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You know that feeling. There's this girl you've been chasing forever. You positively, absolutely, can't stop thinking about her. She's the most amazing woman in the world -- you're certain of it. There's never been another one like her.

Her laughter sounds like the delicate tinkling of the finest crystal.

Her voice sounds like the music of the heavens.

The sight of her sets your heart pounding a thousand beats per minute.

You know that if you could just get her, you'd be happy forever and you would never want anything else ever again. Maybe you're not even certain if you believe in marriage or soul mates or "The One" -- but maybe you'd make an exception to all of that for her.

You'd do anything for her.

Well, as you well know by now, I'm not the type to hold punches, sugarcoat things, or sell you fairytales wrapped in gumdrops. So, this isn't per se a post on how to finally get that girl you can't stop thinking about.

Instead, this is a post about how you can wrest back control of your heart, mind, and dating life -- and how you can get yourself to a place where you're truly happy bringing actual women of quality into your life, instead of sitting there pining away for a vision (built more from your ideas of an idealized version of a flawless her than on her her actual self) of That One Special Girl.

THAT ONE SPECIAL GIRL

What if I told you it wasn't her you liked, quite so much as it was the suspense of not knowing if you'd get her or not, and the dream of some day succeeding?

I remember when I was a little boy, and there was this series of toys called "Monster in My Pocket." I was addicted to them. The way the "Monster in My Pocket" series worked was, you'd buy a box of monsters, but you never knew which ones you were going to get. I had a fold-out pamphlet that showed all the monsters you could get... but there were a few I just never could seem to find.

Well, I kept buying and buying boxes of monsters, always really excited, always hoping I'd finally get the ones I wanted to get. Sometimes I was disappointed, but sometimes I'd have a triumphant victory and get one of those long-awaited missing monsters.

Looking back on my childhood, most of the toys I had the strongest emotional ties to were like this. There was the "Trash Bag Bunch," a bunch of toys that came in dissolvable "trash bags" you had to toss into the water to find out which toy you got. There were Marvel Comics cards, where you never knew which cards you got until you opened up the pack.

Those were the things I stayed up at night, hoping and dreaming about, as a little boy. I wanted to get them.

Getting powerful, obsessive feelings about something -- anything, whether toys or women or anything else -- seems to come from these few things:

Find something you want (a cool toy, a girl you like)

Find yourself unable to get it right away

Begin working and struggling to get it, still not succeeding

Still want it enough that you keep trying

Still continue feeling close enough to getting it that you keep trying

Keep trying

Keep investing more and more, never quite getting it, but always feeling close

Start thinking about it more and more, obsessing over it

Nothing else comes along to break you of that obsession

This process goes on and you continue chasing, growing ever more obsessed. This is what seems to happen with guys. It's why I find I frequently need to tell guys don't chase women; because the very act of chasing makes the thing you chase become more and more valuable to you as you become ever more invested in it.

I speak from experience. But I'll spare you details -- instead, I'll just tell you the end.

A few months back, I was showing some pictures on my computer to my girlfriend, when she noticed a folder marked "Girls." She was understandably intrigued, and asked me what it was. I, not particularly caring either way about showing her this old folder from years ago, decided there was no harm in opening it up.

In it were pictures of girls I'd had crushes on when I was younger... including That One Special Girl, a girl I'd pined over... wait for it... for eight years.

Yeah, you read that write, not a typo. Almost a decade of my life, spent pining over one girl. *Ahem*, anyway, back to the story...

To me, for about a decade, that girl had been the most incredible, amazing, special, perfect woman on Earth. I constantly over that 8 years had tried to wrest control of my mind -- I tried pointing out to myself that she was fallible; that she wasn't really all that much more special than other girls; that she was busily getting shagged by other men and wasn't exactly waiting for me, and I should move on to. But I couldn't. She was the ultimate goal of my entire being.

So, there I was a few months back, sitting there with my girlfriend, looking at this girl who'd once seemed for a large portion of my life like the one good, shining thing in the world, and the one thing I wanted above all else, seven years removed from those feelings and that obsession that once commanded the majority of my free time, mentally.

"Who's that girl? She's ugly," said my girlfriend, not knowing anything about her.

"Ugly?" I said, a little stunned.

"Yes! Look at her!" she said. I hadn't looked at the girl's picture in a long time. And, in what was a truly strange and surreal moment, I looked -- and I saw what she meant.

Here was this girl who'd to me been the most beautiful girl in the world for a very long time. And a lot of people in my school did consider her one of the most beautiful girls in school. And I suppose, compared to everyone else there, she was one of the best.

But I noticed, later in life, that her friends weren't all that hot. "That's odd," I remember thinking, "usually hot girls have hot friends. Strange."

But as my girlfriend pointed this out to me, I suddenly viewed that girl's pictures in a much starker, more objective light than perhaps I ever had. And, while I wouldn't say she was ugly, I also wouldn't say she really was anything all that special. She was just better than most of the other girls in my class... which wasn't saying much.

It felt like waking up from a dream.

I remember years ago checking that girl's Facebook page to see what she was doing with her life, and seeing that she got her Bachelor's degree from a fairly good school, she was hanging out with friends in her spare time, still living in our home city, and doing some entry-level work at a real estate agency.

Totally normal, usual stuff. Nothing special, unique, amazing, or exceptional about her. She's not bad, not good, just a normal, ordinary person.

How in God's name did I end up spending a decade of my life sitting in a corner obsessing about her though while she was out living her (rather ordinary) life?

From Dictionary.com:
ob•ses•sion [uhb-sesh-uhn]
noun
1. the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.

Now, properly directed, I don't think that obsession is necessarily a bad thing.

If you're using obsession with something like business or art or science to create something that truly improves your life or gives back to mankind, that's a good thing.

If, however, you're obsessing over a girl, and you simply can't stop thinking about her, that's something else entirely.

Riddle me this: how often does obsession over someone seem romantic to that person?

Answer: only when the feeling is mutual, and when the obsessed is incredibly charming, smooth and suave.

Thing is, most charming, smooth, suave guys don't get obsessed, and most guys who get obsessed aren't charming, smooth, or suave -- and quite often the reason why they're so obsessed is because the girl doesn't feel the same way and they aren't together.

That was the case for me, and if you've got a girl you're all tied up in knots over, I'm betting that's probably the case for you as well.

Is this kind of fixation healthy?

I'll put it in perspective for you: if one of your good friends came to you and told you there was this girl that he really, really liked and really, really wanted, you'd probably say okay, yeah, sure -- you should ask her out, man.

But what would you say if he came to you 2 weeks later and said he really liked her, but he still hadn't asked her out?

How about a month later?

How about 2 months later?

At what point would you tell him, "Listen man, this girl's becoming poison for you. You're wasting all your time obsessing over this girl you're never going to do anything with. Cut it out and move on?"

For a good friend of yours, this would probably happen when:

He's been talking about this girl for a long time but not doing anything
You can tell he's building her up in his head to unrealistic levels
He's fixating on her to the exclusion of cute girls around him who like him
That's the point where you're usually going to say, "Dude, man, chill out, forget this girl, and let's go meet some new girls together."

In the movies, they like to show how the guy's friend says that to him, but no, he's determined to get her, and then he goes and turns it around and it's amazing and him and this girl end up marrying and they spend the rest of their lives together in joyful, fairytale bliss.

That's the movies. Real life is not like that... it's way, way better.

In real life, you drop that girl you were obsessing over, go out, meet new girls, and end up with a lot of beautiful, awesome girlfriends. Maybe even one day one such beautiful, awesome girlfriend happens to come across a picture of that girl you used to obsess over, and offhandedly remarks, "Who's that? She's ugly." Much better than sitting in the corner, moping and obsessing forever.

But, it is harder to do than keeping your fixation. It's going to take some willpower, because at that point, you're fighting obsession.

What happens when you've gotten this idea stuck in your head of That One Special Girl is that she becomes the only thing that will do. You have to have her. You can't stop thinking about her, and no other girl is good enough, and no other girl measures up to her. She's perfection personified.

And here's the funny thing about the girl you're obsessed with:

You never, ever do anything with her.

Isn't that funny? You fantasize so much about how you'd like to:

Talk to her
Spend time with her
Take her on a date
Make love to her
Take her on some romantic adventure
Be with her all the time

... and yet you don't do any of those things. You don't even try, most of the time.

Why is that?

PERCHANCE TO DREAM
There's a quote that I think accurately sums up the predicament most men in pursuit of That One Special Girl would do well to heed (I sure could've benefited from doing so):

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
- T.E. Lawrence

Here's the situation of the man who dreams by night:

There he lays, late at night, after another day of no action taken on the course to making his dreams turn into a reality, thinking about how much he'd like some day for his dreams to come true.

It's an insidious thing, this expanding infatuation. It creeps up on you like a slow-growing affliction... at first it isn't more than a hint and a whisper -- a thought of her here, a memory of her there. But time passes, and it spreads and grows, and before long you wake up one day and realize the thought of this one girl, of getting her and making her yours, has become the center point of your existence; you find this new obsession consuming you.

That's what happened to me anyway, and that affliction of my nocturnal fantasies became my whole world for a very long time. It was almost like an 8-year prison sentence, for my mind.

But the mind wants to be free. It doesn't want to be held prisoner by a hint and a whisper.

There's one other thing it wants though, too, and sometimes that one thing is more important to it than freedom; that thing is hope.

And even then, right when I was in the thick of my obsession with That One Special Girl, right when I couldn't stop thinking about her to save my life, I also knew that I valued the idea of her, and the dream that I might one day get her, more than her herself. I almost didn't want to go talk to her, because I knew that if I lost hope I could get her, I didn't know what else I could do.

I needed her there as a light in the darkness.

At least, that's what I thought. But as I was fixating on her, I was also turning down some very pretty girls who wanted dates with me, because I couldn't get my mind off this one girl.

If a buddy of yours told you he was turning down dates with nice, pretty girls because he couldn't stop thinking about some other girl who was out busily dating other guys, what would you tell him to do?

Yeah, that's right -- you'd tell him to forget that one girl, and go date the ones in front of him. Sure, maybe they're not quite as good as her -- but man, it'll do him some good:

Dating different girls will give him dating momentum -- instead of inertia
Dating different girls will remind him he's an attractive guy that women like
Dating different girls will sharpen his skill set with women
Dating different girls might even help him make the girl jealous that he likes
Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

Well, how would you feel if you told me there's this one girl that you can't stop thinking about -- and I told you to do exactly this?

CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT HER? ... NOW YOU CAN
As you might surmise from the tone of this post, I'm not going to suggest that the way you deal with That One Special Girl is by getting her.

Because I verily believe that if you were really going to go get her, you'd have gotten her by now.

Trust me, I've coached legions of men over the past 5 or 6 years, many of whom were trying to get That One Special Girl. I tried, and tried, and tried to help them succeed at that goal. I told them exactly what they needed to do, down to the letter. It didn't work. It never does. Never. And every guy thinks he's different, and he's the one who's going to finally succeed at getting That One Special Girl where every other guy has failed, and he never, ever does. Ever. So I get asked the same questions again and again: "How do I get That One Special Girl?" and no matter how many times I tell the guy, it doesn't work.

The problem isn't that the guy was inept with women. Oftentimes, these are attractive, likable guys. And it wasn't that the girl was some stony-hearted ice queen. Usually she liked the guy at some point... maybe even chased after him, like that girl I was caught up on for 8 years initially did with me.

The problem is that when you get highly emotionally invested in a woman, you will trip over your emotions with her every single time. You'll make mistakes that guys who don't have those same attachments to her don't make. You hesitate when you should act. You value her so highly that you don't want to mess things up... and precisely because of that, her attraction for you expires and she loses interest, never to have it return.

Therefore, the solution to the That One Special Girl problem is not "do this and that and the other thing, and then she's yours!"

The solution, instead, as unromantic as it might sound, is this:

First, recognize that learning how to get girls is a skill. It isn't an inborn trait or ability that some guys have and some guys lack. And when you're sitting around pining away for That One Special Girl -- and not talking to her or other girls, dating girls, pushing to make things happen with girls -- you're backsliding while the rest of the world moves ahead. Instead of making progress, you're falling behind.

Next, recognize you're caught up and over-invested in a girl who isn't yours. Much as you might like her, and much as you might wish her to be yours... she ain't. Now, I'm not much of one for ownership of women, but if you're going to think of women as being "yours" or "not yours," you should at least consider that the man who's actually physically sleeping with That One Special Girl is needless to say going to be the one who commands the most sway over her.

You may not want to hear that, but yeah... no matter how much she means to you, her lover (whether you know about him or not... and if you pine for her long enough without the two of you getting together, trust that she will have a guy who's hers while you're waiting patiently by not being with her) has got a lot more influence over her than some guy she knows who's pining away for her late at night. See "The Sad Tale of Shopping Guy" on not chasing women for more on what happens when you're "that guy" sitting there dreaming of a girl.

If you find yourself white knighting, recognize that it's self-interested. Many guys who pine also tend to think, "Oh, if only I could save her from all those other bad men out there and give her what she really deserves!" I know, I was guilty of it. Well, realize that this isn't out of pureness, goodness, or charity -- it's because you want her to be yours, and not some other guy's. Nothing charitable about it -- it's self-interestedness at its finest, masquerading as kindness and goodness. Knock that off -- can't save her unless you save yourself first. Which brings us to our next point...

Next, start meeting new women. This means talking to lots of girls; it means getting out there regularly, being sociable, and actively pursuing new women. So long as you stay in that bubble where the last woman you actively pursued was That One Special Girl, trust me, you won't be able to stop thinking about her at all. Maybe not even for 8 years... egad. How'd I let that happen to myself? It really does creep up on you. Don't let it -- meet new girls pronto.

Next, start pushing for the close with women -- lots of women. That means:

• You need to ask a girl out
• You need to get her phone number
• You need to take her on a date
• You need to invite her home
• You need to escalate physically and you need to close out the last 5%
• And all this you must do before her escalation windows close.

Sound tough? That's why you approach this like a skill. Because when you're trying to do all this with That One Special Girl, when you haven't developed that skill yet, you're simply not going to be able to.

I've seen it over and over and over again. If you haven't nurtured the skill to succeed with women in yourself, you can't magically make it happen in this one special instance. That's like taking a guy who's never bothered to learn how to play baseball, tossing him into the World Series, and asking him to hit a couple of homeruns 4 games straight and win the championship.

If you're not a pro and you don't know what you're doing just yet, you can't just magically turn a switch and transform into Babe Ruth just because you're in a high-pressure situation where now you really need to be able to perform. It doesn't work that way.

Instead, you go out, and you work at it, methodically. You get better, one day at a time.

And then, before you know it, you look around one day, and realize that That One Special Girl no longer seems so special. You realize that you're now surrounded by women a lot more special than she was -- but they're the ones who can't stop thinking about you.

If you can't stop thinking about her, recognize that all you've got to do is go bring some new women into your life, and before you know it, you'll be way too busy thinking about all of them to worry about that girl you weren't even together with -- that girl who wasn't even yours. You'll realize that she was just a hint and a whisper -- but these girls you're with now, these girls are real.

You've got the tools you need to get started. You've got this site, with its scads and scads of articles on here. I pointed you to a number of links in this article above that should help you get going. You can check out the homepage for more basics for helping you get started.

And most of all, you've got yourself. If you read nothing else at all on pick up or seduction ever again, so long as you get out there and talk to new girls and push to close, even when you're not sure a girl will say "yes," you'll end up revamping your dating life so completely you won't even recognize yourself before you know it.

And maybe someday, somewhere in the world, you'll have some beautiful young girl who loves you very much gazing over your shoulder at a picture of that girl you used to not be able to stop thinking about, and she'll ask you, "Who's that?"

And you'll look at her, smile, and tell her that's nobody.
~ Fin

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The post "Should You Pay for a Date?" is still, it appears, attracting its fair share of outrage from what seems mostly to be women, who don't like the fact that I'm recommending, based on my own experiences and all of those of every man I'm acquainted with whose tried both ways, that men not pay for their dates if they want better results with girls.

These commentators are protesting, of course, because it doesn't fit with the way they think the world ought to work.

But I don't write this blog to talk to people about the way the world ought to work. It'd be great if men could just buy women dinner and women would automatically upon the completion of that romantic date then become the men's lovers, girlfriends, and wives immediately thereafter.

That's not what happens, though. And what this site is about is what does happen -- what works, what doesn't, and everything in between.

So let's settle this, then. I've decided to craft for you, today, the definitive post on how to get girls. After reading this post, your core questions on how to be successful with women are all going be answered -- and any of you ladies reading on here, buckle yourselves in because we're going to take an intensive, in-depth look at the way you choose the men you do.

THE BOYFRIEND DILEMMA
I have a subchapter in my detailed, information-packed how-to ebook on getting girls with this very title. I'm going to share a few of the opening paragraphs of that subchapter here, to clarify what the "boyfriend dilemma" -- a core concept you'll need grasp to fully appreciate what is to come in this post -- is all about:

"As you get better with women - smoother, more charming, sexier and more debonair - women will begin to recognize the success and good qualities about you. They will be more likely to think to themselves, "Wow, this guy is great," and they will want to keep you for themselves and want you as a boyfriend.

This means, however, that women will also be more likely to resist fast intimacy with you. And a longer haul to get intimate means more work for you, more chances that things can go wrong, and less time to focus on other important things in your life, like business, travel, and leisure.

The more you improve yourself and your skills, the more you raise your desirability to women as a boyfriend, and the more they tend to want to develop a secure commitment."

In other words, the more amazing you become, and the more women like you and appreciate you and see you as a wonderful guy, the more they're going to want to hang onto you as a potential boyfriend.

And the more they're going to want to hang onto you as a potential boyfriend, the more they're going to want to slow things down, put on their best faces, and make sure you see them as fully 100% commitment-worthy.

That means, of course, that they can't be too honest about their pasts with you. They can't be too honest about their own selves with you. And they definitely can't go to bed with you too fast... lest you come to view them as loose, easy, or worse.

The instant a woman starts viewing you as a potential boyfriend, and believes she can have you as a boyfriend, she puts the brakes on everything. She's got to be careful not to mess this up.

And what happens when someone slows things down, tries not to mess up, and puts a lot of pressure on themselves?

They muck it up, almost always. It almost never ends well.

Our female readers make a good point when they protest that they like guys who pay for them more. Because they really do -- they do like those guys more!

They like them so much that they might consider them for a relationship.

Which means, of course, that they're certainly not going to go and be so foolish as to hook up quickly with a guy like that. That'd be silly and wasteful. Losing a perfectly good long-term relationship candidate for a night of passion and pleasure.

That's the boyfriend dilemma. That's what I'm talking about, and that's why, among many other topics we've discussed on this site, paying for things for a woman makes it less likely that the two of you get together.

It's not because women like you less for it, which seems to be what the female commentators on this blog think I'm saying.

It's because they like you more.


PETE, JERRY, AND SUE: A LOVE TRIANGLE
Before we continue, I want to discuss why it's so important that you learn to move quickly -- expeditiously, even -- with women. To illustrate the concept, I'll tell you a story: the story of a woman named Sue, and the two wonderful, attractive men she's met -- both of whom like her and both of whom decide to pursue her.

The two men Sue's met are Jerry, a charming, quick-witted salesman who makes a middle-class income, and Pete, a charismatic, brilliant investment banker pulling down six figures.

On her first date with Pete, the investment banker, Sue gets treated to a wonderful, fancy dinner. Pete picks her up in his sports car, wines her and dines her at the finest, classiest restaurant in town, and regales her with fantastic tales of travel to exotic locations abroad and high adventure. At the end of the night, Pete drops Sue off at her apartment, gives her a peck on the cheek, and wishes her goodnight.

The next day, Pete gets swamped with work, and in any event he's heard it's good to let girls sit and wonder for a while first anyway, so rather than jump and plan the second date right away, he decides to wait a bit. He's a little nervous anyway; he really likes this girl and doesn't want to mess it up. He's thinking maybe a week later, he'll see Sue again, and charm her even more. It sounds like the perfect plan.

But now Sue goes out with Jerry.

Jerry doesn't have Pete's sports car. He can't take Sue to a fancy dinner. And his most exciting stories are about the time he got arrested for public drunkenness, and that fight he got into trying to save his buddy who'd hit on the wrong guy's girl.

Jerry meets Sue at a café not far from his apartment, and they sit and chat for about two hours. Sue's still riding the buzz from her date with Pete, and likes him quite a lot, and is dreaming of what a spectacular wedding she and Pete will have. She's thinking about what it'd be like to be Mrs. Pete. Meanwhile, Jerry's doing a good enough job making her laugh a little and just generally being a charming, sexy guy. Sue doesn't see much of a future with Jerry, but that's okay.

The two of them end up back at Jerry's place, and one thing leads to another and they sleep together. Jerry's quite charming, and quite good in bed, and after their first time being intimate, they have some dinner, and then Jerry takes Sue to bed again.

Sue goes home, and now she's flooded with the potent emotions that came from that fast, incredible date with Jerry. Even though he'd just been okay on the date, the powerful ending of that date that found the two of them going to bed a few times has left her feeling like he's a pretty incredible guy to make a girl like her want to sleep with him so fast. And when he texts her a few days later and asks her if she'd like to spend more time together, of course she says "yes."

Meanwhile, it's been a week since Pete's first date with Sue, and he decides it's time to ask her out again. This time, Pete invites Sue to see that new play in town -- he figures it'll be a great outing for the two of them. Sue agrees, and again he picks her up and drives her to the play.

Sue and Pete sit there during the play, and while Sue still likes Pete, the emotions that intimacy with a new partner creates are swirling crazily in her head as she thinks obsessively about Jerry. She can't wait to see him again, and she spends most of her date with Pete fantasizing about her next night with Jerry. At the end of the date, again, Pete drives Sue home, gives her a peck on the cheek, and bids her goodnight.

Sue sees Jerry a few more times over the next week, and they have some fun conversations, Sue cooks Jerry some food at his apartment, and they go to bed each time, Sue waking up the next morning feeling wonderful. Then, after another week has passed, Pete asks her on another date. Sue debates, not sure if she wants to go -- but Pete's such a great guy, she'd feel bad about saying no. So she says okay.

This time, Pete takes Sue back to his apartment, and cooks her a three course meal. He's truly an exceptional cook, and his apartment is splendidly well-appointed. He has candles on, and romantic music playing in the background. After dinner, he goes for the kiss. Sue pushes him away.

"Pete," she tells him, "you're great, but this is way too fast for me."

Pete's a little taken aback; it's the third date -- he thought that was the rule. Take a girl out on three dates, and on the third date you get together. But now Sue was telling him it was still too soon.

Pete drives Sue back to her place, fishes for a kiss again, but only ends up getting another peck on the cheek. He tries calling her and texting her to meet up over the next week, but she's evasive. She never has time for him anymore.

He doesn't know why, but we do: it's because she's with Jerry, and she's falling for him. Eventually, Jerry decides he likes Sue a lot, and he makes her his girlfriend. Pete spends the next few months still texting or calling Sue occasionally, and she's always polite but never all that interested. He leaves scratching his head, wondering what happened.

What did happen?


WHY THE MAN WHO MOVES FAST FINDS SUCCESS
There are two major factors at play in that story above that determined the outcome for Pete and Jerry with Sue. Did you spot them?

In case you didn't, here they are:

1) How fast each man moved to get Sue in bed and make her "his," and
2) How hard each man worked to establish his long term potential.

Mainstream society -- including most women -- will tell you you ought to move slow, be gentlemanly, and show a woman what a great, fantastic option you'll be for the long-term.

Great advice, except...

It doesn't work!!!

So many men out there end up like Pete, having spent so much time, money, and heartache thinking they know how to get girls, trying so hard to get girls, then ending up wondering how on Earth they failed to succeed.

They never realize that that combination of taking things too slow, coupled with positioning themselves as exceptional candidates for the boyfriend position, is, the vast majority of the time, a love-life death sentence.

If you ask a woman if women like bad boys or if they like cads, she's going to tell you no, not at all.

And yet you keep hearing women complaining how they keep ending up with those bad men they don't like.

This confuses regular guys to no end. They don't get it.

But the reason why the "bad boys" -- guys like Jerry, our salesman from the story above -- end up with girls: it's because they avoid getting themselves slotted as boyfriends women must move carefully with, and they move fast with women and get women in bed.

A girl's not yours until you've been intimate with her a few times. Until then, she's on the market, and she's waiting for someone to come snap her up.

Think about these scenarios:

1. A man's wining and dining a woman once a week, but hasn't taken her to bed yet.

2. A man's writing songs and love letters to a girl, but hasn't taken her to bed yet.

3. A man goes on shopping trips and watches movies with a girl, but hasn't taken her to bed yet.

Now ask yourself... out of ANY of those scenarios... how many of those men do you think will STILL get the girl if a guy like Jerry comes along and sweeps her off her feet and takes her to bed and sees her a few more times before those guys ever make a move?

The guy who's wining and dining her isn't going to steal her away from Jerry.

The guy who's writing sonnets to her isn't going to steal her away from Jerry.

The guy who's her shopping pal isn't going to steal her away from Jerry.

The man who takes a woman to bed is the man who gets her. Plain and simple. So, romance is great, being gentlemanly with women is nice, but you've got to, got to, got to make getting girls in bed your top priority if you want the best percentage chance you can get with them.

And avoiding the boyfriend designation -- prior to intimacy, anyway -- is a big part of helping you get there as fast as possible. Women don't like men who fail their boyfriend criteria as much -- but it's still very possible they like them enough to end up in bed with them. And once you're taking a girl to bed, if you decide you want her as a girlfriend after all, you've got a hell of a better chance of having her as that than the guy who's still chasing after her.


HOW TO GET GIRLS WITH RIDICULOUS CONSISTENCY
When I first started learning how to get girls 6 years ago, I didn't realize that speed and avoiding the boyfriend designation were key. I thought the keys were to be as interesting as you possibly could, to show women what an incredible, amazing guy you were, and to disarm their fears that all you wanted with them was to go to bed and that's it.

I look back at that now, and all I can think is... how silly of me! No wonder I used to flounder around so much. *head slap*

You must move fast with women. And you must avoid the boyfriend designation (while still being a likeable enough guy). Let's look at some of the ways you'll best be able to do both things -- we'll start with moving fast with women.

MOVING FAST WITH WOMEN
Sparking conversation with new women with statements of genuine interest: this is stuff like, "I saw you walking here, and I had to come tell you that you have the most incredible sense of style I've seen all day. I'm Jake." This gets you moving quickly off the bat -- women know what you're about, and they know you're not going to beat around the bush. Lower opening percentage than the women you open with stuff like, "Can you tell me where the fancy clothing store is?" but God, the women it does open are so much more into you.

Exchanging names right away: I find it hard to believe there's even a debate on this. Some guys think it's better to not tell a girl your name until she asks... then you know she really likes you, goes the thinking, and plus you make her work for it. No, throw this out. Exchange names so you're not strangers, right away. Then you can start getting to know each other from the outset and it isn't awkward.

Get to know her ASAP: a few boring questions are fine so long as you're directing those questions toward deep diving and getting to know the most important things about a girl: wants, dreams, hopes, passions. Most guys go for facts (what do you do, where do you live, how long have you been in town, etc.), and that stuff's good... but only as a jumping off point! You need to use those things to get to the substance of who she really is -- not get caught up in them, like most men do (to their great detriment).

Move her ASAP: until you've moved a girl somewhere, you're still just some guy she's having a casual conversation with. Once you've moved her, and she's gone with you, you're now a guy she's committing her time and effort into and actively working to get to know. Ask her to move -- either to stand somewhere more comfortable or less noisy, or to grab a seat, or to walk in your direction, or to just walk around in general -- within 3 to 5 minutes at the most, typically. If she won't move with you in 3 to 5 minutes of meeting you, she probably won't do anything else with you, either.

Get contact information fast: you should grab a girl's follow up information within a few minutes of meeting her, provided you're going for it at all. Check out the post on "Natural Number Swapping" for more on doing that easily and smoothly. Then, continue on with the conversation as if nothing'd happened once you have her follow up info.

Take her home soon, or end the interaction: if you see my interactions with women, you'll notice that these days I mostly either take a girl home within 30 minutes of meeting her, or I grab her follow up information and I end the interaction within 10 minutes of meeting her. I highly recommend you work to get your numbers to a similar place -- spending excess time with a woman doesn't help you attract her more. It just increases the chance that you make a mistake somewhere along the line and lose her.

Set up a date within days of meeting her: you should aim to see a girl the next day or at least within 2 to 3 days of first meeting her. This significantly increases the odds she says "yes" and agrees to meet you, and that she still has some strong, good memories tied to your first encounter.

Simplify your dates: there's really no reason for fun or fancy dates, unless you're looking for a friend rather than a lover. Keep it simple and keep the focus on you and her, and the two of you getting to know each other, rather than on the things that you're doing.

Invite her home: you should do this within 2 to 3 hours maximum of being on a date with a girl. Thinking that you'll see her on a second date is getting you very dangerously close to boyfriend-candidate territory (more on that in a second), so work to get her home on Date #1 if at all possible.

Make a move and escalate physically: nothing worse than taking a girl home, not making a move, and her leaving after an uneventful night. She leaves frustrated and disappointed, and you end up kicking yourself, angry for not taking action and quite probably losing that girl forever. Instead, set a timer for yourself -- no girl's allowed alone with you for more than 10 minutes without getting kissed.
And, for avoiding landing up in potential-boyfriend-no-man's-land:

AVOIDING THE NOMINATION TO BOYFRIEND CANDIDACY
Be a sexy man: this one makes you more desirable as a fast partner, and makes you seem more like potentially a "bad guy," thus downgrading your eligibility for long-term consideration.

Don't be overly sympathetic: most guys, when girls give them a sob story, take the, "Aww, no, that's so horrible," tack and get a really sympathetic puppy dog voice and try to make it clear how sorry they are. Don't do that. Instead, be sympathetic with your words, but neutral in your tone of voice. "That's horrible, I'm sorry that happened," said with an almost neutral tone, followed with something like, "Well, look on the bright side: it's in the past and you're doing absolutely fine now. What cool stuff are you working on these days?" makes it clear you want to focus on good, empowering stuff, and not dwell on tragic stuff like guys trying to be a girl's boyfriend will.

Be humble and don't try to be too impressive: most guys on dates go overboard trying to be really cool, impressive, and magnificent, so women see how incredibly amazing they are. What ends up happening with this is either A) they come off really fake and annoying, or B) they do an effective job, and seem so amazing that women slot them into boyfriend territory and slow things down so as not to risk losing them. Use humbleness and self-deprecation the right way to take the edge off of your impressiveness.

Actively disqualify yourself as a boyfriend: telling a girl you don't plan on staying in the town you're in for long -- that you'll move on in search of adventure or business or whatever soon -- does an incredible job of this. In my mind, it's quite frankly the best one out there -- although hard to use if you're not planning on moving around much. If it isn't the case for you that you are, try telling women that you think relationships are wonderful, but only once you've gotten your career established and have the time to focus on them, or once you've reached this milestone or that age or what have you. Make it clear you're not against relationships -- you're just not in the position to get into one right now.

Move fast. What one thing do guys who want a girl as a girlfriend not do? They don't move fast! They take it slow and be careful and try not to lose her. In moving fast, you communicate to a woman you're not treating her like a potential girlfriend -- thereby greatly increasing the chances she thinks to herself, "Screw it, I like this guy, but he's not going to be my boyfriend, so what the hell, let's get together," and, ironically, greatly increasing the chances you actually get her as a girlfriend if you want her as a girlfriend.

You know, the funny thing about those two lists of things you need to do if you want to get girls with a high degree of consistency is probably about half or more of that flies completely in the face of what you'll hear from mainstream society on romance and dating.

Like, they're polar opposites. No comparison.

Mainstream society tells you you ought to move slowly and be a gentleman. I'm telling you what I've found to be the secret to how to get girls is moving fast and being relatively unsympathetic. It just works better... way better.

Mainstream society tells you you should be impressive and dazzle women with fancy dinners and displays of wealth and tales of high adventures. I'm telling you to be humble, get her doing the talking instead of you, and leave your Rolls-Royce at home (get her to pick you up, actually, if at all possible. I did this back when I had a beautiful black Mercedes-Benz E320 with a leather interior, and my close rate when girls picked me up was remarkably higher than when I picked them up in my gleaming Benz... boyfriend material with the Benz, not so much when she's the one chauffeuring you around).

Mainstream society tells you to that if you want a girl as a girlfriend, you're better off waiting until the third date -- or much later! -- to make a move. I'm telling you that if you want her as a girlfriend, the first date's probably the latest you ought to go for it, or else risk losing her to fading attraction or some faster-moving competition.

These are the realities of the world, and if you respect them, understand them, and take them under heavy consideration, you can empower yourself to find incredible, consistent, surprising amounts of success.

And not everybody's going to like that. Women aren't going to like that -- they want you to play nice and stick around even though you aren't lovers. Other men aren't going to like that -- so long as you're not moving too fast and not playing too hard, you're no more competition than anybody else. It's only when you start succeeding consistently -- and start wearing the vibe around you that you do -- that other men start to panic and attack.

I used to feel like those guys occasionally. I used to look at the bad boys women were ending up with, and think to myself, "If only she was with me... I'd treat her so much better."

But you know what?

My girlfriend right now... she's beautiful, intelligent, educated, tons of fun, with a vivacious personality, and she's had all of two lovers before me. Pretty conservative girl. She had a lot of men chasing after her when I met her -- men like Pete in our story above. Men with much better careers than me, who wined her, dined her, took her on shopping expeditions, treated her to movies.

All I did was talk to her for a few minutes at the train station, have her come to a café near my place two days later, spent a couple hours talking to her there, then took her upstairs and took her to bed, just as I had a number of other women in the weeks immediately prior to sleeping with her. And once we'd gone to bed, it was extremely easy to transition her into being my girlfriend.

Now, many of those guys who were pursuing her before are still pursuing her. They don't realize she has a boyfriend -- she doesn't bother telling them anything. They can't figure out why she won't see them. They don't understand why, after they invested so much time, and money, and effort into her, they still can't get her.

But I do. And hopefully, if I've done a good job with this post, you do too.

Being nice, and paying for things for women, and trying to be impressive to them isn't how to get girls. Moving fast and not getting considered a boyfriend nominee before you take a girl to bed -- that is.

Hope this has been insightful and eye-opening for you. It's a lot of stuff that, had I realized it 6 years ago, I'm confident I would've had an even more explosive ride to where I am now. But man, it's been fun getting to where I've gotten to, I'll tell you that much.

---

My girl was over and we were talking earlier about how difficult a time it is for a woman to find a quality guy she likes a lot. She spooled off a quick list of men she'd been on dates with who hadn't made the cut: there was the older doctor who lied about his age, and the guy she went to the movies with who had touched her arm and creeped her out. But the one who stood out the most to me was the one she described as her "good friend."

This was a guy who took her out to walk on the ice over a lake in town that had frozen over. There, the guy professed to her that he would satisfy all her needs. At the moment when he said that, she briefly asked herself, "Huh. Could I have sex with this guy?" Her answer was no, it'd be weird. He was her friend.

And then she said something that really stood out:

"I like him as a friend. We can talk about anything. I'm like his guy friend. And he's like my girlfriend."

I felt for this poor fella's misfortune: relegated to the position of, essentially, girlfriend. A sexless, masculinity-devoid excuse of a man, who willingly (though no doubt reluctantly) set his manhood aside to continue spending time with a woman.

She still keeps in touch with him, and (when she has a free night) grabs dinner with him (which of course he pays for), and tells him just about everything. And he still seems to be hoping, despite all this, that there's still a chance.

Meanwhile, my girl comes over here, pays for almost all the food we eat together, cooks for me, helps me clean and do laundry, and this guy's texting her hoping to get somewhere.

What's he doing wrong, and how have I not made the same mistakes?

ENDING UP "JUST FRIENDS"
We've touched on ending up in the friend zone on here before in a couple of previous posts - in "Can I Help You?," about men who offer to help women out too much, and in "Overproviding Good Feelings," which discusses the danger of doing too many fun things with women. But now we're really going to dive into the subject.

Just how does some poor schmuck end up in the position of being "like a girlfriend;" how's a guy who wants to date some girl, or make her his girlfriend, or take her home and shag her silly end up being just friends?

There are three big determinants of whether a man will end up as no more than a woman's friend. They are as follows:

>Speed - or lack thereof.
There's no getting around it - men who move fast with women get more girls, and they even do better with the higher quality girls. How come? Because, generally, the longer a man takes to move things forward with a woman, the less she's going to tell herself she likes him. If a guy "works on" a girl for weeks or months and still doesn't take a girl to bed, she's going to view him as a lot less "man" than she does a man who beds her the day or the night he meets her, or on their first date.

And when she looks back at those scenarios and considers them, she's going to think to herself, "Wow, I went to bed with Tom a lot faster than I went to bed with Sam... I must've found Tom much more attractive than Sam if I went to bed with him so much faster. But poor Sam... he's a nice guy."

You should also consider that a woman will tend to view the man who took her to bed the quickest as the most dominant, powerful man she's been with; so, you want to strive to be the fastest to bed a girl usually, particularly if you want to have a long-term relationship with her, because in relationships it's always favorable for you to have the woman viewing you as the strongest, most powerful man of her life.

> How much you invest in her.
The Law of Least Effort comes into play here, as the more effort a man puts into getting together with a woman, the less she's going to consider him a valid romantic option. Women are most attracted to men who get them as effortlessly as possible; if a man gets her while visibly expending little effort, she reasons that she must be quite attracted to him to be doing these things with him despite his lack of investment. The reverse is true, as well: men who invest a great deal of time, effort, and energy investing in women tend to get thought of as unattractive men. If he's such a great catch, why does he have to work so hard to get her?

This is the source of the friend zoned-guy's lament: "I've done so much for her, and then she goes and runs into the arms of that guy, who treats her like dirt! I just don't get it!" That guy looking on confusedly from the friends zone can thank the Law of Least Effort - and his failure to apply it with this girl - for his predicament.
What emotions you show with her. Women are attracted to sexy, mysterious men. They're not, despite what television tells you much of the time, really all that into sensitive men who wear their hearts on their sleeves. You still ought to talk about emotion with women, but that's the thing - you'll be talking about it. Showing it, on the other hand, is something else altogether.

> One of the mistakes that men who get friend zoned make is that they often show a great deal of emotion. Whether that's because they're genuinely emotional men, or whether that's because they think they need to be emotionally expressive in order to win women's hearts, it's a turn off to girls. Showing emotion - whether hope or joy or jealousy or anger or concern or sadness or whatever - is bad for seduction.

Think about women: they're nearly universally all emotional people. And emotional people need other emotional people around them about as much as they need a punch in the face. Emotional people, rather, seek out others who are "rock-like" and can be solid and unshakeable for them. Note that doesn't mean cold; cold people are scary, because women feel like they're not really building a real connection with them. You still should be warm, but you also should stick to talking about emotions rather than showing them.

Those are the Big 3 of ending up in the friend zone: moving too slow, investing too much, and showing too much emotion. And, naturally, those are three things that most men default to with any girl they like a lot: they move slow (to make sure they don't mess up), invest a lot (so the girl will like them for all they've done for her), and they show a great deal of emotion (so she'll see how deep they are and realize what good guys they are, or because they just can't control themselves around her and act jealous or hopeful or nervous).


WHY YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO BE HER FRIEND
But hey, being friends ain't all that bad, right? You get to spend more time with a girl; you get to really get to know her; maybe even, with enough time, she starts realizing what a great guy you are, right?

Well... no, it doesn't actually amount to such a rosy deal. A man who's "just a friend" is effectively emasculated to a woman; she no longer considers him a sexual option. His power as a man - his ability to conquer and inseminate women - isn't even something a woman who's friend zoned him thinks about; actually, when I have girls tell me about their guy friends who are "just friends," whenever they talk about one of these guys' love lives they talk about it like it's some cute, funny thing; kind of like, "Oh, how cute, there's actually a girl out there who wants to have sex with my guy friend. Isn't that funny?"

I guess it depends how you take it. To me, this feels like one of the most patronizing, demeaning, disrespectful ways one human being can view another; as being completely devoid of any modicum of sex appeal. It's downright humiliating. Yet, many men sit there and maintain these relationships, because... why? I'm not really sure.

I recently had a girl try to friend zone me. It doesn't happen to me a whole lot, but I can smell it a mile away when it's going on. I mentioned her a week or so ago in "Dating on Your Terms;" she was the one I went on a date with, probably could've closed things out with had I pulled the trigger, but I moved too slow and this is a strong gal. Strong women don't tend to give out second chances all that often, and while I'd guessed she'd get in contact with me when I wrote up that post a week ago, I was right - she called me last Friday. Only thing was, she wasn't trying to meet up with me, per se - she was trying to get me to help her with something a friend needed that related to one of the businesses I'm running. I told her I didn't have the thing she was looking for so couldn't help her out this time. Then I told her to let me know when she was free the next week and we'd grab a bite.

Now, there're two ways this could go: the first would that what she really wanted was to see me again, and this was just her excuse to get in contact with me, in which case she wouldn't really care I didn't have the thing she asked me for and she'd be thrilled to have me ask her to spend time together again just the two of us.

The second way this could go was the way it actually did: she sounded annoyed I didn't have what she wanted, and hesitated to respond when I told her to let me know her schedule and we'd grab a bite, eventually giving me a very neutral, "Yeah, sure."

She wanted me in the friend zone.



AVOIDING THE FRIEND ZONE
Being "just friends" with a woman is often going to be something that sucks up your time without providing any kind of realistic return on investment. Just like you aren't going to be good friends with every single man in your town, you also don't have the time and bandwidth to be friends with every single woman in your town, as nice as that might be. And just because a woman is someone you'd like to go to bed with, or have as a consort, or even a girlfriend, doesn't necessarily mean she's someone you'd like to have as a friend. In an ideal world, sure, you'd only sleep with top caliber women you'd love to have as pure friends as well, but this isn't an ideal world, it's the real one, and people sleep with people all the time they wouldn't want to be just friends with.

So, the first line of defense against getting friend zoned is knowing just what you do want from a woman you'd consider having as purely a friend. That's going to differ for each person, so here are the traits I look for a girl I'd accept as just my friend to have at least one of:

Top caliber social skills, contagious energy, and the "know" on where all the good parties and cool people are.
An ambitious, dynamic, and results-oriented personality, and I learn something from her every time we talk or hang out.
The tendency to be strongly beneficial toward my life in some other way or is integrating me into some crowd I want to integrate into (e.g., an actress who's pulling me into the acting community, or a girl from a specific local subculture who's bringing me into the fold).
In exchange, I offer… well, everything that women want from me. I've worked quite hard to turn myself into a very value-giving person, and pretty much everyone who spends time with me gets a large dose of value: positive, inspirational energy; solid, practical advice; a willing ear; the occasional witty remark; piercing insight; and the chance to be included in one of my many adventures, undertakings, or dreams. Not to mention I exude sexuality, which is always a great deal of fun for women to spend time basking in.
Needless to say, the more valuable a man you turn yourself into, the more women will begin to view you as an outstanding candidate to be friends with... and the more high quality friends you're going to have, and the less time you're going to have to be friends with every woman who comes along. So you must be discriminating.

Once you know where you draw the line at, though - which women qualify as solid friend material, and which women don't meet the cut - you'll know also exactly what you will and won't tolerate from women.

And once you know exactly what you will and won't tolerate from women, you're able to respond appropriately to women who try to banish you to the friend zone. Namely, you won't be going along with the platonic plans of any women who don't measure up with what you look for in your platonic friends.

That's Step 1. What's Step 2?

Step 2 for avoiding the friend zone is doing what you need to be doing - which, as you might suspect, is the opposite of what men who end up getting given the "let's just be friends" speech do:

Move fast. In your interactions with women, there is no room for timidity. Get girls moving with you, sitting with you, opening up to you, giving you their phone numbers or going home with you quick. Set up dates soon and with speed, and don't dawdle. Timid men dawdle. Sexy men move with urgency.
Invest little and get much in return. This is a bit of an art, because you want to be warm and accommodating and show that you're investing as well, but you want to do it in such a way that you simultaneously appear to be investing less than she is and conducting yourself and managing the interaction effortlessly. This includes conversation - if she isn't talking 75% of the time, you can do better - and it includes communication over distance - if you're getting into long, inefficient text exchanges, for instance, you might consider reading up a bit on how to text a girl. The more you invest, the "friendlier" you seem; the less you invest, the more sexy and edgy you appear.
Be calm in your shown emotions. Again, mind the difference between emotions you show, and emotions you discuss. I might be talking to a girl and say, "Yeah, I was really upset," but the way I'll say it will be in an almost bored voice tone. You'll say you were or are an emotion with your words, but you'll communicate strength and stability with your calm, neutral tonality.


WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE "JUST FRIENDS"
You probably won't like this advice a whole lot, but here's the #1 best piece of advice I can give you once you've wound up in the friends zone:

Drop the girl and move on.

Drop her, as in cut her off almost completely. Be gracious about it, and don't tell her you're dropping her, just… disappear. You may find she becomes so intrigued that she begins chasing after you, or you may find that she falls off your radar altogether. Either way, it's good for you.

That girl I mentioned earlier in this post, who called me trying to get something from me and didn't really want to meet up with me? Chances are, I won't ever talk to this girl again, because it's not a worthwhile use of my time. She clearly is trying to use me to benefit her life without doing anything to benefit mine. e.g., if she wants to get together with me and have a good chat and then we go back to my place and get intimate, well, that's something that benefits her and it benefits me. If, on the other hand, she wants to be just friends and use me to help her friends and maybe talk to me or have me as a shoulder to cry on, that benefits her, but all it does for me is suck up time I could be using to build my businesses or meet new women or spend time with friends who benefit my life as much as I benefit theirs.

Think about it like this: with a girl you're just friends with, that you don't really want to be just friends with, you've typically invested a great deal of time and effort and energy. And the more you invest in someone, the more committed to them you become. You can very quickly end up in the unenviable situation of being far more committed to a woman (for having invested far more in her) than she is in you (for having invested far less in you). When you're more committed to a woman than she is to you, seduction is doomed. Positively doomed. Not all the time, but about 98% of the time, it's doom. Doom for the chances of that seduction.

So, dropping a girl you've been obsessing over does a few things for you:

It ends the cycle of you investing in and becoming ever more committed to a girl who doesn't feel the same way toward you (otherwise, she'd be in your bed by now), and
It frees up your time and mental energy to begin focusing on new women with whom you are not in the friends zone.
Rather than trying to climb out of a deep, deep hole with one woman, it's far better to just go find another woman who's standing topside. It can be a little tough once you're invested fairly heavily in a woman, but it's very worth it.
Ultimately, it ties into one of the very core tenets of being a man: a man does not keep people around him who make him feel like less than a man.

What that means, of course, is that if a woman starts viewing you as "like her girlfriend," it's time you forgot her and moved on. For your own sake, it's the healthiest thing you can do. There are a lot more women out there you can find to treat you like the man you are!

Never be afraid to walk away from a bad situation. You always have options - that's what real men realize. And those men - those men unafraid to walk away from bad situations - rest assured, they never end up in the friend zone, because they just won't let women put them in it.

---

## -- And Luck with Women

When I first began working in the self-help industry in earnest, I was, as most new to the industry are, overcome with a desire to help others. The pride I got when hearing I'd helped someone turn around his station in life with women, or turn around his life in general, was great. It's still wonderful to hear, but back then it was amazing.

It took me a while to recognize it, but there was another side of the coin to self-help too; it's the side I mentioned in "How to Master Anything" when talking about the "complainers" (as contrasted to the "fixers"), and it was the people you'd run into that you couldn't help. These were the ones who seemed like they wanted help, and they were there asking for it, but you just couldn't break through.

Eventually I did some research on it, and found out there was a distinct psychological term for this: it's called "victim mentality."

And it isn't the people you think who have it. It isn't some poor pathetic schmuck sitting around in his room moping about why life has to be so hard. Sure, that guy's got it too, but there are a lot of other people who have it:

Parents
Teachers
Bosses
Colleagues
Models and actresses
Jocks and playboys

... I've met people in almost every walk of life with victim mentalities. It's surprising when you encounter it, and you see it to different degrees... but it's there.

For me, recognizing my own victim mentality a long time ago was key to getting my life moving again in the right direction. And at the same time, I spent a decade in "neutral" because of my own refusal to see it and fight it, and I've met scores of people along the way similarly bogged down by this.

If you want to break free of it - if you really want the kind of life you want, with the kinds of things you want in it - this is another one of those situations where you'll find that the answer doesn't lie in the world changing to suit you... but rather, this answer lies within.

In yesterday's post on gym pickup, IceCold comments:

"This is a very good article, thank goodness I didn't do those don'ts! Chase I have to get something off my chest that's been borthering me. My life is summed up pretty much of me getting girls but not having as many sex partners as I want. Can you explain what's up with what's going on? I feel like I have bad luck or a bad vibe Im a good person it's just that I can't get rid of this dark cloud.

It's basically like if it's not going wrong it will. Like I can have a girl so into me but something out of nowhere messes things up, like she just acts like an asshole or she says one thing and does another. Another is the girls I do click with happen to be crazy girls, I cant stop from picking these bad apples. It just really kills me inside that I have bad luck happen to me weither I sleep with a girl or not.

Chase I'll be honest on what I need help with. My main problem is this black cloud of bad luck or a bad vibe girls think I might have. I say it's bad luck because I honesty believe in myself that i should have way more sex partners than what I have now because i put in alot of work on my self, I got fashion, game, looks, personality, how can i get intimate with girls and not deal with rejection or problem after problem. It's driving me crazy and I want to give up but I won't, my ego won't let me. Chase how can I get rid of these problems with bad luck/dry spell? And get to sleeping with more women ASAP? Thank you Chase."

What IceCold's feeling here - the source of sentiments like "My bad luck is holding me back" and "I SHOULD be getting better results" - are actually strains of victim mentality climbing in and strangling his abilities to bring the kind of change (and women) he wants into his life. He's fighting against it, and he's trying to improve himself regardless - both good and encouraging signs - but it's still there, preying on him in moments of weakness, and sapping his strength when he least expects it.

The Wikipedia entry on victim mentality states that the phenomenon can show itself through the following key features:

Blaming others for a situation that one has created oneself or significantly contributed to. Failing or being unwilling to take responsibility for one's own actions or actions to which one has contributed.

Ascribing non-existent negative intentions to other people (similar to paranoia).

Believing that other people are generally or fundamentally luckier and happier ("Why me?").

Gaining short-term pleasure from feeling sorry for oneself or eliciting pity from others. Eliciting sympathy by telling exaggerated stories about bad deeds of other people (e.g. during gossip).

One of the most frustrating aspects for others to encounter, especially when you're trying to help the person with a victim mentality overcome whatever obstacles they're struggling with, are the blaming aspects and the luck aspects. It is impossible to EVER solve a problem that you place outside your own control.

The instant it's other people's faults, or it's because of "luck," you are helpless and adrift (and, you're annoying the heck out of your friends who want to see you succeed).

Yet, victim mentality is today perhaps more prevalent than ever. I'd even wager that MOST people have it - that's right, a majority of humans on Earth live life with a victim mentality. They are adrift at sea, buffeted by the winds of fortune, taken only down the courses life directs them upon. At times they struggle to regain hold of the rudder, only to relinquish control once again to "others" and "fate."

Victim mentality was THE crippling mental trait I possessed when back in the throes of depression, and I dare say it's the first step on a straight shot into that bleak, empty place. It leads to helplessness, giving up, alienation from friends and loved ones and mentors and advisors, who get sick of being blamed and get tired of watching their advice go unheeded and ignored... and eventually, ultimately, it leads the possessor of this enervating mental attitude to defeat.
But if it's so bad, WHY do so many people HAVE it?
Whenever I encounter something strange, some evolutionary blip that seems at first glance to defy the rules of natural selection, I always stop and ask myself, "Why has this been selected for?"

Victim mentality is something that is so wildly prevalent in human society that I'm convinced it must be selected for. But to wrap your mind around how that can be, you've got to venture a bit into the confusing side of human sociology.


WINNERS AND LOSERS
In "How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn't Know About the Winner Effect," we examined the research on the testosterone spikes a man receives following even the most trivial of victories, and the testosterone troughs he gets following even the teeniest of losses. And after that, we looked at how these winners' testosterone spikes build upon one another, leading to greater and greater victories, while losses too build on one another, leading to a feeling of being "trapped losing."

I believe victim mentality is deeply tied to this phenomenon, and that it hews closely to an important evolutionary mechanism: keeping people reproducing.

How's that work? Let's look at a few examples.

Imagine you're extraordinarily confident that you're going to start a hot dog stand and sell 250 hot dogs a day and be rich in no time. The plan is, you'll run your hot dog stand for four months, save up enough cash to buy another hot dog stand and hire a guy to run it, and then in another three months you'll have another hot dog stand, and 1 1/2 months after that, with the profits from the first three, you'll be able to open a fourth hot dog stand, and before you know it, the whole of Planet Earth will be eating your hot dogs!

Now, at first, you're nervous, because you don't really know anything about hot dogs or running a hot dog stand. But it seems simple enough; the instructions for how to cook the dogs are right there in the manual, and you've got all the ingredients you need to get started.

So, you head out, Day #1, and find a great spot in a high traffic area to start hawking hot dogs. The sun is out, the day is bright, birds are chirping, and people are walking by in droves.

You wait. People walk by. You wait some more. More people walking. Then - somebody stops! Oh, but he doesn't buy.

You wait some more. Wait... waaaiitt. Then, at last! A customer. A woman on her way back to work who didn't have time for a proper meal - she buys a hot dog. It's working!

You continue on this way for the rest of the day, a full 8 hours. Then, you close up shop: 37 hot dogs sold. Wow, that's underwhelming.

But, you resolve to keep testing things out - you're certain that if you can get it right, you'll be a hot dog millionaire.

So, you change your:

Locations
Prices
Condiments
Snacks
Drinks
Sign
Name
... all multiple times. You never break more than 72 hot dogs sold, even in the best of weather. You're hardly covering your costs.

You go on Internet hot dog forums and read everything you can. You read up on advertising... the best place in your city to sell hot dogs... the ideal price point.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

And here's where the two stories diverge:

The man prone to victim mentality starts to blame the people, blame the stand, blame anything he can; "I'm doing everything I should be, and it isn't working!" he cries. Eventually, knowing that he's in the right and everyone else is in the wrong he throws the towel in and walks away.

The man not prone to victim mentality continues to point the blame squarely at himself: "Clearly I'm missing something here; I'm not doing something right. Others have made this work, and I'm confident if I keep hacking away at it, I'll figure it out."

But will he? Will the guy without victim mentality figure it out?

... or will he eventually go bankrupt, have to sell his hot dog cart, and realize only too late that hot dogs simply weren't the right calling for him?

There's a third option, of course: that someone not prone to victim mentality simply looks at where he's at, the progress he's made, and says, "I'm sure I'm not doing things right, but I have no idea what to do and judging by the progress I've been making I'm not going to figure it out in anything approximating a reasonable time span, so it's better for me to simply fold up this investment and walk away." But people don't think like that. Once someone's invested, he's invested, and the only thing that's going to get him out are emotions.

So, victim mentality kicks in and uses his emotions to get him out of a bad situation before it kills him.

In other words, victim mentality is evolutionarily adaptive.

There's another thing victim mentality does though, too: it asks people to save you.

And this must work, at least as far as evolution's concerned, at least some of the time. I personally have never been able to "save" anyone who needed saving (and not just advice), but then again, I'm less hands-on than most people - I try to help people become self-reliant and then let them go. Most people who save other people want to have them around forever - it's a codependency.

"I save you, and you stick around and be grateful, and I'll stick around and feel good about having saved you and given you a great life." That's how it works, very similar to what we talked about in the article on white knights.

The thing about victim mentality is, it's dependent on experience and success, which generally means the less experience you have and the less success, the easier it is to become afflicted in that field.

If you're an actor who's received five Oscar awards, you won't start feeling like much of a victim if you don't get a sixth. Whatever, you'll get it next time, you figure. But if you're a new actor, and this is your first nomination and you don't get the award, there's a much bigger chance you walk away saying, "That whole Oscar thing is probably rigged!"

And imagine the guy who's been nominated five times and lost all five times. For him, it's definitely rigged!

So what you'll often see in relationships are two people with different strains of victim mentality (a guy who knows he can do a job but just can't get promoted at work, for instance, dating a girl who doesn't really believe she can ever get a job outside the service industry), one of whom provides some degree of "white knighting" to the other (usually the male to the female - although, rarely, you'll see females white knighting males with more extreme victim mentalities than theirs).

But in the end, victim mentality gets tied to:

Lack of experience in a given arena

Lack of sufficient victories-to-losses in a given arena

And so long as those remain out-of-balance in favor against the individual, he or she stays trapped in a victim mentality.

But - as I found out long ago when I carved my way out of my own victim mentality - there is a way around this.

So how do you defeat defeatism?

Well, the first part is recognizing you have it in the first place.

It's really weird to think about when you're outside of victim mentality, but most people with victim mentality refuse to think of themselves as thinking of themselves as victims. It's not that they think they're victims, they'll assure you; it's that they are victims!

Victims of other people.

Victims of fate.

Victims of The System.

It's a different way of thinking.

Imagine you are tied up in a third world prison somewhere, being beaten, injured, and tortured. Are you a victim?

If you asked me, my answer would be NO! Why not? Because I'd be able to trace my entire path back to the decisions that *I* made that landed me in that prison being tortured. Somewhere along the line, I made some foolish decisions that seemed correct at the time, and that's why I'm now where I am, getting bamboo shoots shoved underneath my fingernails. It sucks, but it's MY FAULT.

Why do I think this way? Why do the people who are liberated from victim mentality think this way? Are they blaming themselves? Doesn't it make them feel worse?

To the contrary.

Blaming forces outside your control is what makes you feel worse. The INSTANT that you stand there and say, "It's his fault," or, "It's their fault," or, "I've got bad luck," or, "I've done everything I can and I should be getting something / I DESERVE something!" you have relinquished control over your life.

You're a victim. You're just some inanimate piece of driftwood others push around on the seas of life.

But wait, say the blameless... how could blaming myself for my own problems possibly make me feel better?

Let me show you.

WHY IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT (AND WHY THAT'S AMAZINGLY GOOD NEWS)
Think back to that hot dog stand guy. What a terrible place to end up in, pouring all his time and money into getting a hot dog stand up and running, only to find his dreams of delicious dog domination dashed when far fewer people paid him for hot dogs than even the most dismal of his projections projected.

Whose fault was that?

Was it the fault of:
The guy who made the hot dog stand?
The guy who sold him the hot dog stand?
The guy who first invented the hot dog (for not making it a more desirable product)?
The people who passed by his stand without buying?
The people who bought, for not raving about him to their friends?
The weather, for not being better?
Fortune, for not smiling upon him?
The city, for not making itself a more hot dog-friendly environment?
Who's to blame? Someone's got to be to blame!

The truth is... he is.

Is there a way he could have been successful at selling hot dogs? Is it conceivable that somewhere, someone in the world is selling 250 hot dogs a day and making money?

Sure. Plenty of people are. But did our hero:

Talk to any of those people?

Do a trial run before he opened his hot dog stand?

Work for a hot dog stand company for a while to really get to know the business first before putting his own time and money into it?

Research the best places in the city to open a hot dog stand and sell lots of dogs before laying out the money and opening his stand?

Learn about marketing and advertising and how to create the most attractive-looking hot dog stand to potential buyers he possibly could?

Launch any kind of re-marketing campaign to encourage hot dog buyers to tell their friends about his stand?

Do anything special to stand out from all the other hot dog stands and make his stand not just a convenience, but a destination?

Doubtful. He just did the bare minimum and hoped for a miracle.

Who's to blame here?

He is.

Nobody twisted this man's arm and forced him to start a hot dog stand. There isn't a giant conspiracy waged against him by the inhabitants of his town to deny him his dream. He's simply a "victim" of the reality that he wants something from them he hasn't convinced them to give him (sales revenues).

So he can either blame them for not "seeing the light" (which is ridiculous; I'll show you why below), or he can blame himself for not sitting down and figuring out what they actually want in order to sell it to them, and then giving that to them.

Why's it ridiculous to get upset at people for not seeing how wonderful you are, or how great what you have to offer is?

Imagine you're watching a television commercial for some new type of beans. Now let's say you don't eat beans that often, and don't really get excited about beans.

Imagine the bean commercial flops, and the advertiser gets fired by the bean company. One day, he shows up at your house, furious and distraught.

"I did the best I could to give you a great commercial!" he cries. "It had everything you could possibly want in a beans commercial - beautiful women, hilarious fart jokes, and delicious beans... why didn't you buy my beans??!! WHY???!!!"

You'd think the guy was mental, wouldn't you? This guy's NUTS! Not only that, but he doesn't "get it" at all... begging you to give him what he wants isn't how he gets what he wants; actually doing a good job and providing something that you WANT is how he gets what he wants!

He wants a certain kind of value from you (in this case, your money), and therefore must provide something that you value back (in this case, something you'd be willing to pay for). And it can't be what HE thinks you should value... it has to be what YOU, SUBJECTIVELY value.

I can tell you I'll give you my new car for your new house all I want, but if you don't think that's a fair trade, it doesn't matter how upset about it I get or how much I tell you you're not being fair or reasonable... subjectively, to me, maybe I think my car is so amazing that of course this is a fair trade, but subjectively to you, the trade is totally unreasonable.

And when it comes to dealing with other people, that's the rub:

It's not just what you want. It's what THEY want too.

And getting a victim mentality and being upset because they won't give you what you want simply means you're being selfish and childish and refusing to figure out what they want and give it to them.
Time to man up and turn things around.

PUNCHING OUT VICTIM MENTALITY
If you read that article on depression I linked to earlier, you'll note how one of the things I mention changing in myself was my attitude; I was defeatist and fatalistic, and I figured for a long time that I had a RIGHT to be this way.

Until I realized I'd hit rock bottom, and that my life WASN'T getting any better. Until I decided, screw it, I might as well try breaking this attitude and coming at things from a totally different angle.

And suddenly, everything I wanted out of life began... just happening.

It wasn't that I got lucky. In fact, if you looked at my life, you'd probably tell me I'm incredibly unlucky. I've had so many things outside my control go against my way, and I almost NEVER get lucky breaks. The only time I see success is after I grind and grind and grind away through failure after failure after failure and FINALLY figure out the missing piece to make something work.

I often tell friends that for me, my way of becoming successful is just smacking my head against brick walls often enough that eventually I start loosening the bricks on the other side of the wall. It's painful.

And then, finally, after immense amounts of suffering, doubt, and plain old fashioned really hard work, you get to the other side, and look back, and a bunch of people are staring at you through that hole you bashed through the wall with your hard head and saying, "Hey, how'd you get over there? You're so lucky!"

And I'm like, "You've got to be kidding me!"

The first step to being successful at anything is killing victim mentality. You've got to demolish it.

How do you know you've got it? Well do you ever:

Complain / think / talk about how hard you have it?

Blame other people for "doing things" to you?

Vent that something is "impossible" or "doesn't make sense" that OTHER people seem to have figured out and are doing well at (e.g., not shooting lasers out of their eyes or holding their breaths for an hour, but things like succeeding at selling hot dogs or getting phone numbers, stuff like that)?

Feel like you have no choice ("I HAVE to do this!" "I CAN'T do the things I want!")?

If you ever do ANY of those things... guess what... that's victim mentality.

Now, if you're like most people, you've probably got victim mentality in some aspects of your life (but not all). For instance, you might not be worried about what happens to you with women ("Sally didn't call me back; ah well, I probably misplayed that one - I won't make the same mistake again") but you might have it with friends ("John NEVER invites me to his parties! I can't ever get what I want with friends").
You beat victim mentality by adopting a mindset on EVERYTHING that runs through the following process:

That specific behavior did not work. People with victim mentality don't break things down into specifics; they take every rejection as one big giant PERSONAL rejection of the whole package. "I'm a complete person, so if you reject me, you're rejecting all of me!" goes the thinking. But this is incorrect.
You need to target specific behaviors and actions and pinpoint those for tweaking. "I texted John about the party; John did not respond. Therefore, something is either wrong with my text and how I asked John about the party, or with how I was when I met John; I didn't strike him as the kind of guy he'd want at his party. I should work on both of these."
By breaking things down to specifics, you can start getting around the mental block of, "Things never go my way! The world is so cruel," and start targeting what you need to work on to generate different results.

What things can I change about these items to generate different results? Say you're running a hot dog stand, and you want to sell 250 hot dogs a day, but you're only selling 37 to 72. Or, say your ultimate goal is to sleep with 4 new girls a month, but you've only managed to sleep with 3 new girls in the past year. Clearly, there's a LOT you need to do to bridge that gap, and you have no idea where to start. So, you begin by targeting a few things at a time, to start taking those single steps that must come at the beginning of every great journey.
"Okay," the hot dog guy says, "let me start with my sign. I bet if I paint it bright red, instead of gray, it stands out more against the gray of the city, and I bet if I get a professional logo designed that really makes people feel hungry and catches their attention I get more clients." So he tries these things, and then either works more on the sign or, if he's happy with the change that brought, he works on something else.
Or, "Okay, let me start with my approach. I'm not getting the kind of instant attraction I want off my approach, but my fundamentals are getting pretty tight so I don't think it's that - let me try out a new, sexier haircut and facial hair, and let me get a really cool-looking jacket to wear, and try to use pre-opening more."

This is how you tackle big gaps between where you are and where you want to be - by tearing off bite-sized chunks (usually starting with the things you think are most important), and working through them.

How am I doing now, vs. how was I doing before? Whenever you start getting frustrated about your progress, stop and compare yourself to where you were before you started. The main reason for this is reminding yourself that you are making progress, even if it isn't as quick as you'd like. This keeps you from getting discouraged, and helps encourage you that yes, you can make progress; and your next thought should be, well if I want faster progress, what do I need to do?

It's very important that you adopt the "How Can I?" mindset rather than the "I Can't" mindset.

"How Can I?" is an open-ended question to your mind that can be answered in limitless ways. Think:

How can I meet more girls?
How can I make women like me more?
How can I get girls to come home with me?
How can I create more sexual tension with women?
How can I stop ending up in the friend zone?
How can I make more friends?
How can I get more comfortable around pretty girls?
If you actually thought about those questions as you went down them, you probably could feel the ideas surging up in your head.

"Well, I can meet more girls by getting a part-time job in the evenings working as a model talent scout! That would be fun! Or, I could start doing yoga... wow, I'll be the only guy there! Or salsa lessons... almost every time I go to those, it's 70% women."

or

"Get girls home with me... I can invite them to my apartment before we even go out! If they come pick me up there, it's only natural that they drop me back off... and if I have them bring something with them and drop it off at my place at the start of the date, they have to come upstairs to get it later! Or, I can have something really interesting in my apartment that I tell women about early on and invite them back to see later - my travel souvenir collection, or that really fun game that girls love that I have, or even a photo collection I tell women about. Better yet, I can just make sure I tell women in a far more confident, dominant, but nonchalant tone that we're going back to my place, and then lead strongly without a moment of hesitation. Women almost never say 'no' when they like you and you do it that way!"

Now contrast that with "I can't," the theme song of victim mentality:

I can't meet more girls.
I can't make women like me.
I can't get girls to come home with me.
I can't create sexual tension.
I can't get out of the friend zone.
I can't make friends.
I can't get comfortable around pretty girls.
How much action does THAT mentality inspire?

You can just feel the ardor dropping out of your breast as you read down through that list. It's motivation death.

This is mainly down to policing your thoughts; it isn't just what you say, it's what you think. And if you let yourself think that you can't... well I can assure you, you will NOT be able to.

But if you get pissed off at "I can't..." like, really angry and embarrassed about how helpless that thought is making you, about how ridiculous it is that some simple negative thought cycles running in your brain are standing in the way of you achieving what other people are achieving with ease, then it's time to start standing up to those thought cycles - and replacing them with, "How can I?"

Stop giving up, and start figuring out.


LIFE AS A NON-VICTIM
I spent a long time as a victim whose fate was determined by others. It's a lot of waiting - waiting for people to realize how great you are, waiting for people to recognize your talents or specialness, waiting to get what you're certain you deserve or should have. And it sucks, and you almost never get it.

Some people do. You see the people on Britain's Got Talent or American Idol who start crying when they win? Or the folks who hit the lottery who go nuts over their jackpots? Those are people who've been waiting to be recognized who finally made it big. "Finally! I've made it!" they think.

Usually those people fade back into obscurity though. The idols never go on to much success. The lottery victors squander their winnings, and drift back into poverty and debt.

Why does this happen? Is life unfair?

No. It's because these people retained the same victim mentality in success that they had in non-success, and kept waiting for life to keep giving them what they wanted. But life had other plans; life looked at them and said, "Are you crazy? How many lottery victories do you think I have to give out? Most people never get even ONE! You already got yours! If you're not going to use it RIGHT, why should I give you ANOTHER one?"

I've seen friends squander fortunes, watched them toss away incredible opportunities, seen them sacrifice friendships for short-term payouts, and then turn around and complain that life isn't fair because they didn't get more.

I've never had life throw fortunes at me, or toss incredible opportunities my way. I've had to tooth-and-claw it every step of the way. You cannot count on life giving you ANYTHING; you have got to go out, figure it out on your own, and make it happen.

And if you fail, it's because YOU failed - so go back out and try again.

And again.

And again, if need be.

And change something every time... even if it's just something small. Because if you smack your head against a brick wall enough times, and you tweak your angle of smacking enough, eventually you'll find the direction you need to pound the brick at that knocks it out the other side.

And then you'll get over there, and look back through the hole you carved, head ragged and bloody, and everyone sitting on the other side wishing they were on the side you're on will say, "How'd you get over there? God, you're lucky!"

And you'll say, "Excuse me? ... okay, time for you all to stand up, get over here, and start smacking your heads against the wall."

Victim mentality? You "can't?" It's "not fair?"

Psssh. Relish the challenge. When you can say, "It's not fair at all - and I won anyway," THEN you will have earned your respect - and no one will ever be able to take that from you.

---

##Just be Yourself: About a day ago, we had a commentator on the post on how to become romantic who weighed in to let me know that it's silly to try and get better with people, and that most people have better things to do, and that in fact you really should just be yourself, and anyone who doesn't realize how awesome you are is simply intellectually stunted. Where do people come up with this malarkey? I know he represents a vanishingly small minority on this site -- and likely was just a passerby -- but this mentality represents the majority of the thought on the subject in mainstream society. "Just be yourself. If people don't like you for who you are, who needs 'em?" Quite likely one of the most counterproductive mindsets a man could possibly have. Anyway, I addressed that commentator's individual points pretty thoroughly in the comments section of that article itself, so I won't revisit it here, but I do want to talk about this mentality of "just be yourself" -- and why it's such terrible, terrible advice. THE RISE OF FEEL-GOOD POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE DECLINE OF STEADY SELF-IMPROVEMENT Somewhere between 1960 and 1970 or so, the West decided that it was bad to make people feel bad, and that the most important thing you could do for another human being was to tell them they were fantastic, just the way they were. Before that, if you were doing a bad job, people told you. They didn't hold their punches. Watch old movies and you'll see it; "shape up or ship out" was a commonly used phrase back then. It meant you'd better get your ass in gear and step it up and get yourself improved, or else you were getting kicked to the curb. But then things changed. We collectively decided in the West that we were hurting too many people's feelings by telling them they needed to improve themselves, so instead we pulled a one-eighty and started telling them that they were lovely, just how they were. And what ended up happening was, people bought it. They really bought into it and believed it; they breathed it, ate it, and slept it. "Why should I have to change myself?" people said. "The world should accept me just the way I am!" And large numbers of people really gave up trying to improve themselves. They started believing that everyone else should value them for who they were, and everyone else should see and understand how incredible and amazing they were on the inside, and that that was all that really counted. So, Western people stopped working on their bodies, and many of them became fat and obese. And Western people stopped working on their careers, and many of them ended up in meaningless dead-end jobs. And Western people stopped working on their style, and many of them continued dressing the same way their parents dressed them as children. And Western people stopped working on their personalities, and many of them kept the same personalities they had as children -- selfish, lazy, and filled with a sense of entitlement. And maybe that would've been fine, had everyone made the switch. But not everybody did. You see, some people in the West didn't buy into the feel-good political correctness that everyone else swore by. Instead, some people retained the values of their parents, and their parents' parents, and their parents' parents' parents. Some of those values, discarded by the feel-good folks, included: A strong work ethic -- if you want something to get done, you work hard and make it happen A thick skin for criticism -- if someone doesn't like you, that's fine; consider why, maybe there's a valid opportunity in there for improvement, and if there is, you take it. If there isn't, you just shrug it off and get back to work A sense of personal responsibility -- it isn't other people who have to recognize how amazing you are and make sure you have all the things you want -- it's you who must make people realize your benefits and get the things you want for yourself That last one's the most important for this article here today. Because the people who tell you to just be yourself think that the world should give you everything you want, if you are just "true to yourself." A girl could be a hairdresser who dropped out of high school and genuinely enjoys toking up as her favorite pastime, but if she wants to get a gorgeous, high-flying attorney as a husband, all she has to do is just be herself and of course she'll find him. A guy could be an overweight, balding construction worker who works the midnight shift and watches a little too much porn, but if he really wants to date a model who spent time on the Olympic tennis team, all he has to do is just be himself and he'll get her eventually. Extreme examples, but they're there to illustrate why not everyone making the switch has caused problems: it's because the vast majority of society today is non-improvement "just be yourself"ers, but the people they all like and admire and want to spend time with the most and desire most as mates are the driven, accomplished "pull yourself up by your bootstrap"ers. Get that? Most folks don't want to have to improve. But almost everybody wants to have a mate who's radically improved him or herself. Needless to say, the feel-good politically correct people get left frustrated and bitter they didn't get the kind of mate they wanted, while the improvement-focused people all pair up with one another and end up comparatively a lot happier, as they conduct their joint self-expansion and keep getting better and better. And yet, the feel-good politically correct people keep marching along, beating the drum of "just be yourself" and fervently trying to get others to believe. Funny thing about those who go out seeking converts: it's always the people who are struggling the hardest to justify their beliefs who yell them the loudest and try the hardest to win new converts; it's as if getting someone else to believe reassures them just that much more that yes, in fact, they're on the right path. But the people who're certain of their beliefs? Most of the time, they don't bother talking about them at all. They're too busy getting stuff done and living fulfilling lives to worry too much about what other people think. IT'S A BAD IDEA TO JUST BE YOURSELF Seven years ago, I couldn't get a date to save my life. If I'd decided back then that, rather than trying to steadily improve myself and turn myself into a man that women found irresistible, instead I would continue to "just be myself," I don't know where I'd be today, but I know I'd be a lot angrier, a lot more bitter, and a lot less happy than I am right now. In fact, I'd probably be that same old angry, bitter, miserable self I used to be. Hell of a prescription from the feel-good politically correct camp -- thanks for that, team! Actually, I used to be the perfect example of the "just be yourself" mentality. I went through a period where I legitimately believed that if people didn't realize how awesome I was, then screw them, they were morons. That went on until I started recognizing I didn't have the kind of people I wanted in my life. See, the problem with being yourself is that you don't get any better. But life isn't about staying in one place; it's about continually improving. There's no such thing as stasis. Either you're getting better, or you're getting worse... all the time. That's the difference between the "just be yourself"ers (they think they're standing in place, but they're really in decline) and the folks who're focused on continuous improvement (they're continuously getting better). I'll give you one other way of thinking about it. If I told you: That I wanted to climb Mt. Everest but I'd never mountain climbed before, would you tell me I should start training now, or that I ought to not worry about it and I should "just be myself?" That I wanted to go to law school but I hadn't started studying for the LSATs, would you tell me I should start studying now, or that if the graders didn't like my answers they were just fools and that I should really "just be myself?" That I wanted to be in a rock band, but I was pretty bad at singing and guitar, would you tell me I should work on getting better in those areas, or that if audiences didn't like my stuff they were tone-deaf numbskulls and I'll be fine so long as I "just be myself?" Yeah, that's right. It sounds pretty damn silly when you put it like that. So why the heck do so many people think that "just be yourself" is great life and dating advice? Ay caramba. JUST MAKE YOURSELF This ought to be the mantra for all the non-feel-good politically correct folk. Andrew Carnegie didn't become a steel magnate and philanthropist because he decided to just be himself. Instead, he made himself -- into an entrepreneur, a businessman, someone who gave back to his community. He turned himself into something that at the start of his life he was not. I feel like the "just be yourself" mentality comes from a deeper problem in mainstream society, and that's the problem of people thinking life should all happen naturally and effortlessly. Like, if you just wait long enough, eventually you'll meet the girl of your dreams! And you'll find your dream job! And you'll have a happy, amazing life! Judging by all the unhappy middle-aged folks there are out there who've been following that motto since 1960 something, I think it's safe to say the "wait for life to give you what you want! It'll all work out on its own!" crowd is getting mixed results, at best. Nobody gives you what you want. You learn how to get it, and then you go get it. If you want to climb a mountain, you start training for that. If you want to go to law school, you start studying for that. If you want to be in a band, you start playing for that. If you want success with women, you start learning that too. Who's going to do better with women and get the kind of women he really wants? The trained seducer who: Moves fast with women Gets to know women well and deep dives Uses chase frames and gets women pursuing him Handles logistics and invites women home Closes out on the last 5% Or the guy who just kind of sits there and doesn't really know what he's doing but he's just being himself? Right, hands down -- it's the guy who knows what he's doing. It's not even close. Some guys still think there's some kind of "realness" vibe that a man who has no idea what he's doing has that a man who's trained himself up lacks that gives the "just bein' myself" guy some sort of mysterious advantage. To me, this sounds suspiciously like the French esprit de corps. If you don't know about that, in the run-up to World War I, France and Germany knew they were going to go to war. So, Germany focused on building itself up -- it produced tons of bullets, machine guns, airplanes, u-boats. France was confident that it didn't need to improve itself, and that its esprit de corps -- the French fighting spirit -- would carry the nation to victory over any opponent. It kept its old foot soliders with old rifles and mounted cavalry. Result? France and Germany went to war and France got crushed. The French mounted cavalry didn't do so hot against German machine guns and airplanes. If you don't want to end up like France in World War I, my recommendation to you is that you never, ever listen to anybody who ever tells you to "just be yourself" ever again. Instead, you should take every opportunity you can for improvement and advancement -- because life isn't about standing still. It's about continually putting yourself into better and better positions to get the things you want. And goddamn, what other things do you have to do that are better than that?

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A reader recently contributed another comment to the article "When Women Test Men." Like many of the commenters on that article, he balked; "Why should I have to learn how to deal with women's tests? Women should simply like me for ME, and NEVER test me!" In one way, I sympathize. It's no fun feeling like other people are putting you under a microscope, examining you, and that you're being inspected to see if you meet their requirements. However, the element of learning how to automatically pass the tests you see from women - that's things like: > Her asking you loaded questions about yourself > Her putting up resistance to dating or sleeping with you > Her giving you drama in a relationship ... is more or less one of the key foundational elements, all boiled down, of learning "game." And when you're first learning how to deal with tests, they can be hard, and they can be confusing, and they can make you feel helpless, and they are not a lot of fun. But, is it perhaps possible to just skip learning how to deal with all these feminine things, and just screen for and get women who don't act like this? Can you opt not to learn game... and still find success in mating and in life? Everywhere you go, everything you do, and everyone you meet is testing you. Your boss tests you to see how you respond to what he wants and needs. Your teammates in your sports league test you to see how good you are, and where you fall in the social hierarchy. Your friends test you to see how cool you are, and how much of their respect you deserve. Your employees test you to see how well you'll take care of them, how much you know about what you're doing, and to what degree they can get away with things. Your children, when you have them, test you to find out where the limits are, how well you're listening to them, and how able they are to use you to get the things they themselves cannot get. And women test you, to see how attractive you really are, how strong you really are, and how secure you really are. These tests never go away - not from anybody - although they do die down as a relationship matures. However, if you start showing new behavior, or signs of weakness, or failing to do something you used to do, those tests move right back to the fore again. Likewise, YOU are constantly testing everyone and everything around you... and just like all the people who are testing you, you're probably not even aware you're doing it. Is this because you, everyone around you, and everybody else scattered across this globe are silly, bad people? Or is something else going on? A WORLD OF IMPERFECT INFORMATION If you knew everything there was to know, there'd be no point in your reading of this article... you'd already know everything I was going to say. Yet, here you are, so clearly you and I know different things. There are some things I know that you do not, and there are some things you know that I do not. Chief among these, perhaps, is what we ourselves are like; what our behavior patterns are; our predilections are; how we behave in calm situations, and in high stress / high stakes / high pressure ones. > If we are the types of people who do what we say, or the opposite of what we say. > How much we lie, and how much we tell the truth. > How changeable we are - reliable now, but unreliable a year from now/. > What our past is like - and whether we're hiding some (or much) of it. These things are NOT things that you can know by asking someone. Because most of the time, he or she will tell you what you want to hear, or give you an autopilot response. And you will frequently be unable to discern lies from truth from unthinking standard responses. You will assume you have the truth - know you have the truth - right up until the moment you find out you had it wrong. And the only way for anyone to know more about you than what you yourself want to let on, or that you yourself are even consciously aware of? One word: tests. "THAT'S NOT MY JOB" When I first started working retail as a teen, I noticed something really bizarre. A lot of my coworkers would stand around and not do anything most of the time. If I asked them to help me with something I was doing - some extra cleanup work, or organizing things better - I'd get told they were "busy", or I'd hear "that's not my job." My ambition and initiative quickly caught the eyes of my superiors, and I would quickly wind up in a management position, while those people who started before me would still be in the same place they were when I arrived. And when, as a manager, I'd ask them to do some extra cleanup or organizational work, I'd again often be told they were busy, or that was not their job. Regardless of whether they were my colleagues or my direct reports, these attitudes always really got to me. Not always because I needed their help - often I didn't, although sometimes we would have customers on the hook and they'd just be standing around, maddeningly - but often because I looked at them, and saw that they could be leading better lives, with more opportunity, more freedom, more happiness, more personal fulfillment... and instead they just stood around like rabbits, sipping at cups of coffee, staring off into space, listening to music, and telling anyone who asked them to get to work that that was not their job. Whenever I hear anyone throw his hands up and refuse to make himself attractive to women and learn game to properly interact with women, all I hear is "that's not my job." And really - truthfully - from a purely technical standpoint, it isn't. You don't have to learn game. You don't have to learn how to talk with and interact with women and deal with tests. You don't have to learn how to be attractive, or charming, or sexually exciting. You can just stand there and stare off into space and sip at cups of coffee. But I sure don't want to hear about it when you come to me complaining that you don't have what you want in life. Thing about these people is, they always do complain. They're always trapped in victim mentality, and they want everyone around them to know how unfair it is how everybody treats them. They are victims because the world does not want to bend to them. Poor, poor them. And the world itself? It just keeps on turning. It doesn't notice their self-imposed plight - nor does it care. And why should it (or we)? They don't care about bending to the world... so why would the world bother to bend to them? You must give to get. Yet, the people who have the least interest in learning how to accommodate others are always so upset that others have so little interest in accommodating them. This seems to be a common misconception I see. All this "game" stuff is just for picking up girls in bars and nightclubs, right? Isn't it just for party girls? Real girls don't need game, do they? You can just go be yourself and they will love you for it! The term "game" probably doesn't help anyway. Why should you learn "game" when you don't want to PLAY games? Only, much of what you learn game to do is NOT playing games. WOMEN YOU DON'T NEED TO LEARN GAME FOR In Hollywood, it's only those horrible sleazy women our nice guy protagonist never should've dated or married in the first place that need "game"... because they're fake and inauthentic. They're social ladder climbers, and just generally bad, dishonest people whose ideas about the world are all screwed up. But then - just in our hero's moment of desperation - then comes the nice GIRL! And unlike those terrible "game" girls, the nice girl does not require game at all. In fact, she chases after our kind-hearted protagonist herself, loving him just the way he is, in all his vanilla-flavored Everyman glory. I have a female friend who does this, actually. She's beautiful, intelligent, successful in her career, full of life and energy, and is in many ways a child of innocence, purity, and joie de vivre. Her boyfriends are usually star-struck to get her; she told me that her most recent boyfriend - an unspectacular-looking college professor with his own successful company and a highly religious background with very limited dating experience - glows with pride over having her as his girlfriend, telling her that she's the most beautiful woman he's ever dated and that it's like he's dating a model or an actress. He moved slow with her, and it took him 5 or 6 months to take her to bed. He has no idea his princess has a long history of sleeping with lots and lots of men, was sleeping with lots and lots of men while they were going on platonic dates, and has a history of growing rather bored of nice guys with good careers like him after a few months and breaking up with them to be free again... or sometimes having a little something extra on the side to spice things up. She's hinting marriage with him, and my guess is he'll go for this too. My friend is not a bad person. She's a good person. She really cares about people and likes helping people. But she's not stable or long-term monogamous in relationships - she loves sex, loves being single, and loves hooking up with lots of different men. Her boyfriends usually do not know this, though, and probably would not believe it if you told it to them. She is also a fair template for the kinds of women you do not need game with: Women who are in full control with you, Are vastly more experienced than you, and Who are not especially emotionally attached to you Probing and testing is a security-seeking behavior from women who are not in control, when you ARE. Interestingly enough, this "zero game" template woman very often is the kind of woman that "rescues" those nice guys in Hollywood films. They frequently don't show you the girl's background or dating history, but personality-wise, she's a match. Women who are this way behave almost exactly like those women in film do: they're impulsive, they handle the approaching, they're the ones pushing things forward, they don't test the guy much, they open the guy's eyes up and make him see the world in ways he never did before. And the guy is the one who's soft, needy, and emotionally attached. And he doesn't need to learn game to get her; he can just be himself, and she'll find him. Of course, Hollywood always ends the movie once they get together, and doesn't show you the girl tiring of the guy after 3 or 4 months and dumping him for something more interesting or exciting, or having discrete affairs on the side to quell her thirst for novelty and adventure while her loving boyfriend/husband plods on in ignorance, blissful to have finally met a woman he needs no game with. I've seen a lot of these women, and I've slept with a lot of these women, and I've been contacted by some of the disbelieving and disillusioned boyfriends and husbands afterward. It's a very consistent trend. But aside from not showing the progression of the relationship, maybe Hollywood isn't too far off the mark after all. There are women you don't need to learn game for... ... but they're probably not the kind of women you're fantasizing they are. THE MORE SHE LIKES AND NEEDS YOU, THE MORE YOU NEED GAME Ever see an attractive older married couple that clearly still has a strong relationship together? The woman keeps herself looking good, and has a youthfulness about her that's uncommon in older women. The man has an impressive air about himself, also youthful, and one of power and dominance and a bit of humor. Across the board, you'll notice the woman ball-busting the husband. She's testing him; she's still playing the game, even though it's 30 years later. As for him, he responds to her busting his stones with deft maneuvers; sometimes responding with self-deprecating humor, and other times lobbing a good-natured parry right back her way. The game goes on. She continues to test him. Those are the tests and games you see in evidence. There are also the tests that go on behind closed doors - the relationship trials and tribulations that inevitably arise, when the couple falls on hard times, or the wife starts feeling bored, or the husband starts acting distant. Drama arises - and then, he deals with it. He passes the test. Because somewhere along the way in this game of life, this man figured out how. He may have learned from a mentor or friend, or, more likely, he figured it out on his own, as some men do, because he's high on empathy and knows how to tap into what it is women want, what they're feeling, and what they're really after with him when they start putting pressure on him one way or another. And here's the thing with "game" and "tests": the more a woman WANTS you, LIKES you, and NEEDS you, the more heavily she will test you. The more dedicatedly she will make you run the gamut. But why? If she likes you, shouldn't she not test you? Isn't not testing you the nice thing to do? What if you don't have game? Here's the clincher: what I'm calling "game" - this thing you need to pass "tests" - is really most often just YOU, YOURSELF, fully maximized to be an attractive, powerful, masculine, dominant man. And once you have learned game - once you know how to respond to tests - and once you are fully self-contained as the kind of man whom others respect, admire, or even bow down to... at that point, you don't even really notice when a woman is testing you. You don't think about "game." You are beyond it; you just do what must be done instinctively, and your woman (and anyone else who sees fit to probe you) is relieved: you are a powerful man. And that is what women are looking for when they test you. They are asking you: "Are you REALLY the man I think you are? Before I continue to trust you, to commit to you, to throw my lot in with you any further - are you REALLY as strong and powerful and masculine as I need you to be?" How you respond is how you set women at ease that yes, you really are what you say you are... or how you freak them out and unnerve them by showing them that there is something very much amiss in their perception of you, and that your words are not congruent with your behavior. If you never take the time to learn game - and if you're not the sort who will naturally figure it out on your own - you will forever live a life of unhappy squabbles and disappointed women. That is the damnation reserved for the man who refuses to empathize with women, to learn what they want, and to take pains to become it: he must necessarily always be what women do not want. And really, would you want it any other way? Would you want for yourself a woman who did not care if she was with a man who was going to waste her time, be weak, and give her weak offspring? Would you want her to be with you because it was not special, and she was willing to settle for anyone? THE IDEALIST'S FOLLY The problem that most of these men who balk at game and decry women for testing is that they're idealists - they think that women should just know how awesome they are without having to test or probe. Women should just trust them. And then they get upset when women do the things (testing and probing) necessary for those women to arrive at a place where they can feel confident that their men are what they hope they are and what those men say they are, and they can relax and trust them. It is, like what we talked about in "Are Social Grace, Savvy, and Empathy Unmanly?", just another form of entitlement on the man's part, and frankly I think it's quite weak and un-masculine. They should just get what they want to get, and not have to satisfy the other party's needs for that party to give it to them... they think. Here you have people who want something, who are upset that they don't have it, yet who are unwilling to do what they need to do to get it, and who sit around and moan about why the world (or women, in this case) just won't give it to them. Yech. This is idealism - it's a form of a flawed mental model - and there are few vices more annoying than this. Personally, I think the penance for victimized idealism ought to be that all victim mentality idealists get locked up in a small room together and made to complain to one another how cruel and unfair the world is until they wise up and start telling each other to knock it off. WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN GAME ... is simple. All you need is an open mind. Not this closed mind of the victim-idealist. Not the mind that says, "I want what I want from people and I don't want to have to do what other people want me to do to get it from them!" That's a child's mindset. If you have an open mind, you can walk out and start talking to women, and paying attention to what results your efforts generate, and changing and calibrating and testing to see what works, and you will learn game. This website and the articles and programs here can help you do that faster, but you don't need them - all you need is the willingness to learn what it is women want in exchange for giving you what you want, and the willingness to give it to them. That's what "game" is. It's just learning how to be an attractive man who gives women what they want and need - what they really want and need. And a big part of that is just being aware that women are always going to test you, and you must know how to deal with these tests. Once you've learned this, it becomes automatic, and it's no longer difficult, or confusing, or challenging. In fact, it even becomes fun. You enjoy women testing you, because you know how to respond in such a way that your woman will be delighted by your reply. You can sit there and say it's not fair that people who build nice, expensive things want a lot of money for those things... or you can go learn how to make money and afford to purchase those things you want. You can sit there and say it's not fair that men respect only strong, confident, self-reliant men... or you can go become a strong, confident, self-reliant man, and get respected by other men. You can sit there and say it's not fair that women test and probe to find out if you are still as strong as they hoped you were before... or you can go learn game and learn how to deal with these tests so you never have to worry about it again, and your women are always happy and smiling and thrilled to be with you. The world's a really dark, difficult place for those dim, closed-minded souls determined not to change to give to those they want things from the things those others want. They are forever chasing after wisps they can never have, because they refuse to be or give what is required. They want only to take what they want, and give what they want; other people's wants and needs not considered. But for those bright, shining souls whose minds are open to the learning of whatever must be learned to attain that which they desire to attain, the world is a place of inspiring, limitless choice, bounded only by the drive of the individual to learn how to do what must be done and the will to become what must be become. I know which one I want to be. I hope you do too. Let's leave the sidelines for the spectators, and get out there and play the "game."

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While the focus on here is normally pointed squarely at getting girls, I wanted to broaden that today to a topic that's of significant importance not only to pickup and seduction, but to anything and everything you will ever lay your hands on, set your mind to, and go about doing. That topic, in case you only glanced over the title, is how to master... anything. In case you're not so familiar with my "credentials" (background), I've effectively mastered: Sales Music Production Song Writing Picking Up Women Maintaining Relationships (completely different from pickup) Posture / Movement / Personal Charisma Motivational and Inspirational Speaking Teaching (everything from software to seduction to high school students) Copywriting Writing in General I'm also pretty good at making crazy shots from anywhere on the basketball court, and I'm about halfway through my growth curve as an entrepreneur, Internet marketer, and business growth expert. On several occasions, I've had people ask me how it is you stay motivated to learning something long enough to reach a pinnacle in it. Usually I brush this off, because I don't like to be seen patting my own back too much. Even in my rap days, where bravado and showing off plays a big part of the art (rap has its origins in the West African folk tradition of "men of words" talking up their successes and desirability), I never liked venturing too far into singing my own praises. It's far better for others to sing your praises for you than for you to do it yourself. People respect this more... and you look like less of an ass. But for the sake of this post, let's shelve the false modesty, and talk about how to master things, how to set aside the laziness that nags at us all, and how to keep yourself focused on getting something down that few people ever will. NOT EVERYONE IS BUILT FOR MASTERY Everybody's got problems they wish they didn't have. I'm in the self-help industry, I know. My JOB is to listen to people's problems, and, ideally, help them to solve them. Except most people don't WANT help. Some time ago, I realized a distinction between the kinds of people who are out there. I started telling this to anyone who brought me a problem but seemed reluctant about taking my advice or even their own if I helped them tease out what they thought they should do. The distinction is this: "There are only two kinds of people, when it comes to problems. The people who FIX their problems, and the people who COMPLAIN about their problems." That's it, just those two kinds of people. The difference: People who are "fixers" are eternally devoted to figuring out what their problems are, and solving them. They might not always tackle those problems from the right angle, and they might be guilty of deluding themselves about what those problems are at times, but you can get through to them with reason if you try hard enough. They usually are willing to set aside pride, admit that the failure is theirs, and go start learning how to fix it. People who are "complainers" are eternally devoted to seeking emotional salves for their problems. There's a big difference between "solves" and "salves." Complainers feel bad, but they don't want to fix that feeling bad by fixing the problem. They just want someone to pat them on the back, tell them, "There, there, you're doing everything right, it's just things outside your control that made it this way," and then they'll feel better. But because the problems are never fixed, they need this forever. They spend a lifetime of people listening to their complaints, telling them it isn't their fault, and blaming the world for being an uncaring, unjust place. Now, everybody complains. I complain. You won't see me do it on the site much, because you've got to be careful about how you present yourself in the written word as it's easily misinterpreted, especially when you've got guys coming here to learn what you're doing and absorb your characteristics. But everybody does it. The difference between a fixer and a complainer is that a fixer then immediately says, "Okay, everything that's wrong in my life is my fault, what do I need to change to have a better life?" while a complainer NEVER says this, or says this but then doesn't take action to change anything, and simply goes on complaining forever. I don't know how you end up as one person or the other. I don't know if it's possible for someone who's a complainer to become a fixer. I'm a big believer that you can change damn near anything about yourself that you decide to, but I have my doubts about whether it's possible for someone who doesn't really want to change to muster the energy to change into someone who wants to change. There's an inherent "doesn't make a whole lotta sense" in there. I've always been a fixer. I was a fixer when I was a little kid. I'm a fixer now. I went through a period of depression, and I eventually overcame that depression, because I was fixing the wrong stuff or I wasn't fixing things I needed to be, but even when I was deep in my funk I was constantly trying out different approaches to try and turn around my life. If you're not sure if you're a complainer or a fixer, here's a quick quiz: List your 5 biggest problems. Are these your fault or not your fault? When something is not the way you want it (e.g., it sucks), should someone else fix that for you? Or should you fix it? Do you repeatedly vent about the same problems over and over? What are you doing about these problems? How often do you work on yourself, to better yourself, and improve your station in life? If your answers were ,"my fault," "I should fix it," "not for too long; I'm doing this, this, and that," and, "all the time," congratulations, you're a fixer. If your answers were, "look, it's NOT my fault," "he/she/other people should fix it, I'm doing everything right," "yes, but that's because these problems are awful! I'm waiting for the system to correct itself," and, "well, I'm already pretty good, so I don't need to work on myself too much," well... you know where you're at. These two different mindsets - the fixer and the complainer - come from an essential philosophical difference among the holders of the two mindsets: I can't change the system, because the system doesn't know who I am and doesn't care, I can only change ME vs. the system should change to give me what I want because I'm important! Fixers, at their core, are people who realize that all human systems are imperfect systems cobbled together by lots of imperfect people, and you cannot control these people. Yes, maybe you did everything the system told you, and according to what you see on TV that means you SHOULD be entitled to XYZ reward... but if you aren't getting it, YOUR MENTAL MODEL OF THE SYSTEM IS WRONG. Throw it out, and go get a correct mental model. You don't learn how to master things when you're focused on moaning about how unfair life is. There's another key difference that makes spotting a complainer easy: liberal use of the word "should." "People SHOULD use their turn signals more." "Men SHOULD pay for dates." "Women SHOULDN'T sleep around so much." "People SHOULD believe in God / evolution / the Christmas spirit / aliens / 2012." "People SHOULD respect marriage more." "The courts SHOULDN'T be so harsh to men in divorces." "Men SHOULDN'T cheat so much in relationships." "Women SHOULDN'T cheat so much in relationships." "The airports SHOULDN'T have such ridiculous security procedures." "People SHOULD say 'please' and 'thank you' more." ... and so on, and so forth. Complainers "should," left and right. It bespeaks an inherent flaw in how they view the world: They want other people to do what THEY want them to do! They don't view it this way, of course. They view the world as having certain "right" ways of doing things, and believe that everyone else shares this intrinsic view of how the world "should" be. So, other people not doing what they "should" be are an annoyance and a bother. These people are the cause of all the woes of the complainer. How's it look to a fixer, though? To a fixer, people are the way they are and they CANNOT be changed. Meet a girl who likes sleeping around, but you really want a girl who's committed to you? Don't date the girl who likes sleeping around! She'll make you miserable, and you'll make her miserable. You won't change her. Find a girl who fits your criteria. Same goes for the girls who meet guys who are not husband material in the slightest, and the girls try to shoehorn these guys into their marriage fantasies. You'll never meet a more bitter complainer than the girl with dreams of a perfect marriage dashed by her knave and often MIA husband. To be a fixer, you must relinquish the star-crossed determination to change everyone and everything around you to do your bidding, and instead accept that every other human being on Earth and every human system you are not a president or a CEO of or have friends in important places in is outside of your control. He or she or it might do what you want... but he or she or it equally might do the exact opposite. The only thing you truly control is YOU. So instead of spending your time ranting about how you think the world ought to be, you spend your time perfecting your ability to get the things you want and work within the way the world already is. THE FIXER'S CROSS As a fixer, you admit that you will never be good enough. There are always going to be things you want that you cannot have, no matter how good you get at anything. Become the best in the world at making deals, and there will always be that elusive better deal you aren't quite able to reach. Become the best novelist in the world, and you will always think you could've done yourself just one better had you had a somewhat better grasp of the things you know now when you wrote your magnum opus. Become a great leader of a business or a country or even a small club of people somewhere, and you will always know you could've done it a bit better or taken it to slightly higher heights. But this does not speak to weakness in you. Rather, it speaks to the drive to master. To learn how to master anything, you must want to make things better, and you must believe that you, through personal refinement and betterment, are the key to that. I may not be able to control another person, but I can control my ability to inspire specific emotions in her, to make her feel certain things, and to bring a level of value to her life that she can't realistically get anywhere other than me. I may not be able to control whether someone wants what I have for sale, but I can put out the best products I possibly can, learn how to make ever-greater ones, and market the hell out of them to get them in front of as many people as possible and make it clear what my products can do for them. I may not be able to control the government and social situations operating around me, but I can build up my financial resources, social capital, and ability to navigate tricky and high-pressure situations to learn how to come out on top whenever unexpected things happen or suddenly I find myself confronted with unforeseen or uncomfortable circumstances. This is the cross the fixer must bear: the cross of learning how to master the various aspects of his life he needs to be able to exert the influence he'd like to influence to make things more likely to go his way. Unlike complainers, you can't just do what you think you're supposed to do and hope the system will take care of you. It won't. The more trust you place in systems you did not build and do not control to deliver you what you want, the more you are going to be disappointed. You must lift yourself up by the bootstraps, and fight on. THE WILL TO MASTER ANYTHING: YOU MUST BE MAD If it was easy to become a master at something, we'd have a lot less reverence for the masters. Where does someone get the desire to drag themselves through endless amounts of failure, heartache, and inertia to become truly great at something? I've talked about this fairly in-depth with a number of other ambitious friends, and I think the first thing you've got to be is you've basically got to be a little bit crazy. There's a fascinating personality disorder test available online. Now, I don't know how accurate this is, so don't go making any major life decisions off of what you find, but it seems to be relatively accurate to me. A bunch of my friends and I have all taken it. And you know what we found? We're all crazy. All of us. Every single one of us can tick off multiple boxes on the personality disorder list. Now, it could be that crazy people like me just have other crazy friends. But I think there's something else at play here, too. I only have as my close friends driven, ambitious, charismatic people who are highly self-improvement oriented and work constantly on upgrading themselves in all kinds of different areas in their lives. And I just don't think you have the motivation to do this if you don't have issues. Do you think there's ever been a president, or a premier, or an emperor, or a king who wasn't a little bit narcissistic? Or a writer, or showman, or celebrity, or television personality who scored "low" on histrionic? I doubt it. I honestly don't think normal people ever get the desire to become masters of anything, because they're happy living normal lives. The more I study the things psychology considers "disorders," the more I tend to think that these "disorders" are a fundamental discontent with the status quo. Either a lack of faith in it entirely (e.g., people who are paranoid) or a desire to ignore it (e.g., schizoid and schizotypal) or to bend it to one's will (e.g., borderlines and histrionics and narcissists). Sometimes these can really become problematic. But sometimes they can be channeled into something more. When it comes to normality, riddle me this... can you imagine a normal, ordinary person with no personality issues who's happy living an ordinary life with an ordinary job and an ordinary spouse and ordinary kids in an ordinary house in an ordinary town out there obsessively working on mastering something, day in and day out, one day after another after another? Yeah, I can't either. So, for me, if you want to know how to master something, I think the first thing you've got to be is a little (or a lot) crazy. As I said to one guy I know who scored "High," "Very High," or "Moderate" on every item on that list above, "It's either madness or greatness for you, my friend." THE WILL TO MASTER ANYTHING: YOU MUST BE CLEAR The other part of the equation of the "drive" factor, I think, is a certain clarity on what exactly it is you're trying to master, and how you're going to go about it. It's impossible to get excited about vague goals and objectives, but that's how a lot of people try to plan out their lives. Let's say you're crazy enough to decide you want to learn how to master something like picking up women or getting good at running your own business or playing an instrument or being charismatic or speaking publically or throwing javelins or ANYTHING, really. And let's say you start setting vague goals. "I'm just going to go get good at this!" Not gonna happen. You need specific goals, and they need to be motivating goals. For me, when I started in sales, it was in the same store as and right next to the guy who was the #1 salesman in the district. He was a short, chubby Puerto Rican guy with a million-watt smile and an easy belly laugh who'd been selling for years, he was incredibly charismatic, and he repeatedly slept with women taller than him, whiter than him, and prettier than him, and he could sell anything to anyone. My goal, as a socially-stunted 18 year old who had zero friends, who women said looked like he had "bad intentions," and who didn't know how to have a conversation with anyone, was to become a better salesman than that guy. I wanted to outsell the district's #1 salesman. And eventually I did. But before I reached to that point, I spent countless hours modeling myself after him, learning the ins and outs of the product, trying and testing and refining my selling approach, and figuring out how to do what that ace salesman seemed to do with so much natural ease. It wasn't easy. I struggled with wanting to quit, and there were various times I looked at my own abilities and said to myself, "I just don't think I can do this," or, "I'm just not making any progress." And you know what the funny thing is? Every single thing I've gotten really good at went exactly the same way. They all mostly followed this pattern: Find a role model who's mastered something you want to master Make it up in your mind to become like and exceed that role model Study everything you can about the art, and that guy in particular Become religiously devoted to breaking down the mechanics and learning them Practice, practice, practice - deliberate practice targeted at weaknesses Sometimes those models were people I knew personally; sometimes they were people I watched and analyzed and consumed volumes of information on from a distance (Tupac in songwriting and performing; Steve Jobs in business building). Occasionally I went without a role model if I had a really strong mental picture of where I was trying to get to (like with relationships; I have my own model there that I haven't seen anyone else do), but normally there was a clear model I aspired to emulate. The next step is something upon which there's a fantastic book on it here: Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin, senior editor of Fortune Magazine. The book's based on a Harvard Business Review paper from July 2007 called "The Making of an Expert," and both the book and the paper focus on something called "deliberate practice." (that's a Wikipedia link there) Malcolm Gladwell's exceptional book Outliers talks a lot about this subject too. What's deliberate practice? It is a focused, determined practice targeting your weaknesses and shortcomings in a given area, with the objective of turning those weaknesses into competencies and strengths. There's the old Bruce Lee quote that comes into relevance here: "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." What Bruce Lee is talking about in this quote is the matter of deliberate practice: practicing something until you have achieve mastery. He's also contrasting the man who practices deliberately with the man who practices without direction. In Talent is Overrated, a fantastic example is cited of how auditors who've been doing their job for 40 years make more mistakes than auditors who've been doing their job for 3 or 4 years. The question is posed, if practice makes perfect, why do the people with 40 years on the job perform worse than the people with 4? The answer, of course, is a lack of deliberate practice. Because they're not devotedly working on shoring up their weaknesses and upgrading their aptitudes - instead, they're rather repeating the same dull tasks again and again without engagement or passion or a dedication to perfecting a specific skill - they don't get any better, and in fact get bored and lose focus and perform worse. This kind of unfocused, directionless practice is how most people approach skill-building (or their jobs). They just do a bunch of stuff with no mind to what the end result is or what specifically they're trying to accomplish. So they don't improve. If you practice 1,000 free throws in basketball over the course of 2 weeks, will you be better at free throws than a guy who's performed 1,000 free throws over the course of 30 years? Of course. You're letting your brain analyze your movements and success rates in succession over a period of time where it's close enough that you have repeated data points the brain can analyze and make connections over. That guy who did the same number of free throws over 30 years is probably only marginally better now than he was 30 years ago, because there's too much time between each data point and too much variation (his strength, weight, stamina changing as he ages) to get clean data. Your brain is a pattern-recognition engine that forms patterns and learns on autopilot, if you provide it with the right data in the right circumstances. Most people say, "Okay, I'm going to learn chess," and then they proceed to try a whole bunch of different crazy things and their brains can't make sense of any of it and they get no better. Then they throw up their hands and say, "Okay, I give up. Chess is too hard." But if you want to learn chess - to really learn chess - you don't try a whole bunch of different crazy things all at once. Instead, you practice learning different moves, over and over. You practice doing the same opening move over and over again until you've got it down and know its nuances. You do the Ruy Lopez for 2 weeks or 3 weeks or a month until you've seen most of the usual ways it turns out. Then you open with the Sicilian Defense over and over again until your brain has it down pat and is able to know exactly how things are likely to go based on what your opponent does at each stage of the game. That's how you learn. Not by doing haphazard, willy-nilly, "let's throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" type approaches. You learn by repeatedly, deliberately practicing the same things again and again until you've got them down pat, and then moving onto the next weakness in your game you need to shore up. That's deliberate practice. The reason why someone who's mastered something appears to do everything effortlessly and intuitively is because he's gone through it enough times and his brain has analyzed and put together enough patterns that he's able to tap that information intuitively and act accordingly. To quote that Harvard Business Review paper: "Intuition can lead you down the garden path. The idea that you can improve your performance by relaxing and "just trusting your gut" is popular. While it may be true that intuition is valuable in routine or familiar situations, informed intuition is the result of deliberate practice. You cannot consistently improve your ability to make decisions (or your intuition) without considerable practice, reflection, and analysis." You form a master's intuition through repeated exposure to similar experiences again and again and giving your brain the ability to build the mental models of those situations that allow you to have an intuition to tap, not by it already being preprogrammed in. You must expose yourself to something, day in and day out, practicing deliberately. And to do that - one of the most important elements in figuring out how to master anything - you must have a clear idea of where your weaknesses are and what you need to get down. You've got to know what you're getting wrong and where you want to start fixing it. IT'S NOT THE INSTANCE, IT'S THE SKILL One of the things that happens as you transition from "beginner" to "intermediate" in mastering any new skill is a relinquishing of your emotional connection to the outcome of any one instance and a transference of that emotional connection to the skill itself. Early on when you're trying to learn how to get good with women, for instance, you'll feel like getting one specific girl is a life-or-death matter. That's why I wrote "Can't Stop Thinking About Her? Here's Why You Need to Meet More Girls." To this day, a good chunk of the things we get here from guys via email, comments, and elsewhere comes down to, "There's this girl and I love her and I HAVE to get her, what do I do?" When you're new to learning something, the specific instance feels all-important. You meet a girl, and you get really upset if you don't get her You play a game of chess or basketball, and you get really upset if you don't win You're talking to a customer, and you get really upset if you don't make a sale You're making a piece of art, and you get really upset if it doesn't turn out well Stuff like that. And I think that's unavoidable. When you're inexperienced in something - whatever it is - your brain is trapped in a scarcity mentality. Basically, whatever it is feels like a scarce resource, and therefore life or death. But as you go through more and more of the same situation, and especially once you start seeing success and recognizing improvement in yourself (which sometimes can take a little while), your brain starts to relax. "Things aren't so bad," your brain starts to say. "We're figuring out how to master this; we'll get this down. Now let's work on our weak spots." This is the point where the game "starts slowing down," as the players talk about in American football as they're going into their second year. This is where you've got the initial patterns down enough that your emotions get out of the way and you can start seeing the different elements of your own game and recognizing what you're doing right and where you need work. The transition from beginner to intermediate is when you hit the point where the individual instance doesn't seem all that important anymore, and the most important thing is simply getting better at the skill. Where you get upset as an intermediate is where you keep seeing the same mistake happening again and again. You keep losing girls at the point where you go to ask them home with you, for instance, or you keep misfiring in business when you run out of funds, or you keep getting checkmated in chess when you advance too quickly. Those are the points you get upset at, so you go back and analyze and figure out what's going wrong and start making tweaks. You keep practicing, and even zero in on that specific area. "I'm going to start asking every girl I can to come home with me within 20 minutes of meeting her," you say, "so I can get more data points and see what I'm doing wrong and force myself to get better." Or, "I'm going to play things more conservatively and limit my spending, and see if I can do the same thing with less," you say. Or, "I'm going to continue playing aggressively, but I'm going to make a mental note to keep an eye on my king and make sure he's covered." And in so doing, you progress. So let's say you have the necessary components for mastery. You're certifiably insane, like all of my friends and I are, and you know, very clearly, exactly where you want to get to: you've got a clear goalpost in mind and you're ready and willing to bust your butt to get there. How do you, you know, actually do it? Well, here's how to master whatever you want; these are the steps I follow, and the ones that everyone I know who's mastered anything has followed too. Know you want the skill first. When I first set out to learn how to get better with women, it was because there was one girl I wanted, but I realized I was never going to get her until I got good with girls. So I set out to go practice. I didn't start getting better with women until I moved my focus off the one specific girl and onto the skill overall. I'd still meet girls once I was practicing that I wanted a lot, but the main focus was on developing the skill. It was the same for me in music, in sales, and everything else. I wanted to get good, and then I knew I could have as much success as I wanted. Start practicing, and practice a lot. Hands down the best way to learn anything is on the job. If you can get paid to do it, get paid to do it, because you'll have the added motivation of having to get good at it to keep collecting a paycheck. It was that way for me in sales, and it's that way for me in business now. If you can't get paid to do it, that's okay too, but you've got to be practicing religiously. What helped for me early on in pickup was scheduling it in; that way, even if I didn't want to go out, I knew that it was already on my schedule and I had to go out and go meet girls and work on game. For basketball, I'd make myself go out; same with music. Once you start getting better though, it becomes something of an obsession to work on that thing you're working on, and you don't need nearly as much prompting. Analyze, analyze, analyze. I amaze people these days with my ability to look at almost any situation or any thing and immediately deconstruct down to its component parts and tell them how it works and why. I get called brilliant, a genius, incredibly bright. But it's a skill I've only had since I started skill-building, and it was a sort of bonus side-effect of the analysis that went into learning how to master various different things. When you start building a skill, it's vital that you go back and analyze how things went. Why did that song not turn out so great? Why did that customer walk out without buying anything? Why did that girl not want to give you her phone number? Why did that deal not go through? You cannot blame other people or circumstances. If you do, you won't get better. You need to figure out where you were at fault, and how you could have played that hand differently. It's the only way you get better. I highly recommend keeping a journal or a record of events (or writing field reports and analyzing your mistakes in the report, if you're learning how to get girls), which forces you to think through what happened, remember it, and parse it for lessons. (We're launching a new forum on here soon, and I'd be thrilled to have you and would invite you to join up and do that here) Target your weak spots. Where are you consistently losing? What's holding you back? Figure those out, and then figure out something new you can try out or work on getting down to combat that. If you're finding people aren't very engaged by your writing, perhaps you could use more suspense and intrigue - start writing some cliffhangers into your stuff. Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell are both masters at this, in very different ways - maybe you could study them. If you're finding women keep telling you they've got to go meet their friends, maybe you aren't getting them committed fast enough - start figuring out ways to ask for compliance and investment. As you go through and target these various areas for improvement, it helps greatly to set goals. Specific goals, especially. Whatever your weakness is, set a goal and then go hit it. If your hook shot isn't cutting it in basketball, set a goal that you're going to go out to practice and you're not coming back in until you hit 30 hook shots. And then once your hook shot is good, go practice it again tomorrow and hit 40 of them. Obsess over it. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an increasing common problem in the West, but there might be a good reason for that: some researchers think that the obsessive's perfectionist inclination helps in mastering skills and climbing to pinnacles in chosen fields. As a teenager, I had to fight off a compulsive need to have things exactly as I wanted them, and the obsessive thought cycles I locked myself into were the source of the depression that almost cost me my life and that I had to fight valiantly to overcome. But the upside of obsessive tendencies is this: once you lock onto mastering a skill, you don't let up until you've achieved perfection in each of the areas of that skill that you target. Now, I don't know how you mimic the obsessive's devotion without those inclinations, but I've seen a lot of friends without obsessive-compulsive tendencies who climbed to high heights in their skill areas regardless. But in pursuit of those heights, they nevertheless displayed near-obsessive tendencies. You must be thinking about your skill all the time; it must consume you. You need to make it your passion, and fully immerse yourself in it. Only when your mind comes to it again and again do you start devoting the mental cycles you need to really learn how to tear things down to their basics and do the heavy mental computing you need to be truly effective in your analyses. Start teaching it. Teaching is another way that you get your brain to devote a lot of time to parsing and analyzing your data points, but you need to actually have a lot of data points. In pickup, we call the guys who try to teach and espouse knowledge on things they don't have much experience on keyboard jockeys, because they're guys who act like they know they're stuff when they're really just passing off guesswork for expertise. Don't be that guy. The secret to being a great teacher is part being able to analyze others' mistakes, part being able to relate anecdotes, and part being able to perform. You need all three, and you don't get them without heavy field experience. But the more you go out, the more you can teach, and if you want to achieve excellence, teaching can act as impetus both to perform more (e.g., demonstrations) and to analyze more (of both your own successes and others' failures). Immerse yourself in a supportive environment. Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Mozart. What'd they all have in common? Well, for one, they started learning their trades between ages 2 and 3. And for another, they all came from incredibly supportive environments. I don't care who you are or what you're trying to learn, if everyone around you is against you and telling you you can't do it and nobody's supporting you, you will, at some point, throw your hands up and throw the towel in and give up the ghost. If you don't think the people around you right now will support whatever it is you're trying to master, don't tell them - it's better to have no support than anti-support - but do seek out a group of likeminded people you can talk to, share ideas with, and draw motivation from. You need this to truly reach anything approximating impressive heights. Seek out mentors. I stressed this recently with a guy whom I had mentored, when he'd been asking me about ways he could improve himself in various avenues, including his career. Finding good mentors is vitally important as you progress in anything. The challenge with finding a mentor, of course, is that you've got to provide some kind of value back to that mentor, and you've got to make it easy for him to mentor you - essentially, you've got to go play in his playground. If you think Donald Trump is going to mentor you in business because you shot him an email telling him what a big fan of his you are, you've got a lot to learn about attracting mentors. You'll find that mentors are most drawn to a capable, promising-seeming student who's eager to learn and quickly puts into practice the mentor's suggestions and reports back on his results. You've got to be free of ego; if you're competing with your mentor to show him you're superior to him, he'll lose interest in the relationship quick. Rather, you've got to be giving him the rewarding feeling of being able to nurture and help grow someone with tons of potential. And you've got to find ways to make it a natural relationship; I haven't seen too many scenarios where a guy's chased down someone he wanted as a mentor and successfully got him. The guys you want as mentors already have hundreds or thousands or millions of other people chasing after them to be mentors; you don't get them by jumping on the bandwagon. You find some way to bring yourself naturally into the mentor's circle, and provide so much value to him that he wants to take you under his wing. I'm sure that seems like a lot, and it might be a tall order. But mastery, while uncommon, is not so rare that you can't find examples of others who've mastered whatever it is you want to master. You can. There are examples everywhere. Mastery is something that's becoming more and more common as knowledge explodes all over the world and more and more people start unlocking the keys to the process of how to master whatever it is they want to master. You might've read this article and thought to yourself, "I am WAY too happy just living a normal life to worry about all this mastery malarkey." In which case, I envy you, in a way. To not be burdened with demons driving you is, perhaps, a certain kind of freedom in its own right. Or you might've read this article and thought to yourself, "Why should *I* have to change? It's all those other people who don't get it who are the problem!" If that's the case, I actually don't have any envy there, because that's a very frustrating and inevitably unfulfilling life path to end up on - the world and all its inhabitants are never going to stop doing things the way they do them and start doing them a totally different way simply to satisfy the desires of one disgruntled citizen. But you might just have read this article and thought to yourself, "This is EXACTLY what I want to be doing with...!" And if that's the case, well... that's why I wrote it. Happy mastering. Talk with you next time.

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I've long been amused at people who tell you what you "should" do or "shouldn't" do. Occasionally I've been annoyed. Always I have challenged them back on these declarations, asking them "Who decided that people should do this?" "How did you come by this information?" "How do you know with certainty that this is right, and others who believe the opposite are wrong?" This tends to aggravate the individuals prone to moralizing and polarizing to no end. They become flustered and upset. Sometimes they will respond to you and tell you that you are being morally relativistic, and that moral relativism is wrong, because clearly there is a clear black and white, right and wrong, good and bad in the world. When asked to explain why heroes to some are villains to others, and villains to some are heroes to others, they simply stutter, stretch, and eventually use blanket statements to cast entire civilizations of people as "wrong," never understanding that the members of the very civilization they call "wrong" would call them "wrong," too. Rather than engage in lengthy, unending debates with these people these days, however, and spend precious time trying to convince those who are so certain their views are right that they are viewing things too closed-minded and too far to the extremes, I prefer now to just tell them one simple thing that cuts to the heart of the matter as best I know how: Your mental model is flawed. In Jeff Hawkins's book On Intelligence, he postulates that one of the primary functions of the brain is to serve as a modeling and predictive engine, and that the human brain is the best out there of these modeling and predictive engines. To make the case for this at first rather sensational claim, he cites the example of walking down a flight of steps and missing one of the steps. Why is this so startling? Whether you miss a step, or you put your foot down expecting to drop to another step only to find you've hit the bottom of the staircase, you end up surprised and alarmed. This common, ubiquitous phenomenon (I'm pretty sure it's happened to damn near everyone on Earth who uses flights of stairs at least every once in a blue moon) isn't something we spend much time thinking about when it happens; of course we'd be startled about missing a stair or being on the ground floor when we thought we were on the staircase! It's... not what was expected. We expect the stair to be there, or not. We expect the light switch on the wall to be there when we reach for it to turn it on. We expect our parents to be happy to see us, our girlfriend or wife to smile and greet us, our children or dog or maybe (sometimes) the cat to be happy when they see us. And when one of these things goes not as we expect it to, we become alarmed. Something's amiss! Hawkins's conclusions about the brain are my very favorite sort, short of actual scientific tests on the veracity of claims; it's reductive reasoning, looking at a phenomenon and asking oneself, "Why should this be so?" With a predictive mental model, this is easy enough to answer from a brain efficiency standpoint: it's simply more efficient to learn the way things are and expect them to be that way than it is to need to be constantly on alert, learning and re-learning and re-re-learning things over and over and over again, never being able to know, expect, or anticipate anything. The brain evolved as a prediction engine simply because it's easier, and far more adaptive, than being a brain that doesn't predict anything. THE MENTAL MODEL AS RATIONALE FOR MORAL OUTRAGE Most scientists spend a lot of time debating where morals come from. Are they ingrained in us? Are they learned? Are some ingrained (e.g., thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet thy sister) and others are learned (e.g., thou shalt not steal thy neighbor's minivan)? I have a simpler theory than this. My theory is this: Morals are nothing but the rules upon which an individual's mental model is built. They are the rules he learns from childhood, etched into his mind by observing others, and by acting and being rewarded or reprimanded. Based on how people act around him, and are rewarded or punished for acting, he builds his mental model: "The world operates in this way. People are right for doing these things (helping others in need, taking care of those they're responsible). People are wrong for doing those other things (tricking and manipulating people, hurting others). These things no one much cares about (sleeping in late on the weekend, eating more pizza than usual one day a week). So, if I want to be a good person with a successful life, I should do the right things, not do the wrong things, and I can do or not do the things that are neither right nor wrong at my own discretion." The problem comes when someone with one mental model encounters someone with a different mental model. Take a used car salesman. I once bought a used, but beautiful, black Mercedes-Benz E320 from a used car dealer. My car before that was a red Mitsubishi Galant, which was reliable but not perfect, but it was totaled in an accident when a girl violently changing lanes during slow-moving morning rush hour traffic caused another car, trying to avoid hitting her, to swerve violently out of control, crash into my car, and send me careening across three highway lanes and into a 9' cement wall at 45 miles an hour. My car prior to that, my first car, had been a red Subaru Legacy that I beat to hell: plumes of smoke poured out from under the hood, I constantly had to stop and put more coolant into its leaky coolant system that one mechanic after another could not repair, and after plugging along for 5 years it finally gave out on me one week after I moved with it to Washington, D.C., on a Friday afternoon. Compared to those other cars, which were both very good, reliable vehicles, my E320 was the best car I've ever owned. Yet, when I purchased it, I'd had it inspected and was told there weren't any problems. A week after my purchase, the engine light came on, and the breaks began to squeal horribly. I took it back to the dealer, but his reply was a cold one: "That's on you, bro." "That's on me, bro?" I thought. I'd just paid $2,000 over the Kelly Blue-Book price, and now I was being told I'd need to pay $1700 in repairs, and that was on me, bro? I'd been a salesman for years. When people came to me with problems, I always fixed them. It wasn't my business, but... I wanted customers to come back. I wanted them to tell their friends about me, and about our store. I wanted them to walk out of there saying, "That's the best damn tire store I've ever been to," and turn people who normally didn't care one way or the other about where they bought their tires into loyal brand evangelists who buy there for life and tell all their friends about us. That was how you sold, I thought. And here was a guy with an entirely different outlook on things. A transaction was a transaction was a transaction, and once it was done, and you had the product, and he had the money, that was the end of your relationship. What you felt about his business or what you told to other people, well... that was your stuff. He didn't want to see you again, unless you brought more money to spend. I was angered. I was outraged. My mental model was flawed. This was not how salesman were supposed to act, I thought... but clearly, despite how I thought people were supposed to act, some people were acting that way anyway. My moral outrage was caused by a violation of things going the way I predicted they would go. DIFFERING LEVELS OF OUTRAGE Obviously, due to the kinds of material that's taught on this site, we get differing levels of moral outrage on here in response to different posts. The post "Should You Pay for a Date?" is one that frequently attracts: Women who are outraged that men would dare not pay for dates with them, and Men who are outraged that women would dare ask them to pay for dates. There are plenty of calm, balanced replies on there from individuals of both genders, but when you see the outrage, that's where it is. (There are also some men outraged that other men won't pay, and women annoyed [if not quite outraged] that other women ask men to pay. That one's all over the map) Other posts that attracted or continue to attract periodic bursts of outrage are the one on ego depletion (some people are outraged that at the discussion of hard push / hard sell tactics there); how many partners a girl's had (some women are outraged that we'd even discuss this in the first place); the post on when a girl has a boyfriend (some men are outraged that we'd teach something like this); and of course Ricardus's old lightning rod that led to calls the site was in decline, on what he learned about escalation from porn star and seducer California Pimp (make sure you read Part II, linked to at the end of the post, before you get too upset on that one). Most of the most vitriolic comments never get approved, of course... I want things that are going to contribute the conversation here, not negative diatribes whose only purpose is to vomit up the author's bad feelings onto the Internet to be preserved into perpetuity. But that's a small sample of the most outrage-inducing posts on this website. If you head to one of those articles and read through the comments, you'll see different levels of outrage. Some people feel like the WORLD is ending... others are mildly annoyed. And you don't see the ones who'd probably stab me in the jugular if they could... the ones who are just spitting obscenities and cursing and acting like the article author murdered their little sister. Those ones simply don't get approved. Why the differing levels of outrage here? Why does politics cause some people to become so incensed, and others to bat nary an eyelash? Why does religion cause some people to ride out on a jihad or a crusade, and others to shrug and go about their business? Why don't people all react the SAME? Part of this is personality differences. But the other part is - wait for it - their mental models. In some mental models, some of this stuff just isn't a big deal, while in others, it feels like a grave threat to the individual's very way of life. The women who risk reduced options in dating if men find out they have high partner counts and are greater infidelity risks, and the men who risk losing unhappy girlfriends to men better able to meet those women's needs if men learn how to satisfy the masses of underserved women out there, feel the threat strongly and gravely. And because self-improvement and changing oneself is not a part of their mental models, they don't look at how they can improve themselves to avoid these issues, and instead fly into a rage in the hopes of scaring and silencing others into compliance. But that is the providence of the weak, and it is effective only with the weak. The bigger problem here is, if you are someone who is self-improvement-oriented... if you aren't happy with yourself for flying into impotent moral outrage in judgment and condemnation of others... if you want to become more powerful, more effective, calmer, and better able to get the things you want out of life... what can you do instead of judge, moralize, and fume? I have a confession to make: I'm no more free of moral indignation than anyone else. In fact, I may even feel it more than most. There are certain things that upset me a great deal, and certain things I absolutely expect out of people. There are principles that I will clamp down on people in my life with an iron fist for violating, like loyalty, trust, and failing to honor their word. In these, I am both willing to forgive someone who is truly conciliatory, and also very willing to battle to the end, out-maneuver, and outlast an opponent who refuses to reconcile and continues to move against me. I think to be very successful at anything, you have to be driven by some degree of passion and self-righteousness. You must believe that your cause is the cause of the light, and other causes are murky and misleading and misanthropic, if not outright malfeasant. The moral impetus this lends to your cause makes doing the impossible possible; it gave wings to people like Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla, and Alexander the Great. It's been the moral foundation of every great religious leader, from Moses to Buddha to Jesus to Mohammed. It's provided the thrust behind prominent recent political leaders, from Lincoln to Churchill to, yes, even Hitler. Whether you're the "good guy" or the "bad guy" to any particular group of people, chances are if you are prominent, powerful, and successful, commanding and charismatic, you are driven by moral passion and righteousness. However, if you go about being outraged about petty things, you will spend your life engaged in petty debates, and never moving beyond small concerns. Your passions, misdirected, can as easily trap you as they can set you free. You must seek to free your mind of small issues if you ever want to engage on the larger ones and bring bigger and greater things into your circle. How you do this is in part gathering new reference points; and it is in part by forcing yourself to get into the head of someone passionate on the other side, and to feel as they do... to feel the opposite of what you feel right now. EMPATHIZING YOUR WAY TO BETTER MENTAL MODELS I once had a friend and business partner take a good deal of money from a joint business of ours that I and a third business partner had contributed. Without the money we'd contributed, and myself and the third business partner now deeply in debt from having taken out loans against our persons to fund the business, this business, still young and not yet producing revenue, could no longer pay its bills, and I was forced to shut it down and lay off its nine employees. The (now former) friend who had made off with the business's money frittered it away on vacations and frivolities of his own, then returned, penniless, not to apologize, but to demand we pay him more for his "services" (he had been a full partner in the business, same as myself and the other partner). My reaction, of course, was one of outrage; we'd been conned, robbed, and hoodwinked by this mercenary, and here he was demanding more? It was one of the few times in my life I found myself absolutely stunned and unable to comprehend how someone could behave the way this individual was. I had several later businesses that did not work out as well as I'd hoped. Most of these business I spent a half a year or more each building. When they didn't grow as fast as I'd have liked, I simply gave them to my other partners and got out; I didn't want money, I didn't want equity, I didn't want to negotiate. I simply gave them away. I didn't want to divide my focus between things I was working on that were going well, and things that I considered "failed ventures." I knew the other partners cared about these businesses and wanted to continue to work on them and make them succeed; I did not, and I didn't want to be burdened with fighting over small, not-yet-successful startups. To me, the friendships and affiliations were far more valuable then any small amount of money I could fight and extract out of these still-small businesses - and my former partners. These businesses were not worth much, but the friendships and partnerships I'd had would likely continue to pay dividends, quite possibly in ways I could not anticipate at the time, years down the road. They might not, or they might so. Many times in my life I've had people from years past contact me to offer me things I never anticipated them being in a position to offer me that changed my life radically for the better. What I finally had to come and realize to understand his behavior was that this former friend and business partner of mine saw things totally differently. He did not see any value in retaining individuals and friends and confidantes; his personal and business history was one rife with falling outs again and again with everyone he interacted with. And so, he adopted his mercenary-like behavior: with everyone he interacted with, he assumed he would eventually fall into disfavor with them, and become bitter enemies. Thus, rather than build for the long-term, he shifted his mindset to extracting value in the short-term, trying to get what he could now to guard against ending up with nothing later. In so doing, he caused the very falling outs he so feared, and perpetuated the cycle, further reinforcing in his mind that all people eventually turn on him, and thus he must get value out of them now. Both of us were acting out of self-interest. However, my self-interest functions under the mental model that if you do good with people, and end on good terms, some of them will sometimes return to offer you boons you never expected and that are far more valuable than anything you could "extract" from them in the short-term. Meanwhile, my former friend's self-interest functions under the mental model that once you're done with someone, you're done, so get what you can from them, burn it to the ground, and worry not about the future because no one ever stays your friend. Most people without similar life experiences to this kind of person will never be able to understand this behavior. It will always perplex, confuse, anger, and enrage them. It's the very definition of a short-term mentality; "Get what you can now, for tomorrow isn't promised." So where does empathy come into play? Why should you even bother understanding other people, other viewpoints, other ways of seeing and understanding and interacting with the world? Because of this: the better able you are to understand the mental models of others, the better able you are to predict their actions, their reactions to you, their reactions to your reactions to their actions and reactions, and what they ultimately want and need and will do. And this makes you better able to get what you want, help them get what they want (or avoid them entirely if they're someone you simply can't deal with), and make the world you both (or all) live in a better, stronger, and more rewarding place. GATHERING NEW REFERENCE POINTS The other aspect to mental model-building is gathering new reference points. I covered this fairly in-depth in the article linked to above, so I won't go over it again, but I will say that the more reference points you can gather on everything, the more complete your mental model will be. To have the most comprehensive mental model you can, you must seek out experiences contrary to your prior ones. You need to find things that grossly violate your existing mental model. Things that are upsetting, confusing, and disorienting to you. That means, if you come from a world where people are gracious and generous to you, you'll want to spend some time around people who are brutal, cutthroat, and ruthless. I did this after graduating from college, and it was one of the greatest educations I had. Three of my closest friends (two male friends, and one girlfriend) were devoid of any real empathy (though they had reams of faux empathy); charming, conniving people who came across like the most magnetic people in the world, at their core they didn't really care about anyone other than themselves, and were merciless in getting what they wanted out of people, sometimes with charm, other times with brute force demanding, intelligence, or manipulation. I received a lot of bumps and bruises hanging out around these kinds of people; I learned to be able to view the world through their eyes, and saw what a polarized place it was for them - one filled with excitement, pleasure, disgust, and fear. There is no gray zone for the unempathetic; everything for them is totally good, or totally bad. In some ways, they are far more logical than other people (such as in their ability to calculate short-term costs and benefits), but in other ways, they are much more emotional. They're talented at decision-making in the immediacy of right now, but lacking in aptitude when it comes to planning for the long-term. In addition to the people you spend time around, I'd advise you to travel and experience cultures very different from yours. Live in other cities, countries, and cultures, if possible; immerse yourself in peoples who believe things different than you do now. I grew up in a small, religious town on the East Coast of the United States; from there I attended a big party school; I lived in the nation's capital after that, overflowing with educated intellectuals and working professionals; I then lived for three years in California, in a town with a far more relaxed pace of life, where most people's ambitions for life were enjoying themselves, hanging out, and relaxing. I lived in Beijing, China, a city of 20 million people with a fast-paced lifestyle in a country with one of the highest average IQs in the world, where half of the populace is extremely trusting and naive, and the other half is utterly shrewd, sharp, and at times conniving. Right now as I write this I'm sitting on an airplane, flying out of jungle country, back to civilization. In each of these places you'll meet radically different people, with radically different mental models, and radically different ways of seeing the world. At first you might find this jarring. Later, you will find this freeing. People who don't travel are never really able to understand other cultures, because they haven't experienced those cultures, haven't connected with members of those cultures, haven't related to them, haven't seen the world through their eyes. You must live it to know it. HOW DO YOU FIND THE FLAWS IN A MENTAL MODEL? Any time you catch yourself feeling: Surprised Shocked Angered Enraged Upset Depressed Defeated Disgusted ... stop and examine first if this reaction is in response to any real threat of danger. If it isn't, take that as a loud and clear sign that your mental model is flawed in some way (obviously, if there's a threat of danger, then your emotional reaction may be justified, although you still want to make sure you understand it fully). It means that you were expecting things to go one way, but they went another. You are not a victim (see: victim mentality), you simply did not have the model in place to anticipate the change or event that's caused you the emotions of surprise or anguish. Here's one example of a flawed mental model: You're going through security to board an airplane, when the security personnel find an expensive cologne in your baggage that exceeds the maximum size permitted on airplanes for fluid containers. They confiscate your cologne and discard it. You're understandably furious at this arbitrary theft of your goods; you know the facts, and you're well aware that a liquid explosive could not be created out of a bottle of fluid this small, and your cologne posed no threat. Your goods have been taken for no valid reason, and there's nothing you can do about it. Here's another: You start reading an article by some angry-sounding woman about how men are all bad and all manipulators who lie and cheat and use women, and how women don't need men and should stay away from men and that men are useless, terrible people. The article ends with a rallying cry for tougher laws on men, restricting what men can do, granting more freedom to women to sue and prosecute men and criminalize men for normal, everyday activities. You become enraged, and fire off a nasty comment in the comments section of the article, speechless that this person could possibly cast such sweeping generalization over an entire swath of the population, and incensed that she would try to have your gender treated like some kind of second-class citizen. Now, on the surface, both of these incidents seem to present some kind of danger. The first presents a danger of losing one's personal property, and of getting onto a "slippery slope;" if I arbitrarily let this person take what he wants from me this time, what are they going to do to me next time? The second presents a kind of danger of allowing this behavior, unchecked and unchallenged, to potentially lead to new laws that restrict your basic freedoms as an individual in your society. However, your violent reactions to both of these speak of a mental model that did not expect and does not understand these scenarios. In the first, clearly you didn't plan around the rules of the airport and not place that expensive cologne in your carry-on bags, or perhaps you thought you'd be able to talk your way out of having your cologne discarded. In the second, you perhaps didn't realize you were about to read some scathing denunciation of 50% of the population, or may be fearful that an Internet article could stir the winds of change, eventually leading to manacles on all men, or perhaps you thought that firing off an angrily-worded comment would cause the author to think twice about her position. In both cases, your mental model was flawed. In the first instance, if you fully knew and believed (not just logically knew, but still at the back of your head thought, "Ah, that'll never happen!") that bringing that bottle of cologne in your carry-on bags was going to lead to it being discarded, you may still have protested, but the emotions would have been far calmer because you would've known it would happen. You'd have a better plan for how to deal with it, or you'd have accepted that if your bottle was found, it'd be discarded, and that was a risk you were willing to take because you weren't going to check a bag anyway (and you would've DEFINITELY had to discard your cologne in the hotel room, otherwise). In the second instance, if you fully understood what the article was about from the title ("Why We Need to Criminalize Men Asking Women on Dates They've Known for Fewer than 6 Months"), you simply wouldn't read it, knowing it's an irrational, emotional vituperation aimed more at venting the author's negative emotions than it is at swaying anyone to enact draconian laws that would make everyone's lives worse. And had you begun reading it and found it every bit the castigating tirade the title declared it would be, you'd quickly click off the article, reasoning you didn't need those negative emotions dumped into your heart, and you didn't want to hang around with all the angry men and women in the comments section, and you weren't going to change anyone's mind by venting your OWN angry emotions anyway, much as the article writer didn't change anyone's mind either. By identifying the places where you're reacting emotionally in a negative manner to something, you can figure out where your mental models are flawed. That doesn't mean don't ever fight back and defend yourself when it's called for; but it does mean you need to reflect on why you ended up in that situation (i.e., you didn't appropriately assess the dangers and risks before entering into it, due to a faulty mental model) and why the things that happened happened. BUT AREN'T "BAD" EMOTIONS SOMETIMES GOOD? When your bad emotions inspire you to change things, they can be useful. For instance, if you were upset about the cologne bottle being discarded, and you petitioned your government to stop throwing away people's belongings and instead either let them keep them on their persons or designed a more efficient way of getting those belongings into their checked bags instead of into trash bags, and you worked at it tirelessly until you affected change, this would be useful. Otherwise though, the emotion only serves as a sore point to reinforce a lesson in your mind. The next time you're about to fly an airplane, you'll remember how surprised and angry you were, and you'll place that cologne in your checked luggage (or else you won't bring it). Within a few trips flying, you won't even remember the bad emotion much, and you'll just know the consequences of putting a big bottle in your carry-on luggage. You won't get upset if you forget and the find something else; instead of being angry at them, you'll be angry at YOURSELF. "Gah, I should've known better," you'll think. That's a sign that your mental model now matches the way things actually happen. And, if you were upset about the article writer's jeremiad against males, and that inspired you to action - getting your own column on the same website talking about how we need to tear down the wall of vitriol-laced tirades on the Internet by one side against another and instead approach each other with empathy and understanding, rather than trying to war with one another - this would be useful. Otherwise though, the emotion only serves to keep you away from articles and people like that. The next time you see an article like that, you say, "Bah! I'm not clicking on that rubbish," and you protect yourself from getting drawn into someone else's anger and discontent. What about fighting the system, and fighting injustice? you might say. Well, if something is actually unjust (like the airport screener confiscating and discarding your expensive cologne), or if something raises the specter of wanting to change society to make it unjust (a rallying cry to criminalize normal, unharmful activities), then yes - it's sometimes good to "fight the system." However, you must fight it from a place of understanding and calm. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela are three great examples of individuals who affected change by understanding the other side and calmly and rationally, yet still emotionally and inspirationally, presenting their cases. Those who call for warfare and bloodshed usually don't win, and instead rather bring a great deal of misery and negative affect to their followers. Instead of affecting change, they only manage to dig their hole deeper and polarize the other side in opposition. HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MENTAL MODEL AND LEAD A BETTER LIFE If you catch yourself getting angry, upset, or miffed at anything, stop, and take a breather. Stop focusing on the other person, and turn the spotlight on yourself. Say to yourself, "My mental model is flawed," and try to understand why the thing that made you angry, upset, or miffed has just happened. Without resorting to victim mentality ("It's because this other person is an evil oppressor!"). That just takes the power out of your hands and resigns you the victim role. No... why did this happen? It's not because the other person was "evil." There's no such thing. We call "evil" those who are working to accomplish things that run opposite to what we want. We want to plant trees, they want to tear them down (so it seems to us). But to them, they want to cut lumber to build homes and economies, and we want to stymie the wheels of industry and bring society crashing down in technology-free anarchy (so it seems to them). Understand the other side. Fix your mental model. Then the animosity goes away, and you can actually work with people to get what you want. Why did that girl reject you? Is it because she's "evil?" Of course not. It's because you didn't present yourself in a way that made her think you could offer something to her life that she'd value. So, get out there, figure out what she values, and figure out how to get it to her. Your mental model was flawed in thinking that she rejected you because she's cold and shallow. And her mental model was flawed in thinking that you brought nothing to her life. Repair yours, then work on repairing hers (or that of other women's like hers). Not by convincing or cajoling, but by presenting yourself in a light that she will understand. What does she value? Understand it and become it. Then instead of being angry and confused, you will be happy and satisfied. STOP MORALIZING AND START FIXING The next time you catch yourself getting all moral about what people "should" and "shouldn't" do, knock it off and instead understand why they're doing what they're doing. Ask yourself: What are their goals, and what are they trying to accomplish? How can I change their minds, or can I change their minds? Is it better to work within the confines of the system, or is it better to try to change this system? It's usually better to work within the confines of a given system. Changing the way things are done at a large level requires a great deal of time, effort, work, will, and sacrifice on your part. Usually, it requires decades of full-time devotion. So, you may be very upset that: Airports take your cologne bottles from carry-on bags Commercials on TV are louder than the TV shows they sponsor People cut in front of you in line at fast food restaurants Pretty girls aren't partial to computer nerds ... but you can't realistically change all of these. You might be able to change one of them... if you devote the next 10 or 15 years of your life to that, and only to that. Otherwise, you learn to work within the system: You learn that airports take your cologne bottles from carry-on bags, and stop bringing cologne bottles in carry-on bags or bring smaller bottles that won't be confiscated You mute commercials, or buy TiVo, or watch your TV shows online, or (best of all, in my opinion) you stop watching TV altogether and find something more productive to do with your time You learn to gently tap people on the shoulder or arm immediately when they try cutting in line, and smile kindly but very firmly at them, make eye contact, and motion for them to get behind you, letting them know that they aren't sneaky and you are going to call them out on their behavior. Or, if you really can't stand this and it keeps happening, you go to a different restaurant (maybe a sit-down restaurant, with no lines) or you start ordering delivery You learn how to be more attractive to pretty girls, and don't let on that you're a computer nerd until you've been dating for a couple of months and she's already totally in love with you. At that point, she'll probably even begin to associate computer nerd-dom with having a sexy boyfriend. Score one for the computer nerds! Spending a lot of time angry or upset or defeated or helpless over what other people do doesn't help you at all. So cut it out. Instead, correct your mental model. Learn why other people do the things they do, learn to expect them, learn to empathize with them, learn to communicate with them in terms of their needs (not yours; not "Here's what I want" but rather "Here's how you can get what you want from me BETTER"), and learn the way to work within the world without having to violently struggle against the world over every little thing. Because trust me, no matter how much spirit you've got, if you're going to fight everyone on everything, you'll be beaten down and worn out in no time. Stop fighting. Stop moralizing and telling people what they SHOULD do (according to you, anyway). Instead, understand them, work with them, and treat them as friends and partners. You'll have a much easier, a much more productive and rewarding, and a much more stress-free life for it. And you may just find you end up getting exactly what you want.

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On Ricardus's post "How to Make Her Want You: Lessons from Marketing," a commenter named Garrett reports being conflicted over a few aspects of what's taught here. In particular, he asks why physical intimacy is needed with romantic partners, and if dating without sex isn't also just as possible. Here's the part of his comment dealing with this topic: "Out of curiosity, I've spent a lot of time researching this topic, and there are a few things I fail to understand. Firstly, to get a girlfriend, why must you sleep with them? If you can prove me wrong then I'd be interested to know, but I feel indifferent about this. I feel that everything in life requires balance and in order to get a girl to like you, you should be yourself, be mindful of ways to improve yourself, and strike a balance between acting like a jerk and on the contrary, a 'wet noodle' who is no challenge whatsoever." Garrett also goes on to say that he feels like other aspects of what's discussed on Girls Chase feel to him like "manipulation," though this is a topic already addressed in depth in "Is Seduction Wrong?," the basic premise of which is that people who lack the drive to improve themselves fear others who do who become conscious of their own actions and strive to perfect them, typically working to censor them and stop them to prevent competition and declining options for themselves (e.g., you will rarely have a successful career woman who's had to tooth and claw her way to success and improve herself dramatically stand and accuse you of being manipulative for learning seduction, though you will often have a girl who dropped out of high school and works at the local taco shop fly into a frenzy over how "manipulative" men like you are, presuming of course that she doesn't actually know you and is instead setting you up in her mind as some diabolical "other"). I won't cover whether seduction is manipulation and whether I ought to censor myself here or not again, although I will note that it does partly come down to where you draw the line - there are certain "dark arts" of seduction, like October Man and like Sexual Power Reversal, that I simply don't teach because it's too easy to do harm to women by wielding these clumsily. So, I do have an "ethical limit;" if I really honestly think it's something that can lead to the average man doing more harm than good, I don't teach it. What I will talk about here today is if it's really necessary for you to have sex with a woman you want to pursue a romantic relationship with. Can you skip this step and get by with just waiting for marriage? It's a question I've been asked a number of times on the site, and haven't addressed yet... at least on here. But, as it turns out, this is actually one of the very first questions I had to discuss - and debate - on a public scale that has to do with sex. So come with me, and let's have a look at what happens when you do not have sex. One of the things that annoys me a great deal is getting cornered by Christian zealots who try to convert me and assume that they know more about the Bible, and Jesus, and the Christian God than I do. I don't so much mind that they're trying to convert me... I mind that they think they know more about my old faith than I do. I grew up a devout Roman Catholic in a Roman Catholic town, attended a Catholic kindergarten, primary school, middle school, and high school, and was arguably the most devout believer there. I knew the lyrics to most of the prayer songs in the hymnals, and served as an alter boy as early as they'd let me apply. I felt a very deep connection to God and Jesus, and I'd daily drive myself very deep into prayer, to be fully conscious in my conversations with the Lord, and to not run my prayer on autopilot or "zone out" as most of the "faithful" who are doing no more than punch their cards to get their free pass into heaven do. I felt continual disappointment with these "believers in name only" who said they believed but didn't really. If they really believed in God, they would be joyous, I knew. Even years after I quit religion as a teenager (without telling anyone), I still got voted "Most Likely to Become a Priest" in my senior year of high school. For a time, when I was younger, I actually did feel certain I would be a priest when I grew up. That was until I fully realized that as a priest, of course, I would not be able to have sex. This was one of the things I struggled with as a believer; I'd been a Catholic since the age of 5, but I'd been obsessed with sex since the age of 3. How could those two views be reconciled? What I eventually realized was that the only place in the Bible that sex before marriage (fornication) was condemned were in the epistles - letters written by the disciples of Jesus to communities of the devout in various cities like Corinth and Thessalonica. These were not the Word of God or Jesus; they were the concoctions of followers. And while I had great respect for Jesus and his teachings and parables, I had virtually none for the often mad ravings of the epistles. Here was Jesus, preaching hope and joy and inclusion; and there were his apostles, preaching doom and condemnation and terror. The apostles, at least the ones quoted in most of the epistles, didn't get it; they had no idea what the message Jesus was actually trying to convey was. Much of the Messiah's message fell on deaf ears and got twisted and reinterpreted to mean whatever best served the agendas of those who picked up his tale. I later learned that this very thing happened too to Siddhartha Gautama, the man who became known as "Buddha;" just like Jesus, his direct followers took his message and altered it dramatically, in many places directly contradicting what he himself had said. Here was Jesus Christ, preaching warmth and generosity and inclusion and love; and there were his disciples, preaching coldness and horror and expulsion and everlasting damnation. Jesus had nothing to say on fornication; only the crazed, controlling writers of the epistles and the mad Book of Revelation had. So, even as a believer, I tossed aside the dogma of my church in that regard; I was far more interested in listening to Jesus himself, than all the people following him who presumed to speak for him and reinterpret his Word. SEX AND RELIGION As you reach puberty in Catholic school, that's the time that the conditioning to have you believe that dating without sex is the norm and the ideal; and that sex outside of marriage is wrong, wrong, wrong. In grade 8, I was sent, along with all my classmates, to attend a day-long talk by some woman on the dangers of sex outside of marriage. The woman told a story of a girl who, at the age of 16, lost her virginity to a boy she met down near the seashore. In that one night of passion, the girl both contracted genital herpes, and became pregnant. She regretted ever having had sex. This story, dumped out onto and downloaded into the brains of all of my classmates and I, who could not talk back, could not fight it, and could not engage in dialogue over it, sent me into a rage. I knew the odds on pregnancy; and I knew the odds on contracting a sexually transmitted disease. I had a fairly good understanding of the odds on genital herpes itself. Had the woman come and presented a balanced portrayal, and said here are 20 kids having sex, and 19 of them love it and here's why, and 1 of them regrets having done it and here's why, I would've said fine, let's hear her side of things. But when I was only being told one side of the story - the alarmist side, and the most UNCOMMON view of those engaging in the practice (in this case, sex) - I KNEW I was being manipulated to believe something that wasn't true the vast majority of the time. They were using scare tactics on us... and I loathed it. I immediately went home, took all the free pamphlets and information they'd given me at the seminar about how sex was bad and wrong and dangerous, and I flushed them down the toilet. These materials didn't even deserve to go in the trash; they deserved to go in the sewer. I didn't just reject what they were teaching; I was incensed at the fear tactics used. Their argument was so weak, and so non-existent, that they had to shut out the majority and present a small outlier case and distort it into sounding like the norm in order to try to frighten a bunch of children into doing what they wanted them to do. From then on, for the remainder of my Catholic education, it was war between me and the "dating without sex" people, and it was personal. THE SHOE THEORY In grade 11, I had a teacher for religion class who was a bundle of energy. He was a pretty charismatic guy, but he also spoke with a strong lisp, and the rumor was that he was very gay but trying to convince himself he was not by hiding behind "no sex before marriage." One of my classmates' sisters had dated him for a year, and broke up with him, professing that, "He's definitely gay." In any event, this teacher was still a nice - if very loud and outspoken and dramatic - guy. One day he brought a priest in to visit from another church in another town, and that priest gave a talk on why sex before marriage was wrong. At the end, he asked if there were any questions from the class, and I raised my hand. "Yes?" he asked. "What is your question?" "My question is," I began, "if you're about to buy a pair of shoes that you're going to wear for the rest of your life... I mean, if you're NEVER going to wear another pair of shoes again, and these are the ONLY shoes you will ever wear, forever... PERIOD..." I paused. "Go on," he prompted, waiting for my point. "... well," I said, "wouldn't you want to try them on, first?" The entire class burst out laughing; the priest reached for a counterargument, but couldn't come up with one; and as he fumbled with his words, my maybe-gay teacher exclaimed, in his most emphatic voice, "PEOPLE ARE NOT SHOES!" And then the school bell rung and class was dismissed, a classroom full of laughing 16- and 17-year olds pouring out of the room. My shoe theory became the talk of the school for the rest of the week, and people were still reminding me about it a year later. They probably still whisper it in that school, I bet. WHOM YOU TAKE ADVICE FROM I've always been a believer in taking advice only from people who really, really, REALLY know what they're talking about. Why? Because people who take advice from people who don't know what they're talking about usually end up failing at most of the things they do. Imagine someone who wants to start a new business, and takes advice from anyone who wants to give him advice, successful entrepreneur or not. You probably wouldn't know it if you've never tried starting a business before, but almost everyone you know is going to have reams of advice to give you, and almost all of that advice is horribly, atrociously WRONG. So when I was in high school, listening to a priest, who's likely never had sexual relations in his life, tell me that sex is wrong and I shouldn't do it, I threw it out as garbage. Why? Take hard drugs, for instance. Most people who've never done hard drugs will tell you they're really, really wrong and you shouldn't do them. I didn't care about those people though. What I cared about was what were the people who'd done them saying, and what did their lives look like. And what I found was, some of them said hard drugs are great, and you can enjoy them without any bad effects, and these people seemed to have normal lives. And some people said hard drugs are the best thing in the world, and they seemed to have terrible lives that revolved only around getting their next fixes. And some people said hard drugs are bad, they screwed up my life, don't get involved with them. So, my final opinion was, some people can do hard drugs recreationally and not get addicted. Some people get addicted and it wrecks their lives. Some people manage to crawl out of addiction to hard drugs, but it's never completely gone and it's always sort of there, stalking their minds. So, for me, I said okay, based on those people who actually have EXPERIENCE with this, it seems like hard drugs are a risky proposition and something it's better just to steer clear of. No great benefit to your life aside from a boost of pleasure, but scads of potential downside. Not worth doing. That's how you assess advice based on experience. The same with business success; if a guy's telling you you need to this and this and that, and he's been running a business for 20 years that barely makes enough money to cover his bills, you'd be right to be skeptical of his advice if it goes against what, say, Steve Jobs does in business. If you've got to choose between running a business like Steve Jobs, and running a business like Uncle Larry who needs to borrow money from your dad every so often just to keep the lights in the sandwich shop on, you probably want to go with Steve Jobs, not Uncle Larry. So what about dating without sex though? Where do you find an expert on that? My last year of high school, I had a small study hall period with only three other students. It was an odd time of the day for study hall, so there weren't many of us. Just us four students (the other three and me), and the study hall monitor, one of the coolest and most likable teachers in school. This teacher was around 30 years old, but he seemed much younger. He was funny, energetic, charismatic, and handsome; most of the girls in school had crushes on him. He'd been, as he told it, a star soccer player in college, and was likely to go on to the professional leagues; but, he'd blown out both of his knees, and now he couldn't play anymore. I asked him if he tried; maybe he could work his way back. And he said he could go out and play fine on any given day; but the next day, he'd be in agony and almost unable to walk. His shot at professional success was over. He made light sometimes of his faith, and was a frequent user of the phrase "High five Jesus!" whenever something good had happened. But he was a tremendously devout guy; one of the few people in that school who actually knew as much about the Bible and Christian history as I did (or perhaps even a bit more). This teacher was a believer in the "no sex before marriage" philosophy, and refused to budge on it. And he told me and the other students there, at my urging, the story of him and his long-term girlfriend. The two of them had dated for two years. He loved her, he said, and she loved him. He'd proposed to her, and they were weeks away from being married, when suddenly she said to him, "We have to have sex before we get married." She insisted; he refused. She threatened to call off the engagement if he would not have sex with her... and he was conflicted. One day, sitting under a tree, he asked God if he should make love to his fiancée or not. Then, like Isaac Newton, an apple fell out of the tree and hit him square on the head. He looked up, took it as a sign from God, and decided it was God's way of telling him to stop being a fool and to do what he knew was right; which, of course, was NOT having sex with her. So, he told his fiancée this was something he simply could not do, and she called off the engagement. He lamented that girl after girl he met, "It always seems like we make it to the third date, and I tell a girl that I don't believe in sex before marriage, and then I never see her again!" He laughed sadly as he said this, as if resigned to his fate. "Should I just have sex with these girls? Should I just say, 'Sorry God, but I've got to do it?'" I asked him why, if God forgives you for your sins, and he really believed this was a sin, why could he not just sin, and then ask God for forgiveness in the morning? He asked, "Is that what you do? You just go have sex with everyone you see... 'Oh hey, you look nice... want to have sex?'" And I said no, of course not - you can be as picky about whom you want to sleep with as anything else. But if you really like someone, and you want to be with her and you don't want her to leave, then yes - you should probably be intimate with her. And he just shook his head and said he just didn't know. One day he went back to see his ex-fiancée, and she told him she still loved him, and she would still marry him, but that he knew what she needed from him first. She just needed to know if they were actually going to work as a couple; they needed to be intimate, and she needed to know if they were sexually compatible. And they dated again for a few weeks, and again, he simply could not give her what she required of him, and that was that. They went their separate ways. WHY ON EARTH DO WE HAVE SEX (OR RELATIONSHIPS)? 3.8 billion years ago, according to the latest research, an amino acid formed in the primordial soup that had just the right combination of proteins that it was able to both absorb new amino acids required to grow and expand, and to replicate itself. Chances are, there were billions of combinations of other amino acid chains forming and breaking apart; some that could absorb more amino acids, and some perhaps with the ability to replicate, but likely only a few, or even only one, that happened to have just the right mix of aminos that it was able to take in nutrients, and produce copies of itself. Sometime later, as life became more complex, single-celled organisms began to swap DNA. This DNA-swapping - similar to a technology swap between organizations or nations in today's day and age - let individual microbes upgrade themselves with the latest and greatest biological tech on the market, stumbled across through happenstance by one particular microbe, and quickly dispersed (provided it was an advantageous mutation, and not a deformity or a detriment, as the majority of mutations turn out to be) to the rest of the population. As organisms became eukaryotic - multicellular - it became more difficult to trade DNA, and eventually largely impossible. So, to keep evolution happening quickly enough, and to stave off parasites and disease by swapping and mixing up immune genes, organisms began to create copies of themselves not as perfect clones, but from half the genes of one of them, and half the genes of another. These organisms were the first sexual organisms, and this method was so superior to cloning that it would come to dominate the reproductive practices of almost all higher life forms. The earliest sexual organisms were hermaphroditic; that is to say, they had both male and female sex organs. Even today, most plants remain hermaphroditic, and some simpler forms of animal do too. Later on though, animals found it advantageous to separate out the sexes; instead of having two hermaphrodites compete to see which one could inseminate the other first (as in sea slugs), some animals would be exclusively male, and others exclusively female. This strategy proved superior to the animals that had to devote some energy to male parts and behaviors, and other energy to female parts and behaviors, and this specialized approach to reproduction held sway and grew and expanded. Once males and females had split, they formed their specialized roles. The females, in all cases except a few (e.g., seahorses) had the far higher investment in reproduction; they watched the young, guarded them, taught them. In mammals and some reptiles and even a few insects, they gestated the young and secreted nutritious fluids from their bodies that young could drink early on in their development. Males had far less devoted roles, depending on the species; in some species, the males stuck around and played the role of father and partner, increasing the odds of their young's survival; in other species, the males immediately struck out in search of new partners after mating, pursuing a "quantity over quality" approach - the more offspring produced, the better the odds of their genes surviving, went the strategy. Due to the vast amount of investment and risk associated with mating with a male for her, the female needed to be certain that the male she was mating with was the highest quality one for her; that is to say, that he could aptly provide everything she wanted him to provide, be that strong children, able protection for her and her children, support, resources, training, or anything else. Thus, because of this need for females to be picky, a courtship process evolved - a way for males to show females how worthy of them they were, and for females to force the males to work hard to do so... because the harder a male had to work to prove his worth, the more opportunity the female had to identify and screen out the males who didn't actually pass muster, leaving her with only the highest quality mates remaining to choose from. Thus, dating: your audition as a male for sex. WAIT, WHAT ABOUT ALL THE ROMANCE? As someone who scores very high in emotions and empathy, I was a very emotional child, and a very romantic one. I often had sweeping visions of the great romances I'd give to women when I was old enough to do so; I would be her savior... her lover... the greatest man of her life. And, to be honest, I still have some of these ideals, and I carry them out... to an extent. I am viewed by my ex-girlfriends as the great love they lost; these women who've been pursued by their ex-boyfriends, only to repeatedly brush them off, now find themselves pursuing me, only to be told that I cannot go back. What's finished, for me, is finished. But romance is nothing but emotions and chemicals in your brain and hers, designed by evolution (or God... whatever you prefer) for exactly ONE thing: to get you to mate. When is the easiest time for a woman to be made pregnant by her lover? During the first weeks or months of being physically intimate with him - when passion is at its height. And when do their emotions drive men and women to spend the most time with one another, touching, kissing, and making love? During the first weeks or months of being physically intimate with one another - making the chance at pregnancy and reproduction go up dramatically. For as much as a romantic as I may be at heart, I will not lie to myself, and nor should you: emotions exist because they serve a purpose, and the purpose of the emotions that rush in about dating and romance are to get you to mate. Without sex, romance is purposeless. Without sex, you might as well have a romance with a puppy dog, or a goldfish, or your best guy friend. Take away the aspect of mating and reproduction, and you don't have a romance... you have a friendship. Romance and relationships ARE about SEX. That's why every single romance you read about - yes, even the ones in the Bible - culminates in consummation. HAS DATING WITHOUT SEX EVER BEEN COMMON? It's common in my home country, the United States, to think that past generations were almost totally chaste, and only our recent society has become so "hedonistic." Au contraire, mon fraire. History shows us otherwise. You may not know it, but the flappers of the 1920s were more sexually unrestrained than the women of the 21st century, and they spent just as much time venting about men, too (engagement rings were frequently referred to as "handcuffs" or "manacles"). Casual sex was the order of the day, and the films shown in Hollywood before the Christian moral codes of the 1930s were imposed (by the Jewish heads of the Hollywood studios, oddly enough) would be shocking to modern audiences for their sexual debauchery. We're virtual schoolchildren in modern America compared to what was going on in the '20s and early '30s. Well, okay, that's the 20th century. Let's go back further... how about the Puritans - surely, they were more observant of, well, PURITY... right? They're the penultimate moralistic tightwads! Nobody was more conservative than a Puritan... scarlett letter, Salem witch trials, all that jazz - right? As it were, in the mid-1700s in Colonial America, and hold onto your socks on this statistic: fully 40% of American brides were already pregnant by the time their wedding days rolled around. 40% pregnancy rates prior to marriage! We're not even close to that in the modern world... the fornicating of our ancestors puts us all to shame. The men and women of today are virtual prudes by comparison. I've talked to my grandparents about the dating in their days - maybe the history books have it wrong, and casual sex wasn't so common in the 1920s, and '30s, and '40s. Nope, they confirm for me, it was - things today are not so different. Humans are doing what humans have always done. The same thing as all the other animals, and plants, and fungi, and bacteria, and protozoa, and archaea, and all other forms of life on Earth do; we are reproducing, in our own odd, unique way that involves two organisms making a new one together. Life just keeps going on, and it keeps making more life. It is designed to do so... driven to do so. And that life that does not produce more life simply disappears from history; like the Essenes of Jesus's time, those organisms that do not leave descendants have minimal impact on those organisms who come after them, for they have no part to play in the life that is to come. And once they are dead, there is no one to take their place. When you're on the outside of a society, looking in, frequently the cultural contrivances of the society you're observing look a tad... ridiculous. For instance, in some parts of Africa, males are not circumcised until they reach the age of about 17 to 20 years of age, at which point they undergo a ritual circumcision, the foreskin cut off the penis with no pain medicine or other relief. At this point, the male screams, "I am a man!" and he has completed the initiation to manhood. Sometimes things go a little wrong though, and the penis becomes infected and self-amputates itself from the body. Other times, the penis does not roll off, and instead the infection spreads to the rest of the body, and the young man dies. But, men who do not go through this process are ridiculed; they are considered cowards, and are regarded as "not real men." So, despite the dangers, pretty much everybody gets cut. To most of the readers on this site, this seems like madness. Why would you DO something like this, especially somewhere without good anti-infection or pain medicine? It's insanity; it's not even necessary. But in that culture, it is accepted that this is simply how things are done. You run into that as you travel; strange culture clashes. Ricardus tells me that in Thailand, it's understood that if you have sex with a woman, either you will pay her after, and that's fine, or you will enter into a serious relationship with her, and that's fine too. So long as you either pay her, or commit to her, either of those is fine; but if you don't pay her, and you don't commit to her, the woman will feel as though she's been cheated. But, to a Western male visiting Thailand, paying for a woman is often insulting, and he doesn't know or understand that a woman expects either money or commitment in return for sex. In fact, if he were to hear that those were her expectations, he'd probably think she was crazy, just as she thinks he's cheated her for not giving her either one. This is culture; there are traditions in a culture, and to people in that culture they of course make sense, and they of COURSE are what you SHOULD DO, and if you DON'T do them then you are a BAD PERSON or an outsider or a rebel. And marriage is another one of those cultural practices, exactly like these. MARRIAGE: FOR SOCIETY Most people in a marriage-based society - which, to one extent or another, is most of the world, although marriage is declining in significance in the West (though still rather significant) - see marriage as this penultimate event: "Once I reach marriage, everything else in my life will change!" Traditionally in Western society, men wanted marriage desperately, as it was considered a rite of passage into manhood, similar to the circumcisions of those African boys. Meanwhile, women somewhat wanted marriage, but also feared it, as a loss of freedom. Today, marriage is by and large no longer considered a rite of passage for men, and most of its benefits (a wife who cooks, takes care of the household, supports the man at his farm or after he returns from work, etc.) have largely disappeared, replaced with increased responsibilities and liabilities (e.g., financial risks via divorce). As a result of this, most men have lost most of their interest in marriage in the West - while 50 or 60 years ago marriage was something nearly every man wanted with passion and determination, now it's become something that men try to avoid, and women try to drag men to, kicking and screaming. The exception for this, of course, is among the minority of religiously devout individuals who believe in dating without sex; for them, marriage remains the ideal, as it lies on the path to sex. Typically you'll find that people will do what they need to do to get to sex; having grown up in Catholicism, I've watched how quickly the devout tend to marry... they have the earliest marriages, and often the bride is pregnant by the time the honeymoon is over. Why? Because people do what they need to do to get to sex. If they believe they can't have sex without marriage, they'll simply marry a lot sooner (and, often, be divorced before they're out of their 20s, much of the time, too). So what's the point of this whole marriage thing, anyway? Why's it useful? Marriage is a social construct that endures because the societies which support it are stronger. Imagine a society where no one gets married, and everyone stays single all the time, constantly competing for partners, and most men are depressed and fatalistic because a few powerful men monopolize all the women. How much gets done? Now imagine a society where everyone gets married by age 25, and settles down after that and focuses on producing, producing, and more producing, to provide the best life possible for one's offspring. How much gets done here? The society that favors marriage leads to greater amounts of production, and thus greater technological and military and economic advances, eventually leading that society to conquer and overtake the other societies with less productive social norms. Anyway, that's marriage on a bigger scale. How about marriage on a smaller one? Is marriage for you? Is it for your girl? Do things actually, you know... change now just because you're married? I've been married. And I can tell you for a fact... no. No they don't. You don't wake up the next day and now she's someone different, or you are. You're still the same exact people, and your relationship is still the same exact relationship. Nothing changes. But if nothing changes when you get married for you... and if nothing changes when you get married for her... then who's the marriage for? The answer: society. It's for other people. You're doing it to please them. It's for her friends and her family, so they can stop giving her a hard time and can now say, "Okay, GOOD. I am now CERTAIN that she will be fine forever." Marriage is a way of giving people a false sense of certainty. It is a promise that you will be together forever, no matter what happens. And more than 50% of the time now, that promise gets broken. And every single person thinks that THEIR marriage will definitely be different. Because they are not going to get divorced. Nobody gets married thinking he or she will ever get divorced. Yet, the majority of them do. Their marriages end, and they leave each other. This ritual - this promising of "forever" - this pledge of "certainty" and "absolutes" - is nothing more than a little white lie to oneself and society at large that, because we have dressed this way and done these things and said these words, it is now certain: it is no longer in doubt. Yet it still IS in doubt, because there is no certainty in the world. And no amount of manipulating one's own emotions, or one's partner's emotions, or the emotions of friends and family around you, by making a promise of fidelity, when you can never know with any certainty what the future holds, can change that. So on the one hand we have marriage, a social construct that's existed for a few thousand years and is venerated by certain individuals from certain societies as an ideal to be striven for, similar to the rite of passage that African males undergo with ritual circumcision at ages 17 to 20. And on the other hand we have sex, the entire reason we having dating or marriage or romance or relationships at all in the first place, whatsoever. Do we really need sex? There are a select few individuals out there who identify themselves as "asexual." They comprise approximately 1% of the population at large; these individuals have no sex drive to speak of, or do have a sex drive, but it is only directed at ideal images (e.g., cartoon characters, figments of their dreams or imagination, etc.) and not at real, flesh-and-blood people. They honestly, legitimately do not want sex, and have zero interest in it. Often asexuals remain interested in romance, despite a lack of a sex drive. They find sex confusing, and often disgusting, and wonder why on Earth the other 99% of individuals on Earth are so obsessed with it. Just in case you're reading this and that seems to strike a chord, I recommend checking out AVEN, the forum and support group for individuals like this: The Asexual Visibility and Education Network But for everybody else - those of us with sex drives - yes, we need sex. Even more than that though, is that BECAUSE romance, and relationships, and dating, and all the rest COME from sex, and CULMINATE in sex, what you'll find is that, as we've discussed amply on this site, and most specifically in "Attraction Has an Expiration Date," when you do not get to sex quickly enough, you lose a woman. Why? Because dating and romance and courtship is just the mating dance; and a mating dance that is not followed by mating leads to the male dismissed as impotent. There are countless examples in natural literature of how quickly females of a species move on from males that conduct their mating dances but are unwilling or unable to mate; the male gets a short escalation window, and that's it. Window missed, window closed. Why's it work this way? Well, which woman is more likely to pass on her genes - the woman who waits and waits and waits forever before breeding with a man, or the woman who assesses mate value and then mates? In the ancestral environment (or even the modern environment), a woman who waits for a man to mate for too long introduces all kinds of problems: he may be killed, he may end up mating with another woman, and she throws away precious time she could spend mating on assessing over a long period of time, instead. And remember that the clock is always ticking on women; the older she gets, the lower the quality of mate she can get. If she waits for you for a long time and nothing comes of it, she now has to settle for a man who's 85% of what she wants, instead of one who's 90% of what she wants had she gone for him when she was younger and more sought after. And now she's got to assess someone else all over again. Women who are better at assessing mate quality and can do it more quickly have a better chance of reproducing at all, and a better chance of producing a higher number of offspring. That means that, if ever there existed women who preferred to wait a year or two years or five years naturally before engaging in sex... those women were outcompeted long ago. CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS In societies that place a great deal of social and sexual constraints on their members, it's common to see more hesitancy around sex (though, again, think of Colonial America's numbers on pregnancy at time of marriage and don't go thinking this is all-pervasive). This changes the views of individuals somewhat. For instance, if you travel to India, where the average number of lifetime sex partners for a woman is 1.6, something close to majority of women only ever have sex with the man they marry. That's because the society is so restrictive, and marriage is such an economic necessity, that the norms there are to wait until marriage, and men want to marry virgins and women want to make sure they preserve their virginity to make sure they get a husband. But even in India, which man do you think a woman will fall in love with more quickly: the man who is sexlessly courting her, or the man who is making passionate love to her? Which man has a better chance of "keeping" her? Which man has a better chance of wedding her, if he so desires? Of course - the man who has actually consummated his attraction to her, and with whom she has consummated her attraction to him. Even in India though, where they probably wait for sex longer than anywhere else on the planet, how long do you think a woman is willing to wait for a man? There is a famous Bollywood movie where a man is wrongly imprisoned for 20 years, and his fiancée waits for him, never knowing if she will ever see him again, and finally, after 20 years, he is released from his incarceration and the two lovers are at last reunited, to finally be wed. It was so famous because it was so fantastic - fantastic here meaning the original meaning of the term, as in "of or like a fantasy." That is to say, this is something that does not happen in real life. The horror, right? That pure true selfless undying love does not exist! Well, sure. It's horrible that aliens with advanced technology who want to come bring us world peace and eternal life don't exist either, but they don't (at least not in this arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, so far as any of us has seen). Oh well, you move on, figure out how the world actually is, and maximize your happiness and the happiness of those around you within it. And the fewer social constraints there are on individuals, the fewer social constructs there are to limit and direct and guide their movements, the more people tend to do what they evolved and are programmed to do. SPEED AND MATING If you take a 16-year old girl who's a virgin and ask her how long it will take her to have sex, you'll get anything from, "Instantly, with the right guy," to, "Not until marriage," to, "I don't really know." But if you take a 26-year old girl who's a virgin and... wait, no 26-year old virgins? That's right; you simply won't find 26-year old virgins in the West. Okay, there are a few of them; they will probably post in the comments section of this article, mentioning how they are virgins and proud of it. But the ones commenting here are probably around 50% of the total virgin population of the Western world... something around 97% or 98% of people out there have had sex by age 30, either inside or outside of marriage. And what happens when a man meets a woman who's sexually experienced and he doesn't want to perform? Game over. Okay, let's talk younger girls though. Let's say a guy meets a conservative 20-year old girl who's still a virgin. What if he starts dating her, and doesn't want to perform? Either he's going to marry her fast, then perform, or... in a little while, game over too. Why? Well, perhaps it's "unfair" for men (but you know how I feel about words like "fair" and "unfair"...), but it is the man's role to chase, and the woman's role to resist. If the man is not chasing sex, he has denied his nature. Just like the hermaphroditic sea slugs, cousins of man's ancient ancestors, that spar with their penises out, each trying to inseminate the other first, males are the aggressors in sex. They are the dominators, the penetrators, and the inseminators. Crude? Perhaps. But "crude" is often the term used by those who wish to elevate themselves above animals; to make believe they are superior. The universe does not care if you think you are better than a sea slug though; we are all just somewhere between starting out as ashes and dust and ending up back as these again. This is what it ultimately comes down to. A man is trying to gain access to a woman's body to inseminate her with his seed; she is trying to resist, to give herself more time to assess him, to get him more invested, to make him value her more. But if the MAN does not want sex... if the MAN does not want to dominate, penetrate, and inseminate her... what DOES he want with her? A woman will call him a nice guy... but in her heart, she will view him as impotent, weak, and not a man. He is not someone who can help her to reproduce. He is not a sexual creature. Her genes will not survive with this man, who is without desire to do what males must naturally do. He will give her sons who are impotent, and he will give her daughters who are weak. Remember that women don't care what men say, because they've evolved not to trust words. It's easy to lie with words, and women are very intelligent on most things lie-related. If a man promises that someday he will do this or that for her, a woman's a fool to believe him... women only listen to your actions. And if you are not sleeping with a girl, or trying to sleep with her when you have the chance, that communicates volumes more to her than anything you can possibly SAY about how you feel or what you want to do. She cares about your actions, not your words or your promises. These things mean nothing by comparison. MOVE FAST WITH WOMEN My grandfather was a devout Catholic. He met my grandmother one night in a bar. She was the wild one; they went on a few dates, but he would not take her to bed, and soon she lost interest, driving down to Florida to meet a man who could better attend to her womanly needs. But my grandfather knew what he wanted, and he insisted; he sent my grandmother a letter, asking her to come back home and marry him. She thought about it; and she said "yes." Her mother tried to convince him to marry one of her other, more... conservative daughters, assuring him they'd make much better wives, but he knew which one he wanted, and soon they were wed. The one exception I see to the "wait for marriage destroys a man's image as a sexual man" argument is when the man is BURNING WITH PASSION for a woman, and cannot WAIT to tear her clothes off and take her, but he is deferring that until marriage because of strong religious convictions. Many women can understand this, and tolerate this if they really like a guy... so long as the man is making the marriage happen as quickly as possible. If it's long... if it's drawn out... if it's delayed, however... the passionless man who refuses a woman physical intimacy suffers the same fate as those men I've seen in sexual relationships whose sex drives did not match those of their partners - the woman grows tired of being underserved, and moves on. Because the longer you draw things out, the more you communicate to a woman that you cannot give her what she seeks; that you are not willing, that you are not able... that you lack the drive and fire and passion women most desire in men... and that you will give her sons who similarly struggle to mate, thereby endangering her legacy... the more you erase, nullify, and negate your chances with her. And whether you subscribe to Darwin or Deuteronomy, one thing's for certain: the emphasis, again and again, is placed on passing on your genes (or, in the Bible's case, on having "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky" - Genesis 26:4). My old religion teacher was right, of course: people are not shoes. It is foolish to think that, like a shoe, a human will sit quietly by and wait for you to decide if you want to try her on, or not. Women are not shoes; they are living, breathing, sentient biological organisms, with wills and drives of their own. And if you think that you can bind a woman to you without the ties of sexual relations... without giving her what she needs and wants and demands out of a romantic partner, and not a man she is "just friends" with or neutral with... you still have much to learn about sexual relations. I don't know what ever happened to that charismatic teacher that women loved but who couldn't get them to stick around. I don't know if he ever decided that sex wasn't some horrible thing after all and decided to take his woman to bed; I don't know if he managed to find a woman with the same views as him, in this world where so few people share those views; and I don't know if he's still out there somewhere, still adamantly holding onto his views, and still wishing he could find a girl who wanted what he wanted and nothing he didn't. But whatever the case may be, remember this: it isn't just what YOU want that's important - it's also what SHE wants, and what SHE responds to. And if what you want is a committed relationship with a girl, it's extremely important that you know what 99% of girls need from you in order to have that - and it's extremely important, if you really want what you want, that you give to them what they want too. (unless, that is to say, you happen live in India. In that case, all bets are off)

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Don't Be Bitter I sat there in a café by myself, staring blankly at a couple of abandoned plates of food. "I won't let this make me bitter," I whispered under my breath. I'd spent the night talking and moving from club to club with a girl I liked a lot and had been pursuing for months. She was smart, funny, tall -- beautiful. Everywhere she went, she attracted men to her, like moths to a flame. But she treated me different than all the other guys rotating around her; them, she'd be polite but dismissive toward; me, she'd spend hours just sitting there talking to. She didn't do that with anyone else. That night, it'd been just us, the entire night -- and she'd been talking about the two of us going to an "after-party" together -- I started thinking that finally, after all this time and effort, I was getting somewhere with her. I suggested we could just chill at my apartment. And then, in the middle of us eating at a café at the end of the night, before heading to our "after-party," some guy she knew happened to show up, just as she'd gotten up and was heading into the bathroom. She was excited to see him -- then, they disappeared around the corner together. When they came back, they were laughing like little kids... and they sat down next to each other across from me. I'd been sitting next to her before she got up. It was early 2006. I didn't know what I was doing -- I'd only been trying to get better with women for a year, and only actively doing it -- religiously -- for about 2 or 3 months now. But I figured I had to try to save this; I'd try anything I could. It couldn't fall apart -- not now. Not when we were so close, after months of hard work. So I tried boyfriend destroyers, even though this guy wasn't her boyfriend. I tried seeming as calm and nonplussed as possible as they flirted in front of me. I tried going over the top and telling them what a beautiful couple they made as they fed each other food across the table from me, hoping she'd protest that they weren't a couple. Instead, she only played along more, telling me she'd been chasing this guy forever but that he kept turning her down. And then, despite my efforts, the moment I went to the bathroom to collect my thoughts, they disappeared. The bill was waiting on the table for me when I got back. And they were gone... off into the night together. "Don't be bitter," I said to myself. WHAT THE WARRIOR KNOWS As a child, I was about as fearful a kid as you could get. I decided to stop running at four years old because I was afraid of scraping my knees if I fell down again. I used to lay awake at night, every night, terrified at the prospect of vampires, werewolves, trolls, and even the next round of immunizations I'd need, which at age 7 I calculated would be in another 7 years. In only 7 years, I'd get stuck with another needle! I couldn't sleep. But my biggest fear has always been failure -- and failure's twin brothers, weakness and surrender. It was my fears of failure, weakness, and surrender that led me to confront most of my other fears, and it was that that eventually led me to adopt a value system of continually testing the limits of what was possible for me. Growing up, I used to watch a lot of movies, and I took a lot of life lessons from them. One of the things I saw, again and again, was all the cynical people there were in the world -- cynical, bitter people, who'd been burned by life and never forgot it. And what I noticed, nearly universally, was that bitter people lived in the past. They were bitter because of what happened before -- and it prevented them from ever taking charge of their lives again. I came to equate bitterness and cynicism with surrender -- with becoming someone who's given up fighting for what he wants, and instead sits there and complains at the world about how unfair it is. There's a quote I like by a man named Carlos Castenada: "The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as either a blessing or a curse." What Castenada means there is that when something happens to a warrior, he looks at it, and says, "Hmm. How can I figure this out to get what I want?" Whereas when something happens to an ordinary man, he looks at it and says, "Oh, life is so good to me!" or, "Oh, life is so unfair." That's why warriors are always in command of their lives, while ordinary men's lives instead command them. I've further distilled the concept behind this quote into something I say to people in my life, when I hear them complaining or being bitter or being cynical. What I say to them is this: There are, I've noticed, two kinds of people in the world. People who complain about their problems, and people who fix their problems. Right now it sounds like you're one of the complainers; I think you ought to be one of the fixers. Otherwise, you're just going to keep complaining forever and nothing'll ever get fixed. Me, I don't complain much. I have at times in the past, though it usually would only last for a short time until I figured out how to fix whatever it was that was bedeviling me. I am a big believer in action over complaining and bitterness. Because, to me, someone who's complaining and bitter and cynical is someone who's given up. He's surrendered. He's admitted he cannot get what he wants; he's weak, and he's failed. So when that girl I'd put so much time and effort into left me holding the bill while she ran off with that mysterious stranger, I feared the creeping poison of bitterness and cynicism. My fear of that scourge was even stronger than the bad taste in my mouth that came from the event itself. I've been that man before... and I didn't like it. I worked hard to actively get myself out of the trap that is cynicism; I figured out how to overcome depression, and I taught myself how to get girls. And as I did so, I kept in my mind at all times -- don't be bitter. Because I didn't want to be one of those ordinary men you see in the movies who've given up their dreams and are leading an ordinary, unfulfilling, dead-end life. That might be the life for some people, but it isn't the life for me. And it isn't what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a warrior -- a man in command of his own life, not one cast about by the tides of fortune, eventually resenting life for not giving him what he wants. I worked instead to become the man who asks himself, "How can I fix this?" BITTERNESS AND SEDUCTION: NOT GOOD BEDFELLOWS I've long been of the mind that if you want true, consistent, wild success with women, you can't be bitter. In fact, if you want any kind of legitimate success with people in general, you can't be bitter. The difference between a cynical seducer and a lover of women is huge. The two are worlds apart. The cynical man teases and plays, but women can feel the coldness and the emptiness behind his words. The lover of women kids and beckons, and women can see the warmth and realness behind his eyes. The cynical man approaches women cynically, and is received cynically. The lover of women approaches women with love and warmth and familiarity, and is received, quite often, that way. It's true, there are cynical women out there -- almost as many as there are cynical men. But women are constantly waiting for a man to step into their lives and melt their hearts -- even a cynical woman, encountering a warm, charming romantic man, often begins to quickly melt. Men who are bitter can get success with women, but if you ask me, trying to get success with women while preserving your own bitterness is like trying to climb a steep hill while wearing slippery shoes. Possible? Well, anything's possible. Recommended? No, most certainly not. Put the slippery shoes down and go get something with cleats. Being a lover of women -- having real, legitimate love for women, which is based in warmth and good feelings toward them and an appreciation of the fairer sex -- that's the equivalent of cleats when it comes to getting to where you want to get to with women. I see the guys with slippery shoes on -- the bitter guys -- and some of them do finally manage their ways to the top of the hill (many of them do not), but it's not without tremendous more effort and forcing themselves along than they would've required had they not first shed their bitterness. And those bitter guys, once they are at the top, they either end up attracting equally callous, bitter women into their lives -- no good, believe me -- or, if they're really lucky, they get a good, warm girl, who slowly starts to melt their hearts. But that's only if they've been looking for those kinds of girls. Usually, though, people who aren't bitter don't want anything to do with bitter, cynical people. And so most bitter guys, I find, tend to end up with bitter girls -- thus preserving their own bitterness. Whereas all they had to do was figure out how to not be bitter, and it all would've been so much easier. DON'T BE BITTER: WHAT YOU NEED TO PULL IT OFF There are a few tools you can use to start stripping away the protective layers of cynicism you may have wrapped around your heart once you notice bitterness in your thoughts. I've used all the following, and I'd suggest you do too (unless you're bitterness free -- in which case, good going! You're one of a select, privileged few -- definitely something to be proud of). Cultivate a fear of bitterness. Once you've taken the time to look around you, you'll start noticing that bitter people really do have less satisfactory lives -- and it really is the bitterness causing that, not the other way around (as they often think). I too once used to think to myself, "I'm only cynical because my life sucks; as soon as it gets better, I'll stop being cynical." But my life never improved. It wasn't until I said to myself, "All right, nothing else is working and I've got nothing to lose. I might as well try changing my attitude and I'll see if that works," and life started improving almost right away. Maximize your exposure to others and build reference points. A big part of where bitterness comes from is in failing to relate to others. If you're doing something known as "othering" -- the antithesis of building an emotional connection -- you're probably on the fast track to bitterness without even realizing it. Top recommendation? Think of / write down every type of person you feel bitter towards, and then go make a few good friends of exactly that type of person. It'll erase your bitterness faster than anything else out there. Work to actively love and appreciate women. One of the things I made myself do early on was start viewing women as silly and cute. Because at first, girls were a little scary and a little intimidating. I heard some advice that came out to simply, "They're just girls," and I realized I wanted that same mindset -- it isn't some huge deal, and who cares what they think about you or say to you -- they're just girls. I decided if I wanted to get myself into that mentality with anything approaching speed, I was going to have to consciously grow that mindset myself. So, whenever I saw girls doing crazy stuff, I'd make myself stop and think, "Aw, girls are so cute and silly." At first, it was crazy, because I'd have these conflicting thoughts -- one thought would be, "Oh God, I don't even understand this behavior... women are so confusing and intimidating," and then I'd simultaneously force myself to think, "Aw, aren't girls cute and silly." The cute-silly thoughts began taking the edge off the feelings of intimidation, and eventually my brain learned to think of women as silly and cute on its own and totally lost any feeling of confusion, intimidation, fear of the unknown or hostility. It was a short step to really truly appreciating women after that point. Seek to become a lover of women. If you hold it out as your ideal, as what you wish to be, you will eventually become it. To be a lover of women when you're coming from a background of cynicism and bitterness is no small feat -- I know, because I did it myself. But these days, people tell me constantly how warm I am, how they feel like we're old friends after just meeting me; women ask me if they know me from somewhere, because I just feel so familiar to them. They used to be scared of me. Honest to God. I tell women that now, and they tell me, "No way. Really? Why would any girl be scared of you?" It's because I worked hard and shed my bitterness and cultivated an aura of genuine warmth and understanding. I build connections with people; I deep dive and get to know them right away; and I really do care about people. I'm not a feel-good, peace-loving don't-hurt-the-flies hippie; I still tease women and challenge them and I lead them strongly and decisively and sometimes even get told I'm too demanding and too uncompromising (okay, not sometimes... more like all the time). But beneath a somewhat hard veneer, they can feel my warmth as well, and that's a big part of why it works for me as well as it does. Seek to understand. I plan to do a post on this sometime soon, but I hear a lot of guys saying, "Who cares about understanding women? Just figure out what works with them and do that." Well, when a girl walks out on you with another guy at a diner and leaves you to foot the bill, either you're not going to understand, and you're going to be bitter for the rest of your life, or you will understand, and you'll get over it fast (because you'll realize where you made mistakes), and you'll stop yourself from making the same mistakes with future girls that you made with that one. BECOMING A LOVER OF WOMEN WITHOUT TAKING DECADES TO GET THERE I view there as being two paths to enlightenment (or, changing your mindset / world views): Passive and Active Passive enlightenment is what most people come to. In seduction, this is the guy who starts out bitter toward women, then breaks his back getting good with them, and then reaches a level where he's fairly consistently good with women. He's still bitter, though less so. Over the course of ten or twenty years, he has numerous experiences with women -- some of them good, some of them not so good. And eventually he comes to realize that all women are different, and he comes to be truly touched by the good women he encounters, who do kind, considerate things for him and treat him like a prince. In the end, he sheds his bitterness, and comes to truly be a lover of women. That's the passive way. It works, and it's low effort (at least as far as mindset-altering is concerned), but it's slow. Turtle speed, baby. Active enlightenment is what we discussed just above, under the subheading "Don't Be Bitter: What You Need to Pull It Off." That's harder -- it's going to require you monitor your thoughts. It'll require you force yourself to think things you don't want to think, and it'll require you go get friends of the type of person you don't have so many good feelings for right now, and it'll require you get to know those people, come to understand them, and develop compassion for them. But man, can it accelerate the shedding of your bitterness. Benefits of being a lover of women who's bitterness-free and cynicism-free? Less stress... a lot less stress More comfort in your own life and skin More options -- no more, "I'm not going to talk to her; girls like her are fake / shallow / worthless / not real girls" More initial attraction from women (women lower their walls around men they can sense don't have walls up against them -- cynical men keep their defenses up to protect themselves, and women sense this and keep their defenses up too) You just feel better... and help others feel better, too God, there're so many cynical men out there -- regular men, men who are trying to improve with women, men who are already in a relationship, men who are coming out of a relationship -- I feel like cynicism is this rampant plague of the mind in Western civilization. I'd even go so far as to categorize the progression of belief systems like this: Naïveté (thinks all the world is good and selfless) Cynicism (thinks all the world is greedy and selfish) Zen (understands that some people are selfish, some aren't, and knows how to get to know people and connect to them and how not to be used, and genuinely likes people and appreciate them for who they are) In China, where I am right now, there are a lot of people still at the beginning of the scale (trusting naïveté). In the United States, where I was before, most of the people are in the middle of the scale (skeptical cynics). I'm not sure if there's anywhere that people are just Zen, and understand the way people are and accept them as they are regardless, but man, it's a much healthier place to be, let me tell you. I'm proud to say, I didn't harbor bad feelings for too long toward that girl who stiffed me that night with the bill while she left with that other cat. I cut her off after that, and she even chased me a bit after I did so, but I'd made some mistakes there that would've been tough to fix at that level of my ability and in any event she'd crossed a line on respect that couldn't be uncrossed -- I wasn't willing to resume dealings with her once that line was crossed. But I didn't hold it against her -- she was contrite, and she knew she messed up. We'd both made mistakes. When all's said and done, there's really only one thing you can do when bad stuff happens with girls: Realize that sometimes, those things happen, and that every girl is different. And, in the end, just don't be bitter.

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Some guys are just jerks. And they're fine with that. They think it's the right way to get girls - it's far better than being a nice guy, they'll tell you. And who can argue with that? Nice guys finish last. Me? I almost lost the most amazing woman of my life thus far before I ever got her because I was a jerk. A little over four years ago, I pulled a really thoughtless, jerk move on my first date with a girl I really liked. It's not important what I did, though I should note that at the time, it felt relatively minor to me, but it was major to her, and as a result, she completely cut me off following it. No answers to my phone calls or texts. No emails. No nothing. The only way I turned it around was because we were already heading off overseas on the same tour, and I put in a Herculean effort there abroad to turn things around with her. Had it not been for that tour we were both already booked for, where we were all but forced to spend time around each other for eight days, I doubt I ever would've seen or heard from her again. Instead, I somehow managed to right a sunk ship, and went on to have an amazing 2 ½ year relationship with an amazing woman that helped me grow in ways I could hardly have imagined. But because I was a jerk, I almost missed that. I came this close to missing that. When men start learning seduction, they tend to realize what a terrible mistake they made in their nice guy days - back when they kissed up to women, catered to them, and basically let women walk all over them. Those days were no good, they realize. So, they vow to never repeat the same mistake again, and they veer off in the entirely other direction - they become jerks. And make no mistake, a jerk has an infinitely better chance of finding success with women than a nice guy does. At least a jerk isn't weak and supplicating, like a nice guy is - a jerk is a man women know actually respects and values himself. If forced to choose between a nice guy who caters to her every whim, making her feel bored and resentful, and a jerk who ignores her and belittles her, making her feel excited and resentful, the majority of women will choose the latter. Jerks aren't great, but they're better than nice guys. But lots of men think being a jerk is the be-all and end-all. It's not. WHY MEN BECOME JERKS To a man learning how to get girls interested in him and pursuing him, the markedly improved results he sees with the opposite sex from being a jerk can seem like magic. He makes cocky jokes and remarks, acts like he could care less about women, and makes himself out to be the best thing to happen to womankind since sliced bread. He's loud, arrogant, and full of himself - and suddenly, all those women who ignored him before, when he was a soft, compliant nice guy, seem to have perked up and taken interest. It's like he's walking on water. Being a jerk is by and large a necessary step in learning the proper way to interact with women. Unless a man is of that incredibly rare breed that already has exactly the right mindset regarding girls, he's going to need to go through a transition period where he acts rude, self-centered, and abrasive. The problem that a lot of men have, though, is that they never seem to move beyond the jerk phase. They stay cocky, arrogant, and self-centered forever. It gets them decent-enough results with women, they reckon - so why change? THE GENUINE MAN There's another kind of man, though, who's different from both nice guys and jerks. He's a man who is kind and thoughtful toward others, but self-possessed and not a suffering servant by any means. He thinks highly of himself and is incredibly confident and secure in his capabilities, but he remains modest and expresses his expertise in the subtlest ways, eschewing the ways of the braggart and the showboat. And rather than the weak, needy way of the nice guy, or the abrasive, in-your-face way of the jerk, the genuine man carries about himself an air of warmth, inclusion, and kept-in-reserve power and strength. Genuine men are haltingly rare finds. If I had to rank men in society by percentage, I'd rank them like this: Nice Guys: 70% Jerks: 27.5% Genuine Men: 2.5% That'd be my rough guess, just based on the characteristics of the men I meet. The number of nice guys out there might actually be a bit higher - I imagine a lot of them stay home and don't go out as much, so the men I meet out and about in life may be slightly more skewed toward the more outgoing and confident jerks. But for some rough numbers to work with, these ought to suffice. Now, it's important to keep in mind that within these categories, there are men of varying levels of ability with women. So there are plenty of men who are jerks and can't get girls to save their lives. And there are men out there who are genuine men, but don't genuinely know a whole lot about women. But if you take a jerk and a genuine man with equal amounts of ability with women, the genuine man will almost always win in a head-to-head competition. Why? Because the genuine man has all the strengths of a jerk, and none of his weaknesses. BREAKING THE HOLD OF THE JERK Being a jerk can almost be a little addictive. It feels powerful to be a jerk - most people (nice guys, and most women) buckle in the face of a jerk's challenges. And those few who don't (genuine guys, genuine women, and stronger jerks) are easily written off as not being worth one's time. Meh, who cares about that guy, I've got a million other people in my life who love me! What you begin to realize as you examine the jerk's actions is that many of them violate the Law of Least Effort (bragging, showboating, efforts to tool others or make them look bad or inferior, attempts to position oneself socially) and many others are lacking in any real social calibration (like coming in too high energy for another individual or group of individuals, or trying to force a conversation toward a certain topic when it's moving in a different direction). Jerks have some serious flaws in their approach. What's more, jerks are rather off-putting to people who have a higher degree of social experience and calibration, and are ignored and marginalized by the most able and successful members of society. Jerks aren't welcome in polite society. They don't survive there long. They have a longer life expectancy among such a crowd than pushover nice guys do, but not by much. The problem with jerks is the same as the problem with nice guys: they're both on the extremes. Nice guys are big pushovers; jerks spending all their time pushing (or trying to push) others around. Genuine men, on the other hand, gently but firmly guide the world around them and the people around them in the direction they want. They are assertive in pursuing what they want, but are mindful of others and others' emotions, and do what they need to do to build alliances and good will. While jerks are often in such a big hurry to show themselves off that they steamroll others along the way, genuine men seek to get others to do their building up and showing off for them. While jerks are busy trying to climb the social ladder, genuine men are throwing down a hand to help others reach the top. Here are some traits to look for that are signature jerk traits; if you see these traits in yourself, I strongly recommend you get vigilant about stamping them out: > Inconsiderateness. Do you answer your phone in the middle of a close one-on-one conversation? Do you text in front of people when it's just the two of you? Do you fail to pay attention when someone is telling you something important? Do you forget to show appreciation for kind things people do for you? All these are signs of inconsideration, and need to be amended where present. > Posturing. Do you ever say anything that could possibly be interpreted as, "My XYZ is bigger / better / more important than [his / hers / theirs / its]"? If so, you're doing posturing - knock it off. Women respond far better to men who seem to ooze value from their pores (work on your fundamentals) than they do to men who have to tell them about it. > Coldness. Do people ever call you selfish? It has little to do with how much you actually give or don't give - and everything to do with how willingly you seem to give the things you give. If a man gives a little, but gives it willingly, he'll be thought of as far warmer and more thoughtful than a man who gives much, but gives it grudgingly. Those should be good to get you started off on the right foot. Just remember that being a jerk is only one step on the road to success. Too many men get caught up thinking it's the destination, when it's not. Become a genuine man. Women will like you more, and pursue you more, than you can possibly imagine, once you make it to genuine man status. And if I had to pinpoint how I saved things with that amazing woman once they were on life support four years ago, I'd tell you that it wasn't that I reverted to being a nice guy, or that I succeeded in spite of being a jerk. Rather, I'd tell you that on that trip abroad, I figured out how to do a good enough job of making myself into a genuine man that I won her back over, and freed myself at last to embark upon a remarkable journey with a remarkable girl. Being genuine kicks some serious (jerk) butt.

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I've been pretty into TRON: Legacy lately. The visuals and audio are spectacular, so that's partly why I like it so much. Another big part of the reason though is that unlike most Hollywood movies, its hero (Sam Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund) isn't a pushover and doesn't get sensitive and emotional about trivial stuff. He's in-control, laid back, and down-to-Earth. He cracks jokes at times other people are stressing out and losing their heads. He wins despite the circumstances. In other words, he's cool. And in other words, he's a bad boy. Even back when I was awful with girls, I still was never a "nice guy." I spent enough time watching TV and movies to know that being a nice guy didn't work. Girls like bad boys. And nice guys finish last. Being the nice guy sucks. We talked about it in yesterday's post about the sad tale of Shopping Guy; nice guys end up holding the bag. It's the bad boys who win; the rogues, the rascals. Guys like Sam Flynn or James Bond. Guys like Wolverine from the X-Men. Men who can't be tamed or taught or tied down. Just... held onto for a while, before the wild calls them away once more. But, Average Joe might protest, why do women like these guys so much? It doesn't make sense. They aren't safe. They can't be a good provider; they can't take care of a girl. They never promise her the world; even if they do, girls know they can't and won't deliver on that promise. Bad boys are the antithesis of everything the nice, friendly, safe provider-types strive to embody. And yet, in the competition for women's hearts, they win. Hands down. 99 times out of 100. Why is this? Why do girls like bad boys so much? AN ORDINARY LIFE Think of the average gal's day. She wakes up, pours a bowl of cereal and maybe some milk or orange juice, shuffles into the bathroom in a fog, brushes her teeth, goes back outside. Pulls on her bra and panties; a blouse; slacks. Grabs her handbag. Double-checks her cell phone to make sure she's got it and she hasn't missed any messages or important calls. Nope. Just one missed call from that nice guy friend of hers who's been calling her incessantly; she's tried to distance herself from him but he doesn't seem to get it. Goes outside, gets in her car and drives to class or to work. Sits at a desk all day, taking notes or smashing keys on a computer. Hour lunch break in the middle of the day, where she has a soda and a sandwich and maybe some dessert. Back to the grind in the afternoon. At the end of the day, home again. Her friends want to know if she wants to go see a movie. No, she's got some work she has to do. Okay, they say, they'll tell her if it's any good. Nice guy calls again; she feels guilty about ignoring his calls, so answers and talks to him for ten minutes or so. The call's a little awkward, but at least she doesn't feel as guilty anymore. They hang up. She turns on the TV and watches one of her usual shows, and throws on a microwave dinner while she does. She eats it. After her show's over and her dinner's finished, she does that work she meant to do, then hops in the shower. Blow dries her hair when she's done. Puts on her pajamas, sets the alarm for 7:00 AM, goes to bed. Rinse and repeat tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Ad infinitum. Sounds eminently boring and average, right? But do you know why? Ever sit and think about it? What makes a boring, average, ordinary life so boring, average and ordinary? Got your answer yet? Here, I'll tell you what it is: Lack of new stimuli. That's all. Expanded upon a bit, that means: She isn't encountering anything new, different, confusing, or exciting. She isn't learning. She isn't going on any adventures. Her life is the same, every day. And every man she meets is the same, too. They're all harmless, boring nice guys with nothing exciting or exotic or stimulating about them. They can't teach her anything new, and they aren't introducing her to anything approximating adventure. They're just... ordinary. And where's the excitement in an ordinary life filled with ordinary people? The answer is, of course, that there is none. WHY GIRLS LIKE BAD BOYS Now imagine our average gal living an average life happens to meet a man of adventure. A man of mystery and intrigue. A bad boy, if you will. A guy like Sam Flynn. Maybe she meets him one night at a local bar. Or maybe she meets him out on the street one day. Or while buying groceries. The point is, she meets him. And something is different about him. Perhaps he has an accent from some exotic land, or perhaps he simply carries himself a little taller and a little prouder and he talks a little differently, with more colorful, expressive language and a clear, impressive voice. Or she notices his casual demeanor and somewhat bored look and general indifference to the things everyone else around her is caught up in and treating with such great importance. Whatever it is she sees in him, there's a fire in his eye that the ordinary men living ordinary lives she meets just don't have. Instantly, she's intrigued. And she isn't intrigued a little bit more than if she met an ordinary guy. She's a lot more intrigued. Orders of magnitude more. Because ordinary guys don't make her feel anything. But this guy makes her feel excited. Hopeful, perhaps. Hopeful that he is everything she imagines he could be. Remember that excitement and hopefulness girls feel when they meet a guy who seems different, because we'll come back to it in a moment. For now, I want to continue fleshing out why exactly women like bad boys. There is probably a limitless number of reasons why women prefer bad boys to nice guys. Let's go over the main ones here: They're different and uncommon. The fact is, the vast majority of men are nice, unassuming, friendly guys totally lacking in any kind of an "edge" with women. And women get familiar with this type of man quickly and know what to expect with him - and they know what they'll get with him is not exciting. It's very calm, normal, and average. Bad boys, though, they're different, and women don't meet a whole lot of them. Bad boys are wildcards. They could be scoundrels with hearts of gold, or they could be merciless hedonists or cold-hearted users and abusers. A girl doesn't know, and that's part of the excitement. They're refreshingly emotionally secure. Women are used to having to walk on eggshells, at least somewhat, around nice guys. If they say or do the wrong thing, a nice guy gets upset, or angry, or jealous, or defensive. But bad boys shrug off the things women say with a "girls are silly and cute" mentality that, while it might sound dismissive written down there, women actually tend to really love in men. It lets them be free and let them say and do what they like without the fear of offending or hurting the feelings of the man they're talking to. They're honest and confident. Just like women have to walk on eggshells around normal guys, normal guys are typically on eggshells around women, too. They don't want to say the wrong thing and piss a girl off, and they don't want to risk appearing too interested in sex or in women themselves and risk their harmless nice-guy status. Bad boys don't care about any of that. They laugh at girls getting pissed off at them - it's silly and cute when it happens - and they want women to understand they're interested in sex and in women themselves. Because of this, they're very open, honest, and confident in their dealings with women, and women feel this - and love it. Expectations are lower with them - from both sides. Nice guys tend to have unrealistic expectations of women: they often expect women to be these virginal, untouched perfect angels on best behavior at all times who always look beautiful and are responsible and mature. Nice guys also tend to expect a woman's full attention more often than not, and panic when they aren't getting it. Finally, they usually want a relationship right away, and will even chase for a relationship themselves, often before even having taken a girl to bed. Bad boys don't have or do any of this. Their expectations and standards are far more realistic and much closer to the way women actually are - because they're based in real world experience rather than on television and movie portrayals of how women ought to be, like many nice guys' expectations are. They don't worry about not having a woman's full attention at all times, and maybe could even care less if they have it or not. And a relationship is, quite often, the last thing on their minds, instead letting women chase for the relationship - which women will tell you they don't like having to do, but you'll notice they value relationships with the men they have to chase for far more highly than the men they don't. At the same time, nice guys, if they manage to be attractive in addition to being nice, have the potential to make good boyfriends or husbands, and women put a lot of pressure on themselves not to mess up with them and to portray their best selves at all times. With bad boys, there usually isn't much of a future a girl sees, so she can just relax and be real and honest with them without worrying about positioning herself as the ideal girlfriend or wife candidate. I guess you could sum it up by saying it's a combination of the newness and unexpectedness of the bad boy with the comfort and ease he puts women in. He's exciting and refreshingly different, and at the same time he isn't heaping women with his expectations of them and getting upset if they don't meet them. Women can both find something new and just be themselves around him - and that's quite a rare thing for women to find in a man. No wonder girls like bad boys. HOW TO BE A BAD BOY Girls don't like nice guys. Girls do like bad boys. That means you ought to go turn yourself into a complete jerk, right? No, that's not what that means. One of the tragic downfalls of human logic is the tendency to default to black-and-white thinking. "If women don't like nice guys, I should become a total jerk and they'll love me!" That's what most guys who've been nice guys too long tend to think once they start coming to grips with how women actually choose the men they like. But the truth is, if you want real success with women, you need to go one better than jerk; you need to be a guy who's both cool and charming. Your choices aren't actually only between sweet, harmless nice guy and cold, manipulative jerk. Look at the movie examples of bad boys we talked about early in this thread. James Bond. Wolverine. Sam Flynn. They're all cool, unconcerned with the stuff regular folks fret about, confident, cracking jokes in the face of danger... but they're not cold, heartless automatons. No, they have hearts - and women can sense that. You want women to be able to sense you have a heart, but that you don't open it up so easy. That's one of the real secrets of how to be a bad boy. Recall earlier that we discussed the mixture of excitement and hopefulness a woman feels when she first meets a guy who seems like a bit of a bad boy. There's a very good reason why women feel both excitement and hopefulness when they meet a new guy they think they might like: it's because he seems like he might be what they're looking for, but they don't know for sure yet whether he is or isn't. It's all too often a girl meets a guy, thinks he has mountains of potential, then realizes as she gets to know him a bit that he doesn't quite meet the expectations she had for him at first meeting. This realization will help you to understand the two areas you need to focus on as you seek to be the kind of man women find most compelling. Those two areas are: > Your presence and how you carry yourself and come off, which affects your first impression and how you are perceived subconsciously throughout an interaction and from a distance, and > Your presentation and how you describe yourself and interact with a woman, which affects your assessment and whether you fit with the impression you make. Some guys have decent presence but drop the ball when it comes to actually interacting with women and matching their impressive first impressions. Girls get to know them and find out they're actually quite ordinary and unexciting, and these kinds of guys get slotted into "normal guy" territory and judged accordingly. Some other men have good presentation but are lacking in presence. These are the guys that women say, "I didn't realize when I meet him how charming/sexy/intelligent/cool he was!" They're the guys who are capable of winning women over once women get to know them. Presence opens more doors, but presentation is what gets you through an open door. With good presence but no presentation, you'll get a lot of open doors, but few successes in getting through those doors. With good presentation but no presence, you'll do great once you've found an open door, but you'll really struggle to get doors open in the first place. The key then is to focus on developing both your presence and your presentation. You want to become a man who's both visually, viscerally compelling, and compelling once a girl starts actually getting to know him. To do that, you'll want to focus on a few things: > Learning how to be a sexy man (presence) > Learning how to flirt with a girl (presence) > Learning how to be a great conversationalist (presentation) > Learning how to deep dive (presentation). Getting those four things down goes a long way toward handling both your presence and your presentation. As you handle these areas, you'll increasingly place yourself further along the road to being one of those bad boys that women like so much - and eventually you'll find you start getting considered one outright. Mindsets are important to get down too, but that comes as much from experience as anything else. Check out the post on abundance mentality to get a better understanding of the kind of mentality you should seek to cultivate as you improve with women. I get called "bad boy" or "bad guy" a lot, and also get told by the same women who call me these things that I'm a "very good guy" and am "very warm." So just keep in mind that "bad boy" doesn't mean bad, per se. Rather, what a girl is talking about when she says a guy is a "bad boy" is just that he's different, exciting, refreshing, and he isn't like all the other ordinary guys she meets in her likely very ordinary life. He's an exceptional individual - and you ought to always want to be a guy like that anyway. Seek excellence in presence and in presentation, and you will become the kind of man women find most thrilling.

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I've always been a strong proponent of meeting women via cold approach - that is, going and meeting women who are strangers whom you don't know and who don't know you - rather than via social circle. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses, but I think overall that the rules of social circle put far greater constraints upon your potential success and mental well-being than do the rules of cold approach. To give a quick summary, a man who's meeting women through social circle is going and hanging out with his friends at parties and bars and nightclubs, talking to the same people night after night, and gradually trying to work his way into success with women in his circle. He's generally going to be competing for the boyfriend role (see "Telling Women You're NOT Boyfriend Material"), he's going to be competing for it with a host of other men, and he's going to be competing on traditional early boyfriend stuff - trying to act like a girl's boyfriend before they get together. On the plus side, women here are more accepting of men and less likely to run off quick and be flighty, so it might feel easier. A man who's meeting women through cold approach is going to be going up and meeting complete strangers. He's anonymous, he's a mystery, and a girl can do things with him and get away with them that she can't possibly do with a guy her circle knows. On the negative side, because her friends don't know him and won't hold her to anything she's decided to do with him - whether that's meet him for a coffee or be in a long-term relationship with him - she's likely to bolt the moment she starts feeling uncomfortable. WHY SOCIAL CIRCLE FEELS SO SEDUCTIVE Social circle, particularly when you're first starting out meeting lots of new women, feels a lot more seductive and rewarding than cold approach. Women treat you better; they're happy to see you; the do fun things with you, like dance with you, drink with you, even kiss and make out with you. They bond with you, spend a lot of time with you, you get to know them well, and you come to care about them and they come to care about you. There's the sexual tension between you, if you haven't slept together, of course, but there's also a strong, powerful connection, and you come to value them more highly than just about any other girl, as well. Women you're cold approaching, on the other hand, might seem, well… cold. It just feels easier when you do social circle. At least in the beginning. It feels like the girls in your social circle give you a lot more than women you cold approach, like you get farther along with social circle girls, and that you're *closer* with those girls. It often feels like you're only two steps away with social circle girls - just two more steps and the two of you will be lovers. Just a little more work, a bit of the right circumstances, and a little luck, and you will get together. WHAT SOCIAL CIRCLE DOES TO MEN Social circle typically works better as a mating device for women than it does for men. For women, social circle allows time to really get to know a guy, get to review his character relentlessly, weeding out those men who show weakness, and to get him accustomed to doting on them and investing in them, so that by the time the two become a couple, the man will be a proper boyfriend-style provider and will take good care of the girl and be safe and reliable should they decide on having children. Social circle also helps women trust men more and feel more comfortable with them - a woman will feel more safe, generally, with a man she just met via social circle than a man she just met via cold approach. The main disadvantages of social circle for women are some that men have as well: in-group mate competition (Katie likes a guy, but her friend Amanda likes him too) and a limited dating pool. For men though, the advantages that social circle offers are less compelling than what women get out of it. For starters, it gives them constant access to women - a big advantage for many men. For most men, if they want to be around women, the only consistent way for them to do that is via social circle. It also provides a way of showcasing hidden talents - for instance, the guy who isn't so good at positioning himself as a Prince Charming on the first meeting may be able to get a girl by slowly wooing her as she gets to know him more and more in social circle. Those are all well and good, but the disadvantages of social circle to men can be quite crippling. Those disadvantages are: A man who isn't good with women is likely to watch other, more talented men snapping up all of the best girls in the circle He's less likely to be included in a circle that even includes attractive women in the first place Social circle generally takes a long time to move forward, which means a man may be wooing a girl for months - sometimes even years - before they get together Watching other men scoop up women in a man's circle while one fails to do so is an absolute killer. There was a study on the effect of winning and losing tennis matches on men's testosterone and cortisol levels I found quite interesting; here's the gist of it: Winners with rising testosterone had higher testosterone before their next match, in contrast to losers with falling testosterone, who had lower testosterone before their next match. Cortisol was not related to winning or losing, but it was related to seed (top players having low cortisol), and cortisol generally declined as the season progressed. In other words, the men who won the matches got boosts in their testosterone and felt stronger and more manly and more confident, not just immediately after a victory, but before the next attempted conquest, as well. Losers lost testosterone and felt weak and unmanly and beaten. The top guys in tennis had low levels of stress hormones - so, were very relaxed - while the guys who were losing again and again and watching other men beat them were tripping out on stress hormones. And that's just tennis. Imagine that now with winning and losing with women. Impact might be possibly even a little bit greater, no? I have done social circle off and on throughout my seduction career, but it has remained a distant second to cold approaching for me since nearly the beginning. I have, however, been afforded to see the effects of social circle on all kinds of men, and you might be a little surprised by them. I've noticed this: > Even the most successful men in social circles tend to be a little on-edge, a little defensive about girls they like, and a little prone to emotional mood swings > Even the most successful men in social circles tend to fall into doting on girls and getting all twisted up over girls and treating them like princesses when they get them, because even as successful as they are, quality women are still difficult things to come by and they have to do a lot of work to get them (see "Absolute Abundance") The men who aren't getting success tend to be meek and quiet, and often angry and bitter. They come along to social functions, but you almost might wonder why, and they often leave early and alone So, think about that: even the most successful men in social circle are still needy. Don't believe me? Go find a guy who's successful in his social circle and go start talking to his girl in front of him and get her flirting with you. More often than not, he's going to come in frightened and try to tool you and scare you off, because he feels threatened and he's afraid of losing his girl. On the other hand, go find a guy who's successful at cold approach and go get his girl flirting with you, and he's generally just going to smile a little bit and maybe laugh to himself, because he knows she's his girl and she's just being social, and anyway, that's how the game is played. One of the other main disadvantages of social circle ties back to point two of that short list just above; there is a very limited amount of women available in any social circle. Men who do primarily social circle tend to get tunnel vision; they say to themselves, "Oh man, there are only three cute girls available, and they all have boyfriends! This sucks!" Meanwhile, they fail to notice the legions of beautiful girls standing all around them in the bar they're partying at with their three boyfriend-happy social circle girls. Before we go on, I don't want to come across like I'm saying social circle is all bad. It isn't; it's very necessary, and it's something I recommend you spend time on and develop your skill set with. Social circle teaches a number of valuable things you will have a great deal of trouble learning via cold approach, including: > Getting to know women personally very well, and learning to relate to them > Learning group dynamics of various kinds of groups (particularly if you participate in a variety of social circles) > Learning how to integrate with new circles > Learning how to operate within large and small groups > Learning when to talk, when to lead, and when to simply be quiet and listen > Developing local knowledge - e.g., where different kinds of people hang out in town, what people think is fun and interesting to do, and what kinds of relationships people are having in your area in that demographic I know for me, personally, I will attest that immersing myself in a large variety of different kinds of social circles and social circle activities in 2007 and 2008 helped me immensely in rounding myself out more as a social man. I am today able to captivate and hold the attention of large groups with ease, and am just as easily able to blend in and join a group and be accepted as "just one of the group" rapidly after being introduced, to the point where people are later saying, "Whoa, it's crazy that we just met Chase tonight. It's like he's been part of the group forever!" Social circle is a great, incredible, wonderful way for developing your overall social skills. However, I highly recommend against retaining it as your sole means of meeting new women, because the number of women available to you is extremely limited, and the amount of time and effort you need to put in to get any one of those women, relative to the amount of time and effort you need to put in to get a woman through cold approach, is much greater. COLD APPROACHING AS AN ALTERNATIVE Cold approaching is a little scary and a little intimidating for maybe the first month or two you start doing it, and it can be frustrating until you start getting results. I know in my early days doing it, when I expected immediate results because, of course, how could women not recognize how incredible I was? well, things didn't quite work out the way I envisioned and I found it quite frustrating. But, you forge ahead and that all starts changing faster than you might think. One day, you look back and realize, "Oh - wow. I'm actually doing pretty good." The hardest thing about cold approach is that initial hump you get over. In body building, they often talk about the first 12 weeks - in cold approach, I think it's very much the same thing. For those first 12 weeks, you may have to drag yourself out of the house kicking and screaming to get yourself to do it. Once you get over the 12 week hump though, it becomes routine, and rather than looking at the clock and saying, "Man… maybe I'll just go out tomorrow instead," you'll be looking at the clock and saying, "All right - time to head out and go meet some girls." Cold approach seems harsher than social circle because if you mess things up with a girl, she disappears. Say something weird or awkward or unusual with a cold approach girl? Gone. Fail to move fast, miss an escalation window, get bogged down in one spot for too long? Gone. Build a super fun vibe but forget to deep dive and get a connection going, and someone comes and interrupts you and the spell is broken? Gone. Seems harsh, right? But then you stop and think about social circle rationally, and ask yourself how many of the girls you get together with in social circle once you've messed things up with them. Sure, they hang around, and they stay your friend, but… once the attraction is gone, it's probably not coming back. Most men don't realize this though, and that's why they spend so much time running in circles, working their asses off trying to win over gals in their circle, pulling their hair out, while new guys without the bad precedent they've already set come into the circle, do things right, and get the girls. That's not fair, say the old guys from the circle. I put so much time and work into her! And that guy just came in and got her! That's because he had no bad precedent, hadn't let himself get slotted into "platonic guy friend" territory, and did things properly from the beginning and moved fast. So, while social circle seems like it keeps your options alive, it's really just keeping hopes on life support. Chances are, if you don't get together with a girl within a month or so of entering her circle, you're probably not going to get together with her. You hear the stories of guys who knew a girl for four or five years and finally won her over, but what the stories aren't telling you is that usually the guy is a nice guy who doted on her for years, and after she'd been shagged and chucked by enough bad boys and started feeling her age and noticing her looks slipping and feeling her biological clock ticking, she said to herself, "Crap, I better find a nice guy to make house with." So, Mr. Hanger On finally got the girl… after, that is, all the bad boys were done with her. Nice guys get the leftovers. We might even expand that by saying that quite often, social circle guys get the leftovers - if they get anything at all. One thing that annoys me personally about social circle - may just be a personal peeve that has nothing to do with the actual efficacy of social circle vs. cold approach - is the "trade the date" mentality. e.g., yesterday, Chris was dating Suzie, Ben was dating Gina, and Harry was dating Kelly. Then they all broke up, and now Chris is dating Kelly, Ben is dating Suzie, and Harry is dating Gina. Maybe because I'm a big fan of "purpose" in things, I guess, I tend to look at the whole social circle dating carousel as one big clueless merry-go-round, with people jumping from horse to horse and no idea where they're trying to get to. Seems pointless and inefficient. Cold approach is where you will hone most of your "get girls" skills. Stakes are both higher (you could sleep together that night) and not quite as high (if you lose a cold approach girl, you're only losing an hour's work, versus six month's work for a social circle girl). Turnover is far greater; if you're going out a few nights a week and doing an intermediate number of approaches, you should be meeting at least twenty or thirty new women a week and developing your skill set with them. In social circle, you'll be working on maybe two or three or four girls in a week, generally, and you'll be far less likely to try crazy, experimental stuff that might have phenomenal results or might blow up in your face. Cold approach can be a little scary and intimidating when you're new; I started a post a little over a week ago on the beach in Boracay called "Acclimating to Approaching" that I'll try and get back to sometime this week to address any approach-related anxiety guys might be having. But wow, once you get it going - cold approach is great. I can't tell you how often I've been out with friends who are fixated on this girl or that girl from their social circle, and I look at them and I'm like, "Dude… this girl is seriously average in looks. Average in intellect. Average in personality. You're above average in all of those departments. Why on Earth are you focused on an average social circle girl when you could just be going out and meeting amazing women anywhere you want?" Usually, after me giving them that message a few times, they come out of dream land and say, "Chase, you're right; don't know what I was thinking, man. It's probably like you said, I just invested so much time in her, I was really hoping for it to work." My recommendation? If you've been investing a ton of time into a social circle girl and it still ain't happening - cut your losses, stop wasting your time, and go get yourself cold approaching in a hurry. Before you know it, that social circle girl won't seem quite so amazing, special, and unique anymore; because when you give yourself the kind of options that cold approach gives you, you give yourself a ton of perspective on things, to boot.

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20 surprising places Something I'm being asked lately is where to find a woman who checks off every box on your list. Where do you meet those truly amazing women who are everything you want and more? You know - a girl who isn't just good... she's great: Her hair flows perfectly down her neck in gorgeous locks. Her eyes sparkle with intelligence and energy. Her perfume captures your attention and waters your mouth. Her smile makes your heart beat faster and a flush come rushing to your cheeks. Her personality oozes warmth, curiosity, and zest for life. Her mind is sharp, and she knows what she wants (and what you want, too). You actually feel nervous around her. You! Who never gets nervous around anyone! Where do you find a woman like this? It's not like she's just out walking around waiting to be plucked off the street... is she? Something in the way of most men ever getting these dream girls for themselves is that the majority of people THINK they know what they want but don't LISTEN to what they ACTUALLY want. How many times have you seen a girl and suddenly gotten that feeling that said, "Wow - I HAVE to meet that girl. She's everything I want!" ... and then gone on to ignore this feeling, giving yourself an excuse to not say anything, reasoning to yourself that it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway? How often have the women you ended up with instead been women you didn't get this feeling for, and were never quite crazy about or a perfect match for? In a study of homebuyers, the homebuyers who bought homes according to their gut instincts (the homes that "felt right") were much happier with their purchases 10 years later than the homebuyers who bought homes based on a methodical, logical analysis of the facts, with no mind paid to that gut instinct. Why? Because, as it turns out, your subconscious mind processes significantly more information about the world around you and the objects within it than your conscious mind is even aware exists. Consciousness is a resource-heavy brain program that quickly becomes overwhelmed when presented with too much information. For this reason, the subconscious comes to the rescue by automating most processes - e.g., walking, breathing, typing, driving, catching baseballs, deciding what flavor of ice cream you feel like eating for dessert. All these are largely automated processes. Much of your decision making is done subconsciously too - but your conscious mind can choose to overrule these decisions. A subconscious decision is that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. It's the one where you suddenly get a bad feeling about something - or you get really excited out of virtually nowhere. And these feelings can be tremendously useful - when you listen to them. YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS IS HERE TO HELP When you're out and about somewhere - anywhere - and you see a pretty girl and your heart suddenly starts pounding and you know, know that you have to meet her... that's your subconscious telling you it's analyzed all kinds of little details about her already and found her a match. In my experience, these kinds of "love at first sight" moments are invariably mutual - when you feel that way toward a girl, and really feel it, not just get nervous, but get really excited, too - she nearly always feels and reacts the same way toward you. Your subconscious mind is not some alien intelligence inhabiting its own domain inside your cranium. Your subconscious is you - and it's trying to alert you, with these little gut feelings, to things it's identified as good, bad, or worth investigating for you. In the fact-centric, data-crazy, stimulation-heavy environment of the modern world, the people who consistently hit it out of the park on decision making are not necessarily the most informed, but rather the ones who listen to that little voice the most faithfully. That little voice is processing far more information about the environment - and all those beautiful women you're meeting within it - than your nose-in-the-air conscious mind is even aware exists. NO EXCUSES Every girlfriend I've ever had has been a girl I saw and said to myself, "Whoa." If I wasn't excited, nervous, intrigued, and juiced on first seeing her, she never made it into consideration for a girlfriend role with me. I just aren't interested in having her for that. And each girlfriend I've had has been amazing. They've all been beautiful; they've all been smart. They've all had fantastic, one-in-a-million personalities. I've had great relationships with every single one of them, and have grown as a person with them, and they've grown with me. We've been right for each other, every time. If you give yourself excuses and bow out when those gut feelings start kicking in, it doesn't matter if you know where to find a woman who is all that you want... because you'll never actually go meet her. We're going to talk about where you can find amazing women now... where you can actually run into these women of your dreams. But if you aren't listening to your gut, if you won't approach a girl when you see her, if you're letting her walk off without asking her out and getting her phone number, it doesn't matter HOW many amazing women you see... because you won't actually be meeting any of them. Want to meet the girl of your dreams? Then your excuses are no good. When you see her, you must say "hi"! So where do you find a woman who's truly amazing? The answer is: anywhere your kind of women congregate. There is no magic solution for this - there's nowhere I can tell you to go where all the women flock to to stand around and wait for male suitors to come along and pluck them from obscurity, into the arms of destiny. Instead, you've got to meet them out-and-about - looking for you or not. We'll go a good bit more in-depth here than we did in "Top 10 Places to Meet Girls" - in this article, we're going to subdivide your options into categories that are easier to get your head around, and talk about exactly what your strategy will be for meeting women in each one. Here goes. 10 PLACES WITH INSTANT SOCIAL CONTEXT "Social context" is the term for a place where you automatically have a reason for talking to a girl. e.g., no real excuse is needed - if you walk up and say "hi," that's normal for there. The nice thing about places with social context is that the context of the place makes it easier and more natural to slip into conversations - that is, at least in part, what people do there. On the downside, you'll tend to have more competition (even if that competition isn't necessarily all that fierce), and you don't get quite as many bonus points for summoning the courage to say hello - after all, that is what people do here anyway. > 1. The Classroom Remember those old college days? Or maybe you're still in college. Either way, you know how easy it is to strike up a conversation with a girl in class - all you've got to do is ask her what she thinks of the professor, or the latest homework assignment, or how she did on that awful test you had last week. Then make a witty comment about it, and you're in: > You: How'd you do on that test last week? > Her: Ugh... I don't think I did all that well. > You: I know. If I pass this one, I'll consider that a testament to my powers of random answer picking. The most important part of meeting girls in class? Make sure you're sitting next to someone pretty. Especially before everyone settles into his or her seats for the semester... fortunately, seating is normally pretty fluid the first couple of classes. Ample time to scope out the landscape... and pick the prettiest girl to alight next to. If you're not still in university, never fear: adult learning classes can still pack in the beauties, and usually aren't too expensive. Just make sure to pick a cute-girl-friendly course, like Spanish 101 or Acting or Tennis, and make sure it's held on a college campus, where possible. You probably won't meet too many stunners in an Engineering or Computer Science class, so pick wisely! If possible, audit first - then commit. Pick something where you'll learn something interesting, of course... but don't get too committed if there aren't any eligible bachelorettes that meet your requirements! And once you've found a girl to get to know? Follow these instructions: "Cute Girls in Class? Stop Flirting and Start DATING." > 2. The Office The office is the marketplace of the modern age. It's where you hang out, spend your day, chat with peers, and meet likeminded people. It's also pretty common to meet a compatible someone there, too. Office romances are potentially sticky in some ways, but that doesn't stop people from having them: 1 out of 3 men and women have had a sexual relationship with a coworker, although only about 1 in 4 of those relationships turn into anything substantial. The office has a few advantages for putting you in touch with women you'll click with: You get plenty of proximity, which allows more time for attraction to build slower and more deeply than in the rushed settings of many other environments You get a chance to show off some of your traits and assets that might not be as visible in a more rapidly paced interaction (intelligence, resourcefulness, etc.) You'll be working with women of roughly your same educational and socioeconomic background, which means a much better chance you click than with a random stranger off the street So how do you go from flirting at work to dating the girl of your dreams? Simple - you invite her to something fun over the weekend, or steal away with her to grab a quick bite after work. It's just regular old dating after that. > 3. The Social Club This can be anything from an alumni group you participate in for your alma mater to a likeminded group of people, like Toastmasters or one of the many private social clubs that many cities have to offer (some for wealthy individuals, some just for young professionals). These groups typically have regular meetings and goings on; all you need to do is attend, and pick a spot near an attractive young lady. Social clubs can make finding suitable partners a good bit easier, because, like the office environment, people there will tend to be of similar educational and socioeconomic backgrounds to you and have shared interests. However, unlike work, people are exclusively at social clubs to socialize - and, quite frequently, prospect for mates. You don't see a whole lot of couples at these kinds of places now, do you? So get hobnobbing and mingling when you go, and see whom you can meet. You may find you easily meet a gal you really click with. > 4. The Activity Group This includes everything from wine tasting group tours to surf clubs to tennis clubs to language-learning groups to everything else in between. Many of these you can find via Meetup.com, but there are plenty others that have their own websites or you may find listed in the classifieds... or may not be listed at all, and you'll need a friend to invite you to. Upsides of activity groups: > People all tend to be quite down-to-Earth / approachable > Attendees are invariably singles; like social clubs, couples rarely go > These groups can sometimes be large, with lots of turnover / lots of new people (hence, women) to meet Downsides of activity groups: > The most beautiful women tend not to stick around all that long > The people who go to the largest number of activity groups (and you'll meet them if you start frequenting different groups) tend to be either a.) players, b.) attention-seekers, or c.) kind of weird The best advice on activity groups is probably this: > Go once or twice per group > Meet the cool people and women you like worth meeting > Grab contact information and plan to meet up later > Keep circulating through different groups Only settle into a group if you REALLY like the people there (and the activities you do), but bear in mind that if you're going to build a social circle out of it, you probably won't meet many women through it (at least in the short term). Can you meet an amazing woman via activity groups? In my experience, beautiful / intelligent / awesome personality women with a lot going on for them may try out activity groups like this once or twice, usually when on the rebound and trying to get themselves back into the socializing game, but because the caliber of people is more average here, they don't tend to stick around long. So, you've got to be moving quickly with women you meet who ARE of quality - they probably won't be back next week. You get one shot per woman, and that's it. Make those shots count. > 5. Salsa Night Salsa class / salsa night is an easy favorite for meeting higher caliber women. If you ever find yourself pulling your hair out over where to find a woman to take on a date or to turn into a potential new girlfriend, just go to salsa night. Let's talk the class first. What are the advantages of a salsa class? > Almost everybody there is single > Everyone there is out prospecting for new mates > There are usually more women than men > The women there tend to be attractive, educated, and fun > Meeting new women is easy - you just dance and talk How about salsa night itself? > Again, mostly singles > The more skilled women in salsa are often quite beautiful > More of a social circle scene, but for people good with dance Main differences between these are that you need some skill to fare okay on a non-class salsa night; in a class, most of the women you'll be dancing with are unskilled, and all you've really got to do is show up, put in a little effort, and chat with your partner. Then ask her if she's like to grab a coffee sometime. > 6. The Charity Event Are you partial to kind yet empowered women? Then check out a charity event. While some charity events can be places to see and be seen for social ladder-climbing socialites, in general these tend to attract an intriguing assortment of members of the fairer sex: > Higher social status women who use the event to get out, rub elbows with other higher status people doing good for the world, and show their generous sides > Empowered "girl power"-type crusader women who want to fight back against injustice and make the world a better and more egalitarian place > Kindly women who really just want to help other people and feel good about it Each of these different kinds of women will be in attendance to different degrees depending on the size of the gathering, type of setting it's being held in, and the cause being supported (not to mention who's throwing the event), but at a large charity event outdoors in the middle of downtown, for instance, you can expect to find a good mix of all three. Which one should you focus on meeting? Whichever one best suits your style. You can also meet the people here with similar interests to you, and get a bead on where future charity events will be held, to meet more pretty girls (and give back to your community, of course!). > 7. Happy Hour After work, many young professionals head over to a favored local watering hole to unwind from the day's backbreaking labor - or sitting hunched over a computer in a dimly lit cubicle, whichever the case may be. There's something very special about happy hour for meeting women; it functions something similar to finding a woman at the office, except now you have access to women from LOTS of different offices. And a lot of the age and relationship-status screening is already done for you; not many older or attached women bother to show up for happy hour. Like most socializing, it's done by the young and the single and the eager to meet someone new. And if "intelligent" and "educated" and "professional" are some of your requirements for women you'd like to date, you'll run into a far higher concentration of them here. You'll probably need to do some exploration among the bars in your town to find out which bars have the best happy hours with the cutest kind of girls who are your taste - but that's the fun part. As you do, you'll typically find a number of places with different kinds of crowds. Tip: look for the happy hour bars where patrons are standing up and mingling. Sit-down places are to be avoided... they're doable in a pinch, but much harder to get off, and there's little social context for meeting new people. Opt for the places without anywhere to sit down instead. > 8. The Networking Event Yet another event where people come out expressly to mingle and get acquainted with new individuals they have yet to meet. Networking events, like happy hours, tend to attract young, single professionals, although they'll also typically have a selection of older individuals with more established careers, who are usually doing the inspecting and hiring (and, by the way, if you're looking for a job, and not a mate, make sure to focus on the older people there, not the younger ones... the older professionals are the ones with positions they're looking to fill. The younger ones want you to hire them!). Different kinds of networking events attract different kinds of crowds - and it's easy to use these to filter based on preferences. For instance, there are: > Young professionals networking events (people in their 20s and 30s, often single, usually working at a corporate job of some sort or another) > Chamber of commerce meetings (a wider spectrum of individuals; fewer attendance by younger people, but better to go to if you're job hunting) > Niche networking events, like an acting and modeling networking event, or a photography and artwork networking event These events are usually easiest to meet women at if you fit the crowd. For instance, if you're a corporation man, you'll probably be right at home at a young professionals' event, but may have a hard time clicking with people at a modeling and acting event, unless you've spent enough time in that world to more easily relate (but, if you want to date a model or date an actress, it might be worth a shot regardless). Look for events thrown in trendy places and by trendy networking companies - there tend to be a handful of networking organizations in every city that throw regular events with solid attendances. > 9. The Party This is where you work your connections and find out what's going on where, when, and who's invited. Unlike most of the other things on this list, you can't just up and go there without a little homework; you need to be plugged into a group or circle that throws good parties and invites you to them. If you're not currently, but you'd like to be, check out the article on how to make friends and start circle-building. But let's say you've got the bead on some good parties. How do things work here? Well, as it turns out, parties are some of the easiest places to meet women at. You've got all this going for you at a party: > The women you'll meet are all friends of your friends, so they're likely to be of the same or similar socioeconomic class, educational and aspirational backgrounds, and interests to you - instant compatibility > People at parties are more comfortable because they're among friends, not strangers - their guards are lowered and they're more open to meeting new people > You instantly have at least some social proof, as you're assumed to at least be a friend of a friend There are lots of women on the periphery of your social circle - that is, the prime place in your social circle to pull new women from Sex logistics are often handled already (empty bedrooms, bathrooms) or much easier (your place is in the next building over) Not to mention the fact that people are only at parties to hang out, have fun, meet new people, and, often, hook up with attractive members of the opposite sex. So go, move through the crowd, meet some new and pretty girls, and see what you can get going on. > 10. Online The great thing about an online dating site is that everybody who's there is there for the same thing (more or less). Contacting other people and chatting them up to assess them as possible mates is what you do there... and it's the only thing you do there. Other kinds of websites can work for this too - e.g., social networking sites - although typically they're not nearly as good for this as purely dating sites; after all, the women on dating sites are self-selecting themselves to be available for your advances. You can even use a situational opener to get the ball rolling with girls you'll meet online; one of my favorites has long been, "So how's the whole online dating thing treating you, miss?" 10 PLACES WITHOUT MUCH SOCIAL CONTEXT Not everywhere you go is designed explicitly for socializing, however. Sometimes you're just going to have to do a straight-up cold approach and walk up to a girl and introduce yourself. Places without so much instant social context have one big drawback - women often won't be expecting your approach, and won't be ready to engage with you right off the bat - and one major benefit - almost nobody else is doing this, which makes you stand out in a very good way and also makes you something of a scarce commodity. If you can muster the brass to start approaching in these situations where it isn't second nature to meet new people, you'll often find you meet much higher caliber women than you'll normally meet in the places with instant social context - partly because some of the highest caliber women don't need or go to many places with lots of social context, and partly because you get attractiveness points for boldly and smoothly approaching where no man has approached her before. > 11: The Street Want to know where to find a woman you'll find stunning, alluring, and a perfect match for you consistently? It's the street. The street is the place to meet awesome women you'd be hard-pressed to meet elsewhere. That's because many of the most beautiful, intelligent, amazing women don't feel much of a need to go to bars or networking events or anywhere else like that... but they do need to walk to where they're going. The street is one of the few places you can meet some of these women. Of course, every good thing has things that make it tough too, and the street is no exception: You need to really get some practice in to get your timing and approach right - it's easy to startle women or bumble your approach when you're unsure what you're doing, or even if you know what you're doing but you're rusty You need to deal with women who are in a hurry, women who think you're trying to sell them something (part of why Ricardus likes using "Are you single?" as an opener is because it gets the "What are this guy's intentions?" question out of the way right from the very first line), and women who will act like you're a total weirdo for walking up to talk to them on the street, even if you look like Brad Pitt You need to be able to handle social pressure and not be overly concerned with the fact that people around you on the street are watching you talk to this new woman you've just walked up to and approached - people aren't used to seeing this, and it's a curiosity for them Are these tough spots worth overcoming? Certainly, yes. You'll met some amazing women on the street, and you can on average get more attractive and higher caliber girls via street game than you will via bars, clubs, parties, events, etc., where frequently the prettiest and highest status girls are more concerned with maintaining their images than getting together with new and attractive men. On the street, there's little to no concern for image - it's just you and her. > 12. Out Shopping An easier way to get started meeting women during the day that's less bold than doing street approaches and incorporates a bit more social context is meeting girls who are shopping for something in a store. Grocery stores are surprisingly common places for people to meet, and it's one that women talk about a lot in women's dating advice magazines: "That Cute Guy in Aisle 6!" If you start paying attention, you'll commonly notice a lot of pretty girls locking their eyes on you in the supermarket - perhaps in part because there's not much else to look at besides boxes of food, but perhaps a bit because there's almost a fairy tale for women these days of meeting Mr. Right while out stocking up on dairy products. All you've got to do is make a wry comment on the contents of her hand cart, or ask her if she knows how to cook something with the ingredient you're holding in your hand - if she likes you, she'll stick around to chat. Clothing stores are another good choice for meeting women with some context. A personal favorite has always been holding up something clearly not designed for grown men and asking her, "Do you think this makes my eyes stand out?" > 13. The Bookstore Large, multistory bookstores (the ones with little cafés on their second floors) in the center of downtown often make great places to meet new women, especially if you like your women well-read. You'll tend to find a caliber of woman a notch above the ordinary here (although if you meet her at the magazine rack, all bets are off). Some other advantages of bookstores: > Women at bookstores typically have free time. That's why their at bookstores, instead of, say, rushing off to work > Women at bookstores are usually alone - which means less reputation management and more openness to meeting you if they genuinely enjoy your company > Women at bookstores want something to do - no one goes to a bookstore with an itching burn to read; rather, she goes there to do something nice and different with her day. If you show up and provide scintillating conversation, she may be just as happy (or happier) to do that instead of read The little café these typically include provides an easy way to take a girl on an instant date then and there - once you've talked to her for 5 to 10 minutes, if you want to keep things going (rather than get a phone number and get on your way), just invite her to grab a coffee or a cocoa There really aren't too many downsides of bookstores, except that their turnover is often not very high (not a huge number of women coming and going). However, if you live in a large city like New York or London, the centrally-placed bookstores get a lot of foot traffic, and a lot of pretty girls coming and going - it's easy to mix in meeting some women in bookstores with meeting women out and about on the street or in some of the other stores in the area too. > 14. Airplanes, Buses, and Trains Transit has been one of my longtime favorites for meeting women, dating back to when I used to live in Washington, D.C., and a ride on the metro was how I started each outing going out to meet girls. There'd invariably be a cute girl waiting for the train there already (it was often about 20 minutes between trains at my train station in Arlington, Virginia), and we'd invariably have a little time to get to know one another. The great things about planes, trains, and buses are: > Every girl is thrilled to meet an attractive guy while waiting for her conveyance to arrive (instead of, say, meeting a drooling bum, or a decrepit old person, or a guy who looks more like a criminal than a dashing Prince Charming) > It's boring waiting for the bus or the train to arrive or the plane to start boarding... and let's be honest, she's not that interested in what she's listening to on her iPhone or what she's doing on her laptop - she'd much prefer to be in a good conversation with you If you get into a good conversation prior to boarding the conveyance, it's easy to continue talking as you do and then go sit together. This is key - you must keep talking, to avoid that weird "I guess we should go sit other places now" vibe that happens during the transition if you let the conversation die - but if you do it, you've just moved the girl and gotten the same degree of commitment as had you asked her to sit with her and she said "yes" You can sometimes have women change their plans and come with you (ask where she's off to first, and if it doesn't seem like she has solid plans, but it DOES seem like the two of you are really hitting it off, see if you can have her accompany you to a coffee shop - or back home to your place - instead); most of the time though, you'll want to make sure to get their phone numbers as soon as possible. I can't tell you how many women I've hit it off with, we hit it off, and then suddenly it's their stop and they're sorrowfully bidding me goodbye and rushing off the train before their stop is missed - and I've been left kicking myself for having forgotten to get their numbers sooner. One of the most beautiful women I've ever met was this way - an absolutely breathtakingly stunning Russian brunette in her mid-20s working finance in a city in Asia - we clicked amazingly well... I was thinking to myself, "Here's the possible future mother of my children"... and then the train doors opened, and I lost her in a sea of moving people, never to see her again. I still get annoyed thinking about that - get her phone number as soon as you hit it off. You never know when she'll be off the train and gone (on the flip side, I have plenty of women I've followed this rule with and met up with later and turned into friends, lovers, and even girlfriends - get her number. It's Rule #1 of transit game). > 15. University Campuses Meeting women on college campuses can be an easy way of finding women who are both young and educated (or, at least, becoming educated). However, like street game, it typically requires direct openers or semi-direct openers on the approach; there's no dancing around the fact that you just walked up to her because you find her attractive here. So don't try to disguise it; that'll only make her question your motives (or confidence levels). If you're going to school, this is easy enough - just talk to girls you see on the sidewalk, on benches, in parks, or in the computer lab as you walk about campus or make your way to class. If you're not going to school, you can still do this, though you might want to be attending or auditing a class at the university so at least you have a valid reason for being there. If there's an especially good café or restaurant on campus that you like eating at or working out of, this can be a very good excuse for being there too. > 16. The Beach One of the more fun options for meeting pretty girls at is the beach. Nothing quite like sand, surf, and babes in bikinis now, is there? The beach actually has a few things going for it when it comes to meeting women: > Like bookstores, women at the beach have plenty of free time. They're not rushing to get anywhere, and their schedules aren't spilling over at the brim with too much to do. They're relaxing, sunning, and don't need to be anywhere any time soon - which means if you hit it off, you have more time to connect, and more time to take her somewhere else, later > Also like bookstores, women go to the beach because they want to do something nice... but the beach itself (or the music they're listening to on their iPhones) is not so engaging that they wouldn't rather talk to the right guy with the right conversation Beaches have a very "vacation-y" feel to them, even if you live in a beach town... women at the beach are in a more conducive mindset to indulging in their desires than women in most other environments are Like most no-social-context places to meet women, most women here aren't talking to other people or with many friends (or sometimes none at all), so there's little social pressure to place reputation over desires This generally works best if you meet women sunbathing or sitting by the shore alone when you yourself are alone; if you go out and find mostly women in pairs on the beach, you're better served bringing a friend along to act as wingman. > 17. The Gym If you're into girls with flat stomachs, low body fat, and buns of steel, there's no better place to look than at your neighborhood gym. The gym's one where you've got to mind your P's and Q's - one of the few stories I've ever heard of a guy being asked to leave a place and never come back for talking to girls was a guy who would just walk around and hit on every girl in his gym over a period of months. Don't do this if your social intuition still needs tuning; if you ever get accused of being "awkward" or "weird" or "creepy," the gym is probably out. However, if you're a smooth guy that women respond to and like, you can make the gym work. Because, just like guys check out girls at the gym, girls check out guys too. There's a large contingent of female gym goers who even go MOSTLY just to meet attractive, fit, disciplined men... all those girls over on the treadmill going a mile-an-hour with a layer of makeup on their faces and their hair in perfect ponytails are not just there to get in great shape, I assure you. You'll usually need to treat the gym like a social circle type of environment (especially if you want to keep coming back there and not have it be awkward); that means, ping girls, be social in general (even with other guys there), and let them get to know you a bit before you go inviting them out anywhere. > 18. The Coffee Shop Cafés and coffee shops are similar to bookstores in that they tend to attract a somewhat more discerning crowd: well-read women with educations are pretty commonplace here. Waiting in line can be one of the easiest ways to meet a girl in a café, although that's somewhat down to chance; you've got to hope a cutie winds up in front of you or behind you (and that she's receptive to you, too). Meeting girls already seated is a bit more in your control, although it's also somewhat trickier to pull off. The easiest way of going about this is by sitting down at the table next to a girl, immersing yourself in reading a book or working on your laptop for a few minutes, and then casually leaning over a bit and pinging to see if she's open to conversation then. If she is, you can always switch tables to sit with her and get to know her better then - and, if she has time and it goes really well, take her somewhere else eventually (or even back to yours or hers). > 19. The Bar or Club Wait a second - a bar or a nightclub is a place where you can find a great woman? Yes and no. Bars and nightclubs have very different demographics depending on who frequents them. You'll find one of these venues filled to the brim with the dive bar crowd; one with people dancing sensually to electronic music; another bouncing up and down to Hip-Hop. Sometimes you'll find lounges where upscale, educated individuals congregate and get to know one another. Bars and nightclubs have these things going for them when it comes to meeting new women: > There is a certain expectation going to a nighttime venue that people of the opposite sex are going to come up to you to meet you and see if you connect as potential mates - it's built into the very fabric of a lot of these places > You have an excuse to dress up and look your best - clothes make the man, and good fashion does a lot to turn an attractive man into an impressive man, or even an amazing man > One-night stands are not uncommon and are sometimes expected (especially if you really hit it off), shortening the time from saying hello to going to bed, and reducing the odds of escalation windows being missed or life intervening >Alcohol is ubiquitous; and as everyone knows, sex and alcohol tend to go together like peas in a pod (and women often choose to drink as a means of excusing their dalliances later on in the evening) > It's significantly easier to escalate things quickly with women and invite them home in nighttime venues than it is in most other types of venue On the down side, you're a lot more likely to meet club queens and party girls at bars and nightclubs - if you're looking for a great girlfriend, these can be harder to find at night. > 20. Hired Guns Rounding out our list of where to find a woman who rings all your bells is anywhere you'll find a hired gun. Hired guns - if you aren't familiar with the term - are women hired to work as clerks, salespeople, survey takers, cocktail waitresses, strippers, dancers, models, barmaids, or anything else. While there is some social context here - you can always talk to them about their jobs - they're accustomed to male patrons flirting with them (especially if they're pretty or in an environment where people drink) and are used to deflecting questions about work or themselves with brief, short answers. Hired guns can be tough cookies - they're running on autopilot 95% of the time - but they are still women and they do still get attracted to male customers some of the time. The key with them is: > Not being a customer (not buying anything) and/or downplaying your customer role (buying something, but being very nonchalant about it, and not spending a lot of time deliberating or treating her like your "helper") > Having industry knowledge (helps immensely if you're able to connect with her as an insider, rather than someone impressed by her job or someone trying to connect with her on the same superficial details everybody and his brother tries to connect with her on) > Standing out in a very attractive way unusual to the customers she normally encounters The one downside to hired guns is that they're usually not the highly intellectual / highly educated types (although they can be sometimes, especially if they're younger and working their ways through school). However, if that's not something on that checklist of qualities you're searching for in a belle, it probably won't much matter to you. WHERE TO FIND A WOMAN TO MAKE YOU SEE STARS The key to all of this of course is: get out there and meet new women. You won't find the girl of your dreams sitting around the house playing computer games or throwing darts at the wall. You've got to throw on your going-out clothes and mosey on out of the apartment or house. Whether you're searching in one of those environments rich in social context: > The classroom > The office > The social club > The activity group > Salsa night > The charity event > Happy hour > The networking event > The party > Online ... or you're looking for your potential dream women in places that require you to be a bit more direct: > The street > Out shopping > The bookstore > Airplanes, buses, and trains > University campuses > The beach > The gym > The coffee shop > The bar or club > Hired guns ... there are as many different avenues you can use to meet women as there are flavors and varieties of women and ways of getting to know them. No big bookstores or popular beaches in your town? No big deal... you've still got 18 other options to run through. The amazing women are out there. It's on you to go find them. Why are you still staring at the computer screen?

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(for attracting women) Good posture is one of those things it's easy to overlook -- how often do you examine your posture, for instance? But it has a tremendous impact on how others view you -- so much that you might be amazed, in fact. Our excerpt today is on how to recognize and use good posture, from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams. Posture's a fundamental -- it's something that many men forget to work on when improving themselves with women, but it has large and continuous impacts on your development and success rates with the opposite sex. If you haven't given much thought to posture before, I'll start you off with an example that'll snap you right into seeing how important having good posture really is... "Ever see a woman walking down the street who looks so good, so confident, and so womanly that you just can't peel your eyes off her? You can just tell by looking at her that she gets anything she wants out of life. She's got her body fundamentals handled. When you have yours handled, women will look at you and will feel the same draw towards you. And when you talk to them, they will very often instantly be receptive to you, because they will assume, just from the way you look, that you are someone they'd like to meet. The first body fundamental we'll address is Posture. This consists of the following: • Back straight • Shoulders back • Chest puffed out • Head held high, chin parallel to the ground Have someone take two pictures of you, one with bad posture (or even average posture), and one with great posture. Then look at the difference. Changing your posture may be uncomfortable at first, and it may even be difficult to retain your good posture for a little while. After about thirty days of consciously correcting yourself, you'll notice that you begin to do it unconsciously." Posture's a big one. It influences how people perceive you, receive you, and treat you in nearly every aspect of your life. Weak, bad posture can make people ignore or dismiss a man; strong, good posture can make a man look like a champion and make everyone want him on their team.

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Eye contact is one of those things that's a great deal of fun when you know what you're doing, but a real thorn in your side when you're still working on figuring it out. It's subcommunication at the very core level - talking in the absence of words. At once both more powerful than verbal conversation, and, until you've come to a better understanding of it, often distractingly unclear. Eye contact flirting, in particular, can be a real head scratcher until you're pretty well versed in reading the various signals women are giving, and have figured out what signals you ought to be giving back. The eyes are used to communicate a wide range of feelings and messages, and what might seem trivial to an untrained guy may well be a crucial signal a more experienced man will jump all over. My aim here was to write a very solid post that's going to cover all the bases with eye contact and get down to some real practical, point-by-point details so you'll be able to know with confidence exactly how to use your eyes with even the most beautiful, socially elite of women out there. The goal is to take the nuanced, difficult-to-pin down bits and pieces of eye contact flirting I've picked up over the years and get them down here so you can start applying them with the girls you meet today. EYE CONTACT BASICS As we discussed in the post on elite eye contact, it's vastly, vastly preferable for you to get girls looking at you first. The reason why is a bit of a subtle one that might be a bit slippery to grasp if you're a beginner, though if you're intermediate you ought to be able to feel it with your intuition; you'll notice it just feels more right and correct and powerful when a woman looks at your eyes before you look at hers. The subtle reason why this is is because when a woman looks at your eyes first, she's declaring her interest in you to herself and to you. If you look at her and then she looks at you, it might be simply that she's looking at you because she noticed someone looking in her direction. But if she's the one to initiate eye contact between the two of you, she's making it clear to bother herself and you that she's the initiator and thus, by default, is the more interested party. In other words, when girls look at you first, they are in the default pursuit position. From the very outset of an interaction, the girl who looks into your eyes before you look into hers is chasing you, ever so slightly. This small, tiny difference in gestures - her looking at you first, instead of you looking at her first - sets the tone for the entire beginning stages of your interaction and, if you do a good job of following and maintaining the Law of Least Effort thereafter, can even influence the entire pick up, seduction, and subsequent relationship. This is that huge. When girls look at you first they just plainly and simply value you much more highly than they do the men who look at them first. If you change this one detail about how you make eye contact - if you get good at ensuring women make eye contact with you before you make eye contact with them - you'll see a strong boost in the levels of attraction, investment, and warmth you get from them right off the bat and all the way up through having a relationship with them. It's very big. It's going to require you spending some time getting familiar with using your peripheral vision a fair amount, but it's very, very worth it. No one talks about this either, and I'm not sure why. It's one of those tiny things you can do that makes a big difference, but the difference is a bit "hidden" and not as obvious, so the results perhaps are less measurable. I guess it isn't as marketable as new ways to neg. Another eye contact basic that's going to make a big difference for you is in slowing down your eye and head movement. You'll have to really start paying attention to your head and eye movement speed, and work to consciously slow these down, but again, this is an investment in yourself that pays dividends in the base attraction you receive from women. You should move your head slowly, and move your eyes slowly. As you raise your head up and move your eyes up to meet a woman's, she should know it's coming. She'll see your head raising and eyes raising slowly before they reach her eyes. This is fantastic for you, because it's going to often compel her to make eye contact with you first, before you ever lock eyes with her, and it's also going to take the edge off any eye contact you make, as a slow, calm movement to make eye contact with her is going to be far less alarming than the look that guys who "steal glances" at women are. Note that you do not ever want to be stealing glances. If you're going to look at a woman, then make sure you look, and make sure she knows it. She'll see you looking regardless - women are extraordinarily adept at noticing what men are doing around them - so you might as well make it a confident, sexy look when you move your eyes to her. Finally, when making eye contact, lock your eyes on the bridge of a girl's nose, between her eyes. Don't move your eyes back and forth from one of her eyes to the other; this is called "scanning" and it appears as though you're looking to see her reaction. When you instead keep your eyes glued to that space between her eyes, your eye contact comes across far more confidently and calmly. So, our eye contact basics are: > Get girls to look at your eyes first. > Get good at using your peripheral vision to know when girls are looking. > Move your head and eyes slowly. > Don't steal glances - if you look at a woman, really drink her in. > Focus your eyes on the bridge of a girl's nose, in between her eyes. Don't scan. Unless you have all of these down already, this is where you ought to start with your eye contact. These form the foundation of all the eye contact you'll be using with girls, so get them handled and the rest will be a breeze. EYE CONTACT NUANCES The next step in eye contact flirting mastery is getting down the nuts and bolts of eye contact. That is, getting the pieces in place to where you really understand, down to the level of natural, instinctive action, exactly how to respond to eye contact from women. The first nuance we'll explore here is eye positioning. Namely, as noted in "Eyes That Draw," you want to be looking at women out the corner of your eyes. The more you can do this, the better. It's of especial importance in your initial eye contact; this sets the tone of a very sexual, very charming, very charismatic connection between the two of you. Eye contact straight on is considered neutral. To make your eye contact charming and sexy and charismatic, look from the corner of your eyes, or at least partially so. You may have to turn your head slightly away from a girl in order to look at her this way. Once she's seen you looking at her out of the corner of your eyes, you can move your head so that you're looking at her closer to dead-on. You might still want to keep your head slightly tilted and slightly pointed away from her so your eyes will continue to be at least slightly off-center from the rest of your head as you make eye contact with her. It's good practice to reposition your head somewhat while talking with women, keeping your eyes fixed firmly on hers as you do so. So, you might have your head slightly tilted to the right and pulled back a bit, looking at a girl from the bottom left corner of your eyes, then move your head after a time so that you're looking at her straight on, with your chin pointed up, your eyes looking at her from the bottom but mostly dead-center. Then you'll tilt your head to the left after a while and look at her from the mid-corner of the right side of your eyes. Moving your head around every so often like this allows you to continue looking at girls sexy in a natural way. The second nuance we're going to focus on is time spent maintaining eye contact. This one drives a lot of guys crazy. I know it certainly drove me crazy for a long time. How long is too long for maintaining eye contact? Too short? When should you look away, and when should you hold? I'm going to do my very best here to break this down into specific, exact numbers so you can start refining your eye contact to the level of a guy who's been in the field actively approaching women for six years without having to actually go and spend six years doing that to get there. Here are the numbers: > Eye Contact Prior to Opening Glancing at her eyes before she's made eye contact with you. Again, this is something you want to avoid, as it's better if she makes first eye contact, but sometimes it happens, and you need to know how long to hold eye contact for. The rule of thumb here is, you should be the first to break eye contact. If she locks eyes with you and you're already looking at her, she doesn't know your intentions. By looking away first, you communicate that you are not a threat, which puts her at ease with you. You're then able to return your eyes to hers. Not breaking eye contact first when you were the initiator positions you as too strong and too threatening; it sets off alarms in women's heads. Breaking eye contact disarms those alarms. You should break eye contact about 1.5 seconds after initiating, regardless of when she looks at you, or even whether she does or not. Glancing at her eyes when you made eye contact first, and broke eye contact first. After you've broken eye contact and established that you are not a threat, you'll now want to restore eye contact with her again. After waiting about 2 to 2.5 seconds, return your eyes to hers. As soon as your eyes reunite with hers, smile warmly and seductively at her using a slow-spreading, closed-mouth smile. If you are close to her at this point, you should open her while maintaining eye contact. If you are not close, break eye contact again after letting your eyes drift down slightly (to about where her mouth is) around the 4 second mark, then let your eyes drift off to the side after letting them linger slightly below her eyes for a moment. Don't resume eye contact again until you're ready to go open her. Glancing at her eyes when she's initiated eye contact with you. When you've picked up that a girl is looking at you, you'll want to wait for about 1.5 to 2 seconds after she's made eye contact before initiating. You don't want to spring too fast into looking at her because it can seem as though you were monitoring her and waiting for her to look at you if you do, and that tends to unnerve people a little bit - no one likes to feel like they were being watched without them realizing it. When she's the first to initiate eye contact, your eye contact with her will proceed the same as if you had reinitiated after breaking eye contact as the initiator. In other words, smile warmly, open if you can open, and let eye contact drift away if you can't, only resuming prior to opening her. When you've already made eye contact prior to opening a girl, you should skip pre-opening her. While it's essential in opening if you haven't yet made eye contact, pre-opening becomes an unnecessary, awkward extra step once you've already locked eyes. So, it may be helpful to view eye contact flirting and pre-opening as mutually exclusive; do one, or do the other, but don't do both. Eye Contact While in Conversation While you're talking with one person. While talking with another person, your eye contact should be focused on her about 70 to 80% of the time, glancing off to the side the rest of the time as you speak. You should especially break eye contact while making witty remarks or saying something about yourself that could potentially be perceived as impressive or showboating. By breaking eye contact, you greatly reduce the risk that your statement is seen as reaction-seeking. While you're listening to one person. As the listener, you should be looking into the speaker's eyes more than she's looking into yours. A good general rule of thumb is to look into her eyes 90 to 95% of the time she's speaking. Only look away when she's looking away, but don't always look away when she's looking away. If a girl spends a lot of time looking away, you'll have to adjust your eye contact accordingly; she's likely looking away because she's uncomfortable with eye contact, so you overusing eye contact may be intimidating to her. Look away about 25% of the time the speaker looks away if you find her looking away a lot. While you're speaking with more than one person. You'll want to devote the same amount of time (70 to 80%) making eye contact with your listeners, but the division is tricky. Don't dart your eyes rapidly from listener to listener; instead, move them slowly, taking time to speak to one person, then another. The person who asked you the question or made the statement that led into you speaking should get the lion's share of your eye contact. The reason you're speaking is in response to her, so she should get 60 to 75% of your total eye contact made while speaking. While you're listening to more than one person. This one's sort of a trick question, but the answer is simple: you should only ever be listening to one person. People who are splitting their time trying to talk to two or more people - except in emergency situations - tend to seem distracted and not in control of their own conversations. Instead, focus on the person whose conversation is most important to you - typically, whoever was talking to you first - and make the other speakers wait for their turn to talk. Those are the hard numbers and exact descriptions of how to use strong, sexy, compelling eye contact flirting. Your delivery and execution is going to advance as you do this more, but you can refer to this article to troubleshoot your eye contact any time you have uncertainty about it or encounter a slightly novel situation. The rules for contact length and distribution are pretty much universal to every person and every circumstance you'll find yourself in. All you've got to do is go apply these rules, then watch women gaze back at you with the most wonderful looks in their eyes. "The eyes have it," the old saying used to go. Old sayings often know what they're talking about, and so does this one; if you want a strong way of communicating with women, and a great way of easily, naturally showing them what a confident, savvy, sexy man you are, your eyes and her eyes are the way to do it.

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Really quick quiz: what's the most powerful tool of seduction in your arsenal? What's the one thing you have that, when used properly, can turn an ice queen into a kitten and make even the strongest women become bubbly little girls? Is it your sense of style? Your suave demeanor? Perhaps your silver tongue? Those things all are great, but there's one thing you can use to greater effect than quite possibly all of them combined. Want to guess what it is? It's your smile. I'm sure you've heard the saying: Smile and the world smiles with you; cry and you cry alone. Both parts of that saying have a great deal of validity to them. But for the purpose of this post, I want to focus on the first part: that when you smile, the world smiles with you. My good buddy David Tian posted an article that's really relevant to this about two years ago that I still remember. I had to do a quick Google search to find it, but here it is on his site: Emotional Contagion. David explains this a lot more comprehensively than I'm going to here, but the (really) quick-and-dirty of it is that feelings are catching, and that one can trigger emotions in another simply by one's own visible emotional state. For a little more of the science behind this, check out Wikipedia's article on mirror neurons - brain cells that cause us to feel the same emotion as that we see others feeling. In other words, women will feel the way you show them you are feeling. This is quite powerful when you begin to harness it, and one of the best and most effective ways to harness it is in using your smile correctly. Your smile is something you can spend a lot of time working on, particularly if you aren't 100% certain what you want to do with it. I already have spent a lot of time working on mine though, and I've found a few little tricks that pay big dividends that I'm quite positive you'll be able to start putting to good use just about instantaneously. The two of those little tricks I want to focus on here are smiling warmly and smiling sexily. THE WARM SMILE One of the best books I've read on basic socializing was Leil Lowndes' How to Talk to Anyone. If you've been studying the social arts for a while, much of what's covered in Talk to Anyone will be old hat for you, but even then you'll still pick up nuggets here and there that can end up proving invaluable. The slow smile was one such nugget for me when I gave the book a read-through. The slow smile, or slow-spreading smile - however you want to call it - is a way of making someone else feel quite special to and appreciated by you. The slow smile is a vastly more personal version of the standard smile. Why is that, you might ask? Well, let's consider a pair of examples: In Example 1, you look over at a beautiful woman in a red dress, and she flashes you a quick, easy smile. In Example 2, you look over at a beautiful woman in a purple dress, and watch as a smile slowly spreads across her lips as she looks back at you. Which woman do you think is more genuinely interested in you? Clearly the second woman, isn't it? That's because a quickly-flashed smile can mean anything - and quite often, it's simply someone being polite or acknowledging your gaze. But a slow smile - now there's a signal that means something. It's a smile specifically for you, targeted at you, and one that you know the woman smiling at you is consciously aware of. It isn't just some incidental grin. It's a conscious, confident smile beamed in your direction. It feels personal, and it feels quite warm. Use the slow smile everywhere. It's amazing for seduction - it makes women feel much more highly valued by you. And it's great for just showing people in general you care. I learned to smile slowly all the time by forcing myself to only smile that way - you can certainly do the same, and take the responses you get to your smiles into the stratosphere. You can even use the slow smile as an opener. Many times I have alighted my eyes on a woman, and locked gazes with her, then slowly began spreading a smile across my lips until I looked as though I was about to begin laughing. Almost universally as you do this, your girl will laugh too, and it's quite easy to either continue to tease her with body language and nonverbals, or to begin a verbal conversation. Women you open this way will open far more warmly and require a lot less initial work to get attracted. THE SEXY SMILE How do friendly men smile? How about sexy men? How do they smile? The main differences you should note are as follows: > The friendly man smiles with his teeth. The sexy man keeps his mouth shut. > The friendly man smiles broadly. The sexy man's smile is not quite so broad. > The friendly man smiles with both sides of his mouth evenly. The sexy man's smile has one side of his mouth smiling more than the other. So, sexy men smile with their mouths shut, smile less broadly, and smile more with one side of their mouths than the other - almost to the point of having a half-smile sometimes. Those are some rather meaningful differences from your normal average friendly smile - that standard, but ever-so-usual, grin. The advantage is, when you smile with your mouth closed and less broadly and tilted to one side, women will tend to view you as far more of a sexual creature than they will a man who flashes them a friendly smile. The sexy smile gets women excited about you in a way that the friendly smile just doesn't. Sexy smiles are the way to go any time you're interacting with a woman you're even the slightest bit interested in - they make an immediate and significant contribution to your efforts. I can instantly tell sexual people from less sexual people these days by paying attention to how they smile - it really is a pretty reliable indicator. One note on tilting your smile: smiling more with the right side of your mouth comes across as warm and caring. Smiling more with the left side of your mouth comes across as slick and knowing. Depending on the situation, one of these is often superior to the other - use your judgment. For instance, if a woman gives you a great compliment, you'll want her to feel warm and rewarded for having done so, so you'll flash her a sexy smile that is weighted toward the right side of your face. If a woman makes a witty remark at your expense, you can laugh a little and smile more with the left side of your face to let her know you get it but you're no verbal punching bag. This might sound minor, but it's not. It's major. If you get good at using warm smiles and sexy smiles, you will get such better initial receptions from women it's silly, and your interactions will run remarkably smoother. You'll be using your smile to defuse tension and problems, using the slow, warm smile to build up good feelings and the sexy smile to get girls going crazy over you. Your smile is how women judge whom you are and what your intentions are when they're drawing up rapid assessments. Women can decide very quickly if they think you're the kind of man they're looking for based on your smile alone. It's one of those core fundamentals that most guys interestingly enough don't even think to work on until they're far more advanced; but even the greenest social beginners can (and will!) benefit massively from tweaking their smiles as soon as possible. It's a big deal, and it makes a big difference. So… smile :)

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*About the author:* As a courageous young man he started approaching suntanned beauties on beaches and girls in shopping malls because he was, ironically, too scared to talk to girls he knew in high school. An unusually shy yet carefree character that compensates with a wild inner fire caused him to push the boundaries of his comfort zones in remarkably unique ways. Coming from a place of limiting beliefs he fought his way into a clarity that helped him to understand the things that kept causing him to make mistakes with girls. He honed his understanding of women whilst working at nightclubs until he eventually decided to go all in and get into the action for some more hands on experience. An enigmatic yet highly engaging and open individual out to help, he believed that everyone has the right to improve every part of who they are and took understanding women as an important step towards a full and rich life. He not only learnt what allows you to present yourself as a desirable guy but also how to improve how fulfilled you are with your life at the same time. His writing style is that of a storyteller, and his articles will bring a confident and breezy twist to the reading experience whilst still capturing the brilliant spirit of sharing here at Girls Chase. In short he is sharp minded, surprisingly wise, and full of experience as a true believer in Seduction as a means to a better life. I am going to mystify you with an inspiring view of women and life. I am going to tell you about how views on women change through experience and what I reveal just might astound you. I've known women all my life, but through every stage of my life what I saw changed as I saw deeper into the people they REALLY are. Funnily enough who they are is someone that nobody ever sees. We all start out terrified of girls. It isn't so much that we think they can beat us up; it starts with them having that unfortunate contagious social disease that requires us to run away from them, screaming in hopes that they don't start chasing us. That is until of course our fear does a one eighty and we realise that we are willing to risk social humiliation just to revel in a girl's radiant attention for a moment more. Oh how quaintly transparent our transformations are... We all start innocently enough, and then we grow up from our childish behaviours and start to develop a healthy sense of awe and desire. Women become a mystery, and we in all honesty lose ourselves to the chaos and the drama that is selling out so you can get her to write love hearts in her journal surrounding your initials. Ah, sweet validation, how it eases the pain of not knowing what the hell to really do with girls, "Mmm... Fantastic". What few men realise is that there are more stages in life to come, and more views of women to be had beyond wanting to carve love hearts on a tree with your high school sweet pea. Unfortunately the next step is a little disillusioning for most; we either turn into tail-chasing hooligans, or we treat women like they hold all the answers and are the saviours to our lives. Neither are relevant of course because our views of women must truly evolve if they are to change. And unfortunately evolution doesn't take straight lines; it demands we make the best of things so we can get beyond where we are. WHEN WOMEN BECOME JUST PEOPLE Very few men get beyond being the hooligan with a heart of gold, but for those that do, they start to realise that women don't hold all the answers, and chasing tail just starts to make you look like you undervalue your own time. So, heading forth with a newfound zest for themselves, they look around at girls they once before expected to be wise, and can see the humanity in them that leads to mistakes, that drags them through wants and needs just like everyone else. What does this guy do with this view of women? For me, I was curious and gazed on them with a little wonder, and not because they held answers, but because they lived in this mystery of life and I had yet to figure out what that could mean. In short, a man gains an open mind and girls become fascinating just as they are. To me that is the next step in the evolution, but before we discuss that let us get into how that can come about. The real world SHOCKS innocence out of us, and can even close an open mind, and eventually girls start to get tricky as you try to navigate your personal compass of morality towards something with the potential to be the right answer. The only trouble is, no matter how many times you reset your direction you always seem to get it somehow wrong! We all get snapped out of our daydreams and pulled into a reality where social responsibility is key. Women need us to "assure" them and answer them so that their world isn't full of daydreaming and non-responsive men. We gain a time pressure from our social commitments and are forced to "take a position" on women before our time is up. We don't know much about girls so we freeze up and get out of it what we can and go on living life as we do. Those that do well with girls start to flirt with girls at least a little and joke around, whilst the rest of us just kind of labour in the delusion that "any stance is good enough when it comes to girls"... and of course it isn't. LEARNING HOW TO TALK WITH WOMEN In my life I ended up growing up a little bit, and flirted with girls here and there, and it began to open my mind inch by inch. Some hot girls even kicked and punched me, or joked about me right in my face, only for me to state that it was her magnetic attraction to me that had done it; you know what flirting is. My friends were genuinely shocked that girls paid attention to me and acted playfully aggressive to me, and if I am to be completely honest I didn't know what was going on either - I just flirted blindly to blow off steam. The thing that changed that was when I started feeling a bit insecure about never doing things with women, so my next step was to go to a shopping mall and ask someone to the movies. At the mall, I saw this gorgeous girl and I figured that since I was really just trying to figure out if I could even have success with women that she would do just fine, because she was hot enough. I walked up behind her (she made my palms sweat just looking at her), I turned around, swallowed, and backed up into her to pretend it was an accident. She stopped in a confused way and then didn't pay attention to it, so I walked around the store and then did it again because I had no idea what else to do to get her attention; she coughed and looked at me as I pointed to a movie on the shelf and asked if she'd seen it. Shortly after a few more lines of dialogue she said yes to a movie and then quickly corrected saying that she wouldn't be in town much longer because she lived in another city and was just visiting the area. I felt an unexpected surge of adrenaline and endorphins as I realised that technically she had said yes and that possibly I could do it again. My experiment to see if I could do something with women was a success. The only problem was I didn't yet have any results. A few months later, I was walking along a beach in the afternoon and I heard all these guys shouting and going crazy. As it turned out two girls were topless coming out of the water headed directly on a collision course with where I was walking. "Crap, crap, crap" I thought as I tried to pull myself together to not look like a creep. I did what I could to rationalise a reason to be calm and not deviate course. From their behaviour I discerned that they were rationalising their behaviour something like "hey, there is no big deal about swimming topless" so I matched their attitude and made a comment when I was close. I turned a little towards them and I said what was really only to ease the tension, I turned, smiled looked them in the eyes and said, "guys right? It's like they've never seen anyone with a shirt off before" shaking my head. They responded with a giggle and tried to get me to stop and talk "yeah! Guys swim without shirts all the time, it is the same", "well I wouldn't know much about it, but there is no reason to get all crazy about it surely... You are cute girls, but I'm sure they don't need to holler". I didn't for a moment look down, and they got dressed and started asking questions. I noticed that the brunette one was interested in me. I was a consummate gentleman and I suddenly realised that I didn't have a phone on me, so got her to write her number down on my arm. A little while after that I started to notice that girls would touch and grab me and stop me from leaving some conversations, and I started seeing a new and more spontaneous side to women... and to be honest, I liked it! I soon knew girls that no one else around me knew, and these girls started talking to other people about me with the inference that I was a good guy who knew some things. It was an eye opener, as girls might invite me to a party or ask why I didn't want to come whilst on the inside I was just happy to be asked! They wanted to keep me involved, and often their friends helped them. Often their friend might ask me questions to see if I liked their friend, or I'd overhear comments from other guys who were acting jealous and wondering why the girls were talking to me. I started seeing disappointment when I didn't do anything with a girl, and started to see her smile when I eventually looked like I had decided to kiss her. Spontaneous involvement with women led me from my routine life and I started to see girls enjoying my company and missing me when I was gone. Seeing them smile made it less about success to me and I was okay with just making girls happy, even though they started showing signs they wanted more. Girls started using tricks to get me to take things further. I transitioned very quickly from being invited out into having things expected of me. I of course did NOT know what I was doing but the girls seemed to not care at all. Eventually the day came when I kissed a girl and the flood gates of deliciousness opened up. I saw wonder in her gently gaping lips. I felt her gentle clawing against my chest, I felt the world spin... They would stand there in front of me so sweetly, silently looking up into my eyes, and they would respond to the way I would move or hold myself; when I adjusted, they adjusted. I came to a powerful realisation that women responded to the way I was being, and I noticed it wasn't just physical; they followed the way I was acting, too. I realised that all my life women might have always been partially a reflection of where I was as a man. When I progressed, women changed for the better. EVOLVING PERCEPTION AND RECIPROCATION The core of evolving our perception of women comes down to that idea of reciprocation. In the beginning we are immature. Then we don't know what to do, undervalue ourselves, find life to interrupt our plans. Then we start to notice the power of ourselves on the women around us. The shocking twist to the story is not that women are gorgeous, but they become more so as you grow. There are harsh truths, and brutal mistakes that cannot be made, but after you sense that larger world you might realise like I did, that we can fight for a better perception of women and ourselves and by doing so improve how everything works for us. We are in some ways the seed to the beauty we find in our own point of view. She whispered to me softly, a doubt lingering in the air as she questioned what she saw in him; she raised her hand to touch him; she wanted to see if what was in front of her was even real. As her hand slid up against his chest she sighed, and closed her eyes, sensing that it was real. His heart beat and his warmth responded to her touch and she felt a deep relief that it had not just been her imagination, or some kind of mirage. She opened her eyes and cleared her throat, lifting herself into composure before she spoke. She spoke softly and so tender, as if what was before her might drift away. As he responded to her, a gentle bass filled his voice, and as his softened words resonated in her mind, her hand squeezed into his shirt. What had just transpired in these moments meant to her the fulfilment of a wish she felt would go forever unheard. She knew in this moment that she might attain something she felt she so deeply needed in her life, even if just for a while. Women, in my experience, are desirable because we inspire them to be. Their deepest self, the side no one can see, is often a reflection of ourselves; the more we become, the more beautiful they are, until finally you wake up from the dream... Our view of women will change because it is unwritten just how much beauty can be seen. Women's deepest nature is like a well, and every day the water changes, just like the water within ourselves. There is no end to how deeply you can understand, just a healthy pragmatism as you learn to grow with women in the moments you share together.

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The other day, a reader wrote in with a question about keeping your cool when women are being flighty or slow to respond, in reference to the post on what to do when girls flake: "In your article on girls not returning texts, I was wondering what your idea of a socially savvy way to deal with it was. I've found it hard not to take this personal, especially when it's from girls I've known longer that still do it. I understand it's quite common, but to me there's really no excuse. I'd much rather hear "I'm not interested" than waste my night waiting around, especially when considering how girls get when guys don't call them back." You know, a long, long time ago -- it almost seems like another life -- I made it a point to respond to every single person who texted or called me, no matter what. I looked at it as a matter of honor, and took it as a point of pride -- I was reliable. And it annoyed me to no end when people didn't respond. Like the reader above, I couldn't understand people who didn't respond -- I thought it rude, and I considered it inexcusable. Of course you can take 10 seconds to text a reply, or 10 minutes to return a phone call, I'd think to myself. I considered it a personal slight, those people who didn't respond. I see things a lot differently nowadays. Often, I don't even notice when one person or another -- when one girl or another -- hasn't responded, until maybe much later -- and perhaps never at all. And, for all my earlier "principles" on being 100% reliable in responding to those who contacted me, I'm now sitting at somewhere decidedly below a 100% response rate -- maybe 85%, maybe 90%. I still try to respond most times, but it's no longer an unbreakable rule. The reason why I changed -- both in how I saw it when others didn't respond, and in why I don't chase women with texting or phone calls anymore and why I don't always respond when people chase me anymore -- is what I want to share with you here. THINGS DONE CHANGED: MORE PEOPLE, MORE PROBLEMS Although I am a good bit more flakey than I used to be, and a good bit less responsive than I once was, I still try my best to be reliable and responsive. I think being responsive says good things about a man. But, well, you see, life's changed. I routinely get texts, emails, and messages from girls wanting to meet up with me. Girls I'd met before who are telling me they're going to be in town and want to see me. Girls I've spent time with at earlier dates who say they miss me and want to know why I'm not on instant messenger anymore or Facebook anymore or why I don't talk to them anymore and what happened to me. Well, two things: I'm swamped -- like, literally, I'm working between 10 and 16 hours a day, juggling a social life, trying to get back to the gym, and I'm still falling farther and farther behind in everything I need to get done. I really can't spare another 2 or 3 or 4 hours a day responding to every single person who wants a response that day, and that includes a lot of women who want to meet up or chat or whatever. I've realized that these are girls who want to take up my time and offer little in return. It used to be that I'd just go for any girl I had a chance with who was reasonably attractive and had a tolerable personality. Now, just because of where I'm at with things, even if a pretty cute girl is chasing me hard, if she can't fit herself into my schedule or I'm not super sold on her, there's a good chance we aren't going to meet up. Here's the thing: you can't tell people this stuff, because it makes you sound like a dick. I'm not trying to be a dick. I really do feel a little bad each time some girl is messaging me excitedly to meet up... and I don't respond right away, because I'm busy, or just lazy, and then don't even remember that she messaged me again until like 2 weeks later. Whoops. Of course, when I didn't have as much choice with women, it would be more like, "A girl messaged me! Wow!" and then I'd respond right away (well, after waiting a few minutes to not seem overeager!). Now I more look at it and I'm like, "Ah, Jesus, another one... what am I going to do with these chicks?" I've been trying to meet up with buddies lately and pass them girls that I just don't have time for who've been chasing hard. Like, I'm not going to do anything with this girl, but maybe my buddy can make good use of her. Funny thing is, this is all stuff girls do to lots of guys. Girls ignore guys' texts and emails, or maybe write them back much later. Girls get flustered because they're being bombarded with lots of messages from all these men chasing after them. Girls try to be cool and introduce a guy who's chasing them to one of their gal pals and try to get the two of them together. I never understood this until quite recently. I mean, I understood it in theory, but I'd never been in the situation where I was doing it myself. You really have to be in the situation and have the experience to be able to understand and really empathize with what's going on in someone's head -- and empathy's one of the biggest factors in keeping your cool. UNDERSTANDING IT INTELLECTUALLY VS. ACTUALLY LIVING IT I started coming to an abstract, intellectual understanding of women flaking and being unresponsive some time ago, just from talking to women about this and from meeting enough girls and talking to enough girls and having enough of them flake on me and enough of them not flake on me that I really started to see the patterns. First, I want to remind you about the relationship between the level of attraction a woman has for a man, and the amount of time she knows him. This is what we discussed in "Attraction Has an Expiration Date," and the normal distribution for time and attraction in a situation where a man doesn't sleep with a girl right away looks roughly like this: Basically, the longer a girl knows you without becoming your lover, the lower her level of attraction for you will drop. As discussed in "Social Circle vs. Cold Approach," you get a little more leeway when you're dealing with women from your social circle -- but still not much. Attraction's fairly high when you first meet a girl -- and then it spikes soon thereafter, before starting to fall if you haven't bedded her. There's some sort of mechanism buried deep in the most primal part of women's brains that seems to scream, "This is not a guy accustomed to sleeping with women! Therefore, he must be less successful with women. Therefore, he'll give me sons who won't do so well at spreading my genes with other women. Therefore, he's not a good choice as a mate." To a woman, this just feels like, "Meh, he's a nice guy, but I'm not really all that excited about him. I was, when I first met him... but yeah, turns out he's really just a good, nice guy. Maybe we can be friends or something." Time passes, and her excitement, enthusiasm, and sexual interest in a man quickly and precipitously drops. What that means for the man is this: > She'll become less and less eager about responding to him over text, phone, and email > She'll become more and more apathetic about seeing him in person > She'll fade more and more from his life This is a value assessment, where the man is assessed as slow and unconfident for failing to move expeditiously, and he's judged as not being particularly desirable and the girl loses interest. When you're a guy, it sucks, and it feels inexplicable. "Why did she just disappear? I don't get it!!!" And then you start chasing, trying to make things right. Often this happens totally unconsciously... you gradually and inadvertently toss aside the maxim of "don't chase women" and you start to chase instead. I came across a great example of this last night in a conversation with my girlfriend. She was telling me about some of the guys who've been chasing her for a year or more. We talked about one of these guys on this site before, a fellow my girlfriend terms "Shopping Guy" because he'd always go hold her bags for her on little shopping expeditions (actually, he was either fortunate or unfortunate enough to have his own featured article, "The Sad Tale of Shopping Guy"). The guy my girlfriend told me about last night was a guy she calls "Ho Hai Guy," because he took her one time on a date to a place here in town called Ho Hai. Ho Hai Guy, my girlfriend told me, originally ignored her, back in the days before she'd met me. And she considered him charming, and a good guy, so she chased after him and flirted with him a bit. She'd talk to him and try to get him to notice her. She really, honestly, legitimately wanted to date him. So what'd Ho Hai Guy do? Well, he started spending time talking to her to, and texting her, and going and doing things with her here and there. None of those activities involved the two of them becoming lovers, of course, and with time, my girlfriend came to see Ho Hai Guy as just a friend. And of course; if you think about it logically, what else would you expect? Spend a lot of time with a girl doing only friend stuff -- talking, chatting, texting, shopping, going on little outings, having meals -- and absolutely zero lover / boyfriend-girlfriend stuff -- making out, sleeping together -- and you're really soon, really quickly going to get yourself seen as a friend. Of course, right? What happens though is that there's an imbalance in information. Most of the guys who end up in the friend zone don't have many or any women in their lives. So, they move slow, not wanting to mess things up with this girl they like. And they project their realities onto her. She's the only woman in their lives, so they assume they're the only man in hers. But it isn't that way for most women, especially not if they're pretty and nice and sociable and well-liked. Women like that get a lot of men chasing them, and they have to categorize men fast. So, a guy who tries to take her home fast and rules himself out as a boyfriend and doesn't let her cry on his shoulder goes into the lover category. And the guy who wines her and dines her and sends her romantic messages and steals a kiss here and there goes into the boyfriend category. And the guy who talks to her and goes shopping with her and goes to do little activities with her but never makes a move goes into the friend category, or the "guy chasing after me that I might, someday, in a moment of desperation, be glad to still have around just in case of the off chance I might need him" category. Anyway, I was discussing intermittent rewards with my girlfriend, and how rewarding people sometimes, but not all the time, encourages addictive levels of attachment, and I talked about specifically in responding to people who were chasing after you, and she mentioned that yeah, this guy Ho Hai Guy sends her messages, asking her how she is, what she's doing, when they can talk, telling her he misses her, and rubbish like that, and she usually ignores them, but every now and then she writes back something like this: "Hey, sorry I haven't been responding, I've been really busy with studying for my exam in September and with family stuff. I'm fine; thanks for asking! I hope you're doing good too." And then she says she can see how happy and relieved he is in the response he texts back. He tells her it's okay; he understands she's been really busy and that it's very important for her to be studying for her test and that that's exactly what she should be doing. And then he tells her that after she takes her test, the two of them should do something. *forehead smack* Made me think of when I used to do this with girls. Also made me think that poor Ho Hai Guy really doesn't get it. If a girl wants you and likes you, she's going to respond to your messages. Yet here this poor guy is, chasing after the same girl he's been chasing for a year with no luck, not realizing that she's been in a relationship half of that time and she's just keeping him on the backburner, because 1) she feels bad not responding to him, and 2) she feels better knowing that she has some guys out there who are chasing after her. "I think everyone likes that feeling -- the feeling that people are chasing after you," she said to me. And this isn't a manipulative girl -- she really cares about people, and doesn't want to hurt anyone. She's just very candid. And she's right. Everybody does want to feel like someone is chasing after them. It feels good. But until you experience it -- not just being pursued by anyone, but being pursued by women who are actually desirable and who other men want and pursue -- it's extremely difficult to empathize and understand what that feeling is. And what it is is power, security, and validation that you are, in fact, a very desirable, awesome person. KEEPING YOUR COOL, AND REFINING YOUR STRATEGY I don't know about you, but I don't want to be like Shopping Guy or Ho Hai Guy. Once I realized that this was going on -- that women kept guys in the wings because it made them feel safer, and because they could call on those guys at times for emotional support, or because they needed a guy to hang out with or go shopping with or see a movie with -- that was the moment that I became very anti-"hanging onto a girl." If I didn't sleep with a girl in 2 dates, I didn't ever see her again usually by my own volition. Nowadays, it's the first date; if it doesn't happen then, it won't happen, even if she chases me. She probably doesn't get another shot. And most girls do chase these days, and most girls do try to get another shot after our first date even if I didn't take them to bed. I just don't give them that next shot, because I'd rather go onto a more promising prospect, or else work on one of my businesses. I went through a "moment of weakness" a while back after coming out of a long-term relationship, and in that moment of weakness I actually did, for the first time in my life, the traditional nice-guy-friend-chasing-a-girl thing. It sucked. I plowed a lot of time into a girl, thinking that of course we were going to end up together -- I spent a great deal of time with her, I got her a prestigious new job after she'd been laid off, I single-handedly pulled her out of depression, I rebuilt her entire social circle, from scratch, I was her number one best friend and confidante -- I completely renovated her life and made it better in so many ways. Yet, I found myself unable to get beyond making out with her, despite repeated attempts. But I kept plowing hours a day into her, kept helping her out with stuff, confident that of course we'd be together. Meantime, I slept with a few other girls, but this one was the one I wanted as a girlfriend. What finally snapped me out of my delusions were when I found out she'd been going on dates with other guys. I was like, "Wait -- what? This girl that I just, like... did everything for???" I finally understood what nice guys go through. It was a big slap in the face. So, I let her know I must've had the wrong idea about us; that I was going to have to go hit the dating pool pretty hard and wouldn't have so much time for her anymore (she protested, of course); and then I faded her out of my life really fast. She started chasing hard, and less than a month after fading her out, she called me up desperate and needing to talk and wondering where I'd been one night and I talked to her for about 20 or 30 minutes, told her she was going to be fine in her job and in life, and then dropped it on her that I had a girlfriend and that I had to go because my girl was almost over... and she seemed honestly stunned. Guess guys didn't do that to her. Anyway, she got quiet and disappeared for a while. I broke up with my girlfriend, and then that girl reappeared and pushed hard to spend some time alone with me in my place. Guess by then she'd decided the overwhelming value I'd provided to her life before was sorely missed in my absence, and she'd finally decided she wanted to get together. I shot that idea down because, well... by that point, I was over it and not really interested anymore. That moment of weakness was gone, and I end up seeing her as pretty thick-skulled for not realizing the best thing in her life (me) and grabbing onto it with a vice grip when she had the chance. I'm grateful for the lesson though, and I don't think I'll ever plow a lot of time into investing heavily in the life of a girl I'm not lovers with ever again. Because what happens is, as we've talked about other places on this site, if you become too valuable to a girl you aren't lovers with, she won't want to risk losing you for something as replaceable but potentially disastrous as physical intimacy. She doesn't want to risk the two of you getting together, then you breaking up with her or disappearing and then suddenly you aren't her friend or advisor or supporter anymore. So, you don't give girls those things until the two of you are together. > You don't spend a lot of time on a girl, > You don't spend a lot of money on a girl, > You don't talk a whole lot to a girl, > You don't do a lot of things with a girl, > You don't try to help a girl too much, > And you don't try to revamp her life, at least until the two of you are lovers. At that point, if you're sleeping with her and she's sleeping with you, if you want to spend a lot of time on her, or buy her something nice, or talk to her all night, or go skiing with her, or help her find a better job, or introduce her to cool new people -- yeah, that's cool. But you can't do that stuff before the two of you are lovers, or you probably will never become lovers. Most guys try to do this stuff up front as "proof" of what great boyfriends they're going to be. I know, because I used to do some of it -- not the nice guy friend stuff, but I did do the "I'm going to spend a lot of time talking to her on the phone and text her a lot and I'll become an integral part of her life -- THEN we'll get together!" Nope, doesn't work that way. You do it after... otherwise, you're going to encounter a wall of resistance to the two of you becoming lovers that's a mile high. She won't want to risk sacrificing ALL she's getting from you for what might be a one-time roll in the hay. And that can even include just knowing that she's "got" you -- that can actually be quite valuable to women. One more thing my girlfriend said about Ho Hai Guy: she said that she'd wanted to "conquer" him. Because he'd been a charming guy, and he'd been ignoring her. But once he started chasing -- she knew she'd won. The challenge went away, and with it, her desire for him. Most women aren't as honest as my girlfriend is with me. But most women, to one extent or another, really do feel this way. It's not so good an idea to get into the habit of chasing women; you sabotage yourself when you do. DON'T CHASE WOMEN -- MAKE STUFF HAPPEN INSTEAD Chasing is one of the most poisonous things you can get into doing with a girl. Once you're chasing, you're done. Almost always. If you disagree, then riddle me this: how many women you've chased after -- like, really hounded with calling and texting and begging them to go on dates -- how many of those girls have you slept with or turned into girlfriends? Probably none of them, right? So why do guys keep doing this? It's an unconscious response, and it's one you can't control. Chasing is just how people respond to things they want and can't have. The thing is, the harder you chase, and the more invested you become, the more and more and more you end up wanting something, and going crazy over it. Chase after a job, and you come to want it more and more. Chase after a certain school you want to attend, and you want to get into that school more and more desperately. Find a girl you like and start chasing her, and she transforms from a girl you liked to a girl you want bad, to a girl you're crazy about, to a girl you're head over heels in love with (or at least you think you are... it's more your idea of her than her as a person, especially if you've been chasing her a long time and not spending much time with her. Ho Hai Guy and Shopping Guy are chasing after ideas of my girlfriend. Another guy -- Fetish Guy -- I'll get a post up on his rather interesting story too at some point -- he hardly knows my girlfriend, only met her once for an hour, and is chasing after the idea of her too, even as he thinks he's falling in love with her). Don't chase women. It kills their attraction for you, and it's going to tear you up inside pursuing a girl who's -- because you're chasing her -- forced to start running away. Here's what you do instead: > You keep things simple, direct, and to-the-point. > You only use texting and phone calls for a very little bit of getting to know a girl. > You primarily use texting and phone calls for setting up dates and handling logistics -- sell her on you in person, not over the phone. > You get her out soon after meeting her, and move fast. If she's social circle and you've known her for a long time, you make a big push to get her out, and close the deal then. Aim to get together with girls on Date #1. Why? Because she's out with you, and there's a good chance life intervenes and there never is a Date #2, even if Date #1 goes reasonably well. Also, the chance that a girl sleeps with you on Date #1 is higher than Date #2 and way higher than Date #3 in most cases. Even conservative girls -- yep, still will sleep with you on Date #1 if you handle things appropriately most times. A few notes on this one: don't ask girls, because they'll tell you of course that won't happen. And before you say girls won't go to bed with you on Date #1, answer me this: how many times have you tried? For your own sanity, adopt a cut off mark for girls. e.g., you might say, "Okay, if we aren't lovers after Date #3, she and I are done." Of course, to make this legitimate, you need to be trying to get together with her too -- you need to tell her to come home with you at the end of Date #1 and/or 2, and if she doesn't, you need to try again at the end of Date #3. If she still doesn't, write her off. After you adopt a cut off mark, add a conditional exception. e.g., for me, I have a few exceptions to my one-date rule. If a girl's really exceptional, and I really really like her and I think she'd make a great girlfriend, I might see her one or two more times if we don't sleep together on Date #1 and I'll try to make it happen then. If she's not as exceptional, then I'll have the condition that if she wants to come over and hang out at my place, we can do that, but otherwise, I won't invest any more time into her. So like a girl I've been on a date with who wouldn't go home with me, normally I'd write her off, but if she started texting that she wanted to meet up, I'd text her back, "Honestly, I've been doing so much lately that I really can't get out from under a pile of work. I could chill though -- you could come by, we'll cook some food or order a pizza, and just kick back and watch a movie. You game?" That weeds out a lot of them and you won't hear from them again -- those were the ones looking for a friend or a guy to chase them -- but both the ones that like you a lot, and the ones that just want a strong, sexy guy to take them to bed -- both of those girls will say, "Okay." Getting some rules like this up and running gets you keeping your cool a lot more easily, streamlines your dating a lot, and really ups your results. You become lovers with more girls, higher quality girls, and you get the girls you want. Wait, you might say, how does being aggressive and ruthless like this help you get the girls you want? Won't those amazing high quality women be scared off by stuff like this? And that's a completely understandable concern. Here's why I'm recommending the route I am: Think of what happens when you meet an amazing girl that you really, really like. Maybe she's incredibly beautiful; maybe she's got a killer personality. Maybe both. So what do you do? You go really, really slow, try not to mess stuff up... and then you don't get her. She fades away, and you end up becoming upset that she isn't responding to your texts anymore, like what happened with our reader at the start of this post and what happened to me plenty of times in the past. So why's having a solid process like this help you get the girls you want to get? Because even incredibly beautiful girls and girls with killer personalities and girls who have both are still just GIRLS. And they still all respond to exactly the same stuff. They still all want a man who's going to man up and make stuff happen... and all the guys who aren't get to go cool their heels in the friend zone and spend the next couple of months or years chasing after them until they finally give up and go repeat the process with some other girl. Don't be one of those guys. Don't chase women; don't go crazy holding out for that one special girl. Understand that past a certain mark, she really is lost, and that trying to get her back is like trying to get back a job offer again once the opportunity's already passed you by because you took too long to take action and seize that opportunity. Sure, maybe if you hound the people at that company like crazy, they'll eventually hire you. Probably not, but maybe. And sure, maybe if you hound that girl like crazy, she'll eventually date you. Probably not, but maybe. But yeah, really probably not. Sucks to hear, I know. You've been throwing a huge amount of time into chasing after a girl, for a long time, investing boatloads of your time and energy and effort and everything else into trying to get her, and all the while she's long since moved on and sees you as a friend or a guy she's "conquered" or is keeping on the back burner "just in case." But what's encouraging is knowing that next time -- with all the other women you're going to meet in your life -- you can do it right. Just like you're probably not going to get that job that you had a shot at but didn't take the shot for and now it's gone, so it is with women you had a shot with but waited too long to take that shot. But just as there are plenty more jobs out there you can do it right with next time, so too are there plenty more women out there you can do it right with next time, too. You've just got to make sure you seize the opportunity, and push for the close. That's what separates the friends and the conquered and those waiting in the wings from the guys who end up being girls' lovers and boyfriends and more.

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I've had a few folks write in recently asking about pornography addiction and excessive masturbation. It's not really a subject I've been especially excited about broaching... I mean, who really wants to talk about watching other people do the deed on video while giving himself a hand? But a few friends who've dealt with this have shared their experiences with me and suggested that I write about it, because they felt it was something that very much negatively affected them when they were in it and they thought this site was one with a wide enough audience that I'd be doing some good talking about it, and could reach a fair number of men. I even had forwarded along to me by Genaro in customer service an email from a reader who used the contact form to send in what amounted to a full-length sales letter custom written just to urge me to write about this, because it was something he'd gone through and he felt I could really help some people by addressing it on a larger platform. So, since it seems to be what the people want... let's talk about porn addiction: what causes it, how it sucks you in, why it's bad, and how to break its hold on you. The first time I heard about porn addiction was back in early 2005. I had a new roommate in college, and we traded stories about our prior roommates. I told him about the accounting major roommate I'd had freshman year who used to rip loud, smelly, disgusting farts all day long and play Dave Matthews Band incessantly, and he told me about his roommate the previous year: a guy who did NOTHING but watch pornography ALL DAY. According to my new roommate, all this guy would do was watch porn. My roommate said he rarely ever saw him go to class or study. Every time my roommate got back to his room, this guy was in there sitting in front of his computer watching porn. The guy had a girlfriend for a while... and when she came over, that was pretty much the only time he ever turned the porn off. Eventually she broke up with him, because she felt like he wasn't very interested in her. When my roommate would try to study, this guy would be watching porn. When my roommate would watch a movie, this guy would be watching porn. When my roommate would talk to his girlfriend in Connecticut over his webcam... this guy would be watching porn (and my roommate's girlfriend would say, "Is he watching porn AGAIN?!"). Much of the time it was bizarre porn, too, from what my friend told me. This guy watched all kinds of things. Bukkake. Gang bangs. Rape porn. Granny porn. Dwarf porn. Women having sex with farm animals. I watched pornography, of course. Every guy did. But for me, it was just a little bit of lesbian action - a couple of pretty girls going at it. And I'd do it when I was in need of a sexual release - throw on some girls getting busy (no penises, please; I want to put myself in the scene and imagine touching everything there when I'm watching, and some penises in the mix sort of breaks the mood), make sure I had a couple of tissues handy, and get to work. Once that was all taken care of, suddenly the porn was boring again; I shut it off, and then I'd compose a new song or do some writing. These guys with the porn addiction though, they weren't using it the same way I did or most of the guys I knew did. They watched porn just to watch it; they didn't even rub one out a whole lot. They'd spend hours watching porn at a time. And they sought increasingly higher degrees of novelty; the kind of porn I got off on - two girls, no guys - was downright boring to them. They needed stuff like what my old roommate's former roommate watched in order to gain any stimulation. Because it was detached from real sexual experience for them. They weren't imagining themselves there, in the scene, having sex with these women themselves, as I was... instead, they were just watching and voyeuring. CHANGES IN THE BRAIN Addiction to pornography, like all addictions, and like depression and victim mentality, which are addictions in their own rights (in this case, to negative / fatalistic thoughts), makes changes to the brain. Porn addiction is usually included with Internet addiction by addiction researchers, since the two typically go hand-in-hand. Here are the research findings - and they're rather disturbing. From "Cybersex addiction: Experienced sexual arousal when watching pornography and not real-life sexual contacts makes the difference": "The results show that indicators of sexual arousal and craving to Internet pornographic cues predicted tendencies towards cybersex in the first study. Moreover, it was shown that problematic cybersex users report greater sexual arousal and craving reactions resulting from pornographic cue presentation. In both studies, the number and the quality with real-life sexual contacts were not associated to cybersex addiction. The results support the gratification hypothesis, which assumes reinforcement, learning mechanisms, and craving to be relevant processes in the development and maintenance of cybersex addiction. Poor or unsatisfying sexual reallife contacts cannot sufficiently explain cybersex addiction." From "Pornographic Picture Processing Interferes with Working Memory Performance": "Some individuals report problems during and after Internet sex engagement, such as missing sleep and forgetting appointments, which are associated with negative life consequences. One mechanism potentially leading to these kinds of problems is that sexual arousal during Internet sex might interfere with working memory (WM) capacity, resulting in a neglect of relevant environmental information and therefore disadvantageous decision making. Results revealed worse WM performance in the pornographic picture condition of the 4-back task compared with the three remaining picture conditions. Furthermore, hierarchical regression analysis indicated an explanation of variance of the sensitivity in the pornographic picture condition by the subjective rating of the pornographic pictures as well as by a moderation effect of masturbation urges. Results contribute to the view that indicators of sexual arousal due to pornographic picture processing interfere with WM performance. Findings are discussed with respect to Internet addiction because WM interference by addiction-related cues is well known from substance dependencies." From "Enhanced Reward Sensitivity and Decreased Loss Sensitivity in Internet Addicts: An fMRI Study During a Guessing Task": "As the world's fastest growing "addiction", Internet addiction should be studied to unravel the potential heterogeneity. The present study is set to examine reward and punishment processing in Internet addicts as compared to healthy controls while they subjectively experience monetary gain and loss during the performance of a guessing task. The results showed that Internet addicts associated with increased activation in orbitofrontal cortex in gain trials and decreased anterior cingulate activation in loss trials than normal controls. The results suggested that Internet addicts have enhanced reward sensitivity and decreased loss sensitivity than normal comparisons." And according to "The effect of psychiatric symptoms on the Internet addiction disorder in Isfahan's university students," around 25% of young males are Internet and/or porn addicts. That's quite a lot, isn't it? There's also research showing that white matter in the brain's orbitofrontal cortex shrinks and declines in porn addicts, and some gray matter in the brain atrophies, and that the net result of these losses in brain tissue are that the brain's conscious control systems become impaired and less able to modulate actions and stem impulsivity. In other words, you become less conscious a human being, and more a kind of mindless impulse zombie, unable to control your own actions, fixated singularly on obtaining your next hit of Internet porn. Let's review these changes in the brain from becoming addicted to Internet porn: The brain's reward circuits change, and the brain learns to associate watching other people have sex on a computer screen with sexual fulfillment, and ceases looking to real live women out in the real world for this The brain's working memory becomes poorer, and individuals addicted to pornography have more and more trouble retaining information The brain's reward circuits change to more feverishly chase down rewards and care less about loss - leading addicts to chase down porn hits, and shrug over lost girlfriends, poor school or work performance, or other losses non-addicts would find distressing (and, likely, motivating to get their acts in gear) The brain's conscious control centers atrophy, as the addict chases pornography consumption impulses and does whatever he needs to do to satisfy them 25% of young men (and around 10% of young women) are addicted to the Internet and/or addicted to porn Wow, that's scary. I've never watched a woman suck on a horse's penis. Nor have I watched a man shove his penis into a transsexual's butt hole. I haven't taken the time to watch two dwarves double-team a porn star, and I've never seen anyone over 40 have sex. Even still, I noticed something curious when I started approaching women in 2005: I was not being turned on by women. I hadn't yet read Casanova's autobiography (that came a few years later), but I'd seen excerpts from it, and I distinctly remembered him salivating as he watched beautiful women walk down the street. And I could remember sitting there in the 7th grade, staring at girls' legs under the table, my penis hard as a rock in my pants, hoping that no one would notice. That didn't happen anymore, though. What had changed? THE BRAIN GETS TRICKED "I've neutered myself," I realized one day. It was true. I was totally asexual. The prettiest girls in school used to flirt with me up and down and ask me out on dates back in junior high and early high school. But my last two years of high school, there hadn't been as much of this... and I'd been watching porn. Same with college. Girls flirted with me much less. It was very frustrating, and I didn't know why. I assumed it was because I was going to a bigger school, and they didn't know me as well and hadn't had a chance to see my attractive qualities. But then I realized how distinctly un-sexual I was. I was probably a lot more sexual in the 7th grade than I was in my second year of college. I didn't show it, then, but it was bursting through. Same with my first two years of high school. And then in 1999 we got Internet, and I started finding websites like HornyAmateurLesbians.com, and watching the scrambled porn channel on cable TV. And I started self-stimulating 3 to 5 times a day. There went my sex drive. But on top of that, I also reconditioned my brain... I stopped having sexual interest in those girls around me - after all, I never even touched them, so it wasn't like they provided a realistic sexual release or anything. No... the real release was in porn. My brain learned that porn = sex, and women do NOT = sex. Women in the real world quit being a turn-on, and women in porn took their place. I did not view real women as sexual creatures... they were just asexual beings, that didn't even get a moment's thought as sex partners most of the time. One day, browsing a porn site, I realized something. I was looking at pictures of a naked girl, and thinking, "Whoa, she's hot." And then I covered up her body. The only thing I could see was her face. And I looked at her face, and I said to myself, "There are so many girls around me right now who have WAY prettier faces than her, and whose bodies are at LEAST as good... how come I'm not interested in any of them at ALL, but I'm staring at this girl WISHING I could sleep with her?!" And at that moment, I realized what I'd done to myself, and I largely abandoned porn. QUITTING YOUR PORN ADDICTION Do you want to quit? Because you're not going to quit if you don't want to quit. I could write the most compelling thing in the world for you here and you won't quit. There's not a damn thing I can say that's going to mean anything to you if you aren't genuinely fed up with watching OTHER people have sex instead of having sex YOURSELF. And that truly is the distinction. You're either doing one, or you're doing the other. You know how much porn I watch these days? I think I've watched one video of a couple of girls going at it in the past year or so. I sometimes stop by porn picture sites to admire some beautiful naked girls, but not often. Know why? Because it bores me. Didn't used to. But when you're used to having sex with pretty girls, and then you go look at a PICTURE or VIDEO of a pretty girl naked / having sex, it's kind of like... meh, who cares; my penis isn't in her. And that's the major difference between sex and pornography. Pornography is all about the visuals, with no active involvement. Sex is all about the feel. You're not watching your penis go into her and out of her most of the time during sex (save a few fun positions). Her breasts don't look especially appealing when she's lying on her back and they're all spread out and flattened across her chest instead of pointy and perky, and you're not usually looking at them anyway. And unless you're into cumshots, you don't watch sperm shoot out of you and onto her. You have to retrain your brain to quit getting off on watching sex happen, and start training it to enjoy experiencing sex... with another person. The steps are these: You must be pissed at yourself for having porn addiction. You are not getting laid because you have porn addiction, due to your brain being more interested in staring at Plain Jane naked women on a screen (who look hotter than they are because of makeup and, well, NUDITY) than significantly attractive women around you IN REAL LIFE. Important parts of your brain that make you a human instead of a chimpanzee are disappearing as a result of your porn addiction. Your working memory is shot, your impulse control is nonexistent, and your desire to do anything of any real meaning with your life is indefinitely put on hold. If this makes you feel angry, frustrated, upset, or helpless, you can do something about it. If it doesn't... well, there goes any motivation to change. Enjoy your porn, I guess. But if it does, you've got the energy for it. Cover up porn actresses bodies and just look at their faces. Are there more attractive women than her around you? I'm guessing "yes." Are their bodies as good as hers or better? I'm betting at least some of them are (though you don't see them naked because they have CLOTHES ON). Would you prefer to have those women naked in your bed for you to sleep with, instead of no women naked in your bed and you watching pretend women naked on the screen? Time to start training your brain to find real women sexy now. Now it's time to pull out that dusty old tool you stored away and almost forgot about: your imagination. You need to begin to train yourself to view the women around you right now as sex objects. You need to watch a girl walking, look at her ass, and imagine bending her over naked and mounting her. You need to look at that girl sitting down and study her legs, her arms, the mounds of her breasts. You need to imagine what her neck tastes like. Imagine her looking up at you with her big eyes while her mouth is wrapped around your cock. Imagine a porn in your head, but with the women you meet and see around you in real life, instead. This trains your brain to seek sexual satisfaction with real women, and makes you horny for girls again. Some of the first few articles on this site were about training your brain this way; see 2008's "Picture the Conquest" and 2009's "Women as Sex Objects: Supercharge Your Game." Never masturbate to porn again. I won't tell you not to masturbate at all. I will give you another rule about limiting it in a moment, but for this one, it's this: you are not allowed to masturbate while watching pornography. What if you need a little rub and tug, though... what do you do? Again, it's this: use your imagination. Imagine sex. YOU having sex. Shut your eyes, and imagine that what you feel is not your hand, but a moist, wet, welcoming vagina, of any kind of woman you want to imagine. Go wild. The point is training your brain to want real sex again, instead of finding satisfaction as a voyeur. Never masturbate or watch porn on a day you're going out to meet women. One of the things you need to be doing if you're going to start getting out regularly to meet new girls is scheduling this into your routine; e.g., "Thursday night at 10:00 PM I go to Club Red to go talk to girls," or, "Sunday afternoon at 12:30 PM I go to Union Square to do some day game and collect phone numbers." You may not masturbate or watch pornography that day. You think it will excite you to meet women? It won't. It will demotivate you, because you will not meet any horny naked women when you go out. All the women you'll see will have clothes on and they will NOT be horny women, and your brain will say, "Aw shucks, it's a lot easier at home with the Internet. Why not just call it a day now and head on back and throw on some porn?" Then you will meet no women, have no sex, and be stuck still watching porn and cumming into your palm. Just like with your porn addiction you trained your brain into being an unconscious zombie brain that finds real life women unattractive compared to fake horny naked Internet women (who really aren't all that attractive usually, but whose horniness and nakedness mask this), you can train your brain to find porn boring (because you never masturbate to it) and real women exciting (because you imagine having sex with them when you see them, when you masturbate, and eventually you start having real sex with them, too) instead. HOPE FOR THE PORN ADDICTED Even if you never read anything about porn addiction, chances are you'd come out of it naturally on your own. Most of the people with porn addiction are young guys. Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I never meet men over 25 or so who are addicted to porn. I'm aware that some of these guys exist, but more and more men tend to pull themselves out of it as they get older, and start to realize it's impeding their love lives significantly. Some of my friends are guys who were formerly porn addicted - way more than I ever was, with gangbangs, bestiality, etc. - but now aren't. And they love women, and have no trouble sleeping with girls. So if you're annoyed by this, and you want to get rid of it, and you want to have a sex drive for real women again and you want to be sexually attractive to them again, you've got the steps for that above - follow them. And if you really don't care and you're fine with watching porn and not annoyed at yourself for being porn addicted... well, you'll have a few years of sluggishness and reclusiveness and probably less success in your career or in school or in your other projects than had you given it up, and you'll have a few years of little to no success with women while you remain addicted. But chances are, even if you don't do anything, at some point on your own you're going to say, "Screw this. I'm done watching porn. Time to get out of the house and go meet some real women, in the flesh." And then life changes.

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Ever see a really beautiful woman that you'd love to meet, walking down the sidewalk… she looks like your ideal, and maybe you even imagine how well the two of you would probably hit it off together, and the laughter and smiles and romance and adventures you might share in an unwritten future… and then you just let her walk by, past you without a word, off into the sunset and into being no more than a memory to you, never to know what might have been? There is an old adage in the seduction community that goes, "It's better to be rejected than live with regret." Yet so many men invent what they might not even identify as excuses for saving their feelings and remaining in a state of inaction… and fear. Today I'm going to put a magnifying glass on these weak excuses and why you should throw them out the window to make substantial changes in your life. When I first started actively improving my skills with women and trying to meet them outside of my social circle or just relying on blind luck, I would think about the seduction community saying all of the time. And I would repeat it to myself whenever I went out and thought about the possibility of seeing a cute girl. Which was pretty much a 99% probability. And when it happened, there I would stand, in a grocery store or at the bus station, mere feet away from a pretty girl, telling myself that it's better to get rejected than to go home regretting having done nothing. And there I would remain standing, stiff as a log…telling myself that "it's better to get rejected, it's better to get rejected…" as the pretty girl would walk away, leaving me frozen in my place…never to be seen again. THE PROBLEM EXPOSED When I was in college, I was a pretty good student. Not amazing, but this was mostly because I chose to be one of those "too cool for school" guys who would freestyle and party and act like he never had to do homework to succeed (when in reality I'd stay up until 5 am on a near nightly basis scrambling to get all of my work done). One day, I met with one of my professors to get back a paper that was a pretty large chunk of my grade. I hadn't done well on it. At all. And we proceeded to talk about how he had given me pointers throughout the semester and how I hadn't really implemented his tips. I apologized and said I'd rewrite it, or do better on the next one, or whatever I could say to get out of such a tense meeting. As I reached to grab my paper from the desk, he quickly grabbed it. With a firm grip on the paper, he stared dead into my eyes. He then said, "Your problem is that you don't feel bad long enough. And until you fix that, you're never going to do better. Not on the next paper, not on the final, not ever." And then he let go, and let me leave without another word. What did he mean by that? Wasn't I supposed to get over it as fast as possible and try harder on the next one? Why would a man I respect utter such words? I mulled over what he had said for an hour or so. But then - as I had so many times before - I put the paper away, got dinner or went out, and quickly forgot about it. And for the rest of the semester, after pulling constant all-nighters and giving poor efforts, I did just as poorly on each subsequent paper. THE TURNING POINT I don't remember what particular instance caused a shift in my mental framework. Maybe it was seeing a gorgeous girl on the bus smiling at me and looking down, only to walk away visibly disappointed - and even lingering a bit - when I did nothing. Maybe it was running into her again on the street that day, and watching her eyes light up, willingly anticipating my redemption; only for me to do nothing… again. And to spend the entire day feeling like garbage, for the longest period of time that I could remember. Maybe it was me applying for a work program that I really cared about, having been satisfied that the 22 year college journey was over, and I was finally free to live life on my terms; only for me to be rejected due to my inadequate college performance and less-than-full-effort essay. Maybe it was being fully inspired by this website after being mentally destroyed by a girl I was obsessed with. So inspired that I wanted to write here, and sending Chase my first potential piece; only to be initially rejected because my article wasn't well thought out enough (luckily he was nice enough to give me a second chance). Whatever it was, at some point I felt so bad that I never wanted to feel that away again. And then, I made some serious changes. I started working harder than I ever have. I developed powerful habits. And though I certainly didn't approach every single pretty girl I saw, my approach numbers were often in the dozens when I went out. It took me several months to understand what my professor had been trying to tell me that day. And although it was too late for me to make the change in college, it was just in time for me to set my course straight for the rest of my life. And this is the problem with many guys who have approach anxiety: you simply don't feel bad long enough to make a significant change in your life. You see girl, get nervous around girl, fail to approach girl, feel bad about girl temporarily (maybe even grumble to a friend), and then forget about girl. And you trap yourself in this cycle… over, and over, and over again. When I started my first business venture, I held on to the rejection letter that I had gotten from the work program, and looked at it every single day to remind myself of how terrible I felt, and how hard I needed to work. If I ever got a really bad case of approach anxiety, I would write down exactly what the girl looked like, where it happened, and what I could've done in the situation. Then I would look at it prior to every outing. So, if you want to overcome your anxiety, you need to make it visceral for yourself. You need to feel it. You have to feel it so much that you never want to feel that way again. But as men it's so easy for us to create barriers and excuses in our lives to help us avoid rejection and delude ourselves into thinking that we don't "want" or "need" new girls. So, I'm going to lay out each of these sorry excuses, and then talk about making real changes in your life. Below, I've listed out 9 common reasons men give to not go get the things they really want with the women they really want. Unless you're an approach machine - and even then, I'd bet at least occasionally even if you are - you're almost certainly going to see at least a few of these that gel with your own thoughts and actions. Knowing is half the battle. > 1: CLASSIFYING WOMEN AS "SHALLOW" OR "MEAN" These sweeping generalizations are used by the guys who think that you shouldn't need to learn game to get girls. They've had one or two bad experiences (and I do mean one or two) and they've decided that all girls are crass/ shallow and don't see all of the great things that the guys they reject (that is, they themselves) have going for them. So when they have the opportunity to talk to a girl, they usually get on some sort of soapbox about how terrible women are. But really this comes from a very deep insecurity. These men fear women because they understand nothing about how women actually think; and rather than face their ignorance and risk going through the unavoidable rejection and failures of improving their skills, they delude themselves into thinking that they are "above" this whole mating game. No one is above the mating game. It's at the essence of why we exist. > 2: GOING BACK TO OLD (BAD) RELATIONSHIPS I'm of the opinion that if a relationship didn't work for one reason or another, it's never going to work. It's like trying to repair broken glass. Yet so many men trap themselves in destructive situations because of a lack of abundance mentality. I've been guilty of this a few times myself in the past. Rather than get a new glass - i.e., putting in the effort with a new girl - guys see the potential failure and instead just sleep with ex-girlfriends or other past lovers. Or even worse, just call or text them for the emotional validation. Once they get said validation, they see no point in "risking it" with new girls, even though they know the OLD girls aren't right for them. Earlier I talked about the old seduction community adage. What I've come to realize is that it's not that guys don't want to talk to girls; it's that they actually believe that their efforts will be futile. So it's easy to quickly forget because they just tell themselves, "Eh, it wouldn't have worked anyway, so I shouldn't beat myself up." With old girls, they've already approved of you. You have little chance of rejection. Why put yourself on the line for something that stands a high chance of not working out? Relationships are always better the second time around anyway, right? > 3: STAYING IN UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS There are many valid reasons to call it quits with a girl. In reality, 95% of the relationships you'll be in won't end in marriage, so most relationships are a learning experience anyway. But men get caught up in the fear of the unknown and the emotional security that their relationship offers them. And notice I didn't say that their girlfriend offers them. Because often I see guys take so much abuse and drama from their girlfriends. avoid meeting women You fall in love with the idea of having someone to care for and be cared for by, and you wouldn't risk chancing it in the cruel, uncertain world. You would much rather stick with the abuse and fighting and continue holding on to your relationship crutch. > 4: UNNECESSARILY DEVALUING PARTICULAR WOMEN You know these guys. Maybe you are one of these guys. These are the guys who say things like "I could definitely get that girl, but… she's not that hot / she's too skinny / she looks like she has a boyfriend / she's not my type." You often hear them talking about how they "could" get girls, but you never see them actually "getting" them or "trying" to get them. This behavior is usually a result of men being afraid of losing face in front of their friends. Maybe they are all guys who think that men should never be rejected if they have looks or money or attitude, and rather than chance incurring that shame or humiliation, they endlessly talk up their theoretical abilities. And usually that's all their abilities are. Theoretical. And if you want to theoretically get women, feel free to stop reading right here. > 5: WATCHING PORN This leads me to my next point… porn. Chase wrote an article a while back about breaking porn addiction and sleeping with real life girls instead. Watching porn is one of the most common addictions in the West, and especially in America. Why go out and "game" girls when you can have any beautiful girl or two you want at your fingertips? And she'll be in any place and fulfill any fantasy you want. Well, read Chase's article about the psychological implications of porn addiction. This idea can even apply to excessive sexting. No man should invest his existence in a digital life. Machines can't bring you a wife, or family, or even legitimate connection with another human being. Only other human beings can do that, and unless you're out in the real world, you'll miss out on this important aspect of living. > 6: ONLINE DATING AND SOCIAL MEDIA There's nothing wrong with looking online for a viable woman, but the whole point of the service is to facilitate in-person interactions. Many guys use online dating and social media as a shield for not having to get rejected in person. So what if you read some text about how a girl doesn't want to see you? You can just close the window and go back to watching porn. But if you haven't handled your conversational skills/fundamentals, seeing women in your inbox is the farthest you're ever going to get. > 7: NOT BEING IN THE RIGHT "ZONE" Mm, maybe you don't have the right outfit. Maybe you didn't listen to your pump-up song before going out. Maybe you didn't bring your wingman. Maybe it's a combination of things. But for one reason or another, you are simply not prepared to talk to girls. Just like you weren't quite prepared last time. Or the time before that. Or that one time where you were prepared, but just weren't "feeling" any of the girls. Because everyone knows that girls expect you to be pumped up, in your perfect outfit, with your ideal wingman, in the ideal place, wearing your lucky necklace to give you any kind of chance with them, right? > 8: PAYING FOR SEX Sex tourism is prevalent in many of the Southeast Asian countries that I've visited in the past. Men fly from all over the world and pay top dollar (or… should I really say "bottom dollar"?) for high quality girls (or… should I say often men dressed up as or surgically transformed into girls?). Why waste time pumping girls full of drinks when you can get the milk straight from the cow? It's not like it's expensive, or offers no long term value, or could be dangerous, or wouldn't be something you'd proudly boast about to people you're trying to impress. > 9: VIDEO GAMES AND TV Finally, why try to sleep with girls when you could at last reach that level 69 General badge in Call of Duty (irony in the number?)? Or why improve your game when you could watch the latest episode of Parks and Rec? The average American spends 9 years in front of a TV screen anyway; why not join the crowd? Now that I've laid out the sorry excuses, let me talk about why you should toss them out the window. Believe it or not, I am a writer. And one of the most important aspects of being a writer is the ability to take criticism. Does it hurt the first time? Absolutely. Does it feel like you are exposing a delicate part of yourself to the world that most men don't often show, only to have someone tear it apart? Absolutely. But does it hurt the 50th time? Not as much. Does it hurt the 200th time? Not really. One of the main rules for critiques among writers is that you never make the critique about the person. The critique is always about the work that is presented and what does and doesn't fit well. I can honestly say that when it comes to seduction, 95% of girls adhere to this same principle as an unspoken rule. Believe it or not, women fear rejection more than men (owing to the fact that they are not the natural aggressors in seduction). Besides being pretty naturally socially restrained, they fully understand how much courage it takes to walk up to a complete stranger and try to seduce them. So even if you're approach is awkward, too strong, or just plain terrible, girls will never verbally attack your manhood or make you slink away in shame. Maybe if you're a serious creeper. But even then… they will probably just roll out with their friends and talk about how creepy you were in private, or make one of their orbiting guys come to their rescue. They really don't want to hurt your feelings. Women react to how you present yourself. Not you. Because they know nothing about you. You could be the smoothest guy in the world, but if you completely fumble an approach, a girl will walk away thinking you're the most awkward guy she's met in a while (at least until she soon forgets your existence). On the other hand, you could be Steve Erkel, but if you come off like Jaleel White (the actor who played him, who is actually quite smooth), a woman would think you're a regular Casanova (at least until she tests you and possibly finds out otherwise). I've only ever seen a girl completely blow out a guy 2 or 3 times in my entire life. And those were more because the guys were seriously threatening their social status than making attacks on their character or even making an awkward approach. Seduction, just like all human social relations, is a matter of appearance. So just like someone telling me that a certain story section is awkward and doesn't communicate my idea well, rejection is a woman's way of simply telling you that part of your game is awkward and doesn't communicate your dominance and/or sexiness well. So stop catastrophizing. When you get rejected enough times, you start to realize that you need rejection as a beginner and even intermediate. That's right; you need rejection. Just like a person looking to master a skill or a craft looks to the feedback of others and their results to improve his form and execution, you need rejection to reveal your sticking points and other weaknesses in your process or execution. And nothing will help you learn faster than learning from people who have made the mistakes for you. That's why this site exists. That's why Chase wrote his book and has his Mastery Package. The learning curve has been made so much easier for you; all you need to do is collect data points for yourself and figure out where your strengths and weaknesses lie. But only being rejected can show you that. BREAK THROUGH THE BARRIERS After you pass the initial start point and begin improving your skills, you can let go of the small losses and focus on the big picture. I often like to use sports analogies for this sort of thing, so here is another one. Think about a game of basketball. If you're in the flow of a game and you take a high-percentage shot and miss, the coach will pat you on the back and tell you to forget about it. But, if you're not a good shooter, and you take a wild shot at a key time, and miss or make it, the coach will lay into you. He'll lay in so hard that you never want to think about taking such a stupid shot again. It's the same with seduction. Unless you're the Kobe, LeBron or Durant of seduction, you need to fix the glaring holes before you can go for the half court shot. And just like shooting being a basic skill in b-ball, overcoming a fear of rejection is a basic skill in seduction. The key is to remove the barriers and excuses. Give yourself no other choice. Make sure your friends are people who will support you when you get rejected. And if you still can't start approach, tell those friends to take away your phone and computer, or whatever it is in your life that truly matters to you, until you've made a certain number of approaches and worked to conquer your fear. Imagine you were looking for a job. Maybe you were putting some effort into it, but you spent a good deal of time on Facebook or watching cat videos. Now, imagine that your landlord walked into your apartment, and told you that he can't have unemployed people living in his building. So if you didn't get a job in a week, you're out on the street. How motivated would you be? Would continue to waste time on Facebook? Would you sit on your couch telling yourself you'd look for work tomorrow? Now… imagine that you landed a few quality interviews, started meeting some of your potential co-workers, got a good job, and then started bonding with people at a happy hour or two… would you feel excited? Would you feel the anticipation of not only getting paid, but exposing yourself to great people? The initial motivation is not the entire point. The initial motivation is the catalyst to transform your life, but the growth and the enjoyment come from the process and small victories. Soon you forget about the initial motivation, and realize that you've simply achieved by taking action. The same stands for overcoming your fear of rejection. You have to remove all of the barriers and give yourself no choice but activate the catalyst. DOES IT ALL JUST CLICK? When I was a beginner at martial arts, the first thing I was told was that I would have to learn how to walk, and that that would be the hardest part of the beginning stages. "Impossible," I thought. I'd been walking all my life, how could it possibly be that difficult? But there I was… on the training mat… every morning. Looking like a damn fool because I couldn't master three steps. Those three steps were together one of the most difficult things I had ever tried to learn. The weeks passed, and I kept rehashing the same lesson over and over again. And getting criticized by the master over and over again. And then one day… I was standing in my room listening to music, and I started martial arts walking to the beat without thinking about it. I hadn't even realized what had happened for several minutes. And the next day, I was "walking" along, and finally demonstrated my readiness to learn other things. You don't realize the steady progress you make each and every day until the day that it just "clicks." It's not that it happened instantaneously; it's that your mind simply doesn't pay attention to the little details. Maybe at first you'll be sweating and nervous when you see a pretty girl. But then maybe one day you'll be able to say hi. And then maybe one day you'll be able to banter. And then maybe one day you'll ask her home - analyzing your successes and many failures along the way. And then maybe one day… you'll face a really harsh rejection… and simply smile, wondering what you were so afraid of when you first started. So remove the barriers. Drop the excuses. And as always… Carpe diem.

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## Something I like prescribing for newer guys as a very low-pressure but high-impact and really quite easy opener is something I've begun referring to as "Indirect Direct", for lack of a better term. Your run of the mill, general indirect opening - or, engaging a woman in conversation under pretenses other than that you're interested in her - is a common choice among men. It feels less scary and less like the man is putting himself on the line. It's also far less effective than your run of the mill, general direct opening. Women respond best to men who state - either explicitly or implicitly - their interest. Men using indirect do not do this. And, while they may not realize that women realize what they're doing, unless a girl is completely clueless, chances are she probably does. And the man looks less for having masked his interest. He looks scared. My concept of indirect direct goes back a few years to an opener I got from a very knowledgeable fellow named Glenn. Glenn's opener went like this: you'd walk up to a girl and ask her where something very close and very obvious was. So, if the two of you happened to be standing right next to a Starbucks, you'd open her with, "Excuse me, can you tell me where the Starbucks is?" You then would proceed into a routine of hiring or firing her as your tour guide for the city. Me not being much for routines, I liked the opening part of this sequence nonetheless, and adapted it to more closely suit my own purposes. My adapted opener looked like this: [to girl next to Starbucks] Me: Excuse me, can you tell me where there's a Starbucks around here? Girl: Uhhh… right there. Me: I know, I'm kidding. I just thought you were cute and wanted to come say hi. I'm Chase. This opener works amazingly well, and it's amazingly easy to do. Women are always charmed. Why's it such an easy opener, and why does it work so well? It's because it's such a good mix of good things: > You begin with something disarming that lowers her guard > You confuse her momentarily > You turn her confusion into laughing at herself for falling for it > You then show genuine interest and confidence in opening her direct Powerful combination. Once I had this one running, I began devising some variants. Here are a few examples of such to get you started: [to woman leaning against bar] Me: Hey, you're taking up all the prime real estate. Girl: What? / [or clever remark back] Me: I'm just kidding. I thought you were cute and I wanted to come introduce myself. I'm Chase. [to woman waiting in line] Me: Do you mind if I cut in front of you? I hate waiting in line. Girl: Uh, no / Okay, go ahead. Me: Relax, I'm kidding / Thanks, but I'm just kidding. I thought you were cute and wanted to introduce myself since we're stuck waiting here anyway. I'm Chase. There's a lot you can do with this. Very easy opener, very low pressure, but still quite effective. If there's one style I think is great for both new guys and veterans alike, indirect direct is it. Have fun with it!

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How do you say "hi" to a new woman? One of the most tried and true of the PUA openers around is the direct opener. Direct, or "genuine interest" as it's also called, centers around, well, directly stating your genuine interest in a woman. For instance, you think she looks breathtaking in the flowing, summery dress... you tell her. Of course, it helps if you have a standard form you can rely on to place your direct opener in so you have a rough idea what you're going to say everytime you use it. This helps you crowd out anxiety and be able to slide right into opening a new woman pretty much on demand. All you've got to be able to do is say what you already know how to say. This excerpt from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams is going to take you straight into the heart of communicating genuine interest in women with a direct opener and give you the basics you'll want to follow... as well as the mindset that comes with. "Some ground rules for genuine interest are as follows: Ground your opener. Begin with something to ground your opening statement, such as, "I saw you walking here, and I just had to come tell you that…" or, "You know, I saw you sitting here, and I had to come and say that…" Compliment her on something genuinely. If she has nice hair, compliment her on her hair. If she has an exquisite sense of style, compliment her on that. If her walk is absolutely killer - tell her. Whatever it is, make sure it's genuine. Use interesting words. A tip that's also good for improving the attractiveness of your conversation in general, "use interesting words" is a piece of advice that's particularly of vital importance to a genuine interest opener. Telling a woman her hair looks nice has got nothing on telling her she has striking features or gorgeous hair. Follow up your opener with an introduction. After you've given a girl a great compliment, even if she likes you right off the bat she may not know what to say. Rather than put her in the position of awkwardly fishing for words, or blurting out a clumsy "thank you," offer your name instead. Above all, remember that the object of your opener is to make her feel special. Every woman wants to feel admired and appreciated for something unique and special about her. Your goal with genuine interest is to make her feel that way." The direct opener is really about letting a woman know you like her right away, right off the bat, and making no quibbles or bones about it. You exude confidence when you use this means of introducing yourself, but even more than that, you take a "devil may care" approach that women absolutely love in men. Sure, she may turn you down... but hey, that's no big deal. The far worse thing would be for you to never make your interest clear and sit on your hands forever, and that's not you, you're telling her. Direct openers work best during the daytime and in situations where you clearly and unavoidably are talking to a woman because you're interested and there's no social context readily available... but the work great by night too, even in the most deafening, pulse-pounding nightclubs or alcohol-infused taverns. While you might be a little afraid to give this one a try at first, you'll soon find it's one of the most versatile openers at your disposal, and the one that gets you the strongest positive beginnings with women.

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## When to use Direct Openers Versus Situational Openers Have had an exhausting past few days, just constantly tired and running all over the place, but wanted to get some thoughts up here, so this'll be just a short quick post. There's a saying that goes, "If you want to learn, teach," and one of the cool things about teaching something as dynamic as seduction is that it compels you to continually be refining things, questioning things, and identifying new strategies and techniques and then asking yourself why they work. I'll get asked things I find I know the answer to, but had never thought of or considered before having been asked about, so it's almost like I hear my response and think, Oh, hey, that's neat. Never thought about that before. Sounds weird, but it's pretty cool actually. Anyway, wanted to share a thought from yesterday. That thought is on: WHEN TO USE DIRECT OPENERS, AND WHEN TO USE SITUATIONAL OPENERS Direct (or genuine interest) is arguably the best style of opener available out there, but there are times when it doesn't come off right. This is something I've known instinctively for a long time but hadn't thought about consciously until a guy asked me when you should use either yesterday after I'd finished speaking. Quick and dirty definitions on each: Direct is opening with a genuine compliment, such as, "I saw you standing here and had to come tell you that you are incredibly cute. I'm Chase." Situational is opening with a casual, preferably slightly humorous, conversational remark about your surroundings, like turning to the girl next to you and saying, "This band is amazing," when actually the band sucks. Fact is, each is more appropriate than the other in different situations. To contrast, imagine you run up to a girl on the street, pre-open her, and then go into a situational opener. Unless you're running up to tell her you found her wallet or there's a tarantula on her back, it's going to be very odd and out of place that you ran up to her to spark a conversation. And neither the missing wallet or the tarantula on the back is going to get you into the kind of conversation you want to get into. Conversely, imagine you're sitting next to a girl on a bus for a few minutes, then turn to her and tell her she has the most incredible sense of style you've seen all day. Wow… awkward, right? Why is that? Both of these tie back to the Law of Least Effort. Basically, if you like a girl so much that you feel compelled to open her direct, you'll be investing more effort; whereas if you are just sparking a casual conversation, you'll put far less effort in. So, you wouldn't chase a girl down on the street or walk across the bar to meet her just to spark a casual conversation; you'd do that with someone close by to you. Likewise, you wouldn't sit there casually and wait two minutes to open a girl direct if you liked her so much you felt compelled to go open her direct; it feels weird if you do. Therefore, the rules for direct opening versus situational opening end up looking like this: If you are opening a girl quickly whom you just walked up to and are just meeting, you should use direct. Especially if she knows you put a lot of effort into coming up to her to meet her; you must use direct or it feels strange and unnatural. If you are opening a girl slowly and casually whose proximity you're already in, you should use situational. Otherwise, like that girl on the bus, she's going to feel cornered (since she's settled in) and it's also going to be weird that you waited to open direct, and it ends up feeling calculated and not genuine. Follow these rules and I'm confident you'll get better mileage out of your direct and situational openers. If all else fails, there's a post up on here called "Troubleshooting Your Opening" that might be worth a read-through. Anyway, short post today, but hopefully it's useful to some.

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## Book Excerpts: Women Love Sex There are a few key differences between a man who's confident and experienced with women and one who's neither confident nor experienced with women. One of those differences is the confident, experienced man's approach and demeanor: he knows how to act in a way that will most attract women to him. Another of these is his process: no longer uncertain of what he needs to do, he single-mindedly pursues his objective with each new woman - finding a way to take this beautiful, scintillating creature as his lover. Another still is his mindset: unlike the unconfident and inexperienced man, this man knows, with unwavering certainty, that women love sex. Or at the very least, he knows they love it with him. While you'll rarely hear me harp on this blog or in any of the products offered here on mindsets - I typically believe it far more important that you start taking the right steps, and the mindsets will fall into place - this is one I think it's worth devoting a little time to, at least for you to hear it. The main benefit to hearing about mindsets you should adopt, I find, is that they're there, hovering in the back of your head, just waiting for you to prove them right - and then they become yours, too. That's why today I've published this excerpt from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams about the mindset of "women love sex" - along with the things I've seen that've assured me this is true. I want you to get at least some exposure to this idea... and then, as you get out there and have a better and better sex life yourself, you'll start finding your own evidence to back this up for yourself, too. "Women love sex. They love it. If it makes you uncomfortable to read that, or you think it isn't true - good. That's why I'm telling you. When they have a chance at intimacy with an attractive man who knows what he's doing, it can be four or five times more pleasurable for them than it can ever be for a man. And just like men, women get horny and go through dry spells and get desperate for the release of relations and have one-night stands with people they aren't all that into sometimes and allow themselves to be swept off their feet and taken off into a whirlwind romance that "just happens." A lot of guys don't believe this. A lot of guys think things like, "Women don't really like sex," or, "Women have to really like a guy to sleep with him," or, "Women won't sleep with a guy until they know they're in a relationship." Or, they hold an even more insidious belief: "Yeah, women hook up fast with some guys, but I'm just not the kind of guy they do that with." Take all these beliefs and throw them in the garbage because, well, that's where they belong. Here's what I know: I've had women tell me they were traditional and didn't have sex before marriage, who then went on to get intimate with me on the first date. I've had married women and women with boyfriends sleep with me quickly and easily. I've had women become intimate with me an hour or less after we first met. Women are not the chaste virginal saints society often portrays them as. Women aren't perfect models of restraint and virtue. Rather, they're regular people just like men." Keep in mind, there was once a time when I too thought that women needed to really like a guy a lot before they slept with him. Looking back now, I realize I only thought that because I didn't understand women that well and there was a big "wall of uncertainty" between my understanding (or lack of understanding) of women and what their actual real world thoughts, feelings, and behaviors were. Women love sex. That's not a bad thing, like some men think if they've gone a long time without sex only to find that in fact women are having more sex than they imagined (as are other many other men). All it means is that a little tweaking is in order to bring your mentality more in line with the way of the world, and your behavior and action patterns too. Before you know it, you're one of those guys women love sex with - a lot - as well.

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## What Women Want It's an age old question - one that most men spend their lives trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out. What do women want? Books and films have been made about it; men have spent fortunes in pursuit of it; reputations have been staked upon and lost in the timeless search for the answer. Even the venerable (now largely-discredited) Sigmund Freud, who claimed to have spent thirty years peering into the "feminine soul", ultimately found himself asking, close to his death, "What does a woman want?" That's the point of this article. I'm here today to discuss with you what women want. If you ask a woman what she wants - or what women want in general - she'll respond with a variety of possible answers. > "What women want is a good guy to take care of them," she may tell you. > "What women want is a confident man who makes them feel good," she might say. > "What women want is to feel loved and free," she could offer. And all of those are accurate, to a certain degree; but they all only begin to scratch the surface of what women want. Women want a lot more than what those statements might imply; in fact, give a woman a man who meets every requirement she says she wants, and I guarantee you that in two to four years, she'll have grown increasingly bored and unsatisfied with him. That doesn't mean she'll stray from him; that doesn't mean she'll leave him. That doesn't even mean she'll want to. But it does mean that she'll end up not having what she wants after all - because if she did have what she wanted, she wouldn't be bored or unsatisfied... would she? But if those things women say they want won't keep them happy forever, then what on Earth will? To understand the answer to that question, first let's try to get an idea of how women function in and view relationships. HOW WOMEN VIEW RELATIONSHIPS It's probably not politically correct to say so, and telling you this isn't going to win me any points with feminists, but women in relationships are followers. They naturally fall into the follower role. What that means is that they provide the support role, and they also look to the individual in the leadership role (the man) to provide answers, guidance, decision-making, and fairness. They also rely on him to make them happy and content, since as followers relying on someone else to make the main decisions that affect their lives, their ability to have their needs met, and happiness fostered and upheld, is to a large extent dependent upon his actions. When a woman is happy in a relationship, she tells her man he's doing a great job. When she's unhappy in a relationship, she tells him he's not making her happy. And when she strays from a man she's been seeing, she tells him it's his fault. And, to be honest, ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, I agree with that view; she's right. When relationships fail, it's nearly always the man's fault. Relationships are a partnership - but they're an unequal partnership. Men are responsible for their women's happiness. Men are responsible for keeping their women satisfied and content. And when men lose women, whether to boredom, anger, apathy, or other men, they usually have no one to blame but themselves. Somewhere along the line, a woman's man has failed to meet her needs, and because of that, she left. Most Western women will not outright agree that men are leaders in relationships and women are followers. Most of them will tell you that a relationship is a partnership between equals, because Western society has tended for the past fifty years or so to view relationships this way. If you look at Western society before about 1960 or so - and if you look at any other society on this planet right now, today - the belief is completely different, however. In every other society today and throughout history, except for ours right now, men are and were viewed as the leaders in relationships, and women the followers. Women are typically protected, and have full rights under the law to own property, to separate from husbands they no longer wish to be with, and all other rights accorded to men, but from a cultural standpoint it's simply understood that it's the man who leads the relationship. Now, it might be that all other societies in the world - and our own society, pre-1960 - in fact, all of humanity since the dawn of civilization, with the exclusion of the Western world post-1960 - has absolutely no idea what it's talking about and simply doesn't understand male-female dynamics... or, it might just be that our own society has gotten a little carried away with the gender-equality issue, and forgotten that being equal does not equal being the same. Men and women are different. And men and women play different roles in relationships, just like they play different roles pretty much everywhere else. The societies that understand these differences, accept them, and embrace them tend to have far lower divorce rates and more effective and satisfying long-term partnerships between couples. The chief point of our discussion here on gender roles in relationships, though, is that it's a man's responsibility to give his woman what she needs. Any man who does not believe that, or decides to shirk his responsibility to his woman because he doesn't think he should have to do anything other than whatever it is he wants to do, is probably not going to hold onto his girl for all that long. Because the woman plays the role of follower, she is dependent on her man to live up to this responsibility - or else she becomes bored, resentful, discontent, or unhappy. But in order to do that, to give his woman what she wants, a man's got to have some idea of what women want in the first place. And most men don't have a clue. FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND PROVIDERS After we ended our 2½ year relationship together, an ex-girlfriend of mine went on a tear, dating a bunch of men, hooking up with some very quickly for casual short term flings or one-night stands, and taking it far more slowly with others, gradually building up her relationships with them. When discussing the differences in her behavior and trying to get her to see the disparity in how she views some men, compared to others, I asked her why she hooked up fast with several men she liked but not with other men she was just as excited about upon first meeting. "I don't care about him," she said regarding a man she had a brief sexual encounter with. "He didn't mean anything to me." "OK," I said, "but what about that guy," I asked her, referring to a guy she claimed to like a lot but didn't go very far with, despite his efforts. "Why didn't you sleep with him?" "He is a very good person," she said. "He wanted a more serious relationship than I could give him; I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Very nice; very well-behaved. He's the kind of person I would consider a relationship with." She gave the first guy sex because she didn't care about him and just wanted to use him for gratification. But the man she liked more - the one she'd consider a relationship with - that man she denied sex to, because she had feelings for him and wanted to keep him around for something more meaningful than a quick, insignificant fling. This is just one conversation with one woman, but it neatly sums up the way that the vast, vast majority of women view men. Few of them will admit to it to anyone but their closest and most trusted friends; because of society's bias against sexually liberated women (even in today's politically correct environment, where we are all supposedly "equal"), a woman who admits enjoying flings, hook-ups, and casual sex is often branded a "slut" and looked down upon. Other women will attack her, claiming that they, of course, would never engage in such activities; men will be dismissive toward her, valuing her only for physical enjoyment and not as relationship material. It's in most women's interests to be very guarded about their sexuality, even in our "liberated" day and age, and it's easy to see why. The basics of male-female mate selection still haven't changed; when it comes to relationships, men want women who are hard to get and very selective about whom they get intimate with, and women are careful to make sure men they want relationships with see them that way. But the fact is that all but the most sexually repressed women enjoy casual sex with men who fall into the lover category, and most women have three primary categories that they fit men they want to keep in their lives into. Those categories consist of: > Friends > Lovers > Providers Friends are the men women feel contribute to their lives, but they have no romantic or sexual interest in. Women have a great knack for holding onto men who make their lives better; maybe those men help them at work, or give them rides in their cars, or buy them food or gifts, or give them good conversation. It's rare for women to intentionally lead these men on; oftentimes, men in the "friends" category are thinking that if they are nice enough to women, they'll get a relationship or physical intimacy eventually. But the women these men are spending time with usually are really, honestly viewing them as "just friends" and are oblivious to any ulterior motives of the men they slot into the "friends" category. Lovers are the men women feel sexual and romantic attraction to, but see no long-term potential with, whether that's because they live too far apart (if one of them is on holiday when they meet, for instance), because the man in question is attached (he has a girlfriend or wife), or because he has some other strike against him (he's unemployed, not intelligent or educated enough, etc.). Because they see no long term potential in him, but feel attraction for him, women give themselves permission to engage in quick sex, seeing no need to prolong gratification since there's no reason to try and rope him into a relationship. Providers are the men women feel attraction to, and see long-term potential with, as well. Even if a woman finds a man incredibly sexually attractive, she'll often control herself and put the brakes on if she also thinks he's a strong candidate for becoming a future boyfriend or husband. Most women know, whether through instinct or experience, that men value women more highly whom it takes them a greater amount of time and effort to become intimate with - so they make these men wait, in the hopes of achieving some level of commitment and increasing their desirability to these men as relationship material. Women want all of these men in their lives. For almost any woman, if she could find one man who met all the requirements of a friend, a lover, and a provider, he'd be her dream guy. He'd be Mr. Right. Most women are willing to settle for less, though, and get other needs met elsewhere, or forego the satisfaction of a few needs if most of the rest are being met. By understanding what women look for in friends, lovers, and providers, though, we can begin to close in on what women want, exactly; the qualities, traits, and attributes women select for, and how important they are. So, broken down by category, here are the traits women look for in each kind of man they include in their lives: Friends are: > Thoughtful, supportive, and considerate > Good listeners > Accepting and non-judgmental > Uplifting and encouraging Lovers are: > Exciting and stimulating > Challenging > Physically and romantically aggressive and affectionate > Dominant and sexy > Charming and witty > Fun, different, refreshing; a break from the ordinary Providers are a combination of the qualities of Friends and Lovers - although most of those qualities are demonstrated to a lesser degree in Providers than they are in Friends and Lovers. Providers also are: > Stable, secure, and reliable > High status / financially successful / resourceful Men in pursuit of women typically adopt a strategy that accentuates the qualities of one of these categories. The men who try to get girls by becoming their friends first act like nice guys, lend them their ear, and are kind and understanding. The men who seek to get girls by becoming their lovers are charming and aggressive, and stimulate women's emotions and make an effort to sleep with them quickly. And the men who try to win women over by proving what excellent relationship material they will be prefer to wine and dine them, buy them expensive gifts, and show what dependable choices they will make. The big secret that none of these men ever seems to realize is this: being just one of those types of guys isn't enough. That's right - it's not enough to just be a woman's friend. Or lover. Or provider. Women eventually get bored with the friends and providers and long for the excitement of a lover. But once they've had a lover for a while, they begin to long for the comfort of a friend, or the security and stability of a provider. There is this constant shifting of desires toward the thing they do not have - and the shifting never stops. A wise man I respect very much once told me: "I don't believe it's possible for a woman to ever be 100% happy." I'd agree with that - although I'd probably also include men in that statement as well. As living beings - dynamic, changing, evolving creatures - we constantly yearn to better and improve our situation, and we constantly look for the things we're missing, and the things others think we're missing. Eventually, we acclimate; we become accustomed to the good things we have and take those things for granted; and we begin to focus on and desire the things we lack. A woman who has a man who takes her to fancy dinners and buys her nice clothes and provides her a great lifestyle, but is never around and always at work, will begin to long for a man who can give her attention, affection, and time. And a woman who has a man who gives her time and affection but is unable to promise her stability or security will eventually begin to long for a man who can. No matter how amazing a man is, his woman will never be 100% happy. But that doesn't mean a woman can't be 99% happy. Because if we know that women aren't happy with a guy who falls into just one of those categories above, we also know something else by deduction. We know they want a guy who's more than just fitting the mold. In other words, what women want - what they really want - is everything in all three of those lists above. Women want the traits possessed by friends, lovers, and providers. And one other thing. Once women get an amazing guy, they need to be reminded of it - they need to be shaken out of acclimation and prevented from taking their amazing man for granted. BECOMING WHAT WOMEN WANT Becoming what women want is no easy task. Most men target one category and establish themselves in it - they become good at making friends with women, for instance, or get good at being the sexy guy that women want to have a fling with, or become the guy who competes for women on traditional dates and romantic excursions. But for a man to really give a woman what she wants, he's got to do more than be just one of the men from those categories. He's got to do his best to be all of them. And he's got to make sure his woman doesn't forget that he is all of them - which means her friends and family need to be reinforcing how great he is, and she needs to be at least a little aware of the risk that she may lose him if she starts taking him for granted. Which means she should ideally see women flirting with him occasionally, and they will have to fight and make up occasionally. That probably sounds like a tall order, and it is. It's a tough pill to swallow. Most men who read this are going to say to themselves, "Not a chance. There's no way I'm going to waste my time trying to be the perfect man just to get a woman. I can get women just fine!" But we're not talking about getting women. We're talking about keeping women. Long-term. Indefinitely. We're talking about becoming the kind of man who can keep a woman around as long as he wants her. And to become that kind of man, you need to become the kind of man that women want. So what do women want? Women want, plainly and simply, a friend, lover, and provider all in one. One man, with all of those characteristics. Every woman's dream man. And this man must challenge her, win her friends and family over to his side, and create a "bubble" of "us vs. the world" - create a feeling that the two of them are close and inseparable and working together through thick and thin, all the while always knowing - and keeping her aware, in the back of her head - that he is able to separate, if absolutely necessary, and be perfectly fine. To the men who say you can simply follow one path, whether that of the friend, or the lover, or the provider - you're wrong. The men who try to just be women's friends forget that women are sexual creatures who need strong, dominant men to satisfy them. The men who try just to be lovers to women forget that women eventually long for security and stability, and no matter how much excitement and passion a man offers her, eventually a woman will leave if she becomes convinced she won't get the security she needs from him. And the men who try only to be providers forget about the consideration and encouragement the men who are friends offer to women, and the adventure and primal gratification the men who are lovers do. If a man only wants to follow one path, and is content having women who are "happy enough" for a while before moving on to new women, I suggest the path of the lover. It will provide the quickest and most satisfying short term results of any of the three paths. If a man wants a healthy relationship over the long-term with a woman, however, he must seek to combine the three paths and offer everything offered with each. And he must always remember to include growth, change, and challenge in the relationship to keep things fresh and keep his woman engaged in it. People resist routine with all their might; and the more passionate the woman, the more passionately she will resist sameness and familiarity and seek out novelty. So... What do women want? They want a man who has become what they want. And need. And believe me, once you have, they will be fighting over you. Because when it comes to men who've figured out what it is that women want... well, suffice it to say there aren't a whole lot. They are the rarest of breeds, and the most desired men out there. Women want men who know what women want. And if you've read this article... now, you're one of them. So here's to your success - because there are lots and lots of women out there hoping and praying for that rarest of men; the man who knows what women want better than they know it themselves, and who isn't afraid to give it to them. I'm confident you can be that man; because quite honestly, when you boil it down to the absolute basics, the core fundamentals; that one certain thing that symbolizes what women want from a man more than anything else there is... what women really, truly want, is a man who tries.

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## Secret to Getting Girls: The Art of the Deep Dive Building rapport - and building a connection - is one of those things I consider myself pretty talented as a conversation-alist at these days. People remark that they often feel like we're old friends upon first meeting me; men very often assume that women I've met minutes before have known me for years; and I find it incredibly easy to have people open up to me about all manner of personal details - so easy that they typically offer those details unasked. Kind of funny, in retrospect, considering I spent most of my life as a man apart, without any close connections of any sort. So someone you've just met thinks of you as an old friend, or the girl you've been getting to know for twenty minutes has told you her life story and now feels that you know her better than all but two other people in her life. Sounds fun, and empowering, right? But what's the advantage of this? Well, as you can probably surmise, the advantages to deep diving with rapport come in spades, actually. Here are a few: You get to know people faster. So you get an idea of whom you're dealing with. Is she a consistent, reliable person, or has she used people in her past? Does she carry a lot of baggage, regrets, and grievances around with her, or is she free and clear-headed? Is she clingy or independent? Ambitious or unambitious? How open is she to adventure and new experiences? You have an easier time judging which women are looking for friends, which are looking for boyfriends, and which are looking for intimacy that night. You're good at discerning relatively quickly if a woman meets your requirements for a girl you'd date long-term - or not. You make friends and alliances faster. In the social arena, this is absolutely vital to your success. The difference between the men who sink and the men who swim - the men who get blocked by others from getting the results they want, and the men whom other people help get the results they want - is how good they are at building friends and alliances. You're far more likely to take that cute girl you've just met home if her friends think you are an amazing, awesome guy than if they think the opposite. You're "sticky". You become one of those people that others meet and just want to hang onto and keep in their lives. You provide something invaluable that almost no one else does - a ready ear, and an open mind. Because they grow to feel so connected to you so quickly, they want to make sure they stick to you and hang onto you as much as possible. This makes everything from same-night seductions to lifelong relationships much easier to find, manage, and accomplish. Those sound like some cool advantages that would be nice to have, right? They are - they make life easy. A lot of the problems that men without the benefits of being talented at the deep dive run into are non-existent for men who have mastered conversational deep diving. Phone numbers that flake? Almost non-existent. You're burned indelibly into the mind of every woman you spent at least five minutes with, and they can't wait to talk to you again. Women who take a long time to warm up to you? I'll be damned if I can remember the last time I ran into this situation. Women become magnetically attracted to you the instant you start getting to know them. One strange thing I've noticed is that once a man's good at deep diving, he seems to put out this extremely warm, extremely welcoming vibe that others are naturally drawn to and will begin opening up to without any prompting by him. I'll try to break down my current understanding of this below. I wrote this to be a sort of wrap-up article. There is a lot of information I've covered spread out over the past two years of writing on here that is kind of strewn about everywhere. This article looks to coalesce a lot of that into something vaguely recognizable / comprehensible. Hopefully it will give you a better idea about how to achieve some really cool things in your conversations with women. There are some technical elements to the conversational deep dive, and some personality traits that are important to train yourself on. You need both sides of the coin - the technical, and the personal - to become highly effective at deep diving into rapport. Let's talk about the technical elements first. These are the ones you can begin implementing immediately to start seeing some results. Many of these I've talked about before in individual posts - I'll link to them where relevant below - this post would be absolutely massive if I went into each of these elements in-depth on an individual basis! TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF DEEP DIVING Getting Past Small Talk: small talk is important to move past quickly, for one overarching reason (when it comes to deep diving): you don't cover anything personal, connection-building, or deep while in small talk. Small talk is like treading water, socially. It keeps you afloat, but it doesn't get you anywhere. Thread-Cutting and Thread-Amplifying: don't believe I've covered these on here before. Again, long explanations for these; quick and dirty summary is thread-cutting is a technique for shutting down bad, unproductive, or destructive lines of conversation (like a girl talking about how she thinks men use women for sex, or how much her jobs sucks, etc.), while thread-amplifying is a conversational technique for building up and encouraging productive lines of conversation (like a girl talking about things she likes about you, or her favorite childhood memories, etc.). Try to imagine thread-amplifying as the opposite scenario - rather than cutting off and changing the topic, you'll find ways to get a woman talking more about what she's mentioned, provide more details, and expand. A good example of some ways to do this is the "Ask the Right Questions" section in the article on getting past small talk linked to in the bullet above this one. Thread-Directing: haven't covered this one either; it's a bit of a complex topic, with a lot of layers, and is quite honestly an art in and of itself. Thread-directing is the way you guide a conversation in the direction you want it to go and get women to independently discover the topics you want them to discover, ask you the questions you want them to ask, and tell you the details about themselves you want them to tell you. I'll write up a piece on this at some point and link to it here; for now, if this is something you decide to focus on working on, I'd suggest checking out some of the written reports of a guy named A2daMIR; check out the link on the left of this page (under "Friends") for Fast Seduction, and run a quick search for some of his stuff. Not all of his reports have it, but some of them contain a number of masterful thread-direction as he guides women in exactly the way he wants them to go. Chase framing is an example of thread-direction, and in fact my current model of chase framing was in part inspired by A2daMIR as well (as well as by a good friend of mine from Southern California who used a great deal of sexual humor with women). Being Intriguing / Limiting Displayed Value: you'll find that the men women open themselves up best to are the ones who serve as a kind of mirror to those women. The more a woman feels you are like her, the more comfortable opening up to you she feels, because she sees the two of you as being the same. Of course, you're not the same as any other person on the planet, and the more people get to know you, the more of those differences become apparent to them. The ideal situation for helping a woman open up to you is to reveal little about yourself, only revealing aspects of yourself and your past that match what she reveals to you, to further her bonding with you. This is an art I've mastered as I've moved throughout a number of very different kinds of people - from upper-middle class white American suburbanites, to black Americans from the ghetto who stole cars, sold drugs, and got shot, to globe-trotting internationals, to Southern California surfers and actors and models, to rough-and-tumble Mexicans spending time on the other side of the border, to wealthy self-made business professionals, to (most recently) holier-than-thou expatriates and nose-to-the-grindstone local Chinese. To move freely and accepted with different kinds of people, you must be highly adaptable and able to showcase certain aspects of yourself while putting other aspects on ice. Meeting new people and deep diving with women works exactly the same - showcase the parts of yourself she will relate to, and sit on the rest. Getting Your Girl Talking About Herself on an Emotional Level: this is covered a little bit in the piece on conversational technique tips and tidbits. Your main focus in conversation should always be on the woman, and the main focus of a focus on the woman should be on her strong emotional topics - childhood, dreams, past relationships, goals and aspirations, things that are currently exciting her or frustrating her in life right now. The reason why this is is because sharing strong emotional topics is what makes someone feel deeply bonded and connected to another person. If your aim is to get a woman feeling connected to you at a rapid clip, this is ultimately how you do it. Those are the main technical elements. Working on each takes time, but even a low level of mastery of any one of those aspects of deep diving gives you a huge advantage in generating strong, connection-forming conversation with others. For both your goals in seduction, and your general life goals, I highly recommend some time getting these things down. The other aspect of getting good at deep diving is personality-based. That means, you have and showcase the personality characteristics of a man who others will be inclined to share themselves with and bond deeply with. Men like that are few and far between - most men are too caught up in their own lives and stories and goings-on to pay much attention to those of others, let alone to how well they do at making others want to share and deeply connect. The following are some things that, should you decide to begin implementing them into your own base personality, because of their very nature will take you a longer time to learn and incorporate - but once they become a part of who you are, you will reap benefits in just about every walk of life where socializing comes in to play - which is to say, just about every walk of life. PERSONALITY ASPECTS OF DEEP DIVING Being Warm and Non-Judgmental: you'll often hear the advice that you should be non-judgmental. This advice is some of the best life advice you can get for opening yourself up to great new adventures and opportunities (provided, of course, you continue to be discriminating - or, careful in how you asses and screen - even as you remain non-judgmental). Being non-judgmental is the cornerstone to getting women to open up to you - people can sense how judgmental another person is, and the more open they sense you are, the more likely they are to be open and honest with you. People only hide the things from others that they think those others will judge them on. I'd have you go one further than this though, and not just be non-judgmental, but actually be warm. I think of the spectrum like this: judgmental people are on the negative end of the spectrum - they shut people down and make them feel lesser and unworthy. Non-judgmental people are in the neutral zone - they don't tear people down, but neither do they build others up. Warm people are on the positive end of the spectrum - they accept others for who they are, free of judgment, and encourage them to pursue the positive, constructive aspects of themselves and avenues in their lives. When I was younger, I was actually quite judgmental. Eventually I labored to free myself of that yoke, as I realized that the person I hurt most by being judgmental was myself - I realized that every spiteful, judgmental thought I had that crossed my mind actually made me feel a little worse inside, and that I was slowly poisoning myself with mental toxins. So I focused on shutting out judgmental thoughts. As I did so, I became more neutral toward others, and moved to the middle. Eventually though, I wanted others to feel trulycomfortable toward me, so I worked to view things through their eyes, their motivations, their fears and insecurities, to try to understand others - even the ones who would hurt me. Why did they feel the need to try and hurt me? Once I developed warmth, women began opening up to me in ways I had not realized were possible. They could sense that I legitimately wanted them to do well and succeed and be happy, and wanted to share with me as much about themselves as they possibly could. Work to free yourself of judgment first; and once you have done that, work to open your heart to others with understanding and care. This probably sounds like very New Age-y, hippy-ish, Jesus-y kind of stuff, but take my word for it - from the perspective of making women melt around you and think of you as the most amazing man they've ever met - and feel very comfortable jumping into bed with you very quickly without the fear of being judged "easy" or a "slut" - genuinely being warm and caring toward others (and particularly toward women - somethingmany men are not) is unmatchable. Being Positive and Constructive: the best way you can possibly put thread-cutting to use is in cutting negative, boring, hurtful, and pitiable conversational threads, and switching over to positive, optimistic, constructive ones. Always remember that women tie the emotions they feel around youto you. If a woman always vents about how awful her job is to a man, and talks about other crappy life circumstances, she'll come to view him as the guy she talks about bad stuff to. But if she tries that with a different man, and every time she starts on those topics he thread-cuts and takes her into something positive, she'll come to view him as the man who always makes her feel good. You can show women you are this way very quickly into an interaction if you are vigilant about it. When a woman begins venting, give her a minute - she does need to feel you hear her and get her and understand her - but after you quickly relate to her, move the conversation on. The personality aspect of this is that people who are quite genuinely positive, optimistic, constructive people have a far easier time keeping conversations on the right course than people who aren't - so if you struggle at all with staying positive, working on this aspect of yourself can have a big payoff in your socializing and seductions. Being an Active Listener: when women relate, they need to feel related to back. A lot of men don't do this - they don't know how, or don't want to spend the time to listen. It doesn't actually take much time at all, really, and it's not all that difficult to listen. And - provided the women you're meeting are interesting - you'll get a lot out of it, learn, and grow. One of the reasons why it's vitally important to me to be meeting fascinating women with interesting things about them or happening in their lives isbecause I am a listener. I see a great many men who are talkers, not listeners, and their ability to build connections with amazing people is limited to how amazing their conversation is. As a listener, you grant yourself the ability to merge with anyone from any walk of life, even those you know nothing about, because rather than seeking to wash your own ideas over others, you allow others' to wash over you. Personally, I can talk with the best of them. I have a number of strongly held opinions and beliefs, and lots of things I can talk about for hours on end (just look at this post!). But I meet a lot of people who aren't going to be interested in those things - so I don't talk about them. Instead, I let them tell me about what they are interested in, and I learn and grow and evolve. And at the same time, they feel rewarded for having someone who cares and is interested in what they have to say. If you think of some of the men who seem to be the most POWERFUL men in the movies, or in politics, or history, do you think of men who talk and talk and talk? Or do you think of men who sit there quietly, taking everything in, and only speaking a little? The strongest men are not the men who talk - they are the men who listen. Once you've got the basics of conversation down, implementing the tools and techniques and personality elements covered in this post will take your connection-building to the next stage of its evolution. You will be building powerful, rapid, lasting connections with others, and being one of the most memorable people they'll meet in any given span of time. You'll give yourself the foundation on which to move through a seduction with speed - even when you make mistakes here and there, you still have a strong connection with your girl to fall back on - and build lasting relationships upon. You'll have mastered the art of the deep dive - and you will be someone other people gravitate towards as they do few others. Chase Amante

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## Conversationalist Conversation and the conversationalist: probably one of the most under-discussed topics in the social arts. What a pity. Conversation is part of the backbone upon which everything related to socializing is built upon, but in the 21st century that's almost forgotten. You might go so far as to say that the art of the conversationalist is a vanishing art. In this day and age of sound bites, quick blurbs of news, and friends and acquaintances using social media to spit out short, tepid, meaningless quips about their days and feelings and whatever else springs to mind and gets unloaded out on the uncaring and overburdened ears of the Internet, being a good conversationalist is a rare thing. Being someone who is able to deftly move from topic to topic, keeping a conversation flowing effortlessly and breezily forward, diving into the depths of another individual's personal life and concerns, then coming back up for air with a bit of laughter and lightheartedness before things get too heavy, then diving back down again to find out more about this person you've met just an hour ago than his or her closest family members know… this is what the lost art of being skilled in conversation is all about. The conversationalist moves past small talk with ease. The conversationalist elicits emotions and feelings about topics his conversation partner didn't know she had. The conversationalist dives deep and gets to intimate, personal topics that allow him to really relate to others and bond to others, and allow others to really relate to and feel bonded to him. The conversationalist does not just talk; he drives a conversation from the initial feeling-out stage to a deep, personal connection that is rewarding to everyone involved. It isn't easy to become talented at conversation. Actually, it's rather challenging, sometimes emotionally draining, and always a constant work-in-process, even for those who've been focused on improving their conversational aptitudes for years. But it's very worth it; learning to excel in conversation is one of the most excellent, useful, empowering skills you can possibly learn. Being good at conversation opens doors for you that few other things can. Before we discuss how you can start on the path to becoming a truly world class conversationalist, though, let's start by covering everyone's favorite part first: the benefits to you. BENEFITS OF BEING A GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST So let's say you put in the work, and actively hone your conversational abilities, and start really paying attention to what you're saying to people and what they're saying back to you and start trying to actively drive conversation to more effectively get more and better information from others. How's that do you any good? Well, the thing about conversation is, unless you decide the hermitic life is the life for you, you're going to be using conversation everywhere, constantly, with just about everything you do in life. You use conversation everywhere. Because it's so ubiquitous, you'd think it would be a no-brainer that of course their abilities as a conversationalist would be one of the first things people focused on. But life is funny, and beyond a certain level of ubiquity, people stop working on things. To put it in perspective, I'll ask you this: when's the last time you worked on the way you walk? How about your voice tone - have you worked on that lately? If you drive a car, have you sought to get better at driving any time recently? If you ride a bike, have you actively worked on becoming a better bicyclist in the past year? If you're a highly self-improvement-focused person - which, if you're reading this blog, I'm betting you are - then you may very well have worked on some of those things. The vast majority of people out there have not, however, for this simple reason: The more you're exposed to something, the more "natural" it feels, and the less it feels like a "skill" you should work on developing. It doesn't feel like a skill, because you do it all the time. But could you get a stronger, more powerful, sexier walk than you have right now if you worked on it a little? Could you get a sexier, edgier, more commanding voice if you put some effort into it? Could you become a better driver or a better bicyclist if you actively tried to? I'm betting you could. Conversation is more nuanced than any of those, though; it's made up of more variables, there's more to keep track of, and it changes quite a bit depending on whom you're talking to. Driving cars is always pretty much the same; sometimes it's daylight, sometimes it's nighttime; sometimes there are more cars or sometimes less; sometimes there are two lanes or three lanes or sometimes just one. But the variables are small and manageable. In conversation, though, the conversationalist must manage a whole host of things. He has to manage how he's feeling, what he's expressing through his words, voice tone, and nonverbal communication, he has to read how others are feeling and what they are expressing, he has to steer the conversation so that it stays on productive and value-building topics and avoids destructive ones, he has to reward others' efforts to contribute and provide value and remove embarrassment from them when they slip up and make a faux pas. And that's just for starters. So, being a talented conversationalist becomes one of those things that's exceptionally rare. It's quite uncommon to meet someone able to adeptly and adroitly navigate conversation - but it's always refreshing when you do. Truly, hasn't it felt great those few times you've met someone who was just so agreeable and pleasant to talk with and who made you feel accepted and understood right away and showed a genuine interest in you and curiosity to get to know you? You can probably count the number of people you've met in your life like that on one hand. Those people you're thinking of were the good conversationalists. Here are some of the benefits of being skilled in conversation: > People just like talking to you. You're fun, easy, and low pressure to talk with. Whenever they talk to you, they feel good, relaxed, and accepted for whom they are. You become a breath of fresh air from all the other people they talk to in their day-to-day lives. > You get to know people very quickly. As a skilled conversationalist who's mastered the deep dive, you quickly navigate down to the important stuff - stuff often others talk about only with their closest friends, or sometimes no one at all. This allows you to build a real connection and get past that awkward zone in a hurry where two people are talking but don't really feel like they know each other. > You make deep friendships fast. A consequence of getting to know people fast, and one of the amazing benefits to the conversationalist of his skill, is being able to build a lot of very rapid, but very genuine, friendships and alliances with people. When you're a good conversationalist, you can cover twenty or fifty or a hundred times as much ground in an hour of conversation than an unskilled conversationalist can. While Joe Average is still figuring out what his date likes to do for fun on the weekends, I've found out that mine dreams of living in Rome and wants to open her own pastry shop someday after she leaves the corporate world. That kind of connection leads to real friendship, because people know what you're about, and know you know what they're about, and the two of you are then able to let your guards down around each other and just be comfortable and genuine. > You get what you want a lot more. No sense denying it, simply for getting what you want from other people, being skilled in conversation is essential. Whether you're trying to negotiate a deal or win over a potential new lover or talk your way onto an airplane that's already finished boarding while you're still at the check-in counter (as I have successfully done a few times in the past few years; that probably means I should just get to the airport earlier, though), the conversationalist is at great advantage over an ordinary individual who hasn't put much thought or effort into improving his conversation. It gives you a decided, decisive edge that really is beyond valuable. I'm probably forgetting half the reasons out there why you ought to invest in training yourself up in conversation, but you get the point. Conversation reaches tendrils into every aspect of your life; to ignore your skill as a conversationalist is to ignore one of the most significant skills you can possibly develop. MAKINGS OF A CONVERSATIONALIST There is only one prerequisite for learning to be skilled in conversation, in my opinion: you must genuinely be interested in other people. If you aren't, well, you can force yourself to a certain degree of aptitude by sheer willpower, but beyond that, you'll have a hell of a struggle getting beyond an intermediate level in your conversational abilities. However, even if you don't find people terribly interesting at the moment, that may be simply because you haven't gotten your skill at getting to know them well to a high enough level yet. Lots of people think golf is a terribly boring game, until they've played it enough times and get familiar with it. Then they come to find it quite engaging, and rather enjoy a good round of eighteen holes. Conversation and meeting new people may very well be that way for you later on down the road after you focus on upgrading your skills, experience, and exposure to it. So, genuinely enjoy talking to people. You don't have to genuinely enjoy small talk; me personally, I'm not a big fan of small talk, and I get past it pronto. What I'm really interested in is what makes people tick - what drives them, where are they going, where did they come from. Why do they do the things they do. This is the stuff a conversationalist is good at finding out. Here are the skills I think you ought to focus on first when upping your skill tree. These are the building blocks everything else rests on in conversation: 1. GET TO THE ROOT Conversation for normal people usually looks like this: Person A: What do you do? Person B: Oh, I'm an accountant. Person A: I see. Person B: And what do you do? Person A: I'm an engineer. Person B: Oh, okay. You must be good at math, then. Person A: I'm okay at it. How long have you been an accountant? Person B: About four years. And you, how long have you been an engineer? And on and on. Ouch, that's a painful dialogue; no wonder no one likes small talk. Small talk is boring. But why is it so boring? Look carefully at that conversation above, and you'll notice it's extremely surface-level. Nowhere do we get to the meat of emotions, feelings, dreams, motivations, a person's backstory; the stuff that's really, truly important to people. Person B may be an accountant, but her job as an accountant is not what defines her, and we don't really know her all that much better by finding out that she's an accountant and she's been an accountant for four years. Here's how we get to know her: Person A: What do you do? Person B: Oh, I'm an accountant. Person A: Hmm, I see. Accounting… why accounting? Why not finance, investment banking… why choose the field you did? Person B: Well, I guess… because it was an easier major to get into when I was in school! Person A: Really? You're doing the job you're doing now because it was easier to get into in college? That's crazy! How long have you been doing it? Person B: About four years. Person A: Wow, four years in a job because it was an easier major. Okay, well, tell me this: erase college. If you could jump into any job in the world, regardless of how easy the major was in college, what would you be doing other than accounting? Or is accounting your dream job?[said with a smile and a wink since you know it's not - she's already said she's only in it because it was easy, and besides, who wants to be an accountant? (advance apologies to all the accountants out there who actually love it!)] All the other guy managed to find out with his initial conversation was that Person B is an accountant and she's been one for about four years. With the same number of lines of dialogue - count ‘em, there are four lines of dialogue for Person A in both conversation examples - our second guy has managed to find out not only that the person he's talking to is an accountant and has been for about four years, but also that she's doing it because it was an easy major in college, and it's probably not something she really dreams about doing. And now she's going to tell him what she does dream of doing. Not bad for four lines of dialogue. That's what getting to the root is about. 2. HELP OTHERS THINK. Being a good conversationalist typically means you'll be being a bit demanding of others, intellectually speaking. People prefer to talk about themselves, and conversationalists are talented at getting others talking about themselves, but people sometimes need a little help to avoid getting confused, frustrated, or worn out. Helping the people they're conversing with to think more easily is one of the ways a conversationalist gets people talking more about themselves than they do when talking with others, and it helps prevent the person he's talking to end up in a conversation that feels mentally taxing or draining. If you noticed in the last example above, the question of, "Why accounting?" is fleshed out beyond just the words "why accounting." We say "why accounting," but then we also list a handful of suggestions and clarify the question - "Why not finance, investment banking… why choose the field you did?" If you ask a question that's too open-ended, people can feel lost in the spotlight. It's like being on-stage without cue cards or a teleprompter; they've been put on the spot and start to panic mentally. When you phrase a question like how we did in that example, though, with a few alternative suggestions for what Person B might have done rather than accounting, and then give a specific question to jog her memory of what's being asked, you light the path for her basically and make it much easier for her to come up with the response you're looking for and answer your question. The mind generally goes through a process like this: Why accounting? Oh, I don't know… Oh, why not finance or investment banking? Because I didn't major in those in college. Why did I choose accounting? Oh, right - because it was an easy major in college. I didn't major in those other ones because they were more difficult to get into and I was a little lazy in school. And just like that, you've helped her think through her response, just by listing a few alternatives and restating the question. This is useful with a wide variety of topics: "Why move to London, then? Why not New York, or Paris, or Tokyo? Why come here to London-town when you could go just about anywhere?" "Why get your Master's? Why not keep working, or use your spare time to travel the world or write a book? Why go back to school?" "Why break up with your boyfriend? Why not marry him? Why not just keep seeing him the way things were? Why call it quits?" All kinds of things you can use this for. The point is, you want to help people think more easily, and that gets conversation flowing fast and naturally and it frees their minds to process the more important, deeper aspects of the conversation since you've already handled the basic stuff for them and provided the framework to answer you with. 3. RELATE Obviously, the flipside of things is that you don't want this to be an interview. You need to be relating to what you hear from others. Balance is quite key here; you don't want to overdo it and come across like you're trying to impress or force a connection, but you also don't want to underdo it and come across like you don't relate and she's talking nonsense to you that you don't connect with. This is where the "art" comes into play in the art of conversation. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a way of breaking down exactly what that balance is - we've done it for things as seemingly random as how many "I" pronouns versus how many "you" pronouns you ought to have in conversation (keep them as close to equal as possible), so there probably is a way. I just haven't figured it out yet, and I'm not aware of anyone else who has either. I'd say a good rule of thumb is to relate on things that you intuit someone else might be slightly embarrassed about; e.g., if you're talking to someone and she mentions that she's had so much bad luck lately, you commiserate and tell her you go through strings like that as well, where nothing ever goes your way; then you turn it back to her and ask her what good things have happened to her lately. Relate too on important topics; if the two of you have been talking about something that's obviously important to her, and you haven't related to it, you should. Again, learning the proper way to relate in a convincing, genuine way without seeming like you're trying to force things is going to take practice. I can remember a few years back when people would tell me things about themselves that I just didn't know how to relate to. For instance, I had a 21 year old girl tell me three years ago about how her Navy ex-husband had cheated on her, and she found out, so she cheated back - I had no idea how to relate to that at the time; I think I blurted something out like, "Yeah, sometimes guys in the Navy, you know, lots of temptation overseas." These days, I'd handle that easily: "Ah, people. They do crazy things, and some of ‘em you can't trust farther than you can throw ‘em. What're you gonna do?" But that's just because I've been through enough conversations where I was struggling awkwardly to relate to something I didn't really know how to relate to properly at the time. Remember, relating is how you make people feel good in a conversation. If you don't relate to them, they'll feel like what they're saying is falling on deaf ears, and they'll start clamming up. The better a job you do relating, the more people will feel like you "get" them, and the more they will want to tell you about themselves to help you understand them even better. 4. TURN IT BACK TO HER. Most men, you get them talking about themselves, and it becomes a spout that just doesn't shut off. There's this voice in men's brains that seems to say, "I must position myself as impressively as possible; I must show people how amazing I am!" Men thus feel compelled to tell everyone who will listen how wonderful and cool and successful they are, and show this off through stories of their successes and tales of their feats. Good conversationalists? No such penchant. Ask a conversationalist what he does for a living, and he'll build some intrigue with a short, interesting-sounding reply. By way of an example, people ask me what I'm doing right now, I tell them I'm traveling and finishing my first book. I also have a few startup companies I'm launching, but I don't typically tell them that until later on, because traveling and writing a book is intriguing enough in its own right. After I tell them that little snippet about myself, I then turn it back on them. "How about you, how are you spending your time these days?" I'll ask. The conversationalist should spend maybe 20% of a conversation talking about himself, and 80% of a conversation engaging his partner to find out more about her and listening to her. When you're just starting out, it'll probably be more like 50-50 or 60-40, but you should gradually be paring down how much you talk about yourself with time, and focus more on talking about your partner, and sometimes about people in general. Sometimes, you won't even talk about yourself at all, and that's okay. 5. MANAGE THE CONVERSATION FLOW Something that frustrated the hell out of me once I started deep diving and relating was that my conversations would get deeper and deeper and deeper, until eventually we went so deep that there would be this sudden shift, almost like the spell had broken, and I and the other person I was talking to would suddenly find ourselves stranded back on the shores of superficiality and neither of us knew how to get back to where we'd been before. It was like the whole conversation had been a dream, and we'd just woken up - then couldn't fall back asleep again. These days, I've taken to managing the flow better - I take things deep, but bring them back up again periodically with a little lighthearted teasing or a witty comment here or there, or pointing out that something in the conversation is silly or doesn't make sense. I then take it back down deeper again. It ends up looking like this: Person B: … and then I never heard from him again. He just disappeared. I felt awful for three months. Person A: Wow, that's terrible. [pause for maybe five seconds, let the dust settle from the deep emotions] So I guess you feel a lot better these days! [said with warmth and a smile] Person B: Yeah, I do. Person A: That's the cool thing about bad, sad experiences - people are strong, and we bounce back. Even if it feels pretty bad for a while, it doesn't stay feeling bad forever. We'd never make any progress that way. Person B: You're so right. Person A: So after this guy pulled his disappearing act, what'd you do to get your life back in order? Person B is sharing this very deep, emotionally powerful experience, but it reaches a conclusion. Person A brings her back up from that; he commiserates, then makes it light and airy again, like a breath of fresh air. He tells her she must be feeling a lot better now; she agrees. All that darkness she was feeling earlier fades away, and she feels good and warm in his company. He's taken her down, but brought her back up again. Remember that voice tone is very important here. You can use different tones, and sound cold and insensitive saying Person A's lines with one, or warm and considerate saying them with another. Play around with your voice tones to get the right ones. Watch a lot of movies with strong, confident, charming characters, and learn to talk like they talk. So Person A does a bit of inspirational talk, and then he goes back into the deep dive again, finding out more about Person B's life's trajectory and getting her talking about what she did after this experience. It's natural to go back into it now that she's come up for air; now they can go back down again for a little bit, before coming back up again later. Managing the conversational flow like this does two things for you: > It keeps things from getting so intense and heavy that people start feeling a need to break out of the oppressive intimacy of the conversation and free themselves, and > It gives your conversation partner a shot of good feeling and reassurance and, most importantly, perspective, giving her the strength to continue through her story, whether it's a happy memory she's discussing or a painful one. If you've ever seen the movie The NeverEnding Story, the feel of this movie is exactly the feel of what you should be going for in your management of the conversational flow. The story intensely sucks you in, at times feels overbearing, but then you get sucked out of it and everything is put back into perspective when Bastian closes the book and stops reading. He takes a break. Then he goes back into the book and we get sucked back in. That's the feel of it. 6. YOU MUST NOT JUDGE There is this social enforcing behavior we all tend to get instilled with very early on in life, and it's called "judging." We use it to put social pressure on others to conform to our views about what is correct behavior and avoid engaging in incorrect behavior. If someone engages in enough incorrect behavior, we judge them quite poorly, and effectively consider them out of our social class, clique, or tribe. Here's the thing: the more you judge, and the more harshly you judge, the more you limit your social potential. Almost everyone you meet is going to have things that clash with something or other about your own personal beliefs and values systems. If you take issue with people over that kind of thing - even if you just take issue inwardly, but try to be friendly outwardly - people will sense it; they sense the gulf between the two of you, and they close up. No conversation. No connection. Just awkwardness, and a desire for the interaction to end as quickly as possible. The conversationalist does not judge. He teaches himself not to judge on the inside as well as on the outside; he accepts that many people are different from him, but that different doesn't equal bad, and he forces himself to stop having bad, negative, derogatory thoughts about others because he know it will cripple his ability to succeed socially. Don't judge. It cuts your legs out from the standpoint of connection-, friendship-, and relationship-building. People are infinitely more honest with you when they can tell they're being accepted by you for whom they are, free of judgment. The sizeable boost in trust and depth of bonding with others that you gain from getting over any judgmental tendencies you have now is well worth the month or so of work you'll put in of monitoring your thoughts and shutting down judgmental thoughts about other people to rewire your learned thought processes. Judgment is learned, and it's unlearned as well. I suggest you remain discriminating - certainly you will be choosy about having top quality people in your life - while simultaneously freeing yourself of the burden of being judgmental. In addition to opening up whole new social vistas to you, you will find you actually feel much better without a cluster of negative judgments running around in your head poisoning your thoughts. 7. BE A LIGHTHOUSE I'm an Aquarius. That means that I have a great deal of empathy for other people, but also that I'm quite emotionally detached. I don't get affected by things the way others do, but I care about them enough that I want to see them do well and succeed and prosper and feel good and confident. If there is one thing that drives me nuts when it comes to conversationalists, it's seeing a guy who's good at conversing but who clearly doesn't give a damn about the people he's talking to. You know, the guy who's focused more on himself and what he has to say than he is on the other person and couldn't tell you how someone else is feeling to save his life. I recommend walking a mental mile in the shoes of everyone you talk to. Put yourself in every person you meet's position and ask yourself how you'd feel if you were them. It's enlightening. And it also makes you realize how much people need you to be an uplifting, motivating, strong person for them. I call this being a lighthouse. The lighthouse is the beacon on the rocks that guides ships to safe passage, no matter the weather conditions. It's a sign of hope, and also one of strength; a solitary beam of light in the darkness. You should seek to provide hope, encouragement, strength, and high spirits to those you speak with. Be honest and realistic, of course; if someone proposes a business or relationship idea to you that you know will fail, for instance, tell them you have some fairly strong reservations about it, but give them much credit for being creative or hopeful, and perhaps suggest an alternative they might use. Again, you must balance this; you don't want to be so wildly optimistic that it's patently unbelievable. You want to provide gentle, subtle guidance and support; not be crazy happy, but exude more of a calm, guiding confidence that the person you're talking to will be okay no matter what path she chooses. TRAINING YOURSELF UP AS A CONVERSATIONALIST Obviously, if you want to be good as a conversationalist, you're going to need to go have a lot of conversations. Beyond that, there are a few other things I can recommend you do to get yourself started. > Form a plan of attack. I recommend only working on one or two of the above points at a time. I listed seven of them - too many to work on at once. You don't conquer the world by attacking the entire world; you conquer the world one country at a time. So it is with this - bite off one chunk at a time and go from there. > Identify your own deficiencies in conversation to use as a starting point. If you have an awful time getting past small talk, start with that. Work on deep diving and see if you can get into some real conversation about real stuff. If you have the bad habit of talking too much about yourself, get better at turning the conversation back to the other person. If you find yourself saying or thinking negative things sometimes, focus on clearing judgmental beliefs out of your system and strive to be a lighthouse. > Pay more attention to what people are telling you… and not telling you. If there are things about people you'd like to know, but don't, find ways to start getting them to tell you that information. Usually you'll start out rather clumsily, just asking for it; as you hone your skill, you become more and more adept in getting people telling you what you want to know. Eventually you can reach the point where people enjoy talking to you so much and become so eager to connect with you that if you simply bring them to a topic, they will proactively tell you the things you're curious to know without you even needing to ask. > Get more experiences. The more things you do, and the more things you get comfortable with, the better you'll be able to relate to people. When I first started working on my skill as a conversationalist, I suddenly began taking on a variety of very different activities (international travel, language studies, social activities and mixers, sports, martial arts classes, dance classes, acting, modeling, photography) in part because they interested me, but also in part because I wanted to have these experiences to be able to relate to more people more easily. Most of them I didn't spend a huge amount of time doing, but I'm now able to relate to anyone who talks to me about snowboarding, or traveling to Europe, or learning Spanish, or dancing salsa, or going to a photo shoot because I've done those things at least a little bit. > Get talking (with new people). Meet new people, get into conversations. It's different when you're talking with classmates, or officemates, or family members, or old friends. You know them; you don't have much work to do to get to know more about them. Meeting new people forces you to learn how to get to real conversation fast, because you don't have a lot of time. Take too much time dancing around with small talk, and most people will start feeling uncomfortable (the result of lacking the formation of a connection or finding common ground fast enough) and leave. You meet a wider variety of people, with a wider variety of life experiences, and a wider variance of tolerances and conversationalist aptitudes in their own rights, so you are constantly having to adjust and make changes on the fly. This is hands down the best, most reliable, most effective way to get conversational abilities down; meeting lots of new people is a bit of a gauntlet, but it's a gauntlet that will see you come out the other end much improved. When should you start? Well, the cool thing about conversation is you're always having it. So I recommend you begin training yourself up as a conversationalist the next time you have a conversation. Get good at talking to people. It's a game changer in pretty much every way; becoming a talented conversationalist is one of the most fundamental, significant ways you can improve yourself, period. So don't put this one off until tomorrow - start improving the very next time you say "hi" to someone. It's worth every ounce of the effort you put into it, and the payoffs will last you a lifetime.

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## Conversation Example A few weeks back one of the readers here requested I get up an example of how a typical conversation goes for me with a new woman, and how I engage her. I tried to put a few conversations to paper over the past few weeks, but each of them was less than a great example - either because the girl engaged me a little too aggressively herself to be all that useful to beginning and intermediate guys, or because I knew the girl already through social circle so it wasn't a completely fresh connection, or because there were multiple people involved and I was juggling other men competing for a woman while I built a connection with her. So rather than post up one of those messy examples, which might be useful in some ways but less-than-useful in others, instead I'll put up a made-up example conversation to show how you can use conversation to engage a girl who's moderately interested. Note that this is all stuff I use with real women and I've structured the girl's response to reflect how women typically respond to these conversational topics. Two things that're definitely not conveyed are expressions and tonality. Think of Sean Connery's or Pierce Brosnan's self-assured tone and half-smile as they banter with women as James Bond, or Ryan Reynold's more overt tones and expressions as Van Wilder. I tend to go between these two styles. All you need is a moderate level of interest to build a connection. If you have a large amount of interest from a girl, she'll do all the work. If you have little or no interest, you might be able to make something happen, but it's going to be tricky and by no means a sure thing. A moderate level of interest, though, is manageable, so let's run with that. EXAMPLE CONVERSATION Here's how a typical conversation for a guy who's skilled at being a conversationalist and knowledgeable in the way of deep diving will go. I'll give notes throughout. Let's place our hero in a lounge in New York City. Him: I saw you standing here, and I just had to come tell you you have the most striking sense of style I've seen all day. I'm Joe. Her: Hi… I'm Tina. Him: Hi Tina. How's your night going? Her: Okay. How's your night going? Him: It's going all right. So tell me, New York native or you come from somewhere far away? So far, pretty standard conversational fare. You can see we start to use more interesting words and phrasing; you want to capture her interest with your unique choices of words and phrase structures. Her: Nope, I'm New York, born and raised. Him: Ah, all right. So you know all the secret places the tourists and I can only guess about. Her: Where are you from? Him: Right now or originally? Her: Um… right now. Some intricacies of conversation here. After she says where she's from, our guy builds up her value without really advancing the conversation, thus putting social pressure on her to move things forward herself. If he simply let it hang without building up her value, she might be inclined to leave; since he's built her up and made her sound good and knowledgeable and he's self-deprecated himself somewhat, she's going to feel obligated to build him back up and show interest by asking a question. Thus, even with girls who are only moderately interested, you can use this to begin structuring things so they are chasing somewhat. Next notice how when she asks a question, we throw it back to her and ask her to be more specific. Because of the simplicity of the request for clarification, she'll comply, and thus is putting in greater effort to find out an answer from us - in other words, she's chasing again here too. Him: Right now I'm a New York native. Well, not native, but I live here, if that counts for anything. Her: How long have you lived here? Him: That's a good question, how long have I lived here? Umm… I guess about two years, yeah? What do you do here in the City? Her: I'm a paralegal. Him: Oh cool, cool. Does that mean you aspire to be a lawyer someday, or you see how much work your boss has to do and say, "Never for me?" Trying to find out her feelings about the job here and her future plans for herself. Her: I might be a lawyer someday. Actually, I do more work than he does, and it's all the hard stuff, too. Him: You like it? Her: It's okay. Him: Okay, well, why are you doing a job that's just okay? Why not find one that's amazing? More deep diving on the job. Her: [laughs] There are no amazing jobs. Him: There's got to be an amazing job out there somewhere. She doesn't get to control that frame and claim there are no amazing jobs. There are amazing jobs; and he's going to show her. Her: Like what? Him: Like… well, I don't know. If you could do anything else in the world and get paid the same as what you get paid now, what would you do instead? He avoids the trap here. Instead of answering, and trying to figure out and list what kind of job he thinks she will find amazing, he instead throws it back at her and asks her what she'd rather do instead. If he started listing jobs, she might very well reply with, "No, that job's not amazing!" or, "That's not a real job," things like that to defend her position of "There are no amazing jobs" (trust me, been there plenty of times). So, he chooses not to list examples and instead asks her to do so. Note the subtlety there: she says there are no amazing jobs, he says there are, she asks what jobs are amazing, and he asks her what job she'd liked to do in place of what she's doing now. So in effect, he changes the question: now it's not "Why aren't you doing a job that's amazing?" but rather "What job would you rather do?" Her: Hmm, well… maybe I would work as a vet. Him: A veterinarian? Her: Yeah. Him: Wow, that's different from being a paralegal. What, you signed up for the wrong school or something by accident? Her: [laughs] No, I just thought there was more opportunity to make a better salary in the law. Him: I see. Think you'll stay in the legal profession forever? Her: Ehm… maybe like five to ten years. Him: Then what? Her: I don't know, that's a long time from now. What do you do? Finds out more about her future plans, and brings up the subject of school to see if she'll talk about it. She doesn't go into that, but she does let him know that money is the major motivating factor for her having taken the job she has over the job she would've probably enjoyed more. Remember that building a connection with a woman is all about getting her to tell you things she views as personally significant. Her rationale for choosing a job she doesn't like over a job she does is pretty personally significant, and probably not something she talks about all that much with all that many people. The combination of its significance and its rarity as a conversational topic for her make it more impactful in building a stronger connection. Him: I'm an artist; do some creative stuff. Her: Like what? Him: Paint, mostly. Take some photographs. I'd like to get my own studio up. Her: Really? I love photography. She's actively seeking to bond with him over his artistic pursuits. Him: Oh, no way. You take pretty good pictures? Her: No, I'm terrible! I can't even use a digital camera. Him: Ah, you can't be that bad! You must have at least some good pictures. Her: No, really. All my pictures suck! Him: [laughs] Well, sometime I'll give you some pointers. What else do you do creative? Rather than challenge her or tease her, as many beginners and intermediate guys may do, he recognizes vulnerability here in that she sees him as being more advanced than her in a specific area, and takes the opportunity first to build her up by telling her she must take some good pictures, then by making a small offer to give pointers at some indeterminate future date. Then, he rewards her by assuming she's creative (a good quality) and seeks to find out what else she does. Her: Not really anything. Him: There must be something. Her: No, really! I'm the most uncreative person on Earth. Him: Well, you do a lot of hard work for a law firm. You've got to get creative to get some of it done sometimes. Again, he won't let her win this frame battle. Of course she does something creative. He might have to get creative himself to paint her as a creative person (in this case, implying that grunt work at a law firm is creative), but he's doing it to build her up, so it's okay. If you let a girl "win" by implying she doesn't meet a standard you've set, you lose. You can't stick around and continue showing as much interest in a girl who's failed your screen. Thus, you refuse to let her fail and find a way to help her pass. She sees this, and views it as you really being on her side because you're trying to help her win you over. Does all kinds of good for you. Her: Maybe. Well, I do draw. More like doodle. Does that count? Him: Of course. Millions of ways you can be creative. Her: So do you make money through photography? Him: No, actually, I'm kind of a struggling artist. I have a day job, which is what I lean on for the bills, but I don't like being defined that way so I'll always say I'm an artist. Her: What's your day job? Him: I manage projects at a company downtown. Her: Oh, that's good. Him: No way! It's boring as hell. I want my photography to take off so I can stop riding a desk all day, falling asleep in front of my computer. Now we find out more about this mysterious stranger, and he's fleshed out a bit. He has a day job after all, so he's not just some rogue, starving artist. But, he still defines himself as an artist, and quickly moves the focus off his job, so she doesn't see him as some stodgy project manager who's boring and worthy only of a relationship. He's an artist; that's romantic. And romantic-seeming men are the men women want as lovers. Her: [laughs] I do that too. Him: Yeah, seriously. How'd we end up trading our time for money? I wanted to be James Bond and go travel the world, killing bad guys and seducing beautiful women. Her: [laughs] You'd be great at that, I think. Let me know if you do that, maybe I'll go with you for a few missions. Him: You can be my Bond girl. Her: Totally. Him: Too bad the Bond girl is different in every movie. I kind of like you. Her: [laughs] Him: Maybe I'll lobby the writers to keep you around for two movies. Like, a sequel or something. Her: [laughs] They're bonding here. He uses roleplay to imply that he's a little hard to get but still working to help her get with him. See that? He's hard for her to get, but he's on her side and he's trying to help her be with him despite how hard a guy he is to get. If he's too hard to get, she'll close up and go cold. If he's trying to help her get him but he's not hard to get, she'll think he's too easy and get bored. If, however, he's hard to get, and gunning for her and trying to help her succeed… well… now she's intrigued. Him: Hey, let's grab a seat before we get run over up here. There's a couch right over there. Her: Okay. [the two go and sit] He moves her, following a high point when they're both bonding heavily and really enjoying the conversation. This gets her to commit to being with him. Him: So tell me about yourself; I don't know anything about you. Simultaneously challenging her ("I don't know anything about you"), expressing interest in her (wants to get to know more about her), and demanding compliance ("Tell me about yourself"). This is a very dominant thing to do and plants you firmly in the driver's seat of the interaction. It throws her off balance a bit, so you'll want to be a little nice after you use it and guide her toward answers. Her: Okay… what do you want to know? Him: Well, for one, do you travel? Her: No. Do you? Him: A little bit. Her: Where have you been? Him: A bunch of places. Well, tell me this: if you could go anywhere you wanted in the world, where would you go? Note that he does not get sucked into bragging or showboating about the many places he's traveled when she asks. She doesn't travel, so if he talks about all the places he's visited, she's either going to be bored to tears, or blown out and shut down, the vast, vast majority of the time. Instead, he's vague about where he's been, and quickly puts the spotlight back onto her. Her: Umm… Europe, maybe? Him: Like, where in Europe? Her: Spain. I think Spain would be so romantic and wonderful. And I love Spanish food. Him: And Spanish men, perhaps. Her: [laughs] Spanish men are a little too lazy for me. Him: Ay caramba. Her: [laughs] He finds out what she likes, where she wants to go, and teases her a little, implying that she chases after men (setting the frame that she pursues men, which is helpful to his cause). Him: I haven't been to Spain, but I have been to Italy. Definitely could be described as romantic and wonderful… oh man, the food there is so good. And the people… everyone is beautiful. Even people in their forties and fifties - it's not like over here, where everyone over thirty-five is fat. There, even if you're fifty years old, you're still thin, and dress well and in bright colors, and live well and take good care of yourself and look good. And the buildings, and the architecture… what a beautiful place. Notice that now we have this, five to ten minutes into the interaction - our first story. And it's short, it's not really about him at all, directly - rather, it's about this beautiful, romantic, wonderful place, Italy. The story conveys a lot of strong, positive emotions about him: that he loves and appreciates beauty, that he loves good food (men who love sex tend also to love good food, and most women instinctively are aware of this), and of course that he's been somewhere she probably wants to go (but isn't bragging about it because he's showing appreciation only very briefly, then moving off of it). Her: It sounds amazing. I want to go! Him: You will. Maybe Italy will be where we do our James Bond mission. Rather than saying, "You should," which almost sounds like a dismissal ("Ah, get out of here. Have fun overseas by yourself!"), he instead structures his response as something they could do together, reusing the roleplay from earlier. Her: The first one or the second one? Him: Well, let's plan for the first one; I'm not sure if the writers will let me have the same girl in two movies yet or not. Her: [laughs] Again, he's hard to get but on her side. Him: So you're not much of a traveler. What do you do for fun? Her: I play board games sometimes. Him: Oh my god. Her: [laughs] Him: Seriously though. Her: Well, you know… hang out with friends, go to movies, eat at restaurants. Clubbing sometimes… Him: Apparently. Her: [laughs] Yeah, well. Not that much… Him: Just four days a week. Her: [laughs] No! Maybe a couple times a month; that's it! Him: I believe you. You probably know every bartender and doorman here. They're like, "It's Tina!" Her: [laughs] Just having a little fun here to keep things light so they aren't too heavy. It's good to have moments of lightness to buoy up the "feel" of the interaction so it never feels overly serious. Him: What else do you do? Her: Umm… that's about it. Him: Okay, cool. Her: What do you do? Him: Mostly just chill. My life is pretty boring and uninteresting; I just like to make it sound exciting. Can't even remember the last time I had a near-death experience… Her: [laughs] Oh my god…! The joke about his last near-death experience is actually designed to subconsciously make him sound more exciting. If he just said his life was boring, the statement would be… well, boring. But if instead he says his life is boring and he can't remember his last near-death experience, it makes it sound like nearly dying is a fairly common thing for him, even though it's a joke. It makes him feel a bit more exciting than he otherwise would. Him: Family live in the City still? The last conversational thread had run its course and there wasn't really anywhere else either party could have taken it, so he begins a new thread, seeking to find out more about her family. Her: Mom and dad are in Queens. Him: Brothers and sister? Her: One brother; he moved out to California. Him: Smart man. He likes sunshine and fake boobs, I'm guessing. Her: [laughs] That sounds about right. He's a naughty guy because he mentions fake boobs, though it's just in passing and it's mentioned along with something tame and "pure" (sunshine). He also implies he likes sunshine and fake boobs too, because he opens the comment with "Smart man." Him: How is it growing up as a precocious little girl in NYC? Now he's asking her to tell him about her childhood. Once again, the more meaningful stuff she tells you about herself, the more connected to you she feels. All in all, this conversation takes place over maybe ten minutes. It's very fast. By ten to fifteen minutes in, he knows her better than all but her closest friends do. He can quite possibly pull her in ten to twenty minutes, depending on the circumstances. Even if she was only moderately interested at the outset, maybe give it twenty to thirty minutes, then go for the pull, and I'd bet, at this rate of conversation, he succeeds a third of the time at least. Go out and repeat this with four or five girls in a night, and you've got one to take home. Conversation doesn't have to be long or tedious - it can be light, meaningful, fun, and fast!4

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## Teasing a Girl the Right Way A reader recently wrote in to ask me why I thought his text conversations weren't going anywhere. He's been working really hard to get his game tightened down, and thought he was doing well... but here, again, he could feel this girl slipping away. The texting transcript he sent picks up mid-conversation: Him: You suck with directions. Lol. Are you from the city? Girl: haha I dont know what the streets are called1 Just know theres one down a side haha. Its by the big bungy thing, down a little street:-) Him: haha. You suck. Need to get a gps then. Can you cook? Girl: haha sorry:-) uhmm like simple things. and if I had instructions then yeah lol Him: Imple things like biting your nails or fun things? I like dangerous stuff:) Girl: haha as in easy stuff Girl again:haha as in easy Him: Im just finished with my engineering project. I think youll find it interesting. Are you a metal head or a classical music type like me?lol Girl: Haha uhmm, not really... More party side.lol Him: Im running seminars in the city next week,. We should go grab a coffee and you can come by... Girl: I have exams and school next week. Him: Im running it in the weekend. But your missing out! IM hungry. Make me some soup. Girl: Um, Whats it about? Then he replied with some brief info about his seminar, and... nothing. She never replied. It was lost. And he didn't know why. Was she just not interested? he wondered. Actually, she sounds pretty interested early on. How'd he lose her? Well, it's a little more complicated than you might think. And, as the subject of today's post, one of the main problems it turns out is that he wasn't quite teasing this girl the right way. Because this isn't just a texting issue -- it goes deep into how you hold conversations with women in general. And if you aren't teasing women right, you may very well be costing yourself a lot of success with girls you like. TEASING SHOULD BE PLEASING All right, I'm guilty of a bit of a cheesy headline for this section here, but it gets the message across that I want to get across in this part of the post: namely, that teasing is supposed to be fun. > "What's with the word mix ups, are you mildly retarded?" > "I love your hair... it looks like a bunch of small animals made their nest on your head. Creative." > "You're pretty awful at thinking logically, aren't you? Maybe you should stick to emotions." > "Hey, you know what would be a really good idea? Not that one you just had." > "What kind of music do you like? I hope it's not Britney Spears." This is how lots of guys tease girls. It's sarcasm, and indeed it can be quite funny. But, here's the thing... this kind of humor is amusing to people watching it from the outside. It's hilarious when you watch one person on TV tell another person her hair looks like a pack of wild dogs had it out over leadership of the clan on top of her head. But to the girl who actually has someone say that to her, it's both a little funny... and a little hurtful. Even if she laughs, it probably stings, ever so slightly. And when you hurt a girl, she closes up. She gets cold. She begins to auto-reject. And then... you lose her. This confused me a little at first when I was starting out. Back in 2005 and 2006, I'd get to talking to a girl, and she'd be excited, and clearly was glad to be getting to know me. And then I'd tease her a little, and she'd get even more excited. And then I'd tease her a little more, and she'd still seem happy. And then I'd tease her a little more, and then -- well, then she'd start going cold. I'd panic. Crap, I'd better find a way to get her interest back again, I'd think to myself. Then, Ah, I've got it! I'll just tease her some more! And then, wouldn't you know it, she'd get really cold toward me, and she'd stay that way for the rest of the time I'd know her. At first, I reasoned I was teasing her too hard. So I scaled back my teasing. But the problem nagged me for years. I'd challenge girls less, and then I'd have a harder time attracting them. Then, I'd challenge them more again, and they'd just get pissed off. It was maddening. In 2007, a mentor of mine gave me a piece of advice that changed everything for me with regards to teasing: "I listen to you tease and flirt with girls, and it's good stuff, and funny stuff -- like really witty, smart stuff," he told me. "But I almost feel like it's too much for most girls -- they're going to feel like they aren't able to compete with you. And you tease girls competitively, when you could be teasing them cooperatively. It's a small difference in how you word things -- but the difference it makes in how women respond to you is huge." At first, I wasn't quite sure what to make of that advice. How do you tease a girl cooperatively? I wondered. I filed it away in the back of my head and figured maybe someday I'd come back to it. Well, nowadays, I tease women cooperatively almost exclusively. Almost all the humor I use with women is about what she and I are going to be doing together, or what she's trying to do with me, and I am a more-or-less willing participant. That's probably a little hard to follow, but I'll explain it more; chase framing is one part of this that we've touched on before here. And, the times I tease women competitively verbally, I use vocal tonality that makes it explicitly clear I'm just giving her a playful ribbing and that I'm actually warm and affectionate toward her. The end result when you use this style of humor is, instead of building attraction while pushing women away, you build attraction and pull women in close to you. Sound appealing? Let me show you how it's done. TEASING A GIRL... THE RIGHT WAY There are as many ways to tease women playfully as there are stars in the sky, but only a handful of ways to do it right, without offending and without pushing those women away. What I'll share with you here is what I've found to work, consistently and reliably, and what I've seen work for other guys I've known and trained. Put yourself on the same level. This is part of the "cooperativeness" of the teasing; you don't let a girl get cast into the tease alone. You go with her. We can do this by rewriting the example from above: "What's with the word mix ups, are you mildly retarded?" like so: "What's with the word mix ups, are you just trying to confuse me and throw me off the trail?" and voila, now instead of imply that she's retarded -- and you aren't -- you're implying that she's mixing up words to try and confuse you. She's subtle and sneaky, but you're onto her. It's cooperative, fun, and most definitely not insulting. Avoid commenting on sensitive topics. These include physical features, style and fashion, intelligence, social skills, family, anything like that, in anything that might be remotely construed as insulting about a girl herself. Instead, comment on people at large -- and make sure you reassure the girl you don't mean her. So, you wouldn't say to a girl: "I love your hair... it looks like a bunch of small animals made their nest on your head. Creative." but you might say: "I love how people dress in this city. Not you, you're fine -- you're fashionable and you look good. But I'm not sure I get the whole leggings-meet-tutus thing they've got going on here. Scary." Keep it critique-free. Don't like how a girl does something? That's fine -- but don't tease her about it. That's called passive-aggressiveness, and it stings. I did it plenty when I was young and angry and had a bone to pick with the world. Stay away from it and play nice -- nobody likes being told they suck. Instead of saying: "You're pretty awful at thinking logically, aren't you? Maybe you should stick to emotions." you might instead remark: "Let me go see if I can find an intermediary to resolve this debate. No, I'm kidding, how about we leave the ideological wars until Date #4? I'd rather get to know you than sit here and tell you you're horrible because you like Bach and I'm a Beethoven guy." Note that when you go this route, you always want to pick some very silly topic rather than the one at hand to defuse the argument (e.g., maybe the two of you were beginning to debate politics or religion, when you disarmed this by joking about her liking Bach and you liking Beethoven... a harmless contrast, and one that can let you switch back to lighter topics with ease). Suggest instead of veto. This one is giant, not just for teasing, but for all forms of deciding what you're going to do or where you're going to go. For the purpose of teasing though, remember that you always want to suggest an alternative rather than veto something outright with a flat negative. You'd replace: "Hey, you know what would be a really good idea? Not that one you just had." with: "Or we could just go play skee ball. Or maybe go back to your place and put on sexy movies and... talk, or something." This is a much better response to a girl suggesting something you don't like the sound of. So, if she suggests you go hit some club and you don't feel like managing a party date, you can tease her this way instead. Be absurd in place of mildly against. This one's kind of fun, but basically, whenever you might otherwise suggest you don't like something, instead go over the top and let her know you really don't like something. This takes the edge off your not liking it and changes it from something awkward to something amusing. Like so: "What kind of music do you like? I hope it's not Britney Spears." becomes: "What kind of music do you like? If it's Britney Spears, I'm jumping out the window and landing on a samurai sword." When you're teasing a girl the right way, you'll know it. She'll be smiling, laughing, enjoying herself, and getting warmer and warmer and closer and closer to you. Her attraction tells you your teasing is good -- and her closeness tells you she's feeling cooperated with, not competed against. Bring women close to you and attracted with your teasing, and it becomes an extraordinarily powerful tool in your arsenal. A pair of other notes to point out about that reader's conversation with the girl at the start of this article -- at one point, he says, "IM hungry. Make me some soup," which, as it turns out, is asking for too much investment at this point in the interaction. But that's for another post! It's also a bit choppy in flow, but again -- we'll have to get to that another time ;) For now, happy teasing, and here's to a great upcoming weekend.

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## When Women test Men Women nearly universally display a social behavior with men they like that's often referred to as "testing." Testing is what women do when they're looking to see if a man is strong and congruent with himself; in other words, if he really is all the man he's presenting himself to be. Asking a man to do something for her, or teasing him with sexual suggestions to see if he jumps at the opportunity or gets overexcited, or dropping hints with regards to her own promiscuity or relationship status to see if he gets defeated and walks away - all those are "tests," and there are many other varieties. Testing often gets a bad rap with men. It gets called annoying, frustrating, or petty - but still, all but the absolute most innocent, trusting, inexperienced women - the ones who don't know men any better yet - do it. But why do women test men, and how do you act in testing situations? That's the subject of this post: what to do when women test you. WHY WOMEN TEST MEN You've got to understand first that when a woman is dealing with a man she's considering as a potential mate, one of her top priorities is finding out if this guy really is a strong, confident, successful man. In both primal times and still today, ending up pregnant with the child of a weak, unsuccessful man meant and means bad news: lack of proper support from that man; lack of protection by him; susceptibility to the risks of the weak (jealousy, insecurity, anger, spousal abuse); a far higher chance of having a weak child. Weak men are dangerous men. But a woman can't go by just what a man says when she's trying to assess his strength. If she asks a man, "Are you a strong, successful, confident man?" every single man, no matter how true or not it is for him, is going to say, "Why yes of course I am." There's a learning curve in women; the least experienced women often haven't realized the need to test men yet, so might not test men much, and what tests they do try are clumsy and weaker men make it past them more easily. As women grow in experience with men, though, their tests get tighter and more pointed and they get better at figuring out the strong men from the rest with speed, accuracy, and efficiency. In the game of mating, the arms race is ongoing; the men who want to position themselves as ideal mates and cover up their flaws, and the women who want to separate the wheat from the chaff and expose what flaws exist and where they exist. Women test men to better to know who those men really are. They test them to know whether they truly are strong - or whether they're just pretenders. They use tests because the same test that rolls off the nose of a strong man without ruffling a single feather of his will completely throw off a less confident man, and send him scrambling into damage control. As it were, tests are an extremely effective method for women to find out how strong and successful and confident a man really is, because responses to tests are quite difficult to fake. Women are looking mostly at a man's nonverbals, and nonverbals are extremely challenging to misrepresent. It's easier to just get strong and confident and successful than it is to fake being strong and confident and successful. For understanding why women test, it's helpful to understand the emotions a woman is feeling when she tests. The emotions typically are one of the following: > Playfulness > Frustration > Disgust > Dismissal All, stated otherwise, "borderline" emotions. Emotions she feels when she's on the fence about a guy and not dead-set on going to bed with him or, conversely, on counting him out as a sexual option altogether. If a woman is testing a man playfully, it's because she's interested, but not yet convinced. She's enjoying spending time with him, but doesn't take him fully seriously yet (that doesn't mean she won't later). Her sentiment is basically, "This guy is cute. I wonder if he's the real deal..." If a woman's testing a man in frustration, disgust, or dismissal, she's in one of a variety of stages of auto-rejection and is, by testing him, throwing him a lifeline at redemption. Her sentiment is basically, "I hope he says or does the right thing in response to this test and makes me change my mind about him." Take note that women will not test two specific types of men: > Men they are 100% committed to being with, and > Men they are 100% not interested in. So if you're not being tested, it's because a woman either has written you off entirely as not a valid option, or she's so entranced and in-love with you that she hasn't a doubt in her mind that you are the one she wants to be with. An example of the former - the guy she's written off - might be a guy she's just friends with in a very platonic way. An example of the latter - the guy she's head-over-heels with - might be a guy who's in a local rock band and she knows exactly what she wants with him - a quick fling or one-night stand, for instance - and she's fully committed to getting it. PASSING THE TESTS WOMEN GIVE The first thing you'll need to start successfully passing tests from women is a good understanding of the Law of Least Effort in social situations. You want to be getting maximal results with minimal visible effort whenever and wherever possible socially. The impact a good understand of the Law has on your responses to testing is immediate. Once you know you shouldn't be jumping up and down and bending over backward for women who haven't already put in a similar level of investment for you (and even if they have put in a lot, you still don't want to go too far), you'll stop making some of the most common mistakes men make. Here's how women test men, with a handful of the more common tests you'll see, and here to is how men often fail those tests: > Scenario One: Drinks Girl: Will you get me a drink? Man: Sure, definitely. What do you want? Scenario Two: Hand on Her Arm or Leg Girl: Would you mind not touching me like that? I don't like being touched. Man: Oh, sorry. [moves hand] Scenario Three: Resistance Girl: I can't go sit with you, sorry; I have to stick close to my friends. Man: Oh, okay. Scenario Four: Temptation Girl: So what is it you want to do with me, exactly? Man: Umm... nothing! I just want to talk to you! If you possess even a small degree of social intuition, you can feel in your gut that those responses to women are weak and wrong. As for women, they have a lot more than a mere modicum of social intuition, and those kinds of responses ring like alarm bells telling them the man responding this way is not a man of strength and self-possession. Quite often, a single weak response like this can be enough to sink you. Think about that for a moment there: one weak response can derail an entire seduction. That's especially true early on; once a woman is fairly certain she likes you, and she's invested in you, you're allowed a little leeway, so if you slip up a bit later on, you stand better odds of getting a second chance than had you made a similar slip before she started feeling connected to you and before she became invested in you. This is why it's so important to move fast with women and start on deep diving right away and get them investing in and connecting to you in a hurry. The sooner a woman's invested in and connected to you, the fewer tests you'll see, and the more slack you'll be given if your responses aren't perfectly on point at times. Back to the tests themselves. Thing is, if you're a beginner or you're early in the intermediate phase of developing your skill set with women, even if you know these kinds of responses - where you put in too much effort by over-investing or by retreating on your positions or defending yourself - are wrong, you still do them anyway. Why is that? It's mostly because, until you've been battle-hardened a bit, you won't be prepared to react. All the martial arts training in the world won't do much to steel you against that first big fight you end up in; once you have a bunch of men socking you in the face, all those years of training go out the window and you fall back on pure instinct and defensiveness. It takes repeated exposure to situations where you're getting physically hit to be able to remain calm and to follow your training despite the immediacy of the situation. This is every bit as true with meeting women and riding out tests; even when you know exactly how you ought to respond to a test, early on you'll often find yourself defaulting to weak or defensive responses regardless. Don't beat yourself up too much over this; just recognize that you need more exposure and more time in the field meeting live women and experiencing the things women test men with in real life to develop the thick skin to it you need to remain calm and composed and follow your training. Let's have a look now at some examples of how a collected, self-assured man would reply to the same tests we used above from women. Facial expressions, body language, and tonality are all crucial here; a woman's paying even more attention to what you communicate nonverbally than to what you say verbally when you respond to a test of hers. You want to be a sexy man and be charming and evocative as you reply - so don't just work on the words; work on the delivery, too. Scenario One: Drinks Girl: Will you get me a drink? Man: Maybe later, if you're good. What brought you out tonight? Scenario Two: Hand on Her Arm or Leg Girl: Would you mind not touching me like that? I don't like being touched. Man: You mean… like this? [slapping other hand on her right next to where first one is, and smiling like he's just about to start laughing; it's a game to him] Girl: I just don't like it when people I don't know touch me. Man: [laughs] Okay, party pooper. You want an awkward wall of no-touching between us, fine. [moves hands] I still might go find a ruler or something to reach out and caress your cheek with later once you've decided I'm the man of your dreams. Scenario Three: Resistance Girl: I can't go sit with you, sorry; I have to stick close to my friends. Man: Yes you can. Come sit with me; it's just over here. You'll be plenty close to your friends. Scenario Four: Temptation Girl: So what is it you want to do with me, exactly? Man: Well, the first thing I want to do with you is have you keep me company while I drink my drink. After that... hmm, we'll see. MAINTAIN YOUR COOL The most important part about passing a test is maintaining your cool and staying composed. Even if you do do what the girl asks you to do, do it like you meant to do it and wanted to do it anyway. Remember that seeking to throw you off balance - either playfully, or in the hopes that you'll turn around her views of you - is the principal driving motivator in how women test men. Women do many things with the intention of exploring a man's reaction; it's how they learn about him and his feelings toward them. By keeping your composure and staying cool, you communicate that you are in-control, self-possessed, non-needy, and every bit the kind of man she hopes you are. Above all, don't resent women for testing you. They test every man they aren't 100% certain of, whose minds they don't feel they can read 100%, and even after you've slept with a girl, even after you've made her your girlfriend, even after you've made her your wife, she'll keep testing you anyway for the rest of your and her time together. She must constantly assess if you continue to be strong enough to protect her and provide for her, and whether you're showing signs of instability, weakness, or decay - because, as we mentioned at the beginning of this post, those things are very dangerous to women. Strong, confident men don't harm and hinder women. Weak, unstable ones do. So stay cool. Stay nonplussed and unreactive in the face of even tough testing. And smile inwardly to yourself every time you face a test - whether you pass, or whether you don't - because you'll know that each time, you're getting trained a little more about what to expect, and a little more of the fog of war is being lifted as you become better and better prepared to face and handle tests going forward. Also note that whether you're using chase frames and flirting with girls effectively or not is going to play a big role in whether you receive tests; as you position yourself more and more as the pursued, and her more and more as the pursuer, it is increasingly you who will be testing her - and not the other way around. Ultimately, with time, as you learn to handle them properly and as you employ more chase framing and flirting in your interactions, tests fade in importance from your awareness. Someone asked me a few months ago if women still test me. I said, "No, they don't; I can't remember the last time I got tested." But then I thought about it, and I realized that yes, they test me all the time; I just am so comfortable with tests that I always pass with flying colors and they don't even register as tests. Just like women's objections, you come to smile at tests and know that they are opportunities that, when handled properly, you'll see a noticeable spike in attraction and interest following your handling of them. So, I won't say "enjoy tests," because while with time you'll come to enjoy them, first you've got to get through that initial period where they genuinely are a pain to deal with. But, if you put in the time meeting women and getting to know them, you'll face many a test down the line, and the more you face, the more you'll come to handle them with confidence and panache. So maybe, don't enjoy tests... but do try not to mind them too much.

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## Bring the energy: Being the Life of the party My good friend David - who also goes by "Asian Rake" - made a point some time ago that set the gears working in my head. He said something along the lines of, "You know what I've realized all naturals have in common? They build up the energy of everyone around them." This was something I'd thought about a little before, but hearing someone say it outright hit me like a bolt out of the sky. Of course! That's what naturals do, and that's why everyone likes them so much. That's what *I* am doing on my best nights. That's what *YOU* have no doubt done on YOUR best nights. Any person - man or woman - who is a truly fun, likeable, sociable person is considered as much because he or she builds up the energy of everyone around him or her. People who bring the energy make others feel good; they make them feel included; they practically FORCE them to have fun. But all this, I've heard from a few folks, seems a bit ephemeral. How exactly, they ask, do you bring the energy? How do you become the life of the party - not the zany guy bouncing around, or the overtalkative fellow blabbing on and on, but the real genuine life? So that's what I'm writing about today. An in-depth, step-by-step look at what it means to really bring the energy - and how you can easily do it yourself. First off, to get an idea, think if you can of someone you know whom EVERYBODY loves. Someone whom everyone absolutely loves to be around, to spend time with, to hang out with. How is this person with others? He or she is no doubt all of these: > fun > happy > inclusive > seemingly carefree Others gravitate towards him or her because when they are in this person's presence, they get a boost to their own energy. Socializing, and in turn seduction, is ultimately about energy transfer. If you make people feel good, they will want to be around you more and more. Period. It's how you make loyal friends; it's how you make women fall in love. You provide value to their life and you make them feel good. When you make women feel good, they will seek you out. They will chase after you. They will come up to talk to you again if you talked to them earlier and drifted away. They will want to bring you along when they go places. They will want you to be a part of their lives. Now into the nitty-gritty: how do you bring the energy, exactly? There are three main ways: > control the flow of the conversation > be physically and verbally inclusive > lead the group / person you are with I'll go into each and give further details here. Control the Flow of the Conversation: one of the ways you bring the energy is by avoiding negative and boring topics of conversation, and introducing positive and interesting/exciting topics of conversation. When conversation is negative and/or boring, people will want to get away. On the other hand, when conversation is positive and interesting, people will want to stay - and more people may even want to join! More specific means of controlling the flow of the conversation: Cut bad conversational threads. When people get onto negative or boring topics, both of which drain energy from the group, cut them. Change the topic and move onto something else. Introduce positive and interesting conversational threads. Talk about something exciting that happened to you recently, or something interesting going on in the vicinity. If someone says, does, or is wearing something you genuinely like and appreciate, tell them. Ask people about things you know they like to talk about, or ask them how they spend their time and ask them to tell you more about those things they seem keen to talk about - particularly if those things are interesting to you! Use energy when you speak. People who speak without excitement or enthusiasm or inflection in their voice, and without physical gestures, tend to be boring speakers, even if the content of what they're saying is good. Be ALIVE when you talk, and entrance others not just with your words, but with the way you deliver those words. Be Physically and Verbally Inclusive: this can be one of the tougher things to do for people who are new to managing groups of people, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. If you want everyone in a group to feel like you are his or her friend, and to in turn be on your side, this is probably the best way of going about doing that. Include others, both when you are speaking, and when you are not, and they will be grateful to you. A few ways of doing that: Make your stories and conversation interactive. Rather than just belt out a story, ask others to involve themselves. If you're talking about a restaurant or bar you go to, after you say the name, ask your listener(s), "Ever been there?" If you're talking about a favorite activity, ask your listener(s), "Have you ever done that?" or, "Isn't it awesome when you get to do that?" Be physically warm. Put your arm around people's shoulders. Give girls and good guy friends of yours hugs when you see them. Give people light punches to the arm every now and then, especially if they are distracted. Give girls the "hip bump" if they seem distracted: slide up next to them and gently bump your hip into theirs, just enough to nudge them. Use physicality to make people feel both welcome and *focused* on you and the group and the conversation. Remember the golden rule: if you interrupt someone's story, or something else interrupts them, make sure you come back to them (provided, of course, that it was a good thread! Negative stories / conversational threads need not apply!). "So you were saying about the supermarket?" People frequently have things they want to talk about, and if you bring them back to it, they are grateful - and they tend to see you as someone who is very socially calibrated and someone who is paying attention. Lead the group / person you are with. Simply put, make decisions and cause movement. The feedback cycle is… leading a group brings energy to a group, and bringing energy to a group shows leadership. In doing one, you do the other. A more in-depth look: Make decisions by stepping up to the plate when it's called for. Particularly when the group is lacking in leadership. When people start saying, "What should we do?" or, "Where should we go?" or, "How should we do it?" they are basically saying, "I can't decide… can anyone else decide?" This is when you say, "Let's grab the table over there, it's in the shade and should stay nice and cool all through lunch," or, "Let's hit up the dive bar, the big nightclub scene feels like a little much for tonight." Others can agree or disagree, but more often than not, if you make a suggestion and back it up with a reason, they will be inclined to agree. Cause movement. This is somewhat more advanced and requires more calibration. You need to have a good understanding of the way the group is functioning, and you need to be attuned to the group's energy, because if you try to move people when they don't want to be moved, it will be seen as an annoyance / distraction / state-breaker. So you want to be attuned… when the group seems to be bored / restless, cause some movement. "Hey, let's check out the upstairs, that's my favorite part of this club," or, "Let's hit up the pizza parlor next door, that place always has the best pizza." * * * * By focusing on bringing that energy to the people around you, you'll set yourself apart, in a great way. And not only that - you really, literally, will make the time people spend with you more fun, more positive, and all around better in general. In fact… you just might even have a ton of fun yourself!

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##[A34] Why "Fun" is a Seduction Killer When a lot of guys plan dates, they seem to plan them with an attempt to address one specific concern: How can I make this date fun? The fear seems to be that if the date isn't fun, a girl won't want to go. And how can you move things forward with a girl who doesn't want to go out with you? I spent a lot of time trying to figure out and plan "fun" dates early on in my seduction career. I tried to be inventive, and innovative, and come up with engaging, exciting activities that my dates would not have experienced before. The result? I was continually baffled by the fact that the women I ended up getting intimate to or getting close to intimacy with were the ones I had very boring, casual dates with, while the super fun dates at best led to the girl wanting to see me again another time - but not get together with me that time. I couldn't figure out why the dates I put the most work into structuring creatively and inventively turned out to be flops when it came to converting dates into intimate liaisons. I knew I was doing something wrong, but I just couldn't figure out what it was. The turning point came when a buddy pointed out that I was overcomplicating my dates. "I just have girls come over to my place to hang out," he told me. "Then we hook up." Another buddy told me he did the same thing. I decided I ought to try that. So I did, and wouldn't you know it - it worked. I had girls come over to hang out, and voila, we'd get together more often than not. Eventually I concluded that low-stress dates - like the Easy Dates I discussed in the post on Date Templates - were the best setup for achieving intimacy with a woman. Provided she was already interested enough to be comfortable relaxing with me in my apartment, all I had to do was have her come over, get her interested enough while we were there, and make a move. Boom - things would turn physical. That still didn't answer the question for me back then though: why didn't fun dates work for seduction? It seemed counterintuitive: show a girl a great time, and she should be very attracted to you - after all, you're giving her a ton of positive emotions. She should think, "Wow, this is more fun than I've had with anyone in a long time. I'd like to have even more fun with him!" and it'd be easy from there. Except it doesn't work that way. What I finally realized was it was all a combination of Law of Least Effort stuff, Value Compensation stuff (haven't written a post on that last yet, but one's in the works), and the Boyfriend Dilemma, mixed in with a healthy dose of adding too many steps to the date. So think about it like this: you plan out a great, super fun date with you and this cute new girl you've met. The two of you are going to head to the amusement park, ride the water slide like you did when you were both kids, grab some cotton candy, go have a great meal at this really gnarly, different little restaurant near your place with its own cool vibe, and finally hit your place up for a nightcap to top off the evening. Of course, you get back there after your amazing date, pull your girl in for a passionate kiss, and it's close curtains, fade to black. The perfect ending to a perfect date. But it pretty much never, ever ends that way. It almost always goess off-track. And here's how each of those things we just mentioned above contributes in its own way to knocking your best lain plans off course: The Boyfriend Dilemma: a guy running his dates like this has just shown a woman that he's capable of giving her an absolutely amazing time. Think she's going to want to risk sacrificing a potentially incredible and rewarding long-term relationship with a man like that by getting physical with him too fast? Not likely. Value Compensation and the Law of Least Effort: if a guy is working this hard to set up an amazing date… why does he feel like he needs to do this? While she enjoys the date, and appreciates it, there's at least a part of a woman's brain that's asking itself, "Hey, I've dated other guys who didn't feel like they had to work this hard to impress me… what's wrong with this guy that he has to?" Adding Too Many Steps: finally, there are just too many places in here the date can go off-track. What if after the theme park, the girl is absolutely exhausted and decides she wants to take off? What if she has other plans that night she hasn't told him about, and after a few hours being out and about, she needs to book it? What does he do if after dinner she says she really enjoyed the date, thanks him, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and heads over to her car and drives home? Just too many transition periods and other places things can go awry jumbled into this well-organized mess of a date. This is a very difficult date to manage - needlessly difficult, in fact. Because of all this, what you ultimately find is that the simplest dates you can put together are very often the best dates you can put together. If you check out the post on Date Templates linked to above, give a quick read-through of the date ideas listed there - you'll notice they're all simple, straightforward, and unimpressive in design and scope. There's a very good reason for this: You don't ever want the focus to be on the date itself. You want the focus to be on you and your date spending time together. THE DANGER OF PUTTING THE FOCUS ON THE DATE Social learners often oversell their dates to try to "win" their women over into going on the date with them. "Let's go do XYZ - it'll be awesome!" They're trying to sell a super fun date. But that's not what they should be selling. A woman who's sold on a super fun date will come out purely to enjoy the activity. Some beginning students of the social arts will find this the easiest, least assuming way of meeting up with girls, because the "date" can allegedly be about doing something completely harmless and un-date-like - such as playing tennis or relaxing at the beach. But because he's done such a good job of misrepresenting his intentions by overselling the date itself, a woman's far more likely to be there to enjoy the activity instead of specifically to spend time with him, and she's far more likely to be less attracted to him because of that, and to feel less of a social obligation to become involved with him romantically or physically. If, on the other hand, a man tells a woman to come over to his place and hang out, it's far more direct, and a woman may be safe in assuming his intentions are more romantic and more sexual than the intentions of the guy who's inviting her to go to a theme park are. She also views the man who's putting more of an emphasis on them doing something together just to do something together, vs. the man who's putting more of an emphasis on the activity itself, as a more confident, straightforward man, and one more worthy of her romantic and physical affection. A woman brings very different expectations to a date where she's going to be hanging out with you at your house than she does to a date where she's going to be doing a fun activity with a guy. They're just different scenarios. And, really, think about it. If your goal is to get intimate with a girl as quickly as possible, how does doing some super fun thing help you more than doing something relaxed where the two of you can get to know each other with minimal distractions or interruptions? "Fun" is a seduction killer. Seductive guys know that - and they limit the woman's "fun" to the kind of fun that women have just being with them. Spending time with you should be all the fun a woman needs. If you've been focused on overly complex, overly thought-out "fun" dates, maybe now's the time to scrap them and find something a lot more… sexy. Bet the girls you date will appreciate it - and so will you.

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##[A35] The Real Reason many Men CAn't Get a Girl Why is it that most men can't seem to get what they want with women? How come so many men can't get a girl? A few months back, a friend of mine asked me to author a post on leading women. I put it off for a while, because it's not as sexy a topic as, say, opening or locking in or overcoming objections or dating. Leading's just... a little vague, as far as topics go. Yes, it's good to be an alpha male, and it's good to have a set process you follow, and to move on fast if a girl isn't following along. But how's that all come into play in a cohesive strategy for getting success with women? If you'd like to achieve anything resembling consistent, reliable success with women, you're quickly going to realize that leaving things purely up to chance isn't going to cut it. "God helps those who help themselves," goes the saying -- which, boiled down, quite basically means that good things come to the people who go out and actively bring good things into their lives. In other words, success comes to those who engineer that success. But still, most folks don't bother engineering anything approximating success. Most average folks sit around waiting for success to find them. And it never does. For success with women to start occuring for a guy, that has to change for him. So what's it take to advance an average man who can't get a girl into a man who consistently can? Well, among other things, it takes this: he's got to be leading women. SOME PEOPLE GET WHAT THEY WANT When I first moved to Washington, D.C., I started meeting people from all over the world. My girlfriend was from South America. My best friend was from Asia. Another good friend of mine was from Africa. One of the most interesting things you quickly come to realize about people from less developed countries is, they're used to being totally self-reliant: they stand up for themselves, fight and scrap and claw for what they want, and refuse to take "no" for an answer. Me, when I first started meeting international people though, I wasn't like that at all myself. Most folks in the West aren't, I find. Growing up in the West, you're largely told to follow the plan, and everything will be taken care of for you. "Go to school, get a good job, and buy lots of stuff, and everything will be fine." A business screws you over? Vote with your dollar by not going back. Somebody says something that offends you? He's sexist, racist, ageist, or a bigot of some sort or another. Cut that person out of your life and move on. There's a strong culture of, "Don't worry, the State will protect you! Just walk away from conflict!" in the West, and what you tend to get as a result is reasonably passive people. Not all the time -- there are a good amount of go-getters in the West too -- but a lot of the time, denizens of the West are more content and thus a lot more passive than their third world counterparts. Because it's different in the third world. There, you have to go after what you want -- ruthlessly -- because nobody gives it to you. Well, as well as the Western system works for a lot of people, for me the system didn't work. I saw plenty of other guys happy with their desk jobs and their good-enough girlfriends, so I guess it works for some. But me, my job, while paying me quite well, bored the hell out of me, and I had no girlfriend to speak of. The system had failed me. So, I rejected it. I decided to become like all those people from the third world I'd met, and I learned from them, and I emulated them. As I did, I became bolder, more assertive -- I became, more and more, a leader. I'd set out to figure out why I couldn't get a girl, and fix it, and as I focused on becoming more like my third world friends who seemed so adept at getting their ways, I quickly found that my lack of assertiveness was a gigantic factor in my plentiful failings to that point with women -- far more so than I'd previously realized. Back then, I'd: > Give up on something after a single rejection; > Never push or pursue the things I wanted; > Never go out on a limb and ask for stuff in fear of being turned down; > Assume that people didn't want to give me what I wanted to get. I'd have businesses rip me off, and I'd fight a little, and then I'd just throw my hands up in the air and walk away. I'd have people be rude to me, and I'd try to deal with it, then just fold and accept it. And it wasn't that I was afraid of failure, necessarily. It was that I'd never been taught how to get what I wanted. But other people, one way or another, seemingly had. So, I decided to figure out what it was they knew that I didn't, and I decided to learn from them. DECISIVENESS: EXTREMELY NECESSARY FOR LEADERSHIP The biggest thing I noticed between my international friends and my domestic friends was that my international friends absolutely, positively knew where they were going and pursued those ends with a laser-like focus. I think it's very possible to have your basic needs met in the West and really not need to pursue anything else all that hard. Abundant, tasty food; decent, relatively easy jobs for anyone who wants one (compared to what they do for work -- for a lot less money, no less -- in the third world); rafts of consumer goods; and easy escapism in movies, TV, video games, and the Internet. No scraping and struggling; no haggling; no fighting for survival, or just to get the things you want. Life's pretty easy in the West, relatively speaking. Unfortunately, that means we don't learn how to set solid targets and decisively push for the things we want -- and that is absolutely, positively, unavoidably a necessary trait for leadership. That's why so many guys can't get a girl. Because a girl isn't going to just hand herself to a guy on a silver platter; it doesn't work that way. Women want to be led. But most guys in the West can't lead. Back when I was trying to figure out why I was so bad at leading, I hit upon a core reason: I didn't really have a specific objective in mind. I didn't know what I wanted. I really think this is what plagues most men, and it's the root cause of most men's failures with women. They don't know what they want, so they end up all over the place. "Maybe I'll talk to that girl from class sometime" they think. Or "Hey, maybe she'll like it if we go to the movies" There's no objective in there. The guy isn't going for anything concrete; he just knows that he likes girls, he likes this girl, and maybe if he talks to her or takes her to the movies that will be good... in some... undetermined... way. Now, it'd be great if you could just kind of go out and do stuff and suddenly money would fall into your lap. And it'd be great if you could kind of sort of just mess around with like talking to girls and trying to do something fun with them and then suddenly you've got incredible success with women. Heck, it'd be cool if you could go to work and kind of amble about and work on stuff here and there and before you know it they're promoting you to something two positions above where you started out at. But it doesn't work that way. You need to have a specific, concrete, crystal clear objective that you're aiming for to guide your actions. Otherwise, you'll end up meandering around, which can be fun and relaxing, but I'll eat my hat if random wanderings ever produce anything close to consistent results. Wandering just doesn't cut it. LEADERSHIP AND THE MAN WHO CAN'T GET A GIRL We talk about being a guy who moves fast and closes deals with women a lot on here. The primary determinant of a man's ability to do this is his ability to lead. You can have a man who's a skilled conversationalist, who knows how to come across smooth, charming, and charismatic, and who people just absolutely love, but if he can't lead he can't get a girl. Period. Why? Because... well... It's unpopular to say in the West, but men are leaders and need to be leaders. Women like men who are leaders, and despise men who are followers. If you ask girls, they'll often deny this; they like men who listen to them and do what they ask the most! At least that's what they'll say. Then you'll notice those men they like the most are their platonic guy friends who do everything for them, while those bad boys they don't like at all are their lovers and boyfriends. Don't believe this to be so? Okay, try this: First, go out on three dates with three different girls, and tell them, "What we do is up to you; anything you want to do, I'll do it with you." Next, go out on three more dates with three more, different girls, and tell them, "How about we do this and this and that. Work okay for you?" You're generally going to find that women from the first category of dates are going to be a little nicer and friendlier. Meanwhile, women from the second category of dates are going to be a lot more interested in you and a lot easier to become turned on and want things to progress. This is deep in human biological wiring, and you can't fight it. Men dominate, women submit. Men who submit instead of dominate get flung so far into the friend zone they eventually just accept that as their perennial role with the women in their lives. When I first realized this, it was kind of a hard awakening. I thought I'd be able to take it easy and just have things happen with women "naturally." But things don't "just happen." They only seem like they "just happened" to the person who was submitting to the other and letting that other person call the shots and be in control. And the instant you realize that, that's the instant you're able to start becoming the guy who makes things "just happen." I used to have something I'd always tell to guys when I noticed them waiting around for a girl to do something or make a decision. I'd tell them, "You're the man. YOU must lead." HOW TO LEAD WOMEN LIKE THE PIED PIPER can't get a girlYou might be surprised, but true leadership isn't just about telling people what to do. There's a lot more to it than that. Most people imagine a false dichotomy when they think of leadership. They think that telling someone to "be a leader" is the same as telling him to be a jerk who calls all the shots and controls an interaction with an iron fist. But being a jerk with an iron fist only gets you so far, and with the most confident, attractive, socially savvy women, it ends up falling flat. You've got to have nuance, and you've got to have real depth as a leader. So without further ado on my part, here're the tools you need to start leading women with great effectiveness right now. Know where you're going. A leader always has a plan, even if that plan is just to get others' opinions to help him form an idea. As the man in charge, you've either got to be telling women what's going to happen next, or asking, in a very strong way, for their thoughts on the possible choices. So, "All right Kylie, let's go swing by the liquor store to grab something to drink, and then we'll go relax and watch a movie." and "Well Leigh, we can either go down and check out the ocean while we wait for the bus to get here, or we can sit here and talk. Any preference?" are both okay because they present a clear path (without being overbearing) and make it easy for the girl to follow along. On the other hand, "Nancy, what do you think we should do now?" is not okay, because it doesn't lead. You need to primarily be thinking logistics -- basically, "How can I get the two of us alone together as quickly as possible?" Women respond better to men who are moving them quickly and expeditiously forward along a path toward the two of them getting progressively closer and eventually getting physical together, and quickly get bored and end dates with men who seem to just be aimlessly wandering through the date without an objective or set path. If you don't know where you're going, improvise or ask for logistics. Sometimes you really don't know what happens next, logistically. What you do then depends on where you are in the interaction. If you've just met a girl, you need to be strongly decisive. You may not be sure what happens next logistically, but you tell her, "Let's grab a seat," and then the two of you walk over to a bench and sit down. Just focus on continually moving her every so often as you sort out your logistics, and you'll be fine. Normally, you want to be the one steering the logistics. But if she seems like a pretty sexually experienced woman and she seems noticeably interested in you, and you're at a loss for logistics, you can ask her to help you decide. In that case, you might say, "Gosh, I really like spending time with you, Jesse... I wish we could keep spending time together," as the night draws to a close. If she doesn't seem to be getting the hint, you can throw in, "So my place is a little crowded with friends over there right now -- what's your living situation look like?" and then invite yourself over to her place. "All right, why don't we go kick it at your place before we call it a night?" A great leader is a great manager of emotions. True leaders are great leaders because they know how to take care of others emotionally. This means using their skills as a conversationalist to guide and direct the emotional ebb and flow of the conversation. Using deep diving to create a strong connection, fast; and building women up and making them feel good and empowered, while simultaneously fully understood. The vast, vast majority of people out there are utterly not in control of their emotions, and they're forever grateful to those select few individuals who are able to impact them emotionally and guide them to good feelings, more productive mindsets, and realistic encouragement. One example of this so you'll know what I'm talking about: when she's feeling a little down, get her talking about what she likes about her life. e.g.: Her: I just don't know what I want to do with my life. You: All right, well, what are you good at? Her: I'm good at painting, and dance, and writing. You: A lot of artistic stuff. And are you doing any of that regularly now? Her: No, I'm not. You: How are you spending your time? Her: Mostly at work. You: Mostly at work doing paralegal stuff. Her: Right. You: Okay. So what if you started painting again in your spare time? What if you made one painting a week, and started showing your paintings in local exhibitions? Her: That could be fun... You: What if you started a website where you wrote five days a week about whatever you most like writing about? What if you started taking dance lessons again, in a form of dance you haven't mastered yet? Her: You're right... You: You can start doing the things you want, whenever you want. If you're only doing stuff you don't want to do, of COURSE you're going to get frustrated! Her: Wow, you're so right. This is just a great thing to do with people in general. It only takes a few minutes to help people get some exciting ideas about how they can effect meaningful change in their lives and get themselves back on track, but they bind to you fast when you do. Leaders talk about themselves little, except to teach or relate. If you've ever heard people talk about meeting Bill Clinton, the former US president, they always mention how warm they felt instantly talking to him. He'd ask them about themselves, express genuine interest, and perhaps relate a short tale back to what they'd said. Most people try to brag, or showboat, or one-up, or dazzle others with their accomplishments. Leaders don't do this, primarily because once you reach a certain degree of accomplishment, you start so far outclassing everyone else you meet that you either toss them into auto-rejection right off the bat, or else force them into a competition where they're trying to one-up you. Instead, show interest in others and reduce talking about yourself only to things that will facilitate the conversation and the connection -- as opposed to trying to bolster how impressive they perceive you being, like most folks do. A leader is constantly moving things forward. Whether conversationally or logistically, leaders are busy people and they don't have much time (or tolerance) for treading water. For that reason, they're constantly moving things forward. What's that mean? It means that, in conversation, you should be: • Quickly moving off of bad topics, boring topics, and finished topics • Prioritizing emotional connections over factual discourse • Focusing on getting to know her rationale and background fast Which means the following are superior choices: "That's too bad. Well, anything good happen to you today?" "How do you like doing that?" "What would you rather do instead?" "How'd you end up where you are right now?" And moving things forward logistically means this: • Never settling into staying in one place physically for too long • Planning several moves ahead logistically (what comes after this?) • Moving fast with women from open to close Which means you should be thinking: "It feels like we've been standing here too long... time to move." "We'll hit up that tea house, chill an hour, then back to my place." "If she won't move with me within 10 minutes, I'll grab a number and move on." Seem like a lot to remember? Never fear -- you can really boil all this down to a handful of key points to remember: Know where you're going Make sure she's feeling good Help her to relate to you, and you to her Keep you both on-target and headed steadily to where you're going Most men don't do these things, because they're too worried about themselves and how they're coming off to take the time to manage the girl and manage the interaction. That's why most men can't get a girl, or really struggle to. When you start actively managing women and actively managing the interaction and the process -- like how my third world friends manage just about everything in their lives -- that's when it all starts getting really easy, and really clear. All the confusion and anguish about trying to figure out how to get girls and failing disappears. Suddenly you're no longer trying to showcase and being judged inadequate; now you're actively managing things and when you fall short, you've got metrics to check and places you know you can adjust. She got uncomfortable and left too soon? Either she didn't feel like you knew where you were going, it didn't feel like you were actively taking her there, you didn't properly manage her emotions, or you didn't get her feeling like the two of you were connecting. She got to the point of being ready to go home with you, but a little too much time passed and she ended up going home alone? You didn't keep the two of you on-target and moving forward steadily and quickly enough. You can use these leadership metrics as a guide for figuring out where you're messing up; and make tweaks accordingly. Cool, huh? Anyway, that's how I'd break down and codify leadership and leading. If you're not sure where to start, I know what I struggled with for a while, and what I still see most guys struggling with, is knowing where to go. So the next time you find yourself somewhere semi-aimlessly doing something without a clear goal in mind... take 30 seconds and iron out what is you're there for. That exercise alone might make all the difference between an unfulfilling night, and one in which you meet an exceptional woman who's everything you were hoping to find.

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##[A36] The Sad Tale of "Shopping Guy" In this post, I'd like to share with you a cautionary tale. I'd like to tell you the story of a man named Shopping Guy. Shopping Guy isn't really his name. His family and his friends call him something else, no doubt; something closer to an actual name and less of a label. But I know him only as Shopping Guy. I first learned of this unfortunate soul one night when my girlfriend came to visit. She has a number of men she's friends or acquaintances with, you see, who'd very much like to be more than friends or acquaintances of hers. And the stories she tells me about their tragic attempts to get together with her are enough to make a man cringe. Part of the reason I cringe when I hear these stories is because I can see everything these guys are doing terribly, awfully wrong. Another part of the reason, though, is because I've been there before, and I still wince at the recollection. You may have been there before, or you might still be there right now - either way, the story of Shopping Guy, and a reflection on his mistakes, is, I think, well worth spending a few minutes of your time on. Hopefully, his tale will help you avoid ending up like him with girls you like in the future. SHOPPING GUY'S STORY The first mention I heard of Shopping Guy was several weeks back, when my girl told me she went shopping with one of her workmates. As she told me about their outing, where she browsed clothes for several hours while he waited, holding her handbag for her, she referred to him as "Shopping Guy," and his name was forged. I heard of him again the other day, when my girlfriend and I were outside. She handed me her purse while she put on her coat; then she started walking. I stood there and called her to come back, and when she did, I handed her her purse. "You forgot this," I said. "Shopping Guy told me men should always hold my purse for me!" she said, half playfully, half indignantly. "He said I was not demanding enough about getting what I deserved!" "Oh, really?" I said. "So Shopping Guy holds your purse for you?" I asked her. "Yes!" she said. "Well," I answered, "maybe you ought to call him up and let him know where we're going. He can come hold your purse for you." I smiled at her impishly. "I hate you!" she said, a big smile on her face. Then, we headed off, her holding her purse, and me with my hands free, as I like them. Shopping Guy came up in conversation again yesterday, as my girl and I headed out. I needed to buy some groceries, and she needed some pants, so we swung by a shopping mall to hit the department store so she could grab her pants. It was the first time I've gone shopping with her (it's not something I particularly enjoy, so usually I decline any invites of this sort, but it was on the way). "This is where I come with Shopping Guy!" she said. "Ah, so this is where you guys go, huh?" I asked her. "Yeah!" she said. "We have been here several times. He never buys anything, just waits for me while I buy things." "Sounds like a great time for him," I said. "The first time we went shopping, he waited for me to finish my role in the company play for five hours," she told me. "Wait - what?" I asked. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. "So, he sat and waited there for you for five hours?" "Yeah!" she said proudly. "He waited five hours for me!" "Oh my God," I said. "I guess he really wanted to go shopping with you!" She laughed. Now, I've heard stories like this before. My ex-girlfriend from Peru used to have guys doing all kinds of things for her, and this girl is in many ways her long-lost Chinese twin sister. So I'm not surprised to hear this kind of thing. I am still always a little amazed to hear the lengths some of these cats go to try and court a gal. My girlfriend recently had one of her guy friends blow up at her when he tried to go home with her and she turned him down. He got pretty upset, then stormed off saying he'd never talk to her again. He called her the next day, of course, and was all conciliatory. This is at least the second time this has happened with a guy trying to get with her since she and I have been together. Unlike either of those blow-up guys, though, Shopping Guy continues to be a good and loyal companion, and he continues going shopping with my girlfriend and holding her bags for her. He doesn't know she's seeing me, mind you; I'm her secret lover. Whenever my girlfriend asks me to carry her handbag for her, and I politely decline, she protests, "Shopping Guy would carry it for me. He'd ask to carry it for me." And I continue to tell her, "Well, maybe you ought to call him up and get him over here then. He can join us - maybe he can carry my coat, too." And she laughs, and that's the end of it. WHY DO GUYS DO THIS - AND WHY DO GIRLS LET THEM? You might think my girlfriend is an evil, diabolical gal who uses men for her own devices. In fact though, nothing could be further from the truth. My girl's a really sweet, considerate person who cares about other people and very much wants to make sure she doesn't hurt anyone's feelings if she can avoid it. Actually, when that guy got upset that she wouldn't let him take her home last week, she called me right away and asked me if she did something wrong. See, here's the thing. Even though I've told my girl repeatedly that these guys are really only after one thing with her, she still doesn't see it; and, in my experience, this is true for most women. The vast majority of women, in fact. Guys who go the friend route often do such a good job convincing women of their good intentions that they get completely removed from the running in any kind of romantic or sexual consideration. It's not that girls are evil or manipulative. It's that they really believe these guys are their friends. Think about it. If someone spends a great deal of time trying to be your friend, and then months later explodes, saying you never give him or her the attention that he/she deserves, aren't you going to be at least a little bit surprised and shocked? I mean, you thought this person was your friend. You didn't realize they had a whole other concealed agenda. This is what Shopping Guy did wrong: he concealed his interest, and hoped that by being a good enough friend, my girl would recognize what a great guy he was and the two of them would magically end up together. Well, magic ain't real. And women rarely - very rarely - are the ones who push for things, pull the trigger, or make it happen. It's on you. But lots of guys don't realize that. So, they keep hanging around, waiting; being good friends. Holding shopping bags and handbags. And getting nothing. Honestly, if you told Shopping Guy that he had no chance of being with my girl whatsoever, or if you told him that she had a boyfriend right now, do you think he'd still be accompanying her on shopping expeditions, standing around for hours at a time waiting for her, holding her stuff, while she looks to upgrade her wardrobe? Yeah, me neither. HOW TO NOT BE SHOPPING GUY So how do you avoid ending up like Shopping Guy? There are a handful of things to keep in mind. First off, you don't go out of your way trying to be extra helpful to girls. If you can help them while abiding by the Law of Least Effort, do so, for sure. If you can't, then seriously think twice about it. There's a big reason why almost all of the dates I go on these days entail me meeting girls at the subway stop near my place, taking them to a café underneath my building, then taking them upstairs to my place afterward. It's because I don't want to be investing too much time working to make things happen with a girl. Second, you want to be clear about your intentions. That doesn't mean you need to verbally state outright that you're interested in a girl; that can be useful when you're starting out and you need to lean a bit more on verbal stuff to convey the messages you want to convey, but as you improve you'll want to do a better and better job with your implications. When you're doing things right, women should be picking up just from the way you are with them that you're interested. Check out "How to be a Sexy Man" and "Chase Framing" for more on how to do this. Third, you need to move faster with women. Moving slow is one of the primary reasons men end up in the friend zone. Fast-moving guys don't get friend zoned. They get the girl, or at least get her admiration for trying. Women have more respect for a man who moves fast and tries and fails to win them over than they do for a man who plays it slow and safe and takes the friendly guy route. Safe, friendly guys don't inspire much emotion in women. Cool, dangerous, sexy guys, though - they certainly do. Finally, you need to be a bit ruthless about cutting your losses and moving on. Unless a woman offers tremendous value to you outside of being a lover of yours, she ought not have a chance of you being just friends with her. That sounds kind of harsh to say, but really: whatever great traits some girl has, couldn't you also find a girl with the same great traits who's your lover as well? Sure you could. Spending time on women you aren't lovers with is a poor use of your time. You could use that same time spent hovering in some girl's friend zone while she dates other men to instead go out and find your own girl who's just as cool and fun and pretty as her and who goes to bed with you as well. Always keep in mind that women treat their lovers eminently better than they do their friends. If you're taking her to bed regularly and rocking her world, she's just plain and simple going to treat you much better and much more deferentially than she is if you aren't. Does doing all these things guarantee you'll end up with every girl you want to? No. But it will help your odds of accomplishing as much. In addition, it'll enable you to weed out the women who are taking up your time while giving little that you value in return. Remember that any girls who've friend zoned you aren't doing it maliciously. My girl honestly enjoys having these guys in her friend zone as her friends; she likes them as people, if not as potential lovers. To put things in perspective though, I'll leave you with something she said to me about one of them that neatly sums up women's mentality on guys who are just friends. I asked her quite recently why she wants one of these guys as a friend in the first place. Her response: "Because it's nice that he listens to me and I know he can help me and I hope that maybe one day if I need it he can do me a big favor." She isn't being selfish or manipulative. She really is a sweet girl. But this guy has offered himself, his time, and his resources to her without any requirements or preconditions; his time and energy have been unconditionally offered to her. So of course she's going to look to put them to the best possible use for herself; what else do you do with unconditional offers? You figure out how best to use them. So, don't offer yourself unconditionally. Make sure women know you're warm, you're value-giving, and you're a guy who truly cares - but that you are so on your terms. That's how you avoid ending up waiting around five hours for a girl to finish up what she's doing and take you on her shopping trip, where you stand around a few more hours holding her bags for her while she browses the aisles. That's how you end up not being Shopping Guy. Here's hoping someday Shopping Guy figures this out too. I'm rooting for the guy.

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##[A37] How To Compliment A girl Like You've Known her for years In the article on causes and cures for a moody girlfriend, a reader asks about how to compliment a girl, saying: "Hi there Chase, Can you write an article about compliments to girls that [you] are interested in. Not just from that you approached cold but girls that you met through hobbies or friends. I tend to like to tell girls aggressive compliments of sexual nature. Like I would think they are good kissers, they have nice ass or legs, or that I love their bodies and also other compliments in which is related to personality type because there are 2 opinions about compliments." Compliments are a little tricky to get your head around when you first start using them. Go too far overboard, and you seem like you're chasing her; don't compliment at all, and you run the risk of that attractive new woman you've met ending up in auto-rejection. Then, there are the various kinds of compliments... everything from the most subtle compliments she won't even realize were compliments until she thinks about them later, to those blunt-force-direct compliments our reader talks about, like telling a girl she's got a great pair of legs. We'll cover all those and more in this article, your complete guide to complimenting women like only a pro knows how. Compliments are strong stuff. If you have any doubt of their efficacy on others, have a look at these bits of research: From "When flattery gets you nowhere: Discounting positive feedback as a relationship maintenance strategy.," on the effects of ignoring compliments by those in relationships already: "Intimates can rely on a number of strategies to protect their relationships from potential threats. In the present article, the authors investigate a new strategy: to discount flattering comments received from an attractive alternative to a dating partner by making a situational attribution. However, the authors did not expect everyone to adopt this strategy, as not everyone is likely sufficiently motivated to override both the tendencies to make dispositional attributions and to accept positive feedback from others. Dating and single participants were informed that an attractive alternative's positive impression of them had been made freely or under constraint. As expected, dating participants in the constraint condition were less likely than were those in the no-constraint condition to believe that the alternative's impression of them was genuine. In contrast, single participants believed that the confederate's impression of them was genuine, irrespective of their experimental condition. Self-esteem further moderated this effect. As hypothesised, only dating participants with low self-esteem were sufficiently motivated to recognise the situational constraint and discount the positive feedback. High self-esteem daters who were less inclined to discount the positive feedback instead protected their relationships by devaluing the alternative's attractiveness compared to singles." That is to say, complimenting's effects were as follows: Single person: "That person complimented me because I genuinely am great!" Low-self esteem person in relationship: "That person complimented me because they made them compliment me." High-self esteem person in relationship: "That person complimented me because I'm clearly superior to them and they're kissing up to me." From "Self-serving interpretations of flattery: Why ingratiation works.," on the impacts of flattery: "Persons who are flattered are more likely to assign credibility to and like the flatterer than observers, presumably because they are motivated by vanity. In existing studies, however, the difference between targets and observers has been confounded with other variables. The present experiments demonstrate that the target-observer difference in judgments of an ingratiator is not affected by these confounding variables, such as cognitive resources, the motive to like one's interaction partner, or to form an accurate impression, or mood. Results further suggest that, whereas cognitive responses to ingratiation are different among participants with high versus low self-esteem, affective responses and judgments of the ingratiator are not qualified by any personality variables." Put in layman's terms, flattery and compliments make the flattered feel: Better about him or herself, and More trusting of the complimenter (obviously, he's a friend and ally, and a pretty smart guy to recognize our strong suits!) And, perhaps most startling of all, here's the research from "Insincere Flattery Actually Works: A Dual Attitudes Perspective:" "This research uses a dual attitudes perspective to offer new insights into flattery and its consequences. The authors show that even when flattery by marketing agents is accompanied by an obvious ulterior motive that leads targets to discount the proffered compliments, the initial favorable reaction (the implicit attitude) continues to coexist with the discounted evaluation (the explicit attitude). Furthermore, the implicit attitude has more influential consequences than the explicit attitude, highlighting the possible subtle impact of flattery even when a person has consciously corrected for it. The authors also clarify the underlying process by showing how and why the discrepancy between the implicit and explicit attitudes induced by flattery may be reduced. Collectively, the findings from this investigation provide implications for both flattery research and the dual attitudes literature." In other words, Someone may realize flattery is insincere, and logically discount it Emotionally, however, he or she will still have a positive reaction to the flatterer The emotional effect is stronger than the logical one, and the net effect is positive How crazy is that? So, our main takeaways on how to compliment a girl from the research are: Single women presume you're complimenting them because they're genuinely great, while girls in relationships assume it's because there's some other reason (low self-esteem) or because they're superior to you (high self-esteem), Complimenting someone makes her feel better about herself, and more open and trusting toward and think more highly of you, and Even if a compliment is obviously fake, its net effect is still positive and it's still a net gain. TALES FROM THE FIELD I'd like to expand a bit on this research with my own anecdotal findings in complimenting women and being complimented, to give you a more fleshed-out picture of how this works. I've been on both the giving and the receiving end of the "compliment to an attached person" phenomenon. And you really do see either: A weird awkwardness out of the girl in question, or A increase in "superiority" from her ... which matches the research, assuming the weird awkwardness is low self-esteem women, and the superiority is high self-esteem. I've also been on the receiving end of compliments many times while in relationships, and my attitude is generally this: "Oh! Poor girl. She's single and all alone... wishing she could have a man like me." Whereas, when I'm single, it's more like this: "Mmm... this girl seems like a pretty sharp cookie. I think I could get along with her. Let's see if we can't move things forward..." None of this is conscious; it's just an automatic emotional reaction, probably largely based on what your radar is attuned to in any given situation. If you're single, you're on the look out for a girl to show interest (or, in women's case, a guy) so you can zero in and focus on making things happen with this particular person. If you're attached and not actively looking, or only browsing around less actively, there's a lot less urgency or need to pick up, and when compliments come you can feel that the other person has a much stronger need or desire for you than you do for her. Incidentally, having been on both the receiving and the giving end of insincere flattery (usually by accident on that last... i.e., walking up to a girl who looks great from behind and launching into a direct opener, only to have her turn out to be not so spectacularly beautiful from the front), and while it's never as powerful as genuine, sincere flattery, it does still pack some punch and almost always elicits a smile. Furthermore, as we've discussed on here about direct openers before (which, really, are nothing more than dressed up compliments used to begin a new conversation with a girl you'd like to meet), direct gives you some of the most polarizing opens you will see... often resulting in very, very warm receptions to you... much warmer than what you'll get with anything else. It isn't always the case, but it is enough of the time that direct makes for a stick of attraction dynamite sitting in your tool belt at the ready for deployment on a moment's notice. Now, that research is all well and good, but how to do you get down to the nitty and gritty and, you know, do it? How do you compliment a girl and have it work wonders? There are four (4) aspects to this you need to know, and they're this: Complimenting genuinely Type of compliment used When to use the compliment What to do after the compliment We'll do a thorough review of each. HOW TO COMPLIMENT A GIRL GENUINELY The first thing to know about compliments is that, while insincere flattery does work (as noted in that research above), compliments go a lot farther if the complimented can tell it's sincere. What's the difference between a genuine compliment? Imagine you're wearing a new hat, and I walked up to you on the street and said each of the following, then kept walking past you, onto wherever it is I'm going: "Hey man, love the hair." "Hey, cool hat." "That's an awesome hat... colors, patterns, everything. Really neat. Complements your style very, very well." The first one, you might get a boost of pride, simply for being confident... but it's a little weird. Can I even see your hair underneath your hat? Yeah, not really. The second one, you nod your head in agreement and think, "Yeah, I'm cool." The third one, though... what goes through your head? If you're like most people, it's probably a bursting of pride and enthusiasm, and you even feel a little sorry that I keep walking and didn't stop; "That seems like a great guy to get to know," you think to yourself. A potential friend and ally. That's the effect of a well-put together genuine compliment. Option #3 there employs a style of complimenting known as "genuine interest," because you need to take actual, genuine interest in whatever it is about someone you're complimenting because you've got to be able to pinpoint details and tell that person why those details are great. And that's simply very, very difficult to do insincerely. The process for a genuine interest compliment works something like this: See someone you'd like to compliment Pick out something about her you want to compliment Pick out some cool, interesting details about it Pick out how those details reflect well upon her Deliver the compliment In addition, there are also a pair of facial expression adjustments you can use to greatly enhance genuine complimenting, as discussed in greater detail in the post "Genuine Interest Dynamite:" Squint, wrinkle your nose, and get a small smile going when you deliver the strongest part of the compliment Use a slow-spreading smile when you smile, rather than that quick "on-off" light switch smile most people use in uncomfortable situations These two additions back up the sincerity of the compliment, and communicate your comfort and genuineness in delivering it. Getting good at delivering genuine compliments typically takes practice. You're training your brain to do a number of little things in quick succession here, such as noticing the tiny details of something, tying them back in to reflect on the person in question, and then delivering the compliment in conjunction with the appropriate body language and facial expressions. Some more examples of genuine interest compliments, just so you've got a feel for them: "Your hair is gorgeous - that flip is a great look... it's one you never see anywhere except in old movies, and that's a shame. It really stands out in a very good way." "I had to come tell you that your sense of style is really well put-together. There's just something about the way everything about you ties in with everything else that simply makes it *pop*." "You know, I just noticed, but you have the most magnetic little smile when you laugh... it's really quite something. Your lips curl up at the edges in this really cute, charming way that's just totally unique, and there are dimples, and... wow. It's good." There are some little details in there to mind, like: Don't use the word "you" too much, but do use it a bit Use the word "I" even less (it isn't about you; make HER feel good). Use it once, or not at all Use interesting and descriptive words that will capture her attention and interest Don't go TOO effusive with your praise ("It's AMAZING!"), but also don't understate so much that the compliment is underwhelming The first couple of times you try to deliver a strong, genuine compliment, it's probably going to come out awkward and fall a little flat. No worries; insincere flattery works too... just not as well. But as you use this more and more, you'll become more and more adept at it, and get better and better and instantly recognizing people's strong suits and points of pride, and pointing them out to them. In other words, once you've got genuine compliments down, you'll be one heck of a hit at the parties, and one heck of a hit with the ladies. If you tackle this as a skill you'd like to learn, the best advice is to try to always compliment a girl on something unique; that is, don't keep recycling the same compliments again and again (otherwise, you're running off a script, rather than developing an ability). THE 3 TYPES OF COMPLIMENTS There are three main ways of complimenting women you can employ. They are: Standard Compliments. By "standard," I mean things you can compliment just about anyone on, at any time, and get a good reception. Things like cleverness, sense of humor, fashion sense, walk, posture, grace of movement, etc. Sexual Compliments. Edgy compliments are those that up the feeling of intimacy and sexual tension between you and a girl, and make you into more of an edgy bad boy simply for having used them. Sexual compliments fall into this category, as do "us against the world" type compliments. You'll use these most when you're pursuing a style of direct, sexual game, and are the person in the lower value position in the interaction. "Us vs. the World" Compliments. These comments tend to rely a lot on timing, but create a great sense of togetherness and carry a heft punch. Essentially, they're compliments designed to push away the outside world and create cohesion and unity. These are very effective in indirect game, when the object is to keep girls guessing about your level of interest while continually dropping hints and upping the vibe. You can also use them at times with more direct game, when they're needed or useful. ... and now that you know the types, here's how to compliment a girl with each of these different styles. Standard Compliments Standard compliments are the ones you're most commonly going to use in direct openers, and they're also the ones you'll use complimenting women in a genuine interest fashion. They're the most straightforward to use, although, as noted when we discussed genuine interest, practice makes perfect, and the more you challenge yourself to tease out interesting and noteworthy details about the women (and men, too!) you meet and compliment them on these, the better at complimenting sincerely you'll get. Because we already covered there fairly extensive under complimenting genuinely, I won't spend time going over them again here, except to say that you can use these compliments throughout the course of an interaction, and regardless of whether you're taking a direct or an indirect approach to your conversation and "game," as (done right) they don't necessarily communicate interest, but rather simply appreciation for the complimented's strong suits. how to compliment a girl And of course, when someone knows you know and appreciate her strengths, she appreciates you, all the more. Sexual Compliments You won't use sexual compliments if you're pursuing a strategy of indirect game, and you also won't use them if a girl considers you sufficiently high in value over her. Rather, what you use sexual compliments to accomplish is twofold: Positioning yourself firmly in the "lover, not provider" category, and Exciting a girl and readying her for physical intimacy, logically and emotionally Sexual compliments are used for upping polarization - that is, driving some women away, while ramping up the excitement levels of others. They're a screening tool, in that way. Generally speaking, sexual compliments coming from a man a woman perceives as higher in value than her are a turnoff, and a signal she's failed to accurately assess his value, while sexy compliments from a man a woman perceives as lower in value than her cause her to stop and gauge whether she'd be interested in a bedroom romp with him regardless. That means, you'll tend to use these with girls who are acting like they feel themselves clearly superior to you, to scare off the ones who aren't interested, and invite the ones who are to sign up for some no-strings fun. Sexual compliments look like this: "You have the most amazing, sexy legs to look at." "You're driving me crazy... I can't keep being near you like this, it's turning me on too much." "Your eyes have this hypnotic, sensual feel to them that I'm feeling like I can't escape." "Us vs. the World" Compliments Opposite to sexual compliments, "us vs. the world" compliments communicate higher value than the woman, and are typically used to reassure her and take a "it's just you and me, babe, and screw the rest of 'em" type approach with her. "Us vs. the world"-style compliments look like this: "Who cares what these other people think? What are they doing with their lives that's so great?" "We don't need their approval... they're nobody compared to us." "[insert group of people] are luck they don't have US in their group... I don't think they'd be able to handle what we'd be bringing to the table." Whether you use sexual compliments or "us vs. the world" compliments, both sets create strong feelings of intimacy, excitement, and togetherness, increase sexual tension, and make a woman a lot more likely to logically prepare herself for sex as well as emotionally, which reduces last minute resistance and makes it easier for you to sleep with girls. WHEN TO COMPLIMENT A GIRL Just as important as knowing how to compliment a girl is knowing when to compliment her. Compliment women at the wrong time, and it'll seem awkward at forced. But compliment them at the right time, and you come across like a brilliant, astute, and very relatable man. So when do you compliment her? The times when you'll most want to compliment a woman are here: When you first meet her (on the opener) Shortly after you've opened situationally or with "Are you single?" On a high point, when she's smiling and laughing After she's just done something very good In a moment of heightened sexual tension ... and the times when you'll least want to compliment a woman are here: When she's ignoring your or being rude or dismissive When she's talking with the group and not just you When she's pulling away from you and auto-rejecting When she seems like she's skeptical of you or unsure There are caveats to those last four, and if you're very smooth you can violate these rules (e.g., a girl who's being skeptical, and a guy who holds his finger up, getting her attention and breaking her out of autopilot, and then delivers a genuine compliment to her that causes her to melt out of her skepticism), but, generally speaking, unless you're a compliment pro, don't chase women by complimenting them when they're pulling away or not giving you their full attention. You'll come across as if you're trying to force the interaction through. On the first five, the function of the compliment is either to: Lower her initial walls against you and get her to open up, or Capitalize on a high point / tension point, and escalate things further The first one we've covered in some detail already throughout this post and others, but here's an example of the second (capitalizing on a high point): Her: ... and that's why I didn't become a vet. You: [laughs] Her: [laughs] You: You really have an amazing sense of personal freedom and self-direction. It's very refreshing. It's hard to meet people who want to do anything other than office job, white picket fences with their lives. Here's another example of that second one, this one on capitalizing on a tension point: Her: ... and that's why I didn't become a vet. You: [stare, build tension] Her: [stare back, tension builds further] You: [squinting eyes, leaning in, talking softly] You have... the most amazing air about you when you tell a story. It's like magic. Now, timing out of the way, that only leaves us with one last thing to cover: what to do after. WHAT TO DO AFTER YOU COMPLIMENT WOMEN What you do after complimenting a girl is slightly different depending on the kind of compliment and what you're trying to accomplish with it. Here are the guidelines: If you complimented her on an opener, immediately introduce yourself after opening and shift into normal banter or small talk If you compliment a girl after she does something good or nice, or as a form of qualifying her while getting to know her or deep diving, go right back into conversation afterward as if nothing has happened If you compliment her on a high point, let it sink in and let the tension build - it's a nice transition from laughter to intimacy If you use a sexual compliment, maintain eye contact and say nothing else until she responds. If she doesn't respond for a while but simply maintains eye contact, ask for some form of compliance (get her phone number, move her, invite her home, etc.) If you use an "us vs. the world" compliment, let it sink in and don't say anything for a little while. Resume normal conversation only after a moment WRAPPING UP ON COMPLIMENTING GIRLS Here's the post-article wrap up on all we've covered: Scientific Research on the Effects of Compliments Single women presume you're complimenting them because they're genuinely great, while girls in relationships assume it's because there's some other reason (low self-esteem) or because they're superior to you (high self-esteem), Complimenting someone makes her feel better about herself, and more open and trusting toward and think more highly of you, and Even if a compliment is obviously fake, its net effect is still positive and it's still a net gain. How to Compliment a Girl Genuinely See someone you'd like to compliment Pick out something about her you want to compliment Pick out some cool, interesting details about it Pick out how those details reflect well upon her Deliver the compliment Squint, wrinkle your nose, and get a small smile going when you deliver the strongest part of the compliment Use a slow-spreading smile when you smile, rather than that quick "on-off" light switch smile most people use in uncomfortable situations The 3 Types of Compliments Standard Compliments: use to open, make yourself relatable, and praise Sexual Compliments: use when you're lower in value to create arousal "Us vs. Them" Compliments: use when you're higher in value to create intimacy When to Compliment a Girl When you first meet her (on the opener) Shortly after you've opened situationally or with "Are you single?" On a high point, when she's smiling and laughing After she's just done something very good In a moment of heightened sexual tension What to Do After You Compliment Women Introduce, then talk or banter, Return directly to conversation, Let the tension build, Ask for compliance, or Let it sink in a moment Remember to approach compliments as a skill like anything else - the more you use them, the better at picking them out and giving them you get. Best of all... while you learn, you'll be having tremendous fun in the process, too. So don't let this seem to overwhelming. Instead, just pick your favorite kind of compliment out of this list, and start practicing. Before you know it, you'll be an expert at picking out others' strong suits and telling them about it - and everybody loves having somebody like that around.

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##[A38] Tactics Tuesdays: Locking In I'm kicking off a new weekly blog post series today, that's going to center on brief, informative articles focused on one specific technique you can use to achieve greater success with meeting and dating women. I'm calling this new series Tactics Tuesdays. In today's edition -- our inaugural one -- I want to have a look at the technique of locking in. When I first stumbled upon the pick up community, I heard the term "lock in" or the instruction to "get locked in" tossed about fairly often. And to me, it sounded silly and overmuch -- another vestige of the old indirect days of picking up girls, like opinion openers and routines. Then I moved to San Diego, and acquired a new friend and wingman who was doing outstandingly with girls, and who I noticed made it a point of his game to always lock in. It was the first time I'd seen it done effectively. About two years later in mid-2009, I partnered Girls Chase with a talented San Diego-based date coach named Mateo (who just launched his new website, Live the Knight Life; congrats to him!), and I observed that, again, here was a guy for whom locking in was a pretty essential part of his approach with women. And like my other pal, I noticed he was having a discernibly easier time more often than not on his initial approaches. "Well, okay," I said to myself, "this looks like something I need to stop being so closed-minded about, and start doing." So, lock in I did. THE TACTICS OF LOCKING IN Locking in is, quite simply, the technique of getting yourself into position where you're visibly more comfortable, and a woman is facing toward you. Locking in is something you're going to use everywhere, but before I go into examples of how and where, I just want to take a minute to make sure it's crystal clear what locking in actually is. So let's use a very easy-to-follow example -- let's take the example of a guy meeting a girl for the first time at a bar. Typically, when a man approaches a woman who's up at the bar, it's going to look something like this: The guy will be facing the girl while she reclines against the bar. This is a very common position for new acquaintances to end up in, and very common opening body language for men to adopt with new women. In the image above, the girl is locked in; the guy is not. If you've already developed some social intuition, you can doubtless sense that the image above feels like the man is chasing and pursuing the woman. He's not using the Law of Least Effort. He's not visibly more relaxed or in command. In fact, he's clearly putting in more work -- he's the one on the outside, looking in. Put plainly, he's the pursuer, and she's the one deciding whether he measures up or not. But now what's it look like if the guy's locked in instead? It looks like this: He's relaxing, back against the bar, and she's the one who's standing up, leaning in, and putting in more effort. Maybe his arm is draped lazily over the edge of the bar. Maybe he's got one foot crossed over the other while she looks attentively on. In the first picture -- the one where the girl is locked in, and the guy is not -- this looks like just an ordinary exchange, where a woman is hanging back and assessing a guy and being skeptical, and the guy is taking his chance with fate and hoping for the best. In the second picture though, the roles are reversed, and the guy looks like a king. He comes across as desired and desirable; that rare man that a woman -- so much more attuned to social power dynamics than most men are -- is willing to stand there and invest time and attention into and potentially look lower status because of, just to have the chance to perhaps be with him. And you'd better bet your bottom dollar that does something different for a woman's levels of attraction than standing and pursuing does. What locking in is about, in a nutshell, is displaying social power and getting investment from women. Some examples of locking in: Getting your back against a bar, pillar, or wall while a girl faces toward you Getting seated in a bench, chair, or booth with a girl facing you Getting a girl on top of you (on your lap or on you prone if you're laying down) How do you do this, exactly? As it were, the technique itself is quite straightforward. You can follow these steps to get locked in just about anywhere: Find the girl you want to talk to Walk up to her and open her, then Grab a spot next to her if you can easily lock in there, or Move back a bit to somewhere you can relax, and motion her over while talking, or Move her gently and deftly aside, and position yourself somewhere comfortable -- perhaps even where she was just standing or sitting! An example might look like this: You see a girl standing over near a wall. You walk up and start talking to her: "How's your night going?" you remark casually in a sexy voice. She instantly warms up; you can tell she likes you. You take a few steps back, about 5 feet away from her, backing yourself up to a wall to lean against. She follows, coming closer as you talk to her from afar, as she naturally closes the gap to be able to speak with you without having to raise her voice or stand awkwardly far away. Now you're locked in. Another example might be spotting a girl leaning up against a bar casually, and starting your conversation with her, then gently guiding (within about 15 seconds or so of first saying "hello") her to make room for you to lean against the bar. "Here, move over," you'll say, in a warm, non-threatening voice. She'll comply -- it'd be socially ungracious of her to do otherwise. Easy enough to do. The only thing I can see guys being afraid of is girls not following them -- but if you are, don't be. If she won't follow you a few feet as you lock in, there's a very low chance she would've done anything else with you either, so you can even use locking in as an effective tool for screening out the women who aren't all that interested in you. Of course, every coin has two sides, and there is something you do need to be aware of, however. And that is that women are very attuned to the social implications of their actions -- if only subconsciously -- and there's a feedback loop in their heads that tells them one of the following two things: They're either investing too much, and need to stop before it gets too awkward, or They're investing a lot, but it feels great and they feel rewarded. Now, if a girl feels awkward, she's going to cut the conversation short and end it to save face and preserve her own value and social status. But if, on the other hand, she feels comfort and enjoyment, well, she's certainly going to want things to continue as-is. What that means for you, then, is that it's imperative to make sure the women you get locked in with end up feeling comfortable, rewarded, and glad that you're locked in. LOCKING IN FIRST AND ASKING QUESTIONS LATER Newer guys tend to wonder when the best time to lock in is. The answer to that query? Instantly. One of the really cool things I picked up from my old partner Mateo was how much of an emphasis he put on instantaneously locking in. He'd walk up to girls at the bar and instantly move them and position himself between them or with his back to the bar. Most guys don't do this because they think it'd be disruptive and awkward. But when a cool, powerful man does it, it's dynamite for attraction. Women love finally meeting a man who isn't afraid to move them from the outset and enter their personal space. Just bear in mind that it's very, very important that you're qualifying women and getting into deep dives so they feel rewarded for putting in this extra effort with you that they don't with most men. When you start locking in regularly, I assure you you'll be amazed at how potent this simple technique is. If you place your hands on a girls' shoulders and gently move her aside so you can lean up against the bar next to her, all the while continuing your conversation as though nothing were happening and nothing had happened, you'll quite normally see a noticeable perking up in attraction from her and increased pursuit on her part. Locking in just works, for the same reasons that investment works and leading women works. Women respond best -- and are most attracted to -- the man who can take charge, get them following his lead, and be comfortable in the process -- it's sprezzatura. This is a simple technique you can use anywhere -- whether you're leaning against a clothing rack in a department store while a girl stands and talks to you, or the hostess' podium at a restaurant while you wait for your table, or you're reclining in a plush couch in your favorite nightclub, locking in -- and getting locked in quickly from the very beginning -- can give you a leg up in attraction, and make the whole rest of the interaction with a girl not only better -- but easier and more relaxing, too. See you again soon.

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##[A39] Get to Know A Girl: Connection-Building Tactics A guy meets a girl he thinks he might really like. She's cute, she has a great energy about her, and there's something about her - the way she looks at him, the way she smiles and laughs when he says something funny, the way he feels just being in her presence - that makes him get a little excited about her. What comes next though is that one thing that's troubled so many men throughout history: once you've found one that you like, how do you get to know a girl? In this post, I'm going to take a look with you at the old concept of "screening and qualifying," at how men usually get to know girls - and the mistakes they make - and at deep diving once again. Best of all, I'm going to introduce you to a very different way of thinking about getting to know women from the traditional screening and qualifying mindset that's so pervasive out there right now, that's guaranteed to help you fit the pieces together in a much more streamlined way. Let's dive in. MISTAKES MEN MAKE TRYING TO GET TO KNOW A GIRL When most men meet a girl they like, they make a valiant effort to get to know her - and usually end up doing it all wrong. Common things guys do include: Talking about themselves a lot Trying to be impressive Trying to carry much of the weight of the conversation Actively seeking to keep things moving smoothly constantly Being clumsy or obvious in things like screening and qualifying Acting overly interested in uninteresting topics Venturing onto uninteresting topics themselves And there are a lot more than that. But you get the idea. Point is, most men mess themselves up while trying to get to know a girl. They have missteps and make some clumsy maneuvers and they end up knocking themselves out of contention for the girl. Why do guys do this? It mostly comes from lack of understanding. Lack of understanding of some basic core social dynamics that influence how we become intrigued by and attracted to others. For instance, most men take the "be overwhelmingly impressive" approach to attempting to woo women. The thought behind it is, "If I can communicate to her just how amazing I am, she won't have any choice but to become insanely attracted to me!" Except, attraction doesn't quite work that way. Women are hardwired to not take men's words at face value. The easiest way to present yourself falsely is through the words you speak; because of this, his spoken word is the least reliable indicator of a man's value as a potential boyfriend or lover. And women know this, both intuitively and (quite often) consciously. The man who's a skilled conversationalist realizes this. This is why he seeks not to impress, but to understate and use humbleness to remove some of the glare from his presentation with others. A woman isn't going to feel comfortable opening herself up to you when she feels like you're positioned 3,000 feet above her as vastly more accomplished and ridiculously superior. Instead, she'll close off. And this is what happens with most men's efforts to get to know women: they cause women to close off, either by being too impressive, or by trying too hard to force rapport. All those mistakes we listed above either end up making a man seem like too much, or like he's working too hard to come across a certain way or achieve a certain objective. He isn't using the effortlessness of sprezzatura and he isn't minding the Law of Least Effort. He's seeming too high and mighty, or too artificial and needy. WHAT THE SEDUCER KNOWS ABOUT GETTING TO KNOW WOMEN A man who's a seducer doesn't make those mistakes mentioned above. Part of that is his mindset - he doesn't view getting to know a girl to be as much of a life-or-death kind of deal as an average man does, and so doesn't place inordinate amounts of pressure on himself to perform - but a larger part of it is his simply knowing what women want, like, and enjoy in a man they've met, and his knowing how to genuinely connect with a woman and get to know her. The seducer knows that most women aren't pop stars or supermodels or CEOs. He knows he doesn't have to be the most impressive man of her life to catch her attention - and that, in fact, positioning himself as such is likely to put him out of her league. And he knows that women don't want to meet a man who wants to tell them all about himself - they want to meet a man who wants to know all about them. But not just any man. They want a man who's charming and attractive - a man they're going to want to open up to. Women want to open themselves up to a man they're attracted to off the bat. That takes working on your fundamentals - on things like how to be a sexy man and on things like understanding why girls like bad boys and how you can use that knowledge to make yourself into a more attractive man. But even if you haven't yet started working on your core fundamentals, there are still women who like you and want to open themselves up to you. You cross paths with these women all the time - the girl in line at the coffee place whose gaze lingered on you a little too long; the woman you met at happy hour the other day who couldn't seem to get enough of talking to you. All you need to do is find these women - and get to know them. And it's not about being impressive. Nor is it about putting the weight of the conversation on your back and carrying it forward. Nor is it about struggling, tooth-and-clawing it, fighting to make an interaction work. If a girl likes you, you shouldn't have to fight her to get to know her. It should be easy... right? SCREENING, QUALIFYING, AND CONNECTION-BUILDING The first thing you normally learn about within the circles of men training for success with women is a concept known as "screening and qualifying." It's an old standby that's been a fixture in the industry for a long time because, quite frankly, it works. Screening is the term for the practice of (usually) asking women questions about themselves to get to know them better. Statements can also be used to encourage women to self-screen, but for beginners the easiest things to start off with typically are screening questions. A few very basic examples so you know what I'm talking about: "Do you cook?" "What sort of creative stuff do you do?" "Do you travel at all?" Those are basic screening questions, and they'll help you quickly find out things about a girl that you're curious to know. Screening is a normal part of human interaction and dialogue. It's how we get to know one another. Screening is great, wonderful, and absolutely essential. BUT, one of the things you're often told about it is completely wrong. A lot of the guys in the seduction industry recommend "screening hard" to "show women you have standards." They're coming from that same mindset that you need to "display higher value" in order to "impress" women, basically. In this instance, by screening you "impress women with your standards." Actually, for a while I thought about screening this way myself. It's a pervasive mindset. But there was something about it that never quite clicked for me mentally... But we'll come back to that in a second. There's a second part to screening, and it's known as "qualifying." Your screens won't get far without qualifying statements, which are, simply put, how you show a woman your approval of her answers. At least, again, that's the thought behind it in mainstream seduction circles. So, an exchange with a screen like the following occurs: Guy: Can you cook? Girl: I sure can! I've been cooking since I was ten. And in response, the guy qualifies the girl to reinforce his approval of her passing his screen: Guy: Oh, that's great! I love girls who can cook. And as far as building connections and boosting attraction goes, screening does its job really well. Screening works, hands down. But the explanations for why it works always seemed a little clunky to me. "Screen a girl to show her you have standards. Then, qualify her to show you approve of her and get her viewing you as higher value and an authority figure." That felt a little... misunderstood to me. Once I started putting together the framework of connection building that became deep diving though, things started to click better and make more sense. I realized that people became comfortable with other people and let their guards down the more connected to someone else they felt. And as they became comfortable and as their guards went down, they allowed themselves to become attracted. Actually, that last part's a concept I owe to my old business partner, MNX. He first introduced me to the idea that a lot of women are controlling themselves and preventing themselves from feeling attraction. They're putting the dampener on their feelings for men. And as I learned more and more about connection building, I began to realize why: It's because most men don't make women feel comfortable, connected, and understood. And people don't open themselves up to people they don't feel comfortable, connected, and understood with. They keep their defenses up, raise the bridge over the moat, and plop archers into their towers. They stay at the ready to defend against attacks. But when you build a connection with them - when you make them feel comfortable and understood - those defenses come down. The bridge gets lowered and the archers head to the cantina for a pint of ale. So, building connections helps people to lower their defenses and really feel around you. And what's one of the key tenets of building solid connections with people? Helping them to feel like you know them better. By finding out more and deeper and broader things about women, you enable them to connect to you more thoroughly. And by enabling women to connect to you more thoroughly, you enable them to allow themselves to feel attraction. What I realized was that screening worked not because it "shows women you have standards," but because it helps women to CONNECT to you! It helps them to help you know more and more about them, and thus they begin to feel increasingly comfortable, connected, and understood - and, thus, they put their guards down and allow themselves to let their mounting attraction for you run free. This is also why women you don't screen properly go into auto-rejection and leave; they start feeling like you aren't getting to know them and don't care to, and eventually the conversation feels to uncomfortable for them to remain in and they make their exits. Screening works because it helps women feel connected, which frees them to feel attracted. What about qualifying then? Is it still about showing women you approve and getting them to view you as a leader? Well, the current thinking on qualifying I think is a little closer to the mark than the current thinking on screening... but, it's still off the mark, nevertheless. Let's look at qualifying from the same perspective as screening. Screening works because it helps you build better connections with women by encouraging them to share things about themselves with you and you get to know them better. How does qualifying advance a connection? Simple: see if you can feel the difference between these two interactions: You: Actually, it's something of a hobby of mine. Girl: How long have you been doing that? You: Almost four years. I've gotten pretty good. Girl: ... You: So... do you have any hobbies? Girl: Not really. I'm too busy for hobbies. and You: Actually, it's something of a hobby of mine. Girl: How long have you been doing that? You: Almost four years. I've gotten pretty good. Girl: Oh, so cool! I really admire that you stuck with it that long and developed your skill... most people never do that, they give up way too early! What made you keep at it? You: Well, I... Huge difference, right? What's the main difference? The girl in the second conversation qualifies you for what you've shared with her. The girl in the first example does not. Why's it matter? Is it because Girl #2 is showing approval over you and you're accepting her as a leader? No. It's because you feel like Girl #2 gets you and wants to build a connection with you. She appreciates you. So, you lower your defenses, you allow yourself to feel more connected to her and feel more attracted, and you start viewing her as someone who's on your side; she's "one of us" instead of "one of them." That's why qualifying works. Because, like screening, it helps you build connections with women, which allows women to feel attracted to you. HOW TO REALLY GET TO KNOW A GIRL Ready to step your connecting game up and take it to the next level? Good. Because if you've made it this far in this post, I've got something special for you. It's new, cutting-edge stuff I've been using for a little while but have only recently broken down well enough that I feel comfortable putting pen to paper about it. And that is the concept of how you can integrate screening and qualifying seamlessly with deep diving. Deep diving is all about forming fast, rapid connections with women. Screening and qualifying is all about finding out the things you want to know from women. If you want to get to know a girl fast and well, you must combine these two things. To do so, there's something you must understand first about qualifying: the reason it works is not because you are verbally saying "I approve." Nope, that's not why qualifying works at all. The reason why qualifying works is because you express INTEREST in another person. Look back over those last two examples above about the girl who qualifies you and the girl who doesn't. What's the deepest emotion you feel about what those women are conveying? The first girl doesn't care about your hobby. The second girl DOES. So, rather than look at qualifying as necessarily something in which you must explicitly convey approval for what a woman shares with you, instead you can look at it through the far more flexible view of seeing it as expressing interest in her and what she's sharing as she seeks to connect with you. Here's how we combine all three elements (screening, qualifying, and deep diving): You: When you're not crunching numbers or saving small animals, how do you spend your time? Her: Well, actually I sculpt. You: Really? No way! Sculpt what? Her: Mostly 12 inch or smaller sculptures, though I've done a few human-size pieces. You: Hmm! That's wild. I never would've taken you for the eccentric artist-with-a-hammer-and-chisel type. How long have you been doing that? Her: Since I was 5 years old. My father taught me. You: That makes you something of a prodigy then, right? Her: Well... maybe if I'd kept at it. I slacked off majorly in high school though. You: Ah, so maybe you could've been Raphael... but you got too interested in skipping class and chasing boys, huh? Her: Haha, well, maybe... do you do anything in the arts? Notice how we use screening questions ("How do you spend your time?" "Sculpt what?" "How long have you been doing that?" "That makes you a prodigy, right?") both to find out more about this topic in particular and to advance the deep dive overall, and we use interest and excitement and further screening questions (which convey further interest) to serve as our qualifiers. And right away, you have a very smooth, natural, intuitive way of getting to know a girl. You find out more about her, show her that you're genuinely interested in what she has to say and encourage her to share more, and help her to grow her connectedness to you, get comfortable with you, and allow herself to feel attraction for you. By rolling screening and qualifying into your deep dives, you enable yourself to do away with the rather clumsy way most folks advocate using screening and qualifying - as stand-alone screens with an accompanying qualifier - and integrate them into your overall conversations, and then use them to explore deeper aspects of a woman's life, self, and history. Once you get this down, it is easy to get to know a girl. Stuff's only hard when you're doing it in a disjointed, unnatural way. Start plugging it all together, and you'll find your interactions hit a lot fewer snags along the way, and feel a lot cleaner and more fluid, both to you and to that new girl you're getting to know.

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##[A40] Spell Broken: Big Mistakes that Shred Conversation Think for a moment of a time you were talking to a pretty girl you'd just met. You started hitting it off -- things were going great. You took the conversation deeper and deeper -- getting to know her more and more. It felt like the two of you were bonding at this incredibly close level, and it kept getting closer. There was more and more magic... more and more chemistry... crazy amounts of electricity sparking in the air... ... then, suddenly, the spell was broken. It was like the two of you came up for air, then realized that you'd emerged back up at the surface and couldn't get back down to where you were before. It was as if you'd awakened from a dream. Then, try as you might, you couldn't get back into that dream again... and both of you knew it. The interaction with this girl -- this girl you'd been bonding and connecting with so deeply mere minutes before -- ended soon after. It became too awkward to continue once it'd returned to that surface level of shallow conversation and superficiality, and she uncomfortably excused herself, telling you she had to go find her friends or that it was time for her to head home. But you were close -- you knew you were. There was so much intensity between the two of you, until it just... evaporated. DIVING TOO DEEP... AND RUNNING OUT OF AIR Back when I first started developing the method of getting to know women that later became deep diving, this was something I frequently ran into. I'd build these super deep connections with women, and they'd get deeper and deeper, until finally they'd... fall over, top-heavy. It was maddening. I've long prided myself though on not only my ability to break things down to their functional components, but also to "feel" when something's amiss, identify it, and course correct. And what I could feel was happening, in these instances, was that I was taking conversations too deep. I was over-diving, you might say. In scuba diving, there's a condition known as decompression sickness -- or, more commonly, "the bends." It's what happens when you dive too deep, and rise too quickly -- it can really mess you up, and can even be fatal. In conversational deep diving, our version of "the bends" is what happens when you end up "spell broken." You come up too fast out of a deep dive, and it's potentially fatal to your interaction. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure why this happens. It's weird. I have some theories, but nothing you can't shake a stick at. Ultimately, all I can say is, you go too deep and stay down there too long, and eventually 99% of your interactions are going to break spell. It might be because too much emotional intensity is draining on people, and they need a break from it. It might be because you're struggling to continue this downward dive into ever deeper territory, and the girl "rebels" and resurfaces, and knows internally that she was the one who broke free from that emotional hold -- severing a lot of her investment in you. Or it might be because it feels socially awkward -- much of being socially graceful is about helping others avoid awkward feeling situations, and the very fact that, by continually pressing to take things further, you end up putting a woman in an awkward position, communicates a lack of social grace, negatively impacting comfort and attraction. Whatever the reason, having the spell broken is one of those things that can very firmly and reliably sever interactions at the jugular and quite often kill attraction even over the long term. Get a girl's number that you've had break spell on you, and she likely even avoids meeting up with you again, or keeps it super friendly and neutral if she does. spell broken HOW TO NOT GET SPELL BROKEN: MANAGING THE FLOW The thing that women refer to as "chemistry" or "magic" or "something just clicked" is what we refer to as a combination of attraction and connection. Deep diving is one of the ways we move quickly to cultivate such a connection. It really is magical when you deftly move past small talk and get to really connecting on intimate topics and conversations. But the problem is getting yanked back out into cold reality and having the spell break. Fortunately, there are a number of readily identifiable causes of spell breaking that you can start working to eliminate right away. Forgetting to lighten the mood. The problem with taking things heavy is that it becomes emotionally burdensome after a time. People don't want to be stuck in a spiral of increasingly deep emotions -- it can be almost overwhelming. To prevent women rebelling against too deep emotions, you should be actively using humor lightly sprinkled into your interactions to prevent the conversation from getting too top heavy with meaningfulness. Women aren't most attracted to men who get to know them super well and that's it. Women are most attracted to men who get to know them super well... and make the process quite exciting, enjoyable, and refreshing. Most guys try to either get to know women, without making it a good experience (thus, women rebelling and breaking spell), or try to make things exciting and enjoyable without actually getting to know a woman. No good. Here's an example of lightening the mood: Girl: ... and when I stopped and looked at how much time I was spending doing work I really didn't want to do, that's when I started realizing that I was never meant to be an accountant. Guy: Which is when you went and launched a business selling owls online, right? Girl: [laughs] No, not exactly... Guy: Really? Ah, wrong again. Well, what'd you end up doing then? Girl: Well, at first I wasn't quite ready to quit my job, so I... You should be able to feel quite easily how much this little, harmless crack in there lightens the mood while not interrupting the flow of the conversation. Note also that there's nothing in there that might possibly be considered an insult to the girl; it's extremely important you don't say anything that could be construed as an attack when she's opening up to you. That'll derail the deep dive and quite possibly send her into auto-rejection. Not changing topics when a subject's been exhausted. One thing I've noticed lots of newer guys do in their conversations with women is they get stuck on a topic, and keep trying to explore it more even when it's already been thoroughly explored and the girl is clearly ready to move on. The problem with getting hung up on topics is that it starts feeling awkward for the girl -- she doesn't want to talk about this anymore. This can cause the spell to break quite fast. How to know when a topic's been exhausted? Run through this checklist: • Are you discussing boring stuff? • Have you already discussed the most interesting things about a topic? • Does it feel like you ought to be talking about something else? If you answer "yes" to any of those, it's time to get things in gear and keep the conversation moving. Check out the post on being a conversationalist for more on that. Getting into a debate or trying to be persuasive about subjective, inconsequential stuff. This is one of the most destructive things you can do when it comes to attracting women, but lots of guys do it anyway. Like so: Guy: Yeah, soul is cool, for sure, but you know what's REALLY awesome? Punk rock music. There's so much passion and nuance in it that there's really no comparison. Girl: Really? I've never really liked punk all that much. It's a little too whiney for me. Guy: No way! Punk's the best! How can you not like punk music? Girl: It just doesn't appeal to me, I don't know. Guy: Man... I'm going to need to introduce you to some good punk. I'll bet I can get you to change your mind. It's really almost high art when you listen to the better songs. Girl: I guess, it just isn't something I was ever able to get into. Getting into an exchange like this will get you spell broken faster than you'll be able to realize what happened. Debates and persuasions about inconsequential things (things unrelated to the two of you becoming lovers) will unravel attraction so quick it'll make your head go numb. Avoid this like the plague. Criticizing her or shooting down her ideas or opinions. I alluded to this one at the end of #2, but basically, if you want to shut down a connection and kick a woman rudely back to the surface of the connecting pool, criticizing her is fastest and most reliable way to do it -- even faster than debating and persuading over inconsequential things. Example: Girl: I've always thought that if I can get my art gallery up and running, I'll never have to worry about being a starving artist again. Guy: I don't really think an art gallery is too great an idea to try and make money off of. Many of them make very little money, and it's common to see them close not long after opening. Ouch. That's uncalled for. And it's exactly opposite what a seductive, romantic man who's very interested in her is going to discuss. He's there to make her feel good and lead her to physical intimacy, not to assess and critique her dreams and tell her what's a good idea and what isn't. This is one of those things that men who are still too caught up in having logical, fact-exchanging conversations with a woman do that leave them scratching their heads wondering why she lost interest. All of those are the things that, if you get caught doing them, are very likely to break the spell in a hurry and end both you and your girl up in an awkward, floundering conversation, wondering what happened and why the connection was lost. If you keep your nose clean and remember to keep things light, change topics at the appropriate times, avoid arguments or debates, and refrain from criticizing a girl or her ideas, you'll insure yourself against having the spell get broken -- and you'll do a far better job of building a strong, stable connection with women. See you on here again soon.

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##[A41] Facial hair Styles to make you look Cool, Sharp, and sexy A long while back I posted about facial hair styles on here in "Facial Hair and Baddassedness," essentially summing up my findings that cool facial hair nets you better results with a better reception from the opposite sex; in effect, girls just like guys with facial hair better. For me, the result was no comparison; the instant I had the right facial hair, women were telling me I was "hot" and "sexy," when these weren't words they used with me before (when I was clean-shaven it was more like "cute" and "handsome"). So I started recommending my clean-shaven friends to test drive some new facial hair styles, and they reported back similar results. But just in case you'd like a little further support, here what the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality has to say on the topic in a study published under the name "The Influence of Facial Hair on Impression Formation": "Results indicated consistently more positive perceptions of social/physical attractiveness, personality, competency, and composure for men with facial hair." So women see men with facial hair as: More attractive More charismatic Smarter and more capable Calmer and more in control And here's how the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences weighs in a paper entitled "The Effects of Facial Hair Manipulation on Female Perceptions of Attractiveness, Masculinity, and Dominance in Male Faces": "Male faces displaying a full beard were considered the most masculine, aggressive, socially mature, and older. Males with a light beard were considered the most dominant. Males with light stubble were considered to be the most attractive, light stubble was also preferred for both short- and long-term relationships." The study "Do women's preferences for men's facial hair change with reproductive status?" further establishes that women (especially ovulating / fertile women) favor men with heavy stubble. For our purposes, that means that some kind of stubble or light beard is the way to go. But which facial hair style is the right facial hair style? That's what I'll show you today. THE WRONG KIND OF FACIAL HAIR Before we go into showing you and discussing the various kinds of facial hair styles there are out there, I'd like to say this on facial hair first: there are a whole lot of ways to do it wrong. I'll spare you the photo, but when I first started wearing facial hair at age 18, I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't do a very good job of it. I grew in a thick, red moustache and goatee that did a nice job of making me look about eight years older (good for getting me into bars without an ID check), but didn't do much else. Nobody liked my facial hair that much, which wasn't a big deal when I was working with a bunch of rednecks and inner city guys, but when I went off to college the next year people called me "scary" and "that kid with the red beard." I spent a few years hemming and hawing on my facial hair, sometimes wearing the moustache/goatee, sometimes going clean-shaven. But I never seemed to get it quite right. I also didn't know much about facial hair maintenance, and, being a perfectionist, I used to spend a fair amount of time in front of a mirror with a pair of small scissors, diligently trimming away at stray beard hairs poking out in the wrong direction. facial hair styles What a waste of time! So, before we begin, here are a few notes on the kind of facial hair styles to avoid: Facial hair that's mangy / unkempt / wild Facial hair that's time-consuming to maintain Facial hair that doesn't accentuate your face and looks Facial hair that gives you the wrong kind of look for what you want Thankfully, you've got this guide, which is going to give you a much better launch pad than I had, so you can start off on the right foot. My aim here is to arm you with everything you need to look good enough to get girls excited about you for your looks. ONE QUICK NOTE ON LOOKS A lot of guys think they can't get girls because they aren't "good looking" enough. What you might not realize is that unless you're really, REALLY ugly (and usually even then), a lot of that is under your control. Don't believe me? Go to a nightclub. Walk around. Look at those really HOT girls getting all the attention. Now... take a closer look. At their faces. JUST their faces. Are they beautiful? Stunners? Knock outs? Girls whose faces look like works of art? Nope - they're totally ordinary. Plain Janes. Nothing special about 'em. What makes the girls in nightclubs look so jaw-droppingly good that guys are spilling their drinks on one another trying to get over to meet them is: Their hair Their bodies Their makeup Their clothing Their nonverbals (e.g., she looks aloof / unattainable) ... not their base-level physical attractiveness. They look good because they made themselves look good, not because they were born with better genes than those poor girls being ignored outside the nightclub. Actually, when you start doing enough day game and meeting girls during the daytime, you'll realize that you almost never meet women with the highest natural beauty in nightclubs... they just don't go to those places. Nightclubs draw the ordinary, plain folks masquerading themselves as beautiful people... kind of like Hollywood. And the great news for you as a man is, all of that is available to you, too... the one exception being makeup. And do you know what a man's answer to makeup is? Yeah, that's right - facial hair. SEXY FACIAL HAIR STYLES All right - let's get you armed with some cool facial hair. I'm going to take you through a bunch of different facial hair styles, discuss the merits and drawbacks of each, and help you figure out which one's the best one for you and your look and what you're going for. And I've got pictures for each of these, so no risk of you not having a clear idea what something looks like - we're going to get you looking good in a hurry. #1: The Full Beard facial hair stylesThe full beard is a classic look. It gives you age, power, and credibility. It's hard not to trust a man with a beard - beards just speak "father figure" when you see them. Full beards are most attractive to women in their 30s and older. Women younger than that usually tend to steer clear of men wearing beards, and men younger than 35 or so sporting a full beard tend to get thought of as somewhat weird, at least in the 2000s (in the 1970s, apparently, full beards on young men were fine). The impressions a full beard makes are: Very masculine (full beards give the greatest masculinity boost) You look established and mature You look older For a man in his late-30s, or in his 40s or older, the full beard can be an easy ticket to garnering more respect from his peers, and having women be softer and more deferential around him. I recommend the full beard most for men in committed and stable relationships over the age of 35 who want to maintain a dominant role without needing to worry about being as attractive to newer women, since the full beard sacrifices some of the attractiveness boosts of other forms of facial hair in exchange for a greater masculinity and authority boost. #2: The Light Beard sexy facial hairThe light beard is an interesting look. You don't see it a whole lot, and it packs some novelty punch simply because of that. It's halfway between stubble and a full-on beard, and the impression you make as a man while wearing it is somewhere in that in-between land, too. Men wearing light beards have a certain "edge" about them that's difficult to describe, but basically feels like they've been working a little too hard, a little too long, and they're close to losing it and going off and living in the mountains. You get the impression that the man with a light beard used to wear stubble, but somewhere along the line he just gave up on shaving and now this is where he's at. He's loose, a little crazy - think Captain Jack Sparrow and his light beard. The light beard is the wildcard of our facial hair styles here because it can go both ways. You could just as easily sport a custom-tailored business suit with your light beard or a tattered old t-shirt and look right at home. When it comes to the light beard, I recommend that only younger men wear this look. By the time you're mid-30s or older, the expectation that you'll be established and accomplished is too strong, and sporting something as loose and uncertain-looking as the light beard can make you seem immature and "not there." The light beard makes you look sexy, but at the expense of credibility - only wear it in occasions where you don't necessarily need to be thought too highly of, and can sacrifice some credibility for a little extra sexiness boost. #3: The Moustache and Goatee The moustache and goatee is a tried-and-true combination that can serve different functions depending on the purpose behind wearing it. For men with a weaker chin or a more feminine jawline, wearing a goatee can extend the chin visibly, giving the appearance of a longer face and a more masculine look. Therefore, often for men with softer or rounder faces, a moustache-goatee combination can be just what's needed. facial hair styles For black and dark-skinned men, the moustache-goatee is often the facial hair style of choice regardless of jawline strength, simply because anything else (e.g., the full beard, light beard, chinstrap, or stubble) looks too dark against the skin and makes them look too intimidating to most women. Dark-skinned men sporting a moustache and goatee typically want to make sure they keep the lines of their facial hair very thin, neat, and trim. Because black and dark-skinned men are usually considered more masculine and more aggressive than lighter-skinned men, maintaining very thin, neat facial hair signals to women that these are controlled, conscientious men that those women can feel safer opening up around. facial hair styles My recommendation: if you're a light-skinned man with a softer jawline, choose the goatee and moustache. If you're a darker-skinned man with any jawline, this is probably the facial hair style for you. #4: The Chinstrap Beard (with Soul Patch) facial hair stylesHere's a fun one: the chinstrap beard. When I first arrived in California, I spent a little time in horror at how much guys who looked like "douchebags" seemed to be pulling some of the hottest, flashiest women, while those women had little interest in me. "Why are they all going for those douchebags?!" I'd ask myself, rather concerned. "How do *I* get those girls, and beat these guys?" Eventually, after all else had failed, I turned to a radical strategy: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Having been clean-shaven at that point since midway through university, I decided to start sporting a chinstrap and soul patch. Many reading this might be alarmed; the chinstrap is the height of douchebaggery, the ultimate pretentious look. What man would choose to wear his facial hair this way? As it turned out, the instant I started wearing a chinstrap and soul patch, my results with the typical California girl skyrocketed. Suddenly, I was among the "in" crowd; I got it. I was one of those guys that men hate... and women lust after. And my results with my usual demographic (classically beautiful smart girls with Master's degrees) didn't suffer for it, either... if anything, they improved. For once, the pretty smart girl got to date one of those sexy-looking guys that the pretty airheads usually monopolize for themselves... and this guy wasn't a meathead, either, so he was right up her alley. If you're over 35 and wearing a chinstrap and soul patch, it's a bit much; of course, test it out and see how it goes. My instinct tells me you'd do better with the next one we'll cover (stubble) than a chinstrap-soul patch combination as an older man. But if you're younger than 35, I recommend trying out the chinstrap and soul patch at least once, if just to see how you're received by women. This is doubly so for men with square, masculine jawlines - the chinstrap highlights your jaw, and makes it look even boxier, which is a good thing if you've got a manly mandible. #5: The Stubbled Look facial hair styleThis is my current look, and the one I'll probably keep for some time. I adopted it when I first got to Asia and I found that the chinstrap and soul patch was too much for Asian women, as noted in the earlier facial hair styles post; a chinstrap made me look like too much of a bad boy for Asian girls (while it was just enough bad boy for American ones). I tried clean-shaven briefly, but found that it lacked any kind of sexual punch, even with Asian women. So, I segued into a stubbled face with a clean-shaven neck, and I never looked back. The advantage of stubble is that it's sexy, and it's universally sexy, without being intimidating, at least in lighter-skinned men. It works just as well with white American girls from the Midwest as it does with women from Southeast Asia, girls from the Eastern Bloc, or women from Africa or Latin America. And, it's universally sexy regardless of age: it looks just as good on a 60-year old as it does on a 19-year old. If you want to maximize the visual (and sexual) impact of your facial stubble, shave your neck clean (with a razor for a close shave) while keeping the stubble on your face. The contrast of a clean neck with a stubbled face gives you a look that's both rough and sexy, yet clean and neat. Another advantage of this look is that it's acceptable almost anywhere except the military, in terms of where you can wear this look. You'll have a hard time getting away with a chinstrap and soul patch in a lot of lines of work, but most places of employment aren't going to give you to much trouble for a little bit of stubble (yes, I'm aware that rhymes, I couldn't think of any better way to phrase it). I strongly recommend taking stubble for a test drive. Sooner rather than later. If you can't decide what on this list to start with, start with stubble - it's safe enough that you can wear it and see some gains just about anywhere. It won't give you the kind of polarizing effect that something like a chinstrap-soul patch will, but it'll give you an edge and position you as a sexy man - the kind that women want to be around (and do things with). PARTING THOUGHTS ON MEN'S FACIAL HAIR STYLES There are a lot of great choices (and plenty more bad ones... mutton chops, anyone?) when it comes to facial hair styles, and I hope you'll choose one that fits your own personal style well, and the kind of women you want to be going for. For maintaining facial hair, you can actually grab what's known as a "beard trimmer" pretty easily - they're cheap (some as low as $15) and they do their job well. A beard trimmer looks like this: beard trimmer Makes keeping your facial hair neat and trim a snap. Use a razor for the parts of your face and neck you don't want facial hair on to keep them smooth and stubble-free, the better for the contrast with the facial hair look you're sporting. If you've been going through life clean-shaven, you've been missing out. You don't realize what a difference it makes in your ability to get a girl's attention until you start wearing some sexy facial hair all your own. Put plainly, if you want to upgrade your looks and become the kind of man that women describe as "hot" and "sexy," you need to get yourself some cool facial hair. It's one of the biggest ways how an ordinary guy becomes a good-looking one, and how a good-looking one becomes a stunner.

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##[A42] Fashion for Men: The PRimer on Looking Amazing Guys have been asking for a while on here for a piece on fashion for men. So I guess that makes this one a long time coming. Fashion's important. How important? It's pretty important. It's not make or break always... but you know the saying: clothes make the man. fashion for men What you wear doesn't just define you as cool, sexy, or stylish. It also subconsciously affects how other people feel toward you. Wear clothes that make you look amazing, and people will feel like you're amazing. Wear clothes that make you look different, and people will view you as different (good or bad as that may be). Wear clothes that make you look ordinary, on the other hand, and people will view you as just that: ordinary. Boring. Not particularly noteworthy. They'll hardly even notice you. And thus, we have our focus on fashion: getting noticed, in a positive way. But not like what we discussed in the article on peacocking... the truly fashionable man picks clothes that fit him so well people don't even see the individual clothing items all that much. Instead, they just look at the man himself and say "wow." fashion for men I chose the word "excellent" for the heading here because "excellence" is what you want to strive for and put the emphasis on in your own assembling of your fashion and style. Fashion is an art form. It's making yourself appear more beautiful, more powerful, more put-together, and more competent. It's making yourself stand out from the crowd in attractive, noticeable, and, ideally, subtle ways. It's also about contrast and highlighting some aspects over others. An extreme example of how fashion impacts perception is to think of someone from a rebellious youth subculture - the punks of the 1980s, the goths of the 1990s and early 2000s, the emos and hipsters of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Then take them and contrast them with, say, an urban gentleman, a business elite, or a trendy celebrity. And take all of those people and compare them with someone who spends all of his or her time at the beach, tanning and surfing and hitting the gym and drinking at beach bars. There are some personality differences you no doubt see when you picture these people; but the biggest difference in your mind's eye are the fashion differences. The punk / goth / emo has dark clothes, with lots of zippers, chains, and piercings, accented by sometimes colorful hair (pink or green, say, or bright red). The urban gentleman or business elite sports well-fitting clothes clearly made of high quality materials. The beach frequenter is wears loose-fitting, breezy clothing - t-shirts, shorts, and sandals - designed to show of his or her body, which is in shape, tanned, and as much a part of his fashion identity as the articles of clothing worn. Which brings us to our first lesson on fashion: when you set out to put together a good "look" for yourself, you need to have a certain image in mind. Fashion can be a way of expressing yourself... but usually, it's a way of labeling yourself. We'll come back to fashion identities in a little bit. For now though, what I want to start with are those elements of fashion universal to all styles. THE POWER OF RED fashion for menYou may have heard the advice that "if you want to be more attractive, wear something red." You've probably had the experience of walking down the street and having your eye suddenly caught by some girl wearing a bright red dress or shirt or jacket. Well, there's research on red, too. The research was done first on the "woman in red," finding a notable increase in a woman's sex appeal to men when wearing red. Then they did the research on men's sexual attractiveness to women while wearing red: "In many nonhuman species of vertebrates, females are attracted to red on male conspecifics. Red is also a signal of male status in many nonhuman vertebrate species, and females show a mating preference for high-status males. These red-attraction and red-status links have been found even when red is displayed on males artificially. In the present research, we document parallels between human and nonhuman females' response to male red. Specifically, in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are responsible for this red effect. The influence of red appears to be specific to women's romantic attraction to men: Red did not influence men's perceptions of other men, nor did it influence women's perceptions of men's overall likability, agreeableness, or extraversion. Participants showed no awareness that the research focused on the influence of color. These findings indicate that color not only has aesthetic value but can carry meaning and impact psychological functioning in subtle, important, and provocative ways." That's from "Red, Rank, and Romance in Women Viewing Men," published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2010. The main points of interest from the study: Men wearing red or pictured on red backgrounds are more sexually attractive to women These men were NOT considered more likeable, more agreeable, or more outgoing; merely more sexually attractive The sexual attraction boost the men received came as a result of being perceived as higher status due to the presence of red The wearing of red had no effect on other men's perceptions of men wearing red being more attractive or higher status (another interesting note about this study is that approximately a quarter of its length is nothing but citations referencing other research - I guess the researchers were very serious about backing their experiments up with citations of other works... work in the sexual attraction space is rife with method-questioning, it seems) An interesting side note from the same research: "We fully expect our findings to generalize to dynamic skin displays, because female primates, including women, are extremely adept at detecting and decoding blood flow changes in the face (Changizi et al., 2006), and women have been shown to be more sensitive to the perception of red stimuli than are men (Hurlbert & Ling, 2007). As such, women seem particularly well equipped to pick up subtle, shifting, red coloration displayed on men's faces." The authors are thus saying they believe that blushing/flushing and reddening of the face may lead to men being perceived as higher status and more sexually attractive, which is the first time I've heard of this. Another interesting note: "Red displays by men may not only influence others' perceptions but may influence self-perceptions as well. This seems particularly likely with regard to artificial red (e.g., red clothing) that the individual is clearly cognizant of displaying. Wearing red may subtly enhance a man's sense of his status or power in a given situation, which in turn could influence his thoughts, feelings, and actions in that situation. Thus, a man in a red tie may give a more confident business presentation, a man wearing a red football jersey may play more aggressively (see Attrill, Gresty, Hill, & Barton, 2008), and a man wearing a red shirt on a date may be more forward and assertive. In fact, in many instances, red likely exerts an influence on self-perception and other-perception in joint fashion. For example, the red shirt that Tiger Woods typically adorns on the final day of golf tournaments likely provides him with a confidence-boosting reminder of his alpha status in the golf world as it simultaneously reminds his competitors that they are probably facing another long day on the course. Interestingly, the results of our research suggest that Tiger Woods' choice of apparel may make the ladies in the gallery swoon, as well as the competitors on the course wilt." The researchers here are speculating that not only does wearing red make you more attractive and confer higher status, but knowing that you're wearing red may make you feel more attractive and higher status - leading you to act more attractive, more assertive, and higher status, and thus upping the boost you receive. Back to that old adage. If you want to be more attractive, wear something red. YOU SHOULD BE WEARING SIZE "SMALL" fashion for menThe signature of Hip-Hop culture has long been baggy clothing, a descendant of prison culture, where men had belts removed upon being arrested (so they wouldn't hang themselves), and ended up having their pants sliding down past their waists. In the ghettos of the 1970s and 1980s, where an urban black culture ravaged by crack cocaine saw a large portion of its men going into and out of prison, a stint in the lockup became something of a rite of passage, and baggy clothing a signal that you were "hard" and a "real man." As often happens with fads and trends beginning among the lower socioeconomic classes, this began to migrate up to the middle and upper classes as "cool," too ("dating" was another of these trends that began, in the 1900s and 1910s, with the poor and migrated up). The only problem was, as "hard" as baggy clothes made a guy appear, they didn't make him look GOOD. They didn't make him sexy. In fact, while they did make him tough, they also made him rather non-sexual. Which is all well and good if your main purpose in how you select your clothing is to impress other men... but if you'd instead rather be dressing yourself to be impressive to women, you need to dress a little differently. After I graduated from college, I decided to select some tighter-fitting clothes and try them out. I'd been wearing large, loose, baggy t-shirts and jeans for quite a while, but I realized I was dressing to impress men, not women... and I realized, "Wait a minute. Who cares what random men on the street think about me? I want the WOMEN to look at me and say 'Whoa!'" The first few days of wearing size small t-shirts and tight-fitting jeans, I found the clothes a little uncomfortable... but there was no denying I looked good. I still had a big gut then - I hadn't spent much time investigating weight loss yet - but the instant I was wearing better-fitting clothes I started getting compliments: "Whoa, Chase, you got ripped!" "Damn dude, you look good!" "Chase, your arms look a lot bigger!" I'd been concealing my form in baggy clothing, I realized, and doing so in very unflattering ways. Even though my newer, smaller, tighter-fitting clothing showed clearly that I had a guy, no one noticed that... I've since realized that people just assume you have a big gut if you wear baggy clothing anyway. Very similar to the style of clothing popular among women in the early 2010s and satirized as "tit curtains" by a blogger named Maddox: pregnancy shirts Male or female, baggy clothing makes you look fat. And decidedly NOT sexy. Unless you're a giant, or living somewhere in Asia (where the sizes are markedly smaller), you should be able to fit into shirt size "small." For reference, I am six feet tall and about 160 pounds, and size small fits me well and looks good on me. If you're significantly larger than I am, you may need size medium. If you're a bit smaller than I am, you might want to go with size extra small (I own some pieces of clothing in XS as well - cuts are different). What happened for me when I was growing up, and what I think happens for a lot of other guys, is that you get some sort of ego-attachment to being able to say, "I wear size large!" as if wearing a large-sized t-shirt makes you a bigger, more powerful man. Actually, it usually just makes you look fat. Buy size small (or smaller). It makes you look good. CONTRAST IS KING No doubt you've heard of "color coordination" when it comes to selecting clothing. And this is important - you want your: Shoes Belt Watch Other accessories ... to match, no doubt. In fact, if you can purchase shoes, a belt, and a watch of similar design, color, and material, you can create a very "integrated" look that people will not be able to quite put a finger on, but will just know that they like. But really, in the grand scheme of things, this is a smaller, more subtle detail. It's worth getting down, but there's an even bigger difference you don't hear about all that often: Contrast. What's contrast? Contrast is wearing clothing items that stand out from one another, without crowding each other out. Check these examples out: fashion for men Each of these men looks very good in what he's wearing, because of the kinds of contrast going on: Contrast of the color of clothing items against other clothing items Contrast of the color of clothing items against his skin color The man in the first photograph, for instance, looks darkly charming because of the contrast of his all-black clothing with his white skin color. A darker skinned man wearing the same all-black outfit doesn't look nearly as good, however; nor does this man look quite as good if he wears an all-white outfit. However, if a black man puts on an all-black outfit like this and adds in a bright white tie, or if a white man puts on an all-white outfit and adds a black tie or black buttons, it can look very good, because of the contrast. The man in the fourth photograph has contrast primarily between the clothing items he has on; this outfit looks equally good whether his skin is pale white or dark black in tone, or anywhere in between. The light gray outer shirt offsets the bright pink t-shirt underneath, and the lightness of the top colors are balanced out by the dark color of his jeans. In selecting clothing, environmental considerations are also important. For instance, if you'll be meeting women in a crowded bar, nightclub, or party, the fourth look probably isn't a good choice because women will likely mostly just see your upper torso and higher, which means they won't see the contrast the dark jeans provide. If you cover up the model's jeans with your hand and only look at him from the waist up, his style becomes decidedly less appealing (because there's markedly less contrast). There are other scenarios in which a woman may not be able to see how your lower body style matches up with and contrasts against your upper body style; e.g., in a classroom setting where everyone is sitting down; in a cafeteria; at a conference for work or in a meeting; in a crowded train; any kind of social function where people are sitting down or packed in tightly together. That means that generally, unless you're primarily meeting women on the street during day game, you want to stick to making sure you have enough contrast on your upper torso that you look good regardless what your pants or jeans look like. Several more examples of contrast: fashion for men fashion for men In both examples, the model on the left is wearing clothing with little contrast, while the model on the right is wearing clothing with clear contrast. Your emotion on comparing the models usually just feels like the man on the right is the sharper, more powerful, "cooler" man. The reason why is contrast. ALWAYS WEAR A COAT I spent time in Los Angeles with a fashionable friend of mine some years back, and I noticed that even though it was quite warm outside, every time we went out he had a coat on. "I always wear a coat," he remarked when I asked him about it. I thought about it, and I realized why. If you scan back up over the images of men above considered "fashionable," you'll note that every single one of them has multiple layers. You can be fashionable with only one layer of upper body clothing on, but it's hard, and you just don't get the same level of "cool" and esteem that you do with a second layer on. The outer layer doesn't have to be a coat. You can often get away with having a light t-shirt on as layer #1, and a light button-down shirt left unbuttoned and open with the sleeves rolled up as layer #2... this way, you can still look very fashionable even in warm weather. Another way of doing multiple layers that's been in vogue the past couple of decades among the more well-to-do (but seems to be on its way out) is wearing a dress shirt or polo shit as layer #1, and a sweater loosely tied around the neck and draped over the back, shoulders, and chest as layer #2. What's important to note is, the forms this takes may change with time, but the principle remains the same: wearing multiple layers allows you to be more interesting, more fashionable, and show more contrast in your look. If you want to look good, always wear a coat (or another shirt) on top of your bottom-layer shirt. fashion for men The first section of this post was focused on overall universal elements of fashion that always apply and always will. The exact details of fashion will change with time - someday, suits and t-shirts alike will be antiquated pieces of clothing that no one but people making movies that are period pieces will wear anymore. But red will still be sexually stimulating and confer status upon its wearer, well-fitting clothing will still look better than poorly fitting attire, multiple layers will still allow you to accomplish more fashionably than a single layer will, and contrast will still be king. The rest of this article will be devoted to the specific things you can do with clothing and accessories to improve your look right now. Because fashions change as the years wear on, this part of the post may not be as relevant if you're reading it in 2023 as it is if you're reading it in 2013, or it may not be as relevant if you're living in a vastly different culture with very different fashion expectations than what we have in the West right now. That said, the focus here is on accenting your style in attractive ways, and even if specific examples seem not to apply, there's likely some way you can find a similar twist on a similar clothing item to make it work in a way that that's attractive, trendy, and stylish. ABOVE-THE-NECK FASHION: LIMIT TO FACIAL HAIR, HAIRSTYLES Depending on whether you're part of a subculture (or not), you may be around people who get piercings - sometimes lots of piercings - and even tattoos, or other forms of modifications for their face. My advice: don't do this. It's generally not attractive. It has another downside as well, in that it limits your mobility among different classes, cultures, and subcultures. A giant nose ring or a bright pink mohawk might serve you well with the 1980s punk culture, but you're going to have a very difficult time dating professional women, girls from the middle or upper classes, or women hailing from a different country with a conservative culture. Keep your above-the-neck fashion limited to attractive facial hair and a great hairstyle. Anything more than this is very restrictive of your choice with women, and not advised. COOL ACCESSORIES: PICK ONE There was a time in my life wear I wore loads of gold jewelry. I had: gold braceletA gold necklace A gold pendant A gold watch A gold belt buckle Four chunky gold rings (two for each hang) A gold bracelet from a website called IcedOutGear.com exactly like this one: I won't say I'm ashamed of that period of my life... but I certainly wouldn't advise you to dress like I used to dress back then. It got me a lot of attention and a lot of comments, but reactions do not equal results. You make yourself more of a curiosity than you do a sex symbol when you load yourself up with accessories. After that phase, I moved down to a silver necklace and a pair of silver rings - one an iron cross, and the other a square ring with a sapphire in the middle - along with a braided leather bracelet that women repeatedly told me made me look "like a bad boy." Cool accessories like these can help when you're newer to meeting women and your vibe is not down well enough yet - you're not smooth enough, edgy enough, or sexy enough yet. The more powerful your presence gets, though, the more you want to dial down the accessories. They become unwieldy tools for communicating coolness - you yourself are far better at it than any accessory can possibly be. These days, my rule is "pick ONE accessory." My one accessory is a Tibetan mandala pendant, similar to this: mandala pendant It's simple, it's elegant, and it's eye-catching in contrast to my lack of any other kind of accessory. It has a good backstory, too; when women ask me about it, it's very easy to say that it's from Tibet (and it is; I had it mailed to the U.S. expressly from there) and that it means "whole world" or "healing circle" (this is what a mandala represents in Tibetan Buddhism). Accessories are an okay crutch to lean on when you're new, but the better you get with women, the fewer of them you want to have on. COATS: RED AND FUR black coatI have two kinds of coats I like to wear most: A red patterned coat from Guess A black coat/parka with a fur-lined hood and a waist-sash from Uniqlo I also have some really cool leather jackets from a leather store, and a beautiful tailor-made cashmere overcoat. I still like to wear these out sometimes, but red coat from Guess and the coat with the fur-lined hood from Uniqlo are my favorites, simply because I just get better responses when I'm wearing either the red patterned coat, or the fur-lined coat. The coat with the fur-lined hood looks similar to the image on the right, except with a black material with a matted finish rather than the plain (and boring) surface of the coat in the image. The red patterned coat from Guess I can't find an example of on the Internet - there was only one of it when I purchased it in 2009, and no others in the store, and I haven't seen another since, out and about or on the net. If you're thinking you wouldn't be able to pull this off though, here're a few examples of men sporting red coats and blazers and looking good: fashion for men Because understatement is key in fashion, you'll usually want a darker red than a brighter one - a coat closer to the tone of the second or third images above is ideal (the fourth image is a little too bright for my tastes, and the first one's going to be a little difficult to pull off in most situations). If you can find a red/burgundy patterned jacket like what I found at Guess in 2009, that might be your best bet for a stylish outer layer you can wear in any non-extreme (not too hot, not too cold) weather. However, those are hard to come by. This also makes for a point worth emphasizing - the article of clothing in my possession I get the best reactions from women out of - that red patterned coat - is done in a style and color it's very difficult to find. So, don't assume that just because you don't see something everywhere you look that means it doesn't look good and isn't attractive or fashionable. The best fashion is some mixture of understated, popular, and unique or uncommon, all rolled up into one. ZIPPERS, BUTTONS, AND BUCKLES This one's something of a fad built on top of a larger trend. The fad - what's current in the 2010s - is zippers, buttons, and buckles. The larger trend, though - the one that's universal to human fashion throughout the ages - is clothing that's more complicated than it needs to be, in attractive-looking ways. Why do human beings find clothing that's slightly more complicated than it needs to be attractive and appealing? My guess is it's a simple penchant for novelty. You see a standard looking leather jacket next to a jacket with some bells and whistles on it: fashion for men The one on the left is somewhat appealing, though mainly because it's shiny in the lighting of the photograph, and that's not an advantage you'll have the majority of the time while out with that coat (e.g., in a café or in a bar). The coat on the right is far more interesting, and makes it an easy conversation piece. You'll tend to get a lot of, "That's a really cool coat," compliments when you have an item on with extra zippers, buttons, and buckles (not to mention shoulder straps, as in the coat on the right above). The exception: if you are naturally very good looking, go with a plainer-looking coat. This is to distract less attention from your face, which is naturally providing you with a "style" advantage. If you're not very good looking by nature - e.g., moderately good-looking or less - go with zippers, buttons, and buckles to accentuate your looks and fashion. SHIRTS dress shirtI wear button-down shirts whenever I want to look good, and any time I plan to meet girls. The only exceptions to this rule are the gym and the beach. I've experimented with t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, polo shirts, and the like, and I've just found that I get a warmer reception from women in a button-down. The t-shirt as layer #1, button-down shirt as layer #2 on top of the t-shirt usually works okay too. Nearly all of my "going out" dress shirts come from Guess. I find the button-downs at Guess are consistently and considerably cooler and trendier than the things you'll find at other stores (like Express, which is what pretty much every guy everywhere you go who's trying to be trendy is wearing, and you don't stand out at all wearing). They're no more expensive than what you'll find at Express or Abercrombie or anywhere else, either. SCARVES A scarf is a great attention-getter and a great accent to nearly any look. The fad in 2013 is BIG and often COLORFUL scarves, but I'm pretty confident you can expect this one to pass pretty quick and we'll be back to standard-sized scarves by next year (standard-sized scarves are still attractive and appealing, too, despite the bigness trend). Some examples of men wearing (standard-sized) scarves: fashion for men A scarf is an item you can add to any outfit to instantly make it trendy. If you're wearing it in party / bar / club situations, be prepared to have women ask if they can borrow your scarf (and for some of them to try and make off with it). For some reason, nothing stirs up kleptomaniacal tendencies in party girls quite like scarves do. BELTS For belts, I prefer a smooth clasp buckle, rather than the standard-issue buckle you see on most belts. Anything with the standard hole-and-tooth look just strikes me as extraordinarily plain and unoriginal looking. This is the only kind of belt you will usually find me wearing: fashion for men It used to be next to impossible to find belts with clasps like these, but I guess they're becoming more popular because it's less difficult to find them now than it used to be. A look like this is just cleaner, more attractive, and more elegant than the hole-and-tooth look you'll find on 99% of belts, in my personal opinion. You'll also tend to get a bunch of compliments on it (provided your belt is showing, that is), but that's almost beside the point; it's just nicer to wear. CHUNKY/BLOCKY WATCHES diesel watchI often don't wear a watch at all, simply because I don't like the feel of having something on my wrist. It's vaguely uncomfortable, and it tends to catch on things. However, when I do wear watches, my preference is for blocky or "chunky" watches, like the one on the right from Diesel (that's my preferred model, the DZ1114). The chunky/blocky watch face style strikes me as more modern, attractive, and attention-grabbing than the more traditional circular watch style common with most watches. It also tends to get a lot of attention, and you'll get a lot of questions about it. Commonly it's, "That's a really cool watch... I haven't seen a watch like that before. What kind is it / where did you get it?" When I was younger, I used to be a fan of wearing Rolexes (well... counterfeit Rolexes; I didn't have the funds for real Rolexes - but I did own a couple of very convincing fakes), and those get a lot of attention too, but it feels very much like you're trying for attention. With an attractive-but-uncommon-looking watch from an unrecognized brand, you instantly have a way of being cool, fashionable, and unique, without having to pay top dollar to look that way. JEANS Here again I'm a fan of Diesel: diesel jeans I just like the cut and fit of these jeans - they're very well made. I've owned True Religions, and still wear a pair now and again, but they tend to strike me as more feminine than anything else, whereas Diesel has a more masculine feel to it. That might just be superstition - I had a "lucky" pair of Diesels that I'd end up taking girls to bed in almost every other time I wore them when I was still fairly new to pickup, though that pair got stolen out of the wash one night in Southern California, by some clothing thief who I can only hope, out of sheer spite, isn't getting the same mileage out of them that I got. Whatever kind of jeans you buy, make sure they fit very well. If you go to a higher-end jean store, they'll frequently have specialists on hand who are great at helping you pick out jeans that will look good on you and be well-fitting. A good pair of jeans can set you back about $200. But, one good pair is really all you need - if you wash it once a week, you'll be fine. Oh, and, with tight-fitting jeans, you'll generally find you're a lot more comfortable when you skip the underwear. It also makes things a lot, shall we say, easier when you've got a new girl you're rounding home plate with. The less there is to take off, the better off you are. SNEAKERS camper sneakerI used to wear big chunky white Nike sneakers, and girls hated them. I'd have girlfriends with even just ordinary fashion senses ridiculing my footwear. It wasn't even like I had anything especially different... they were your standard pair of basketball sneakers. They just didn't look all that stylish. These days, I only buy sneakers from Camper, which has "fashionable" sneakers in the style of the one on the right. Not only do Campers look good, but they're thin enough that if you buy a dark-colored pair, you can often get away with them in place of dress shoes if you work in an office that's relaxed enough. And on top of that, they sure are comfortable. COWBOY BOOTS Nothing says "style" like a good old-fashioned pair of cowboy boots: cowboy boots The above are the sort of boots I like best - the shape, look, and material (distressed leather), although I usually buy brown, just because brown works with more colors. Cowboy boots offer you a few advantages: They stand out, giving you something cool and different to wear on your feet, which is an area that most men wear unoriginal / standard dress shoes, at best They look tough, manly, and grizzled, far more than dress shoes - which make a fella look like a prissy businessman - and sneakers - which make a guy look like an overgrown kid. No one wears cowboy boots but manly men They add a few inches of height to you - and height is an attraction trigger. It can be overcome with a variety of things, but there's no denying that adding inches to your height adds a little bit to your attractiveness, no matter how tall (or not) you are I usually get mine from Aldo - they're the best shop I've found for consistently cool cowboy boots - but feel free to shop around. TAILORS You won't want to visit the tailor when you're just starting out with getting your fashion sense down, but once you know what kind of clothes you want to wear and how you want to look, I very much advise finding a good tailor and either: Having your store-bought clothes tailored to precisely hug your frame, or Having custom clothes made for you from scratch. That second option can be pricey, which is why I don't suggest you have it done until you know exactly what kind of clothing you want (and won't have completely changed styles in six months). I also don't suggest this if you can't afford it - it certainly adds to the look, but if you haven't handled your finances to the point where you can easily pay for custom clothes, don't go into debt just to get these. There are plenty of things in the store you can find that will fit you reasonably (or sometimes even really) well. FASHION FOR MEN WRAP UP chinese jacketFashion's one of those things that most men never learn about because most men aren't exposed to it. You'll get hints about looking fashionable here and there, and there are images of fashionable men all around you on TV, in the movies, in print, and online, but if you're not paying close attention to what they're wearing, you won't learn a whole lot about how to dress yourself any better. Worse, because fashion is an acquired taste - you're not born knowing that scarves are great accessories; fashion is different at every era in every civilization across the globe - it takes time and exposure to current fashion to understand what looks good and what doesn't. While in China once, I purchased a very cool all-black traditional Chinese jacket. It was a big hit once I got it back to the States (everybody wanted to know where I'd gotten it; the answer "Shanghai" would either get me big smiles or blank stares); I'd wanted a Chinese coat like that ever since watching Chris Tucker sport one in Rush Hour 2. It just looked bad ass. Anyway, I lost that jacket in a bar when I set it on the back of a barstool some years later and someone made off with it, by accident or not, and I bought another one in China a little while later. That one I took to a tailor to have it taken in a bit so it'd better hug my frame; but the people there told me it looked terrible that way. The tradition in China was for the sides to be straight up and down; that looked good to the Chinese. To me, it just made me look fat. But they refused to take it in; they were just looking out for me, they said - they didn't want me to look bad. Fashion is a big adventure. You'll combine a lot of different, interesting pieces from all over the place, and some of them will work well together, and some of them won't. You'll get feedback from people and refine your style as you go. You might realize that a treasured item really isn't all that flattering on you, and end up setting it aside. You might discover that the style of clothing you once said you'd never wear looks great on you, and you come to like it a good deal. You don't need to make fashion the center of your life to get good at it. You just have to be a little interested in making yourself more fashionable, more captivating, and more unique, and pay attention to the things people tell you about you when you're out and about. Most important of all, pay attention to what strangers say - because the people closest to you are usually more interested in you staying like the you they know. The people who don't know you from Jack are the ones who'll be telling you how it really is, for better or worse. If you'd like some further reading on the subject, and some recommendations for how you can look good on the cheap, check out our (rather long) thread on the discussion boards, "Affordable Fashion." And, I'll see you next time-

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##[A43] Faux Pas of the Sociaux Noveaux Social calibration is one of the toughest things to learn, because it's one of those things where if you haven't yet become aware of a certain aspect of socializing, you may be completely oblivious to mistakes you're making or people you're offending or alienating. I want to take a look today at some common mistakes that can get a guy labeled "rude" (or worse) and what he might do about them to correct that. Most men who've been working on their social skills fairly religiously for a year or two who come from less social backgrounds tend to end up at similar places and make similar social faux pas. They reach what I call the "frat boy personality": a place where they do a lot of posturing and attempt to exert dominance over others in slightly clumsy ways. Whenever I spend time with newer guys, I encounter this; in fact, it's probably the main reason you won't see a lot of social veterans spending much time with guys who are less than three or four years into honing themselves socially. Guys who are only a year or two in, while vastly improved over where they were when they started out, just tend to be a little bit of an asshole to others. What social calibration is, by definition, is one's ability to gauge how others will feel and react to social actions and statements. So for instance, you know that if you walk up to a stranger and begin telling him about the fascinating new TV show you've just started watching, he may not be so intrigued, and in the future will want to avoid interacting with you; small children don't know this yet, so are socially uncalibrated in that regard and often will walk up to complete strangers and regale them with the latest information about their favorite new Saturday morning cartoon. Developing social calibration is all about discerning how others react to social actions, and learning the proper ways to act socially to get your desired end result. Some of this is covered briefly in Ultimate Social Calibration, but I want to take a much more in-depth look here at specific behaviors. Below, we'll review some of the prime mistakes that social learners a year to two years into the social arts tend to make, and how to be aware of them, and how to correct them. TOO MANY "I"S AND NOT ENOUGH "YOU"S It starts with "I" vs. "you" statements. While social veterans tend to be far more concerned with making others feel included - their conversation is full of "you" statements, and questions about the other person - social learners tend to use a lot of "I"s. "I like this," "I did that," "I think it'd be a good idea to," etc. They're very focused on themselves, and not so much on the other person. What happens with people who talk about themselves a great deal is that others begin to tune them out. I consider myself one of the most attentive listeners I have ever met, yet even I begin to zone out when I find myself trapped in a conversation with someone who talks a lot about himself. He may even have very interesting things to say; but the point is, the conversation feels so one-sided that the listener simply isn't able to maintain his or her interest levels. If you notice yourself doing this, to correct it, include more interactivity in your conversations. STORIES THAT ENTERTAIN BUT DON'T INTRIGUE Good stories are essential to good conversation, and interactivity and lack of a patronizing tone are essential to good stories. Social learners often don't realize this and both lack interactivity, and use too much of a patronizing tone in their stories, which often makes listeners want to tear their hair out a little bit. So, two issues there. Let's deal with interactivity first. Stories should always be interactive to keep the listener engaged, even in deep conversation. You should be constantly relating your story to your listener. A non-interactive story will look like this: I went to the fair about three weeks ago. There were all kinds of rides, but the Ferris wheel is my favorite. I rode the Ferris wheel with my friends, but it got stuck at the top! We were up there wondering if we were going to be sitting there all night… it seemed like it took them forever to get us down. At first it was kind of fun, but after a while I pretty much got over the whole "sitting there staring at the park from sixty-feet up" thing. Finally we did make it down though, and we went and got some corndogs and called it a night. Think it'll be a while before I go to another fair! The premise is interesting, but your eyes glaze over after a few sentences, even if the speaker is using big eyes and an expressive tone (which, actually, can come off as quite patronizing and mildly irritating - guys tend to do this because they think it'll hold more attention, but anyone with an IQ over 80 just finds it annoying). It's not that interesting. Here's the same story, but now with some interactivity: Did you go to the fair a few weeks back? I did, about three weeks ago. There were all kinds of rides… which ride is your favorite? Oh yeah, I love bumper cars too! My favorite is probably the Ferris wheel, do you ever go on that one? Well, my friends and I decided to ride that one, but it got stuck at the top! We thought we were going to be sitting there all night… it seemed like it took forever for them to get us down. You'd think it would be kind of fun to be stuck in a Ferris wheel, right? Yeah, but not really. After a while, you've pretty much gotten over the whole "sitting there staring at the park from sixty-feet up" thing. We finally made it down and grabbed some corndogs. As you look at those two stories and compare them, ask yourself a few questions: Which story feels like it's told to glorify the speaker and impress the listener more? Which story feels more interesting? Which story feels more natural, and which one feels more scripted? You likely said the first story feels more like the speaker is trying to impress, and more scripted, and that the second story feels more interesting and natural. It's designed to flow the way a natural conversation flows, as opposed to a one-sided story, and it engages the listener and makes the listener a speaker as well, in a way that the first story completely misses. To make storytelling feel great, natural, and engaging, use interactivity, and avoid using overly expressive, patronizing tones (like the way some people tell stories to children). You'll have others feeling a lot more involved and attentive and intrigued. FAILURE TO TREAT OTHERS AS EQUALS Social learners often adopt a bossy tone with others - making statements like, "I'm going to have you do this," or, "I think it'd be a really good idea if you do that," or even, "I'd really like it if you did this." Even with someone who's accepted him in a leadership position - say, a student he's instructing, or a woman who's given him a lot of compliance - a man still runs the risk of coming across as domineering with bossy-sounding statements like this. To everyone else, he just comes off as a bit of an ass. This mistake I think comes primarily from social learners taking tactics that they've learned for dealing with women - such as compliance requests and compliance demands - and using them both in ways that require more calibration, and with people other than women they're trying to seduce. Most people chafe at being told what to do, and when social learners try this on others, they tend to alienate a lot of people and make the more socially calibrated people who meet them want to limit the time they spend with them. Another aspect of this that chafes is that no one really cares what anyone else likes, or what he or she thinks would be a good idea. If you catch yourself about to tell someone you'd really like it if they did something, stop and see if you can find a more socially savvy way of wording your statement. Adopting a more inclusive tone is the solution to the failure to treat others as equals. Rather than bossing them around or telling them what you like or what you want them to do, you can (as noted above in "I"s vs "You"s) drop the "I" part of the statement, and make it a question. So, "I'm going to have you hold this for a second," becomes, "Hold this for a second?" or, "Can I bother you to hold this for a second?" You're still going to be just as insistent, particularly with women, but the wording (and the voice tone) is far warmer and more considerate - and far more socially calibrated. Focus on limiting blatant efforts to appear dominant, and find ways to get more interactivity and come across as more considerate and warm. Cold and hard and ultra dominant has limited effectiveness, and is mostly only effective with people with lower degrees of social calibration and expertise. Focus on being open and thoughtful and gracious in your communication, while still being strong and firm and having solid opinions that you share in a very inclusive way, and you will find much greater social success with the more socially adroit men and women in the world around you. The social elite are all strong, dominant, opinionated individuals, and if they all tried to be dominant with each other all the time they'd all repel each other and would never be able to work together on great things and form alliances and synergies. Because of this, in the social arena, the most powerful people tend to play themselves down. It becomes a way of telling who's who - the people who are quietest and submissive are at the bottom; the people who are loudest and most domineering are in the middle; and the people who have balance, and are firm yet conscientious and inclusive of others are at the top. When it comes to the social elite, graciousness wins the day. Try it out - I expect you'll find it rather rewarding.

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##[A44] Geting past Small talk Small talk is one of those things in life that it pays well to be good at -- but also pays equally well to move beyond as quickly as possible. When you've just met someone new, dwindling on small talk can be one of the most stultifying "nowhere zones" to end up in. Many a great new connection has been lost by the conversationalists' inability to move past this sometimes daunting formality. So what exactly is small talk, why do we engage in it -- and most of all, how do we get past it and get to real conversation? Wikipedia has this to say about small talk: "[S]mall talk is a bonding ritual and a strategy for managing interpersonal distance... it helps new acquaintances to explore and categorize each other's social position." In laymen's terms, what that means is that small talk is how we get to know the basic facts about one another. "What's your name?" "What do you do?" "Where are you from?" - all that is small talk. Small talk's also used by friends, family members, or acquaintances who haven't seen each other in a little while - a way of catching up. "How's the job going?" "How's your daughter?" That's small talk. And while all that is fine and good, it's feels infinitely better to get beyond small talk and get to the meat and potatoes of conversing with other people - getting to know them better. Scientific American has even published a podcast here about a recent study with the following findings by researchers on the happiness level of study participants who engage in different levels of conversation to different extents: "[T]he happiest participants spent 70 percent more time talking with others than the least happy people. But more than just measuring amount of time spent talking with others, they also found a difference in the type of conversation happier folks engage in. "The happiest participants had twice as many substantive conversations and only a third as much small talk as those who are least content." Apparently, according to the latest science, not only is getting past small talk good for your love life - it's good for you overall. The problem that a lot of people have with small talk is that they can't get past it. Ever have one of those conversations where you've met someone new (or ran into someone you hardly know) and the two of you are both trying to make conversation, but you both just keep circling around and circling around and not finding anything to connect on? You can never quite get out of that awkward place of one person asking a question, the other person answering, and the conversation never really getting started? "So where you from?" a man asks a woman. "I grew up in Los Angeles; moved here four years ago. You?" she answers. "I'm from Portland," he replies. "I see," she says. "What do you do?" "I'm an accountant," he responds. "I count dollar signs, mostly. How about you, what's your profession?" "I'm in the administrative office at the university downtown," she tells him. "That's great," he says. After an awkward pause, he asks, "So... how do you like working at the university?" "It's ok," she says. "Nothing special. How do you like being an accountant?" "Well, it pays the bills," he tells her. She offers some polite laughter, and he laughs in kind, and then there's another awkward pause. "Ok, I should probably go get another drink," she tells him. "It was really nice meeting you." "You too," he says. What happened? They didn't get past small talk, and the conversation ended. Now, it may have very well been the case that she liked him and he liked her, and both of them were in fact interested in getting to know each other better, but eventually the failure to move beyond small talk made the conversation feel progressively more awkward and less comfortable and eventually the social pressure was too great for them to endure - and the woman, in this case, ended the conversation (and that uncomfortable awkwardness) by exiting it. Why does it feel awkward when people fail to get past small talk? It's because they end up talking about stuff they don't care about and they fail to relate. Does the guy above really care how much this girl likes working at the university? Does the girl above really care that this guy is from Portland? Not likely on either count. The function that small talk provides - or is supposed to provide - is as a jumping off point into getting to know each other. But that never happened in the conversation above. What went wrong here was that both partners in the above examples missed opportunities to get to know each other better and build a real conversation (and get past small talk) by getting personal and delving into meaningful topics - instead of staying on superficial levels. How does one do that? By asking pointed questions to get the other partner in the conversation to divulge more meaningful and more interesting tidbits and information. For instance: After our gentleman notes that he's from Portland, the lady may say: "I've never been to Portland. What's it like, and why did you leave there for here?" What she's done is asked him to tell her some of his story. "Why did you leave there for here?" invites him to go into his background. Once he begins relating the details of his life, his situation, how he came to move to this new town they both find themselves in, suddenly she knows much more about him and has more to relate to him on - and make more interesting and meaningful conversation on. Similarly, after she notes that she works at the university, rather than asking the pointless question of how she likes it, he might say: "Really? My friend works there too. What do you like better, being around college kids all the time or getting to work in the middle of downtown?" He's given her a couple of interesting options for telling him about what she likes. Now she can tell him about how she likes being around young people, or what she likes to do downtown. He's just handed her a few different ideas she can use to branch out in the conversation, rather than staying on the same boring topic of her job at the university (which she probably doesn't really want to think about a whole lot in her free time - unless of course she sees it as her calling!). He's also noted that his friend works at the university - giving her the opportunity to ask him who his friend is (maybe they know each other), what she does there, etc. If you're picking up a trend here, you've got a good eye; in each case, I've given you a few examples on how people can get to relating to each other better. Because that is what getting past small talk is really about - it's about reaching the point where the two of you are relating to each other and connecting to each other under mutual understanding. A failure to get past small talk is a failure to relate to another person. And that's really all it is. And that's why it feels so awkward. When you're speaking with someone and you just can't get past small talk, what you know instinctively is that you're just not relating to her. And she feels the same. It can be terribly frustrating, especially when both of you want to be relating to each other (and moving beyond small talk), and it's just not happening. But here's a secret: once you master the art of getting beyond small talk, you can connect with almost anyone. The reason why is, most people want to be building new connections with other people, but often don't know how or aren't very good at it. It only takes one of the people in a conversation to be able to move the pair past small talk; once you're past it, you're conversing on a deeper level and relating to each other and conversation flows along far more smoothly and naturally. So let's go over how to get past small talk, and get you relating to the new people who come into your life. First, here's one more invaluable piece of info on what connecting to people really is all about: it's about getting them telling you about themselves. A really cool study I saw quite recently found that how connected to you a given person feels has nothing to do with how well that person knows you, and everything to do with how well that person thinks you know her. Which means that the more she tells you about herself, the more connected to you she feels. Because of this, when all she's told you is where she's from and what she does, she doesn't feel connected at all. But once she's begun telling you her dreams, hopes, passions, motivations, and story, she will begin building that connection more and more. Helping other people to feel you know and understand them is what relating to people is all about, and that's what getting past small talk really is. So without further ado, here are some of the best ways to move past small talk. Ask the right questions. Some of the most powerful questions you can ask are: "What do you like about that?" "Why did you decide to do that?" "Why are you doing XYZ instead of ABC?" "If you could do anything else instead of XYZ, what would it be?" The reason these questions are so powerful is twofold. It breaks your conversation partner out of autopilot. By the time someone's reached the age of 20, he or she is so used to being asked the standard small talk questions that the answers come without thought. But we don't want her answering on autopilot. When she's on autopilot, she's failing to connect with you; instead, you want her thinking, putting in some work in the conversation, and building a connection. When you get her thinking about things like what she likes, why she's doing what she's doing, or what else she could be doing instead, you get her telling you about herself and building that connection. It moves instantly beyond the trite. How often does she get asked why she decided to become a photojournalist, or what else she might do instead and why? How many people are generally interested in what she really likes and wants to do? People love to talk about themselves, their passions, and their motivations, and when you give them the chance to do so with you, you've instantly broken past small talk. Relate to what you hear. Always try to relate whenever possible to what people tell you. So when someone says, "I'm from Portland," you can say, "No way, I have a really good friend from there. It's rare to meet people from Oregon. How'd you find your way down here?" When you let someone know that you relate - something as simple as saying, "I've been to that town a few times," or, "My friend can't stop talking about that restaurant," or, "I've been trying to get up the nerve to try that sport forever," you set them at ease and reassure them that they're not talking your ear off about something you don't care about. It relives the social pressure on them and allows them to relax and know that you're relating. Offer more detail. The number one reason people can't get past small talk? A failure to get enough information to make conversation on. When you go back and forth with another person, giving each other near-one-word answers for each question, the conversation dries up soon. e.g., "Where are you from?" a woman asks a man. "New York. You?" he says. "I'm from DC. How do you like New York?" she replies. "It's a great town. Ever been there?" he asks. "A couple of times. Have you been to DC?" she says in turn. "Once or twice," he responds. There's nowhere to go with that conversation. But if you throw some details in, it starts to look like this: "Where are you from?" she asks. "The City That Never Sleeps. I love it, but it's nice to be out of the concrete jungle for a bit. Where do you hail from?" he says to her. "I'm from DC. How do you like New York?" she says back. "You know, it's a great town," he tells her. "I used to live in a place that didn't have any public transportation; I'm grateful for it now. And there're always lots of different things to do; it's nice being in a town where you never have to worry about getting bored. What do you think of our nation's capitol?" Now, this conversation is primed to go somewhere. The man in question here took the opportunity to give his new connection some information about himself to work on; he mentions living in a place without transportation, and living in a town with lots of different things to do. Now, instead of making polite conversation that doesn't really scratch the surface of either party, he's given the woman he's speaking with the chance to ask him, "Where did you live before?" or, "What kind of things do you do in New York?" (which she'll likely ask him after answering his question about how she likes DC) and he can go into some detail on his background, and ask her about hers. Note that conversation is all about leading into topics; there needs to be a progression from one topic to another. That's why you'll never see a conversation that goes: "Where are you from?" "Melbourne, in Australia. Have you ever skied the Alps?" "No." "Oh. Too bad." It doesn't make sense. The poor person asking where this guy is from is going to be scratching her head, wondering why on Earth he asked her if she's skied the Alps. But you could see a conversation like this: "Where are you from?" "Melbourne, in Australia. I was just traveling in Europe, though - have you ever skied the Alps?" "No - did you do that while you were there?" Or like this: "Where are you from?" "Melbourne, in Australia. Have you ever skied the Alps?" "No." "Hmm. Well, the reason I ask is, I first left Australia about two months ago, and my mission was to ski the Alps. I got seriously sidetracked though - that's how I ended up here. I'm planning on getting back to Europe and skiing those Alps before I make my way back to Melbourne though - seeing how charming and adventurous you appear, I thought to suggest you come with me." Remember to tie a train of thought back to the preceding thought - either at the beginning of the thought (how it's normally done), or by explaining the relation at the end of the thought (less common - more of an advanced conversational technique) - and you can relate just about anything to anything and make it natural. Forget to do so, and the conversation seems to randomly jump from topic to topic and thought to thought - so it's important to remember to tie it all together! If you follow those three basic rules for breaking past small talk Ask the right questions Relate to what you hear Offer more detail you'll be flying by it and getting to building connections fast in no time. Ideally you want to spend as little time in small talk as possible - use it only as a tool to jump off into real conversation and get relating to people. Do that and you'll be in real conversations quickly, reliably, and regularly - and I guarantee you'll enjoy meeting new people a whole lot more. And they'll enjoy meeting you too. All my best, Chase Amante

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##[A45] How to Get a Phone Number from a Girl Every Time you Ask One of the most glaring things missing from the content available on the blog here has been an authoritative article on how to get a phone number from a girl. I put up "Natural Number Swapping" sometime back, and that covers the basics; Ricardus has covered phone numbers somewhat in a couple of different posts. But there isn't any one comprehensive post written on everything you could ever want to know about becoming insanely effective at getting phone numbers. Time to change that. Today's article is a tour-de-force of all the most potent, powerful tips and techniques on how to get phone numbers that you could ask for, so you can get the numbers you want from the women you want them from, whenever you want, every time (or pretty close to it). There's no reason you shouldn't be able to follow up with a girl that you like later on after meeting her. And after reading this article and following its advice today, you'll see exactly why - and phone numbers will be a breeze. how to get a phone number Phone numbers aren't a big deal. Really, nothing is a big deal... or, it shouldn't be, anyway. Meeting girls isn't a big deal Going on a date isn't a big deal Sleeping with girls isn't a big deal Taking a girl as your girlfriend isn't a big deal Getting married isn't a big deal Having kids isn't a big deal Growing old isn't a big deal Dying isn't a big deal These are just normal, ordinary, regular parts of life that everybody goes through and everyone experiences. And the men we admire - and the ones women go nuts with - are the ones who stay calm, controlled, and relaxed throughout... because for them, things aren't a big deal. The wise old man sitting on a mountain top doesn't jump for joy if he finds out he has a grandchild... he smiles, and gives a few calm words of congratulations to his son or daughter on the new arrival. And we respect him much more for it than the guy who loses his shirt over what's a wonderful, but otherwise normal, life event. Put in this way, you should be able to step outside yourself for a moment and realize that getting phone numbers is no big deal. If you're good at knowing how to get a phone number, you can go out and get 10 or 20 phone numbers from new women in a day. All you've got to do is go out, keep meeting new women, and keep asking for their phone numbers. But if you make it a big deal - if you freak out, get nervous, or get excited - it's going to be a much more uphill battle. GIRLS WANT GUYS WHO'VE DONE THIS BEFORE Like we discussed in the article on preselection, women are most attracted - far and away, and by a large margin - to men that other women want. Without seeing other women pursuing a man, women use a man's confidence as a proxy for this - if he's confident, he must have done this before and succeeded, which means women must want him, which means SHE should want him. If he's nervous, that means this is a BIG DEAL for him, which means he probably hasn't done this very many times before and succeeded, which means a lot of women don't really want him... which means she doesn't want him. Cue the "creepy guy" thoughts and comments from girls. "Something about that guy just seemed off." To get around this, you've either got to: Have done this many times before, or ACT like you've done this many times before. The chief thing is, you don't want women thinking this is your first time around the phone number rodeo. So if you're new or inexperienced, kill the nervousness. How do you do that? Well, principally by following the next step... MEANTIME, YOU DON'T WANT TO THINK TOO MUCH Yes, you want to pull off a smooth, solid phone number ask. And yes, you want to make sure you come in the right way with the right strategy. how to get a girl's phone number But no, you will not be successful if you are devoting a ton of time to obsessing over what you're going to say and how you're going to say it before you say it. I remember a time, long after I'd gotten very good at getting girls' phone numbers, where I'd met this girl on an airplane on a trip I was making out to Milwaukee. She was very pretty, very sexy, and clearly very interested in me. And I decided that rather than simply ask her as soon as it felt right and get it out of the way as I usually do (we'll discuss below), I'd wait until the end of the plane ride and make some big production out of it. Well, wouldn't you know it, years of experience and conditioning went out the window and suddenly the end of the plane ride came and I was as nervous as when I first started asking women for phone numbers years before. Needless to say, I asked her anyway, and it was not smooth, and I did not get the phone number, and I never saw her again. You cannot overthink getting a phone number. As soon as you start thinking about it, you either need to ask RIGHT away, or just get it out of your head until it's time for you to do it. Overthinking leads to you psyching yourself out, and you'll sabotage yourself every time. A FEW MORE POINTS ON PSYCHOLOGY The best sale doesn't feel like a sale at all, and it's the same with getting phone numbers. Your objective in getting a girl's phone number should be to make it feel as natural and effortless as possible. The better the experience, the more likely you are to get what you're seeking (her number). But there's another side to this too: making sure that the number you're getting is good. It's important that you know how to get a phone number the right way, because the way you ask for a number affects a bunch of different things, both immediately and downstream in your interactions with a girl: It affects how likely you are to actually get the phone number It affects how much and what, exactly, she thinks about you later It affects how likely or not likely she is to answer your phone call or text message It affects how warm she will be to meeting with you in person right away or not It affects if she sees you as a friend, lover, or provider (see: "What Women Want") Because how you ask for and get phone numbers has such a big impact on how things go downstream (not just your likelihood of actually getting the number), it's extra important you're handling things appropriately. Fortunately, handling things appropriately is precisely what the rest of this article is designed to teach you. how to get a phone number While you don't want to be overthinking things (overthinking is what nervousness is all about), you also don't want to rush into asking a girl for her phone number at the wrong time or in the wrong way. There is a proper way of building up to things. You can ask for a phone number quickly, or you can ask for it after an extended conversation. The important part is, you ask for it once her emotions are in the place where you can most effectively take her phone number. I'll give you two scenarios - now tell me which of these feels comfortable asking for a girl's phone number: Scenario #1: The Instant Ask You see a pretty girl on the street or at a bar and walk up to her. "Hey, can I have your number?" you ask, without so much as an introduction. Scenario #2: The Conversation That's Jumped the Shark You met a girl, started talking to her, and things went great... for a while. But the two of you just kept sitting there, and talking, and talking, and talking, for maybe a few hours, until there was nothing left to talk about. "Well," she says, getting up, "I've really got to be going." "Oh hey, wait," you say as she rises to leave, "we should hang out some time! What's your phone number?" ... back to the meat of the post. Which of those two scenarios feels more comfortable? Got an answer yet? I'll wait. ... ... ... Here's the answer: it's a trick question - they're both really awkward! And they're both unlikely to work. But why? Well, the reason is, both of these phone number asks are completely inconsiderate of the woman's emotions. They're asking at the wrong time, and they show a complete disregard for how the woman feels, what she wants, or what's most appealing to her. And because of that, they're a total turn off. Let's have a look at why that is, and how you can prepare yourself to ask women at the right times for their phone numbers. THE EMOTIONAL ARC OF GETTING PHONE NUMBERS Learning how to get a phone number properly is a lot like learning how to do anything else with women properly, from saying "hello" to physical escalation. It's all dependent on emotions. Which makes sense... emotions are the brain's intuitive logic center. When your subconscious mind picks up on things, it tells you how to act through emotions. Guy seems confident, cool, attractive, and suave? Emotionally, a girl responds well to him. Guy seems nervous, awkward, and uncomfortable? Emotionally, a girl feels creeped out and wants to get away. That's the overall picture of how emotions work. The smaller view picture is that for every interaction, you're going to follow a certain emotional arc: Meet (you're strangers; she's unsure about you) Introductions (if your fundamentals are good, she's interested instantly) Repartee / chit-chat (she's finding you more attractive now; she's excited) Rapport (she's feels the emotional connection between you) Escalate (you move her or move things forward) or wind-down (you end things) If you're doing things right (and want to have the best chance possible of having a girl give you her phone number and setting things up to go well downstream) you want to get a girl's phone number somewhere between Step #3 and Step #4 on the emotional arc. how to get a phone number The reason why it's so important to get a phone number after you've established some initial repartee but before things have begun to wind down and draw to a close is to capitalize on emotional high points. Watch any movie where two people kiss. They never kiss right after they've first met; nor do they kiss when things are awkward or uncomfortable. They always kiss right at the perfect moment, when things are at an emotional high point and it just feels right. Asking a girl for her phone number is a lot like kissing her in that respect; if it doesn't feel right, it'll blow up in your face; but if it does, there'll never have been anything more natural. So what should you be looking for, then? How do you know when the moment to ask has come? You should ask her for her phone number when: She seems comfortable around you The two of you are "vibing" - e.g., conversation is happening easily She's contributing to the conversation, telling you things about herself, and asking questions You hit a peak within the emotional high period - she's laughing, hitting you, or clearly having a good time in some other way You never want to ask her for her phone number on an emotional low point... things are winding down, she's seeming bored, or she's otherwise unengaged. That's because the moment you ask a girl for her phone number, she's going to say to herself, "Do I want more of what I'm feeling right now?" If the answer is, "No, this is not that great," her answer to you will be "no," too. But if the answer is, "Yes, this is wonderful!" then her answer to you will be "yes." MAKE IT ABOUT A DATE, NOT A NUMBER how to get a phone numberAnother reason that asking for a phone number can be awkward both for her AND for you is because she doesn't know what you want her phone number for! I mean, she knows you like her, but... Are you going to send her 200 text messages every day? Are you going to call her at weird times to tell her about your "feelings?" Or are you just going to use her number to ask her out on a date? Because she doesn't know, the very first thing that springs to her mind when you ask her for her phone number is, "Um, why?" But she can't ask that, because it's socially impolite. So she's forced to make a judgment call: do I want this guy to be able to have unfettered access to my phone to do whatever he wants, or do I not? This is fine for confident, charismatic guys, because she KNOWS a guy like that is too busy to go strange on her. But if you're anybody ELSE... if you're just a regular guy starting out in game, who doesn't have James Bond super skills at wooing women yet, she's going to wonder if you might by any chance turn into a creep. You know, those guys who pester women all day long with boring and annoying text messages and never quite seem to "get" it. Or who call her wanting to get into long phone conversations with her that don't lead anywhere and just take up her time. If you aren't super suave, she's not going to know if you're going to be "normal" over the phone with her or not. So her entire judgment call comes down to how normal you've been in the interaction and how much she trusts you to maintain that normality once she gives you the power to call her. Because remember, she's tied to her phone. Anyone who has her phone number can access her at any time and say anything to her. And most women have had the experience of giving their phone numbers to a guy who seemed pretty normal, then became obsessed with them or went strange on them. Want to get around this? Want to free the women you meet from having to ask themselves a giant unanswerable question ("Will this guy be normal or strange on the phone?") and instead make it really, really simple for them and easy to answer? Then ask girls on dates, not for phone numbers. It's much easier for a woman to decide if she wants to see you again than it is for her to decide if she wants you to have access to her via phone for the rest of eternity, so don't ask her for that latter one - ask her for the former. Your goal in asking women for their phone numbers should be to always ask them about going out again first. This makes the phone number ask natural, and almost a second thought. Because after all, if she does want to see you again, the two of you are going to need some form of long distance communication to coordinate that, right? how to get a phone number And now, we come to that all-important point: the one you've been waiting for - how to get a phone number from a girl. You've got the psychology behind it down: Phone numbers aren't a big deal; you can get lots of them fast if you want to Women want confident men who've done this a lot (or seem like they have) You can keep yourself calm and collected by not overthinking things Getting things right is important for the downstream with a girl, too And you've got the general setup under your belt: It's important to ask at the emotional height of an interaction, not a tail end The question of, "Can I get you number?" is a giant question women can't answer You can help a girl out (and get a lot more phone numbers) by making the question, "Would you like to see me again?" instead Now all that's left is the technical stuff - the words, the actions, and the things you'll actually, you know, do. HOW TO GET A PHONE NUMBER THE EASY WAY There's an easy way to get a girl's phone number, and we mentioned it above - simply ask her out first. That goes like this: You: [in conversation with her] ... wow, I can't believe you did that. Her: I know, right? Well, I didn't have much choice... she was the meanest teacher I ever had! You: [laughs] You don't say. Her: How about you, did you ever have any really nasty teachers? You: I did, you know what - [pause to change course] I'm probably going to have to take off soon, but I'd like to grab some food or a drink with you again sometime later this week or next. Would you like to do that? Her: Yes, definitely. You: Okay, awesome. Let me grab your phone number so we can coordinate. This goes so much more smoothly and easily than the traditional, "Can I get your number?" line that most men throw at women you'll be blown away and amazed. And the reason it works so well is in all the groundwork we've laid down earlier in the post: It makes the number not a big deal You ask confidently because you need it to set up the date It's a natural part of the conversation so you remain calm It's established correctly so things go better downstream with girls You ask at the emotional height, not a tail end You completely remove the question of, "Can I get your number?" altogether... ... and you make the question, "Would you like to see me again?" instead Much easier, much more natural, and you'll have a close rate that's through the roof. You will almost never get a "no" to this once you've got some experience under your belt and you're executing it at the right time in the interaction and without any hesitancy or uncertainty, because it's essentially built on a yes ladder that leads directly to the phone number: Is she enjoying herself? Yes. Would she like to see you again and continue enjoying herself? Yes. Should she give you her phone number to see you again and enjoy herself? Yes. The only thing you've got to do, other than follow this process, is give women a good enough experience in conversation with you (or elsewise) that they want to have an experience like that with you again. And for that, we've got a number of great articles on here about conversation, including "The Art of the Deep Dive," "The Conversationalist," and a whole bunch more; and we've got Spellbinding, our program on having amazing conversations. Once you're following these and giving women amazing conversation, wanting to see you again is a given. It's that easy. But there's one other way you should know about... and it's a heck of a lot of fun. THE TWO MINUTE NUMBER CLOSE What if you are legitimately in a hurry trying to get somewhere, and you see a beautiful woman walking down the street... but you just don't have time to go get in a conversation with her? Is she just a vision of beauty you will never get to know? Not quite. There is something you can do. That something is the 2-minute number close. how to get a girl's phone number This is a more advanced technique than the one we just covered for getting a girl's phone number. It's going to rely a lot more on your ability to open well, convey a strong sense of presence and charisma right away, and to be confident and self-assured while running day game. But if you pull it off, you'll have a beautiful new woman's contact information in your hands (or, in your cell phone, more likely) in only a couple of minutes. Here's how it works: You'll approach her, open her, and give your name You'll explain that you really wish you had a moment to talk to her, but you're in a hurry Then, you'll tell her to give you her phone number Finally, you'll finish that up by qualifying the ask so she doesn't feel it's too "easy" And here's what it looks like: You: [suddenly noticing and approaching her] Excuse me... I saw you walking here, and I just had to come tell you that you have the most stunning walk I've seen all day. I'm Chase. Her: [a little surprised] Thank you - I'm Amelia. You: Amelia, great to meet you. I'm in a big hurry, and I really can't stop and chat, but I saw you and I might never see you again and you might never see me again, and I think both our lives would be the poorer for it. So, I'll tell you what... [pause, take out your cell phone] I want you to tell me your phone number, and I'm going to call you and you'll have my phone number too. And sometime later this week I'll give you a proper call and we can talk on the phone and figure out then if you like me and I like you. And if we both like each other, maybe sometime we can meet. Okay, let me have your phone number. Her: Okay - it's xxx.xxx.xxxx. You: Great. I'll shoot you a text later so you have my number too. Wonderful meeting you, Amelia! I'm off! Her: Goodbye! You'll get girls who will politely refuse, and that's fine. But you'll also get girls who will give you their phone numbers, and you can call them later. For these girls, you do need to properly call them on the phone. I mentioned in "How to Text a Girl" that I never make phone calls to women anymore. This is the exception. When you've got zero rapport built up with a girl, it's a lot more challenging to get her out for a date, so in this instance, when you've simply met a girl briefly and grabbed her number, you do need to actually talk to her on the phone. The upshot though is that when you successfully pull off a ballsy move like the 2-minute number close, you get massive attraction from women. PARTING THOUGHTS ON PHONE NUMBERS The first method we reviewed for asking a girl if she'd like to grab food or a drink with you before asking for a phone number is going to be your bread-and-butter phone number ask. It's the easiest way to get a phone number, it works in almost any situation, and it's extremely consistent and reliable. The 2-minute number close is a special situation that you'll only use when you're reasonably advanced and when you're in a reasonable hurry - when, for instance, you're on your way to the airport, or to an important meeting. Most of the time though, you'll be fine simply asking a girl if she'll join you out again later that week or the next, and then simply asking for her phone number so the two of you can coordinate. It's how you take something that most guys make a REALLY big deal... and turn it into a harmless detail that you simply need to wrap up before calling it a conversation. If you've been sweating over how to get a phone number from that girl you like, you can stop sweating. All you need is a couple of minutes of conversation - then just ask her if she'd like to see you later on (remember not to be specific; if you ask her if she wants to see you on Thursday, she's probably got plans, so stick to general like "later this week or next week" - nailing down specifics is what the phone number is for), and grab her number. And just like that, we took a daunting topic like how to get a girl's phone number and gave you the psychological underpinnings of what you're up against, the general setup of how to pull things off right, and the exacting techniques you need to grab a phone number from a girl in well night any scenario. Not bad for a day's work, eh?

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##[A46] How to Text a Girl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pie-biJxzNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc_aQf5R_VI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuEc7QtXkTI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c2uq65mKM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QouUFwmDG48 The social arts is really a collection of different social skills rolled up and bundled together in one big hodgepodge of stuff useful for getting success with women. And one of these many skills you'll find you'll need to work on that proves absolutely vital to your success is text messaging and how to text a girl. Texting is a thorn in many a man's side. Sometimes it might seem when you're trying to figure this medium out that there are more questions when it comes to how and what to text a girl than there are answers. What's the right thing to say in your texts? How do you know if your messages are having the right effect on a girl - or not? What should your ultimate objective with texting be - what are you trying to accomplish? A long time ago, when texting was new and phone calls were king, I used to be highly, vehemently anti-text myself (and pro-phone call). "You can't build a real connection with a girl over text, and you should never ask her out over text," was my old mantra... But times change, people change, and so have I; these days, I almost never make phone calls anymore. Phone calls are so 20th century. YOUR OBJECTIVE IN TEXTING GIRLS Let's start with the underlying basics and strategy of text messaging girls, because that's what's going to drive how you structure your messages and everything else about them. First off, if you want every single text you'll ever need spelled out for you, you'll want to check out my massive "exactly what to text her every step of the way" texting guide here: Read more: 14 Simple Ways to Text a Girl and Make Her Want You how to text a girl Read my ultimate step-by-step how to text a girl guide. I give you every text you could possibly need there. A lot of guys tell me that is their go-to reference guide for texting, and they've saved the page and refer to it every time they get stuck texting someone. Now on with our how to text girls guide. I feel like most of the men whose text conversations I see have a very slipshod approach toward texting: Many guys text girls without really knowing what their objectives are. Oftentimes they text without any discernable objectives at all. I'm not sure how they expect directionless, objective-free texting to lead to anything productive, but well... I remember the days when I was a lot less effective with texting and it felt like this big black question mark of an area, so I commiserate. We'll shine a little light on texting then, and get you pointed in the right direction. You will only ever have two (2) objectives for texting, and they should never overlap. Here are your objectives in texting girls: Build rapport and comfort, or Set up a meet. That's it. how to text a girl Don't get pulled off track texting girls. I think when most men are texting women they rather have this pseudo-objective instead, which is: Keep texting her and fishing around hoping to somehow set up a date. And that's probably the most abominable lack of direction in texting known to man. That horrible, atrocious non-objective leads to men sending all kinds of random, half-baked, lame text messages that leave a woman staring at them thinking, "Why is he texting me this?" and only accomplish sinking the guy's efforts to win this new girl over. Thumbs down for the pseudo-objective. If you do that, stop immediately. Back to our real objectives. When you are sending text messages, a woman should know immediately what your objective is - to build rapport or to ask her out. There should be no question in her mind. This is how to text a girl properly. The reason I say not to have any overlap is because the instant you start trying to overlap setting up meets with building rapport, it gets messy. That's when you have a guy fishing around as he builds rapport, hoping for / looking for / trying to find some way to ask the girl out. Don't fall into this trap; keep your objectives separate. Either you're building rapport, or you're setting up a meet. Some texting a girl dos and do nots: Don't Beat around the bush. Text without having an objective. Send lots and lots of texts. Get wordy or longwinded. Do Be direct and straightforward. Text with your objective in mind. Send a handful of well-planned texts. Be precise and concise. how to text a girl Texting dos and don'ts. You will always be trying either to build rapport and comfort, or set up a meet. That's all; those are your text messaging objectives when it comes to contacting women. WARM TEXTING AND COLD TEXTING One stop into the land of definitions before we continue. I want to make sure we differentiate between warm and cold texting, because it's an important distinction. So let's define these terms henceforth for the remainder of this article. Warm texting is when you text message a girl who was expecting to hear from you at the time you texted her, or was thinking about you. Cold texting is when you text message a girl who was not expecting to hear from you at the time you texted her, and was not thinking about you. how to text a girl Your strategy will differ based on whether your text is likely to be a warm or cold one for her. Why the distinction? Because you're going to strike a different tone in different types of messages, depending on how prepared a girl was to be talking to you. I'll give you a pair of examples: First, imagine you're on your way to meet a coworker you're friendly with but not super close with for lunch. You get a text from him: "Just parked. Grab a table yet?" It may be the first text message he's sent you all day, but it feels normal because you were expecting to hear from him. Now let's say you're sitting there at 10 AM in the morning the next day, slogging through some work you don't want to do when you'd really rather be in bed. You get a text from the same coworker whom you're friendly with but not very close with; this one reads: "Just had my second cup of Joe. How's your morning?" To a very social person, it might be cool to get this text, but most people will find this one strange and intrusive; it comes out of the middle of nowhere. They wonder, "Why is he texting me?" how to text a girl This is an effect you do not want to have on women. That's the difference between warm and cold texts. The first one - where you were planning to meet your coworker - came as no surprise, because of course you would need to handle some logistical issues with meeting each other for lunch. The second one though - where'd that one come from? This isn't a guy you're super close with - is he trying to be friends with you? Does he want something from you? Does he have some kind of man-crush on you? Those are the kind of confused questions that pop into your head when a cold text isn't properly structured to account for the surprise and confusion it may elicit. Texting girls is a little more nuanced than you thought, ain't it? HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR TEXTS When you send your first text in a new text message conversation with a girl there are a few elements you will always want to include in every cold text. This rule of including these elements goes for every first text you send... from the first text you've sent her after not having spoken via text for two or more hours, to a text you send even if you just talked to her over the phone. The elements are: A greeting. Her name. A piece of new information. Something that shows you're considering her. Each of these plays a big part in the "feel" of the text. Here's what a complete one with all of the elements looks like: "Gabby, hey. Running a bit behind, sorry; will be there closer to 2:30. Still cool?" So there, we have: Greeting: "hey" Name: "Gabby" Information: "Running a bit behind" "will be there closer to 2:30" Consideration: "sorry" "Still cool?" Also, the fact that you texted to let her know you'd be late in the first place - that also counts as consideration In certain cases, we can drop the greeting and it still feels okay, especially if the text is a warm text. So in the example above, we could drop the greeting ("hey" in this case) and it's still okay, because she's expecting you to handle logistical issues in the run up to the date. You could drop the name too, but that makes it a bit impersonal, so I recommend keeping it. You should always use a girl's name in your first text of a new text conversation. This trips a mental trigger that reassures her that you're talking to her. Text, phone, and email correspondences simply don't feel that personal when you don't use the other person's name; I highly, highly recommend that you do. My text message conversations always start with: "Hey Lily, hope your weekend was good =)" "Katie, morning!" "Hi Melanie!" Always a greeting, and always a name. Note that I shied away from exclamation points ("!") and emoticons (smileys) for a while, as being too "cutesy" and adding too much fun into texts, but ultimately decided periods (".") were too morose. For a while, I operated off the assumption that a girl would just get used to me using periods and eventually realize that hey, Chase is always in a good mood so I shouldn't take it to mean he's sad or complaining when he uses periods. Yet, these days I'm moving so quickly with girls that they don't have time to properly get to know me anymore. So I use them. And you (probably) should too. When you're moving fast with new girls, exclamation points and emoticons have more upside than downside for engendering the right emotions and allowing you to progress things rapidly. "Hi Chase. Hope your week has been good. Feel like mine's never going to end." makes me recoil in fear that this girl's a total downer; she sounds dour and whiney. I'm scared if I meet up with her she'll suck me into negativity or get clingy and dependent on me if we get together. On the other hand, "Hi Chase! Hope your week has been good :) Feel like mine's never going to end..!" feels so much more fresh and vivid and engaging! I can't wait to see this girl. Same exact message, just different punctuation at the end of the sentences. She's a breath of fresh air. Our texting won't be quite that bouncy, since we won't be texting exactly as girls text, but it'll be pretty close. Texting is one of those mediums where you're forced to choose, unfortunately. In this case, the choice is between masculine and negative, or feminine and positive. I'll choose feminine and positive and trust that my masculinity in person will plow under any thoughts of my texting being cutesy. Girls are going to take your texts at face value. They will not read any emotion into them that is not immediately visible in the text. Hector talks about this in our video on girls only reading from your texts exactly what you put into them, and no more (thus, the need for you to be very clear, in both your words and how you convey emotion): Next, on the matter of information and consideration: the information you share is the "point" of the text; it's the reason why you texted. The consideration is the "bond" in the text; it's your way of bonding with and showing care and consideration for this girl you're texting. You want to make sure you know how to text a girl and create the right emotions, because without that you're sunk. If she's left confused as to why you sent the text (information is missing or irrelevant) or feels like it's cold... ... if she feels like you aren't really focused so much on her (lack of consideration)... ... then she'll have confused or bad feelings tied to the text correspondence. She'll be less likely to respond positively, and for that matter less likely to respond at all. Information might be: "Sitting here in gridlock… this city has the worst traffic ever!" "Had the most amazing shrimp of my life last night… I can still taste it." "Thinking we need to get together some time soon." Consideration might be: "How's your week looking?" "How was your test?" "What's your schedule looking like this week?" You'll notice I use a lot of, "What's your week look like?" That's because I find "What's your week look like?" a great, open-ended question for both A) getting a girl to talk about anything fun, different, or interesting she's got going on or coming up, and B) setting up logistics for us to meet up. And, as you'll see in just a moment, I'm very direct these days and don't like wasting much time on niceties. You'll also notice we're directly violating one of the capital rules of text message flirting I used to recommend. Well, for ordinary texting, that still holds true: questions in the initial message is a no-no... But when you structure things very properly as we do here, you can circumvent that rule and cut to the chase. It's the whole "get good enough and the rules don't apply to you anymore" rule. Well, certain rules do still apply - if you drop names and greetings and consideration, you probably won't get very far. However you can drop the question rule when you're doing everything else right. And then you can use questions to your advantage. Here's what our text messages to these gals look like fully assembled: "Hey Lily, hope your weekend was good =) Sitting here in gridlock… this city has the worst traffic ever! How's your week looking?" "Katie, morning! Had the most amazing shrimp of my life last night… I can still taste it. How was your test?" "Hi Melanie! Thinking we need to get together some time soon. What's your schedule looking like this week?" These are cool, fun, personal, and upbeat, and will almost always get responses. This is influenced partly by the initial impression you made on the girls you're sending them to, of course, and partly by precedent (e.g., if your initial impression was not good for whatever reason, or you've already set bad precedent in your correspondence, a good text now may be too little too late). But generally, structured this way, you'll almost always hear back from women, and they'll almost always be at least reasonably warm and expansive in their replies. And if you don't hear back? Follow the my very popular "what to do when girls don't text back" guide right here: Read more: What to Do When a Girl Doesn't Text Back girl doesn't text back Everything you need to do when a girl's not texting you back. HOW TO TEXT A GIRL TO BUILD RAPPORT I recommend you send an initial text message to a girl somewhere between 30 minutes to four hours after first meeting her. If you had a great vibe between the two of you, 30 to 60 minutes after you meet her is perfect. If you met her toward the end of the night in a bar or nightclub or on the street or at a party, one or two hours later is okay if you're just about to head to bed. Your first text message, several hours after first meeting a girl, is to break the communication barrier and establish a degree of comfort for her with communicating with you. how to text a girl We call this first message you send her "the icebreaker." The longer you wait to send your icebreaker, the more awkward it gets when that first communication of yours arrives (whether a text message or a phone call). So text within 30 minutes to four hours to prevent any awkwardness or expectation settling in, and to establish rapport via text message right away. All you need to do that is a simple text like: "Glad to meet a fellow traveler :) -Chase" or "Happy to run into you tonight :) -Chase" Basically, you're giving her: A goodwill statement letting her know you're glad to meet her A smiley face conveying warmth and good feelings Your name This serves the following purposes: Establishing rapport. You've quickly moved to establish rapport via text message, removing any awkwardness or expectation. When you text or call later, it will be natural, now that you've already exchanged communication. Confirmation that you like her and remember her. Sometimes guys take girls' phone numbers and get all weird or never text or call at all. A girl can get stuck wondering if you really liked her, if you ever intend to get in touch with her again, or if you'll be the same over text as you were in person or if you're one of those Jekyll / Hide guys who's cool in person but creepy over text. Giving her a (short, single sentence) goodwill statement with accompanying smiley will set her mind at ease and prevent her from starting to imagine any weird scenarios of you texting or calling and it being odd. Giving her your name. When you've been at this for a while, you develop a talent for remembering everyone's name, because you get so used to meeting lots and lots of new people that it just becomes routine. I rather enjoy meeting a new group of eight or ten people, having them all cycle through their names, and then I go back and tell them all what their names are after and everyone's amazed. As it were though, most women are not so talented, and may very well forget your name, no matter how much they like you and how deeply you connect. This can be downright embarrassing for them - so much so sometimes that they can't bear to talk to you for the shame of it. Signing your name at the end of that first text allows them to save face and gives them your name just in case they forgot it. For building rapport, typically I'll fire off that initial text, then not get in contact with the girl at all the following day, only reestablishing rapport the day after (unless she reaches out to me first). At that time I'll generally fire off a few rapport building texts to get her comfortable chatting with me. These follow the structure we covered earlier, at least in the first text or two. Some general outlines on rapport-building texts: Be concise. Shorter texts get far more replies than longwinded ones. Stay positive. No one likes a downer; bring good, positive energy to your texts. Girls should look forward to receiving texts from you. Let them dread texts from those other boring, depressing life-draining guys, while you come along and light up their days. Keep it to a few texts. Unless you get in a really good texting conversation with a girl, you'll want to keep it to three to ten texts sent, generally. Don't go crazy with your texts... and check this video out by Hector if you sometimes do: Finally, watch the time. It's okay to vary your response times, but don't reply too much more quickly to a girl's text than she replies to yours until you get pretty advanced, lest you risk looking like you're waiting by the phone for her reply with nothing better to do. Once you're advanced, you can play around with varying response times; sometimes I'll reply within minutes to a girl's text; other times it might take me hours. Usually that's more because I'm busy than anything else, but building variance into your response time is a good thing to do. HOW TO TEXT A GIRL TO ARRANGE A MEET This is the real meat of this post and probably the most important part of it. Honestly, I hardly spend much time building rapport with girls over text these days; I usually go straight for setting up the date. If you prefer to build some comfort and rapport first, I'd recommend a rough schedule like this: Initial text several hours after first meeting girl Rapport-building texts two days after first meet Arrange the date four to five days after first meet That's all you need. Less, even. Like I said, I often skip the rapport-building these days unless I really think a girl needs it, and I go for setting up the meet the day after I've first met a girl or the next day after that. You don't need to talk to a girl for weeks before she's ready to meet up with you; you don't need to gradually win her over. You just need to get her out. Back in my days selling tires, my old boss asked me a question while I was still in training. He asked me, "Do you know what the telephone is for?" I said, "To sell the customer on a tire?" He said, "No. A really good, seasoned salesguy, like Jim, can sell a customer on a tire over the phone, but even he knows not to push too hard to try to sell over the phone unless he can tell that's what the customer wants. All I want you to do with the telephone is to use it to get the customer in the store. Selling over the phone is an uphill battle; but, get them in the store, and by that point they've come all the way here, they've made the decision this is where they want to buy their tires, and they're committed, and more likely than not they'll buy the tire. You stand a much better chance of selling the customer a tire when they're here in front of you than when you have them on the phone. Get them in the store." tire store Sometimes I still miss the tire store. Sales is a field filled to the brim with invaluable life lessons. I took that to heart and made it my priority with every phone call I answered from a customer. Whenever I found myself on the phone, my priority was get them in the store. I forgot this lesson for a while when I was first learning how to do well with women, and I'd have these long, drawn out phone and text message interactions spanning weeks and months, and sometimes I'd eventually meet the girl, and sometimes nothing would come of it. It was colossally ineffective. I hated the phone; I had better luck taking a girl home the same night I met her in the nightclub than I did ever seeing her again once I had a phone number. But eventually I remembered "get them in the store." Translated to seduction, it's "get them out with you." So, I stopped trying to sell myself over the phone, and just started using it as a logistical tool to set up dates. And my success soared. I've hardly even used phone calls at all the past two years. Heck, in the first fifteen days of this year, I slept with four new girls, every one on first dates, every one of those dates coordinated via text message. My secret? "Get them out with you." I recently helped a good friend of mine structure his text messages to get a girl out who hadn't responded to an earlier effort of his. I wrote him up a new text, and suddenly this girl who hadn't responded before responded right away this time and ended up coming out late that night to meet him when she had to be up for work at 7 am the next day. Why? Three elements to a meet-up text: Be warm. Offer value. Keep your eye on the ball. The ball being the meet, of course. The value can be offering to do something cool or fun with her, or it may simply be leading her to something she wants to do (meet you). Sometimes girls will ask side questions, like, "How was your day?" but you must answer that and continue to push toward the meet. Don't get sidetracked. Here's what an example conversation might look like as you forge ahead toward setting up a meet: You: "Lisa, hey! Let's figure out a time to grab a bite. How's this weekend looking for you?" Her: "This weekend's okay, sure! How are you??" You: "I'm good! Why don't we do Saturday at 1 PM? We can meet at Main St Station Exit 2 and go from there. Cool?" Her: "Okay!" You: "Awesome. See you Sat ;)" And bam, that's all it takes. Note that when she asked how you were, you didn't get sidetracked and kept your eye on the ball (the meet). Just before I sat down to write this article, a pal of mine shared a message thread of his where I noticed he fell into the sidetrack trap and diverted off-course. He ended up not meeting up with a girl who had really wanted to meet up with him, but did not, because he let her sidetrack him, and the conversation petered out. Which sucks. Keep your eye on the ball and continue pushing - gently, calmly, and socially adroitly - for the meet... Then, plan a good date, and make it a simple date, and she's as good as yours. If this article wasn't enough for you and you want even more awesome tips you can use with your texting today, check out my follow-up article on how to text girls, just below. Read more: How to Text Girls: 20 More Tips and Techniques how to text girls Get my full set of 20 more tips to make your texting as tight as it can get. PARTING THOUGHTS This was another rather wordy article, but I haven't seen much good information out on there on texting and wanted to put this out. I was considering making this a mini-ebook and selling it, but, eh… my hands are full enough with finishing How to Make Girls Chase and doing pre-scripting for Spellbinding. Besides, information wants to be free anyway, right? ;) Seriously, if you get this down, your dating life will get about 1000x easier. Being able to quickly turn your phone numbers into meets is a game changer; it gives you so many more opportunities to succeed with women. Definitely focus on stepping up your text message skills and really learning how to text a girl when you have the time. A few of the possibly more challenging bumps in the road you may encounter and the items you'll likely want to target as you seek to learn this: Beginners: getting down timing (how fast or slow should you respond? what days and what times of day should you text at?), number of texts sent (how many is too few? too many?), and anxiety over pulling the trigger (sooner or later you have to ask her out!). Intermediate: getting down concision (don't write long texts), being interesting without being an entertainer (avoid being boring, but also avoid going over the top), engaging women properly (how do you get them really participating?), and arranging dates more smoothly. Advanced: cutting down your texting even more, to the bare minimum of texts you need to send before you can get a girl on a date; getting girls to chase you and pursue you and at times work to set the date up themselves; getting very dominant and direct in how you set up your dates and mastering the finer points of language in text messages; working on assuming the sale ("Shall we grab lunch? I'm thinking we could do O'Malley's at noon tomorrow; sound good?"). So, get thee to a messaging app and start texting today. how to text a girl This is the kind of stuff you need to have women doing. Invaluable skill to have, and while I still think you ought to invest some time into getting great on the phone just for the pure sake of having that versatility should you need it, texting at this level is really all you need to get girls out and on dates reliably and quickly. In short, I am firmly a text messaging convert these days. Texting girls... fun, easy, effective, and above all, efficient! Can't be beaten. Talk to you soon.

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##[A47] How long to Wait before Calling (or Texting) her One question that confuses the hell out of a lot of guys (and also confused the hell out of me when I first learned all this sexual Jedi mind power stuff) is how long to wait before calling (or texting) a girl… and how to move things forward towards a date and beyond once you do call her. You may have heard that you should not be too eager, and you may even have heard about the three day rule… get in touch with her after three days. Then again, that one is so common now that a text or call after three days doesn't really surprise anyone anymore… What's a man to do? And what about dates… how can you really sweep a woman off her feet anymore, or should you even be concerned with that question? What if you don't want to drink alcohol… and even if you do, can't "drinks" be too stiff or formal? What's the right way to go? HOW LONG TO WAIT BEFORE CALLING (OR TEXTING) In response to the article about what to text girls: "So after you got her number one random night, and then you send that text where you tell her to save the number, is there a time gap that you leave before sending the next text? I don't know where I got this, but between the first and second text of a new girl, I would leave a day between, then ask her out. So is it that I should do the first text, then the second with no wait (of course, SOME)?" Great question… so how soon after you get her number should you text her? Right away, after a few hours, the same day, the next day or even after a few days? The truth is that there are no real hard-and-fast rules here… but there ARE a couple of guidelines that are going to clear up some of the confusion: The three-day rule only applies to social circle… if at all. If you met her at a party where you both have a lot of mutual friends who introduced you to each other, calling the next day can sometimes be perceived as "coming on too strong"… in the context of a social circle, you have a lot more time to make things happen gradually, and it is also often wise to make ample use of plausible deniability (see: "How to Get Laid Every Time, Part II"). We've discussed that women don't appreciate gossip about whom they hook up with… well, if you both have friends in common that is doubly true. That doesn't mean that you need to actually count to three… I'd rather follow a general guide line of not being too eager in that context, unless it was very "on". But it does mean that if you want to get a girl alone later with you at some point whom you met through social circle, you want to set discretion frames. If you pick up a girl you'd never met before, on the other hand, and that you don't have any friends in common with, you should not wait long before you follow up. You need to strike the iron while it's hot… otherwise you lose a lot of momentum. After a few days, "life happens"… depending on how long you talked to her, she may not even remember you that well, and even if she does, she's no longer in the emotional state of being swept off her feet by a sexy stranger! Verdict: Take it slower in social circle game, strike the iron while it's hot after a cold approach. Follow up very quickly in day game. When I meet a girl during the day, I like to send her the first text on the same day I approached her. It's a good way to keep the momentum going, and also to gauge how much she's into you. I'll often send her a text just a couple of minutes after we split, while she's still on that little emotional high from my approach… it cements that positive emotion further and sets a little anchor where receiving text messages from me puts her back into that state. This won't have a huge impact, but it's still good to capitalize on the emotional spike you just created in her and text her before it has worn off. After that first text, there are really two contingencies: if you hear back right away, text her again the next day and ask her what her schedule is like… this is the ideal way to nail down logistics for a meet-up because it saves you from chasing her through her calendar. If she ignores your first text or if she responds very late, on the other hand, don't chase a lot. Just text again the next day, and if you don't hear back a second time, let it go. That's right… I usually only follow up twice with girls if I don't hear back. There is really no reason to send more texts… she has received the ones you did send, or if you called, she has seen your call. It's not like back in the day when we had analogue phones and people would miss calls… in the age of the cell phone, a call or a text is never really missed, because it shows up on her display. If you really like her, you can send a third text after a couple of days just in case she genuinely forgot… but it's a long shot, and your time is usually spent better elsewhere - review the article about making girls want you, and specifically the bit about "emptying the funnel." As an analogy… once you start having success in business, everything becomes an opportunity cost. Every hour, every dollar you spend on one deal, you can't spend on another, and you have to make sure that you spend all your money and all your time only on the most promising, most high-value, and most profitable deals. Pursuing dating opportunities is no different - success is as much about knowing what to say no to and what to pass on as it is about following through on other things. Always remember the 80-20 rule and don't sink a lot of time into "courting" girls who aren't really into you. Also keep in mind that you just don't know what else is going on in her life. Maybe she just had a big fight with her boyfriend when you approached her, and that's why she was excited to talk to you… but a couple of hours later they made up, and she's now ignoring your texts. Nothing you did wrong. Put her on the list of unresponsive numbers, and once you have 100 of those, text them all at once and see if someone bites… you might get one or two of them after all. Usually the women who respond to this text are the ones who had merely been unresponsive previously because of circumstances that have since changed. Finally, your goal is not to text girls, your goal is to meet them. how long to wait before calling Every text I send is moving the interaction towards meeting up with her... and usually very quickly. Sometimes you might want to send texts that have nothing to do with a meet up at all, but only to set up the dynamic between you and her in a way where asking her out would be expected, and where she would accept the invitation. This is simple stuff… in fact, it could just be one text, but never more than a handful. Verdict: If a girl spends a lot of time texting with you, this is a BAD sign, not a good one - if she really liked you, she'd just meet up. EXPECTATIONS AND COFFEE DATES All right, so you've got her number, you know how long to wait before calling or texting, and you have followed up… and you're starting to move things towards a meet up. But now what? Again, the same confusion arises... you've probably read that dinner and a movie are a bad idea, but what about coffee dates? Or should you take her to a bar… on a party date… or something more exciting to really sweep her off her feet? Here's a question from a reader about this topic: "The second question is that I am not a party guy and recently I decided not to take a drop of alcohol so it seems difficult for me the starting point or the starting line as I was always starting as: "when do you have time to get a beer or something you like, this coffee thing is very formal and to be honest it is not fun anymore?" You know, the folks at Google have a sign up in their offices that reads like this: Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. I think that's brilliant… because it gets to the essence of things: You want to simplify, and then you want to simplify again, but without leaving out anything that's essential. Simplicity is elegance… see the post on sprezzatura… and if you can make your seductions elegant, girls will only think one word: Smooth! And not in a bad way… not like a "smooth talker" or "agenda guy." Rather, they will realize that you're not making too much of an effort, and that everything is therefore happening effortlessly. There is nothing awkward going on, nobody is making any "move"… things just unfold, simply, elegantly, and naturally. Almost as if you and her were meant to be! And the same rules also apply to dates… how's this for a simple rule: What you drink doesn't matter. You can have a coffee together and (subtly) talk about sex and it won't be formal at all. Or you can be at a bar together and drink beer but be stiff and stilted. You could also meet her at a bar and have a non-alcoholic beverage… gasp! The drink you're having is a complete non-factor. The truth is that the only reason why you go to a bar or a café first is because you need to go someplace… and you want it to be a place without too many distractions, so that you can move the interaction forward, get to know each other better and eventually go home together. You could really meet a girl pretty much anywhere; bars and cafés are simply comfortable and convenient… the actual drink has little to do with the date. MY RECOMMENDED DATE how long to wait before callingI have literally dated hundreds of women and I've tried just about everything you could think of. Early on I would take girls to romantic places because I figured that would be a great place for the first kiss. My "natural game" about 10 years ago basically consisted in chatting girls up with some indirect opener that I had come up with, then holding a conversation with them while being interesting and charismatic and finally isolating them. Once I had them alone, usually at a park or a beach or even in the back row of a movie theater, I would go for the kiss. Taking girls on these kinds of elaborate dates as well as going for the kiss this early and in this way are things I don't recommend anymore, and here is why: That kind of date is overkill unless you want to get into a romantic relationship as opposed to a sexual one. Even then, I'd probably steer clear of anything that looks too much like courtship or like you and her have "something special" - this, too, violates the Law of Least Effort and it also violates the sexual frame. Even serious relationships are better when you start them off with a bang - you will hold a stronger position and the relationship will be more passionate. What you should do instead: these days, I simply tell girls to meet up downtown for a drink in the early evening. We might go to a bar together or to a coffee shop… we might have a beer, a hot chocolate or a cocktail… that doesn't matter. What matters is that no one is making a big thing out of the evening… it's simply a guy and a girl who like each other, getting to know one another a bit better before going home to have sex. As far as the kiss goes, I basically had to kiss girls on the date at some point because I hadn't set any sexual or even romantic frame at all up to that moment. Sure, the girls probably knew why I had chatted them up, but I was only making conversation and being charming… I wasn't really hitting on them. I instinctively knew that this was going to land me in the friend zone if I didn't make a move at some point, so I simply went for the kiss. If you do make your intentions known, either with a direct opener or by framing the interaction as sexual, you won't have that problem. What you should do instead: again, I don't kiss girls on the date at all anymore. It can certainly be done, but after extensive testing of kissing girls vs. not kissing them when we're out together, I've found the latter is far better, for the following reasons: Once you have kissed her, it's harder to keep her chasing. She already knows you want her… and that can let the air out of the balloon of intrigue in a heartbeat. She will enjoy the kiss, but she will also feel validated in her desirability and in her feminine power, and she won't be compelled to chase anymore. The next step after kissing is more physical intimacy, and most women aren't in any rush to make that happen. The only way you could really pull that off was if you kissed her but always pulled back before she's had enough of your kiss… that can compel her to keep reaching for more. Even if you do that, however, you will find it harder to bounce girls back to your place once you have kissed them. Again - she knows what's going to happen next… and you have therefore ruined all plausible deniability. If you haven't even kissed her yet, if you've set a sexual frame yet stayed a bit ambiguous to keep her on her toes by sending her mixed signals, she has really no reason not to go back to your place… after all, you're not even making moves on her. Once you've kissed her, though, that is no longer the case. Finally, a great deal of what creates the right energy between you and her as you're flirting is sexual tension. That is one reason why I recommend not playing the clown on dates (see: "Making a Girl Laugh Means NOTHING")… laughter releases tension. There is another thing that releases tension, however… and that is a kiss. If you imagine the evening as the plotline of a story or a theater play, the entire evening is building the tension towards the climax… the hero and the heroine eventually getting together. Another balloon you can pop by kissing her too early… it's like letting everyone know that the gardener killed the bride in one of the first few chapters. In summation, always keep things simple. Don't overcomplicate texting, don't overcomplicate the date and don't overcomplicate kissing her. In simple steps: As you go out, collect numbers, or even better, set dates with the women you meet and only take the number to confirm the meet-up later. Text them soon after you first get to know them, especially if it was a cold-approach… don't let the numbers go cold, and strike the iron while it's hot. As you are texting her, move things towards another meet up as soon as possible, by simply asking her about her schedule. Make the date something simple… have a drink somewhere, and don't overthink which kind of drink to have… it's just a social excuse for the two of you to meet up. Don't kiss her on the date… instead, bounce her home at some point (see: "12 Simple Tips That'll Help You Sleep with Girls"), and kiss her once you're already in your bedroom together where you can take it all the way. And this is how it's done… …your turn! Move your mouse to the bottom left corner of your screen, click that silly blue circle and the hit the words "Shut Down." Put on some nice shoes and some cologne and give a girl some screaming multiple squirting orgasms… she's probably had a hard day at work and is going to appreciate it.

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##[A48] The Early Boyfriend: Why its a bad Idea Sometimes, a man will meet a woman he just hits it off with and really likes. He starts spending time with her, doing all kinds of activities with her, just the two of them together, and doing everything a good boyfriend would do - before he's slept with her. I call this being an "early boyfriend", and it's bad news for all sorts of hideous reasons. early boyfriend The bad: being an early boyfriend makes a woman lazy and complacent about actively working to move things forward. Women also take men for granted whom they haven't become physical with -- if a woman hasn't slept with you yet, she'll tell herself there's a good reason why. The ugly: a man can pour countless days, weeks, even months of efforts, striving, strain, and time into making headway with a woman as he fulfills the role of early boyfriend, only to see his girl snapped up and whisked away by a man who moves quickly and beats him to the punch in getting intimate with her. Nothing feels worse than watching months of hope and toil get washed down the drain, lost to a man who didn't invest nearly as much in her as he did. There is no "good" to being an early boyfriend, so that's why "the good, the bad, and the ugly" here is only "the bad and the ugly." WHY MEN BECOME EARLY BOYFRIENDS From a bird's eye view, it seems like a silly thing to do. Why on Earth would a man invest a mountain of time and energy into a woman he hasn't been intimate with? Why would a man spend so much of his limited resources on a "maybe"? It usually ties back to a man being lacking in abundance mentality. He doesn't have a lot of women in his life, see this one as a rare find, and is willing to do a lot of work just to try and win her over. It can occasionally also tie in with complacency; he feels like things are moving at an acceptable pace, and everything's assured. He's making progress with his girl, and if he keeps it up, they'll end up together. Just because they haven't been intimate is nothing to worry about, he thinks. So, he contents himself with spending more and more time with her, and treating her like a boyfriend would, and assumes that in the none-too-distant future, the two of them will end up together. Finally, a man who becomes an early boyfriend does so without realizing the need to move quickly with women. He doesn't realize the number of potential suitors a given woman has, and he doesn't realize how aggressively some of those men move. An attractive woman normally has a lot of men chasing her at any one time. If she isn't completely discouraging them, they can pile up quite quickly. And if she doesn't have a man she's completely loyal to and devoted to as her lover, she's still open to being taken as a lover by another man instead. WHY WOMEN DON'T RESPECT EARLY BOYFRIENDS So, a man becomes an early boyfriend. He takes a girl out to dinners, calls her all the time, talks to her all day on an instant messenger, texts her incessantly, and meets her friends and introduces her to his friends. He does everything a boyfriend would do, except get intimate with her. What's a woman think about a guy like this? Well, to be frank, she thinks he's a chump. Not in those words, exactly - she'll say something more like, "He's so sweet," or, "He's such a great friend." Women don't see early boyfriends as powerful, dominant, sexy, masculine men. Because for a woman to see a man that way, he's got to either be physical with her, or have the potential of becoming physical with her at a moment's notice. Early boyfriends, on the other hand, are safe. They aren't going to move too fast; they aren't going to be aggressive, or push for intimacy. They're too invested; too afraid of losing what they've built. So, they move slow, they move tentatively, and they let opportunities to get physical slip by one after another. So what is it that these men have built, exactly? In a word: nothing. They've built nothing. They've constructed a house of sand that will fall down in a gentle breeze. Women know this, and they see these men clinging desperately to this idea of the two of them getting together, and it turns them off. A real man with less invested in a girl will just come along and take her and be with her physically in a far shorter amount of time than it's taking the early boyfriend to get to that same point. In fact, if a man stays as an early boyfriend long enough, there's a fair chance "his" girl has gotten physical at some point along the line with another, more assertive man. Why do women keep early boyfriends around? Two reasons, predominantly: They like the benefits of the early boyfriend. He looks good in front of their friends, or treats them to nice dinners, or listens to them vent about their problems. They intend to potentially get into a relationship with him… eventually. But, before they do so, they want to make sure he values them as highly as possible, so they delay intimacy. And they feel no hurry to get to it sooner, because he's always right there. Ugh. It's no fun being an early boyfriend. HOW TO NOT BECOME AN EARLY BOYFRIEND So how's a guy avoid this raw deal? Here are a few suggestions: Avoid being too available. When a man is always available at a woman's beck and call, she loses respect for his time - and for him. Don't rearrange your life for a woman, and don't be in a big hurry to text or call back every time you get a message or a voicemail from her. Maybe contact her soon after you receive her correspondence sometimes, but other times, if you're busy, then take care of it when you can take care of it and don't sweat it too much. Avoid contributing too much. If you haven't been intimate with her yet, there's no reason to be spending a lot of time, money, emotion, or anything else on a woman. If you contribute too much before the two of you have gotten together, you can move quickly into boyfriend territory (and risk being strung out even longer so you'll value her more highly). You also risk not being respected; a woman can understand and respect a man spending time and money on her whom she's intimate with, but a man with whom she isn't intimate who spends a great deal of time and money on her is someone she instinctively knows that she "owns". Get her chasing. Use chase frames, but also maximize investment and get her doing things on your terms. Use date templates and have her come to your place or do something easy and convenient for you, rather than you doing things she wants to do or that are easy for her. Disqualify yourself. Actions speak louder than words, of course, so if you are verbally disqualifying yourself as a boyfriend, yet still acting like an early boyfriend, the behavior will cancel this one out. But if your actions back up your words, you'll be doing A-OK. Move fast. If you move fast with women and get intimate with them quickly, you'll never have to worry about potentially falling into early boyfriend status again. Avoiding becoming an early boyfriend is easy enough, if you're careful not to fall into the trap of spending too much time with a girl, and if you're moving quickly enough with her. Move fast, keep an eye on your level of effort, be a little busy / scarce, and invite women to do things that suit you, when they suit you.

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##[A49] Date Templates: Minimize Confusion, Maximuze Return Dating is one of those things that can be a little ambiguous, even for guys who are relatively skilled in seduction in general. I know for me, it was an annoyance long after I'd reached a decent level of proficiency in meeting girls and taking them home quickly - that I could do fine, but dating was still a big unknown. Sometimes I'd hit on a lucky combination and sleep with a girl on the first date - but more often, I'd move too fast and scare off girls who weren't ready, or I'd move too slow and I'd lose girls I could've gotten intimate with. Very annoying. Timing and calibration isn't something I or anyone else can teach you - that you'll just have to pick up from experience. What I can teach you, however, are the keys to a successful date - and how exactly to set your dates up to be successful. For newer guys, dating can be confusing. The bad part of dating is that there are a lot more elements to juggle than when you met a girl originally - when you first met her, all you had to worry about was her and you and moving things forward. The place, situation, circumstances, all of those were already set for you - you met her where you met her. With dating, you choose the place, the time, the activities, and a number of other things. That can be a lot to handle for men with less experience. But once they start figuring things out, they realize the good part of dating - because you are responsible for juggling all those extra elements, you can control for them, plan them out ahead of time, and use them to your and your soon-to-be-lover's benefit. So those extra elements are both the good and the bad part of dating. Bad in the beginning - when you're still figuring things out - good later on, when you've got them reasonably well handled. It's like anything with a learning curve - the things that you have to learn early on and are difficult and annoying later become things you use to your advantage and help you achieve better, faster results. I like organizing things, and giving myself little templates to choose from, and dating is no exception. I find it very helpful to have date templates mapped out that you can choose from and fit into your schedule as best as possible. Date templates are basic formats you choose from when figuring out what you want to do with a girl, how long you want to spend with her, and what you intend to do with her. Here are mine right now: INFORMATIONAL DATE The "Informational Date" is what I use with girls I've only recently met whom I feel need more work getting to know me and feeling attracted to me before we do anything too serious. The reason I call it "informational" is because the main purpose of the date is for the girl to meet me and get enough information from me to decide that she likes me and wants things to move forward with me. This is a low pressure date - I want it to be easy for the girl to make it out. That's because of the very nature of the date - the reason why we're doing an informational date in the first place is because she needs to know more about me, because I am too much of an unknown and uncertain quantity, and because she doesn't know enough about me, she's less likely to agree to or be comfortable with a longer date. I also don't want to schedule a big block of time for a girl I don't know all that well yet, just in case she doesn't show up, or I decide I don't really like her all that much. I want her to understand that my time is scarce, as well, so I don't want to spend a lot of time with her right off the bat. I'd rather schedule a little time, meet up with her, get her interested to see more of me, and get back on with the rest of my day. What an Informational Date looks like for me: Lunch or Dinner: meeting up with a girl over lunch or dinner works perfect for me - I knock a meal out and knock an Informational Date out in one block of time. I never go anywhere too expensive or fancy for this - I'll schedule this for somewhere close by to my home or work or anywhere else I have an appointment, and have the girl meet me there. Maybe a nice deli or an inexpensive Italian restaurant. Occasionally I'll have a girl pick me up from somewhere else and drive me - that works too. I always split the bill with the girl, and call it a day (or a date, in this case!) after the meal is over. The one exception is if I can see the girl is extremely interested, in which case I will invite her home for a nightcap or to have a drink and some dessert. Shopping: if I have to buy something downtown that a girl might find interesting - at, say a bookstore or a clothing store - I'll sometimes invite her along. Again, knocking out two birds with one stone here - doing something I need to do, and having a girl meet up with me, give me a hand with my shopping, and get to know me better in the process. I will sometimes have multiple Informational Dates with a girl, particularly if she is more conservative, taking longer to get to know me, or I'm just pressed for time or our schedules don't line up just yet but I still want to see her and keep her "warm" for me. STRUCTURED DATE The "Structured Date" is the one that's the most work - it's the one where I know a girl is more interested in me, and we can do more things together, but perhaps not interested enough to come to my apartment and get intimate right away. So I'll put some time in and plan out a Structured Date - so named because it's structured to follow an arc. You want to begin with low-pressure, low-investment activities, since your girl may still be deciding on you, and build up to an opportunity for intimacy at the end of the date. So here's a Structured Date template I've used with success on multiple occasions: Have girl meet me at my place, or pick me up at my place Go and grab a coffee or tea, or get some ice cream Go do a fun activity - go to a comedy show (and get very cosy with her throughout) or go to the beach (and pick her up and throw her in the water!) Go back to my place to unwind Make dinner or drinks as necessary Get intimate I helped a friend design his structured date, which looked like this: Have girl come to his place and help him make a picnic lunch Take girl and picnic lunch out to the beach near his house (you could use a park too, if you're not near the ocean, or maybe even your yard) Head back to his place after the picnic to watch a movie in bed Get intimate Structured Dates work well at helping you get some good success on dates with women who had been even borderline prior to the date. They let you spend time with her, do different things, and finally handle logistics and end up in a situation suitable for seduction. EASY DATE "Easy Date" is what I call any date where the girl comes over to my place and the date happens there. Maybe we are watching a movie; maybe we are cooking dinner; maybe we are just hanging out. Regardless, because the date takes place 1) in the most convenient place for me it could possibly take place, and 2) in an ideal location for seduction, it makes things very easy for me. Even if your girl completely resists your advances, on an Easy Date you haven't lost much - you didn't have to go anywhere, likely didn't have to spend much or at all on the date, and in the odd chance a girl has to postpone or cancel, you can get some work done or take a nap. If she's late you won't care - you weren't stuck somewhere waiting for her; you were at home! Easy Dates are my favorite kinds of dates, and I use them any and every chance I get. Once I've gone through at least one or two Structured Dates with girls, I will almost refuse to do anything other than Easy Dates until we've gotten intimate together at least once. Easy Dates also minimize the risk of a woman trying to use you as an "activity partner" or slot you into the friend zone. If you're insisting on her coming over to your place, and you're escalating physically when she gets there, she's either going to get intimate with you, or she's going to give up on trying to make you her shopping companion / activity buddy / party liaison. It's far better to avoid doing too many fun things with women before you've gotten intimate with them; otherwise, they may come to value you too highly for the fun you provide to risk getting intimate with you and potentially losing access to the fun if things don't work out. You'll notice some common dates missing on here - group activities like taking your girl to a party, or inviting her along to a nightclub when you go, for instance. That's because group activities don't help your girl to get to know you much better, and overprovide good feelings and contacts and connections for her in the process. Group activities train a woman to see you more as a source of fun than a potential mate. Stick to one-on-one date formats, like the ones discussed above, and you'll do fine. Date templates have the potential to be an enormous boon to your dating life - they make things a lot clearer and more straightforward and give you a path and series of steps for moving things ahead with the women you meet. Throw a few date templates together for yourself, or use these here -you'll find them useful.

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##[A50] What to Do When Girls Flake Is there anything more annoying than having a girl you put a lot of time and sweat into building rapport with flake on a date with you? You planned everything out perfectly, finally steeled yourself to ask her, set everything up, and then… the girl flakes. She's a no-show. No good. It used to drive me crazy when girls flake, and I know for a fact it still drives plenty of other guys out there crazy too. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be a dating death sentence, because there are plenty of both preventative measures to avoid a girl flaking... and salves to smooth things over and recover from a flake if it's already happened. Let's look at both. WHEN A GIRL FLAKES: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU At the end of 2010, I met a girl and set up a date with her. She called me prior to our date, telling me that her phone's battery was almost out of charge, but we decided on where we'd meet and at what time. I arrived there about ten minutes late, and she hadn't arrived. I waited for ten minutes. I tried calling her but no dial tone; her battery must have died. I waited ten more minutes. At twenty minutes waited, she was now thirty minutes late for our date (since I'd been ten minutes late), so I sent her a text telling her I guess we'd gotten mixed up and that I'd tried calling her but her phone must be dead. Then, I turned around, got back on the subway, and headed back to my part of town. I got some food and went home. A few hours later, the girl called and very apologetically told me she'd been an hour late because she got lost and couldn't find the place and the parking had been horrible and she'd had to park far away and walk. She said she was very very sorry. I told her not to worry about it. She said she wanted to make it up to me; I told her she could cook me dinner some time this week. She said okay. At the end of the week, she texted me to meet up. I told her to meet me at my subway station, which she did. I got into her car, and she handed me a box full of chocolates as an apology and asked me if I wanted to go to my place or drive around. I told her we could just go back to my place, so we did. Within fifteen minutes of getting back to my apartment I had her clothes mostly off, and I bedded her several times that day. Later we went out for food, and she paid for my dinner, again as a way of apologizing for missing our original first date. Had this all happened a few years ago, I probably would've been blinded by my anger at getting flaked on and never would've met up with this girl, or played games with her and made things difficult and caused things to cool off. Now though, when girls flake, I just stay cool and don't make a big deal out of it, and it's often a happy ending. Rule #1 of successfully dealing with flakes? Don't let it be a big deal. Stay cool when girls flake. I think what happens with a lot of guys is they take it personal; if a girl flakes on him, a guy considers it a sign of disrespect. "Obviously she doesn't respect me and she doesn't respect my time," he thinks. You know what I realized? It's not about you. Or at least, it's very rarely about you. Most of the time when a girl flakes, it's simply because something came up, or she misjudged how much time she had to allow to get there, or she started having doubts you were going to show up, or the date as arranged was inconvenient or difficult, or something along those lines. It's almost never a judgment leveled at you. So don't take it so personal! FLAKE PREVENTION How do you discourage a girl from flaking? There are a few different means, and I recommend using all of them (I do): Be simple and direct in your run-up to the date. See "How to Text a Girl" for details on how I build basic rapport and arrange dates with women; I don't even use phone calls these days. The reason I recommend you avoid getting overly mired in phone calls or long text conversations is that all this unproductive talk time makes things feel overblown; she might start feeling like the date is a big deal, that she really likes you, or that you really like her, and gets nervous and jittery and skittish. Far better for things to be simple and her feel like it's very casual and easy to meet - she's a lot more likely to show up. Pick a date that's easy and convenient. One of the prime reasons you want to simplify your dates is that the easier it is for a girl, the more likely she is to agree. When you try to set up something complicated like going to this place or that place, or that involves a lot of work, like ice skating or rollerblading or laser tag or whatnot, you suddenly create a lot of potential mental resistance. That's when girls flake. Maybe it sounds fun at the moment, then your girl wakes up on the day of and thinks, "Man, I don't have the energy for laser tag today. Maybe I just won't go." Pick dates that are easy and convenient to minimize the chances this happens. Give a girl a choice of times. One thing I'm big on these days is letting girls choose times. I'll lay out a few days I'm available and suggest we do either a meal or grab a drink. That's sufficiently flexible that she can suggest lunch or dinner or drinks or toss the ball back in my court. When you do it this way, she'll let you know if it's easier for her to do lunch or if she'd rather do drinks, or if any time all day is good for her and what day is better or best. Because you're now choosing a time that's convenient for her, instead of trying to force her into squeezing your date into a timeslot that doesn't work as well for her, you make her far less likely to flake on you. Text beforehand. Text an hour or two before your date, something very casual and neutral regarding the meet itself. The texts I use most are, "Hey Casey, hope your morning has been great! When you get here I'll meet you at Exit B. See you soon!" and, "Jana, running about twenty minutes late. Cool to meet at 1:30 PM instead of 1?" This does two things for you: first, it puts the girl at ease by letting her know you remember the date and are still set on meeting her. Just like you may be feeling nervous and not sure if she's going to show up and may even bail or flake on her if you start getting unsure, so may she be. By preemptively texting her, you set her mind at ease and remove this fear. Second, if she was planning on flaking on you, this prompts her to respond to you telling you she isn't going to make it, thereby saving you your time and energy and allowing her to save face rather than simply not informing you, then feeling too embarrassed about that faux pas later to face you again. These are going to be your primary tools for reducing flaking and getting girl flakes down to a minimum level in your dating life. Using all of these techniques - and I personally do use all of them, with every single girl I set a date up with - markedly reduces the likelihood that a date doesn't show up. FLAKE MANAGEMENT Say you take all of your flake prevention measures and a girl still ends up flaking on a date, though. Either she's a no-show, like the girl I had a date with at the end of December, or she calls or texts telling you she has to cancel. What do you do then? Just a few simple guidelines in this case: Don't panic, and treat it like it's no big deal. Be understanding, and tell your girl it's okay and there's no need to explain if she tries to launch into a long explanation. Don't try to reschedule then and there unless she's adamant about so doing. Don't even mention rescheduling. If she brings it up, tell her to just do her thing if she's in a rush and you'll worry about rescheduling later. You want to communicate basically that you're confident you'll see her again and, once more, that it's no big deal. Do make excuses for girls where need be. Just like with that girl I had a date with, where I texted her that I guess we got mixed up and her phone must have run out of juice. You want to show her that you're on her side, you understand, and give her a possible out - you want to avoid her feeling trapped and like she has to explain herself. Give her an explanation and she's far more likely to feel at ease with you and feel comfortable talking to you and meeting you again later. The basic gist is: it's no big deal. I've seen guys recommend you call girls out on this, and I've seen other guys recommend you don't let them off the hook too easily, and still other guys recommend elaborate games to play to re-interest the girls in question and get them absorbed once more in you and in wanting to see you again. All of that, of course, is based on the assumption that the reason she isn't going to see you is because she really isn't all that into you. I'm willing to bet though that if she's interested enough to agree to a date in the first place, her interest levels probably aren't the issue. More likely, it's just that something came up, or she was running late, or she panicked, or she got nervous, or the date you set up was inconvenient for her, or something along those lines. Simply letting her call it off, then rescheduling with her a little later solves all this. No elaborate ruses, no games or techniques to spark her interest anew, no waiting periods to make her think you're über hard-to-get and sought after. Just be chill and reschedule later. No big deal. There's one really cool thing about girls flaking and you handling it very well, too: as in the first date I had with the girl at the beginning of this year after she'd flaked on our original first date, girls you have dates with after adeptly handling a date they flaked on tend to be much more intrigued by you and often ready for very rapid intimacy. Why? Because most guys don't know how to handle the situation and get testy or weak or needy or angry. But you, when you handle a sticky situation like this properly - it says more about your strength and confidence and power as a man than just about anything else you could say or do can. And that's the kind of statement about yourself that makes girls want to jump in bed with you fast.

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##[A51] Understanding Women: Its not as hard as you think Women do some strange, confusing things. Things like getting rude and angry with men who are treating them as well as they possibly can. Things like telling a man they're not wearing any underwear... and then walking away when he gets too excited. Things like saying "no" when they mean "yes," and "yes" when they mean "no." So you'll be forgiven for thinking it must be impossible understanding women. And to top it all off, most women don't even understand themselves. They can explain some of the simpler things they do, but if you start asking them why they (or other women) do the more complicated things they do, you get answers that are full of holes. They sound good on an pure emotional level, but take a moment to analyze the logic and you'll realize it doesn't hold water. Women really honestly don't know why they do what they do. So how could you possibly know? But, in fact, learning to understand women actually isn't an impossible task. It's a lot easier than you might think, in fact... so long as you understand a few little things, first. INDEPENDENCE, SCHMINDEPENDENCE Today's modern woman is a paragon of total, complete, utter independence. In the post-feminism era, women don't need a man -- all they need is a good pair of heels, an appletini, and a couple of high-end shopping bags filled with the latest "in" designs, and their lives are full of import and meaning. Well, that's what TV would have you believe, anyway. In fact, women today are exactly the same as they have been since the dawn of humanity. They haven't evolved into some new, distinct line of the human race, that only needs Gucci bags to achieve inner fulfillment -- far from it. Women -- every single woman out there who's not wildly in love right now -- are almost universally waiting for the man of their dreams to step into their lives. No, don't tell that to the Western Woman... especially not Western Women on the Internet. They'll yell and scream to high heaven that that isn't the case; that they "don't need a man!" and that they get fulfillment out of their careers and their gal pals and everything else Sex and the City and Gossip Girls and Cosmopolitan tells women they ought to get their fulfillment out of. But ultimately, when it comes to people, what women want (and what men want) -- and I really do mean just about everything they want -- comes down to coupling up. People work hard to better position themselves as mates; to get access to higher quality mates; to get access to higher quantities of mates. People travel the world in search of romance, and they go on grand adventures seeking it. Why else do women (and men): Spend so much time at the gym Work so hard to distinguish themselves in their educations and careers Travel to where they travel to, or change countries Maintain the social circles they do, or join new ones Spend so much time looking good Care so much about their reputation We'll come back to some of those in a minute, but for now, let's talk about how women talk about things they do that seem blatantly about finding a guy. Women often disguise things like this as "fun" -- they never want to admit to looking for love (because it makes a woman, or anyone else for that matter, sound weak -- it makes them sound like they can't get what they want, because otherwise, if they want it so bad, and they really are attractive to the opposite sex, then why don't they have it?). Interesting to note: take a group of people who've just left a speed dating event, and ask the men there why they went, and ask the women there why they went, and you'll almost always get responses that sort along the gender line like so: Men's response: "Well, I thought maybe there'd be some cute girls there, and I figured I'd just go see what happened." Women's response: "Ah, it wasn't serious. I just wanted to go for fun!" Women say the same things about classes they attend, bars and clubs frequent, social events they go to. It's always "just for fun." What that translates as, though, is quite often "seeing if I meet a guy I like." Now, they won't readily admit it -- some women'll go to their deaths maintaining that they are NEVER looking for a guy, and that men just find them. But if it isn't the case that women often do these things looking for love, then how come women in love with their boyfriends don't go to speed dating events "just for fun?" How come the girls' nights out tend to get curtailed so severely once a girl's in a relationship, and how come their social lives fall off? If it wasn't all about finding a man, why the dramatic shift? Is their guy really sucking up so much of their time that they don't have time for anything else anymore? This is the first rule of understanding women: women aren't any different from men: they want to meet someone they like too. They just do a better job of playing down their interest in actually meeting that man -- and why they do that is what we'll talk about next. FEIGNING DISINTEREST: WOMEN'S VERY REAL NEED TO KEEP FACE understanding womenIt sounds like a strange thing for a man to say, but I spent a number of years seeing the world through a woman's perspective. From about 7th grade to college, I was so crippled by a social phobia that I was entirely unable to actively pursue the things I wanted. So instead of learning to chase after things, like most men do, I had to learn to attract attention to myself in order to bring the things I wanted into my life. And I got good at it. The most beautiful, popular girls in school would ask me on dates; the coolest guys in school would invite me to their parties. Sound great? It wasn't. It was hell living life that way -- I became so crazy micro-analyzing every tiny social nuance -- "What does it mean that she responded this way when I did that?" "I said this thing -- does that mean these people aren't going to like me anymore now?" -- that it plunged me into a deep depression it took me a decade to climb out of. I spent a few years after that learning to chase as well as any man out there, and then a few more years re-integrating all the things I used to do to get people chasing me with my newfound ability to do the chasing myself. I'd now say I'm in a "best of both worlds" position -- I know how to attract others to myself and make them want to pursue me, but I also know how to take charge and close the gap and make things happen rather than sit by passively waiting for them to. God, it's so much better than it used to be. I would never want to go back to being pure passive and waiting for others to do things. But this is life for most women. Yes, there are the women that break the mold. Those are the women who: Approach the men they like Ask men out and ask for men's phone numbers Arrange dates themselves Make intimacy happen themselves But I'd estimate that's somewhere around 2% of the women in the world. The other 98% won't do that. Why? Two reasons: Women don't want to risk rejection, and Women don't want to risk losing value in the man's eyes. Let's talk about Reason #2 first, because it's simpler. Men value softer, more passive women more highly. This isn't a universal truth, and it isn't even true for me -- I feel like I'll break women who are too soft. I need strong women -- they're the only ones who stand a chance of standing toe-to-toe with me in any kind of relationship and not coming out of it with their ego totally shredded, as considerate as I try to be. But for the vast, vast, vast majority of men out there, they want soft women. Women softer than them, anyway. Women know this. They know, at an instinctive, intuitive level, that men value women more highly that they have to approach and chase and do the work with. This is due to investment: the more invested in a woman a man is, the more highly he's going to tend to value her. And women want men who are highly invested. I feel like I'm saying, "We'll come back to this in a minute," a lot in this post, but -- well, we'll come back to why women want highly invested men in a minute. You've got to understand, getting to the bottom of what makes a woman tick is like opening up a matryoshka doll -- those Russian nesting dolls where you open one up and there's a smaller one inside, and then a smaller one inside that one, and then a smaller one still inside of that one. There are a series of layers to understanding women that you need to unfold before you get the whole picture. Back to Reason #1. Men are afraid of rejection too, you might say -- so why don't women just approach men as much as men approach women? Why shouldn't both genders share an equal load of that fear of rejection? Well, I'll tell you why -- it's because rejection for women is worse. Much worse. When your role in the dating game is to be pursued -- you are the object of desire -- and then you pursue instead, and get rejected -- wow. Ouch. The object of desire being told she isn't desired. Rejection hurts like hell for women. Much more so than it does for men. That's why you see so few women approaching. Even if a girl is crazy about a guy, she's not likely to approach him, unless she's among that 2% minority of women that could give a rat's ass about rejection, about keeping face, about what her friends think, and about maintaining her reputation. Aside from that outlying 2% of confident women who either don't care about reputation management or else are so damn good at it and so overwhelmingly charismatic that they can do whatever they want and people still love them, the fear of rejection is crippling to women. For that reason, most women will not approach unless they're absolutely certain it's a sure thing. WHY WOMEN WANT MEN TO INVEST Everybody likes control. We feel better when we have it; safer, more secure. The world feels like a more transparent place that's more likely to give us what we want. Getting investment is THE primary way that one person can assure herself of another person's constancy. When a man's heavily invested in her, a woman knows she's got him. When she chases after him, she's invested, and he isn't. She's going to feel stronger emotions for him than he is for her, and he's going to be less reliable and dependable in a relationship and if she should become pregnant. Women aren't thinking this when they wait passively for men to do the work in pursuing them and making things happen. The actual emotion is more like, "I want him to chase, because he'll like me more." But the reason it works though is that it builds investment, and investment builds commitment, and commitment gives control and constancy. A little more reliability in an unreliable world. Of course, the point of this site is to help train you to make girls chase, not the other way around. Reason being, the person with the greater amount of investment (the pursuer) is the person who's far more likely to feel a greater degree of emotion than the one who's being invested in (the pursued). And to do that with women, you have to give a little to get them chasing. UNDERSTANDING WOMEN: HOW THE MATRYOSHKA DOLL UNFOLDS understanding womenAll right, this post feels like it's gotten a little wild and tangential and unwieldy, so let's tie it all back together. Women want men they desire who are also invested The reason they want this is simple mating: they want a man who won't run off when they get pregnant, as tends to happen when men and women get together and start sleeping together and having a relationship Thus, they look for things like emotional connections and romantic men who treat women well (these are things that say much about a man's character and reliability to women), and things like ambition and drive (things that speak to a man's potential as a provider for their children), as well as a man's current accomplishments (current status as a provider). Put this together, and you get a ready model for understanding women and why they do the things they do. Why do women act coy? Because men who pursue are both investing themselves and showing a greater level of interest and commitment. A man who just walks away from a woman who acts coy or shy isn't going to be able to give her what she wants in a relationship and probably isn't going to provide for her when she needs it. Why do women go into auto-rejection and get cold and dismissive with men? Because those men have demonstrated, one way or another, that they aren't reliable men. Why do women test men, then walk away when men "fail" the test? Because those men have shown that they're more interested in anonymous relations than in the woman herself. Women want to feel special. Society can try and strip intimacy of its meaning all it wants -- sex is just for fun, it's meaningless pleasure, it's devoid of any purpose or function in modern life, liberation, all that jazz -- but beneath the shield of culture, we're all still operating like bipedal apes roaming the savanna. And when it comes down to it, women want men who care about them as people, who appreciate them, and who are interested in getting physical with them, for them. That's where most men make their mistakes. They either: Put women on pedestals and treat them like awe-inspiring, virginal creatures, pure and chaste and in need of sexless protection (thus removing themselves from consideration as potential mates for those women, ending themselves up in the friend zone), or they Chase women for sex and ignore building an emotional connection or being charming or charismatic or seductive (and end up triggering auto-rejection most of the time) Women don't want you to be their sexless defenders (they have enough of those guys already, paying for things for them and being their shoulders to cry on; see my post on "Shopping Guy"), and they don't want you to only want them for intimacy and not for who they are. Women want to be appreciated who they are, and desired for who they are. It's fully possible to seduce a woman by only wanting her body, so long as you make it clear to her how incredible and unique her body is. And it's fully possible to seduce a woman by only talking to her about her emotions, so long as you make it clear to her how deeply you understand those feelings she conveys. It doesn't matter what about her you focus on, so long as she feels it's special and she feels desired for her (and not just random sex). That's the key to understanding women. There's a saying that goes like this: When a man is respected, he feels cherished. When a woman is cherished, she feels respected. I try always to keep this in mind. As men, respect is the thing we want most from others. Women don't care so much about respect for the sake of respect, like men do. Women want to be cherished and treated as special and unique (and yes, as desirable sexual creatures you'd like nothing more than to ravage... but only because they're so special and unique). That's what you need to know to understand women.

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##[A52] Women's Forgotten past Any man who's had a girlfriend before can tell you that women keep secrets. Quite often, a lot of secrets. Far more than men. In fact, many men have virtually no secrets. But find me a woman with no secrets, and… well, she's a rare woman indeed. What kind of secrets do women keep, and why do they keep them? That's the topic of this post. SOCIETAL PRESSURE ON WOMEN It's a cold, vicious world out there if you're a woman. Men want to think you're good and chaste and virginal, or they'll have a tough time considering you for a relationship. Yet, those same men that you think you might end up dating will pick you up and sleep with you and then never talk to you again. So even if your full intention is to find the man of your dreams and settle down, if you aren't talented at reading men, or incredibly conservative in your dating habits, it's easy to quickly find yourself "disqualified" for a long-term relationship by most men's standards of how many partners a woman should have. And women, well, they can only be trusted as far as you can throw them if you're a woman. Other women are the competition - even the ones who claim to be your friends will still try to steal your man when push comes to shove, or tear down your ego if you start looking too pretty or they start feeling too insecure. And if there's one thing women love above all else, it's putting down other women; talking about how tasteless Anna's clothes are, or how Kate was suckered by that guy who really didn't care about her at all, or how Becca is the biggest slut in town. Everything's a battle if you're a woman. Men are looking for reasons to scratch you out of the running for long term relationships; women are looking for ways to pull you down a rung so they can climb over you in the competition for rank, hierarchy, and, ultimately, mates. Just check out all the hoopla surrounding Karen Owen's quaintly named "Fuck List" that just hit the information superhighway a few days back. It seems commonsense to say it, but if a man released a list of thirteen women he'd slept with, it's doubtful anyone would care. Another guy bragging about the women he's been with, people would say. So what? But because this was a woman doing the showboating, it became huge. Because women just don't do that. Men do it, sure. But how many women do you know who see you Monday morning and can't wait to tell you about their latest one-night stand? In Karen Owen's "Fuck List", the world got a unique, sharply honest look in a way it very rarely does at how some women think about sex and engage in it with men. Owen is no flighty, clueless virginal maiden, seduced against her better judgment and manipulated by a powerful, conniving man; rather, she's a willing lover with each of these men, not completely sold on all of them, but willing enough to go the distance and give intimacy a shot with them. She even discusses seeing multiple men within brief periods of one another. The fact is is that this is very common behavior from many women the world over. Not all - not by a long shot, and we'll look at some distinctions below - but certainly a lot of them. But it's not talked about. The only people who know it are the people who see it - the people living lives where they see women in their social circle repeatedly going home with new men. Otherwise, it remains a mystery. The reason why is that one of the prime ways women are evaluated for quality is based upon their sexual history. If a woman's twenty-seven years old and she's slept with three men, that's considered quite low in America. But if another twenty-seven year old woman has been with twenty men - which could come out to just two new men per year had she first begun sleeping with men at age seventeen - that number seems ridiculously high to many men. So the woman who's been with three men will be rewarded with men feverishly competing to get her, while the woman who's been with twenty men will have decidedly less male effort devoted to getting her in a relationship. She fares far better if she says she's only been with seven men than if she gives her real number. The pressure on women to lie about and distort their pasts is colossal. And that pressure is why women lie. When you boil it down to the basics, unless she's kept it low naturally, a woman stands a much better chance of snagging a higher quality man if she lies about her number of past partners than if she tells the truth. GETTING WOMEN TO BE HONEST I remember when I first began going to nightclubs by myself, five years ago. One night I ended up inadvertently crashing a private party for a sorority at an underground lounge at my university. I was one of maybe five men in a venue packed with sorority girls - many of whom were a bit sloshed and considerably horny. One such girl - a cute blonde freshman with frizzy hair - and I got to talking at the bar, and she quickly began giving me the full rundown on her sexual history. "You know, before I came to college here, I was a virgin," she told me. "But in my first semester, I slept with five guys! My big sister's way ahead of me, though," she continued. "She's at twenty-seven." Inside, I was simultaneously stunned and appalled at everything I'd just heard (I'd come from a conservative background… I'd heard and suspected some of this stuff before, but actually hearing it in the flesh was a whole ‘nother ball game), but I maintained a cool exterior. "Sounds like you've got a lot of catching up to do," I told her. "I do!" she said, laughing in agreement. She then told me about her strategy of either getting drunk or having sex the night before she had a test, and how in theory it was supposed to make her score better. Then, she let me know she had a test the next day. She could not have made it clearer what she was after with me. ~~~~~~~~~~ I quickly learned the importance of first appearing, and later being, non-judgmental with women (people in general, really). It was something I truly believed in - I didn't want to be a man who judged others. Like that quote from Bob Marley and the Wailers' song "Could You Be Loved," while you point your finger, someone else is judging you. Those judge others harshest tend to be judged the harshest themselves. The more accepting and non-judgmental you truly are, and come across as being, the more comfortable women feel being honest with you - and the more likely you are to get an accurate picture of their personality and sexual history. And that's important - a woman's true personality and relationship history are vital for you to know. I've heard men say, "Why does it matter? It's in the past." Well, the fact is, the past repeats itself, and it repeats itself over and over and over. So the more honest information you have about an individual's past, the better an idea you have of how you can expect that person to behave in the future. There are a few tenets of encouraging honesty to keep in mind when broaching the subject of women's "forgotten" pasts, and using them will make women far more likely to give you more truthful and accurate responses. We look at the chief ones below: Be Casual. You always want to talk about things in a very casual, normal, natural way. If it seems like just part of a regular conversation, a woman will feel far less pressure and respond far more honestly than if she believes she's being assessed. For a ready comparison, think of any time a girl you were dating asked you a question that you could tell she was grilling you on… if you remember that feeling of, "Uh-oh, better make sure I give the right answer," that's exactly the feeling we want to avoid. Be Subtle. Build your questions into your conversations. Compare the following two wordings: "Have you ever had a one-night stand?" "I think everyone's had a one-night stand." One is highly inquisitive; the other just makes a statement and is used for gauging a woman's reaction (does she enthusiastically agree? Does she adamantaly disagree? Does she stare at you like a deer in the headlights, unsure how to properly respond? Does she quietly listen, not realizing the statement has anything to do with her whatsoever?). Her reaction can tell you quite a bit - far more so than her knee-jerk automatic response to an inquisition-style line of questioning. Be Nonjudgmental. This one's simple: if a woman feels like a man judges her for any response she gives him, you can bet her bottom dollar she'll be more careful around him (read: less honest) the next time she answers a question of his. So if you want women to be honest around you - don't judge them. ~~~~~~~~~~ I also wanted to discuss sexual awakening in this post, but that's a post in its own right, and it's already quite late and I'm already quite exhausted and want to get something up on here as I'm behind schedule as it is. So we'll save sexual awakening for another time. Suffice it to say, women are wonderful, passionate, soft creatures who are as eager to experience and explore the world as men are. But because of the double-standard placed upon them by the nature of sexual selection - because women can only bear one man's child at a time, and because men now look to commit for life (or, that's the initial intent, anyway), they want a woman they feel reasonably confident has a low percentage possibility of straying. One of the main indicators of that is a woman's level of sexual awakening - whether she still views sex as something that only two people in love should do, or whether she views sex as something two people do for fun, even if those people are total strangers. Because men are testing and assessing women for a potential lifetime together, women are often compelled to conceal past "indiscretions" to make themselves appear more "chaste" and "virginal". Simultaneously sad and silly. Fact is, for many women, men who don't turn into significant long-term relationships "don't count" and get forgotten, or scratched from their "record". These "forgotten lovers" are nevertheless important for gauging a woman's real views on sexuality, and you should know about them. The way to get the maximum level of honesty from a woman is to follow the steps outlined above. When she sees you as an easygoing, nonjudgmental guy, she'll be far more likely to give you the scoop on whom she really is, and you can make a much better informed judgment about what you want with her in your life going forward.

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##[A53] Attraction Has an Expiration Date A guy meets a girl he likes. He starts talking to her, and there's electricity in the air. Attraction. He can tell she likes him. A lot, even. She tells him all kinds of things about herself, her eyes wide and filled with excitement. It feels as though there's a bubble around them, in which only they exist; the outside world falls away. For a while, as time passes, the energy and enthusiasm only builds. It builds and builds, until it hits a peak; a crescendo. And then... it begins to fade. The guy panics mentally; he can tell he's losing this girl, whom he felt so sure was his only minutes before. He works hard, trying to turn things around, to reignite the passion that was there. But alas, his efforts fail, and the fire dies. He's fallen victim to a painful fact of life and love: attraction has an expiration date. But what's more painful is, guys almost never realize this is why they failed. Usually they assume it was a value problem, or that they need to get better at maintaining attraction. If only they knew the truth: they did just fine with attraction. It was, ultimately, that failure to act in a timely enough manner that led them to losing the girl. DOES ATTRACTION EXPIRE? The first time we talked about this subject on this blog was in "Move Faster," the original post about moving quickly with women to capitalize on open escalation windows. This post is going to cover some similar ground, but the phrasing is a little different and I think the concept of attraction having an expiration date is rather a new one and one worth writing on. Personally, I am, by nature, a rather risk-averse guy. I tend toward inaction over action, like, most probably, a majority of people out of there. Now, I've pushed myself for a long time to take bold action and force myself into taking some risks, so I do tend to take a lot more risks than most folks, but I still have a tendency to fall back on risk-averse behavior in some circumstances. Because of this, I've lost... oh, quite possibly hundreds of women. And that includes everything from sultry looks from beautiful women whom I absolutely should've opened and didn't, to women I had in my bed that I gave up on too soon and never closed the deal with. Girls I'd been well into the last 5% with; heck, some of them I'd been into the last 0.5% with. Some of those I still kick myself over. The tall, sexy Brazilian girl who'd been making out with me in the nightclub, whose top I'd had off, who suddenly panicked last minute and charged out of the room. But she wasn't sure she wanted to leave; she needed me to reassure her. But I took too long, and lost her. The spunky, adventurous Thai girl I spent a night with and from whose bed I rose early without sleeping with her, only to have her kiss me passionately and all but beg me to stay, but I'd grown too weary and left when I should've just closed things out. The stunning Indian girl sprawled out on my bed, paging through my coffee table book SuperSex, that I should've just jumped onto bed with and given what we both wanted. All those girls and a lot more I lost for want of capitalizing on their attraction while it was on the table. I ignored the dictum that attraction has an expiration date; and instead I let attraction expire. We never got together. And when you miss a girl like this, your life's the poorer for it, and her life's the poorer for it. You miss out on incredible opportunities to experience each other because of your inaction. Because make no mistake, women won't take action for you. They're waiting for you to take action. And while they wait, the clock is ticking. ATTRACTION'S EXPIRATION DATE Why does attraction expire? If two people are suited for each other, they ought to have all the time in the world to get together, one might think. I first noticed that attraction had an expiration date back in college. I noticed that girls in my classes who'd stare at me all day and smile at me and flirt with me would only do it for a time; gradually, as they flirted and I took no action, they'd come to lose interest, and eventually they'd move on. And then, they'd even end up being outright cold. I didn't know it at the time, but what I was experiencing from them was auto-rejection - and it was I who was to blame for their coldness. Inaction on the part of the man leads women to give up and lose hope. But when I actively started cold-approaching, it all happened so fast I had to learn it all over again. It seemed like something different altogether; whereas before, attraction's expiration date with girls in my classes seemed to be months or even years after I first met them, the expiration date on strangers I'd just met seemed to at times be minutes or even seconds later. So, at first, I didn't think it was the same phenomenon. It couldn't be. Could it? I did the thing most guys do, and I focused on pumping my value. I made myself into a more and more attractive guy. I got a cooler and cooler life: a well-regarded, prestigious job; travel to fun, exotic places; invitations to exclusive clubs, parties, and events. But it seemed like the more amazing a man I made myself, the quicker girls went cold on me. And it began to drive me absolutely crazy. "How on Earth do I fix this?" I'd think to myself. Eventually some of the pieces started coming together. I learned to talk about myself a lot less and get girls talking about themselves much more. It didn't make much sense at first, but I couldn't dispute the fact that women seemed to be more interested in me when I told them fewer cool things about myself, and just focused on exuding coolness and sexiness without talking about it. And I learned to move faster. I even found that I had a far higher percentage chance of sleeping with a girl on the first date than I did on the second. That blew my mind a little bit. To think I used to not try to sleep with girls on the first date because I thought I might lose them that way. Turns out, the opposite is true: NOT trying to sleep with girls on the first date was what was losing them for me. And that's because, as it turns out, attraction has an expiration date. It's only good while it lasts. Get girls while they're hot. For a limited time only. Going, going... gone. Once I realized it, it changed things for me in a BIG way. No more hemming and hawing and thinking, "Maybe I'll just wait a little longer." No more internal clocks saying, "It's too soon for this to happen!" No more inaction because too little time had passed. Instead, I started moving a lot more speedily, I skipped steps and cut corners wherever I could, and my results went up. A lot. Like, it wasn't even close. And, as thrilled as I was at the huge boost in success rates, I had to ask myself: "Why is this so? Why are women so much more willing to go to bed with men who move fast with them, and why is there a sell-by date stamped onto attraction?" BEST IF USED BY The funny thing about attraction is that men tend to internally take full personal responsibility for it, but never stop to consider that, perhaps, women might also be doing the same exact thing. But in fact, they often are. When I point out to girls that a guy likes them whom they don't want to like them, at times I've had them ask me if they were doing something wrong or coming off in a way that made the guy interested. They're taking responsibility for his interest. Likewise, if a girl likes you, but you don't do anything... again, she'll take responsibility. And inside, she'll tell herself she failed to attract you. And failure don't feel so great. So, what women end up doing is the same thing men end up doing when they decide someone doesn't like them and isn't responding to them; they write them off. "Ah, who needs him?" a girl thinks. "Who cares if he doesn't like me?" Now, you might be saying, "But I TOLD her I like her!" And, that might be true. But if you didn't tell her soon enough, and if you didn't back your words up with action, it wasn't enough. Women can turn their opinions of a man on a dime. They can be in love with him and going crazy hoping he walks up to them one moment, and then he hesitates a split second and they decide they hate his guts. Let her linger with the feeling she hates you for 5 seconds, and then you decide to approach her... by the time you get there, she doesn't even want to talk to you anymore. Sometimes the girls who give you puppy dog eyes before you meet them will be colder to you than anyone else if they think they were obvious about their attraction and you took too long to come meet them. As a guy, this probably sounds crazy to you. So, let me explain. Another lifetime ago, I had a social phobia. I was literally afraid of doing anything actively with people. I turned the cool kids down when they invited me to their parties, and I turned the pretty, popular girls down when they asked me out, because I was afraid to say yes. Sounds crazy, I know, but I was. The only way I could get any kind of attention was by attracting people's interest and having them come up to me. And let me tell you... it sucked. It absolutely, positively SUCKS big time to be sitting there waiting and hoping for someone to come talk to you. Waiting and hoping that cute girl you like comes and flirts with you and maybe even asks you out. And if she doesn't, well, some of the time you'll even shrug and say to yourself, "Eh, who needs her." This is how women feel ALL THE TIME, because most women are trapped in a perpetual state of waiting and hoping for men to take action. They aren't going to walk up to you and start talking to you, 99.7% of the time; it violates every law of male-female dynamics. So all they can do is look at you longingly and hope you come talk to them. All they can do is hint to you in conversation they want you to stop joking around and start getting to know them. All they can do is suggest to you they want you to take them home and give them a night to remember. All they can do is joke to you they want you to become lovers with them. And, if their efforts to get you moving things forward fall on deaf ears, and you don't take action, and you don't move things forward, they become bitter for it, and they close off to your future efforts. GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT So what do you do if attraction is a fast-vanishing thing? Attraction Has an Expiration Date Pay attention to what women are telling you. This goes for both verbal and nonverbal cues. Look at her eyes - is she looking at you excitedly? Look at her body language - is she leaning in? Listen to her words - is she asking you where you live, or whether you have roommates, or how far away your place is? These are all signs she wants you to move things forward, fast. Shoot first, ask questions later. If you're not sure whether a girl wants you to move things forward or not - try. Trying and failing won't set you back too much; she'll just know you mean business. But not trying - that kills your chances, because it lets her attraction expire. Always err on the side of action over inaction, especially when you're not sure which way to go. Better to try and fail and learn than never try at all and never know and never improve. Always be moving forward. Something I was very guilty of for a long time, and that I see a lot of guys perpetually are, was of ending up in these situations where you aren't moving forward with the girl, and just hovering there for a long time. Women see this for what it is: stalling. Stalling just gives women time to feel disappointed and let their attraction expire. The instant an interaction starts feeling stagnant, you've been there too long. Take bold action and move things forward. Beat attraction to the expiration date. It makes such a colossal difference in your interactions; I can't stress doing it enough. Women will be glad you capitalized on their attraction before it expired - and so will you!

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##[A54] Escalation Windows Just received the following email from a reader, who was kind enough to allow me to reprint here, preferring to remain anonymous. He asks: Hey Chase, I'm not sure if your one to give feedback to random readers of your blog but I was hoping I could get help with this girl. I met her at a party a week ago, and within about 5 minutes of meeting her I was making out with her. We leave the party soon after. I asked her to come back to my place and she declined because she had to get up early which I new was true. So I walk her back to her place and kiss her good night. Flash forward to this weekend where after a week of texting I get her to come over to a small party at my house. I play beer pong with her and talk with her somewhat but she seems very cold. I am able to touch her somewhat but when I do sexual things like touch her butt she moved my hand away. So she left my house pretty abruptly, and becuase I didn't want to see her go that easy I texted her the next day. She basically told me she didn't like me that much in the first place and doesn't want to talk to me anymore, very harsh! I don't know what I did to upset her so much. Also, is it possible to still see this girl again or is it done? Ah, this sounds like something that used to plague me all the time when I was starting out. It feels super-confusing when it happens to you, too - why on Earth would a girl who really, really liked you one night suddenly pull a complete 180 and be cold to you the next time you saw her? It's bizarre and mystifying to us, because as men we don't act that way. Either we like a girl, or we don't like her. We don't really, really like her, and then suddenly we hate her guts and treat her like a leper. It does not compute with us. What causes this reaction in women, though, is in fact the making of the most painful mistake you can realize you've made in seduction - having a girl who wanted you but with whom you missed the window to bed her in. ESCALATION WINDOWS AND AUTO-REJECTION An escalation window is the name for that period of time you have to move things forward with a girl. That is, it's the moment where you can get a girl to talk to you, get her to move around with you, get her to go sit somewhere with you, get her to go home with you, get her to kiss you, get her to get intimate with you. And the thing with these windows is, most of the time, they don't stay open long. In social circle, these windows don't stay open terribly long, and if you miss them you get slotted into the friend zone, which it's always going to be a hell of a long slog to try and carve yourself out of and it's always easier to just meet a new girl. Easier to just go buy a new drinking glass than try to glue together a shattered old one. With a cold approach, or something close to it - any avenue really where you're meeting women you don't have strong social ties to and aren't going to see on a reasonably regular basis - the window for escalation is even smaller, and women are less forgiving of failure to hit that window. Women you meet during cold approach often don't have the social ties to still want to be nice to you after a window's been missed; they'll shut down and go cold and just pure resent you for not having given them what they wanted and needed. You become something of a reminder of their inability to get what they wanted. When attainability drops too low - when a girl reaches a point where she feels like she just can't get what she wants with you - she'll go into something called auto-rejection, or self-rejection, which is where she, sensing that you don't want her and won't give her what she wants, will reject you first to prevent you rejecting her and her suffering that blow to her ego that accompanies rejection. You can see this in yourself: have you ever gone up to talk to a girl, thinking, "Wow, she's gorgeous!" only to have her shoot you down in a really cold way? You likely walked away, muttering something to yourself like, "Bah, who wants to have anything to do with a horrible person like that anyway?" That's auto-rejection; she probably isn't actually a horrible person, but now you think she's bad and evil because it helps you justify why you aren't with her. You aren't with her because clearly there's something wrong with her. Women go through this too. If you take the example above from our reader, here's a guy this girl was making out with in a party and whom she left the party with. Girls don't leave parties with guys they've just met whom they're only hoping to be friends with. She left the party because she wanted to sleep with him. When it didn't happen, she most likely went home miffed at not getting what she wanted, went into auto-rejection, and started thinking to herself what a dreadful guy this guy she met was and how she didn't actually like him at all. RECOGNIZING AUTO-REJECTION AND AVOIDING IT You know you're dealing with auto-rejection when a girl who was previously very warm with you gets very cold. I remember this girl I really liked in college - she was this beautiful, smart Italian-American girl with a vivacious personality, a tiny waist, and the most perfect breasts I'd seen all year. Oh man, I had it bad for her. And I managed to flirt with her enough in class to win her over, and she started flirting with me pretty hard and even called me up one night to allegedly gripe about something in class and tell me that this was her cell phone number. But this was back in the days before I'd even begun forcing myself out to meet girls, and I was still a big knucklehead when it came to women, and wasn't sure what to do, so I did… nothing. And then the beautiful Italian girl just went ice cold on me. I'd run into her and try to flirt with her, same as I'd been doing, and she'd be dead serious with me and not warm and flirtatious and talkative like she used to be and she just had no time for me anymore. It drove me nuts, and never was able to fix it with her back then, but it forced me to start realizing that if you didn't get a girl in a certain period of time, you'd lose her forever. As noted earlier though, with girls you don't know well, that time is not drawn out over months, as it was for me with that girl in my class I saw three days a week, but rather compressed into an evening, or hours, or sometimes even minutes. In "She Doesn't Even Need to Know Your Name," I mention a girl I left the bar I met her at with somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes after I'd first met her back in December. Which sounds like it must've been really easy, right? And indeed, it was very straightforward. But there were three moments in the quarter of an hour or so we spent together in that bar where an escalation window opened very briefly, and I leapt at it and moved things forward. Had I missed any of those three windows, we would not have slept together that night. For instance, when I pulled her at the end, she asked me one question ("Where are you staying?") after not having asked me anything else about myself since I first met her. My brain quickly ran through a few scenarios, and decided that if I tried to stay any longer and keep talking to her, the conversation wasn't going to go anywhere, I'd miss the window, and she'd go cold and walk away, meet someone else, or go home. So, I stood up and told her to come with me and I'd show her the place I was staying at, and we went back there and became lovers. The less a girl knows you, the more you must move fast with her. With girls in social circle, you can afford to dally a bit (though still not too long… if she's on the market, it's a safe bet that you're probably not the only guy she's available to, so if there's another guy she likes who moves faster than you do, you're out of luck); with girls you meet through cold approach, you're afforded far less leeway. You must move fast. Moving fast and hitting escalation windows is the only way to avoid getting mired in auto-rejection. And it makes your life far easier, too: move fast with a girl who wants you, and you get together quickly, become lovers, and are happy together. Miss escalation windows with a girl who wants you, and suddenly she hates your guts, is acting cold to you, and you're doing an extremely delicate balancing act simply trying to get her back close to the same level of warmth to you she had before when she was available to you and open to becoming yours. It's easier to buy a product when it's still on the shelves than trying to get your hands on it somehow when it's sold out and off the market and you're scrambling around trying everything you can think of to get your hands back on it. You know the old phrase: He who hesitates is lost. We might rephrase it a bit here to say: "He who hesitates has lost the girl." PUSHING FOR THE CLOSE Back to our good reader. He did ask for the close and asked this girl who left the party to join him at home, but she declined, saying she was tired. So why did she still go cold on him? What often happens with women is that they want to be able to be a little coy and say "no" a few times and have the man persist until they "break" and go along with him. They don't actually break, of course; if they really didn't want to go with him, they're not going to go with him against their will just because he asked five times instead of two. This is what we discussed in the post on "The Last 5%;" pushing for the close in the end and steering things to success in that critical final juncture. The most painful failed seductions you'll have are the ones where the girl was yours but you didn't push for it at the end and she slipped through your fingers. Getting intimate with a man is a big decision for most women, and big decisions are like this. People sometimes get cold feet even with things they really know they want to do, and it's your responsibility to help them stick to what they want and steer them through the rough patches. Think of a man about to get married who starts feeling unsure, or a couple about to buy a new car that get gun-shy right before they pull the trigger and sign the contract. Think the bride-to-be is going to stand there on her wedding day and tell her bridegroom, "Oh, it's okay, we can just do this later and you can think about it," or that the car salesman is going to take the pen away from the couple about to sign the contract and tell them, "You know what, you can always take some time and come back later and we'll just do it then?" Of course not. Because what do you think will happen if they do? That's right, the bridegroom probably will never marry the bride, and the couple probably will never buy the car. Even if they were 98% sure they wanted it before, being that close to the edge and not jumping in makes them look back and say, "Well, I must've had a good reason for not doing it when I was right about to." As the man, it's your responsibility to lead the women who like you to intimacy. Many women have mental walls they need you to help them overcome to get there, and doing that may include being persistent and allowing them to save face so that they can later say, "Well, I told him I was tired, but he still insisted on me coming home with him anyway and it just happened! I tried to get out of it!" When I was first training myself up as a persistent guy, it helped me to imagine myself as a Latin or Italian man romancing some ravishing belle. In America, men are trained not to be pushy, so we're much more hands off and if a woman says, "No, I have to get up early tomorrow," we just accept it and back down, even if that's not what she wanted us to do. Can you picture a Latin man or an Italian man letting it stand at just one refusal? Italian: Come with me, bella donna! Girl: Alas, I cannot, I must rise early tomorrow. Italian: Oh, okay. Silliness! Here's how a romantic man runs this interaction: Lover: Come with me, let's have a nightcap before we call it a night. Girl: Ah, I can't, I have to get up early tomorrow. Lover: You can come with me. We'll spend but thirty minutes, then you can go. Girl: But I'm tired! Lover: The night must not end too soon! Thirty minutes; let's go. Girl: Okay… Be prepared to persist up to ten or fifteen times if necessary, unless she is absolutely firm in her refusal to join you. If she's waxing back and forth and clearly on the fence, that means she's still open to the idea. Don't settle for a fuzzy "no" when you can get an "okay" instead. Remember too that people will rationalize and justify whatever decision they make. Buy something you didn't intend to buy? "Well, I was there and it just looked good." Really wanted to take a trip, but you didn't end up going? "Eh, I didn't really want to go there that bad." Women do the same thing with men, so you really must move quickly to avoid this happening to you. "I didn't really like him all that much anyway," is the last thing you want a girl thinking about you. Get together with her quickly to avoid this. Just another reason why you can't afford to be putting things off. COMING BACK FROM AUTO-REJECTION AND MISSED ESCALATION WINDOWS Our reader did almost everything right with his girl. He got her excited about him; he moved things forward very quickly and got her out of there with great speed, and he invited her home. I might recommend not kissing her until she's home with him, just because it generally makes girls get a bit more resistant to coming home with you because it makes them think, "Wait, we've kissed; what are we going to do when we get home? Oh no, I don't want to look like a slut!" whereas girls you haven't kissed are still just thinking, "Ooh, I really like this guy… I wonder what will happen or if he will do anything if I go home with him?" So you have a bit more management to do with girls you've kissed than you do with girls you haven't kissed. But the kissing didn't really hurt him all that much; she still left the party alone with him. The only reason he did not sleep together with his girl that night was because of the missed window to persist with her and close out on that last 5% of the seduction at the end. Otherwise, his speed and decisiveness is excellent. None of that matters though when she looks back on the interaction and gets resentful for not getting what she was after that night. All she sees is a night she went out likely wanting to find an attractive man to sleep with, a man she met and was attracted to and left a party with and thought she was going to get together with, and then nothing happening at the end of the night… and she feels bitter about that. How do you recover from such a situation? Not by chasing. Chasing only makes it worse. When she's feeling bitter and resentful and telling herself that she doesn't like you and didn't really want you anyway, running after her and working to try and get her won't turn things around; it'll only make them worse. Unfortunately, there's actually no solid answer on how to recover from a mistake like this, and also unfortunately it's one of the questions I hear the most: "How do I fix it with this girl who went cold on me?" It sucks, I know, I've been there more times than I can count. But just like it's easier to avoid a car accident than it is to fix a mangled wreck, and it's easier to keep a job you already have than it is to get back one you've lost, so it is with girls who like you: it's far, far, FAR easier to get a girl if you get her while she still likes you, than it is to try and turn things around and find a way to get her after the window has closed. I have turned it around with a handful of girls I've lost, and come close with a few others. But when a window closes, it is almost always absolute. You can bring it back if it's just closed and you realize it; for instance, if you say something and she feels like you're rejecting her and she gets snippy and says, "Fine, you know what, I'm over you," and goes to leave and you stop her and you're very warm with her without being needy or apologetic and you get her back feeling good again. But if time passes and she spends hours or days or weeks stewing over how much she hates your guts… 999 times out of 1000 you won't turn it around. I've made concerted efforts to turn things around with a few elite caliber girls I'd lost in the past, and one of the girls I successfully turned things around with became my girlfriend for a few years. At the time, I truly believed she was worth putting in the effort to try and turn things around with, and I was right. I recommend if you're going to put the time and effort and mental footwork into trying to turn things around, you only do so with a girl who seems very, very worth it, because this has effects on you, too: the more time you spend working on a girl and investing time and effort in her, the more highly you will value her. You don't want to risk making yourself start obsessing over some sub-par gal; I've seen that happen and it's ugly (the guy usually ends up saying, "I don't know what it is, she isn't that great, I know, but I have all these feelings for her and I just can't stop thinking about her!"). If you're going to risk falling for a girl, make sure you think she's worth it. That said, if you go the route of attempting a turnaround, these are the elements I believe you must have to turn things around with a girl in auto-rejection you've missed windows with: Total confidence and self-assurance. You must know without question that you are the best possible thing that could happen to her life, because she no longer believes this and will fight this belief and unless yours is stronger than hers, you will not change her mind. Ability to express warmth and sadness without neediness or supplication. Kiss up to a girl, chase her, or act needy toward her or supplicate to her or apologize to her and you lose her for good or get slotted into nice-guy friend-zone land. You must show her that you care about her, and are sad that she is hurt / upset / leaving you / not spending time with you, but you must do it in an incredibly strong, completely non-needy way. Time and exposure. You need to be physically around this girl. In most cases, you absolutely have to be around her so she can get some time being with you in your presence and reset her feelings toward you that built up in her when you were not around; e.g., she sees you in person and starts thinking, "Actually, he's quite warm and not as horrible a person as I've been tagging him as." Additionally, there's one, less simple, alternative to this, which is: Eloquence and knowing her very well. If you both know her very well and you have a very good, very eloquent way with words, you may be able to turn things around over the phone, via text message, or in person. Some of the turnarounds I've had have come via text or email when I was able to show, in a very non-needy but still very warm way, that I cared about the girl and knew a great deal of things about her that no one else knew and that I understood why she had to go but that I was sad and would miss her. If this seems extreme and hard… it is. Auto-rejection is one of the toughest situations to try and fix out there. The odds are stacked highly against you; it isn't impossible, but it's going to be like climbing Everest. The few times you see guys turn things around with girls they lost, it's always a great story, and it seems like a triumphant moment, and the reason that is is because it's so rare and almost never happens. LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL Fortunately, this isn't all sadness and loss and pain and hopelessness. Chances are, there are probably several hundred thousand to several million available women living in whatever city you're in; even if you're in a medium-sized town, there are going to be at least 10,000 to 20,000 women your age available. So so long as you keep meeting new women, you keep getting chances to do things right. It took me years of messing things up before I started getting my act together and consistently springing at escalation windows whenever I saw them. For me, I used to spend a lot of time deliberating, telling myself, "It's too soon to do something, if I do it might be too fast for her and maybe she'll leave!" so I wouldn't do anything, thinking I'd wait until later or the next date or next week sometime, and then I'd lose the girl and never see her again. Eventually this happened to me enough that I my thought process flipped to, "If I don't move fast enough with this girl, I'm going to lose her and never see her again! I've got to try and get together with her now!" Hopefully you're not as hardheaded as I am and it takes you less time / fewer hard lessons to learn this one than it did me. That's the way it goes though. You get fired from a few jobs, and you feel sad that you lost those jobs and can't get them back, but you learn to do better at your next job. You wreck a few cars by driving carelessly, and you mourn the loss of those vehicles, and do a better job handling your next car. You lose a few girls by moving too slow and not persisting enough and missing escalation windows, and you feel bad about these girls going cold on you, but you resolve to do better next time and move faster and persist like a romantic man would and give these girls what they want from you: a night of passion and romance and satisfaction. That's the light at the end of the tunnel: you learn, get better, and improve. Oh, and our reader? I wrote him back recommending that he mostly focus on simply continuing to meet more girls, and he tells me that last Friday he threw a party at his house and did just that, sleeping with a cute new girl he met that night. Here's to your success, present and future, brother ;)

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##[A55] 7 Ways to Touch a Girl + 3 Ways to have HER touch YOU Ever find yourself wondering how to touch a girl in a smooth, natural, normal way? Ever find yourself wondering how to get girls to touch you? In the article on cognitive dissonance, a reader asks the following: "Now in my head during this conversation one of the single girls moved her leg under the table to rest against my leg and turned to say "I'm sorry" but before she could I raised my eyebrows in a flirty way of saying "Sure, put your leg on mine." Which I found quite ironic but then it got me thinking... How can a guy not come across as "over touchy/trying to force/awkward" and more on the side of getting her thinking positive thoughts?" Like this commenter points out, the problem you run into with things you're inexperienced in is, they often feel forced. And when touch feels forced... it feels really awkward. And awkward is not really all that attractive. So, in this article, we're going to have a look at seven (7) ways to touch a girl that she'll respond to and enjoy, and three (3) ways you can easily get her to take the initiative and touch you first. touch a girl First off, before we get into talking about touch... does touch even matter? As a matter of fact, it does. As Ricardus talked about in his article on how to touch women, the simple act of your body coming in contact with hers causes the release of the hormone oxytocin into her blood, a trust and bonding chemical. But that's not all: "The effect of touch on compliance to a request has traditionally been tested with small solicitation (answer to a small questionnaire, give a dime to a confederate ….). In our experiment a larger request was evaluated. Passersby, 53 men and 67 women, were asked by two confederates to look after a large and very excited dog for 10 minutes because each wanted to go into a pharmacy where animals were prohibited. In half of the cases, subjects were touched during the request. Analysis showed that, when touched, 55% of the subjects agreed with the request whereas 35% only in the no-touch control condition agreed. This finding indicates that touch was positively associated with the subjects' compliance (p<.03)." That's from the research paper "An evaluation of touch on a large request: A field setting," published by Nicolas Guéguen and Jacques Fischer-Lokou in the journal Psychological Reports in 2002. The finding in layman's terms equaled a 57% increase in the chances of someone agreeing to a request when that request was accompanied by touch, even when the request was coming from complete strangers. And from "Courtship compliance: The effect of touch on women's behavior," again by Nicolas Guéguen, this time published in 2007 in Social Influence: "Previous research has shown that light tactile contact increases compliance to a wide variety of requests. However, the effect of touch on compliance to a courtship request has never been studied. In this paper, three experiments were conducted in a courtship context. In the first experiment, a young male confederate in a nightclub asked young women to dance with him during the period when slow songs were played. When formulating his request, the confederate touched (or not) the young woman on her forearm for 1 or 2 seconds. In the second experiment, a 20-year-old confederate approached a young woman in the street and asked her for her phone number. The request was again accompanied by a light touch (or not) on the young woman's forearm. In both experiments, it was found that touch increased compliance to the man's request. A replication of the second experiment accompanied with a survey administered to the female showed that high score of dominance was associated with tactile contact. The link between touch and the dominant position of the male was used to explain these results theoretically." Here, the findings were that men got more "yes"es asking women to dance and trying to get a girl's phone number when these efforts were accompanied by touch. The reason why, Guéguen found, was that the women touched by the men regarded these men as more attractive. And, as we discussed in "How Much Do Looks Matter for Romantic Success?," perceived physical dominance (i.e., touching) is a major attraction trigger. If you want to look like an attractive dominant man, just touch a girl. WHAT DO BEGINNERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TOUCH? Here are the ground rules of touch that all beginners need to make sure they know (and stick to): Her upper arm, elbow, and the small of her back are best. At least when you're just getting started. Touching these areas is the easiest to do, won't come across too sexual by accident at the wrong times, and will allow you to learn touching easily. Touch her elbow or upper arm while making point; place your hand on her lower back while showing her something with your other hand, or if she's moves herself very close to you in a side-by-side position. Don't touch her face (too soon). People can be very sensitive about being touched on the face, unless they're very comfortable with you. A good way of thinking about it is this: she's probably more comfortable with you touching her breasts or butt than she is with you touching her face. Don't do this unless she's extremely at ease with you. Touch soon into talking to her. Take her hand when you first meet her (don't shake it, like you would a man... just take it, and hold her hand for a moment in yours, almost as if you were about to bend down and kiss it... but probably don't actually kiss it). Touch her intermittently as you talk. The longer you go into talking to a girl without touching her, the weirder it gets - get it out of the way ASAP, and make it a common, normal part of your interaction. Touching on a high point is easy and good. She's laughing? Laugh too - and touch her. Touching on high points - she's laughing, she's agreeing with you, she's smiling a big smile - anchors her positive emotions to your touch - making her come to subconsciously associate touching you with feeling good (and for obvious reasons, refrain from touching her when she's angry and/or upset). A high point touch can be cupping her elbow in your hand as she laughs, or it can be putting your hand on hers for emphasis at just the right moment - like George Clooney's character does with Jennifer Lopez's in this clip: Don't look at your hand. One of the (rather funny) things men inexperienced with touching girls tend to do is look at their hands while touching a girl. If you want an easy way to creep a girl out, just look at your hand as you touch her. Staring at your hand touching her is a surefire way to make things feel very forced and unnatural - the good news being, of course, that all you have to do if you're doing this to make it feel a whole lot MORE natural when you touch a girl is don't look at your hand. Be close to her when you touch. The other thing that can make touch awkward - aside from making eye contact with your hand instead of with her - is if touch comes from too far away. Imagine reach across a table to touch a girl on a high point... feels pretty weird, right? Feels even more weird to her. Get close - then touch. And when you're talking to a girl you like, you should be close anyway - there's no reason for standing far away like a pair of strangers when you'd like to be something more than that. Get inside her personal space if you want a personal relationship. The more (natural-feeling) touch, the better. Touch communicates physical dominance and triggers sexual tension between you and a girl quicker and more easily than almost anything else you can do as a beginner. When you're still inexperienced at creating a sexual vibe, touch is the easy shortcut to making her excited and preventing her from thinking about you as "just a friend." ... just don't go overboard. As mentioned in "Mastering Sexual Touch," it's important you stay away from venturing into touching women too sexually or intimately until you're alone with them. Touch a girl intimately too early, and she's liable to crest emotionally too early - then crash (and lose interest in you). Instead, keep her in suspense until you're ready to pull the trigger. Don't make touch a big deal, and it won't be. Just touch her arm, elbow, or lower back, don't look at your hand (look into her eyes and continue conversation as normal), and make sure you're close when you touch. TOUCHING GIRLS AND EXCITEMENT LEVELS Usually, the more you touch a girl, the more excited she's going to get... up to a point. It's important that you're aware of escalation windows and attraction's expiration date. Attraction will peak as you touch her more and more, but if she starts really wanting something to happen - some progress, for you to kiss her, for you to make love to her - and this doesn't happen, she'll start going cold, into auto-rejection, and lose interest in you. An easy way to think about touching girls is like this: Touch is an attraction amplifier and a progress accelerator - it makes her more attracted to you, faster, but also puts more pressure on you to keep things moving fast so she doesn't get frustrated and lose interest. Anytime you make someone want something - and if you're doing an even somewhat good job with touch, you will make women want you - you've got to be wary of making them want something so bad that, when nothing happens for too long, they end up thinking you're just a tease and are going to leave them hanging, and they get upset and storm off. This is one of the weirdest things you will experience when you're new to touching girls - women losing patience with you and leaving in disgust. It isn't because they didn't like you. It's because they liked you a LOT... but you didn't back up all that touch with action (moving things forward). The solution to this, of course, is when you start seeing it happen - move faster. touch a girl Now that you have a foundational understanding on how to touch a girl, let's get you doing some advanced stuff. In this section, we'll discuss: The 4 Different Kinds of Touch The 7 Ways to Touch a Girl The 3 Ways to Have Her Touch You Let's dive in. THE 4 DIFFERENT KINDS OF TOUCH In "4 Ways for Touching Women" we took a cursory perusal of the different kinds of touch. These are: Incidental Touch Protective Touch Romantic Touch Sexual Touch Each touch is expressed in different ways, and is best used in different situations. Here's how they break down: Incidental Touch: incidental is your bread-and-butter touching. This is the touching you'll be doing with women incidentally, throughout your interactions with them. It's the touch you do on high points, and the touch you do while demonstrating things, and the touch you do almost by accident as a product of sheer proximity. Incidental is used to get her acclimated to your touch. Forms of incidental touch include: Touching her upper arm while making a point Cupping her elbow briefly while talking to her Touching her stomach with your finger while talking Resting your leg against hers as you sit very near one another Lifting her wrist up to inspect the bracelet she has on Protective Touch: protective you'll use when leading or guiding a woman, though crowds, traffic, or in other chaotic or risky situations. This style of touch helps women to feel "safer" and more protected around you, and allows them to relax around you - and trust in your guidance and leadership more. Some examples of this are: Placing your hand on her back while guiding her Holding her hand while taking her through a crowd Putting your arm out in front of her to stop her stepping into the street Putting your arm around her shoulders while walking outside Placing your coat or scarf around her to keep her warm Romantic Touch: this is the kind of touch you'll be doing once she's very comfortable with you and is completely open to you touching her - normally, once a fair bit of incidental and protective touch has already been established as your pattern of interaction with her. When you touch a girl romantically, you bring her emotions for you to an even higher peak, and get her even more ready for things to progress. Romantic touch includes such things as: Holding her hand or hands Stroking her head or hair Lightly putting your fingertip on her nose Running your hand over her cheek or chin Kissing her (kissing is romantic touch) Sexual Touch: as mentioned earlier, you won't want to start engaging in sexual touch until you're somewhere alone together - otherwise, it's like cooking dinner two hours too early - by the time it's finally time to get down to business, everything's gone cold. Sexual touch are all the sexually exciting forms of touch that prepare a woman for intercourse, including: Touching her inner thighs Placing your hand on her butt Rubbing her breasts and genitals Kissing her neck or other parts of her body besides the mouth Biting or nibbling on any part of her The general guidelines for using these are: Incidental: use early, and use often Protective: use when it makes sense Romantic: use 5 minutes before you're going to invite her home Sexual: use when alone in private, immediately before getting intimate Of these, incidental touch is the most important by far, but all four types of touching are important steps along the progression from stranger to lover. 7 WAYS TO TOUCH A GIRL touch a girlSo now you've got all this down. You know it's important to start with incidental touch first, and that the more of it, the merrier. You know you need to get touching as soon as possible, to avoid there being a whole lot of awkwardness - or you ending up labeled a creepy guy or a nice guy and banished to the friend zone. And you know you don't want to get too heavy, too fast with the touching - sexual touch outside of your place or hers is an absolute no-no if you want to get any further with her than just sexual touch. What's the easy way of going about touching girls? Here, find assembled a list of seven (7) ways you can touch a girl when you meet her and on a date to start hurtling things forward with her. The Introduction. You should always touch a girl when first meeting her - that means, take her hand and hold it for a moment while you introduce yourself, or, if you're feeling especially bold, use the cheek-kiss hand-hold introduction. The important part is that you get close enough to her on opening that you are inside her personal space, and that you break the tension gap so there isn't any unnecessary awkwardness between the two of you. The Compliance Ask. Getting investment from women is good; getting investment from women while also touching them is even better. Does she have an interesting ring, bracelet, or other accessory on you can ask her to show you? Do so, and take her arm or hand as you do. Necklaces and earrings can also be examined, though calibrate to the girl - some women are fine with you touching their ears and chests, while others are not. Rings / bracelets / watches are the safest bet for this. Not sure how to ask? See "Command Women (and Have Them Listen)." The Question Tap. When you want to ask her a question - especially if she's been momentarily distracted by something - one very good way of doing this is lightly tapping her. For this, a tap on the forearm or a light poke in the stomach serves best - the shoulder tap / upper arm tap to get someone's attention are a bit too cliché. If you're feeling playful, you can also try tapping her head - but if she's not the playful type, be warned this can backfire. Tapping her forearm or (gently) poking her stomach are always safe bets for this. The High Point. On a high point - when she's laughing, when the two of you are vibing and connecting really well, when there's electricity in the air - take advantage of the opportunity and touch her. The stronger the positive emotions, the more you ought to be touching her - anything from cupping her elbow with the palm of your hand, to putting your arm around her and pulling her in, to putting your hand on the small of her back, to even throwing her onto your lap. Judge it based on the intensity of the positive emotion - but when she's feeling good with you, touch. This does wonders for advancing your connection. The Lead. When it's time to move a girl, you usually want to make sure you're leading her, and the way you do that is with protective touch - guiding her with your hand on her back or your arm around her shoulders, leading her by holding her hand as you walk through a crowd, and keeping an eye out and stopping her from walking into traffic - whether foot traffic, or automobile. This establishes the bond between you, as two people sticking together during transition points, and reassures her that you're looking out for her and aren't only thinking about yourself. The Build Up. As she gets more and more comfortable with you and things become increasingly more electric, it's time for some romantic touch. That means things like holding and touching her hands, stroking her hair, and touching her nose, cheeks, or chin, or resting her head on your shoulder if you're sitting next to each other quietly. These make your intentions loud and clear - the two of you are bonding and touching in a way that friends never would. The Escalation. Once you've got her all alone, it's now time to move things toward physical intimacy. You do this via the process of physical escalation - gradually (or sometimes not so gradually) dialing up the intensity and sexuality of the touch that you're doing with her, right up until you get her in bed. You can use these 7 ways for touching girls very consistently throughout pretty much every interaction you have with a girl you like, and if you progress in this order, you'll find it's a very smooth transition from strangers to lovers. Just keep building up the touch... a little bit more... a little bit more... a little bit more... But how about her? Is there a way to get her to touch you? 3 WAYS TO GET GIRLS TO TOUCH YOU In addition to you taking the initiative and touching them, there are also a trio of ways you can get women to touch you, too. Here they are: Telling her to. This one's easy... you simply tell a girl to touch you, and she does. But does that count? I mean, you told her... Well, the way the subconscious mind works is a beautiful thing - and even though you told her to touch you, she still touched you of her own accord, and her subconscious mind registers this exactly the same as it would if she touched you and you hadn't said a word. Some examples of how you'd do this: Extending your arm and telling or gesturing her to take it (to walk) Holding out your hand to her for her to take (as you walk) Telling her "Feel this" about something on you (a scar, a muscle, etc.) Physically putting her legs over yours, or her hand on your thigh Pointing to your cheek and having her kiss you there Getting her excited and leaning in close. Not all women will take this bait - it depends on how outgoing the girl herself is, and how comfortable with you she is - but when you have a woman getting increasingly excited around you (emotionally, sexually, etc.), and you're in close proximity to her and lean in closer, she'll frequently touch you of her own accord - especially on high points. Wear very interesting items (or have interesting features). If you're familiar with peacocking, you know you can wear items that will get you attention from girls. Often this can lead to women touching the item - e.g., I not infrequently will have women touch the Tibetan mandala pendant I described wearing in the article on fashion for men. Some women also like to touch big muscles, or interesting hairstyles, or attractive facial hair - it depends on the girl's tastes. But the more interesting your style, look, features, and accessories, the more touching you will tend to get by pure default. The only one of these that's close to 100% consistent and fully in your control is #1, of course - but all three are good. And when women start touching you, they start advancing the connection, conversation, and interaction with you themselves... which of course makes life for you a whole lot easier. WRAPPING UP HOW TO TOUCH A GIRL So what's good about touch? Well, we know that: Touch causes the release of oxytocin, a bonding and trust-forming chemical Touch significantly increases individuals' willingness to make investment Women find men who touch more physically dominant, and thus attractive If you're a beginner, you'll want to pay attention to the following tips: Her upper arm, elbow, and the small of her back are best Don't touch her face (too soon) Touch soon into talking to her Touching on a high point is easy and good Don't look at your hand Be close to her when you touch The more (natural-feeling) touch, the better ... just don't go overboard And you'll want to pay attention to excitement levels; it's easy to get girls excited with lots of touch, but if you get them too excited, too soon, you can risk having that excitement "pop" before you've had a chance to advance things to the two of you become lovers, and at that point her attraction quickly declines and she goes cold. So don't overdo it before you're ready to do it. There are four kinds of touch: Incidental Protective Romantic Sexual ... with incidental being the most common and vital for establishing you as a non-platonic person in her life, protective for allowing her to let her guard down around you, romantic for priming her for getting alone with you, and sexual for priming her going to bed with you as lovers. The 7 ways to touch a girl in just about every interaction you'll have are: The Introduction The Compliance Ask The Question Tap The High Point The Lead The Build Up The Escalation ... and if you follow them closely, you'll have a pretty easy progression from strangers to something much more. Lastly, for getting a girl to touch you, you have three weapons in your arsenal: Telling her to Getting her excited and leaning in close Wear very interesting items (or have interesting features) After reading this, you should be sufficiently well-armed to go out and touch someone. Not to mention have her touch you back. Now, there's only one thing left to do - go put it all into practice.

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##[A56] How to Attract Women: The Guide Once upon a time, I sat in a college dorm room wondering how to attract women. I mean, in high school I'd had them chasing after me, at least some of the time, but then I went to university and that all disappeared. Coupled with my lack of social skills, I soon found myself both alone, and un-pursued. So, I tried anything I could think of. I got into music and performed on-stage. I made myself stand out however I could in my classes. I started peacocking with flashy clothes and accessories. I even tried buying pheromones from the Internet -- the jury's still out if that did me any good. But despite those efforts, I still didn't have any women in my life. Some of it got me noticed -- a lot of pretty girls were paying a lot of attention to me. But was I attracting them? Here's how Dictionary.com defines the word: "Attract: to draw by appealing to the emotions or senses, by stimulating interest, or by exciting admiration; allure; invite: to attract attention; to attract admirers by one's charm." Well, they may have been interested, but they certainly weren't around me too much. So, at best, maybe I was part of the way there. Most men, I discovered, find themselves in the same boat. They try a bunch of things, not sure what, exactly, it is that'll work best at getting women attracted... only to keep realizing that the things they're trying aren't working as well as they'd hoped. Anywhere near as well as they'd hoped. Some guys even all but lose hope entirely. How I learned to be a man who knew how to attract women and inspire them to chase him and pursue him and desire him is the story I want to share with you here. Furthermore, I want you to avoid the scenario I was in, of having to figure this mostly out from scratch -- so I'm going to give you 7 tips you can start using right now, today, to get yourself becoming more attractive to women. Without further ado: How to Attract Women: The Guide. THE TRUTH ABOUT ATTRACTION how to attract womenI've been teaching men to do well with women for a long time... since early 2006, in fact. I've taught men in-person, over the phone, and via Internet. And one of thing I've noticed, again and again, is that guys primarily struggle in 3 distinct areas. If a man can handle all 3 of these areas, he's on easy street with women -- they are: • Attracting women • Interesting women • Closing women If a guy learns how to attract women, interest them, and close them, he's got it down and he can coast (at least with women) for the rest of his days and not have to worry about the girl problem ever again. Thing is, each of these three areas are categorically different. Yet, most of the information that's out there treats them like they're the same. I recently had a reader write to me who follows one of the other schools of thought on pick up and seduction that came into being some time before my tenure in the pick up community. He noted that what I discuss is very different from what he's seen discussed by other men's dating advice professionals, and that he was under the impression that I was advocating men ignore attraction and get straight to conversation with women without doing anything to attract them. Herein lies one of the fundamental differences between how I view attraction and how other schools of thought do (and you might be excused for thinking I don't think attraction is important): In other schools of thought, attraction is something you create through your actions. But from everything I've seen, attraction is something that stems from who you are. The reason I stress the fundamentals so heavily in my seduction ebook -- heavily enough to devote an entire chapter to them -- is that building up your fundamentals is the most important thing you can do to attract women. It's absolutely, positively crucial. To demonstrate, let me ask you this: are you more attracted to a woman who Looks beautiful and elegant, is well-attired, carries herself well, and speaks and smiles gracefully and with sociability and charm, and never mentions being an object of desire or pursuit by other men (though you're certain she must be), instead making you feel warm and comfortable, or An average-looking woman with everyday clothes hanging off her body who speaks with an average voice, slumps her posture a bit, and acts a bit awkward and uncomfortable, but who tells you stories and uses lines and routines that imply she's highly desired and sought-after by men, and then gives you a hard time and acts hard-to-get? That one's pretty easy to figure out, right? Okay, good. Clearly, the first girl is far more attractive than the second. In fact, the second's likely to be somewhat annoying and off-putting to a great many men. The difference, of course, is that the first girl's handled her fundamentals and she just IS attractive, and the second girl hasn't bothered to and she's trying to talk her way into attraction. Of course, it doesn't work, and she might as well be speaking Farsi. You do a quick read of her fundamentals, and she's instantly disqualified. Well, believe it or not, women are every bit as unlikely to let words influence their level of attraction for a man. He can talk until he's blue in the face, but if he comes across in unattractive ways, the best stories in the world won't win a girl over for him. I've watched attractive men do nothing and go home with the girl. And I've watched unattractive men tell women stories about the hot women they've dated, the exotic places they've traveled, the expensive paintings they've bought, and had the woman walk away from them bored and uninterested. Attraction is not about what you say. It's about who you are and how you come across. So how on Earth did so many men get it in their heads that attraction was all about their words? THE QUICK FIX THAT ISN'T I've found myself working with more and more guys recently who are coming from a background of having practiced pick up as taught by some of the older schools of seduction out there, and I'm finding them some of the most difficult to train. This is primarily because they come in with a deeply entrenched belief that they need to convince girls they're attractive. So, they end up adopting all kinds of lines, routines, and stories that they use while talking to girls that they intend to help them show those girls how attractive they are so that women will choose them. If you've been following my material for a while and you're familiar with the pieces on sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort, you already know where this is going. What ends up happening is that these guys work, and work, and WORK, to try and attract women. Which, of course, violates one of the principle underlying tenets of attraction: Women are most attracted to the most effortless, effective men. The man who beckons a woman to cross a room and come to him isn't just twice as sexy and powerful than the man who gets up and walks over to her himself... he's ten times as sexy and powerful. Maybe more than that. The processes that run through a girl's head in each scenario are completely different: He walks to her: "All right, I've got this guy. He thinks I'm great. Let's see if he's good enough for me. He probably won't be and I'll have to dismiss him, but maybe he'll surprise me... you never know. Here he comes. All right buddy, let's see what you've got." She walks to him: "Wow, I'm walking across the room for this guy... I must really like him. I hope he treats me well when I get over there. I hope we hit it off. It'd be embarrassing if I got over there and it looked bad. I'm going to have to make sure this goes well. I'd better look as good and sexy as I can when I get over there... okay, good posture! Back straight, boobs out. That's it... whew, here we go..." That's just one example. Compound that with a bunch of different things throughout your interaction: You get her leaning in You deep dive and get her telling you about herself You get her qualifying herself as you get to know more about her You get her following your lead and coming with you You intrigue her and make her want to get to know you You get compliance throughout your interaction You move her You take her home and suddenly you are this alluring man she is constantly putting work in to get. Meantime, you're mostly lounging back, listening to her talk, doing some active listening so that she knows you get her, and basically following the Law of Least Effort and being cool and relaxing somewhat as you help her to invest in the interaction and to feel increasingly attracted to you. Is that stuff hard to learn? Yeah, maybe, kinda sorta... not that hard, though. It's just a little bit at a time, and it's mostly behavioral. You don't even have to memorize any stories that aren't yours. I think the reason why verbal attraction became so popular in the early days of pick up was because it felt like a quick fix: just say this and women will fall all over you! It also appeals to the popular myth of the pick up line: use the right line, and women will go home with you almost on the spot. You've just got to figure out what that right line is. One my buddies used to use in college: Guy: Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs? Girl: Uhhh... no. Guy: Enough to break the ice. I'm Steve. Ah, pick up lines. Anyway, early pick up evolved from the pick up line, as far as I can tell, and retained the same spirit of, "If you say the right thing, women will want you." It feels encouraging, exciting... easy. Except it doesn't produce results. It might get you some reactions... but we've discussed reactions versus results on here before. I find the dieting industry a similar case study to this. Confession: I had about 25 pounds of excess fat on me from college until mid-2008. I'd been skinny most of my life, so hadn't realized the slow accumulation of a big belly and a round face until my girlfriend and one of my pals started pointing it out to me. Once I realized it was a problem, I started counting calories, reduced my caloric intake (I was hungry sometimes for about 2 weeks, until my stomach acclimated), and I lost a pound a week until I'd shaved off most of my fat. I've kept it off since then by sticking to a slightly smaller diet, still with all the same foods I always loved. So, that was really easy, but it just took a little time and a little discipline. I look at all these overweight people on fad diets now, and I ask myself, "Why on Earth are they doing this stuff?" And, I realize, it's because they want a quick fix. They want someone to come along and tell them, "Hey, this is easy! Just do this, and you'll be thin again, and it won't be hard!" But, three years later, they're still fat. Whereas all they had to do was start doing something that worked, that was a little bit hard at the beginning, and then after a few weeks they'd see gains; after 6 months they'd be in pretty darn good shape; and after a year or 2 or 3, depending on how bad off they were before, they'd be amazing. Nobody wants to work on themselves though. They want a quick fix. And quick fixes never are. how to attraction women WHY CAN'T YOU TALK YOUR WAY INTO ATTRACTION? I like research. Usually I find it validates things I already believed to be true. I don't know if that means I'm smart, or I'm lucky, or maybe I've just read enough research already that the next conclusions are pretty natural to draw, but it is what it is. In any event, we've discussed nonverbal attraction on here before, but just in case you had any reservations, feel free to check out the research: The Nonverbal Basis of Attraction: Flirtation, Courtship, and Seduction: David Givens identifies conspicuous nonverbal cues used widely by men and women in flirtation, courtship, and seduction; particularly, a submissive look that increases sexual attraction in both genders. [something I call the "male model look" and I've been meaning to get a post up on] The Effects of Nonverbal Cues on Gender Differences in Perceptions of Sexual Intent: Antonia Abbey and Christian Melby find that women tend to rate men's nonverbal sexual communications as more ambiguous. [in other words, unless a man's clear about his intentions, women tend to slot him into the friend zone] Nonverbal Skill, Personal Charisma, and Initial Attraction: Howard Friedman et al. find that emotional expression and extroversion boost attraction along with physical attractiveness, and operate independent of it. [attraction from extroversion and emotional expressiveness is unrelated to attraction from looks] Then there's Albert Mehrabian, and his 7%-38%-55% rule: 55% of communication is nonverbal 38% of communication is voice tone 7% of communication is the words you say What everybody keeps seeming to find, again and again, is that the vast majority of human communication occurs without consideration to the words used or not used, and that attraction functions as a response to nonverbals as much or more so than other forms of human communication. This is why, on this site, in my ebook, in Sensei, in Spellbinding, in everything I put out and talk through and teach via, you won't hear me talking about how to increase attraction through lines or routines or stories so much. I might say, "Talking about things this way will increase attraction," but again, that's presentation, not content. It isn't what you're saying; it's how you're saying it. Confused? Okay, let me give you an example. Let's say we have two girls talking to two guys. Each girl asks her guy the same question, and each guy responds differently. One of them responds by aiming to attract her with his words. The other responds by generating attraction within her with his nonverbals and voice tone. Take a look at each: Case 1: Aiming for Attraction with Words Girl: What do you do? Guy: [deadpan] I'm a ninja. Girl: Okay... what would you like to be doing in 10 years? Guy: Ruling the world, probably. With my harem of 50 Victoria's Secret models. Analysis: yeah, that's... okay. He's fun and entertaining; the conversation has a light, airy feel to it. She'll probably stick around, but there's no telling if that's because she's got some attraction for him, or if it's just because she's having fun talking to him, without regard to attraction. Also, there's another dynamic here that might've slipped past your radar: she's asking, and he's telling. She's controlling the flow of the conversation and steering the dynamic. This means it's more work for her to control, but she doesn't feel like she's truly investing or that she's having to qualify herself. Instead, she's asking, and he's qualifying himself. Not directly -- not by telling her how impressive and amazing he is -- but instead by making an effort to be funny and entertaining and show her a good time. He's still chasing, and he's still being impressive, if in a more subtle manner. He's still in the rat race. Case 2: Generating Attraction with Nonverbals and Voice Tone Girl: What do you do? Guy: [looks thoughtfully away, before turning back] Hmm [said in a sexy tone of voice]. Some business, some writing... a bit of this and that... I dabble. What do you do? Girl: I'm a photojournalist. Guy: Really? [said with sexy eye contact and a "Hmm, I'm intrigued" tone of voice] What does that mean? Girl: That means I take pictures and they go in the newspaper and magazines. Guy: That sounds interesting. [said in a sexy tone of voice with a knowing smile] Girl: It can be. What kind of writing do you do? Guy: The creative kind. I have a book I'm working on. Girl: Oh wow, what's it about? Guy: People, leadership, how others think... psychology stuff. Things I find interesting. How do you like being a photojournalist? Analysis: you can't see it perfectly from words on a page, but much of what's communicated there is coming from his nonverbals and his voice tone. He's drawing her in with powerful, sexual nonverbals, and communicating through his concision and mysteriousness that he isn't trying to be impressive... he just is. And because he's compelling without chasing, the girl he's speaking with is forced to invest as much as he is -- or more. You can't talk your way into attraction. And anyone who tells you you can doesn't know how to attract women or even how attraction works. Women aren't attracted by tales of how successful with women a man is, or how many expensive watches he has, or how well he treats his friends. Those aren't the things that make women excited and intrigued and desirous of a man. What does? Well... that's what I'm going to talk about with you next. HOW TO ATTRACT WOMEN how to attract women"Assume attraction." This was something I learned early on in my journey to improve with women. It served me well. Why's this a good assumption to have? Well, there're a couple of reasons: If you assume that women are attracted, you'll act like women are attracted -- and the actions of a man who thinks a woman's attracted to him are bold, confident, and... attractive. While attraction is very much something you can improve and develop, there's very little you can do about it at any specific outing. It's like worrying that your muscles aren't big enough or your clothes aren't perfect -- you can work on that for next time, but you've got what you've got right now, so deal with it and work with it; it isn't worth even thinking about there in the moment and will only serve a distraction. Attraction primarily comes through more or less passive traits. At any given time, you should be working to develop these passive traits, but no amount of fussing over them right now is going to give you a huge boost in attraction in the short term. There is no "quick fix." Not in the sense that most guys think of it. Now, improving yourself and making yourself attractive is pretty darn quick to do compared to the path that most guys take for attracting women -- building their careers, amassing small fortunes, becoming rich and famous, or even attaining a certain social status in one circle or another (head bartender, chief physician, best salsa dancer, etc.). Where those other things might take years or even decades in some cases, you can turn yourself into a very attractive individual on a much faster scale. You've just got to drop the quick fix mentality of, "Okay, if I just learn to say this line right, then women won't be able to resist me!" It's not about words. It's about you. Here's how to attract women more beginning today: Handle your fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. I'll hammer these home until the day that I die. Why are fundamentals so important? Attraction can grow a little bit as a girl gets to know you, but for the most part, it's there or it isn't the moment she first meets you. Give it .3 seconds, or something like that... something crazy quick. But you can see it. I've seen it myself again and again, I've seen it with friends, I've seen it with guys I train... the moment you walk up, she's either into you, or she isn't. And your fundamentals are the primary thing she's gauging to decide whether she is or not. Fundamentals include: • Posture. Strong posture makes you attractive, period. • Movement speed. Powerful, sexy men move more slowly. • Eye contact. Effective eye contact flirting makes you captivating. • Expressions. Great facial expressions entrance and excite women. • Gracile movement. Smooth, fluid movement sends strong signals. • Voice. A sexy voice is mandatory for increasing your sensuality. • Speech. Speak slowly and use the pregnant pause. • Fashion. Get well-fitting clothes, a sexy haircut, and cool facial hair. Properly developed fundamentals allow you to always be at a baseline of high attractiveness to women. That means that no matter what kind of "state" you're in, women will want you regardless. It's a form of liberation, actually -- it's like losing weight, or putting on muscle, or learning a new skill or ability like painting or driving or computer programming. Work to get there, but once you've got it, it's quite easy to maintain, and it provides constant benefits and boosts and plusses. Stop scanning. If there's one thing I notice most newer guys do a lot that's quite off-putting to women, is that they constantly scan for new and attractive women. Scanning is when a guy's looking around, sweeping his eyes back and forth, visually combing the premises in search of a promising new girl to go talk to. Guys also scan when they're already talking to a cute girl, checking their surroundings for new threats (e.g., other men) and new opportunities (e.g., "Is there a cuter girl?" "Is something happening in the environment I should be aware of?"). Scanning is actually quite obvious, and it instantly slots the scanner into the "chase" position and the "insecure guy" position. Any woman he talks to once she's seen him scanning is going to expect him to chase her, and in response she will flee as he chases. She'll also quickly lose interest in him if he's scanning when he should be focused on her talking to her. Solution? Stop scanning. Talk to the people around you if you're not talking to a girl yet. Develop your peripheral vision. Position yourself so that you can look over your friend's shoulder as you talk and view the rest of the room. When you step into a new room, stop for a moment and look the place over and pinpoint where the cute girls are before you step into the fray. Once you're talking to a girl, focus on her and only break eye contact occasionally, and only then to let your eyes drift slightly off, without looking at anything. Even if there's a stir, don't be the first to look; only look if she does. The only time scanning is okay is when you're outside of the crowd and staring out into the mix, so long as you don't seem too intrigued by any one girl in particular. Otherwise, if a guy does it in the middle of a crowd in a bar or in the midst of walking down a street during the day, it shoots his attractiveness way down. Cut the cute stuff and get to the point. I can't tell you how often I've seen friends who were routine guys walk up to a girl, start talking to her, and then right away I'm pulling my hair out going, "Eeeugggghhh, stop trying to attract her, she's already attracted! Just move her and get her out of there while she still wants you!" You won't attract women by talking to them. You won't. You really won't, I promise. The women who seemed attracted by your talking to them were probably attracted the moment you walked up, and had you done things smoothly and properly from the beginning you almost certainly could've moved them and gotten them to go with you right away. Even when I was new to meeting girls, I operated this way, and it worked. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew that the cute stuff was a waste of my time and I didn't spend any time on it. I'd go, talk to girls, and if they seemed interested I'd move them as fast as I could. And they'd usually say "yes." Never forget that attraction has an expiration date. Long ago in pick up, something called the "7 Hour Rule" emerged. According to the 7 Hour Rule, you had to spend seven hours with a girl before you could sleep with her if you wanted something solid with her. Well, I can't speak to the origins of that rule, but I can say it's utter baloney. I think it's based on the idea that the more time a girl spends with you, the more she'll come to know you and appreciate you and bond with you... and to an extent this is true, but there's a flaw in the thinking. The flaw is this: the more she comes to know you and bond with you and appreciate you, the more of a fixture in her life you'll become, and the tougher the decision to sleep with you becomes. She may even come to see you as so amazing a benefit to her life that she doesn't want to risk losing you by sleeping with you. Conversely, the longer you wait, the more time you give yourself to make mistakes, or to let another man step in and sweep her away -- just like what we discussed in "How to Get Girls." Attraction and excitement and enthusiasm fades fast in most women under most circumstances. If you want to maximize your chances of success with girls, you'll need to remember this, and you'll need to hew closely to the following rule... Move fast with women. Not only is this good form, but moving fast with women is actually very attractive! Women love and find enchanting the confident men who go for what they want with them and move things forward boldly and with decisiveness. I've had a lot of guys ask me if women will be put off by men moving too fast. Well, here's the answer: women are only put off by men they don't like that way moving too fast. What that means is, if you move quickly with a girl and she pushes back and says, "You know, girls don't like it when you move that fast," what she's actually saying is, "Whoa buddy, you want us to get together? I don't see you like that." That's actually a good thing... because it tells you you don't need to spend any further time with this particular girl, and it tells you you've got some tweaks to make on coming across the right way to women (e.g., as an edgy, sexual guy). If on the other hand you've got a girl who's into you, and you move fast, she might give you some token resistance ("I don't usually move this fast"), but she won't push back with disgust or revulsion. The only women who push back with disgust or indignation against you moving too fast are the women who weren't sexually attracted to you in the first place. The girls who like you get increasingly excited by things progressing quickly when they do. Human sexuality did not evolve as a three month courting process, remember. Wait three months and there's a good chance you got impaled by a mammoth tusk, or at least that Stug, the caveman next door, came along and moved a lot faster and swept that cave girl you liked off her feet and into his bed. Human sexuality evolved as two apes meeting in the wild, sizing each other up very quickly, finding somewhere private together, and getting to it. Romanticizing the process is very nice and sweet, but things work a lot more smoothly when you drop idealism and treat it all the way it actually functions and plays out. A man she likes moving quickly with her is very attractive to a woman. Move intelligently with women. Moving fast, of course, might be interpreted to mean "drag her out on the dance floor and make out with her," which is bad form and actually usually counterproductive to a seduction. That would be an example of moving quickly but without direction. There must be focus and direction in the progress you make with women. You need focused action to keep yourself moving toward a successful outcome. This means having a process; a series of steps to follow like: Go somewhere with pretty girls --> start talking to girls --> find a girl you like who likes you --> focus on her (don't get distracted or break circle) --> get her to move with you and invest and so on, all the way up until the two of you are lovers (or beyond that, if you want her as a girlfriend -- you can build a process for that too). Moving scattershot (e.g., moving her here and there; breaking circle to bring other people in or talk to your friends or her friends; ignoring her then coming back; leaving to go get drinks or go to the bathroom or whatever) is a surefire way to confuse a girl and dampen her enthusiasm, both that something will happen with you, and that you're the kind of man who can make something happen. Move forward with purpose and intent, and women will be attracted. Close. Women aren't closers. That isn't their role. Women's role is to accept or reject men's proposals. That means that if you don't propose it -- if you don't go for the close -- it probably doesn't happen. Asking girls to meet you on a date this week and grabbing their phone number can be intimidating up to the first 30 or 40 times you do it. Inviting a girl to come home with you can be scary the first 30 or 40 times you do that, too. But eventually it does become automatic, and you lose all emotional association to it. It just becomes something you do, because closing is now a part of your process (see #6 above). Going for the close is what differentiates the guys who get a lot of attention and attraction from women but don't ever convert it to anything from the guys who take the attention and attraction they get -- even if it's less than those first guys -- and turn it into dates, lovers, girlfriends, and more. And above all, women can tell if a man will close. And it attracts them, and it excites them, and it encourages them to place their trust and comfort and hope in the man who closes that he will provide the kind of exciting romantic and sexual experience they long for. Attraction isn't hard. But it isn't a quick fix. It's something you build with time and focused effort. With time and effort, you tighten up your fundamentals and turn yourself into an attractive man by default. With time and effort, you cut out the cute stuff and get yourself to the point. With time and effort, you build a sense of urgency into your interactions with women and realize -- fully realize -- that when you move slow, you don't get the girl, and that when you don't ask, you don't get the girl. So, you start moving fast, and you start asking, because you find out that works. Attraction isn't a chore. You don't even have to actively manage it once you've gotten the things down above. At that point, it becomes automatic -- you're automatically attractive to women. If you've ever had the idea that learning how to attract women is about learning lines, routines, or stories, well, drop it, because it isn't. The words you say matter far less than the steps you take and the man you become. So, get yourself to become an attractive man who takes the right steps. Women will fall all over themselves to be with you, I promise -- and you'll get there a heck of a lot sooner than the guys who're still trying to talk women into their beds.

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##[A57] How to be a Sexy man Towards the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, I decided to focus my energies on a new thing I had to learn and get down: how to be sexy. I wanted to give myself a dangerous, edgy, exciting vibe, that compelled women to want me and desire me and be amenable to moving quickly with me. At the time, I didn't really know how I was going to go about it, but I set to work on cracking the code of sexiness nonetheless. Two years later, I bed women faster than ever, get strong initial attraction from most of the women I talk to, and get told all the time that I'm handsome, sexy, and good-looking. When I meet new women, they're more likely than not willing to do as I command very early on in our interactions, and I can often suck them into an almost trance-like state of interest and desire. This was something I was doing only occasionally in early 2008, but am doing regularly and consistently now. The process of how I went about revamping myself from a cool, friendly, neutral guy to a dangerous, edgy, sexy man is what I'm going to share with you in this post. So strap yourself in and let's get you turning on some beautiful girls. WHY YOU SHOULD WANT TO BE A SEXY MAN Before we dive in, let's talk a bit about what the benefits are to you of becoming a sexy man. Like anything, it's going to take a little work and it's going to take a little while to up your level of sexiness - why should you bother working on this and not focusing more on getting a promotion at work or a nice new car? I'm thinking of this particularly because my ex-girlfriend I'm staying with in California tells me about a coworker of hers who's decided that he wants to get married in three years… so his first step has been to buy a really nice Audi convertible. He already has a big, gorgeous house, bought and paid for, and he just paid cash for his Audi. Financially, he's doing all right; he was recently promoted at work and is in a fairly important position in his company. He has virtually no success with women and is currently being pushed around and scolded by the one woman he's courting, whom from everything I've heard he hasn't even slept with yet. Me on the other hand, I'm the same age as this other cat, and while I formerly had a good position with a prestigious company, I've been unemployed for the better part of a year, with no promising job prospects on the horizon. Everything I own fits in three suitcases. I have no problem with women whatsoever though; girls have been coming quick and effortlessly for me lately, and I have dates with eight new women lined up within the next two or three weeks, not to mention the girls I'm still seeing that I've already gotten together with this year. Most men, when they want to attract more women, start building their nests. This doesn't work. I could tell you about plenty of other guys I know who are plowing themselves into advancement in their careers and making lots of big purchases and who do awful with women, and plenty of other guys who are dead broke and drifting around like me and are having success with women. Now, I don't want to give you the misconception that material success and success with women are mutually exclusive - I also know guys who bring in a lot of money and bring in a lot of girls, and I've met (thought can't say I keep much company with) men who are broke and jobless and can't get a girl to save their lives. The point I want to make is that most men target material success as the answer to getting girls, and it isn't. At best, it's a tool. At worst, it's a distraction. The more I think about it, the more I think men pursue material success as an attempt to woo women because it's easier. You don't have to work on yourself, you don't have to critique yourself, you don't have to change and go out there and fail and refine and get better. You just have to work hard, save up, and thenBOOM!, go buy something. Now that you have this new toy, the women will want you… right? Here's the truth: women aren't interested in toys. They might get excited about your car, but that lasts all of ten seconds and a ride around the block. Cars are mostly good for impressing other men. If you want to impress women, you need to work on you. Sexiness, you'll find, is one of the primary ways you will do that. Sexy men get all kinds of special privileges and advantages with women that men low in sexiness don't get: Instant attraction. Obviously, this is going to be one of the big ones. Life's a lot easier when women are instantly drawn to you. One, because you'll find more success with them, and two, because you'll be working a lot less hard to get it. Access to higher level women. The sexier you are, the more women you'll have access to. Women who would've been cold to me on the approach two years ago now receive me very warmly and with a good deal of excitement. The better you get at being sexy, the more options you have with more beautiful and higher value women. They just respond better to you than they do to less sexy men. Ability to move quickly, get sexual fast, and have it feel natural. A more friendly, neutral kind of guy who tries going sexual quickly with a woman can often have it end up being weird or awkward for her. It seems out of character for him to be doing something a sexual guy would do but a friendly guy would not. If you're going to start moving faster with women - which is what you'll need to do if you want more success with women and don't want to lose girls to lack of speed - you're going to need to step up your sexiness. Sexy men get to skip steps in a seduction that unsexy men just don't. Help from women's friends. Believe it or not, being sexy actually makes a women's friends more likely to help you succeed, more often than not. What will happen a lot is they'll see you talking to their friend, think to themselves you seem sexy, then want their friend to enjoy having you and will help the two of you get together. This makes for a much smoother, easier seduction than you'd otherwise need to put together. HOW TO BE A SEXY MAN Once you've decided revamping yourself a little bit and dialing up the sex appeal is a good idea and one worth a tad of your time and effort, you need to start targeting those things that impact your sexiness the most. Here they are, in no particular order: Fashion. It takes time to develop a good fashion sense, so especially if you're just starting out, don't get yourself feeling overwhelmed and instead seek to gradually improve your wardrobe with time. Start by sizing yourself down into smaller, better-fitting clothes, and look for more stylish things to wear. Look too for colors that compliment your skin, hair, and eye colors; generally speaking, people with lighter colored skin look better in duller colors, while people with darker colored skin can get away with more vibrant hues. Eye contact and facial expressions. Check out "Elite Eye Contact" and "Wordless Communication" for a primer on getting some of these down. One of the best ways to learn your nonverbals though, in my opinion? Movies. Many top actors have their nonverbal communication down to a science, and you can pick up all kinds of nuanced, finely hewn details by paying attention. Smiling and using your mouth. Get sexy smiling down and smile slowly to add sincerity and warmth to your smiles. Purse your lips ever so slightly (note: not pucker, but rather purse), like what Daniel Craig is nearly constantly doing in the latest James Bond films. The pursing of the lips, in conjunction with a small, sexy smile, gives you a sexual edge to just about any facial expression you make - no matter what else you're doing with your eyes, mouth, brow, etc., if your lips are slightly pursed and you're wearing a slight hint of a sexy smile, you'll exude sexual energy. Walk. You should be walking like a male model on a catwalk, or a gunslinger from the American West… and you should be walking in a way that leaves some space between your thighs. Strangely, I noticed that one day, after I'd been walking all day in abrasive pants in very hot weather, when my thighs had gotten chafed, as I started walking delicately trying to keep my legs far apart so my thighs wouldn't touch, I started having women telling me I had a sexy walk. At first I thought they were kidding, but I soon realized they were serious. My only interpretation is, a walk like that looks to women as though you have a large amount of… well, goods… between your legs, which appeals to their subconscious desire to seek out the most masculine man with the biggest set of… ahem… confidence, shall we say. Slowness. Sexy men, in many ways, are powerful men, and powerful men move slow. And not just in walking speed - in everything. Spend time slowing down your movements and you will come across as far more self-possessed and sexually appealing. Facial hair. This one is going to differ on your face and body type and age. Generally speaking, if you're under 30 you probably ought to have facial hair; it makes you look older, and women tend to go for men older than them. Older men can consider going sans facial hair as they may wish to look younger. Note though that facial hair gives a man a degree of edginess, when done right, that the boyish cleanshaven man struggles to replicate from looks alone. Voice. Voice is huge. It's one of your primary tools for attraction, and it's something you ought to spend a healthy chunk of time working on. You'll again want to turn to movies for inspiration; going after a newscaster's voice or a radio show or television show personality's voice (unless that personality plays the role of the sexual, dangerous man) is not going to get you the kind of results that developing the voice of a sexy, powerful man in cinema. When your voice is good enough, women will turn around to see who's speaking simply at the sound of it, and they'll melt when they're in a conversation with you. Conversation that's focused on the woman. Your skill as a conversationalistis important to your sexiness primarily because you will use it to disarm women's reservations and allow them to feel more comfortable around you. Your conversation should focus primarily on the woman, and you should be both impressive and interesting, but also humble, in your discussions about yourself - and keep them brief, and turn things back to the girl again. The impressiveness intrigues, the humbleness disarms. This is a skill, but you want to drop something intriguing about yourself, disarm it with humbleness to make yourself accessible and attainable, then move on and return the focus to her. Easy confidence. Moving women around and having them do as you like is vitally important to coming across as strong and sexual. Get used to demanding investment from women in an inviting, non-confrontational tone of voice. Get used to laughing off women's emotional swings, and staying stable and calm and relaxed and content whether they're cold, moody, or excited. You'll find typically that women will often lose interest fast in men who reflect their emotions back (and get cold, or moody, or excited themselves), and rather get increasingly interested in and excited by men who stay warm and stable and content regardless the emotion the woman shows. Recognizing and responding to signals. In "How Women Show Interest" we discussed the real signals women will give a man that they are interested in him. It's important to work on your ability not just recognizing these signals, but responding to them, sometimes with subtlety, sometimes with bold action. For signals that aren't strong, "Take action now!" signals, but rather signs of building interest, you'll simply want to smile a little more broadly and mischievously just to show her you got it. For signals that demand you take action, though, you must take action. Experience is the best teacher, and most guys are either too timid or too bold when they start trying to do this consistently, but err on the side of boldness if you have to choose as you'll learn your calibration here much more quickly that way. Closing things out. Part of the reason that responding to signals is so important to being sexy is that it shows women that you are a man who will not leave them wanting. Remember that women tend to meet many men who don't pick up on their signals, don't move things forward aggressively and boldly, and often leave them disappointed and unsatisfied at the end of an otherwise good conversation, meeting, or date. Responding to signals shows women you aren't going to be like one of those men; actually closing things out with women completes the circle and gives the woman the satisfaction she's looking for. That means you must be moving to get results as quickly as possible, not leaving women hanging, and trying to get girls alone with you as fast as possible. Women will respect you for it - far more than they respect the slower, more careful men who take fewer risks and get fewer rewards. There are other things involved, of course, but those are the major factors. If you get these aspects handled, you'll be an incredibly attractive, sexy man whom women will respond to with warmth and desire and will often take it upon themselves to pursue. Chase framing is another one that helps, but you won't use it with every girl, and women need varying levels of it - some love it and it's quite useful with, others it's too much for and you need to keep it toned down with (typically, the women who view you as much higher in value than themselves). One of the main things that sexiness does for you is it disarms women in a sexual way. Many men are cold, or aloof, or intimidating, and women stay reserved around them and closed off and these men fail with women (then become frustrated and get even more cold, aloof, or intimidating). Other men recognize the necessity to put women at ease around themselves, but go too far and remove intrigue and challenge, coming off as too nice and too friendly; these guys get women disarmed, but in a nonsexual way, and they get banished to the friend zone. TRAINING YOURSELF TO BE SEXY One cool thing that is the case for sexiness but little else in the social and seductive arts is that many aspects of sexiness can be worked on in your own by yourself. You can watch films with sexy men and practice your facial expressions and voice tone; you can perfect your posture and slowness of movement; you can get your fashion handled and get your walk down. You will of course need to actually implement all these things in real life with the people you meet and the people you already know so they become your new default traits and characteristics; for instance, as you refine your voice, you need to begin speaking in that slightly different voice around friend and family and strangers until you get comfortable with it and learn to speak that way all the time. Most people won't notice differences in your speech - even many that you might assume are quite noticeable - and they quickly forget how you "used to" speak. My voice these days is vastly different from how it used to be, but if I try telling that to friends or family who know me now compared to who knew me back then, their reaction is always, "Really? You sound the same to me!" I actually made a recording with my old voice and my current voice some time back just so I could show disbelieving loved ones the difference. There are other things you simply can't work on without being out there meeting new women; your prowess as a conversationalist, your skill recognizing signals from women and how they show interest, and your ability to move things forward quickly and seamlessly must be learned in real life with real women. I suppose you could practice drills for some of that stuff if you have friends who are learning with you, but for practical purposes you're going to need to be meeting lots of new women. So, you'll have to get out there and start refining these traits with real live women, if you aren't already. You can consider it practice if that helps; you're building a skill (a whole host of skills, really). The neat thing is that sexiness carries over into other aspects of your life; the same qualities that make a man sexy to women also make him charismatic and engaging to other men. Your friendships and relationships will benefit as you improve the aspects of yourself that lead to sexiness. Best of all, of course, as you train yourself up and learn how to be a sexy man, you'll get better and better results with the opposite sex. It can be a little challenging to learn sexiness since not everything you'll get immediate feedback on; it's well worth your time, though. I suggest beginning immediately, with the very next woman you meet. You might just find she acts a little warmer, laughs a little softer, and looks at you a little more desirously for it.

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##[A58] Going Stag: Your GUide To Going Out By Yourself It's been almost a year since I started working with my good friend Chase (wow, time flies) - and it has been an incredibly busy year. And while I've dropped about 150,000 words of 10 years' experience in picking up women on the blog, I haven't always had time to get back to everyone who wrote in with questions or comments. It's time to remedy that… I really appreciate all your feedback, it lets me know how we can bring more value to you and it's also great to know that our work is really helping people out - so thanks for all the comments, even and especially the ones who just stopped by to let us know how much this blog has helped them out. That's fantastic and part of what makes this work so incredibly gratifying. Now, I just went back over all the comments you have left on my posts, and I am going to get all the questions answered that I think every reader will be able to benefit from. That means I won't be answering questions about "this one special girl," unless my advice in the situation is broadly applicable and will be useful to other readers as well. But there have been a lot of very smart questions that I thought were very interesting and worth having a closer look at for everyone. We're starting off the series with a follow-up to the post on going out alone, with more on going stag and going out by yourself. This is one of the best ways to meet new women, but it's also a scary and unusual one for most newer guys - it's a worthy place to kick off this new series, in other words. going out by yourself Furthermore, I will be answering comments on this series - either directly, or if the questions are very involved, in future blog posts - so now is the time to let me know what you're struggling with. Of course I won't be able to go into the same depth as we do in our phone coaching program, but if we can get some of the more pressing problems solved for ya and take your dating life to the next level right here and right now, then I'll say we'll have achieved our goal! So feel free to hit reply and post your question. Onwards! GOING OUT BY YOURSELF In the original post on going out by yourself, Jay posted the following comment: "Hey Ricardus, your posts have been a useful addition to an already excellent site and this is another good one. A couple of questions though. I have tried going out alone a couple of times and staying out after my mates have left a few times too. When I've been questioned by girls as to why I'm out alone I've always come up with a lie like 'I was meeting my mate but he just text to say he can't make it because' then some more lies, or in a club that I've lost my mate, is this what you recommend doing or just be honest?" Great question… I actually still remember the day I first started researching this topic myself. Here's the thing… I had noticed a pattern: All the guys who got really, really good at meeting and dating women would go stag when they went out… some of them even preferred it to being out with a friend, because it forced them to approach, and it gave them more opportunities to meet people. Every minute that you're chatting with your buddies, you're not approaching… and every time you fear the approach, you have an excuse not to go: you're in a conversation already. Some of my friends who are the best with women I've ever seen would go out seven nights a week… and as you can imagine, on four or five of these nights, there was simply nobody around to join them. It really paid off for them though, as they got very good very quickly… faster than anybody who wasn't in the habit of going stag from time to time, including me. And so I decided to create that habit myself as well - and it was one of the hardest parts of getting good with women. I wrote about my first few times on the town alone before, and described how much of a struggle it was for me… I wasn't even able to ask women for the time because I had psyched myself out so much. I finally solved that problem once and for all though, and in that article I also discuss the two most important strategies you can use to overcome this fear. SECURITY BLANKET…? The biggest problem is that it's a lot more difficult to stay in state when you're out alone than if you have someone to chat with to keep your own social momentum going… and there are two ways to solve this problem. The first one is to develop state independence, and the second is to develop state control (see: "How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor"). There is, however, another problem that guys face when they start leaving the "security blanket" of a wingman behind… it can feel a little bit weird to be the guy who came to the club alone. Most people are there with friends after all, and when you're new to going out by yourself it feels for all the world like everyone at the club knows that YOU are the dork who came alone… and they're all watching you, wondering why you don't have any friends to go out with…? Well, the truth is that this is not something you need to worry about at all... and here is why: First of all, nobody is observing you. People are WAY too caught up in their own conversations and their own night out to even notice, leave alone observe anybody else. Here's a little exercise you can do the next time you're out alone: Just stand in a corner for a while, or sit down on a sofa and step out of the matrix for a couple of minutes. You be the one to watch… and you will realize that you are pretty much invisible to everyone else. You might even learn a thing or two about what NOT to do from watching the chaos of neediness going on around you… or you might spot a real player whose game you can model. The second point is that even if people *were* observing you, which they are not, they still don't have any reason to assume that you're alone. People walk around a club alone all the time, as they're going to get drinks for their group, or while they're on the way to the bathroom. And if day game is your thing, then being out alone is definitely common… guys don't usually go shopping in groups like girls often do. Finally, even if people knew you were alone, it's still no big deal. Why do you think everybody goes out in groups? It's because almost everybody has the same fear about being out alone that we're talking about here. Sure, they are out with their friends because they want to spend an evening with them, that's a factor… but if they had the social skills and the confidence to go to a club alone, make a bunch of new friends and go home with a hot girl that night… they'd probably prefer that. In other words, people actually really admire the courage it takes to go out alone, and especially to chat up groups of strangers alone… so long as your approach is solid, of course. But we've got you covered there with this site and these programs. GIRLS ARE NOT THE KGB! Another thing that strikes me in Jay's comment is the wording… he has "been questioned" by girls. A lot of newer guys get an emotion when this happens that is similar to when a cop questions them, or even a judge, or some superior or authority figure. I'd suggest you reframe this as "girls asked me," rather than "questioned me." Small detail, but a bunch of small details together make up big deals. If you interpret a girl's question as her interrogating you, your response will automatically be different than if you interpret it as her merely being curious, or if you even interpret it as her trying to make conversation with you because she's so much into you that she wants to keep the ball rolling. No matter which of the two was her actual intention, if you respond as if it was the latter, you will always get better results. As for specific things to say in answer to this question - there are all kinds of clever answers you can give a girl if she asks you why you're out alone. Remember my friend who's amazing at making girls laugh? When women ask him why he's out alone, he'll say something like… "Well, I went out with a friend, but he fell in a hole." Girls always crack up, but if you've read the article, you also remember that he doesn't usually get a lot of love with this act. Forget clever. If you have strong frame control, you can simply tell her the truth: "My friends already left, but I wasn't ready for my evening to be over yet." going out by yourself Or, if you went out alone from the get go, you might say something like: "My buddy and I decided to split up tonight because we already know all of each other's stories… and so we'd rather make some new friends tonight and hear some new stories." Notice the friendship frame - it's a nice little gambit to keep her guessing. Bottom line - just tell the truth; it's only a big deal if you think it's a big deal. If you present it right, many girls will merely think: "Wow, I wish I had the confidence and self-sufficiency to go out alone." - They, too, get stuck at home with soap opera reruns when their friends are being lame and don't want to leave the house! GET HER ALONE! " Secondly a problem I keep coming up against is when you get chatting to two girls how do you get the one you like away from her mate? So many times I've had girls say 'I'd like to stay with you but I'm staying at my friends' or 'I've got to make sure my friend gets home ok' etc. etc. I get their number but end up going home alone, have you got any advice on what I can do here so the friend goes home alone instead?!" Yeah, this one is tricky - you need to be alone with a girl if you want to make something happen, and the constellation of two girls is often the most difficult one to break up. This will depend on a couple of factors though: Older girls (say, in their late 20s) often go out specifically to get laid. They have a lot of experience under their belt, they've already had a couple of relationships behind them and aren't naïve about dating anymore, and oftentimes they know exactly what they want and don't feel bad about going for it, the same way a guy would. The only reason they take a female friend along is to keep them company until they find a guy to go home with - in this case, cockblocking won't be much of a problem. If the girls are a lot younger or less experienced, however, they often don't realize that they're shooting themselves in the foot by making it hard on guys to make something happen. Same goes for girls who go out with their guy friends hoping to meet someone, never realizing that most guys are too shy to approach mixed groups. These girls usually go home disappointed and wondering what's wrong with them and why no guys came up to approach them - which should encourage you to approach mixed groups by the way, they're actually easier. It's also cultural - Caucasian girls often cockblock each other, whereas I've often seen Latinas help each other get laid. It's a quite interesting phenomenon. Cockblocking is almost always a sign of jealousy by the way, not protectiveness. Sometimes you can solve the problem by getting your girl herself to deal with the situation… if she's into you and you can frame the situation right, she may handle her friend - whereas other times, her objection is nothing but an excuse and she will only tell you that she has to stay with her friend as an easy way of rejecting you. Her body language will tell you which of the two it is more than her words will. Final words of advice: either do bring a "wingman" with you who can occupy your girl's friend, or simply steer clear of difficult situations - chances are there is another girl just as attractive who has better logistics that night. If you want to make sure you'll get laid TONIGHT, you should approach about five or six girls you like over the course of your evening, have a 15-20 minute conversation with each of them and then determine which one is most responsive and has the best logistics for going home together that evening. Then go back to that one and drive the ball across the finish line. GOING STAG: JUST DO IT In summation, going out by yourself really isn't a big deal, and it's mostly a psychological challenge. Practice your state independence Practice your state control Take baby steps, just go out to observe other people and get comfortable being out alone Realize that nobody's watching you, nobody knows you're out alone… and if they did know, they'd be jealous of the courage it takes Don't feel that you owe anyone an explanation - but if you must explain it, the truth works fine, so long as you come from a confident frame Talk to several different groups over the course of the night (or day) to find out which one has the best logistics Remember, going out alone is the best way for you to learn how to pick up a girl fast, and the best way to get results once you know what you're doing, period. So don't worry if it's a little scary - that scary side of it is all in your head!

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##[A59] How to Act when a Girl Rejects you Yesterday I went out with a guy I mentor, and he asked to watch me do some direct daytime approaches. "Sure, no problem," I told him. I scouted around for a while, and saw a really cute girl walking along, wearing a blue blouse and big sunglasses, apparently looking for a taxi, her cell phone in hand. Usually I don't go for women who are visibly occupied like that -- taxi-searching and texting / calling, as her headspace is going to be elsewhere -- but I wasn't seeing all that many cute girls around solo, so up I went. "I saw you walking here, and I had to come tell you," I began -- and she put her hand up and waved me off. "...that you're incredibly cute. I'm Chase," I finished. She waved me off again. I walked next to her, matching her stride. "What's your name, then?" I asked, sticking my hand in her direction. She smiled, turned her head away, and waved me off again. "I'm sure you've got to be called something," I said. "Your friends don't just call you this [I demonstrated waving], right?" She cracked a bigger smile, laughed, and kept walking. "There, that's more like it!" I said. "All right, we're making some progress. Smiling, laughing -- now we just need some actual 2-way communication going on." Again, she waved me off, smiling. "If you keep up like that, we're going to end up back at square one again!" I told her. She continued smiling, and turned her head away again. Now she was crossing the street, still looking for a taxi, her phone still in-hand. I let her go. "Well, it was nice getting to know you!" I called after her. My friend and mentee later asked me a good question off of this. His question was: "How do you deal with rejection like that?" The answer has a few parts, but it's a little more straightforward than you might think. THE AGONY OF REJECTION This is one of the most important points I stress with newer guys, because I realized the mentality in myself a few years back -- and then I noticed it in everyone else. Why's it hurt when a girl rejects you? Ever ask yourself? There's a fascinating term called metacognition. It is, roughly, thinking about thinking. When you sit and ask yourself, "Wait, why am I thinking this? Why do I feel this way?" you're thinking metacognitively. Wikipedia defines metacognition thusly: Metacognition variously refers to the study of memory-monitoring and self-regulation, meta-reasoning, consciousness/awareness and auto-consciousness/self-awareness. In practice these capacities are used to regulate one's own cognition, to maximize one's potential to think, learn and to the evaluation of proper ethical/moral rules. In other words, when you employ metacognition, you're becoming self-aware. When you turn the magnifying glass inward while you're feeling rejected, you'll notice fairly quickly why rejection stings: it's because you feel like this girl is saying you're not wanted. It's because she seems to be rejecting you. You've been deemed "not good enough." And that cuts to the very core of our egos and self-esteem. I realized this fully while going through a bad breakup with an ex-girlfriend. As I analyzed the breakdown of the relationship, I realized that she'd ended up feeling, by my own mistakes and actions, as if she "wasn't good enough" for me... as if I'd been saying that she was good, but I thought I could do better. And I realized this is one of the deepest, most soul-wrenching feelings a person can have; to feel that someone -- especially someone who knows her well -- has rejected her as unworthy at a very primal level. I got back together again for a time with that ex-girlfriend, for various reasons, but one of the primary ones being to go through a healing period; I wanted us to end on good terms, and I wanted her to understand it wasn't that she wasn't good enough for me. As I came to comprehend how viscerally she'd felt, it also opened my eyes about rejection in general. And I realized how the rejection men feel when women turn them down is a lesser form of the bad-breakup-rejection feeling: they feel like they've been found insufficient. That's why you see so many men get hurt and angry upon rejection. That's why men in Bangladesh throw acid on the faces of women who've rejected them; that's why men in some parts of Africa forcibly kidnap and rape women who turn them down as husbands. It feels insulting at a level that goes beyond almost anything else a person can experience. But the thing is -- that anger and insult is terribly misguided. Because it isn't you that a woman's rejecting -- it's your approach to her, your presentation of yourself, how you come across in that split second when she's first assessing you. It's not you. It's your game. IT'S NOT YOU -- IT'S YOUR "GAME" Ever have an off-day where everything you do goes to hell? And ever have an on-day where you've got the Midas touch -- where everything you come into contact with turns into gold? The same things happens with "game" -- with your approach and success with women. I like to use the example that you can go out and meet a girl on an off-day and she won't want to talk to you at all, but you could go out another day when everything's going your way and you're feeling great and meet the same girl and she'll be all over you. The point of that example is, you're the same, and she's the same, but her reactions are worlds apart, simply because you are feeling and acting differently. This is a pretty empowering thing to understand once you've got it. When a woman is rejecting you, she typically isn't rejecting "you." She doesn't know anything about you: your qualities, your history, your likes, your dislikes, how compatible you'd be for her or how compatible she'd be for you. It may be the fact that you would've been the most amazing man of her entire life -- and she dismissed you outright and missed out on the best thing she ever could've had. But that doesn't mean you ought to be angry with her for it. Nor does it mean you ought to feel ashamed for going up to talk to her. It just means you didn't come off the right way. What happens when you fail to strike the right tone with a girl? Any of the following can happen: She dismisses you reflexively on "autopilot," without thinking. She feels pressured and tries to run away. She feels annoyed or challenged and pushes back. She feels frightened or startled. She feels nervous or like you are "too much" for her. Nowhere in there does she take time to get to know you or consider you or find out if the two of you are a good match. She has no idea if you are or not. She's responding at an instinctual level to a gut-feeling; it's a knee-jerk reaction, and a self-reinforcing one -- once a woman's felt herself react a certain way, she tends to stick to it. This is why pre-opening tends to be so effective; it eases women into responding to you warmly first, before anything else happens. And when you jump into the interaction, she's going to stick to that early reaction and be warm with you. Even when we're not talking opening -- even later in an interaction, with a girl who, say, tells you she just wants to be friends -- again this is about gut-level feelings. The guy who gets told a girl just wants him as a friend failed to strike the right emotional, instinctual feelings an attractive guy strikes, and the girl pushed back. And that's what it's really all about. But now that you have an understanding of your own feelings and girls' feelings during a rejection, how do you use that understanding to deal with the situation a girl rejecting you? In fact, there are a few mindsets -- and a few actions -- that are going to take you a long way in dealing with it better and bouncing back after the fact. girl rejects you HOW TO ACT WHEN A GIRL REJECTS YOU A quick list of the key ways to improve your "resilience" -- the ability you have to bounce back from a rejection or a crash-and-burn with a cute girl: Understanding everything is a skill and you need to work on that kind of opening Understanding that what works for one type of girl in one situation won't always work for others Understanding that dating is a numbers game and you're going to have to collect some "no"s (sometimes a lot of "no"s!) before you start getting "yes"es I'll go through each of those in a little more detail. Everything is a skill. I've known guys who were amazing at opening, but couldn't get a girl in bed to save their lives. And I've known guys who were stellar closers, but couldn't open for jack. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle, admittedly more on the closer side of things -- opening I do all right, especially with certain kinds of women, but I'm a rather polarizing guy and I come off very strongly, which makes lots of girls feel a little nervous or intimidated around me initially without a nicer or more friendly wingman to take the edge off first, or if I don't properly pre-open. But once I'm in, things tend to go consistently very well. If women aren't opening, that means that's a skill you need to work on. You could be a movie-star-good-looking, Rhodes-scholarship-having, catch-of-the-century Mr. Right type of man, but if you haven't developed the skill to open you'll find yourself continually frustrated and floundering while approaching. Women don't open with any degree of consistency to men who haven't built up that skill. Further, it's situational, too. Most guys I know who do great in nightclubs struggle with daytime. Most guys I know who do great in daytime struggle in nightclubs. And guys who are great in-person can be atrocious online, and vice versa. Often it's just little tweaks they need to make to their approach if they're already pretty successful somewhere else; there's a moderately painful learning / adjustment curve as they acclimate to new opening conditions, but they quickly adapt and self-correct. And that brings us to our second point: what works for some girls in some situations won't always work for others. If you go direct on a very beautiful, confident girl, and you come on strong and powerfully, she may be flattered and excited to meet you. If you do the same thing to a girl who's only somewhat cute and not accustomed to that kind of attention, however, she may very well buckle under the pressure and bow out of the interaction early on. Similarly, if you try to play down your interest in a gorgeous girl when she clearly knows what's up, she'll think less of you, and if you are overly loud in a quiet area or too quiet in a loud area, there'll be a disconnect. When you find yourself opening well in some situations and not well in others, you need to make "tweaks": you need to find the situational differences and calibrate for them in your approach. The final piece of the puzzle is understanding that meeting girls really is quite often a numbers game. As you get comfortable in a certain environment and good at picking up signals, you tend to get better at picking out which girls are looking for what you have to offer and meeting them. Regardless where you are in your development though, it never stops being a numbers game. Even as your close rate goes up, you still need different women in play to have consistent success. Even as your base attraction increases, you still need to meet a number of women to find the ones who are most attracted to you, and most open to your advances. Some types of women are going to be low percentage opportunities; they just aren't likely to convert into anything substantial. The thing about a numbers game is... you need to put up numbers to see success. If you go out and meet four or five women, it's likely that may not turn into much unless you're opening highly targeted girls. But if you go out and meet fifteen, twenty, twenty-five women or more, chances are you're going to meet one or two girls things go well with. For me, back when I was frequently doing outings where I'd meet lots of girls, I found my rough hit rate to be about 1 out of 12. 1 out of every 12 girls I'd meet would really, really like me and be open for just about anything. That meant that on an average night, I'd have to talk to between 10 and 15 girls to find one I could move things forward with reliably. Understanding that changes things. It changes the way you look at opening, and the way you handle rejection. It allows you to go a long way toward beating approach anxiety, and it makes going out to meet girls a lot less stressful and a lot more fun. Because it's supposed to be fun. You know, lately, I've had a lot of people say this to me: "Life is serious." and I keep looking back at them and saying, "No. Trust me, life is not serious. I spent most of my life believing it was serious, but nowadays... we only get a handful of trips around the sun. I don't know about you, but I'm going to focus on doing the things I want to do while I'm here." So if you've been letting a few girls waving you off stop you from meeting the girls who'll positively jump at meeting you... knock it off. Life's short. Get out there, pay the women who don't want you no mind, and keep saying "hi" to girls until you find one who likes you as much as you like her. Oh, and as for how to act technically when a girl rejects you? Shrug. Laugh. Pretend to cry. Smack a mildly amused grin on your face and shrug your eyebrows, as if to say, "Does this girl really understand what she just missed out on?" (my personal favorite). Then go get back on the saddle and meet some more girls. Basically, just poke a little fun at the situation and then soldier on; because, remember... life's supposed to be fun. Let the dismissive people go dismiss each other, and go find the cool girls who want to get to know you.

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##[A60] How to Flirt with a Girl The other day I got told I was a very good flirt. And, I suppose, I am. Of course, I wasn't always a good flirt... well, perhaps I was always at least a little bit of a flirt. What's it matter if you know how to flirt with a girl or not? In fact, it matters a good deal. Flirting is how you arouse a girl's interest and make her start imagining the two of you getting together. And once you've gotten her thinking about it - and gotten her thinking about it in a fun, suggestive way - you're a lot closer to taking it out of her and your imagination and into the real world. In this post, we're going to focus on what most men do wrong when it comes to flirting with women, what the right mindsets are for a man who's a successful flirt, and what talented flirts do. So purse your lips and lower your eyelids a smidge; we're going to get flirty. CLUMSY FLIRTS: WHERE MOST MEN FAIL Did you know that babies flirt? If you didn't, no biggie; most folks don't. My mother likes to tell the story of how when I was a little infant, before I could walk, when she'd take me out in the stroller and go around the shopping mall in our town, I used to smile and coo at all the pretty girls who walked by, and I'd get very flirty with the ones who came over to admire me. Guess I started young. As it works out though, the majority of flirting done by small children is done by baby girls, and this trend only accelerates as children get older. Boys are running around and scuffling with each other and getting into messes; girls are talking and gossiping and looking at the boys and flirting. What that ends up producing is a whole lot of girls who are very good at flirting... and a whole lot of boys who aren't. Flirting just doesn't come second-nature to most men. As a result of this lack of experience with flirting, when most men try to flirt, it comes out clumsy and overly direct. Most men just don't really know how to be subtle, and they don't really know how to tease and excite women the way women know how to tease and excite men. And that, there, in subtlety, is one of the primary differences between many men's attempts at flirting, and women's successes with flirting. If you want to know how to flirt with a girl, subtlety and implication is going to be something you must learn. But flirting is made up of two halves, and the second half is nothing like the first: wit and chase frames make up the rest of the flirtation equation. Of course, just like most men lack subtlety, most men never think to use chase frames when flirting with women, and those two missing pieces - subtlety and chase frames - are the main reasons why most men fail at flirting. Once you start incorporating those pieces into your fliration repertoire, however, things change in a hurry. HOW TO FLIRT WITH A GIRL: THE HALVES OF FLIRTATION Men who flirt want women to be having fun, feeling a little teased and challenged - though not too much - and feeling turned on and excited. What a man does to make a woman feel that way can be boiled down to a few technical elements. We break flirting down like this: The Two Halves Subtlety and Implication Wit and Chase Frames Let's have a look how each plays into your flirting. Subtlety and Implication Most men's ideas of subtlety seem to be bluntly stating something outright, like, "I'll bet you look great in a thong." Yikes. By being subtle, what I mean of course is you want to fly under the radar and say things that imply what you mean, rather than state what you mean outright. So here's the typical man's way of flirting: Girl: I love thongs. Guy: I'll bet you look great in a thong. Ugh. There's no mystery there; no challenge. By being direct and obvious, this guy's robbed this exchange of all its fun. Here's the flirtatious man's more subtle response: Girl: I love thongs. Guy: Thongs do have a very nice way of accenting the female form. And another take on a reply using subtlety in response to the same statement: Girl: I love thongs. Guy: Oh really? Well, believe it or not, I love girls who love thongs. You should be able to feel the difference in subtlety between the first, clumsily obvious example, and the second and third far more implied statements. But think about this: the man is more or less saying in all three of them that he likes this girl, right? So why do the second and third replies - the subtle replies - feel so much more flirtatious? The reason why is implication. In that first example, it's stated outright that the man likes this girl in particular. In the second and third examples, the feeling is that he likes this girl as well - but rather than come out and state it, instead he implies it. When you imply things, rather than state them explicitly, it feels more exciting to women. The reason why is because there's a degree of "safe intrigue" in it; she feels comfortable and assured enough that you like her, but not so assured of it that she's bored with the lack of challenge. No, with an implication, there's enough intrigue and challenge to interest her, while still communicating enough of your desire for her to put her at ease with you and open herself up to the challenge that is you. "I'll bet you look great in a thong." This is the man stating outright that he likes the girl. There's no challenge in it; no standard to meet. All his cards are on the table and he's easy to get. It's utterly uninteresting and uninspiring, and a woman spending time with a man who talks like this will get bored quickly. "Thongs do have a very nice way of accenting the female form." This is the man saying he likes the looks of women in thongs - implying, though not out-and-out stating, that he'd like this girl too, if she wore a thong. He's interested, but not a pushover who's going to stand there drooling over a girl. "Oh really? Well, believe it or not, I love girls who love thongs." This is the man implying that he'd love this girl too - assuming, of course, that she loved thongs (which she's just stated that she does). Again, he's interested, but not a pushover. Tonality and facial expressions are as important as ever here. The difference between a man saying, "Thongs do have a very nice way of accenting the female form," in a neutral tone with neutral facial expressions, and a man saying the same thing in a sexy voice tone with a suggestive, alluring look about him, is miles apart. Check out the post on "How to be a Sexy Man" for more on adopting the traits of sexy men. A final note on subtle, implied flirting: if you notice those last two replies, they both communicate the man has standards and imply the woman has met them, while the first reply does no such thing, instead communicating blind attraction. Women don't want a man who's blindly attracted to any girl with decent enough looks; there are lots of girls out there like that. Women want a man who's attracted to them, and communicating that you have standards, and that they've met them, and that that is the reason why you're interested in them, is how you show them it's them themselves you're attracted to, and not just a pretty face with no thought to the woman behind it. Wit and Chase Frames Flirting is supposed to be fun. That's why wit is such an important element to flirting well with women. There are plenty of witty things to say with regards to that thong example we used earlier (e.g., I'd probably say something like, "And I love snapping girls' thongs against their butts when they have them on"), but let's change up examples just to keep things fresh. Let's use massages on this one. Let's say a girl says, "Nothing beats a good massage." Here's our standard guy's reply: Girl: Nothing beats a good massage. Guy: I'm pretty good at giving massages myself, actually. Another ugh for that one. Now let's see how a guy with a little wit might reply to that massage statement: Girl: Nothing beats a good massage. Guy: Shall I stand on your back later? Another potential response: Girl: Nothing beats a good massage. Guy: Well, that depends... who's giving the massage, a beautiful woman, or a woman who looks like grandma? The difference here should be even more apparent than the difference between an average reply and a subtle / implicit reply. The average reply in this example features the man trying to prove himself to the woman and match himself up to her standards; the witty replies feature the men giving the girl a friendly ribbing and, in the second witty reply, showing off, in polite fashion, the man's interest in beautiful women - an attractive trait (women like men with a healthy sex drive and the confidence to be tactfully honest about it). Wit - again, when combined with sexy tonality and facial expressions and a powerful way of carrying oneself - takes pressure off an interaction and keeps it from getting too serious. Strive for balance, needless to say; if she's laughing her head off the whole time, that may be good, if you're chase framing the living daylights out of her, but otherwise you'll be working too hard and setting yourself up as the entertainer guy. Instead, keep interactions flowing smoothly, and hovering right around the middle, mixing deep dives with chase frames and flirty banter. And that brings us to, of course, the chase frames, with an example being such as where you clearly and obviously pretend to be clueless or confused about a woman's intentions, or what she's doing or saying, or what not, in order to tease her by positioning yourself as the more "innocent" party, while positioning her as the pursuer. Chase frames look like this: Girl: Nothing beats a good massage. Guy: Trying to seduce me by offering massages? You see how this can quickly set a fun, sexy dynamic. The conversation might continue like this: Girl: No! Guy: Good, because it won't work. Here's another example: Girl: I love thongs. Guy: Don't try to make me think about you in thongs. By twisting everything she says a little bit to position her as the pursuer chasing after you and trying to entice you and turn you on, you make the interaction very fun, lively, and sexual. This is flirtation at its best - lighthearted, carefree, and very exciting for women. PUTTING YOUR FLIRTING TOGETHER When you put both the halves together -subtlety and implication, and wit and chase frames - what you get is pure dynamite for seduction. I'll give a final sample flirtation: Girl: What do you do for fun? Guy: I'm not sure if I should tell you that. What do you do for fun? Girl: I asked you first! Guy: You don't want to tell me? Maybe it's something you're ashamed of. So now here, we're using some wit and some subtlety to imply that it's something sexual she does for fun. Girl: That doesn't make sense! I asked you first. Guy: All right, I'll bite. I like to tease bad little girls who won't tell me what they do for fun. Girl: Too bad there aren't any bad little girls around here. Guy: Yes there are! There's one at this table, in fact. Again, we use subtlety and implication - the guy is saying he likes teasing bad little girls, without outright stating that she is the bad little girl. Then he says there's one at the table - the implication is it's her, of course - but refrains from pointing and saying, "You!" He uses a general statement to imply a specific instance (that particular girl). This is how implication works. Girl: Okay, you got me. I am a bad little girl. Guy: I know. It's obvious. You've been trying to seduce me since Day 1. Thank God we met somewhere public. Girl: [laughs] Guy: So seriously though, what do you do for fun? Paint, draw, calligraphy...? Finally, we end with a chase frame, and then cut the silly stuff and get back to connecting. You don't want to overdo flirtation, and that's as much an essential element to knowing how to flirt with a girl as all the primary elements are. Keep it fun, but use it in moderation. Boring guys are overt and don't really flirt. Annoying guys over-flirt and go over the top with excessive flirtation. Cool, sexy guys who get the girl? They flirt just right. Work on getting your flirtation down, and you'll be flirting just right, too. And girls will laugh, and smile, and touch you for it, and they'll be very glad they ended up spending the time with you they did.

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##[A61] Think in Numbers: talking to lots of girls If you've ever looked at a pretty girl and suddenly felt a surge of nervousness at the idea of going to say hi to her, you'll get something out of this article. Because what you were doing when you felt that nervousness was you weren't thinking in numbers. Most men who are successful with women have a number of similar traits you can distill and learn from. One of those traits is thinking in numbers. That is to say, thinking to themselves not, "I'm going to go meet that girl… I hope she likes me!" but rather, "I'm going to go meet every cute girl I see, until I find one who likes me." That difference in thinking about women while out to meet women has a tremendously big impact on levels of anxiety, anticipation, and desire to actually meet new women. The guy who is focused on meeting that one pretty girl he's looking at and hoping against all hope that it goes very well is going to be bursting with self-imposed pressure. He's betting all his chips on this girl; it's do well, or go home. But the guy who's out to keep meeting women he likes until he finds one who meets him back - that guy who's thinking in numbers - for him, meeting any one new girl is not much of a big deal. She's one of twenty or thirty or forty women he'll meet that day or that night - she's just another girl. Thinking in numbers applies to all aspects of your relations with women - meeting them, dating them, getting intimate with them, building and maintaining your relationships with them. You should always strive to think in numbers, because thinking in numbers has some profoundly positive effects on how you interact with women and the kinds of results you get from them. Look at these contrasts. First, how a guy who doesn't think in numbers is when he goes out to meet women: Worries anxiously about whether the girl he wants to talk to will like him and respond well to him May very well be crippled by nervousness and not even go talk to her at all Is quickly demoralized by setbacks and women not responding as well as he'd hoped, and gives up easily Acts needy and insecure, and supplicates to women because he is afraid of rejection and failure Fails to push too hard, hit escalation windows, and do anything edgy or sexual in the fear that it will backfire and his girl won't like him - so instead he plays it safe Goes home empty-handed, angry, and feeling like he'll never get girls And, how a guy who thinks in numbers is while out meeting women: Is free from worrying about whether any given girl reacts a certain way to him Confidently approaches women he likes - he knows that the more of them he meets, the more of them he'll hit it off with and bring into his life Remains energized despite early setbacks, because he knows sometimes you have to meet a lot of women to find the one you'll hit it off with Behaves naturally and confidently and seems secure in his person, because he isn't overly concerned about what women think about him Oozes the kind of charm, sexiness, and edginess that women love, because he's focused on putting himself out there and finding the women who respond to him and will do what he wants to do, rather than trying to please one woman he doesn't know very well Goes home either with a girl, or content in the knowledge that soon he'll go out and meet many more women - success will be his as soon as he meets enough girls Some fairly substantial contrasts, right? Should be pretty darn obvious which is the superior mindset. So how do you train yourself to think this way? I certainly didn't always - although I certainly do now. One way to train yourself to think this way is consciously reminding yourself of it - and then sticking to your plan. Go out and force yourself to meet twenty or thirty or forty women in an outing. Move quickly from girl to girl, looking for the ones who will show you a lot of attraction and will invest in you rapidly. If they won't invest in you soon, or act too aloof, keep moving and keep meeting new women. You can still get those girls - the ones who are slow to invest, and the ones who act aloof - but for this exercise, it's better to focus on finding the fish that are biting, rather than the fish that you have to try different baits and tackles with. Make use of the skills you already have developed to show yourself this mindset is the correct one and you can find girls who will go on a date or go home with you. If you catch yourself feeling nervous, just remind yourself that this girl is the first (or fourth) of a long line of women you'll be meeting today. So go up and say hi, and get on with it. You'll thank yourself later (after girl number twenty-seven agrees to go home with you!).

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##[A62] Troubleshooting your Opening Had a discussion with a friend of mine the other day where he asked me if I ever got the scenario of walking up to a girl, engaging her, and having her blankly stare at me and not respond. He asked because he wondered what it meant - in other words, what he might be doing wrong. And it touched on something I'd been thinking about recently: on how perceptions of "rejection" change as your understanding of women evolves. Five years ago, I took any form of non-engagement by a girl I'd started speaking to as a deep, personal rejection. It was as though she had assessed my person and found me unworthy. I felt hurt and insulted. Nowadays, I recognize that reaction I used to have for what it was: a combination of a lack of understanding of women, and a lack of any kind of abundance mentality. Because the world is not so simple as I assumed it was back then. These days, I have much greater success when first opening new girls than I used to have. My opening is more streamlined, and more consistent. I have techniques I've cobbled together that aid me in opening; some, like pre-opening I've talked about in articles on here, and others, like soft opens I expand more on in my upcoming book How to Make Girls Chase. But of course, I still have plenty of women who fail to engage when I open them. No matter how confident and charming and attractive you are, there are always going to be (lots!) of women who won't open. That's life. But how you interpret those instances can have a big effect on how hard you push yourself to succeed with women, and how much you believe in yourself. Here's an illustration of what I'm talking about: Let's say you have two men. Hector believes that when women fail to open, it's because they think he isn't good enough for them. Eduardo believes that when women fail to open, it's because they are intimated by him or are not in a very social mood. Now let's say both men go out one day to go meet a few girls; both men find that none of the first three women they talk to open to them. How are they likely to respond? Most likely, Hector is going to take this personally, assume that women are saying he isn't so attractive today, and feel bad and call it quits for now. And most likely, Eduardo is going to assume he's just run into a bunch of girls who were too quiet or intimidated or head-in-the-clouds to receive him warmly, or he might realize he was coming off a little too loud for the environment he was in and needed to tone it down a bit, and he'll keep meeting girls until he finds one who isn't intimidated by him or who responds to his adjusted energy level. Same scenario. Markedly different results. Nothing is different about the external circumstances; everything stays the same. But, internally, we see very different things. The guy who takes it all personally believes that women are making a value judgment against him. He believes women are saying, "Sorry pal, you ain't good enough." On the other hand, the guy who doesn't take it personally keeps a more level-headed view of things. He attributes some of it to his own actions, and some of it to the individual woman. If a girl is intimidated by him, for example, it's probably because she's a little meeker than some women are. At the same time, he knows he can do a better job in the future of toning it down for women like her, so he's still learning. The guy who took things personally was too hurt to learn these finely tuned details, and instead is more likely to focus on drastically overhauling himself, throwing out the old and changing everything in an effort to do better with women. He doesn't know what the problem is, so he tries to change everything. Needless to say, even if he manages to solve that original problem (somehow), he's going to be faced with a bevy of new problems resulting from his new way of doing things. He's going to struggle until he really gets a handle on what he needs to correct. Fact is, if you've handled your fundamentals - things like posture, eye contact, voice tone, nonverbal communication, fashion, being strong and confident and not supplicating… all that stuff; if you've handled that, you're going to be more attractive than almost any guy out there. Your problem with women - whatever the problem - is not a value problem. Which means it must be something else. If you're in the habit, as many men are, of questioning your value after feeling "rejected" - of asking yourself, "Man, if she doesn't want me, what kind of men does she want?" then I suggest you just straight up stop that, and start questioning her. What kind of mood is she in; is she intimidated by you; if so, why do you think; could she have been lost in space? There are a bunch of reasons why a woman might not open to you, and very few of them have to do with her judging you to be an unacceptable candidate for becoming her lover. Keep these questions in mind, and ask them of yourself whenever a girl fails to open: Was she intimidated by me? Am I too strong or too attractive for her to feel like she can get, or more strong or attractive than the kind of man she's accustomed to dating? Was she distracted and not prepared to engage socially when I approached her? Was my opener poorly chosen or my energy level not properly matched to hers? Was I hesitant at all during the open? Did my opener feel natural as I said it? Was my body language good? Did I make an effort to engage her despite the opener not immediately opening her up? If you ask yourself these, you'll very quickly come to a sharp, clear picture of what exactly you're doing wrong, and you'll avoid the crushing feeling of thinking a woman is judging your value and finding it unworthy - because that's rarely the case.

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##[A63] Girls: Silly and Cute Don't forward this post to any feminists. There's a lot of animosity among men in the West toward women these days, and a lot of it, I'm quite sure, ties back to the efforts women have made to change their image. Fifty years ago in America, if you watch old television shows, women are quite often depicted as silly and cute; they did and said the darnedest things, and men would look upon them with expressions that said, without words, "Aw.. ain't she just so silly and cute?" Nowadays, a woman being depicted that way on television, and a man looking at a woman that way, would be demonized as outdated and humiliating. "Women need to be taken seriously," we're told; "that's the only way they'll be treated as equals." So most men in the West no longer view women as silly and cute. Instead, they view them as scary, intimidating creatures who will bite their heads off should they dare to view women as anything less than ferocious beasts and equals; "men in skirts", if you will. And, as a result, men resent women. They complain about them, harbor negative feelings toward them, and think poorly of them. And as a result of that resentment men harbor for women, women come to resent men. They complain about not being able to find a decent guy, relationships breaking down everywhere, and not even being able to find a guy they're interested in sleeping with. THE UNAFFECTED MAN There are, however, a few men who don't buy into the message that women should be viewed as and treated like men in skirts. Mainly, these are the men who've unplugged - who've quit TV, stopped reading magazines, and largely removed themselves from pop culture. If you haven't done this yet, I recommend you do. Unplugging is one of the best things you can do for your mindset. It allows you to start thinking for yourself and stop thinking whatever the dominant mainstream culture in your society thinks. Because generally, dominant mainstream culture caters to average people; and I very much doubt that anyone reading this blog aspires to an average existence. So yes, unless you want to feel weak and frustrated and confused like most men portrayed on television are, I recommend you do yourself a favor and unplug from that acculturation device, and step away from movies and music with crappy messages too. I sat and thought about it for a moment, and I realized I don't know a single strong, independent-minded dude who watches TV, in fact. TV's the worst for free thought; radio is number 2. Movies, at least, you can pick and choose what you watch. For instance, I've had a few girls try and get me to watch a movie called She's Out of My League with them; the title of the movie alone already makes it sound like something filled with the kind of thinking I don't want being beamed into my skull. I was thinking about this last night as I sat at a bar looking at a table full of girls dressed in skimpy little Santa suits for Christmas day. I smiled and laughed a little and thought how cute and silly those girls were. Then I stopped for a moment, and thought about how most guys would react at seeing a table full of girls dressed in skimpy Santa outfits with their legs and the tops of their breasts on display; most guys, I thought, would probably think, "Wow, oh my God, those girls are so hot and sexy!" And I found this thought kind of funny too. Later I was sitting at another bar in the same nightclub, on the upstairs level. There were two girls sitting a few seats down from me, making out with each other for a picture. I smiled and thought about how silly and cute they were. Then I thought about the Santa girls earlier, and realized that most guys would probably be flipping out if they saw the two girls making out that I was watching. Why is this? It ties back partially to having an abundance mentality, in part; when sexy girls are a part of your life, they stop seeming so amazing. It also ties to being used to pretty girls doing sexy things; once you've seen it enough times, it stops being so mind-blowingly incredible and just becomes something you've seen a hundred times already. So part of it's just exposure. What it really comes down to, though, is being able to smile at girls' antics and think to yourself, "Girls are so silly and cute." Because, heck - they are! Girls do the silliest, cutest things - they dress up trying to look cute and sexy, in silly little outfits; they're kind of clumsy, and drop things or run into things or break their heels; they scream and yell and make a lot of noise and dance and generally act like little kids trapped in grown people's bodies. Girls are silly and cute. HOW THIS MENTALITY HELPS YOU I actively worked to develop this mentality in myself. A few years back, when I didn't have it, I'd make myself watch girls doing crazy things, force myself to smile or laugh a little bit, and think to myself that girls were silly and cute. These days, I genuinely do smile and laugh, and genuinely do think girls are silly and cute. Training myself to do so helped me get there. This mentality is actually immensely helpful. The same girls whose sarcasm or aloofness scares off lesser men seem silly and cute to you with this mentality, and you treat them as such, and they respond as such. It actually sets up the proper dynamic that should exist between men and women: you, the man, see a girl dismissing weaker men left and right, and think to yourself, "She's so silly and cute," and you treat her like she's silly and cute when she tries being dismissive to you, and she melts and treats you like the strong, self-assured man she realizes you are. You were the only guy to see through her tough girl façade and treat her like the girl she is. You're also better prepared to shrug off minor indiscretions. If a girl makes a mistake, or says or does something mildly offensive, it doesn't bother you and you chalk it up to her just being a silly girl. When she tries to apologize, you dismiss it, because you know she was just being a girl and it doesn't really matter. This is one of those things that might be considered an "intangible" in seduction. You don't see immediate results that you can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, "Okay, this and this and that happened because of my ‘girls are silly and cute' mentality;" rather, you see an overall improvement of your comfort with women and their attitudes in their treatment of you. So, should you see any girls dressed as sexy Santas this holiday season, it's my suggestion to you that rather than bug your eyes out and think, "Oh my God, those girls are so hot!" instead, you look at them, let a sly smile spread slowly across your face, and think to yourself, "Girls are so silly and cute." You'll get yourself thinking about things the right way - and I promise, except maybe for a few of the feminists, all the rest of the girls you meet will like it. But actually, so long as you don't go and tell them what you're thinking, I'm betting those feminists will like you treating them like you think they're silly and cute too.

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##[A64] How Girls show Interest Women are subtle in how they show interest. Well, by male standards, anyway. Even when women think they are blatantly obvious, they're quite often being very subtle by male standards. Learning to tell how girls show interest is a very valuable skill for a man, because it will allow him to operate with greater assurance he's making the right move at the right time, and will also allow him to pick up the pace when a woman signals she is ready. The last couple of girls I slept with surprised me a little at how quickly they were ready to get together. They gave me some hints that probably would've seemed fairly subtle; a friend of mine remarked that one of the girls I took home and bedded rather quickly quite recently hadn't even seemed to be terribly interested in me, and that it just looked like we were having a good conversation. Being able to read the signals they gave me was the main reason I moved as quickly with them as I did. MIXED MESSAGES, UNMIXED Probably one of the more confusing things for men about how women show interest is when women appear to be sending "mixed messages" - when they do something that makes it seem they're interested, then do something that makes it seem like they're being challenging or aloof. It's important to understand why this happens. Remember that for women, saving face is extremely important, no matter where in the world you are. A woman's social reputation is tied to her desirability to men and her choosiness; there is little more damaging to a woman's reputation than for her to be seen throwing herself at a man who won't take her. Because of this, women's efforts to show men they're interested are often couched within efforts to seem aloof or disinterested. For instance, a girl may tell a guy, "Wow, we're so similar," then proceed to act distracted or look away. The guy may scratch his head, wondering if that means she likes him or not. This is probably the most common way you will see women expressing interest in you; they'll give you a hint, then stuff it under sarcasm or aloofness. There is a secret to understanding these scrambled messages women send though - it's like a secret decoder ring for woman-speak. Here it is: If a woman implies she is interested in you, you should accept the statement as a sign of interest and ignore sarcasm, aloofness, or feigned distraction as simply her efforts to protect her reputation in the event you do not feel the same or do not take action to lead her to a satisfactory conclusion. In other words, it's her insurance policy. By not throwing all her chips in by being completely overt about her interest, she allows herself some wiggle room to later say, "Oh, I wasn't really interested in him, I was just kidding," if things don't work out. Which means, of course, that your ears should perk up the instant you hear something that implies a girl is interested in you - then, pick up the pace and start moving things forward as quickly as possible (but, needless to say, wait a moment before springing to action - you must always have your actions seem your own, as opposed to being reactions to something the girl has done. Even a small pause of three or four seconds can sometimes be enough - just give yourself a little time and be very casual, nonchalant, and natural about things). CAPITALIZING ON GIRLS SHOWING YOU INTEREST The primary reason why I have been having fast liaisons with women these days is because I am getting these little subtle signs of interest and I am capitalizing on them quickly. I'm not just moving things forward with any girl (well, usually, anyway… I had a night in Manila where I was grabbing pretty much every girl in the venue to go sit with me in one spot or another, but then, I wasn't entirely sober that night); I'm pinging different girls whom I like the looks of, and moving things forward with the ones who respond warmly. The girl I slept with quickly on our first date the other day, I hadn't been expecting to do that with. I thought we were going to go and grab some food at a restaurant. But she got a weird look on her face when she saw me as I reached her car, and when we got in she asked me if I wanted to go to my place or drive around. It was kind of a strange question for her to ask, just because girls don't usually ask that kind of thing, so I said my place, and we went upstairs, and she got into a position on my sofa with her body facing very directly and very openly toward me, so I read that as her being desirous of fast intimacy with me, and I took her quickly to bed. You must get in the habit of responding this way to interest women show you; often they will show it to you only once, maybe twice, and never again. You don't get second chances with lustful women. They can quickly be hurt or upset that you did not want them when they offered themselves to you, and will close themselves up to protect their feelings, pride, and reputation. I had a girl in Seoul, South Korea back in July that I lost from not capitalizing on the interest she showed me. She was such a great girl to me - she took me to her favorite restaurant in town, treated me to dinner, walked with me to a tea place, paid for the tea as well, and even offered to drive me back to the apartment I was staying at. She asked me if my friend would be home at his apartment (he wasn't) - something that'd be brutally blatant for a girl to say in any culture, but especially one that can be as reserved as South Korea's (if you're wondering why, there's really only one reason a girl would start wondering whether anyone else would be in your apartment or if you'd be alone there). I gave her only a half-assed effort to get her upstairs with me when we arrived at the apartment though, and needless to say she didn't come. I felt awful by the time I'd arrived upstairs - this girl who by her own account hadn't had a lover since she broke up with her boyfriend nearly a year ago, this beautiful girl, who'd been so excited about seeing me and had told all her officemates about me, had made it as clear as she could have that she wanted to accompany me upstairs and have me as her lover that night, and I let her down. I let her down after she'd bought me dinner at her favorite restaurant and bought me tea at a very nice little tea place and shown me around town and driven me home so I didn't have to pay a taxi or ride the subway. She of course flaked on the date we'd had set up for the next weekend, and didn't return any of my phone calls or text messages, not replying to me at all until I sent her an email after I'd left Korea. The girl I slept with this past Sunday also asked me if I had a roommate as we drove back to my apartment, and even confirmed. "No friend in your apartment?" she double-checked prior to us going upstairs. I made sure I didn't let her down. I've taken these two rules for myself, and I recommend you take them for yourself as well. They've been serving me quite well since I adopted them: Shift gears and throw your seduction into overdrive when a girl gives you a nudge implying she likes you a lot or is thinking about intimacy. If a girl feels she has to help you out and drop hints, that's basically her way of saying, "Okay, enough chit-chat, let's get down to business." She's ready, she's made her decision, and she needs you to step things up and make it happen. Persist harder and more confidently when you've gotten signals. I might let something go if a girl hasn't signaled to me she's interested (or I might not; depends on my mood, my sex drive at the moment, and how much I like the girl), but if she's signaled to me she's interested, I will not let things slip through anymore like I did with that girl in Korea (and quite a few others littered throughout my past… poor lonely disappointed women. Apologies to all the girls who counted on me for a wonderful night and I let them down by being oblivious to their signals). I will persist in asking her to accompany me until she's said no eight or ten or twelve times - which, when it comes to girls who've signaled to you they want things to progress, almost never happens. You usually won't get to eight times - they say yes at two or three. A few examples of things a girl might do that should serve as a strong signal to you she's interested: She says you'd make a great couple, you look good together, anything like that She says you're handsome or sexy She asks you where you live, especially if it comes at an unusual time in the conversation or out of the middle of nowhere She asks if you live alone or with friends or roommates, and especially if she asks if they are home right now She focuses more of her attention on you, especially if you've been quiet or other people are competing for her attention, but she's still devoting a lot of attention to you She does something physically suggestive, like taking your arm and putting it around her or taking your hand and putting it on her, or putting her hand or legs on you She buys you food or buys you a drink And, a few examples of things a girl might do immediately following one of these signals that you ought to just ignore outright: Turn and start talking to her friends Crack a joke or make a lame cover up (e.g., "You're so handsome. Ah, I think I just say that to every guy I meet!") Act distracted or aloof; start looking around, break eye contact, etc. Get quiet Get uncomfortable (e.g., "Well, I should probably go" - most likely if she was hoping you were going to do something, then felt jilted that you didn't - when this happens, stop her and save her night!) If a girl shows interest in you, then does something like one of the above, ignore it and proceed with her anyway. For instance, she says, "You're so handsome. Or maybe I'm just drunk." You say, "Nah, I'd be handsome even if you were sober. Come on, let's go grab a seat." The more I pay attention, the more surprised I am at how many apparently blatant signals women throw at men that they're interested and want to move things forward. Like, women signal this stuff a lot. I just spent a minute scanning back over every girl I can remember enough details about the conversation prior to us getting together, and, hmm… maybe 70% of them gave me some kind of rather strong indication prior to us getting together that they wanted to? And those are the ones that kinda sorta registered, and I'm just now scanning back and realizing were rather obvious signals they wanted to get together. There might have been all kinds of other ones that didn't register at all, from both those girls and other ones I didn't register any from that I'm counting in the 30% negatives. Really wasn't even fully cognizant of this stuff until maybe early summer this year, and I wasn't capitalizing on it consistently until maybe even a couple of months ago; I was sensing it but only capitalizing on it inconsistently prior, and before early summer I was just kind of bludgeoning my way around, relying on a rough sense of timing based on past experience of how fast pulls went. Of course, how fast your pulls went a year ago is not going to be close to how fast your pulls go right now if you've been making steady progress. I'm only starting to realize how fast I can pull now that I'm recognizing these signals from girls. I've been surprised fairly often lately; I'll be sitting there, thinking, "Okay, now I'll get the girl to tell me some stuff about her past, and then…" and suddenly she will say something that amounts to, "Are you going to take me home already?" and I'm caught thinking to myself, "Wait, what? Did I hear this correctly? No, she can't possibly… well, I'm going to be mad at myself if I don't try. All right, here goes." And then we get together and I'm pleasantly surprised at how quickly it all went down. Jesus, why did it take me so long to see these? So many disappointed women I left in the past… I feel like going and sitting in the corner with my dunce cap on. Seriously, start paying attention to what women are telling you and how girls show interest; you may be surprised how fast they're ready to do something with you. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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##[A65] How to Approach a Girl wherever you are (easily) Lately I've been noticing a fair amount of guys discussing difficulty approaching women while looking smooth and effortless. Some of the time, they're ending up not approaching girls they like at all, because they can't find the "right angle" or they're waiting for the "right moment," and that moment never comes. Approaching girls is a bit of an art, but how to approach a girl is not - that you can boil down to distinct bits, pieces, and learnable, repeatable steps. However, it's also a topic that's shrouded in a lot of general, generic advice and scads of "Just do this [hard-sounding thing] and the girl is yours!" Before we get into the mechanics on how to approach a girl, a few articles to recommend checking out if you haven't already done so (or, are in need of a refresher): Overcoming Approach Anxiety (combatting nervousness prior to approaching) Move Faster (a basic but under-discussed tenet of good game) Reactions vs. Results (a mistake loads of men make - confusing reactions from women for results with women) How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need (a broad overview of the mentality you'll need to have and the situations you'll run into in the modern dating environment) The Law of Least Effort and Sprezzatura (the big impact that the appearance of effort has on how attractive you are to women and the kind of results you get) We'll be using and referring to these principles here - if you're vague or unfamiliar with any of them, make sure you give these a look. That in mind, let's get you armed up with a process for approaching that takes advantage of the situation and the environment and has you meeting girls as easily as possible, as smoothly as possible, and with the best end point possible (the girls you meet wanting to meet up with you again and exchanging contact details with you - or better). And we'll do all that with the 4 big mistakes that men make when approaching - and the 10 steps to take to have a near-perfect approach. approach a girl There are four (4) categories of mistakes the average guy makes in his approaching - and there's no need to feel bad about it if you catch yourself doing them, as they're all quite common. The categories are: Waiting for the "Right Moment" Not Being Aggressive Enough Being TOO Aggressive Not Closing Things Out Well We'll take a brief look at each of these categories and how they can trip you up just below. #1: WAITING FOR THE "RIGHT MOMENT" Are there really some moments and some angles that are better for approaching women than others? Yes, there certainly are. Is it prudent to wait for these when you're still learning how to approach a girl? No, it certainly is not. Why not though? What it comes down to is the expert eye. Throw a pro baseball player up at bat, and he can sit back and not swing at pitches he knows aren't good. But then, when a great pitch comes along, he spots it a mile away and swings and connects and knocks it out over the fence. Throw a rookie up at bat though, and tell him it's fine to sit back and wait for the right pitch to come along, and he'll collect strike outs all day long. What's the difference? The pro's already paid his due and swung at thousands of different pitches - and his brain's learned how to tell the difference. The rookie may think he knows - but he doesn't... otherwise, he wouldn't pass up so many choice pitches. There's another problem with rookies too: Self-doubt, Second thoughts, and Hesitation. That means, even if a rookie thinks he's seeing a good pitch, his brain switches into gear and asks, "Wait - is this actually a good pitch? Or is it a bad pitch and I'm mistaking it for a good one? Maybe I ought to just hold off on this one and see." And whoosh - another great pitch goes screaming by. The expert eye isn't just about screening bad angles and moments out. It's also about screening good angles and good moments in, and capitalizing on them. When you're still relatively new - even if you're intermediate - you haven't developed either the eye OR the capacity for snapping into action after sitting and waiting. Nothing is really "clear" to you until you've swung at thousands of pitches (or, approached thousands of women). So, until you have several thousand approaches under your belt, remember this: you do not have the luxury of waiting for the "right moment." Find the right girl - the one you want to approach - and just approach (we'll talk more about the mechanics of approaching below). And worry about the details later. #2: NOT BEING AGGRESSIVE ENOUGH If you ask me, this is one of the biggest problems men face in sorting out how to approach a girl properly - they finally muster up the steel to go meet some pretty girl, and then they, a big ball of nerves, throw the ball continually in her court and leave it up to her to figure out what happens. Bad mix for successful approaching. Here's what an unaggressive (bad) approach looks like: Guy: Hi there... I saw you walking here and had to come tell you, I think you're really cute. I'm Bill. Girl: Oh! Hi Bill! Guy: So, uh... what are you up to today? Girl: I was just on my way to meet some friends for lunch. Guy: Cool. [awkward pause] Girl: ... and what are you doing out here on the street? Guy: Oh, I'm just going to meet some friends too. Girl: Okay. [awkward pause] Well, I guess I should go. Guy: Okay - see you! Now, pausing, properly used, is good (see: "Using the Pregnant Pause"). Awkward pausing, however, is bad... and plenty of guys do it plenty. That's usually because they're nervous with women - which is understandable; they're inexperienced. But it doesn't help their approaching any. Instead, your aim when approaching a girl needs to be to move things along smoothly and briskly - from first meet to contact detail exchange (or invitation to accompany you some where on an instant date, if you're using one). We'll get into doing this a lot more effectively below when we discuss building an approach process you can lean on to consistently meet girls easily - for now, I want to point out the error - that if you're continually throwing the ball in the girl's court, it usually won't go anywhere. You're the man. You must lead. #3: BEING TOO AGGRESSIVE This one's less common, though you'll see it more frequently with darker skinned guys - black guys, Latinos, Mediterranean guys, and men from India and the Middle East. Like not being aggressive enough, being TOO aggressive is also a rookie mistake - although it's a better rookie mistake than a lack of aggression, because the failure here comes through trying hard and not succeeding, rather from not trying out of nervousness or fear (and, consequently, having a harder time really knowing where the mistake is and not improving as quickly). Being too aggressive in how you approach a girl can range anywhere from the very first thing you say to her, like catcalls - "Damn, girl, that is one fine set of legs you got on you! Come on over here and say hello - don't be shy!" Or it can be things you say to her during the conversation - Guy: What's your name, baby? Girl: Tiffany. Guy: Tiffany... that is a beautiful name, like a Tiffany's necklace. Your mama picked that name out for you? Girl: Actually, it was my grandmother's. Guy: All right, all right. So what's a gorgeous girl like you doing sitting all by her lonesome in a coffee shop like this? Girl: I'm just taking a break from work... that's all. Guy: Work? Let me tell you... a woman who looks like you should be IMMUNE from having to work! It's a CRIME that you should have to work! But where do you work, anyway? Girl: You know, I'd really just rather relax a little bit and have my coffee and then get back to work. Sorry... I'm just not in a very social mood today. Guy: Okay, I get you, it's all right. Tell you what, why don't you and me plan on meeting up again when you ARE in a more social mood - say after work tonight or tomorrow? Girl: I can't. Sorry. It was nice meeting you! Guy: Okay, okay. I'll talk to you later, girl. Oh, but actually- Girl: No - I really can't. Guy: Okay, okay. Later. Here, the error is in being too forward about how impressed you are with her / her looks, etc., without her having done anything to earn that kind of reception yet. There's no "courtship dance" here - it's more like a courtship bludgeoning. This does work sometimes - but only with girls who were sold on you before you ever said "hello," and normally only with women who are lower than you on the looks and status scales. By being too aggressive, you won't miss out on dating entirely, like the guy who isn't aggressive enough often will - but you will most likely end up only dating down. We'll talk more about being smooth in your approach when we get into details later in this post. #4: NOT CLOSING THINGS OUT WELL Ever approach a girl and have things go great, only to have the end drag out and drag out to the point the whole interaction ended up ruined? That's a failure to close things out well. approach a girl It's great when you hit the ball hard and send it flying out over the field, but if you just stand there at home plate holding onto the bat, you're going to end up "out." You've got to close things out quickly and properly after you hit the ball - drop the bat and run for first base. Same deal with approaching. If you pull off a great approach, and you aren't used to doing this, you may well end up standing around amazed and impressed with yourself. "Wow - I'm in a really good conversation with a really hot girl!" Stay too impressed too long though and you'll end up like the guy who just stands there holding the bat watching the ball he hit soar up over the field. When the ball comes back down and they throw it to home, he's going to be "out." And when the approach has run its course and you've dawdled for too long and not closed things out (either by getting the girl's phone number or by moving her somewhere to sit down or do something together or grab some food or a drink), it can very much end up being like hanging around too long at home plate marveling over your hit. While the girl you're talking to won't exactly be throwing baseballs at your head, she will feel that the interaction has reached a natural end point... and then not ended. It'll go from good to too long to awkward and uncomfortable. She'll have been expecting you'd ask her out and ask her for her number... but then when the time for that has passed and it hasn't happened she'll have switched to dreading it (as an uncomfortable, awkward situation) instead. (The awkwardness comes from her thinking you were an amazing, fascinating guy right up until the escalation window getting missed, then her thinking increasingly that actually you're a nervous guy who doesn't know how to do things properly with women and it makes her think anything with you going forward will be similarly awkward - bad scenario) How do you know the right time to end an approach and close things out with a phone number or moving this girl you've just met onto the next stage of the interaction? Let's have a look. approach a girl If you've read those articles referenced at the start of this post, you know you'll typically want to incorporate into your approaches the following qualities: You act decisively to meet women and brush past any nervousness or hesitation You move fast and smartly while in an interaction with women, and don't let things hang unnecessarily You're focused on getting results - compliance, investment, phone numbers, dates - and not worried quite as much about reactions (laughing, flirting, teasing, etc.) You're aware of the fragility of attraction and attraction's expiration date, and that pushing things off into the future often means you don't get them You're aware that your attractiveness is in large part results minus effort - how big is your impact on how little effort So how do all that? I'm going to arm you with ten (10) steps to take for any approach you make: Spot a girl you want to talk to DON'T make eye contact Position yourself near her Pre-open her Open her Introduce yourself Engage in some light banter Get some early investment Build some rapport Close and get out, or move things along Any or maybe even all of these you'll be able to bend, break, change around, or do as you like once you've got your own method down and can approach with ease and confidence on command... but until you reach that point, you'll want to stick to these like glue. Here they are - the mechanics on how to approach a girl simply, easily, and successfully. #1: SPOT A GIRL YOU WANT TO TALK TO There is a form of approaching - usually called "mass approaching" or "shotgun opening" - where you don't bother looking for women you want to meet, and instead you just move through a crowd (usually at a big party or in a bar or nightclub or a very crowded city street or shopping mall) and say hello to and strike up conversations with every woman you encounter. This usually doesn't work well at all, because your approaches are totally untargeted, and your interaction with each woman is generic and unremarkable. Girls can tell, and that usually means the end of an interaction. If we take the novice baseball player again, the similar example here would be a guy who just swings wildly at every pitch, eyes closed. You're swinging in the dark. Instead, what you want to do consistently with your approaches is know exactly what girl you're walking up to meet. Is it the blonde, or the brunette? The black girl, the Asian girl, or the redhead? Are you trying to talk to that cute girl who's been staring at you, or are you trying to talk to the entire group of people she's with? (incidentally, I don't have much love for "group theory" - talk to the girl you like, not the group of people she's with) #2: DON'T MAKE EYE CONTACT If you're an eye contact pro, you can skip this one. If you're anything but that though, it's mandatory. Why no eye contact? Isn't eye contact a part of the flirting process? Why, yes it is... but if you don't handle it exactly right, you'll start off your approach in pursuit. You'll be chasing her... and that means you'll be in the disadvantaged position. Instead of her not knowing how your status relates to hers, and having to find out... or better still, her being the one in the chase position, trying to impress you... she'll have seen you looking at her and will see you approach, and you'll now find yourself slotted into the same box as 99% of the other men who walk up to her, and you'll be on stage with the microphone doing your very best to be impressive. Not where you want to be. Instead, skip the eye contact - catch glimpses of her using your peripheral vision, and close in for the kill (the approach) that way. You can look her in the eyes once the two of you are talking. More on eye contact, if you're interested in the topic: Elite Eye Contact (subtle, advanced-level eye contact strategies) Eye Contact Flirting (on the nuances of doing eye contact right) Eyes That Draw (on using eye contact to get approached by women) #3: POSITION YOURSELF NEAR HER This one's a fun one. Before you can begin talking to her, obviously, you've got to be near her. And it's a lot easier to do this while minding sprezzatura than you might suspect. I have plenty of stories I can tell you here - about approaching women in nearly-empty venues, where I got up from wherever I was, drifted around for a minute or so, acted as if I was looking at something interesting, then made my way slowly back through the area until I walked right by where the girl was. I've taken students out, pointed out a woman for them to approach, had them tell me there was no way they could approach her without it looking awkward, and then told them exactly how to walk by then suddenly "notice" her there as they were on their way to something else. The main gist is, you focus yourself on something past the girl you want to meet, and start moving towards that - and only as you're about to pass her do you "notice" her, stop, and proceed to start talking to her. Think this sounds too contrived? It works. I've taken plenty of girls to bed doing this, and I've had students replicate it as well. Even more than that though - I initially got it from women themselves. Women are masters at this - whenever you've had women "accidentally" hover nearby you or walk directly into your field of vision, "distractedly" focused on or looking at something else, most of the time, that's actually intentional. It's an invitation for you to talk to them. This is just that in reverse - you doing it back to women. Only, instead of waiting for them to engage you, it'll be you who first engages them. #4: PRE-OPEN HER If you're not familiar with this term, I very much recommend you check out the article on pre-opening. Then long and short of it is, women open a lot more consistently for you and much warmer and friendlier to you when you get them looking at you first. That is to say, if, immediately before you start talking to her, a girl is looking at your eyes before you start looking at hers. As covered in that article, there are a couple of ways you can go about this: Give her a firm-but-gentle nudge when next to her (without making eye contact with her) Leave a lingering touch on her (without making eye contact with her) Glance in her direction, smile, and look away (without making eye contact with her) Once you have her attention and she's looking at you, you then return eye contact with her and begin to speak (deliver your opener). Simple, right? And it takes all of a couple of seconds. But the benefit is, it makes opening worlds easier - both in terms of apprehension (you'll feel a lot less nervous about pre-opening first and beginning to talk only once you have her attention than you will about popping in front of her and laying into your spiel) and in terms of reception (it simply feels a lot more natural, both for her and for you, to open this way - it's warmer, sexier, and more personal). If you're not pre-opening already, you need to start - it's an instant success rate boost. #5: OPEN HER Here's the part where you actually start talking. There are a variety of openers you can use - some of the articles where we've talked about your options here in detail: The Direct Opener (opening with a direct compliment) Easy Opening with Indirect Direct (a combination of humor and direct) Game Openers That'll Get You Girls (a breakdown of the elements of opening) Are You Single? Why to Always Ask Girls This (Ricardus's favorite opener) When to Use Direct Openers Versus Situational Openers (pros and cons) Opening Body Language (how you want to position yourself for opening) How to Use Indirect Game to Get Girls (a post on indirect game that also discusses openers to use in conjunction with it) Short and Sweet Tips for Your Openers (tweaks that up your performance) Troubleshooting Your Opening (figuring out where you're going wrong and correcting it) Obviously, there's a fair amount of material here purely on opening alone. approach a girl If you need something simple to get started with though, here's a quick selection of things you can say: Hi. (an old standby) How's your day/night going? Excuse me... I saw you standing/sitting/walking here, and I just had to come tell you that you are incredibly cute. Going anywhere exciting? (when waiting for transportation) So what do you think of working at [company name] / going to school at [school name]? (when in class / at the office) Just about anything will serve as an opener, realistically - when I was still fairly new to approaching girls, in mid-2006 or so, I'd use, "Wow, your earrings are crazy!" and it would work great for me back then. (Nowadays I think that's a terrible opener, but I really liked it then, and the most important thing about the opener is what you're communicating via your nonverbals, your voice tone, and other fundamentals - rather than the words you're saying) So pick something you like - something you feel comfortable with - and use that, and you'll almost certainly do fine. #6: INTRODUCE YOURSELF There is some school of thought in the men's dating advice community that it's better for the girl to ask your name than it is for you to just give it to her - that way you can use it to gauge her interest. To which I say, "Rubbish!" You want to give her your name as soon as possible. You don't need to gauge her interest, anyway - whenever you try moving things forward with her, you'll find out how interested she is real quick. Giving her your name quickly does a couple of good things for you: It breaks the "stranger" barrier and gives you a name - you are now a "real" person to her It makes it clear your intention is not to simply trade a few lines of conversation and slip away back into the night, but that you are, rather, interested in genuinely establishing rapport It circumvents the increasingly awkward situation that arises when you get into a longer and longer conversation without either of the people knowing one another's name - believe it or not, you can actually reach a point where it's too awkward to ask you for your name, but it's too awkward to keep talking much longer without knowing it, too. At that point, women usually exit a conversation Introducing yourself is simple: if you're using a direct opener, introduce yourself immediately after the opener (before she's even responded) - you additionally use the introduction to keep things moving and prevent any discomfort if she isn't sure how to respond to the compliment. That looks like this: Guy: Hi there... I saw you walking here and had to come tell you, I think you're really cute. I'm Bill. Girl: Oh! Hi Bill! Guy: And what do they call you? Girl: I'm Amy. Guy: Hi Amy. And, with any other kind of opener, introduce yourself as soon as she contributes to the conversation in some moderately substantial way. That is, she tells a joke, or asks you something that's more than just her being polite - anything like that. In this way, you cast your introduction as a social reward - you're telling her your name because she's contributing to the conversation now, too. That looks like this: Guy: How's your night going? Girl: So so. Guy: Just getting started, huh? Girl: Yeah... we'll see what happens. How's yours? Guy: Give me a Jack-Coke and a little electronic music and I'm good. Girl: Do you like house music? Guy: It's grown on me over the years, yeah. I'm Bill. Girl: I'm Amy. Guy: Hi Amy. (you'll notice the repetition and saying back to her of her name - if this is the first time you're meeting her, this is a great memory aid; the mind's a lot more likely to remember a name the mouth has used at least a few times already than one it's merely passively heard) #7: ENGAGE IN SOME LIGHT BANTER While you never want to veer into the realm of comedian and entertainer, and never want to make making girls laugh the center point of your approach, a little light banter to kickoff a conversation goes a long way. Most women appreciate it - it's a way of communicating that: You're relaxed (nervous men don't banter) You're sociable (humor requires a good understanding of social norms) You probably won't be a social burden (e.g., you'll listen to her signals) In other words, early banter sets women's minds at ease about you. It helps them open up to you, be receptive to you, and lower their guards to your approach. Light banter can be as simple as picking out one (harmless) thing to give her a gentle ribbing over. Like: "You don't think it's a little warm for scarves right now?" ... said in a playful tone with a wry, knowing smile on your face. Or: "What do you think it says about us that we're a couple of 30 year olds in a place full of recent college grads?" ... said similarly. This is flirting - but of course, don't go too far and tease girls too much; a little bit here and there is good, but this isn't the foundation of your interaction. It's just something to get you started, and onto the next step. #8: GET SOME EARLY INVESTMENT You want to be getting compliance from the get-go - the more, the better, generally. Having women invest in you solidifies their connection to an interaction. If a girl isn't investing, she'll begin to feel like this is a conversation she doesn't want to be in. If she is investing, she'll begin feeling like she wants this thing to move forward and she wants to get somewhere with you, instead. Early investment you can get with women includes: Locking in - when you lock in, she's taking the "outside" position to keep talking to you, which is an investment by her in the interaction Physical compliance - things like having her give you her hand (so you can inspect her ring or bracelet), lean in (to show you her necklace or earrings or hair coloring), spin around, hand you something, move for you or with you, etc. Deep diving - once you're into deep rapport - and we'll talk about this in #9, too - and she's telling you about herself, her life, her dreams, her motivations, her past, and more, she is working to answer your questions and go into things about herself she doesn't tell most people. This is investment on her part too There are so many different little things you can do to get early investment that you can easily pick and choose whichever ones suit you best. The only thing you really need to do is remember to get this investment in the first place. #9: BUILD SOME RAPPORT This is where deep diving really comes into its own. Depending on how you're doing your approaching, you'll want to build either a lot of rapport, or a little rapport. It breaks down generally like this: If you approach a girl to get a phone number and set up a date for later, you'll only want to build a little rapport - enough to get her interested in talking to you, but not so much that there's a big emotional buildup that goes disappointingly unreleased when you simply take her number and walk away If you approach a girl on the other hand with the object of making things happen immediately - e.g., you're going to see how far you can take this interaction today or tonight, and see if you can keep things moving right up until she comes to your place or you go to her place - then you'll want to get a lot of rapport going - as much as you can, really There's a plethora of resources to tap on this site about building rapport: Getting Past Small Talk (for not being stuck in go-nowhere conversation) The Conversationalist (an introduction to being superb at conversations) How to Talk to Girls and Make Them Want You (a thorough how-to) Spell Broken: Big Mistakes That Shred Conversation (mistakes to avoid) Listen to Women Better with Active Listening (showing you're involved and paying attention) How to Be Vulnerable, Enchanting, and Alluring to Women (revealing vulnerabilities and attractive, humanizing qualities about yourself) How to Talk About Yourself on Dates (when talking about yourself) How to Tell a Story that Rivets and Captivates (telling great stories) 20 Ways to Talk to Women and Make It AMAZING (20 key tips) What Does She Want? The 8 Things You Must Ask Her (8 key questions to ask) But if you need the quick and dirty version, here are the main points: You want the women you meet doing most of the talking - not you You want to be feeding back to women the things that they're saying as they talk You want to keep the focus on deep, meaningful things - the "why"s and "how"s about a girl's life, much more so than the "what"s You want to thread-cut bad topics and encourage good ones - things like dreams, motivations, emotions, desires You want to periodically "come up for air" when discussing heavy topics - sprinkle a little humor in at times to keep things airy and prevent yourself and this new girl you've just met from sinking into the depths over overbearing conversation. You can do this with chase framing, or any kind of humor you can muster that fits the situation and the conversation You want to keep talking about yourself to a minimum, without being dodgy or evasive - still do talk about yourself, but don't reveal everything when you do, and be mysterious and intriguing You want to continually turn the conversation back to the girl you're talking to - never let the spotlight linger on you for too long (lest she get bored - she'd much rather be talking about herself, and that makes things much easier for you, too) #10: CLOSE AND GET OUT, OR MOVE THINGS ALONG If you want to avoid our error #4 above - not closing things out well - that means you'll need to be moving quickly and capitalizing on a good interaction, by doing one of two things: Proposing the two of you meet again (a date), grabbing her contact details, and saying goodbye, or Deciding you're going to see how far you can go with her right now, and getting things moving - to sitting down somewhere to talk first, and back to your place or her place a little later In many situations - at work; at school; at some social function where she knows a lot of people and can't quietly slip away - the second option is going to be impractical, and you'll normally have to settle for proposing a date and grabbing her contact information. And that's fine. Other times, you might approach a girl expressly with the purpose of trying to pull her home with you then and there - at a bar, for instance, or on the street. Either of these options is very okay, so long as you take one of them. Don't ruin a great interaction by hanging around too long past the point where you're supposed to squeeze the trigger and make things happen. It's common in newer guys to reach that point - to hit the escalation window - where they know they're supposed to do something, but they get nervous about switching gears, so they stay doing what's comfortable - continuing to talk to this girl they have some great rapport going on with. But an interaction with a new girl is something that's in constant motion - and if you aren't too, you'll soon be left behind. Here's a general rule and hard limit to help keep you focused and effective in your approaches: by the 10-minute mark, you must either propose a date, trade numbers, and leave, OR you must invite this girl to sit with you or (if you're on the street or in a mall) come join you for a coffee / hot chocolate / ice cream. approach a girl If you're meeting her on the street, you'll usually want to cut this down to about 5 minutes maximum. If she's a girl you're talking to in class, at work, or at a social convention, and both of you are already sitting down, you can bump this up to about 15 minutes, assuming you both have the time. Make sure you're closed out or escalating things on up by that time, and you'll keep the pace brisk - and her interest in you, and desire to do things again with you in the future, warm. HOW TO APPROACH A GIRL ANYWHERE: RECAP We just covered a lot of information on a process that's going to last all of 10 minutes, maximum. The idea is though, by going in-depth on each of these steps, you can get yourself consistently hitting pitches out of the park - or at least batting singles, and making it to first base without standing around waiting to be tagged out. To review, here are the 4 big mistakes that most commonly hamper a man's approach: Waiting for the "right moment" Not being aggressive enough Being TOO aggressive Not closing things out well ... and here are the 10 steps to take with every approach you make, anywhere: Spot a girl you want to talk to DON'T make eye contact Position yourself near her Pre-open her Open her Introduce yourself Engage in some light banter Get some early investment Build some rapport Close and get out, or move things along Follow those steps, and you won't have to worry about waiting for the right moment, your levels of aggressiveness will be handled automatically, and you'll know to close things out (or get her moving) as soon as you hit your time limit for an interaction. Follow those steps, and you get to be a breath of fresh air for all the women tired of being approached by men who aren't following those steps... and are making those big mistakes we talked about not making, instead.

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##[A66] How to Ask a Girl out and always get a "yes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNXbv1ZqqYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-GxHHDfpfM Ever find yourself wondering how to ask a girl out? She's there, she looks great, you want to ask her out... so bad... but you just can't form the words. Or maybe even approach her in the first place. Making the ask is, in fact, remarkably easy to do once you know how to do it... However, you can spend endless amounts of time stressed out over it when you don't. So let's give you some AWESOME tips to making asking girls out SIMPLE. Before we get to tips, a quick story. When I was 14 years old, I asked a girl out for the first time. I walked up to her in front of the whole school (her name was Sarah), and flat out asked her to go to the school dance at the end of the year with me. She was the prettiest, most popular girl in school (not to mention head cheerleader), and she'd flirted with me and chased me hard for a year. In fact, she'd asked me out about 6 months earlier (but I was too scared to say "yes")! Yet by the time I finally asked her out, she'd given up on me -- the window had passed, and so had my shot with Sarah. At the time I didn't know you only had a certain window of time to ask a girl out in... though I guessed something like that might be the case. I soon found out it definitely was. You only have a certain window of time to ask out a girl you like. Miss that window, and your chance with her drops to almost zero. As you could've guess, Sarah said "no" to me, albeit in a very gracious way. She told me she wanted "to be friends first", which I knew meant we weren't going to the dance together. I never got a date with Sarah. However, in the many years after, I eventually asked hundreds of girls out on dates. Some said no... but many more said yes. And along the way, I've learned a thing or two about how to ask a girl out and get that "yes." I've planned to write on how to ask girls out for a while now. However, a reader just wrote in asking about asking girls out specifically -- so, it's time to cover it. Our reader says: "Man chase I really have been in a funk lately. I'm back in school and I feel like a social retard now lol! I need some advice, I really need help with asking girls out on dates and what that actually looks like you know? I'm reading your articles and a lot of it is making sense but closing the deal and getting dates is weird for me. I guess I really haven't actually asked a girl out on a proper date before my last GF I got with because I was able to escalate things with her fast." To answer our reader's question, I've put together this guide to asking women out. This guide will teach you -- emphatically, unequivocally, and without fluff, huff, or pomp of any kind -- how to ask a girl out... and always (or almost always, anyway!) get a "yes." how to ask a girl out I have eight (8) tips for you today that, used together, will make you an 'Ask Out Superman'. Use all eight of these, and you can ask out a girl (any girl) and almost without fail get the date with her. The three (3) tips in this section are my most crucial tips. To be any good at asking girls out, you must mind these three tips! The five in the section after this are optional (though strongly recommended). However, the tips in this section you must do! Once you have these three tips down, you'll find asking girls out gets much, much simpler. HOW TO ASK A GIRL OUT: STRIKE WHILE THE IRON'S HOT This one ought to be obvious enough just from that story of mine I shared at the start of this post -- wait too long and the window closes. But yet, no matter how many times this happens to a guy, many guys keep making this same mistake. I know it sure plagued me for a long time. That mistake, of course, is the mistake of waiting to ask a girl out until it's too late. how to ask a girl out In other words, don't be the guy who's sitting around, biding his time, waiting for the "perfect moment". You will wait too long, till it's way too late... because the "perfect moment" never arrives. How often have you had a girl you really liked, that you were waiting for the "perfect moment" to ask out? Probably pretty often, right? If you're like I was in my school days, you probably have 1 or 2 girls at all times that you're just waiting for the right moment for... and you might well end up waiting on that moment forever. Well, women don't wait forever. If a girl is cute, she has multiple guys interested in her. The guy who makes the move first is usually going to be the one who gets her. If you wait around, you don't get the girl. If you move fast, you very well may get her. Keep in mind: attraction has an expiration date. The longer you postpone making something happen, the more her attraction for slips. Wait too long, and (just like happened to me with that girl Sarah) she'll move on. That means, you ought to ask girls out soon. Like, as soon as you realize you like them, just about, you ask them out. Not a week after you decide you like a girl; not a month later. Ask her out within a few days of realizing you'd like to ask her out -- preferably, you ask her out within a few minutes of realizing you'd like to ask her out! The less time elapses between the moment you realize you'd like to ask a girl out, and the moment you start your feet moving to go over to talk to her and ask her out, the higher the likelihood is that both A) you ask her out at all, ever, and B) she says "yes." I know, that's a little intimidating -- especially if she's really cute and you like her a lot. "Because," you might ask yourself, "what if she says 'no'?" But that's not where your mind should be. It should not be on "what if she says 'no'?" It should be on "what if I don't ask her out fast enough, and she loses interest or some other guy gets her?" Because I'll tell you what -- that is the far, far more likely outcome for most guys. If you follow the tips in this article, more likely than not when you ask her out she'll say yes. The BIG RISK for you is that you don't ask her out, fast enough (or at all), and you lose your chance with her. One neat fact: in a survey Girls Chase conducted of 1517 American women ages 18-34, asking about the last guy they'd gone on a date with: One neat fact: GirlsChase.com surveyed 1517 single U.S. women, aged 18-34, to ask them "The last guy you went out with, how soon after you met him did you know you wanted a date with him?" Their answers might surprise you: how to ask a girl out 9.7% of girls said they knew before their future date even walked up 12.4% of girls said they knew the moment he said "hello" Almost fully two-thirds knew by the end of 10 minutes with a guy Most of the time, if she's going to go out with you, she knows it right away. All you have to do is ask! Here's what asking right away does for you: It greatly increases the odds you get her while she's still receptive to you It gets you an answer, now, definitively, so you aren't left wondering forever It allows you to start actually spending time with her, if she says "yes," instead of spending time thinking about her -- much less fun It starts getting you experience and starts training you to have an easier and easier time talking to girls and asking them out (this is super vital for inexperienced guys -- so you don't get hung up thinking about a girl you can't get!) If she says "no", you'll discover it's not the end of the world. In fact, it's a load off, to not have to worry about it anymore. And she might not say "no." She might say "yes." And now, you're in a pretty good place, aren't you? See why asking ASAP (and not putting it off) is a good, important, vital thing? Assignment: is there a girl you'd like to ask out? Ask her out the next time you see her after reading this article. Don't worry if it's not the perfect moment (it never is), just figure out a way to do it, and do it. Follow the tips in this article as best you can. But ask. DON'T MAKE THE ASKING OUT A BIG DEAL Remember Sarah, the girl I asked out in eighth grade? Want to know how I asked her out? Here's how: "Miss Lastname," I said, in front of pretty much the entire school, "would you do me the honor of accompanying me to our graduation dance?" I wasn't going the humorous route... I said that dead serious. Can you feel the cringe...! how to ask a girl out So -- don't do that. If you can pull it off in a clever, funny way, it could work. Not how I did it though. The reason that doesn't work: because who wants to be invited on some big, formal, high-pressure date? Today, dating is casual. People don't like formal dating nowadays. It's too high pressure. Your job as the guy is to make things low pressure for your date, so she will want to come out with you. It needs to feel natural. For an excellent breakdown of what a 'natural' date invite feels like to a girl, watch this Girls Chase video on asking girls out naturally by the very talented Hector Castillo (he has a great body language tip in there you should absolutely use when you ask her out): The only women who want to be asked out on formal dates are women in their 30s who've had their fill of naughty bad boys and now are finally ready for a Serious Gentleman to come court them and whisk them off to a sunset marriage with a happily ever after. If you're asking out anyone other than a woman in that category, your asks need to be relaxed. Women don't like formal dates. They don't respond to them. They might think it's a classy, romantic idea, but formal date invites rarely get "yes"es from women... and even if you get a girl to show up to a formal date, it probably won't end up with anything more exciting than her telling you she "wants to take it slow" and "start out as friends." Women don't like high pressure situations. They look for ways to get out of such scenarios. Formal dates don't work (usually). So then what do you do? You make your date ideas simple -- more on this later -- and you ask women out in a super chill, casual way. (quick aside: if you want the absolute simplest, and best, date you can ask a girl out on, that makes it easy-as-pie to get the date with her, you need to pick up a copy of my One Date System. You can >>> watch my video on it here <<< to learn more -- you're going to love One Date. It makes dating so much simpler) Here's how you ask (after a minute or two of small talk): Let's grab a bite or drink sometime! That's it. Done. All you need to say. If she says yes, take her contact info and tell her you'll message her. how to ask a girl out Not so hard once the formality's gone. Don't try to figure out the perfect thing to say -- all you need to do is ask her out in a simple, casual way. ASK A GIRL OUT ON A HIGH NOTE Another key lesson: don't just ask her out at any old point of the conversation (also, you know, don't interrupt her when she's talking with friends, and ask her out in front of 200 people... like 14 y/o me did). When SHOULD you ask her out? Ask her out on a high note. how to ask a girl out If you want to know how to ask a girl out and get a "yes" almost every single time, this tip is the key to the whole thing: If you ask her out when she's enjoying talking to you, she's GOING to say "yes"! You know when most inexperienced guys ask a girl out? It's either: Out of the blue, like 14 years old me, While she's in the midst of conversation with other people, also like 14 years old me, or As the conversation with her is circling the drain and it starts to feel to the guy like it's now or never if he's ever going to ask her out (no pressure! ... remember how we said to avoid high pressure ask-outs?). Rephrased, most guys ask girls out when: It feels random and awkward, or It feels like there's no connection between them and, again, it's awkward. There's pressure. No wonder asking girls out is so terrifying to so many guys... and no wonder so many guys struggle to ask girls out well. They ask at the wrong moments! (we just spent all that time talking about "no perfect moments" -- well, while we're not exactly looking for perfect moments, the moment itself is still rather important. But don't worry, I'm going to tell you how to construct that moment) Here's another way to think about it: If some random guy started talking to you, and then you guys talked and talked, and the conversation began to die down, and then it started feeling like "Well, now it's time to go", and then suddenly he was like, "Hey man, by the way we ought to grab a pizza sometime," how much do you want to say yes? Now compare that to the same guy talking to you, and you're in the middle of laughing at some quick funny story he just told you, and he says, "Hey man, we ought to grab a pizza this week." On that second one, you're probably a lot more likely to say, "Sure, sounds fun." control girlfriend or wife Sign me up, brah! Why are you more likely to say yes? Because he made his proposal on a high note. In the one of the newsletters I send to subscribers when you sign up for my newsletter (you can take our free Girls Skills Diagnostic to find out how good you are with girls, get a free report on what you should focus on first, and sign up to the newsletter) I discuss the most important difference between men and women. And that difference is how acutely women listen to their emotions. Women don't decide things because they logically make sense; women decide things because they emotionally do. Even for us guys, who don't rely on feeling as much as women do, when someone asks you to spend more time with him when you're already enjoying spending time with him, in the very midst of that enjoyment, like in that second example above, you're certainly going to agree, almost always. The emotional timing of the ask is key. So what high notes do you look for? She's laughing She's telling you a lot about herself Nonverbal signs... such as, she's grinning at you like she wants to grab you and kiss you control girlfriend or wife Don't make her wait. You can create laughter yourself with teasing and flirtation. And you can get her to start telling you about herself with deep diving. If she's smiling and talking with you and laughing, that's a pretty good indication she's enjoying herself with you -- and that she's open to spending more time with you. So, ask her out. how to ask a girl out Still not ready to start asking women out like crazy? Well, you're in luck. We've got 5 more AWESOME date-getting tips on how to ask a girl out Put these tips in play to help you step up your game -- and get way more yeses from the girls you want. PICK A SIMPLE DATE IDEA ... and avoid complication at all costs. No ice-skating, hot air balloon rides, laser tag death matches, or trips to Paris. It's a date... it's for you to get to know a girl and for her to get to know you. The problem with complicated, fantastic date ideas is they usually become both logistical nightmares (how do you get from Point A to Point B to Point C without losing momentum with her on the date. Also: when you're so worried about 'following the plan', how are you going to focus on her?). Big dates can even intimidate a girl into not saying "yes"! Picture a girl who really likes you, and wants to go on a date where she talks to you and gets to know you, but instead you ask her to go play laser tag. "I'm not really the laser tag type..." she says, hoping you'll just ask her to go somewhere more relaxed instead. But what might happen instead? "Oh," you say, "all right." And then you walk away. You're disappointed. She's disappointed. Nobody wins. Has that ever happened to you? control girlfriend or wife When she wants to go out with you but your date invite is just way too intense. Overactive dates that try to be too "fun" can oftentimes end up being too much for girls and they'll say "no"... even when they like you. I've frequently turned down girls I liked for dates when they asked me to parties or off on some crazy adventure. Why? Because I didn't want to do those things, and I figured nothing would happen. Nothing's going to happen at a party date where you're surrounded by her friends. You won't get to know her more there, and you can't get together with her in front of a crowd. And nothing's going to happen with the two of you rappelling down a cliff face. You'll be too tired afterward for anything to happen there either. Besides... maybe she just doesn't have the energy for what you're proposing. Maybe she doesn't like doing it. Wild/fun date ideas are great things to do with friends, and activity partners. But they're not great ideas for someone you're attracted to and want to be with. Women will sometimes refuse these dates because they don't want the guy to kill their attraction for him by accidentally plopping himself into the friend zone with these unromantic dates. Also -- and you may not realize this: Many of the girls who say "no" to fun dates would rather just get to know you than do off-the-wall activities... meanwhile... Many of the girls who say "yes" to fun dates really just want to have fun -- and could care less who they're going with! They're there for the activity, not for you, and your odds of doing anything other than having a nice friendly outing are not great. control girlfriend or wife Generally the way it is. This isn't always true... but it is a lot more often than you might think. But guys often take women's refusal to go on these sorts of high-energy crazy "fun" dates as a universal refusal, when it might just be the activity a girl was rejecting -- not them. To get around this, stay away from inviting girls on crazy wild fun dates, keep your dates simple, and just invite them on relaxed ones where you can talk. A few ideas: Take her on a picnic Take her to the beach Meet her at a café close to your home Meet her at a chill lounge or quiet bar nearby for a drink Have her come over to your place to cook or watch a movie Pick a date template -- something simple -- stick to it, and you should be fine. It's only when you try to be crazy and overly clever that it blows up on you. All you really need is something laid back where the two of you can talk and get to know each other and build connections... keep your date simple and straightforward and, when you ask her, she'll usually say "yes." LET A GIRL TELL YOU WHEN WORKS BEST FOR HER One really common mistake I see guys make is trying to shoehorn women into their schedules with no consideration for the girl's schedule. So like, the guys who are over-focused on being an alpha male will do things like tell a woman: Let's do Thursday at 8 o'clock. ... only to have that woman reply with Oh, sorry, I'm busy on Thursday. Which builds up a lot of negative compliance. Oops. You want to avoid having women tell you "no" as much as possible. The more a woman tells you "no", the more likely she becomes to tell you "no" again in the future. This is true no matter how much she liked you at the beginning. Nos lead to more nos. You want to build yeses. What I started doing a while back and works great is the innovative (get ready for it) process of... just plain asking a girl when works best for her. There is even research on this (which I discovered long after I figured this out myself) that finds you're more likely to get a date if you ask a girl's schedule first. All you're doing is simple stuff that gets it done. So, instead of floating her a time there's no way to know she'll be free for, or one convenient for her (so she doesn't flake on you), just let her tell you the day(s) and time(s) she's free. Then pick from the options she gives you. how to ask a girl out Like so: YOU: We should grab a drink or a bite some time this week. HER: Yeah, definitely! YOU: When's good for you... what's your schedule look like? HER: Umm, let's see. I'm really packed most of the week... oh, but I could do, Friday night, or maybe Sunday afternoon? YOU: Okay, great. Sunday afternoon would be perfect. Let's say 1 o'clock maybe? HER: 1 o'clock works fine. YOU: Perfect. Let's say 1 o'clock then; meet me at my subway station maybe? And we'll grab some food? That sound good? HER: Okay, that's perfect! I'll see you on Sunday then! YOU: Cool beans. See you Sunday, Christie. No rejection from her on date or time. No wondering what to do when girls flake -- because flakes largely disappear. You're seeing her on a date at a time that works fine for her -- that makes it easy for her to say yes, and easy for her to not miss it. Make it as easy for her to say "yes" in the moment and show up on the day of your date as you can without overextending yourself. That said -- if you'd like a way to ask a girl out to get her out that very night, then give this Girls Chase video a watch. Hector will show you exactly how to pull this off: AFTER DATE AND TIME, YOU HANDLE EVERYTHING ELSE Have you ever set up a date with a girl, then proceeded to ask her, "So, what do you want to do? Do you want to see a movie, get some food, check out the shopping mall...?" I was guilty of that too, when young and inexperienced. You'll never catch me doing that ever again, however. There's an excellent reason why you never want to do the 'indecisive guy thing': most girls don't like having to make the decisions! Your average female dater wants to be able to just relax and let you lead. It takes work to make decisions, and frankly, most women are like most people -- the more decisions you take off their plates, the happier they'll be... so long as they agree with or enjoy your decisions, of course. So, after we've found a time that works for her schedule and I can fit into my schedule, I stop asking for her to figure things out. I just make proposals and ask her if those proposals work for her. Also, on the same note, you really don't want to let girls plan the date for logistical reasons, either. If she has an idea, it's usually better that you can't make it -- unless that idea is conducive to seduction. Just a few such terrible date ideas for the record: Let's go hiking Let's go to a party Let's go to a nightclub Let's all hang out with my friends Let's go shopping Let's go to a movie Let's go to some kind of group activity Let's go to a networking event These all fall under the category of "bad first date." Or bad second, third, or fourth date too, for that matter. Why do they make for bad dates? Because they violate those 5 Cs of Dating I mentioned in the article just linked to. For a refresher, those 5 Cs are: Cheap (nothing too expensive) Convenient (something easy) Conversation (to get to know her) Covert (not involving anyone other than the two of you) Control (you plan and handle everything) the five cs of dating A good first date is: At a café where you can sit and talk At a park or the beach, preferably with some food Having an ice cream or a coffee At your place -- cooking dinner, having drinks, "hanging out," watching a movie, studying, etc. How's that going to help you asking a girl out? Simple. A big part of the reason why guys get nervous asking girls out is because they don't know exactly what they're doing. If you choose a good first date idea, you know exactly what you're doing: you're taking her on a date she'll like, where the two of you can get to know each other... one that'll be conducive to the both of you quite possibly getting together. IF SHE SAYS "NO"... DON'T GIVE UP! I remember when I used to get this surge of fear and adrenaline before asking a girl out. Like I was going to get stabbed in the hip or something if she didn't want to go out with me. The funny thing is, it's just a "no." The stock market doesn't explode, the polar ice caps don't melt, and nobody posts a video of you getting rejected online for the world to see (or at least, hopefully not). The worst possible thing that could happen is she says "no," and you go on with your life. But you shouldn't just take a "no" at face value. control girlfriend or wife She won't always, but sometimes if you try again you'll find she's flipped from "no" to "yeah, okay." If she says "no," unless it's incredibly harsh and you just want to hightail it out of there (and unless you're doing something way wrong, you will rarely get a harsh "no"), play it off. If it's a casual no, make it as forgettable as possible (so you don't cement any strong rejection or bad emotion feelings in her mind): YOU: We should grab a drink sometime. HER: I've been pretty busy lately. YOU: Oh yeah, well that blows. No good when there's no time for fun. HER: Yeah, it's definitely pretty stressful. YOU: You'll get through it. Well, maybe I'll connect with you when you're not so jammed. I'll see you around! [smile & wink] HER: See you! At this point you've set yourself up to very easily ping her again in a few weeks and see if she wants to do something then. No muss, fuss. If it's a firmer rejection, and especially if there's an audience, you can play it off in a quasi-dramatic way to save face: YOU: We should grab a drink sometime. HER: I don't really think I'm interested. Sorry. YOU: [put your hand over your heart, gasp, and look away] Jennifer! How can this be! We're meant to be together! HER: Sorry. Just not interested. YOU: [half joking voice] How will I cope... [give her a wink] Well, I'll see you around. HER: Okay. Or, if there's not an audience you need to save face in front of, and you want to set her up for a possible re-ask: YOU: We should grab a drink sometime. HER: I don't really think I'm interested. Sorry. YOU: [put your hand over your heart, gasp, and look away] Jennifer! How can this be! We're meant to be together! HER: Sorry. Just not interested. YOU: [half joking, half firm voice, with a half smile and playful eye contact] All right, well I want you to reconsider this over the next couple of days, okay? Because you're going to be sitting there, thinking back to this day, and you're going ot say to yourself, "Damn it, when John asked me out, I should've said yes!" Just keep that in mind! I'll talk to you later. Let me know when your mind's changed! HER: [laughs] Okay. If she laughs, you are often going to be in. Maybe not that time. But ask her out a week later, and she's may now say "yes." And if she doesn't, well, rinse and repeat. It might sound silly, but you being unfazed when she says "no" is one of the most crazy attractive things you can do around a woman. Persistence is attractive to women like few other things are. Don't believe it? Try it out. Then come back and let me know how it worked out in the comments. You may be quite surprised. Even guys women thought they'd never go out with get dates with them this way... I've heard plenty of stories of men who've done exactly this. And I've pulled off a few of these myself, too. I've had multiple women tell me they'd turned a guy down eight or nine different times, then finally agreed to go out with him... and now they're married. Persistence pays off. Don't take "no" so seriously. control girlfriend or wife Sometimes it pays to try again. BE COOL WHEN SHE SAYS "YES" It's awesome when she says she'll go out with you. That doesn't mean cartwheels and victory chants are in order in (well, not in earshot, anyway). A lot of less experienced guys, when a girl says "yes" to them, get really excited... or really weird and awkward. You don't want to go either of those routes, so be prepared for that and prime yourself to be normal after you ask her. How do you stay cool after the ask? You make a personal note -- internally, before you ever go talk to her -- that no matter what she says, you're going to be cool. After you ask her out and she gives you her answer, just continue the conversation as if nothing else had happened. Here's what not to do: Get really excited Get really nervous Start talking to her about the date Start telling her you're really glad she said yes Start trying to plan out logistics or timing or scheduling Do or discuss anything overly factual or logical Here's what to do: Talk to her exactly the same as you were before Pick up on a topic you were on before you asked her out if you need one Or, if it seems natural to at that point, end the conversation ("Cool, I'll message you!") control girlfriend or wife Stay calm, stay cool, and you'll secure the date. And if your mind goes blank? Ask her what she's got planned for the rest of the day -- that's an easy one. Just make it smooth, natural, and make sure she doesn't have any cause for concern about her decision to say "yes!" how to ask a girl out Stick with these 8 tips to use when you ask a girl out, and I'm confident you'll start getting just about every girl you ask on a date eager to come with you. Next though, you're going to need to know what to text her to make sure she shows up on that date! So, the very next thing I want you to do is to read my article on how to text a girl out onto a date: Check this article out: "How to Text Girls: 20 More Tips and Techniques" Don't for get to share this article with your buddies if they could use help asking out the girls they want to ask out too. Every guy can use a little help! Now get out there and ask a girl or two out. You've got the tools. It's time now to go -- she's waiting for you.

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##[A67] Going Out to Meet Women even when you dont want to When I first started lifting weights regularly, there were plenty of days I did not want to go to the gym at all - days I felt sick, days I felt tired, days I was down in the dumps. But I made myself go anyway, because I had committed myself to it, and I knew that if I started skipping days at the gym, I'd skip more and more, and whatever gains I actually made would be slow and, likely, negligible. So, I went, time and again, when I did not want to go at all. The feeling after was always triumphant - I had vanquished my emotions and managed to achieve in spite of myself. And six months after I'd begun working out three times a week, every week, I was back in front of a bunch of my old colleagues, and everyone was impressed at how much muscle I'd put on. I hadn't even realized; because I saw myself in the mirror every day, I hadn't seen the transformation. All I'd seen was that I kept lifting heavier and heavier amounts of weight. Going out to meet women is just like this; the important thing is not being "ready" to go out and meet women - the important thing is going out and meeting women. But a lot of men have trouble doing this. meet women routine When I first stumbled on the pickup community, I heard a lot about this thing called "state." "State" referred to your emotional state - how were you feeling? Were you feeling: Excited? Energized? Fatalistic? Defeatist? State, I learned, had a life-or-death impact on your success at meeting new women. If your state was not great, you'd be cut up for bait. Guys in pickup back then listened to pump-up music; they went with buddies to help them "pump state" together; sometimes they even had elaborate rituals for how they got themselves prepared enough to go talk to women. I gave it a shot, and I tried it for a while - if a lot of people are doing something, maybe there's something to it - but after a bit, I went back to my old ways; screw your feelings, I'd say to myself, just go do it. After I largely threw the concept of "state control" into the waste bin, my improvement rate with women really started to take off. WHY STATE CONTROL CAME ABOUT Let's face it: it's easier to do things when you're looking forward to doing them. When you're excited about them. Especially scary things. When you're new to going out to meet new women, it's very often a scary experience, because you're not getting a lot of positive feedback and results yet; i.e., on any given night or day you go out, you're probably not going to get laid or get a phone number when you're a pure beginner... but you are probably going to get girls rejecting you a whole bunch. meet women routineThat's not fun. It's draining. And it's work. Sure, afterward, you'll often get that triumphant feeling of, "Yes, I DID it! ... despite my own hesitancy about going out," same as you do after going to the gym when you really didn't want to and putting in a full workout regardless. But that whole getting-yourself-out-there to begin with thing is the hard part. Once you're out and doing it, it's not so hard. But getting yourself doing it? That's hard. That's intimidating. Because you look ahead, and all you see are rejection and bad feelings, with a low probability of success. "I'd rather just play video games," you tell yourself... falling back on one of those excuses not to meet new women Colt talked about just the other day. And then you stay in. WHO NEEDS "STATE"? Some of my most memorable outings in 2006 - the year I really started knuckling down on going out to meet new girls - were nights I pushed myself out despite being in a terrible state and not wanting to go out at all. Those experiences more than anything else convinced me of how little "state" really matters. One was one of my first nights out in Washington, D.C. My new wingman - and the only guy I knew in town - had left for New York City for the weekend, and I had the weekend to myself. "I guess I should just stay in," I said to myself. I didn't want to go out that night, even one bit. But, I rallied myself up; picked a bar I hadn't been to that was nearby to where I lived, and decided to go explore it. When I got there, the prospects were pretty slim; a few pretty girls, but all in big groups of people, animatedly talking, having a good time. The bar was very brightly lit, so anything I did was going to be under a spotlight, and a single approach going bad was going to mean everyone there wouldn't want to talk to me. Discouraged, I slunk up to the bar and grabbed a seat. I sparked up a conversation with a guy in the stool next to me - kind of a scrubby-looking guy; nothing all that spectacular about him - who, 10 minutes later, after our conversation died down and I chatted up the girl next to me, re-engaged me to ask me if I wanted to hit up a club in D.C. I said "sure", and a taxi ride later, I found myself in a nightclub I'd never heard of or seen before, that ended up becoming my favorite all-time venue in D.C.: a place I'd become a regular of, take lots of new lovers from, and have lots of memorable experiences at. I also met the girl that night who'd go on to become a girlfriend of mine for the next 2 1/2 years. I was pretty "out of state" that entire night, and only did a handful of approaches; the only good one I did was on that girl, who was arguably the cutest girl there. At the time, I thought it'd been the best 10-minute interaction I'd ever run; after a string of go-nowhere interactions with women my first few nights out in D.C., I finally had a hit, and with a beautiful, charismatic girl, no less. Fast forward a month or so later, and I found myself sick with an intestinal flu. Again, I'd planned to go out that night... but now I felt atrociously bad. Yet, after I finished my last round on the toilet, I said to myself, "I'm going to go out anyway," and did. I rode around on the subway for a while, figuring I'd talk to girls there... but didn't talk to anyone. I got off at one stop, exited the station, got a few feet before feeling ill, and turned right around and went back to the subway station again. I walked downstairs and, as I did, spied a thin, svelte girl in a red-and-white striped shirt walking ahead of me, a very sexy sway to her hips, golden locks of hair bouncing off her back. "That girl..." I said to myself, "I'm going to go meet THAT girl." My stomach was still making uncomfortable noises and telling me to head back home and lie in bed (or plant myself on the john), but I forged on ahead anyway. I caught up with the girl waiting for a train, and opened her with my standard train game opening line: "Going anywhere exciting?" We got to chatting; she mentioned she'd just drank an entire bottle of wine with her girlfriends, and had another bottle of wine with her. She also mentioned she was a former beauty pageant winner from a few years prior. She also invited me back to her place alone with her, six minutes after I'd met her. I, still feeling quite miserable, nevertheless, saw the skies parting and the light shining down on me, and said, "Sure." Over the years, I've had many nights like this, where I did NOT want to go out, but did anyway, and ended up having something really fun, great, or wonderful occur. Of course, I've had nights I didn't want to go out when I did go out, and they completely sucked, too. But I've also had nights where I was JUICED to go out... and stayed juiced the entire night - but nothing ever came of it, and I just piled up one rejection after another after another. It actually got to the point where I started telling myself, "Oh, I'm excited to go out tonight... it's probably going to be a waste of a night," or, "Oh, I don't want to go out tonight? I should probably go out anyway to see if I can have yet another crazy experience that further convinces me it's awesome going out when you don't want to go out." meet women routine I still tried to get in "a good state" throughout much of 2006 and 2007, and some of 2008, and still sometimes opted not to go out when I really wasn't feeling it, until I had a couple of realizations about how flimsy "state" really is. The first was on a night when I hadn't wanted to go out, where I then decided to listen to some pump-up music and get myself really excited about going out. And I was! But then, within a few minutes of being in my car, my state was awful again, and I ended up turning my car around and driving back home. The next was a little while later, when, again, I was feeling awful, but I remembered the lessons of the last time I'd tried listening to music to "pump my state", and I figured that the solution would be to listen to state-pumping music in the car so I'd be pumped the whole way there. So I did, and it worked! I stayed pumped the entire drive. Then I got out of the car, and started walking to the nightclub I was going to. By the time I reached the line to get in, I felt terrible all over again. I don't remember how that night went, but I do remember the lesson of it: artificially-induced state is fleeting as hell. FAKE STATES DON'T LAST I realized that the times I went out to meet girls when I was starting low, I was able to gradually build up into a more talkative frame of mind just by going out and planting myself in a bar and chatting up the people around me. Conversely, when I'd "pump my state", that state was based on listening to exciting music, or imagining things going perfectly with girls, and the instant I set foot outside my house or car, the music was gone, I was back in the real world, and the fake state would crash. I finally decided that, at least for me, these artificially induced emotional states were actually harmful... they wrecked my nights. I had a much harder time going on to have a good night after pumping state and having it crash, then subsequently needing to rebuild, than I did simply going out low and gradually building up by talking to people as I was out and about. The fake state, I came to see, was transitory, fleeting, and all around just bad for having productive nights with women. WHAT IF YOU CAN MAINTAIN A PUMPED STATE? The other thing I found: when I went out in super excited, chatty, talky emotional states, and went around meeting women like that, and I maintained that state, I rarely had much luck with women regardless of it. Even though I was feeling great. Eventually I pinned this to being in the wrong mode - you don't see James Bond or George Clooney or Brad Pitt or anybody else bouncing off the walls talking excitedly and energetically and ending up with a girl in bed at the end of the night. Yet, the "excited fun party guy" seems to be the model most often recommended to new guys starting out. meet women routine To be sure, I have known a handful of guys who've made this mode work. And I did eventually figure out how to make it work myself - you have to be very good at knowing exactly when to switch that mode off and transition into a much more intimate, intense, sensual one to create the right amount of sexual tension and arouse a woman's more carnal interests in you (rather than just her excitement and curiosity). Possible to do? Oh yes, absolutely! Easy to learn? No, not at all. And I wouldn't recommend doing so unless the bouncing-off-the-walls-with-tons-of-energy mode is your natural one. Otherwise, without the ability to transition smoothly from "excited and chatty" to "intriguing and sexual", you'll lose girls when you try to do anything more than be their talking and chatting buddy, due to overproviding good feelings and being too much fun. Now, if you CAN'T state-pump your way to going out when you just don't want to go out... what CAN you do? GOING OUT TO MEET WOMEN EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO There are three (3) ways to get yourself out to talk to talk to women even when you feel terrible, even when you're scared, and even when you're trying to find excuses to stay in and watch a movie or play a game or head to bed early because you're "going to get up early and do some day game tomorrow" (never happens). They are these: Scheduling it in Being an explorer Having set goals Some of this I talked about in my (free to download) 2009 mini eBook Finding Your Niche - so snag a copy of that if you haven't already. Let's have a look at each of these points and how you can use them to get yourself out... even when you don't want to go out. Scheduling it in. When something is amorphously penciled into your schedule, it's very easy to decide not to do it. This is when you sort of feel like, "Maybe I'll go out tonight after dinner and a shower," and then later start feeling like it's going to be a lot of work for little payoff, then decide, "Nah, I'll go out tomorrow, because I don't feel like it right now." The way around this? Scheduling it in. Making it part of your pre-planned routine. When it's, "Today, after work, I'm going to have dinner at 6 PM, take a shower at 8 PM, and at 9:30 PM I'm heading out to The Sticky Tap to settle in before the crowd starts showing up at 10:30 PM or so," it's a lot easier to stick to that, because you already know what you're doing and it's already planned out. Just do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it, and there's no deciding required. If you feel yourself trying to wiggle out of it, just say to yourself, "Nope, it's already scheduled in. No thinking about this; just doing." Being an explorer. This one, when used in conjunction with scheduling things in, can remove most or all of your emotional reservations about a place. Any time you want to go out, but there aren't any places you're excited about going out to, it's time to check out somewhere new. Your mission: find a venue that sounds even vaguely interesting, that you've never been to, or have only been to briefly, and go there early in the night and stay there the whole night to get a feel for what the venue itself is like, and what the crowd it attracts is like. You don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to - all you have to do is go out alone, go to your selected venue early in the night (or late in the morning / early afternoon, if you're doing day pick up), walk around the entire premises to get a full lay of the land, then pick a spot where you can be comfortable, where you'll probably be somewhere high traffic, and where you can get a view of the crowd as things fill up and get busy over the next several hours. This "explorer" approach has gotten me into many places I'd probably never have checked out over the years that I eventually ended up becoming very fond of. Sure, maybe 70% to 80% of the time you get to a place, and leave with the impression of, "Meh, this place is no good for girls," but 20% to 30% of the time, you find a diamond in the rough - one that none of your friends knows about, you hardly ever hear about (or maybe NEVER hear about), yet is a veritable gold mine for meeting cute new girls who are happy to make your acquaintance. As an added bonus, you also get very acquainted with the spots all over your town to meet women at, and get more familiar with your city itself in general. Having set goals. When you've set out goals you're going to target achieving on any given outing in advance, it makes it a lot easier to get out - because instead of having some overwhelmingly impossible and poorly defined goal (like "get a date" or "get laid" or even "get girls to like me" can be if you're a beginner), you now have a specific set of small tasks to accomplish: "I will use a direct opener with 3 girls tonight" or "I will spin 4 girls around by the hand today on the street" or "I will do 3 nighttime street approaches tonight." Pick goals that feel achievable for where you're at, and instead of biting off a mountain, you're biting off something bite-sized and much more manageable. Any one of these alone can help you get out a lot more easily with a lot less back-and-forth, rationalizing, or talking yourself out of it. #1 combined with #2 or #3 can make it almost impossible to not go; and if you can combine all three ("Tonight, at 10 PM, I'm going to Club Nova to see if it's as good as I keep hearing it is or not, and I'm going to spin 3 girls around while there regardless") it's a lot easier to get yourself out - because then all you're doing is following through on what you've already decided to do. NO EXCUSES Ultimately, especially when you're new, randomness is king, and going out lots and talking to lots of girls is mandatory. Even when you know what you're doing, randomness plays a big part; when you're just starting out, you need lots of chances and lots of data points to both improve and to hit the occasional homerun with a cute new girl. And, you're every bit as likely to stumble into some good luck on a night you didn't want to drag yourself out of the house as you are on a night you went out on Cloud Nine. The hardest time for this is in the beginning, when you're new. Once you've had a few occasions of going out feeling awful, but ultimately having a great time, you'll soon realize that "state" has little or no correlation with "success", outside of its impact on getting you approaching more women. Make it a routine, schedule it in, be an explorer, and set a few goals (not too many... no more than 3 for any given outing to avoid overwhelm). Do that, and you'll be going out, even when you don't want to. It's how you get real results, and train yourself up at a realistically fast pace, and get yourself accustomed to meeting the kinds of women you want to meet anytime, any place, whenever you run into them, no matter how you're feeling then and there.

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##[A68] Social Skills 101: Socializing and Dating for introverts We live in a world designed for extroverts. It is designed for people who love parties, large social gatherings, and constant social stimulation. Today's post is designed for the underrepresented men, the men who still want to attract beautiful women, but want to remain true to their selves: this post is for the introverts. So without further ado, here we go: dating for introverts. What is an introvert? It's estimated that around 30% of the American population is introverted. But I would guess that the true number of people who are at least somewhat introverted (say, people who qualify as ambiverts - those who switch back and forth between introvert and extrovert) is actually much higher. But before we go any further, let me first clear something up: being introverted is not the same as being shy. Shyness means that you are afraid of social interaction because you fear social judgment. If you find yourself in that category, there are plenty of articles on this site that can help you brave the social waters, such as: How to Take Your Self-Esteem to the Stratosphere Anxiety in Men: Where it Comes From and How to Stop It The Pig and the Mirror How to be a Sexy Man Becoming a Social Success The Purpose of Life from a Practical Point of View However, being an introvert means that you still possess social skills and have the ability to attract women, but you would rather spend your time reading, working out, or otherwise improving yourself. dating introvert I am an introvert who has learned to be an extrovert when it's needed. Since we live an extroverted world, learning to be socially vibrant and engaging with large groups of people is absolutely essential. But it's completely possible to be true to your introverted essence while learning this skill. Before I get to discussing how to flip that switch, let's look at a few reasons why I love introverts: A high potential for success. Some of the greatest inventions and innovations in modern history have come from people who understand the power of solitude for inspiration. Introverts are usually driven, and sometimes even obsessive, about their personal progress. They are willing to put in the work and create great things for themselves and the world at large. No need for constant validation. In our extroverted world, people are constantly looking for their next source of stimulation and reassurance from texting, email, Facebook or the latest social media fad. On the other hand, introverts have the ability to go deep in face to face interactions, and get their emotional validation from their constant self-improvement. Great conversation. Introverts - because of their naturally varied interests and dedication to personal cultivation - all have the potential to have fantastic conversationalists. If you want tips on taking advantage of your conversational potential, check out Chase's post on becoming a conversationalist. Introverts have tons of advantages to offset the "disadvantage" of not being as socially inclined. Some say we live in an "extrovert's world" today, but I don't think so - if anything, the Internet has made it easier to be an introvert and get the things you want out of life than at any time before. Now let's talk some about introvert dating and socializing. SOCIAL LIFE TIPS FOR THE INTROVERTED MAN Introverted men definitely stand to have fulfilling and exciting social lives, with as much richness and depth - perhaps more so - than their extrovert counterparts. In fact, while your extroverted peers will be focused on having as broad a selection of acquaintances as possible, you'll be a lot more focused on having one-on-one conversations with people and driving these into becoming deep, meaningful connections and relationships. Before we talk about dating as an introvert, let's devote a little time to socializing in general first - it'll be a little tough to meet the girl of your dreams if you don't know anybody or do anything, after all! Here's how to go about building a rewarding social life as an introvert: Find reasons to leave your home. Introverted people are pros at finding excuses to stay home. I used to have periods a few years ago when I would go 2-3 days without stepping outside. It felt good at first because I was very productive, but after a while, I started to feel like I was wasting opportunities to have new experiences out in the world and started to feel a void in my life. At that point I made a promise to myself to get outside every day - rain, sleet or shine. I think every introvert can benefit from venturing out into the world every so often. Whether it's working on a project with someone in a café instead of your home, or going to the bookstore to buy the latest Tim Ferriss book instead ordering it on Amazon: find reasons to get outside and expose yourself to the world. Direct your attention and energy outward. As an introvert, it's easy to get caught up in your own personal reflections and think about what your next individual challenge is going to be, how your environment is affecting you at a given moment, or what you should be observing. But it's vitally important to direct your attention to your outside environment. The only way to truly connect with other people is to invest in what they have to offer. To be sure to actively listen, get your energy up, and get out of your own head (as much as you can) when you find yourself in large social situations. Step outside your social circle. It's a common misconception that being an introvert means that you only spend time by yourself. This is inaccurate. Introverted people like close personal contact, so most tend to have a small group of friends that they spend most - if not all - of their time with. If you want to expand your sphere of social influence or hone various aspects of your social skills, you must meet people outside of your social circle. There's no way around it. If you want to bring high-value women into your life, if you want to network for employment opportunities, or even if you just want to add some social spice to your world: expanding your network and meeting new people is absolutely essential. Learn to compartmentalize your social life. The reason why so many men end up in the friend zone, or in the potential boyfriend category, or in the whatever category, or any other undesirable category in a woman's life is because women are masters of compartmentalizing. They have no problem with assigning particular roles to the men in their life. An easy way to get the intimacy of small gatherings while still improving your social skills is to do what women do: compartmentalize your social life. That is, do particular activities with particular people. This is especially easy if you have multiple interests/hobbies (as most introverts do). Go rock climbing with a small group of people, then play park volleyball with a different group, then party with another group still. There will most likely be overlap with your closest friends, but being able to put together a small, reliable group for a particular activity will serve the introvert well in both remaining comfortable and improving his skills. Be a host. The easiest way to flourish in a social situation is maximizing your comfort while being in an advantageous environment. What easier way to get new people into your life, increase your social clout, and feel right at home than literally being at home? So open your home to a social gathering or two, and take advantage of being in your own element. Take time to recharge your batteries. Going to large social gatherings for extended periods of time can be extremely emotionally and mentally draining. It's okay to take time to recharge your batteries and dedicate time to yourself or your close group of friends. In fact, it's necessary if you're going to maintain a sense of well being as a sociable introvert. It's very possible to build a social life that both accomplishes your objectives for socializing and is not a burden on you emotionally or temporally as an introvert... you've just got to build your social life in a way that best suits YOU. dating introvert Let's dive into introvert dating. There are two parts to the introvert's approach: quality and quantity. In terms of women, quantity involves actions that are outwardly directed: such as approaching sufficient numbers of women, handling your fundamentals, and developing a process. Quality involves actions that are inwardly directed: such as developing a sense of style, landing a good job, and traveling. Introverted men are naturally good at improving their prospects of quality. So, just like expanding your social circle, it will be necessary to cold approach women fairly regularly so that you have the ability to bring the high-value ones into your life. dating introvert Moreover, most introverts prefer to have 1 or 2 high-value women that they invest their time and energy into instead of constantly trying to bed new women. I hear men say that they enjoy the challenge of bedding a new woman, or the act of sharpening their social axe, which is why they find themselves picking up girls in bars and clubs quite often. This is not the case for the introverted man. The introverted man would rather have a few solid women who contribute to his life and allow him to continue to pursue his varied ambitions. So how does the introverted man go about getting these women? Find girls in places that you would actually enjoy frequenting. If you are anything like me, you hate going to bars and clubs and trying to pick up drunk girls or club queens. Luckily for you, there are several comprehensive posts (as well as Chase's ebook) on where to find quality girls. But in short, day game is your friend, so find them in places that you actually like going to; whether that's the art museum or your favorite farmer's market: start there and find your dream girl. Deep dive, qualify, and stay humble. As an introverted man, you greatly value deep connection and women who have values that match yours. So spend a little more time deep diving and finding out what really matters to a girl (while still chase framing and maintaining your sexy vibe, of course). Also, focus on her and stay humble. It can be easy for women to get caught up and interested in you talking about your varied personal development projects, but this does not further a a romantic interaction; so make sure to keep the focus on her and stay humble as you move through conversations. DATING AS AN INTROVERT It's especially important for the introverted man to be an expert in keeping women satisfied and happy whenever they spend time with him. First off, you should check out Ricardus' post on how to date multiple women - even if dating multiple women isn't your plan right now. This post gives you the mental foundation to juggle interacting with multiple different women in multiple different kinds of scenarios, regardless what your end goals may be. After you read that, take a look at these tips on structuring an effective lifestyle that will keep you and any women in your life happy: Be a good lover. If you've followed this site at all, you've probably noticed that a common theme: giving women unbelievable sexual experiences. This is the easiest way to get a girl on a second date (give her great first-date sex). This is the easiest way to ensure a girl never forgets you. This is the easiest way to keep women coming back and loving the time they spend with you. This should first and foremost be your concern in terms of keeping women (and yourself) happy. You won't regret it. Find women who share your interests. Many guys have no problem spending time with a girl as long as she's attractive, easygoing and likes to have fun. However, introverted men should find women who they can discuss and pursue their passions with. The introverted man greatly values his time, so you should always find a girl who can share in your interests and make your time enriching, in addition to being attractive and high-value. Be chill. If you want to have high-value women in your life, without having a serious relationship, it'll be important to relax and let the women in your life maintain whatever relations they have outside of you, as it's only fair. At least until the point that you want to escalate things and make them a bit more serious. Although we live in a world seemingly populated extroverts (perhaps because the introverts are all indoors), it is very possible for the introverted man to spend time improving himself and still have a fulfilling social and romantic life. So get out there, find your balance, and as always… Carpe diem,

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##[A69] How to demolish Approach anxiety forever One of our readers, Richard, asked about approach anxiety in the comments section of my last article on Girls Chase about dating for introverts: "Colt, I must genuinely thank you for your article as, without consciously labeling my game as introverted, it is. Sex hasn't meant a whole lot to me, and even after opening several women, I generally only end up holding onto a few of the girls I meet. I respect what you write, and I greatly look forward to your future articles. That being said though, I have a few friends who introverts as well, and though my game has gotten worlds better, I can't get them over their massive approach anxiety, what worked for me hasn't worked for them. Any advice for the introverted man who has approach anxiety? You've become a huge inspiration for me man. Thank you, Richard" Approach anxiety is a topic that resurfaces from time to time on this site, addressed in articles such as "How to Approach a Girl Wherever You Are (Easily)" and "How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor, Part IV" and a smattering of other pieces. It was even systematically addressed by Chase in "Overcoming Approach Anxiety." approach anxiety Yet, despite these excellent write ups, so many of our dear readers (as well as male friends of my own) continue to complain of completely freezing whenever they try to talk to an attractive woman. I know exactly how this goes. Well... at least I used to. Approach anxiety was by far my biggest hurdle in greatly improving my skills with women. Bar none. I read everything I could, I talked to everyone I could possibly talk to, and did whatever was necessary to try to address the crippling anxiety I had. Now, it's not something I really think about anymore. So team, I am now going to offer you a comprehensive post on approach anxiety; one from my own perspective, to complement Chase's previous piece and the other articles on this site that deal with the subject, to share with you everything I learned, the pitfalls you should avoid, and how you should go about moving forward. It is my hope that this will be the last post you will ever need on the topic. approach anxiety When I was high school, I was a champion debater, often ranked in the top 10 to 20 high school debaters nationwide. I often liked to keep to myself, but whenever people got me going in social situations, I was loud and energetic. If you ever met me in person, you would be among the many who say I'm probably the loudest person they've ever known. And when it came time to compete, there was absolutely no one who could intimidate me. However, whenever I encountered a girl I found attractive, I would become as quiet as a mouse. I would have no vibrant energy, few good remarks, and would develop a very awkward general aura. Exacerbating this was the fact that I had a lot of female friends. They would constantly tell me that I'm a "great guy" and give me well-intentioned, but terrible advice on girls - really, telling me to do whatever was the opposite of whatever the men who ended up together with them did; see "Dating Advice for Men: Why NOT to Get It from Women" - as they continued to sleep with whatever powerful men were currently in their lives. For years I was frustrated, and after a conversation with a friend of mine who was a natural with women, I became motivated to understanding why I made such a negative transformation around attractive women. I was determined to start to see success in the area of my life. KNOW THYSELF The mind is a very interesting thing. Our subconscious thoughts, many that we aren't even fully aware of, find ways to creep into our actions, and therefore into our life results. Approach anxiety is no different. There are two main mental components that I want to highlight in terms of approach anxiety: This first is an idea that is often highlighted on this site: you vs. your paleomammalian brain. There's that tiny part of your brain - literally in the back of your head - called the amygdala, which is responsible for activating your flight-or-flight response and generally filling your body with adrenaline to keep you out of danger. In terms of women, back in the caveman days, this part of your brain was incredibly important. Approaching some random cavewoman could mean inciting the anger of her better half, ending in your death. Those are pretty high stakes. However, now, you won't really have that problem 99% of the time you approach a woman. But, that part of your brain is still active, so overcoming approach anxiety means actively calming your amygdala. The second component is social rejection. When we are infants and toddlers, we have no concept of social rejection. This is because almost any adult will gladly shower a young child with love and affection, even if the child isn't theirs. However, as children get older and begin to interact with one another, they start to form social groups, compete for dominance, and engage in the general competitive and exclusionary behavior that we see in any human group. And as we age even further, we start understanding the triggers of people's disapproval. These are things like our looks, personalities, skin color, etc. So as our awareness grows, so does our self-consciousness. This is the reason why facial expressions are so incredibly important. If you've ever read Blink by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, you know that many conclusions we draw about people happen in less than three seconds. So, if we don't see positive signs (like smiling, laughter, open body language, etc.), we subconsciously assume that the person will reject us if we approach them. So, for people who haven't trained their brains to get past the amygdala and their fear of social rejection, approach anxiety can be nearly impossible to overcome. However, once you learn to deal with these two mental factors, approach anxiety will all but disappear most of the time. approach anxiety A lot of people are under the impression that fear is something you get rid of, or something you move past - but that's not what fear is. Fear is something you learn to manage, and just like any tool a great carpenter wields: it's something you master. You use the positive aspects of fear without having to suffer from the negatives. This mastering of fear will quiet your amygdala and eliminate your fear of social rejection. If getting beautiful women was no challenge for anyone, every less-than-average Joe would be walking around with an Adriana Lima on his arm. The same is true for every skill, craft and profession in existence. There is always a barrier to entry. And in the case of bringing beautiful women into your life: approach anxiety is the price of admission. At the end of the day, fear is just energy. It keeps us alive, it keeps us invigorated, and it keeps us aware of the constant need to improve. Got your fundamentals down? Be afraid of guys who are great conversationalists. You're a great conversationalist? Be afraid of losing your girl to guys are great closers. You're a great closer at the top of your game? Be afraid of losing your skills if you don't keep your axe sharp. No matter what stage you're in, fear will always find a way to manifest itself. So understanding what it is - and how to master it - will be the key to overcoming approach anxiety and graduating to better fears. IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU Interestingly enough, approach anxiety has very little to do with other people, and very much to do with you. Let's hammer down the process that will help you shake your approach anxiety for good. Step One: Learn to Accept Yourself I don't want to make this sound like an afterschool special. And normally, I don't really like to talk about "inner game" too much, as actions will end up changing your deep mindsets. But, for approach anxiety, people can tell you "approach, approach, approach!" And the first approach will be just as nerve racking and uncomfortable as the 50th or even 150th. That's because your results will often be lacking at first, so you internalize the failure - which prevents you from moving forward. approach anxiety In the case of approach anxiety, the right mindset will lead to deliberate action, which will feed that mindset, and so on and so forth. Here's a little exercise I like to do. If you want to get over your personal insecurities, write down a list of all of your weaknesses. And then, when you've completed your list, write down 3 strengths for every one weakness you wrote. And every week, pick a weakness, and write down how you plan to overcome it. Make your plan detailed. And then for that week, dedicate all of your energy to deliberately focusing on that weakness, while looking over your list of strengths as often as you need to. And when the week is up, add that trait to your list of strengths, and move on to the next weakness. What this exercise does is train your brain to associate your perceived weaknesses as sources of positive energy. Secondly, acknowledge the fact that you will always have faults. That's the thing about people - no one is perfect. Meditate on this fact. Think about it every day. Internalize it. Yes, you can always improve, but you will never be perfect. A truly dominant, powerful man isn't so because he doesn't make mistakes or doesn't show weakness - that's just being a dumb alpha. The truly powerful man is Byronic; he knows he's flawed and he uses those flaws his advantage. BE PREPARED Every day is opportunity to meet a beautiful woman. And even if you don't end up talking to one, you should always be prepared to do so. Step 2: Prepare Yourself for the Events of Every Day Fashion. Are you going out into the world for any reason at all? Then expect that you may be put in a situation to interact with a cute girl. That means: make being stylish an everyday occurrence. If you want to win the game, come ready to play. Small Steps. If you're going out at night, talk to people all day long. But start slowly and progress. It doesn't matter who it is. It can be an old lady at the bus stop, or the mailman. Try to talk to them; say hello, ask how their day is going, etc. And then as you interact with more people, try to deep dive them. Anyone can say hello to someone else. But deep diving random people does two good things for you: It sharpens your skill for deep diving and conversing with women when it matters. It helps warm you up socially with no pressure. The lady at the post office doesn't feel like sharing the details of her day with you? No problem, she's just a random woman, and you will likely never see her again. Exercise. Exercise generates energy and endorphins, both keys to battling approach anxiety and staying positive. Take advantage of it. Affirm. Some guys swear by affirmations. In my opinion, at the very least they don't hurt you, as long as they are a part of a greater process. So look in the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and tell yourself that you are charming, powerful, etc. and really mean it. This will also help infuse positive thought patterns into your psyche. EMBRACING FAILURE A big mistake that a lot of men make (especially us introverted types) is expecting that if we take action, we should be rewarded with a beautiful woman. This is the SINGLE greatest misconception that feeds approach anxiety. It was this realization that completely turned things around for me. This leads to my next step: Step 3: Acknowledge That the World Doesn't Owe You Anything You can be the best guy in the world. You can be smart, Byronic, athletic, charming, sexy, well-dressed, wealthy, and humble…and there will still be plenty women who will reject you. Why? Sometimes you're simply not her type. Sometimes she's married. No matter what the reason, even if you handle a situation perfectly, there will always be times when you lose. But just like in poker, if you make the statistically correct moves every single time, you will come out on top in the long run. In any given situation with a girl, there's no guarantee that you will be rewarded for your efforts, despite the fact we live in a society of entitled people. In the end, all you can do is your part. Once you've done your part, that's it. That's all you can do. The world doesn't owe you a beautiful girlfriend, a night of passionate lovemaking or anything else. But if you play your cards right, and go out enough times, those things will happen to you inevitably. Step 4: Develop a Process A clear process is one of, if not the most important factor to consistent success with women. If you don't have a process of your own, adopt Chase's process (examples here and here). Write it down if you have to, but keep it simple, tweak it to your needs, and follow it every single time (at least until you're confident enough to deviate). Step 5: View Failure as Feedback Sometimes you'll end up with a beautiful girl because of a fluke. You accidentally strike the right chords and she falls for you. But these occurrences don't teach you anything about improving yourself and your skills with women. But failure, combined with a clear process, always does. If you're following a process, you can see - step by step - where interactions are going south, and what you need to improve on. Making this your mindset is incredibly important to mastering approach anxiety. If you've ever seen interviews with author Seth Godin, he often attributes his great successes to the fact that he has advantages over people; not because he's smarter or richer, but because he's failed more than they have. He's taken the time to understand the ins and outs of marketing (his field) so that he knows exactly what pitfalls to avoid. It's the exact same with women. Expect failure, and come to view as feedback for improvement. Also understand that if she rejects you, she's not rejecting you as a person. Actually, oftentimes when girls reject you it's not because they weren't attracted. Maybe your approach was a little off and she got sheepish, maybe she has a boyfriend, maybe you didn't persist. And if it was because she wasn't attracted, she can't possibly be rejecting you as a person because she doesn't know you. If someone comes up to you on the street trying to sell you insurance and you say no, do you think to yourself: "Man, this is a terrible person in front of me"? Of course not! You think: "I don't need an insurance policy right now" or "I don't buy my insurance from random street vendors." Sometimes you just don't have a girl is looking for right now, and that's okay. It's not a reflection of you as an individual, it's just a combination (or lack thereof) of skills, timing and a little bit o' lady luck. So stop catastrophizing every rejection, and instead look at it as an opportunity to get better and eventually give the girl of your dreams the man of hers. Step 6: Embrace the Zen of Action There is something I like to call the Zen of Action. This idea is based on being the active agent in your own life. This is the idea that every remarkable person I've ever known has come to understand. If you see a cute girl in a café, or even a "perfect ten" (even though I hate that ranking system), you must first understand that this girl's life is probably very mundane. She goes to work, goes to the gym, grabs coffee, runs errands, and gets hit on by sleazy guys. That is her every day. And just like every other person in this world, she has her own worries, problems and personal insecurities. That's where you come in. You with your unpredictable, devil-may-care attitude; you who will inspire her to travel or to dance or to do whatever she's too afraid or apprehensive of doing. You will give her an amazing experience in bed. But let's say you don't get that far. Let's say you don't even make it out of the café. Well, if you've been reading this site, you've changed this girl's world. You've given her an amazing conversation, you've shown her that there are still sexy, stylish men in this world, and you brought excitement into her very ordinary life. Whether she goes to bed with you, gives her number, or even rejects you, you will take solace in the fact that in some way, her world will never be the same after meeting you. That is the Zen of Action. And it applies to everything. It's knowing that after you interact with someone, you have altered their sheltered world. But in order to do this, you must always act. And once again if you fail, it's no big deal. I'll share a secret with you: the best people in any walk of life fail more than they succeed. What's a good average shooting percentage in pro basketball? 45%-50%. What is the golden rule of success in business? Fail 99 times; succeed on number 100. Even if you become a master seducer, you will be rejected/miss out on far, far more women than you will take to bed, especially when you're just starting out. In all parts of life, you will fail more than you succeed. Step 7: Find Something You Fear More Still finding yourself stuck sometimes? Find something you're more afraid of than being rejected by some random girl. Do you fear waking up at age 50, alone, overweight, and regretful of the fact that you couldn't talk to some girl in a bar for 5 minutes? Well…you should. In the beginning (actually, even now) fears like this kept me going. I don't want to be an old man full of regret. I want to be an old man who can smile at the fact that he lived an incredible life with incredible people. If that means getting rejected sometimes in order to earn unforgettable adventures, then it's a worthy exchange. So find something you fear more than a little failure or some girl. HANDLING WOMEN Fear out of the way, let's move on to talking about having the right kind of thinking about women prior to and during the approach. Step 8: Have a Clear and Definite Outcome in Mind It's incredible how many men go out into situations - guns blazing - without a clear outcome in mind. A key to success in any interaction is deciding what you want out of the interaction. Do you want to take the girl home? Do you want to take her home but grab her number if there are bad logistics? Do you want a cute dance partner? Do you want a new female friend? No matter what your outcome is, it's incredibly important to decide beforehand. This decision will give your interaction direction and structure, and you can demonstrably test how effectively you're using your process. Also, give yourself reasons to succeed. Tell your friends to take away your computer until you approach ten girls in one week. Buy yourself a nice shirt after you hit a fifty-approach benchmark. Set clear goals, and give yourself reasons to achieve them. Step 9: Step Away From the Pedestal I said it in step 6, and I'll say it again: women are flawed, insecure, silly creatures with active digestive tracts. They're not goddesses, and they don't like being treated like the object of your prayers (though, they do like being treated like the object of your fantasies). approach anxiety No one wants to be anyone else's crush. We all want to be with someone who understands us as an individual and accepts our flaws. Avoiding infatuation can be tricky sometimes, and definitely may warrant a post of its own, but for now, stop putting the women in your life on a pedestal. It's best for you and them. Step 10: Understand That It's Always a Numbers Game The two greatest mistakes that men make with girls are: Never trying at all, and Giving up too early. Sometimes you'll have to flirt with 15 girls before you find the one you really click with. Sometimes you'll be hitting it off with a cute, funny girl, and you'll mess things up and lose her, so you're forced to start a completely new interaction with someone else. You have to learn to push until you can't push anymore. It's the only way you'll build your endurance. It's the only way you'll get the girl of your dreams. If you want motivation, read this short account of a middle-aged man training with Bruce Lee: "Bruce Lee had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We'd run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a half minutes per mile]. So this morning he said to me "We're going to go five." I said, "Bruce, I can't go five. I'm a helluva lot older than you are, and I can't do five." He said, "When we get to three, we'll shift gears and it's only two more and you'll do it." I said "Okay, hell, I'll go for it." So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I'm okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I'm tired, my heart's pounding, I can't go any more and so I say to him, "Bruce if I run any more," -and we're still running-"if I run any more I'm liable to have a heart attack and die." He said, "Then die." It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, "Why did you say that?" He said, "Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." Step 11: Reverse Engineer Success In the 20th Century, there was a writer named Dale Carnegie who wrote books about winning friends, influencing people, and having complete control over your life. One of my favorite books of his is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. In it, he discusses some powerful ideas on how to reverse engineer success, especially for people just starting out in a certain area of life. Now let me share them with you: Ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen?" Let's say you want to approach a cute girl at a bar and are really nervous about going for it. You start feeling the internal resistance. Stop for a second, and think about what the worst case scenario is. Probably in this case, the worst-case scenario is the girl throwing her drink on you and walking away. Accept the worst case scenario, if you have to. Now, tell yourself that you accept the possibility that this cute girl could throw her drink on you and walk away. It probably won't happen, but it could, so accept it. If she throws her drink on you, is the world going to end? Is she the last girl you'll ever see? Of course not. You're going to get a few napkins at the bar, wipe yourself off, and keep living life. And if you're not too serious of a person, probably have a laugh about it. Improve upon the worst. So you've now accepted the worst-case scenario. So now you have nothing to fear, and you may as well go for it. And now, it's time to improve upon that scenario. How could you prevent her from throwing her drink on you? Probably by projecting a sexy vibe, not falling into the alpha male trap, and having good fundamentals. Once you have all of these things, you'll probably be able to open her pretty well. So push a bit farther. Banter with her, and then deep dive

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##[Ext] "Im Picky" Here's a short, powerful tip for getting girls feeling both attracted and special around you in a hurry: tell them you're picky. Tell them you're very picky - but you like them. And then have some valid reasons for why (them being beautiful does not count - there are a lot of beautiful women in the world!). I picked this up originally from women I dated; it seems like every girl I date tells me she's picky at some point or another. I'm not sure if that's because I actually date mostly picky women, or if they just like to tell me that because they can tell I myself am picky. Regardless, it's something I started telling women too: that I am picky. i'm picky And I am - I really am. I'm a very picky guy when it comes to determining what kind of girl I'm willing to spend my time on in a relationship. And if you're not, well, you should be. Screening, qualifying, and holding women to your standards are all things you ought to be doing to communicate you're a guy who isn't so easy to please. When do you tell a woman you're picky? Here's an example of when I used it quite recently: Girl: Are you sure you like me? Me: I am an extremely picky guy. Most women don't stand much of a chance with me. So the fact that I'm spending time with you in the first place should answer that question for you. I didn't want to say, "Yes, I'm sure I like you," and come off as a yes man. Nor did I want to tease her and say, "Of course not, I don't like you at all!" as I'd already joked around like that when she'd asked me a few other questions before this one. I needed a solid answer that would answer the question in a very high status, attractive way. "I'm picky" did the trick. Use this any time you need to reassure women who aren't certain why you like them. But make sure it's true - women can tell if you're picky or not. If you're not very picky in general, then specify what you are picky about - for instance, maybe you sleep with a lot of women, but the women you date you're very picky about. So tell her: "For me to date a girl, she's got to be pretty amazing. I'm a tough guy to please." If you don't often tell women you're picky, you ought to start. It's a strong statement that positions you at once both as a man with high standards, and as someone she can get (provided you stress the facts that you're picky and you like her). So, start telling girls you're picky - and watch them light up.

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##[] How to Build an Emotional Connection An emotional connection is one of those fleeting, powerful things that can seem all too rare and all too outside one's control. It can seem like it's just chance when you happen upon one -- as if but by the grace of God it came into being. But it doesn't have to be. Just like succeeding with women in general -- just like figuring out how to launch businesses and succeed financially -- just like anything in life -- the ability to build an emotional connection is something that can be learned. Most people don't like to hear that. Most people want to think that all in life is pure happenstance and nothing other than fate determines the outcome of their lives. But those of us actively in pursuit of bettering ourselves and of mastering the skills to control our own destinies know better -- that a lot less in life is chance than most folks think. A lot of it is skill. And learning to connect with people on an emotional level is one of the most powerful, practical, wide-reaching skills you can possibly learn. If you haven't given much thought to this one before, it's high time you started. "THE OTHER" In the mid-20th century, French psychoanalyst Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan developed the concept of "the other," originally introduced by German philosopher Georg Hegel in the early 1800s and now a pillar of modern day psychological models. What the idea of "the other" holds is that every person sees everything else in the world -- including every other human being -- as being either the same as him or herself -- or other. It's easy to gather how othering -- as the verb form is called in psychological parlance -- would serve to keep our ancestors living and thriving. Those who aren't with us may be against us and need to be watched carefully and be subject to suspicion, unless and until they can prove they're on the same wavelength as us. Even today, in our far safer world with a far lower mortality rate than at any other point in history, othering helps keep us safe; it protects us from people who might potentially be a threat to us and helps us stick to those who understand us best and ally with us and are most likely to help us succeed and go to bat for us in times of need. For the seducer though, and for anyone else who seeks to achieve mastery at building emotional connections with others, the question of the other presents a unique problem -- and an unparalleled opportunity. That's because most people are very good at positioning themselves as the other, and not so good at showing how they are the same. And emotional connection, at its very core, is all about helping others see you as the same as them: as someone who gets them, is bonded to them, and understands them to the quick of them. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first: you need to realize the things you're doing that position you as "other" in the mind of girls you like. And before you can do that, I want to call your attention to how you view some women as "other" right now. First, think of a certain kind of woman you dislike. Maybe it's those Barbie dolls who dress themselves up and think so highly of themselves -- all you want is to get a real girl. Maybe it's fat women if you're skinny, or skinny women if you're fat -- who wants a woman that disgusting (fat) or that much a bag of bones (skinny)? Or maybe it's the hardcore feminists and the women's libbers -- if anyone falls into the "other" category for most men, it's got to be them -- they hate men! And now that I've got you all riled up thinking of your most hated enemies in the opposite sex, stop and think. Are they really all bad, horrible, good-for-nothing people? Do they really have nothing to offer to humanity? Or are you just broad-handedly, ham-fistedly, categorically tossing them into a stereotyped category of "other" and deciding they're stone-hearted individuals who simply can't be related to as people? If you stop and you're really, truly honest with yourself, you'll realize they're people just like you are and just like the people you don't consider "other" are, and there really isn't anything wrong with them. They're just living a different life you don't fully relate to, and they have different reactions to you and feelings about you too. Personally, girls who dress über flashy I used to not like all that much because they used to be colder toward me; and heftier girls I didn't like a whole lot because (aside from my own personal preferences for women with thin waists) they tended to snap at me even when I was just being friendly and social a lot of the time. So, for a while, those kinds of women got tossed into the "other" category for me. Who's in your other category? But tackling your own list of others isn't the object of this post. For doing some internal work in that regard, check out "Reference Points and Changing Worldviews." I just wanted to point out that "the other" is very real and a psychological mechanism we're all subject to. And that includes the women you meet. You see, most men, while trying to build an emotional connection with women, inadvertently tend to flip girls' "other" switches. They do some knuckleheaded things that get them booted out of contention for the same and quickly slotted into the other. And once you're an "other," good luck trying to get a girl to do... well... ANYTHING with you. WHERE MOST GUYS GO WRONG IN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION-BUILDING So how do you avoid being an "other;" any idea? Let's define what most guys are doing wrong... the things that kill their chances at building a connection and being viewed as "the same." Throwing out contentious opinions. Men are a lot more susceptible to this than women are for some reason. Okay, not "some reason"... women are a lot more socially attuned than the average man and just don't do this. What's a contentious opinion? Let's say you're talking to a girl, and the two of you talk about exercise. "You know what I hate?" you say. "Yoga. What a silly waste of time that is." Then she tells you she runs a yoga studio. By way of another example, say she makes the off-hand remark that she absolutely loathes men who spend hours watching sports every week... but unbeknownst to her, you spend hours watching sports every week. The instant she states that opinion, you feel less connected to her. That's the kind of thing you want to avoid doing to women -- but so many men do it, and keep doing it, more or less obliviously. Failing to build consensus. Women are very good at building consensus. Men often aren't. The men who fail to build consensus regularly tend to leave women feeling ignored or marginalized when they make unilateral decisions; women can end up feeling their needs haven't been attended to, and they lose a lot of connectedness to the man making the unilateral decision. This, you might say, is bad form. You can still be the leader and still direct things your way; in fact, women typically will be looking for you to make the decisions and lead the charge. But they still want to feel included. When men fail to include women in the decision making process and instead make those unilateral decisions, women end up feeling left out -- not just of the decision itself, but of the man's consideration altogether too. Never going beyond the superficial. Deep diving is an effective tool for a reason: it gets women telling you about themselves, beyond the ordinary, and bonding to you on who they really are. You aren't "other" if you know them and get them to an intimate degree. Most men never do this though, and instead let their conversation remain in the realm of the common and the surface-level. Forgetting to actively listen and provide good feedback. As discussed in the post on becoming an exceptional conversationalist, one of the things that makes a woman begin bonding to and relating to a man is his ability to show her that he's listening to, relating to, and understanding what she's saying. Most men don't do this, either because they aren't really listening, or because they're too caught up in trying to be impressive to really be there in the moment and feed back to a woman what she's saying. When a man fails to feed back a woman's conversation to her, she feels like her words are falling on deaf ears -- on ears that don't really care. Thus, the man she's talking to must not relate -- he must be "other." These are the mistakes most guys end up making that poison their ability to really connect and bond with a woman. And if you want to do better than most guys, you're going to need to do a little better than this. build emotional connection HOW TO BUILD AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION You want to get out of ending up considered "other" and into being thought of as "the same." How you do that is by building an emotional connection. The man who knows how to build an emotional connection is the man who's able to control his own fate, so to speak, when it comes to connecting with others. He's no longer at the mercy of destiny, hoping for that spark to manifest; instead, he controls its manifestation. "Chemistry" is at his beck and call. To build an emotional connection though, you're going to need to do the opposite of what most men do -- the opposite of those places we just laid out above, where most men go wrong. You'll need to be focused on bonding instead of whatever it is regular guys are focused on (proving how amazing they are, I guess?). Some of this is going to be similar to what we talked about in "The Conversationalist;" if anything sounds familiar, just view it as a refresher. Some of it's going to be different. All of it's going to be focused, first and foremost, on building that emotional connection and avoiding the label of "other" that so many men put themselves into. Here are the tools you'll need to build an emotional connection: Avoid arguments and contention, and hold your tongue on divisive opinions. At least until you're fairly certain she shares those divisive opinions of yours, anyway. You're very nationalistic, and she's from another country? Probably not a great idea to get into singing your home country's praises too loudly. Instead, talk about stuff you can both agree on -- interests, hobbies. Maybe both of you like art, or played sports in high school, or hate office desk jobs. Doesn't matter what it is -- so long as it's something you relate to each other on. Build consensus. You don't have to hold a vote, exactly, but you should ask for buy in. Like so: "I'm thinking we should hit the pizza parlor. Do you like pizza?" That way she feels included in the decision. You get the added bonus of once she's bought in, she'll support the decision -- rather than attack it or resist it, as women may do with decisions they haven't bought into. Skip this one in obvious time-to-lead situations, such as when you're moving her somewhere quiet or secluded, or when you're taking her home. But when it's not as much of a do-or-die situation, yeah -- get buy-in. It helps. Quite a lot, sometimes. Get to the nitty gritty ASAP. Quick, how connected do you feel to someone you've spoken with for ten minutes who still knows nothing about you other than where you went to college, where you're originally from, and what you do for work right now? Not a whole lot, right? By focusing on getting under a girl's hood fast -- by getting to her deeper self -- you allow her to connect to you deeply and rapidly and get out of the "other" zone. This is where deep diving comes in, and why going beyond the superficial is so crucial in everything other than fast pulls. Listen actively and provide feedback. This can be as simple as repeating back to a girl what she's said to you but with different words. e.g., she tells you about how her father taught her to sail, and you respond with, "That's so very cool you had a dad who taught you to sail. How good did you end up getting?" By actively listening / providing feedback, you show that you listen, and you show that you get it. Most important about all of these is that they're signature markers of "sameness" and identify you as in-group, rather than out-group. They let you skirt the stigma of "other" that so many men seem so good at getting slapped onto their foreheads, and aid you in building a real, genuine emotional connection with women. Futher, once you're good at knowing how to build an emotional connection, you become that rare individual others can connect to well -- distinguishing yourself from everyone else. The ability to build an emotional connection allows you to build friends and allies with on a highly consistent basis. And, it makes you a heck of a closer -- you know that, given the opportunity to talk to a girl, the two of you are probably going to end up connecting very well. All you really need to start is a focus on connecting, instead of obliviously blundering into "other" territory like most guys do. Knowing is half the battle... and the techniques above are the other half. Hope you enjoy using them.

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##[N/A] How to get Real Girls Recently while scanning the good old Internet I came across a number of posts where guys talk down on beautiful women as being "shallow" and "bitches" and wonder about how to get "real girls." This seemed a little jarring and I like to cut myself off from negative stuff whenever possible, so I navigated away from those guys' pages. But the thought was in my head: what is a "real girl?" Because to be sure, everyone defines it a bit differently. A guy who sports a few tattoos and works construction might mean "a girl with a few tattoos herself who likes alternative rock and WWE" when he says "real girl." A guy who was a bit of a nerd in school and is a computer programmer now, on the other hand, might mean "a girl who appreciates sarcasm, digs anime, and plays WOW" when he says "real girl." So who's right? Well, in a way, they both are - and neither of them are. Because what determines whether a girl is "real" or not isn't whether she rocks tattoos, surfs the web, or even whether she gets her hair dyed and her nails done or not. What determines "realness" runs a little deeper, and if you want to know how to get real girls, you need to know first what "realness" really is. "REALNESS" A little over eight years ago, when I was 19 years old, I launched my first website, designed to promote my music and image. Aside from the catcalls I got over my music (which was quite bad when I started out), I also took a lot of heat for being "fake" and tryhard. I was, people told me, not real. It was a hard thing to hear, and it stung more than the comments about my amateurish music. More importantly though, it made me realize the importance of putting out a coherent, believable, genuine identity to the world - if you come off too cartoonish, too one-dimensional, as I did in those days, you get called "fake." This is because people who only portray themselves as one thing seem unreal. They flip our mental switches that say, "That person is pretending." The truth is, everyone bleeds. Everyone has good days and bad days, and everyone fails more often than he succeeds. People who get called "fake" don't account for this when they build their identities, and they end up coming off fake because the way they present themselves to the world is as invincible and perfect; the ideal image of something that everyone knows isn't as ideal as they present it. But people also get called fake when others only see one side of them. That hot blonde in a flashy dress might get called "fake" by some random guys who saw her in a nightclub and pinned her as a Barbie doll, but if they knew she was a genuinely warm, accepting person who graduated summa cum laude from her school and likes to tell silly jokes at parties, suddenly they wouldn't see her as fake anymore. Suddenly she'd start to seem real. So "fakeness" is an effect of the limits of perception - of not being able to see a person's entire self. Those limits may be due to the person him or herself - the jock who tries to always seem untouchable and perfect, for instance, or the career woman who tries to always keep it 100% professional and never mention anything about her personal life ever to her colleagues or ever get into personal discussions - or they may be due to the situation - the celebrity you only ever see on TV, or the girl you only ever see from a distance in real life. "Real" is the word we use to describe those people we're able to emotionally relate to; the ones we see and think to ourselves, "Ah, she's just like me." "Fake" is the word we use to describe everyone else. Generally speaking, the more you get to know about a person, the more "real" she's going to seem to you, because the more things you're going to find out about her that you can relate to. Either you share those things in common with her, or you've had other people close to you at one point or another with the same traits. WHAT IT TAKES TO GET REAL GIRLS get real girls So how do you get "real girls?" Well, the first order of business is you're going to need to be able to connect with women. That means you're going to need to be able to deep dive and you're going to need to be able to get out of polite conversation. Because if you can't connect with people, the only people who will end up seeming "real" will be the ones who go out of their way to connect with you. Everyone else will seem to be "fake" and caught up in his or her fake world. I consider a former girlfriend of mine one of the most "real" people on the planet. She's brutally honest, ruthlessly intelligent, talented at getting people to give her what she wants, makes no excuses about looking out for herself before all others, and thrill-seeks and chases adventure like few people I know. She and I had a great relationship for a long time, and I learned quite a bit from her. But I imagine that to some men, looking at her from the outside, with her bouncy energy and high-pitched laughter and good looks and (when she hits the club) flashy dress and short attention span, she'd quickly be dismissed as "fake." They'd see her dancing crazy in the club and imagine there was nothing more to her than being just another club party girl. Me though, I connected with her on a level much deeper than most people ever do. I learned she has a curiosity about life that's nearly boundless; that she spends a great deal of time learning, attending classes, mastering all manner of skills, software programs, and tools. She was, I found, a rich and full person; not just another club party girl. I got to know her, and unlike how she seems to some people, she ended up seeming quite "real" to me. Getting to know people: that's half the equation; the half that enables you to see others as "real." The other half is helping people to get to know you; that's the half that enables them to see you as "real," too. Most guys out there are nice guys; most of the rest are jerks. And the thing about nice guys and jerks, aside from being polar opposites of each other, is this: both jerks and nice guys are one dimensional. The nice guy supplicates and yields in every circumstance. The jerk dismisses and resists in every circumstance. If a guy meets a girl, and he's a total nice guy and does everything she asks and compliments her incessantly and licks her boots, she's going to be a little disgusted by this, see him as one-dimensional, and view him as either fake or too weak. If on the other hand a guy meets a girl, and he's a total jackass and resists her on everything and doesn't know the difference between light, flirty teasing and mercilessly busting her balls, she's going to be a little more aroused by him than the nice guy, but she's still going to see him as one-dimensional, and quite possibly view him as either fake or too closed off / defensive / tryhard. The secret to getting women to know the real you, then, is in not being one-dimensional. The secret to getting women to know the real you is in showing them you are a real person... fast. A girlfriend I had last year whom I'd met in an elevator leaving a nightclub commented to me once that had she met me in the club, she wouldn't have even talked to me. She never talked to men in nightclubs, she said, because she assumed they were all "club guys." In other words, she assumed they were all fake. She thought because a man was in a nightclub, he must be a fake club party guy, and therefore one-dimensional, and therefore not someone she could relate to or even had any interest in getting to know. To get "real girls," you must not only get good at seeing the real side of women quickly, then, but you must also show them that you, too are real. Again, the steps are twofold: Deep dive and get out of polite conversation. These are crucial to getting to know a woman well quickly so you don't end up writing her off as "fake." I used to be very guilty of this mentality and trust me, it severely limits you from being with some incredible women you didn't even realize you'd get along with so well. Hone your abilities as a good enough conversationalist. This is necessary to quickly express a variety of diverse and interesting items about yourself. At the very least, you should aim to quickly paint a picture of yourself as a genuine guy who doesn't fit easily into any one box or category a girl might have for men. Then, with those two things handled, you won't just be getting girls. You'll be getting "real" girls - girls you see as real, because you really get them - and they'll see you as real too. REFERENCE EXPERIENCES AND RELATING TO PEOPLE I want to share one personal anecdote before we wrap up today. I've been meaning to write a proper post on having a non-judging mentality and focusing on building up reference experiences, but until that's ready, this will have to suffice. Simply put, your reference experiences - all the experiences you have that your mind uses to build up its model of the way the world is and the people in it are - dictate whom you view as "fake" and whom you view as "real." I had a theory early on in my career approaching women that a lot of it was about achieving critical mass - once you'd had enough good experiences with a certain kind of girl, you were going to naturally be warm and confident around other girls like her, and they'd sense it and respond to you in kind. Reference experiences are why guys with tattoos like girls with tattoos, and guys who like computer games like girls who like computer games; they can relate to each other. They're like other people they know. They feel like they're on the same page. Because I came from a background of being very much alone my whole life, when I was younger I'd known very few people closely, and so my views of others were comprised of a lot of one-dimensional stereotyped views of pretty much everyone else in the world, derived largely from TV and movies. I thought almost everyone was "fake." Eventually I decided I didn't like thinking that way and that it was limiting my ability to work with other people and succeed in a variety of ways in life, so I set out to change it. And the first thought I had was, "I bet you anything, if I build up reference experiences with the kind of people I think of as fake, I'll find out they're just normal human beings like me and everyone else and I'll start seeing them and everyone similar to them as real instead of fake." One of the groups of people for a while I viewed as "fake" in the past were bleached blonde party girls of the variety that abounded all over San Diego, CA when I first moved there (the natural blondes I thought were okay!). I was used to educated, brunette, East Coast girls, and these West Coast girls seemed like such fake party girls, I thought. I felt cold toward them, and they sensed it and were equally cold back to me, which made me even colder toward them. "They just don't like me," I'd say, "and I don't like them." I refrained from calling them "bitches" because I didn't like that word then and I don't like it now, as it seems to be mostly just the more bitter, jilted guys who use it, but the feeling I had for them was something close to what that word describes. But instead of carrying my bias around with me, I forced myself to integrate with them and build new reference experiences. I took acting classes that threw me in the mix with a lot of beautiful bleached blonde party girls. I started hitting the bars and clubs they frequented and forced myself to meet them. I worked to really get to know bleached blonde party girls wherever I could meet them. And something happened: I realized they were regular people. I saw their hopes, dreams, successes, failures; I came to understand why they did the things they did, stopped seeing partying and a focus on looks as "fake" and more like something that made a lot of sense for how they saw themselves and the kinds of lives they desired; and even at one point considered going blond myself, an idea I never would've entertained years before (as it turns out though, bleached hair is ridiculously high maintenance, and I didn't want to try it bad enough that I'd be willing to go sit in the salon 2 hours every 3 weeks to have my roots bleached, and pay a ton of money for it to boot). These days, I have some pretty legitimately warm feelings toward blonde party girls. I think they're truly wonderful human beings, and they put a big smile on my face. And the main reason why is because I spent time building up reference experiences and spent lot of good times with bleached blonde party girls. The morale of the story is, I suppose, that if you feel like a lot of women are fake, it's mostly going to be because: You don't have any / many good reference experiences with them to draw upon, and You haven't yet honed your ability to get to know anyone and everyone, thus quickly learning about people's "real" sides. In other words, if you want to get real girls, the best place to start is by getting to know girls you think have qualities you like and admire, regardless of whether they seem "fake" from a distance. You might end up being surprised at how "real" they really are. And they might end up being surprised how real you are, too!

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##[] Simplify Your Dates Just met with a client who is doing pretty well for himself - he slept with a few girls off a coaching session we had late last year, and is a likeable enough guy in his own right with plenty of women interested in him. During this evening's session, we discussed a couple of different things, and one of the things we discussed was dating. One of the things we touched on in dating was having "straightforward dates." I mentioned how my dates these days typically entail a girl meeting me and going to a café or a bar with me, us having a little to eat and drink, then me inviting her home and us proceeding to get intimate together. My client said I made it sound easy, but he didn't think it was. I told him I didn't really want to do the whole shopping / visiting art galleries / doing crazy things, and neither did the girl; we both just wanted to talk a bit, then get together, so why not just do that? Keep things to straightforward dating, basically. If you recall our article a few months back on date templates, you likely remember the informational, structured, and easy dates. These days though I'm mostly doing informational dates where I meet up with the girl and we grab some food and some tea and talk for an hour or two, and then I invite her home with me afterward and we get intimate then. I'm having a lot of success with this style of dating, and I want to go a little bit into why I think that is. INFORMATIONAL DATES THAT GO SOMEWHERE In the first 16 days of 2011, I went on 5 first dates, and slept with girls on 4 of those first dates. The one I didn't sleep with I perhaps could have, but she threw me off a bit in the beginning of the date and despite recovering later, I didn't push for a close at the end of our lunch. I'd also just slept with a new girl the night before, and it'd been exhausting (see "Walk the Line") and I didn't have a whole lot of energy for a gal as challenging as the one that next day. But 4 for 5 ain't bad to start the year off. I'm satisfied with numbers like that. 5 for 5 would be better, but I'll take what I've got. How am I closing so consistently right now? I'm tying a lot of things together currently to make my dating very tight and have it happen as fast as possible. I'm also a very busy man right now, so I naturally don't have a huge amount of time to waste, which adds to my need to close fast; each date takes a big chunk of time out of a crowded schedule for me, so I want to make it worth my while by spending as little time as possible to reach intimacy, so I can then do things with my time other than dally around on dates. You know what's funny though? I never had close rates anywhere near where my close rates are now back when I was taking girls on 2, 3, or 4 dates. Nowhere near. Not until I started pushing consistently for first date intimacy did I start sleeping with a majority of the girls I got out on dates. There are two major factors why I'm having so much success with getting together with girls on the first date these days: I've gotten all the major things down I needed to get down to get girls primed for intimacy on Date 1, and I've begun asking girls regularly to come home with me on first dates. GETTING GIRLS READY FOR RAPID INTIMACY I've long been a connection-based guy. Sure, I don't always connect all that deeply with a girl before we get together - my first girl of the new year, and the last one I slept with in 2010, knew next to nothing about me before we became lovers - but when we have time to stop and talk, I get to know a girl very quickly and very thoroughly. It's the man's responsibility to ensure that women around him feel comfortable, warm, and accepted. This is the only way they will open up. A woman will never open up to a man she feels is being aloof, doesn't care what she's saying, or is judging her. So if you're too aloof, act disinterested, or make judgments (even if they're mental - they still show up on your face), cut it out. Once women around you feel warm, accepted, and comfortable enough to start talking about themselves intimately, it's your job to get them doing so. That's where deep diving comes in; you want to get a woman telling you the most important, personal things about herself, her dreams, and her feelings, that she normally doesn't tell anyone else. If you spend an hour talking about things like this with women on a date, and making them feel rewarded for telling you, they will quite often be ready then for intimacy. Between one and two hours is typically all you need. Take longer and you may miss the window and start to look less like a dashing rogue and more like a careful, tip-toeing friend or a boyfriend candidate. ASKING GIRLS TO COME HOME There is a certain degree of temptation to get lax and say to oneself, "Well, it's just the first date. We can take things easy on this one and not have sex and just wait until the second or third date." I know that temptation, because I gave into it for years. Guess what? Many of those girls you don't sleep with on the first date you never end up seeing again. Others you might get out again later, but the vibe you had on the first date never materializes the second time around, and you leave wondering what happened. Regardless, every time you see a girl without taking her as your lover, the likelihood that you do so the next time you see her goes down. The most likely chance you have to get together with a girl is the day or night you meet her. The next most likely is on the first date. A distant third is on the second date, and the third date almost doesn't even make the running. In the West, it's common practice to wait until the third date, but the women men get on the third date are the exception, not the norm. I bet you if you take an average dater and force him to wait until the third date for intimacy every time, you'll notice he loses most of the women he gets to go on first dates with him long before they would've made it to the end of Date 3. Oh, and Mr. Average Dater's close rate certainly won't be 4 out of 5 while waiting for the third date. I only recently started asking girls to come home with me on first dates. I never did it before… not sure why. Okay, yes I do; I was hesitant because I didn't expect them to say yes. Recently I started noticing that girls seemed quite interested, signaled their interest, and I thought they might be ready. So I began routinely asking them home with me. In the past two months, every single woman I have invited home with me has come with me. It makes me pause for a moment and wonder: how many women have I lost by not making straightforward dates and inviting them home on Date 1? Quite a lot, I'd bet. You do so much work to set up that first date… it seems a shame to not finish it properly. Better to just invite women home. I have even had women get upset with me for not sleeping with them on Date 1. In retrospect on all those times I didn't pull the trigger when I clearly should have, all I can wonder is, "What was I thinking?" Meh. A few rules on the invite: Do it during a positive point. Just like asking for phone numbers, a lot of men wait until the very end of a date to ask women to come home (if they do it at all). They wait until things have died down and it's clearly over, then make their move when the woman isn't feeling it anymore. This is incorrect. Invite a woman home with you in the middle of the date - your place isn't where the date ends, it's just the next step of the date. And wait until she's smiling, laughing, or clearly feeling very good and comfortable with you to invite her to go somewhere with you. Be nonchalant. You know how much I recommend being casual, chill, and natural about things. This is no different. Don't make it a big deal; make it a natural one. "I don't know if you have any other plans today, but if you still have time, let's go watch a movie and have some tea," I offer to my dates during the day. If it's in the evening, I'll say, "Not sure what time you have to get up tomorrow, but why don't we go have a nightcap before calling it a night." Very calm, very casual, and it usually gets a "yes." Keep conversation up. After you've invited a woman home with you, keep the conversation flowing smoothly. This will reassure her that nothing's changed and you're still the same guy she liked throughout the date - and the same guy she wants to go home with. Feels too forward for you to ask a woman home on the first date? I recommend trying straightforward dates like this anyway. Only by trying something you've never tried before can you know where your limits truly are. That's how you get to 4 out of 5 girls slept with on the first date in a two week period, and that's how you become a force to be reckoned with in just about anything.

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##[] Secret to getting Girls; Natural Number Swapping Ever go for a girl's number, and have it just feel really awkward and contrived? Any idea why that was? Imagine you've met a girl you liked a lot, and the two of you talked for ten minutes. Things went really well for the first seven or eight minutes, but they started to die down at the end. Finally, she says, "Well, I have to go find my friends." (often, incidentally, a consequence of not moving fast enough with her) You tell her, "Wait, we have to trade numbers!" But how does that ? You're very clearly chasing after her, aren't you? In that situation, where the woman is walking away and the man is pursuing her, the dynamic is very much not in his favor. We as people tend to value others we have to work for, and when she does not have to do any work - and in fact is running away from the man while he puts in work - it sets up entirely the wrong dynamic. There are, believe it or not, a number of points in almost every conversation where you can very naturally grab a girl's contact information. These are called "high points" - the points in the conversation where the two of you are laughing, enjoying yourselves and each other, and having great, fascinating conversation. And there are a few very good reasons why it's better to grab a phone number after a high point. Think about it like this. You met someone and had a conversation, but at the end things got a little boring and you decided you wanted to go. And that person then asked for your phone number. You feel a little weird about it, don't you? I mean, you're leaving the conversation - you obviously have had enough of talking to them. And now they're asking for your contact information? Now, the other side: let's say you've met someone, and you're having a great conversation. You're learning cool new things, find this person intriguing, and you're laughing. In the middle of all of this, your new friend says, "Hey, we've got to trade cells so we can keep in touch." How do you feel now? You probably readily agree to swapping numbers, right? It feels far more natural to other people to swap numbers when the conversation is flowing well and is exciting and fresh. They think to themselves, "Well, of course I'd like to talk to this person again!" Whereas, the guy who waits until things are dying down at the end of the conversation, he is clearly chasing and pursuing someone who is fleeing and has decided she wants the conversation to end for now. Getting the phone number in the middle of a conversation, following a high point, is always superior to waiting until the end. There's really no reason to wait. The only potential awkward moment with a natural number swap is the moment following the trading of numbers: most people are so used to trading numbers at the end of a conversation, they are expecting the conversation to end - but because the conversation was going so well, they don't really want it to. Which means it will be your responsibility to keep the conversation going, keep the good feelings coming, and help your new friend feel reassured that everything will stay natural and good with you. Here's an example of how that might look: Guy: So I ended up with two computer bags instead of one! Girl: Haha, that's so funny! Guy: For sure. Let's trade cells, before I forget. Have one of these? [shows her his phone] Girl: Of course. It's 1-5-8… Guy: Hold on a sec, let me get in here. … OK, let me have it. [after guy has her number and called her so she has his] Guy: So, nurse, huh… I understand that's a position in pretty high demand right now. Girl: Totally, it's blah blah You can have her give you her number and call her from your phone so she has yours, or you can have her put your number in her phone and call you. Either way works fine. The only thing that must be managed to an extent in this exchange is this: the moment after the number swap is a moment of uncertainty, that you must take charge of the moment to let women know that things are going to stay natural and OK in the conversation, and the phone number didn't change anything. Make certain you manage it, and everything will go smoothly from there. This is a very strong, confident way of grabbing contact information and continuing on with the conversation, and you will commonly see increased attraction following it. It's the best way to get phone numbers out there, and 100% natural, too.

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##[] The Ultimate Guide on How to get a girl back The most frequent email I get from readers is of the very gracious, magnanimous variety, with readers reaching out to say thanks for writing your blog, your book, etc., and sharing perhaps some of the successes that have come from, in part, applying what they've learned from my materials. But hands down the second most frequent email I get is the one that reads something akin to this: "Hi Chase, I've been reading your site and I wish I'd come across it sooner. You see, there's this girl I like, and I guess I didn't move fast enough with her, because now she's cold and distant and I don't know what to do. Is there anything you can recommend I do to turn it around?" I get about 2 or 3 of these emails a week. And as traffic to this site continues rising, I'm confident the number of them coming in will only increase. And I commiserate. I've been there lots of times; watching a girl you really liked shut down and go cold on you when formerly it seemed like she was yours for the picking is maddening, gut-wrenching, and about as big a sucker punch as you can get. It's awful. So, I want to lay it down here today, for all those guys out there pulling their hair out like I used to -- a complete guide on how to get a girl back. AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION'S WORTH A POUND OF CURE First let me start by saying that if you're trying to get a girl back, that already tells me you dropped the ball in a big way the first time around. Forgive the directness there. From everything I've seen, there are three main root causes for men losing women: She started feeling like you didn't want her. This one's probably the biggest one, believe it or not, and it happens before you've slept with a girl if you don't get her to bed fast enough, and it happens after you've slept with a girl if you start ignoring her or making her feel unwanted or unappreciated. In other words, if you're lovers and you started ignoring her, that's why you've lost her. If you're not lovers and you didn't become lovers fast enough, on the other hand, that's why you've lost her. She started feeling hurt or insulted by you. This one's common with guys who are jerks, and with guys who are trying to shake off their "nice guy" mantles and end up going too far. If you tease a girl in a less-than-smooth way, you can veer too far to the other side of the spectrum and end up insulting her, instead. This is like the guy thinking, "So where'd you get that dress, at the Salvation Army?" is teasing, when actually it's more like a slap in the face. Make a girl feel bad around you too much, and she'll get scarce faster than you can say, "Whoops, my bad." She started feeling like it was too easy with you. I'd imagine most of the guys reading this blog have moved away from doing this, but if you're newer it still might be the case. If you chased after a girl too much, came across as nervous or needy, or went out of your way trying to "prove yourself" to her, there's a very, very good chance that she started feeling like it was too easy with you -- which must mean, she assumes, that she's out of your league. At that point, of course, she's certainly not going to want anything further and will cool off toward you dramatically. Regardless which one it was -- whether she ended up feeling unwanted, she ended up feeling insulted, or she ended up feeling it was too easy -- she pulled away and started viewing you in a much more negative light than she originally did. If it was the first two, she's in auto-rejection; if it was the latter, she's feeling like you're a bit too needy or too much of a nice guy for her. Either way, the damage is done, and it's going to be a heck of a slog trying to undo it. It can be done... sometimes. But I want to throw this disclaimer out there first: Trying to get back a girl you've lost is like trying to save a dinner you've burnt, or take back an insult you've slung, or fix a vase you've broken. It's possible, but it's not going to be easy. Not at all. It's about 1000 times easier to learn simply to NOT burn dinner, NOT insult people, and NOT break vases... and not cause women to run away, either, than it is to continually be trying to get back women you've lost. But, unfortunately, even for the most talented guys out there, sometimes dinner still gets burnt, sometimes an insult still slips out, sometimes your elbow still catches a vase, and sometimes you still mess up with a girl you like and have to watch her run away, and it's worth knowing how to turn things around when you do end up in that scenario. That said, I'm of the mind that for every hour you spend trying to raise a sunken ship, you ought to spend ten hours learning how to sail ships without sinking them. Otherwise, you're just going to keep plowing into icebergs, again and again. So, let's talk turnarounds and lets talk how to get girls back, but don't forget that the most important thing for you to learn is how to get girls to begin with and how not to lose them in the first place. THE GIRL I GOT BACK Back in 2006, there was a girl I really, really liked... and I blew it with her. She was beautiful, intelligent, and full of life in a way that few women ever are. And I moved way too slow (we're talking months here), I mishandled everything, and when I finally got her on our first date, I showed up dressed sloppily, I took her on a terrible date, and I even managed to blow it even worse at the very end of the date. Talk about ending on a high note... ... but, as fate would have it, the two of us were already booked on a tour abroad together, along with a buddy of mine, and despite this girl literally getting away from me every chance she got at the outset of the tour, snapping at me, and even being rude to me after I saved her life when she stepped out into traffic directly in front of a semi-truck barreling down the road and I yanked her back out of harm's way, I managed to turn things around, and I bedded her halfway into the trip. My pal was ecstatic. He couldn't believe I pulled off the turnaround. He was walking to our hotel room just as I exited from hers across the hall, and he saw me stumble out of the room, clothes a mess, belt dangling loosely down from my unzipped pants because we thought her roommate was coming back and I had to get out of there, and my pal saw me and started whooping and hollering at the top of his lungs. I had to tell him to hush up just to not make us both look like fools. That girl and I went on to have a long relationship together, and we broke up a number of times, but I always managed to get her back in the end. Eventually we'd taken each other through the ringer enough times though that I thought enough was enough and we agreed to part ways for good. I realized I was being selfish holding onto her, when I couldn't give her what she wanted (exclusive, monogamous, lifelong commitment -- not really something for me). Another time, a few years after I first met that girl in 2006, I had another girl I really liked -- also quite beautiful, quite intelligent, and quite a character, that one -- that I blew it with, and only after another equally Herculean effort was I able to get a second date with her. And she was so primed for me at that point that she ended up sprawled out on my bed, waiting for me. As it were, I fumbled this opportunity too with this girl, a newlywed -- she eloped in the couple of months between our first date and our second -- by again hesitating and again moving too slow, losing her a second time. Anyway, the reason stories like this seem so remarkable is because they're so incredibly rare. For every story I have like this, I have 20 more about girls I really liked that I lost and never turned things around with. And as I've gotten better and better with women, turnarounds have become less and less of a concern. You see, that girl I got back -- the one in 2006 -- I had to work my ass off to turn that around. I had to wrack my brain and figure out everything I'd done wrong, and then I had to undo all of it, and then I had to redo everything again, but right this time. I had to pull out all the stops and take my game to a level it had never been at before that point to make what happened happen. But as I've gotten better and better with women, a curious few things have happened. They are: I've largely stopped making the mistakes I used to make that lost me women I've consistently been having higher and higher quality women in my life I've consistently had more and more options with women in my life and as a result, my desire to chase after and "win back" any one girl I might've blown it with has shrank to virtually zero. In fact, I had a girl I blew it with last year who was chasing after me hard early this year... a buddy of mine even wished me good luck with her when I'd told him she was begging to come over to my place and spend time with me, but I told him no good luck needed; it was in the bag if I wanted it. But I didn't want it. At that point, I felt confident that I'd take that girl to bed... but that she'd then expect a relationship out of it, and I didn't want to deal with that with her. And after her holding out on me as much as she had before, I didn't think she was the kind of girl I wanted a relationship with. I ended up telling her not to come over, and met her at a restaurant instead for a much more neutral, platonic meeting. She kept trying to find an excuse to get over to my place, but I kept deflecting her, and eventually she gave up and disappeared. Now I only get the occasional email from her, wondering how I've been and telling me she misses me. Well, before I get into how to get a girl back, I want to make it equally clear to you that, should you invest the time in yourself to fully develop your skills with women, you won't want to waste time trying to get girls back. You'll have too many new women on your hands to worry about one flakey one. But, I realize you may or may not be there yet, and no matter what may be said, if a guy wants to know how to pull a turnaround off, he wants to know how to pull a turnaround off. So, all right; you asked for it, so here it is. how to get a girl back WAYS TO GET A GIRL BACK: ALL THE TOOLS YOU NEED I want to draw a distinction here, for the guys reading this post from different perspectives: if you're trying to get your girlfriend back -- a girl that you've been intimate with, that you've had as a lover -- it's going to be pretty straightforward... if you did a good job with her emotions throughout the relationship. But for the guys who messed it up with a girl they hadn't slept with, and for the guys who had a girlfriend they were sleeping with but with whom they weren't good in bed with and didn't leave a strong emotional imprint, you're going to have an uphill climb. That's not to discourage you, because it can still be done; that's just to give you a more realistic expectation of the level of effort that's going to be involved. Pick ups can happen fast when you know what you're doing -- even with conservative girls, even with girls who've only had one or two lovers before -- or even none at all. Turnarounds, on the other hand, very rarely happen fast, if only because the guys who have the skill set down solid enough to be able to turn things around fast don't usually end up in the position of needing to turn things around. I'm going to tailor this as a more general how-to on getting a girl back; a more specific "how to get your girlfriend back" post I'll try and get up at some point in the not-too-distant future. If I forget, shoot me an email to remind me and I'll try and get it up; but, since I don't really get the "how do I get my girlfriend back" questions, I'm going to assume there aren't many cats on here with that question and I'll save that for another time. [UPDATE: here it is: "How to Get Your Girlfriend Back"] Just yesterday, a reader made the following comment on the post about staying out of auto-rejection: "Great article man, but just realized that I did everything wrong, gone too slow and now the girl I like its just cold with me, she already was shy, but now its getting very hard talking to her, as she always go quiet and aloof, I started talking to her becouse she always was the first to gaze me. now we often flirt in distance with eye contact and smiles, but she seems way too shy now, sometimes she even walks away when im talking to her, there would be something I could do to bring her back? every time she looks at me from distance i feel she still likes me but I have no idea of what to do! greetings from Brazil (sorry for my bad english). Caesar." Let's use Caesar's comment here as our model to work off of, because this is the one I get emailed the most frequently about. Guy meets girl, guy likes girl, girl likes guy, guy flirts with girl, girl flirts with guy... then nothing happens... for a long time... girl gets cold, guy gets frustrated. What to do? Again, check out the post on how to get girls (link earlier in this post, or over on the sidebar to the right of the page) if you haven't already; that's your basic instruction manual for what to do with the girls you like. For a complete guide to getting girls, snag a copy of my ebook; everything you'll ever need and a whole lot more is in there. If you follow the steps lain out in that post or in the book, you're going to be well on your way to avoiding ending up having to figure out how to get girls back any time soon. So, do that first; use this post as a last resort. But let's say, for one reason or another, you've ended up here, and you've absolutely got to know how to get a girl back. Well, without further ado, let's have at what to do. Get your thoughts off of her. Why's this important? Because I'm betting that if you really like her this much -- so much that you're willing to do whatever it takes to turn things around and make her yours -- that probably also means you're thinking about her. A lot. Maybe even all the time. And girls you think about a lot, you become useless around. Just think back to the last time you tried to talk -- or do anything -- with a girl you really, really liked. You probably became a quivering mound of Jell-O, didn't you? You need to get your mind off her and distance yourself from your feelings from her before you're able to effect anything resembling a comeback. That means thinking about other girls; dating or sleeping with other girls, when possible; or at the very least plunging yourself into some kind of hobby, activity, sport, or other passion that can consume your thoughts and get you spending a lot less mental time on this girl. The more time you spend investing mentally in a girl, the less effective with her you'll be. Start acting gradually opposite to how you were. That means if you were being a little overly aloof, you need to be a little warmer. And if you were being a little insulting, you need to be a little less so, and get to mentioning to her the things you genuinely like about her. And if you were coming across too easy to get, you need to start becoming more scarce and tougher to get. The key to this is the word "gradual." If you make a sudden switch, she'll know it was in reaction to her, and if your goose was cooked before, it's turned to ash, now. You need to start straightening out your act, but you need to do it without it looking forced or contrived. Be gradual. DO NOT CHASE. Under any circumstances whatsoever. I know the instinct is to panic and chase after the person you're losing; it's universal, and women do it too (this factors significantly into how I run my own interactions with women these days; the reason they pursue me as much as they do is because I'm being the "guy they want to get back"). But trust me, nothing will flush her attraction down the toilet for you faster than you chasing after her. If you want to make absolutely certain that she NEVER wants to be with you again, chase after her. Otherwise -- yeah, don't do this one. If you seemed too easy, make her jealous; if you didn't, avoid this at all costs. This is where our strategies start diverging. To get her seeing him in a different light, the girl who saw a guy as too easy needs to see him getting attraction from other women, and no longer chasing after her. This can take the form of: • You talking to other girls in a bar or nightclub in front of her • You hinting that you're unavailable a weekend night, without saying why • You mentioning how cute or pretty another girl is to her If you lost her because you made her feel unwanted, or because you hurt her, though -- do not do this. Making her jealous will only push her further away -- it only makes you seem harder to get, and less available to her, which is the opposite of what you want. And if she ends up resenting you because you seem too hard to get, she may very well want to make you jealous -- and then the two of you will just end up in twisted little war of each one trying to make the other more jealous. I've been there a few times, and trust me, it ain't fun. Whip out the jealousy only when she thinks you're too easy (e.g., that women don't want you). Give her some cooling off time... without you. If the two of you were flirting before, it's safe to assume that she liked you, enjoyed your attention, and enjoyed spending time with you and talking to you. So, give her a little time to cool off and realize that life is noticeably less awesome without you around. The main thing this does is ease your return. No matter the reason why she ran off, if you want to get her back, she needs a little time without you. In addition to reminding her that she likes having you around, this also lets any pressure she was feeling (if you'd been chasing her) reset. Don't be cute. I know lots of the stuff out there on game, on texting, on phone calls, on talking to girls tells you to be cute. All that stuff like, "I'm going to treat you like my little sister, and wrap you up in bubble tape and stuff you in my pocket!" Well, that's stuff that -- I won't say it helps you -- but it at least doesn't hurt you too much when she's feeling very comfortable with you and digging you. When she's annoyed at you and running away, her tolerance for cutesiness falls to zero. So cut that crud out and be straight with her. Get compliance. If you can't get a girl to invest in you, you're not going to be able to get her to do anything else. You need, need, need to get her following your lead again -- ask her to come for a short walk with you; tell her, "Hey, don't run away, I want to talk to you for a minute." Start giving her small orders, or asking for small amounts of compliance. Read up on persuading women before you do; particularly if she's running away, you're going to have to be at your most persuasive! Set up a meet, pronto. I don't know where guys get this idea from, but most of the guys you see trying to salvage something with a girl try doing it over phone, text, or email. Are you kidding me? If you want to turn something around, you've got to do it in person. Get her in person. That should be your mantra for turning stuff around. Get her alone with you, or semi-alone, in person, where the two of you are there just for each other. At that point, you can be cool with her, and not be insulting, and not be too easy to get, and move forward quickly and naturally. Exceptions. Some of the above steps are going to be "exceptioned-out" sometimes. For instance, in Caesar's situation, where it sounds like this girl is already pulling away really hard and, I'd have to guess, he hasn't gone on a date with her at all yet, he needs to get her out ASAP and show her he's a man who will lead her to making progress, to make something happen, and, not long after, to bed. So for Caesar, I'd recommend taking exception to worrying about jealousy plotlines (they take too long; he needs to move fast before this girl is gone completely) and I'd skip the cooling off period (she doesn't need to cool off from him chasing her, as it sounds like it hasn't gone beyond flirting and he hasn't asked her out at all; he needs rather to make it crystal clear he wants something to happen, and that he'll make it happen). If you follow these steps, you're going to stand a much better chance of getting a girl back than your average, ordinary guy, who stands around feeling sorry for himself, yelling, "WHY???" at the gods, and begging women (in vain) for another shot. Instead, now you've got the tools to take matters back into your own hands and start effecting a turnaround. But, there's one more thing you need to keep in mind before the turnaround is complete... how to get a girl back HOW TO GET A GIRL BACK AND KEEP HER BACK Once you've done the impossible (well, implausible, really; but your friends will think you've done the impossible) and turned it around with a girl who was running away, there's still one more thing you've got to do if you want to set it in stone. You've got to sleep with her. All romantic notions aside, men and women are separate sexes for one reason, and one reason only: getting together and making babies. If we didn't need to do that, we'd be sexless and we'd reproduce by splitting. Everybody knows that intimacy is what it's all about in the deepest parts of his or her unconscious -- it's the entire reason why romance exists at all in the first place. And, like it or not, women are remorselessly unforgiving toward men who don't man up and do what they're supposed to do -- that is, who don't take them to bed, get physical with them, and rock their worlds. Lots of guys -- especially guys who are starting out -- tend to get caught up in this romantic notion of selfless sacrifice, of the purity of a girl, of her being too innocent or conservative or the kind of girl who would "never go for that" or "never do that." Like somehow she's some special kind of girl from whom evolution has mysteriously stripped the drive to mate and reproduce. I'll tell you what I know. I see lots of guys like this all the time -- they're the guys who chase after the girls I'm dating, the girls I'm with, the girls I took to bed on the first date. They put women on pedestals and view them as goddesses. Meanwhile, I'm doing all kinds of things to their goddesses in the bedroom and making those goddesses scream at the top of their lungs. Don't make the mistake I made with that newlywed girl I worked so hard to get, then ended up gun-shy with her laying sprawled out on my bed. Don't go to all that trouble to get a girl back... only to lose her again by not pulling the trigger. I'm still upset at myself about that one, and that was years ago. If you want to know how to get a girl back, you know it now; but you won't keep her if you don't take her as your lover. I guarantee you that much. For as romantic as we'd like to think things really are, it all comes down to who's in bed with whom -- and if she isn't getting it from you, she'll get it somewhere else. So, just make sure she's getting it from you -- and she'll be yours, instead of that other guy's who doesn't really deserve her anyway ;)

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##[] Conversational Technique; Tips and Tidbits A big thing for me lately is calibrating my conversation. Conversation to me these days is mostly about getting the girl talking, and mostly about getting her talking about her dreams, her relationship history, her childhood, and qualifying herself. conversational technique I'm far more aware now of when we're embarking on a boring topic or a logical topic and am getting good at shifting off of it almost instantly. This has been bringing a lot more bang to my conversations and making girls open up and feel deeply connected to me much more rapidly. I've never had girls falling for me as fast as they've been falling for me recently. It seems like there are certain key conversational foci that are making the big differences lately. As far as I can tell, they are: Keep the conversation on the girl. It's amazing how little you have to say about yourself… you can tell her what feels like almost nothing and have her open her heart up and tell you just about everything about herself. End result, of course, is that she feels much more connected to you than you do to her, but that's how it goes... Don't talk too much. Goes hand-in-hand with keeping the focus of the conversation on her. Reveal little about yourself; just enough to intrigue her and hint at the depth and color of your character, but not enough to blow her out with huge value displays or bragging about expensive things or loads of girlfriends or too many amazing adventures, etc. Note this doesn't mean actively withhold information in a lame attempt to seem mysterious; this means don't be overly forthcoming, more in a strong, silent kind of way than a "you-can't-get-it-out-of-me" way. Remember, it's a conversation, not a competition! Keep the conversation on the emotional level. Talking about the weather, or the logical / factual parts of her job, or things like that, are pointless topics that fail to move a connection forward. What moves a connection forward are the things that a woman FEELS strongly about - her dreams, her relationships, emotional things about her life or people she lives or works with or things she loves to do, and occasional stories by you that allow her to see how you embody the kind of things she is looking for emotionally (adventure, security, romance, edginess, whatever it may be). Do a little cold reading. After she's told you a ton about herself, this is easy to do. You basically take what she's told you and summarize it back to her. For instance, she tells you she likes travel and sports, and you tell her later on when you guys are talking about personality or characteristics or whatever that you know she loves adventure and excitement and trying new things, and that doing the same thing over and over is boring to her and she needs new stimulation. Then watch how stunned she looks that you already know her better than just about anyone else in her life. Obviously, this requires actually paying attention to what she's saying... Get her to qualify herself. The main way I seem to be doing this these days is by making statements like, "I really like XYZ," and the girl responds by saying she likes it a lot too. I'm also noticing that in almost every conversation now there will come a moment where a girl will say she doesn't like something, and I will say, "Actually, I think it's kind of cool," and she will turn around and retract her earlier dismissal and say something like, "Yeah, sometimes it can be, I don't mean it's ALWAYS a bad thing..." At that point I'll just cut her off so she's not floundering around and just give her a verbal reward like, "Way cool," or, "Definitely," accompanied with a warm smile and perhaps a light stroke of her back or arm, then change the topic. Start applying these things to your conversational game, and you'll start seeing the dividends being paid. By shifting the focus onto her, you actually make seducing girls EASIER on yourself -- you do less talking, less calculating, less WORK. And the girls, because they're working harder to keep YOU engaged, become much more invested much more quickly. And that's what this is all about. Making it easier to find and attract and make connections with the women you like.

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##[] Employing the Cold Read to unlock Women's secrets I had a date Friday night with a young television anchor for one of the big TV stations in China and Hong Kong. Things started out innocently enough -- she put me in the hot seat early on, treating me almost like how I imagine she must treat her interviewees, asking me lots of questions and making it feel like an interview -- but I soon wrested control of the flow of conversation, and pretty soon things were going swimmingly. I used something known as the cold read to do it. Before you knew it we were well into a deep dive, her telling me all about her past relationships and what she thinks the purpose of life is and what she really wants (children, namely). And it all happened, despite a little while of me being there in the hot seat, more or less effortlessly. Even not so long ago, I struggled with transitioning into "real" conversation when I was facing women who were professional "talkers" -- reporters, saleswomen, any kind of gal who spoke effusively for a living. The problem was, women like that tend to snap into these routines of making their pitch or going into interview mode, and it can be hard to snap them out of it. What I ended up returning to to solve this dilemma was something I've developed slowly -- almost unconsciously -- over the past half decade: cold reading. It's largely because of cold reading that I had this girl who was so used to steering the conversation instead drinking in every moment with me, and by extension it's largely because of cold reading that I had this girl telling me how she'd drank too much (after a mere two drinks, spread across 2 1/2 hours) and all but announcing that I should invite her home to make some bad decisions. THERE'S A GOOD REASON WHY PSYCHICS COLD READ I used to hear a few guys here and there saying they used cold reading to good effect on women, and I thought it was kind of silly and pointless. You mean, stuff like telling her she acts tough on the outside, but on the inside actually she's a real softie and really just a little girl wanting to be taken care of? Eh, I'd rather have a real conversation with a gal, I thought. Somehow or other though, cold reading gradually worked its way into my conversations regardless. I think it was a decision I made some time ago. Back when I was first hitting the clubs regularly, I met a girl in line one night and struck up a very brief conversation. She was Asian, and she had a very slight accent. At the time, I'd been trying my best to see if I could differentiate different races of people (e.g., French from German, Chinese from Japanese), so I decided to guess with her. "You must be Thai," I remarked. Her eyes got huge. "How did you know that?!" she exclaimed. "Oh my God, how did you know that?!!" She turned to her friends. "This guy knew I'm from Thailand! I don't even have an accent anymore," she said in surprise (I still caught a slight accent, anyway). She then went on to ask my name, and even as her friends pulled her away, she kept dropping by throughout the night to chat me up. It was that night I made a decision to make calculated guesses every so often in my conversations with women. Guesses about their ages; guesses about their races or countries of national origin; guesses about their backgrounds and personal histories. My theory was, the more often I made guesses, the more feedback I'd get on whether I was guessing right or not, and the more refined my ability to correctly guess things about people would become. And, over time, I did indeed get better and better at making informed presumptions. I didn't do it often enough that I could pass for psychic by any stretch of the imagination, mind you, but I did get good enough that I could make little guesses here and there about things and often be correct. For instance, that a girl was a daddy's girl, or that she was an eldest child. But, along the way, I made a few fascinating discoveries about the way these things tend to work, too -- and it changed the way I eventually ended up using cold reading in my interactions. SURPRISING NOTES ON HOW COLD READING WORKS As it turns out, cold reading has some rather intriguing ways of working on people. They end up making it even more useful for getting to know a girl than you might suppose. I'll list them out here. People forget inaccurate cold reads when they like you. You probably might also call this confirmation bias. I had a boss and mentor point out to me once how most people, when you tend to admire someone, you tend to think they do everything great, and when you dislike someone, on the other hand, you tend to think they can't do anything right. Well, this holds true for cold reads, too. If you're doing a good job connecting with a girl, and she likes you and feels like you're getting her, she'll tend to forget the odd cold read here and there that's off the mark. It's funny, but it works that way. What this means is, you're able to use cold reading sporadically throughout an interaction, and you shouldn't fret too much about whether your reads will be right or not, because if you're doing everything else well, the missed reads won't hurt much at all. In other words, if she feels like you're really "getting" her, she isn't going to think less of you if you tell her you bet she was an only child and she tells you instead that she has four siblings, provided you continue connecting with her afterward. Cold reads that work, often work big. When you tell a girl something about herself she assumed you must not know, it's a bit of a shock to the system. Remember that people really want to meet someone who "gets" them, but people also assume that when they meet a stranger, he probably won't get them... at least not right off the bat. A strong, correct cold read or two, though, tells a woman you do get her, and it forces her to reassess how well you know her and get her internally. Instantly, she feels that you know her a lot better than she thought you did the moment before the cold read. Even if logically she knows you just made a lucky guess, she still ends up being wowed subconsciously. Nobody does this. It'd be a lot less impressive to people if everyone got good with people and was able to go around and cold read things about one another. But virtually no one does this, which is why it remains a novelty, and why it makes such a huge splash with people you've just met. You can even use it in relationships. I cold read girlfriends all the time; sometimes I'm wrong, and they correct me, and we go on our merry way, but other times I'm right, and then they stop, stare, and exclaim, "How did you know that?!" And I smile, and tell them I know everything (I like teasing girls). The biggest advantage of cold reading is its cost-benefit. The cost to you of an incorrect cold read is pretty low -- she tells you you're wrong, and then tells you what the actual truth is. Cool, now you know more about her and the two of you have connected more. But the benefit of a correct cold read can be huge. Cold reads that are on the mark can really propel an interaction forward -- they can take women who were closed off, with their walls up, and just knock those walls flat to the ground and get those women connecting with you as fast as they can. It can be pretty amazing to see it work. Because of this, I tend to view cold reading as one of those skills that's peripheral to the critical path of a seduction -- it's not moving a girl, and it's not building the actual connection with her, and it's not getting physical with her, etc. -- but when properly employed, it can play a solid role in moving things forward. At times, it can even be a game changer. But how do you cold read? Well, as it turns out, it isn't as hard as you might think. And best of all, you don't even have to be able to read minds to pull it off. cold read HOW TO COLD READ LIKE YOUR NAME WAS MISS CLEO Like all things social (heck, all things period), cold reading is one of those skills that you get better at with time. Put another way, the sooner you get started playing around with this with the women you meet, the sooner you're going to become ace at using it. But before you dive in, I'll share with you a few of the secrets of cold reading I've picked up over the years as I've done it... Pay attention. This is the first and most important rule to cold reading: you've got to pay attention to what a woman's telling you, both with her words and with her nonverbals. You arrive at the educated guesses that are cold reads by drawing conclusions from what she tells you about herself, and you discern whether you're right or wrong and whether to continue by reading her nonverbals (are her eyes widening? You're right. Is she getting a skeptical look? You're not right) and by listening to what she feeds back to you. Most guys are too focused on themselves and what they're doing, and not as focused on what women are telling them verbally and otherwise. This is especially true for beginners -- it's often too hard for a guy who's still figuring out how to present himself to women to juggle that and paying attention to reading their signals. For that reason, I'd peg cold reading as being primarily for intermediate guys and greater -- the guys for whom the game's slowed down and they're able to think a few steps ahead and pay attention to what's going on around them, instead of just being there in the moment and focused on what they're doing. Link your cold reads to sentiments she's conveyed. Not only does this make it feel a lot more natural than you randomly belting out a cold read (like telling her, "I get the feeling you're a pretty romantic person," right in the middle of her talking about her friend's wedding, but she hasn't mentioned anything anywhere near being emotional or sentimental whatsoever), but it's a lot more likely to get agreement. For instance, she tells you she grew up with a dog, and then talks about what a sweet puppy he was and how he was her closest friend as a child. At that point, you say, "You must be a real animal person. I bet you have a great deal of compassion for people in general, too," and she's probably going to agree with you there, and you can then take that thread down a lot of different and revealing avenues conversationally. Drop it when you're wrong. You don't want to be one of those guys where the girl says, "Actually, I'm not really all that assertive at all," and he goes, "No. Come on, that's not true -- you're totally assertive... right? You strike me so much like you'd be that way!" and she goes, "Nope. Not assertive at all," and he goes, "Man..." What that guy's doing is getting hung up on topics, a big mistake in any kind of conversation, but especially when the topic he's hung up on is one that highlights an instance of him failing to connect. Instead, the instant she starts refuting you, just drop it without trying to fight it. So you say "You must be a super-assertive person." and she says "Actually, I'm not really all that assertive at all." then, you look a little surprised, and say "Oh wow, really? Hmm. What kind of a person are you then?" Which also brings us to a corollary for this rule: show interest in getting to know her better when a cold read is wrong. Cold reads are, really, all about communicating that you get her and building a stronger connection; so when you're wrong, have her tell you about herself instead. Follow up an incorrect cold read with, "Well then what are you?" or, "Okay, fair enough. How do you deal with those kinds of situations then?" or something to that effect, and you'll keep moving in a positive direction, rather than ending up flummoxed by a failed cold read. Play it down when you're right. Now, when you hit a cold read on the mark, there's a chance she may become really excited, asking you how you know that or even telling you you've already got her all figured out. At this point, you just want to stay calm and play it off like it was nothing. The man who wins a race who's never won before jumps up and down and screams and yells and acts like a fool. But the man who wins a race he's won twenty times before just smiles and shrugs and goes on with things. You should be that second man in everything you do that goes well. Take risks. Being good at cold reading really is about having enough experience guessing things about people that you get good at guessing -- to the point where it isn't guessing at all, and is more you simply knowing what different kinds of people do and think and what their backgrounds are like. Like, a girl tells me she's studying Italian, and I smile and say, "You had an Italian boyfriend, didn't you?" I'm not always going to be right, but about 80% of the time I am, because a lot of people, and especially a lot of women, end up learning languages after they had a good experience with a member of the opposite sex from a country that speaks that language. And I know that just from talking to enough people and asking them things like this that I picked up on these patterns. When you start employing cold reading as a regular part of your repertoire, you'll find you quickly start blowing past the walls women have constructed -- even with the women most experienced at constructing those walls and keeping you in the hot seat. Knowing how to cold read is one of those skills you might not ever think to develop just for the sake of developing it -- but if you make it a point to every now and then make an educated guess about women you're talking to, and put it out there to find out if you're right or not, in time you can come to be extremely adept at telling people about themselves after knowing just a little about them. It's an impressive ability, and one that allows you to bond with women faster than you could without a neat technique like the cold read. So yeah, there's a reason why psychics use this -- because it works. I'll talk to you again soon.

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##[] Dont Get Hung up on Topics Yesterday, I got into an elevator where I found a really cute girl with an electric scooter. Most people just park their scooters downstairs, so I found it odd she'd brought hers with her. "You're bringing it with you!" I commented. She giggled pretty hard. "Why didn't you leave your scooter downstairs," I asked. "Afraid someone will take it?" She laughed again, but seemed not to understand. One of the problems of living in a foreign country is that sometimes people just don't have any idea what you're talking about. I decided to try again. "Your scooter," I said, pointing to it. "Why are you taking it upstairs?" Again, she just giggled and shook her head. "Are you scared someone will take it? Steal it?" I pressed, trying to be as simple as possible. She still didn't understand, and we reached her floor and she said "bye bye" and waved and got off. I instantly, as I am wont to do, performed a post-mortem on the interaction. She gave me a big smile, laughed, at least seemed mildly receptive, and from experience I know in general that most girls just flat out like me. So how come I didn't get anywhere with this one? And almost instantly it came to me - I got hung up on a topic. Getting hung up on topics is one of those things I'm always careful about telling students I coach to avoid, because it's one of those insidious little things that has a huge impact but is well nigh invisible to the average man. Most men don't realize that getting hung up on a topic is bad for their interactions; they just, as I did with that girl in the elevator, keep hammering on the same topic that wasn't getting a good reaction in the first place, and end up spinning their wheels and not going anywhere at best, or backsliding at worst. This is part of adjusting on the fly - something I ought to and will at some point write a post on. Not getting hung up on topics though is probably the most essential verbal element of adjusting on the fly. WHY TOPICS DON'T HOOK It's always frustrating when you start talking about something and the girl you're talking with just doesn't seem to get it. And it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to restate the question / topic (bad), or just plain old repeating yourself (terrible). But those are most men's default fall backs when a topic doesn't seem to be understood or properly responded to; if she didn't get it, just keep hammering it until she does. Why do topics not engage sometimes in the first place anyway? Let's have a quick look at the four main reasons: She didn't hear the statement She didn't understand the statement She doesn't relate to the statement She doesn't like the statement Straightforward, right? Either she didn't hear or didn't understand what the guy said, or it's not something she can relate to or she doesn't want to talk about it. Now let's take a little bit of a deeper look at each of those. What does each one of them tell you? She didn't hear the statement. Unless the guy's speaking in a really low voice, this should tell him that her interest was not piqued by the topic. Try talking to someone you know in a quiet voice about things that interest them, and things that don't, and take note of how much they hear of each topic. You'll be surprised to notice that even when you're talking quietly, people pick up on a lot more of what you say if it's something they're interested in. She didn't understand the statement. Could be there's a language barrier, as in my case, or could be it's an uncommon / unusual topic she doesn't think about much and trying to think about it is more mental effort than she's willing to put in at this point. Either way, she probably still isn't going to get it - or want to get it - even if the guy rephrases. She doesn't relate to the statement. If a guy starts talking about stuff a girl doesn't relate to, sometimes she'll seem not to understand, but it's primarily because she doesn't understand on a relational level. It'd be like if you walked up to a British car mechanic and started talking to him about agricultural law in French Polynesia. He's likely not going to hear or understand because it's something completely alien and utterly uninteresting to him. She doesn't like the statement. Think about something you don't like. Now imagine you're in a conversation with a stranger, and that person starts trying to talk to you about that thing. You're probably going to give them at least a few, "Huh?"s and, "Uhhh…"s as you try your darnedest to avoid thinking and talking about it. In other words, most of the time when a topic doesn't hook, there's a good reason why, and pressing on that topic is not going to help. You might be able to press on it and get a mediocre response, but you're still losing the battle. Pressing here does you no good. GETTING UN-HUNG ON TOPICS THAT DON'T HOOK So, we've established that if a topic fails to connect - if some topic you're talking about with a woman just doesn't hit home - there's almost always a very good reason why, and pressing the issue doesn't help. In fact, quite often it hurts. In that case, what do you do? Here, the solution's incredibly easy - you simply change topics and switch directions. So, you use a non-hook topic change indicator: "Anyway…" "Not important." "Doesn't matter." And start in on your next topic. So, for instance, with my conversation with the girl in the elevator, I'd have stood a much better chance of finding something she understood had I switched topics than had I kept hammering on the topics of "theft" and "bike", words or concepts that obviously weren't clear. I'll give you an example of a conversation I had recently that I used this in to good effect: Me: How'd you end up in the field you're in now? Girl: Pardon? I don't understand the question. Me: Not important. So why are you here in Beijing? Why here and not anywhere else? In this case, the reversal was pretty dramatic. I'd been talking with a girl from outside the country, and we'd just met, and we were discussing her career, but after just a few sentences traded on that topic I could sense that it wasn't something she was terribly interested in discussing and I wanted to ditch it. When she didn't understand the question, that told me her mind wasn't working all that hard to find a way to understand. It wasn't something that was a priority for her. So, I changed topics, and struck off in a completely different direction. I went for something that would almost certainly be more interesting, and it was. She then launched into telling me a great deal about herself, I found out that in addition to being quite cute she was also a very ambitious person with a lot of dreams and goals, and we agreed to meet again later as I had to run then and couldn't stay. In addition to helping you quickly switch off bad topics and on to good ones, being aware of this kind of thing and responsively taking action and adjusting on the fly is itself a very attractive trait to showcase. You will almost always see an attraction boost, and you will almost always see women start working harder and putting more effort into an interaction, after you cut off a bad / boring / unproductive topic without pressing it (as most men are wont to do) and instead change gears and launch into something different. Only the most socially adroit individuals do this - so if you start doing it, you communicate a veritable cornucopia of good things about yourself to women. And of course, it keeps you off spin-your-wheels topics and onto topics that throw you into first gear. So next time a girl doesn't understand, rather than try to pound the point home, just change topics. And don't worry, if it was truly something she wanted to talk about - she'll bring it back up!

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##[] Is Qualifying Women Really That Important? If you're like me and you come from a background of being low attainability with girls -- teasing them a little too hard, seeming a little too aloof, causing them to clam up and get cold and snippy and dismissive -- or if you started off as a nice guy and ended up swinging to the opposite extreme, you'd probably be inclined to thinking screening and qualifying is the best thing since sliced bread. I know I sure was. Screening and qualifying is an effective way of finding out if a girl meets your standards. If you're just starting out with women, of course, most of those "standards" are arbitrary standards you're putting up for the sake of seeming like you're being picky; but as you accumulate more success with women, you really do become a lot pickier. So how do you find out if a girl's your kind of girl? Well, you screen her and, when she passes your screens, you qualify her. At least, that's the standard advice. What I've realized lately though is that stand-alone screening and qualifying -- even at its acme, its highest levels -- it's still a technique best suited to beginners and early intermediates. Why? Because, one, screening and qualifying as a stand-alone technique is clumsy. It's unnatural, and it feels contrived. And in fact, as you start getting better, there's something a lot more natural you can use in this approach's place. A BRIEF DEFINITION OF SCREENING AND QUALIFYING If you're already an old pro at screening and qualifying, feel free to skip this section and head straight to the next header. If the terms "screening and qualifying" sound like some kind of voodoo black magic to you and you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, then read on! When you're screening women, what you're doing is finding out if they meet your standards. The simplest, most basic form of screening is a question: Do you cook? That's a screen. If you're looking for a woman who cooks, asking women if they cook is the fastest, easiest way to find out. There are a dozen varieties of screening, including more advanced screens like stating what you like (e.g., "I tend to surround myself with a lot of ambitious people, just because I like their energy and that they're constantly achieving things and setting things into motion"). Point is, screening is what you use to get a woman to divulge her qualifications. Qualifying women, therefore, is what you end up doing when a gal passes one of your screens. You let her know she's qualified. You can qualify women a number of different ways as well: telling them you like that they do or are something; responding that what they tell you is very cool or neat or impressive; telling a woman you think the two of you are going to get along just fine, or that she's starting to grow on you, or that you think she'll make a really cool friend. For simplicity's sake, I'll give you the most basic screening / qualifying combination here, which ends up looking like this: You: Do you cook? Her: I do, yes. You: Awesome, I love women who cook. I think you and I will be great friends. Again, that's a very simple screen -- it's good for beginners to play around with, but once you start hitting intermediacy you'll realize it feels a little... clunky. The funny thing is, based on everything I see out there, it doesn't seem like anyone else realizes this. They don't seem to realize the traditional model of screening and qualifying feels... well... contrived. And they never recommend any sort of improved, smoother, more natural method of screening women and qualifying them... or even discussing why the two are necessary in the first place. That's why I made this post. IS QUALIFYING WOMEN ALL THAT IMPORTANT? HOW ABOUT SCREENING WOMEN -- IMPORTANT TOO? When I started out, screening and qualifying were one of those areas I kept hearing about, but neglected. It didn't feel like it "fit in" to my approach anywhere -- it was like something I had to consciously remember to plug in, but it never quite made it in there snuggly. It was like trying to jam a piece of the puzzle into a place it didn't belong. I'd remember sometimes to ask women if they cooked, or did anything adventurous, or traveled, but it always felt stitched in there. It always felt like I was asking those questions just to ask them -- and it always felt too... forced. What I realize now is that by asking those questions directly, you make it crystal clear to women that you're screening them -- because it's obvious. And it makes you come across like a man who's looking for a girlfriend. Like we discussed in detail in the post on how to get girls, the instant a woman starts thinking of you as boyfriend material, she starts putting the brakes on things and slowing them down. Either she wants you as a boyfriend, in which case she's going to make sure she doesn't mess things up by going too fast. And then, chances are, nothing ever happens. Or, she doesn't want you as a boyfriend -- in which case, you've screened yourself out, because boyfriends and lovers are two very different categories of men that rarely overlap. Whoops. This started dawning on me in 2007, and I started looking for more subtle ways to screen, without painting myself into the prospective boyfriend corner. What I found though was that it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all. I tried getting more and more subtle in my screening... but it kept sticking out like a sore thumb. It was too obvious; it didn't mesh well with the flow of the conversation. Why'd I keep doing it then? Because you need it. Screening is important. Vitally so. As is qualifying. And I'll tell you why. If you walk up to a girl, and don't screen her at all, and then try to move things forward with her -- it feels like your routine. It feels like you're doing the same thing to her you do to everyone, and people don't like that. I'll give you an example so you can feel what I'm talking about. You're in the market for a new house. I'm a real estate agent, and you step into my office. "I'm looking to buy a house," you tell me. A smile spreads across my face. "I've got the perfect one for you," I say. "It's a big, blue ranch home -- 1 story -- no basement, but there's a big shed out back you can store your tools in. Let's head out to my car, and I'll take you there. You have your down payment, right?" "Wait," you say, "what? I hate the color blue, I have a huge family I need to fit into my home -- a ranch won't cut it -- and who said I have any tools to store? I haven't even told you what I'm looking for yet, or how much I can pay. You don't know anything about me or what I want!" You're probably not going to trust that I have your best interests at heart. You're probably going to assume I don't really know what I'm doing, and I use this same exact shtick on everyone. And you're probably not going to want to do business with me. But give me one do-over. Let's say now you step into my office, and we have the following conversation instead: "I'm looking to buy a house," you tell me. "All right," I say. "Why don't we have a seat and figure out exactly what you're looking for?" We sit down together. "Why don't you tell me a little about what it is you want in a home," I say. "Well, I'm not really sure," you tell me. "That's okay," I say. "I'll just ask you a few questions then, and we'll figure it out together. Do you have a big family?" "Yeah, pretty big," you reply. "All right -- how big?" I ask. "It's me, my wife, four kids and a dog," you say. "Wow!" I exclaim with a friendly laugh. "That is big! So you probably want a big house, I'd guess?" "Yeah, I guess so," you say. "Okay," I respond. "And probably something with a yard for your kids and dog to play in?" "Yeah, a yard would be great," you respond. "All right... big house for big family, yard... got it," I say, taking notes as I do. "Do you like new homes, traditional homes -- probably not '70s style with fuzzy green floors, right?" You laugh. "No, definitely no fuzzy green floors. Um, I like brick exteriors, more of a functional kind of guy -- my wife though, she likes a little flourish on the interior and exterior." You see how this one's progressing. We're sitting there, and I'm just taking the time to find out what it is you want exactly. Feels a lot more comfortable, doesn't it? You're a lot more likely to buy from someone who takes the time to find out what you want, what you're looking for, and then shows you what he has that matches your standards. Because that's what a big part about screening is. You aren't just screening the girl -- you're screening yourself, too. You're showing her that yes, you have on offer something that matches exactly what she's looking for, and you're doing it in a convincing way (as opposed to the guy who says, "You'll love this blue 1-story ranch house -- it's perfect for you!" or the guy who says, "Yeah, we'd be great together!" without knowing anything about a girl). The very act of a man screening her reassures a woman that she's getting something unique, special, and tailored to exactly what she wants. Qualifying is the other side of the equation. Qualifying is how you let a woman know she meets your screens. In other words, screening women right tells them you're the kind of man they're looking for. And qualifying women right reassures them they're the kind of women you're looking for -- and prevents them going cold and slipping into auto-rejection like they do with the men they feel like don't value their traits or accomplishments. qualifying women HOW TO SCREEN LIKE THE CIA All right, so screening and qualifying are good and important elements of getting to know a girl -- we've established that. How do you screen in a way that doesn't feel clumsy -- like that puzzle piece crammed into the wrong part of the puzzle? Screening is about discovering information. It's about finding out what makes a woman tick. Because of that, it ends up being a very natural fit with deep diving and building emotional connections with women. Properly integrated into your conversations, screening allows you to cut to the core of a woman in the space of only a few questions. Here's an example of a deep dive. Tell me what you think this sounds like the guy is doing: Guy: How long've you been living in Sydney? Girl: Hmm... about three years now, I guess. Guy: You like it, then? Girl: Actually not that much! How about you, you from here? Guy: No, just passing through. [pause] Well, so if you're not so fond on Sydney, why stay? Girl: Well, my job's here, and my friends, and... Guy: You could get a new job somewhere else, right? Girl: Sure, wouldn't be too hard. Guy: And I suppose it'd take a little while, but you'd make new friends too, yeah? Girl: I guess so, yeah. Guy: So what's really stopping you? Why're you still in a town you're not all that high on? Girl: I don't know. Just kind of got stuck here, I guess. Hard to leave. Guy: I got you. You'll stay here longer, you think? Girl: A few years, maybe. I want to get my Master's. Guy: What's your dream? So let's say you get your Master's... do you stay in Sydney and get a white picket fence house and find the perfect man and settle down and have a few kids and a career? Girl: Oh, God, no. That sounds a little too boring for me. Guy: What, then? Girl: I'd like to start a fashion line. You know, design things for people to wear. Guy: Ah. Now that sounds like a good dream. Girl: What about you... what are you doing with your life? Guy: Well... it's complicated. Girl: How so? What do these statements seem like? "If you're not so fond of Sydney, why stay?" "You could get a new job somewhere else, right?" "You'd make new friends too, yeah?" "What's stopping you?" "What's your dream?" Yep... all screens. Woven into the very mesh and fabric of the deep dive. What makes a man a skilled conversationalist isn't merely his ability to keep others engaged; it's his ability as well to extract large amounts of information -- both to inform himself about his conversation partner, and to identify additional avenues to take the conversation. Deep diving essentially uses a system of screens to drill down to the inner layers of a woman's history, personality, dreams, preferences, and identity. It gets you to the quick of her, and seamlessly integrates screening with your standard, ordinary conversation. You don't have to clumsily fumble around with awkwardly timed screens when you use deep diving. The pieces of the puzzle all fit neatly together. 2 TIPS FOR QUALIFYING LIKE A PRO Ask questions, and Share related stories. That means, she says, "Yes, I can cook," and you ask her what dishes. She tells you a little about her cooking, and you tell her a short story about how your last attempt at cooking went horribly awry -- and then you ask her another question about her cooking again. Yes, it's good to express approval -- e.g., "Now that sounds like a good dream," in our deep diving example above -- but you really don't need to do that all that much. So much of the advice out there on qualifying is about telling women you like something about them directly. She says, "Yes, I can cook." You say, "I like that." Frankly, to me, that's clumsy. Fine when you're starting out, but once you've got your feet under you and you're comfortable telling girls you like them and that they meet your standards, you want to cut that out. Instead, ask questions to show interest, and share related stories of your own to bond. That girl, in the example deep dive above -- think she feels like the guy is interested? Of course she does. If he wasn't, he wouldn't keep asking her to know more. She feels like he's really, honestly getting to know her -- because he is. Most guys she meets just ask her where she lives, and leave it at that. They never find out she doesn't like the town that much, that she's in a bit of a rut in her life right now, that she intends to pursue her Master's, and that her dream is to launch her own fashion line. But the guy above got all that out of her in about a minute and a half -- and I guarantee you, she feels increasingly qualified around him. The more someone shares of him or herself with you, the more deeply connected to you he or she feels. It's a feeling completely automatic -- it can't be controlled. Qualifying isn't about telling a girl, "I like that you can cook." It's about showing interest in her cooking -- asking her what she cooks, where she learned that skill from, how long she's been doing it, if she has any special recipes, how often she cooks, if she has any cooking disaster stories -- that's what makes her feel qualified. Because she feels like you've actually taken the time to get to know her. That does a better job of qualifying than any number of, "I like that," statements ever could. So -- screening and qualifying -- important? You bet they are -- but wherever possible, cut out the clumsiness. Integrate them with your regular conversation, and make sure all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It'll all go a lot more smoothly.

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##[] Get to know a girl: Connection-building Tactics A guy meets a girl he thinks he might really like. She's cute, she has a great energy about her, and there's something about her - the way she looks at him, the way she smiles and laughs when he says something funny, the way he feels just being in her presence - that makes him get a little excited about her. What comes next though is that one thing that's troubled so many men throughout history: once you've found one that you like, how do you get to know a girl? In this post, I'm going to take a look with you at the old concept of "screening and qualifying," at how men usually get to know girls - and the mistakes they make - and at deep diving once again. Best of all, I'm going to introduce you to a very different way of thinking about getting to know women from the traditional screening and qualifying mindset that's so pervasive out there right now, that's guaranteed to help you fit the pieces together in a much more streamlined way. Let's dive in. MISTAKES MEN MAKE TRYING TO GET TO KNOW A GIRL When most men meet a girl they like, they make a valiant effort to get to know her - and usually end up doing it all wrong. Common things guys do include: Talking about themselves a lot Trying to be impressive Trying to carry much of the weight of the conversation Actively seeking to keep things moving smoothly constantly Being clumsy or obvious in things like screening and qualifying Acting overly interested in uninteresting topics Venturing onto uninteresting topics themselves And there are a lot more than that. But you get the idea. Point is, most men mess themselves up while trying to get to know a girl. They have missteps and make some clumsy maneuvers and they end up knocking themselves out of contention for the girl. Why do guys do this? It mostly comes from lack of understanding. Lack of understanding of some basic core social dynamics that influence how we become intrigued by and attracted to others. For instance, most men take the "be overwhelmingly impressive" approach to attempting to woo women. The thought behind it is, "If I can communicate to her just how amazing I am, she won't have any choice but to become insanely attracted to me!" Except, attraction doesn't quite work that way. Women are hardwired to not take men's words at face value. The easiest way to present yourself falsely is through the words you speak; because of this, his spoken word is the least reliable indicator of a man's value as a potential boyfriend or lover. And women know this, both intuitively and (quite often) consciously. The man who's a skilled conversationalist realizes this. This is why he seeks not to impress, but to understate and use humbleness to remove some of the glare from his presentation with others. A woman isn't going to feel comfortable opening herself up to you when she feels like you're positioned 3,000 feet above her as vastly more accomplished and ridiculously superior. Instead, she'll close off. And this is what happens with most men's efforts to get to know women: they cause women to close off, either by being too impressive, or by trying too hard to force rapport. All those mistakes we listed above either end up making a man seem like too much, or like he's working too hard to come across a certain way or achieve a certain objective. He isn't using the effortlessness of sprezzatura and he isn't minding the Law of Least Effort. He's seeming too high and mighty, or too artificial and needy. WHAT THE SEDUCER KNOWS ABOUT GETTING TO KNOW WOMEN A man who's a seducer doesn't make those mistakes mentioned above. Part of that is his mindset - he doesn't view getting to know a girl to be as much of a life-or-death kind of deal as an average man does, and so doesn't place inordinate amounts of pressure on himself to perform - but a larger part of it is his simply knowing what women want, like, and enjoy in a man they've met, and his knowing how to genuinely connect with a woman and get to know her. The seducer knows that most women aren't pop stars or supermodels or CEOs. He knows he doesn't have to be the most impressive man of her life to catch her attention - and that, in fact, positioning himself as such is likely to put him out of her league. And he knows that women don't want to meet a man who wants to tell them all about himself - they want to meet a man who wants to know all about them. But not just any man. They want a man who's charming and attractive - a man they're going to want to open up to. Women want to open themselves up to a man they're attracted to off the bat. That takes working on your fundamentals - on things like how to be a sexy man and on things like understanding why girls like bad boys and how you can use that knowledge to make yourself into a more attractive man. But even if you haven't yet started working on your core fundamentals, there are still women who like you and want to open themselves up to you. You cross paths with these women all the time - the girl in line at the coffee place whose gaze lingered on you a little too long; the woman you met at happy hour the other day who couldn't seem to get enough of talking to you. All you need to do is find these women - and get to know them. And it's not about being impressive. Nor is it about putting the weight of the conversation on your back and carrying it forward. Nor is it about struggling, tooth-and-clawing it, fighting to make an interaction work. If a girl likes you, you shouldn't have to fight her to get to know her. It should be easy... right? get to know a girl SCREENING, QUALIFYING, AND CONNECTION-BUILDING The first thing you normally learn about within the circles of men training for success with women is a concept known as "screening and qualifying." It's an old standby that's been a fixture in the industry for a long time because, quite frankly, it works. Screening is the term for the practice of (usually) asking women questions about themselves to get to know them better. Statements can also be used to encourage women to self-screen, but for beginners the easiest things to start off with typically are screening questions. A few very basic examples so you know what I'm talking about: "Do you cook?" "What sort of creative stuff do you do?" "Do you travel at all?" Those are basic screening questions, and they'll help you quickly find out things about a girl that you're curious to know. Screening is a normal part of human interaction and dialogue. It's how we get to know one another. Screening is great, wonderful, and absolutely essential. BUT, one of the things you're often told about it is completely wrong. A lot of the guys in the seduction industry recommend "screening hard" to "show women you have standards." They're coming from that same mindset that you need to "display higher value" in order to "impress" women, basically. In this instance, by screening you "impress women with your standards." Actually, for a while I thought about screening this way myself. It's a pervasive mindset. But there was something about it that never quite clicked for me mentally... But we'll come back to that in a second. There's a second part to screening, and it's known as "qualifying." Your screens won't get far without qualifying statements, which are, simply put, how you show a woman your approval of her answers. At least, again, that's the thought behind it in mainstream seduction circles. So, an exchange with a screen like the following occurs: Guy: Can you cook? Girl: I sure can! I've been cooking since I was ten. And in response, the guy qualifies the girl to reinforce his approval of her passing his screen: Guy: Oh, that's great! I love girls who can cook. And as far as building connections and boosting attraction goes, screening does its job really well. Screening works, hands down. But the explanations for why it works always seemed a little clunky to me. "Screen a girl to show her you have standards. Then, qualify her to show you approve of her and get her viewing you as higher value and an authority figure." That felt a little... misunderstood to me. Once I started putting together the framework of connection building that became deep diving though, things started to click better and make more sense. I realized that people became comfortable with other people and let their guards down the more connected to someone else they felt. And as they became comfortable and as their guards went down, they allowed themselves to become attracted. Actually, that last part's a concept I owe to my old business partner, MNX. He first introduced me to the idea that a lot of women are controlling themselves and preventing themselves from feeling attraction. They're putting the dampener on their feelings for men. And as I learned more and more about connection building, I began to realize why: It's because most men don't make women feel comfortable, connected, and understood. And people don't open themselves up to people they don't feel comfortable, connected, and understood with. They keep their defenses up, raise the bridge over the moat, and plop archers into their towers. They stay at the ready to defend against attacks. But when you build a connection with them - when you make them feel comfortable and understood - those defenses come down. The bridge gets lowered and the archers head to the cantina for a pint of ale. So, building connections helps people to lower their defenses and really feel around you. And what's one of the key tenets of building solid connections with people? Helping them to feel like you know them better. By finding out more and deeper and broader things about women, you enable them to connect to you more thoroughly. And by enabling women to connect to you more thoroughly, you enable them to allow themselves to feel attraction. What I realized was that screening worked not because it "shows women you have standards," but because it helps women to CONNECT to you! It helps them to help you know more and more about them, and thus they begin to feel increasingly comfortable, connected, and understood - and, thus, they put their guards down and allow themselves to let their mounting attraction for you run free. This is also why women you don't screen properly go into auto-rejection and leave; they start feeling like you aren't getting to know them and don't care to, and eventually the conversation feels to uncomfortable for them to remain in and they make their exits. Screening works because it helps women feel connected, which frees them to feel attracted. What about qualifying then? Is it still about showing women you approve and getting them to view you as a leader? Well, the current thinking on qualifying I think is a little closer to the mark than the current thinking on screening... but, it's still off the mark, nevertheless. Let's look at qualifying from the same perspective as screening. Screening works because it helps you build better connections with women by encouraging them to share things about themselves with you and you get to know them better. How does qualifying advance a connection? Simple: see if you can feel the difference between these two interactions: You: Actually, it's something of a hobby of mine. Girl: How long have you been doing that? You: Almost four years. I've gotten pretty good. Girl: ... You: So... do you have any hobbies? Girl: Not really. I'm too busy for hobbies. and You: Actually, it's something of a hobby of mine. Girl: How long have you been doing that? You: Almost four years. I've gotten pretty good. Girl: Oh, so cool! I really admire that you stuck with it that long and developed your skill... most people never do that, they give up way too early! What made you keep at it? You: Well, I... Huge difference, right? What's the main difference? The girl in the second conversation qualifies you for what you've shared with her. The girl in the first example does not. Why's it matter? Is it because Girl #2 is showing approval over you and you're accepting her as a leader? No. It's because you feel like Girl #2 gets you and wants to build a connection with you. She appreciates you. So, you lower your defenses, you allow yourself to feel more connected to her and feel more attracted, and you start viewing her as someone who's on your side; she's "one of us" instead of "one of them." That's why qualifying works. Because, like screening, it helps you build connections with women, which allows women to feel attracted to you. get to know a girl HOW TO REALLY GET TO KNOW A GIRL Ready to step your connecting game up and take it to the next level? Good. Because if you've made it this far in this post, I've got something special for you. It's new, cutting-edge stuff I've been using for a little while but have only recently broken down well enough that I feel comfortable putting pen to paper about it. And that is the concept of how you can integrate screening and qualifying seamlessly with deep diving. Deep diving is all about forming fast, rapid connections with women. Screening and qualifying is all about finding out the things you want to know from women. If you want to get to know a girl fast and well, you must combine these two things. To do so, there's something you must understand first about qualifying: the reason it works is not because you are verbally saying "I approve." Nope, that's not why qualifying works at all. The reason why qualifying works is because you express INTEREST in another person. Look back over those last two examples above about the girl who qualifies you and the girl who doesn't. What's the deepest emotion you feel about what those women are conveying? The first girl doesn't care about your hobby. The second girl DOES. So, rather than look at qualifying as necessarily something in which you must explicitly convey approval for what a woman shares with you, instead you can look at it through the far more flexible view of seeing it as expressing interest in her and what she's sharing as she seeks to connect with you. Here's how we combine all three elements (screening, qualifying, and deep diving): You: When you're not crunching numbers or saving small animals, how do you spend your time? Her: Well, actually I sculpt. You: Really? No way! Sculpt what? Her: Mostly 12 inch or smaller sculptures, though I've done a few human-size pieces. You: Hmm! That's wild. I never would've taken you for the eccentric artist-with-a-hammer-and-chisel type. How long have you been doing that? Her: Since I was 5 years old. My father taught me. You: That makes you something of a prodigy then, right? Her: Well... maybe if I'd kept at it. I slacked off majorly in high school though. You: Ah, so maybe you could've been Raphael... but you got too interested in skipping class and chasing boys, huh? Her: Haha, well, maybe... do you do anything in the arts? Notice how we use screening questions ("How do you spend your time?" "Sculpt what?" "How long have you been doing that?" "That makes you a prodigy, right?") both to find out more about this topic in particular and to advance the deep dive overall, and we use interest and excitement and further screening questions (which convey further interest) to serve as our qualifiers. And right away, you have a very smooth, natural, intuitive way of getting to know a girl. You find out more about her, show her that you're genuinely interested in what she has to say and encourage her to share more, and help her to grow her connectedness to you, get comfortable with you, and allow herself to feel attraction for you. By rolling screening and qualifying into your deep dives, you enable yourself to do away with the rather clumsy way most folks advocate using screening and qualifying - as stand-alone screens with an accompanying qualifier - and integrate them into your overall conversations, and then use them to explore deeper aspects of a woman's life, self, and history. Once you get this down, it is easy to get to know a girl. Stuff's only hard when you're doing it in a disjointed, unnatural way. Start plugging it all together, and you'll find your interactions hit a lot fewer snags along the way, and feel a lot cleaner and more fluid, both to you and to that new girl you're getting to know. If you want to know more about deep diving and connection-building, keep your eyes out for my upcoming video program, Spellbinding: Enchanting Conversation to Get Her Talking. In it, I go in-depth into how to transform yourself into an elite conversationalist that women find completely captivating. More information will be available in June 2011 in the program catalog. (update: you can get Spellbinding now right here: Spellbinding: Get Her Talking) Meantime, use the signup form at the bottom of this page to join the newsletter and stay informed of all the latest announcements, and to find out when Spellbinding is coming out as well. Until then, here's to many exciting and connection-filled conversations between you and a great many beautiful young women.

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##[] Sprezzatura, Effort, and Investing Question from a reader named Sam yesterday: Hi Chase, Just wanted to say thanks for all the great advice and content you post here. Some of this stuff is pure gold because I have had a few "ah ha" moments, especially about the interchangeability of value and good feelings, and this I think will take my game to a better level. More importantly though, it has greatly increased my understanding of relationships, not because you didn't know this, but you "just couldn't put it into words". Another thing I learned here was that I was making the mistake of investment, but from what I have read here, there are a few things to fix here and there on this part. Can you please write up a comprehensive post on investment? (haven't come across one here yet) And some of the dos and don'ts of it. You did mention in one of your posts (chase framing post) your would write about "comprehensive investment / compliance post". You probably hear a lot of praise, but I'm just putting it out there that this is indeed great stuff. I honestly do wish I had come across your site earlier. All in all, you now have a regular reader. Investment's a great topic. It's one of those things that boggled the heck out of me early on, but it pays such incredible dividends in the end. Once you really get down a strong, solid gameplan for investment and you know what you're doing with it and you have your strategy for approaching investment in whatever situation, your interactions with women run so much more smoothly. Of course... getting there, well, that's the challenging part. What I want to focus on in this post is specifically answering Sam's question: how much should you be investing with women? Let's have a look at some of the dos, don'ts, and precisely why those dos and don'ts are dos and don'ts when it comes to a concept called sprezzatura, a close cousin of our Law of Least Effort. It's a bit much to get your head around, but once you've got the concept you're going to start seeing social interactions in an entirely different way. SPREZZATURA, INVESTMENT, AND THE LAW OF LEAST EFFORT Since I haven't talked about investment much in a while, let's have a quick refresher before diving in. Investment is the amount of time and effort you spend on a girl. It's any kind of time and effort, really: everything from doing things for her physically, to spending time thinking about her and pining over her. The way investment works is, the more you invest in someone (or something) else, the more invested you become, and the more your emotions tell you this someone or something else is important to you and needs to be held onto and retained. The implications for doing well with women are, of course, twofold: The more invested in you a woman is, the more attached to you she'll become, and the more likely she is to go along with what you want to do, and The more invested in a woman you become, the more attached to her you'll become, and the more you're going to capitulate to what she asks you to do and work to not lose her. Now, one of these is very good for succeeding with women. The other is rather detrimental to it. The more invested in you women become, the more they want to be with you, and the more they're willing to do for you to maintain what they have with you. On the other hand, the more invested in a woman you become, the more you're going to shy away from taking bold action with her, the less aggressively you'll push things forward with her, and the more likely you are to do what she asks or tells you to do. Women don't like pushovers. In fact, as discussed in yesterday's post "The Secret to Hooking Up with Friends," the more time and effort you've spent on a woman without sleeping together with her, the less likely you are to bed her (contrary to what you'll hear just about everywhere else). Thus comes the Law of Least Effort, which states that the more you can achieve while appearing to put in less effort, the more attractive, powerful, and "cool" you are perceived as. In other words, what the Law of Least Effort is saying is, the more investment you get while giving as little investment as possible, the more desirable you seem to women and the stronger you seem to men. The Law of Least Effort is why kings sit on the throne while everyone else comes to them and stands and kneels. The Law of Least Effort is why women chase after rock stars and the band members have someone else pick out the prettiest ones and bring them to their rooms. The Law of Least Effort is why the male lion takes a nap all day and the females go out to hunt and bring him food and come to him to mate. The weak man flails his arms about wildly and rushes from place to place and accomplishes little. The strong man waves a hand and his will is done. Women like strong men. Check that - women love strong men. But without a solid understanding of the dynamics of investment and effort, most men's efforts to be perceived as strong are shots in the dark. That's why you see so many guys trying to be strong by tooling others. They do okay, until they run into a guy who understands investment and effort, and he obliterates them. When a guy makes a dumb comment or tries to belittle you, and you glance at him casually and skeptically and a slight smile spreads slowly across your lips as if he's just said something cute like what a little boy might say, then you turn your head casually back to resume doing or saying whatever you were doing or saying before his attempt to put you down, you've just... blown him out of the water. Effortlessly. Because he invested a great deal to put you on the defensive, but his efforts fell flat. He's on the suboptimal part of the effort diagram: he's invested much, but gained little in return. Actually, I whipped up a chart just for this post. Here it is: Effort and Investment Chart Makes sense when you think about it, doesn't it? But how often have you ever thought about this before? This is one of those core, core aspects of human socializing and fundamentals that no one knows, and no one ever talks about. The man I mentored under early on in my studies of the social arts discusses a similar concept called sprezzatura, defined as "studied carelessness." I call it the Law of Least Effort. Whatever name you prefer, the end result is the same: if you're visibly expending a lot of effort while getting little in return, you're a bit of a joker to people; no one takes you seriously. If on the other hand you're putting out very little visible effort, but getting a lot of returns, people stare at you in awe and call you cool, awesome, powerful, sexy. Charming. Amazing. The other two are the guys who don't do anything - the unknowns - and the guys who work hard and get returns - the peasants. That's the main thrust behind the Law of Least Effort. Most guys out there are jesters. We want you to be a king. But how, exactly, do you get there? "STUDIED CARELESSNESS" Notice that when we talk about sprezzatura, and when we talk about the Law of Least Effort, what we're actually talking about is putting in less visible effort. In other words, it's all about the appearance of being effortless. To get to that point, you may very well have to work yourself to the bone, though. Cultivating an appearance of studied carelessness - of effortlessness - is no small feat. It entails an understanding of social dynamics that few people ever come to possess. And it entails mastering the ability to get people to do what you want without having to expend much effort. That's two things right there that are essential to it. They are: Learning to understand people very well, and Learning how to compel people to do what you want them to do very well. Both, for obvious reasons, are essential to being a talented seducer and ladies man, so you're going to end up working hard to master both of those anyway. But you should also be seeking, as you learn them better and better, to incorporate their lessons into your presence and presentation; you should seek to minimize the visible effort you put in while maximizing your returns. Let's take this out of abstraction and look at an example so you can start seeing what I mean. Example Part 1 A man sees a woman across the room. He locks eyes with her, turns to face her fully, and strides across the room directly toward her. When he reaches her, he faces her fully and introduces himself. Example Part 2 A man sees a woman across the room. He feigns not noticing her, then talks to someone nearby him. Several minutes later, he strikes off, taking a circuitous route around the room, until he comes nearby to her. He acts as if he's just noticed her, and casually nudges her arm, getting her attention. She looks at him first; he turns to face her a bit and locks eyes with her, and introduces himself. Of those two men, which would you say the woman felt more attraction to? Well, she probably thought the first guy was quite bold. But consider this: now that she has this expectation of him being this incredibly bold man, for walking across the room zeroed in on her, if he's anything less than incredibly bold and direct, do you think it'll work? Well... not really, it won't, no. He needs to be on fire, or be so accustomed to incredible boldness that it's simply the way he always is. There are a few men who can do that consistently - but most men can't. And reaching that level of consistent boldness, while a noble goal, is incredibly difficult. You can do it, but there are faster and easier paths to success with women. The second man in our example, everything seems so casual and natural and effortless. The woman isn't going to expect him to be incredibly bold. But if he is, she'll be still more impressed. And if he isn't, if he's still cool and in-control, she's going to be attracted. Because, from her perspective, he's put in very little effort to get to know her, but he does a good job of it anyway. That first guy put a lot of effort in, so he's going to be held to a much higher standard for results. If his results don't go above his already large outlay of effort, he's going to look tryhard. The second guy is held to a lesser standard for results since he put less effort in. That means that even if he doesn't get quite the results the bold guy does, comparatively he's going to appear more attractive, and women will be more willing to do something with him. This isn't speculation. This is rigorously tested. I've done the "walk across the room and boldly open" thing a number of times. You get strong reactions out of it; women either really dig it, or they're very dismissive. The ones that dig it though, if you don't move incredibly strongly and boldly with them right away, you lose them fast. Needless to say, I usually go the sprezzatura route and go for effortlessness. It means that even if I'm a little off, I still have a decent shot of moving things forward. You don't have to be perfect when you're visibly expending little effort. The funny thing is, the guy who navigates around the room to casually open a girl, when you think about it, he's actually expending more actual effort than the guy who just straight-lines it for the girl. But it isn't about actual effort - it's about the appearance of effort. The king may be crunching inordinate amounts of numbers in his head and stressing like crazy over how to get the population what they want and not incite rebellion and how to manage the drama going on between his wife and his head concubine, and he may be putting in late nights planning and strategizing and figuring it all out. But when people come before him on the throne, he only sits there calmly and gives them orders. He's the hardest working man in the kingdom. But he creates the appearance of achieving all the results he achieves on the expenditure of little effort, and it makes him seem all the more powerful. FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE Before you go thinking you want to invest nothing, keep this in mind: you must invest at least a little to achieve results. The king still has to open his mouth and speak for his will to be done. The challenge to sprezzatura is finding the right line to walk to generate the results you want to generate without putting in too much visible effort. Some suggestions: Keep correspondence with women short, direct, and to-the-point; use it primarily to arrange face-to-face meetings. Master the arts of deep diving and conversation to get women talking a great deal while speaking sparingly yourself. Learn to move slowly and regally; powerful men don't jerk around or move much. Strong men have abundant levels of stillness. Learn the right voice tone for giving commands. You'll often want to raise your voice at the end of a command, as if it were a question, without actually making it a question. This raises buy-in substantially and eliminates much of the chance a woman resents you for giving her a command (more common with Western women). Learn to respond to jokes or insults with subtle facial expressions instead of verbal responses. In fact, learn to respond to many things that don't necessarily need a verbal contribution with expressions instead. Talk slowly and use lots of pauses. Powerful men don't speed through their conversation; they take their time to make a point. Once you have those down fairly well, you'll notice you start getting greater and greater returns on lower and lower amounts of visible effort. You may still be expending a greater degree of actual effort, processing everything and learning new behavioral patterns. But the cool part about it is, once you've learned it, it becomes second nature - then, socializing does become truly effortless. When it reaches the point where it's easy and natural and it just flows, and all you have to do is start talking to girls and things just work and they somehow just end up in your bed... that's when you know you've made it. Sprezzatura. Just remember you want to be the king - leave being the jester to all the other guys out there.

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##[] Which Women Want Sex: Here's how to Tell In a fascinating study by Kristina M. Durante of the University of Texas, Austin's Department of Psychology et al., entitled "Changes in Women's Choice of Dress Across the Ovulatory Cycle: Naturalistic and Laboratory Task-Based Evidence," researchers identified a finding that's at once something you probably already guessed was the case, but never saw hard evidence for before: that when women want sex, they dress for it. Here're the findings of the research: "Although each data source supported the prediction, the authors found the most dramatic changes in clothing choice in the illustrations [of what each woman would wear out that night]. Ovulatory shifts in clothing choice were moderated by sociosexuality, attractiveness, relationship status, and relationship satisfaction. Sexually unrestricted women, for example, showed greater shifts in preference for revealing clothing worn to the laboratory near ovulation. The authors suggest that clothing preference shifts could reflect an increase in female—female competition near ovulation." In other words, when women want sex as they approach the time of the month when they're fertile, they dress more provocatively to attract more male attention and out-compete other females. When it comes to ways to tell if a girl is horny though, this is just the tip of the iceberg. UNDERSTANDING THAT WOMEN WANT SEX women want sexBefore I dive into this article in detail though, I want to cover something first: the question in many men's heads of, "Do women actually want sex?" There are a lot of men on Planet Earth who seem to function under the belief that women don't actually like sex all that much, nor do they want it that much. No matter that any biological organism having an entire gender not liking sex probably wouldn't make it past its first generation, these men cling stubbornly to this belief of icy, unemotional women who only want to... talk, or something. Women themselves maintain this myth in the minds of many men by insisting that, gross, men are so sex-obsessed, and that of course they aren't interested in sex... hell, they don't even like it that much! Traditionally, this has been because women have been under a lot of pressure to maintain a veil of chastity and purity in order to have higher social status and to get men to work harder to please those women to get what they want (sex). However, the balance in power in the dating market has significantly shifted following the women's liberation and free love movements in the West, and women have begun playing men's game instead of inviting men to play theirs. It's a lot more common these days to hear women openly admit to enjoying sex - whereas before, a woman used to pretend not to be interested at all to make a man really chase hard, nowadays the strategy has shifted to, "Yeah, I'm interested... but maybe not in YOU. Impress me." This is actually for competitive reasons; a woman saying, "I'm not interested in that at ALL!" these days gets zero male attention, because there are so many women saying, "Yeah, I'm interested... if you're the right guy;" it's similar to price wars in economics - once enough people go lower than the previous floor price, everyone's got to follow suit or risk being shut out of the market. Of course, then you have the problem that the buyers (men) start thinking they're getting cheap goods (women) because the price is so low, and the sellers (women) start feeling like they're getting a lot less in return (the amount of investment and valuation men give them) for their goods (their sex / a relationship), and everyone ends up unsatisfied, but that's a bigger discussion than this article's focused on. The points I want to make here are: Women are biological creatures just like men, driven to mate just like men Women instinctively hide their sex drive from judgmental men out of fear of being judged lower in value / quality / worth Chances are, if you're under the belief women don't want sex, you're probably behaving in some way that's telling them they should hide that side of themselves from you, or else you'll judge them (and potentially risk damaging their reputation / chances with high quality men) - you'll want to figure out what that is and stop doing it, obviously So yes... women want sex. And just like men, they have sex drives that are all over the map... some of them only get randy every now and again, while others are almost constantly ready to go, and have had so many different partners that they'd put most seducers to shame (they probably won't tell you that if they think you'll judge them, though). But no matter who they are or what their drive is like, just about every woman wants to mate when she's fertile for impregnation. That's biology kicking in; her body's telling her, "Okay honey, this is our one shot this month to secure the next generation's continued existence; let's do it!" And doing it is exactly what she wants to do. But how do you know which women's bodies are primed for receiving, well, YOU - and which women are just out socializing? HOW TO KNOW WHEN WOMEN WANT SEX I've long looked at the hordes of men in nightclubs competing for the select few women scantily attired in short, flashy, glittery dresses, twisting and gyrating against each other to the music. "Those guys are damn fools," I'd say to myself, "they're competing with the entire nightclub when there are tons of women who are objectively more attractive than those girls, who aren't surrounded by overprotective friends and legions of drooling drunk guys, all over this place. They should be going after them." But, as it turns out, those men may well have been onto something. Martie G. Haselton and Kelly Gildersleeve of the University of California, Los Angeles put together a comprehensive aggregation of research studies of signals that men detect of women during their fertile period in their research "Can Men Detect Ovulation?" The study opens with a reference to Miller, Tybur, and Jordan's 60-day 2007 study of the tips lap dancers received throughout their menstrual cycle, finding this about dancers not on the pill: Dancers not on birth control received $350 in tips during high fertility Dancers not on birth control received $260 in tips during low fertility Dancers not on birth control received $180 in tips while menstruating and this about dancers on the pill: Dancers on birth control received $210 in tips during high fertility Dancers on birth control received $190 in tips during low fertility Dancers on birth control received $140 in tips while menstruating Here's the infographic: women want sex Miller, Tybur, Jordan, 2007. Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus? Pretty wild, right? When women can't get pregnant, whether due to their cycle or due to birth control, men are decidedly less interested in sex with them than they are with women who can get pregnant. Like we discussed in "Best Ways to Pick Up Girls," the birth control pill can have an incredibly powerful effect on a woman's desirability to men, and the kinds of men women feel themselves attracted to. Because of the dampening effect the pill has on women's natural hormones - and because the hormones at work in your brain really do effect the way you think, perceive, and navigate the world - a girl who's on the pill and a girl who's off it really are like two different people (and, as we discussed, a woman can often end up being very unhappy with the man she's selected once she goes off the pill and she begins reassessing him according to her natural, non-pill preferences). But this article isn't about the pill's effects on women and mating and dating (you can see the one above for details on that). This post is on how to tell when women want sex. In Haselton and Gildersleeve's research, the question that's asked - and answered, in my estimation - is this: "Is the change in attractiveness we see of fertile women due to cues like sent that men are picking up on, or are women eliciting the increased attraction in men with their behavior?" Here are the primary behavioral / psychological changes the researchers identified across the multiple studies examined in pre-ovulatory women (women entering their most fertile period): They become more interested in sexy men with traits like masculine facial features and competitive behavior They become more interested in men other than their boyfriend or husband, particularly if their boyfriend / husband lacks the qualities of a sexual man They become more open to flirting with attractive men and more actively seek opportunities to meet attractive men to flirt with (e.g., more likely to accept an invitation to dance by an attractive male, more likely to go to a nightclub or party) They put more work into being attractive (wearing both sexier and more revealing clothing) Their faces and bodies may become slightly more attractive during ovulation (this one's speculative and the researchers say needs further research) Their vaginal and underarm scents become more attractive to men Their voices become higher pitched and are rated more attractive to men Interestingly enough, there are also some changes noted in pair-bonded male behavior (how the boyfriend / husband acts) around the time of his partner's ovulation: He becomes more "vigilant, monopolizing, and spoiling" - basically, he gets a lot stricter about how she spends her time, takes up a lot more of it himself, and gives her lots of nice things He becomes more jealous and possessive - this was especially noted in men rated by their partners as "low" in sexual attractiveness (which probably means the woman is a scarcer resource for these men and must be guarded more jealously than a man living with an abundance mentality would guard her) His testosterone levels go up - both increasing his sexual interest in her, and raising his desire to combat rivals If you've ever been at a nightclub and had a really aggressive, gaudily-clad girl start coming onto you strong, then had her raging bull boyfriend come to butt heads with you, telling you, "Hey! That's my girlfriend! What are you doing dude, that's my girlfriend?!!!" then you know exactly what I'm talking about. Ah, jealous boyfriends. Hey pal, if she wants it over here, that means you're not getting it done over there, capisce? Either that, or she's trying to make you jealous to step it up... which also means you're not getting it done. Step it up with your woman or watch her step out. But I digress... What do we learn from all this? When women want sex, they put themselves in a position to get it. No great surprise there, right? But we also learn that when women want sex, every guy and his brother within a 20-block radius knows it and starts converging on the woman's location. What's a fellow to do? USING THIS INFORMATION TO GET GIRLS If you're like most guys in the West, you're probably unnerved to learn that the women you find most attractive are also the ones you're most likely to get pregnant. Surprise! Evolution works. (I kind of enjoy watching guys squirm when I tell them that - just like they learned in Bible class - sex really is all about making babies, and it all makes a lot more sense when you start looking at it that way. It's one of those truths that people used to be comfortable about, but now they aren't, yet it isn't any less true. Ah well, the world goes on) Anyway, you can fight the knowledge that, much as you may dread the prospect of having a drooling, smiling, 15-pound poop-machine all your own, that's really what your body wants to have you make happen to your life, or you can accept it, understand why you want the things you want and why the men and women around you want the things they want, and plan accordingly. Personally, I'm for the latter. Knowledge is power, I always say, and acceptance of knowledge is king. But how do you use the information in this post to get girls? Well, first off, you need a look at yourself. Are you: A sexy man women can't keep their hands off, or A man who hasn't quite figured the sexy thing out yet? If you're A), you'll have an easier time going head-to-head with the competition for fertile women in nightclubs, though it's still going to be tough because there's often going to be a lot of it. If you're B), you can all but forget about out-competing sexy men until you get sexiness figured out - however, if you can take the emotional beating and not come out too scarred, going head-to-head with men who are out-competing you is going to be highly educational - pay attention to the men the women you want choose, and ask yourself what they're doing and how they're presenting themselves, styling themselves, and acting differently from you are. Now, the first thing you might think if you are a sexy guy is, "Well, gosh, I'm sexy, and I'm pretty skilled socially - if I just go out and out-compete every other guy out there, I'll get the girl!" But... not so fast. women want sex I've found a few things in my years in the trenches (bars, parties, and clubs) that might surprise you, and might save you hours upon hours of frustrating lost time. We'll get to other avenues to meet fertile, lusty women in a moment besides nighttime venues, but I want to touch on these. While women are more receptive to men while they're fertile, they also seem to be far less forgiving. Never will you meet a harsher judge than a horny woman. One major slip up - or even a minor one, sometimes - and you're done. Does that mean there's no hope with them? Nope, not at all. It just means, drum roll... you've got to minimize the time you spend GAMING them! But how do you do that? Well, you do it by pulling fast, or coming late. I'll explain. If you've been exploring the nightlife with any regularity and you haven't been going regularly for the whole night (open to close), then you've probably been missing a lot of patterns. Namely, that many women are a lot more open to meeting new people at the start of the night, and they can be quickly pulled then, or locked into a conversation early on and you're their "guy" for the night (assuming you don't take too long to take them home... do that at your own peril). And, many women are testy and short-tempered but open to being pulled by a strong man at the end of the night, too. But a whole lot of women won't do anything other than evaluate, evaluate, evaluate throughout the entire middle part of the night. That means, if you're showing up for the middle part of the night - or you didn't do such a hot job meeting girls early on at the outset - you're probably going to have a long night ahead of you of competing with one guy after another after another for the girl you're talking to. She's not going anywhere, which means now she's going to take her time to see how well you compete with the other men who are approaching her. And what happens when you've got an entire night to defend your prize? Well, a few things: There's a good chance you get tired and worn out and start slipping up There's a good chance you start looking needy by hanging around with this girl who's forcing you to compete for her There's a good chance that, no matter how good you are, some guy comes along and out-competes you for that girl you just plowed two hours into "working on" I went through this countless times before I adopted the mantra of "move faster with women." Trust me... it ain't fun. Fun for the girl, of course... she gets to evaluate tons of options, and leaves feeling like she got the best guy (the one who out-competed all the other ones). Some of that is skill, some of that is chance. You want to remove chance from your interactions as much as possible, at least once you're reasonably skilled. It's kind of like being a good gambler at a casino. I don't care how good you are, if you stick around long enough, somebody's going to beat you. And unlike the casino, you don't get to play another hand at the same table after you get beat; and you don't get to keep any chips to cash out. You lose once with a girl, you're wiped out. The good news is... when women want sex, they don't want to hang around and chit-chat! They want a guy who knows how to attract women who's going to flip their switches fast, then get them out of there... because remember, they want sex! That may be hard to believe when you're just starting out. But believe it, yes - just like you, women are biological organisms, and just like you they need to make babies. Sex is how they do that, thus, they are driven to want it. Don't let culture's tendency to build sex up into some "big deal" scare you into thinking otherwise - it's only a big deal because you're deciding whom you want to recombine genes with and spend a lot of time and money raising your offspring with (from a biological / sociological point of view). Get there early, or get there late, and whatever you do, move fast. But wait - what if you're not sexy yet, or you don't really feel like braving the nightclub (and all the competition for those flashy, lustful women)? Never fear - day game is here. But wait, you say - do women want sex in the daytime too? Well, let me ask you this - do you think they only ever ovulate at night? Walk around outside and pay attention to the women you walk by. Chances are, you'll pass by at least a few women who give you a hard stare. (You should probably go meet those women) If you don't get looks from women, then you need to work on your style - the focus should be "sexy" and "edgy." Don't think that's you? Well, is being attractive to women you? Most guys will tell you, "I want to be attractive to women, and still dress how I want!" Okay, that's doable - but you've got to do other work to compensate for the lack of sexy attire. That means a sexy haircut, cool facial hair, and a good, cut build. Don't want to do that? Then let me ask you how many women you're interested in who don't bother to get sleek haircuts, good fashion, have a good body, and move well and sexy with great posture. Uh-huh, right... thought so. Day time is a great place to meet women, and women will signal they're receptive to you much of the time. Pay attention to proximity clues (standing around you, looking in your direction then looking away), eye contact, even clothing (women are more likely to wear red when ovulating, and are also perceived as being 12% more attractive and 17% more sexual by men when in red). And when you meet a woman in the daytime, and you can tell she's very interested in you, should you then move slowly? Nope, not a chance. Treat her the same as a girl you'd meet in any other environment - get her home with you fast, if at all possible. And if she's out and about and has to get back to work, or has some other unbreakable commitment - do as Ricardus recommends in his tips on how to sleep with girls more consistently - ask her what she's doing later that day (and invite her to do something then). Just make sure if you go back to her place that her jealous, overly-territorial boyfriend isn't there waiting for you. Always, Chase Amante

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##[] What's the best way to pick up girls? Get the ones looking for you What's the best way to pick up girls? You might be surprised by what can influence a woman's receptiveness... even something like being on birth control or not. A fascinating study, "Relationship satisfaction and outcome in women who meet their partner while using oral contraception," was several days ago published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Researchers from the UK decided to look at the differences in women who began dating men while on birth control, and those who started dating men when they weren't on birth control. What they found was this: "Women who used OC scored lower on measures of sexual satisfaction and partner attraction, experienced increasing sexual dissatisfaction during the relationship, and were more likely to be the one to initiate an eventual separation if it occurred. However, the same women were more satisfied with their partner's paternal provision, and thus had longer relationships and were less likely to separate." In other words, using birth control (or oral contraception -- "OC") leads to women ending up with men they're less attracted to, are sexually dissatisfied with, increasingly become more sexually dissatisfied with as the relationship progresses, and the women more often are the ones to call the relationship off eventually. On the plus side, the men women on birth control end up with usually make better husbands and fathers, and their relationships lasted an average of two years longer. The flip side of this is that women off birth control choose to mate and date with sexy men -- men they find more attractive, who give them better sex, and who they're less likely to initiate a breakup with -- but the breakups still happened, on average two years earlier than the men women met while on contraception. And it's more often the men doing the breaking up -- likely because these are more attractive men with more options with women who don't like staying tied down too long. The reason for these huge differences in dating preferences -- why women on the pill are ending up with nice guys they're unsatisfied with but who make good dads, and why women off the pill end up with sexy guys they're excited by but who break up with them -- comes down to what the pill does chemically to women's brains -- and that works out to be some interesting stuff. Read on if you dare... FERTILITY AND LUST: WHEN WOMEN WANT BAD BOYS MOST Life's hard for nice guys. If you still have an inkling of attachment to the nice guy mantle though, here's some pretty definitive scientific evidence that you ought to reconsider. A study by Steve Gangestad at the University of New Mexico, "Women's Preferences for Male Behavioral Displays Change Across the Menstrual Cycle," found that among 237 ovulating women (women off contraceptives, and in the midst of their fertile period), women became more attracted than at other times of the month to men who displayed the following traits: Social presence (confidence and social savvy) Direct intrasexual competitiveness (more sexy and appealing than other men; better able to vanquish other men in competitions) Masculine male faces (square jaw line, firm features, masculine smiles & eyes) The scent of symmetrical men And another study, again by Steve Gangestad -- this one entitled "Conditional expression of women's desires and men's mate guarding across the ovulatory cycle" -- found that, among 38 women not using contraceptives, both single women and women in relationships began flirting more with other men during ovulation, and the boyfriends and husbands of those women in relationships began guarding them more jealously. Noteworthy though was that this happened most with women who rated their partners as low on the desirability scale; women with less attractive mates became more flirtatious and, presumably, more open to taking another, more attractive lover. If you're reading this and you still think of yourself as a nice guy, don't lose heart; this isn't anything conscious, evil, or manipulative that women are doing -- it's hardcoded into human DNA, they can't control it, and the vast majority of them aren't even conscious of it. It's simply that if a man comes across weaker and less desirable, a woman's more likely to look for a stronger man when she's in the part of her cycle when she can conceive. Mating is all about reproduction, ultimately, and we all want to have the fittest, strongest, healthiest children -- so if a woman doesn't feel her partner can give her that, her genes kick in to tell her to start searching for it elsewhere. All this adds incontrovertible proof to the pudding that, yes, girls like bad boys and nice guys finish last, despite what you'll hear on daytime TV or in those movies where the nice guy defeats the bad bad boy and gets the girl. All that's just feelgood stuff to reassure the nice guys that they'll get theirs in the end if they wait around long enough -- here instead is the truth, though. And it's a truth that'll strike as downright jarring and unpleasant for a guy that hasn't worked to develop himself into a sexy, exciting man. But it's also one that's really, really telling and affirming for those of us who are out there every day busting our chops to become what women truly want. best way to pick up girls TALES OF FERTILITY, BETRAYAL, AND JEALOUSY I've been at this a fair amount of time, and I've seen a goodly lot in that time as well. I've taken a fair number of girls to bed who had lovers, boyfriends, and husbands. Sometimes I knew beforehand; oftentimes I didn't. I'm certain there must have been girls along the way in various stages of relationships that I never found out about, too. There've been different studies that've shown that men respond differently to fertile women: they pursue them more aggressively, are more likely to compete for them with other men, and find them more attractive than similar looking women who aren't ovulating. That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective -- the men who identified fertile women and mated with them were most likely to pass on their genes, and we'd all today be necessarily descended from those men and thus retain their same inclinations. I've had a number of women -- probably mostly fertile women -- flirting with me heavily, and at times about to leave a bar or a nightclub with me, only to have a (very angry) boyfriend or lover appear to drag her away or try and fight me. I've had lustful, likely fertile women I was picking up but moving too slow with (doesn't happen anymore really, but 3 or 4 years ago it would) begin bringing other men into the fray and flirting with them heavily, putting pressure on me to close or step aside for the next suitor. Point is, at least from my own anecdotal experience, I'll attest that women really do seem to behave noticeably different and a lot more lustily and short-term minded when they're fertile. Honestly, the best way to pick up girls seems to entail, in part, recognizing those women that are most desirous of a new, attractive suitor taking them to bed expeditiously, and going for them. At times I've taken to asking new women I've bedded quickly when their last period was, and their answers have often planted them firmly in the part of the cycle at the time of the pick up where they're likely to be fertile and ovulating. They went to bed with me because I came across as a sexy man, and their bodies were looking to conceive. WHERE FERTILE WOMEN GO, AND WHAT THEY DO This quote from the last study referenced, on the conditional expression of women's desires during ovulation, had this interesting thing to say (among other interesting things): "Near ovulation, both pair-bonded and single women reported feeling more physically attractive and having greater interest in attending social gatherings where they might meet men." I've read studies on the first one before -- that fertile women rate themselves as more attractive (and tend to denigrate other women's looks, as well) -- but the last one I hadn't heard assessed scientifically before, thought I certainly would've told you it seemed like ovulating women went out putting themselves in position to meet men more often than non-ovulating women did. So now there's scientific evidence to back up the anecdotal findings: fertile women go out more often to places where they can meet men. That means places and activities like: Bars and nightclubs Parties Networking events Group social activities Spur-of-the-moment vacations (to Las Vegas; to the beach) Anecdotally, I'd tell you that women prefer venues where they can meet new men over venues where they'll meet the same tired old guys from their social circle (whom they've already categorized as friends, coworkers, acquaintances, etc., and have lost the initial attraction they might've felt for any men who've already let attraction expire by not taking them as lovers soon after meeting them). I'd tell you you're more likely to see women out alone when they're fertile, and I'd tell you you're more likely to run into horny women, who can sometimes be a little terse and impatient -- particularly if you haven't gotten your sexual vibe down yet and aren't getting investment quickly with women and moving fast with them (they don't want to waste time with men who aren't what they're looking for or won't give them what they want -- remember they aren't thinking this consciously, it's all unconscious emotions and responses). You'll want to keep these things in mind: Women by themselves often get snapped up quick or get frustrated quick. For this reason, it's generally better to follow the mantra of "go out early and go out alone" if you want to pick up a girl who's by herself and looking for something to happen that night. If you've got friends with you, they can scare off a girl who's by herself or who's looking for a man she can sneak off anonymously into the night with, and if you go out later there's a good chance she's either been snapped up by another man or she's gotten fed up with being approached incessantly by men who don't make the cut, and she's gone home. Women who don't go out at night can be really excited to meet you during the daytime, but you can't let it slip by hesitating. If you meet women during the daytime, you'll see this sometimes -- women who are really, really excited to meet you. They're not jumping up and down, per se -- but their eyes widen, they can't seem to stop smiling, and their body language immediately shoots open to you. This is the same thing you'll see in nighttime venues when a girl is very interested, but you might be surprised to see it happen during the day. This is often a sign a woman is ovulating or otherwise very intrigued by you -- you should try to move things fast with her and either take her home with you that day or grab her phone number and set up a date with her immediately the next day. If you wait too long with women like this though, to set up a first date or to take them to bed, their attraction will often cool off and slip into a more logical mode of shifting you into boyfriend consideration or the friend zone, so strike while the iron is hot. Fertile women are about 300% more impatient than non-ovulating women. Part of the reason why fertile women can seem so rude and abrupt is because they're on a mission, biologically speaking. If you've ever gone out with a mission to pick up (not a logical one, but an emotional one; you really, really wanted to find a girl to take home), you know what I'm talking about: you move rapidly from girl to girl, quickly switching off of those you can tell aren't interested or who're interested but warming up slowly, searching for one who's interested in you back and ready to go immediately. Fertile women are like this: they lose patience fast with men who don't show them the levels of interest or rapid interaction progression they're looking for, because they don't want men who can't or won't deliver occupying them and blocking them from meeting a man who can and will. What all this means is, women who aren't ovulating are more easy-going, and more tolerant of nice guys and slow-moving guys and are kinder to them. Non-ovulating women who aren't looking for something right then can actually be a better experience for guys new to approaching women to learn from -- they're less intimidating, are more willing to stick around and shoot the breeze with a guy, are friendlier, and are less prone to jealousy games and rudeness and impatience. They can help you get your positive reference points up and start building good experiences meeting women if you're relatively green to dating and pick up and haven't had many good experiences with women before. But... friendly, sociable, non-ovulating women are also a lot less likely to go home with you, too. For getting results, you need women who are open to having things happen. best way to pick up girls THE BEST WAY TO PICK UP GIRLS: GET 'EM FERTILE How's that for a non-PC subheading? Take that, thought police... Learning the mechanics of how to pick up a girl is one thing; determining the optimal time to do so and the best way to go about it is another still. There really isn't anything you can do about the birth control pill. It might sound like a boon to nice guys -- it makes women more likely to end up in a relationship with a less sexy, less masculine man, which gives a better chance to guys who haven't upped their game in the sexiness and manliness departments yet -- but in fact those are bad things for your development if you're self-improvement focused. It takes pressure off of you momentarily to have to up your game, and gives you an artificial "win" -- you get the girl not because you made yourself more attractive, but because the chemicals she's putting in her body changed her standards. And she isn't going to put those chemicals in her body forever, and when she stops, her standards are going to revert to what they would otherwise be -- leaving a nice guy she's with seeming like an increasingly disappointing option compared to what she now wants. Because of that, I recommend you work on a few things first to start hitting those triggers that excite women most when they're fertile (the things that'll get you coming across like a powerful, sexual, masculine man): Social Presence: bars, nightclubs, parties, networking events, and social circle activities all will train different aspects of this. Primarily you want to work on your ability to address women's objections, handle disruptive men, and remain confident and unfazed in a variety of different situations and scenarios and continue leading women decisively no matter what. Opening and sparking new conversations rounds this out; a man who knows he's able to strike out on his own and meet new women at will exudes confidence. Being Sexy and Masculine: get your fundamentals handled -- get excellent posture, get a sexy voice, get cool facial hair, get good clothes, get strong eye contact, get a cool haircut. Over the longer term, slim down and put on some lean muscle mass. Get yourself to look like the kind of man women describe as sexy and appealing -- you can change your look dramatically in a reasonably short time if you try... the hardest part is really just knowing what to change, figuring out what looks good when you haven't focused much on that before, and being willing to make the change in the first place. If you cover those, you'll have covered everything from the list of what women are most attracted to when they're fertile (well, except for having the "scent of a symmetrical man" -- not much you can do about that one; maybe spray on some Cool Water cologne? Very Sexy for Men from Victoria's Secret is also always a good bet, and plus you get to go into Victoria's Secret to go buy it). Next, check out the post on how to "Tell if a Girl is Horny." That's going to give you a solid understanding of what to look for in women while you're out, and what traits and behaviors you should have your ears and eyes perked for to function as signals as to a woman's receptiveness to being picked up and seduced -- how much is she looking for a man right now, as opposed to just someone to talk to and be social with. Ultimately, you want to be looking for the girls who are looking for you. Not the ones who just want to be social and make new friends. Not the ones who are kind of sort of maybe considering dating someone. You want to find the women who are looking for a man like you. You'll know, because they'll respond noticeably well to you, and you'll feel a strong pull to them right away and it'll feel very certainly like that pull is being reciprocated -- the girls you're feeling this with are feeling it back too. Then, it's all about moving quickly, following your process, and doing what needs to be done to turn a girl who's excited about the potential the two of you might have together into a girl who's actually your lover and has found what she was looking for -- in you. See you soon.

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##[] Tactic Tuesdays: Screening Girls for Same Day Lays This should be a fun one. Slightly advanced. Not too advanced. This should be fine for intermediates on up. So, this revolves around not boyfriend zoning yourself when screening girls for something quick. screen same day lay As you may know if you read this site regularly, it's good and important to screen girls: Book Excerpts: What to Screen Women For Why You Always Date the Wrong Person ... and after you screen, it's important to qualify: Is Qualifying Women Really That Important? Screening and qualifying is important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is making sure you end up with girls you'll be happy to be with. Another reason it's important though is for making a girl feel like there's a reason you like her. If she feels like you are trying to sleep with her and she doesn't understand why, you're going to end up with attainability problems on your hands (because she's going to follow Occam's Razor and assume if you're interested in her without communicating a good reason for being interested in her, it's simply because she's a random piece of ass). So, you've got to screen. Yet how you screen - particularly when you're trying to put together something fast - is important. "SO... DO YOU COOK?" The #1 problem with traditional screening is what it implies you are screening for. For example: Do you cook? The only guy who cares about her cooking is one who expects to partake of her cooking. Which means relationship. Which means, right away, you've already expressed indirect interest in applying for the boyfriend role. What kinds of guys do you date? Same deal. Unless you plan to date her, who cares? So when you ask her this, the implication is that you plan to date her. Are you adventurous/spontaneous? These are slightly better, if a bit heavy-handed. Yet, in addition to this, depending on the context, they can be just as easily interpreted as you screening for an exciting girlfriend as you screening for a quick roll in the hay. I still suggest you start out with simple screens like these when you're new. Using them will not be the end of the world, and they're the best training wheels to get you used to holding girls up to specific standards and seeing if they check out. However, as you begin to move faster with girls, and particularly as you begin to aim for one-night stands and first-date sex, you're going to need to adopt an approach to screening that paints you less as a boyfriend... and more as a rascally knave. 2 WAYS TO ADVANCED SCREEN Two (2) ways you can perform advanced screening with girls you want to pick up fast: One is deep diving, and The other is compliance testing You can use one, the other, or both. However, for our purposes here, the context of when you use them is king. When and How to Deep Dive Screen If you're sitting in a quiet wood talking about life, it'll be out of place for you to suddenly request a bunch of compliance from her. But a deep dive where you ask her to tell you more and more about herself is perfect. Deep diving lends itself naturally to screening because it is, in a sense, just one giant screen. Instead of let her off the hook with small talk like "What do you do?" and "Where are you from?", you dive into her character, her motivations, and her aims. The best times to use a deep dive to screen are: Once you've isolated her somewhere relatively intimate After a little playful banter, teasing, or other excitement Any time she mentions something personal or revealing So, for example, if you meet her on the street or in a shop, you won't deep dive her on the sidewalk. But if you can get her to join you at a café, that's the perfect place to deep dive. screen same day lay Or, if you meet her in a relaxed lounge, you won't deep dive her immediately after ‘hello' unless she seems wildly into you (and if she's wildly into you, you shouldn't deep dive too long, either... just do enough to build a little connection, then get her out of there). Instead, you'll flirt with her and banter a bit, and once she seems sufficiently hooked, you'll move her off to a couch or a corner somewhere and get to know her better there. The goal with your deep dives is to get her to open up about deep topics about herself, and to challenge her on why she does what she does. Deep diving also provides ample opportunity for you to come up for air and lighten the mood a bit with chase frames, sex talk, or other less-heavy conversation. Just make sure you stay off any topics that aren't conducive to you and her getting ever closer together and more intimate. Impersonal topics are out, of course (it's not a deep dive if you get her to ‘open up' about her political views), but so are discussions of her past relationships, for the most part, or about what she wants in a future relationship, unless you're so clearly a lover there's no risk of her suspecting you want this information to better position yourself as her boyfriend-to-be. Now... when should you NOT use deep dives to screen? When... She's already super compliant (see the next section) You're in a very loud venue (like a loud mega club) You're in a fast-moving/changing scenario with her (walking, driving, etc.) You're engaged in any kind of energetic activity (playing tennis, etc.) Basically, if it feels like you'd be forcing it to try and have deeper conversation here, don't force it. Keep it light. And, instead, focus on... Screening with Compliance If you're positioned at the edge of the dance floor in a nightclub, and she's swinging her head and smiling and listening to the music, you trying to pick her brain about why she gave up wildlife photography to become a patent attorney is not going to fly. And of course, you probably don't want to lean in and ask her (in your loudest voice), "HEY, CAN YOU COOK?" either. Instead, what you want to rely on in this scenario are compliance tests. Compliance testing is a way to screen a girl to discover how willing she is with you. But more than that, it's a way of building UP compliance, such that she gradually and continually ‘passes' more of your screens. Every time you ask her to do something and she complies, you're building up that track record of you requesting and her doing. Build it high enough, and when she asks herself why you want to kiss her later, the answer is pretty clear: because we're in this together. I've been following his lead all day or all night, so of course he wants to kiss me. You use compliance to screen by, of course, requesting compliance, and then gradually, as you get more, requesting more compliance. For instance: Motion her closer to you Motion her to lean in more to speak to you Take her hand and pull her into you to examine her necklace Have her walk over to a shawarma vendor with you because you're hungry Have her sit on a bench with you while you eat your shawarma Ask her to throw the wrapper into the trash can next to her Take her hand and have her stand with you Walk her back to your place nearby Once inside, kiss her By the time you reach the kiss, provided you've used enough compliance, there's little feeling of, "Why is he kissing me? Am I just another lay to him?" She feels screened, she feels invested, and she feels as though she's proven herself to you. After all, she's ‘with' you. A girl less ‘with' you would've balked at an earlier request or gotten out earlier. She knows by this point you have a special bond. Now, you cannot ask for too much outright compliance in certain scenarios; particularly those most conducive to deep diving. When you're sitting somewhere quiet and private, deep diving IS your compliance... you ask her to tell you all these things about herself, and she does. The rest of the time, you'll want to rely on compliance tests, and getting women to say yes before you make them say "Oh yes!" Before we wrap this article up though, there's one thing more to cover. HOW TO REWARD ADVANCED SCREENS This is important, because your approach to reward/punishment has a big impact on how she receives your screens. This is an area guys get wrong. The commonest mistake is simply not rewarding girls for passing screens, or rewarding them only in the most bland, melancholy way. For instance: You deep dive, she gives you a great answer, and you say, "That's great, yeah," and then completely change the subject. Think she feels like her efforts to qualify herself were successful? You deep dive, she gives you a great answer, and you start talking about your own tangentially-related-but-not-really story, and she feels confused about what this has to do with what she's told you, or if you even cared about what she told you You ask for compliance, she gives it, and then you make a remark, like, "Oh, it's just one of those necklaces, I thought you had some expensive jewels in there." You ask for compliance, she gives it, and there's no change in your demeanor or conversation after she complies How likely do you think the girls in any of these scenarios are to continue qualifying themselves when you ask them to respond to a deep dive or comply with a request? Not so likely, right? You must reward qualification if you want her to continue to qualify herself. Fail to do so, and she will stop bothering. If you've ever had a girl who seemed like she was eager to open all up about herself early on, or do whatever you asked her to, who then gradually cooled off, you can bet the ultimate reason was she felt like you did not reward her sufficiently for her qualification: If she complies with a request of yours, and you do not properly reward her, she will feel disinclined to comply with future requests of yours ("Why bother?") If she opens up to a deep dive of yours, and you do not properly reward her, she will feel disinclined to continue bearing it all for you ("I feel too exposed") Missed escalation windows are opportunities a girl gives you that are her saying, "Hey: I'm available for you," which is about the best qualification she can give you... but for whatever reason, you miss the window and she goes unrewarded The way you reward a girl opening up to a deep dive, complying with a request, presenting you with an escalation window, or any other good behavior is by rewarding her. screen same day lay You reward her with things like: Increased interest in what she has to say / active listening Leaning in / drawing closer / more nonverbal interest Jumping on escalation windows when she presents them Check out these articles for a little more on this: Get Girls Chasing: Give a Little to Get a Lot Showing Interest and Keeping It The gist is, if you're screening her with deep dives or compliance, and she's qualifying herself, and you're rewarding her properly, you will move fast. The method you use to screen you'll determine based on the situation you're in, and the girl you're with. HONORABLE MENTION: MORE ADVANCED SCREENING TOOLS I only covered two (2) methods for advanced screening in this post: Deep dives, and Compliance ... however, there are several others you can use too: Chase frames / sexual innuendo / sex talk (if she plays along, she qualifies) Role-playing (if she plays along, she qualifies) Dancing (if she dances mutually with you, she qualifies) ... and each has its own little quirks to using it as a screening tool and rewarding it properly (for instance, with the latter three, it's important to make sure she feels like everything is mutual - you don't want her feeling like she's the only one talking about sex, for instance). So long as you reward properly and you keep the forward momentum going, you can use these tools to screen girls for same day and same night lays, without accidentally cueing them to think you're interested in a more long-term role. Of course, if she doesn't bite, that's a sign you may be doing something wrong, or she simply isn't sexually available for something right now. Only way you find out, though, is by tossing a screen at her and seeing how she responds. Yours, Chase

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##[] You and your game attract a certain kind of girl I've talked about this over the years in various articles. However, it's worth giving its own proper treatment, if only to make sure everyone who reads here gets this message. There are some girls who are going to like you more. Some girls who will like you a lot more. And there are some girls who are going to be less excited by you. Who these girls are is determined by two (2) things: You (and your fundamentals), and Your game If you're great with athletic girls who love the outdoors, for instance, you'll tend to struggle a lot more with bookworm girls who are well-read and love to bury their noses in tomes. If you do awesome with alternative-scene girls from electronic dance clubs, you'll usually struggle more with flashy, aloof girls at high-end nightclubs. Contents 1. Specialization in Girls 2. What Girls Should You Go For? 3. How to be a Generalist 4. Your Girl Choices Shape You The better you are with one demographic of girls (i.e., the more you specialize), the worse you will tend to do with other, dissimilar demographics to her. Great fundamentals and game will take the edge off specialization (so the penalties for specializing are not as severe), but it never goes away completely. Why should this be so? I'm going to take you through the ‘why's. Then, I'm going to help you decide what to specialize in... and whether to resist too much specialization and be a generalist instead. SPECIALIZATION IN GIRLS: THE GREAT UNBALANCING Think of a man who's taken no steps to improve his attractiveness to women. Neither consciously nor subconsciously. He has a certain default level of attractiveness, depending on things like looks, build, and natural personality. His upbringing, and how forward or direct he is versus how circumspect, his comfort with people, and things of this nature have a big impact as well. All of these things will make him more or less attractive in general. They will also make him more or less attractive to specific types of girls. You might have a default ‘dumb, handsome jock' look and personality. And you find that cheerleader-type girls fall all over themselves for you. But you struggle to get other-ethnic girls, or career-type girls, or flashy high status girls. Or you might have a default ‘witty-but-nerdy bookworm' look and personality. And you find nerdy bookworm girls fall all over themselves for you (even the cute ones!), but the cheerleader girls aren't as interested. Et cetera. When you begin to learn game and improve your fundamentals, you do this along a certain direction. You may not (and probably won't) realize you're specializing. But you are. Every guy specializes - it's how you get good. I say this as a guy who made a concerted effort to be generally good with girls. Despite my best efforts, I still specialized as I learned. I had better luck in some kinds of venues with some kinds of girls, so I went to those venues and talked to those girls more. The more I got laid and met awesome girlfriends at those venues and among those girls, the more I went to those places and talked to those girls. And the more I went those places, the more I conformed to their norms; the more I interacted with those girls, the more I adjusted myself to conform to their preferred kinds of guys. Typically, you'll specialize in girls who are your mirror: Girls who look like you Girls with similar backgrounds to you Girls with similar social lives to you Girls with similar life goals to you The closer you get to a girl on these dimensions, the better you'll do with her. The farther from her you get, the worse you'll normally do. The classic example in seduction circles is the Indian guy who wants to date American blondes. Indian men are raised in what are comparatively socially awkward settings, compared to Americans. They're taught to focus exclusively on book learning and do not go out for sports or hang out with the boys. And quite often they remain in immigrant communities and do not well integrate. Compare that to the average American blonde bombshell. She's steeped in American culture, hangs out with Americans non-stop, hangs out with cool American guys (whom she likes), and has the apple pie American view that if it's not from America it's weird (and likely inferior). Is it any wonder these two demographics are far from a match made in heaven? Which is not to say it can't happen. I know Indian guys who do great with blonde American bombshells. However, these are universally men who've worked very hard to specialize in this type of girl: they've integrated themselves into mainstream (‘cool') American culture, surrounded themselves with male friends who are the type of guy these girls like to date, and rolled with social circles filled with cool guys and bombshells for years. Eventually they become so apple pie American in mannerisms and behavior it becomes no problem for them to get bombshells... But, on the other hand, for a lot of these guys, when they meet Indian girls now (or Indian family members), they are the black sheep. They are so clearly different, so "robbed of their heritage", they no longer seem Indian. The more you specialize in one direction, the more you sacrifice in other, dissimilar directions. This is because specialization is all about making yourself conform to the likes, dislikes, and prejudices of the subsets of girl you want to excel with. WHAT KIND OF GIRL SHOULD YOU SPECIALIZE IN? I have two recommendations for you, when it comes to specialization: You should specialize in one type of girl it's easy to hook up with You should specialize in one type of girl who matches your ‘girlfriend ideal' The first type is for fun, for getting your rocks off, and for amassing as much experience as possible, as fast as possible. The second type is for finding and keeping great girlfriends who are incredible matches for you. The reason you should seek to specialize in TWO (2) types is because these two likely shouldn't be the same. What most men do is they specialize in one type of girl. Typically for guys who get good with girls, this is whatever type of girl they hook up with most. You'll see it time and again with skilled seducers: the girls they date in long-term relationships are the same girls they hook up with for short-term flings. The sole difference is their LTRs are with versions of these girls who are somewhat cuter, somewhat more personable, etc., than what they usually get. That'd be fine if the type of girls you hook up with are your ideal, but most of the time they won't be. attract a type of girl She's not like the other girls. I've seen it time and again with both friends and students... Loads of hooking up, and they're having fun the whole way, until they end up with girls who are top tier for them in that demographic of girl. They settle into a relationship at that point. They're never enthusiastic about the relationship. It's a near-ubiquitous trend. I've yet to have a friend who hooks up a lot, then settles into a relationship with one of his hookup-type girls, and is overjoyed about it. So my recommendation is that you split these two groups. I'll give you an example. Here's how mine split: Hookups: for fast pickups and flings, I prefer sexy, flirtatious girls with great nonverbals and high social aptitude. Chase framing works great on these girls and they're a lot of fun to seduce. They're also easy to seduce, either because they're very sexual with high sex drives, or because they act like they are and I hold them to it (commitment-consistency). Education and career, which are important for me with girlfriends, are irrelevant here; I do just as well with this type of girl whether she has a PhD or she never finished high school. Mood is irrelevant for me here too; if she's upbeat or depressed, it doesn't matter, so long as she's fun with me while we're together. It's just a fling, not a life partnering. I'll also compromise more on things like body (if her breasts aren't that big, it's okay) and ambition (if she's content to live in her small town for the rest of her life, no biggie). These girls tend to have higher partner counts. Girlfriends: for long-term relationships, I take beautiful, upbeat, intelligent girls with good ambition, educations, and careers. Some of my standard seduction practices, like chase framing, do not work as well with the kinds of girls I want as girlfriends, while being sincere (but still with sexual nonverbals) tends to work great. The lack of flirting and sexuality, which would bore me and turn me off with a hookup prospect, doesn't bother me here. These girls tend to have more book smarts and less social grace, though they still have razor sharp woman's intuition (I can't do the girls who have no intuition! They drive me too nuts). Mood is a much bigger factor for me here; I will not date girls who are downers. Education-wise, I exclusively date girls who have or are getting their Master's degree or beyond. And career-wise I look for a practical, respectable career (like finance or architecture) with a decent income range. I pick girls with low to moderate partner counts for girlfriends, just because I don't like sharing and lower partner girls give you less to worry about. Now, I didn't sit down and write out a list of "what I look for in a hookup vs. what I look for in a girlfriend" when I started out. In fact, that above is the most detailed I've ever written both of these out together (or thought about them!), to my recollection. Instead, as I went out and met girls, I just had an instinct in my head that said, "There are three kinds of girls for me: girls I'd like to shag, girls I'd like to date, and girls it's probably not going anywhere with but what the hey, I'll try to shag them too." As I got progressively better with girls and accumulated more reference points, I found some of the girls I might've initially put into the "girls I'd like to date" category moved into the "girls I'd like to shag" category (because for whatever reason they didn't make as good girlfriends, but were still fun to bed). I also discovered some girls from the "girls it's probably not going anywhere with but what the hey, I'll try to shag them too" category migrated to one of the other two categories as I took shots with them and happened to get them into bed or relationships. At this point, my categories are pretty well set. But there'll occasionally be some movement; I might break up with a girl and say, "Okay, girls with X trait I'm never going to date again, it's just too much of an inconvenience," or I might shag a type of girl I hadn't traditionally focused on or done well with and say, "Huh. That girl was pretty fun to sleep with. I should do more girls like her," and change her category. So, much of this process is intuitive and gradual. As you gain more experience, you sift girls into increasingly more nuanced buckets. However, I suggest you keep the underlying dichotomy in mind: there are girls you want to hook up with, and girls you want to date, and they'll tend to have different traits and features, and respond to somewhat different sorts of game. (though of course, move fast with all of them. Treat every girl like she's a girl you want to shag (because hopefully you do want to shag her), and once you've been in her you can shift her over into being a prospective girlfriend if you like) HOW TO BE A GENERALIST For all this talk of specialization, I'm still a pretty strong generalist with girls. You may (or may not) want to be, too. So, if it's so easy to specialize, how do you become (or stay) a generalist who does well with a range of different sorts of girls? There are a few keys to this: Great fundamentals Great game Diverse reference points I won't cover fundamentals and game here (since the other writers and I cover them so extensively throughout the site) other than to say this: past a certain level of fundamentals/game, you stand so head-and-shoulders above most men in attractiveness that you're able to overcome most stereotype handicaps with relative ease. At that point, you can be attractive to girls of completely opposite demographics to your target demographic(s), without sacrificing anything with your regular targets. So let's talk ‘diverse reference points'. All I mean by this is you meet, sleep with, and date a wide assortment of women, of a wide assortment of types, in a wide variety of different ways. For example, careers: Girls who work retail post-college Girls who didn't go to college Girls who are artists Girls who are gold diggers Girls who work professional careers Girls in early college who haven't picked majors (i.e., life paths) yet Or venues: Girls you meet on the street by day Girls you meet in a classroom Girls you meet in dive bars Girls you meet in nightclubs Girls you meet at the park or on the beach Girls you meet out shopping Girls you meet at cafés Girls you meet at the library Girls you meet at networking events Girls you meet in transit Or personalities: Sexy, sultry minxes Valley girls ("Oh my God!") Bombshells Athletic girls Outdoor girls Nerdy bookworms Artists Intellectuals World travelers ... or racial/national/cultural backgrounds. Or any number of other criteria. What dating a diversity of different types of women you meet in different settings does is it permits you to learn how a wide variety of women act. What their differences are, what their similarities are. This helps you avoid the blinders that most men (who only specialize in one or two different types of girls) have on. e.g., the guys who tell you, "All girls X!" when your reaction is, "Wait... but no girl I date does X," are almost always men specializing in different kinds of girls than you are. They encounter one type of behavior; you encounter another. Do you have to do this? No, it's not necessary. Being a generalist takes up a fair bit of time (steeper learning curve), and thus requires a lot more devotion to doing great with girls than most guys want to give the field. You don't need to be a generalist to succeed with your preferred couple of niches. However, if you value a more universal skill set with girls... Or you want to avoid the blinders and incomplete conclusions men come to when their experience is limited to isolated subsets of women... Or you want to broaden your palate of girls, and quite possibly encounter new flavors of woman you did not even realize you could enjoy... Then I recommend it. YOU AND YOUR GAME ATTRACTS A CERTAIN KIND OF GIRL attract a type of girl Which girl you do best with depends on which girl you tailor yourself to match. Remember: as you grow in your ability to sleep with and date more girls, it's not just you affecting them more and more easily. They affect you, too. They train you - they train you to do certain things, behave in certain ways, and maintain your appearance to achieve certain looks. The women you spend the most time with (or have the most luck with) nurture and direct you in ways you may not realize. They influence how you think about yourself, women, and relationships in general. But they also influence things like how you opt to spend your free time and what endeavors you embark on in the future. If you surround yourself with women who think books are for nerds, you likely won't do much reading. Just like if you surround yourself with women who read a lot of classic literature, you'll get more into this too. Likewise if you find yourself with girls who exercise a lot, or girls who club and party a lot, or what have you. Much of the time, your preferences in women begin as a little snowball rolling downhill, that pick up more snow as they go and accrue into a larger and larger snowball. Once you've been at it for a decade plus, you will have strong preferences in women (even if you strive to be a generalist). So, be sure as you train yourself that you do so for the types of girls you want. Best if you have separate categories for ‘girls I like to hook up with' and ‘girls I like to date'. Though - and this is important - aside from some tweaks in what type of game you use, your overall approach should be largely the same (e.g., move fast, skip steps where you can skip steps, assume attraction, get investment, escalate when you can escalate, etc.). In the end, you will get the kind of girls you have built yourself to get. And those girls you do get will help build you to get more girls like them. So, be judicious in your choices. Chase Amante

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##[] 12 Things Every Man Should have Handled by age 35 I've had guys ask me over the years what areas of their lives to focus on outside of women. And younger guys have asked what they ought to have handled as they get older. Society's grown more complex than at perhaps any other time in history, due to myriad factors. However, one of the biggest factors has been the near-total abandonment of preparing young people for what to expect in life. In place of lessons and guidance, we give them feel-good Hollywood films and vapid platitudes. Things that for prior generations were known and expected in life are surprises for the generations now coming of age, left to their own devices to figure these things out (or not). So I've worked to set out a list here of the 12 most important things for a man to have handled before he turns 35. If you're young, these are the items in life you need to concentrate your energy on. If you're older and you haven't handled all these yet, it's not too late to start. This isn't a list designed to make you ‘feel bad' if you haven't accomplished these yet - this article isn't about ‘feelings'. This article is about masculine concerns: what areas of your life can you work on that will improve your life? The more work you do on these 12 areas, the better your life will be. If your life is already awesome, improve these areas and it will become more awesome. If it's less than awesome, improve these areas and you will change that too. Note that some men have some degree of natural ability in some of these areas. But no one is a natural at them all - and every man has room to improve in each. #1: DATES AND PICKUP things men should have handled You must be able to bring new women into your life. Every man needs to know how to go out, approach a woman, talk to her, and ask her out on a date. And he needs to know how to run the date and escalate things to sexual intercourse after it. You need to know these things whether you want to find the perfect girl and settle down into a relationship that lasts the rest of your lives... or you want to be a prolific bachelor with a sky-high notch count. Even if you want only one girl, you must still be able to get her when you see her. If you lack the tools to get her, you will watch one dream girl after another pass you by. And you might yet get lucky in the end and land one of them. But more than likely you'll lower your standards and end up with a girl who's less than you would have settled for when younger and more idealistic. On top of this, you're not in an agrarian society anymore. You live in a big, urbanized, industrial society, where even wives have access to lots of sexy mates. Even if you live far from society with her, she can see the city on TV, and she knows what her options are. You don't need to be the best guy out there in the world. But you do need to be an attractive guy, and one she knows and believes is able to replace her if it ever truly comes to that. Women are copycat maters. For a woman to remain happy with her man, she needs to know and believe other women want him. You need to know dates and pickup to enjoy your bachelorhood and land the highest quality partners you can get. But even once your five to 15 years of bachelorhood draw to a close, you have another 40 to 60 years of long-term relationships (perhaps dotted with periods of bachelorhood throughout if your marriages don't last). And whether you learned to be attractive to women and get the women you wanted during those years of bachelorhood will echo down through the rest of your life... either keeping your woman attracted and you in control of the relationship, or, if you doubt you can replace her and become dependent on her, causing her respect for you to erode and her to gradually assume power over you (or decide to cheat on you or leave you). When you learn how to run dates, how to court women, and how to pick up the women you want, you: Get to enjoy intimacy and relationships with plenty of pretty girls Give yourself the ability to find and start relationships with desirable mates Empower yourself to remain sexy, attractive, and in-control in your relationships Build a backup plan for yourself, in the even a long-term relationship someday ends No matter what your end goal with women, the ability to meet and end up together with the women you want is an imperative life skill to have. If you're brand new to the idea of meeting women as a skill set, start with these articles first: How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need Do You Really Need to Learn Game to Get Girls? Why Cold Approach Works Better Than Anything Else How Naturals Meet Girls and Get Laid ... or take the Girls Chase Diagnostic Quiz to find out what to focus on first. #2: ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS things men should have handled Getting her is only half the battle. The other half is keeping her. Relationships are a sister skill to dates and pickup. But they aren't the same skill. You can have men who are exceptional playboys, able to bed new women with abandon... but who cannot hang onto a girl to save their lives. Likewise, there are men who are every girl's dream guy once they're in a relationship, yet they cannot for the lives of them get women into bed to get them into those relationships. You must solve both pieces. While you might be inclined to put relationships off, sooner or later every guy tires of the loneliness of bachelordom. Or even tires of the endless stream of faceless women, if he's adept at bedding new girls. The novelty fades, the excitement wears away, and you move on to the next phase of life. Many guys enter crises when they realize they want something more but don't know how to get it. Or they get it but aren't able to keep it - women break up with them quick and won't stick around with them. Relationships are their own distinct skill set, and to do well with them, you must get this area of your life handled. There are three (3) pieces to being truly excellent at relationships: You must be able to screen in women who are a fit for what you want in a relationship, and screen out women who are not a fit or will cause unnecessary friction down the road You must be able to convert the women you sleep with into relationships and make them stick around You must be able to run the relationship well and give a woman what she needs (including great sex) To get you started on these three pieces, check out these three links: Resources on how to screen women for relationships and what to screen them for (as well as which women to definitely screen out of relationships) An article on how to convert girls you've slept with (courtesy your dates/pickup skill set) into lovers and girlfriends Resources on how to build and maintain a great relationship (that will keep you and her thrilled and satisfied with each other for a long, long time) And one other thing to keep in mind. The more you improve yourself along each of the dimensions we'll cover in this article, the easier it gets for you to meet, date, and sleep with women, and the easier it gets for you to hold onto them in happy relationships. There is a synergy here, where as you improve in each dimension, it gets easier for you in many of the others too. That is not an excuse to slack on any one of these items. If you're great at everything else but atrocious at relationships, your excellence everywhere else will not make up for your atrociousness at relationships. But the better you get across the board... the better you get, across the board. As you start to win, you will soon find your winning begets more winning. #3: MONETIZABLE SKILLS things men should have handled What can you do that others will part with money for? Every man requires monetizable skills. These are distinct from ‘career' or ‘education'. While career and education both have plenty of value, a man can still make do without either. And in a real pinch, career and education may not be enough. If your career vanishes (as has happened to everyone from animators to coal miners), it won't matter how good your résumé is or far back your work experience goes. And if your education isn't in a practical, skills-related major (let's say, for instance, you majored in English or psychology), you'll still often have to find work as a retail clerk or coffee shop barista, alongside your G.E.D. peers. A monetizable skill is something you know how to do that people will pay you for. These skills are sometimes known as ‘trades'. That includes things you do with your hands, like the work of: Plumbers Electricians Carpenters Engineers ... and it also includes work you do in offices or on a computer, like the work of: Architects Graphic designers Copywriters Writers in general Programmers Some of these skills are easier to make money in than others. To make money as a writer, for instance, you'll need to be at a fairly high degree of skill. You can be at a comparably lower level of skill as a programmer and still make good money, however. When I left my career as a business consultant in 2010, I did not have any monetizable skills, and did not know what I would do. I spent a lot of time afraid I'd never have a good way to make money again. The only choices I knew of were to leap to another consulting company, or go back to school. Instead, I started a few businesses and tried my hand at entrepreneurship. Well, when that still wasn't working yet, and I found myself deep in debt, I went looking for freelance work - and discovered the skills I'd picked up in a few years of entrepreneurship were in-demand skills. Right away I was making $50 an hour - almost double what I made as a business consultant - doing conversions consulting (how you make websites more profitable), a skill I'd picked up running various websites. This was as a brand new consultant; there were guys making $80-$200 / hour as conversions consultants. And there was plenty of business... I had as many hours as I could work. As fate had it, business turned around, and I quit contracting pretty quick to focus on my own business ventures. But I had fun doing it, set my mind at ease, and never feared running out of money again. I'd discovered I had at least three different skills (writing, copywriting, and conversions) I could easily find people to pay me for if worse ever came to worse. Sometimes I wonder though... what if at 19, while I attended university (or perhaps instead of attending university), I'd learned the skills I know now? I would've been making a six-figure income before I even graduated college, using skills that translated just as well to entrepreneurship... instead of getting a 9-to-5 where I made mid-five-figures and learned next to nothing for four years (then had to learn entrepreneurship from scratch with no skills and ridiculous amounts of stress). It would've been a very different life trajectory. What skills should you specialize in? It'll depend on what you like to do, what you can already do, and how much you want to get paid. For ideas, check out my thread on skills and trades on our forum, here: What Career, Trade, or Skill Should I Pursue? #4: POSITIVE NET WORTH things men should have handled There's no nobility in debt. It's okay to mess around and run up a little debt in your twenties, so long as it doesn't get too crazy. If you need to spend more to get credentials (like a useful academic degree or career certification), experiences, or property, it can be worth taking out some loans to give yourself advantages for the future. You won't always make the right investments; some university degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on, and stocks aren't always a winning bet... despite the stock market rally, my 401(k) and Roth IRA are both worth less today, 7.5 years later, than they were the last time I put money in them in 2010. But by the time you're 35, you should have cut bad investments, learned to budget, and gotten yourself out of the red and back into black. Debt is one of the greatest burdens you can carry. It is a monkey on your back that sinks its claws in your shoulder and pours hot breath down your neck. It limits you, pressures you, and hounds you wherever you go. The greater the debt, the greater the pressure... though even a little is enough to put its thumb on the scales of your life. A positive net worth gives you freedom to do what you want. If you have money enough to live on for the next year without sweat, you won't have to stick around in a job or business you don't want to be in. If you feel like traveling the world for three months, or six months, or permanently (and setting up a business or finding a job elsewhere, or working online), you can. Under debt, you're trapped in The System. You can't leave your job, because if you leave your job, how will you ever pay your bills? You can't move away, because if you move away you'll have to quit your job - but you need your job. Debt can make you fearful to look for other jobs (what if my employer finds out and I get fired?) or ask for a raise (what if I annoy my boss and he fires me?). And if that happens, you may find yourself trapped in a dead-end job with low pay for much, much longer than you'd be if you could move freely. There is not an easy way out of debt. Bankruptcy is not easy; it destroys your credit and marks you for the better part of a decade. And you're not going to win the lottery, or luck into a lot of money. While it's easy to get into debt, it takes time to climb back out of it. All you can do is chip away at it gradually, piece by piece. Outside of medical school, startup debt, unexpected medical expenses, or divorce rape, there's no reason for a man to still be in debt by 35. If you hit 30 and still have negative net worth, it's time to start budgeting, cutting expenses, and paying down your debt. No one will begrudge you a little frivolousness in your youth. When you're young, it's easy to get caught up in what's cool, what's popular, and what's fun, and not think too much about the future. But if you want to be respected as a man, and you don't want the burden of your creditors nipping at your heels, there comes a time to pay that debt off, and keep it off. Don't enslave yourself to moneylenders. #5: PRODUCTIVE HABITS things men should have handled Being productive is hard. Good habits make it far less so. In your twenties, you're still figuring out what you want to do with your life. By 30, you should have started to figure this out. And by 35, you should not only have a direction, but you want to have the habits in place to enable yourself to get where you want to get to. Your habits are how you do (or fail to do) the things you want to do. That may include: Hitting the gym to put on muscle Sticking to a diet to drop some weight Going out regularly to meet new girls Churning out deliverables for work Getting ahead on classes you're taking Regularly reading valuable books (like anything from Lubbock's list) No man has unlimited willpower. Even the strongest man has a very limited pool of willpower, in fact. What differentiates effective men who build themselves up and get things done from drift-about men who achieve little and get nowhere fast are habits. Effective men build a system of habits that get them to do the things they need to do to improve their lots and advance their positions. Ineffective men do not; their habits serve short-term enjoyment (what productivity gurus call ‘procrastination') over long-term advancement. Find any successful man you like. No matter what areas he is successful in, he has leaned on habits for it all. Willpower only takes you so far, and only in bursts. Habits are the crutch you lean on when things get hard, and the tool you use to spare yourself from burning willpower on things you don't need to burn it on. Most of the time, your should direct your greatest expenditure of willpower to the setting up new habits. We have a few articles on Girls Chase about habits and productivity. If you need any help in this area, I suggest you check them out: Goal Setting The 100 Hour Rule How to Create a Habit You'll Stick With Chase's Guide to Time Management #6: A TIGHT-KNIT GROUP things men should have handled Your group of close comrades is an invaluable asset. No matter whom you are, no matter where you're from, by 35 you should have a tight-knit group of likeminded friends you talk to regularly, grab food or drinks with, and can count on and rely on. If you're like a lot of guys, your twenties will tend to split you up from people and keep your relationships shallow: You may get into the party scene, where connections constantly shift and relationships rarely progress beyond the superficial You may hang out with coworkers, attend happy hours, and the like, which again lend themselves to a certain degree of professional distance (even with the female coworkers you hook up with from work sometimes) You'll change divisions, jobs, cities, or even countries, often leaving many or all of your prior friends and acquaintances behind You'll switch interests, pastimes, and socioeconomic classes, and at the same time all your friends will, too By the time you hit 30, most of your friends from your mid-twenties or earlier will be gone. Yet the majority of men have also settled into a clear life trajectory at 30... and at that point it's time to start building your group of tight-knit men of similar interests and trajectories. Every man needs a tribe. Your tribe gives you counsel, steadies you in times of duress, backs you up when you need it, and provides you a sense of belonging and community that helps to reassure you the path you're on is a good one. If you don't move around much, your tribe can be a group of local friends you meet up with regularly. If you do move around much, your tribe will be more spread out - mostly other travelers - and you'll connect more over the Internet: email, chat apps, forums. But regardless, by the time you're 35, even if you're a bit of a loner by nature, you need your tight-knit group of guys. Every guy needs other men to keep him sane and to have his back. For help on building your tribe, read these: Guy Talk: Here's How to Kick Butt at Talking to Other Men How to Make Friends? The Master Key to New Friendships Social Value and Value Imbalances How to Get Anything from Anyone: The Law of Social Exchange #7: ABILITY TO SWITCH OFF things men should have handled You must be able to switch off and do. What do depression, approach anxiety, moving too slow, and (most) erectile dysfunction all have in common? They're all symptoms of an inability to ‘switch off'. As you age, you need to learn how to switch off your inner monologue and just do. This is a critical ability: Life isn't going how you want? Don't sit there and obsess over it and depress yourself. Just decide what you need to fix, and go do it. See a pretty girl you'd like to talk to? Don't fret all the possible things that could go wrong or try to wait for the perfect moment to approach. Just walk up and say hello. Not sure what to do next with this girl you're on a date with? Don't get trapped in analysis paralysis. Just try to escalate the courtship and see how she responds; then, calibrate. Have a pretty girl naked and willing back at your place? Quit obsessing over what your performance will be like or whether you'll be able to get hard or not. Get in the moment and enjoy the girl. Your body will take care of things on autopilot at that point. This applies to a lot more than dating and girls, too. You'll lift more weight when you're switched off. You'll run father when you're switched off. You'll push more, strive harder, and win when you're switched off. The art is not to be switched off all the time. You're not brain-dead. But you must be able to decide, then switch off and do. And you must be able to switch off in those situations where being switched off is what works best, or where being switched on is a liability. To switch off better, read these: How to Overcome Depression How to Be More Aggressive with Women, Dating, and Life How to Be Decisive #8: ABILITY TO EMPATHIZE things men should have handled Can you get inside another man's head? No, not ‘sympathize'. Everyone confuses these two. Sympathize is "I feel bad for you." Empathize is "I can see things the way you see them, view the world through your eyes, feel what you feel, and understand why you hold the beliefs you hold and why you feel your beliefs are justified and why you believe your adversaries' are not." There are few good tests for real empathy, I find. Most empathy tests focus on measurements of things like "do you feel bad when someone gets hurt." Which is sympathy. And sympathy is tied to empathy... however, it is a lower, more basic form of empathy. Sympathy often misfires due to underdeveloped empathy. It's very easy to manipulate the sympathies of people with less developed empathy. What we end up with is most people fall into one of two camps: Callous individuals with little sympathy. These are those with low natural empathy, or who have closed themselves off to empathy due to a difficult life. Gullible individuals with too much sympathy. These are those with normal-yet-underdeveloped empathy, who too easily fall for cries of victimhood and "I'm hurt and need help!" acts. Next to these two groups, but quite separate from them, is the man with fully developed empathy. This is the man who views other people neither as objects to manipulate (the view of the man with low/no empathy) nor as helpless victims to rescue (the view of the man with normal-yet-underdeveloped empathy). Fully developed empathy gives you a tremendous social advantage; it allows you to out-strategize almost everyone, because you have a good idea what everyone else is thinking. It allows you to avoid being blindsided, a phenomenon which plagues society. Any time you hear someone freak out and accuse someone else of being evil or twisted due to a different set of values/opinions/beliefs, it's blindsiding due to an empathy failure. Confucius, Jesus, and Buddha never called anyone evil; only, at worst, lost, or misguided. These were men with fully developed empathy, who could peer into another man's head and see what he saw, and why he saw it. A close cousin to empathy is reference points. If you lack reference points, you starve your empathy. In Western politics, for instance, nationalists often think globalists are all conspiratorial elites who knowingly enrich themselves at the common man's expense. Meanwhile, globalists often think nationalists are uneducated rubes who fall prey to the fear mongering of opportunistic demagogues. Of course, both views are childishly simplistic. While there certainly are conspiratorial elites, and there absolutely are opportunistic demagogues, these individuals are only able to wield the power they wield because they tap into real, legitimate ambitions of the citizens they appeal to... and those citizens, who are the ones who support their sides in power, are neither mostly conspiratorial elites nor uneducated rubes (though it certainly strokes the egos of either side to dismiss their opponents as either evil or idiotic). True, developed empathy is a quality in very short supply. It has been throughout history, and it continues to be today. Listen to any discussion of men and women, of politics, of religion, of any hot button issue, and you will quickly discover how few pundits actually grasp the other side. Almost no one is able to say "The other side has an excellent point, and if I was in their position, with their life experiences, and the environment they're in, I would feel as they do." If you develop your empathy to the point where you can understand those with opposite views to yours without judgment or dismissal, you gain a superpower few humans in your society possess. The world makes sense to you, and the confusion, the cognitive dissonance, and the fear others feel so much of the time melts away. To start to build real, true empathy, give these articles a read: Your Mental Model is Flawed Reference Points and Changing Worldviews Stop Being So Judgmental: It's All Actor-Observer Bias Brain Hacks: How to Learn Empathy #9: A GRAND STRATEGY things men should have handled There must be a unifying strategy behind men's actions. Something you find out quick when you start to play strategy games - chess, Risk, bridge, poker, real-time strategy games like Age of Empires or StarCraft - is different men have different strategies. Some guys like to burst out of the gate and go on an offensive blitz against their opponents to keep them off-balance from the get-go. Some guys like to fortify their positions a bit, then shift to attacking. Some guys like to slowly advance a solid position and gradually take over the board, a piece at a time. The synergy is that once you know a guy's game strategy, you realize he follows the same strategy in real life, too. He follows it in dating, he follows it in business, he follows it in skill-building and habit-formation. The most effective men all have grand strategies they pursue no matter what the field or situation. The value a grand strategy provides is enormous. Where many men fall prey to confusion and idleness, the man with a grand strategy immediately sets to work looking for ways to follow his strategy in any new field. After you've labored to improve your position in a few different fields, you realize the same grand strategy can be applied in any field (with modifications to suit the details of the field, of course). The offensive blitz works just as well in entrepreneurship (launch fast, get investors fast, be the first to market right out of the gate), boxing (wither your opponent with a hail of rapid hits from the start), chess (put your opponent on the defense from the start with aggressive tactics), women (approach fast, don't hesitate, skip steps, use early compliance tests to find women you can move fast with)... whatever you apply it to. Same with all the other strategies. Once you've mastered one grand strategy, it's worth it in my opinion to take time to learn others. I am not a natural blitzer, but I've learned how to blitz and can use the strategy well in a variety of situations. It's not my default, but I can use it, and often use it well. How do you learn strategy? The most distilled way to learn is through games. To quote Bob Rice in Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You About Business, "The more you look at the business world, the more you see that successful companies and the people who run them use chess strategies routinely (whether they know it or not)." Peter Thiel (billionaire) is a chess master. Warren Buffet (billionaire) is talented at bridge. David Einhorn (billionaire) is a highly skilled poker player. My first mentor in seduction, the brilliant Sebastian Drake, was a professional poker player who was also adept at chess, and who introduced me to Risk. Games I can recommend to learn strategy: Chess Bridge Poker Risk Mahjong Go (‘Chinese checkers') Real-time strategy games (RTS): computer games like Civilization, Age of Empires, StarCraft, and Galactic Empires You can also learn strategy from reading books that discuss military strategy, like Sun Tzu's The Art of War or Plutarch's Parallel Lives. However, it is impossible to get a visceral, emotional grasp of strategy without firsthand strategic experience. That's where games come in. You can and will learn strategy organically once you get deeply involved in various strategic fields (business, dating, career... you name it). However, games are the shortcut; they let you try out different strategies, observe others' strategies, and learn from the greats in simplified form (much easier to parse the details of the strategy) and at a much quicker pace (the strategy unfurls over the course of an hour or two instead of over days or weeks or months or years). I recommend every man get some experience playing strategy-minded games. They will help you figure out your own grand strategy - which will make you more successful at everything you do. #10: SELF-DEFENSE things men should have handled The world isn't always a friendly place. Self-defense, in my opinion, has six (6) purposes: To allow you to physically defend yourself and others if necessary To give you more confidence and make you less afraid of physical attack To serve as a deterrent to possible attackers (who can often sense fighting ability) To make you more attractive to women (confidence + other men's respect... attractive) To train you to be aware of confrontation risks, and to deescalate or get away To make you aware of what your limitations are and what the risks of confrontation are On that last, until you've had sufficient fighting experience or self-defense training, you will tend to overestimate certain risks of combat and underestimate others. You may be much more afraid of a punch than a single punch usually warrants... but on the other hand not realize the potentially lethal danger of getting into a knock-on, drag-out fight with someone who's truly angry. You may be thinking "just fists", but he may have a knife... or your punch to him may knock his head against the table and give him an aneurism that kills him. A good self-defense instructor will train you how to defend yourself from attack. This can keep you alive in bad situations. The confidence you get from this is real confidence, because you know you know how to carry yourself in a fight. This confidence affects your body language; the average attacker is a lot less likely to pick a fight with a man who looks able to fight back than he will a man who looks afraid of confrontation. Attackers look for victims they think they can overpower. Even more important than this though is the sensitivity self-defense training gives you to attack signals, and the coaching a good instructor will give you to get out of violent situations rather than stay in them. You see, what happens for many men is once a confrontation starts, ego gets involved. Some guy gets in your face and starts to posture and challenge you... and your ego kicks in and says, "Well, I can't back down now, this guy's impugned my honor!" And now you're well on your way to a pointless ass-kicking contest with some random tough, all because he was searching for someone clueless enough to make eye contact with him and not exit after his challenge (that's you). Best case scenario: somebody breaks the two of you up before anything too bad happens. Worst case scenario: prison on an involuntary manslaughter charge (if you're not the one who's six feet under, that is). The confidence of knowing you can hold your own in a fight, or at least fight an attacker or two off until you can get away, pays dividends in many ways too. Other men mess with you much less, and you feel much more comfortable in places you might've felt more vulnerable and shier before, like in nightclubs. It's easier to approach cute girls in clubs when you aren't worried about whether some big, possessive hulk will show up to pound you into dust because hey, that's his girl! If you know how to handle confrontations, deescalate them, and not get beat up in the event they do escalate, you're a lot more empowered to go for what you want in social situations without being overly afraid. The self-defense classes best suited for practical, real-world self-defense are generally agreed to be: Krav Maga Brazilian Jujitsu Wing Chun At a superficial level, the students of these methods snipe back and forth about which is the superior martial art. At the practical level, the best martial artists I know study multiple methods. I know a lot of guys who study Krav Maga and Brazilian Jujitsu (BJJ), for instance; Krav for the multiple attacker and armed attacker training, and BJJ for the ground fighting. There's also a book I recommend you read: Geoff Thompson's Dead or Alive: The Choice is Yours. This is a guide by a long-time nightclub bouncer at one of the U.K.'s roughest bars (and a guy who's claimed to have been in thousands of fights) on how to recognize an attack before it happens, how to deescalate the situation, and how to make sure you win if there's no way out of the fight. It's also an excellent book for anyone with too much pride still wrapped up in fighting (if you're the kind of guy who says "But won't I look weak if I back down or run away?"), since here is a big guy and an expert fighter who freely admits to always feeling fear before a fight and talks about swallowing your pride and getting out of the fight situation any time and any way you can unless a fight is absolutely necessary. Also check out my article on street smarts, which is geared toward giving you greater attack awareness and helping you to avoid attacks by random people: How to Be Street Smart & Handle Life-Threatening Situations #11: FASHION things men should have handled Looking good is not just for dandies. Your fashion is how you present yourself to the world. "The clothes make the man" - surely you know that old chestnut. Just because it's been repeated almost to death doesn't make it any less true, though. Fashion is a greater or lower concern, depending on society. In the United States, for instance, it's less common for men to focus on fashion. While I always liked interesting clothing items myself, I didn't actually get serious about improved fashion until I was in my mid-twenties. But what a difference good fashion makes! Until you start to focus on it, you'll tend to be unaware of how much fashion impacts the way other people perceive you. And the impressions fashionable others make on you will tend to be largely unconscious. You'll see a well-dressed man and rather than have it register in your mind that "That guy has great fashion", you'll think "That guy seems powerful" or "He must be rich." You won't realize his choice of clothes is responsible for a large part of that impression of yours - or that you could have the same impression on others with similar clothing choices to his. Fashion as a skill set takes time to learn. When you start to focus on it, you'll pick items you think might be cool that perhaps are better than what you used to wear but still leave much to desire. You'll put together outfits that are too loud, or where the designs and colors clash, or that fit well but are boring. Only with time do you learn how to put together outfits to have a specific desired effect on the people who see you wear them. But this is a skill worth learning. From how those in your tight-knit group regard you, to how your boss or investors or customers feel about you, to how the women you meet out and about view you, the clothes you put on have a large degree of influence on how you're perceived. To start elevating your fashion, check out these articles: Fashion for Men: The Primer on Looking Amazing Peacocking: Now Scientifically Proven To Get You Girls ... or read pretty much anything by Darius Belejevas, our fashion writer-at-large. #12: A HANDLE ON VICES things men should have handled There comes a time to tell your demons to go. We all have our dark sides. No man is free of vice. Some men have vices of excess: greed, gluttony, hedonism in general. Other men, vices of apathy: sloth, lethargy, procrastination. Some men get lost in pornography or video games, or gamble away their incomes. Some men slide into victim mentality and cry for all the world to save them; other men become predatory and look for ways to gain at others' expense. Some men fear responsibility and run from it, while others become control-obsessed and subjugate those they hold leverage over. A central mission in life is to rise above your vices... to become the man you can be, unconstrained by your darker nature. Vice may feel good while you're in it, but it limits you. It keeps your vision to the ground, and prevents you from achieving any true elevation in your skills, your personal cultivation, and the things you want to do in life. You cannot root out vice entirely. And if you try to suppress it, it will come bursting forth at the most inconvenient times. But you can route around it. Build an environment that limits your ability to engage in vice. Build a series of habits that directs you away from vice. And fill the holes in your life that lead to vice. No man burdened by an excess of vice can reach his full potential. By the time you're 35, you should aim to have a handle on vice... rather than permit it to have a handle on you. I don't have article recommendations for you here, since there are so many different vices that affect men in such different ways. What I will suggest is to read history's great moral teachers: Solomon Confucius Buddha Jesus Plutarch Socrates/Plato Aristotle Marcus Aurelius ... and take time to meditate, look inward, and discover where you need work, and what sort of work must be done. HONORABLE MENTION: PURPOSE things men should have handled Each man is driven to something... even if he does not at first know what it is. Every man needs a purpose. Purpose drives you forward... it gives you direction when times are good, and resolve when times are hard. A man with purpose adopts missions which serve his purpose, and a man with a mission is the most dedicated, attractive, unstoppable sort of man there is. Once a man has purpose, the other items above become more important to him to achieve, and become items he strives harder and with greater determination to realize. Purpose is the hub of the great wheel; our other items the spokes. It holds them together and unites them. To open the lid of the box to your own, unique purpose, give this article a read: The Purpose of Life from a Practical Point of View RECAP things men should have handled Your life is your canvas. Try not to leave it blank. In an unmoored world, the man who handles these areas of his life by the time he's 35 positions himself for a level of excellence few other men will know. For him, women are handled; money is handled; safety and solidarity are handled; social support is handled; and he has the skills, abilities, and resources to take his life wherever he'd like it to go. This is a rare freedom. Men, bound as they are by need for women, need for money, need for social approval, need for safety, rarely get to enjoy freedom like this. Even many men who enjoy outsized success in one area - fame and fortune, say - often find themselves limited in others. You may have money and fame yet fail at romantic relationships and end up cheated on or taken to the cleaners in a divorce... or you may owe your career to more powerful men who decide when to make you or break you. To set yourself up for the best life possible, get these items we covered in this article handled. Whatever you do after 35, you will be free: free to make your own choices, to pursue your own direction in life, to make up your own mind. It's a fair bit of work to do this. But it only looks hard when you imagine the journey from A to Z in a single stride. The average 25-year-old has already walked something like 34,000 miles; that's 36% farther than the circumference of the Earth. If I told you you had to walk the length of the planet, you'd likely tell me it couldn't be done... but you've already done it, one-and-a-third times over. Life's most precious gift is time. And you can do a lot in 10 or 15 years. You can do everything in this article, in fact. You don't have to be a master at all these things... or even any of them. You just need to get them handled. Get them handled, and you position yourself for a great, incredible, remarkable future life. Yet it isn't just about the future, either. Because you'll have a lot of fun just getting there, too. In fact, you may just find the ‘getting there' part - the journey of it - to be the most enjoyable, most memorable part of all. Chase Amante

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##[] How to get Girls who seem closed or impossible: Over on the discussion boards, we have of late had a dustup where a collection of several of our experienced members along with some other members led a small 'insurrection' against the most senior, experienced of us on there. The gist of the insurrection was guys claiming, in effect, "You cannot get certain girls, now you old hands just admit it!" This thinking seemed to stem from a few things, including (perhaps) my frequent suggestions to readers that most of the time, they should focus on screening for the women most receptive to them and their game. This screening for receptive women is just an efficient, practical step. It is one every experienced guy employs. Yet, just because you will usually do this, does not mean you treat non-receptive women as impossibly closed off. Over the years, in addition to my "screen for girls who are receptive to you" posts, I have also authored many other pieces about getting girls who seem disinterested, or like hard cases, lost causes, or otherwise impossible to get. The key is to be able to hold both concepts in the mind at once: most of the time, it is simply more efficient to focus on the women most receptive to you. Yet, also available to you are those women who are not at first into you, but whom you are nevertheless able to seduce. Note before we begin: this article is a guide for advanced players, and should not be used by beginners (or probably intermediates either). HOWEVER... I strongly suggest beginners and intermediates read it, so that it is clear that even while we are suggesting you usually move on from disinterested girls, these girls are not actually totally out of reach, and there will come a time, if you continue down the road to seduction mastery, where these girls enter into your circle. THE SEDUCER'S MINDSET A good seducer loves a challenge. For a good seducer, who prides himself on his ability to change women's minds, lead them, and influence them, a woman he wants who seems closed off and unavailable to him is an enjoyable challenge. This is not about seeking her approval, as manosphere guys sometimes like to assert. Not with high skill level seducers, in any event. Rather, it is a test of skill: like making a three-point shot from behind the half-court mark, or playing your favorite computer game with a handicap. Men who are good at anything, who pride themselves on being good at it, and consider themselves hobbyists or experts at the thing, like to test their skills. Now, for the good seducer, there usually must be some other motivation for pursuing a closed off girl, aside from it being a pure skill test: It might be that the girl in question, despite not being apparently interested in or receptive to him, is very beautiful. It might be that she is the only worthwhile target in a given venue, and it is too hard or too late to change to another venue. It might be that he senses that despite all outward signs he can get this girl. It might be because he wants to put on a performance and show his buddies what happens when he approaches the toughest girl in the venue. impossible girls It's late, there aren't many girls left, and she's closed off. But he's going to try and pull it off anyway. Regardless the reason, he is a guy who is accustomed to finding ways to pull off improbable feats, and no girl, to him, is truly impossible. This may be a hard mentality to grasp before you are here. But imagine yourself as being highly skilled at anything -- then imagine someone saying, "I bet you can't do X." The response of anyone who is highly skilled, who has poured his lifeblood into getting highly skilled, who practices constantly and prides himself on his skill, who is competitive, is going to be to say, "Watch me." THE EXPERIMENTER'S MINDSET There is another mindset that will help you with closed off, impossible girls as well. And that mindset is the experimenter's mindset. This is not exclusive with the seducer's mindset. Usually the two go hand-in-hand. However, this is also a much easier mentality to have, even before you have reached much experience with the opposite sex. The only thing the holder of the experimenter's mindset knows to be true is this: there is probably a way to do almost anything, and the only way to find it is through experimentation. Many years ago, a new guy joined our discussion boards, using the name 'Anatman', and began posting about his very bold, direct way of explicitly inviting girls he met to sex. Several of our higher ranked members jumped on to say he could not do that, and it would backfire on him. As soon as I saw this, I got in there and said wait, no -- hold up. This is a risky method, I agree. I cannot think of anyone I have known who's pulled it off. But there is a fire to you, that is obvious, and you are doing an innovative new thing, that I feel confident can be done. In the short term, I suggested to him not using this method for girls he really cared about, and playing it safe and using plausible deniability. Yet I also urged him to continue testing and refining this method. Because I had a feeling he could make it work. And once you do, I told him, it is going to be a thing of beauty. I for one will be exceptionally fascinated to see it perfected. This raunchy young upstart of course was our own Hector Castillo, and he did indeed perfect this approach of directly telling girls he wanted sex with them, and he has had a good many lays with it, some of which you can read here (he used to have a lot more reports up, but we archived a bunch. You can still find quite a few good ones at the link, though). In the broader seduction community, and including and especially on this site, we hold a certain reverence for the men who innovate, try new approaches, and refuse to rule anything out. And we in general have a bit of an immune response to guys pushing any kind of "It can't be done!" perspective -- especially pushing it onto other seducers. (I in particular tend to butt heads with folks saying anything is impossible, in both my personal and business life, as well as here. "It can't be done!" are, like, the magic words to summon me to challenge you, especially on my own website) impossible girls That is me on the right, appearing just after someone has claimed something is impossible. Just as there is a reverence for experimenters in seduction, there is an equal disdain for "can't be done"rs in this niche. Every step of the way we have heard such refrains: "Seducing women with NLP can't be done." "Same day laying women off day game can't be done." "Picking up girls who are 10s can't be done." "Cold approach threesomes can't be done." "Recovering with a girl who's rejected you can't be done." "Picking up girls who are in big groups you aren't part of can't be done." "Picking up the bride on her wedding night can't be done." (I actually did shag a bride on her wedding night, after the groom flew back across the country after the wedding for work... I did not know she'd just married at the time, nor even that she'd been engaged... The moral of the experience to me though was if you are going to get married, you should probably spend the wedding night with your bride... unless you want some rogue to come along and claim prima nocta) Anyway, obviously all of these things can be done, and have been done many times, by many guys in the seduction community. But that has not stopped annoying guys from trying to claim you can't do it. So the seduction community has a term for this: "limiting beliefs." It does not limit another guy that YOU think a thing cannot be done. It only limits you (well, I suppose it could limit another guy, if you tell that guy the thing is impossible, and he believes you). Regardless, in the community, we strongly encourage guys to experiment: Read more: Real Empiricists Test empiricists test Test first. Opine later. Experimentation is how you discover all sorts of things you did not know you could do. FIRST OFF, SOME STRATEGIES THAT OFTEN WORK Let's talk tactics. There are different kinds of women guys view as 'closed off' or 'impossible'. They include: Girls who shut you down hard on approach, with a hand in the face, an eye roll, a "Sorry, I'm not interested", and other blowout rejections Girls who shut you down more softly on approach, by ignoring you, or giving you one-word answers, or closing themselves off to you and looking at you skeptically Girls who are polite but non-compliant -- for instance, they will talk to you, yet you sense zero attraction from them, and you are unable to get them to comply with anything Girls who did like you, but with whom you screwed up, and who now are in auto-rejection, hating your guts Girls who look bitchy and are not putting out any approach invitations, but whom you have not yet approached There are different approaches that work with varying degrees of success in each of these scenarios. Obviously, the TOUGHEST scenario is that of girls who blow you out hard on the open. For these, you need an ironclad frame, and you need to have an effective way of pattern interrupting women's shut down attempts. I personally like slightly playful-yet-authoritative interrupts for this: You: I saw you walking here, and... Her: Sorry, not interested. You: [commanding yet "Hey, look" voice tone, with hands up in a "Don't shoot" manner, and an open, very slightly amused expression on your face] Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey... you got me wrong, I just wanted to tell you something. Put the barbs away, you don't need 'em with me. [winning smile] impossible girls This, just a little more sexy and a little less goofy. This will get a fair chunk of women to stop what they are doing, turn, and give you that, "Okay, what?" look. At which point, if you have another good pattern interrupt to deliver here, that is both playful and disarming, you can often get the girl to stick around for a minute and give you a little more time to melt her frosty exterior. Like so: You: I saw you walking here, and... Her: Sorry, not interested. You: [commanding yet "Hey, look" voice tone, with hands up in a "Don't shoot" manner, and an open, very slightly amused expression on your face] Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey... you got me wrong, I just wanted to tell you something. Put the barbs away, you don't need 'em with me. [winning smile] Her: [stops walking, turns, looks at you] What? You: [hands still up in "Don't shoot", voice tone still commanding but now a little more intimate/explanatory, eyes wide, eyebrows shrugged, hint of smile on face] I just wanted to say... that I saw you walking here, and... gah, you're standing really far away now, will you step back please? [beckon her closer as you break out into more of a smile. Then when she comes closer, even bigger smile to reward her, and:] Thank you. I wanted to say I saw you walking here, and you had this absolutely killer walk... it is THE best walk I have seen all day. My name's Chase [hold out hand]. [as soon as she takes hand] And before you run off! [put other hand up in "Don't shoot!" while you hold her hand with the other] I have something really important to share with you. Her: What is it? You: Well, I can't tell you with you looking all pouty like that. [quizzical, slightly amused look] Where are you from? The name of the game here is lots of very tight, frequent fractionation, mixed with baits, so she is continually unsure what is happening and intrigued, both by your mannerisms, and by this secret thing you have to tell her. (the 'something to tell you' trick is one I picked up from A2daMIR, who used to use this to get closed off girls all the time, and it is golden. The only trick: you need to put off telling her what the something is until she is hooked. Once you've hooked her, you can then tell her what the thing you wanted to tell her is... usually a cheesy joke will work best here: "All right, the thing I wanted to tell you is when I saw you walking like that flicking your hair around [demonstrate this] you reminded me of exactly of Selena Gomez in that Lose You To Love Me video where she sings so angry in black and white looking at the mirror" -- just something cheesy, ridiculous, semi-complimentary [compare her to a sexy female singer, not a non-sexy one, for instance -- but that singer when she is doing something kind of silly]. And only do it once she is hooked!) With a girl who soft rejects you on the open, you can: Try a different opener (you can try several in a row) Use the bored look on them (hold it until she cracks) Make eye contact, use a slow spreading smile, and spread it until you are almost laughing and she mirrors your smile and breaks out into one herself. Then tell her "See! That wasn't so hard!" and start talking Use your two fingers to push your own mouth into a smile, while looking at her, to indicate that she should also do this Slow open her (where you open her, let things die, then continue the conversation a bit, as if they hadn't really died, then let it die again, then continue the conversation again... just a very slow, gradual progression into a conversation -- only works with stationary girls, obviously) Shotgun open her -- even if she's not showing interest, say a few interesting things, stay cool and friendly, then wander off a bit, and reopen her later (she may be much warmer then) With non-compliant girls, you can force a decision, you can persist, use one of the options I give you in my article on dealing with girls who say no, or use the strategies I gave you in my article on girls who aren't ready to escalate. With girls who are in auto-rejection, use my turnaround strategy for that. As for girls who aren't putting out approach invitations, you aren't really going to know if you can get her or not till you approach. It's fine to say "I'm feeling lazy, so I will only go for girls who signal me." However, it is the biggest cop out in the world to say, "She didn't signal me, so she doesn't want me." Until you've approached her, you don't know. Even if you've approached her, if you didn't push on past her initial resistance, you don't really know. But at least get in front of her and make some conversation before you draw conclusions! THE GENERAL 'IMPOSSIBLE GIRLS' MINDSET The general mindset you want to have with closed off girls (when you opt to go for them) is, "I don't know if I can get this girl, but I want to see what I can try out or learn about getting girls who are closed off like her." Because you can try out different things. You can test out strategies you have seen other guys use, or you can test your own zany hypotheses. Because the thing is -- most of the men she meets are boring or timid or crass, and they do not use very creative ways to intrigue her. There are only a handful of men a woman will meet in her entire life who will try to persist with her in intelligent, creative ways. The act of simply persisting in a cool, inventive, novel way is itself highly attractive to women. When a woman 'shuts you down', yet you persist, without getting hurt or defensive about it, you are behaving in a way she has almost never seen a man behave in before. And that is intriguing. It is attractive. You stand out, as a rather unique kind of guy. impossible girls If you can get her to stop, pause, and consider you, despite her initial rejection response, you can find yourself in a very good position. Once you realize this, and your mind opens to the possibility of "I bet I can get those closed off girls... at least some of them" you will start to look for ways to do that. Now, note, again: I do not recommend this for non-advanced guys. If you are not ADVANCED -- if you are not consistently attracting and pulling women, and in particular the types of women you want -- you should not worry yourself with cracking tough case women. Instead, stay focused on the girls who are more easily within your reach, as you continue to hone your craft. Yet, once you have climbed all the foothills, and you are looking for a taller mountain to climb, figuring out how to net yourself some impossible girl successes becomes a much more attractive prospect -- and it can get downright creative and fun, too. A NOTE ON MISTAKES Sometimes you will screw things up with girls. When you screw up, depending on how bad you screw up, it may be 'impossible' to recover. impossible girls Mistakes are often killers... though not why you think. It is not really impossible to recover from any mistake. I have coached guys who have made all kinds of boneheaded mistakes, and told them what to do, and they did it and got the girl out again and sometimes slept with her. The thing is, if you make the mistake in the first place, you probably are not going to know how to recover. That's because if your game was at a place where you knew how to recover, you likely wouldn't be making that mistake, either. So, mistakes often will kill you. Not because they really are fatal. More because, well, if you're making the mistake at all, it's a good indication you also probably don't know how to recover from it. (that said, there are guys who are very good at recovery -- and if you are one of those guys, obviously you can bumble around a bit, screw things up some, and still go in and recover... and you should) PICKING UP CLOSED OFF GIRLS I would like to close with a note on girls it is truly impossible to get. Being totally realistic, of course there are SOME girls it is truly, indubitably impossible to get. At any given specific moment in time. Some girl you cross on the street may have just been screwed out of her job, the day after her mother passed away, and is warring with her roommate. Getting her to even think about hooking up with a guy might be totally out of the question, giving her mindset. Perhaps, no guy could do it. However... is it useful for you to think "There are girls out there who are impossible to get, and I should look for them and avoid them?" No! Because that same girl we just mentioned, she might be in a messed up headspace, but maybe the one thing she really needs right now is a stiff cock to ease her mind and help her forget all her troubles. If you're not advanced, and you approach a girl, and she unloads on you and says not now, my life is falling apart right now, I just can't, then you should leave it alone. Don't mess with troubled people when you do not know what you're doing. However, if you are advanced, and you know people, and you know how to make an offer (e.g., "Let me ease your troubles") in a way that is not intrusive or burdensome, do it. There is no way, ever, to know if a girl is TRULY impossibly closed off to you. And the number of girls who are 100% impossible for you to ever get in a given situation at any given time is fairly small. If you could pinpoint exactly what to do, what to say, and how to behave, you'd be able to get most girls in most scenarios. Even the very closed off ones. The main issue is that "If" part. If you have not worked on 'closed off girl game', you will not have very high odds of bagging a closed off girl. Yet it is possible. Work on it some, and your odds improve. Also, girls who are, indeed, actually totally impossible today, due to life circumstances, may not be tomorrow. I have not in my experience seen that there are ANY girls who are always closed to you, at every point in their lives, if you have some skill developed. Certainly there are times and places when any given woman is going to much easier to meet and get together with than she is at other times and places. For beginners and intermediates (and even most of the time for advanced guys), I recommend looking for these more receptive girls and capitalizing on their interest. It is simply a practical matter that most of the time you are going to prefer girls who make it easy for you (or at least not super hard). Yet, you can indeed get 'impossible' girls. Indeed, there is no way to know with anything even approaching certainty which girls really are truly 'impossible'... versus which ones are just tougher than usual to get. Will you get every single impossible girl you persist with? No, of course not. You won't even get every single highly interested girl you pursue! Sometimes you will make mistakes, miss escalation windows, or have unforeseeable wild cards enter the fray and screw up an almost-perfect seduction. Certainly, closed off girls are lower odds than highly interested ones. Will you then at least get most of the closed off girls you pursue? Again, probably no. However, could you get some of them? Say if you use some of the methods from this article... or devise some creative new ones yourself (or pick some up from a talented natural friend of yours who specializes in hard case girls)? Absolutely. And -- and this is the kicker -- these 'impossible' girls you pick up will be some of you most memorable war stories. These are the girls you remember, because picking them up was a feat, alongside some other memorable types of lays (like the ones where you just had a really magical connection with the girl, that persisted for a while even after sex, for instance). You will come up with some of your most dynamite strategies trying to close impossible girls. Strategies you can employ to deadly effect on girls who are a lot more open to you, too. Think of impossible girls as a way of playing a game you like to play with a big handicap. You won't always win. It may sometimes frustrate you. But if you are an advanced player, it is at times a nice diversion... and the victories you get this way will be some of the sweetest, most memorable you will enjoy.

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##[N/A] Making a Girl Jealous: Dos and Don'ts Wouldn't it be great to have the girl you want green-eyed with envy and madly competing for you? It'd be awesome... right? Well, as you know, there are two sides to every coin. On the one side you have the oftentimes huge spike in attraction and investment you gain from a girl when she realizes she's jealous over you. And on the other side... you risk becoming too aloof, too hard to get, and losing her altogether. But, no risk, no reward, as they say. Learning how to make a girl jealous can be another mighty weapon in your seducer's arsenal. If you're not careful though, it can be a weapon you end up using with devastating effect... on yourself. My intention here is to walk you through the mechanics of jealousy, using jealously plotlines to drive attraction and investment, and walking the tightrope between making girls chase you and sending them off ablaze in search of vengeance and validation. As with any powerful technique, I must of course warn you... caveat emptor. Proceed here at your own discretion -- and at your own risk. THE MECHANICS OF JEALOUSY "Love sees sharply; hatred sees even more sharp. But jealousy sees the sharpest -- for it is love and hate at the same time." ~ Arab proverb Jealousy's a fascinating emotion. I've studied it rather closely over the course of my life -- it's a mighty changer of emotions and even life paths. The ability to elicit strong emotions is the nuclear power of seduction: capable of lighting up a city (when used judiciously) or of razing one (when used clumsily or vengefully). If I had to define jealousy in under 10 words, I'd define it thus: Jealousy is wanting control where one has it not. As such, certain kinds of individuals are more susceptible to it than others. Namely, those who like control and/or are accustomed to being in control. You can quickly see how jealousy could be big for beautiful, high status women. The way jealousy works is basically like this: When someone you think ought to want you very much seems preoccupied with someone else, you begin to want to regain that person's attentions When someone you like seems preoccupied with someone else, you begin to fear losing them, and pursue them harder If you're familiar with the basic tenets of investment, it works thus: the more time, emotion, and energy you spend on something, the more invested in it you become, and the more and more highly you come to value it. When you become jealous over a girl -- or she becomes jealous over you -- the desire to have that which you're jealous about very quickly escalates how much you value that person. For that reason, we might say jealousy can supercharge attraction. But there's a catch -- make someone too jealous, and she won't be able to handle not having what she wants (you), and instead will strike off to hurt you back and show you what you're missing out on by not being with her. Enter something I call the "Jealousy Scale": make a girl jealous Obviously, the X, or horizontal, axis is the degree of jealousy; lesser to the left, greater to the right. The vertical Y axis, though, is a little more curious: we might call it attraction, though the kinds of attraction at the opposite ends of the scale are of completely different natures: one is disinterest, while the other is disdain. This is because of how amounts of jealousy affect people's emotions. You might notice this isn't a standard bell curve distribution. It's a soft, gradual arc up to attraction; but a pretty precipitous drop off into the abyss of stone-hearted resentment if you go past the peak. I'll offer the disclaimer that this is based purely on my own experiences and countless anecdotes I've come across and had shared with me, but jealousy seems to work very much like this: On the far left of the curve, a woman has no feelings about a man and he is unvalued. A little more to the right, she begins to feel some stirrings of possessiveness, and is rather invested and interested in him. At the peak of the curve, she's very possessive and jealous about him, and feels a strong degree of attraction and is given to pursuit. Past that peak though, as jealousy builds to an even greater extent, she becomes resentful and disdainful of this man, and wishes to hurt him and exact revenge -- or at the very least be rid of his presence. So actually, the two ends of the curve are qualitatively different. The opposite of love is not hate. It's disinterest. Therefore, emotions trend increasingly strong to the right the greater the emotion gets -- but those emotions cross a threshold from being very good for the seducer to being very bad. You can use jealousy to move women out of disinterest and into interest, and even ramp things up to the point where girls are chasing you. But you must be aware that making a girl jealous is playing with fire -- and overdoing it means there's a very good chance you might end up getting burned. WHEN MAKING A GIRL JEALOUS BACKFIRES I'll tell you a quick story so you know what I mean. Back in mid-2006, when I was still pretty green, I was going through a phase of seeing how fast I could physically escalate with girls in nightclubs. I was getting two-minute make-outs and that sort of thing. It wasn't particularly effective at getting girls to come home with me, but it was fun. One girl I met one night I had on the dance floor with me and had my hands under her bra and in her panties within seven minutes of meeting her, and we were making out heavily. "I have a really interesting ceiling at home," I told her. "I think you should come see it." "Okay," she said. We headed for the door, but just as we were about to exit, her friends appeared out of nowhere to snatch her away. "Call me!" she cried. I called her and texted her a few times the next week, but of course, she didn't answer my calls and she didn't text back. The very next weekend, however, I ran into her and three of her girlfriends at the very same nightclub. She seemed only lukewarm toward me, so I decided to get her friends attracted to me. I'd run a jealousy plotline. I started talking to her friends, and they all liked me. Soon she warmed up to me too. She even began competing for my attention. But, I decided to really ramp up her attraction, and largely ignored her to continue talking to her friends. This went on for about ten minutes -- but, then, I noticed she'd stopped paying me any attention. So at last, I turned my focus onto her. She was ice cold. "You know," she told me, "if you like someone, you should try talking to her." Then she turned and walked off, and I didn't ever see her again. I'd overdone the jealousy and sent her into auto-rejection. I've seen scads of guys doing this again and again. A friend of mine was doing it quite a lot, recently; he's a pretty cool and sexy guy, and he was already getting pretty solid attraction from girls, but he just felt like he always needed more, so he'd spin off from girls to go meet new girls to show the ones whom he'd been talking to previously how strong and successful and non-needy and desirable he was. And it just kept on backfiring on him. The girls who were crazy about him earlier would end up making out with other guys in front of him, even going home with other guys, sometimes while staring at him explicitly as if to say, "This is what you're missing out on." He did such a good job creating jealousy in these girls that he pushed them past that ledge, and they descended rapidly into auto-rejection. Filled with resentment, they did whatever they could to show him the error of his ways. "I don't get it," he remarked, "these girls seem to really like me, and then they just act so cold and heartless later on!" I pointed out to him that their actions were actually reactions to his actions, and he started scaling back the jealousy he'd previously been inspiring so much of. The change he saw was more or less immediate -- as soon as he took it a little easier on the jealousy plotlines. WHEN MAKING A GIRL JEALOUS WORKS I'll tell you one more story. I was out one night in a lounge with a group of people, including a girl I'd slept with a few weeks earlier who was all over me at the lounge, and another girl I was interested in. A tall, beautiful girl I'd told to come showed up just as I was leaving with some of that group, and stroked my face lustily as I walked out. At the next party I and some of the folks from that lounge ended up at, I turned things around with a girl who earlier was ice cold to me (she ended up giving me her phone number), all the while chatting up another girl who was cute but seemed more or less indifferent to me and had been there at the lounge earlier and come with us all to the party. About 2 AM, I got a phone call from that tall, beautiful girl asking me to come to her apartment, but I, in my drunken stupor, instantly forgot her address and asked her to repeat it, and she, worried I'd get in an accident, refused to give it to me again. We debated my drunkenness for about 30 minutes on the phone, but I never did manage to get her to repeat her address. Meanwhile, that cute, indifferent girl had born witness to all of this, me charming one girl after another, and gradually warmed up to me more and more. After I got off the phone with the girl who'd invited me to her apartment, I had another drink with the formerly indifferent girl -- and then we went back to my place and I took her to bed. Her seeing me with those other girls shook her out of her apathy for me, and made her start seeing me as somebody desirable to be with. At the beginning of the night, I'd been at the far left of the scale -- not valued. But on the weight primarily of a handful of jealousy plotlines throughout the night (with a little deep diving on the side), I moved up to somewhere between somewhat interested and intensely interested, and we ended up becoming lovers. I doubt I would've ended up with that particular girl without the attention from the other girls I received before her. So, as it turns out, while making a girl jealous can be dangerous, it can also be highly beneficial toward your seductions. Because of that, this is something to play around with as a beginner, and something to really look to implement at least somewhat seriously once you're at an intermediate level. make a girl jealous HOW TO MAKE A GIRL JEALOUS Usually I try to stay away from posting anything that might remotely be construed as "being manipulative." I like to operate from the light side of the force whenever and wherever possible. This is just one of those things though that there's really no way I can talk about it without sounding like I'm telling guys to be manipulative, though. Ah well. Can't win 'em all. In any event, before anyone starts pointing fingers about it, compare these Google searches: "how to make her jealous": 19,900,000 results "how to make HIM jealous": 43,600,000 results Ladies, if you don't want us talking about this, all I can say here is... you started it. ;) Women are the masters of jealousy plotlines. Most of what I know about how to make someone else jealous I learned from watching club queens who were experts at working the nightclub scene. Girls are good at this; it's one of their premiere social control tools. As they say though, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and what works here for women works for men as well. What's great is, we can sift it all down to a few essential steps to get you off and running and get girls going a little crazier for you and chasing you a little harder. So, without any further ado, here's how to make a girl jealous: Talk to her a little first to wet her appetite. It's very difficult to make a girl jealous who's never met you before. She has to at least know who you are and like you a little bit (usually) before a jealousy plotline begins to kick in. Banter with her a bit, build some rapport, and generally just be your usual attractive self for at least a few minutes. Make subtle, casual conversation with a girl near her. The keys here are threefold: subtle, casual, and near her. These keys are essential to minding the Law of Least Effort and ensuring that your social maneuverings appear effortless and natural. I made the mistakes early on of awkwardly shifting gears to talk to new women, or striking out to search the entire venue for another girl to meet, often out of eye- and ear-shot, which didn't do very much for inspiring jealousy. Again, mind the subtlety. This one is important enough that I'm listing it out here again. What just about every guy does wrong here is make his flirting with a girl overt. But if she liked you when you talked earlier, flirting overtly is almost always going to be too much. You'll trigger too much jealousy in her, and push her into auto-rejection. Women aren't superheroes; they feel jealousy and uncertainty and worry just like everyone else. Letting her see you talking to another girl is more than enough most of the time; she doesn't need to see the two of you becoming bosom buddies too. Make it short. This is another common mistake, and one I was as guilty of as anyone else: turning a jealousy plotline into a full-blown seduction. You're trying to move things forward with Girl A, not Girl B. Don't lose sight of which girl you're there for. Get in, make some casual conversation with Girl B, and then, after four or five minutes, end it and get back to the girl you're there for. Too much longer and you risk losing her. One of the credos I live by when it comes to meeting and succeeding with women is "keep your eye on the ball," and that's just as important when it comes to making girls jealous as it is with anything else. Run your jealousy plotline, but don't forget the main reason you're there -- to move things forward with the girl you like. And you can't do that while you're talking with someone else. So, don't be afraid to use jealousy as a tool with girls who are only lukewarm in their interest to you, but be very careful about overdoing it with girls who already like you. In fact, that's your top indicator for when to use jealousy and when not to: Use jealousy with girls who are lukewarm or not all that interested in you or invested Don't use it with girls who already like you a lot. Instead, focus on moving things forward with those girls with speed and decisiveness Stick to that plan, and you'll be a heart-stealing, jealousy-inspiring lady killer in no time. Just remember that it's staying on the tightrope that makes all the difference.

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##[] The 3 things to know if you want to be Charismatic Some guys seem to be born lucky... They have a natural charisma about them that just magically DRAWS people in. Women are attracted to them, men follow their lead, and everybody likes to be around them. They just KNOW how to be charismatic, and no one ever had to teach it to them. For centuries, people have been wondering what exactly this magical aura is, and what causes somebody to have it. In fact, the French call it the "je-ne-sais-quoi" - in English: the "I don't know what." You will even hear women say these exact words when they talk about a man they find irresistibly attractive. "I just don't know what it IS about him!" - Because often this man isn't particularly PHYSICALLY attractive. And while women don't know why they like him, they also can't stop calling him, or dropping whatever it is they're doing to meet up with him… or sleeping with him, for that matter. Many people simply admit defeat around this kind of man… they think he got lucky, he "has it", and that "you have to be born with it". But is that really logical? If you did the exact same things as this man - if you behaved in the same way, had the same body language, and said the same words - if you KNEW how to be charismatic - wouldn't you have the same effect on people? No brainer… of COURSE you would. A world-famous chef might be able to prepare a better "Crème Brûlée" than you can - and he may have a lot of talent in this area that you don't have. But guess what. If you can take the exact same ingredients and combine them in the exact same way, you WILL get the exact same dish. No two ways about it. BE CHARISMATIC: THE MINDSET OF THE CHARISMATIC MAN You have two options. The first is you can make friends with one of those guys who have this irresistible Personal Magnetism, and imitate everything they do. Record their conversations, videotape their movements, analyze all the recordings and practice laughing the same way, touching people at the same moment in a conversation and making the same kinds of jokes. That would, however, be rather lame. The second option is more interesting: Realize that all his behaviorisms, words and actions spring from a fundamental mindset. He's not THINKING about what to say next - he simply approaches the entire world with a specific outlook… and everything he does flows NATUARLLY from there. An example would be an excellent waiter in a restaurant who always gets the biggest tips. If you were a waiter too and wanted to get the same amounts of cash, you could try to listen in on his conversations with clients and try to imitate everything he does and says. He himself is probably not even that aware of what he says though - most likely he simply has a certain MINDSET that causes him to act in the right way AUTOMATICALLY (and it's probably to serve the customers as best he can, and give them an unforgettable experience at the restaurant.) But hold it now… that's for WAITERS. The same mindset would NOT work very well on attractive women. In fact, trying to SERVE them as best you can is probably just about the WORST mindset you could have to spark attraction. This is called supplication - and supplication sucks. So if serving a woman doesn't help you to be charismatic... what kind of attitude actually does create IRRESISTIBLE charisma? I'm glad you asked - there are three, actually. (1) CONVICTION Charismatic people are always convinced of what they're doing. They don't suffer from self-doubt… it's just not something that even crosses their mind. If they're going to do something, they're going to do it with CERTAINTY. I first learned that when I observed a negotiation between a millionaire friend of mine and his banker. People are always trying to figure out whether what you're saying is TRUE, and whether it's IMPORTANT. Their first clue is whether YOU believe it is. Because if you don't even believe in yourself - how can you ever expect anybody else to believe in you? Daniel Peña, one of the greatest businessmen of the last few decades, goes as far as to say: "I may be wrong, but I'm never in doubt." And I don't suggest that you have to take it this far… when you don't know the answer to a question, it can demonstrate a lot more confidence to admit that; besides, if you make things up, the truth is going to come out eventually. Nevertheless, you're always better off if you speak with CERTAINTY, walk with CONFIDENCE, and act with CONVICTION. It communicates to the people around you that you know what you're doing, that you believe in what you're saying and that you have a plan that you will see through to the end. This kind of behavior is absolutely magnetic… ESPECIALLY to women. (2) FRIENDSHIP Another thing that charismatic people do very consistently is to treat EVERYBODY as if they were their friend. It doesn't matter whether they're talking to somebody they've known for decades, or to somebody they've only just met. It doesn't matter if it's a beautiful girl, an old lady in a wheel chair or a delivery boy. Charismatic people treat everybody the same - they treat everybody WELL. The idea that a true leader, an "alpha male", is so dominant that he bosses people around and treats them harshly is outdated… that may have worked during the industrial revolution 150 years ago. But ever since Dale Carnegie has come along (get a copy of his legendary book How to Win Friends and Influence People if you don't already know it by heart), we know that people don't respond very well to this kind of leadership anymore. It's more than just treating people as friends, though - a charismatic person treats everybody he meets as if they were their BEST friend. Try this the next time you're in a social situation. Simply imagine that who you're interacting with is the BEST friend you've ever had in your life. PRETEND! be charismatic Maybe you can think of somebody you knew from back in high-school and that you haven't seen in a long time, or maybe there's one friend you have that you can talk about anything with. Treat that NEW acquaintance with the same familiarity and warmth… shine your light on them, so to speak. They will notice… and they will likely reflect that warmth back to you. Even if they don't (because they haven't read this article J), they won't be able to help but notice how charismatic you are. (3) "NEVER CARE…" …as they say in Asia! The third rule is to stop caring about what other people think about you. Yes, you are convinced of everything you do, and your every gesture and word demonstrates a great deal of confidence. Yes, you hold other people in high esteem and treat them well… just like they were your BEST friend. But at the same time, you don't care in the SLIGHTEST whether they will do the same for you. That doesn't mean you should be careless… rule number two still holds. It does, however, mean that you stop worrying about what people think about you… and how they perceive you. This is huge - because even if you get the first two elements right, but you're still looking for approval from other people, it will completely destroy your charisma… and render it COMPLETELY ineffective. Remember how I said to shine your light on people… approval seeking is the interrupter that switches this light off at the SOURCE. Why? Well, the reason is that it completely undermines rule number one. If you act as if you were acting with COMPLETE confidence, but people can tell that you're subtly checking in with them to see if they agree - this clues them in that you weren't really that sure of yourself after all. EXERCISE: At the next social event or party you will find yourself at, practice these three mindsets. Behave and communicate with UTTER conviction, treat everybody as if they were your BEST friends, and completely let go of all worry what people might think about you. Then let me know how it went for you. I'm betting that, before you know it, you're going to have a lot better idea how to be charismatic than you did immediately prior to this exercise.

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##[] Girl Has a Boyfriend? 3 Things to Do, and 7 Things NOT to I've been with my fair share of "attached" women before - that's girls with boyfriends and girls with husbands. As I've mentioned before, the way I see it, there's always some guy, SOMEWHERE who's going to be angry you're sleeping with a girl - whether he's her boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend, her husband, or just some guy who's already "called dibs" on her and you moved faster, it doesn't matter - somebody somewhere is upset that you're with "his" girl. So you can either spend time worrying if some man you don't know will have his feelings hurt if you sleep with a woman who wants you, or you can sleep with a woman who wants you and figure that if someone is upset about her for sleeping with someone else, well, that's between that person and her. And if she was REALLY his, there's not a thing you could've done to get her... trust me. Contents 1. Category One: Time Wasters Wants to Make Him Jealous Girl You Wine and Dine Gal Who Needs a Pal Gal Who's a Tease 2. Category Two: Not Worth It Her Man is Crazy She is a Mess She is in Love 3. Category Three: Green Light Be Refreshingly Different Be Persistent DON'T be a Boyfriend! By the same coin, it doesn't bother me a lick when men are trying to get a girl *I'm* seeing. If you're dating a beautiful girl, men will want her, and men will try to get her. More power to them for trying. And hey, if she DOES give you the slip for some other cat, you can take that as strong evidence that either you weren't doing things right with her, or she wasn't the kind of girl who believes much in loyalty and fidelity, or you're dealing with some combination thereof (usually it's some combination thereof). Lately though, I've been seeing some pretty lame attempts by men trying to get my girlfriend. And it's made me (and my girlfriend) realize: most men have no idea what to do when a girl has a boyfriend and they like her. In an effort to stem the tide of lame attempts men make to get girls with boyfriends, I've put together a list here of the top 3 things TO do, and the top 7 things NOT to do when you're trying to get a girl who's got a guy. After reading this list you will, I hope, be in a much better position to avoid making these mistakes - and avoid ending up in time-wasting or worse situations with attached women, too. girl has a boyfriend The most annoying situation you'll encounter when a girl has a boyfriend is the one where said girl's not going to do anything at all with you... except waste your time, and potentially other things, too (such as: effort, emotions, money) if you aren't careful. Look out for these girls, or you might get sucked into a black hole where you're chasing after a girl, and eventually even perhaps can't stop thinking about her and start falling for her, while she's busily shacking up with that silly boyfriend you thought you could outfox. Many a daring man has been lost to falling for a girl with a boyfriend he can't convince her to leave. To save you from such a fate, our list of what not to do starts off with this unique category of women and situations: the Time Wasters. #1: SHE WANTS YOU TO HELP HER MAKE HIM JEALOUS No doubt you've been out somewhere - a bar, a nightclub, a party - and met or seen the girl who's miffed at her boyfriend and is trying to make him jealous. "Ah, easy pickings!" your mind might suddenly declare, as a diabolical grin spreads across your face. Not so fast. If a girl has a boyfriend with her at a party or club and she's upset at him and trying to make him jealous, that tells you two things: She's close enough with him that she CAME with him, and He affects her emotionally enough that he can make her upset There's usually a third point attached to this one, too: She has friends close-in-tow nearby What's wrong with these things? Take it to the next logical conclusion: She came with him, which means she's probably LEAVING with him. Right? If he affects her emotionally a great deal, that means she has strong emotions for him If she has strong emotions for him, those emotions are going to also include LOVE If she's trying to make him jealous, she isn't focused on you... she's focused on HIM Finally, if her friends are there, they're going to step in and intervene For all these reasons, a girl who pops up looking for some guy to help make her boyfriend jealous is usually a bad bet and is going to lead to wasted time and effort. There is, however, ONE glaring exception. Before anyone asks me to censor this because they don't like it, remember that when a girl is trying to make her boyfriend jealous, she isn't interacting with another guy as a person - she's trying to USE him as a tool to make her boyfriend mad. Is there harm in having a consensual encounter with a woman who was trying to use you? The only people who seem to have a gripe with this are those who believe that women are unable to control themselves, and therefore men must control women's emotions for them, for the good of society. Needless to say, as someone who sees women as, well, thinking, independent PEOPLE, this argument doesn't hold much salt with me. So here it is: if you move fast with a girl who has a boyfriend - like, really fast - you can (sometimes) clean up here. One friend of mine met a girl who was upset at her boyfriend and she took him out to her car for a quick fling about 30 minutes after they met. Another friend of mine met a girl upset with her boyfriend and took her in an alleyway outside the nightclub they met, before she went back inside to rejoin her friends and boyfriend. If you don't have your sexual vibe down and you're not moving blazing fast at handling logistics though, girls mad at their boyfriends and trying to make them jealous will just waste your time. They're just trying to use you to make the boyfriend feel bad and chase after them. Do NOT: Spend a lot of time with a girl trying to make her man jealous Hang out with the friends of a girl trying to make her man jealous Meet the boyfriend of a girl trying to make her man jealous Do anything other than move, move, move her to the point that you get together... or she decides she doesn't actually want to do something with you and goes back to her boyfriend Don't be a tool to help her make her boyfriend chase her harder. Escalate things and see if you can move girls that are (seemingly) flirting with and interested in you, and if you can't - move on. There are plenty of other women you can meet who won't be nearly as much of a headache. #2: THE GIRL YOU WINE AND DINE girl has a boyfriendI don't recommend doing this anyway (see the ever-popular-with-the-ladies "Should You Pay for a Date?"), but when a girl has a boyfriend this one ESPECIALLY goes out the window. Why? Because imagine the value calculation going on in her head: There you are, pursuing her, spending time on her, spending money on her. Meantime, she continues seeing her boyfriend. You take her out for a nice seafood dinner... then do call her again. The next day. After she went home after your dinner and had sex with her boyfriend. This continues for some time. Wash, rinse, repeat. Now... how's this affect your value to her? You're pursuing her over time, spending on her, entertaining her, and he's... sleeping with her. I'll tell you how it affects it. Her attraction for you plummets deeper and deeper down into the bottomless well of no-attraction. I've seen this happen back in the old days when I'd still spend time taking women on multiple dates and I did this with girls in relationships, and I still see this now with guys trying to get girls I'm dating. My current girlfriend will let male friends who want to be more than friends buy her dinner, but you can see the drop in attraction as time goes on - she might describe the guy as charming initially, but after a few of these outings she visibly has less and less respect for him. Don't be that guy who's taking a girl who's already got a boyfriend on date after date. If you can't do it in one date, the chance that you do do it falls dramatically with all women - but especially with a woman who's already got a man who's providing for her what you are not. #3: THE GAL WHO NEEDS A PAL You know what I'm talking about: the guy who's just friends with a girl he likes in the hopes that she'll eventually realize he's better for her than her boyfriend is, or that she's eventually going to break up with her boyfriend and then the two of them can be together. Why's this a bad idea? If you don't know, you need to check out that "Just Friends" article, as well as the one on the friend zone. But the long and short of it is, she's going to stop seeing you as a potential mate and come to value you primarily just for your friendship. She will date someone when she eventually breaks up with her boyfriend... but it won't be one of her close male friends. And all the while, the guys who were plowing all their time into "being there" for her are going to receive nothing in return for their time - at least not what they'd hoped. The only real thing you'll get will be a front row seat to her relationship ups and downs, and you'll get to be there to dry her eyes in between boyfriends. Not exactly "Consolation Prize of the Year," if you ask me. Don't waste time on being a girl's friend while you hope for her relationship to end. Instead, just come back into her life when her relationship ends. Trust me, she'll have a lot more attraction for you still than the guys who were hanging around holding her hand through the break up... and instead of you being the one standing there going, "Hey! But I put so much time in!" it'll be other guys saying that, while you get the girl. #4: THE GIRL WHO'S A TEASE You may be surprised to hear it, but there are, in fact, girls who are nothing but teases out there. My girlfriend right now is this way - she leads men on and leads men on, and they never get anywhere with her. She did it when she was single, and she does it now. She used to not be aware she was doing it, but now she is... and she keeps doing it anyway. Many guys HATE hearing about these kinds of girls, because they've had their own run ins with a tease and it wasted a lot of their time. Understand this, though: a girl who's a tease is not (usually) being a tease out of malice, but out of a sense of fun. I've seen a few girls who led men on because they liked messing with guys. That's pretty rare, though. Most of the girls who knowingly lead men on do it because they get a kick out of it, and they really believe that they're making the man feel good too - he gets to talk to a pretty girl, right? And that's the rub: the girl figures the value the man gets out of the whole interaction is that he gets to talk to a pretty girl. When a girl is leading a man on, she assumes he's a guy who doesn't get to talk to pretty girls that much. Why? Because experienced guys don't get led on. It's only the guys who don't know what they're doing that do. What do experienced guys do differently? They don't waste time. They'll very quickly set up dates and get together with a girl, and very quickly sleep with a girl, or they'll disappear. No: Texting back and forth for hours Confessing their feelings Fretting because they haven't heard back from her in too long Just plain and simple "make it happen or move on." How can you tell if a girl's a tease? A few ways: Most important: she'll be in control of the conversation She'll get a guy telling a lot about himself or flirting She won't tell much about herself or let you get to know her She'll avoid meet ups as much as possible - they're harder to control A girl who's a tease is getting her kicks while in a relationship without risking that relationship. After all, no harm a guy can do her over text, right? She'll sometimes meet up if pushed, but she'll get upset if the meet up goes out of control and the guy tries to advance things. Why's that upsetting? Because that's not the role he's supposed to play. He's supposed to text her and let her get her kicks, and in return she'll provide some hope to him that he might actually have a chance with a hot girl like her. The reality? He lost his chance the moment he started chasing her. Don't chase women - especially not women in relationships, and especially not women who'll tease. girl has a boyfriend Just because a girl who has a boyfriend decides to go for you doesn't automatically mean you should go for it. There are other considerations, too, not the least of which are the ones where there are going to be consequences to your actions that aren't going to be so good. #5: SHE'S GOT A CRAZY BOYFRIEND / HUSBAND / EX I don't care if he's: Her boyfriend, Her husband, or Her ex and she's totally single... ... if the guy's unstable and a mess and you know he's a problem, stay away from her. It's not worth putting yourself in a situation where a guy's going psycho because his little princess ran off and hooked up with some guy she met at a dive bar (you). And if you think he'll never find out, you might be surprised. I received a phone call from the husband (whom I didn't know existed) of a girl I slept with sometime back. I thought she was single; turned out she was a newlywed. I've met boyfriends who gave me cold stares; they knew. I don't know anyone personally who's had a violent run-in with a boyfriend, husband, or ex of a girl he's slept with, and I know some guys with pretty sordid pasts, but this sort of thing is something to be very wary of. If she's the kind of person who'll involve herself with a crazy violent person, too, that says something about her as well - even if she's trying her best to not let on that there might be anything wrong. Steer clear if she's got an overly possessive man in her immediate past or present. There are thousands or millions of women in your town right now that aren't going to introduce those kinds of problems into your life, no matter how "wonderful" she might seem to be in the moment. #6: WHEN A GIRL IS EMOTIONALLY A MESS A girl who's emotionally a mess can trigger another one of those deceptive "Ha HA! Easy pickings!" moments in many men's heads (same as an attractive man who's emotionally a mess can trigger those moments in women's), but I call that "deceptive" for a reason: girls who are emotionally a mess are not a walk in the park. Whether you want to steal a girl like this away from her boyfriend and turn her into your girlfriend, or you're just looking for a one-time night of bliss, you're going to get a lot more than you bargained for when you date the Girl Who's a Mess™ with all her emotional baggage in tow. What does "more" mean, exactly? Well, to put it bluntly: you're going to be listening to her problems - often, complaints about her boyfriend - and she's going to be constantly talking about what makes her unhappy. If you're good, you can tell her, "Shut up, and let's just try and have a great time and not think about our problems," but at some point - maybe before you take her to bed, maybe after - those problems are going to come back again. She's stuck in a loop, and she'll keep returning to the things that are on her mind - and what's on her mind isn't her and you (unless you cause some problems for her that she can dwell on, that is); rather, they're her and her boyfriend, or her and how men don't treat women right, or don't treat her right, or how her parents didn't treat her right, or how someone is doing something not right to her. Basically, she isn't in control of her life, she's going to blame everyone else for her problems, and you're either going to listen to it... or you're going to become one of those people who gets blamed for causing problems for her too. Worth selling your soul just to partake of her charms? Unless she's exceptionally more beautiful than what you're accustomed to (and perhaps even then), the answer's a resounding "no." #7: WHEN A GIRL HAS A BOYFRIEND SHE LOVES This is the one where I'll advise you to rein in your powers of seduction to avoid wrecking a woman's life. Otherwise, your soul will turn black and cold and all hope for redemption will be lost. Well, not necessarily, but you'll still mess her up. Just don't do this. Why not? What happens when a girl loves her boyfriend and you manage to seduce her despite herself anyway and get her in bed? It was her decision anyway... right? Here's the thing: most people are not REALLY in control of their lives. This is why most people fear seducers so much. Most people are floating aimlessly through life, chasing after emotions, looking for their next emotional fix, following some fleeting, vaporous sense of purpose they absorbed from church or school or society or the latest Sex and the City rerun. They don't really know who they are, they don't really know what they want, and they let other things around them influence them by impacting their emotions. And as a seducer, what you're doing is you're impacting women's emotions. Usually, this is a good thing: you pluck a girl out of the mediocrity that is ordinary life and give her an extraordinary experience. Maybe the two of you go on to be paramours; maybe it was just that one night that you spent together as lovers. Either way, you leave a positive, meaningful impact on a girl and she'll always look back warmly on having met you and gone away with you. Not so for the girl you seduce who loves her boyfriend, though. That girl you're temporarily blinding to her emotions by creating other emotions in her... but then, once it's over, her love for him comes rushing back, and she's torn apart. I haven't seen this myself - I stay far away from people who are in love, it isn't something I want to mess with - but some of my more cynical friends haven't, and I've heard some of the stories of girls coming to see them and crying over their boyfriends they love. It messes with women's heads. For your own sake and for hers, don't date or sleep with a girl who has a boyfriend she loves. It isn't worth it. girl has a boyfriend Let's say a girl has a boyfriend and you realize she doesn't fall into Category One or Two - she isn't a time waster or worse. She's got a man, but she isn't happy with him - she wants you. At least, you think she does. What should you do? In this last part of the post, I want to focus on those three things you should do if you want to get together with a girl who has a boyfriend... those things that will help you to be a success. #8: BE REFRESHINGLY DIFFERENT Everyone falls into routine with their relationships at some point. He does his thing, and she does hers... and she gets bored. Your role as the "guy on the side" or as the new guy who's going to take the place of the boyfriend, if you want that, is to be what he is not: exciting, fresh, and different. What that means, of course, is that the guys who try to get a girl who has a boyfriend by talking about their boring jobs and dull hobbies are even less likely to get girls than the guys who do that with single women. That doesn't mean to be an entertainer though, either. Funny doesn't get you girls... otherwise, Bozo the Clown would be up to his eyeballs in women, instead of dogs and kids and colorful fuzzy balls. A good sense of humor and wit is fine - but you need to open her eyes and show her vistas she doesn't see in her relationship. You must be better than her boyfriend... while maintaining sprezzatura and respecting the Law of Least Effort. girl has a boyfriend How do you do this? Be calm. Be cool. Move fast. And don't be a burden. Don't complain to her, don't whine, don't seem anything more than a dream... because that's what she wants and needs you to be. She needs solace from the drudgery of an everyday relationship with an everyday guy. You must be exceptional. Read "The Conversationalist" and "How to Build an Emotional Connection" for more on these. #9: BE PERSISTENT Some guys meet a girl with a boyfriend who is not sure whether she wants them or not. Many guys will get discouraged here and throw in the towel, when in fact had they persisted somewhat they would've gotten the girl. You needn't be persistent in an off-putting way - you can be quite charming as you persist. e.g.: You: Come with me, let's steal away into the night. Her: I can't... I have a boyfriend. You: It's okay, he'll never know. Her: But *I'll* know. You: So will I. We can share it together as a secret. Her: [laughs] No! You: I don't think you'd be laughing if you weren't interested. Her: I'm laughing because this is ridiculous. You: You're laughing because you're too excited to contain your laughter. Now let's go. Her: [laughs] I am not going anywhere! You: We'll go for five minutes and then you can leave if you want to. Her: Okay. But ONLY five minutes! You: Cross my heart. Her: [laughs] Okay, let's go. This kind of persistence can be very winning with women - very attractive to them. And if you persist with a girl persistently (sounds funny, right? Persist persistently?), and she stays around for it, you can be assured that she's at least considering it... otherwise, she'd be uncomfortable and she'd be gone. #10: DON'T BE A BOYFRIEND! You've seen it on this site again and again - don't try to be her boyfriend! This goes for single girls as well as girls in relationships. But it's DOUBLY true for attached women. Why? A couple of reasons. Women in relationships are more attracted to single men. A recent study found that single women rated men they were told were in relationships as more attractive than men they were told were single, while women in relationships rated men they were told were single as more attractive than men they were told were in relationships. Why? Women who are single are looking for boyfriends - so they care if a guy's a high enough caliber that other women want to date him. Meanwhile, women in relationships are looking for flings - and those are easier to get with guys who are single than guys who are attached. If you try to be her boyfriend, you're in COMPETITION with her boyfriend. One of the most atrocious things a man can do when trying to get a girl is compete with her boyfriend. "He's no good for you," a guy might tell his prospective lover about her boyfriend. Wrong answer! When a guy says this, he's communicating that he's competing for the boyfriend role. What happens then? Now she must evaluate him and compare him to current boyfriend - investment levels and all. That means that even if he's slightly better than her current beau, he's still shut out because she's already so invested in the guy. He's got to be LEAGUES better... and then, of course, he's got to prove he'll be exceptional boyfriend material through multiple dates and lots of waiting. Chances are, nothing comes of these efforts, and much time is wasted. Don't go this route. She'll be more attracted to you if you're a single rogue, and she'll be more attracted to you if you AREN'T (seemingly) interested in replacing her boyfriend... just in, say, supplementing her diet of men. If you do want her as your girlfriend, trust that she'll be far more inclined to become it once the two of you are lovers - especially if you really are a better man for her than her boyfriend is (she'll have to be the judge of that, though). By staying away from time wasters and worse, and focusing on doing things right with the girls you like who are in relationships, you can up your odds of landing the girls of your choice - even if they happen to be with some guy not quite as great as you right now ;) Talk to you next time.

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##[] How to be Unpredictable with Women (and Up attraction) In "Time Efficiency Done Right," Michal asks the following about how to be unpredictable: be unpredictable "Hi, Chase. I can't stress enough how your site helped me and opened my eyes. I feel you spend less time on projects because you have great analytic skills and you come up with solution pretty fast while others take hours to think it through. I have been thinking, could you write a post on How to be unpredictable/not to be predictable? It struck me the other day when I was talking with a female friend - I am too predictable. So I used search and I only found some shattered information here and on forum too. I found on other sites that good technique for this is Push/Pull which you already wrote about. But you said that push/pull is only to increase attraction, not to build it. I know the core of the issue (being predictable), it kills attraction, they are not excited and you are slotted as a boring person. But I dont really know what should I do about this. Make her guessing? And how? Like not saying things outright? Tell her "Ah, now I know why your pink skirt does not seem right to me". She asks why and then I should say like.. "Maybe if you behave good today, I will tell you." Should I start saying "Maybe" more? And answering with: "Maybe I will, maybe I won't" And what other things should I keep in mind? Because I feel it's what women want in a man among other traits - to be able to surprise them even after 5 years in a relationship. Michal" Push-pull and hinting at things while not fully revealing them build intrigue, which contributes to unpredictability. These are good. And yes, I do use the word "Maybe" quite a lot with women. It's a great answer when you're being pressed for details on something that doesn't help you to answer, and you can add in all kinds of sexual undertones. But there's a good bit more to unpredictability than these tactics. This one's an especially interesting topic for me, largely because I love strategy. My favorite computer games were always the ones that demanded the most attention to being strategic - games like Age of Empires and StarCraft were at the top of my list. And my favorite board games likewise - Chess and Risk reigning supreme for me there. Unpredictability has a very large strategic component to it - because, in learning how to be unpredictable, one must also learn the limits: how much unpredictability is enough? How much is too much? Because in this respect, your degree of unpredictability is much like your driving speed: too little compared to someone else and you're a snooze, too much compared to someone else and you're a mad man. be unpredictable A man walks into a bar. Asks the first woman he sees if she wants to get out of there. "I was here first," she replies. "Why should I be the one to leave?" We enjoy unpredictability because it shakes us out of running in autopilot and forces us to pay attention and think. Unpredictability rivets us back into the real world, thinking and feeling and sensing as if for the first time. The more familiar with something you become, typically speaking, the less you enjoy it. As the patterns become familiar to your brain, the brain spends less and less time and energy trying to decipher these new patterns, and everything is something it's seen a hundred times before. This is a big part of why chase framing works so well at establishing attraction and intrigue with a woman... it isn't expected, and it flies in the face of what she's learned with time normally happens when she talks to men. Usually, they pursue her, and she gives chase. When a man breaks this mold, it's unpredictable, refreshing, and amusing. It makes her think and feel. And the more familiar a woman is with the standard repertoire of being approached and courted, the better able you must be at doing and being unfamiliar enough that she is intrigued... but not so unfamiliar that she is put off or finds you unrelatable. MOST MEN: TOO PREDICTABLE In "Turn On Your Girlfriend with Raw Sexual Enthusiasm," I talked about the standard pattern many men follow with women they're seeing: She comes over They talk for a while They eat dinner They relax and watch a movie They get ready for bed Just before falling asleep, they have sex There's nothing exciting about this; it doesn't make her wonder what will happen, or try to guess at what time which thing will occur. Instead, she quickly learns exactly how things are going to go, and intrigue quickly wanes. Most guys are the same way when they first meet a girl, too, or when they call or text her after getting her number, or when they take her on the first date... or the second date... or the third. And what happens when the same script gets followed again and again and again? She gets bored. And boredom is the complete opposite to attraction. You're better off if she hates you than if she's bored with you. At least hate is an emotion... we can work with that. With boredom, there's just nothing there. be unpredictable She feels nothing. Nothing except, "Someone please save me!" that is. Not only do most men not know how to be unpredictable, but most men don't even try. The most most men do to be unpredictable is to buy their girlfriend flowers every once in a blue moon. How uninspired, and cliché. SOME MEN: TOO UNPREDICTABLE At the other end of the spectrum are the men who are totally unpredictable. These are the guys who are professing their undying devotion to a girl one day, and then they're running off for a vacation in Rome with an Italian girl they just met at the train station the next. They say they're going to pick a girl up for a date, then flake on her and don't even bother to text her they won't show up. Then later when she texts them about this, they call her back apologizing profusely, with dramatic-sounding reasons for why they missed the appointment. They'll be having a nice conversation with her in a café one day, then suddenly erupt into a string of obscenities at the waiter for getting their order all wrong. Then they'll calm back down, thank the waiter, and go back to the conversation. Women have different reactions to this kind of personality. Some are completely put off by it immediately... others find it initially vexing, and intriguing; a challenge to be overcome. A wild stallion to tame. But eventually, even those women who were up to the task originally burn out, suffer ego depletion, and go into auto-rejection. These men are too unpredictable. They'll often have brief, tumultuous relationships, but never anything stable, and never anything that lasts all that long. Their lives are long series of fiery, passionate trysts that flame out with anger, accusations, hurt feelings, and finger pointings. Often they wonder why they can't maintain anything longer term, or yearn for a girl who'll "stick around" even though they themselves won't. If you're reading an article about how to be unpredictable, chances are this isn't your problem. However, it's worth being aware that it absolutely IS possible to have too much of what's normally a good thing here, and that while you're tweaking your predictability to be a little lower than what it is right now, swinging too far to the other extreme isn't all that desirable either. HER LIFE IS BORING "Life's always an adventure when you've got me around." This is something I tell to the women I date (usually after something crazy / incredible / ridiculous has just happened). Among the women I have longer relationships with, I usually end up getting a, "Yes, life certainly IS a lot crazier with you around." My Peruvian ex was great at expressing mock exasperation at whatever my latest outlandish adventurers were... "Ay, Chasito!" she'd say, followed by a slow shaking of her head and a skeptical look of her own. I've had guys sometimes ask how you can feel "good enough" for a woman... this is one of those things I struggle to answer, because I've personally never felt like I wasn't "good enough" for a girl. The only women who've ever told me, "I would NEVER date a guy like you!" are the ones writing pissed off notes in the comment sections of a few of the articles here, who don't know me and have never met me and have an inaccurate picture of me in their heads, culled from a very small segment of my writing on the site. (my ex-girlfriends sometimes tell me they'd never date a guy like me too) But I suppose one thing that can help you to realize one of the core forms of value you can offer to a woman's life, if you haven't realized it already, is this: most people - beautiful women included - lead dull, unexciting, uninspiring lives. And if you can do anything to spice that up in a way that isn't entirely negative, you're almost always doing them a big favor... and becoming one of the most memorable people of their entire lives. be unpredictable "I'm never completely sure what to predict with you, except that I probably won't be able to predict it." That's the kind of thing you want women thinking around you. I think if you don't have much experience being unpredictable, you tend to assume wrong about what this means, though. It doesn't mean you lurk behind a corner waiting for her to walk by, then lunge out at her like a mad Jack-in-the-box. That's not the kind of unpredictable we're talking about here. Rather, the kind of unpredictable we are talking about is the kind that breaks routines and shatters autopilots; you bring newness, excitement, exploration, and intrigue, instead. HOW TO BE UNPREDICTABLE It's impossible to be truly unpredictable all the time, unless you have a pretty serious personality disorder (like, say, schizophrenia). However, you can add a large degree of what appears to be unpredictability to your life by following several life rules that differ from the rules that most people follow for themselves, and that they have difficulty understanding the mental model behind, and thus difficulty predicting your actions via. Here are mine. Being a "yes man." Ever see the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man? It's about a guy with a sad, empty existence who changes his life tremendously for the better by deciding to say "yes" to every invitation extended to him. I saw it for the first time recently and had a big smile on my face throughout, because that was exactly the philosophy I adopted myself to break myself out of a similar rut. I didn't go quite as extreme as he did (e.g., I'd still turn down sexual advances from, say, particularly large or unattractive women - I'm all for lowering your standards to level up in skill, but within reason), but it was pretty much the same, and has been. In fact, learning to say "no" again in moderation was rather difficult; it's much easier to be a "no man" (like I was for the first two decades of my life) or a "yes man" (like I was for the third decade of my life). But if you want an easy way to become unpredictable, start saying "yes" to every not totally insane request or invitation you receive. Just when someone thinks she has you all figured out as an accountant or a computer programmer who plays it safe, you run off to go skydiving and she throws up her hands and says, "There, see! Totally unpredictable." The truth was, one of your friends just invited you, and you - against your better judgment - just said "yes." Being a mirror. People learn to deal with people in specific ways and expect specific results. For instance, this person loves socializing with large groups while this person prefers one-on-one; this person prefers to talk about literature, while this person loves sports, and this person is all about politics. This person is conservative, so he'll tend to be defensive in a confrontation rather than offensive; this person is impulsive, so he'll tend to go on the attack to get what he wants, but isn't so good when put on his heels. My philosophy is, be a mirror. Reflect back to each person how she is with you. On the positive side (connecting, doing fun things, etc.) people will find you incredibly relatable because you mirror their own interests back to them - then be amazed at how you're able to talk to anyone else about anything else and connect fluidly with them, too. On the negative side (arguing, fighting, etc.) people will be surprised when instead of responding with the customary response to their attacks (e.g., the way people usually respond to whatever attack they use), you fight fire with fire and hit them back with their same exact strategy - which they're used to using on others, not defending against. Being a mirror is a very easy way to appear unpredictable - all you do is reflect back to someone how he or she is with you. Most people expect you to react to them, rather than reflect - reflection is nearly always unexpected. Being averse to wasting time. This one's funny, but the more you dig yourself out of a "I have time to spare" mentality, the more unpredictable you become to most people. e.g., you'll be driving, and someone will say, "Oh, I just heard that I-95 is completely gridlocked right now," and you'll pull off the highway and turn onto the back roads - "Let's not wait in traffic," you'll say. Or a girl you're talking to says, "We can go in a few minutes - let's just talk to my friends first," and you, knowing that your chances of pulling drop dramatically if she reengages with her friends, first say, "Okay," so it isn't a fight, then, after taking a few steps, say, "Actually, wait - let's sneak into this alcove over here for a moment. We can go talk to your friends just after," and then you make out with her a bit to try and excite her and get her mind off talking to her friends and pull her sooner. The more religious you get about being efficient and not wasting time on things, the more "unpredictable" you'll start to seem, because other people who aren't thinking that way won't immediately understand why you're doing what you're doing (to save time), and it will see unexpected and surprising to them - and, often, refreshing, since no one likes having her time wasted, but few people are aware enough of this that they proactively guard against it. Not talking about personal interests. This one really befuddles people, especially if your interests are substantially different from most of your friends (which tends to happen when you are a "yes man" and surround yourself with people who will push and pull you into trying things you wouldn't have tried on your own). Most people only do what they want to do, and assume that you are the same - so when they see you doing things, they assume those are the things you want to do, too. Then they think they have you pegged. Then they'll try to predict what you'll do in the future, or in a certain situation, and they assume they've got you all figured out... and then you do something completely different. Or, they'll find your puzzling because what they learn about your personality doesn't seem to match up with some of the things you do. The pieces don't fit all nicely together like they do with most people - who are you really? What do you really want? They don't know, and can't tell. This tends to intrigue them even more - you become ever more Byronic, with ever more masks to peel back. Periodically trying "exotic" sex. This means new sex positions, locations (e.g., at the beach, in the back of your car, at the top of a waterfall, etc.), fetishes (e.g., bondage, S&M, etc.). You don't have to do these a lot - in fact, you really only need to try them once. Try it once, and it will stick in a girl's head. When she thinks about sex with you, she'll remember, "The sex is usually pretty good.. and sometimes it's CRAZY! Remember that time we had sex in a Ferris wheel??" A few crazy sexual experiences is usually all you need for her to think you're an at least occasionally-unpredictable sexual maniac... even if you usually just do the same 3 positions over and over again 96% of the time. None of these things constitute true unpredictability. Anyone who really knows you completely to the core will still be able to predict your actions. However, when you: Say "yes" to all kinds of opportunities from all kinds of different people, Mirror people's actions and behaviors toward you back toward them, Hate wasting time, and constantly look for ways to cut out time wasting, and Talk with other people about their interests but don't bother mentioning yours ... people quickly come to view you as wild, crazy, and unpredictable. "You're going mountain climbing? I didn't know you did that!" "That's because I haven't done it yet... this weekend I will." BEING UNPREDICTABLE WITH WOMEN YOU'VE JUST MET be unpredictableEasiest way to be unpredictable with women you've just met? It's as simple as this: Don't do what every other guy does Don't tell her what you're going to do Keep escalating things, move fast, and make headway If you need a slightly more detailed breakdown, here it is: Don't do what every other guy does. This is why things like walking up to a girl and saying, "Hi, I'm Calvin," with anything other than the most drippingly sensual tone of voice and matching facial expressions don't work with women and lead to blow outs and massive attraction drops: they're entirely predictable. "Oh," she thinks, "he's exactly like every other man who approaches me. Now he's going to ask me my name... then tell me how pretty I am... then ask if he can buy me a drink..." Instead, be different. Surprise her and tickle her senses. I won't go into all the different ways to do that; this website is chock full of them, and you won't have any trouble finding them if you're looking. But, do look. And don't be the same. Don't tell her what you're going to do. Again, the exception here is if you're utterly oozing sex out of your pores and she's already pretty much made up her mind that that's what she wants with you. Otherwise, "statements of intent" and things of the sort (e.g., verbally telling her 'here's what I'd like to have happen with you') shows all your cards and makes you too predictable. The only time this works is when you tell her you're going to do one thing... then you do another. For instance, you meet a girl at a park, and tell her, "Tomorrow night, I'm going to take you out and wine and dine you." You then stand up, extend your hand to her and say, "But right now - come with me." Then take her somewhere she knows not where. That can work. Otherwise, keep your plans (if you have any) under wraps. Keep escalating things, move fast, and make headway. Most men's approaches have a predictable level of either them bumbling around, missing girls' signals, and not doing enough to move things forward, OR a predictable level of them charging ahead regardless of whether the girl is interested or not and trying to move things forward at all the wrong times. Instead, you want to be escalating at the right moments, when she's ready for things to move forward, right away. How's this unpredictable? Because most men either 1) wait way too long after a woman signals she's ready for progress, or 2) don't wait for her to signal at all and go bombs away on escalation even if the girl isn't ready for it yet. Don't be like them - read the signals, then act. You'll be refreshingly unpredictable - even though you're merely doing what you should be doing (to get a girl in bed). You could sum this up the same way you could sum up the section right above this one: don't be boring. ADD A LITTLE UNPREDICTABILITY TO HER LIFE Being unpredictable doesn't mean being random. It's not about being zany and erratic and insane. It isn't bouncing off the walls and doing magic tricks and getting into fights with people who look at you funny and then buying them a beer afterwards. Rather, unpredictability is mainly about doing things that break a girl's mental model of what she thinks you could, would, or SHOULD do - ideally, breaking these predictions in fun, attractive, and stimulating ways. You can achieve this unpredictability through following some standard procedures - the very antithesis of true unpredictability. But true unpredictability isn't what we're after here. Only the perception of unpredictability. Over the short term, being unpredictable means you: Don't do what every other guy does Don't tell her what you're going to do Keep escalating things, move fast, and make headway Over the long term, being unpredictable entails: Being a "yes man" Being a mirror Being averse to wasting time Not talking about your personal interests Periodically trying "exotic" sex These items will keep you having just enough new things going on that people are continually surprised (and often impressed) by you, without you having to burn mental cycles trying to figure out new ways to be impressive - instead, unpredictability becomes a natural part of your life... it's built in. Most people are "no" people. They say "no" to things they aren't familiar with or don't already like. Most people are not mirrors - they just are who they are, and never take the time to understand others and adopt their own traits, behaviors, and arguments. Most people don't mind wasting time - they might say they do, but they'll still go the long way or avoid shortcuts because there's too much uncertainty to deal with. Most people love talking about their own interests and helping others to understand them better and predict what they want and need more. Most people fall into patterns and routines with sex, with meeting strangers, and with how fast they move things that border on the conservative and the uninspiring, or the "too much" and the inattentive. It doesn't take much to do things differently than most people. You've just got to change your reaction to a few different common scenarios, like people asking you to do things you maybe at first don't want to do, or summoning up the courage to try a new shortcut that you aren't sure will get you where you want to go, but saves you buckets of time if it does. If you can do that - if you can change your standard responses to a few kinds of scenarios, in ways that bring novelty, speed, and uncertainty into your life in ways that few people allow themselves to experience - you will very quickly become a surprising, originally, and unpredictable individual to almost everyone you meet. And one of the few things they can reliably predict about you, they'll come to tell you, is that you're always doing something different. Your life will be a lot more interesting for it, too.

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##[] Cheek Kiss + Hand Hold Forget if I posted this before... probably have talked about it in passing, but don't think I devoted an actual post to it. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm having a hard time keeping everything sorted out these days. Really fun way on getting the ball rolling fast and getting girls excited about you off the opener. Learned to use cheek kisses on opening a few years back from Seb -- after you open, as you introduce yourself, take your girl's hand with one of your hands, and place the other hand on her shoulder. Pull her in gently with both hands (one behind her shoulder, one holding her hand) and put your cheek against her cheek, then change to the other side. You'll see an instant spike in attraction from roughly about 98.4% of women... you're acting very confident, very sexy, and getting investment (when she leans in and does the cheek kiss with you), all in one fell swoop. It's good. I more recently (maybe five or six months back) added another part to this: after the cheek-to-cheek kiss on opening / name-exchanging, I'd keep her hand in my hand and let it linger as I continued on into normal conversation and maintained eye contact. What I noticed was that most women would keep their hand in mine, and would get a much bigger smile as they talked to me holding my hand than the ones whose hand I let go and proceeded as normal with. Same deal each time, only difference is you keep holding your girl's hand, and you'll notice the smiles of the girls whose hands you continue holding are much broader and their eyes are more lively and excited. I'll typically transition from here to heavier kino, like putting my hand on a girl's waist or on the small of her back (depending on what's within reach and natural for me to touch). Sometimes things will sexualize extremely rapidly right off the bat with all this extra touch, and girls will get aggressive. This does NOT happen without all the initial physicality. This works great with all kinds of women, and is something I highly recommend. It gets a very intimate, very sexual vibe rolling quite quickly, and gets you started off on the right foot. Group note: if I'm meeting more than one girl, I'll typically only cheek-kiss the one I like. I've seen other guys cheek-kiss every girl; matter of personal preference. I want to be friendly with all, but also make it clear to all the women where my interest lies, so I don't have different girls competing for me and end up in a situation where a more dominant girl sidelines the girl I actually want so she can have a shot at me instead. So you can use targeted cheek kissing to communicate your preference.

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##[] "Do you have a girlfriend?" THis is how you answer In "Girl Changes Her Mind Too Much? Try This," Maxz asks this: "Speaking of indecision, I had a question for you. I recently had two girls who I was trying to bed ask me if I had a Girlfriend? I told each girl "I was not exclusive to any one woman". One of the Girls who had agreed to come over to my place flaked the next day saying she could not make it because she had suddenly got sick though I am certain she was not. Do you think her flaking was a response to my answer? As I think this girl was trying to put me in the BF category and my answer I thought put me out of that label." He's right here that you don't want to simply up and answer "Do you have a girlfriend?" in the normal yes/no way that most men do. A straight "yes" or "no" robs you of any intrigue, puts the control of the interaction clearly into the asker's hands, and just generally makes things a lot less interesting. do you have a girlfriend Plus, whether you say "yes" or "no," it's easy for either one to say something bad about you: If "yes," that you're 'off the market' and not available (or some sleazy guy who sneaks around behind his girlfriend's back if you try anything) If "no," that you're not preselected by other women and there must be something wrong with you (why don't other women want you?) You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. But if you tell her "I'm not exclusive," well, that has problems too - now you're seen as some freewheeling wild man who's either immature or "not what she's looking for" much of the time. How on Earth do you answer this? do you have a girlfriend When I was new to picking up girls, this question was probably the most maddening question out there for me. "Do you have a girlfriend?" No matter how I answered it, I'd see a sudden and complete shift in the power dynamic in the interaction. Regardless of who'd been in the stronger position before it, after I'd answered the girl was always on top. It drove me nuts. It was like kryptonite for attraction. All a girl had to do to murder all intrigue, desire, and attraction there might be was utter those five little words; after that, and after I answered, whatever that answer might be, the best I could hope for at that point was being just friends with her... and I wasn't interested in that. Surely, women must know what this does to their attraction for a man, I thought. They must know that this destroys intrigue, kills desire, and upends the chances that they end up together with him. I knew that the average girl had asked this enough that she must've seen the effect this had on her interactions. So why'd she keep asking it? EMOTIONAL OUTBURST VS. CONSCIOUS CONVO KILLER I eventually came to the conclusion that there are two different types of women who ask you about your girlfriend status: Women who are genuinely emotional beings, are genuinely interested in you, and simply say whatever's on their minds and this happened to be what was on their minds Women who are conscious of the effect this question normally has, know that it's a way to mess with you, and do so for laughs because they already view themselves as being in charge of things anyway The first girls are kind of cute and almost innocence in their bursting-at-the-seams interest in finding out your relationship status. They're really, genuinely excited about you, and when they ask this they're giving themselves away: they want you as a boyfriend, and are trying to find out if you're available for that. The downside of this, of course, is that with any highly emotionally driven woman, her emotions are fleeting. She may be dreaming of you as her future husband one minute, then one small thing happens and an instant later she's decided she wouldn't even want you in her friend zone. So if you go thinking you can just say, "Yeah, sure - I'm available!" simply because she wanted you as a boyfriend when she asked that question and things will be all gravy... think again. The other girl is at once both less pleasant to run into, but also increasingly uncommon to run into as your abilities with women get better and better. This is a girl who believes that she is "above" you; either she views her social status as superior to yours, or she views herself as more socially experienced and savvy than you and doesn't take you seriously. When a girl doesn't take you seriously, there are two ways she can deal with an interaction with you: She can be nice to you, take care of your emotions, make idle chit-chat with you, and eventually let you down softly, or She can mess with you, feign interest while undermining you in the interaction, test the heck out of you, and do her best to make you look bad Most girls do the former. But occasionally, you'll run into women who do the latter. This might be because they are cold-hearted people. Much of the time though, it can simply be because they're wise-cracking, pressure-wielding individuals who get a kick out of making the people around them squirm (their friends included), and see the fact that you're trying to pick them up as a kind of opportunity for them to crack more jokes and give someone they don't know who's randomly approached them a hard time. These girls can actually be a lot of fun IF you can get around the wise-cracking, joke-making, fun-at-your-expense-having nature of them when you approach them while not at your smoothest (and if you're able to not take it too personal when you get this kind of reception). To do that, however, you've got to be able to answer this question. do you have a girlfriend "I'm not exactly boyfriend material," or, "I'm not really a one-girl guy." That's how I used to women when I was new to picking up and they'd ask me the dreaded "Do you have a girlfriend?" question. The response I'd commonly get to this was a mysterious, "I see," or, "Oh... okay," followed by a withdraw of interest or emotion. I didn't completely understand what this was, or why it was happening. These days, I'd tell you that this is what's happening: You're not being relatable. When you tell a girl you're not boyfriend material or not a one-girl guy, you're making yourself not relatable to 98% of women. Even most girls who regularly hook up and have one night stands still don't "relate" to a man who says he doesn't "do" monogamy. It's a strange contradiction, but just because she takes a lot of lovers doesn't mean she thinks of herself as someone who wants an exclusive boyfriend any less than anyone else. By declaring that you're non-exclusive, you essentially take yourself out of contention for the majority of women, and position yourself as a two-dimensional stereotype. You're looking stiff, not smooth. A smooth man doesn't come equipped with many hard rules... especially not about the kind and style of dating he does. When you start off with telling a woman your "dating guidelines," you're communicating to her that you've put too much thought into this - and that you're overly rigid. Women prefer unthinking naturalness over calculated stiffness every day of the week. You're answering too matter-of-factly. One of the big rules of building intrigue is that you don't directly, matter-of-factly answer questions if at all possible. Why not? Because matter-of-fact answers kill curiosity and interest, and that's not what you want to be doing... you want to be building those, not removing them. You're making it a preference. If you state that you're not boyfriend material, that implies there's something a little wrong with you; if you state that you're not a one-girl kind of guy, that implies that this is a preference of yours. The problem with preferences is that people who don't share them don't respect them. Just take a look at conservatives vs. liberals, or adherents of one religious faith vs. another, to get a feel for this. You're being absolute. Telling a girl, "I am this," is being absolute and final - and it shuts down any thoughts of her challenging whatever "this" is, or changing your mind. So, the straight-up "I don't do monogamy," is often no more effective than a plain and simple "yes" or "no" when answering the question of whether you have a girlfriend or not. But if you can't say "yes"... and you can't say "no"... and you can't say "I'm not boyfriend material" or "I'm not a one-girl guy" or "I don't do 'exclusive'"... then what can you say? do you have a girlfriend HOW TO ANSWER "DO YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND?" If our review of why "I'm not boyfriend material" doesn't work all that well teaches us anything above, it's this: You want to be relatable You want to be smooth You want to create intrigue You want it to be somewhat out of your control You want to suggest things are open to challenging How do you accomplish all of this with a single answer? Simple: you tell her you don't date girls to be nice to them. As Richard A. Bogg and Janet M. Ray showed in "The Heterosexual Appeal of Socially Marginal Men," women are most attracted to masculine, dominant men who nevertheless have multiple personality "flaws." And of course, these men must also be attainable. That is to say, if you present yourself not as the uninspiring (the man who answers "no" when asked whether he has a girlfriend), nor as the unattainable (the man who answers "yes" when asked whether he has a girlfriend, or who says he doesn't "do" the whole girlfriend-thing), but as hard-to-get yet not completely out-of-reach, you'll send women into a frenzy of desire and activity to "get" you. So how do you answer this one? Simple: "My life is simply too busy for a girlfriend right now... it wouldn't be fair to her." Thus: You're relatable, because everyone can understand being busy You're smooth, because you're communicating high value in your busyness You create intrigue, as she wonders what you're so busy with that you can't have a relationship It's something rather outside of your control - it's not that you don't WANT relationships, it's that you simply have more important things to do You challenge the girl, who longs for a chance to prove that SHE is better than all these OTHER women - maybe other women haven't been able to carve a role out for themselves in your life, but SHE can Generally, the instant you use something like this, you'll get asked, "What are you so busy with?" because she simply has to know what could POSSIBLY be so important to you that it's superseding the place of relationships in your life. And the intrigue is on, and the game is afoot. So, the next time you get asked, "Do you have a girlfriend?" don't panic. Don't get matter-of-fact, and don't try to put down an iron foot stamping out any hope of her wrestling you into boyfriend territory. Instead, simply set it up as a challenge: it's not that you're closed off to relationships... it's just that no woman has come along who's been more important to you than the things you need to do. Most women, you'll find, become fascinating, riveted, and captivated by this challenge - and that makes you all the more attractive, whether she's a creature of emotion or one who simply likes to push men's buttons.

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##10 surprising rules on how to be a wingman Unless you exclusively meet women by yourself, sooner or later you're going to have a buddy along with you when you meet a new girl or two. And what your buddy does -- and what you do -- can go a long way toward determining the outcome of that encounter. There are, it seems, as many prescriptions out there on how to be a wingman as there are on how to become a millionaire, or how to get six-pack abs. But, you know me -- I don't tend to agree with too much of the advice that's out there. I usually find it overcomplicated and too "fancy." Like, if you want great abs, you don't get the Super Ab Roller 3000 and start rubbing lotions on your stomach to melt away the fat. Instead, you just scale down the number of calories you're taking in and cut your carbs to drop the belly that's hiding your abs, and regularly hit the gym, go grab a bar above your head, and start lifting your knees up against your chest until your abs are on fire a couple times a week to build up your abdominals. Presto, great abs without magic machines or mysterious ointments. Learning how to be a wingman is like that. You'll get all kinds of crazy advice out there -- some of which I'll highlight today, as examples of what not to do, before we get into what to do. But you'll be better off avoiding all that crazy advice, and instead sticking to what works. WINGMAN TIPS YOU CAN SAFELY IGNORE I'm not sure why it is, but winging seems to be one of those areas in doing better with women that's particularly replete with detrimental advice. I suppose if a guy's out with another guy who's good with women, and he does something silly but he sees his buddy succeeding in spite of what he did, he may be liable to think whatever it was he was doing worked -- even if what he was doing was wrong. That's my current theory on where all the shoddy advice comes from, anyway. Regardless, there's a lot of bad information out there that does a great job of making the guys doing it look pretty silly -- and looking silly and being sexy, as you need to be if you want consistent results with women, aren't exactly closely related. Let's highlight a few pieces of not-so-great advice that are floating around out there just so you know it when you hear it. Bad Piece of Advice #1: Enter the conversation no later than 2 minutes after your buddy's met new people. I guess if guys are really new and they need a lot of help just maintaining a conversation, this is okay... if they're really honestly just starting out and can't engage two women at once and win them over without a buddy taking on one of those girls, and they really just need to build up some very basic experience. For everyone else though, this is awful advice. What you end up seeing is two guys walking up to talk to two girls together, or one guy starts talking to two girls and his buddy jumps in on his own 30 seconds or a minute later. Why's this bad? Think about it like this. You're out, minding your business, when suddenly a stranger walks up and starts talking to you. Okay, mildly alarming, but he sounds cool, it's okay. You gauge him and assess where he's at. Now let's say while you're still just getting comfortable with this new guy's presence, another guy walks up and starts talking to you. Now you're really starting to feel a little uncomfortable... even if these guys seem cool, and not creepy, you're probably going to want to make a swift exit. This is what happens when guys ambush girls like this -- the girls get startled and uncomfortable and make a fast exit. Even if they don't leave, they're often too off-balance to bother getting all that attracted. Bad Piece of Advice #2: Both guys have to make friends with both girls. All right, this one's good in theory, but bad as applied by most guys out there meeting and getting to know new women. What you usually end up seeing is guys trading girls back and forth, exchanging light, shallow conversation, in an effort to make sure both girls approve of both guys. What ends up happening though, is that both girls end up confused about which guy is going for what girl -- or even assuming that the guys are just out to be social and not really looking to move things forward with them. Hence, they put their own emotions on hold -- and attraction dries up quickly. Bad Piece of Advice #3: Guys should "take over" new groups they join. As mentioned in the post on how to be an alpha male, trying to out-alpha the people already in a group, in order to show to your new friends how powerful and attractive you are, pretty much universally comes off as tryhard. Not only that, but when you and your pal are doing it together, most groups of people -- unless the both of you are extremely cool, extraordinarily engaging individuals -- end up looking at each other, collectively wondering to themselves, "Who the hell are these guys, and how did they invade our group?" and then end up re-forming their circle again somewhere else (usually adjacent to where they were)... without you. Each of those three pieces of advice -- enter the conversation no greater than 2 minutes into it, both guys make friends with both girls, and guys should take over the groups they enter -- they're all pretty common advice... but they're all based on a very superficial understanding of group dynamics, and the way those pieces end up getting applied by most men is pretty detrimental to those men's own success with women. That said, let's get you some more solid stuff to work with. how to be a wingman HOW TO BE A WINGMAN -- 10 SURPRISING RULES What if I told you that the most important rule of being a good wingman was in not stealing your buddy's thunder? And what if I told you the second most important rule was allowing time for girls to get comfortable with your pal before you jump in? Well, in fact, those are the first and second most important rules. And there are a lot more where those came from. I call these rules "surprising" because most of them are going to go against the grain of what you've probably heard elsewhere. But I think you'll like 'em anyway. Don't Steal Your Pal's Thunder. When I first started meeting women with wingmen (I worked on meeting girls for a year and a half solo before ever rolling out with a buddy), I was both stunned and annoyed at how consistently other guys I'd roll with would come in a lot higher energy than me, take center stage, and then crash and burn and cost both of us our girls. I eventually figured out how to deal with situations like that, and I'm the better for having learned to do so, but it was poor wingmanship by my pals when we started out. It's vital that you don't steal your buddy's thunder. Having met a pretty large number of groups of people throughout my career as a social artist, I've picked up a thing or two about how groups respond to that kind of thing, and what I've noticed is groups tend to treat the guy who opens them as the de facto "leader" of his group, and that any attempt by his wingman to take center stage or in any way tease or rib his friend a little too hard gets viewed as dissension among the ranks, and you both get viewed as lesser men. If you want to maintain the respect of the people in the groups you meet, letting the guy who opened maintain the "lead" role in the interaction is a crucial part of how to be a wingman. Give Girls Time to Get Comfortable Before Joining In. Contrary to the whole "jump in before 2 minutes" philosophy, I'm a believer in the "chill on the outside as long as it takes for your buddy to get the girls warmed up to you" school of thought. Think of it like this: if two men are pursuing two girls, those girls are going to feel a lot more pressured and a lot less comfortable than if one man is pursuing them, and one is minding his own business five or ten feet away. When you let your buddy get the girls comfortable while you keep a low profile (or when he lets you get them comfortable while he stays out of the picture), you give them time to get used to the presence of this new man, without their attention being split and disoriented by two new men. I've seen it done both ways a number of times and trust me, it works better when one guy wins them over -- not two. Resist the Urge to Oversell Your Wingman. There's some old advice floating around that you ought to talk about what an amazing guy your friend is. Don't listen to it. Trying to beef up your friend's credentials comes across the same way to women as does trying to beef up your own credentials. Women aren't fools; they know that the buddy you're bringing in is there to help your odds with them. And they know that anything you say about him is to do so, too. Building him up has the same effect as talking about your own value; it comes across like you're trying to showboat, and it comes across as chasing. There's another strike against it, too: when you start talking about your pal before they've met him, and then you build him up to them, and then he shows up, it all ends up sounding rather... "planned out." And women hate feeling like any part of an interaction was logically, carefully "planned out." They want everything to feel natural, spur-of-the-moment, and they want to feel like this isn't something you do with every girl... just them. Most people don't mention their friends until their friends have entered the picture; I'd recommend you do the same. Bring Your Buddy In When Both Girls Are Warm. If you're the one who's opened, it's your responsibility to bring your wingman in -- not his responsibility to jump in. If you're already on the inside, he shouldn't need to go open the girls himself and carve his way in -- that's poor wingmanship on your part. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see guys making: one guy walks up and starts talking to girls, and the other guy kind of hovers around them for a minute or two, then goes up on his own and opens a girl on his own or introduces himself. This ends up coming across to the girls like two strangers walking up to meet them -- not like one stranger (the first of you), and one friend-of-a-friend (the second of you, if he's properly introduced). Again, it also lends itself to feeling quite planned out and calculated if one friend goes in first, the other hovers around, and then he goes in too, unless the guy on the outside does it really smooth. Cut the necessity for good acting chops out and just have the man on the inside welcome in the man on the outside. Sometimes the girls will ask for this, too ("Why's your friend standing over there?"), which makes it even easier (you can invite him over and set a chase frame by saying, "These girls were asking for you, brother!"). Address Your Friend Rather Than the Girls. This is another big one that most guys get wrong. Most guys say, "Ladies, I'd like you to meet..." as if the women are the ones who need to be impressed by your friend. Instead, you're going to say, "George, I'd like you to meet these two lovely young ladies I've just gotten to know..." because it isn't the girls you're trying to impress. It's your friend you're trying to impress... with the girls. That's what's communicated to them at the outset, and they automatically feel he's more important; and your friend gets this feeling too -- it's almost like you've already placed a chase frame on the girls and they're now pursuing your buddy from the very beginning. Give Your Buddy a Proper Introduction. This doesn't mean build him up, but it does mean you give both him and the girls you're introducing him to things to start talking about right away. So, you might start by saying: "Christie here's a nurse who works over at Mainline Hospital. She paints pictures of landscapes and wants to run away to Thailand to go live for a year sooner or later, and not tell anyone. Christie, my buddy Zach's been a painter since he was finger-painting at 3 years old, but his paintings today look a little better than that. He was just in Thailand a few years ago; he can probably even give you some recommendations." Give them both commonalities wherever possible (as in the example above), and do your best to make those commonalities in areas where your friend comes across as more experienced than the girl. I won't go into why in this post, but women tend to be more attracted to men who are more experienced than them in the things they're interested in than they are to men who are less experienced or ignorant of those things. Having stuff to riff off of means your buddy and his girl jump instantly into solid conversation and skip the awkward getting-to-know-you fumbling in the dark trying to reach the hook point. It's one of the best things you can do for a wingman of yours. Stay Paired Up. There's nothing worse than one wingman dropping the conversation with his girl to be social and get to know the other girl and talk with his friend a little. Because, what happens is, now his girl is out in limbo, with no one talking to her, slipping closer and closer to auto-rejection each passing second, while he disrupts his pal's conversation and potentially even ruins it. If your girl likes you, and your buddy's girl likes him, trust that there's no need for you to "be social" and win over the other girl. She's going to be so thrilled that she found a guy and her girlfriend is happy too that she isn't going to sacrifice what she wants to stop her friend from having what she wants. It just doesn't happen. Note: if there are more than two girls (e.g., if you and your wingman are talking to a group of three girls), generally speaking, the more experienced / socially adept of the two of you should take two of the girls and let the other focus on one. Having the more adept of the two of you handle both girls makes it more likely the girls stick around and there's a good outcome for both of you. Move Together. Just like moving girls within a few minutes is critically important when you're on your own, it's just as necessary when you're winging a friend. Within 10 minutes or so of meeting girls with your wingman, look for ways to move them. See if you can get them to join you for a coffee, an ice cream, or a water, or at least move them to another part of the venue. Moving them gets commitment and buy-in, and you vastly up your odds of accomplishing something with women later on in the day or night when you move them early on first. Extract Together. It's usually good practice to pull your girls together. Both of them will be more comfortable that way. Try and sort your logistics out before going out with a friend -- will you go to his place or yours? When you go for the pull, there are two techniques you can employ: A) Address your girl first. If your girl is very much into you, whisper to her that the four of you should get a nightcap or go hang out together or go to an after party. Once she's agreed, announce it to the group, and she'll likely chime in in support of the idea, making it more likely her friend agrees too. B) Address the group first. If your girl is less into you, and your buddy's girl is more into him, address the group (and, more specifically, your pal's girl). "What say we all go chill and have a few quiet drinks to end the night?" you can ask, spending most of your time looking at her as you do so. Because she likes your friend, she's likely to support the idea, and may very well encourage your girl to come along even if she was previously reluctant. Get Alone. Once the four of you have arrived somewhere private, it's time to make something happen. Unless the girls (and you!) are really open, nothing's likely to happen while you're all in the same room. That means you have to get alone. "Come on, I want to show you something," is a great line to tell your girl in front of the other two. "We'll be right back," you say to them, and take your girl off. Take her to another bedroom, or even a bathroom if you're in a tiny apartment and there's nowhere else to go, and just get to it as quickly as you can. If you waste time when its two guys and two girls in an apartment together, something always goes wrong -- you have to move even faster than when it's just you and a girl alone together. There you have it. If you follow these rules, you won't just learn how to be a wingman -- you'll learn how to be a wingman extraordinaire. Guys will love having you as their partner in crime, and women will be ecstatic at your social grace -- and at your ability to lead them to what they want. Being a good wingman isn't about being the center of attention, or being amazing at talking to girls, or any of that. All it's really about is about not stealing your pal's thunder, keeping the focus on your girl, helping to move things forward, and getting alone and giving your buddy alone time once you've gotten the girls somewhere private. Talk to you again sometime soon.

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##The 100 hour rule It occurs to me that there is a certain percentage of the readership here that has been reading Girls Chase for a fairly long time but not taking much or any action. Some guys work on their fundamentals enough to get more attraction, but have difficulty ever talking to new women. Some guys view all this self-improvement hoopla as something of a curiosity to be read about, enjoyed, and perhaps considered, but not something to be done, at least not right now. Some guys meet women in their social circles, but not really in the way that Peter discusses in his series on social circle; more in a just freeform, unguided, I'll-meet-women-whenever-they-meet-me kind of way, that doesn't lead to a whole bunch of outstanding results but does lend itself nicely to ending up fixated on one or two women you just can't seem to get. For those readers - all the guys who'd like to start, someday maybe, or even right now but just can't seem to get past their approach anxiety no matter how much they read or how much they do, I'd like to suggest something that's been a boon to me in skill building of all types, classes, and varieties: something I call the 100 hour rule. 100 hour rule The brain is a brilliant, beautiful, wonderful machine, and your subconscious brain is aware of and can do a lot of things that are so far beyond the capabilities of your conscious brain it's hard to fathom. Everything from picking out a home based on gut feelings vs. logic (gut feelings - your subconscious's assessment - win over logic - your conscious's assessment - nearly every time, with gut feeling home buyers happier with their home purchase even 10 years later than logical checklist people) to being able to walk properly or throw a paper ball into a wastebasket (try doing that when everyone is watching you with a lot riding on it and you slip into "full consciousness" mode)... your subconscious is very good, and knows a lot of things that you ("you" here referring to your conscious mind) do not. However, there are also certain things your subconscious is absolutely horrible about, and one of them is giving you the freedom to learn new skill sets. WHY THE BRAIN FEARS NEW, HARD THINGS Most people's brains love new things that are easy. Depending on your levels of thrill-seeking, that might be anything from riding a roller coaster to popping a new video game onto your screen. If it's easy, new, and acceptably low risk for whatever you consider low risk to be, your brain will have zero qualms about doing it - and, in fact, will even encourage you to. At some point, though, you're going to hit a point where new things start to look scary. Where that point is is highly subjective from person to person, and subject to subject. I knew a woman who had no fear whatsoever about getting on the back of a motorcycle behind the motorcycle rider without a helmet and doing 100 miles per hour, but who wouldn't touch video games because she was afraid of becoming addicted to them. I've known men who regularly rushed out into combat situations with bullets whizzing past their heads from other men trying to kill them and who found this an adrenaline rush, but who couldn't walk up to women they didn't know because they found this to be too intimidating. So, there's a big, subjective element to it, and it's very much dependent on both your own base anxiety levels, as well as on what you (for whatever reasons, usually based on experience or lack of experience) view as "risky" or "not risky." But there's another aspect, too, and it's your perception of the probability of reward. Some examples of easy rewards (depending on your tastes and experiences): You may see a new blockbuster movie coming out of your favorite genre, and be very excited - because your brain perceives a big emotional payoff from watching, relative to a low risk / low effort investment to get that payoff You may see your favorite sports team is winning recently, and decide to start tuning in for games more often - low risk / low effort, high reward (emotional boost) You may see Space Mountain at Disneyland and feel a surge of adrenaline to climb aboard, reasoning that it's going to be perfectly safe and easy to do - low risk / low effort - but tons of excitement (high reward) Once you're good with women and get regular results, you'll see a pretty girl somewhere and be juiced to go talk to her - the risk is quite low (you maybe get rejected - big deal!), the effort is very low (just walk up and say "hi"), but the potential reward (this pretty girl naked in your bed, or on your arm as your new girlfriend) is sky high These things all change as your experiences, skills, and abilities change. If you never go on amusement park rides, the idea of a roller coaster ride in the dark (Space Mountain) is going to sound horrifying to you, most likely... and it's going to flip your "danger" signals. The brain is always asking itself three questions, in any given situation: How big is the risk? How much effort is being demanded? How large is the probable payoff? The bigger the perceived risk and perceived effort, and the lower the perceived probable payout, the less likely you are to do anything. Meeting women as a beginner, like anything else, is subject to this same calculation... and if it feels to your brain like social rejection is a big risk that your reputation or ego simply cannot handle, and it feels to your brain like a colossal amount of work is going to be needed before you can turn strangers into lovers or girlfriends, and it feels like the likely payout of your efforts is going to be nothing - or worse than nothing (a stack of rejections) - you're likely to talk yourself out of doing something altogether. Why bother doing something hard, risky, and unlikely to provide much - or any - payoff? GOALS AS NEW THOUGHT TARGETS 100 hour ruleOne of the things you'll hear me recommend regularly is that men - especially newer men, who aren't that skilled or experienced with women yet - set goals for themselves every time they go out. Just a 2 or 3 small little goals every time you go out is enough, although I think it's also wise to have a handful of larger goals you're working on too, though you won't really take these with you when you go out. The benefit of goals is both to keep you focused on what you're working on, and to serve as distraction from the "scary stuff." When you go out to meet new women and take no goals with you (and you're inexperienced and afraid), the moment you look at a woman and consider approaching her, your mind starts going, "Oh God, I'd better not blow it; OH man, I'd better do this right; oh boy, oh boy, I'd better not act all nervous and choke," and pretty soon you've lost all nerve altogether and do not approach. However, when you go out to meet new women and you take goals with you, when you want to approach a girl you get thoughts much more like this: "Oh man, I'd better do this right; oh wait, well, what does it matter, my goal tonight is to open 4 new women, not to find a wife and get married. Quit being silly and go complete your goals." Because you change the focus from the amorphous "Go out and get the biggest success imaginable with this girl or else you're a total failure" to the concrete "Go out and accomplish this little goal that's just on the range of achievability for me, and don't worry about anything beyond that", you're suddenly able to do this, because you're biting off a lot less than you otherwise would be. Well, just like we can do this to get ourselves moving on small things, like approaching a new woman or trying out a new amusement park ride or speaking in front of a crowd of people, we can use a bigger version of it to get us moving in a more general way, and get us forming the commitment we need to really excel at something - that hundred-hour rule I mentioned at the start of this article. 100 hour rule In his guest post here on how to create a habit, Robert King mentions that it takes about 30 days to fully implement a new habit. In my experience, and from lots of things I've read, to make sure that new habit sticks, you need about 12 weeks - that's three months, or 90 days. That's the point where it stops being something you have to go kick your butt to get yourself to do, and deliberate on, and convince yourself over, and becomes something you just do, without thinking about it, because it's part of your routine. That's when the execution of the thing becomes easy, regular, and natural for you, and the ball is really rolling and you will consistently get better at it because now you're always doing it. So, you can embark on something new - but it may not last all that long. If you want to make sure it does, you've got to make it to 12 weeks with something. But when that something is hard, feels risky, and doesn't seem to offer a whole lot in terms of near-term payoffs, how do you motivate yourself to make it over the 12-week hump? THE 100 HOUR RULE I came up with a rule to challenge myself, and I designed it to circumvent my propensity to give up on hard things with low payoffs too soon, and get myself to a base level of skill I could then use to either continue building on the skill, or at least have a basic understanding of a thing and not be a complete novice on it anymore. I call this the "100 Hour Rule." The hundred hour rule is this: you pick ONE thing you really want to learn how to do, and get good at, and get some proficiency at, and you pledge to putting in 100 hours of training on it. That's it. Not more than 100 hours of training. Not learning specific elements of it, or achieving specific results. You just commit to 100 hours of DOING the thing, and after that, if you want to, you can give up, walk away, and never do the thing again. This, for me, alleviates most of the issues with doing something new that's hard and doesn't offer a lot of immediate payoff: It gives you a clear end point where you can walk away still feeling like a winner (once you reach 100 hours of practice), so you know that this isn't something you're going to have to do FOREVER if it isn't working out for you It gives you a concrete payoff that you can achieve and know HOW to achieve (hitting that 100-hour mark and completing your objective), so that no matter what other payoffs may or may not be associated with the actual thing you're doing itself, there's one you KNOW you can hit - 100 hours - if you just put the time in It gets you working on something long enough that you're GOING to develop some base level of skill in it, even if you're starting off as a pure beginner. At the worst, you walk away a LOT more competent, proficient, and knowledgeable in the thing than you went in being (the difference between someone with 0 hours of experience in something and someone with 100 hours of experience in something is STARK); at the best, you hit 100 hours and say, "Whoa... I'm actually getting the hang of this! Let me see if I can reach TWO hundred hours!" It's important that you're completely, absolutely fine walking away at 100 hours. Your goal can't be, "I'm going to do 100 hours, and then after I finish that, I'm going to do 250 hours." If that's your goal, then your goal isn't really 100 hours, is it? Now it's 250 hours... which is a lot more to bite off and chew. The goal NEEDS to be, "I will do 100 hours, and then I will stop, and reassess if this is something I want to keep doing, or if I want to hang up my spurs." You must be giving yourself an end point at which you decide whether you're going to continue or not. The motivation to put in those 100 hours ultimately comes from the motivation to achieve freedom again - the freedom from having to keep doing this thing until those 100 hours are reached. Once they're reached, you're free, and can do whatever you want - even if all you want is to walk away. A BRIEF ANECDOTE 100 hour ruleOver the years, I've started and stopped several times with Krav Maga, the Israeli close quarters defense system that trains you to have an automatic response to attackers and break attacks and counterattack on instinct. I took a free Krav intro class back in 2007; but I was so tired and worn out by the end of it that I was unable to drag myself back. In 2009, I took another Krav intro class, and this time I signed up for a few months, and made it to a handful of classes... before my job told me I needed to start attending training seminars all over the U.S. Midwest, and after that Krav was a memory again. Earlier this year, I signed up for Krav Maga once again, and once again, like that class in 2007, the first class kicked my butt. My head was spinning and I was almost ready to keel over... I hadn't realized how out of shape I was. I LOVE lifting weights... but I HATE cardio. Always have. I move slow in everything I do, and when I have to run around a lot, well... my body just isn't use to that. But I stuck around for a second class, and then I signed up for a year's membership, and at the same time, I made a commitment to myself: 100 hours. The same commitment I'd used to get over the initial hump of learning many other things, too. A few classes in, I got really sick, and then I was on travel for a while. By the time I was back and could attend Krav, it'd been a few months, and I really didn't want to, and all I could think about was how hard it was, and how tired I was, and how weak and pathetic it made me feel. Eventually though, I dragged myself back, embarrassed at how much time had gone by and the fact that I was stuck at a mere 12 hours out of my 100. And then I started going. Then going more. Then going more. I picked up a stomach flu from some poorly prepared food I ate, and was out of commission for a few weeks. But as soon as I was no longer attached to the toilet, I was back in class again. I'm well along my way now to 100 hours, and I'm pretty confident I'm going to get there well before my year of membership is up. Maybe at that point, I decide to keep going, and see how many hours I can get in before my membership expires... and maybe I'll renew again after. Maybe I decide that 100 hours is enough for now, and it's time for me to take a break from Krav and go back to weight lifting. Maybe I decide to take a little vacation, and push off the decision about whether to continue after I get back from that. I don't know what happens after I reach 100 hours, and that's the point: at 100 hours, I get my freedom back, and I can decide if I want to commit myself further, if I want to do something different, or if I don't want to do anything at all. And at this point, I'm both looking forward to it, and enjoying Krav a lot more, because there's no more deliberation about whether to go or not. The only thing I'm worried about is when can I go and put a few more hours in to get myself to 100. USING THE 100 HOUR RULE There are a few conditions you'll want to follow to use this rule properly. Only have ONE (1) 100 hour task at a time. I don't care how amazing, disciplined, and fantastic you are, if you have more than one task you're trying to get your first 100 hours on at any given time, you're going to run off the track and come to a halt. Doing something new that you have little prior experience with is HARD. If you say to yourself, "I'm going to do 100 hours working out, and 100 hours meeting new women, until I reach that limit on both," and you've never really done either of those things before, you're going to end up taking a stroll down washout lane, I almost guarantee you. Pick one that you're firmly committed to 100 hours on - you can still dabble in the other in the meantime and set smaller goals, but don't take on TWO 100 hour goals... just have one. After you hit 100 hours on one, you can do 100 hours on the other, if you really want to do two. Make sure your objective is to STOP at 100 hours and reconsider. Not to do more. Not to pile on. Not to then plow on to the 10,000 hours needed for achieve mastery. The more you pile on mentally, the more your 100 hours balloons into 500 hours, then 1,000 hours, then 10,000 hours, and the payoff becomes unreachable. It's too far off in the future; the results are too uncertain; and your brain's going to start asking itself, "Do we REALLY want to put 10,000 hours into this? I mean, what if it doesn't even work?" You can spare 100 hours; you can't spare 1,000. Don't balloon your goal - know that at 100 hours, you will STOP, and can continue if you want to then, or you can walk away, satisfied with having learned a new skill to the baseline you get after 100 hours of practice... and that this choice will not be made until you reach that hundred hour mark. Don't try to do it all at once. You've got a week off, and you're going to do 100 hours this week? Well, while I admire your enthusiasm, that's not going to solidify a habit you can use going forward, it's not going to be a sustainable part of your routine (i.e., it's not going to fit with all the other pieces in your life), and there's only so much the mind can learn in a small amount of time - the brain needs time to process new lessons and learn new patterns, and if you try to stuff all your learning into too short a period of time, you won't learn a whole lot. Spurts of a day spent on something here and a day spent on something there can be fun and educational, and these can sometimes serve as the catalysts to get you going, but you don't want to try to do everything in too short a time period, as that's going to feel like you're rushing to get it over with... and whether you do get it over with or not, you won't be much better off for it. Pick something you really believe in. Don't do something that you just DON'T want to do and don't think is going to be useful or good for your life. Pick something that's either going to be awesomely cool to be able to do, or is going to be super useful to know, or is going to be a lot of fun to learn. You might, say, put 100 hours into learning snowboarding. You might never take another snowboarding lesson again after that, or deliberately work on your snowboarding skill set, but any time you want to go hit the slopes with friends thereafter, you'll be able to do this and be reasonably assured of having a good time and not tumbling down the mountainside in a giant snowball. Or, you might never learn another thing about computer programming, but if you take 100 hours to practice all you can about a given programming language that the people who work for you use, you're going to have a much easier time managing them, understanding and appreciating the work they do, and hiring people who know what they're talking about (and firing ones who don't). Book learning doesn't count. I almost hate having to add this in here, but come on - book learning doesn't count. You may have spent 200 hours reading Girls Chase, but if you've only spent 4 hours approaching real women in real life, you've still got another 96 to go. HOW AWESOME IS THIS? I think it's pretty awesome. For me at least, this is a very easy way to get yourself to a base level of proficiency in a number of different skills. Some of those may be skills that you very much want to practice beyond 100 hours and really develop some expertise on. Some of them may be skills in areas where you're just not very strong, and you want to shore up one of your weaknesses so it isn't such a problem for you anymore. You may be excited after reading this, and ready to pick one (and ONLY one) thing and commit yourself to 100 hours on it. My suggestion? Wait. Hold off a day or so. Let the emotion die down. Don't commit yourself until you can commit yourself calmly, because emotionally-made commitments frequently get abandoned as soon as the emotion they were made with disappears. Make a calm, clear-headed commitment to putting in 100 hours of practice and practical training into something (NOT book learning, or "talking about it" -doing ONLY; it's the only thing that counts for this - if you aren't doing, it doesn't count), and then go do it, and start the day you commit so you're already rolling. And, have fun (or at least, have fun once you get past the first few "I don't want to do this!" occasions)! Once you start learning something - actually learning it, and doing it - you'll find you end up going surprising... and often unexpected... new places.

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##12 Simple Tips That'll Help You Sleep with Girls In the vein of my last post - 15 lessons on getting girls - this post is focused on short, simple tips you can learn from and implement right away to make you better able to sleep with girls you like. If you've been at actively meeting new women for a while, you're probably already familiar with or doing some of these... but even if so, I'm guessing there're a few new tidbits in here for you that you haven't heard elsewhere before. And if you're new to meeting, approaching, and seducing new women, then this post is going to be great for getting you out of the starting gate... with a bang. Without further ado... 12 SIMPLE TIPS THAT'LL HELP YOU SLEEP WITH GIRLS Being Sexual Every girl is different… and if somebody tells you that all women are sluts, you can be certain that whoever makes such a claim is both very inexperienced and very judgmental. That said, a lot of girls are very much in touch with their own sexuality and extremely open to hooking up with guys just for fun… while others are not - no matter how tight your game is or what kinds of frames you set. Most girls, however, will be afraid to *show* their sexual side to a guy… at least before they know whether or not *he* will hold it against them! So you need to find out quickly what kind of girl you're dealing with, and communicate that you're sexually open. How? Throw out some subtle sexual comments early on… like: "Your angelic face doesn't fool me for a second," or "You're dressed way too sexy to be shopping." Little comments like this can, when you couple them with gauging women's reactions to them, very quickly help you figure out whether an individual girl is comfortable with her sexuality - and comfortable expressing her sexuality with you - or not. At that point, you've instantly got a thermometer for the openness and attraction levels of every new woman you meet. Sleeping with Girls in the Afternoon I usually avoid meeting up with girls in the afternoon… or even continuing a conversation I'm having with a girl that I just picked up. Simply because the mood isn't very sensual during the day, and it doesn't build a lot of intrigue and mystery to have lunch in the light of day together. There is, however, one exception to this rule: I suggest you always ask girls you meet during the day what they're up to right now. If you find out that she's free the rest of the day, and you happen to be near your house… go for it and spend some more time with her. Why? Because it is surprisingly easy to get a girl to come home with you in broad daylight! It feels very safe, and the last thing she expects is that you will make a move at 2pm and try to get into her pants… you're using the element of surprise, and dodging her preset autopilot resistance response, normally only deployed at night. You might be shocked at the results…. Smooth Methods to Bounce Her Home Fast Be it in the afternoon or at night - a girl can never be a conspirator in her own seduction. It simply goes against society's rules… and, unfortunately for both you and her, a lot of girls feel like they have to live by these rules. Here are some little means to get around that: As you walk to a bar or coffee shop with her, you suddenly notice that you forgot your wallet… or that you have to pick up a book for a friend. Of course, the plan is to just stop by your place real quick and then immediately go out again together… but you never know ;) Does she really not want to go to your place? Of course she does… she just doesn't want to feel like she's being "easy". Sound too simple? In fact, you'd be amazed how often this excuse gets you and a girl alone, right when you need it most. Have you ever wanted to sleep with girls you were out with, the moment you met up with them, and you could sense, down to the very center of you, that they wanted it to... you could absolutely feel the sexual tension bursting in the air - you could all but cut it with a knife? Except... well... there just wasn't any socially acceptable way to get her out of there and do what you both wanted to do? That kind of sucked, right? You just continued on your way to where you were going, talked about normal everyday stuff, and eventually the tension vanished... often, never to return. Opportunity missed, escalation window closed. Well, now you've got an easy way to never miss another one of those windows again. The Pool Bounce One nice little reason you can give her to go back to your place is to talk about your house, and about something fun to do there, such as your pool table. I'll then drop the topic, mentioning to her that I happen to have a pool table at home, and half an hour later I'll say: "Hey, I have a crazy idea... Let's go play pool!" I don't say that we're going to my house, but we do end up there… But she also can't complain that I tricked her, because I *had* in fact mentioned my table. If you don't have a pool table, you might want to get one - or at least grab a dartboard and set of darts. These make for easy, low-pressure things to do that are fun and the two of you can do together at your home - much better than the high-energy or mentally demanding or too-fun or short-attention-span things a lot of guys propose doing in their efforst to sleep with girls (think: Nintendo Wii, Jenga, etc.). Ideas like this: Pool (billiards) Darts Horseshoes Beer pong (I know Chase is a fan of strip beer pong, but I think girls usually need to be a little drunk first before they go for that one) Remember, girls *want* to be seduced… heck, they enjoy sex more than we do… I get jealous every single time I see a girl orgasm. But they want you to make it all work out in a way where it seems like "it just happened." The Bad News About Online Dating sleep with girlsSo, all the above is practical in just about any pick up or date kind of situation. But what about online dating? That's a pretty good place to look if you want to sleep with girls pretty quickly, right? Here's the thing: by the time women look on the internet, they're often pretty desperate which makes some of these websites a bit of a leftover-buffet, and many of the girls aren't going to be centerfold candidates. A true beauty usually doesn't need to get on dating websites - she gets 10 to 20 new dating options per day. If very attractive women log on anyway, they often do so because they got burnt in real life and want to finally find something serious for a change… you will need to frame control things hard. You will also have more competition online - a stunning girl may well get approached dozens of times daily in real life, but, well, guess what - on the Internet, she gets approached hundreds or even thousands of times... because there is no fear of the approach. Men online have nothing to lose... so there's nothing there to stop them from doing what they only wish they could do in real life. Every idiot and his brother is writing her… and that's why a picture is so supremely important in online dating. If she's getting 100 emails per day, she *has* to pre-filter what she even opens and what gets deleted unread… and most girls will make a snap decision based on your picture. The Good News About Online Dating If you get professional pictures taken, the above rule works in your favor… it's easy to stand out that way because most guys don't post really good pictures of themselves. Online game is also one of the easiest ways to sleep with girls… it's very easy to approach them (hey, she's just a click of your mouse away), and if she's willing to meet up with you, she's interested… so you just need to smoothly move things toward the bedroom. If you focus on girls who have a *new* profile, they haven't been spammed as much yet by the masses of fearless Internet Romeos waiting to bombard them with boring, super-long, and/or offensive messages, so you have a *much* better chance of standing out. And one final piece of advice on online: wait a little while before you go sexual… everybody dares to make sexual comments on the internet. So while women often perceive you to be very ballsy if you tell them in person that they're fucking sexy, she's getting a lot of these kinds of messages online… so in that context, they will only make you look sleazy (unless, of course, you're hot… in that case, a lot of the usual rules go out the window). So Now You're at Your Place… I mentioned above that you often need to maintain plausible deniability when you ask a girl to come back home with you… and that often involves the pretext of "only stopping by your place for a minute." So how do you get the two of you to stay in, and sleep together? Glad you asked… As soon as you're in the door, tell her you're thirsty and make yourself a drink… then offer her one too. Stay *far away* from her, so that she can relax in your place and not feel like you're going to pounce on her. Then just keep talking to her, bring up some interesting topic that you have pictures of on your laptop, put on some music or show her some videos… and most importantly, don't have any chairs in your room. The only place where you guys can sit down should be your bed… Be Edgy You've heard this before… don't be too NICE! You know that girls like bad boys… or at least guys who have that SIDE to them. Can you put a little evil, selfish, conceited, arrogant, reckless, rebel in there? Just a little bit of asshole. Have you seen that movie Heat from 1997? Watch it... And notice that every single last one of the male characters in that movie has EDGE. Even Al Pacino, who's a good guy at heart… he cares about his step daughter and is trying to make the world a better place - but even his character is one hell of a badass. Start modeling some of those guys. Notice how they're not sweet or nice or friendly. Notice how they're still very likable though. See how they speak… how they look at people… notice their facial expressions and voice tone. Pay attention when they are silent, and how they move. Model them. Don't change yourself completely to be like them, but ADD that edge to what you have already. It'll go leagues toward making it easier for you to sleep with girls with less resistance or fanfare... because you'll be the kind of guy women sleep with quickly and effortlessly. I'd even go so far as to say if you're yellow and blue now and those guys are bright blazing red, go ahead and make yourself be completely red for a few months. Then after a while it will fade and integrate with your other colors… and then you'll be yellow, blue AND red. Ignore Brattiness! Have you ever heard of behavior modification theory? It's a simple theory that explains a counter-intuitive, yet profound, truth: you don't change a behavior by punishing it… you change it by ignoring it. Why? Because when you put a girl in her place because she's being a brat, you're giving her attention… and that is, in itself, a reward. Especially for bratty girls - many of them are true attention junkies. It's like patting a dog to calm it down when it barks in order to make it be quiet… it doesn't work, because the strokes reward the dog and reinforce the behavior. Of course you need to draw the line at some point, but if a girl is doing something that doesn't help you to get her into bed, simply ignore it and pretend like it never even happened at all… and it will usually go away. Acknowledging something means strengthening it. So, most of the time, ignore it instead - and it'll be a lot more likely to up and go away. Emotional Interactions I like to always keep my seductions one-on-one… for two reasons. First, because if I'm alone with her it will be *much* easier for her to buy into sexual frames… if there are other people around, she has to worry about being judged for that. The second reason is that as soon as you have three or more people in a group, the entire interaction becomes much more about status games and mutual emotional state pumping…. And often the loudest person ends up getting all the attention. This emotional effect is multiplied in clubs, where everybody is bouncing off the walls. Club girls are *not* ADD girls, as you will hear so many guys complain… no, they're getting in state… and that's what the club is for. If you think they're ADD you're missing the *point*… …but if you don't like that kind of emotional hyper interaction, day game might be your niche. You'll meet the girls one-on-one, and they won't be in this hyperactive mode. Modes are crucial to being able to sleep with girls you want to sleep with - pay close attention to this, and choose your venues to present you with women in the kinds of modes you want to meet them in. How to Get a "10" sleep with girlsThis next piece of advice is so simple but it has turned the lives of more guys I've coached more completely around than any other thing I have taught them: what do perfect "10" girls really want? I dated my first ten 9 years ago, and I still remember exactly what she told me about the reason why she was with me instead of the other 793 guys who would kill for a chance to be with her: "Because you know exactly what you want out of life and you go after it." That's the trait! Sure, there are other things she looks for… a lot of the things that other women look for as well, and you'll find them all over the blog. But that is the one thing that a woman with literally *infinite* choice in men looks for. I told this to one student of mine and he became a successful photographer and music producer as a result… and his dating life exploded as a mere side-effect. Think long and hard about this… what does your ideal life look like? Then go create it... and the women will follow. Know Your Stats I have stressed time and time again how important it is to talk to a lot of girls… here's another good reason to play the numbers. Once you've collected a couple of hundred phone numbers, you will know your stats! And once you know your stats, you have a sure-fire way to get laid AT WILL… Let's say for example that one out of three girls you approach gives you her number… it might be 4 out of 5 girls, if you approach them in a well-lit mall on a Saturday, or 1 out of 5 if you hit on them in a rushed, dark train station on a Tuesday morning… but let's just go with 33% for the sake of easy math. Now, let's say that out of every six phone numbers you get, one girl ends up sleeping with you… again, these numbers might be a lot higher if you meet them in a venue where you have a lot of time with them, or if you get introduced to them… but just for the sake of math, let's say one in six. So that means that you end up having sex with one out of every 18 girls you approach… How easy is it to get laid now? Just go out and talk to 18 girls… and you will end up sleeping with one guaranteed. It's a statistical certainty (so long as you keep approaching, of course - maybe you're 0 for 18 on the first set, but 2 for 18 on the next set of 18 girls. That's just kind of how statistics goes). Another big benefit of knowing your stats is that you can then stop going out with the goal of seducing the very next girl you approach… rather, your goal is now to FIND OUT whether or not the next girl you approach is the ONE out of the 18 that will be game… or not. This takes all the pressure of the approach and allows you to relax… which will, in turn, improve your stats. In fact, there are a million ways to improve your stats… and this blog is chalk full of them… so keep reading. But whatever you do, talk to a lot of girls, count the approaches, the phone numbers and the hook-ups and calculate your "conversion rate" toward sleeping with girls… it will be invaluable. And it'll make getting yourself up off the couch and out the door approaching a lot easier, and a lot less of a chore.

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##20 ways to talk to women and make it amazing Lately we've had a number of readers asking about more ways to talk to women and keep the conversation going. Here's JFav, answering the question of what he'd like to see in the new forum's bonus book: "Love to see something on keeping the conversation going. Some strategies a newbie could possibly use to deep dive." Wanting to know more about conversation, particularly for newer guys. talk to women And on the recent article about how to pick up girls shopping, Maxz commented: "Hey Chase, another rocking article. Question for you man, I have been having problems on the conversational aspect of the game lately. When you talk about deep diving and all, is it all about asking girls qestions about themselves? I can't seem to truly crack this nut. Some of the girls I have talked to lately, we usually just end up in strange silences at some point in the conversation. What kind of easy probing questions will you suggest to carry on these conversations? Thanks Chase, love every single lessons on here." I referred Maxz to a few articles to help him get his bearings, but I realize that a lot of guys need a more basic layout of how to talk to women properly than is laid out in the article on deep diving or being a conversationalist. So, today's article has been put together to be exactly that: talking to women for beginners (with a few neat tips thrown in here and there to spice things up for the old pros), broken down into four lessons with five points each - a total of 20 ways to talk to women and make it go swimmingly. Let's dive in. talk to women Most newer guys make the mistake of getting into conversation with women... and then boring them. Seems obvious, right? If you want to get somewhere with a girl... don't bore her! Everybody knows that! And yet... men keep boring women anyway. Why? The reason why, of course, is that the things most men think women want to hear often are not what they actually want to hear. If you had to name the most interesting topics to a woman, what would you name? Some guys would say: Travel Excitement Danger Sex Parties Drama Some guys would say: Pop culture Music Celebrities Fashion Friends Gossip Either of those sound right to you? The fact is, some women like some of those things... but if you start going on and on about them at random, chances are you'll spend a lot of time talking about things any particular girl finds tedious! That brings us to the first of our 20 ways to making talking to women amazing: #1: Find Out What She's Interested in FIRST Imagine you met a girl who'd just read in the latest edition of Cosmopolitan that men are all really fascinated by: Sports Guns Violence Motorbikes Video games Stock trading Robots HDTV Now, armed with this valuable information, this otherwise attractive girl busts out her newfound knowledge in a conversation with you, droning on and on about guns and stock trading, or video games and golf. Sure, some of that you might find interesting... but the rest of it makes you want to go jump off a bridge! Before you launch into any longwinded stories, tales, or monologues about any topic in particular, find out if the woman you're talking with finds the topic interesting first. Here's an easy way to do that: simply ask her, "Hey, do you ever follow what the celebrities are doing?" ... and you'll know whether you've got the green light, or whether you need to change directions and head down another side street. #2: If She Doesn't Like It... Ask Her What She DOES Like So how do you know if a girl's interested in what you're about to talk about with her, and what do you say if she isn't interested? If she says, "Yeah, sometimes," but isn't that interested, it's time to reverse course and talk about something else. If she says, "Are you kidding? I practically know half of Hollywood's addresses and middle names!" then you've got a winner. Now, when she isn't interested, you conversation will look like this: You: Do you ever travel, or want to travel? Her: No, I totally should, but I just never seem to get around to it. You: That's cool. So what do you do to get new stimulation in your life so it isn't the same old thing all the time? She's saying travel doesn't interest her, which means that amazing travel story you were just about to tell her is going to bore her to tears. Instead, you changed the question to ask her what she does do to get new things into her life. talk to women What you do there is frame the question so that she feels uncool if she doesn't have a good answer. If you ask her, "What do you do for fun?" she can sound cool and defiant and rebellious by saying, "Oh, I just work all the time," or, "I don't really have fun." But if you ask her, "How do you expand your horizons?" or, "How do you keep life from getting too stale?" she has to come up with some kind of answer to not look lame. By phrasing things this way, you compel her to want to invest more in the conversation, and show you why she's someone worth getting to know. #3: Don't Stay on a Topic That's "Jumped the Shark" There's a phrase in television known as "jumping the shark." It refers to an episode of the old TV show Happy Days, when Fonzie jumped over a shark while waterskiing, and the show was never that good after that. They should've ended it, but it just kept going. I talked about this a long time ago in the article, "Don't Get Hung Up on Topics," about recognizing when a conversation topic has "jumped the shark" and when it's time to get off of it. The gist of it is, when someone doesn't understand, or relate, or like a topic you've brought up... drop it. How do you know if you're beating a dead horse conversationally? If the communication isn't substantial. Take a look at this example: You: Hey, did you see the latest summer blockbuster movie? Her: I did; it was great. You: Yeah. I really liked how they blew a lot of stuff up in it. Her: Some pretty good special effects there. You: And the story was surprisingly good, didn't you think? Her: Yeah... usually those things have pretty simple stories. You: I know! But it was just so intense! Her: Totally. What's wrong with that conversation? The following things: It's impersonal (it's not about her or you; it's about some other thing) It's superficial (not diving into anything thought provoking about the film) It's refusing to die as a topic, long after it should have (and why'd you bring it up, anyway?) When you stay on a "dead" topic, and the girl stays on it, it quickly begins to feel like the two of you have nothing to talk about. And at that point, she'll want to exit the conversation. So - change topics. #4: Don't Brag, Showboat, or "Pump Your Value" Everyone knows that women don't like guys who brag about themselves. And everyone knows that trying to impress women is a waste of time and counterproductive. So, what everyone else does instead is he tries to "pump his value," by indirectly making himself look as valuable as possible. Only problem is, most of the things men do to do this are far too obvious to women, and simply come across as - you guessed it! - bragging, impressing, and showboating. Why's it bad to brag, impress, showboat? It's bad because: If she already sees you as desirable, bragging pushes her away, making her feel that you are increasingly out of her league and outside her reach, plunging her into auto-rejection If she doesn't yet see you as desirable, or views herself as more experienced / aware / in-control than you are and isn't taking you seriously, bragging makes her feel even more experienced / aware / in-control, as she watches you race to try and impress her (to no avail) What should you do instead to make women value you more? Focus on your fundamentals. Trying to "talk your way" into being impressive at the last moment (when you're actually talking with her) instead of actually doing the groundwork to go and be impressive beforehand (by working on your fundamentals) is transparent - women see right through it. Talk is cheap - she's far more interested in who you appear to be, how you conduct yourself, and how you come across, than in the words coming out of your mouth. Fundamentals include things like: Your walk Your voice Your eye contact Your charisma Your movements Your facial expressions Your sexual vibe ... get those down and you won't have to worry about trying too hard to be impressive. But if you're there with a girl, and you don't want to bore her with bragging, how do you show her what an attractive guy you are, then? Well, you... #5: Get Her Doing Most of the Talking When you get a woman doing most of the talking, guess what? She ends up talking about the things she enjoys most. That is, provided of course, that you are actively listening and are feeding her conversation back to her, and you are asking her the right questions to get her talking more and opening up more. Talking to women isn't so much about talking to women as it is about getting women to talk to you. The more she's talking, for the most part, the more interesting she's finding and will continue to find the conversation. That's the secret of making conversation interesting for a woman... get her talking. But how do you get her talking, exactly? talk to women Since Girls Chase launched in 2008, much of the focus here has been on getting women to talk. Some of the past articles here that have dealt with the subject include: Secrets to Getting Girls: The Art of the Deep Dive Spell Broken: Big Mistakes That Shred Conversation How to Talk to Girls and Make Them Want You The Conversationalist There's even a post on here entirely devoted to providing you with a conversation example so you can see how a normal conversation of this sort gets carried out early into the interaction. Here, I'll sum up a lot of the important points about getting women to talk in the first place, and add a few new pieces in that will help you solidify this in your mind. #6: Make Your Interest Clear (or Implied) Most men have the impression of women as being eminently emotional, and while that is somewhat true, women are also eminently something else, too: they're eminently practical. The first thing a woman asks herself whenever she ends up in a conversation is, "WHY am I talking to this man?" And if she can't come up with a good reason, she excuses herself fast. In fact, one of the biggest problems men new to cold approach run into - one that mystifies them, boils their blood, and causes untold volumes of frustration and hair-pulling - is a direct effect of this: women leaving to go find their friends, go to the bathroom, get back to work, or go back to school. Women excusing themselves is less often a rejection than many men think it is. Much of the time, when a woman excuses herself, it's simply because she doesn't know what the point of the conversation is or where it's supposed to be going. This is why I continually harp on using Direct openers, or Indirect direct ... and making sure that even if you use indirect game, that it's never true indirect. And here's why. Imagine you're sitting in a cafeteria eating your lunch, when some jolly, cheerful guy comes over and grabs a seat next to you. "Hello friend!" he declares. "Fine day we're having here!" "Yeah, sure is," you respond, wondering what this guy wants. "Hey, how's that sandwich?" he asks. "Uh, it's great," you reply between bites. "Sure looks good," he says. "Have you ever tried the ham and cheese?" "Yeah," you say. "That one's my favorite," he says to you. "So what do you do during the day that you ended up over here for lunch?" he continues. "Um, I've got to go get back to work," you say, getting up with your tray to go throw away your leftovers. "It was great to meet you." "Great meeting you too!" he proclaims. What'd that guy want? You have no idea. You just know it was weird, and awkward, and you wanted to get out of there. Many newer guys do this SAME thing to women, making women wonder why the heck they're talking to them, making those women feel awkward, and making those women eventually leave. Never make her wonder what your intentions are about; make it clear, one way or the other. Open her direct, or be sexy and flirt with her. #7: Ask Interesting Questions You can't always do this one, but you'll find that the more you try to, the better able you are to as your abilities with women progress. There are precisely three ways to make your questions more interesting: Make the topic interesting Make the topic curiosity-inspiring Make the wording interesting Let's talk about the first one first. Interesting topic - "Tell me how you got involved in modeling in the beginning." Asking someone about the origins of something she's doing is always interesting to her, because it gives her a chance to tell her stories. People love to tell the stories of how they came to be doing something or how they arrived somewhere - it helps them to emotionally connect with others, and helps them to feel more related. Here's another interesting topic - "If you could do anything else - absolutely anything - with your time and get paid the same as you are now, what would it be?" talk to women Asking someone what she'd do if she didn't have to worry about not getting paid for it can lead you into all manner of avenues conversationally, with women talking about passions, goals, and dreams they've shared with few other people. #8: Ask Curiosity-Inspiring Questions A curiosity-inspiring topic makes a woman wonder what you're getting at, and causes her to answer in a form of mild confusion, which ups her intrigue. You must deliver on the promise of a curious question, however... or else it's a let down. Here's an example: "Let me ask you this: would you ever date a football player?" The instant you ask her something strange or different, she's going to wonder where it's going. A lot of the old pickup routines took this route, and I'd advise you to learn to make this kind of conversation naturally without relying on scripts. Because in fact, you can learn to ask curious questions yourself, then lead them somewhere interesting. If a girl tells you she'd date a football player and then you simply respond that you were just curious, it's a let down. But if you tell her based on her answer you can now tell her something about her personality - and then do - well, now it's interesting! Here's another example you can use when talking to women: "Have you ever thought about just picking up and leaving it all behind and running off to some foreign city or country you've never been to before for good?" What a question like this does is that it puts her into the mindset of imagining she's doing this wild, crazy thing you're telling her about. She's picturing herself leaving her whole life behind, and running off on some uncharted adventure elsewhere in the world. This is something the majority of individuals will never have the courage to do... but the majority of individuals always wish they could. By giving her the fantasy, you allow her to feel more free around you, and begin to open up about her dreams. You can also build some intrigue here - phrased this way, she almost expects you're going to ask her to runaway with you. If you never tell her why you asked, you allow her to continue to wonder, and fantasize. #9: Ask a Question That Has Interesting Wording Use interesting and colorful wording, it makes even your mundane questions seem a bit more extraordinary. An example of interesting wording - "What sort of employment do you hold, young lady?" You can make ordinary questions sound a lot more interesting, and bring a lot more liveliness to a conversation, with a few interesting word choices. Seek to use colorful language. By so doing, you animate your speech - and make women find the questions more interesting, and you more interesting too. One more example: "Where do you hail from? Faraway lands, or are you a native to these parts?" Obviously, you'll want your delivery to be totally normal and natural, not sounding like you're doing the voiceover for a high-fantasy epic adventure movie, or that just makes it sound contrived. Instead, have normal tones... with perhaps a hint of playfulness... and ask your colorful questions. #10: Be Mildly Bored We've talked about being a little bored on here before several times, most notably in the article on the bored look. But it bears repeating here, I think, that when you're talking to women, you want to come across as mildly bored. Imagine Brad Pitt or George Clooney talking to a woman. Think of the expression on their faces. Mild amusement, mild boredom. They've done this a million times before already. That's the look you want. Here's an interview with Brad Pitt that shows the difference in facial expressions pretty well - watch it with an eye on both A) how he looks in the movie at the start of the clip (bored, mildly amused, in-charge and on his own turf) and B) how he looks in the interview (alert, explanatory, pitching on someone else's turf) - you don't need to watch the whole thing, just the first minute or so - Note the difference in facial expressions and nonverbal communication - in the movie he's laid back, his movements are slower, his smile is smaller and more mild amusement; in the interview he's upright, leaning in, his movements are quicker, his smile is broader and more aiming to please. Most guys when talking to women are more like Brad Pitt in the interview than Brad Pitt in the movie. Brad Pitt in the interview makes people want to sit back and let him do the work of trying to be impressive. Brad Pitt in the movie makes you want to go on alert and try to please and spit it all out to impress him. Be Brad Pitt in the movie, and women will want to talk volumes to you. talk to women By this point, you've got the basic parts of talking to women down: you know how to avoid being boring, and you know how to get a woman talking. But what if you want to talk to women for longer than a couple of minutes? How do you keep them talking? Let's go through our next five points. #11: Deep Dive Every Good Topic Most inexperienced men's conversations with women look like this: Guy: Where are you from? Girl: I'm from X. Where are YOU from? Guy: I'm from Y. Girl: Cool. Guy: So how do you spend your time? Girl: I don't know, some A, a little B. You? Not only does that violate our Lesson #1 and give women totally boring conversation that makes them want to run for the hills, but it ALSO throws away opportunities she's giving you on a silver platter to keep her talking and really get to know her well. Instead, for every good topic you land on - and by "good topic," I mean a topic that's integral to her life and important to her, such as: Work School Hobbies Passions Pastimes Objectives Experiences Dreams Goals Aims ... for every one of those, you can dive much deeper with only a small set of questions. These include: "How long have you been doing that for?" "How do you like it?" "Do you think you'll [get promoted / move up / open your own business / master that hobby or art]?" "If you don't like it that much, why are you still doing it?" "How'd you get into it if you don't like it?" "Think you'll do it forever?" "What's stopping you from doing it?" Each of these questions gets you deeper into finding out more about her - and keeps her talking more. #12: Permit Her No Excuses When you meet women who are more confident / social / experienced with men, they tend to be resistant to probing like this. They've brushed off many men trying to get to know them better before... why should they open themselves up to you? This is where you'll get women try to joke something away, like when you ask her if she doesn't like her job why's she still doing it? and she tells you, "Well, everybody's got to eat, right?" A lot of guys say, "Yeah, that's true," here, and drop the subject. You don't want to do that though, because her trying to brush it off is an excellent opportunity for you to show her you know more about human nature - and more about her - than she herself does. Instead, make your conversation look like this: You: How long've you lived here? Her: Pretty much all my life; I'm a lifer. You: So I guess this is the town for you then, huh? Her: Well, I'd like to live somewhere else, but never got around to it. You: Why not? Her: Too many obligations... life just creeps up on you. You: Eh, life's a short ride on a big rock and then it's done. In a hundred years, nobody who knows anything about your life is going to care about your obligations... the only thing they'll care about was how interesting was your life, and did you really do what you really wanted to do. Her: That's true. talk to women You don't have to go into a mini-speech like that if you don't want to. You can always just change direction on the topic, like what we discussed in #3. But if you've got a perspective that's going to make her think - if you're able to point a lens at her and say, "You're not living the life you wish you could be," you will attract her, mesmerize her, and inspire her to really open up and tell you all about herself. #13: Provide Feedback Throughout your conversation, you'd be well advised to provide feedback to show that you're paying attention and relating. Just little remarks like "Hmm." "Oh I see." "Really?" "That's crazy." "How'd you get through that?" "That's pretty remarkable." "I'm surprised you hung in there that long." ... and others like those are all you need. These offer encouragement to her to keep talking, and keep going with the topic. You can also elect to simply give her intensely focused eye contact without providing feedback... this increases sexual tension and leads to her needing something to break the ice, however. You'll usually want to use humor for this, though if you're somewhere private you can escalate physically with her then. #14: Turn It Back to Her This is the opposite side of the coin of #4 (not bragging or showboating). Most men get asked a question about themselves, and they turn into Brad Pitt in that interview above - it's time to expound! Time to show my value! The pleasing smile spreads across their faces, they come alive, and go into tales about their glory and triumphs. When you get asked something about yourself, your main concern should not be "Let me see how impressive I can be," but rather, "Let me see how I soon I can get us back to her talking again." The object isn't for you to show off - it's to let her show off. One of you is always showing off, and the other is always assessing, judging, and weighing. Better to be the judge than the judged, when it comes to seduction. Your conversations then will look like this: Her: ... but anyway, that's me! What do YOU do for fun? You: Me? My life's so BORing, I hardly do anything for fun. I just work all the time. You said you like playing billiards... are you any good? Her: I'm not bad. Well if you work all the time, what are you working on? You: I'm a sculptor; I make statues. But it's not as exciting as it sounds, it's really just sitting in front of a block of granite all day with a chisel in your hands. Her: Wow, that's so cool! You: Do you do anything artistic? Her: I don't, but I've always wanted to be an artist! When I was little, I... Notice how first you turn it back by returning to something she mentioned in passing earlier; but, she doesn't want to talk about that (there might not be anything interesting to say there), so you ditch that topic (don't get hung up on topics) and instead ask her if she's done anything artistic (since you were just on the topic of your artistic pursuits, and she found them fascinating... now you'll give her a chance to talk about this thing she finds so fascinating). Continually turning the conversation back to the girl allows her to keep talking about what she wants to talk about, which makes the conversation fascinating for her. #15: Return to Open Threads As you talk to women, multiple conversational threads will be opened and often not be finished. For instance, a girl you're speaking with mentions she eats a carton of yogurt everyday, and plays badminton, and hosts her own celebrity gossip website. You get to talking about the website, and yogurt and badminton go unexplored as topics. Well, it takes a little exposure to enough conversations, but after a while you begin retaining a lot of this as you talk, and you can return to open threads like this to finish them out if and when you need something else to talk about. e.g., "So what was this you were mentioning earlier about eating a carton of yogurt a day? Is that even healthy?" or, "Now, you told me you were in, like, the badminton Olympics or something, right?" and she'll laugh and tell you yes it's perfectly healthy or no, she just plays badminton for fun, and you'll be off talking about something else again. talk to women It's all well and good for you to get her talking a lot, but if she isn't also interested in you, she'll be a lot more excited about this great new friend she's made than this potential new lover. You need her not only excited to be talking to you, but excited about you, and wanting to know more. And the way you get that is by arousing her interest in you. #16: Employ Baiting I got excoriated for divulging this technique by a female commenter back in the day (I don't allow those kinds of comments on the site anymore, but at the time I allowed it so I didn't take it down), although I think she more disagreed with the name of the technique than the actual technique itself. In any event, the technique in question is one I call "baiting," and what it's about is giving pieces of information when asked that somewhat satisfy a question while leading to more questions (and thus, more curiosity, intrigue, and interest). Here's how most men are in conversation: Her: So what do you do for fun? You: Most of my free time I spend bodybuilding. Her: Oh cool, so you're a weightlifter. You: Yeah, I do mostly free weights, but some machines, 5 days a week. Pretty intense workout schedule, but it's why I've got the body I do. Her: That's cool. At this point, you've already answered any questions she could've asked, there's no intrigue or mystery about you, and the conversation continues on... decidedly un-romantic feeling. Here's how it goes if you use baiting though: Her: So what do you do for fun? You: I bodybuild, mostly. Her: Oh cool, like a lot? You: Yeah, pretty often. Her: Like, every day, or some days, or what? You: Normally every weekday. I have a schedule I follow pretty closely to for getting maximal results. Her: Wow, yeah, I can tell you're in pretty good shape. How long have you been working out for? Because she's having to work for this information, she actually finds you a LOT more interesting! It's actually funny how it works. Rather than just "spilling the beans" and telling her everything you do the instant she asks you the slightest question about it, give her a little bit, and if she's interested she'll ask more. If she isn't, then good - you haven't wasted your or her time on a topic that'd bore her. Now you can go find one you'll both find more interesting. #17: Understate Yourself and Your Achievements Ever read the book The Great Gatsby? I wasn't a big fan of the story of the book when I read it back in high school - some guy chasing after some girl he liked in the past now that he'd "made it" - he could have any woman he wanted, why chase after one who'd moved on and chosen someone else? - but I was fascinated by the difference between "old money" and "new money." New money flashes its wealth about. It hasn't learned how to "use it" properly yet. Old money, though... it lives well, often better than new money, but it does so with style, taste, and understatement. The way you show value and present yourself to women is exactly like the difference between old money and new money. Guys who are naturally good with women are "old money": They're chill, They don't make a big deal about it, and They pick up women left and right. Guys who are only just beginning to realize their newfound power with women tend to be "new money": They're excited, They brag (or imply heavy-handedly), and They aren't nearly as successful as they want women to think they are. What happens is that women read men very quickly on how understated (or not) they are about their value, and box men into, essentially, three categories: Guy with no value (no money) Guy trying too hard (new money) Guy who lays back and enjoys his success and doesn't make a big deal about it (old money) New money is fleeting - look at how many first-generation celebrities (actors, sports stars, entrepreneurs) end up right where they started, dead broke and penniless, mere years or a decade after being wealthy beyond their wildest past expectations. But old money... that's safe, normally. When you grow up in money, you're usually taught how to use it right, too. It's the same with men - a woman knows that if a man is excited and "new money" about his value, there's a good chance that's fleeting, or just a show. But when a man is understated, she assumes, he's been successful for a while... he is tried and tested by time and has come out a winner. What's this mean? It means, employ humbleness as much as you can. Seek to downplay your accomplishments. When a woman says, "Wow, you're really good at..." tell her, "Nah, I just worked at it long enough," or, "No, I just got lucky." She'll know that's not the truth - and she'll value you more for the understatement. #18: Don't Mention Anything "High Value" Unless Asked Most men are in such a rush to spew out the things that are valuable about themselves when they talk to women that they never bother to think of timing or placement. But what's more impressive to you, the girl who comes out and tells you in the middle of nowhere, "I'm a model!" at the start of your conversation... or the girl you talk to for 10 minutes, and don't find out she's a model until you really start digging into her life story? It's the second one, isn't it? She blows you away! Why's it have such a profound effect for you to NOT finding something out until you dig for it? The reason is this: the questioner has no clue how much more value is lying there under the surface. Someone who comes out and tells you that she's a: Painter Violinist Rhodes scholar Business owner within the first five minutes of conversation is clearly an impressive individual, no matter how you slice it. But once you know those things, you can pretty safely assume you know the most important and impressive things about her. You've got a read on her now. But someone you don't find those things out until various points in the conversation and after lots of digging... wow, how much more is there to find out? You simply DON'T know. And the fact that she hasn't gone out of her way to bring those things out to try and impress you is even more impressive. She has no need to impress. She COULD have pulled them out on you earlier... but she didn't even think to, or bother to. Now THAT's impressive. And you want to be equally impressive with the women you meet, too. It goes hand-in-hand with baiting and old money - use the baiting to help her discover these gems about you that you've got hidden, and the old money mentality to keep them understated before they're discovered - and even after. #19: Use Lots of Pauses Pauses are masterfully powerful when you talk to women because they keep women hanging on, waiting and wondering what you're about to say. Pauses communicate the following things about you: You're calm You're confident You're in control You have no need to rush or be impressive When a man uses pauses when speaking with her, a woman instantly finds him more intriguing - it is a kind of biological "switch" programmed into her to instantly assess him as being a more dominant man, and thus a more attractive and interesting one. Eric talked some about mixing long pauses in with very long stares in his post on efficient seduction, including giving some conversational examples of how you'd work these in, and you can also use pauses simply to give you a moment to think or flesh out a thought. Pauses add a lot of dramatic effect, and cause people to really pay attention to what you're saying (or about to say). They give the sense that something important is about to come - and, try not to disappoint. #20: Get Investment Last but not least is investment. Getting women to invest creates a feedback loop in their brains; a woman assumes that if she's putting time and effort into being with you like this, then she must like you, of course... else, why would she do it?! Investment takes all forms, and can stretch from things as simple and basic as: Having her show you a piece of jewelry or clothing item she has on Moving a girl even a few feet to somewhere more comfortable / convenient Having her give you her hand to say hello, then holding on for a moment Having her qualify herself to you in a conversation ... all the way up to more major forms of investment mid-interaction, like: Radically changing her views to match yours Breaking a "rule" of hers (stay near her friends; no kissing; etc.) Leaving to get you a drink or food and bringing it back Changing her schedule (cancelling an appointment, etc.) to stay with you Investment and interest go both ways - the more interested in you she is, the more she'll invest in you, and the more she invests in you, the more interested in you she'll become. talk to women Therefore, the further into an interaction you get, generally speaking, the easier it is to get more investment - though, you can get investment, sometimes major investment, right from the beginning of a conversation much of the time, if you simply try. 20 WAYS TO TALK TO WOMEN ... and there you have it; 20 ways to talk to women and make it amazing. Hopefully this helps out the guys who had questions in the comment sections of the posts, and a lot of the newer guys who are just starting out with lots of questions about talking and conversing. And, here's hoping there were a few tidbits in here that were insightful for some of the guys who've already been around the block a few times as well. Talking to women is one of those things that seems pretty complicated, but it's really just a series of little rules you pick up here and there, get down, and then pick up a few more rules, until eventually you get enough of those down that you don't even think about them anymore and you just do what you want. It's like playing a game that you know very well - eventually, you feel like you can do anything, because you know all the different paths to winning so well that it stops being all that hard. Start using these 20 tips, if you aren't already, and you'll find that before long, you don't even have to think about them anymore.

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##3 second date strategies to make her flirt and swoon With a question on strategies to use on a second date, the Tool (one of our valued readers and forum participants) over on the post requesting ideas for new forum join bonus says: "Hey Chase, Personally I know myself and alot of other people would appreciate an ebook, or post on how/when to ask for a second date, taking into account certain things that happen on the first. What I mean is, I have no problems getting second dates with girls who I only kiss once on the first date, its the ones who I either have sex with after taking them home or nearly go all the way with that become cold and unresponsive. I myself usually follow the 3 days rule for getting a second date after the first. My process with women i escalate things quickly with is a follow up text the next day asking about how their day was ect or asking how a test went and then i leave it at that, then i wait another two days and go for a second date. the problem is lately these women have been unresponsive to me or do not agree to go on a second and stop contacting me. I believe its because they think I used them for a one night stand when in fact I do truly want more. So what I was wondering is exactly what are the steps you are supposed to take after escalating so fast with a women to secure that second date or future meets?" So, there's the question of: How do you get a second date with a girl you aren't intimate with yet? second date ... and Tool says he's fine on that count, but I want to cover that one today regardless. Regarding Tool's comment, he's really asking two questions here: How do you get a second date with a girl you've slept with on the first? How do you get a second date with a girl you almost slept with on the first... then didn't? All three of these - the girl you haven't been intimate with; the girl you have been intimate with; and the girl you've almost been intimate with but it didn't happen - offer very different and unique cases for setting up a second date. In today's article, I want to cover two things, then: How to get a second date, depending on what happened on the first, and How to run that second date. So let's get to it. second date It's your second date - which means you've been out with her once before. Now, setting up the second date depends on two things: How the first date went How quickly you want to move As you know if you've been following the site for any length of time, we generally advise going for first date sex whenever and wherever possible, whether you want her as a one-night stand or a future wife. That's for a variety of reasons: It keeps you out of boyfriend territory, which makes you more likely to actually get together with a girl in the first place It shortens the courtship process, eliminating extra steps, and giving life (and other men) fewer opportunities to step in and intervene It communicates to women that you are a powerful man who goes for what he wants, confidently and decisively It communicates to women that you are a man who doesn't place women on pedestals and, thus, must have a lot of choice with women and be preselected Now, I understand that if you aren't meeting a lot of women, you naturally tend to have a scarcity mentality about women and think that a good woman is in short supply and you'd better not "mess it up" with her. If any of these thoughts occur to you when talking about getting to intimacy quickly, read this article before you read any further here: How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need Sometimes though, you simply aren't confident enough that you can get together with a girl, and just can't get yourself to push things on the first date... you're just not there yet. Or, sometimes, you run a shorter date style on your first date - e.g., a quick informational date - that you planned to be short because you didn't have logistics to set up a proper date that you could take a girl to bed from. Or - like what Tool asks about in his comment - maybe you did take a woman to bed on the first date, or you came close but it didn't work out, and now you want to see her a second time. What do you do? Well, that depends on what happened on your first date, and how things went. HOW TO GET A SECOND DATE IF YOUR FIRST WENT OKAY For our purposes, I'll define a first date that went "okay" as one that went reasonably well, but didn't result in the two of you becoming lovers. That is to say, there were no horribly atrocious mistakes on either party's side of the table, you two didn't go home alone together, and you two didn't sleep with each other. How do you get the second date in this case? Well, there are three ways she may be thinking about you at this point - they are: Disappointed Neutral Excited She may be disappointed if: The date or conversation wasn't that great She became attracted to you but you didn't lead her to sex She feels like the two of you didn't connect for some other reason Disappointed is when she feels like you are not what she hoped you were. She may be neutral if: The date or conversation was good, but not great The date or conversation was great, and so good that she wanted sex, but didn't get it She feels like the date was more or less a platonic meeting between two people who are probably best suited being just friends Neutral is when she feels like she doesn't much have a strong feeling either way about how things went. She may be excited if: The date or conversation was great She became attracted to you, and felt like you were in control and will give her sex next time She felt like the two of you were very connected, you are an attractive man, and you are clearly in control and know what you're doing Excited is when she feels like she's found a diamond in the rough, likes him quite a lot, and trust that he is going to do what he "should do" as a man, dater, and potential or future lover or boyfriend. The thing that makes this hard is that much of the time, you will never even know which one of these it is... at least until you try and get her on another date. The problem with not taking girls to bed on Date #1 is that all you have to go off of are her reactions, rather than results. You'll go on dates with women who seem like they REALLY like you and enjoyed the date... and then you'll never see them again. And you'll go on dates with women that seem like they're not into you AT ALL... and then you'll see them again for a second date, a third date, or more, and end up taking them as lovers on one of those dates. So, a girl MAY be: Disappointed Neutral Excited ... after a non-sexual first date, but you simply aren't going to know which one of these it is. Therefore, you'll simply follow the same process with every girl, and do your best to get her out. That process looks like this: End the first date yourself, on agreeable terms. If she seems like she REALLY doesn't want the first date to end, she probably wants to keep spending time with you, and if you can, I strongly suggest that you invite her home (unless you have other obligations; even then, it might be worth clearing your schedule for). Otherwise, don't be rude or curt in how you end things, but do be the one to end things; thank her for a wonderful day or evening, and bid her good day or goodnight, then be off. Don't tell her that you liked her or want to see her again before the end of the date - it both robs you of mystery, and also can feel like you're "trying to be nice," and as though you actually don't want to see her again. Very easy for this to go wrong - just say farewell, and leave. Text her the next day to let her know you enjoyed coffee / lunch / dinner / drinks with her. This is to head off any chance that she goes into auto-rejection simply by being a pessimistic or defensive person if she doesn't hear from you in a few days and thinks that you're rejecting her. Once she's in auto-rejection, even if she liked you before, she won't want to see you now. So ping her anyway, to reassure her that, yes, you liked her. Text her again to set up your next date. When I started dating, I'd wait a week on this, or sometimes even two weeks. This is far too long. Later I was doing this 2 or 3 days later, which is good. Toward the end, before I stopped doing second dates altogether, I began texting girls the very next day to plan to meet them that night, if possible. Why the difference? Well, if you come off well on the date, you can ask her to meet in 2 or 3 days and she'll be delighted to hear from you. If you come off exceptionally well, and you know that she's probably lying in bed with a grin on her face and nervous anticipation that night hoping she sees you again, there's really no sense putting this off further - just tell her to meet you the next day. She'll be thrilled, and you'll stand a better chance of taking her as your lover than if you wait a few days and those emotions cool off. Good rule of thumb: if you're pretty good on dates, wait 2 or 3 days. If you're exceptional on dates, and there's no chance of you being thought needy or clingy or as not having many options with women, text her to set up your date the next day, FOR the next day, if possible. Although, once you're getting this good, you should probably be sleeping with girls on the first date most of the time and not needing to do a second date in the first place. Some examples of how you'll ask out girls on a second date, from that last point: After 2 or 3 days (if you were pretty good on the date): You: "Hey Kelly, hope your week's going great. Enjoyed hanging out with you Saturday - you're very pleasant to talk to. Let's grab lunch or dinner sometime this week - what's your schedule look like for either meal?" The next day (if you were AMAZING on the date): You: "Kelly - had a great time with you last night. What say we keep the ball rolling - are you free for dinner this evening (or CAN you be free for dinner this evening if you're not already)?" Your objectives here are, with the 2 or 3 days-later text: Remind her that, yes, she enjoyed your date TOO, to help her recall those emotions and put her back in that emotional state in case she's forgotten (it's been a few days, and she may well have been too busy to think much about it) Qualify her in a vague-but-interesting way so she can't really be sure if you like her as a friend, potential lover, or prospective girlfriend Ask for her schedule, and give her some options to both make it easier for her to know when she can meet you and harder for her to make up excuses about not being available second dateYour objectives here with the next-day text are: Tell her flat out what you're doing ("What say we keep the ball rolling") so she knows you're conscious of it and not trying to hide it or hope she doesn't notice that you're moving fast Ask her if she's free today to see you - this conveys excitement about her on your part, and if she's also excited about you, this sends her through the roof, emotionally - the mating dance is nearing its end, and the two of you will be lovers soon Suggest to her that she rearrange her schedule to be free if she isn't already (this will give her an idea she may not have thought of on her own; it also asks her to invest, which shows a high degree of confidence on your part for assuming that she'd go so far as to rearrange her schedule just to see you, and it spikes her attraction for you if she does take measures to free up time just to be with you) You'll want to follow one of these processes regardless of how you THINK the date went, because you're not going to know for sure until you try to get her out. Some girls are just good at dating, or really want to take care of your emotions and do the socially polite thing and seem nice and friendly, even if they aren't all that interested, and some girls just don't flirt much or show a lot of emotion or feel too reserved to be overly effusive about their feelings, even if they like you a lot. So, pick a process, and follow it. You won't get a second date with every girl you go out on a first date - in fact, in my experience, you're more likely to get more lovers by trying to take girls to bed on Date #1 (if you do a good job of it, of course, and aren't overly nervous or awkward or unsmooth) than by trying to stretch things out over multiple dates -all the more reason to move fast. However, if you find yourself in the scenario of having ended the first date without having taken a girl to bed, and now it's time to set up Date #2, this is the process you want to be following. HOW TO GET A SECOND DATE AFTER SEX ON THE FIRST Now let's say you've been following this site and the mantra espoused here of moving fast with women for a while, or you're just an assertive, aggressive guy by nature who doesn't like wasting a lot of time or waiting too long for the things that he wants. How do you set up a second date with a girl after sleeping with her on the first? If you do things right during and after physical intimacy, this is a breeze. But, if you don't, you'll be facing a challenge. What does it mean to "do things right" during and after the first time you have sex? It means you do these things: You're a good lover for her, and give her great, passionate sex. This includes orgasms if at all possible, and ideally you make love to her multiple times and for long-ish periods of time (e.g., 10 to 20 minutes is good the first time you're sleeping with her; if you want her to fall head over heels for you, make it 30 minutes or more). You hold her close in bed and talk to her after. Women bond most after sex and especially after orgasms; their brains release oxytocin specifically for this purpose - their biochemistry wants you to take advantage of this and form pair bonds during this period. ... and, possibly, these things: You let her spend the night. Spending the night with you makes her feel much more assured that this is something solid; you weren't in a rush to get her out of there, which means you're clearly comfortable with her and like her. You get food with her after. Whether that's breakfast the next morning, lunch or dinner the same day, or even a dessert or midnight snack, sitting and having a meal together after your intimate is another way of telling her, "You aren't just a roll in the hay to me." Essentially, you want to remove any doubt in her mind that you really like her as both a lover AND a woman. You make love to her again in the morning. If she spends the night, mornings are occasionally awkward (especially if the two of you had been slightly drunk or more the night before, and aren't sure if the person you're waking up to feels the same way as he / she did the night before). You can remove any awkwardness and reassure her that you still desire her by getting intimate with her again in the morning. Afraid she may spurn your advances? Attack her passionately as soon as you wake up, maximizing skin contact and kissing, and just go for it. You'll occasionally get rejected - if, for instance, all she really wanted from you was a one-night stand - but almost never from a girl who has any desire to see you again, and you'll only help your chances (substantially) with those girls. And the more passionate you are when you reinitiate, the less likely you are to get rejected. That's possibly because it depends how close you want this new girl to feel to you. If you want her VERY close, do them all. If you DON'T... then don't. If it's a casual ongoing relationship you want, for instance, similar to what Ricardus discussed in "How to Date Multiple Women (with Zero Drama)," it's better to not spend the night with her (this sets a bit too much of a "relationship" tone to things, as you're investing much more time with her than you otherwise would be). In any event, at least do #s 1 and 2... and the more you like the girl, and the more you want to up the odds that you see her again, do #s 3, 4, and 5, too. Why's it important to do these things? What happens with a lot of women is they this whole build up... this big seduction... and then they get together with a guy... and then it turns out to be either a lot less exciting or GOOD than they thought it would be, OR they end up feeling dirty or slutty for going to bed to quickly with a man who doesn't really value them all that much. And by doing the things listed above, you circumvent both of these: you give them a great experience, and you make them feel warm, desired, and appreciated for it. Remember, seduction, in the end, is really about providing women with good emotions. She should be able to look back on what transpired between you and her, and smile about it, and think to herself that it'd be very nice for it to happen again. Now, once you've slept with her on the first date, you can sometimes find yourself wondering what to do on a second "date," or a second meet up. Should you: Take her to a restaurant? Meet her for coffee? Have her come over again? Invite her for sex? Take her to a movie? Grab drinks with her first, THEN have sex? Get ice cream, then take her back to yours? Truth is, most women aren't really sure what to expect after they've slept with you for the first time, either... unless she's a pro, bear in mind that she's really only been through this situation a handful of times. If a girl's 24 years old and she's slept with 8 men, for instance, chances are 3 or 4 of them were one night stands she never saw again, and most of the rest were guys who took it slow with her, courting her over a period of time, and by the time she slept with them they were essentially behaving like a couple already. For most girls, probably only a quarter or less of the men they've ever slept with have had a relationship trajectory like theirs and yours. They're in relatively uncharted territory with you (for them). What that means is, you can pretty much decide what the next step is, and do it, so long as you make it feel comfortable and natural for a girl. She doesn't have many expectations; she just needs you to make her feel at ease. Having slept with her, you have a few things you need to do: Let her know, within 12 hours or so of last seeing her, that you had a great time. The reason you're doing this is to defray any tension and head off any auto-rejection at the pass, same as what we talked about for the guy who's had an "okay" date. But the auto-rejection you're heading off here is preventing any risk of her saying, "He just wanted sex with me," or, "Oh no, I went too fast and now he won't respect me." By breaking the contact barrier with something like, "Hey Chrissie, had a great time last night. Hope you aren't too tired today ;)" she feels comforted and reassured. Text her to meet a few days later. Depending on your relationship preference, I normally recommend meeting only twice a week (for a girlfriend) or once (for a casual relationship) to start with. If you want to take things more serious, you can start seeing her more later, but it's MUCH better to start slow and gradually build up than to start intense then gradually have to unwind. Wait a few days after the two of you were together, then text her to meet up with you again. That can look like this: You: "Hey Kelly, hope you're having a great week. What's your schedule look like tomorrow or Friday? I'm preparing to cook you a delicious chicken dinner feast the next time we meet since you paid for the food last time. Which day's best?" You want to see her again after too long to "cement" the two of you as seeing one another, so you don't normally want to wait too long... often you can, but there's really no point risking a longer wait, though. So, simply see her within a few days. Do things this way (not too fast, not too slow), and you stand a fairly reliable chance of converting girls you slept with on the first date into ongoing lovers and girlfriends. HOW TO GET A SECOND DATE AFTER A FAILED ESCALATION If a first date that went well but didn't get physical is a "maybe" for getting a second date, and a first date that made it to sex and ended well is a "probably yes" for getting a second date, a first date that got to the point of physical escalation and then didn't result in intimacy is, most often, a "probably not." There is a term in psychology known as "rationalization;" rationalization is when someone looks at his or her actions first, and comes up with reasons for them second. Rationalization is considered a defensive mechanism - it's ego-protective. Things happened because we wanted them to happen; we are in control. Everybody does it, pretty much. It's a ubiquitous human trait. And when it comes to seduction, rationalization can be your most powerful ally - or your most powerful enemy. Take a girl, an ordinary girl. She's pretty, intelligent... she has a pleasant personality. You take her on a date, things go well; you invite her home. She accepts. There, you start to kiss her; and the first kiss goes well, and you start to escalate physically. Then, she begins to resist. At this point, there's going to be one of three possible outcomes: At some point, you will overcome her resistance, and she will assent to sleeping with you, and the two of you will become lovers. At some point, you will give up trying to overcome her resistance, and she will either sleep (platonically) in your bed, or she'll go home to sleep in hers. At some point, while you are trying to overcome her resistance, she will decide that she definitely does not want to sleep with you, and she will get up and go. If she takes Door #3, there's nothing you can do about that. You tried, and she decided her answer was "no." This happens sometimes... but in fact, it's very rare. The reason? If she's gone on a date with you and decided to go home with you, 98% of the time she's already thinking that she'd be open to sex with you. Very occasionally, you'll meet a girl who's completely inexperienced with men and thinks it's harmless to be alone with a man who's interested in her, but this is very rarely the case. More often, you'll find women who profess innocence ("I had no idea you were going to make a move!") while having known full well what to expect all along. So, outcome 3, you can't do anything about, but you'll hardly ever see. What about outcomes 1 and 2? The amazing thing is, with most seductions, they can go either way, and are completely dependent on which of you has the strong will, the stronger desire to see his professed outcome achieved, and the greater amount of experience in aggressing and resisting. Defense is the weaker play, generally; you don't get "wins" on defense that strengthen your resolve. You only get losses. Women almost always take the "defense" role (resisting intimacy), and it's almost always the man's role to go on "offense" (pursuing intimacy). Sometimes this is a ploy on her part, though sometimes it reflects genuine ambivalence. If your "offense" is strong enough, you'll wear down her "defense;" but if her "defense" is stronger, you'll wear out your "offense" before you can beat that "defense." Resistance to sex is quite often a battle of attrition; she likes you enough not to leave, but not enough to get together with you - it's your job to stick to the game plan long enough that she either leaves, or gets together with you. The thing is, a woman's feeling about you and thoughts about what she ACTUALLY WANTED after the face change DRAMATICALLY based on what HAPPENS. So, if you tough it out for a couple of hours and overcome that monster resistance you faced with her and finally take her as your lover, and then you give her an amazing experience that night and the next morning and have a good breakfast together, she will reflect back on that night and think, "God, he knew what I wanted more than I did. What an amazing man he is." But, if you tough it out for a couple of hours and give up 15 minutes before you would have broken through her resistance and you fail to take her as your lover and she leaves, she will look back and think, "Man, I just am not into him at ALL! Thank GOD we did not have sex! I dodged a real BULLET there!" This is rationalization at its finest. You're the same. She's the same. Only how much you persist and whether you seal the deal with her or not varies... and it leads to completely different opinions of you and how attracted to you she is. That also is to say that if you try to mate with her and fail, she writes that off as having happened because she WANTED it to happen - in other words, that she judged you and found you unworthy. And now you want to get her out on a second date. Fat chance! she thinks. You already know my decision - no! I made it that night! When you've got something as big as a failed mating attempt, with its big black mark on your record, you normally can't turn that around with simply the same things you used to get the girl in bed the first time around. That means that: Normal texting with her Normal asking her out Normal conversation Normal dating processes Normal physical escalation ... all go out the window. She's seen it before, she's established how she reacts to it, and she'll just do the same thing again. So what do you do? Well, you need a reset. You need something that can communicate to her that her original assessment of you was wrong, and force a reevaluation. You need her to give you a second look... one that isn't being filtered through the distorted lens of rationalization anymore. And you can't do that by doing the same things you've already done. So, you will text her... and you will invite her out again, but it should not be for another week or so at least after your failed escalation, and it should not be until she's had some time for her emotions of mild disgust at a failed mating attempt to dissipate somewhat. And what you're going to invite her out to is not going to be a normal date. Instead, you're going to text her... and you're going to invite her to a party, and it has to be one where you're going to be putting on a show for her - she needs to see you surrounded by flirty, interested women. Which means you're going to drop off the radar after things don't go as planned, and then you're going to send her something like this, somewhere from 7 to 14 days after your unsuccessful attempt to get together with her: You: "Hey Kelly! How's the past week been treating you? We're putting together a big group of friends going to Main Bar on Friday - it's going to be sick. You should totally be there - the first of us are getting there at 9. Think you can make it? First drink for girls is free." or You: "Hey Kelly! How's the past week been treating you? We're putting together a big group of guys and girls going to dinner at Chez Ritz Friday night at 8 PM. The food there is supposed to be AMAZING. It's totally up your alley - think you can join us? You're going to love it..." At this point, she's going to be confused; are you friend zoning her? She won't know. It's odd. And she's... kinda gotta know. You're violating the rule about not taking girls on party dates. You're running the risk of getting her out, overplaying your hand at making her jealous and sending her into auto-rejection (and the arms of another man). And you're adding steps to a seduction you almost had sewn up. All sound like things I've expressly and repeatedly told you not to do. But the fact is, a failed mating attempt - unless it's with a very inexperienced girl who REALLY likes you - is all but a death knell for your odds of getting together with a girl... and you need something dramatic to reset her interest in you. And the only way you're going to reset her expectations now is through preselection. second date At this point, you've made contact. You've invited her out on a second date - be it: Another "normal" date if you didn't get physical on Date #1 Simply to meet you at your place if you took her to bed successfully last time Or, to meet you out at a party or social gathering, following a botched escalation Now all you've got to do is figure out how to run THIS date... and what your objective is. A SECOND "NORMAL" DATE If you just had an "okay" date the first time around - if it didn't end up with the two of you hot and heavy in the bedroom (or her spurning your advances...), then you've got a couple of options this time around: Running the same kind of date we discuss in "Simplify Your Dates" with the things we discussed in the article on first-date sex, focused on structuring things so that the two of you become lovers at the end of the date (or the middle of the date, if it helps you to think of it that way!) Running another short informational date like what we talked about in the article on date templates If you didn't escalate on Date #1 because you just don't have the confidence that you can do it "that fast," and you still feel like Date #2 is "too soon," you can go for another short-but-sweet date, a la the informational date template. You do NOT want to have an overlong date that builds a lot of emotions but does not lead to sex under ANY circumstances, though. So if you're absolutely not ready to try and bed a girl yourself yet, keep it short, keep it light, and don't go too deep. Save that for when you're ready to get serious (unless you want to end up deep in the friend zone as the platonic guy she has a meaningful emotional connection with and views as a kind of "brother" of hers). Otherwise, it's time to step it up and make things happen. If you first date was good enough, you can even invite the girl to come straight to your place on this date. I won't go into detail on how to run this date, since you'll be running it the same way we discuss in the articles on simplifying your dates and achieving sex on the first date (the only difference is, this is a second date). You'll have an advantage here, and that's that if you're like most guys, you yourself will probably be more comfortable escalating things on a second date than a first. There's also a chance the girl is more comfortable with you and more open to this, especially if your vibe and presence aren't down quite perfectly yet and the first date would've been pushing it too much. second date You'll also have a disadvantage here, and that's that because things are following a more traditional dating route now, you'll be experiencing more traditional dating expectations: that you pay for a date; that you follow traditional courtship rituals; and that you compete for a girl on all the same categories as other men do - job, social status, provider potential, etc. You'll have to fight these off to be able to move quickly and get to intimacy here; otherwise, you may end up looking at a long, drawn out seduction that takes place over many dates and has a high probability of resulting in you being friend zoned or told that she just "isn't ready for a relationship" somewhere along the line. So, move fast - make it happen. A SECOND DATE, POST-INTIMACY When you're meeting up with her after having slept together on the first date, she probably doesn't know what to expect, and you may not, either. Don't make it unduly hard on yourself. Your goal, on this date, is to take her to bed again, very soon into the date, and remove all awkwardness, apprehension, or doubt in either of your minds. The sooner this happens, the easier a time you'll have it. She may not be in a "sexy" mood when she shows up at your place. That's fine. Throw on some music, and don't push things. Let her relax. Do NOT: Talk about "last time" Tell her how much you enjoyed sleeping with her Act gushy or "in love" Act like you're desperate for sex or love or thinking about it in anyway Instead, be calm, cool, and collected. Put your sexy vibe on. And let her get herself at ease. If she's very uncomfortable or awkward, don't try to make something happen until she relaxes. If she won't relax, feel free to call her out on it, and give her a command, e.g. "Hey, are you going to be awkward all night, or are you going to come help me cook this chicken over here?" Once you call her out on it in a friendly and warm way, and give her a command to carry out (ideally, something together with you), you'll find that she very quickly loses her awkwardness. Now that she's aware of it, she's trying to rid herself of it. This gets her comfortable, and once she's doing something together with you she's also getting comfortable with you in close proximity. Take the opportunity to escalate again, and take her to bed once more. Once you've slept with a girl on two to three separate occasions, generally speaking, you're now officially a couple, to one degree or another, and you can drop the pretenses and make it natural. A SECOND DATE, AFTER A FAILED MATING ATTEMPT Am I being too technical here calling it a "failed mating attempt?" That's really how I think of it now, to put it in starker light. A lot of guys seem to call this, "Tried to get together with her but I couldn't get past making out with her / her shirt / her bra," but I think this is too ego-protective and hides the issue. The issue is, you tried to mate with her, and your effort was rebuffed. And now in her mind, you have tried to mate with her, and been rejected. It's almost as bad as if you are impotent, or sterile. You're "not a real man." And now you need to fix that image in her head. But not with her. Usually, if you've failed once at mating, you won't get another shot. If you're hoping to convince her what a sexy man you are, you'll be disappointed: she sees your sexuality as non-existent. There's are only two things that are going to change her mind: A whole heck of a lot of time (10 or 12 months, maybe? A couple of years?), or Preselection. Preselection, as you recall from the article linked to earlier on the topic (and if you don't, it's right here again), is when a woman sees that other women are interested in you, attracted to you, and investing in you. And, if you recall, this is quite possibly the single biggest attraction trigger there IS in women. It's greater than resources. It's greater than looks. It's greater than fashion. It's greater than dominance. It's greater than social proof. It's greater than every other thing you could possibly do to make yourself more attractive. And it's quite possibly the only thing that can effectively save you from a failed mating attempt. Now, this is where you need to walk the tightrope. You need to get this girl out somewhere that she can see you shining, socially. You need to be commanding the attention of people, and she needs to see women chasing after you. That doesn't mean that girls need to be throwing themselves at you... but it does mean that women should be trying to talk to you, and get ignored for a second or two before you give them your attention because you're too busy talking to someone else... that women should be hovering near you, or talking to you, or touching you, or competing over you. And she needs to see this. The good news is, if you can make it happen, she'll almost certainly see it. She's going to be paying more attention to you than anyone else there... analyzing your every movement... observing with great detail how the other men and women in attendance are responding to you and treating you. She wants to know if she made the right "choice" by spurning your advances. And if she sees that other women are competing for you... especially if they're women she finds as attractive or more attractive than her in one way or another... she's going to have immediate cause to reconsider. This actually isn't as hard as it sounds. All you've got to do is: Be charming, and Be the center of attention, at least some of the time. If you can do that, you'll get good receptions from the women around you almost by default, and your girl will take note. What do you do after? This is the part most guys mess up. Most guys either: Go for the girl they tried to sleep with and messed up with - but now they're chasing, and she's got all the power (after all, she already said "no" once!), and while she may like you a bit more, as soon as you start chasing she knows she's still in charge. OR, guys Go for another girl in the group to make the first girl jealous - but once she's started liking you again and thinking she might have been hasty in spurning you the first time, she's going to start worrying this might happen (especially if you're doing a good job and being friendly but not paying much attention to her in this outing), and if you go for another girl there's a good chance she plunges straight into auto-rejection, and maybe even tries to make you realize what you're missing out on by flirting / making out / leaving with another guy from the group / party / bar / dinner. So if you can't go for her, and you can't get another girl in the group... what can you do? The answer: leave. After a few hours of you at your most charming best, you will simply tell everyone you need to get going. You can say you've got to get up early tomorrow if you like. If you're one of the first to leave, this is very noticeable. You'll go around, bid your farewells, and, at last, you'll say goodbye to your girl, and spend a split second longer with her than you have everyone else. Be warm with her... she's melted at this point, and is no longer frozen to you and closed off. But don't ask her out, don't suggest you'll see her again, don't mention the last date at all under any circumstances. If she does, play it off like you almost forgot that happened. Just tell her you're really glad she came out, and tell her you hope she has a great night... and then leave. What's this do? She watched you commanding women's attention, and decided that she might have been wrong in rejecting you (preselection) She saw you commanding the group's attention, and realized how well-liked, socially savvy, and popular you are (social proof) She saw you not paying a great deal of attention to her at all, communicating that you clearly aren't as "hung up" on her as she expected you would be (as is usually the case with men women spurn) But, you were still warm with her when you did talk to her, communicating that you weren't bitter or in auto-rejection about things Finally, she watched you leave early, not trying to pursue other women, and not trying to pursue her - leaving while you were on top. Men do NOT do this, and she doesn't understand why. Are you seeing someone? Are you so sure of yourself that you don't need to stick around and see what the night might bring you? What is going on? ... and with that, you've gone from being that guy that she had her finger on, that she knew exactly what he was all about, and that she had rejected and was absolutely certain she made the right choice about doing so with... to a guy she realizes she made totally the wrong decision about, that she actually likes and finds attractive... and who's now just left, off into the night, without trying to get anything from anyone, and she doesn't know why. And the next day, you'll send her this message: You: "Glad you made it out last night, Kelly - it was great seeing you. What do you say to a coffee or a hot chocolate this week? Let me know your schedule if you're up for it." She'll swoon. Take her on a brief informational date. Be chill. Don't push for anything. Keep it short, and leave after an hour or so (have a prior engagement that she can understand), but before you do, ask her if she'd like to cook dinner sometime later that week - she'll almost certainly say yes. Sort out the details then and there - when's good for her? Day, time - what's she bringing to your place for the meal (wine, dessert, etc.)? second date It's important that you follow this process of hitting these notes while her emotions are still warm: Asking her out for a short date while she's still confused and intrigued and regretful over the night before Asking her to dinner at the end of the short date while she's still feeling like, "Wow, I actually like him a lot more than I thought I did!" The best part of it is this: she's been to your place. She knows that physical escalation and sex happens there. She knows that if she agrees to come to your place, she's agreeing to sex. So if you ask her out over text after your informational date, there's a good chance she needs to sit and deliberate and hem and haw, and a good chance she says "yes" anyway, but also a good chance she says "no." But because you ask her to dinner on a high point of the date, and when she doesn't want to see you leave, she's inclined to agree. In other words, she knows that going to your place means sex. And she agrees to go to your place to cook dinner with you. Her rationalization kicks in again now - but this time, it's in her favor. She's agreed to have sex with you, and she knows it. Except now when she rationalizes, she rationalizes this: "Well, I must really like him if I agreed to have sex with him!" Just make sure you don't miss the escalation window THIS time around... because otherwise, my next piece of advice is going to be go get famous in Hollywood, because that's the only thing that might possibly save you from TWO botched escalations! Take care of business. She wants you to. And you won't have to worry about scheduling a second second date to get things back on track.

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##5 Essential Insights on How to Meet Girls in Groups A buddy of mine recently asked me to write on how to meet girls in groups, as it's something I don't talk about a great deal on here. The most I've touched on the topic before has been in "Breaking Circle," the post on maintaining attraction despite distractions around you or even other people trying interrupt you. But, as my friend noted, I haven't gotten a proper treatment on meeting women in groups up yet, so this is it. Meeting girls in groups is one of those things that, assuming you're doing much nighttime approaching, you're going to run into reasonably regularly. In fact, it may very well be the meat and potatoes of your approaches -- you might just find yourself in groups most of the time. Groups aren't ideal, of course. Things tend to move faster and more smoothly the majority of the time when it's just you and your girl, and there are no interruptions or distractions to knock the two of you off course. However, when handled appropriately, any negatives of groups can usually be negated, and in fact you can sometimes even get groups working for you with the women you meet. So it doesn't always have to be unfortunate that that pretty girl you like is in the middle of a group -- sometimes groups make it even easier for the two of you to get together. MEETING GIRLS IN GROUPS IS MORE WORK Personal note on this one: I typically prefer meeting women who are either alone, or who are in a loose group they're easily peeled off from. Why? Because meeting a girl entrenched in her group is work. I come from a background of optimizing things for efficiency. I don't like spending a lot of time on anything. Plus, I had it happen to me enough times in the past -- you spend hours on a girl, or managing a group, only to have it go nowhere, when you could've been doing something else instead (like, talking to a girl who really was interested!). Frustrating. Part of that's just experience; it takes time in-field to learn how to recognize which women are interested in you (see "How Girls Show Interest"), learn how to tell if a girl is horny, learn how to identify which groups are more protective and which are more laissez-faire about what the members of their group do, and which women are likely to buck an overprotective group (or jealous guy friends with crushes on them) if they really like you. And there's no substitute for experience and the intuition it builds within you. The only way to get it, of course, is just to go out and have enough experiences that you build that intuition within yourself and become able to accurately gauge the situations you find yourself in. But the rest of it's just taking a moment to access your in-built common sense. I mean really, if a girl's dancing like crazy and surrounded by six of her closest gal pals, do you really think you stand a better chance of taking her home than a girl who's over sitting quietly next to a friend she's hardly talking to, scanning the room, and clearly hoping to meet someone? Of course not. Avoiding groups is usually preferential. A few months back, I was out with a friend, and he really wanted to be social and get meeting people, so he jumped in with a big group and started hanging at their table and talking to everyone. I found this somewhat boring, and just chilled there sipping my drink. I was the quiet guy staring off into space as my buddy lit up the whole group. He spent about an hour and a half looking to make some inroads with the cute girl of the group, and she did like him a good bit, but we left to get food and when we came back she was gone. The next night, we went out to the same place, and right away I met a really cute girl who I could tell was looking to meet someone. She was with one friend, who didn't mind the two of us sneaking off together, and the girl and I were lovers under an hour after I met her. It's just more efficient and a lot more effective to meet women not entrenched in big groups. Things move faster, easier... better. But what if everyone's in a group, and you're dead set on meeting a girl? Or what if the girl you really, really want is in a group? Well, then it's time to put your group stuff into action. More work usually, but sometimes it's the only way to get what you want. And if you follow the steps I have for you a little later in this post, you're going to optimize group work as much as possible and save yourself a lot of time, a lot of hassle -- and capitalize on a lot of opportunities you otherwise might've missed. THROWING OUT "GROUP THEORY" A while back, there was something in pick up artist circles called "group theory," and its proponents held to a certain number of tenets for when it came to how to meet girls in groups. This is no relation to the group theory of mathematics, mind you; but some of the early pick up guys were into programming and math and things of that nature, so you'll hear terms with similar names to those fields bandied about in the social arena. The tenets for early pick up's group theory were as follows: You must engage the leader of the group first You must win over everyone in the entire group You must ignore the girl you want until you've won over everyone else If that sounds complicated, circuitous, and counterintuitive, that's because it is. I have my own theory about all the early theories in the social arts. My theory is that the guys who came up with them in the early days really, honestly thought that meeting women was really, really hard, and that there must be some sort of really complicated set of laws and dynamics underlying everything that had to be explained by equally complicated, counterintuitive social machinations one should follow. Generally though, I find that, past a certain point, the more complicated you make something, and the more rules and laws you add to stuff, the tougher it gets to pull off, and the less likely it is to succeed. In warfare, there's something called the "Three-Pronged Attack." This is when an army divides itself into three branches, or "prongs," and attacks from three different directions. The "Two-Pronged Attack," where an army attacks from two directions, tends to be a consistently successful strategy, as the enemy's forces get sandwiched between two attacking armies, or confronted by one and flanked by the other. So, you'd think that the 3-pronged version of this same attack would be killer... right? Well, the three-pronged attack almost always, always fails. The army that divides itself into two parts, throughout history, often wins. The army that divides itself into three parts, throughout history, ends up losing. Why? It's because the strategy's just too damn complicated, and the world doesn't like complicated strategies. Nothing ever goes according to plan, and the more moving parts your plan has, the easier it is to get a monkey wrench jammed in there somewhere in the operation and foul up the whole darn thing. That's what happens with this "group theory." It takes something -- meeting girls in groups -- that needs a bit of strategy applied to it to work best, and then just WAY overcomplicates things by introducing too many crazy wild attacks. And then it fails. All right, there are probably a few guys out there who've used the traditional group theory and had it work for them. But if you're one of those guys, trust me, you're one of about four guys on Earth who can say he's made it work, and who knows if that was skill or just luck. For everybody else, we need a somewhat simpler approach to groups. Or at least, I know I sure do. I want to talk a little more about the specifics of group theory though, and why those specifics're bad ideas. Fallacy #1: You must engage the leader of the group first This one's the least harmful of the three rules mentioned above, but it's still going to be less effective than other paths to getting your girl if you're an experienced guy, and it's probably going to be downright detrimental to you if you're a newer guy or intermediate. Why's it so ineffective to engage the leader of the group first? Well, think about it like this. Have the leader -- the alpha male or the alpha female -- of the group on your side is generally a good idea. If the leader likes you, the rest of the group will at least tolerate your presence, and they'll be more inclined to lower their defenses and like you and accept you themselves. But if you're talking to the leader first, you're communicating to the group that the person you're most interested in getting to know is him. Not the cute girl off to the side. Yes, it may catch her interest if you do things that way, but there's an even better chance she writes you off as some guy who's just being a social butterfly, or even starts auto-rejecting because you ignored her to talk to him instead. And on top of that, while you're busily getting to know the leader of the group and/or distracting him or her, another guy hanging around nearby with his eye on the girl you like may just take the opportunity to swoop in and grab her, mentally thanking you for being his unwitting "wingman." In other words, the downsides are: People usually assume you're just being social Women can auto-reject because they feel neglected Other men angling for the woman you like may snap her up while you're busy That's Fallacy #1. Here's Fallacy #2: Fallacy #2: You must win over everyone in the entire group Of the three rules, this one's the one that bugs me the most when I see guys doing it, and this one's the one that bugs me most when I'm out with a group of people and a random jumps into our group and tries to "install" himself. Seriously dude, just talk to the girl you want to talk to, you don't have to try and chat my ear off and make me your buddy. You're not going to accomplish that with a few minutes of chit-chat, anyway. Back to you doing it. I did this plenty of times when I started out; it really does sound like good advice. Get everyone in the group on your side, and no one will stand in your way with the girl you like. Sounds great, right? Except it doesn't work that way. If you recall the term "fixtures" I used in the post on hooking up with friends, you'll remember that I discuss how it's better to stay on the periphery of a girl's circle until you're ready to get to know her and move things forward with her. The reason why is because once a girl's been exposed to you enough, she's going to slot you a role in the social environment around her. And if she sees you being super social with everyone and winning over her group and all her friends liking you, she's going to slot you as "part of the group." And that's bad because, as mentioned in that post above, girls don't sleep with men from their groups. They sleep with men from the periphery of their groups. Not from within them. So, you go and you do all that work to become a part of a girl's group, and then in the end you find that you can't get anywhere with her. Guys that go this route have only themselves to blame for it, though they rarely are aware of why things played out the way they did. Finally, our last "group theory" fallacy: Fallacy #3: You must ignore the girl you want until you've won over everyone else This fallacy is the most deadly one of the three, and it's made more deadly by the "positive reinforcement" it seems to get. So, generally, if you walk up to a group and win over the whole group and only then start talking to the girl you like, yes, generally, she's going to be friendly to you. The early guys testing this approach out drew the conclusion then that this worked; waiting to talk to the girl you liked last was the safest, highest percentage method. But highest percentage for what? Highest percentage of her being friendly to you, that is. We talked about this in the post on reactions from women vs. results with women; reactions do not equal results. Just because a girl is friendly with you does not by any stretch of the imagination mean she wants to go to bed with you. But those early guys, they saw friendly reactions, and said to themselves, "Aha! I've found something that works!" Except, for what they were really going for -- getting girls in bed with them as lovers and girlfriends -- it doesn't work. Like we discussed under the points above, going that circuitous route of being the friendly, likeable, sociable guy is great for getting a friendly reception, and it's okay if you want to get a girl to just be friends with you. But yeah, no, it ain't so good if you're looking to come off as a strong, sexy beast that women can't resist wanting to tear the clothes off of. Women admire boldness and confidence and directness. They don't like guys who dance around and maneuver and try to slide under the radar. Those group theory guys designed their group theory to do just that; it's designed to slip under the radar of women who have their "shields" up. Even among beautiful, well-dressed, in-demand women in nightclubs though, it's easier to learn how to show direct interest and get them interested in you -- regardless of your looks; I've seen lots of guys you might not think pull it off -- than it is to slip under the radar and come out a winner. Trying to go under the radar blows up in the faces of the guys who try it -- because women know what they're doing. And it ends up looking awkward and bad, which is the opposite of what's attractive to women. how to meet girls in groups HOW TO MEET GIRLS IN GROUPS AND HAVE IT WORK I have my own rules for meeting girls in groups. And they work really well for me. Want to know what they are? Start talking first to the girl you most want to get to know. Be cool with her friends if introduced, but don't be the one who breaks circle. Keep the lion's share of your attention focused on your girl and don't be away from talking to her for long for any reason. Don't try to be the new alpha -- treat the guys in the group already with respect. Avoid talking to the "group" or addressing people as a collective ("Hey guys!"). Address people as individuals -- nobody responds to "Hey guys!" People respect this so much more than the indirect approach, and boy, does it work better. Need an example? All right, let's say this. You're out at a bar one night with a group of your friends, including a cute, single gal pal of yours. Two guys approach. Guy #1: Guy #1 walks up to you, and starts trying to chat you up in the midst of your group because you're clearly the leader. He jokes around with you and tries to make some small talk, while all your friends stand around watching. He addresses the group too, when he senses you aren't biting. And if it goes okay and he gets an okay reception, he then turns to your cute single gal pal, then turns back to you and asks if it's okay if he borrows her for a minute. Guy #2: Guy #2 walks up to your cute single gal pal and starts talking to her. You're talking to your other friends, and you notice he and your gal pal have started talking, but that's her business. Maybe you decide to see if this guy's cool, so you introduce yourself and ask his name. He's chill, calm, and makes a little polite chit chat with you, all the while keeping his body language largely pointed at your gal pal, and she's keeping her body language largely pointed at him. He seems like an all right guy, you figure, and it looks like they're enjoying talking to one another, so you decide to get back to talking with the rest of your friends and leave the two of them to their conversation. Eventually, they head off to sit somewhere; if you've talked to the guy before, he tells you, "Hey man, we're going to go grab a seat over there. Didn't want you wondering where we disappeared to." You thank him for the heads up, and off they go. No comparison, right? See how much smoother and more natural and less invasive / socially awkward Guy #2's approach feels? And what's really neat is that cool recognizes cool. When you approach this way, you're clearly doing things the most effortless, sprezzatura-driven way you possibly could. People just like that a lot better. They can tell if their female friend likes you, and most folks, unless they're super uncool, won't interfere. I used to have a lot more girls pull their girlfriends away when I tried talking to the "group" or when I tried to be sociable / indirect than I did once I started focusing my energies largely on the girl I actually wanted to meet. In fact, I almost never get girls dragging their girlfriends away from me anymore. Not only that. When you're the cool guy, and a girl's friends can clearly see that she likes you, they will often, often try and help the two of you get together. And that seems to be everywhere in the world. This happens to me when I'm in the States, and this happens to me when I'm in Asia, and both are very different cultures. I've had people tell me how you have to win over the friends in America because most people aren't that cool, and I've had people tell me you can't pull Asian girls when their friends are around in Asia because it's too conservative for that. Nope. Wrong on both counts. Try again. If you seem cool, calm, and self-possessed, and you make no bones about going for the girl you want, and she clearly wants you too, and you're cool with the friends when they engage you but you're not the first to break circle and you're friendly but not too friendly and clearly eager to get back to talking to the girl you like, people get it. And they'll help you, much of the time. First time this happened to me was in San Francisco in fall of 2007. I'd been trying to do the "social guy talking to everybody" thing for a long time until a short while prior to then, and then I decided, "Screw it, this doesn't work, I'm just going for the girl I want." So, I found myself at a bar at closing time one night, and there were three girls leaning up against an open window looking out onto the street. I started talking to one, and I just talked to her. Not her friends; I didn't ask her to introduce me; I didn't introduce her to my friends or my friends to her; I just talked to her. And then I asked her to sit, and we went and sat. Her two girlfriends each came by briefly as we were seated to check up on her, and she introduced us and we said our hellos and then they were on their ways again. The bar closed, and my friends all left. I went outside with this girl, her two girlfriends, and a big number of guy friends of hers (I think there were eight guys total, maybe?). She gave me introductions to the other guys, and then she and I went back to talking. It seemed one of the guys was a bartender, and he could bring some people back to his bar for an after party -- but only five people. So, the three girls were in -- I just hung back and chilled and figured my night was over. My girl joined the conference of the girls and the bartender talking things out, and then she came back to me. "Only five people can go with him," she said. "I'm making sure that you're coming with us too." I was pleasantly surprised. "Oh, cool," I said. "Thanks!" The bartender, the three girls, another guy friend of theirs, and I all started walking toward the bar. Then, halfway to the bar, the bartender got a phone call that he was unhappy about. "Damn it!" he said. "He told me I can only bring four people." I figured that meant I was out. I hadn't even talked to this guy; why would he bring me? But I stayed chill and kept my mouth shut. He turned to his guy friend: "Sorry bro," he said, "I can't bring you." The guy friend turned sadly off and trudged away to go hail a cab. I was stunned. Why the hell was I brought into this select group of people who got to head to a bar after hours and drink the bar's alcohol for free when I hadn't actively worked to win anyone over other than my girl? Well, I ended up at the bar, and then I ended up at the bartender's place later with my girl, and then I ended up at her place, and I took her as my lover there. I got the girl because I didn't come off as the crazy guy working his ass off to try and win everybody over and ingratiate himself. Instead, I just won my girl over, and everybody saw it, and I was cool enough with them that they figured if their gal pal liked me and I liked her it was a good thing and they should help the two of us get together. Also worth noting is that when a girl feels like you're close with her group, she'll expect you to fend for yourself. But when you've predominantly talked to her, and she likes you a lot, she'll stand up and go to bat for you as your "representative" in the group. This works a heck of a lot better on a number of levels than you having to do it yourself, not the least of which include: She becomes increasingly invested in you as she goes to bat for you more The two of you grow closer and closer in an "us vs. the world" type scenario The group puts more stock in her going to bat for you than you going to bat for yourself I've slept with a fair number of girls from groups I've met since that night in San Francisco, and it's always gone this way. The friends see the girl and I talking; introduce themselves perhaps and we talk briefly (or sometimes I never even meet the friends at all), and then they back off and it's like the girl and I were there alone. And when this happens (and it happens a lot when you're following those five steps), it makes it even more likely that you and your girl get together than if you met her alone -- because despite not even talking to them, you've managed to get her friends' express approval. They see her engrossed in conversation with you, and you seem cool, so they stay hands off. She notices them not interfering and instead giving their express approval, and interprets that to mean they think you're a quality guy and she feels more comfortable around you and likes you more and is more willing to let things take their natural course. Then all you've got to do is invite her home. Sometimes -- and it's always funny when it happens -- the friends will even suggest that the two of you go somewhere together themselves. Just remember, Start talking first to the girl you most want to get to know. Be cool with her friends if introduced, but don't be the one who breaks circle. Keep the lion's share of your attention focused on your girl and don't be away from talking to her for long for any reason. Don't try to be the new alpha -- treat the guys in the group already with respect. Avoid talking to the "group" or addressing people as a collective ("Hey guys!"). Address people as individuals -- nobody responds to "Hey guys!" Oh, and group theory? Tell the indirect guys to archive that one and start using this stuff instead. They'll thank you for it!

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##7 Facial Expressions That Drive Women Wild Most guys who want to get good with girls focus primarily what to say when they first start out. Me? Pretty early on, I focused on facial expressions. Ever wonder why girls go so crazy for certain Hollywood stars? Many of them are good-looking, sure... but there are plenty of good-looking men out there that women don't go gaga for. Stars tend to have some preselection going on, and of course there's the money / power / prestige / social status there to back it all up. So that's part of it. Yet, many great-looking men make it into Hollywood only to never achieve that legendary "sex symbol" status that certain actors do. What sifts the wheat from the chaff? Well, acting chops, certainly... and hit movies help. But one of the topmost factors is this: charm. And what's up there in the mix among the chief elements of this mysterious thing called "charm"? You guessed it - it's what we talk about in this post: facial expressions. If you get the right sensual, powerful, captivating expressions down, you become someone positively mesmerizing to women. So let's have a look at seven (7) of the best: four flirty and sexy to ramp up your sex appeal with women, and three for putting a little social pressure to good use... while of course still keeping it pretty sexy, too. facial expressions "He's a real charmer." Anyone ever say this about you? I started "collecting" cool, interesting, and sexy facial expressions back in college. I had a few of my own prior to then, but I really started paying attention to what people were doing in my early twenties as I started socializing more and tried to parse what made certain people just so much more magnetic than others. One girl in particular I remember, who had the most charming personality and absolutely the cutest - but also sexiest - collection of little unique facial expressions I'd ever seen, I ended up spending a little too much time pursuing, getting little more than a kiss on the lips when she was drunk one night for my efforts (before being promptly cockblocked by her pretty Persian girlfriend, who despised me). Sure enough, that charming, expressive girl went on to star in a few reality television shows on VH1, but back when I knew her she really started me paying attention to what people were doing with facial expressions. #1: THE CUTE AND SEXY LOOK Let's kick off with the one we talked about in "Sexy Body Language for Men (Learned from Hot Girls)": the cute and sexy look. This one's something of a "bread and butter" look for interacting with women - it automatically slots you into "sexy guy" territory, and you'll want to do it as much as possible... perhaps even turn it into your default facial expression. Cute and sex is, for a refresher (or in case you didn't read the previous article): An underlook, with chin tucked down and eyes looking up Lips slightly pursed and drawn into a slight, playful smile Eyebrows either up or down (never just neutral) A hand or object near your face to draw attention, if you like Eyes peaking out from the corners of their sockets / head slightly turned if you want added sexiness And it looks like this: facial expressions facial expressions The cute and sexy look really ramps up interest from women, and causes them to view you as a curious, interesting, sexual man - and one very much worth getting to know. This look is effective at placing you firmly into the 'lover' category - removing much of the risk of ending up in the friend zone or as an early boyfriend candidate. That's because more platonic men simply don't use it, and if you do, she knows automatically which category you go in (the bold, naughty, sexy man). It isn't going to pick girls up for you, of course - you've still got to do that yourself. But if you want to have an easier time of it with everything you do with women, this look contributes to that quite strongly. Test it out, if you haven't already - you'll almost certainly find it useful. #2: THE VALUE-GIVING SMILE A friend of mine in California who's very good with women uses this facial expression a great deal - and not just with girls, either. This is his go-to smile for any time he wants to give value. What's that mean, "give value"? By this I mean: Someone tells a joke or makes a witty comment, and you want to smile/laugh a little bit, in a high status way. The communication here is, "All right, I'll give you that one! That's funny." Someone tells a story about something he or she did that is cool, different, or exciting, and you want to show them a little admiration without oozing it. Here the communication is, "Well, you don't say! That's neat." You see someone you haven't seen in a while (although it's fine to use on dates too, assuming the girl isn't overly serious), and want to show them you're happy to see them in a high status way without having to use words, get up, be overly expressive, etc. In this case, the communication is, "Hey, it's you! Great to see you again, old friend." Sean Connery does the expression well, so we'll use him as an example again: facial expressions You'll notice the characteristics of this one are: Genuine smile, with eyes crinkled at the corners (fake smiles don't have this eye-corner crinkling; genuine smiles do) Reasonably broad smile, though broader on one side of the mouth than the other Some teeth showing, but not a fully open-mouth smile; this smile's a mix of the sexy smile and the warm, friendly one Eyebrows slightly pulled up, almost imperceptibly so Often accompanied with a slight, slow head tilt backwards (not dramatic or significant; slight), followed by a nod forward to return the head to its original position, with a bit of "bounce" as the head settles into place This expression is great for conveying feelings of warmth and familiarity; the instant you do this with someone, they feel as though the two of you are old friends... even if it's only your first date, or you've only just met her and you're acknowledging her as she returns from the bathroom. #3: THE SEXY POUTY LOOK If you thought only little girls and sultry grown up minxes pouted, think again. The sexy pouty look is often the domain of younger men, simply because it's a more "tormented" look... and younger men tend to be the more tormented, angstier men (older men just tend to have their stuff together, and don't need / use the pouty look all that often... although you can still find Brad Pitt and Sylvester Stallone using it quite a bit, even as they grow longer in tooth). This expression is fairly similar to the cute and sexy look, except that it lacks the latter's hints of playfulness. Instead, this one drips of Byronic vulnerability: facial expressions The features sexy pouty has in common with cute and sexy are: The slightly pursed lips Eyebrows either up or down, though not as exaggeratedly as in cute and sexy An underlook, with chin tucked down and eyes looking up Some of the differences include: No hint of playfulness in lips, and no slight smile Eyes sad and unfocused; looking slightly down (as opposed to locked onto one's conversation partner with lively incisiveness, as with the cute and sexy look) Sexy pouty works well when you're going for "young, lost, and vulnerable," and makes you especially likely to get approached by women and opened by them. You appear alluring and vexingly interesting with this look... and also like you won't put up a fight (or turn her down) if she walks up to say 'hello'. #4: "COME ON... I KNOW YOU WANT ME" This is one of my favorite facial expressions. For me personally, this one even beats Cute and Sexy. "Come On... I Know You Want Me" is what you give to girls: When they resist you When they try to act like they're not interested in you When they're trying to play coy When they're trying to wind down the sexual energy When they're trying to friend zone you or throw you in the boyfriend box It's a great way of telling the girl, "Nice try, but I'm not falling for it. You want me." Which is good for lightening the mood a bit... while at the same time, kicking the sexual tension up another notch. It looks like this: facial expressions facial expressions This look is similar to the cute and sexy look in these ways: A hint of a smile and playfulness about the lips Eyebrows either up or down, though not as exaggeratedly as in cute and sexy An underlook, with chin tucked down and eyes looking up ... and different in these: Lips are not pursed Mouth is drawn slightly down in the corners, even as it overall pulls up in a smile Eyes are very frequently squinted in a playfully inquisitive, "Oh really?" sort of way Needless to say, you've got to be somewhat cocksure to pull this one off... you've really got to think you're some hot stuff. However, when you DO think this... and you communicate it with this expression... very often, the women you use it with are inclined to think the same. facial expressions Pure flirty expressions out of the way, let's talk about three more "high charm" facial expressions you can put to use to communicate in powerful, socially dominant ways with other people (particularly, attractive women!). The looks in this section are used more for putting social pressure on people, in order to better facilitate your interactions moving in the direction you want. Two of them we've covered on this website before; the other one, this will be our first time talking about. #5: THE BORED LOOK I am absolutely certain that at least SOMEtime, at SOME point in your life, a girl has given you this look after you said or did something, and held that look until you cracked: facial expressions ... and as soon as you cracked, giving into the pressure she was putting on you that implied that whatever you'd just said or done was socially retarded, you then immediately took whatever you'd just said or done back: "I was just kidding," you said, or, "Hey - it was a joke!" At that moment, a clear power shift happened between you and her - and instantly, the two of you both knew who was in charge here. She was. And you'd better not forget it. That look was the bored look, a facial expression we first talked about here: "The Bored Look: Use It to Get Women Engaged." The good news is that men can use this look just the same as women can. All you've got to do to pull it off is: Put a slight smile on your face, pull back one end of that smile dramatically up into your cheek, while turning the smile down at the edges Raise one of your eyebrows in an inquisitive position Open up your eyes and stare at her wide-eyed facial expressionsThe overall message is, "Really? You're really going to say that? Really?" Then, once you've got the face in place... hold it. Hold it until she cracks. She will. This expression communicates that whatever the person it's being used on said or did was socially unintelligent. In other words, that she's just embarrassed herself socially. It's an aggressive move. It's wielding some heavy social firepower... and as such, you only want to use it when someone steps out of line. That is to say, she: Says something rude or insulting Tries to have a laugh at your expense Implies that you'd make a great platonic friend Does something boneheaded and offensive Don't do this if a girl says or does something boneheaded that isn't insulting or hurtful or demeaning to your social status, otherwise it feels like you're just criticizing her for not being perfect... and she'll start circling the drain toward auto-rejection if she likes you. Do do it if a girl says or does something that potentially elevates her position above yours - e.g., implying that you are chasing after her, or that you'd invest heavily in her: Her: You'd buy me a new phone if you were my boyfriend and I needed one, wouldn't you? You: [bored look] Remember, when you do this, do it and hold. If she doesn't say or do something to alleviate the pressure after 5 or 6 seconds, you can just blink and look slightly away, as if to say, "Well... anyway." #6: THE SKEPTICAL LOOK The skeptical look is another one we discussed on here, this one back in 2010's aptly named article "The Skeptical Look." This look functions as the subtle man's bored look - doing the same thing that look does, but with subtlety. Think of the bored look as the look you'll use when: You're not yet that good at making subtle facial expressions, or You're interacting with a girl who's socially inexperienced and hasn't yet learned to pick up on (and value) subtlety Generally that means with girls who are in their late teens and the first few years of their twenties, you'll want to stick to the bored look. With women older than 22 or 23, you'll use the skeptical look. There are exceptions - the 18 year old girl who's mature beyond her years and recognizes and is attracted to subtlety, or the 27 year old who acts like a little party girl and on whom the subtle is lost. Think of it this way: if she seems poised and socially well-attuned, go subtle. If not, go obvious. The risk of subtle is if you use it with a girl who doesn't pick up on it, the message isn't conveyed; the risk of obvious is if you use it with a girl who's socially experienced enough to prefer subtlety over obviousness, you look a little goofy and less socially experienced. Here's our more subtle skeptical look: facial expressions You'll notice a few differences between Will Smith's expression on the left and Tom Hiddleston's on the right... namely, that Smith's is a bit more playful and disarming, while Hiddleston's is a bit more "disappointed." The main features of this look are: Sharp eye contact Eyebrow in a slightly (more serious) or very (more playful) raised, inquisitive position Mouth closed somewhat tightly, showing just the slightest hint of a smirk The overall message is either, "Are you kidding me?" (playful) or, "Finished?" (disappointed), and the pressure it puts on a girl to knock off whatever rudeness or silliness she's getting up to is quite effective (with any girl socially savvy enough to be able to read its subtlety). This one's especially useful when a girl is trying to go backwards in a seduction, like moving back from deep conversation to playful banter. Flash her this look and hold it for a few seconds, and she'll recognize that she's being a bit of a goof and get back with the program again. #7: THE INTENSE LOOK When I was a boy, I had an English teacher who told us that there was a rare ability a select few people possessed to look at someone a certain way and just fill that other person with fear by the sheer ferocity of the look. I felt a surge of pride when I heard this, because I knew I had that talent - I'd been told by many people that when I got angry, I looked scary. But the intense look isn't just for making other people quake in their boots - otherwise, it wouldn't be all that worth putting up here, unless you plan to spend a lot of time in dangerous areas and would like another way to become a walking crime deterrent. The intense look is used for communicating something else, too: I am a powerful dude. It looks like this: facial expressions facial expressions The way it does this is by putting on your intense face, and then making and holding eye contact. Usually when people wear a face like this, it's because they're angry or upset... and they divert their eyes away from other people, seeking to avoid confrontation. By instead maintaining eye contact, your communication is, "I know I look intense, and I know I look threatening. And I'm going to look you dead in the eye, because I want you to see me." Doing this with men is typically a challenge. But doing it with women... if she knows you're a cool guy, you're socially savvy, and you possess self-control, she knows you're not challenging her. Instead, she just feels a surge of power... your power. The keys to this look are: Furrowed brow (eyebrows down), but only somewhat so... not furiously so Eye contact from the corner of the eyes ("sexy" eye contact) An underlook, with the chin tucked slightly down A slight flaring of the nostrils... you should barely be able to feel doing this. If you can easily detect it staring in the mirror, you're overdoing it Corners of the mouth pulled back just enough that there is some compression in the cheeks, but it isn't clear if the mouth is headed toward a smile or a frown if it continues to grow One difference you might pick up from the feel of the images above is the difference between Tom Cruise's facial expression (on the bottom right) and the other two expressions. That difference is caused by the shadow covering the right half of Cruise's face and, thus, one of Cruise's eyes; when viewing the picture, you only look into one of his eyes, which makes the image feel more confrontational (next time you talk to someone, try focusing on just one of the person's eyes; it will feel quite aggressive to you and him both - the left eye is particularly confrontational when stared at exclusively, and that's the eye that this photograph of Cruise puts your focus on). FACIAL EXPRESSIONS BONUS: THE HEAD TILT Bet you didn't realize it, but in nearly every one of those pictures above (the bored look being the notable exception here), the man in the photograph tilts his head to one side or the other. Sometimes a little; sometimes a lot; but almost invariably, at least some. Why's he do this? Head tilting makes you stand out. It causes people to pay attention to you. Normal people tilt their heads when asking a question; it's a sign of inquisitiveness. Charismatic people will tend to tilt their heads anytime they're doing something that demands a little attention. It's a quick and easy way of saying, "I'm intrigued - I'm trying to figure something out about you." It makes you feel at once much closer to this charming individual you're speaking to, as he indicates his interest in you and his desire to find out more about you. If you want to add a dash more charm and personality to any of your facial expressions, just tilt your head. PUTTING IT ALL TO USE facial expressionsWho should you use these facial expressions with? Pretty girls only? All girls you talk to, regardless of your interest levels? EVERYBODY you talk to, man or woman, young or old? My personal recommendation is that you use most of them with everyone. "Cute and Sexy' and "Come On... I Know You Want Me" you probably want to reserve solely for women, although I'd suggest you do this with ALL women, and not only the ones you want to go to bed with. Why this recommendation? Because your facial expressions are habitual. They become your defaults. Search for photographs for most of the actors in these photographs, and what do you see? Ryan Reynolds with that same expression on his face in every picture. Sean Connery with one of several different expressions... in every picture. Charming, sexy facial expressions do not come with an on-off switch. If you learn to use them all the time, you will use them all the time, even when you talk to beautiful women. If you don't use them all the time, and then try to use them when you run into the girl of your dreams... well, don't count on doing anything different then. You might get yourself doing them for a few minutes, but as soon as you stop paying attention to what your face is doing, it'll go right back to its normal mode of expressing itself. If you really want to unlock the power of these for use in your seductions (and anywhere else you might need them), start using them all the time. Use them with friends. Use them with colleagues. Use them with waitresses and clerks you wouldn't otherwise flirt with normally. Use them anywhere and everywhere, until they become your default faces. Then, those expressions will be there when you need them. And you won't be acting anymore... it will just be you: a real charmer.

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##Absolute Abundance "Abundance Mentality" is something that's frequently prescribed as an answer to men's neediness issues: approach anxiety, having a "weird" or "awkward" vibe, escalation hesitation, failure to invite women home. Anything where a guy comes off as hesitant or is nervous about achieving a certain outcome. Men who know there are women everywhere, and know they can get women whenever they want, goes the thinking, won't worry about it. But in fact, a standard abundance mentality will only get you halfway there. This article's going to focus on what I call absolute abundance - something that goes beyond ordinary abundance. First though, let's have a look at what an abundance mentality is, and how you can work to develop one. abundance mentality ABUNDANCE MENTALITY Abundance mentality is the name given to the feeling, the belief, that a man has abundant options with women: that there are attractive women everywhere, and that he can get them with relative ease. Once a man achieves an abundance mentality, seduction seems like a vastly easier prospect, and far less work. Of course, getting there is easier said than done. I'd say it took me a good three years from the time I really began training seriously in the social arts until I reached a true abundance mentality. For me, the realization came when I took women home three nights in a row on vacation, and I saw that I had reached a point where any night I put enough effort in, I could take women home. It was reinforced further that year when I worked on street pickup, and found I could reliably bring women home most nights I went out just from meeting girls on the street. Once I reached that point, all my old beliefs about women being difficult and challenging to get and about seduction being this tough skill I still had to master fell away, and suddenly getting girls seemed like a game I had mastered. After three years of hard work and sporadic results, it became straightforward, and I achieved consistency. But abundance mentality is not achieved in an instant. Rather, it's built up to over time, as you develop more skill in seduction and things become clearer and easier to control, and the fog that hangs over this area of most men's lives fades. The better you become at seduction, and the more you understand it, the more of an abundance mentality you naturally develop. It's also developed through experience. If you've only ever dated a few women, women will feel like scarce resources that are hard to come by. But if you've dated many, and if there are always women in your life, they seem like far more abundant resources. You don't worry so much about them - they're just there. If I was to recommend a process for developing abundance mentality, I think that process would look like this: Absorb information on understanding women and social dynamics. A lot of men who dive into the social arts work on learning routines, pickup lines, and various things like that. All those things are short term fixes - they're band-aids for a lack of understanding about why things happen the way they do in social contexts, and why women are the way they are. The more you understand women and socializing, the easier a time you'll have figuring out confusing or novel situations, and the faster and more consistently you'll start getting results with women. Practice, practice, practice. The number one key to developing an abundance mentality is getting results, and the number one key to getting results is getting out there and meeting women. Lots of women. Not a few a week. A lot of them. You really need to be serious and meet lots of girls and push to move things forward if you want to get to a point where you're consistently finding success with women and build a real sense of abundance. Move somewhere with abundance built in. If you're living in the country, and there are ten beautiful, available women in your entire town, you will never, ever develop an abundance mentality. I promise. At the very least, move to a city with a lot of beautiful young women. If you're more ambitious, move to a city in a country with a lot of beautiful young women. Compare Osaka, Japan, or Florence, Italy, or (so I hear) Buenos Aires, Argentina with any city in the United States (my home country), and what will you find? Vastly more women who are thin and attractive by comparison, and an average body size that is much less likely to tip the scales. If you're used to going to the club in the States and seeing three or four girls who aren't overweight, you'll be truly amazed stepping into a nightclub in a major city abroad and seeing it filled with beautiful thin women everywhere. Instant abundance. Get ambitious. Are you inviting women home regularly? If not, you likely have no real idea what women would go home with you, given the opportunity, and what women require more work. I just brought a girl home with me a few hours ago who was trying to go back to her own home because she said she had a lot of work to do before she went to class tonight. But I invited her back with me, and she came. Abundance is heavily influenced by how many women you're bringing home, and how easy you think it is to get them home. If you're not trying, you might be surprised how easy it is to get a girl alone with you. That's abundance mentality. Getting there is no piece of cake, but it's certainly achievable. Once you get there, though, you've only made it halfway. Because on the other side of abundance mentality, we have an entirely different beast: ABSOLUTE ABUNDANCE What's absolute abundance? It's something I became aware of last year as a once-wonderful long-term relationship of mine wound down. I knew logically I should let my girlfriend go - it had passed the point of no return. But I wrestled with the decision. She's such an amazing girl, I thought, I don't know if I can ever find anyone as incredible as her. I'd roll through the list of her qualities in my mind and decide I didn't think I could. I realized in retrospect that despite my feeling of abundance in general, I was lacking a feeling of abundance in another way; I lacked the feeling that I could find amazing women easily. Sure, I could go out and pick up a girl to spend a night with; but if I wanted to find another beautiful, intelligent, dynamic, ambitious, successful professional woman with a high degree of in-built loyalty and affection and devotion… could I? Before, I met maybe two or three women who met those very specific qualifications a year. That meant two or three chances a year to get myself a girl I'd be willing to invest the time and effort into building and maintaining a long-term relationship with. Yikes. Better not blow it when those chances appear. And that's exactly how most guys feel about women in general; it's another shade of scarcity mentality. It's scarcity of a particular type of woman; in this case, the kind of caliber woman I look to have a long-term relationship with. I lacked absolute abundance. But, I soon developed it - perhaps nine or ten months after I'd developed ordinary abundance. Which is something I find interesting - I see guys who've had abundance mentalities for years, and still get quite hung up on the rare girls they meet they deem of high quality. They've had abundance for years, but still haven't developed absolute abundance. Why is this? I think the reason why is that most men who teach themselves to meet women focus solely on the meeting part, and aren't choosy about the kind of women they maintain relationships with. They tend to turn girls they aren't crazy about into friends-with-benefits, and then sometimes fall into relationships with those girls. Their standards for women they'll sleep with and women they'll date aren't all that different. I'm a little different. I don't do the friend-with-benefits thing anymore, because I don't see any long-term value to it. If I just want intimacy, I can spend time with my girlfriend, or I can go out and meet a new girl. It doesn't make much sense to me to keep seeing a girl I'm not crazy about. This is similar to how I am with friends - I have a lot of friends, but mostly only spend time with the friends I find pretty amazing. There's a learning curve with this kind of thing. It meant that, for a while, I didn't have a lot of friends, because it took me a while to figure out how to meet amazing people, how to spot amazing people, and how to bring them into my life. In the meantime, I was spending a lot of time with only one or two friends, or by myself. Similarly, with women, it takes you a while to learn how to spot amazing women, how to meet them, and how to bring them into your life. Once you have it down, however, you're set. It's just like meeting women in general - get the skill, and you're on easy street. Once you know you can consistently meet the kind of women you consider amazing - whether that's the kind of women I mentioned above that I consider amazing, or whether it's different kinds of women altogether - you will have achieved absolute abundance. Here's what I think the keys are to absolute abundance, as far as I can tell: Abundance mentality. Without abundance mentality, absolute abundance is out of the question. Work on standard abundance first - and worry about this later! Known standards. Know exactly what you're looking for. You have to know what it is you want before you figure out how to find it consistently. So, if you like brown-haired women with a fiery disposition, or you like blondes with big breasts and glasses, or you like Latinas who wear suits to work, know that. What kind of looks do you look for? Smarts? Education? Career? Upbringing and background? Wealth or property? Personality? Independence? Devotion or loyalty? How passionate must she be? Do you want a woman who seeks novelty and is a thrill seeker, or one who's quieter and more conservative? You must figure all these things out before really getting a clear idea of what you want. Putting yourself in the position to meet the women you want. If you want women who like to relax and kick back and maybe go surfing and light bonfires, London or New York City probably aren't the places you want to be living. Conversely, if you want women who are ambitious, successful, and upwardly mobile, those cities are excellent choices. In addition to actual locale, you can look at where you're meeting women - women in loud dance clubs are going to be more likely to lean one way; women in upscale lounges another; women in dive bars still another; and women in salsa bars another yet. Women who spend their weekend days at the coffee shop vs. the bookstore vs. the beach vs. the park are all going to be different kinds of girls. Look at where you're meeting the women you are, and ask yourself if you're going to the right places. Connection-based courtship. A lot of guys I know and am friends with are party guys specializing in party girls. Which is lots of fun, for sure. I made it a point to learn how to consistently get party girls. But, for relationships, party girls aren't what I want; and in my experience, they aren't what the majority of men want relationships with either. Yet, the higher quality women tend to be pretty adept at screening out party guys - which means that a lot of men who've specialized in getting party girls often aren't able to reliably get higher quality women. The way around this is connection-based courting and socializing of women. When you get good at connection-based courtship, you can very quickly find out a great deal of information about a woman, and get her feeling extremely connected to you in a hurry. This is what most higher quality women respond to. Higher quality women are accustomed to being approached and courted constantly by all kinds of men, and they mercilessly screen out the party guys whom they can tell aren't really interested in them as people. High quality women will still have fun - but usually with safer men or men they can control. When it comes to dating, they want men they feel know them well and understand them and make them feel very connected and cared for - because they know they can get that, and they expect it. Life-improvement and development of social class and grace. The higher you go in quality of women, the tougher at screening those women get: they aggressively screen out men who party too much, men who lack ambition, men who lack class and social grace, and a host of other factors. Like all people, high quality women are searching for men they can relate to - men who are as ambitious and successful and driven as they are. You don't have to have your act perfectly together - I'm by no means financially well off, with an uncertain future, and no promising job prospects at the moment, on any continent - but I'm dating a beautiful, confident girl with a porn-star body, a conservative upbringing, a highly prestigious professional job, who is in the process of getting her MBA, and she buys me food and brings me gifts nearly every time I see her. Despite my shaky situation though, she sees that I'm an intelligent guy who's got drive and ambition and wants to do something with his future - whatever that might be - and I treat her well and make her feel things no other man ever has. And I do it all with class - my current girlfriend says that she rejected men for a year after she broke it off with her fiancée a year ago, but she liked me because I was a gentleman (and she still considers me a gentleman, despite originally getting very upset and embarrassed by how quickly I bedded her); indeed, my last girlfriend said something similar (she would always reject men who approached her, but I seemed different), and a good friend of mine in California, an attractive, successful professional woman, would typically only date more refined, professional men (with the odd suave seducer thrown in for good measure). All these girls are very high quality, very attractive women, and they all routinely reject the loud, crazy party guys. The classier the woman, the more class and ambition she expects from the men she dates. I'd say I realized I'd reached absolute abundance when I got to the point that finding amazing women no longer seemed like a challenging prospect. Meet enough super cute girls, and some of them are bound to be amazing. That and - and this one's the kicker - knowing you've got what it takes to hold onto those amazing women are what grant absolute abundance. Knowing you can meet them consistently. And knowing you know how to keep them once you've found them. That's absolute abundance. Not all men will tell you they want successful, high class, high society women with good breeding and education and who take great care of their man and are devoted. "A cute party girl is enough for me," a guy might say. You know what I say? That's settling. It's like the guy who's had three (short-lived) girlfriends his entire life who says, "I'm not going to bother studying seduction, because I do just fine with women." He doesn't want to go through the painful process of learning and growing and challenging himself, so he settles. I challenge you to strive for not just abundance, but absolute abundance. I challenge you to make yourself into a classy, driven, suave man that high quality women desire. Do well with party girls, for sure, but also position yourself to find success with the best women out there. Only then will you feel truly in-control of your dating life, and have the comfort and the contentedness that comes from knowing that you have an abundance of the world's most amazing women.

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##Anciety in Men: Where it Comes from and how to stop it There've been a handful of commenters recently asking about an article on anxiety in men, including this one, the first of these more recent requests: "Hi Chase, A slight digression from the post, hope you can add your two cents to this. You mentioned avoid being the guy who's "racked with anxiety". Throughout most of my life, I have been plagued with anxiety. My mother suffers from anxiety and I believe it has significantly influenced my development. In high school, though I was part of the cool crowd, i knew at the very core, I was extremely uncomfortable around other people. To hide my weakness, I would put on a facade that consisted of being a loud, obnoxious, "bad-ass" person. I have matured from this and instead of living through a mask, i want to tackle my anxiety head-on. My belief is that, just like anything, gradual exposure will ultimately desensitize. I have been forcing myself to approach strangers and make conversations on a daily basis with this belief in mind. It's been a difficult journey though. Correct me if I'm wrong but through reading your ebook and blog posts, I take it you've gone through a phase of social anxiety/general anxiety yourself as well. If you could be so kind to share with me how you tackled your social anxiety, specific "exercises" that you found extremely helpful, anything you think is worth mentioning, it would truly be a boon to my development. Many thanks, Jack" Jack, sure, I can go through this a bit. It's a little off topic from what we normally talk about, but I think it ties in well to being more successful with women and dating, so let's have a look. anxiety in men This'll be a more personal post for me, similar to the one on how to overcome depression, simply because it's one I've had a lot of experience with and spent a long time stuck in. Anxiety and depression are quite often part-and-parcel to one another, so you might even think of this as the sequel to that post: defeating anxiety. anxiety in men As a young boy, I used to lie awake at night, so filled with fear that my stomach was shriveled up in it, obsessing over and over in my mind ever tiny way that my latest fear fixation would hurt me: werewolves, vampires, trolls, needles from the doctor's office. I'd frequently get up and go down to my parents, but they couldn't offer much comfort; for once I was back upstairs in my bed again, the fears returned, and I was racked with terror until at last sleep took me. This went on for years. I often had terrible nightmares with horrible creatures chasing me, but for the first 5 or 6 years of my life these fears were restricted to nocturnal hours. But anxiety soon began creeping in and affecting me socially, too, not long after I began primary school. When I was six years old, in the first grade, there was this girl I liked - her name was Diana. I went about telling everyone how Diana and I were going to get married and go on a honeymoon to Bermuda (the Beach Boys song, Kokomo, was very popular then, and a favorite of mine, with its lyrics, "Bermuda, Bahamas, come on pretty mama..."). Diana was a second grader - way more mature than a first grader - and she was horrified that this little first grader was going around telling everyone how he was going to marry her. Eventually she told me flat out in front of a bunch of other people by the swing set in the recess yard that she was NOT going to marry me, and burst my bubble (although I still thought I could change her mind). For the next couple of months after that, I imagined every lunchtime that the entire school cafeteria, filled with its cacophony of other students' mealtime laughter and chatter, was ALL directed squarely at ME; they were all talking about me, about how foolish I'd been, and about how funny it was that Diana had roundly rejected me. And they were laughing at me. I felt ashamed. Still, I kept getting into trouble, and kept proclaiming my love to the girls I liked, for a few more years, but events conspired to undermine my extraversion and plunge me into a doubt and a hesitation that began to naturally stalk me everywhere I went. Eventually my outgoing personality faded, though my defiance remained, with me only following the rules enough not to get in trouble, but never liking it. Things changed in seventh grade, when the pretty girls, even the eighth grade pretty girls (a big deal for a seventh grader), started asking me on dates, and the cool kids started trying to hang out with me and inviting me to their parties. Suddenly, like a light had been switched on, everyone wanted to be around me and hang out with me. But all I could say to these overtures was no. Because by then, I had something that would plague me for over a decade more, and nearly claimed my life on multiple occasions, either through my own hand, or through my own recklessness with my mortality to prove my worth to myself. That something that plagued me and froze me and gnawed at me was this: A gripping, paralyzing social phobia. I did not just dabble with anxiety; anxiety ruled over me like a cruel king, limiting my freedom and keeping me locked away deep in the dungeon of my mind. So I stood there, watching the people around me live their lives as my teenage years wore on, wishing that I could live a real life too, and knowing that the only thing that stopped me from doing so wasn't even real; it was this barrier in my head. ANXIETY AS A MENTAL AFFLICTION I didn't know it until I was in my late twenties, but my mother suffered from depression and anxiety attacks all throughout my childhood. She'd always seemed happy and in control to me, but unknown to me she'd sometimes slip away into my parents' bedroom, shut the door, and just cry for no reason. She'd been suicidal. She'd had to go on medication. I never knew. She always seemed like the perfect mom... she never let her problems show through. My mother's mother, an American born of Irish stock, was, and still is, bipolar, and very likely borderline. When my mother was growing up, one moment her mother would be yelling and cursing at her for breaking something or getting into some trouble, as children do, or even for walking too heavily on the floor above; a minute later she'd be singing, free as a bird. My father's father, a German immigrant, had had an extreme personality as well, cutting off his family and divorcing my father's French-born, British-raised mother, leaving them penniless and alone, and creating so many enemies that eventually one of them murdered him, running him down in a pickup truck when my father was only 14. To get around the provision in the law that invalidated a last will and testament leaving nothing to one's children, he left one dollar each to each of his sons, so that the will would stand and his hated ex-wife would have no access to the fortune he inherited from wealthy European ancestors after he died. According to my father, not long before he died, he mentioned wanting to change it, but his foe whisked his life away before he did. Yet to me, growing up, despite the familial background of extremity and wild emotions, my parents had been the perfect picture of the traditional American family. My mother stayed at home, taking care of the children and the house, loving and cheerful; my father worked long hours and brought home the bacon. They almost never fought, our home was always impeccable and spotless, we had more toys and books and good things than anyone could ask for. My father was the stern-but-loving disciplinarian (with whom I frequently found myself in hot debate), while my mother was the big softie. Even today, when I've had friends or girlfriends meet my family, their impression has always been, "Wow, I REALLY like your family!" According to girlfriends I've had, most families in America are not nearly as close as mine. So I frequently wondered where on Earth my anxiety came from. I was so outgoing when I was very young; how had I become crippled by phobias as I grew older? The current research suggests the following as causes for anxiety problems: Genetic inheritance (e.g., chemical issues in the brain) Environmental inheritance from chronically anxious parents Trauma leading to chronic anxiety From the Wikipedia article on anxiety: "An evolutionary psychology explanation is that increased anxiety serves the purpose of increased vigilance regarding potential threats in the environment as well as increased tendency to take proactive actions regarding such possible threats. This may cause false positive reactions but an individual suffering from anxiety may also avoid real threats. This may explain why anxious people are less likely to die due to accidents." In essence, the theory here is that higher levels of anxiety lead to increased vigilance (being on edge for danger; defensiveness), leading to the individual being more careful, taking fewer risks, and ultimately having a lower chance of encountering real harm and danger. The article goes on to note that infants displaying higher vigilance and fear responses have been shown to have increased sensitivity in their nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that regulates pleasure, addiction, laughter, aggression, reward, and fear. But a restriction of risks doesn't only limit the chance to be harmed; it also limits the chance to gain victories, triumphs, achievements, and success... as many of the greatest rewards coming following great risks, too. Thus, anxiety serves as the great limiter - of both risks and rewards. And it can be gotten through blood; through life; or even through simply your parents having it, and you picking up on it. And once you have it, it can very quickly seize control of your heart and mind, keeping you "safe" from risk and reward... and imprisoning you inside the very place those cold and timid souls Theodore Roosevelt mentions in his immortal line know so very well, never to escape. anxiety in men anxiety in menMore women have anxiety than men, but I'd have to argue (much respect to our female readers) that anxiety in men is worse. Not to get into any kind of "who's the better victim" competition (no desire to promote victim mentality here), and anxious women certainly have a host of problems in their own right. But anxious women have one leg up on anxious men, and it's a big one: they can still get dates, lovers, and relationships. The most anxious woman in the world will still have men come up to her, ask her out, guide her through the date, take her as a lover, and enter into relationships with her. She may be anxious, but all she has to do is keep saying, "Okay," and eventually she'll get there. For the anxious man, there's no such reprieve. Anxiety in men, in extreme form, can lead to isolation, loneliness, and abandonment. Even when girls ask you out, they aren't going to make the move on dates, or make things happen to get together with you; in the end, your anxiety still wins the day. That's what the case was for me, in any event, but I recognized early on that the only way I was going to beat my fear was to look it in the face unblinking until it went away. The earliest memory I have of confronting a fear of mine was at the age of five, after I awoke from a terrifying nightmare wanting to run to my mother, only to find that one of the creatures from my dream was standing in the doorway to my room, semi-transparent, blocking my way out (I've done some research, and it's actually fairly common for children to hallucinate before or after sleep, so it's not just me). I walked up to it, yelled, "You're not real!" right in its face, and ran right through it, out of the room. I never had another hallucination again. In grade eight, I made myself ask out the girl I liked, the prettiest, most popular girl in school, who'd asked me out before months earlier, but I'd turned her down. When I went back and asked her out, it was in front of the entire school, since I couldn't seem to find a better opportunity than that. She said "no," but every guy in the class seemed to think I had balls of steel for doing it (it'd taken me 7 months and countless nights and days obsessing over it to work up the courage, though). I knew I didn't want to regret not asking her out, and I knew that, no matter what she said, at least I'd be able to look back in the future and say, "I did it; I tried." In high school I strode along the ledge of the Mayan temple Chichen-Itza, 80 feet above a sheer drop to the jungle floor, the safe part of the small ledge occupied by fearful tourists clinging to the sides of the structure, leaving nothing but a tiny edge for me. If I was going to rid myself of the fear of heights I'd developed after tumbling down a moving escalator at a young age, I needed to confront that fear head on and chance death, I reasoned. I walked through the ghetto of the city with the highest murder rate in America wearing a tan trench coat, two weeks after the Columbine massacre had made trench coats (albeit, black trench coats) an object of fear throughout the country. I stood in the middle of a busy four-lane road with cars whizzing by me uncaring on either side going in opposite directions, some of them coming so close, so fast, that they brushed my clothes. I did a number of things to challenge my fears and confront my anxiety. I don't advise this, at least not as dangerous and unpredictable as some of the things I did were, and I'll tell you right now the way I went about it was foolish. One slip on that pyramid ledge, one wrong glance in that ghetto, one driver not paying complete attention on that road, and I would not be writing this today. A lot of the adventures I've since had would never have happened. There would be no Girls Chase. But I share these with you to make a point: you don't beat anxiety by willing yourself through it; you beat it by confronting it. ANXIETY IN MEN: A SILVER LINING So how do you get rid of anxiety? Well, truth is - you don't. It never goes away completely. Personally, I'm still a somewhat anxious person. I'm just not anxious about a lot of the things I used to be anxious about, is all, and I don't spend time obsessing over it anymore. In fact, most of the time, I am content, calm, confident... Zen. Yet, every now and again, in some quiet moment, it begins to creep back in, and whisper doubts to me. But in all but the most extreme circumstances, I no longer listen. And the good news is, in my opinion, anxiety makes you stronger than non-anxious individuals if you can overcome it. Answer me this - who would you place more trust in in a dire, certainty-of-death type situation: A man who had struggled with fear and anxiety before, and overcome it, and now was confident and used to winning, or A man who had never known defeat, who had always been confident of success, and was accustomed to winning Me, I'd take the guy who's known fear and known apprehension, and overcome it, over the man who never really has, any day. Because the man who's always won is an unknown - you don't know how he's going to react to defeat or impossible odds. And chances are, because it's an unfamiliar feeling for him, it'll break him... at least for a while. And getting broken when you're learning is fine, but getting broken in the hour of need is bad business. The man who's struggled and overcome usually is the stronger man, because he has been on the wrong side of success and knows how to deal with it. His confidence is based on control of his thoughts and beliefs, rather than on purely a history of victories. He not only wins. He knows how to win, and he knows how to deal with uncertainty, anxiety, and defeat. An anxious disposition offers you a number of advantages less anxious individuals lack: Attention to detail that you simply can't get with lower levels of vigilance Social tuning and social intuition that, again, stems from that high degree of vigilance Resilience to setbacks that comes from having suffered "more" setbacks (likely the same in number and objective severity, but felt more strongly and more viscerally) than men without much anxiety Habitual fear confrontation that eventually becomes a very strong trait, because it leads to confronting and eliminating weaknesses regularly by necessity, turning originally weaker individuals into ultimately stronger ones The last point is interesting to think about. Take two men, one without anxiety, and one with. Let's say the man without anxiety has fears to the following extent: Women: he's not afraid to ask girls out or escalate things with them, only to let go of a girl he's invested heavily in when things go south in a long relationship. Career: he's not afraid to apply for jobs, interview, or ask his boss for a raise; he's only afraid to quit his job and start his own company, or to go back to school to get a better job (for fear of losing momentum in his career trajectory). And let's say the anxiety-prone man has the following fears: Women: he can't even talk to girls and is paralyzed by approach anxiety. Career: he's afraid to apply or interview, for fear of rejection; can't talk to his boss about a raise; and certainly can't leave his job for any reason. For the man with anxiety to get going at all, he needs to learn to overcome his anxiety to some degree. Many men only do this somewhat, and stop; but some men, once they've done a little bit, go further; then further; then further still. In fact, they go so far that they start confronting fears that ordinary men without anxiety have, and can't get around. Pretty soon, even the things that most people fear seem silly to them. Not every man with anxiety does this; but enough do - and once you're in the habit of confronting fears and demolishing them, you eventually start to get a bizarre affinity for feeling fear - and facing it head on. It's this part of the process I want to focus on to help you beat your own anxiety. LEARNING TO RELISH FIGHTING FEAR I don't know when exactly it happened, but I realized some years back that I had trained myself, unconsciously, to become excited at feeling fear, for I saw it as an opportunity to confront another weakness and wipe it away, becoming an even stronger man. My emotional / thought process these days goes like this: Fear: Oh no! This super muscular, angry-looking Canadian customs and border security guard is grilling me hard... what if he thinks I'm some kind of international terrorist and puts me in a Canadian prison cell? I don't even know anyone in Canada who can bail me out! Excitement: Ha HA! Listen to my weak, pathetic self. This is an EXCELLENT opportunity for me to go through the fire, be tested, and come out stronger. To battle! Conscious Mind: Oh - looks like Fear and Excitement are in the process of sorting out some new perceived threat. Hope they can iron this one out fast so I can get back to just dealing with this situation like a calm, cool, rational human being. What this does is it leads to automatic fear confrontation - that is, when you encounter something that strikes fear into your heart, you don't freeze... you don't run away... you engage. Reason? Because you're training yourself to be unafraid. It's a simple process, and it works. The steps are this: Feel your fear and admit it. You have to be able to consciously recognize that you're feeling fear or anxiety and own up to it. You can't make excuses for yourself, or this doesn't work, and you're stuck in neutral until you get more honest. If you're having trouble reading your emotions, just ask yourself what you REALLY want to have happen, and why you're not in the process of making that happen right now. As soon as you know it, say to yourself inside, "Okay, I'm afraid. I'm acting nervous and afraid and being weak right now." Don't justify it ("Well, I have a reason to be afraid, because..."). Don't scold it ("I SHOULDN'T be afraid, because...!"). Don't try and piece together some grand strategy ("Okay, so what I need to do right now is..."). Skip all of those, and go immediately to the next step in the process, namely... Tell yourself it's time to beat this fear. The problem with fear and anxiety is that the thing you are afraid of feels tough, or scary, or unpredictable, or confusing. The instant you make it about the fear, though, the fear largely vanishes. Why? Because you know what you have to do: you have to confront it. You have to go do the thing you're fearing doing. Then, Take action. Take action and confront the fear. Obviously, don't take your life in your hands like reckless teenage me, but DO get moving and go confront it right now. See a pretty girl? Feel fear because you're not sure how to meet her? Go take action to beat that fear - go talk to her right now. Want to start going to nightclubs but no friends to go with and they seem like intimidating places? Feel that fear, then take action and go anyway. Take away your ability to back out. The first time anyone asked me to travel abroad, I felt gripped with fear; there was so much unknown, so many things that could go wrong... so I immediately said "yes" and committed myself to doing it. Whenever I set new, scary goals for myself - pickup goals, business goals, anything goals - the first thing I do is set a hard limit: "Do this, and you can't come home until you do," "Do that, or no more vacations until you do," "Finish this, and you cannot start anything new until you do," etc. Whatever it is that you WANT to do, make it so that you cannot do it until you've finished the thing that you are pushing yourself to do. The emotion is normally split-second: fear ("Oh no!"), excitement ("Okay, let's do it!"), action (doing it, or removing the ability to back out if it takes a while to do, then doing it)... then done. All in the snap of a pair of fingers. WILLING YOURSELF TO VANQUISH ANXIETY anxiety in menYou cannot will yourself to victory. That's impossible. You will run out of gas long before you reach the finish line. However, what you can do is will yourself to remove the obstacles in your way before you start the race. Push the hurdles off the path, and suddenly the race ahead looks a whole lot easier, and a lot more fun. You must train yourself to feel fear, laugh at it, and fight it like a champion. For every man is born with fear; some more than others, but it's there in each of us. The men who get what they want out of life are not the ones born with less fear, but the ones better able to tackle and defeat the fear they have. And once you've vanquished a fear enough times, your brain does what it does best: picks up on patterns - and recognizes that there isn't anything there to fear at all. Then, suddenly, one day, out of the blue, seemingly, that thing that used to freeze you in your tracks and stop you in your boots doesn't even catch your attention anymore. And you don't even realize it until you notice, "Hey, I just asked my boss for a raise and I didn't even think about it," or, "Whoa! I just asked that girl out and it was completely on autopilot!" Your brain is a pattern recognition machine, and it learns that there isn't anything to fear there once it's seen a situation often enough. But it won't learn at all if it never gets to see those situations up close and personal - so go get it some data to play with. Go confront your fears. (Just, ideally not in the middle of traffic or on the side of a pyramid or somewhere a lot of people get shot / stabbed / mugged. Can't get girls chasing you when you're six feet under!)

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##Archive: Ultimate Social Calibration: Stop Climbing the Social ladder I just read a fascinating article today that brings scientific research to bear on the topic of an old post I made that went on to be featured on some popular dating and seduction websites. The content still resonates and is still relevant today, and so I've reposted again here for you to see and read -- hope you enjoy. 19 December 2007 Every man who is good with women gets these areas handled: physical expression and communication (eye contact, body language, and voice); leadership and assertiveness in pursuing what he wants; and social calibration. The better a man gets at these areas, the better he will be received by others and the better his luck with women will become. These make up the bedrock upon which everything else, from the way he touches women to how he screens for qualities he likes to how he gets them to put in work and earn him, is built upon. This post is about achieving the pinnacle of social calibration. What ultimate social calibration boils down to is a desire to build others up around yourself, and the lack of a social "agenda". Men and women who are considered "weird" or "creepy" or just "off" are thought of as such because they are people who are socially uncalibrated. If a woman says a man is "creepy" it's not because he's a homicidal maniac (usually), but rather because he doesn't know the proper way to behave in social situations. He is awkward, a little strange, and doesn't "get it". Most folks tend to vie for rank in the social hierarchy. This is where one finds all manner of unpleasant behaviors: cutting others down, pointing out mistakes they make, delivering hurtful remarks veiled as humor, backstabbing, disloyalty, throwing people under the bus, social ladder climbing, etc. You will even find people near the top of the hierarchy, like some very beautiful women and some very successful men, who engage in advanced forms of this kind of behavior - theirs is more subtle, but present nonetheless. They use things like backhanded compliments and stories that take indirect shots at individuals similar to others in the group they want to attack, in order to lower the value of others and position themselves in the role of validater. As you look lower on the social ladder, unpleasant behavior becomes more blatant and awkward; the higher you go on that ladder, the more subtle and devious it is. Until you reach the top. When you reach the top of the social hierarchy, you will see an interesting phenomenon. There you find people who break all the rules that everyone beneath them follows: they don't cut others down, they build them up; they don't have a hidden agenda of ladder climbing - they don't need a ladder. They are inclusive and accepting and non-judgmental. There aren't a whole lot of people like this, but the ones who are stand out like oases in the desert. These are the people you meet who engage others with ease; the ones whom others trust and open up to because they know they can. They move through society with seemingly little effort, while everyone else fights for scraps. Not all people like this bother to maintain huge social circles - some of them have only a few close friends and a moderate circle of acquaintances. Nevertheless, whenever they do choose to mingle with others, they come in with instant high value, and everybody knows it. It is so ultra important to be truly socially calibrated. It speaks volumes about you. Men who are socially calibrated are men with whom women feel most comfortable, because they are men who know how to navigate the social arena, make friends and allies, and get the things they want and need out of life. Social calibration is alluring to women, and the more calibrated and agenda-free you become, the more magnetic you will be. Look at these differences between the behaviors of someone who is socially uncalibrated versus someone who is socially aware and comfortable: Someone who is uncalibrated may: Talk about negative topics frequently and in inappropriate situations Try to tie unrelated jokes or humor into the conversation Belittle others or try to make them look bad Butt into others' conversations Not know when to leave Try to force rapport Brag or showboat Meanwhile, someone who is socially calibrated will: Build up others Ignore minor faux pas Keep conversations upbeat Allow conversation to progress naturally Enter and exit gracefully from conversation Use humor that stems from the conversation You can FEEL the difference between those two lists. They are very, very different. The first list is of needy traits - they are the traits of someone who seeks attention, reactions, and validation. That person is trying to raise his value relative to others by removing value from them - but everyone understands what he is doing subconsciously, and his value suffers the most in the end. The second list is of value-giving traits - the traits of someone who seeks to enhance the value of those around him. Others flock to be around people who provide value. That second list is where you want to be. If you behave as someone who is high value, and you give value to those around you, you will be treated as a high value person. Value-giving behavior is a trait of very high value people, and it's instantly recognizable. There are a few exceptions, such as those who give too much value to others who don't deserve it, but even in those instances the individual laying on all the value goes overboard because he or she is trying / hoping to get something from others - and this is something that most people are unconsciously aware of, too. If you give value without seeking anything in return… if you give value for the sake of giving value and improving the lot of those around you… you will be seen as high value. It takes some time and effort to change your behavior, especially if you have been trapped in the "ladder climbing" mentality for a while, vying to establish yourself as higher value than others. It's the same as correcting your body language though - focus on it for a while, get it handled, and spend the rest of your life reaping the benefits. The rewards are immense: people will be comfortable around you, and they won't feel threatened by you or feel a need to combat you - they know you aren't going to take them out or cut them down. They'll go out of their way to help you. And that's a wonderful thing.

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##Are Social Grace, Savvy, and Empathy Unmanly? A reader with ruffled feathers writes in response to the article "Tell If a Girl Likes You: Are Her Walls Up Or Down?", saying: "What a bunch of rubbish! In all of your articles, you always encourage men to act weak. For example, phrases like this: "one part of being good with women is about not flipping the triggers that activate women's walls." What?? So, you think men should avoid trigging women's "walls"? This is utter rubbish!! A strong individual won't give a shit about a woman's walls! Only a weak, very passive and supplicated individual constantly afraid of offending women will look for walls and avoid them at all costs! Your position is inherently weak. Only weak men are always cognisant of women's walls because they are afraid that her walls will go up and this comes from weakness, his weakness -- he is scared and doesn't have confidence. Women instinctively sense weakness without any training or experience necessary and you don't need me to tell you that women are not attracted to weaknesses. Nervous men (those afraid of triggering walls, the kind of man you encourage in this and other articles) are best left to nervous, fumbling women who have issues, not well-adjusted, confident and attractive women. All this boils down to confidence: if you are not truly confident of yourself, 100%, then you will always achieve less than you could have and this applies of course to more in life than just attracting the opposite sex. A confident man is attractive and sexy. He knows exactly what he wants. He doesn't worry about girls' walls...or himself, nor does he care when women exhibit walls, he will always get exactly the kind of girl he wants. Looking in from the outside, this achievement will seem effortless and natural. Girls put their walls up because of themselves, never because of you; if you think you act in a way that repulses them then you are (thinking in a way that is) repulsive to yourself. Get some confidence." I have a strong feeling this reader is one of those individuals who runs around the Internet screaming about the need for men to "be alpha" while simultaneously spending the majority of his time alone or with unusually large women, cursing womankind in general for not recognizing his glorious, manly, alpha attractiveness. But I digress. I share this comment with you because it poses an interesting question: is it possible to be SO attractive that you can run through life like a bull in a china shop and still land loads of hot women in your bed regardless - or perhaps even BECAUSE of it? social grace For the confused Girls Chase reader, who does not quite grasp the thought process behind this commenter's remarks, allow me to introduce you to a distinct subset of Internet culture that will familiarize you with where this way of thinking likely comes from. There is a group of individuals on the web who go by the term "Men's Rights Activists," or MRAs. MRAs are the male equivalents of feminists - they believe that the other sex (women, in this case) is overly privileged and entitled, and is owed precisely nothing by them - including respect or, in this case, even social awareness. Just as feminists criticize women who work to be more beautiful and learn womanly ways and teach themselves how to tend to men properly, MRAs criticize men who work to be more masculine and learn the ways of men and teach themselves how to tend to women properly. Just as a feminist is unable to recognize the difference between a woman who chases after men desperately and a woman who makes herself the epitome of feminine grace and sensuality to draw men to her, an MRA (what this comment author strongly sounds like) is unable to recognize the difference between a man who chases after women desperately and a man who makes himself the epitome of masculine charm and virility to bring women to him like moths to a flame. That's because, generally, feminists are - on average - unattractive women with unfortunate histories with men, and MRAs are - on average - unattractive men with unfortunate histories with women. These individuals tend to be angry, bitter, and inordinately opinionated in comparison to their levels of real world, actual experience with the things they preach about and pass judgment on. I imagine you already know where this article stands on the merits of these qualities, but let's drive a bit deeper into the jungle of just why social grace, social savvy, and empathy are NOT "weak." THE CLUELESS BULL In one breath, our commenter tells men not to bother being aware of or taking pains to not trigger women's walls - that is, when women are open to you, or when they are closed to you - and in another, refers to men who don't bother to do be aware of or avoid triggering these as "well-adjusted, confident, and attractive." Which means one of two things: He's actually pretty socially savvy, but has very low levels of self-awareness and is wholly unaware that he does this naturally as an integral, previously learned part of his own socializing He's not very socially savvy, but will try his best to convince himself and everyone around him that he is - not by getting better at being socially savvy, but just by telling people how socially savvy he is In light of the tone of the comment, I'm inclined to go with Door #2. I'll explain what I mean, though. The article this commenter was replying to was one on recognizing which women are open to you and actively interested, and which women are closed off to you, and avoiding turning opened women into closed women, in order for you to: Adjust your approach to something more effective, given the situation Target those women interested in you, and ignore women who are distractions Avoid turning women who like you and want to date and sleep with you into women who do not like you and do not want to date and sleep with you Now imagine someone who does/can not do this. Say, our commenter. social graceImagine he walks into a bar. In the bar, there are 100 women. 30 of those women he finds moderately to very attractive. 4 of those women find him attractive, and are open to having something happen with him soon and are not otherwise there with boyfriends or friends who will cockblock them hard. So what's he do? He walks up to the nearest of those 30 women to him on entering the venue... and starts running his routines on her right away. He probably uses routines, because to him, all women are the same, and you use the same approach with every woman. Because he's unable to detect which women are interested in him and which women are not, and because he's unable to tell which women are open to him and which women are not, he says and does the same thing with every single one. Because he doesn't care about not triggering women's walls, he triggers this girl's walls several minutes into his first routine, and she closes off to him being anything other than just someone she'll talk to until he leaves. So what happens? Well... he spends two hours engaged in conversation with a woman who doesn't even like him. Predictably, it goes nowhere. Meanwhile, the 4 girls who thought he was cute and wanted to get to know him have all long since given up on him and left the bar... either alone or with someone else. He never picked up on the fact that this girl he's invested so much time into simply wasn't interested. Because, after all, if he took the time to pay attention to her responses to him and read them for context, or if he took the time to not offend her... well, that would mean he was weak, wouldn't it? A REAL man... an ALPHA man... he just goes up and says and does WHATEVER he wants, to WHOMEVER he wants, because THAT'S what being a man is all about. Never mind all this "results" stuff, and this "getting laid" stuff. That stuff's for pansies. Right? THE PROBLEM WITH SOCIALLY AWKWARD ... is that you waste scads and scads of time on go-nowhere interactions - either ones that you walk into (that were go-nowhere from the get-go), or ones that you create (that might've been go-somewhere, but you acted like a doofus and turned it go-nowhere). Now, a socially savvy person doesn't have to think about these things, this is true - but that's because he already KNOWS and has INTERNALIZED them. A man with social grace who meets a beautiful woman does not consciously think about not offending her. He just doesn't offend her. But that's because he knows how to not offend her - it's already programmed into his subconscious patterns. He's actively running "watch what you say, because this girl's a medical student, and she seems like the sensitive type, so don't make too many 'doctors are assholes' jokes in case she auto-rejects" as a subroutine in his mind... without even thinking about it. He's still running it though. And for some amount of time, at some point in his life - whenever it was that he learned how to have social grace - it used to be conscious. The socially awkward guy, by comparison - what our commenter appears to advocate - just bumbles around like a hurricane, saying whatever he likes to whomever he likes, assuming that everyone must think he's super cool simply because he has no fear of approaching, and no fear about speaking his mind to anybody. But here's the thing - people don't consider people who are socially unaware to be cool, savvy, or attractive. Like, at all. Okay, occasionally - there are some girls who go for the broken guys who don't seem to "get" social convention in even the foggiest sense. They can, every once in a blue moon, have a kind of Byronic appeal through their sheer endearing social brokenness. I've seen it happen a few times. Usually this only happens when the guy is really good looking and/or really successful in one way or another. The socially oblivious head of the football team, for instance - he can afford to be utterly clueless socially and still get women in bed with him, simply because he has status, and women go nuts for status. He can walk up to a girl and tell her she looks like a mongrel dog who hasn't showered this millennium and smells like a trash heap and the girl will still think he's adorable and bed him because he's so much higher status than she is. (which is not to imply that because a guy's on the football team he's socially oblivious - actually, in my experience, sports players are often a lot more socially attuned a lot earlier in life than most men are - I use this here merely for the sake of argument) If you're lacking a crutch to lean on like sports star status, however, you're going to need a dose of social grace to not be an outcast, though. social grace Where's the right line to draw? Obviously, you don't want to be a kowtowing pushover, too busy trying not to offend to go for what he wants, or too busy monitoring others' reactions for negative signs to pay attention to the positive ones. But you need to not be crossing others' lines unnecessarily, and if you don't know where they are and don't know how to read them you cannot do that, you must be tuned into this stuff. The best seducers I know are the most talented at this - they are magicians at saying just the right thing and being usually right up on the edge of offensive without going over, and at knowing exactly how into them a girl is and exactly how open (or not) she is to them, too (and thus, what to do with her next). Until it's fully automatic (and still sometimes even then), you need to keep your mind's eye on where this line is. UP TO THE LINE, NOT OVER IT The guy I learned chase frames from was a big, burly nightclub bouncer in Boston. He'd repeatedly sleep with beautiful, feisty women he met in the club or the mall or the gym, and would write some of the most detailed, amazing reports of these encounters you'd ever seen. His dialogues were masterpieces. And one of the things he was very, very good at was taking women right up to the line of auto-rejection... but not crossing it. Occasionally he would cross it once or twice with a girl by accident, but he was very attuned to when he'd done so and was good at quickly turning these around. You'll find that some of the most profound attraction you will get from women are from those women you briefly take into auto-rejection territory, then pull back out from it, and the women he did this with were no exception. However, when I talked to him, he told me he never intentionally crossed that line... he usually preferred not to go over it, and if he did go over it, it was merely by being careless. What made him so good with girls was in large degree his extraordinary sensitivity to where women's walls were. He was able to take the edginess of the conversation right up to the point where a woman might be offended... then stop, and come back. Why would you want to do this? Because it is exciting and attractive as HELL for women. Let's go back to that early example we painted, where a guy's talking to a med school student who's sensitive about her profession and doesn't like it being maligned. Here's what that'd look like in that case: Him: You know what they say about doctors, right? Her: Is this going to be insulting? Because I've had a really long day. Him: It's that once you go stat, you never go back. Her: [laughs] Ohhh my God, that is so lame. Him: So why'd you pick being a doctor? The first remark ("You know what they say about doctors, right?") sounds like the typical start of some insulting / demeaning snide remark at doctors' expense, making this sensitive med student bristle and putting her just about to auto-reject him. Instead, our hero comes back from the line by making a silly, sexual joke - all the funnier because it was completely unexpected in light of the tone of the lead-in and her expectation of what would likely come next. And just like that, she goes from tired and probably not very interested, to all of a sudden paying attention and wondering just who this guy is. social grace None of this is possible without knowing where her walls are, and respecting the hell out of them. WHEN TO BULL YOUR WAY PAST SOCIAL GRACE There are certain times when you have to just disregard women's walls and push for things to happen regardless (within reason). Those occasions include: When you're doing mass approaching in venues with lots and lots of women but where walls are very high; e.g., a giant dance club with very loud music where many women are resistant to being approach. Here, it's often better to just barrel in and be persistent, and if it isn't working just leave and move on - unless you want to get your dance floor seducing on, that is When it seems like an interaction is stalling out and not going anywhere. That is, even if it seems like she's too resistant to go anywhere with you or do anything with you, if the interaction is running out of gas, it makes sense to take a stab at getting her to move with you or leave with you. Sometimes this works out, even when you were certain it wouldn't When you've already started escalating with her physically - you've kissed her, or started touching her sexually. You now need to get her alone with you somewhere, if you aren't already alone, and you need to persist toward sex, even if she's giving you resistance to sex. If you begin the mating dance but do not mate, the chances that the two of you ever end up together are pretty darn low - some persistence is desirable here When you're very new, or you're trying something very new, and you really have no idea of what you can get away with women or what you can't yet (especially if you think you CAN'T get away with a lot of things with women) - it's worth ignoring where you believe her walls are and trying crazy things just to get new reference points on what's possible and what isn't In these kinds of situations, it can make sense to say, "Screw where her walls are, I'm going to push on regardless." Yet, even then, you still need SOME social awareness. If you're endlessly hitting on a girl who just isn't interested in the dance club, one of the doormen may escort you out - or maybe her guy friends will do it. If you're escalating with a woman physically and she's clearly not interested at all and wants to go, it's obviously not so good if you can't recognize the difference here. And if you're trying something new and being REALLY crazy, there are all kinds of possible bad ways that can go depending on what you're doing and who's around. Don't go so far that you're a nutjob. TRUE STRENGTH The guy bumbling his way around a bunch of women yelling, "I'M ALPHA!!" and unable to read the looks of disgust and rejection he gets from the women he talks to because he's oblivious to their signals is not strong. And the charming, dashing rogue who's able to excite and arouse women by taking them right up to their walls, but not over, and who whisks them off out of the venue and into his bed is not weak for being socially aware. True strength comes in results, not actions. Who's stronger - the man who tries to run a marathon and fails, or the man who just goes and runs a marathon? Sure, maybe the guy who tries and fails is an underdog, or a sob story - maybe he was really sick, and he's making his come back. But come on - the guy who wins is stronger. Stronger of body. Stronger of mind. Likewise with women. Being socially aware does not make you "weak" in the social arena. What makes you weak, socially, is being unable to achieve outsize social returns. That's things like beautiful, desirable women in your bed, and cool, accomplished men as your friends. That's things like an awesome, rewarding social life, filled with people who build you up and don't tear you down... because they know where your walls are, and do not cross them. Having the social grace and aptitude to be able to recognize when people are open to you or closed to you, knowing what to do in both situations, and being able to avoid turning an open person into a closed person is real social strength. That's because the man who has these abilities has the ability to achieve his own ends with so many of the people he meets.

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##Are You Nervous with Women? Stop Overthinking Does meeting women sometimes seem like rocket science to you? Do you get nervous with women and trip over your own two feet? Wow… there is so much stuff to read, so many things to work on internally, so many things to consider at every step of the way when talking to girls… And one single mistake can be fatal, and lose you a girl that was totally into you. No, far be it from me to tell you that this skill is incredibly easy, and that you need to "just be yourself" and run "natural game"… if that worked, none of us would be here right now. At the same time, there is also something that is worse than not knowing what to do… and that is "paralysis by analysis:" when the fear of doing the wrong thing leads you to do nothing at all, which is obviously also going to get you no results at all. Or you think you need just a little bit more information before you can finally start going out and meeting women. Or maybe all the information doesn't paralyze you, but you do lose track of all the things you should be doing on a date and end up stuck in your head, or even more nervous and stiff because you're thinking too hard about what to say next. I've been there… I'm a pretty analytical person, and so I got stuck in that pattern too for a while. And because I don't want you stuck there for long too, here's how to avoid it. NERVOUS WITH WOMEN Armin commented on the blog: "What if you hit a low point and get stuck in a cycle of just forgetting what to do next or just constantly not trying to do one of the many taboos you preach about? And you might try so hard as to not "chase a girl" "invest in" "be fun" "open vaguely" that you just lose yourself in this process. When before you where unconsciously pulling girls with the steps you were talking about but without knowing anything about these "keys". Once realized that "this step might be a mistake" or "doing that to her is not worth my time", I've put myself in a state of mind that only says what can go wrong. Like say you're on a date that you get worked up in a different reality and fail to address the girl's needs or be true to yourself that you just still end up losing her. This might be more of a psychological problem, but I think this is why a lot of guys that might know what to do correctly in order to get the girl but still mess up anyways when they persist." Armin raises a very real concern here when it comes to getting down first adequacy and then expertise with women… there really ARE a lot of things to learn, and a lot of things that can go wrong. I mean - if getting good with women was merely a matter of reading a list of things to do when you're talking to a girl, everyone would have the dating life of a rock star… But you know what they say; brick walls are there to stop other people. If it was TOO easy, you couldn't ever get an "unfair advantage" over other guys by learning this skill set, after all. All that said, Chase and I have spent A LOT of time and effort to make dating as simple as possible… even though we did not know each other when we were practicing the social arts, we have arrived at many of the same fundamentals, and we have distilled a lot of the complexity down to simple steps and principles that anyone can implement with some practice. ROCKET ASSEMBLY When I first started going out for the sole purpose of approaching girls in 2002, I learned from "naturals" - from those guys who just instinctively know how to talk to girls, and who somehow seem to always end up with a hot girl at the end of the night. And that was a very good way to start learning… I didn't plan my dialogues ahead of time; I simply went up to girls and struck up a normal conversation. With some practice, I got a bunch of make outs, and from time to time I would even get a girl to go to bed with me. A couple of years later, however, I started meeting seducers who were way more systematic about the entire process… and my first response was to laugh it off. M3, BHRR and IVD… wait, how exactly does being a nerd help with getting girls? (If you don't know these acronyms, don't worry… they won't be on the mid-term.) After seeing these guys in action, however, I realized there really was something to the idea of having a solid plan and not leaving entire conversations completely up to random chance… the guys who had mastered these complex techniques slept with four to eight new girls per month… with absolute consistency. They were never nervous with women, there were no dry spells, and there wasn't much luck involved… they were systematic (see: "How to Make Her Want You") and prolific. I had to admit that both approaches worked really well… my natural friends certainly got results, but so did the guys with the more systematic approach. Over the years, I found that it's only when you marry them both that you get some real dynamite to be able to meet a girl and seduce her with consistency. And once you do that, THEN it's time to simplify everything, and boil everything down to the essentials again. GirlsChase.com is the result of that entire process. YOUR BRAIN CAN'T COUNT TO FOUR! The shocking truth about human evolution is that only our neocortex, the outermost layer of our brain, has actually evolved since we were cavemen. All the other parts of our brain are still the same as they were then… and that's the reason why we want to eat fatty foods when we're on a diet, and why you want to call that girl that's being elusive even though Chase told you not to chase women! What's more… our brain unconsciously also still counts the way cavemen do - it knows only four digits: one, two, three and many. As soon as the human brain is confronted with a number that is larger than four, the conscious mind needs to help out to handle all the extra processing. The number three, on the other hand, is a small enough chunk for our subconscious to handle. When you're talking to girls, you're facing a dilemma - on the one hand, you are practicing new skills, and there are a lot of skills to practice… on the other hand, you need to be in the moment when you're talking to her, and you can't be stuck in your head overthinking some complex model of seduction theory. And the solution to this analysis paralysis, to getting nervous with women when you can least afford it, is to never leave the house with more than three things to work on. For example, today you may want to remember to Keep good posture… Open by giving girls a compliment (use a direct opener) …and setting one sexual frame once she opens up to you. nervous with womenIf these are three things you're currently struggling with, then you should work ONLY on these three things at any one time… any more than that, and your brain will be too busy juggling them all to actually focus on the girl in front of you. But wait, you might say, what if I'm not working on anything and I'm still nervous with women? Well, what you'll find is, the instant you start taking things you're targeting to work on out with you, your nerves go way down. How's that work? What happens is that when you're out talking to a girl, or out on a date, and it's just you and her and your ONLY goal is "get her to like me," you're going to start tripping yourself up and scrambling every time you think you've made even the slightest mistake. You become all butterfingers and belly butterflies, so to speak. But now imagine you're on a date with a beautiful girl, and instead of "get her to like me," your goals are "keep my posture straight, and give her a few genuine compliments, and set a sexual frame." Suddenly, your mind has things to focus on other than something it can't entirely control - how much she likes you - and with a feeling of control over the interaction, and targeted things you're working on, a big chunk of your nervousness recedes away. So one way to stop overthinking the process and dramatically reduce nervousness with women, while still improving your skills and abilities with women and dating very systematically, is to simply FOCUS on specific elements that need the most work right now. Then once you have mastered these three elements, move on to the next pieces of the puzzle, until you eventually reach a point where you don't really have any serious weak points in your game anymore. LET YOUR BRAIN DO THE WORK ANYWAY We have firmly established that your subconscious mind is pretty dumb when it comes to doing heavy-duty neocortex work… however, it is pretty smart when it comes to running things on autopilot. Your digestion, your breathing, your heart… all run without your conscious awareness, and they do so with impeccable precision. But what's more… you can also tie your shoe laces, or brush your teeth, or even drive your car without your conscious awareness, and also with impeccable precision. These latter skills are more interesting in this context, because they are skills you did, at one point, not possess… they are skills you had to acquire and practice. Yet now, they're automatic. And that's really the miracle of the subconscious mind… it takes over any task the conscious mind passes on to it. Once you have spent enough time thinking about something and practicing it consciously, your autonomic nervous system will start doing it for you, and without so much as your awareness. What if seducing women became something that happened automatically for you, and without you having to think about it? Well, just like driving a car or playing a game or brushing your teeth or responding aloud when someone asks you how your day is going, it can. Now let's look at how we can achieve that. WHAT LEARNING REALLY MEANS In NLP (neurolinguistics programming), learning is not defined as knowing what to do… it is defined as actual behavior change. More than that: you have only really learned something once you have implemented the new behavior as a habit. And once you are at that level and the subconscious does take over, then your conscious mind is free again to seek out the next skill to drill and automate. If that sounded convoluted, I'll give you an example: Maybe setting sexual frames seems complicated now, and maybe you have to think about it and concentrate to do it right and you get nervous with women that you'll try to do a sexual frame but won't pull it off… but with time, your behavior will change and eventually become habitual. Your subconscious mind will do the work for you, and at that point your conscious mind is free again to focus on the next skill. And in this way you can automate one skill after another, gradually but consistently... you'll never even think about the "what ifs" and crazy contingency planning loops your brain goes through when you're nervous and uncertain (it'll just all happen automatically) and your dating life will improve right along with these skills. FOCUS ON FUNDAMENTALS FIRST The final way to avoid becoming nervous with women through overwhelm and overthinking is to put your complete focus on the fundamentals… especially when you're first starting out, but it also pays to come back to fundamentals from time to time when you're already intermediate or advanced… I still do sometimes. You've heard that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts… and a big part of these all-important 20% are your fundamentals, and your vibe. Fundamentals are things like good posture, a confident handshake, solid eye contact, and so forth… while your vibe is your charisma, and your ability to control your emotional state and project it onto other people. Maybe you have heard of Coach Wooden… he was considered to be THE best basketball coach that ever lived. And you know what he had his super star basket ballers do during training? He had them practice hundreds of free throws. He had them practice the basics and the fundamentals a million times. "But I can do free throws!" they'd opine. "Okay…" he'd say, "let's see you do them. Do 400 of them." It's no different with social skills. Sometimes it pays off to just walk around greeting people, or asking for the time. Sometimes it pays off to just hold normal conversations and focus on your voice tone and your body language. THE REAL STORY OF THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE If the tortoise and the hare were competing against each other in real life, the tortoise might win the race as well, and without cheating… simply because in real life, endurance is often more important than speed. Especially when it comes to developing a new skill set… which is a marathon and not a sprint. That means that you should calculate a good half year before you start seeing significant results, and several years before you get to be anywhere near mastery… …which, again, is really good news and should not deter you because it's deterring everybody else and thus eliminates most of your competition - if you can just be one of the few that stick with it and become the real life embodiment of the meaning of grit. And getting better at picking up women is a skill set, same as any other… focus on no more than three skills at a time, and put a great deal of emphasis on your fundamentals and your vibe. From there, it is merely a matter of taking enough action… just keep making gradual refinements over time, and you will keep getting better with every month that passes. If you can only improve your skills by ONE percent per day, you will be TWICE as good as you are now just over two months from today. Do the math. Keep yourself at methodically improving your skills with women, and being nervous with women will quickly become a thing of the past. In fact… get good enough… and before you know it, women start becoming nervous with you. And that's when you know you've made it.

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##Are You Single? Why to Always Ask Girls This When was the last time you saw a stunning girl during the day and didn't know how to approach her? The thought perhaps dancing around in your head, you too hesitant to ask it… "Are you single?" Maybe it was on your way to work you saw her, or while doing your shopping or riding the subway… Maybe she was just your type, and you realize that if you JUST approached, your chances of her becoming an affair or a soul mate would at least increase from ZERO to POSSIBLE... But you didn't know how to go about it? This is your play-by-play. And, there are many ways to skin a cat… but this is the one that has worked best for me, after a decade of refining the process. Let's jump right in. DIRECT OR INDIRECT Many people wonder whether it's better to approach a girl directly or indirectly - should you show your interest immediately… or should you strike up a conversation first? Should you boldly hit on her, or give her a chance to get to know you at least a little bit before she has to make a decision about you? The simple answer is - direct approaches work better in some situations, and indirect approaches in others. MOST pickups during day game, however, tend to work a lot better with a direct opener. As they say in Malaysia, "because why?"… The reason is that you usually don't have a lot of TIME during the day. In 95% of the cases, if a girl is out during the day, the only reason she left the house in the first place is that she has to get something done. She has to go to work or university, she has to run some errands or meet somebody. She's busy BY DEFINITION, and on her way somewhere. This means you have to make a strong impact… and you have to make it quickly. Direct openers are perfect for that. There are exceptions, of course - if she's sitting in a café and reading a book, she probably has time to talk to you for a while… and if she's taking a long distance train somewhere, chances are you can strike up a conversation and break the ice first before showing your interest. But in most situations, even on the subway or the bus where a girl might be sitting down, chances are your interactions will be cut short… so it is best to get to the point quickly. LOOKS MATTER… are you singleLook… I would love to join the marketing hype and tell you that it doesn't matter AT ALL what you look like. If I could convince you that any professional model will go to bed with you even if you're 200 pounds overweight and haven't showered in a week, I might be able to sell you a 997 dollar DVD set on how to do that. In fact, that would still be cheap. But, I really don't want to insult your intelligence… and I think I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you the truth: YES, all else being equal, women prefer attractive men over unattractive men. Every 3rd grader knows that… only some marketers still want to tell you otherwise. This is doubly true if you approach directly… since you don't have much time to demonstrate your personality in this scenario, your looks are a big part of what little information she has to go by. I can't count the times I've seen some really good looking guy go up to a girl with some really lame approach, such as asking her what time it is… and immediately the girl was all about it and asked him if he had a girlfriend. For most of us, this is not how the world works, though. Having said that, I also can't count the times I've seen average looking guys approach professional models, singers, strippers, dancers, actresses (or stunning girls with a more "normal" job)… and take them home that night, or a few days later. It CAN be done… and quite consistently! So the point I'm making here is threefold: Look as sharp as possible. If you don't get consistent compliments on the way you dress, you should talk to a stylist. Average looking guys do well if they have a very specific VIBE when they talk to girls Put on your thick skin… you will develop this magical vibe with TIME, so in the mean time don't take it personally when a girl rejects you …AND SO DOES VIBE The reason why some guys who aren't that good looking have a magnetic effect on beautiful women is all about the way they come across. They've mastered the art of the good first impression. Especially when you're going out alone, it is crucial to get a grip on the emotions you feel… and hence PROJECT, because women pick up on these things very strongly. Read these two posts to get a good idea of how to control your state and your vibe, and how to make a good first impression. Unless you were lucky enough to be born a Greek God, this is really the KEY… if you get this right, everything else will fall into place with time. If you don't get this right, girls will probably think there's something "off" about your approach and you won't get very far, no matter how much you practice, how many girls you approach or what words you use. So read these two articles and make sure you implement all the advice. NUTS AND BOLTS Okay, let's get down to the nitty gritty - the actual HOW-TO of approaching women during the day, and exactly what to say and do. Most people wonder about how to stop a woman that's walking toward you… usually by the time you say something, she has already passed you and she gets dragged away just by the force of her own momentum. As you know from the article "How to Use Your Job to Meet Women", working as a club promoter is an excellent way to practice dealing with this kind of scenario - you simply open your mouth and start talking while she's still ten to twenty feet away from you. This way she will notice that she's the one you're talking to AND have time to react, stop and respond BEFORE she passes you. If a girl is walking in the same direction as you are, you will have to pass her before you can stop her. There are two ways: Either You position yourself ahead of her, so you can do the above technique, or You tap her on the arm to get her attention when you're right next to her, or maybe a little bit ahead of her. FEAR OF APPROACHING During the day, most guys experience a lot more anxiety about approaching women than any other time or place. There is no context to socialize with her like at a party, your friends aren't there to hide behind and there is also no alcohol available for liquid confidence (well at least I HOPE guys aren't going to the supermarket drunk to chat up women!). This is GOOD NEWS! As Randy Pausch said: "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!" Again… the fact that it's so much harder to overcome approach anxiety during the day time is really good news. It means that there isn't a lot of competition. So just do it, and go get what you want. I also recommend starting a daily meditation practice… this really helps to get a grip on your emotions, including the fear of the approach… and finally just remember: There is NOTHING to lose. If you play to win, you might win… or not. But if you KEEP playing, you WILL win eventually. And if you DON'T play, you will NEVER win. are you single WHAT TO SAY This is the big one for most people! Even many years ago, when friends would see me approach girls, the question they asked me most frequently was: "HOW did you do that? WHAT did you say to her?" And the truth is - if you get all of the above right, it doesn't matter that much WHAT specific words you use. That said, I remember back when I was learning this stuff myself, I used to get really irritated at teachers who told me it didn't matter what I said. "Yeah but I still have to say *something*, so what do YOU say when you approach?" I think this is a very legitimate question, and how a girl responds to you WILL vary significantly depending on what you say to her first. If you don't believe me, do this: Approach five girls and ask them: "Do you know what time it is?" With the same body-language and vocal tonality, approach five girls and ask them: "Do you want to fuck?" See if the words change the responses you get… I have a hunch that they might! A FORGOTTEN TECHNIQUE: "ARE YOU SINGLE?" For the last three or four years, most dating coaches have been advising their clients to approach girls with a compliment during the day. This works extremely well, and it's something that I've done for years. It takes a lot of confidence to go up to a stranger and just tell them how you feel… most people don't have the courage to do that, and it's quite impressive to a beautiful girl - also because it doesn't happen to her a lot. However, there is an old technique that used to be popular about ten years ago and that nobody is really using that much anymore. It is to simply go up to a girl and ask her: "Are you single?" That's it. You may have heard that you don't want to bring up a potential boyfriend when you talk to a girl… and that is true. But notice that I'm not asking her if she has a boyfriend. I'm asking her if she's single. Deliver this from a frame of authority… ask it the way a bouncer would ask her if she is under age. Cock your head back a bit and ask in a slightly suspicious tone. It throws them off… they often stutter and don't know what to say at first. It's quite funny to watch actually. There are three possible answers you might get: "Yes" - if she says that she's single, that's a green light to at least talk to her some more. You can give her a compliment now, or simply transition into some normal conversation - ask her what she's up to, and relate to whatever she says. "No" - if she says she's not single but doesn't walk away from you, you can still keep talking. She might really be single and just saying that out of caution. So long as she's staying to talk to you, she's curious to find out more. "Why do you ask?" - Some girls will evade your question and throw a question right back at you. Keep the compliance momentum in your favor - don't start to justify yourself. Remember, you're the bouncer - she's the little kid who forgot her ID. You could tell her that you were just curious, which throws the question back into her court. Test both the compliment and the "are you single" approach twenty times each, and see which one works best for you. For me personally, the latter has far outperformed the former. are you single HER RESPONSE More important than the words she will use in her response to you when you ask "are you single" are her signs of NONVERBAL attraction (or lack of attraction). She might say that she's married, but start flirting with you, smile at you and direct your body towards you. Or, she might say that she's single, but demonstrate with her body-language that she's not interested in you. There are really three types of responses you might get from a girl in the first few minutes: Interested Disinterested Skeptical If a girl shows her interest immediately, you don't really have to do much to "game" her anymore. In fact, if you do it will work against you - it will simply look bad if you try to win over a girl who already likes you… she will just wonder why you feel that you have something to prove. So just relax, have a normal conversation and make sure you set the right frames so she understands you're a sexual man. If a girl shows disinterest in you, you can still talk to her for a few minutes so long as she doesn't walk away… some girls might warm up. It can also help to tease a girl a bit… this can often light up the interaction and demonstrate that you're not intimidated by her beauty. But don't waste too much time on girls who are just not into you… keep in mind that there are 3,500,000,000 women on the planet! (That's a lot.) If a girl seems somewhat skeptical, however, this is usually because she thinks she MIGHT be interested in you, or she might not be. SHE'S not sure HERSELF yet. This is where making a strong first impression really comes into play. If a girl is neither giving you a green nor a red light, STAY CHILL. Don't start resorting to convincing behavior and gimmicks and tricks… simply stay in your masculine core, remain unaffected and continue the conversation. These girls usually come around if you just follow this one rule. Stick to the plan, keep your vibe going, and don't forget to ask her "are you single?" You're going to be surprised by the results you'll get - give this one a shot the next time you go out… you'll thank me.

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##Are You Sure? I was just going through a bunch of old text messages, when I found one from a girl I'd met online when I was in a different city on travel for a week and I'd posted a personals ad on Craig's List. She was one of the women who'd responded. She was borderline cute -- not a girl you'd date, but a girl you could have a quick fling with, and I got the impression that was what she wanted too. Well, okay -- I'm out of town, no plans to be back any time soon, so, yeah. I was hands down higher on the looks scale than she was, though. We talked on the phone, and I set up a date and place for us to meet up. Just before we ended the conversation though, she asked me, "You've seen my pictures, right?" I reassured her I had, and we ended the conversation. That got to me, though. I started turning it over in my mind. "Wait, is she less cute than I thought? Maybe those pictures of her are her BEST pictures, and she actually looks a lot worse than that." I went back and reviewed her pictures. "I guess maybe she isn't really that great," I said to myself. Eventually I decided a borderline girl who might be worse than borderline wasn't worth the effort of driving five minutes to meet, so I texted her the next day that something came up and I'd have to miss our date. She texted me a few times after over the next few days, but I never replied. Why am I telling you this? Because guys out there do the same thing to girls, ALL THE TIME. Girls say they want to go somewhere with a guy, and the guy says, "Are you sure?" Girls express interest in going out with a guy, and instead of telling her, "Cool, got a cell?" or, "Let's trade," as he pulls out his cell phone, he asks her, "Can I get your number?" Girls agree to a date, and guys follow it with, "Only if you want to," or, "You don't have to if you don't want to." What's wrong with all of these? Each of them is forcing the girl to have to think and decide -- oftentimes, asking her to reconsider a decision she's already made. She's already said she wants to go with the guy -- why would he ask if she's sure? When a woman hears that question, she's autmatically going to say to herself, "Well, he must be saying that for a reason -- maybe I don't want to go with this guy." He's not just giving her a way out. He's giving it to her and ENCOURAGING her to TAKE it. It's your job as the man to lead the interaction. Women will follow your cues. It's true, leading is hard. It requires decisiveness and a clear idea about what you want and where you're going. Most people find it easier to follow a leader than to lead themselves -- including most women. It's not politically correct to say that -- it's just correct. Really, try and find a woman who'll tell you she wants a weak man. Most of them are looking to their man to lead. And when a man fails to lead -- or causes women to second-guess his leadership -- they'll leave, and go find a man who will lead. In fact, a lot of the disharmony in modern relationships comes from women frustrated by the weak men they end up with failing to lead, and it's the source of a lot of frustration among single women as well. But that's for a different post, at a different time. So always be aware of what you're saying, and how that's affecting the women you're saying it to. The last thing you want to do is imply to women that they shouldn't want you! Mind your Ps and Qs and just accept it when they tell you they like you or they want to come with you. They do; it's why they said it. And there's never a need to ask them to clarify, because they already told you what they wanted to tell you. Take it, run with it, and have fun!

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##Attraction Has an Expiration Date A guy meets a girl he likes. He starts talking to her, and there's electricity in the air. Attraction. He can tell she likes him. A lot, even. She tells him all kinds of things about herself, her eyes wide and filled with excitement. It feels as though there's a bubble around them, in which only they exist; the outside world falls away. For a while, as time passes, the energy and enthusiasm only builds. It builds and builds, until it hits a peak; a crescendo. And then... it begins to fade. The guy panics mentally; he can tell he's losing this girl, whom he felt so sure was his only minutes before. He works hard, trying to turn things around, to reignite the passion that was there. But alas, his efforts fail, and the fire dies. He's fallen victim to a painful fact of life and love: attraction has an expiration date. But what's more painful is, guys almost never realize this is why they failed. Usually they assume it was a value problem, or that they need to get better at maintaining attraction. If only they knew the truth: they did just fine with attraction. It was, ultimately, that failure to act in a timely enough manner that led them to losing the girl. DOES ATTRACTION EXPIRE? The first time we talked about this subject on this blog was in "Move Faster," the original post about moving quickly with women to capitalize on open escalation windows. This post is going to cover some similar ground, but the phrasing is a little different and I think the concept of attraction having an expiration date is rather a new one and one worth writing on. Personally, I am, by nature, a rather risk-averse guy. I tend toward inaction over action, like, most probably, a majority of people out of there. Now, I've pushed myself for a long time to take bold action and force myself into taking some risks, so I do tend to take a lot more risks than most folks, but I still have a tendency to fall back on risk-averse behavior in some circumstances. Because of this, I've lost... oh, quite possibly hundreds of women. And that includes everything from sultry looks from beautiful women whom I absolutely should've opened and didn't, to women I had in my bed that I gave up on too soon and never closed the deal with. Girls I'd been well into the last 5% with; heck, some of them I'd been into the last 0.5% with. Some of those I still kick myself over. The tall, sexy Brazilian girl who'd been making out with me in the nightclub, whose top I'd had off, who suddenly panicked last minute and charged out of the room. But she wasn't sure she wanted to leave; she needed me to reassure her. But I took too long, and lost her. The spunky, adventurous Thai girl I spent a night with and from whose bed I rose early without sleeping with her, only to have her kiss me passionately and all but beg me to stay, but I'd grown too weary and left when I should've just closed things out. The stunning Indian girl sprawled out on my bed, paging through my coffee table book SuperSex, that I should've just jumped onto bed with and given what we both wanted. All those girls and a lot more I lost for want of capitalizing on their attraction while it was on the table. I ignored the dictum that attraction has an expiration date; and instead I let attraction expire. We never got together. And when you miss a girl like this, your life's the poorer for it, and her life's the poorer for it. You miss out on incredible opportunities to experience each other because of your inaction. Because make no mistake, women won't take action for you. They're waiting for you to take action. And while they wait, the clock is ticking. ATTRACTION'S EXPIRATION DATE Why does attraction expire? If two people are suited for each other, they ought to have all the time in the world to get together, one might think. I first noticed that attraction had an expiration date back in college. I noticed that girls in my classes who'd stare at me all day and smile at me and flirt with me would only do it for a time; gradually, as they flirted and I took no action, they'd come to lose interest, and eventually they'd move on. And then, they'd even end up being outright cold. I didn't know it at the time, but what I was experiencing from them was auto-rejection - and it was I who was to blame for their coldness. Inaction on the part of the man leads women to give up and lose hope. But when I actively started cold-approaching, it all happened so fast I had to learn it all over again. It seemed like something different altogether; whereas before, attraction's expiration date with girls in my classes seemed to be months or even years after I first met them, the expiration date on strangers I'd just met seemed to at times be minutes or even seconds later. So, at first, I didn't think it was the same phenomenon. It couldn't be. Could it? I did the thing most guys do, and I focused on pumping my value. I made myself into a more and more attractive guy. I got a cooler and cooler life: a well-regarded, prestigious job; travel to fun, exotic places; invitations to exclusive clubs, parties, and events. But it seemed like the more amazing a man I made myself, the quicker girls went cold on me. And it began to drive me absolutely crazy. "How on Earth do I fix this?" I'd think to myself. Eventually some of the pieces started coming together. I learned to talk about myself a lot less and get girls talking about themselves much more. It didn't make much sense at first, but I couldn't dispute the fact that women seemed to be more interested in me when I told them fewer cool things about myself, and just focused on exuding coolness and sexiness without talking about it. And I learned to move faster. I even found that I had a far higher percentage chance of sleeping with a girl on the first date than I did on the second. That blew my mind a little bit. To think I used to not try to sleep with girls on the first date because I thought I might lose them that way. Turns out, the opposite is true: NOT trying to sleep with girls on the first date was what was losing them for me. And that's because, as it turns out, attraction has an expiration date. It's only good while it lasts. Get girls while they're hot. For a limited time only. Going, going... gone. Once I realized it, it changed things for me in a BIG way. No more hemming and hawing and thinking, "Maybe I'll just wait a little longer." No more internal clocks saying, "It's too soon for this to happen!" No more inaction because too little time had passed. Instead, I started moving a lot more speedily, I skipped steps and cut corners wherever I could, and my results went up. A lot. Like, it wasn't even close. And, as thrilled as I was at the huge boost in success rates, I had to ask myself: "Why is this so? Why are women so much more willing to go to bed with men who move fast with them, and why is there a sell-by date stamped onto attraction?" BEST IF USED BY The funny thing about attraction is that men tend to internally take full personal responsibility for it, but never stop to consider that, perhaps, women might also be doing the same exact thing. But in fact, they often are. When I point out to girls that a guy likes them whom they don't want to like them, at times I've had them ask me if they were doing something wrong or coming off in a way that made the guy interested. They're taking responsibility for his interest. Likewise, if a girl likes you, but you don't do anything... again, she'll take responsibility. And inside, she'll tell herself she failed to attract you. And failure don't feel so great. So, what women end up doing is the same thing men end up doing when they decide someone doesn't like them and isn't responding to them; they write them off. "Ah, who needs him?" a girl thinks. "Who cares if he doesn't like me?" Now, you might be saying, "But I TOLD her I like her!" And, that might be true. But if you didn't tell her soon enough, and if you didn't back your words up with action, it wasn't enough. Women can turn their opinions of a man on a dime. They can be in love with him and going crazy hoping he walks up to them one moment, and then he hesitates a split second and they decide they hate his guts. Let her linger with the feeling she hates you for 5 seconds, and then you decide to approach her... by the time you get there, she doesn't even want to talk to you anymore. Sometimes the girls who give you puppy dog eyes before you meet them will be colder to you than anyone else if they think they were obvious about their attraction and you took too long to come meet them. As a guy, this probably sounds crazy to you. So, let me explain. Another lifetime ago, I had a social phobia. I was literally afraid of doing anything actively with people. I turned the cool kids down when they invited me to their parties, and I turned the pretty, popular girls down when they asked me out, because I was afraid to say yes. Sounds crazy, I know, but I was. The only way I could get any kind of attention was by attracting people's interest and having them come up to me. And let me tell you... it sucked. It absolutely, positively SUCKS big time to be sitting there waiting and hoping for someone to come talk to you. Waiting and hoping that cute girl you like comes and flirts with you and maybe even asks you out. And if she doesn't, well, some of the time you'll even shrug and say to yourself, "Eh, who needs her." This is how women feel ALL THE TIME, because most women are trapped in a perpetual state of waiting and hoping for men to take action. They aren't going to walk up to you and start talking to you, 99.7% of the time; it violates every law of male-female dynamics. So all they can do is look at you longingly and hope you come talk to them. All they can do is hint to you in conversation they want you to stop joking around and start getting to know them. All they can do is suggest to you they want you to take them home and give them a night to remember. All they can do is joke to you they want you to become lovers with them. And, if their efforts to get you moving things forward fall on deaf ears, and you don't take action, and you don't move things forward, they become bitter for it, and they close off to your future efforts. GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT So what do you do if attraction is a fast-vanishing thing? Attraction Has an Expiration Date Pay attention to what women are telling you. This goes for both verbal and nonverbal cues. Look at her eyes - is she looking at you excitedly? Look at her body language - is she leaning in? Listen to her words - is she asking you where you live, or whether you have roommates, or how far away your place is? These are all signs she wants you to move things forward, fast. Shoot first, ask questions later. If you're not sure whether a girl wants you to move things forward or not - try. Trying and failing won't set you back too much; she'll just know you mean business. But not trying - that kills your chances, because it lets her attraction expire. Always err on the side of action over inaction, especially when you're not sure which way to go. Better to try and fail and learn than never try at all and never know and never improve. Always be moving forward. Something I was very guilty of for a long time, and that I see a lot of guys perpetually are, was of ending up in these situations where you aren't moving forward with the girl, and just hovering there for a long time. Women see this for what it is: stalling. Stalling just gives women time to feel disappointed and let their attraction expire. The instant an interaction starts feeling stagnant, you've been there too long. Take bold action and move things forward. Beat attraction to the expiration date. It makes such a colossal difference in your interactions; I can't stress doing it enough. Women will be glad you capitalized on their attraction before it expired - and so will you! Wishing you many speedy interactions and a 0% expiration rate,

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##Being Really, Really Good in Bed I'm writing this article not as a "how to" on being a good lover, but rather to explain the rationale behind why I think you ought to be one. I may get around to giving specific insight on technique at some point [UPDATE: see the end of this article for links]; like seduction in general, there's a lot of advice on the topic but the actual good information is spread out quite far and there's a lot of nonsense out there. But that's for another time. Anyway, on with our post… There are two reasons that nearly every woman I get together with falls very quickly and very deeply in love with me. One of them is that I give a woman a mental and emotional experience like no other man does - I make her feel good, and special, and accepted, but also empowered, emboldened, and ambitious, in ways that probably no one else ever has. I am a motivator, an encourager, and I truly, genuinely want a woman who comes into my life to leave feeling like the world is within her grasp and anything she wants she can reach, with enough determination and perseverance. Women know very quickly that I am one of those rare few people in life who will truly believe in them, and be on their side 100% of the way. The other reason women fall for me so hard is that I give them better sex than anyone ever has, or likely ever will. being really good in bed The two girls I was with this past weekend remarked as such - one of them calling me "fantastic" and the other remarking breathlessly that I was "so good" - and this is something I typically get. Even with the ones who don't say anything, I assume based off the number of times they climax and the potency with which they do so that they're probably at least thinking it. One of the girls I was with yesterday - a girl I was parting ways with amicably, after our second weekend together - asked me if all American men were as "strong" in bed as I was. I thought back on my past conversations with American friends when I'd asked them about whether they gave girls lots of orgasms: I think so, but I'm not really sure, one of them told me. Honestly, I'm not too concerned with whether the girl gets off or not, I just want to enjoy myself! another said. Well, I don't want a girl to enjoy it too much, just enough that she keeps coming back, yet another friend told me. Lots of women can't orgasm from sex, right? asked another one a few years ago. I usually just finger them or give them oral. They're pretty happy with that. But here's been my experience: for driving a girl absolutely crazy with lust and satisfaction, nothing beats making her climax like crazy like good old fashioned penetrative intercourse. "No," I told the girl yesterday. "Just me. It's not an ‘American guy' thing, it's just a ‘Chase' thing." I thought then of an article I read last week. I wish I could find it because while the article itself was rubbish, the comments section was quite interesting. The article covered research stating that women claimed similar levels of sexual satisfaction the world over, and then it concluded that obviously this meant that the traditions of claiming that Latins and Mediterraneans were more passionate lovers while North Americans, Northern Europeans, and Asians were less so obviously were false. From everything I've seen, and from what most of the commentators to the article stated, those stereotypes are in fact quite valid - and apparently, there are some very good reasons. CULTURES OF LOVEMAKING My big skepticism about studies like these is that "satisfaction" is too much of a big, catchall term. A woman who says, "Yeah, I guess I'm satisfied," because she's never had a good roll in the hay in her life and has no idea what that's like is going to be lumped into the same category as a woman who says, "Oh yes, I'm very satisfied!" with a big smile on her face because every night her lover makes her scream at the top of her lungs. There's no qualitative analysis there, and the information it provides isn't really all that useful. In things like this where the science hasn't caught up yet, I find it most useful to rely on a cross-section of anecdotal reports, and what I read in the comments section on that article on lovemaking was quite interesting. Almost universally, people (the commentators were mostly in North America) were panning dispassionate American lovers and discussing how good their Latin lovers had been (both male and female). This coincides with my own experience as well; while American-born women often are less-than-rambunctious in bed (they tend to enjoy good sex, but not do all that well at providing much of an experience in return, even among some of the more "experienced" women), Latin women tend to be firecrackers in bed. Still, I didn't know why, until reading one comment. The author stated that in his travels throughout Latin America, he noted a culture of bravado where men bragged to other men about what good lovers they were and how many times their women climaxed. In Latin America, it is a point of pride to be a good lover. This is fascinating if it's true, and it stands in stark contrast to my American friends, who for the most part, as noted above, could care less about how satisfied their women are. In a quick Google search, I couldn't find anything else to back up the claim about Latins bragging about skill as lovers, but it's great food for thought. Most of the women I know who've had Latin lovers also claim these men are the best. I did find this interesting poll result: World's Worst and Best Lovers Only twenty countries were selected to be ranked, leaving a number of Latin and other countries out, but it is as you'd expected: Latin and Mediterranean countries rank the highest, and Northern European and North American countries rank the lowest. Asian and African countries (aside from Russia, Turkey, and South Africa) aren't ranked. The comment section on that page isn't quite as informative as that other article I read the other day, but if you sift through looking for the comments from women who have actual experience with men from multiple countries, the findings bear out (as opposed to the people who are just upset that men of their nationalities have been ranked lower). The more I read about this, I really think it is the man's mindset that makes all the difference: does he take pride in his lovemaking ability, as men from Latin and Mediterranean countries apparently do? Or is he only interested in getting off, as most of my countrymen profess to me to be, and as many Northern European men seem to be? PRIDE IN YOUR ABILITY AS A LOVER I personally view strength as a lover as one of the defining aspects of a man's masculinity. A man who cannot give his women an explosive time in the sack will not long hold their interest. I've seen a number of studies that bear this out; was just trying vainly to find it on Google, but there's some research I saw a number of years back that found that women tend to love the scent of their man if he's a good lover, and feel repulsed by it if he's a bad one. A woman is never really "yours" until you've given her good, powerful, satisfying sex. This is something I've long personally believed, before I knew how to be a good lover, and even how to get girls in the first place. I did a lot of experimentation early on in bed until I found techniques that could consistently get the kind of results out of women I was looking for: loud, powerful, earth-shattering climaxes that went on and on and on. I was frustrated that I couldn't achieve those results when I was younger, so I kept playing around until I figured out how to. I am probably one of the most lazy, dispassionate people on Earth by nature. I get a fair amount of things done, but I have to drag myself into doing almost everything. Just about everyone I meet describes me as "very chill", and lately I've been getting a lot of women telling me, very surprised at how quickly I bedded them, "I thought you were a gentleman!" But I made myself act passionate enough in bed that it eventually became my natural default; now women tell me I'm a very exciting, passionate lover. You must have pride in your ability as a lover to be a good lover. Of this much I'm certain. I don't think there's a man out there who's talented in the sack and doesn't care about it. Honestly, when I meet a man who confesses he's not really that good in bed, my first thought always is, "I bet I could take your woman." It's not a very nice thought, and I certainly wouldn't do that if the guy was a friend of mine, but I know she isn't satisfied and that sexual satisfaction is a good 50% or so of a woman's experience with a man. I feel it shakes out like this: that a woman's experience with a man is made up of two equal parts: Her emotional satisfaction, and Her sexual satisfaction. Now, I'll go out on a limb here and admit I think it isn't just the second one that many men in North America, Northern Europe, and Asia don't do well with. I think it's both of them. I think men in these parts of the world just don't think of "pleasing women" as something that should have to be their responsibility; it's almost like, "Well, if she isn't happy with me, that's her problem!" Part of the entitlement mentality of the US, I suppose. To be fair, it does seem like it's both sides of the coin - women in Latin America and the Mediterranean seem more focused on their man's satisfaction, while women in North America and Northern Europe are less so. Curiously, women in Asia seem to be far more focused on satisfying their men than their men are on satisfying them, but most places in the world it seems there is an equal balance of either concern for pleasing one's partner, or disinterest in it. Men from Latin America and the Mediterranean seem to take the approach, "I will make my woman feel amazing in body and mind." That's why you see these passionate lovers from those cultures who tell women wonderful things and make women fall so helplessly in love, then sweep them off their feet and blow their minds in bed. Those men are that way because they take pride in their ability to be that way. When you boil down to it, I think people really are most interested in what the benefits are for themselves, and I think the perceived benefits shake out like this: Men who are selfish lovers think, "I'm not going to do any work; I would rather not have to do anything. I just want to be responsible for my own enjoyment and she is responsible for her own enjoyment." Men who are clueless lovers think, "I'm not sure if she's enjoying herself, but I hope so!" Men who are good lovers think, "If I truly want this woman to fall for me and be mine, I must give her an exceptional experience. I will learn how to do so so that it becomes second nature to me and I am naturally a good lover without even having to think of it." Selfish lovers think their way is the best because it's easy. Clueless lovers don't really know what to think. And good lovers think their way is the best because it drives women wild and makes their interactions with women more passionate and satisfactory. Personally, I side with the good lovers. If you want to really enjoy your sex life, I recommend becoming a good lover, if you aren't already. There's nothing more satisfying in bed than a woman who is helplessly climaxing because you're just that good in bed, and who lies there after looking at you in amazement because no other man has given her what you just gave her. THE SEX EFFECT ON PICK UP There's one other effect worth mentioning, I think, and that's the effect of knowing you are giving something extremely valuable to a woman. I know that if I bed a girl, she will likely have one of the best nights of her life with me. I know this. And when women are around me these days, it's very clear that they can almost sense it. They're very sexual with me, very fast, and they're hopping into bed with me very quickly recently. Most of the men I know who are both good in bed and good with women are this way. I have known men who were good in bed but bad at meeting women, and they weren't able to convey their expertise when meeting new girls; and I have known men who were bad in bed but good at meeting women, but they often seem to be a bit more on-edge and nervy around women, as if they're afraid perhaps the women they're meeting will realize they're trying to get satisfaction but not give it in return. For this reason, I recommend always striving to improve these two sides of the coin evenly, because they benefit each other synergistically. The better you are at meeting women, the more adeptly you're able to understand women and provide the emotional cues they need to have a fantastic sexual experience; and the better a lover you are, the more calm and confident you are in your seductions, knowing that what you have to offer is superior to what the other men around you can give women. These days, I don't feel like any other man out there is any real competition, and being a good lover is a big part of the reason why I feel this way. And women sense it; they pick up that you feel this way, and they reason that if you feel this way, you must have a good reason for it. It becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more you feel like you have to offer compared to other men, the more women sense it and believe it, and the more warm, friendly, and forward they get with you early into meeting them, and the more you begin to believe you have more to offer. Becoming really good in bed is one of those things that helps you in many ways - seduction included. And needless to say, retention rates go through the roof. Heck, while writing this post, that girl I parted ways with amicably yesterday sent me a text asking if we really can't see each other anymore. In taking pride in your ability as a lover and becoming really, really good in bed, you join an elite group of men who give women some of the most amazing experiences of their lives. And, if I may say so, this is one of the few instances of being elite where it really is not lonely at the top!

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##Book Excerpts: 4 Ways for Touching Women A topic that I know a lot of guys struggle with is touch. It's something I don't think to discuss terribly often -- touch, while I had to learn it like everything else, came pretty fast to me and was relatively second nature for me early on, so I never got to thinking about it so much as other things -- but touching women is incredibly important to your success with them. As I've broken it down for myself, there are several different ways of going about touching women you can employ -- different categorizations of the manner of physical contact you can have with girls. Touch from each of the categories is conducted a little differently from touch in all the other categories, and each has its own effects. The excerpt I have for you today is from my eBook, How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams. I've teased out the 4 ways to touch women here for your perusal, to get you thinking about touch in a newer, sharper, and more effective way... "There are all manner of ways of touching women. We'll categorize these here, and describe each kind and give examples of ways you might touch in each category. These should get you primed for getting increasingly physical in the right ways. Incidental Touch: The kind of touching you do lightly and throughout a conversation as mostly a social function; for instance, touching a girl's elbow on a high point, or sitting next to her with your legs touching hers. Protective Touch: Touch you use in protecting or guiding a woman, such as placing your hand on her lower back while guiding her through a crowd, or placing you arm in front of her chest or stomach to stop her stepping into the street when you notice cars coming. Romantic Touch: More intimate touch that you do as the interaction progresses to physically signal your interest. This can include things like briefly stroking her chin or cheek, or playing with her hair, or holding her hands. Sexual Touch: Touch that stimulates a woman sexually. Generally, you want to wait until the two of you are in private to begin doing sexual touch, so that you can move immediately into getting intimate without worrying about people watching or having to worry about what her friends might do. Sexual touch includes stroking her inner thighs and kissing her neck. The fun thing about touch, like everything in this book, is that you can learn to speed through the stages in certain scenarios, and have women being romantic and sexual with you almost immediately. This is dependent upon what mode they're in, but also reliant upon your comfort level with executing these different kinds of touch and progressing quickly. Something you can do in crowded bars and nightclubs if you're feeling particularly bold is make eyes with a cute girl walking nearby and, if she's game, take her hands as she passes and pull her in very close. I have had women come up and kiss me on the lips and face whom I haven't spoken to yet doing this. It gets them very interested in you right off the bat, as they're not used to men doing things like this. You can't do this with every girl, but the ones who are giving you strong eye contact and a bit of a mischievous smile - they're the ones who are usually going to be up for this maneuver. That's one way, actually, to use strongly suggestive touch as an opener with a new girl. For now though let's look at specifics for each kind of touch, before we get into talking about when and how to use them..." Getting yourself touching women properly is absolutely going to be a core part of your success and interactions with them. Touch is one of the most important means of conversation between human beings, it's completely crucial to succeeding at nonverbal attraction, and besides all that... it just feels good to be touching that cute girl you've just met.

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##Book Excerpts: Don't Look Down (and Here's Why) There's a good chance you know it already, instinctively if not consciously, but the first rule of eye contact, of course, is this: don't look down. Why's that so important? The reason, you'll quickly find, is what looking down means. When you break eye contact with someone, you communicate something very specific about yourself and your emotions toward that person, the esteem you hold them in, and how you view yourself socially and status-wise in relation to them. And just like this, when a woman breaks eye contact with you, she communicates something very specific to you too, based entirely on the manner in which she does it. This week's excerpt from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams explains exactly what each of these ways in which you can lose eye contact mean - and exactly why you want to make sure that, whatever you do with a girl, you don't look down. "Another aspect of eye contact is dropping eye contact, a behavior with many nuances. • Looking down is a sign of submission. If a woman looks down after you lock eyes with her, she is signaling to you that she submits - oftentimes a strong sign of attraction. If a man does the same, he is signaling that he is intimidated by you / does not want to challenge you. As a rule, do not look down for anyone. You're a strong man who is neither intimidated nor is submissive - you won't be using this one. • Looking to the side is a neutral eye contact break. If a woman looks to the side after you lock eyes with her, it means her attention is turning elsewhere. If you are the one breaking eye contact with someone else, this is almost always the best way to do it. Be sure not to overdo, however - overdoing this may show a lack of interest. Simply know that if you need to break eye contact, this is how to do it. • Looking up is a sign of dismissal. This one is pretty rare, and is almost always a conscious gesture by another individual. It's a way of saying, "Oh please," or, "You've got to be kidding me." You can use this to tease women - although be wary of overdoing it, as it can come off as harsh or overly dismissive. And it is best never to use this in relationships, as it tends to dig away at the connection between the two of you. In fact, eye rolling is an indicator that can even be used to predict whether a marriage will last - couples who roll their eyes at each other during conversations are far more likely to split up than couples who don't." It's easy to overlook how much is communicated in a look or a glance, a gaze, a stare... but there's often more meaning in that than a hundred empty words said to awe or impress. The eyes are some of the most powerful seduction tools in your arsenal; for eye contact flirting, for getting women to pay attention when you want them to pay attention, for communicating things that words would be too much - or too clumsy - to effectively communicate. So don't look down. Get look back at her instead. And if she breaks eye contact... pay attention to what she's really telling you, between the lines.

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##Book Excerpts: Get a Sexy Voice I'm launching a new blog series today that'll roll every Friday of each week, featuring selected excerpts from my acclaimed manual on meeting, dating, and succeeding with women. If you've already got a copy of the book, these should serve as nice weekly refereshers! And if you haven't gotten yours yet, here's a small sample of what you're missing... Today's excerpt is on how to get a sexy male voice, from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams. Voice is one of those topics that's tragically under discussed; it's a huge fundamental, and (if Mehrabian's numbers are right) it comprises a whopping 38% of what you communicate to other people -- and women. Not your words, mind you -- your voice itself. This is an area you should definitely pay a little attention to... "Your voice is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. It can be used to attract, to seduce, to build intrigue and capture a woman's interest. If you listen to women talk, you'll notice first off that some women have appealing voices; you'll also notice that other women have unappealing voices. Some women have voices that make you think, "Wow, she's cute, but she must be a nerd." And other women have very sexy voices. It's the same with men. There's a great deal of variation in voices; in fact, every man's voice is in fact surprisingly flexible in how it can change and evolve. Your voice is most likely the result of the way people around you spoke as you were growing up. If you were raised in Northern England, vs. Southern California, vs. Australia, vs. South Africa, you will have a different accent, for instance. And within each of those accents, there are even different voices. Before we get into the deeper stuff though, first let's cover some of the vocal basics: Basic Vocal Technique Hyoid: Does speaking ever seem difficult or tiring, almost like you have to force the words out? You're most likely depressing your hyoid as you speak. The hyoid is a bone in your throat - the only bone in the body that doesn't touch any other bone in fact - that some people get into the habit of pushing down on with the back of their tongue while speaking. It has the result of making speech more work, and makes the voice "fuzzier" and harder to hear. The solution recommended by voice coaches is to make or feel the back of your tongue floating upward. Then, while still doing this, begin speaking. It takes a little practice, but you can train yourself to speak without putting so much pressure on your hyoid. One side note: there is no way to not put pressure on your hyoid, but you can always train yourself to involve less pressure. So you can always be working on having a louder, clearer, more effortless sounding voice. Purr: Sexy men have a certain guttural purr to their voice (as do sexy women). A good contemporary example in film of this is George Clooney. Listen to how he speaks, and the "purr" that seems to inhabit his voice. Add this to your voice, and watch women begin to swoon. You will likely want to practice deepening and slowing your voice down first, and add a purr or rumble to it after - and of course, be careful to avoid getting too guttural - we don't want you sounding like a caveman! Throw a slight purr in your voice, and you'll do great. Depth and Resonance: When you speak, you should be speaking from the bottom of your chest and lungs. Focus on adding that depth and the resonance it brings. Your voice will sound much more masculine and intense, creating a more desirable impression. Boredom: Again, a degree of boredom makes you sound more worldly and experienced. It also tends to unconsciously encourage others and compel them to want to impress you and keep you engaged. The way you make certain remarks - like, "Oh, really?" or, "Is that right?" - while someone else is speaking can quite often spur them to work a little harder to make you more interested. This technique is useful particularly if the conversation is about something uninteresting or that does not move the interaction forward in any way. It's important to not overdo this, as you can run into problems with attainability (covered in the last chapter of this section). Use it as one of your tools, rather than the only one." If you haven't spent much time working to get a sexy male voice yet, you might be surprised to realize you can train your voice up, just like any other skill. Take the right approach, do the right exercises, and work on it consistently, and before you know it, you'll have achieved a voice that makes women's heads turn -- quite literally.

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##Book Excerpts: Mastering Sexual Touch Following up on and complementing our post on how to be a good lover, I wanted to share this latest excerpt on the topic of sexual touch; namely, how to do it, when to do it, and where to do it. For a guy getting started out, touching women sexually can be a big, unnerving deal. How should you touch her? Should you do it on your date? Wait until you've got her alone? Should you not do this at all until the two of you are already lovers? What's okay... and what isn't? In today's excerpt from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams, we take a close look at what sexual touch entails and how best to employ it to get the results with women you most want to get. "You will almost always want to wait until you are in private before engaging in sexual touch. The sole exception is in rapid public seductions - such as on a dance floor, on a beach, or an airplane. In those circumstances, where you are progressing rapidly through the stages with a woman who is also interested and willing, you will get sexual quickly and possibly even become intimate in only a semi-private location. These are the exceptions, however, and you will normally be alone with a woman before beginning sexual touch. The danger of beginning sexual touch in public is higher than with romantic touch due to the nature of the touch. Some types of sexual touch: Stroking. Caressing your hands up and down a woman's body - whether her arms, her legs, her sides, her back, her face, her hair, or whatever else - are great to do in private, but best avoided in public. In private, this communicates affection and warmth. In public, it can be a little much, and risks looking possessive. However, if she's doing it back to you, or started doing it first, then, a little bit is okay. Body kissing. Rather than kissing her lips, focus on her neck, jaw, earlobes, shoulders, chest, breasts, nipples, arms, hands, stomach, thighs, labia, and other parts of her body. This is extremely erotic to women - much more so than kissing on the lips. Rubbing and fingering her genitals. You will often start by rubbing the outside of her pants, before sliding your hand inside her pants and down her panties. Rub the outside of her vagina, focusing on the clitoris, before slipping your finger inside her to finger her. Once you have been fingering her for several minutes, her pants will come off very easily. Oral sex. Performing oral sex on her is a big turn on for a woman, and will prime her for full penetrative sex. Focus on stimulating the clitoris for maximum pleasure for your girl. She will also often be quite turned on performing oral sex on you. Once you have run through the various kinds of sexual touch, you will have gotten intimate with your girl. Together with incidental, protective, and romantic touch, sexual touch completes the package for all the ways you should be touching the women you like." Sexual touch isn't just for creepy drunk guys at the bar - it's for every man who wants to move things from platonic to sexual with women. Think about it - a girl doesn't want to get sexual with a guy who doesn't strike her as sexual, does she? This is one of the key ways that you can communicate to women that you are that sexual man they want. Use sexual touch to show that you're a strong, sexy man - and get women chasing you like you're giving out $100 clothing store gift cards for free.

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##Book Excerpts: Short and Sweet Tips for Your PUA Openers When you're new to meeting women and you're just getting started, finding the right PUA openers is consistently the number one thing on your mind. How do you open a girl the right way? Learning opening can feel like this big, daunting challenge. Today's excerpt on getting down the basics of PUA openers that you might not know comes from my eBook How to Make Girls Chase: Every Tactic and Technique You Need to Get the Girl(s) of Your Dreams. Opening's easy to do, you'll have experienced guys tell you, again and again - you can use anything to open with... so long as you say it right, that is. Problem is, when you're new, you don't really know how to say it right. So, you end up making mistakes, and women don't open well. So what's the secret to opening well? It mostly revolves around a few key things you do to set the opener up right - so you're coming in warmly welcomed by women, instead of being greeted with suspicion or surprise as a man who plunges in awkwardly is wont to be greeted with. Here's what you need to know to get started... "A few basics on opening techniques: • Avoid full frontal opening. When a man opens a woman facing directly at her, he comes on very strong, and he can seem overwhelming. Instead, open somewhat across your body or over your shoulder, only turning to face her more fully as she earns your attention. The one time that opening from the front can more or less be considered standard and acceptable is when you are doing street stops - approaching women walking the opposite direction of you by walking straight into their path facing them, holding your hands up, and telling them, "Stop." Even then, it's typically more effective to let them pass you, then turn around and catch up to them and open from the side. • Avoid opening from the back. Just as opening from the front can seem overly pushy or forward, opening from the back can be startling. Ever have someone tap you on the back, or worse, suddenly start speaking to you from behind without you knowing who they were? It's unnerving, and doesn't make for a very pleasant - or socially savvy - introduction to a new potential lover. Seek to open from the side. • Pre-open her. In other words, get her to look at you before you look at her. This can be done simply by coming into her proximity, but more commonly by first touching her lightly (before looking at her). When women look at you first, and you then look at them, they unconsciously feel as though you are responding to them checking you out. When you look at them first, they feel like the objects of desire, and also feel as if they are being stared and expected to react a certain way. The latter tends not to open as well as when you get them to look at you first. One common way of pre-opening a girl is to position yourself next to her, then lightly tap her on the arm with the backside of your hand, only fully turning your head to face her and locking eyes with her once her eyes are locked on yours. • Drop the apologies. It's usually never a good idea to say, "Sorry," or, "Excuse me," in general, but this is especially true when you're opening - you don't want to use these words or phrases. Stay away from apologizing for yourself like the plague - when a man apologizes first, he's communicating to a woman that he feels like he's interrupting whatever more important thing she was doing. And if he believes it, there's a good chance she will, too. What could be more important for a woman than meeting a strong, confident, sexy man like you? The answer, of course, is "nothing." • Lock in as soon as possible. Locking in is getting into the position of being comfortable and "at home" with a girl or a group. For instance, if three people are talking, and one of them is leaning back against a wall with the other two facing him, the one leaning against the wall is locked in. If two people are speaking, and one is sitting on a stool while the other stands, the one who is seated is locked in. You can instantly lock in by walking up to a group of people and gently moving them to the side that you might move past them and lean against a wall or bar or other structure, or by telling a girl who is sitting down to get up for a second and then take her seat (you can smile and say, "I just stole your seat," and then tell her, "I'll give it back in a second, I just wanted to talk to you")." Like the more seasoned guys will tell you, opening's not hard. But it does take a little finesse. Just like you appreciate a musician or a dancer who starts his or her performance off with grace and charm far more than one who blunders clumsily into it, so too do women love and become enchanted by those men who open them gracefully and elegantly far more than the men who bumble their way into an opening. Learning the proper delivery for your PUA openers makes a world of difference in whether those openers work, whether they don't work, and whether they get women hooked into you the moment you introduce yourself.

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##The Bored Look: Use It to Get Women Engaged Ever find yourself talking to a really cute girl, and have her start acting bored and distracted? You probably began scrambling hard to try and get her interested again. And, if you succeeded, you likely felt like you'd won a crucial victory, and you felt like things with this girl were now stronger than ever. You'd been on the brink, and recovered. You also probably were very careful to keep her interested after that, and stay on topics she'd find engaging, and off topics she wouldn't like. You worked harder to make things work, and likely came to value her more highly than you do other women who never seemed bored with you. I want to work on getting you doing the same thing now with women. We've talked about nonverbal communication before here; this is another piece of the nonverbal puzzle. In this post, I'm going to show you how you can use boredom and the bored look to keep women off of bad topics and on good ones, and make them pay more attention and invest more in your conversations. This is a strategy that women use all the time. So let's even the odds a little bit and get you using it too. WHAT THE BORED LOOK IS AND ISN'T Just in case it isn't 100% clear what I mean when I say "the bored look," let me clarify. The bored look is when you do the following: Raise your eyebrows a bit Move your eyes off to the side partway Pull your lips in somewhat into a bit of a slight "I give up" kind of smile Sigh a little, almost imperceptibly Wait a moment after starting the above, then slowly turn your head gradually a little to the side Keep the rest of your body as pointed toward her as it was before - don't close off. You'll notice that all of those actions use qualifiers like "a bit" or "a little" or "partway." I put those there because most people who are just starting out overdo these and come off blatant and unsubtle. But, subtlety is a big part of determining whether the bored look is effective - or whether it's just plain rude. Look at the guy in the picture. Notice that he's not turning his head entirely away, nor is he turning his eyes entirely away from the girl. He's just kind of saying, "Ah, whatever," with his face. That's what we're talking about with the bored look. Most men who are learning how to deal with the situations the bored look addresses begin with over the top stuff instead like back turns to show displeasure and disinterest. The problem with overly showy things like back turns is, those things make a game out of it. It makes the guy very entertaining, and simultaneously very hard to be taken seriously. Girls see guys making a show of their proclaimed displeasure, and they think it's a game. Oftentimes, these girls will then work even harder to do the thing they're doing, participating in the game. But if a girl is truly being rude or boring or negative, you don't want her thinking you're playing a game with her, because if she thinks you're playing a game with her in response to her bad behavior, it's as though you're signing off on that behavior and telling her to keep on with it. It's as though you've told her it's okay to treat you rudely or be boring or negative around you, and that you'll accept that kind of behavior and play with her on it. And that's not good. Let's do a quick summary of what the bored look is and isn't, so you can know when you're doing it right. I should note that the bored look isn't the skeptical look; it's similar, but different. In the skeptical look, you keep your eyes fixed firmly on the girl's and tuck your chin down. With the bored look, you'll be letting your eyes float distractedly away from hers, and your chin will be raising, if anything. What the bored look is: Recognizable but still subtle Straightforward and direct. What the bored look is not: Over-the-top, gamey, and showy Something done for the entertainment value of a girl. WHEN TO USE THE BORED LOOK Now that you know what it is, when should you start using the bored look? Well, as it turns out, it's quite a useful expression socially, and there are a variety of situations you can use it in: When a woman is saying something boring. This one's the one most guys are going to think to use the bored look with, so let's start here. When women get onto boring topics, the bored look is what you're typically going to use to encourage them to get off those topics. It does take a little judgment; obviously, if it seems like a girl is working really hard to try and make conversation with her, don't make her feel bad by looking bored. But if you can tell she isn't really trying all that hard and isn't investing much in the conversation, or if she's off lost in her own world and talking about things that are only interesting to her, the bored look is the way to go. When a woman is saying something rude. Lots of guys freak out when girls get rude. "What do I do?" they think. Understandable; it can be a bit jarring when some cute girl you're interested in is being curt. To know how to respond, it's often helpful to flip the script; think of how a really high status girl would respond to the same thing. Say she's in a conversation with some guy, and he says something rude. What's she going to do? She's going to get bored and let her eyes and attention slide distractedly away until he shapes up. This is exactly what you should be doing, too - any time a girl starts acting rude. Now, if she's really rude, of course, stand up for yourself, but for mild, subtle rudeness - the most common kind - putting the bored look into play just can't be beat. When the conversation dies. Most guys panic when the conversation dries up with a girl they like. They start wracking their brains trying to find the next topic to jump to. Well, early on when you're learning, you should be working on building natural, seamless conversations and on relieving most of the social pressure of dead air throughout your time with a girl, especially at the beginning of a conversation. But, here and there throughout an interaction, there will be times when things dry up and you will want to wait for the woman to be the one to reengage. You can't be doing all the work, or she'll end up being uninvested in the interaction and she'll be relying on you to carry everything on your back. Instead, now and again when you hit a dry spot, pause a moment, then start getting distracted. Women will notice that you're not going to do the work of reengaging, and they'll do it themselves. And boom - they've started investing in the conversation, and now are chasing you a little bit more. When someone else is talking to her. This one's powerful, and it's one more place that the bored look saves the day. Guys often don't know what to do when someone else jumps into a conversation and starts talking to their girl: should they ask for an introduction? Start talking to him themselves? Should they close off their body language and try to be noticeable? All of that is far too much. Remember, women are very socially aware - what might seem subtle to you as a man when you're still learning is often going to seem blatant and overt to a woman. So everything you do you want to do in moderation. Use the bored look; get distracted; don't close off your body language defensively/protectively. Instead, just sit that way and wait. Don't be immature about it, just be... bored. Eventually she'll notice your boredom and end things with this other guy to resume her conversation with you. This is far more effective than anything else you can do - trust me, I've tried it all. For getting her to want to continue talking to you, and for getting her to view you as a truly high value guy who handles social pressure like this with grace and finesse, the bored look takes all comers. When she's trying to say "no" to you. Whether on the opener, or when you're inviting her home, or when you're physically escalating with her, the bored look can solve a lot of problems. One flash of the bored look after she says "no" can often get her laughing and saying, "Okay, sorry," and then agreeing to whatever it was you proposed. It makes her realize she was being preposterous, and causes her to reign that behavior in and be more reasonable. And, at the very least, it makes her far more likely to say "yes," when you make the same proposal 2 seconds later. WHY LOOKING DISTRACTED WORKS The cool thing the bored look does is it makes women conscious of how they are affecting you. Everyone does this, and women are just as guilty of it as anyone else: they focus on themselves and don't pay as much attention to the other person's emotions and experience with them. As soon as a girl sees you getting distracted and looking bored though, it's going to flood her with a bunch of questions, doubts and emotions that will get her back on track: Am I being boring? Am I being socially inelegant? Is this guy a very high value guy? Lower status guys never act bored with me. Did I misread this guy? Maybe I should pay more attention to this conversation. Summed up, using the bored look makes women more conscious of trying to connect with you in a conversation and inspires them to work harder and invest more, and it causes them to view you as a more powerful, higher status male. Low status men who are trying to get anything they can get will never dare to show boredom around a pretty girl. They're too afraid of losing her. It's only the sexy, high status men who are comfortable displaying boredom. Because of this, women recognize boredom as a high status trait. Scratch that; people recognize boredom as a high status trait. Men respond to this just as well as women do (well... when men pick up on it, anyway! Some guys are totally oblivious to other people's boredom). Again, be judicious; don't overuse the bored look with women who really are trying to give you good conversation, who are actively contributing, and who clearly want to see things succeed with you. But, if a girl's half-assing it - if she isn't investing nearly as much as she ought to be - if she's treating you like just another Joe Schmoe - letting yourself get a little distracted is very often going to be the key you need to get her to shape up her act and get with the program. You might be surprised how effective it is - but no need to take my word for it, take the bored look for a test drive and see for yourself! I think you'll be quite pleased with the results it gets you.

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##Breaking Circle Several nights ago, I was out with a friend in a nightclub, and I noticed a cute platinum blonde German girl standing next to him not doing anything while the two friends she was with, a girl and a guy, flirted back and forth. "You should talk to that girl," I suggested. So he did, and she happily engaged. At one point though, he turned to me and said, "Chase, where did you say you were from again?" and then introduced the girl to me and told her where I was from. She quickly jumped off of him and rotated around to my side, away from him, and began chatting me up. I flirted with her, pinched her arm a bit, had her tell me why she was in China if she disliked it so much. My buddy eventually roped her back in again, and I withdrew. She peeled off and left a short time later. After she left, I asked my friend a question: "Why did you introduce her to me? Did you run out of conversation with her?" He said that no, things had just been slowing down, so he thought perhaps adding another interesting person to the mix might spice the interaction up a bit. "Dude," I said, "you broke circle. Never be the first to break circle when you're talking to a girl." He didn't know what I meant, so I explained. THE MASTER'S WHEEL OF SEDUCTION There's a scene in the movie The Mask of Zorro where the elder Zorro is training the younger Zorro-to-be. The elder Zorro puts the younger in a ring of concentric circles and tells him this is called a training circle, or a master's wheel. "This circle will be your world," he tells him, "your whole life. Until I tell you otherwise, there is nothing outside of it." The younger Zorro interrupts to raise an objection about another person, but the elder Zorro corrects him: "There is nothing outside of it," he tells him. "As your skill… improves, you will progress to a smaller circle." In seduction, we can think of there being these circles as well - maybe we'd call ours a "circle of focus" - and like Zorro, as you progress in the social arts, your circle contracts. You get a smaller and smaller circle, which means you get more and more intimate conversations going on with women. I've seen this termed different things. Some men call it "bubbling;" other men call it "vibing." A guy not using any kind of fancy terminology might say, "It was amazing, we were really connecting!" Women often refer to this as "chemistry." Having a tight circle of focus where the two of you are engaged in good conversation and increasingly ignoring the outside world is something you very much want to get going on. Here's what a small circle of focus with a girl does for you: It shuts out the outside world and makes everything about just the two of you. It allows a girl to begin putting her guard down, as she enters an increasingly close-feeling conversation with you. It communicates to her that you really like and enjoy talking to her. It makes things feel special and magical and unique and wonderful. It gets "teamwork" going on and puts you both on the same team. As you contract your circle, and make things increasingly close in conversation with a gal, she tends to feel more and more comfortable with you, and excited by you. Contracting your circle of focus very closely is an important part of using deep dives successfully and really getting to know a lot about a woman with speed and efficiency. There's just one problem: other people tend to like nudging their ways into closed circles. And they will often stand there next to you and stare at you and put social pressure on you until you let them in. The response of most men to this kind of social pressure, from what I see, is typically to just bow to that social pressure and engage this new person… but, as it turns out, that's exactly what you don't want to do. WHY YOU MUSTN'T BE FIRST TO BREAK CIRCLE That night while talking to my friend after the German girl had left, I told him never to be the first to break circle, because when you break circle, you give the impression to the girl you were speaking with that you really weren't that interested. I gave him a reverse example: say you were talking to a girl. At one point, she said, "Oh, let me introduce you to my friend," and then she did. And then the friend took over talking, and she stopped talking to you. Suddenly, it feels like the girl you were talking to wasn't really all that interested in you, doesn't it? Even if she pulls you in and starts talking to you again, now it feels a little weird and awkward because it seems like she's just being social and is not attracted. That's what happened with the German girl. "She got put onto me," I told my friend, "and ended up feeling like the guy she'd been talking to - you - really didn't dig her all that much." You want girls to feel like you like them. If they don't feel that way, they don't get comfortable around you, and if they don't get comfortable, they don't open up, and they don't let you move things forward with them. The root cause of this problem is the guy being the first to break the circle. So, the rule of thumb you want to follow is, never be the one to break circle first. If the circle must break, let the girl be the one who does the breaking. My friend said he felt like he ought to introduce me, but I said that no, actually, he should've just kept talking to his girl, and if she really wanted to meet me she'd ask for an introduction. And then it'd be fine, and he wouldn't take any kind of a hit to how much she felt he was into her, because she'd be the one initiating the breaking of the circle, not him. Another example: you're standing there talking to a girl, and another person walks up and stands outside your circle, right next to both of you, staring at one or both of you. Maybe it's a friend of hers; maybe it's a guy who wants to be a tough guy to you or try and steal her from you; maybe it's some random person who decided he or she wants to come make new friends with you and your recent female acquaintance. What do most men do? "Oh, hi, I'm so-and-so, who are you?" Wrong. All wrong. You've just taken a great, tight, close interaction you were having with a girl you liked and brought another person into it, thereby breaking circle and lowering the odds you get together with this girl. Why? The answer of course is social pressure. When someone is standing outside your circle wanting to get in, he or she is placing social pressure on you to yield and admit him / her. But doing so says some bad things about you: Your focus is not on the woman. If you were focused on a girl, like really, really immersed in conversation with her, how much heed do you think you'd be paying to outsiders? Yeah, that's right - none, right? It's just the two of you. When you break the circle and invite new people in, you're communicating to a girl that you really weren't all that engrossed in conversation with her, and really weren't all that into her in the first place. You're a friendly, social guy, not a sexy, focused one. Related to the first point, women know the kind of men who sweep them off their feet quickly and into bed: it's the men who are sexy and focused. And sexy, focused men don't get sidetracked into needless conversations with random people. They know what they're after, and they pursue it with targeted resolve. They'll talk to others sociably if need be, but they aren't going to break their circles without very good reason. When a woman watches you opt to break circle, you're communicating you aren't really focusing on getting together with her with a laser sight, or anything of the sort. You're more haphazardly socializing than zeroing in on a pretty girl you want to bed. You bow to social pressure. A socially powerful man can stand there with hard social pressure being layered upon him by others and not bat an eyelash. "If someone really wants to talk to me," I think to myself these days, "he can man up and grab his balls and introduce himself, not stand there hovering on the outside staring at me." And it won't be just you - the more socially savvy a woman is, the better able she is to resist social pressure as well. Your ability to withstand social pressure is a sign of strength and power and attractiveness - so actually, you ought to make it a point to show women how resilient you are in the face of social pressure whenever it's socially appropriate to do so. Bowing to an outsider who wants in to your circle is bowing to social pressure. What has he or she done to deserve entry, other than stare at you and demand it? For those reasons, you must never be the one who breaks circle first. If it must be done, let the girl do it. WHEN YOUR CIRCLE BREAKS What to do then when you're standing there talking to a cute, awesome girl, and some other person comes up and stands there looming on the outside, putting pressure on you to let him or her in? Ignore them. Pretend they aren't there. Keep talking to your girl. But wait, won't they be offended? Think about it like this. Have you ever had a buddy talking engrossed to a girl, and gone up and tried to get their attention? Did you feel pissed off at the girl for continuing to talk animatedly to your friend? No, of course not; she's engrossed in talking to him, so you'd expect her to want to keep talking to him and maybe not have noticed outsiders at all. But if on the other hand she peeled off and turned to you and said, "Hi, what's your name?" how'd you feel about that? Well, you'd probably think, "Oh, I guess she's just being social and not really all that into my friend." And despite what you might think, women rarely block their friends with guys they like who like them back. Rather, the ones friends make no qualms interfering with are the guys they think are just being social, because they figure the girls aren't going to get with these guys anyway if the guys are just being friendly social chaps and not trying to get together with the girls. So you want the subcommunication to the friend on the outside to be, "We really, really like each other - look how engrossed we are in conversation. Neither of us wants to stop talking to the other for some person on the outside." The longer the friend waits before the circle breaks to include her, the better. If the girl you're speaking with breaks circle herself, be friendly and sociable with the new person, but don't go overboard. Your object basically is to be kind and polite while keeping this new person feeling like he or she is still outside the circle. There should be no doubts in the mind of anyone else attempting to enter the circle that what you want is to continue focusing on the girl, and that this other person is a bit of an interloper. Don't be mean or cold, just… warmish, but largely neutral. So, a girlfriend of hers comes up, for example, and stands there looking at the two of you. You remain engrossed in conversation with your girl - not even a glance over at the other girl; there's no indication from you that you're anything other than engrossed in conversation with the girl you're speaking with. After thirty seconds or so, your girl turns to her friend. "Hey!" she says. You turn your head slowly in the friend's direction and smile warmly, then let your eyes glance down a bit then off to the side, as if saying, "I'll let you two talk." And then you wait patiently. Now the social pressure is on the two girls: this new person, to say her piece and then let the two of you get back to talking, and your conversation partner, to find out what her friend wants and then return to your conversation. Your girl may introduce you to her friend, in which case you'll be polite and make a little small talk, but you're not there to socialize and make a bunch of new friends. You're there to get to know this girl you're with better. If you pull this off properly, the friend will almost always excuse herself. An extension to not breaking circle is dealing with disruptive people (and disruptive men). When someone comes up and addresses you directly, run it through the girl before addressing this person. This shows solidarity with your girls and communicates to her she's your #1 priority. So, a somewhat belligerent man walks up to you while you're talking to a girl and says, "Hey, that's my friend." Your response? You pause, slowly look at him curiously out the side of your eye, perhaps tilting your head in his direction ever so slightly, then look back at the girl you were speaking with and say, "Someone you know?" She will then either introduce him ("Oh, sorry, this is my friend John") or she'll dismiss him ("Uh, not really, he's my friend's friend"). Either way, you can then proceed to be polite and cordial with him, while keeping the subtle social pressure on for her to speak with him and finish up if she speaks with him, or you can try ignoring him if she is dismissive of him, or simply move her elsewhere ("Come on, let's go grab a seat"). When new people try to break your circle by addressing you, you should always address the girl first for the following reasons: She acts as a filter. This way you don't let someone into your circle that neither of you like. This is especially useful with randoms or friends-of-friends she doesn't really know whom she might not want joining your circle but whom you, if you addressed them directly without first checking with her, might assume are good friends of hers and give a warm welcome to… possibly even leading to her leaving while you stand there talking to this new person. You show her that you care most about her. Whom you address first in situations like this communicate what your priority is: the girl, being social with anyone who addresses you, etc. You want the girl to know she's your priority, not just socializing with anyone who happens to want a piece of your time and attention. This becomes especially true in situations where many people want to talk to you, at, say, networking events, or parties you've helped organize or are the guest of honor at. You show the other person, with subtlety and grace, that he or she is interrupting. Sometimes people may not realize they're being rude and interrupting a private conversation. Other times they may think that others are subject to their whims and they can act with impunity. By instead addressing your conversation partner first, you communicate to these others that they really are "outside" your circle of two, and the social pressure is on them to say what they need to say and excuse themselves. This is true even for friends of yours. Hopefully, you seek to surround yourself primarily with wonderful, socially skillful and intelligent people who will only help you to further your goals and objectives, but especially if you are new to self-improvement, you may still spend time with people who are a little socially blind and deaf. When you have friends try to jump into a one-on-one conversation you're having with a girl, you should respond to them as you would anyone else. When your friends interrupt you, talk to the girl first: "Oh, this is my friend Chris, he's one of the buddies I'm here with tonight," then talk to your friend, politely but coolly: "Hey bro, what's up?" Don't get too involved with conversation, and don't be afraid to excuse yourself. "Great, man. Well, I'm having a conversation right now, but why don't I catch up with you in a little bit?" Once you've gotten down the mindset of not breaking circle - and once you know what to do when your circle does break, to no fault of you own - you'll have gotten past the troubling issue of circles breaking and women leaving because they felt excluded, marginalized, or generally socially uncomfortable. You'll be a savvy socialite with a tighter circle of focus, and women will feel open and looked out-for in your presence. Expect less challenging from women and more teamwork and cooperation as a result. This is one of the pieces you want in place to get yourself forming "teams" with new women with speed - and teamwork and cooperation is essential to making a seduction succeessful.

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##Call Girls to Success: Phone Secrets, Part II Okay. In Part I of this series on Phone Secrets - yesterday's "Text Girls to Success", we went over a ton of tips, tricks and tactics for texting girls, for the rare occasion that using those minimalist rules for what to text girls isn't enough and you want to put in some extra effort to give yourself another chance. Today I'll cover the second part of the equation - what to do when you call girls and how to make it all go smooth. What I have for you here is a bag of tricks that work well on the phone… and in many cases, they are all part of girls' standard repertoire - these are the things you'll see girls use on you. Before we get into specifics on how to call girls and make it go well though, let's have a look at some theory, as to WHY these tricks work - because once you understand the idea behind a tactic, you can come up with a million techniques of your own... ... rather than having to memorize anything. WHY SHE'LL WANT (OR NOT WANT) TO TALK TO YOU Have you read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini? If you haven't, I HIGHLY recommend you pick up a copy - it is the BIBLE of persuasion, and of getting people to do what you want. Of course you want to use these techniques ethically, and only to move people into action where it will serve them as much as it will you; to get people to do things that are also in their own best interest. In any case, everybody should be aware of the tools Cialdini discusses in Influence. The most important idea Cialdini proposes is that there are certain so-called "influence triggers" - these triggers make it more likely that somebody will be influenced by you, and the process is usually unconscious and completely automatic. The six most important triggers with the biggest impact on influence are: Reciprocity - People are likely to return a favor; this is the *real* secret behind the Godfather's power (you have seen The Godfather, right?), much more so than extortion and violence. A lot of guys try to use this principle to sleep with girls by buying them drinks, dinners and movie tickets. A more effective way to use this trigger in a seduction is by being real and using humbleness with a girl, which will often lead her to drop all the "BS and games" as well. Commitment and consistency - Once somebody has made a verbal commitment to an idea, it is much more probable that they will follow through on it. This explains a lot of religious rituals in our society, and the best way to use this trigger in a seduction has been discussed on this blog in the context of being a sexual man- getting a girl to openly own her identity as a "wild girl", at least around you. Social Proof - people are more likely to want what other people want as well. The most obvious way to use this trigger when meeting women is to surround yourself with women when you're out - other girls will automatically find you more attractive than if you're going out alone or hanging out with your buddies. The best part: They won't even realize this is happening. ;) Authority - when people perceive you to be an authority, they will reward you with much more compliance than the average person. The good news, especially in the context of dating, is that it is very easy to be perceived as an authority. All you need to do is to act like you are the authority, and people will align themselves with that frame. This is why you always want to lead women on dates, and tell them what to do instead of asking them. Liking - we are all more easily persuaded by people we like. A lot of guys do this wrong in a dating context by trying to be super nice and complimentary, which doesn't work too well at persuading women to think they're sexy and cute. However, sharing a story or two on a date that shows her your vulnerable side can go a long way in making you more likable to her, which will set up that all important "team" dynamic as opposed to the "opponent" dynamic that so many guys fall into when they see the girl as an "obstacle" to get around to get what they want. Scarcity - this is a corollary to the law of supply and demand. When there is less of something, people automatically want it more. This is the reason why you don't want to call girls every day, and why it's better to have a busy life in which you sometimes make time to see her as opposed to chasing after her all day long. call girls TECHNIQUES TO CALL GIRLS WITH Now, let's have a look at some of these techniques in the context of calling girls and "gaming" them on the phone. One thing you can do to increase your perceived value is to not pick up the phone when she calls you for the first time. Again, this is a standard tool in a girl's arsenal, and something women do all the time when you make your first phone call… they've been reading girlie magazines with this kind of advice since they were twelve, and they're still reading Cosmo now. At the very least, be aware when she doesn't pick up the phone that she might be doing it JUST because she's trying to make you like her more… which obviously means that she likes you a LOT. Incidentally, this is a very good frame to come from in ANY situation with a girl: no matter what she does, it means she likes me. I even know a guy who has this frame ingrained so deeply into his subconscious that he will reframe even the harshest rejections as nothing other than proof that she is massively into him. "She had to shove her hand in my face and call the bouncer to get me away from her, because she knew she'd end up sleeping with me tonight otherwise." He really believes such things… and he sleeps with more beautiful girls than most men I know. Another way to use scarcity in your favor is to be the one to end phone calls first. If she tries to do this to you, you can quickly reengage her by saying something like "Sure, just one more thing real quick" - and after that, you can be the one to end the call. If you haven't talked to her in a long time (usually because she was initially unresponsive, as we discussed above), you can reinitiate and flip the frame around: simply pretend you haven't been talking to her in a long time because YOU had no time for HER, rather than the other way round. You can give her a reason, such as friends visiting from overseas, which adds social proof to your story. Example: you call her and tell her, "Hey, really sorry I haven't been in touch. Had friends over from England and pretty much all my time went to catching up & going out with them. Anyway, I didn't mean to ignore you; sorry for my rudeness ;) What's been going on with you?" You'll be surprised how effective this is with girls who've dropped off the radar if you haven't used it before. Try it out on a few of them.. you'll be impressed. call girls If you call girls and a girl's not really engaged in the conversation or seems distracted, you can "save face" by being the one to quickly end the call. Maybe somebody else is calling you on the other line (social proof), so you tell her you'll call her right back… and then don't actually do it (scarcity - which is really the essence of making girls chase). The other option here is to call her out on it - "Hey, you sound like you've got a lot on your mind right now... why don't we catch up another time?" This one's high risk, high reward: she's either going to snap back to it and love you for being up-front with her and confident in yourself, or she's going to take the out and get off the phone if she really isn't interested or she's legitimately busy. Sometimes girls will follow this up with a really cool text and ask to see you sometime soon. Very important that you move fast and close things out with her on this date, though, because calling her out + letting her go is either really ballsy, or really considerate of you... and she's going to decide which based on your performance on the next date. If you take it slow, you were considerate and go to the friend zone; if you take it fast, there's a good chance you take her to bed. Here's a very effective little trick to knock a girl RIGHT off the little pedestal she perceives herself to be on when she's got guys calling her… make her a little bit self-conscious at the beginning of the call. You might say something like "Hey sorry did I wake you? You sound sleepy." This is a sneaky one, I know… but when you call her and she picks up the phone, chances are she'll immediately go into the headspace of, "oh there's another guy pursuing me". If you can snap her out of that state and into worrying about how she comes across, you can level the playing field a bit and talk to her on more even ground. As I mentioned previously, I like to send girls a text and ask them when a good time to call would be - simply because pretty much everybody is busy, pretty much all the time. If you do call her out of the blue, however, ask her if she's free to talk to you, just so you'll actually have her attention on the call. Once you get a green light from her, feel free to give HER a red light in turn, and say that you DON'T have a lot of time right now… hitting that scarcity trigger again before you start the conversation. Again, remember that you only want to use techniques like these with women who are playing hard to get. Why's that? Because this is all going to be OVERKILL for girls who actually LIKE you! You'll send those girls into auto-rejection and then be wondering what happened, because it seemed like she liked you so much before... These techniques are for when you call girls who are acting aloof or disinterested, or when you call girls you've been pursuing for a little while. The girl who's already into you, you can often skip phone calls altogether and simply use texts to arrange a meet (one of the very basics of how to text a girl effectively). SETTING UP THE DATE Alright, you've got her on the phone and/or responding to your text messages, now it's time to actually get in front of her in person again… because as you know, even with 4G technology, it's not yet possible to sleep with a girl unless you're in the same room together. Of course it's better to schedule a meet-up while you're still talking in person rather than trying to do so over the phone, but if you didn't have a chance to do that during the first interaction, here are some tips and tricks to make that happen: Double-Booking: Depending on where you live, and this is especially relevant in Southern countries and in big cities, girls are often unbelievably busy and flakey. For a while I was living in a city where people were so non-committal that I made it a policy to double-book every date. At the time, I had almost half my dates cancel at the last minute… and while many of them rescheduled for later, it's still annoying and you end up with your thing in your hand, and back at square one. So I started doing what the airlines do: I double-booked all my dates. I would tell one girl to meet me on Wednesday night at 6, and another to meet me at 7. If the girl at 6 shows, you can text the other one to postpone your date with her… but if the 6 o'clock girl stands you up, you've got a second date to fall back on. As long as you're in a culture where everybody is constantly canceling everything at the last minute (and you know this is a cultural issue if your plumber does it too), you might as well have her be the one on the receiving end… and then this technique ALONE will almost double the amount of girls you'll hook up with. Time Limits: This plays on the scarcity trigger as well as on a whole bunch of other psychological principles, and it works very well: if you're not entirely sure that a girl would be willing to commit to an evening of drinks with you yet, simply tell her that you will have something else going on around 8:30, but that she can meet you from 7 to 8. This works because it's a smaller commitment to make; she's more likely to meet up with you for an hour than she is to reserve an entire evening for you. It also takes advantage of the social proof trigger - you're in demand, and other people want to meet up with you later. If the date goes well, you can of course extend it, and the thing you had planned at 8:30 is suddenly forgotten about. The disadvantage of this technique is that SHE might also make other plans for later, so there is a chance you won't be able to take her home that night… but it increases the likelihood of her coming out to meet you in the first place And once you've had drinks with her, she'll probably feel comfortable enough to commit to a real night out with you. The Spontaneous Date: Smetimes the best way to schedule a date is to not schedule it at all - instead, just call girls or text them out of the blue when you're free and ask them what they're up to. One VERY effective strategy I learned back in the day from MY dating coach (who has since retired): ask her what she's up to, and then tell her "that sounds incredibly boring", and then that she should come see me. Another wording is to simply ask her if she's feeling spontaneous, and telling her that you're really looking for an excuse to procrastinate on work. The whole idea of the spontaneous meet-up is fantastic because it sets you apart from other guys, frames your get together as a little adventure and cements the persona you're trying to project as you sexually frame the conversation. If you don't hear from her for a while... Cancel! This sounds crazy, but if she doesn't text back for a while (yes I know she might be legitimately busy), go ahead and send her another text and cancel your invitation. Just tell her that you're sorry, but you had to make other plans since you didn't hear back from her. This combines scarcity with social proof again, and this little technique has proven to have a VERY high success ratio. I've often had girls call me right there and apologize for not getting back to me sooner. Some girls also got really angry that I'd just blow them off like that, but since I'm apologetic and nice about it, they're always willing to reschedule… and NOW they don't flake, that's for sure. Remember... some people don't like to hear it, but anger is a lot closer to love than indifference is. Better for her to pissed at you, then calm down, than it is for her to be always calm and feeling neutral. call girlsAll right, between this post and yesterday's, you now have a MASSIVE toolbox to help you text and call girls… consider it your HUGE Swiss Army Knife for getting dates, with one tool to fold out for every situation. A couple of comments here before we wrap up though. First of all, techniques and tactics aren't that essential once you develop the right mindset and confidence, and you can read more about that here on the blog as well (see our recent post on how to get lucky without relying on luck for a mindset infusion). That said, the right mindset and confidence often develop automatically once you start seeing a lot of results… and a few tricks and techniques can get you there faster. Consider these techniques training wheels… if you use them for a while, the mindset behind them will start to become ingrained in your subconscious mind, and you won't even need to use any tactics anymore. You'll just always intuitively do the right thing. And once you're at that level, there will be another reason why you will never need to use any techniques to hit the scarcity or the social proof trigger: Your dating life will be so abundant that you will be LEGITIMATELY busy with all the girls you're dating… you really WILL have an abundant social life that massively social proofs you automatically, and your time really WILL be scarce, even if you wanted to call or text a girl more - you simply won't have the time to do it. And that's where you want to be. How do you get there? Very simple… step by step, and by just setting one foot in front of the other on the road to learning how to seduce women like the masters of the art.

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##Can I Help You? Know how when you walk into McDonald's or any other fast food restaurant or just about anywhere with service personnel they ask you if they can help you? They are, after all, at your service; it's their job to be so. Now, if you had to reckon, what do you think the likelihood is that a woman becomes very sexually attracted to a man asking her how he can help her, then catering to her every need? Chances are, not terribly likely, right? Yet, men do this with women all the time in the hopes it'll get them somewhere. But it doesn't. It gets them nowhere. So why don't they learn? I'm convinced it must be pure stubbornness, or lack of creativity and the inability to figure out another approach. You'd think a guy would figure out after a while that when he offers to do lots of things for women, he almost never gets what he wants, but hey, men can be a little blockheaded sometimes. And women get to reap the benefits of getting lots of free stuff and lots of assistance, advice, and support from men hoping to "help" their way into those women's pants. WHY BEING HELPFUL HURTS YOU It's a cruel world where being helpful towards a woman means you're less likely to get intimate with her, but that's the way it is in this world we live in. Fact is, when you do things for women, offer to do things for women, or even say things that lead them to believe that you could maybe, possibly do things that would be beneficial toward whatever it is they want to accomplish, the odds of you getting together with women fall precipitously. Why in God's name does being useful to a woman mean you're less likely to sleep with her? It all comes down to a little cost-benefit analysis. Let's say a woman finds out you can help her in some way. Say, you know some people in an industry she wants to gain access to, or you have friends on the admissions board at a school she desperately wants to attend, or you're a graphic designer and she needs some design work done for the business she's starting up. And let's say that before she found this out, she was at least a little interested in you and fairly excited about the prospect of getting intimate with you. Now that she's found out you can help her with something she really wants or needs, do you really think she's going to risk messing that up by engaging in something as messy and unpredictable and potentially relationship / friendship / partnership destroying as a sexual relationship? Hell no. No chance in Hell whatsoever. Women know how unpredictable things get once you throw sex into the equation; a girl's not going to risk her meal ticket for a roll in the hay. Just ain't gonna happen. What that means for you as a man, of course, is this: the more useful you seem to her, the less likely you are to bed her. AVOIDING THE "USEFUL GUY" LABEL You remember in articles past we discussed overproviding good feelings and being the early boyfriend. This is somewhat related to each, although overproviding good feelings is simply another way of losing a girl who otherwise might've been yours, but by providing too many good feelings rather than by providing too many possible ways of making her life better platonically. Becoming an "early boyfriend" though is something that can happen when a man starts trying to help a woman too much, and she steers him into the helper / boyfriend candidate role. Any of this happens, and your chance to get together with a girl and get something more than a superficial, "you help me, I help you" style relationship going are slim and getting slimmer by the moment. This really is one of those things you aren't going to fight your way out of. Once a girl sees you as useful to her, you're probably done. You can hang around and try and piledrive your way through it and simply throw time and effort and whatever else you like at her in the hopes of making something happen, but as someone who's been there and done that plenty of times, let me save you some needless hair-pulling and tell you to just chalk a girl up as a loss if you've got her seeing you as someone useful to her. So we won't be talking cure here; we'll be talking prevention. We want to prevent you from ever getting the "useful guy" label in the first place at all. First, some topics to avoid in conversation: Your job. Boring at best, "useful guy" signaling at worst. Seriously, especially if you have a good / well-paying / prestigious / connected / useful job in any way, avoid discussing your job like you'd avoid a fat chick with Chlamydia. Talking about work doesn't normally do you any favors, except possibly to transition to more interesting topics (for instance, if you're an artist, discuss what meaning you try to put into your art, and get her discussing about meaning she finds in life). Nothing worse than telling a woman about your useful job and watching the sexual interest fades from her eyes and is replaced by ambition. "No way, you do XYZ? Maybe you can help me with ABC!" The instant you hear this, you're done. Your skills. Men like talking about their skills. "I'm so amazing at spear-fishing you wouldn't believe it," or, "I can design a website from the bottom up in four days." Whatever your skill is, trust that there are women out there who will be excited about the notion of finding ways to put you to good use making their lives better. And that your reward will be a nice "thanks", not a few hours of passion. Discussing your skills is great for a job interview; it's not so productive, and often quite destructive, in seduction. Your achievements. Mainly because these lead to a woman asking you / finding out more about your skills. If you've managed to do something very impressive, the next question from most women is going to be, "How did you do that?" and after that come the requests, "Oh, maybe you can help me with…?" Now, let's say you made a misstep and ended up on one of those topics accidentally. What do you do? Only thing you can do, really… thread cut. Cut the conversational thread and move to a different one. Hanging around too long on a bad thread is bad news. The worst thing you can hear in this scenario is, "Oh, maybe you can help me with…" As soon as you hear that, take it as a sign you're seeming far too useful, and need to pay more attention to what you're communicating - you're probably trying too hard to impress instead of connect. That said, this is a sucky thing to hear. You don't really want to say, "Oh no, sorry, I can't, I have to…" because you come off selfish, insecure (interestingly enough, about people taking advantage of you, something strong men don't worry about because they don't let themselves be taken advantage of, but weaker men do, because they do), or both. But nor do you want to be completely accommodating and just acquiesce to this demand of assistance. Here's what I recommend saying: "Yeah, we'll have to talk about that sometime," followed by immediately and unequivocally changing topics onto something utterly different, preferably dealing with emotions or drama or something with no ties whatsoever to you being useful to a woman. You'll still be in bad shape, but at least you'll have stemmed the bleeding before it got any worse. You might even try to make yourself look a bit irresponsible after that; perhaps talking about how you're always late to things, or you'd never be suited to an office job because you're horrible about sticking to a schedule or getting things done the way other people would like them done, etc. Maybe wait a few minutes and talk again later about how people try to use you for different skills you have and how transparent and annoying that is; this'll send a clear signal to you that she'd better back off about trying to get help out of you or you'll view her as just another user. WHAT YOU CAN HELP WOMEN WITH Sex. Sexual release. Personal gratification and physical fulfillment. That's how you help women. Any other form of being helpful to women should be stricken from your repertoire, at least when it comes to women you aim to take as lovers. If it's a girl who's just your friend, it's fine to help her out, at least as much as you'd help out a male friend. If it's a woman you aim to be lovers with, helping her with anything other than intimacy ought to be out of the question. When you offer to help a woman, or seem useful to her in some way that matters, it adds another complicating factor to her decision about whether to sleep with you, and makes intimacy as an outcome far less likely. We want to remove complicating factors and make it as easy for a woman to get together with us as possible; adding offers to help to the equation goes the opposite route and makes things much more complex. So, don't be Mr. Fix-It, and don't be that great, reliable guy she can always count on. Once you're boyfriend and girlfriend, you can help her with a lot more; but trying to help her and guide her and make her life better prior to getting intimate with her is, rest assured, an absolutely terrible idea, and one that'll torpedo your chances with her. This is coming from one of those blockheaded men we mentioned earlier (me). I know this stuff and I still do it myself from time-to-time. I still fall into the trap of coming across as too helpful / too useful to a woman, and then end up kicking myself a little bit when I miss getting together with a girl where things should've been a done deal. Be very wary of being the useful guy. There are a million other men out there who are happy to help her with whatever platonic things she needs a hand with. You, you're the man who can only help her in one way, at least until the two of you get together. The two of you will get together, or you won't; but don't throw other things into the mix that just make that harder and more complicated. Keep it simple, avoid getting labeled as the "useful guy", and focus on how amenable of a lover you'd make for a girl, and you'll do far better with her.

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##Can You Flirt at Work Under the Radar? Why Yes You Can In the post on indirect game, Dave asked the following about flirting at work and in other non-anonymous social situations where romance may not be the focus of the gathering at hand: "Hello Chase, there's something about indirect rapport I'm not sure you've covered and it might be interesting. Very often and especially with girls whom you're likely to meet again - colleagues, fellow students etc. - it seems to me going true indirect could make sense (while still being sexy that is, but not saying "I'm kidding, I just thought you were cute" which is in fact direct but just delayed 3 seconds) because it allows the girl to pretend she didn't know you were seducing her. She can then tell herself (or her friends) that she's completely innocent and didn't help you or make it easy for you. On the other hand, directness and indirect direct polarize reactions so it can easily become awkward if you have to see them on a regular basis afterwards. Maybe you could add a few words on this. Dave" It's a tight rope to walk - how do you express interest and flirt with colleagues and coworkers without being so obvious about it that you risk an ugly rejection or a (decidedly non-professional) label as the office flirt? I'm going to focus mostly on work situations here, largely because we've already covered the classroom (see: "Cute Girls in Class? Stop Flirting and Start DATING"). As with that article, the topic here is going to be not just how you can flirt with (a modicum of) subtlety, but also how you can actually make something happen. Because, while flirting is undeniably fun in its own right, taking that coworker you've been flirting with for months for a hot date or a roll in the hay is a lot more fun. flirt at work Unless you're just about to leave your job and don't care about your reputation anymore, or you only ever deal with people you're never going to see again and who have zero impact on your performance review - and if that's the case, why are you reading this and not just asking her out? - you probably don't want to be doing anything that risks jeopardizing your employment or career. Sex is great and all, but as far as where it stacks up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I think you'd have to put it somewhere slightly less pressing than putting food on the table. Money first, romance later. So let's go over the ground rules - how to flirt in the office without turning your life upside down. WHAT CONSTITUTES FLIRTING? The ever reliable James Bond-Moneypenny flirting relationship there on the screen. That, to me, represents the classic modern work flirt dynamic (although that last scene, if you didn't see the movie, isn't really flirting; it's actually Moneypenny's virtual reality fantasy, which the real Bond then interrupts. You can skip watching that part, unless you're really into Moneypenny/Bond scenes, in which case, watch away). Office flirting has changed dramatically over the years - if you watch the old Bond films, it's completely different. In old Bond films, the woman (Moneypenny) flirts by constantly asking the man (Bond) to buy her a ring, or by virtually throwing herself at him... while he demurs. These days, as in the clip above, the man (Bond) tosses innuendo the woman's (Moneypenny's) way, and the woman resists, casting the man as a roll-your-eyes playboy who doesn't understand the way things work in the modern workplace... before "finally" giving in and flirting back herself, with a sort of "in your dreams" note to it. You'll also notice that there's a large string of "If only," in Bond's flirting; it's a great example of the use of barriers. "If only that didn't have to be so," "If only we wouldn't end up court marshaled," "If only this or that." The use of "If only," allows Bond to suggest things without suggesting them, because it's clearly a joke. Moneypenny is left without knowing if Bond really wishes "If only"... or if he's only joking. Make a mental note of that - we'll come back to it again later. THE OFFICE FLIRTING GROUND RULES flirt at workIf you're a street hustler, you have the Notorious B.I.G.'s Ten Crack Commandments to live by. "Keep your family and business completely separated" and "never get high on your own supply" are my favorites. For those of us who aren't street hustlers though, and rather workplace flirts, we need a different set of rules. If you don't like big numbers though, not to worry; there are only six (6) of them here. After graduating high school, I did everything I could to get hired by one of the "cool" clothing companies, and work day-in and day-out with model-esque girls. I figured that'd be a good way to get my game on point. But, I didn't have quite the right image then... and I got turned down by all of them. So next, I tried to get a job as a waiter somewhere with pretty girls working as servers... but I had no luck there, either. I ended up working as a grease monkey in an auto shop instead. Not a lot of women there. And the ones who were there weren't exactly the kinds you'd want to date. In fact, I'm not even sure they dated men. It wasn't until I graduated from university I finally found myself working somewhere, in mid-2006, with a reasonable amount of attractive women. As a business consultant for one of the best known and prestigious companies in the world, I found myself surrounded by women who were beautiful, intelligent, educated, and ambitious, with killer personalities to match. Exactly my types. Except, I had no idea how to flirt at work. One of my first days there, I decided to go invade the cubicle of one of the hottest girls working on my floor... but soon after I got there, a couple of the more experienced guys nearby, who also had their eyes on her, noticed someone was moving in on "their" woman and dropped in to defend their territory. "Way to break out the sexy pose!" one of them commented my way, noting my... decidedly obvious way of leaning against the girl's cubicle wall, ultra-relaxed. My competitor then immediately switched into talking to the girl about "important" business stuff (that he probably chose conveniently to talk to her then), and I was left feeling way too obvious. That leads us to our first two rules: Don't be too obvious. James Bond can deal with M making cracks at his expense for flirting in the office, but if you're just starting out (like I was), you probably can't just yet, and you'll end up an easy target for men who want to compete with you and women who want to brush you aside. Take everything you normally do to flirt, and dial it down a notch. If you normally lean in, very close and intimate, while flirting... don't lean in quite so close. If you normally toss about sly grins... make the grins you toss about a little less sly. Make people at least wonder whether you're really flirting or not - unless you have the experience and the savvy to shrug off those blows and flirt mercilessly regardless. Don't flirt in front of other people. Another piece of low-hanging fruit here; don't let other people spoil the party between you and that cute girl in HR because you started flirting out in the open. People will step in and rain on your parade for any number of reasons; some of them are the competition, and want to derail you from landing that sexy colleague before they can; others are just bitter and dislike flirting and flirters in general. On top of this, there's social pressure to worry about, too - while she might be flirty in private, there's a good chance she clams up when there's an audience nearby, even if it's only an audience of one. One is all it takes to tell the whole rest of the workplace... As I got my legs under me in my new job and my new place for clandestine flirtation, I soon found another very pretty girl at work who seemed like the ideal candidate for a little workplace romance. She was fun, cute, and seemed to genuinely enjoy my sense of humor... and me, for that matter. So, she and I went for lunch, and I turned on the charm hard. She bit. I was a smooth operator and she loved every minute of it. I was killing it. And then... I didn't do anything. I'd get her another day after that. Wouldn't you know it, she got weird. Of course... attraction has an expiration date. But I hardly knew that then - I was just starting to piece that sort of thing together. I know better these days though, and that brings us to our next two office don'ts: Don't go too deep in the office. Slow down, Casanova... it's not a date. It's work. And unless you've got a private corner office you can sweep her off into without anybody noticing, and neither of you have any commitments for the rest of the day, you don't want to go getting a colleague to the point where she's ready for something to happen right now. Because that leads to a LOT of disappointment and loss of interest in you if it doesn't... when you bring someone close but don't take them over, it causes resentment and spite. And you can't take them over at work. The only exception: the two of you are working totally alone after hours, or some other one-on-one, interruption-free scenario. In that case, go as deep as you please - but do make sure to please. Otherwise, it won't be any different from the usual "wrong place, wrong time" scenario. Don't do anything else to bring a colleague close to "peaking" too soon. Right along with going too deep in conversation comes anything else that can get your coworker to the point she's ready to jump your bones right now in the office... if only all these people would just go home. Just like going too deep, making her peak too soon - with too much sexual innuendo, too much chase framing, and the like - then fail to deliver, and you'll end up with a very disappointed (and mildly disgusted) officemate on your hands. After I moved out to California, we had a new teammate join our team. She was spunky, pretty, and lots of fun - and I figured I'd line her up for the kill. Unbeknownst to me though, the quiet, nerdy guy who'd been showing her around the office and getting her acquainted with our project beat me to the punch - and one night not long after she'd arrived, when the three of us were at a nightclub after hours, I walked back from grabbing drinks to find the two of them making out like junior high schoolers. Kudos to him!, I thought; they left together soon after, and I found myself rather grateful I hadn't pursued the girl too aggressively before knowing the lay of the land, and made a fool out of myself. I downed my drink that night and set to work running a little solo club pickup; can't win 'em all, you know. That leads us to our final two rules of flirting at work: Don't start driving before you know the terrain. It's impossible to ever completely know what's going on - that coworker of mine who got together with the quiet nerdy guy end up dating him for 4 or 5 months, until she broke up with him for being a little too needy. Not long after, she went home with another colleague of ours - only, much to his dismay and her hilarity, he could not perform. I heard all of this because she and I became friends - I doubt either of these men knew about their fellow officemate a few cubicles over. Even still, get a feel for what a girl's ties are to men in the rest of the office - many of the people who flirt, date, and sleep around at work do it a fair amount, and you never know when you might be stepping on another colleague's toes - or your boss's. Don't tell other people or announce your intentions. Goes without saying, you'd think, but I've seen some of this machismo or one-up-manship where a guy announces he's going to bed a certain new girl, and things along that line. There're all kinds of ways this can go wrong though - your colleague may get wind of this, and very well change her mind about you; you can end up looking rather weak if you "call it," and someone else who didn't say a word beats you to the punch instead. Keep your intentions to yourself - no one else should know what they are... or even suspect what they are. There. If you respect those six rules when you flirt at work, you'll be covered - and we all know the workplace of today is all about C-Y-A (sadly). Again, our six rules for office flirtation are: Don't be too obvious Don't flirt in front of other people Don't go too deep in the office Don't do anything else to bring a colleague close to "peaking" too soon Don't start driving before you know the terrain Don't tell other people or announce your intentions Mind those, and you'll be as clean as an office flirt can be (which, isn't actually pristine, but is still at relatively harmless levels). And now that the CYA is covered, let's talk about the how to. flirt at work It took me a while - partly because I ended up working mostly with people just about to become retirees (the average age for the people working in the branch of the U.S. DoD I was working in was 55.8 or something crazy like that - I saw an internally-circulated chart on it, called something akin to "The Impending Staffing Crisis" - impending meaning everybody's about to retire, so then what?), but before leaving the workforce I did finally figure out how to not only flirt with sexy colleagues, but actually turn that flirtation into something substantial, too. Flirting can be a little sticky when you have a bunch of rules regulating it - one of the reasons I vastly prefer cold approach to social circle (work being a social circle environment itself) - but if you've done a good job making yourself attractive to the opposite sex (see: How to Be a Sexy Man) and you've got a solid, sexual vibe going, you've already got the necessary components for having relatively easy success in the workplace. And if you haven't got those things yet, well... you've still got a shot. But you ought to be working on having them as a top priority! There's no shortcut to office or any kind of romance quite like already having worked to turn yourself into a head turner and eye-popper. Fundamentals are #1 all day long, regardless who you are. Without further ado, here's our how-to. HOW TO FLIRT AT WORK flirt at workIf I learned anything about male-female dynamics from the working world, it's that flirting can bring both a lot of fun and a lot of frustration into your daily grind. There's another side to it, too - the long period of time most office flirtations unfold over really heighten the emotions involved. That means you can easily run over a colleague's heart if you handle it with butterfingers... or, if you aren't too careful, she might do the same to you. I've never gotten so hung up on an officemate that it messed with my head, but I've had the reverse happen - women from the workplace that I took to bed, but who ended up going a little too crazy for me. All that proximity, buildup, and anticipation does funny things to the mind... including making colleagues who hardly know each other in real life fall in love with each other in the office purely out of fantasy and flirtation. So do be careful about this - have fun with it, but don't be a heartbreaker. Break out your sexual vibe. The sexy vibe is your #1 office environment tool for flirting at work without getting "caught." If you exude sexuality, you can make anything you say flirtation. When I coach guys on this in person, I usually have to demonstrate - they tell me things like, "Well, I've been trying to include sex talk and sexual innuendo when I'm talking to girls a lot, but it just doesn't feel like it's working!" My response is always no, no, no - talking about sex is not sexy. Being sexy is a way of communicating - when you're doing it right, everything you say sounds sexy. You can walk up to a colleague and ask, "Reports done yet?" and have it absolutely drip with sensual undertones. Quick tip: if you're still a beginner on being sexy, get accustomed to talking the same way you do in the bedroom. Instant sexiness. Use chase framing. When you use normal sexual innuendo, you can too easily offend, show all your cards, be too obvious, or look like you're chasing. Instead of this, you can use chase frames, a form of sexual humor in which you imply your coworker is chasing you... rather than the other way around. Like so: Her: Reports done yet? You: [in a sexy tone of voice] Always after me for my reports, aren't you, Susie? Her: [sexy voice, playing along back] Well you know I'd be lost without them, Rick. You: [still a sexy voice] I'm sure you'd figure out something. There's always Peter [pick some guy she'd never date in a million years] over in marketing. Her: [still flirting] Your reports are the only ones for me. A side benefit of chase framing is it's easy to call off if the other party doesn't bite. So, if you tell her she's always after your reports and she gives you a boring office response back (instead of flirting), it's a snap to switch back into normal office mode without having sounded overly flirty. Flirt in bursts. Just like in a bar or a nightclub, a coworker when she's meeting you for the first time in an office setting is usually wondering if you're going to be a social burden or not - if you're going to be one of those people who says "hi," and then just stays and stays and stays and never leaves until she has to tell you it's time for her to get back to work. So - especially if you're dropping by her workstation, or you're catching her in the hall somewhere - make sure your flirting is coming in short bursts. Like this: You: [noticing your colleague in the hall] Cat, how'd the weekend go? Her: [she stops to talk to you] So-so. My friend had a birthday on Friday so we all went out for that. You: [in a mischievous tone] I can't believe I wasn't invited. Her: [not sure how to take that] I didn't know you wanted to go. You: [sexy voice] I'm kidding. The only one I'd have known there would be you... we'd have been stuck together all night, and what fun would that be? Her: [mock hurt feelings] You don't think it'd be fun being stuck with me all night? You: [sexy voice] Well, depends what we're doing. Anyway, I've got to go see the boss - more account reconciliation stuff. Her: [flirty] Sounds exciting. You: Always is. [walk off] Use barriers. Just like James Bond, you can make good use of barriers to build intrigue, up attraction, and tempt your coworker(s) to pursue (I talked about barriers before in the article on being a challenge if you want a bit more on these). Bond uses plenty of "if only" to add an element of mock-longing to his barriers; he's pretending to seem like a hopeless romantic, which pokes fun at the hopeless romantic archetype and paints him as ever the roguish bad boy in contrast. An example of how these work: Her: Reports done yet? You: [in a sexy tone of voice] If only you wanted me for more than my reports, Susie. Her: [sexy voice, playing along back] You know I'd be lost without them, Rick. You: [still a sexy voice] Someday we really should run away from this place, and leave all the reports behind. Her: [still flirting] If only we could... but then who would deliver the reports to Mr. Richardson? You: [still flirting] You're absolutely right, Susie. Thank God one of us has a good head on his shoulders. In addition to being a mischievous way of flirting and a way that paints you as a bad boy mocking the romantic nice guy, barriers also give you the advantage of serving as a form of role-playing, and a means of planting seeds of an idea in your coworker's mind. Even though it's merely fun and games, she still gets the idea floating about, potentially to be imagined later - as a fun sort of daydream (running away with you and throwing away the reports). Never "end" your flirting. When walking away from a flirty conversation, do not Say you'll see your colleague later anywhere (sounds like you're planning... not sexy; also puts her on the spot and forces her to mentally run through her schedule - not good) Try to close / set up a date / grab a phone number (looks like you'd been meaning to, then jumped on an impromptu opportunity... again, premeditated, not natural) Say "goodbye" - this is light, informal flirting, it doesn't really end with any kind of formality or finality If you stay away from any kind of "ending" other than "Gotta go do X - always a good time..." (said in a sexy voice with sexy eye contact, of course) and take off, you'll be fine. On touch: touch is one that I recommend you play by ear, as it's highly dependent on the work environment. I've known men who were heavy touchers with their workplace flirting, because it worked in those environments - places like bars, restaurants, modeling agencies, etc. Those are places where, if you're sexy, it's very easy to end up with coworkers sitting in your lap, coworkers whose behinds you're slapping, coworkers who are walking up to you and hugging you or kissing you on the cheek, and the like. Contrast that with an office environment, where even nudging a colleague likely comes off as strange and uncalled for, and you'll want to avoid it at all costs, even with colleagues you're on very friendly terms with (usually). If you're not sure where on the spectrum your office environment falls, take your cues from the other people there - especially the women. The women are the most attuned to the social environment - if they're being touchy, it'll be okay if you are too... provided you do it in a smooth, sexy, attractive way, that is. HOW TO DO MORE THAN FLIRT AT WORK flirt at workI promised you this article wouldn't just be a "how to flirt at work" article, but rather a "how to flirt at work and get RESULTS"-type piece as well. So here it is. Keep coworkers you like on the periphery. It might seem like counterintuitive advice, but just like hooking up with friends, getting together with colleagues is all about not letting things get stale or comfortable or "fixed" before you're ready to strike. That means, don't get close to her until you're ready to ask her out somewhere. If you get close to a colleague before you're ready to make a move, you stand a very good chance of both you and your colleague getting into a "rut" of "just" flirting... which perhaps some part of each of you would like to evolve into something more, but it becomes increasingly difficult to pull off as more time goes by and you both get more comfortable merely flirting and no more. Date outside your close circle. Again like with friends, not only is dating people close to you often difficult to do - unless they're very open-minded - but it's also impractical for "what happens after" reasons; that is to say, someone always gets feelings. It might be them, if you've got your game on lock; or, it might be you, if you're not exactly swimming in abundance with the opposite sex just yet. Either way, if there are messy close feelings going around with someone you see every day, those are very often one-sided, and very often not good for work. I've known a fair number of people who had to change jobs because of failed relationships / flings with close coworkers - maybe think of dating someone from your close circle as another form of incest. Leads to nothing but trouble... Follow the standard guidelines for getting contact details. That is to say, when you go to get a phone number, make absolutely sure you've proposed a meet up for food or drinks sometime first. That way, you a) have an easy, practical reason for wanting contact information in the first place, and you b) don't need to spend time trying to figure out how to convince your colleague to come out with you now that you have her number. All you have to do is text her to figure out logistics, and you're set. Roll your date request in with some form of scarcity. When you've known a colleague for a while, it can seem odd to suddenly ask for a date out of the blue - you need some kind of reason, and simply waiting for the high point of the conversation (which you should do anyway) isn't enough. The most effective way to get dates with colleagues you've known a while is when you couple the ask with a "going away" message... like: You: [noticing your colleague in the hall] Hey Bree, haven't seen you in a while! Her: [she stops to talk to you] Hey Harry! Yeah, you just disappeared all of a sudden. You: They've got me trapped in the dungeon doing all kinds of crazy mad scientist work on metrics and PowerPoint presentations. It's good stuff and I'm getting to work with a lot of the higher-ups, but it's pretty grueling work, too. Her: Well, that sounds like good work to have! You: Yeah, it's not bad. What've they got you doing now - same stuff? Her: Same-same, yeah. Nothing all that exciting. You: Right on. I probably won't see you much around the office since I'm on lockdown 24/7, but let's grab a bite sometime this week or next, you and me. Her: Cool, I'm down. You: Rockin'. Let me grab your cell and I'll text you for details, assuming they don't take away all my possessions when they lock me back away down there. You typically want to make it sound that the reason you've been scarce is because you're on the upswing, not the down. Whenever there's change in the office, you're either a) moving up, b) moving down, or c) moving laterally. The first one is good, the second is bad, and the third one sounds like nobody wants you. Go for #1. Plan a date where she isn't likely to bring more colleagues. Lunches with big groups of coworkers are fun - unless they're supposed to be one-on-one lunches with a romantic prospect, that had a bunch of other people either jump in uninvited (and if other people hear you're planning a lunch / happy hour / dinner, it's not too uncommon for them to invite themselves along like this - I've had it happen, and it's not fun for you or her), or your colleague invites them along herself to be nice / friendly / sociable, or because she isn't sure of your intentions and figures "whatever" (or because she IS sure of your intentions, and isn't sure she wants things to get too serious). Some good non-group activities include: A late or early lunch - pick a time when no one else is likely to be available, and where she'll need to do some scheduling around to make sure she's free - a coworker's also a lot less likely to invite people if the lunch is planned at a weird time (e.g., 10:45 AM, or 2:15 PM in the afternoon) An off-day, impromptu happy hour - if you want to take a colleague for drinks after work, make it an impromptu message toward the middle (not end) of an "off day" - a day when people at your office don't normally go out for happy hours. If you make it mid-day, she won't have much time to invite other people - or for others to hear about it and invite themselves along A party invite - while my general recommendation is that you should stay clear away from party dates, when it comes to a setting like the workplace where a coworker sees you one way, interacting with you in a party environment can help push her to see you another way, too A "stay after work" date - this is the one where there's already a good deal of sexual tension between you and a girl, and it's "excited" tension (where you can tell she wants something to happen), rather than "nervous" tension (where it seems like she isn't sure how she wants to play things out). If you can find an excuse for her to stay after work with you - perhaps, say, to work on something the two of you are working on together, or that you need her help on - and you'll be the only ones there, you can use this situation to unleash the sparks that have been trying to fly Once you have a coworker out on a date, you run it the same as you would any normal kind of date, as well. One note - fast sex is more common among colleagues than almost any other demographic I've seen. I've seen it with restaurant staff and I've seen it with business consultants. I've seen it with teachers. I've seen it with office workers. Tension builds and builds and builds... and then the instant you get two people alone together - with or without throwing alcohol into the mix - something explosive is the result. If you're planning on a "take it slow" traditional dating style of going about courting a colleague, you'll almost certainly be in for disappointment - and so will she. It'll flame out, and you'll go back to (awkwardly) working together. Instead, go for fast - move fast and pursue first-date sex. It is, generally speaking, the way things go down outside the office. WORK FLIRTING WRAP UP To put a bow on things - The Office Flirting Ground Rules: Don't be too obvious Don't flirt in front of other people Don't go too deep in the office Don't do anything else to bring a colleague close to "peaking" too soon Don't start driving before you know the terrain Don't tell other people or announce your intentions How to Flirt at Work: Break out your sexual vibe Use chase framing Flirt in bursts Use barriers Never "end" your flirting How to Do MORE Than Flirt at Work: Keep coworkers you like on the periphery Date outside your close circle Follow the standard guidelines for getting contact details Roll your date request in with some form of scarcity Plan a date where she isn't likely to bring more colleagues ... and, as always, move faster. Make things happen faster. Don't dawdle. And remember: flirting in the office is fun. Getting together with coworkers is even more fun. But, don't burn down your employment or drag some smitten coworker's heart through the drainpipes for the sake of it - use a little tact, and a little awareness, before you go nuts flirting and dating at work. That said, assuming you're tactful and aware enough, it certainly is an enjoyable thing to go nuts flirting and dating at work.

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##Can't-Miss Tips for Getting the First Kiss with a Girl Ah, the first kiss. Does the following sound familiar? "This conversation with her is going great... man, she's a real cutie… and she seems to be having a good time too... maybe... yes... I *think* she's flirting with me too! "But... what if I try to kiss her now and she rejects me? I'll have made a fool out of myself... and maybe that'll blow all my chances with her... I can't take that risk... I better play it safe." This is a pre-recorded voice message, installed on just about every man's mental hard-drive… at birth. (It almost seems mother nature doesn't want you to produce offspring at all sometimes, doesn't it?) So… we need to scramble that file... and fast. FACT: If she's talking to you, one on one, chances are she likes you… or she's at least considering the possibility. Which means, she's EXPECTING you to kiss her… and in fact, it will even be WEIRD to her if you don't make a move. She will think that you're either not that into her, or that you just don't have the balls to take things to the next level… and either way, it will cause her interest in you to diminish. It's ironic… men are afraid to ruin their chances by making a move, when in reality the opposite is true… not taking things to a physical level with a woman is the number ONE reason why guys end up in the dreaded "friend-zone"! HANDLING REJECTIONS ON THE FIRST KISS "But what if kissing me wasn't on her mind and I try for it anyway?" Another file we need to scramble quick! First of all, we need to stop wondering whether she wants to kiss or not… just assume that she does. Even if it's not the case, just believing it is and projecting that certainty is often enough to pull her into that reality. And guess what… if it WASN'T on her mind before you tried to kiss her… she's definitely thinking about it NOW! Simply pull back for a second… look her straight in the eyes… and don't flinch. Then move in again, and chances are she'll go for it the second time. And if not… you can be pretty sure that she will go for it later… this "no" is usually just a "not yet". That said, some girls love playing hard to get. She may actually want to kiss you, but still enjoy making you chase... and if you fall for that little game of hers, this too can cause her to lose interest. If a girl really tries to get you to chase for the kiss, playfully call her ungrateful … or tell her that she's ruining all her chances with you, and that you haven't played these kind of silly games since junior high. "But it's cool, we can still be friends." This'll flip the script… enjoy watching the back-paddle! :) Now let's look at what exactly to do, and how specifically to bridge that gap between her lips… and yours. FIRST KISSES FOR BEGINNERS If you're completely new to dating - maybe if you don't know how to kiss a girl in the first place - or even if you were out of the game for a long time because of a relationship - you may not feel comfortable with just moving in for the kill just yet. Maybe you logically understand that it will only hurt your chances if you don't just go for it, but your emotions still hold you back. Yes, those same irrational emotions that made you order that pizza the last time you were on a diet! Don't worry - there are some simple little moves you can use to make this easier… not all of these will be for everybody, so choose one you could imagine yourself doing comfortably. Tell her to close her eyes. You can come up with a reason, such as accusing her of using fake eye lashes… or you can come up with a reason why she gets to make a wish tonight… or you can simply tell her in a tone of authority: "Close your eyes!"… without giving her any reasons. Once she does, you kiss her. Tell her about the last place you were on vacation. If you've been to Mexico this summer for example, just say to her: "Do you know what they do in Cancun? They do THIS." And move in for the kiss. Do tequila shots with her… you know the drill, right? The salt goes on the wrist, the lime goes in one hand and the shot in the other. Here's the twist: The lime goes in her mouth... and after two or three shots you simply kiss her instead of biting the lime. (You can also put the salt on her neck instead of your wrist… Tequila Bang-Bang!) Ask her if she's ever done something crazy the first time she met somebody… or if she lives her life on the EDGE (the latter is good for dance floors)! No matter what her answer, you know what to do next, big boy! Role-play that you're asking her to be your wife… then take her hand, look her straight in the eyes, pull her in… and kiss her. To be honest, I don't use any of these techniques anymore… but if you need a crutch for the first few times, give them a spin and let me know how they work for you. first kiss FIRST KISSING FOR INTERMEDIATES Once you get more comfortable around women, and the very thought of kissing a girl doesn't paralyze you anymore, stop using routines and gimmicks. Instead, create sexual TENSION! Hold strong eye contact during the conversation and edge closer and closer, with a look that says: "I know you want to kiss me… but I haven't quite decided yet if you get to do that!" Then move in and come dangerously close to her lips… until you can feel that electricity building and building… but without actually kissing her yet! You can even TELL her that you won't kiss her… to increase her anticipation and desire even MORE. Smell her hair and her neck, but pull back… tease her till she HURTS! (Women LOVE that kind of thing… trust me.) If you're here to learn how to make GIRLS CHASE… this is one of the BEST ways to do it. Build the tension up until it reaches the absolute breaking point… then flick your tongue along her lips for a split second… and pull back AGAIN. If you can get HER to initiate the actual kiss, you know you're doing it right. Oh, and feel free to push her off after a few seconds of kissing and tell her not to be too greedy! :) ADVANCED TECHNIQUE FOR THE FIRST KISS Once you get really good at playing with sexual tension and physically escalating the touch with a girl, you can actually drag the first kiss out until AFTER you're already having sex with her. This takes some masterful calibration, but it can be very exciting and a lot of fun for you and her… and since it's unexpected, it gives her less to resist. Besides, she'll always remember that one… you can be sure that not a lot of guys have tried this before! So there you go… you have the playbook now, so pick your strategy and enjoy the luscious lips of the women of this world! One final word of advice: Make the first kiss a very soft and sensual one. Women have a much softer kiss than men do… surprise her by first gently matching her kiss… and then taking the lead from there.

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##Cognitive Dissonance and Upset Commenters Somewhat less polished article than usual today... my computer's in the shop, so I'm having to put things together on a rather dated machine instead of my usual one. A reader wrote in to give me a tongue lashing for being insecure, brainwashing men, and leading people astray - away from loving themselves, their soul mates, and God. Here's what he had to say: cognitive dissonance "Hey Chase, So I used to be on this site until I realized a few things. Firstly, you're a very insecure man who is brainwashing men into learning a 'skill' which they should not be learning. I believe there is a God-given person for anyone, and regardless of whether or not you think that is 'feel good nonsense' is up to you. A girl left you and because of that you felt like you needed to change. Ever think that maybe she just wasn't right for you? Ever think that you could find a girl who likes you for who you are, but you just got to be patient? Ever think that it's okay to be yourself and to want to be efficient and get things done fast only if you want to? Your website is based on complex logic-based ideological nonsense that appeals to vulnerable young and old men who have typically been through hard times with women and are looking for a solution. Sure you can learn how to make money, get the best body, etc.; we live in a progress-based society. On the other hand, when you are trying to teach people a skill, which is not yours or anyone else's right to teach, then that's crossing the line. Deep down, you know it's wrong, and despite the fact that it works (I can vouch for that), it's morally wrong. You don't need to sleep with women for them to stick around. Most of them will stick around, and you're right about that, but really think about what's the point of doing that. If a girl is meant for YOU then she will like YOU for the nerdy, efficient, intelligent, socially awkward person that you naturally are. SIMPLE. Chase, please give your head a shake, bro. I know what you're saying is true and works, I know if you get the girl to pay it works, I know chase frames work, etc. Please just take a moment and think 'Why would I want a girl who doesn't like me for who I am?' Don't fight your core self, try to change your voice, and who you are. Do it if you want, but the girl you end up with will like you for you. Marriage may not be a big deal to you, but it is a God-given way for 2 people who love each other to demonstrate that; you're just taking a completely logic-based approach, which is one that society tries to conform us into due to its progress-based nature, but if you know what's good for you, you'll take a moment and seriously rethink what you are doing, and get your insecurities sorted out, because you have some serious work to do my friend :). All the best, Former member" I have a pretty good idea who this individual is, because he routinely comes on here leaving similar comments. If it's the person I think, he's a guy who was very religious, then decided he was going to learn how to be good with girls, then, before he could actually get any experience with women, decided that being good with girls was morally reprehensible and that he should go back to being very religious again. I've nothing against religious people personally, but flip-flopping is just annoying. If there's a God, He's probably pretty annoyed with it too. God and I are both annoyed. I'd take the time to respond point-by-point here - except I've already done that, in this article from two years ago: "Just Be Yourself: The Worst Dating Advice Known to Man." If you're curious about my response to the line of reasoning espoused in the above comment, just read that article - I wrote it specifically so I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself every time somebody decides to challenge why anyone needs to bother with self-improvement, dating advice, treating yourself as your own greatest project and investment, etc. And the morality issue - "You know it's wrong to teach men about women!" - has been previously addressed here: "Is Seduction Wrong?" (also worth adding, for clarity's sake - I started improving myself with women when I had almost zero prior success with women and was alone and friendless, not because a girl "had left me," although this does seem to be a common origin story for men in the dating advice niche; and I score 35% on OkCupid's "How Insecure Are You, Really... Test," which you can draw your own conclusions about) Anyway, what I'm actually primarily interested in discussing here is the emotional reaction - why do people get upset and feel like they need to go on a crusade to silence you when they know you don't think as they do? Why is it about other people's ideas that make them so... frightening? I mean, they're just ideas... right? THE DRIVE TO STAMP OUT DISSENT People don't like it when other ideas that clash with their ideas begin to gain prominence. It's frequently perceived as a threat - as if, somehow, these new ideas will pollute the world, stamping out a purer, better way of life that was there before. Even the tolerant are intolerant. Just have a look at modern "progressives"... those who want "tolerance" of all views, beliefs, and ways of life... all the way up to the point of being completely intolerant of anyone even moderately intolerant or unpermissive. I'll include myself here. I believe strongly in not judging others if you want to lead an even moderately worthwhile life... and then I get really annoyed when people start wagging their fingers and judging. You see this most vehemently of all with religious folks - the Catholic Inquisition, or the radicalized Christian and Islamic fundamentalists today. You also see it a great deal with people who really care about an adopted cause, or what they deem to be their purpose in life, whatever that cause or purpose may be - e.g., conservative political beliefs versus liberal political beliefs; pro-abortion vs. anti-abortion; people who believe mankind is responsible for global warming, people who don't, and people who don't think global warming is even a real phenomenon in the first place. People who believe in nuclear power; people who think it's a scourge. Anyone with a flag to carry or a cross to bear. But everybody does this to some extent... sooner or later, everybody tries to silence or slam down on the opposition. Where does this drive to stamp out dissent come from? ALL ON THE SAME PAGE cognitive dissonanceWhen examining human behavior within a social context, I find it helpful - upon encountering a behavior that seems unnecessary or unusual - to examine other social aggregations of separate but interconnected organisms. Some of the examples that spring to mind here are ant colonies, and the human brain. In an ant colony, pretty much everybody is on the same page. Workers dig the nest, keep it clean of debris and waste, gather food, and tend to the larvae; soldiers guard the nest and battle invaders; queens lay eggs and produce new workers, soldiers, and queens for new colonies. Males are mostly used for mating, and soon die... males don't have much of a role in the ant world. Every now and again, however, somebody gets ideas; an ant worker decides that SHE wants to lay eggs, TOO. The other ants don't try to convince her she's wrong, and lead her back to the light. They don't tolerate her doing her own thing, either. Instead, they just kill her, and kill all her young. In the human brain, there's a normally very efficient way of dealing with ideas, as well. The brain doesn't usually hold competing ideas long; ideas are most of the time quickly considered, explored to see if they match up with existing ideas (or strongly overrule them), and discarded if not. That's because the brain doesn't work quite right if all of its neurons aren't all on the same page. However, this DOES sometimes happen, that competing ideas reside within the same brain - and the phenomenon is known as cognitive dissonance. What happens when the brain experiences cognitive dissonance? What occurs when it holds two competing beliefs, both of which seem to make sense, and neither of which it's fully able to discredit or dismiss? It gets frustrated, irritated, upset, and angry. People tend to avoid situations that lead to the creation of dissonance - they don't want to deal with competing ideas that make sense to at least some degree. Someone reading this site, for instance, probably doesn't also spend much time on: A radical feminist website (not necessarily in the sense of "equal rights" for women, but more in the sense of "men are the enemy - burn the patriarchy!") A radical fundamentalist religious website (in the sense of "sex is bad" "all non-believers will burn in Hades for all eternity") A really wildly homosexual website (then again, I've been told we have a few gay readers... there are exceptions to everything) Likewise, readers of those sites usually won't come here, or go to one of the other kinds of sites on those lists. The ideas espoused at each are just too different, and don't usually line up well within the same brain. Cognitive dissonance is the driving force behind the polarization of reading on the Internet - liberals read liberal point of view articles, conservatives read conservative point of view articles, religious read religious point of view articles, non-religious read non-religious point of view articles, feminists read feminist point of view articles, non-feminists read non-feminist point of view articles. People stay away from things they don't agree with because it forces the mind to do extra work and consider view points it doesn't agree with but can't immediately dismiss. I'd guess that when you read that comment from that reader above, if you largely agree with the material on this site, it got you a little bit upset. "Learning to be good with women isn't WRONG!" you may have thought, or, "We each have a God-given soul mate - is this guy 10 years old?" or maybe even, "Oh come on, thinking that you need to improve yourself doesn't make you insecure!" But if you got even an ounce upset, that means there's at least SOME part of your brain - no matter how small - that read that and thought, "Hmm - maybe this guy has a point." And the natural human response to that kind of dissent was the emotion you felt reading that comment - or the emotion that commenter felt reading this site. Your brain - and everybody else's - wants all your thoughts and feelings to be on the same page - and it wants to silence anything out there that is challenging them not to be, in order to reduce doubt, reduce mental load, and increase in-group cohesion. DISSONANCE REDUCTION From Wikipedia: "According to Festinger, people engage in a process he termed "dissonance reduction", which can be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors.[6] This bias sheds light on otherwise puzzling, irrational, and even destructive behavior." There are three (3) ways people deal with cognitive dissonance - encountering things that do not match up with what they think or believe: Devaluation ("I don't like/need/care about that thing/person anyway") Adding consonance ("Sure, that's true, when XYZ is the case") Changing a dissonant factor (silencing the opposition or getting them to change their tune) If you want to see #1, just look at any girl who's gone into auto-rejection with you because you moved too slow or weren't warm enough or attainable enough toward her. There are also elements of #1 in our commenter's comment - by dismissing me as "insecure," he's able to safely write off everything I have to say as a vain attempt to make up for this and feel better pushing it out of his mind. Our commenter above also uses some #2 - "Sure, these things work, but they get you the wrong women for you." In this way, he's able to make some peace with the conflict between his belief that you can do nothing and things will eventually just be given to you, and what he's read here that you are 100% responsible for what you bring into your life, and if you do nothing, you'll get nothing. (as a former religious person myself, I think it's worth pointing out that most religious people do not share this view - the saying is "God helps him who helps himself," not, "God helps him who sits on his behind and keeps asking God for help while writing off those people who offer to help him help himself" - in fact, there's a parable about this - a man asks God for help, and has people keep coming by offering him things that will help him get what he wants, but he keeps telling them, "Not now, I'm waiting to hear back from God!" Later he dies, never having gotten what he wanted, and he asks God, "Why didn't you answer my prayers, Lord?" and God says, "I kept sending you help and you kept turning it away, you big dummy!") Finally, he turns to #3 - change the cause of the dissonance - and asks me to become more secure, stop trying to bring the things I want into my life (the "insecure way"), and instead trust in the Lord to provide and know that we are all perfect, just the way we are. This is dissonance resolution - it's an attempt at reducing cognitive dissonance by writing off, excepting out, or stopping the cause of the dissonance. And every time you start talking and somebody else vehemently disagrees, expect to run into it. SO WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH UPSET PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SILENCE YOU? The best thing, I've found, usually, is just ignore them. Usually they go away. When people are accusing you, pointing fingers at you, upset, and you're calm, emotionless, and composed, they usually will start to feel embarrassed, and realize they've overreacted. Assuming, of course, that you're able to maintain YOUR composure, staying calm, not trying to explain too much, and just staring at them like they're insane seems to often do the trick. If it's in front of a crowd, as discussed in the article on moral superiority, you probably need to challenge them back on the same grounds, especially if the crowd is potentially very hostile. For instance, if that commenter above calls me and leaves me a voicemail saying that, there's probably no reason to bother responding. But if he says that to me in front of a crowd of whipped up religious fundamentalists who think I'm the son of Satan, I'd better respond with a moral whitewashing of him and his position, or I may end up lynched. When you notice your OWN self doing this though, I encourage you to stop before you go nuts. Recognize it's an emotional reaction to two positions your brain is in various stages of openness to. And instead of responding emotionally, follow this process: The instant you recognize you're about to belt out some emotional reaction, take a step back Write down your initial, emotional response on a piece of paper or a word processor document on your computer. But don't send it, submit it, or publish it Now, go take a break. Chill out. Play a video game. Talk to a friend. Have some ice cream. Talk to pretty girls Once you've regained your composure, come back and take a look at what you wrote down when you were emotional. Now it probably seems funny and mildly embarrassing, doesn't it? Glad you didn't put it out there into the world, aren't you? Whoops, THAT would've made you look like a rube! Now re-write your position, stated calmly and in matter-of-fact language. Much more compelling a case you've just made, isn't it? You can do this in-person, too - when things get too heated, tell the other person, "This is getting heated, and I don't want to say something I don't mean because it's emotional. So let's adjourn for now, and we can come back and pick this up again a little later." Then go write down your thoughts and cool off. The main purpose of this? Getting the emotion out so you can think clearly again. You may even realize that the person has a point, or that there was a lack of clarity in your communication that caused this other person to misread your position or misinterpret it. Maybe you realize this is someone who sees the world in black and white, and if you aren't totally in alignment with him then you're a completely bad person, and you're actually arguing different points - you're trying to convince him to slightly tweak his views, and he's trying to tell you you need to be totally aligned with what he thinks is right or else you're bad people. I've had arguments with people that have gone on for weeks or months, until I finally took a step back, put my thoughts down on paper, and realized, "This argument will NEVER be resolved, because he sees things this way, and has a perfectly valid reason for it, and I see things that other way, and to me of course my reasons are perfectly valid as well." So I'll talk to the person and tell him we need to just drop it, or cut contact if we can't do that. WHAT ABOUT WHEN PEOPLE...? Are mean? Start labeling you (as insecure, brainwashing, a bad person, etc.)? My suggestions are, fight back or ignore them / get away in the moment, and when you're calmer later consider whether they have a point. Some criticism is nothing but the criticizer trying to make himself feel better by tearing you down or dismissing your point of view, but there can be kernels of truth in there, too. For instance, the commenter at the start of this article accuses me of "brainwashing" - a girl accused me of this just the other day. First time in my life I'm accused of brainwashing, and it happens twice within a few days. What this tells me is I'm probably more openly challenging people's deeply held and cherished beliefs - "brainwashing" implies some kind of strong threat to the core of a person's identity. In both cases - this girl, and our commenter - the charge seems to revolve around my dismissal of the idea of an everlasting, perfect marital covenant. They want to believe that perfect wedded bliss is promised, nay, it's destiny for them - while I say, you may get married for life, but it probably won't be like the Disney movies are and nothing is certain - it may come to an end someday. I think that's where it comes from. They're so used to everyone else around them giving them the easy answer: "Why yes, of COURSE you'll have blissful happiness throughout your entire life! Just as soon as you turn 30 and marry your soul mate!" You get pampered with little white lies your entire life, and then someone comes and rips you out of the Matrix and all you want is to get plugged back in again and forget that ever happened... and to hell if it isn't real. PARTING THOUGHTS ON COGNITIVE DISSONANCE It's a sort of weird, funny relic of the brain that people get upset about ideas different than theirs. This has been shown to occur in other primates, and I'd imagine other mammals, too - it's not just a human thing. I suppose it makes sense. You build this entire mental model of how something's supposed to work in your head, and along comes someone else who tells you you've got it all wrong, and actually water flows uphill, not down. And this does not compute. But telling the other person to silence himself doesn't give you better information. It doesn't help you paint a more accurate picture of the world. All it does is quiet the doubt inside your mind by shutting up the cause of that dissent. It no more helps your thought process than a leaky roof is fixed by the rain stopping. The hole's still there... it's just not leaking right now because the rain's turned off. You can't keep it off forever, though. So when you encounter something you disagree with, that seems a little jarring or upsetting, I recommend that you follow the process from above - step back, write down your thoughts, take a break, and examine them again later. You may just find the nuggets of information in there you need to think a little better - and be a little less affected by those who don't see quite eye to eye to you the next time around.

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##Constructing Your Sexy Vibe (and Making Girls Go Nuts) I couldn't believe it when she told me… She was 25 years old and had a banging hot body… one that I was just about to peal out of her sexy, tight jeans. She had a belly button piercing and fake boobs… yet here she was lying next to me, telling me she was a virgin. Just when you think nothing's going to surprise you anymore… well, meeting women during the day truly is Forrest's proverbial box of chocolates. But, at least that explained why it had taken me a while to get together with her. Most women will sleep with a guy the first night, so long as he sets the right frame as a sexual man and creates a sexy vibe… but if she's never been with a guy before, it may take her a bit longer to get truly comfortable. In one of my most recent articles, on the girl who says she has a boyfriend and why it doesn't matter, I wrote about nymphomaniacs, strippers and party girls… and how much fun they can be. Today, I'll talk a bit about the opposite end of the spectrum… and I'll let you in on some of the secrets of hooking up with girls who are far less wild and far less experienced. That can be a very interesting experience in its own right… in fact, one good friend of mine and fellow dating coach specializes in virgins… he gets a kick out of being the first man in a girl's life and teaching her the ins and outs of one of the best things life has to offer. But why would a virgin go with a professional seducer, out of all people? THE INGREDIENTS OF A SEXY VIBE It's crazy if you think about it… She had waited for 25 years for the right guy to come along, and somehow, a professional Casanova and dating coach should end up being that guy. How is that possible? There are three parts to the answer to that question… three magic bullets that will win you any girl's heart (or other body part of your choice): Honesty If you've ever had a consultation with me, you know that I strongly encourage my clients to not EVER lead girls on about their intentions. There is absolutely NO reason to lie to girls… in fact, it is EASIER to win this game with integrity than it is by deceiving women and abusing their emotions. I tell girls what I'm all about… and I do it subtly. I don't rub it in their faces, and I don't parade other girls in front of them… in fact, when I'm with them, they're the only woman in my universe. My phone is off. My eyes don't stray. They have my FULL attention and I make them feel special… because they are. But I do tell them that I like being single and have no intention of committing… that I enjoy my freedom more than anything and that I think adventures are what makes life worth living. You'd be surprised… girls know exactly what that means. They understand. They're grateful that you're being transparent. They know where they stand… often a guy looses a girl only because she's not sure about his intentions… and she'd rather avoid confusion and messy communication. You'll often hear a girl say: "His honesty is REFRESHING." Women appreciate it… and they won't try to change your mind and box you into an exclusive relationship. If they like you, and they know they can trust you because you're not hiding your intentions and your motives, almost all of them will go along for the ride and enjoy… even virgins. Sexuality The second reason why even a virgin would prefer to be with an experienced man is the very fact that he is experienced. He oozes a sexual vibe… once you get to that level, people will have one look at you and they can tell you get laid. That IS attractive to women, make no mistake about it… it is a very subtle yet very powerful form of pre-selection. I didn't treat this girl like a friend… at least not all the time. Talking to a girl as if she was just one of your buddies is a great rapport builder… but you need to make sure you always have a certain amount of a sexy vibe with sexual tension seething underneath the surface. You pick her up at the landmark where you meet her, say hello and look into her eyes like you just gave her the best orgasm of her life. You pull her in for a hug and hold for just a second longer than a friend would. You close space during conversation and come just a little bit too close. Your eyes move slowly and seductively as you give her a penetrating gaze, just before your eyes drift to her lips in mid conversation. Often, simply thinking sexual thoughts as you're with her can have that effect on your nonverbal communication. Not horny thoughts, like "oh my God I wish I could sleep with this girl." But sexual thoughts, like "she has NO IDEA how hard she is going to come two hours from now." For more advice on creating the right vibe with a girl, review my article about "The Success Factor" - it is THE corner stone of everything I do. Vulnerability You have heard of Pareto's Law before… the 80-20 Rule. It states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. 20% of your customers are going to create 80% of the revenue. 20% of your phone numbers are going to lead to 80% of your lays. The thing is, Pareto's Law is often more a 90-10 Rule, or even a 95-5 Rule… and it also holds true for getting laid. The top 5% of guys get 95% of the action when it comes to dating, sex and romance. More on this, if you haven't read these yet: How to Make Her Want You Text Girls to Success What If She Doesn't Have Time? She Says She Has a Boyfriend So what is holding 95% of guys back from being successful with women? The answer is that they're either too nice (the more common problem), or too macho. You see, this isn't a binary on-off one-zero thing… no one's either a "nice guy" or a "bad boy." There is an entire spectrum between these two things. The problem is that guys either are at one far end of that scale already, or they're trying to be. For example, they might be way too nice, yet try hard to be perceived as "manly" by acting like a domineering idiot… because they read somewhere that girls like bad boys. The guy who gets women like water from a faucet is the guy who has learned to strike the right balance between the two extremes. Yin and yang. He's not in the least submissive… he never would supplicate to any woman, and he carries himself with confidence and purpose. Yet he's also not an asshole… he looks after the people in his life, he's generous and he wears his heart on his sleeve with the people he cares about. Girls don't like assholes… they just prefer them to the wet noodles that run after them kissing their behinds all day! Give them a better choice than either and they'll take it in a heartbeat. The bottom line is this: if you can combine the masculine sexuality of a James Dean with the genuine openness and vulnerability that gets girls to tell you their darkest secrets… then you have already won. It's already over. If a girl thinks you're a sexy man AND trusts you completely, she WILL sleep with you, just about 100% of the time. And that's how come girls wait 25 years before they lose their virginity and then finally pick a total Lothario with a show-stoppingly sexy vibe for the experience… BOOTS ON THE GROUND sexy vibeBut first things first… let's rewind back to the "day in the life" series I've been writing, so I can paint some context about how I met, dated and eventually hooked up with this girl… that should shed some more light on the ins and outs of how to build any dating life style you could ever dream of. I've mentioned in previous articles that the weather can be a huge factor in how well your pickups are going to go… on a sunny day, more people will be out and about, and they will be in a friendlier and more receptive mood. The day I met the virgin from this report, it was overcast and kind of chilly and rainy. I went out against my better judgment, because I really wanted to meet some girls… a far cry from what my life had been like when I first started learning this stuff. Back then, any excuse not to have to put myself through the fear of the approach and the humiliation of rejection would have been VERY welcome. But eventually your fear turns into addiction… if you just stick with it long enough. A second thing I had working against me that day was that I wasn't well rested. I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, the night before, and having the right amount of energy is CRUCIAL to picking up girls… because your ability to control your vibe depends largely on the amount of pure, raw physical force you have: What shape you're in. How healthy your food is How well-rested you are. ... and in the case of that last one, it wasn't on my side here. CHARISMA FORMULA For the math geeks among you (I love anything that makes logical sense… simply because most things don't, in this world!): C = E * (S + P) (If you're having flashbacks to your junior year trigonometry class right now, just bear with me, it gets clearer in a moment) Charisma (that's the "C" above) is defined as the amount of energy ("E") you have combined with the emotional state ("S") you are in (or, if you've read the Success Factor Series, the emotional state you put yourself in!), combined with your ability to project ("P") that state onto other people by being extroverted and in communication with your environment. In any case, I found three girls I really liked that day. The first approach wasn't very smooth… I just didn't put my best foot forward, though luckily this girl happened to just be into me. That will happen sometimes… there are approaches where you do everything right, but you're simply not her type… and sometimes, you awkwardly fumble your way through, not a shred of that sexy vibe you're trying to project in sight, but she just thinks you're totally cute and comes out on a date with you anyway. The second approach went nowhere as she had an engagement ring, and then the third girl I met that day was the virgin… It was already after dark when I approached her, and that is really a double-edged sword. In most places, the best time to approach girls is around sunset or later, because the mood, at night, is simply more flirtatious and sensual for some reason… but in big mega metropolis cities, the ones that are most abundant in women to chat up, people will often be on guard once it's dark because they might think you're trying to stick them up. She was no different and quite skeptical at first… the vulnerability vibe I described above helped to solve that problem. She was just about to get on stage, and so I chatted for two minutes before exchanging numbers and letting her go. When I got home, I decided to take a day completely off to just chill and recharge my batteries before going out again. If you want to be at your best, if you want to be able to be charismatic and shine it at girls like an eye-blinding football stadium floodlight, well, generally… you need to be well-rested. WOMEN ARE IDIOTS… …when it comes to logistics. I had my first date with this girl on a Tuesday evening, but we only had two hours together as she had a dance rehearsal later on. You'd have to create one heck of a vibe with a girl to get her back to your place, sleep with her and get your clothes back on in a mere 120 minutes… it's possible, but a tall order with a virgin. Not that she had told me yet at that point, but you learn to read women, how open they are, where you stand with them and what you need to do next to stair step the interaction along towards your overall goal and objective (i.e., her orgasm first, and then yours, in this case). The second time she wanted to see me, she sent me a text about meeting at some park far away from the city center (and hence my apartment)… and there is simply no way to sleep with girls if you don't have a private place to do it. I ignored the message completely as if I had never received it, and sent her an invitation to meet me closer to my abode three days later… something I had learned from one of my mentors of seduction back when I was still a student: if she does or says anything that does not further your goal and objective (see above), IGNORE IT. You don't need to argue with it, debate her on it or even reply at all… simply ignore. We finally set our second date a few days later… but once more, nothing transpired. After having a coffee with her, I took her back to my place, but just before we started to break the Bible's laws and engage in premarital naughtiness (hey… if you don't sin, Jesus died in vain… we wouldn't want that now, would we?), her phone rang and her brother asked her to pick him up somewhere. And so it was to be the third date. What a cliché, no? This time I made sure the date would BEGIN at my place… I invited her straight over to make a cocktail together and toast to our goodbye, as I was about to go overseas for a while. And if you have a girl in your apartment and you're having drinks together… and you have a sexual vibe while also being open and vulnerable enough around her to allow her to trust you fully, there are only so many ways the situation can end… even if she's a virgin. And so, at some point, with all her clothes still on, she asked me if I had a condom… and then confessed that she had never done this before. SO WHY'D SHE END UP WITH ME? sexy vibeHere's a girl most guys would jump through hoops for. A vixen with a smoking body, who dances and has a dancer's cut and a dancer's moves, who's held onto her virginity for a whopping 25 years… and she picks Ricardus, professional dating coach to lose her virginity to? Was she out of her mind? Well, not quite. A lot of girls do lose their virginity to high school sweethearts, or early college romances. Lots of times it's because he kept bugging her about it, and she just figured, "Why not?" But sometimes a girl holds onto it for whatever reason - it could be she's religious; it could be she didn't meet the right guy. It could be her sex drive isn't really all that high, and she's just never had much desire to find out what it feels like to be with a man. But whatever the reason, people change, and people can be changed. Changing her mind is, after all, a woman's perogative, isn't it? So just because she was adamant at holding onto her virginity at 24 doesn't mean she can't make a total 180 at 25 and decide, "Screw it; everybody else says it's so great, it's time I joined the club and find out what this is all about." And when you think about it, it makes sense: A girl who's as inexperienced as they come when it comes to sex A girl who's probably spent years turning down one guy after another A girl who's so used to guys trying and failing to get her she expects it Who's she more likely to end up with - a guy who doesn't know what he's doing, or a guy who's trained himself rigorously with women for years, who's exuding his sexy vibe out the wazoo, and who knows what he's doing with her inside and out? Easy answer, right? LIVE (AND LOVE!) WITH PASSION Before we wrap this post up, I want to leave you with one final lesson today, one more little takeaway that you can use IMMEDIATELY to improve your interactions with girls. You see, after we had sex, she commented that the thing she liked most about me was my passion about life. She said she had never met such an optimistic person before… and that did really not surprise me. Most people really do live lives of quiet desperation, in the words of the great Thoreau… and if you give them the chance to experience a true adventure, they'll jump at it. In fact, this is ONE TRAIT that I see in common in all my friends who are either dating coaches or simply very, very successful with girls even if they're not teaching seduction: they are all predominantly positive, they're excited about life, and in the words of Tony Robbins, they live with passion. How could a girl not want to be a part of that… especially after a day in her cubicle? Create the life of your dreams… then invite girls along for the ride. If you just implement this one piece of advice, you will have so many dates that you won't even need this blog anymore (there I go, making myself redundant again!).

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##Cute Girls in Class? Stop Flirting and Start DATING Whether you're working your way through college or a master's program or you're taking adult education classes on the side in another language or a new skill you'd like to get down, you've probably run into girls in class you liked at some point or another. Heck, maybe even in most of the classes you've taken you've run into a few! girls in class And if you have, you've probably also run into the scenario common to most guys who've had cute girls in their classes: Spot pretty girl in class Try and sit near pretty girl Try to make eye contact with her Maybe exchange a few words Try and work together with her, maybe on a project Try and impress her in class - telling jokes, say, or knowing all the answers Eventually it seems like maybe she likes you - but then nothing happens You can easily spend one semester after another doing this, always feeling like girls like you, and never getting anywhere with them. And that's frustrating. If you've ever sat there admiring some beautiful girl in class, then never made a move, you know what I'm talking about. She made class a lot more interesting and exciting to attend... but that was about it. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually meet these pretty girls in class and date them? A lot of the advice out there centers on getting you flirting with girls in class... eye contact, teasing, and all that jazz. To me though, that's a big waste of time. ANYBODY can flirt with a girl in one of his classes... what we want to get you doing is asking them OUT. So let's get you asking them out. girls in class You'd think it'd be easier to meet girls in class than somewhere random, like a street or a nightclub. Or than some alcohol-infused mish-mosh like an apartment party or dorm room shebang. But if you're like most guys, it's the opposite. Classrooms are a lot harder to meet girls in than the alternative. It's weird. There you are, and there she is... you see each other every day... you like her, she likes you. Easy, right? Well... not exactly. Similar to what we talked about with "regulars" in the article on gym pickup, girls in your class effectively function as "regulars" in that environment, too - they're slow-game social circle prospects that it's often difficult to move fast with. But why? There are several reasons: Most of the value you show her during class you show her indirectly. She sees you impressively answering the teacher, for instance, or she laughs at one of your jokes you tell a classmate or the class; or she marvels at your sense of style, or impeccable posture, or attractive, resonant voice. Because it's indirect, it's harder for her to let you know she likes you - she can't well say she's impressed by your voice when you haven't been talking to her; she'll feel like she's chasing you. Despite you being in the same class together, there often isn't a social context. In other words, you don't often have a good reason to speak to one another. Her heart might be throbbing for you, and yours for her, and you might even be an expert at talking to girls outside of class, but because there's no easy, readily-available situational reason for the two of you to start talking, you never do. There's hardly any time to talk before or after class, and you can't talk during class. Before class, she isn't there, or you aren't there, or the two of you are sitting far apart. After class, everybody leaves. And during class, well... that's when the teacher's talking, not you. So again, you and the girls in class you like never talk. Classrooms are instant social circle - which means she needs to be cautious. Because she'll see you again, and especially if you're in a small school and you and her are in a lot of the same classes and know a lot of the same people, you are most certainly not some random guy she can interact with with zero fear of the consequences. Being her secret lover is largely out; the classroom imposes immediate and nearly universal expectations of "friend" or "boyfriend," almost never "lover," which means you'll be stuck moving slowly (and often ineffectively)... and we'll discuss why below, and how you can try to counter this. These things in conjunction all make classroom dating more difficult for the majority of men. Getting girls in class is an entirely different skill set - it's sort of like social circle, but not really. And it's completely different from picking up strangers in a bar or a bookstore. The things that work great in those scenarios often don't work at all in a classroom. Fortunately, all the fundamentals you've been building (great posture, a sexy walk, a sexy voice, slow and dominant movements, eye contact, a sexy vibe, leading women, moving women, frame control, and all the rest) still apply, and still are important in attracting women in class as much as anywhere else. But make no bones about it, classroom dating is a strange and unusual beast into and unto itself. THE INSTANT SOCIAL CIRCLE If you've read "9 Great Tips for Dating in College," you may have noticed I spent very little time on talking about class. That's for two reasons: Class is "luck of the draw." You might end up in a class filled with beauties, or you might end up in one filled with guys who like engineering, anime, and video games. Aside from selecting classes more likely to have attractive women in them, you have little control over whom you're going to get in your classes, and that's doubly true if you're in university taking required courses. That instant social circle deal we mentioned above. I'll go into this one more in-depth here. The luck-of-the-draw element in classes can mess with your head if you aren't meeting new women more regularly on your own. I can remember classes in college where I'd start thinking some girl in one of my classes was really hot, just because she was the prettiest girl in class. I'd be having all these fantasies about her and what have you. Then I'd run into her outside of class and realize that, compared to all the other girls out and about, she was really nothing special. Classrooms are dangerous like that. Suddenly you start highly valuing some girl that you really wouldn't value nearly as high outside that single classroom, and you act weird and do the wrong stuff. What I really want to talk about here is the "instant social circle" problem. Social circle is a different approach to meeting women than cold approach, which is the main thing advocated here and what I suggest you do to liberate yourself from ever having any limitations on your dating life ever again. If you want to be free, you need to cold approach, plain and simple. Many guys never will, because it's too intimidating, but once you get going on it and start racking up experience and it stops being scary and weird, it truly is freedom for your love life. girls in class Back to social circle. Sometimes, you can leverage social circle to get yourself a lot of fast lays with a lot of attractive women who might otherwise be difficult to get through your cold approaching. For instance, Ricardus at one point had himself well-established in the social circle of some popular local music celebrities who'd always hang out in the VIP section of the nightclubs in town, and they'd always have a constant stream of new and beautiful women coming through. Ricardus, who was just some guy who was friends with the music stars, as far as the girls were concerned, would just hang out and pick up girls this way and had an easy time of it, because he was operating on the periphery of their social circles and just being a sexy guy they happened to run into for fast intimacy. Most of the time though, unless you're doing things really right, social circle simply leads to: Girls being extra-cautious (you're not anonymous, which means there's a much greater chance that whatever happens between her and you gets out to everyone she knows - and she absolutely must maintain discretion - and her reputation) Girls coming to value you as potential friends or lovers - they see your "other sides" and suddenly it's next to impossible to see you as a one-dimensional sexy man who's only going to provide one thing to their lives and one thing only (lusty, raunchy physical intimacy) The "I've got time" mentality - if you're some man she meets on the street, it can seem like a romantic, rushed encounter - she's got to decide: will she see you again, or not? Then, if you're not always completely available, she may fear losing you and never seeing you again - thus prompting her to pick up the pace if yes, in fact, she likes you. In social circle, women feel none of this urgency. And the more time they spend around you, the more secure they begin to feel that you are never going away... so they can take as loooong as they like to make up their minds. Thus, you see the limitations here. And there are fewer places better at reassuring women you aren't going anywhere, at showing them your other (non-sexual) sides, and at reinforcing that they'd better move slow and be cautious with you than school. In as restrictive an environment as the classroom is, what's a boy to do? girls in class Obviously then, if you want to get girls in class, you have to overcome the limitations of the classroom environment - namely: Girls extra-cautious Girls seeing your other sides and valuing you more highly Girls feeling like they've got plenty of time with you ... and then you've got to step up to the plate and make some magic (and dates) happen. Let's tackle extra-cautious first. DEFUSING EXTRA-CAUTIOUS Extra-cautious is the most intractable, at first glance, of these three problems to remove. You can't very well just tell a girl that you're discreet... that doesn't work. You'll just be wasting your time. In fact, every way I've seen most guys try to do this reeks of desperation, or is a little on the clumsy side. So stay away from anything approximating, "Hey, don't worry... I don't kiss and tell!" Stay away too from the equally-clumsy, "Hey... you don't kiss and tell, do you?" She knows you don't care if she does. You can tell her a story about how foolish it is that you friend was indiscreet about something, but it needs to be artfully and expertly woven into your conversation to not sound contrived - and you're in a classroom, there's not much chance to talk about anything, let alone artfully weave something in. In fact, there's a better way to let a woman feel comfortable letting her guard down around you and trusting you to be discreet: Give her some leverage over you. That's right - tell her some secret she can use against you if it ever gets out. Obviously, don't use something that's really going to wreck you if she does it, and don't do this with girls you think might possibly do something spiteful / mean / hurtful, and don't use something that's going to make you look like a dumb oaf to the girl. Instead, use one like this: You: Hey, what's your name? Her: I'm Becky. You: Hi Becky, I'm John. Her: Hi John. How was your summer? You: It was great - hey, Becky, can you hold onto my bag for a second? I've got food in here, we're not supposed to have it, just don't tell anyone. I have to run outside for a second and I don't want anyone going through my stuff and finding it. Call me paranoid. Her: Okay... You: Cool, I appreciate it. I'll be right back, thanks Becky. You can do that before class begins, leave for a minute (go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, etc.), then come back, thank her, and tell her you'll give her a potato chip later (or whatever you've got in there). Why's this work? As it turns out, it does a number of good things for you, all at once: It creates an "us-vs-them" theme between the two of you It communicates to her that you trust her It communicates to her that you value discretion It gets compliance from her right away and gets her investing It gives her a piece of leverage over you (she knows you bring food to class, and could tell the teacher), which makes you far less likely to do something to hurt her than someone she holds no leverage over, and she knows this And just like that, you've gone from being a total stranger to that quirky guy with food in his bag that she now has some modicum of a connection with. She doesn't know anything about you yet, other than that you're a little imposing and you keep food in your satchel, but she's going to be a lot less cautious with you now than, say, that guy Timmy over on her right who keeps staring at her and trying to flirt with her. And now, you're one down, two to go. PREVENTING GIRLS IN CLASS SEEING YOUR "OTHER SIDE" girls in classOne of the big ones that kicks in once girls have been around you too long in class is them seeing your "other side;" that is, they realize that you're not just a sexual man filled with lust and passion, but that, hey! You're actually a pretty smart / funny / great guy! At that point, you can kiss any hope of getting together with them quickly goodbye - and, most likely, any hope of getting together with them at all (see: "Attraction Has an Expiration Date"). So how do you circumvent this? Easy - you get together with them before they've had a chance to see that other side. That means, by the fourth time the class meets, you should already have asked a girl out if you like her. Once you wait too long, attraction expires, and you get slotted into just friends territory - no good. That's exactly where you don't want to be - it's like getting tossed into a deep, dark hole of non-seduction. No good ever comes of being her platonic guy friend and contenting yourself with hoping and dreaming while other men date her, breakup with her, and move onto other girls and she moves onto other guys. Your process should look like this: Day 1: introductions. If you can, defuse her cautiousness right when you meet her, although you can always do this on Day 2 once you've said "hi," too. Simply asking her how her summer or winter break was if you've never talked to her before is sufficient. Don't talk about the class; it'll kill you (it's a boring, dead-end topic, and she knows you don't care why she's taking the class or what she thinks about the teacher). Day 2: the second class you see her in. Talk to her more (easier now that you've said "hi"), and if you haven't already defused her cautiousness, do it now by sharing something that will give her a little leverage over you and make her understand you're a guy who values discretion. You can be talking to her and tell her, "Hey, don't tell anyone, but..." if you can tie something related into your conversation. Or, just use the "food in my bag" example. Day 3: talk some more; ask her out if things are going great, or wait until next time if you think she needs a little more warming up (usually this is when you'll want to go in for the kill, though). Day 4: if you haven't asked her out by now, do it this day. Wait any longer than this and you're dead in the water; friend zone material. If you like her, grab your cajones and do it. That's it. Fast. Not asking her out the first day - unless you're unbelievably suave, that's going to seem too abrupt for a social circle context like this. You also won't have had time to get into much of a discussion with her and screened her to any meaningful extent; it won't feel "right" that you're asking her out. Once you've met her on the first day, it's very easy for you to sit next to her on subsequent days and go straight into talking to her. The two of you are classmates who are on a friendly basis now; there's no need for you to pretend to ignore her. Just sit near her and talk. What should you talk about? The same things you would with women in any other situation. See: The Art of the Deep Dive Conversation Example The Conversationalist ... for some ideas. You should absolutely not talk about: The class The teacher The school The school football team Anything impersonal to her whatsoever If her answers are going to be similar to the answers you'd get from anyone else (e.g., "Why are you taking this class?" "What do you think of the teacher?" "Do you think our football team has a good chance to win this year?"), do NOT ask that question. It's boring conversation fodder, and you'll sound like a boring conversationalist. Be an interesting one. Get onto deep, meaty topics about her. How to ask her out? Well, once you've had a few half-decent conversations, you can simply ask her: "Tell you what, let's grab a bite sometime this week, outside of class." And then get a phone number from her. And at this point, you only have one more consideration left. WHAT IF SHE THINKS SHE HAS PLENTY OF TIME? Any time someone is faced with having to make a choice, if given the option to delay that choice, most folks will take it. Have to choose whether to buy that used BMW you were checking out for $10,000 or not? It's okay, you've got time. You'll make up your mind later. But for the dealer, this is not so good. Now he's not sure whether to sell the BMW to the next guy who comes by, or to show him a different car, try and sell him that one, and hope you come back and take the BMW... or whether he should just sell the guy the BMW, thinking you won't come back, and hope he made the right decision and you don't come back looking for the BMW, find that it's gone, and then he's lost a sale. Have to choose whether to buy that new Bose sound system at Best Buy or not, but you're not sure if it's what you want? It's fine, you can head home later and check out the ratings on Amazon. But for Best Buy, chances are you never come back. If you want it, it might just be more convenient to purchase it on Amazon and have it shipped out. Or, you might discover there's another model you want even more over at Circuit City, so you go there instead. This is women, and you. She likes you; she's interested in you. BUT, she thinks she's got plenty of time to make up her mind. No rush. Meanwhile, you're neglecting meeting other women because you're putting mental energy on trying to meet her. And then, like we talked about in "How to Get Girls," along comes a guy who does everything right, and he manages to interrupt her daydreams about how great you and her will be together just long enough for the two of them to sleep together - and now suddenly she's his girl. Time, my friend, is most certainly of the essence when it comes to women and dating, and girls in class are no exception. But how can you convince a girl that she needs to stop deliberating and make a decision? If you follow the steps above under "Defusing Extra-Cautious" and "Preventing Girls in Class Seeing Your 'Other Side,'" chances are you won't need to. You'll have done things right, have moved fast with her, and you already be lining up dates and taking it from there. But what if you didn't? What if you did things wrong, slipped into the social circle position, and now you're stuck? Well, unfortunately, your options for upping your scarcity are pretty limited in class. You can't: Up and disappear - she'll still see you in the classroom, and you don't have her contact info to follow up with her later even if you do start skipping class Just quit talking to her - she'll think you've gone into auto-rejection and that she hurt your feelings - in other words, that she holds emotional power over you, and you're more interested in her than she is in you. Not so good for attraction-building Tell her you're scarce - women pay your words little mind; it's your actions they care for, and action-wise... you're still there That means it basically comes down to preselection and making her jealous. You won't always be able to do this. That's why you want to move fast and cement things with her as soon as you start a new class with a girl. But sometimes you can swing this. The tough news is, this is a very delicate balance, and you can just as easily cause a girl who likes you but wants to take her time with you to auto-reject as you can to begin pursuing you. You really need the right balance of just enough of a jealousy plotline that she becomes interested again and realizes you risk going off the market that she decides to make her choice. How's this work? Well, first, before you run a jealousy plotline in class, always either: Ask the girl you like out, or At least try and make some headway talking with her If she won't get into any good conversations with you, and/or you've tried asking her out and she pushed it off into some indeterminate time in the future, then it's time to get her excited in you again. You do that by starting to talk to another girl, and getting her interested. The good news is, if you have been talking to the first girl, the second girl's probably already interested. To her, you're already preselected - the first girl was your preselection. That means the second girl is likely to be warm to you right away. Now, once you're talking to this second girl and flirting with her, you don't want to be obvious with the first girl. It isn't: Girl A ignores you You talk to Girl B immediately After some flirting with Girl B, you go back to Girl A That's obvious, and it doesn't give her any time to stew. Instead: Girl A ignores you The next time you're in class, you sit near Girl B and talk to her You do not talk to Girl A that entire class (even if you usually do) Judge how many classes to take off from Girl A based on how cold she is to you - if very cold, take 3 or 4 classes off. If just a little bit, or she's playing hard to get, take 2 classes off. After 2 to 4 classes off from talking to Girl A and instead talking to Girl B, sit near Girl A again and pick up where you left off, as if nothing had happened. At the end of your conversation, ask her out. Now note: this doesn't always work. That's why you want to do things right the first time around and move fast so you aren't walking the tightrope later trying to hit the balance just right. However, there are a couple of benefits from this strategy: You let Girl A realize she actually liked you You get Girl B interested (and maybe even date her instead) ... it's a heck of a lot of fun, and a lot better than what most guys are doing (hoping and praying, essentially) And, ideally, now you've got a date. girls in class GIRLS IN CLASS WRAP UP The long and short of it - The classroom is a difficult place to meet women usually, because: Most of your value's shown indirectly - not useful for sparking conversation Despite being in class together, there's often not a social context There's little time to talk before or after class, and often none during Classrooms are instant social circle environments The difficulties of the instant social circle environment are: Girls become extra-cautious Girls see your other sides and value you more as a friend or boyfriend than lover Girls assume they've got plenty of time to decide if they want you or not You can get around all of these by: Talking to girls right away on the first day of class, making it socially acceptable to sit near them and talk to them in future classes before class and after class Targeting personal, non-boring conversation to talk about with girls in class Creating an "us-vs-them" air and/or giving her leverage over you to remove her fears of indiscretion Asking her out quickly into beginning class with you, before she has time to see your "other sides" and begin thinking of you as a friend or potential boyfriend Using preselection and jealousy to reignite interest and increase scarcity if you've taken too long or she assumes she has time to choose And if you do these things, you'll be better equipped to meet girls in the classroom than almost every other guy in class with you (even the cool guys, popular guys, handsome guys, and jocks). Heck, they might even start coming to you for advice... now wouldn't that be fun?

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##Date a Model: What You Need to Know to Succeed A friend of mine shot me an email the other day, and in one part of the email he asked me this: "How do you respond to girls when they tell you they are models? I've been getting that a few times in my gaming career and still have no clue how to reply... should I go: "Hmmm, modelling? Why did you chose to work as a model when you could have chosen...?" or should I downplay it?" Models, yeah. That's just about every guy out there's fantasy: dating a model. They're everywhere we look, all around us: newspaper and magazine ads, television commercials, even in the movies. Models are, in many ways, the very picture of feminine beauty personified in nearly every culture around the world. But how exactly do you get a date with a model? The fact is, most guys, when they run into a girl they find out models, tend to panic a bit and freeze up. "Oh no," they think, "what do I do? What do I say?" Something tumbles out of their mouths, but isn't quite as smooth as what they'd hoped it would be, and they end up tripping over their own two feet talking to this beautiful girl with her prestigious career. She leaves. They sulk. If this sounds at all familiar, well, don't worry, because it used to happen to me too. It doesn't anymore, and when I meet models these days they even tend to get rather excited about me. And helping you learn how to date models, too, is what I aim to do here today. MISTAKES MEN MAKE TRYING TO DATE MODELS date a modelWhen I was 23 years old and fresh out of college, I moved down to Washington, DC and continued the push I'd made during my last year of school to get out a lot and master the skills I'd need to do well with women. I hit bars, nightclubs, bookstores, and the street 3 to 4 days a week, almost to the point of exhaustion while trying to balance a full-time job and hitting the gym pretty religiously. One night not long after I'd moved to DC, I met a beautiful girl who very soon after meeting me told me she danced in a video for Beyoncé, the famous pop singer who was all over the airwaves then. I panicked internally a little bit; "Okay, stay cool," I thought to myself, "you don't want to mess this up by acting too impressed or anything. Just be cool." The thing was, she seemed like she kind of liked me. But I didn't really know what else to do; I was stuck. She introduced me to another pretty girl, whom she said was her manager. That girl didn't seem as impressed with me as she was, so I quickly switched back to the dancer. "So, how many videos have you been in?" I asked her. "Just one so far, but I'm trying out for others," she told me. I didn't know what else to say, and her friend/manager soon dragged her off to another part of the bar. I'd inadvertently made some of the mistakes men commonly meet upon first meeting models, dancers, flight attendants - or any woman (or person) in a position of prestige in general. And those goofs, no matter how small they might seem at first, will hang you out to dry if you're not careful. If you want to date a model, you're going to want to curtail the following mistakes: Acting impressed. This one's pretty much instant death for attraction if you do it: acting impressed or wowed or amazed by a girl's status as a model (or pretty much anything she says or does). A man coming across as impressed tells a girl that he's outside her circle; he isn't in the know; he's the complete opposite of an insider. And instantly, she feels this gulf between the two of them that's going to be next to impossible to bridge. Acting impressed is the biggest no-no there is when meeting models. Asking the wrong questions. This is another sign of an outsider. You're usually going to know a question's wrong if you're paying attention; if it feels clunky or unwieldy or not particularly savvy at all, it probably isn't a good question. So a question like, "Oh. How do you like being a model?" while seeming quite innocent can quite quickly communicate that, just like the guy's who's impressed, you don't actually know the first thing about models. Avoid clunky questions. Returning to the topic. This is one of the mistakes I made with that girl who danced for Beyoncé mentioned above. When you return to a topic, a woman knows it's on your mind and she knows you're impressed. Even if you acted nonplussed initially, if you bring it up again later she knows it's a big deal to you. Once the subject of her being a model has been moved off of, it's important that you don't bring it up again - and don't get too excited about the topic if she does. Treating her like a celebrity. Really, celebrities don't like getting treated like celebrities (some of them like the attention, true, but they don't want to be treated that way by someone they're going to bed with). And the fact is... most models are not celebrities! This simple truth helped me a great deal back in the day - just because she's been in a modeling show or landed a spread in a magazine doesn't mean she's a superstar. She probably still has a day job to pay the bills and this is merely how she brings some sense of adventure or status or prestige to her life. It's how she chooses to identify herself, rather than what she actually is all the time, so people see her as more than just an average pretty girl. In other words, it's cool that she models... but she isn't really a celebrity. And if you treat her as such, she'll know you fell for her ruse - and she'll know you don't really get it. You can't treat women like celebrities (even if they are), or you're instantly an outsider. You must treat a girl, no matter what her background or profession, like she's still just a girl. You might notice the common thread linking all of those points together is that you want to avoid "acting like an outsider" at all costs. The man who knows how to date a model knows that models, just like every other human being on the planet, want to be with people who understand them; not with people who are amazed by them and treat them like princesses or porcelain dolls. To succeed with models, as with all women, you must learn to relate to them as people. But not just as any old people; rather, as people that you "get;" people that you already comprehend. That's how you win people over fast, and that's how you show that girl who's a model that you're the kind of guy she could end up with. HOW TO DATE A MODEL date a modelMistakes out of the way, how do you actually pull it off? How do you date a model? Well, remember the core ideas behind avoiding those mistakes we just talked about - you want to stay cool, not be impressed, and act like an insider. Those are going to be key to how we go about getting to know a girl who models, and showing her that we're different from all those other guys who lose their hats when they meet her and she lets slip what she does. First, there are a few important realizations I ought to cover, before I launch into specific steps: She isn't a superstar. Unless you live in Hollywood, and actually even if you do, most of the "models," "dancers," and "actresses" you meet are going to be girls with limited experience who are trying it out. She might have attended one photoshoot for the first time last week and now she's identifying herself as a model. So don't make it a huge deal in your mind; chances are, she's just a regular girl who's had a few pictures taken and is trying / striving / hoping to someday maybe catch a break. She doesn't really want any "fans." No drooling fanboys need apply. She wants to meet a REAL man, who understands her for who she is, and doesn't carry any overblown ideas about what she's doing with her life. She needs you to communicate with her on her level, and not worship her - or dismiss her. She's trying to impress you. Ever stop and think about why she bothered to tell you she's a model? Think there's any chance that it just slipped out there on its own, totally unintentionally? Of course not! When a girl tells you she's a model, or a dancer, or an actress, ESPECIALLY if it isn't her full time career and ESPECIALLY if she isn't bringing in big bucks doing it, she's trying to impress you. There really is no other explanation for it than that; she wants you to be impressed. And if she wants you to be impressed, she cares what you think. And if she cares what you - you, some stranger she's just met - think, chances are she probably likes you. When you think about it, it's amazing more men don't realize these things - they seem quite obvious, right? But they never, ever occur to most guys. So much of talking about this stuff is pointing out the obvious that's been hiding in plain sight. If I can make you slap your head a few times and go, "Ah, of course! Why didn't I see that??" that's how I know I'm doing my job right. Let's get onto some of the specific tactics and techniques, then, that you'll employ with a girl when she drops those vaunted words: "I'm a model." Be interested in your words, uninterested in your tone. This is actually one of those huge, giant things I keep meaning to write up a proper post on, but I never end up getting around to. If you sound bored in your voice tone, but fascinated in your words, what you'll find is that you strike exactly the right chord and end up getting the models you meet opening up to you very fast. You sound like you're just making casual conversation, but aren't terribly engaged - which is far different from what girls who tell people they're models are accustomed to encountering. Ask her if she does print or runway. I got this line from my friend David sometime back; he has a great, detailed post on screening models, dancers, musicians, and flight attendants here: challenge screening. David likes to really dive into profession here and show off his knowledge of the industry; I'm more of the mind to show a little familiarity and then move quickly off the topic as I don't see it as all that helpful toward advancing the seduction. Six in one hand, a half dozen in the other; the results are the same. You show her, quite clearly, that unlike all the other men you meet, you most definitely are NOT an outsider. Ask her what else she does. I love this one. Make sure you show her the proper level of "just enough" interest in her modeling first; treat it as though she's just told you she's a hairdresser. Then ask her what else she does. This communicates to her very fast that modeling to you is not a big deal - which is usually going to surprise her. She's so used to people she meets fixating on that and getting stuck on the topic or freezing up and trying to run from it, that you addressing it, then moving on, as if it's some other, more ordinary thing she's mentioned, is going to jar her out of autopilot... and make her a lot more curious about you. Ask her if she makes a living doing anything else, or if modeling pays the bills. This is another one that will shake her out of autopilot and get her intrigued by you and enjoying talking to you in a hurry. She's living this glamorous life of telling people she's a model, and having them fawn over her, and then YOU come along... and see right through her... and not only realize modeling might just be her hobby, and not her profession, but you outright ASK her. You'd be surprised how many formerly aloof-acting women will turn into little girls around you when you ask them this. Their cover's been blown, and they've found a man who really, honestly, sees them for who they are. Note: be very careful to build her back up and make her feel good after she tells you she isn't a full-time model, because you've basically "called her out" on this one, and if you don't build her back up you strongly risk her going into auto-rejection. Continue on with the conversation and interaction as if she's anybody else. This one's supremely important. You can't treat her like she's a special case just because someone takes pictures of her. You need to move fast with her, follow your process, and treat her the same as every other girl. That's how you get results with models; that's how you get them in bed. That's how you date a model. Here's how a typical conversation might go: You: How do you spend your time? Her: I'm a model. You: No way. Print or runway? Her: Um, a little of both. I was just in a spread in Maxim. You: Way cool. Congrats. You pay the bills doing that, or you're still working up to it? Her: Oh, uh, actually I'm a paralegal. You: Smart and talented! You're a killer combination then. Her: What do you do? You: I'm, uh... well... a bit of an adventurer. Are you from here originally? I don't meet a whole lot of model/paralegal combos around these parts... Her: Actually I'm from the South. What do you mean, an adventurer? And there it is. The mistakes men make that you know now how to avoid. The mentalities you want to make sure you have going in. And the steps to follow to break her out of autopilot and get her seeing you as quite different from all the other, less insightful men she meets. Not as scary as it might've seemed before, eh? Stick with this plan and you'll be dating models, dancers, and all other manner of sought-after women with a lot more ease - and a lot less freezing up and tripping over your own words - than the majority of men out there. You'll stand out. And women who are used to men drooling over them, well - they'll be thrilled to meet a man like you. Go and see for yourself! And if you haven't already checked out the post on deep diving, make sure you do, because that's what you'll be doing next once that model you meet is comfortable with you and enjoying your conversation

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##Dating Advice for Men: Why NOT to Get It from Women In the recent post that discusses whether you should pay for a date, a reader comments: A woman's perspective: If you invite her, you pay. If the guy asked me, so he should pay. I really don't think this is unreasonable. I do, however, think that it is unreasonable to invite someone out and then expect them to pay for themself or for both of you- probably they would, out of politeness, but would be very angry about it and would never see you again. I once met a great guy who basically made me pay for the dinner he invited me to. I wrote him off and never saw him again. What a cheapskate!! All I'm saying is that basically, if you follow this man's advice and don't pay for a woman on a date when you invited, you will lose your chance with her. Nobody expects you to spend a week's wages on a fancy meal. But if you invite, you should pay. Same as when I invite (and I do, and so do many women), I pay. Lisa Anyone who knows me in real life knows I think women kick ass. All my current and former lovers count me as one of their best friends, if not their very best friend, and I frequently discuss a lot of deep relationship and social dynamic stuff with women. I find that the average woman has a much firmer intuitive grasp of the way people are and the way people work than the average man does, and when you explain advanced social concepts, women are often quicker to parse them, pick them up, and arrive at intuitive mental corollaries than men are. That said, and I hope no one takes it personal, but... women are the WORST on the planet at giving out dating advice for men. That's not an attack on women. They mean very well. And they have a strong understanding of social dynamics. But when it comes to helping men achieve their objectives with women, women themselves tend to give some rather boneheaded advice that's better tailored to artificial social expectations of men, women, and dating than what actually works right now in the real world. It isn't women's fault their advice to men on dating often ends up making men worse at succeeding with the opposite sex for having it; they really are honestly trying to help the best way they can. But because of the nature of the differences between the sexes, there are some pretty big, pretty wide gulfs in understanding what either gender wants and needs to accomplish in order to win in the dating world, and because of this women often end up giving men destructive advice. CHOOSING YOUR ADVISORS CAREFULLY Some years ago, back when the real estate market in the United States was still a good one and I had a well-paying corporate job that left me flush with a lot of capital to invest in things, I took a weekend seminar in Washington, DC on investing in real estate and, in particular, in buying and flipping foreclosures. It was eye-opening and provided me a lot of great information on everything from finance to entrepreneurship to, of course, real estate, so although I never ended up entering into the foreclosure fray (at least, not yet), the information crash course I received was worth the price of admission. There were a number of insightful, informative speakers there, but one message in particular stood out to me. It went something like this: "When you want to go into real estate investing, most of the people in your life - friends, family, and a lot more - will tell you it won't work and you'll lose your money and you shouldn't do it. And you might be discouraged. So what I'd say to you is, before you listen to their advice, take a moment and ask yourself how well they're doing with their own real estate investments. Chances are, most of the people giving you this advice don't own their own homes. They're renting - paying other people's mortgages for them. And they're probably stuck in a 9-to-5, trading time for money. "Before you take advice on anything, always ask yourself if the person you're listening to is experienced and accomplished in that field, and if that person has results you'd like to have for yourself. If you want to be successful in real estate, you don't listen to someone who rents his or her apartment and doesn't own a piece of property. You listen to someone who's already successful in real estate." When I heard that, I thought it was such a significant, important piece of advice. I realized I'd been following it in most areas of my life - I wouldn't tell most people about my plans or endeavors, only discussing them with people who had already succeeded at what I wanted to do or were well on their ways - but I'd never consciously considered this before. If you want to succeed, you need to choose advisors who are already successful in the area you're seeking success in. A lot of people can give spectacular sounding advice. I could tell you that if you really want to make money, just go invest in this stock, this stock, and that stock and it's a sure thing; you'll double your investment by the end of the year. Just check out this data I have supporting it. These companies are the leaders in innovation in their markets, and their markets are poised for a jump forward. It's a can't-lose deal. Sounds pretty solid, right? But if I am not actually all that successful with my own stock purchases, well... maybe you shouldn't listen to me. Nevertheless, a lot of people do just that. Most of the guys on TV and the Internet pitching stock tips actually aren't all that successful at investing in stocks. Otherwise, they'd probably be chilling on an island in the South Pacific fanning themselves with hundred dollar bills instead of collecting paychecks by recording five half-hour shows a week telling you where to put your money. And it isn't just speculators. Everyone wants to offer his or her opinions, thoughts, and advice. But that doesn't mean you should take it. Look very carefully at the individual's actual results, and closely examine their logic. Does it stack up with stuff that you know personally works for sure? Are they testers - do they rigorously test out and apply in-field the things they're recommending that you do? Finding people that actually know what they're talking about on a particular subject isn't always an easy task, but it's one you should prioritize and invest a great deal of time into. If it takes you six months to find a proper advisor, you're going to learn a lot more to help you succeed in the following six months than will someone who spent a year listening to unskilled or speculation-prone advisors. WHY DATING ADVICE FOR MEN FROM WOMEN DOESN'T WORK Enter women and dating advice for men. Why don't women give good advice? Well, the first reason is what we just talked about: women are as inexperienced as it gets in picking up women as a man. Even the women who sleep with other women are having qualitatively different experiences than men do with women. Women who sleep with women can offer you some fascinating insights, but even they have a lot of advice that doesn't work so well when applied to men. For instance, an opener I've heard recommended by women who sleep with women is, "Oh my God, you're so beautiful!" While I'm all for using genuine interest, and I'm a firm believer that you can make any opener work, regardless how ridiculous the words, with the perfect execution and delivery, this is not an opener I'd recommend for beginners... not even for intermediate guys, actually. You'd better seem supremely confident and high value to pull this one off. Fact is though, most of the women you'll hear giving you advice on succeeding with women don't have much experience succeeding with women themselves. In fact, often they don't have any. It's kind of like taking dating advice from your priest. Or computer advice from your granddad who's never touched one of those whatzits before but he's seen them on TV. Or foreclosure investing advice from a lifelong renter. So when a woman says, "Just be yourself!" she isn't saying that because she's been on a hundred dates with women and she's found that being herself achieved the greatest degree of success for her. She's saying that because she thinks it ought to work. And that's one of the most dangerous kinds of advice you need to be aware exists: advice that people think ought to work. "Will that work? Of course it'll work! I think! I mean, it should! Right?" *shiver* Everything you read on this blog - every single piece of information or advice - is stuff I've personally tested again and again, and quite often other men I know have too. If I tell you it works it's because I've seen it work and it works for me and it works for the guys I recommend it to. Every now and then I find stuff that works for other guys but doesn't work for me, or stuff that works for me but doesn't work for other guys. I refrain from recommending those things. And I never, ever advise anyone to do things I haven't tested and haven't seen other guys test. I just don't do it. I don't want to be known for giving out flimsy advice that doesn't hold up in the real world. Most people don't hold themselves to a rigorous standard of testing though, because their reputations don't rest on it. If Elizabeth tells you it's okay to cry in front of a girl you like, you're not going to ruin her professional or personal reputation if you report back that you cried in front of a girl and then that girl got disgusted and left. It doesn't affect Elizabeth one bit; she just shrugs and says, "Well, sooner or later, you'll meet The One." She faces no consequences, and often isn't even going to end up getting told when her advice falls flat, so she never stops to check if what she's saying actually works. Does it actually produce results? There's one more reason why women's dating advice for men doesn't work, though, too: women advise men with a different objective in mind for the man than the man has. Ask a woman what she thinks a man's objective is when he goes on a date with a woman. And have her be 100% honest. Then ask a man what his objective is when he goes on a date with a woman. And have him be 100% honest. If you ask a guy in public, of course, he's going to say, "Well, I just want to get to know her and find out if we get along and find out if we're a good match." And women, hearing this from men again and again, take this at face value, and they assume that a man who's on a date with a woman just wants to get to know her and find out if they get along and find out if they're a good match. And that's it. Men don't say, "I'd like to take her home and sleep with her," because if they do, women raise their hackles and get upset and even some other men will call them horrible, terrible, no-good cads who entirely lack social grace and compunction. So, instead of saying, "I want to sleep with her," men say, "I just want to get to know her and find out if we get along and find out if we're a good match." And women believe that, and they tell men how they think they can best achieve that objective. Fact: the "vetting" process is actually a lot more important for women than it is for men. I've had a few guys tell me they were just dating around trying to find the right girl, but with most men, I find they know pretty darn quick if they're going to get along with a girl or not. For men, it's mostly about looks and personality, and you've got a read on both within a few minutes of meeting her, tops. The next step is just getting her to become your lover. Women aren't thinking this way in their advice to men, though. They're not thinking, "Hmm, how can I get him in bed with her as quickly as possible?" Instead, they're thinking, "Hmm, how can I make sure I give him advice that won't cause him to lose?" Because ultimately, women are emotional caretakers and protectors of calm and stability and the status quo. Women want to make sure everyone feels okay, and nobody rocks the boat. The girl giving you advice really doesn't want you to get hurt. She doesn't want you to face the pain of rejection. And because she doesn't want you to get hurt, and because she doesn't want you to have to face the pain of rejection, she'll give you advice that's going to maximize your chances of NOT losing. Not losing means you play nice. Not losing means you play safe. Not losing means you keep the kid gloves on, and skirt the friend zone and maybe even wade into it because you want to make sure you don't do anything too edgy that might lose you a girl... or cause her to become too attracted. But you don't want to play to not lose. You want play to win. Dating advice from women doesn't tell you how to win though; it tells you how not to lose. And that's a big problem for men listening to that advice who actually want to succeed with women. dating advice for men DISSECTING WOMEN'S ADVICE Lisa, if you're reading, I hope you don't feel like I'm picking on you, but your comment's a very good example of the kind of advice women typically have for men, and I want to show men where there are some destructive (for their cause - getting lovers and girlfriends) pieces of advice in there. So let's have a look at how women tend to approach advising men on dating: A woman's perspective: If you invite her, you pay. If the guy asked me, so he should pay. I really don't think this is unreasonable. Is this reasonable? In some ways, yes, I think it is. I think it's reasonable to have a standard that if someone invites you somewhere with them, that person pays. It's not a standard I have, nor is it one I'd participate in, but if someone wants to have it, I can see the rationale behind it, sure. On the other hand, I must ask... if your girlfriend asks you out to the movies, does she pick up the tickets and the popcorn? If you invite a guy pal to go shopping, do you spring for his new Gucci shoes and that Armani jacket he's been eyeing? Maybe, but probably not, right? That's because you're considering outings with friends separate from outings with men who are courting you. But I'm not advising men to court women here. I'm advising men to treat women as friends... that they take to bed. Not as their future betrothed, though things may turn into that someday, long into the future, if that's what they want. Should men pay for the company of women? I do believe some of them should. There truly are a number of men who've spent so little time developing themselves as attractive mates that the only reasonable recourse they have for spending time with women is spending money on women. Is that what I teach men to do here? No, absolutely not. To the contrary, actually: I'm teaching men here how to make women want them without taking the traditional - and far less effective - approaches men take. I do, however, think that it is unreasonable to invite someone out and then expect them to pay for themself or for both of you- probably they would, out of politeness, but would be very angry about it and would never see you again. This is a piece of advice that comes from emotions, but isn't field-tested at all. I've been focused on improving my skills with women for the better part of a decade. And I've paid for lots of women; I've split the bill with lots of women; and I've had lots of women pay for me. The rough success rates I've personally seen have been: I pay for both of us: ~5% chance we become lovers We split the tab: ~35% chance we become lovers She pays: ~75% chance we become lovers Field tested. Rigorously. Religiously. I'm not a big date fan, but I've been on somewhere around eighty dates over the past four or five years. These numbers are pretty solidly established. Men get together most often with women who pay. Second most often are women who split the bill. And I'm sure there are some men out there with better numbers than my own (Brent, a commentator on the "Should You Pay for a Date?" post, seems to do better with it), but for me at least, paying for dates pretty much never ends up with the girl and I being together. It's a sunk cost; money thrown away on something that never materializes. I've known a few guys who always paid and had pretty good date success rates, but those guys were incredibly charming, seductive men who I'm confident could've done even better had they taken the time to revamp their tactics. So yeah, it doesn't work when you pay. And, despite this one anecdote by Lisa here, overall you actually get girls in bed a LOT more reliably when they pay. Like, it's no comparison at all, really. Don't believe it? Take it for a test drive. I'm not here to force anyone to believe anything they don't want to believe; I don't get points for changing minds. But before you get upset and start telling me it isn't right and that isn't the way it's supposed to be and such things would never work... try each one out ten or fifteen or twenty times and see what kinds of results you get. You'll come out of it seeing the world, men, women, dating, and social dynamics in a very different light, I guarantee. Back to our advice dissection: I once met a great guy who basically made me pay for the dinner he invited me to. I wrote him off and never saw him again. What a cheapskate!! Hard to know the whole story here without a lot more details, but I'm betting there's a lot more to it than him simply not paying for your food. If he actually did a good job during this dinner - if you were feeling incredibly connected to him, and couldn't stop thinking about how much you wanted to go back to his apartment and tear his clothes off - I'd be incredibly surprised if him not picking up your tab caused that to all suddenly evaporate. On top of that, another question springs to mind: have you ever had a man buy you dinner but then, despite him not being a cheapskate, you nevertheless never saw him again either after that? I'm betting there are a lot more guys who paid for you and you never saw again. All I'm saying is that basically, if you follow this man's advice and don't pay for a woman on a date when you invited, you will lose your chance with her. Again, this drips with lack of field testing. Unless you, Lisa, have taken a number of women on dates and have measured your success rate at taking them as lovers later that night, I'm guessing this is coming from a knee-jerk emotional reaction and not from rigorous testing and hard numbers. Refer to my rough percentages above for an idea about what kind of results I've had with different approaches to who should pay on a date. I'll also note that I've heard a LOT of contradictory opinions and advice from women. An ex-girlfriend of mine, whom I'd told from the start I was not exclusive with, would frequently espouse to her friends how they should NEVER date a man who was not 100% exclusive to them, and that she herself would never do it. Even as she was doing it. I've heard women talk about how they would NEVER see a man a second time who didn't pay for them before, too. Some of these women told me this on "dates" we were on, that they supposedly did not consider "dates," and we went to bed after the "date," after the girl paid for both of us. I "didn't count" though, I guess, for one reason or another. Actually, my current girlfriend told me recently about a few men she went on dates with. When I asked her if they paid, her reply was, "Of course!" These men she didn't sleep with. She hadn't been with a man in two years when I met her, and lots of men had been taking her to nice dinners and fun dates in the meantime and paying for her. She tells me men always pay for her. On our first date, she paid for me. We slept together a half hour after that. Personally, I put little faith in people espousing absolutes. There may very well be someone out there who never does something she says she'll never do, and always does something she says she'll always do, over the course of her entire lifetime, but I haven't met her yet. Nobody expects you to spend a week's wages on a fancy meal. But if you invite, you should pay. Same as when I invite (and I do, and so do many women), I pay. Lisa In an ideal world, it'd be fantastic if things really worked out like the mainstream says they should. It'd be wonderful if you could take a woman out to a nice, romantic dinner, pick up the tab, and then sweep her off her feet and back into the bedroom for a night of passion and bliss, consistently, reliably, every time. But this ain't Disneyland, and life ain't a fairytale. Women end up in your bed a lot more reliably when they pay or you split the bill than when you pay, and that's the real world. Rose-colored glasses off, kid gloves put away - that's real. And that's the final reason why not to get dating advice for men from women: women want to live in a fairytale, and they'll give you advice that fits with that fairytale. As a man living in the real world, in pursuit of real results, however, you can't listen to fairytale advice. You've got to keep it real. So, thank the women who give you advice for caring - because they really, honestly do. And then, go get your advice from someone who's actually out there doing it.

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##Dating on Your Terms Ever meet a girl, and get her contact information, and then start chatting with her via phone or text message, and then go to set up a date with her - maybe to get some food, maybe a drink, maybe to just chill and hang out and watch a movie at your place - only to have her offer a counterproposal that suited you far less? Perhaps she suggested going shopping, or that you join her out with a group of her friends, or come to some party she was attending. Ever accept one of those counteroffers? If you did, you may very well have kicked yourself for going later, when you ended up getting slotted into the friend zone and never got together with the girl. Maybe, just maybe, a guy tooth-and-claws it, and fights off her other suitors, and eventually on Date #6 he gets her in the sack, but of course by that point she has him firmly pinned down into boyfriend territory. And maybe she even does end up becoming his girlfriend because by that point he's invested so much in her that he thinks she's better than the other women he has available. This is what happens when you don't date on your terms. You don't get the girl most of the time. Actually, most of the time, you waste your time, and get slotted into the friend zone, or become a potential boyfriend at best. Solution? Stop dating women on their terms, and start dating them on yours. WHY WOMEN WANT TO DATE YOU ON THEIR TERMS It doesn't happen to me as much, but it still does happen to me. I'll text a girl to meet up, and she'll counteroffer that we do something that she wants to do or that's convenient for her. Usually these days this is with girls I've already dropped the ball with by not sleeping with them quickly enough. For instance, two girls I messaged to meet me when I got back to town I'd had dates with earlier this year, but I hadn't slept with them on those first dates. I should have - one I moved too slowly with on the date and showed too much value with, and by the time I took her home she was very nervous and afraid that something would happen and she'd lose me as a future boyfriend, so we didn't get together. The other threw me off at the beginning of the date by acting incredibly socially high valued - something I can handle, but was unprepared for because I didn't realize this girl would be that way. I turned it around by the end of the date, but was still off balance and didn't take her home. One of them I saw at a social event before leaving, and she insisted repeatedly that we hang out again soon and was visibly very nervous. That told me she wanted me as a boyfriend though, so I figured I'd have trouble. When I got back to town, I texted both of these girls (and others) to meet up. Their replies: Girl #1: hey chase! Welcome back! am traveling will be back Thursday. Lets get together over the weekend! how long you in town for this time Girl #2: Sure, tnite i will be around slt, nali area, there is an jewelry opening thing, will send u email now Those were both responses to offers of mine to meet up soon - possibly that night. Obviously, these replies didn't give me quite the response I was looking for. These examples each showcase one of the two chief rationales women have for not wanting to meet you on your terms and instead wanting to meet you on their terms: They're really honestly busy and just don't have a lot of time, or They've lost hope that you can be whatever they wanted you to be (lover, boyfriend, husband) and want you to do all the work if there's going to be any kind of continuing relationship (friendship). RESPONDING TO UNCOOPERATIVE WOMEN So how do you reply when a gal doesn't want to meet you on your terms? The first girl I didn't reply to at all (she took all day to reply to me, so I wasn't going to reply that night, and the next day it didn't feel worth my time to respond), and the second girl I shot a text to saying, "Cool, I'll check the email out," and haven't contacted since. The first girl really didn't do anything that's her fault. She wasn't around, and she wanted to meet up on the weekend. But my weekends are booked these days, and this girl only ever wants to meet up on the weekend. I'm not going to stop and rearrange my schedule for a girl who's anything short of breathtakingly gorgeous and outstanding in personality. On top of that, this girl frequently CCs me on mass "let's get together" emails to friends, so, "Let's get together over the weekend!" may very well just mean, "Let's do some group activity with friends!" which has approximately zero appeal to me; I don't do party dates. The second girl... meh. That message tells me she isn't interested anymore, probably from auto-rejection - she was a few years older than me and made a big deal about it, and kept asking me about me sleeping with a bunch of local girls - which I'm not going to deny - and that seemed to really dampen her spirits; one of the problems with dating in China is the expatriate girls who are all desperately seeking boyfriends, and automatically slot just about any man who will talk to them into that category. Once I was out of the running as a boyfriend, she got sad and disappointed and didn't want to bother with me anymore, so invited me along on the jewelry opening thing she was going to. No thanks. I've been using this kind of response more and more: when a girl tries to squeeze me into her schedule, I fall off the map for her for a while. And it works wonders like little else. When I reconnect with these girls later on, they're typically chasing after me, asking me why we haven't hung out in forever, what I'm up to, when we're going to spend time together. It's kinda funny - before this happens, when you use this technique, they try to push you into the little box of "convenience" they try to shoehorn most men into. But later, much of the time - wow, they're going all out trying to find a way to see you. What happened? There seems to be this little switch that flips in a woman's mind when she tries to have you see her on her terms and instead you just disappear, and it's very specific to this scenario. When you try this with women who were trying to date you on your terms, or at least meet you halfway, it usually backfires. That's because a girl who's bending to your schedule and demands, or trying to meet you halfway at least, is going to feel pushed away and marginalized if you fall off the Earth despite her efforts. A girl who's trying to pigeonhole you, though, will take notice: you don't play by her rules. You aren't one of those guys who's so desperate to meet her you'll meet her under any circumstances she deems fit, no matter how unfavorable to seduction. Instead, you wrote her offer off as an inefficient use of your time and moved on to other options. Do keep in mind that you want to stay warm and cordial throughout, and when you reconnect with her later, you want to act as if nothing had happened, and remain just as warm and cordial. You want her to feel like you didn't even notice that the two of you never got together. What she wanted to do didn't fit into your schedule, so it just didn't happen; no big deal to you. This does precisely two things for you in this circumstance: It lowers your value as a friend or boyfriend, because the best friends and boyfriends are available whenever she wants them available, and It raises your value as a lover, because lovers have options and don't squander their time going on group friends outings or joining women for jewelry store openings. Now, do be aware that this is more a salve than a cure-all; if you showed no lover value before at all and primarily just friend value and boyfriend value, a maneuver like this may still not be enough to turn things around and re-interest her. But if she was on the fence about you, this can very well be all she needs to start chasing after you and meeting you on your terms instead of trying to get you to meet her on hers. RECONNECTING WITH A GIRL YOU'VE DISAPPEARED ON Your results may vary based on how much of a lover you present yourself as with women, but for me, generally about 50% of the time I'll have women I've dropped off with reinitiate with me first. They'll send me a mass text inviting me to some event, or they'll contact me asking where I've been and perhaps even asking me out. When you get these mass invites, the way to respond is by communicating that 1) you can't make it, but 2) you'd like to grab a bite with her sometime soon. Then, no matter her response, unless it's a complete "no," set to work a few days later scheduling your next date - something that's convenient to her, but again, is on your terms. For refreshers on what your terms ought to be like for dating, check out "Date Templates" and "Simplify Your Dates." Those two posts will give you a very solid foundation to structure your dates on. If you don't hear back from a girl reinitiating with you on her own, you can use the standard reconnect text after a few weeks or a month have passed: "Hey [name], sorry I've been out of touch lately, just got swamped with things. How have you been? Let's grab a bite sometime soon and catch up. What's your schedule looking like this week?" Then proceed to pick a date and time she gives you and set up a date that's convenient to you and on your terms. Chances are, you'll find most girls far more amenable to dating on your terms once you've disappeared once and resurfaced than they were the first time around. REMEMBER NOT TO USE IN OTHER SITUATIONS! Again, can't stress this enough: don't use this with girls who've simply flaked or are busy but not trying to squeeze you dismissively into their terms for dating. See the post on what to do when girls flake for strategies on handling that scenario. All said, if you're careful about this one and save it for the girls working to shoehorn you into the friend or boyfriend roles, you can bust those efforts a lot of times and turn things around to get girls chasing. It's a bit of a percentage game - it doesn't work on every girl - but the percentages are far more in your favor than anything else I've seen for dealing with this particular scenario - certainly more in your favor than going along with whatever she wants (rates of successfully bedding a girl by dating her on her terms aren't pretty). Basically, if you don't have a good feeling about joining a girl out on a certain date she's proposed, don't go. You stand a better chance of getting a real, solid date with her later on where the two of you can really get to know each other and move toward intimacy if you are adamant about dating women only on terms that work for you.

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##Day Pick Up: Take Girls from Street to Bed in a Snap …and when I say "street-to-bed" in a day pick up, I'm not talking about the red light district either! When I first started approaching women, that was THE big motivator for me - okay, at the time it wasn't even about taking them straight back to my bedroom just yet; in fact, if we'd have sex on the third date that would have been fine for me back then. But, all the beautiful girls I'd see downtown every day had me *wishing* I knew what to say and do to meet them, and to start some form of relationship with them. Today, first sex on the third date has become a very rare occurrence, and I've since learned that given the right circumstances and the right guy, almost all women will have sex on the first date, no problem… so all you need to do is CREATE the right circumstances, and BECOME the right guy. We've talked about this topic on the blog before, and about what it takes to be that sexy man that women want and to create these circumstances to pick up a girl fast - feel free to review these two articles real quick and then come back here. Back with me? Great… then let's talk about how to make that happen RIGHT after you approach a girl in the street during day pick up. DAY PICK UP: THE GUERILLA APPROACH The header on this one sounds a lot uglier than the actual technique behind it. The basic idea is really simple. If you can get a girl to sleep with you on the first date, as discussed in the two articles I've linked to above, then all you need to do is to take her on the first date right after you pick her up. And if you get a very flirtatious vibe from her, feel free to sexualize the interaction a bit with chase framing or even a California Pimp approach. If she gets engaged as you do this, you can bounce her straight home immediately… that's the stuff 15 minute lays are made of. Of course this will in part depend on HER situation - how much time she has, and where else she has to go that night. But if you keep talking to a couple of girls, and you do it in the right place and at the right time, chances are one of them will be free right now. Here are a couple of day pick up situations in which you are likely to find a girl that has time to go on a date RIGHT there and then: It's the plain afternoon and she's strolling around in a slow pace and clearly not in any hurry to get anywhere If you live near the beach - it's a pretty safe bet that a girl who's hanging out there on her own has brought some time with her It's six PM, just after office hours, and she has the rest of the evening off. I want to touch on that last one in some more detail, and this works especially well if you live in a great city. One thing you can do is to just hang out near a busy subway station down town or in the business district, and all the girls who are leaving the office will walk past you. Now all you need to do is stop them, chat for a bit and find out what else they have going on later on… if she's free, BINGO - you're on a date. And, as we discussed above, it's not too hard to sleep with a girl on the first date once you have the process down. And when it comes to the process, picking up girls is a bit like sales - if you don't have a process for selling, you are at the mercy of your customer's process for buying. Or, in dating terms: if you don't have an outcome that you're steering the date towards, the outcome will either be random, or completely on her terms. (Dating on her terms usually means her getting wined and dined, and then rewarding you for such generous behavior with some affection on the third date, or after three weeks, or after three months… good doggy. Careful though - you might also get rewarded with being just friends). On the other hand, if you present yourself in the right light and create the right circumstances, she would be extremely annoyed if you didn't sleep with her on the first date (see: auto-rejection) - whether or not she wants that to happen depends on a lot of factors, but once you're able to fabricate the kind of situation in which a girl wants to have sex TONIGHT, you had better act on it or she will leave sexually frustrated (and hating your guts). And yeah, it's quite funny to sexually frustrate a woman (if you have never done it, do it once… just for the experience of turning the tables for a change), this can also undo a lot of the work you've done earlier in presenting yourself as a sexual man. PREPARATION FOR PROPER DAY PICK UP day pick upMaybe the idea of pulling this stunt right now and unprepared seems a bit daunting… approaching the most beautiful girls you can find in broad daylight, and then convincing them to go to bed with you immediately - certainly not something a lot of guys can do. And I can certainly relate to that. The first time I walked around a city all day with the intention of doing this, I stressed myself out so much about it that I ended up being unable to even ask a girl what time it was. You definitely want to be in the right head space and just in general, have as much going for you in this situation as possible… so here are some tips. If possible, go with a friend. I don't recommend you approach girls together during the day, I really think it's best to talk to girls that are alone and to do it while you are alone as well… the reason being that the social pressure on her will be significantly lower, and so she will be able to respond positively to your advances without having to worry about being judged for it. That said, hanging out with a friend all day and just occasionally splitting to chat up the beautiful girls you happen to come across is a LOT more fun than stalking the city on your own all day - it keeps you chatty, extroverted and in a good mood. If you can't bring a friend, take an MP3 player along with you. Some upbeat music will keep you in the mood to pick up girls, and you can even use it to record the interactions you have. The first time you record yourself on a day pick up, you might be shocked… we often think we come across one way, but when we see ourselves on video or hear a recording of our voice, we find out that the impression we make is entirely different from the one we had intended. We often have no idea what's going on with our nonverbal communication until we see and hear them from the outside. If you are looking for a small, convenient MP3 player that makes excellent recordings without an external microphone, I highly recommend the Sansa SanDisk Clip - it's the one most professional seducers I know use to break down their own interactions and tweak their delivery and the way they come across on the approach. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals - check your voice before you go out. I know for me, girls tell me my voice sounds almost Berry White sexy on some days, while on other days I cringe when I record myself. And all it takes to fix that and get a sexy voice going is some awareness. Project your voice from your diaphragm (or from your hara, if you're into such things), breathe deeply, and speak slowly. Check your voice before you go out, with a microphone if you must. Cologne - this isn't a huge factor, and it certainly isn't part of the 20% that account for 80% of your results… but it can definitely help. Women's sense of smell is 8 times more refined than men's, so it's worth taking the time to make sure you smell really nice. Don't overdo it though - a spritz or two is plenty. As for artificial "pheromones"… there doesn't seem to be conclusive scientific evidence on this one, but if you're willing to experiment, give it a shot. I played around with it a little bit a few years back, as I'd hang out with a couple of girls I had already slept with previously. I'd go to the bathroom in the middle of our date and apply some pheromones and in all cases, they immediately started to try and seduce me when I came back… one even sat on my lap and put her hands down my pants. So - feel free to see how this works for you. The idea is simple - we find people attractive who are healthy, and the right pheromones signal health as much as good genes and facial symmetry do. Make sure you have impeccable breath. I don't recommend mouth wash, as it's one of those quick fix solutions that aggravate the problem more in the long run. As so often, the basics are where it's at - eat healthy food, brush after every meal and floss daily. You might also want to take some mints along, in case you want to grab something to eat while you're out. There are two chemical substances that can enhance your performance as you meet women (actually, there are a lot more, but most of the other ones aren't legal and I certainly don't recommend them). One is alcohol - not something I would do during the day, but a drink or two can make you (and her!) more chatty so once you have her on a date, feel free to order a cocktail or a beer. Speaking of beer - okcupid.com does regular surveys and has found that the one question that most correlates with the willingness to have sex on the first date is: "Do you like the taste of beer"… this doesn't apply much to day pick up, but something to keep in mind. Hmm, where could you find girls who like the taste of beer? I wonder now! The other substance is caffeine. If you feel a little bogged down or low on energy, the first thing you want to do is, again, check your fundamentals. Get plenty of vegetables, proteins and whole foods and drink a lot of water. Get enough sleep every night and try to work out every day. That said, if you do feel somewhat tired for whatever reason and you want to take advantage of the day to meet women anyway, feel free to spike your state a bit with coffee or, also very good for this purpose, Guaraná pills. Just don't overdo this, remember - the most attractive vibe to straight feminine women is a good first impression with a masculine vibe - calm and powerful, not hyper. Girls might ask you what you're doing out approaching girls, or even just what you're up to today. Have an answer ready - ideally, you want to be in a place where you never have to go out specifically to meet women because you're doing so many cool things with your life every day that you come across a lot of hot girls anyway and you just chat them up where and when you see them. While you're still practicing this skill set, however, it makes sense to sometimes take an entire afternoon to do nothing but talk to girls. And if you want to get good at guerilla day pickup FAST, you might even want to do that three or four times a week at first. Consider combining this exercise with an actual purpose such as doing some errands - the shopping bag in your hands will also make you look like you're actually out for a reason other than chatting up chicks! All top athletes use visual rehearsal to increase their performance. Olympic ski jumpers close their eyes for a few seconds before they dash down the slope and visualize the perfect jump. This is not redundant… spend a few minutes doing this before you leave the house. You might also want to go over your process for day game before you go out and read the plan on exactly how this day is going to go down. Once you're done, however, put the paper away, forget all about it and let your subconscious mind do the heavy lifting - it has been well prepared by this blog and Chase's programs and DVDs. At most, keep 2 or 3 things in mind you want to focus on and practice today - you won't be able to hold more than that in the forefront of your mind anyway, so if there are more than three things you want to practice, pick three for today and leave the rest for another time. Finally, pick the right venue. I recommend you brainstorm a list of places to meet girls in and near your city where you could meet new women. Are there any central squares, shopping streets, train stations, malls, large book stores, beaches, etc.? Try one or two of these venues today, and then move on to another place next time you go out. You don't want to hit the same location every time… in fact, you might even make a list of all the places that are ideal for meeting women and then rotate through the list. day pick upFinally, if you really want to get serious about this "pick up game", go to the same venues on different days of the week and at different times of the day. You'll likely find out that a certain subway stop has a TON of beautiful women passing through it at 5pm on weekdays, but is completely dead on the weekend… or the other way round. That wraps it up for today - and while "guerilla pickup" is a somewhat advanced strategy, it is really quite simple once you are able to get girls to sleep with you on the first date consistently - simply find a time and a place where girls hang out when they're free for the rest of the day, chat them up and take them on a date right there and then. Not what many people call an "instant date", which often implies that you have coffee with her for 30 minutes. Instead, chat her up and immediately start doing all the things you would do on a regular date with her… and chances are, two to three hours later you'll be sleeping together (or, in some cases, 15 to 30 minutes later). Now go get ‘em!

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##Dealing with Disruptive Men You've just met a girl, and you like her, and you're getting to know her, and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a man you've never met before in your life steps up to you and starts talking to you. "Hey, how do you guys know each other?" he asks. Or, "Dude, where'd you get that shirt - it looks like something I saw at a yard sale last weekend," he remarks. Or, "Hey, buddy - that's my friend. She doesn't want to talk to you." Disrupting, interrupting, tooling, AMOG tactics, whatever you want to call it, this can be a real thorn in your side until you figure it out. It's quite annoying and can be out-and-out frustrating when you lose a girl because some oaf lacking in social finesse decides to offer his opinion on your conversation and manages to throw you off balance, or he distracts you from the girl long enough that she starts feeling excluded and leaves, or gets dragged off by a friend keeping an eye on the interaction. disruptive men We talk about responding to interruptions on this blog as well, but disruptive men are a bit of a different animal. People interrupting you are often trying to build a connection. Men disrupting your interactions, though, are only typically trying to mess you up. You could spend a long time pulling your hair out trying to figure out the right way to deal with this. It's one of those things that seems like there's no right answer. In the world of seduction, for a long time, the standard fare was to either tool a man who interrupts your interaction back, or else to befriend him in the interest of disarming him as a threat. But neither of these approaches serve you all that well, and each has some rather glaring problems. Let's have a look. THE PROBLEM WITH TOOLING GUYS Seems like an easy way to disarm another man - just tool him in front of your girl, and he instantly becomes irrelevant. In theory, it's great. In practice, it's not so ideal. First, you run the risk of the fact that by trying to tool a guy, you are in fact violating the Law of Least Effort and will, close to 100% of the time, always be defeated by a man who is socially savvy enough to know and follow that law. We'll discuss how you use exactly this fact to your advantage below, but for now, know that by trying to actively tool a guy, you open yourself up to being Least Effort erased. Second, there's always the risk that your wit may not be as sharp as his, your social grace not as finely tuned as his, your charm not quite as magnificent as his own. And when you try to tool a man who's talented enough to turn your efforts on their head, and he does as much, it's quite often the end of attraction with whatever girl you'd been speaking with. Finally, there's the classy girl effect. Women with genuine class are generally repulsed by men who tool others; it's a loud, clear sign that a man lacks ultimate social calibration and is busily trying to climb the social ladder. Women at the top aren't terribly interested in men who are climbing - women at the top aren't interested in men who are still trying to make it to the top. They want the men who've already made it. THE PROBLEM WITH BEFRIENDING GUYS Well, so tooling is out. How about we just make friends? I used to be big on befriending guys. When I first realized how powerful befriending guys was at cooling them off, I felt like I'd discovered some kind of secret knowledge that few people have access to. Because really, all you've got to do is talk to a man in a friendly, sociable way with a smile on your face and seem chill and non-confrontational, and 95% of men will warm up to you instantly. But once I started doing this, I noticed something else happening: I'd win over the guy, but the girl would lose interest and drift away. Even if she knew the guy and he was her good pal, I'd still lose her after befriending the guy. It was like me making friends with men was an attraction killer for the opposite sex. I wracked my brain for why this could be. There must be a reason! I figured. Then, slowly, it began to dawn on me. When you start spending a lot of time talking to people other than her, a woman assumes you were just being social with her, as you are with everyone else, and dials down her attraction to go look elsewhere. It's like she says, "Oh. Silly me, I thought he liked me. Now I see he's just here talking to people." Not only that though, it seems to squelch sexual intrigue. Is a man who splits off from an attractive woman to talk to a random guy acting with intent? No, he's subject to be pulled here and there by whoever engages him. He's not strong, not determined, not there for any concrete reason other than just to be willingly engaged by anyone. And he certainly isn't zeroed in on finding a woman to get intimate with - otherwise why is he ignoring a cute girl for a random guy? It's subtle, but this shows a kind of weakness (lack of ability to continue talking to the person you were talking to after being interrupted; lack of ability to stay on-course with a woman in spite of interruptions) that undermines attraction women have for you. THE RIGHT ANSWER Realizing this put me on the right path, however. Okay, so ignoring her to talk to a random guy seems pretty weak, and it's actually probably killing attraction, I thought. Then, suddenly, it hit me like a bolt of lightning: If you're in a conversation with a cute girl, and the two of you are talking, and some random man comes up and starts talking to you, why on Earth are you going to talk to him? Why are you going to choose him over a cute girl? If you're going out regularly, you've gotten cold shoulders from women here and there. It happens, and it happens most often when you stick your nose where it wasn't wanted (for whatever reason). No biggie, everybody gets them. What you ought to pay attention to, though, is how those cold shoulders are executed, and how you yourself respond. If you've gone out enough, and seen enough, you've eventually seen the polite cold shoulder; that's the one where the girl isn't rude, she isn't mean, she's just very neutral and quietly dismissive. Picture this: A man walks up to two girls talking, taps one of the girls on the shoulder, and launches off a lame opening line: "I really like your dress." The girl briefly glances over her shoulder at him, almost makes eye contact but doesn't go all the way, smiles politely (but not warmly or even sincerely), and says, "Thanks." She lets her head linger for a moment, then slowly turns it back and resumes her conversation. It was polite. The girl briefly acknowledge the comment, then returned to the conversation without giving the disruptive man anything else. That's key; she gave nothing back to him, aside from a cool "thanks." Lots of guys feel like they have to be nice and try to be social with a disruptive guy, because they have some kind of social sense of duty or feel like ignoring him isn't "nice" or is mean or something like that, or are afraid that ignoring him might make him angry and things will go south quickly. So, they engage him. And then they completely ignore the girl they were talking to! And they don't think that's wrong? It is. If you ignore a girl you like and are talking to to engage a disruptive man, that's wrong. You're not in the bar or the nightclub to meet guys like this. You're there to meet girls like the one he's trying to mess you up with. When you combine Law of Least Effort thinking with the idea that you want to focus on your girl and not this disruptor, things start getting clear, fast. She gets the priority on your time; he's just an interloper and gets nothing more than a polite acknowledgement, followed by you returning to your conversation with your girl of choice. Remember, because you are already in a conversation and he is interrupting, he does not deserve your attention. The woman you're currently speaking with does. It plays out like so: Girl: [to you] Which was when I… Interloper: [to you] Hey man, nice boots. You: [slowly turning to almost look at him, but not making eye contact] Thanks. [returning your gaze slowly back to your girl] Sorry. Girl: No problem. So that was when I… That's actually how I usually defuse these situations. Some of the crucial points to remember: Avoid eye contact. You never want him feeling like he's fully engaged you. He hasn't earned eye contact. Make your replies as brief as possible. Never ask him a question, introduce yourself first, or make any move to start a conversation with him. If you're not sure if he knows your girl, as her (not him): "Friend of yours?" The briefer (but still polite) you keep your replies, the better. Be polite and give a polite smile. The reason being polite is so important is there are a lot of desperate meathead guys out there who are looking for the slightest offense to jump into an altercation. By being polite, you disarm these kinds of guys, and prevent them from trying to start something with you (and sending your girl running the other way). Return to your conversation with all haste. Your attention should be on your woman, not on some stranger you don't know and stand nothing to gain by engaging. Get back to talking to your girl as quickly as you possibly can. Tell your girl "Sorry" as you reengage her. This does two things for you: one, it lets her know that you care about her feelings and didn't mean to ignore her or neglect her or be pulled away from her by someone else, and two, it communicates to the guy, who also hears it, that he is so socially awkward that someone else has to apologize to a woman for him. I don't always do this, but if I feel like a guy might need an extra nail or two in his coffin, "Sorry" is the nail I use. Use this stuff and you will very coolly, and very discretely, silence any man trying this kind of tomfoolery on you. By being the guy who offers a brief polite comment, then returns to his conversation without so much as making an effort to make eye contact with the newcomer, let alone engage him, you display to women that they are more important to you than some random guy. And you display to random guys that bugging you is a waste of their time and self-esteem. Score another one for the Law of Least Effort - and one less point for oafish interlopers.

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##4 Qualities Every "Devil May Care" Man Has In the article that poses (and answers) the question "how much do looks matter?," a commenter asked the following about having a devil may care attitude: "I don't know if you've heard the quote: "The attitude dictates that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin'. Now when you got that, then you have the attitude." But I'm aiming for a Devil May Care attitude. And I would appreciate some insight on your attitude as far as badboy/alpha/dominant.. Etc. Since mindset effects your outlook which effects your actions I think it's something to definitely touch on." I referred him first to the relevant articles on this site for adopting the actions and behavior patterns of the cool, indomitable outsider that women adore: Why Girls Like Bad Boys How to Be an Alpha Male -- Without Becoming a Stereotype How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn't Know About the 'Winner Effect' How to Be Vulnerable, Enchanting, and Alluring to Women How to Be Smooth with Women (and Take More Lovers) How to Be Edgy (and Turn Women On) ... but what his question really seemed to be about was not actions, but mindsets; what does it feel like to be that devil-may-care guy... how do you think about things when you are this way... and how do you get to be this way in the first place? This article's about that. It's about what it feels like to get an injection of attitude straight into the artery, and it's about how you go about getting that injection in the first place. devil may care What's the "right" attitude to have? That, of course, is an entirely subjective question, and one that's entirely relative to what it is you're trying to accomplish. Take the secret agent prototype: a suave, charming world traveler who kills bad guys, stops evil schemes, and seduces beautiful women by the bucketful. A great many (not all, mind you, but many) men look at a guy like that and say, "Wow, that guy's cool... I wish my life was like that!" But, in yesterday's carnival, I included a link from a female writer chiding emotionally unavailable men in relationships... that is to say, men who just aren't available for feeling deep emotions and falling crazy in love. To someone with her perspective, that secret agent archetype is most decidedly not cool - sure, he sweeps her off her feet and takes her to bed and makes her heart flutter... but then he breaks her heart, because he never feels for her what she felt for him, and eventually he leaves. For short-term seduction, then, you'd say an attitude like this is probably the "right" attitude, whereas for maintaining a happy long-term relationship, you'd say it probably isn't. Attitudes are more or less "correct," very much dependent on what it is you're trying to do with them. This article is geared at describing one type of attitude, that is good for some things, and bad for others. Before reading - or before tweaking yourself to be more like this - it's important that you first understand that. There are benefits and drawbacks to every potential attitude. WOMEN LOVE PRIDEFUL (AND SHAMEFUL) MEN From "Happy guys finish last: The impact of emotion expressions on sexual attraction," published in the journal Emotion in 2011: "This research examined the relative sexual attractiveness of individuals showing emotion expressions of happiness, pride, and shame compared with a neutral control. Across two studies using different images and samples ranging broadly in age (total N = 1041), a large gender difference emerged in the sexual attractiveness of happy displays: happiness was the most attractive female emotion expression, and one of the least attractive in males. In contrast, pride showed the reverse pattern; it was the most attractive male expression, and one of the least attractive in women. Shame displays were relatively attractive in both genders, and, among younger adult women viewers, male shame was more attractive than male happiness, and not substantially less than male pride. Effects were largely consistent with evolutionary and socio-cultural-norm accounts. Overall, this research provides the first evidence that distinct emotion expressions have divergent effects on sexual attractiveness, which vary by gender but largely hold across age." Why is pride so attractive? Because proud men are likely to be powerful men, and the most likely to be successful and to work to maintain their position. I'd guess that shame is attractive for a similar reason - being ashamed communicates displeasure at failure, and a desire to succeed (or, perhaps, an expectation of success and being used to succeeding). A guy who's happy no matter the outcome doesn't show a whole lot of potential for anything, other than being pleasant to be around. But pleasantness doesn't put food on your offspring's table. Pride is an important part of a devil may care attitude. A prideful man is accustomed to success, takes pleasure in his successes, and knuckles down and works harder after setbacks. You'll see him smiling knowingly when he's just pulled off a feat, or glaring around in frustration and determination after a failed attempt. This one's one that I think a lot of people miss about having the right attitude for getting girls; most guys seem to think "devil may care" means "I don't care," and try to take the tack that they don't care about anything. That's not what it means. People with a devil may care attitude do care... just not about the same things as everyone else. BIG PICTURE OR SMALL? devil may careMost people most places in the world are far more concerned with the small picture than they are the big one: "I must succeed this time!" "I have to win that prize!" "I've got to have this job!" "I must get that one specific girl!" And while there is a time and a place for specificity, placing all his bets on one shot might make for great do-or-die now-or-never moments in Hollywood, but it isn't such a fantastic way to run a man's life off the silver screen. Who would you suspect a company is going to fight to hire more - the guy who's hoping that they please oh please hire him, or the guy who comes in, interviews well, leaves calmly, and continues to be courted by other prospective companies while the first company decides whether it wants to pursue him? And which man would you suspect a woman finds more desirable - the man who supplicates and promises to do anything she asks, or the man who flirts in a calm and attractive way but doesn't seem to have too much need one way or another about how things work out? And who would you as a customer feel more inclined to make a purchase from - the man who asks you to please buy his product, it's really good, and he hasn't made a sale in ages, or the man who greets you warmly, gives you the information you're looking for on a product, let's you know how much it'd be, and offers to get you rung up and out the door - if you're satisfied this is the product you want? Of course it's the second guy in all three scenarios... but why? The first man, by communicating his need and his "must succeed in THIS INSTANCE!" mentality, also communicates his lack of options. He confesses through his body language and his demeanor that he is not living with an abundance mentality; he tells his prospects that he doesn't see much success, which functions as a sign of negative social proof and negative preselection. The very condition of being overly focused on one thing communicates a lack of options and, thus, a lack of desirability. If you're not having success, and you want to this badly, it must mean that everyone else has judged you not someone they want to do business with. That devil may care fellow, though... he's got a different approach. For him, success isn't about the individual. It's about the big picture. He knows he's attractive. He knows women want him. And he knows that if it doesn't work with this girl, that'd be sad... but at the same time, another one will be along in a moment with whom it just might work out instead. So he doesn't get too worked up over any one thing. Women really dig this attitude. NO BIG DEALS Have a look at this scene from Dr. No - the very first James Bond on-screen appearance in movie history: Of particular importance, note how Sean Connery (as James Bond) treats Eunice Gayson's character after he gets up from the poker table and she follows suit. There's no big production out of him - he isn't shaking her hand or excited to meet her or asking her a hundred questions or asking her if she wants to see a magic trick. Instead, he walks calmly and casually along, acting like as if they're already old friends - or, as if she's already his girlfriend or lover. This is the kind of "first meeting" you'll see the man with a devil may care attitude making with women. I can tell you from personal experience - friends tell me when they see me pick up a girl, it doesn't look like what they'd expect... instead, it just looks like two old friends meeting, having a good conversation together, and then leaving together. The function of this is that it removes the pressure off an interaction. It makes it not "high stakes." That way, it's just a calm, relaxed meeting between two people - with electric sexual undertones, of course. Everything with him is Law of Least Effort and sprezzatura. The feeling behind this is one of flirtation. When you're acting this way with a woman you've just met, what it feels like is like you are teasing and flirting with this new girl, and seeing if she'll play along. It's almost a form of role-play - you're acting as if the two of you are long-time acquaintances. It's a little fun, a little exciting, because you're fooling the outside world; to everyone around you, it appears the two of you go way back. But only you and her really know the truth. There are no big deals. NO TIME FOR WASTING TIME Men without that devil may care personality trait are liable to do a lot of things that end up wasting their time and giving them nothing in return. Things like: Beating around the bush: afraid to state their true intentions and doing everything they can to avoid being rejected by women, they take the "safe" path and do their best to act friendly, neutral, and platonic. Result? Most of the time, they end up plowing time into a woman who isn't interested in them - or who may have been interested in them at first, only to have attraction expire, dry up, and fade away. Agreeing to things against their terms: a man who's devil may care is always aware of when things are being done in his favor - and when they aren't. Dating on your terms is one of these things; for this man, if a girl's proposing or pushing for a date that doesn't work for him, he doesn't suck it up and go anyway - he counteroffers, or politely declines if she's being rigid. He knows that doing things on other people's terms usually leads to him not getting what he wants - so he focuses on always changing the terms to something favorable, or moving on to someone else more willing to be flexible. Moving too slowly: I know a few men whose seduction styles are to get women very aroused, to the point where those women are practically (or literally, sometimes) begging for intimacy, while these friends of mine continue to hold out and make the girls chase. That's not moving too slowly - that's moving at his pace, and a pace which the girl enjoys and responds to (or else she wouldn't want things to progress so bad). Moving too slowly is when the man doesn't act when he needs to act, when he misses escalation windows, and when he hesitates and hems and haws. A devil may care guy is practiced enough that he knows a window when he sees it - and he takes it when he does. There's one core unifying theme behind all of these, though: The devil may care guy only does things he enjoys and wants to do. He doesn't enjoy trying to hide the banana and conceal his intentions with women, so he doesn't do it. He doesn't enjoy doing things on other people's terms (and usually not ending up getting what he's after), thus he doesn't do it. He doesn't enjoy moving too slowly, leaving things on the table, and missing out on women he could've had had he taken a bit more risk and moved faster - hence, he doesn't do it. When you're new and you're just adopting this kind of a mentality, you're setting some hard limits for yourself here and having to force yourself not to beat around the bush, not to get sucked into doing things on other people's terms, and not to move too slowly. Once you're comfortable being straightforward, having things done on your terms, and moving quickly and expeditiously, you'll have little patience or time for doing things otherwise - and you'll have a genuinely devil may care attitude. The genuine attitude like this isn't about hard limits - it's about only really doing things you really want to do. devil may care That's all well and good, you may say, but what's actually going through your head? What's it like to be devil may care? The interest in understanding the thoughts and feelings of someone with an attitude like this are, I think, twofold: Identifying how close (or far) your own present thought processes and emotions are from this Deciding if you even want to think and feel like someone with a devil may care disposition ... because as noted before, this attitude is not for everyone, and it is not for everything. It's good for certain things - and not so good for others. Whether you want to think and feel devil may care must be a personal choice by you. DEVIL MAY CARE AS A THOUGHT PROCESS Most people have a very off-base idea about what someone devil may care thinks about the world and the things in it. They seem to think a man like this thinks: "I can do whatever I want, whenever I want!" or "I don't care about the world; it's opinions don't matter to me," or perhaps "Ha, look at all these fools, living their sad, ordinary lives." These are not how he sees the world. These are how a regular person - trapped in the social constraints and restrictions of a regular life in the regular world that trap most regular people - imagines he would think if he were to start acting and behaving like the devil may care guy. But these thoughts are the responses of a rebel, or someone trying to break free of his shackles. The man with a true devil may care attitude is not rebelling against anything, nor is he trying to break free. He's already the master of his life, and he's already free. And he's used to it. It's not a novelty to him anymore. Because of this, the actual thoughts rolling around in his head are thus: "Hmm, that girl's cute. I wonder if she'll find me exciting?" "These people seem cool. How long will it take me to be accepted as one of them?" "This seems like a good company. Let's see if they're looking for someone like me." You might define his thought process as one of playful curiosity. He isn't mad. He isn't angry. He isn't rebelling, or trying to prove something to himself, or anybody else. He's just playfully curious... "Hmm, I wonder." "Well, let's see!" "Time to find out." That's what he's thinking. He isn't rebelling... he's probing. Just like women probe when women test men. Same deal - playful curiosity. He's just curious, and just wants to know. THE EMOTIONS OF THIS ATTITUDE Several times on this site, I've mentioned the fact that emotions are strongest in situations where personal control is weakest. That is to say, the more out of control something is (or seems to be) for you, the more extreme your emotional swings will be. The more in control it is (or seems to be), the more placid will your emotions be. Some notes on feeling in control: The more experienced you are, the more in control you feel The bigger the picture you view things at, the more in control you feel The more past success you've known overall, the more in control you feel When you've become very familiar with something, you feel in control of it, and emotions go down. When you view things from very high up, you're able to see a broader, longer-term perspective of them, and feel more in control and fewer emotions (it's easier to achieve an outcome over the course of years than it is in hours or days). And when you've known more past success overall, you feel in control - for having learned the process that produces success across areas - and emotions, of course, go down. Well, the man with a devil may care attitude has all of these. It's very difficult to adopt a true devil may care mentality without a fair bit of experience, without a fair number of past successes, and without having learned to see the big picture rather than get trapped on the (often irrelevant) details. But once you have, you become devil may care emotionally by default. Suddenly, you are in control, and things are no big deal. That girl you were talking to suddenly goes cold or flips out or disappears? That was weird... but, girls do weird things. Spend a minute trying to figure out if you did anything wrong that you can correct - then go meet someone else. That company you were interviewing for that seemed so promising suddenly tells you it's pursuing more qualified candidates, but thanks for applying? Unexpected... see if you can pinpoint the cause, correct it next time, and (unless you see an opening to push a little harder on this one) get on with applying. That customer you were trying to sell who seemed like he was ready to buy suddenly changes his mind and decides he's not ready and leaves? People are crazy sometimes... spend a minute in reflection to see if you made a mistake somewhere along the line, and get back to selling. A man who's devil may care has embraced uncertainty. He's embraced the fact that he cannot control every outcome at the micro level. However, he's also so good at persevering calmly and emotionlessly, and he's often so experienced and savvy, that he's still able to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat more often than not. The man with the devil may care attitude is Harry Houdini - calmly climbing out of his shackles submerged in a tank of water, because he's already done it a thousand times and he's confident he can do it again. HOW PEOPLE RESPOND TO HIM devil may careResponses to the man who is devil may care are fascinating, but predictable. Women are enamored with him, intrigued by him, and incredibly frustrated with him. If you've ever heard a woman complaining that her boyfriend drives her crazy, chances are it's because she can't get to him. Human beings, as a natural response to an uncertain world, typically try to control their surroundings to increase certainty. It's a survival mechanism - the more certain you can be of your control over the things around you, the more you can allow yourself to relax and quit having to be so vigilant about checking up to make sure the things you want to be there are still there. When a woman dates a nice guy, for instance, the nice guy - great guy that he is - does everything in his power to help her remove this uncertainty. He wants her to be able to completely relax around him, and just trust him 100%. As a result, she ends up not having to spend much time worrying about him... and then she gets bored with him. The devil may care guy, though... he's another story. He won't give her the assurances she seeks. In fact, he toys with her - he makes her more uncertain! He takes her right up to the point of auto-rejection - and then brings her back. He drives her crazy. And her emotions for him grow and grow. As much as people want to control the things around them, they are also, somewhat paradoxically but completely understandably, most attracted to those things they cannot control. The unbroken, untamed stallion out galloping across the plains - he is the man who drives her mad, and the man who makes her fall in love. Why can't he just SUBMIT himself to me?! she wonders. Why can't he tell me he loves me back, be soft, and let me know he'll never leave? WHY CAN'T HE DO WHAT ALL THE OTHER GUYS DO?? But of course, deep in her heart, she knows the answer: that he is not like the other guys... and that's why she's so wild about him in the first place. How men respond to a man with a devil may care attitude encompasses a range of emotion, with the most common ones being: Respect Awe Envy Judgment Dismissal Their responses mostly come down into two classes: "That guy is so cool." "That guy is nothing but a lonely playboy, hurting women and himself." The first is based on wanting or wishing to replicate his results. The second is based on wanting to write off his results as undesirable... so that the one doing the writing off need not think that he may not be living an optimal life himself. IS DEVIL MAY CARE FOR YOU? This one's an interesting question. On the one hand, you will sooner or later end up devil may care with enough success and experience under your belt (with women and various other things). When you reach the point where individual successes are things you try to get, but not things you get overly upset about not getting, you become this way by default. On the other hand, you can train up the external appearance of being devil may care to an extent before you actually arrive there mentally, by mimicking the actions and behavior of someone who's devil may care. And this taking on of these characteristics will aid you in getting there sooner mentally, as well. But there is a sacrifice made - the sacrifice of emotion for control. Instead of being the one who is never in control, and always riding the waves of emotion up and down, you become the one who is in control, but no longer feels those highs and lows. This is one of the things that many people fear about adopting an attitude like this - the loss of feeling. Truth be told, loss of emotions and growth of feelings of control happen naturally with age anyway - just ask any 50 year old to watch a teenage romance, bursting with proclamations of undying love and everlasting affection, and ask for his or her reaction (it will either be, "Ah... young love! To be young and feel so powerfully again," or it'll be, "All right, can we change the channel now?"). You will see emotions recede naturally - this is a part of maturity, a part of aging, and a part of experience. Emotions are there to drive you when you are not in control and don't know what you're doing. The more experienced you get, the more in control you become, and the more you do know what you're doing, the less you will feel. However, so long as you aren't caught up in the (relatively recent) fad in the West of thinking that emotions = life, you'll be okay. Emotions are a tool designed to help guide you toward greater success and, ultimately, greater control over your life. You might even say that the goal of emotions is to help you get to the point where you don't need to feel emotions all that much anymore. A devil may care mindset is more something you must arrive at than something you can out-and-out adopt - however, once you have it, you will be unfailingly more attractive to women than you would be without it, and that, I think it's safe to say, is a good thing.

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##Dialing Down the Value Volume Here's a surprisingly common problem that men run into with women: showing TOO much value. Wait, how can that be a bad thing? The more value you have, the more attractive you are -- right? Well, yes, to an extent that's true. However, the art of communicating value has a deeper, more subtle level that most men (even the majority of men who spend years learning how best to navigate the social arena) never reach. That level is the level of leading women into discovering your value, a little at a time, rather than hitting them in the face with it. Before we go into WHY it's bad though, let's throw a few examples out there of what exactly we mean by a guy hitting a girl in the face with value... and they aren't as obvious as you might think. Here are a few a man might do: Raise a new value-displaying topic unrelated to previous conversation: "I just got a new car and I am SO happy with it. The ride is lightyears smoother than my old one." Return to an old topic that was unfinished or interrupted: "Well anyway, as I was saying earlier about my travels abroad..." Hijack or steer a conversation into something to communicate value: "Oh, you surf? I'm actually a surfing instructor." Think about those for a moment in a conversation. They're very real, pretty natural things to say in a conversation, right? People say things like that all the time. Fact is though, someone who's highly tuned in socially will pick up feelings from statements like that, and the statement they pick up is this: the person saying these things is DELIBERATELY taking the conversation to topics that let him display value: his new car, his travels, his status as a surfing instructor. It's one of those things that flies under the radar, and its effects are subtle. Some women will gradually lose attraction for guys doing this, because they can sense that the guys are TRYING to win them over, and thus chasing (and in a position of weakness). Other women will take these value proclaimations at face value, and begin to feeling increasingly insecure themselves -- often to the point of feeling like they're unable to relate to this guy with this exciting life and buckets of value. Women like that will become cold and distant and rude because they feel now like this man is out of their league. It's an insidious issue. How many men catch themselves when they do this? Almost none. A more socially skilled man may feel like he's chasing, may feel like he's doing something wrong, but he probably won't know exactly what it is. This -- trying too hard to show value -- is very often what it is. The thing about this problem is, you don't see it. It's not something that's obvious, and it's not something that will jump out at you. The natural thing for most men is, if a woman doesn't seem to be all that interested, or she's beginning to pull away, they'll start trying to inflate their value. And then you run into the issue above. So, if those examples above are the wrong way to display value... what's the right way? The answer is, the right way couples communication of value with intrigue and humility / self-deprecation. Anyone can talk about awesome things in his life. But it takes a rare man to talk about awesome things in his life, yet put the other party at ease by reassuring her that in fact he's just a regular, ordinary man. And that's really what you want to be doing. You want to communicate value, and then -- instantly show that you're not really a big deal, that you don't take yourself too seriously and she doesn't have to worry about doing so either. The really neat thing is, once you're doing this consistently, you'll notice that women get relaxed around you very quickly, and open up to you very quickly, and are even more honest about their attraction for you -- and communicate it more quickly and earlier. The value you display allows them to feel attracted -- and your humility, that down-to-earth aspect your show them, allows them to feel free to let their guard down around you and just be themselves. If you're wondering how exactly all this is accomplished, I have a few examples for you below: When mentioning very something very high value about yourself, defuse it with a self-deprecating remark: "I've written a few articles for Playboy, believe it or not. But I don't think anyone ever reads them, there are far too many distractions in that magazine." "I've been working for [XYZ desirable job] for four years... it's not that amazing though, I think I'm still just a step above the kid who makes the coffee in the mornings." What this does is takes the edge off the high value trait and tells a woman this is just part of your life and you expect nothing like awe or reverence out of her -- just communication and that's it. When mentioning something high value not everyone can relate to, be sure to relate to THEM. A common one is travel: people who travel will vibe on traveling all day long, but people who've never been outside the country will usually be completely unable to relate. So if the conversation turns to your travels, and the girl you're talking to doesn't respond strongly or with tales of her own, get off the topic fast, and end with a statement like this: "It's so funny, you know, before I started traveling I never really wanted to. I always felt like, 'It's so far away, and I don't know anything about the country or the culture, and what if something happened and I got stranded there... [at this point, people who don't travel are usually nodding or smiling or verbally agreeing with you] but I went and it was incredible and I've just been going everywhere since then." Resist the need to jump in with every high value statement about yourself. For instance, you may be talking to a girl who mentions that she plays tennis, but it's just a brief mention in a bigger conversation. Rather than interrupt to force a connection ("Tennis? I'm a big fan too!"), let her talk and let the reference pass by. There will be plenty of time to come back to it later, and when you reveal the value later on, it will be far more potent. To use the tennis example, say the same girl later asks you if you play sports. NOW you say, "Yes, well, I remember you said you play tennis earlier, I've actually been playing for about four years and it's my favorite sport right now." She'll be really excited and wonder why you didn't mention it earlier -- and what else you might not have mentioned (hidden value -- you're a guy who doesn't hang all his value out in the open trying to impress). Ultimately, it's about not trying to force a connection, not trying to force value onto people. When you are a very high value person, you need to continually be considering how you're going to put others at ease around you -- how you can communicate value without blowing them out or making them feel like they're unable to relate. It takes a little while to get down -- it's more art than science -- but once you have it, you'll see marked changes in how comfortable women are around you, and even how quickly they warm up to you and how open they are about their interest in you. Keep an eye on how you're communicating value -- if you're pushing too hard to impress girls with value, reign it back in a bit and follow these suggestions. You'll be surprised at how much better women receive you when you dial down verbally communicating value and instead communicate through your behavior (not revealing too much too soon, and expressing that valuable stuff about you is no big deal and that you have no need to win anyone over).

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##Does Confidence = Success? Actually... No. The Daily Mail had a piece on U.S. college students' confidence levels shooting sky high while their actual competence and performance in the areas of their confidence dipped to new lows a few days back (the original article's here). confidence success The article mentioned research finding that that more and more young people were carrying bigger and bigger life goals, and more and more of them were falling short and slipping into depression and anxiety disorders. It quoted psychologist Jean Twenge as saying "You need to believe that you can go out and do something but that's not the same as thinking that you're great," and, "An intervention that encourages [students] to feel good about themselves, regardless of work, may remove the reason to work hard." I thought it was a fantastic article for one reason: the clear differentiation between confidence and success. I've always found the, "I just need to tell myself I can do it, and then I can do it!" approach to "achieving things" to be a little daft, and it's nice to see some research backing this up. I'd like to talk with you a little about this today, because, if this research is anything, there are fewer and fewer people out there like me who think that the secret to success is just going out there and busting your chops until you get there, and more and more who think you can just think your way to success. Well, I've got news for those people: nuh-uh. confidence success Before we go into confidence and success specifically, I want to discuss where all this "self-confidence!" mumbo jumbo came from in the first place. When the self help industry first emerged, it brought a lot of good things to the fore. There are people out there in self help who really have helped and inspired a lot of good in others; Steve Pavlina and Tony Robbins are a couple of examples right off the top of my head who've made some impact. I'm sure there are countless more. But there were also a lot of grifters and conmen who saw the self help scene as a quick way to get some cash by selling ineffective advice that made people feel good temporarily, or fooled them into thinking the life improvement they were searching for was just around the corner. Robert Kiyosaki's an example of this with his whole Rich Dad, Poor Dad empire - he was essentially a bankrupt, failed businessman who made it rich by writing a book about how to get rich, then selling it to a bunch of sales people in a multi-level marketing company and using his success there to get a book deal... his money came from selling books to clueless buyers about getting rich on real estate, something he had no experience with. Today much of his money comes from his "Rich Dad Seminars," which teach you about real estate for a few days while telling you to raise the limits on your credit cards as much as you can (so you can buy real estate), then on the third day pitching you "elite classes" that they negotiate with you over price (basically, whatever will fit on your newly raised credit card limit - hey, it's going to make you a MILLIONAIRE, so you should have NO problem spending every penny you've got on it, right?). However, one of the greatest travesties in the rise of self help has been the elevation of "confidence" over all else, in my opinion. Why's it so bad? Because now you've got tens of millions of people out there walking around trying to get better by making themselves more confident. I saw it in pickup when I first discovered the pickup community. There was this incredible focus on "inner game." Like, if you just focused on your internals enough, it'd make you magically irresistible to women. I thought it was bunk. But everybody else seemed to think it was magic. They were drinking the Kool-Aid. I chose to abstain. What's happened over time though, is that this, "Just believe in yourself!" mentality hasn't remained constrained to self help. Gradually, it's spread its tendrils out into everything: books, movies, TV shows. Your teacher, your boss, your Uncle Karl, sitting there in his recliner with a six pack of beer resting on his belly telling you you've just got to believe in yourself and be confident, and you'll be anything you want to be. WHAT'S SO WRONG WITH BEING CONFIDENT? Well, that all depends. Confidence as a product of already knowing how to achieve whatever you want to achieve is great. Then instead of wasting a lot of time and energy worrying about things, you can just go do them and be happy about it. But if you have no idea HOW TO DO something, and you're STILL confident, you just end up looking like an ass and stumbling your way to defeat. Just think of one of those over-confident characters in some comedy show or film. "Here, let me help you out with that," says one of the more experienced characters. "Oh no, it's okay; I got this," says the over-confident, under-skilled comedian. Hilarity ensues as he makes one ridiculous blunder after another. Or, imagine you're at the top of a dangerous ski slope - and it's your first time skiing before. "Hey, you know what, let's take you down to the bunny slopes and get you doing the basics first," says your instructor. "No, don't worry about me; I'll be fine!" you declare confidently, and then shove off down the mountain, plowing into a tree or a rock a minute later. Well, of course those guys are idiots! you say. That's not confidence - that's foolhardiness! Well, how about the guy who's just going to start a business without learning much about it first, or consulting any good mentors or teachers? How about the guy who's not going to bother studying women and dating, he's just going to assume if he's confident it doesn't matter what he says or does, and women are sure to love him? How come THESE guys get assured success by everyone? The reason, I've come to believe: because these are complicated arenas that most people don't actually understand how to succeed in. confidence success And when it's not actually clear to succeed, you're ripe for all kinds of influences to come in and tell you how to do things. Even if all they're telling you is, "Just be confident!" CONFIDENCE IS A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR SKILL The predominant school of thought in economics in the West today is a sort of economics called Keynesian economics. Keynesian economists believe that the pillar of an economy is demand: the more demand there is, the stronger the economy. So, if you just increase demand and keep demand levels high, supply will grow by default (the economy will necessarily adjust to meet the demand). Confident that they know what they're doing, government economists recommend complex monetary policies that ordinary people don't really understand, and even most government policymakers don't really understand. They take it on faith, implement these policies, and sometimes the economy grows, and sometimes the economy shrinks. Is any of that due to the policies of the Keynesian economists? Nobody really knows, because nobody seems to understand the system all that well. Being an economist is sort of like being a voodoo witchdoctor; you don't really know if what you're saying is right, but you've just got to act confident and hope everything turns out okay. Unfortunately, confidence is a poor substitute for skill. And confidence does not guarantee success by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask countless medieval European alchemists, confidently (and vainly) mixing concoctions together in search of the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life. Or ask countless ancient Chinese royal scientists, confidently crafting potions intended to let their kings live forever, but quite frequently bringing about those regents' untimely demises instead. Or ask an economist today. While confidence can at times be very convincing with other people, the limit of confidence's powers stop there. And even with people, most people have their bamboozle detectors at the ready to pick up on conmen and charlatans... there's only so far you can get on confidence alone. So, does that mean you should abandon confidence altogether? confidence success "Let's wait until we can be a little more confident of the right action." "I want to try it, but I'm just not confident enough." "How do I make myself more confident?" These are the kinds of protests I hear centering on confidence most often. Sometimes they have some merit - and I'll review which situations those are that they have merit in - but most of the time, these protests are empty and purposeless complaints. "Lack of confidence" is a frequent complaint of those suffering from victim mentality; as if sitting around waiting to somehow become more confident through inaction is ever going to change anything. And that's the problem with "waiting for confidence;" if you're not taking ACTION while you wait, that confidence will almost never ARRIVE. HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU? confidence successWhen I first started in sales, I was not very confident in myself. I looked at sales, and I saw it as this insurmountable mountain to climb; there was the district's star salesman, right next to me, and there was me, who struggled to sell even to people who really wanted to buy something. It felt impossible. So, you know what I did to increase my confidence? Absolutely nothing. Instead, I just worked hard to learn the product, I studied the methodology of that star salesman working across the counter from me, saw how he sold and made people want to buy, observed his flaws as well - where he was taking shortcuts, giving people breaks on prices - and tried to find ways to match his sales performance without cutting the corners he was. I learned his method, and then I perfected it more than he had. The only thing I was confident of was that I could learn bits and pieces of things here, if I worked at them. So, I just learned one bit and piece at a time, until eventually all those bits and pieces I'd learned made me a star salesman too. It was the same deal with music, and the same deal with pickup. Every time I've started something new, I've started weighted down with self-doubt and a lack of confidence. But instead of sit there and gripe about how unconfident I am and how much that sucks, I just go take action, and trust that my lack of confidence will work itself out as I gain experience. THE BEST PICK UPS I'VE EVER HAD... One night, about 6 months into me actively going out to meet girls, when I still wasn't very good yet and still had a great deal to learn, I thought about going out, and didn't really want to. My only friend in town had gone to New York City for the weekend, and I didn't know anybody else. I was accustomed to going out alone, but that was in my old college town; now, I'd moved to a new city, and I didn't know anywhere to go, really, or anyone. Finally, I dragged myself out of the house to the bar street in the suburb I was in, thinking I probably wouldn't even end up talking to ANYONE that night. I ended up at a brightly lit bar full of people having fun with their friends... not exactly the kind of place I'd been hoping to find (I much preferred to pick up girls in clubs). But, I settled in, tried to be a little social, and ended up talking to some scruffy looking guy in his 30s sitting next to me for about 10 minutes. That conversation ended, and I wondered what I was going to do next when the guy turned back to me a few minutes later and said, "Hey man, you want to go to a club in the city?" I wasn't very confident that would go all that great, or even where we'd be going, but as part of my efforts to be more social, I'd decided not to turn down any social opportunity I received, so I said, "Sure." We took a taxi ride into the city, and ended up at a nightclub I'd never heard of or been to before. I stood around on my own for a while, racked with approach anxiety, before noticing a really beautiful girl who kept stealing glances at me. But, she was in the middle of a crowd, and I saw no way to approach her. So, I stood there, totally unconfident, totally not sure what to do, but knowing that I had to take action at some point or I was going to regret it. After standing there for perhaps 10 minutes, not knowing what to do, I saw my opportunity: that girl was getting her picture taken with a couple other girls. So, I moved in, and, as the picture was ending, I opened my girl and started talking to her. Immediately I tried to move her; she resisted; I persisted. I knew from 6 months of active experience, that if I gave up after asking her to do something and I let her not do it, I was dead. So, I insisted, and she moved with me... once... twice. She was into me. I took her to go upstairs with me and grab a seat, but a male friend of hers intervened. He wanted to leave; they were going home. I took her phone number and bid her fair well. A few months later, that girl became my girlfriend for the next 2 1/2 years, and was one of the most amazing women I've ever known. Many of the BEST pick ups I've ever had came on occasions that I went out with ZERO confidence, from girls I walked up to thinking for SURE I'd be rejected by. Out of the serious girlfriends I've had, a good chunk I thought I didn't really stand a chance to get. How do you succeed despite a lack of confidence? When all the self-help gurus tell you how absolutely CRUCIAL confidence is??? You find success in SPITE of confidence, by arming yourself with something else: Process. PROCESS = SUCCESS. CONFIDENCE = BYPRODUCT. True confidence is a byproduct of success. You have it because you've succeeded at something (or at something similar) so many times that you feel reasonably certain you know what to do, and that you can pull it off. Why do so many self-help gurus, advice-givers, and feel-good friends tell you you need confidence? Because they see successful people acting confident, and wrongly attribute those individuals' success to their confidence. "Well," the observer thinks, "this person's very successful, and very confident. My other friends, who are not successful, are also not confident. What's the BIGGEST personality difference between successful people and unsuccessful people? Hmm... seems like confidence! So what determines success? Must be confidence!" Then these people go around telling you, "You don't need SKILLS... you don't need TALENT... what you NEED is CONFIDENCE!" And then you get all excited, because they make you FEEL confident and then... ... and then... ... and then it wears off. And you're no better able to effect any real change in your life than before that big, impressive pump-up speech. Confidence doesn't get you success. Everything I'm successful at I started off certain I'd fail miserably at and be ashamed for all time of my performance in. And many of the things I started off confident I'd be able to ace quickly (like surfing) I got discouraged by my lack of initial results mismatching my barrels of initial confidence and threw the towel in on to tackle something a bit more fulfilling with my time and effort instead. If you're waiting for confidence before you start something, you're waiting for the wrong thing. It's kind of like a guy saying, "I'm not going to start building a business that can make me a millionaire until I'm a millionaire," or, "I'm not going to start learning how to date multiple women until I'm dating multiple women." You've got to do the thing first; results and byproducts come after. You can't think your way to success. You can't will yourself to be confident, and then suddenly experience and skill becomes irrelevant. I don't even think confidence is all that helpful for struggling through the troughs and low points of skill-building. Most of the people I've known who've been super confident they could do anything never really learn that many new things, because they don't see much need for it; who needs skills when you're already confident you'll be a success? What really leads to success isn't confidence. It's process. Process enables you to follow steps to success despite how confident or not you're feeling. Process enables you to work out patterns and pathways to follow to achieve the results you want. Process frees you from the crashing and receding tides of emotion and grants you logic to follow, test, and refine. Process sets you free, and gets you REAL success. confidence success How do you get yourself focused on process instead of confidence as the key to your success? Simple: you start looking at steps, and stop chasing emotions. CHASING EMOTIONS: THE MODERN WEST'S CURSE Sometime in the mid-1700s in Western culture, a curious thing began to happen: the ideal of logic and rational thought and reason being held in higher esteem than emotions gradually began to wear away, and emotions began to be hoisted into the place of reverence and veneration that logic previous held. While someone in the 18th century would've chided you for acting childishly and immature if you told him (or her) that you wanted to get married for love (rather than because your mate was a good match), or that you wanted to pursue a profession because you enjoyed it (rather than because it was where you could best contribute to society or best enhance your position from), someone in the 20th or 21st century would tell you that those were exactly the right reasons. Society shifted from encouraging reason to encouraging emotion. The problem with that, though, is this: emotions change. They're ephemeral. They shift. There is no constant in emotions. And when you base your life around something that is inconstant, your life itself becomes changeable, fluid, and inconstant. Which is fine if you're a traveler with no set purpose or direction. Or someone not tied to one place or one life. But most people in the modern West aren't like that. They live settled, sedentary, rooted lives, best suited to constancy and solidity. But their minds are focused on shifting, changing emotions instead. "Be happy!" That seems to be most people's life goal if you ask them. But then you ask them if they are happy, and you get a vague response, if not an outright "no." Then you ask them what it'd take to MAKE them happy, and you get another vague response, about something that'll happen far off into the future. People don't know what they want, and they don't know how to get it. They're so busy chasing emotions, they never stop to realize they never actually achieve those emotions, but for a moment... and then the emotion is off, and the chase is on again. The problem is, this carries over into their skill-building and life-determination as well, and instead of being able to logically target the acquisition of a given skill, they decide they'll just "follow their hearts." So, they never get better at anything, and end up becoming bitter as they watch the clock slowly tick down on their lives without things ever getting any easier or clearer. A SERIES OF STEPS confidence successConfidence is just an emotion. Trying to rely on confidence for success is like trying to rely on happiness for fulfillment, or excitement for an enriching life. It is, as a member of the Enlightenment would've called it, a child's plan; and it isn't one that works. What does work? A process; a series of steps. If you've ever done any goal setting, you have some experience with this. Goal setting is setting a few steps or objectives that you'd like to accomplish. Building a process for ANYTHING is simply laying out a series of loosely connected steps, then following them. Process is how you take control of your life despite the vagaries of your emotions. You may be a very emotional person; you may not be. But if you train yourself to follow a certain process, you can achieve predictable, controllable, consistent results that are not reliant on how confident or not you're feeling on a given day. A process for selling tires (my old job back in university) looks like this: Greet customer, ask how you can help him today Ask him to see his car and the tires he has right now Ask him how those tires did for him Ask him if there's anything he'd like to have better (wet traction, cornering, quiet ride, etc.) Ask him how long he intends to keep the car for, and how many miles a year he drives Show him a tire you think'd be a good fit for him, how the mileage warranty means the tire will last for most of the time he wants to keep the car for, and explain how this tire is better than his existing tire in each of the areas he's said he'd like to see improvement in, and any other standout areas Tell him the price of the new tires installed after taxes, and let him know you can get started on that for him right away and be finished in 30 minutes If he's ready to go, get his keys and write up his ticket; if not, show him another tire and repeat the process Print out the quote, walk him through all the charges and line items, and explain what each is so there won't be any surprise or pushback from him later Have him sign the quote agreeing to the prices and charges, and hang up his ticket with his car keys for the shop workers to work on A process for picking up girls looks like this: Plan out ahead of time what day and time you'll go out and where, so that even if you're feeling out of sorts or not very confident, it's already planned and you'll go Go out to the place you have planned, and begin approaching women immediately. If it's a social venue (bar, club, party, networking event, etc.), also strike up conversations with men too, but keep the focus on meeting ATTRACTIVE women (not just ANY women, but women you actually like, too) Move girls minutes or seconds into talking with them to gauge their interest and compliance levels. If they won't invest in you and commit to talking with you by moving when you ask them to move, they won't do anything else either, so use this to screen out women who are simply making polite conversation with you and aren't especially interested Keep moving and talking to lots of girls until you meet a girl you like who's responding to you, investing, and moving when you ask her to move. Once you've found her, stick with her; don't keep moving and don't break circle Engage in some light banter, but only enough to get her comfortable with you and recognizing you as a bad boy and attractive man; don't overdo it Get her sitting with you not long into talking with her; the sooner, the better Deep dive with this girl to get to know her better, sporadically applying chase framing and sexual framing to keep things light and up sexual tension Invite her home as soon as you start detecting heightened levels of interest and desire on her part Kiss her within 10 minutes of getting her alone with you in her place, yours, or wherever else you're taking her to get intimate together Escalate physically and take her to bed You can build processes like these for ANYTHING, simply focused on parsing whatever it is you're trying to accomplish down to discrete steps along the way to be completed. All you need to know to do this is: What your end goal is What steps you need to get there along the way What you need to do to make sure you get started taking action Hit all three points, and you've got yourself a solid, unassailable process that you can use no matter the emotions you're feeling or not feeling at any given time. SO DO YOU REALLY NOT NEED CONFIDENCE? Don't get me wrong; I think confidence is GREAT. There are few better feelings than being able to strut around like the head rooster, feeling like everything you do is assured success. What aggravates ME is the veneration of confidence as some sort of success magic pill. It isn't. Process is. A well-executed, well-rehearsed process that builds on experience and acquired skills. With process, you can succeed in spite of your feelings. I can't tell you how many times I've felt utterly unconfident, and had process save me. There've been girls I was CERTAIN I couldn't get... they just didn't seem all that interested in me, or the male competition seemed to fierce, or the girl herself seemed like the most aloof, passionless, powerful woman in the world. But I followed process in spite of myself and I ended up together with her. It's the same with sales, the same with business... the same with everything. There've been countless times I had a customer walk in when I was a salesman when I thought, "There's no WAY I can pull this off... this guy won't buy from me!" But, I'd try my best not to let my lack of confidence show, and I'd follow my process, and voila! I'd have the sale. There've also been plenty of things I was confident I could do, but I had no skills, experience, or process, and I failed at them miserably. I've watched friends and business partners repeat this again and again; there's nothing more dispiriting than watching a friend totally confident he or she is going to succeed at business crash and fail after months or years of hard work because he or she never got a process down and only ever ran on emotions, and emotions don't last. Don't cheat yourself by trying to run on emotions. Emotions make for ephemeral fuel... here today, gone tomorrow. Adopt a process. It's the real path toward success. And don't worry so much about emotions. When you take the right actions, emotions follow suit. Grab a process. Get results. And you'll get all the confidence as a mere byproduct that all those other guys - without process, and without results - spend so much time trying to will themselves to have.

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##Don't Get Too Attached to a Girl Before the Sale A few years ago, I wrote "Can't Stop Thinking About Her? Here's Why You Need to Meet More Girls" for all the guys out there going crazy over That One Special Girl. I've been there; I understand it. It's a tough place to be. I was reminded of one of the essential elements of this not long ago when coaching a mentee on sales. She was new to it, and had had a string of successes, but then, suddenly, ended up working with a customer who was incredibly difficult: he kept changing his mind, kept calling her and asking to see more product, kept haggling endlessly on price. And as this went on, as my friend plowed more and more time into this one customer, it became a more and more emotionally charged thing for her, and a bigger and bigger deal. She also came down more and more on price, and became more and more willing to sell him something for almost nothing. Soon it became all she thought about. She ate, slept, and breathed this customer. Eventually the sale fell though, and it sent her into a rage. How could this customer have wasted so much of her time and not even given her anything? attached to a girl I was reminded of one of the most important lessons of both sales and seduction then: don't over-invest in any one prospect, and don't get too attached. attached to a girl The rookie's folly, of course, is that he allows himself to get too attached to one prospect. One prospect who is guaranteed to give him precisely nothing. Rookie salesmen and seducers alike are flying blind through inexperience, and struggling with desperation and an utter lack of abundance mentality. Thus, when they strike upon a customer or a girl who shows even a smidgen of interest, they very often do their best to latch their claws on, and pull out all the stops to try to close the sale. And there begins the process of investing too much in a girl, and getting too attached to a girl. HOW ATTACHMENT FORMS Though there are a few exceptions, by and large attachment is formed in direct proportion to the amount of emotional "pursuit" energy you put into a thing. The more you allow something to affect you emotionally as you pursue it, the more attached to it you will become. That's why I tell men don't chase women. When you're chasing women, not only are you causing them to flee (you can't give chase if she isn't running first), but you're also getting yourself tied up in emotional knots... that are going to bind you to her. Except, it's not a two-way bind. You don't bind her to you by getting emotionally attached to her yourself. To the contrary... the more emotionally attached to a girl you become, generally, the less attached (and interested) she'll be in you. The more time you spend emotionally pursuing something or someone - and any time you even vaguely "want" something, it's emotional, at least to some degree - the more power you give that something or someone over you. And what happens when someone has power over you? She realizes it. attached to a girl And then, she abuses it. ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY As a rookie salesman, I'd sometimes encounter the customers who always seemed like they were just about to make up their minds... but then they didn't. They'd ask for more of your time: could you show them some other options? They'd ask for more breaks from you: the price is too high - can you do better? They'd ask for more time to think: they have to think about it - can they let you know later? All these things are normal requests from people, but some people take these to an art form... a subtle dance of making it appear as if they are wallet-out and ready-to-buy, but they just need one more thing from you... and from this, they get more and more concessions, more and more "give." What ends up happening is that either they end up not buying at all, and completely wasting your time... or they do buy, but only after having worn you down and gotten things so cheap and with so many frills and benefits for them that you might even be losing money on the deal and you'd have been better off had they never walked into the store. Why's this happen? Because as you become increasingly emotionally attached to the outcome - as you want to close the deal more and more - you become increasingly willing to do whatever it takes to do so. This includes doing things that you'd normally never do, that would rule a sale out as ridiculous and laughable if someone walked up to you and asked you for it right off the bat. The amount of investment you put in goes completely off the charts compared to the value of what the sale itself is actually worth. It becomes more about winning, or not having "wasted your time", than it is about getting anything of any actual real, substantive value. But because the customer finagled his way into it gradually, over time, getting you to chase more and more, and put more and more effort into it, you got caught like a fly in honey. Women do this same thing with men. Not all of them - there are some who abstain - but a large portion of the women you meet operate this way exactly with men. Some of them do it only with those men who more or less MAKE them do it... the ones who won't make a move but keep chasing after women like broken records. Other women will try to do it with EVERY man - even if she probably knows you're not going to chase her, she's so addicted to the feeling of having men chase after her that she's going to try with you anyway. If you know what they're doing, women usually won't do it with you - they can't do it with you, just as a seasoned salesman can't be taken for a ride by a customer like the above - but you'll catch them doing it with other men. It's not entirely conscious, at least not for most women; but they are at least partly aware of what they're doing. And it's understandable. Everyone wants to get the best things for himself or herself, often without much consideration for the other party... especially if that other party doesn't show emotion, as men tend not to with women, and salespeople tend not to with customers. When you hurt a girl, she lets you know it, and you feel bad. When she hurts you, most of the time, she'll never know about it, because you won't show her. It isn't that women are cold-hearted hagglers who mercilessly get whatever they can from men because "who cares about men." Rather, it's that women never see the bad effects of their efforts to squeeze a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more out of men's time and effort and emotion and investment, because men don't communicate feelings (unlike women, who communicate these things to men, so men learn early on what things hurt women, and quit doing those harmful things). It's better to think of women the same way you'd think of most customers as a salesperson: as children, who haven't been on the other side of the fence, and don't fully understand that they're dealing with emotional human beings who are prone to feeling things and being hurt too. And you wouldn't get too attached to trying to get a child to do any one little thing, would you? attached to a girl "You need to learn not to invest so much time or effort into any one customer... especially a difficult customer," I told my friend. "But how do I know if he's going to be a difficult customer or not?" she asked. "Simple," I replied. "You do a good job at the beginning, find out what he wants and needs, give that to him, then ask him to decide; if he still can't, stop wasting time on him, while letting him know the options you've given him are the only ones you have available, and then just wind down your level of investment until he either buys or scrams." "Although... you're probably going to have to struggle through some frustrating, time-wasting, and emotionally draining clients to learn how to recognize when it's time to draw the line, tell him what his options are, and start cutting investment," I added. YOU'RE NOT OFF THE HOOK The first rule here is you're not off the hook from doing a good job with the seduction process early on. Just because you're too attached to a girl now doesn't mean she started off as a bad prospect. She may have been an excellent prospect who really, really wanted you to "close the sale" with her (that is, take her to bed)... only you didn't do what you needed to do: You didn't get to know her and find out what she wants, You didn't build the sexual tension up and prime her for intimacy, and/or You didn't hit the escalation windows she offered you, and let attraction expire. You can excuse yourself for bad game if you're new to seduction. However, you don't get to unilaterally shift the blame onto women for you not firing on all cylinders when they liked you and gave you the opportunity to be with them if you did things right. That one's on you. So, yes - women will try to keep you around in various capacities you probably don't really want to be in (just a friend, potential boyfriend / backup for sometime in the distant future, etc.). But that's not always because they're women with agendas. Some of the time - maybe even much of the time - they were women who originally liked you, and wanted something to happen with you... but you botched the sale, didn't give them what they needed, and didn't pull the trigger. You're not off the hook from having to do things right. YOU'VE GOT TO PAY YOUR DUES I can look at how a girl's interacting with me and tell you almost instantly if she's wasting my time (that is, trying to slot me into a role in her life I'm not interested in occupying) or not. When you're new, you do not have this ability. I certainly didn't always have it. In fact, I'd say it probably took me a few years of dating lots of different women before I was able to get a fairly reliable read on when my time was being wasted and when any difficulties I was seeing were just the vagaries of life and the girl herself was still interested and committed to moving things ahead. So there is some amount of paying your dues to get there. Every rookie salesman wastes time with customers who lead him on and lead him on and never pan out, or wear him down into giving them the deal of a lifetime - and one he ends up regretting having given them later. Likewise, every rookie ladies' man wastes time with women who lead him on and lead him on and never pan out, or wear him down into accepting a "just friends" role with them, or quietly waiting in the background for her to finish up with her string of all-wrong bad boy hookups and realize that, really, he was the one she wanted all along, she just hadn't seen it (cue romantic music). These experiences get coded into your memory as "lessons", and you need them there to stand as examples of what not to do, and where you don't want to end up going again in the future. So don't think you're going to have a few hookups or a girlfriend or two under your belt and be immune to this. It takes time, experience, and getting burned at least a handful of times first before your radar really starts going up and getting attuned to the proper signals. TIME UP, EFFORT DOWN Those caveats aside, let's talk about the one rule to follow to ensure you don't end up getting too attached to a girl: As the time it takes to bed her INCREASES, the effort you put into doing so must DECREASE. Most men take the opposite tack. For most guys, as the time they put into a girl goes up, the effort into her remains constant, or goes up too. And that's how chasing happens. An escalating or never-decreasing level of investment as a woman stretches things out and strings the man along. Likewise in sales - a customer stretches things out longer and longer, piling on more and more demands, and rookie salesmen continue investing the same levels of effort, or more. My advice - both to greenhorn sellers, and to new-to-the-game seducers - is to reduce your effort in direct proportion to the amount of time that's gone by and investment that's been asked of you. attached to a girl It's far better to devote your time to the women it's actually going somewhere with. That'd look like this: You meet a girl, and invest a fair amount of time getting to know her and trying to take her home or set up a date with her If things don't pan out, you spend a little time via text or phone trying to set up the first date, though not nearly as much time as you spent with her originally in person Say you get the first date, and this doesn't lead to intimacy, despite your best effort. You now spend even less time trying to set up the second date; if she goes for it, great; if not, you move on. On the second date itself, you'll generally make it a lower-effort outing - something nice, but less intensive than that first date, unless you're doing the romantic second date we talked about in the article on date compression Your third date, if you need one, is even lower effort - invite her over to your place for food, then sleep together If somewhere along the line you get resistance to meeting up with you, and she's dodgy or counteroffers trying to get you out on a "just friends" party date, you maybe give her a phone call to build up some rapport if you didn't do such a good job on first meeting her or on an earlier date, but otherwise, if it isn't panning out, you just cut contact and move on As time goes up, your effort goes down. The way this works with customers is, when you first meet a customer, you do an amazing job. You pull out all the stops to find out exactly what he wants, what he needs, and show him his options, and offer to get him set up and good to go right now. If he still isn't sure, you explore what he wants or needs a bit more, but much less effortful now. You tell him about a few other options, but don't go out of your way to show these to him unless he seems very interested. If he still isn't sure, you give him a pamphlet to look over, or a website with information he can check out, and send him on his way. He probably isn't coming back... and if he is, well, he's going to have to sell himself, since he's already shown you that you're not going to be able to sell him. Likewise with women - do a great job when you meet her; give her a few more, lower investment (on your part) tries or opportunities if she isn't super excited with you at first blush; and after that, give her a parting option to chase you down when she's ready. That last one can be a text or a face-to-face or phone call message like this: "You seem like you're really busy / not ready to do anything right now, so no sense us trying to pin anything down at the moment. Let me know when you're a bit more free, whenever that is, and we'll try and get something scheduled." Then the onus is on her... and you're free to waste no more time until you hear from her that yes, she now does want to meet you, on whatever terms you set forth as required for the meet (terms of lower levels of investment, proportional to the amount of time you've already spent on her). As time goes up, your effort goes down. DON'T GET TOO ATTACHED TO A GIRL BEFORE THE SALE Getting too attached to a girl before she's yours leads to: You chasing hard (and her running away) You becoming tentative and awkward; her meaning more and more to you You becoming an emotional mess, subject to the whims of her availability You passing up loads of opportunities with other, more interested women That last one's the real kicker. All the time you spend chasing a woman with an ever-decreasing probability of ending up with you (the longer the courtship, the less likely it is to ever be consummated) could have been spent on women with a much higher probability of ending up yours - including women prettier, smarter, more fun, and more amazing than the girl you've currently fallen into the attachment trap with. In sales, you miss out on more and better sales by wasting time on finicky customers who probably aren't going your way anyway, or are going to give you something that's not really worth the time and effort you put into it if you soldier on through and finally get it. The same is so in seduction - sacrifice your time and energy for a girl you've messed up on or who is not very interested, and you will end up paying $500 for a $10 item. Don't let yourself get too attached. Be cognizant of when you're spinning your wheels, and decrease effort as time increases. Then instead of wasting time, you'll save it - and save yourself from the draining emotions of chasing after women who aren't interested (or have lost interest), too.

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##Ego Depletion (and Keeping Women Around) Apologies if you haven't seen me on here much recently. I'm working on a few new things that should help you take your game to the next level; the first one due out is a book on relationships that I'm really thrilled with the development on. I'm aiming for it to be as complete a book on relationships as How to Make Girls Chase is for pick up, and I have some truly outside-the-box thinking in it that I've developed through my own personal relationships and through advising a number of friends and clients on their own, and that I haven't seen or heard anywhere else. Anyway, I wanted to take a break from all the big project stuff and stop by here with a few of the things I've been working on lately. Today's blog post is a monster, at over 5,000 words, on something called "ego depletion." As you get better with some of the more advanced techniques from this blog and from the programs available here, you're going to start experiencing more and more of this, as one of the downsides to efficient and effective pick up. If you're familiar with a sales tactic called "hard selling," you know that, even when people know what this is, it still works a lot of the time. You also know from this site that the hard sell can be a useful seduction technique - but that it's not without its drawbacks. And the chief among those drawbacks is ego depletion, and the after-the-fact effect it can lead to: buyer's remorse. Buyer's remorse is, of course, when you make some headway with a girl - she gives you her phone number, kisses you, fools around with you, or sleeps with you - and then she disappears, never to be seen again, or (sometimes) suddenly acts coldly toward you in social situations. Coldness can also be caused by auto-rejection, but there's one important difference: Buyer's remorse is what you get when a girl feels like you made her go too far, whereas Auto-rejection is what you get when a girl feels like you didn't take her far enough. Mildly confused? Great. Confusion's the stage that immediately precedes learning something that will prove, hopefully, rather useful. So let's talk willpower, decisions, buyer's remorse, auto-rejection, and ego depletion - and let's discuss how you can avoid shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to forming a relationship with a girl you really like. THE HARD SELL There are various different ways of being persuasive. The best is getting into a real, genuine conversation where you sit down and seriously analyze the topic at hand, weigh all the variables, and each party gives the other a chance to prove its merits. Of course, when it comes to picking up pretty girls, and when it comes to keeping women around, that's no good. In a perfect world, you could take all the time in the world to really communicate with a woman and show her why the two of you would make an incredible couple - or at least why going with you is the best decision she's ever going to make. But she isn't going to give you that chance. She's busy. Her friends are waiting for her. And you... well, you are just some random guy she just met, and has close to zero social obligation to. That means that you don't have time to go to work changing minds with anything like a thorough, balanced approach. That means that, if you want this girl, and she isn't already set on you, you need to do something to change her mind fast. Thus, the hard sell. Like we talked about in "The Real Reason Many Men Can't Get a Girl" and "Don't Let Her Go," you can get women to do unexpected things with you, unexpectedly fast, by simply asking, being persistent (also see "Persist in Your Insistence"), and continually making a push to get a girl to comply and do things your way. This is the ultimate fast pick up in anonymous settings - by pushing for action, you're putting a woman in a position where she's either going to comply, and do what you want, or else she's going to leave and the interaction's over. In pure pick up, this is what you want, because you don't want to be wasting time on women who aren't interested and aren't going to end up giving you the compliance you need to move things forward and actually get the girl. As a refresher, a hard sell looks like this: Guy: (after talking to girl for, say, 5 or 10 minutes, and things are going well) Hey, let's go grab a seat over there so we're not getting run over by everybody. Girl: Actually, I have to wait for my friend here at the bar. Guy: Yeah, we won't be too far away, so your friend will see us when she makes it back. Girl: I'm afraid she'll have trouble finding me. Guy: We'll be just over there. You can see the bar from that sofa, and plus it'll be a lot more comfortable. Let's go. Girl: I really should wait here. Guy: If we don't grab that sofa soon, someone else is going to take it. Let's go claim our territory. Girl: I can't; I have to wait for my friend to get back. Guy: Tell you what. Does your friend have a cell phone? Girl: Yeah. Guy: And do you have a cell phone? Girl: Yeah. Guy: Okay, then if for some weird reason she makes it back and can't find you sitting at the sofa five feet away, and she's really desperate to find you instead of having fun like I think she probably is right now, she can shoot you a text. Let's go sit. Girl: Okay. You can use the hard sell with anything. The chief points in a pick up you'll usually use this the most, however, are: Getting a girl to move with you Getting a girl to go somewhere alone with you Physical escalation These are the points where her logical mind starts battling with her emotional mind - they're the points where you're most likely to encounter interruptions in the flow of things and end up spell broken and disoriented. That's the point where her brain is disengaging and trying to reassess the situation - unless you're so smooth at moving girls, getting them alone with you, and escalating that the flow is never broken (and it is possible to get that good, although even after 7 years of hard practice at this stuff I still have a spotty track record at keeping the flow smooth during transition points, personally. That's not to say you can't focus on this and master it fast with practice and concentration, though). The moment someone starts disengaging, you need something dramatic to pull them back into things - and that's where the hard sell comes into play. You force a decision - stay with you and comply, or refuse to comply and end the interaction. If she's not that into you, it's done - but if she is into you, she'll comply and you can move things to the next step. Sounds great, right? This is one of those "magic bullets" you can use to make learning how to pick up a girl immediately faster, easier, and a lot more painless than it was even a day earlier when you didn't know this and didn't use it. But, there's a hidden cost - a pick up penalty, you might say - to the hard sell that you must account for, and must adjust for - otherwise, you can risk sinking yourself with the girls you really like, either in the midst of a pick up, or after that first night together when you'd hoped to see them again - but end up not getting to. And it all has to do with the willpower reserve, and a little-known phenomenon called "ego depletion." EGO DEPLETION AND BUYER'S REMORSE In 1998, a team of researchers set out two plates in a number of rooms, each room holding one college student. On one of the plates they set out sat a pile of tempting chocolate chip cookies. On the other plate sat a pile of radishes. The researchers then instructed each college student to do one of three things with the two plates in front of them, and left the room to let the students get to it. Each student was either to: Eat nothing, Eat a couple of chocolate chip cookies, or Eat a couple of radishes. After each student had finished his assignment, he was then given a geometrical drawing puzzle, asked to solve it, and told that he could notify the researcher at any time if he wanted to quit. Unbeknownst to any of the students, the puzzle had no solution. And what the researchers found was, the students who'd forced themselves to eat the radishes and leave the chocolate chip cookies quit far sooner than the students who ate the cookies instead, or even the students who ate nothing. What they found was that we do, in fact, have a willpower reserve, and that tapping into that willpower reserve leads us to something called ego depletion - where we have, effectively, used up our willpower and can maintain no more. What they further found was that people have two distinct modes of thinking: Slow, deliberative, and logical, and Fast, intuitive, and emotional. And what they found about these two modes of thinking's relationship to willpower was, the more depleted someone's willpower was, the greater the difficulty he had using the slow, deliberative thought process, and the more likely he was to fall back on fast, intuitive thinking. And when this happened, the researchers discovered, people made decisions they sometimes came to regret. Think about that for a second. It's possible for someone to get their ability to reason things out logically worn down, and to fall back on listening to their emotions instead, and that when this happens, sometimes people end up regretting the emotional decisions they make. What's this sound like? To me, it sounds exactly like what women have been reporting to have happen to them since the dawn of civilization - hooking up with the wrong guy, and regretting it the next day. Why'd they do it? They can never tell you if you ask, but you see the pattern again and again: the guy's always persistent, and eventually the girl says "yes." Historically, this is why in most civilizations society has kept strict controls on what men and women could do together. It's why society frowned so much on men and women spending too much time alone up until the 1920s or so in America and even more recently in much of Europe and Asia and South America. Men want sex, and persist until they get it, and women often end up regretting giving in and feeling disgust or anger toward men for "making them do it" later. ego depletion We can have endless debates about who's responsible for women's actions: is a woman responsible for her own actions? Does a man have some responsibility for the actions of women, or is the responsibility for a woman's actions that woman's alone? Personally, I detest politics and think they're a colossal waste of time; so if by any chance this article gets some attention and people decide to battle it out in the comment section about what they think people should or should not do, I'll leave that to them. All I'll say is that I view a woman as responsible for her own actions, and I'm very careful to always make sure a woman's aware she can part company with me at any time she chooses, however I tend to run under the assumption that if a woman is spending time with me, it's because she likes being with me, she likes that I'm moving things forward with her, and she wants this to continue, otherwise she'll leave. A few times I've run into situations where I genuinely came to believe that a girl was going to get hurt if we slept together and I couldn't give her a relationship; those times, I didn't feel right continuing with her and ended things with her instead, despite her clearly wanting to spend more time with me. I'll only sleep with a girl if it seems to me she genuinely wants it, or she at least isn't opposed to the idea. The point is, just like as happens with ordinary guys who don't know anything about pick up or seduction and are just following their instincts, it's possible for you to wear down a woman's ego throughout the course of a pick up - and if you're using the hard push, it's even more likely you will. The hard sell is all about forcing a woman's logic to overcome her emotions. Her emotions are saying, "I'm not sure," and you're asking her logic to say, "Okay - yes." But when a woman's emotional brain kicks back in again after she's done something with that sexy man, it can be upset and it can make her feel regret. Because here's the thing: logic is not really logical at all. In fact, it usually only serves the facts present at the moment. A man might convince a girl logically that sleeping with him is the best possible thing she could do, only to have her think about it later while not feeling emotionally satisfied, and then go back and rationalize that in fact she made a logically bad decision, then feel unhappy. And that's what we want to have not happen. TELLING BUYER'S REMORSE FROM AUTO-REJECTION How can you tell if you're seeing buyer's remorse or auto-rejection? The two are related, and both have an element of shame; but both also stem from different emotional sources. Buyer's remorse comes from regret, and its shame factor comes from being ashamed of having been "tricked" or "fooled" into doing something. Auto-rejection, on the other hand, comes from disappointment and frustration, and its shame factor comes from feeling "ignored" or "marginalized." Needless to say, a woman feeling ashamed of dealing with you is bad, bad, bad, but it happens a lot and it happens to every guy. Worse still, most men don't even realize women are feeling this way. They just think girls are being rude, or mean, or short, or callous, rather than responding with a feeling of shame to something that, at least as far as the girl is concerned, is entirely the man's fault. Here's an easy trick for recognizing which of these two you're seeing (since they can seem quite similar): You'll see buyer's remorse after you've moved fast and pushed for women to decide You'll see auto-rejection if you've moved slow and her excitement has faded Now, here's the tricky part of the trick: you're not likely to see either of these until you try to get a girl to do something. I'll say that again, in case you need a minute to wrap your head around it: you won't see auto-rejection or buyer's remorse in full until you ask a girl for compliance. That is, you ask her to show you something, tell you something, move with you, go home with you, kiss you, or come over and see you again a few days later... and she says no, or gives you no response. You won't always be able to tell, if too much time has passed. Typically speaking, if you spent a lot of time on a girl and were very caring and considerate and she goes cold, it's likely auto-rejection; whereas, if you moved very fast with her and didn't spend much time on her and rushed things forward and didn't take time to take care of her emotions and she goes cold, it's usually buyer's remorse. An Example of Auto-Rejection: A guy talks with a girl for forty-five minutes, just chatting about life, and he can tell she's really interested in him: she's touching him, laughing at all of his jokes (even the lame ones), and giving him super strong eye contact. After working up the courage, finally he... grabs her number, then bids her farewell. He calls a few days later - but she doesn't answer. He texts her, calls her... nothing. He didn't move fast enough, and she auto-rejected, and told herself she actually didn't like him all that much in the first place to protect her ego after facing the disappointment and apparent rejection of him not moving things forward with her after she made it clear to him (she thought) that she was interested. An Example of Buyer's Remorse: A guy talks with a girl for five minutes, then tells her to come sit with him. She resists a bit, but he persists, and she does. He mostly talks about himself once they're sitting, and goes on for a bit, then says, "Hey, let's go get some pizza!" She declines, he persists, she says "no thanks;" he continues persisting, but this time she holds firm. "No, sorry," she tells him, "I've got to go," and then gets up and leaves. He scratches his head, wondering why she was willing to sit with him, but not to go get some food. He moved fast - which is good, and that's what you want to be doing - but he didn't stop to rebuild her comfort levels after putting her through ego depletion. Depleted, and now in an unsatisfying position (listening to this guy try to be impressive by talking about himself), she begins to regret having sat down with this guy she doesn't know who's made her uncomfortable, and when he tries to get her to go somewhere else with him, she takes that opportunity to leave. KEEPING WOMEN INTO YOU As you might've noticed in the example above, the girl was suffering from ego depletion after that hard sell. That means she's more likely to make gut decisions at that point, rather than logical ones, and her emotions will have greater say. That's great if you're good at making women feel the right emotions and building an emotional connection, but not if you're not, which is why this is something I consider pretty advanced. Here's the (arguably) good thing about ego depletion: it cuts down a woman's emotional protests and allows her to make decisions based on logic, which is what you need if you require fast decision making and to combat emotional obstacles. However, it's your logic she's listening to, and typically you're going to be better versed at making your case in favor of her doing what you want her to do than she is at convincing you logically she shouldn't. So, with that understanding, here's the bad thing about ego depletion: it can lead to women making decisions they aren't emotionally certain about and only make because you've disarmed their logical objections and saying "yes" feels easier than continuing to say "no." In effect, when a girl makes a decision while ego depleted, she's "giving in." How do you compensate for this? You certainly don't want women getting together with you just because you out-muscled them verbally and they just gave in. Not only is it morally questionable, it also leads to a lot of sticky situations, like a girl you like who now doesn't like you anymore because she felt like you were too pushy or she felt like she did something with you she didn't want to do. In fact, there are specific steps you can take to minimize the odds you elicit a buyer's remorse reaction, to get yourself keeping women in your life a lot more easily and reliably. Here they are: ALWAYS make women feel REWARDED for complying. This one's colossally important. It's long been a rule in my playbook for dealing with scenarios where you're getting investment from a girl, but I just knew that women felt bad if they complied with a request or demand, then didn't feel rewarded. Once I understood ego depletion, I knew why: the more a girl's resistance is overcome, the more she feels she's relinquished control to you, and the more she's going to be looking to feel she made the right choice. How do you reward her? With deep diving, with giving her attention while she opens up about herself, and with an accepting and sexual vibe, and with warmth. Take breaks between hard sells. Here's the thing about the hard sell: it can make things happen strongly in your favor, but it can also make things blow up in your face. If you had to work very hard to get a girl to go sit with you, don't then try to hard sell her on getting out of there but a few minutes later. Instead, give her some time to enjoy the benefits of complying with you and understand she made the right choice and that you're a man whose company she enjoys and who takes good care of her emotions, and let her build up some of her energy again. Get a woman as on-board emotionally as possible FIRST before attempting a hard sell. A woman's a lot more likely to listen to your logic if her emotions are already feeling pretty good toward you. The less emotionally on-board she is with you, the more difficult a time you're going to have logically convincing her of anything. This isn't always possible, especially in high-pressure, fast-moving situations - if, say, you've just met a girl in a hurry to get somewhere, and you're trying to talk her out of her schedule to spend some time getting to know you because you're only in the country for that day and you can't meet her later. Most of the time though, you'll have at least some time to interact with a girl prior to a hard sell scenario and build up positive emotions - this is what you want to be doing. Keep in mind that you're dealing with two brains with every woman: her logical brain and her emotional brain. Contrary to pick up community logic, you aren't always trying to get her listening to just her emotional brain and short-circuit her logic. Instead, you can often convince her with logic, then catch up with her emotions after. However, you must catch up with her emotions after a hard sell and deliver good emotions. When you fail to do this is when you face pushback and regret. "Why did I listen to him??" she thinks to herself, should you fail to emotionally satisfy her. "How did I let him talk me into wasting my time?" or "How did I end up going back to his place? I don't even like him!" And then you've got buyer's remorse. ego depletion Here are some specific recommendations for each of the major stages of a pickup where you're likely to encounter buyer's remorse, and how to get women's logic and emotion aligned so they come out having a great experience and having positive emotions toward you and wanting to see you again: Moving Her When you move girls, this is often the first time in an interaction you encounter a hard sell situation. If you have to hard sell a girl to get her to move with you, immediately after moving, do the following: Get closer to her than you were before Stare at her warmly and with a sexual vibe Ask her something interesting about her that she'll enjoy talking about - NOT boring stuff about her job, school, or generic stuff about the venue you're in or the people's she's with; it must be about her and it must be personal to her Leaving with Her Once you invite her home and you leave the venue with a girl, you're now faced with two or more distinct scenarios for her to encounter buyer's remorse: During the transition point, when you first start walking In transport, if you're driving or taking a train or bus Home alone with her (if you're going to an apartment) The last point also applies if you're taking a girl to get food or coffee or ice cream. There's a moment of awkwardness much of the time as you first start walking toward where you're going, as you start driving, if you're driving a car, or as you're settling into a new environment, where the girl wonders to herself: "Okay, did I make the right decision going with this guy, or is this going to be weird, and awkward, and a mistake?" To avoid buyer's remorse here, you're going to want to: Make the conversation casual and light (in contrast to the deep diving you did when you first moved her), but not goofy Move quickly to physical escalation, but only once you're home with her The reason you're keeping the conversation casual and light is to avoid getting into any deep conversations now that are engrossing but break the mood for intimacy. Deep conversation followed by light conversation normally presages physical intimacy, and you want to set this tone by moving to light conversation as you transition to somewhere private. Sleeping with Her After sleeping with a girl is another very critical point where the girl now wonders to herself, "All right now... was this guy legit or was it all an act to get into my pants?" If it feels awkward, she'll decide she made a mistake sleeping with you. If she feels rushed out or kicked out or ignored, she'll decide you used her for sex (incidentally, this is probably the #1 leading cause of false rape accusations... yet another good reason to make sure a woman feels great after sleeping with you, and not neglected or insulted). On the other hand, if you're every bit the same with her after sleeping with her as you were before, she'll feel like what she saw was what she got, and she made the right choice. Even if she'd been unsure before sleeping with you, if you are exactly the same with her after intimacy, plus a little bit of interpersonal warmth, she'll feel like she got what she expected and she'll be satisfied. How about for keeping women around? For that, I strongly recommend the following: Give her good sex. Important, but not as much as the next four points Talk to her afterward, about sex or anything. Don't be judgmental - especially important to be mindful of if you're new to picking up Sleep with her multiple times. This one's the most important. Why? Because sleeping with a girl multiple times in one night tells her it was real. You're communicating to her that, in fact, you really are attracted to her, and weren't just sleeping with her just for sex Sleep with her the next morning. It's fine to ask girls to leave after sleeping with them - you can just tell them you've got to get up early the next morning, and usually you'll be fine with that - but if you really want to cement a bond, have her spend the night and sleep with her the next day. The morning's awkward for a lot of people - "Wow, was that just last night?" she's wondering - so take that awkwardness away and kill buyer's remorse by showing her you want her as much in the morning as you did last night Finally... get breakfast with her. Nothing makes a girl feel respected, liked, and reassured like sex and breakfast the next day. If you can do all of those, you can convert virtually any woman you sleep with into a girlfriend. The only ones that resist this sometimes are the ones who were only looking for a cheap thrill - that is, the girls who only wanted a casual sex partner and nothing more. Those girls are the exception to #1 - for them, the better the sex, the more likely they are to come back. A PARTING THOUGHT ON THE HARD SELL AND EGO DEPLETION The hard sell is a very effective tactic when used right, but the risk that you turn an ego-depleted girl into one with buyer's remorse is high if you fail to deliver on her expectations. For a comparison, imagine that you go to a car dealership, and a used car salesman hard sells you a car, and you buy it. Driving off the lot, you wonder whether you made the right choice... or if you'd been had. Now imagine that a week later the engine light comes on, and you find out there's an expensive engine problem that, upon taking it back to the dealership you just bought it from, you're told, "Sorry bro, we sold that to you as-is." Buyer's remorse - big time. You'll look back on that salesman and say, "I got conned. He took my money and ran." But now imagine you're sold a car via hard sell, and wonder the same thing driving off that lot ("Did I make the right choice?"), only to realize the car's even better than you imagined: it handles like a dream, it stays problem-free, and it gets 40 miles to the gallon. Not to mention that, but all your friends love it. Chances are, you'll look back at that pushy salesman and say, "That guy knows what he's doing. I'm glad I let him talk me into this car." That's the guy you want to be. You want to be the guy who delivers on the promise that's implied in a hard sell - you are everything you purport to be, and a whole lot more. Make women feel amazing for investing in you and complying with you. By listening to you and going with you - to sit down, to your home, to your bed - she's saying, "I trust you to give me a great experience and show me I was right to choose you." And that's a big responsibility - so don't let her down.

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##Elite Eye Contact Every guy new to the social arts works on his eye contact. He practices holding eye contact, maintaining it even in the face of social pressure from others who continue to hold eye contact back. He learns the importance of maintaining eye contact while speaking with and listening to others. He learns not to shift his eyes around from eye to eye while looking at someone else. What many don't realize is that there are advanced eye contact techniques that you can use to take your eye contact to the next level. Eye contact as it's used by the most socially adroit, most highly calibrated members of society. Call it elite eye contact, if you will. elite eye contact What elite eye contact is is using your eye contact to communicate power and status. Standard good eye contact communicates confidence and social aptitude; elite eye contact goes beyond that to communicate extreme strength and elite social status. There are a few different veins of elite eye contact, and each builds on the next. Because of that, we'll look at them here in sequential order. EYES THAT WAIT Unlike lower status individuals who constantly scan their environment and scan the eyes of others for eye contact and nonverbal signals, men using elite eye contact do not normally initiate eye contact with others, and usually don't engage in eye contact at all until they have decided that they will engage someone socially. A high status man, when out and about, will usually let his eyes rest up, above the heads of others. Elite men look over others, and only meet their eyes with others' when they've decided to interact with those others. Even when others gaze intently into their eyes, they do not meet those others' gaze unless they are prepared to either speak with them, or communicate with them nonverbally. So, if you are practicing elite eye contact as you're out walking on the street, and you notice (through your peripheral vision) a woman looking into your eyes, you will only meet her eyes when you decide to interact with her, perhaps by opening her, or perhaps by smiling at her. And you would never bring your eyes to meet hers without her first gazing into yours; to do so is to seek a reaction from her - to seek to get her to look at you. It is always better to wait for her to look first. If you decide to open a woman who is not looking at you, just make sure to pre-open her. This way you can continue to preserve your mystique of being the elite man others strive to make eye contact with. EYE CONTACT HALF-STEPS Once someone is making eye contact with you, and you decide to make eye contact with them, you can use eye contact half-steps to make your eye contact feel extremely powerful and intense. Depending on how you follow half-steps up, they can come across as either incredibly sexy, or incredibly intimidating. The way eye contact half-steps work is that, once you've noticed someone looking at your eyes and decide to return her gaze, you move your eyes half the distance toward hers, then pause for a second. Then, you move your eyes again to meet hers in full. It's important to speak to a girl immediately after doing this. Otherwise, you run the risk of scaring her off. If on the other hand you instantly engage her in a very warm, seductive way, the brief surge she feels upon receiving this kind of eye contact will quickly turn into excitement and interest. It's a very powerful eye contact gesture. If you decide to use it to intimidate (if, say, a tough looking guy is staring at your eyes in a challenging manner), you can carry out the eye contact half-steps maneuver and not follow up with verbal engagement, and simply hold eye contact. The level of intensity you deliver from this kind of eye contact will disarm all but the most determined aggressors - it's one of the most effective nonverbal means of dissuading anyone who was considering causing you trouble from actually doing so. SHY EYES Once you've made eye contact with a girl, you can use something called shy eyes. Shy eyes are where, you glance somewhat down - but not all the way! You want to glance about halfway down, and let a small smile spread across your lips simultaneously. Wait for about two seconds, then bring your eyes back up to make eye contact again. It's called "shy", but it's actually quite sexual. Because you smile to yourself, it removes the feeling that might otherwise be present that you'd been intimidated by the girl; instead, the shy eyes coupled with a smile communicate to her that you are thinking about her and you. This is slightly different from the glance-and-smile discussed in the post on pre-opening in that the glance-and-smile utilizes a sideways glance, while shy eyes utilizes a downward glance. The glance-and-smile works well as a standalone pre-opener, while shy eyes is something I'd typically recommend using after you've established solid, dominant eye contact already, such as by using eyes that wait or eye contact half-steps. You don't want to seem too shy; using shy eyes after you've demonstrated dominance can add a nice yin-and-yang to your eye contact that women find incredibly alluring. You can also use shy eyes throughout an interaction with a woman to great effect. Use these forms of eye contact to up the power and effectiveness of your eye contact communication, and catapult your eye contact into "elite" territory. These are the ways that high status individuals use their eye contact; use these techniques to say great things about yourself to all the women you meet.

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##Emotional Build-Up: The Right Way to Use Emotions With Your Woman Just watched the new Iron Man 2 trailer that came out today. See it real quick. Before you watch it though, think about this as you do: notice how it starts off, and then notice how it ends. Particularly, what you should be looking out for, is what is the energy level / emotional content like, and how does it rope you in? Once you've watched it (2.5 minutes, won't take too much time out of your day!), keep reading. Ok, now you've seen it and you know what I'm talking about. Notice how it started out light, airy, funny. Then gradually, it built up more and more, until at the end it reached a fevered pitch of action, excitement, and emotions. Normal story arc, right? Here's why it's important: this is how people emote. It's designed for an average person in an average emotional level to come in and relate to it instantly. It starts off at around a normal emotional level, maybe a little bit higher, with humor to make the viewer comfortable. Now imagine a scenario in which the pace was reversed. Say you clicked on that link, and instantly you're bombarded with people talking dramatically and firefights raging and all that jazz. Unless you were already in a very pumped up mood, that would most likely be a little jarring, and might prevent you from becoming immersed in the trailer. You just can't relate to that emotional level that it's at, and it seems a little alien to you. And let's say instead of continuing at that emotional pace, the trailer moved backward and kicked things down to being light and funny and airy, and ended there. How strong would be your desire to remain involved (in this case, to go see the movie)? Nowhere near as strong as had you been reaching that intense, fevered ending as in the way the actual trailer is layed out. The way it really is, you want to keep watching -- you want to know how it ends. There are two great lessons here very applicable to your interactions with women (ALL meaningful interactions you have, really). The first is to come in at an energy level close to where she's at, and often use humor to get her comfortable. Don't go overboard with strong emotions, or trying too hard to get her involved at the very beginning. Keep it light, and let her become involved at a normal pace. You can actually escalate compliance and get her involved faster if you don't overescalate emotions early on -- if she doesn't feel like things are too intense too early, you'll find she's actually MORE willing to comply. When you are laughing and she is laughing, compliance is, quite often, almost automatic. The exception to not starting off too intense, of course, is if you meet a woman who's already in a strong emotional state. In that case, you have to match her emotional intensity to not be a downer. You have to pace her reality. The second lesson is that the emotional level of the interaction must always be moving forward -- always increasing, always upping the ante, always roping her in more and more. You use push-pull to make this not seem so intense -- increasing the emotion, increasing, and then a little defusing, and then back to increasing and increasing. Had the Iron Man trailer had that, it might have been even more effective and not felt a little emotion-heavy / over-the-top (as it seemed to me once it got toward the end). But ultimately, your interaction should have a constantly increasing emotional level, leading your woman to become more and more emotionally invested, and wanting to stick around to find out how it ends.

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##How Seducers Use Emotional Contagion to Attract A potent but under-discussed phenomenon in the fields of socializing and seduction is that of emotional contagion, the tendency for emotions between two or more people to converge. Emotional contagion is the foundation of frame control, and is of vital importance too in creating sexual tension and social pressure, in remaining in command of yourself and others in high pressure situations, and in effectively leading women (and men, too). You might say it's a case of "the person with the most solid and catchable emotions wins." Todays article is the first of a two-part series on emotional transference, with two articles focused on: How to transfer your emotions to others, and How to protect yourself from others' negative emotional transfers Done right, emotional transfer is an outstanding tool for creating the emotions in women that you want them to feel, and improving their experience, your experience, and the outcome of your interactions. And while "emotional contagion" and "emotional transference" might sound at first like New Age-y touchy-feely mumbo jumbo, it is in fact hard science, and it all has to do with the fascinating little cells in your brain called "mirror neurons." emotional contagion Yes, indeedy do. I'm sure you've experienced this plenty of times yourself: That time you were feeling great... until some dour friend of yours came along and dumped all his troubles on you, making you feel as awful as he did That time you were down in the dumps, until somebody told you a few jokes and shared a funny story about something that happened to her recently and suddenly you were laughing and chatting as if you'd been fine all along That time you went to the party feeling tired and drained, but after a short while around the other people there - even before the alcohol started kicking in - you were talking, dancing, flirting, and having a ball "No man is an island," John Donne said. He might just as well have said, "Man is a lake in the middle of a sea." For things flow out of us, and things flow in. HOW EMOTIONAL CONTAGION WORKS "We define emotional contagion as the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person's and, consequently, to converge emotionally." That's an excerpt defining the subject from the paper "Emotional Contagion", first published in Current Directions in Psychological Science in 1993 by Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson. While they note others as far back as Adam Smith in 1759 had proposed a method of humans mimicking one anothers emotional displays, it was only in the past 25 years or so that awareness of this phenomenon really gained much traction. I'd been aware of emotional contagion since I was a little boy growing up in the 1980s. I didn't know what it was or how it worked though... I just knew that it was very easy for me to make other people feel how I wanted them to feel. I just thought I had a "power." And while it'd be presumptuous to rule out an extrasensory basis altogether - there still isn't any significant refutation of the positive findings of the large number of ongoing ganzfeld telepathy experiments, for instance - as it turns out, emotional contagion does not need the supernatural to be explained. It exists courtesy a far more mundane explanation. The way emotional contagion seems to work is that the brain analyzes the voices, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues of other people, then mimics them. This mimicry - spurred on by the brain's "mirror neurons", a set of brain cells solely dedicated to making people feel what they observe other people feeling, to bring them emotionally in-sync - feeds back into the brain's emotion centers, causing mirroring not just externally - in one's own voice, expressions, and cues - but internally, as well - in what one actually feels. emotional contagion Thus the term "emotional contagion" - as it turns out, smiles really are contagious... and misery does love company. POWER AND EMOTION I'm going to share a study with you now that's first going to seem confusing and counterintuitive, but it's absolutely key to how we use emotional contagion in seductive and social situations, so bear with me. Elaine Hatfield and three other researchers published an earlier study - in 1989 - in which emotional contagion was studied in conjunction with personal power. The study - titled "The effect of power on susceptibility to emotional contagion" - ran on the hypothesis that individuals in powerless positions (e.g., employee, student, inmate, etc.) would pay more attention to their superior's emotions and be more likely to "catch" those superiors' emotions, than superiors in positions of power (e.g., boss, teacher, police officer, politician, etc.) would be to theirs. However... the study proved otherwise: "This study explored two questions: Do people tend to display and experience other people's emotions? If so, what impact does power have on people's susceptibility to emotional contagion? We speculated that the powerless should pay more attention to their superiors (than their superiors pay to them) and should thus be especially likely to "catch" their superion' emotions as well. College students, given the role of "teacher" (powerful person) or "learner" (powerless person), observed videotapes of another (fictitious) subject relating an emotional experience. They were asked what emotions they felt as they watched their partner describe the happiest and saddest event in his life. In addition, they were videotaped as they watched the tape. As predicted, clear evidence of emotional contagion was obtained in this controlled laboratory setting. However, a direct (rather than inverse) relation between power and emotional contagion was found. Powerful subjects were more likely to display their subordinate's feelings than subordinates were to display those of the powerful other. Several possible explanations for these unexpected results were proposed." It is not the powerless who are most susceptible to emotional contagion. It is the powerful. So how does this work? emotional contagion To get our heads around emotional contagion's power dynamic, I'd like to ask you to think first of the person trapped in victim mentality. The typical person with victim mentality: Sees himself as the victim of more powerful superiors, who control the keys to him getting what he wants and needs or not Views himself as oppressed or shortchanged by more powerful forces Believes that the things he wants and needs are outside of his control; he is unable to direct his own life and destiny in some or all ways In other words, someone who believes he is a victim of anyone / anything has placed himself into a subordinate role, mentally. He is someone low in power. And how easily swayed are people in the victim role? Have you ever tried? I have... countless times. It's a trap. You cannot change someone's mind when he sees himself a victim... he will not listen to you. He won't entertain your views. And, he is largely immune to your ability to impress emotions on him... particularly, good emotions. An individual in the subordinate role is too worried about himself to spend much time caring what you are doing, thinking, or feeling. As a subordinate, all he can think about is him. WHAT BEING "RELATABLE" REALLY IS Intriguing to me has been the link between emotional contagion and deep diving / screening and qualifying women / inspiring women. You might even be able to say that a large part of what makes these so effective with women is that they allow a woman to feel more empowered and, thus, her circle of emotional awareness is able to expand, and allow her to more easily catch your emotions. It seems to work like this: A woman you haven't connected and/or with whom there is no powerful feeling of instant attraction with feels weird, awkward, or creeped out if you try moving things with her too fast or break out a strongly sexual vibe on her too early; the emotion she sees in you seems inappropriate to her, she feels cognitive dissonance, and she rebels against it Alternately, a woman you have deep dived and thoroughly screened feels as though she has impressed you with her qualifications (she's empowered); a woman you have inspired feels as though she could take on the world, with your support (she's empowered); and a woman who sees you and instantly feels attracted to you is relating you to a man she's had highly positive experiences with in the past, and feels confident she can have them with you (again, she's empowered) In each of the three scenarios where a woman is deep dived and screened and qualified, or inspired, or feels instant attraction upon seeing and meeting you, SHE FEELS EMPOWERED. And, now empowered, she tunes into and mirrors back to you your emotions all the better. You might even say that this is the crux of what "being relatable" is really all about: it is, simply, making a woman feel empowered around you. HOW TO USE EMOTIONAL CONTAGION WITH OTHERS In most articles, this is where I'd put a list of 7 or 10 steps for you to follow to start using the technique du jour right away. This time around, I've only got two for you: Empower Emote If you need it spelled out a bit more in-depth, here it is: Empower. Before that other person you're talking to is going to be open to catching your emotions, she must first feel POWERFUL. If she feels weak, subordinate, or off-balance, she will not catch your emotions. This probably comes as a bit of a surprise if you're used to standard seduction logic; but I thought you were supposed to be the dominant alpha male? you might say. And while you do want women following your lead and viewing you as a powerful individual, you also want them feeling like they are free to do what they want around you - something a student usually would not feel around a teacher, or an employee a boss. You want women to feel like they can let their hair down and pursue you as aggressively as they like - and that's about feeling powerful, not weak. Emote. The next step - once she's feeling powerful - is getting her to feel, period. The emotions you want a woman to feel in a seduction are typically sexual excitement and anticipation. The emotions you want others to feel in other social situations can be anything from enamored to amazed to comfortable to warm to relaxed. All you have to do to make people feel these things is wear those emotions on your own face and body while making eye contact with them once they feel connected to you and empowered around you. At that point, they begin to easily catch what you emote. The connecting / screening / qualifying / empowering you can do quite easily with these articles: The Art of the Deep Dive How to Build an Emotional Connection Get to Know a Girl: Connection-Building Tactics What Does She Want? The 8 Things You Must Ask Her Student of the Game: How to Succeed with Women Is Qualifying Women Really That Important? The emoting you can do with these: Sexual Tension: 7 Ways to Make Women Excited and Randy Constructing Your Sexy Vibe (and Making Girls Go Nuts) Sexy Body Language for Men (Learned from Hot Girls) Nonverbal Attraction and Getting Girls Without Words Emotional Cresting: What It Is and How to Use It 7 Facial Expressions That Drive Women Wild The 9 Secrets to Being a Sexual Man There's lots of material on this site on these two topics. SO IT'S REALLY ABOUT EMPOWERING OTHER PEOPLE? emotional contagionYes, it is. The secret to being good at using emotional contagion - at transfering your emotions to other people - comes down to being adept at making people feel like they matter. If you can communicate to other people that you believe they are important, and powerful, and can do anything they set out to do - and you can communicate this in as little as a look or a glance, sometimes - those people will be open to receiving emotions from you. Because they feel powerful. Because they feel secure. Because they are able to expand their emotional awareness outside of themselves and take on the emotions of others. When you empower first, and emote second, you can use this one-two punch to impress upon others the emotions which you have called up in yourself. And you can use this to scare up a bit more sexual tension and arousal with beautiful women; to convey a feeling of warmth with new acquaintances; to strike just the right tone of responsibility and ascendancy with prospective employers and your new girlfriend's family alike. Emotional contagion is powerful mojo... and you can use it to make your interactions that much closer and more intimate.

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##Emotional Cresting: What It Is and How to Use It In "How to Pick Up Girls in Bars and Clubs," we had a look in passing at why dance clubs and dance floor game are so difficult to get real results with women in, aside from make outs and rapid escalations that usually don't ever lead to anything much more. There we called it "emotional spiking," but this spiking is actually the result of a far broader and more common phenomenon seen everywhere in life and love, dance clubs being only among the more extreme examples. The phenomenon is one I've dubbed emotional cresting, and it creates some interesting wrinkles in how your interactions with people - women and men alike - play out. Emotional cresting is about taking emotions to their extremes - those emotional spikes we mentioned before. It follows the process of emotional escalation that we mentioned as so crucial to the process of preparing a woman for intimacy in How to Make Girls Chase, except that it's an intrinsic part of everything. There's great power in emotional cresting, but there's also significant danger to your interactions in it as well - because the higher you crest, the bigger the crash is if you can't maintain that emotional momentum. emotional cresting "Emotional cresting" is my term for the escalation of emotions toward emotional extremes. I chose "crest" because the term "crest" is used with waves - whether radio waves or oceanic waves, they all have crests. A crest is the peak of a wave - its apex; its top. And just like a wave, emotions tend to swell upward, resulting in a crest of those emotions. In dreams, emotions are represented by water, often by oceans; and I felt that here, the term "crest" was every bit as fitting. All emotions crest. The start out small, then rise, and rise, and rise, swelling up higher and higher and higher, until at last they reach their zenith. It's true with: Anger Excitement Happiness Joy Fear Ecstasy Agony Depression Heartache Lust Revulsion Disgust Desire ... and everything else. Generally speaking, there are two core aspects to emotional cresting: How much buildup and anticipation there is behind the experiencing and release of an emotion, and How sharp the spike is that causes the crest. As a rule of thumb, the more anticipation there is without emotion dissipating, the higher the crest is; and the more gradual the spike is without emotion dissipating, the higher the crest is. That is to say, if you're watching a scary movie and you've been expecting something scary to happen for two minutes now, sitting at the edge of your seat, growing more and more and more tense... and then it happens, you'll be a lot more freaked out than you will if you had zero expectation of anything bad to come and then something bad happened. It's why creating that mood of foreboding is so important to horror flicks. On the other hand, if you're expecting something bad to happen... and then nothing happens... and the mood stays foreboding, but it's dragging out too long and you're beginning to lose interest, when something finally happens the crest won't be as high as it could've been. That's buildup. We've discussed buildup before - in fact, it was among the early posts on this site, back when this was still a one-article-a-month website that only a few guys I knew off of forums visited - in this article: "Emotional Build-Up: The Right Way to Use Emotions With Your Woman," but I'm going to go into it quite a bit deeper here than I did then. If you want another example of buildup though, check that out. As for spikes: imagine you walk into your house, having completely forgotten it was your birthday, and the lights flash on and all your close friends and family jump out of nowhere and exclaim "Surprise!" That's a quick spike, and its effects are short-lived; you'll be thrilled and excited for a moment, but then the adrenaline recedes and it's back to business as usual. On the other hand, think back to Christmas morning or your birthday or any other time as a child when you received lots of gifts (if you came from a family well-enough off to get you lots of gifts and your family came from a gift-giving tradition). Remember how it felt diving into that pile of presents, opening them one after another after another. That's a more gradual spike; it's not a "then-and-done" kind of spike - it keeps going, and building, as you unwrap one present after another, growing more and more excited and nervous about finding that one particular thing you really wanted. The intensity of that emotion is overall much stronger than the quick thrill of having everyone jump out and yell, "Surprise!," because it unfolds over a longer period of time. HOW DOES EMOTIONAL CRESTING WORK? Emotions are largely responses to uncertainty and the unknown. The more certain you are about something - the more reliable your mental model of it is - the less emotional you are about it. That's true with anything: First time skydiving? Prepare for some wild emotions. 100th time? Not so much. First time picking up a girl? Wild emotions. 100th time? Not so much. First girlfriend ever? Wild, crazy emotions. 15th girlfriend ever? Not so much. First trip overseas? Lots of emotions. 30th trip overseas? Not so much. First time getting caught by the police? Wild emotions. 20th time? Not so much. ... and on and on it goes. The less you know about something, the stronger your emotions are around it, and the more you know about it, the weaker. In fact, this is a big part of why how many partners someone has determines his or her future fidelity - the more experienced with sex, dating, and relationships, the less of a big deal these are, and the more likely someone is to view straying from a current partner as not that big a deal, either. This is also why you'll see us recommending building intrigue and being mysterious and using techniques like baiting in conversation and not putting everything out there on the table, spilling your beans all at once (like most guys do). The more intriguing and mysterious you are, the less "known" you are, and thus the stronger the intensity of the emotions you inspire tend to be. Buildup and spiking affect emotional cresting in much the same way - anticipation leads you to wonder about what's coming, and spiking leads you to wonder how much more there is to come and when and how it's going to end. Thus, a girl you're talking to on the street who's gradually becoming more and more intrigued by you as you unfold your indirect game is more interested in finding out what it is, exactly, that you want with her and plan to do than a girl you're talking to on the street whom you've simply walked up to and told her you like her and want to take her on a date to a little dive bar near your house and ask her for her phone number (much more buildup and anticipation in the first example than the second). Likewise, a girl you're kissing and touching in your apartment whom you're gradually running your hands up and down the body of is going to get a lot more excited than a girl you're kissing and touching in your apartment whose pants you immediately grab to unzip within 30 seconds of landing her on your bed (assuming there is the first time you've started physically escalating with her, of course, and she isn't already dying to be intimate with you from earlier escalation before getting her into your place). This is emotional spiking - the gradual spike, so long as it isn't too gradual, trumps the sharp spike any day of the week. Now, you might be saying, this is all well and good to know, but how's emotional cresting of any use to me in my day-to-day life with women and beyond? That's a very good question, for a rather abstract subject. The next section of this article is devoted to answer exactly it. emotional cresting We're big believers on this site in teaching abstract concepts with follow-on concrete examples. No different with this. So I want to arm you today with some tangible uses of emotional cresting in your seductions and interactions with women - but first, I want to talk about the flipside of emotional crests... a little thing called "troughs." CRASHES AND EMOTIONAL TROUGHING emotional crestingJust as waves crest (hit their peaks) but also trough (crash down into valleys), so too do emotions have crests and troughs. And the bigger (or taller) the wave, the bigger (or deeper) the trough. In waves this is called amplitude; and the amplitude of emotional crests and troughs is every bit as important to the social arts as wavelength amplitude is to studying all things wave-related. What this means is that the more extreme an emotion becomes, the bigger the crash is when that emotion is interrupted or ends. It's why you feel kind of worn out and tired after watching a really scary movie, or sort of empty and quiet after a great gift-opening session's come to a close and there are no more gifts left to open and new toys to play with. This emotional troughing is one of the most dangerous things to an interaction you can have happen, and you need to guard against it vigilantly. One of the things I placed a great deal of emphasis on getting down when I was new to seduction, that nobody else ever seemed to talk about, was transitions. I first took note of how important this was when meeting girls while waiting for the Washington, D.C. metro, as I often did there; I'd meet them, we'd get into a good conversation, I'd like them, they'd like me, and then the train would come, things would get awkward, we'd both board, and then both head in separate directions on the train because no one knew the right thing to do. (for the record, I discuss the simple solution to this - keep the conversation rolling as you transition - here: "Meeting Women on Buses, Trains, and Airplanes") Transitions are the most common place to hit an emotional trough; emotions often crash during them. Why? Because transitions (things like moving a girl to sit down with you; going from light banter to serious conversation and deep diving; asking for a phone number; setting up a date; inviting her home; and getting girls in bed) have all the elements of crest-breaking rolled up into them in one: They involve an interruption in the conversational flow They involve an interruption in the physical flow They involve a change in environment They involve a change in expectations A single one of these elements can cause a trough by itself... all of them together always do. And before we go into how you can avoid losing an emotional crest while transitioning, let's talk first about each of the ways emotional troughs can occur in your conversations with women. EMOTIONAL TROUGHS EXPLAINED If you spend much time reading men's dating advice, you'll come across the phrases "her state broke" or "I broke state." The "state" in question is emotional state; that is to say, things were going great one moment, but then the emotions changed and suddenly they were no long so fantastic. These state-breaks are emotional crashes, or emotional troughs. They're the result of an emotional cresting being interrupted and crashing back down to Earth, resulting in the negative side of the emotional crest's amplitude. However tall the wave of emotions was before, it's suddenly become every bit as deep, now. Interruptions of Conversation When conversation is interrupted, this causes a trough. The emotional cresting is broken, and emotions are brought back down in the opposite direction. Have you felt this before? Absolutely. Imagine one of those great conversations you were having with some new girl you'd met... it was going awesome. You and her were vibing so well it was like you were old friends who'd known each other a lifetime. Then, suddenly, inexplicably, out of nowhere... you hit a wall where just nobody knew what to say next. It was awkward... you searched for something to say, she searched for something to say, but nobody came up with anything. And just like that, the spell was broken. Things got weird, and she excused herself from the conversation, to get back to what she had scheduled for the day, or to return to her friends or go to the bathroom at night. That was a trough. Emotions had crested higher and higher and higher as the conversation progressed, but then they hit a trough, and suddenly the whole thing felt strange and bizarre and unnatural - the complete reverse of what it'd felt like during the crest. During the crest it felt exciting and comfortable and like the most natural thing in the world - and suddenly, it became the total opposite. When this happens, it's a big let down for everyone, and the girl gets out of there to get away from the bad and awkward feelings. Interruptions in Physical Flow An interruption in the physical flow is anything that disrupts what you and the girl you're talking to were physically doing. That may include: The two of you were walking on the street, then arrived at where she was headed and she needed to leave and go to work / meet her friend / off to lunch The two of you were sitting and talking on bar stools at the bar early in the night, then the staff came by to take the bar stools to make room for more bargoers and you had to both stand up The two of you were dancing, then stopped dancing to move off the dance floor and find elsewhere to talk The two of you were waiting for a bus, or train, or airplane, sitting / standing and talking, and then the conveyance you were waiting for arrived and you had to board The two of you were sitting or standing and talking somewhere, and suddenly one or more other people entered your conversation - friends of hers, friends of yours, or other people wanting to compete with her for you or challenge you All of these are "physical flow" interruptions that interrupt what you're doing one moment, and get you suddenly doing something different the next (unexpectedly). They're jarring because if neither of you was expecting this change and neither knows how to respond to it, it leaves both of you in an awkward position, wondering how this affects the interaction, whether the two of you know each other well enough to continue or should say goodbye, or what should happen. As a result, unless a girl really likes you a lot - and even then sometimes, if she's especially shy - she'll simply excuse herself, bid you farewell (or perhaps not saying anything at all), and leave. Changes in Environment If you've ever stepped out of a pulsing, pounding nightclub into the (comparatively) quiet streets outside, and felt the gust of cool nighttime air hit your flesh, covered in sweat from the hot club interior, you've experienced the sudden shift that occurs with a change in environment, and consequent emotional trough. Not all environment changes are this extreme; however, imagine the "feel" of these troughs when you change environments with a girl you've just met: Moving from walking in the street to entering a shop or café Changing from talking in a diner or cafeteria to walking outside Leaving the office or classroom you met in to go step outside Leaving the bar or nightclub you met in to go step outside Boarding the bus, train, or plane you were waiting for from the waiting area Going from driving in your car to walking into your apartment Taking a girl from sitting in your living room into your bedroom All these changes in environment and many other ones like them tend to cause emotional troughs that lead to a crashing of emotions. However strong the emotional cresting was prior to the change, it troughs equally hard in the opposite direction during and after the transition. Changes in Expectations This is the one that always gets the nice guys. When your expectations are that someone is going to do a certain thing and behave a certain way, and then that person does something contrary to what you expected him to do or how you expected him to act, emotions trough. It's what happens when you: Act like you want to be just friends with a girl, then try to escalate or tell her you like her and she reacts with disgust or revulsion (she expected you to be happy remaining in the friend zone) Act sensual and sexy with a woman, then fail to move fast and let escalation windows close and attraction expire (she expected you to move fast, escalate, and take her as your lover, and you failed to deliver) Not make a move or ask for much investment throughout the course of an interaction with a girl, then suddenly surprise her by asking her out, asking her for her phone number, or inviting her home (she expected a calm conversation where she wouldn't be asked for anything or need to make any judgments or decisions, and suddenly a relatively big thing is being asked of her to decide on) Expectations were one way, and emotions built around them remaining that way, but suddenly something else happened, and the let down was big. It's like watching a horror movie and feeling the anticipation build and build, only to find out the characters were never in any real danger and it was all a big joke, or tearing into your Christmas presents only to find out they're all filled with clothes instead of toys. Who wants that? HOW TO USE EMOTIONAL CRESTING The pitfalls of emotional troughs in mind then, our rules for using emotional cresting with the women we meet are threefold: Use more buildup and anticipation to heighten involvement, suspense, and impact of a girl's emotions throughout an interaction Use drawn-out spikes that extend emotional gratification over a prolonged period of time - don't make satisfaction happen too fast Avoid cresting a girl's emotions too early or in the wrong direction, priming her for a trough before you're ready to cushion that trough properly These are actually fairly easy to explain doing, now that we have the foundations established for how they each play out. So let's have a look at applying each angle to the women you meet. Using Buildup and Anticipation As we've discussed on here time and again, you want to draw out the getting-to-know you process on your end. Spilling your beans, so to speak, and telling girls everything about you as soon as they meet you is death for seductions; you must ration out information about yourself, a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, and leave her always wondering what else there is to find out about you. In this way you build anticipation for getting to know you more. If she keeps unpeeling those layers we talked about in "How to Be Vulnerable, Enchanting, and Alluring to Women," only to find ever more layers underneath, her anticipation is only going to build... assuming you don't draw things out too long, of course, and assuming each layer she peels back leads her to something else even more interesting. The other way you build anticipation is by hinting at your intentions, without ever fully revealing them. This is the foundation of indirect game, and it underlies sexual tension-building at the core. Your thoughts around building anticipation thus are: "I'll let her get to know me, a little bit at a time, and frustrate her efforts to get me to spill my beans by deftly turning the conversation back to her and getting her to talk about herself, which she enjoys doing anyway." "I'll hint at my interest in her and my intentions with her, ramping this up gradually as our interaction progresses, but I'll never come out and flat tell her exactly what I want to do with her." (the one exception is the sexual complimenting discussed in the article on how to compliment a girl, but of course that builds anticipation by telling someone you want to do something without saying when or how or asking her to decide) Drawing Out Spikes to Extend Gratification The first emotional "spike" that no doubt pops into your head when thinking about this is physical intimacy - sex. And yes, that is a big one. There's nothing quite like unsatisfying 2-minute sex putting the cap on a 5-hour seduction to lead to a big, uncomfortable trough in the most disappointing of ways. But in fact, there are a variety of emotional spikes scattered throughout your interactions with any particular girl that you can more effectively draw out. These include: The opener when you first meet her Early conversation and getting-to-know-you type talk Revealing any specific piece of information you're asked about How you ask her out and get her phone number Setting up the date properly Inviting her home Escalating to sex Having sex Let's look at just a few ways you can draw each of these points out. Opener. A lot of guys plunge right into their openers, suddenly and without warning. But you can draw this out... pre-opening and slow opening are just two of the techniques used to do this; speaking slowly and easing your way into the opener and exchange of names is a part of this too. Don't just belt out an opener to get it over with - start conversations naturally and comfortably with women, and the emotional impact is stronger and better. Early Conversation. Rather than dump all your cards on the table, hold yourself back and build some intrigue instead. Use techniques like baiting and just give out a little (but still make it interesting) when asked, and only go into it if the conversation is of interest to her and she pursues a topic further. Revealing Information. When you're asked for specific information, don't just divulge it then and there and that's it. Instead, weave a story around it... ask a question back first before answering it... take the opportunity to make it an experience, and not just an answer. Asking Her Out / Getting Her Number. "We should hang out sometime," and, "Let me get your number," are okay, but you can usually do better. Even if you only take 50% longer to say these, drawing them out a bit more increases the heft of them. Opt for, "Tell you what, let's grab some food later this week or sometime next," instead of, "Let's hang out sometime;" and go with, "Okay, cool. Here, let me get your cell," instead of, "Let me get your number." It doesn't seem like a big difference on paper, but the difference in person (when most guys are nervous and try to belt out an answer as quickly as possible, and instead you're talking relaxedly and a bit longer) is actually rather noticeable. Setting Up the Date. As you well know if you've read the articles on how to text girls, you want to use texting primarily for handling logistics, and you'll want to set up your date soon after meeting a girl, if not the same or the next day. However, once you've sent that initial text and got back some times on her schedule to meet, you'll also draw this out over a couple of texts for ironing out the details, rather than do it in one fell swoop. You theoretically could send something like, "Hey Vicky, shall we get that meal we discussed? There's a fantastic little place called Eve not far from here... could do Thursday or anytime Sunday through Tuesday just fine. Let me know a day and about what time works for you - let's set it up." And that would be okay, but... it's a bit rushed, even still. Better to split this up over multiple texts - the spike feels better that way. Inviting Her Home. Similar to asking her out and getting her number. You could simply say, "Let's get out of here," and lead, but it's very cut and dry and not all that intriguing. If you prompt her to join you for a movie or a nightcap though, it's more intriguing - and she's also likely to ask you some questions you'll need to address. This draws out the spike, and lets you handle objections as well. Escalating to Sex. The first time you touch her shouldn't be to tear her pants off, unless you've done an amazing job with sexual tension up to that point. Get her warmer first. Having Sex. Here, you should be focused on being a good lover, first and foremost. Focus on giving her a very satisfying sexual experience, and everything else falls into place - this naturally takes a little time to do, and the spike is drawn out to do it. As you see, most of these aren't being drawn out for immense amounts of time. It's not like you're turning seconds into hours here. Instead, it's more about micro-calibration. How do you take a 2-second quick experience and turn it into a 10-second rich and rewarding experience? Don't overdo it - overly drawn out spikes are as lame as too-short ones - but do seek to find ways to turn every emotional high point into something that delivers on its buildup. Avoiding Early or Incorrect Cresting emotional crestingBack to those dance clubs and that dance floor game we mentioned at the outset of this article. Why do you avoid those? Because emotional cresting is happening too early here, and in too wrong a direction. Think about it. In a dance club, a girl's emotions are peaked already... which means that they're going to quickly trough and crash if you can't maintain that peak through escalation. But you can't maintain it if you take her out of that environment - the more crested her emotions are, the more fragile they become, and the moment she's out of the club they're crashing. Not only that, but in a dance club, a girl's emotions are peaked for fun... not for sexual intimacy. Those are two totally different emotions. Yes, sex is fun... but it's "sexy" fun, not "wild party girl swinging my hair around while guys hit on me" fun. She's peaking with the wrong emotion for what you're looking for - and people don't like doing things that are outside their current emotional states. To avoid early cresting: Don't ramp girls' emotions up too quickly Provide frequent "release points" for cresting emotions (e.g., chase framing and other forms of playfulness and humor to release conversational cresting during deep diving) Move fast, hit escalation windows, and get girls moving to the next step of the interaction once they've begun cresting higher but before they've reached an absolute peak for the given situation (e.g., if she's getting more and more excited as you talk to her on the street, move her to sitting down with you somewhere before she troughs and walks off) And to avoid incorrect cresting: Try not to meet women in grossly incompatible environments (e.g. out on the dance floor instead of around the bar; right in front of all of her friends instead of off to the side; etc.) Don't cause women to crest in wrong directions (e.g., debating something political or religious with her and making her angry; talking about something depressing with her and making her sad; getting her really excited and making her jubilant; etc.) Stay away from those two (early cresting and incorrect cresting) and you'll largely be in the clear. STAYING OUT OF TROUGHS Well, okay - you've got emotional cresting down now. So what do you do to skip landing in one of those troughs I told you about earlier? They were: Interruptions of conversation Interruptions of physical flow Changes in environment Changes in expectations As it turns out, these are the easiest parts of the emotional amplitude to handle - all it takes is following the guidelines for proper emotional cresting, plus a few smooth moves, and you'll be in the clear for all four types of troughs. Have a look: Interruptions of Conversation. You can't prevent these from happening entirely - even when you're amazing at conversation, they'll still sometimes happen. What you can do, however, is provide frequent release points throughout the conversation to avoid the crest getting too high. That way, when troughs happen, their impact is not that great - and by providing periodic releases through chase framing and breaking conversation yourself, you condition the girl to expect these, and they come as no surprise. Interruptions of Physical Flow. Just like interruptions of conversation, you need to make sure your girl is prepared for these to happen - by routinely providing releases and outlets for emotions and breaking the crest yourself. That way, when it's time to move her and change the physical flow, it's fine; and if other people interject, it's also fine. When changing physical flow yourself, keep conversation going, to minimize the impact to emotions, and look to change physical flow mid-conversation; that is, start her moving as you're talking or beginning to talk about something interesting. The "cliffhanger" keeps her wanting to complete the transition to find out more (or tell you more, if she's talking). Changes in Environment. These are going to happen as your interaction progresses, and again, all you can do is ready yourself and the girl for them by refusing to let emotions crest too high until you're past the point where environments will change (i.e., you're home alone with her). That means no kissing girls at bars, clubs, or on dates... at least, not if you want to sleep with them later, that is. Changes in Expectations. This is the only one that you can completely avoid, and you will completely avoid if you're doing things right. You'll know you aren't if girls are telling you "let's just be friends" or "I didn't know you felt that way" or they're getting upset and going into auto-rejection. Seek to set the right expectations from the beginning by exuding a sexy vibe and make it clear to women through your actions and attitude exactly what kind of man you are (the kind of man who will later take them as his lover, that is). For the experienced seducer, who's intuitively good at avoiding emotional cresting in the extremes before he has a girl alone with him and all but ready for physical intimacy, and who knows how to handle transition points and emotional rough patches, the deadliest time for an interaction is at its beginning. That's the point where outside influences can come in and have the biggest impact, because the girl isn't sufficiently intrigued or invested in him yet, and she hasn't gotten accustomed to cresting and troughing with him yet. SOME PARTING THOUGHTS ON EMOTIONAL CRESTING This is somewhat abstract, and admittedly rather more advanced stuff. If you're still getting your bearings on seduction, it's probably not worth worrying yourself over too much. If, however, you're intermediate or higher, and you're starting to wonder how you're ever going to handle those maddening problems you're having with losing girls during transition points or other places that things intervene or emotions simply seem to crash, then this is the material you need to get working on patching that up. Emotions are a lot like a snowball rolling downhill... a little hard to get started, but once the snowball's rolling and it's picking up snow as it goes, it's going to keep going faster and faster and getting bigger and bigger until it either hits something that shatters it (a hard crash), or it comes to the bottom of the hill and rolls to a stop (a gentle trough that you've managed out). Be smart with how you use emotions. Don't ramp them up haphazardly like some kind of crazed mad scientist playing with his new powers of intrigue and seductiveness... this is what most beginners do once they start learning how to get girls, and it's why most beginners have so many promising-looking interactions with women blow up in their faces and end in spectacularly bad fashion. Emotions are dynamite... a powerful tool when wielded carefully and intelligently, and a force of great explosive destructiveness when wielded with butterfingers. Mind your crests, and avoid any hard troughs, though, and you'll be just fine with them. And remember: Use more buildup and anticipation to heighten involvement, suspense, and impact of a girl's emotions throughout an interaction Use drawn-out spikes that extend emotional gratification over a prolonged period of time - don't make satisfaction happen too fast Avoid cresting a girl's emotions too early or in the wrong direction, priming her for a trough before you're ready to cushion that trough properly

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##End Relationship Drama with These 2 Rules Have you ever noticed how women sometimes launch into relationship drama, picking a fight for no logical reason at all… and how even their arguments themselves are completely devoid of logic? Or how women sometimes try to boss you around, just to see how much they can get away with? And with 80% of guys, a woman can get away with a LOT… until she completely owns him and walks all over his dignity. Yet he's grateful - hey, at least he has a real girlfriend that is not made of rubber! (Grab one of our programs, of course, and you won't have that problem). But why do women do this? What's the deal with women and drama? We all know they don't want a weak guy… so why are they undermining his strength and masculinity? And what's the best way to deal with it? You may have read on our blog before that women test men because they NEED to make sure their man is strong - so that's one reason why they put his masculinity to the fire. But if you give a girl too much rope, she'll hang you with it. Another reason for drama, however, is one of the more insidious tricks of Mother Nature… women also need to gain a certain amount of relationship control over their men. If she's not in charge, he might leave once she's pregnant… she needs to be sure that she can access his resources, both for herself and for their offspring. If she starts to hold TOO much control in the situation though, she will see that you're not strong enough and lose all interest in you. On the other hand, if you hold too much control, you will probably lose interest in her - that's the essence of the passion trap. The secret is to strike the right balance… and to do that, you will sometimes have to disarm one of her tests. REASONS FOR RELATIONSHIP DRAMA Here are a couple of things to realize about a woman's tests: Tests never let up. Ever. Even if you've been married for years or decades, your woman will always test you, to make sure you're still congruent with yourself, aligned with your masculinity and in touch with your own power. This can be tough, because you will feel weak sometimes, and you will probably want to look to your woman for emotional strength during those times. And that's fine… just make sure you don't go overboard with it. Open up to her sometimes, talk about your problems, and if you've done the qualification bit right, she will give you encouragement and strength. But then pull your act together and get back in the driver's seat and stay there… that's what SHE needs from YOU. Something else about this point that I found very interesting when I first heard about it: a woman's tests actually INCREASE over time. Once she goes through menopause, she will suddenly have a lot more testosterone. At the same time, a man's testosterone levels gradually start to decrease… and that's how come you often see these power women in their fifties who kick their careers into the next gear or even take on entire corporations as the female CEO… while their husbands are henpecked and a mere shadow of their former selves. Something to be cognizant of and to watch out for, if you want to get into a really long relationship. (I don't have the answer for this one by the way, I've never been married for thirty years - nor would I want to be!) Second… realize that women are more emotional than men, period. They are more in touch with their feelings, and in turn their emotions have a greater level of control over them. This also means that a woman often might change their mind about things quickly - as all decisions are truly emotionally based, and emotions are fleeting, transient states that can fluctuate and change quickly, so will your woman almost seem unstable to you at times. It's okay… weather her storms, and be the rock in the sea of her emotions… don't be the ship. The above gets greatly amplified during the time of her monthly cycle. This may sound silly, but even if you aren't using natural birth control methods, it may be good to keep her menstrual cycle in mind - and if she's blowing off steam while she's PMS-ing, treat it accordingly and don't take it too seriously. In fact, I've had a former girlfriend once approach me a few hours after we had a fight, and this is what she said: "Hey… I have my periods…" I asked her if that was her way of apologizing, and she said yes. Now that's a quality girl, not afraid to admit where she went wrong and apologize for it. YOU should do the same with HER… if you mess up, own it, apologize and move on. Pride has ruined many a great relationship. relationship drama Another reason why women create relationship drama is that wanting to draw a negative emotional reaction out of you. This usually happens in one of two scenarios… the first one is when you neglect her. If you don't give her any positive emotional attention, she may often throw a tantrum, simply because negative attention is better than no attention at all. If this is the case in your relationship, then the drama is merely a symptom… and you have deeper issues to work on. The second scenario in which a woman would start a fight in order to get a negative emotional response out of you is if she has low self-esteem and doesn't believe she deserves the positive attention that she really craves. Love does not match her blueprint, but arguments do… and both are a form of attention. So she'll take what she can get… or rather, what she believes she can get. This, too, is a matter of selection. Rather than fixing this problem, you want to screen your girls right when you first meet them, and avoid getting into this situation in the first place. Some girls will create drama just to spice things up. To most guys, this sounds absolutely crazy. Why would you not want your relationship to be smooth sailing? Men tend to be more logical and linear in their thinking, and if everything is going smoothly, that's just fine. Women, however, ARE more emotional, and as such, do require more emotional variety… this is doubly true if your relationship has gone a bit stale. Maybe to you, that's comfortable… but she wants to be entertained. A fight is entertainment to many women… they can even watch OTHER couples fighting on the soap operas all night long! Women also create drama to gain dominance in the relationship. This ties in with what we've discussed previously about her natural nesting instinct of finding a provider, getting him under her control and tying him down. If she thinks a breakup is imminent, she may start to create a lot of drama simply as a way of EASING into a breakup. Both men and women do this unconsciously - you may find yourself doing it too if you want to break up with a girl. If she feels trapped in the relationship and wants out, she may suddenly start fights for no apparent reason whatsoever. It creates a "justification" for a breakup, and also pushes the positive memories in the background… because those memories are a big part of what makes breaking up so hard to do, as the song goes. Maybe she's been with you for a few years, and isn't really in love anymore. Maybe she wants her freedom back… or she just doesn't see herself with you long-term. Again, if this is the cause of the drama you're seeing from her, you have bigger underlying issues to fix. In some cases, women may also do this "create drama to ease into a breakup" thing because they are afraid of losing YOU… and they'd rather replace all the good memories with bad ones while there is still time. This, too, if usually unconscious. HOW TO AVOID RELATIONSHIP DRAMA If your woman knows you're a strong man, in control of yourself and of the relationship, you will experience significantly less drama than most guys. Maybe she will throw a tantrum every once in a while, just to enjoy the feeling of being with a man who has a handle on things… but then she'll quickly let up and have passionate sex with you, because she's so excited about the idea of being with that kind of man. This is what all women look for. The important thing is to already treat your girlfriend in the beginning the way you will treat her later on. Remember how we talked about the way people are on their best behavior during the first six months of being together? The problem is, those six months also set the frame and the expectations for the entire relationship, so you need to be careful what kind of expectations you set! If you're not the kind of guy who calls his long-term girlfriend that he's been with for a year every day, then don't make the mistake of calling your new girlfriend every day either… because if you do, she will come to expect that. And when you start doing it less, she will complain… voilà, drama. And there you have the two rules that can almost END relationship drama once and for all for you: Treat her in the beginning the way you'll treat her later on, and Show her you're a strong man, in control of yourself and of the relationship These two rules will significantly reduce the amount of problems you're going to face with your girlfriend… however, always keep in mind that it is NATURAL for women to test their men. My grandfather said it best when he put it this way: "Men who say they never fight with their wives are either liars or wussies." Unless you're the kind of yes-man that a girl can simply put on a shelf like the puppet-on-a-string he is, you are guaranteed to have some conflicts with your woman sometimes. But you can effectively end major relationship drama following these rules… and as for the minor drama, if this doesn't occur too frequently, it's perfectly healthy: embrace it, deal with it, and then move on. HOW TO DEAL WITH THIS DRAMA relationship drama99% of guys deal with female tantrums and hissyfits in one of two ways: The typical macho type blows up. He puts her in her place. Maybe he read on the internet that he needs to be an "alpha male" and never supplicate. His response to drama is: "My way or the highway." The typical "nice guy" type, on the other hand, folds. He will do whatever he can to make her happy and cater to her every whim. His response to drama is: "What's wrong, honey?" As so often, however, the ideal response to relationship drama is neither one extreme nor the other… the best way to deal with this kind of situation is to walk the golden middle path. You stay strong, and you do draw a boundary… you tell her that she's drawing outside the lines with the crayons! But, you also do so with total COMPOSURE. You speak to her calmly, and then give her some time to calm down. If she does try to freeze you out in this situation, if she does give you the silent treatment, LEAVE. Don't try to get her to talk. Simply go do your own thing, and either wait until she comes to you, or give her some time to cool off and then simply ask her something like "Are you feeling better now?" (This is a subtle frame… it implies that she was not well when she threw her hissyfit.) In either case, girls LOVE it when you handle their drama in this way. You neither blow up at them, nor do you fold. You calmly take the lead, and then give her time to find her fault. (If you're really the one in the wrong, however, respond accordingly - own your mistake, apologize and move on.) I've had girls bring this up to me weeks and even months later - they are not used to seeing a man in control in this way. Final piece of advice - if she creates a bunch of drama while the two of you are out to have fun together, tell her. Simply say to her that you're not having fun, and that the two of you should either stop fighting and get back to enjoying the evening, or otherwise spend the evening apart to cool off. You cannot imagine how powerful this can be until you have tried it.

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##On Entitlement: What Do You REALLY Bring to the Table? We talk about value quite a bit on this site: being a high value man, dating a high value woman (or two) and adding value to situations where you want to make friends or contacts. But does value really matter that much? The short answer is: yes. It matters a lot. Because while a lot of people feel entitled to things... just because you feel entitled doesn't mean other people feel any obligation to give them to you. entitlement I've noticed a certain level of self-entitlement in men that have no skills with women, men who are beginners, and even somewhat with men who are intermediate. Today I want to take a deeper look at value and examine what we as men "deserve" from women and life. entitlement I was speaking to an acquaintance of mine recently, and he was complaining to me about the litany of girl troubles that he's been having lately (actually somewhat of a psychological vampire now that I think about it). He felt that women simply don't appreciate how good of a guy he is, and he can't find a woman who measures up to his standards. So, I decided to dig a little deeper into his mindset. Essentially the conversation went like this: Me: …So what are you looking for in a girl? Haven't you met a couple cool, cute girls lately? Him: Yeah but they just blow me off and play games, I'm so tired of it! They're so bitchy! Basically, I just want a girl who's smart - maybe even went to grad school, physically fit, hot and who will cook for me. Me: So you want a girl who maybe went to grad school? Him: Yea. Is that so much to ask for? Me: Did you go to grad school? Him: No, but we both know I'm intelligent.. Me: Hmm. Didn't you drop out of college? Him: Yea, and I started my own business. Me: That's right. How's that going? Him: ... Me: And you want a girl who's physically fit…when's the last time you went to gym or played a sport…just out of curiosity? Him: I go all the time [a lie]! Plus, I'm not out of shape anyway! Me: So, let me just get all of this straight. You want a girl who is smart, fit, and will cook for you when you basically do none of those things yourself? Nor do you seem to spend that much on your business, fashion or anything like that? Is that fair? Him: Colt, you're being an asshole! You should be on my side! Now, before I go on, let me say that I am as helpful and compassionate as can be with everyone I come into contact with. But as Chase so aptly put in his article on vampires, there's just no boosting vampires with your positive energy. And after having tried to have a supportive conversation over a dozen times with this particular individual, I knew that I had to call him on his nonsense. And I will never hesitate to call someone out when it gets to that point; I've always believed that honesty - used properly - is the best thing you can do for other people, especially negative ones. As men, we have the tendency to attack women on their hypocritical standards for guys. "Why should an overweight girl get to date a muscular, sexy man, like you seem to think she should get to do?" etc. But, as this acquaintance taught me, men are just as guilty of this crime as women are. And like those members of the fairer sex who are guilty of being entitled, we too are often not just guilty of it with the opposite sex, but with everything. MISUNDERSTANDING AND JEALOUSY entitlementA good friend of mine became a high-level executive at a tech firm right out of college and started his career making more money than most people hope to make in all of their 20s. Instead of being proud of him as all of his closest friends and I were, I noticed a lot of the people whom he considered friends actually trashing his achievement. They would often grumble and say things like, "He doesn't deserve such a prestigious job as his age," and, "Why don't I have a job like that? He's just so lucky!" But the cold hard fact was that luck had nothing to do with it. As discussed in "How to Master Anything", many average people who look at great achievers only see the final product. They only see the reward, the victory, the triumph. But what these fair weather friends didn't see was the hours he put in every single day researching the latest trends in tech firms, reading white papers on developing technology, and getting his hands on whatever gadgets he needed to stay on top of the industry. What they didn't see was how awkward he was when we were teenagers, and how many active hours he put into honing his social skills to scalpel sharpness and improving his abilities with women - both of which boosted his confidence and granted him the ability to interact and charm pretty much anyone. The entitlement that everyone else felt was merely a form of jealousy. They saw themselves as his equal (or maybe even as better than him)... and they could not comprehend the fact that he was doing better in the job market. And I believe that all entitlement is a mixture of jealousy and insecurity. Average men see other "average to below average" men walking around with stunning girls, and feel deeply angry that they are not with a stunning girl. They secretly wonder if they are lacking in one area or another, but they would never admit that to themselves. Instead they insult the man/woman and complain behind their backs instead of working to improve themselves. But the question: Do they deserve these girls? entitlement Prior to the minted coins of the Lydians around 650 BC, there was no such thing as money. They only way to get something you wanted was to exchange something that someone else wanted. That's where the phrase "bringing something to table" comes from. You actively put something down and barter it with someone else. I believe that understanding this very concept of transactional value can greatly improve the life and mind of any man. If a girl chooses to be with you, she has very specific reasons (even if she's not fully aware of them) as to why she is with you. What do you get from her? This: The potential to birth a child and pass on your genes Sex Someone to nurture you as you recover from trying take over the world Someone to fulfill your instincts of providing and protecting A companion who shares (hopefully some of) your interests A beautiful woman (assuming you follow the tips on this site) to make other men jealous What does she get from you? This: A man who will give her children able to attract beautiful women A strong man to protect her and her potential children Someone to fulfill her instincts of nurture and care Someone who can provide for the household (assuming you're the traditional type, but no judgment here) A man who can give her orgasms A man who she can join on a the path to a greater life purpose A stylish, worldly man who will make other women jealous And how can she tell if you will provide these qualities? Like this: Your fitness Your facial expressions Your social skills Your sexy vibe Your fashion Your job These are some of the factors - among many - that we cover on this site that she'll be judging you by. And if you don't have these qualities, you simply don't have enough transactional value to attract her. Just like my poor acquaintance, you simply don't offer enough value in exchange for what the woman is bringing to the table. Or in some cases, you don't present the value in the right way - a problem that I've definitely grappled with. A couple of these things will make you good. All of them will make you great. But what makes you exceptional is having something that sets you apart from everyone else, even the great guys. And being exceptional only comes from mastery. BEING GOOD ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH If you ask a guy why he should be with a certain girl or why he deserves to have a certain job, he will often begin by saying: "I'm a really good guy," or, "People really like my personality," or, "I work really hard" (hopefully this latter one isn't the case with dealing with specific women). Unfortunately, the harsh truth is nobody but your mother cares that you're a "good guy" unless you have something more to offer. The people of the world only care about what you bring to the table to fill their needs. entitlement If I need to have my car fixed, am I going to hire someone who is a "good guy" or "well-liked" or am I going to hire the man with his hands covered in grease who can tell me parts of a car that I didn't even know existed? If a woman wants to find a man to give her offspring, is she going to have sex with a man who will "try really hard for her" or "be really nice," or will she go for the guy who can give her amazing orgasms in ways that she didn't know she was capable of and get what he wants and sing to her and be a nice, good listener? Hmm… One of my favorite scenes from any movie ever demonstrating the power of value is Alec Baldwin's speech from Glengarry Glen Ross. In the words of Biggie: relax and take notes. Always be closing. Always be understanding your goals and offering value to other people in order to benefit both parties. DON'T DISAPPOINT WOMEN Earlier this year, I needed to have a website designed for me. So I went to an online bidding site, and got bids from various web developers. There was a guy from India who had good credentials and seemed like he could really get the job done. So I selected him and gave him my instructions. After about a week - three days longer than the estimate - I got a really confused email from him. He didn't understand a couple of things that I had laid out, so I had to re-explain my specifications. After a few more days, he still didn't get it. And after even more days of muddled exchanges, he told me that he was unable to produce the final design for me - which was actually quite simple. The whole process left me feeling slightly bitter, frustrated, misunderstood and wanting my desire fulfilled (I still didn't have my final website design). For the first time in my life, I clearly and distinctly understood how women feel on a regular basis. They see a man who seems so promising, who seems like he's going to fulfill their desires, and after taking a chance on him, realize that he just doesn't get them and in the end…can't deliver the skills they thought he would. He can't deliver the goods. And damn, what a terrible feeling that is. So don't do it. Learn your skills, and bring the value - start to finish - to the women of the world who so desperately need a powerful man like the one you're becoming. BRING SOMETHING TO THE TABLE From now on, never get caught empty-handed. You need to make some friends? Bring unique value to the table. You need a new job? Bring some unique value to the table. You need to bed a beautiful girl? Bring some unique value to the table. Let go of the jealousy when you feel it creeping up. Let go of the entitlement. Put in the work necessary to become the man that so many others never will be. The good thing for you is that time is probably on your side. If you put in enough hours into anything, you will become competent enough to set you apart. And as always, remember that the world owes you nothing. But if you focus on giving the world what it needs, you will get everything.

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##Eyes That Draw Yesterday on my way home, the bus I was riding on came to a stop with lots of young people - in particular, lots of young college age-looking women. My interest, needless to say, was piqued. As I sat in my seat, I watched everyone board the bus out of the corner of my eye… and then, I caught sight of a cute girl dressed very fashionably coming down the aisle. Ooh. Now, when you're already settled in somewhere, there aren't a whole lot of ways you can get a woman to join you proactively. You might call out to her, of course - but this is chasing pretty hard and can hurt your chances, and you've probably got to be feeling rather bold to do it. If you are, and you want to try it, go for it; I wasn't yesterday, but I still wanted that cute girl to take a seat next to me. So I pulled out my trusty ol' come hither eyes. This is a different animal altogether from the elite eye contact we discussed two months ago, but you might add come hither eyes to your list of powerful things to do with eyes. Due to my rather unique past in junior high and high school and struggles with a fear of socializing (which I'll write about a bit more in "Learning from Reactions", a post I began writing yesterday but put on the backburner to get this one done), I studied and took on a lot of feminine nonverbal cues used by women to make men approach them, and adapted them instead to make women approach me. Now, I don't recommend adopting absolutely everything women do nonverbally and otherwise; some of it will make a man look quite gay, even to a woman. But much of what women do to get men to approach can be used to get women themselves to approach. Thus, come hither eyes. When I say "eyes that draw", this is what I'm talking about: using eye contact in a way that encourages a woman to come place herself in your proximity. The way come hither eyes work is as follows: Slide your eyes over in a woman direction, almost looking at her out of the corner of your eyes, without making eye contact Smile very slightly, and a bit naughtily, to yourself Look slowly and casually away, to the other side of your field of vision, looking at nothing in particular while retaining your smile Look again as your girl nears you, and smile a little broader. Again, go from the corner of your eyes and do not make eye contact Look away again, retaining your smile Wait a four to six seconds, then open The most important things to remember when executing are: Look from the corner of your eyes. The look from the corner of your eyes is "sexy eye contact" - it's one of the most potent ways a person can communicate sexuality and sexual intent. Corner-of-the-eye looks generate a great deal of draw. NO eye contact. Do not lock eyes with her; doing so will fluster her and get her nervous and she won't approach Avoid looking directly at her. You want to be blatantly sly, not blatantly obvious Smile. That's what will tell her you like her. Remember to keep your mouth closed, à la "Smile Warmly, Smile Sexy". Look twice. The first look makes her notice you and puts the thought in her head of coming over to you. The second look gives her the confidence that her read was correct and compels her to follow through with approaching you Wait a few seconds to open after she settles in near you… but not too long. Too fast and you seem reactive and overly excited to meet her - it'll throw her off balance and instantly think she made a mistake by approaching. Too long, and she'll feel uncomfortable for having approached a man who wasn't interested, and opening after waiting too long just feels unnatural - why did you wait a minute to talk to her when you could've started speaking right away? Wait four to six seconds, then engage. If you're nervous, count to six, and at six force yourself to say something, even if it's just, "Hi. So what brings you over here?" (even if the answer is obvious… you can use that opener like a joke, as we did with the obvious openers in Easy Opening with Indirect Direct Because this is a very highly socially calibrated maneuver - on both your part and the girl's part - you can expect that if she responded she's at least somewhat socially aware, while she is going to assume right off the bat that you are an extremely desirable man. One, because the drawing in and opening process was conducted so seamlessly and effortlessly by you, and the less effort you put in while achieving greater results, the more attractive you seem (see "The Law of Least Effort"), and two, because she sat next to you at your nonverbal urging - she is effectively chasing you. Expect that if you pull this maneuver off, the girl you pull it off on is going to be heavily sold on you. One of the first times I re-implemented this successfully once I started actively training in meeting and seducing women (I went through a period where I shed all the things I formerly did to draw women in as I actively pursued women myself - good for learning, not so good for results), was with a very tall, slender, pretty girl in a nightclub whom I managed to get to position herself right next to me at the bar, three and a half or so years ago. I took her home that night. One of the last women I slept with before I left California earlier this year, similarly, I used this technique on while I was seated at the bar. She came over a few minutes later to order her drink next to me, and we went home together a half hour later. And how'd it go with that girl on the bus? She sat next to me, of course; despite there being plenty of open seats all around me. I casually engaged her about five seconds later, and fifteen or twenty minutes into our conversation she offered to come over to my place and cook me dinner this Sunday. Play around with your come hither eyes a bit. They might be a little tricky to get down; and I'd like to think I wrote a pretty clear description of what this looks like and how it goes, but I can see it still being a bit foggy if you haven't done this or can't think of what it looks like. So, hopefully you aren't, but if you're scratching your head a bit, maybe think of it this way: how might a woman use her eyes and smile to get you to go approach her without directly looking at you? Get that picture in your head - then just go do that to women yourself. Important note: come hither eyes will make women approach, but they will very seldom open. Partly this is because women simply don't open a whole lot; partly it's because they've already taken a big risk and really put themselves out there by approaching you, and feel they've given you an obvious sign they're interested and it's on you now to reciprocate. Regardless, the onus is on you to open. If you don't open, no matter if she crossed the room to come sit or stand next to you, you won't meet her. You must engage women - don't rely on them to do it for you because they won't. Putting themselves in your proximity for you to open is the best that 99% of them are able to do. Eyes that draw will get many girls to make the first move by positioning themselves near you; the rest, of course, is up to you.

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##Facial Hair and Badassedness After a long break from facial hair, I decided last fall to begin sporting some again. I hadn't had any since I'd shaved off my moustache and goatee back in 2004. This time though, at the end of 2009, I grew a chinstrap and a soul patch. And I noticed an immediate changed in the level of attraction I got from women. Asian girls from Asia, I noticed, apparently had preferred me clean-shaven, and their attraction for me went down a bit once I began sporting facial hair. But white girls, on the other hand - whoa. Dramatic increase in attraction there. My approach toward them hadn't changed. My style hadn't changed. My voice hadn't changed. But the level of attraction I got from them after growing a little facial hair - that changed over night. Since I was living in Southern California and most of the women I was meeting were white, I kept my facial hair on. It served me well there; I felt like I'd found the missing piece to generating the kind of initial attraction from women I'd always desired. Women weren't just warm toward me; they were outright aggressive at times. Later on in interactions, things seemed to go more smoothly and women challenged me less and went along with what I wanted them to do more. It made everything just a lot easier then it had been. Until, that is, I began traveling in Asia. I got over here, and didn't seem to be getting the kind of receptions I thought I should. Women were a bit more reserved around me and a bit aloof, and they'd challenge me continually to a degree throughout my interactions. I recalled noting how Asian girls had cooled off in their attitudes toward me in the States after I'd grown facial hair, and I shaved off my chinstrap and soul patch and went clean-shaven again. I went out a few nights later in Seoul, where women had been chilly toward me, and the third girl I talked to was pushing her body up against me and ready to go home with me minutes into meeting me. Her friends intervened, perhaps figuring it was too early in the night for her to be acting that way, but the next girl I met was almost as aggressive. I shaved my facial hair off, and overnight, the women I was meeting in Asia acted as warmly and aggressively toward me as the women I'd met in the States while I had my facial hair on. That got me thinking about things a little bit. Why would facial hair be a boon with American girls, but a bane with Asians? And was it a universal thing - or was it particular to me? I began looking at friends I know and their success at getting girls. And I noticed some really interesting trends: Skinny and overweight men in America seem to do best with women when they have "cool" facial hair Very fit, muscular men in America seem to do best with women when they're clean-shaven White men in Asia seem to do best with women when they're clean-shaven Asian men in Asia seem to do best with women when they have "cool" facial hair A full beard ("uncool" facial hair) seems to be a recipe for disaster in America, but not necessarily in Asia Stubble is rather sexy in America, and very sexy in Asia I stopped to think about this. Why are these things the way they are? And the conclusion I've kept coming back to is that facial hair has a huge impact on your level of badassedness. What do I mean? Think of a big, muscular guy in America. You look at him, and you know he's a badass. Now think of a big, muscular guy in America, and throw some facial hair on him. Now he's just scary and imposing. Too scary and imposing, in fact - he'll do better with women if he goes clean-shaven and lets his muscles do the talking about how badass he is, while his face appears more clean and boyish. Now think of a thin guy in America. You look at him, and he's just a thin, average, normal guy. Nothing overtly sexy about him in appearance; maybe he has a cool haircut, or is good at sexy facial expressions. But throw some cool facial hair on him, and suddenly he's a badass. Now women are drawn to him far more powerfully, far more instantaneously. This is why every white man I've met in the United States who was on the higher end of the spectrum of skill with women sports facial hair. Long hair has a similar effect, too - it's also quite common among the most successful lovers and seducers. But, now, come to Asia, and things get a bit more complicated. It doesn't take you long to hear about what badasses foreign men are perceived to be in Asia. If you look foreign, you're automatically mentally slotted into badboy territory here. Now, take a foreign guy, regardless his body size, and put some facial hair on him, and suddenly he's not just a badass - he's a very intimidating badass. Take that facial hair off though, and his boyish, disarming face offsets some of that badassedness. The flipside of that, though, is if the guy looks local. If he's an Asian in Asia. Then, the situation's reversed. Now he's an average, normal guy - just like a thin or an overweight man in America. What happens, do you think, if he grows some cool facial hair? That's right - the level of attraction he gets goes up. Cool facial hair makes a foreign guy look outright intimidating in Asia - he'll do far better without it; but it makes a local-looking guy edgy and sexy and dangerous. Take heed of these differences, and trim accordingly. If you have a square, more masculine jaw-line, sport a chinstrap to highlight that jaw-line and a soulpatch to balance it. If you have a softer, more feminine jaw-line, grow a moustache and goatee to add weight and length to your features. However you trim your facial hair, be mindful of cultural considerations, and be mindful of how you're coming off. I like to think of myself as a badboy with a heart of gold (or maybe silver… I'm not perfect), and I'm quite consistent in how I come off, but switching between facial hair or no facial hair made dramatic differences for me from the initial meets all the way through the interactions I had with just about every girl - and I'm certain it will affect your interactions similarly. Take a look at yourself, and take a look at the kind of women you're going for. Plan accordingly.

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##Find the Right Girl: What to Look for in a Potential Girlfriend We've been talking a lot about relationships on here recently - but so far, it's been more on how to have healthier relationships in your own right. But how should you go about selecting the girl you want to have a relationship with in the first place? As you might guess, your ability to find the right girl is enhanced significantly if you know exactly what you want her to be like. We've all heard a million times before that a ship without a rudder ends up on a reef… and that failing to plan is planning to fail… but are you really planning what kind of girl you want to attract into your life? Put down in writing the exact kind of girl you want to attract for your ideal relationship. Describe her in detail… her physical traits as well as her personality. What does her hair look like? What race is she? Does she have big breasts or is she super-slim? Is she educated and ambitious or sweet and homely? Write it all down… and add it to your daily affirmations. Whether you believe that the law of attraction is at work here, or whether you believe that goal setting isn't much more than programing the subconscious mind and the reticular activation system… either way, their effectiveness has been established over and over. You may have heard the old Yale survey that showed that the 5% of students who had written goals at the date of their graduation ended up having a higher net worth than the 95% of students who didn't COMBINED within 20 years of graduation. Well... it turns out that was just an urban legend and there never was such a study - BUT, there's still been plenty of research since then that has firmly shown the strong positive effect setting goals can have on actually achieving those goals (see: A meta-analytic study of the effects of goalsetting on task performance: 1966-1984, or Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey, to name just a few). In any case, I have some good news for you… the girl that is your EXACT type… the one you REALLY like out of all the beautiful women you'll come across day in and day out… is the one that is most likely to also REALLY like you back. I haven't seen any scientific studies about this yet, but I have made this experience time and again… my personal theory is that this happens because you both subconsciously realize you're an ideal genetic match for each other. THE PROCESS OF ELIMINATION If you're going to get into a serious relationship, the first step to find the right girl to do that with is to make sure you do your homework on whom you are, quite literally, getting in bed with… and you want to find this out early, before your emotions make you love blind to major flaws of hers. Once you're head over heels for a girl who seemed perfectly nice and normal on the first date, but who later turned out to secretly be a meth-smoking bipolar chick who sabotages every relationship because she doesn't believe she deserves to be loved, it might be a bit too late to rethink your selection… So find out EARLY. Here are a few questions that will give you a very DEEP look into her psyche very early on: Are her parents still married? This is not a make-or-break question, but many times people who come from a stable background tend to be more stable people later in life as well. What was her childhood like? Related to this question - did she have a happy childhood or did her mum drag her around the country, running away from her alcoholic father who beat her half to death while she was consoling herself with another unemployed, dead-beat "step-daddy" for her? Has she ever been abused? This is probably not a question you want to get into early on, and you may not want to ask her explicitly at all… at least not without treading very, very carefully. But girls who have been raped often make for complicated girlfriends, and there are certainly some warning signs… if she touches you a little bit too much when you first flirt with her, that's a common sign, for example. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it's something to keep in mind. Some statistics show that as much as 20-30% of girls have been sexually abused in some way. Does she have a healthy sense of deservingness? As I mentioned above… if she doesn't believe, deep down, that she deserves the best in life, she will unconsciously sabotage any good thing that happens to her… including her relationship with you. What is her relationship with her other family members, and ESPECIALLY with her father, like? We all get imprinted by the life we live back in the house we grew up in… and especially by the relationships and roles that were being played out at that time. For a woman, the most crucial relationship is the one she had with her father… that relationship will often define and be reflected in all relationships she has with other men later in life. You want a real "daddy's girl"… they make the best girlfriends. What's her self-image? Related to the point about deservingness - does she believe she's capable of great things? Does she have a positive or a negative self-image? Does she truly have high self-esteem, or does she just put on a front? Does she truly and deeply approve of herself, or does she need approval from others at every step of the way? Is she an honest person? As I said - whether or not her parents are still together is not necessarily a deal breaker. This one, however, is. You will never be able to have a healthy relationship with a person who's not honest with you. Communication is the basis for all relationships - even for short term hook-ups, but much more so for a more serious commitment… and without honesty, there can be no communication. If you find out that she has a dishonest streak, cut bait quickly. ‘Nuff said. Is she reliable? Related to the point about honesty - does she keep her word? When she says she'll do something, does she do it… or is she a girl who flakes? This may not seem like much, but chances are it will drive you up the wall in a relationship if you can't count on your partner… the ONE person you should be able to count on. What have her past relationships been like? This is obviously a big indicator for what her future relationships are going to be like (for example... the one with YOU)… because we all fall into patterns that we repeat over and over again without even being aware of it. The ones you really want to watch out for are girls who have been in abusive relationships before. Because while it's not always their fault, attracting (and especially, staying in) that kind of relationship is often a red flag for a lot more baggage underneath the surface. NOW GO FIND THE RIGHT GIRL… find the right girlAlright, you've found her and you've screened her… now read the article on "How to Get a Girlfriend" again to review some of the basic fundamentals about getting into a relationship. The most important lesson here is that you should never wait for it to happen… don't rely on "fate" to drop the perfect girl into your lap. I know some people believe in the fairy-tale of the right girl coming along at the right time, but in my experience, the guys who wait on that to find the right girl usually end up with some random homely looking girl that they eventually settle for because nothing better is coming around. The guys who end up with the hottest, sharpest and smartest girls and the best relationships are usually the ones who made a proactive effort to make that happen. I know for me, ALL of my best relationships started with me doing a cold approach pickup on a very hot girl whose path I would never have crossed by accident… …yup, every single last one of them. Sitting back and waiting on Cupid to do the job for me would have meant missing out on A LOT in my case… and the same seems to be true for just about everyone Chase or I have taught here through coaching, the programs, and the blog. HOW TO MAKE ANYONE FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU I guess technically speaking, Leil Lowndes probably has a copyright on that phrase as it's the title of one of her books… but it's not one of the books I recommend, so I won't even link to it here. (Hey - I only link to absolute MUST-READ books… and those you shouldn't miss out on. But Leil Lowndes you can give a miss in my opinion.) But is it really possible to make girls fall in love with you consistently? The answer is yes… and it's easier for us than it is for them. The reason is that women usually fall in love over time, and it happens to them with most men they are intimate with long enough and often enough. If you sleep with girls a couple of times per week and you do that for a few months, chances are girls you do this with will be VERY attached to you by the end of that time. However, you have to follow a few ground rules to make sure you won't mess it up… Keep being the guy she was attracted to in the first place. You see, most people think that once they're in a relationship, they "have" their partner and no longer need to make much of an effort to "conquer" them. This line of thinking is wrong for several reasons, the most important one being the following: When you're single, you're competing against a couple of capable players for all the beautiful women in the club. But when you're in a relationship, and especially if she's very beautiful, you're competing against every man on the planet for one single woman. Think about that… just because a girl has a boyfriend doesn't automatically make her "safe" from other interested parties and now you can rest. There are STILL men competing for her... and so long as she remains attractive and desirable to other men, there always will be! In that light, keep up the playfulness with her, the banter, the teasing, the seduction and the excitement as much as possible… keep her on her toes! This is what attracted her to you to begin with, so don't let up on those things. BE her best option. We've discussed the topic of value, both in the context of meeting women as well as in the context of dating and relationships, in previous articles (see: "What Do Girls Look For? Part I" and "What Do Girls Look For? Part II" ) - but in essence, you have to be her highest value option at all times if you expect to prevent cheating and hang onto her. That means… be socially proofed, be well connected, live an exciting and interesting lifestyle and make an identity for yourself. She will observe all of this, and admire you all the more… and so will other women, which will also serve to keep her on her toes. Most importantly, you have to be the kind of man who knows exactly what he wants out of life and goes after it… that is THE most important quality a "perfect ten" looks for in a man. Let me say that again… it's just too important to skip over. Being the kind of man who knows exactly what he wants out of life and goes after it is THE most important quality a "perfect ten" looks for in a man. Now read it once more… and then we can move on. :) See her how she wants to be seen. This is a two-way street… just like you want to be her highest value option, you also want to shine the brightest spotlight on her. That doesn't mean that you put women on pedestals - women resent the pedestal because they know they won't be able to live up to it, and because they don't want to feel like they're above you. However, she has an ideal image of herself… and if you can see her in that light, while also embracing her insecurities and helping her deal with them… you will have a girl that will adore you forever. Be a Yin and Yang Guy. As you know if you've been reading this blog for a while, a lot of men struggle with their dating lives because they are too feminine in the way they deal with women… They don't approach enough girls, they don't take the lead on a date and they generally act too "nice" and too submissively. On the other hand, you don't want to be an all-out "macho-man" either… you need a speck of yin in your yang. Women often find the man most attractive who has retained a little bit of his childlike side. He's a real man, but she can sometimes spot the boy he once was in his smile. Just like the white dot inside the black half of the yin-and-yang symbol, he has a SMALL but undeniable feminine element to himself. In fact, all the BEST players I've ever met were bisexual… how's that for a mind boggle? Guys who will go out and hook up with four new hot girls per week… maybe it's because their feminine side allows them to connect with women quickly and deeply enough to make them comfortable sleeping with them. WITH GREAT POWER… …comes great responsibility. I'll say it again… PLEASE do everybody a favor and only use these techniques when you find the right girl - in other words, with girls you are ABSOLUTELY serious about. If you do this right, girls WILL fall in love with you VERY consistently. find the right girl And if she's not a girl you want to be in a monogamous relationship with for a long time, you really don't want her to fall in love. Trust me… the last thing you want is a stalker or a clinger, and you DEFINITELY don't want slashed car tires. And if you're only after a casual relationship, there is also absolutely no need to make a girl fall in love with you. Women are much more open to that kind of arrangement than most guys realize… and the only reason why they would not be is because the communication that you're a sexual man in pursuit of a sexual relationship isn't clear. As long as you're being honest and up-front about your intentions, without lacking class and subtlety, chances are she'll be happy that she's found a guy she can just get laid with… and all without any of the usual strings that often come attached to that.

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##Game Openers That'll Get You Girls If you're keeping up on the latest in game openers, you're probably familiar with the now-canon advice to pay women a compliment when you approach them during the daytime… and, that actually works pretty well, sometimes. I've met and hooked up with a lot of beautiful girls that way … a sincere compliment during the daytime is often unexpected, and women admire the courage it takes to pull it off. Especially on a dead cold approach of a girl you've never met before - she will often be jealous. She might WISH she had that kind of courage, to be open enough to just meet strangers like that. That said, there are a few serious disadvantages to this approach, which is why I've stopped doing it almost altogether. Here, in no particular order, they are: You need to be in the right "head space" in order to deliver a compliment right and make it work. That's fine when you go out specifically to meet women, but it can be hard to do it right on these off-the-cuff approaches… on your way to work or while doing your shopping. Especially when you have a million other things on your mind. Even if you're extremely charming and good at winning girls over… running up to them with a compliment doesn't always give you enough time to do that. It screams: "I'm coming on to you", and forces her to make a decision about you ON THE SPOT, without ever having a chance to get to know your social graces. Not to say that a direct approach is bad… but there's a more refined way! Getting rejected on a compliment can be a real sting to the ego. If you open with anything else and she doesn't take the bait, that's one thing… but with compliments, you're basically walking around town telling everybody how great they are and half the people snub you off as if you were a bum who just asked them for a coin. Ouch… humiliating! RICARDUS'S PATENTED DAYTIME ICE-BREAKER So what's a guy to do? On the one hand, most girls are busy during the day… So there's rarely enough time for a more indirect approach in day game, and to let her get to know you a bit better before forcing her hand. On the other hand, going up directly with a compliment has a lot of drawbacks, and really reduces your success ratio. That makes for a tough choice among game openers. This catch-22 bothered me for years. In fact, there was a time when I decided to simply make this very dilemma INTO an opener. I went up to girls and asked them how they would like to be approached during the day. And that actually works, believe it or not. It's not as direct as opening with a compliment, but it's also not really indirect - your interest is implied. Or is it? It's still ambiguous, so she will often be curious what's going on. It's a social opener… and it works pretty well: "Hey… quick question… what do you think would be a good thing to say… to strike up a conversation in a train station… with somebody you're curious to meet?" Give it a try some time. You'll have some success with it if you do it right, and who knows, maybe a girl actually ends up giving you a useful opener! BE ARTFUL, GRACEFUL, MASTERFUL However, this approach will only feel authentic for a while. Once you've opened with this question a couple of dozen times, it will be hard to ask with genuine curiosity. And once it starts to feel fake to you, it will start feeling fake to the girls you approach as well. They can SMELL that sort of thing! There still had to be a better way than running up to a girl's house and kicking the door in, so to speak… something more subtle, elegant. It's called "Pickup ARTS", not "Hitting on Tons of Girls and Hoping Something Will Stick", after all. There had to be something that avoids the shock reaction and the auto-pilot rejection that a compliment often triggers… but without pussy-footing around and feigning disinterest. game openers NEGATIVE COMPLIANCE MOMENTUM The standard format that most guys use these days for approaching a girl with a compliment is: Pace - e.g. "I know this is really random", or "I just saw you walk down the street" Compliment - e.g. "I had to tell you that you're really cute", or "and you're absolutely beautiful" Showing Intent - e.g. "so I wanted to come talk to you", or "so I had to say hi." Again, this does work sometimes; I've done it a lot and successfully approached dozens and dozens of girls this way. But just because something works sometimes doesn't mean there isn't a better way. Let's take a closer look at the psychology of game openers like this: The pace is basically starting out with an apology The compliment proceeds to give all the man's power away - she has 100% control in this situation, to grace him with her acceptance, or to crush his advances and brush him off Showing intent gives away all the mystery, and ruins the challenge completely. Girls LOVE a challenge. No, asking what makes her special or whether she's really creative doesn't count, because if she's going to snub this approach, she will do so before you even get to this point. GAME OPENERS: A BETTER WAY I suggest you try this formula instead: Get Her Attention - e.g. "Excuse me", or "Hey!", or "Quick question!" - This breaks her internal dialogue, and gets her to focus on you - make sure you have her full attention before you continue. (Don't say "excuse me" unless you have to give her the false impression that you're going to ask her for directions, because she's in a rush.) Demand Compliance - e.g. "Are you single?", or "Are you married?" - This puts the pressure on HER, and completely shifts the power dynamic in your favor. As a colleague of ours says: "She realizes that she just lost ALL the power in the situation and she hasn't even gotten to talk yet." Answer Her - e.g. if she asks why you want to know, say "I'm just curious" and keep expecting more compliance from her… but more on this below. Why does this work? Doesn't this break every rule in the book? The answer is, she doesn't expect this question… and if you deliver it with the right confidence and strength, you'd be surprised how many women are totally thrown off. It keeps them on their toes, much more than a compliment does… and puts you in control of the approach. Say this in a very challenging tone - cock your head back a bit, and deliver it the way a bouncer would ask her if she's under age… or the way a cop would ask her if she stole that purse. If you speak from a place of authority, as if you absolutely EXPECTED total and complete compliance, you'd be surprised how many people simply go along with it. 4 POSSIBLE OUTCOMES You will usually get one of the following four responses: Yes No Why do you ask? She stutters and doesn't know what to say If it's the latter, you can just tell her that you'll take that as a yes, and then keep talking to her. If she says yes, she's single, you can definitely keep talking… and even if she says no, keep going. Girls often say no even though they really are single… if she stays to talk to you, she's curious! So no matter what she says, you can continue the conversation and win her over with your personality… where she might already have shut down a compliment long ago. And if she wants to know why you're asking, just tell her you're curious, as I mentioned above. Keep looking at her and expecting an answer… this is called a "vacuum" - it's a pregnant pause, an empty space in conversation that sucks people into talking. It packs a massive pull - use it in your favor! Or you could hint that you're really asking because a friend of yours might like her… you don't need to lie, but it can't hurt to be ambiguous. As a good exercise to overcome the fear of the approach, you might even want to ACTUALLY ask girls if they're single, with the intention of introducing them to a friend of yours - it will give you the emotional distance to approach completely nonchalantly. THROW HER A CURVEBALL! game openersThis approach really catches girls off-guard because it's the opposite of what they usually hear from guys. Most men see a beautiful girl and think: "Oh, she's probably got a boyfriend"… and so they don't even give it a shot. If they DO approach her despite that fear, they often ask that very question: "Do you have a boyfriend?" It sub communicates that they expect her to be taken… That they expect to be unsuccessful. "Are you single" is the opposite, and it's also something she hears very rarely - girls usually don't have an answer ready, it's a real curveball you can throw them! Where a pace is apologetic, this approach is cocky. Where a compliment gives your power away, this one is will challenge women. And where showing your intentions right away ruins all the mystery, this approach gets women very intrigued! And if you're not in the right head space because you're on your way to a meeting, the very wording of the opener FORCES you into a challenging mindset, into demanding compliance and being dominant… which, as we know, is attractive to women. DON'T BE REACTIVE! Many men who have never read a word off GirlsChase.com show interest in girls, even when the girls are showing DISinterest. She's being evasive, he pursues all the more. Guys who have a bit more experience have learned to calibrate their interest to the girl's - if she shows disinterest, so does he… and if she gives him signals that she likes him, he reciprocates as well. That's a bit better, but the problem with this approach is that it is reactive. You don't want to only respond to whatever she's doing… you want to take the lead. The advanced Casanova doesn't show interest simply because he notices that she's into him - he's not that easily won over. He will still TEST her and make her WORK for his attention. He will demand compliance. When you open without the false pretense of being disinterested in the girl, you operate under the assumption that she will be attracted to you… you should hence not show your attraction just yet, but demand compliance. AN APPROACH THAT JUST WORKS As I mentioned above, the classical complimentary approach can work really well during the day - especially if you do it right. Some key points on opening with the direct opener: Expect the approach to go well - visualize her responding positively before you even go in. Don't smile too much… you don't want to come across as seeking rapport or approval. Create some tension when you open. Don't make your opener sound too polished - if you've done too few approaches, you may come across as too nervous, whereas if you've done too many, you may sound rehearsed. Talk naturally, not in a scripted way. Focus on your VOICE. This is easily forgotten, but it's the 20% (the fundamentals) that get us 80% of the results… projecting a resonant, masculine voice with a lot of bass and spoken from the chest is part of those 20%. Make sure she sees you before you open. If you tap her on the shoulder from behind, your voice will come out of nowhere and she will be startled. I always make sure I enter their field of vision and be there for a second or two before I even turn to them and say anything. But when I stopped opening with compliments and started demanding compliance from girls off the bat, I suddenly started successfully seducing a lot of beautiful girls who weren't having ANY of it at first. Several times I was out with friends who later said they were SURE I was going to get blown out… just from some of the girls' obvious initial disinterest. But this modus operandi turned it around, ended up winning them over and led to solid interactions... and eventually, a lot more. A compliment opener would have meant game over from the start with these girls. WANT TO SEE AN EXAMPLE? Then let me suggest you go out and TEST all three openers! Approach 50 women and give them a compliment, ask another 50 if they're single, and ask yet another 50 how they want to be opened during the day. Once you have these 150 approaches under your belt, compare your data. Put it in a spread sheet if you want and make a graph, I don't care. The important thing is that you experiment with a few different styles of approaches and figure out what works best for YOU in the REAL WORLD. Are you still on the computer?

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##Genuine Interest Dynamite It's tough going direct -- which is to say, expressing genuine interest in a girl. It's tricky, it's risky, and it can sometimes elicit all the wrong kinds of reactions. But it's also the most potent, powerful way that you can begin a conversation with a girl and gives you the best chance of getting strong attraction, fast, from the very outset of the interaction. genuine interest If a guy's genuine interest opener sounds insincere -- if he doesn't really mean it and she can tell -- it'll fall flat on it's face. So always compliment her on something you geniunely like about her. For instance, if you see a girl with a killer sense of fashion, you walk up to her and say, "You know, I saw you sitting over here, and I just had to come tell you," pause, "that you have the most killer sense of style I have seen all day." Then introduce yourself. Basic genuine interest, right? If you're well-dressed, well-groomed, comfortable, confident, your body language is handled correctly, and you get in close -- get into her personal space; no orbiting out in the awkward-feeling "polite zone" that strangers usually hang out in upon first meeting each other -- you stand a good chance of getting a good reaction. But remember, there are always going to be women who will respond really well to this kind of approach, and others who may even act put off or annoyed by it. That's how it goes though -- you have to take your risks that some won't respond well in order to find the ones who'll respond really well. Here's a little dynamite, though, to take those response rates to the next level. These two things will make your genuine interest / direct openers open more consistently, and with bigger responses from girls accompanied with greater levels of attraction. Nose wrinkle, squint, and launch into a small smile. It sounds silly, but it's very powerful. In the part of the opener where you *pause* (see example above), you wrinkle your nose a little bit -- just like how you might if you were about to sneeze -- and you squint your eyes. As you do this, go from the sexy hint of a smile you were giving her before into a smile as if you were trying to contain a (small) laugh. It's a subconscious trigger for women that displays you're both socially savvy and comfortable opening her direct. A guy who's thinking she's out of his league will NOT do this. But a guy who's thinking, "Isn't she cute?" will. It's the same reaction you'd have to a puppy or a little kid doing something obnoxiously cute. "Awwwwwww, that's adorable!" Slow-spreading smile. I know I've written about the slow-spreading smile before, though I don't think I have it up here on Girls Chase. So here it is, summed up: a smile that spreads slowly across your face, growing larger and larger, and ultimately terminates in a smile that looks like you're just about to crack up laughing. Your mouth should be closed (closed-mouth smiles are sexier than open mouth smiles, by the way); your eyes will squint naturally. When done right, 99% of women will smile with you. It's almost impossible for a gal to not smile. I'm trying to think of specific examples... you've no doubt seen it in movies. Think of a guy looking at a woman who's staring back at him seriously, and a slow smile begins spreading across his face until he looks like he's going to erupt in laughter. What happens? Suddenly, a HUGE smile bursts onto the face of the woman in question, and she may even laugh herself to relieve some of tension. And she feels good. When you combine these two with genuine interest, you give yourself a higher opening percentage with it, and the girls who open well will hook harder and be more into you from the start, because you've displayed attractive traits and you've made them smile with you. They're a couple of easy, surefire means of taking the most powerful way to approach a new woman and make it even more powerful. It's dynamite for your direct openers. So get out there and start blowing stuff up!

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##Get a Girl Alone Today with These 7 Tips Tell me if you've ever been here: You've met a girl, and you really like her, and you can tell she really likes you, and maybe you even keep running into each other, and you really like each other every time you do and it never fades away... but for the life of you, you just can't ever get her alone with you! get a girl alone I know I ran into this plenty when I was cutting my teeth with women and dating - this maddening inability to get a girl alone. You end up feeling like the unluckiest man alive... so many women who like me! you think. But so impossible to ever get together with any of because I can't ever get them alone! Today I'm going to give you 7 easy-to-use tips that are going to help you start getting girls alone with you right away. These are strategies you can use wherever you meet women - be that at bars, parties, shopping malls, the street, classrooms, or even at work. You'll have to vary them up a bit depending on the environment you're in and where you know a girl from - but the point is, now you can do it. And you won't have to spend another moment going crazy inside because you can't get a girl alone. Step inside my tent and allow me to reveal these mysteries to you... GIRLS ARE JUST AS FRUSTRATED... BUT THEY KNOW WHOM TO BLAME You see that girl you like, and she likes you too, and there's that magic spark between you, but... it just never happens. The two of you never get any privacy, and nothing ever develops. Guess what? Chances are, if that "spark" is really there, you're not the only one who's frustrated and annoyed - she is too! Women get just as frustrated at nothing happening with them and a guy they like as men do at nothing happening with them and a girl they like. Especially if the girl thinks that maybe this guy is "fate" for her or "destiny" (and pretty much every single woman on Earth believes in fate and destiny, in my experience), but then fate and destiny never bring them together. Just like you, women go home and curse the gods and wonder why oh why they can never seem to get that guy they really like. But unlike men, women have another tendency that springs out of this frustration with not being able to get together with someone they like... ... they blame YOU! That's right; if you never get a girl alone, and she wanted it as much as you did, she doesn't blame anyone else but you, and right she should. As discussed in the post on why most men can't get a girl, the thing standing in the way of most men isn't the lack of looks, or the lack of a giant bank account, or the lack of a great job or flashy car. Plenty of men throughout history have succeeded with beautiful, amazing women without any of those things (although they do help). What impedes the success of most men isn't any of those - it's lack of action! How many millions of dollars does a couch potato who spends his days watching TV movie marathons on cable and his nights playing massive multiplayer online games in the guise of an elf make? Zero, right? Is that because he's dumb? Talentless? Not cut out for business? No. He might be those things right now, but they're not what are holding him back - he could train himself up and get smart, talented, and armed with a razor-sharp business savvy. What's really holding him back from becoming the next Silicon Valley success story is lack of action - the same thing that holds most men back from becoming dating success stories. And women know this. And every time you fail to get a girl alone who likes you, she chalks it up to you being just another dating world couch potato and moves on. She doesn't think about it exactly like this. She essentially can have one of several different thoughts about you and/or the situation: "I guess he just doesn't really like me. Okay, who needs him?" This is where you've moved too slowly and the girl thinks it's because you actually don't like her or are playing games with her (which would also mean you don't actually like her all that much). She goes into auto-rejection, writes you off, and looks for a guy who does actually like her, instead. "I guess it just isn't meant to be. Okay, well it's good I avoided that." Other times women will think that destiny has prevented them from ending up with a man who isn't a good fit. They then write the guy off forever ("If he was really the right guy, we'd have gotten together by now") and move on in search of a more suitable partner. "I can't wait for him forever; too bad. I have too many great options!" This is the thought of a girl who kind of liked you, but who also has a lot of choice with men. Or she may not even think anything at all; she might just forget she ever had a crush on you and be on to the next man. Either way, she's gone, and you're back to square one. This again highlights the need to move faster with women; you don't move fast, you get left eating other men's dust (the faster moving men, that is). And the biggest component of moving faster? Taking action. But how do you take action to get a girl alone with you when you're in a crowded place or a social situation? We'll tackle that question next - but before we do, I want to review a few important considerations first. YES, CONSIDERATE MEN DO DO BETTER WITH WOMEN get a girl aloneBy considerate, of course, we mean considerate toward what women actually need... not considerate as in being a namby-pamby nice guy pushover. Nice guys buy gifts for women, give them excessive compliments, and put them on pedestals. Truly considerate men realize that garbage drives women NUTS. Instead, truly considerate men give women what they really want: intrigue... curiosity... an exciting experience... a taste of adventure... the thrill of seduction... and discretion, privacy, and the upholding of her reputation. A nice guy wants to be around a woman and get EVERYONE to see it. He's marking his territory. And because of this, he FORCES a woman to move at glacial speed with him... if they get together, everybody's going to know it. So she can't take any risks here whatsoever. One mistake, and her reputation is in free fall. A truly considerate man gives a woman space, discretion, and is largely uninvolved in her affairs... he makes it easy and risk-free for her to get together with him. She knows that if they become lovers, he can be her secret lover if she so chooses... and this gives her time to figure out how she feels about him without the pressure of her social circle. Do you get the point we're driving at here? "Nice guys" are, in actuality, not nice at all... they're not considerate of a woman's true emotions, they refuse to give her space and breathing room, and all they do is put pressure on women, all the time. Even when they're trying to act like they're NOT giving her pressure... they're laden with expectations about how things ought to go, and women sense this a mile away. It's burdensome. Meanwhile, the sexy men that society usually labels as the "bad guys" actually give women what they want... which is why women keep picking them, and they keep getting girls. Women have a number of concerns about being seen to go off together with a man, and if you want to get girls alone with any measure of consistency, you need to be very attuned to this and help them manage it. The man who adroitly circumscribes problems that can impeded him and a girl getting together and helps women to circumscribe them is the one who most frequently ends up together with the women he likes. Here's a list of the top problems a woman commonly runs into when she's thinking about dashing off into the night with that charming rogue she likes (you): What will her friends think? Will they think she's easy for getting together with you? Or will they be disgusted at her choice of you, and she'll lose face among her circle? This is a very real risk for most women. Will people assume it's serious? This point is related to the last one, in that the people around her are going to make a judgment call based on how serious they think you are about her. The more serious they think you are, the bigger a deal they're going to make it, and the more of a headache she's going to have later dealing with gossip and speculation. Will you assume it's serious? If a woman's hooking up with you quickly - and oftentimes, if she's hooking up with you at all outside of a traditional dating context - she's not thinking of it as a serious affair. Really, she's not. And if she thinks you are... she knows she's going to have some heavy trouble on her hands real soon if she goes off with you. Will people think she's easy? Again, this is related to the first point, and what the friends think of you. If she hooks up with you and you're just a regular guy, they're going to assume she's pretty easy - if some Regular Joe can get her, anyone can get her! Will you think she's easy? Suddenly there she is, alone with this guy she's just met, and it's just the two of you there... what do you think about her? Do you think less of her because she's giving it up to you so quickly? Women are aware that many men don't respect women who sleep with them too fast, and they do not want to get together with a man who'll think poorly of them for it. Will she look unserious / unprofessional? This is mainly a concern in the classroom or in the office, but it can come into play during social outings when a woman's out with classmates or coworkers, too. Women are merciless gossips, and there's nothing they like dishing on more than that girl who's hooking up with guys in class / the next cubicle over. Are you going to go all the way? There's nothing a woman hates more than a fake-out. She may not know when she's leaving with you whether she wants to sleep with you or not (or she may have already decided she will), but the last thing she wants is to leave with you, decide she wants you to sleep with her, and then... you fail to deliver. You don't do the deed. Believe it or not, there are plenty of men out there who take girls home and then don't sleep with them, and women really, really don't want to risk the disappointment of ending up in the cold, passionless bed of one of those men. Now, a note here: not every woman is going to have every one of these fears or concerns. Some might have all; some might just have some of them. A few (a very rare few) will have none of them. But you are never going to know which girl has what fears until you know her a lot better than you will ever know her prior to sleeping with her... or perhaps ever. A woman's not going to tell you whether she's mortally afraid of her reputation getting assassinated by her friends if she goes home with the wrong guy or not, and she won't give you any signals (aside from nervousness and hesitancy, but you'll only see these if you're already doing things wrong with her). So, while a woman may not necessarily have every one of these concerns, approach each woman as if she comes equipped with all of them. That's the best way for you to maximize your odds of getting a girl alone when you like her; by dotting all the "i"s and crossing all the "t"s. Now let's talk about how you dot those "i"s and cross those "t"s. GET A GIRL ALONE: 7 VITAL TIPS I'm going to go back through that list of fears and concerns we just went through, and this time instead of explaining what each of them is, I'm going to fit you with a strategy to use to combat those fears or avoid them altogether, so you can get a girl alone whenever you feel like it (instead of only when you get lucky). Let's proceed. What will her friends think? Here's a truth you might be surprised by: most friends are fine with their girlfriend hooking up with a guy... if the guy is sexy enough! Basically, if her girlfriends would hook up with you in a heartbeat, they're not going to judge her an ounce for hooking up with you either. This is another reason why it's so important to be a sexual man with a sexy vibe. You clear so many birds with a single stone by being sexy it's a wonder more men don't get resolved and get this down. Will people assume it's serious? If you've been hanging around her a lot... putting a lot of time and effort into things with her... hanging out with her friends excessively... if it seems like you really, really want to get with her... her friends are going to assume that if the two of you get together, it's SERIOUS! This makes it a big deal, and means they'll put the pressure on her, and she doesn't want that. If you haven't already done so, read "The Secret to Hooking Up with Friends." You must remain on the periphery of her attention and her circle, until you're ready to "strike." Will you assume it's serious? Again, if you've been chasing after her for a long time, investing a lot of time and attention into trying to make headway with her, and otherwise breaking a mighty sweat trying to make her yours, she's going to assume you're really serious about her. That means a messy situation if she decides she doesn't want something really serious with you... and for her, it's too early to tell that. Solution? Mind the Law of Least Effort and sprezzatura, and make sure she's investing more time, energy, and effort into things than you are. get a girl alone Will people think she's easy? This is another place where being sexy does all the hard work for you. If you're a man that NO woman could resist, surely no one will begrudge HER for not being able to resist you, right? The sexier you are, the more permission women will give themselves to get together with you... so get sexy! The other consideration here is that you want to make things as discreet as possible for her... obviously, you wouldn't ask her to come home with you right in front of her friends, but you've got to be very attuned to her circumstances and not push her or rush her or ask her or say or do anything revealing in front of people who know her. Make your intentions clear - that you want to invite her home - then let her handle the logistics with her friends. If she likes you, and she wants to be alone with you, she'll have a much better clue how to get herself out of there discreetly than you will. Will you think she's easy? This is mainly related to screening and qualifying women. If a woman feels properly screened / qualified - e.g., if she feels like you're genuine a choosy guy and that you've found out some important stuff about her and give her the stamp of approval - this won't be a problem. It's only if she's afraid you know nothing about her that a fear of you thinking she's easy surfaces. In addition to regular screening and qualifying, you can employ deep diving here to get to know a lot about her in a hurry and make her feel qualified by default (if you do a good job getting to know all about her, that is). Will she look unserious / unprofessional? This one's a very valid concern in a classroom or professional setting. Unless you're in a very small school or a very small office, you're probably (probably) not going to get a girl alone with you somewhere at school or work (don't let me stop you from trying though, if you think you can sort out the logistics of it!). For that reason, point 6 here ends up being similar to point 2 - if people around you have picked up on the flirting, banter, and small talk, they're going to know the two of you have a thing for each other... which makes it serious. Women will frequently shy away from something serious happening at school or at work, because of the effect it can have on them there if things blow up in their faces. So don't spend too much time flirting or bantering - if you like a girl in class or at work, get a phone number from her as soon as you meet her, so you can meet up with her later, alone... without the prying eyes of classmates or coworkers. Then be very neutral with her in class / at work. Don't let people see that there's something going on there (lest you want the kind of pressure put on you that can very well derail you from getting a girl in bed you like). Are you going to go all the way? Yet again, we circle back to being a sexy, sensual man as a crucial determinant of your ability to get a girl alone with you. If you're sexy, women will simply assume you'll go all the way with them. If you're not that sexy yet, you need to do your best to make it clear from your verbal dialogue with them that you're a guy who puts out, so use chase framing liberally... but there's no real substitute for a sexual vibe, so make sure you get that handled. The less sexy a man is, the less confident a girl will be that he'll deliver the goods; the more sexy he is, the more confident she is that he'll get her what she wants and the less she'll spend time fretting about this or wavering on whether to go somewhere alone with him. If you follow these 7 tips, you'll be able to disarm or sidestep women's fears and concerns and be able to get a girl alone with you almost on command. Work on your sexiness, work on being considerate about what really matters to women (not what nice guys think matters), and work on not putting too much effort into a girl until you're ready to make a move and take her as yours. Oh, and, of course, work on making yourself into the kind of guy that her friends will say, "Well of COURSE she hooked up with him - I would've done the same exact thing!" At that point, you'll have more women dragging you off to go be somewhere alone together than you'll be able to beat off with a stick... and that's a wonderful position to be in.

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##Get Girls Chasing: Give a Little to Get a Lot For use with girls who like you a good deal. So, anyone who's been following my writing recently knows I've been talking a lot about chase frames lately. Along with speed, persistence, and understatement, chase frames are one of the things I'm quite big on these days. In fleshing out the right description of how chase frames work though, there was one detail I neglected to mention in that first post on them linked to above; namely, that to get a girl to chase, you usually need to give her a little bit first. get girls chasing Think about it like this. You walk into a bar and go sit down and order your drink. A pretty girl walks in and sits down two seats away from you. How do you get her to start investing in you and pursuing you? You can't do it by sitting there taking no action at all. The chance that she makes the first move to interact with you on her own is negligible. Which means, you're going to be the one responsible for the first initial push in the interaction. You need to give her a little first. You need to give the crank that starts the engine of seduction. Fish don't catch themselves; you have to bait the hook and throw it in the water. Only then, when you've given a little bit, will you begin to get something back. In chase framing, our ultimate goal is to get women doing two things: investing, and expressing interest. Not too complicated, right? That's simple enough. The only part about chase framing that gets a little bit more involved is that we want to encourage women to invest and to express interest more-or-less proactively in response to our actions to them. We want women reacting to us, and we want them reacting in the best way they can possibly react: by trying to get together with us. If you're familiar with the concept of attainability though, you know that the higher your apparent value becomes relative to the woman you're speaking with, the lower your attainability becomes as well. So, she starts seeing you as increasingly higher in value, but simultaneously begins seeing you as increasingly less attainable. You become too unattainable, and she gives up, resents you for seemingly being too good for her, and leaves feeling angry and frustrated. It's possible too to have less extreme versions of these attainability problems. For instance, you may find yourself talking to a woman continues to engage you in conversation, but she seems closed off and reserved, or cold and aloof. Why? Well, usually it's not because you're lacking in value, as most men tend to assume is the case; usually, rather, it's because you're lacking in attainability. Either she thinks you're too high value, or she doesn't feel like she relates to you or you relate to her; regardless which one it is, the result is the same: attainability is on the lower end, and while she may continue speaking with you out of some degree of attraction or interest, it's nothing like what it could be if you did a little bit better job managing attainability. That's where the "give a little" mentality comes into play. We want to give women a little bit, so they feel more warmly towards us, and making efforts to invest in and pursue us feel as though they have a reasonable chance of success - of helping these women to "get" us, and win us over. So, one example I used recently when discussing this with a friend (which in fact prompted this post), was of a man who wanted to engage a woman he knew liked him, but was presently engaged in conversation with another man. My friend was momentarily stumped on how to solve that puzzle; my solution for him looked like this: What do you know? You know that she likes you, and that chances are you're a cooler person and have more going on for you than anyone else she's met or will meet tonight… and she knows it. But she doesn't feel confident enough to let everything else go and chase after you. What if you spurn her or ignore her, and she looks like a fool? So instead, you need to show her that you're interested, and that she has a shot at getting what she wants (which, in this case, is you). So, to give her a little, you walk by as she's speaking with her present suitor, put your hand on her arm to call her attention, and tell her, "Hey babe; don't want to interrupt. I'm going to go grab a seat over there; come join me for a little when you're done talking here." What that does for you is, well, quite a lot, in fact. It does the following things: It shows your girl that you're interested It shows her you're patient and not intimidated or going to overreact to her speaking with other men or other people It shows her you're confident - you don't mind interrupting her conversation briefly to let her know you'd like to talk to her It states the assumption that of course her interaction with this other man will conclude, and she should come find you when it does In addition to that, it places social pressure on her to conclude the interaction with that man sooner - she has someone waiting on her, and in addition to that, you are most likely a man she values more than the one she's just met When she does come to see you, she's complying with what you asked her to do, and giving you a good deal of investment By approaching you, she's also chasing you, and thus pursuing So quite a lot there. All because you took three seconds to stop by her and tell her to come join you. Kinda cool, no? You can use this all kinds of places. I use it pretty darn often - I like telling girls to come by and see me when I'm around them, or telling them to drop me a line to set something up when they get some free time. It's powerful to let a woman know you're interested, and then put the ball in her court. If you've done a good job of attracting her, she'll take the next step - and when she does, she's begun to chase you. So one more example of when I'll use this. After attempting to schedule a meet up with a girl, and her telling me she's busy for a few days, I'll tell her this: Okay, no problem. Tell you what, just let me know when you're free and we'll set it up. The ones who are very interested in you will take charge of this and let you know when they're free. Even a lot of the ones who are still making up their minds about how they feel about you will make an effort to schedule something. And what happens is, the woman becomes the one seeking to set up and coordinate the date. Because you put the ball in her court, you make her the pursuer when she later reaches out to you and tells you she's free to see you. Just like the first example, she's complying and investing by doing as you instructed her, and she's pursuing a date with you. Chase Frames 101: give a little to get a lot. Neither of these examples - nor any you'll use in your life day-to-day - are all that difficult to pull off. But they go a looong way. If you're not using the principle of "give a little to get a lot" (as opposed to the more mainstream seduction principle, and certainly the one that I used to hold, of "give nothing until you've received enough to justify giving"; or perhaps described as the "get a lot to give a little" approach), you should be. Start using it the next time you meet a girl who is interested in you but clearly needs to be chasing more. Give her a little, and get a lot in return.

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##Get Rock-Solid Frame Control with the Women You Like, Guaranteed Frame control is an incredibly necessary thing for you to master, both internally and externally, for finding success with women. Guys that have it get their way with girls. Guy who don't get steamrolled by girls. You see it go both ways every day. If it feels like an intangible topic, it isn't. Rather than going into specific definitions (we'll get into that in a bit), let me give you some examples of what we're talking about. A guy's got control of the frame when he: Gets a girl who's hemming and hawing to stop doing that and come with him Takes a girl who's trying to act coy and aloof and excites and intrigues her enough to make her chase him Nimbly deflects jealous friends trying to derail or interfere with his progress with their cute friend Shrugs off women's attempts to throw him off-balance, by being overtly sexual or overly rude, and remains calm, in control, and attractive On the other hand, a guy's relinquished control of the frame when he: Buckles to a woman's insistent demands Revokes his request for a woman to comply with his desires before she's done so Allows others to interrupt or derail him Gets flustered and off-balanced by a woman's tests The average woman tends to be much more talented at frame control than the average man. And here's why that's not good for the average man: Frame control is how you lead decisively, remain calm and attractive, and above all, get what you want. If you aren't able to control the frame, you aren't able to get what you want with women, and women don't want men who can't get what they want. It's a cruel world, but without frame control, women will push and push a man -- right up until they push him out of contention for them. WHAT ARE "FRAMES?" Wikipedia defines a frame (as used in the social sciences) as "... a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events." In other words, a frame is a way of seeing the world. If you're a tattoo artist, you may have the frame that you are the most talented tattoo artist in the world. You don't just ink people... you create works of art. That's a frame. That's a way of seeing things and interpreting the world. What happens every day in your life, however, is that your frames are constantly encountering the frames of others -- and, like survival of the fittest, the strongest frame usually wins the day. The rawest example might be two guys who meet in the street, each thinking he's bigger and badder than the other. The two of them posture, stare each other down, and growl a bit. Finally, one of them gives in and walks away. His frame just broke to the other man's. The man who lost walks away defeated, his frame broken. The man who won gets to keep his frame intact, and all feels right with the world. Another example might be a girl telling you she doesn't sleep with a man on the first date. She keeps telling you this; you keep pushing for the close. Eventually, one of your frames will break; either you'll give up trying to sleep with her on the first date (your frame breaks), or she'll give up trying to wait and she'll sleep with you (her frame breaks). In the pick up community, these encounters are called "frame battles;" I prefer to call them "frame encounters." The term "battle" paints situations like this as inherently confrontational -- one of the major problems with general pick up community dogma (most of it treats seduction as an adversarial relationship with a woman, when in fact it functions much better when treated as a cooperative enterprise where you and a woman seduce one another together). So for the purposes of this post, I'll be talking about frame encounters -- how you should act in them, what you can expect to happen, and how you can retain frame control and have things work out, for both you and the girl. UNDERSTANDING FRAME ENCOUNTERS Why do frames clash? Well, in fact, it's usually because of differing expectations among the parties involved. Here's what I mean: A woman thinks you'd make an excellent boyfriend, only for you to start moving faster than she'd expect a boyfriend candidate would or should You've had a great but friendly and platonic conversation or even relationship with a girl, then suddenly try and take things romantic or sexual A girl you've been seeing casually views you as purely a casual lover, but then you begin acting possessive toward her and treating her like a jealous boyfriend would Expectations strongly influence frames. The problem that most guys run into, then, is that the expectations they set do not match the actions they later take -- prompting frame encounters. Here's a typical scenario: Let's say Chuck meets Lindsay, a really cute girl, at a party one night. Chuck likes Lindsay a lot, but he isn't sure the right things to do, so he keeps things friendly and neutral so as not to scare Lindsay off. Consequently, Lindsay comes to view Chuck as just a friend, and comes to expect him to act as such. But Chuck grows bolder, and as time passes he begins trying to push for things. He asks Lindsay to meet up with him for dinner; Lindsay politely declines and suggests they do something together with friends. Then, Chuck gets a little too drunk at the next party, and he tries to get Lindsay to give him a kiss. "But we're friends!" Lindsay exclaims. Chuck can't believe it; how can she only think of him as just a friend? That's the kind of thing the pick up community would refer to a frame battle, but it's actually just an encounter of different frames based on different expectations resulting from a lack of proper expectation setting from the beginning. Chuck set the wrong expectations with Lindsay from the start, so she came to view him in a way that was different than how he thought she should view him. Then, when he tried to act along the way he actually felt -- and the way he thought she should view him -- what he found was that she pushed back against this, not feeling the same way or thinking he should act the way he was at all. Frame differences therefore don't come, too often, from irreconcilable differences between the sexes; they most often come from a failure to properly communicate the right expectations from the outset. frame control FRAME CONTROL AND EXPECTATIONS If I told you I was going to tell you how to become a business owner and make all the money of your dreams for just $20, and you agreed, and then I said, "Okay. Now if you'll just give me my $50, we can get started," you'd balk and tell me, rightly, that we agreed to $20. Now, had I told you it was going to be $50 from the outset, it probably wouldn't have been a problem -- you like me, and you trust I can teach you how to make a lot of money, and that's certainly worth a paltry $50 -- or you would have at least asked yourself if you were willing to spend $50 to learn how to make all the money of your dreams. It's when those expectations got shifted on you that you pushed back. At that point, you're either going to refuse to pay $50, and I give you those secrets for $20, and your frame emerges victorious in the encounter; you're going to concede and pay the $50, and my frame wins; or neither of us will budge and we'll each go our separate ways without money or secrets changing hands. But, here's the thing: the outcome that you simply pay the $50 is going to be far, far higher the vast majority of the time if I just tell you the price I want from beginning and don't try changing it to something else later. There ends up being two sides to frame control: Your degree of proper expectation setting Her degree of understanding expectations You will sometimes meet people who are, either through inexperience or through having their heads in the clouds or through sheer force of will, no matter how well you set expectations from the outset, still going to try and funnel you into a certain category. That's like the girl desperate for a boyfriend who expects that every man who talks to her -- no matter how clear he is about not being relationship material -- is a potential white knight come to save her from singledom, or the man in a similar position who believes that every attractive woman who bats an eyelash at him is a potential soul mate. Those are the people who are far to the extreme on #2. You can't do much to control these people's expectations; you've just got to be very good at frame control (more on that below). But, for the majority of people, if you do a good job with #1 you'll have far fewer frame encounters because you'll both be on the same page. This is why you'll notice that skilled seducers make it very clear what they're about to women very early on -- they come across highly sexual, with a high value and demand on their time, and sometimes gentle but always quite firm. They don't want women thinking they're like other men who're going to wait around and chase women forever in the firm hope that something -- anything -- might happen. They're a valued commodity, and they'll be gone if things don't go the way they expect them to. Because of this, women know what they're about, and they either go along with it, knowing full well the price of admission (the person who agrees to pay $50 from the outset), or they walk away, not being interested in the offer (the person who thinks $50 is too steep a price for a lifetime of boundless financial resources). Thing is, when you're attractive and sexy and you're upfront about what you've got to offer, there are a lot of women who won't want to walk away. That's how you minimize frame encounters, and how you minimize the work you have to do to move a seduction forward; by focusing on setting the right expectations from the outset with things like: Opening direct Being a sexy man with a sexual vibe Using things like chase framing to set the right tone Qualifying women properly early on That sets the frame that you're a sexual, confident man who's screening her hard; if she sticks around, she's automatically accepted your frame. That's why setting the right expectations from the beginning is so powerful. Otherwise, she'll decide on her own frame, which, if you were moving slowly and acting platonic, isn't going to be the frame you want her to have you in at all. USING FRAME CONTROL TO CHANGE MINDS frame controlEarly on though, you're likely going to be having one frame encounter after another, because you haven't learned yet how to properly set the right frames and expectations from the outset, and because you'll be making mistakes and predisposing women toward setting different frames about you than would be ideal. For instance, the guy who's too much of a nice guy is going to find that trying anything romantic or sexual with a girl is going to lead to a frame encounter. It isn't how girls see him, and he'll have his work cut out for him any time he tries to break out of that box. Some examples include: "I like you, Frank... but as a friend." "I couldn't date you, Tim -- it'd be weird! You're like my brother!" "Wait... why do you want to hang out just us?" On the other hand, the guy who's too much of a bad boy is going to find that women are distrustful of him and may at times not go to bed with him as quickly as he'd like or not want to engage in a relationship with him because he feels unsafe -- and any attempt by him to seem a little safe leads to a frame encounter. Some examples include: "Ray, you're fun, but you're all about sex and I need something real." "I really like being with you, Chris, but we can't do this forever." "Sorry, you're not my type. You're just too wild for me." For either of these guys, it's too late to go back and set expectations properly. That means, they're going to have to do some fire fighting. It's always much better to not have to fight fires in the first place -- that's setting expectations properly. Proportionate to the time you invest in perfecting it, you'll get so many more returns out of working on coming across the right way than you will out of learning how to fix things when you've mucked up. But you'll still muck it up here and there, no matter how good at expectation setting you get, so ultimately, you'll have to know this. So here's how you use frame control to change women's minds: Getting Investment and Moving Things Forward This is for generally getting investment from women and moving the interaction forward with them -- even when they push back and give you a little resistance. Know what you want to accomplish. One of the principle places most men falter in frame control is not knowing what, exactly, it is they're trying to accomplish. It's like the guy who asks a girl to dance with him, and she declines; why was he asking her to dance? If he doesn't know, he isn't going to have any idea how to push for it properly or how to sell her on dancing with him. Know why you want to do something -- is it to cheer her up? To move things forward with her? To get to know her better? You need to know the "why" behind your actions before you can do anything else. Communicate to her what you want to accomplish. When she pushes back, that's because in her frame the thing that you're attempting to do doesn't make sense. So, you need to show her why it does. You might say something like: • "Come with me; I'm going to cheer you up." • "Let's go; we're heading somewhere quieter so we can talk." • "You do want to go out with me, because you'll genuinely enjoy it. Come." By helping her to understand that complying with you will lead her toward something good and positive that she will value, you make it much more likely that she'll consent. Back off fast and casual, or persist to the end. When you try and get a girl to invest, or try to move things forward with her, and she resists and you have a frame encounter, you need to decided right away if you're going to casually brush it off, or if you're going to persist to the bitter end. You can't halfway persist -- you can't ask her a few times, then give up, then go back to just hanging out with her, because she out-framed you and now views herself as more dominant than you are (murder for attraction). You've got to either ask once, then casually drop it and get another form of investment that's just caught your attention or that you just remembered to ask her about (ideally cutting off her decline in the middle), or you've got to persist until she agrees or you give up and walk away. An example of each: Rapid back off and diverting to alternate investment: Guy: Let's grab a drink at the bar. Gal: I'm not a drinker. I just- Guy: Wait, I almost forgot. You were going to show me your new phone? Persist to the end: Guy: Let's grab a drink at the bar. Gal: I'm not a drinker I just- Guy: All right, I'm going to get a drink, and you can come with me and talk. Gal: I'm fine right here. Guy: You'll be more fine if we're hanging out and talking. Let's go. Needless to say, the guy comes off a lot stronger in the second example, so you should always trend toward persisting whenever possible. Only back off if you sense it's an absolute lost cause from the very beginning (in which case, it'd have been better had you not asked, however). Do NOT bring up the frame encounter. Regardless whose frame took precedence. If hers won, she'll feel dominant over you and attraction declines. If yours won, she'll feel beaten and want to slink off and lick her wounds. Once you've gotten her to comply with your wishes, leave it alone and never bring it up again. Reward her. Make sure she feels extra good for complying with you. That doesn't mean rub it in -- resist the urge to ask her if she isn't glad now that she went with you (violates #4 above). Instead, just focus on her a lot more, deep dive her well and build a strong emotional connection, and be physically closer to her and more affectionate. She should feel like complying with you has moved things forward -- which it has. Don't ask for too much for no reason. I almost didn't include this one, because I don't want guys saying, "Well, I don't want to invite her home, because maybe that'd be asking for too much," -- no. I don't mean "fail to get the girl so as not to ask for too much," I mean don't ask her to put in large amounts of effort with little incentive. So, if she isn't in a dancing mood, don't bust your butt trying to get her on the dance floor, because it doesn't really move the interaction forward much (best thing it does for you is up her investment a bit for doing something she didn't want to do just because you asked -- but if she isn't heavily rewarded for that, you risk auto-rejection). And if she isn't a walker, don't ask for her to go for a walk around the block with you when you met her in a coffee shop (instead, chill at the coffee shop a while, then take her home or grab her phone number and arrange to meet her later). Basically, avoid anything where a girl's wondering, "What's the point? Why am I wasting my time doing this?" unless you have a very good reason for it. This goes back to #1 -- know what you want to accomplish. Frame control can work wonders for getting what you want. Basically, for frame control where you're putting yourself out there to get a girl to do or say something, you typically want the right expectations from the outset, and you typically want to persist and make sure she feels rewarded for complying afterward. Deflecting Active Frame Control Attempts For frame control where the girl's putting herself out there to test you, just toss it back to her. You can answer any testing / frame control style question with, "What makes you say that?" or "Why do you think so?" or "Why so interested?" and now she's backpedaling and qualifying her test. And you don't even ever have to respond -- a thoughtful "Hmm," or an intriguing, "I suppose, if you say so then..." to whatever she says after you put the spotlight back on her is going to end the topic almost every time. There's one other variation of frame control, of, "Whose opinion is correct?" The rules for this variation are slightly different, and I'll detail them below. Sometimes you'll find yourself in a discussion where both you and a girl are insisting you're each right. For instance, she might be saying that she thinks it's unfair for men to date younger women, while you're telling her fair has nothing to do with it, that's just the way of things. The rules of proper frame control here are: State your case clearly (why are you right?) Come across impartially (not emotional or invested in being correct) Shrug off further debate and move on Using the example above, you'd end up in a discussion that looked like this: Girl: I think it's totally unfair that older men can date younger women and that's considered okay, but that it's considered gross for older women to date younger men. Guy: But there's no such thing in the world as "fair." There's just the way the world is, and that's that. The younger a woman is, the more children she can bear a man, and the healthier those children will be, so of course men are biologically more attracted to younger and healthier mates. Girl: But older women can have children too! Guy: Yeah, well. I don't make the rules, so don't blame me. Blame Mother Nature; she's cold and uncaring, and anything but fair. She just cares about what works best for survival of the species, and all else be damned. Why do you bring this up? There, the guy: States his case clearly ("This is why things are the way they are") Comes across impartial ("Hey, I didn't make the rules -- blame Mother Nature") Shrugs off further debate ("I'm not the one who decided all this") and moves on He's likely to emerge with the victorious frame here; at the very least, they've achieved an understanding (her position: it isn't fair; his position: that's just life, and life isn't fair). This is much better than the deferential male who bows his head and says, "You're right! It isn't fair! Let's change the world so women can date younger men!" when really this isn't his cause, there's nothing he can do about it, and it has nothing to do with moving the interaction forward. Instead, you want to come to an understanding, and limit future debate on unproductive topics. Ultimately, frame control isn't hard, and it can be summed up with these several rules of thumb: If she's testing you, ask her why she thinks so, then give her a vague response in a sexy voice after she tells you ("Yeah, maybe I'm like that... I haven't really thought about it too much. How about you?") If you're asking her for investment or to move things forward and she's resisting, make sure you know what you're trying to accomplish, tell her why it'll be good for her, and then persist in making it happen and reward her afterward If she's disagreeing with you on some kind of unproductive topic, reach an understanding by coming across clear and impartial, and then end further debate by disavowing any desire to try and change the way things are or taking a similar tack You'll be shrugging off tests and reframing situations and behavior from ornery women like it's your job in zero time flat. The next time you start feeling like your frame is being tested, don't panic; just follow the steps above, and you'll have the ship righted before you know it, sailing on your way to tranquil waters with some beautiful new girl. Talk to you soon

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##Girl Types: Club Queens Club Queens is the post we've chosen to launch a new series on the Girls Chase blog, entitled Girl Types. Club Queens have always been a bit of a favorite type of woman of mine in particular, so I figured what better girl type to start us out on than them! Ever notice how in most nightclubs there are one or two women you just can't miss? They're gorgeous, gregarious, and charming the socks off of everyone in their proximity. They know their way around people in social situations like the back of their hands, and they're constantly the center of attention, and constantly seeming to be enjoying every minute of all the attention they receive, as well. I call these girls "Club Queens." A Club Queen is a woman operating at the apogee of social calibration. She is more attuned to the social rank and subcommunications of people around her than almost anyone else, except perhaps a man who's studied the social arts extensively and knows logically and consciously things she is aware of only at a high level of subconsciousness. She reads people at lightning speed, and is an exceptional judge of character. Club Queens are also quite generous in their kindness; they exhibit none of the petty behavior of someone unsocially calibrated, as detailed in Ultimate Social Calibration. You will almost never hear a Club Queen dishing on negative topics or belittling others. You won't see her trying to force rapport or overstaying her welcome in a conversation. Her socializing is honed to a razor edge. At the same time, you'll also notice that a Club Queen is exceedingly frugal in giving her attention. She will only devote prolonged chunks of her time to the most fascinating, engaging, captivating men she meets. The rest of the men get only brief snippets of her. In the time she does spend with someone, however, she is adept at making that person feel very comfortable with her, and as if he is someone special to her. Though, the feeling is often not mutual - very often, the Club Queen is being sociable and charming, but not necessarily honest about her feelings toward them, with the majority of the people she meets while out socializing. ATTRIBUTES OF A CLUB QUEEN Club Queens have the following attributes and characteristics: Beauty. Always among the most beautiful of women, Club Queens may perhaps not be the most beautiful women on the scene, but they catapult themselves to the top with their fashionable, sexually appealing attire and their warm, easy smile. High Intelligence. Club Queens are among the most intelligent of women you can meet, as well. High intellect is a prerequisite for achieving the highest levels of social calibration; you will never meet a witless Club Queen. While they're skilled at small talk, you'll also find they tend to prefer deeper topics when they find a worthy conversation partner, and can be deeply connected with if approached the right way. Ambition, Competitiveness, Dominance. Club Queens tend to be ambitious and competitive, seeking to outfox and outrank their female competition by outclassing them in every major category. They're also quite dominant, and have mastered the use of their feminine wiles for getting others - especially men, but women as well - to help them out in various ways. Solitude. Curiously, you'll find that Club Queens, once you get to know them, actually tend to be loners. It's lonely at the top, and Club Queens quickly discover that women friends of a lower rank all chase after the men that they're interested in, and male friends aren't really friends at all, but just men who haven't figured out yet how to get into their pants. Club Queens often end up surrounded by a bunch of false friends whom they know are false, but instead of being used they turn their thorough social aptitude to their own ends and use the people who would use them. Club Queens typically only have a few close friends, if any, and can tend to be rather cynical and mistrustful of others and their motives. Confidence and Self-Sufficiency. Club Queens are the most confident, most self-sufficient women out there; they know how to make it on their own, and don't count on anyone to "save" them (as many other women do) or rely on any man to make them or their lives "complete." They have a bit less faith in humanity than the other women out there, but their disbelief in fairytales translates into a much stronger belief in their own real-life capabilities. Preference for Male Companionship. This is one of those big things that I look at in women: do they prefer male companionship, or female companionship? The answer to that question will tell you a lot about a person. In the case of the Club Queen, the answer is "male companionship." Club Queens will tell you they like the rationality of men, and loathe the fickleness and backstabbing that are trademarks of their friendships with women. Their relationships with women are always contentious, and they often find it easier to keep other women at arms' length. What's a Club Queen like outside of a nightclub, you might ask? Interestingly, you're most likely to find a Club Queen doing something relatively solitary and lowkey, like reading a book at the store downtown, or relaxing by herself with a cup of Joe at the local coffee shop. As outgoing and vivacious as Club Queens are in their nighttime environs, it's mostly for show, and in real life they tend to be quite self-contained. If a Club Queen is in a relationship but does not respect or value her man, she will continue being as outgoing and Club Queen-ish as if she were single. When a Club Queen is in a relationship with a man she respects and values, however, you will notice her tune her level of outgoingness far down. She's content and is identifying herself with her man, and no longer feels the need to be the center of attention drawing everyone to herself. SEDUCING CLUB QUEENS Winning the heart of a Club Queen is no easy task. It's easiest for men possessing certain qualities themselves: Intelligence Charisma Social Grace and Calibration Good Fashion Sense and Appearance Because Club Queens are the hardest screeners out there, and the most socially adept, don't expect to do well with one if you fail to come across as genuine and sincere. Any hint of falsehood or posturing, and a Club Queen will move on, never to return. Conversely, if you come across as genuine and real, Club Queens will love you. Coupled, of course, with charm and wit and sexiness and all that other good stuff. Taking those things for granted though, genuineness is absolutely crucial. And when you add it in, you become one of the few men she meets that aren't trying to pretend their way into her panties. Like attracts like, and if a Club Queen sees you being sociable and outgoing, and sees you as a warm, inclusive man (as opposed to the cold, calculating social ladder climbers that some men make themselves out to be), she will be drawn to you. Keep that in mind as you look for ways to get her to take note of you. Finally, once you've met a Club Queen, it's very important to move quickly through repartee and on to rapport. Too much time spent in playful banter will kill attraction here - Club Queens are even less attracted to entertainer-style men than the average woman. They crave deep connections and a man who can actually make them feel understood; they don't get that all too often, and if you can give it to them, you become a man they will pursue with relish. BENEFITS OF CLUB QUEENS When a man is just starting out, I'll often warn him to be wary of Club Queens. These women are the flames that most men are drawn to; they're the bright shiny objects that catch the eyes of even the most discriminating men. What that means then, of course, is that just about every man thinks he has a shot with a Club Queen, though few men ever actually do. Most men are bound to be disappointed when it comes to these types of girls… many a man has wasted countless hours and peace of mind pursuing a Club Queen who seems perpetually just out of reach. That said, interacting with Club Queens can be one of the fastest ways to upgrade your own social calibration. Just watching how they interact with others and how they manage different (and often difficult) social situations is always educational. And by forcing yourself to try and keep up with them, you force yourself to learn how to operate at their level. I have been burned more times than I can count by Club Queens. I have also had some of the most rewarding friendships and relationships of my life with them, too. As I look back over the most influential women of my past, I can point out almost every one of them and say, "That girl was a Club Queen." They're just my type, if there is such a thing. So, if you're a new guy, be careful with Club Queens. It's easy to think you're getting somewhere with a Club Queen when all you're really getting is the same warm smile and friendly / sexy manner she gives to every man. How do you know you're getting somewhere with a Club Queen? You know you're getting somewhere if she spends a lot more time with you than she does anyone else, and if you connect on some deep topics that she probably doesn't talk about very much with other people. You know you're getting somewhere if she seems as hypnotized by you as you feel by her. Oh yeah, and you know you're getting somewhere with a Club Queen if she meets up with you one-on-one outside the club. That's probably the biggest one - it's all just smoke if the party stops when the lights come on. Make sure she's spending time with you in the real (non-nightclub) world, and you'll be well on your way to having one of the most dynamic, exciting, rewarding women out there.

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##Girlfriend Moody? It's in Her Genes (But You Can Fix It) On the new forum join bonus post where I asked for suggestions for the limited-time ebook offered to the first group of forum members, a reader weighed in with his preference: "I'd like some tips and tricks, and knowledge about longer term relationships - for example, how to bring a girl out of that 'brick wall' sulk! I seem to attract fiery and moody, and I would like to know how other people deal with this. Never too old to learn?" While this didn't make it into the ebook in question, I've been trying to get through each of these and tackle the ones that weren't addressed there on the website here. If you've been in a relationship that lasted any substantial length of time, you've no doubt encountered what our commenter here is talking about - that sulky, pouting, dreary moody girlfriend situation. For men in relationships, there are few things more dispiriting than a girlfriend, moody and sulky, skulking around the apartment, acting like somebody stole her bag of cookies, and you have absolutely no idea why. It can make you want to pull your hair out and exclaim, "Out with it already, woman!" If she'd just TELL YOU what the problem was, by George, then you could address it at least! Well, if it's any consolation, science is here to tell us we're not crazy, and women really DO do this and feel this a lot more than men. And I'm here to tell you what to do about it so she knocks this off and starts acting a little more chipper again. girlfriend moody From the a paper published by a number of researchers from the Swedish Karolinska Institutet in the journal NeuroImage comes "Sex differences in the serotonin 1A receptor and serotonin transporter binding in the human brain measured by PET," discussing neural receptors and transporters in the brain for compounds that are correlated with moodiness: "Women and men differ in serotonin associated psychiatric conditions, such as depression, anxiety and suicide. Despite this, very few studies focus on sex differences in the serotonin system. Of the biomarkers in the serotonin system, serotonin1A (5-HT1A) receptor is implicated in depression, and anxiety and serotonin transporter (5-HTT) is a target for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, psychotropic drugs used in the treatment of these disorders. The objective of the present study was to study sex related differences in the 5-HT1A receptor and 5-HTT binding potentials (BPNDs) in healthy humans, in vivo. Positron emission tomography and selective radioligands [11C]WAY100635 and [11C]MADAM were used to evaluate binding potentials for 5-HT1A receptors (14 women and 14 men) and 5-HTT (8 women and 10 men). The binding potentials were estimated both on the level of anatomical regions and voxel wise, derived by the simplified reference tissue model and wavelet/Logan plot parametric image techniques respectively. Compared to men, women had significantly higher 5-HT1A receptor and lower 5-HTT binding potentials in a wide array of cortical and subcortical brain regions. In women, there was a positive correlation between 5-HT1A receptor and 5-HTT binding potentials for the region of hippocampus. Sex differences in 5-HT1A receptor and 5-HTT BPND may reflect biological distinctions in the serotonin system contributing to sex differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. The result of the present study may help in understanding sex differences in drug treatment responses to drugs affecting the serotonin system." I've bolded the important parts. What this research is saying is that two aspects of brain makeup were studied in male and female brains: A receptor that's tied to depression, and A transporter used to combat anxiety and regulate serotonin The researchers found that, compared to men, women had: More of the receptors linked to depression (which would imply a higher tendency toward becoming depressed), and Less ability to bind the transporters combatting anxiety and regulating serotonin What this essentially stands as is some evidence that women are biologically more prone to depression and anxiety, and more resistant to the compounds used to break them out of these mental states. In other words, women are naturally more likely to be moody, and naturally more likely to have difficulty breaking out of these moody conditions. WHAT IT'S LIKE TO MOOD SWING There are men reading this site who are all over the map, emotionally. One guy reading this article may be thinking to himself, "Sure - I know exactly what this is like... I'm moody all the time!" while another man is probably reading this and thinking, "I REALLY don't get how you can have moods wildly swinging around and plunging you into depression and then swinging back out again... women, geez!" So, here's a brief picture of what it's like for your moody girlfriend when she gets hit with a mood swing. Imagine it's a normal day - the sun is out, the birds are chirping, and you're going about your normal daily routine. You feel just fine - maybe even a little upbeat. Then, a thought pops into your mind - you remember that time your boyfriend came home really late one night and smelled a little like perfume and you were never 100% certain if he was telling you the truth or not that he was at a work meeting and one of the coworkers spritzed her perfume on right next to him at one point and some splashed over on him. You start thinking about it... was he cheating? You don't really know. You think about it some more... well, he's always been really honest. But then again, that issue of Cosmopolitan you just read said that that's one of the signs you should keep an eye out for - your guy smelling like another woman. Oh man... should you break up with him? Or not? What should you do? Suddenly, you start feeling really down... really helpless. You could confront him about it again, but he'll probably just get annoyed. What if he's telling the truth? Then you'll just be bugging him and look really insecure. But what if he's hiding something? You're never going to know if you don't confront him over it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you've just become moody, cranky, and depressed. When people come up to talk to you, you don't really want to talk to them. And when he calls later... ugh. Do you REALLY want to talk to him? Well... girlfriend moody And then he gets all whiney about it. "What's wrong?" he asks. Ugh. Clueless. He should KNOW what it is... how could he come back smelling like perfume like that 6 months ago? Horrible man. Then, later, when you meet up with him, he drags it out of you what you're being sulky about, addresses it, and suddenly you feel great again. How silly you were to waste the whole day worrying about this! I mean geez, you already went through all this 6 months ago... you trusted him then, you should trust him now. And, just like that, everything's right as rain all over again. IS THIS SOME KIND OF TEMPORARY INSANITY? Actually, it's a product of rumination. Rumination is something we looked at in the article on how to overcome depression. It's the obsessive thinking about, turning over and over in one's mind of, and fixating on something or somethings that you can't do anything about and can't think your way to a satisfactory solution with. Basically, it's a bear trap for your mind. You get your foot stuck in rumination, and now you're going nowhere fast. You're trapped in this endless, fatalistic cycle of doom in which you just think and think and think about something and can never achieve any kind of resolution. It's enough to drive you mad. If you've never spent time being depressed, or moody, or fatalistic, you're both blessed (not to have experienced these undermining, self-defeating emotions) and somewhat disadvantaged in this arena (because you'll have an infinitely more difficult time understanding and dealing with these emotions in others - particularly, the women in your life). One of the major benefits of spending time being depressed yourself is the ability to properly empathize with others going through similar mental states, and the ability of getting a good read on how to wrest them out of those states. But let's assume relating to this kind of mental prison of defeat doesn't come all that naturally to you... or, even if it does, figuring out how to combat moodiness has you totally licked. How do you crack this nut? girlfriend moody The first thing you want to understand is that there are three distinct flavors of moody girlfriend that show up with different causes and characteristics. These are: Extra Melodrama: these are the girls who are acting moody and pouty because they want to get a reaction out of you. They aren't really feeling all that bad... they are, rather, exaggerating their symptoms of moodiness in order to get you to take notice and come rushing and white knighting your way to the rescue. Genuine Distress: women in this state are genuinely upset about something, and they aren't exaggerating it (or, if they are, it's just a little bit). They may be looking for help from you, but they may just as likely simply be feeling down and not really care about trying to seem "up" or cheerful for your (or anyone's) benefit. End of Her Rope: this is the girl who's so over it with you that she's miffed at you all the time and there isn't anything you ever seem to be able to do about it. She's essentially talking herself out of her relationship with you, and not so long from now you're more likely to be getting over your ex than you are to be trying to figure out why she's spending so much time being so sulky. As you might surmise, each of these women needs something different, and that's where a lot of guys end up confused. They figure out one of these, only to find it doesn't apply across them all. So, let's take a look at how you recognize a girlfriend moody with each of these types of moods, and give you a strategy for handling each one. MOODY GIRLFRIEND #1: EXTRA MELODRAMA You can recognize a girl who's bandying about extra melodrama by the following dramatic flares: There are frequent loud noises, bangs, crashes, outbursts, sighs, or other dramatic displays designed to capture your attention. Women who are actually just moody and not seeking attention don't cause a lot of commotion... they just sit quietly by and sulk. There are loud accusations and lots of finger-pointing. Again, this is designed to draw a reaction out of you, and to bring matters to a head. If the above two fail to get your attention, they are usually followed by declarations of what she will do (like break up, or hang out with some other guy, or start calling her girlfriend for a girl's night out). This is also designed to spur you into action and kick start the normal man's, "What's wrong, honey?!" panic mode. The first thing you should recognize about extra melodrama moodiness is that it's exaggerated and a conscious ploy to a certain extent, designed to produce a reaction out of you, and that ALL women do it, and that ALL women know they do it. The second thing you should recognize about it is that, annoying and contrived as it may be, it is built around some kind of point of contention or some bad emotion that she needs resolved, although it's typically not anything too bad, and a little emotional comforting will usually do the trick. So, your thoughts on extra melodrama girlfriend moodiness normally ought to be: "Blech... this is so annoying and contrived. It's childish," and "All right, let's figure out what's driving this and get it resolved." Your reaction should not be the panicky normal man's, "Oh no, what IS it?," said as if the world was about to implode. This kind of reaction just drives women even crazier. girlfriend moody Rather, you're best served adopting the irritated-but-stern tone of a father whose reading of the daily newspaper has been interrupted by dramatic attention-getting displays of children in faux-crisis. You: Are you going to tell me what this is about, or are you just going to run around sighing and acting like you're going to go jump off a bridge? Asking her something like this is usually all it takes to get her to open up. If she resists, you persist. Like so: You: Are you going to tell me what this is about, or are you just going to run around sighing and acting like you're going to go jump off a bridge? Her: No, it's fine. It's nothing. [she wants you to chase after her and say, "What?"] You: Just tell me why you're banging pots and shutting doors loudly already. Her: I'm fine. You: Look, either tell me what all the dramatic displays are about, or knock it off. I can't read your mind; 5 minutes ago you were happy. Are you going to cut this out, or are you going to tell me what this is? Usually at this point she'll simply tell you what she's unhappy about. Half the time it's going to be something (often somewhat silly) to do with you; the rest of the time, it'll be something else in her life that she simply needs to vent about, but didn't feel comfortable bothering you with (she needed an invitation to do so, and for you to chase her down and squeeze it out of her). Why do women do this? Why not just bring up the problem and be done with it? It's done because they want to feel like you care about them enough that you will recognize when they're in distress and can comfort them and make them feel better. Which is why this so often works; most of the time, the very effort by you to make them tell you what's on their mind and showing enough concern at least to listen is all women need to feel better again. Reassured that someone does care, they can resume normal activities, without all the dramatic displays. However, it's always better to be firm here (like in the examples above), rather than the panicky, clueless male, "What's wrong, honey??," as this is not comforting so much as it is disappointing (e.g., "Oh GOD, he doesn't get and he isn't in control"). Instead, when you tell her to knock it off or tell her what's on her mind and point out to her the things she is doing (e.g., banging pots, shutting doors loudly, she was happy 5 minutes ago, as in the example above), she feels like you are paying attention to her, and thus get her and care. MOODY GIRLFRIEND #2: GENUINE DISTRESS When you have a girlfriend whose moodiness is genuine distress, you cannot take the same "stern father-figure" tone you want to take with a girlfriend who's causing extra melodrama. Her moodiness is not exaggerated... it's real. Here are the signs: She's very quiet. Rather than going storming around banging about and causing a lot of noise and bluster, she's off somewhere you don't know where, sitting by herself, sulking. Correspondence-wise, she isn't the same as usual either; her text messages or phone conversations will be less lively, or may stop coming altogether. She softly and sadly says, "Nothing," or, "I'm fine," when you ask her what's wrong. She isn't making a big show of things like a girlfriend with extra melodrama does, and she isn't dripping with vitriol and disgust like a girlfriend at the end of her rope is. She's just sad, soft, and retreating. Genuine distress is caused by something in her life that has genuinely distressed her. The two of you may have had an argument where you said something genuinely hurtful. Or someone at work or one of her friends may have been especially mean, and caused her to doubt whether she's doing what she supposed to be doing with her life. Or, a family member may be ill. Don't always assume that genuine distress is about you. Much of the time, it isn't. How do you deal with this kind of moodiness? Go to where she is, Sit down next to her, Put your arm around her, ... and just be with her there. Sit that way for a few minutes. If she wants to talk, you can talk to her, but if she doesn't, no need to force it. You're simply reassuring her with your strength and presence that things are not as bad as they seemed. If it's in reaction to something mean or hurtful you did, then this is one of those few times (as noted in "Should You Apologize to Women?") when you should apologize. e.g.: You: I'm sorry I yelled at you. I've been super stressed with the new project I'm on, and not getting a lot of sleep. It wasn't you I was mad at... you just were unlucky enough to trigger all those emotions in me to come bursting forth. Sorry about that. If it's not in reaction to something you've just done though, you can skip saying anything. After a few minutes of comforting, rub her arms and get back up. Make her a nice offer: "I'm going to go put a pizza on. Do you want a mozzarella or a tonno?" If she says she doesn't want anything, pick whichever one she usually likes best: "I'll put on a tonno," and then go do it. When it's ready, let her know. If she says she doesn't want it, just say, "Okay, well, it's out here and it's delicious. If you want it, you'd better come join me soon, because I'm going to eat all of it and you know I will." That will usually be enough to get her to come out and join you, and at that point she'll be feeling much, much better. MOODY GIRLFRIEND #3: END OF HER ROPE If you are fortunate, you may never have to run into this one. However, if you're like the average Western male these days and you don't much know what you really want out of relationships as an end-goal (we discussed this in-depth in "How to Start a Relationship with a New Girlfriend" the other day), you will encounter this... and it ain't pretty. Here's what differentiates a girlfriend moody to the point she's at the end of her rope from the other sorts of moody girlfriends: She isn't just upset... she's disgusted, all the time. She's angry and disgusted with you, and you're frequently fielding scowls and grimaces rather than smiles and happy faces. She avoids you, and is spending less and less time with you. In other words, she's withdrawing from the relationship. She's terse with you, and treats you more like a prison warden than a romantic partner. You feel like she views you as bad person who's restricting and constraining her and preventing her from being happy. This is a bad place to be, and it immediately precedes a breakup event. girlfriend moody My typical recommendation is, once you reach this point with a girlfriend, it's time to break up with her, because the relationship has spoiled and got rotten. So that you can understand and interpret what this is and what's going on with it though, I'll explain it: she's reached a point where she feels that she cannot get what she wants and needs with you and this relationship, but you also won't easily let her go and set her free. She's fighting with herself over whether to remain in a relationship she's grown unhappy with, or whether to leave and start anew somewhere else. Of course, it's a tough decision to make because she's so invested by this point. What are your options to fix this? Well, they're pretty much this: You can give her what she wants and needs, or You can let her go. Those are your two fixes, and your only two fixes. When I was younger and less experienced in the ways of women and relationship, I thought that it was possible to simply stretch things out, or provide solutions for these kinds of issues like joint self-expansion. And, while joint self-expansion is great for maintaining a solid relationship, it's a poor panacea for unmet needs. You can bandage a relationship by "tricking" a woman into thinking there's some progress in it, but at some point she's going to realize that that's what it was - a trick to make her feel like it was going somewhere. And it isn't. Not to anywhere she wants it to get to, anyway. My view these days is that a man who tries hanging onto a woman who's unsatisfied in their relationship without giving her what she needs is selfish, no two ways about it. Do you really care about her? Then decide if you can give her what she needs (and you should know by the time she reaches this point what she needs... she will have brought it up many times before while in extra melodrama moody or genuine distress moody). If so, give it to her. If not, let her go. Word of warning: it's my personal experience that once a relationship reaches this point, it's permanently damaged. Even if you give her what she wants and needs, it's a bit of a case of too little, too late. It's like waiting to drive between the lines on the highway until after you hit another car. Sure, now you probably won't hit anything else, but you've got a big ugly dent in the side of your Honda and it's always going to pull a little to the left side. If you're going to give her what she needs, do it before she reaches this point; and if she ever reaches this point, end things so you can both start over fresh with partners you don't have this baggage with. BEING MR. SUNSHINE You don't have to be a happy-go-lucky, boundless-enthusiasm guy to make women feel better when they're feeling down. No need to put on your rainbow colored wig and Bozo nose. Some firmness, care, and genuine concern (without coming across weak, clueless, or sappy, mind you) is usually all it takes. If you feel annoyed that your woman is acting moody, keep in mind that she's biologically prone to this, and she isn't enjoying it anymore than you are... it's just a part of being a woman. However, with this article, you have the tools to fix it: quickly, easily, and without much fanfare or expenditure of effort (at least, for the non-nuclear two scenarios, that is). White knights, eat your hearts out. Before you click away from here, I'd also recommend you check out the following articles on some very related subjects... if you haven't read them already, of course: Women and Drama End Relationship Drama with These 2 Rules So, stay calm, be firm, and let her know you're listening. And usually, that's all it really takes.

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##Granting Social Status; and, Not Getting Thrown Under the Bus I recently completed an almost 2-hour interview with Glenn Pierce (formerly just Glenn P), a really sharp and talented guy who taught me a thing or two when I wanted to kick my daytime approaching up a notch back in early '07, for his upcoming interview series. While doing the interview - much of it something of a "how you got your start" type piece - we each shared stories of girls early on in our lives (both in junior high) who liked us, who were otherwise really cool girls, yet who, when we approached in awkward / socially unsavvy ways, threw us each under the bus socially, even as they still liked us. When it happened to me, I immediately understood why it happened - why a girl who still liked me (she continued to flirt with me and give me hints and invitations for years after) - and same deal for Glenn... his girl still liked him (a friend of hers even told him so) - yet these girls so coolly and seemingly ruthlessly tossed us to the wolves, status-wise. I think this is a thing a lot of guys don't get. Why would a girl do this? A girl who likes you - maybe she even likes you more than anybody else around her - yet she casts you aside. Maybe you want to judge her. Maybe you want to say that clearly she's a petty person; she's weak; she cares too much what others think and not enough about what she wants. Maybe you want to say that if she's not willing to take a risk to be with you, then who needs her? Except this isn't the right approach. If you want success with women, you must have a mind for status - and you must have a mind for protecting and even enhancing the status of the women around you. women status I've long detested people who will attempt to climb over you socially in an attempt to elevate themselves. I made it a personal pastime figuring out how to shut down these individuals' efforts and make them look like clowns in the process, turning their machinations back against them. Some of this I talk about in "Ultimate Social Calibration: Stop Climbing the Social Ladder", the oldest article on this website. But there's no getting around the fact that social status is of pivotal importance in all your social interactions. It determines which girls you can talk to and succeed with and which ones not. It determines who treats you with respect and who ignores you or maligns you. It determines what you can do and who you can do it with. Pete just had an article on how key reputation management is to meeting and succeeding with women in your social circle, and in "How to Escalate with Girls in Social Circle" he talked about the importance of looking out for the girl's reputation socially. Women - just like men - have varying degrees of social awareness and social savvy. There are some women who don't get it at all. There are some who get it, but they're kind of clumsy (they're the ones most prone to ladder climbing and negative behaviors). And there are the ones at the top of the pile - the girls who calmly and deftly deal with threats to their social status by sidestepping and deflecting those threats (as happened with that girl who rejected me, something she did in a socially savvy, non-aggressive way that made her look big and didn't do too heavy damage to my reputation). But they all care about it, and it's important to all of them. And believe it or not, even if you're at the absolute bottom of the totem pole socially speaking, I'm pretty damn sure you care about it too. WHO CARES ABOUT STATUS? women statusThe thing I've always hated about social status is that it looks to other people's opinions of you. You are not completely in control. You are yielding to the opinion of others. At the upper levels of social status - when you are really cool, really powerful, and really well liked and well respected - you can do a lot of things people lower down on the ladder can't do, and you get to make a lot of the rules, set a lot of the trends, and decide, much of the time, what is cool and what isn't... ... within reason. See, the thing about social status is that the guy at the top is not all powerful. He's still a slave to many larger scale social rules and social norms. No matter how cool, powerful, and high status you become, you never get completely free of them. You could be the coolest guy in the world, but if you walk down the street naked while yodeling and groping the breasts of women you come across, people are going to say you're off your rocker and lose respect for you (even if they won't say it to your face). Women are even more subject to the whims of social pressure because no woman is truly at the TOP of the social hierarchy. That's because the instant a woman reaches the ultimate pinnacle of her hierarchy, she starts to feel at once both pride at having done so, but also a measure of dissatisfaction that everyone here is beneath her. There should at least be a man more socially powerful than she is whom she can partner with... a lower status male than herself simply won't cut it. So then, it's time to expand her horizons. Social status maintenance is really about maintaining and growing power, security, and better mating options. The higher status a woman is (or YOU are), the safer she is from being cast out or ostracized, the more power she has to wield (either for good or for ill), and the higher caliber of mate she can obtain. You can quickly see why status and reputation is so pivotally important to women. GETTING THROWN UNDER THE BUS Why do girls throw other people under the bus so much? Are they all just... bitches? I hate that word "bitch." It reeks of othering. Yet, many people - men and women alike - view women quick to throw others under the bus - considerately or not - as "bitches." I love those kinds of girls. They are my bread and butter. They are the ones who are in control of their lives, and all the people in them. Rather than being at the mercy of others, followers in their groups of friends, buffeted about by the winds of life and the opinions of peers, they are the ones doing the buffeting. And I can tell you one thing these girls are not is mean. They're not bad people. They're just trying to clear away people who are social value drains. That sucks when it's you. And, especially when you cold approach, you never get away completely from being received at least some of the time as a social parasite... you approach a girl the wrong way, or run into her when she's in an especially closed off headspace, and she chews you up, spits you out, and tosses you to the side of the road. Ouch. But it's not happening because she's a bad, evil person intent on destroying the lives of innocent, good people like you. It's happening because she views you - for whatever reason - as someone who is a threat to her social status, and thus her security, control over her life, and other mating options. This is so key to understand. When you seem like you are or may be a social burden to a woman, you are a THREAT to her: Security in her social group Control over her own life Ability to mate with high value / high status men People low in social status: Are at constant risk of being booted out of the group / excluded Have very little control over their own social lives / reputations Have significantly reduced chances of mating with the highest caliber mates And when you come across lower in social status, and act in a way that potentially takes value from her socially or lowers her down to your position or LOWER than it, she is forced to throw you under the bus. So you can understand that this is not something EVIL, let me relate one of my own bus-throwing scenarios. I love people. I believe in the potential of damn near everybody I meet, and don't think there's much that anybody cannot do with him or herself if he or she is willing to work at it hard enough and go about it in an intelligent enough way. And I HATE throwing people under the bus. Hate it. But I will do it if somebody comes up and is being a blatant social parasite and won't take my hints that he or she should beat it... because if I don't do it, this person starts sucking away my perceived social status. Here's an example pulled from real life. I was at a networking event once, dressed up really nice, and having a great conversation with a stunningly beautiful woman, also dressed up real nice. She was into it; I was into it; both of us were laughing and enjoying one another's company and clearly did not want to be disturbed. So, of course, up trotted a nerdy guy in un-trendy clothes who decided that I looked like I'd be the perfect person to connect with, and he injected himself right between us and aggressively took my hand to shake it and started introducing himself. Anyone with an ounce of social awareness would've looked at the girl and I and said, "Okay, there are two people who are clearly really immersed in talking to each other, and I stand a good chance of being a pest if I try and jump in. I'll just get to know them later when things have cooled down between them." But not this guy. He started asking me what I do, and talking about what he does. Probably a great guy, probably smart, probably had a lot to offer in the right circumstances. But in this case, he was being a social burden, had forced me to break circle, and if I talked to him for too long, it would look like I was insulting this beautiful girl who was standing and waiting to talk to me in order to speak with this nerdy guy who had butted into our conversation, unwelcomed, and commandeered my attention... and I just let him do it. So, I did the only thing I could do; after about a minute of exchanging pleasantries, I said, "Well hey, my friend and I were chatting here, and we're going to get back to that, but it was really great meeting you!" and then turned my body away from him, shrugged my eyebrows at the girl and gave her a smile like, "Well, THAT was random!" and said, "Anyway...!" The guy was left out in the cold, standing there, thrown under the bus, looking awkward and weird. It wasn't fun to do - I got no joy from doing it - and in fact, the only emotion I felt during the whole episode was panic. Panic that I was about to lose a gorgeous woman for a boring conversation with a nerdy guy. Panic that every other girl in the venue was going to think I'm a social liability who will make her stand around looking goofy while I ignore her to chat up nerds instead. Panic that I would look weak and non-dominant, allowing myself to be pulled away from talking to someone I wanted to talk to by someone I wanted much less to talk to. And this is the same exact emotion that women feel when you come across more as a social burden - a threat to their prestige, reputations, and status - than as a social asset. women status Obviously now, you don't want to be a social liability to someone. You don't want a woman to see you or meet you and panic, thinking, "Oh crap - I've gotta get rid of this guy!" or, "Damn it - I've got to sideline him before he sucks away all my status." You don't want to be a leech, or a value mooch... as hard as that sounds to hear and as much as you might not like to think of it that way. That's how you can sometimes come across. There's two parts to this, really: Not being a social burden, and Instead, being a giver of social value/status Let's discuss each. NOT BEING A SOCIAL BURDEN First order of business: on not being a social liability. There are a couple of things you can do that instantly make you a social downer and marked for immediate bus-throwing by anyone not too nice to do it (that is, anyone savvy enough to protect his or her status and not let other people dictate it for him/her). These are: Not bringing lower / unwelcome energy. I talked about the concept of bringing the energy in one of the earliest posts on this site. For people to accept you socially, you must be bringing in better energy than what they've already got going on. That can be higher energy - you can be more energetic, more upbeat, more positive - it can also be lower energy of another value-giving variety. e.g., the guy exuding calm, cool sexiness; or the guy exuding profound wisdom, insight, and sublime knowledge. Even at lower levels of "energeticness", they're still offering high social value, and thus likely to be welcomed in, instead of dropped like a burning, singing lump of coal. Not interrupting people in rapt conversation. If you see people having light, sparse conversation, it's okay to jump in during a lull, especially if you're bringing significantly more positive energy than what they've got right now. But when they're engrossed in conversation? Nuh-uh. You'll be breaking a mood they're both (or all, if more than two are engrossed) really into, for... well, it better be DAMN good if you're going to do it. Otherwise, wait. Not asking for over-investment. Little feels worse in social situations than being asked or cajoled into over-investing in someone or something. This can be something small - like someone you're at odds with coming up and asking for a sip of your drink or for you to lend him a bit of money - or it could be something big - like asking a girl to wait for you, and then leaving her hanging for a while too long. Even if you're the only one who sees it, they know they've been "fooled" into over-investing, and it feels bad - and they will throw you under the bus, much of the time, to correct the balance. Not putting people on the spot. It's one thing to talk about personal things deep in one-on-one conversation. It's another entirely to bring them up in front of a group. Sounds silly, I know, but I've seen people do this, and I've had them do it to me. This includes anything from saying to someone, "So I heard you like Dani," right in front of Dani herself, or asking, "When's the last time you got laid?" or even asking someone out in front of her friends. When you do this, you're just begging for a taste of bus undercarriage. Not lurking / hovering. Want to look really awkward? Just lurk around people without actually talking to them. Rule to live by: if you're outside a group, and they're not including you or making room for you, keep moving. Girls are pros at this - you'll see them hover near someone for a split second, then get out of there if they aren't given a proper reception. You'll want to do the same. Not taking hints. There are few things that so clearly differentiate someone who "gets it" from everybody else as an individual's ability to take hints. If she's feeling tired, or wants you to take the lead, or needs a little privacy, or really honestly needs to leave... picking up on this makes you look good, while not doing so makes you look... well, like an oaf. Train yourself up on reading women's signals. If you're burying your hand in your heads going, "Ohhhh... that's me!" that's okay, just do better. You're only a social liability if you act like one. And, chances are, as you're learning social skills, you're going to have to go through a period of awkwardness where you're making a lot of these mistakes... the price of pushing boundaries, I'm afraid. Even if you're aware of them, you'll tend to make these errors when you're trying out a lot of new stuff, at least until you're at an intermediate level or so. This is one of the major reasons why it's best to learn the social and seductive arts with strangers, rather than with women in your close social circle, with classmates, or with workmates. If some random stranger thinks you're a social burden because you made a mistake while doing something unfamiliar, it's unlikely to affect the rest of your life all that much. GIVING OTHERS SOCIAL STATUS women statusNot being a social liability only gets you halfway there, though - it only gets you to neutral status. It only gets you to the place where women meet you, and don't want to get rid of you. How do you get them to chase you for status? How do you get them to actively seek you out? The way you do this, of course, is by making yourself a giver of status and social value. When you are someone with the ability to hand out social value - to raise the status of the individuals around you - suddenly you are a HOT commodity. Sounds good, right? This is the Grail of social power; becoming he who giveth and he who taketh away social status. This gives you the power of both love and fear, socially; people flock to you for status, and fear offending you for the loss of status you can mete out to them if they do so. But not so fast. This requires that you are two things, first: Cool, and Socially savvy I still need to do a "how to be cool" article, but for now let's just say that obeying The Law of Least Effort and hewing close to sprezzatura gets you most of the way there. If you are getting maximal results with minimal effort, you ARE cool. Social savvy is something you pick up simply with time and exposure to all kinds of different social situations. The best way to get mastery-level social savvy is to socialize with EVERYBODY. This means: Rich people Poor people Middle-class people Locals Foreigners Jocks Thugs Criminals Cops Punks / goths / emos / hipsters People who are down-to-Earth People with their heads in the clouds People who are virtual hermits People who are social divas Blacks, whites, Asians, Latins, everybody... socialize with Inuits, if you can The more social reference points you collect, the more you'll have seen socializing from every possible angle, and the more likely anything ANYONE tries with you you'll have seen it before and will know what it is and how to respond. For instance, let's say you're at work or in school and you get assigned a team project. Right away, your teammate comes up and says, "Why don't you do take this part, and when you're all done email it to me, okay? Thanks!" Feels not so good, right? Know what to do about it? Until you're fairly socially well-versed, something like this is going to ring your bells for a minute (or more), and you'll struggle to come up with a response (I had a coworker back in my salaried days who'd do things like this because he was, of course, busily trying to use me as a rung on his climb up the corporate ladder. We had some great intercubicle power struggles, him and I). Or, say you're at a nightclub, and a male friend - whom you know despises you - of the girl you're talking to walks up to you and says, "Hey man, mind if I have a sip of your drink?" What do you say? What do you do? Do you just let him have some of your drink... or not? Before you're able to be a giver of social status, you must first be adroit at maneuvering in all kinds of delicate social scenarios - both fending off challengers, and taking care of the emotions of those whose emotions need taking care of. If you're not quite there yet, not to worry - you'll get there. If you ARE there, though... here's what being a giver of social status entails: Know how to compliment genuinely. Being good at both recognizing people's strong suits and paying them compliments in calm, cool, appreciative ways allows you to build those around you up by giving them recognition - something that just about every human being is constantly in search of. Being a payer of compliments also very quickly sets you up as someone who provides emotional validation, and boosts in social value. Get good at qualifying women. Qualifying is similar to complimenting, with the exception that it can be done even more effortlessly - rather than pointing a feature out and saying, "You are X; I like that about you," you can qualify with things as effortless as simply showing more interest in what someone has to say (e.g., she tells you she used to play lacrosse, and you ask her how long she played it, what position, if she was any good, etc.), or by signaling nonverbal attraction in response to something she's said or done, by, say, leaning in a bit more, opening your eyes a bit wider and focusing on her more intently, or increasing the depth of your breathing a bit to indicate excitement. Properly reward investment. When someone invests in you - whether she's doing you a favor like watching your belongings at the café while you head to the restroom, or she's complying with a request of yours, such as handing you an item you've asked her to hand you - you can grant her additional social value simply by thanking her and rewarding her the right way. This shows appreciation and recognition of her being helpful socially (as opposed to, say, you taking for granted that she would invest, and giving her no appreciation - in which case, her social status is lower... more similar to that of a servant than a peer). When you thank/reward, not only do you raise her social status, but you also raise yours - you, after all, are the one who's being invested in, and the one doing the thanking. See "Operant Conditioning in Your Romantic Relationships" for more on rewarding (and punishing). Create "us vs. them" vibes. It's one thing to tell someone you like her, or try to relate to her. It's something else entirely to cast your lot in with her to the exclusion of others - "outsiders." When you create "us vs. them" vibes with women - say, she mentions something that other people don't "get," and you respond with, "Yeah, I think most people are just too trapped in their own small worlds to recognize the things really going on around them," the feeling she gets is here is the group of her and you... and there is everybody else. This gives social value to her, because she's risked having you say, "What? You're crazy; those other people are right," but instead you've validated what she's said, sided with her, and dismissed other people as the ones who are clueless. You've just elevated her above nearly everyone else socially (and yourself in the process, too). Be very interested in women, and for good reason. A contributing reason for why a lot of men struggle socially and why they struggle with pickup, I'm convinced, is that they either a.) don't give women good reasons for WHY they're interested in those women, or b.) don't feel comfortable expressing interest ("putting themselves out there") with others. However, if you can first deep dive and get to know a girl and really understand what's great and unique about her, and then show her more and more rapt interest as you do (like what we talked about in bullet #3), she will begin to feel like a more and more interesting, amazing, wonderful person around you - simply being in your presence enhances her social value. Of course, these same rules apply for making friends and for talking with men; I've simply focused on meeting women here, but you can apply them just as well in other areas of your socializing too. GIVE STATUS; DON'T MOOCH IT The high status man has a very different emotion on seeing a beautiful, apparently high status woman than the low status man does. The low status man thinks, "Oh, I hope she likes me," or, "Oh, I hope I can get somewhere with her," which quite frequently means he will come across as a kind of value or status mooch; rather than focusing on what he will provide, he's focused on what he can get (her to like him, her to go on a date with him, etc.). The high status man thinks something very different; he thinks, "She looks beautiful; she must be so bored with all these mundane men. I will bring some joy and pleasure and excitement into her life." Of course he wants something with her too; but that is not what he thinks about when he sees her. He merely thinks about what he will GIVE to her. This creates a very strong emotional difference, too. The low status man fears rejection because he sees rejection as a loss of the opportunity to get something good. The high status man does not terribly fear rejection, because all he loses is the opportunity to provide her value; and who knows, maybe she doesn't need his value. But even if he's rejected a hundred times, he still has his value, and he knows he'll find a woman sometime soon who will benefit from it and recognize it and value it and want it. If you study men who become business titans, you will notice the mentality these men possess is almost never, "I sure hope I can make more money!" but rather, "How can I provide MORE value? How can I get my stuff - which I KNOW makes people's lives significantly better - into more people's hands, more people's homes, and more people's hearts?" Wanting money is the realm of the money-poor, and wanting success with women is the realm of the status-impoverished. To join the ranks of the elite - the wealthy, the successful, the high status, the men with great choice with women - you must turn the focus from, "What can I get?" to, "What can I give?" When you do that - and focus on building up women; inspiring them; recognizing their great qualities; giving them the feeling that you are with them, that it isn't they who are crazy, but everyone else; appreciating what they do for you - you'll never have to worry about being thrown under the bus again. Because women (and men) will be too busy scrambling to be in your presence, win your approval, and have you along for the ride because you make them feel so damn good, important, and respected instead that any short-term status boost they might achieve by trying to one-up you socially pales in comparison.

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##Gym Pickup: Dos, Don'ts, and How to Meet Girls at a Gym In the comment section of the article on how to have a sexy walk, Matt remarked: "Excellent article, my brother! Would love to see a post about direct/indirect pick ups specifically at the gym. Seems like a great place for day game, girls at the gym are obviously some of the hottest you'll see out in the day cause they're fit and healthy... but it's a challenging proposition. Many are listening to iPods, plugged into their music and workout. Whenever I talk to a girl at the gym I feel like I'm "disrupting" her workout. Matt" One of the very first places I picked up from when I was brand new to cold approach was the gym. In that case, it was a girl who worked at the gym who I sort of knew from class (I was in university at the time), but hadn't spoken to before, and I took the gym as my opportunity to do so - and then to have her drive me to get some food, and set up a proper date. You might think gym pickup is inordinately hard simply because there are so many big muscular guys there, or because the women look so good (and there are so few of them), or because it's so brightly lit and obvious, or because since everyone else is focused on putting weights in the air and treadmill tread behind them, and that you're really going to stick out when you approach. But in fact, there are certain advantages to meeting girls in the gym for a socially savvy man, not the least of which is the fact that most of those guys who are working out so hard there are doing so because they have no idea how to get women. So there's not actually as much competition as you think. And in certain ways, even the environment itself can work to your benefit. In this post, we'll take a close look at the dos and don'ts of gym pickup, along with the how-tos for opening and game at the gym. gym pickup The gym has a number of big differences from, say, a bar, or a nightclub, or the street as a place to pick up girls, and depending on where you're at with your skill set various of these may be intimidating or not-so-intimidating: Everyone there is focused on working... hard Most exercisers have set agendas, moving from one machine to the next The women are dressed sexy (which often means their guards will be up) There isn't much socializing going on There's a lot of seeming competition Everything's brightly-lit and obvious Many women wear earphones / listen to music Women are often using different machines than you (e.g., you're on weights, they're on the treadmills / stair climbers / bicycles, etc.) It can end up seeming like a kind of tantalizing forbidden fruit: there they are, legions (or a select few, depending on the demographics of your gym) of beautiful, shapely nymphs, training their bodies into sleek representations of feminine perfection. You go out in the U.S. and other places in the West these days, and it can be downright depressing: overweight women as far as the eye can see, in bars, in clubs, in shopping malls, in cafés, in coffee shops, on the street. But the gym? An oasis. Thin women with hard bodies everywhere. The way women were meant to be (and still are, minus some of the muscle mass, in most of the rest of the world). Except... how do you meet those girls? If you pay attention long enough in the gym, you'll see plenty of guys try and fail: The dude who goes up to "spot" her The dude who tries to ambush her at the water fountain The dude who follows her around the gym, working out next to her, moving when she moves The dude who never makes an approach... he just stares and stares Usually these are the bigger guys... the smaller guys don't dare to try any of this. They know it's not their place. But the bigger guys figure, hey, this is MY home! ... and then, their approach anxiety kicks in and they still don't execute it properly anyway. But women aren't any more closed to the approach in a gym than they are in any other venue. In fact, compared to a lot of place, women in gyms can be a lot MORE open to meeting new men! So long as those new men are breaking with stereotype, that is. BREAKING WITH STEREOTYPE Just like pickup in general is all about turning women's expectations on their head, gym pickup is no different. And what's a girl expect will happen when she gets approached in the gym? She expects one of the following: An overconfident meathead who'll start talking to her and call attention to how skilled he is at weight-lifting and how impressive his muscles are An overly helpful trainer or fellow gym mate who'll pitch in to try and "show her the right way to do this one" or give her a spot when she really doesn't need one An overly hesitant fellow - whether burly meathead or skinny gym newbie - who timidly trips over his own feet quietly whispering out a half-hearted opener that she has to pretend she didn't hear so as not to be bothered ("Thanks, earbuds!" she thinks to herself, her music player providing easy cover for her feigned ignorance) Basically, she expects some guy who'll be really awkward. gym pickup Some guy who's bragging and trying to impress women he meets; some guy who's trying too hard to be of use (see: "Can I Help You?" for more on this); some guy who's racked with anxiety and simply doesn't come across like the kind of dominant, sexy man she's going to have any interest in having around her in any capacity. These are the stereotypes you're going up against, and they are what you do not want to be. In a nutshell, your entire gym pickup approach should be structured around making it blindingly clear to the girls you meet that you are not any of these three guys. It's how you set them instantly at ease, and arouse their curiosity to find out more about you. She's expecting a guy's going to pull one of these awkward situations out of his pants on his approach. And all you got to do to surprise and impress her is not do that. A BRIEF WORD ON APPROACHING Some years back I participated on a seduction forum where some young kid who was trying to learn how to meet girls at the gym got himself first warned, then permanently banned from his gym by repeatedly, and very, very obviously, approaching woman after woman after woman there, and doing it awkwardly and uncomfortably for the women and getting complained about. I don't think the kid even worked out there, I think he went there just to pick up. Now, I've only ever heard of this happening once out of all the times I've seen guys do gym pickup, so it isn't a likely scenario you'll run into, but it is one I want to highlight: we'll talk about this more in a moment, but the gym is a primarily social circle environment, which means you cannot approach it like the street or a nightclub; it's not a meet market where you can just go walk straight up to women and not be noticed, like you would in day game or beach pickup. Everyone notices you approaching in the gym if you're obvious about it. Unless you go about making yourself "The Man" at the gym (and we'll talk about this below too), you must be subtle, and you must be smooth. Those are the two options for handling your approach and still being cool with your fellow gym members: Be smooth and subtle, or Be The Man everybody knows and loves By and large though, just don't go flooding the women at your gym with incessant and obvious pickup attempts, and do actually go there to work out some (and not just to treat it like a party, like that kid did), and you'll be fine. gym pickup We've already covered some of the overarching don'ts and we touched on a smattering of the dos, but now we'll delve into a lot more of the specifics on both sides of the equation. Let's start with some gym pickup don'ts. GYM PICKUP DON'TS When you want to meet girls at the gym, don't: Stare. It's obvious; she knows you're doing it. And unless you're extraordinarily good-looking, it's going to ruin your chances before you even say "hi." (And even if you're extraordinarily good-looking, it's not going to help much.) Stalk. You know, the one where you keep meaning to say something to her, but she keeps slipping away before you can, so you just keep moving over to the bench or machine next to her... she knows you're following her! She isn't blind. And most women are a lot more socially attuned than most men, which means if you think there might be kind of a sort of little chance she might notice it, it's almost certainly glaringly obvious to you. Stalking is cute if you're a puppy dog, but it's not very cute if you're a big sweaty stranger she's never spoken to before. Spot (unless she asks). Ah, the old "spot her" trick, eh? Think you'll just casually slide in there with that one unnoticed? Think again. Girls know what this is - it's the timid man's attempt to swing in and get to know her. One exception: if you are extraordinarily dominant; if you're the kind of man who can walk up to her and say, "Here, I'll spot you," as if you noticed her struggling and of course you should offer her some help, and it feels like more of a command from an authority figure than a kind offering from a peer, then this can work. Water fountain ambush. The water fountain ambush is where you either A) lie in wait for her at the water fountain, pretending to be unwinding after a workout or loudly talking to one of your friends, or B) follow her to the water fountain, and try and pounce on her (conversationally) between sips. This one's very obvious too, and you're not doing yourself any favors by using it... it makes you look intimidated and uncertain, and that makes you look weak. Which is to say, maybe nice as a friend, but not the kind of guy she's looking to date (or go to bed with). Awkward form advice. Correcting her on her form is one that can be good, if used properly - we'll discuss below. But if you can't execute it right, don't do it. That means, no timidity: "Hey, I think you might be doing that wrong;" no hesitancy: "Do you want some help with that exercise?" and no 'offers': "I can give you a hand with that if you're not sure what to do." These are half-assed gestures that are easier to say "no" to than they are to say "yes" to, and "no" is exactly what you'll get. Catcall. This one probably goes without saying, but you never know. "Damn, you look good!" or, "You can stop working out right now, you already look perfect!" are not good conversation starters for the gym. Talk about the gym a lot. So let's say you just met some cute girl by the ellipticals, and now the two of you are chatting - and she seems to like you! What's the most natural thing to talk about? For most guys, they're going to talk about the gym, of course. Don't do this! Talking about the gym, when the two of you are IN the gym, is EXTREMELY boring, and tells her you have nothing interesting about you or to talk about. She'll exit the conversation quickly. If you've tried meeting girls at the gym before, you're probably guilty of at least one or two of them... maybe even most of them. So there's a good chance you just read the don'ts of gym pickup and thought to yourself, "Man, that was everything I had in my arsenal! What now?!" Well before I cause ye who've entered here to abandon all hope, let me re-fit your seduction skill slots with a host of emphatic dos. GYM PICKUP DOS gym pickupThe dos of picking up a girl at the gym are as follows: Be a regular. Being in the gym regularly (e.g., 3 days a week) gets you familiar with the environment - and also who goes there. You can play around with going at different times of day if you're trying to combine working out with picking up - you'll often find that the afternoon is the best time to go to meet girls at the gym in college, while the evening is the best time to go to meet girls in the working world. Try out different times of day, and keep your eyes peeled for: Who the regulars are What times of day they go You'll use this information to inform your future pickups. Get to know the staff. Actually chat with the staff at your gym - the girls at the counter, the guys doing training. The manager, if he's out and about. Just a few words here and there to get started, "How's it going?" "What's the crowd looking like today?" and building up gradually to more substantial conversations as you become a familiar face. Remember, there's no rush. Being friendly with the gym staff does two (2) great things for you: It builds your social status at the gym and provides you social proof (not to mention preselection, if you get in with any attractive female staffers), and It gets you familiar with "gym people," gets you comfortable talking with folks about working out, gym etiquette, gym humor, and all manner of related topics, so you start behaving like an expert; the gym becomes your home away from home, just like it's theirs, and this environmental comfort and ease is very noticeable and attractive to women in the environment (effectively, they feel like they are in your environment when talking to you once you're visibly very comfortable and natural) Be authoritative, cool, or both. Most guys in the gym, despite their muscles, do not act like they're "alpha males" at all. I've never quite been able to figure out why; although I've long suspected they fear coming across too strong with a girl, so they head in the opposite extreme. And it's true, you don't want to be so strong you're overwhelming to her, but you also don't want to be so meek you come across nervous and hesitant. Women who want to meet men in the gym go there to meet strong men, remember, not weaklings. So when you engage, make sure you do so with an air of confidence, dominance, and authority about you... or at least be cool. Stay focused. Don't let your eyes wander... use your peripheral vision. Even if a girl likes you, the instant she notices you checking her out, she'll stop checking you out and start playing hard to get. Instead, keep your eyes to yourself; stay focused, don't check her out... and give her the opportunity to check you out without feeling like you're watching her. That way she can slowly ramp up her attraction for you - just by staring at you. And all the while, she'll be more and more hoping you'd just come up to her and say "hi." Sometimes, girls will even start stalking you at the gym, when you ignore them long enough. Turn the conversation to things outside the gym / exercising / athletics, etc., as quickly as you can. Get into personal stuff so you aren't being another "gym buddy" for her that she just talks to about her workouts. Get personal - imagine you met her in a coffee shop instead of a weight room. Those are the "do"s and the "don't"s for meeting a girl at the gym. Follow them, and you'll become a gym girl attraction magnet, instead of a repellant, like most of the other men trying to meet women in the gym are. But wait, you might say - these dos and don'ts are all well and good, but how do I actually, you know pick a girl up in the gym? That's a good question - and it's what we're going to go over in the third and final section of this article. gym pickup For this section of the article, I'm going to assume you're following the dos laid out above and you're shunning the don'ts. The don'ts are self-explanatory; but why are the dos so important again? If you don't get to know the staff, you're running at a sizeable disadvantage, both in terms of feeling truly comfortable in your gym, and in terms of social proof and preselection If you're not being authoritative and/or cool, women won't like being approached by you - so make sure you're at least one of these, so that they will If you're not focused, you'll toss too much emotional validation at women too early on - often before you even approach - and by the time you actually go up to say "hi," they'll largely have lost interest (or at least will really want to make you work for it) If you don't turn the conversation off the gym, you'll lose women fast who get bored and think you don't have anything to say, so turn the conversation to something interesting fast And if you're not going to the gym regularly, not only won't you learn who the regular are and who aren't, and when the best times to go to meet women are, but... what the heck are you doing trying to meet girls in the gym, anyway? You should be doing all of these. Once you've been going to the same gym a month or two, you've gotten on at least relatively friendly terms with most of the staff (and you'll be best buddies in a few more months), and you're feeling and acting like a gym pro (even more so than the other guys there who are thrice your size), you're ready to gym game with the best of them. Here's how. MEETING GIRLS IN THE GYM (REGULARS) Most of the women you'll meet in the gym are "regulars;" girls who are going there, and who've been going there as long as or longer than you have. You need to approach regulars the same way you approach women in social circle: gradually, with little pings to get them comfortable with you... all the while staying right at their periphery until you're ready to move in for the kill. Like we talked about in "The Secret to Hooking Up with Friends," if you get to know a girl too much before you make a move to take things romantic (or sexual), you'll automatically get slotted into the "just friends" category, or, at best, the "potential boyfriend" category - neither of which you want (these rarely turn into anything). Your approach instead should look like this: Scouting out. This is where you don't look at her, stare at her, follow her around, or stalk her. You just recognize her, and get a feel for how often she's there. You'll see her a couple of times. You'll also let her see you, and check you out if you like; ideally, she'll see you being social with the gym staff. Pinging. Little pings here and there over the next few times you see her will "break the ice" with her and get her feeling more familiar with you than 99% of the other men there. Things like saying, "Oh, sorry," as you move past her while she's doing a work out, or, "Hey, are you using this?" about a bench or dumbbell near her. Don't do more than one or two of these in a day, over the course of several times seeing her. "Real" ice breaking. Once you've exchanged a few words with her now and again, you can break the ice for real, with a simple question, and see if she bites back. Wait until she comes to work out near you, or you find yourself near her, and when she's in-between sets ask her (and it's all right if you're lifting while you ask), "What's your workout objective?" or, "How long've you been working out for?" Let her answer back ("I'm in a modeling competition," "I just want to keep fit," or, "A couple of years now"), and respond with a question or a statement, or even simply, "Oh. [pause] Cool." Then go back to your workout. If she reengages: you can get into a normal conversation with banter and a little deep diving before telling her she's cool and the two of you should grab a bite or a drink sometime when you're not hoisting heavy loads of iron in the air. Then, get her phone number afterward to set up the date. If she doesn't reengage: no harm, no foul. Not all girls are assertive enough to reengage; but you want to do something now, otherwise next time it's going to be awkward. So now you need to pull out your A-game for bantering and hooking, same as you do with any girl anywhere else. Here's what a successful conversation can look like with a gym girl who doesn't engage right away (a "mildly difficult" girl): You: What's your workout objective? Her: I'm training for a modeling competition. You: Oh. [pause] Cool. Her: ... You: I had a friend who did one of those a while back. Intense stuff. But it gives you a better body than 99% of the women running around outside these days. Her: Yeah, it's hard work, but it gets you in great shape. You: Well, you seem like a pretty dedicated lifter, so I'm sure you'll do great. Her: ... You: ... Her: So how long have you been coming here? You: Why? You plan on doing something with that information? Her: Just curious. You: I know. I'm just kidding. But people always ask each other the same stuff in the gym. So I like to make fun a bit. Her: Do you work here? You: No, I work writing books. I don't have the patience to be a personal trainer, those guys are saints. Her: What kind of books do you write? You: Mostly stuff that nobody wants to publish. What do you do? Her: I'm a student. You: Everybody's a student of something. What do you study? gym pickup The main theme to meeting gym regulars is that it just takes time. She's used to the gym, she's comfortable with it already, so if you come barging up out of nowhere and start hitting on her when she's never seen you before and don't know who you are, you end up looking like the new guy who hasn't figured out what gyms are all about (working out!) and it's a big turn off. However, the same rules do not necessarily apply for the other kinds of women you'll meet in gyms. MEETING GIRLS IN THE GYM (NEW GIRLS) Once you've been working out at the same gym for a while, you'll start to notice the new girls: the ones who are showing up for the first time (so far as you've seen them, anyway). Of course, so will every other male there... but that doesn't necessarily make them much competition. New girls, you'll soon realize, frequently don't last long in the gym. Many of them start coming, they come a couple of times, and then you never see them again. Maybe they pop back in a couple more times that year, but that's it. What's the deal? Well, just like with men, the majority of women who join a gym simply never get serious about it. What that means for you is, if she's pretty and she's new, you can't afford to stretch things out over weeks or a month like you would with a regular - you need to get her while the gettin's good. You don't want to start by asking a new girl if she's new. At best, it's disorienting and makes her feel like she doesn't belong and she's an outsider from "your" group (and sticks out like a sore thumb). At worst, it makes her feel like prey - and you're the predator. So don't ask her this. Instead, you'll want to open her with a more traditional opener - direct or indirect - but make absolutely sure to do it from a position of authority and coolness, not neediness or hopefulness. Here's an example using a direct opener, though you can use either kind, or even indirect game, in a standard gym pickup: Wait until she's settled in a bit to the gym (don't pounce on her the moment she's in the door, unless you want her to feel like you've been lying in wait in the dumbbell section for some sexy minx to step right into your clutches) Catch her just as she's ending a set (not mid-workout, for obvious reasons, but you also don't want to approach her if she's just been standing around for a while; catch her immediately following a transition into not working out) Pace your introduction with a bit of authority and a name exchange - that looks like this: "Excuse me... I saw you working out over here, and I haven't seen you in the gym before, and I just HAD to come tell you that you have the prettiest hair I've seen all day today. I'm Pete." Next, get into playful banter ASAP! I know the temptation is to ask her how long she's been working out here, or why she decided to start working out, or something like that... but don't you dare. She'll write you off faster than a donkey in a horse race. Gym pickups are one of the least conducive forms of pickup to regular conversation - instead, you need to keep things light, quick, and to the point. Ramp attraction quick and get a phone number to get back to working out, e.g., You: Excuse me... I saw you working out over here, and I haven't seen you in the gym before, and I just HAD to come tell you that you have the prettiest hair I've seen all day today. I'm Pete. Her: Oh! Thanks! I'm Annie. You: Annie? That's an unusual name in this day and age. Her: Yeah, I guess you don't hear it much anymore! You: Well, it's cool; sort of like taking a time machine back to simpler times. But I guess they didn't have gyms back then. Her: Hmm, I never thought about that. You: Probably we would've met at an ice cream parlor in that case. Her: [laughs] You: I'd have been the greaser, and you'd have been the good girl there with her friends, all her books in a tidy little book strap. Her: I think I would've been a greaser too. You: Oh really? Her: Probably. You: So much for the nice-girl-with-a-tidy-book strap theory. Her: [laughs] You: Hey, so, in all seriousness, let me ask you something, Annie. Her: What's that? You: Well, it's kind of personal, I'm not sure if I should ask it in a gym. Her: What it it? You: Well, before I do, let me see that wristwatch a bit, it looks like the one Edward Norton had in The Hulk. Her: It's a heart rate monitor [extends her wrist; you take hold of her hand]. You: Yeah I know, my little brother has one of those... they're cool. Her: So what were you going to ask me? You: Okay, what I was going to ask you is this: who do you think would win [pause] in a cage match for Kristen Stewart's heart: Robert Pattinson or Rupert Sanders? Her: [laughs] Oh my God, is that the question? You: What's your answer? Her: Robert Pattinson, definitely Robert Pattinson. You: Hmm... [pause] An unexpected reply. Her: [laughs] Why? You: Well, you seem like the kind of girl who'd go for a Rupert Sanders type. You know, older, established... pretty rich. Her: I'm pretty sure Robert Pattinson is rich too. You: Yeah, but he's young and immature. Anyway, what do you do about town here, Annie? Her: I'm bartending right now while I try to find a fulltime job. What about you? You: I mostly just hang out at the gym and ask people about the latest teen sensations. Okay, well, I would like to stand here talking all day, but I've got to get back to my work out. But you seem kind of fun, so I'll tell you what: let's grab some food and get to know each other a little bit better outside the gym when we aren't both so sweaty sometime either later today or later this week. Sound good? Her: [laughs] Yeah, that sounds great. You: Awesome. Let me get your cell number. Get her phone number and plan for a date right then (don't push it off to later - this may be the only day she ever comes to the gym again for the rest of her life, for all you know) Say goodbye and get back to your workout - the reason for this is that if you hang around too long in a gym, it starts to feel weird. You're supposed to be there to get ripped - she's going to think you're setting your schedule aside just to talk to her if you stick around too long. So make it quick, grab her number, and get in and get out and get back to your workout Remember, what you need to be thinking throughout the entire pickup is "break with stereotype." Don't be the same as the other guys who approach her; intrigue her, attract her, and excite her, instead. PULLING OFF A GYM PICKUP Just remember that more than anything else, you want to: Be a regular Get to know the staff Be authoritative, cool, or both Stay focused And turn the conversation off the gym And for regulars, slow game it like social circle, since you'll be seeing them a lot and they may well know the staff anyway (no need to shoot yourself in the foot here), while for new girls (or the bumper crop of "temporaries" who show up after a holiday to shed holiday pounds, or after New Year's to momentarily stick to their New Year's resolutions to get a better body!) you'll want to approach the day you see her (since in all likelihood she won't stick around). Break the stereotype, cast nervousness or hesitation aside, and go rack yourself up some cute girls with great bodies. The gym's a wonderful place to meet dedicated, awesome women - and now you've got the tools to do it!

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##How to Be an Alpha Male -- Without Becoming a Stereotype If there's one pet peeve I have right now, it's the current way being an "alpha male" is talked about in most pick up and dating circles. I've gotten to the point personally where I cringe every time I hear some guy talking about "being alpha." But I don't want to go on an anti-alpha tirade here, because at it's core, the alpha male ideology is very correct; it's just that the term itself has become so laden with cultural baggage that "the alpha male" has just about become a stereotype -- a clownish, cartoon caricature of what an alpha male used to be. Every time I hear the term "alpha" these days, I imagine some bald, shirtless, gargantuan, vein-popping 'roid-head screaming, "Alpha... ALPHA!!!" at the top of his lungs, and a crowd of skinny nerdy guys standing around him, pointing at him in awe, and whispering to each other, "That's alpha. That's how you get the ladies." This post is my effort to wrestle back the term "alpha male" from the shadow of itself it's become, and redefine once and for all what the term really means -- and exactly how to be an alpha male... without turning yourself into a cartoon character. ORIGINS OF THE ALPHA MALE "Alpha male" wasn't always a term that meant a man who ate rusty nails like other men eat Doritos and clubbed women over the head with T-rex femurs to drag them back to his cave, willing or otherwise. The terminology actually originates in ethology, the name for the scientific discipline devoted to the study of animal behavior. There are five rank designations used in ethology: Alpha (the leader of a group) Beta (the second-in-command) Gamma Delta Omega (the lowest of the low; completely subordinate to all others) You can infer it's probably much better to be the alpha or the beta than it is to be the omega. But wait, it's more nuanced than that. There are other individuals -- nomads -- who operate outside of the groups, and don't fall into any of the five main ethological designations. These nomads may at times come into conflict with alpha males, defeat them, and assume alpha male status of the defeated alpha males' groups. So the big players in ethology end up looking like this: Alphas lead their groups, protect them, look out for them, and mate with the top females. Betas bide their time, help the alphas succeed, and take over if the alpha dies or is killed or otherwise disappears, becoming the de facto replacement alpha and getting access to the women when the original alpha male is gone. Nomads operate outside the hierarchy, not being traditionally ranked ethologically, until they come into contact with a group and, if successful in challenging the group's reigning alpha male, become the new alpha. You can quickly see that the ethological view of intra-group hierarchical rankings is a lot more nuanced than what the pick up community bandies about. If you listen to most of what's said there, you'll get this message: "There are alphas, and then there are betas. Dominant men, and weak men. You're either one... or the other. You get either everything... or nothing." Now, if you know me, you know I talk a lot about finding the middle ground and avoiding extremes. This is a big reason why I get so annoyed with what I hear from most guys instructing others on how to be an alpha male these days. They take things to the extreme, and recommend that men become cartoonish versions of what a truly dominant, alpha male is. And what happens when you take something to the extreme, of course, is that you end up looking silly, graceless, and tryhard -- to everyone with any modicum of social awareness. And that, of course, especially includes women. how to be an alpha male RISE (AND FALL) OF THE "FAKE ALPHAS" I'll start by saying this isn't just a pick up community thing. Men have been trying to position themselves and posture as dominant males since long before anything like an underground international community of seducers came into being. And they've, of course, long achieved varying degrees of success. In the Hip-Hop world (and elsewhere, but you hear it a lot here), someone who tries to be something he isn't is called a "poseur" -- pronounced like "poser." The poseur is seen to be "posing" like a model would pose; it's all about appearance, without any real substance. Many of the modern "I'm So Alpha!" guys are like this -- they're more concerned with appearing strong and dominant than they are with actually being it. The problem that catches them is that, in their quest to be seen as alpha males, they never really take the time to learn what being a dominant male really entails -- so they end up getting the crucial details wrong. If you ask your average pick up community guy what being alpha is all about, he's going to give you back a list that looks something like this: You do whatever you want You don't take crap from women or anybody else You have dominant body language and eye contact You take command of group situations and are clearly the leader You're loud, physical, and aggressive, and others are intimidated by you I'll admit, that sounds like a pretty solid list, on first blush. You read through that, and you think to yourself, "Yeah, for sure. That's the guy that just ends up getting whatever he wants, and everyone else defers to him." But the guys who take this as their whole approach to being alpha males actually usually fail quite miserably, because stuff like this is only half the equation. When I first started going out actively to improve socially and meet women, I spent a little time trying to mold myself into a stereotypical alpha male the way it's described by most folks in the community. After about six months though, the buzz wore off and my natural social intuition kicked back in and told me, "This is way too over the top. Scale it back down and re-introduce nuance; you're not a damn cartoon character." So I did. I stopped trying to be the really loud guy slapping everyone on the back and out-alphaing everybody else. And when guys would do that around me, I'd just ignore them or shrug them off or be real chill with them (see "Dealing with Disruptive Men"), and they'd shut themselves down or back off or end up looking tryhard, and everyone else would see it and women would gravitate toward me instead of them. It was trippy. What I realized, you see, was that it isn't the guy who's pulling out all the stops to be alpha who ends up being viewed as the most attractive, dominant male in the group. In fact, that guy digs his own grave -- he ends up looking tryhard. People know a walking caricature when they see it -- and they know, right away, a guy like that isn't legit. It's the guy who's alpha without even trying that people end up recognizing as the dominant male -- and this is where my entire philosophy of "real alpha" stems from today. HOW TO BE AN ALPHA MALE... WITHOUT BECOMING A STEREOTYPE how to be an alpha maleA lot of my realizations about dominance stem from investment theory and from understanding sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort. Once you have those things down, you quickly start seeing that the men (and women) viewed as most powerful and most dominant -- the most alpha of all -- are NOT the ones, necessarily, who are the loudest, who slap people's backs the hardest, and who out-muscle everyone else, verbally and otherwise. They are, rather, the ones who get their way most often, with the smallest amount of effort. Who's more alpha -- the man who commands a woman by taking her by the arm and dragging her to a sofa, or the man who commands a woman by gazing seductively at a her, motioning toward the sofa, and the two of them rise together and head over? Well, if you listened to most folks, you'd guess that the first man is the alpha male. He got all macho and yanked his girl over. But that ignores a concept known as "buy in," something I plan to write more on in the future. What buy in states is that people are far more invested in you, and far more likely to follow you and remain loyal to you and comply with you and do more with you, when they feel as though they've made the decision to do so themselves -- rather than having been strong-armed into making that decision. I've seen lots of men strong-arming women into moving around with them in bars and clubs. And what almost always happens is, at some point, the woman breaks away from the man and disappears. On the other hand, I've seen my fair share as well of men charming the socks off of women and using smoothness and naturalness to guide women along in a seduction, and those men quite often leave with their girls. Those latter are men variously from the "real alpha" caste, or from the nomad caste (the guys who enter a group and peel off a girl of their own). In fact, I'd even say that if you're cold approaching, you really shouldn't concern yourself all that much with being "alpha" in the traditional sense of the word -- alpha pertains mostly to group situations, and you're more likely to bed women as a strong nomad who comes in and peels women off than as the alpha male center of a group (who usually ends up with the alpha female of the group, and the two of them are paired up that way -- one of the limitations of social circle game). But anyway, back to being alpha. Being the alpha male isn't about being a caricatured "tough guy." It's about mixing vast inner strength and a bit of a hard edge with charm and social grace. The example I'm most enamored with at the moment is Harrison Ford. I've had several girlfriends of mine confess to me that they find Harrison Ford very attractive. And it's not hard to see why. Harrison Ford is a penultimate alpha male, in the realest sense of the term. He's a real leader -- he's tough and gruff, doesn't smile much, seemingly doesn't care a heck of a lot what other people think, but he's also sexy, he's warm, and he looks out for people. He's got a rugged exterior, but a good heart, and he's charismatic as hell. Most guys I see trying to be alpha try to be rugged on the outside, and rugged on the inside, and charisma is an afterthought for them. Women recognize this as fake, and they run away from it. Or they just feel like it's too much, go into auto-rejection, and get scarce. Learning how to become an alpha male isn't about learning how to be a brick wall outside and in -- it's about learning how to meld strength of character with plain old character. Here's what I recommend you focus on in your quest to become truly alpha: Decide what you will and won't tolerate from people. It's incredibly important you know where your limits are. e.g., if a woman teases you a little bit in a conversation, that's fine, you can deal with it. But if you're not in the mood for teasing girls and she's really pressing you, you'll have to set her straight and let her know that isn't cool. Learn to communicate what you won't tolerate with grace. What we just said in #1 though doesn't mean that you're alpha by telling a girl who's teasing too hard that she'd better knock it off or else, or that you're alpha by back-turning her or walking away. That stuff's just rude and/or silly, and it's universally childish (and weak in its childishness... it isn't what a man would do). Instead, learn to be subtle... if she over-teases you, you shrug a little, roll your eyes to the side, and let your attention drift off... it's now her job to reengage you and bring you back into things. Leave off the social butterflying. One huge misconception that most guys have about being the dominant guy in a group is that the dominant guy is the one who's doing all the talking. Are you kidding me? It takes a lot of work to talk... and dominant men don't do a lot of work. Picture a lion sitting among his pride... he's relaxing, not trying to entertain. Heck, picture Harrison Ford again -- can you envision him blabbing non-stop to a group of people he's just met? Can you picture Sean Connery doing this? They'll be social, sure -- they'll tell a few stories, crack a few jokes, get everyone liking them. And then they'll fast switch into focusing on talking to that pretty girl they like a lot (if they're there for women) -- so fast you'll hardly notice. One minute they're socializing, the next minute they're getting to know a girl one-on-one. Everyone else respects this decisiveness a lot more than they do the guy who keeps trying and trying and trying to win them over by blabbing. It gets old. Quit trying to tool guys. The most respected, dominant, successful men I know with women never try to tool or AMOG other men. Never. They build other men up -- make them sound good. Why do real alphas never tear others down and only build them up instead (or ignore them / marginalize them if they're being ignorant)? Because, quite simply, it's the social ladder climbers who tool others to try and advance their position. Leaders, by contrast, build others up and confer value upon them, because they don't want weak people in their group -- they want strong ones, they want allies who're grateful for being recognized and appreciated, and they want to disarm with charm rather than try and beat down with verbal or physical intimidation. Go for what you want FAST. While the fake alphas are busting their asses posturing and trying to look tough and sound dominant, you start talking to the cutest girl there, and within a few minutes invite her to go sit with you. And twenty or thirty minutes after that, you invite her to go have a nightcap with you, and the two of you leave and head back to your place. Fast, easy, effective. And don't worry, everyone else notices -- people really do ultimately pay more attention to the results others produce than the reactions they get. And everybody sees the guys full of hot air standing around trying to be alpha, while the actual alpha male (or, in some cases, nomad) goes and takes his woman and leaves. Do use dominant body language... but don't be a caricature. Best example of this is how some guys trying to be alpha hold their arms out a little too far from their sides, as if trying to exaggerate how big and muscular their arms are. I learned this one was bad back in high school, when hanging out with some girls I worked with. "What's with Royce and his arms being held so far out, have you seen that?" one girl asked the others. She was referring to a pretty ripped guy who often tried to seem like a really tough guy, and held his arms too far out from his sides. "I think he must have a lot of armpit hair or something and he can't close his arms," another girl joked. They all laughed. "Too much deodorant on or something and his arms get stuck that way," another one said, and they all laughed again. Exaggerated body language: it looks silly. Yes, stand tall, and do puff your chest out -- but not so far out you look like a rooster. Aim to look like James Bond instead. Remember to make it natural and stop trying to pose. If you scan through the above points, you can quickly pick up a theme: • Don't over exaggerate your displeasure (#2) • Don't over-try to win people over and be liked (#3) • Don't over-try to intimidate guys or out-alpha them (#4) • Don't waste time posing when you could be closing (#5) • Don't over exaggerate dominant body language (#6) See the trend? It's don't be tryhard. The instant people start thinking a guy is tryhard, he's banned in their heads from ever being considered a true alpha male leader of the pack. Real alphas don't try to lead or work on the appearance of leading... they just lead. Be cool. If people don't like you, they won't follow you, no matter how alpha you try to be. Humans are not a species where sheer physical dominance wins the day -- it's a combination of perceived physical presence, and demonstrated social ability. If a guy is short and stocky but moves solidly, and compliments that with a 100-megawatt smile and charm and moving fast to close on what he wants, he's going to be seen as alpha. If a guy is tall and lanky but moves his body slowly and takes up space with his body and is chill and relaxed in his demeanor and also moves things very smoothly but very quickly forward, he'll be seen as alpha. Becoming an alpha male isn't about being a beefcake who yells at women and head butts walls. It's about mastering your physical presence and your social presentation -- being solid, confident, cool, and charming, and not wasting time trying to pose and instead looking for opportunities to close. Those are the kinds of men women go for. Always remember that women are far more attuned than the vast majority of men to power dynamics, too -- so while a guy who's a meathead may think he's more alpha than you are, women are still going to recognize if you're ignoring his efforts to tool you and are instead moving with social grace and effortlessness and you're closing on the girl you want. Women notice that in a BIG way. That's why real alphas get the girls... while fake alphas get left standing around still trying to win people over and tool people and wondering why the heck that beautiful girl left with that less active guy.

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##How to Be Decisive There it is: the Big Decision. how to be decisive On the one hand, you've got Road #1. And it is a tempting choice. It seems like a great path to go down... maybe everything you want. Except you're not 100% sure it'll work out. And if it doesn't, you'll have lost all that time going down it. Then, on the other hand, you've got Road #2. It's the safer path by far... but maybe - could it be - too safe? If you pick Road #2, you'll probably be okay, but you might miss out on the amazingly potential upside of Road #1. Alternately, pick Road #1 and you risk having it not lead anywhere, and then you won't end up enjoying the benefits of Road #1 OR Road #2. So, you hem and haw, delay and stall, sending your mind into overdrive trying to figure out which choice is the right choice to make. Only, your mind can't figure this out. There's no new information coming in. Nothing else to tip the scales in your head to help you to decide, or force you to. In the end, you sit there, no closer to a decision than you were when first presented with those two choices, despite endless wheel spinning, mental gears clogged with mud and grass, unable to spin any further, you unable to decide. This article is designed to help you never have to worry about this ugly (and far too common) scenario again; it the complete manual on how to be decisive, and it's how I took myself from someone who kept ending up in these scenarios to someone who never does anymore. how to be decisive I remember walking with a group of friends a while back, wrapping up a night after having just had dinner. "Shall we take the metro, or take a cab?" I asked everyone. "We're not certain of getting a cab, but if we can hail one it'll be a lot faster and we'll have a lot less walking to do. Or, if we ride the metro, there'll be a lot more walking, but we won't be standing around wondering if we're going to be able to flag down a cab or not." They stood there, befuddled. One of them was an out-of-towner like me, but everybody else was from town. I figured they'd have a good idea about how they wanted to get home, but none of them did. "Well..." started one, "we could take the taxi, I guess. But will we have to wait a long time? I guess it's hard to find a cab right now." "Maybe we should take the metro?" said another. They stood around and stared quizzically at each other. "I'm just going to try and find a taxi," I said, impatient with their indecision. "I think maybe we should do the metro?" said one of the girls. "What if we can't find a taxi?" Everyone stood around looking at me, perplexed. "Yeah, definitely, feel free to do the metro if you like; I'm going to go take a taxi because I don't want to walk all the way to the subway station," I said, and then I started walking to where the taxis were most likely to see me. Everyone else followed. But they never decided. They were still debating whether to keep following me to see if we could land a taxi or whether they should turn around and walk back the other way toward the metro, right up until I hailed a taxi and we all piled in. Not exactly a major life decision here or anything, but nobody else could decide. THE DEMON INDECISION I'm convinced you lose more good opportunities to indecision, and the inaction that subsequently follows, than anything else in life. Indecision is the twisted funhouse mirror that fear hides its ugly visage behind. It is man's defense against the great unknown... instead of taking a leap into uncertainty, simply stay put, frozen in in the middle between two irreconcilable choices. No one chooses to be indecisive... that would, after all, be making a decision, albeit a decision not to make decisions. Instead, indecision is the place you end up when your mind has stalled out, unable to accurately gauge, based on your previous reference points and experiences and what you know about these two (or more) choices, which way is the right way to go. how to be decisive Saying "I can't decide" can feel safe... now instead of doing something, and potentially taking a risk, you can do NOTHING. So nothing changes. But if you aren't satisfied with your life as-is - if you want new friends, new lovers, new skills, new resources - you won't get those hemming and hawing. And if you want to be seen as a leader - as someone respected and revered - that won't happen when you're unable to make a decision. WHY YOU CAN'T MAKE UP YOUR MIND The scientific paper "Indecisiveness and Culture: Incidence, Values, and Thoroughness" published in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology had this to say about indecision: "Three studies examined cultural variations in indecisiveness among Chinese, Japanese, and Americans. In Study 1, validated self-report, comprehensive measures of indecisiveness indicated large cultural differences, with Japanese participants exhibiting substantially more indecisiveness than Chinese or Americans. Study 2 provided evidence that such cultural variations correspond to variations in people's positive versus negative values for decisive behaviors, suggesting that such values are plausibly an important means for motivating and sustaining cultural differences in indecisiveness. Study 3 provided direct behavioral instances of the differences in indecisiveness implicated in Studies 1 and 2. It also suggested that thoroughness might be an important cognitive mechanism whereby cultural differences in indecision actually occur, with thoroughness being especially prominent among Japanese decision makers. Suggestions for theory concerning the nature and foundations of indecisiveness and its cultural variations are developed and discussed, along with plausible implications for real-life practical issues, for example, in politics and management." That is to say, looking at Chinese, Japanese, and American decision makers, and finding that Japanese decision makers had a markedly more difficult time arriving at a decision than did their Chinese and American counterparts, the researchers posited that differences in indecision resulted from Japanese decision makers being: More fearful of arriving at an incorrect decision than excited about arriving at a correct one, and More concerned with arriving at THE correct, thoroughly selected decision The people with the hardest time making a decision are the ones who most want to be right, and most fear being wrong. Could it be your desire to be right is holding you back? how to be decisive In "How to Overcome Depression" I talked about the psychological overhaul I gave myself back in college when I realized a lot of how I used my brain was limiting me. I did things like: Start censoring negative emotional thoughts from my head Start forcing my brain to think about projects I was working on and enjoyed Remove negative people from my life who were having a bad influence Forbid myself from engaging in victim mentality Set goals for myself and force myself to start doing them Another one of the things I did was realize that I was spending too much time being indecisive, and that this led to my life being rather stagnant. So, I decided to do something here, too: I decided to start mixing it up a bit more. THE FOOLISH AND THE BOLD The archetype of the "hero" in movies, comics, and stories of all kinds is often of a man who bullishly - and sometimes foolishly - rushes into taking action to save the day. Sometimes this leads to problems for him, because he makes the wrong decision, and people get hurt. He's forced to go through strife and difficulty dealing with the fallout, and eventually comes out of it on the other side with better-informed decision-making, and is able to still rush in with brash decisions, but they are now decisions drawn from a richer pool of experiences, and tend to be shrewder moves. On the converse, you have the indecisive guy - this is a fellow you see infrequently in fiction, but far more so in real life. This guy never does anything. As such, he does not make the bold, foolish hero's mistakes... and he also does not receive the bold, foolish hero's lessons. He avoids looking foolish by making bad choices. But he also never learns how to make good choices, either, because he doesn't get the opportunity to learn from failure. So, he ends up looking like the "guy who plays it safe", because he IS the "guy who plays it safe" - he never does anything crazy, wild, risqué, or interesting. And he's never going to break that mold by continuing to play it safe. The only way he breaks out of the "guy who plays it safe" mode of leading an unrewarding, unsatisfactory life is by adopting the principles of the foolish and the bold. HOW TO BE DECISIVE... WHEN YOU CAN'T DECIDE The hardest decisions to make are the frequently ones you encounter when you're still new to making fast, decisive decisions. The reason for that is because when you haven't yet learned how to be decisive and haven't yet pressed yourself to decide, you don't have the experiences to educate you in consistently making correct decisions yet. You also don't have any "default decisions" in place yet - and these are a key part of being decisive. "Default decision?" you might ask. "What's that?" A default decision is how you decide when you can't decide. It's your decision making contingency plan. e.g.: What do you do if one of your friends wants you to come have dinner with him at your favorite restaurant, while another of your friends wants you to go see that new movie you really wanted to see on the same day and at the same time as that first friend? How do you choose if you want to do both equally? What do you do if you're getting a seemingly good offer on something, but you're not completely sure, yet you're being told it's a "now or never" kind of deal - if you don't take it now, you'll never get another chance to? What do you do if you have a major life decision coming up - where to move to, what kind of career to pursue, whether to quit your job or not, whether to go to college or not, whether to marry a girl or break up with her, something along those lines? How do you decide? These are the kinds of scenarios in which most people get stuck. And they always get stuck because of one of two reasons: They want both (or all) options relatively equally, or They don't have enough information to know which option to select Therefore, what we really need are some logjam-busters... a chain to latch onto your car and yank you out of the mud. We need some default decisions. DEFAULT DECISIONS Before you can use these to be decisive, the first thing you must be is angry at being indecisive. You've got to be legitimately annoyed at yourself when you're unable to decide and/or unable to take the lead. If this isn't something that bothers you, you're not going to care about changing it, or want to change it. So, first thing's first: be able to realize when you're stuck making a decision, and be ANGRY about it. This gives you the impetus you need to force a decision on yourself. how to be decisive What kind of decision you force on yourself, of course, is going to depend on what you feel like your options are for deciding - and for that, I recommend a good stable of default decisions to fall back on in various scenarios. Here are mine: Pick the scarcer option. If it's something relatively minor - say, going to your favorite restaurant, or going to see that movie that's out right now - sometimes you can pick by selecting the option that's scarcer. For instance, the movie's only going to be playing for a limited time, and maybe you won't have another chance to go see it, or maybe nobody else will want to go and you don't feel like going alone. The restaurant's not going anywhere. So you pick the movie, knowing you can go to the restaurant another day. Pick the option that's less immediate work. The taxi-metro story from the start of the article jammed my friends' decision making because both options contained potentially large amounts of possible work: you might have to do a lot of walking and standing and waiting to use the metro, but the taxi would be fast and you could sit. Or, you might try to find a taxi, but be unsuccessful, in which case you'd still have to take the metro and do all the work there, but with the added work of having had to walk around and try to find a taxi and backtrack and go to the metro instead if unsuccessful. I was able to decide because I just said to myself, "What's less work right now if it works?" and the answer was "taxi," so I went for the taxi, knowing that I didn't have a way of knowing if it would work or not, so the point was moot. Pick the more educational option. Ever find yourself torn on what to order at a restaurant, between an old favorite of yours and that new dish that might be good... or might not be? When you can't decide and don't have a clear preference, it's best to say, "Okay then, I'll try the new one to get more information on what that tastes like and how good or not it is so that next time I'll have an easier decision making process." Pick the less harmful option. You can make $100 working for 10 hours, or you can go stick up that guy who just cashed his paycheck and make $100 in a few seconds. While I don't think this is a hard decision for most of the readers on this site, there are other, more complicated decisions - like how to deal with a girl you're seeing whom you want to break up with, but you know she'll be hurt - where this comes into play. Choose the option that causes the least harm to all parties involved. When not pressured, say "yes." When you have a "yes" or "no" decision to make and you can't decide what to say, assuming no one is pressuring you for a reply, say "yes." You'll enjoy new experiences and discover if you like something or not, and be better able to decide decisively next time. ... EXCEPT when pressured. Then, say "no." I'm a pretty straightforward person, and because people tend to assume others are like them, people tend to make decisions under the assumption that others are like them. I've had a handful of incidents I can recall in the past where some person (a sales person, a former business partner) was asking me to make a decision right now on something I was very much on the fence on. Because I was in the habit of saying "yes" to all new opportunities, I said "yes" to most of these and ended up losing a great deal of money and getting nothing for my troubles every time. I ended up adopting that default decision of, "If someone is pressuring you to decide on something and will not give you time to think, say NO every single time." Your conversation with people like this will look like so: Him: I can perform X great service for $2,000, but ONLY if you sign up right now. You: I need time to mull it over. Give me a chance to talk to some other folks I know who are educated in this and do a little research on my own. Him: There's nothing to research! All the information you need is right here. Look - you've got to decide RIGHT NOW, or never. I can't wait around for you to make up your mind, I'm very busy. You: Okay, in that case - no. Him: Well, wait - are you sure you want to write this off? You're making a HUGE mistake! It's the deal of a lifetime! You: Nope, not interested. Thanks. Bye. Then you exit the situation immediately, unless you REALLY want to stick around and strengthen your resistance to someone trying to hit every angle to get you to do what he wants... better be certain you won't say "yes," though, as these people are good at getting "yes"es out of you. Flip a coin. If all else fails, just choose at random. Your "indecision decision tree" (how to proceed when you're not immediately sure how to proceed) ends up looking like this, in order of importance: Am I being pressured for a "yes"? If not, say "yes"; if so, say "no." Is one of these choices harmful to anyone? Don't choose that one. Is one of these choices more educational for me? Choose that one. Is one of these choices rare / scarce / disappearing? Choose that one. Is one of these choices less immediate work? Choose that one. Nothing else here applies? Pick randomly to just have a decision. So, first thing you'll avoid are agreeing to things you're being pressured to agree with. Always say "no" to these, unless you have no other choice (e.g., someone's asking you for your money with a gun to your head... probably say "yes" there, unless you're Batman). Next, if you have a decision to make and there's potential for other people getting hurt, choose the option that's less harmful. Then, if you have a decision that's hard to make and one of the options is going to be more educational to you than the other option(s), choose the more educational one. Finally are scarcity and effort. If pressure is not an issue, neither option is especially harmful to anyone, and neither option is going to give you much of an education advantage over the other, then just choose whichever one is likely to be harder to come by, and if both are the same in that regard, do whichever is easier. And if you're not being pressured, there's no potential harm, no potential education, no difference in availability, and everything's roughly the same amount of work, then just choose randomly. It doesn't matter which one you select; if it did, you'd already have arrived at a decision. HOW MUCH YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO REMEMBER You don't need to memorize that "indecision decision tree" to know how to be decisive in one situation or another. Having a good idea about what questions to ask in what scenarios is probably enough. When I realize I'm stuck in deciding on something, the first thing I'll usually ask myself is, "Which of these options is more educational, or which is harder to come by?" That's because I'm not usually being pressured for a decision, and the things I'm deciding on rarely involve possible harm coming to other people. If I can't make up my mind still, I choose whichever's easier (or closer, if I'm traveling somewhere). And if I still can't make up my mind... I'll play some sort of randomness game, like taking the letters "I" and "F" for an Italian and a French restaurant and saying, "I, F, I, F, I, F, I, F, I, F, I..." faster and faster until I trip up, and go with whichever restaurant I said the initial for last before I stumbled over the letters. The only exception to this are "big" questions, like where to work, where to live, where to travel to, etc. For these, it's best to do as much research on them as you can to give your brain enough information to make an informed decision on. Yet... if you've stocked your cerebrum with facts and you still can't decide... if the choices are too hard to pick from... and you can't decide which is more educational, or rarer, or easier... ... then just play the role of bold, foolish hero - and pick one and charge ahead. The only way you learn how to decide better in the future is by deciding right now and finding out later if you decided right or not.

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##How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn't Know About the 'Winner Effect' Dominance is a touchy topic. It's positively loaded with cultural baggage - in the West, we're averse to both the idea of being dominant over others and of others being dominant over us. It has all kinds of ill-favored connotations that most would rather just avoid. I'm throwing all of that out today though and talking to you about how to be a dominant man, political correctness and sensitivity aside - and I'm going to teach you a lot of things you didn't know about dominance before today. In the post on how to be an alpha male (without becoming a stereotype), we broke down the difference between what's generally thought of as "alpha" and what alpha actually is, and about the character of the nomad -- the man who's neither alpha, nor beta, nor any other role in a social hierarchy, but instead operates outside it entirely. I've long noticed a failure to differentiate among "being alpha" and "being dominant" in those who discuss social dynamics. They're treated as one and the same -- if you're being alpha, you're dominant, and if you're being dominant, you're alpha. But they aren't the same. Being alpha's about heading up your group. Meanwhile, being dominant... that's about something else altogether. What that is -- that and the winner effect -- is what this article is all about. SOCIAL POLICING AND REGULAR JOE Can you be an alpha male and be dominant? Of course you can. Can you be a nomad and be dominant? Yes, most definitely. But how about this: could you be an alpha male and not be dominant? Well... as I'll show below, you can. How about being a non-dominant nomad? Yes to that one too. What then is dominance? How could a man be alpha but not dominant, or dominant but not alpha? There's something out there called "society" that's more a web of social rules and regulations that are generally decided upon by the members of that society and used to keep one another in line with shame, guilt, and force when necessary. Elite members of society bend some of these rules and break others, but Regular Joes are expected to abide by them. For instance, if you're a celebrity, you walk up to the front of a nightclub and get in and everyone's fine with it. "Oh, that's celebrity X," they all say understandingly. But if you're a Regular Joe dressed in Regular Joe clothes and you walk up to the front of a nightclub and you get in, the people waiting in line get angry. "Who's that guy?" they ask, "and why does he get to cut the line while I have to wait?" This is a phenomenon I've touched lightly on here before under the name social policing. Social policing is when people you know or even people you don't know and have never interacted with before perceive you as equal to or lower in status than they perceive themselves interject themselves into your life to "help you out," "look out for you," or "set you straight." It's a justice mechanism, and it's how members of society reassure themselves that if they just follow the rules (like waiting in line at the nightclub to get in) then eventually they'll get theirs. The basic rules of social policing are these: The stronger someone perceives you being or the stronger they respect you, the less likely they are to social police you The weaker someone perceives you being or the less they respect you, the more likely they are to social police you So, when someone sees you as being equal to or lower than them, and they detect you doing something that they aren't doing that gives you an advantage, they get upset. Their world is being turned upside down, and they want to get things back in order again. They want the world to make sense and order to be restored, because they aren't comfortable or capable operating outside of it. Examples of social policing are: Asking you to calm down when you're angry Trying to be overly polite to you when they're telling you "no" e.g., a secretary telling you "I'm so sorry, but Mr. Lawson isn't able to see you today. If you'd like to leave your name and phone number however, I'll do my best to see to it that he gets in touch with you soon," when all she's trying to say is, "No, he can't see you." Looking at you sternly or confronting you when you break the social norms (e.g., approaching women on the street, pulling a girl into a hidden alcove, kissing girls in public, talking loudly, swearing, behaving any way that isn't considered "polite") Telling you to stop having a certain kind of relationship because it's "wrong" (e.g., you have a casual sexual relationship with a girl, and her girlfriends tell her to demand more from you, or your friends tell you you should be more serious, when both of you were otherwise happy and satisfied) All these are forms of social policing. They're means that members of society use to get people operating within the rules that they themselves are accustomed to operating inside of. You see this most clearly when you travel. Act like an American in Japan, and you're considered loud and boorish. Act like an American in China, and you get told repeatedly how polite and friendly you are. And if you stay in these societies long enough, and integrate, and surround yourself with locals, with time people will put more and more social pressure on you to follow the same rules that they follow. As you integrate with a society, that society begins to impose its social norms on you. To an extent, this serves good purpose: by having generally agreed upon social rules that all follow, a society removes a lot of thinking and training and consideration from its adherents' minds. It also helps people know what to expect and the proper ways to interact with one another. But these rules apply far less to dominant people. The elites of society. The celebrities. The government officials. The wealthy. The connected. The people with networks, resources, and respect. Those people do whatever they want (within reason), and no one tries to social police them (unless they get so far outside social norms relative to their position in society that they become open game again, that is -- see Britney Spears shaving her head and not wearing underwear in public). Why is this? It's because they're perceived as more dominant, powerful, resourceful, and respected than the ordinary Regular Joes who make up society. But wait, you might ask -- why would you even want to break social norms? Isn't that rude, impolite, or offensive? It's an interesting question, and it ties in closely with the discussion about how to be a dominant man. Because learning how to be dominant is about a lot more than just learning how to do it -- it's about learning why to be dominant, and when you should be dominant and when you should not. how to be a dominant man WHY YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO BE DOMINANT What if you could just follow the rules and get everything you wanted? Society would have you believe that well of course you can! If you work hard and do good, you can succeed at school. And then if you work hard and do good, you'll get a good job and make a steady paycheck. And if you do all that, then you'll find the girl of your dreams, get married, and start a family. And then if you do all that, you'll get a mortgage, get your dream house, and save for retirement. And for most people... that's what they'll do! Well, she probably won't really be their dream girl, and it probably won't be their dream job... in fact, after the honeymoon period, they'll come to hate waking up in the morning to go to work, and they'll dread Sunday, because Sunday means the weekend is almost over, and on Monday it starts all over again. And maybe they'll even come to resent their girlfriends and wives, because they didn't get the girl of their dreams... instead, they settled. And they know they settled. That's life for the non-dominant person. A whole procession of events that occur outside his control that just happen to him. His life has been pre-planned by society, he follows the plan, and he gets a Regular Joe life. End story. I won't tell you to get off that path entirely, because let's be realistic, most people are never going to do that. Most people don't want to do that. But I bet you also don't want to settle for less than you could get. And if that's the case, then you need to start training up your dominance regardless, because dominance is how you get the things you want. Things like what, you might ask? Dominance is how you get the women you want Dominance is how you get the job you want Dominance is how you get that job to pay you what you want Dominance is how you negotiate tough deals and make them go your way Dominance is how you get people to help you do stuff they refuse others Dominance is how you succeed where others fail Now, dominance isn't the only factor in these -- your skill verbally plays a role, your presence plays a role, your precedent and relationship with the individuals you're interacting with plays a role. But dominance plays such a big role it can't possibly be avoided... and yet it often is. Telling someone they need to be more dominant scares the hell out of them. But let's say you're an attractive, well-dressed guy who knows how to talk to women... but doesn't know how to be a dominant man. And let's say you try to invite her home, and she says... "Why don't we just meet up in a few days?" Well, if you're a non-dominant man, you say, "Okay." And then, chances are, you never see her again, or she treats you like you're just a friend when you do. If on the other hand you're an attractive, well-dressed guy who knows how to talk to women, and you're a dominant man, and you invite her home and she proposes meeting another day, what's going to happen then? First off, you aren't going to accept meeting her another day as an option. Second off, you're going to do everything you can to make it happen right then. "Look, do you like me?" you ask her. "Uh, yeah," she says. "I like you." "Cool," you say, "I like you too. And let's be honest, if we go our separate ways now, are we really going to meet up in a few days?" "Sure we are," she says. "No, we aren't," you say. "People say, 'Yeah, let's meet up later, let's do it another time,' but another time never comes. If you like me and I like you and we want to spend time together, then we should spend time together right now, because if we don't we probably don't see each other again. On the other hand, if we spend time together now and really get to know each other and really have a good time together and really bond, then when we decide to meet up again later we will, because we'll already have something real. Come on." Then you lead her out of there and pull her home. That isn't going to work every time, but it's about 1000% more effective and consistent than saying, "Yeah, sure, let's meet up another time." Because I'll tell you, from years of experience -- that last one doesn't work very often. Dominance is what lets you win. Dominance is how you close things out at the end. Dominance is winning and making the best possible outcome come into being. Dominance isn't being an overly loud, coercive asshole, which is how society portrays it. Rather, it's how you achieve a satisfactory outcome in a situation in which other individuals are working to deny you the outcome. Dominance is success. DOMINANCE, VICTORY, AND TESTOSTERONE LEVELS Want me to totally shock your world view? Welcome into the rabbit hole. What I've got here for you are the big guns you were waiting for me to bring out on you - you've been leading your life all wrong. Concessions: people make them every day. Your boss asks you to stay late. Your girlfriend tells you she can't make it and asks to reschedule. Your parents yell at you for racking up credit card debt and you take it. Random strangers tell you they're sorry but they can't help you, or that you can't get what you want, or that you need to get in line... and you do. But what happens when you concede? Well, you just don't get what you want... right? Not exactly. There've been a raft of studies that've shown the effects of winning and losing on individuals' testosterone, and the subsequent effects on those individuals' confidence, dominance, assertiveness, risk taking, and even future success. Here's just a sampling: From Alan Booth of the University of Nevada's Department of Sociology, et al.'s findings in "Testosterone, and winning and losing in human competition": "After [tennis] matches, mean testosterone rose for winners relative to losers, especially for winners with very positive moods after their victories and who evaluated their own performance highly. Winners with rising testosterone had higher testosterone before their next match, in contrast to losers with falling testosterone, who had lower testosterone before their next match." From Kevin D. McCaul of the Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University et al.'s findings in "Winning fights elevates testosterone levels in California mice and enhances future ability to win fights": "The ‘winner effect' has been studied in a variety of species, but only rarely in mammals. We compared effects of winning three, two, one, or zero resident-intruder encounters on the likelihood of winning a subsequent aggressive encounter in the California mouse (Peromyscus californicus). During the training phase, we ensured that resident males won all encounters by staging contests with mildly sedated, smaller intruders. During the test phase, the resident male encountered an unfamiliar, more evenly matched intruder that had experience winning an encounter and was larger than the resident. Testosterone (T) plasma levels significantly increased after the final test when they had experienced two prior winning encounters, and the probability of winning a future encounter increased significantly after three prior wins independent of intrinsic fighting ability. We hypothesize a ‘winner-challenge' effect in which increased T levels serve to reinforce the winner effect in male California mice." I'll put those in laymen's terms real quick. From the first: winning a sports match increased testosterone in subjects, losing it decreased testosterone. From mice studies, mice with higher testosterone from previous victories won a lot more than other mice equal in all other respects except that their testosterone was lower from previous losses. Think about that: higher testosterone levels from victory help you win more in the future, and something as small as winning or losing a tennis match can influence that. But wait, it gets better. From another study by McCaul, this one entitled "Winning, losing, mood, and testosterone": "In two experiments, male college students either won or lost $5 on a task controlled entirely by chance. In both studies, winners reported a more positive mood change than did losers and, in Experiment 2, winners reported a more positive mood change than a neutral group that did not win or lose money. After the task was completed, winners exhibited significantly higher testosterone levels than losers. Levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress and arousal, did not differ among the groups, suggesting that a hormone-behavior response pattern for winning and losing is specific to testosterone. These data suggest that winning can alter testosterone levels in men and that mood may mediate such changes." I bolded that sentence in there. But did you catch that? Even something as insignificant as a randomly controlled $5 payout had a significant impact on these students' testosterone levels. Which, if humans are anything like mice in their reactions to high and low levels of testosterone -- and they are; they're dead similar -- something as trivial as winning or losing a random $5 can be the difference in whether those students go off to create a work of art that afternoon or pick up the girl of their dreams, or spend the afternoon staring at the wall or avoiding the gaze of pretty girls. Do you get this? Learning how to be a dominant man isn't just about "being dominant." It's about learning how to structurally correct your life so that you're putting yourself into a feedback loop of consistently winning, leading to elevated testosterone levels, leading to further winning, leading to further elevated testosterone levels, and so on and so forth. This is the winner effect. Winners win more, and losers lose more. It's why when you have something good happen to you in the morning you often go off to have a killer day, and why when you start a day off on the wrong foot the whole day goes awry. It's why when you start meeting people the instant you go out you often end up having a great night and meet a lot of cute girls and maybe even take one home, and it's why when you go sit around and talk to no one for a while you often meet no one the entire night. Here are a few more studies to pound this point home. From the findings of J. M. Coates and J. Herbert of the University of Cambridge in "Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor": "We found that a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day's profitability. We also found that a trader's cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market. Our results suggest that higher testosterone may contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increased by risk. Our results point to a further possibility: testosterone and cortisol are known to have cognitive and behavioral effects, so if the acutely elevated steroids we observed were to persist or increase as volatility rises, they may shift risk preferences and even affect a trader's ability to engage in rational choice." Testosterone predicted traders' profitability. Think about that. Now that's not necessarily causation -- if a guy's been trading for a while and he's good, he'll be having more wins and his T levels will be up, and if a guy's been trading for a while and he isn't good, he'll have more losses and his T levels will be down. But I've consistently seen studies that point to trading being a lot more luck than skill, so my inclination after seeing this research is to posit that high testosterone traders are more aggressive in pursuing opportunities and taking the big risks that potentially offer big rewards. So, not necessarily causation -- but here's one that indisputably is, entitled "Second-to-fourth digit ratio predicts success among high-frequency financial traders," again from Coates et al.: "Prenatal androgens have important organizing effects on brain development and future behavior. The second-to-fourth digit length ratio (2D:4D) has been proposed as a marker of these prenatal androgen effects, a relatively longer fourth finger indicating higher prenatal androgen exposure. 2D:4D has been shown to predict success in highly competitive sports. Yet, little is known about the effects of prenatal androgens on an economically influential class of competitive risk taking—trading in the financial world. Here, we report the findings of a study conducted in the City of London in which we sampled 2D:4D from a group of male traders engaged in what is variously called "noise" or "high-frequency" trading. We found that 2D:4D predicted the traders' long-term profitability as well as the number of years they remained in the business. 2D:4D also predicted the sensitivity of their profitability to increases both in circulating testosterone and in market volatility. Our results suggest that prenatal androgens increase risk preferences and promote more rapid visuomotor scanning and physical reflexes. The success and longevity of traders exposed to high levels of prenatal androgens further suggests that financial markets may select for biological traits rather than rational expectations." Yeah, you read right. The amount of testosterone you were exposed to in the womb has a bigger impact on your financial success as a stock trader than any other factor. Did your eyes just open a little wider? HOW TO BE A DOMINANT MAN: TRAINING YOURSELF TO WIN how to be a dominant manIf you want to make a lot of money, do a lot of cool things, and sleep with a lot of pretty girls, this is probably one of the most important things you will ever do for yourself: You need to learn how to be a dominant man. If you weren't fortunate enough to have been exposed to a high dose of prenatal testosterone and have a naturally dominant personality, you're going to need to train it up. And that's going to mean you're going to have to get accustomed to going against your default programming. You need the winner effect in your corner -- it's going to make every single thing you do work a whole lot better. But how do you start training yourself to be dominant? To start with, you need to know the most important rule of dominance, success, and victory: always find a way to win. That means you can never concede. You can never give up. You must always get a success or at the very least do things on your terms. Your boss asks you to stay late: "I've really got to get out of here but I'm happy to do some work from home later tonight if it's mission critical or otherwise get on that first thing tomorrow." Your girlfriend tries to reschedule: "Okay, let's meet right now then and then you can go see your friends," or, "Actually I'm going to be booked up for the next week. If you can't make tonight let's reschedule after next week." Your parents yell at you for racking up credit card debt: "You guys are right, I should've been more careful, but instead of yell at me, what can you do to help or what recommendations can you make for me to get back on track?" Strangers say they can't help you: "Yes you can. You can help me. You're the only one who can help me -- how do we make this work?" Being dominant isn't about being a loud-mouthed asshole. Learning how to be a dominant man is about learning how to control the situation -- how to get a satisfactory result no matter the circumstances, how to prevent others who are trying to dominate you from being able to, how to keep your testosterone levels high and keep the winner effect on and fight having your testosterone slashed and your will to win and confidence and assertiveness and risk taking broken. Maybe you weren't dosed with tons of testosterone in the womb. I wasn't. My 2D:4D ratio is about on par with the average man; my ring finger is slightly longer than average compared to my index finger, which means I naturally have a bit more testosterone than average, but it isn't huge. But you can still have all the success with women, with money, with life that you want if you build wins into your life and fight concessions as if your life depended on it. Because your life might not depend on how often you win and how often you concede -- but the quality of that life, and the success you have within it, most certainly does.

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##How to Be Edgy (and Turn Women On) Most of the time, you walk about the world meeting ordinary people living ordinary lives who leave little of an impression on you. That's life. But, every now and again, you see someone, or run into someone, who strikes you a certain way. You can't quite put your finger on what exactly that something is - the individual has a certain degree of intensity about him, you think; or a piercing gaze. He might not be charismatic; and he might not be sexy or sensual. But he's definitely got something. This is a post about that "something;" about how to be edgy. Edge is a particularly difficult thing to learn, and teach, because it entails a specific rawness about oneself that most people simply lack. And that rawness is difficult to emulate when you don't have it... perhaps more difficult than being sexual, more than being charismatic, more difficult than almost anything else. And while it is necessary for you to transcend into the higher levels of success with women, it isn't a magic bullet; you'll meet plenty of men with edges who still struggle with girls, too. It's a component, and a vital one, but it isn't all that good on its own. Adrian commented the following recently over on the post about indirect game: "Chase, Great to hear from you! Cultivating an "edge" is something you often talk about. That said, my understanding of what exactly constitute this "edge" is still rather spotty. To me, cultivating an "edge" is a movement along the "disarming and friendly" model towards the "bad-boy/don't-give-a-shit" model. Considering being warm and welcoming an integral factor in your process, how does cultivating an "edge" fit into it? Furthermore, during your journey in developing "edge" to your character, what are some specific areas/mindsets you worked on? Many thanks, A" All right Adrian, let's talk about it. We've talked about being a sexy man plenty on here, and the vibes and nuances that go along with that. Now let's talk about being edgy itself, and how that's different from sexy... and just how combining edginess with sexiness turns you into a very compelling character, to everyone you encounter. how to be edgy In "How to Master Anything," I mentioned that I think you've got to be somewhat - or perhaps very - crazy in order to master well nigh anything. Edge goes along with that. Have a look at some of these pictures of brilliant, accomplished individuals... mozart mozart That's Mozart, the pianist. A single look at him tells you he's likely not the sort who backs down from a fight... doesn't it? He's clearly an intense, focused man. He has an edge to him. Here's another one: picasso picasso picasso Probably not a guy you'd want to run into in a dark alley, right? That's Pablo Picasso, the famous painter. Edgy, right? You might not be terribly surprised to know that Picasso was also a world-class seducer and philanderer (and probably also wouldn't be surprised to know it didn't always end well emotionally for those he philandered with). How about one more: tesla tesla This one's Nikola Tesla, the man who more or less invented the 20th century, including alternating current (which made it possible to have homes wired with electricity... which would've been impractical with Edison's direct current, which Tesla also worked on). Tesla was a prolific inventor: he invented much of the technology used in radio. He created the precursors to radar. And x-ray technology. Transistors. Hydroelectric power plants. Lots more. In fact, he kept inventing and kept coming up with astonishing new things until at an advanced age he died penniless and alone in a low-end hotel room. Scroll through these pictures, and you can tell that every single one of these men has edge. It's not all the same edge - Mozart looks like a bulldog who will pull strings and use his connections to screw you if you piss him off; Tesla looks like he's peering into your soul and knows what you're thinking; Picasso just looks like he's going to come at your kneecaps with a baseball bat if you look at him funny. Edge can take a variety of forms. But the one thing you'll notice in every single one of these pictures is intense, drilling eye contact, with the camera or the painter, and just a hint of a smile playing about the corners of the subject's lips (in all except the bottom right picture of Picasso). What gives, and why do Mozart, Picasso, and Tesla, three great men in totally different fields who likely never met each other, all have shades of the same expression? WHERE EDGE COMES FROM Edge, I think, is something you must develop naturally, at least in part, from having objectives and concerns important to you and talents within you that you know other people are awed by - or at least can't match. This can be natural - you can just have worked yourself to the bone until you got so good at something that you know other people can't come close to you, and you think you're the best at it and can take anyone - or it can be insanity: you can just be batshit crazy and think you're all-important or have access to privileged knowledge. Picture a wild homeless man ranting at passersby on the street at the top of his lungs... not talented, but extremely edgy. Same goes for religious fundamentalists, or dyed-in-the-wool political partisans. Not often talented, but wild edge poking out nevertheless about the seams. In other words, you can be edgy because you're actually really good and you're on a mission to build or create something, or because you've adopted a cause that tells you if you follow it you're really good, and you truly believe it. Learning how to be edgy, then, is really about learning how to believe something so deeply that it manifests itself in a feeling of control and superiority to the normal people you meet on the street. Why's this helpful with women? Why did Picasso have women all over him, and Tesla too (although Tesla chose to remain celibate for life to not sidetrack him from his work). It's unclear what Mozart's life with women was like, but as he was in charge of casting young women in his own operas, we might be able to guess. It wasn't just because they were famous. Tesla was always desired by women, both for his charm and for his looks. And if you read up on Picasso, you'll find out he was seducing women from a young age, long before any of them knew who he was, despite his lack of looks. Edginess boils down to a handful of things: Overriding belief in one's own "rightness;" or, extremely strong moral authority Confidence in one's own beliefs as superior to or stronger than others' Certainty that one will get what one wants, one way or another Experience being socially successful With one or more of those, you've got edge. With all of them, you've got edge... and, charm. how to be edgy You're not going to develop edge if you're just an ordinary guy reading an article on how to be edgy for kicks and giggles. That isn't the profile of an edgy individual, and the majority of individuals will never be edgy. To develop edge, you must believe strongly, and you must believe in yourself, and you must believe in whatever mission you subscribe to, or whatever mission you choose to subscribe to. That could be a religion, a calling, a cause; a political persuasion, a life purpose, or a passion or art you are completely and utterly devoted to. Mozart's cause was his art; Tesla's, his science; and Picasso's his paintings and his women. Your cause might be: Creating incredible art Building a burgeoning business Advancing scientific research Advancing mankind Advancing your religion Advancing your political party Advancing some other affiliation Being the first to do something Being the best at doing something But whatever it is you choose to subscribe to, it needs to be bigger than you, and it needs to be bigger than the women you meet. A lot of men have the problem that they don't subscribe to anything bigger than themselves or the women they meet. So when they meet some girl, it's a really big deal. Because they don't know what they want! How about Mozart, Picasso, or Tesla... do you get the impression looking into their faces that any of THESE guys thinking meeting some new girl is a "big deal?" mozartpicassotesla Yeah, not really, right? It's the women meeting them who think it's a big deal... not the other way around. But now take Mozart's composition away from him... Picasso's paintbrush... Tesla's inventions. Prevent them from ever doing what they love again. Do they still retain that edge? Possibly, if they can find something else to plunge themselves into... but probably not to the same degree. Instead, it becomes a shadow of the edge it once was... I used to be great, it says. The edge of an old man who's hung up his spurs and can only recall what he once was... how he once was great. Edge stems from belief, in one's purpose and in one's self. The two are intimately tied together, and inseparable. When you believe very much in yourself, you will find a purpose or create one; and when you have a purpose you devote yourself to and begin to see success in it, you will more and more come to believe in yourself. Now let's talk about having an edge. HOW TO BE EDGY: EMULATION Can you emulate edge without having an actual internal edge yet? Sure. Edge as it's perceived by people comes down to two categories: nonverbals, and behavior. The nonverbals are easy to get down. The behavior, without an actual edge, is more challenging. Let's tackle the nonverbal portion of learning how to be edgy first. Getting Your Nonverbal Edge Edge is best described in English phrases as "Devil may care" or "Don't give a fuck." These phrases are crude and can mean different things; it might me a charming, roguish guy with edge when one person says it, or a sloppy, careless man who simply lacks manners and behaves recklessly when someone else does. For our purposes, think of a man with edge as a man who's "devil may care" and "doesn't give a fuck" in a very cool, enamoring, riveting way. The nonverbal side of edge stems from a few feature expressions: Sharp, piercing, intense eye contact. No timidity here. You'll notice all three of the men cited above as example have this. And not only are their stares focused and intense, but their eyes are held open very wide. Not completely bugged out, mind you; but wide enough that you can clearly see them. The only exception is Mozart's first picture, in which his upper eyelids are lowered in a partial squint. And this is how you'll see men with edge: wide-eyed, or squinting. You won't see them with the blasé, ordinary relaxed eyes that most individuals employ, because they're intense individuals, and they're constantly running through things in their minds. Just a hint of a smile. It's almost imperceptible... as we've stated before on being charming and roguish and particularly when discussing sprezzatura, understatement takes the day. You'll notice in every one of those pictures above, with the exception of the third Picasso image, each man has a hint of a smile playing about his mouth. This makes him look impish... privy to some unknown detail... and as if he knows something you do not. The underlook. A little-discussed flirtatious head gesture named by Byron as the "underlook," you'll notice that in every image above (except perhaps Mozart's second image, which is borderline), the "underlook" is employed. The underlook is a tilting downward of one's head and chin while staring, wide-eyed and intensely, into the eyes of another. The underlook communicates intense focus, and is often employed by both sexy and edgy on-screen characters (James Bond, Dean Martin, etc.). Of course, these three are just the nonverbal portion - and that's the easy stuff. The real challenge in edginess is in the behavior. Getting Your Behavioral Edge Edgy men behave in edgy ways, and you won't be complete learning how to be edgy without learning how to behave edgy first. The reason this is a lot more difficult to emulate than simple facial gestures and head tilts is that edgy behavior stems from edgy beliefs. In other words, you'll have a hard time getting this behavior down if you don't have the mentality that goes with it. You probably have had moments of edge with women before, even if you aren't normally an edgy individual - for instance, say you're in a heated dance competition, and your primary objective isn't impressing your attractive female partner, but winning the competition; or, you're making a presentation at school or work at there's a beautiful girl you like present, but the focus you have isn't on her, it's on giving an amazing presentation. how to be edgy For a man with edge, that's his attitude all the time, even when he turns his intense stare onto a woman. His major concern is not her, and what she thinks about him, and how she feels about him... that's child's play. What he cares about is whether he can achieve what he wants with her, and if not, what he'll do next (meet a different girl, get back to work, etc.). The good news is, simply by acting edgy with your nonverbals and as much behavioral traits as you can pull off, you go a way toward becoming edgy, and people begin to treat you edgy, and you begin to feel edgy... which often feeds back and alters your perception of the world, compelling you to take on more edgy views. So, just as wearing a smile when you're feeling down can feed back into the mind and make you feel more up, so too can acting edgy and getting treated edgy feed back into the mind and make you more edgy. In other words, don't start acting edgy unless you actually want to be a man with edge living on the edge. You've been warned... Acting edgy comes down to the following behaviors: An air of superiority. Have you ever stood in a nightclub looking at some guy who looked, sounded, and acted like a complete douchebag, thinking to yourself what a total douchebag that guy was... and then watched as some beautiful girl slinked up to him, put her arms around him, and kissed him? What? It turns out that women, in fact, rate arrogant men as more attractive men. Why? Because arrogance often communicates a history of positive reinforcement from successes - it's very difficult to be arrogant following a history of failures. And a successful man is an adaptively superior one, providing better genes and likely more resources to better take care of children - he makes a better mate than a meek one. Arrogance around women also includes preselection - while men without much experience with women (or without much success) tend to let hesitancy and nervousness bleed through, a man who's acting confident and superior around her is telling her she's no big deal to him - which likely means other women have already voted "yes" on his candidacy. Focused intensity. When a man is driven - when he knows what he wants - it comes out through an intensity and strong opinions that women easily pick up on. That doesn't mean an edgy man steamrolls her with his opinions and intensity - though he might, and she may or may not like him more for it - but it does mean she'll see he's a man with deeply held beliefs. These kinds of beliefs and this kind of intensity is attractive to women because it signals a man who is a leader, not a follower. Most men follow rather than lead, and they can only adopt the beliefs of others and subscribe to them; not stand there at the brink shouting their beliefs into the void with total confidence they are right. And every woman wants to be with the leader, not one of the followers. Distracted, eccentric behavior. According to psychologist Ernest Becker, with the decline of religion, most individuals have made the seeking of a romantic partner the center point of their existence. Personally, based on the research into how relationship functioned in the past that I've done, I'd say that most individuals did this even when religion was extremely popular everywhere in the world. The consequence of this, of course, is that a lot of men have a tendency to place their lovers, girlfriends, and wives quickly on pedestals as the most important things in their lives, thus making mistakes around those women, doting on them far too much and making them feel more valuable than the man is, smothering those women with too many expectations and restrictions, and becoming controlling, jealous, and possessive. But not a truly edgy man. The edgy man, caught up in his campaigns, is at times swept up in emotion for his woman, but at other times he ignores her entirely, focused on his bigger, loftier ambitions. Most ordinary men recoil at the thought; "How could you ignore such an amazing creature?!" and most women spit venom at the suggestion: "I would never date so callous a man!" Yet, edgy men continue to date the world's most desired, desirable women, and be in turn incredibly desired by these women. Why? Variable rewards given at random intervals. Ever wonder why so many people play slot machines, even though they lose far more than they get? Or why people get so addicted to poker or blackjack, despite losing in the long run? Or why they play the lottery, even though the most they've ever won was $50 while they've spent thousands of dollars on it over the years? Randomly-timed variable rewards: the most addictive kinds of rewards there are. Guess what kind of man naturally provides these kinds of randomly-timed emotional rewards of random magnitude? Yep, you guessed it: distracted men caught up with their projects who intermittently remember their women and turn their attentions to them, before returning to their projects. Edgy men are addictive to women. This even holds true in pickups... waxing and waning interest and intensity can be very addictive even over a short amount of time. If you've been picking up women a while, you've probably already seen this - many of your faster pickups will be ones where you met a girl, talked to her briefly, got pulled away onto something else (e.g., another girl), then returned to that first girl again and picked her up very quickly after that. That temporary loss ratcheted up her emotions for you and caused her to suddenly feel addicted to you, even though the two of you had only just met. Not wasting time. A man who's not on a mission has all the time to waste in the world. This is the guy who spends eight months chasing after a girl, texting her, calling her, lol'ing at her status updates on Facebook, busting his chops to talk her into giving him a date, never realizing she's had two one-night stands and a five-month relationship in the meantime with men she met after him. He's not moving fast, and he usually doesn't succeed. How about an edgy man though... how much time does he have to waste on a woman? Answer: not much. For him, it's happening now - a whirlwind romance, a quick seduction - or it isn't happening at all. Sometimes you'll see an edgy man pursue a woman over time, but it's not the tentative, half-hearted pursuit of a man without purpose; it is the driven, impassioned pursuit of a man who knows what he wants and absolutely will convince her that the man she wants to be with is him. And if he can't get her, he very quickly moves on as soon as he decides it isn't happening. Intolerance for distraction. Did you know that the most stable marriages are the marriages where the woman is dominant over the husband? That's not the edgy man's lot, however. Edgy men are demanding, they're obsessed with whatever it is they're working on, and they have little tolerance for distraction, including the ordinary relationship drama that all women cause. How's a regular man respond to drama? At first, it's, "Oh no, what's wrong?" Next, it's, "Okay, whatever you want!" He responds by capitulating, because he has no higher purpose than satisfying his partner. How's an edgy man respond to drama? At first, it's, "Hey, look calm down." If that doesn't work, it's, "You know what? There's the door - feel free to leave any time." He responds by escalating, because he wants the drama to end so he can get back to what's important, and whether it ends by the women calming down or the woman leaving, either is acceptable - the woman is less important than the other things he's got going on. That's why I say learning how to be edgy is an uphill battle if you don't already have some great talent or strong mission or purpose you're bound to and believe in more than any woman you meet. This might sound like general life advice, but it's not; it's seduction advice. Wealthy, successful men don't actually do well with women BECAUSE they have big bank accounts. Yes, women like having money to spend on designer purses, but it isn't the main draw of these men. The main draw of an accomplished man is the AIR of accomplishment about him - it's the edge it gives him. The killer instinct. It's the confidence of knowing that he doesn't need anybody else, because the most important things to him are whatever they are, and individual people in his life are great, but they're of secondary importance. That's the game. That's the other side of the coin we were talking about in "10 Ways to Have a Girl Take You Seriously" - when you've got real edge, based on real underlying beliefs, you will treat women as "silly and cute" automatically... because that's what they will be. And for this, they will find you completely, irresistibly enchanting... you will be that edgy man they simply have to have. They won't know why; they won't be able to say quite what it is... all they'll know is, you affect them in ways that are exactly the opposite of how most regular men affect them - and they can't get enough of it.

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##How to Be a Good Lover (and Give a Girl Orgasms) "Nothing much to do... I'm at home and I think I'm so addicted to your passionate sex... I still can't get over last night… I love it." If you're not regularly receiving text messages like that, even from seasoned party girls - and you could use a primer on how to be a good lover - read on. The next text she sent me was: "Hmm… what is your secret magic?" I didn't tell her… but I'm going to tell you. And if you don't know how to make girls crawl the walls, you really need to learn how to. It does a lot for your confidence… and it does a lot for your ability to hang onto a girl you really like. Really, there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to give a girl an orgasm multiple times when you're sleeping with her. And once you're able to do this, then you can approach women knowing that you will give them the best sex of their lives... And that's powerful. WHAT IS "GOOD IN BED"? If you ask just about any man whether or not he's good in bed, 99% of guys will say that they are. Just like most guys think they're a better than average driver… But of course, that's impossible. Only 50% of drivers are better than average. And it's not automatically the 50% that are male… The point is, we guys have a big ego and we often have a very optimistic view of our own abilities when it comes to any skill that is associated with masculinity… and for that reason, we often don't seek to improve our skills in that area. Including how to be a good lover. I used to be the same way… until I started to get into tantric sex and other oriental sexual practices. And suddenly I realized that most people don't know what "good in bed" even means! The first girlfriend I had after studying some of these techniques was able to come three times within 90 seconds… and I'm not even talking about serial orgasms, but three separate ones. Sometimes her climax would last for five minutes… and I once counted her coming 19 times in one single night. The next morning, she was sitting on my bed, leaning back against the wall and staring at the ceiling… she could hardly string a complete sentence together anymore - and she, too, wanted to know where in the WORLD I had learned how to do that. I'm going to reveal some of the secrets of being really good in bed right here. HITTIN' WHAT SPOTS, NOW? Some guys apparently still struggle to find the clitoris… I don't assume you're one of them, but if you ever have to explain it to your friend who doesn't do anything other than play World of Warcraft, tell him it's the thing above the vagina that feels like a mouse wheel. Different strokes for different chicks… some girls like it when you rub their clit very gently, barely touching it even. Others like it rough and you can use your flat hand and rub it back and forth as fast and hard as you can… you have to gauge her a little bit. And make sure you use plenty of lube if you do the latter… So that's the clit. The second spot is a little bit more interesting - I'm talking, of course, about the infamous G-Spot. THE G-SPOT - A MYTH? Believe it or not, there was an article on BBC not too long ago, claiming that the G-Spot "doesn't appear to exist." If you've ever seen how women respond when you stimulate their G-Spot, you will find that claim as hysterical as I do - I can only conclude that the scientist who wrote that paper not only made a fool out of himself by publicly proclaiming that he is unable to pleasure women, but also that he needs to get laid more… a lot more. Somebody needs to point him to our blog… Yes, the G-Spot does exist - anatomically speaking, it is the female equivalent of the prostate… just like the clitoris is the female equivalent of the penis. how to be a good lover It can be found inside the vagina, and you can easily reach it with your middle finger… it becomes engorged when a woman is aroused, and stimulating it can cause female ejaculation. Just like with the clitoris, different women like to have their G-Spot stimulated in different ways… some like it when you move your finger in a circular motion, others prefer a quick back-and-forth from left to right, and some like a gentle come-hither motion… The possibilities are endless, and you will have to find out what she likes best by trying a few different things and seeing how she responds… it's also a good idea to ask her. Communication is always a winner in any relationship. In the end of the day, however, this isn't as much about technique as it is about psychologically stimulating a woman by being a strong masculine man who takes the lead. THE DEEP SPOT This spot is a little bit harder to find than the other two… and as its name suggests, it's pretty deep inside a woman's vagina. In fact, it is so deep that a surefire way to find it is to move your fingers so far inside that you can feel her cervix… then bend your fingers a bit, and you've got it. The Deep Spot is made up of the muscles that contract when a woman orgasms… which means that if you massage and stimulate these muscles, you can't HELP but give a girl orgasms. It's really cute to see the expression on their faces when they realize that, even if just for a minute, you completely own them… you own their pleasure, and you can send their mind on a rocket ride to the moon and back. This is what causes sexual addiction… if you get this technique down and use it with a girl, you won't have to worry a whole lot about how to make her want you and to keep her around once you've slept with her. Women just can't get enough of this one! Note that the Deep Spot isn't actually a "spot"… It reaches from the front of her anterior fornix (below her belly button) all the way to the back, near her rectum… …and by the way, if you stimulate the back of the deep spot during anal sex, it can make some girls speech impaired for a while from the endorphin overdose! THE R-SPOT I took the liberty of naming this spot after myself, because I haven't seen anybody write about it before. The R-Spot is right between the G-Spot and the Deep Spot… and it is very small. In fact, it feels a bit as if there was a grain of rice under her skin… and not all girls even seem to have this spot. With girls who DO have it, however, you can often get them off in seconds by stimulating the R-Spot… look for it. You might be in for a surprise… Which brings me to my next point. Not all girls are the same sexually… and while this might sound obvious, there are still a lot of "gurus" out there who claim that you can give the same sexual experience to any woman. That is simply not true… It's the same with guys… some of us get off on a blowjob in seconds. I even know guys who prefer it to sex! With others, a blowjob does nothing for them and they've never had an orgasm from oral sex in their lives. And it's the same with girls. Some can come 15 to 20 times in a single night… that is absolutely true. Others might experience only a couple of orgasms or even none at all. And while it's possible to teach a girl that's never had an orgasm before how to let herself go and cum for the first time in her life, that is a bit beyond the scope of this article. But by the same token, some girls have a higher sex drive than others. I've dated girls who were perfectly fine hanging out with their boyfriends or the guys they were dating and not have sex with them… yeah I know. That sounds insane to me too. But it's reality. On the other hand, I've known a couple of girls whose sex drive outstripped just about ANY guy's… I'm talking about chicks that you pleasure for four hours straight and after round four they jump you again and get all disappointed and sexually frustrated if you run out of steam! Fortunately, we still have our hands… and if you learn some of the techniques above, you can really do some magic and hold a total monopoly over her sexual pleasure. You better believe she's going to call you back! how to be a good lover HOW TO BE A GOOD LOVER: BEYOND TECHNIQUE As I mentioned above, it's not all about technique. And while it's not true that technique doesn't matter at all, you also can't give a girl the night of her life just by going through a million different positions and ways of stimulating her physically. The mental component is important, as discussed above… …and sex with a woman begins the moment you first talk to her! It's all in the psychological build-up, you see… And if you combine that with physical build-up, you have a girl that will be so ready to go and dripping wet before you ever start having sex with her that she's going to BEG you to penetrate her… …which, by the way, will also make it ten times more likely that she's going to have an insane amount of orgasms and experience the night of her life with you. So what IS good foreplay really? Some kissing, some fondling, some caressing? Nah… that won't do it. Every guy does that. Here's how you can set yourself apart. PREHEATING THE OVEN Want to know how to be a good lover for your girl? Well, here are a couple of things you can do to make her weak at the knees and melt in your arms before you even get started… and a couple of secret tips and tricks to give a girl orgasms, and for the actual sex as well: Smelling her neck, breathing into her ear and licking her skin: Lick a spot on her skin so it becomes moist, and THEN breathe on it. Your warm breath will make the saliva evaporate and give her the shivers. Works best on her breasts or her neck. Run your fingers along those parts of her body where the light thin hair is… the hair that is barely even visible. Stay about a millimeter above her skin, so you don't touch it… but you do brush that hair. Goosebumps guaranteed. Biting - a very sensual, slow bite that can be very erotic to a woman. You can also byte her whole lower jaw... I'm not even sure why this turns many women on so much, but I suspect it's because it's such an expression of raw passion and desire. Ass smacking - this really depends on the girl. Some women only get really aroused if you are super affectionate and sweet with them, others won't leave your bedroom happy unless you smack them in the face and dominate them like a rag doll. Be careful with this and ramp it up slowly to find out what she likes. Tease her - licking or even just touching a girl around her vagina or her breasts (not actually on them initially) is extremely powerful. You can also lick her tits, but only for half a second and pull back… Wait 5 seconds and do it again. Avoid her nipple and tease her stupid. For cunnilingus, try to pretend like you're French kissing her vagina as if it was her mouth. It's as exciting to them when they can tell you're really enjoying her as it is to us when a girl looks us straight in the eyes with desire while she's giving a blow job. Kisses - For some reason girls really like it when you kiss them all over their bodies... You can even give a girl little peck kisses all over her face. The same goes for softly touching her face, for your cheek touching her cheek and even for cupping her face with your hands as you make out with her. Put her legs on your shoulders or your chest, with her pelvis tilted up while you have sex with her - that way you can really hit her deep spot as you penetrate her, and her own knees will be massaging her breasts. Pull her nipple strongly with your lips, or softly with your teeth… then lick the middle of her nipple quickly up and down, back and forth with your tongue. Also try going in circles, around the nipple… you can even spiral your way from the outside in, getting closer and closer, always going in circles. The reason why this is such a turn-on for women is because the nerve endings at the skin of her breasts are arranged in circles. Massage both her G-spot and her Deep Spot from the inside and the outside (her belly) at the same time. If you're good at multitasking, you can even stimulate your girl in four ways at the same time, with your left and right hands, your mouth and your member. While she's on top, raise your hip and just shake it back and forth. You can get a good angle at her spots that way, and her whole body is pretty much at your mercy... which is a huge turn-on for most women. She's on top, but she has no control over what's happening to her at all. As you stimulate her G-Spot, instead of doing a come hither motion, go left and right, back and forth, with your middle finger, and extremely fast. The gland should swell and so your finger will slide off the gland on either side every time you cross it. That's a whole bunch of dynamite I've just given you to play with… and as such, I have to give you a warning. Do NOT use this full arsenal on women you're not in the least bit serious about. You can REALLY create a powerful sexual addiction in women if you do, and you don't want women you're seeing only casually to get too attached to you. You need to be careful you don't hurt a girl by doing this with the wrong girl. Trust me on this, there is absolutely NO benefit whatsoever in getting girls to fall in love with you when you're not in love with them. It will only create drama, they will give you the ultimatum and what could otherwise be a pleasant experience for everybody will end in tears. So reserve the real nukes for the girls you REALLY like. It will be one heck of a solid foundation for a relationship if you can rock her world… like no man she has EVER met, nor will ever meet… in her LIFE.

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##How to Be a Powerful Man: The Secret You Didn't Know I sat there staring for a moment at the woman who'd walked outside to tell me to clear out, thinking about how to be a powerful man in a situation like this. I was sitting at an empty table -- one of about thirty of them -- in a largely empty seating area in the middle of a square surrounded by a bunch of restaurants. "You can't sit here, sorry," she told me. I'd gotten my food at one of the restaurants ringing the square. She apparently was from another one. "This seating is only for our customers." I looked slowly out over the tables. Then I looked back to her. "All of this?" I said, gesturing to the entire square of empty tables. "Yes," she said. "That's all ours." I briefly considered. On the one hand, it was incredibly unnecessary for her to come and ask me to get up and leave. It's not like there was a mad grab for tables; they were almost all empty. And it wasn't like me sitting at the table was going to wear the chair out or anything. I supposed there was the risk that I'd leave some crumbs or garbage or something and she'd have to clean up after a non-customer. But on the other hand, it was her restaurant's private property. They paid for it, they owned the rights to it, and they had final say on who gets to use it, when, and why. That's how it works in cities, where there's basically no public property. Fighting back means fighting the system; police or security get called, and then it's a big mess. "Okay," I said. "Which restaurant are you?" I asked her. "That one?" I said, pointing to a classy Japanese place. "No," she said, "that one." She pointed toward a tiny little deli. I had a hard time imagining a deli was going to fill up all these seats with paying customers and that owning the rights to use this big outdoor square (and spending the time to police it all) was worth it. "Okay," I said, after another moment. "I'll head elsewhere." I slowly started packing up my food. "Sorry," she said quietly, and walked off, leaving me to pack up and leave. I noticed there'd been some people who'd stopped to watch the interaction. As I slowly packed my things and left, they turned and went their ways. After I left, I realized I should've just ordered a bottled water for $1 or whatever it was from the deli. I'll do that next time. But regardless, it got me thinking about looking powerful even when you're not getting your way, which can end up being something that makes or breaks your interactions with women, more often than you might care to think. POWERFUL" DOESN'T ALWAYS MEAN "VICTORIOUS" In my post on how to be an alpha male from a little while back, I discuss the difference between a man who's truly perceived as in-charge and unshakeable and what a lot of the guys who go around tossing the word "alpha" about think it is. Powerful is kinda like that. Tied in with the idea that's making the rounds now of what "alpha" really is, there's this idea that a core element of how to be a powerful man is that powerful men always win. If you suffer some kind of failure or setback, then you've become not powerful, or at least less powerful. But this understanding of what "powerful" is neglects one core, undeniable fact about powerful individuals: Powerful men don't always win. Even the biggest win machines rack up losses between those wins. That's the nature of things. Think of any man you consider powerful, and you can see this to be the case. Your favorite sports player suffers repeated failure, setbacks, and losses. That imposing politician that sprung to mind has lost elections, had his hat handed to him in debates, and sat there in a room all by himself wondering if he's ever going to succeed. Every guy you know who's talented with women has had women stand him up, stop responding to his calls and texts, insult him or act rude to him, walk away from him, or refuse him flat out for just about everything he's ever asked women to do. Even your own personal strongest, toughest male role models from your own life -- that great boss you had, the teacher who inspired you and made a difficult subject a joy, your dad -- they've been beaten up by men, rejected by women, and told to clear out of areas that they arguably probably shouldn't have had a problem being in. That doesn't mean they're weak though. They aren't. And it doesn't mean they're failures. Far from it. Powerful men lose too. Steve Jobs, busily being hailed as a corporate messiah right now and one of the most powerful, effective business leaders in history -- and for good reason -- released products that were flops, tussled with his board of directors and lost, and eventually got booted from his own company. Yet, we still see him as powerful. The reason why powerful men can fail and still remain perceived as powerful has much to do with two things: How they handle the setback, and How they recover from it. how to be a powerful man SETBACKS, NOT SHUTDOWNS Every now and then I'll compare successful outings I've had with women with unsuccessful ones I've had. Early 2009 was a turning point for me in game, because that was when I discovered that with enough work, I could usually get a girl I found attractive to go home with me. I'd reached the point I'd set out to reach 4 years earlier; what I perceived of as the pinnacle of pick up: the ability to pick up on any given night I found myself motivated enough to stick it out (provided, of course, a continuous supply of women to go meet). That turning point came on a string of nights that I picked up on in a row, and the first night was particularly insightful. I started the night off with a bang -- I met two beautiful Swedish girls on the beach, and both were very attracted to me. With my two buddies, I moved us all around, got to know the girls, and the vibe got very sexual. But I looked at these two girls -- both slim, sexy blonde girls with great accents -- and I looked at my two buddies, and I said to myself, "I can find more like this." So I rose, told my pals I was going to have to run to the bathroom, and disappeared. I offered these girls -- either of whom I was certain I could've had -- to my friends, as my gift to them, and struck out on my own to find a girl for me. For two hours, I combed the beach, meeting hordes of women, and having most of them refuse to talk to me flat out. It seemed the magic had gone. I felt disappointed; it wasn't as easy as it'd seemed at first. But I took comfort in the knowledge I'd set my pals up with those two pretty girls who clearly wanted nothing more than to be taken to bed. And then I saw the Swedish girls. They were still at our table, but now my pals were gone and two other men were in their seats. "Where are my friends?" I asked them, surprised and confused. "Oh," said one of the girls, "they went looking for you." I was shocked. I'd sacrificed the opportunity to take these great girls to bed in order to be kind to my friends, and they just... left them there? To look for me? I went and sat down on the beach, watching the waves crash on the shore. Then, I stood up, and started walking the beach again. I wasn't going to let this night get me down. I met a few more girls. No dice. And then I saw two girls sitting on the beach by themselves, with no one else around. They looked cute. They looked bored. "Tired of partying, huh?" I said. They seemed unmoved. "We're just resting," said one. "Yeah, it's getting a little too crazy for me too," I told them. "We're okay," they said. "I'm Chase," I said. They introduced themselves. "Tell you what," I continued, "let's throw our own party." They were skeptical; they wanted to know what I meant. I told them we'd get some music and drinks at my hotel; they weren't sure about it. I convinced them it'd be a good time, and we all went. I didn't end up sleeping with the girls -- I made out with both, and got the pants and panties off of one and got well into foreplay with her, but the other lost her cool and ended it for all of us, probably about 10 seconds before I and the girl would've gotten intimate, we were that close (it was my mistake for going for the follower first, rather than the leader among the two girls) -- but the way things played out that night made me start realizing that setbacks didn't mean all was lost. A setback only meant that a particular opportunity was lost, not that all opportunity was lost entirely. I could've given up after I found that I couldn't get other girls ready to go quite as easily as that initial pair of Swedish girls. I could've given up after I'd seen my pals squander the opportunity I'd given them, which was particularly demoralizing since I liked those girls and was trying to be extremely generous and gracious and the ball got dropped (I became a lot more selfish in pick up after that... not completely, but I won't pass the buck on girls I like who like me too anymore). But by not shutting down in the face of setback, I was able to rally, and come back and have a relatively fun and interesting ending for the night. I use this example to illustrate the two things I'm going to discuss next: those two points we mentioned earlier of handling setbacks and rebounding from them. how to be a powerful man HOW TO BE A POWERFUL MAN, EVEN WHILE LOSING It's (relatively) easy to be powerful while winning: Lead decisively Be slow and deliberate in your movements Be humble Be sexy Ignore anyone who's rude or ignorant Follow sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort And as discussed in my seduction ebook, posture and nonverbals are some of the most important aspects of coming across as powerful and commanding of all: a straight back, a great walk, and how you move are just a few examples. Well, okay, so maybe not easy if you're just starting out, but you can get most of this down with some consistent focus on it. See "How to Be an Alpha Male" and "Sprezzatura, Effort, and Investing" for a lot of the perspective you'll need to really take off with rocket fuel here. What's harder -- often a lot harder -- is learning how to be a powerful man even as you lose. What do you do when a girl tells you she isn't interested? What do you do when some big guy is rude to you and it isn't worth fighting for? What do you do when someone tells you to clear out, and they've got the force of the entire police force and military behind them with but a phone call? Most people do one of the following: They get upset: angry, emotional, frustrated, crying; They get vengeful, obstinate, or rude and refusing; or They get meek, compliant, and fearful. But the thing is... none of those come across as powerful. The man who's angry seems like he's struggling back against a stronger foe The man who's emotional and upset seems weak and beaten The man who's vengeful, obstinate, or rude seems classless and knuckleheaded The man who's meek and compliant seems like a pushover Men who act this way destroy their chances with women when women see them act this way... even when women don't see them act this way but other people do, and treat them like men who act this way, or when those men act this way and stay in the emotional state they're in and screw up their own future interactions with women. This sort of behavior is directly contrary to the behavior that inspires romantic and sexual attraction in women. So instead of taking any of those routes, I'm going to tell you to take the following steps: Remain calm, and move and speak slowly. Calmness and slowness communicate power and control. People naturally become deferential around slow-moving, calm people, because moving slow and remaining calm tells the other person you're not responding emotionally to the situation -- which implies that you're confident you'll be okay and will get what you want. Only powerful people act this way. If the other person is calm, ask how you can make it work. I've had ticket agents hold airplanes for me after telling me I couldn't board because I was late (I guess I'm just that guy sometimes) when I calmly asked, "Okay, how can we make it work then? We've got twenty-five minutes; how do I make it to that flight before it takes off?" If you don't get upset and instead ask for a way to make it work (and leave it up to the other person to come up with a solution), this works a surprising percentage of the time (maybe 30% of the time, which sounds low but is actually a great boost in situations you'd always lose normally). If the other person is a rule maker, play by her rules. Like mentioned earlier, with that table outside I'm guessing the girl who came out was a stickler for the rules... a less rule-orientated girl wouldn't have gone to the trouble to walk all the way out to the table to tell me to clear out when there weren't any customers who needed to sit there. So, had I simply played by her rules -- had I ordered something small, a token purchase from the restaurant -- she would've been unable to refuse me. If the other person is emotional, give her a moment, then address her emotions and immediately take action. If you're talking to a girl and say something that upsets her, give her a moment to sit there with the emotion -- don't be reactive -- then turn back to her (perhaps 10 to 30 seconds later, depending on the strength of her emotional response) and explain your actions calmly and without extraneous justification. e.g., if you've just insulted her accidentally when trying to tease her a little too hard, let things cool off for a minute, look away for about 10 seconds, then turn back and quietly but matter-of-factly say, "Hey, look, I was just giving you a hard time. I think you're cute and I like talking to you; if you feel I over-teased you, it was only because I like you and maybe my style of flirting is a little more intense than what you're used to. Friends?" Then, when she calms down and accepts, immediately take action: lead her somewhere else. "Come on, let's get an ice water," or, "Let's go sit down and chill a bit." If it's a no-win situation -- if you don't see a way out -- use questions to remain in command and give yourself time to think. Meek people just accept what they're told. Powerful people want to know who's telling them and what that person's authority is before they decide whether to accept instruction or not. If a complete stranger walks up to you and starts telling you what to do, unless he's wearing a uniform (and even then sometimes) your default response should be to begin slowly and calmly questioning him, in a non-confrontational way. e.g.,: Guy: Hey man, you're going to have to leave. You: Hello. Do you work here? Guy: No, but this is my table. You: Oh, your VIP table? You paid for this one? Guy: Yeah. You: Okay, sure. I'm Peter. What's your name? Guy: Philip. You: Okay. Philip, is this just your table, or is it everyone's table who's sitting here? Guy: It's all of ours. You: Got you. Because the reason I ask is, I'm friends with Chrissie and Clara and they invited me over here. Hey Chrissie, are you friends with Philip? He thinks we should leave. Chrissie: Philip, it's okay. Peter's a friend. The important notes there are that you want to be concise, polite, and agreeable, yet continue finding out who he is and what his authority to be giving you commands is. Notice too that you want to be agreeing with him verbally ("Okay, sure") while continuing to question him; this short circuits his logic pathways a bit and prevents him from getting angry at you not doing as he says. If it really is his table and he paid for it, then he has the right to ask you to leave if everyone else who paid is in agreement. But you need to find out that that really is the case first. Involve others. As in that last example -- where Peter pulls in Chrissie to go to bat for him -- if you're getting nowhere with one person, pull in someone else (in group scenarios). This can be pulling in people you know in a circle to justify your presence to people you don't, or getting additional employees or management to help out when you're dealing with someone who isn't helping you in a business, legal, or governmental context. Bow out graciously. If you must lose, be set back, or walk away, do so with graciousness. Don't go out kicking and screaming; then it looks all the more as though someone else has imposed his will over you. Instead, bow out with that same calmness and slowness we talked about before. "Okay, in that case I'll move," followed by slowly packing up after you've been asked to cleared out and found out who this person asking you to do so is and what authority she has is the best possible response when you simply have to go. And for recovering from setbacks? You just have to keep doing what you do, and keep trying. Just because you've been asked to clear out doesn't mean you never sit at a table outside again. You sit at tables when you want to; if someone asks you to move, and it's their property, then you move. Just because you ran into a problem with a girl doesn't mean you stop approaching. You keep approaching, and learn how better to handle things as you go, and mentally accept that a lot of the time it isn't going to work out, and you've just got to keep at it until you do make it work. When I've endured setbacks in the presence of girlfriends or girls I was just getting to know who saw me handle those setbacks with grace and dignity, I've universally seen instantly increased solidarity from those girls, and often them getting far more upset and indignant toward the person or people setting me back than I was. No one expects you to always win. Because the most powerful men in the world do fail and falter and suffer setbacks -- sometimes great setbacks. But just like Steve Jobs, men aren't thought of as lesser men for suffering setbacks. They're thought of as greater men -- as more powerful men -- for overcoming them. Jobs' story wouldn't have been nearly as interesting had he had smooth sailing from Day 1 on the road to Apple's present success. And I doubt he'd be seen as anywhere near as impressive and powerful a figure today had he not suffered that large setback; it's part of his mythos. The secret to how to be a powerful man isn't to not fail. It's to fail with graciousness, tact, and honor -- but to not give up, and come back and continue to be bold and continue to succeed after the fact. 'Tis a far more powerful way of dealing with things than anything else you might do.

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##How to Be Smooth with Girls Every Time About 3 weeks ago on the post announcing the site's new forum, a reader named "D" asked about escalating things with women, being seductive, and cool - essentially, how to be smooth. how to be smooth Here's the gist of D's comment: "Brother, I can initiate with no problems and create that instant attraction. But I seem to hit a wall at some point shortly after. I tend to have difficulty escalating to physicality. Granted I'm not very experienced in my endeavors but have been reading, studying, and trying to better myself; both in my body language and self image. I need to know how to ignite the spark that I create and squirt a little gas on it. I can create an opener from nothing and sometimes get 1 or 2 dates. Then something goes south. I try to be funny and witty, which works with openers, but I need to flip the switch to escalation and being SMOOTH to seal the deal! I feel like I have read almost everything out there so please my brother, let me know if you have any advice. I appreciate all that you've done and anything you can do to help me. Thank you!" And just a week ago, another commenter, xChaser, this time on the post about anxiety in men, asked about something very similar, saying: "Hi Chase, I again want to let you know you blog is impacting lot of guys lives. I have improved a lot from implementing what's discussed here. I have one request on a topic that pretty much helps the new guys not end up wasting lot of time. Basically what I noticed is as we gain in knowledge, we get more succesful at dealing with girls, but after moving quite forward in the interaction sometimes [after] a small mistake the girl drops you like a ball, never to recover. Could you cover a topic around this major critical point where you up the ante and at least during initial days avoid those traps rather getting dropped flat after spending so much time on the girl. I guess you got my point. Thanks in advance, xChaser" Both commenters are asking about something I call "transition points" - those moments in an interaction with a woman where it's time for you to take things to the next level... if you can only figure out how. Most guys can't, and drop the ball, as xChaser put it. But what if you didn't drop the ball? What if you could handle transition points like a pro every time? What I'm asking is... what if you knew how to be smooth? Because that's what I'm going to teach you to be today. how to be smooth When I was first learning how to pick up girls, most of the guys around me didn't really have a whole lot I could learn from. Even after I moved to Washington, D.C. in mid-2006, and I started hanging out with other aspiring seducers, all of them were as choppy with women as I was then - or worse. Some of them much worse. But even those guys were better than what I'd see out of your average run-of-the-mill Joe on the street or in the bar - all those guys knew how to do was get drunk, mumble or shout things at girls, try and grope them, fail, and end up in a fist fight with some other drunk guy who'd equally failed in his mumblings, shoutings, and gropings after all the girls got fed up for the night and went home to sleep. And then I moved out to Southern California, and right away met a guy far better with women than anyone I'd known in a long time. He'd talk to them, joke around with them, and move them around effortlessly. He was charming. He was attractive. He was smooth. And suddenly, in an instant, I realized in an instant how un-smooth I was. I did not have this guy's ease with the opposite sex. Every girl I'd landed before I'd basically had to steam roll through... or, occasionally, I'd pulled off a smooth seduction through sheer luck or accident. But this guy was pulling things off smoothly all the time. Soon I made another friend who was as smooth as the first. Then another. Between these three friends, I quickly got an education on what it meant to be smooth... and I knew if I wanted to make meeting and picking up and seducing and dating women as easy and straightforward and intuitive as these friends of mine had, I was going to need a complete "smooth" overhaul. BEING SMOOTH: AN OUTSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE how to be smoothWhen you're sitting on the outside, looking in at a guy who's smooth, it looks to you essentially like this: Nothing fazes him Everything is natural Everything is effortless He's always in control of things He's never stiff or uncomfortable Even setbacks are handled with ease and adroitness, as if he's seen it all and done it all a million times before already Some of that may sound familiar to you if you've been reading this site for a time - you'll recognize the "effortless" and "natural" elements of smooth as outcroppings of what we talked about in these articles: The Law of Least Effort Sprezzatura, Effort, and Investing Making Your Seductions EFFICIENT If you haven't read those articles yet, or it's been a while and you've forgotten what they were all about, I recommend you go check them out first to get a handle on the tremendous IMPACT that effort has on your social power and your ability to present yourself as attractive and dominant. But here's the long and short on effort: women and men alike find the individuals with the highest level of return on their actions and the lowest level of apparent visible effort exerted to achieve results to be the most attractive. If you want a cookie, and I want a cookie, and I've got to get up to go get it, but you can snap your fingers and have someone bring it to you, or push a button and the cookie is delivered down a conveyor belt to you, you look cooler, stronger, and more powerful and attractive than me. Effort - and the minimization thereof - is undoubtedly a part of being smooth. But it isn't the whole picture. So what is? How do you get those other parts - how do you stop being fazed, always be in control, kill stiffness and discomfort, and handle every setback encountered like you've seen it a hundred times before, even if you've never even seen it once? I could get cliché on you here and just say, "Well, confidence, of course! Duh!" But that's the easy answer (and not a very helpful one, at that). Instead, today's article is going to take a far more nuanced look at how to be smooth, in order that you might make attraction and transition handling far more snap... than snafu. how to be smooth When a lot of people think of "smooth," the image they get in their heads is of a used car salesman with the perfect pitch who, try as he might, can't help but rub you a little bit the wrong way... maybe it's because he just won't shut up, or maybe it's how every word out of his mouth seems to be something he's practiced a hundred times before. But that's not smooth; that's slick. A guy who really knows how to be smooth isn't just good; he's natural. Have a look at this clip from The Saint with Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue: Kilmer has a good "feel" about him, right? But he isn't slick... he's smooth. Take a glance through some of the nuances of the clip, in case you missed them: Kilmer looks down initially when Shue looks over, but not immediately; he holds eye contact for a split second, just long enough for him to tell her he's interested, but he's not going to chase after her. When you've locked onto someone's eyes before they've locked onto yours, you normally need to break eye contact first to not feel like a threat (to give them a chance to assess you without being watched). He gives her a chance to check him out without checking out back, then speaks to her just as she quickens her pace as she's leaving - just as awkwardness begins to set in, he breaks it and opens her. He keeps his eye contact broken until she gives him a reason to reestablish it strongly, putting his gaze on her to communicate, "I'm listening." He deep dives very quickly, going from a simple question into finding out something she loves, and putting the burden of the interaction on her to define to him something that's in her head but she hasn't taken time to examine much before. He doesn't give feedback after her answer, only goes back to his drawing, as if he didn't have a care in the world. But he knows she has to ask him something now... it's far too awkward for her to simply leave after just having told him something intimate about herself, so he's able to be both extremely intriguing and to get her pursuing him and interested right away. After she asks him about himself, he's both humble and intriguing, and then he follows the cardinal rule of conversation management and he turns it back to her, asking her what she searches for... another deep and intimate question. He then asks a question that seems to break the flow of the conversation, which confuses her ("Why's he asking this?") and intrigues and excites her further. The question is made both dream-like ("Perhaps I'll take you to my home, in Africa") and relevant to the conversation ("... you should experience the energy of where all life began"), which ups his impression as a powerful man and a mysterious one. He moves very quickly, and acts as if he's about to kiss her... and she appears both excited and willing for it. Then he breaks that and moves off, saying he's not good with people, which makes him more vulnerable and relatable after he's just built himself up as this powerful, intriguing, mysterious man capable of drawing intimate details out of her with ease. There is a lot of detail packed into that short scene, and it's the reason why The Saint, although its seductions are only a small part of the movie, was one of the biggest things I modeled myself after early on in my seduction career. Because while you might picture James Bond in a tuxedo with a hint of a smirk on his face when you think of smooth, you don't have to dress like a penguin just to be smooth. Smooth isn't about your clothes, you see (as evidenced by the clip above). And it isn't about being snarky or witty, although a little well-placed humor doesn't hurt (if you watch the rest of The Saint, you'll see Kilmer use humor as that character later on too). Nor is it about talking a mile-a-minute and never letting the other person get a word in edgewise, per the used car salesman example. Rather, being smooth is about being both confidently strong and purposeful and completely non-needy in the face of whatever you encounter. And in case you think that's too vague, let's get a little more specific. DEFINING "SMOOTH" Can a college student be smooth? How about a software engineer? A construction worker? An office manager? Yes, yes, yes... and yes. Smooth doesn't have anything to do with your profession. Nor does it have anything to do with your physical characteristics - those smooth friends of mine I told you about in Southern California made up a full spectrum of ethnicities: one of them was Korean American, one of them was white, and one of them was black. Two were in great shape, but one was stick thin. One was an inch over 6 feet tall, one was three inches below that, and another was another three inches below him. And those famously picky, beautiful California girls loved all of them. And the first "smooth" guy I ever knew was a 5'3" Puerto Rican salesman with a beer gut who only slept with attractive women who had at least 4 inches on him... and he slept with a lot of attractive women who had at least 4 inches on him. Smooth doesn't even have to do with energy levels; I've seen guys who were bouncing off the walls but still oozing smooth, and I've seen guys who hardly ever lifted a finger dripping with smooth. Smooth is not about your look, or your characteristics, or your background or profession. Those things might matter somewhat for other aspects of attraction, but they don't play a part in smooth. What smooth IS, ultimately, is all about THIS: Being clearly and comfortably in control. Sort of like the used car salesman example, when a lot of people think of a man being "in control," they get the wrong idea. Usually they think of: A big muscular alpha male jock barking orders and intimidating everyone around him An angry, unevenly tempered man snapping at the slightest straying from his orders by his submissive and retreating girlfriend A guy sitting at the top of his social circle, in his preferred environment, who's used to having things go his way and giving commands and having his friends or toadies fulfill them But none of those are truly in control. The first two examples are men who are maintaining control by a hair; they only remain in control so long as they can continue intimidating those they control. The instant those being controlled wise up to their act, or no longer need them, their illusion of control vanishes, and their subjects simply walk away. And the third example, of the guy in his social circle, his control doesn't last, because it doesn't translate. At some point, his friends move to other cities, or get married, or get a job that takes up their time and they stop being able to hang out. If his power is at work, his employees leave, he changes jobs or gets promoted or changes departments, and suddenly his powerbase is gone. It's a very fleeting form of control... and it doesn't to anything for his success with women outside of the one environment where he pulls his strings at. Those normal examples people think of when they think of someone in control are wrong, because they imagine a man who is seemingly in control, while in fact is on the very precipice of losing control. Real control though, you do not lose, even when things don't go your way. Now let's have a look at how you can get it, and at how to be smooth... and, by extension, at how to get girls by the boatload. how to be smooth Why do women find a man comfortably and stably in control so attractive? We could go deep into evolutionary psychology on this one... but rather than do that, allow to give you a few examples of different men: A weak, emotionally needy man who is not in control at all A man who is in control, but hanging on by a thread and using fear/intimidation A man who is easily and effortlessly in control, comfortable, and smooth Which man would you want to have around you in any capacity? Which man strikes you as the most stable and trustworthy as the bunch? Which man would you want to have as a friend, a business partner, a brother-in-arms in a time of war? And which one do you think a woman would want to invest her time, her energy, and her body into? It's pretty obvious when you put it that way, isn't it: the third one. Hands down. Everybody wants to be around a man who's smooth. The man who knows how to be smooth knows how to command the attention, attraction, and desire of the masses. how to be smooth But, knowing what it is is one thing... actually being it, well - that's something else altogether. You may have watched that video clip of Kilmer above... but can you do that? And even if you pull it off at the start... can you maintain that? HOW TO BE SMOOTH WITH WOMEN (AND EVERYONE ELSE) There are three stages of becoming smooth that you will go into (assuming you're just an ordinary, average guy who isn't already in the process of being smooth). These are: Understanding what "smooth" is and trying to be it... somewhat awkwardly Becoming more smooth and having "lucky breaks" where you seem very smooth Reaching the point where you are now naturally smooth almost always I'm going to take you through each of these, and give you plenty of examples of how they play out and what they look like, both in normal conversation, and during the transition points (moving things forward with women), where smoothness is at its most essential. Beginner Smooth As a beginner at learning how to be smooth, you'll be focused on a handful of things: Tamp down your enthusiasm. A smooth man is never amazed, or awed, or overly impressed by anything. He will show flashes of excitement and animation... but he never goes crazy. Nothing is truly "new" for him... he's seen it all before. What this means for you as a beginner is you will have to tamp down your reactions and keep them controlled. A clown on stilts walks by? You don't say, "Wow, oh my God, look at that! It's so cool!" Instead, you casually glance at it, then turn back to whomever you're speaking with and say, "That's neat. So anyway..." A girl tells you she's been selected to go on some TV show? You don't say, "No way! That's amazing!" Rather, you say, in a neutral, almost bored tone, "Oh no way... that's really cool. How'd you pull that off?" as if you're mildly disinterested but making polite conversation. If this seems "unnatural" to you, that's fine. You don't have to do it. You can simply wait until you're 50 or 60 years old, and you really HAVE seen it all and heard it all before, and be smooth then. But if you'd rather not wait 20 or 30 or 40 or however many years you have to get there, start tamping down your enthusiasm now. Tamp down your other reactions, too. A smooth man does not take what other people say seriously, because a smooth man understands that if someone is REALLY serious, that person will not spend time talking about it, or threatening it... he will simply go do it. What that means is, when you have a girl fuming and saying she's going to leave, or a guy standing in your face filled with rage telling you he's going to pound you into the dirt... neither of them is ready to do it yet. Otherwise, they'd be doing it. So, you force yourself to remain calm - don't react, don't backtrack, don't apologize - and simply handle the situation. You tell the girl, "No, stay; I like talking to you. If you really want to go, you can go in five minutes." You hold out your hand and say, "I'm Jake," and maintain eye contact with a smile on your face until he shakes it. Afterward, you say, "I figure if we're going to fight each other, we might as well get properly introduced first." And, suddenly, they're disarmed by your smoothness. That's because the escalation process is one of escalating confidence; someone who is emotionally escalating is also checking you for reactiveness to confirm that he or she is making the right decisions. If a woman doesn't see you desperate or upset to see her leave, but rather calmly telling her to stay, she becomes confused and realizes her emotions aren't appropriate for the situation; if a petulant man doesn't see you fearful or apologetic or confrontational in the face of his belligerence, but rather calmly introducing yourself and opening up a dialogue, unaffected by the situation, he becomes confused and realizes his emotions aren't appropriate either. Work on your steadiness. Being emotionally calm and not overly reactive is a part of it, but being steady is another big part. Most people, in emotional situations, are jittery, nervous, and unsure. Their emotions are flooding their neural circuits, and there's simply too much going on; their voices tremble, their eye contact falters, and their forced smiles look too fake. Work on this. Why's it so important to work on your steadiness? Because the fact is, lack of steadiness can give you away in emotionally heightened situations (such as pulling women home, or addressing tough questions or objections) that you aren't experienced in. Oh, sure - you'll get natural steadiness once you've already been there and done that a hundred times or more. But if you don't want to be reliant on having to acquire massive amounts of experience in any particular situation before being able to handle it well, work on getting steadiness down first. Work on being relaxed. The flip side of learning to tamp down your emotions and make yourself appear more steady is that most learners end up going overboard and become stiff. But when you're stiff, it's a dead giveaway you aren't actually comfortable OR in control. What you communicate through stiffness is that you are trying to control yourself, which means you aren't actually smooth - it's a front you're putting on. The subconscious minds of others around you read that, and are emboldened by it; "Aha!" they think. "See that! He's uncomfortable! That mean's we're right!" When you can be both emotionally unreactive to extreme emotions, and relaxed in the face of them, you become extremely naturally smooth. Getting there, however, is the beginner's challenge. Work on being effortless. The great thing about working on being relaxed and working on being effortless is that the two go hand in hand. When you slow down your movements, take more time to respond to questions, take time to look someone in the eyes and smile first before answering, and throw a lot of pregnant pauses into your communication, you give yourself time to think, slow down the interaction, and cut into anyone else's ability to take control of the conversation and start driving it down a path that's bad for you (it's hard to really grill someone when he keeps taking his time, pausing a lot, and using good conversation guidelines and turning the topic right back to you after he answers). Let's give you some practical examples of all this. Here's how a conversation between a normal girl and a normal guy will look: Girl: So, do you have a girlfriend? Guy: Um... [knows this is an important question; gets uncomfortable] ... no. By reacting uncomfortably here, the guy communicates that: He isn't in control He's not used to being asked this Further, through his response ("Umm... no"), he communicates that: He isn't all that desirable (otherwise, he'd have a girlfriend) He isn't lover material (otherwise, he'd have a far smoother answer than "yes" or "no") Now let's say the guy's a beginner learner at how to be smooth, and he gets asked the same question. Instead of the above dialogue, he has the following one: Girl: So, do you have a girlfriend? Guy: [slow smile spreads across his face as he's looking away; slowly he turns to look at her, making eye contact half a second after his face has risen to meet hers] Why do you ask? Girl: I'm just curious. Guy: [smiles again, as if he knows EXACTLY why she asked and he's just playing along] Oh. Well, no, I don't have a girlfriend. [leans in to look at her] Do you have a boyfriend? That's probably a bit stronger than most beginners will pull off, but later on in the beginner phase you'll put together responses that look a lot like that. While the guy here is still giving the girl a definite answer, he's making her work for that answer, and he's using nonverbal communication to imply here that he knows exactly why she's asking. Here's another example, this one of a pull where a man's inviting a woman home with him, and the woman is demurring. A normal man's attempt: Guy: How about we get out of here? Girl: And go where? Guy: [knows he shouldn't be this direct, but feels like he has no choice] I thought we could go back to my place. Girl: I'm kind of tired. Maybe we can go to your place next time. Guy: [knows he's being turned down, but figures, "Well, there's always next time!"] Okay. This is a pretty awfully constructed pull, but you'd be amazed how many men try to get women home with them with a pull like this. It's little wonder so many guys call it "getting lucky." It's like playing tennis with a blindfold on. It's a miracle if you manage to hit a ball back over the net. Here's how a beginner at smooth who's been doing his homework is going to look: Guy: Let's go somewhere a little more chill and less crowded. Girl: Where? Guy: [slow smile] It's a surprise. But it's better than here. Come on. Girl: I'm kind of tired. Maybe we can go to there next time. Guy: [ignores this and acts like it's a ridiculous suggestion] You can rest in the cab on the way over. We're going. [takes her hand and leads] This pull works far better, because this guy doesn't make it a big deal. This is where steadiness and effortlessness comes into play - whereas for most guys, this is a HUGE deal ("I'm inviting her home! Sex! Oh man... is she going to say yes? I don't know!"), and women pick up on that and it freaks them out, for the guy who's learning how to be smooth, he keeps himself calm and steady and unenthusiastic and emotionally unreactive. He stays smooth. And when he does this properly - when he stays steady, keeps his enthusiasm and fear and nervousness tamped down, and remains calm and unemotional - the girl doesn't pick up on anything that would communicate that this is a big deal. And since HE'S acting like it's not a big deal - SHE'S inclined to think it isn't, TOO. One of the miracles of smoothness... even if you're only a beginner, and you're having to pretend to be calm and steady and effortless, if you do a good enough job at it, you will actually make HER feel calm, and she'll be orders of magnitude more likely to go with you than an ordinary, average, nervous guy who's making this simple act of going back to his place to do something that humans do every day a GIGANTIC DEAL. Make it not a big deal, be smooth, and be natural, and suddenly women are just coming along with you like it's the most natural thing in the world... because for them, from the way you communicated it to them, it is. Intermediate Smooth Intermediate smooth is about working on the same bullet points we discussed under beginner: Tamping down enthusiasm Tamping down other reactions too Working on being steady Working on being relaxed Working on being effortless Intermediate smooth is characterized by a more intrinsic origin for these much more of the time (i.e., a man is more naturally less enthusiastic, more naturally relaxed, more naturally efficient, etc., rather than having to pretend to be), as well as the realization and adoption of a few more principles: He builds intrigue more and better. If you go back to that clip of Kilmer from The Saint, he plays a very intriguing character, and much of his power comes from that. Right away, Shue is wondering who this guy is, where he comes from, what his story is, and all kinds of things. He's snapped her out of autopilot, and he's all done it without anything contrived liked asking her for a female opinion or telling her some long story. He's more comfortable with intensity. Beginners struggle to be intense without losing some degree of control of their emotions. External intensity = internal intensity. But once a man becomes more in control of his emotions and more and more naturally smooth, he becomes better able to channel his intensity without it feeding back and affecting him too (unless he wants to). This includes through things like intense eye contact, putting social pressure on people (say, if they're doing something silly or wrong), and forcing decisions ("Are you coming or not?"). A guy who's intermediate is better able to do these things both calmly and intensely. He's less reactive when hit with a "surprise." Everyone has unexpected things happen to them and around them. An ordinary guy gets flustered; a beginner at smooth tries to control his reactions. A man who's intermediate-level smooth, though, seems almost comfortable, and doesn't take long to know the right way to react. These aspects of intermediate smooth come more from experience applying and using the techniques discussed under beginner than from any concerted effort on the part of the intermediate learner. Smooth is becoming natural to him at this stage, through repeated use and focus on it. At this point, he starts catching lucky breaks, and pulling off things that he thought were impossible, implausible, or highly unlikely. He invites two girls home with him, for instance, and both say "yes;" or he tells a girl who's about to go back to her friends to change her mind and say, and she does, despite him thinking she'll leave. He begins to surprise himself here, and starts finding he can do more than he thought he could. Advanced Smooth how to be smoothThe man who knows how to be smooth through and through, skin to bone, is what you could consider completely "natural," or completely smooth. He doesn't think about trying to control himself that much... he simply doesn't react strongly to emotionally heightened situations, and he remains calm, steady, effortless, and in control. A man who's become proficient at being smooth has a number of advantages over lesser men when it comes to social interactions: He's able to keep his focus on forward progress, not on putting out fires in his interaction (e.g., a normal man thinks, "Oh no, she's asking me a tough question - what do I say?" while a man proficiently smooth doesn't even think about this, he just addresses it, and continues direction the interaction the way he wants it to go) He's able to get outside the interaction and see the big picture - instead of being engrossed with the minutiae, he's able to run his interactions on autopilot and instead look at the whole scene, noting, for instance, that her one friend doesn't seem to like him and might be a problem later when he tries to pull, and realizing that he should get the girl to deal with her friend directly rather than him try to manage things; and noting that the girl is friends with the bartender, so he'll want to make sure he has her out of there before closing time, otherwise they won't be able to slip off anonymously and she might even feel pressured to go with the bartender if the bartender tries to get her out of there too He isn't wasting time wondering if he's doing things right or whether he'll fail or succeed - he knows how it's likely going to go, and what he'll do if it doesn't go the way he wants it to. He has his process, his backup process, and he's also confident than even setbacks or defeats aren't necessarily permanent. The lack of fear of setback is probably the biggest advantage of the man who's proficiently smooth, and this one simply comes from going through enough situations smoothly that he knows that so long as he remains steady, unreactive, and in control, he'll almost always be able to handle whatever setback occurs. What's the difference between a man experienced with women who's smooth, and a guy who's had a lot of girlfriends and lovers (e.g., a muscular jock, or a guy at the top of his social circle for the moment) who isn't smooth? The guy who isn't smooth, even if he's very experienced, still overreacts to setbacks, demonstrating to women who are paying attention that his control isn't inherent - it's environmentally-based only. So he overreacts, a girl leaves, and she doesn't come back - or if she does, it's on her terms, and she's calling the shots. The guy who is smooth, and experienced, doesn't overreact to setbacks, demonstrating to women who are paying attention that his control is inherent to him - a very rare and very attractive trait. It's at the very core of that ephemeral term "confidence" - here is a man who does not fear setbacks, because he does not see them as setbacks. Girl's asking tough questions? She'll settle down. Girl's acting dramatic? It'll pass. Girl's threatening to leave? She's not going to leave. Girl's saying she isn't sure? Yes she is - she just doesn't know it yet. This is how the man advanced at smooth thinks, because by being smooth, he's seen how women actually react when they don't feel pressured. Smoothness is ultimately a means of alleviating the pressure a girl feels of having to decide if a guy is attractive enough, or if she's going to be judged by him, or face a harsh rejection from him, or have to friend zone him or treat him like a boyfriend candidate. Because he's in control, and she accepts his control, she can simply let go, and let him determine how things will play out. All she's got to do is decide if she can say "yes" and go along with what he's asking or not... and the smoother he is, the easier it is for her to say "yes" (because things aren't a big deal), and the quicker she is to trust his leadership. Men who aren't smooth never experience this. They live life in a world of absolutes. A girl says she's leaving? She does. A girl says she isn't sure? She means "no." These men never realize that they create the world they experience... by being awkward, uncertain, and unsmooth in the face of a woman's uncertainty or pressure, they tell her which way to go - away. The smooth man, though... he places no expectations on her. He gives her no nervousness, uncertainty, hesitation, or uncomfortable emotions in reaction to hers. Instead, he just sits there... and smiles warmly... and continues to act as if he knows she will stay and go along with what he wants. And because he acts this way, she feels reassured - and she does. Being smooth like this is the key to transitioning successfully with women. It makes you able to move girls with ease, able to kiss a girl with ease, able to take women to bed with ease. And it makes the whole process feel so natural that there's never even a hint of the "big deal feel" that ordinary men wrap these transitions up in, tearing apart their chances. The smooth man just does, naturally, effortlessly, steadily. And women do, right along with him. UNDERSTANDING SMOOTH Now that you've read this article, and you've got a handle on what being smooth is all about - not making everything "not a big deal," and tamping down and eventually ending the indications on your part that most men have that communicate to women, nonverbally that things are a big deal - does that mean you have now become a smooth operator by default? Not quite. Not yet. Because now, you've got to go out, meet women, and do these things. If you haven't focused much on getting down the nuances of how to be smooth before, you'll have your work cut out for you. You'll start to find it annoying how hard it is to not have an awkward smile on your face in some situations... to not have your voice tremble... to not be hesitant, or say the wrong thing, or fail to move fast when you should or persist when you should. But keep working on it. Learn to control your reactions so that they aren't wild or extreme. You never see Brad Pitt, George Clooney, or Val Kilmer, or James Bond bug their eyes out and say, "Wow! That's amazing!" Women do that. Those guys just smile slowly, and say, "Yeah. It's cool, isn't it?" Because they're smooth. You don't see those guys drop their heads and say, "Okay, maybe next time," when a woman refuses their invitation. Instead, you see them chuckle a bit, and either say, "Come on," or simply smile and stare at her as if she's said something ridiculous... until she recants. That's your objective with smooth. That's where you're working to get to, and where your ultimate goal lies. Because once you are smooth with women... everything just happens a lot more easily. And instead of worrying about how you're going to answer this tough question you're being grilled with... you're wondering how soon you can pull her: 5 minutes from now, or 10 minutes from now? And you'll smile to yourself, and realize you'll just have to play it by ear.

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##How to Be Vulnerable, Enchanting, and Alluring to Women We've had a handful of commenters write in recently to ask about how to be vulnerable, as well as how to more fully embody Byronic traits, like those mentioned in the articles on answering "Do you have a girlfriend?" and on being a challenge to women. How do you, as a man, be vulnerable, in a way that is both appealing yet not overly sappy or saccharine? One of these comments from a reader reads as such: "I have several girls interested in me primarily because of my flaws, and they have told me to my face that I am imperfectly perfect. I am interested in this Byronic concept. Do you try to adapt byronic traits? And can you do a post on them?" The flawed, vulnerable, Byronic romantic hero - he lines the pages of romance novels, and dots the dreams of women's hearts. But who is he, and how do you become this imperfect man that women so love to fantasize about? The truth is, we are all of us imperfect, and that gives us an edge. The problem is, most men spend too much time either trying to cover up their flaws entirely, or indulge in them so much that they refuse to improve. Like always, I will advise you to take the middle path, that lies at neither extreme, but the crossroads of both. Let's have a look at how you can do that. how to be vulnerable Though the research on women's attraction toward Byronic types is quoted in the article on being a challenge cited earlier, I'll add it in again here so you don't need to go dashing between articles just to keep up with things. Here it is: Bogg's and Ray's research on "The Heterosexual Appeal of Socially Marginal Men" again: "Surveyed women consistently specify preferences for egalitarian dates and/or mates. A common perception is that many of these same women often select consorts who are inscrutable, assertive, and controlling, ultimately bemoaning their choices. Dominance has been experimentally shown to provide initial attraction advantages. The Byronic Hero, a venerable literary model, embraces protagonists who possess extraordinary masculine traits that include dominance but also multiple personal flaws. Byronic Heroes, easily identified and plentiful in popular fiction, appear strongly to resonate with youthful audiences and provide alluring portrayals of heterosexual relations. In a classroom survey employing slide images of paired apparel models and a blind date scenario, collegiate women slightly but significantly preferred models independently judged to project Byronic traits over equally handsome men who appeared affable and conventional. Subject comments on Byronic models uniquely included allusions to sexual and mysterious/rebellious attributes. It was concluded that projections of Byronic masculinity provide initial advantages in the securing of heterosexual liaisons." So - sitting in a classroom, not having met the men in question, only looking at images of them, women rated the flawed, vulnerable, bad boys with Byronic traits as more attractive than the totally normal, unflawed men of equivalent levels of handsomeness. Why? To better understand this phenomenon, I'll cite another piece of research here, this one entitled "The Byronic Hero, Theatricality and Leadership," by Gabriele Poole: "Starting off with Annabella Milbanke's description of Byron after their first meeting, this essay explores the way in which Byron's persona, as displayed in a certain kind of social situation, appears characterised by a series of masks, yet is presented in such a way as to facilitate its unmasking by observers and obtain their sympathies. This model of interaction between Byron and his admirers is then applied to Byron's works, where this same semantic stratification of the Byronic Hero is complicated at times by the hero's use of the Byronic persona as an instrument of domination and on some occasions by the author's deliberate foregrounding of the hero's theatricality." Let's boil this down and see what researchers have to teach us about what Lord Byron has to teach us about how to be vulnerable in a way that is both transfixing and alluring. The takeaways are: Women are more attracted to men who are flawed in specific ways (we'll explore more what these ways are below) The Byronic hero wears a series of masks that must be taken away, revealing more and more of his character as this is done These masks are usually relatively easy to strip away, though sometimes are made more difficult by the very flaws of the hero The interesting thing is that this is a rather natural phenomenon you'll see in a lot of men. Far before they ever know anything about this logically, many more socially calibrated men begin to "layer" themselves with different levels of identity and vulnerability that women can then strip away, like a kind of Russian nested matryoshka doll... only, one that gets more and more captivating and amazing and personal every time another layer is removed, rather than simply smaller. WHAT'S SO EXCITING TO WOMEN ABOUT THESE LAYERS? Let's take a break for a second. You'll generally find that men have two different reactions to the whole "layers thing." These are: "Of course women love complicated, layered men... that's why I have constructed myself as just such a man!" "Geez, women are so ridiculously complicated! Why can't they just like a guy for who he is, and not need all these silly games? This is too complex." The first reaction is that of the man who has learned to think like a woman. He's learned the great principle of, "If you want someone to give you something, learn to understand what that person wants first, and provide that in return." He knows that if he wants women as lovers and girlfriends and romantic partners, he'll have the most choice and the most consistent ability to do so with them if he gives them exactly what they want. And what they want is a complicated, layered, perfectly imperfect man. The second reaction is that of the man whose mental model is one wanting to do things the way he wants to do them and not wanting to need to accommodate anyone else, and expecting everyone else to see things like he sees them. When he says, "Why can't women do this?" what he's actually saying is, "Why can't women think like men, instead of like women? Geez!" What that man is failing to take into account, of course, is that what men want out of partners and relationships, and what women want out of partners and relationship, are in fact rather different. And because what they want is different, the way they go about looking for it is different, too. Women, by nature, are probers. They're pokers. They like to stick curious eyes and investigative fingers into places others would rather they didn't; they test men ceaselessly, checking to see if a guy's still strong NOW... and how about now... and, what about now? They object to things, hoping those objections will be overcome, disappointed when they aren't. They protest about things they don't really care about, just to see what your reaction will be or get attention. They play games because they like to play games, because they're good at them, and because the men who beat them at their own games excite them and arouse them and energize them. Women like complicated situations and they like complicated men. They like peeling back layers. They like feeling like they're getting to the bottom of some great mystery that no other woman has fully gotten to the bottom of yet. It's a driving force behind why they like: Gossip Drama Soap operas Testing/teasing Flirting (to see how men react) ... and it's a driving force behind why they like bad boys, those quintessential flawed, Byronic heroes who know how to be vulnerable without being weak. Why aren't women as interested in nice guys, in handsome guys without flaws, and in those guys who'd rather women were more like men than wishing for those men who are what women want? Simple - these men just aren't as interesting. They're boring! And there's nothing quite like boredom to still any stirrings in a woman's bosom or loins. Put another way (the way we talked about in the "being a challenge" article), most men are either too available and no challenge (nice guys, boring guys), or they're too perfect and unattainable (handsome, desirable men who are flawless and "unreal"). In addition to boredom and lack of challenge at the one end of the spectrum though, I strongly suspect there is something else at play at the other... IF HE'S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE... Let's say you meet a girl. She's intelligent, charming, witty, sociable, fun, flirty, fashionable, and everybody you know thinks she's amazing. She plays the piano flawlessly, dances like a professional, earns marks off the charts in school and at work, and in her spare time helps out at the local soup kitchen. Oh, and she's absolutely, positively, drop-dead GORGEOUS. She is, in a word, perfect. And oh... she's madly in love with you. Sounds great, right? And, being a man, you'll likely rush in headlong... but at the back of your mind, something will feel a little off. That something is the old word of warning of: "If something seems too good to be true, it probably is." The thing with perfect people is that NOBODY tries that hard to be perfect without having something he or she is compensating for. Really intelligent girls don't make themselves look as beautiful because it isn't as much of a concern. Really beautiful girls don't work as hard on their studies, and don't contribute to causes and charities as much, because they have enough value in one sphere that they don't need to spend time boosting their value in another (academics, work, charity, etc.). If she's working THIS hard to make herself THIS perfect, your mind knows something is amiss. And it doesn't know what that is. But, as a man, you're likely to disregard this feeling in the back of your head. The desire to reproduce is stronger; something might be wrong here, but you can always just get out later if it turns out she's crazier than a bag full of fruit bats. Not so for women. Women approach dating far more cautiously than men do. Their alarm bells ring all the louder, and they pay all the more attention to them. And when you come across too good to be true to women, they tend to pay close attention. They proceed cautiously... untrustingly. Something's wrong with this man, they think, but he won't show me what it is. Instead, he just keeps acting perfect. Never let her find out what that is, and she'll never feel comfortable opening up to you and trusting you. She'll never lower her guard around you and put down her walls. She may never let things proceed, even if you seem outwardly like the catch of the century. That is, of course, until you let her begin to remove your masks. Then, the game changes. how to be vulnerable how to be vulnerable Whether you're too nice (and a little too boring) or too perfect (and a little too suspicious), you'll benefit from learning how to be vulnerable and making yourself into a more Byronic kind of man. In so doing, you will come to embody many of the key traits and qualities of the heroes of just about every romance book, film, or TV show ever made. You will become the man women dream about. Chances are, you already have these traits and qualities, in fact... you just don't know the right way to present them yet. And that's the key - the presentation. Presentation is the difference between an ordinary magician and a great one - the ordinary one knows all the tricks, but the great one is a showman, in addition to knowing the technical aspects of the magic he performs. Put on a good show, and people will admire you wherever you stand. THE TRAITS OF THE HERO Wikipedia lists the following traits as the characteristics of the Byronic hero: Arrogant Cunning and able to adapt Cynical Disrespectful of rank and privilege Emotionally conflicted, bipolar, or moody Having a distaste for social institutions and norms Having a troubled past or suffering from an unnamed crime Intelligent and perceptive Jaded, world-weary Mysterious, magnetic and charismatic Rebellious Seductive and sexually attractive Self-critical and introspective Self-destructive Socially and sexually dominant Sophisticated and educated Struggling with integrity Treated as an exile, outcast, or outlaw Note that normally no one Byronic hero has all of these - a handful of them is all it typically takes, but a mixture of the good and the bad is normally what makes him up. Many of these are traits already established in scientific literature to boost attraction in women (arrogance, emotional extremes, breaking social norms, intelligence, and intrigue are a few; and obviously we don't need to say that sexually attractive has proven sexually attractive), whereas others are traits that, mixed in with the positive traits, give a woman an opportunity to "save" a man. We discussed the other side of this coin - men falling prey to Superman Syndrome and riding in to rescue damsels in distress - in the article on white knights; but the reverse is just as true. Women often want to save a man, because: Saving someone makes you feel special - like you are the only person who's been able to reach this other individual at this level of emotional impact Saving someone makes you feel secure - surely, he or she will not leave when he or she owes you such a great debt of gratitude! Saving someone makes you feel like a noble person - you're a hero, someone who's come to the rescue, pulling this other individual out of the fire Saving someone makes you feel powerful - you have the ability to bring good into the world, and into other people's lives If she can just show him the light, she knows, or help him through his issues, she will have made this imperfect man into a perfect one - and he'll be all hers. She'll be the envy of every woman in town. Of course, it doesn't actually play out like this in real life - most people in need of saving can never successfully or permanently be saved (rather, they remain always in a state of perpetually being in need of rescuing, and always find their way back to that, no matter how many times they're saved), and the people who do get saved soon forget the person who saved them and move on with their lives, seeking to partner with someone who is more their equal now, rather than this person who was their equal when they were not so perfect. But no one thinks that way. Instead, they just keep on saving. HOW TO BE VULNERABLE (WITHOUT BEING WEAK) how to be vulnerableIf you look back over that list of traits above, you should be able to pick out which traits of yours are on that list. When I go down it, I can put a check mark next to most of them. There may be men out there who have absolutely none of these traits, but if so, they're probably so good-natured and so content with their lots in life that I doubt they're among the readership here. If you're reading this article, you should be able to pick out at least 4 qualities in that chart that match your own. Ideally, far more. The issue here, of course, is the presentation; how do you show a girl that YOU are the vulnerable, enchanting, alluring Byronic hero for whom she's been searching without her knowing she was? That's where we come back to masks - multiple layers of them, easily peeled back by the curious. You'll recall what we've discussed in the articles on building intrigue; that women like having to dig to find out more about you. This is the basis behind baiting as a conversational technique, and it's the line of reasoning behind the advice of dialing down the value you show. Normal men - the ones who get slated as "boring" or, alternately, "too high value" - often rush to empty their box of valuable qualities all over the table and lay out their wares for sale. "Here's everything I've got to offer!" they declare to women. Women look over those wares... then, confident they've seen everything, and not having seen anything all that unique compared to the thousands of other men who've shown them very similar wares, they keep moving. Then they come to a man who does not have that approach. That man has a few interesting items out on his table, and boxes upon stuffed boxes behind him, with no indication into what's inside. "These are neat..." says the girl, examining some knick-knacks. "What else have you got?" The man shakes his head; sorry, I can't let you see that. She presses, he apologizes again. Then, he has to disappear into the back room; she sneaks a peak into one of the boxes, getting a glimpse of that which all the other customers never get to see. That's what it's like being vulnerably Byronic; you're the guy with boxes of untold baubles, but you feign not wanting to let her look, until she looks inside on her own. I'm waxing metaphorical, though. How does this apply to your interactions with women in the real world? Simple. Let me give you a series of steps to follow, instead of abstractions and figurative examples to work off of. Don't show all your cards. You know this one, if you've been reading here a while; we talk about it a lot. Don't spill the beans. Don't go divulging everything about yourself when first asked; keep some back. Girls don't do it with you; and you should not do it with them. It kills intrigue and makes a man boring - leave some things to the imagination. This is a part of why deep diving and being a conversationalist revolve around getting girls talking - instead of you talking. Reveal yourself in layers. As you begin to dive deep and get to know a girl in conversation, she'll begin seeking to find out more about you and probe and learn too. As she does so, you want to start with revealing only the more superficial levels of your motives, while hinting at deeper ones. Too abstract? Here are some examples: A girl you're talking to asks you why you moved to town, and you say, "In search of a new adventure," or, "My old town was great, but after 4 years there I felt like I'd done and seen and experienced everything there was to offer. I need something more." A woman you've just met asks you why you chose the profession you have. "Well, everyone needs a calling - something they can use to impact the world;" you say, "this one's mine," or, "It wasn't my first choice, but it was the best choice available to me to get to where I needed to get to." What do each of these do? They inspire the girl to dig deeper. She's peeled off the first mask - your polite social mask, of "this is what I am and this is what I do." She's discovered the next mask underneath - that you in fact are driven by something other than chance or fate. In the town example, you're an adventurer; but what drives that, and what kinds of adventures? Or, you'd done it all; but what more are you looking for now, and when will you know you've found it? In the profession example, you've found your calling; but what kind of impact are you trying to make? Or, you took a practical choice to get you where you want to go; but where was that, and what would you have chosen instead? Show some of your "damaged" side... but only if it's unexpected. You might talk about getting arrested, or getting in fights, or getting shot at or stabbed. You might talk about a scuba diving accident where you nearly drowned, or the time climbing a mountain you nearly went over the cliff. You might talk about how you were a loner for a long time, and never had friends. But whatever it is, it should be mentioned only briefly in passing, and it should come as something of a shock. Don't talk about how you used to be a loner, obviously, if you still seem like a loner; do it when you're clearly the most social guy in the room. And don't talk about your jail time or fist fights if you seem like a tough guy or hood; do it when you seem clean cut and refined. Don't talk about your adventuring among a group of adventurers; do it among reserved polite society. You need to pick what's "damaged" based on the particular society. Women are enamored with Byronic heroes in romantic tales because these heroes have unexpected "damaged" histories that are thrilling and exotic to the woman. If a girl's been in and out of jail herself, she won't be too impressed about your night in the drunk tank. But if she's been surrounded by people who'd never dream of breaking the law all her life, when she stumbles across this fact about you she'll have just peeled back another mask. Also, obviously, the same rules apply here as everywhere else in conversation; don't launch into an overlong story simply because you think it'll be great for showing how vulnerable you are. Instead, just mention it, in intriguing fashion, and give her the opportunity to ask more, dig, and probe if she's interested. Be the holder of forbidden knowledge. The easiest way to get someone to push a button is to put a big, fat "DO NOT PUSH" sign next to the button, with no explanation whatsoever why not to push it. If a girl asks you about something and your response is along the lines of, "Well... we all have our little secrets," or, "It's not that important," you will drive her mad with curiosity trying to uncover what these hidden truths from you are. Being highly perceptive and using cold reading and accurately guessing or intuiting things about her can push this agenda too. She'll wonder how you knew that, and assume there's a lot more you must know, too. That last one's optional, but the first three are more or less the order of the day for the Byronic hero. They are the essential elements in the cookbook; to learn how to be vulnerable, you must learn and use these. A VULNERABLE MAN Vulnerability does not mean, "I cry when I think about starving children in impoverished nations." Nor does it mean, "I spend all my time trying to save the world!" Oftentimes, all it means for the Byronic man is, "I WISH I could save everyone... but I am only one man, and I cannot." There's a mixture of idealism tempered by realism. The Byronic man is the one who began life as an idealist, but through the chain of his life has become, by necessity, a realist. And that's another thing women love about him - his broken dreams of grandeur, likely never to be fully realized, because he is honest that the world is a hard, difficult, dirty place. He bucked society. He tried to bring his dreams to fruition. He worked, he struggled, he strived. But, like all men who struggle valiantly, at some point he came upon the firm hand of reality, and was checked and slowed down and forced not to dream as big. He's not like the childish, unrealistic dreamer who thinks anything is possible and there are no limits. And he's not like the cold, forsaken pessimist who believes life is a pointless spinning of the top that goes on only until the top stops spinning and we pass into oblivion. Rather, he's the dreamer who dared to dream big once, but life has tempered his grand ambitions. Yet still, somewhere back in the dusty recesses of his mind, he dreams. And that is what women want to be a part of.

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##How to Become Romantic You know, I've been called a lot of things. I've been called an extremely warm person; I've been called a cold man. And at times, I've been called a romantic. To me, romanticism is an ideal, of sorts. It's a refusal to accept the baseness and ugliness of the "real" world, as most consider it. And, it's the creation, in your own self and in the life you lead, as well as in the life you help those around you to lead, of another world -- a world where things are filled with meaning, where people truly matter, and where we all are the authors of our own spectacular, riveting stories. As a romantic man, you become able to touch others' lives and bring hope to those who lack it. You inspire; you motivate; and you energize. You take those for whom the world had been empty and cold, and make it feel as though it's buzzing with electricity and potential. And best of all, you take the fantasies that women read about so avidly in their romance novels, and you can bring them to life. Striving to become romantic is, to me, something very much worth striving for -- romanticism gives you an ability to affect others' lives that is in some ways without equal. THE "LOSS" OF ROMANTICISM I want to start this one out by saying I'm not so sure romanticism has ever really been "lost." Sure, if you read books about 100 to 200 years ago, it seems like just about every guy was a romantic. But that's books -- and books are fond of fanciful and idealistic characters. If you ask me, I'd be really surprised if there were actually a whole lot of romantic men at any point in history. Because, you see, romantic men are rare. And women love them. They go crazy for romantic men... all of them. So why don't more men become romantic? Well, there are two things that romanticism ultimately stems from: A joyful, blissful love of women A blinding, nearly unshakeable optimism about life Most men don't have those qualities, and that's why most men aren't romantics. A man must genuinely really love and enjoy and care for women to be a romantic. This is different from what nice guys do. And the distinction is incredibly important. Nice guys try to be nice and pretend to be nicer than they are and supplicate to women and kiss up to them. Usually they think they're flying under the radar... and what ends up happening is either they succeed in flying under the radar (and women really, honestly think they only want to be just friends and never see them as more than that), or they fail in flying under the radar (and end up seeming creepy to women). Romantic men, on the other hand, don't try to hide their interest in women -- they're upfront about it. They can do this either by stating it outright -- in a very smooth, natural way, of course -- or by implying it through their nonverbal communication, voice tone, and implications (such as chase framing). Women know, most of the time, that if a man's spending much time on them, he probably has some degree of romantic interest in them. Because of the way attraction works, women have the highest degree of respect and mutual attraction for the men who are just honest about their attraction and don't try to conceal it in fear. That's what nice guys do -- they try to hide their attraction out of fear of being rejected. Women instantly take that as a sign they should reject them -- who knows you better than you? So if a guy thinks a woman ought to reject him, most of the time that woman is going to trust his judgment of his own worth, and listen to what he thinks she ought to do. A guy's afraid a girl's going to reject him? She'll probably end up rejecting him. Romantic men combine two aspects of very successful lovers that appeal to women at a very deep level: confidence, and a way with women. Confidence tells a woman a man must be desirable, else he would not expect attraction with such self-assuredness. A way with women also tells a woman a man must be desirable -- he must have had success with women to have developed this way with them. And what women tend to be looking for, ultimately, is a man who's already successful with women -- confidence and a way with them are the keys that tell her he is. Back to what we were talking about earlier. Have the romantics been lost? The answer, I'm quite confident, is no, they haven't. In fact, you can find romantics just as much today in women's reading materials (romance novels, for instance) as you can in books of old. And there are indeed men today who reap the rewards of romanticism. Western culture may have hurt the number of romantics out there somewhat -- with all the "men vs. women" polarity there is these days stemming from the feminist movement and backlashes against men and return backlashes against women, there are a lot of cynical men out there now (along with a lot of cynical women). There's a big divide between the sexes, a lot of distrust, finger pointing, and prickliness. But there are still men out there who love women. And those men do so much better with them than the cynical men that it's not even funny. I don't think romantic men were ever all that common before. Men hundreds of years back had to spend too much of their time at work, and had too little leisure time, to spend much time pursuing women as romantics. Only the odd man out -- a man with an aristocratic background, perhaps, who was also well-traveled -- ended up as a romantic. Nowadays, men have more leisure time, but with today's cynicism about women and dating, many men have in-built opinions that stifle any kind of romantic whims they might otherwise have. That's why, even in a time when men have the availability and the resources to become romantics, romantics are still so rare. And that's why women continue to treasure them so much. become romantic HOW TO BECOME ROMANTIC I think you've really got to be a bit of an artistic type yourself naturally to become romantic. Fortunately, most people out there are at least a little bit artistic or creative. If you like good movies, for instance, you're probably artistic enough to turn yourself into a romantic. The hardest part in being romantic is shedding any cynicism or misogyny you might still carry from when you struggled with women. Even among men who become good with women, it's still quite common to have a lot of retained resentment left over from the days when they didn't do so well with girls -- this you must fight at all costs. Cynicism is mental poison on so many levels; I'm a staunch anti-cynic myself. Some people seem to think that cynicism makes them cool... I just think it makes people really off-putting and lame. Now, *I* used to be a cynic, some years back. Until one day I realized that every cynical thing I said or thought made me feel a little worse on the inside when I said it or did it, and then I realized that the bad feelings I had on the inside were coming from myself. That prompted a revolution in how I handled my own internal life and judgmentalism -- see "How to Overcome Depression" for more on taking control of your thoughts and feelings. But I am fully, absolutely, 100% convinced you just can't become a romantic man until you've shed cynicism and really found love for women -- it can't be done. Romance and cynicism are mutually exclusive -- one comes from love for women, and one comes from resentment of them. Typically, you'll find that cynicism fades as you acquire more and more positive experiences with women, but not always. It's something you have to watch for and police in yourself and remove that bad thoughts. Once that's out of the way though, and you acquire a genuine love and appreciation for women, here's all you have to do to turn yourself into a romantic man: Benchmark. Watch some movies with very attractive, alluring men (Val Kilmer's wooings in The Saint are some of my favorite), and watch how strong guys woo women in romantic ways. They're passionate in love-making; silent in other ways; and they quite often extremely strong, powerful men. You don't see truly romantic men chasing after women, the way, say, a Greek or an Italian man might. Truly romantic men are able to enchant women without having to pursue relentlessly. Learn to show their affection in unexpected but powerful ways. You notice that many romantic men skip expensive gift and purchases for women -- they recognize that an inexpensive but meaningful gift (such as something you've personalized or made yourself, say with a poem or an inside joke or pet name) carries far more emotional impact. They'll also do things like take a woman some place in town that they know she'll like -- she loves independent art, say, and you happen to find a small independent art gallery she doesn't know about -- and they use surprise a lot -- so you might take her to that gallery without telling her where you're headed. Just take her there, walk in, and let her be amazed. Learn to show more than tell. Related to the example of the small art gallery in that last bullet, while most men talk a lot to women about their feelings or how much they care about her, romantic men show women -- through remembering important little things about them, small subtle gestures, etc. When she's upset, simply bringing her into an embrace wordlessly rather than trying to comfort her verbally is a great example. Guiding her across the street with your hand on the small of her back or changing positions with her to walk curbside is another. Most importantly, remember that being a romantic man is about the emotions you cause women to feel. Most guys never spend much time learning how to spark emotions in other people and make them really feel; I tend to believe this is one of the most crucial interpersonal skills you can develop in yourself. The man who can make a woman feel can make her fall in love. If your aim is success with women, becoming that sort of man is one of the fastest roads there.

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##How to Build an Emotional Connection An emotional connection is one of those fleeting, powerful things that can seem all too rare and all too outside one's control. It can seem like it's just chance when you happen upon one -- as if but by the grace of God it came into being. But it doesn't have to be. Just like succeeding with women in general -- just like figuring out how to launch businesses and succeed financially -- just like anything in life -- the ability to build an emotional connection is something that can be learned. Most people don't like to hear that. Most people want to think that all in life is pure happenstance and nothing other than fate determines the outcome of their lives. But those of us actively in pursuit of bettering ourselves and of mastering the skills to control our own destinies know better -- that a lot less in life is chance than most folks think. A lot of it is skill. And learning to connect with people on an emotional level is one of the most powerful, practical, wide-reaching skills you can possibly learn. If you haven't given much thought to this one before, it's high time you started. "THE OTHER" In the mid-20th century, French psychoanalyst Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan developed the concept of "the other," originally introduced by German philosopher Georg Hegel in the early 1800s and now a pillar of modern day psychological models. What the idea of "the other" holds is that every person sees everything else in the world -- including every other human being -- as being either the same as him or herself -- or other. It's easy to gather how othering -- as the verb form is called in psychological parlance -- would serve to keep our ancestors living and thriving. Those who aren't with us may be against us and need to be watched carefully and be subject to suspicion, unless and until they can prove they're on the same wavelength as us. Even today, in our far safer world with a far lower mortality rate than at any other point in history, othering helps keep us safe; it protects us from people who might potentially be a threat to us and helps us stick to those who understand us best and ally with us and are most likely to help us succeed and go to bat for us in times of need. For the seducer though, and for anyone else who seeks to achieve mastery at building emotional connections with others, the question of the other presents a unique problem -- and an unparalleled opportunity. That's because most people are very good at positioning themselves as the other, and not so good at showing how they are the same. And emotional connection, at its very core, is all about helping others see you as the same as them: as someone who gets them, is bonded to them, and understands them to the quick of them. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first: you need to realize the things you're doing that position you as "other" in the mind of girls you like. And before you can do that, I want to call your attention to how you view some women as "other" right now. First, think of a certain kind of woman you dislike. Maybe it's those Barbie dolls who dress themselves up and think so highly of themselves -- all you want is to get a real girl. Maybe it's fat women if you're skinny, or skinny women if you're fat -- who wants a woman that disgusting (fat) or that much a bag of bones (skinny)? Or maybe it's the hardcore feminists and the women's libbers -- if anyone falls into the "other" category for most men, it's got to be them -- they hate men! And now that I've got you all riled up thinking of your most hated enemies in the opposite sex, stop and think. Are they really all bad, horrible, good-for-nothing people? Do they really have nothing to offer to humanity? Or are you just broad-handedly, ham-fistedly, categorically tossing them into a stereotyped category of "other" and deciding they're stone-hearted individuals who simply can't be related to as people? If you stop and you're really, truly honest with yourself, you'll realize they're people just like you are and just like the people you don't consider "other" are, and there really isn't anything wrong with them. They're just living a different life you don't fully relate to, and they have different reactions to you and feelings about you too. Personally, girls who dress über flashy I used to not like all that much because they used to be colder toward me; and heftier girls I didn't like a whole lot because (aside from my own personal preferences for women with thin waists) they tended to snap at me even when I was just being friendly and social a lot of the time. So, for a while, those kinds of women got tossed into the "other" category for me. Who's in your other category? But tackling your own list of others isn't the object of this post. For doing some internal work in that regard, check out "Reference Points and Changing Worldviews." I just wanted to point out that "the other" is very real and a psychological mechanism we're all subject to. And that includes the women you meet. You see, most men, while trying to build an emotional connection with women, inadvertently tend to flip girls' "other" switches. They do some knuckleheaded things that get them booted out of contention for the same and quickly slotted into the other. And once you're an "other," good luck trying to get a girl to do... well... ANYTHING with you. WHERE MOST GUYS GO WRONG IN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION-BUILDING So how do you avoid being an "other;" any idea? Let's define what most guys are doing wrong... the things that kill their chances at building a connection and being viewed as "the same." Throwing out contentious opinions. Men are a lot more susceptible to this than women are for some reason. Okay, not "some reason"... women are a lot more socially attuned than the average man and just don't do this. What's a contentious opinion? Let's say you're talking to a girl, and the two of you talk about exercise. "You know what I hate?" you say. "Yoga. What a silly waste of time that is." Then she tells you she runs a yoga studio. By way of another example, say she makes the off-hand remark that she absolutely loathes men who spend hours watching sports every week... but unbeknownst to her, you spend hours watching sports every week. The instant she states that opinion, you feel less connected to her. That's the kind of thing you want to avoid doing to women -- but so many men do it, and keep doing it, more or less obliviously. Failing to build consensus. Women are very good at building consensus. Men often aren't. The men who fail to build consensus regularly tend to leave women feeling ignored or marginalized when they make unilateral decisions; women can end up feeling their needs haven't been attended to, and they lose a lot of connectedness to the man making the unilateral decision. This, you might say, is bad form. You can still be the leader and still direct things your way; in fact, women typically will be looking for you to make the decisions and lead the charge. But they still want to feel included. When men fail to include women in the decision making process and instead make those unilateral decisions, women end up feeling left out -- not just of the decision itself, but of the man's consideration altogether too. Never going beyond the superficial. Deep diving is an effective tool for a reason: it gets women telling you about themselves, beyond the ordinary, and bonding to you on who they really are. You aren't "other" if you know them and get them to an intimate degree. Most men never do this though, and instead let their conversation remain in the realm of the common and the surface-level. Forgetting to actively listen and provide good feedback. As discussed in the post on becoming an exceptional conversationalist, one of the things that makes a woman begin bonding to and relating to a man is his ability to show her that he's listening to, relating to, and understanding what she's saying. Most men don't do this, either because they aren't really listening, or because they're too caught up in trying to be impressive to really be there in the moment and feed back to a woman what she's saying. When a man fails to feed back a woman's conversation to her, she feels like her words are falling on deaf ears -- on ears that don't really care. Thus, the man she's talking to must not relate -- he must be "other." These are the mistakes most guys end up making that poison their ability to really connect and bond with a woman. And if you want to do better than most guys, you're going to need to do a little better than this. build emotional connection HOW TO BUILD AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION You want to get out of ending up considered "other" and into being thought of as "the same." How you do that is by building an emotional connection. The man who knows how to build an emotional connection is the man who's able to control his own fate, so to speak, when it comes to connecting with others. He's no longer at the mercy of destiny, hoping for that spark to manifest; instead, he controls its manifestation. "Chemistry" is at his beck and call. To build an emotional connection though, you're going to need to do the opposite of what most men do -- the opposite of those places we just laid out above, where most men go wrong. You'll need to be focused on bonding instead of whatever it is regular guys are focused on (proving how amazing they are, I guess?). Some of this is going to be similar to what we talked about in "The Conversationalist;" if anything sounds familiar, just view it as a refresher. Some of it's going to be different. All of it's going to be focused, first and foremost, on building that emotional connection and avoiding the label of "other" that so many men put themselves into. Here are the tools you'll need to build an emotional connection: Avoid arguments and contention, and hold your tongue on divisive opinions. At least until you're fairly certain she shares those divisive opinions of yours, anyway. You're very nationalistic, and she's from another country? Probably not a great idea to get into singing your home country's praises too loudly. Instead, talk about stuff you can both agree on -- interests, hobbies. Maybe both of you like art, or played sports in high school, or hate office desk jobs. Doesn't matter what it is -- so long as it's something you relate to each other on. Build consensus. You don't have to hold a vote, exactly, but you should ask for buy in. Like so: "I'm thinking we should hit the pizza parlor. Do you like pizza?" That way she feels included in the decision. You get the added bonus of once she's bought in, she'll support the decision -- rather than attack it or resist it, as women may do with decisions they haven't bought into. Skip this one in obvious time-to-lead situations, such as when you're moving her somewhere quiet or secluded, or when you're taking her home. But when it's not as much of a do-or-die situation, yeah -- get buy-in. It helps. Quite a lot, sometimes. Get to the nitty gritty ASAP. Quick, how connected do you feel to someone you've spoken with for ten minutes who still knows nothing about you other than where you went to college, where you're originally from, and what you do for work right now? Not a whole lot, right? By focusing on getting under a girl's hood fast -- by getting to her deeper self -- you allow her to connect to you deeply and rapidly and get out of the "other" zone. This is where deep diving comes in, and why going beyond the superficial is so crucial in everything other than fast pulls. Listen actively and provide feedback. This can be as simple as repeating back to a girl what she's said to you but with different words. e.g., she tells you about how her father taught her to sail, and you respond with, "That's so very cool you had a dad who taught you to sail. How good did you end up getting?" By actively listening / providing feedback, you show that you listen, and you show that you get it. Most important about all of these is that they're signature markers of "sameness" and identify you as in-group, rather than out-group. They let you skirt the stigma of "other" that so many men seem so good at getting slapped onto their foreheads, and aid you in building a real, genuine emotional connection with women. Futher, once you're good at knowing how to build an emotional connection, you become that rare individual others can connect to well -- distinguishing yourself from everyone else. The ability to build an emotional connection allows you to build friends and allies with on a highly consistent basis. And, it makes you a heck of a closer -- you know that, given the opportunity to talk to a girl, the two of you are probably going to end up connecting very well. All you really need to start is a focus on connecting, instead of obliviously blundering into "other" territory like most guys do. Knowing is half the battle... and the techniques above are the other half. Hope you enjoy using them.

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##How to Create a Habit You'll Stick With Habits are the brain's own productivity mechanism. The brain converts conscious actions, consistently repeated, into unconscious habits. The brain turns conscious actions into unconscious habits to free up future resources and will power for other tasks and actions. The only downside to this process is that it can be extremely difficult to break bad habits or to create new ones. Once positive habits have been ingrained into the unconscious they are EXTREMELY beneficial, though. create a habit To create a new habit, we first engage in a new activity, and the brain works very hard to process all the new information. The brain looks for patterns and tries to understand the new action. As soon as it understands how the task works, this behaviour starts becoming automatic, and the mental activity required to do the task decreases. Think about how much brain power you used when first learning how to drive. Compare that now to when you drive; probably the vast majority of your driving is done on autopilot. Let's talk about creating habits, which are crucial to getting success, especially in all things self-development. IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF Before setting out to create a habit, ask yourself these questions first: What am I trying to accomplish by creating this new habit? How will it feel once I've done this? What habit/s do I need to allow me to accomplish my goals? Are there any examples of people that have done what I want to do already? What are all the ways that my life will be better after implementing this habit? These questions will help you clarify what it is exactly you're endeavouring to learn, and help you to visualise how beneficial a given habit will be to your life (which helps quite a bit with the motivation you need to implement said habit). ONE NEW HABIT AT A TIME It is optimal to only build one new habit at a time. You might have lots of motivation at the outset, but it is all but impossible to successfully implement more than one habit at once. The general rule is to take thirty days to implement one habit. As soon as the habit has become ingrained in your subconscious, you can start to implement the next habit. This might sound like a long process, but it really isn't, compared to the benefits you'll receive from each new good habit you create. It's possible going at this rate to build twelve new habits per year! Considering the average person doesn't consciously build even a single new positive habit most years of his life, twelve per year is pretty EPIC! CREATE A HABIT IN BITE-SIZED CHUNKS Gradually move towards the habit; don't go for it straight away - build up to it. If you want to build a habit of ‘wake up at 6 a.m. every morning', then every few days gradually wake up thirty minutes earlier. Don't try straight out of the gates for the early time because it will be too much (unless you're presently waking up at 7), and you will be much more likely to just give up. Gradual change is the best way to go for everything. create a habit Self-improvement = consistently being slightly outside of your comfort zone. Don't be massively outside of your comfort zone; you don't want to give yourself a virtual aneurism! Instead you want to be progressively, slightly outside of your comfort zone. Every few days you should do slightly more. Everyone has a default level of homeostasis; this is the natural equilibrium of your body and mind. If you go massively outside of this equilibrium, your body and mind will shut down in order to protect you, or revert back to old habits and programming. If you make progressive incremental changes, though, the body and mind won't fight it much (or at all) because the change is gradual and not nearly as alarming. A NEW HABIT WON'T KILL YOU With regards to pick up, it's important to learn that from doing an action nothing bad will happen. Approaching a group of girls on the street won't result in you dying. As soon as that mental click happens inside of your brain, your approach anxiety gets reduced and approaching new women gets easier. Give yourself the opportunity to gain this realisation by putting yourself outside of your comfort zone a few times. Then, when you begin to create this new habit, you can make realistic goals, and you will have progressively less fear over the thirty days. BE PREPARED TO BE EMBARRASSED In the beginning stage of implementing a new habit, it will be embarrassing. Whatever new habit you want to take on, it's important to realise that you are going to be bad at it. Approaching women when you're just starting out, for example, will result in you looking silly, especially if you aren't an "icy pimp" already. This is fine; don't compare yourself to other people who have a lot more experience then you. When starting out you are definitely not going to be able to pick up like you see in pick up videos. When first learning pick up you are going to be embarrassed and humiliated a lot. This applies to an extent to all new habits learned publicly (in front of more people than just yourself); and, generally, the larger the audience, and/or the further out there you're putting yourself, the more embarrassment you'll be up for. When beginning with approaching, you will approach women and they will walk past you, ignore you, tell you to go away. You must ACCEPT this and not fight it. If you are very new to pick up, it will probably take you six months before you get reasonable results. Reasonable as in you are getting some results, inconsistently. Now six months might seem like a lot of time... but I assure you it will fly by! The six months is going to pass whatever you do, so you might as well be doing something that will help you in the long run. Focus on how great your life will be after you've progressed through this stage to keep yourself motivated. Imagine the quality and amount of women you will be dating. A NEW HABIT TAKES THIRTY DAYS TO BUILD Implementing a new habit is all about repetition and committing to what you've written down on paper. It takes thirty days of repetition to implement a new habit into the subconscious, where it becomes automatic. You will need to do whatever it takes to make sure that you complete those thirty days; after those thirty days, it is a lot easier to keep the habit going. In fact, after thirty days, it takes effort to stop doing the habit, because it has become so ingrained in the subconscious. GET AN ACCOUNTABILITY FRIEND create a habitFind someone that you can count on to be accountable to. If you have someone that you can be accountable to then this will be your easiest win! If the habit is work-related and you have a girlfriend, she'll be the best person to help you. In this situation, tell her, "I need to do this habit every day for the next thirty days; here is two hundred pounds. For each day I don't do the habit, I want you to keep fifty pounds - you can spend it on whatever you want." This is without doubt the best way that I've found to ensure I stick to something. Now, if you want to create a habit that is pick up-related, then you probably don't or at least shouldn't have a girlfriend. For this you need a best friend or a great wingman. If you want to approach groups of women more, then what you should do is say, "Hey bro, I want to start approaching groups of women more frequently. Please, can you point out some groups for me to approach; they must be girl-groups only, not mixed. That's my only requirement. Here is fifty pounds. For each group that you point out that I don't approach within fifteen seconds, I want you to keep five pounds." Most wings will be more than happy to play that game, especially if they get to: Wing you after you approach the group Take your money if you don't approach This technique will get you approaching fast, guaranteed! If you are rich and five pounds per approach isn't enough of a motivator, then increase that figure until it starts to motivate you. Tell your wing to play this game with you every time you go out. The pain of losing money will outweigh the fear of any approach anxiety that you may have. YOUR BELIEFS ARE YOUR FINAL CONCERN If you manage to maintain a new habit for over the thirty days, CONGRATULATIONS! You're almost there. The final requirement for solidifying your new habit is accepting that "Change is possible". People backslide after thirty days, after putting all the hard work in, because they don't believe that they can change. It is important to truly believe that change is possible and that you DO DESERVE these changes and their positive effects in your life. If you have a belief like "I don't deserve to be happy" or "If I'm happy bad things will happen", these beliefs need to be removed first with the help of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or a therapist. Hope this post helps.

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##How to Get a Girl in Bed: 10 Crucial Tips for Making Her Yours I haven't touched much on last minute resistance on this site, and it's about the time I got a proper post up on it. Before we jump in, I want to share a note from a reader who wrote in asking about how to get a girl in bed to illustrate what I'll be talking about and provide us an example case to work from: "Hi Chase, Firstly I'd like to say that I love your blog and that many things have started to make sense (especially about moving fast). After taking your advice I decided to try it out and act as though the only night I had a chance of sleeping with a girl was that night. It started with me being introduced to a girl through a friend at a party, we flirted a bit and I intentionally moved her around. When we got to town everyone got separated and we were together, after moving her around more I persuaded her to take me back to hers for a "sandwich". We got back to hers she made me a sandwich and after that it started getting a bit steamy in the bedroom. However when I went to take her panties off she wouldn't let me, even after trying about 5 times. She then claimed that she was too tired and we should try in the morning. When the morning came she avoided sex again and I managed to find out that she though sex was pointless if we weren't in a relationship. To say the least I was confused and angry but also felt a sense of failure as though I wasn't good enough to be her lover. I mean why would a girl take me to hers, heavily make out with me and then refuse to have sex even if she wanted a boyfriend? I wanted to be put in the lover zone not the boyfriend zone. A reply to this would be much appreciated but a blog post on why a girl would do this would be awesome." Our reader's case here is a classic case of last minute resistance, or LMR -- that thing that happens when it feels for all the world like you're just about to sleep with a girl, that it's totally inevitable, that all that either of the two of you want in all of existence is to just be together... and then she suddenly, inexplicably, unexpectedly throws a wall up and won't let you proceed. Why's that happen, and what can you do about it? To show you how to get a girl in bed and overcome last minute resistance, first we're going to have to get you to understand why women react this way -- and then we're going to have to teach you what you can do about it. BEING A WOMAN IS NO EASY RIDE As a man, it can be incredibly frustrating how flakey, indecisive, and unpredictable most women tend to be. They say they'll call you and they don't; girls flake, ask to go somewhere else, say yes then no, no then yes, tell you they can stay then say they've got to leave. It's one of the most maddening, bewildering, indecipherable things about girls for the vast majority of men out there. Because as men, we know that if we say we're going to be somewhere or do something, we follow through. Why can't women? Until you see it from a woman's point of view, women's flakiness seems utterly ditzy and scatterbrained. But see it from their perspective you must, and once you have, it looks a whole lot different. Let's start with a story. Imagine you're buying a car. From a used car lot. There's none of the certainty you have at a dealership for new cars; some of these cars are diamonds in the rough, and some of them are lemons cleverly disguised as pearls. And you, though you've got experience with cars, you're certainly no expert; you're just going on your best guess and hoping you pick well. So, you take a ride in a car with a dealer. It looks good on the outside; the interior is plush and comfortable. As you're driving down the road, you grin at the dealer, and the dealer grins back at you. "I think I like this car!" you tell him. You're thinking you're going to get it as soon as you get back to the lot. This is the one. But then, as you hit the brakes to decelerate coming off the highway, the car suddenly shifts and shudders -- Brrrr, brrr, BRRR! The brake pedal shimmies hard under your foot. Whoa, that wasn't good, you think. The confidence you had moments earlier that this was the car for you instantly and totally evaporates. Now you're certain this isn't the one for you. "Is it supposed to do that?" you ask the dealer nervously. "Oh," he says, "you have the emergency brake on. Jesus, be careful," he says, putting the emergency brake down for you, "you'll break the car driving like that." You blush. "My mistake," you say, suddenly reassured. "I didn't realize." "It's all right!" he laughs kindly. "Let's head back to the lot." You do, but you're still on edge. Adrenaline is coursing through your veins. You like this car -- it's everything you wanted -- but the memory of that shuddering, even though you caused it, is still in your head, and your embarrassment at driving with the emergency brake on is making you uncomfortable. "Yeah, it's a good car," you tell him when you make it back to the lot. "Great. So you'll take it?" he asks expectantly. "Ummm...." you say, "I'll think about. Okay?" You leave, and never return. You end up buying a different car a few weeks later -- one you didn't even like as much as that first one. Why'd all this happen? Well, it happened because you were the buyer, the dealer was the seller, and as the one making a big purchase with limited information who knows his information is limited and possibly flawed, you were on edge the entire time, ears perked for the slightest hint you were buying a lemon, and sensitive to any inability on the part of the seller to get you completely calm and reassured that this is the one for you. In other words, you just experienced last minute resistance, and you got to be on the other side of a transaction getting tossed in the trash pail over seemingly minute details. Welcome to the tough reality of life as a woman. how to get a girl in bed BUYERS, SELLERS, AND COMPETING INTERESTS When you're the one who's selling -- the dealer, in the case of our used car example, and the man, in the case of getting girls in bed -- your primary objective is to get the buyer to accept. But when you're the one who's buying -- the car shopper, in the case of our example above, or the woman, in the case of seduction -- your primary objective is to not get gypped. And make no mistake, in the realm of men and women sleeping together, the men are the sellers and the women are the buyers. Why? Well, if twenty beautiful women with seemingly amazing personalities asked you to bed, how many of them would you say "no" to? If you're like most guys, the answer's probably "None of them!" That's just like the car dealer -- if twenty people want to buy cars off his lot at the price he wants them to pay, how many of them will he turn down? Yeah -- none, right? You get a lot of girls who meet the standards you're looking for, you win. The dealer gets a lot of car shoppers who'll pay him what he wants for his cars, he wins. This is the seller's position. But if a girl just took any man who came her way based on a cursory one-over of his looks and personality, there's a good chance she soon ends up pregnant and for all she knows he may move on and not stick around and support that child and she's screwed, socially, financially, and every other way there is. Furthermore, she doesn't actually know him -- and for all she knows, the child she's carrying might end up being slow, or strange, or something else that she hadn't recognized from that cursory glance she gave the guy. And that's not even to mention the potential damage her reputation and ability to land a high quality mate later on might suffer if the man is indiscrete or turns out to be a social outcast. Or the danger he might pose to her personally if he turns out to be crazy -- a big, strong man is a very real threat to a woman, who's usually going to be smaller and a lot less aggressive than he is. There are a ton of reasons -- both practical and biological -- that women need to be a lot more careful than men in who they go to bed with. It's just like a car buyer who buys the first car she sees that looks good; for all she knows, simply grabbing that first thing to come her way, the engine might just fall out on the way home. Because of this, car buyers are usually quite careful about their purchases, and women are usually quite careful about their lovers. The stakes for the buyers are much, much higher than they are for the sellers. This is where last minute resistance comes from. It's also where flakiness, mind-changing, and unpredictability comes from. What seems like nitpicky silliness to a man is usually a very big deal to a woman. THE POINT OF SALE AND LAST MINUTE RESISTANCE Even once you've found a car you really like, you're still going to tend to be really nervous and hesitant about buying it. What if it turns out to be no good, despite all the checks you've done? What if you're actually paying too much, and you won't realize it until it's too late? What if there might be a better car out there, and you're going with one that doesn't measure up compared with what you might get? These are the kinds of concerns that might pop into your head at the last minute when buying a car. And they're very similar to the ones that pop into many women's heads before the moment of truth in a seduction. No matter how sold she was on you up to that point, it's common for worries to run through her head like: What if he doesn't actually like me that much, and he's just saying he likes me to get sex? What if he's going to think I'm too easy if we have sex now, and he's going to toss me aside immediately after? What if he's not what he says he is, and I'm being tricked and deceived? What if my friends find out? Will they judge me? Will they like him? What if I don't want this with this guy? Maybe I'm making a mistake. What if he isn't the best guy for me? Am I 100% sure I want him? These are the kind of things you're up against when you're trying to get a girl in bed and you run into last minute resistance. This is why she suddenly and inexplicably freezes up, pushes back, or starts trying to shut you down when, like our reader with the girl with the sandwich at the start of this article, you finally make your move. For a most women, physical intimacy feels like a very big deal because, historically and evolutionarily speaking, it was (and frequently still is). For that reason, it gets treated with the same level of seriousness you'd treat an important buying decision, like signing for a new car or a new house: this isn't something to just sign your life away for and figure out the details on later. The problem is, as you probably can infer from our car example, when you let a buyer walk away they almost never walk back. Occasionally they do... but if you're counting on this as a part of your sales process, you're going to go out of business in a hurry. This is what happened to our reader, and this is why his girl -- who was ready to go the night before, with just a slightly different strategy -- changed her tune the next morning. She was ready to buy but walked away before she could -- and then she wasn't going to walk back. If you're a used car dealer, you've got to do everything in your power to reassure and excite the car shoppers who visit your dealership as much as is humanly possible that yes, they want your cars. It helps a lot if you've got awesome cars on display that are awesome under the hood, too; but if you've got great salesmanship but poor cars, you'll just do okay, and if you've got great cars but poor salesmanship, you'll do even worse. And so it is with women: you can't rely on just having great fundamentals or just having good close game. You need both... or you're going to struggle with getting girls in bed 'til kingdom comes. how to get a girl in bed HOW TO GET A GIRL IN BED: 10 CRUCIAL TIPS I've been selling a lot lately, in a couple of different businesses I'm involved in right now, after not having been a salesman in years. Some guys are natural closers; I'm not one of those guys. It takes me a while to warm up to a new product and get my process down. I need to flesh out my responses to common objections, get the lay of the land for why people usually walk away from sales, and figure out how I'm going to go about turning myself into a closing machine. Anyway, as I'm figuring out how specifically to sell in some of the new industries I'm in, I'm going back over my previous sales experience and my experience with seduction as well and breaking down some of the things I've long done. And as I've distilled those lessons over the past week, I'm suddenly finding them instantly applicable to this article, and this reader's particular question. So, I suppose, from that standpoint, his timing was good. Here then are what I consider some of the best tips on how to get a girl in bed -- combining things I've been practicing and preaching for years on how to overcome last minute resistance, along with a few recent realizations I've had about things I unconsciously adopted simply because they worked, but now that I'm consciously aware of them I can speak on them here too. Identify her needs. A good seller always gets to know the buyer's needs from the very beginning, so she knows that he knows what it is she most wants and needs. But it's not only finding out what she thinks she needs -- because the difference between a good salesman and a great salesman is that a great salesman identifies needs his buyer didn't even know she had. You might start getting to know a girl and having her tell you about herself, and you find it's primarily superficial, surface-level stuff she's telling you. That's fine. If you ask her what her needs are right now, she'll tell you something about how she wants to be happy and free and have a good companion and things like that. Pretty standard stuff that most men and women would say in response to that question. In other words, she has no idea what she needs. It's your job to find out what she needs by inspiring her. You see, people are all pretty similar -- we all want to learn, be challenged, grow, feel encouraged, and spend time with someone interesting and engaging and confident and real. If you can tease out her real dreams and motivations early on in getting to know her via deep diving, you can get her consciously realizing needs she didn't realize she had. Meet her needs. The next step toward bedding a girl after identifying her needs, of course, is meeting them. No, not like that -- not yet, anyway. I mean showing her how you can meet her needs -- without expressly telling her. This'd be like the difference between the used car dealer just throwing you in a decent sports car and asking you how you liked it afterwards, and the used car dealer priming you first by asking you if you'd like a car that handles really well, if you'd like a car that accelerates quickly, if you'd like a car that feels good under your fingertips and gives you a sense of control and a command over the road that's hard to match -- and then putting you in the sports car and saying, "Here's the one I've got that I think will most closely match what you're looking for." You'll start driving it, and you'll say to yourself, "Wow. This is exactly what I want!" You should actively seek to personify in yourself the things that the people around you need. If one of your friends needs a rock to lean on because he's going through hard times, you're a rock. If your buddy needs someone to tell him he's being an idiot because he is, you tell him he's an idiot and to knock off the idiot thing he's doing. And if a girl you're with needs a sense of adventure, excitement, and freedom in her life, you do your darnedest to give her that in your conversation and interaction with her. For a bit of an idea on how to do that specifically, see "The Conversationalist." Move fast, move confidently, and lead her decisively. Just like a nervous real estate agent would freak you out about buying a house and scare you off, and a real estate agent who moved slowly, seemed unsure, and didn't close probably wouldn't end up with you signing any contracts, so it is with women -- the men who fail to move quickly and decisively rarely get them. When you've got a girl you like, and you can tell she likes you, don't dawdle. Move things as fast as she can stand it -- keep things flowing ever forward, and don't hope for things to happen -- make them happen. Get buy-in: shoes off at the door. I got this one way back in the day from the guy I learned the most from early on... and man, is it good. Get used to having everyone who enters your home take their shoes off and leave them just inside the door. It sounds silly, but the buy-in you get from having a girl take an article of clothing -- even one as seemingly insignificant as her shoes -- off at your door is tremendous. To her, it feels like she's committing to stay a while... she instantly feels more comfortable and casual... she's followed your lead, respected the rules of the house, and taken off something she was wearing... and to top it all off, your place stays cleaner. For simplicity and ease of implementation, having her take her shoes off at your door can't be beat. Kiss her within 10 minutes of getting home with her. Not just getting home, really, but getting anywhere you might possibly be able to get a girl in bed or even get intimate with her without a bed. Wherever you're going to get physical, this rule applies. What about giving her time to relax? you might ask. Nah-uh. If she's nervous, it's because she's excited. If you give her time for her nervousness to wear off, that means she isn't excited anymore -- or maybe even has gone into auto-rejection -- and if you go for it then, it'll be too late and she'll feel uncomfortable and turn away or leave, more often than not. What about if you're nervous? Same rule applies. There's nothing worse than putting off kissing a girl right away because you want to calm yourself down first. And then 30 minutes goes by. And then an hour. And then two hours. And you realize that, contrary to the, "I'll just wait until I calm down," theory, you're now even more nervous than before, and it feels like the moment has passed, on top of that. Kiss girls within 10 minutes of getting them into your place alone, maximum. Try to shoot for 5 minutes max, or less. Almost every girl who'd kiss you after an hour would've kissed you within 5 minutes, but many girls who'd have kissed you 5 minutes into being alone with you won't kiss you an hour later when it's feeling awkward and weird. Don't miss the window -- kiss her within 5 to 10 minutes after making it back to your place. Keep your hands moving early on. As you begin escalating physically, your hands should be sliding slowly but steadily over her body. Don't leave them resting on her breast, buttocks, or thigh -- keep them moving. This is how you'll acclimate her to your hands touching all over her body and prime her for you touching her more heavily in just a moment. Start -- then pull back. Long ago, there was something in the seduction community people referred to as "push-pull," but when you'd ask for a definition of it it seemed you could never get a straight one. I don't think I ever quite figured out what push-pull was for at least a few years of being familiar with pick up. But, eventually, figure it out I did. You can push forward with things -- then suddenly pull back. This works amazingly well with all kinds of things girls think they aren't ready for you to do yet. It's the philosophy behind manhandle kisses -- give her a strong, manly peck on the lips, even if she pulls back or resists a bit, and then totally let her go and revert to just chilling for a few moments before resuming -- and it works with everything else in late-stage seduction, too. You always want to give her room so that she feels and knows she can get up and leave any time if she wants to (that's when you pull completely back and stop touching her and be fully casual); somewhat ironically, you make her a lot more comfortable and excited about being with you when you make it clear to her (without saying so) that she can leave at any time. Very rarely will you ever have women who've come all the way back to your apartment with you actually get up and leave because you started getting physical -- unless, that is, you ever make them feel like they won't be able to leave. That's usually the only time they get up and go (if it ever starts feeling very awkward is the other). Then, after a brief break, you resume. Then, you take another break. Then you resume again. And so on, until the two of you at last go to bed as lovers or she becomes certain that yes, this is definitely what she wants, and begins attacking you with as much certainty and ardor as you are her. Address objections simply without getting logical. Unlike with selling cars, you absolutely do not want to logically address a woman's concerns during a seduction. Why? Because logic sets off alarms to women that a man's being manipulative. The quick and dirty rationale behind that is that it's very easy to lie, and so women are programmed to become cautious around men who might potentially be doing that. So, women respond far better to men who address their concerns with confidence and charm, which is much harder to fake than logic. In response to, "This is too fast for me," you can smile and say, "I think the speed is just right. Or are you smiling for some other reason?" In response to, "I don't even know you!" you can get in close and whisper, "Yes you do. I'm me." To a man, those might sound silly. But to a woman, who's trying to calm her sudden indecision at the point of the sale, some soothing words from the confident man she's about to become lovers with is often exactly what she needs to relax and open herself up to intimacy. Said slowly with a sexy voice and sexy smile, these will often be enough to completely disarm the women in your bed... and you may not even need to pull out the big guns -- steps 9 and 10. Use "bursts of passion." A tool that I discovered toward the end of last year was something I termed "bursts of passion;" basically, with a girl who's being resistant and not letting you proceed with a seduction (but still sticking around and obviously into you -- if she wasn't, she'd leave), you suddenly launch into an all-out BURST of passionate kissing, touching, stroking, and caressing, firmly and lustfully, as though you've suddenly been overcome and cannot control your desire for her. This takes even the most level-headed women and melts them in the intense pleasure and arousal of the moment, and allows you to move things forward, if only momentarily before they regain control of their senses again. But, if you do this in conjunction with the next step, there's a very good chance you'll make a permanent gain in moving the seduction forward... Hit milestones. One of the weird things about psychology is the concept of "walls," and how, once you've climbed them, you've hit a milestone where suddenly the person who's wall's been climbed feels that things have changed. For instance, if you're trying to drive home drunk and I'm trying to stop you, the major wall we need to climb is for me to get your keys. Once your keys are in my hand, you're going to feel very strongly and absolutely that you've given into my desire for you to not drive drunk and you'll be a lot more likely to stop trying to drive yourself home than if I let you hang onto your keys and didn't take them. In seduction, you should be aiming to climb walls and hit milestones throughout the course of a seduction. One of the first walls you climb in a pick up is getting a girl to move with you. Once she has, you've passed a milestone; she now feels committed to talking with you. Taking her home is another milestone. Kissing her is yet another. Women have their walls at different heights for different milestones. For one woman, the first kiss is a BIG deal, and she'll fight like crazy to not kiss you even if you've gone on a number of dates with her. Once you make it past that wall though, and get the first kiss or two, everything else is a lot easier. For another woman, kissing is no big deal at all, and maybe even letting you take her shirt and bra off is no big deal, but if you go for her pants she freaks out. Once her pants are off though, it's game over. Occasionally you'll encounter women who are comfortable all the way up to being completely naked with you, but have a wall up about intimacy itself. And occasionally you'll encounter women with multiple big walls, and occasionally you'll encounter women with no walls at all. When you combine bursts of passion with an objective of getting over walls and hitting milestones, you can use it to great effect. Say you have a girl who absolutely, positively will not let you take her shirt off. So, you relax for a moment... you let her unwind... and then you start kissing her again. Just a little bit at first -- but then, suddenly, you dial up the passion and all but attack her. She becomes passionate too, kissing you back with force and lust, and then, at the height of both of your passion, you tear off her shirt and toss it across the room (so she can't easily put it back on if she cools off). She may continue being passionate at this point, or she may calm down and get logical again for a moment, but whichever happens, you'll have hit a milestone and made forward progress. Rest, rinse, and repeat. Now, don't overstep your bounds and go getting yourself charged with a crime or anything here... use this stuff within reason. But if you follow these steps, I guarantee you're going to be so incredibly good at opening up women who were previously closed off that they're going to be amazed at how it happened. And I bet you, had our reader coupled a few bursts of passion with a focus on climbing walls and hitting milestones, he would've gotten her panties off at some point (and hopefully thrown them behind a couch or a bookcase somewhere). Passion at anything -- whether seduction or sales -- is a skill, and it's one it'll serve you extremely well to spend time in developing. Whether you're passionate about selling cars to car shoppers, or passionate about selling a night with you to a skeptical woman, you'll get a lot more closes and cut through last minute resistance a lot more easily if you can make your buyers as excited about the sale as you are. So, aim to be known by women as a passionate lover. It's vitally important to throw yourself into lovemaking and give a woman an experience unlike any she's likely ever had before -- and that includes in the lead up before the sale. You should aim to be the most passionate, lustful, memorable experience of her life. And if you can do that, you'll know how to get a girl in bed like the best of them.

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##How to Get Laid Every Time, Part I There aren't many things more frustrating than picking up a beautiful girl, getting her phone number, going out on a date with her, bouncing home together, making out on the bed and getting each other all aroused… …only to be stopped at the last second! Maybe she won't let you take off her panties, or maybe she'll stop you at her bra… maybe she'll block you every time you move towards the erogenous zones, or maybe she'll simply tell you that she won't sleep with you. It's like playing a video game for hours and hours and then losing your last life to the final boss fight… and there is no "save" feature! This inability to consistently get a girl in bed is an upper-intermediate sticking point… it's not something you'll run into a lot when you're still struggling to summon up your guts to approach girls in the first place. But it's also something that is going to happen less and less once you figure out how to get laid with girls consistently. Personally, I went nuts when I was working on this sticking point… it really IS the most frustrating stage of your learning curve as a seducer, because you end up with blue balls every time! Let's see if we can save you from some of that swelling to the point of agony…. For the good of all mankind. A SEXUAL VS. A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP Prevention is better than cure… a lot of times, a girl will simply resist your advances because she's not sure whether you're looking for a romantic or a purely sexual relationship. So why is this a problem? Well, a lot of men have a tendency to want to be with a dirty "slut" sexually, but they eventually want to get into a serious relationship with a lily white "good girl". These guys seriously need to wake up and smell the coffee… EVERY girl has BOTH those sides to her personality - at least to a certain extent. And even 99% of otherwise "good girls" still have sexual fantasies about all kinds of crazy things they'd never admit to their future husband.... …things like gang bangs and rape and lesbian sex. Read Nancy Friday if you doubt me… … but they all have a wild side SOMEWHERE. Now, on a scale from one to 10, how helpful would it be in your efforts to learn how to get laid predictably if we could get a girl to just SHOW us that wild side of hers in the decisive moment? 11? Well, fortunately there are two ways to do this… and ideally, you want to do them both. The first way is to communicate to her that you don't suffer from this polarity in how you view women… that you're aware of women's high sex drive, and that you don't judge them for it. The second way is to frame your relationship with her as sexual as opposed to romantic… if she knows that you like being single and have no intentions of getting into a serious relationship, then she won't have to worry about presenting herself as good girlfriend material. Read my article about being a sexual man for a detailed step-by-step guide on how to do frame yourself sexually. Keep in mind that you can still take a sexual relationship and turn it into a romantic one later… …going the other way, however, is extremely difficult - which is why you always want to start out with a sexual frame and then move to a romantic frame later, if you think she's the right girl for that. "BUT I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU" This might well be THE most common thing you get to hear when a girl gives you resistance at the last minute… especially when you're trying to sleep with her on the first date, or the first night you've met. And probably the most famous technique to get a girl to stop freezing you out sexually is to freeze her out emotionally. If she won't play ball, you disengage and stop caressing her… you don't pout, you don't argue… you simply say that it's okay, and then you stop all intimacy and talk to her as if there was no male female dyanmic going on AT ALL. In most situations, she will soon crave your touch and reinitiate… and then you can take it a bit further than when she stopped you. In most situations… except for this one. how to get laid If a girl objects to having sex with you because "she doesn't even know you", it's really not a good idea to freeze her out. It's a legitimate concern on her part… you screwed up on the date. This objection translates to: you didn't get to know her well enough, and you didn't present yourself as a three dimensional human being with any depth whatsoever. Of course filling in the canvas of your life for her can be unnecessary if you set a strong sexual frame and have enough of a sexual vibe with her… but in general, it's a good idea to make a girl feel like she knows you a little bit and can trust you. WEED OUT THE "GOOD GIRLS" Earlier, I said that every girl has a wild side, and that even good girls enjoy it rough in bed sometimes… with the right guy. That is true… however, some girls are definitely more liberal than others… and the more conservative ones are going to make you do more of a song and dance to get into their pants. If you want to shortcut that, you can simply screen for the most sexually open girls before you even get into much of a conversation with them. And this is something I've discussed in previous articles… but go a bit sexual right after you approach a girl… either via nonverbal communication or by saying something a bit raunchy. This really helps to screen out time wasters… because here's the thing: Girls have different phases in their lives. There is a time when they like to party and hook up with lots of different guys, and there is a time when they wish they had a serious relationship. The girls in the party phase are easy to find at bars… if you do day game and approach women by day, however, it's going to be a mixed bag and you will get both types of girls. And the girl in search of a serious relationship might give you some grief if you try to get her to put out on the first date… so a simple way to deal with last minute resistance is to simply screen those kinds of girls out early. They won't respond well to sexual comments right after the opener… which is what you WANT. BOYFRIEND MATERIAL! Another way to trigger resistance to sex in a girl quite consistently is being too high value. Huh? Counter intuitive, I know… but it happens. In fact, I had a friend who was amazing at picking up girls… and also at sexualizing the interactions. He had girls ALL OVER him at the bar, and good and ready to go. But as soon as he brought them back to his penthouse apartment, the girls immediately thought: "Wow… boyfriend material!" So much for the hook up… His girls always started playing hard to get as soon as they found out how wealthy he was, simply because they wanted to make sure they'd be able to keep him around. This kind of last minute resistance had me totally stumped for the longest time… how the hell are you supposed to get your value just right? If it's too low, she won't be interested in you… and if it's too high, you won't be gettin' any cause she wants to keep you around for the long haul! Very frustrating… it poses the question of how to get laid when she thinks you're too good for that? But there is a pretty simple answer. Framing helps, as I discussed above… But if despite your best efforts you still run into this kind of problem, here's a tactical nuke to crack open even fallout shelter resistance… Tell her that you guys should be just friends! That's right… cause here's the thing. She REALLY likes you. She thinks you're a KEEPER. So if you let her know that not putting out will ruin her chances of keeping you, there's only one thing left for her to do… SPREAD! CASE STUDY: HOW TO GET LAID Here's a transcript of a conversation I had with a girl when she told me that she didn't want to sleep with me the first night because she liked me too much. Talk about female logic… sigh. "But every time I hook up with a guy the first night, things go wrong. You really have to understand my side..." "No, I understand, and that's cool, and I think it will be great if we're just friends. We have awesome conversations, and you're great… you're really pretty and smart and cool to talk to, so I'll introduce you to some cool guys. I already know who I'm gonna hook you up with :)" "It's not that I don't like you... I really do like you... I've just made bad experiences before." "I understand, sweetie… and I really like you too… but you know, maybe if we don't have the kind of chemistry with each other where we can't keep our hands off of each other, then maybe we really should be just friends… and that's okay." "Hmm..." (she touches my belly) "... do you shave your belly?" "Yeah." "Hmmm... and do you shave down there too?" "I do." "Wow...." "Why do you ask?" "I love that..." "Because then it slides aaaaaalll the way in?" "Yes..." "Do you want to feel it? Just feel it..." (I take her hand and lead it down there) "Hmmm...." "See, it's not even hard anymore from all this talk about friendship." "So it gets even bigger when it's really hard?" "Yeah... touch it…" "Hmm…" At this point, I take a drop of pre cum, put it on my finger and put my finger in her mouth… and escalate to the Full Monty. And this is the final secret weapon… the final ace up your sleeve for overcoming resistance to intimacy: Take a girl's hand and put it on your cock! I know it sounds crazy… but it REALLY works. Chicks go nuts when they have a cock in their hands… it just makes them incredibly horny. Here's another important point. Usually if a girl who really likes you resists your sexual advances - and you then tell her to just be friends - she will often back paddle instantly. HOWEVER, if she does not - don't YOU backpedal then! This is crucial… instead, just relax, and try again a couple of minutes later. Just because you don't see an immediate effect doesn't mean there isn't one. THE BLOODY RIVER Another reason why a girl might not want to have sex with you is simply because she's on her period and embarrassed about it. But the interesting thing is that girls don't really mind having sex on their period… they're just worried that YOU might be grossed out. So get over it big boy, it's really not a big deal… and if you let her know that it isn't, she'll be fine with it too. So if none of the above techniques work, ask her if she's on her period… And if she is, simply reframe it as a TURN-ON. For me, my first girlfriend always got extremely horny during that time of the month… which is why I somehow have it associated to some of the wildest nights of my life… and why I think it's a massive turn-on. Try telling a girl something like that if she brings up the gore objection… you'll be surprised to find that 95% of girls really don't mind at all having sex on ther periods. But do put a towel on the bed… you don't want to get the sheets TOO messy. :) SHE'S GOT A SECRET… how to get laidAnother big reason why a girl might not want to sleep with you is that she's actually got a boyfriend that she hasn't told you about. This is most likely the case if she can't articulate the reason why she doesn't want to sleep with you… …and if none of the above works at all. Honestly, there isn't a consistent way to deal with this - if she's got some principles that she wants to stick by, then she might just do that. What you CAN do, however, is communicate that it's cool and that you're not trying to be her boyfriend… as long as she knows that there won't be a conflict later when you're trying to take his place, she might just go for it. Especially if she's had a fight with him and/or had something to drink… (Remember that and be careful with those two things if YOU'RE ever in a relationship and have a fight with your girl!) You can try to get her so aroused that she loses control… but really, that will just give her a way to rationalize doing something she wants to do anyway. And that's one of the biggest secrets about how to get laid: if she wants it, she's really just waiting for you to make her feel the emotions she needs to allow it to happen. At the end of the day it's all up to her in this situation. She either wants to cheat on her boyfriend, or she doesn't. Make sure you check out the second part of this series, "How to Get Laid Every Time, Part II," where we'll talk about taking her game away, plausible deniability, blaming HER for your attraction and desire... and more.

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##How to Get Laid Every Time, Part II In the first edition of this two part series on how to get laid every time, we covered all the ground rules… all the fundamentals about why girls sometimes resist having sex at first, and all the most important ways to deal with it. Now let's dive into the topic a bit deeper and look at a few more little ninja tricks and tactics - so you will always know what to do, no matter what the situation. This is called contingency planning, and we discussed it more broadly in the post on when she doesn't have time (and other contingencies)… today we'll look at it specifically in the context of the last few yards. LEAN BACK… What if she resisted sex and you didn't care? What if it wasn't a big deal to you? And the thing is, it really *is* no big deal. It is the most natural thing in the world for a female to resist the male's advances… as I had mentioned previously, it's part of the mating dance in many species and does by no means imply that she is not interested. Hey - she came back to your place to be alone with you there… she's obviously got *something* on her mind! Just watch the discovery channel… females resist. They are wired to… just like we are wired to be afraid of the approach. The reason is a biological need to protect her genetic investment, and to make sure she only procreates with a man who: Will stick around when she's pregnant to provide for the offspring, and/or who… Will not be phased by her reluctance. The first point is of lesser importance if you sexually frame the relationship, because you are, then, not the provider, but the lover… and somebody else will do the child rearing. The second point, however, matters a lot… because it says so much about you as a man. If you are really a high value guy who has women flocking to him and who has more sex than Gene Simmons from the rock band Kiss, why WOULD you care if this one isn't into it… or at least not yet? Getting flustered about a girl's resistance is negative pre-selection. It's a sure way of demonstrating to her that you don't get laid a lot… which, to her, means that if you're not good enough for other women, you're probably not good enough for her. So be cool, Fonzie. Look at it this way… if even the California Pimp gets a whole bunch of resistance from his girls almost every time, why would you berate yourself if you do? The only difference is that with him, the girls resist the camera and the idea of being filmed… once he's over that hump, he has enough compliance built to escalate towards sex pretty quickly. For us, the resistance is about the sex per se… but it's part of the process, so don't think you dropped the ball when it happens. Just stay cool, and keep going. The game is ON. If it wasn't, she would have left. (A disclaimer that shouldn't be necessary: if she says no while unzipping your pants, it's just her style of foreplay and by all means… keep going. But if she really stops you… stop. This ain't monopoly and we don't have any get-out-of-jailfree cards for sale on this website.) TAKE HER GAME AWAY how to get laidHave you ever tried to steal a woman's lines before she can say them? This is hysterical… because what can she do now? Maybe she can play a little catch-up… but basically, you own the frame at this point. You know how women often say "Just so you know right now, I won't have sex with you tonight" before they come home with you? STEAL that line and say it to them before you take them home. You want to calibrate this one a bit to the situation… if you don't anticipate much resistance, this can hurt more than it helps and she can end up in auto-rejection, but if you think she's going to play hard to get, then you be the one to play hard to get FIRST. THAT is the art of making girls chase. And by the same token, you can also be the one to resist your own sexual advances. You escalate, AND you resist escalation. You pull her in, and you push her away. You tell her that she's so fucking sexy that you can't resist her… and then you say "never mind… you're probably too much of a good girl for me… I would be a really bad influence, you should really stay away from me." This drives girls wild. PLEASURE DELAYER Have you seen the movie Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz? There is a scene where they're alone in her apartment together for the first time, and the sexual tension reaches the absolute breaking point. And then… Tom LEAVES. This increases the anticipation even further… he delays the pleasure in order to further augment it. Now, in general, I don't recommend this. It's usually better to sleep with a girl sooner rather than later, because it will set up the relationship dynamic in a more productive way and also frame the relationship as sexual early on. Relationships that start out lukewarm often stay lukewarm… and that's how you end up with couples that watch TV together… on two separate sofas… and call that a date. Insane, I know… but it happens. That said, women *do* enjoy anticipation… and if you have a hard time relaxing in the face of a woman's resistance, getting into the mindset of "pleasure delaying" might help you to take your time… and it will keep you from coming across as needy or pushy (which will almost certainly transform her TOKEN resistance into the REAL thing!). Another movie that speaks about anticipation, by the way, is The Tao of Steve. There is a sage quote about how to get laid regarding a woman's resistance to sex in that flick… remember that next time she won't spread, it'll make a world of difference: "Women are on a different time table. They want sex as much as men do… but they're ready for it about fifteen minutes later. So if you hold out for twenty, she'll be chasing you for five." Nice. SLEEP WITH HER... OR *SLEEP* WITH HER? Another thing a lot of guys don't realize is that when you *actually* sleep with girls it often leads to… sleeping with them. So one simple thing to do when a girl doesn't want to have sex with you right there and then is to simply spend the entire night together. More time will have passed, additional comfort will have been built, and you'll touch women a lot more throughout the night. Just take off (most of) your clothes and get in bed - chances are she will do the same, and simply by merit of the two of you being almost naked in bed together, she will get so horny that she won't be able to resist any longer. Even if not… it might happen when you wake up next to each other in the morning. HIGH SCHOOL ESCALATION Guys often overcomplicate escalation a lot… and yeah, there are some ways to get a girl incredibly horny very quickly. But, there is also a very old-school way of escalating to sex that will rarely meet with resistance... the one you first learned way back when you were originally deciphering how to get laid - I call it "high school escalation". It's what you did back in high school when you had a girl over for a movie… you very simply and gradually run all the bases. You see, there are really two ways of going about this - either you mix it up completely and escalate in a way that she's not expecting, which gives her less to resist (for example, touch her between the legs by reaching across her back from behind before you've even gotten to her boobs). Or, you can simply take your time with a very traditional style escalation and take it in baby steps, backing off each time you see a sign of resistance, and then taking it a bit further than you had previously as you reinitiate. So: Switch on a movie, lean back and after a while, just take her hand. A bit later, put your arm around her. Then smell her hair and her neck. Brush your lips against her ear. Finally start kissing her… but don't go for the full make-out; instead, give her the softest kiss she's ever received in her LIFE. And continue this way, escalating little by little without ever giving her anything to resist, pulling back if she does and reinitiating a bit later. This won't get you laid 15 minutes after the approach (there are other solutions for that), but hey - it worked in high school and it still works now. Sometimes it's best not to reinvent the wheel. PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY AGAIN! Sometimes you'll get resistance to sex long before you're ever trying to get a girl in bed or even alone with her… she's fine with everything else, except with explicitly (or even implicitly) agreeing that the two of you will have sex together. She can never be a conspirator in her own seduction - those are society's rules, and even with proper sexual framing, sexual positioning, and chase framing, many girls will play by these rules. A fellow friend of mine, experienced with women and an expert of some of the finer elements of how to get laid, was talking to a girl in a club once, and she was all for it - kissing him passionately and completely into him. So he decided it was time for the bounce and said to her: "So, wanna go back to my place?" He forgot to give her plausible deniability - a way to make it look like sex just happened and wasn't something that she helped to make happen. So of course she said "no, I can't do that…" while giving him a look that pretty much said: "Come on you dumbass, I WANT to sleep with you, but don't screw this up for us, don't put me in a position where I HAVE to say no!" He knows the score though… he gets it. So he just said: "Okay, no worries", went back to normal conversation and a couple of minutes later went for the bounce again, this time WITH plausible deniability in the picture. "Hey, I downloaded the latest episode of South Park earlier today, wanna go watch it?" And off they went. No, they never watched that episode… but a seduction always needs to be structured in a way that, if her girlfriends ask her the next day how she ended up in your bed, she needs to be able to say: "I don't know, one thing just led to another." BLAME IT ON HER how to get laidThis is one of my favorite ways to bring the mutual arousal to the absolute breaking point… blame everything that's happening on her and on how desirable she is! The best way to get a woman sexually engaged is to make her feel like she's the seductress… like she's irresistible and she's having a powerful sexual effect on you that you can't resist! So when she resists you, tell her How sexy she is… …how amazing her skin looks… …how incredible she smells… …and how you can't resist her any longer because she's turning you on so much that you HAVE to have her. After all… you're just a simple man… what can YOU do in the face of the feminine weapons of seduction? If you REALLY want to take this to the next level, combine it with a proper push-pull dynamic and keep sending her mixed signals: "Oh my God, you smell so amazing… but wait, we can't do this (push her away) you turn me on too much, you really shouldn't do this to me (blaming her again), why are you doing this to me?" …and so forth… Ideally, you want to keep doing this until SHE escalates on YOU. When she's starting to moan with sexual frustration because she wants to feel you inside her already… then you know you're doing it right. HOW TO GET LAID: A SUMMARY In this two-parter, we've discussed a whole arsenal of things you can do when a girl doesn't want to sleep with you… or rather, if she won't sleep with you YET even though she DOES want to, which is more often the case - due to some of the reasons we discussed above. Go over this check-list before you go on your next date, so you'll be able to free her to let her act on her own desires: Frame the relationship as sexual Disengage romantically when she disengages sexually Fill in the canvas of your life for her - be a three dimensional person Screen super conservative girls and time wasters out early Tell her that you want to be just friends Put her hands on your dick (this one's a nuke!) Figure out why she's objecting (e.g. a hidden boyfriend), and respond accordingly. If she's on her period, alleviate that concern Lean back and stay chill Steal her lines and run her own game on her Delay the pleasure and build the anticipation until she can't resist any longer Actually go to sleep with her and escalate the next morning Blame your desire on her Run the bases like we did in high-school Give her plausible deniability I'll go ahead right now and say that if none of the above work, you're likely in the friend zone and it's probably a good idea to simply move on.

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##How to Get Lucky without Relying (Entirely) on "Luck" I'm listening to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets on audio right now. It's a good and insightful listen, and a good refresher, though not much different from what you'll already be familiar with if you're well-acquainted with the effects of happenstance on the world around you. Randomness and luck is an important topic when you talk about pick up and how to get lucky; it was the subject of one of the very first posts that ever went up on this blog, all the way back in December 2008: the brief "Randomness and Success," where I talked about another book I was reading at the time and the need for including quantity in your approach to meeting women. Last night I had a discussion with a business partner of mine about the nature of randomness and its influence on success. "Surely, it isn't all randomness," she said. "Skill has a big part to do with it." "That's true," I replied, "skill does have a lot to do with it. A lot depends on the time horizon you're looking at, however. If you're looking at how someone performs over the course of a single week, there's going to be a lot more random variation in there compared to how they perform over the course of a month, which will be a lot more random and less skill-based than how they perform over a year, and so on and so forth. The smaller the time horizon, the bigger the part randomness will play." As I was walking to the gym this morning, Taleb's book reached a discussion of exactly this point: that if everyone lived for 1,000 years, the skilled workers who'd simply been unlucky would eventually rise to prominence, and the lucky fools who got more than they deserved would eventually even out at far less success than they happened upon originally. It's like flipping a coin: if you flip it 10 times, you might end up with 7 heads and only 3 tails; 70% heads and 30% tails. But if you flip it 10,000 times, you're almost assuredly going to come up with a number very close to 50% heads and 50% tails. This is why the most rigorously conducted scientific experiments have large numbers of participants. It's why the most accurate polls have the largest number of individuals polled from the most closely representative populations. And it's why the most successful seducers nearly universally tend to talk to lots of girls. But if randomness plays so big a role in success in so many different aspects of life, and whether you get lucky with a girl or not, what's the use of learning skills? TO GET LUCKY: LUCK VS. SKILLS If you examine most people's attitudes about what makes a man successful, they tend to boil down to two core attitudes: "It's all luck." "It's all skill." Of these, each has one positive and one negative side. They are: Luck Positive: "It's all luck... and I'm a lucky fellow!" Luck Negative: "It's all luck... and I've got bad luck." Skill Positive: "It's all skill... if I work at it enough, I'll get skill, too." Skill Negative: "It's all skill... and I just don't have the skill." The proponents of luck are the ones who believe that all is chance and random variation, and the best thing to do to avoid bad things happening is minimize your exposure to risk, and the best thing to do bring about good things happening is maximize your exposure to opportunity. The proponents of skill are the ones who believe that all is hard work and individual ability, and the best thing to do to avoid bad things happening is to work hard and develop your skills, and the best thing to do to bring about good things happening is to work hard and develop your skills. Of course, some of these people think it's going to be too hard to develop their skills, so they give up before they ever get started. You might think that so long as you have one of the positive mindsets, you'll be fine, and, in seduction, you'll "get lucky" (or, for the skill people, "get the success you worked so hard to earn," or something like that). And often, for a while, you are. "It's all luck," people do great so long as fortune is on their side... but when they get hit with a rash of bad luck, they often get fatalistic and turn into the luck negative folks who stop trying because now they think they have bad luck and it's not even worth making an effort. "It's all skill," people do great so long as their skills hold up... but when they too get a string of defeats, they figure that all the time they put into developing their skills still isn't enough, and maybe they really just don't know how to become successful. Then they become fatalistic - the skill negatives. These are the successful business people, actors, politicians, and more you see who fall from grace and never recover. They were on a roll before... and then they take a hit, their belief systems are short-circuited, and they give up trying. Almost everyone falls into one of the all-luck or all-skill populations. Which one are you? Here's a quick test to figure it out as far as seduction is concerned (but, generally, your mentality in one area of life extends to everywhere else, too). Do you believe: Some guys are just born knowing how to get girls, or it's a learnable skill? Getting a girl to go home with you is right time, right place, or just how good you are? Getting a high quality girlfriend is more luck - or more skill? Being a sexy man is about how you just are, or something you develop? If your answers are more in line with the first statements: You're born knowing how to get girls Pick up is all right time, right place Getting a high quality girlfriend is pure dumb luck Being a sexy man is just how you are - or aren't Your worldview centers around luck, chance, and happenstance. If your answers are more in line with the second statements: You learn how to get girls Pick up is an acquired ability Getting a high quality girlfriend is up to your skill level Being a sexy man is something you develop Your worldview centers around skill, learning, and expertise. In general, the "luck" people tend to be more fatalistic - things are just going to be how they're going to be - while the "skill" people tend to be more optimistic of their odds - they can always get better. So which answer is right? Is skill the determinant of whether you "get luck" with women, or is it luck that determines that? Well, guess what. That little test above was filled with trick questions... because neither of the options presented was wholly correct. It's about skill and luck. THE SEARCH FOR "CONSISTENCY" One of the things that maddened me for a long time as I sought to be able to pick up girls ever better was "consistency." I wanted to be able to: Consistently open and meet women Consistently hook them and attract them Consistently get into meaningful conversation with them Consistently get them turned on and aroused Consistently get them to come home with me Consistently take them to bed And every time I felt like I was getting closer to consistency, I'd have the rug pulled out from under me. And the patterns didn't even make sense. I'd go out feeling like a champion one night, and very quickly meet a great girl, take her home, and we'd go to bed. "Aha!" I'd think. "The secret is your emotional state!" Then I'd go out feeling like a champion another night, to the same exact place, dressed in the same exact clothes, and no women would talk to me. Another night I'd go out feeling terrible, not wanting to meet anyone. I'd force myself to do a few approaches, and then -BAM!- I was taking some hot girl home. It didn't make any sense. Where was the consistency? Maybe I really was just getting lucky. The breakthrough I had in understanding consistency was when I had a stretch of nights where I managed to pull a girl (or girls) home every night. And each one of those nights, when I first looked back, I thought, "Wow, that was a great night!" But then I'd remember there were long stretches when I was piling up rejections, and it seemed like I'd run out of attractive women to talk to and I was probably going to go home alone. There were even ups and downs - one of those nights I started off great, meeting two beautiful girls who were both very into me, passing them onto my two friends with me to be generous, then striking out on my own and not meeting another friendly girl for 3 or 4 hours, until finally meeting two more girls sitting by themselves and taking them both home with me. These nights had all kinds of variation. That seems to imply an element of luck. There's chance there - it's random. Keep talking to enough girls, and something finally clicks. This is where the fatalistic luck guys chime in and say, "Yes! See? This proves it! Learning pick up is a scam and a waste of time; it's all a game of chance!" But not so fast. randomness and consistency Pablo Picasso. World famous painter - probably one of the first names you think of when you hear the word "painter," right up there with Van Gogh, Monet, and Michelangelo. How many of his paintings do you know? If you're like most people, it's somewhere in the range from 3 to 10. Somewhere around there. Highly talented painter, right? Picasso created about 50,000 different paintings in his lifetime. That's a rough estimate. There's no definite figure, but that's the number a lot of his biographers settle on. And yet you only know 3 to 10. There are probably a few hundred in art museums. And... what... perhaps 50 "masterpieces?" Fewer? This leads us to two questions: If Picasso was so skilled though, why didn't he create more masterpieces? This is the argument the luck people will make to show that, in fact, Picasso just threw a lot of stuff out there and only happened to create his masterpieces because he created so many paintings - he had to have a few hits in there! By this vein of reasoning, Picasso could get lucky because he put so much stuff out there, so it must be luck. If it's all about chance though, why don't the millions of random paintings created by tens of thousands of amateur painters every year produce masterpieces at anywhere nearly the same rate as Picasso did? This is the argument the skill people will make to show that, in fact, it was Picasso's skill that let him generate those masterpieces, and that 50,000 paintings by hundreds of amateur artists won't have nearly the same average quality or peak quality as those created by Picasso. By this vein of reasoning, the amateur painters failed to get lucky despite putting out way more stuff than Picasso, so it must be skill, not luck. Of course, these two lines of reasoning contradict each other. The conclusion this drives is that it's not all luck, and it's not all skill. It's both. Success - and consistency - is both luck and skill. The amount differs by the field; as Taleb points out, trading in the stock market, for instance, is far more luck-dependent than dentistry, which is far more skill-dependent. Any baboon can make money in the market (see: "Lusha the chimpanzee outperforms 94% of Russia bankers with her investment portfolio"), but arming a chimp with a drill and a dental mask wouldn't have quite so favorable results when it came time for your root canal. When it comes to getting lucky in picking up girls, luck and skill matter in different stages of the process. HOW TO GET LUCKY: MIX LUCK AND SKILL The most resilient mentality toward success you can have, I strongly believe, is one that combines a healthy respect for both luck and skill. A lot of the opportunities you're going to get will be random. And things will happen or line up in ways that are random. You can't control this. However, you can reduce the ability of randomness to decide your fate by improving your skills, abilities, and fundamentals. This protects you from the vagaries of fate. When a bad stretch happens, you know part of it's luck, and part of it's that you need to refine your skills some more. So, you work on what you can work on, and trust the rest to even out on its own. Before you know it, you're back to getting lucky again. How's this work? Let me give you a scenario. Let's say you're walking along the street. Up ahead, you see an unusually beautiful woman. She's stunning. Gorgeous face, perfect hair, and a low-cut dress showing off an extraordinary body. She looks great. What are the chances you were going to see a girl who looks like her? Random. But, how random? Well, they're strongly influenced by: Whether you live in a city with a lot of beautiful girls (or not) Whether you live and work in the part of town with the most girls like that Whether you're outside a lot, or not You can imagine that your odds of running into a girl like that are going to be a lot lower in Podunk, USA than they are in Miami, Florida or Bogota, Columbia. These are all things you can control. Now how about how she responds to you? That's going to be random too. But again... how random? Well, it'll be influenced by: How well-dressed you are How good your posture is What kind of shape you've gotten yourself into What kind of hairstyle you're sporting Whether you've got cool facial hair or not Whether you've got a powerful, sexy walk or not What your eye contact is like What your facial expression is like How sexy you seem How edgy you seem All that's going to be filtered through: Her personal preferences Where she is in her life right now Where she's going and what she's got going on Whether she's in a social mood or not Whether she's been approached by anyone else recently like you approach her You have NO control over the filtering criteria. Yet, you have TOTAL control over the FIRST list of criteria. Imagine the difference a guy who fails to handle his fundamentals will elicit in terms of her reaction versus the reaction a guy who gets ace fundamentals down will get. Here's the thing: randomness and consistencyLuck will always play a big role in your pick ups. But skill takes a lot of the edge off. Getting more skilled is HOW you get more LUCKY. You learn what you need to do to be successful. Do you ever get lucky EVERY time, from here on out? No. Do you ever get 100% consistent? No. I have friends I've gone out with whom every time I go out with them they see me pick up a beautiful girl and take her to bed, or have women fawning all over me. These friends treat me like I'm the messiah of seduction, and they assume that when I say it isn't always like and I get turned down too that I'm just being modest, and women just fall at my feet everywhere I go. And I have friends I've gone out with whom every time I go out with them they see me get dismissed by women and get lukewarm reactions from the women around me. These friends treat me like they're trying to figure out if I'm a big phony or not, and assume that if I say it isn't always like that and I get some pretty gorgeous girls move pretty fast with me I'm just exaggerating or worse. Were these friends ever to compare notes on my abilities with women, I'm sure they would respectfully listen as one another related his experience with me, but inside each of them would be thinking of the other: "This guy has no idea what he's talking about." But if it was 6 or 7 years ago, there would've been a lot more of that second type of guy than there was of the first. Developing your skill with women to a high degree doesn't erase randomness. It just helps you reduce its impact, and increase your levels of consistency. How high you can you get them? I wouldn't set a limit... because limits are made to be broken (just look at the Olympic 100-meter dash records over the past hundred years). You can always get more consistent, and you can always reduce the influence of randomness a little bit more. You can improve yourself. You can change your surroundings. You can change your exposure to threats and opportunities. There's a lot you can do. But, in something like pick up and seduction, where you're dealing with real, living, dynamic people with their own wants, needs, preferences, and predispositions, you're never going to be able to gain full control over the process. There will always be a mixture of luck and skill inherent in the process. All you can do is get yourself as good as you can, and give yourself as many opportunities to meet the kinds of girls you most like, and go start taking your shots. And if you do all that, chances are, you'll get lucky sooner rather than later.

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##How to Have a Powerful Masculine Presence Cruzer, a Girls Chase reader, comment on the article on entitlement asking: "Great article, but I want to ask you something that varies from the topic. How does one have presence? There are some people who walk in a room and are able to instantly command attention, even though they may not be the best look person in the room......so how do I do that?" Cruzer (and our other reader "John W.") bring up a very important aspect of charisma and dominance: presence. You know that feeling. That moment when a man walks into a room and everyone seems to stop for a minute and take notice. The women wonder who he is and why he has such a commanding energy. The men wonder whether he's chill or an asshole and why this man seems to be so sure of himself. Presence is that special character trait that very few men possess. And it is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult characteristics to develop. As I alluded to in my brief response to Cruzer, it is a combination of advanced mindsets and basic fundamentals. And something else as well. Today I want to talk about presence; about how to develop that powerful and magnetic force that compels people toward you and forces them to take notice. Let's go… presence "Presence" is defined as: The noteworthy quality of poise and effectiveness, especially with a stately or distinguished bearing. And I would add that combined with this poise is the inherent ability to command attention, both wittingly and without your own personal efforts. But the thing about presence is that the more people are exposed to your particular presence, the less it affects them. Do you think that the White House chief of staff is awestruck very often by the U.S. president anymore? There's probably a great respect; but awestruck? I doubt it. So in developing your own presence, it's important to understand that this energy is really only relevant with initial impressions, and when used properly, will help you bed women and make friends quicker. When you have presence, it's not only that you have solid fundamentals, and a sexy vibe, and are powerful and dominant. But you have all of these things and something that distinguishes you from everyone else. I need to get a formal post up on this at some point soon, but I think that every man who wants to reach the peak of his potential needs an "X factor." He needs something that separates him from the pack, and gives him the certainty that he is in fact separate from the pack. But until then, I'll just leave it at that. PRESENCES OF THE RICH AND THE POWERFUL presenceInstead of starting at the foundation as I would normally do in an article like this, I'm going to start at the top. I'm going to get at the secret ingredient that definitively determines whether or not a man can have presence. I used to have an acquaintance who was obscenely rich. Like fly to Europe on a whim and stay in a five-star resort kind of rich. The girls were obsessed with him. He was a good looking guy; not amazing, but definitely well above average. But it wasn't his looks or even his money that drew women (and people in general) toward him. He just had this energy - this transcendental devil may care attitude and lust for life that was absolutely intoxicating. You just wanted to be around him because you knew he knew something about the world that you didn't. And you could never guess what he was going to do next. I've noticed this trait in a lot of the present-hedonistic rich and high social status people that I've observed or met. Mind you, these are not the Warren Buffets who have a lot of money but live a pretty ordinary lifestyle. These are the people who are flashy with their money, but not necessarily in a selfish way. They just like showing people a good time and making life an adventure. I noticed that what gives these people their certain je ne sais quoi is the fact that they live a life that most people can't relate to. This may seem a bit counterintuitive at first, but let it sink in for a second. The reason why people are so drawn to these individuals is because they usher people into a world that would otherwise be inaccessible. And that's magnetic. Basically, these are people like Jay Gatsby: But you don't have to be rich and famous to have this mindset (though, that is a pretty sure-fire way to get it). When I was a debater in high school, you could very often tell who was going to win the debate just based on how people walked into the room. You knew if they had a case that was better than yours. You knew whether or not they had abilities that exceeded your own. And if you were any good, you owned every room you walked into. That is the secret to developing the distinguished mindset that is a part of presence. You just have to have insider knowledge. You have to be aware of a secret something about social interaction that most people have no clue about. When it comes to ideas that are discussed on this site, these are things like understanding that women have dirty sexual fantasies and can't be relegated to the Madonna/whore box. These are things like understanding that "just be yourself" is terrible advice, and that most men have the most backwards and hopeless views on success with women. You have to live life in a way that most people aren't familiar with. For those of you who read "manosphere" sites, this would be called living a "red pill" existence. People with insider knowledge of any higher social status world (celebrities, rich people, government officials, guys who are good with girls) are automatically separated from the "everyday" existence of most people. And when these people choose to let others into their world, they develop a mindset of wanting to find people who can handle it and understand them. IT'S LONELY AT THE TOP Interestingly enough, just like with "perfect 10" girls, people with powerful presences want to interact with and befriend people who are unaffected by their presence. Imagine that a man with advanced skills with women walks into a bar. He knows that he can walk out of there with a girl. So that very fact gives him a one-up on all of the other guys in a bar. He then approaches many women, and meets three who are responding well to him that night. The first two are average, but the last one is a high-value woman who is able to challenge him intellectually and socially. She uses her graces to dodge a lot of his sure-fire techniques, and forces him to be at his peak in order to bed her. Who is he going to take home? It's obvious. Not only is this last woman the person the high-value man would choose to bed, she is also someone that he would open up to and let into his world (revealing his mindsets, worldview, etc.) after sleeping with her. Similarly, this is what happens when the advanced man meets a beginner or intermediate who has high potential. This person isn't quite at the same level yet, but he can relate to how the advanced man thinks, which most men cannot. So if you're trying to develop your level of presence, you should know that there will inevitably be a moment of alienation where the pool of people that you can truly relate to (that doesn't mean just "get along" with or even superficially befriend, but really relate to) will drop dramatically. The price of your presence will be only feeling home in the circle that most people don't have access to. Once again, refer to the Great Gatsby book/movie to see what I mean. But if you're going to be at that level anyway, you may as well enjoy the perks too. And there are many perks; such as confidence, social success, wonderful women, and high-value friends. So, let's look at the other aspects of developing an inimitable presence. presence One of the most important foundations (if not the most important fundamental aspect) of presence is body language. Because presence is tied so closely to first impressions, a lot of times people will judge you before you have the chance to introduce yourself (and before you or they have consciously realized that they have judged you). That means that you have to carry yourself in a way that exudes self-assurance. There's a great TED talk that addresses this very issue. I think that many TED talks should be taken with a grain of salt, but this talk is informative, important and definitely one of my favorites: For those of you who don't have the time or desire to watch the whole video, here is a brief synopsis: Your mental state in social situations is greatly, and surprisingly, influenced by your body language Weak body language (e.g. crossing your arms or placing your hand on your neck) will communicate awkwardness and nervousness to other people, and will greatly hinder your success in social situations from anywhere from a few minutes to an entire hour On the other hand, strong body language (e.g. placing your hands on your hips or stretching out as much as possible) will communicate comfort and self-assurance to others, and can improve your success for that same amount of time It takes only 2 minutes of changed bodily posture to greatly affect your subconscious confidence either positively or negatively And anecdotally, the "fake it ‘til you make it" strategy can be surprisingly effective, because if you maintain a certain mindset of confidence/dominance/positive energy, those mindsets eventually just become a part of you So focus on your body language, get your fundamentals down, and build a strong foundation. Sprezzatura is key here - the relaxed-looking and effortless man is the powerful-looking one. FASHION If you want to be a presence you have to dress well. Period. Your body language and your sense of style are the first two things that people will notice basically 100% of the time. And presence is about standing out, so learn how to use your fashion help you stand out. Don't go overboard with this, but just get a few cool accessories or one interesting main item that people will take note of. The key to top notch fashion is subtlety. Also, it's important that you dress appropriately for the occasion. If you go to a hoedown dressed in a three-piece suit you'll definitely stand out, and you may even get a compliment or two, but you'll also stick out in a negative way (people wondering what was he thinking?). The second key to standing out with your fashion is being unique within the parameters of the event you are attending. You can mirror people with emotions/body language, and you can also mirror them in attire as well; which is a part of social grace that's often overlooked. TAKING UP SPACE You don't have to be a hulk to have presence, but it is just a simple fact that people who are more physically imposing have an easier time with a powerful presence. They just take up more space. And if they take advantage of this fact, it can create a magnetic energy. presence But if you're a thinner guy (like me), just try to be as physically open as possible when you interact with people. Walk with your chest out, make large gestures, spread your arms out when you sit down. If you can master how to take up space, you will have mastered an important component in having presence. MAKE AN ENTRANCE As I've mentioned, presence is all about first impressions. And nothing sets a good first impression like making an entrance. And no, I don't mean busting through a door and yelling "I'm Here!" with doves flying out behind you. But I do mean if you walk into a social situation, take a minute to see the room. Walk in Stop at the doorway Look up and to your left Slowly rotate your head to the right Look straight ahead and smile as if you've just learned a secret about everyone there Start socializing Women will always take notice of this. Men… sometimes, sometimes not. But women are too socially attuned and will start to wonder who this man who just made a powerful entrance is. presence When I was in my first year of college I met a few guys who, like myself, were really into freestyle rapping. We were all okay at it at the time, but we'd meet up in one of the same three places almost every day and rap about anything and everything from politics to sports to potato chips. Not only were these guys talented, they were also really smart, so they could make complex connections that most people couldn't. After about 7 months or so of doing this, we all got good. Really good. We had an official crew going, and whenever any of us had any number of guests over to our rooms for drinks, we would call up the other ones. When everyone was present and accounted for, we would have every person in the room tell us three things about themselves that they thought we should know. After collecting facts, without any hesitation, we would all start rapping about the people in the room, and weaving in the facts or topics that they gave us. The smiles that people had on their faces were almost indescribable. It was always a mixture of pure happiness and sheer awe. Then after delivering a few verses, we would deep dive them and make a legitimate connection. It was a deadly combination. And it was a trend that quickly caught on. People from all over the campus would come visit us, they would buy us alcohol, invite us to their parties, and would often do all this regardless of whether or not we actually rapped for them. But besides increasing our social clout, this ability did something else for us. This was something that it took me years to fully realize and understand. We were able to add significant value to every situation we found ourselves in - if we so chose. We could single someone out at a party, stop them on the street, catch them after class, and completely make their day if we wanted to. This ability allowed me to eliminate all social anxiety (which was never big a problem anyway) that I could've possibly had. I walked into rooms with a different air about me, because I knew I could validate anyone. But I was also aware that this single ability wouldn't be enough. My social skills were good, but I wanted to be able to bond with anyone in situations where I couldn't just break out in verse. My dancing abilities were pretty good, but I wanted to be able to sweep girls off their feet with multiple styles of dance. So after spending a couple years honing these abilities (and a couple other ones to a lesser extent), I came to the realization that people who possess powerful presence know that they can add significant value to any situation they find themselves in. Not just a little value. Not just some value. Significant value. A famous actor will leave people in awe just because he is physically there in a place (instead of on a screen). An amazing singer can move and inspire people with her voice. So learning or a perfecting a unique ability can be a great way to add substantial value to any situation. But honestly, if you're not famous, the most important ability you can possess is social grace that is honed to a tee. Abilities aren't always reliable because you can't use them in every situation. But social grace is good for all occasions. However, I should add that you need to be at the top tier of social grace. It's very easy to add significant value through something like singing or playing an instrument well. But social skills are something that everyone has engaged in their entire lives. So if you want to add significant value to social situations, read up on the material on this site, team - and practice as often as you can. That'll get you ahead of the game. WHAT ABOUT CONFIDENCE? If you haven't read the post on confidence not equaling success, I suggest you read it now. If you ask the average person about how to develop presence or charisma, they'll you ‘be confident, be confident!' They mean well with this advice, they really do. But, confidence has to be based on something. And if you haven't done any of the things that I've talked about up until this point, be confident will be useless advice to you. But if you do the things I've outlined, confidence will come as a natural result. Confidence is just another way of saying "been there, done that, and did it well." So getting experience and processes under your belt will put you in the right mental state to have a magnetic presence. ARE YOU A PRESENCE? Maybe not yet. But now you have the tools to make it happen. It will take a long time; presence takes years to develop, and even then, some guys never learn it or barely have it. But stick with it, and heads will be turning in awe at every place you find yourself in. Here's an overview of what we've gone over: Presence is all about first impressions The one thing that will make or break your ability to learn it is having insider social knowledge Body language is the most important fundamental aspect of presence This is followed by fashion, taking up space and learning how to make an entrance The final component of presence is adding significant social value to every situation Don't focus on confidence; it's a byproduct of success Now go forth, and make the Earth tremble with your very being.

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##How to Have Sex with Blonde Bombshells There's an undeniable allure to the blonde bombshell. Hers is a unique spot in the Western pantheon - with her own sexual iconography, even; one that makes her tremendously desirable to a large segment of the male population. blonde bombshells And if you want a gal like her, you may find yourself hitting the same obstacle again and again: why does she keep turning her nose up at me? It's a question we've been seeing here a lot recently... some of it from minority guys, those of Indian or Middle Eastern birth or descent; some of it as well from plain old apple pie Americans. They want to know how you get these girls. The standard response is "get your fundamentals in order, get your game in order, and you will get the women you want - including the blonde bombshells." And it is correct. Yet, one of the things you do learn along the way is that different sorts of girls need different sorts of details. In the case of blonde bombshells, they're more like punk girls with piercings and tattoos, or feminist girls with closely-cropped blue hair and unshaved armpits, than most guys seem to recognize. Because the blondes men in North America lose their shirts over are not the blondes who were born that way; rather, they're ones who decided they wanted to fit into a certain mold, then did. blonde bombshells It takes a fair amount of dedication to be blonde. A cheap-o salon will charge $50 for bleaching. At a nice one, it's closer to (or over) $300. And unless you want your roots to show - and if you're going to bleach your hair, you don't want your roots showing and breaking the whole illusion, or making you look like one of those ghetto blondes with the bleached white hair and the dark brown roots - you're going to be making a trip to the salon every 2 to 3 weeks. Not only this, but because bleaching is traumatic to hair, you need to be vigilant in using conditioner unless you want more split ends than a slashed-and-burnt rainforest; you'll need to lay off the hair drying as much as possible because your hair is already so fragile; and, oh, chlorine turns bleached hair green - which means you'd better look good sitting next to the pool, because you certainly won't be swimming in it. In addition to your bi- or tri-weekly bleaching, you're well-advised to use a chamomile rinse to make sure your hair stays the desired color. If you'd rather not go all the way, you can get blonde highlights instead, but... unless your hair's already lighter colored, you won't get the whole "blonde bombshell effect" going on, and that kind of defeats the point. Of course, you could always try to bleach yourself, but it's going to take a while, and if you're really going for the blonde bombshell image, well... blondes don't do that sort of thing themselves. They visit the salon, because it's good to pamper yourself sometimes. WHAT MANY MEN DON'T SEE Most men don't realize the difference between natural blondes and bottle blondes. Natural blondes are the ones who could spend their lives putting nothing in their hair but water and their hair would still be blonde. They need neither work hard nor spend much money to have the hair they do. Somewhere around 15% of the United States population is natural blonde; however, many of these are not the bright blonde colors you'd see in a blonde bombshell, but dirty blondes, strawberry blondes, etc. The bombshell is a separate breed. She is a self-made woman, and her focus is appearance. She puts a great deal of energy into achieving a specific appearance, and her investment reveals her focus: the bleached blonde is a woman focused on appearances. blonde bombshells This is what the men who want these women but struggle with them do not grasp. It's also what the men these women go ape for do grasp. Who do bleached blondes typically go for? Stereotypical examples: Jerks Jocks "Douchey" cocksure men Flashy banker types with spikey hair Bad boys with motorcycles Men who, all things considered, exhibit a specific appearance these women want. THE BOMBSHELL DROPS When I was new to pickup, my views on women changed quickly. Before, with limited experience with women, I had little opinion on women. I thought women were all pretty, nice, and wonderful. When I started making approaches in nightclubs and cafeterias, my perceptions quickly changed. Brunettes and natural blondes were friendly and polite. Black girls were funny and sexual. Asian girls were demure. And blonde bombshells were rude, showboat-y ice queens. They made it clear they did not like me early on, and I soon decided the feeling was mutual. For several years, blonde bombshells and I were constantly at odds. They were the ones who rained on my parade; I'd be doing great with a pretty brunette girl, and then her blonde bombshell buddy would appear out of nowhere and cockblock me like a pit viper. It drove me nuts. It reached a point where if I even saw that a group of girls had a blonde bombshell in it, I'd try to look for a different group to talk to. It wasn't all the time. Sometimes I'd really hit it off with a blonde bombshell, or they'd at least be friendly. But when I was getting nasty rejections or blatant "Sorry, we're not interested" dismissals, most of the time it was coming from a bottle blonde. And then I moved to Southern California. I've done quite a bit of travel; much of Europe, much of Asia, some of the Caribbean, a bit of South America. Most of the United States, and a little of its two neighbors to the North and South, and even much of middle and Northern California. Nowhere have I found as many bottle blonde bombshells as Southern California. If that wasn't bad enough, the number of single men to single women in Southern California (San Diego, specifically) is staggeringly not in your favor as a male: it's 1.12:1.00, single males to single females, in the 18 to 29 age range: blonde bombshells Compare that to a far more favorable ratio of 1.03:1.00 single-males-to-single-females where I had just come from in Washington, D.C. I was still doing all right with girls when I reached California... but not with blonde bombshells. That would've been fine, were I not in the blonde bombshell capital of America. As it were, there I was, and there they were; I didn't like them, and they didn't like me. But we were stuck with each other, and I had to figure them out, or spend a lot of time alone. blonde bombshells Every woman has her own particular needs in a man. Some women need men with great senses of humor. Some need men with big bank accounts. Some need men who are approachable and attainable and make them feel safe. Some need men who are rock stars in the sack. All would like all of these things in one package, but all have different things they prioritize more than others. Blondes - and we're talking bottle/bleached blondes here, not natural blondes - are looking for a specific set of qualities in men that they place (in general) above other things they're in search of. He must: Be aesthetically pleasing Conform to current fashions/trends Play nice with popular culture Be "in" with the hippest/coolest/trendiest things If she's a blonde bombshell, she wants a man who conforms. Not just an everyday conformist Joe Average. She wants the All-American guy. The guy who conforms to the media version of the Ideal Man. blonde bombshells She is working overtime to conform to the media version of the ideal woman. She: Exercises/eats right to have a healthy body Bleaches her hair to look like she's blonde (or to look more blonde) Practices sexy/pouty facial expressions to be facially expressive Cultivates the air of a high value, elite woman Works meticulously on elevating and enhancing her social reputation Endlessly seeks to be on top of the latest fashions, fads, and trends If it's hip, she's on it. She doesn't think fashion trends are silly trifles. They're life. They're how she differentiates herself from the pack. She gets it. She's "in the know", on top of the ball. Where everyone else is watching the Hollywood stars sport some new fashion, she's already sporting it herself. Now, who do you think she wants to date... the punk rebel guy who thinks he's bad ass because he threw a blazer on before he hit the club? Puh-leaze. She wouldn't touch that guy with a 10-foot pole. YES, YOU NEED TO CONFORM The pickup scene tends to attract nonconformists by its very nature. It exists outside of mainstream society, is shamed and sidelined, and barely tolerated. And while there are naturals who do well with bleached blonde bombshells, the fact is that many of the guys these girls end up with have highly unrefined styles. They're often needy, jealous guys who have difficulty holding their frames in the face of drama and have never ascended higher in the game hierarchy than jerk game. Their sense of identity comes from externals, and they are almost as trend-obsessed as the women they date; their hairstyles change as the fashions do, as does their attire. Nevertheless, these guys usually have great fundamentals, and they frequently make a show of tooling lower status men. They are social ladder climbers, and while not all of them are at the top of the hierarchy, they're mostly in the upper-middle range or thereabouts. They spend a great deal of time in social circle and seek to position themselves at the top of various artificial hierarchies - and always the hierarchies the bombshells are drawn to. Quarterback? Check. Class clown? Check. Ski instructor? Check. Military officer? Check. Rides a motorcycle? Check. President of a fraternity? Check. Dedicated gym rat with big biceps and washboard abs? Check. Bouncer or bartender at a popular nightclub? Check. Owner of his own private legal practice? Check. Proud owner of a small boat? Check. Note the hierarchies such men do not participate in: Captain of the chess club? Nope. Head of a World of Warcraft guild? Nope. Bartender at a dive bar bombshells don't go to? Nope. Guy who does nothing of note other than try to pick up girls? Double nope. The first instinct most guys who study pickup feel when they look at guys like these - and it was my instinct at first too - is, "No way... do I really have to be one of these guys to get these girls? No! I refuse!" I mean, it's way too conformist. It means putting these fleeting, petty "trends" at the forefront of your identity. Do you really want to be another herd creature? Put differently... do you really want to live your life like one of the men who has constructed his entire life around appealing to exactly this sort of woman, who herself has constructed her entire life around appealing to exactly this sort of man? Well, if you want to be competitive at blonde bombshells, the answer is "YES." She isn't working that hard to conform with society's latest idea of "hot" so that she can get a non-conformist artist type. If she wanted that type of man, she'd have left her hair color alone and bought some artsy clothes instead of whatever Kim Kardashian is wearing right now. She doesn't want that guy. That guy is icky to her. Ew. Go away. She wants the man she sees in the magazines. The guy her favorite pop star is smooching on. You know, those guys you think are either complete douchebags, like your high school's homecoming king, or totally gay, like Edward Cullen from that vampire movie? Yep, that's who you've gotta be. Don't like it? Cry me a river. If you want her, then you must become what she wants. There is an exception!: you get your game and fundamentals so on-lock that you transcend these concerns; you basically become desirable enough to women that they want you anyway even if you aren't "their type." You can do this, but it takes years, and I'm guessing if you're here you want something a little more immediate. As with all girls, if you want the best shot, you must be her dream man. And it just so happens that with girls who do their very best to look like Barbie, the dream man looks quite a bit like Ken. HOW TO GET BLONDE BOMBSHELLS In rough order of importance, the things (that you can change) that will affect your chances with bleached blonde bombshells are: Be a sarcastic jerk. Seriously. She wants a guy who can poke fun at her, without being bitter. No insults. But you do need to be cracking small, socially savvy jokes within a minute or two of opening her. This is where Mystery's neg came from; who did he develop it gaming? Blonde bombshells in nightclubs, of course. Typical fun early conversation, like what we talked about in "Tactics Tuesdays: Mastering Playful Banter with Women", applies here. Of course, do be warned: many guys overdo the teasing, thinking that because she's a blonde bombshell and she acts aloof, she needs to really have her stones busted. All this gets you is a first class ticket to auto-rejection. Status first. There are some girls who do not care about reputation much or at all. These are the independent women, the career women, the adventurers and explorers. That's not blonde bombshells. They want to be a part of the "in" crowd, and the in-crowd is all about reputation. That means that if you can demonstrate that you are a socially proofed, preselected, high status man, you will be in so hard you won't be able to beat the bombshells off with a chlorine stick. If you can't, well... going the mysterious artist/stranger route is tantamount to suicide with these girls. They want popular, not mysterious. That means, of course, leverage the heck out of social proof and preselection. The more you get these going on, the easier a time you have. Ignore them at your peril. She's looking for the man who's going to most enhance her status, whether through a relationship or a fling. Marilyn Monroe - the penultimate blonde bombshell (natural brunette, of course) - didn't mess around with just anyone, you know. Her lover was a U.S. president... and the fact that he was married didn't mean much, or only helped the allure. The thing he had going for him was status. An air of at least moderate wealth. You needn't actually be rich. But you do want to act like it. That means, pay attention to how guys who act like money isn't a care in the world to them act, and act that way. It's not the money itself you're emulating, and it's not about lying about your net holdings; it's about conveying a certain air that blonde bombshells are drawn to. Some women find the allure of sleeping with the dark horse guy with Byronic qualities and a crummy apartment in the bad part of town exciting. With blonde bombshells, you can still do it with these traits if you're good, but it'll be a fight all the way. Want to make it easier for yourself, adopt the personality of the guy for whom money is the least concern because he has enough at this point that he doesn't even need to think about it. Remember, her energy is focused on appearance, which means not much time left for school, ambition, career, finances, and the like. She's looking for a man she won't need to worry about these with (even for flings - it's her "type"). No weird/nerdy interests. With less status-focused women, you can make a joke about your old comic book collection and she'll laugh and tell you about how she used to collect Troll dolls and your connection with her grows stronger. Not so with blonde bombshells; because she's constantly policing her reputation, the average bombshell is uncomfortable even having nerdy things like comics, science fiction, and the like mentioned around her. In her eyes, each interest like this of yours is a mark against you. So if you're the class clown, head bouncer at the bar she likes downtown, and have trendy spiky hair and a cool facial hair style, those are things in your favor; the fact that there's a poster of Obi-Wan Kenobi in your living room is a big strike against you though, and might mean you're a pretender. It makes her uncomfortable. She keeps hoping it's actually your roommate's and you were just kidding about it being yours. As with other kinds of women, the more of a caricature you are early on, the easier of a time you'll have it. You can always flesh yourself out later, but for actually getting this girl in bed, she doesn't need to know your quirks - they'll only complicate things. blonde bombshells Lift more and eat less. Really, there's no excuse for not doing this one. She spends hours at the salon so she can get a man with nice abs and hours counting her calories so she can stay slim; you can spend hours at the gym and address your own weight loss so you can get a girl with bleached hair and a thin waist. Lifting and staying trim are just good in general, and help you with any kind of woman; with blonde bombshells, they're pretty close to mandatory, especially if you aren't a blond-haired, blue-eyed, 6'1" white male yourself. You will have an easier time sleeping with blonde bombshells the more of these you have in place. If you're a sarcastic jerk who's the head of a cool social group she's a part of, act like you live a comfortable life finances-wise and never stress out about money or complain about work, don't have any non-trendy interests, and have good muscle and low body fat, these girls will seek you out like moths to a flame. blonde bombshells There are a few exceptions to our normal blonde bombshell rules. Here they are: Her: Not a full-on bombshell: e.g., she uses highlights, but not outright bleach, or she bleaches but not super often. If her hair is bleached but you can see her roots, she's less rigid about her criteria than the girls who are meticulous about their roots; and if her hair is simply highlighted, it's even more lax. Rule of thumb: the more rigid she is about hair color, the more rigid she is about mate selection. Older blonde bombshells: older bombshells (i.e., 27+) tend to have expanded diets in men and are more open to a wider variety of men, so long as those men are still high status and trendy. They've had more reference experiences and aren't as immediately turned off by non-trendy interests; they're also more secure in their own status and aren't as afraid they're going to be thought low status by spending time around men who think swords are cool. You: You are exceptional in some way: if you are really good-looking, say, or you've worked hard and built a ridiculously built body, or you have a lot of money, or your game is through-the-roof good, or you have ridiculous amounts of social proof or preselection, you can get blonde bombshells (even the young ones) fairly reliably without fitting their preferred archetypes. You're extremely dominant: persistence and physical dominance are extremely attractive traits with a woman, as is the overcoming of her objections. These will tend to go hand-in-hand with sarcastic jerk / high status game, much of the time, but even without these, if you are sufficiently persistent, assertive, and overcome objections, you can "out game" blonde bombshells who are used to using the status they've constructed for themselves to ward off men who aren't the types they've set their sights on. Note that we're talking about socially calibrated persistence and dominance here; if you're grabbing some girl's butt after she told you to get lost, all that's going to get you is beat up and kicked out of wherever you are, or maybe arrested. ARE BLONDE BOMBSHELLS HARD TO DATE OR BED? Well... yes and no. blonde bombshells They're hard for a lot of guys - and were hard for me originally - because these guys haven't taken the time to position themselves as the archetype these women are searching for. Kind of like if you open up a store selling power tools, and then complain that you never get any 18-year-old female customers. Well, sure; if you want those customers, sell something they want, not something they don't. On the other hand, there are men whose lives revolve around all the things that blonde bombshells adore, and for these men, getting women like this is second nature. They don't have to think about it. I've had guys like this ask me how they can get women who are not blonde bombshells, because they're tired of them, but other kinds of women aren't biting for them. You're always going to have a hard time if you're fighting against the tide. That's how it goes. If you're trying to convince a woman to date you or sleep with you and you're not offering her any of the value she's looking for, you're walking uphill in roller skates. As for me, that was how I finally started succeeding with blonde bombshells myself, too. For me, the process looked like this: I realized my own adversity with blonde bombshells - a bit of bitterness from past previous negative interactions - was probably making me a lot colder with them when we interacted, which made them like me even less. So I started visualizing 10 minutes a day having warm, rewarding interactions with bottle blondes when I went out. I went to a high fashion hair salon I found on Yelp and got a new, sexy, trendy hairstyle perfectly tailored to my face I bought cooler, tighter-fitting, trendier clothes than I'd previously owned, including a patterned burgundy jacket and a yellow-white scarf that looked great on me together I styled my facial hair in the douchey chinstrap-soul-patch combination I saw a lot of the guys that blonde bombshells went for rocking I adopted a slightly more playful/sarcastic style, which entailed me busting lightly on girls a few seconds into opening them - not going overboard, just enough teasing to break them out of autopilot and communicate I wasn't there to kiss up As soon as I started doing all this, I found myself taking blonde bombshells home with me... almost overnight. The visualizations I started first, and did those for a few months before I had results. I played around with the sarcasm for a few months before I was hitting the right note as well. However, the new jacket and new facial hair I added last, more or less at the same time, and those were the final pieces of the puzzle and immediately led to significantly stronger results with bottle blondes. I still had to (and have to!) be careful what I say around bombshell blondes, especially since I do mostly cold approach and don't have the benefit of social proof/preselection to back me up. I'll still get eye rolls if I forget and play the "traveler from a distant land" role, which mostly gets bored, blank stares ("Oh, you've been to Korea... that's cool... okay, bye"). But that's okay. I laugh about it now and move onto another girl, and if I run into another bottle blonde I remember not to play that role. The key to remember about anyone trying to conform is that they are doing it out of fear; she's afraid of you being a liability to her reputation, to how others think of her, to her ability to find a man who will be able to take care of the things she needs him to take care. If you can avoid triggering this fear - by showing her that you are what she is looking for, typically - you have the key in your hands to getting as many of this sort of woman as you desire.

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##How to Have a Sexy Walk That Drives Women Nuts When I was 12 years old, I first started experimenting with my walk. I'd begun running social experiments a little earlier that year, and I figured I could tweak things about myself to give people the kind of impression I wanted to give them. At first, I walked really fast. Everyone would comment on how fast I walked. I thought doing things quickly was good. But as I studied people more closely, I realized that slower was more powerful. So, 6 months after I started walking faster than anyone else, I slowed down... way down. Now everyone commented on how slow I walked... I walked slower than anyone else. Over the years, I added pieces to my walk, refining and improving it: first to have a very powerful walk, then to have an intimidating walk. It wasn't until my early 20s that I at last began developing a sexy walk, designed not to impress people, clear them out of my path on the street, or dissuade them from challenging me in bad parts of town, but, rather, to attract women. On the article titled "Get a Girl Alone Today with These 7 Tips," Nick commented: "Hey Chase, great article by way. I have bought your book and read up on your blog posts( having lots of success because of it) about how to have a powerful walk. Although, I am not sure if I am being too try hard or being to subtle that it is unnoticeable. It would be great if sometime in the future you could put up a video demonstration or even list a few examples of actors in cinema who have a powerful walk. Thank you" He's referring, of course, to the section of How to Make Girls Chase that discusses your walk. And Nick's right - something as nuanced as your walk needs video illustrations to show you how it's done. And today's article is going to give you just that. sexy walk There are various aspects to your walk, and the good news is that most of what you do to make your walk powerful will also make it sexy. Evolutionarily speaking, women evolved to find the most powerful men the sexiest, and because of that, to female eyes, a powerful walk is a confident walk is a sexy walk. But they're not completely one and the same. You can also have an intimidating walk, like I used to have, and it scares people away from you... they think you're a tough guy, a hood, or a hooligan. That's not the kind of walk you want to have to lure beautiful women. You can think of the psychology behind a properly constructed sexy walk as, "I am the biggest, most powerful man around, and women cannot keep their eyes off of me." The funny thing is, when people know they're being watched and their mate value is being assessed, they sexy up their walks automatically. There's a wonderful video from the Discovery Channel that illustrates this beautifully - check that out here: If you watched that video, you'll have noticed a couple of things: The girls who know they're being rated on how sexy their walks are look really sexy The guys who know they're being rated on how sexy their walks are look really confident To a woman watching that video, those confident-looking men also look sexy, too. Those walks are attractive, captivating, and really get a girl's attention. But how important is this really? Super important! Have you ever walked down a sidewalk and suddenly just had your attention riveted to some girl walking towards you - or even on the other side of the street? Every single time this happens, if you pay attention to it, you'll notice she has a smolderingly sexy walk. And guess what? You can have the same exact effect on women if you get your own sexy walk handled. Because it stands out. Because most guys aren't walking this way... they're too afraid to. Or they never think of it. But now you're here, and I know you're thinking about it. So let's get you walking powerful, confident, and extremely sexy. AN UNEXPECTED COMPLIMENT Back when I was not yet at an "intermediate" level with pickup and seduction skills, I had to walk a very long way in very hot weather in some poorly fitting clothes (I hadn't yet upgraded my fashion sense), and I ended up with very sore, chafed thighs. It burned whenever my inner thighs touched in anyway... so, to allay the pain, I walked the rest of the way back with my thighs space far enough apart so that they wouldn't touch. It was a bit awkward to walk that way, but at least I wasn't in pain anymore. On that particular day, I was meeting up with a girl I was seeing, and as I approached her on the street where she was waiting for me, her eyes popped out and, as I reached her, she blurted out, "Wow, very sexy walk!" I assumed she was teasing me, and I said, "Right, sexy as hell," in a sarcastic tone. And she said, "No, Chase, I mean it... you're walking very sexy!" She wasn't the kind of girl who joked around, and I asked her one more time for clarification. "You're not serious, right? You think this walk is sexy? I'm walking this way because my legs hurt." "Well it LOOKS very sexy," she said. She was dead serious. And then I realized why. Walking with your thighs spaced apart implies that there's some reason why your thighs can't be touching. And in primates walking upright, this means that what's between those thighs must be massive - in this case, testicles. Walking with my thighs spread apart made it seem like I had very large testicles, which signals a very fertile, aggressive, and dominant man. My chafed-thigh walk was making me look stronger, sexier, and manlier. This was all at once bizarre, amusing, and very interesting to me. I'd accidentally stumbled on one of the components of a sexy walk... and because the rest of my walk had been mostly tweaked by that point, all those things together made me look very good. sexy walk If you know anything about old-time American cinema, you know the name John Wayne. He was one of the toughest, baddest, manliest actors in film. But where'd John Wayne learn all his mannerisms from? Well, you might not believe it, but Wyatt Earp, in his later years, served as a consultant on some of the early Hollywood Western films. And while working on one such movie, a staff member named Marion Morrison served Earp coffee and chatted with him about being a lawman in the Old West. As you might've guessed, Marion Morrison later assumed the stage name "John Wayne," and became probably the most famous actor in Western cinema, with a persona based squarely on that of Wyatt Earp, the legendary gunslinger and justice-bringer of the lawless American Frontier. You can have a look at how John Wayne (and, we might imagine by extension, Wyatt Earp) used to walk: That's your classic Gunslinger Walk. You'll notice the following: Arms swaying Slow movements Exaggerated movements Thighs spaced far apart Good posture / straight back No side-swaying This is a very controlled, confident walk. It doesn't reek of sexiness, but there is sex appeal in its raw power. You might say that this is John Wayne's walk when he isn't walking at full tilt sexy (like in that video from How Stuff Works). If you take this walk, and throw in a bit more shoulder swaying, you have a very sexy Gunslinger Walk. THE MALE MODEL WALK There's another alternative to the Gunslinger Walk, and it's called the Male Model Walk. Have a look at this compilation of male models on the runway: That's the Male Model Walk. If you're paying attention, you should've noted a lot of similarities between this walk and the Gunslinger Walk: Arms swaying Slow movements Exaggerated movements Thighs spaced far apart Good posture / straight back No side-swaying The main difference between the two is that the Gunslinger Walk entails arm swinging that goes in front of the body. The Male Model Walk's arm swinging simply goes from front to back and back to front, not in front of the body at all, and it works better at a somewhat faster walking pace than the Gunslinger Walk, which borders on silly looking if done at too fast a walking pace. HOW TO HAVE A SEXY WALK AND TURN WOMEN'S HEADS As you've picked up from the How Stuff Works video on sexy walks, and the videos on the Gunslinger Walk and the Male Model Walk, there are a number of components comprising a sexy walk that you can learn, emulate, and use yourself to transform your walk into one that women find positively alluring. And don't worry, going out and getting your inner thighs chafed isn't going to be one of them. Here, let's have a look at the primary aspects of what makes for a sexy walk, and how you can use them yourself to take your own walk (and the effect it has on the girls you meet) into the stratosphere. Perfect posture. Everything in your nonverbals ties back to your posture, and your walk is no exception. You must walk with your back straight... the straighter it is, the more powerful, more confident, and more sexy you look to women. And it isn't just your back, it's everything. Make sure your chest is pushed out and up, your shoulders are back, and chin is held parallel to the ground. The better a job you do with your posture, the better amplified are the impacts of all the other parts of your walk. Slow walking speed. When you walk fast, you look hurried, rushed, and not-together. I've known people who told me you have to move fast... we live in a fast-paced world! Most of these people aren't millionaires, billionaires, or overly successful in any way, though. It's simply a mindset they adopted somewhere, assumed to be true, and followed as religion after that. Some of the most accomplished, most successful people I've met move slowly and do things slowly. They take their time. They're careful. And because they're careful - because they never scramble or rush - they do things right the first time, and save themselves a lot of headaches and hassles that my more rushed friends encounter again and again, as they dash from place to place trying to put out fires and resolve problems that they only deal with because they did things rushed and sloppy the first time around. Women are naturally attuned to this dichotomy: men who seem rushed are not in control of their lives, let alone anything else, while men who seem slow and controlled themselves are also in control of the rest of their lives. When people comment on the speed of your walk, it should only ever be, "God, you walk so slow!" When you hear that, take it as a compliment. Slow movement speed. Related to walking speed is movement speed. No jerking your head... no whipping your arms back and forth... no sudden turning, abrupt stopping, or explosive starting. Everything should be... smooth. Gradual. Controlled. But not artificial. If you look herky-jerky, you're doing it wrong - so slow down. Ever see a really big, muscular, powerful man jerking around and looking, for all the world, like a little mouse in his movement speed? No... you just don't see that. It's because men who put the time into building their bodies that much have also studied how powerful men move (or they've come to it naturally), and they've realized that slow movements and the conservation of energy (see: Law of Least Effort) makes them look like the most dominant men possible. Exaggerated movements. Did you notice in the How Stuff Works video the difference between the man walking normally and the man walking sexy? That's right... his movements were more exaggerated. His shoulders swaggered more... his arms had more sway. They were the same movements as the man walking normally, just more pronounced. This is how you want to walk all the time. Why? Because it calls attention to you and puts you on display, which is what you want when you're out in public and could meet the girl of your dreams at any moment (without time to shift into a different walking mode). A sexy walk with exaggerated movements is peacocking for posture. Arms swaying. Ever see someone doing the "stiff-arm walk?" That's the walk where someone walks along with their arms held straight down at his or her sides, never moving. It looks really awkward. Your arms should always be moving, in rhythm with your leg and body movements, and they should sway gracefully, as the arms of all the men in the videos above did. Shoulders swaggering. You can't have a great walk without shoulder swagger. That's your shoulders moving up and down, opposite one another, as you walk. The shoulder on the side of your body that's stepping forward should move down, while the shoulder on the side of your body with the foot planted firmly on the ground should shift up as your other foot moves forward. Once your forward foot is firmly on the ground and your backward foot begins moving, your shoulders should change direction and begin moving the opposite way from how they were just moving... and just repeat until you stop walking. Shoulder swagger should be exaggerated compared to how most men walk, but not SO exaggerated that you look like you just got released from prison or are walking up to someone you're going to deck in the face for wronging you somehow. There's a fine line between "sexy" and "intimidating" when it comes to shoulder swagger, and you'll want to mind that line. If you're not sure where it is, watch the videos above again to get a solid idea. Thighs spaced far apart. It sounds childish, but women actually find it sexy when you walk with your legs farther apart. They don't actually THINK, "Wow, he must have incredibly giant testes," but subconsciously they find the walk more sexually enticing, even if they aren't quite sure why. The simplest way to do this: don't let your thighs touch as you walk. It'll feel a little awkward at first, as though you're pushing your legs out of their sockets in your hips (you're not though), but you'll adapt to it quickly. A week or two of feeling funny while you walk... for a lifetime of looking sexy as hell. I think that's a fair trade. Feet facing forward. Not everyone does this, but you'll notice that as a lot of men walk, their feet splay out to the sides. I'm not sure why this is, exactly; it used to happen to me too. Humans have evolved two different joint structures for ankles; the more primitive joint structure entails three joints within the ankle, making it easier to twist and turn your feet for climbing but not as efficient for walking, while other people have the more modern two-joint structure, that is less flexible for climbing, but better suited to walking. So it may be that those of us who splay our feet have the more primitive three-joint structure; I don't exactly know. Because feet splaying to the side looks a little funny and affects how you walk somewhat, you'll want to get this handled. Similar to keeping your legs spaced a little farther apart, you'll need to spend a few weeks feeling funny as you keep your feet facing as forward as possible while you walk, but once it's handled, you'll just have to check back in on yourself every now and again to make sure you've kept it up, and, other than that, you'll now have a better-looking walk for life, making better, stronger, and sexier impressions on everyone you meet. No side-swaying. This is one I only recently became aware of, when a black belt karate instructor friend of mine asked me to walk, and pointed out how I was swaying slightly from side to side as I walk. He noted that almost everyone does this, and it's a trait learned in early infancy to guard against falling: basically, you fall a little bit toward the side you're moving your foot on as a preventative measure to maintain balance in the event you slip. But it makes you look less confident. I'd had no idea I was doing this until he pointed it out. I immediately weeded this out of my walking style and straightened it out. You can best do this by paying attention to your head as you walk; does your head sway from side to side as you take each step? It shouldn't. Instead, keep it steady and pointing forward. The rest of your body will adjust for that. Still swagger your shoulders and sway your arms, but keep your head and torso held straight, instead of falling slightly from side to side as you walk. If this is too much to do all at once, no problem - just work on a handful of these at a time. Your brain will learn that this is how it needs to walk going forwards once you've been actively changing your walking style for a few weeks or a month, and you can move onto adopting others of these components. BENEFITS OF A STRONG, CONFIDENT, SEXY WALK sexy walkA great walk isn't just good for catching women's eyes. It's also very useful for looking important, commanding respect from those around you, clearing a path for yourself on the sidewalk (except for a few men larger than you and looking for a challenge, most people will get out of your way on a sidewalk when you're walking this way, even most larger men who aren't looking to challenge you), and making a very strong first impression on a girl, whether you're approaching her on the street during day game or at a bar or a party, or even if she just sees you strutting around the halls at school or work or the local shopping mall. A sexy walk is an important part of being a sexy man; it's an important part of having solid nonverbals; and, due to the feedback loop between emotions and the state of your physical body, a sexy walk even reinforces your confidence and makes you feel more sexy, powerful, and in-command. Want a shortcut to more confidence, self-esteem, willpower, and feelings of sexiness? Get your walk handled. Both John Wayne and Wyatt Earp, I'm quite certain, would heartily approve.

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##How to Kiss a Girl Like No One's Ever Kissed Her Before We don't talk much on here about how to kiss a girl, typically because we're more focused on helping you to get girls in bed - why spend much time on the appetizer when you can skip right to the main event? But even if you're working to turn yourself into the kind of irresistible man a woman simply can't say "no" too, it's still worth putting some time into bringing up your kissing technique. Why? Because it's one of those small edges that fold into the big picture that is you, and the impression you make on girls. In other words, being a talented kisser makes you better able to achieve the kind of results you really want with women: namely, hot, steamy liaisons with beautiful girls you really dig. Even if you simply run through a seduction quickly with a woman, and then plant a mind-blowing kiss on her, it still helps: It helps remove any last minute resistance you might run into prior to intimacy, It helps her switch off her logical mind and be there in the moment, And it helps her realize that yes, you are exactly the kind of charming, seductive, sexy man she's always dreamed of meeting. So on those notes, I want to address the reader from Slovenia who commented the following over on the article on how to get a phone number: "I've read around 95% of your articles and let's say trained myself to an intermediate level... or something more than a pure begginer lets say. Tnx to you again ;) Still I have problems when it comes to Physical Escalation... but not problems with getting laid. I have serious problems with the transition from conversation to kissing. Once the kissing is on I have very few problems with bed magic. I have actually never read any insight that would break down how to get closer and closer, when/how to start putting my arm around or something, hug her, kiss her on her cheeks or I don't fkin know... My question would sound like this: HOW to get to kissing part if you do everything wright? I have serious problems with this transition. And I angry even more because I know I would have gotten laid so many times If I had only mastered this part... And I will sooner or latter." And he's right. That's a tough transition, from conversation to kissing and being physical together, and for a lot of guys it can be one of the most challenging things to learn. Transitions in general are pretty tough stuff, and you'll find that most of your obstacles as you improve with women and dating come when you find yourself struggling to transition from one phase of an interaction to the next. So let me give you an article on how to kiss a girl that'll help you navigate this transition a lot more smoothly... a lot more naturally... and as a bonus, teach you exactly how to lay one on her that she'll remember for a long, long time. how to kiss a girl So there you are, with this gorgeous, womanly, amazing girl. You've had some great conversations. You've got a great vibe going on. And there's something in the air... you can tell she's every bit as interested in you and excited for something to happen as you are. She wants it too. But... how do you do it? How do you kiss her and make it perfect... not weird, awkward, or unnatural? how to kiss a girl Truth be told, you're going to have to work at it a little bit. Kissing doesn't "just happen," no matter how much women might like to think it does. Rather, you make it happen. Because somebody's got to be in charge - and because that somebody is almost never going to be the girl - you're going to have to step up to the plate. While she gets to sit there and enjoy the experience, it's you who needs to create that experience for you. And know that she is judging you on your performance. Do a great job, and she'll be in love the moment your lips touch hers. Muddle it up, and she may well be out the door in a heartbeat. Because those are the roles of men and women in kissing - the woman gets the thrill of the moment and gets to play the role of critic, and the man is the one who's hard at work and putting himself up there to be critiqued and judged. Don't like the hand you're dealt on that one? Realize that you're judging and critiquing women on your own all the time, too - for instance, by selecting which girl you'll approach in the first place. There might be a girl right now whose heart throbs at the mere thought of you... but you've judged her not attractive enough, or not cool enough, or maybe you haven't even noticed her because she isn't your type at all, and she'll never get a chance to be with you. So don't worry too much about it. Them's the shakes. Reality is, men perform, women judge. There's some freedom in that though, because you get to improve your performance and use that to get more and more desirable women, while women remain largely in the passive role of simply judging what men come their way, and trying (often in vain) to attract those men through indirect, passive means like making themselves look more attractive and trying harder to catch the attention of the men they want. Back to kissing. You essentially have two important things to worry about when it comes to how to kiss a girl: The transition to kissing The kiss itself ... and getting them both right is pretty important. But believe it or not, it's the transition itself that is the hardest part. how to kiss a girl When it comes to transitioning to a kiss (and especially a first kiss), whether you pull this off smoothly or not makes a HUGE amount of difference in how likely you are to actually get that kiss. We have a couple of other articles on the site here about kissing - there's "How to Kiss Her," one of the short early articles posted on the site, nevertheless with plenty of useful tips and techniques, there's "Manhandle Kisses," covering a very specific kissing technique, and there's "Can't-Miss Tips for Getting the First Kiss with a Girl," Ricardus's article with techniques broken down by beginner, intermediate, and advanced, and including some information on handling a kiss rejection. I might touch on a few things here and there, but by and large I'll let those articles stand for themselves, and I won't review most of what they've already covered. So check them out, if you want more on kissing after reading this post. Before we get to some actual technique on how to kiss a girl right - e.g., lips, mouth, tongue, hands, that sort of thing - I want to go over the transition to a kiss with you... because you won't GET to practice your kissing technique if you can't pull off a proper transition! We'll start with a look at the three main types of transitions to kissing: The Romantic Transition The Spontaneous Transition The Sexual Transition I'll also briefly go over manhandle kisses again and how best to use them. THE ROMANTIC KISS TRANSITION This one's the one you see in the movies when guitar music is playing, and some singer is slowly crooning in the background, and the man and woman stare into each other's eye for what seems like forever while the audience shouts, "Kiss her already!" You'll use a romantic transition to kissing following a long, protracted build-up with a girl toward that magic moment. This is the one you'll use with that girl you've been courting for a long time, or the girl you fell in love with in third grade but only now have the dating skills to get. how to kiss a girl I'll be frank - the romantic kiss is my least favorite kiss out of any mode of kiss transition you can make. Why is it my least favorite kiss transition? Simple: it sets the tone for what follows as romantic, which means boyfriend-girlfriend... which means she's going to fight you like crazy before you're able to bed her, more often than not. And she'll expect you to fulfill every aspect of the traditional boyfriend role thereafter, and protest wildly if you don't do so perfectly. In effect, the romantic transition sets the wrong expectations for things going forward... unless you like the girl calling the shots over you, that is. That said, it's also probably the easiest transition for most newer guys to make (which is also why it sets the tone for the woman determining how things go from here on out... the male's essentially signaling a lack of experience, a certain degree of placing her on a pedestal, and that he doesn't have enough options with other women to be less romantic), so let's go over how to kiss a girl this way anyway. Here are the main components to making a romantic transition: Proximity. You've got to have close proximity to a girl for a romantic transition. If you have to walk across the room to kiss her, or lean halfway across your body, it will feel too "thought through" and not "natural" enough to her, and she won't want to kiss you. How do you get proximity? By planning for it. When I was starting out (and still doing the romantic transition... *shiver*), I used to stack stuff up on the loveseat in my apartment so that there was only just enough room on the couch for two people to sit, and we'd be practically on top of one another. An early mentor recommended to me to place a couple of boxes on the couch and throw some dirty laundry on top, because no one's going to touch dirty laundry to move it, and you're set. Worked like a charm. Other ways of getting proximity: Get close to her at the movies... ideally from the start - sit down and put your arm around her at the outset, so you aren't trying to awkwardly put it around her later on. If you forget, wait for a "scary" moment in the movie to wrap your arm around her and comfort her. Take her somewhere inspiring and secluded. Like a pier at night, or an overlook on a small mountain, or even a walk through a deserted park. As you talk, get close, and stop somewhere with your arm around her and take in the scene. Lay down on your bed together. Get her to lay down on your bed next to you as the two of you look at pictures or you read her a passage out of a book (heck, if you're going to go romantic, you might as well go all out and have a book of poetry laying somewhere near your bed). And what do you do if she sits too far away? That one's easy - you tell her to come sit closer to you. "Don't sit all the way over there, what are saving a space for your friend to come join us or something? Come here." This is effective every single time. If you're not sure the right voice tone to use, listen to the example in the post on how to command women. How close should you be before you kiss her? Close enough that you can lean forward and have your forehead touch hers. If you aren't that close, find an excuse to get closer (or, better still, bring her closer to you). Silence. You need to let the conversation between you and her... just.... fall..... off. Like as if you're in the midst of speech and suddenly fall asleep, or into a trance. Let it trail off into nothing, and all the while maintain... Romantic eye contact. In other words, that dreamy look as you stare into her eyes. If you're not sure how to do this, start by using triangle gazing - that is, looking from her eyes, to her mouth, to her eyes, to her mouth. Make sure you do this slowly... if you do it fast it'll just seem bizarre. When a girl wants to kiss you, you'll notice she does this naturally much of the time - she's thinking about your lips, so unconscious she starts gazing at your lips (then back at your eyes again). When you do it yourself, you signal to her subconscious that you're preparing to kiss her - and if she likes you, she'll get excited, and she'll get ready. Lean in slowly, and close your eyes gradually as you do. As you lean in to kiss her, you should be doing it slowly but methodically (and confidently, for the love of God! Hesitant kissers need not apply), and you should be gradually closing your eyes as you go - so that they'll be completely shut just as you reach her lips. You also need a certain degree of incidental touch, and a little bit of tension, both of which we discuss down with the sexual kiss transition in greater detail, though you don't need as much of these as you need for that kiss - you just need enough that girls are comfortable with touching you and excited about kissing you. If you execute correctly on these four steps, you'll be able to pull off the romantic transition to kissing smoothly and well... and if you did a good job prepping her for the kiss (e.g., attracting her and making her want you), she'll be more than happy to kiss you back. THE SPONTANEOUS KISS TRANSITION how to kiss a girlAh, now we're talking my language - the spontaneous transition. Personally, I like this one more than either of the other two - the romantic kiss or the sexual kiss. Reason being, it doesn't depend nearly as much on her emotional state. If you've been at this for a while, you've doubtless seen the difficult-to-control ebb and flow of other people's emotions - particularly those of the women you've sought after. One minute she seems like she's burning with desire for you... and the next minute she's emotionally a dead fish. You'll go crazy trying to control that. I know I did... I spent years trying to learn how. Trying to learn how to transition a woman in a peak emotional state along the way from where we met to somewhere alone to getting together as lovers... and I lost one girl after another after another. You know what I learned? If you depend on her emotional state to get together with her, you introduce a ton of unpredictability into your seductions. But how can you possibly kiss a woman without her being in a heightened emotional state? Glad you asked. The way you do it, my friend, is by peaking her emotional state right before you kiss her - with a spontaneous transition. The spontaneous transition grossly violates all the rules of the romantic kiss transition (which we just covered) and the sexual kiss transition (which we'll cover after this one). That is: You don't need proximity You don't need silence You don't need touch You don't need tension You don't need eye contact of any sort You don't need to lean in gradually or close your eyes This is why I love it... I don't like rules (although you might think otherwise from the boat loads of information I inundate you with on the blog and the book and the videos - but all that information is really about training up your subconscious so you can operate without having to mind many rules). The spontaneous kiss is flexible... but you've got to be pretty ballsy to pull it off. That's the hitch. That means that you'll probably still be relying on the romantic kiss transition and the sexual kiss transition before you're able to start employing spontaneous with any regularity. You've got to know women want you, or not care if they don't, before you can do this right. To get a picture in your head of how to kiss a girl with a spontaneous transition, imagine one of those movie moments where the woman is freaking out emotionally, upset or angry or whatever, and suddenly the guy just kisses her. Or, imagine a woman standing on a bridge, talking to a guy, when out of nowhere he turns to her and kisses her. Or, think of a woman positioned at a bar, and a guy walks up to her, smiles at her, takes her hand, and draws her into himself and kisses her, without ever saying "hello" or introducing himself. That's what a spontaneous transition looks like, and it's strong stuff. What do you need to do it? Chiefly these components: Unwavering confidence and certainty. To pull off the spontaneous kiss correctly, you require rock-solid confidence and incredible self-assuredness, which is why this is the toughest one for most newer guys to pull off. You've essentially got to be completely sure it will work - and when you are, it usually does. But what happens if you aren't completely sure? I went through plenty of unsure spontaneous transitions to kissing when I was still figuring this one out for myself, and I'll tell you what happens when you're not confident about it: the girl feels really awkward and uncomfortable and then she leaves. You have to go through that to learn this transition, but you'll probably want to avoid the spontaneous kiss with any girl who's über important to you until you've got it down cold. Calmness right up to the kiss. A big part of the impact of the spontaneous kiss is that the girl often doesn't know it's coming. You suddenly grab her, and kiss her. If you're acting nervous or excited, your cover's blown, and you can't use a spontaneous transition - you'll have to change plans to use romantic or sexual. Why's an emotional giveaway spoil the spontaneous kiss transition? Mostly because if a girl can tell you've got heightened emotions, she's going to be startled and freaked out by anything sudden. It's a defensive reaction. This is why both the romantic and sexual kisses are slow and gradual - so as not to startle a girl who's emotionally piqued and who feels like you are too. Calmness after the kiss. You can come off a spontaneous kiss with steaming sexuality - if you look at how Harrison Ford kisses women in movies, it's almost always a spontaneous kiss followed by some sort of growling sexuality - but it needs to be controlled. If she isn't a girl you have buckets of passion for at this point yet though, it's better if you're simply completely calm and natural and can go right back into whatever conversation you were having before. If you read the article linked to earlier on manhandle kisses, you'll realize that they fit the bill for a lot of what makes up a spontaneous kiss transition. Most of the time you employ a manhandle kiss technique it'll be when you're doing a spontaneous transition. Use the spontaneous kiss transition when you want to keep her guessing, when you don't want to set expectations right from the start, and if you must kiss her in public before sleeping with her but don't want to pique her emotions only to have them crash sometime when you're in the process of taking her home with you. THE SEXUAL KISS TRANSITION how to kiss a girlThis one's a lot of fun, but the situations it's used in by most men actually make them less likely to bed the girls they like. For that reason, I recommend that while you're learning how to kiss a girl you avoid this one except in the scenario where you're learning how far you can push your limits and test your ability to ramp up women's emotions quickly in party, bar, or nightclub settings, or if you're alone with a girl and have the time and want to take the time to slowly ramp up her excitement. Exception to the exception: if you're at a party where you have access to a seduction location - a bedroom, an unused bathroom, or even a broom closet (as a friend of mine is known to resort to using at times), or if you're in a nightclub where there are unwatched bathrooms (no security that's going to kick you out of them), you can use a sexual transition to kissing to escalate things quickly and go for an on-the-spot seduction. These are some of the few scenarios in which a sexual transition has real world usefulness. So what is a sexual kiss transition? The sexual kiss transition occurs when you've ramped up physical escalation, primarily with incidental touch, to the point where a girl is so turned on that she's absolutely dying for something to happen between the two of you... and then you give it to her (in the form of a kiss). You'll most often run into this situation with a girl being tremendously turned on in bars, nightclubs, and parties, which is what limits the usefulness of the sexual transition - if you escalate to kissing with a girl in public, you vastly reduce the odds that she goes home with you that night, or ever again. Said otherwise, using the sexual kiss transition in public, except where noted above, is usually going to make you less likely to get together with a girl... not more. But how about back at your place or hers? I've had a few friends who were experts at getting a sexual kiss transition to occur when they were alone with girls. These friends would get girls physically close to them, begin physical escalation with their girls, and then transition to the kiss. Usually though, this is impractical, because until you're good at sexual escalation, it can be a pretty slow process, especially if you haven't laid the proper groundwork earlier in your interaction with her. There's also a "jarring" effect of transitioning a girl back to your place, in which many of the emotions from earlier have been severed and you've got to recreate them. This is hardest with sexual transitions, because they're so reliant on strong degrees of emotion, which take time to build. For most guys, the sexual transition to kissing will be harder to do than the romantic transition, and its usefulness is lower than the spontaneous transition. It's right in the middle, but not in a good way... it doesn't really have any strengths. Well, except one perhaps: of all of the three transitions, the sexual transition is the most fun. What's fun about it? Because of the way it works, you tease a girl, excite her, arouse her, and stimulate her until she is so desperate to have you that by the time you finally kiss her, it's fireworks. For that reason alone, you might still want to learn this one. On the plus side, it sets better expectations than the romantic kiss transition, and it's easier to pull off than the spontaneous kiss transition. It also has the added benefit of training you in solid physical escalation technique while you're learning it, which you won't necessarily need once you get advanced enough with women, but is one of those things that helps tremendously while you're learning and is good to know in a pinch once you're established. Here's how the sexual kiss transition works: Proximity. Lots of proximity. The sexual transition to the kiss is similar to the romantic transition in that you've got to be close to the girl. But while you want to be close to the girl for a romantic kiss, you've got to almost be on top of her for a sexual one. A major part of what makes the sexual kiss work is that there is a build-up of sexual tension and desire while she becomes more and more excited at the prospect of touching you more, sleeping with you, and yes, kissing you. You create that build up via lots of very close physical proximity. You also create it through... Strong incidental touch building up into other forms of touch. Discussed briefly in the excerpt from the eBook (and far more in-depth in the book) on touching women, incidental touch is, in a nutshell, touching women incidentally throughout the course of your interactions with them. The reason this is important is because you need to be continually getting more and more physical contact to trigger her sexual emotions and desires. That's what physical contact from a man she's attracted to does - it primes her for mating. It readies her for courtship processes like kissing and sex. Through touch, you effectively prime women to receive your sexual kiss transition. Sexual tension. You create sexual tension through the two bullets above - proximity and incidental touch - and also through having a strong sexy vibe, great presence, and use of sexual frames and chase frames. Sexual tension is the build up of the desire to do something with you - she's becoming more and more and more attracted - without her knowing for sure if you will do something with her. You need to be careful you don't lead her to suspect you won't do anything with her while you build it up - lest you put her into auto-rejection - but if you use it right, you can build a lot of desire for your kiss and have some of the most passionate kisses of your life with it. Like the spontaneous kiss, you can use manhandle kisses with a sexual transition and have it be pretty natural too. But unlike the spontaneous kiss, because there's a high degree of emotion, you've got the potential for having things not be so good if the kiss goes awry - if, say, you grab her to kiss you, then she strongly pushes you away. So, I usually only recommend manhandle kisses for guys who are already pretty advanced - and with the sexual transition, that much more so. Before you use a manhandle kiss and a sexual transition in concert together - and they're a very powerful one-two punch when you execute them properly - I really, really recommend you get good with each skill separately, first (e.g., practice the sexual transition without manhandle kisses, and practices manhandle kisses without the sexual transition, with, say, a spontaneous transition instead). And, a disclaimer on the sexual transition: this kiss transition, more than any other, defuses sexual tension if it doesn't lead immediately to the two of you becoming lovers. That's because sexual tension is predicated on excitement and uncertainty, and: A romantic kiss leaves a girl feeling excited about her future relationship and wanting more with the man A spontaneous kiss leaves a girl feeling excited but confused and still uncertain what the man's intentions are - he isn't behaving at all like how most men behave after they kiss her... what's going to happen with this intriguing, mysterious man? A sexual kiss gives the woman certainty on the one thing she was interested in this man about - whether he has sexual intentions towards her, too. And the instant she knows that... most of her interest and excitement drains away, and she's in command. She calls the shots. And when the woman is calling the shots, she puts the brakes on (for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are preserving her reputation, preserving her self-image, and rotating the man down into a provider candidacy rather than a lover candidacy - see "What Women Want" for more on that dichotomy). It's possible to use a sexual kiss transition in public, away from a seduction location, and still manage to keep a girl around long enough to get her alone somewhere with you and make something happen. But you must be calm and you must lead strongly, and you have to make something happen as soon as possible. Want to take her phone number and call her to come over later? It's not going to happen, 98.2% of the time. When you make yourself into the exciting, scintillating lover persona, then begin the mating process (that's what a sexual kiss is; it's the commencement of mating), then proceed to fail to deliver on the impending sexual release and gratification that the sexual kiss promises, you get written off instantly. If you want to use the sexual transition to kissing right, wait until you're alone somewhere with a girl to use it, or until you've got your logistics set to get somewhere alone with her very fast. Don't pull a bait-and-switch on some poor girl - don't start physical intimacy, then stop mid-process and not deliver in full. how to kiss a girl how to kiss a girlSo now you've got your transitions down. You realize that a kiss isn't an isolated incident, but something that's built up to, and that the build-up is arguably THE most important part. Watch a great movie ending after sitting through the whole movie, and you're blown away. Turn the movie on and skip right to the ending and you're... unmoved. That's a kiss. It's the great ending to a great movie, but if you skip the great movie and go right to the kiss, it loses most of its thrust. You've got to build things up properly first. For a romantic kiss transition, this is through a great date. Same with a spontaneous kiss transition. For a sexual kiss transition, this is through a ramping up of sexual tension and desire. Regardless which path you choose, you need to build things up to the point where she really, really wants to kiss you before you kiss her... if you want to give her a kiss she'll remember for a lifetime, that is. A kiss she'll remember when the two of you are fifty years old with three kids, or that she'll still remember when she's fifty years old and married to some other guy, but still thinks often of you. That's the kind of kiss you can give her with great build-up and a great transition. The actual mechanics of a kiss play a far smaller role. But they're still worth knowing anyway, if only to improve your confidence that once you actually get there, you know how to kiss a girl the first time (or any time) and do a fantastic job. HOW TO KISS A GIRL... AND BE AMAZING You know the old saying: "Only fools rush in." Well, this goes for kissing as much as anything else (even for the spontaneous kiss... I'll discuss how just below). A rushed kiss is a bad kiss, plain and simple. Picture a guy in a movie who's got to go save the world, who grabs a girl and kisses her really fast, then rushes off to go fight monsters or aliens or Nazis or zombies or whatever it is. Is that ever an incredible kiss? No, it's not. It's a rushed kiss... and it's nice, but it's emotionless... and it sucks, as far as kisses go. And that's no way to kiss a girl. That in mind, let's plunge into our bullets on being great at kissing women: Build some anticipation. She really ought to be trembling by the time your lips touch hers. Lean in... get your mouth very, very close to hers... then stop, just for a split second. Let your breath touch her lips. If she leans forward and tries to kiss you, pull back a little bit so that your lips stay just out of range of hers. You can tease her this way for half a second, or for three seconds, or even longer if you're a big tease. Why's this work? Because women are most attracted to experienced men (see the article on preselection) who know how to lead women. Begin lightly. Most men plunge inelegantly into a kiss, diving into women's lips and sometimes even into their mouths, tongue-first. This lack of control and of teasing is not good form, and it's not a good kiss for a girl. It can even be sloppy, messy, and downright annoying. Instead, begin by very lightly kissing her lips. You can think of this as "nibbling" on her lips. Kiss one of her lips at a time... don't try and suck her entire mouth into yours as so many inexperienced kissers are wont to do. Lightly kiss her upper lip... then lightly kiss her lower lip. At that point, she may be trying to suck your mouth in... but don't let her. Not yet. Wait for her to be almost desperate to kiss you more passionately. You can't always get this one... if you didn't build up emotions properly, or if you're doing a spontaneous manhandle kiss, for instance, she might not always have a strong desire to kiss you passionately - and some girls just aren't passionate kissers, plain and simple. Some girls don't even like kissing all that much. But with the ones who like it, and the ones who are excited and passionate, wait for them to reach a fevered pitch before you really dive in. You'll know you've reached that point when she begins kissing you faster and deeper, grabbing you with her hands, and moaning a bit. The moment that starts happening, she's reached a threshold where she can no longer contain her desire for you... and it's time for you to turn the dial up on the heat. Now, dive in. Once she's properly bursting at the seams - or, if she isn't passionate or hasn't been emotionally primed, then once you've spent about 2 or 3 seconds kissing her lightly - now you can open your mouth widely and really start making out. I know, you wanted to do it immediately on kissing her... but trust me, she'll be blown away at how good a kisser you are by drawing it out just those extra couple of seconds and creating an experience for you. How exactly do you "dive in?" You do it by kissing her with your mouth open very widely, opening and partially closing it as you kiss her open-mouth. This is easiest to do with your head tilted at an angle compared to hers - she should do this with you naturally. You want to be passionate here. This is important. A passionate kiss is a great kiss, and if you're not naturally a passionate person, it's okay, you can learn. I'm naturally a very dispassionate person (except when I'm angry...), but I've had plenty of women tell me I'm very passionate because I trained myself up to be. At first it was a bit odd and forced for me, but these days I don't even have to think, "Be passionate;" it's all down pat and automatic at this point. You can make it that way too if you make yourself act passionately (essentially, doing things harder, deeper, and closer). If you're naturally passionate, of course, you get a mostly free pass here... but do ask yourself if it's possible you could be more passionate. Vary where and how you kiss her. Now that you're free to kiss her open-mouth, you should just do that the whole time... right? Wrong. That's boring! No girl can stay excited by a guy who just keeps kissing her the same way for minutes on end! Instead, you want to vary things up, between kissing her open-mouth, kissing her lips, and lightly biting her lips. When you kiss her lips, you won't be doing the same light kissing as you did when you first started kissing her - now you want to kiss her lips deeply and passionately. Mix up your kissing, kiss her different ways for different lengths of time (measured in seconds, not minutes) - don't move too erratically from one kiss to the next, but don't spend so long doing one kiss that the seasons start changing outside, either. You can also change the tilt of your head - this is a very passionate move. Your head might be tilted to your right, and hers to her right, and then you'll tilt your head to your left and move her head to tilt to her left. You can change your head tilt multiple times, within even 5 or 6 seconds of each - e.g., start light kissing... 3 seconds later, start passionate kissing... 5 seconds later, change the tilt of your head... 6 seconds later, change it again. After this, you'll want to pause for a little while... don't keep changing the tilt, she'll think you've got some massive tic going on! But a little bit of this can be very exciting. Should you ever French kiss? I'm of the mind that a French (tongue) kiss is an inelegant kiss, and it defuses a lot of passion and removes much intrigue. I think you want to break the "tongue barrier" at some point early (but not too early) into a kiss, just so that she doesn't think you're afraid of French kissing or don't know how, and also so she doesn't think you're a stick-in-the mud she has to control herself around if she really likes tongue kissing, but after that you mostly want to leave it alone. If she wants to do it, fine, but you'll find what she'll enjoy even more than you rubbing your tongue back against hers is if, once her tongue darts into your mouth, you kiss her tongue (with your mouth and lips) instead. Not many men (no men?) will ever have done this to her before, and it's quite exciting and different. Stop at some point... then go back in. At some point early into kissing her, I strongly recommend you to stop, pull back a bit, and stare directly into her eyes with a small smile on her face. You can compliment her - "You're a good kisser" - or not, it's not very important - whatever makes you feel more comfortable. But the important thing is that you do it. Why's this important? Basically, it's good for two reasons: It lets her feel you're very in control (which is very attractive to her) And it prevents her from doing it first (which some women will do to try and seize control over things from you if they want to slow things down or position you more in a boyfriend role or a "some guy who's trying to get me" role, rather than the lover role or the "some guy she can't keep her hands off" role that you want established) Stopping briefly and then resuming is a strong move that ups attraction and unwinds the desire that most stronger women have to seize control of things and direct them the way they want them to go. Essentially, you show a girl that you know how to direct things, and will take them in the most compelling, exciting, fulfilling direction there is. ... and that's it. If you do all those things, and put together a great experience throughout the course of your interaction with a girl, and follow that up and precede your kiss with a flawless transition, you'll give her a kiss that will curl her toes. KISSING A GIRL: RECAP how to kiss a girlThat was a ton of information, and this is an over 7,000-word post. That's 1/10 of a nonfiction book you just read. So let's do a recap before your head explodes. You'll see that it's not as complicated as maybe it feels right now, because we went into a lot of detail and explanation. Let's pull you back out of it into the big picture now, so you'll understand how to kiss a girl without having to pull a print-out of this article up from your pocket mid-seduction and hope she doesn't notice. In essence, there are three transitions: The Romantic Kiss Transition The Spontaneous Kiss Transition The Sexual Kiss Transition The romantic kiss transition: Is the easiest of the three to do Is the hardest of the three to transition into a girl being your lover or girlfriend Is the least flexible of the three (mostly only useable in private) The spontaneous kiss transition: Is the hardest of the three to do Is the easiest of the three to transition into a girl being your lover or girlfriend Is the most flexible of the three (useable anywhere) The sexual kiss transition: Is intermediate in difficulty to do Is intermediate in its ability to transition into a girl being your lover or girlfriend Is intermediate in its flexibility (useable anywhere, but doesn't always work for getting a girl to stick around and get together with you later) A great transition follows a great interaction, filled with fantastic conversation (in the case of romantic or spontaneous) or rapid physical escalation (in the case of sexual), and leads to an amazing kiss. An amazing kiss consists of (in addition to a great interaction and build-up, and a great transition): Hovering in front of her lips prior to kissing her to build anticipation Starting your kiss by lightly kissing one of her lips at a time or "nibbling" Waiting until she reaches the point of desperately wanting to kiss you Then diving in with passionate open-mouth kissing Vary your kissing with passionate lip kisses and head tilts Give her a little tongue, but don't make it a centerpiece of your kissing At some point early into the kiss, stop kissing her... wait a moment, then return And there you have it, your complete guide on how to kiss a girl. Feel like you're ready to get going? Of course, there are always more tips and techniques to cover... if you have any special kiss moves of your own that work great, please share them in the comment section below and let us know what they are. Here's wishing you a lot of incredible kisses with a lot of incredible women.

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##How to Make Female Friends (as a Guy) In "Guy Talk: Here's How to Kick Butt at Talking to Other Men," JFav (a commenter singlehandedly responsible for perhaps 20% of the "a reader writes in" type articles I've written here) writes in asking about how to make female friends: female friends "Hey Chase, Was reading through this article again and it's great stuff! Can't believe I haven't been using it all this time. Though as I was reading though a thought popped into my head, could there be a companion article to this concerning women? I'm not sure if what I'm asking isn't already covered on here but I thought I'd ask anyways. I've always been fascinated with those guys that just get women and can instantly turn them into a friend or ally. Much like the way you said you can turn any man into an ally I'm sure you can do that with a woman too. So, I was wondering if you could a write up on this kind of thing. You talked about this subject briefly in Girls Chase ebook where you compared the female and male conversational style. I'm asking about this because I'm in a spot in my life where being active in pick up difficult for me so having some female companionship in terms of having invites to parties or clubs is my best bet right now." And just the other day, Ryan had a similar question in the latest Carnival of Dating Advice: "Hey Chase, I was wondering if you could write an article about what to do if you want to be good friends with a girl. All your articles have been really helpful but i'm not sure how to apply the techniques to a girl whom seducing would be inappropriate, but you still want her to admire and respect you as a good friend. Could you write something about this please? Thank you :)" JFav and Ryan are right - there isn't an article on Girls Chase yet about turning women into friends - so let's correct that situation. female friends That's a clip from When Harry Met Sally, and a good introduction to the problem with male-female friends: the sex thing. What Billy Crystal is talking about is something you're always going to deal with when looking for female friends - the inevitable question of sex and attraction. Men and women treat friendships themselves a little differently: Men's friendships are generally "alliances" where the men have teamed up to shoot the breeze, watch each other's backs, or accomplish some shared objective, like traveling the world or getting girls or building businesses Women's friendships are generally either "security blankets" or "social elevators," where the friend serves the role of either making the girl feel more secure about herself and/or her options in life, or gives the girl some chance to elevate her position socially There's also the "close friend" type friendship, which is common to both men and women - this is different from any of the pure "alliance," "security blanket," or "social elevator" friendships you'll see. This one's a genuine close connection between two people who simply get along very well and are emotionally connected and have similar interests, aspirations, and directions in life that complement each other rather well. These friendships are the most enduring, but they strengthen or weaken as the parties' goals, interests, and directions move closer together or farther apart, respectively. In addition to these are the "friend who wants to be more" type friendships, where the parties are just friends but one of the two would like there to be a sexual / romantic element as well. Unless dealing with two very sexually and romantically inexperienced individuals, these friendships are always one-sided; that is to say, one friend sees the other as a potential partner, while the other sees the first friend as an ally or a security blanket or a social elevator. I won't go into male friendships - we talked about those quite in detail in the article on guy talk. But what I would like to delve into a good deal here are the four kinds of dynamics you can have with women from the standpoint of forming friendships: Security Blanket Social Elevator Close Friend Potential Mate ... and the ties and connections and interplay between those four. THE SECURITY BLANKET If you've ever found yourself relegated to the friend zone, you're all too familiar with the security blanket role. This is the nice guy waiting in the wings biding his time; he's usually attracted to her, and she usually isn't much (or isn't at all) attracted to him. If you have any trouble getting your head around this one, check out "The Sad Tale of "Shopping Guy"" for a pristine example of this; my guess is most men have run into this at one point or another, or at least watched their friends loll about in this unenviable role. The security blanket friendship is one where the girl spends time with someone only because it makes her feel better about herself and more secure. It's the nice guy friend, or the fat girl friend. The friend she's able to be around with and think to herself, "See what a great person I am? I allot some of my time to her!" or, "He's an okay guy, and it makes me feel safer to know that he thinks I'm amazing and is there in case I ever need anything." A lot of men get upset when they realize that women see them this way, but they shouldn't. I've heard it said that the men control the resources, and the women control the men; and this is generally how things play out. A woman is always looking for men to have around her who can provide resources to her and make her feel safe and secure. This is a basic survival instinct, and there are many men willing to compete for those provider roles. Sometimes the nice guy provider friend role becomes a romantic and sexual partner eventually; frequently this is not the case. However, for men with no better options with women, this at least provides them "a chance," even if that chance is not all that considerable. THE SOCIAL ELEVATOR This is the person a girl becomes friends with because she perceives him as being higher in social status than she is, or because she sees he has access to high social status she'd like to use him to connect with and get into the good graces with. The fat girl who's friends with a beautiful girl is in a security blanket - social elevator friendship, usually; the fat girl provides a security blanket to the beautiful girl (because the fat girl either makes the beautiful girl feel more secure by contrast, or the fat girl provides some sort of protective / leadership role for the beautiful girl in social situations that the beautiful girl isn't well equipped to handle on her own), while the beautiful girl functions as a social elevator for the fat girl (she gets a social status boost from having a pretty friend, and potentially some of the pretty girl's cast offs and left overs - more attractive, higher status males than she'd be able to get naturally on her own). Likewise, women are interested in men as friends who provide some manner of social elevation for them too - the guy who's connected with all the big bosses in the firm the girl and he both work for; the guy working as the head bouncer who can usher her into that popular club she likes free of charge without waiting in line and get her into exclusive after parties; the guy who everyone considers the most popular kid in school, or the most dynamic go-getter at work with "rising star" written all over him. All these men can help a woman elevate her position by association, and gain access to higher caliber people. female friends Let's stop here and consider the differences in goals and objectives men and women have in friendships for a moment. Men's goals are: Increasing their fitness and survivability Increasing their resources and holdings Women's goals, meanwhile, are: Increasing their security and survivability Increasing their ability to land a higher caliber mate (you could arguably include "having fun" as a goal, but we're very picky about whom we have fun with - you probably wouldn't have much fun sitting back and shooting the breeze with a delirious homeless person, because he doesn't help you get closer toward any of your primary goals for a friendship) Gaining access to mates isn't actually a primary consideration in men's usual friendship building (with the exception of the friend who wants to be more than a friend, of course), but for women, the underlying reason for seeking to elevate one's position is ultimately to gain access to the highest caliber mating options available. The instant a woman lands a man she's thoroughly satisfied with all the way around, her efforts to social ladder climb abruptly stop, and her interest in friendships with social elevators dries up and shrivels away. THE CLOSE FRIEND The close friend is an extension of one of the three main friendship archetypes the alliance (male), and the security blanket (female) and the social elevator (female). Close friends evolve out of one of these friendships that proves valuable to both members and where both members of the friendship become close, open up to one another, and come to emotionally associate with, care about, and bond with one another. In men and women, close friendships frequently become sexual. They're also relatively uncommon. The most common close male-female friendships you'll see are between homosexual men and heterosexual women, but even these often become sexual - many mostly homosexual men have bisexual tendencies, and as the relationship becomes close, the woman gets desires for the man she believes she can't have, and eventually one night with too much drinking something happens. What I'm going to advocate you focus on building in terms of female friends is close friendships that you ideally never get sexual or romantic with. These can evolve from either security blanket or social elevator friendships (on the woman's side; they'll always be alliances on your side); but the end goal is, you reach a point where you and a girl are intimately close with one another while refraining from physical intimacy. THE POTENTIAL MATE This one blurs the lines on all the others, because there is always a question of "What if?," if at varying levels of certainty or uncertainty. e.g., a woman with a really nerdy, goofy male friend is 99.4% certain she'll never sleep with him, but there's still that 0.6% chance; meanwhile, a woman with a really sexy, Adonis-like male friend is 96.3% certain she will sleep with him, but there's always that 3.7% chance that when push comes to shove she'll back out and say "not interested after all." Like Billy Crystal says, there's always the "sex thing" there to some extent. Where you want your friendships to end up is such that your female friend is a lot more interested in sex with you than you are with her. That doesn't mean you're disinterested; it just means you could take it or leave it, but you're pretty sure if she had a chance she'd take it. If the positions are reversed - if you're a lot more desirous of her than she is of you - then you aren't the one calling the shots in the friendship, and you're going to have a hard time maintaining this friendship as something that generates value to your life - a friendship where you can't stop thinking about your friend as a partner candidate is a giant distraction. It impedes your ability to meet new women and saps your will. Not so for women - women keep getting approached by new, charming, attractive men, no matter how hard up for you they might be. And women are far more practical than men are - and far more likely to take a look at a guy they're crushing on and say, "Well, if he isn't going to give it to me, I'm going to let this other guy do it instead." In fact, some of the women I've made girlfriends of mine were crushing in a big way on some guy friend of theirs before we got together, but it didn't stop us from getting together (oftentimes, these men decide they actually do like the girl after all, but only once it's too late and she's off the market with a man she sees now as more attractive than she sees them. Such is life...). One of you is always going to want the other more than the other wants him (or her). My advice to you as a man is to make sure that the one with greater desires is her, not you. And if you end up in a friendship where you're falling head over heels for a girl who sees you as just a friend, it's time to close up shop on that friendship and get out now before it becomes a poison for you (and for her... there's nothing quite like some overly obsessed guy who can't get over her to freak a girl out, or annoy her at least). female friends Like we discussed in "How to Make Friends? The Master Key to New Friendships," forming new friendships is really rather difficult for most people outside of the classroom or the workplace or, sometimes, where you live. And even in those environments - classes, work, or your residence - you're only becoming friends with whatever people happen to be present, and that you happen to have enough in common with. If anything, I think this actually puts you at an advantage. Most people don't know how to make friends, and they don't know where to find friends, and they don't know how to meet the caliber of person or the kind of person they'd like to get to know to have as a friend anyway. You, on the other hand - at least after reading that article on making friends, and this one on making female friends - do. HOW TO MAKE FEMALE FRIENDS In the article on making friends in general, we discussed the impact of social constraints on the ability to make friends. That is, the more socially constrained someone is - the more restrictions society places upon him or her - the tougher it is for that person to make new friends. In general, you will find that women have more social constraints than men do. Women tend to have fewer, closer connections than men do, while men have more and shallower connections than women do. Men simply keep looser networks with more people in them; most women do not. And the tighter and closer someone's network is, the more difficult it is to break in. When you're reasonably new to socializing, you may find girls who are club queens among the easiest of "desirable" female friends to make. That's because club queens employ a more masculine "loose, shallow" network of friends and acquaintances than the typical "few, close" network most women do. But as you want to meet more and different kinds of women, the question becomes how do I break in with all those OTHER girls? Because once you start trying to make female friends in earnest, you'll quickly find that the great majority of women are: Somewhat guarded and cautious - why do you want time with them, exactly? Somewhat pressed for time already - if she's pretty, a lot of people want to be around her Already at or near full social capacity if she's living in a city or town she's "established" in - i.e., she went to school there, knows lots of people there, has her social circles long since sorted out and people's different positions in them appointed, etc. For those three reasons, you'll find it's easier to make female friends sticking to the following three rules: Aim for more outgoing women as friends. Girls who are outgoing are more comfortable interacting with others socially; they're more experienced; less guarded and skeptical; and more likely to take initiative in making the friendship happen. They're also generally better female friends for you - while reserved people can be deep and interesting, women who are thoughtful and reserved tend to make far better mates than they do social acquaintances, for a variety of reasons we'll go into below. female friends Make yourself very valuable to have as a friend. If you're doing the stuff we talk about on this site - if you're a talented conversationalist, if you deep dive, get to know girls, maintain an edgy, sexual vibe - you'll be very attractive as both a potential mate and a potential friend to just about every woman who meets you. The more "in-demand" a person is, the more she must be able to recognize instant, immediate value gains by having you in her life, and most of that is fundamental stuff like your nonverbals and your conversational aptitude. Look for women new in town - or newly single. Simply for practical reasons - when people are new in town, they tend to start on "social circle building" sprees anywhere from the moment they first arrive in town to 3 to 6 months in, and these generally last 6 to 9 months until they have a firmly established new circle - and then they reduce their social activity from the fevered pitch it was at while building the circle to a more subdued "hanging out with friends" pace. Many women will also launch on friend-gathering expeditions following breakups, too - especially if the relationships they were in were long and they'd been socially out-of-touch for a while. Women are much more open to new friends while in one of these "new in town" or "newly single" friendship-finding modes than they are once they're established with a core group of close friends and connections. As with male friends, you want to front-load your value in making new female friends - that means, ask not what your friend can do for you, but what you can do for your friend, to paraphrase John Kennedy. After meeting her, invite her to: Parties Dinners Brunch Barbecues Hang outs Study groups Happy hours Nights out at the bar or club Weekend activities Trips to the beach (with other people) Hiking expeditions (with other people) Cool things you found on Meetup.com or somewhere else The point is to just start inviting her to stuff - the cooler and the more diverse the activities you invite her to, the better. Especially if you aren't someone who likes doing a lot of stuff, this might be a little hard for you, but it's well worth doing because: It gets you trying lots of new things you ordinarily wouldn't try, building up new reference points for you and making you a better conversationalist and better at relating to a broader swath of the people you meet It teaches you to be a better host (and makes you a shoe-in for the "social elevator" role), making you better at planning activities, gauging what new people you've just met will like and not like, and discovering which activities are good to do with which people, and which activities are not It paints you as a fun, energy-bringing, high value individual, which is the kind of individual that most women want to be friends with There are two things you want to do with new female friends fairly early into a friendship: You want to go on some group activities together, and You want to do something that's just the two of you together On that latter, you want to avoid anything with any kind of "date" feel to it - brunch is usually a good option here, as is meeting up for a happy hour just the two of you after work, or meeting up for a bite to eat just the two of you before going out to join a party or night on the town with more people. The reason why you want this mix of group activities and one-on-one activities is to cover both bases in the friendship: the group activities are to make it clear that this is a friendship and that's what you want it to be, while the one-on-one activities are to give you the chance to really get to know her and her to really get to know you and for the two of you to form a real, deep, meaningful connection with one another as friends. If you only do group activities, you'll tend to get slotted into "just" the security blanket or social elevator type of friendship. You need to build a personal connection with a girl through some one-on-one meetings too if you want to move beyond these and get a real, close friendship going on. That said, there is still one other consideration when it comes to making female friends... THE SEX THING So what role does sex play in the forming of female friendships? Plenty. It is possible to have "friends you hook up with," although I'd advise you against this. It usually tends to ruin the friendship - one friend always gets more emotional than the other. Even if you sleep with a friend now and both of you go back to being pure friends after without any problems, when one of you goes through a rough spot with dating or relationships and abundance mentality starts to fade, there's a very good chance you or she begins looking back at that one night of pleasure through rose-colored glasses and pining for your friend to be something more. And at that point, the dynamic of the friendship changes completely. One of you becomes needy, and the other quickly feels that the friendship is no longer what it once was. The mentality of wanting to have female friends so that you can "sleep with them sometimes" is also a bad one for the reason that it's overcomplicating things and making life difficult for you - if you want to sleep with girls, just go find girls to sleep with and sleep with them, don't overcomplicate things by trying to be platonic friends first. Save friendship for women that you will not have sex with, even if some part of you might find the idea a little intriguing. Of course... just because you're not going to sleep with her doesn't mean you can't get a little sexual intrigue going on and build a little sexual tension. In fact, you should! Building sexual tension with your female friends is great fun, both for them and for you. It immediately sets you up as a "potential mate," which makes the friendship much more solid and meaty in addition to whatever other elements the friendship already had (closeness, social elevation, security, etc.). It electrifies the friendship, and gives it an undercurrent that you simply don't have with male friends. There's a constant question of, "What if?" just under the surface there, as the tension makes both parties wonder about, "What if we slept together?" There are some other reasons why it's very good to build ongoing sexual tension with female friends, too: It electrifies the friendship. The one we just talked about. It gives the friendship certain life and legs it would otherwise lack if it was a purely platonic, two-dimensional friendship. Tension adds a dimension to the friendship that makes it more exciting than it would otherwise be, and adds a bit of, "Ooh, I wonder what happens next?" to it that gives it a hint of the thrill of a new romance. It gets you used to women being very attracted to you. Particularly if you're still working on becoming a sexy man, learning how to build and work with sexual tension with female friends is a fantastic training ground, and it also gets you very comfortable with this tension (and not defusing that tension, which is something a lot of newer guys rush to do with laughter or jokes or fun stuff or telling women they aren't actually serious because they can't handle the pressure). It makes your female friends respect you more. There's just something about a sexually potent, powerful, attractive man that garners him more respect from women than a wet dishrag of a man - even if those women are just his friends. Women are naturally attracted to sexually powerful men and respect them more, just as men are naturally attracted to sexually powerful women and respect them more. It makes other women you meet take notice. I don't advise using female friends as "wing women" most of the time - even the most well-intentioned female friends usually hurt more than they help your efforts to meet girls (e.g., they want to hang out and talk, not approach; or, you don't want to leave them behind if you meet some girl you like, hampering your ability to pull) - though occasionally you can find a girl who's really committed to meeting new people with you and who really gets off on you picking up girls, and that can work. Normally though, just having a female friend who's clearly flirty with you and attracted to you makes other women very interested to get to know you. Personally, I go through periods of being something of a recluse, and other periods where I'm being very outgoing, spending a lot of time socializing, and really reaching out and getting back in touch with folks I haven't spoken with in a while. And when I've been out of touch with someone for a while, many of them will eventually reach back out and get back in touch with me... but it's been my experience that, while my male friends do this too, and we do reconnect, my female friends do it more regularly, more thoroughly, and are often much more serious about reconnecting than my male friends do, and I think a big part of this is due to sexual tension. It just makes those friendships you have it in a lot more interesting. HOW TO FIND FEMALE FRIENDS The flip side of making female friends is finding female friends, of course. Where do you go to meet these girls? If you're in school, this probably isn't too big a problem - you have class, or the dormitory, or your student apartment building. You have all kinds of social activities. You have group projects. Study groups. Computer lab. The cafeteria. Everywhere you go, there are people your age, many of whom don't know what they're going to do Thursday night or Sunday afternoon - and that's where you come in. Once you're out of high school and university though, this gets harder - you don't just bump into people your own age with similar interests to yours anymore; you have to go looking for them now. You have to find them out and hunt them down. Fortunately, many of the people you'll meet in the right places are doing the same thing as you - they're out looking for new friends. And most of them have no idea how to make those new friends. So, here you come with the ability to make meaningful conversation, with the knowledge of how to smoothly get a girl's phone number with plans to meet up later, with the situational awareness that you ought to offer value rather than ask for it when first setting up new friendships (or even late into established friendships - friendship isn't actually give and take, it's give [by you] and give [by her]). It's easy to see why when you're one of the few people out there who actually knows how to build new friendships quickly, reliably, and easily, you're well-equipped to make friends with just about whomever you want, so long as you stick to your friend-making process. Where specifically ought you go to find new female friends? Well, that very much depends on what kinds of female friends you'd like to have. If you'd like: Party girl friends, you'll want to meet them at bars, parties, lounges, and nightclubs - you can follow a lot of the same steps we covered in "How to Pick Up Girls in Bars and Clubs," except that instead of picking them up as lovers, you'll be converting them into friends (obviously, you won't want to turn the sexual tension up too high, otherwise it'll be a letdown when you don't close the deal and they'll go into auto-rejection... not very conducive to friendship, you might say) Chill, relaxed female friends, you'll want to meet them at happy hours, the beach, the park, relaxed social events... basically anything that isn't too high energy, crazy, or intense High-energy go-go-go female friends, check out networking events and social clubs; these kinds of girls tend to gravitate to these events, where you can spy them energetically moving around and engaging with almost everyone there - the girl who's beaming a 1,000 megawatt smile and seems to be talking to someone different every time you notice her is exactly this kind of girl - but you'll have to move fast, be very interesting, and propose a quick brunch if you want to meet up with her again later (she'll be open to it if she thinks you seem cool; she's there because she likes meeting tons of new people, after all) "Hot" / popular girl friends - this is one where it helps to really have one of those jobs that help you meet women, simply because these women have worked very hard to make themselves "in-demand," and now that they've made it it's very difficult to cut through the competition and differentiate yourself. The other way of meeting these girls is via day game - street approaches and meeting girls out shopping is best here. Try to get the girl to either grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate with you then and there, or set it up for a few days within meeting her, and then very quickly translate things into it being a friendship Note on that last - many times, one of your best sources for female friends is your same source for new girlfriends and lovers - picking them up off the street or in a bar or at a party or in a shop or store somewhere. However, it's very important with girls you want to make friends whom you meet this way that you make it very clear what your intentions are early on - and that you do it through actions and not through words. That means, you meet up with her once for coffee or brunch or what have you, and then you invite her to a group event. "Hey, my friend's throwing this art show this weekend, you should totally come;" "Hey Tanya, hitting the beach this weekend to join a bunch of friends - can I count you in?" "Lexie, going to this kickass party my friend's hosting Friday night - theme is German beer and German costumes. Intrigued and interested?" The reason you're doing this is that you want her to know that you are the one who shifted this connection into friendship territory - not that you were chasing her and she deflected you into the friend zone. That keeps the friendship on equal footing, even though you approached her initially, and allows you to maintain and build sexual tension - now you're the guy she thought she had, that apparently she doesn't have, but she still might like to have. (side note on invitations: make sure the invitation is worded more "You and I will be joining some people" and less "I'll be with a bunch of friends - want to join in?" One implies, "We two people will be hanging out and meeting new people together," while the other communicates, "I will be hanging out with my friends, and you can come and try to make friends with my friends" - you'll get a lot more "yes" responses to the former than you will to the latter) THE BENEFITS OF FEMALE FRIENDS Are female friends worth the trouble to cultivate? Wouldn't it be better to just sleep with women if you like them, or move on to greener pasture if you can't or don't much want to? Well, in fact, female friends do offer a number of benefits, especially for guys who are newer or intermediate to upgrading their dating and social skills: Female friends get you accustomed to having the kinds of women you like around, and help you learn how to relate to those kinds of women much more easily Female friends serve as very good testing beds for learning how to create, build, and direct sexual tension and sexual energy Female friends can provide a lot of additional value to your life, depending on the friend - from valuable business or social connections, to great conversation, to nuanced social lessons and skills - many of my gestures, facial expressions, voice tones, and much of my game come from things I've learned directly from girlfriends of mine and female friends of mine female friends Female friends can be a lot of fun too, so long as you remember that they're not the same as male friends. Female friends don't join with you to form a strategic alliance to accomplish shared objectives (even if those shared objectives are hanging out and pounding back beers). Rather, they initially form a friendship with you because you provide security or social elevation or seem like you'd make a good potential mate. For that reason, even as goals and life directions change, female friends normally won't drift away the way that male friends do - because you still represent some manner of security, or some degree of social elevation, or some potential as a possible future mate at some future unknown time. For that reason, the way I often like to think of it, female friends are lasting friends, and that's kind of a nice thing.

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##How to Make Friends? The Master Key to New Friendships One of our younger readers, by the name of Jaden, asked over in the comments section of my article "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way" about high school popularity, asking: "What would the process for becoming popular look like? I would say im on the edge of popularity, as the "cool" kids all talk to me and invite me to their lunch tables and stuff (hardcore, right?), yet they do not invite me to their houses and parties, which are actually quite fun. How can I develop an air of superiority, and is there anything in specific I can do to raise my status?" If I had to redefine that question to really get to its gist, I'd say it's more, "How do I make friends with the other students I want to be friends with?" than it is, "How do I make everyone like me more?" What Jaden wants here is to see these classmates of his outside of school - he wants to make friends. But he isn't the only one who wants to know how to do this better. There are plenty of people who struggle with making friends in high school and college - and even more once they're out of those places. If you thought it was hard making friends in an environment where everyone is your own age and you all do the same things, just wait until you're out of that environment, and you're working in the professional world where people range from 22 to 62. High school and college end up looking like friendship bonanzas compared to the working world that follows them. Making friends isn't actually that hard a process though - take it from me, a guy who spent his the entirety of his teenage years friendless, then reinvented himself and emerged as someone who made friends with jet-setters, entrepreneurs, seducers, celebrities, and millionaires. How'd I go from zero friends to friends with some of the most in-demand people you'll meet, whom everyone wants to be friends with? The secret, I found, lies in just one master key - from which all the other paths to friendship flow out. make friends When I moved to Washington, D.C. after graduating from university, I didn't place much emphasis on making new friends. I was six months into a driven, renewed commitment to learning how to pick up girls, and my main focus was going out to bars and nightclubs 3 or 4 or 5 times a week and talking to 10 or 20 or 30 girls a night. Sometimes I'd go out with my wingman and only real friend in town, and sometimes a few of his friends who were into pickup would go with us, but mostly I'd just go out alone. I had a few girls I was seeing, and very occasionally I'd go to a happy hour with people from work. But, most of my colleagues who were my age lived out in Fairfax, VA, or Alexandria, which I thought was insanity - why would you live so far from the big city, where everything is happening? Just to be closer to work? As it were, they mostly stayed out there, and I mostly stayed close to D.C. So I didn't make making friends a priority. In fact, it wasn't on my list of things to do at all - getting good with girls was the only thing that was, outside of work. My life was work by day, game by night, and that was the way I liked it. But when I moved to California that all changed, and, influenced by a friend out there who placed a great deal of emphasis on social circle, I decided to learn how to make friends and master the skill set once and for all. After all, it'd be a useful skill to learn, right? At first I wasn't good at it one bit - I was awkward, uncomfortable... try hard. But I was a fast learner, and within about a year and a half of working on it consciously and consistently, I was very good at making new friends very quickly with pretty much anyone I wanted to make friends with. It was then that I really started noticing how much trouble other people were having making friends. WHY'S IT SO HARD TO MAKE FRIENDS? As someone who didn't really have friends in middle school or high school, and whose university friends mostly consisted of first year floor mates he'd see once every month or two at the parties they threw, plus a couple of roommates thrown in for good measure, I didn't really start making friends until somewhat after my school years were already over. And I am acutely aware that this is the opposite of the norm for most people. Most normal, well-adjusted people complain about how hard it is to make friends after graduation, and talk about their friendship glory days back in high school and college, when they had their bands of good buddies and always had friends ready to ride out with them and do whatever any of them wanted to do. After school ends though, this changes for most people. The reason this is is that most people get their friends through: Their residence (especially in school) Their classes (in school) Their workplace (after school) ... but the workplace is a much less fertile ground for friendships than school is. For one thing, you have a far smaller pool of people your age with your interests at your work than you did in even the smallest school, at most jobs. For another thing, it's more difficult to make friends at work than it is in school - things are more formal, you're expected to keep more of a boundary between your personal life and your professional life, and there's a certain degree of competition between you and your workmates much of the time - only one of you is going to get the boss's job after he's promoted, after all. It's common in the post-school world to hang out with someone as friends once or twice, then never see that person again (or see them only in passing at work, if they were a colleague). Further, most people get set fairly quickly in their friendships, which can make it hard to break in - they don't need new friends, and the work of trying to roll you into their existing circle if you meet them and they hit it off can seem almost impossible for them (and for you), and so you both don't much bother trying. Both in school and after school, you'll see people follow this same pattern again and again: The coolest, most sociable people form their initial friendships fast, as soon as they're introduced into a new environment The somewhat less cool, less sociable people lag behind, slowly accumulating friendships The outsiders and the socially less savvy hang around, not sure what to do, hoping to be swept up and included by some "cool person," and only striking out in search of friends often much later, or being frustrated in their efforts to make new friends early on It's sort of like getting picked for the basketball team. The best players get picked right away, and the best players pick other best players to play with. The guys who can't shoot get left behind, and picked last, or not at all. What that means is, when you're not a friend-making, socializing machine, you tend to end up fishing around for friends, wondering how everyone else made their friends, and finding that too often you're shut out of the show. How do you get inside? But in addition to the difficulty of breaking into people's pre-existing friendship groups, there's another challenge as well: and that is that modern Western society is not set up in a way that makes it easy to build new friendships and affiliations. A FRIENDSHIP-FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT If you want to build a friendship, what are the elements you most need? Laughter? Conversation? Some form of mild intoxicant? Kismet and serendipity? make friends If you look at the environments where people are most likely to make new friends, you'll see a number of common elements: Exposure. People who go onto become friends usually have repeated exposure to one another in regular social environments. e.g., the other student you see and talk to again and again in class until you finally start hanging out outside of class, or the coworker you have to work with every day until eventually you start grabbing beers after work, too. Interaction. No matter if someone else is three cubicles down from you every day, or is in all the same classes with you in school, or lives two doors down from you in your apartment building, you will never become friends with this person if you never interact with him or her. You must build a friendship through interpersonal interaction, otherwise you never breach the "familiarity wall." Camaraderie. You'll notice that many of the people you've gone on to become friends with have been people you had some sort of "shared mission" with - be they people you worked with closely on a school or work project, or people you spent time complaining about how terrible your boss or instructor is with, or people you worked out at the gym with, or people you practiced martial arts with or learned to play tennis with. Regardless of what it is, there's some feeling of a "shared mission" there, as though you've done something together, and relied on each other somewhat, too. Some of the strongest friendships you'll see will be between members of one branch or another of the military - there are few things that give you as high doses of exposure to the same people again and again, large amounts of interaction, and camaraderie virtually by default like the military. And, as a result, military personnel typically come to have strong bonds between each other, and a high affinity for their branch of the service overall (because so many of their close friends are in it). I'd almost define the spirit and solidarity you see among military service members not as pure patriotism, per se, but more as a sense of strong brotherly duty and obligation - i.e., if all your friends are over there fighting, then by Jove you for sure want to support them. The problem all this presents for the lay person though is this: how do you make friends with people you aren't repeatedly exposed to, won't interact a great deal with, or have any kind of special camaraderie with from the beginning? Because if you can solve that problem, then you'll have unlocked the master key to making friends any time, anywhere, with well nigh anybody you want. make friends Early into my efforts to learn how to make friends and unlock a process and strategy I could use to good effect here, I struggled with the same thing I'd struggled with (and largely failed at) in high school and university: how do I make people invite me to hang out? I was able to make myself a compelling, magnetic person enough that I'd get asked out on dates by pretty girls or invited to parties by the cool kids. But because I was best with social anxiety, I always turned these down, and the offers stopped coming. What was even worse was turning myself into someone who started bugging people to hang out with me or invite me to go to their parties. I'd meet some cool guy out at a bar, and he'd tell me we should grab a drink sometime, we'd trade cells, and then I'd follow up and ask him about it a few times, but it'd never happen. I'd meet some pretty girl somewhere, and she'd tell me about a party she was going to and invite me to come, so we'd trade contact info, but when I'd ask her about the party later it'd never go anywhere, or I'd get some terse reply with just the date and time and location and I knew I wasn't going to get any kind of warm reception there. What was I doing wrong? I knew I was doing something wrong... it felt wrong, and I could tell from people's reactions it was wrong. I just didn't know what else I could do differently, or how to achieve better results making friends. SOCIAL CONSTRAINT'S PART TO PLAY In the April 1989 volume of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers Christopher A. Langston and Nancy Cantor published a paper entitled "Social anxiety and social constraint: When making friends is hard." The paper looked at a little-discussed facet of sociology known as "social constraint" as it related to friend-making in individuals making the transition from high school to college, and has this to say in its abstract: "Provides an analysis of social anxiety set within a longitudinal study of students in life-transition from high school to college. The typical first-year student expected social life tasks (e.g., making friends) to be rewarding and easy to accomplish, whereas a minority of students approached these tasks with anxiety. Second-year interviews served as the basis of observer-judges' Q-sort assessments of the students' strategies in social and achievement tasks. Students who reported the atypical pattern of anxiety about social tasks were observed to use an atypical social strategy of humility and otherdirected action (social constraint). Path analyses showed that differences in adjustment outcomes were not due to direct effects of initial social anxiety, but rather were mediated through the social constraint strategy. Students' perceptions of family life and prior experiences were used to suggest an explanation of use of this strategy." What the researchers found, then, was that one's friendship making ability has much to do with one's strategy concerning social constraint. What is social constraint? It is, effectively, how limited one feels in one's ability to take action socially. The more socially constrained you are, the more careful and conservatively you act socially. The less socially constrained you are, the more carefree and risk-taking you act socially. Now, there's perhaps a corollary to this: the better you know something (e.g., where the boundaries and limits are socially, what you can get away with, and what you can't), the less constrained you tend to behave, so I'd be inclined to say this one may show correlation, and not necessarily causation. Are these students better at socializing because they're less socially constrained, or are they less socially constrained because they're better at socializing? In any event, the findings here are still relevant for us, because they tell us that the students who are NOT successful socially are the ones who are: Overly humble Overly socially constrained That is to say, the students who do not succeed socially are the ones who don't put themselves out there and don't go after what they want. Makes sense, right? You're not going to learn the trombone if you never play trombone. Likewise, you can't get good with people if you never put yourself out there and try to get good with people. But how do you get yourself out there and get good with people if you don't know what to do? This is the one I always struggled with, and it was the one I eventually had to overcome to change my fate and start to make friends. HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS: THE MASTER KEY Humility, social constraint... these sound like the big thing I was doing for so many years that largely didn't work: waiting for the friends to come to ME. Why didn't it work? Because that's not how friendships work! People don't chase you down to be friends with you... and the kind of people who DO are usually not the people you want to be friends with (in my experience). Humbleness is good... in conversation. However, it's not so good as a friend-making strategy. Be humble in your words, but bold in your actions. This is the way of a truly effective individual. And, when it comes to making new friends, there is one powerful, compelling, enormously effective strategy to end all strategies, that blows them out of the water and gets you friends with little exposure, little interaction, and little camaraderie to speak of altogether... ... a strategy that works almost every time... ... and do you know what it is? Front-load your value. That is to say, be someone who is instantly a valuable addition to another individual's life, and then keep providing value until you start getting it in return. How's this work? Well, you've always heard the clichéd advice that you should "give before you get." Personally, I can't stand clichés, and that phrase makes me feel a little nauseous just to say. I almost want to do the OPPOSITE, just to prove it wrong... it's so smarmy and saccharine. But, the fact is, it hits on a very real and accurate phenomenon: that people respond far better to those who are constantly GIVING to them than those who are trying to GET. And this was what I realized when I was in California. By checking and bugging people to hang out or send me the information about that party they told me about, I was doing it all wrong. Because while they might enjoy talking to you when you first meet, once you're hounding them later to give you something, all they see you as is a liability; here's someone who wants something from me. At the same time, if you never follow up, you'll never get anything or anywhere, so that's no good too. So I started doing something different; instead, when I'd meet someone cool, someone I'd like to be friends with and see again socially, someone who invited me to a party or an event, what I started doing was this: I started finding ways to provide value to THEIR lives FIRST. BECOMING A VALUE-GIVING, FRIEND-MAKING MACHINE Now, this takes a certain degree of social awareness, and a respect for the Law of Least Effort and sprezzatura. One of the common mistakes you'll see socially uncertain individuals do is offer the wrong kinds of value; that is to say, they offer value that isn't that highly valued by the person they're offering it to. For instance, if you want to hang out with a jock-type guy who plays football and picks up chicks, you don't invite him to come over and play video games, even if you know he plays them sometimes on his own. Because a jock-type guy who plays football and picks up chicks is probably very cautious about not having too many things that aren't cool, and too many people who like doing things that aren't cool, in his life, so that's actually a low-value offer to him - if he says yes, he takes a value hit. Not good. On the other hand, if you want to get to know a software engineer who spends his weekends coding new web apps, you probably don't want to invite him to scrimmage with you sometime next week... that's going to make him turn and run in the other direction. The value you offer needs to be targeted toward the individual, and it must be something he or she will genuinely value. make friends Let's have a look at the different kinds of value you can offer to potential friends, and how you can modify that value depending on the individual. Conversational value. Conversational value is a lynchpin of value, and you want to train yourself to crank out value with every word out of your mouth if you want to have the maximum effect here (becoming very desirable as a friend). The kinds of value you can provide as a conversationalist include: Deep diving and connection-building Interest in strengths and calm admiration of them Advice and inspiration These will differ depending on whom you're talking to; some people are very much in need of advice and inspiration, while others maintain a rock-solid exterior and are really looking for someone to get to know about their accomplishments and recognize their success (that doesn't mean being stunned or amazed - "Wow!" - but rather a calm recognition, i.e., "That's really impressive," followed by exploring those accomplishments more deeply and giving the speaker the chance to regale you with them). Women are more likely to need deep diving and connection-building. Rule of thumb for men: if he's confident, get him talking about his strengths and points of pride; if he's less confident, look for opportunities to give advice and inspire. Also bear in mind that this is all relative to how a man sees himself in relation to you; even if he's confident, if he sees you as more accomplished than he is, he'll want a mixture of guidance and recognition typically. Implied value. This is the value someone intuits he'd get out of having you in his life as a friend. Too many people assume they should be able to just have anyone they want as friends without giving much in return, but it doesn't work this way; the reason you want someone as a friend is because of the value you think they'll bring into your life... and to have them as a friend, you should be bringing equal or superior value to theirs in turn. The more accomplished and in-demand the individual, the more value you must bring. e.g., if you want to be friends with some guy with no friends who's dying to be friends with ANYONE, all you've got to do is show up; but if you want to be friends with Bill Gates, who has tens of MILLIONS of people who'd like to be his friend and have him spend some of his time, wisdom, or money on them, it helps your cause if you're a scientist with a cure to malaria no one else has access to, or you've got a few hundred million to devote to his charity projects. Generally speaking, for most people, if you are doing interesting things with your life, this will be enough - because most people, even most cool people, are not doing interesting things with their lives. Having a friend like you with an interesting, inspiring life that they can learn from is an attractive deal. Forms of implied value include: You're an entrepreneur and run your own successful business You're an artist and create cool and beautiful things You have access to lots of beautiful women through your work or hobbies You have a broad network with lots of valuable connections You attend a lot of events/parties and know where things are "happening" You have hobbies or skills this person has an interest in, e.g., rock-climbing, traveling, skiing, etc., and you are better at these than them or can be a companion for them while doing them The question of, "Why would this person want to make friends with me?" should, in other words, be fairly easy to answer: because you have a lot to offer as a friend and he knows it! Offered value. Offered value is the value you actually offer to someone outright. What are you giving to them? Much of the time, when you offer someone something of value - and even better, when you actually deliver it - they will feel obliged to reciprocate... and they will want to reciprocate, and get pleasure out of doing it. You don't want to go overboard doing this - offer too much value, and this seems tryhard and the person feels like you're working too hard to try and lasso them in, which is not the right way to go about making new friends. So instead, you want to offer things that are thoughtful, tailored to the individual person, and yet are relatively effortless for you to offer. Some examples: Inviting someone to a party you're attending (or throwing) inviting someone to grab drinks with you with some friends Offering to introduce someone to someone else you think they'd like Offering to make a business connection or introduction to someone Offering to take a look at something free of charge in your area of expertise (e.g., "Send me your resume, I'll have a look at it and give you some feedback") Inviting someone to join you on a trip you're making ("I'm going to Greece this summer; you should totally come too, it's going to be a blast") When you offer value like this, people very quickly see you as someone who's going to bring value into their lives - and then they, at least as it stands with the socially adroit individuals you meet, will offer you value in kind, in order to retain you as a friend. Front-loading your value like this is how you make people want to have you in their lives as a friend. But it does something else for you, too: It puts you in charge of taking initiative and creating those opportunities for exposure, interaction, and camaraderie required for friendships to build and grow. Especially outside of the school environment, you won't make friendships out of thin air. But, just like taking leadership with women to get lovers and girlfriends, by taking the initiative and acting with the individuals you want as friends, you can create the opportunities and environments to build and establish friendships with most anyone you want. All you need is the chance to talk to them, and a pulse on what they'll value and what they want (and that, if you don't have it, can simply be developed from talking to people and exploring their interests and inclinations and finding things that most appeal to them). PARTING THOUGHTS ON FORMING FRIENDSHIPS make friends Most people go about making friends all wrong, trying to get before they give, either waiting for someone to reach out and take the initiative, or hounding someone to hang out with them or get them to their party or something else along those lines. The only people you see routinely going about building new friends and connections by front-loading their value are the really cool, socially savvy people - and they're whom you want to emulate here. You don't need to go through a military boot camp together to be friends, or to live on the same floor freshman year of college. You can absolutely form friendships outside of school, work, and the like - in fact, most of the people I'm closest with now I've met on the street or in a bar or at a party or through (believe it or not) Internet forums. As I look through the ranks of people I'm still close with, I count one (1) I met in school, and one (1) I met at work. Everyone else comes from places most other people NEVER make friends. You can make friends with nearly anyone you want to make friends with, so long as you work on yourself first, and turn yourself into a value-generating, value-giving machine (that gives appropriately measured and fitting forms of value, that is!). Because it isn't that people don't want to make new friends - it's just that they only want to spend their time and energy on people they feel can bring a lot of strong value to their lives. So, understand that, and know that it isn't just whom you want to be friends with that's important - it's how you're going to bring value to their lives in turn, and how you're going to communicate that to them, that's most important. Now, go out there and make some friends.

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##How to Make Her Want You: Lessons from Marketing If you're like most guys, figuring out how to make her want you can feel like a full-time job. But if you look at people who have similarly-veined full time jobs in their own right, you can make making women want you go a whole lot more smoothly, and a whole lot more easily. Take marketers, for one. Marketers have always fascinated me… They really have the art of persuasion and influence down to a *science*… and that's exactly what mastery of any skill should be: A marriage of both art and science. By way of an example, look at picking up girls…. There is the art, the intuitive part of game… the calibration, the spontaneity and simply being creative in the moment. Your right brain does all that. But there is also the scientific aspect of pickup. From psychology and biology, we know a lot about what women want, and a lot of behaviors can be predicted - and even triggered - quite consistently. It's no different with marketing. These guys *know* that if they spend x dollars on persuading people to buy their products, then they will make y dollars in profit… and they have SCIENTIFIC ways to make sure that pays off. At the same time, it's also an art… marketers are creative, artistic and innovative… they have to engage our EMOTIONS. Marketing, influence and persuasion have a LOT in common with the human mating game. The big difference between the two, however, is that people have been taking a SYSTEMATIC approach to marketing for about 100 years longer than they have to dating! They're a little bit ahead of us… So let's see what we can learn from them! LURE AND TEMPTATION… I remember when I first bought a book about picking up girls. The guy who sold the book was obviously not only good at meeting women, but also at persuasion… his sales letter made the book sound really intriguing. I just *had* to find out the secrets he promised to reveal in his book… secrets about getting women turned on, about avoiding rejection, about getting the first kiss, about making a girl want to sleep with you and even fall in love with you. But most of all, I was thinking… heck. This guy really did a good job of making me want his stuff! If I can only learn *that* from him and nothing else, and then apply it to dating… I'll be golden! And that's how this works… Walking up to a professional model that you've never met before, on a street corner out of the blue… and then convincing her to have sex with you hours (or sometimes minutes) thereafter… that is the gold standard of persuasion, if you ask me. Let me see anyone who hasn't spent hears honing his abilities persuading women pull that off. And this is VERY doable… I have done it dozens and dozens of times… and so have many other seducers I know. I mean hey - if a corporation can persuade people to spend a ton of money on a bunch of rolled up dried leaves that make their breath stink and kill them of cancer… surely we can persuade a girl to let us pleasure her to climax! That is the frame you want to come from when you're mastering how to make her want you… never think about sex as something you *get*. It is something you *give* to a girl… simply because she is going to experience TEN TIMES the pleasure you are. Or have you ever heard of a guy screaming to wake the neighbors and tearing a pillow apart during sex? Right; didn't think so… In fact, if you frame it right, you can even get girls to wine and dine you in exchange for the sexual pleasure you give them, and steer clear of one of the biggest dangers of dating altogether. MARKETING YOUR "SEXUAL SERVICES" how to make her want youSo if that is the product we have to offer, we OWE it to the women of this world to market it well, don't we? We wouldn't want them to miss out on that… it would be SELFISH of us not to give them all this pleasure. So let's look at pickup from that perspective… When we talk about customers in marketing, there are essentially three things we need to do: Lead creation - we need to put our product in front of people in order to find those who might be interested in it Lead conversion - we need to get these prospects to actually buy the product Customer retention - we want to keep the customers coming back for more As a rule of thumb, a customer is worth ten to fifteen times as much as a prospect. Not only that, it is also ten to fifteen times easier to create the same amount of revenue from a customer than from a new prospect. With pickup, it is essentially the exact same thing - there are, again, three essential things we need to do: Lead creation - we need to go out and approach girls in order to find those who might be interested in us Lead conversion - we need to meet up with these girls and actually begin a sexual and/or romantic relationship Customer retention - we want to make a good enough impression on these ladies to keep them coming back for more As a rule of thumb, it is ten to fifteen times easier to sleep with a girl again that you've already slept with, than it is to approach a stranger and get her to sleep with you … provided that you're good in bed (that's tomorrow's article). And while it is often more exciting to sleep with a girl you've never slept with before, simply because of the thrill of exploring each other and letting the sexual tension build up until you finally devour each other for the first time… it is probably a good idea to build up a little "portfolio" of your own. A black book of phone numbers that you can call up at any time… In fact, I would say if you're only doing one night stands, it might pay off to become a little bit more picky and start choosing girls that are beautiful and interesting enough for you to want to see them more than once! (By the way, for more about "customer retention" when it comes to sexy girls, check out my article about how to date multiple women) FILLING THE FUNNEL Have you ever had a dry spell before? I don't think there is any man in the world who's never experienced that in his life… it happens. But if you understand the laws of marketing, you can prevent it… there is a fool proof way to ALWAYS have a never ending stream of dates lined up… heck, if you have the free time for it, you could be dating a different girl every single night of the week with this method. Once you know how to make her want you and keep her moving through the process, getting a girl to come see you regularly is child's play. What's the secret, you ask? Keeping your lead pipeline filled at all times! You simply cannot rely on the one, or even two, phone numbers that you got yesterday. In fact, even if you have ten phone numbers, the ones you don't convert to physical relationships quickly will become useless within about two weeks. Let me walk you through my "marketing process" real quick… Let's say I want to ramp up my dating life, and increase my options… I will go out several times a week. At least twice, but four times is ideal when you're practicing, and also when you're refilling your pipeline. Personally, I only do day game, so I'd go out in the afternoon and talk to an average of ten beautiful girls per day. Let's say that five of those are going to give me their numbers. On some days I might get seven or eight numbers, on other days it might only be three… that will depend on a few things we discussed in the article with tips to help you sleep with girls. But I'm always going to put a couple of new leads in my funnel… that much is a mathematical certainty once you get the fundamentals down. It's simply the law of averages… so you better go after the most beautiful ladies you can find and get three of those, instead of three average looking ones! I'll then write these three to five numbers on a sheet of paper, and just keep doing that. After going out a couple of times, you will have a whole A4 sheet of paper full of phone numbers of stunning girls. How's that for a souvenir? EMPTYING THE FUNNEL What? Empty the funnel? That's right… you collect numbers quickly, and you eliminate numbers quickly as well. Studies have shown that the best sales people in the world have only two traits in common: they qualify the buyer better, and they build trust faster. We're going to talk about trust later, but the qualification bit means that they don't waste time on leads that are unlikely to close anyway! Uncle Pareto is going to yell at you if you keep chasing down the 80% of girls who are currently happily in a relationship, or who are really not interested in you for whatever reason… Sort through them quickly and find the 20% that are going to be really into you! Again, you've only approached beautiful girls, right? So these 20% are all going to be stunning! So text every girl once and ask her what her schedule is like this week. If you don't hear back, text her once more… if it's still radio silence after that, you cross the number out. You get a lot of numbers really quickly with this method, so you want to sort through them quickly as well, in order to find out which ones are likely to go somewhere. In fact, you should burn through this whole A4 page pretty fast and sleep with at least one to two new girls per week if you do so. That's four to eight new girls in bed per month! If you combine that with a solid date management system where you also focus on "customer retention", you will be in sexual relationships with 18 girls after 3 months. Which may sound ridiculous and hopefully fantastic, but is, like everything in nature, rather just a simple property of mathematics. Do the numbers and make it all work, and it works. If this is not your goal, by the way, you can still use this method to achieve whatever your specific goal is for your dating life. This method is so efficient at finding the girls that are a good match for you and getting involved with them that you could even find a wife that way if you wanted… and do it quickly. HOW TO MAKE HER WANT YOU: MAGNETIC MARKETING I assume Dan Kennedy probably holds a trademark on this term, but I'm going to go ahead and use it anyway since I'm pretty sure he has never talked about it in the context of dating 18 beautiful women at the same time. And when I say magnetic, I'm talking about a nice side effect that comes from having so much abundance… It instantly KILLS any neediness you may have deep down in your psyche! You know… a lot of coaching clients I take on would be able to solve a LOT of their sticking points by getting rid of the underlying CAUSE. Are you calling girls too often? You're probably feeling an unconscious neediness… Are you nervous before the approach? Again, feeling a bit needy without even being aware of it is probably the reason. Are you fumbling the close… afraid to pull the trigger? Same thing. If you keep your funnel full and then qualify your leads quickly… if you build your dating life by doing the math and playing the numbers intelligently… you will have the life of a Sex God 60 days from now. Guaranteed. how to make her want you And it will be physiologically impossible to feel needy at this point… which will automatically break the back of a lot of your supposed "outer game" sticking points as well. And make sure you do that with beautiful girls ONLY. When I say play the numbers, I'm not talking about whaling! "Thar she blows!" …not so much. Go after the GOLD my friend! Why's this, exactly? Well, here's the thing about abundance mentality: you can reach the point where you feel like it's no problem getting WOMEN, but you feel like it's a HUGE problem getting QUALITY women. And then, basically, you've just wasted a lot of your time. So instead of going out to get just any girl - which will leave you back at square one the instant you start pursuing the women you actually want - start going for the kind of women you want off the bat. TRUST The final element that makes an excellent salesman and marketer is that they are able to build trust QUICKLY. Now, how could you do that? The short answer is, if you really want to make her want you, be trustworthy! Really be authentic in your communications and interactions, and women will pick up on the fact that you're being completely honest and open with them… and they will trust you. If you try to lie your way into a girl's pants, the karma goblins will bite you where it hurts while you're still inside those pants… you can be sure of that. But if you communicate from your core, from your true purpose and your true desire, without leading her on about your intentions, you will be surprised how many women are open for just about any ride you want to take them on… In fact, I can't remember how many times girls have told me that they APPRECIATE that I'm so honest with them. It's like a breath of fresh air to them… They KNOW I'm not the guy to introduce to their mum… they KNOW I won't rent a tuxedo and buy them flat-pack Ikea furniture. But they also know that they can live out their own sexual fantasies without having to worry about consequences, or about being judged by anyone. They quickly pick up on the fact that I'm open minded… and that I don't kiss and tell. So honesty is the first way to build trust… it's the royal road to better relationships, no matter whether you want to be with her for a few hours or for a few decades. The second thing you can do to bond with girls faster, the way top sales people do with their prospects, is to share DEEPER things about yourself. Instead of telling her about your accomplishments like she was some HR Manager interviewing you for a cubicle position, tell her something you did when you were still 5 years old. Instead of name dropping and talking about the famous guy you met or the big shot rich dudes you hang out with, tell her a bit about your family, your siblings and even your grand-parents. And instead of talking about cars and computers… two topics girls really care as much about as you do about lipstick and eye liner… talk about the dog you took care of when your neighbor went on vacation. These topics give you depth… they make you human… they make you three dimensional and real. And that's what we're all starving for… even the girl on the cover of that magazine. A real connection… Make that mental and emotional connection with her, and SHE will make the physical connection FOR you. And then you'll see what the best salespeople and marketers all see: once you've got it figured out how to make her want you, you can run those processes almost on autopilot - and everything gets a whole lot easier.

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##How Many Attraction Factors are There? Infinite One of the biggest obstacles for a lot of men when it comes to improving with women is fixating on the wrong thing. attraction factors Much of this seems to come from improper understanding of some of the raw basics of attraction. When you see guys get hung up on one specific characteristic and blame that as the cause of all their woes with women, like the ones I discussed in "I Can't Get Girls Because Girls Only Want [BLANK]": Race Height Wealth Good looks ... it's because they misunderstand attraction. And when you see guys become (overly) obsessive about improving in one specific area, like muscles or wealth, it's because they misunderstand attraction. So how does attraction work? Because surely, all these things have some impact on attraction... right? But then, so do fundamentals. And game. So if all of them have some impact, then just how do these things all play together to affect a woman's ultimate degree of attraction for you? ATTRACTION: A RANKING OF MATE OPTIONS Here's the way attraction really works: There are about 3.7 billion men on Earth Every man ranks somewhere in that 3.7 billion in desirability Because women have differing standards, a guy might be #19,576,132 for one girl, yet #25,479 for another - a colossal difference Of course, that's assuming every woman was able to gauge and evaluate the mate value of every man on Earth The truth is, a woman's probably capped at seriously evaluating no more than 2,000 men lifetime, and for many women it'll be a lot less than this Chances are, she won't get to be with her top-ranked men, because they'll go for someone else (and if she does get to be with him, she'll feel like the luckiest girl in the world) Your goal is not to be Man #1 out of 3.7 billion. Instead, it's to be in the top 10 or so men out of the 150 to 2,000 men the girl you're talking to has evaluated The real question is not, "How do I be better than ALL the other guys I see?" It is, rather, "How do I get her to actually consider me?", followed by, "How do I be better than most of the other guys this girl's ever seriously assessed?" Both of these questions are answered the same way. FRACTIONS OF THE WHOLE Having been in the dating advice arena a pretty long time, I've had the opportunity to meet lots of guys from every spectrum of the "success with women" curve. And you know what I've noticed, all the guys who blame their failures on a single thing, be that thing any of the traits I listed at the start of this article, or something else completely ("It's my big nose" "My annoying voice" "The fact that everyone has an iPhone and I don't have an iPhone"), all these guys, they always suck across the board. attraction factors They're guys who miss social cues, they're depressing to be around, and you probably wouldn't invite them to your party if you threw one. And it never has anything to do with the reason they think is the reason people don't like them, because you've got 3 other buddies coming to your party who are exactly the thing these guys say people don't like them for being. Here's their problem: they fail to grasp that attraction is a recipe of a nearly infinite amount of different ingredients all mixed together to produce a final product. Attraction is contributed to by "fundamentals": How you move How sexy your walk is How sexy your voice is How good your eye contact is How good your hairstyle is How good your body language is What your facial expressions are like Whether you have attractive facial hair Whether you have a good physique Whether you follow the Law of Least Effort It's also contributed to by traits you communicate via "game": Your frame control Your skill as a conversationalist Your ability to use humor effectively Your ability to introduce a sexual frame Your ability to lead the interaction forward Your ability to handle obstacles and objections Your ability to keep the mood going the right way Your ability to make her feel the way you want her to It's also contributed to by myriad miscellaneous traits: Height Race Nationality Good looks Income Wealth Assets Worldliness Body proportions (shoulders, legs, neck, jaw) Facial features (big/little ears/nose/eyes/lips) Hair (straight, curly, wiry, balding) How you laugh Social proof Preselection Intelligence Education Resourcefulness Job prestige Hobbies ... and buckets more, in all three categories (fundamentals, game, and miscellaneous). All of these things factor in. But how much? Well, it depends. On the girl, on whether any particular one of these is in extreme supply or demand (e.g., wealth will get you substantially farther in sub-Saharan Africa than it will in Western Europe), et cetera. In general though, for any non-crazy girls, you won't see any of these contribute more than 10% to a man's overall attractiveness score. And usually the most any one of these might contribute is maybe 5%. Maybe. 10% in extreme cases. Unless you are horribly deformed, mentally retarded (which, if you've read this far, color me startled), or under maybe 4'10" in height. Then you may have the case of one specific trait contributing more than 10% to your attraction score, in this case as a detriment docking significant points off your desirability rating. Even still, you will still generally find some girls who are really into you if you have everything else in good shape. You can be retarded, but still get girls at least sometimes if you're Forrest Gump. That's the problem with guys who obsess over one trait or characteristic though: they never get everything else in good shape. They never realize that the one thing they're worried about shrinks to insignificance if they take all the OTHER things they can improve, and improve the living heck out of them. IGNORE THE UNIMPROVABLE Some things you can't "fix". Ignore these. They're irrelevant. Sure, would be cool if you could fix them. I'm sure I'd see a boost in my results with girls if tomorrow I woke up and I was richer or taller or handsomer or my nose wasn't as crooked or skin not as pale or I had blond hair and blue eyes instead of red hair and brown eyes or I had six-pack abs or was an incredible guitar player or piano player or whatever. Some of those things I can get if I work for them, some of them I never can. *shrug* There was a time in my life when I worried about some of these things - sometimes a LOT - but that time's long past, since I discovered enough things I could work on a lot more easily that provided much faster gains to my results with girls. Worrying about whether your face is too wide or your skin is too brown or your hair is too wavy is not worth the time it takes when you could be worrying about whether you come across with the warm feel of an old friend when she first meets you, or whether you exude the kind of sexual tension that makes panties moisten just talking to you. When you come across the unimprovable, don't obsess over it. Ditch it. It's useless stuff, and only there to trip up the lazy and the uninformed. Don't let it be your stumbling block too. You've got a million other things to improve instead - best to get going.

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##How Many Partners Has Your Girlfriend Had? Find Out Here Here's a post that's sure to raise some ire. Ricardus and I were discussing men's tendency to want to sleep with sexually open women, but to date or settle down with or marry sexually conservative women - and how difficult it is actually figuring out how many partners women have actually had because of this. You see, women are acutely aware of this male bias against sexually experienced women when it comes to getting into serious relationships - and they do everything in their power to avoid getting pinned as such a woman. "Everything in their power" here including, sometimes (okay, oftentimes), stretching the truth, leaving things out about their forgotten pasts, and, well, lying. Of course, women don't think of it as lying. It's more like, "Well, I slept with that guy on vacation, so he doesn't count," or, "That guy was totally gross, I should never have hooked up with him... as far as I'm concerned, that didn't really happened." It's a form of selective memory used by a woman to preserve her idea about herself as fitting perfectly into society's recommended mold: that of the "good girl" who doesn't give it up too often to men. Women who do part with their bodies too easily, society tells women, aren't valued as highly, so it's a big no-no. But, well, women are people, and people like and want sex, and sometimes it... just happens. Of course, a woman doesn't want other people to know it just happened... at least, not as much as it actually has just happened... because that impacts her perceived social and reproductive value. So, she stretches the truth, leaves things out, and, where necessary, tells a lie or two. Any women reading this site may not especially like this article, but if you're a man who's seriously considering a relationship with a girl, and you want to know what you're actually getting instead of what you're being told you're getting... how do you tell who's whom? SEX PARTNERS: A COVER-UP It can be very difficult to tell what's true and what isn't when it comes to how many partners a woman's had. She can tell you straight-faced and completely believably that she's only ever been with two men, or five men, or six men, when it's actually been a great deal more. You're a lot more likely to get something closer to the truth out of her if she doesn't see you as long-term material (see "Telling Women You're NOT Boyfriend Material"), but even then, women are naturally good at guarding against the unlikely becoming likely - even if she thinks you probably aren't a guy she'll ever take home to mom and dad, she's likely to still fudge the numbers a bit when she tells them to, purely out of force of habit... and out of a desire to make sure that there's no chance her real numbers could some how get out and make their way back to her circle. But wait, before I continue, let me address one thing: Why should you care? This is often a really heated topic everywhere I see it discussed: you'll find some people (usually mostly men) insisting that it really is important to know how many men a woman's been with, and others (often a mix of men and women here) protesting that it doesn't matter or shouldn't matter. People get heated and call each other nasty names and the debates get ugly. Here's why I think this is something worth knowing for guys who want a serious relationship (emphasis on serious there) - it's the findings of a study by Lynn F. Cherkas of King's College, London, et al., entitled "Genetic Influences on Female Infidelity and Number of Sexual Partners in Humans: A Linkage and Association Study of the Role of the Vasopressin Receptor Gene (AVPR1A)." "Our findings demonstrate that infidelity and number of sexual partners are both under moderate genetic influence (41% and 38% heritable, respectively) and the genetic correlation between these two traits is strong (47%)." There was another study I heard of that tied a woman's likelihood of infidelity to her number of partners, rising with each successive partner until she hit eight lifetime partners, at which point her likelihood of infidelity had reached as high as it was going to reach. I can't find this study though, so I don't know if it's legitimate or not, and the more I think about it the more I think that it only seems logical to assume a woman who's been with 30 men is probably a lot more likely to stray than a woman who's been with eight. Until there's some solid research the jury's out on this one, though. UPDATE: a 2007 study of American women, " Sexual infidelity in a national survey of American women: Differences in prevalence and correlates as a function of method of assessment.," discovered a 7% increase in infidelity risk per each additional partner (also, a 10% decrease in infidelity risk per each additional year of education) for women. This means roughly twice the chance of infidelity for a woman with 10 lifetime sexual partners than for a woman with one, three times the chance for a woman with 16 partners, and four times the chance for a woman with 20 partners. Thus (to our female commenters below), the importance of an article like this for men at all interested in monogamy. Anyway, what's all this mean for a woman's male partner? Well, this means that, at least according to the research we already have, the higher a woman's partner count is, the more likely she is to stray from her man... and thus, the more likely he is to get stuck with a lifetime of rearing another man's child under the false impression it's his (you may be surprised to know that 1 out of 10 children born in marriage in the United States are not fathered by the husband in that marriage), or carrying a permanent infection from one of his lover's new partners when he thought he was the only one and that she was safe (one of the dangers of sex, unfortunately). That's a little doom and gloom for you, which normally I don't like touching on on this site, but it's there for a reason: I want to highlight why knowing a woman's partner count is valuable, because a lot of people get upset that you're even talking about this and tell you to stop. They tell you it doesn't matter. They tell you that you don't need to know. They tell you to put it out of your mind and forget about it. But any time people tell you something like this, they usually have an agenda. My recommendation: any time anyone asks you to censor yourself or, worse, censor your thoughts, stop and ask yourself why they'd want you to do that. I also want to give another warning though, while we're on the topic of warnings: do make sure you see things from the woman's perspective too. Especially on the Internet, people easily fall into the habit of demonizing one another, and lying's one of those things that's easily to demonize. Yes, women lie about their partner counts; and it's extremely, extraordinarily common. You could almost say it's universal, even among otherwise saintly and innocent girls. Women aren't lying to you because they're tricky and manipulative. They're lying to you because they're scared: scared you won't think they're worthy of you. Scared you'll judge them as low value. Scared of social rejection. This is preprogrammed protective behavior; women can't control it. It's like asking a guy how many girls he's slept with; it's almost automatic that he's going to exaggerate up because he's scared of being judged weak and undesirable. Well, women just automatically exaggerate down, because they're scared of being judged loose and undesirable. But, as it were, how many partners a woman's had doesn't just impact how likely she is to stray. It turns out, at least from everything I've seen, that it in fact impacts a lot of other things in your relationship, too. TEASING OUT HOW MANY PARTNERS SHE'S HAD So let's say you want to find out the truth: how many partners has your girlfriend had? That's easier said than done. Over the years, I've had a lot of experiences with a lot of different kinds of women, and I've had girls I've been with open up and admit to me that they lied about how many men they'd actually been with, and I've watched female friends of mine and observed their normal mating behavior over time. I eventually identified four personality archetypes when it comes to attitudes about men, sex, dating, and love, that almost every woman fits into. They are: Trusting / Naïve Curious / Inquisitive Angry / Cynical Confident / Self-Assured And they progress in that order. This is actually a more typically human pattern of adapting to something new than anything else; you'll see both men and women display similar personality archetypes about all kinds of things. A new sales guy starts off naïve that sales is going to be a cake walk. As he gains experience, he becomes more curious about what makes sales work, and realizes there's a lot more to it than he initially thought. With time, he becomes cynical that sales isn't as easy as he thought and he doesn't get the results he thinks he ought to get; it's too confusing, there's too much going on, and it's not fair that it doesn't ever seem to go his way. Finally, he comes to accept that people are the way they are, selling is the way it is, and he learns what works, what doesn't, and how people think, and he works within that system to get what he wants. And so it is with women and dating: and from what I've seen, much of the time these dispositions towards men, dating, and sex can be tied almost directly to a girl's number of partners, + or - two partners or so. Guys go through this same thing with learning how to pick up a girl. Most of them either find a higher quality girl than they were able to get before and settle down in the first or second stage (these are the guys you'll hear announcing that they've found The One, and then you never hear from them again), or they take a stroll down washout lane in the third one (these are the guys you see cynically complaining that pick up doesn't work and it's all looks or money or status that women go for). Few men make it to the final stage, where they've accepted what they can and cannot do and know how to get the best results for themselves consistently. But back to partner counts. Here's the infographic I put together depicting how many partners a girl's had based on her attitude toward sex and love: how many partners Let's go into some detail on each. 0 to 2 Partners: Trusting / Naïve These girls are sweet, though I typically find them a bit too nice and trusting for my own tastes. I'm constantly afraid I'm going to hurt them. They're basically playing love on "Beginner": everything's new and wonderful, and the emotions they feel at this stage are more powerful than they will at any other stage of their romantic careers, because everything feels so outside their control and left up to fate. As a rule of thumb, the less control a person has over something, the more powerful around it his emotions will be (both the good and bad emotions); the more control over it he has, the less potent will be his emotions. How do you recognize a trusting / naïve girl? She'll have the following characteristics: Very strong emotional attachment to you Falls head-over-heels in love with you extremely quickly Never takes charge in a relationship; lets you be in charge Never doubts you or suspects you of anything Believes everything you tell her Often seems shy or reserved Conservative - doesn't like trying new things Feels like sex is both naughty and exhilarating Has a lot of sexual inhibitions Sex equals love; the two are inseparable The trusting / naïve girl's odds of cheating in a relationship are somewhere pretty close to zero. She's totally devoted to her man, he's the greatest thing in the world to her, and there's also a good element of guilt and fear mixed in: if she loses him, what if she never finds anyone like him ever again? And if she cheats on him, wouldn't it hurt him so much? If you're going to date one of these girls, I strongly, strongly recommend only doing it if you're going to be very responsible with her emotions. Remember that her relationship with you is going to be one of the most formative events of her life, and at this point in her relationship career you're going to have a big impact on how her future relationships go. I've mishandled things with girls like this a few times myself, and they count as among the few regrets I have in life. Don't hurt a girl - steer clear of trusting / naïve girls if you can't treat them very tenderly and manage their expectations expertly, and if you don't want something close to what they do, or what they think they do, anyway (serious, committed, everlasting love). 3 to 7 Partners: Curious / Inquisitive Curious / inquisitive girls are probably my favorites. They're often likely to be shy excited girls, who are starting to break out of their shells but not totally broken out yet. Perhaps part of the reason I personally like these girls so much is because it gives me the opportunity to be their "guide," and that can be a lot of fun - you can easily be one of the most positive and influential figures in a woman's life if you reach her in this phase and guide her to more understanding of herself, her body, and romance in general. These girls are more open than trusting / naïve girls are, but they lack the negative energy of the angry / cynical girls, and don't have the often capricious nature of the confident / self-assured girls. They come equipped with the following traits: Fairly strong emotional attachment to you May or may not fall in love with you quickly Attempts to take charge but relinquishes control easily May suspect you of things, but her concerns are easily assuaged Believes things you tell her at first, though questions them later Alternates between shy and excited Can seem conservative, but is testing the waters outside Sex is less naughty and less exhilarating, but still good Has fewer sexual inhibitions and is more curious Sex and love have an ambiguous relationship The curious / inquisitive girl's odds of straying from her partner are significantly higher than the odds of the trusting / naïve girl's. She's also a lot more likely to have fast sex and casual sex, though she's still pretty reserved about these and doesn't actually want them (though she may well be very curious about them). She will, however, sometimes put herself in situations where she can be quickly seduced, simply because she's curious to see what will happen. This can happen even if she's in a relationship, sometimes leading to "something happening" that she didn't intend to happen, and a lot of guilt because of it. Curious / inquisitive girls are the ones most likely to tearfully tell you about it if they cheat, seeking your forgiveness (trusting / naïve girls would probably be even more likely to do this if they ever strayed from their partners, but they pretty much don't do that... ever). They'll also worriedly tell you about a date they went on or a guy they kissed but didn't mean to much of the time if these things happen, because the guilt is eating them up inside and they can't contain it. These girls are far more resilient than trusting / naïve girls, but you still need to handle them with care. They'll still tend to put a lot of trust in you, and it's easy to damage that trust - and them, and their future relationships - if you don't handle that well. 8 to 19 Partners: Angry / Cynical Girls These girls are my favorites for quick pick ups, simply because of the challenge of getting hit with attitude throughout the entire pick up (it makes for a much more rewarding conquest when you finally get them), but I'd never enter into a relationship with one of them (and never have), simply because their views of men, sex, love, dating, and relationships are so warped by dashed dreams and bad experiences that their relationship baggage will eat you alive. 'Nuff said. Here's the skinny on these gals: Very cautious and often love/hate emotional attachment to you May fall in love quickly, but will fight it the whole way Uses lots of drama and complaining to browbeat her partner Suspects you of things, and nothing can tell her otherwise Doesn't believe a thing you tell her Is angry, frustrated, cynical, or grouchy much of the time Sometimes tries to control herself, other times lets go with reckless abandon Sex is hedonistic and she has a love/hate relationship with this, too Has a few sexual inhibitions and some sexual preferences She resents that sex and love are not the same thing Angry / cynical girls are basically girls who've "broken out of the Matrix" when it comes to the romantic fairy tale that everyone's fed since infancy about finding the Love of Your Life and everything being perfect and rainbows and gumdrops and butterflies and all that good stuff. They're realizing the real world is different from that... but they sure don't like it that way. They haven't come to acceptance yet. They usually blame men for not giving them what they want, and for not appreciating the things they do for them. If an angry / cynical girl sleeps with a guy quickly and he doesn't want a relationship with her, she'll hate him for not seeing how amazing she is after she got intimate with him; if an angry / cynical girl dates a guy but can't get him to commit, she'll hate him for wasting her time or failing to deliver on what she perceived as his promise by dating her (whether such a promise was given or not). Angry / cynical girls are more likely to stray from their partners than the two earlier, less experienced women, and while they'll feel guilt as well, they'll typically manifest it as blame instead of guilt. Rather than thinking, "I did something horrible to my man by cheating on him," they'll think, "It's my MAN's fault that I was driven to cheat! I'm INNOCENT! HE was failing to meet my needs." And when you go on the Internet, it's the angry / cynical girls who are the ones that are the most vocal opponents of men asking women how many partners they've had. They've got something they want to cover up, and they don't want people digging (contrast this to the two earlier women, who'll feel either A) it's okay to tell the truth because they've had virtually no partners, or B) embarrassed that they've had a few "too many" partners, or contrast this with the last type of woman, who's comfortable with her sexuality and doesn't blame anyone else for the life she's chosen to live). I highly recommend staying away from having relationships with women in this phase unless you want to spend most of your time dealing with another person's (your girlfriend's) relationship baggage and then getting blamed for it. Trust me... let these girls work out their issues with men, sex, and dating before you hop into a relationship with them. You'll be happier with any of the other three kinds of girls than you will be dating a girl like this. She feels bad about herself and the world, and she'll make you feel bad, too. 20+ Partners: Confident / Self-Assured how many partnersHave you ever gotten so good at something - an instrument, a video game, a sport, an art, or heck, even picking up girls - that most of the emotion went out of it and you just saw the Matrix for what it was? In other words... you saw everything you had to do, and were able to execute properly without worrying about the outcome? You knew that sometimes things went your way, and sometimes they didn't, and it was no big deal either way, because you knew how to get what you wanted to get in the end? That's confident / self-assured girls. They are the connoisseurs of men among the female sex. They've paid their dues with men, and now they're ready to embrace men and dating and intimacy and relationships the way they really are, without putting any undue emotions upon them. These girls can be a blast... if you can handle them. What's that mean? Well, here're their characteristics: No strong emotional attachment to you May get infatuated, but falling in love is rare and doesn't last Will constantly be in charge of the relationship unless you're an über dominant man Doesn't spend much time worrying about what you're doing Has a good instinct for if what you're saying is true or not Usually seems confident and open Liberal - loves adventure and trying new things Sex is hedonistic and she loves it for what it is Has virtually zero sexual inhibitions and strong sexual preferences Sex and love are totally separate and one doesn't need the other Confident / self-assured girls are the most likely to stray from their partner because, to them, it's not really a big deal. After all... it's just sex! That's the mentality, anyway. Gone are the days when they thought sex was this super-important affair that had to be sacredly guarded. Now it's something done recreationally for enjoyment and new experiences and to let off steam. They're also a handful in a relationship: they know exactly what they want, and they know exactly what buttons to push with a man to get it. And they're very willing to walk away and won't think twice about it; they might tell a guy they miss him once they're broken up, but there's a good chance they're telling three or four other guys the same thing at the same time. I say that confident / self-assured women are a blast if you can handle them for these reasons; they're very positive people, very clear about what they want out of life, and they won't burden you with the neediness or the drama of the three earlier stages of women. But, you've got to accept that they're wild women; they didn't get to 20+ partners by accident. Even if they don't go out much, if you're with them long enough they're probably going to stray at some point, and you can't take it personal. And if you're not a master at relationship control, you're going to relinquish power to them at some point and they'll tire of you quickly. There's no shortcut and no pretending to be at her level, relationship-wise; you've either got to be there, or you're going to have a fascinating-but-brief relationship with a woman like this, unless, that is, you do exceptionally well at not causing drama and at being her boy toy. CLOSING THOUGHTS ON PARTNER COUNTS So what's the best kind of girl to date? How many partners should she have, and what attitude toward sex and relationships and men should she have? That's going to depend on you. If you want sweet and innocent, trusting / naïve girls are your hole-in-one bet here. But be prepared for long nights of staring into each other's eyes, and large amounts of emotional dependency. You won't be challenged much, which means your relationship will be both easy to manage and not very stimulating. If you want peppy and you like the "teacher" role, curious / inquisitive girls can be a lot of fun. On the downside, they can still come off a little too trusting if you're more experienced than they are, and a little too conservative. Though, I find it rather charming, normally :) If you want... well, actually, I can't think of anything you might want from the angry / cynical girls, unless you have masochistic tendencies. However, I do know a few guys who seem to be - well, not happiest, per se - but perhaps most addicted to the kinds of semi-abusive relationships they end up in with women like this. These are the women most likely to engage in hardcore "taming" of their man and who will hate him if he breaks and hate him if he doesn't. There's really no way to win here. Fun for challenging and rewarding hook ups, but not so fun if you find yourself dating them. If you want crazy sex and as close to a drama-free relationship as you're going to get, confident / self-assured girls are probably the way you want to go. That said, you'd better be pretty confident and self-assured yourself, and you won't last long if you're the type who stays up late at night worrying whether his girl is splitting time with him and another fellow or not. There's really no "perfect" woman out there, just like there's no perfect man out there for those women to date (no, not even you... though you can always get closer to perfection!). There's just perfect enough. Unless you're dating an angry / cynical girl, that is. In which case, all I can say is Godspeed, my friend. Godspeed. Oh, and before you let me know how wrong I am in the comments - that, for instance, you're an extremely confident girl and you've only ever been with three men - stop and think for a minute if you match not the overall definition for confidence, but the one I defined above for confidence about men, dating, sex, and relationships. I'm not saying that inexperienced women can't be confident. But I am saying they think and behave differently, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in not-so-subtle ways, than gals with a higher kill count do.

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##How to Meet Tons of Girls on Plenty of Fish Plenty of Fish - as chances are you already know - is an out-and-out treasure trove of young, cool, attractive girls who want to meet cool, sexy guys and... well, it's a dating site. Thing is, it's a free dating site, which means it's open to the masses... which in turn means the most beautiful women on POF get inundated by messages from hopeful (sometimes desperate) men - so much so that the average pretty girl with options doesn't last longer than a few weeks on the site before throwing her hands up in frustration and resignation and abandoning her account. And the ones who stick around? Grizzled POF dating veterans who cut through newbie online dating hopefuls like female paramilitary troopers trained at mercilessly crushing and cannibalizing the unready and unprepared. In this article, I'm going to take you through what I learned in four (4) years of using Plenty of Fish to meet, date, and sleep with tons of new girls, including some of the hottest girls on POF in Southern California. So sit back, relax, and let's get you doing what most of the rest of the online dating crowd can't do: lining up dates and taking pretty new girls to bed by the bushel. plenty of fish The most important thing in your POF profile by far? Your profile picture (and, to a lesser degree, your other pictures). Most people when you tell them this think or say, "Yeah, sure, I know my picture's important," and then they put up some mediocre-quality profile picture and get all upset that they aren't getting any dates off the site. No - your picture is everything. If you don't have a good one, you will not get girls on Plenty of Fish. WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD PROFILE PICTURE Online, you don't have things like body language, nonverbal communication, or even a good male scent to help tip the scales in your favor. Instead, it's eyeballs-only - what you see is what you get. That means that looks do matter a lot more on Plenty of Fish than they do in real life, where there are plenty of other things involved in assessing attractiveness. In space, no one can hear you scream, and on POF, no one can feel your sexiness. It's photos and the words in your profile, and that's it. So what makes for a good POF profile photo? OkCupid's famous profile photo blog post, in which the dating site examined a large cache of user picture and messaging information, revealed the following about men's profile pictures: "Men's photos are most effective when they look away from the camera and don't smile: " Look at the difference in men's odds of getting a response from women based on their profile photos: men with no eye contact, not smiling, and looking away from the camera in their profile pictures had a nearly 90% success rate per attempt at meeting new women. Almost 90%. Compare that to: ~70% for men smiling and looking away (no eye contact) ~65% for men smiling or making a flirty face and making eye contact ~55% for men not smiling and making eye contact ~35% for men making a flirty face and looking away (no eye contact) Clearly, non-smiling, eye-contact-away pictures are the best pictures you can use. That's pictures that look more like these: plenty of fish ... and not so much like these: plenty of fish My all-time best performing profile picture catches me just as I'm pulling on a suit jacket, looking down and away a bit, not too dissimilar to the guy in the image on the top right. Why do women prefer their men looking off and to the side? Well, I can tell you this: in real life, women will only check you out (usually) when they think you're not looking and won't notice. When you're staring at them, they tend to quickly avert their gazes, not wanting to be seen looking. Gut instinct? She feels like she's getting to check you out and explore you without you knowing when you're looking away. While the photo with you staring dead at her feels higher pressure... like you're expecting something from her. So she looks away (and doesn't write back). And just in case you're curious, for men, the trend is reversed - women making eye contact and flirty faces get significantly higher response from us fellas than women averting their gazes do. I guess we men just like to know our girl is interested in us before we spend much time on her. POF PHOTO TRICKS In addition to not smiling and looking away (no eye contact), there are five (5) other things you can do to spice up the pictures you'll use on Plenty of Fish: Contrast. This is a general picture-taking rule that you want to use in all of your pictures. When selecting pictures, make sure you pick pictures with contrast. Plenty of Fish is blue, white, black, and gray. Most of the profile pictures on the site are in dull colors / human skin tones, from pasty white to dark chocolate brown. Pick pictures - and especially profile pictures - that visually stand out against this backdrop. You want clear, crisp, and vibrant, not dull, hazy, and blent in. I couldn't find any examples of male pictures that stood out much to me (maybe partly because I'm a man and men's' pictures just aren't all that exciting, but probably mostly because most men on POF have no idea what they're doing), so here right at the top of the women's results is an example of a profile picture that pops: plenty of fish Notice #2? Don't your eyes go right there immediately? Regardless of whether she's your "type" or not, you notice her because her picture isn't boring or low quality-looking (like the other three pictures are). She avoids "profile blindness" by having a picture that stands out from the pack. She's also making that flirty face that men respond best to. You want pictures that pop as much as 'someone hacked my other account's does (minus the flirty face) to be your profile pictures - and, ideally, to be all the rest of your pictures, too. Picture with an almost-cropped out girl in it. Photos of you with girls in them have been shown to perform worse on dating sites. Why? Because a girl's going to look at the girl in your picture and immediately either decide a.) the girls you date are uglier or lower status than SHE is, thus YOU are lower status than her and unworthy of dating, or b.) the girls who date are too much prettier than she is, thus you're probably some fake phony so who needs you anyway? So how, then, do you come up with a way of taking advantage of the benefits of preselection - that powerful attraction force to beat all attraction forces that states that women want most the men that other women also want? Back in 2007, I came up with the perfect solution for it: take a picture of you with a girl, then mostly crop her out of it, leaving just enough of her face to make girls not be able to tell what she looks like but enough to be intrigued. That looks like this: plenty of fish You're going for the "cropped as well as I could" look in the image - e.g., she isn't there because you want her to be there... this is just a damn good picture of you, and there just happens to be a part of a girl spilling over it into it, and you've tried to remove her as much as possible (that's the impression, anyway). A few tips: Don't have more than one picture like this, or it looks intentional Make sure the pictures look affectionate but ambiguous - e.g., none where the girl has her arm draped around your neck or anything that's clearly couple-y... suggestive is okay though Pick a photo you still look good in, too - not just any old thing. Otherwise, the question of, "Why pick THIS one?" comes up Results? Some of the hottest, sexiest girls I've met off of online dating I've met with this type of photograph up. I've even had girls specifically ask about it... "So who is that girl in your photograph?" The instant they ask, you know you've got 'em: hook, line, and sinker. Picture of you doing something really cool. That could be on some wonder of the world (my profiles have always included a picture of me on Machu Picchu or at Angkor Wat), surfing, playing guitar, skateboarding, singing on a microphone on-stage... something really different and interesting. What you're going for: girls to look at this photograph and say, "This guy's cool; he's got some character." Include just ONE (1) of these photos... otherwise you look either like some guy who's a complete adrenaline junkie whom she stands no chance of keeping up with or impressing, or you look tryhard. Picture of you with an animal. That OkCupid data review found that the men's profile picture themes that received the highest number of responses from women of any photo theme were those of men with animals. No kidding. If you want the highest possible number of responses from women, get a picture with an animal. Guesses as to why? Research has shown that women are pretty much born with a high dose of empathy, but for men this has to be learned (one way of learning it, interestingly enough, is by taking care of a pet). So maybe women are picking more empathetic men... or, perhaps seeing that cute cuddly animal makes them feel more empathetic toward you, and want to reach back out to you more. The ab shot. Only if you actually have abs to show off, of course. But, according to that OkCupid study, being shirtless and showing off your muscles in your profile picture nets you almost as many responses from women as a picture of you with an animal (though quite possibly from categorically different kinds of women). Of course, if you have a good male physique to show off, you might want to combine a shot of that with you, say, playing Frisbee with your dog down by the ocean. There's abs, animals, and something interesting all in one shot. plenty of fish How many photographs should you use on Plenty of Fish? I recommend you stick to THREE (3) total. That's one profile picture, and two additional pictures. I suggest two "profile-like" pictures, and only one interesting picture. Why? I'll tell you this. I have experimented with ALL SORT of combinations - including some with tons and tons of pictures - and this one has worked best most consistently. The only one that's beaten it has been when I've set up test profiles with a sole profile picture of one very physically attractive male model, and no other pictures. This one's worked very well on POF... the lesson being, if you are very handsome, and have a very good picture of yourself, perhaps try out having just that picture - one that nearly every woman will look at and go, "Whoa." Philosophy behind pictures: if it adds to your profile picture in a good way, include it. If girls look at your extra pictures and think, "Oh. He was cute in his main picture," then don't include them. For the rest of us with more pedestrian looks: stick to just that one main picture - no more than two (2) supporting pictures. WHERE CAN YOU GET AMAZING PHOTOS TAKEN? When I had professional pictures done, my results on Plenty of Fish and every other dating website and social networking website I was on and used for dating went through the roof. I've heard similar stories from a lot of guys doing online. Why do these make such a difference? Part of it's the quality of the image itself; good cameras take good pictures. But a bigger part is the photographer: a good photographer makes a living making people look good. A good photographer can take a flattering picture of you even if you aren't all that flattering to behold normally. Put together: A good outfit with some good fashion A great, sexy hairstyle A good facial hair style ... and grab a good photographer and you're all set. You can let your photographer know you want some pictures of you outside, in natural lighting (these tend to fare better - they make you look more attractive), and looking down and away / to the side, and that you want to look as sexy, mysterious, and attractive as possible. Then let him do his thing. Where do you find such a photographer? What if you don't have the money for a professional shoot? Photographers in most cities will do a shoot with you for $150 to $400. That typically includes several wardrobe changes and about an hour of shoot time or so. But there's a hidden secret for getting your pictures taken absolutely FREE of charge. Know what it is? In most major cities, there are far more people who want to become professional photographers than there are professional photographers. And the people who are still working on their careers in photography work on these mainly by building up their portfolios; that is to say, putting together collections of images they've taken of various models (people). In exchange for your modeling services, and your permission to use your photographs in their portfolios, they will normally offer you finished versions of a bunch of the best pictures they take of you free of charge. The easiest way to find aspiring photographers looking for models to take pictures of in exchange for copies of those pictures is to head over to Craig's List and browse through the "Gigs" section, "Talent" subsection - what you're looking for are gigs labeled "TFP" ("Time for Pictures") or "TFCD" ("Time for CD" - a CD with your photographs burned onto it). plenty of fish Craig's List search for "TFP" in San Diego. Remember that YOU are the "model" here. Then just write to some photographers, send them copies of the best photographs you currently have of you, and wait to hear back. These posts tend to get more requests from people wanting free pictures than the photographers offering them can serve, but if you keep replying to different gigs for a week or two, you'll find someone who will take your pictures and provide you with copies. The website Model Mayhem is another way of finding photographers willing to take pictures to build their portfolios, but it helps if you already have some professional pictures done... and, a lot of the photographers on there (especially the ones who will proactively contact you) are gay men looking for a little fun - so check their portfolios out before saying "yes" (or, just be prepared to fend off a few advances in order to get your pictures... the things you must go through to get free stuff sometimes!). plenty of fish How important is it that you have a great profile? Well... not as important as it is that you have great pictures. But still - it's pretty important. Many women will NEVER read your profile when deciding whether or not to respond to your first message. They will only ever see your: Username Picture Message A lot of the women who write back to you will not check out your profile until AFTER they get their second or third messages from you. Basically, once they've already decided that they think they're interested in you. The ones who check your profile out before responding the first time are very often ones who've already decided that they think they're interested in you, too. In other words, what you're doing with your profile is reassuring her she made the right call to be interested in you, rather than trying to win over someone who's on the fence about you. That should color how you set your profile up quite a bit. SHORTER IS BETTER pofI know what you're thinking, the first time you open up that profile editor on POF: "I'm going to write AS MUCH about myself here as POSSIBLE so that she'll find at least SOMETHING to connect with me on!" Good theory, but it doesn't actually work out that way. No worries though... everybody does that. Remember, women don't go nuts for guys who just lay out everything about themselves for the whole world to read like a boring factsheet. They prefer men who are: Mysterious Intriguing In possession of a host of Byronic personality traits (and flaws) If you go for the "Hey, I'm Mr. Perfect, and here's everything to know about me!" good neighbor profile that everybody and his brother goes for, you'll be every bit as boring, platonic, and forgettable as all those other worker bees are, too. Your challenge: write an amazing profile in two (2) paragraphs max. Sound hard? Let's add some rules that will make it sound harder but actually be easier: Must be two paragraphs maximum Must include multiple interesting things about you that AREN'T bragging Must leave your reader with more questions in her head than answers This is because your profile does three things for you: It reassures her you're a cool, interesting, and most of all, NORMAL person It gets her emotionally involved with you and intrigued by you It gives her a bunch of things she can ask you about or talk to you about Can you violate some of these rules? Sure. I've had profiles do very well that came out to about three or four paragraphs (often broken down further into smaller one- or two-sentence paragraphs for a total of 5 or 6 line breaks). But the majority of my best profiles - and the majority of the best men's profiles I've seen - have been two paragraphs. If you need it, you can add ONE sentence after the second paragraph. That's it. That's your challenge. But before I go giving you some examples, let's talk about being interesting. BAD PROFILES AND THE PROFILE COMMANDMENTS How often have you read a girl's profile and thought to yourself, "If only she would tell me what her favorite food was, and what movies she liked best"? Probably never, right? How about, "GEEZ, I sure wish she would tell me how much men suck"? Negative on that one too, isn't it? So why do so many guys write stuff like: "I'm an accountant from Chattanooga. Really into country music and line-dancing. Do it every chance I get. My favorite TV shows are 'Heroes' and 'Game of Thrones'; I'm most like the character Jon Snow, in that I believe in loyalty and honor, even in challenging situations. On weekends I like to do some cooking; if you've never had fried ravioli, a dish I picked up in my travels to St. Louis, be prepared for me to expand your culinary world." HE sure sounds exciting. Yawn... Then there's the ones like: "I know a lot of guys lie about their heights and incomes and a lot of women lie about their body shapes. I'm not looking for someone perfect, but I'm just tired of meeting women who are fake. Be real for a change, stop trying to be something you're not, and stop insisting that men be perfect... we're just people like you. If you're a real woman and you want to meet a real man, send me a message." This guy's total message count ever? 0. He's obviously trying to change the world by telling other people they need to start doing what he wants them to do, and is otherwise just depressing... women close that tab before they're through the first paragraph. And of course there's the ones like: "Fortunately for you, you just came across the profile of the most sexy, incredible member of this whole entire website. ME. And I am going to rock your socks off in the bedroom and keep you MORE than satisfied... again and again. So if you're tired of all these other bedroom disappointments and ready to have the night of your life, message me, hot stuff!" Whenever a woman hears a man talk like this, the very first thought that enters her mind is, "This guy ACTUALLY lasts about 30 seconds in bed, doesn't he?" Thus, the commandments of writing your profile: One doth not showcase boring things like 'favorite TV shows' or 'favorite songs' or 'jobs' that everybody has and no one has ever gotten excited about finding out someone else shares in the history of Plenty of Fish One doth not be depressing, rude, insulting, or sound as if he is about to quit on life and retreat into his parents' basement, where he shall abide for the remainder of his time on Earth One doth not write about his sexual prowess, conquests, or bedroom or woman-getting abilities of any kind, lest he be thought compensating for being in possession of a remarkably small penis by all women encountering his profile THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR PROFILE pofBest thing you can do to get as many women writing back as possible on your profile? Mention you're foreign, and have just arrived. My foreign friends in the United States get crazy replies on POF and other dating sites. I've gotten similar replies in other countries there. And in the U.S., I've tested out two profiles that were almost identical, with only slightly different profile pictures... and one of those profiles mentioning that I'd just moved to town from Washington, D.C., and the other mentioning I'd just moved to town from London. The London account received 4 times as many messages. Most of these messages to my English gentleman profile were akin to, "Welcome to the U.S.! I'd love to show you around town =)" And most of the writers were pretty damn cute. Some didn't even want to message banter, they just handed out their phone numbers straight away and instructed me to call them. That's never happened to me in the U.S. with my fellow American girls when I'm not wielding a phony Englishman account. Still living in your home country and will mostly be meeting your countrywomen? No problem... because the next best thing you can mention in your profile is that you've just made it to town and are meeting new people in town to get situated. The next contender after this is having just gotten out of a long-term relationship. Again, you're a catch with some potential, and there's a very valid reason why you're there. Why are these items so good to include in your profile? Throughout my years of online dating, I have become deeply convinced that THE #1 QUESTION ALL WOMEN HAVE, if they see you are dating online, is this: "Why do you need to meet somebody online?" They usually won't ask you this outright (though some will ask "So why are you on POF?" - a seemingly innocent question, but one dripping with all kinds of implications depending on your answer). You can see it in women's profiles; the most attractive of them are constantly writing things like, "lol, I don't even do online dating, but my friend made me set up this account on a bet, so whatever, let's see what happens." Pretty girls are, quite often, embarrassed to have to be meeting men on the Internet. Forget all that nonsense about online dating being "accepted"; the most beautiful women rarely use it for long, because it's too easy for them to meet high caliber men offline. Online is still usually a den of second-rate mating options... usually. There are the exceptions. And the person who is "new in town and just looking to get settled" is the largest of these. The guy who's "just broken up and getting my social circles built back up again" is next in line. Women want to know you have a good reason for being single and trying online dating. They want to "catch" you during that rare window of singledom. Because, just like employers hate hiring anyone who's been unemployed longer than 6 months, women hate dating men who've been single for a long time and having to actively go looking for women (instead of having them come to him)... the question in the back of their minds is always, "Why is he single?" If you answer that question with: It's because I've just moved to the country It's because I've just moved to the city It's because I've just gotten out of a relationship ... the feeling is always that she's getting an opening to snag a guy who normally wouldn't be on the market... and may well not be on the market, for long. KILLER PROFILE EXAMPLES So we know that: Your profile needs to be brief You want to intrigue her and leave her wanting to know more You want to raise lots of questions - not answer them You want to stay positive and avoid dreary negative stuff You want to steer far clear of trying to talk about being a sexual dynamo You want to let her know WHY you're on POF Here's what a good standard profile looks like: "I'm from the other side of the country. Resettled here for a new line of work and a new life... left all the old behind. It's been a while since I was on Plenty of Fish (another lifetime ago), but I met some fantastic people here before (and a few not so fantastic ones, of course), and I can't think of a better way to get started anew in a new hometown. I make music, write, and am a seeker of truth and searcher out of adventure. Recently back from my first trip to South America - there is a very special place. What I'm using POF to find: a curious mind, a daring adventurer, and someone with both passion in her heart and conversation in her mind." This is the standard template that my profiles generally follow these days. Here's what it's doing: The first two sentences of the profile build the intrigue and mystery... what is he running from? Why does he need a fresh start? Where on the other side of the country is he from, exactly? The next sentence, about people met on POF before, establish preselection and social proof; he's not one of these bitter people who meets only crazies off of the Internet - in fact, he's had success here before, which means he must be attractive enough to get some girls The first two sentences of the second paragraph flesh out his personality a bit, as an artist and an adventurer. This narrows the field down a bit; women who aren't in search of passion and adventure will be turned off... but most women are in search of this, and end up turned on The final sentence of the profile is screening; it lets the reader know that he has standards and is looking for something specific; but the standards are sufficiently vague here that they function like a cold read, and just about every woman who read this will say, "Wow - that's me, exactly!" This profile is not going to win you any awards, nor is it going to get you a lot of girls messaging you on their own. What it does do is provide a solid support for your pictures and first message, so that a girl who's intrigued, on checking out your profile, leaves even more intrigued. It's an amplifier, rather than something that will draw attention to you in its own right. Here's another variant on a profile I've used with some good effect - this one requires you have a bit more interesting things to throw out there about yourself: "Hello there. My name's David, I've just moved to town from Philadelphia, and am soaking in all the palm trees and beaches and am absolutely in love. A bit about me: my education is in finance, my career is in numbers, and I've dabbled a bit in acting while here in Southern California - nothing serious, but a little time on a movie set never hurt a soul! I'm hoping to find someone on here who enjoys a good conversation about people, relationships, what makes you tick, what makes me tick, anything interesting along those lines - human beings are my special fascination. I like a good spot of tea and am a bit of a sucker for dessert - so if we go out, or if you're showing me about town, we'll need to be careful about those dessert places if I'm to keep my waistline nice and trim." This one's obvious a different feel from the first - this is the typical "high value guy" profile, in contrast to our "mysterious man with a troubled past" profile from before. If you're younger, "mysterious man" likely suits you better; if you're older, "high value guy" likely does, instead. This one establishes our hero as: Direct and straightforward - strong traits (he gives you his name, tells you where he's from, but it's sort of an aside to the main message of the sentence) An out-of-towner, but he's thrilled to be here (local folks who love their town want to make sure they're spending time with others who similarly like it) An upbeat individual who drinks life in ("absolutely in love") Has a good career, probably, but doesn't boast about it or try to use it to gain points; "my career is in numbers" is the kind of very vague thing that usually only a very wealthy individual who doesn't want to admit to being VP of a Fortune 500 company will say, so it builds some intrigue as to whether this guy is a rich guy or not and exactly what it is that he does Talking about the kind of conversation he wants to have makes it clear he won't be talking about boring stuff like work, sports, the weather, etc., and instead things that she'll find interesting too, and also makes it feel very personal already ("what makes you tick, what makes me tick") Saying he likes a "good spot of tea" makes him sound different ("Is he British?"), and him being a "sucker for dessert" introduces some weakness into the profile ("Oh, thank God, he isn't COMPLETELY perfect... THIS guy I can relate to!") while also painting himself as a more passionate individual (passionate people all have their indulgences) This profile is a bit more likely to get you women writing proactively - when I used a version of this on POF, it received several messages a week from women simply writing in because they'd read the profile and found it engaging / exciting. However, it's still one you're largely going to need to use as support for good pictures / messages. There's another style of profile that I won't cover further here; that's the "humorous / hard-hitting profile," which is designed to get girls laughing very hard and having a great time. This will get you MORE girls out on dates, but they will be a lot LESS likely to be in a sexual mood. Quantity goes up; quality goes down. Some of these girls you will be able to change the vibe with and steer it toward something more intimate; some of them you never will, because they came out to be entertained by you, not to be seduced. That said, it's still an effective profile for meeting LOTS of girls in a hurry and taking a healthy chunk of them as lovers and as girlfriends; for that one, see this post I've made about it on the discussion boards: Chase's Guide to Online Dating (2010). OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: HEADLINES AND DETAILS Aside from your profile itself, there are a few other considerations that are very important to you building a profile with big impact: your headline, and all those other details. Headline If you've thought about putting something in your headline like "Looking 4 My Tru Luv" or "S3X G0D!!1! lolz", you may well be beyond my help. Sorry about that. pof Your headline is arguably more important than your profile content itself. A LOT more women are going to read your headline all the way through than are going to read your PROFILE all the way through. It's your advertisement. In the world of writing articles on the Internet, common advice is to spend half as much time writing your title as you do writing the actual article itself. That's because if your title / headline sucks, no one is going to click. What you're going for in a headline: Different Engaging Colorful words or phrasing Makes her want to click on it Some examples of godawful crappy headlines: Scuba boy looking for scuba girl Looking for my [anything] Amazing guy right here! Cool, honest, warm-hearted person Ready to rock your world... Basically, anything that is not sultry, arrogant, or mysterious is out. If you sound platonic (just friends), raunchy (turns men on, scares off women), or lovelorn (needy, desperate guy who fails with women), she'll be turned off. Now, here are examples of headlines that stand out: Funny / Cocky Sit down, the Man of Your Dreams™ has just arrived Where have I been all your life??? Write me a message, live life dangerously Stop checking me out & start writing to me Hey girlie... quit checking out my headline! Click my profile and blow your mind Mysterious / Intriguing A man hops a plane from [your old town]... Life, passion, adventure, and dreams of Mexico A short walk from a land of intrigue Can you guess who I am...? Bad Ass Not Mr. Right... Maybe Mr. Wrong The guy your girlfriends try to steal Ask yourself if it's time for an upgrade I'm all kinds of wrong for you It would never work out between us Stop drooling, it's just a profile Generally, I've found that "bad ass" nets you the most clicks and messages. However, if it doesn't work with your profile, you shouldn't use it. I recommend testing out different headlines. If you're really an experimenter, I'd recommend testing out different profiles with different headlines and pictures in multiple different cities you don't ever visit first and finding what works best, and then taking the best results of these and using them in your hometown. Other Profile Details Other profile details I'd recommend you largely leave blank. The Law of Least Effort / sprezzatura dictate that the less effort you seem to be expending (while still getting results), the more attractive you become. Long profiles with lots of details look like something you put a great deal of time into constructing; thus, readers of your profile assume that you're not a very in-demand man with little free time on his hands to spend, say, chasing down new women. Even though it really takes you only a few extra minutes, it doesn't matter; this is the psychological effect seeing a bunch more details has. She assumes you got excited at the opportunity to share all these things about yourself with Internet strangers, which strong guys with lots of girls and abundant friends do not. Put either something generic in your profile (e.g., "Numbers" or "Letters" or "Spreadsheets" or "Trading", etc.), or something outlandish (e.g., "Ninja" or "Knight" or "Hercules" or "Surf Board Cleaner" or "Cosmonaut", etc.), depending on what fits with the rest of your profile. For the "First Date" section, you can write something sleek, like: "Let's sit somewhere by the beach... ocean waves crashing against the shore make a nice backdrop for a chat over drinks with a new friend." ... or something funny: "I'd suggest Dave and Buster's, so I can mess you up at air hockey while we tell each other stories from our childhoods." But whatever you write here, make sure you suggest something specific. Far too many women ask guys what they want to do on dates, only to have those guys reply with, "I don't know; what do you want to do?!" If she asked you, it isn't because it's a test, or because she's being nice; it's because she doesn't want the burden of having to figure this out. You're the man; you must lead. Show her dating you will be a relaxing, enjoyable, decision-free experience for her, and you'll get positive responses from women. plenty of fish Now onto the fun part: let's start lining you up some dates. If you're breathtakingly gorgeous-looking, you may get a handful of messages to your profile based on looks alone. But on Plenty of Fish, the messaging done by women to men - even the most stunningly attractive of men - is far less than what it is on a number of other dating sites. No matter how great your pictures are and how tight your profile is, you're more or less going to have to be doing the initiating yourself. STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD pofThe blessing and the curse of POF is that it's BIG. There are loads and loads of people on it, because there are so many people on it (broader pool of mates to draw from) and because it's free. That means lots of women for you to reach out to for dates... and lots and lots and LOTS of messages for those women to sift through to find yours. When I first started playing around with online dating in 2004, I went in with something of an entitlement mentality: "Well, if she doesn't read my message and realize how awesome I am, too bad for HER!" That's great and all, except... she has no idea who you are. Quite often, the most attractive men in real life are TERRIBLE at meeting women online. Why? Because online is a whole 'nother ballpark. If you're good at strutting your stuff in person, the women on POF don't know that. And if girls are practically clawing your clothes off every time you step outside the door in real life, the women on POF don't know that. The only thing they know are pictures, headlines, maybe your profile (if they even read it)... and messages. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need good messages, and you need good subject lines for those messages. WOMEN ON POF GET A LOT OF DRECK I set up a female profile on Plenty of Fish a few years back, just to see what the response was like. I chose a pretty blonde girl for this account's profile picture, and then I wrote her profile as basically the meanest, pickiest bitch on POF... just to see how much punishment some of these guys would be willing to suck up just to take a shot. In a manner of 10 hours or so, my snobby, entitled young female alter ego received 40 messages from potential suitors. And the messages kept coming. I went to bed, and woke up the next day to find another 20 messages had filtered in overnight. I pulled the plug on the account, and sifted through the messages. The kinds of messages I received were: Form messages (from men who obviously hadn't read the profile, and were obviously mass-spamming any girl who looked reasonably attractive to them) A bunch of résumés ("I read your profile, and you said you like punk music concerts - I am SO into punk music TOO! I would LOVE to go to a punk music concert!!!") A few witty retorts ("Look here honey, you think you're some hot stuff, but in case you weren't paying attention, punk is so 1990s. What's cool THESE days is electronic - and I can open your eyes to...") Several guys just throwing their phone numbers out there, or asking to get a number back ("Oh, you like punk? Give me your phone number and let's talk about it") A handful of guys offering the best sex ever enjoyed by anybody in the history of life on Earth, or telling me what a naughty girl I was and how they were going to discipline me with their cocks Out of all those messages I read, I don't think there's a single one I would've responded back to had I actually been a girl. WRITING A GRIPPING SUBJECT LINE Your first order of business with any online dating message writing is writing a gripping subject line. She gets 30 to 50 messages a day on Plenty of Fish. Maybe her first day or so on there she opens every message, but once she's been on the site more than a few days, she's mostly just skimming through for interesting-looking subject lines at that point. Fail to make your subject line interesting, and you fail to even get a message read - let alone a reply back. What's gripping? Well, here's what it isn't: Hey there Hello [username]! You have the most beautiful eyes I loved your profile! It's crazy how much we have in common ... or anything else with a generic greeting or compliment, or that sounds like you're trying hard to force a connection where there isn't one yet (because she doesn't know you). Here's what gripping is: interesting or intriguing enough to make her click on your message. plenty of fish The best of these I've found are subject lines that start a statement but don't finish it. This includes: I'm confused... I'm unsure about one thing... One thing jolts me... You know what...? You know what surprises about you...? You totally strike me as... (it's a good thing!) What you're going for here is 1.) intriguing, and 2.) NOT making her wonder if the message is going to be from a hater who's bitter that she's out of her league and is trying to bring her down (e.g., that last subject line might seem like that without the caveat at the end of it, if she's sensitive and has had some bad experiences on POF or another dating website). These are just some I've used. I'd strongly encourage you come up with your own intriguing lead-ins, rather than using these verbatim... since thousands of people tend to read each article on this site and if you're using the same subject lines that thousands of other people are reading, there's a good chance she puts blinders on to seeing these after this article's been up a little while. But these far and away do the job of getting girls to at least open up and read the contents of your messages better than anything else I've seen or used, because they're different and because a girl's natural reaction is to see them and say, "What? I have to know!" GETTING HER TO WRITE BACK She's seen your subject line and been intrigued? Check. She's noticed your picture and it looks good? Check. She's clicked on your message and started reading? Check. The hard part's almost over. The only thing left for you to do is get her to write you back. To do that, you'll need a good first message that ISN'T as terrible as 99.95% of men write, and is not: Kissing her butt Trying to battle it out with her Telling her off for being egoistic Offering to expand her mind with your penis Gifting her a picture of your nether regions ^ on that last, personal aside: where did this practice originate? I've never been able to figure it out. Do men on secret Internet dating forums somewhere I've never come across urge one another to send random women penis pictures as some kind of secretive rite of passage? I always just assumed it was guys addicted to porn who just assumed women must find nudie pictures of strangers' packages equally as titillating as they do... I guess? Anyway, it's no more effective on POF than it is walking up to a pretty girl in a nightclub or on the street or at work or in class and whipping out your erection there is, either. In other words, not only does this work out, but it creeps women the heck out and sends them running for the hills. James Bond does not send penis pictures, even if women ask him for them. If women want to see James Bond's penis, they must come meet him in person, and in private. And they've got to show him theirs if they want to see his. Back to writing messages. So if you can't kiss her butt, yell at her, or send her naked pictures, what CAN you do? Four words: get a conversation going. Assuming you're casting the net wide, to get as many women as possible writing back to you, you want to focus on sending a message that comes across cool, socially savvy, and easy to write back to. I like writing messages like this: SUBJECT You know what...? BODY I hear the people who like cats and sushi do the worst Justin Bieber impressions. ;) How's the online dating world treating you, Ms. Sociable? -C ... or like this: SUBJECT One thing jolts me... BODY I've noticed people who like cats and sushi have strange affinities for all things hipster. ;) How go your adventures with Internet dating, Ms. Sociable? -C pofWhat you're going for with these types of messages is for her to smile, roll her eyes, and go, "Oh my GOD that is so ridiculous!" and then laugh, and then move onto the next statement and not even have to THINK about it, she can just kick back a response. She's already doing online dating right now (she's logged into POF and reading through her messages, after all), so this plays right into what you're doing. The only thing you need to change with these message templates are the items in bold. In the first sentence, choose two (2) items FROM HER PROFILE that are different and not linked in any way, so as to be absurdly funny. e.g., if you say, "I hear people who like running and parasailing," it isn't funny, because it sounds like you're a fitness hater. FAIL. However, if you say, "I hear people who like running and whack-a-mole," it IS funny, because those things are totally unrelated... and you concluding that she's a hipster from them is just ridiculous (and funny). In the second sentence, pick out an attribute of hers from her profile; something that isn't "beautiful" or "fun." e.g., if she says she likes reading books, call her "Ms. Literature." If she says she's a fitness nut, call her "Ms. Fitness." Make sure she'll get the reference, otherwise she's going to read it and go, "Huh?" Remember that people frequently write their profiles and then forget all about them, so if the reference is to obscure or oblique, she's not going to go read through her profile to figure out what you mean; she's just going to write you off as some random guy who spits out nonsense. These kinds of messages do four (4) things for you: Because they're brief, they're easy to read / respond to They're FUN, which make them easy to reply to You're including a smiley mid-message to let her know it's all fun and games, not one of those weird over-serious messages she gets from a lot of guys They talk about something she's already doing (online dating), which make them easy to reply to They refer to things in her profile, which makes them clearly NOT form letters to just be ignored You CAN go more serious with your initial message, but only if you have something interesting to say and you have REALLY good profile pictures. In this case, you can pull off something like this: SUBJECT You totally strike me as... (it's a good thing!) BODY ... the kind of person who's got her stuff together and isn't all over the place. The fact that you like cats and sushi drove that one home for me. ;) How long have you been in Fredericksburg and how do you find it, Ms. Sociable? I've been under a rock for a while, but it's time to start exploring. -C The response rate you'll get to a message like this is far lower, but the initial responses you'll get are far warmer than what you'll get with the other template. Essentially, a girl read this, and says, "Well, the message is only slightly interesting," then if she's somewhat interested checks out your profile and other pictures. If she likes what she sees, she writes back. In effect, you trade quantity for quality - but make sure your pictures and profile are out of this world first. These are crucial for getting responses to this one (they're much less so with the fun message). LINING UP DATES Once she's replied to your initial message, the hardest part is over. Now, you've just got to get her talking a bit more about her, and then ask her to move that conversation to a date or a phone call. Keep the conversation light; always write back in 2 to 3 SHORT paragraphs at the MOST. Even if she's a heavy writer and starts writing you novels, don't follow suit. Eventually she'll feel like it's too much work to respond to YOUR novels, and stop writing. Keep it short and interesting, and mostly about HER, and you'll keep her writing back. Your first couple of messages can be fun / banter-y, but you should be setting up a date or asking for a phone number by the fourth or fifth message MAX. Some people like moving things to instant messaging; I never use this (for various reasons), but if it suits your style perhaps try it out. How do you ask for a phone number? I like to do it like this: "Well, cool. Tell you what, so long as we're talking, let's do it on the phone so we can hear each other's voices and make sure neither of us is a total weirdo before we invest in this conversation any further ;) I'm at 555-555-5555 - call me or text me your # and let's chat." ... or, if things are going REALLY well: "Let's meet up; talking's easier than typing, plus there are no beers on the Internet. I'm at 555-555-5555 - call me or text me your # and what your schedule's like this week. We can always talk on the phone first if you're afraid I'm going to start following you around with a UAV monitoring drone or something ;)" Note the common themes in both of these: You give her YOUR number, then tell her to call OR text her number. She may also elect to send you her message on POF - this is fine too. You're basically giving her options on how to get in contact with you via phone - she can make first contact, or she can give you her number and ask YOU to make first contact You handle the weirdo / stalker thing in a cool, socially savvy way, that puts her at ease because socially retarded weirdoes simply don't talk that way You throw in a smiley just for good measure, to keep the mood light And that's all there is to it. See these articles on your options for setting up the first date and handling phone calls and text messaging: Simplify Your Dates Date Templates: Minimize Confusion Maximize Returns How to Get First-Date Sex with Girls on Every Date Tactics Tuesdays: Making the First Phone Call to a Girl How to Text a Girl / How to Text Girls: 20 More Tips and Techniques Text Message Flirting (useful in some online contexts) plenty of fish pofSo there you have it. Just shy of 10,000 words on kicking some major butt at getting tons of dates with loads of beautiful women off of Plenty of Fish. Key things to remember about profile-building: Your profile picture is ALL IMPORTANT You other pictures are important too - aim for no more than three (3) pics total Your headline is vitally important as well Your profile must be short, intriguing, and leave her curious - not sated Your profile serves more of a support role - it's reassurance, not what sells you Key things to remember about message-writing: She gets TONS of messages every day - you MUST stand out Your subject line is the first place you stand out - again, intrigue her Your message can be funny (quantity) or matter-of-fact (quality)... ... but it must be brief. Women don't respond to 6-paragraph autobiographies Trade a few messages, but get her phone number by Message #4 or 5 POF is a wonderful place to meet new girls. Because it's so big, the turnover is quite high; older members leave the site, and new women sign up. The new girls are often the ones you want to go for first. The majority of women don't stay on POF more than a few weeks at most, and many of the ones who stay longer become extremely picky (not good for you, even if you're damn near perfect), and often use the site more for emotional validation than they do for lining up dates (there are the exceptions, though - the high sex drive girls who love novelty and use the site for a constant parade of fresh meat - but they're in the minority). Think of building a great profile and getting the right messages down as a long-term investment; once it's built, you'll be using it for months (or more) to come. You can meet some beautiful, wonderful, sensational women on Plenty of Fish - and now you've got all the tools to do so, too. Go get 'em, tiger. Or, perhaps, lion fish.

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##How to Not be the Creepy Guy I've posted a few articles recently that deal with casual relations. "Do Women Only Want Sex?" cuts to the core of what, specifically, women want from men; "Sexiness is Critical to Casual Relations" discusses some research highlighting how important being sexy is to netting rapid intimacy with women. A reader sent me an email the other day after reading some of the posts on rapid intimacy, asking if I can help identify what it is he might be doing wrong. An excerpt from his message: "I just can't figure out how any guy can sleep around without misleading girls about his intentions. With a lot of girls, I feel like I'm in a weird zone where they think I only want casual sex, but that they aren't attracted to me enough, so they don't like me at all (and I don't know whether I'm not attractive enough for them or whether they just don't want casual sex.) In this zone, they don't really want me around cuz they see me just as a roving dick on the hunt. That's what honesty gets you... But maybe I need to be more honest about the side of me that wants to get to know them? How do I even do that? Currently I just try to have fun with people, which is how I got over the creepy vibe, but I still feel like I have this worthless-player vibe." creepy guy Okay, so I have a pretty good feeling for where this gent is. He is, it seems to me, at the point where he's relying on being fun and entertaining to keep women's interest and get them to like him, but it isn't translating well to intimacy, and he feels that without being fun and entertaining, he doesn't have much else to offer and people dub him "creepy." Kind of a Catch-22: being fun and entertaining means women don't see you as all that sexual, but dropping the fun and entertaining vibe means people don't want to hang around and that certainly isn't terribly conducive to bedding new girls either. Now, there's a post on this site up about how to be a sexy man, and that's the first place I'll point anyone who wants to know how to start instilling the right kinds of emotions in a woman: interest, curiosity, intrigue, and arousal. And we talk a lot about the drawbacks of being the entertainer guy in "Reactions from Women, or Results with Women? So those are a couple of great places to start if you're looking to get out of the habit of being entertaining and into the habit of being sexy. But if you drop the fun and entertaining slant, and you end up seeming creepy… what causes that? That's the main thing I'd like to address in this post; basically, how not to be the creepy guy. HOW "CREEPINESS" WORKS "Creepy" is kind of a catch-all term for feelings of nagging fear and uncertainty that certain people instill in others, most commonly when we intuit that those others are trying to hide their real motivations. When someone wants something from us but is lying about it, we call him a "creepy guy." Creepiness is something many newer guys run into, because they find themselves in the situation of wanting something from people but lacking the social wherewithal to honestly express their wants without being too forward or awkward - so they try to conceal them. To people they might be threatening to in the wrong light, this comes off as "creepy." Some common faux pas that someone described as creepy might make: A conversation is dying, but he stands there and keeps trying very hard to keep it alive. A woman has given signals she isn't interested, but he continues trying to talk about very mundane stuff like the weather or the city or his job. The level of interest he's showing does not align with his purported intentions. The first two are tied to being a social burden, which we'll talk more about a little below. What that last one stems from is that say a guy is trying to be indirect and not show any interest in a girl, but his body language and behavior is communicating he's very interested, there's going to be a big mismatch between what he's saying he wants (friendly, polite conversation) and what he actually wants (to take this girl to bed right now). That "concealing of the obvious" tends to put other people on edge a bit. It's not really the "coming on too strong" that's a problem. It's the coming on too strong with a lack of social calibration. It really all ties back to how socially calibrated a guy is. The more comfortable he is with people, the more he knows both how to act with people to get what he wants, and how to present himself in a way that others find pleasing and compelling but not overbearing. Being creepy ultimately is about wanting something from people without offering anything in return. Creepy guys do not try to get to know who women really are and give them good emotions. They don't try to sweep women off their feet and make them feel romanced and excited. They just stand there and keep trying to talk to women hoping that somehow by saying enough words women will decide they want them. They offer no value and do nothing positive to interest or intrigue or attract a girl, and instead only want and pursue whatever it is they want (a phone number, a kiss, to take a girl home, etc.). People don't like people who want to take from them but give nothing in return. When someone picks up that another person is like this, that other person tends to get labeled "creepy." THINGS CREEPY GUYS DO AND HOW TO FIX THEM There are some specific behavioral traits creepy guys possess that you'll notice more socially calibrated men do not. I'll list them out here and explain. Scanning and Staring. Creepy guys tend to scan around a lot, "hunting" and looking for the next woman they'll talk to. This is very obvious to everyone else in the venue, especially women, who have eagle eyes for which guys are staring at them and get creeped out by men who are scanning around and staring them down. More socially calibrated men instead flow naturally into conversation and use their peripheral vision, identifying women they want to talk to without ever looking directly at them. Giving too much of their body. Creepy guys come on very strong and give full body attention most of the time. That is, they point both their feet, their torso, and their head and eyes directly at the person they're talking to. This is like what many salespeople do when you walk into a store, and it makes you feel cornered when they do that to you, right? Well, a guy turning his body on full blast to some girl he's just met makes that girl feel exactly the same. Learn to talk to women over your shoulder and open them with the side of your body facing toward them, rather than giving them a full frontal. Being overly serious. Sexy men typically have either an extremely steamy, sultry vibe about them, or they have a puckish playfulness mixed in with sexual undertones. Women react very well to this. Creepy guys, on the other hand, usually don't smile at all, and seem dead serious. When a man approaches a new woman, she has no idea what his intentions are, and men are generally bigger and stronger than women and thus potentially dangerous to them. Smiles disarm; but creepy guys often forget to smile and instead barrel in with a serious expression on their faces and alarm women. You mustn't forget to smile. Being a social burden. The concept of the social burden is a pretty interesting one, and one I'll probably do a post on at some point. Basically, when you've just met someone there's often a fear that you're going to stick around and not leave and be a burden on them socially, even if you seem like a really cool guy. Socially calibrated men are very good at defusing the fear of the social burden, and thus move past this quite quickly. Less experienced men are often not, and hang around giving full, unflinching attention to a new woman and hanging onto her like a bulldog. There are ways to adroitly hang onto a woman while simultaneously defusing the fear of the social burdens, which I'll cover more in-depth when I get a post on this up, but for now, suffice it to say that speaking slowly and with lots of pauses is a very good place to start. It allows women to relax and know that they'll be able to get a word in and end the conversation if they need to, which is freeing for them to know and alleviates much of the fear. Being truly indirect verbally, while communicating interest nonverbally. Most new guys prefer using indirect - not coming out and stating their interest in a woman - because they haven't figured out how to do direct yet without coming on too strong, and indirect feels a lot safer and less intimidating. And indirect is certainly fine, so long as at some point you start communicating your interest. The stronger your interest comes across via behavior and body language, the sooner you must verbally communicate or at least imply interest. If you continue beating around the bush and trying to act uninterested while your behavior and body language implies otherwise, you'll be deemed "creepy." Circumvent this by verbally or implicitly confirming to women that yes, you admit you're interested. creepy guy Being afraid. There's a psychological term called "emotional contagion" that discusses the absorption and internalization of the emotions of those around us, and the one thing that many creepy guys have when they're talking to strangers and new women is fear. And when a man is feeling fear, he communicates it; the expressions on his face a are a little tighter; his voice trembles a bit more; he thinks about conversation more slowly and his conversation comes with more hesitation; and he puts out plumes of pheromones filled with fear chemicals that women pick up on. If you start communicating fear, women pick up on it - and become fearful themselves. Compound that with standing there trying to force a conversation with a woman you're afraid of - ack, no good; the girl feels like something is very off. Unfortunately, not much you can do about this one aside from bite the bullet and go talk to the girls you find most intimidating, until you reach the point where they frighten you no more. MOVING BEYOND CREEPY The best way to get over creepiness, of course, is to develop a high degree of social calibration and social intuition. I strongly recommend dropping routines and fun and entertaining stuff if you're doing that and focusing instead on becoming a talented conversationalist. It will be a bit harder for a while if you've been doing that other stuff, and you'll get fewer extreme reactions from women and might see a drop in your results for a while if you've been getting some with some other stuff, because the learning curve's a bit steeper. But you'll quickly advance as a conversationalist once you start trying and, man, let me tell you, once you're good with conversation, you will blow away all the guys trying to entertain. You must also seek to romance women. Provide them great emotions and a great experience! That's what you need to be looking to do. You're not there to take; you're there to give. Quick, casual intimacy happens when a man creates the proper emotions in a woman to make it happen. Even the women who are desperately looking for a man to go to bed with will not go to bed with just any man most of the time; usually they're looking for a man who knows how to push the buttons they need to have pushed in order to accompany him home and become his lover. So, if you ever feel like you're giving off a "worthless player" vibe, take a second and ask yourself what value you're providing to women. If the answer is not much, start zeroing in on how you can provide value to them. You should target things like excitement, connection building, and sexual intrigue. See the article on "How to be a Sexy Man" for more on this. Once you're providing value to women, and being honest about your intentions, the risk of being dubbed a "creepy guy" becomes less and less, until eventually it disappears altogether, never to be seen again. Then you'll the one women come to to point out a guy and say, "Ah, that guy's creepy!"

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##How to Not Fall in Love (Too Soon) Tell me if you can relate to this… You've met a girl that is somehow pulling all the right strings with you (…and if not, this article will teach you how to find, meet, get and keep her). You don't know what it is with her (or maybe you DO), but she's got your heart atwitter and your mind in a knot just thinking about her. Your hard work has paid off… and you've hooked up with a girl who's EXACTLY your type… both in terms of looks and personality. Things couldn't be much better… except, all the confidence and inner strength you had worked so hard to cultivate over the years are suddenly RIGHT out the window. Maybe you're even in a place where you know you could go out and pick up other girls if you wanted to, so it's not an issue of scarcity (e.g., your girlfriend being hard to replace)… maybe you've had a lot of one-night stands, friends-with-benefits or open relationships before. And in those situations, you've always been cool… coolio like Fonzie. But around your new girl-friend, you're suddenly weak at the knees… ESPECIALLY when something happens that gives you room for doubt… doubt whether she's really as much into you as you are into her. What causes this, and what can you DO about it? AH, LOVE: OLD INSECURITIES, CREEPING TO THE SURFACE… As we've discussed in the article on relationship control, the feeling of being infatuated or even in love with someone is biochemically linked to the feeling of being out of control. The very reason why people fall in love with each other is that they don't initially know where they stand with the person they're with. Once you show her that she OWNS you… that's it. She'll lose the thrill of the chase, and start to "fall out of love"… And this goes both ways. Maybe you already know about that, and maybe you're always extra careful not to show her how much you like her… and especially, not to show her your fear that you might like her more than she likes you. You don't just need to know how to avoid acting like you're head-over-heels in love… you need to know how not to fall in love in the first place… at least, not fall in love too much. But this behavior is just another level of the same problem… it stems from the same basic, underlying insecurity. how to not fall in love DON'T CHECK YOUR PHONE NOW! You KNOW you're in trouble if you're constantly checking your phone to see if she's messaged you. You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've been there… And if you have, the simple solution is to CHILL OUT. Don't let it get to you if she isn't texting you all the time… keep in mind, girls play THE GAME too. They read all about how to manipulate a guy's feelings in Cosmopolitan and a few dozen other magazines… they learn it from the soap operas they watch on TV and from the romance novels they read while you're watching porn… Chances are she's checking her phone just as obsessively as you are. In any case… CHILL! I can assure you that this problem passes with experience and with the right mindset… years ago I would sometimes check my phone every half hour when I had a crush on a girl. It's not something that can't be overcome… now, if anything, girls ask ME why *I* haven't texted back. Let me show you the light. HOW TO NOT FALL IN LOVE: ABUNDANCE MENTALITY So where did that abundance mindset go that you spent so much time and effort cultivating? How come there are all these girls around, but this ONE, for some reason, has suddenly become so important that your abundance has morphed into suffocating scarcity over night? Why is it you can't stop thinking about her - what's so special about her? It is because women who trigger these kinds of feelings in you really ARE scarce… make no mistake about it. Maybe the thought will even creep into your head that "you will never find a girl like her again." Well pal, I have good news and bad news… which one do you want first? Okay… The bad news is that you're absolutely right. She really IS a unique little snow flake, there are NO other girls like her anywhere and you will NEVER find a girl just like her again. Bam! Now, for the good news… Have you ever seen that poster on despair.com that says: "Always remember… you're special. Just like everybody else." how to not fall in love That REALLY is the truth. While there are no other girls out there that are exactly like her, there ARE three billion women out there that are unique in their OWN ways… Every girl is so intriguing and fascinating in her own way that I can't imagine NOT having broken up with (a.k.a. "lost") my first girlfriend. Christ, I can't fathom what I would have missed out on over the years… So keep that in mind, and also do keep your options open a bit. Talk to girls where you see them… you don't need to cheat on your new girlfriend, but you KNOW she's getting approached by guys, so it's only fair that you should have a flirt with a girl here and there as well. The root cause of neediness is ALWAYS a lack of (perceived) options. And if you want to not fall in love and lose your edge with that amazing new girl, you need to keep those options open. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS… TEXT INFATUATED Did you know that being "in love" has been likened to a psychosis by scientists? Biochemically, it is a very similar process… and in many ways, you are pretty much on drugs when you have a crush on someone. See the Los Angeles Times' in-depth piece on "Brains in Love" for a sound tour-de-force of the science behind this. One might say you are unfit to plead in a court of law… and definitely unfit to make any important decisions about your relationship (or even about your text messages) at this point. Here's a parachute, a life line, if you will, that you should make FREQUENT use of… Are you freaking out? Checking your phone every thirty minutes and thinking about writing her again… because she hasn't replied yet to the text you sent her TWO HOURS ago? Sheesh… she's probably busy at work, dude! Relax! Call your wingman instead… your buddy you go out to meet girls with. He has a clear head… he can think straight, and view things more objectively and from a distance. He'll slap the idea of sending her another text out of you pretty quickly. Watch this clip and let the lyrics sink in… THE TRANSITION FROM DATING TO RELATIONSHIP Whoa… the R word… out of Ricardus's mouth? The guy who always talks about how to date multiple women? I know, calm down… I haven't always been the kind of guy who exclusively does non-exclusive deals… In fact, I've been in several long and very fulfilling monogamous relationships before… and I know that can be one of the greatest things this life has to offer. Being in love with a girl who's also in love with you? The greatest rush this side of Eden… while it lasts. But, you need to set things up right… and you need to strike the right balance. When you first get into a relationship with a girl you have a crush on, you need to know how to not fall in love - at least not before she's in love with you too; you obviously can't be a weak push-over who calls her five times a day and rolls over when she gives the command. She'll lose all respect for you - and all attraction as well. On the other hand, however, a lot of the rules you've learned about dating go RIGHT out of the window as well… there does come a point when it's time to drop the "game", if you ever hope to establish a good, open communication line and trust with your girl. In dating, a lot of this "tip toe" dance goes on, where one person slips forward a step and then the other person goes forward, and so forth.... It's part of the fun, and you both don't really let on to your attraction until the other person has really won you over. Once you are in love though, the game changes and you need to start being more authentic… because everything else runs contrary to a great relationship. BEING AUTHENTIC Most people are not 100% open with their hearts… but if you want to be in an exclusive relationship, the right confident kind of vulnerability can actually serve to make you MORE attractive - IF it is done right. It is also the main thing you need to address in HER, as she will likely be afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve, too. You see, here's the thing… Everything could be really simple, in theory… Boy likes girl, girl likes boy. When did it all get so complicated? Well, the problem is that we've all been hurt in the past… and so most people act out of fear. Everybody has baggage from previous relationships, from their childhood or their relationships with their parents, and it overshadows and complicates the intimacy they COULD experience today if they were only able to truly let go of the past. One girl I used to date put it this way: "The first time one falls in love is always the best… because there are no scars yet, and no fear… so we allow ourselves to love fully, without reservations and without playing any games." The problem, however, is that this baggage lies in the subconscious… and therefore, below the level of our awareness. But if you can get over your own past, and allow yourself to love fully and yet be completely OUTCOME INDEPENDENT, then you will be able create an intensity in the relationship that makes women just crazy for you. DISCLAIMER: It is absolutely cruel to do this without loving intentions. Don't do it with a girl that you aren't absolutely crazy about yourself… you can mess up years of her life and she will spend them pining for you. Don't hurt a girl, and don't lead women on. There's no need to hurt girls or lead them on about your intentions… if you only want a casual thing, she'll probably be fine with it… so long as you're honest about it. SO JUST PUSH HER AWAY… RIGHT? how to not fall in loveOne common piece of advice in the world of dating and seduction is to simply push a girl away from you, and she will want you even more for it. One "guru" even went so far as to saying that other guys are like rubber… if you push your girl onto them, she will bounce right back at you. And that is true... but only to a point. I've seen it happen several times that a guy told his girlfriend - "Hey, if you want to leave me for another guy, just go for it." He probably thought it made him look really secure in himself and like he didn't need her… but this is not how not to fall in love. It's a fool's gambit played by a man who's trying to appear in control when he knows he isn't. In all cases where I've seen that happen - where the guy told the girl, "Hey, if you want to leave me for," the girl took the green light and went ahead and cheated on the guy with somebody else eventually (me). It is essential to strike a balance... neither too needy, nor too indifferent. Or, in the words of David Shade: "A good man is exciting without being reckless… considerate without being boring… macho without being uninteresting… intelligent without being bland… and dominant without being demanding." If that sounds like nothing more than an empty cliché to you, use these words on a woman some time… I once sent this exact line to a female friend of mine over instant messenger, and she was about ready to hop on a plane to come see me afterwards. Even a year later she still brought it up to me… because, as she said, "your words were strong." Never underestimate the power of words… and never underestimate the attractiveness of a man who unites both sides of the yin and yang in his personality!

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##How to Overcome Depression Was discussing this on a forum with a guy; I used to talk about it a fair amount, some time back, but it's sort of faded from my life in significance. It just isn't on my mind much these days anymore, but I do remember how big a deal it was for me once, and hopefully my story and process can help a few people. I used to be depressed. Really depressed. For about ten years, I was so utterly despondent and resigned about life, I thought the rest of my life would be that way. I was often filled with anger and resentment toward the world, and felt like I was fighting against everybody else. Forced outside the system and viewed as an unwelcome interloper, I was friendless and without companionship, isolated and alone. I didn't belong anywhere. How I turned things around, and transformed myself into a guy who's constantly positive and optimistic - and no, it ain't an act, I really am optimistic, in a realistic, practical, still-somewhat-cautious way, all the time - and filled with a can-do spirit and good at getting what he wants and succeeding at most things he tries, at least over the long term - how I turned myself into that kind of guy from the complete opposite, well, that's the subject of today's post. And I feel it's worth saying before the jump, that yes, you can do it too. There's nothing all that exceptional about what I did - but you're going to have to be a little stubborn to do it. If you ever struggle with not feeling so great though, and you think you're ready to start pulling yourself up by your bootstraps now, read on. DECIDING TO CHANGE In late-2004 I reached, once again, the end of my rope. I'd suffered another string of defeats, and was feeling desperate; it was as though nothing I did made a difference in my life. It was then, in late November that year, that I decided it was time to plot a new course to try one last time to change my life; a course, this time, unlike any I'd plotted before. I'd long refused to take medication, despite my parents' urgings - sure, it might make me feel better, I said, but at what cost? Then I'd be stuck taking pills to feel good for the rest of my life. And I didn't want to talk to psychologists - I spoke with a few, never by choice, but I didn't give them anything. I knew how they talked to patients and the kind of advice they gave; there wasn't anything they could help me with. Many days I woke up feeling absolutely sick to my stomach, not wanting to get up from bed, not wanting to have to face another day of misery and failure and helplessness and living a life devoid of hope and meaning, but even that wasn't enough to compel me to give in and surrender to medication or doctors. If I was going to beat depression, I thought, I wanted it to be on my own terms, and I wanted it to be forever. I just... didn't really know how I was going to do that, exactly. One thing about me is, I'm a skeptic. And, I was so fatalistic, you couldn't have told me anything back then. If I today met myself from ten years ago, and I told him, "Dude, guess what, I figured out how to overcome depression, and I can help you change your life!" the me from ten years ago would have looked at me today and said, "No, you can't help me and you don't know what you're talking about. The only thing that's going to help me is my life changing. Then I'll feel better." Because really, that's how I used to think. That I wasn't going to change my attitude until my life changed. I had a right to be depressed, I thought. I should be depressed. What, I should have a crappy life and be happy about it? But by late-2004, I had begun to realize that everything I tried to change my life - every single thing - had utterly failed. My attempts at building close friendships fell short. Girls still liked me and flirted with me but never did anything with me. I still remained standing apart, in clear exception to John Donne's immortal line, "No man is an island." "No man but me," I used to say. "This man is an island." Then one day, in the midst of feeling as unhappy as I usually did, I had an interesting thought. It had floated up into my mind from time to time, only to be pushed back down again as preposterous and unreasonable. But suddenly, it began to float up more and more often, until at last I could deny it no longer. "I'll wait for my life to change, and only then will my attitude change." That was how I always thought before. But I'd tried that for years, and it hadn't worked. " What if," I asked myself, "I try changing my attitude first, and see if my life changes?" It seemed like a bit of a silly proposition, and it sounded like the feel-good tripe I'd heard countless times before and dismissed as groundless, but I figured, you know what? It ain't like I have all that many more options. Heck, it's worth a shot. And just like that, I at last, after many years and many failed attempts, started myself on the path that would lead me to overcome depression. DEFINING DEPRESSION I've always been fascinated with the mind. It is truly such an impressive organ. Since I was a boy, I've followed the latest research in neuroscience - the study of the brain - and I've been intrigued with Eastern philosophies on consciousness and controlling one's thoughts. I collect studies and theories on the brain and consciousness like some folks collect coins. A mixture of research, and anecdotes, and general common sense began to congeal into an understanding of what exactly depression was. This was years before talk about rumination - the theory that depression is caused by obsessive thinking - became mainstream enough that you could find it on the Internet easily. What I came to think was this: "They say ignorance is bliss. And it seems true - people who don't think much seem considerably happier. Why is that?" I could only think that thinking too much leads to unhappiness. Next, I wondered: "Why should overthinking lead to misery? Hmm, well... when I overthink things, often I end up doing nothing about them, and just sitting there stewing over them. So, the problem makes me feel worse and worse, because I do nothing about it, and just sit there obsessing over it instead. What do people who don't overthink do? Well, they take decisive action, and just go do something and forget about it." Some research I read on how neurons form pathways in the brain sealed it for me; as it turns out, neurons - your brain cells - form information pathways in your brain. And just like how the more elephants that take a certain route through a forest, the clearer that route becomes and the more likely future elephants are to take that same route, the more your mind follows a certain pathway, the more connections the neurons along that pathway form, and the easier it is for your mind to follow that route in the future. So, negative, depressive, fatalistic thought patterns are nothing more than a route in your brain that's been deeply carved by overuse. It becomes a default pattern that your brain falls into, because the path of less resistance is to take the most deeply carved route, and the most deeply carved route, the case of a depressed, fatalistic person, is the depressed, fatalistic route. Once I realized that, I knew what I had to do: I had to change the way I thought. And I had to start doing it right away; I felt like time was running out in those days, and I finally started realizing no one else was going to save me. It was all on me. HOW TO OVERCOME DEPRESSION Once I realized what depression was - excessive, obsessive thinking, or "rumination" - and once I knew what caused it - carving a path in your brain that became the default path your thoughts traveled along - I knew I had to shut down my obsessive, negative thinking, and carve a positive, can-do, new path in my brain - and let the old path grow over. "Okay, great," I said to myself. "Now I know what needs to be done. But how on Earth do I do it? " Over the next few days after deciding to change my outlook on life, I began cobbling together a list of steps. The very first one I targeted was shutting out negative thoughts. 1. Shut Out Negative Thoughts I was standing in line the next day in the school cafeteria after deciding I wanted to change how I thought, and there was this very obese girl standing in front of me, waiting for her chance to grab some pizza - several slices, no doubt. "Yech," I thought, "that's disgusting." I looked at her bare arms and the bumpy folds of flesh there. A shiver went down my spine. And then I realized I felt horrible. Like, not guilty for thinking that, just really... negative and bad on the inside. "I'm poisoning myself with my own thoughts," I realized. From that moment forward, I decided I would no longer cater to negative thoughts. It was only once I realized that these negative thoughts made me feel bad - sick to my stomach, in fact - that I started paying attention to them, and realized I had a lot of them. I'd sit there and obsess all day about all these horrible things I didn't like. "Is this what I'm doing with my time?" I realized, "just sitting here obsessing over negative stuff?" What a way to live your life. So, I did the only thing I could think to do: I started monitoring my thoughts, and every single time something negative popped into my head, I would internally yell, "STOP!" (yelling this inside my head mind you, not aloud!), and all my thoughts would quiet. Then, they'd come pouring back in, and I'd do it again. I'd do it as many times as was necessary to silence them for good. As you can imagine, with a man as negative as I was back then, I mentally yelled "STOP" quite a few times that first month. 2. Think Constructive Thoughts About the Future The next step I realized was thinking constructive, future-oriented thoughts. When you kick those negative thoughts out of your head, it's a lot harder for them to take hold again if their spots have already been filled up with something else - and the something else I decided to use was a focus on things I was doing to better prepare myself for success in the future. I wasn't doing a whole lot in those days, but I was exercising, and I was making music. So most of my constructive thoughts came to focus on those two things: on how I was going to look once I had my body in peak physical condition, and how I was making progress at the gym every day, and how I was going to feel once I got my first album out and once I got some airplay on the radio. I never did get my body into the shape I wanted to get it into, and I never did get on the radio, but those projects were enough for me to focus on at the time, until newer projects developed to take their place. And there are all kinds of things you can focus on: How you're exercising to build a better body for yourself What you're studying to achieve, if it's something you look forward to The kind of job you're going to have when you graduate from school or change careers A company you're starting and working on A website you're developing A book you're writing A skill set you're improving An art you're mastering ... and a lot more I haven't thought of. Anything you're doing to improve yourself and make yourself stronger and better and more successful in the future is game. Think about the progress you are making by putting in work on something every day, or every other day, and use that focus on making progress to crowd out negativity. As a bonus, the more you focus on making progress, the more progress you'll want to make, and very soon you'll start noticing you're advancing a lot more quickly in the things you wanted to advance in than you were before. 3. Force the Change Once I started silencing negative and obsessive thoughts and replacing them with constructive, future-oriented, progress-oriented thoughts, I noticed a very bizarre phenomenon: there was a part of my brain that did not want to change. I discovered something I called an "emotional feedback loop." Basically, when you're in an emotion, you emotionally associate with that emotion and want to keep feeling it. Perhaps because evolution designed emotions to respond to external stimuli, it wasn't a good thing for our ancestors to be able to override those emotions too easily, as that kind of defeats emotions' purpose as decision-influencing stimuli processors. Everyone tells you you're great, and emotions say, "Yes! Keep doing this, you'll be successful." Everyone tells you you suck, and emotions say, "Okay, time to quit doing this, it isn't working." People overriding those feelings can end up doing some distracting or destructive things for themselves, like quitting what they're good at or wasting all their time on what they're bad at. But in the case of overcoming depression, your emotions have gone haywire; evolution hasn't had time to adjust to a modern lifestyle with great amounts of leisure time for you to spend overthinking with your huge neocortex instead of scraping and scrambling all day just to survive. A problem within the mind requires a solution within the mind. So, you figure out how to overcome depression, and you start doing it. That's when you run into the emotional feedback loop. And if you start using this process, you will quickly realize that much of the time, you don't want to change. At least not emotionally. You'll want to change logically; you'll know it's good for you to change and that staying mired in depression and obsessive thought loops is damning yourself to hell. But emotionally, you'll want to stay the same. This was a real problem for me that first month of trying to change my thoughts, and half the time the first couple of weeks I'd just give up. I'd go to shut down my negative thoughts and go positive, and I'd think, "No, it's too hard... it won't work... it's too much work. I don't want to be happy anyway; my life is so bad. I shouldn't be happy." But then I'd force the change anyway, and my thoughts would instantly reverse. "Oh!" I'd think, "That was strange! Why on Earth would I ever want to be depressed? How silly of me to think that! I love being positive!" Like I said, bizarre. At first I even thought maybe I had some kind of latent personality disorder I didn't know about, before I realized that this was simply how powerful emotions are. When you're feeling different emotions, you literally are like different people. 4. Stay Vigilant Depending on how depressed you're starting off at, early on, you're going to be forcing a lot of changes, because you won't be able to stay positive for long. It'll be work to get yourself being positive, and the negative thoughts and emotions will come stampeding back the instant you let your guard down. Don't let this get you down. It's just like learning anything new that's challenging. At first, you can only do it for a short while, and then you've got to stop and take a break. Next time, you do it a little longer. And then a little longer. And then longer. After a month of staying vigilant, monitoring your thought process and forcing changes any time you aren't completely exhausted and your willpower isn't totally tapped, you're going to have a much easier time switching out to feeling positive, and you'll stay there much longer. AUTOMATIC DEPRESSION RESISTANCE It's probably a little different for everyone, but for me, somewhere between three and six months in - I forget exactly where because I didn't really notice it until after the fact - I realized this process had become fully automated. I didn't even have to think about shutting down negative thoughts or populating my mind with positive ones or forcing changes or staying vigilant. My mind began policing itself. What a wonderful feeling that was when I realized it! I looked around, and the world seemed like a place full of promise and potential. I'd started cold approaching in the meantime; I'd been forcing myself to meet random girls, strike up conversations, and go on dates. My music was hitting heights I'd long hoped it could hit; my body was, after a long plateau of not improving, bigger and stronger than ever. And depression was being automatically dispatched from my mind. It was still there. I still had a few depressive episodes over the next year or so following that realization. But they didn't last long, and they self-corrected; my mind had learned how to overcome depression so well that it didn't even require me to be consciously aware of it anymore. After a year and a half, my depression was gone entirely, and it hasn't come back. I feel like a free man. I'm living the life I always dreamed about living, and there is almost nothing I want that I don't already have or am not in the process of moving towards. If I could go back in time and talk to myself in November of '04 and tell him the path he was launching himself on was going to take him where I am today, he'd probably look at me and say, "Yeah right. This most likely isn't even going to work; it's just an experiment, and only because I'm out of other ideas." LONG-TERM ANTI-DEPRESSION MAINTENANCE The process is good, and having it internalized is wonderful, but even when you've got this down you must always be aware that there are certain things a man needs in his life to stave off depression's return. For instance, the whole process comes crashing down if you aren't working on anything to advance your life. If I ever reached a point where I had nothing I was doing to advance my life further, I'd be unable to keep depression vanquished, because I wouldn't have anything to look towards if my life as it is currently suffered some setbacks. One must always have the future in mind and be working toward it. There's another element of depression that I realized much later on, and has subsequently borne out in scientific research: namely, the importance of feeling in control. People who feel very in control of their lives have markedly lower rates and risks of depression that people who don't feel much in control of their lives. Which makes sense; when I felt depressed, the best way to describe that feeling, really, was feeling helpless. Feeling like I had no idea what to do to change my life, and no resources at my disposal to start changing even if I did know what to do. So, for that reason, I recommend always keeping many options in your back pocket. Options for your job, options for dating, options for where you'll live in the world. Have options. Doesn't mean you need to exercise them; just knowing you have them is enough to make depression irrelevant. Options mean freedom and control, and freedom and control are the absolute antithesis of depression's helplessness. WHERE DO YOU GO FROM HERE? Now that you know how to overcome depression, what's your next step? What will you do? When I was fourteen years old, I looked ahead at the rest of my life and realized it didn't seem all that promising. So, I tried to call it quits. But, at the last possible moment, I had doubts; not doubts about death, that didn't bother me. Not because of the pain; that I can handle. But I had doubts about life; what if I would've achieved what I wanted to achieve had I stuck it out long enough? Wouldn't that be a waste if I bought it for nothing. So, I stepped back from the brink, and suffered through nearly a decade of misery before turning my life around. All the while as I suffered through it, though, I thought to myself this thought: "Some day, I will turn my life around, and be such a smashing success, doing everything I could ever possibly want to do, that I will be able to reach out to the people who are where I once was and say, 'You can do this too. You always have a choice.'" And I have made a difference, I think. My best friend, a very successful guy in both business and with women, tells me it was my counsel that pulled him back from a similar brink some time ago. My ex-girlfriend - a beautiful, dynamic woman who taught me how to deal with people in ways that proved invaluable to me in life and love - credits me for freeing her from the poison of negative, judgmental thoughts and allowing her to truly be free. But it doesn't work with everyone. One friend of mine, whose life I did everything to try and improve - I helped her find a great new job; helped her meet great new friends; counseled her on how to overcome the depression she was dealing with; and worked with her through just about every problem she had - she still couldn't get better, and ended up on medication, where she will probably be for the rest of her life. And I think the main reason why was because the whole time, she was still waiting for someone to save her. She kept sitting there waiting for her life to change. No one will save you. No one can. Just like I thought sitting in those psychologists' offices long ago, "What's the point? It's my life; there's nothing you can do to fix it." And it's true. I can't save you; some beautiful girl who loves you can't save you; family and friends can't save you. The only person who can change the way you see the world is you. I read something a few years back about a guy who was a millionaire, and had a drop-dead beautiful wife, and a gorgeous house, and a new baby, and he killed himself. It stuck in my mind because I remember how shocked everyone was. He had all the things about which most people say to themselves, "If only I had that, then I'd be happy." But he wasn't happy. He was miserable. Because happiness doesn't come from the things you get. If you rely on "getting things" to solve your problems and conquer your depression, you will be forever chasing your next fix, because all the things in the world are never enough. If you want to vanquish depression, that's a victory that must be won in your own head and in your own heart. That no one can help you to do it should not be a let down; in fact, it should be quite empowering. Because, the truth is, everything you need to overcome depression is in your own hands, and it always was. Your own destiny is yours to decide; here's hoping, if you haven't already, that you take the wheel and start steering.

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##How to Pick Up Girls in Bars and Clubs Recently we've been getting a lot of comments from guys asking how to pick up girls at bars and nightclubs. I've even had a few commenters on here asking if any of the material on Girls Chase works in nighttime venues. Well, that's funny to me, because almost everything I discuss on here was developed, tried, and tested first in bars and clubs. pick up girls in bars and clubs In fact, to this day, these remain my preferred venue type for picking up. You won't find girlfriend-quality girls hanging out much in these places... and you'll even find some downright crazy girls at times. But if you want to pull off quick pickups and bring girls home within hours or minutes of meeting them... if you want to put yourself in a venue where much of the screening is already done, and a healthy chunk of the women there are looking for something right now... and if you want to really train and hone and test and refine your skills and abilities with women in a fast-paced, ultra-competitive, extreme-as-extreme-gets environment, bars and clubs are it. Now if all that appeals to you, well... where do you begin? pick up girls in bars and clubs If you're new to the nighttime scene, you might not realize yet that different kinds of bars and nightclubs attract different kinds of clientele, looking for different things. Just as you can expect to find different patrons in search of different meals and different experiences in Mexican restaurants than you can in fine dining establishments than you can in fast food joints, so too does the world of nighttime venues offer a variety of flavors to suit all tastes. Understanding what these are best prepares you to be able to go out and start using these venues right now to find the kinds of women you most want. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF BARS Bars come in three distinct varieties: Neighborhood bars Dive bars Popular bars Bars tend to not be as suited for pick up as other nighttime venues, as they're generally smaller, more brightly lit, and more "friendly" environments that are conducive to groups of friends going to hang out, have drinks, eat snacks, shoot the breeze, and dance. People generally prefer beer to liquor in bars. Of these three groups of bars, dive bars are the most reliable pickup locations, while neighborhood bars tend to be the worst. Here's a look at each. Neighborhood Bars Neighborhood bars have a tendency to be all over the map, in terms of patrons and expectations. You'll find some neighborhood bars stocked with retired military veterans; some that are biker hangouts; others that college kids stop by in droves to pre-game at prior to a night on the town. Some them will have all of these and more in a single venue. A neighborhood bar is identified by its large gang of regulars, many of whom know each other; its friendly and cordial atmosphere; and its acceptance of both groups of friends and solo visitors there to pound back some ale and shoot the breeze with bartender and bar-goer alike. Neighborhood bars include: Sports bars Irish pubs English pubs Salsa bars Generally speaking, these bars are not good pickup locations, with the exception perhaps of salsa bars on a salsa night. You won't find many attractive young women at these locations, and most of the ones you will find are deep into socializing with people they're already friends with. Even at salsa bars, the most favorable of these toward pickup, most salsa classes are held in the early evening, and are more conducive to getting a phone number than they are to picking up girls. Dive Bars Of the three main categories of bar, dive bars are the easiest spots to pick up a girl at. Why so? Mainly because dive bars: Attract less image-conscious people (thus, that new girl you've just met won't care as much what her friends think if she goes home with you) Are darker / seedier types of environments (which discourages from visiting them women who are focused on everything being "perfect" or having a night out on the town with the girls, or who aren't bar "veterans") Are much more likely to serve as meet markets The downside (depending on your tastes) of a dive bar is that the women in attendance don't get all dressed up to the nines. The upside of this is that they don't expect the best, so you can still manage to pull from here even if you aren't on your A game. Because women in dive bars tend to be less concerned with their friends' opinions, or to be bigger participants in modern Western "hook up culture," you'll typically find these venues the most reliable pickup spots. One other reason that dive bars make such good locations to meet women open to accompanying you home the same night: dive bars attract women more experienced in the bar scene, and the more experienced in the bar scene a girl is, the more open she tends to be to casual flings and rapid pickups. As dating website OkCupid found in its famous analysis of website data "The Best Questions for a First Date," the only correlation for women between the answer to any question and whether a girl said she'd have sex on the first date or not was for the question, "Do you like beer?" As beer is an acquired taste, and that it typically takes a fair amount of time at bars and parties to acquire it, and the more often a woman is in these situations, the more opportunities she's giving herself to hook up with men and the more likely she is to get comfortable with the idea, it only stands to reason that the more time she spends around beer (at parties and bars), the more she likes its taste, and the more hook ups she has. Thus, dive bars: home to female drinking pros... and hook up pros, too. Popular Bars pick up girls in bars and clubsPopular bars include: Dance bars Music bars Piano bars Karaoke bars College bars These are basically the big, hopping bars that attract large crowds of attractive / fun-loving young people. In terms of pickup reliability, popular bars are somewhere above neighborhood bars, and below dive bars. Popular bars attract a more "mainstream" clientele; that is to say, not the older and mixed crowds of neighborhood bars, and not the "bar veterans" of dive bars, but rather your run-of-the-mill, ordinary folks out for some fun, drinking, partying, socializing, and dancing. The disadvantage of this is you get people less experienced with the bar scene, which means a lot of women with reservations about hooking up in front of their friends. And, because people always come to popular bars with friends, and because they tend to have reservations about hooking up with strangers in front of those friends, this makes picking up in popular bars a lot more challenging than in dive bars. On the plus side, you can find flashier / more "done up" girls in popular bars than you will in dive bars (not necessary physically prettier, but typically better hair / clothes / make up; "hotter," if you will). And you can sometimes pull - but usually that happens later at night, when everyone's somewhat drunk and a girl's friends are all over the place. You'll tend to find that the most fights happen at popular bars, too; just as popular bars attract immature women inexperienced with the bar scene, they also attract a lot of immature men who easily become drunk, sexually frustrated, and aggressive. So long as you're ready to sidestep aggressors and calm things down after finding out a girl has a boyfriend only after he comes up and puts his hands on you, and you keep your wits about you, you'll be fine. Just remember that people tend to roll in big groups at popular bars, so tread a little lightly if you're there by yourself. These places can still be fun, and you can sometimes pick up from them, if you don't drink too much and you keep your head screwed on straight. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOUNGES While technically considered bars, I'm including lounges here as a separate category, mostly because they tend to attract very different crowds and have very different atmospheres than most bars. The three kinds of lounges are: Hotel bars Cocktail lounges Hookah/shisha bars Unlike bars, people don't come here to drink beer, or to party (except in the case of some hotel bars); rather, they're here to relax, sip a cocktail, and make conversation. Dress codes at lounges are more upscale; while you may be able to get away with t-shirts and loose-fitting jeans at most bars, in a lounge you'll want to have at least a button-down shirt on - if not a blazer or fashionable coat on top of it. And forget about anything that doesn't hug your frame; looking good is more important than feeling comfortable in a lounge. Hotel Bars For all the glamor of a hotel bar - imagine the mystique of meeting some beautiful woman staying at the hotel, all alone in the room paid for by her company, whiling away her night with a martini and a cigarette at the bar - they're actually surprisingly difficult to pick up at compared to the other lounge options. Partly, this is because there simply aren't a lot of lonely businesswoman travelers out there manning the bar at their hotels. And partly, this is because the hotel bars that are popular - e.g., the Ivy Hotel bars, the W Hotel and its bars, the Hard Rock Hotel and the bars it has there - tend to be trendy lounges akin to the "popular bars" discussed above where young people new to the bar scene come to see and be seen with large gaggles of their friends - not to meet somebody new. So, while you'll often see and hear of lots of "hot" girls in attendance at these, you'll also find them much harder to pull women home from than other lounges, despite the often larger numbers of women present. Women in hotel bars tend to have their "shields" up, ready to deflect incoming male suitors on autopilot, no matter how stylish, attractive, or smooth those male suitors may be. That's because they aren't being dismissed because the woman has actually gotten to know them and thinks they aren't her type; it's rather because she's working off the assumption that every man who bothers to approach her here is "gaming" her, or a "playboy." Best advice for picking up in hotel bars? Get there early, before the women present have switched into autopilot dismissal mode. You still stand a chance of meeting girls on a human-to-human basis at this point, rather than having to break out your A game just to say "hello" like you will later on in the night. Cocktail Lounges Cocktail lounges are the dark, smoky places filled with stylish furniture, ambient music, and people interested in people. Because they're so similar in clientele and behavior, I'm including wine bars in the "cocktail lounges" category here. Of the three main types of lounges, you stand the best odds of picking up girls here, at the cocktail lounge; better than hotel bars, and better than hookah bars. What makes cocktail lounges so conducive to picking up are the following things: People go to cocktail lounges to relax and talk, rather than to dance and party Most people in cocktail lounges are open to meeting new people Music sets the tone for interactions, and the music in cocktail lounges (ambient and house music) tends to be the music most conducive to seduction and building and creating sexual tension You'll find that women in cocktail lounges tend to be attractively dressed, open to meeting strangers, and often somewhat older than the women you'll meet in hotel bars (e.g., 21+ in a hotel bar; 24 or 25+ in a cocktail lounge). Women in cocktail lounges tend to be classier women than you'll find in dive bars, but similarly experienced with nighttime establishments and similarly open to casual liaisons. That means, when you ask her to leave with you and join you for a nightcap, she won't flip out and tell you in a dazed panic that she needs to ask her friends first (as women at hotel bars and popular bars are wont to do), and instead will simply look you in the eye, smile like a minx, and say, "Sure... why not?" Hookah/Shisha Bars Known as hookah bars (or lounges) in most of the United States, and shisha bars in the U.K., these establishments cater to laid back clientele there to relax, smoke some flavored tobacco, have a few drinks, and chat. While hookah bars aren't quite as conducive to same-night pick ups as regular cocktail lounges are (as women tend to be seated more with groups of people, and thus more "entrenched"), you'll find that, on average, they're somewhat easier to pull from than hotel bars. This is because they attract a clientele that straddles the middle ground between hotel bars and cocktail lounges. While the women you'll meet here aren't quite as experienced with going out as the women you'll meet in cocktail lounges most of the time, they tend to be more experienced and comfortable with it than the women in hotel bars, and, thus, more open to making new acquaintances and more open to doing something with those new acquaintances. Hookah bars tend to be more "casual" than either hotel bars or cocktail lounges, inasmuch as people dress a bit less formally at these and act a bit more relaxed. However, you can still find classy, modernist hookah bars with ambient music and well-dressed women - and these tend to be your best bet for picking up that night at hookah lounges. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF NIGHTCLUBS I break nightclubs down into three unique categories: Dance clubs Player's clubs House clubs There's nothing "official" about these terms, but they correspond roughly to the types of venues you'll encounter. Nightclubs offer some of the most "extreme" environments you can pick up in, featuring quite often more worked up women, more jealous boyfriends, more sexual energy, and significantly shorter escalation windows than almost anywhere else. If you weren't too sure if the mantras on Girls Chase of moving fast and attraction has an expiration date were accurate, a few rounds in a nightclub will settle all doubts. Here's what you can expect in each one of these venues: Dance Clubs "Dance clubs" I define as super loud, often very dark nightclubs that serve as little more than big dance halls for throbbing, sweaty scores of men and women. Dance clubs play LOUD popular music, hip-hop, and techno, and feature little sitting or talking area and LOTS of dance floor space. If I could pick any single nighttime venue that was best-suited to what many women want out of their bar/club experiences and worst-suited to what most men want out of their bar/club experiences, it'd be the dance club. When you read online reviews of a nightclub and see scads of women leaving 5-star reviews that read, "OMG! This is THE best nightclub EVER! Don't just go here... go here RIGHT NOW for the TIME of your LIFE!!!" that's a dance club - and when you hear these things about it, you're either going to have one of two reactions: Inexperienced Club Guy: "Whoa, women are having such a GREAT TIME here... this is probably the best place in TOWN to pick up at!" Experienced Club Guy: "Whoa, women are ecstatic about this place... that means they're getting reams and reams of attention from countless men, brushing these suitors off left and right, dancing and making out with others like crazy and then walking away like nothing, and basically feeling like all-powerful princes who call the shots with every man they see and leave every single guy wanting more. This place is probably the worst place in town to pick up at." The reason that women love these places is because they get mountains of emotional validation from the volumes of horny drunk guys present. The reason that men keep going to these places is because they get dances and make outs and feel women up, and keep thinking that they almost got there and that next time they're going to seal the deal. Slow down, Casanova; you're not thinking logistics here. Like we discussed in that sexual tension article, kissing women acts as an extinguisher, or a "release," for sexual tension. Once you've kissed a girl, she knows she's got you, and she doesn't need to keep going on with you. Is it possible to pick up girls at dance clubs? Of course. Is it advised? No, absolutely not. When I used to teach pick up in-field to guys, and I'd have guys signed up for boot camps or one-on-ones, we'd usually do part of the boot camp at a dance club, simply because there were so many women there to approach, and then we'd do the rest of the session at a house club or a cocktail lounge or a wine bar, because that was where the guys would get results. When you're getting paid to train a guy, you want to make sure he sees results, and most of these guys who are learning how to pick up only ever go to dance clubs because they feel more anonymous and easier to approach in. But they're also significantly harder to get results in. A good rule of thumb for dance clubs is this: take whatever girl you normally get at a cocktail lounge, and subtract two points. Or whatever girl you normally get during day game and subtract four points. Normally I'm anathema to the very flawed 10-point scale of rating women by looks, but for the sake of clarity if we use it here that'd look like this: If you normally pull 9s during day game, you can expect to pull 7s in a cocktail lounge, and 5s at a dance club (6s on a really lucky night) If you normally pull 8s during day game, you can expect to pull 6s in a cocktail lounge, and 4s at a dance club ... and so on, and so forth. Now, it is possible to pull the really hot girl from a dance club for a same-night lay; but, it's very difficult. Because of the charged emotions and the tons of men repeatedly approaching her, you're best able to pull same night from a dance club if you have perfect logistics. That is, if you're staying in a hotel right next door to the club, or your apartment's a block down. You've essentially got to get her out of there and alone with you and escalating before the emotional high wears off, and it doesn't last long. Because you don't have any real connection to go off of in a dance club... just emotion. What about dance floor game, you might ask? Same problem. It's emotional spiking. You might get a club make out, but once you've done that for a while you'll soon realize that kissing girls in nightclubs actually makes it harder to get them out of there going home with you. As you reach mid-pull, she starts coming out of the cloud of emotions and realizing things rationally... and suddenly, she knows the two of you are leaving to have sex, and she isn't sure if that's what she wants to do. So, she objects; she protests; and then, she begs off and leaves. Dance clubs are very tempting, I know; almost every aspiring nighttime pickup artist gravitates toward them eventually, for the number of scantily clad women they contain and the just-out-of-reach feel of those women, who will dance, touch, kiss, and flirt like crazy. You can pull - sometimes, at the end of the night. But generally, this is only with mid-level girls who are drunk and sloppy, confused and stumbling around. Not fun, not pretty, and not the kind of girl you really want to take home, unless you are very much looking forward to a night of drunk loving, morning-after hangovers, and non-metaphorical walks of shame. Trust me - there are better options out there for your nightclub enjoyment. Player's Clubs The player's club is what I call a club that isn't really a dance club - its music isn't quite deafening enough, and there's too much floor space dedicated to non-dance floor activities, like bars and tables. This is the kind of nightclub I first cut my teeth in, in a venue named exactly that: the Player's Club. Player's clubs tend to be more relaxed than their wild cousins the dance clubs, with people moving frequently back and forth between the dance floor and the other areas of the club, which are more lounge-like. If you get there early, you can typically grab a spot at the bar while things fill up, although you typically won't want to stay there long once the crowds start coming. Like dance clubs, player's clubs tend to play a mix of popular, hip-hop, and techno music (often badly mixed), though the volume is at tolerable enough levels that you can shout some conversation with girls. It's still rather difficult to talk here, and you'll find that attention spans aren't the greatest, and escalation windows still aren't the longest. Women are slightly more open to meeting new people in player's clubs than they are in dance clubs. The secret here is to be ready to quickly peel a girl away from her group of friends and get her moving and sitting somewhere with you. You'll still find it logistically difficult to pull - player's clubs are similar to popular bars in that girls are usually there with groups of their friends - but you'll still have an easier time of it here than you will at dance clubs. House Clubs pick up girls in bars and clubsThe crème de la crème of nightclubs, if your interest is in picking up new women to share fantastic sexual experience with (as opposed to, say, dancing the night away). When I moved to Washington, D.C. in 2006, I had absolutely zero interest in house music. I was a fan of rap; it was what I listened to, almost exclusively, with a little Bob Marley thrown in for good measure. The house clubs of D.C. changed all that for me. Why'd I become a huge fan of house and ambient music? Simple: tons and tons of good experiences tied to this style of music. Emotional anchoring works on everyone, and when you've had consistently great experiences tied to a specific type of music, you come to love it. My very first night in a house club I met a stunning Peruvian girl who'd go on to become my first real girlfriend and to-date the girl I dated for the longest period of my life. On frequent visits after that, I picked up numerous girls same-night, and met a great deal more. No other type of venue in D.C. held a candle to these. At my favorite D.C. house club, I had a same-night pickup ratio of about 25%; not bad for a guy with a beer gut and a baby face who was still for all intents and purposes a beginner (and I was picking up some pretty cute girls, usually). Living in San Diego, again, my most reliable pickup location was a tiny house club / lounge. I ended up picking up same night or meeting a girl I'd later sleep with even more frequently than at the D.C. location. I had great luck at another big house club there, too. Everywhere I traveled after that, I kept finding house clubs consistently the easiest places to pull from. My pull rate narrowed the gap as my skills improved - I found it easier to pull from the more challenging venues, while my pull rate at house clubs continued improving, though not as fast - but house clubs remained the easiest places to extract women from. Why is that? When I was new to learning seduction, I found that most of the other guys learning pickup kept going to the more "mainstream" venues, heading to dance clubs and popular bars, and kept not getting laid. And I'd tell them, well, look, why don't you come to these house clubs with me, you'll be amazed how much easier it is there! Not only that, but you'll be able to amass a bunch of experiences going from meet to lay, build up your skill level, and build up your confidence levels, so even if you really, really, really prefer the girls at dance clubs and popular bars, heck, you can go back to those places armed with better everything! And these guys would just keep declining, and I'd run into them years later and I'd be picking up chicks left and right and dating gorgeous women with incredible personalities, and these guys would still be twiddling their thumbs at dance clubs or popular bars, still no better at picking up than they were years before, or they'd be locked up in a monogamous relationship with some rather rotund woman who appeared for all the world to be the one wearing the pants in the relationship. That's because house clubs are considered "underground." They're not places you go if you're a normal, social circle-having, play-by-the-rules-being type of guy (or gal). Instead, at house clubs, you get all the rest: everything from weirdoes to beauty queens, all the people who don't want to go to the more mainstream places because either A) they won't be accepted, or B) they'll be mobbed by sloppy drunk guys without style, grace, or charm, and unlike faux "hot" girls dressing up to make themselves appear more beautiful for the sake of getting attention, they're legitimately beautiful women who don't need more attention from random men, and prefer to go somewhere they can disappear, relax, and be treated like normal human beings. What makes house clubs great for picking up, then? The following: Ambient/house music creates a sexual vibe. If you've ever spent time in a house club, you'll know right away what I mean when I say the pulsating rhythm and deep bass used there creates a very sexual vibe. Where pop music creates "dance the night away!" vibes, and hip-hop creates "grind-'n'-fight" vibes, and techno creates "go crazy dancing and jumping!" vibes, house and ambient music create "move fluidly and get turned on" vibes. In fact, this is the only music I recommend if you want to play music back at your apartment when alone with a girl, too. House clubs have an atmosphere that lends itself to conversation. Women are less "on guard" in house clubs that at pretty much any other type of venue. People get into conversations here; random men with random men, random women with random women, random men and random women. Everybody socializes... it's normal. A house club isn't like a dance club, where you go with your friends and dance the night away... rather, you go to a house club to meet, connect, listen to the DJ, and compare notes on other house music experiences. You're much more likely to meet women alone here. You'll just about never meet a girl by herself in a dance club, but women come alone to house clubs all the time. While a girl would feel overwhelmed and threatened alone in a dance club, the more relaxed air and clientele of a house club make her feel relatively safe flying solo. She might be there just for a drink... but often if she's there alone, it's because she's there to pick up too. Women are far more comfortable slipping off into the night with you. Whether that's to go grab a seat on the closest sofa, or to hop in your car and head back to your place, women in house clubs have a lot fewer reservations about breaking off from their friends and going with you than they do in dance clubs. Partly this is because house venues attract a more experienced-with-nightlife clientele, and partly it's because things are just more comfortable in house clubs and she's more comfortable saying, "Okay." House clubs are the most likely candidates to be "meet markets." Most cities have meet markets, but it's not usually the places you hear about. You won't find most real meet markets listed on Internet discussion forums; in fact, the last time I checked on San Diego, one of the toughest places to pull from was listed as the city's #1 meet market on most lists! This is probably due to women voting up places as "meet markets" the places where they get approached by the largest number of men... as opposed to the place where they actually meet the most men that they go home with, or go on to date. Reactions vs. results. So how do you find your city's real meet markets? Simple - you look. Often, in the course of your explorations of less "popular" venues, you'll find the ones that still attract sizeable crowds, but that are surprisingly easy to meet people in, get conversations going, and get compliance from the kind of women you like. Voila - meet market found. For these reasons, you'll tend to find that house clubs have some of the best pull-to-visit ratios you'll experience. If you want the best odds of pulling when you go out, go to a nightclub that plays exclusively house and ambient music. VENUE LAYOUT SPECIFICS When you're gauging a venue to discern how good it's going to be for pick up, you want to look at a few logistical elements in the venue's layout: Size Seating Narrowness Number of floors Centrality of the bar(s) as opposed to the dance floor(s) Whether there's a catwalk or not Obviously, bigger is better (more room to spread out, wander around, and more capacity for women to fill into), but the other ones aren't quite as naturally intuitive. Size: bigger is better. The larger the size of the venue, the more women it can fit, and (unless it's a place in the process of failing), the more people you can typically expect it to get. A good size also means more space for people to spread out; you don't want a totally empty bar or club, but trying picking up in a mosh pit and you'll realize that the more people there are, the more women are on guard, and the less open to meeting strangers they tend to be. Seating: look for lots of empty chairs and sofas. There's nothing less conducive to picking up girls in bars and clubs than bars and clubs with nowhere to sit. You know the ones; they're mostly big dance floors, with a few VIP tables scattered about, or a few seats at the bar, and that's it. Look for ample seating; the more space there is to sit down, the greater the likelihood that there'll be somewhere to sit once you're meeting women and ready to move girls. Narrowness: narrower is better (to a point). Here's one that might surprise you: narrower is better when your goal is to pick up. The very most popular bars and clubs tend to be ones with lots of big, wide, open space - but these tend to make women feel exposed, vulnerable, and more on-guard. They're also not very suited to naturally "bumping into" women as narrower places are. Obviously, you don't want somewhere that's so narrow it hardly fits anyone in; but look for venues narrow enough in most places that it's easy to meet women in them without having to close a big gulf of space, or stand there uncomfortably without a wall or bar or railing to comfortably lean against. Number of floors: 2 to 3 is ideal. The great thing about multiple floors is the ability to move among them, keeping things "fresh." Once you've spent much time on a floor, you'll find you've approached a number of the women there, but changing to another level often means a lot of new women to approach. One floor is too few; you're liable to get trapped in a place that's tapped out. But more than 3 floors is usually too many; these places are too big, too confusing, and tend to lead to too much defensiveness from women. Look for venues with 2 or 3 different floors to spend time on. Centrality of the bar(s): look for central locations. Venue layouts tend to favor either a centrally located dance floor (most nightclubs) with a bar off to the side, or a centrally-located bar (some clubs; more common in bars and lounges) with the dance floor off to the side. You want to look for the centrally-located bar(s) and relatively marginalized dance floor(s), as the central location is where people tend to congregate, and pick up is a lot easier and more consistent off the dance floor than on it. Catwalk: look for these. Something you might not think to look for, but I highly suggest you do, is a catwalk. Catwalks tend to replace dance floors on upper levels, with a setup commonly being a dance floor on the first level, and a catwalk ringing the dance floor and looking down over it on the second. What this tends to mean is that the second level of the venue is entirely devoted to standing and socializing, with nobody dancing - prime choice for picking up. Additionally, women scattered around a catwalk looking down tend to be in reflective moods, and more open to meeting new people. When you find a venue with most of these attributes, you'll often have a winner. When you find a venue with all of them... well, check the crowd, but assuming there are enough attractive women in attendance, you've almost certainly found a great place to pick up. pick up girls in bars and clubs Bars and clubs are both straightforward places to pick up at, and a little challenging and intimidating when you're new. Because of the sensory overload most of these places have to offer (especially nightclubs), and the sheer volume of drunk and sometimes intimidating strangers, they can seem a bit much, especially when you're more accustomed to day game or meeting girls at parties. So how exactly do you approach meeting women in these venues? Simple: you need a game plan for the night, you need to identify which women you want to meet, you want to screen women out, not in, and you need your process down. I'll explain. YOUR NIGHTTIME GAME PLAN When I was still new to going out at night, I tended to fall into one of two patterns in how I approached a night out: I'd either spend all of my time in ONE (1) venue, or I'd spend all of my time bouncing from place to place to place. The former most often happened when I was going out alone, the latter most often when I was out with a wingman, but there were exceptions to both. I later started realizing that most of my pickups happened on the relatively rare outings when I visited two (2) venues only, despite the fact that they made up only a fraction of my nights out. I realized that on these nights, I was using one venue (the first) to warm up and get going in, and one (the second) to really burn the house down in and swing the bat hard. Once I realized this, I ended up making this a part of my default nighttime game plan: go to two venues, and two venues only, no more, no less. A little later, I began experimenting with nighttime street game, and achieved some of the fastest pickups in my life. I started viewing street after bars and clubs closed as so reliable that it became my default "back up plan;" if I really wanted to pick up, and couldn't do so in a bar or a club, I could probably do so on the streets afterward. These days, when I recommend a guy set up a nighttime game plan, I recommend he set one up like this: First venue: get comfortable approaching, and talk to a fair amount of new people here. Get here early. Second venue: arrive here once you've warmed up at Venue #1, but before the main crowd shows up. Begin meeting people while it's still empty and women's defenses are still lowered. Do your best to pull here. Street: in between venues, and after the second venue lets out for the end of the night, approach women on the street. Strike up conversations, then immediately look to pull. You'll want to be focused on talking to lots of girls, and the first venue is what you'll be using to get warmed up and doing that. No worries if you have a bit of approach anxiety; you'll get that sorted in Venue #1. And no worries if you come off a bit stiff or unpolished when you're starting up for the night; by the time you reach Venue #2 you'll be humming (while most of the rest of the guys just showing up for the start of their nights are all thumbs with the girls). You'll also want to decide how big an impact alcohol is going to have in your evening; while sex and alcohol are decidedly linked, drinking too much is a recipe for a bad night (that doesn't result in you picking up, or at least picking up any especially attractive young ladies). I have a few friends able to mix copious amounts of liquor with successful picking up, but these friends are friends who've been drinking copious amounts of liquor for very long times and retain a great degree of control over their mental faculties even as they drink most of the competition under the table. Unless you're a drinking pro, my advice here is to keep it to a couple of drinks a night, and nurse those drinks. A slight buzz helps get you going more easily, be wittier, more relaxed, and more on-point; being even a little drunk though is going to mean you're off your game and making mistakes. IDENTIFYING WHICH WOMEN TO APPROACH Also known as "target selection" by some of the more technical students of seduction, identifying the women you want to meet is something that can save you a lot of both time and hassle, and up the odds you go home with a new girl you like. The problem with this, though, is this: you won't be able to do it without much experience. You need to be socially experienced in order to have the social intuition necessary for sifting through the various different signs and signals you're getting from all the women around you. For instance, a man new to the bar scene may see a scantily-clad woman and think to himself, "Oh! There's a girl who CLEARLY wants to be picked up tonight!" only to find that he spends a lot of time with her and never gets beyond flirting with her. Conversely, the same man may see a woman dressed in a t-shirt and baseball cap and think to himself, "Meh, that girl doesn't want anything," only to be surprised to watch her leave with some other man an hour later. "Maybe he was her boyfriend?" the guy asks himself, knowing full well he wasn't. The fact is, the flashier she's dressed, the higher her expectations are for her night - and for YOU. She's expecting a night of heavy doses of attention, men drooling over her, and only the most perfect Prince Charming sweeping her off her feet. If she's dressed down though, that means her expectations are virtually non-existent. She isn't going out to be the pretty, shiny object... she's just going out to go out. And that means that any attractive men she meets are a bonus. pick up girls in bars and clubs I've long since adopted a personal philosophy of, "When you really want to pick up, approach the dressed-down girls first." The dressed-up girls are good for practice. And you will get these girls... sometimes. But for the absolute best return on the investment (of your time, effort, and energies), approach girls who are dressed down. I've picked up lots of dressed down girls who were every bit as attractive under their unexceptional clothing (or more so) than the flashy girls were as lots of other men who wanted to pick up were busily competing for that one club queen off over there shaking her booty and waiting for the next man to approach and try his hand at her. But once her clothes are off, it doesn't matter how flashy they were... all that matters is how good she looks without them. When identifying women to approach, then, look for the standard stuff: Women who are looking around a lot / distracted / disinterested with friends Women with open body language / feet, heads, or bodies open to the crowd Women who look calm (not über-excited, nor depressed) ... but also look for these things: Women who aren't being as flirtatious Women who aren't dressed quite as flashy Women who aren't being the "main event" While ovulating women tend to be both hornier and more flirty and flashier in dress, as discussed in "What's the Best Way to Pick Up Girls? Get the Ones Looking for You," these women often attract suitors to them like moths to a flame, which means you're going to be facing: Fierce and determined competition (men can "sense" fertile women, and compete hard for them) Women with higher "walls," their defenses in place from being swamped with men approaching them Women with more fickle taste, with lower tolerance for mistakes, shorter escalation windows, and more fleeting interest in specific men In other words, these flirty, fickle women you'll see men climbing over one another to compete for in bars and clubs are absolutely, positively fantastic to test your skills out on and push your boundaries with, and provided you're already at an intermediate level of skill you'll learn lots from them when trying to pick them up. However... even with an advanced degree of skill, you'll only on occasion be able to actually land these girls, and get them invested in you and leaving with you and going home with you and going to bed with you. The rest of the time, you'll just end up frustrated, wondering why it's so hard to pick up in bars and nightclubs. Well, when you're going for the same girl that half the club is too, and you're not already a pickup pro, that's the equivalent of asking yourself why it's so hard to win the NBA championship when you're not even in the NBA yet. Is it possible? Yes, absolutely. Is it likely, when everybody and his brother, including guys with better looks, who are smoother with women, and more experienced than you, are trying their luck as well? No, not really. So if you're in "pick up TONIGHT!" mode, and not "learning and pushing boundaries" mode, focus on the girls with the traits we talked about that signal them as the easiest for you to pick up. SCREEN WOMEN OUT, NOT IN Most guys new to pick up have a very simple philosophy when it comes to screening: Try to help as many women as possible pass their screens. As a result of this, they end up with tons of women available to them... hardly any of them the right ones. Believe it or not, not every woman out there is open to being picked up at any given time by any guy who comes along and smiles the right way and says the right things. Throw Brad Pitt or George Clooney in a nightclub and ask them to pick up one particular girl you point out, and they might be able to... but even with the advantage of fame added onto their good looks and great charm, there's a good chance they get a "no." This isn't a reflection on them, and it isn't one on you when you get rejected by girls... it's simply the way things go; not all women are open to being picked up by all men, all the time. A girl might say "no" to Brad Pitt, but "yes" to George Clooney. Or she might say "yes" to Pitt, but "no" to Clooney. Or maybe she doesn't like Hollywood very much, and she says "no" to both men... but "yes" to you. There are a million different things that can happen with a million different women. Thus, why you want to be pushing for investment and for girls to move with you quickly into an interaction: to screen out the ones who aren't interested, and to get the ones who are interested in you rapidly upping their investment and growing accustomed to following your lead. HAVING YOUR PROCESS DOWN The last part of this, of course, is your process: you need to know what you're doing with women if you want to pick them up and take them home. We've discussed process a few times on here, but for the sake of simplicity I'll lay out a straightforward process (the one I followed for years in bars and clubs, until my targeting was good enough that I could be more selective more easily) right here: Do a fair amount of approaches to get warmed up and build social momentum Open with direct openers, indirect direct, or situational openers Keep moving and meeting new women, working to get quick investment and move them, screening out non-compliant women and women who aren't especially interested in you Transition quickly from light early banter following your opener to deep diving, broken up periodically with chase framing to keep things from getting too heavy Get her sitting down with you soon into deep diving, if you aren't seated already Continue escalating investment from the girl, getting more compliance, and screening her via deep diving Once she seems ready (anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour, normally), invite her home Kiss her within 10 minutes (ideally, sooner) of getting her into your place Escalate to sex This is simple and straightforward, but most guys don't have a process like this. Fact is, if you armed every guy with a simple process that took him from meet to close, I guarantee you the number of men picking up women regularly would rocket sky-high. But, as a reader of this article, you're in a rather unique position... because most men will never take the time to figure out what their process ought to be. Instead, they'll just "wing it," and repeatedly go home empty, alone, and frustrated. HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS IN BARS AND CLUBS TONIGHT You'll notice that most of this article is focused on the types of venue, with only about a quarter of it on your actual process. That's partly because so much of the pickup process is covered in various other articles all over this site (see: "How to Get Girls;" "How to Pick Up Girls," etc.), but also partly because the venue really DOES make a huge impact in the kind of night you're going to have. If you're spending most of your time in dance clubs and popular bars, like the majority of men out there, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle every time you go out to pick up. By diversifying your taste in venue - and by getting a game plan and process down, and by better identifying which women to meet and screening out the ones who don't want what you want - you enable yourself to do what most men struggle crazily to do and still fail to do: Pick up pretty new girls, and take them home with you.

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##How to Pick Up Girls Shopping for Gifts or Groceries It's the holiday season, and that means one thing: time to pick up girls out shopping! If you don't have much experience picking up women who are out shopping for shoes or shellfish, you might think this is rather hard... I mean, walking up to some girl in the middle of a well-lit store and just... hitting on her? Isn't that obvious? Actually, there are a number of more-or-less smooth ways of going about running pickups in shopping areas, whether malls or shops or grocery stores. A bit of a sense of humor and a good handle on indirect game helps; while you can use direct openers out shopping, they often come off a bit too strong. Mostly, what you'll be focused on creating in a shopping environment is a feeling of fate, fortune, or destiny... you and the girl met because you simply had to meet. It was written in the stars. Today, we'll talk about how you go about creating that feeling, and help you bring some holiday cheer into the lives of some beautiful, lonely women out in the wide world. pickup girls shopping Meeting women in a shop or store is different from the many other places to meet girls for several reasons: There are tons of "props" available, making situational game a lot easier than it is in many other environments Many women who shop do so by themselves (making them easier to approach and make headway with), and certain stores tend to attract predictable demographics (e.g., all the beautiful classy girls buy clothes in this store; all the cute punk girls buy clothes in that store) Women who are shopping are often "browsing," as opposed to going somewhere in a hurry like you'll encounter running day game on the street or hanging out with friends like you'll encounter picking up girls at night A shopping mall, or a grocery store, or a clothing shop, or a bookstore, is unlike any other kind of environment for those three reasons in combination. However, there are a few downsides to be mindful of: You stick out far more approaching women in a store than in a bar or a party (where it's business as usual) or the street (where you happened to be walking along when you spotted her) - all the more reason why you need a smooth entry into the interaction (e.g., an under-the-radar indirect / situational open / conversation) You're more likely to get pegged as "some guy out approaching women" - again, more reason for you to favor discretion over valor here Think of shopping environments as places to make your approaches and interactions with women as "invisible" as possible. Don't do this to the point that you aren't approaching to stay "invisible," but you should cause them to draw as little attention to yourself and the girl as you can, primarily so that she won't feel like she has to play the role of the "unassuming woman who gets approached and has to brush some guy off," though also so that you don't become that annoying guy who bothers all the customers and gets asked not to come back by the management. SHOPPING FOR GIRLFRIENDS: THE VENUES When it comes to what sorts of venues are available for you to meet women in that fall under the shopping / store banner, the following are your options: Shopping Malls Clothing Stores Grocery Stores Bookstores Specialty Shops (e.g., Halloween stores, Christmas shops, etc.) If this were the late '90s or the early '00s, I'd have included movie stores and record stores in there, but those are fast becoming extinct. Judging by what happened to Borders (bankruptcy and closure), with Barnes & Noble being the last major chain bookstore holdout, I'd imagine the bookstores aren't far behind, though a B&N in your area still makes an excellent place to meet new women. I'm not including coffee shops or restaurants here because although they are places women are buying things, they aren't in "shopping mode" here per se, and the style of approach and interaction you'll use is different. We'll get into specifics of approach and meeting women in shopping venues in a moment, but before we do so I want to go over some of the differences of each of the five venues above. Shopping Malls: Pros: lots of women, high turnover (new women entering the venue frequently and ones you've already met exiting); can treat approaching in the halls of the mall similarly to how you conduct day game street approaches. Cons: depending on where you live, you may find many of the women here are young or underage; there is a slight "this guy comes here to do this" vibe that it's harder to get away from in a mall than anywhere else. Clothing Stores: Pros: much less "planned" vibe when you approach her correctly than shopping malls; a very easy and natural place to ask women questions or opinions. Cons: less conducive to direct, the most powerful form of opening; harder to transition into meaningful conversation or to move girls to other places or locations than many other venues. Grocery Stores: Pros: can be lots of women when you find the right grocery store and go at the right times; you'll meet women here who never go to bars, nightclubs, coffee shops, or cafés, effectively broadening your dating pool (because no matter what she does in her free time, every woman has to go buy groceries at some point during the week) Cons: grocery stores can feel a little more intimidating to open in than clothing stores or bookstores, with their bright lights and sterile feel and the families and other people milling about; like clothing stores, they can be difficult to move or pull from. Bookstores: Pros: women are "settled in," making them easier to approach and get into a substantial conversation with; you'll also find more intelligent / educated / ambitious / interesting women in bookstores (which I assume if you're the kind of guy who will read 5,000 word articles on getting girls like you'll find on this site, these girls probably rank among your favorites) Cons: bookstore game is much lower key than the game you'll use everywhere else, so you need to fashion a different approach here; if you go at the wrong time of day, bookstores can be completely dead, even more so than the other venues on this list. pick up girls shopping Specialty Shops: Pros: often lots of women; women here are often in "curiosity mode," where they're not on a mission, they're more just checking the store out to see what it has (which means they're also open to checking out other interesting things... like you). They're also usually in good spirits here; you won't find many bored / angry / frustrated women in a costume shop or decorations store. Cons: these stores are seasonal; they're often open only at specific times of the year, and the few year-round ones tend to be ghost towns when not in-season. There are strengths and drawbacks to each choice of venue here. The biggest drawback of all of these though is that (with the partial exception of the mall) it's impossible to keep moving and stay completely anonymous. This is why most men who get good at day game prefer the street; you're able to keep moving and keep running into new women you haven't seen before, and there's nobody around who notices you meeting one girl after another. That said, each of these is a solid venue to pick up a girl at, and once you get the nuances down of each you'll find there isn't that much difference between a bookstore and a clothing store, or a grocery store and the mall. But how do you go about picking up girls while shopping? That's what we're going to talk about next. pickup girls shopping Many a man makes the sorry mistake of going shopping too frequently with his girlfriend (or worse, a girl he's "working on" - see "The Sad Tale of Shopping Guy" for why not to do that one). While shopping with a girl you're dating can be a hair-pulling experience ("We've already been here three hours!") that I recommend you avoid at all costs, shopping for a new girlfriend, on the other hand, can be a lot of fun. In most cities, there are usually lots of pretty girls out and about in shopping venues, frequently by their lonesome. Shopping is certainly one of those occasions where you don't want to bring sand to the beach. So what're the secrets to picking up girls shopping? Below, we'll dive into some mindsets to adopt, some openers to use, and some objectives to have when you're out meeting women in stores, shops, and malls. WHAT TO HAVE IN MIND pick up girls shoppingSome time ago, I remember reading a guy with a large following online who was a self-proclaimed "day game guru" who made the following remark: "You absolutely CANNOT sleep with girls the same day that you meet during the day. You can't do it. Get phone numbers, and meet up with them later." What a load of crock! I count among my friends a handful of men who specialize in meeting women during the day and bringing them home, and they do so regularly. I'm more of a nighttime guy myself, but even when I've dabbled with daytime I've found it not terribly challenging to take girls home. Don't listen to anyone who tells you you have to do something or you can't do something else. They're talking about themselves and their own experiences, and are only telling you where their own limitations are... not yours. Never say never, and always is always wrong... that's my opinion. In "Day Pick Up: Take Girls from Street to Bed in a Snap," Ricardus discussed his strategy of asking girls what else they have going on for the day, and taking them on dates then and there if they're free (or setting up a date for later in the day if they're not). You can also just meet girls during the day and then start leading, regardless of what else they have planned. You can even try to get them to change their plans... and if you approach it the right way, some of the time you can. And once they've changed their plans, they are firmly committed to being with you. All that in mind, I'd advise you to adopt one of the three (equally valid) objectives for when you're going out to meeting girls shopping: Talk to her quickly, propose a date, get a phone number, and exit the conversation on your terms Meet her, find out what else she has going on the rest of the day, and either take her on a date immediately if she's free, or set up a date for later that day or tomorrow and grab a phone number if she isn't Meet her, and immediately start moving things forward like as if she's free. If she likes you, she may change her plans without telling you (e.g., she was going to go to get her hair cut, but instead she skips the appointment to keep hanging out with you, without ever telling you about it), or she may tell you she has to do something but you can tell her that if she's having fun spending time with you, she should keep spending time with you, and she can do that other thing later today or some other time Before you head out, you'll want to know which of these is your mission, and stick to it. Not much sense in trying to figure out what you're going for halfway through an outing... decide if you want to grab phone numbers, test for availability, or just push things forward and see if it works. Then do it. HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS OUT SHOPPING You've got the overview of pros and cons on each of your options for venues. And you've got the mindset and objective to use when out meeting girls in stores. Now let's get you the mechanics on picking up these girls. Below, we'll have a look at Shopping openers What to do after you open Doing a complete same-day pickup Let's get to it. Shopping Openers One of the easiest openers to use when out shopping is a form of indirect direct; it's fun, it's flexible, and it's direct enough that you can get to the point without women wondering what you're really after, while not being so direct that it's jarring to a girl with her mind on the latest clearance sale. If you haven't read the article, indirect direct is structured like this: Curious / amusing situational question Statement of interest and introduction So, an example of an indirect direct opener in a clothing shop would be: You: Do you think these come in my size? [holding up women's shoes / panties / earrings, etc.] Girl: [laughs, or mildly surprised] You: I'm just kidding, I thought you were cute and I wanted to meet you. I'm Hector. An example of indirect direct in a grocery store would be: You: Hey do you know any good recipes combining this [hold up a random ingredient] with tomato sauce? Girl: Um... no, I don't know if I do... You: I'm kidding, I'm actually not that hopeless. I just thought you were pretty and I wanted to say hello. I'm Hector. An example of indirect direct in a bookstore: You: Excuse me... do you know where the section on equestrian sports is hidden at? I can't seem to find it. Girl: [laughs] Um...! You: I'm joking, I thought you had a great look about you and I wanted to come say hi. I'm Hector. Indirect direct works great for shopping, for two important reasons: It begins situationally relevant, which makes it not seem out of context, and It quickly moves into stating interest, so you have a reason to continue talking with her These two points in conjunction get you around the biggest hurdles of meeting women in shops and stores: it seeming contrived, and it seeming unusual to continue talking with you. Many newer or less experienced men use true indirect when in stores, being intuitively aware of the need to not get too far out of context in shopping situations. However, because they're going true indirect and not stating or implying any interest in the girl, once their initial opener is complete or their initial question is answered, they've arrived at a point in conversation where the woman expects them to exit. This is one of the (many) reasons I recommend against using true indirect. You can also use direct openers when in shopping venues. Direct works best when approaching women who are walking and otherwise on the move. Therefore, you'll mostly be using it in malls: You: Excuse me... [stopping girl] I saw you walking along here, and I just had to come tell you, that you have the most elegant walk I have seen all day. I'm Hector. You can also use Ricardus's famous opening line, "Are you single?": You: Excuse me... are you single? Whichever opener you decide to use, pick something that feels relevant and appropriate for the style of venue and the type of woman you're meeting there - and then get to work opening. What to Do After You Open You'll find that, generally speaking, there are three ways it goes when you first open a girl out shopping somewhere: She's delighted you came to talk to you / likes you a lot too She's cold and standoffish when you open her She's confused / awkward / nervous The first two are pretty cut and dry. If she likes you, you're golden; you're already in. If she's cold and standoffish, she doesn't like you - either the way you come across, or the way you opened didn't go all that great. You can try and recover, but it's probably lost and time to go find someone else. It's the third one on the list there that will boggle and annoy you. These are the girls who act like it's really strange or unexpected or shocking that you came up to talk to them, interrupting their peaceful browsing of the women's shoe section. You should not be jarred by this. You'll be jarred the first 20 or 30 times you run into it, sure. But realize that's just because it was completely unexpected by her, and she's probably only been opened a few times in her life out shopping - or perhaps even never. She knows how to deal with men talking to her in a nightclub, or in class, or at work... but in a grocery store? pick up girls shopping Part of this will be your opener. If you notice that a lot of women are being jarred by your opener, you're probably coming off too strong for a given venue. Speak quieter, slower, and with more humility and see if it changes your responses. That said, with women who clearly like you, and with women who are a little confused or awkward, I recommend you follow the following steps: Make sure you state interest early on. Whether via a direct opener, or via indirect direct, or even if you forget and go true indirect but recover with a "You have a nice smile" or "You're actually very cute," make sure she knows that you're talking to her because you like her. Otherwise, your motives will be "hidden," and the conversation may become uncomfortable and she may leave. Be clear about why you're there talking to her. Make sure you give your name. The sooner you give your name, the sooner the two of you are acquaintances, and not strangers, and the sooner you can stop treating each other like strangers. Giving your name also gives you the chance to shake hands, exchange greetings, and close some personal space. Move her soon into the interaction. Even if it's just a couple of feet. The point of moving women is twofold: getting them committed to talking to you (mentally; she makes a mental commitment to follow your lead when you ask her to and she complies), and screening out women who won't even do that (almost all will if you command them properly). Find out her schedule if you're going to find out her schedule. If you're planning to ask her what she's got planned for the rest of the day, now's the time to do it. Now here's the tricky part. Most newer guys try to get into meaningful conversations with girls they're meeting in shops and stores. But you are not going to get into a meaningful conversation that doesn't feel awkward as all get-out when she's standing there with something a copy of Cosmopolitan in her hands or a couple of shopping bags or a head of lettuce. It's just going to be awkward, and feel forced. Worse still, many women will stick around for the conversations, not out of desire to, but out of a feeling of social obligation. Sort of like when you meet one of those people who corners you and just talks and talks and talks and you can't get away. Like that. The only place on our list of shopping venues you're likely to get into a meaningful conversation is in a bookstore, and the only time then is when you take a girl to sit down in it. That is to say, you should NOT try and have a meaningful conversation with a girl who's already seated. She'll feel like you've "cornered" her, even if she likes you. Instead, invite her to go get a coffee or a latte or a hot chocolate with you, and take her over to the sitting area to talk instead. Which brings us to our next point: don't go into deep diving or substantial conversation with women until you've moved them and are seated somewhere with them that is date-like. That means, don't move her to sit down by a fountain two feet away and get to know her there. It's not a big enough of a move for her to feel comfortable shifting from shopping and browsing to bearing her soul to a stranger... it'll just feel like this is something you do all the time. Instead, move her to a "date" venue, like a café or an ice cream shop. If you can't do that, then skip the deep conversation and go straight to telling her you should get together sometime in the next week or so, and grab her phone number and leave. Conducting a Complete Same-Day Pickup Let's say phone numbers aren't enough to slake your thirst for success with women. You want to meet a great girl, get to know her, and whisk her away for a bout of passionate intimacy between two strangers who've only just met. Fresh, fun, exciting, and great. How do you pull that off? Well, there are two totally different models you can use: the date, and the it-just-happened. The former is somewhat more straightforward to execute; the latter will give you greater success rates once you've mastered it, but it's difficult to master. Here's how each works. How "the date" works: Invite her to go get food or a drink with you right then. If you've already found out her schedule, you'll know if she's free or not. If she's free and she says "no," ask her why not; if it's anything other than an amazing excuse, simply bid her farewell and walk away; she's not interested. There are plenty more where she came from. If she says yes, though, then take her out on that date pronto. Do your normal date routine. That's deep diving, chase framing, getting to know her, and setting the groundwork to invite her home at the end of the date. Invite her home. You must move fast here; if you know her schedule and she has things planned later in the day, you need to have enough buffer time between when you will invite her home and when she needs to be elsewhere that she won't feel like she's cutting it close. If she'll be cutting it close, she'll say "no" (unless you are really charming, and she's willing to change her schedule for you!). So if you know she's got to be somewhere in 3 hours, make sure you invite her home no more than 45 minutes from now. Escalate quickly, especially if she has places to be. Once you're back home, make no bones about moving slow. If she came home with you during the daytime, she knows what the deal is, and she wants it to happen to. There's really no need to move slowly here. The date format is easier when you're starting out, and it's also easier when you aren't up to the task of managing resistance / enduring uncertainty from women. The downside is, it's only going to get you the girls who are ready to say, "Yes, I want to go on a date with you right now," and the girls who are on the fence typically won't go for it. That in mind, here's how "the it-just-happened" happens: Get a girl to accompany YOU. Most guys do this wrong in daytime pickup, and try to go with the girl. At that point though, you're following her; you've glommed onto her, and are, even if she likes you, being a social burden. Alternative? Instead, tell her to come with you. You can tell her you need a woman's opinion on the clothes you're buying, or the gift you're getting for your mother / sister / friend. Doesn't matter - just get her going with you. Get to know her as you walk. Your way of rewarding her for accompanying you and investing her time in you is by getting to know her and paying attention to her and giving her a chance to connect with you. As you walk, you'll engage in deep diving and meaningful conversation, to find out about who this girl is and build an emotional connection. Make sure you know where you're taking her though, and keep progressing the interaction forwards as you talk. Tell her to come home and cook some food with you. This is pretty simple if you're at a grocery store; once you have her going around with you, have her help you select ingredients for a meal. Don't tell her it's for a meal you'll cook together at the beginning; but once all the ingredients are there, you'll be telling her to come back with you and cook some food together then. She'll be resistant; she can't do that, you've only just met, etc. And you'll just continue persisting, and persuade her to come along with you. If you're not near a grocery store, you can either have her go with you to one first, or invite her to come home and cook food with you regardless. Or, if you live near to where you met her, you can simply walk outside with her and keep walking and talking until you arrive at your place. And keep walking and talking as you go in. And keep walking and talking as you ride the elevator up. And keep walking and talking as you go into your apartment. Some women will never even say anything about this, or even ask you where you're going - you'll just walk and talk all the way back to your apartment, and then grab them and take them as your lovers as soon as you're back. Others will ask, and you'll just say, "I've got to go drop some things off first," and go back to walking and talking. This one is harder to pull off than the date approach to picking up girls shopping, but it allows you to pick up the girls who are more on the fence, or who desire plausible deniability and don't want to have an active role in their own seductions (e.g., the ones who want to be able to say "it just happened!"). A BAG FULL OF GOODIES Think women don't want to meet men out shopping? Think again. Watch romantic comedies. Notice how many women in them meet men in the grocery store, or department store. Read women's advice magazines. Observe how many of them talk about meeting men in the mall or the produce section. Or how many of them talk about finding an intellectual guy at a bookstore. In fact, I became convinced over the years that half the women you see in bookstores... or maybe more... are there not because they love reading a good book, but because they are hoping to meet a good man. And so are many women who go out shopping. Every gal dreams of having some dashing guy come along and say the right things and do the right things when she's out casually browsing the shelves, racks, and aisles who will make her fantasies come alive. So the question I've got for you, if you're debating on whether or not to meet girls out shopping, is this: why can't that guy be YOU?

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##How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor, Part I Some guys just have it… an apparently magical vibe, a charisma and vibrancy; a form of personal magnetism that draws people magically to them… and that makes them irresistibly attractive to women, able to pick up girls seemingly effortlessly and make girlfriends out of the most desirable women around. The question is… what exactly is this vibe? It seems very hard to define, to nail down or even to emulate… which is why I call it the "X-Factor". In fact, it is so hard to quantify in precise terms that women often say about the guys who have it: "I just don't know what it is about him." And the French even go so far as calling this vibe the "je-ne-sais-quoi" - in English: the "I don't know what." Let's see if we can do a little bit better than that! Read on. THE THREE PILLARS OF DATING SUCCESS The common paradigm in the dating community these days is that there are three pillars that define dating success and results with women. These are: Your inner game, i.e. your psychology and your confidence Your outer game, i.e. your verbal skills and what you say and do when you're around women, as well as when and how you say and do it Your lifestyle, i.e. how connected you are and how this helps you to meet women, as well as how cool your life is and how much fun it would be for a girl to participate in this life style This is certainly a useful model and these three aspects of your dating skills are absolutely key… you should definitely work on all three of those. However, your results with women will depend more on the following three factors, in order of importance: Your looks. There… I said it. The truth that nobody wants to admit: What you look like will always be part and parcel of how well women respond to you, especially initially. Read on… I will tell you how to use this in your advantage, no matter what you look like. The "X-Factor"… Your vibe, your personal magnetism… this "je-ne-sais-quoi". This article will go in depth on this topic… how you come across. Your "Game". By game, I mean anything that is conventionally taught as dating advice. Body language, verbal skills… the works. You don't need to have all three of these… a good looking guy often doesn't need a whole lot of game, and a very charismatic guy doesn't need to be terribly good looking. In any case, the first two will trump the third any time. There aren't many guys who have learned seduction consciously as a skill who do as well as extremely good "naturals" - whether these naturals be extremely good looking, or simply ridiculously charismatic… or both. In fact, "game" only allows you to "harvest" what your looks and/or your vibe have "planted". If you only have game, but you look like Quasimodo AND your vibe is off… no routine, no line and no amount of skill will save you. On the other hand, there are also good looking guys who aren't very successful with women. They DO get a lot of attraction - but they are probably not even aware of it. The way that girls show interest is often very subtle. These guys would need more skills to capitalize on the attraction they get. I have one friend who has all three… he looks like a GQ model and is ALSO extremely charismatic and has "game skills" like the Devil… and he's cleaning up like nobody's business. I mean, I know many of the big names in the dating industry personally… and none of them can hold a candle to this guy… not even close. There is a lesson here. Before we dive deeper into the X-Factor, let's clean up with the confusion surrounding the importance of a man's looks. DO YOU NEED GOOD LOOKS TO PICK UP GIRLS? how to pick up girlsIt is true that very good looking guys fight a downhill battle… when they approach women, they will often find them to be extremely receptive right off the bat… and the only two things they need to do are: 1. escalate, and 2. not do anything VERY stupid. But the short answer to the above question is - no… you do not have to be good looking in order to pick up girls. How handsome a woman perceives you to be might very well be the most important factor in how well she will respond to you... especially initially. However, this is not the be all and end all. Three pieces of good news about the importance of looks: Tastes differ. You may have noticed this yourself when you were out with a friend. Maybe he approached women that you would never feel attracted to… or inversely, the one you thought was the most beautiful woman present that night left him totally cold. It's the same for women… Some even find Brad Pitt completely unattractive. On the other hand, even an average looking guy will happen to be many women's specific archetype that they find unbelievably attractive. The website HotOrNot.com used to display a bar graph that showed how many people had given what rating to a specific picture. For me for example, I usually got rated a seven by the great majority of people. But there were always a few that rated me an eight or a nine… some even rated me a ten. Sometimes I run into those women who just happen to think that I'm ridiculously hot. And then, the rule that looks DO matter a lot works in my favor and the entire process becomes ridiculously easy. In fact, it would almost be hard NOT to end up hooking up with these girls. Women can be won over. When I was a teenager, I had a mentor who, aside from being very well traveled, successful and just an all-round interesting person, was also very successful with women. He was always dating at least four beautiful women - and I took every chance I got to pick his brain to learn how to pick up girls. I remember one day we were traveling in a large group and he had already been flirting with several of the women present… and they were all responding very well to his advances. Except for one girl… she had an attitude and when he talked to her, she pretended to be flirting with him over the top, in an ironic and sarcastic way, batting her eye lashes exaggeratedly and then blowing him off. When I talked to him about it later, he just said six words that I still remember to this day, 15 years later. "Her heart can be won too." And that's true for many women. While we often decide in the blink of an eye whether we're attracted to a girl or not, women often judge a man's strength (especially his inner strength), his status and his personality over time. If you are an interesting, high value guy (and we will cover what that means in a future article), women will become more and more attracted to you as you interact with them longer. The caveat is, of course, that you need to escalate with them in the first couple of hours - if you don't make your intentions known and make your move after a while, they will still like you, but their attraction will go cold… this is the friend zone. Not good. But the bottom line is that men can do a lot to win a woman over with their personality. Women are not in such a fortunate position… if a girl is overweight and unattractive, she's often out of luck. A man's sexy personality usually has more leverage than a woman's. You have more control over what you look like than you think. The importance of your appearance should NEVER be a cop-out. On the contrary… it means you're even MORE responsible for your results. You need to do everything in your power to maximize your looks as much as possible. Work out regularly - at LEAST three times a week. Women DO love muscles… as long as you're not so beefed that you walk like a robot. If you can get a bit buff, you will often create attraction just by merit of your biceps alone… or of your six-pack, if you meet girls at the beach. At the very least, stay slim and in shape. Get enough sleep. Unless you're picking up girls in gothic clubs, dark circles under your eyes are NOT sexy… and you will also not be able to get into your most resourceful emotional states if you're bleary-eyed. Eat healthy food. No excuses. Nobody's asking you to turn into a health nut. But there is no reason why you shouldn't follow a healthy diet at least 80 to 90% of the time. It will do WONDERS for you. It will make it ten times easier to get into great physical shape and develop your body - yes, nutrition is even more important than working out if you want to get a fitness model physique that makes girls break into SWEAT! What's more, your skin will look better and you will have more energy - both of which will help the way women perceive you tremendously. You will look healthy - and health is sexy. Get a sexy haircut. Many people recommend getting a male, gay hair stylist, and this can be good advice. Personally I prefer to seek out whoever has the most experience in the salon… and it has to be a salon that caters to a stylish crowd. You may have to test a few hair dressers before you find the right one for you. Tip him well and keep coming back once you've found him. Get an expert to give you fashion advice. Ideally a guy who's very good with women and very well dressed. There is also a wealth of information on fashion blogs and the like. It's unhealthy to walk around believing that for getting success with women it doesn't matter what you look like. It will divert your attention from working on your appearance, which IS a very important factor. It will also set you up for berating yourself when you meet a girl you can't seem to win over. Instead of wondering what was wrong with your game, consider that you may simply not have been her type. And that's okay. Really. Chances are the next girl might think you're a 9… just because of her personal taste in men. THE MAGIC POWER THAT TRUMPS GAME how to pick up girlsNow that we have the whole "looks" topic out of the way, we can focus on the "X-Factor" I mentioned above... and it really does almost seem to be a magic power. If you've ever seen a guy in action who had this power, you know exactly what I mean… some of them almost seem to be Jedis. Some aren't even physically very attractive, yet they manage to consistently approach the most stunning women and wrap them around their fingers. The girls may react skeptical or even openly disinterested at first… but before you know it, they melt under his charms. After a minute, they are smiling, and yet another minute later they're loving it and flipping their hair. Now, I have some bad news and some good news… I'll give you the bad news first. The bad news is that it is very hard to fix your "vibe", because it is unconscious and hence completely invisible. What's more, a lot of it was formed in your childhood and adolescence, your formative years. That's why this isn't commonly taught... but there IS much that CAN be done, if you know how. The good news is that THIS is where we average looking guys can have a REAL impact on our results. This vibe is precisely the reason why some average looking guys get the hottest girls very consistently and defy the rule that looks are so supremely important. This is also why so many guys who study dating advice never end up getting good results and never really learn how to pick up girls... THEY COME ACROSS in a way that girls don't respond to, no matter how they dress, or what they say and do. Their vibe is "off"… they lack the X-Factor.

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##How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor, Part II For the longest time, I believed in "game" as the most important factor in picking up girls myself… and I invested a lot of time working mostly on that part of the equation. And I got pretty damn good at it. The more experiences you make in the real world, however, the more likely you are to run into guys who apparently have no game to speak of, yet have a magic vibe that makes even the most idiotic lines work for them. And once I came to that realization, I decided to focus all my efforts on decoding this piece of the puzzle. I was going to reverse engineer this X-factor like a mad scientist. I had some theories; I thought it must have a lot to do with how you FEEL about yourself and your life. Not just state, since state is something temporary… it had to be something much, much deeper than that; and something very subtle. State is how you feel RIGHT NOW. Whereas this magical vibe seemed to have something to do with how you feel about EVERYTHING. About your life, your status, your wealth, your future and your social connections. How happy you are, and how much you feel like you're in control of your life and in the flow with everything. That was, however, just a theory… I had to dig deeper. HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS: THE FOUNDATION One thing that is very obvious about the men who have this magic charm is that they are VERY comfortable in their own skin. They don't display any signs of insecurity… and they are not faking that, either. It's real… and it flows from a deep knowing within. We humans, in general, tend to do best at anything when we're completely comfortable with whatever it is we're doing. I once had the great fortune of getting to ask an internationally famous musician about this topic - I asked him, what is the secret of performing artists who never make any mistakes on stage? We're all just human, after all… and to err is human. His response was - they play songs that are EASY for them. Even a lower intermediate piano student will be able to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" without making any mistakes… because his real skill level is much higher than the song he is performing requires. People who seem to never make any mistakes have reached a level where the songs they're performing are ridiculously easy to them. They are 100% comfortable with what they're doing. how to pick up girls And just like you need to be very comfortable with a song in order to play it well, you need to be very comfortable with your own life to live it well. This is what creates this deep knowing within… that sense of certainty that women can pick up on from men with that magic vibe we're talking about. THE THREE PILLARS OF LIFE MASTERY Now, in order to feel completely comfortable with your life, you need to feel like you're in charge of things. You need to feel like you're controlling events, and not that events are controlling you. It really helps if you can feel, in your gut, that everything is okay, and that you will be able to handle any challenge that life might throw at you. So what exactly does that mean - "everything is okay"? On the most basic level, that means that all your needs and desires are met. And if you look at the famous "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs", you can quickly deduct that all the needs we need to meet fall into one of the following three categories: Health, Wealth and Relationships. maslow's hierarchy of needs Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Does that mean that you need to be a millionaire with an Adonis body and a harem of ten playmates? Is that what it takes to feel so comfortable with your life that you will project this magical aura we're talking about here? Well, maybe. The degree to which you have to meet these needs in order to feel comfortable with your life varies greatly from person to person. Some people are totally broke, but they don't have any worries about money because they don't value financial abundance very highly. Other people have a six-figure income and are still stressed about their financial future. This explains why sometimes a car mechanic who lives from paycheck to paycheck can ooze a vibe of being in charge of his life… while an entrepreneur who rolls in twenty million a year might be totally depressed because he can't make the 100 million he thinks he should be making. What are your needs? How much money do you need to feel comfortable with your life? What kind of shape do you need your body to be in to feel sexually comfortable with your clothes off? What kind of social network do you need to feel well connected? In order to project that you're completely comfortable in your own skin, which is an important foundation of the X-Factor, your reality needs to match your blueprint for what your life should look like. You either have to adjust your reality to your expectations, i.e. become successful enough to be able to say… yes… I've made it. My life is exactly the way I want it to be. Or, if that's not possible - at least not in the short term - you have to adjust your expectations to be able to say… I'm okay as I am right now, and even though I'm still improving my situation, my life is already good enough as it is. Success breeds confidence… so build a life that allows you to feel successful in all three areas. STATE TRANSFER The next piece of the charisma puzzle is this: emotions are contagious. I have mentioned this in a previous post - since we humans are social animals, we have evolved mechanisms that allow us to pick up on other people's emotions. And not only do we notice them, we also automatically mirror them… and experience them ourselves! When you're around somebody who is angry, it is very easy to get sucked into that person's emotional state and feel angry too. Another example - when you're in a church or temple full of people who are in contemplation, you might begin to feel a sense of serenity yourself. If somebody is always in such a good mood that they make you feel good just by being around them, you will want to be around them more in order to feel these emotions more. And in the same way, women gravitate to men who can create certain emotional states in themselves and transfer these states to them. People who have the "X-Factor" consistently FEEL emotions that other people want to feel. Women pick up on these emotions, and it draws them to these men like moths to the light. So the two big questions are: What emotions do Master Casanovas experience and transfer to the women they're seducing? One hint: What emotions do you want her to experience? There is a rule in NLP: "You Go First." Induce in yourself the emotions you want others to feel. Can you see how simple this makes everything? If you can make yourself feel completely relaxed, women will tend to relax around you. And if you can make yourself feel highly sexual and aroused, chances are women will experience the same emotional state - provided you do it in the right context. We will explore all of this in more depth later, particularly which emotions are best suited for the purpose of meeting, dating and seducing women. In the meantime, the second question is this: How EXACTLY can you induce any emotions in yourself CONSISTENTLY? How can you control your own emotional state - is that even possible? If you ask 10 people on the street whether they have control over their own emotions and whether they can choose how they feel or whether feelings are something that happens to them, most of them will likely tell you that they don't have a great deal of control over their emotions at all. There is a reason why this seems difficult - but if you understand this reason, you can use a strategy that circumvents it. And with some practice, you can gain almost total control over your own emotions. Keep reading. how to pick up girls STATE CONTROL When "Pickup Artists" talk about state, they often mean how you feel when you're out at the club, looking to pick up women. They usually say that they're either "in state" or "out of state". The state they refer to is not what we're looking for in this context. They usually mean being high-energy and sociable… and they may even approach several groups of people just to "warm up" and get into this state. This can be effective in order to overcome approach anxiety and to become more extroverted… in fact, if you do it a couple of times, you might suddenly experience AA as "approach addiction" and feel the desire to approach more and more strangers. However, this state is not helpful to build the X-Factor, as it floods your blood with a ton of adrenaline and can easily make you come across as hyper… especially during the day, it will be counterproductive and hurt more than it helps. You want to be a sexual man... not a hyper man. If you manage to get girls to respond to you in this state, this will be based on ATTENTION, not based on ATTRACTION... in other words, reactions instead of results. I've experienced this state myself and it almost feels like a cocaine rush… you think that you're the SHIT! In the meantime, everybody else is just wondering what in the world you have been smoking. It is also not true state control at all, since you're still drawing your state from the environment… you're not creating the state you want from within, but rather you're relying on the people around you as a crutch in order to influence how you feel. Rather than switching from an introverted state to a hyperactive state that almost resembles being on drugs, and doing so by relying on other people, we want to develop a high degree of INTERNAL state control, where we can make ourselves feel any emotion we want… without relying on ANYTHING external at all. Sounds impossible? It is not… and I will prove it to you. YOUR BRAIN HAS A HARDWARE CONFLICT! If you've studied any evolutionary psychology, you may have come across the "Triune Brain Model". In essence, it explains that the human brain evolved in phases. The first animals to leave the water were reptiles, and their brains were very primitive survival machines. They only processed simple instinctual responses, such as eat, fight, flee and procreate. The next stage of evolution were mammals… they have more complex brains that are capable of emotions, but these evolved ON TOP OF the reptile brain and still contain the more primitive instincts underneath their more sophisticated neurology capable of bonding and building social structures. Finally, we humans evolved, and our brain is the most intricate on this planet so far. We are the first to have a third version of this brain, the neocortex. It is our rational mind, it is the part that allows us to think logically and make conscious decisions. Just like mammals also have the reptilian brain, we humans actually have all three of them, because they evolved on top of each other. We have: The reptilian brain, which is our PHYSICAL brain… it is responsible for our more primitive instincts. The mammalian brain, which is our EMOTIONAL brain… it handles our feelings and social bonds. The neocortex, which is our LOGICAL brain… the part of the grey matter we actually "think" with. Now, as a rule, older brains are stronger than younger brains. That means that if something is threatening your life, if there is immediate danger, your reptile instinct will kick in IMMEDIATELY. Any thoughts and emotions you were having previously get "switched off" and you're in fight or flight mode. The reptile brain has overpowered the other two brains. By the same token, your emotions will usually overpower your logic. Marketers know that we make decisions based on emotions and then rationalize them later… if you would like to know more about this topic, look up "self-deception" or "confabulation" on Wikipedia. As you can imagine, at any one time, the three different brains might have three different needs. This is what creates a lot of internal conflict and friction, and it makes it difficult to be in control of our emotions simply by willing ourselves into feeling an emotion… or to disregard instinctual behaviors that would have helped us survive 20,000 years ago but that are counterproductive in the 21st century. The biggest challenge is that it is very hard to influence the mammalian brain directly. It is almost impossible to simply decide to have an emotion without a little detour through the other two brains. The good news, however, is that there IS a detour. If you know exactly HOW to use your neocortex and your reptile brain, you can influence your mammalian brain indirectly, THROUGH the other two… and THAT is the secret to choosing your emotions… and to creating any feeling inside yourself that you want.

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##How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor, Part III We last discussed how if you want to be able to pick up girls CONSISTENTLY, you've got to have INTERNAL state control... we can't just leave something as important as the way we FEEL to chance. Since we cannot influence our emotional brain directly and just will ourselves into feeling an emotion, we need to create the emotions we want through the other two parts of our brain… our logical and physical brains will be our detour. We can control the neocortex by changing our focus… and we can control our reptile brain by controlling our physiology. If we do both, our mammalian brain, i.e. our emotions, will align with the other two. Let's talk about the latter first and have a look at a few examples of a change in physiology creating an emotion. Let's say you're walking down the dark street in a seedy part of town and there is a shady looking character on the other side of the street. You know that criminals prefer easy, defenseless victims, so you decide to adjust your posture and your pace to project an aura of confidence. You put on an aggressive facial expression and walk as if you were ready and willing to fight. You furrow your brows and start breathing more heavily. Your pace becomes stronger and you clench your jaws. Chances are you will start to actually FEEL aggression, anger and a willingness to fight the guy in case he should try to mug you. This works for most emotional states we want to create. We can make ourselves depressed by breathing shallow and sitting down with a slumped posture, and we can make ourselves feel happy by putting a big smile on our face, taking deep breaths and standing up straight. One of the most fundamental teachings of Tony Robbins is that we can make ourselves feel certainty by moving our body in a way as if we already possessed absolute certainty. Here's the other mechanism you can use - for changing your focus: A simple process in your mind can also trigger emotions. When you're watching a movie, you might feel certain feelings, even though there is nothing actually happening in YOUR life to warrant that. The movie has no impact on you physiologically; it doesn't change anything about your body or your posture. It also doesn't have a direct impact on your mammalian brain - emotions are biochemical processes, and the TV set isn't injecting you with any chemicals at all. But a movie DOES impact your mind, and your thoughts - your neocortex. And from this impact alone, all kinds of emotions can arise. People watch horror movies and get scared, they watch romantic movies and experience the emotion of love, and they watch dramas and are touched to tears. Not that events in the real world are actually more emotionally real than events on the big screen - in the end of the day, ALL emotions get processed INTERNALLY - even the ones that are triggered by real, external events. And THAT is the big breakthrough! That is what we have to work with. CHOOSING YOUR EMOTIONS I started reading personal growth books and self help material back when I was a teenager, and I often came across the adage that "happiness is a daily choice." And while that somehow seemed to make sense, I've never seen a book yet that really explained how exactly to go about choosing happiness… or any other emotion, really. But with the process of influencing our mammalian brain through the other two brains, you can actually CHOOSE how you feel! And that is AMAZING news. Because everything in life that we chase, we only chase because we want a feeling. You might want to win the lottery, but what you really care about isn't the paper money, it's the emotions you would be able to feel if you did win the lottery. Or you might want to date a certain type of girl - but why? Because it would make you feel good. What if you were to just GIVE yourself that feeling? WINNING THE LOTTERY Brian Tracy has a great example of how one can influence his own emotions by changing one's focus, simply by thinking different thoughts. Consider the following three scenarios: You're having a really rough day because you're completely broke. You're worried about the future… life seems like such a drag. You've already sent out more than two hundred CVs, but nobody is hiring you. You're already in debt, but with every day that passes, your debt increases, because you have bills to pay. How would you feel in this situation? If you're like most people I've asked this question, you would probably feel stressed out, worried and down… maybe even anxious or depressed. Now imagine that while you're still in this state of mind, you receive a phone call from one of your family members, who tells you: "Cheer up! None of that even matters, because we won the lottery, and each of us is going to get 5.6 million dollars!" How would you feel NOW? Again, if you're like almost everybody else I've described this scenario to, you will probably tell me that you'd feel relief first… and then, an incredible sense of joy and elation. You are FREE! Not only will you be able to pay off your debt and take care of all your bills for the rest of your life - you won't even HAVE to look for a job anymore. You can do whatever you want with the rest of your life. You feel an immense sense of happiness and joy. The third and most important question is this: What if it was all a lie? What if your family member had only told you about the lottery win to cheer you up, but in reality, there had never been any money? You would then have to ask yourself this essential question: Were the happy feelings you had been experiencing real? And the answer is, yes, the emotions were absolutely real. The second conclusion you will come to is that the joy, elation and happiness you had felt did not come from the money… because there had never been any money to begin with. The emotions came from YOURSELF… and they were triggered by a thought. This PROVES that you can choose how you feel… by choosing what you think. And instead of triggering the emotion you would feel if you were incredibly rich by asking yourself how you would feel if you won the lottery, you can also create emotions in yourself that will help your ability to pick up girls instead. Ask yourself - how would you feel if you were so incredibly handsome that you could have any woman you want? How would you feel if you were the best pick up artist in the world? INAUTHENTIC EMOTIONS? Now, you may ask me - but isn't that inauthentic? Aren't we simply deceiving ourselves… by being happy about things that aren't real? Well, the first point is that you don't need to create emotions by thinking about things that aren't real. The lottery winnings simply make for a great example that prove - emotions ARE real, even if the apparent cause of the emotion is not real… which also goes to show that what REALLY caused the emotion was not, after all, the external event - but rather, a thought. But, instead of creating fake images in your mind, you can also trigger positive emotions by vividly remembering something awesome that happened in the past… or some inspiring goal that you are working towards. In fact, all visualization should be done in this way… vivid and real enough to trigger an emotion. Only then will it pass your critical factor and go right into your subconscious mind, where it can do some good! However, consider this: when a real thing happens to you that you deem to be positive, it's STILL not that thing that triggers the emotion… it's STILL the thought you have about that thing. You also may want to ask yourself if you really want to depend on the real things that happen to you for positive states. I know that works great when good things happen and everything is going well… but, you know, shit happens! And when shit happens, do you want to be in a shit state, just to be authentic? Or would it be better to create an inauthentic positive emotion, which will then allow you to be more resourceful to deal with the problem… and turn it around? In either case, as described above, you can always use positive memories or expected positive goals to create positive emotions without fooling yourself and being inauthentic if that is a concern for you. YOU ONLY OWN IT AS A HABIT how to pick up girlsYou can throw all of the old conditioning out, all the ideas of chasing things, events and people to attain emotional states. Just decide to create any emotion you want internally, by controlling what you think about, and by controlling your physiology. This will require constant and diligent practice, but it is absolutely worth it… because you will start to be so happy that you'll think you're on drugs. We talked about this in "How to Overcome Depression" - beating back the negative thoughts and replacing them with good ones. And this does not only work for happiness - you can also make yourself feel motivated and excited to get something done when you need to be productive, or confident when you want to approach a girl, or enthusiastic when you need to make a sale! The idea is to practice the beneficial states so much, so often and so long that they end up becoming your default state… the state you automatically go into if you don't do anything to alter your state. In other words, the state you wake up with in the morning. Make it a HABIT to feel great. In NLP, they say the purpose of the mind is to seek out new behaviors to automate. Anything we have done over and over again for a sufficiently long time gets taken over by the autonomous nervous system, becomes a habit and starts happening automatically. This is a habit to get into… because you only truly own a skill when you not only understand it, but also do it… and when you not only do it, but when you do it automatically. When you've gone to what is called unconscious competence - you're doing the right thing without even having to think about it. YOUR MIND IS ON AUTOPILOT! The biggest challenge in creating a new THOUGHT habit is that your thoughts are ALREADY very habitual as it is. Researchers are now saying that 98% of the thoughts we have today are the same thoughts we had yesterday… and the day before. If you've ever taken up a meditation practice, you know that we have a lot less control over our thoughts than we'd like to think. If you haven't, try this experiment right now. Sit down for 10 minutes and focus on your breath and nothing else. You will undoubtedly find that your mind is going to be dragged off every couple of seconds. Random thoughts of all sorts pop into your head - what you had for dinner last night, what you need to get done tomorrow, or an argument you had with someone. You just keep bringing your mind back to your breath… again and again. This is why meditating a lot is very helpful in taking control of our own emotional state: once the mind is off autopilot, or at least a lot less automatic than it would otherwise be, it becomes a lot easier to steer your thoughts and focus them on ideas conducive to the emotional state you want to experience. Read that sentence again… it's important. Thoughts are really the dumbbells of the mind. Meditation will also help to CLEAR your mind first, before you even start putting the thoughts you want in there. First cut out the negative stuff that doesn't help you… then replace it with the positive thought impulses that will create the desired emotions. And just like with meditation, you will have to bring your mind back to the thoughts you want… again and again. The discipline required may seem like a big feat… but that's not really the case because you start gaining momentum once you get started, and over time, you are building this all-important habit. That's why I liken thoughts to the dumbbells of the mind. Yes, dumbbells require discipline… but over time, all they do is make you strong. Your mind is the root cause of all your problems… how you decide to think and feel about things. And just like you can whip your body in shape with dumbbells, you can start whipping your mind in shape with the right thoughts. You can decide to look at any situation in any way, in order to change how you feel about the situation. As a result thereof, you will take different actions, which will in turn impact your results. In the next part of this series, I go into learning how to apply this technique of controlling your thoughts into conquering approach anxiety; how to increase the power of your mental control; and more ways you can train your brain to turn you into a pick up machine.

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##How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor, Part IV Anyway, that's the science side of state control. Now you may think, well - these are great ideas, but is it really possible to control your state of mind at every moment? After all, we think tens of thousands of thoughts per day. Actually, you really only need to put yourself into the state you want when you start any activity… whatever state will be the most resourceful one for that specific task. If you can then get into the activity and get positive feedback from it, the state will reinforce itself. If it does drop, you simply notice the change in your emotional state and repeat the focus exercise… and correct your physiology along with it. Keep doing it. If you're alone while you're practicing this, you might want to set a timer that goes off every ten minutes to remind you… like the bells they have in Buddhist temples to remind meditators to stay mindful. Ever notice how the Dalai Lama always seems to be smiling? Maybe he read this article :) Maybe his meditation isn't to focus on his breath… but instead, to focus on thoughts that create constant bliss inside him. Compassion for other human beings, for example. HOW TO APPLY THIS TO APPROACH ANXIETY One of the biggest emotional problems men have with their dating lives is the moment of the approach, and the fear and approach anxiety surrounding this crucial moment. Not only does it usually keep them from talking to strangers and taking a more proactive approach toward improving their love life, it also causes them to approach in the wrong emotional state… which gets transmitted to the woman and is pretty much the opposite of the X-Factor. This is really the number one reason why more people don't master the Art of Seduction. This is why most guys don't learn how to pick up girls. Hence... the level of control you have over this fear is key to how well you do. Let's have a closer look at this. I used to think that the ability to approach girls without fear had a lot to do with how much momentum you have - how many approaches you have been doing recently. Our anxiety and fear of strangers comes from the fact that our instincts are protecting us from getting into a dangerous situation, such as hitting on a girl whose boy-friend is around the corner. In caveman days, when our brain evolved, that was a serious risk. A good analogy is a high steel worker - he will be afraid of heights the first few days on the job because his instincts are protecting him from the danger of falling. After a while on the job, however, he will get used to the environment, and heights cease to be a big deal. When he stops working for a few months, however, they fear of heights returns. The fear of the approach is very similar - and you can indeed condition yourself to cease feeling it. If you start conversations with strangers every single day, you will eventually be able to do it without even thinking about it. You may even wonder how you were ever able to feel any fear at all - but if you stop approaching for a while, the fear will return. With the right state control, however, you no longer need to depend on conditioning yourself by massive exposure to what you're afraid of. You can learn to CHOOSE your mental state… MOMENT TO MOMENT. And, as we've seen above, state control does not need to rely on warm-up approaches or anything else external… it can be created completely internally. COULD YOU DECIDE TO FEEL CONFIDENT NOW? Yes, you absolutely could. Is it just lazy not to? Yes, it is. So what could you do about the laziness… the inertia that keeps you from proactively choosing a new state for yourself to be in… that lethargy that keeps you stuck in your comfort zone and within your current emotions? That, too, is just another decision. Just like I asked you - could you decide to feel confident now? - you could also decide to feel motivated now. Create the motivation first… then let all other state changes flow from there. INCREASING THE POWER OF MENTAL CONTROL Let's talk about how you can have an even stronger impact on your own emotional states by moving them along a gradient scale. This, too, was originally taught by Tony Robbins - he calls it a "quality quantifier." Don't worry about the complicated name… just consider that any emotion you ever feel can show up in varying degrees of intensity. You might feel rage, anger, slightly annoyed or neutral - the same emotion, ranging from an intensity of 10 to 0. The simplest example to work with and practice might be the emotion of desire for a certain kind of food. Let's take a chocolate chip cookie… Maybe your desire for it when you see it is a 7. How could you change that feeling just by changing your thoughts? If you imagine it dipped in milk, maybe it goes up to a 9. If you imagine it with cinnamon on top, nice and warm, fresh from the oven maybe your desire increases to a 10. On the other hand, if you imagine you just had 30 of them in a row, your desire may now go down to a 0. If you think you picked it up from a trash can, you might reach a -2, or -3. If you imagine there is mold all over it and maggots inside, it might be a -7. And if you visualize it was produced in a nuclear waste dump now maybe it's a -10. Practice this exercise and use it to enhance any other emotional state you would like to create… toy with the thoughts in your mind, play around with your focus, until the emotions you're summoning grow stronger and stronger. This is a knack… you will get better at it with practice. Maybe you can remember a time when something like that happened in the past, where somebody told you something and suddenly you felt awesome. Feel that out, and see if you can get back into that state. Or maybe you could even fool your brain into thinking something false that would evoke a feeling (you're actually doing this every time you masturbate). POETRY Once I started to understand the power that thoughts and words have over our emotions, and how tweaking them can greatly magnify their power, I realized the true meaning of poetry. Poets are MASTERS at describing emotions with words… and as we have seen above, just reading the words can elicit the emotions. It's just a question of picking the right words. Malcolm Gladwell even talks about how reading a text with words like sleep, fatigue, tired and bed can actually make someone yawn. A good example is that scene from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption", where Morgan Freeman talks about Andy's carefree attitude. He might simply have said: "Andy was always relaxed." That would get the point across, you would logically understand the state of mind Andy was in, and you might be able to elicit it in yourself. Instead, Freeman chooses a much richer description of that same state - this is basically a quality quantifier, and helps to evoke the emotion more easily and more profoundly. Instead of simply describing Andy as "relaxed", the words he uses are: "He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled. Like a man in a park without a care or worry. Like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place." Next time you want to evoke an emotion in yourself, remember what power the right words and images can have to increase the state you're trying to produce. MORE ON PHYSIOLOGY Now that we've discussed the power of the neocortex to change your emotions by controlling your mental focus, let's have a closer look at how your reptile brain can greatly enhance this process… simply by controlling your physiology. This is actually very easy to do - simply by moving, breathing, standing, walking and gesturing as you WOULD if you already FELT a certain emotion, you can trigger that very emotion almost instantly. A great way to take advantage of this fact for the purpose of seduction, at least as an exercise to develop your own confidence, is to emulate a role model. Pick an actor you like, one that is known for his appeal to women, or maybe even a character that this actor portrays. Then ask yourself: If you were this character, how would you look at people? How would you look at girls? How would you breathe? How would you gesture, move and carry yourself? How would you walk, what would your posture be like? What would your eyes project - what kind of depth, clarity, focus, lucidity and determination? What kind of vocal projection would you have - how powerful, masculine, deep and resonant would your voice be? How slow would you move and speak? If you just imitate all of these physiological channels the way you envision your role model would, you will start noticing how your emotional state follows into that reality. These are training wheels… eventually you will be able to project your own confidence in your own way. Actors know all about this by the way… you can tell how their emotional states are shifting as they go from scene to scene. Are they just faking it? Well, a good actor actually makes himself feel the emotions his character is experiencing… in the way I described above. What makes a good actor is that he actually BECOMES his character. He doesn't act frustrated, he makes himself FEEL genuine frustration and then the acting takes care of itself. As you do this, you may even notice girls STARING at you… they pick up on something. This is part of the X-Factor… this "je-ne-sais-quoi" that is so hard to define. You will unconsciously begin to communicate high status… shop clerks may also start treating you with more deference. how to pick up girls THE POWER OF MUSIC Just like poetry, music is another art form we can use to enhance our emotional states. I don't mean listening to songs that pump you up before you go to the club… what some people call "pre-gaming." This doesn't work very well at all, because by the time you get there, the inflated state you've briefly created at home has already evaporated. Rather, I think of music as a state strengthener. Not something external to draw a state from, but something that can greatly amplify any state you have previously created internally, by channeling your physiology and your focus properly. Now, you may have noticed that even your favorite song loses its appeal over time. Sometimes we come across a song we just love… and that we'd like to listen to again and again. But within a couple of times, it seems to go "stale"... and before long, we can't even stand to listen to that same song anymore. This proves that music alone cannot trigger states reliably. However, I've found that if I put myself into an "X-Factor state" before listening to music, even songs that had long ago gone stale suddenly win their appeal again… and strengthen the X-Factor state. There is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, something Shinzen Young discusses in his excellent program "The Science of Enlightenment" - but suffice to say that with the "barbells of the mind", we can train our brain to perceive every moment as fresh and new - there is no reason why anything should ever be perceived as stale just because we've been exposed to it before. RANDOM STATES As we've discussed above, most people don't have a great level of control over their own emotional states. This is because they draw their emotions from their environment. Something "good" happens, and they're on top of the world… something "bad" happens, and the state is gone… and turns into depression. Or, their mind on autopilot randomly thinks positive thoughts, and again they feel elated… but then, the mind might drift off and start focusing on something negative, and they start feeling down. We absolutely need to start taking control. Who wants to have his happiness at the mercy of unpredictable events we can't control, and random thoughts that pop into our heads without warning? And that's really what the Buddhist talk about when they say we're asleep: we are going in and out of emotional states that we have no control over… because the thoughts trigger the states - and we don't control the thoughts. This is also where ALL inconsistency comes from… in any skill. This is why on some days, we do exceptionally well with women, and on other days we come across like a dud and couldn't even get an old lady to think we're charming. Take control of your mind, and your physiology, and you will gain control over your emotions… and ultimately, your consistency in any endeavor you undertake… including, of course, your dating life! Tune in next week for the final post in this series, as we wrap up how to direct your emotional control into seductive control… and how to become an extraordinarily attractive man.

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##How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor, Part V By now, you're starting to get a pretty clear idea of how we can control our own emotions… completely internally, without having to rely on alcohol, "warm-up sets" or having company around. Two questions remain: What kinds of states should you put yourself into… and how can you transfer these states to other people? The truth is there are several different states that can work well to meet and attract women… different things work for different people. What's always going to work best to attract feminine women, however, is the masculine vibe of a sexual man. The kinds of emotions you want to induce in yourself to properly project this vibe are: Calm and Serene: A real man does not bounce off the walls like a ping pong ball, trying to get everybody's attention. Like the alpha male lion, he is very relaxed. Carefree: Wealth is a status indicator… and women look at your emotional state much more than they do at your Rolex watch to find out how wealthy you really perceive yourself to be. If a monkey raises in status in his troop, the females can tell from very subtle behaviorisms. The same is true if he falls in rank. These status cues are so subtle that you can't just fix your posture and expect people to believe you are high status… these cues need to come from inside you… and these state exercises can help you accomplish that. Conviction and Certainty : The most powerful belief one can hold in life is certainty of outcome… period. Reality usually surrenders to the one who is most sure. Or in the words of Andre Agassi, quoted from his autobiography, OPEN: "He thinks it's his day, and when you think it's your day, it usually is." Masculine and Powerful: A feeling of being an unstoppable, dominant man… get in touch with your brute animal force, that primal energy you might feel after a good, intense workout. Socially Confident: Be aware of your social skills… remember situations in the past where you have handled social situations with absolute expertise. If you were able to do that once, then you obviously have the skill… so you should be able to do it again, and again. It is merely a matter of tapping into the emotion of feeling socially confident. Sexually Aware: Just like social confidence, sexual awareness means getting in touch with your masculine sexuality. Remember a time when you blew a woman's mind, and she was tearing the pillow apart, screaming loud enough to wake the neighbors. Mysterious: Have you ever met somebody who had a knowing, almost mischievous smile on his lips - as if he knew a secret that nobody else knows? There is something intriguing and magnetic about this kind of aura. Aroused: This one isn't always useful on the approach - even though it can be, given the right environment. But the idea here is this: if you are in a highly sexual mood, you can transmit that to the girl… and even if you go to a sexually charged place, your interactions will be more sexual. Moods are contagious. Compassionate: Wait… compassionate?! That's right… a confident yet calm state will give you an aura of masculinity, and this will trigger attraction - well, at least in most feminine, heterosexual women. But it is really the ability to relate to other people, and experience the emotions they're feeling in yourself as well, that will allow you to create an emotional connection with them. Exercise: For each of the above states, ask yourself What could you think about to trigger these emotions inside you? Do you have a memory of a time when you felt like that - can you close your eyes and bring that memory back to life? And how could you play with these thoughts to intensify the feeling? What words could you use to describe it more vividly… how could you give the emotion more depth, the way a poet would? How can you feel them out with the quality quantifiers we discussed earlier? If you already felt the emotion you are trying to experience, what would your physiology be like? How would you breathe, walk, gesture, look and talk? How would you interact with people, how would you stand and what would your posture be like? Work with this for a while… as I said, this is a knack. Set aside some time each day to practice… and eventually, take the states you want with you when you go out to socialize. It will become a habit over time, and you will eventually almost ALWAYS be in the states you want to be in without having to practice them consciously. You will have become a person with incredibly powerful personal magnetism… your brain will have formed habits and built new neurological pathways. Here is one more very crucial point. Your ability to control your state will depend hugely on the amount of raw, physiological energy you have. I have found time and time again that this depends mostly on my diet. No sugar, no white salt, no white flour, no alcohol, no white rice, no processed foods, no junk of any kind whatsoever. I know this is asking a lot. But try it for 21 days and see how much it affects your ability to control your own emotions - not to mention, your overall energy level and sense of well-being! Don't discount this part just because it's a mere couple of sentences in the middle of a very long article… this is going to make a HUGE difference in how effective all of these exercises will be for you. how to pick up girls STATE PROJECTION Alright, we've established that the ability to be charismatic has a lot to do with the emotions other people pick up from us. We have determined that these emotions can be controlled, and how. And, we have identified a couple of key emotions that will be beneficial to dating. You have been told "just to be confident", but nobody ever told you how… well, now you know! Now the question remains, how do we transmit the emotions we feel to others? For one thing, as I mentioned, emotions already get transmitted pretty much automatically, simply because humans have mirror neurons… brain cells that pick up on what other people do and feel. However, the more extroverted you are, the more your emotions will be projected outward. By extroversion, I don't mean being social… I mean pointing your attention outside of you instead of inside. Even when you are doing something alone, you can project your energy outwards… and even when you're interacting with other people, you can project your energy inwards. Instead of having your ATTENTION focused on your thoughts and on everything that is going on inside your head, you need to have your full concentration focused outside… on your environment. Just like a meditator may focus on his breath, you will focus on your surroundings and the people around you. Now you may ask - "wasn't I supposed to think all these thoughts to make my neocortex trigger the states I want?" Yes - that's how you CREATE the states to begin with. Once you've created the state, turn your focus outward and stop getting caught up in your thought loops. You see how we went about this in several steps: We stopped random and sometimes negative thought loops and cleared them with meditation, or by focusing on our breath. Next, we replaced them with positive mental triggers, by deliberately choosing our thoughts, in order to get into positive states We strengthen this internally created emotional state by aligning our physiology with it Finally, once we have reached enough emotional momentum where the state is stable enough, we let go of either and simply focus on our environment. Now you have created the emotional state you desire, and by being in closer communication with your environment, through all your senses, people around you will automatically pick up on your X-Factor more. This will cause you to get more positive social feedback from your environment, which will in turn reinforce your emotional state… a positive feedback loop. WINNING THE LOTTERY - PART II how to pick up girlsRemember how we discussed above that people chase after things, events and other people because of the feeling they hope to experience? You're starting to see that they only do this because they can't control their feelings internally. They don't know about the impact of their physiology and their focus on their emotional state, and much less do they have enough practice to control it consistently. Since they can't control their emotions, they try to control events, by chasing after external, fleeting pleasures which will then trigger thoughts, which in turn, will create the emotions they want. Nuts! Since I've become aware of this process, I've also started noticing that every time something makes me feel good... it's always a THOUGHT that actually shifts the feeling… it's not the external event that does the trick. By the same token, if you ever find yourself falling into negative states, you should be able to catch the thoughts that first trigger the negative state if you pay close attention. Which ultimately, and with practice, will mean that we won't even need any occurrence to get into an emotional state. The entire alcohol industry would collapse if everybody knew how to do this... in fact, most of consumerism and advertisement would too. WHY IS THIS SO ATTRACTIVE? So why do women respond so strongly to this vibe? Simple! There is an old adage in the dating advice community, that a smile is the male cleavage. That's close, but the core of the matter is that emotions are the male cleavage... a smile simply projects a certain type of emotion that is attractive. But why? Because positive emotions demonstrate high value. Only a man of high value would be getting so much positive neural feedback from his environment that he would constantly be in a positive state. Are we just gaming the system? Not really... because if you can CONTROL your own neural feedback, you can also increase your own value. The chicken and the egg perpetuate each other. Do you need to be confident in order to achieve success, or do you need to be successful in order to become confident? As Nathaniel Brandon, considered the "father of modern self-esteem", would point out: The answer is BOTH. Confidence and success have a symbiotic relationship - they enhance each other. In summary, the reason why positive emotional states make you attractive is that women read your emotional state, in order to get a clue about your status. Without state control, only a high status individual would ever be in a truly positive state. A "worker drone" would be bogged down with the grind and the trouble of life, simply because most people draw their state from their life circumstances. But a man who perceives his life to be going well will exude positive emotions - and a woman wants to be a part of that life. Another reason why women are drawn to men like this, by the way, is that females have even less control over their emotions... And here you come, a guy who's in control of his… AND you take the lead. This is exactly what women are looking for, in dating as much as on the dance floor. LIFE CHANGING! how to pick up girlsCan you begin to see how this X-Factor is a new way not only of game, but of being? When you are in these powerful, extroverted states, you will also begin to be more energetic and productive. You will start to get a lot more done, and hence GENERATE more external positive feedback as well… on top of the internal state control which you are creating for yourself. This will, in turn, strengthen your X-Factor further… a positive self-reinforcing cycle. Just like an external event sometimes triggers positive emotions, even in people who don't have internal state control mastered, we can begin to CREATE more of these kinds of external events. And by living your whole life in this state of mind, you will automatically create a ton of those external events that trigger the state again and it just spirals you higher and higher. And all it comes down to, really, is tapping into the ability you already have. Anything you have done once, you can do again… you HAVE the ability. Hence, all consistency comes down to the ability to TAP INTO the state that allowed you to do it in the first place. Before doing ANYTHING from now on… anything at all… ask yourself, what would be the best emotional state to be in for this activity? Then put yourself into that state by changing your physiology and your focus, in all the ways we discussed above… then, let go of the state control exercises and extrovert your attention onto your environment. Properly applied, this will sky rocket your success with women… but also your success in every other area of life. The X-Factor is truly a way of life.

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##Frame Control Examples: Out-Frame Anyone In "How to Talk About Yourself on Dates," a commenter named Al asked about an article on frame control - examples and advanced/detailed technique: "One future article I would love to see is a more advanced and detailed article on frame control. I have read a forum thread by you on advanced frame control which was beneficial and your frame control article on here but I feel I need more real life examples of adroit frame control to be able to master it myself. To put it in to context this last month I have just been focused on reading conversation articles on here as this has been my little "month of conversation" (convenient you slip this article in before the end of the month!) and I found the most valuable article of yours was the annotated example of a conversation you would have. Personally, i find learning by imitating helps initially for all game-related things before i stamp my own persona on how these are used so such an article would be fantastic. Thanks again, Al" Frame control's a neat topic, and an important one - persuasion and communication is a central point of human existence, and if you want to stay in control and have things go your way, you've got to be good at it - not just at winning debates, but at getting people to see things your way. That's what frame control really is - it's painting the picture in a way that not only speaks to you, but to everyone who's looking at it... your "opponent" included. Here, we'll be taking a deeper look at frame control than we have before, and it's a look chock full of examples to get you thinking about things in the most intuitive way possible. frame control In his comment above, Al referenced two pages on this site that discuss frame control: "Get Rock-Solid Frame Control with the Women You Like Guaranteed," the late-2011 primer on frame control, and "Advanced Frame Control with Charismatic People," a mid-2012 post to the old Girls Chase Forum (now on the new one, too; follow the link) on a few snippets of frame control you'll see used against you on occasion by very socially savvy and rather cunning individuals Both of these articles discuss nuances and specifics of frame control, but, particularly in reviewing the 2011 piece, it doesn't seem like I made frame control quite as easy to wrap one's head around as I perhaps could have. With that note, let's see if we can revisit the topic from a new angle, and shed a little more light on a potent but murky area of the social and seductive arts. THE WIDEST ANGLE WINS In photography, there's a type of lens known as a "wide angle lens." A wide angle lens is a lens you can place on your camera that allows you to take a snapshot of a wider field of view. When it comes to frames, the widest angle always wins. One of the examples I used in the 2011 article was of two burly men meeting in the street, facing off, each man going in thinking he's a champ, until one of them buckles and slinks away, leaving the other victorious in this confrontation of intimidation... and competing frames of mind. What causes the difference in the two men's frames? If your first answer was, "Well, clearly the winner was the bigger guy / the better fighter / the more intimidating opponent / anything else for sure," I'd be willing to be you you're wrong. If you recall what we discussed in "How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn't Know About the 'Winner Effect'," among male mice coming out of rigged fights then pitted against each other, the winners of the fight weren't the biggest mice, nor the most experienced fighters - they were the ones with the highest testosterone levels and the most momentum from immediately previous wins. The winners were the ones who'd just got done winning. The losers were the ones who'd already been losing. I've seen this in real life plenty of times. I've watched skinny guys who sucked at fighting back down much bigger guys with far more combat training simply because the skinny guys were coming from stronger frames. It's a little mind-boggling the first time you see it - you KNOW that big guy could probably tear the other guy to shreds in a fight, but he submits to him anyway. What happened? The skinny guys (in these cases) had stronger raw frames than the bigger guys did. If you can't understand, just imagine being a really big guy, who encounters a really small guy who's unafraid of him. What's this guy know that you don't? Does he have powerful friends? A bunch of other people just around the corner waiting for you to snap? What's he got up his sleeve? The stronger frame wins because the other person assumes you must know something he or she does not. If you're this confident that you're going to win, maybe you have some way I don't know. If you're this confident she's going to love going home with you, maybe you have a way with women she hasn't seen yet. Strong frames come from more than just the testosterone of the person holding the frame, however. Let's set the importance of testosterone itself aside for a moment, and look at the thought and behavioral differences between someone who's been winning, and someone who hasn't. What's different? The main differences are these: Scanning for ways to win: when you've been winning, you start instinctually scanning for opportunities and figuring out how you'll win this next encounter, and this happens automatically. When you haven't been winning, and aren't expecting to win, it's next to impossible to get yourself to do this. Tracking the bigger picture: when you've been winning, you aren't just thinking about the frame battle - you're thinking about the environment, who's watching, what the effects of this social maneuvering will be, how the outcome influences what comes next, etc. When you haven't been winning, your focus is almost certainly going to be ENTIRELY on this encounter - and all the nervousness and psyching-yourself-out that goes along with it. When you're used to winning, you start to know things this person does not know... and you know the other person doesn't know what you know, which makes you even more confident. Thinking clearly: when you're coming in confident of success - or at least not worried about a possible loss having much of an impact - you tend to think a lot more clearly than the person on the other side who's coming in fraught with concerns, worries, or doubt - and prone to panicking, making mistakes, and tripping over his own two feet, or even just not really knowing where she's trying to take this encounter. One thing that each of these has in common is that you can boil each down to viewing the frame battle from a broader point of view. Back to the example of the confrontation between two big men, while the one guy is only focused on just this guy in front of him, and on dealing with the rushing, pounding, cascading avalanche of emotions crashing down upon him, the other guy is calm and relaxed as he examines not only the battle immediately before him, but how to win that battle, how other people around will react based on if he does one thing rather than another, what the ripple effects will be, what he'll do after the first few punches are thrown, and more. So what ends up going through their minds? The more confident man is thinking, "Okay, I think I've got this. I'm going to do X, he's going to do Y, and then I'll come back with Z and AB." The less confident man is thinking, "Oh crap, am I sure I can take this guy? What kind of tricks does he have up his sleeve?" Beset with uncertainty and doubt and feeling unprepared for the battle ahead, the less confident man bows out. Why? Because the more confident man had a wider angle. Another example: you're talking to a girl, and the following conversation transpires: You: What say we grab lunch sometime? Her: Okay... but only if we're going as friends. How do you respond? Well, that depends on the width of your angle. Her angle is almost certainly something like, "I like this guy enough to let him provide value to me as just a friend, but not so much I want to actually, you know, date him." If you're thinking, "Oh no, OMG, I've GOT to have this GIRL!" then you're going to respond with: You: What say we grab lunch sometime? Her: Okay... but only if we're going as friends. You: Uh.. okay. Great, so... lunch it is then! Then you end up relegated to the friend zone, banished there by the loss of frame control here to this girl, who, in this case, had the wider angle - while you were worried about "Dear God, I NEED her!" she was worried about that she valued your contributions, though probably not enough to date you. On the other hand, if you're thinking, "This girl's cute, but I'm super busy and don't have time for platonic female friends. Way too many important things to do in the world - can't waste time," then you're going to respond with: You: Would you do me the honor of grabbing lunch with me? Her: Okay... but only if we're going as friends. You: Well, I can't promise you that, but I will promise you you'll have a good time. ... and chances are she laughs and says, "Okay." Why does she say okay? Because she valued you enough to want to spend time on you anyway, and you saying, "The only way we spend time together is if it's understood we may be a romantic item," in a cool, savvy way is attractive, and forces her to decide then and there between two options: Enjoy your value and company, but as a potential lover, or Don't enjoy your value and company at all Assuming you're not completely off-putting, more often than not this one goes your way. Why? Because you had the wider angle view. LOGIC VS. EMOTION Most people's frames are emotion cleverly disguised as logic. The majority of men new to the social arts don't recognize this, and slip up trying to address only the logic... instead of the underlying emotion first, and the logic only second. You've no doubt seen the famous bit by Chris Rock on love - the one that includes the routine about arguing with women (skip to 2:20 if you want to get right to it): The line that really makes that routine so hilarious is when Rock counsels men to not even bother arguing with women for this reason: "It's impossible, you will not win. 'Cause men, we are handicapped when it comes to arguing 'cause we have a need to make sense." What he's really talking about here is frame control: women are better at it. In fact, almost that entire bit by Rock is about women beating men over the head with superior frame control. Women are so good at this because women have a larger portion of their brains devoted to socialization, and they socialize earlier and much more often than men do - they're simply better at all things social and political and nuanced than most men are. And the core reason most men suck at winning frame battles? Not that they have a need to make sense. Rather, it's that they don't understand what they're really about. Because of that, they're not able to properly address the real issue... so they lose. In other words, the woman has a wider angle view than they do. Women realize that it isn't the logic that's most important when it comes to frame control... it's the emotions. Emotions control far more of you than logic does. If you want to win with people, you must address their emotions first, their logic second. While men stand jaws agape, unable to respond at the illogical response volleyed at them by a female argument partner, women pound their point home, gain concessions from their confused prey, and then slink off happy as can be. Because frame control isn't necessarily always about winning, either. Sometimes it's just about confusing the other party enough that you can get what you want. THE CONFUSION FACTOR frame controlTake that example we mentioned earlier: man asks woman out on a date, woman says sure - so long as it's just as friends. Is the woman clueless here? Does she not KNOW his intentions? No. Of course she knows what they are. If she thought he wanted to go out with her as a friend, she'd never have thrown that little caveat in there. So why'd she do it, then? Simple: she was attempting to use frame control to confuse him into going along with what she wanted. Man: would you go out with me? Woman: yes, so long as it's as your friend. She didn't say "no." She also didn't give him an unqualified "yes." Instead, she faked and dodged - avoiding the unpleasantness of rejecting him outright, and instead twisting around his attempt to get a date with her into a platonic friendly outing of the kind he'd probably never elect to go on willfully of his own accord. She just confused him into being another Shopping Guy. The fun thing about frame control though is that most women seem to understand that that's kind of how it goes. Most women won't resent you too much for turning it right back on them; live by the sword, die by the sword, as the Bible so wisely notes. So when she tries to confuse a man into agreeing to a platonic outing with her, and he confuses her right back by saying we can go but it won't be platonically (something she wasn't expecting, and doesn't have a prepared response for), her response to that usually is not anger or frustration at the reversal, but rather attraction at his social savvy. He's just passed her "test" (although she doesn't think of it that way). And now she finds him all the more compelling for it. frame control Winning frame battles is about outstanding "frame control," although I don't really even like this term all that much myself. I prefer to think of it as just knowing what you want and what you will and won't tolerate, and going from there. But, for the sake of putting a label on it so you know what we're talking about, "frame control" will suffice, I suppose. How do you learn frame control? How do you get good at it? And how do you know how to respond to novel situations? It all comes back to that wide angle view of things, and knowing where your limits are. I've further broken frame control down into four (4) separate tiers, from highest (most unassailable frame control) to lowest (basic frame control): Knowing you're right Knowing the best path Knowing frame control Knowing specific responses Below, we'll take a closer look at each. THE TOP TIER: KNOWING YOU'RE RIGHT In "The 5 Ways to Answer a Challenge in Social Situations" I mentioned being known as the "Comeback King" when younger because of my aptitude at turning things around on my opponents whenever they'd try to verbally one-up me. I was highly competitive, and had an inclination for making sure I knew how to take down opponents deftly and effortlessly - and look good doing it, too. There's another thing I've found that always gives you wings in being able to respond to challengers, though, aside from pure competitiveness and experience doing a thing: that is, knowing you're right. In the case of discussing factual matters, I try to never speak unless I know what I'm talking about. And in the rare case where I'm speculating about something, I try to always coach that speculation with caveats, like, "Well, I'm just speculating here so may be entirely off the mark, but here's my read." If someone wants to attack speculation, I'm happy to back off with a, "If you have better evidence or more experience, be my guest; I don't really know what I'm talking about there anyway." But if someone tries to refute something I'm certain about, that I have loads of evidence and anecdotal experience to back up, without anything short of the most convincing argument back with the most convincing evidence I've ever seen, I'll dismantle their argument. In the case of insults, you need to know that you aren't what you're being insulted as being (i.e., someone calls you stupid and ugly, and you've got to know you're not stupid and ugly); in the case of women, you need to know that you're probably the best thing that's ever going to happen to a girl if you really want to kill it with frame control. I'll write that latter point out a second time for emphasis: When it comes to women, you've GOT to know you're probably the BEST thing that's ever happened to them if you want the most outstanding frame control you can get with them. Why's that so? Because when a girl's protesting, or her friends are, or she's throwing up reasons why she can't be together with you, you've got to, got to, GOT TO KNOW that those reasons are trash and she's about to miss out on the best goddamn thing that's ever happened to her (YOU). Until you know that and believe it in your bones, you will always struggle with frame control. And how do you get to the point where you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you're unquestionably the best thing that could happen to a woman? You must work on yourself to the point where you bring tremendously more value to her life - whether in a one-night stand or a long-term relationship - than any other man likely can or will. You must get feedback from women, too - think of it as accumulating credentials. Just like Mike Tyson knows he's the best boxer once he's beaten every other contender, and his frame control there is unshakeable, and Donald Trump knows he's the best real estate magnate once he's pulled off one coup after another, and his frame control there is indomitable, once you're picking up gorgeous, amazing women and giving them the times of their lives and giving them relationships unlike any they've had before or any they'll have after and changing and improving and bettering their lives in nearly every way, your frame of reference becomes naturally unassailable. That takes time, of course (I didn't get there myself until I was maybe four years into approaching and seducing women). And there are no shortcuts aside from turning yourself into a man who provides crazy amounts of value to every woman you encounter: Riveting emotional connections Conversation unlike anyone else Ridiculously good sex Inspiration to chase down her dreams and live the life she wants An all-around amazing experience being with you Knowing you're right... for the uppermost tier of unshakeable frame control, you need this. Once you arrive there, frame control becomes automatic, and you are beyond reproach (for the most part). Then conversations like this happen: You: Come sit with me and let's talk. Her: I can't... I have to go rejoin my friends. You: Your friends can wait. I can't wait. Let's sit now and you can join them again in a few minutes. Her: But I don't know you! You: That's why you're coming to sit with me. [take her arm and lead] ... and all are said by you in a smooth, commanding, powerful tone dripping with sensuality and complete confidence, and it works well (try doing that with a hint of hesitation or insincerity, though, and it doesn't work at all). When you come across attractive already, and you know that her missing out on you means her missing out on the most amazing man she's ever met, your actions exude this belief - and she picks up on that. It's intriguing at worst to her, and exhilarating at best. THE NEXT TIER DOWN: KNOWING THE BEST PATH What if you haven't gotten yourself to the point yet where you have so much to offer and know you have so much to offer that you have master-level frame control automatically most of the time? Well, the next best thing is knowing the best path. This one mostly comes down to process and logistics. That is to say, you talk to a girl in a shopping mall for a little while, and then her friends appear and want to do something, and she wants to do something else, and you want to do something other than that. Suddenly, you have a variety of possibilities: You want to take her somewhere one-on-one She wants to stay with you and keep talking and join her friends later Her friends want her to come to the next store with her and keep shopping Who wins here? The person who knows the best path that provides the greatest amount of satisfaction to all parties involved. If you aren't certain that's you, then it'll probably be the friends - if there are two of them, pulling her away from you to go shopping with them means: Friend 1 has higher satisfaction Friend 2 has higher satisfaction Your girl has slightly lower satisfaction You have much lower satisfaction Which is better than her staying with you when you and her don't know what you're doing, resulting in slightly higher satisfaction for both of you, but lower satisfaction for both of them. If, however, you KNOW the best path to take - one that minimizes dissatisfaction for everybody, and maximizes satisfaction where applicable - you usually get your way. You frame control the situation to go how you want it to go. That looks like this: Friend: Amyyyy! Come on, we're going to Zara! You: Tell them you've just met the most amazing man of your life and you want to grab a coffee with him so you don't miss out on it and end up regretting it forever. Her: [laughs] ... Go without me, guys - I'm going to grab a coffee with Mel. I'll catch up with you later. You: Make sure they know I'm the most amazing man you've ever met. Her: [laughs] He's the most amazing man I've ever met! Friend: Okay! We'll see you later! You: Good work. Let's go. Then you'll take her to go get some coffee, and get to know her better and set up a date and grab her phone number, or you'll tell her to text her friends that she's being taken on a whirlwind romance and is leaving to go on an adventure with her new lover, and then you'll take her home and take her to bed. Because of how this is framed, you've just maximized everyone's satisfaction. The friends are laughing because Amy found some guy she obviously likes and who's obviously a lot of fun (he made her tell them he's the most amazing guy of her life, after all); Amy's having a great time, because she wanted to stay with you anyway, and now you've shown her a socially exciting way to pull that off while bringing enjoyment to her friends; and you, of course, are far happier than you would've been had she left. By viewing the situation with a wide angle perspective, you're able to see what's likely to work out best for everyone involved and make interesting things happen. Taking a girl home when she needs to get up early for work or school tomorrow works like this, too (so long as you're mindful of her schedule and you're not trying to take her home too late - plan the date earlier, and pull earlier, to avoid real time crunches): You: Let's head back and I'll show you that home movie I was talking about. Her: I have to get up early tomorrow. Can we do it next time? You: That's impossible. If we do it tonight, you'll enjoy it a lot more, because women like things that are spontaneous. Plus, you have to get up at 8 tomorrow morning, and it's 9:30 PM right now. You'll be on your way home no later than 11, which means you've still got an hour to lounge around your apartment in your underwear before going to bed to get your 8 hours of sleep. Her: Oh my God...! You: Come on. Again, you're viewing things with a wider angle here - she's afraid about not getting enough sleep (and also about whether she's ready to go home with you so soon), but you've accounted for the logical objection, and you've accounted for the emotional one (your response is a mix of confidence and humor, plus the droll bit about how "women like things that are spontaneous" is true and, delivered properly, will change her thought pattern). Because you know a better path than she does, that maximizes her and your satisfaction more (i.e., she'll still get everything she wants - a full night's sleep without being rushed - plus more good things - spontaneity, doing something fun with you, low to no pressure), your frame of it being good for her to come with you beats out her frame of it being better for her to retire early. THE THIRD TIER: KNOWING FRAME CONTROL frame controlIf the top tier of frame control leaves you unassailable, and the second tier gives you a wide enough angle view that you can usually win, the third tier is a substantial drop from these, but still gives you a good edge. That third tier, of course, is knowing frame control. Knowing frame control means you know the basic rules of frame control, including: You cannot back down: once you propose something, you're stuck with it, so make sure you get it right on the first try, because if someone challenges you on it, you've got to push it through. So if you make a dumb comment like, "All Russians drink a lot," and she starts telling you about her Russian friends who don't drink, you can't abandon ship and still command her respect. You cannot FIGHT with her: frame control is a subtle dance, not a boxing match. You must not get into a heated debate or argument - your points must be stated with subtlety and social grace. The instant you start arguing, you may have won the battle (over who's "right") but you've undoubtedly lost the war (on being and remaining attractive and desirable and relatable). You must tend to the emotions of all involved: if it's just you and her, then you've really only got to worry about what she wants and needs (and what you do). If there's another guy trying to butt into your conversation, or a female friend of hers trying to cockblock, or an employee of an establishment trying to hustle you outside because it's closing time, or anyone else involved for any reason, you've got to tend to their emotions as well - either assuring them of what they need assurance of, or giving them something to engage with, or putting social pressure on them and making them feel awkward and embarrassed for attempting to interfere. You mustn't let her get locked into an idea: the instant she says she's leaving, you've got to start frame controlling her out of it. If you let her say something, then think on it for a while, or ask her too many questions about it that aren't clearly directed at circumventing it, she'll lock the idea in her head as a firm decision, and then good luck getting her to do something else (you still can - with great energy and enthusiasm and spontaneity - but this needs to be well-executed, and it's easier to not have to pull out spontaneity last minute if you can avoid it). You may not believe you're the best thing that can happen to her. And you may not know exactly what you're going to do with her next. But if you know the principles of frame control, you can often hang in there long enough to win a frame battle and figure out what you need to do (figure out the wider angle view and realize what the right path MIGHT be). Here's some recovery frame control (using that "All Russians drink a lot" gaffe): You: All Russians drink a lot, you didn't know that? Her: Actually, I have a lot of Russian friends, and most of them don't drink. You: Okay, all Russians who aren't friends with YOU drink a lot! Her: [laughs] If you say so. You: So tell me about your Russian friends: why do you have so many? It seems like everyone around here just complains about Russians all the time... and then there's you, and you're friends with them! Why the difference? In this case, she isn't going to fully accept your frame because she KNOWS it's incorrect - all Russians do not drink a lot. However, you turn it from a statement of fact into something of a joke - and one that she can't easily refute (i.e., she can't cite her friends as examples, because you've just stated that Russians who aren't her friends drink... she'd have to cite some survey by the Russian Census Bureau that found that drinking is on the decline and only 28.4% of Russians drank heavily in 2010 or something like that, which is breaking the mood of the current conversation and being socially awkward, so she won't do it even if she knows of such a study). Here's an example of frame control when others are trying to intervene and you don't necessarily know where you're taking things, but you just want to stop them from intervening: Clerk: I'm sorry guys, I have to lock the café. It's 11 o'clock and time for us to close. Her: Okay... it's time for me to head back anyway. You: It's 11 o'clock on a Friday night... far too early to head back. Her: I got up really early today; I'm flagging pretty bad right now. Clerk: I hate rushing you guys, but I've really got to get going now. Her: Sorry; we're leaving. [to you] Are you ready? You: [to clerk] Give us just a minute, we're taking off in 45 seconds; we won't hold you up. [to girl] I won't keep you out too much later, but there's something I have to show you before you head home, no matter how tired you are. Her: What? You: I can't tell you what it is, but it's totally worth going to bed a few minutes later. Let's stop holding up this poor man - he clearly wants to get out of here and go enjoy his Friday night. Time for us to go enjoy ours. Her: But I'm tired! You: Not for long you won't be. Let's go. You may have no idea what it is you're going to take her to go see or do, but you know you can always promise something fun and amazing and figure out on the way what that'll be - the most important thing for now is making sure she doesn't get locked into the idea of taking off. THE FINAL TIER: KNOWING SPECIFIC RESPONSES What happens if you don't know (or believe) you're a girl's best option, hands down... and you don't know the best path to take... and you don't even know the elements of frame control? Do you not stand a chance at ever having things go your way? In fact, this is where "lines" come in... it's why guys look for pickup lines and why early on in the seduction community there was so much emphasis on routines. Guys who don't know how to do frame control itself want to know what to say specifically. This actually is a fairly common part of the early learning process for most men... learning how to respond to specific questions and situations they encounter. You'll see most beginners asking questions like "She said/did this; what should I say/do?!" This is a guy saying he hasn't figured out frame control yet, and would like you to help him collect responses that will work in specific situations. Those are things like: Her: A gentleman always buys a lady a drink. You: Lucky for me I'm no gentleman. and Her: I only date guys over 25. You: Good thing I don't want to date you. Truth be told, having a repertoire of standard fallback responses (or response templates - e.g., both of the examples above use a "good/lucky thing I'm not" -style template to break the girl's frame) can lighten your mental load and make life easier, though these take time and experience to acquire (although make you seem pretty snappy when once you've got them down). Because there are so many possible things women can say or do or scenarios you can wind up in, it's highly recommend you learn how to use frame control and get out of the bottom tier of needing specific go-to responses to maintain frame control. Sooner or later with every woman and in most situations, you're going to run into something you don't have a scripted response for, and then you need to be able to think on your feet and respond appropriately and improvisationally. That said, while you're still learning frame control, take the time to write down the situations and frame battles you most commonly encounter, and come up with some standard responses you can use for these. This will address most of the framing difficulties you have, and it'll get you accustomed to responding to women's attempts to out-frame you, and get you familiar with what it feels like to evade these evasions. FRAME CONTROL WRAP UP We can say that frame control boils down to three key elements: Having a wider angle view than anyone else involved Being focused more on the emotion communicated than the logic Being aware of "confusion game" and able to confuse would-be confusers When it comes to men's abilities with frame control, we find there are four tiers, from most advanced to least advanced: Knowing you're right Knowing the path Knowing frame control Knowing specific responses Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you say is right and/or that you are the BEST thing that's going to happen to a girl gives you unassailable frame control that usually wins the day (the one exception is when you're up against someone else who knows he or she is right too, and this other person has better debate skills or more people or force on his/her side). The next step down from there is being able to see widely enough that you can figure out the best course of action in any given situation for maximizing the satisfaction of everyone involved and minimizing any dissatisfaction. Next down from that one is knowing how to use frame control itself, such that even if you don't know you're perfectly right and don't necessarily have the widest angle view, you can still wing it long enough to figure out where you're trying to take things. And remember that the basic ground rules of frame control are: You cannot back down (so choose your position wisely) You cannot FIGHT (you must be subtle and socially adroit) You must tend to the emotions of all involved You mustn't let people get locked into their ideas (challenge them fast) Finally, there's knowing specific responses - while these won't help you win every frame battle, they can at least tide you over on the ones you've seen before and the ones you most commonly run into. Frame control's loads of fun (there's nothing quite like having someone tell you she is ABSOLUTLEY not doing something, and then using nothing but verbal prowess to end up having her come do it anyway, and seeing her enjoy it far more than she would have the alternative), and it's an important skill to learn if you want to succeed at seducing beautiful women... not to mention dodge the slings and arrows the women you seduce and their friends (and your competition) will throw your way - intentionally or otherwise.

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##When It's Worth Fighting I was out last night with a friend at about midnight, and we stopped to ask for directions. I saw a pair of women on a patio as they were leaving a bar, and asked them if they knew where the place we were trying to find was. In the midst of them telling me as I stood there a bit beneath them on the street -- "Go to the cinema, then..." a large, obviously drunken man strode up to the edge of the patio they were standing on, towering over me. "Oy," he said, and raised his fist in what sort of looked like a greeting. "Hi," I said, and flashed him a smile. He dropped his fist smack into my forehead, and it connected with a dull thud and a mild sting. Now, I come from a background of formerly having been a bit of an angry guy, and a bit of a fighter. I used to get in a fair amount of fights, about all kinds of pointless things. Anything that might just be considered disrespect, I used to be ready to go to war over. These days, I don't make physical confrontation that much a priority for me. I'll use it when absolutely necessary -- I manhandled a guy a few days back who tried pickpocketing me late at night in the rain -- but the risk is often far greater than the reward. And that's what I want to discuss today -- assessing combat situations well and accurately gauging the risk-reward ratio -- not just for yourself, but for your opponent. Because it's necessary that, as you make your way through the world, you learn when it's worth fighting -- and when it isn't. COMBAT'S RISK I wish I could say that the world was a peaceful place, or that guys only fought each other over valiant things. It isn't though, and they don't. Fights almost universally start over stupid stuff. The fights and skirmishes I've been in my life have been over the following things: A guy stole $1 out of my hand as another guy who owed both of us paid me back instead of him I locked eyes with a guy walking in a shopping mall who was strung out on drugs I was mildly teasing a guy, and he snatched my sunglasses and threw them A guy threw a snowball through my window that landed on my bed Some ice landed on top of my head at the bar in a nightclub, and I thought a guy threw his drink at me (actually, the bartender'd just been a little sloppy as he made a drink and ice got kicked up) A guy saw me talking to his female friend and "danced" into me, pushing me aside A guy decided he wanted to get a drink at the bar, and wanted my spot Another guy "danced" into me when he thought my girlfriend and I were getting too close to his crew's VIP table on New Year's Eve (our VIP table was right next to his) Is there one "smart" fight there in the bunch? No. Fights are almost always stupid, dumb, useless posturing. And it gets worse than this. At my university, a couple of guys got into a fight because one guy'd thought another guy'd said something to his girlfriend. A third guy got in between the two of them, trying to break it up, and ended up getting himself stabbed in the heart by the boyfriend, and died in the hospital four days later. Near where I lived in San Diego, a couple of guys had tussled in a nightclub, and one of them went to get his strap. He did a drive by shooting on the club as it was letting out, and hit the wrong people, killing a girl there to celebrate her 21st birthday, her first ever visit to a nightclub. Fighting is bad news. It's potentially very risky, especially when weapons get involved. The last full-on brawl I was in -- the nightclub fight over the ice spilled onto my head, where I fought a crew of six guys (I didn't win, needless to say) -- I got told by a counselor at the university about a fight the year earlier, where one guy had punched another guy, the punched guy's head hit a table as he went down, he died, and the first guy went to prison for third degree homicide for a long time. Oops. I cut my fighting back after that -- after a good long think about whether fighting some meatheads was worth potentially spending the best years of my life playing "don't end up some musclebound guy's girlfriend" in the slammer -- and haven't been a knock-down, drag-out brawl since then. I decided it wasn't worth. Just a few shoves or pushes exchanged here and there, mostly, and I've taken a few punches without trying to fight back much. What's the difference? It's what a guy has to lose. That's the big difference between the belligerent guys -- the guys who really want to fight -- guys like I used to be -- and the guys who prefer to defuse or avoid combat. Some guys don't have anything to lose. You've got to be really mindful of that any time you start weighing whether to fight a guy. It might end up being a life or death difference. when it's worth fighting WHAT'VE YOU GOT TO LOSE? When I was young and angry, I really didn't feel like I had much to lose. The slightest disrespect (like a snowball cast through my window) would set me off... nobody messed with me. People even would tell me how the girls in school would tell them, "That red-headed kid is scary." I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I once went looking for a guy, drunk and armed, because I thought he'd cheated me out of $15 earlier in the night. All I remember from that episode was stumbling past dilapidated buildings, past gangs of guys hanging out on the corners, fuming with anger, ready to put an end to him for that disrespect. I'm not completely certain I would've done it had I found him... but I'd give it maybe a 75% chance at that point. Over $15. I might be dead or in prison today if I'd found that guy. But I didn't, so my life took a different path. I'm not like that anymore. In fact, I'm so far in the other direction nowadays that if a guy just hits me, and then it gets broken up, the emotion doesn't even register. I just keep doing whatever I was doing before it happened. But there are a LOT of men out there right now who are like I was. Men who've got nothing to lose, and who'll scrap with you or take your life over pocket change. You've got to be aware of that in fighting situations. I'm in Mongolia right now. I can't say I'd recommend it terribly... the women are the least attractive women I've seen anywhere else on Earth, the men are poor and belligerent, pickpockets are everywhere, and fistfights, even during the day, are common. In some ways, it's worse than the 'hood. At least in the ghettos of America, people won't mess with you too much, because they don't know if you've got a weapon or if you're crazy, and the police are never too far away. They'll size you up, and if they think you'll be a handful, they won't get into it with you most of the time. Here, the men just drink and brawl. And sometimes people just get beat up, and sometimes people die. The fights happen during the daytime, in broad daylight, and at night it's worse. I've had more people tell me not to go out here alone at night than I've had tell me that probably throughout the entire rest of my life, and I've been in some dangerous places (Manila in the Philippines; Camden, Baltimore, DC, the Tenderloin District in San Francisco...). And if you're an outsider, you're more of a mark in Mongolia than you are in the 'hood back in the States. It's a dangerous place, with really nothing going on for it. They're fighting over table scraps. The funny thing is, you'll typically find that the most resource-poor places and people have the highest levels of violence. Dirt-poor men fight other dirt-poor men over nothing. Over disrespect and undesirable women. And the more you have, the more of a target you become. You become both a threat, and an opportunity. That guy who dropped his fist on my forehead saw me talking to that woman on the patio (who turned out to be his wife), and probably perceived me as a threat. Here I am, an attractive foreign guy, dressed well and talking to his wife, and he's a big, sloppy, drunk guy who probably has a crappy job and zero prospects for his future. Of course I'm a threat. A threat to the one thing he has in the world -- his wife. It doesn't matter that I'd never go for a girl like she was (nice person, but really not attractive at all); all he sees is "DANGER." So, he attacks. He goes to show this foreigner who's the boss. He has everything to lose if he doesn't, he thinks -- his woman, his self-respect, how others think of him -- he has to fight. I think it's incredibly important to be mindful of this in all combat situations. when it's worth fighting WHEN IT'S WORTH FIGHTING In my humble opinion, there are a few times in life it's worth fighting: To defend your friends, family, or lovers from harm or great insult To defend your country after it's been attacked (related to #1) To defend yourself from theft or a legitimate threat To get experience fighting to learn how to defend better And I think that's it. The problem, I think, is with #3 and defining "legitimate threat." There are many things guys consider "legitimate threats" that aren't. For instance, half of the scuffles I've had or come close to having in my whole life were over some guy getting pissed off that I was talking to his girlfriend. And that's something I understand... I'm a pretty charming guy, and women tend to respond to me pretty well. I have slept with my fair share of other men's girlfriends and wives... so it isn't like I'm harmless. I try not to, but if a woman clearly wants me, well, her relationship is her business, not mine. And most men will never be able to compete with me on the level of attractiveness to women I've cultivated. It isn't that they couldn't, per se; it's just that they don't put the time into it. So, the only recourse they end up feeling like they have in the face of watching a man like me charming and seducing their woman is to try and fight back violently. While I understand this, I tend to think of it as the foolish man's strategy. Is his girlfriend really going to walk off with me right in front of him? Of course not! But I know the feeling... I had it a long time ago, when I first started dating. What if my girl ditches me and leaves with this guy? I'd think to myself. Getting upset and fighting over your woman talking to another guy very clearly communicates to her that you feel threatened by another man and doubt your own ability to retain a woman... it can almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a huge turn off to women when they think that you think you can't keep them without physically enforcing that they're "yours." I've certainly had girlfriends of mine talking excitedly with other men it was clear they had a spark of attraction for. It happens; we're human. Fighting is not how you react to this; it does a ton of destructive things to your relationship. And on top of that... what's he going to do when he isn't there to police her actions? I mean, he's with her at the bar, sure, but what happens when she meets a charming guy at work? But most guys don't realize this, and they fight anyway. Because fighting comes from fear. Fear of losing his girl. Fear of losing face and status. Fear of being hurt or taken from. I used to fight so much because I was constantly afraid. I had nothing in my life -- no future that I could see, no real friends, no women -- and the only thing I had was my reputation and my self-respect. Any man threatening that became a GIANT threat in my mind. Men who fight are usually in this boat. They've only a tenuous hold on the things they value as most important in their lives, and they'll use combat to try and maintain that hold. There's also the "dumb-as-rocks" guys who fight because they don't know how to solve problems any other way, and they know you can run circles around them verbally / socially. These guys are best avoided; they usually have tons of fighting experience, because they fight so much, and their women are usually unattractive and un-engaging anyway. They're almost like a separate class of men whom you have absolutely nothing to gain by fighting (they're totally outside your circles, usually; they don't have anything you want -- women, resources, etc. -- there's no benefit to fighting them at all) but potentially a lot of risk in doing so. I generally view people who fight these days as being people who feel as though they aren't in control of their lives... they're people who view everyone else as a threat against whom they must struggle violently. As you move up in the world, the ability of others to threaten you goes down. But, others want to fight you more, because they perceive having more to lose from you, and more to gain by defeating you. The more attractive to women you become, the greater a threat to other men you become. But if you fight every damn guy who wants to fight you, you'll be fighting forever, getting beat up, and you'll get absolutely zilch for it. Sometimes you'll have the good fortune of meeting a guy who falls into the "big, dumb fighter" category, but he's also pretty good looking and does well with women, and he's typically in a good mood and is even cool if you meet him via talking to his gal, because he's secure enough in his ability to retain women and get new ones if he can't that he doesn't worry about a guy talking to his woman, even if the guy is an attractive, charming guy. These guys tend to be really cool guys, usually pretty worldly and experienced, and you'll find they're worth getting to know. And they'll fight guys that piss them off, because they're big beefy guys and they've fought so much that they always win, and it's easy for them, so there's not much disinentive for them not to. These are good guys to have on your side if you meet them; they can be a blast to hang out with and talk to and learn from, they're usually pretty ambitious and upwardly mobile, and you wouldn't mind having them in a fight, either. Otherwise, though, steer clear of the big guys who like to start things. Aside from those few cool guys, the rest of them typically don't have anything else going on for them, and fighting (and winning) is the only way they can feel good about themselves. Taking all of this into consideration, at the outset of a combat situation or potential combat situation, you'll want to take a few moments and try and figure out when it's worth fighting and when it isn't. That guy last night, after he dropped his fist on my forehead, he then just stood there, looking at me with a facial expression with all the emotional depth of a cow. His wife and her girlfriend then pulled him away, apologized to me profusely, the woman I'd been talking to telling me he was her husband, and then continued pushing him back so he wouldn't get into anything. I raised my arms up briefly, inviting him to fight, then realized it wasn't worth it. I wasn't really injured, and I stood to gain absolutely nothing by fighting this cow of a man. Because, honestly... if a cow butts you with its head, are you really going to stand there and fight it? What do you gain by fighting with a cow? This is why successful people characteristically cordon themselves off from the destitute. It isn't because they think people living in poverty are undesirable people or lesser, per se... it's because members of the underclass are far more likely to be violent, dangerous, and prone to destruction -- because they have nothing to lose. Whereas, successful, established people have worked very, very hard to build success into their lives and have a great deal to lose -- it's not worth risking losing everything in a meaningless fight over them, say, asking directions from the wrong guy's girl, or accidentally stepping on someone's feet (which is something people actually fight over here in Mongolia; it's considered incredibly insulting to step on someone's feet, obviously something that becomes kind of unavoidable in a crowded city). Anyway, my friend stood there, asking me if we should take this guy. "He's a little big, but he's drunk as hell and hardly standing," I said, thinking aloud. "He'd be an easy roll." "Let's get him. Do you want to get him?" my pal said. "Ummm.....," I said, considering. I turned it over in my mind for a moment. I wasn't hurt; the guy was just a drunk with nothing going on in his life -- I didn't feel any more disrespected by him than a lion feels disrespected by a house cat, really; I really felt nothing at all about this. I leave Mongolia and go back to my awesome life; this guy stays here, with his unattractive wife, his slovenly body, his crap job, and his futureless prospects. He can hit me in the head, but I beat him at life a million times over. "Nah. What's the point?" I said. I turned back to the women. "You said we head down to the cinema and then- what? We go right? Or it's behind it? Or where, exactly?" She gave me direction, I thanked her, flashed some eye-daggers at the cow-man, then turned and went on my way. Because... what would you rather do, go fight some guy? Or go meet some beautiful girl? Once you have the ability to choose between the two, I think it's pretty easy to do so. I used to fight men because I didn't have that choice. These days though, I'd much rather live for building businesses and making art and getting girls and having children than I would fighting men. That last one isn't even worth the trouble, unless there's a genuinely good reason to do it -- and most of the time -- 99% of the time -- there isn't. A little live and let live is in order. And if some random guy shoves you or clocks you one, unless he's actively trying to fight you, I'd say shrug it off. Think of the coolest guy you can -- Harrison Ford, George Clooney, etc. -- and what he does if some guy decks him, then gets pulled away. He doesn't chase him down for a fight. He just gazes at him with daggers in his eyes... then walks away. He's the bigger man, and he recognizes that men with lesser lives and means will always strike out with physical force trying to injure bigger men. Just goes with the territory. Heck -- it's kind of a compliment when guys consider you such a threat to their relationship that they feel like they have to fight you off! Once it starts happening to you, you know you're moving up in the world. Well... either that, or you're in Mongolia.

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##Social Skills 101: Pushing Past Your Comfort Zone A lot of you have commented on the fact that you want to see more posts about social interactions. Well, I want you to know, we hear you. This technically should've come before my last post, but either way, I'm officially starting a series of posts dedicated to every aspect of social interactions - our very own social skills training series. A little more about my background, since we haven't discussed it to much great detail before: I've worked in law firms, sales, have been a part of countless organizations, have studied psychology, and have spent time all over this beautiful planet of ours. Along the way, I've spent countless days, weeks, and hours meeting and interacting with women from sun up to sundown (and often later) to get closer to reaching the same level of understanding and efficacy with women that Chase and Ricardus share with you every day. As those of you who have been around this site have seen, the three of us work toward many of the same goals, but come from very different points of view. The feeling of just starting out and getting a lot of your basic social skills down is still vivid for me, and I know how intimidating or confusing it can be to be put in a new or overwhelming social situation and still want to pick up a girl on top of that. So get ready for the series, and let's start off with a proper introduction. EXCITEMENT AND UNCERTAINTY There I was, sitting in a train station in Switzerland. It was my first time in Europe, and I needed to take a train across the country to meet up with a distant family member I had never met or seen before. Everything around me was in Swiss-German. I had no phone, and I had forgotten what station I needed to get to. Everyone seemed to be in their own world, confidently bustling across the station without a second thought. I was terrified; a part of me wanted to sit in that cold station for as long as I could rather than risk talking to someone or getting on the wrong train, but my family was waiting on me. So, I looked at the general direction that I needed to go, then I picked a train - and then I boarded. I ended up being eased by a great conversation with an old man who was on vacation, and decided to ride the train until the final stop. At the last stop, I got off, and after a few minutes of tense wandering, I saw a man who looked vaguely like my father with a wide smile on his face. The train had taken me to the right place. This experience will always stay with me as one of the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences I've ever had. And what I realized recently when recounting this story to a friend of mine is that this feeling of excitement and uncertainty is the same feeling you get when you start to see consistent success with women for the first few months. It's the feeling of pushing past your comfort zone. It's the simultaneous feeling of fear and anticipation that makes people feel alive. It's the same feeling that bonds you with girls - and one that you will consistently be able to give them if you follow the articles and programs on this site. ACCEPTING THE SOCIAL SKILLS CHALLENGE We tell you on this site that if you want to improve your social skills and your romantic skills you have to keep pushing past your comfort zone. Why? Because only then will you understand where your process is lacking; and only then will you be on the path to being a powerful man, able to handle any social situation. social skills I will tell you right now, as I've said before, improving your social skills is one of, if not the hardest task you will ever undertake - you can ask Chase, you can ask Ricardus, you can ask anyone who's made a real effort to do it. And because it's so hard - because it's such a challenging, daunting process - a large number of the men who start on down this path give up on improving themselves before they make much significant progress. You can see it, almost like a funnel going down, with people falling out of the funnel every step of the way to the bottom, towards that goal of extraordinary social skills and success with women. The deeper into the rabbit hole you go, the fewer men you find left standing. This goes much farther than just being able to get any woman you want (though that's certainly a worthy goal in it's own right). The reason why mastering social skills is perhaps the hardest thing you could ever do is twofold. First, it challenges every part of your being and your identity at the same time: Your perception of yourself How you see the world Your level of confidence How you deal with failure Your sexy vibe How you perform in bed Your "social stamina" ... we'll get to the second reason in just a moment. But first, a bit of expansion and explanation on this first point. All of these aspects - and every other part of your individuality - are put under the microscope when you tirelessly work to improve your social skills. It's the same principle behind fully devoting yourself to a martial art or being completely devout to a religion; it's not only about the practices (the fighting or the prayer service, respectively), but about the complete changes (the newfound life discipline or the new sense of passion for learning and compassion for people, particularly women) that you experience. In the case of the seducer, the practice is talking to, befriending, and sleeping with women, but the complete change is the new, better man - in control of his emotions - you inevitably become. This man is confident, knows how to get what he wants, is a stylish dresser, and has no reason to be unhappy about his life, even when things don't always go his way. This is why Girls Chase doesn't just tell you how to sleep with women like other gimmicky sites; we tell you exactly what to expect from every personal and emotional standpoint and how to understand women from the viewpoint of a powerful man (which naturally includes constantly bringing high-value women into your life). Ultimately, you can be one of two people: The man who decides that it's better to play it safe, and gives up when life gets hard The man who is unafraid to accept the challenge and bring everything he dreams about into his reality Which one you become is up to you - and nobody else - to choose. CHANGING YOUR LIFE This complete change, this tackling of one's own being and identity and self, is why most people avoid anything that requires them to make such a large commitment - fully devoting yourself to anything will change your life. But, this is only the first reason why improving your social skills is harder than nearly anything else. The second reason is that most of your improvement requires other people (almost always women). If you want to improve at basketball, you can go to a basketball court and practice your shooting and dribbling for as long as you want. If you want to be a better writer, you can lock yourself in a room and write stories all day, every day. If you want to be a better fighter, you can go the garage and hit the punching bag until you've got the meanest swing this side of Jack Dempsey. But if you want to improve your social skills, once you get the right style and posture, you can't really improve on opening women, moving them, or taking them to bed by talking to yourself in the mirror. One of the hardest facts to face as a beginner is this: you're going to make the same mistakes in front of a lot of different women. social skills REAPING THE REWARD But before you throw your hands up in exasperation at the impossibility of this undertaking... hold on - because it's hard, but not impossible. We've talked a lot about the difficulty; now let's talk about the reward. In his book Making Time, psychologist Steve Taylor looks at our perception of time as we age: "As we get older, we have fewer new experiences. We start to ‘switch off' to the realness of the world, as it becomes more familiar to us. As a result, our minds take in fewer impressions, and so time seems to pass more quickly. However, this shows us a way of slowing down time… unfamiliarity slows down time." Our lives actually seem longer when we have new experiences. Taylor goes on to add that people actually value experiences and connections with each other over material possessions or anything else in life. I mentioned earlier that fear and excitement usually go hand in hand; fear in fact activates the same part of our brain that causes attraction between people. And if you remember that meetings girls is a numbers game, the fear part starts to fade away and you get hooked on the excitement of new experiences and meeting new people. After a while, pushing past your comfort zone isn't so much of a push anymore - it just becomes something you do. But you must push yourself to get past the hump until you reach that point. If you stop focusing on particular women and start focusing on improving your social skills and romantic skills and you yourself, you'll just be eager to learn from your mistakes and analyze your interactions with women. Chase alluded to an upcoming forum where you'll be able to analyze your interactions with women. I'll also include a post or two in the future to share my experiences about where I've arrived at in this last year of fully dedicating myself to improving with women and where I still need to go. The beauty about the great difficulty of improving your social skills is that your life will improve for the better in pretty much every way, and it'll stay that way. You'll have new confidence, honed instincts, and the ability to interact with nearly anyone in any situation. You've seen the testimonials, you've read the posts; but if you haven't started, now is the time. If you have started, keep pushing yourself; talk to one more girl, move the girl you're clicking with, handle your logistics and take her home. Even if you feel like you're at a plateau - the quantum leap is right around the corner. In the spirit of Chase's post on how to master anything, I'm reminded of a Zen proverb: "To follow the path, look to the master; follow the master; walk with the master; see through the master; become the master." Your train is here, and I'm excited to see where it can take you. Stay tuned for this social series, and let's get you building some killer social skills.

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##How Preselection Works to Get You Girls In early 2007, back when I was still trying to figure out how to achieve consistent results picking up women in bars and nightclubs, I took some time to look back over the successful pickups I'd had over the past 6 or 7 months to see what common patterns I could pick out among them. I noticed a few trends: I'd often had a sociable night early on, talking to different people, before meeting a girl. Sometimes I had social proof. And almost ALL the time... I had preselection. It blew my mind when I realized it. Right after I'd end an interaction with an attractive girl who clearly had a good time talking to me, I'd meet the girl I'd end up picking up. Like clockwork. I even started to think that, had the roles been reversed - say, had I met the girls in the reverse order, maybe I would've picked up the other one instead. Could it be that all you REALLY needed to get girls was preselection and an emphasis on moving fast? preselection Even to-date, most of my fastest pickups have come after a smattering of preselection to grease the wheels of the coming seduction. And if you're not using it in YOUR interactions with women... you are sorely missing out, my friend. Allow me to explain. MATE POACHING: NOT JUST FOR CHIMPANZEES In a paper entitled "Who's chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on matepoaching," published in 2009 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Jessica Parker and Melissa Burkley arrived at the following results: "Are women more interested in men who are already in a relationship? Female and male participants who were single or in a relationship viewed information about an opposite-sex other and indicated their interest in pursuing this target. Half of the participants were told that the target was single and half read that the target was currently in a relationship. The results showed that only single women were more interested in pursuing an attached target rather than a single target. We discuss how these results add to what is already known about matepoaching." In other words, the women who were unattached were MOST interested in the men who were ATTACHED. Now... that's odd, isn't it? Well, not really. If you consider female evolutionary strategy, it's primarily about minimizing risk. The men are the risk takers: from a purely biological standpoint, you could go out and have sex with some undesirable girl, get her pregnant, and never have it slow you down one bit because you're on to the next one. A woman, on the other hand, if she sleeps with a random guy who isn't all that great and becomes pregnant HERSELF... historically, now she's stuck (these days, she's got a few options, and society is a lot less judgmental than at most other times in the history of civilization... but still). Now, ethics and morality play a role of course in how freewheeling you as a man will actually be, and how choosy as a woman she will actually be, but this is the underlying in-built awareness we each have as separate genders: If you're a guy, sex is cheap - you only have to stick around if you want to If you're a gal, sex is potentially very pricey - it might come with the price tag of a lifetime For that reason, women tend to be a lot more choosy in whom they mate with. (at this point, a few guys always get upset and say, "Women are NOT choosy... they keep sleeping with bad boys and avoiding guys like ME!" but this stems from an ignorance in those men of what it is women are actually looking for in mates, rather than any kind of faulty programming in women) So, women are choosy. It's important that they end up with the right guy. And the men they most want to breed with are the alpha males, the dominant males, and men of that ilk. Except, every guy KNOWS this and every guy wants to PORTRAY himself as one of these guys. And women know guys do this. So how's a gal supposed to know who's the real deal, and who's just selling snake oil? THE ROLE OF PRESELECTION IN MATE SELECTION One of the most fascinating things I've noticed has been women's sensitivity to social proof and preselection in ALL things... not just mate selection. Many times I've stopped by a restaurant with a girl, only to have her complain that she doesn't want to eat there because the restaurant is empty and mustn't be very good. Or, I've gone to an amusement park, but she's had us shy away from the rides with no lines and directed us towards the ones with the longest lines. I see an empty restaurant and think, "Great! Fast service!" I see a lineless amusement park ride and say, "Excellent! No waiting!" But a girl sees these things and thinks, "Uh-oh... why isn't anyone ELSE here?" Well, in order to rule out the guys who are all talk and no walk, women have a lot of mate selection techniques that parallel this line of reasoning exactly. Creepy guys aren't creepy because they've got horns growing out of their foreheads. They're creepy because women's subconscious is using aversion to prevent any mating "accidents" from occurring with men it's deemed undesirable to mate with. Just look at the things women find most attractive and how they come about in men: Confidence, self-assuredness, and other forms of nonverbal attraction that develop in men as they become experienced at getting women and have already been with a healthy number of attractive women Social proof and obvious alphaness (not acting like an alpha, but actually being witnessed AS the alpha - the guy who's the leader of the group) where a girl sees a guy being revered and respected by others, especially if they're others she admirers, accepts as peers, or aspires to join Preselection - actually seeing a guy with attractive women who clearly like him Generosity (giving something significant to a friend or even a homeless person, say) and throwing money around / engaging in conspicuous consumption (we haven't covered this one on the blog because it's the hardest to train up unless you've actually got the money to do it, but the effects of conspicuous consumption are actually almost as powerful as preselection itself, which is arguably the most powerful aphrodisiac) These are what you'd call evidentiary proof of his social and sexual attractiveness, and these features are way, way more important to women in mating and attraction than anything else a man could say (easy to lie) or do (easy to pretend). Because THESE things are nearly impossible to pretend. preselection Your nonverbal fundamentals, social proof, preselection, and conspicuous consumption are, you might say, your tools for blowing away a woman's objections to mating with you. You really only need one of them to get girls at least some of the time. Combine two of them, and you'll be a rock star. Three, and you're a god with women. All four, and you can have any woman you want. But if you've only got to choose - or, if you're just starting out and don't have the confidence and vibe down yet, and you'd really like to get a few layups in the game - the most powerful of these, hands down, is preselection. WHY PRESELECTION KICKS SO MUCH BUTT I've had nights where I've been feeling pretty "off," but through sheer dumb luck (and a little bit of trained-up skill) I managed to have a decent conversation with a girl, and had it end amicably on a nice note. Immediately after, on some of these occasions, I've had girls come right up next to me. These girls blow open. You can open them with a direct opener, an indirect opener; you can even botch the opener. You can talk about the most stupid things in the world. Much of the time, it doesn't matter, so long as you move things forward rapidly. The reason why I say many of my fastest pickups have come after a preselection event is because the girls you meet immediately after you've been preselected tend to be really, really warm to you. Now, what this means: I'm not talking about meeting a girl and then meeting the girl right next to her, although that can work sometimes too, but the hit rate will be lower Rather, I'm talking about meeting a girl, and then meeting the girls who come up and position themselves near you or start doing things to get your attention afterward What's happened here is this: women are highly socially attuned, so when they see a woman is talking to you and clearly engaged and possibly attracted, they take note. They mentally jot down, "Hmm, he looks like a pretty good bet to be a viable mating option," and start keeping an eye on you. You trigger that same switch in single women that attached men do in that study from earlier. And then... the girl you were just talking to leaves... and this new girl suddenly shows up or catches your eye (or, sometimes, I've a few times had girls interrupt my conversations with other girls to introduce themselves and make themselves known - this is, in as few words as possible, the girl making it as clear as she possibly can to you that you need to mate with her immediately - just follow your process and move fast). It ends up working like a sort of "peacocking on steroids" - you're using the girl who's preselected you to show off to other women that, yes - I am a man other women want. And everything's a whole lot easier after that. HOW TO USE THIS IN YOUR PICKUPS (AND ELSEWHERE) Because preselection is so powerful, you should be looking to use it as much as possible. It can almost be a magic pill when you're still starting out: you don't have your sexy vibe down yet, you don't have a solid process, you don't ooze confidence and drip charisma and emit mating signals like the guy who's been at this a long time... yet, a little preselection, and suddenly it's all but in the bag with the next girl you meet. This works great for experienced guys though too: rather than spending an hour showing her your qualities, you can do it in minutes. You can have her out of there with you in minutes. It adds a degree of consistency and reliability to your pickups that it's hard to find without it. Preselection is useful in one other area too: restoring attraction in relationships or "just friends" situations. It even works when you've inadvertently placed a girl in auto-rejection; preselection is one of the very few things that can bring her back. Preselection is the power to attract women at will... so long as you can let them see you being attractive to other women. preselection When I was starting out, preselection was one of the things I spent a lot of time getting down. I wanted women to see me being attractive to women. It makes your life easier... significantly so, in fact. And here's how you use it: First, find a spot that's conspicuous where you can talk to women. If you're in a bar or a nightclub, this is often in the center area of a mostly-empty bar, or just off the dance floor, again right in the middle of the room. If you're in a store or a mall or an office, this is out in the middle of dead space, smack in the center of the place. If you're in a classroom, this is up at the front of class, in front of everyone who's sitting behind you. Note: there's some risk involved here - you lose face if things don't go well, but you look like every girl's dream guy if they do. You'll have to gauge accordingly. Also, if you're at a bar or club, you'll want to choose a location that will be easy for women to approach you in - mind the Law of Least Effort. Women are naturally attuned to this, and if she's got to walk halfway around the bar very conspicuously to get near you, she won't do it. Make sure it's easy for her to reach you. You can sometimes adjust if you met a girl in one place by moving somewhere closer to the girl you want to approach you afterward to give her an opportunity to get nearer. Then... talk to women! You want to get into a conversation with a girl - the prettier, the better. And at least ONE of you should visibly be having a good time. It's better if she is and you're aloof... but if she isn't biting or is being the aloof one, you can still get some mileage out of having a good time yourself (laughing, talking animatedly with her), though it won't compare with what you get if you do a good job with her and SHE is clearly the more interested party. The girls who are watching you are sharp cookies - they can tell if she's feeling you (or not). Next, wait for the girl who's going to position herself near you once you're done talking to that first girl. Occasionally she'll open you herself, but don't count on this. Girls are most likely to approach you the first chance they get - she'll position herself next to you right after you finish talking to another girl at the bar, or she'll brush up against you right as you're leaving class, or she'll veer over to walk near you at the mall or in the office. Open her fast, and open direct. Don't beat around the bush on this one. She's nervous, excited, and sees you as a rare treat - one of those few men that she KNOWS is a good bet - other women like him! Don't hesitate - she'll lose her nerve quickly, think you're out of her league, and auto-reject; rather, jump on the opportunity the instant it presents itself, make her feel good, and say hi. "Oh hey," you might say to her as she brushes by you - then stop and wait. She turns to face you, and: "Your walk... [pause] it's absolutely killer. I just noticed that... it's kind of hard not to, though. I'm Chase." Move fast. You know the mantra on here... don't stand around wondering what to do; instead, keep things moving. That's even more important here - if she's seen you talking with another attractive girl who likes you, she's ready, much of the time. Use the minimal amount of steps required to progress things forward with her, and get her moving with you and somewhere the two of you can be alone together as rapidly as you possibly can. And, the fun thing about preselection is that sometimes the girl you started talking to for building up your preselection rating is actually really into you already in the first place! You'll also have a much easier time meeting new women if you still grapple with approach anxiety if you're going in with the understanding that this first girl is just to get some preselection going on... you won't be so worried about how things go with her, necessarily. When girls already see that other girls find you to be a sexually exciting and attractive man, everything else with those future girls you'll meet (or ones you've known for a while whom you're trying to excite about you once more) goes so much more smoothly you'd be amazed.

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##How to Take Your Self-Esteem to the Stratosphere A little while back, in "How to Find the Woman You Most Want: A 10-Step Process," Vaughn commented as follows: "Hey chase I've been looking around but I couldn't really find an article on self esteem. I have low self esteem and inferiority complex. I always compare myself to others like ALL the time and I mean all the time. With friends,family, and guys I see at bars, clubs, and guys with their girls. When I'm out I feel so lame seeing guys with girls and I don't have one, it makes me feel like something's wrong with me. Especially on Facebook when I see people showing off all the good things going on in their life and I'm just living my regular one. Then I keep thinking about bad moments in my past that replay in my head over and over making me think I'm really a loser. I don't mean to vent so much about it but I know your good with people and to be honest I trust your advice more than anyone else. Could you help me out with my self esteem, confidence, and getting rid of the inferiority complex and reliving past failures? Thanks Chase, all of this stuff will help me finally get my dream girl." So, how to build self-esteem... it's the 10 million dollar question. Everybody wants to know. And everybody else has got a solution. This isn't one I normally tackle, because I'm a believer in action, and to hell with the words. Once you're taking action and improving your life, self-esteem, confidence, and all the rest naturally follows (see: "Does Confidence = Success? Actually... No."). Cast aside the pump-up, roll up your sleeves, and go get your hands dirty; that's the secret to all the great feelings you could ever ask for. Yet... the questions about self-esteem keep rolling in. And they are worthy questions... little else is worse in the world than being low in self-esteem. And since those questions about self-esteem don't seem to show any sign of drying up any time soon, let's tackle them head on - and give you the plan you need to take your self-esteem into the stratosphere. self esteem Self-esteem is an odd thing because it is, in part, 100% mental. Your looks? External. Your social status? External. Your attractiveness to women? External. Your self-esteem...? That one's internal, through and through. But its effects are manifested out into the real world in very big ways. So how do you change that? First, a disclaimer: I've been high self-esteem my entire life. Low natural confidence (until I actually get good enough at something to feel confident doing it), high natural self-esteem. So while I normally like to write articles from an, "I've been there and done that," perspective, I simply can't, on this one. And I don't have a lot of low self-esteem friends. In fact, I don't think I have any. Every one of my friends, every girlfriend I've ever had, every person I've kept much company with has been high self-esteem, by my definition. Sometimes I've wondered, when people ask me about the subject, if "self-esteem" even exists at all, and "low self-esteem" is just another way of talking about depression. So, to get a handle on what self-esteem actually is, I did what I usually do when I run into a weird, sticky problem that I can't go out and easily test myself: I dug into the research. SCIENCE ON SELF-ESTEEM The first paper of note I came across was one that's amassed over 3,000 citations (and here's one more) in Psychological Review, entitled "Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma." Here's the abstract: "Although several psychological theories predict that members of stigmatized groups should have low global self-esteem, empirical research typically does not support this prediction. It is proposed here that this discrepancy may be explained by considering the ways in which membership in a stigmatized group may protect the self-concept. It is proposed that members of stigmatized groups may (a) attribute negative feedback to prejudice against their group, (b) compare their outcomes with those of the ingroup, rather than with the relatively advantaged outgroup, and (c) selectively devalue those dimensions on which their group fares poorly and value those dimensions on which their group excels. Evidence for each of these processes and their consequences for self-esteem and motivation is reviewed. Factors that moderate the use of these strategies and implications of this analysis for treatment of stigmas are also discussed." This is our first clue. Even as a member of an outcast group, self-esteem remains normal. If you'd be high self-esteem hanging out with the cool kids, you'd be high self-esteem hanging out with the nerds or the punks; and if you'd be low self-esteem hanging out with the nerds or the punks, you'd be low self-esteem hanging out with the cool kids, too. The researchers hypothesize that members of stigmatized groups dismiss out-group negative feedback by ascribing it to those individuals' own prejudices; in other words, they don't count because they aren't one of "us." They simply "other" them, and write them off. Here's our next puzzle piece: "Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence, but the opposite view is theoretically viable. An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause. Instead, violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism—that is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's superiority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating process may involve directing anger outward as a way of avoiding a downward revision of the self-concept." That's from "Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem," published, again, in Psychological Review. There we have the finding that the most violent and vociferous individuals are those with high self-esteem, who feel that that esteem is under real threat. Seem like two totally different studies? Not to me. In one, we find that stigmatized persons who retain high self-esteem usually write off or fight off negative feedback from others. In the other, we find that the people most likely to fight back and challenge negative feedback are individuals with high self-esteem. So what is self-esteem? This far in, it seems like, based on these two clues, I'd simply say it's an individual's tendency to defend his ego from outside attacks, or not. self esteem THINGS THAT DEFINE US Okay, I lied to you earlier. Here's the part where I talk about me. When I entered primary school, it was as one of the most energetic, outgoing, LOUD kids in my class. My teachers considered me creative, intelligent, and likeable, but also disruptive, rambunctious, and unable either to whisper or to discern when was a good time to talk and when wasn't. This was fine before I was mingling with older kids. Once I was, though, the bigger, angrier kids who were rejected by their peers and needed someone to take it out on had an easy mark: me. Over the next few years, I curbed my rambunctiousness, in part due to verbal and physical bullying by older kids because I'd stuck out so much, and in part because of an über-strict third grade behavior-rating system (only a few slip-ups allowed per month, which was wickedly hard for a kid who was used to blabbering at everybody and one of the ways you could slip up was by talking). But, I fundamentally changed my personality, from bouncy and chipper and outgoing, to quiet, withdrawn, and reclusive, to finally get a transgression-free month last month of third grade, and to not stick out so much any more to the bullies. But the habit of bullying had been set, and when I rolled out the new, quiet, passive me, it only encouraged everybody else to start picking on that kid that the older kids picked on. By the time sixth grade rolled around, that had all started changing, and bullying Chase became a thing of the past. But that's not what this story is about, and I've discussed that elsewhere anyway. What this story is about is how I felt, at my most friendless, my most outcast, and my most stigmatized. When I was the school nerd. When the other kids threw footballs at me during recess and knocked my glasses off my face and interrupted my reading and I threw the footballs back, honestly thinking that all those footballs zipping by my head all the time were accidents (I didn't actually realize this was probably not an accident until I remembered it looking back a year or two ago). How'd I feel? Defiant. I wasn't like them. I didn't want to be like them. They were all the same. Normal. Average. Boring. I was original. Unique. I did what I wanted, and did it different from anyone else. I was indefinable. Despite the fact that from mid-third grade until the end of fifth grade you'd have considered me the penultimate social reject, I really simply thought that everyone else was just not as awesome as me, and that's why they were so prejudiced. I was my own outcast group of one, and everybody else "didn't get it." So how is it that I, even while a complete and utter outsider to all, and millions of other people you'd objectively consider everything from all-around successes to all-around failures, are high in self-esteem... while other people, many of who have objectively better lives, objectively better social positions... objectively better everything, just about... end up being low self-esteem? self esteem Here's where it starts to get interesting. While I was midway through writing this article (I actually started it a week or two ago, then threw it on the back burner for a while to work on a few other pieces), I had a conversation with a girl that landed right on this very topic. She mentioned to me that she blew up at her father, whom she hadn't seen in years, after he said something critical of her her first night back visiting her parents, and lamented that she wished she had a family that didn't beat her down, and that it had really affected her self-esteem and she'd probably be even more successful today if not for that. I said, well, wait a minute. You have a great education, a great career trajectory, and by almost all accounts you have a pretty awesome life. Do you mean you feel like a loser when someone says something that "beats you down?" And she said, "no." And I said, "Tell me this: do you get sad when someone says something insulting - or angry?" And she said, "I get very angry!" And I said well, all right! You're high self-esteem. You're defending your ego against attack. And she said, "Yes, I am now, but that was only after I went off to college. While I lived at home I used to feel sad and useless all the time." That got me wondering - the difference between when she was living at home with a father who beat down her self-esteem, and once she was out on her own in charge of her own life - might self-esteem really just come down to how "in charge" of your life you feel? FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND AUTONOMY self-esteemThat led me to the last, remaining piece of our self-esteem puzzle. One more paper, this one published in the journal Child Development in 1994, with the (rather verbose, technical jargon-replete) title "Longitudinal Assessment of Autonomy and Relatedness in Adolescent-Family Interactions as Predictors of Adolescent Ego Development and Self-Esteem." Here're the findings: "This study examined links between processes of establishing autonomy and relatedness in adolescent-family interactions and adolescents' psychosocial development. Adolescents in 2-parent families and their parents were observed in a revealed-differences interaction task when adolescents were 14, and adolescents' ego development and self-esteem were assessed at both 14 and 16. Developmental indices were strongly related to autonomy and relatedness displayed by both parents and adolescents. Significant variance was explained even after accounting for the number and quality of speeches of each family member as rated by a different, well-validated family coding system. Increases in adolescents' ego development and self-esteem over time were predicted by fathers' behaviors challenging adolescents' autonomy and relatedness, but only when these occurred in the context of fathers' overall display of autonomous-relatedness with the adolescent. The importance of the mutually negotiated process of adolescents' exploration from the secure base of parental relationships is discussed." Get that? The study looked at teenagers, and found that self-esteem changes were predicted by combining how closely related a youth in a two-parent household felt to his or her father, and how much that father challenged the youth's freedom. The closer you feel to a father, this study says, the more his challenges to your autonomy will both rein you in and wear you down. And my guess is - based on the other research, and on my own experiences with people - that it isn't just parents with this effect. It's anyone in your immediate circle of influence (friends, lovers, consorts, teachers, bosses, colleagues, classmates). Even before I read this research, I'd told that girl above that when you feel very close to someone, you let your guard down around him, and the things he says and opinions he holds of you have a much bigger impact than the same things said and opinions held by other people whose thoughts and deeds have to get through your mental filter before it's decided whether they're to be accepted or not. For people close to you, their opinions of you don't get filtered much - or at all - and instead travel directly into your subconscious... and even change how you feel about yourself. So you have: Your self-esteem has nothing to do with people you consider "outsiders" or who don't "get you" whatsoever - those people are irrelevant The people who actively combat negative feedback, put downs, and discouragement have high self-esteem. The people who don't do this and simply take it end up with low self-esteem. The closer you feel to someone and the more that person challenges your autonomy, the lower your self-esteem becomes. That, then, is our complete picture on how self-esteem comes to be high or low: it's all about the people you allow in through the doors of your mind. Are those people with the keys to your psyche building you up and setting you free, or tearing you down and locking you away? FINDING FREEDOM If self-esteem is as simple as how in-control of your life you feel vs. how much control of your life you hand off to others - and it seems very much to be - the simplest answer, if you want higher self-esteem, is to simply get away from controlling, insulting people, shut them out, and shut them down, and to surround yourself only with people who have no interest in controlling or belittling you and who build you up and push you toward greater and greater levels of autonomy. When I'm around friends, girlfriends, employees, or others I have some responsibility to, I usually refuse to outright tell them how to do things they're struggling to do. Usually I'll just give them some pointers, sit through things with them, watch them make mistakes and correct themselves, and only jump in if they really start getting off course. My message is always, "I'm here if you need me, but you'll remember this a lot better and need me a lot less if you figure out how to do it on your own." I learned this from my father, who wasn't always the most involved when I was growing up, and was always something of a stern figure, but he was very much interested in me becoming self-reliant and learning that I could do things on my own. What do you do if you don't have a family background encouraging autonomy, though, or your close friends all treat you like a guy who doesn't "get it" or is too slow on the uptake or not very capable or anything else in the negative? The quick answer is, find some new friends. And go friendless for a while, if necessary, while you make friends to replace the ones you'll part ways with. I did it in grade school. I had some pseudo-friends I'd hang out with at lunch and during recess sometimes, who'd usually end up insulting me or putting me down. In fact, they were still doing this even after everyone else decided I was kind of cool in a different, mysterious way. So, I cut ties with them, told them I was tired of their insults and our "friendship" was off, and I sat at a table by myself during lunch after that. It felt a lot better. But what if you can't drop friends who are insulting, controlling, and push you down? Well, that's your choice. But don't get all victim mentality about low self-esteem; you've chosen that path for yourself. There are millions of different friends you could have, but you choose to spend time with "friends" who will tear you down and pick you apart... you'll get no sympathy from me. The only people I do have sympathy for are the ones with controlling, demeaning family lives. Family is one you cannot trade away. You can't go out and get a different mom or dad or older sibling (at least, not usually). So what do you do here? My recommendation is to start with a technique that I use anytime someone close to me is doing something offensive or in a put-down like way. It works like this: Recognize they're making you feel bad. If you don't realize it, there's nothing you can do about it. This process needs to start with you being aware of it, first. Tell them, calmly, what they're doing and what effect it's having on you. And start with empathizing with them. This looks like this, "Pops, I know you're trying to help and encourage me to do things better, but the way you're doing it is coming across like a put-down, it's making me feel bad about myself, and it's making me feel less confident I can do better, not more. I know that's not your intention, but that's the effect this style of communication is having on me." Tell them what they can do instead. When you take something away, you must always replace it with something if you don't want it coming back. So teach people a better way of interacting with you - say, calmly and logically pointing out something you're doing, telling you they think you can do better, and telling you how they think you should do things differently and why. Keep telling them every time they do it until they stop doing it. You can keep saying the exact same thing, even - they'll recognize that you're saying the same thing over and over to them over the course of days or weeks, and it'll begin to dawn on them that they're practicing this negative behavior over and over again and haven't even been aware of it. This prompts most people to start to change. It's important you stay calm. It's best if you do this immediately after someone says something to you. However, if you aren't used to minding your own emotions and don't realize until later that someone was saying or doing something that affected you negatively, you can always go back later and say, "Pops, earlier, when you were telling me that..." When family members are overly-critical, it's not usually out of spite. It's usually because that's the only way they know how to raise you and express concern for you and try to get you doing things that they think will be better for your life. Thus, usually, if you can correct them in a gentle-but-direct way, and then give them a replacement tool for reaching you (i.e., "If you want to communicate with me, you can just point out something I'm doing and tell me in a calm way that you think I should be doing it differently, and tell me what that is, rather than get upset and say something insulting"), they'll use it. However, this isn't always the case with "friends" and others close to you. Many times when non-family members are rude, controlling, and verbally (or physically) abusive, it's because they have a lot of bad emotions themselves on the inside, and they simply need an outlet. Which may just happen to be you. Lucky you. That is why I say, if you've got non-family members who are bringing you down, get them out of your life. You can try a correction on them the same as you'd use with family or a girlfriend or a close friend who's normally good but just every now and then lashes out and says something rude or demeaning, but if it's something they do all the time in many different ways, they probably aren't going to change. Most of the time, it's cut ties with them, or content yourself with remaining low self-esteem. SELF-ESTEEM: LAND OF THE FREE self-esteemWhat does a high self-esteem man truly look like? A high self-esteem man is one who lets no one control his destiny but him. A high self-esteem man is one who dismisses, ignores, or, if necessary, combats any attempt to put him down. A high self-esteem man is one who chooses his inner circle carefully, and even his outer one, to eliminate anyone with controlling or insulting behaviors that risk his own autonomy and life-satisfaction. A high self-esteem man is one who refuses to allow anyone tell him who or what he is (see: "Tactics Tuesdays: What Happens When You Label People (or Let Them Label You)"). Only he gets to decide that. A high self-esteem man is one who acts on the people, environments, and situations around him, rather than one who is acted upon by those. Read any of these articles: How to Be a Powerful Man: The Secret You Didn't Know How to Be an Alpha Male -- Without Becoming a Stereotype How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn't Know About the 'Winner Effect' ... and you'll be reading about how to be a high self-esteem man. But it's even easier than being the king of your castle and emperor of your domain. What it really comes down to is who are the people you let put their influence on you... are they people who believe you can, or people who believe you can't? If you suffer from low self-esteem, chances are, you've got people around you who believe you can't. What you need to do, if you ever want to be high in self-esteem instead of low in it, is cut them out, set them straight... or, use their disbelief as fuel for yourself to try harder, win more, and show them exactly why you can. Because, as it turns out, self-esteem isn't internal after all. It's external. And it's made up by the influencers you hold closely nearby to you. Want to change your self-esteem? Then change those influences. And find people who think you can, too.

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##How to Talk About Yourself on Dates n the comments section of "Are You Smart? It Doesn't Much Matter Either Way," on how viewing and talking about yourself as smart actually impedes progress in your endeavors, a reader named Al made the following request: "Great Article, Chase this is an invaluable mindset for so many areas of life. I want to see an article on how to tell good anecdotes and speak about yourself. I know this goes against deep diving and LOLE but when conversations do start to become a question and answer session i often struggle to make an insightful or interesting comment." Al's right - while there's a great deal on this site about how to get other people talking to you, there really isn't a whole heck of a lot about how to talk about yourself. how to talk about yourself So, in order to change that, I've put together a two-part article series on the subject: the first on talking about yourself, and the second on telling great stories. Let's kick this two-parter off then, and have a look at how you ought to go about talking about yourself with women to achieve maximal results. how to talk about yourself From "Dominance and Heterosexual Attraction," published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: "Four experiments examined the relation between behavioral expressions of dominance and the heterosexual attractiveness of males and females. Predictions concerning the relation between dominance and heterosexual attraction were derived from a consideration of sex role norms and from the comparative biological literature. All four experiments indicated an interaction between dominance and sex of target. Dominance behavior increased the attractiveness of males, but had no effect on the attractiveness of females. The third study indicated that the effect did not depend on the sex of the rater or on the sex of those with whom the dominant target interacted. The fourth study showed that the effect was specific to dominance as an independent variable and did not occur for related constructs (aggressive or domineering). This study also found that manipulated dominance enhanced only a male's sexual attractiveness and not his general likability. The results were discussed in terms of potential biological and cultural causal mechanisms." And from "Dominance, prosocial orientation, and female preferences: Do nice guys really finish last?," also published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: "Three multimethod studies (total N = 348) probed the hypothesis that women's attraction to men would be influenced by male prosocial orientation. In Study 1, prosocial men were rated as more physically and sexually attractive, socially desirable, and desirable as dates than were nonprosocial men. Dominant men were no more attractive than low-dominance men, and male dominance did not interact with male prosocial orientation in eliciting attraction from women. In Study 2, prosocial orientation was manipulated to avoid "personalism," but still affected attraction. Across all measures attraction was an interactive function of dominance and prosocial tendencies. Dominance alone did not increase any form of attraction measured. In Study 3, male prosocial tendencies and dominance interacted to affect women's attraction to men. Results are discussed in terms of the place of altruism and dominance in evolutionary approaches to human interpersonal attraction." So, some interesting findings here. In the four experiments reported in the first piece of research, dominance increased a male's sexual attractiveness, but not his overall likeability. In the three experiments reported in the second piece of research, prosocial behavior (behavior that benefits others or society as a whole) led to boosts in a male's sexual attractiveness, with dominance's role ranging from "no effect" in one experiment, to being an ingredient that interacts with prosocial behavior to affect attraction in the other two experiments. So, 7 experiments. 6 showing that dominance impacts male sexual attractiveness (and 1 showing not, likely due to how the research was conducted), and 3 showing that prosocial behavior impacts male sexual attractiveness. These two things - dominance and prosocial behavior - are what we're going to use as the basis for how you determine how to talk about yourself with women. WHY DOMINANCE? Women are sexually attracted to dominant men for a number of reasons, the primary of which are these: Dominance communicates preselection / good genes. Quick - how many men do you know who never get laid but are also very dominant with women? Probably zero. Men who are unsuccessful and inexperienced with women place those women on pedestals, and behave hesitantly and tentatively around them. Because women are scarce resources for them, they're unable to react strongly and dominantly out of fear of making a mistake and losing them, so they play things safe. As a result, girls quickly learn that dominance is one of the few reliable signs of a man's actual success rate with women - a shortcut, if you will, for knowing whether other women have judged him an acceptable mate in the past... or not. Dominance communicates survival value. Dominant men don't stay dominant long if they're unable to win the fights - physical and social - against the challengers that displaying dominance necessarily attracts (i.e., challengers looking to make a name for themselves by defeating a dominant male). The very fact that a man is behaving comfortable dominant with a woman communicates to her that he's almost certainly emerged consistently at the top of the pile, which means he's relatively safe (he can protect her from threats), and probably has access to resources (money, allies, connections, etc.). Dominance communicates the woman can sit back and let the man lead. Forget the talk about "equality" - that's talking about salaries and educational and workplace opportunities. When it comes to mating, women want men who are going to take charge and know what they want and give them what they want without them having to spell it out for the guy or lead themselves. Dominant men lead women, which means that a girl spending time with a dominant guy knows she can kick back, relax, and enjoy herself - so long as he's doing things smoothly and in a way she enjoys and approves of - and let him lead her down the path of least resistance. As noted in the first piece of research, dominance does not make you more likeable. It makes you more sexually attractive. Which is why a lot of men starting out learning how to get girls don't focus on it so much... there's far more focus in the men's dating advice niche on teaching men how to get women to like them than there is on teaching men how to get women to want to tear those men's shirts off to relieve all the sexual tension. WHY PROSOCIAL? how to talk about yourselfThen, of course, there's the other side of the coin when it comes to how to talk about yourself: prosocial behavior. What's prosocial got to do with things? Prosocial behavior is at its most elemental form essentially altruism - helping other people. It's about willingness to step in, take care of others, stick one's neck out, and pitch in. Prosocial behavior actually implies some of the same things about men that dominance does, in addition to a few other qualities that are of interest to women. As noted in that second paper quoted, prosocial behavior - just like dominance - increased men's physical and sexual attractiveness to women. Here's why: Prosocial behavior communicates preselection / good genes. Just like dominance. How's it do that? Well, think for a second about a guy you know who really goes out of his way to help the people around him. Just an all around great guy. Do you think this guy gets laid? Yes - you almost certainly get a picture of him in your mind as a man who struggles not with women. Why? Because men who can't get girls usually are too bitter / misanthropic / plagued by victim mentality to go out of their ways helping people. They're at lower levels on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You don't normally start helping people out until you're at a place where your base needs - including sex - are taken care of. Prosocial behavior ends up being a big indicator, then, that a man isn't too terribly worried about sex and is living a life of at least sufficient abundance. Prosocial behavior communicates survival value. Who's more likely to survive in a bind in today's society? The guy who punches his way out of trouble... or the guy who talks his way out and pull some strings to get himself (and others) out? Prosocial people tend to be well-liked and well-connected with others, and tend to be good communicators. They're people who like people... and whom people like back. When push comes to shove, they're probably the people most likely to come out with their heads still attached to their shoulders in bad situations, and most likely to be able to make friends, pull strings, and get others helped out, too. Prosocial behavior makes you more relatable and attainable. Let's say you see two guys standing on a sidewalk. An old lady trips and falls down in front of them... one guy acts like he doesn't even see her. The other guy kneels down, helps the lady back to her feet, hands her the purse that she dropped, and checks with her to make sure she's all right and laughs kindly and tells her he falls down too sometimes when she makes a joke at herself to defuse her embarrassment at falling. Which guy do you feel like you can relate to more? The guy who helped the old lady, of course. You instantly feel like here's a really cool, friendly guy you could chat with and he'd be respectful and agreeable and fun to talk to. He's attainable... and attainability plays a very big part in whether a woman is able to recognize a man's value, or not. Unlike dominance, prosocial behavior definitely does make you more likeable. It also increases physical and sexual attraction, especially in conjunction with dominance. When it comes to talking about ourselves, being dominant and being prosocial are our one-two punches. EFFECTS OF THESE ON MEN We were mainly reviewing the effects of dominance and prosocial behavior on women above (increased physical and sexual attraction to men with these qualities). But what's the impact on men you're talking to? After all, you won't only talk about yourself to women when you're out socializing and connecting with people. Prosocial's a net win, right out of the box - as noted in the research, prosocial men were not just rated as better potential romantic and sexual partners by women, but were also rated as more socially desirable. The same effect holds with men - just like in that example above where you rated the man who helped out the older lady who'd tripped and fallen down as cooler and more likeable than the man who pretended not to notice, so too will man find you more likeable and admirable when they see prosocial behavior coming out of you, too. Dominance is a bit trickier, because when you're dealing with other men egos come into play. When you're too commanding with other men, those men quickly begin to resent you, unless they've fully accepted you as a leader - even then, you need to walk a fine line in making sure they have enough autonomy in their own spheres around you to feel like men and not like lapdogs. The secret to dominance with men, I've found, is to let those men see you being dominant with others, and to communicate dominance when you talk about yourself, without being overbearingly dominant with the men themselves. Usually this means you simply treat a man as a "dominance equal" and neither attempt to dominate him or submit yourself to him. He's simply an ally of equal size and heft to you. This avoids ending up in a scenario where he resents you or glorifies you (if you're dominating him) or despises you or takes you for granted (if you're submitting to him). When it comes to men, prosocial is all around good, and dominance is good so long as you are exactly matching the dominance levels of the man you're talking to, and neither dominate him nor submit. A COUPLE ADDITIONAL QUALITIES Several additional qualities I recommend mixing in when you're talking about yourself include: Adventurousness A "devil may care" attitude A few vulnerabilities / Byronic personality traits By tossing these extras in, you paint yourself a fuller character portrait and help listeners view you as both a rich, multi-dimensional person (and not someone easily dismissed or labeled), and as someone who is both "cool" and admirable. We'll discuss how to use these three traits, plus dominance and prosocial behavior, when talking about yourself in the section below. how to talk about yourself For talking about ourselves, now, we have our two main qualities: Dominance Prosocial behavior ... and our three secondary ones: Adventurousness A "devil may care" attitude A few vulnerabilities / Byronic personality traits Let's have a look at how you'll use these in conversation to portray yourself in the best and most fleshed-out light. HOW TO TALK ABOUT YOURSELF WITH GIRLS While we did take a brief look at dominance and prosocial behavior as they come into play in your conversations with men above, the main purpose of this article is to equip you to know how to talk about yourself with girls - on dates, when you're first meeting them, or even years into a long-term relationship. Before we discuss talking about those five specific qualities just above, I want to discuss the ways in which you'll talk about yourself, and the little nuances and technical aspects of discussing yourself in conversation. Those aspects and nuances are: Keeping talk about yourself to a minimum Presenting yourself as a "legendary figure" Presenting yourself as a relatable human being Ending talking about yourself and turning it back to her Let's take a quick look at each. Keeping Talk About Yourself to a Minimum As the man, you're the one driving the date or the interaction. It's your responsibility to get girls to open up to you - for that, we have a number of resources: The Conversationalist Conversation Example The Art of the Deep Dive How to Build an Emotional Connection Get to Know a Girl: Connection-Building Tactics Employing the Cold Read to Unlock Women's Secrets What Does She Want? The 8 Things You Must Ask Her ... I'd suggest you read them all, if you haven't yet. The reason why you want her talking, and not you talking, is because people do not form connections to others based on how well they know those others... they form connections to others based on how well they feel those others know them. how to talk about yourself That means, you can talk about yourself until you're blue in the face, and if she's hardly talking about yourself she'll walk away from the conversation feeling like the two of you "just didn't click." Alternatively, if she tells you everything there is to know about herself and can tell you were listening and paying attention and feels like you get her, even if she knows next to nothing about you, she will feel like the two of you have the greatest connection in the world. How connected you feel to someone else is all about how well you feel that person knows you, and that's it. (this is also a part of why musicians have such a big effect on people... listeners listen to their music, and it feels like the musician is talking directly to them, and about things they relate to - the listener comes away saying, "Oh my God, I feel like he just KNOWS me so WELL and we have this great connection even though we've never met!") You will need to talk about yourself (usually; see "She Doesn't Even Need to Know Your Name" as an example of an exception to this), and you'll want to make some big splashes when you do, but then get the conversation right back to the girl you're talking to. That works like this: Girl: How'd you end up publishing your own magazine? You: It's kind of a long story, but actually I spent about a year after college living at home doing nothing but working on the magazine. No money, no free time, nothing but the magazine. I was a recluse! But I got it off the ground, I signed up enough people to subscriptions, and after that it was self-sustaining and I was able to bring some good people in and grow it and now it has a life of its own. Girl: That's so cool. You: I guess. It just seems like a lot of work whenever I think back about it! How about you - you said you wanted to go travel the world and be a globe trotter after college, but it never happened. What stopped you from your after-college dream? Think of it like this: the purpose of talking about yourself is to be exciting and intriguing very quickly, and then get the conversation focused back on this new woman you're talking to as soon as possible. This way, you're building an interesting, engaging narrative for yourself and making her wonder about you, while at the same time giving her the opportunity to share a great deal about herself and build a real connection with you. Presenting Yourself as a "Legendary Figure" This one ties in with women's love of arrogant and ambitious men, driven to do things greater than themselves, with life objectives outside the ordinary humdrum boredom of the daily grind that almost every other man she meets fixates all his time on. (for our female readers: you'll want to skip this section to avoid making yourself too scary and intimidating for most men, unless you want to screen out everyone but the absolute most ambitious, dynamic, dominant men out there... it'll be a vanishingly small dating pool if you do, though) Every woman will tell you she wants a sane, normal, responsible man, but every woman keeps ending up dating bad boys, instead. What gives? Well, what gives is this: everybody, somewhere inside her, wants to have something bigger and more meaningful in her life than the ordinary slow decay of time and gradual changing of the seasons. She wants to feel like she's a part of something more than that. To be a legendary figure, you must truly have legendary aspirations, to some extent, if you're under 35; if you're over 35, you must be on your way to making those aspirations a reality. You can still be somewhat legendary without great ambitions, simply by telling your tale in a gripping and meaningful way, but the impact is not as strong. So how do you present yourself as legendary? To do this, you'll need to break out an old technique dubbed a "grounding sequence" (by Mystery, if you know him) that is, essentially, the process of taking a woman (or anyone) through your road to success, starting at the beginning, when you were nothing but a clueless youth who had no idea what he was doing but knew he wanted to make something of himself, all the way up to your eventual, triumphant success (recognized publically by other people). It's a multi-step process, but not terribly difficult: You start by talking about when you were young and wanted to do something but had no idea how you were going to do it. You talk about the challenges you face and why you wanted to do this thing, and how it seemed like such an impossible feat You then discuss the process of pushing yourself to learn this new skill, ability, or activity, and all the trials and tribulations you faced, and the points where you nearly gave up You talk about when you started seeing successes here and there, and really started to believe you could do it And, finally, you talk about your ultimate success, culminating with some sort of public success where you received public recognition of your accomplishments The neat thing is - while this is best done with some sort of long-term goal, talent, or ability you nurtured - you can even do this with something that occurred over a relatively short period of time - say, some important project for work you were assigned to work on but weren't even sure you could do, but by the end of the two months you had to do it not only had you succeeded, but you'd gone far and above the initial specs of the project and done so much extra that it led to a lot more business for your consulting company and your boss's boss personally thanked you for what an outstanding effort you'd made. The point is that you display an ability to triumph in the face of adversity, and help women to view you as a man who is more than just an ordinary man - he's a man with grit, who hangs on in the face of near-certain failure, and pulls victory out from the jaws of defeat. Presenting Yourself as a Relatable Human Being The other side of the coin to "legendary," however, is relatable. If you just present yourself as some grizzled, determined success machine and then turn your nose in the air without ever stopping to be relatable, that's going to send most women straight into auto-rejection... prepare for some cold, insulting, resentful responses. That's because the fact of the matter is, no matter how amazing a woman may be or present herself as, chances are, almost all of the women you're going to meet are still just normal, ordinary people. Not Olympians, not supermodels, not Hollywood celebrities... if you go out enough, you'll meet those types of girls here and there, but they're rare. Almost everyone you meet is still just a normal person - and, heck, even most of the extraordinary-seeming people are just normal people, with one or two extra-special things about them. That means, if you portray yourself as too legendary, without being human enough, they'll simply see you as not like them. I won't go into great detail on relatability since we've covered it in-depth on this site several times, but do see the article on being a conversationalist, and do check out these two pieces: Take the Edge Off: Using Humbleness Like an Elite Man Spell Broken: Big Mistakes That Shred Conversation Tactics Tuesdays: Learn How to Be Relatable with These 7 Secrets of Relatability Two very easy tips for presenting yourself as relatable: Don't forget to poke fun at your slips, gaffs, and errors. That doesn't mean you turn talking about yourself into a comedy, but don't take yourself too seriously, and point out your mistakes. This is especially important while talking about your successes - as in the legendary / grounding sequence mentioned earlier: you want to portray yourself not as someone who is perfect and infallible, but rather as someone who has struggled and striven his way to success, despite his failures. This is how anyone who's successful ever really gets there, after all. Mix some being playful, being fun, and being light-hearted into things. Don't make conversation with you a chore or a bore - add some laughs into things as well. Again, not comedy - if you make a girl laugh a mile a minute, she'll write you off as a non-sexual comedian in a heartbeat. But, some light humor here and there - chase framing / sexual framing works best - and you'll have her smiling and comfortable and relating with you. Ending Talking About Yourself and Turning It Back to Her You know that feeling where it feels like you've just been talking about yourself too long? One of the objects of mastering conversation is to get to the point where you never feel like that again. Get good at returning the focus of the conversation to the person you're talking to as quickly as possible. This does a few good things for you: It helps her to feel more connected to you, as she shares more about herself It keeps the pressure on her (instead of you) to impress you and qualify herself It minimizes the amount of working you need do in the conversation, adhering to the Law of Least Effort How do you return the conversation to the girl you're talking with as you talk about yourself? Simple - you can use one of these methods (or any of a hundred more): Ask her the same question back. If you just finished talking about your favorite hobby because she asked you what your favorite hobby was, it's very straightforward to simply ask the same question back. Easy. Ask her if she's familiar with something you're discussing. Many times when you start to talk about yourself, if you're doing a good job at involving women in your conversation, you'll say something like, "Well, I really love skiing - do you ski at all?" and she will then excited launch into talking about how much she loves skiing, or about how she doesn't ski but she does snowboard / ice-skate / build snow forts, and you'll set your story aside for a while and simply listen to her. Ask her about something she mentioned earlier that you didn't explore. Say she mentioned that she became a veterinarian because her family always had so many animals as a child, and then she goes on talking about vet school. You can come back later once that topic is exhausted and say, "You said earlier your family kept a ton of pets as a kid - what kinds of pets?" Ask her about something totally unrelated. This one's your backup play if a topic ends and you're not sure exactly what to start talking about, but asking her anything about what she's wearing or what she does or how she spends her time or various places she's lived or what not does the trick. Why are all these about her? Because you need to be expressing interest in her. That means, you don't build a connection by saying, "That barista has one hell of a crazy mohawk over there," but you do build a connection by saying, "That barista has one hell of a crazy mohawk over there... you ever try any crazy hairstyles yourself?" Remember that the object of conversation is getting girls opening up about themselves and connecting with you. So if you've just learned all these tips on how to talk about yourself and you were raring to go and tell her this amazing tale about yourself you had all prepped for action, and then you asked her if she was familiar with something at the start of your tale and she launches off into her own conversation about something, mission accomplished. Set your tale aside. It's fine if you never come back to it. The important part of the conversation isn't talking about yourself - it's getting her talking about herself. And you've just done that - so pat yourself on the back. THE 5 QUALITIES IN CONVERSATION how to talk about yourselfBack to our five qualities. Once again, they are: Dominance Prosocial behavior Adventurousness A "devil may care" attitude A few vulnerabilities / Byronic personality traits ... with especial emphasis placed upon the first two. How do you talk about yourself in a way that highlights these five qualities? In a word: mindfulness. You need to be mindful of what you are saying about yourself, and how you are saying it. Everybody tries to be impressive when he (or she) talks about himself. But most people do this all wrong... rather than seeking to highlight qualities, they seek to highlight stats. That is... I've got a nice car / nice watch / nice place / successful business / important position in my company / prestigious job / prestigious education / well-connected friends / exciting life of travel / etc. Instead of women learning about who you are, they only end up learning what you've got when you talk to them this way. How great do you think that is for relatability and trust-building? You're not a man... you're a stat sheet. The focus must be on qualities, not statistics or achievements. A date is an interview, of sorts, but it isn't a job interview... you can leave your résumé at home in the cupboard. Women rate you based on feel, not on "facts." How do you make a girl feel? That's what's important. Thus, how you talk about yourself must be conducted in a way that maximizes communicating the emotions you want to communicate, and minimizes communicating the ones you don't. What emotions do you want to communicate? Dominance: a feeling of power, respect, and safety. Prosocial behavior: a feeling of admiration, respect, and safety. Adventurousness: a feeling of excitement, mystery, and intrigue. A "devil may care" attitude: a feeling of mystery, intrigue, and curiosity. A few vulnerabilities / Byronic personality traits: a feeling of relation, comfort, and a desire to "save." All rolled up together, these five qualities make you one heck of a compelling, captivating, and sexy man. Learning to target communicating the right emotions is something of an art, and it takes time. It's harder than rolling off a list of achievements if you're not accustomed to doing it, but once you've got the basics of communicating sentiment through talking about yourself down, this isn't so hard. For instance, say I want you to think I'm a really prosocial guy, and we're talking in a café somewhere. You ask me what I like to do for fun, and I tell you I'm something of an adventure traveler - I travel to exotic places most people don't dare visit - and that I take great pleasure in sampling the local food and customs and amenities, both because that gives me a real taste of that culture, and also because it's a chance for me to show them that people from our country care about their culture and aren't elitist, and for me to support local people outside the standard tourist industry, too. In just a couple of sentences, I've just shown you I am both adventurous (traveling to exotic places) and prosocial (interested in local culture, supporting local people, and concerned with building a good impression of my home culture with the local culture). A few more sentences and you can probably hit all the points. When you talk like this - when you're focused on how to talk about yourself in a way that communicates sentiment and emotions and personal qualities, rather than raw facts, stats, and achievements alone - you communicate a much richer, fuller picture of yourself than you can by just reeling off accomplishments. SO HOW DO YOU TELL YOUR STORY? How do you tell a proper story about yourself then - one that hits many, most, or all of these qualities - Dominance Prosocial behavior Adventurousness A "devil may care" attitude A few vulnerabilities / Byronic personality traits ... and follows the rules of those aspects for talking about yourself we covered: Keeping talk about yourself to a minimum Presenting yourself as a "legendary figure" Presenting yourself as a relatable human being Ending talking about yourself and turning it back to her ... and do all that in a natural, smooth, cohesive way? How do you keep the emphasis on, above all, being dominant and being prosocial while communicating things about yourself and regaling women with your adventures and experiences? Well, for that one, you'll have to wait for the next article in this series - one on how to tell a story that rivets and captivates. So stay tuned.

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##How to Talk to Girls and Make Them Want You A few days ago, a very perceptive reader wrote in to share with me an insight he'd had after reading over the blog here again and reading the appendices at the end of my seduction ebook. It was, he said, a profound realization about how to talk to girls that he'd seen me using and others using, and it was something that, when he told me about it, I immediately realized was something I'd once known consciously but had long slipped into the forgotten parts of my memory that were accessed only intuitively and subconsciously in conversation, without ever realizing it. That reader called it "taking off the mask." Here's the relevant part of his email: " Over the past few weeks I've been noticing something about your posts and really every other seducer/PUA. I've noticed that the ones that really know how to handle women all demonstrate one quality. They see through the BS! I've been reading through some of your posts and the Girls Chase appendices and when you talk to women you go straight to her "real" self. The "real" self the girl in her that's still romantic, the girl who wants all her sexual fantasies to come true. You don't ever allow women to put on that mask around you, you make sure she can let her hair down and just be herself." In a flash, I remembered it being 2006, and me for the first time approaching hordes and hordes of women. It was such a confusing time; women would say things -- crazy things, unexpected things -- and I didn't know how to react. What do you say when a girl tells you she has a boyfriend? What do you do when she's acting flighty and disinterested? How do you keep her engaged in a loud nightclub filled with distractions, or on a busy street when there's somewhere she very much has to be? I remembered how confusing talking to women used to be. And I realized that the way I go about talking to women and interacting with them these days isn't just better -- it's different. It's categorically, unequivocally, incontrovertibly different from how I used to talk to women. I'm coming from a different place, and my thoughts are on much different matters. And if I can help get you there -- or at least illuminate the path -- I think I can rapidly speed up the process you learn by. THE MASKS WE WEAR Have you ever seen the movie The Mask? Not the second one, with some guy whose name nobody knows that lost more money than any studio would care to think about, but the first one with Jim Carrey, where he discovers a magical green mask that transforms him into a superhero (of sorts). In that movie, speech writer-cum-actor Ben Stein played the role of a psychologist who had a thing for masks and had written a book called The Masks We Wear. It was supposed to be metaphorical, though Jim Carrey actually wanted to know if he could help him with his superhero mask. Well, I always liked that phrase, "the masks we wear," and I always considered it an accurate description of the what the people we meet in day-to-day life are doing with their personas. People are different with all the different people in their lives. Just think of your conversations with your parents over dinner, versus some new girl you've just met, versus a group of your best friends. Different things discussed in every one of those scenarios. What the seducer and the pick up artist and the conversationalist are good at, then, is perhaps not just the conversation itself, but being able to see past those masks. When's the last time you met a girl and within 10 minutes you knew about: Why she chose the major or job she did? What she looks for in a partner? What her past relationships have been like? What she'd like to do with her future? What she really thinks about the people in her life? What she's afraid of and what she's excited by? Those are all things I'll typically cover within the first 10 minutes talking with women. And you can't get onto those topics if you're still looking at masks. You can't. It's impossible. Why not? Well, because we wear masks to shield us. To protect us from enemies, from judgment, from being outcast. And we wear them with everyone. Furthermore, most people take those masks at face value. "Okay, she seems strong and unflinching, so she must be cold and emotionless." "Wow, she seems so soft and deep, she must be submissive and a pushover." Learning how to talk to girls is learning how to take off the mask. how to talk to girls THE WAY IT USED TO BE AND THE WAY IT IS NOW I remember back when I first started improving with women when I heard someone say, "I don't get what the big deal is. You just go talk to girls. Easy." But just talking to girls didn't seem easy; it seemed hard. It used to be that I'd never take a risk like telling a girl I was unemployed, because, well, I was too afraid she'd come back and say something rude or dismiss me. Nowadays, I tell women I'm unemployed the first chance I get. And sometimes they do come back and say something that most guys might perceive as rude or dismissive. But I handle it. I handle it adroitly. And then they become even more attracted. How am I able to do that, you might ask? Normally, I'd tell you it's because I know how to address women's objections. Or I might tell you I've built up resilience and things don't bother me much anymore. Or I might say that, truth be told, after thousands upon thousands of approaches, this all becomes routine. But the kernel of it all? It's what our reader pointed out -- things change when you see through women's masks. You know what women need, through and through. Not just think it, or guess it -- you know it. And because of that, you can ignore the stuff that doesn't matter. And because of that, you can get to the gist of a girl, with speed and with gusto. And because of that, you get the girl more often than not. That's the way it is for me now. Now that I know how to talk to girls. It's not confusing or mystifying or hard anymore. It's just talking to girls. It's easy. But how'd it get easy? Well, I got better at a number of things. I learned how to balance my value so I wasn't coming across as bragging or out of a girl's league. I learned how to deep dive and get women opening up to me. I learned what women liked talking about (feelings, emotions, relationships, their futures, their pasts, their motivations) and stayed on those topics, and I learned what women didn't like talking about (facts, debates, sports, video games, cars, work, things unrelated to you and them) and I stayed far the hell away from those things. But above all, I learned how women think, and I learned to read between the lines. READING BETWEEN THE LINES: THE KEY TO CRAZY SUCCESS A woman's never going to tell you what she wants. She's not going to lift off her mask for you. At least not with words, anyway. You have to know it, through and through. You have to be able to make a judgment call about what it is you think she wants. And you have to be confident she wants you. This is one of the toughest parts about getting to the place where you're successful with women. Because you start off just a regular guy -- without a particularly stylish wardrobe or haircut or style of facial hair. Without charm or wit or grace. Without the ability to get to understanding her fast or thoroughly. You don't know how to talk to her. And this limits you early on because the key to how to talk to girls with great success is made up of two parts: An unwavering faith in yourself, and An uncanny instinctual knowledge of her Sound like they'd be impossible to get to quickly, right? In part, that's true. You'll have to work hard and learn women more thoroughly than you knew was possible. You'll have to push your limits and move faster and test out things you didn't think would ever work. You'll have to make tweaks and improvements and changes every single step of the way. There's more to it though. There's understanding women -- and that accounts for a lot. And when you're moving fast with women and taking no prisoners (refusing to hang around and just play nice and platonic with women who aren't romantically or sexually interested in you), you find you're able to evaluate women increasingly quickly on the fly and know exactly what's on their minds (more or less). It's a shortcut to understanding girls, if you will. And it makes it immensely easier to talk to them. That shortcut is this: Consistently and quickly moving women forward with you Running your interactions off the assumption that those women want you Interpreting everything they say as either a sign of interest, or something irrelevant to be moved past to get your interaction back on track The first step leads to the second, and the second to the third. From moving fast comes the assumption of attraction, and from that leaps the steering of the interaction toward things that show that interest. It ends up working like this: You're talking to a girl. It seems like she might like you; you're not entirely sure. But she seems interested. "So then I figured, what the heck, I might as well move to this town too," she tells you. "Hey," you interject, "let's grab a seat." "I wanted to wait for my friend here," she protests. You know that if she doesn't come with you, everything's lost and it won't go anywhere; so, you figure, do or die: you might as well push. "Your friend'll be able to find you over there. Come sit with me," you tell her. "Okay," she says. She follows you, and the two of you sit. To most guys, this probably looks like you saw right through her. You knew, somehow, that she wanted to spend more time with you and for you to move things forward. But did you? Here's the facts: you may have... but you didn't need to. All you needed to have going on for you was knowing these few things: Girls usually like you If you don't get her moving with you, you'll lose her You've got nothing to lose by keeping things on course For those reasons, you keep moving things inevitably toward your desired outcome: the two of you going to bed together (or setting up a date and you grabbing her phone number; or whatever other outcome you might desire). By moving inexorably toward your goal, you clear any and all uncertainty about what comes next away. You lose the confusion. The questions fall away from your mind. You see past the mask. But you don't just see past it... you lift it up. You make a woman choose to take action and solidify her interaction with you, or decline to and end it. There's no second-guessing or half-measures; you know with certainty where you're at. And that makes it incredibly easy to talk to girls. how to talk to girls HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AND MAKE THEM WANT YOU I see past, and the other guys who do this see past, the masks of women so easily because I put women in a position to have to choose: be with me, or don't. Most men don't do that. Most men talk to women in a really friendly, kid gloves way where they never force women to have to choose. They stick to safe topics and avoid making demands. That doesn't work. Any guy who's been around women for a while usually figures this out eventually. It's my hope that I can shave years off your learning curve by talking about this here; I know I sure would've appreciated it had someone done the same for me 6 or 7 years ago. Knowing how to talk to girls is knowing to follow this process: Consistently and quickly move women forward with you Run your interactions off the assumption that women want you Interpret everything girls say as either a sign of interest, or something irrelevant to be moved past to get your interaction back on track Your conversations stop being like this: You: So, how do you like living in California? Her: It's okay. You: Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh? I like the weather here a lot. Her: Yeah, the weather's great. and start looking like this: You: So how do you like living in California? Her: It's okay. You: Why just okay? Why not "great"? [not letting her get away with a vague answer; that doesn't move things forward] Her: Well, the weather's great, but the people are all the same. You: And you want more diversity. [keeping it moving along, understanding her] Her: Right. You: What's good about diversity? [keeping it moving along, understanding her] Her: It's just more interesting. The people, the food, the art -- it's all more interesting in more diverse places. You: Hmm, good observation. Things do get a little repetitive at times. [connecting with her] Her: [laughs] Yeah. You: Let's grab a seat. [moving things forward] Her: Okay. If you give your interactions direction and momentum and focus on moving things forward, you start making stuff happen. Your conversations with women blow open -- they get downright easy and fun, because you're no longer trying to stay safe and nice and "well liked." Instead, you're sprinting toward the finish line, eye to your destination. You're not meandering aimlessly about -- you're determined. Suddenly, you find it easy to get to know a girl: because of course, you must, if you're to move things forward. You have to find out her goals and dreams and motivations; you have to build an emotional connection. You have to get her talking about herself to you. True, you will screen out the girls who weren't interested. You'll tell some girls to come sit with you, and they'll say "no." At that point, it's on you to persist in order to find out if that "no" is really a "no," and not a "please win me over." So you'll persist somewhat, and sometimes you'll still get a "no" and things will be over. And it's freeing! You walk away from the girls who weren't interested, and there isn't a shadow of confusion or doubt or "what if" left in your mind. You know. And when a girl does come along with you... you know she's interested for a fact. You'll be totally confident and able to interpret everything she does in the light of her being attracted to you. You'll suddenly, magically, find it downright easy to talk to her. That's what it's all about. That's how you talk to girls; that's how you lift up the mask. By constantly moving things forward, and sifting out the girls who weren't interested in you and leaving behind the ones who were, who you now know how to proceed forward with. And make no mistake, women love this. I am deeply, deeply convinced at this point that there is nothing more exciting to a woman than encountering a man who moves things quickly and confidently forward with her. Who knows how to talk to her, because he talks to her true emotions -- feelings of desire and freedom. He gets to know the real her, and ignores things that don't advance their mutual interests because those things are irrelevant. Those are the men women respond best to, go home with, and fall in love over. The men who go for what they want -- because when you go for what you want, everything else -- from conversation to momentum to the next step to take -- falls into place and becomes clear. See you next time.

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##How to Tell if a Girl is Horny Without Her Having to Tell You One of the things that it seems like a lot of guys have difficulty realizing is when women actually want them. Chances are, you've heard some of the conventional ways on figuring out if a girl is horny. Some of them are: Check her heart rate Check her breathing rate -- the faster she's breathing, the more excited Check her pupil dilation Check her vaginal dilation or how lubricated she is... down there Great stuff if you're an M.D. And you've got your stethoscope handy (or a pair of rubber gloves). But how do you figure that out when you're standing across the room from a girl, or you're deep in conversation with her? Not exactly the right time for a lubrication check. One of the most underrated skills for the man interested in getting together with women is the ability to quickly identify the women who are looking for the same thing that he is. This is a skill called "targeting," and it's one I've put a fair amount of work into cultivating in myself. One of the most important aspects of targeting, it turns out, is figuring out how to tell if a girl is horny. HORNY WOMEN ACTING UP: THIS AIN'T THE MOVIES If you keep up with my blog on here, you know I tend to recommend movies every so often as wonderful places to learn nonverbal gestures and communication, as well as the voice tones and general demeanors of attractive, powerful men. Well, another thing that movies occasionally get right, but usually don't, is accurately depicting horny women. In the movies, lusty women are usually depicted as wild, affectionate sexpots -- quite far from how things actually normally shape up in reality. To start you off in this post, I'll begin with a comment from a female reader of the blog here. Making her remarks on the post on telling women you're not boyfriend material, she writes: "Sometimes a girl will purposely be rude or have an attitude with you when she knows it's in the bag because, hey, you're a hookup, not boyfriend material, so why show you my sparkling personality? Or why even shave for this guy? lol It's nothing personal, just a timesaver." This comment should start some wheels turning in the heads of guys who are beginners or intermediates and just getting their legs under them as lovers of women. And it's going to have all the grizzled veterans out there smiling and nodding. The question the newer guys inevitably have when they hear something like this is, "Wait, what? You mean a woman will be mean to you... if she wants you???" And the answer, of course, is yes she will be... sometimes. The first time I became consciously aware of this was a night in 2008 when I was out at a bar in Southern California with my then-girlfriend, a close friend of mine who had a prolific history with women, and a few other friends and acquaintances. My girlfriend at the time was standing away from me, arms crossed, fuming, and acting very short-tempered and terse with me at the time. "She is so horny right now," my buddy said as we both looked off in her direction. "Tell me about it," I replied. "I haven't slept with her in a week, just because I've been super busy. But yeah, she wants it really bad right now." And then I stopped. Wait, how did he know that? And how did I know that? She certainly didn't look anything like what horny looked like in the movies. I quickly had a series of women's faces flash through my mind: women I'd known had wanted to go to bed with me, but who had also been acting like... well, like total bitches, if you'll pardon the language. I don't like that word a whole lot, but that's what they'd be acting like. And the reason they were acting that way was because they were horny and they wanted sex. I took my girlfriend home that night and gave her a hard, hour-long stretch in bed, and brought her to satisfaction a number of times, and when I was finished with her she was all smiles and lovey dovey cutesiness. The meanness and hostility she'd been exuding all night evaporated instantly, and she took on the disposition of a tiny little kitten, big doe eyes and everything. But it made me start thinking about things quite a bit differently. Because until that night, I hadn't consciously realized that a woman who's mean and terse and rude might not be that way because that's how she really was -- she might actually be that way because she's just horny. WHY HORNY GIRLS CAN BE MEAN GIRLS Do you remember when you were a child, and there was something you really wanted -- maybe food, maybe a toy -- and for whatever reason, some cruel adult simply refused to give it to you? How did you start acting? Probably pretty rude, short, and mean, right? That's what often happens with horny women. When a woman wants to go to bed with a man, and starts feeling like she's having a tough time getting what she wants, she's pretty naturally and completely understandably going to start getting pretty darn annoyed. There're generally two ways this manifests: She's mean when you meet her. This is the girl who's already really horny and has been disappointed by about 10 men today already. This girl is easy pickings for a man who's willing to persist through that early wave of pushback he's going to get when he meets her, and who's going to move fast with her. Conversely, she'll be a nightmare for a guy who moves slow -- her patience is already paper thin, and she's not going to tolerate another Pokey Puppy trying to ease her hour-by-hour along the path to the bedroom. She's only there for the men who're playing to win. She's nice when you meet her... then gets mean. This occurs when you've managed to trip a girl's "he's a slow mover" alarms. In a nutshell, if she likes you at the outset (when she's being nice), but then starts feeling like things aren't progressing (maybe you keep bantering with her and she's thinking, "Okaaaay, time to move things along now"), eventually she can grow frustrated, slip into auto-rejection (where she effectively gives up on anything ever happening with you, or starts feeling like it's too much work), and become cold and dismissive. That's yet another one of those reasons why I harp on here so much about moving fast. The guys who move fast put smiles on women's faces and give women want they want, while the guys who move slow run out women's patience and end up alone at the end of the night, wondering what went wrong. I'll tell you a story about the first time I started realizing, subconsciously, that one of the ways to tell if a girl is horny is to look for whether she's mean. I was in a nightclub in mid-2006, slightly drunk and momentarily by myself, when I noticed a pretty Hispanic girl next to me looking at me desperately. I noticed she was with a guy, but she didn't look happy to be there. She briefly leaned into me then, and whispered, "Help me!" I sprung into action. "Hey babe," I said, turning and throwing my arm around her, "I was wondering where you ran off to. Who's your friend?" She introduced the guy to me, and then told him I was her boyfriend. "Oh, well it was a pleasure meeting you both," the guy said, and made a fast exit. I laughed. The girl turned to me, annoyed. "I was staring at you forever," she said. "Why didn't you jump in any sooner?" "I wanted to make a good entrance," I told her. "Besides, I figure my girlfriend can play nice with strangers for a few minutes while I get a drink." She was busting my balls pretty hard for a few minutes, and I had a little trouble keeping up with her, but then I moved her to the bar with me, and then I moved her out on the dance floor. And within about seven minutes of meeting her, I was making out with her, one of my hands was up her bra, and my other hand was down her panties (this was back in my club-make-out-guy days... I don't do that anymore -- it's far easier to get a girl back to your place when you haven't kissed her yet). Later I thought to myself, "Wow, had I not been a bit drunk, I probably wouldn't have done anything with that girl because she seemed so confrontational." But then things like that kept happening with "mean" girls. Because most of the time, it turns out, mean girls are horny girls. how to tell if a girl is horny MEAN MEANS HORNY, BUT HORNY DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN MEAN Confused? Great -- that's what I was going for! Kidding aside, horny and mean are kind of like squares and rectangles. If you remember your geometry, all squares are rectangles (an object with four sides), but not all rectangles are squares (an object with four equal sides). Almost universally speaking, if a woman is being mean, it's because she's horny. Yes, there are a few legitimately bad apples out there who really are just mean people, but even most of the bad apples soften up quite a bit after a good roll in the hay. I'm telling you, almost every time you see a mean girl, she's a horny girl, too. Now, mean is different from indifferent, so make sure not to get them confused. That one can take several forms. If a woman is cold and aloof, she might be in auto-rejection (because she liked you but doesn't feel like she can get you). If she's actually, literally indifferent, she may be emotionally fatigued and/or not feel like she has time for you (if she's had men awkwardly hitting on her all night in a nightclub, for instance, and just can't take any more men walking up to her trying to talk to her). Here's how you tell the difference. Mean is: Acting like you're stupid Busting your balls Being rude Being selfish Getting angry Cold is: Being dismissive Acting like she doesn't care when you can tell she does Intimating that you've blown your chance with her Trying to make you jealous Trying to make you realize what a mistake you made by losing her Indifferent is: Not showing any kind of emotion at all Not trying to make you feel bad or good Not trying to make you jealous Not paying any sort of attention to you, nor actively trying to ignore you either The long and short of it: Mean women are horny Cold women are in auto-rejection Indifferent women you're just not even on the radar of (yet -- go get to know them!) But now, before we continue on talking about mean girls, another note. Horny doesn't always equal mean. A girl can be turned on and be a kitten too. She can be nuzzling you and warm and affectionate and submissive. So what's the difference? Why are some horny girls kittens, and others are lionesses? It all has to do with a woman's expectations of satisfaction, and levels of frustration. Imagine two women: one of whom is with a strong, sexy man who's moving things confidently and decisively forward and she's able to relax around and trust that he will lead her to the intimacy she so wants and needs. The other of whom is surrounded by lots of men who are coming up and "trying their hands" with her, being gamey, tentative, and trying but failing to be charming. Which of those two women will be warm and fuzzy in her desire, and which will be mean and cruel, do you think? Of course -- the woman who feels confident she's going to get what she wants is going to be calm and excited about it, while the woman who feels she's being jostled about and is going to go unsatisfied or have to settle for a man who's less than her ideal is going to be bitter about it and spiteful. There's also a certain amount of disdain women will have for men they're going to sleep with whom they consider "not their equals." For instance, if a man makes it clear he wants to sleep with a girl, and is persistent with her, but he's below her ordinary standards -- if he doesn't dress well, he's crude, he's unattractive in his mannerisms and nonverbals, he doesn't know how to move things forward with tact and grace and instead bluntly tugs her along -- she may find herself in the position of being willing to settle for him, despite not wanting to, because she doesn't feel like there are any better options out there. These are the men that commentator earlier remarked about women being rude to when they "know it's in the bag." When a woman knows she's going to go to bed with a man if he persists, but she's only going to do so because he's "good enough" and because he's moving things forward and she just needs a man -- any man -- she'll tend to be mean to him. The funny thing is, if you tell this to most guys, they're going to scratch their heads and say, "Well, why don't girls like that want to be with a guy like me, who knows how to make them excited and happy and feel good??" And the answer, of course, is that maybe a woman does want that, but that man who makes her feel excited and happy and good doesn't move things forward with her, and that man she likes less does. Getting girls isn't just about how much you can make a woman want you. A big part of it is whether you stand up and lead them to the bedroom. HOW TO TELL IF A GIRL IS HORNY how to tell if a girl is hornyAs you might surmise, "she's mean" is going to be one of our dead giveaways that a girl is probably quite desirous of some alone time with a member of the opposite sex. I'll flesh out the other big signs here, too. She's mean. If a girl's being mean, it almost always means she's horny. Now, you don't want to tell her that -- women rarely admit to being horny, and women who are feeling mean particularly aren't going to admit to wanting or needing anything from anybody else. But if you see a girl being mean, you should take that as a loud, clear sign that she needs a man. If you're covering your bases and you get women moving with you soon into an interaction and investing and they can tell you're going to lead them and move fast, you'll notice a lot of "mean" women slowly start warming up to you. Their formerly bitter meanness turns into a more playful type of banter, and often eventually (assuming you really are leading decisively, making constant forward progress, and moving them quickly toward intimacy) even warming up to you and becoming almost kitten-like. Alternatively, women will sometimes maintain meanness throughout an interaction, especially if they're very much in need of a man. So long as a woman keeps following you and going along with you when you tell her to, don't worry about whether she's being mean or not -- you shouldn't even let it be a factor. I've heard men complain about mean women, saying things like, "Who wants to be with a girl like that anyway?" but those were just men in auto-rejection because they didn't feel like they could get those girls. Little did they know those mean women they walked away from only needed a man tough enough to take their verbal jousting and lead them to intimacy. She's distracted. Ever go out to a bar or a nightclub and notice a group of girls where one of the girls is looking around a little feverishly, constantly scanning the crowd, and being a lot more open and/or flirtatious than her girlfriends, engrossed as they are in the gossip that's being shared in their circle? That's a big sign that something else is on her mind -- and quite often, in a social venue like a party or a club, that something else is men. One of the most helpful mentalities you can assume in this kind of situation is that of the hero who's going to swoop in and save distracted women from their distractedness. I'll often start talking to women like this with a simple, "Hi. How's your night going?" spoken with a voice tone that assumes she was looking for someone to talk to. And that usually gets a very warm, knowing response -- she knows that you know that she was looking for a man like you. She's personally flirtatious. This one's a little more challenging to describe to a newer guy, but there're essentially two varieties of flirtatiousness: personal, and impersonal. Impersonal flirtatiousness is the female equivalent of males' impersonal game -- standardized, autopilot, and the same stuff she uses on everyone. Personal flirtatiousness is the variety that stands out because a woman's giving you lots of personal attention, is devoting most of her time, energy, and focus on you, and is either actively moving things forward herself, or giving you lots of hints (some subtle, some not as much) that you should take action and lead. Personal flirtatiousness is what you're going to run into when a girl wants what you have to offer and trusts that you can lead her to satisfaction. It means that, so far, she feels like you're doing everything right, and she wants you to keep everything moving ahead. She's hyper-affectionate. This is usually only women who've had some to drink, but you'll see it occasionally among sober women. If a girl's touching you (or other people) a lot, and draping herself over you, chances are she's feeling quite lustful. Get her somewhere alone pronto. What do you do once you recognize a woman is desirous? Well, you pick up the pace and get her somewhere you can physically escalate! Won't do either you or her much good if she wants you and you want her and the two of you just stay standing and talking in the coffee shop or the bar. You've got to get her out of there, and make something happen. With any girl you want to make things happen with, there are three (3) things you have to focus on. Those three things are: How similar she feels she is to you, How aroused she feels around you, and How compliant with you she is.

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##How to Tell a Story that Rivets and Captivates In 2001, I set foot inside a nightclub, just off the seashore in Ocean City, Maryland, for the first time in my life. It was senior week, the week after graduation from high school, and I was 18 years old... and my efforts to get my life on track were sputtering out. I'd tried everything else I could think of to learn social skills, to make friends, to get girls; but none of it had worked. I was liked, in my way - most of my classmates thought I was cool, or a curiosity... something of a high school legend. But I had no friends to speak of. I kept everyone at arm's length, fearful of substantial social interaction. I didn't even know how to hold a conversation with people. And unlike almost everyone else in my graduating class, I wasn't going to college come summer's end. No one understood why one of the best students in school wouldn't go to college, with no job, and no backup plan, but how could they. They had their normal lives. Friends, girlfriends, parties, fun. Walking into a nightclub alone - an environment I'd never been in in my life - and walking out with a girl was my last resort. While the rest of my classmates drank and laughed and talked and partied with their friends and hookups and paramours, I struck out into the night on my own, driven and determined, on one last, hubristic, quixotic quest that was only ever going to end one way. One of the older pieces of writing of mine still floating around on the Internet is a newsletter I wrote for theApproach back in 2007 called "Becoming a Great Storyteller." Because I already wrote something on it back then, and because much of the emphasis I've placed on Girls Chase is on getting others to tell you their stories more than it is to get you telling yours, I never took the time to get a proper treatment up for how to tell a story. how to tell a story If you've read through the other articles on this site, you've no doubt come across some of the more story-driven pieces here - one of the more classic examples of this being "Can't Stop Thinking About Her?" Storytelling is a key component of most things involving people - whether that's writing, teaching, or speaking; building connections with others, delivering speeches at political rallies, or shouting on high from the pulpit. The best actors are storytellers. The best bosses are storytellers. The best authors are storytellers. The best seducers are storytellers. The best salesmen are storytellers. The most powerful, compelling, magnetizing people from all walks of life are storytellers. And if you'd like to join their ranks, to hold that candle up that flickers light onto the damp and dusty walls of intrigue and enchantment and fantasy and allure, to attract the minds of those trapped in lives of boredom and normality and sameness and deliver them a wake up call that snaps them at once to attention, then, to do that, you must know how to tell a story. how to tell a story This is the second part in our two-part series on telling stories. The first, if you haven't yet read it, is here: How to Talk About Yourself on Dates We'll return to talking about what we covered in that article a little later in this piece, but before we do that, I want us to more closely examine the principles that make up the bedrock of a good story. There are some very specific elements to telling a wonderful, gripping, rewarding story, and I'm happy to say that my storytelling - which was already pretty good in 2007 when I wrote that newsletter on the subject - has advanced a bit since then. In the years intervening, I've sat down and broken apart the methods of some of the most riveting storytellers whose styles I didn't quite yet grasp and put them all back together again, and I've come away with a variety of new elements you can use to tell a great tale that you'll be hard-pressed to find teased out and analyzed elsewhere. GREAT STORYTELLING IS EMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION That night I set out to enter my first nightclub ever and see if I had the chops to pull a girl out of there with me, the emotions started out dull, worn out. The journey down to the shore following graduation had been the longest drive I'd ever made; I'd bought a pack of condoms at a thrift store before beginning it - simply having them in my pocket made me feel like something had to happen. The emotion overflowed as I began the drive... but three hours later, by the time I finally got there, my enthusiasm was vanished, replaced with a kind of nervous forward momentum toward the inevitable and the unavoidable. It was easier to be excited from a distance than it was up close, it seemed. But now I was too locked in to give up or go back. I'd left a little after sundown to find the nightclub a girl at a diner I ate at told me about that evening after I'd arrived in town. The girls working as hostesses at that diner - both about my age - had commented it was "sad" that I was eating by myself; I guess they were used to seeing big groups of senior week revelers, but not sole travelers. I'd gone back to where I'd parked my car - near some of the houses classmates of mine were staying in - after dinner, to freshen up a bit and steel myself for my mission that night. Walking slowly down from 91st street to down past 1st street, I made my way to the main tourist district... a 2½ hour walk. There were buses I could've taken... but I didn't know it then, and I didn't want to drive. Where would I park? What if there was nowhere to park when I came back? I didn't have a place to stay... I didn't even have a plan for what I'd do once I found a girl and left with her. So I just walked, marching my way gradually down the numbered streets: through the 80s, then the 70s, the 60s, the 50s, the 40s, the 30s, the 20s, the 10s, and the single-digits. Once I'd arrived, I wandered about the boardwalk, amongst the teeming throngs of other graduating seniors, searching for that one place I was looking for, but unable to find it, wondering if I was chasing a ghost, a closed-down club, something that the girl at the restaurant had only thought was still here but now no longer existed, until at last I found it: down a side street off an alley branching out from the brightly lit wooden planks into the dimly lit streets... the nightclub. The first one I'd ever seen with my own eyes, and not on a television screen. Outside, there snaked past the club a line of people, men and women, all waiting to get in. I did the only thing I could, having driven for three hours and walked for nearly another three: I joined that line at the end of it and waited too, stomach tied up in knots equal parts excitement and dread. * * * Compelling storytelling, at its most basic, is about is communicating with your listeners at an emotional level. The content is important, yes. So are the facts. So is the message. All these things add up to a complete whole. But the emotion is the lifeblood of the story. Without that, you have nothing. I'm sure you've heard your fair share of boring stories. And I'm also sure you've heard your fair share of fantastic, mesmerizing ones. What you may not have realized was that different storytellers can regale you with exactly the same subject matter to completely different effect, depending upon how they tell that story. Have a look at this tale: "A hunter shot a fox, but missed vitally wounding it and only gave it a flesh wound. The fox took flight. The hunter's hound, old but still competent, gave chase after the fox, and was gaining on it. The fox rounded a corner and hid in a bush to escape the hound. The hound rounded the same corner and thought the fox still lay ahead of it, and ran on. The fox was able to escape." Not terribly exciting or interesting. It's merely a statement of facts and events: here's what happened, here's what happened after that, and here's what happened last of all. Now have a look at the same tale, told differently: "A hound, long-in-tooth but sharp in mind and body from years of catching and outfoxing crafty foxes, pursued his weary quarry, the fox damaged and bloodied from a shot made by the hound's master that had hit that fox but not killed it. Desperate to save its life but knowing the hound was nearly upon it, the fox at last rounded a corner past a hillock and spied a bush. Knowing the hound would not see it dive into the bush from the other side of the hillock, the fox plunged into the shrubbery, hoping and praying the old hound's nose would fail it and the hound would charge on, the scent lost. From inside the bush the fox watched the hound round the hillock and then - the fox holding its breath - the hound charged on, thinking its target lay still ahead of it. The fox, nursing its wounds, but relieved to be alive, slunk off into the wood, escaping man and hound once again... at least until their next encounter." This is a rather simple exercise of taking the bare facts and making them more interesting by fleshing some of the details out, by telling the story somewhat less linearly, and by building out the characters involved more by giving us a look at their thoughts, feelings, and backgrounds. The more we understand these, the better able we are to emotionally associate with the characters - to feel as if we know them - and the more drawn into the story we become and more we care about what happens to the characters. That's "How to Tell a Story 101." Make your listeners care about what happens by fleshing out the characters: background, emotions, motivations. It's why in books and movies the characters whom the story kills off at some point frequently receive little character development - the writers don't want the readers becoming too attached to these characters and having too many bad feelings later when the characters die. Caring about characters only comes when those characters are presented in a way that your listeners are able to emotionally associate with them. Storytelling is all about emotions, because without emotions - without emotional association - no one has much incentive to pay attention, or to care. DRAMATIC STRUCTURE German playwright/novelist Gustav Freytag, in the mid-19th century, broke down the classic Greek / Shakespearean dramatic structure into something now know as Freytag's pyramid, a five-part segmentation of a story by plot section. The parts are: Exposition Rising Action Climax Falling Action Dénouement These five parts are defined thus: Exposition: the introduction of the main characters and the establishment of whom each of these characters is. While introductory exposition takes place at the start of the story, further exposition continues to take place throughout the course of the story, as we find out more and more about the characters and they become richer, fuller individuals. Rising Action: from the exposition, the action of the story begins to rise, creating the arc - the drama - that captivates the listener. This rise in action parallels the peaking effect of emotions that we discussed in the article on emotional cresting. Climax: the climax is the pinnacle of the action, where the action suddenly changes. This usually means a reversal of fortune - in a funny story, things go bad up until the climax, but then there's a happy ending; in a sad story, things go great up until the climax, but the end is tragic. Falling Action: after the climax, there is a general, more rapid wind-down of the action. This happens much more quickly than the rising action portion of the story. There may be a suspenseful final moment in the story, where the listener is unsure how things will end. Dénouement: the dénouement is the unraveling of the plot's knots, and the tying up of its loose ends. All the things that left the listener wondering and intrigued are at last addressed and made clear, and some sense of finality is given. Cinderella marries the prince and lives happily ever after, or Jack slips off the door into the icy waters of the Atlantic. The dénouement is somewhat optional - it isn't always there - but it's a common enough element in storytelling that its accepted as a usual piece. Modern storytelling often uses an additional, sixth element, termed the "fall." The fall is the point in the story where the protagonist (the hero of the story) suffers a major defeat or setback, part way into the rising action, only to climb back up again and eventually reach the climax. The fall has the effect of giving the climax feel all the more emotional heft, as it serves as a point of contrast: the low of the fall compared to the height of the climax. The whole thing ends up looking like this: modern dramatic structure To tell a story without a fall, obviously, just keep the rising action slope constant with no interruption. In a more complex story, there will also be mini-emotional spikes along the way throughout the rising action as various crises or events occur: a friend of the protagonist is captured or killed, say, or the protagonist takes that girl he's had his eye on since the start of the movie to bed. When you tell your own stories, even in very short stories, you'll want to encapsulate the dramatic structure (with or without a fall, and with or without a dénouement). Even in the simplest of stories, you must have exposition, rising action, and a climax. Usually you'll want falling action, and perhaps a dénouement, too. Without these, a story feels very incomplete. WHY DO YOU NEED ALL THESE PIECES? For the emotions, of course! You need the exposition to build an emotional connection with the characters (or with yourself, if you're talking about you) You need rising action to reel your listener in emotionally and get her on the edge of her seat, hanging on your every word, wondering what happens next You need the climax to give her emotional satisfaction - to know that there was a point to all that action and emotion You need falling action (usually) as a come-down from the climax, to bring her back to a normal emotional state from her emotional crest ... and, you optionally need the dénouement to tie up any loose ends, and a fall to really make the story pack a punch (provided you're telling a longer story). ADVANCED STORYTELLING how to tell a storyThere are a few other elements you can use in storytelling that drive up interest and make your stories more compelling. These are: Open Threads: beginning a subplot within a story, but moving onto something else without resolving the initial subplot. This is a great technique that's used all over the place - everywhere from Lost (with an episode exploring one character's stories, only to leave off somewhere intriguing but have the next episode move onto a different story, only looping back to earlier open threads later on in the season or series) to Malcolm Gladwell (who makes writing about science and trends so fascinating by starting off with a story, circling back around to it multiple times throughout the piece, and not wrapping the story up until the article wraps up). For a great example of this, see Gladwell's article "Million-Dollar Murray," and pay special attention to how he routinely returns to the story of Murray, making what would otherwise be a dry, impersonal piece about healthcare into something gripping. Layered Meaning: have you seen Christopher Nolan's Batman movies? They're interesting, compelling, intense narratives that keep the action going constantly and the plot thickening and unfolding as you go. But they aren't just action thrillers; they explore economic and law enforcement policy, and play out various "what if" scenarios. The third film mirrors the first film, and the overall message of the films is that, in fact, for all his heroics, Batman doesn't really change anything; the end of the third movie leaves Gotham in exactly the same position it was in when Bruce's father died in the prelude to the first. Layered meaning is difficult to achieve, but if you can achieve it, people will think, talk about, and dissect your stories for a long time. (for some really wonderful breakdowns of Nolan's Batman films, see the late Aaron Swartz's blog "Raw Thought") Confusion Tales: applicable to both written and verbal storytelling, there's a form of storytelling I call "confusion tales" that encompasses launching into a story about which the listener wonders to himself, "What has this got to do with anything?" only to have the story end up wrapping around and making the listener realize what the storyteller was getting at with a bang. The impact is made all the more momentous because the story seemed random and unrelated, but tied in at the end in a powerful way. To use Nolan as an example once more, the Dark Knight characters of both Alfred and the Joker use this storytelling technique during the movie (e.g., Alfred's story about a Burmese thief, which seems to come out of nowhere but makes a big impact once we realize why he's telling the story; the Joker's talking about "plans" as a way of getting to the point of explaining that nothing is personal for him because his objective is bigger than any one person - it is, rather, to show those with plans that their plans are hopelessly idealistic and unrealistic, doomed only to fail in the real, chaotic world). Character Realization: the most fulfilling, satisfying stories are those in which the protagonist arrives at an important, life-changing / direction-altering realization as the result of the struggles of the rising action, culminating in the climax. This may be a reversal of his former position, realizing he was wrong all along and that someone or something else was right, or it may be an acceptance of the thing he was fighting against throughout most of the story (as Gilgamesh accepts his own mortality at the end of his epic after first being ignorant of it, then fighting against it and vainly searching for a way to not have to one day die). If this seems like way more than you ever wanted to know about how to tell a story, that's okay. You won't use these in simpler stories you tell, and you may not use them at all early on in your seduction career. However, they're worth learning as you become more advanced and need to explain things in impactful ways in your relationships, and they're worth learning should you ever find yourself in any line of work even remotely story-related... and most lines of work, at some point, will require you to be able to tell a good story, even if it's just to educate the new guys coming in to work for you. how to tell a story We just covered a lot of technical aspects of storytelling. If you remember your English literature classes in high school and university, the dramatic structure, at least, shouldn't be too new (aside from the more modern element of the fall, which still hasn't made its way into most textbooks), but unless you've spent much time picking apart storytelling on your own those other aspects probably are. But don't worry - we're going to focus primarily on getting you working with basic stories that are communicating the right things about you in social situations. The advanced stuff is there for those who are interested - but we'll leave putting that to use to the most hardcore and laser-focused students of the social and seductive arts. For now, let's talk about practical storytelling. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CLIMAX I spent nearly twenty minutes waiting in that line outside the nightclub. I'd bought a milkshake at the ice cream stand where I'd asked for directions back on the boardwalk, even though I wasn't thirsty or particularly in the mood for ice cream - I hadn't felt comfortable asking for directions without buying anything. So, I nervously sipped on the milkshake while the line inched forward, groups of friends in front of me talking to each other, and groups of friends behind me talking to each other, and me standing there with only the cold drink in my hands and the cold stars in the night sky above for company. When I got to the front of the line, I tossed the milkshake in a wastebasket there, showed the doorman my driver's license, and went in. There was a ten dollar cover charge. I paid it. Inside, the music was loud; it was pounding, pulsing - the room was alive. Everything was dark, and lit up with dim red lights. As I crossed out of the entry hall and into the main room of the nightclub itself, I got my first look at the interior of a real life club. On the dance floor, masses of people gyrated together. Around the dance floor, in a ring, people stood, drinking, talking, or watching the dancers. I was here; it was there in front of me. I'd made it. There was nothing left to do now but find my girl. My theory was, nightclubs are loud; too loud to talk. So, if you go in and you're attractive - and, I wasn't the best looking guy in the world, but I was reasonably attractive - and if you go in and you've got good dance moves - and, I didn't have the best dance moves in the world, but my rhythm was pretty good - those really ought to be the only thing that women can assess. And since we know women get together with guys at nightclubs, and we assume that only looks and moves matter, if you're good on both counts, that must be the only thing needed to attract a woman and take her home. Of course, I was hopelessly naïve; I was still half a decade away from even starting to work on what eventually became the club game I talk about in "How to Pick Up Girls in Bars and Clubs." And, while my original plan had been to move down to the seashore over summer, get a job, and go to nightclubs often enough to learn how to pick up girls there, somewhere between the drive down to Ocean City and the walk down past 1st street I'd discarded this plan, and decided it was do-or-die, now-or-never. I'd either be able to do it now, or I'd never be able to. So, I started dancing with girls. I'd never danced with a girl before, but I'd watched a lot of hip-hop music videos, and I knew that what you should do is go up, grab a girl's hips, and grind on her from behind, and then switch around and dance in front of her a bit, and then do some more grinding. So I did that. And it worked! ... at first, anyway. But girls wouldn't dance with me more than a song... or half a song. After twenty minutes trying to make this strategy work, I met a pretty black girl with cornrows who danced with me for two songs. She gave me a tip - "You should move your feet!" Apparently I'd only been moving my hips and shoulders and arms and hands. But after two songs, she moved away, and she wouldn't dance with me again. An overweight girl came up to take her place, grinding her body against mine; I obliged, sadly, but then even that girl moved away from me. I'd been rejected by a fat girl. After a time, there were no more girls to dance with: I'd danced with, or tried to dance with, almost all of them. And it hadn't worked; I was still alone. I didn't know what to do - I was failing at my last resort; my last chance to figure things out and get some semblance of a normal life going. I knew there was one other nightclub, just across the street. My hope was beginning to fade, but it was right there; I had to try it. So I went. I left the first club, a wasteland of uninterested women, and went to the second. This one cost twenty dollars to get into - a fair amount for someone who'd quit his job weeks earlier; the plan was, after all, to move down to the shore, get a job here, and learn to meet girls in nightclubs and the beach - but I paid it and went in. Inside, there were more people jammed together than I'd experienced probably ever before. It was shoulder-to-shoulder, there were so many. I made my way through the crowd, carving a path to the center of the dance floor, and tried to find girls to dance with. But every girl I approached moved quickly away from me. I'd approach another; she'd flee. Another; she'd flee. Soon I found myself surrounded by nothing but men, jumping and gyrating and turning and shaking, on all sides of me, rubbing sweaty skin against my clothes. It got hotter and hotter; so much that I felt like I couldn't breathe. I had to get out. I couldn't do it. Outside, I breathed the fresh air, and felt numb. I'd been rejected by every single girl I'd approached. I couldn't get girls to dance with me. I couldn't do it. There was just something I did not know about getting girls, and that no matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out what it was. There was this thing that other men knew, or had, that I simply did not. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to get it. And I had exhausted the last of my plans to try and fix it. I walked back out onto the boardwalk, and sat down on a bench. And there, I just stared. There were so many people walking by... thousands and thousands of happy, excited high school graduates, celebrating their freedom from childhood, and looking forward to the new lives they were about to embark on. Many of them would go to college. Others would work at jobs in their hometowns or another town. All of them would spend time with friends, and do fun things, and kiss, and date, and take their lovers to bed. They kept going by, in endless streams, not a single person alone among the masses, not a single person not smiling or laughing or having a great time. Thousands on thousands of them. Everyone was happy, and everyone knew what came next for him. There was only me, sitting there, broken and alone, with no future in sight, no plans, no ideas, no nothing... just an empty sea of space where there should've been exciting next steps, as black and bleak as the dark sea lapping at the shore behind me, reflecting the night sky back at itself. * * * There must be a climax in every story. It's what you build to as you tell the story; it's the turning point, where one emotion becomes another - where confusion becomes certainty, or certainty becomes confusion; where anger becomes satisfaction; or where hope becomes hollowness. The climax is your promise to the listener, delivered. It is you making good on the implication when you start telling the story that, yes, this is a story worth listening to. It has thrust to it... it has impact. This story holds its salt. When you start telling a story, I'd advise you to always know what climax you are working towards, so that you don't end up aimlessly wandering about, spinning your wheels, and frustrating listeners. Have a specific place you're trying to get to, and the magic of storytelling happens quite naturally after that. CHOOSING YOUR STORY CONTENT Before telling a story, you also need to know the message you want to communicate. Why is this story relevant to your listener, and what does it say about you? If you recall from the first article in this series - the one on talking about yourself - there are two primary qualities and three secondary qualities you'll want to target communicating about yourself: Dominance Prosocial behavior (the most important two qualities) Adventurousness A "devil may care" attitude A few vulnerabilities / Byronic personality traits (the less important - but still important - other three qualities) When you're new to storytelling, you'll probably pick bad climaxes and bad messages accidentally some of the time, and that's okay. It's part of the learning process. how to tell a story You'll begin telling a story, only to realize that where it's headed is going to make you sound like something of a putz, or a pushover, or resentful, or something like that. Even when you're an expert at storytelling, you'll do this occasionally - only, by that point, you'll be fast enough on your feet that you can either change the direction of the story once you realize it, or bring it to a quick end that leaves the listener wondering why you told it, which is better than thinking of you in a poorer light because of it. However, that doesn't mean you should leave off trying to choose good climaxes and good qualities to convey when telling stories. You should. And you'll get better and better at it as you do. You can't fit every quality into every story. These won't always be appropriate. If you want to tell the story of how you became the head of the football team, or the champion of your chess league, dominance is going to be pretty easy to throw in there, as will a number of Byronic traits (e.g., arrogance, cunning / adaptability, disrespect of others' ranks, etc.). But you may struggle to fit prosocial in there, except as a side story - about the guy who was struggling but whom you mentored along the way, perhaps. Conversely, if you're telling the tale of when you taught children in a third world country for three months, it's very easy to talk up your prosocial tendencies, but it might not be as good a fit for discussing your dominance. A good rule to go by is to select two to three of these qualities to convey for any given story. A few templates to work off of: The guy who doesn't care but wins anyway Dominance "Devil may care" attitude Byronic traits The guy who works incredibly hard, and succeeds Dominance Byronic traits Possibly adventurousness (if it's something adventurous you succeed at) The guy who embarks on a journey, and ends up helping people or contributing to something Prosocial behavior Adventurousness Possibly Byronic traits (if they fit the story) The guy who considered himself an outsider or a loner, until people started approaching him for help Prosocial behavior Byronic traits Those are for your "big" stories. There are plenty of other combinations to get you started, but those will do. HOW TO TELL A STORY THAT BOLTS LISTENERS TO CHAIRS In that old article of mine on storytelling, I list out the following aspects as key to the telling of any story: Emotion in the telling Conviction that the story is a good one Concision - free of rambling Involvement of the listener (e.g., "So I was at this Mexican restaurant the other night - do you like Mexican? ... oh yeah, Mexican's great. Have you ever been to Casa de Tacos? ... well, it's just about the most authentic Mexican in town, you need to go there. Maybe I'll take you some time. So I was at Casa de Tacos and...") Front-loading of emotion (e.g., "Have you ever been in a situation where you thought everything was peaceful and fine, and you only found out later you very nearly could have died, and didn't even know it?") Intrigue-building and suspense (e.g., "I figured, well, everything between Hank and I must be fine now. But then, the boss calls me in, and I go in and see Hank standing in the room with him too, and I think to myself, 'Oh, crap!'") Colorful language to tickle listeners' ears (e.g., "We were up in Maine, and I'd never been there before, and I wanted to bring back some kind of souvenir, or bauble, or some little trinket to remember the trip by because it'd been such a fantastic expedition") Loads of pregnant pauses - never rush a story Impact at the end - something to really stick in the listener's head (e.g., "That's when I realized - she'd known it the entire time") The example I used in that newsletter about storytelling was a tall I tell sometimes of a snorkeling trip I once took out in the Caribbean, about 30 minutes from shore. We'd swam somewhat away from the boat, but not very far, and stopped to feed the tropical fish swimming nearby, only to look up and find the boat very far away. So, I'd said, hey, wait a minute, let's get a little closer, and had us swim back near the boat, only for us to go back to playing in the water and look up again another 10 minutes later and see the boat even farther away, almost out of sight. We then heard the captain whistling and saw him waving at us, and swam back to the boat - it seemed like it took us forever to get back. When I got back, I was about to ask the captain why they kept moving away from us, but then I noticed they had the anchor down. The boat had been standing still. As it turned out, we'd gotten out on the wrong side of the boat - the seaward side. And we'd been in the process of being swept out to sea. Had I not noticed and moved us back toward the boat the first time, there's a very good chance we may not have noticed at all until it was too late and the boat was out of sight, us being swept away by the tides farther and farther out into the Atlantic Ocean. I like this story, because it hits on a lot of good triggers: It shows dominance, because I move us back toward the boat (a non-dominant person would ask others and hand the decision off to them, or not say anything out of fear of being called silly or paranoid) It shows prosocial behavior, because I'm taking care of others beside myself And it shows adventurousness - I'm in a situation where I could easily have died Not every story you tell will be about almost dying, of course, or about saving people's lives, and that's fine (I've saved a few people's lives - dragging people out of the paths of oncoming vehicles that they hadn't seen that weren't going to stop, for instance - but usually these don't make good story fodder because they paint you in too saintly a light - you're so proud of having saved lives that now you want to throw it around. It's better to tell stories where you're almost as ignorant as everyone else, and in the same danger as everyone else, like in that snorkeling story, so that listeners can better relate to you and it comes off more humbly and not as showboat-y).But, the most important thing is you make the stories you do tell sound interesting. So, if you're looking for concise points - Your stories should be about YOU (not a news story or something a friend told you), because this is a conversation between you and another person, and if the two of you aren't getting to know each other, what's the point? Your stories should tell a tale of something that happened to you, and how you responded to that happening - yes, you put yourself in the situation for it to happen, most likely, and we don't want to encourage victim mentality ("Things just happen to me and I'm a victim!"), but people are far more interested in hearing about how you got out of sticky situations that happened to you, rather than how you are responsible for everything that's occurred - they want to see how you deal with challenge and adversity that unexpectedly comes your way Your stories should show attractive qualities about you, without making you seem too saintly or perfect (and hence unrelatable) - instead, seek to show flaws, whether those flaws are ignorance, naiveté, foolhardiness, or something else, and then seek to show what you learned and how you got out of the situation WHEN'S IT TIME TO TELL A TALE? how to tell a storyHow do you know when it's the right time to tell a story? Practice. You'll launch into some stories that are way too long for the point in the interaction it's at. I have, stuck in my memory, the recollection of the time years ago when I was trying to upgrade my storytelling, and a pal of mine asked me about something while we were standing at the top of a flight of steps, and I launched into this two-minute long story. Two minutes doesn't sound like a long time, but when you're in the process of talking casually as you walk and you stop and launch into a dramatic tale, it seems like it takes forever. It was a funny story I was telling, and my friend kept laughing politely at all the right points, but I could tell this was not the right time to launch into a protracted funny story. Lesson learned. Generally, the earlier in an interaction with someone you are and the lower the investment levels and shallower the conversation, the shorter and shallower your stories must be. If you're standing up, stories must be shorter. If you're sitting down, they can be more involved. If you're in a higher-energy mode (e.g., party mode, or social butterfly mode), stories must be shorter. Often much shorter. The deeper into the conversation you get, the more you can use powerful stories. But don't use these too early, or you'll be making a faux pas and looking like you haven't figured your way out around socializing quite yet. It's often also better to launch into a story after you've done some baiting first - that way your listener has been pushing for a story. e.g.: Girl: How did you end up moving to France? You: Ah... I've just always liked Europe, and I've always like the French, and when it was time for me to change countries it seemed like a natural fit. Girl: So you just moved here simply because you like it? You: Is that not reason enough for you to change countries? Girl: Well, it's just that it seems so hard to move somewhere new, and you make it sound like a snap decision to just pick up and move to the other side of the world. You: I suppose that's really just what I say in polite conversation - most people ask, but don't really want to know - you'll only just bore them with your real reasons. If you want to know the truth, you know, for me, when I was growing up in Sydney, actually, I never wanted to travel. I... This does a couple of things for you: It makes sure that you're only telling stories that your listeners want to hear. She won't press on with a topic if she isn't interested in it It helps you to create a deeper picture of yourself - you are not what you appear to be at first glance, as is evidenced by your fellow interlocutor's scratching you and finding another layer underneath It creates a feeling of privilege - of her discovering a side of you that few people ever see. This is akin to the "pulling back of masks" we discussed in the article on Byronic traits and vulnerabilities You can also launch into telling a tale when someone is asking you an interrogating question - that is, they think poorly of you, or suspect you of something, or are accusing you of something. Rather than answer their question outright - which gives more power and momentum to them - you tell a story instead. e.g.: Girl: How could you just quit your job and be unemployed? You: You know... when I was a little boy, I watched countless movies, TV programs, and even people around me in real life, and saw how restricting and inhibiting the "normal path" was for well nigh everyone. You go to school, you get a job, you buy a house, you pay your mortgage, and then you, my friend, are STUCK. You will now do the same exact thing for the rest of your life, with little to no variation. Maybe one two-week vacation to somewhere not far from home once a year, if you're lucky. But to me, I don't know what the point of that life is. I don't know how anyone can stomach doing the same thing over and over and over again for 40 or 50 or 60 years, unless it's something he really loves, and most people do not really love their jobs. I can't do the same thing for 2 or 3 years without going crazy, personally. So, I did get a job, and it was a good job. And I started down the conventional path. But somewhere along the line I simply couldn't accept that my life ended there. There's always another job, if you want it. But life is something you only get one crack at. I quit my job because I could - the rest of the world awaits. The corporate world has enough people willing to give their lives over to it - I doubt it'll miss one crazy guy out walking a different path. A properly told story as answer to a scalding inquisition can be far more effective at changing the listener's mind - or at least giving her pause enough to question her certainty that one thing is right, and another is wrong - than anything you can do with simply answering questions the normal way. KNOCKING YOUR STORIES OUT OF THE PARK In summary - The earlier into a conversation you are, the briefer and shallower your stories must be; the deeper into a conversation you are, the deeper your stories can be Stories you tell in conversations with others are best told about you; talking about your own experiences keeps the story personal, meaningful, and genuine Before you tell a story, make sure you know what the climax is going to be, and make sure you know what you want it to say about you There are five primary items to target covering in storytelling - dominance, prosocial behavior, adventurousness, a "devil may care" attitude, and Byronic traits or flaws - but you only need to fit in two or three of these categories into each story Every story you tell must at least have an exposition, rising action, and a climax. The longer stories you tell will also have falling action and dénouements, and your absolute longest stories may also have falls Use the aspects of good storytelling - emotion, conviction, concision, involvement, front-loading emotion, intrigue and suspense, colorful language, pregnant pauses and an unrushed delivery, and a big impact at the end - to turn good stories into great ones ... and, of course, give your readers a good ending. THE END IS IMPORTANT IN ALL THINGS Five hours after leaving those nightclubs by the beach feeling more hollow than I ever had at any point in my life - completely without an answer or an idea about what comes next, for the first time ever - I arrived back at my car. It'd taken me twice as long to walk back as it had to walk down... I'd had no reason to rush. Along the way, I'd watched others running and playing and laughing out on the beach, glow sticks the only sign in the darkness that there was anyone out there besides the laughter and shouts. And I'd dodged a pair of sinister-looking locals who, late into the night, were the first people I'd seen in hours, and who asked me probing questions as I walked by to find out if I was drunk and to find out if I'd defend myself if anyone did anything to me I wouldn't like. When I arrived back at where I'd parked my car, outside the homes rented by some of my other classmates, it was 5 AM, and the sun was just beginning to rise. I'd just begun to sit down in my driver's seat, empty and hollow on the inside, clueless as to what I should do, when to my surprise I heard someone call my name. "Chase!" I looked up, and there was one of the most well-liked and popular kids in school. I'd always thought he was a pretty cool guy, and he always seemed to have thought the same about me. He'd tried to be my friend, but my social problems wouldn't permit it. "You're still up!" he shouted down to me from the balcony above, walking down the stairs to meet me. "Dude, you have to come join us, we're playing strip beer pong with some of the girls. They're really drunk, so they keep losing and having to get naked." He slapped my back and guided me to the second level. I dragged myself up the stairs, still numb, and stepped into the apartment with him. There were four guys there - the kid who'd invited me up, and three others - and two girls; and as sheer coincidence, or maybe something else, one of the girls was the girl who'd chased me for over a year in junior high, and whom I'd then asked out several times (in front of lots of people) and had loved all throughout high school. They asked me to play, but I'd never had a drink before, and I was wary of having beer. So instead I just stayed there, talked, and joked around, and watched the girls strip down to their underwear, topless. The boys insisted on "naked hugs," and the girls hugged each of the guys - with the exception that the girl I had history with would not hug me. But the other girl did. Then "my" girl put her clothes on, took me by the hand, and walked me to the next house over, where I'd put some of my stuff. She'd invite me to stay in her bed, she said, but there were too many people there already. She'd come by and wake me up the next day once everyone was up, she said. I said okay. Then she wished me goodnight. It was the most I'd talked to her in four years. I discovered the next day she was there with her boyfriend, but that cool kid invited me to stay at his place, since all ten renters had shown up to the place I'd stayed the night before and I couldn't stay there again (or they'd be fined). The girl who'd given me the "naked hug" the night before seemed to have developed a big crush on me overnight; whereas before she'd ignored me completely, suddenly now she was warm, flirty, and going out of her way to talk to me, and to stare at me. I left a few days later, after hanging out with all the popular kids in school on the beach and in their houses and at their parties. I drank, I talked, and I was finally, at least for a few days, fully one of them. A few days was all I had in me though; I'd done more socializing in three days than I'd done all of the past three years. So, early one morning, I packed up my car, got in, and left without a word to anyone. I still didn't know what I was going to do with myself yet when I got home. I still wasn't going to college; I still didn't have a job. And, back in suburbia, I didn't really have much of a plan for anything. I had the phone numbers of all those cool kids and pretty girls, and they said they wanted to hang out with me, but I was too afraid of the phone to pick it up and do anything about that. I wasn't quite ready yet. So, what I did decide to do that summer, after I'd gotten home, not quite sure what I wanted to do with my life but not quite as empty as I had been that night on the boardwalk, was to crack open some books by some of my favorite authors, switch on my laptop, and teach myself to write like they did. I figured, with all this extra time on my hands, I might as well learn how to tell a story.

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##20 Ways to Text a Girl that Make Her Super Attracted In the article on second dates, Todd comments on a girl he's met and some of the texting they've done between their first date and second, and finishes up with the questions below: "What's the next step? I don't want her to lose interest, but I'm gone for this entire week. We said we'd get together next week once I'm back. Do I just want an entire week before I give her another call/text? I don't want to fall out of her mind." If you've been around on this site a bit, you know the philosophy on how to text girls here is this: Write your texts simple and to-the-point Don't get mired in long text conversations Keep your eye on the ball (i.e., setting up dates) You probably even know some of the rationale behind that... if you've ever found yourself in a long, frustrating back-and-forth trying to figure out how on Earth you're going to get this girl you've traded 10,000 text messages with out on a date, you've had an inkling of this already. But, the temptation may still be strong to enter into some witty text banter, and do a fair amount of "maintenance" texting... after all, no harm can come from being in contact, right? This post is put together to break you of any remaining predilections you might have for engaging in long / witty / thoughtful text conversations with women, and show you clearly, precisely, and unequivocally why you must focus not on building rapport over text... but on sorting out dating/meeting logistics, and that's it. Let's dive in. how to text girls This article builds on the groundwork laid in previous articles on how to text girls we've published before - if you haven't seen them already, read these first, then come back here: How to Text a Girl What to Text Girls to Get DATES Text Girls to Success: Phone Secrets, Part I What to Do When a Girl Doesn't Text Back ... if you're short on time (or attention), and just have time for one of those, read "How to Text a Girl" first, and come back to the rest later. That one serves as a nice, condensed introduction to the simplified form of texting we teach here. So, what's the harm in texting like a normal guy, anyway? Why not just text... you know... the same way you've been texting? THE THREE KINDS OF NORMAL GUY TEXTING STYLES There are basically three strains of text messaging styles prevalent among the men out there today: Clueless Boring Questions Guy™ Endless Conversations Guy™ Really, Incredibly Witty and Interesting Guy™ ... ranked here in order of prevalence, from most to least commonly encountered, though even though he's ranked last, the Really, Incredibly Witty and Interesting Guy™ is still not all that uncommon. Before we dive into what you want to be doing with women to actually get results out of texting, let's start with looking at what these three guys do, and why it doesn't work. Try not to be too miffed if you realize you're one of these guys halfway down... because if so, you're exactly the target demographic of this article. Can't fix the problem unless you know the problem exists in the first place, right? Clueless Boring Questions Guy™ how to text girlsThe most diabolically annoying to women of texters, the Clueless Boring Questions Guy™, hereafter abbreviated as CBQG, has absolutely zero clue how to text girls, what girls would like to see in a text message, or even what women are like most of the time in general, period. At no time has CBQG ever sat down and asked himself, "If I was a girl, how would I respond to a message like this?" He immediately assumes that all women are like him - lonely and without many options - and thus should be thrilled to hear from him, even if all they hear from him are clueless boring questions like, What's up? How's it going? How was your weekend? What are you doing? Do you have plans? CBQG assumes that women must love getting texts like this from him, because he'd love getting texts like this from them, so of course it must go both ways. CBQG often becomes frustrated when women don't answer his questions, and wonders why he doesn't get responses. He thinks women are difficult to understand, and make things needlessly complicated. At no point does CBQG sit down and think to himself, Most women are inundated all day with lame requests from lame guys Most guys text, write, and say to women the same lame things all the time Oh no! If I send women lame texts, women will assume I'm lame, too! This never occurs to him, because CBQG knows himself so well that he knows that he's certainly not lame, and he assumes that everyone else must know this too, even if he behaves the same way that other men, who actually are lame, do. "She'll know I'm not lame, even if I seem totally lame," CBQG thinks, "otherwise, she's totally shallow and not worth my time!" CBQG believes that it's women's responsibility to recognize his inner awesomeness and to fight through the lameness he exhibits on the outside to discover his awesomeness inside. CBQG spends many nights alone, angry, hurt, and confused at how the world can be so confusing and so cold. Endless Conversations Guy™ Endless Conversations Guy™, hereafter ECG, was usually a CBQG who one day looked at his phone, devoid of responses to the text messages he'd sent out, and said to himself, "If I was a girl, how would I respond to a message like this?" ... and in a flash of insight, he realized he'd been doing it all wrong. ECG is, you might say, on a more enlightened plane than CBQG. He's realized that women need to be engaged in a dialogue, and they don't really want to answer clueless boring questions. Unfortunately - perhaps because he hasn't thought much about it beyond that, or perhaps because he simply lacks the experience with women to have a very good theory of mind for your average attractive, personable girl - ECG doesn't get much further beyond "engage women in dialogue," and there he's usually stuck. ECG's conversations tend to look something like this: ECG: Hey Shirley, how'd your weekend go? I saw some friends Saturday, but yesterday was all just relaxing. Girl: Hey, it was all right. My friend from out of town came to visit, so we went to a couple of restaurants and saw some sights... that was about it. ECG: Cool, what sights did you see? Girl: Oh, you know, Sea World, the harbor, just the usual things. ECG: You know, I've been living here for 5 years and I've never seen Sea World. Everyone keeps telling me I should go. Girl: I know, I didn't go to Sea World until I was 19, and I grew up here. Isn't that ridiculous? But you SHOULD go, it's a lot of fun. ECG: When I used to live on the East Coast, sometimes we'd go down and visit the Baltimore Aquarium. I don't know if Sea World's like an aquarium at all, but that place was amazing. I kind of miss going now. Girl: It's not really an aquarium... more like a place with sea animals that does shows. ECG: Yeah, they had some of those at the Baltimore Aquarium too. Girl: Cool. ECG: Hey, so [conversation continues] ECG never realizes that these endless conversations are actually boring, pointless, and inane, and most girls who engage back in them are either A) just doing it because they're bored too, or B) are just too nice to not send back a response. To him, it feels like he's unlocked the key to texting girls: just keep texting. As far as ECG is concerned, this is just another totally normal conversation, in which he imagines that he is inching his way ever closer to becoming this girl's beau of choice. Every sent text is another couple centimeters closer to her heart... You can imagine how frustrated he is when those women he spent so much time in endless conversations with end up endlessly dodging dates every time he asks them out, and how perplexed he is to discover, after weeks or months of endless conversations, that she's suddenly now got a new boyfriend. "How can this be?" ECG thinks. "I thought we had such special conversations!" He's bewildered... it simply doesn't make sense. Why would she spend SO much time talking to him and then go date someone else? Really, Incredibly Witty and Interesting Guy™ Last but not least is Really, Incredibly Witty and Interesting Guy™, henceforth known as RIWIG. RIWIG is the next stage of evolution after ECG; he's a man who's realized that endless conversations don't work - they're boring, kill his intrigue, and every guy and his brother chasing after a girl engages in them. RIWIG has more experience with women than either CBQG or ECG, and he knows that women react well to humor and prefer interesting bad boys to uninteresting nice guys. So, goes RIWIG's line of thinking, what could possibly be better... than being a bad boy via text message? Most texting advice you'll see online or hear from friends comes from RIWIGs. They've cracked the texting code, they'll confidently tell you. They've figured out how to create the emotions they want in women - desire, laughter, intrigue. Being really, incredibly witty and interesting over text is the way to get girls attracted to you. And to be fair, RIWIG is far more interesting and captivating than either CBQG or ECG. It's not even close... he leaves them in his dust. Just as CBQG can't hold a candle to ECG, ECG's odds of beating RIWIG in a text fight are about as good as a medieval pikeman's odds against a Navy S.E.A.L. armed with a minigun and a grenade launcher. RIWIG's text conversations tend to go something like this: RIWIG: Oh man, I just had WAY too much food. Never should've eaten that last drumstick. Advice: gluttony doesn't just make you fat, it's also REALLY uncomfortable. Girl: lol where were you and why'd you eat so much? RIWIG: Friend had a birthday party. There was far too much to eat; I felt a moral obligation to ensure there weren't unnecessary leftovers. Girl: Did you save any for me? RIWIG: Thought about it; decided against it. You should be grateful I prevented you from enduring a similar fate to mine. Girl: But I want some too! RIWIG: You know what, miss... you are coming on WAY too strong right now. Most women are a lot more... CIRCUMSPECT... when they say things like that to me. Girl: I'm talking about the food, DUH! RIWIG: That's what they always say... Girl: You are such a dork. RIWIG: Hey, so [conversation continues] I was this guy for a long time. And, it's obviously a big step up from ECG... but even with his really, incredibly witty and interesting text banter, RIWIG has the following problems: Women are still frequently dodgy about setting up dates When the dates ARE set up... the girl often comes in treating RIWIG as a boyfriend candidate What gives? RIWIG thinks. I was interesting, witty, sexy... everything a woman looks for in a lover, NOT a boyfriend! And she's STILL treating me like a potential boyfriend! Clearly I need to be even MORE witty and interesting. But being more witty and interesting isn't the answer... in fact, the answer is something far simpler than any of CBQG, ECG, or RIWIG think it could possibly be. how to text girls The good news for our heroes Clueless Boring Questions Guy™, Endless Conversations Guy™, and Really, Incredibly Witty and Interesting Guy™ is that there's a line of thought on how to text girls they haven't tried out or thought of or investigated into yet. And it doesn't need clueless boring questions. It doesn't require endless conversations. Heck, it doesn't even need you to be all that witty or interesting. All you've got to do is be able to send simple text messages, and tell the girl you want a date with her BEFORE you get her phone number. If we had to give this guy a name, I think it'd be Just Gets It Guy™ (JGIG), and his style is all about keeping things simple and to-the-point. I adopted this style of texting only after I'd reached a point in my dating life where I simply didn't have time to engage in long texting conversations with women or to think up incredibly witty, interesting things to say... and also where, when I did have the time, I simply didn't care to anymore. And what I found was, it was far more effective. I started teaching friends how to text girls with this simplistic model of texting, and suddenly they were lining up as many dates as they could handle. And then I put it up in a few articles on the Internet and in the free ebook with the newsletter signup (signup at the bottom of the post and grab a copy of that, if you haven't already), and, well, the response has been pretty fantastic. The "How to Text a Girl" article' that started it all has been #1 on Google for about a year and a half at this point, it was posted and reposted and upvoted like crazy on Reddit and Facebook and just about every social media and bookmarking site there is, and copycat articles are popping up all over the Internet. But, a lot of guys still don't really get it... they're still trying to mix in CBQG or ECG or RIWIG elements with this style of texting. It's like taking a recipe for sugar cookies and throwing in some extra eggs and baking soda because those ingredient work great in other things you bake. The end result is not something better... it's something worse. Thus, this article: more in-depth, more meaty, and more behind-the-scenes psychology so you can really understand what women are thinking, why they're reacting the way they are, and what it is that those other texting styles just don't understand. HOW TO TEXT GIRLS: THE FOUNDATIONS It's important you understand why exactly the texting styles that are wrong and less effective ARE wrong and less effective. So, our first round of tips is going to be on the foundations of simplified texting: why the things that work work, and why the things that don't don't. #1: Faulty Models Are Your Responsibility to Fix, Not Women's One of the themes of this site, and one we went particularly in-depth into in the article on victim mentality, is this: you can blame OTHER people for YOUR life, or you can go out and get what you want. You absolutely can't do both, however. It's blame and be miserable, or accept responsibility and go get what you want. As you go down the list of texting styles, you'll find that the less further evolved a man's texting style is, the more he blames women for his lack of results. Clueless Boring Questions Guy™ is the worst; everything is women's fault, and nothing is his. The worse a man is with women, the more it's women's fault and the less it's his (or so he thinks). What's the reason for this phenomenon? It's a symptom of faulty mental models. Women trade phone numbers a lot. And they don't like getting clueless boring questions from anyone... even close friends, family, lovers, boyfriends, etc. So just imagine how a girl feels when she gets questions like this from some guy she doesn't know all that well that she met at work or at the bar or on the street or in class. Yeah, that's right - he instantly gets pigeonholed as someone who's going to be a liability and not a joy to be around, and her interest in him goes from whatever it was before the clueless boring questions started, straight to zero. It's not women who are the problem - it's the model you're currently following. If women don't think / act / respond the way you think they should, it doesn't mean all 3.5 billion human women need to change to accommodate what you think they should be. What it means, rather, is that your mental model must change, to accommodate the way women actually are. #2: Phone Numbers are Easy One of the reason most inexperienced guys struggle so much with the idea of texting needing to be ironed out is because they view phone numbers as a BIG DEAL! The problem is that to women, phone numbers are NOT a big deal! An inexperienced guy gets a girl's phone number, and it feels like a colossal achievement, and now he can rest. He's effectively got a girlfriend now, for all intents and purposes. Except she doesn't see it that way. For girls, a phone number is just the START... and girls give their numbers out to guys all the time that they never end up talking to or seeing ever again. Phone numbers mean NOTHING. They're a dime a dozen... nothing more than a chance. They are NOT a guarantee, a promise, or an assurance of any kind. "Here's my phone number" does not equal "Sure, we can have sex," nor does it equal, "Would you like to be my boyfriend?," nor does it equal, "I'm definitely going to talk to you again!" If it helps, you can think of a phone number as, "Here's a way you can get me to meet you again if you do a good job making me want to." Once you start seeing numbers this way, you'll instantly begin realizing why clueless boring questions are a death sentence: it's far easier to say "no" to you over the phone than in real life. And if you're just going to be boring and clueless on the phone, what's she supposed to do... be excited? Phone numbers are not a promise; they are an opportunity. #3: Emotions Don't "Stick" how to text girlsWhen you first trade numbers with a girl, you might leave on cloud nine, dreaming about the amazing future you're going to have together with her. Maybe you had an amazing interaction with her, and really connected with her on a pretty deep level. Chances are, she's forgotten all about you. Oh sure, she might still be thinking about you... but you don't know that, and it's much better to assume that she isn't. If she isn't, how's she going to react to your first text? Pretend she's forgotten EVERYTHING about you and is now rushed, put-upon, angry, and annoyed from other things in her life when she gets your text message. Is it going to make her smile? Is it going to take a load off her shoulders? Or is it just something else to make her feel even MORE rushed, put-upon, angry, and annoyed? If you're not sure, ask yourself this: If I was really rushed, put-upon, angry, and annoyed right now, and I received this text message randomly from someone I could hardly remember, what would my emotion be? If the answer is "even more rush, put-upon, angry, and annoyed," head back to the drawing board - and find something that better evokes the right emotions. If she remembers you, great - that's a bonus. You'll still send her a great text message and she'll be even HAPPIER to hear from you. But if she doesn't... if she's forgotten all about you... and you send her the right message... you still stand a good chance of getting her out anyway. #4: People Want You to Reduce Their Cognitive Loads (Not Pile On) Imagine you are SUPER busy. You're stressed like crazy, running around trying to get a million things done that you HAVE to get done. You want to scream and punch the wall and pull your hair out you're so far behind on things. Then, you get a random text message from some guy you met at a bar the other day who seemed like kind of an okay guy. "What's up?" it says. "What's up?" you think to yourself, angry and annoyed. "What's up??!! What, am I supposed to sit here and figure out what that means? Like, you just want to shoot the shit, like I have time for that? Or, you want to ask me for some kind of favor, or want me to offer something to you? I don't have the patience for this!" This is the thought process of even a moderately busy person when she gets a message like this. Personally, I won't respond to these messages when I get them from GIRLS. And I'm a GUY... most guys WANT to get messages like this from girls. Girls do NOT want to get messages like this from guys, because these messages increase mental loads. When a girl gets a message like this from you, the second she reads it her mind puts everything else it's working on on hold and asks itself: Who is this? What does he want? Is he going to ask me for something? Should I respond? How should I respond? Should I tell him about my day? Should I tell him how stressed I am? Is he going to start sending me lots of messages if I reply? Is he waiting for me to take the lead here? Is he going to ask me out? Does he expect ME to ask HIM out? ... and, much of the time, her mind is simply going to decide that this is too many questions to answer, and it'll worry about this later. She closes her phone, never to reply. Not because she's mean or cold or rude or aloof or even disinterested... it's just too much thinking to do, so she puts it off... and then forgets about it. Or she remembers it, but puts it off even further. You must strive to be crystal clear and easy to respond to in your messages, to reduce mental loads as much as humanly possible. Don't make her think. Don't make her wonder. Don't get her into giant open loops she needs to spend huge amounts of mental processing power on. That's an invitation to ignore you. And to see you as inconsiderate / socially stunted, as well. Socially savvy people don't shift big mental loads onto people via text... they make things easy. You should too. That means, instead of, What's up? ... you can say, Hey Charlene, hope you had a kick ass weekend. Mine was solid, and restful... just what I needed. When's good for you to grab that bite this week? Let me know when your schedule's clear and let's set it up. No wondering what your motives are. No asking herself what you're after. No deliberating on how to respond, or even if she should respond at all. All she's got to do is tell you when her schedule's open. It's easy. And because it's easy, you're orders of magnitude more likely to get what you want: a date. #5: You Must Keep Your Eye on the Ball Quick, how many great relationships in your life have been built on the back of long text messaging conversations? Friendships? Girlfriends? If you're like most people the answer is this: 0. That's because texting is an atrocious way to build meaningful relationships. This is not how to text girls at all. Guys still keep doing it though. They do it in droves. And the reason why is because their eyes are not on the ball. If you've ever found yourself mired in long text message conversations with women, you probably never stopped to ask yourself, "Where is this going?" but if you did, I'm certain your answer to yourself would be, "I have NO idea!" Which is not how to run a texting conversation. It's not how to run anything. Imagine if a sailor set out on a ship into the great blue sea with no idea where he was going. "I'm going to find a beautiful, uninhabited island out there with a pirate's buried treasure and I'm going to get rich!" he told himself, "I just have to sail around enough until I find it!" Now, after he sets off on his voyage, he might end up finding that one island in the wide blue yonder that is what he searches for... but far more likely, he'll just waste a lot of time, until either he dies out at sea, out of fresh water and food, or he turns around and returns to port, frustrated and bitter. When you're shooting in the dark, you almost always miss the mark. Text messaging is terrible for: Establishing rapport Building an emotional connection Getting into a real conversation Transforming a stranger into a girlfriend or lover Showing your personality and qualities Growing or maintaining attraction ... and if you use it for these things, you will be missing the mark again and again. You won't even get better at hitting the mark in the dark. You'll just waste a lot of bullets... and time, and patience. Setting up a date is the only thing you ought to be using texting for. Using it for anything else is distracting you from your core objective... and reducing the odds that you ever make it to your port of call. #6: Girls Talk Because They Like to Talk Unless you're an incredibly loquacious fellow, my guess is you don't spend a great deal of time in drawn out text message conversations with your male friends. Nor do you likely spend a great deal of time in lengthy conversations with a girl who's already your girlfriend. Most men only get into these long conversations with girls. And those men assume that the girl knows what the deal is. "Obviously, I wouldn't talk to her this much if I didn't want to date her!" the guy thinks. "So, again obviously, she must know this, and, also obviously, her texting back to me is an implicit go-ahead to proceed forward! She's telling me to continue courting her!" There're a lot of assumptions in there... and they're mostly incorrect. As socially astute as most women are (compared to most men, anyway), they are not mind-readers. They will know you want something when you keep texting clueless boring questions or endless conversations or large amounts of really, incredibly witty and interesting stuff... ... they just won't know what it is you want. And here's the thing: Most women love talking! They will talk to you just for the sake of talking. And they'll love it. Many girls will be happy to text back and forth with you all day... and not just you. They do it with their girlfriends. They do it with their frenemies. They do it with the other eight guys who are chasing them and texting them all day long too. You're there talking, thinking it's just about in the bag because she's so willing to chat with you... and she's there talking, to you, her best friend, her girlfriend, and a gaggle of guys just as gabby over text with her as you. This isn't the way to a woman's heart... it's simply a way to help her pass the day. If you're spending time in long text conversations with women, you're wasting your time... and quickly becoming more valuable as a texting friend than you are as a potential lover or boyfriend. #7: Women WANT Men Who Are "Just Friends" Just as many men texting women have a "hidden agenda" of wanting to get together with those women, most of the women being texted have "hidden agendas" of their own. Think of Mr. CBQG. He isn't texting her, "What's up?" because he really is dying to know what's up with her. He doesn't care about that. His real agenda is to maneuver this girl into being his lover or girlfriend... and, he just happens to think that texting her clueless boring questions is the best way to do that (it isn't). Well, Miss Average Girl, when she replies back to CBQG with, "Not much. What's up with you?" also doesn't really care what's up with him, either. She has her own hidden agenda... and hers, most likely, is to make CBQG into someone she is "just friends" with. How cruel and unfair of her, you say? How demeaning for her to want to take this man texting her and finagle him into the friend zone! How can she possibly live with herself... Well wait just a gosh-darned second there. This guy texting her is also trying to finagle her into wanting him... he isn't being forthright about it... he isn't being upfront... he's just thinking that if he texts her enough, she'll end up being his girlfriend. Meanwhile, she's thinking that if she texts him enough, he'll end up being her platonic guy pal. Why this mismatch of desires between texter and textee? Because women have a lot of options with men, and multiple positions any one of those men might best fill. Women want men who can be "just friends" for them... it increases their security levels, and makes them feel safer. Women with male friends are more likely to get help in times of need, more likely to be successful in their lives, careers, and other endeavors, and much more. And clearly, if you're a guy texting things like, "How's it going?" and that's it, you're not exactly Grade A lover or boyfriend material. But you might just make a great friend... Solution? Don't be ambiguous about why you're texting, and don't beat around the bush. We'll cover this more below, in the section on mechanics. #8: Women Cannot "Get Comfortable with You" Over Text I know a secret of the CBQGs and ECGs and RIWIGs of the world that they themselves are only half aware of... want to know what it is? They're all trying to get girls "comfortable" with them over text message! "If I text her enough," they think to themselves, "then she'll get really comfortable with me! And then she'll have to date me!" Bzzt! Wrong. Attraction doesn't work that way. Furthermore, you cannot get girls comfortable with text messages. The very reason that texting feels so appealing as a medium for doing comfort-building (i.e., you think, "I can make her comfortable without ever having to worry about how my posture is coming off, or my facial expressions, or my voice tone, or seeming like I'm nervous, or don't know what to do...") also makes it marvelously ineffective for doing comfort-building (i.e., they can't see your posture, or facial expressions, or hear your voice tone, or tell if you're nervous, or whether you know what to do or not...). Want her to get comfortable with you? Meet her in person. HOW TO TEXT GIRLS: THE MECHANICS Now that you've got a handle on the foundations of texting girls: Faulty models are your responsibility to fix, not women's Phone numbers are easy Emotions don't "stick" People want you to reduce their cognitive loads... not pile on You must keep your eye on the ball (i.e., your purpose for texting) Girls talk because they like to talk Women WANT men who are "just friends" Women cannot "get comfortable with you" over text ... you're ready to dive into the mechanics... the nuts and bolts... the nitty gritty of how to text girls and actually have it go the way you want it to. This is the part you've been waiting for. #9: Propose the Date Before You Ask for the Number! This one's so important that I underlined it and put an exclamation point on it. A lot of newer guys skip this step. It just feels easier to ask for the number. After all, if she says "no," all she's rejecting is giving you her phone number, right? It's not like she's rejecting a date with you or anything! But that's preposterous. If she rejects giving you her phone number, by extension she's rejecting all future possibilities of the two of you doing anything together, ever. And that includes dates. When you go to get a girl's phone number, exactly as we discussed in that article on phone numbers linked to there, you must ask for the date FIRST! Not only does this actually make it easier makes things to get phone numbers from girls... but it also makes things infinitely easier when you sit down to figure out how you want to correspond with her afterward. I'm convinced that if men started asking women on dates before asking for phone numbers consistently, CBQGs and ECGs would become extinct, and RIWIGs would become an endangered species. Here's ALL you have to do: Girl: [mid-conversation] ... so then I totally got out of there before things could get even worse! You: That's hilarious. Girl: I know, right? I thought I was going to die for a minute! That girl was crazy! You: Hey, I'm going to have to jet in a minute, but we should grab a drink or some food this week or early next. What's your schedule like? Girl: Oh, I don't know, I'll have to take a look. I think I'm free on Sunday. You: Cool, I'll text you. What's your number? Girl: 619... Isn't that way easier than the big productions most men make of trying to get phone numbers? Furthermore, doesn't that make things way more straightforward when you want to text her later? Don't you know exactly what you need to do now? If you want my opinion, you ought to open up your phone right now and delete every phone number you have from a girl you didn't ask on a date before getting her phone number. Or, if you'd rather take a stab before deleting those numbers, then text every single one of them right now something like: Hey [name], I just stumbled across this really cool little café in [area] with the most amazing hot chocolates. I totally want to take you there - want to grab a chocolate and a bite to eat with me sometime this week / next week? Any girl you get "yeah, sure" or a "how about we do XYZ instead" from, hang onto; you can work with that. Any girl you get a "no, I really can't" or a "sorry, I'm busy" from, just delete. Now you're starting fresh. And every number you get from here on out, before you get it, make absolutely sure you've gotten it in the context of doing so in order to set up and plan for a date. No more figuring out what to text her. No more pacing back and forth in your room deciding what you should say. Now you know what to say: you're going to text her to find out when she wants to meet. #10: Use an Icebreaker Text how to text girlsThe longer you wait after getting a girl's number to text her, the weirder it starts to feel. There are a variety of "weirdness" factors that come into play: She wonders when you're going to text her, or She forgets about you altogether; plus You build things up in your head and get awkward, or You push things off so long that she wonders why you're texting a week later Solution? You need to break the ice. Breaking the ice gives you the freedom to be more natural later. The awkwardness of wondering whether the conversation will be normal, natural, and comfortable over text is gone, and this new girl knows that you are going to follow up with her, and doesn't have to wonder now whether you will or not. Breaking the ice sets the tone for you to text women later on without having to introduce yourself or use call backs to when you met to refresh her memory of the emotions she felt while meeting you - because you cemented them while they were still fresh in her mind. A typical icebreaker text looks like this: You: Wonderful to meet you, new friend :) -Steve or You: Glad to have met you :) -Steve You do not: Tell her you "like" her Qualify her ("You're a really cool / amazing / neat girl!") Ask her any questions Propose any dates You do: Keep it very short Use the word "friend" if possible Sign your name It's short because this is just to break the ice, and to reassure her that you aren't one of these guys who's already flipping out for her writing her novels even though he knows next to nothing about her yet. You communicate from the outset that you're adhering to the Law of Least Effort and that meeting a new girl isn't a big deal to you (like it is for many men, who are then quick to deluge women with volumes and volumes of text). You use friend where possible because you want to confuse and intrigue her a little bit. Do you like her or not? She thinks you do... but now you're using this ambiguous term. She's guessing... she's intrigued. Most guys just verbally state their interest right away, and kill the intrigue, excitement, and mystery. Women don't want men like that... they want men who'll keep them guessing and who won't let them know how the story ends, right up until it does. If a girl seemed to really like you and view you as far higher status than she views herself though, you may elect to drop "friend" so as not to send her into auto-rejection, thinking she can't get you. And you sign your name because she may well have forgotten it, or if she wants to brush you off she can use this as an easy way to do so. She's either going to: Feel awkward that she's forgotten, and not respond, or Feel awkward that she's forgotten, and have to ask you, or Not be able to dismiss you by saying, "Who's this?" even if she might've been tempted to otherwise Very, very occasionally, you will get a girl writing, "Who?" back after your initial text, even if it's only a few hours later, and even if you've signed your name. This is almost always a brush-off attempt; don't respond back by telling her who it is. When I get something like this from a girl - it's rare, but it still happens - I usually just delete the number as no good and move on. If she's THAT disinterested, or her memory of you is THAT poor, you're almost certainly not going to get her out again. You can still play around with numbers like this for practice if you want... just don't expect to get anything. But... this is pretty rare, and unless you're doing tons of approaches you may well never see it so long as you keep signing your name. When should you send an icebreaker text? About 1 to 4 hours after meeting her. You can sometimes go sooner, although 30 minutes is about the soonest you want to do this. If you wait too much longer than 3 or 4 hours, you're getting into awkward territory... so break the ice before then. And don't worry about getting a response; you're texting to break the ice, not open a dialogue. You'll still get dates and lovers from women who don't respond to your icebreaker text; it's just icing on the cake if they do respond. #11: Don't Wait Too Long You know those old dating guides that tell you to wait 3 days or a week or whatever it is before even calling a girl? Throw those handbooks in the garbage pail; they'll do you no good here. Run things based off how your interaction went when you met her. Use these metrics: If she was excited about you when you met her, text her to set up the date the next day, or even that day if you met her in the afternoon or morning. You'll find you can quickly set up dates for the same day or following day with women who are excited to meet you, and these are always your best bets - the emotions are fresh, the desire is hot, and you create that whirlwind romance feeling that most women dream of experiencing all their lives. If she was just nice toward you when you met her, text her 1 or 2 days later. 1 or 2 days is enough time for her to "make up her mind" if she wants to see you again, but not so much time she'll have lost interest entirely. If you wait longer than that, she may just say, "Ah, I wasn't that interested. Never mind." If you've already been out on a date, see the guide on second dates. Remember the maxim on here: move faster. If you do too much waiting around, some guy who's a more devoted practitioner of the material on this site (or has discovered some of this on his own) is liable to beat you to the punch, or life may intervene with any number of other momentum-killing roadblocks and detours on your side or hers. Strike while the iron is hot, or content yourself with an uneven blade (i.e., not very good odds of getting together with her). #12: Don't Beat Around the Bush Like we talked about in #7: Women WANT Men Who Are "Just Friends," if you're slinking around trying to trick women into liking you and dating you, women will turn right back around and start slinking around trying to trick you into being platonic friends with them. One good turn deserves another, says Aesop. Thus, why all the "text her until she's ready for a date" strategies don't work that well. You can't text your way into somebody's heart. You've got to do that in person. If you're sending texts that don't suggest a meet up in the first text (aside from an icebreaker text), then you are beating around the bush. Why? Because she knows you want something, but you aren't saying what it is. Catherine knows you weren't sitting there at 2 o'clock in the afternoon when suddenly, out of nowhere, the urge to just find out how Catherine's day was going struck you out of the blue. "Gee," you said to yourself, "I know my day's going swell... but how's the day of that girl Catherine I met at the coffee shop last weekend going?" She knows you didn't just send a text message to Randy the maintenance guy and Stefo your old college roommate asking them how their days are going. You messaged her... because you want something. But you're beating around the bush and not telling her what it is. If you get a message like this from someone: Person: Hey man, how's your day going? Mine's pretty good; just had a great club sandwich. ... you know this person wants something, and is going to ask you for something. And if you're not especially inclined to go granting favors, you're probably just going to ignore it, or give a perfunctory reply designed to discourage him or her from asking about it. You also perceive this behavior as weak. So don't do this - it moves you further away from being considered attractive and date-worthy, rather than closer. Instead, your initial message of a conversation is best structured like this: You: Hope the rest of your weekend was great, Catherine! I ended up taking a trip to Bear Mountain last minute with some friends... it was both surprising and awesome. Let's grab that lunch we talked about later this week - when's good for you schedule-wise? Nothing hidden. No beating around the bush. Just some light pleasantries, and then what you want is spelled out clear as day. It's short, brief, and straight to the point - and doesn't make her wonder at all what you're after. Women respond better to this and more consistently to this than any other texting style you'll ever use ("respond" here meaning setting up a date with you, as opposed to entering into an engaging-but-ultimately-unproductive long text banter / conversation, which seems to be most men's idea of a girl being "responsive"). #13: Keep Texts Short Your first message to kick off a new conversation can be a little bit of an exception to this, just so you have enough space to fit the pleasantries in before the ask. Other than that though, text messages should not be significantly longer than whatever the length of the last message you received from a girl was. If your texts are much longer than hers are, you're violating sprezzatura - and looking tryhard in the process. That means if she sends you: Girl: Hey Charlie, didn't hear from you last week :) What's up? Don't send her: You: Hey Marlene, sorry I didn't reply sooner! I was actually SUPER busy last week traveling to meet some new business clients. It's really cool stuff but a lot of work. Did get to see the Cirque du Soleil when I was in Vegas though... wait until you hear about THAT one! Anyway, what've you been up to? Hope all's been well. We still on for lunch this Thursday? That's okay, and it's good stuff, but it's too much as a reply to a short text. If you've been cool with her, she'll just view it as you being enthusiastic about an awesome week. If you haven't, she'll view it as you trying to force a connection. Instead, send her this: You: Sorry Marlene, I was up to my eyeballs last week :/ Tell you about it when I see you. Still lunch on Thursday, yes? On the other hand, if a girl sends you a wall of text, don't send her, "Cool," or, "Let's do it," as a response... she'll feel awkward and as if you aren't as interested in her as she is in you. You want her to feel that your interest levels closely match hers. To do that, you'll want to keep your text messages short - and similar in length. #14: Ask and Share Something Personal to Relate Imagine last week you met a guy at a networking meeting... he seemed like an okay guy. Not amazing, no great connections that could help you land an awesome new job... nothing like that. Just an okay guy. This new acquaintance asked you if you'd like to grab a beer sometime and shoot the breeze, and you said sure, why not, and gave the guy your phone number. Now imagine it's a few days later, and you've largely forgotten about this guy. Until he sends you a text message. Which of these three is the most likely to get a "yes" response out of you? Text Message A: Acquaintance: Tim, want to grab that beer we talked about tonight? Text Message B: Acquaintance: Hey Tim, how'd that audit go? Want to grab that beer we talked about tonight? Text Message C: Acquaintance: Hey Tim, how'd that audit go? I've got one of those myself coming up... what a pain. Want to grab that beer we talked about tonight? If you're like most people, and your time is sacred (and not a free-for-all for anyone who wants it... if that's the case, check out this article from 1922: "Why I Quit Being So Accommodating"), your reactions will be something along the following lines: "Wait, who is this guy? Do I really want to give him my evening?" "Is this guy trying to butter me up because he wants something?" "This guy seems like not a bad guy. I can probably afford a quick drink." What's the difference? Message C is personal and relates to you. There's a distinct formula here: Greet her with her name (yes, this is important, casual texters) Ask her how something in her life went Relate to that and share something similar from your life Ask her to meet you, with a subtle reminder that she already agreed to The name is to reinforce in her mind that this is a personal text, and not a mass text. Asking her about something personal is to get her to start relating. Sharing your own experience in the same vein as the question is to finish up the relating, by showing her that the two of you are not so different. Asking her to meet you is getting to the point, and mentioning (in passing! Don't put it out directly, unless you want to look like you don't think she's going to say yes) that she's already said "yes" makes her remember why she said "yes" and makes her a lot more likely to say so again this time around. Keep it personal. #15: Avoid Asking Too Many Questions / Irrelevant Questions This one's simple. Don't go around asking girls weird / irrelevant / lots of questions via text. A simple, "How's/How'd your X going/go?" is a formality that makes things more personal, and a question like, "Shall we grab that coffee we discussed this week?" is necessary so a woman doesn't feel like you're unilaterally trying to decide for her (e.g., "Let's grab that coffee we discussed this week," which is too imposing and is likely to lead to resistance). That's just two questions: A personal "formality" type question, and A "buy in" type question about the date. Other than those two, that's it. No other questions - everything else is irrelevant. You'll talk to her more when you see her in person. No deep diving via text, my friend; much of its effect is lost without the body language and nonverbal communication. #16: Ignore Unhelpful Questions and Topics Sometimes a girl may be on the fence about whether she wants you as a date or a friend. When this is the case, she'll often try to wedge unhelpful or distracting questions or topics into a text conversation to slow things down or try to create banter or rapport, or steer you away from "date-like" activities and toward "friend-like" ones. That looks like this: You: Haley, how was your weekend? Hope you got a lot of rest in. I was super lazy all weekend... but sometimes you need weekends like that. Hey, so how about we grab that bite we talked about this week? Let me know what your schedule's looking like and let's get the gears in motion. Girl: Hey Will... omg, my weekend was insane. Waaay too much drinking Saturday night, never doing that again, lol! Lunch? Let me check what I have going on this week. Oh, btw, did you hear about the new club they're opening up downtown next week? It's called "Motown." We should totally go to that! I have a friend who says he can get tickets. This is where most guys drop the ball. They feel like something's wrong here... this girl seems to be calling the shots. It's weird. It doesn't feel completely right saying, "Sure, let's go to that club opening..." but they do anyway, because they don't think they have a choice. They didn't ignore unhelpful stuff. They welcomed it in the front door and left that door open for more to keep pouring in, instead. Why's this bad? If it's not clear why letting girls lead, going to party dates, and things of that nature are very bad for seduction, see these posts: The Real Reason Many Men Can't Get a Girl The Sad Tale of "Shopping Guy" The Party Date: Don't Do It Next, when you get hit with unhelpful and distracting topics, just duck and weave: You:Haley, how was your weekend? Hope you got a lot of rest in. I was super lazy all weekend... but sometimes you need weekends like that. Hey, so how about we grab that bite we talked about this week? Let me know what your schedule's looking like and let's get the gears in motion. Girl:Hey Will... omg, my weekend was insane. Waaay too much drinking Saturday night, never doing that again, lol! Lunch? Let me check what I have going on this week. Oh, btw, did you hear about the new club they're opening up downtown next week? It's called "Motown." We should totally go to that! I have a friend who says he can get tickets. You: Oh man, that sounds awesome, though let me take a rain check on Motown! I'm all out of club juice in me lately. There is such a thing as too much clubbing, believe it or not... ;) Well, check your schedule and let me know which day's good for you on grabbing a bite. I've got Wednesday and Thursday free at lunch time, and Saturday free right up until 8 o'clock - let me know if either works! If the girl just wants you as a friend here, you'll get a negative response back on the date. She'll be "busy" those times, and try to reschedule for some other time (so she maintains the advantage and is in control - which is what she needs to be to friend zone you). But, if she's on the fence, she'll come back and tell you one of those times works. Be prepared to have to do a kick-ass job getting some sexual tension brewed up when you meet her though, and have your sprezzatura at full blast, to escape that "possible friend" mantle she's draped around your neck - and make sure you move fast! #17: Use Interesting Language This one's hard to teach - it's really just best if you're well-read and have a little experience with writing - but if you can pick some interesting, colorful language out it only helps make your text messages have more "pop" and be all the more appealing (and YOU all the more interesting). how to text girls A few words to get you started: "Shall we" instead of "Would you like to" or "Do you want to" "Scoop you" instead of "Pick you up" (in a car, for a date, etc.) "Grab [lunch, a drink, etc.]" or "Snag" instead of "Get" or "Have" Using verbs instead of nouns (e.g., "I napped" instead of "I took a nap") Using active voice ("I got this" instead of "They gave me this") Colorful language is simply more attractive, and makes you more attractive, too. Its effects on women are closely related to the effects of general humor, which displays social intelligence and increases attraction. #18: Vary Your Response Frequency This isn't a problem when you're genuinely busy - when you're involved in a hundred things socially, or you've got six different women you're seeing, or you're running your own business, or you've got a million projects to manage for work, your response time will naturally vary and be lightning quick sometimes, and glacially slow others. This is optimal. Women respond best to men whose response time is unpredictable, within a certain range. Now, if you always take a day to respond to her, or it happens too much, she'll quickly auto-reject. So don't go overboard. Basically, don't go too extreme in either direction. If a girl always takes an hour to write you back, don't always write her back in 10 minutes. Instead, write her back in 10 minutes one time... and 2 hours the next. Response times will tend to vary naturally for most busy people. Actually, if you notice that a woman is: Always texting you back after the same amount of time (e.g., 40 minutes), or Always texts you back the same amount of time that it took you to respond to her last text ... you know she's playing games with you. Don't call her out on it, just... be mindful. And play her game back better than she knows how - vary your response times and don't be predictable. You'll keep her guessing - and intrigued. #19: Make Seeing You In Person the ONLY Way to Talk with You Like we said in #6, girls talk because they like to talk. And like we said in #7, they WANT guys to be "just friends" with platonically. How's that affect how you text girls? Simple: you don't give them what they're looking for over text. A girl wants a texting buddy? Great! That's not you. A girl wants someone to go into deep conversation with over SMS? Fantastic! It just isn't you. She wants someone to send her lots of texts and make her feel special? Outstanding! But she'll have to find someone else for that. The only thing you use text messages for is getting girls out to meet you IN PERSON. If she can get her fill of you via text, the odds of her coming out to meet you drop dramatically lower. But, if she really likes you... and if she really wants to talk with you... ... and she can't get that from you via text message... and you won't talk to her on the phone, either... ... she WILL meet you. And once the two of you are there, in-person and in the flesh, you can work your magic. #20: Leave Something Small to Cover, and Send a Pre-Meeting Text When you set up the actual logistics of a date, it's best to leave some small detail out that you can cover later. While this isn't totally necessary, it's helpful for your pre-meeting text. You nearly always want to use a pre-meeting text for two reasons: You reassure your date that yes, you remember the place and time, and you will be there. This nixes any chance of her flaking out of fear of you not showing up. You give her the opportunity to give you a heads up if she intends to flake. This makes sure you don't waste your time going somewhere if she's going to be late or not make it at all. A pre-meeting text with a pertinent detail you didn't mention earlier will look like this: You: Hey Cassie! Heading out in 10 minutes; should be there right at 2 PM. I'll meet you at the subway station's South Exit. A pre-meeting text if you don't have any specific pertinent data to cover will look like this: You: Hey Cassie! Heading out in 10 minutes; should be there right at 2 PM. I'll meet grab a seat inside if I'm the first one there. Either of these work just fine, and both reassure her you're going, and remind her to give you a heads up if she isn't so you don't waste your time (and get angry / annoyed). If she does flake, of course, see this article on how to follow up: "What to Do When Girls Flake" how to text girls If you've been around on this site for a while, you probably recognize a fair amount of this advice, and encountered a few new things and some fleshing out on the psychology behind why women behave how they do and why we do the things we do. But if you're brand new here and this is one of the first (or the very first!) things you read, you may be saying to yourself, "Dear God, is texting really this complicated?" To which I say - nonsense! While this is a lengthy article on an oft-misunderstood subject, the topic matter isn't all that complex. Let's have a quick review at our steps on how to text girls properly: The Foundations: Faulty models are your responsibility to fix, not women's Phone numbers are easy Emotions don't "stick" People want you to reduce their cognitive loads... not pile on You must keep your eye on the ball (i.e., your purpose for texting) Girls talk because they like to talk Women WANT men who are "just friends" Women cannot "get comfortable with you" over text The Mechanics: Propose the date before you ask for the number! Use an icebreaker text Don't wait too long Don't beat around the bush Keep texts short Ask and share something personal to relate Avoid asking too many questions / irrelevant questions Ignore unhelpful questions and topics Use interesting language Vary your response frequency Make seeing you in person the ONLY way to talk to you Leave something small to cover, and send a pre-meeting text What all this leads to (while it might seem complicated at first glance) is vastly simpler and more intuitive text conversations, that clean up in the dates department. All said and done, here's an example text conversation, start to finish, to give you a feel for what this looks like: how to text girls[an hour after meeting a new girl] You: Happy to have made your acquaintance, friend ;) - [your name] [two hours later] Girl: Great to meet you too! :) [36 hours later] You: Hey Sandy, how'd the weekend turn out? Hope the rest of it was as awesome as the beginnings were :) I ended up going to a pizza party with a bunch of people Sunday night... haven't been to one of those since I was 12. It was fun, though. And, some great pizza. On our bite this week - when's good for you? My schedule's pretty open except Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Let me know what day's best and we'll schedule it up. [40 minutes later] Girl: Hey! The pizza party sounds amazing! My weekend was pretty chill... mostly just recovering from Friday, lol. How's Thursday for meeting up? I'm free most of the day. [25 minutes later] You: Thursday's perfect. Say 1 o'clock in the afternoon? There's this amazing little café no one knows about on Green Avenue we can check out... they have the most mind-blowing crepes in the world. We can meet at the Green Ave subway stop, it's a short walk from there. [1 hour later] Girl: That sounds great, let's do it! See you on Thursday! [2 hours later] You: Awesome - see you then, Sandy! [Thursday, 12:30 PM] You: Heading out the door in a few minutes, should be there right at 1 o'clock. I'll be at Exit 2C. See you soon! [5 minutes later] Girl: Hey, I'm running about 10 minutes behind. Sorry...! I'm coming! [3 minutes later] You: No biggie. See you when you get here! Now compare that to the last 10 texting conversations you had with women... which are more complicated, and which are less? The only complicated part here is in learning the process. Once you've got it down, you can execute it perfectly, efficiently, and consistently... and it's a thing of pure beauty. And you'll sit there and look at the cell phones of those poor girls you're sleeping with or dating, and see the volumes and volumes of clueless boring questions they get, endless conversations they're mired in, and really, incredibly witty and interesting texts they're inundated with, and you'll shake your head at the guys sending them. "I used to be one of those guys," you'll say to yourself. "But that... was another lifetime ago." And then that thought will pass, and you'll probably never spend a second thought on texting ever again.

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##How to Pick Up a Girl in 6 Steps (Plus, 10 Trip-Ups to Avoid) It's Friday night, and you're sitting at home by yourself. No girlfriend to spend time with, no gal you're kind of sort of seeing to call... not one girl to keep you company. A thought pops into your head: "Maybe I can go out and pick up a girl!" But, just as quickly as it popped excitedly into mind, a bunch more thoughts rush in to dampen your spirit, and you realize that you really just don't know how to pick up a girl. You go to a bar or a nightclub, and... use a pick up line? Then what? Buy her a drink? And then just hope somehow at the end of the night the two of you end up in bed together. No, no... you know it isn't that simple. There's a lot more to it than that. You just don't know what that "lot more to it" might be. Fortunately though, by fate or fortitude or because you knew where to look, you found this post. As a guy who's spent the past six years studying, refining, and honing his ability to meet girls and get them in bed fast, and who's spent much of that time teaching other men to do the same, I'm rather uniquely qualified to help you succeed. And helping you succeed at getting girls is exactly what this site, and this post in particular, was built to do. So, without further ado, let me present to you the step-by-step guide on exactly how to pick up girls, so you can beat back those spirit-dampening thoughts and start succeeding with women. THE 10 COMMON MISTAKES MEN MAKE TRYING TO PICK UP GIRLS Guys do a lot of knuckleheaded things when they're trying to get girls to like them, talk to them, and eventually go home with them. More opportunities for successful nights have been squandered by guys making dumb mistakes with girls who liked them or would've gone home with them than by just about any other reason. Here now we're going to have a look first at the 10 most common mistakes men make trying to pick up a girl, so you can know what they are, identify these mistakes in yourself if you're making them, and stop making them right away so you can find success in picking up the girls you like. Our top 10 mistakes men make trying to pick up women: They go to the wrong places. When most men think of picking up a girl, they think of big loud nightclubs. But big loud nightclubs are a stretch for many men out there - for many guys, it'd be a lot easier to strike up a conversation with a girl in a bookstore or on the street. You can do the club scene, and it can be a lot of fun, but do keep in mind there are a lot more places to meet women than big rooms with pulsing music and strobing lights. They focus on the wrong things. Doing well with women isn't about having good "pick up lines" or dressing flashy. It's your presence - how you are, including your posture, your body language, your eye contact, your voice tone - and what you say after you first say hello that matters most. Those are the things that get women attracted and cause them to want to move forward with you. But most guys focus on the wrong things, and are left scratching their heads when their pick up attempts fall flat. They don't emulate winners. Ever have anyone say the phrase "Just be yourself" to you? Well, there is a kernel of truth in it - but it's no good until you've spent enough time trying to emulate others that you know what parts of yourself are good as-is and what parts need tweaking. When you're meeting new women, who are you trying to be like? If it isn't a guy you already know does better with women than you do, you're probably missing out on implementing a lot of the more effective things he does. In business, we call it benchmarking. In sports and in the arts, they call it having an "influence." Whatever you want to call it, the people who do best don't figure it all out on their own. They learn from those better than themselves and go from there. They don't know how to target. I'm either going to do a post on this or maybe even put an entire program out on it at some point, but being able to target the right women to meet is so very key to succeeding. It's why men who are very experienced will at times go out and talk to one woman, and that's the woman they take home later. It does require you to spend some time learning how to do it, but once you've developed the ability to discern which women are open to meeting someone new - pay special attention to body language and eye contact - is she focused on her friends, or does she seem distracted - it all gets so much easier you'll find it difficult to believe you ever got by without looking for these signs she's interested before. Oh, and, while I know they seem like the bright shiny objects of a bar or nightclub, don't chase after the girls partying hard on the dance floor, because they're not in a "meeting a cute guy" kind of mode. Instead, wait until they take a break and stop dancing, or find a girl who's relaxing by the bar already. I guarantee you it'll go over better than trying to get to know her while she's bouncing up and down. They miss escalation windows. Of all the ten mistakes listed here, this one's the most painful. Missing an escalation window is what happens when a girl wants a guy to move things forward, and signals for him to move things forward... and he just doesn't. And then she gives up. Argh. This happens to lots of guys early on. It used to happen to me a lot. It happens because either a guy doesn't realize she's signaling him to move things forward, or because he's moving too tentatively and doesn't capitalize on the signals he gets. They're too much fun. Fun kills the mood; it messes things up. At least, the kind of fun that most guys try to pull off. Being sexy and a bit fun is great; being goofy, silly, slapstick-y, or just platonically fun is, on the other hand, terribly counterproductive. It communicates to women that a man is more a fun friend than he is a sexual option. No good. They never go beyond the surface. How many times does a guy have to have an average go-nowhere conversation with women before he realizes go-nowhere conversations don't take him anywhere? Most guys never get past the surface with women in their conversations, and never really get to know the girls they're talking to. Because of that, they never end up feeling connected to the women they're meeting - and the women they're meeting never end up feeling connected to them, either. They don't move women. The #1 way to get a girl committed to talking to you early on, and the #1 way to see if she's serious about you, are one and the same: you ask her to move with you. But most guys are so scared she'll say no that they don't ask; or else, they just plain don't think of it. So, she never commits to the interaction, and it starts feeling awkward. And then she leaves. And guys then guys are even more cautious the next time and wait even longer before asking a girl to go sit with them or accompany them to another part of the store or coffee shop or bar or lounge. Egad. They don't invite women home. Goes without saying a guy won't do too well picking a girl up if he never asks her home. Yet all the time, men go out to meet women with the hopes of finding a new girl to take home that night, and still never ask any women they meet to go home with them. Make sense to you? No, me neither. They come ready to lose. How many of the above wouldn't even be an issue if men came playing to win and kept that mentality the entire time? Probably at least half of them. But most guys are so ready for failure that they miss the signs that are there that women want things to move forward, and they fail to take actions they need to take to make the night a success. Being ready to lose is different from having nothing to lose; the guy who has nothing to lose does whatever he wants because he has no fear of losing. The guy who's ready to lose doesn't even try, because he's confident he's going to fail no matter what he does. It ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and, just as he expected, he ends up going nowhere fast with the women he meets. Those are your 10 most common mistakes men make trying to pick up a girl. Maybe reading through you see some mistakes you make; those are all mistakes I made when I was new, and I see guys making them every day (or, at least, every day I'm not holed up in a cave in some third world country writing articles like this or doing business stuff like I am right now). How do you fix those mistakes, you might ask? Well, I'm glad you did. Allow me to present to you... how to pick up a girl HOW TO PICK UP A GIRL First things first: there's no shortcut to becoming a compellingly seductive man. That is, being a sexy man, engaging women in great conversation, and just generally being bold and confident and experienced enough to know how to move things forward and when to do so. All that takes time. And while, over the long-term, those are the things that are going to benefit you most and do the most for transforming you into a consistently successful seducer of beautiful, wonderful women, over the short-term there are a few things you can focus on to even out your odds a little bit. Choose your locations wisely. If you like party girls, you ought to be hitting up parties and nightclubs. However, if you like more sensual, seductive women, you'll fare better in lounges and house music venues. And if you like intellectuals and educated girls, your best bet is going to be the bookstore... or the street. And if you're not sure, check out my free ebook Finding Your Niche; that'll help you narrow down where to begin. Ditch the pick up lines. Some cheesy line isn't going to win a girl's heart over. But if you open strongly and confidently with a direct opener, you just might speed the process up quite a bit. If that seems a bit much to start out with, you can always lean on the trusty indirect direct style of opening to get the ball rolling. Move girls fast. I can't stress enough how important it is to be moving women. Moving a woman forces her to commit to an interaction with you - or bow out of it entirely if they have no intentions of doing so. Asking a girl to move is the moment of truth for an interaction - the girls who are genuinely interested in you will go with you (although you might have to ask / insist a few times); the ones who are just being social won't. To minimize time spent on girls who are just being social and maximize time getting girls invested, move women you meet five to ten minutes into talking to them - or faster. And say goodbye to the ones who won't accompany you - trust me on that one. Actually get to know women. As in beyond the surface layer. Use deep diving and your prowess as a conversationalist to get to the core of her person. In other words, don't just find out where she moved from, but find out why she moved and how she came to that decision and whether she'd make the same move again if she had to do it all over. That's how you really get to know a girl in a hurry. Move faster in general. Not just in physically moving girls but in all aspects of your interaction and seduction. The longer you take, the more time you're allowing yourself to make mistakes, the more time you're allowing outside factors to coming in and influence the progress of your interaction (like some random drunk guy or your girl's overprotective best friend), and the more time you're allowing that initial excitement she had upon first meeting you to cool off. Waste not, want not; if you want to pick up girls, don't forget to pick up the pace. Invite women home and get physical. This is the endgame in a pick up, the part that differentiates a cool conversation you had with a girl from an actual pick up, where you took a girl home with you (or went back to her place, or to some other convenient location where the two of you could be alone together). You went out specifically to meet a girl to get together with, yeah? Well, asking her home and getting physical is the final piece of the puzzle in accomplishing what you set out to accomplish. If you stay on-point and follow those steps, you'll have a much better chance at success. A few more pointers that will serve you well: how to pick up a girl In bars and nightclubs, look for girls who seem a bit distracted, are looking around a lot, or aren't paying as much attention to their friends. Something else is on their minds, and much of the time that's finding a new guy. On the street, keep your eyes peeled for girls who stare at you hard; they're the ones you most want to stop and say hello to. When you're getting to know a girl, make sure you're keeping the focus of the conversation on getting to know more about her - her hopes, her dreams, her past experiences, what she wants for her future - and less about yourself. Touching is good and important and you should be doing it often in the beginning. Start touching women the moment you meet them - particularly as a beginner, it's one of the main ways you'll differentiate yourself from the platonic guys who'll only ever end up being just friends with those women. Be looking constantly for ways to get investment. When you're deep diving, you'll be getting women investing nearly continuously in the conversation, because they'll constantly be thinking about how to answer your questions and they'll be doing most of the talking and most of the impressing - and that's very good. Look for other ways to get compliance throughout your interactions as well - getting investment is how you get women more and more accustomed to following your lead, which is necessary for moving things forward at critical junctures. And... there. That's your crash course in how to pick up a girl. So, the next time you find yourself sitting home alone on that Friday night, don't fear - just bookmark this page, head back here, and take these lessons with you when you head out into the world. I'm certain you'll find meeting a new girl less of a mystery and more of a straightforward process than you did before. And that alone means you ought to have a lot fewer lonely Friday nights, and a lot more Friday nights spent in good, welcome company. For a lot more step-by-step direction to help you pick up the girls you want, I created the How to Make Girls Chase ebook program. It's my cover-to-cover instruction manual on everything from meeting girls to getting them alone with you, getting physical with them, and taking them to bed. Because a man who knows what women want and how to give it to them is what every woman is searching for. And women can go years without meeting a man who knows how to be that kind of man. Just click on THIS link to download your copy. Happy reading (and picking up!)...

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##How to Use Indirect Game to Get Girls Over in the comments section of the post on how to get a girl's phone number, Hunter asked for a review of indirect game: "Hey Chase, I'm so glad you got to this, I actually had an exact question about phone numbers only to have you answer it with finesse! I was pondering however about the aspects of city game vs closed space game, small towns or places you return to because you have to, school or work. I have done direct openers in places like school and around my city of medium size, but it can go awry easily and when it does, you hear about it back! It is almost normal to meet girls again whom I've approached before. The fleeting moment of awkwardness is fine, but if every girl I approached went awry at school, that'd be too much to handle. I remember your post on direct vs situational approaching. I advocate direct approaching, but I feel they are not the best in places I return to frequently because I have to. Can you go over the aspects of situational game? I know most guys actually get stuck in situational game, but after doing more direct openers, I'm having a hard time in situational environments coming off too strong or putting too much social pressure on her! Thanks again, don't you guys stop anytime soon! Hunter" If you don't know indirect game, it's essentially using either situationally relevant (ideally) or other non-direct (e.g., not stating your romantic / sexual intentions) openers and conversation to meet new women and move things forward with them. indirect game And, like most aspects of pickup and seduction, indirect game can be very effective - done right. But also like most aspects of pickup and seduction, there is a right way to do indirect game... and a wrong way, and like most aspects of pickup and seduction (and I'm still not sure why this is) the wrong way is the one you'll usually hear about most. So let's clear this up and get you using indirect right. OPINION OPENERS NOT INCLUDED These have by and large been banished from pickup community teaching and literature, but let's go over these anyway: the opinion opener. If you're unfamiliar with opinion openers, they go something like this: Guy: Hey - I need a female opinion, let me ask you a question. Girl: Okay. Guy: You see, I was reading this article in Cosmo, and it was talking about lying... basically, it posed the question of, "Who lies more? Men or women?" And I was having this debate with a friend of mine, and he thinks it's women, but I'm not so sure. This might just be male bias. So I said, let me go get a girl and see if we can find out. So what do you think? Who lies more? Girl: Ummm... that's tough... men, I think. Guy: That's interesting. You know, there's an old Chris Rock stand up routine where he's talking about this, and he says, "Men lie more, but when they lie, they tell small lies, like, 'No, those pants don't make your ass look big.' Girls, they don't lie nearly as much as men, but when girls DO lie, it's always a DOOZY... you know, with like, 'Well you know what it's YOUR baby!'" Girl: [laughs] Guy: So I can't stay long, I've got to get back to my friends in a moment, but did you see the fight outside earlier? There was a girl who looked like a model and this guy who must've been a midget rolling around on the sidewalk tearing each other's hair out... Back in 2005, when I first stumbled on pickup community teachings, I thought I'd found a godsend in opinion openers. I'd been cold approaching on my own for a year at that point, but I'd been relying primarily on direct, on what I'd now call "situationally relevant," and on simply just saying "Hi." But I was still struggling with shaking off approach anxiety and was only doing a handful of approaches a month at that point. But opinion openers... now that seemed like an awesome way to get into a conversation with a girl without even having to put yourself out there! Because at no point was the conversation made to be about you and her, opinion openers seemed to offer a free pass: the chance to talk to girls without being judged. If they rejected you, it was just because they didn't want to talk about dogs, not because they didn't like you! What I didn't realize at the time was that the opposite was equally true: When you use an opinion opener and a girl DOES talk to you, it's often just because she likes the topic... NOT you. It's very possible that a girl thinks you're cute, but gets totally turned off when the first thing you say to her is a question about Elvis. And it's also very possible that a girl would never hook up with you in a million years, but finds the idea of talking about your friend's girlfriend finding your friend's ex-girlfriend's pictures in a shoebox and wanting to burn them in a bonfire absolutely fascinating. I know they seem like an easy way to get into a conversation with a girl because the entire dialogue is all laid out, but trust me... they're the lazy man's approach to indirect, and they only work if you've already got solid enough fundamentals and are attractive to women enough to overcome their inherent handicap (of beating around the bush like mad). So before we say anything else about indirect game, I just want to throw these out of the running for this post and make it clear why we're going to ignore this once trendy form of indirect: because it takes you down a side path and away from a seduction. Opinion openers are the antithesis of our philosophy of moving fast and cutting out unnecessary details here... and they don't get you any hotter or higher quality women than other forms of game. Actually, they're more likely to get you flighty women... but we won't go into that here. Onto the main event. indirect game So what is indirect game, exactly? Is it not telling a girl you think she's cute? Is it pretending you just met her by accident? Is it acting like you're a super-social guy who just talks to anyone? Is it removing any sign of interest in her at all? Well, it can be any of those... but not all forms of indirect game are created equal. To my mind, there are two main forms of indirect game: True indirect, the type you'll hear bandied about most frequently Indirect direct, which is the type I advocate on here (Ricardus too) As you might suppose from those bullets, I consider true indirect the "wrong" way to do indirect game, and indirect direct the "right" way to do it. But what's the difference, and why's it matter? TRUE INDIRECT: PLAYING HIDE THE BANANA The theory behind true indirect is that women aren't interested in a man until they have a chance to see his qualities, and true indirect - by taking a woman out of "assessment mode," where she's judging you right off the bat to decide whether she'll accept or reject your advances - ups your odds by giving you more time and more of a chance to display your attractive traits. What true indirect practitioners actually end up doing, of course, is presenting themselves as neutral, uninterested parties, and seek to get women to pursue them first. You know I like the second part of that. It's the first part I take issue with. In the book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, Frans de Waal, the famed Dutch primatologist, talks about the observed tendency of beta males and subadults to sometimes grow an erection in the presence of fertile females, but then in the presence of a dominant male who's around, those beta and subadult males will take their hands and cover up and hide their erections, so as not to attract undue attention. Meanwhile, of course, the alpha male prominently strides about, erection in full view - or just goes for the female he wants, mounts her, and takes her. I tend to think of the difference between the dominant males and the nondominant males in terms of them "hiding their bananas"... or not. And every time I see a guy doing true indirect, all I can think to myself is... he's hiding his banana. Only he isn't even hiding his banana from a dominant male... he's hiding it from the female herself - something even the beta chimps don't do. Here's why that's wrong: there's a certain thought process a woman goes through when a man's doing full-on true indirect... "He's talking to me, and I know he has a reason. It's not like he's talking to EVERYONE here... he came up to ME." "He's acting like he's not interested in me at all... but he just keeps talking to me. Weird." "Okay, I've got it - he LIKES me, he just doesn't want to ACT like it. I'll play along." indirect gameIn effect, it doesn't take a woman long to realize a man using true indirect is playing hide the banana. But how's a girl react to a guy hiding his banana around her? Well, for one, she doesn't treat him rude... after all, he's harmless. He's hiding his intentions - and she knows he has them, women aren't dull, they know if someone's talking to them it's because they want something - and guys who hide their intentions aren't a sexual threat in any way... there's not much danger of her ending up with a guy like this. So, if she's getting some enjoyment and entertainment out of the conversation, she'll play along... she'll give him reactions instead of results... she'll flirt and chat and laugh away... because it's fun! And at the end of the night, he'll leave thinking he did GREAT... even if he never talks to her or sees her again - which is what usually happens. But he just keeps getting those reactions, and he just keeps thinking things are working perfect. They're not though - he's not getting results, he's not focused on moving girls, he's not focused on inviting them home. He's just playing hide the banana, and the girl's playing along and pretending she doesn't know there's a banana underneath his hands there. INDIRECT DIRECT: LETTING THE BANANA HANG OUT There's another way of doing indirect game though, and that way is indirect direct. Or, as I like to call it, letting the banana hang out. If you think of true indirect as hiding the banana, and true direct as shoving the banana into a girl's face (or other part of her anatomy), indirect direct is not making any effort to shove your banana in her face right away... but not making any effort to conceal it, either. Indirect game that's deployed with a direct twist comes down to a few components mixed in together: You're on the surface just chatting to her for the sake of chatting Simultaneously, you maintain a very sexy vibe and air about yourself You employ the sexual frame and chase framing to set the tone When women test you on your attraction, you tease them back... not play dumb The overall feel of an indirect direct interaction is that it's all a big tease... you're pretending you're just talking casually to her and are not really interested in her, but she knows you are, and you know she knows you are, she knows you know she knows you are, and you aren't actually trying to hide it from her, but rather tease her about it instead, and paint the facetious, but very fun and exciting for her, picture of her being the pursuer instead. You're letting the banana hang out. Indirect game in this fashion is talking about the weather... with decidedly sexual undertones. It's taking the conversation down winding alleyways that explore her deepest dreams and desires... while being physically close and firmly in command of the trajectory the two of you are on. It's teasing her like the two of you are old friends... and implying that she's been trying to get together with you forever. That's indirect game done right. You're not telling her outright that you like her style or think she's beautiful or sexy or even qualifying her all that much, as you would with direct... ... but that's because you don't need to. indirect game Of course, all we just covered on indirect direct - on infusing your indirect game with barely-contained sexuality, with raw, latent energy, and with a smooth but firm grip on the flow of the interaction and the course of the conversation - all that's easier said than done. First, a cautionary note on true indirect, just to hit this point home. There's a reason why so many guys use true indirect, and why so many teachers recommend true indirect to their students: It's easy. Pay no mind to the fact that it hardly gets results, of course - the important part is that it gets you talking to women! Personally, I'm okay with someone sacrificing some return in the short term in order to acquire more data points... but not if they're the wrong data points. And the data points you gather running true indirect are most certainly the wrong data points. As someone teaching this stuff, let me tell you, the hardest, most hopeless cases you will ever encounter are NOT the brand new guys who don't know how to talk to girls and don't know how to kiss a girl and have never had a girlfriend before. Those guys are like wet clay. All they want it for you to form them into something that's effective with women, and let them go to work. No... the guys who are the worst to work with in the world are the guys who've been running true indirect game for 4 or 5 or 6 years. Why? Because they've acquired so many reference points from this style of game that they've become completely convinced it's the only way to do things, and that because getting results with women this way is really hard, then so far as they're concerned getting results with women itself clearly is inherently really hard. These are the guys you look at and say, "Dude, why are you doing that? You're adding like 30 extra steps to your pickups, extending them by about 5 unnecessary hours, and increasing the odds that you trip over your own two feet and never get the girl EXPONENTIALLY! You're making it way harder than it needs to be!" And they look back at you and say, "These steps are all necessary if you want beautiful, high quality girls. I don't get those girls, but some true indirect guy told me years ago that's the case and I believe it. I don't know what you're doing with all your step-skipping and fast game, but you're probably only getting easy girls and low hanging fruit." And I'll say, "Amigo, the only girls I date are beautiful, charismatic, driven, ambitious, life-of-the-party type social butterflies who are pursued by hordes of men and never get caught. I DATE AND SLEEP WITH THE GIRLS OTHER GUYS CAN'T GET! If you want to date and sleep with and have relationships with these girls, instead of just talking to them and getting blown off by them, just try this out!" And they say, "It won't work, trust me." They've been conditioned to fail by years of running true indirect. That's the real reason I think true indirect isn't just downright ineffective... it's harmful. It's like training a guy to play piano with his fingers starting on the wrong keys, or training a guy to play basketball with a really awkward shooting pose, and then the guy just does it that way for a half decade. You'll have a beast of a time trying to untrain years and years of actively working to learn an incorrect form and open his mind to trying something different again. Too much true indirect conditions men to expect to not achieve results with women. So, I know it might be tempting to use because it's easy and a lot less scary not to show any interest in girls, but what it usually leads to in my experience is learned helplessness. You've been warned. Let's get on with how to do indirect game right. HOW TO DO INDIRECT GAME RIGHT The image I have in my head of the perfect indirect direct is James Bond. You'll almost never hear James Bond tell a woman he can't stop thinking about her... instead, his entire dialogue is innuendo that pretends to be neutral but drips with sexual undertones. Sean Connery did this great as Bond. Pierce Brosnan did it well too... I'm thinking of Halle Berry walking out of the sea and Brosnan's Bond saying, "Beautiful view," which on the surface was meant to be about the scenery, but they both knew what he really meant. Like Brosnan's Bond, indirect game done well makes use of situationally relevant content and context to pain a seemingly benign, ordinary conversation over a layer of sexual thrust and romantic intrigue. I'll give you a fuller example of this so you can see what I mean before we go more into specifics: Guy: [slowly, sexually] So what's the story with this place? Girl: [turning to face him] What do you mean? Guy: This whole coffee shop... it seems so gauche. Girl: I think it's supposed to be chic. Guy: Does it seem chic to you? Girl: No... no it does not! Guy: You don't seem like the kind of girl who'd be in such a gauche place that aspires to be chic. Girl: Why do you say that? Guy: [waves his hand in front of her torso, gesturing] That. Your whole style-thing. Not gauche chic. More like just light, trendy... on top of things. Girl: Oh [looking down at her clothes]. Well what are you doing here? Guy: I didn't realize it was going to be so gauche chic before I walked in. Girl: [laughs] Well why did you stay? Guy: By the time I noticed how terrifying the decorations were, it was too late, and I'd already paid for my hot chocolate. So I'm stuck here. Girl: You could just leave. Guy: And miss out on analyzing the patterns in that throw rug over there? Not in a million years. Girl: [laughs] Guy: How about you, why are you here? You seem like the type who'd be too busy to hang out in a wannabe-trendy coffee shop. Girl: Well, I have the day off from work today. Guy: Oh really? And what's work? Girl: I work in a clothing store. Guy: Is it... a gauche chic clothing store? Girl: [laughs] No, it is NOT a gauche chic clothing store! Guy: [laughs] Okay, well that explains why you have better style than most I suppose. How long have you been working at the clothing store? ... and from there we're into normal deep diving and everything proceeds per usual (see the conversation example for more on how to run an ordinary conversation with a girl). indirect game You'll notice that this isn't too different from the ordinary approach you see me talk about on here, and that's for good reason - my own normal style with women is largely indirect direct. I modeled my approach after James Bond, after Val Kilmer in The Saint, and other seducers with smoldering sensuality like that. When you pretend to be asexual and uninterested in women, as in true indirect, why on Earth should they be interested in YOU? But, when you come out and tell a girl you like her directly, well... that just kills all the fun. Those are my philosophies, anyway. Even when I use a direct opener, I transition very quickly into indirect game with sexual undertones like this, because it's the style of pickup I feel works best for my personality (lower energy, not overly talkative). To help you understand the difference between true indirect (the wrong way) and indirect direct (the right way), I'm going to set up the how-to walkthrough as a compare and contrast illustration. Difference #1: Impersonal vs. Personal Have a look at that example we just went over, and compare it to the opinion opener example way back at the beginning of this article. Notice any differences? If you've been at this for a little while, the biggest difference should be glaring: our proper indirect game example is extremely personal, while the opinion opener example is extremely impersonal. Imagine you were on the receiving end of these two conversations (pretend you're the girl, or that some guy is talking you and you're still you): Which conversation do you feel more engaged in? Which one do you feel like you're contributing and sharing and involved? Which one do you feel like you're actually really starting to like this guy, and which one do you feel like is just an empty spectacle and nothing more? That's right... the second one makes you feel engaged, contributing, sharing, involved, and a growing respect, admiration, and intrigue for this this new individual you've just met... he seems like a cool, interesting person. The first one - the opinion opener example - is interesting for its spectacle value, but do you really care if you never see this guy ever again? And a major part of the difference in the feel of these two conversation is the personal nature of the second one - it's all about getting to know the girl, building an emotional connection with her, and finding out more about her. The first one's just about trying to throw some bizarre and interesting stories at the girl and hoping that somehow she realizes this guy is the man of her dreams. Not exactly a "strategy," per se. Difference #2: Monologue vs. Dialogue Another part of the "engagement" difference is that, as you might notice, our second guy is talking with his girl... while our first guy is talking at her. Guy #1 is monologuing... he's just going on and on and on about his openers, then his DHVs, then his stuff. He doesn't want to show interest in a girl, so of COURSE he can't ASK her about herself! That'd be showing INTEREST! So she never gets engaged. Guy #2 is dialoguing, though... he's not going to go into any lengthy stories until later in the conversation, when it's more contextually relevant. Instead, he's guiding the conversation along a steady, natural progression, from his situationally relevant opener into eventually finding out what she does and getting into his normal conversation flow. Here's what ends up being the main contrasts between each: Guy #1 monologues, trying to impress a girl and grab her attention, thinking that by not showing direct interest in her, she won't realize what he's doing Guy #2 dialogues, assuming that of course a girl's going to realize he's talking to her because he wants to get to know her, but instead of try to impress he digs into finding out more about her, effectively asking her to impress him. Guy #1 monologues from the start, likely under the impression that if he stops talking too early, the girl will just blow him out or go away. Guy #2 dialogues from the start, knowing that it's better if he can get her contributing early and that he can always put more oomph into things if she doesn't respond warmly out of the gates. Guy #1 monologues on impersonal topics to the girl, mistaking surprise, excitement, laughter, and interest for attraction, desire, and investment Guy #2 dialogues on personal topics to the girl, deliberately keeping things somewhat interesting but largely toned down... he's far more interested in getting her attracted, desirous, and invested than excited, laughing, and interested in the conversation. I just saw a video recently of a guy running indirect game who was clearly experienced - he anticipated the objections he was about to receive from women and circumscribed them easily before they even occurred - but he also talked far too much, mostly about himself, and his interactions ended on decidedly neutral terms. This is common in guys running flawed indirect game... they assume they've got to do all the talking and position their value very high so the girl will chase after them. But that's not what makes girls chase. Difference #3: Tough Transition vs. Easy Transition Let's say you open with true indirect, and you're not asking anything about the girl, you're acting totally disinterested in her, and you're just talking about random neutral things that have nothing to do with either of you. How do you transition to anything MORE than that? How do you get to talking about her... to pulling her off somewhere with you... to escalating with her physically? Whatever you do, when you're starting from true indirect, it's going to be an awkward transition. And awkward transitions are one of the major ways that most men lose women. Now look at the guy who's doing indirect game properly... talking about things that are situationally relevant (so his thought process makes sense) as opposed to things that are all over the place and not-so-relevant to the situation (as most true indirect guys do... there's only so much situationally relevant stuff you can talk about before it's either talk about her, or talk about you). Because the guy running indirect direct is already talking about her, and already implying, though not stating, that he finds her interesting, transitioning her to the next stage of the interaction once she's sufficiently impressed him is a snap. It's natural. It's what's expected. With the true indirect guy, no progression is expected, because there's no reason for it. Why should she go sit with him... he doesn't know anything about her! A true indirect guy will argue here: "That's not GOOD true indirect you're talking about, because a guy who does true indirect RIGHT will use screening and qualifying, too!" But screening and qualifying as used by true indirect practitioners tend to be unwieldy tools, clumsily hefted and inaccurately turned. Because a true indirect guy is NOT focused on the girl, his screening consists of questions tossed into his monologue that only test pieces here and there, e.g.: Guy: ... and ever since my ex cooked me that meal, I've loved Mexican food. Girl: Yeah, Mexican food's great. Guy: Do YOU cook? Girl: Yeah I do. Guy: Do you cook... MEXICAN food? Girl: No, not really. Mostly just regular stuff. Guy: Okay, well, you still get one star for cooking, but we're going to have to work on that Mexican food thing. So get this: about a year and a half ago, I was IN Mexico, when suddenly... This is really the only kind of screening and qualifying women available to the true indirect user, and it's okay, but it's not even close to being as effective as natural screening woven effortlessly into the conversation you're having with a girl through a deep dive. (This kind of screening and qualifying is still worth playing around with when you're new, but it's not the final stop for this skill, and it's not a justification for using an ineffective style of indirect game, either.) If you've played around with true indirect (and really, I think most newer guys do... *I* certainly used it for far too long), you know what I'm talking about: those impossible transitions you can never quite seem to master. I remember how FRUSTRATED I was trying to transition to different stages of an interaction... God, why is this so HARD? I used to ask myself. It isn't. It's just that true indirect makes it hard, by not setting the proper groundwork for a seamless transition. INDIRECT GAME WRAP-UP If we go back and review those guidelines on indirect game done properly, we've got three main differences between (wrong) true indirect and (right) indirect direct. They are: Impersonal (wrong) vs. Personal (right) Monologue (wrong) vs. Dialogue (right) Tough Transition (wrong) vs. Easy Transition (right) For newer guys, this hopefully points out where along the path you've veered off the trail if you have. It's easy to fall into the trap of true indirect, if primarily for the reasons that it seems to offer more ego protection and be less likely to result in a personal rejection. But when you reduce the risks, you also reduce the rewards, and true indirect offers the greatest reduction of both risk AND reward of any style of game out there. And you've still got a couple of great choices anyway... you can be the alpha male walking around shoving his banana in the female's faces (direct), or you can be the alpha male strutting around with his banana just hanging out in the wind (indirect direct). Just don't, please, for the love of God, get yourself caught playing hide the banana. Girls really don't have a lot of respect for the guys that do that, and they're not going to take your hands off and pull that banana out themselves (unless they're REALLY aggressive)... take my word for it. You've got to help them get their hands on your banana. Man up - direct or indirect direct, either one's fine and either one works. They are what you want to be using (if, that is, you want results). And whichever path you so choose, may the force of situationally relevant dialogues be with you.

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##How to Use the Sexual Frame to Turn Women On Many people believe that it doesn't matter much what you say to a girl when you chat her up… that 93% of all communication is nonverbal anyway, and that the words are just filler. Thus, any sexual frame you employ should be more focused on your body language and less so on your words… they just aren't as important, goes the thinking. This is a misunderstanding of Mehrabian's study, which showed that somebody's body language and tone of voice account for 93% of our LIKING for that person… it does not, however, mean that the spoken word only convey 7% of the meaning of any communication. "Liking" is also largely irrelevant when it comes to seduction - girls will often sleep with and even get into relationship with guys that they don't particularly like… attraction beats liking, hand over fist, every time. And if it was true that words only conveyed 7% of what's being communicated, it should be perfectly possible to watch a movie in a foreign language and still understand 93% of what is being said… Try that some time. :) If it was true, it should also be possible to tell a girl to bugger off… and get a 93% similar response as when telling her that she's pretty. There is, however, a more subtle reason why words matter… and that reason is frames, and the implications of what is being said. So what are frames and frame control now? Well, let's look at some examples. FRAME GAME A frame might be defined as the contextual meaning a communication takes on based on how it is presented. For example, one person might look at outsourcing as a bad thing because he lost his job to someone in India. His boss, on the other hand, probably sees outsourcing in quite a different light, as it saves him a lot of money on wages every week… it may even save his company from bankruptcy. Now let's twist the frame around a bit more - what if we look at the situation from the perspective of the Indian worker? He is now working remotely for a company in the West and makes three times as much as he would in a local job… Or, we could reframe the Western worker's situation as a great opportunity. Sure, he lost his job - but isn't he now finally free to pursue his true passion, start a business, and even get rich himself? He might even end up hiring people himself, both in the West and in Asia… …or, he might decide that his life is over, apply for social security and spend the rest of his days under a bridge. It's completely up to him… and the same set of circumstances takes on a completely different meaning, depending on the angle we look at it from. That angle is the frame… and the frame we set, the meaning we give things, creates our reality. This is why frame control is not only a powerful tool of persuasion, but one of THE most important life skills. THE SEXUAL FRAME: FRAMING FOR SEDUCTION Just like outsourcing can be seen as a good or a bad thing, depending on one's frame, so can things that are more useful to our pursuits… such as having sex the first night of meeting someone, or even after 15 minutes. Think about it… 50 years ago, sex on the first date was almost universally seen as "wrong"… 100 years ago, even premarital sex was considered "bad" - and to this day, there are still cultures and societies who would agree with that. The difference? Nothing but the frame. This difference in frames is also the reason why some girls will be open to going home with you at the first opportunity… they see their own sexuality in a positive light and have no hang-ups about it. (By the way, labeling negative views about sex a "hang-up" is a frame in itself… and a useful one… use it!) Other girls, however, aren't as open-minded about casual sex at the first encounter… they may be worried about their reputation, they may fear being judged by you or by their peers, or they may simply buy into some of society's old-fashioned ideas (frames) about how a "decent lady" is supposed to act. Therefore, 80% of getting a girl to sleep with you, especially on the first night, comes down to her agreement to a sexual frame. You're starting to see how useful this skill can be! SEX? WELL, WHY NOT! We've discussed sexual framing on the blog in the past (see the posts on being a sexual man and chase framing), but in summation, it involves framing short timeframe sex as something normal, healthy and desirable, and objections against it as "hang-ups" that you and her don't have. If she agrees to those premises, there is really no reason NOT to go home with you… Which is why the mastery over this one skill gets you about 80% of the way there, so long as your fundamentals are in place. And if she agrees to these frames, all you have to do is gradually escalate towards sex, while coming across as trustworthy enough of a guy to go home with… In other words, as someone who won't leave her hacked to pieces in a dumpster somewhere. DOES THIS WORK ON EVERY GIRL? If there is a magic bullet in seduction, the sexual frame IS IT. If you talk about sex with her in a way that leads you both to agree that sex is good and not having sex is bad, then there is really only one thing left to do… …hit the bed. And the better you get at framing, the more eloquent you become in your verbal skills and the more subtly you can come to this kind of agreement, the more girls will end up sleeping with you the first night you meet them. I'm at a point now where almost all first dates or first encounters end in sex the same night… however, I've also noticed a pattern when it does NOT happen. And that pattern comes down to a crucial distinction that most people I've talked to aren't aware of. I've coined a term for that distinction… it is the difference between internal and external frames. INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL FRAMES The reason why you have to frame sexuality in a positive light is simple - most people ALREADY have default frames about sex in their minds, and these frames usually come from society or religion, and are therefore often negative. However, there are two TYPES of negative frames a girl might have about sex - internal and external ones. External frames are those imposed by society that she doesn't like. Sexual framing gets around those. I've had TWO virgins come over to my place, explicitly for nothing but casual sex (!), because I out-framed the negative ideas their teachers and priests had put into their minds… these girls WANTED to be naughty. I once picked up a girl who was on her way to church, bible in-hand, and slept with her on the first date. She talked about Jesus before we got down to the action, but I was easily able to out-frame these ideas because she didn't LIKE the limitations her priest had set her. The basic idea of sexual framing is FREEING HER from the limitations society has imposed on her and her sexual expression. Internal frames, on the other hand, are those (in this case negative) beliefs about sex that a girl actually LIKES. This one is a tall hurdle. It would take more than a few hours (probably months) to exert big enough an influence to undo someone's core beliefs. I've once had a former "friend with benefits" that I hadn't slept with in a year get back in touch with me, and she plain refused to sleep with me the first time we met again… "Because it's the 1st date again, and I don't do that... next time." She knew it would have been okay… after all, we'd had sex before. But, she didn't WANT to hook up the first night... it was an INTERNAL frame. There are also girls who consider religion more important than anything else in life… and if she is truly convinced that she will go to hell if she sleeps with you before you guys get married, chances are… it won't happen. MEN WHO DON'T LIKE SEX Let's look at a male counter example of an internal sexual frame. Just like some girls are simply not open to the idea of hooking up the first night, no matter what kinds of frames you set, there are also guys who are simply not open to the idea of a monogamous relationship (I am one of those guys). I'm not against exclusivity because of something someone once told me… it is not an external frame for me. Rather, it is a life style choice I have made because I value my freedom and independence more than I value the certainty that a girl I'm dating isn't seeing any other men. This is an internal frame I have… and no girl could ever frame me into exclusivity with verbal jiu-jitsu, and much less in 3-4 hours. Another counter example are men who have spiritual beliefs that lead them to have bad frames about sex. That's right… guys who don't want to have sex… absurd as that may sound. In fact, I used to be one of them… a couple of years ago, I was on a really spiritual "trip" for a while and stayed sexually abstinent. During that time, I ended up having two girls naked in front of me, begging to be f***ed, and I didn't do the honor… I had negative INTERNAL frames about sex at the time, and I know the girls couldn't have out-framed them… these frames WERE no external limitation I needed to be freed from, but an INTERNAL belief… what's more, they were an internal belief that was probably at identity level at the time, and you can't change identity level beliefs without tackling changing someone's identity at the same time - and THAT'S a tall order, no matter how you cut it. sexual frame MARRIAGE AND FRAMING Now, the biggest proponents of framing always cite the example of marriage as proof of its power, and to show how irrelevant a woman's objections to a sexual encounter really are. After all, what objection to short time frame sex would be more real and solid than that of her being married? She's risking a divorce, plus a host of social and financial repercussions, should she get caught. The distinction between internal and external frames solves this mystery… her objections to cheating on her husband are EXTERNAL frames. If she's been married for a while, she's probably not as attracted to her partner anymore as she used to be (see the post on the 2 Year Drop). The limitation of her freedom to experience an adventure and hook up with a new man are EXTERNAL barriers, imposed on her by society… barriers that she WANTS to be freed from, because she is no longer in love with her husband. And if she's tipsy and just had a fight with him, then all bets are off… On the other hand, if she just got married last week and is still madly in love with her husband, then her marriage is an INTERNAL obstacle to hooking up with you… it's nothing she wants to be freed from, and your framing is not going to have much of an effect. CONCLUSION The sexual frame is VERY powerful… and it is THE most important instrument in my tool box. And, you should always ASSUME that any objections she might have to sexuality are EXTERNAL frames. Ignore negative frames she might set (don't even debate them), and instead free her from society's limitations with the frames YOU set. However, if you run into a girl that you can't get agreement on a sexual frame with, don't berate yourself too much either… some people have a very conservative world view and hold on to it very tightly… you don't need to beat your head against the wall. There is another girl around the corner who looks just like her, but who's a lot more open minded. HOW TO LAY "INTERNAL FRAME GIRLS" Internal Frame girls can be laid as well… the only difference is, their seductions are harder to ACCELERATE. With an internal frame girl, you simply have to go at her speed… If you keep pushing frames on her, you're just amplifying her resistance. And if you escalate too fast physically and beyond what she's comfortable with, you risk hitting a brick wall and ending up with a girl who won't pick up the phone when you call. You should probably make this experience a couple of times, simply to find out how far you can go… if you've never hit the limits of what's possible, you have no way of knowing what these limits actually are. After experimenting with this sort of "over-escalation" for a while, though, tone it back a bit… and especially if she's an internal frame girl who doesn't buy into your liberal ideas about sexuality, lean back and take it at her speed if you really want her. That should really never mean more than three dates… if she still isn't willing to hook up with you after that, she's either not that into you, or psychologically damaged, or more conservative than you probably want to deal with… …but don't be too upset if things don't always happen the first night. They usually do, once you have your fundamentals handled and your process down… but not always. And in some cases, a hands-off second date will make her comfortable enough to let the clothes come flying off the third time you meet up. You see, the great distinction is that with external-frame chicks, you can constantly imply subtly (or not so subtly, depending on the vibe you have with her) that "I'm going to fuck you before this night is through"… and as long as you set the right frames, that's going to fly. You still do need to set the sexual frames with internal-frame girls too though, but you don't want to debate them on these frames at all. Eventually, you'll get them both. The world is yours, chico.

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##How to Use Social Proof to Get Girls I'm taking a week off from writing a Tactics Tuesdays post to write another post that is, I suspect, long overdue: a post on social proof. It isn't something we talk much about on here, nor one that I think you want to devote an inordinate amount of your time or attention to. Yet, it is one that, used properly, can be an absolutely incredibly powerful tool for picking up girls and for changing the minds of the ones you already know. I'll go into some example below of just what social proof is, how you can use it, and why you don't want to miss using this potent and effective tool, both for lifestyle design and for using in your own pick ups on the fly - whether you've got friends around or not. Onward... WHAT IS SOCIAL PROOF? Imagine you wake up in a foreign town in some exotic locale with no idea where you are or how you got there. Your stomach is rumbling and you feel hungry... but it's dirty and impoverished here, and you're not even sure what there is to eat. You walk outside the dingy hotel room you woke up in, and look around. Across the street are two equally-run down-looking restaurants, except that one is full of people, and the other one doesn't have a soul inside. Which one do you go try to get a meal at? This is an extreme example, but it's an example chosen to highlight one concept: social proof. Wikipedia defines social proof thus: "Social proof... is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation." It goes on to note that this effect is most pronounced in uncertain situations where the correct course is not easy to determine, and therefore is determined by looking at what other people do. Thus, our restaurant example above. You're in an unfamiliar situation, with an unfamiliar place, with unknown safety of the food, but you're hungry and you want to eat. Which place do you eat at? The place with all the people. After all, there's got to be a good reason they're all there and nobody's at the other place, right? Social proof comes into play in a surprising number of places in our life, including: What products we choose to buy What companies we do business with Where we decide to go to school Where we want to work Whom we want to date How we decide to spend our free time What we think is "cool" and "not cool" If you're just out of high school and you surround yourself with a lot of people who think college is for losers, you're less likely to go (this happens in many poor parts of the U.S. and inner cities, where people going to college are often called "soft" or "sell outs"). Surround yourself with a bunch of people who think college is THE way to a successful and happy life, and you're more likely to go. Not rocket science, right? When we have decisions to make that include managing a large amount of uncertainty, particularly with decisions that possibly lead to great investment and have a lot of importance down the road, we often fall back on relying on others to help us feel we're making the correct and "safe" choice. How do you know how college will impact your life before you go? How hard will it be? What kind of job will you get? How long will it take to pay off your student loans? What will your friends think of you? Your family? Will you be freer because of it, or less free? There's a lot of uncertainty, so most of us are influenced by those around us. If everyone around you tells you college is a waste of time, you know it's better not to go. If everyone around you tells you college is the path to success, you know it's better to go. And just like with going to college, or buying a car, or choosing which toothpaste you want to brush your teeth with, or which guy you want to be friends with, social proof can affect you a great deal when it comes to mate selection - and this is especially true for women. Remember, women are the choosers when it comes to sex (really... how frequently have you turned random women down for sex?). Even for men who are celebrities - who are, essentially, walking, talking testaments to social proof - it's not that they are carefully "choosing" women (remember, they're amounting thousands of women slept with - they're not choosing anywhere nearly as careful as most women are), it's that they're just far advantaged over the average man of getting chosen. A woman looks at a guy with celebrity and her brain begins saying: "Oh! I know him... he's on TV! Which means he's wealthy and successful. It also means a lot of women want him all over our society. If I could have him, I'd have Grade A genetic material to mix with my own and create powerful, successful offspring, and sons who would spread my genes more effectively with other women." And men get upset and look down on women for responding this way to celebrities, or men comfort themselves by saying, "Well, that might be true for OTHER women, but it definitely isn't true for MY woman!" and women get upset and say, "Sure, OTHER women go crazy for celebrities because they're SLUTS, but *I* would never do that!" Yet, celebrities never seem to run into trouble finding women. It must be all those OTHER women... you know, the ones that nobody actually knows. Fact is, social proof is one of the most powerful determinants - if not THE most powerful determinant - of a woman's attraction for a man. Early on, later on, and after decades of marriage. If you're like a lot of people this is upsetting to read. Why would women be so subject to the fortunes of social status - to the whims of those around them? For that, we need to take a look at just how uncertain things are in the mating game for women. TALK IS CHEAP social proofOne of the principals I found to be true as I bettered myself at getting girls over the years was that the more I taught myself to rely on nonverbal communication and the less I talked, the more attracted to me women became and the more sexually exciting they found me. And actually, this makes a lot of sense. Think about words, for instance. Think of a commercial for a new kind of soda with an announcer who launches into a whole spiel about the qualities of the new soda. "It's tasty!" he tells you. "It's bubbly! It's better than anything else on the market! Try it today, don't delay!" Now imagine another commercial, showing the new soda. A really cool party is going on, with lots of cool-looking guys and beautiful girls dancing up and down having the times of their lives, with that soda in their hands. At the end of the commercial, you just see the message: "A new kind of cola." Which soda do you think people watching those commercials are more likely to pick up a bottle of the next time they see it in the supermarket? Right - it's the cool, intriguing newcomer, not the verbose one that sings its own praises. But why's this so? Well, it's because of social proof. Even for something as simple as a new soda - your brain is thinking, "Man, I really like Coke / Pepsi / A&D. Do I really want to try some new soda instead of going for the one I already love?" And your emotions are a lot more likely to kick in and say, "Okay, you know what? Let's try that new soda. It seems cool," for the one that your brain's already had some reinforcement that the new soda is the "cool" soda. This is advertising. It's why advertising is so powerful. It's why now on this site you'll see a Facebook fans box and a client testimonials slider. It's why the new home page is focused on building trust. It's all social proof - so that when somebody hits this site for the first time, it isn't, "Oh, who are these guys?" but rather, "Okay, it looks like they've been around for a while and people like them." You can say whatever you want, but people don't listen. And that's because you can't trust what someone says. I've got the Mastery Pick Up Package for sale on the site now with the book, video, and audio - what I think is a complete set to really get your game in gear and get you results with women. But are you going to be more likely to make that purchase if I tell you how great the program I'm selling is... or if three of your friends come up to and tell you, "Whoa, this stuff is taking my game to another level!" Right. It's the latter. Social proof. IT WORKS. And it's HUGELY significant. Way more important than anything you can say. And that's because mate selection is an inherently uncertain process - how does she know if you're better or lower quality than that other guy over there? By relying on how other people are reacting to you and treating you, she's effectively expanding the decision-making beyond herself and tapping into other people's perceptions and ideas about you to make her choice. If all of them like you, she assumes, you can't be all bad... and in fact might even be quite good. But if social proof is so effective, why don't I talk about it more on here? A QUESTION OF FOCUS What would you say if I told you, "Want a guaranteed way to be up to your eyeballs in beautiful, lustful women? Become a celebrity?" You'd probably roll your eyes and ask me for something more realistic. But there ARE people who become celebrities... it's NOT unrealistic advice. If you put the time in, you can probably figure out SOMETHING you can make yourself a celebrity with. The reason I don't give that advice on here though, and by extension the reason I don't give social proof advice, is because I have a personal philosophy of teaching guys mostly things that are adaptable on the fly and can be used anywhere. And social proof is one of those things you can't just conjure up out of thin air. I mean... there are ways to do it. But often it's more effective to simply target a girl you like who likes you too, meet her, and get out of there with her. Faster. Simpler. Less risk and random variation. Yet, if you're willing to make a concerted effort on social proof, you can make it pay a great deal of dividends. Ricardus, at one point, built himself a social circle where he was constantly involved in the goings ons of some very popular and well-known people who were constantly in nightclubs, in the VIP section, with constant turnover of new and beautiful women. This wasn't an easy thing for him to put together, but once he had it, he had a steady, nearly bottomless supply of beautiful, fashionable women who were turning their noses up at most of the male clientele of the club but were very routinely falling into his arms due largely to the social proof he'd constructed for himself. Not easy to build. But once it's built, then it's easy. Sort of like building a business that generates a lot of revenues... often very challenging and time-consuming to put together, and filled with a lot of trial and error, but once it's built, you can run on autopilot and get far better returns than people slaving away pulling their hair out who haven't put the time into building something like that. That's one of the most powerful ways of building social proof. That's sculpting a lifestyle for yourself that brings you the things you want (whether that's money, women, or something else). But what about for the average guy who doesn't have that the time, energy, or desire to build a killer social circle like the one Ricardus had? How can he use social proof? SOCIAL PROOF: THE MAGIC BULLET? In everything remotely challenging in life, people search constantly for magic bullets. "How can I get rich quick?" people will ask. "How can I get that girl I want right now?" other people will say. "How can I get my promotion this week instead of this year?" Social proof might well be one of those magic bullets. I had a realization early into my second year of actively working on learning how to pick up a girl: I realized that there'd been a weird trend I'd seen with a number of the girls I'd picked up the most easily. There was the time I went into a club that had just opened, talked to a beautiful blonde girl who got really excited talking to me, then left saying she hoped she'd see me later, and then I immediately had a tall, stunning Caribbean girl saunter up and park herself next to me on the empty bar - I took her home an hour later or so There was the time I was out teaching a boot camp and met up with three students near the end of the night, and stood there animatedly teaching them and answering questions from them, only to notice a slender tan-skinned beauty standing there looking straight at me. I asked the students to step aside, walked up to her, and 5 minutes later we were sitting on a couch, 20 minutes later we were making out (she asked me if she could kiss me), and a few minutes after that we went back to my friend's apartment nearby There was the time I wandered in off the dance floor, fresh from dancing (this was back in the days when I still did dance floor game) with some people, a big smile on my face, and ran smack into a girl who seemed like she'd been watching me from afar. I took her home a few hours later There was the time I'd been out at the club with a guy who was a DJ there and was getting us surrounded with club staff and beautiful girls, and I met a beautiful and energetic girl who was very happy to meet me and whom I was in the process of picking up when her male friend interrupted us. I still ended up with her later on and turned her into my girlfriend ... and countless more. And this was only drawing on experience from my first year of picking up. Since then, I've had many more examples like this. You don't have to have social proof. I've picked up girls where they were the first person I talked to in the entire venue. It just helps, is all. HOW TO USE SOCIAL PROOF (TO GET GIRLS) Okay, okay, you're sold on social proof... it seems like an idea that might have some merit. How in tarnation do you employ it in your own outings, though? Three ways: Let girls see you with other girls / friends Work the room (be a social butterfly) Build somewhere you're "known" Let's look at each: Let Girls See You with People There are, in my estimation, a number of "tiers" of people women can see you with. Here they are, in order of most alluring to least: A group of attractive / young women following or watching you You with multiple attractive / young women doting on you A group of attractive / young mixed or men following or watching you You with a single attractive / young woman doting on you You with a very cool-looking buddy hanging out and having a good time You with friends, having a good time That last one includes if you're just another guy hanging out in a rock star's VIP party. You get some spillover effect from him, but he gets most of the attention. social proof If you look over that list, you'll notice a few important distinctions: How people are acting towards you is paramount. Women naturally notice the guy getting all the attention. I've seen this again and again when out with female friends; they invariably notice the guy that everyone else in the group next to us is treating like the leader, and who is acting like he has "rights" to the hottest girl in the group. "Who's that guy? He looks interesting," my female friends will say. The funny thing is, this guy is just as likely to be a car mechanic as he is an investment banker or a Hollywood celebrity. In the club, people don't care what your job is. They just care about who's clearly on top of his or her social hierarchy. For attraction purposes, in social circles, and when it comes to social proof, it really is better to be the alpha male. You are rated by the people around you. Think women will be as intrigued by you if you're hanging out with a pair of 40 year old cougars than they will if you're hanging out with a pair of 20 year old foxes? Guess again. The same goes for your friends - if you're spending time with your old frat buddy in his stained t-shirt and beer belly you're going to get a different vote than if you're hanging out with a guy in a Gucci suit with a stylish haircut. Fans are better than friends. This is related to point #1 - if you have fans, you're clearly at a high level of the social hierarchy, and thus get a lot more points in the mating game. There was a club promoter in London a few years back who made a name for himself in the pick up community by making it his signature method that he'd go out, find 10 or 20 beautiful girls during the day to invite to come with him to the club, and then he'd take them there that night as an entourage and use this to attract other women. This also creates a boon to pick up instructors - women see you with men gathered around you, hanging on your every word, and you instantly become a minor celebrity to them. It's strange - I've picked up many of the times I've taught guys boot camps, and the girls are often pretty aggressive, but they never ask why I had other men gathered around me - I don't think it even registers consciously, it seems like an entirely subconscious assessment of mating value, similar to how you don't realize Coca-Cola's advertising has worked to make you think Coca-Cola is cool, you just do (in blind taste tests, people clearly prefer Pepsi to Coke; but when you tell people what they're drinking, they clearly prefer Coke to Pepsi. How's that for the power of advertising?). That last point of that last point is a significant one - girls don't care and usually don't ask who the other people are you had around you. I don't think I've ever had a girl ask me, "Who was she?" after I'd approached (or been approached by, in the instances where I'd get approached) a girl immediately after I know she'd seen me talking to another girl. They never ask. Yet, it greatly influences their perception of you. How can you engineer this? Well, in lieu of becoming an outright celebrity (or building an entourage like that club promoter), you can talk to girls near other girls you want to meet. It's better to be a sexy man than it is to be an exciting, entertaining one. But you can get other girls really excited about you and have them put on a brief show... then roll in, smooth and sexy, with the girl you wanted to meet nearby. In fact, I've used this one a good number of times. If you see a girl you'd really like to get to know, but she looks closed off or she's with a lot of friends, try this: find another girl, nearby, and get into a very excited and animated discussion with her... ideally, she should be a lot more excited than you are. Then, once a few minutes have passed and you're certain that girl you want to meet has seen, make a graceful exit and go meet that girl you'd like to meet. Sound complicated? It's not. All it is is: See a girl you like but will be hard to meet or closed off Find another girl closer to her you can say "hi" to and get excited Roll off that girl after a few minutes and then meet that girl you wanted to meet It's not 100%, but the open rates and initial attraction rates you'll get on this one are a lot higher than you'd get normally without it. Social proof. Work the Room (Be a Social Butterfly) The next path on our list is the path of the social butterfly. The social butterfly's path is one that is fraught with peril... namely because it's too easy to fall into high energy, entertainer mode. However... if you can walk the balance between being high energy as you work the room, and switching into low energy seducer mode before (not after) you meet girls, you'll be okay. Here's how it works: You start meeting people right away and building social momentum The more people you meet, the more people want to meet you because everyone else is Women start to see you as a really high status guy - "Does he manage this club?" Women start to want to meet you and get intrigued Meet women, and things go quickly and easily Here's what you need to keep in mind: You must KEEP MOVING until you find a girl you really like. It's easy for momentum to die if you get stuck talking to someone too long... this is one of the hazards of social butterflying (losing momentum). You must STOP MOVING when you find a girl you really like. It's also easy to build so much momentum that you can't stop moving, even when you meet a really charming girl who clearly digs you. This is the other hazard of social butterflying - you've got to be able to put on the brakes and get into a real conversation when you find a gal you like. Don't lose focus. And that's it. If you keep moving, socializing with anyone and everyone, until you meet a girl you like who likes you back and you THROW ON THE BRAKES, you'll have utilized social proof in the social butterfly path and pulled it off. And she will, most likely, be thrilled you chose her. Build Somewhere You're "Known" This is, essentially, building equity into your nightlife. To do this, you need to get familiar with both staff and regulars in a place you like. Be careful selecting your venues - you don't want to sink a lot of time into a bar or club that's going to be difficult to get returns out of. What you're looking for is: A place with high turnover (lots of new women) A place women go to meet new people (as opposed to dance, or hang with friends) A place that has ample places to take women to go sit and connect at Ideally, somewhere with multiple floors so you can change venues in venue Once you've found it, the process is simple: Go there a lot and meet people Go on off days and go early so you can make conversation with non-busy staff Get comfortable with the place and explore every aspect of it With a little time, you'll come to know the people there, and you'll come to know the patterns. You'll know that the doors open at 9, the first people show up at 10, the place doesn't start getting busy until 11, everyone starts shifting into hard party mode around 12, and all the women have gone home to escape from the drunks by 1:30. Once girls are seeing you lounging around and talking with staff and other patrons like a fixture of the place, they'll come to view you as "connected," and thus (in that environment, at least... and social proof is all environmental, rather than absolute) higher status and more desirable. Then all you've got to do is go say "hi." WHEN SHOULD YOU USE IT? I rarely make social proof a concerted part of my efforts to meet women, simply because it's time consuming and sometimes difficult to control. I'll capitalize on it when it brings me opportunities, but I won't actively seek it out. However, I am a big believer in building equity into your social life. Most of the men I've known who've done the best with women have constructed opportunities for themselves to meet a lot of women, constantly, just like what Ricardus did with that circle he integrated with. This was the gist of the post "How to Use Your Job to Meet Women" - build it into your lifestyle and you'll be amazed how something like meeting beautiful women goes from challenging to easy nearly overnight. I'll also use it in a pinch - as mentioned above where I talk about using social proof to "warm up" a girl who otherwise would be difficult to open before I go up to her. I'll also use it in high target, low receptivity instances - e.g., a massive club or party with lots of women to meet but who are mostly closed off to meeting new people for one reason or another. Then it's time to go be a butterfly and meet lots of people until you meet a girl you like who likes you back. Really, this comes down to preference. How do you want to use social proof? How can you build it into your life that it helps you and / or provides repeated dividends? social proof Social proof can be a powerful friend and ally in meeting new women - even ones you'd ordinarily have a tough time getting to know. Because it helps women make a decision in your favor in a very uncertain decision-making process, it clears a lot of the "haze" away from figuring out whether you're of the caliber they want... or not. It doesn't need to be a necessary part of your repertoire. But it should be one you know you have available, there to be used when needed.

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##Invite Her Home Guys go out for different reasons. I find that one of the most common ones, particularly for men new to meeting women on the street, at bars, at clubs, at bookstores and coffee shops, is to "work on their game". Totally understandable. It's where I started out at. And, especially in the beginning, you have a lot of basic stuff you're trying to get down and specific traits you're looking to iron out and make a regular part of who you are and the way you interact with women. However, there comes a time when "working on your game" is no longer a valid reason for going out and meeting girls. It could be when you realize that talking to girls is no longer scary and intimidating. It could be when you discover that most girls now react pretty well to you. It could be when you have girls flirting hard with you now every now and again. At that point, once you've realized that you still want to work on your game without having "working on your game" as your primary focus (because it no longer intrigues you), it's now time for you to set a new objective for yourself. One I find very useful is "bring a girl home." invite her home It's intimidating to think, "Okay, I've got to go talk to a girl and I hope she likes me." When talking to a girl to get you to like you is your objective, you'll have a lot of anxiety. However, when talking to a girl to get her to *come home* with you is your objective -- well, it tends to be pretty exciting. Here's why: when you're at the point where you can realistically tell yourself, "I'm going to try and bring a girl home tonight, and if I meet enough girls and try to get some to come with me, I stand a good chance of finding a girl who'll come with me," you'll be energized and will work harder. Then the goal is no longer the vague goal of working on game, but actually the very SPECIFIC goal of taking a girl (or girls) home. And it's easier than it sounds. A lot of guys build it up to this big thing in their heads. "Oh no, I've got to bring a girl home… how on EARTH am I going to do that?" they think. But I've taken girls home that I spent less than five minutes talking to. Wow, sounds amazing, right? It's not. It doesn't take some incredible level of game to get there. All it takes is the ability to PROPOSE it and FOLLOW THROUGH. That means, you're talking to a girl and you can tell she likes you. You're moving fast maybe -- there are lots of girls and you want to keep moving. But you like this one and don't want to dawdle. So what do you do? You say, "Hey, let's party." She asks what that means; you tell her. "Let's go somewhere more fun than this; somewhere with good music and cheap drinks." She asks you where; you refuse to say specifically. "It's five minutes away; you'll love it. Let's go." You insist again and again until she agrees. She continues to ask where as you head to your car or her car or to hail a cab; you just deflect and keep the conversation moving fluidly. Take her home, pop on some tunes, pour a drink. Give her a massage if you need to, or go straight into making out. Scoop her up in your arms and kiss her deeply. You can talk to her at the bar or lounge for five minutes or fifty minutes; it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you read her body language and know she's into it. Preferably, you've built up compliance by having her do things for you, so now she's ready to take the plunge and REALLY follow your lead. But I've brought girls back quickly who've never done anything for me yet and I really didn't think WOULD come with me. I just proposed and insisted, and they agreed; I was SURPRISED they came home so quickly and readily, but they did. It's like the old saying, if you stand at a bus stop and ask 100 women to come have sex with you, one of them is bound to say, "Hmm… ok." But when you're combining that with good game, charisma, and a good / disarming look and persona, you'll up your percentage a good bit. Being able to pick out the girls who are looking for it helps, and being able to disarm objections on the fly helps as well. But ultimately, it comes down to proposing it and following through. Those who don't ask for it, don't get it. Keep that in mind. You can kind of boil seduction down to that. There are the guys who ask for it, and the guys who don't. Girls are the followers, not the leaders. They're waiting to be led. So it's always the guy who will step up and lead who gets the girl. Next time you go out, and you're not sure what exactly you're doing, or what you want to do, try this: tell yourself you're going to keep talking to girls until you find one to come home with you. You'll be surprised at what you learn and some of the crazy adventures you get out of it.

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##Knowing When to Break Up with a Girl break up with a girlBreaking up with a girl is quite often one of the toughest things you'll do. It involves cleaving yourself from someone else you've likely grown quite close to, and have quite possibly been with for a long time and shared a lot of experiences with. It's often said that the end of a long-term relationship can have the same emotional impact on someone as the death of a loved one. It can be that strong. So it's no wonder that most people have a really hard time breaking up -- and that relationships frequently limp on long after they should've finished. Instead, people wait, and put the decision off, hoping that somehow, it'll just take care of itself. It never does, of course. What I'm going to talk about with you today, then, is how you recognize the signs that it's time for you to break up with a girl. RELATIONSHIPS: THE PATH FROM GREAT TO GHASTLY I'll start off by saying this: relationships almost always end poorly. Unless the two of you get hitched and stay hitched until the day one of you dies, your relationships with women are always going to flame out in fire and agony when they end, typically. And they tend to go one of two ways: The man does the breaking up. His now ex-girlfriend gets upset and needy and pleas ("We can make it work!") begging him to reconsider and not dump her. The woman does the breaking up. Her now ex-boyfriend gets upset and needy and pleas ("We can make it work!") begging her to reconsider and not dump him. That's pretty much how it goes. One person does the breaking up, and the other one struggles to hold on. The funny thing is, the relationship can clearly be on its way out, and the person being broken up with would be much happier out of the relationship, but he or she will fight to save it anyway (often only to do the breaking up him or herself a little later on if the save is then successful). We'll talk about why this happens in a little bit. Before we do, I want to spend a little time talking about the signs that your relationship is failing, so you know when to break up with a girl. So, a guy I learned some from and corresponded with a bit in the past used to say, "New love is true love." And it really, really is. Think how passionate, wild, and blissful things have been at the start of any of the relationships you've had, and you know what I'm talking about. The best part of a relationship is the first 90 days, when the passion is young and the two of you are still exploring each other and learning about each other and it all feels so exciting and uncertain and fresh. Then comes acclimation, and with it commences the point of the relationship where women change men -- or at least try to. They try to tame men and tie them down into more committed relationships. Usually somewhere in here, either the problems with women and drama become too great and things end, or, alternatively, men start to buckle and give in to women's demands and they pass the commitment point and their woman start losing respect for them and both parties become increasingly unfulfilled in the relationship. In other words, for all men except those who've honed their relationship management skills to a razor edge, relationships either flame out because the man refuses to be tamed, or they fizzle out because the man complies. We're going to cover both of these scenarios in this article pretty extensively, so that no matter what point you're at with a girl, you'll know how to read the signs it's time for things to end. I'll divide them into two varieties: untamed (the man who staunchly maintains his independence) and tamed (the man who sacrifices freedom in exchange for perceived peace and stability). Each man has a somewhat road to breaking up -- but the signs that the end is near, quite often, are the same. break up with a girl WHEN TO BREAK UP WITH A GIRL Because his is rather less pleasant than the untamed man's break up process, let's look at how things go for the domesticated man. By tamed or domesticated, I'm referring to a man who's allowed his woman to "break" him; he does what she asks him to, bends or breaks his rules and schedules to comply with her, and frequently and consistently supplicates to women. Most men fall into this kind of relationship, so don't be too embarrassed if you've realized that's where you are. Women actively work to domesticate men -- the compulsion to do so stems from a very deep drive for security that all people, and particularly all women, possess -- and without active preventative tactics, it's pretty much impossible for a man to avoid this unless he has a really dynamic, activity-filled life. A brief illustration of the tamed man's relationship progression: Beginning (blissful) break up with a girl Taming (fraught) break up with a girl Boredom (grinding) break up with a girl End (painful) The relationship starts off the same way most do, with happiness, fun, contentment, and often even bliss. This is the "new love is true love" part. Next comes the taming. That's when women begin to push men for more and more concessions; they want their boyfriends to stop going out on boys' nights out; stop seeing their friends; stop doing things without them; see them more often, do more for them, and invest an ever-increasing amount in them and their relationship. Once a woman's tamed her boyfriend or husband though, the challenge dries up, and with it goes the excitement. Suddenly, things become boring, unchallenging, and predictable with him, and she begins to long for the excitement of early in the relationship... before she'd tamed him. Finally, after growing increasingly bored and annoyed, she'll begin to long for freedom again, and either ends the relationship then and there, or ends up sleeping with another, more exciting man, which often precipitates the end of the relationship on its own. Generally speaking, as a tamed man in the end stage of your relationship, you'll want to break up once you start seeing these signs often enough: Coldness. She's cold, aloof, and disinterested in her lover. She acts as though he's an annoyance and that he's wasting her time or is otherwise not worth being around very much. Disrespect. Signs of disrespect include failing to comply when her lover gives her a request or a command; insulting him; explicitly doing things she knows he does not like; and talking bad about him to friends and others. Negligence. Things like failing to make her lover food, to take care of him, to be affectionate and loving, to be warm and feminine. Disappearances. When she's disappearing and her lover isn't completely sure where she's going, it's a very bad sign. Evasiveness. Particularly regarding where she's going and whom she's spending her time with. If her man can tell she's uncomfortable answering, it's because it's something she doesn't want him to know about because she knows he won't like it. Partying separately. This one's probably the clearest sign that the end is near a man can get. If a woman's partying without him, it isn't because she just likes hanging out with the girls and it's special girl time or something. Why do people cheat? It's because of opportunity. And going into a party location with booze and horny men and girlfriends who will egg you on is about as great an opportunity to stray from a relationship as there can possibly be. When a woman is partying without her boyfriend, he needs to break up with her. Even if her intentions aren't to find another man, sooner or later, no matter how vigilant she usually is, she'll be angry at him or she'll be a little too drunk or the perfect man will come along -- and she will stray. And once she's strayed, the relationship will have been forever tarnished -- and her ability to respect him and treat him as a man she looks up to, admires, and feels passion and devotion for will have been forever lost. Once a man starts seeing these signs, it's time to end the relationship. Is it possible to save things? Perhaps. But, as a teacher of mine put it a long time ago, relationships are like a clay pot: they're soft and moldable at the outset, but then they set and harden. And once they've hardened, you can't shape them anymore. Continuing with that same analogy, you can seal up a crack in a vase like you can seal up a crack in a relationship, but the crack will always be there and it will always be a weakness. If you want a strong, beautiful vase (or relationship), your best bet is to get some new clay (a new girl) and start over from scratch -- and this time, do things right. So if you ask me, once you start seeing the signs that a relationship is failing -- yes, I know it's hard to break up. You've invested a great deal of time in one another; if you're anywhere other than in absolute abundance mentality, you're going to fear that maybe you'll never find such a great girl again. But if you're improving yourself all the time -- looks, fashion sense, fundamentals, conversational ability, sensuality, all that jazz -- you will. It's only the men who fail to advance themselves who don't. Now, how about for the untamed man? Well, the untamed man has a relatively shorter relationship progression cycle. His goes like this: Beginning (blissful) break up with a girl Taming attempts (annoying) break up with a girl End (relieving) His is so much shorter because once the woman starts trying to tame him, he gets annoyed at the constant drama, and, typically, ends the relationship himself without the problems tamed men encounter. However, the untamed man can also struggle through the taming attempts, resisting them and countering them, and eventually he ends up encountering the same cold withdrawal-style behavior when his girlfriend realizes she can't get what she wants from him, though for different reasons. Women get cold as they bore of the tamed man and resent him for relinquishing his ability to attract them, but they enter auto-rejection with untamed men for being unable to get the kind of capitulation they were working for. The end results look the same on the surface -- all those signs that it's time to break up with a girl we went over -- though the flavor is different: bored women with tamed men are dismissive and annoyed with their men, while auto-rejecting with untamed men are vengeful and angry with their men. The moral of the story is, keep your finger on the pulse of your relationship. When you catch some of these signs early -- a little coldness here, a little disrespect there, some negligence -- it isn't too late to save things. Check out the post on growth in relationships for more on how to turn things around before it's too late. Typically though, once you've gotten enough of these signs, it's time to be honest with yourself and be honest with your girl and admit that neither of you is happy any longer and it's time for things to end. It's a tough process to go through, but once it's done you'll both be glad it's ended and you can move on to pursue something that really makes you happy.

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##The Law of Least Effort I've been mentioning it for a while on here, but a friend pointed out to me recently that I have yet to actually flesh out something I've been referring to as the Law of Effort; henceforth referred to as the Law of Least Effort for reasons of clarity. When I say the Law of Least Effort, what I'm referring to is a very simple, but very universal and little-understood, social rule common to all forms of socializing (not limited to courtship and seduction by any means, though certainly of substantial importance there as well, perhaps especially so). Basically, that the person who appears to put the least amount of effort out, while getting the largest amount of effort returned to him by others, comes across as the most socially powerful. Note the italics around the word "appears" in that bolded section of the second paragraph. We aren't necessarily talking about the person who is actually, literallytrying the least, but rather the person who is able to accomplish the most with the appearance of putting in the least amount of work. Appearance. It's all appearance. Or, half appearance, half results. The appearance part is how much effort you're expending; the actual-results part is what you actually get from others. Think back to the Hard Push. That's the nickname I've given to the kind of persistence I talked about in Don't Let Her Go. It's basically talking a girl out of leaving (or, alternatively, into coming with you). If you were to watch me, or anyone who does this with any degree of expertise, persuade a woman who was about to leave to instead stay, it would look like very little effort was involved. All the guy persisting did was tell his girl four or five times not to go, give her another reason to stick around each time, in a very laidback, relaxed tone, and she stuck around. Here's the rub, though: as effortless as it sounds, now ask a guy who's never done that before how hard he might find it to do. For most men, this is so outside their experience and worldview and seems so hard to them that it isn't even something they'd consider trying. But, the appearance is that the man who persisted in a relaxed manner andsucceeded achieved a great deal with very little expended effort. And because of that, he looks quite powerful: he achieved a lot while hardly lifting a finger. That's the appearance. Think of every single man you have ever considered cool. Some of them may have been tall guys; some of the may have been short guys; they may have been fat guys, skinny guys, old guys, young guys, white guys, black guys, Asian guys, and everything in between. A colossal variety of guys, all with different personalities, and probably with only one thing in common amongst the lot of them: every man you think of as "cool" subconsciously knows and obeys the Law of Least Effort. He does things that minimize the appearance of effort on his part, while maximizing his results. I personally have been (unconsciously) aware of the Law of Least Effort since seventh grade. That was the age that I began learning the art of making the things I wanted come to me. I did things like developing a sense of humor with a wit that appealed to both the students and the teachers, that made teachers like me more and work with me better, and students like me more and try to socialize with me more often. I dressed in cool, different clothing that attracted attention passively, without me having to actively do anything. I found ways of positioning myself around school so that pretty girls and cool kids would come into proximity with me, and I made myself an attractive enough, interesting enough individual that the most popular girls in school asked me out on dates, and the coolest kids in school asked me to go to their parties. If that wasn't some good, solid positive reinforcement for me back then on the power of the Law of Least Effort, I don't know what else could have been. The funny thing is, I was putting in a lot of work in those days. I was probably working harder at appearing effortless than anyone else was working at positioning themselves socially any other way. The reason it was such hard work, I see now in retrospect, is because I was learning an entirely new field: the art ofappearing effortless. When I first began studying seduction, it really threw me off, because the way I went about it in my early days, and the way I went about it after discovering the pickup community, was very clearly a high-effort endeavor. It was no doubt obvious to women, despite my years of honing my abilities at appearing effortless, that I was trying to meet girls. Take a look at most of what's taught in the seduction community. Opinion openers? There is no woman in a nightclub who really believes a man just had to know who lies more - men or women? She knows a guy who's walked up to her throwing an opinion opener at her is there to meet her, and is doing his song and dance to gradually win her over. Routines? They seem designed, in about 99 out of 100 cases, to impress and entertain. Fortunately, I learned fairly early on under a few really smart guys whose focus on investment as one of the pillars of attraction set me back on the course ofmaximizing the investment of the women in my life while minimizing theappearance of my own investment. Again, the word "appearance" is key there - oftentimes, I was spending a greater deal of time and mental effort and concern on women than perhaps any other companion they'd had before ever had, but I always made an effort to make my effort appear effortless. As you become increasingly familiar with investment and compliance, it pretty radically changes your worldview. You notice even small, subtle things - like how much of a woman's body is turned toward you, or how much of her mental energy and focus she is putting into a conversation with you - and calculate how much she's investing. You become hyper-aware of investment. As you become aware of investment more and more, you become more skilled atgetting it. Because as you improve you can get investment faster and easier, you necessarily begin to get it seemingly more effortlessly, as well, and very naturally increase your default level of "cool" stemming from others' perception of the balance of effort you're putting out and effort you're receiving back. A focus on investment, over time, makes you cool almost by default, because it indirectly teaches you the Law of Least Effort. I typically like to give a lot of practical, real world tips and suggestions and examples on how to use a technique I've written about, but the Law of Least Effort is rather different than the kind of thing you can immediately go out and start doing. Instead, it's something that should influence your thoughts and actions as you move through your interactions with others. "How can I get what I want while appearing as effortless as possible?" you might ask yourself. This is a great place to start, and a good launching pad for exploring the power of the Law of Least Effort. Some other good general tips: Find ways to maximize the positive attention you receive passively. This includes most fundamentals, like posture, nonverbals, and hair- and dress-styling. The more positive attention you receive from people without having to actively do anything to get it, the better. Find ways to maximize your level of visible comfort. You should always be the most comfortable person in the room. A good rule of thumb is, if you feelcomfortable, you look comfortable. The more comfortable you look, the more confident, strong, and effortless you appear. Find ways to minimize your level of investment. One reason I got myself very good at connecting with women rapidly was because once women feel a connection, they tend to be incredibly talkative - and talking, for me at least, is work. It's much easier to be the listener while someone else talks and talks - and if you're comfortable as you listen, you appear to be expending far less effort, while the woman you're speaking with does her best to impress and attract you. Get good at giving orders and commands in a very relaxed, low-effort way. When giving people orders or commands, you want to give those orders or commands in a voice that is both dominant and demanding, but also relaxed and calm. The more effortlessly you appear to state your demands, the more likely you are to get compliance with those demands. The Law of Least Effort is pervasive - you will find it everywhere, in just about everything. Learn it well, and begin applying it whenever you find yourself socializing. You'll be thrilled when you see it in action - appearing effortless is a critical part of being successful in dating, relationships, and all manner of courtship and social interactions. You'll love it - I promise.

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##The Legend of California Pimp, Part I I don't know if you've heard of the California Pimp before… but if you haven't, you're in for a life-changing read today. I almost hesitate to write this, because there is so much hype on the web these days… but there is simply no other way to put it. And if you HAVE heard of him before, this post will help you to emulate what he's doing. Emulate what now? Glad you asked. Sleeping with girls within MINUTES of meeting them, for example. In fact, the "CP" as his fans have come to call him, does this on the regular. That's right… it is VERY RARE that it takes him more than fifteen to twenty minutes to seduce a girl… meet to mate in minutes. And he has done this HUNDREDS of times. He has also video-taped every single one of these interactions, and uploaded them ALL on the web, for you to watch and learn (keep your hands where I can see them now!) Hard to believe? Stay with me here! You will NEVER see the world the same way. This one… is a true matrix-buster-paradigm-shifter-reality-crusher. He has 440 seductions caught on video tape on his website… and it was literally one of the biggest breakthroughs in my own game, as well as the game of my fellow instructors and our students… our results changed literally overnight. Yes… I know how that sounds… but just remember that I have nothing to sell to you here, and suspend your disbelief for just a few minutes. Check it out and then judge for yourself. CALIFORNIA PIMP PULLS 15-MINUTE LAYS!? california pimpWe discovered the California Pimp in 2007, when people started talking about him on a notorious private underground forum of Pickup Artists… and the first debate was, of course, is this even real? The answer is, yes - at least most of it. CP is a reality porn producer and probably the best natural anybody has ever heard of. One of our fellow instructors is friends with the guy and brought him to our attention. As it turns out, seducers were actually talking about him about a decade ago, but they thought it was fake… with dating science being more advanced now, people are taking him seriously, modeling his techniques and getting the same results as he is. BIKINI MODELS WANTED! The California Pimp runs an ad in the paper that says he's looking for models for a calendar shoot. The girls show up at his apartment and he seduces them within about 15 minutes… even if they seem skeptical at first. In fact, he gets rejected sometimes… but usually they get into it. He has a video camera running throughout the whole process… and it's just ridiculous to watch. In fact, ever since I started studying him, most of my lays happen as fast as I can get logistics handled, often in 15 to 60 minutes. Keep in mind that girls have a stronger sex drive than guys do… they just need the right guy, the right frame and the right mood. So one stormy night in 2008, just after finishing up a boot camp and seminar, a fellow instructor and I stayed up all night with some of our best students to watch these videos and break down what this Jedi is doing. Here's some of what we found. HIS STATE The California Pimp puts himself in a massive sexual state before he even opens the door. He has that anchored to stomping his feet and then he opens the door with a bang. And transferring his state onto the girl is obviously a big part of his method; I had written about that on the blog before - put yourself into the emotional state you want her to experience… because emotions are contagious. See the series on here about the X-Factor and how to pick up girls. The California Pimp himself actually talks about this state transfer, and he recommends an essay about personal magnetism that you can find online. It was written about a century ago by a guy named Theron Q. Dumont. The essay is public domain now, and is, according to the CP himself, the cornerstone of what he does... check it out here: Personal Magnetism HIS TONALITY He also leads the girls through a series of emotional states, by using his voice tone. Each time he talks to a girl, he starts out with a very warm, friendly and charismatic vibe… far from the disinterested and sedated vibe people used to teach at boot camps back in the day. He also uses long vowels and raises and lowers his voice tone for emotional impact. There are 7 ways in which he uses his tonality: Reassuring - He speaks in a way that makes her feel like everything is okay. He handles her nervousness brilliantly, makes her relax and open up… he tells her that she's safe by using words like "not a problem", "everything's cool", and so on. Confusion - He handles her objections by pretending to be confused about what she means Enthusiasm - When he shows interest or sexual desire in the girl, he does so with passion Dismissive - When she doesn't comply and he needs to do a takeaway, his voice tone can be quite aloof Laughter - He does this to break tension… but only to fractionate, before building yet more tension (I discussed fractionation in the article about why not to make a girl laugh too much) Sexual - As he starts escalating, he also begins to speak in an aroused tone and sexy voice and begins breathing heavily Horny - Taking the sexual vibe to the next level, he's acting like he's barely able to control himself… which is a very powerful little technique. There are few things that turn a woman on more than feeling like she is being desired and like she is having a sexual effect on a man that he is almost unable to resist. THE CALIFORNIA PIMP COMPLIANCE TEST The California Pimp also does a little snake-like movement with the camera... he moves in closer, just to read how she responds and to calibrate his next move accordingly. When he does this, she either flinches, in which case he backs off and goes back into reassurance… or she doesn't, in which case he moves forward and escalates further. HIS COMPLIANCE LADDER The goal of his compliance ladder is the face touch. Once she agrees to that, he can get the girls into a sexual state much faster with touch. States are also transferred more easily if there is physical touch involved. Here are the baby step commands he gives and that he walks the girls through one by one to build compliance momentum: Stand at the wall Put your feet together (sneaky… that also makes them feel less balanced) Smile Bend over Say this line COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY From Cialdini's excellent book "Influence" (must read, by the way!), we know that people are more likely to act in a way that is consistent with how they have acted in the past, or with something they have said in the past. That means that if you can get someone to act in a certain way once, they will be more likely to act that way again in the future. It also means that if you can get somebody to make a verbal commitment to something once, they will also be more likely to live up to that commitment. And so the California Pimp gets the girls to say that they are "naughty", "wild", or "a wild girl". The first time they say it, it's usually tentative… so he often tells them to repeat it, and to say it like they mean it. He also gets the girls to verbalize anything that he sees in her which will help to move things forward. Questions like "Why are your nipples hard" are money… he's calling out any sign of her interest that he can spot… which makes it more real in her mind, and also gets her to talk about it… hence strengthening it even further, and building that magic commitment and consistency in his favor. Or he'll grab his dick through his pants, just to make the girl look at his crotch and then accuse her of doing so… "What are you looking down there for?" Caught in the act! DEALING WITH RESISTANCE Of course it's never a completely smooth ride, and he always faces some resistance along the way. This is just normal female mating behavior… you can see that in all animal species on the discovery channel as well. Even if you take three dates to get a girl in bed and wine and dine her first, you will still encounter some resistance at some point. In fact, probably more so… So when she does protest at any point, he makes her repeat the objection, which automatically makes it weaker. "What's that?" or "Why is that?" are good wordings that he uses frequently, again applying his voice tone to strengthen the message… he really sounds genuinely confused. Then he stacks forward or get physical, for example by pulling her hair. When a girl asks a question, he simply says "I'll tell you all about it", and immediately starts talking about something else until she has forgotten the question. You can see politicians do that a lot… when a journalist asks a question that they don't want to answer, they move in the general direction of the question, then get on a tangent, ramble on about that and eventually ask for the next question - without ever having answered the part they didn't want to talk about. Hey, you don't owe it to the world to explain yourself at every step of the way. Another little trick he does to handle resistance is getting her to masturbate. If she doesn't want to get intimate with him, he simply asks her to turn herself on… until she's way too horny to resist him any longer. FORCE FRAMING california pimpForce Framing is a simple technique that you can read about in the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People", by Dale Carnegie. The idea is really simple - if you pay somebody a compliment about a behavior they have (or even one they have not!) shown around you, they will be more likely to engage in that behavior again in order to deserve your compliment and live up to your expectations of them. That's a convoluted way of saying that you can simply tell somebody how you perceive them and they will then be more likely to act consistent with your perception of them. He does this in the simplest ways possible… with words like: "You're feeling comfortable with me, right?" "You're okay following directions." "You can feel comfortable saying / doing whatever." "Why are you so naughty?" "You're naughty." If she makes any gestures that can be misinterpreted as sexual, he says: "Why did you do that", or "What were you thinking just now" He asks her - "What do you think of me?" and then reinterprets whatever she answers as meaning that she's seducing him If a girl objects and says "I'm not okay with this", he just flips it around and says "What do you mean, you're okay with this?". Hysterical. "What do you want to do with me? Just go with it." "How do you want to be remembered, sexy?" "What kind of girl are you, sexy?" "If you could be a little bit naughty, what would you be doing?" HIS VOCABULARY Note that he chooses his words very carefully. Anybody who still thinks that words don't matter obviously doesn't understand communication. Try this on for size: Ask somebody what time it is, and then tell them to fuck off. See if the different words get you a different kind of response or not. And with that in mind, he frames her as "sexy", "wild", and "naughty"… he never uses words like "dirty", "bitch" or "slut". Note how the first three are seen as positive in our society... whereas the last three basically mean the exact same thing, but they're seen as negative and almost derogatory. Another important detail is that he uses the word "pretend" a lot… by telling girls to "pretend" to be a bad girl, he makes it OK for her to do so, cause hey… it's not real, we're just playing, acting… pretending, like back in kindergarten. HIS TOUCH Screw traditional "touch escalation"… here's California Pimp's model: Touching her face (with the back of his hand… pick up a copy of that Personal Magnetism book I mentioned above to find out why) Pulling her hair Slapping her face, stick his finger in her mouth and push her whole face to the side… getting physically dominated without actually being harmed is an unbelievable turn-on for most women. Slapping her ass Grabbing her boobs Slapping her hand (he often does this move when he has her hand on his knee, just before getting the girl to give him a blowjob) Rubbing her pussy with his thumb (sometimes through her panties) Slapping her pussy TAKEAWAYS His freezouts are a lot stronger than what is traditionally being taught in dating advice. If she won't play ball, he just tells her "This isn't going to work out", or "this is not working". He believably conveys that he's about to stop the show… which often gets her to comply.

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##The Legend of California Pimp, Part II Some more nuggets from the California Pimp treasure chest: He runs what I call the "Blame Frame" - meaning that he sets a frame that blames whatever is happening on HER. She's the one who's seducing him; she's the one who's having this irresistible sexual effect on him. He does that by saying things like "look what you're doing to me", with a voice tone like he's incredibly turned on, or "you are making me a little nervous", "I can't handle this, go easy with me". This takes away from her nervousness and builds comfort… and it also force frames her as seductress. He sometimes criticizes her, in order to take some of her inherent female power away, which often gets the girls to overcompensate by acting more sexual. Then he rewards her for that with a compliment and immediately holds out an even bigger hoop… thus gradually stair stepping it up from "put down your purse" to "suck my cock". He creates attraction largely based on body language, dominance and sexuality. He qualifies women based entirely on their looks and their compliance... never based on their personality or anything asexual. He builds comfort based entirely on his voice tone and his reassuring comments. He seduces women based entirely on dominant touch and dirty talk. He gives girls the option to leave, but sandwiches it in between two commands to move things forward… instead of push-pull, he does pull-push-pull. There are also a couple of things you can't get out of his videos… one is his body language, obviously. You *can* tell though the he is dressed to the fucking nines… which is a huge lesson. Style! Damn, a friend of mine told me last week that capitalism is all about ripping people off and selling them the false hope that if only they buy the right pair of jeans they will get laid. Well, that hope is not so false after all. I do know some guys who are invisible to women otherwise, but who get *approached* by hot girls regularly in clubs when they dress up… and complimented on their amazing sense of style. Talk about a pass! Another thing that is not apparent in his videos is how exactly he runs his phone game… he mentions somewhere that he usually talks to the girls for 20 minutes on the phone before they first meet up. There is really only one video that I have found so far where he shows how he sets that all up - go to his site and check out Brenna, 2005. REAL WORLD APPLICATION Now, as I said, there is one objection that frequently comes up: is this even real, or are the girls just porn actresses? And we will get to that later… but before we even discuss that, I'm going to show you a couple of examples of how I have personally made this work for myself in the *real world*, and without having a camera or a photo shoot set up. These are bits and pieces from my journal, from back when I was experimenting with California Pimp-style seductions, and when I was still figuring out how to run these super-fast escalations. Warning, graphic. But of course, if you were looking for a PG-13 read, you probably wouldn't have made it this far in the article anyway, and you'd probably be browsing Disney.com instead. So here we go… all of the following stories commence about 20 *minutes* after first approaching each of these girls in the streets. I've got a couple more like this, but these three are a good start… "PLEASE FUCK ME" california pimpShe comes over "for a movie", but we don't get very far into the movie because I had set my room up in a way where we have to lie on the bed to watch it together. We go from first kiss to having sex in something like five minutes... It goes down very smoothly and fast. She gives token resistance for two seconds twice but that's it. The CP's escalation model helps too, it's just so genius… I put my finger in her mouth and ask her "what are you thinking about doing, huh?" Well duh… what's she going to be thinking about doing when she's in bed with a guy and sucking on something? Then I take her hand, put it on my belly and push it down so she's grabbing my cock… and once she has your cock in her hand she will not be too likely to resist having you do the same to her. I stick a finger inside… and once she has my fingers inside her and my cock in her hand, I ask again "what are you thinking about doing now, huh? What do you want to do now?" Think about it… she now has something in her pussy, and she has a cock in her hand... what's she going to be thinking about? This escalation model kind of propels itself forward… Nice! Her: "Do you mean... fucking?" Me: "Say please". Her: "Please fuck me..." "WOW YOU MUST HAVE SO MANY GIRLS…" Different girl. I fractionate and move her to my laptop to show her some videos. I massage her a bit while breathing down her neck and smelling her perfume… then I escalate more and blame it all on her. I find it's easier to escalate from behind than while standing in front of her, probably for the same reason why we open over the shoulder when we go indirect - it's less threatening. I keep escalating and fractionate maybe two or three more times before I push her onto the bed. Now, I already have my hand under her skirt at her ass, but we're both still wearing all our clothes, and she's resisting any attempts to take them off. So I start cave-manning her… I open my pants and put her hand on my cock, suck on her tits and put my fingers in her pussy. At this point, any last minute resistance starts to melt away and she starts moaning… I put on a condom, make her cum a few times with my fingers and she tells me between breaths: "Wow you must have many many girls." I tell her, "thousands", and we continue having awesome sex. The fascinating thing is: if I had invited this girl out for dinner and a movie, and tried to make a move on the third date, she would have gone along for the ride, no doubt… instead we had sex only an hour after we first met. And, she was loving every minute of it, and kept coming back for more… so don't think these girls will feel "used" or whatever nonsense society indoctrinates into people's heads. And THIS is what I meant when I talked about a "matrix-buster-paradigm-shifter-reality-crusher" earlier… the very *moment* my beliefs about what's possible with women changed, my results changed right along with them. "Oh... you can actually take a girl straight home from a street approach without any phone game, or dates, or anything… And then you can fuck her immediately?! Cool - let me try that." And it started happening for me too… and the girls were ALL about it. In fat, they wonder why this doesn't happen more often! It's truly a woman's sexual fantasy to be swept off her feet like this in a rush of passion and desire. Don't believe me? Read some of them romance novels that sell more than the friggin' Bible! "DO YOU WANT TO TAKE A SHOWER TOGETHER?" Different girl again. I try to smell her perfume but she says "No… I'm sweaty!". I offer her to take a shower, but she says she had only come over to talk. I say, "Of course! Do you want to take a shower?" She refuses again. I start to escalate like the California Pimp does, and focus on the voice tone especially - building compliance, slapping her ass, sandwiching the pull-push-pull… I thought it went well but then she says that she has to leave. At this point, I'm already starting to think that I dropped the ball on this one, but then my brain goes: "No you didn't drop the ball - that's the EXACT same reaction the CP gets from almost every girl too… Keep going!" So I back off, do the warm charismatic laughter to break tension, then the snake movement to calibrate her and touch her hair and her cheek. I back off again, make a sexual comment and back off yet again. At this point, she says she was more sexually adventurous when she was younger, and now she doesn't do that anymore… (she was 24) - and that she wants to leave. So I start talking about that and get her talking about sexual fantasies… and about how everybody secretly has them. Like, for example, "Meeting a sexy stranger and going home with him and having sex with him right away even though you know nothing about him… but it's okay because it's totally secret and nobody will ever find out." She says that she already lived out her sexual fantasies when she was younger, so I jiu-jiutsu that around in my favor and call her a naughty girl… a good opportunity to connect the word "naughty" to the core value "honesty", by telling her that everybody is naughty… some people are just more *honest* about it. Next I start cold reading her body language with force frames… She is touching her hair, so I call it out and tell her, "When people touch their hair, it means they want affection... they feel lonely and crave to be touched." At this point, she puts her purse down and says, "So you want to fuck me?" I switch to the sexual voice tonality and go, "I totally want to fuck your brains out right now... damn you're such a sexy girl... just look at you, oh my God…" And that's when it starts to go down and I put her hand on my cock and start to stick my finger into her mouth and ask her what she wants to do. california pimp She starts giving me a blow job, but then stops and says she wants to take a shower first, so I say - "Do you wanna take a shower together?" "Yes." "Do you want me to fuck you in the shower?" "Yes." And this… is how it's done. COME ON… IS THIS REAL? Okay, let's talk about this. First of all… if you can apply what you learn in this article and in his videos… and improve your results with women… does it still matter if it's real or not? But, we actually know a friend of California Pimp, and he told us that yes… most of it, is indeed real. Sure, some of these girls are actually porn actresses, and you can find them on the relevant websites… but, many of them got into porn acting after or even because of the California Pimp… and they never act that well in their standard porn. In any case, and I'm quoting our mutual friend here: "His tonality and ability to force social pressure is pretty amazing. Anyone who you think has good body language - CP's is better." OUTSIDE THE PHOTO SHOOT You've read above how I used a variation of his escalation model to get laid with normal girls, in a normal every day situation… just by inviting them over to my place and escalating like he does. But if you want more real world examples, there are also a couple of videos of street pickups and even club pickups on the California Pimp's website. He's always extremely aggressive, and might even open a girl with: "I want to fuck you." I mean… talk about screening for open-mindedness in your girls! And is it real?… well, I have a friend who's a super-natural. He's amazing at salsa dancing and unbelievably charismatic. When he's on vacation and has the free time to do it, he lays 4 hot girls a week. I've seen him do it. Well, I showed the California Pimp videos to that guy and *not for one second* did he ever doubt that they are real - it's simply not outside of his paradigm. He never questioned them once. Think about it… how good are porno queens usually at acting? Exactly… If these videos are staged, then these girls all deserve Oscars… ‘nough said.

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##Love at First Sight Just walked out the second girl I slept with in a 12-hour period. Oh my, going to need to get a good night's sleep tonight… and I'm all out of bed sheets. So I slept with a new girl yesterday who continues this streak I've been on of young and inexperienced girls. She's the second new girl in less than a week to tell me I'm only her second lover, in fact. This is a girl I'd met a few months earlier at a dinner related to some work I was doing at the time. We'd spoken a few times since, and yesterday we had our first date. She spent the night with me, and this morning told me she loved me. She asked me if I loved her back; I looked at her and gave her a warm smile. "You don't love me," she said. "You don't love me either," I told her. "We just got together yesterday!" "But I loved you the moment I saw you," she said. "I walked into the restaurant and I saw you, and you smiled at me, and I said, ‘Oh God, I'm in love.' Didn't you feel it? Why did you smile at me that way?" I told her I smiled at her because I liked her. But yes, certainly - I'd felt it. I felt it when I first laid eyes on her - a spark, or chemistry, or destiny, or I don't know what you'd call it. Call it "love at first sight," if you will. But there was something there, and it's something I've felt a number of times before, always with girls I inevitably had a tremendous and powerful bond and attraction with instantaneously. I'll be frank, I have no idea how this works. That's not something I like saying, because I usually have a theory for everything, if not outright research and/or anecdotal support. But I do think it's a topic worth exploring, and worth spending a little time thinking about. So let's discuss this thing called love at first sight. THAT MAGIC MOMENT Call me romantic, but you can count me firmly in the "believer" category on this one. Long before I learned how to be anything approximating successful with women, I was aware of "love at first sight." I'd see girls, and I'd feel this instant draw toward them, and they toward me. Quite often they'd more aggressively pursue me, and be more compliant to my advances, than any other women I'd meet, and they'd be warmer, friendlier, and more flirtatious with me. Once I figured out what I was doing, more or less, I started ending up with more and more of these girls. My first real long-term girlfriend was a "love at first sight" situation; I noticed her as she was looking at me, and my heart instantly skipped a beat and I thought, "Wow!" to myself. I was standing about fifteen feet behind her, but she stole a few more shy glances at me until I finally met her twenty minutes later, and she was very happy to meet me. We ended up spending a few wonderful years together as lovers and are still great friends today. Some other girls I've taken as lovers, or come very close to, have had this spark. One that I'm confident would have been a fantastic lover of mine (had I not mishandled three separate, glaring last 5% opportunities to get together with her spaced out over about five months a few years ago… egad) I had a "love at first sight" moment with despite her being engaged at the time, and we went on one of the most amazing dates either of us had ever been on. I still regret not having gotten together with her; she even made it clear at the end of the first date she wanted us to become lovers right then, but I missed her signal of interest. I've certainly had a few girls I've looked at, and thought, "Wow!" about who didn't seem to return the emotion, but it does seem to very often be mutual. When it is, here's what I notice is happening: We both seem to notice each other at the same time, just about Our eyes lock together, and the gaze lingers It's unexpected - I hadn't noticed the girl before, though perhaps she'd noticed me and had already flittered a glance at me We have a simultaneous "Wow" moment, that seems to have some kind of instant growing feedback as each of us reflexively, subconsciously, and rapidly recognizes the other one feeling the same way and growing even more excited as a reaction So it's like this shared, mutual, "Wow!" that I might say most defines love at first sight. It's a mutual feeling and reaction of strong, visceral attraction, that is enhanced by the excitement of recognizing that shared attraction in the other person. I guess that means I lied then, I do have a theory. The magic moment is all about feeling it, and noticing that the other person feels it too. EFFECTS OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT I've never been a big believer in fate (well, until I started reading some of the latest research in physics on backward causality… but let's save that for when I launch either a blog on quantum mechanics, or one on rhetorical metaphysical conundrums), but love at first sight has been one of the few things that's given me pause in that department. When I lock eyes with a girl like that, I almost get this feeling of certainty that I know we will have important parts to play in each others' lives. And women get the same feeling when they feel this. The girls I've shared this with and talked about it with have described it as "fate" or "destiny" - this is the first time I've had a girl outright refer to it as "love at first sight", likely because she's younger and less experienced and hasn't been jaded the way some of the somewhat more experienced women I've been with have been. But regardless of what they call it, this feeling and experience is very important to women. When you sense this, you must act. I can't stress enough how often this feeling is mutual. Ignore love at first sight to your own detriment. This is your brain's subconscious way of telling you, "Go for that girl! She's exactly what we want, and she's giving us signals she feels the same way!" When girls feel this strong, instant attraction for you, the following things seem to quite commonly be true: You get an extremely warm reception. You will almost always be received very warmly by the girl when you open, even if you blunder through your opener. Don't worry too much about what you're going to say, just make sure you say something! You get to skip a lot of steps. Love-at-first-sight-girls don't need to be convinced you're a catch. They just need you to introduce yourself, be a regular normal guy, and lead them to intimacy. They already like you; you don't have to do anything special. Feel free to move faster than you normally would with a girl like this; she was sold on you the instant she saw you. You get very strong relationships. Whether it's because she believes it's destiny, or whether it's because there really is some kind of inherent wisdom in the unconscious mind's choices of whom it chooses to feel strong instant attraction for, relationships with women you share love at first sight with tend to be very strong and very passionate. Or maybe it's the case that only passionate people get the whole love-at-first-sight feeling. Don't know. Regardless, these are some of the most solid, rewarding seductions you can have, and some of the most solid, rewarding relationships you can have. You're more likely to be a match for each other than in just about any other kind of pairing. Come to think of it, I wasn't thinking of her when I wrote the post on them, but this girl I talked about at the beginning of this post is the epitome of the shy excited girl type. As was my ex-girlfriend in California, and as was my ex-girlfriend in Beijing. Actually, every single girl I can think of having had the "love at first sight" feeling with was either a shy excited girl or a club queen. Strangely, my two favorite types of women seem to be the only ones I get "love at first sight" feelings towards. It's almost like I know somehow before meeting them that they have the kind of personality I am most interested in. Bizarre. There must be some kind of explanation for this, but I'm at a loss. Maybe these two kinds of girls are the only ones confident enough to visibly express love at first sight, so I just happen to keep meeting my favorite kinds of women this way. If you have any experience with this, please do share in the comment section for this article. I only have a limited sample of my own experience with this, so if you have some anecdotes you can share that'll flesh out / rebut / enhance the experiences, thoughts, and generalizations on this phenomenon I've lain out here, I'd love to hear them. Again, I don't really know how it works, and there does seem to be some kind of strange sensibility in the logic that drives two people to fall for each other instantly on sight. The pairings seem to be incredibly well-suited to each other, and the relationships that come out of them are quite often hot, passionate, and strong. My recommendation: if you have the opportunity to get together with a girl you share this kind of magic with, don't pass it up. Not going to get all gushy here and tell you to go hit Vegas and make it official and go honeymoon in Tahiti a week after you meet your love-at-first-sight gal… you know me, not really the overly emotional type. But for sure don't brush it off as some kind of weird feeling or quirk. This is one of those weird feelings you ought to take seriously when you get it. You may just meet the girl of your dreams.

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##Making Girls Laugh Means NOTHING Many guys think that all women want a man who knows how to make a girl laugh… and that is not entirely false. However, the importance of cracking jokes and making girls laugh when picking up on them is FAR overstated… and in fact, trying to do this can actually HURT you and make you LESS sexually attractive to women. How can this be, though? So many women will tell you that a sense of humor is one of the most attractive traits a man can possess! On the surface, it doesn't seem to make sense at ALL. As so often is the case, however, the truth about what's REALLY going on in the human mating game is not obvious; it's counter-intuitive and hidden deep beneath the surface. The good news: this means that you can drop most of what you used to do in an attempt to be funny on the approach. You can let it all go overnight and never worry about it again, once you understand the following truth: Getting strong emotional reactions out of girls on the approach, making them all giggly and going out of your way to make a girl laugh, means nothing at all. I'm sure you're probably scratching your head right about now… Stay with me, and let's shed some light on this topic. TWO APPROACHES - TWO VIBES You can approach a girl directly or indirectly… i.e. you can either start a normal conversation without showing interest in her, or you can tip your hand from the start. My friends who have seen me do indirect approaches on girls usually comment that it never looks like a pickup. It doesn't stand out too much from whatever else is going on around me… and it shouldn't. To bystanders, it should seem like a normal conversation, and in fact the biggest compliment you can receive is this: "You knew these girls before, right? It looked like you guys were old friends reconnecting." And when you open direct, you should ALSO just start a normal conversation with the girl - in fact even more so, because after a direct opener you can go right into building rapport. The direct approach itself usually makes enough of an impact to create all the attraction you need… if it is executed well. THE STRANGE PARADOX WHEN YOU MAKE A GIRL LAUGH I don't go 1 for 1 when I approach girls… I get blown out sometimes. I also don't get a lot of laughter and giggling and spiked emotions out of the girls right away. I get laid VERY regularly though. A good friend of mine on the other hand, gets a foot in the door with EVERY girl he approaches. He's one of the funniest guys I know. It's insane… I don't know that I've ever seen him get blown out. But he mostly gets numbers from girls under 20 with this act, and he hardly ever gets laid. He spent two months in my city a while ago and we went out together a lot… and he didn't end up sleeping with even a single girl. If you see him talk to women, you will be thoroughly impressed - the girls always like his approach. But if you see him go home alone, you won't be that amazed anymore. Girls don't feign over the comedian on stage… they feign over the humorless rock star. Being on stage is not enough to get groupies. WHAT SEDUCTION REALLY IS There is a rule in dating science that has been around for many years now: "You need to build comfort with a girl, and the seduction game is really played during that time." You need to be able to have a nice, smooth conversation with her, where you can set frames and present the relationship as sexual. Get into a good rhythm with the girl. You have to share your identity and your background, and get to know hers, so that the two of you can feel like you know each other (this isn't always necessary... but with many girls, it is). You must not be afraid to show vulnerability, and get to know a girl on a deeper level. You need to be qualifying women… you need to make sure she knows you like her, and why. What you do NOT need to do is entertain girls and become the court jester... only throw entertaining pieces at them where you need to, because the vibe is about to die down. A good rule to follow is this: evoke laughter and strong emotional responses as little as possible, and as much as necessary. Do funny guys get laid? Yeah, sure. But if they do, it's because they're good at building comfort with the girls they meet... Not because they're funny. SEXUAL ORNAMENTATION Sexual ornamentation - peacocking - is what every species develops to attract the opposite sex. The most famous example is the peacock's tail - it serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to attract females. Deer have antlers, parrots have huge beaks, and humans have… are you ready for this? Brains! That's right… the human brain serves, among other things, as sexual ornamentation… but it's internal. We are one of the first species on the planet whose mating adornments have moved INSIDE of us. In fact, we have both external and internal sexual ornamentation. In human males, their muscles are an example of the external ways they signal replication value, and their brains are one of the internal ways. Now here's the kicker: Inward sexual ornamentation by itself does NOTHING! That's why the nerd never got laid in high school, even though he probably had the biggest brain of everybody in his year. That's also why being a musician alone doesn't get you laid - you actually need to be a successful musician, or aspiring to success… so it's really the social status and being driven that triggers the attraction, not the music. And working to make a girl laugh is your brain showing off its power to be funny… it's internal sexual ornamentation. It's peacocking. It can enhance your ability to get girls, but only if used sparingly… and it won't get you laid on its own. Again, girls don't throw their panties into the circus ring for the clown… they throw them at powerful, masculine men with electric guitars, who actually often have a pretty gloomy and grim look on their faces! Imagine that. SO IT'S BAD TO MAKE A GIRL LAUGH? No… I have fun and laugh around with my girls as well, that's not what I'm getting at. I'm talking about getting the girls all wound up and giggly when you approach them in order to get their attention. "Look at me, look how funny I am. I can roll over too, and if you throw a ball I'll fetch it." Some guys start throwing a million funny lines and teases and role plays at her just to get her laughing. And these are the most impressive pickups to watch, because the girls get really into the jokes. The problem is, that doesn't necessarily mean they get into the GUY… everybody I know who does that style of game doesn't get laid a whole lot. SEXUAL TENSION The question is - WHY does this happen? How in the world could being funny actually hurt your chances with a girl? Well, for one thing, it frames you as the entertainer… rather than the masculine, smooth, charismatic and sexual man she fantasizes about. But what's more, it destroys sexual tension! There are two kinds of laughter: people laugh because something is funny, but they also laugh to diffuse tension. There are also two kinds of tensions - social tension, and sexual tension. And this is the crux: MOST laughter is NOT in response to something funny... but an unconscious response to TENSION. It lets the air out of a tense situation the way a needle pops a balloon. You do not want this! In the context of picking up girls, tension is your FRIEND… both social tension on the approach, as well as sexual tension when you escalate physically with a girl. Learn to be comfortable with silence, with prolonged eye contact, with breaking rapport and even with confrontation... because all of these situations can be TENSE. The ability to be comfortable with that is arousing to women… because it demonstrates a strong psychology, and that you're able to cope with social pressure. HER LAUGHTER RUINED EVERYTHING! Many years ago, I was dating a girl who was unbelievably beautiful. I was temping as bellboy at a five star hotel at the time, and when she came to pick me up from my shift, all the big shot rich, successful guys stared at me because they couldn't believe their eyes… how in the world could this bombshell go for a bellboy instead of one of them? (The answer can be found all over this blog, by the way.) But the problem was, she had been brought up in a strict Catholic family and was very religious and sexually repressed. I was the second guy she ever had sex with, and she was still quite uncomfortable with her own sexuality… and the sexual tension in the bedroom always caused her to… crack JOKES, and giggle in bed as if sex was something funny! She did that unconsciously, of course... and she was actually really funny. It certainly made me laugh… and it also diffused the sexual tension that she was so uncomfortable with. However, it also diffused my hard-on! Hmmm… not so good! Here's the point: Human mating is BASED on tension - and laughter is based on BREAKING tension. It is the OPPOSITE of sexuality. Want proof? Try to masturbate while watching standup comedy or South Park… you can't do it! And the fact that tension breaks when we laugh is why we don't want our attraction game to be based on laughter and giggles as the centerpiece. You can use it, but sparingly. Just keep repeating to yourself: Don't be the court jester. Don't be the court jester. Don't… you get the idea. make a girl laugh HOW TO DEEPEN HER SEXUAL TRANCE There is one exception to all of the above, however - and that is a concept called FRACTIONATION. In NLP and hypnosis, fractionation means that you take somebody out of an emotional state you want them to be in, just to put them right back under IMMEDIATELY. The second time, the state will be stronger. So if sexual tension is the state you want her to experience, you can use laughter sparingly to break the tension for an instant… only to go right back into the tension as soon as the laughter ebbs off. This time, the tense state will be even deeper. Think of it as a sexual trance that you can trigger like the push of a button, and that you can dial up at will. DO say funny things here and there throughout your interaction with her, but don't let it be your bread-and-butter. See the post on chase framing for more on this. VALIDATION ADDICTION A lot of "dating gurus" who give "pickup advice" teach their students a bunch of funny lines and routines that they can use to go out and get strong emotional responses from women RIGHT AWAY. And that can be good to build some confidence… to anybody who has so far been invisible to women, it feels good to suddenly get women he's never met before laughing on cue. However, this can be an insidious trap: remember my friend I mentioned earlier, who never gets rejected because he's so funny that all girls want to talk to him… but who also never gets laid? The problem is that the emotional validation this kind of approach gives can actually be ADDICTIVE… and even though my friend understands the concept of sexual tension and how laughter breaks it, he just can't help himself. He keeps feeding his ego by pushing the buttons that will make a girl laugh… he's getting positive responses and making himself feel good, but he ain't getting no love! It can become a very hard habit to break… a crutch you use to learn how to walk will only hold you back in the long run. Once your legs are strong enough without it, you will be able to walk much faster if you just let it go. SO, FUNNY GUYS NEVER GET LAID? That would be an exaggeration… I don't think that making girls laugh stops you from getting laid, and it's not detrimental in and of itself. However, take this article as encouragement to be a bit more conscious of the emotions you evoke in girls! Look specifically at how girls respond to the funny things you say… do they become more SEXUALLY engaged… or are they just giggling in a non-sexual way, like grade-schoolers? Also, avoid being the "dancing monkey" who talks about devils and angels and powerpuff girls and psychics and all that confetti that is sometimes taught as "dating advice for men" that takes you in every direction other than that of being a sexy man. Girls don't perceive funny men to be sexy... they perceive them to be entertaining. That creates attention, but not attraction. (If a funny man has something else going for him beyond the funny, he can be sexy TOO though.) You might even start to become really strategic and make the friends of the girl you want laugh a lot, but not her. Or, you could spike a lot of laughter in girls that you want to recruit as wing-girls or for social proof. Then when you talk to the girl you really want, however, keep up that magic tension! I've brought this up with some of my female friends, and most of them agreed… that guys who really go out of their ways to make a girl laugh a lot are often perceived more as the "just friends" type. One girl also said that if a guy says a lot of funny things off the bat, she often assumes that he memorized everything he says beforehand, which makes him look somewhat try-hard. Straight from the horse's mouth. So scrap clever, cut out the excessive humor, and focus on some connection-building instead. And, go practice… the best way to improve your dating skills is by talking to women.

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##Meet New Girls by Doing THIS Aarrrrgh procrastination got me. I had worked very hard to set up my life in a way where I'd have a lot of free time, and all for the explicit purpose of going out to meet new girls… yet there I was, dicking around on the internet, watching movies and chilling with my buddies. Have you ever had that problem… when you're busy, you say to yourself: "If only I had the free time to approach more girls!" meet new girls But then once you have free time, you somehow get lazy and complacent… until your calendar is suddenly jammed again and you regret not having taken advantage of the golden opportunity you had? We're often our own worst enemies, and the reality is that everyone procrastinates… I'm no exception, sometimes. Even Napoleon Hill said he was not entirely free from it… but at the very least, one thing is true: the more you refine your ability to pick up girls, the less you will procrastinate out of fear, and the more it will be out of laziness. You know for a fact you can go out and get laid with a hot girl in a matter of few days and highly likely, today (and if you don't know that yet, well, that's what this site is for!)… but you first have to beat inertia. You first have to resist calling one of your girlfriends over, and instead make yourself look sharp and hit the town! Of course once you get going, it's so much fun that you don't want to stop… but until you get to that point, you can lose a LOT of time that you will later regret not having made better use of. If you do have that problem (and I know you do, because everyone does), check out the post on "How to Get What You Want," about getting yourself to take action… it's going to help. NOT MEETING NEW GIRLS? YOU'RE WASTING YOUR LIFE! It was just one of those days… I felt a bit sluggish because I had spent the previous night with a girl and she had left my place just at the crack of dawn… and the weather wasn't really all that great either. So here I was, sitting in my apartment thinking… meh. Anyone wanna play Portal 2? While I was still sitting in my room, the radio was on in the background, and it was one of those shows where people call in to talk about their problems. I don't think it's usually a good idea to feed your mind with negativity in any way, shape of form, but in this case it did me some good… I mean, wow… talk about a wakeup call! The first caller was a guy who had some terminal disease… and he had less than three weeks to live. And so I started to ask myself… if I had three weeks to live… what would I be doing right now? Portal 2…? Uhm… Not so much! I got up, took a shower, put on some nice shoes and went out. I mean, damn. Life is so short… what kinds of memories do you want to look back on when you're on your death bed? Wouldn't you want to puzzle the nurses and have them wonder why you're smiling to yourself, as you're basking in the memories of untold encounters with stunning young ladies…? WHAT'S BEST IN LIFE…? Is it… to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? No Conan… No. What's best in life is to BE with women. You want to hear them go wild with pleasure… not lament. Truly, I was not to regret going to the trouble of hitting the town… because I ended up with one of those amazing experiences that make life worth living in the first place… I went out to meet new girls and ended up hooking up with a girl that is my EXACT archetype. You know what I mean… there are beautiful girls, and there are beautiful girls who also happen to be your exact type… those are the ones you really go crazy for. The kind of girl you're in the game for. The type that gives you the drive to get out of bed each morning on this often bittersweet planet we call home…. But, first things first. TO MEET NEW GIRLS, BE A CHICK MAGNET FIRST As I was walking around town, I noticed that girls were giving me a lot more eye contact than usual… and I attribute that to a couple of factors - factors that you can implement right now to get the same results: I had lost some weight… in fact, I had lost a fair bit of weight - I had my body fat percentage down in the single digits. This is not only important because numerous studies have found that visible abs are the most attractive physical feature in a man… after all, that won't help you a whole lot during the day unless you do a lot of beach pickup and meet women at the beach. More importantly, your body fat percentage is visible in your face and changes your attractiveness TREMENDOUSLY. Don't believe me? Just have a look at Val Kilmer - chick magnet par excellence when he was slim, blob with bad skin now that he's out of shape. Since GirlsChase.com is well into the millions of readers now, I should probably apologize to Val just in case he's reading this… but, Val, science is with me on this one. val kilmer's jawlines Source: The Fitness Chronicle State Control - In one of my very first articles here on this blog, "Going Out Alone," I talk about how there are really two things to master if you want to be confident without needing your friends as a security blanket: one is state independence, the other is state control. State independence means that you no longer need to rely on "being in a good state" to approach girls… even when you're tired, even when your mind is not in the best place, you can still do approaches, and do them well… this can easily be achieved by consistent meditation. State control, on the other hand, is the foundation of TRUE success in pickup… check out my five-parter about The Success Factor if you haven't yet. Afterglow - This one is so important that I even started giving my students the advice to forget about "well-groomed" if they just got laid. The day after a man has sex, he radiates… he has a magnetic aura that draws women to him like iron filings to the world's largest scrap iron crane. There are a few reasons for this… one of them is pheromones. Other women can literally smell that he just got some… and that's a powerful form of preselection. The second reason is the additional confidence and non-neediness you project just after a hedonistic night of debauchery… and finally, if you believe in such things, some might argue that your hara radiates a sexual energy and your aura has a powerful, primal charge of kundalini (hey, even if not, you still get two out of three!). BOOTS ON THE GROUND The only way to meet new women is to leave the house. Obvious, right…? Yet, advice that can be oh so very hard to follow. And so I went to a mall close to my house, and I approached three girls that day… one approach I performed poorly and got rejected… the second girl tells me she has a boyfriend… and the third one, well, turns out SHE was married. So much for today's report… no glory to be had here, right? Well, that's what I thought… when the third girl told me that she was married, I was just about to congratulate her and excuse myself to go continue to meet new girls elsewhere in the mall… but she stopped me and drew me into a conversation. She started to ask me questions about me… she started to break the ice with me, the exact same way we teach our guys to do with girls… she was gaming me. So I figured… well, maybe she's only defacto married, but separated… or maybe her husband hits her? Who knows… she's obviously looking for something, and she obviously wants that something to be ME. So I suggested coffee some time, to which she replied: "Yeah, it's always good to make new FRIENDS." She must have read this blog… that's exactly what I like to say to women if I want to keep them guessing (so don't let that phase you if you ever hear these words from a girl!). WOULD YOU SLEEP WITH A MARRIED GIRL…? Since she was married, I decided to just meet her for a short date after work… just to test the waters and figure out what was going on. She accepted, but then canceled last minute. Was she about to back out… did she suddenly have moral qualms about it? Once again… not so. Just a short while later, she sent me a text, saying: "Sorry about that… next time you invite me, I will be there, I promise." This is what we call a green light… You see, many an experienced Casanova knows that it's actually easier to hook up with a married girl than with one that's single, and for a few reasons… First, if she's been married for more than a few years, she's probably not in love with her husband anymore - the 2 year drop happens, and the passion that once was there subsides. And second, this husband whom she's already gotten over is your only competition, whereas with single girls you're competing against every man she ever meets. That said, I usually stay away from married women… I don't think it's worth the trouble, and I prefer to keep my dating life drama-free. MY HOLY CONFESSION meet new girlsAnd so I was absolutely prepared to let this one go. If I had found out that she has kids, or that her marriage still has a future, I would have left it alone… and that's exactly what I expected the outcome to be. So I scheduled two dates for the next evening… one with the married girl at 5 o'clock, and one with another girl I was "courting," for lack of a better word, at seven (even though my style of seduction is about as far from courtship as… well, if courtship is London, Ricardus is Tokyo). The married girl shows up… and she is dressed to kill. Oh My God… Bless me, Father, for I'm about to sin… in thought, word and deed. And not only did she dress extremely provocatively, she was also very flirtatious. It was obvious that she hadn't had a lot of romance in her life for a while… and that she was starving for it. And I finally found out why, as we had the most divine cappuccino in town and she told me her story. She had gotten married to her high school sweetheart, seven years prior… and she regretted having made that decision. Too young to know better, blinded by her first love and naïve about the world of relationships… … I really can't blame her. Haven't we all made some stupid relationship mistakes when we were teenagers? At least we didn't cement them for a lifetime… as opposed to her, most of us had a chance to learn from those mistakes, move on and get into healthier relationships later on. Not her… Now, she had just moved out of her husband's house and was living with her aunt… and was getting ready to separate from hubby. She told me my voice was very sexy. I texted the other girl I was supposed to meet at 7 and canceled my date with her. WHERE I LIKE IT MOST… When we were back at my place, I gave her a massage… and I really took my time with this girl. I didn't want to make any real moves here… I decided that if this is going to happen, it will have to be on HER initiative. And so it transpired… …after a while, she asked me: "Would you massage me where I like it most... I'm being audacious aren't I... would you massage my… stomach?" As she was still saying the last words, she took off her top and her bra and revealed an amazing pair... Life... is not so bad after all :) After we slept together, we talked some more and once she finally left, she sent me a final text message: "You asked me what I want to do with my life, what I want to be? I will tell you... be happy every minute of my life... good night." I will be frank here… I felt sorry for her. I feel sorry for everyone who's caged in a relationship that's not healthy or fulfilling for them. In fact, I hope that society's conventions are going to change at some point, and that more people are going to start living the life that is going to make them happy, rather than following other people's expectations while silently being miserable. I hope we will have a second sexual revolution… and that more people are going to embrace what I call the "Ideal Relationship." It's not for everybody, but it certainly would have been right for her… and for many other women I've dated… as well as many of the men I've coached. Try it sometime… and judge for yourself. MORAL OF THE STORY For a lot of guys, going out to meet new girls seems like some kind of impossible task at times. You've got to muster up some huge amount of steely-eyed resolve and go climb mountains and slay polar bears or some such nonsense. meet new girls But it isn't like that at all. If you take care of basics like: Keep your weight down and your style up Learn state control and to master your emotions And go out after you've just slept with a girl (where possible!) ... and then you just GET OUT THERE and actually physically MEET women, you'll be surprised what you can make happen. Just like I was here.

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##Meeting Women on Buses, Trains, and Airplanes Efficiency in meeting women ought to be the name of the game for you, and there's no more efficient way to meet women than wherever you happen to run into them. And if you're on the go a lot, one of the easiest, most convenient places to meet women is however you happen to be going where you go. I've met some incredible women on-the-go. The first fashion model I got together with I met waiting for a train; one of the most passionate, incredible women I had in my life I met boarding an airplane. Planes, trains, and buses are great avenues to meet new women in. There are a few reasons why these make such great meeting points: Her guard is down. She's not in super-social mode, doesn't have her defenses up for dealing with annoying barflies and club guys, and hasn't been hit on by every passing guy like she is at her favorite party spot. Because her energy level is going to be more normal here than in a nighttime venue, it's much easier to connect quickly and naturally and avoid much of the extraneous stuff you'll run into at night. She's alone, and so are you. That means, you don't have to mind her friends (or yours); you don't have to keep an eye on a number of different people's moods and behavior and actions. You only have to worry about her, and you. She'll be less conscious without friends monitoring her actions, and more likely to be honest and upfront with you from the beginning. Transit game means high turnover. The more frequently you use transit, the more often you're going to run into pretty girls on-the-go, and the turnover is quite high. The girl you see today you won't see tomorrow; someone else will be in her place. The only time you start seeing the same people is if you make the same commute every day at the same exact time; most of the time, even if you're making the same commute, you'll have variance in your commute time (maybe one day you board the train at 6:10 PM; maybe another day at 6:13 PM; maybe a third day at 6:04 PM), and so will everyone else. Consequently, you'll be running into new women over and over - which gives you many new women to meet, and many opportunities to meet them. You have instant social context. "Going anywhere exciting?" That's really all you need to say to get the conversation started, at a bare minimum. Enough said. So, great, you want to start doing transit approaches. What do you need to keep in mind as you do them? MEET HER WAITING If at all possible, you should always try to meet women while the two of you are still waiting for the transportation to arrive. If you're waiting for an airplane, this is easy - you just go sit next to her in the terminal. If you're waiting for a train, it's similarly straightforward - if she's on a bench, grab the seat next to her; if she's standing, position yourself nearby. Look also for women who will grab seats or position themselves near you - this can often be a girl's way of putting herself in your proximity so you can meet her when she wants to talk to you. Where it's a little harder is with buses - quite often you'll be waiting in line. But if you luck out and happen to be waiting in line next to a cute girl - well, go for it! By meeting a woman before boarding, you get to take advantage of the feeling of commitment that comes from meeting her beforehand, then having her continue to stick with you as you board the conveyance. You also expand your options - it's a lot easier to cruise around the terminal or the train station and find a cute girl and meet her before boarding than it is trying to locate a cute girl while actually riding the train, bus, or airplane. For reasons of efficiency and reasons of building commitment, whenever you can do it meeting women prior to boarding is preferred. And, once you've met her prior to boarding and gotten to know her, the next step you need worry about is, of course, how to… MIND YOUR TRANSITIONS The transition is the make-or-break moment in meeting girls in transit. It's that point where the two of you who were formerly waiting for the train or bus or plane now board the train or bus or plane. The reason it's so important is because the transition will either end the interaction, or solidify it… and the primary determinant is simply whether you continue talking to your girl or not. When you've met a girl and talked to her before boarding your transportation, there's going to be a "natural end" moment where most people let things die - it's like what happens after you get a phone number. Even if the number had come at the middle of the interaction, most people are so used to things ending after that that they expect it, and you have to steamroll your way through that and make things continue on-course. And so it is with transit interactions - people who talk prior to boarding transportation normally let the conversation expire as they board said transportation, and head to their respective seats. But not us. If the interaction ends, where does that get you? Absolutely nowhere. It means, most likely, that you've lost the girl forever. Oh sure, maybe you got a phone number, but that's a hollow victory. What are the chances that number will amount to anything? So, we're going to push to keep the interaction alive, and the main way we do that is by minding the transition. There are a few ways you mind a transition: Keep talking. If you aren't talking to her, it will feel awkward to her if she sticks with you or you stick with her - it feels more normal to part ways. But, if you continue talking to a girl as you board a plane or train or bus, she sticks with you to continue the conversation. It feels easier to stay with you and continue the conversation than to excuse herself, break the conversation off, and go sit somewhere else. She'd have to have a pretty good reason to do so, in fact - so she's far more likely to stay with you. And as we know from a previous look, women, like most people, tend to follow the path of least resistance. Be the conductor. You're responsible for orchestrating the movements of those around you - particularly the women around you that you're interested in. In a novel situation like boarding an airplane with a man she's just met - something that's likely never happened to her before - a woman's not going to know how to act or what to do. The path of least resistance is going to be for her to go sit somewhere by herself - until, that is, you introduce an even easier path by simply directing her where to go / what to do. So, as you board, you'll want to continue talking to her as you head to a seat, but pay close attention to what she's doing and where she's going; if you notice her starting to move away or sit or stand too far from her, tell her where to go instead: "Sit here," is all you need to say, and continue on the conversation. It'll look like this: Guy: "… so I ended up jumping out of a plane. Wow, that was intense… never going to do that again. Sit here [patting the seat]. So how about you - what's the craziest thing you've done this year? Hope you haven't jumped out of any planes." Make it comfortable for her. Don't be overly wild, or crazy, or expressive. Don't make any strong movements. Just make it comfortable and easy for her to stay with you and sit with you. Once you're seated together, you can start moving things toward intimate / sexy / intriguing / deep conversation / wherever you like; until then, keep it on the level and keep things easy and comfortable. MEETING ON THE CONVEYANCE Meeting women while already on a bus, airplane, or train is less than ideal, but sometimes you don't have a chance to meet a girl before boarding, or you spot a really beautiful girl once you're already aboard, or a girl boards after you've already got on and gotten seated. This is where things get a bit tricky. If you're on a train and can move around - ideally, if you're standing and she's standing - you can maneuver yourself closer to her and get to talking to her that way. If, however, you're already seated, you'll need to pull out you're A-game. First, consider whether she's seen you or not. If you're reasonably confident she hasn't, and you can snag a seat next to her without her realizing you moved specifically to sit near her, try going that route. Chances are, she's going to have at least a vague idea that you were already aboard though; that means, in that case, you're necessarily going to need to approach with genuine interest, or direct, because anything else is going to seem contrived. If you get up out of your seat and go plop into a seat next a girl who already knew you were aboard, and you try to act as if you just happened to grab a seat next to her and then noticed her, it'll seem rather forced. Instead, be honest about your interest. It'll go like this: Guy: [sitting down next to girl] I know this might seem rather forward, but I saw you walk in and sit down here, and I just thought you had the most incredible look about you and I simply had to come meet you. I'm Chase. May I join you for a moment? She'll be flattered at worst; at best, she'll be enchanted by your boldness and confidence and want to get to know you a lot more. Where you take it from there, I leave to you - but remember the mantra of move fast, and take as little time as possible to move things forward with a woman. The more time you allow, the more time you have to make mistakes, drop the ball, let things go cold, or have some other person or circumstance or twist of fate come in and come between the two of you and prevent you from ever getting together. Move fast, be bold and decisive, and enjoy meeting women on your way to wherever it is you're going. Have fun flying the friendly skies (or riding the friendly rails)!

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##Meeting Women via Social Circle: The Pros and Cons Ahhh, social circles and their potentially entrenching romances. Meeting women through social circle and all its accompanying tricks and snags can be a minefield punishing to navigate without a map. meet women social circle While it's a common opinion among men who study the social and seductive arts that there's only a limited number of women available in social circle, and that getting flirty with them almost always engenders drama, good management of your social circle interactions may garner you some of the easiest seductions you'll ever get while mitigating many of the downsides. In addition to heaps of pretty girls, done right, there are also a lot of other benefits that'll swing your way if you become a social circle master. In this series of articles - my first on Girls Chase - I'm going to introduce you to the best way to handle dealing with girls in your social circle. This first article focuses on the pros and cons of social circle approaching so that you can understand more fully some of the benefits and trappings before you embark on your quest to cultivate social circles and refine your social circle game. So, let's check the lay of the land. meet women social circle "Woah, woah, woah... Wait a second!" you say. "Who the hell are you and why should I listen to you?" My name's Peter Fontes and I've been studying, practicing, and using the social arts since 2008. Most of my sexual mingling has been in my native country of Australia, but I've also travelled extensively and done quite a bit of overseas canoodling, too. My specialties are social circle approaching, reputation management and building social circles, relationships, dance floor seduction and a healthy dose of insight into approaching girls at nighttime venues. I've come across pretty much any and all situations within these respective fields, so I should be able to help you out with any questions you have. Let's start with the 'Pros' then. With social circle, you'll find there are two distinct kinds of pros: those that deal explicitly with girls, and those that benefit your life overall. PROS THAT BENEFIT YOU WITH WOMEN Here are all the ways that meeting women via social circle makes it easier for you to meet the kind of women you like, get the kind of women you like, and do a whole lot more of them. Pro #1: Get Girls Without Dealing with Strangers Approaching total strangers can be tough. When working your social circle ya don't really have to deal with it, do ya? While I'm not advocating not attempting to meet girls formerly unbeknownst to us, a few successful social circle seductions can pave the way to a lessening of approach anxiety and increase one's sexual confidence out-of-sight, thus increasing one's ability to approach strangers. Win, win. Pro #2: A Powerful Screening Tool Can you really know everything about a girl without seeing her in myriad social situations and meeting her friends? With girls that we may meet on the street individually or out at a loud club setting, we have trouble understanding her in an altogether rounded way. Observing how a person is perceived in her social circle and how she acts within that social circle gives us one of the biggest shortcut screening tools we can have in terms of working out all manner of things about her; her status, her level of promiscuity, her social skills, her girl-girl friend interactions, her boy-girl friend interactions etc. The list goes on. While this is not so important for a girl who we may want a one night dalliance with, if you are looking for a girl who you want to spend a lot of time with this can save you a whole lot of effort, as you observe her in situations where she can show you a lot more 'stay-away-from-me-I'm-a-psycho' indicators than she'd be able to were it just you and her. Pro #3: Relatively Easy Access to the More "Aesthetically Gifted" Girls meet girls social circleI've personally watched Ricardus in action on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil, so I'm not going to argue that meeting girls individually via day game isn't the best way to get access to the prettiest girls most quickly. However, as your reputation and social skills build you will have every girl attracted in your immediate circle (that includes the hottest ones)... and access to the finest girls you meet in your extended social circle, too. Don't get me wrong, you can get foxy girls like this in nightclub-like situations by approaching strangers, it just becomes a little harder when they don't know you at all (that's why it's called cold approach) and they're in a situation where they're being attention-validated like crazy. Funnily enough, we can also use social circles to help in these type of cold approach situations. "What!? How?", you say. My friend... you'll just have to wait to find out more on that in further articles. Pro #4: Your Looks Matter Less and Less Without opening the whole "How much do looks matter?" can of worms, it is definitely true that with increased social standing and reputation, looks begin to matter less. Meeting a girl through a warm approach (especially if she's already heard about you) means you have more time to display the attractive qualities that are going to get her hooked than you would in the cut-throat world of cold approach. Pro #5: More of Your Type of Girls Girls in your social circle and extended social circle are typically more compatible with you than those you'll meet at random in many ways. They're usually of similar socio-economic background, educational background, cultural background, and style background. This makes for great ease of compatibility, better clicking in interactions, and generally more fulfilling relationships. While I think it's VERY important to interact with and seduce girls from all over (you need to be rounding out your experiences), you'll often find that social circle girls will have more in common with you and thus be easier to hang out with. Pro #6: Girls as Friends Who Help You Approach Other Girls Having girls as friends is something that can be really beneficial. Girl friends can fill areas of your life that male friends often have a harder time doing. They can be less narrow-minded when it comes to things such as talking about relationships and myriad other things that men typically dismiss. Not only that, having girls around you at a club, party, festival etc. is something that is always going to work in your favour when meeting other girls. In terms of dance floor seductions, having girl friends around you to create preselection is something that I believe has the greatest amount of power in helping you meet and take to bed new women, hands down. Pro# 7: More Elements to Turn in Your Favour In some interactions where it is just you and a girl, there are some factors that you can't properly play with. Making a girl jealous, social proof and being preselected sexually by other women are inaccessible in their strongest forms in day time approaching and some night-venue approaching situations. When you get all of these going for you at their strongest, like you can in social circle, you can become a truly magnetic attractive force. More on that in later articles. PROS THAT BENEFIT YOUR LIFE IN GENERAL Social circle isn't just good for your success with beautiful women, though; it leads you to more and better friends, networks, and opportunities, as well. Here's how. Pro #8: An Extended Social Circle There is a belief that meeting girls via social circle is frequently a very limited approach because you only have available the women in your immediate social circle. This is true sometimes, with small circles or less active ones, but is perhaps the biggest misconception when it comes to social approaching overall. Social circles don't exist in a vacuum; they're a series of interconnected webs. This has become even more apparent with the advent of social media. This means that if you develop a reputation in one group, it will have certain spillover effects into another social circle. If you follow the guidelines I'm going to set out for you, you will be introduced into new social circles with an already stellar reputation. Imagine how much easier it'll be for you then. Pro #9: Guys as Friends While this may be personal preference, my best friends all remain male. A lot of guys stay constricted in their high school social group and/or their work social group and don't look to widen their horizons and grow their character by making new friends and meeting life-changing people. Some of the best friends I have today I met through actively seeking out new social circles, rather than only staying confined to those that I've known all my life and mostly by default. Pro #10: A More Varied Social Life No more sitting at home on a Saturday night playing video games. No more empty events calendar on Facebook. In male-female social groups it is the women who usually hold the keys to acceptance and entry. And they are often the organisational force behind gatherings and social events. Expect them to want you to be at their social gatherings if you cultivate the right skills and reputation. That means access to more social circles and more girls. Allying with the guys you meet along the way is also going to really help in this regard. Pro #11: Increased Network When you spend more time growing your social network you can have all manner of unexpected positives. These comes from a widening network. Whether it be job-offerings, tickets to a concert/club-night etc., or meeting somebody who will fix your computer/car/sink on the cheap, the benefits of knowing a large amount of people who you offer value to (more on this in another article) can be quite marked. meet women social circle You didn't think it was all going to be flowers and rose gardens, did you? Like anything where you have multiple ways of going about an endeavour, there are pros to meeting women via social circle, and there are cons. We just covered the pros; let's have a look now at the cons. Con #1: Not Talking to Strangers Your first instinct might well be, "How is this a con?" Well, let me tell you. While you can increase the amount of girls you have access to by climbing along the web tendrils that connect different social groups, unless you approach strangers you are still going to be much more limited in the amount of girls you have access to. Even if you are a social circle guru, you still need to do cold approach. Not dealing with the anxiety one may feel at approaching a stranger I considered a 'pro', but foregoing this will also curtail the development of your social acuity... and even your ability to seduce girls within your social circle. This is because the better elements of social circle cultivation are unlocked more easily by using strangers to create attraction within existing social circle members and vice versa. I'll be expanding upon how exactly to do this in further articles. Con #2: Potential to Blow Up in Your Face Taking multiple girls from the same social circle to bed comes laden with a fair share of potentially combustible situations, with girls and guys alike. If you're flying dark then this is probably going to happen. Thankfully, I've trodden this road before you, so hopefully you'll be able to side-step the drama with what I've learnt from dealing with more than my fair share of my own. At the end of the day you need to be the cream that rises to the top to float above the potential mire of social group drama. We'll go into this further into the series. Con #3: Time I know this one is Chase's personal pet peeve with social circles. Staying in contact with multiple social circles, while providing loads of fun and numerous great benefits to your life, can be very time consuming. If you're at the stage of self-development where you need to increase your social skills then it's worthwhile investing a lot of time in this. However, if you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company then this type of thing is going to become markedly harder as you become more and more time-constrained, and have less and less time to spend socializing. There have been times in my life where I haven't had the time available to be invested in many social groups and this means that your ability to get girls through this avenue can diminish (another reason why you still need to be cold approaching). However, we can turn an absence from a social group, for periods of time, in our favour. But again, more on that later in the series. Con #4: Let's Get to Know Each Other... Privately After a certain point, hanging out with a girl in her social circle can become tiresome, especially if you're ready to take the interaction further. meet women social circle This sounds somewhat contradictory to my original 'screening tool' positive, but once you've seen her in these situations enough there is really no need for them as getting to know somebody on a deeper level means you're going to have to leave these social circle interactions and get to one-on-one time. Thankfully, this can easily be overcome by scheduling dates outside of the social circle with girls that you're interested in. Con #5: More Elements to Go Against You This can also be a negative. As it ain't just you and the girl, there are a lot more factors at play. When these factors are swinging your way it's totally great, as I said before, but when these factors go against you (and some are outside your control) it can be detrimental to you seducing a specific girl. Con #6: Boyfriend-a-Lookin' When a girl from your immediate social circle sleeps with you then expect a greater level of expectation. There are certain things you can do to mitigate this and as you extend further out into uncharted social circles then this becomes less of an issue. Again, more on this in further articles. meet women social circle That's a wrap for pros and cons. You'll notice that I've talked a lot about the necessity of still attempting to meet strangers while you're working your social circle/s. I wanted to highlight this at the end of the article just to drive the point home. It's important. A blend of cold approach and social approaching is the best way to go - the two can help each other out in many ways. Another point - social circle approaching is great in that it can bring you many more benefits than simply meeting and seducing girls. I seem to have briefly touched on that as well, but it is also worth highlighting. One more thing. I've made the distinction between immediate social circle and extended social circle (the periphery Chase talked about in "The Secret to Hooking Up with Friends"), and that's also worth noting. So that's the bird's eye view, but don't worry if you want a lot more details - they're on the way. Stay tuned for the coming articles (that you're probably sick of me mentioning). In these, I'll be showing you how to accentuate all the above positives while diminishing those bothersome negatives.

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##Mixed Signals from a Girl: What These Mean Today I want to talk about a strange and confusing topic for a lot of guys - namely, getting mixed signals from a girl. You know what mixed signals are: one moment, she's flirty and warm with you, and you get excited, thinking you're getting somewhere with her. The next moment, she's cool and aloof - and you're really not sure what happened. Then, out of nowhere - BAM! You're back get warm, flirty behavior from her. So does that mean she likes you, or does that mean she doesn't? mixed signals In "How Girls Show Interest," we discussed one of the causes of mixed signals from girls - women's need to often couch their interest in aloofness or disinterest so as not to risk their images or ego by putting themselves out there too far and not getting the response they were looking for. Because the fact remains that - in spite of the occasional commenter or two on here lamenting, "Why can't women just come up to us guys and ask us out?" - men do the approaching and the asking out, while women do the waiting and the weighing of those choices among men who've asked them out. These roles in the initial approach to mating mirror the final roles in the bedroom - men aggress, women receive. There are a few other reasons why a girl will send you mixed messages, however; the complete list is this: She's deliberately not sticking her neck out too far - in case you don't bite She's just naturally a flirtatious girl and likes flirting and/or she's leading you on to capture your interest and keep you around her She's legitimately switching her mind like crazy - one minute into you, the next minute not Here's quick one-over of each of these potential reasons for this behavior from her. #1: SHE'S PROTECTING HER NECK You know, of course, how embarrassing it can be as a man to go up and have a girl reject you after you try and fail to get her on a date. Most girls will try to be nice, or give you a "maybe" as a way of letting you down easy without a flat-out rejection - they know it's tough, and really don't want to make you feel bad. Well, as hard as it is for men to be rejected by women, it's even harder for women being rejected by men. Men have fairly widely-known lower standards than women. It isn't true for all men, and it isn't true for all women, but if you ask the average woman what she looks for in a man, you'll get something like this back: Handsome Charming Sociable Outgoing Good in bed Makes me feel good My friends like him Smart Good sense of humor Good job Makes good money Affectionate Cares about me Romantic Sexy Meanwhile, if you ask the average man what he looks for in a woman, you'll get something like this back: Long hair Not too fat Hasn't hit menopause yet ... and even some of those might be open to negotiation. This has two effects on women: It makes the average woman bolder than the average man, at least in terms of flirtation - she knows a man won't reject her or call her out on pure flirtation It makes the average woman more timid than the average man in terms of approaching and asking out - while her odds of rejection are lower, women also tend to experience that a rejection stings a great deal There's another reason women who like you won't be very aggressive with their signals much of the time, too: the majority of men are more attracted to women they need to chase than women who chase them. People want what they can't have, and most men simply value women they need to pursue and spend time on and obsess over late at night more highly than women they don't. Women know this - if they haven't experienced it themselves firsthand, they've heard about it from girlfriends or read it in women's magazines and advice columns. For all those reasons, most women will never aggressively pursue you - instead, they'll just ping you here and there with some mixed signals, that perhaps they think are clear enough for you to pick up the hint and take action... if you're so inclined, that is. #2: SHE'S A BIG FLIRT (AND LIKES MEN AROUND HER) mixed signalsAll women like having men around them who are interested in them and chasing and pursuing them. As a man, wouldn't it feel good to have lots of (attractive) women chasing you and texting you and flirting with you and trying to spend time with you? Same deal for women. Some women prefer this more than others, though. While some women really just want to find one guy and attach themselves to him and have it be just the two of them for all eternity, there are other women who enjoy having their cadre of adoring fans orbiting around them, sending them text messages and calls and date invitations and presents and jokes and everything sweet and nice and flirty and fun imaginable. Typically, girls who are big flirts will only do just enough necessary to keep a particular man in pursuit. They tend to have good, well-honed instincts for how much they need to give a guy to keep him coming after them - the mirror of what we discussed in "Get Girls Chasing: Give a Little to Get a Lot." You can identify a girl who's a big flirt by the facts that she: Always has plenty of male attention Never gets angry at your or ever seems to be emotionally affected by you Is very good at making you feel like she might want you, without anything tangible ever happening between the two of you To her, it's all a game. She either enjoys flirting with men and the attention they give her a lot, she likes having men around her (for emotional validation or for the feelings of security this gives), or both. Worth pointing out for the newer guys: women aren't doing this to spite you. They also don't see this behavior as "harmful" or "bad" - i.e., they don't see themselves as distractions to you finding a "real" woman who's actually into you, anymore than men dating women they aren't serious about view themselves as distractions to those women trying to find "real" men to settle down with. They're simply doing it because it's fun, it feels good, and they assume because you are being so warm and friendly and nice back, you must enjoy it too. When I was relatively young and still inexperienced with girls, I blew up at a girl for "playing games" like this with me. I wasn't the only guy she did it with - she was doing it with lots of them. But they were never going to blow up at her, just keep being nice and hoping she'd throw them a bone. I realized she was toying with me, and I got nasty. I ended up apologizing for the emotional venting - she wasn't being malicious, she was just following her programming - and I cut her off after that. I'd run into her from time to time thereafter, and she'd always be conciliatory and ask how I was doing and tell me she was single now and tell me I could call her sometime and things like that - I'd laugh and say thanks, but better if I don't. I don't think she had any idea she affected me (or any other guy) that much until that incident. A girl who's a big flirt is a big flirt because the feedback she gets from men is positive. Just like what a lot of guys new to meeting women end up doing when they pursue reactions over results - someone does something, gets a good response, and does more of it. #3: SHE LEGITIMATELY CAN'T MAKE UP HER MIND Not all mixed signals are women being coy or women being flirts. Sometimes a girl really cannot decide if she likes you or not, and she keeps changing her mind. This is most likely to happen when you're still newer and less experienced, and she is as well. Many newer guys move slow with girls, miss escalation windows, and let attraction expire, and then go work their tails off to try and win back what they've lost. This leads to all manner of emotional ups and downs for both themselves and the objects of their affection as things seem like they're going to happen, then don't, then do again. As women become more experienced with men and dating, they tend to figure out that the guys who don't move fast and don't aggressively go after what they want are just inexperienced with women and haven't really figured out what they're doing yet. So, you won't usually see women past 27 or 28 flipping out and going crazy one way or the other about a guy. The younger you get though, the more you can see this frustrated flipping... where one moment she's flirting, the next minute she's cold, and the minute after that she's flirting again. How can you tell the difference between a girl who can't make up her mind and a girl who's interested but protecting her neck? Simple: The girl who's being guarded about her interest won't go cold on you... she'll just act a little aloof. The girl who's repeatedly changing her mind will sway from hot and bothered over you to cold and deep into auto-rejection over you to (sometimes) hot and bothered over you all over again The girl who's being guarded is generally sexier and more subtle. The girl who can't make up her mind will often have bursts of showing you lots of blatant interest followed by bursts of blatant coldness and disinterest The girl who's being guarded will be receptive when you try to move things forward; meanwhile, the girl who can't make up her mind will usually agree, then disagree, then perhaps later agree again, or vice versa The important thing to remember here is that most of the time when a girl's acting like her decision making has gone spastic it's coming as a response to how she's perceived your actions and intentions toward her - she thought you liked her, then thought you didn't, then thought too bad, you moved too slow, then thought, well, maybe I do like him, then wrote you off again for not taking action... and so on and so forth. mixed signals It's a frustrating thing to be on the receiving end of a girl's mixed signals. Fortunately, carving through these is easy enough - provided you're taking the steps necessary to move things forward. That means pushing ahead for investment, getting girls contributing, and continually escalating an interaction. If you aren't doing - or aren't willing to be doing - the step-taking you need to be to find out if you've got a girl who's legitimately interested in you or who's just playing the flirting game, though... well, those mixed messages may last just about forever. THE EASY-AS-PIE SOLUTION TO MIXED SIGNALS ... is taking action and following your process, of course. There's no verbal jujitsu required here. No social acrobatics. No under-the-radar maneuvering and positioning. Just plain old fashioned no-nonsense moving things forward and seeing if she goes with you... and that's it. How's that solve the problem of mixed signals? By making your intentions clear as day, and by telling girls loudly and clearly that it's put up or shut up time. Mixed signals only work with you - or are a problem for you - when you're moving too slow and when you aren't actually doing anything with a girl. Sure, you'll occasionally get mixed messages from a girl you've traded numbers with. She's available, then she isn't; she sets up a date with you, then she flakes on that date. Even with girls like that though, the solution is pushing things forward. Taking the next step forward works for all three categories of crossed wires: If she's genuinely interested in you and simply showing her interest without sticking her neck out too far, she'll be glad you started moving things ahead If she's a big flirt and a tease and really only wanted to have you around in her friend zone or as a backup plan, you'll screen her out fast by trying to move things forward - you will be, essentially, calling her bluff - you push for progress, and she has no option but to refuse to give it to you if she isn't truly interested If she honestly can't make up her mind, moving things forward forces her to do so - either she chooses to move forward with you, or she jumps ship I'm aware sometimes you'll find a guy who "doesn't want to risk losing her" by taking action, and he'd rather wait for "the right moment." If you have any thoughts rolling around your head like that, make sure you read this article first: "How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need." TOOLS FOR MOVING THINGS FORWARD So what are your main options for making headway - or at least figuring out if she's actually interested or she's just a big flirt - with a girl you think is into you, maybe, but who never does anything with you? They're this: Step 1: Get investment from her (get compliance, move her, etc.) Step 2: Ask her out Step 3: Take her to bed That's it. Three steps... and three steps alone. You'll notice that: Teasing her, Flirting with her, Bantering with her, And talking to her ... are not on the list. Why not? Because while all of them are necessary steps most of the time in any given seduction, they are not ways of moving things decidedly forward. They aren't milestones. They aren't accomplishments of any kind. And they don't make her decide to go along with you and proceed down the road toward becoming your lover or girlfriend. Rather, they're the same things she does with every other guy she never goes to bed with or has anything meaningful with. If you want headway with a girl, you must get investment, ask her out, and bed her. Once you've reached one of the first two plateaus, congratulate yourself, then immediately get to work on making the next one happen very soon - the clock is always ticking. NAILING DOWN SLIPPERY WOMEN mixed signalsIf the girl sending you mixed signals is in Category 1 - she's genuinely interested in you, and just playing a little coy - you won't have to worry too much about "figuring her out," because as soon as you start taking steps to progress your relationship with her, she'll come right along with you. If, however, she's in categories two or three - she's more in love with flirting than she is with you, say, or she can't make up her mind whether she wants something with you or not - she's going to slip and slide around and deflect your efforts to escalate things. What that looks like is this: you'll try to get investment from her, and she'll deftly outmaneuver you. You'll try to ask her out, and she'll never quite be available. You'll try to take her home, and some last minute excuse will come up every time. Even if she likes you, she has competing objectives - she may be somewhat attracted to you, but also value you as a friend, say, or not want to risk any rumors spreading in school or at work. Or, she might like you a little bit, but she also likes the attention you give her, and she doesn't want to risk trading one for the other. Now, what normally happens here is that the guy on the receiving end of mixed signals will hem and haw and make excuses for her. "Well, I can see that she'd be busy," he might say, or, "That was kind of an awkward way I asked her out - she'd probably be more open to going out with me if I came in more smooth." If you catch yourself doing this, it means you're being out-gamed; she's more experienced at dating than you are, and she's giving you pause (the better you get, the more you give pause to girls rather than them give pause to you - in the mating dance, one person is usually more certain and in charge than the other, while the other is more confused and thoughtful and reflective). Instead, you want to be the one giving her pause. That means you: Call her out on her deflections and refuse to let her give a non-answer Work on nailing things down to the point where you get a solid "yes" or "no" Insist on compliance until you get it or it blows up in your face Caveat: most women won't like being forced to be totally honest about their intentions and getting called out on their game. For this reason, it's usually better to avoid nailing down women at work, in school, or in your close social circle. In these cases, if a girl continually slips away from you, it's better just to chalk her up as a loss and move on. However... if you're free of social consequences from calling women out on slipperiness... I recommend you try nailing them down (as smoothly and socially graciously as possible). Here's an example of how this'd go, with a girl who's always been flirty with you but noncommittal: You: Natalie, what say we grab a coffee or an ice cream this week or next? Her: Oh, thanks for the invite! I'm not sure what my schedule looks like... let me let you know. Already from the tone you probably ought to realize this girl is less than thrilled you asked. It may be she liked things just the way they were, if she knows you socially, or she simply isn't feeling it with you. The next time you see her, assuming she never gets back to you on coffee/ice cream: You: How're this week's adventures coming along, miss? Her: Huh? Oh, really good! How's everything with you? You: Peachy as always. I'm grabbing brunch at the Waffle House in about 20 minutes - it'd be delightful if you came along. Here, you don't press her about the same date - the assumption is, if she was really interested in coffee or ice cream she would've gotten back to you. If you press about coffee or ice cream again, you look socially awkward - here's a guy who "doesn't get it." So you change something - she either doesn't like coffee/ice cream, or she doesn't like you. You assume she's fine with you and it's the date she doesn't like - so you change that and ask again. Every time you ask, she's either going to be more likely to say "yes" if she likes you, or she's going to get more uncomfortable with being asked if she doesn't. Are you fine with making women who flirt with you but don't actually have any romantic/sexual interest in you uncomfortable for the sake of finding the women who flirt with you and who do have romantic/sexual interest in you? I know I am. At some point, if you keep getting deflections, you can write a woman off as not "serious," and move on. For me, this is generally between two and three deflections - but I've had women tell me stories about men they worked with or went to school with that they initially had no interest in and only ended up dating after the guy asked them out 10 or 12 times. So, anecdotally at least, it does seem to be possible to "wear girls down," at least some of the time... but you've got to actually be asking them out when you to do this. You won't make headway by sitting around hoping and praying and waiting for "the right moment," because chances are that moment will never come - and even if it does, you'll have built it up so much by that point that it'll fly right by without you ever doing anything about it. If you work to nail things down with a slippery woman and she evades you enough times that you're convinced she isn't interested, it's at your discretion whether you'd like to continue flirting and bantering with her or not. If you do, do it just for the fun of it - not because you think it's getting you somewhere with her (it isn't; she's a pro at this). FUN WITH MIXED SIGNALS Once I had enough confidence and experience with women that I was accustomed to acting quickly on signs of interest, my own dynamic with women giving mixed signals changed quite dramatically. I stopped worrying about mixed signals altogether, really, because as soon as I'd get any kind of signal from a girl, I'd pounce. (I'll stop and stress here that this "pouncing" is done in a smooth, suave, charming, attractive way - it's not me jerking my head around suddenly and saying, "Oh - you wanna go out?") What happened was, I started getting two very distinct kinds of reactions: Women who were absolutely delighted I picked up on their signals and took action, and Women who were stunned and awkward that I did It took me a few months to figure out what was causing the different reactions, but I soon did: the girls who actually liked me were refreshed to find a man who, for once, noticed and acted on their signals of interest... meanwhile, the women who just wanted to flirt for flirting's sake and get a little male attention were taken aback to find themselves confronted with a man who would seize on those signals and push things assertively forward. The girls who liked me were thrilled... and the ones who just wanted another male attention giver were dismayed. I haven't worried about mixed signals for years because of this. As soon as I get any kind of signal, the girl and I are either instantly working on being together, or she's called on her bluff and goes into retreat. (You'll sometimes get women you've called a bluff on retreating, then coming back to you later in a more submissive way - sometimes still trying to have you as a friend, sometimes now wanting you as a lover - my recommendation is proceeding the same as before: move things forward and see if she'll go with you) If you really want to put some delight on the faces of the women who are interested in you, try taking strong action as a response to any mixed signal situations you encounter - the women who aren't receptive you'll quickly forget, but the women who are you'll have some amazing experiences with that you may never have had otherwise.

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##Move Faster II Because our previous article on how to move faster with women (read the original here) proved so popular, we've put together a follow up with more tips on moving faster with women - and everything from getting phone numbers faster to getting kisses faster to getting the girl you like intimate in bed with you faster. The importance of moving fast with women cannot be understated. The same women that some men treat with kid gloves out of a fear of moving too fast and scaring off are often dating, kissing, and sleeping with other, more fearless men much more quickly, and (here's the kicker) they tend to respect those men much more too. Whom do you think a woman will respect more? A man who takes everything slow and treats her like he's afraid of her (or of losing her), or a man who looks at her in a sexy, confident way, and makes her quickly feel attraction and desire for him and anticipates her feeling this and leads her along the path to romance and seduction? That one's a no brainer, right? So let's get you to move faster with women… Tips: Meet Her Fast. When you first spot a girl, start talking to her before you have the chance to over-think things or get into your head with nervousness or doubt. It's important that you start moving your feet as soon as you lay eyes on her. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to actually do anything, so - meet her fast. Meet her when you see her - that's the code you should follow in almost every situation. Get Her Working Right Away. A lot of guys wait until later on in an interaction before they start asking a gal to contribute to the interaction by carrying some of the conversation or joining them in having a seat or going together to go and get a drink at the bar or a coffee at a nearby shop. This is wrong, flat out. The sooner you get a woman investing in an interaction with you, moving around with you, and committing to you, the more likely that interaction is to succeed. Challenge Her Fast. And I don't mean to a match of table tennis. We're talking the good kind of challenging here - the kind that people use when A) finding out more about each other, and B) flirting. This means playful banter, things like takeaways (turning your body positioning away from her when she says or does something you don't like, whether literally or in jest), and screening (asking her questions like whether she's a good cook, or whether she has any artistic talents). Most men never do these things, and most women find those kinds of men boring. The men whom women find interesting are the men with standards, and being a bit of a challenge to her is one of the top ways of communicating that you are one of those men. Reward What You Like, Ignore What You Don't. Want a tip for speeding up the process with a girl you've just met? It's this: reward what you like and ignore what you don't. What does that mean exactly? That means that when she does good things - such as telling you about something you find interesting or attractive (say she's just told you she's a classically trained pianist, something you find alluring) or buying you some small token - you reward her with something like a warm thanks and a kiss on the cheek. And when she does something you don't like - well, you just ignore it and keep moving the interaction forward as if nothing happened. One of the mistakes men often make is confronting women on things they don't like. Confrontation is usually never productive in a dating or seduction scenario, though - it only creates a rift between the man and the woman. Instead, unless she's done something awful, it's better just to keep rolling and continue getting investment from her and taking the interaction forward one step at a time (and focusing on getting her doing things that you can reward!). Use Yes Ladders. If you're trying to move things forward, but you think she might be a bit hesitant or resistant, use a yes ladder. It's a quick, effective technique for making another person more amenable to being agreeable. Here's an example of how an interaction might play out without a yes ladder, and how it might play out with one: Scenario 1: No Yes Ladder Guy: How about we head back to my place for a nightcap? Gal: It's kind of late, I should probably get going. I have to get up early tomorrow. Scenario 2: With Yes Ladder Guy: Seems too early for the night to be over, doesn't it? Gal: Yeah, it does. Guy: I'm having a lot of fun hanging out with you, aren't you? Gal: I am! Guy: Tell you what, let's have one more drink. What do you say? Gal: That sounds great! Guy: Cool. Let's head back for a nightcap before we call it an evening, shall we? Gal: Sure! Once people get onto a "roll" of saying yes, it builds into a kind of enthusiastic vibe of agreeing with another person and syncing their views to relate and do things together mutually. The opposite can also be true - avoid series of "no"s like the plague, and if you're getting nos, make sure to skip asking anything critical right after you've gotten one or two of them! Yes ladders are powerful and pretty easy to use, and can get things moving a lot faster than they might otherwise have moved. Use Barriers. Barriers are a great way of stating your intentions - to let a girl know you're interested in her, and to get her thinking about the same thing you're thinking about - without being too overt, blatant, or crude. So you might say, "If it wasn't for all these people, I'd be tearing your clothes off right now," or, "If my roommate wasn't home right now, I'd take you back and give you the night of your life." Barriers have the added element of push-pull: the push is telling a girl what you'd like to do with her; the pull is telling her you won't be able to. As a bonus, they can often lead girls to chase after you, contributing to the cause and saying things like, "Well, we can go to my place then!" Pack Lots of Experiences Into a Little Time. One big key on how to move faster with women is in how many experiences she has with you. People tend to think that attachment is built on time, but it's not - it's built on experiences. The more experiences you share with someone, the longer you feel you've known them, and the more connected you tend to feel. How to use this to your advantage? Do lots of things with her. The more the better, and the more variety the better. Obviously, they should be things that allow you to move the interaction forward and get investment and build a real connection based on conversation - but if you are doing different things and seeing different things (or even moving around in different rooms in a nightclub, or bar-hopping, or window-shopping in different stores in a mall or street), she'll feel as though the two of you have known each other longer, and things will progress more quickly. Trade Numbers Faster. Most guys wait until the end of an interaction to grab a number. Don't do that. Grab it early, and it takes some of the pressure off - and also communicates very clearly that you want to see her again. Use broken conversational threads to your advantage here - for instance, you mention something, and she asks to hear more and clearly is interested - you pick up on her interest, begin to respond, then say, "Wait, before I forget, we need to trade cells. You're too much fun, I'd feel awful if I forgot to get your contact info and never saw you again." Then boom, the two of you trade cell numbers, and you go right back to that story she asked you about. At the same time, the interaction's gone to the next level, because the two of you have both basically told each other, "Yes, I like you." Get Her Comfortable With Your Touch Fast. Don't wait until the end of your time together before you start getting physical. Kiss her hand, kiss her on the cheek, have her give you kisses on the cheek. Get your face close to hers, as if you're about to kiss her, then don't. Pick her up, move her around, get her used to your hands on her arms, back, thighs. Do it smoothly, and don't do anything she's uncomfortable with - every woman has a different threshold. If you sense her recoiling a bit, pull back and slow down a bit, then come back later to whatever it was you were doing that she recoiled from. Focus on moving as fast as she is comfortable with - rather than playing it safe and moving too slowly, like many a man does. And once the two of you are trading cheek kisses and neck kisses, etc., it's very fast and easy to move onto full-on passionate make-outs. Handle Logistics Fast. The men who get sex fast are the ones who A) do all the right things, B) have a nose for women who are looking to hook up, and C) handle logistics fast. That means knowing where you can get physical with a girl - whether it's your place or hers, the backseat of your car, or a bathroom or a bench or a beach somewhere nearby. It might not sound elegant, but once you've gotten physical with a girl in a bathroom for five minutes, you've broken that "wall" and can go right back to the same point in the seduction when you have her in a more appropriate venue for the two of you to enjoy each other. And, while many women have autopilot responses of feeling uncomfortable, pressured, or resistant in the "lying in bed at his place" scenario, most have far less discomfort or resistance toward getting physical in novel situations that they have little or no previous experience in. Their minds are too distracted and stimulated by the novelty of the situation to process all the worries and fears they'll get wracked with in the familiar place of lying in a man's bed as he moves toward sex. So, a bit of a primer to get you going down the right path. Focus on moving as fast as you can - as fast as she will go - while making her comfortable and making sure that both she and you are enjoying yourselves (and each other), and you will have a more successful - and exciting - dating life. So don't limit yourself to the three-date-rule or anything as stodgy as that - give girls the excitement and passion they deserve. And move faster with women!

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##Nighttime Street Game "Consistency" has long been a focus of mine - I tend to be a very busy person with a lot going on, and I want to make things as consistent as possible, to operate as efficiently as possible. Nothing bugs me more than wasting a lot of time on something - including getting girls. So one of the things I've looked for is this: what are the most consistent places to meet women and take them home from? Nightclubs are good. Lounges are better. But there's one avenue of meeting women I've found that's more consistent and reliable than anything else: Street game at night. Particularly, street game at the end of the night. There is, I believe, a veritable cornucopia of reasons why this is. We'll go through those in a minute, but first I'd like to lay the concept out clearly: Street approaches at night, especially at the end of the night, have higher odds of you taking the girl home than any other kind of approach you do. That's a rather bold statement, so let me back it up with some thoughts: Women are far more receptive to meeting men after leaving a bar or a nightclub. There are a variety of reasons for this. The primary ones are that 1) her guard is finally lowered after having it up all night defending herself against "club guys", and 2) she doesn't really want the night to be over now that she's left. Women who aren't going out often wish they could be a part of the action. If you meet a girl on the street who isn't going to or coming from a party venue at night, especially on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night, oftentimes she isn't going to one of those because she doesn't like that kind of environment - but she's still wishing she didn't have to spend Friday night alone. Women view men they meet on the street far differently from men they meet in a bar or nightclub. In a social nighttime venue like a bar or a club, women expect to be approached, and they expect men to have their A-game on. This is why nighttime venues can be one of the most challenging venues to master; until your approach is tightly honed, you'll often struggle to have success here. Not so with street approaching; you can be far less well-honed, and a bit rawer, so long as you are charming and persistent and you go for what you want and keep things moving fast. Women are far less skeptical of men they meet on the street than they are of "nightclub guys" and "bar guys". And, a bit of anecdotal evidence: The fastest pulls of my life have occurred off of street approaches (including a pull of two gorgeous girls to an "afterparty" within 15 or 20 seconds of approaching them, and another pull of two very cute girls back to my hotel off the beach within 2 minutes of meeting them - those last two I kissed one and fingered and got the pants and panties off of the other before being interrupted by the first girl). The coolest women I have met have usually been street or moving approaches (met my most recent ex-girlfriend in an elevator on our ways out of a nightclub, and she was always very cool; I also have met on the street or in mass transit fashion models I've gotten intimate with or had near misses with and even a former Miss Teen USA who asked me to go back to her apartment alone with her six minutes after I'd met her). Women are far more skeptical of you when meeting you in a bar or club than they are when meeting you on the street. So how does street game work? Well, you simply walk up and approach a girl on the street and start talking to her! Often, it's easier if you run up and get her attention from the side; check out the article on pre-opening and make sure you're following those guidelines. They're even more important on the street, where women are more skittish and more easily startled. Pre-opening puts them at ease right away the majority of the time. And make sure to open with direct; indirect or situational isn't going to cut it in the rather extreme situation that is a street approach. A girl knows why you've come up to her - far better to be honest than to try and hide it. Finally, move fast with her and invite her to get some food or a tea or invite her home soon after meeting her. The street has no tolerance for slow-moving men who don't gamble; take your time or don't invite her anywhere, and she'll be gone before you know it. Ultimately, especially if you've started getting used to bar and club game, street approaching can be a bit of a rush and quite exhilarating. It often moves faster than bar or club game; you get less skepticism from the women you meet; and your girl is already on the go, which sometimes makes it easier to get her going home with you. Street approaching at the end of the night is quite often even easier; if you are a cool guy with solid fundamentals, women will be thrilled to be talking to you, rather than making their way home when they aren't really ready for the night to be over. So if you haven't given it a shot yet… try some street game. Try some at the end of the night after your next outing to a bar or nightclub. I bet you'll enjoy it.

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##Non-Supplication: Why Working to Impress Women Doesn't Work "Can you get me a glass of water?" she asked me. "Please?" She gave me big, dewy doe eyes, and her cutest, most charming pursed lips. "It's over there," I said playfully, pointing to the water cooler. "You can get it yourself." "Oh!" she exclaimed in mock frustration, getting up to go get herself more water. Does it offend your sensibilities that I told her to do that? It might offend some people's. How can a guy be so cold as to not even go and get a girl a glass of water? they think. But it isn't about being cold. It's about returning to the basics of sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort; it's about understanding that the men who supplicate -- the men who kiss up -- the men who try to impress women -- those men end up holding the bag. It's about understanding what women are really attracted to... and what causes them to lose that attraction. And it's about understanding that where the line is, and how much is too much when it comes to doing for women. DEFINING SUPPLICATION The term "supplicate" is defined on Dictionary.com here as follows: 2. to pray humbly to; entreat or petition humbly. 3. to seek or ask for by humble entreaty. It's a very good description of what many men do when it comes to women. They hope, pray, beg, entreat, or petition. They kiss up, and wish to get somewhere. Most men supplicate to women. But why? At first, you might think it's because society tells us women must be courted and romanced. Men must do things for women to "prove their worth." Men need to impress women. And to an extent, society does say this, but many men take it to the extreme: they run around trying to please a woman and do everything she wants. Have you ever seen a TV show where a woman continually asked a man to do things for her, and the man kept doing those things for her? Even in mainstream society, this isn't depicted as "The Way to Do Things;" even there, it's shown as weak and supplicating. And people laugh at the dynamic, as the woman orders the man around and the man meekly complies. "That's so funny," we think. And then, despite having laughed at these same TV shows, huge numbers of men go and do the same thing in real life. Egad. But, before we start saying you absolutely cannot do for a woman period, we have to draw some lines in the sand. And it's sticky defining supplication. How much is too much compliance to give a woman? NICE GUYS AND BAD BOYS Let's take a look at two scenarios. In the first, you're standing next to the water cooler, and a girl asks you to bring her a cup of water. In the second, you're sitting on the other side of the room with a girl, and she asks you to go get her a cup of water. Should you say yes to both women? Only one of them? Neither of them? This is where the fine line must be drawn: you want to know how to provide value without supplicating. Men, as a gender, aren't all that great at walking fine lines most of the time. Most guys tend to one extreme or another. In this instance, most guys are going to choose one of two following extremes: "I must provide value at all times," or "I must not appear to be too tryhard." The guy who's trying to provide value at all times is going to run around doing whatever women ask him to do. On the other hand, the guy who's trying to appear not-tryhard is going to sit there and refuse to help women no matter what because he doesn't want to risk seeming like that first guy. This is similar to the distinction between nice guys and bad boys, and it's a little like what we talked about in the post on how girls like bad boys. There's a happy medium between the two extremes, and being successful in this arena is all about reaching that medium. The guy who's a too-nice pushover is going to fail to elicit any attraction from women whatsoever. He tends to get emotions closer to, "Aww, he's such a sweetheart!" and, depending on a girl's mood, "Ew, God, all he ever does is whatever I ask him, trying to kiss up to me and impress me. Gross." The guy who's trying not to be tryhard does better, and gets more attraction, but also breeds a lot of hostility -- and risks sending women into auto-rejection. He gets emotions that range from, "He's such a bad boy... and I love it," to, "Screw this guy, he doesn't care about me at all." Obviously, "He's such a bad boy... and I love it," is a lot better than, "Aww, he's such a sweetheart!" but it'd be a lot better if you didn't have the downsides that go hand-in-hand with these two. If you could do nice things for her sometimes, and be a roguish bad boy other times. If you knew where to walk that line between the guy who's too nice, and the guy who's not nice enough. What you want to do is still provide value, without supplicating. impress women THE REAL WAY TO IMPRESS WOMEN: PROVIDE VALUE WITHOUT SUPPLICATING Back to those two scenarios. What's the right answer? The answer is: Grab a cup of water for the girl when you're next to the water cooler Tell the girl to get the water herself when the two of you are sitting nowhere near the water cooler Grabbing a cup of water when you're next to the cooler is no big deal, and you seem to be trying harder NOT to provide value when you refuse. It's good to bring the cup of water, and it costs you very little in effort, so that one's easy. How about telling a girl to get her own water? Does that feel risky? It shouldn't. Two people are sitting and talking. One wants something from the other side of the room. Who should get it? The one who wants it, or the one who's talking to the one who wants it? If it involves a lot of work, typically a woman should be responsible for her own things. Help her when you can help her, but remember that she wants a MAN -- not an errand boy. Women will complain to you about you not kneeling down and fulfilling their every command. Shrug and don't worry about it. Remind them that you are their companion, and that if they need a maid, a nanny, or a servant they ought to consider hiring one. Usually they'll laugh at this -- because they realize you're right. If you and a buddy of yours were sitting together, and he asked you, "Hey bro, can you get me some food?" you'd tell him to go get it himself, wouldn't you? And if two girlfriends were sitting, can you imagine one girl asking the other to run and grab her a coffee? Wouldn't the other girl be offended simply for being asked this? So why is it okay for women to ask men this? I'm trying to point this out to you, because it's silly. Women do this to men though for one very unique, specific purpose: Domestication. The compliant man is the domesticated man. He's been broken -- trained -- taught who the boss is. It helps a woman to feel more secure, while simultaneously nuking her attraction for the man. In terms of biology and evolution, for raising a family, security is more important than attraction to women, so they're willing to sacrifice one for the other. The problem is, domestication is never good for men! Men who allow themselves to be domesticated in relationships end up depressed and feeling trapped and bossed around; men who allow themselves to be domesticated prior to sleeping with girls end up landing in the friend zone, relegated to being just friends with a girl they liked (and are waiting on hand-and-foot). I'll write a proper article on avoiding domestication and how both you and the women in your life will be happier for it, but for now let's just say domestication is bad, and leads to frustrated, emotionally impotent men and bored women prone to looking elsewhere for more exciting men. It's lose-lose for both parties. You don't want to be domesticated. And while she likely legitimately thinks she wants you domesticated, trust me, she'll be happier if she's unable to tame you too. And that ties back into non-supplication and why providing value effortlessly and refusing to supplicate when you're asked for silly or unnecessary things is what truly impresses women: it's because women are most attracted to men who are comfortable providing value, but cannot be tamed. It's a difficult balance to strike, I'll admit, but it's one you should aim for nevertheless. Aim to be a warm, genuine, sincere guy who provides good value to women in effortless ways. Just don't be afraid to turn down silly requests, give girls a little bit of a ribbing for asking unnecessary things of you, and challenge them back. A few parting examples of things that can be women's requests for supplication so you have a good handle on what I mean (use this as a guide, but realize it will be different in every situation -- decide for yourself whether you can provide real value or whether it feels like supplication if you deliver on the following requests): Girls who ask you to bring them gifts (flowers, candy, expensive jewelry) Girls who ask you to go get them things (food, drinks) Girls who ask you to give them things of yours (your coat, your favorite shirt) Girls who ask you for intensive favors, like translating something, proofreading it, or teaching them something that's going to take a long time to teach -- especially for girls you aren't intimate with yet "More water?" the same girl asked me after she'd finished the glass she fetched for herself. I pointed to my own empty glass of water over on my desk. "Will you get me more water if I get you more water?" I teased her. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed again, then laughed hard and got up to get herself water again. Then she came back, sat down next to me, a big smile on her face, and looked at me as happy as can be.

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##Nonverbal Attraction and Getting Girls Without Words In the post on how to get foreign girls, a reader named swingcat (no relation to the other guy!) asks the following: There are quite a few Chinese girls I know who ONLY speak Chinese and who told me they always dreamt of meeting a foreigner. Out of experience I know that with nightgame you can pull girls without speaking a single word. What about daygame however? And for nightgame, how can you go beyond SNLs without being able to communicate? You mention leading. Yes, that is indespensable but how do you establish comfort or comfort? How do you non-verbally qualify? Maye you can post some examples orFRs, since you mention that you have quite a few of these experiences. I think this would be really helpful. Basically, he asks how do you move things forward with a woman you can't (or prefer not to) communicate with? Which, I think, is a great question. You won't just use this with women who don't speak your language. I use a lot of what is to follow in my regular interactions with women who are native or fluent English speakers, too. But, you ask, why choose to go wordless rather than make use of verbiage-laden, well-worded conversation? Well, that's a part of what we'll talk about here today. TALK IS CHEAP... AND ITS RESULTS ARE TOO I'm a very efficiency-minded person, and a very results-oriented person, and I like to optimize things as much as I possibly can. That means, of course, that I'm happiest when things move fast and happen effortlessly to produce consistent, reliable results. So I don't generally like interactions that go on for a very long time; I want the point to be gotten to, and for both of us to then move on to more productive uses of our time. But early on in my seduction career, I thought that you more or less had to invest a large deal of time with women. Talk to them for a long time, help them to really get to know you, and then your chances of succeeding with them get a lot higher. Right? Of course, that isn't the case at all. As we've mentioned on here a number of times, taking too long with women is the kiss of death with them, and a surefire ticket to becoming just friends. Guys who take too long end up losing their status as sexual candidates. So then I thought, Okay, so cram more information into a shorter amount of time, and you achieve more success. And for a while I tried packing tons of information about myself into a short amount of time with a woman, and... that strategy performed even worse. When you over-talk about yourself, you come across as if trying to impress. But here's the thing: truly impressive people never try to impress. They just are impressive, without having to try to be. The instant you start trying to be impressive, you stop being impressive. So I started looking to scale back how much I talked about myself with women. In fact, I scaled back how much talking I, myself, did, period. Less. And less. And less. And I noticed that as I spoke less and less with women, they seemed to like me more and more. Now, it's worth noting that as I was speaking less and less about myself, I was also getting women speaking more. Hence, conversational deep diving and my emphasis on how to become a great conversationalist. What happens when you reduce how much you talk about yourself down to the bare minimum while simultaneously encouraging women to talk more about themselves, and you at the same time do a good job effectively communicating that you relate, is that you help women to feel increasingly accepted by you. You also, simultaneously, come across as a very powerful, solid guy who minds the Law of Least Effort and doesn't expend any additional energy that he doesn't have to. That's two great things there: you help women feel more comfortable and relate to you better, and you come across as a very solid, powerful, attractive, confident man. Two birds, one stone. And the one stone you're ultimately using to pull all of that off, of course, once you've pared down your talking to the bare essentials (or none at all), is nonverbal attraction. THE "ATTRACTION" IN NONVERBAL ATTRACTION Remember what we discussed in the articles on sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort -- that putting in a great deal of visible effort or investment makes you appear less powerful and less attractive, while appearing visibly more effortless makes you seem more powerful and more attractive. To understand how and why nonverbal attraction works, let's begin by boiling things down to their most basic level of social power, then, in a few examples: What's more attractive: saying, "That's interesting," or shrugging your eyebrows wordlessly, as if to say, "Hmm!"? What's more attractive: saying, "Hey, how's it going?" or smiling, waving, motioning a girl over, and giving her a hug without a word? What's more attractive: telling a girl, "I like you," or gazing at her dreamily without a word? Yeah, right -- you've got it. No need to go on needlessly with examples here. Going wordless just feels more attractive and powerful. That's because you, like all people and in fact in fact, even pretty much all animate animals, as far as I can tell (coral need not apply... sorry, science joke), judge power: the more powerful individuals move less, say less, and communicate more with their nonverbals. Imagine two big male gorillas courting a female gorilla. One of the big males runs around, makes a lot of vocalizations, beats his chest a lot, and basically tries to look really loud and strong and active. The other one sits there comfortably, lounging back with a bunch of bananas, flashes a gorilla smile at the girl gorilla, and motions her over. Who's going to get the gorilla girl? Most males (male humans included) mistake noise and activity for power, so they try to substitute a lot of that. Male gorillas beat their chests and yell and run around; human males talk females' ears off, buy them drinks, and try to position themselves as more impressive than other men. What goes unrealized by 99% of males, and capitalized on by the other 1%, is that individuals who are actually powerful don't run around going crazy trying to be impressive. Instead, they exude impressiveness. And part of the secret to exuding that impressiveness is doing things with a minimum of effort; thus, nonverbal. It's a lot easier to say something with a subtle gesture than it is to put together a string of words and belt it out in to the air. Because its substantially easier -- and because nonverbal communication strikes a far more primal chord in others than spoken language does -- it makes its users seem a lot more solid and a lot more socially intelligent. Attraction itself works out like this: men are attracted to looks in women, but women don't care so much about men's looks. Women are more interested in finding powerful, confident men. Looks are nice, but they get minor consideration compared to confidence and raw, real power. Not scary power; not the guys who walk around acting like... well... gorillas, though there is a certain subset of women to whom that appeals. But what women really are attracted to is men who seem confident in that their desired outcomes are secured. Men who are merely trying will work hard to get their points across and show women that they're listening and that they understand those women, to make sure those women understand that they understand. There's this whole song and dance most guys go through, being overly expressive, trying to hammer home the fact to women that they're present there in the conversation, that they're attractive guys, and that yes, they're listening and paying attention and thinking about what she has to say. Men who are confident women will get them don't do this. They just make small, simple, but clear nonverbal gestures that they know women will understand. You might even say it's a way of signaling past successes; guys who haven't been successful with women are going to have a very hard time emulating the minute nonverbal attraction signals that men who have know how to pull off. Fortunately, even if you're just starting out, there are a number of these nonverbal attraction signals you can start doing now that are going to help you find a lot more success communicating with women nonverbally right away. Let's have a look at what some of them are. nonverbal attraction HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH WOMEN NONVERBALLY All right, here's where I give you the meat and potatoes of communicating nonverbally. Disclaimer: this stuff is nuanced. You're going to need to play around with it quite a bit to get the right facial expressions and movements. Sounds easy, but isn't. But well worth getting the nuances down... women go ape for this stuff (not to beat a dead horse on the comparisons here). A few rules to keep in mind: Slower is better. Strong men move slowly. You should too. Anything even potentially rude should be followed with a playful smile. Monitor for comfort. It's possible to invest too little while being nonverbal, and your girl will start feeling there's too large an investment imbalance (she's investing a great deal, you're investing far less) and will start feeling uncomfortable. The instant you notice any sign of discomfort, start talking and relating yourself to lessen the difference in investment levels a bit. Also, some of the greatest resources for learning nonverbal communication? Movies. Check out movies with strong, sexual leading men who communicate a lot with what they don't say. My top recommendations: Ryan Reynolds (Van Wilder) Sean Connery Harrison Ford Tom Cruise Pierce Brosnan (as James Bond) George Clooney Check these guys out and emulate their nonverbal reactions -- both facial expressions and other forms of nonverbal communication. There's tons of stuff there. Communicating nonverbally... a full how-to post on this would basically end up being book-length, so rather than attempt to break down an entire form of communication in an Internet post, what I'm going to do here is give you a primer to get you started on communicating effectively nonverbally, as a tool to use with English speakers and non-English speakers alike. Here's when to use nonverbal, along with some examples of nonverbal in each context: As a substitute for words. You'll find that, quite often during a conversation, a simple head nod can be enough to signify you understand. A craning of the neck or shrugging of the eyebrows with widened eyes can communicate you don't understand. And a slow, knowing half-smile can communicate you know exactly what she's saying. Used correctly, you can replace a lot of your normal verbal communication with nonverbal communication. You can point to things (like a hat) and make a confused gesture (say, a confused facial expression plus shrugging your shoulders and holding your hands out expressively) to ask a girl to explain something, or just to make her laugh at something silly about her that she obviously knows is silly. As an addition to words. Telling a girl, "Come and sit," ends up being far more powerful when you couple that command with a patting of the seat next to you. Telling her, "Let's head over there," while craning your neck in that direction or motioning that way while turning your body as if to start walking adds a great deal of thrust. Saying, "I see," then pausing verbally as your eyes glide off to the right and you turn your head ever so slightly as if considering the point makes you sound as though you've understood that much more. Again, you can skip the verbal with any of these and the gesture's still likely to get the message across powerfully. Only use the verbal part of this communication if you think it's necessary for avoiding an investment imbalance problem. As a sign of interest. The old "triangle gazing" routine -- of looking at a girl's eyes, then down to her mouth -- is in this category; things you do nonverbally that express interest. Using eye contact flirting is one of these. Using bedroom eyes -- lowered eyelids and a sort of dreamy expression -- while looking at women is another. There are even certain head movements you can do -- straightening yourself up slightly while moving your head a little bit in one direction while tilting it slightly in the other -- that signify piquing interest. But one of the most potent ways to use nonverbal attraction, if you ask me, is combining these things with your verbally speaking -- not commands or comments, but while you're actually doing your talking. Because there are two things you must mind with women: Occupying a woman's mind logically, while Seducing a woman's mind emotionally. What you'll find is this: even when a girl doesn't understand you one bit because she speaks a foreign language, if you talk to her while using effective nonverbal attraction techniques, she'll become desirous of you. So you might meet a girl who doesn't speak English, and you start talking to her. "I'm sorry, I don't understand," she says. Or maybe she just shakes her head and says, "Sorry." You say, "That's okay," and smile at her warmly. You can tell she's interested. You take her hand and pull her along. "Let me show you this," you say. You're not sure if she understands you or not; it doesn't really matter. You've said something just to fill the void, but it doesn't really matter what you said. The only thing that matters is that she's attracted to you -- predominantly because of your nonverbals. You start talking about very light, silly stuff -- "Romania! I love it here!" Get her involved, point to her, then point to the ground and then gesture all around you -- "You, here? Love it?" put your hands over your heart. "Or no?" as you make a stern-but-silly facial expression and wave no, while glancing away from her briefly (quick tip: avoid saying or gesturing "no" while looking at a girl directly; you can inadvertently / subconsciously send her into auto-rejection). She shakes her head and laughs, still not understanding you. "I'm sorry...!" she starts. "It's okay!" you say, very loudly, playfully, happily, and expressively. Gesture wildly that it doesn't matter. "I like you even if you don't understand a word I'm saying!" She'll probably still be laughing, because you're being a little silly, but still moving things forward, and she's attracted, and she knows you're attracted. Just do this a little more, and move very fast towards your logistics. Keep leading; tell her where you're going, gesture towards it, be fun and spontaneous, and keep leading. She'll try to leave. Don't let her go. Gesture very expressively, with a mock-concerned look on your face, for her to follow. Again, be extremely expressive. "No, you mustn't go!" you tell her. "We're not this far, just this way! Come, young lady, you must accompany me!" Continue gesturing and verbally commanding her (even though she doesn't understand). Much of the time, she'll relent, laughing, and go with you. Then you get her alone, kiss her right away, and the two of you get together. That's what being a sexy man is about. It's not about words much, at all. Being sexually attractive and compelling to women is largely about nonverbal factors. I have a theory. My theory is, if you took two men who were equally clueless with women, and you taught one of them a lot of great lines, stories, openers, and other verbal tech, and you taught another one of them a lot of sexual body language, and sexy facial expressions, and how to move and look and seem like a very confident, bold, sexually attractive individual, and how to lead boldly and decisively and rapidly, that second guy would kill the first guy in results: more girls, higher quality girls, and stronger relationships. Because here's what happens. When a guy's sexy, women just naturally tend to be a lot warmer to him, a lot friendlier to him, and a lot more desirous of him most of the time. They give him more leeway; he gets further along with them; and he builds more confidence in the meantime. The guy who isn't sexy keeps beating his head against the wall trying to figure out the right thing to say, whereas the sexy guy gets so many opportunities with women that he gets to know them so well that the right thing to say just becomes obvious over time. If you take one point away from this article, I'd recommend you take away this: given the choice of working on either learning the right things to say, or learning the right ways to be and act around women, opt for the second one almost every time. You'll get a lot more mileage out of it. And I'll talk to you next time.

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##Nonverbal Communication The chief tenet of the Law of Least Effort in seduction is that the less effort you put in while still achieving the desired result, the more powerful, attractive, and sexy you appear. One of the most powerful ways of doing this is by learning to communicate without the use of words. If you've ever studied very charismatic people - I have, and I recommend it - something you'll notice is that they frequently say things with fun, charming, wordless expressions. A smile and a wink, say, or a mischievous look. For instance, maybe someone asks a charismatic man if he can handle a certain situation - he gives them the skeptical look with just a hint of a knowing smile and then gets to it. Or maybe he gives a small smile, makes a thumbs up sign, and goes about his business. THE POWER OF NO WORDS The Law of Least Effort is not, in fact, the only reason why nonverbal communication positions someone to look powerful, charismatic, and sexually attractive. There's another reason too, and it goes to the heart of how human social status is weighed and assessed: that reason is assumption of understanding. Most people don't use nonverbal communication to the extent that charismatic people do because they're not confident they can pull it off properly. For instance, ask an average guy if he thinks he can handle something, and if he tries to reply nonverbally it will likely come off too harsh (his expression comes across as if he was insulted at the idea of it) or too patronizing (his expression comes across as if he is trying to say he's superior to the other person). A man must be extremely precise in his nonverbal communication to convey the right message without crossing signals. Nonverbal communication must be exact, yet subtle. This takes a large degree of social awareness and a sensitivity to how others will respond to messages communicated that only a man of elite social caliber possesses. So, effective nonverbal communication says two things about you: You are an extremely powerful, attractive man who gets maximal results for minimal effort, and You are an extremely socially attuned man who is highly aware of the thoughts and feelings of those around him and adept at communicating exactly the right message he intends to communicate with no mixed signals. These are the signs of a man in control of his own movements and outcomes socially, and the signs of a leader. People are drawn to other people who possess the uncommon ability to communicate without words effectively, and it's a part of what we call "charisma" or "magnetism." DEVELOPING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION To become effective communicating without words, you need practice doing so, which means you're going to have to start using nonverbal communication and have it be a little clunky for a while. That's okay, because as you use your communication, you'll continue to refine it, and become more skilled with it and better able to achieve your desired result socially with a minimum of effort. There are a handful of different forms of nonverbal communication I recommend you start with. Again, watch movies of strong, powerful, attractive men, and you'll notice them using these. I recommend you start using them yourself as well. The Skeptical Look: follow the link for more information. The skeptical look is an effective catch-all for people saying silly things to you (e.g., a girl telling you, "I bet you'd love to get in my pants right now"), people over-questioning you (e.g., you've already said you can or will do something, and someone asks you, "Are you sure?"), and people making requests you don't think are worth responding to (someone asks you, "Hey, give me your drink and go get another one," or, "Lend me a hundred bucks, will you?"). The Exasperated Look: the effect is the same as if you had sighed, except without being quite so demonstrative. We want to be exact, yet subtle, with our nonverbal communication. When you're trying to tell something to someone and she just isn't getting it, or if she keeps trying to get you to do something that you're not going to do, you can use this expression. To pull it off, you let your shoulders droop a bit, widen your eyes, raise your eyebrows, and give yourself a slightly sad mouth. The Thoughtful Look: used to communicate you're considering something. There are a couple of different ways you can pull this one off, though my favorite is to pucker my lips and take my eyes and look down and away, followed after a pause by turning my head slightly away. You can also raise your hand up and rest it on your chin thoughtfully as you look down and away with your eyes and preferably pucker your lips a bit. The Clueless Look: if someone asks you something you don't know, or for your opinion about something you don't have an opinion about (e.g., "Where should we go eat?"), you can respond by shrugging your shoulders, raising your eyebrows, widening your eyes, and pulling your mouth down in a slightly exaggerated frown to nonverbally say, "I don't know." Interesting note: the facial expression used here is a more exaggerated version of the one used in the exasperated look, with higher eyebrows, wider eyes, and a bigger frown - plus shrugging shoulders instead of drooping ones. The Cocky Smile: if someone asks you if you really think you can do something, or a girl makes a comment that builds you up (e.g., "Well aren't you cocky?" or, "Hmm, you must be really good in bed"), you can use this to reply in a very effective, very nonchalant way. You'll basically droop your eyelids just a bit - adopting "bedroom eyes" - turn your head so that you're looking at the girl out of the corner of your eyes (sexy eye contact), and smile more with one side of your mouth - a half-smile, though you're still smiling on the other side of your face, just not as pronounced. The "Okaaaaay…" Look: for when someone just says something very insulting or uncalled for or extremely random and bizarre. For this one, you'll pucker and purse your lips out, hold eye contact for a moment, then slide your eyes off to a corner looking to the side. You can follow this one up by changing your mouth to a half-grimace; check out Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man, he uses this expression a few times throughout the movie. Effective for throwing off people who are busting your balls. IMAGINE YOUR AUDIENCE When communicating without words, you'll find it helpful to imagine the audience of people watching you and monitoring your expressions. In social situations, there often are people watching how you react, and when they see you reacting nonverbally like this, they're often going to like you more and take your side over whatever the other person is saying, and there's a very good reason for this: The person who's more socially skilled is, generally speaking, far more likely to be "in the right" in social situations. What that means is, if you're the more socially skilled person in a two-person conversation you're in, you're generally going to be more aware of the other person's reactions to what you say and do than the other person is going to be to yours, and you're also going to be more aware of the reactions of everyone else in the vicinity to what you say and do than the other person is going to be of what she says and does. So you're more likely to be respectful, savvy, aware, and socially graceful. Thus, if a situation emerges where there is any kind of competition or combativeness, everyone watching - the audience - will be inclined to take the side of the person who is obviously more socially skilled and in-control, and that will quite often be the person putting in less effort and using more wordless communication. Even when there are no spectators though - even if you're alone in your home with just you and your girl - it's helpful to imagine an audience, though. The reason I say this is so is because there often won't be immediate feedback from your girl - she may be irritated and laying into and not respond immediately to a skeptical look, or she may be busting your balls and not respond to your "okaaaaay…" look. Without immediate feedback, particularly for people new to nonverbal responses, there's the chance that you end up second-guessing yourself and losing confidence in your nonverbal responses. Trust me though, even if she doesn't respond instantly, she's registering your nonverbal responses and recognizing you as a sexy, more powerful, more charismatic man. Even if you don't see it right away, trust that they're working, and if you must, do it for your imaginary audience. Wordless, nonverbal communication is one of these things that not a lot of people do but that you will see strong results from once you have it down. Personally, situations that used to drive me crazy are now sources of great satisfaction for me - for instance, a girl starts busting my balls, and I give her the skeptical look, and she cuts it out and instantly becomes a lot more romantically and sexually forward (note: girls giving you the hardest time are quite often also the horniest girls and are giving you a hard time because they're agitated and looking for a man who will put them in their place (socially) and give them what they need (sexually)). I recommend a lot of movie watching, mainly because there are certain things you simply can't teach via text. This is about as good a job as I can do of trying to describe facial expressions and nonverbal communication in a blog article; hopefully I didn't do too terrible a job, but I do recommend checking out movies and seeing if you can spot these communications. Seeing one of these gives you a much better idea how to execute it than any amount of type-written explanation. A picture's worth a thousand words, goes the saying… Highly suggest you start incorporating nonverbal communication as a top priority if you haven't already, though. It's a remarkable social tool that's under-discussed, under-used, but inordinately effective. If you want to cut time from your interactions, get past the bullshit, and move fast with girls, word-free communication will help you get there.

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##3 Essential Tips for Online Dating Message and Email Writing Keep it short, Help her think, and Walk a mile in her shoes. I don't usually start off a post with the impact points right at the beginning. But I want to lay these out first -- because they're so vital to solid message writing -- and we'll get into the "whys" and the "hows" in a moment. I was going to write about something else today -- I have a couple of big-concept posts I've been meaning to write up and get around to -- but, heck, the last post I put up was a big-concept post so I figured let's have a quick breather from that and get something a little lighter up first. This topic came up as I got to an email from a reader. A very well-spoken and clearly an educated guy, he sent me a message detailing a situation with a girl he knew... and boy, was it detailed. I mean, it was long. Really long. I've been all too guilty of this myself -- sending super-long messages. And what I found was that I was often disappointed -- I'd put all this time and effort into a monster of a message, and then... I'd get no response. There are a bunch of lessons I eventually took away from those experiences that I'll share with you today. The basic gist of today's post is, basically, that this -- what we're about to talk about -- is how you write online dating messages and emails that don't get ignored... and, in fact, get you exactly what you want: responses, phone numbers, dates, and success. TALKING TO STRANGERS IS DIFFERENT I like to be thorough, and I like to cover all the points. If you've read many articles on this site, I'm sure you already realize this. Problem is when you're talking to strangers. You know, people who don't know you from Jack -- you may be an exceptional human being, but they just don't know that yet. So, you write out a really long, thorough, detailed message to someone, and you send it -- and she never writes back. Confused and maybe a little miffed, you write her off as obviously not realizing what an awesome guy you are. Obviously, she ain't that sharp of a gal to pass up a guy like you. But it's not her. And it's not you, per se -- it's your message. One of the basics of investment and the Law of Least Effort is that, the more invested someone becomes in you, the more willing they are to invest more in you. e.g., it's like saying when you've got $10,000 invested in Stock A, and $0 invested in Stocks B, C, D, and E, you're more likely to put your next $100 into Stock A again because you know it and trust it and that's your routine. When your broker tries to hard sell Stock E at you, you're likely to just tune him out and tell him you want to invest in Stock A again, unless he presents his message exactly right. People are like this with all of their investing strategies. They prefer the known over the unknown; they stick with what they're comfortable with. And when you're a stranger, you're neither known nor comfortable. Hence, the importance of solid email writing and online dating messages. Without good, solid, effective message writing, you're going to be left out in the cold while people invest in things they already know -- instead of in you. And make no mistake, time is an investment. And mental footwork is an investment. When it comes to message construction, these are your primary considerations: The more time it takes someone to read your message, the more you're asking her to invest. The more your message makes someone think and rack her brain to respond or figure out what to do next, the more you're asking her to invest. And if you haven't thoroughly streamlined your message by considering how it's going to affect her, you risk forcing her to invest heavily to overcome prejudices or feelings of offense you've elicited in her by saying something clumsy. And if you make her work hard, and she isn't already invested in you, she's almost always going to simply not do so -- she just won't be willing to put the work in. When I got that long email from that reader, I took one look at it, then looked at all the other things I had to do (this was when I was packing up, trying to finish up a number of things on my to-do list, and trying to get set for a 30 hour ride on the Transsiberian Railroad), and figured I'd try and get back to it later. I didn't end up remembering to respond or having the time to skim it and write a proper response until today -- half a month later. And, try as I do to respond when I can, I probably have other long messages I've gotten that I've simply not had time to respond to when I got them and forgotten to ever go back to. And women on the Internet aren't running their own websites, their own businesses, or trying to give back. They're just plain old looking for a guy they like. What that means for you is this: If a girl passes over your message because it's too long, or too hard to figure out, or asks her to do too much mental footwork, she plainly and simply isn't going to circle back to it later. She's just going to move onto the next message... and you'll never know what happened. online dating message SPELLING OUT WHAT MAKES A MESSAGE WORK We'll get into some examples in just a minute. Before we do though, let's take a quick look through the mechanics -- the nuts and bolts of how emails and online dating messages work. First off, length. What's a good length for your first message to a stranger? Well, it depends on the context, of course. But I'd say, keep it to two brief paragraphs maximum, with perhaps a one- or two-line goodwill statement at the end. That means that that six paragraph novella you wrote for that cute girl from Match.com probably didn't get replied to because... man, it was way too long! She looked at that and said, "Nuh-uh." It doesn't matter how good of a writer you are. I consider myself a fairly good writer -- I've been writing for a pretty darn long time -- but when I first plunged into online dating a number of years back and shot girls a bunch of long messages, all of which were exceptionally well-written, of course, I got back diddly squat. They just didn't even bother to read them. Now, that's not entirely true... I did have a few girls reply back then. But it was always much more of an intellectual discussion, and a lot less of an, "Oh boy, it's on!" kind of situation. And the interest in the discussion usually petered out after a few messages and ran its course. And on top of that, the amount of time and effort I put into constructing those incredibly long messages simply wasn't justified by the meager returns they generated. Good rules of thumb on message length: The less well she knows you (e.g., a message to a girl you liked the profile of from an online dating website, versus an email to a girl you met yesterday and spoke with for a few minutes), the shorter your message ought to be. On follow-up messages, pretty much never go excessively beyond the length of her last message to you... and generally, write just a little bit less. Visual appearance is key -- you can feel like you're not saying much, but it takes up four paragraphs. Cut it down. There are ways to say more in two short paragraphs than in seven long ones. You don't have to reply to everything. If you're thorough, like I am, there's always the inclination to refer to every single point she raises to ensure she feels understood, but this can lead to excessive length. Choose the most substantial points, and respond to those. The second thing you need to pay attention to is helping her think. That means that questions like, "Tell me about yourself," are way too vague and are going to lead to women briefly scouring their brains for an answer, drawing a blank, and deciding to "come back to your message later"... and then later never arrives. Leaving out a call to action is equally bad. You'll notice at the bottom of this post there's a call for you to jump on my newsletter. That's on all my latest posts, many of the most popular ones, and I'm gradually going back and adding it to all earlier posts. Why? Because if I don't make it clear what a reader ought to do and make it easy to do it... readers are unlikely to do it by themselves. It's too much mental footwork, and people -- everybody, just about -- want you to make things easy on them. If I told you, "Hey jump on my newsletter... you've just got to head to this other page and fill out ten fields of information," you're going to think, "Nah, that's too much work." If instead I say, "Put your email in RIGHT HERE and click the button and you'll get tons of awesome insights," though, well -- you're a lot more likely to say, "Sure, why not?" Likewise, if you write a message to a girl that's devoid of calls to action -- clear, easy calls to action -- she's not going to know what to do with that message... or if those calls are too complicated, she's going to feel unmotivated to comply... and unless she's crazy into you, she isn't going to do a thing. Compare the following short messages: Message 1 Lily, hey. That sounds like a wild experience you had with the apartment flood. I'm glad MY apartment is high enough in my building I don't have to worry about that! No big plans for the weekend; just hitting the beach on Sunday maybe. Ted Message 2 Lily, hey. That sounds like a wild experience you had with the apartment flood. I'm glad MY apartment is high enough in my building I don't have to worry about that! No big plans for the weekend; just hitting the beach on Sunday maybe. What say we head there together? I'll bring some food and we can do a picnic. Ted Which message is more likely to get a response? Which message is more likely to get a useful response, that moves the interaction forward? That's right; Message 2 is vastly more likely both to get a response, and to get a useful response. That's because it includes a clear call to action and it makes it a LOT easier for Lily to decide how to respond. The response Ted guides her to responding with is, "Sure, the beach sounds fun! What time do you want to meet?" He makes it very easy for her to know what to do next; thus, he also makes it a lot more likely she responds. In Message 1 there's no clear way for Lily to easily respond back; she'll write a response if she's chasing very hard, but even then it isn't going to be the best kind of response; it'll most likely just awkwardly try to force rapport where no doors had been left open for it (by Ted). You need to make it easy for women and help them think to avoid ending up with message abandonment issues. Do these things: Ask simple questions Share simple stories that don't require much analysis Add clear calls to action that are easy to say "yes" to Those three things will improve your reply rates to the messages you send so much you'll want to shake my hand. Finally, walk a mile in her shoes. This should go without saying, but you'd be surprised how often messages get written without a guy stopping and considering how a girl will receive them. Still these days I'll be about to hit "Send" on an email or a message I'm sending to someone, and I'll stop, read through the message as someone else, and realize, "Whoa, this is still way too long, I need to cut out some paragraphs," or, "Oh man, I'm just talking about myself here... this sounds totally self-absorbed and not like I have any consideration for them at all," and I'll go back and make edits. Always take the time to imagine how you'd receive a message like the one you're sending if you received it from a stranger. If you'd feel a little annoyed at the length or the tone or you wouldn't know how to respond to it, you have some edits to make. WHAT A GOOD ONLINE DATING MESSAGE LOOKS LIKE online dating messageI'll note that while I don't talk about online dating a whole lot on here, I used to do it quite a bit as a supplement to meeting women in the real world. It's useful too for getting good at learning how to write to women and finding out what's effective and what isn't. You'll want to keep in mind our three rules from the beginning of this post: 1. Keep it short, 2. Help her think, and 3. Walk a mile in her shoes. That means long, detailed first messages are out. I know, it's tempting when you read a great profile or find a girl you're REALLY excited about to write her a novel telling her everything about yourself and relating it back to her -- such a message can even feel like a masterpiece as you put it together -- but take it from me (having written many such masterpieces in the past) -- yeah, those don't work. No matter how beautifully constructed such messages may be, no matter how much of a perfect match the two of you really are, a girl's going to see a monster message like that, and instantly click the "back" button. So it's got to be short. You've also got to help her think and make it intellectually undemanding. Even if she's a Ph.D., she doesn't want to come home from a tough day at the office, open up her inbox, and find a message challenging her to share 3 unique things about herself or define her favorite 19th century poet. She's going to hit "back" on that one too. So it's got to be easy and it's got to help her think. And you've got to be thinking about what mindset she's going to be in while reading this. She's probably reading a ton of messages from men -- it's an online dating website, after all -- and she's hearing a lot of the same thing -- a lot of: You're so beautiful. I think we should go out. and a lot of: Hi Casey, my name's Charlie. You seem nice. What do you do for fun? and a lot of: If you like this picture of my dong, there's a LOT more where that came from. 555-555-5555. Call me and let's set it up for a hot, sweaty night of ass-smacking ridiculousness. so you know she's getting tired of that. So you also know you've got to be different, intriguing, and light -- she should enjoy getting a message from you. So a good online dating first message ends up sounding like this: Headline: Bienvenido & Your Art Message: Hey Casey. Welcome to town; hope the locals haven't been too rough on you. It's only bad until you're initiated ;) So, found it cool that you're an artist as well. Too forward of me to ask what kind of art...? Going to rule out stonecutter, since it doesn't look like you have the forearms for it.. Anyway, cool to meet you. ~P The base content -- welcoming her to town because she's new; asking her what kind of art she does -- that's going to be pretty standard; lots of guys will have asked her that. But if you throw in some unique perspectives -- joking that she doesn't look like she'd be a stonecutter, telling her the town's only bad until she gets initiated -- you're a lot more likely to capture her interest and get a reply. Also note that this message is short; it helps her think by giving her an easy way to respond to the next message ("haha"ing about the stonecutter comment / the "getting initiated" comment and responding to the question about what kind of artist she is); and by providing a lot of unique language and phrasing, it keeps things fresh for her and sees it from her perspective, providing a message she'll actually want to read. Here's another potential opening salvo: Headline: Whatever you do, make sure you don't open this message... Message: Stella, hi. Saw that you classify yourself as a "free spirit," which I'm guessing means you do things like spend afternoons in the sun and... trespass on personal property, maybe (if you're a free spirit like I'm a free spirit, anyway :D ). Chapel Hill caught my eye -- that's my second favorite part of town. How long've you been there? Maybe I've bumped into you there before (or trespassed on your personal property...). ~P All the same points as the last message, except pay special note to the attainability statement in the first paragraph ("if you're a free spirit like I'm a free spirit, anyway :D"). If you take that statement away, the first paragraph sounds a little rude / accusatory. You might not notice that unless you take a moment to walk a mile in her shoes -- but as soon as you do, and you add that statement in there, now suddenly you've transformed an accusation into a neat little "us vs. the world" sort of set up. There's also a "theme" in this message, of trespassing on personal property. It's a little funny the first time, and it's unexpected and a little funny the second time. It ties the message together and makes it stronger, and you've quite possibly created an inside joke all on your own (she's likely to write back joking about trespassing on personal property next time if she has a decent sense of humor). Now all you do is trade a few short messages focused on getting to know her, and by the second or third day the two of you correspond, you ask for her contact info / set up a date. I specify the day instead of the message here because there's a chance you trade 10 short, jokey messages back and forth in a day, or one message a day, and it isn't the message count that matters so much as how comfortable she's gotten with you. If you wait until day four or later to try to set things up, chances are that attraction's expired to the point that it's too far gone and she'll just be evasive or say "no." WHAT A GOOD EMAIL LOOKS LIKE Emails tend to look similar to online dating messages, except a little bit meatier and less focused with capturing short attention spans. If you have a girl's email, chances are you've met in person and exchanged some conversation already at this point. A good first email to a girl looks like this: Gina, hi~ Great meeting you yesterday. Was awesome to both find the book I was looking for and make a cool new friend at the same time. Books and a bonus! How'd that test you had today end up going? Hopefully you aced the hell out of it and were the first one done, and all the other students glared at you in envy as you glided out the door to take the rest of the day off. Thinking we ought to grab a bite or a drink sometime soon. Let me know if a weeknight or the weekend is better for you, and we'll set the unstoppable gears of planning our liaison in motion. Talk to you soon~ Roy Note that, again, we keep it relatively short, though not so short as an online dating message since you're already familiar with this girl at this point and she's familiar with you. You help her think -- telling her that you like her, without being overbearing about it; asking her how her test went, and then painting a rosy picture for her so she feels good even if it sucked; and including a call to action at the end. And finally, we think about it from her perspective -- keeping things both interesting, and upbeat. If she's had a hard day of test taking, offering her an upbeat alternative gives her the chance to escape into your message -- and a date painted as an escape sounds quite inviting too. LEARNING TO WRITE KILLER MESSAGES EVERY TIME online dating messageMessage writing can feel daunting at first, but understand that it's both a skill and an art -- like well nigh everything else. It's something you improve at with time, and it's something that if you remember to apply the fundamental rules of success to it, you'll maximize your chances of doing okay at from the outset. Once again, those fundamental message-writing rules are: Keep it short, Help her think, and Walk a mile in her shoes. If you're a message writing novice, I'd suggest setting up some free accounts on online dating sites like PlentyOfFish.com and OKCupid.com and playing around with headline writing (headlines are what get women to read your messages) and message body writing (the body, in conjunction with an engaging or intriguing headline, is what gets you replies). The lessons you take away from online dating message writing can be readily applied to email writing, texting, even voicemails, phone conversations, and face-to-face interactions. You get pretty rapid feedback -- if women aren't responding, or if they're taking a long time to write back, or if they're writing back but their responses are tepid, you know you've got some revision ahead of you. And whenever you aren't getting the results you want, take it back to the basics, and ask yourself if you're keeping it short (long messages are scary), if you're helping her think (is it easy for her to understand you and respond to you?), and if you're walking a mile in her shoes (is she going to want to read your message, is she going to enjoy it and feel good, and is she going to want to write back and have further interaction with you?). Happy messaging, and see you on here again.

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##Opening Body Language The other day I had a reader send me a question about body positioning during opening: is it better to open over your shoulder, he wanted to know, or facing toward the girl? It's a somewhat confusing topic, actually, and one I've seen a lot of guys struggling with when they're starting out. They walk up to meet a new girl, but they have their bodies positioned all wrong and the opener goes a little awkwardly -- or worse, the girl even ignores them outright. Having the wrong body positioning when you say "hi" can be downright make or break for your success with a new woman. So the question of how to position yourself -- whether opening full body or opening over your shoulder -- is actually a very good question to ask. And... the answer to that question? Well, like so many things in the social and seductive arts: it depends. You'll find that either of the different body positionings is effective in different scenarios. Further, you'll find that the exact angle you give to a girl is going to be different depending on the girl and the situation. It is, like most of seduction, nuanced, and it's an art. Like every art, the only true way to learn is to learn by doing and playing around and experimenting and seeing what works. Thinking about it, reading about it, and studying an art are good, but they don't imbue you with the abilities of the artist. For that, you must do. That said, hopefully I can get you pointed in the right direction so you aren't flying blind, and get you opening women a little more smoothly and a little more easily. COMFORT IN OPENING Think of the last time you went to buy something in a retail store. Cell phones are a great example. Cell phone salespeople are notoriously aggressive. So let's say you've just walked into a cell phone store, and are scanning about trying to see if there are any phones you're interested in. Exactly two seconds after you've walked through the door, a salesguy walks up to you. "Anything I can help you with?" he asks. "No thanks, just looking," you respond. And then you try to get as far away from him as possible, heading to the other side of the store and pretending to look at phones over there, even though the phones you actually wanted to see were right behind the guy. Why did you react that way? It's because you felt uncomfortable. But why'd you feel uncomfortable? Here's Opening Secret #1: most of what regular guys think of as "opening" comes off way too startling and intense. Let's start with eye contact: his eye contact likely was too severe. He was looking at you before you even knew he was there, and when you turned to catch his gaze you caught him staring right at you -- and then he held that eye contact. That's usually pretty darn startling. We discussed this before when we talked about pre-opening and eye contact flirting; typically, it's best if the girl you're approaching looks at your eyes first, rather than the other way around. And, should she catch you looking at her before she looks at you, you'll best be served by breaking eye contact -- almost shyly -- and then resuming eye contact again. Most salespeople don't do this though. They set their sights on their target, and then home in with locked eagle eyes, never letting their eye contact falter. Problem is, lots of guys do this on opening too, and, unless executed perfectly, it typically comes off way too strong. That's the part about eye contact. But what else do you notice about that salesguy? Well, if you're paying attention to his body positioning, you're going to notice that he walks up to you facing fully toward you. He's on full-blast when he arrives in front of you, in other words. He's using his body language to DEMAND your complete attention. It feels very forceful, and it makes most people uneasy. Most of the best salespeople don't do this. The best salespeople are a lot smoother and a lot more natural. They'll let their eye contact break momentarily to ease the tension. They'll refrain from turning their body language on full-blast. They'll come in at a lower level of openness and directness, even as their opener remains direct: "Anything I can help you find today?" And that leads us to Opening Secret #2: off-setting verbally direct opening with physically indirect opening. You can come off incredibly smooth when you do this. So now picture you've just stepped into that same cell phone store, but this time you see a different cell phone salesguy. He doesn't approach you right away. He waits until you've settled in a moment and gotten comfortable. Then, you notice he's casually walked over in your direction. "That's a great phone," he says, pointing to the model you're inspecting. "Thinking about picking up a new handset?" Feels a lot more comfortable, right? The salesguy in the example here is still being pretty direct verbally about his intentions -- he wants to sell you a phone -- but nonverbally... physically... he's being totally chill, casual, and comfortable. You're more likely to put your guard down around him. You're more likely to talk with him. You're more likely to buy what he's selling. But there's an Opening Secret #3, too: and that's when you don't want to go for casual and chill over direct. opening body language GAUGING WOMEN'S "READINESS TO BUY" Let's say you told the cell phone salesguy you were going to browse around, and you ended up finding a phone you wanted on your own. Now let's say you walked up to the cashier ready to buy -- but the cashier looked at you over his shoulder and opened you casually and nonchalantly: "All set?" he asked you, keeping the side of his body facing you. How do you feel when you get that treatment from salespeople when you're trying to buy? It's hard to put a finger on it, but you feel... slightly disrespected. As if he somehow thinks he's better than you. But why? Why does him now being chill and casual with you feel almost rude? It's because of Opening Secret #3, which is this: you must gauge women's "readiness to buy" before and during your opener -- and adjust accordingly. For instance, if a man walks up to a woman and opens her and she remains aloof and closed off, and he faces her fully and gives her strong, unbreaking eye contact, she's going to feel like he's trying too hard to sell her and she'll get uncomfortable. But, if the same man now walks up to another woman, and decides that this time he's not going to open so hard, and he opens her over his shoulder and gives her little eye contact when she'd been facing fully toward him and initially very interested in meeting him, he's going to make her feel uncomfortable too -- and she too will close up and go cold. First girl, he's too much for. Second girl, he's too little for. You can startle a girl if your opener is too direct for her tastes -- or, you can send a girl into auto-rejection simply because your opener is too aloof. What this means is, just like the salesguy comes on too strong if he tries to sell you hard when you aren't ready to buy, and comes off too aloof and rude if he's casual when you are ready to buy, the strength or casualness of your opener can draw in or push away women in different degrees of "readiness to buy" as well. If a woman is a little closed off and not being particularly social, a man who opens her with direct nonverbal body language is usually going to coming across as though he's working too hard to force rapport. But, the opposite is true for a woman who already knows she wants to meet a man. If she's eager to get to know you, and you act chill, casual, and aloof in your opening body language, you can shut down her excitement and push her away; she feels like you don't share the feelings she has, and she squelches her in turn. Sound fiendishly difficult to get a handle on? Actually, it sounds a lot harder than it really is. SELECTING THE RIGHT OPENING BODY LANGUAGE For easier opening, it's crucial to realize that women are going to be in different modes when they meet you. Some are ready to meet you and excited to. Some aren't feeling social at all and their heads are elsewhere. And many more are somewhere in between. Recognizing which women are in which modes is something that's going to take practice and experience. There are tons of signs you can look for -- here are a few: Is she focused on whatever she's doing (not open to meeting new people), or is she scanning around (open) -- or, better yet, is she glancing at you (wants to meet you)? Is her body language closed -- arms crossed, legs crossed, body facing away from the crowd / strangers -- or is it casual or, better, completely open? Does she seem to be shifting around expectantly, moving her body, as if waiting for something to happen (may mean she's waiting to be approached), or is she calm, still, and stationary (likely content doing what she's doing and feeling what she's feeling)? The best judge you're going to have is going to be your own intuition -- but you won't develop that until you have enough practical real world experience under your belt. You'll need to talk to lots of girls -- you'll have to do a bunch of approaches on a lot of women to start building those internal reference points that allow you to begin recognizing patterns and seeing which women want to get to know you before you've even said "hello." The things to look for above are a great jumping off point, though. The reason why it's important to know what mode a girl is in, and how interested she is in meeting you, is because that's going to determine the kind of opening body language you use. If you think a girl is not thinking about meeting you, you're typically going to want to go in more casual and relaxed so she can adjust to talking to you. Alternatively, if she seems eager to meet you, you want to show her you're interested in meeting her too -- thus, you'll employ more direct opening body posture. It's really that simple. Direct opening body language for women you think want to meet you; casual opening body language for women who seem distracted or aloof. You'll likely need to adjust on the fly. There are plenty of times I've opened a woman casually only to realize she's pretty interested; I'll then quickly shift into much more open body language. It's better to err on the side of casualness; you can quickly shift into being open with girls who obviously want to get to know you, but it's much harder to erase a too-strong initial impression with girls who aren't chomping at the bit to meet you. It's very important to remember to not spend too much time using casual body language to long into an interaction. It's fine to open over your shoulder, and even to trade a little banter or conversation that way, but it shouldn't be more than a few sentences maximum before you start shifting your body to face her more openly. Remaining closed off kills interactions faster than you can say "auto-rejection." The final point to keep in mind is that nothing is absolute; most women are going to be somewhere between totally open to meeting you and totally closed to meeting you. So your opening body language will need to be somewhere in between as well. Adjust and calibrate it to the girl, and don't be afraid to let the "art" part of yourself take over -- eventually, things get a little too complicated to try and plan them all out technically and logically. You've got to be able to feel what's the right approach -- and when you can do that -- when you can intuit the right body language to adopt -- that's when you'll know you're making some solid headway.

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##Overcoming Approach Anxiety There's this thing called approach anxiety, and I haven't talked about it all that much, because it was never a huge concern for me personally, and it was always something I was able to push through okay on my own. Sure, sometimes I'd stiffen up and miss out on a girl I should've had, but all in all it was never too bad for me. I had a lot of fears as a kid, and got into the habit early of overcoming them by confronting them head on; this might be why I was never overly concerned with this one. I just tackled it the same as the rest of them. But for some guys, approach anxiety is crippling. I've coached men who would at times simply refuse to approach women; I eventually got pretty good at getting guys to approach, even when they were terrified to (the first few approaches are always the toughest), but how does a guy who's shaken about going up to meet women do that on his own, without a coach there to work him through it? I could tell you about the mentalities of a man who approaches women without fear - that they're just girls to him, that it's all a numbers game about talking to lots of girls, that he's confident in his success, that he's more interested in the opportunity to get to know a pretty girl than he is the risk of being shot down, and that being shot down for him is basically just something he laughs about, if it even registers at all. But mentalities are a tough thing to change, and yours will change to these over time as you get more experience and more exposure and meeting women becomes fun instead of a chore or intimidating. Rather than discuss mentalities, I think it's better to just give you some practical steps to work on to overcome approach anxiety and get yourself meeting new girls as soon as possible. MAKING A COMMITMENT When I first began lifting weights back in high school, I read a book called Body-for-LIFE by a guy named Bill Phillips. There was a section in the book where Bill talked about the first 12 weeks of exercising; that during those first 12 weeks, you will want to quit, you will want to cancel your scheduled exercise session, and try to tell yourself you'd do it tomorrow or the next day. But you couldn't; you simply had to push through those first 12 weeks, or you'd never make it. To be successful in building your body for life, you needed to endure. And after those 12 weeks were over, you'd be used to it, it wouldn't be a big deal anymore, and exercise would simply be a part of your life and a routine that you stuck to. Well, Bill was right. Those first 12 weeks back when I was 16 years old were incredibly tough. I'd be tired, and start dreading having to go and spend an hour lifting really heavy hunks of metal up and down, over and over again. Every set was a pain to endure - each one I'd feel like there would be no way I could finish. Sometimes I'd miss a workout, and I'd force myself to exercise the next day, instead. But it was brutal, and I never wanted to do it, and I hated doing it. Then, after those first 12 weeks had passed, I realized that, hey, exercise didn't seem quite as dreadful anymore as it originally did. I'd gotten used to it and it'd just become something I did. And eventually, farther down the road, I actually came to enjoy lifting weights. I never would've believed it when I first started out, but I came to take pleasure and pride out of my discipline, the body I'd shaped for myself, and the feeling of working on myself in a way that was making myself better for the future. Actively approaching women is like that - you must commit yourself to making it through those first 12 weeks. It's one of the toughest, most intimidating things you can do for most guys - but it's also going to be one of the most rewarding. If you want women in your life, you need to go out and get them. They aren't going to come to you; it doesn't work that way. I hear from guys all the time who tell me, "I really want to get started in this, but I just haven't gotten around to it." It doesn't take much time, though. You can spend 6 hours meeting women a week - that's 3 hours on a Friday night at a local bar or nightclub, and another 3 hours Saturday afternoon or night, or Sunday afternoon at the big shopping mall or bookstore nearby - and see steady improvement. When I first made a commitment to make approaching new women a much more regular part of my life, after having done it sporadically for a year, I started going out typically 3 to 4 nights a week to socialize and meet women, and I was also trying to meet at least a few girls a week during the day as well. And let me tell you, those first 12 weeks were very hard, and very emotionally draining. I'd come home feeling like a failure for not having had the kind of success I wanted, or like a champion for having achieved some new milestone - my first makeout in a nightclub, for instance. 12 weeks in though, it stopped seeming like such a big deal, and more like something I just did. It became a lot less difficult to drag myself out of the house and go to a nightclub by myself, and approaching women to talk to felt a lot less scary. You must make a commitment to go out and meet women. You must promise yourself you'll do it, and you must hold yourself to that promise. Otherwise, time will just tick by and nothing will happen. ACCLIMATING TO APPROACHING Once you're going out actively, the major hurdle you'll have to overcome is approach anxiety. Overcoming approach anxiety is a little difficult because, well, you're facing a fear. But that in and of itself gives you a tactic you can use to make things easier. When you recognize yourself hesitating, I recommend you tell yourself that you're going to overcome this fear, and that the only way you're going to do so is by confronting it head on. Then, go confront it. Defiantly confronting your fear can feel far more rewarding than going up to talk to some random girl you don't even know early on purely for the sake of it. It gives you a mission; you're not just meeting girls - you're overcoming your fears and becoming a stronger, more able man. Later on down the road, once the fear is no longer an issue, you will be able to approach women simply because you want to and you think they're pretty and you want to get to know them. So long as approach anxiety remains an issue for you, though, you must get in the habit of getting a little annoyed at yourself for feeling that way, then taking action to get rid of the feeling. The only way you get rid of approach anxiety is by approaching. With time, your brain realizes that getting turned down by girls isn't so bad. Your reputation doesn't get destroyed; your family doesn't disown you; you're not incapable of ever meeting another woman again because that girl you stopped once on the street paid you no mind. You start to realize that there are virtually no long-term negative consequences to not succeeding with a woman - but tons of lessons. Every failure, if accurately assessed, helps you get better and more successful the next time around. To get yourself acclimating to approaching, I recommend you follow the following steps: Get a routine. If you don't have a routine yet, or specific venues you really like going and feel comfortable meeting women in, check out the free Girls Chase eBook Finding Your Niche. You need to build meeting women into being a routine for yourself, and particularly early on, it can be a lot easier once you've done some exploring and figured out where your favorite places to meet new women are. Once you know them, set certain times of the week aside as your times exclusively to go out and meet women - schedule it into your life, and make sure you're dressed, ready, and on time for your outings. Set goals. Goal setting helped me a great deal early on: setting small, achievable goals to go out and accomplish. When I first started, I had goals like, "Talk to three random girls," and I was not allowed to go home until I'd accomplished them. Next I added goals like, "Use more screening and qualifying," and, "Use more playful banter," then goals like, "Kiss one girl," and, "Invite two girls home." Goals like this will force you to learn, be active, and get yourself in motion. Choose goals that feel challenging for you and are close to the limit of what you're currently capable of, but that also feel achievable. You want to be moving in small steps - obviously, "Take a girl home tonight," is going to be overly ambitious if you're still just getting used to meeting new women. Keep your goals achievable, and you'll challenge yourself to consistently improve. Track your progress. Also helpful to me early on was progress tracking. I put together a spreadsheet tracking how many nights I went out, how many phone numbers I got, how many first dates I went on, how many new girls I kissed, and how many new girls I slept with, and I even set it up to have a chart that automatically updated as I updated the chart. It basically made me start competing with myself - I wanted to be performing at a higher level than the month before, which meant I had to work harder and get more done. Sometimes I'd be about to just stay in, and I'd take a look at that chart and get annoyed at myself for being about to fall behind, and I'd go out anyway. Which brings us to the final point: Go out even when you don't want to. This is a topic that's probably deserving of its own post outright. Nights you don't want to go out but go out regardless can sometimes be the best nights you have. Two of the greatest girlfriends of my life I met on nights I almost didn't go out because I didn't feel like it. You will sometimes learn more on days and nights you don't want to go out than you will on nights you do, because you're in a more thoughtful mood and not flying on an excitement-fueled autopilot like you tend to be during the times you really want to go out. This is why routines and motivators like progress tracking are so important - you need to be going out regardless how you feel. Oh, whoops, that actually wasn't the final point - there's one more: Approach and meet women. You have to do it. Get started early in the night and build some social momentum and you'll be fine. But if you want to overcome approach anxiety, the way you're going to do it is by approaching women, no two ways about it. I wish I could say there was an easy way to get rid of fear, but there isn't (well, not entirely true - a shot of lidocaine into your cerebellum might do the trick, but for practical / safety reasons let's assume you're not going to be taking any injections into your brain before going out to meet women). There's only one sure-fire way to beat a fear: confronting it. It works, and if you have a fear you don't like and don't want, confronting it is what you need to do to rid yourself of it. The great news is, once the fear of meeting women is gone from you, it never really comes back in full force so long as you continue meeting women at least every once in a while. You might hesitate a split second, but only until that voice in your head kicks in and tells you, "Whoa, what are you doing? Just go talk to her." Yep - after a while, instead of trying to talk you out of meeting women, eventually that voice starts trying to talk you into it. Funny how that works, huh?

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##Overproviding Good Feelings This is one of those things that, when I figured it out, kinda made me slap my forehead and go, "Duh." But even still, it took me five years to figure it out. And I'm going to give it to you in one post. You're welcome ;) I figured it out gradually as I realized a number of things: I did better with women when I told less entertaining stories. I did better with women when I gave them less fun. I did better with women when they knew less about me. I did better with women when I was more low-key and less energetic. I did better with women when I made dates short and simply kept everything moving, rather than stop and do whatever the girl said she wanted to do. At first, it seemed rather odd. Here I was, doing the complete opposite of what almost every piece of mainstream dating advice out there tells you to do, but I got intimate with more girls more quickly and got more respect from women than the other way around. After all, the mainstream advice is the complete opposite of what you're doing here. The mainstream says: Tell impressive, entertaining stories. Show women a great, fun time. Let women know a lot about yourself, so they can get to know you faster. Show a woman how much passion and enthusiasm and energy you have. Take your time during dates, be a gentleman, and compromise and do the things you want to do sometimes and the things she wants to do other times. Yet, after years of careful research and application, I can conclusively say that mainstream dating advice has absolutely no idea what it's talking about. None, at all. It's theories built from assumptions based on conjecture. It's a glass house built on a foundation made of sand. Mainstream dating advice won't make it past just about any test. Where's all this terrible advice come from? Why, people who have no idea what they're doing. For instance, you might find a mainstream dating article for men written by a married woman. A married woman, writing dating advice for men! An individual who likely hasn't been intimate or had relationships with any (or many) women (and who, if she has, has had a qualitatively different experience dating and seducing those women than what a man would have), and who isn't even on the dating scene anymore. It's kind of like getting a homeless person to give you career advice. Thanks, but no thanks. There is one fatal flaw running through dating advice that absolutely cripples, in the romantic and sexual sense, any man following that advice. That fatal flaw is the assumption that the more good feelings a man provides a woman, the closer he is to intimacy and a relationship. overproviding good feelings What a sad, painful misconception. It's a misconception that has inspired countless men to try their hearts out for women who ended up not caring for them at all. All because they believed that if they did well enough by her, she'd be theirs. It doesn't work that way. Nor does it work the total opposite way, either - a man who's consistently nasty to women won't find a whole lot of success, either. Rather, the men who find success with women are the ones who walk the middle path. Balance in all things - this should be a guiding principle of yours in seduction. I'd long noticed a few odd trends in my seductions. For instance, I might have a girl who wanted very much to go home with me, but we'd stop to dance in the nightclub for ten or fifteen minutes, and after that she'd no longer want to go home with me. Conversely, I might have a girl who very much wanted to dance like a fool in the nightclub, but I'd drag her out of there and back to my place and we'd get intimate. It seemed odd, but I could feel there was some kind of pattern there that I just hadn't picked up on yet. At last, I realized what it was: it was the interchangeability of value and good feelings. Provide enough good feelings one way, and a woman will be satisfied and not need them another way. Put simply, even if a girl really wants to go home with a guy, if he dances with her enough and makes her feel good doing it, she can become satisfied and lose her desire to go home with him. On the other hand, if she wants very much to stay and dance, but her man drags her home and sleeps with her, she will become satisfied then too, and no longer want to go dance. And there are all kinds of things you can do to give women good feelings. Dancing is only one of them - many more are listed in the first examples in this article. Is it obvious now why men following the mainstream dating advice available to them are quite often complete failures when it comes to seducing women and beginning relationships with them? All those things most dating advice tells men to do are about giving them as many good feelings as possible. If she ends up with the need for good feelings satisfied by a man's entertaining stories and the fun time he's shown her and all the things she wanted to do that they did along the way, the chances she goes home and gets intimate with him are quite low. Because now, she's: Satisfied, so doesn't need intimacy from him anymore, and She's valuing this man most as a friend who does for her without expecting much in return So you see, overproviding a woman good feelings does not help your chances with her, as opposed to what the mainstream will tell you. In fact, it hurts those chances quite a bit. To succeed with women, avoid overproviding good feelings to girls. They'll be swept up in the mystery and intrigue of trying to figure out this guy who doesn't rush to impress them like everyone else, and they'll be left aching to receive good feelings from you - all the way back to your or their bedrooms. Avoid giving a woman too many good feelings, right up until the moment she is yours - and at that moment, of course, give her all the good feelings she can handle.

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##The Party Date: Don't Do It Just had a chat with a friend about this today. He was doing party dates a lot with girls and getting frustrated that the night never quite ended the way he hoped it would. The basic idea behind a party date is you've met a girl, talked to her on the phone a few times, traded text messages back and forth, and now you're ready to invite her on a date. So you sit there, wracking your brain… what'd be a fun thing to do? Hmm, well… then, you think of it: the party date! Your friends are having a party this weekend - you should invite this new girl to join you! After all, a party'd be a great idea, right? Your date can see you with your friends, which will reassure her you're a sociable guy and people like you, and you can hang out with her in a high-energy environment, and it is after all an excuse to do some drinking, yeah? Maybe she'll even see you flirting with another girl, and she'll want you for sure after that. Well, we already covered the major dos of dating in "Date Templates" and "Simplify Your Dates," so this piece is going to focus instead on one of the major don'ts. Because, as great as it may seem, inviting your date to a party is one of the worst date ideas you can have the misfortune of falling prey to, and most assuredly something you don't want to do. WHY PARTY DATES ARE A BAD IDEA I'm staying with an ex-girlfriend of mine here in Southern California, and she was telling me yesterday about the dating escapades of some of her friends, Sex and the City style. I'm always interested to hear this stuff from her, as I'm constantly looking to expand my understanding of how different types of people handle their dating lives and she has no end to gossips she wants to share with me and get my interpretation on. Well, as we were discussing this, one of the comments I made to her about one series of dates she told me about was that the guy clearly had no process. Most guys, I said, simply go on dates hoping that somehow everything is going to work out, without much of an idea as to how it's going to work out. Which brings us to this topic. I feel like most guys who are taking their dates to parties fall into this category as well. For the most part, they don't have a whole lot of direction, and they're just fishing around to see what they can get and hoping everything is somehow going to work out if they get the girl to go out with them and keep her having fun and entertained. Taking a girl on a date with no forethought, no plan of action, no direction to the date, though, is like marching into battle without first having drawn up a strategy. "Grab your swords and shields, men, and let's get out there and hope for the best." How long do you think a commander for whom this is his entire approach to battle planning is going to last? You must be a tactician in your dating life. This is one of those things that regular guys don't understand but you must. The close rates between men who spend just a little time planning out their dates, and men who don't spend any time on it at all, tend to be rather dramatically different. The guy who knows what he's doing closes; the guy who's hoping things somehow come together does not. Party dates, in my mind, are the ultimate danger dates. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but many guys taking girls to parties figure they'll just invite the girl along and hopefully something will happen. That's just poor planning though and it introduces a whole host of risks you'd do better to avoid. Here are some of the things that can go wrong: Your date is ready to party, not to get to know you or get intimate with you. She's going to be dressed up and ready to mingle, make small talk, and bounce around and dance and have fun. If she's really looking to get together with you, she might still cling to you and spend all her time on you - but if she's that ready, why on Earth are you taking her to a party instead of to somewhere the two of you can be alone together? And the women who aren't as into you probably aren't going to show up to a party date thinking it's anything that might lead to the two of you ending up together at that time. Your date thinks you're just being a fun, social guy and stops looking at you as a potential romantic partner. Especially with guys who are just starting out with this stuff, since they aren't communicating their interest, women who don't know what the guy's intentions are may well assume he's simply being a friendly, sociable guy when he invites them to a party. Once they start seeing a guy as friendly, fun, and sociable, he's lost most of his sexual edge and the chances of him getting together with the girl rapidly decay. Your date comes to value you too highly for your worth as a social liaison. This is something I've been meaning to write a separate post on, and we discussed somewhat when we talked about overproviding good feelings, but when you start taking her to parties and introducing her to cool people a girl may come to value you too highly as a resource for her social life to risk messing things up by introducing dating and romance. She looks at you and says, "Yeah, I like him, but he has access to so many cool parties and so many cool friends, I can't risk losing that access by messing it up with dating or sex!" So she starts friend zoning you not because of any lack of value on your part, but because of an overabundance of it. Your date runs into friends at the party or brings some along. Once you start adding other people into the mix, the odds that your date feels like she has to maintain appearances increase. The two of you alone might get up to some mischief, but when her friends are keeping an eye on her, the chances that she behaves more conservatively are markedly higher - which means the chances that something happens between the two of you drops. Friends also mean that rather than the two of you getting to know each other and things progressing forward, your date gets distracted and doesn't pay as much attention to you - even to the extent of possibly ignoring you. I'll share a quick anecdote. About two years ago, I started thinking I was so good that I was beyond this rule, so I said "yes" when a girl I felt was in the bag invited me to join her at a club with her friends. I'd made out with her the night I'd met her, nearly taken her home, and had one date already where she clearly was very into me and I should've taken her home there too. No matter, she still seemed to like me a lot, I thought, so it'll be fine - I just need to keep seeing her and things'll work out. So, I went to the nightclub with her, and sure enough, she spent the entire night engrossed in conversation with her friends, and every time I'd go up to her she'd quickly get yanked off in another direction. I spent a few hours trying to occupy myself by talking to her friends and meeting other people, but eventually I had to ask her to drive me home because I couldn't take anymore of her dodginess. By that point it had gotten so awkward with this girl who was until that night crazy about me that she invited her girlfriend along for the ride and I had to sit in the backseat of the car. I was pretty pissed at her leaving me effectively on my own in a club full of strangers after inviting me out as her guest, and I never tried to get in touch with her again, and neither did she try to get in touch with me. Had I seen that girl one-on-one again instead of going to a club full of her friends, we probably would've gotten together. Instead, I went against my training and tried something I knew was probably a bad idea, and ruined it for me with a girl who was before that night a sure-thing. Another man intervenes in your date. Maybe this means he steals your girl away from you and you have to watch her go home with some other guy; this happened to me when I first started going out hard in 2006, and it was a killer. Maybe it means he starts causing problems for you or trying to mess you up because he's competing for your girl, and he makes you look bad and she loses interest in you, or he throws you off balance and kills the vibe of the night. Either way, taking a date to a party, or bar, or nightclub where there are a bunch of drunken, sexually frustrated men floating around is an invitation for male intervention in your date. Your date gets drunk. Wait, that's a good thing, right? Well, not really. A lot of guys use alcohol as a crutch to get girls in bed, but in my experience the girls that will sleep with you when they're drunk will sleep with you when they're sober if you move things forward properly, so the benefits are largely imagined. But the dangers - the chance she gets erratic when drunk and starts crying or getting angry or making out with other men or running off and hooking up with one of them, or that she drinks too much and throws up or passes out, or that her friends notice her getting drunk and decide she's in no condition to be making decisions about intimacy with anyone and that they need to protect her from men, including you - those dangers are quite real. Your date gets tired. Part of the reason I recommend moving so quickly on dates these days is that many women only have a certain amount of time they can spend out with you before becoming fatigued and wanting to go home. Taking a girl to a party risks spending too much time dancing and talking and drinking, and her getting exhausted by the end of the night and just wanting to go home and sleep. The long and short of it is basically that when you take your date to a party, or a nightclub, or any other similar type of place, you're introducing a huge number of new variables that are outside your control and can mess everything up for you. That's why I say party dates are a bad idea and you shouldn't do them. ALTERNATIVES TO THE PARTY DATE What can you do instead? Well, again, if you haven't checked out "Date Templates" and "Simplify Your Dates," definitely do so, as those are my roadmaps to dating at the moment. A brief recap of my current dating process: have the girl meet me somewhere (often the subway station near my house), take her to a little café or a chill bar that serves food (note: nothing fancy - I want things to move fast, not be formal and proper), sit and eat and drink and talk for one or two hours, then invite her home. If you're deep diving with these girls, that's really all you need to be doing to get them coming with you. Whatever you do do though, keep it simple and straightforward and don't do something that adds tons of variables. Stay away from anything variable-introducing, like parties or nightclubs or group activities. The more moving parts there are, the more things you're going to have to control for, and the more difficult it's going to be to get things going your way and the more you'll be depending on luck over skill. Eliminate variables, and you eliminate the need for too much luck - and allow yourself to move your date forward based on you and your own skills and abilities, rather than the luck of the draw. So don't do the party date - keep things simple!

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##Peacocking: Now Scientifically Proven To Get You Girls Who would've thought scientists'd ever get around to proving something like this? A decade and a half ago, I found that if I wore outrageously cool and different clothes, I attracted a lot of attention to myself. When I later took on a tougher persona in university, I took to wearing a lot of (what I'd now describe as really tacky) gold jewelry all over: big chunky gold rings with huge fake diamonds, gold necklaces, a really flashy gold cubic zirconium-studded bracelet that people would stop me to comment on and more than a few bouncers and DJs tried to buy off me or barter for. I wouldn't be caught dead in that getup these days, mainly because I have a very different image now, but it got me attention, and what I did with that attention was up to me. And what else I found was that it caught a lot of women's attention. And I couldn't prove it, but they seemed a lot more interested in me than most of the other averagely-attired guys in my classes. When I found seduction a little later on, I learned about a guy who called himself Mystery and touted something he referred to as Peacock Theory: that if you dressed ostentatiously, you'd draw women to you like moths to a flame. Well, as it turns out, Mystery and I (and everyone from goths to punks to hipsters to hoodrats) were right: peacocking makes women want to hook up with you. Because now, academic research supports it. To quote Ron Burgundy, it's science. PEACOCKING AND PORSCHES I've long been kind of hard on Porsche drivers, ever since learning of a 2004 study in Berlin that found that Porsche drivers have the least sex per week (BMW drivers, for the record, ranked first). But maybe the reason the Porsche owners bought their flashy rides in the first place was to let women know they were on the prowl. One fascinating finding from that research on peacocking linked to earlier, by Jill Sundie of the University of Texas at San Antonio and others: "Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are following a lower investment (vs. higher investment) mating strategy and is triggered specifically by short-term (vs. long-term) mating motives." In other words, their research showed that people who buy big, flashy things are usually men who are less interested in investing a great deal in women and more interested in casual sex. Which is of course what a student of the social arts would expect, but the researchers did a bang up job in more or less proving this to in fact be the case. What was more interesting to me, however, was this result [emphasis mine]: "A fourth experiment showed that observers interpret such signals accurately, with women perceiving men who conspicuously consume as being interested in short-term mating. Furthermore, conspicuous purchasing enhanced men's desirability as a short-term (but not as a long-term) mate." In laymen's terms, they found that others' views of men peacocking are that the peacocks are interested in casual flings. And, they found that peacocking DOES indeed make men more desirable for flings! How crazy is that? Science just proved peacocking works. Showing off conspicuously makes you a more attractive option for fast, no-strings hook ups. Now that we know it works though, we've got to separate the signal from the noise. And by that I mean we want to get to the bottom of what kind of peacocking you ought to be doing, exactly, to further your results with the opposite sex. peacocking HOW TO PEACOCK: GOOD IDEAS AND BAD ONES Well, you could always go get a big, fuzzy hat. Failing that, there are all kinds of good ideas for peacocking: Trendy clothes and accessories: get something noteworthy to wear around your neck, for instance. I sport a Tibetan mandella pendant; really cool, unique, and meaningful, and eye-catching without being over-the-top. Coats: particularly, with fur, when you can find it. Field-tested and guaranteed to get girls attracted. Why this is, I don't know, but women just seem to love men in fur-lined garments. Suits: pick out a really cool-looking suit from a magazine and have it tailor-made for you if you can have that done affordably somewhere nearby. I had an ultra-modern suit custom made based on a Gucci picked out of a magazine, for a lot less than a Gucci would cost; it gets rave reviews every time I wear it out, and fits like a dream. Pants: I haven't gone this route myself, but I've known guys who've tried brightly colored pants, and pants that are leather or vinyl. Not quite my style, but you might take it for a test drive if you're looking for something flashy. Jeans are also a good choice; either go designer, for name recognition, or at least get designer-styled jeans with the seam on the outside of each pant leg folded in rather than left on the outside. Hats: hats are good. I used to sport a fedora; these days I wear a smaller, inspector-style hat when I wear one (which isn't terribly often, recently). But hats impact attention and attraction a lot, you'll find. Girls dig 'em. Shoes: your choices for peacocking with shoes are generally limited to two options: lifts or cowboy boots? Me, I prefer the latter; the former is a little too... well... dorky for me. But I don't want to impose my own opinions and preconceptions on you! Note that generally speaking, while peacocking is mostly a good thing, you do want to avoid going to excess. A little peacocking makes you look classy and stylish. Too much peacocking though makes a man look like ridiculous and tryhard. And women don't get excited about getting together with ridiculous, tryhard guys. They want their men to appear effortless. So, wearing a really neat custom-made suit jacket with designer jeans, cowboy boots, and a slick dress shirt with a few buttons opened to reveal a unique pendant or necklace is fine and dandy and that's one style that I've sported personally on many an occasion. But, wearing lifts, vinyl pants, a leather jacket with zippers all over it, sunglasses, and a sparkly shirt is probably going to be way too much just about anywhere. It'll get attention... but not sexual attention. And that's one of the secrets of how to peacock right: your peacocking should be sexy. Not silly. Sexy requires a sense of style. Fashion sense. It requires a man to be able to put an outfit together, and not simply throw the brightest, flashiest elements he can find together and hope to maximize his ability to attract attention. Men who want babes drive Porsches, not souped-up Honda Civics with logo stickers and aftermarket tail fins. This fact escaped a lot of the early guys in the seduction community as they chased reactions instead of results. They got so caught up in the attention they were receiving that they didn't stop to question if it was the right kind of attention. Not all attention is created equal. The king and the court jester both get a lot of attention... but only one of them is able to throw his weight around and get what he wants. THOUGHTS ON "COOL" VS. "OUTRAGEOUS" I'd say there are ultimately two schools of thought on peacocking: the "cool" school, and the "outrageous" school. Outrageous is all about what we just talked about above that those early pick up guys did: maximizing attention by being completely outlandish. Dress like you're from Mars -- goggles, fuzzy hats, and black nail polish, that sort of thing -- and women will flock to you like pigeons flock to statues in the park, goes the thinking. And it does generate attention. But so do horrible car accidents on the side of the road. On the other hand, there's the cool school... dress really unique, really cool, and catch women's eyes with your signature awesome style. Just giving this a few seconds' thought, it's clear which is more likely to result in guys getting girls into bed. Kind of a no-brainer, right? You want to look cool, charming, and appealing because you want women to see you as a sexy man. That's what gets you the kind of attention you want, and that's what gets women into your bed. If you've been wearing average clothes, for sure you should upgrade and invest in some cool clothes that are different and attention-grabbing. Women respond to it. But if by any chance you've been going overboard, think sexy -- not silly. Your results, I'm quite certain, will start climbing the instant you make the switch.

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##Persist In Your Insistence Getting investment from women is a crucial element of your success with them. Men who fail to get investment fail to move things forward with the women in their lives - it's as simple as that. Investment is vital. persist in your insistence So what happens when you ask for compliance and get a "no"? What happens when you say, "Come with me," and she just shakes her head and stays put? A common response from a lot of guys is they back down; they retreat from their compliance requests or compliance demands, and forget about it. The following scenario is typical in a number of guys' interactions: Guy: "Come with me, let's go hit the bar." Girl: "I don't feel like it… I'd rather just stay here." Guy: "OK… we can stay." Then the guy stays there, by the girl's side. Just looking at that interaction, what would you guess was the effect on this woman's level of interest in this cat following this exchange? Think she became more interested… or less so? Women respond powerfully to dominance. Anyone who's ever dominated a woman in public and watched her swoon knows what I'm talking about. And anyone who's dominated a woman in the bedroom and listened to her cum really fast knows too. Women find dominance incredibly attractive… incredibly sexy. And just as they find dominance incredibly compelling, women find a lack of dominance incredibly disheartening. What could be a bigger damper on a woman's attraction toward a man than recognizing he can't make her want to follow him? Women want men they feel compelled to be with, to follow, and to give themselves to. They don't want men they don't feel that way toward. And if she detects herself rejecting a man's efforts to make her follow, she'll quickly decide he isn't the kind of man she's looking for. So, yeah - the answer was less so. A man backing down is a big turn-off; it's a surefire way to pull the rug out from underneath any degree of attraction a girl has for a guy. What's the solution to these tough situations, then? It's the Hard Push - which, as you may recall from Don't Let Her Go, is all about persistence. Persistence in refusing to let a woman refuse you. Persistence in insisting she join you in whatever feat of investment you ask her to make, no matter how big or small. Part of this is your own level of calibration, of course - if you're asking her to lend you $10,000 and you've just met an hour earlier, unless you're one of the smoothest talkers on Earth there's no way you're going to pull that off. You're asking for too much, too soon. So, like anything, calibration is key. Beyond that though, you need to use the Hard Push. Insist that a woman comply with your request or demand. Do so in a nice way, in a way that is almost kind and polite and disarming - you don't want to seem pushy, or you'll cause people to recoil in defensiveness. Instead, be warm and caring and persistent. Persist because you know that if she complies, she will be benefiting her own life enormously - she'll be getting closer to having you in it. In that light, take a look at this example: Guy: "Come with me, let's go hit the bar." Girl: "I don't feel like it… I'd rather just stay here." Guy: "Come, we're going. Let's go." Then, the girl protests a little more, but relents and goes with him. Now how would you guess the woman's interest level was affected? Down or up? Dominance - or confidence - like that is for all intents and purposes an aphrodisiac for women. And it sets the right precedent - the precedent that the man gets what he asks for when it comes to investment. This will cause others to respect him vastly more, and will limit challenging by others (and women) down the road. So when you encounter these trying situations where a woman resists giving you what you've asked for, don't back down - instead, persist in insisting. It's how you show a woman you're interested, and you know what you want - and she'll appreciate it very much.

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##Picture the Conquest I have long believed, based on my own experiences in my most primal state and what I have seen in some truly talented others, that the best and most prolific lovers in the world - the most skilled naturals and the most successful seducers - have a different way of seeing women than most men, and that that difference is one of the biggest keys to their consistent and impressive results. Obviously, right? But I want to focus on one specific KIND of different way of seeing women - the sexual way. * * * * Most folks, as humans, tend to view other humans as people - as separate and removed from the other things around us, whether inanimate, plant, or animal. They see other humans for their minds - their thoughts and their words and their ideas. It's one of the biggest problems for men who struggle with girls. They are so focused on what a girl is SAYING that they miss the meaning of what she is COMMUNICATING altogether. One of the major turning points in a man's transition from loser to lover is learning to hear what a woman is actually saying behind her words. Yet, it doesn't stop there. There's another level, the animal level. That's the level of vibing and sexual communication. It's the level where words melt away and only bodies and feelings matter. Most men access this level at times, usually (like most emotions) times largely outside of their control. It's only when a woman elicits the right feelings in a man. It's the same way that you must elicit the right feelings from a woman to put HER into a sexual state. But, it is something you can control. And THAT is one of the gifts of the best naturals and the best seducers: a continuous sexual state. How does it work? Mainly, I believe, it comes from viewing women differently from most men. As a man builds up success with anything, he begins to associate certain feelings with it - the same principle behind anchoring feelings to a person, experience, or object. Likewise, as a man builds sexual success upon sexual success with women, he begins to feel strong feelings of sexual attraction just seeing the kind of women he's had success with. The right kinds of girls put him into an instant sexual state. And sexual state compels a man to be more charming, more persistent, and ultimately, much more successful at soliciting sex from a girl. He has confidence he will succeed because he's done it before and he can picture the basic steps he needs to follow to get there again. Questions of rejection or anxiety are absent from his mind because he's focused not on any fear of failure, but on anticipation of success. So what's the secret to achieving that kind of state, in lieu of having tons of conquests of a particular kind of girl? What if a guy wants to get sexual around exactly the kind of girl who's always shot him down in the past? He has to imagine the conquest. With long-standing mental blocks (i.e., "I can't get young girls, they won't go for a guy my age," or, "White girls / Asian girls / international girls / etc. won't go for me, they never do"), some time is necessary to overcome the barriers to entering a sexual state and picture the conquest. If a guy spends a month visualizing sexual success with the kind of woman he wants though, picturing in his head the steps it takes to get there, and the ultimate objective of having sex with her, and maybe even having a relationship of some kind with her, for ten minutes a day for a month, the block in his head will be gone and it will be easy to imagine success. For guys who are already block-free, the next step is to picture the conquest on the approach, and on first meeting and while talking to a girl. Picture the conquest while touching her, while positioning yourself around her and in her space. Picture it when she steps away to go to the restroom. What you'll find is you start seeing her not for her words, but for her feelings and her body. You view her as if you are an animal, and she is an animal, because you both are. You vividly picture stripping off her pants and bending her over and entering her pussy, and she can smell it in your sweat and see it in your eyes. All because instead of focusing on her words and your conversation, you stop, and picture the conquest.

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##The Pig and the Mirror Quick post today. More of a reminder than anything. Much (most?) of the time, most people trend toward black and white thinking on things. This extends to all manner of thinking: "This is good, this is bad." "This is my fault, that is his fault." "I am right about this and other people are wrong." "Other people are right about this and I am wrong." The last two are what I want to talk about briefly today. And I want to talk about them by way of sharing with you a Chinese parable I heard a bit back. THE PIG AND THE MIRROR A fly was buzzing about the pen of a pig one day, minding his own business, when he noticed the pig trotting about in the pen, his face filthy, completely unaware that he had so much dirt and grime on his face. "Friend pig!" called out the fly. "Why do you not clean your face?" "Clean it of what?" said the pig. "The way my eyes are positioned, I cannot see my face, so cannot know whether it needs cleaning or not, and if so, where!" "I will see if I can help you," said the fly. He sped off through the air, searching about the farm for something that could help the pig to see his reflection, until he came across a mirror. Picking up the mirror, the fly returned to the pig's enclosure and placed the mirror against the side of the pen, where the pig could see it. "Oh my!" the pig said looking at his reflection. "My face is quite filthy, isn't it?" And with that, the pig set about rubbing and pawing and scrubbing his dirty face until it was sparkling clean. pig and mirror Each day thereafter, the pig would walk up to the mirror, check his reflection, and clean off any dirt. Each day he'd make sure his face was perfectly clean. Then one day, the fly came back. Buzzing about the pen, he inadvertently flung a speck of dirt off of a piece of food he picked up, and the dirt landed right on the mirror. The pig soon walked up to the mirror and, seeing a big gob of dirt on his reflection, began to rub at the spot on his face, trying to remove the dirt. But the dirt would not go away, no matter how much he rubbed. He stayed there rubbing and rubbing for a good long while, trying to get rid of the gob of dirt, but being unable to do so. Eventually the fly noticed this, and swooped down to talk to the pig again. "Friend pig!" he said. "Now what are you doing?" "I cannot clean my face of this dirt speck!" the pig replied. "My friend, don't be silly," said the fly, "the speck of dirt is on the mirror, not your face." ARE YOU THE PROBLEM... OR NOT? In the article on victim mentality, Flames made the following remark: "I think you can go too far the other way too though and blame yourself for things outside your control." ... and I believe that's one worth addressing as well. If you're accustomed to seeing yourself as the blameless victim, then you absolutely need to take some time to teach yourself to view the role you play in everything that happens to you in your life. It's your life; you bring the things in it into it, and you generate the reactions in other people you generate. Your life is the inevitable result of you and your actions. At the same time, I think it's worth keeping in perspective the moral of the story of the pig and the mirror: much of the time, when you're gauging others' reactions, you're seeing something that reflects on you, and lets you know where your shortcomings are and what you need to correct (and where your strengths are, and what you're doing great at). However, sometimes the reflection is marred by dirt on the mirror, not on you. Sometimes it really isn't you; sometimes it really is the other person who has the problem. TELLING THE DIFFERENCE This one's easy. If you look in every mirror and see dirt in the same place, that dirt is there. If you look in one mirror and see the dirt there, but every other mirror you look in doesn't show you that dirt, the problem - at least for that speck of dirt - is with the mirror, not you. So when you're trying to figure out what you're doing wrong, and what you need to correct, make sure you're examining the reactions and results you get from multiple different people. Early on, I realized that every young (~22 and under at the time; I was 23) girl who seemed to like me would quickly lose interest anytime I'd start talking about myself. So I decided the problem was probably me, not every single young girl I met, and I decided to talk about myself as little as possible. Voila, I started taking girls under 22 to bed much more easily with a lot less hassle. But, also early on, I had crazy things happen, like a girl who thought I was trying to ditch her with a bill come storming after me and chew me out (I really was just going to the bathroom), or a random girl on the street I'd never seen before or spoken to (and who was actually quite pretty) come up and kick me in the groin and start punching me in the head. Because these things did not repeat with other women (thank God), I pretty safely just assumed that these were isolated incidents where the dirt was on the mirror. There were still lessons to be learned from them - the girl who came storming after me had picked up that I wasn't all that interested in her, and probably was rather insecure and maybe had even been ditched with the bill herself before (or, more likely, had ditched men with the bill and feared having it done back to her); the girl who attacked me... well, there really wasn't anything to learn from that other than if you see a pretty, short white girl alone at 3 o'clock in the morning walking down a sidewalk lined on both sides for blocks with hordes of large black men in loose clothing hooting and hollering and catcalling at every passing woman who goes by, there's probably something unusual going on with her that night. MORAL OF THE STORY The Chinese parable's moral is, "The mirror can show you what's wrong with you, or what's wrong with it." I think the moral we want to take away though is this: "Make sure you check more than one mirror." It's easy to blame yourself for everything, or blame others for everything. What's harder is to blame yourself for many things, while also recognizing that some things really aren't your fault much or at all. Remember to check multiple mirrors any time you're even faintly unsure, and that lack of clarity will quickly disappear.

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##Pre-Opening Opening (or engaging a woman verbally for the first time) in-and-of itself is a necessity, something that must be done 96% of the time when you want to meet a girl (if we imagine that about 4% of opening is done by women themselves). It's unavoidable and inescapable. Different types of openers can net you different results - with direct openers being of course the flavor of opening that typically offers the most bang for your buck. But outside the words used in the opener itself, there are in fact a few other things you can do with your openers to have them serve you far better. Enter pre-opening. A term I coined to give name to a handful of small nonverbal gestures that net big returns in opening percentages and efficacy. This is stuff that will get more girls opening for you, more eagerly. If you want women falling all over themselves when you first say hello, outside of making changes to your clothing, hairstyle, posture, eye contact, voice, and other fundamentals, this - pre-opening - is the way to do it. There are several categories of pre-opening I'd like to cover here, so rather than spend a lot of time talking about the how and why, let's just dive into them and hash that part of it out as we go. PRE-OPENING Pre-opening by definition is an action that you take with a woman prior to verbally engaging her. It's something you'll use to get a woman's attention and prime her to be opened. We're going to chiefly use touch to pre-open, although as you'll see in the "Glance and Smile" section below, pre-opening certainly isn't limited to touch by any means. Rather, touch is simply the most common and straightforward way for you to pre-open. The reason pre-opening works is simple: you typically want a woman to be looking at you first. This is the first step in setting up the chase dynamic that you want -you want those subconscious signals firing in a girl's mind that she noticed you first, that she was interested in you first, that she is chasing you and pursuing you. The early stages of an interaction with a new woman go much more smoothly when you start off using this dynamic than they do when you start off as the pursuer (as the one making the initial eye contact). By using touch, you're able to get a woman looking at you before you are looking at her. Check out the article on elite eye contact for a little more information on how eye contact comes into play here. Some standard pre-openers include lightly resting your hand on a woman's arm until she turns to look at you, or placing your hand on her shoulder and perhaps squeezing her shoulder a few times if she is slow to turn. A half-second after her eyes are gazing at yours, you turn to her very casually with a warm smile and begin your verbal opener. The reason this works so effectively is twofold: Pre-opening should become an essential, core element of your opening strategy in nearly every occasion. It does so many good things for your opening it can't be emphasized enough. Nudge A variation of standard pre-opening is the nudge. Simple enough to remember, you walk up to a girl who isn't gazing your way, and preferably is leaning against something - a wall, a bar, etc. Then, you nudge her - either give her a gentle hip bump with your own hips, or give her a light, playful shove in the arm with your arm. When she turns to look at you, look at her back, and give her a playful smile. As a bonus, if you smile at her like you're about to begin laughing, she'll often catch the emotion and burst into a bit of laughter herself. This makes for a very fun, light pre-opening, and you can still proceed with any kind of verbal opener you decide on (direct is fantastic here, since she is already receiving you warmly - might as well go with the most powerful, effective opener!). Lingering Touch After physically pre-opening (by first touching a girl to get her attention), you can use something I call the "lingering touch." The lingering touch consists of leaving your hand where it's resting on the girl you've just pre-opened, and holding eye contact with her with a warm smile on your face for a second or a pair of seconds before you begin your opener. A lingering touch might look like this: A man walks up to a woman and places the palm of his hand on her elbow. She turns to look at him, resting her eyes on his. He moves his eyes over to meet hers, and smiles at her warmly while he gazes into her eyes for two seconds. At last, he speaks: "I saw you standing over here, and I just had to come tell you, that…" It's something you'll see sometimes in movies, in fact, where an incredibly suave, romantic man walks up to engage a beautiful woman he's just seen. And just as women swoon for it in the movies, they swoon for it in real life, too. Glance and Smile pre-openingThe glance-and-smile is a non-physical means of pre-opening that relies instead on eye contact and smiling to prep a woman for being opened. It can be used regardless of who makes eye contact first; you'll find it's one of the few times that you can look at a woman's eyes first and still reliably come off as charming and sexy. The way the glance-and-smile works is that once you've made eye contact with a woman, and she's returning your eye contact, you'll then glance away and smile to yourself as if you've just realized something about her, or you're picturing the two of you together. It will generate a lot of intrigue before you even speak your first word. This works best with women who are highly socially aware. For obvious reasons, this most often is very beautiful, fashionable women; less attractive women tend to be less socially aware, and may not catch this subtle gesture. So save this one mostly for the top tier of women you meet, looks-wise and status-wise, to put it to best use. Note on the glance-and-smile: it may be used as a standalone technique, or in conjunction with another form of pre-opening. You can very well use it by itself, but you can also walk up to a woman, pre-open her, the use the glance-and-smile. Use your judgment; depending on the situation, one approach may be superior to another. WHY PRE-OPENING WORKS Why does pre-opening work? It works because of the reasons we discussed before, and a few others: It displays mountains of confidence. Women know that any man using pre-opening is comfortable with women and not in a needy frame-of-mind whatsoever. It sets the initial chase frame. By having a woman look at you first, you're setting the early frame in her mind (and in yours) that she is the one pursuing you. It gives women a chance to size you up. In all likelihood, the woman you're going up to meet is thinking about something else, or talking about something else, or doing something else - and when you first walk up, she has to mentally readjust a little to prepare herself to talk to you. When a guy walks up to her and immediately launches into conversation, it can be jarring and a little disorienting. Giving her a moment to soak your presence in lets her feel far more comfortable when you begin talking to her. Pre-opening is a spectacular way of getting warmer, stronger, more positive receptions from women almost universally. The more you pre-open, the higher an opening percentage you'll have, and the better a foot you'll start off on in every new interaction. Pre-opening does much to benefit your initial approach; if you want to have women at hello, this is one way you can get there a lot more consistently. Until next time--

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##The Purpose of Life from a Practical Point of View When talking about getting good with women, or about starting businesses, or learning or mastering just about anything, really, you will frequently see me discuss the importance of purpose. Purpose drives you; it gives you momentum and wings; it aids you in accomplishing things that men more skilled than you or with more raw natural talent than you or even greater imaginations or intellect or willpower than you could never hope to achieve. Purpose is the great equalizer. purpose of life I don't like going to deep into what purpose is though, because that's a complex topic. Everyone is so certain that he has a - or the - "purpose of life" all figured out, and the people standing on high yelling about purpose can be both some of the most inspiring and some of the most maddeningly frustrating people you will ever see or hear. It's my belief, though, that the major crisis of the West has been its loss of purpose. With the withdraw of religion back into the inky depths of history, the old religions coming to be viewed as no more than quaint relics of a bygone age, Western man has found himself wondering what it is, exactly, that he's working for. Without purpose, the good times seem like hollow indulgences, and the bad times well nigh unbearable. With purpose, though, the good times are meaningful, and the bad times more so. So, since we've had a number of readers on here request it, and since it is a topic that influences you intangibly in everything you do - whether that be dating, relationships, business, some sport or art or hobby, or any and all other endeavors - let's have a look at purpose, and see if we can't boil purpose in life down to a few essential elements, like we like to do with everything else. purpose of life When I first started listening to rap music as a teenager, it was the Notorious B.I.G. I listened to first. I knew that he'd had a feud going on with Tupac Shakur, the West Coast opposite to East Coast B.I.G., but I didn't know much else about Tupac, and wrote him off, at the time, as some pugilistic thug. It was the year 2000, and both men had been dead for three years, having met similar violent ends. When I finally decided to give Tupac a listen a few years into my rap-listening career, I found myself surprised; he had neither the richness of prose nor the consistency of good beats that Biggie had, but he had something else there that at first I could not quite put my finger on. It was something inspiring - something bigger than himself - and there was a certain life to his music that even B.I.G. (not to mention nearly everybody else in Hip-Hop) lacked. What I realized as I dug into Tupac's music was that he had a cause; there was purpose to his music. He was trying to accomplish something with it. When you listen to Biggie, it's lyrically and rhythmically brilliant; but the closest thing to a "purpose" in B.I.G.'s music is detailing life on the streets, and engaging in braggadocio, just like Nas and N.W.A. before him. Tupac does this too, but he also does something else - he pushes for change. He asks black people to change themselves. He asks white people to help. He asks everyone to listen and stop ignoring the problems happening right beneath their noses. And despite the fact that he wasn't the best or the most consistent lyricist by far, and despite the fact that his beats were sometimes good, sometimes not, Tupac sold albums in record numbers, and attracted a fan base - both black and white - that was so intense that they virtually regarded him as their leader. In interviews, he talks about not having expected the response, or being prepared for it - suddenly, he had armies of "soldiers" ready to do his bidding, and he didn't even know what to do with them. What made Tupac so much more compelling to so many people, to the point where they followed him as a kind of leader, in spite of his relative lack of talent compared to, say, B.I.G., was not his talent itself (of which he still had plenty to spare, mind you), but, instead, his devotion to a cause, and his honest, down-to-earth, and strong sense of purpose. WHO DO YOU BELIEVE IN? Religion, politics, political correctness, feminism, gay rights, animal rights, gun rights, free speech rights, capitalism, socialism, communism... you name it. You start stepping on people's beliefs, and you get a lot of riled up people. People naturally attach themselves to causes. They wrap themselves up in their causes so tightly, and so powerfully, that they soon get their identity itself from their cause: "I am a Christian." "I am a Jew." "I am a Muslim." "I am a Buddhist." "I am a Hindu." "I am a liberal." "I am a conservative." "I am a libertarian." "I am a feminist." "I am an MRA." "I am pro-choice." "I am pro-life." "I am... [fill in the blank]" The eminent social psychologist Ernest Becker, whom I'll be talking a fair bit about in this piece, refers to these belief structures as aspects of our "hero-systems," and further theorized that all great suffering and inhumanity and warfare in the world stems from conflict between hero-systems... because our hero-systems are what allow us to defy death, and we cannot tolerate having these questioned or threatened. When your hero-system does not agree with my hero-system, that suggests that my hero-system may be incorrect - and thus, that I will ultimately one day die and be forgotten. So, I must fight you, and defeat you, and prove that my hero-system is correct, and your hero-system is incorrect. You are the one who will die and be forgotten. Our causes - our hero-systems - are irrevocably linked to our sense of purpose in life; without a cause we truly believe in, we lose any real sense of direction and self. WHY DO WE NEED PURPOSE? If you really want something to mess with your head, riddle me this: does it matter if your life matters? After your brain finishes rebooting itself, let's forget that question and instead just talk about why people need purpose. Human beings have a rather unique structure in our brains called the neocortex. The neocortex is one of three command centers in our brain, with each newer command center being built on top of its predecessor. We have: Our reptilian brain: the most ancient, primitive part of our nervous systems, which handles all basic biological functions like eating, breathing, moving, feeling hungry and seeking out food, feeling temperature swings and seeking out equilibrium, and feeling horny and seeking out sex. It is the reptilian brain that responds to pain and fear and anger, but aside from these it knows only contentment; when all needs are met and there is nothing else pressing to do, the brain and body rest. Our mammalian brain: the boon of being a mammal, the mammalian brain enables us to have feelings beyond the bare essentials necessary to keep us alive, including love, sympathy, empathy, and grudge-holding. It also makes forming cultures and societies far easier, and more nuanced. Birds have convergently evolved some aspects of what we have in our mammalian brains, but no other organism can match the social and emotional processing power of this potent tool. Our human neocortex:the newest addition to mammalian nervous systems, and heavily upgraded and customized in humans, the neocortex handles advanced abstraction, planning, reasoning, and strategy. It allows us to process situations and get above the emotional fray to an extent that the other mammals largely cannot. The only animals with similarly advanced brains to those of man are elephants, dolphins (second-in-line to humans in brain to body mass ratio, and just this year were shown to have individual names and, quite possibly, language), and other primates. Normally these brains all work together as one system, though as we discussed in the article on cementing emotion, sometimes the patched-together nature of the brain shows itself and you may experience feeling one part of your brain pulling you in one direction while another part pulls you the opposite way (most often when trying to talk yourself out of strong emotions, like fear or lust or greed, that you want to logically overcome). These brains stack one on top of the other, and the lower brain almost always wins. purpose of life That means that if you have a strong urge to eat food, you can try to will yourself away from it with neocortical reasoning, but at some point if the urge goes on long enough or you stay around temptation long enough (e.g., being close to a piece of delicious chocolate cake that you'd really rather not eat), you burn through your willpower reserve and finally give in. That's when there's disagreement between the parts of your brain. But what happens when your reptilian brain is mostly quiet, and your mammalian brain is mostly quiet, and you have all the time you could want to sit around and just think and think and think with that big, shiny neocortex reasoning machine evolution's equipped you with? You guessed it - rumination and obsessive thought cycles. And, as you probably are aware, rumination is the proximate cause of depression. It is only when people start thinking, long and hard, about things again and again, over and over, that they begin to feel helpless, and out of control. And they begin to wonder what it's really all about... what is the purpose of all this work, and struggle, and misery? When your brain is advanced enough to realize that you may simply be mindlessly carrying out a purposeless, completely random process of being born, growing, producing more life, and dying, it can start to seem like too much. There must be more to it, the human mind says to itself. There's also the darker side, as well: that one thing that all minds fear more than anything else - the eventual extinguishing of thought and existence that is that thing called "death." THE DENIAL OF DEATH In 1973, a rogue professor and cultural anthropologist named Ernest Becker, popular with his students but in constant conflict with his academic superiors and academia in general, published a book entitled The Denial of Death. Not long after, in 1974, he died of colon cancer. He was 49 years old. Two months later, The Denial of Death received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, the highest award for non-fiction literature. When I first read Denial of Death, it was after having learned a great deal about the mind and psychology myself already. To climb my way out of the depression that had held me paralyzed, friendless and socially isolated for over a decade, I'd combined things I'd learned about the mind - and what the mind wants - from Western psychology and neuroscience and Eastern mysticism, and emerged on the other end a new man, and one with a deeper understanding of the inner workings of the brain than anyone I talked to. But I still had holes in my theories... places where my mental model broke down, that left me stumped and stupefied. There were some things about human behavior and thought patterns that just did not make sense. Which, to me, stood as a clear signal that there was more I needed to figure out. The Denial of Death provided the final pieces of the puzzle I'd been missing to make it all make sense. It was the greatest book I had ever read at the time, and now, some years and many more great books later, I still consider it the greatest book I've ever read. Nothing else comes close. The premise of Denial of Death is, put far too crudely and simply, that everything in human civilization is built around one central tenet: give people a reason to believe that they will live on past death, and ways for them to achieve enduring greatness by advancing society. We all have our "immortality projects," Becker calls them. Our ways of living on once our minds are extinguished: Some people believe in an after life, that by worshipping a god or gods or ancestors now, they will be permitted to live on in bliss for all eternity with all the other people they have known and cared for Some people believe in building a legacy and being remembered by the world, that by achieving great things their memories can live on and endure Some people believe in family and children, that by passing on their genes they have ensured the survival of life and the human race and their own lineage I'd understood this, but I hadn't understood the people who rejected meaning and plunged themselves into hedonism - Becker, though, quite elegantly explains that they are simply deciding not to confront living life as a human with no meaning (and thus, permanent death waiting to extinguish their minds), instead losing themselves in the joys of the flesh, burying any thoughts of the future with the sensations of the now. The entire construct of civilization is designed to help us cope with the fact that one day we will die, by allowing us to build purposes for ourselves, to get purposes and meaning from others (church leaders, political leaders, other inspirational leaders), and to give us a way to believe that, one way or another, we will survive. This is our way of denying death. Purpose lets us rage against the dying of the light. Purpose drives us to achieve, in order that we may, in some way, live on. It's a survival mechanism. In other words, purpose is a means of using the fear of death to compel yourself to do great things. You do these things because you believe they will save you from permanent death. purpose of life Is there a life after death? I'm not someone in the position to answer that. I was raised a Catholic. I decided the evidence did not support these beliefs as a teenager, then struggled to separate myself from the faith - finding that beliefs ingrained since childhood were difficult to remove, no matter how logically convinced one was they weren't quite accurate. I explored the teachings of the other major religions, and many minor ones, and some extinct ones. Ancient Greek mythology has long been one of my favorites... simply for the stories it tells. But everything from Gilgamesh to the Rig Veda has plenty of interesting things to say. I've faced death, on several occasions. A former CIA profiler I met once - those people who pick apart others' personalities from the clues in front of them and what they can see - remarked that I had that "edge" about me that only those who've looked at death and returned have about them. But I've never been dead. And I don't know anyone who has. If you study near-death experiences, you'll find some interesting things. Everywhere on Earth, these present in nearly identical fashion: a person floats up and out of his body, maybe sees doctors or loved ones gathered around him, or maybe just heads straight up. He goes through a tunnel toward light, then enters into a place of light, where he encounters one or more beings of light. He feels completely and utterly at peace, and now understands what everything was all about. He may hear music, or he may not. The being(s) may tell him he cannot stay, and must go back, or he may suddenly just be ripped back down and into his body again. Either way, he wakes up, and is alive once more. People taking controlled ketamine, PCP, and psilocybin trips often share similar experiences - I have friends who've personally attested to this. There have been several studies on the effects of some hallucinogenics' ability to give individuals religious experiences (e.g., 1962's Marsh Chapel Experiment and 2006's John Hopkins University study). To quote Wikipedia on the 2006 study, "In a 14-month follow-up to this study, over half of the participants rated the experience among the top five most meaningful spiritual experiences in their lives, and considered the experience to have increased their personal well-being and life satisfaction." And from HowStuffWorks.com, on near-death experiences: "Kenneth Ring, one of the most prolific researchers and authors of NDE studies, reports a large number of subjects who gain self-confidence and become more extroverted after an experience. One of Ring's studies quantified changes in subjects' attitudes toward life. These generally include a sense of purpose in life, an appreciation of life, and increase in compassion, patience and understanding and an overall feeling of personal strength. A small percentage of subjects reported feelings of fear, depression and a focus on death. Ring also found that NDE subjects tend to feel a heightened sense of religious feeling and belief in a spiritual world. " But are these near-death experiences and psilocybin trips actual experiences, or simply the artefacts of malfunctioning wiring in the brain as the dying brain shuts down and the acid-tripping brain misfires? At this point, that question is very much open to interpretation. LIFE AFTER DEATH WITHOUT RELIGION As the old religions die and recede into the mists of history in the West, we are left to deal as a society with a problem that traditionally remained the domain of only the most inquisitive thinkers: if there are no supreme beings and there is no afterlife, what is the point of all this? It is not an easy question to answer. My opinion for a while has been that the West is in a "purpose of life" crisis. Western civilization doesn't really know what it stands for or what it's trying to achieve. What's the goal of it all? Is it freedom for everyone? If so, freedom to do what? Buy lots of stuff? Say whatever you want? Do whatever you want? Is there nothing more meaningful than that? Religion is the traditional hero-system most people inhabited. There are other hero-systems, of course: Being remembered for doing something great Having a family / business / other legacy of some kind Burying oneself in sensation and forgetting about death or living on ... but for practical reasons, these other hero-systems are not quite as effective at a large scale as religion is: Most people will never do anything great (nor want to) Businesses fail, legacies fall apart, and even children disappoint Eventually looks fade, money runs out, and the senses dull enough that fear of death creeps back in and cannot be drowned out any longer When times are good, everything is fine. When people are happy, there's little need to wonder about "what the meaning of it all" is. At worst, there's a small sense of hollowness if one feels one is not fulfilling his "purpose" - but that's mostly it. But when times get rough, and willpower begins to wane, and introspection goes on the rise, people start to wonder what it's all about. How does one live on in the absence of religion? Because the more intelligent, rational, and inquisitive you are, the less likely you are to believe anyone who tells you to believe just because something is written in some old book somebody wrote sometime in the distant past. THE 3 PURPOSE KEYS To get your mind around purpose, I have three things I think of as the "purpose keys." These purpose keys are constructed in the same way the human brain is constructed; of three parts: Your Biological Imperatives: these are the basal, primitive needs you must fulfill as a biological organism. Fulfilling them brings pleasure, and ignoring them brings pain, or even death, of the most immediately impactive variety. Your Emotional Needs: these are the needs you need to fulfill emotionally. Failing to fulfill them leads to depression, while fulfilling them leads to life satisfaction. Your Logical Wants: the only needs you "control" - these are needs like "learn a sport" or "build a business" or "climb that mountain." Logical wants are built on top of and stem out of biological imperatives and emotional needs. They can sometimes become emotional needs if they are worked on hard enough over a long enough period of time with enough emotion invested into them. purpose of life Just like how the brain works, these three keys of purpose generally yield to the purposes beneath them that are holding them up: Your emotional needs will yield to your biological imperatives Your logical wants will yield to your emotional needs and biological imperatives That means, if you logically decide "no more chocolate," but your body decides it needs what chocolate has, you're probably going to eat that chocolate. In defining what purpose is to you, you must take these three elements - these purpose keys - into very deep consideration... lest you choose a purpose that goes against some or all of what you actually want and need. BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES Your biological imperatives are as follows: Don't die Eat food Drink water Maintain homeostasis Mate and reproduce Avoid pain Seek pleasure Religions are successful because they primarily appeal to our biological imperatives, which are our strongest internal "purposes:" All religions promise an afterlife - in effect, that you never really die Boundless food and drink are often promised in this afterlife - a paradise In many religions, sex is promised in the afterlife (e.g., Islam's 72 virgins) In most religions, adherents are told to have many children and be "fruitful" In the paradise afterlife, there will be no pain, and all will be pleasure, forever The easiest way to both wear yourself out in the short term and toughen yourself up over the long term is by avoiding fulfilling your biological imperatives. A man who goes without food for three days becomes very weak, and his will disappears almost entirely; however, once he has done this repeatedly and learned to fast like this, his willpower reserve grows larger than most men's ever will. Generally speaking, you can only ignore biological imperatives for short periods of time. The longer a biological imperative is ignored, the more likely you are to have your reptilian brain take command of your mind and body and fulfill its will despite what your neocortex thinks it wants. This is why you so often see: Dieters fail on their diets (eat food) People give up working out (avoid pain) People become addicted to drugs (seek pleasure) People who think they don't want children grow weak for a partner and get married and have children (mate and reproduce) Fighting nature is good to do in short bursts to build your willpower up. But trying to fight a war of attrition against nature over a sustained period of time will run your willpower out and force nature to take control of your body, on the assumption that your neocortex is taking you too far astray from doing what you are supposed to do, and it's time to get you back on track. EMOTIONAL NEEDS Once your biological imperatives are fulfilled, you're free to set to work on your emotional needs. Your emotional needs are the objectives stemming from your mammalian brain. These include: Be included Be liked Be loved Be needed Be respected Be revered Be understood Learn new things Experience new things Explore new stimuli These needs become comparatively unimportant when your biological imperatives are not being met. They quickly fade away into the background. If you have many friends from poorer countries, or have traveled to poorer countries outside the developed Western world, you'll quickly notice that nobody, really, is depressed, and mental illness is far less a scourge there than it is in the West. Why is that? Because everybody's working so hard to fulfill their biological imperatives that they don't have much time to worry too much about whether they're respected or understood. You don't start seeing too much of those concerns in poorer countries until you come into contact with - you guessed it - the wealthier citizens of those countries, with fewer immediate concerns to deal with and more free time to spend introspecting and wondering why they don't have this emotional need or that emotional need being fulfilled. Unfulfilled emotional needs are the font from which victim mentality rears its head. People scrambling to survive don't have time to worry about whether they're victims or not. But people whose survival is assured, but emotional needs unmet, often become mired in seeing themselves as victims of the uncaring masses, left behind to rot. LOGICAL WANTS Your logical wants are what you end up with when you calmly and rationally look at your biological imperatives, and look at your emotional needs, and look at everything that's going on in the world right now, and decide what it is you should take on, do, or achieve. Logical wants are usually "best guess" efforts at satisfying your more basal needs. That is to say, most people are not aware - or are in denial about - their more primitive needs and urges (i.e., the people who say, "I'm not afraid of death!" or, "I never want kids!" or, "I don't care if the whole world hates me!" or, "I love being the outsider!")... which means that most people choose their logical wants in ways that do not align with what they actually need and are compelled to do. For a long time, religion solved this problem the vast majority of people - religion simply took your logical wants over, and told you what to want, and what it told you to want was in line with your biological imperatives and emotional needs. However, we've thrown off the yoke of religion and are now trying to redefine what it is we want for ourselves. What's the purpose of life now that we no longer have religion to adhere to? In trying to determine their own wants, people are ignoring the wisdom of thousands of previous generations of their elders and trying to do it all alone, all by themselves. Not exactly a recipe for total fulfillment. purpose of life One of the shortcomings of Tupac's message and cause was that it revolved around unmet emotional needs - and, as such, frequently devolved into cries of victimization. Victim mentality isn't always a full negative - to an extent, it helped Tupac attract hordes of followers: both blacks who felt pushed aside and marginalized and ignored by mainstream white culture, and whites who themselves felt pushed aside and marginalized and ignored by their own culture. But this mentality also led Tupac down a self-destructive path, to the point where he was seeing enemies in everyone, fighting the world, and setting himself up for a fall. You must be very careful when selecting what purpose to base your life around. It's easy to pick one that runs contrary to some or many of your true wants and needs - and it's possible to pick one that runs you ultimately down the road to ruin. IGNORE YOUR PURPOSES AT YOUR OWN PERIL The most successful people you will ever meet in life are not those who say, "I do NOT want this!" and, "I do NOT want that!" They are also not those who say, "I can do anything I want to do!" Rather, they are the ones who say, "I am human, I am very limited in my willpower, I have a great many urges I cannot control and may not even want to control, and I simply have to work around my nature as a man to achieve the things I'd like to achieve." Fighting against yourself is a battle you will lose. You can sometimes redirect energy or urges, but you can never block them for long. Nature is very good at taking control of those people who are trying to fight their natures instead of looking for ways to proactively satisfy their natures. Know what your body and your emotions need, not just right now, but what they will need five years from now, 10 years from now, 30 years from now. What will you want when you are old, dying, and alone? Work proactively to meet those needs now, and keep them met, and you will not have to worry about your mammalian or reptilian brains seizing control of you to make you do things your neocortex thinks it doesn't want you to do for whatever logical reason it's settled on. A HEROISM PROJECT In Denial of Death, Becker discusses something called a "heroism project." This is the thing that a man works on in the hopes of making himself immortal and living on forever. It is the thing he creates that is designed to outlast him. A heroism project can be anything from Alexander carving across the known world to bring Hellenistic culture to the peoples of Earth and be remembered for all time, to your parents bearing and raising you to pass on their genes and their thoughts, beliefs, and ideas. Mental illness, such as depression, according to the theory, comes about when one's heroism project is failing. That is to say, when you begin to believe that you will not be remembered, that you will not live on, that you will die and be forgotten and leave no trace behind, mental illness sets in. A heroism project can be something all your own - some great, novel thing that you create; some outstanding impact you make on the way things are done - or it can be your contribution to some great cause, or hero-system, you believe in, subscribe to, and support. But you must have such a project to truly drive your actions and truly motivate you, and you must have one to not slip into the cold grip of depression, fatalism, and defeat. And it must be bigger than simply yourself. IS THERE ABSOLUTE MEANING? Back to the meaning of life. I remember watching an episode of Tiny Toons - the Looney Toons offshoot for children - many years ago that featured one of the characters searching for "the meaning of life." Eventually, he found it - only to discover that the meaning of life was his friends. I shook my head. Is there absolute meaning in life? There may be, there may not be. But if there is, it is unknowable. Why's that? Let's start at the basics, and go from "basic" to "more complicated" and then to "really trippy." To know what something "means," you need to know why it exists in the first place. So, there's life. This one's the easiest to get a grip on. You're sitting or standing or walking somewhere reading this right now on a computer or a smart phone or a tablet, and you're doing that because every single ancestor of yours for the past 3.1 billion years or so successfully reproduced. Every single one passed on his or her or its genes successfully, to you. There is an unbroken line of successful descent that spans billions of years leading right down to you today. The easiest purpose of life to come by is reproduction. Your parents had you; they are a success. Your parents' parents had them; they are a success. Their genes live on. All the way back to that very first self-replicating string of amino acids in the primordial soup. There may have been millions or billions of different combinations of amino acid chains floating around in the turbulent seas, but only one of them had just the right combination of elements to both a) absorb new elements and grow, and b) use those elements to make a copy of itself. That single amino acid chain was so successful that today every living organism on Earth descends from it. One can only dream of being so successful. The next step out is your clan or group or tribe or town. Michelangelo, for instance, was a homosexual. So may Isaac Newton have been. Alexander the Great was bisexual. None of these men has direct descendants still alive today, so far as history seems to be aware. Were their lives failures or successes? For a comparison, it seems fair to look at ant colonies. Normally, worker ants do not reproduce (they can, but rarely do, and usually they and their offspring are killed by the other worker ants if they try to overthrow the queen). But a worker ant's life is still a success in the grand scheme of things, because it contributes to the overall good of the colony. There are larger concerns too. National, specific, etc. A breakdown of successes might look like this: Reproducing Contributing to your family's ongoing survival Contributing to your city's ongoing survival Contributing to your nation's ongoing survival Contributing to the human species's ongoing survival Contributing to primates' ongoing survival Contributing to mammals' ongoing survival Contributing to animals' ongoing survival Contributing to Earth life's ongoing survival purpose of lifeIf you imagine a scenario in which a giant wandering planet is headed on a collision course for Earth, and it can't be destroyed or moved off course, and it is going to hit the Earth and it is going to destroy the Earth and all life on it, if man could send a ship to Mars to settle the planet with small bacteria, plants, and animals genetically modified to survive there, so that Earth life would live on, would mankind have been a success? In one way, it would - because it had ensured the continuation of Earth life. Earth life hit the jackpot with mankind - without evolving humans, Earth life would have gone utterly extinct. But because of humans, Earth life now continues on another world, even if humans themselves are now extinct. Let's go bigger picture than that though (if I haven't lost you already). Let's say there's more life in the universe. Bigger picture than contributing to Earth life's survival is contributing to the survival of life in general. If you want to go still bigger, think about this: some physicists now think that at the end of every black hole, there exists a white hole that is home to a new universe (this is still very speculative, and there are plenty of physicists not on board with this idea). If that theory is correct, our universe is simply inside the white hole of a black hole in another universe on top of this one. And that universe is likely inside a white hole in a black hole in a universe on top of that one. And on and on it goes. (and of course, there'd be all kinds of universes inside the black holes in our universe) If that's the case, then a universe's ability to breed new universes would actually be what's being selected for at the biggest picture level - not life. For instance, you'd stand a much higher likelihood of existing inside a universe that is part of a chain of universes of optimal conditions for creating black holes, and thus new universes (e.g., picture two chains of universes, one that spawns 10 black holes, and one that spawns 1,000. The one that spawns 10 black holes spawns other universes similar to itself, and each of these only has 10 or so black holes - about 100 between them. The one that spawns 1,000 black holes spawns universes that likely each spawn 1,000 black holes themselves - about a million black holes all told. You're much more likely to be in the universe chain of universes good at creating more black holes and thus universes - with, say a million universes the next level down, and more and more as you go down - than one of the chains that isn't - with, say, only a hundred universes the next level down - pure probability). If that's the case, life is merely a byproduct, and the continuation of the universe chain is what's most important. Now here's the trippy part: What if someone living in the universe above this one decided to shut the black hole that contains the white hole that contains our universe? Would that destroy our universe? Now, if our universe is suddenly, instantly destroyed because someone at one of the levels above us decided to shut our universe, that would kind of suck. Everything that's ever happened would instantly become meaningless, because - unless there is some sort of spiritual existence that transcends universes - everything would immediately be obliterated. It would be as if you, your parents, your grandparents, and every single one of your ancestors throughout the last 3.1 billion years had never happened (and me and my ancestors too, now that we're talking about it). Of course, we may not be inside a white hole inside a black hole inside another universe, with that universe inside a white hole inside a black hole inside another universe, and on and on. Or, it may be that once a white hole is formed, it is independent of its creating universe, and destroying the parent universe has no effect on the child universe. The point is, no one knows. And without knowing the answer to something as simple as "Can all of existence be flipped off by the turn of a switch by someone messing around with black holes in one of the universes above ours?" or not, we really have no way of knowing if our lives are meaningful and create true immortality and we really are building something that will last forever, or if we're building and working hard for something that will one day completely vanish without a trace. Your life may mean something, or it may not, and you will never know which of those two is the case. In a way, we are all one big Schrödinger's cat - our lives both meaningful and meaningless at once, and no one will know which it is until somebody opens the box. CERTAINTY IN UNCERTAINTY If I've completely freaked you out and you're now worried about someone ten levels up in the universe chain tripping on a cord somewhere and knocking out of existence all the universes stretching down to ours, my apologies. I wouldn't worry about it too much - if that ever happened, you'd never know it. Everything would be gone in the snap of a pair of fingers. The purpose of thinking about the question of "what's the meaning behind it all" like that is to drive home the point that meaning is unknowable - life is just one big question mark without an answer. Any kind of absolute meaning can never be arrived at because you can always take the question higher and higher, to a bigger and bigger picture. You can always go one level up. Religion tries to put a cap on these levels by saying, "There is only the Earth and the firmament, and above that there is God, and that's it. God made things; end of story," or, more recently, "There is only the universe, and outside of that there's God, and that's it. God made things; end of story." And that seems reassuringly simple, until you stop and think about it. The universe's existence is explained by the existence of God, or Yahweh, or Allah, or Cronos, or whomever. Okay, let's go one level up. How do you explain the deity's existence? Even religion fails when you try to go one level up past the highest level it's got. Its creators' response to that, of course, was, "Don't question the gods" - they made it blasphemy to think there might be anything more powerful than the all-powerful. Which, of course, keeps the masses content. They can rest easy in their certainty, knowing that they simply can't know how their deity(ies) can exist beyond existence. In a similar way, I am giving you some certainty here with meaning too: there is no way you can ever know if your life is - and everyone else's lives are - meaningful... or not. So quit worrying about meaning and go get some purpose. SELECTING YOUR PURPOSES We now have our premises that we're working off of for determining purpose: There may be meaning in life, or there may not be, and we will never know You must fulfill your biological imperatives, or be made a slave to them You must fulfill your emotional needs, or be made depressed and crazy Your logical desires come last of all Now, the really cool thing you can do with your powerful human neocortex is this: If you know what your biological imperatives are, and you know what your emotional needs are, you can logically plan out satisfying these before they take hold of you to free yourself to pursue other purposes. We'll talk about what those other purposes might be in an instant. You must plan out how you're going to address your biological imperatives and emotional needs, and constantly be working to address them. It's not enough to pay lip service, or plan to do things sometime in some far off future - you need to work on them now. That means you don't say to yourself, "I can eat all the donuts I want four years from now when I have a really muscular body," when you really want to eat a donut right now. Your reptilian brain is going to say, "Ha, fat chance!" and you'll buy that donut and eat it. Instead, you say, "The rule is, I'm not allowed to eat donuts except when I've already worked out that day first," and then you stick to that. Or, you save your donut eating for only on days when you also workout. That also means you don't say to yourself, "I'm skipping relationships entirely for the next three years because I just want to work on business and pickup." If some really amazing girl comes along, you're going to end up in a relationship whether you wanted to or not, and likely not on your terms if you were fighting it the whole way. You must build the fulfillment of your biological imperatives and emotional needs into your plans. Or else your plans will get shot to hell by your reptilian and emotional brains, which care far more about sating their needs than they do about what your neocortex had all planned out for you. Here's where meaning comes into play. When selecting an overarching purpose, you need to select a purpose that contributes to meaning greater than yourself. I have known many men who lived only for themselves and their own personal glory and aggrandizement. I have not know any of them who were all that successful. Perhaps the most successful example in history was Napoleon Bonaparte, who was only successful for a time. Eventually his hubris got the better of him, and he ended in ignominy. Scroll back through our hierarchy of meaning. Meanings include: Reproducing Contributing to your family's ongoing survival Contributing to your city's ongoing survival Contributing to your nation's ongoing survival Contributing to the human species's ongoing survival Contributing to primates' ongoing survival Contributing to mammals' ongoing survival Contributing to animals' ongoing survival Contributing to Earth life's ongoing survival ... and add to those perhaps: Contributing to all life's ongoing survival Contributing to the universe's ongoing survival ... plus whatever comes above the universe - and I'm sure there's something. The grander you can go, the better, generally, but I recommend you shore up the ones below it, too. That means if your goal is nationalism - if you want to make your nation great and powerful and ensure its survival - make sure you also plan to contribute to your city, your family, and your own set of genes. That's because the bigger your goals, the more likely they are to fail, and the more glad you will be that you took care of lower-level goals when you had the chance to. PLANNING FOR FAILURE Everybody loves planning for success. Me, I plan for failure. I noticed an interesting trend when evaluating the professed goals of many people. The trend I noticed was this: across the board, people seem to achieve slightly less than their largest genuine life purpose. In simpler form, that means that if your goal is to make $100,000 a year, you will probably struggle to reach $80,000 a year, and be capped there. Conversely, if your goal is to make $10 million a year, you will probably struggle to make $6 million or $9 million and be capped there. You generally don't get the will to make the Herculean push to hit a goal spot on until you've already set your sights (emotionally) on a bigger goal. This only applies with purposes you realistically think you can hit, and purposes you really genuinely believe in. So don't set a purpose of, "I will make $10 million a year," if you don't really think you can make $10 million a year... otherwise, it'll discourage you, rather than encourage you. But, when selecting a purpose, I recommend you always plan a little bit higher than what you think you can ultimately achieve, and aim for that. That way, if you undershoot, you'll still end up with something you're happy with anyway. purpose of life Tupac Shakur, in entering into the world of music, had come in with the purpose of casting a spotlight on how blacks were mistreating one another, on how whites were mistreating blacks, and on calls to members of both races to change their tunes. He moved back and forth between telling black people to stop playing the victim card, and then playing the victim card himself. But all that changed after the robbery incident that cut a rift between himself and his one-time friend B.I.G., and led to an East Coast-West Coast feud fueled by Tupac and egged on by Biggie that led to both men losing their lives, along with several others. Tupac let himself descend into victim mentality - into seeing himself as a victim of others out to get him - and abandoned his role as a driver of change. He watched his downward spiral as it happened, knowing he was headed down a path that led to his own destruction, talking nearly constantly about his own death, but he was powerless to stop it. In a way, dying became his purpose. Because his life was lived so dramatically and aggressively, there are a number of lessons in it on how to live with purpose, and how not to live with purpose. But perhaps the greatest of these is "live for something more than yourself." I am quite confident that had Tupac continued living for more than just himself after that robbery incident, he would still be alive today. SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOU Your cause must be bigger than you. It must become so important to you that if you fail or die in the service of that cause, it is okay, so long as it advances that cause. How do you choose a good cause? Here are the main things to look for: Does this cause accomplish something concrete? What? How will you know when the cause is accomplished? What are the concrete actions you can take to advance this cause? If any of your answers are vague, you've chosen a bad cause. Here's an example. Let's say your "cause" is a political party. Any political party; it doesn't matter which one. For one thing, there is no point at which you can say, "We've won. Case closed. Pack your boots and go home, mission accomplished." For another, because there is no concrete objective other than, "Get more people voted into office," it's one that stretches on forever, never freeing you - people get voted in, then they get voted out, and you've got to go do it all over again. On the contrary, you may instead say, "I'm going to get XYZ law passed, because this law is good for the people." That is a good cause. A purpose can be bigger than a cause. A purpose can be something like, "I will introduce hot pot restaurants to Western diners," because you think hot pot is absolutely delicious, and most of the Westerners you know who've tried hot pot think it's absolutely delicious, yet it's nearly impossible to find hot pot restaurants anywhere in the West. To advance that purpose though, you will need a cause you believe in too, like, "I will open up the first hot pot restaurant in Leeds." KNOWING WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO YOU Beyond pure biological imperatives and emotional needs, you also have things that are important to you. It might be that some teacher really turned you onto math when you were a child, when all your previous teachers had made math seem like the most horrifying subject there was. Now, you want to find a way to make math more appealing for school students too. Or, it might be that you're mortified at the fact that people can lose limbs or be disfigured in fire or chemical or other accidents and there's nothing we can do about that except to offer them crude prosthetics, and you want to find a way to grow patients replacement parts using their own body cells. Whatever it is, there's some way you want to change the world and make it better, whether you know how to do it right now or not. If you're not sure what that is, here are some questions to ask: What makes me angry that it's so, that I think needs changing? Is there a valid reason why things are this way - what is that reason? At its most core, why are things the way they are, and how do I change that? What you want to look for is structural problems, rather than people problems. People slip into whatever structure they're presented with - if you spend your time getting mad at people for not doing what you think they should do, you'll be wasting your time. Instead, figure out why the current structure of rewards and incentives pushes them toward that behavior, whatever it is, and determine what would need to change in order to influence people to change their behavior. In the math example, if you start scolding teachers for teaching math poorly and tell them to teach it well, you'll accomplish nothing. That's because the problem isn't that teachers don't like math; it's that they don't know how to teach math, and don't have good tools to teach it with. That's the cause you need to take up: teach teachers to teach math, or build tools teachers can use to teach math. SETTING UP YOUR "PURPOSE TREE" purpose of lifeOnce you have a big purpose like that you care about, you need to make sure it isn't derailed by you neglecting your foundational purposes - things like food, drink, homeostasis, sex, the need for belonging, children (as you get older), stable relationships, or, conversely, adventure, thrills, change, and learning. That means, make sure you handle your money and lifestyle, handle relationships and sex, plan for children at some point, even if you don't want them now, and plan how you're going to continue to grow and challenge yourself and learn. If you address all of those, your reptilian and mammalian brains will leave you alone to bring your higher level logically-selected purpose to reality. Personally, I've spent the first 30 years of my life building up my skill levels in a variety of different areas and handling as many of my biological imperatives and emotional needs as I could, to free myself up for pursuing logical purposes later in life. If you're still young, unless you know exactly what purpose you're after and you know how to integrate it with achieving your biological and emotional purposes (e.g., you're building a business that's achieving your purpose while also generating income, allowing you to travel, network, meet amazing people, take care of financial/survival concerns, and have the free time and social circles to meet amazing women), I recommend taking some time to address your lower level concerns before you move onto your higher level ones so that you'll be relatively free from distraction to pursue these. BOILED DOWN TO BASICS All right, this is a long article, there's a lot in it, and if I've lost you in the woods somewhere along the way, that's entirely my fault and not yours. Here's the nitty gritty. The Meaning of Life: it's unknowable. Anyone who presumes to tell you what it is, just go one level above the highest level they've reached, and you'll have them stumped, flummoxed, and backpedaling. Don't worry about it, because the very nature of life and existence makes it impossible to know in advance if your life will have meant everything or will have meant nothing. Only the end tells you that, and if there ever is an end you won't know it, and if there never is an end you won't live to see it even if you live forever because there is no "it" to see. The Purpose of Life: boils down to escalating grades of importance: Reproducing Contributing to your family's ongoing survival Contributing to your city's ongoing survival Contributing to your nation's ongoing survival Contributing to the human species's ongoing survival Contributing to primates' ongoing survival Contributing to mammals' ongoing survival Contributing to animals' ongoing survival Contributing to Earth life's ongoing survival Contributing to all life's ongoing survival Contributing to the universe's ongoing survival ... and on and up, quite possibly into infinity. It may be possible there is some upper defining limit to existence well beyond our universe, but I doubt if you or I will ever know what this is in our lifetimes if there is one. To find your purpose, I advise you pick something on this list, and then I advise you to do your best to satisfy all purposes beneath your chosen level, as well as your chosen level. That way, should you fail at your chosen level, at least you have succeeded at other lower-level purposes. You can always choose to ignore my advice here; I am rather risk-averse by nature. And you probably do stand a better chance of achieving a higher level purpose by ignoring all lower level purposes and directing the full brunt of your energies to just one place. It is, however, very risky, from a "fulfillment of your purpose" point of view. The 3 Purpose Keys: are: Biological imperatives Emotional needs Logical wants Generally, the more basal purposes override the more recently evolved purposes, which means if your biology wants you to do something and your logic wants you to do something else, while your logic may win in the short term by tapping willpower, biology will eventually wear your logic out and in the long run find a way to win (often by commandeering your logic, interestingly enough - I can't tell you how many of my friends who confidently told me they'd "never settle down" ended up settling down with some girl who was less than what they could've had in their primes because biology took over and now they try to logically justify their decision). So, unless you want to spend all your willpower fighting yourself, find ways to tend to your biological and emotional purposes (not overindulge, mind you; tend to) before you delve into logical wants. Selecting Your Purpose: ask yourself these questions: What makes me angry that it's so, that I think needs changing? Is there a valid reason why things are this way - what is that reason? At its most core, why are things the way they are, and how do I change that? But do not blame people or try to change people themselves. Instead, look at the structure they live and work in that incentivizes them to act and behave and do things the way they do, and ask yourself how you can change things structurally to change those incentives. Your purpose is effecting change in people. Your cause is effecting the structural change needed to achieve those changes. You may also have purposes like, "Build better [whatever]," or, "Make it easier to [something]." Again, you'll need specific causes like, "Figure out how to apply the [something] to [something else] to build my better [whatever]," in order to achieve progress in those purposes. With purpose you can do great things. With purpose, you can inspire others to, too. THE POINT So, is there a point to it all? Did Tupac Shakur die in vain, or did he accomplish something of worth? Was Ernest Becker's contribution to our thinking about human psychology and "hero-systems" a valid immortality project - or will it be refuted in time, by future thinkers, and Becker himself forgotten? Will you or I or anyone else reading this have done meaningful things - or simply have wasted our time hubristically, thinking that what we did had some grander purpose when eight billion years from now some clumsy kid three universes up trips over the white hole containing our grandparent universe and kills the lights? Well, some day when you die, either those beings of light are going to tell you what the meaning of it all is, or if there are no beings of light and they're just an artefact of the dying brain, your brain will shut off and you won't care anymore if there is or isn't a meaning. Death isn't so far off for any of us - our lives are a lot shorter than they seem. A little time goes by, and *poof* - they're gone. Whether things mean something or they don't, there are plenty of much more pressing things to worry about - because there's always the chance that what you do does mean something. And wouldn't it be a tragedy if you missed out on doing something meaningful because you were stuck being indecisive about whether it meant anything or not?

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##Randomness and Success I'm almost finished reading a great book, called The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow. Its premise is that all these things we attribute to skill are, most often, due to sheer luck. Mlodinow throws up statistical analyses of CEOs, baseball players, and stock pickers to prove his point. In one particularly striking example, he shows the range of the best-to-worst performing mutual fund managers from 1991 to 1995. Most folks would attribute that to skill, of course, and say that those managers who were successful before will probably continue to be successful after, and those who were unsuccessful will likely continue that trend too. But when he keeps the managers in the same place on the chart and maps their success over the period of 1996 to 2000, it looks like near-total randomness. Hardly anybody performed as you would have thought based on past performance. So that got me thinking. What is success and how do we achieve it, if so much of it is random? Here's what I know: everything I've been very successful at, and all of the most successful people I know, are people who combined two traits: quality and quantity. In other words, they did the best job they could, as many TIMES as they could. The way that relates to seduction is this: all the guys I know who are great are meeting women constantly. They approach so much it boggles the mind. Why so much? Because they are driven, and because they truly love talking to women. Certainly, with time and experience they've raised the quality of their attractive selves and the kinds of interactions they have, but QUANTITY is a key factor. It's easy to get into thinking, "I'll just work on this or that and my results with girls will improve," or, "Once I get to this point, women will be all over me." But one of the biggest factors of all is simply being out there to meet those women. So important. That's not to say you can't improve with time and effort. You can, and you will, improve -- sometimes, dramatically. It IS to say you must GIVE yourself that opportunity to grow and change and improve by giving yourself a good quantity, a solid volume of opportunities to do it in. So what are you waiting for -- why are you still sitting here reading this? Get out there and meet some chicks!

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##Reactions from Women, or Results with Women? I intended for this to be a shorter post, since I've put up a few long ones in a row and I didn't get much sleep last night as I'm still rocking a jet lag (so much for my claims to not be affected by that… it's good though, I'm waking up early in the morning and cranking on stuff I want to work on, so my jet lag has actually made me more productive). We'll see if I'm able to write something concise this time, just to shake things up a bit and throw everyone a curve ball. A short article from Chase? Bet you weren't expecting that! Well, so, I touched on reactions a bit in "Learning from Reactions: Developing Social Calibration" two months ago (to the day, actually… how about that?), where I mostly stressed how you can use reactions to learn social calibration, but also mentioned that you don't want to make reactions too much a focus of yours. This post is going to work on explaining why that is. This is kind of a simple topic, but it's one almost no one ever thinks about. It's one of those things you point out to a guy and you watch his face light up like he's just had a small epiphany. That's something of a favorite pastime of mine: looking for those ideas that feel simple and intuitive but that no one ever stops and considers... then making people stop and consider them. Back in 2006, when I first met guys in the pick up community - aside from the training I took with the guy I'd personally credit as the most talented seducer I've ever seen, and aside from the friend and wingman I took on when I moved to Washington, DC after a year and a half of going out alone - and continuing on as I met more and more of them, I noticed them doing something I found both mystifying, and personally frustrating: they were entertaining girls. They'd approach women high energy, be very playful and fun and lively, and do all the work. The women would sit back and enjoy as these men labored to display higher value and tell impressive stories. And the women would laugh and flirt and smile and touch the guys and act excited. And then, once the they'd done the best job they possibly could and exhausted all of their fun / interesting / entertaining stuff, the women would… drum roll… smile, tell them it was nice meeting them, and then casually walk off. And then these guys'd call it a job well done and go do it to the next girl. They collected tons of reactions out of women, but women kept walking away, and walking away, and walking away. Success seemed like a distant goal for these guys, a land they were trying to slowly make their way towards a little bit at a time. I tried the entertaining thing very briefly when I'd first discovered the pick up community at the end of 2005. I spent about a month using opinion openers on girls in nightclubs and trying to tell impressive stories. And they got me a lot of excited girls, but it didn't seem like the right kind of excitement. I couldn't put my finger on what it was at the time, but these days I can tell you what it was I was sensing, and what, apparently, a lot of guys new to meeting women don't pick up on until much later in their seduction careers. GOING FOR REACTIONS Sometimes I think I must have entered seduction with a stronger social intuition than most guys; and that might be partially true, but from training guys what I tend to see is that most men have social intuitions that work just fine. They just don't listen to them. If you point something out to a guy he wasn't paying attention to socially before, he'll quite often go, "Oh, yeeaahhhh, so thaaat's why XYZ happens when I do ABC." It clicks, he gets it, and it makes sense. The fact that it clicks shows he must have been picking up on the fact that something was amiss; he just wasn't paying that feeling much (if any) heed, is all. What happens when you don't pay attention to your intuition is that you make mistakes and things go awry. That's as true for meeting women as it is for choosing which school to attend or not getting jumped in the wrong part of town. I'm convinced most men have a little voice in the back of their heads telling them not to entertain women, but they rather ignore that voice and go on ahead with it anyway because they don't consciously realize the error in it or can't see any alternative. The problem with reactions is that they feel like success. "That girl was flirting with me!" a guy will say. "She was playing with her hair like crazy!" "She couldn't keep her hands off me!" "She made out with me in the bar!" "She was staring at me hard through our entire conversation!" Well sure, yeah, that sounds like a great night. Whenever I hear a guy saying stuff like this now, though, my instinctive first thought is, "Okay, cool; but, did he shag her?" Because if the answer is no, I'm willing to bet you that a week from now, she will totally have forgotten sitting there for an hour starting intently at him and playing with her hair. She won't remember anything about it. Now, disclaimer: I don't want to say looking for reactions is bad. There do give you some indication you're making progress, so they're not all bad, and especially early on if you're starting out at a beginner's level, you need to look for positive reinforcement like reactions because it'll probably take a little time as you work on your fundamentals before you're able to reach a point where you're able to start generating results with women regularly. But the big, overall point I want to make is this: reactions from women do not equal results with women. REACTIONS DO NOT EQUAL RESULTS In early 2007, I was getting more bold with women and pushing for things earlier in the interaction when I thought I might be able to pull them off, and I started being surprised at some things. Women who were being attentive to me, who were playing with their hair, smiling, gazing into my eyes, who seemed for all the world to be interested in me, sometimes would refuse to move with me. And sometimes they'd even refuse me their cell phone numbers. Later that year I also began getting bolder with girls who weren't as openly receptive to me, and I was intrigued to note that sometimes, women who gave me no outward sign of interest would go along with me and continue letting me progress things forward despite their lack of external indication of attraction for me. Both of these things were a little strange, but eventually I got used to them, got used to pushing things forward regardless of whether I was getting reactions or not, and targeting my actions toward generating results with women rather than reactions from women. What did I count as results? By "results," what I was counting was anything concrete I got from girls that progressed an interaction forwards. Hair-tossing and eyelash-batting need not apply. These days, here's what I'd consider "results" now: A girl moving with you when you invite her to move with you. A girl moving to sit somewhere alone with you. A girl deflecting difficult social situations - like pushy friends or needy male suitors - specifically in order to spend more time with you. A girl joining you one-on-one on a date (as opposed to hanging with you at a bar or a party or with friends). A girl coming home with you. A girl getting intimate with you. To me, those are results. Going for anything else is distracting you from moving the interaction ahead. The problem with those distractions is, though… those distractions are what many men go for. Many men are aiming for getting girls to toss their hair back, or laugh, or touch them on the arm. Many men are aiming to get women flirting. Many men are aiming to get girls to grind with them on the dance floor. But that girl who's doing those things is just as likely to walk away a minute later, because those things alone do not equal commitment to you and the interaction she's having with you. Those things can very well simply be all in good fun. I've seen lots of guys doing showy "flash" game that gets girls acting hyper and bubbly and energetic and bouncing excitedly up and down. But I've rarely seen those guys go home with those hyper, bubbly, energetic, bouncing girls. Usually, after the girl's had her fill of good feelings, she rejoins her friends and bids a fond farewell to the man who was entertaining her, thanking him for a fun-filled evening. He feels as though he's accomplished something, because the girl seemed so happy. "I'm getting better and better at this!" he thinks to himself. "Women love me!" But because he's basing this off of reactions, that's what he's training himself to get: reactions. So he gets better and better and better at getting girls hyper and bubbly and energetic and bouncing excitedly up and down. But he doesn't really get all that much better at taking girls home and sleeping with them, because he isn't training for that. He isn't training to get results. He's training to entertain. He's training to get reactions. He also isn't being sexy, he's being fun and entertaining, and the two are very different. If your aim is to get girls flirting with you and be partying with girls and having wild dance-a-thon types of nights, you should work on being fun and entertaining first and foremost. If your aim is to take women home and get together with them and become lovers or make them your girlfriends, you should work on being warm and sexy first and foremost. It doesn't have to be hard. You really shouldn't have one woman walking away after another after another like the entertainer guys do once a girl's hit her "fun quota." Once you start pushing hard for results and pushing to make things happen, rather than pushing to get reactions, you start getting farther along in interactions more quickly on a more regular basis. And all it takes is training yourself to get results. TRAINING FOR RESULTS WITH WOMEN Again, reactions aren't bad; they're just misleading when it comes to gauging efficacy at actually getting results. I'll give a few examples. In my stint as a tire salesman, sometimes a customer would seem really gung-ho and excited about tires, and then not buy them. He'd excitedly tell me he'd think about it, then take off, never to be heard from again. Other times, a customer would be totally silent as I pitched a tire to him, and I'd feel like I was talking to a wall, but then I'd tell him we could get him right in and get him done in thirty minutes and we could start right now, and he'd say, "Okay," and voila, I'd have a sale. I also spent a few months as a middle school and high school teacher, and something I'd see there sometimes would be kids who'd be nodding and saying, "Oh, I see," dead serious and looking for all the world as if they totally grasped what I was talking about. But when I'd call on them to answer questions, some of them knew it, and some of them were clueless. Other kids would sit there silent as stones, not giving me any feedback at all while I lectured, but when I'd call on them, sometimes they'd prove to be more knowledgeable than the kids who were nodding so emphatically. Reactions do not equal results. I really want to drive this home. Just because she's flirting with you doesn't mean you're going to get together with her - and just because she isn't doesn't mean you aren't. The only way you train yourself up to be a guy who produces results is to continue to push for results, irrespective of reactions. Pay attention to reactions, but don't use them as an absolute metric and instead push on anyway. We touched on this a bit in "When in Doubt, Forge Ahead"; you must get into the habit of pushing to move interactions forward no matter how a girl seems to be reacting to you. She should be the one who decides whether she wants to go along with you or not; you must be the one who offers her the option. These days, I am so unconcerned with reactions that I do almost nothing with women that's reaction-generating. I don't go for flashy openers; I go for really, really chill, very under-the-radar ones. Even when I open direct, it's very… chill and natural. I'd be thrown off if a girl reacted crazily or energetically to one of my openers, actually; I'd probably think she was a psycho. Don't deny a woman the opportunity to be with you simply because she doesn't seem to be reacting the way you think a girl who's interested should react. She might be shy, or not especially gregarious or flirtatious, or maybe she's in her head that day, or maybe she's behaving more conservatively because people who know her are around, or maybe she likes you a lot and is scared of messing it up if she acts too interested, or who knows what the reason is. Whatever it is, you don't want to miss out on a cute gal who digs you simply because you were too busy looking for reactions to go get results. All right, well, this post didn't turn out quite as short as I'd hoped, but it's half the length of the last one if that counts. I'll close it out on this note: that to be the guy who gets results with women, you need to be the guy who forges ahead without much concern for reactions. Reactions are great for training your basic social calibration and basic-level meeting-women-skills; once you hit intermediate and advanced though, you need to drop reactions and specifically target results. Once you start doing that, you'll begin seeing a steady upward trend in your success with women, and I guarantee once you start seeing that trend, you'll heartily agree that better results with women trump better reactions from women any day of the week.

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##Reference Points and Changing Worldviews I'm being driven nuts right now about a discussion I'm having with my girlfriend about something we've already discussed and I thought was settled. It has to do with a difference in belief systems; I show her solid evidence and research from the West proving my position, she returns to hearsay, word-of-mouth, and ingrained beliefs she's getting from friends in the East who aren't actually informed on the matters at hand but have firm beliefs on them nonetheless. She's normally a very logical, rational girl, but this specific matter is driving her uncharacteristically batty, and she's falling back to fears refuted by science but given weight by popular opinion. Understanding why this happens to otherwise sane, rational individuals is key to understanding how people's views of the world are built and maintained. It's similar to the autism-vaccine "debate" that's going on in the States right now, or the electricity-cancer "debate." No matter how much research is done to show that there is absolutely, positively, no link whatsoever between vaccines and autism, or power stations and cancer, people continue to believe there are causal links anyway, because they've seen and heard sources that support their position. The worst part is, it doesn't matter where those sources got their information from. It doesn't even matter if the sources outright say, "I just know it." The only thing that matters is that there are, indeed, sources that support the position. Enter reference points: something I've mentioned at times on this blog but haven't devoted an actual post on (see "How to Get Real Girls" and "Social Status: Building It and Using It" for the latest posts that mentioned these). Reference points and reference experiences are what we use to define our belief systems, worldviews, and ideas about reality, and they're absolutely crucial to the way we see life on Planet Earth. The thing that sucks about reference points and experiences is that someone with faulty reference points and experiences is going to have flawed, erroneous beliefs. The thing that kicks ass about reference points and experiences, though, is that once you learn how they work, you can use them to accelerate your progress in developing your skill set. Because, once you know how reference points work, you learn how to control your own core, fundamental belief system. In other words, you have control over your own most deeply held convictions - and thus, control over your own destiny. DEFINING REFERENCE POINTS AND REFERENCE EXPERIENCES Reference points and experiences are: Anything that influences a belief of yours about the world and your place in it Anything that supports or challenges a belief you hold Anything you can look back on in your memory and draw upon to reinforce or cast doubt upon something someone else says or does It's important to note that reference points and experiences have different "weights" depending on how certain you are about something, and how much authority you give the person who's relaying this information. For instance, let's say I walked up to you and told you that with this one new seduction technique, you could make women go home with you within ten minutes of meeting you, consistently. Works 40% of the time, guaranteed. Skeptical? Maybe a little bit. But I'm willing to bet you're a little excited, too. Sure, you have few to no reference experiences of women going home with you in ten minutes - yet - and maybe you've never even heard anyone say that's consistently possible. But, you are here learning about socializing and seduction, and you are reading my stuff, which means you probably assume I know at least a little about what I'm talking about. So, even if a couple of your buddies say, "Dude, trust me, there's nothing that will let you pick up chicks in ten minutes," you're still going to be at least a little curious about hearing what I have to say, and maybe checking it out. Let's now say I walked up to you one day and told you humans can fly. You'd probably tell me that's ridiculous and utterly dismiss the idea outright as nonsense. But why? Why dismiss human flight when I tell you about it but not the Ten Minute Seduction Secret? The reason why is because all of your reference points say, incontrovertibly, that I must be mistaken. It's a firmly held belief you have, because you have a number of reference points and experiences standing to the contrary of it. People can't fly. You know that for certain. You've fallen down and hurt yourself. If humans could fly, that wouldn't have happened. You've seen and heard of numerous people falling to their deaths. If humans could fly, that wouldn't have happened. You've flown on airplanes. If humans could fly, we for damn sure wouldn't ride in tin cans with wings (God, if only I could avoid the cattle lines and the calculated "bumping" off the flight because it was oversold...). I'm also not someone you view as an authority on the subject, so you aren't going to put much weight into my assertion that humans can do self-powered levitation. I might shoot you a link to some information on Joseph of Cupertino and how hundreds of people had signed sworn statements attesting that they'd seen him fly into the air on numerous occasions, and now you might have a little bit of doubt about your previously absolute beliefs, but you're still going to think humans can't fly. Then I might send you information on the scores of Catholic saints and Hindu yogis who've supposedly mastered levitation, and you might find that interesting, but still, your reference points will hold. No one around you believes in levitation, and you'll feel confident that you're right: humans can't fly. But if you are living in rural India, and you are Hindu, and everyone around you believes that yes, humans can fly, your beliefs are going to be very different. There, even if I ask you, "Seriously, have you ever seen a human lift up into the air?" you're still going to believe people can fly. Even if I show you the latest research into physics, and that scientists have proven self-powered human flight is impossible... you're still going to believe it is possible. And that's because your reference points - in this case, the people around you, and the stories you grew up hearing - all point to human flight being reality. Reference points determine the reality in which you live. Different reference points, different beliefs, and different view of the world. The reason why we need to rely on reference points is that we simply need to process far more information than we can investigate ourselves. You know that the sun is a great big ball of burning gas millions of miles away, right? But have you been there - have you seen the sun up close and verified that it's actually burning gas? Have you taken a rocket ship ride through the corona? Have you worked on any of the physics behind it? No, of course not. Instead, you rely on what other people tell you about the sun. You rely on astrophysicists to tell you about what the sun's made up of, how old it is, how far from Earth it is, etc. You can't investigate everything yourself. So, you must rely on other sources of information do flesh out your understanding of the world; thus, reference points play a vital role in shaping your view of reality. reference points UNDERSTANDING HOW REFERENCE POINTS AFFECT OTHERS It's important to have a good understanding of reference points and to recognize that other people may have very different reference points and experiences to your own. I try to avoid ideological debates for this reason. I don't want to debate with you whether Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or no religion is right, because we're both likely going to be bringing very different reference experiences to the table, and we'll never reconcile those differences in a debate. I similarly don't want to debate with you whether the Democrats or the Republicans are better for America, or even if they're both the same or if they're very different. We're likely going to have different reference experiences here. Every person you meet is going to have different reference points than you do, and if you clash over your ideological differences you will fail to get along or build a connection. That's extremely important to recognize. One of the things I have done consistently throughout my life, and that I'd advise you to do, has been to seek out different and varying reference experiences. In America, I was a middle-class private school kid, who went on to immerse himself with a lot of people living rougher lives, who then went to a big party school, who then went to the nation's political and intellectual capital, who then moved to the nation's beach party capital. I took up music, writing, web design, acting, modeling, international travel. I immersed myself in learning the social and seductive arts. Now I'm traveling in the Far East and I'm launching startup businesses and I've published a book and I'm building products and learning search engine optimization and I'm building social networks with geographically diverse friends, and my reference experiences are expanding and growing and blooming dramatically. And as your reference experiences expand - from meeting more different kinds of people and doing more different kinds of things - your view of the world becomes much realer and much less dependent on a few select sources of information. Because, truth be told, most people get their worldviews from only a few information sources. And, no matter how good your sources, the smaller they are in number, the more prone to holes and flaws your worldview is going to be. Most people you meet in life are going to have limited reference experiences and restricted worldviews for this reason. This makes it counterproductive to get into debates with them about their strongly held beliefs. Keep this in mind about strongly held beliefs: strongly held beliefs come from either experience - if the person has been exposed to a large amount of data and personal experience reinforcing a specific idea - or ignorance - if a person has been exposed to a small amount of concentrated information supporting a specific position and has little to no personal experience on the situation. And in my experience, it's usually the latter - strongly held beliefs usually stem from ignorance, not from experience. In fact, I've come to the point now where I internally question anyone who tries to convince me that something is absolutely, positively, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt true without his having extremely solid, concrete, reliable evidence that you can't shake a stick at. Otherwise, I'm of the opinion that you ought to at least say, "Well, I think this is true, based on everything I've seen... but I suppose there's a chance it might not be." But the best thing to do when you find yourself in a conversation with someone with strongly held, ideological beliefs is to simply realize that she is arriving at her conclusions based on different reference experiences, and that fighting her on her beliefs will not do you any good - it won't win her to your reasoning and it won't make her feel like you "get" her. To the contrary, it will only push the two of you apart. So, unless it's something extremely important, when people state their solidly held beliefs, I usually just say, "Hmm," thoughtfully, and I nod slightly a few times, as if to say, "I'm considering it." I don't engage them on it, because nothing good will come of it. This can be a hard lesson to learn, and you will need some restraint at first - it can be challenging to hold yourself back from diving into debate when someone presents beliefs that clash strongly with yours - but ultimately restraint allows you to get to know people far better, and helps you to get past the topics you don't agree on and get to the ones you do. USING REFERENCE POINTS TO CHANGE YOUR WORLDVIEW Aside from helping you realize that ideological arguments are a Venus fly trap for your mind, what good does knowing about reference experiences do you? A lot, it turns out. Here's why: Understanding reference experiences enables you to use your own reference experiences to change your perception of the world. The example I like to use is bleached blonde girls. Once upon a time, about three years ago, I felt like bleached blonde girls were an alien species. They didn't like me and I didn't like them. I thought them vapid and self-important, and they likely thought me arrogant and also self-important. And so, we never got along; when I'd meet them, I'd be cold to them and dismissive, and they'd be cold to me or at times verbally attack me or try to push me to the outside of a group we'd both be in. Eventually I realized the problem was my own: I didn't have any positive reference experiences with bleached blondes. I didn't have any as friends; I hadn't had a bleached blonde girlfriend; they were just people who were "other" to me, and I realized I was treating them as "others" and that they were no doubt picking up on that and mirroring it back to me. So, I set my mind on making them not other. I did visualizations of talking to bleached blondes and us having great conversations and being very warm toward each other, to build pseudo-reference experiences in my mind to make myself feel like we got along well. I took up acting and modeling and immersed myself in social circle activities to (among other objectives) put myself in closer contact with bleached blondes. And I got to know them. I built up a lot of new reference experiences. And as I got to know them, I began to see them as real people (despite the bleach in their hair!), and my heart began to melt toward them. And as my heart melted toward them, theirs melted towards me. It got to the point where, eventually, bleached blonde girls reacted as warmly towards me as other women did, and I felt as warmly towards them as I did towards other women. It wasn't because of them. It was because of me. Because I became warmer with them, and they began to respond to that warmth. Having good, strong, positive reference points is incredibly important for your success going forward. Be honest with yourself: do you have approach anxiety? Are there certain girls you think won't like you - or that you yourself don't like? Do you have any beliefs about women, dating, or the world you'd like to change? As soon as you realize you have some beliefs that need changing, you must set to work building new reference experiences to change those beliefs. For all the talk on "inner game" out there, the good old approach of just getting out there and doing it is, in my opinion, the best way to build your "inner game." Getting out and building new, better reference experiences is how you change the way you see the world. By actively seeking out new reference points through which to understand the world, you expand your understanding of reality. You "de-other" people and situations you previously didn't understand or understood only through stereotypes (e.g., myself and bleached blondes) rather than through actual experience and reliable reference points. Stereotypes are the enemy of reality. They're the inexperienced man's excuse for references. Don't cheat yourself. Drop stereotypes, drop beliefs that are reliant on a few, select sources, and get out there and build real reference points in the real world. Your mind will advance, your worldview will advance, and you'll find the world a much less threatening, much more welcoming, much warmer place.

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##Says She Has a Boyfriend? Here's Why It Doesn't Matter My girl looked at me with a devilish smile and said: "I can't make it on Thursday... I'm already going on a date then… with your best friend." She was obviously completely off her rocker. Like most strippers, if we're honest. Seriously… where do I FIND these girls? The answer, in her case, was probably not what you'd expect… I had met her at the mall, and I had picked her up during the day. You see, one of the things about day game or transit game or any other form of "any-woman-anywhere-pickup" is that it's like a box of chocolates… you never know what you're going to get. One girl's single, one says she has a boyfriend… and the next one just throws you curve balls like this. During the day, you'll meet the sexy librarian whom you can have a truly interesting conversation with after sex… the girl that knows what "confabulation" is and never sets foot in a club. She is off-limits to all the guys who have never built the confidence to approach girls without alcohol… I have those ladies all to myself. (Though the more I keep blogging, the more I'll have to share them with you! ;) ) But you also meet the crazy, nymphomaniac club girls during the day… and pole dancers that are completely insatiable sexually and that will keep waking you up all night urging you to do it a sixth time please! I'll tell you more about this girl in a minute, and why she told me that she was going on a date with my friend… but first, let me introduce you to this new article series, by talking about the kinds of crazy things you'll run into when you're out meeting women, and why you shouldn't put much stock in what women say one way or the other about whether they have a boyfriend or not. It doesn't always mean what you think it does… chicks aren't angels, you know. BOOTS ON THE GROUND It has been almost a year since I started working with Chase, and if you combined Chase's Mastery Package with our post archive here, you'd be able to get yourself a pretty solid foundation for seduction. From there, it's merely a matter of putting it into practice and getting feedback on the specific situations you run into and ironing out the kinks in your game that hold you back personally. However, I do know that to many people, it is still a complete mystery what being a seducer is ACTUALLY like in the real world. Without any positive marketing hype and without any negative media distortion by feminist journalists. Just the brutal, honest truth… a day in the life. And for that reason, I'm starting a real-world series about some of the actual experiences I've had. I will tell you about girls I met and challenges I faced. I will tell you about glory and failure - because no one wins every time. In one word - I will paint you a realistic picture of the life you can have once you get good at this stuff. Names and places will be changed to "protect the guilty"… but factual accuracy will remain intact in all cases without embellishments. And I will make sure there are lessons to be taken away from each article that you can apply TODAY to improve your love life… and your sex life. SUCCESS RATIOS So let's get back to the crazy pole dancer I mentioned above… and, before we get to what to do when she says she has a boyfriend, I want to go back first to a topic that I get a lot of questions about: typical success ratios of a good seducer. What is a good ratio? How many girls should you be able to hook up with, once you have your game down? There is no simple answer to this question, mostly because it is a very multi-facetted topic. I'll give you a few examples: If you have enough time, you can win the heart of almost any woman. I'd even go so far as to say that 90% of the women you meet you can eventually land if you work at it hard enough and long enough. So long as she is still talking to you and you haven't made such a big mistake that she won't even pick up your calls anymore, women can be wooed over time. That said, this is usually a very poor use of your resources, because in the same amount of hours it takes to crack one girl for whom that initial attraction has expired and who's now making it hard on you to get together with her, you could easily meet and seduce TEN other women like her (not even ten totally different women, but ten similar women) who happen to be more into it from the get go. Don't make Uncle Pareto spin in his grave… I imagine it's already round as a cylinder as it is! What's more, you need to be very experienced with women to pull this off… if you're just starting out and there's one specific girl you have in mind, this probably won't work. You may need to cut your teeth on several hundred or, ideally, several thousand other women first in order to develop the level of skill where you can really get almost any girl you come into contact with, given enough time. So let's disregard this 90% figure for the purpose of this discussion. If you're exceptionally good looking, your ratio will be unnaturally high as well. A friend of mine who looks like a male GQ model, and one that I mentioned in my five-part article about "How to Pick Up Girls," learned seduction from me a couple of years ago and likes to use my technique of asking girls if they're single as an opener. And 90% of girls he approaches say yes! You KNOW that at least HALF of them are lying! says she has a boyfriend So not only do most single girls respond well to his advances… but even girls that are taken hide the fact because they enjoy the chance to flirt with a man as handsome and as charismatic as him. We don't all have genes like that, so let's disregard this 90% answer as well. Finally, even outside of the two extremes we just discussed, the answer still greatly depends on a lot of factors. The better the weather, the more open people will usually be. The more free time girls have, the easier it will be to draw them into a conversation. The friendlier the environment, the more approachable you'll find girls to be. In other words, your success ratio of approaching women in a rushed, seedy train station on a rainy Tuesday morning will be a heck of a lot lower than when you're chatting up girls on a sunny Saturday afternoon at a street festival. WHEN SHE SAYS SHE HAS A BOYFRIEND In the case of the pole dancer we talked about above, it was a weekend when I met her, it was a sunny day and we were at the mall. I was out with a friend that day… I like to chat up girls on my own, I never take "wingmen" with me for the actual approach… but it's nice to have company as you're walking around, looking for girls you might want to meet. On Saturday of that week, it was one of those days where nearly every girl you meet says she has a boyfriend. Not many dating coaches will want to admit that, but you're going to have days like that. It's simply the law of averages. But what does it really mean when you talk to a girl and she says she's taken? In fact, it doesn't always mean a girl has a boyfriend. Sometimes it does… but sometimes it doesn't. As so many times, the answer is that it depends… and with practice, you will be able to read from her body language exactly what you should make of her answer. If she says she has a boyfriend and then quickly brushes you off, then it doesn't even matter whether her statement is true or not. The bottom line is she's saying it to get rid of you. It might be that you made a mistake… maybe your vibe was off, or you said the wrong thing… or maybe your fashion needs fixing. Or she might simply not be interested for whatever reason… that's possible too. If she stops with a big smile and starts twirling her hair, if she's hesitant to even mention her boyfriend and clearly regrets that she can't tell you she's single, then chances are you did the right thing to the right girl at the wrong time. Some women are simply in a happy, committed relationship - and they're not looking. And since women will sometimes tell you that they have a boyfriend when they don't, and at other times tell you that they're single when they're not, the best advice is to completely disregard anything she has to say about the topic. Read her body language instead … the information will be at least ten times more useful, and with some practice you will become almost psychic. It got to a point where I would approach girls and then tell them their relationship status… they hadn't even mentioned it, their jaws would drop and they'd ask me how I knew. But psychic abilities have very little to do with it. Once you've been in a certain situation several hundred times, you start to see patterns… and that's why we send our students out to do extensive drills and exercises. It hones your intuition - which is really nothing more than your unconscious mind's processing of patterns you've seen again and again - to superhuman levels. SUNDAY, FUN DAY Just like the law of averages may seem to work against you on some days, it will almost appear to hand you success on a silver platter on other days. The next day, Sunday, I was back at the mall, and this time I got onto a real roll. I approached eight girls and got the contact information of five of them… one of which I got such a good vibe with that we immediately went to grab some ice cream together. (Not something I usually do anymore these days, but it's worth experimenting with all kinds of different ideas… the rule is: try ANYTHING if it will teach you a lesson.) The weather was better on Sunday, I was better rested and the girls I approached were in a better mood as well. And then, I did my last approach… and it was my best one. Your best approach of the day is often your last one, even if it is also your first… because you only need one really good interaction. That's it. At any one time, you're only ONE GOOD PICKUP away from hooking up with your dream girl! Tell me if you can relate to this… have you ever had a day where nothing went right, and every girl you approached seemed to either be taken or not interested? Maybe like the Saturday I described above… Well, the next time you find yourself in that kind of situation… KEEP GOING! Just remember what I wrote above: you only need ONE good interaction to make it all worth your while. I can't count the times a day started poorly, but rather than giving in to the urge to go home and do something else, I simply talked to one more girl… knowing that she might be the one I'd spend the night with tonight. And more often than not, you end up finding that one eventually… if you just stick with it. TESTY GIRLS…? says she has a boyfriendI'm sure you're starting to connect the dots by now… yup, the last girl I approached that day was the one I'd end up taking home. She was the pole dancer I mentioned above… the same one who told me she had a date with my best friend. But what does a "best approach" really look like? Everything goes perfectly, right? Well, not exactly. This "best approach" was still kind of bumpy… she gave me a strange look and asked me two weird questions after I approached her. In fact, I often see how students get derailed by those kinds of questions… even many intermediate seducers would think she's being testy and difficult and that they would have to "deal with that" in some way. Not so. She was simply confused (as she revealed to me after we had sex for the first time). You see… women don't really expect to get approached doing the day. That's one of the biggest reasons why a woman will act off. It's one of the primary reasons why she seems on-guard. It may very well be why she says she has a boyfriend. Most guys don't have the confidence to get to meeting girls during the daytime… at least not without some alcohol in their system and some wingmen to hoot and holler with for a while to get their courage up first. And for that reason, most girls aren't used to it happening. And this is another takeaway for today: when an approach doesn't go 100% smoothly, keep in mind that she may simply be overwhelmed with an unexpected situation. Not bitchy… confused. Treat it as such, stay calm and just keep talking to her… and the vibe will quickly ease up and go from awkward to normal to personal to flirtatious within a mere two minutes. FALSE NEGATIVE SIGNALS This is such a huge lesson… guys often take something as a sign of disinterest that doesn't even have anything to do with her interest level in the first place. Especially if you grew up not getting a lot of female attention and you're learning dating science to make up for all the experience you missed out on when you were younger, it is likely that your perception is somewhat distorted. And just like guys who get laid at the age of 13 automatically build up a magnetic over-confidence and misinterpret anything women say to mean "she wants me," most men who were virgins until pretty late in life often (wrongly) misinterpret things negatively. Just another case in point - I messaged the girl from this report that evening, and got no reply. Not the same day, and not the next. Two days later I tried to call her, but it went to voice mail and she didn't call back. At this point, most guys would assume that she's not interested… and in many cases, try to win her over by sending her even more text messages that are even more clever and funny and witty. Big mistake. Only a few hours later, this girl called me back… she had simply been out of prepaid credit for her phone and hadn't found time to top up. But if I had tried to throw a bunch of gimmicks at her, in order to win her over when there wasn't even any need for such things, then my perception that she may have lost interest WOULD have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy… …and all the gamey behavior would certainly have put her off. So simply assume she likes you, and if you're not sure what to make of a situation, assume that she's doing whatever she's doing because she likes you so much… not because she lost interest. Whether you're right in that assumption or not, it is always a more useful frame to come from and it will always make your mind come up with better responses to anything she might throw at you. CRAZY GIRLS… I'll wrap this up and say that I actually really like "crazy" girls. This chick was certainly a wild one… I suppose you'd have to be, if you're going to dance on a stage with no clothes on and have a few dozen guys drool over you. But if you like open relationships and if you have the dating chops to handle real party girls with a lot of options in men, you'll find the girls with the craziest lifestyles can often make for the most fun companions. They are who they are because they have a real thirst for life, after all… for living life to the max, and for enjoying every single last hedonistic minute with as much passion as possible. They usually have a high sex drive, and a great sense of humor... I told this girl teasingly that she needs to attend her next AA meeting on Thursday, which is when she told me that she can't make it because she has a date with my best friend at that time… …and without blinking an eye. Talk about being quick on her feet! Your librarian might not make you jealous if you get into a monogamous relationship with her, and she'll understand what you mean when you talk about "Austrian Economics"… but chances are you'll have more of a laugh with one of ‘em wild tigers! When you approach girls during the day, you get a bit of both... …and that's why the day is my favorite time to meet women.

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##The Secret Lover I was looking at my pal Mark's blog over on Practical Pick Up, and read through a blog post he has up on something he calls "Chronic Texter Syndrome," referring to American girls who are on their cell phones texting all the time, even throughout the course of a seduction. I put a post up on phone calls and text messaging on dates in early February discussing exactly this phenomenon, and on Mark's blog I noted in a comment that this is by no means restricted to women in America. It happens in China too, and I've seen it in other countries I've visited over the past year. I dare say at this point that it's a worldwide phenomenon. The other thing I noted in my comment to Mark's blog post is what I want to focus on in today's post here: specifically, on being girls' secret lover. Because often, when girls are calling or texting in front of you, the people they're contacting are the more "public" people in their lives, with whom they must keep up appearances. Oftentimes, the reason you're getting texted or called in front of in the first place is exactly because you aren't a public part of her life with public influence and accountability... and if you ask me, this is a very good thing. SECRET LOVER: BEING HER MYSTERY MAN When you are a girl's secret lover, no one from her life can know you, or much about you. They may hear vague whispers or mentions of you from time to time, possibly if your girl slips up and says something about you she didn't mean to, but they'll often never see your picture and quite possibly not ever even meet you in person. My girlfriend calls me her "secret lover," because only her best friend and her eldest sister even knows I exist (though not even that we are in fact lovers). My previous girlfriend before this current one showed my picture to a few of her workmates, but none of her friends or family outside of work ever knew about me, with the exception of her brother toward the end of our relationship. And other girls I've bedded recently have shushed me as they took phone calls from people they'd rather not have know I existed, or excused themselves momentarily to reply to texts that simply couldn't wait. And when I get this treatment... I'm very happy. But unlike me, many men who receive this treatment end up angered at it, pulling their hair out in frustration. "Why can't her friends and family know about me?" they ask. "What's so wrong with me that I have to be this big secret?" I suppose that had I been rudely plunged into the position of "secret lover" some four or five years ago, I'd have resented it as well. I wanted my girl to be proud of me; I wanted to be a public part of her life. I wanted people to know she was my girl. The thing about being "with" a girl publicly, though, is that there are certain distinct disadvantages that come with a public association. They include: Official boyfriend duties: shopping trips, fancy dinners, outings with her friends. Friends and family keeping close tabs on you: policing your girl's relationship, sticking their noses in where they don't belong and causing lots of unneeded drama ("He's going on that trip without you? That's not right. That's not right at all"), pushing for settling down in the relationship ("Are you guys exclusive yet?" "How come I never see the two of you together?" "When is he going to get serious and propose?"), and just generally sucking up a lot of your time. The risk of resentment: once everyone knows you're her man, if you're not doing what she thinks a public boyfriend should do, she's going to begin resenting you for making her look bad publicly. You'll start getting lots of frustration and drama from her for not fulfilling your role. When you're a woman's secret lover, though, you're far freer of those drawbacks: little or no official boyfriend duties; friends and family not able to police your relationship (because they don't even know you exist); little resentment from your girl because there's no public expectations for you to fail to meet. The secret lover is freedom: freedom to have a real relationship with a girl without others meddling and pushing their own expectations, and freedom from having the girl become mentally distressed that you aren't meeting her expectations for what she needs from a public lover to make her look good to her friends and family. SETTING YOURSELF UP AS A GIRL'S SECRET LOVER How do you end up in the secret lover position? Firstly and importantly, you must avoid meeting people from her life. Once people from her life have met you, you become "real" and now they want to know how the two of you are doing, and pressure starts building on your girl to see "progress" in the relationship. Eventually they get more direct in their busybody activities, asking when you'll move in, or get married, or have children, and things of that nature. All of this steps up the pressure on your girl and basically forces her to put that pressure in turn onto you. Rule #1, then, is to not meet the people from her life, and remain at worst an abstract idea of a boyfriend, and at best an entirely secret lover that her friends and family don't even know exists. Rule #2 is to make it clear to her that you like the role of secret lover and prefer it over the public rule. "I think this is better," I tell girls now. "This way, I can be me, and you can be you, and no one is pressuring us to live the kind of life they want us to live, or have the kind of relationship they want us to have. It's just us, and we don't have to worry about anyone else." They always tend to agree with me that this is in fact superior to me serving in a public boyfriend role. The final rule is to avoid doing overly couple-y things. That means no shopping trips; no fancy dinners; no hanging out with her and her friends. None of that. What should your time spent together look like then? Well, I'll tell you what mine looks like: me, relaxing at home, and then my girl comes over, and we talk a bit, and she maybe cooks me some food, and then we go to bed. Sometimes girls spend the night and go to work the next day, or sometimes they go home the same night. And that's pretty much all we do. Very occasionally, we go out to dinner (typically to a restaurant the girl wants to go to, and typically she pays) or go take a walk. To recap, if you want to be a girl's secret lover, you should: Not meet people from her life, Make it clear to her that you prefer the secret lover role, and that it gives the two of you the chance to have a relationship that's free and real and doesn't have other people meddling in it, and Avoid doing over couple-y things that might make her start seeing you as a full-fledged boyfriend. Stick to those three rules and you'll be able to stay the secret lover for a long time. BUT WHAT IF YOU WANT TO GO PUBLIC? You might be saying to yourself, "Okay, well, that's great and all, but I don't want to be a secret lover. I want people to know we're together!" And, while I don't particularly see how this benefits the man in a relationship much, if at all, I can understand; I suppose it makes one feel more secure. But hear this: even if you want to be a public lover, it's best to start out as a secret one. Why's that? Well, it's chiefly because if you start out as a public lover, you'll get public lover treatment from the outset. That means your girl is going to try as hard as possible to position herself as ideal public lover material, and her forgotten past is going to stay forgotten; you'll never get to know her for whom she really is. That also means you're going to have a lot of pressure and expectations lain on you before you really even know exactly how far you're willing to go with this girl. If you ask me, that's kind of a raw deal. When you start out as the secret lover, you deal with none of those problems, and get to learn about your woman slowly and far more honestly than a public lover ever would. If you start the relationship out with no indication that it might someday shift to the public side, you'll truly get to know the girl and find out what you're getting before you make that switch. The other benefit to you is this: all that pressure she gets from friends and family following the shift to you being a public lover is more manageable when she knows you better. Once she already knows you from a good chunk of time spent as secret lovers for one another, she's going to be more devoted to you, more loyal, care for you more, and have a deeper connection to you. That means that she'll be more resistant to others pressuring her; she'll take it personal if they do, and take your side and come to your defense more often when you aren't around and people are telling her what you should be doing or how you ought to be treating her or running your relationship. Because of these reasons, even if you want to be public, I recommend you start out secret. Being a secret lover is great. You're free from much drama and pressure; honesty and truthfulness abounds; and the relationship is allowed to grow at its own pace and go in its own direction without people who aren't a part of that relationship trying to meddle with it and steer it toward where they think it ought to go. If you've never been a girl's secret lover before, why not try it with the next girl you see on something approximating a regular basis? It's a great deal of fun and an extremely rewarding experience, I assure you. Once you go secret, you won't want to go back.

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##Secrets to Getting Girls: Get Out of "Polite Conversation" You know the feeling: you find yourself in a conversation that's stuck on the superficial. You're talking about the weather; about how you both hate getting up early in the morning; about what the local sports team did last week; about how sushi is okay but katsu sauce... man, that's where it's at. Basically, small talk. But, small talk that's beginning to seem like it's not even getting you to big talk. You start feeling like this conversation is taking you nowhere. You've just realized you're in a polite conversation. And this post is about helping you get out of that. Last weekend in the post on talking to lots of girls, a reader, Lau'Ren'Tay, made the following request: Could you please write a comprehensive about socializing with a woman. If your not wasting your time in conversation or are? I don't know if you have something covering that, or related to that. Sure thing, Lau'Ren'Tay; I don't believe I do have on up here like that, so I'm happy to oblige. Here then is the post on recognizing whether what you're in or not is polite conversation - and on how to get out of it when you are. CONVERSATION THAT'S GOING NOWHERE I'll start by defining polite conversation. Polite conversation is the kind of conversation you get into that stays on very surface-level topics and never reaches anything substantial. It dances around, touching lightly on a variety of topics, quite typically topics that both of you talk about with everyone and including commonalities that are far too common. It often feels rather awkward, but you can't quite put your finger on why. So let's put a finger on it. The goal of conversation with someone new is typically to get to know her. Polite conversation prevents you from doing this. When you're talking with a girl and it's merely polite, you're not really getting to know her. Talking about the weather doesn't get you connecting. Talking about things you share in common with everyone ("This place is great!" or, "Don't you just love reading?") doesn't really build any bridges between the two of you. And then, things start feeling awkward because you both know it. You both know you're trapped in a conversation where you're trying and failing to build a connection. Guys who are beginners might not be aware of this awkwardness. They might not even realize things are amiss until they begin noticing a pattern of women consistently bowing out of conversations with them early on into the conversation. Eventually though you begin to be able to feel when conversation isn't going all that well. There are a few ways you can identify when you're trapped in a polite, go-nowhere conversation: You're finding yourself unable to get onto meaningful topics. You're failing to deep dive and get beyond the surface on what you discuss. The girl you're talking to only gives you short, simple answers. The girl you're talking to asks you very few questions, or none at all. All bad for various reasons. If you're not getting onto meaningful topics and you're not deep diving, the conversation won't get very far. And if she's giving you very little in response to your questions and statements and she's asking you nothing or next to nothing about you, she's not carrying her weight in the conversation - and you can't do it alone. A conversation takes two people. You'll normally be the one steering it, but she has to be contributing too for it to work. And when you identify that she isn't contributing, you know right away that it probably isn't going to fly. WHY PEOPLE GET TRAPPED IN POLITE CONVERSATION A good conversationalist doesn't end up in go-nowhere conversations too often, but even if your conversational abilities are exquisitely honed, you'll still run into the odd wheel-spinning talk every now and again. This is because the fault of ending up stuck in neutral may lie with you, or it may lie with the girl. When you're starting out, most of the fault is normally going to lie with you, as you seek to perfect your conversational abilities and learn how to consistently engage women in good conversation that progresses things forward. As your skill at doing so develops, you'll increasingly find that the conversations where you're stuck in the polite zone are stuck there because the girl doesn't want things to progress further. The two reasons then that people end up in polite conversation: The man failed to lead the conversation to meaningful topics, or The woman simply isn't all that interested. But things aren't as simple as they seem. Let's say you meet a girl, and try to engage her. You try to move her off the ordinary and into the intriguing. But you just can't, and getting information from her feels like pulling teeth. You give up and leave, feeling like she just wasn't all that interested. And, that may have been the case. It might also have been, though, that she was shy, or that she hadn't gotten herself into a social state. You will meet girls at times that simply need more time and coaxing before they start opening up. So be wary of writing women off too quick and thinking they just weren't interested; it might have been instead that they were but they weren't showing it. If you're a beginner, you should operate on the assumption that any conversation that fails to make it off the polite and onto the substantial failed to do so because you failed to make it do so. This is the healthiest attitude for learning and the one that will help you advance the fastest. There's one other reason conversations can end up stuck treading water, too, and it's one that most men have no idea exists. Here it is: Sometimes girls are already sold on you and just want you to move things forward fast and/or even take them home immediately. Sometimes the reason she isn't talking is because she doesn't want to talk - she wants you to do something with her right NOW. When that's the case, if you keep trying to build rapport it obviously won't work. Other measures are called for. polite conversation HOW TO GET OUT OF POLITE CONVERSATION So let's say that, for whatever reason, whether because you're not sure how to proceed or because she just isn't all that interested, or because she doesn't want to talk and just wants you to move things forward, you find yourself trapped in polite conversation. What do you do to break free? Deep dive. Real conversation starts and ends with deep diving. Getting to know a girl - really connecting to her - is the most solid alternative to superficial conversation. Rather than jump into storytelling - which is what most men do when faced with a girl who isn't giving much - focus on getting her talking. When you try to talk about yourself to counteract polite conversation, it usually ends up looking like you're trying to force rapport, and the chances things take off decline. Get off common topics. A lot of the reason why people get stuck in polite conversation is because they get trapped on common topics. Yes, it sucks when you have a cold, but that's true for everyone; and it's cool that you and she like that restaurant downtown, but so do a lot of people. What makes people feel like a conversation is meaningful is when you get onto topics that aren't universally relatable for everyone - for instance, you and this new girl start talking about your experiences snorkeling and seeing exotic fish or about how you both wrote a term paper on Nietzsche. That's how you get to meaningful topics and start truly building a connection. Use the bored look. Seeing the bored look on your face can encourage women to start contributing. This is especially true if you've already made a bit of an effort to get her contributing, and your efforts haven't generated much. If she likes you, she'll step it up when she realizes you're bored that things aren't progressing. Move her. This one's sort of your last resort, but it can end up being very effective. When a girl's giving you absolutely NOTHING - when you get that feeling kicking in that things aren't going anywhere at all - try just moving her. Tell her, "Let's go grab a seat over there," or, if you're really bold, invite her home. I've had success inviting girls home very early in the interaction who weren't giving me anything. Sometimes it actually ends up being quite surprising; you're talking to a girl, it feels like the conversation is dead in the water, and then you say, "Let's get out of here," and she says, "Okay." The majority of the time this doesn't work and the girl won't move with you, and that's fine. At that point, you can bid her farewell and gracefully exit the conversation; she's refused to move with you, so it makes for a natural exit. But some of the time, this catapults you ahead in an interaction that felt like it was circling the drain. I'd say it works successfully about 1 out of every 4 or 5 girls, which is quite good for taking a dead-end conversation and turning it into something substantial. This is also best for identifying the girls who just wanted you to take action and move things forward and are more interested in something happening with you fast than they are in getting to know you. Leave and return. I much prefer trying to move women than I do trying the "leave and return" tactic, but you have this available to you as well. Basically, you let a girl know you're going to go scout the area out, and then you disappear for a while and come back later. This can work if she realizes while you're gone that you're a lot more fun or attractive than anyone else she's meeting or that it's boring when you're not around, and she gets much more eager to contribute when you return. I see about a 1 out of 3 success rate with this technique, but it doesn't move you ahead as much as moving a girl, so I prefer the latter and I don't use this one a whole lot. You also risk the girl leaving or getting engaged in conversation with friends or other suitors while you're gone. It's important to remember that attraction has an expiration date and you need to be looking to get back onto interesting conversation as quickly as possible. The longer you spend adrift in polite conversation, the more attraction fades and the less likely the girl you're speaking with becomes to start contributing or to move somewhere with you. In other words, when you find yourself in polite conversation, do something to get OUT of there fast. Polite, go-nowhere conversations are an absolute death sentence for attraction - so rather than let them knock you off, take a focus of giving polite conversation a death sentence of its own, and simply don't allow yourself to have it with people. With go-nowhere politeness gone, your conversations will be snappier and more engaging, people will contribute more to them and like talking to you more, and you'll find that women do a lot more with you, and are willing to do a lot more with you. Follow the steps laid out above, and you'll have a lot fewer go-nowhere conversations - and a lot more conversations that go somewhere. And, quite possibly, a lot more conversations that go somewhere good.

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##Secrets to Getting Girls: The Last 5% I was sitting in a nightclub tonight, smoke and booze surrounding me, sipping on a Jack and Coke (or what passes for one in this country), and thinking about some past interactions and feeling vaguely annoyed. There was the girl on Saturday whose friend was pushing her to go home with me as hard as she could, but the girl was a little too shy and wanted to push that back. I didn't push as hard as I could; I still have a decent chance with her - she's set to come cook dinner for me later this week - but my chances would've been better had I pushed a bit harder and taken her home that night. She liked me enough, but rather than close it out when I had it I let it slip through my fingers. Then there was the girl I brought home Friday night but who stayed tense and I didn't push anything with since I couldn't get her comfortable. She wants to see me again too, but my chances in the future are far lower than they were that night she was sitting in my apartment. If I count the number of women I should've been with that I didn't get together with because I dropped the ball during that last 5% of the interaction, when I'd already handled things perfectly during the other 95%, I'd probably go crazy. There was the girl I fooled around with in my hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City who had my cock in her hand and her tits in my mouth, but I didn't push as hard as I could have and nothing came of it. There was the girl I pulled out of a nightclub in San Diego after a Herculean effort, pulling her out of her own birthday party in VIP and fighting hordes of men competing for her, and her desires for a pretty redhead she made out with on the bar while everyone watched. I had her at my car, alone, with her talking about how she couldn't go back to sleep at her own place, and I, feeling exhausted after all the work I'd done to get to that point, let it slip during the last 5% and lost it. There was the beautiful newlywed girl I'd met on an airplane who was stretched out on my bed after cooking me dinner, waiting for it, leafing through my SuperSex book while she waited me to join her, and I hesitated and lost it. There are innumerable more like this. For every success, count at least three dropped balls during the last 5% somewhere along the line. It's maddening. WHY THE LAST 5% IS SO DANGEROUS The last 5% of the interaction is the most dangerous part of it there is. This is the point where the girl starts fighting hard and throwing up walls if your close isn't executed perfectly, and this is the point where you as a man start feeling fatigued from the interaction if you've had to manage a lot and you've been trying to move things forward for a while. You can also very easily fall into the trap during the last 5% of thinking to yourself, "This girl likes me. I can always just see her another time." But that last thought is a fallacy - your chances of getting together with a girl are inordinately higher the first opportunity you get, and they drop drastically each subsequent time. So your chance at getting together with a girl is highest the first time you get a chance to go for intimacy with her; if you have to see her a second time for this, the chance that the two of you get together is markedly lower. A third time, dock yourself even more, and a fourth time, unless she's an incredibly conservative girl and she's committed herself to you already for one reason or another, it's probably not happening. It's so easy to get caught thinking otherwise, though. You start feeling fatigued, and your mind thinks it's easier to just fold than it is to push more and try harder. As it turns out, this phenomenon is a fairly well scientifically established one; after exerting a great deal of willpower, one's ability to exert further willpower drops precipitously. Which means, if it took you a great deal of work to get a girl to a certain point, the temptation to simply let things fall apart in the last 5% can be great. Your mind, running on empty in the willpower department, just wants to call it a night, get some rest, and freshen up. This is why acting with intent is of such vital importance - you need to know what purpose you're meeting girls for and taking them home for. Without purpose, you can lose things at the end, and that's never a good feeling later on when you go back and reflect. Sometimes you get those girls you let slip through your fingers, but it's uncommon. Far more likely that you never see them again. DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." This is the kind of thinking I recommend you take into your interactions with you. When you've gone 95% of the way, and the end is in sight, fight against laziness, or lack of willpower, or whatever it is that tempts you to give up the ghost during that last 5%. The girl was ready to go, then starts backing away? Don't let her go - be persistent and find a way to make it work. It feels like more work at the time, but you will look back and thank yourself later for having done it - rather than look back and smack yourself in the head like I still do with the examples I mentioned above. Truly, I can think of plenty of moments too where I raged against inertia and lack of willpower and pushed myself through that extra 5%, and I'm forever grateful. My former girlfriend of 2½ years I had a moment where it was basically do or die; I'd just had a huge dinner, my stomach was bursting, but I had one window to get together with the girl and I probably wouldn't have gotten another. The last thing I wanted to do was go up to her hotel room and make a move and get intimate, but I did, and she ended up being one of the best experiences of my life. Sometimes you push during that last 5%, and pull out all the stops, and do everything humanly possible to get together with a girl, and it still doesn't work out. But at least you'll be able to look back and say to yourself, "I gave it my all." You must make the effort to finish the last 5%. EXPERIENCE'S BOON The good news is, as you get more and more experience, the last 5% increasingly becomes as straightforward as the other 95%. You only get weird hang-ups or willpower run-outs during novel situations that tax you mentally more than the scenarios you've been through dozens of times already. My last couple of successful pickups I had almost no second thoughts during the last 5%, and everything progressed incredibly smoothly, with hardly any resistance from the girl at the end. This was because I was dealing with standard situations I'd been through over and over again and I was just executing the steps I was accustomed to following. So, in a way, dropping the ball during the last 5% can actually help you figure out what you need to target. For instance, this past weekend taught me I need to be targeting: Situations where I bring the girl home and she's still uncomfortable Situations where the friend is pushing my girl to go home with me but the girl is resisting Good lessons for a weekend I didn't even feel like going out during. Overall, though, the theme here is one of the ones we see throughout seduction: the more experience you get yourself, the more fluidly, effortlessly, and effectively you perform in future encounters. Each dropped ball gets you closer to having it all work out for you next time, so don't let it get you down. Just learn from those girls you lose during the last 5%; don't beat yourself up too much; and get out there, meet some more girls, and push a little harder next time.

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##Secrets to Getting Girls: Move Faster We're starting a new series of articles intending to highlight some little-known or under-discussed topics in the world of dating and seduction, called Secrets to Getting Girls. This first edition is focused on how fast you move through an interaction with a girl you like, from the time you first meet her until the moment you're sleeping with her. Hope you enjoy. Ever have an interaction going really well, with a girl really into you, but then it starts fading, dying away, and eventually she excuses herself and leaves? You need to move faster. Ever have a girl chasing you hard, calling you and texting you often, but then after a while the attention dies down, her attraction for you seems to wan, and she even stops responding to your calls and texts? You need to move faster. Ever have a girl at your place, into you, maybe even saying sexual stuff or doing sexy things, and you want to make sure the timing's right so you wait for the right moment, and wait, and when you finally go for it she pushes you away, acts uncomfortable, and eventually leaves? You need to move FASTER! Why do girls act into guys, then leave them hanging? Why was she leading you on? Why did she act attracted, put sex on the table, then take it away? It's because with every woman, there is only a limited window of opportunity to take things and run with them. When she's still feeling you out, she'll be tentative and experimental, putting her feelers out there. The men who take action and make things happen are the ones who find success with women. Look at these famous, well-known sayings: Fortune favors the bold. He who hesitates is lost. Strike while the iron is hot. I'm sure you can think of a couple more. Think about them as they apply to meeting girls. Who do you think gets more girls -- the guy who hems and haws when a girl shows him attraction? Or the guy who recognizes it when he sees it, and immediately starts moving things forward with his girl? There is no place in seduction for a man to be tentative or slow. At best, the slow, tentative man gets slotted firmly into boyfriend / husband territory. That means the girl in question will hold out longer, resist more, and demand more work and investment from him before she even thinks about putting out. She realizes he's not a play-hard-or-go-home kind of guy, but if she still likes him anyway, she might just give him a shot at providing for her. At worst, the slow, tentative man gets nothing. His girl loses interest and moves on, in search of a man who goes for what he wants. We hear this often enough: women want STRONG men. Men who LEAD. Who TAKE ACTION and MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. But what we don't hear so much is that you only have so long to SHOW her you're that strong man who leads. You only have as long as her window is open. SO, what can you do? How do you get yourself moving faster? Here are a few ways to light that fire in your belly, and get yourself moving faster than ever: • Any time you feel like it's dragging on and not moving forward, realize that she's probably feeling the EXACT SAME WAY, and do something about it. Move your interaction to the next level! • Any time you want to take action, but feel that twang of doubt suggesting that maybe she's not ready, or maybe she won't react the way you want, stop, and remind yourself that if you don't take action, now, when you have the chance to do so, you may very well never get another opportunity from her. Windows only stay open so long, so move, and move faster! • Move her soon after meeting her. Met her on the street? In a bookstore? In a coffee shop? At a party? At a bar or a nightclub? Move her within ten minutes after meeting her. Faster, if possible, and she's responding well. Try to move every girl you talk to within ten minutes, maximum. The ones who don't want to move you probably weren't going to get anything productive out of anyway; if she seems REALLY into you but won't move (because of friends or some weird circumstance), grab a number and call her later. Hanging around does you no good. And the girls you get to move with you quickly will commit themselves to you -- and their interaction with you -- right away. The earlier this happens, the better. • Be fast. Don't wait to call a woman after you meet her. Text her a few hours after you meet her and tell her it's great to make a new friend and sign your name. Call her the next day and build some rapport. Then call a few days later and ask her out. Get her out with you that same week! • When she's in your place, don't hesitate. Be confident, suave, smooth. Be aggressive. No means no, obviously, but women don't want timid men hoping they'll make the first move, either. The first move is yours to make, and the longer you wait, the more awkward it becomes. So make it FAST! It's crazy when you think about how many women guys lose by moving too slowly. If you're a cool, normal guy, who takes care of himself, grooms himself well, is friendly, outgoing, and sociable, with at least a little bit of sexiness and confidence about you, I guarantee you you will get a lot more girls by moving faster. Is it possible to move too fast? Yes -- depending (enormously) on the girl, the guy, and the situation. Different girls move at different speeds in different situations with different guys. But in my experience, the vast majority of guys lose girls by moving too slow. So, if you've ever had a girl who felt like a sure thing take off because you missed that window, don't get discouraged. Instead, take heed -- and next time, Move faster!

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##Secrets to Getting Girls: Scrap Clever I'm a huge proponent of comparison and analysis. One of the things I always look at is success rates, how women talk about guys, and how those guys treat women. Something funny I noticed a while back about some differences in how some men communicate with women versus how some other men communicate with women struck a chord with me, and I modified my communication accordingly. Since then, it's been stronger and easier, and women chase me more. Sounds like a magic bullet, no? In a way, it kind of is. So here's the secret formula: take all those times and instances where you're being ultra clever, and… scrap clever. Toss it in the trash heap. Don't actually scrap it all together. You should still use chase framing, and you should still use nicknames and call back (even though this post may seem a bit of a counter to that last, it isn't actually - I still recommend using nicknames, just that you use them sparingly and strategically, like when you need to recall a woman's emotions and get her feeling warmly toward you again, or when you have a term of endearment once the two of you have been intimate a few times and are a couple). But other than then, yeah - don't be clever. What? Don't be clever? Why on Earth not? CLEVER VS. SEXY I used to be a really clever guy. My wit was razor sharp, I'd crack jokes a mile a minute - heck, people used to tell me I ought to be a comedian, and they meant it. I was better than most of the guys on TV. And women loved it. Well, they loved to enjoy my humor, that is. They'd laugh like there was no tomorrow, crack up for the entire time we spent together, and then at the end of the day, they'd thank me for spending time with them, and leave. No going back to my place. No getting intimate. Not even a kiss on the lips. Maybe one on the cheek, but that was the last thing I wanted - that was what women's friends got. I started cutting this out right around the time I became increasingly aware subconsciously of the hazard of overproviding good feelings. That wasn't something I'd consciously realized yet - in fact didn't actually realize it fully consciously until as recently as perhaps a month or so ago, right around the time I made the post on it - but it was something hanging around in the back of my head since maybe late 2007 or early 2008. And I knew, instinctively, that being too much of a comedian was overproviding good feelings. What's the problem with having a sense of humor? Nothing wrong with humor itself, really. It's the misuse / overuse of humor that sinks most men's ships. And it was sinking mine. The thing that called my attention to it was correspondence I saw of other men. I noticed a fascinating trend: guys who were then like me, deep into the process of learning to improve themselves with women, tend to, like me, send out these very creative, very witty text messages, and have these very creative, very witty phone conversations. It'd taken me a lot of work and honing of those skills to reach the level that I could consistently be creative and witty, as it had my friends who had also reached those heights. And women would laugh, and they'd enjoy talking to us, and we felt like we were getting places with them - but we still weren't bedding these women all that much. It mystified me. Then I took a look at my buddies who were having the kind of success with women I aspired to - my buddies who were naturally good with women. Their communication was rather bland, matter-of-fact, and no-nonsense. They'd talk with women, tell them to meet up or come over, and that'd be that. No fascinating stories about what they did that day. No hilarious text exchanges. I also noticed that my intellectual and businessmen friends who didn't have much fine-tuned skill with women, and who often were more concerned with their own affairs than women, still had women pursuing them - and that they tended to deal with women in the same way as my buddies who were getting a lot of girls. Bland, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense. Now, there is some technique to properly intriguing women long distance, so I don't want to come off sounding like I'm recommending just sending boring text messages without putting any thought in them. I'm not; that's not how to text a girl. Distance communication is an essential skill to learn and master, and things like building intrigue via texts and using the phone to develop trust and rapport are important topics and topics I'd like to write posts on sooner or later. But guys like my intermediate friends and me were working too hard; somehow we'd gotten it in our heads that the wittier and the more interesting we were, the more success we'd have with women. But it doesn't work that way at all. Because it's a lot of work to be witty and creative and fascinating; being clever is hard work, and takes focus and resolve, even for a man it comes naturally too. A man who is witty is, by the very nature of his actions, trying to impress. And as we know from the Law of Least Effort, it's the men putting the smallest amount of perceived effort into an interaction with a woman who most often end up being seen as the strongest and the sexiest. WHAT LESS CLEVER LOOKS LIKE My old text message conversations used to look something like this: Chase: Hey crazy girl, you'll never guess what happened to me this weekend in Vegas! Actually, feel like the party's still going on… last time I drink that much for a while!! Girl: Oh no! You had a crazy weekend, huh? I love Vegas! I want to hear all about it! Chase: For sure - you will. As soon as I get over this hangover, that is… Girl: Aww… feel better! Then, later I'd call and get the girl on the phone and get her laughing some more, and we'd schedule a date to hang out, but the vibe would usually be pretty close to platonic, and the date would most often go nowhere. It drove me nuts. These days, my text exchanges look like this: Chase: I had a feeling I wasn't missing much by skipping out early…! So how's Beijing treating you this week? Week 8 for you, right? Girl: counted well, it is my 8 week indeed. Have new classmates they seem nice. Besides I miss weekend and nice warm weather… How is your week? Chase: I was seriously considering wintering in Thailand when that first Beijing coldspell hit… Not too much worse than your winters though, I'd imagine ;) Week's been relaxing, for a change. Though, may just be the calm before the storm… Girl: I am used to colder winters indeed but also warmer houses. Am freezing here non-stop… So I hope if a storm comes up it will be a warm one. [two days pass] Girl: Hey Chase, are you up for a Chopin concert on Sunday 7.30 in Forbidden City concert hall, 120 kuai? Chase: Hey, yeah, that would be really cool, actually. Where should we meet? Could do a subway station if there's one nearby… She went on to buy us a pair of tickets, and we met up for the concert and went. I was about forty minutes late, which I think was a bit excessive and damaged my attainability with her far too much… unfortunate, she was a cool gal. But we still got to enjoy most of the concert, and it was quite nice. So, glad for that, anyway. If you look at the difference between the first text exchange and the second, there's a very visible difference. That first exchange is basically me talking about all the cool things going on in my life. The second exchange is me still being interesting, but doing it in a way that's more of a dialogue and shows interest in and concern for her and her life. It's basically a normal, average text dialogue, with some interesting stuff thrown in. You notice it's not quite a boring guy's text exchange, though. Each text I sent is at least a bit fun to read; in one, I discuss skipping out early (something the naughty kids do in school), while in the next I talk about wintering in Thailand (not showing off value since I'm not actually doing that and I may just be kidding). I also put a line in there about the "calm before the storm", which is quite ambiguous in meaning. I almost left it out because I thought it sounded too much like I might possibly be talking about girlfriend drama, but then decided there was nothing wrong with that, since it wasn't explicit, so I left it in. Then I gave the text exchange two days off, and the girl wrote back proposing a date. And she went all the way down to the concert location to buy the tickets for us in advance. That's kind of a big step to go down there and pay a lot of money for tickets to go to a show with a guy she's only met once before, for all of twenty minutes or so. What if I didn't show up, or I did but I was a total jerk? And this wasn't some desperate girl - this was a very cute girl from Europe doing good work in Beijing, with lots of friends in town. And all I did was make a strong first impression, then follow up in a chill, decidedly un-clever way. If you look at the men who've been studying seduction the longest, you'll see this trend again and again. They started off not being very clever; then, they learned how to be clever, and even took it to great heights, becoming incredibly witty and fascinating and wild storytellers. But in the end, they shed all that and went back to not being clever anymore, albeit now with a much sharper sense of how to be interesting and intriguing in their conversations and a pinch of wit here and there to keep things fresh. It's the circle of life in the social and seductive arts, I guess you could say. When you're a beginner, or you're intermediate, it's fine to be clever, I suppose; it's part of how you learn. But once you start moving on from the intermediate level, and you've tired of making women laugh and begin to realize that laughter is probably not the most constructive way you can get women reacting to you, scrap clever and see how far it takes you.

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##Secrets to Getting Girls: Staying Out of Auto-Rejection These days Sebastian Drake's VAC attraction model is all but forgotten in the seduction community. There's been a gold rush toward "natural game" and at the same time a supposed abandonment of the previously ubiquitous "routine-based game," the ever-present 800-pound gorilla in pick up circles half a decade ago. But in the rush toward "natural game" some of its pillars have been missed or marginalized by its new champions - the former routine guys who've turned over a new leaf. Nowadays, most everyone in seduction will tell you he practices "natural game", but what many propose to teach quite often are routines that run a little more smoothly and aren't called by the label "routines." They're dressed up a little and called "natural game" instead. But if you pay close attention… yep, they're still routines. That's why you won't see the term "natural game" anywhere on this site. In my mind, it's become synonymous with slightly-evolved-but-thinly-veiled routine-based game. Nothing personal against routines or the guys who use ‘em; it just ain't my style and I'd rather not be associated with them. The "natural game" pitched by most these days is a little smoother and a little more direct than the routine-based game of yore, but it's lacking in a lot of the teaching of core concepts of what really makes guys who are naturally talented with women so successful. One of those core concepts is the "A" in VAC: Attainability. Attainability is the measure of how readily a woman feels she's able to get what she wants with you - if she thinks it's in the bag with you and she's got you hook, line, and sinker, your attainability is too high; that's called being no challenge. Being no challenge is what happens when a guy makes it too easy for a girl, doesn't challenge her, or comes across needy or low value. If, on the other hand, a girl feels your attainability is too low, and that she can't get you, that one's called being unattainable. Being unattainable is what leads to women going into something called auto-rejection; in other words, she gives up on you, goes cold, shuts down, and her heart fills with resentment and dislike for you. That last one is what we're going to focus on in this post today - or more specifically, how to avoid it. Today's post is about staying out of auto-rejection. THE CAUSES OF AUTO-REJECTION It's important to keep in mind that when it comes to attraction, all is not value. Compliance (investment) and attainability play large parts in determining attraction as well. This is where the modern "natural game" converts often slip up: in understanding the other aspects of attraction aside from value. Auto-rejection is the term for what a woman enters into with a man whose attainability has dropped too low. If a woman seems very cold and aloof with you, chances are it's auto-rejection. This is her shutting down to protect herself from a guy she thinks isn't going to give her what she wants and needs. You cannot ask women about this, same as you can't ask a man who's huffing and puffing about how some girl is no good and not worth his time if he thinks she's unattainable to him. A person in auto-rejection is not going to tell you she's in auto-rejection; she's going to say the person who put her there is a detestable human being. She's rejecting him to protect her ego and prevent herself from wasting time and emotions on a man who'll hurt her one way or another. There are as many potential causes of auto-rejection as there are grains of sand on the beach, but they more or less all roll up into a few catch-all categories. Those include the following: Being too much of an asshole. Being a little bit of an asshole is generally okay; it can be funny when done right. Overdo it though, and you'll seem out-of-reach and like you're trying to rub it into a girl's face. Even very beautiful, confident women are prone to auto-rejection if you push it hard enough, though tolerance will vary tremendously by the individual. Being too aloof. This one plagued me forever, and it's one of the most common things I see other men doing too. The reason that I did this and the reason that other men do this (I suspect) is twofold: 1) they don't want to seem overeager in pursuit of a woman, and 2) they want to protect themselves and their status (more on this later) in the event things fall apart. But in trying too hard to protect themselves and seem cool, men quite often communicate a lack of interest to women, which causes those women to wall themselves off defensively and grow cold. Showing too much value. Note it isn't having too much value - it's showing it. The more value you show, the higher must your attainability be as well to avoid auto-rejection. Most guys in seduction though just focus on pumping their value up and up and up, and then wonder why their results with women aren't improving as much as they'd expect, or maybe even go into a slide. An imbalance of value and attainability is why. Moving too slow. Yep, moving slow with a girl will send you into auto-rejection, more often than you'd expect. As noted in "Social Circle vs. Cold Approach," the less well you know a woman, the less time she gives you to close things out. Contrary to how most men view attraction, it tends to drop rather precipitously after the initial meet the vast majority of the time. When you're a social beginner, you might be able to use a little more time to generate more interest; but once you're at even an intermediate level and your fundamentals are getting tight, you already have most or all of the attraction you're going to get the moment you say hello to her, and everything else you'll be doing is really just getting her comfortable with the idea of intimacy with you. Wait too long to get intimate with her and she'll give up on you or come to resent you for not giving her what she wanted, and at that point it's done. Those are really the Big Four of auto-rejection. Plenty of other smaller ones, but most of them fall under one of those categories or tie in in one way or another. For instance, too much teasing or over-bantering with a girl will blow her out and send her into auto-rejection, but that falls under being too much of an asshole. Texting and calling a girl only intermittently and being lax about pushing to meet her will often make her feel like you're wasting her time send and her into auto-rejection, but that falls under the umbrella of moving too slow. THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND AUTO-REJECTION Just a quick break down on the thought mechanics behind this one so you can understand it better and develop a more intuitive feel for it. If you don't really care why things work and would rather skip ahead to the solutions that's fine, but come skim back to this one when you have time because I think having an understanding of the inner workings of things gives you greater range and flexibility in the long run when it comes to being able to predict, improvise, and adjust on the fly in dynamic social situations. We humans are intensely social creatures, and in our societies status is vastly important. Status determines who you mate with, how powerful and successful the friends you attract are, your access to resources, and all kinds of things. Because of this, the preservation of accumulated status is key to our success in a great variety of things, and the avoidance of status-harming situations and people is built deeply into our programming. What are some things that might hurt a person's status? Some of them include: Being rejected. Being insulted. Being ignored. Being outclassed. Being sidelined or put on the backburner. All those are things people tend to avoid like the plague. This "status harm avoidance" is incidentally also the driving force behind men's approach anxiety; there's a strong desire to avoid putting oneself in the situation of being rejected and seeing one's perceived status go down. Each of the causes of auto-rejection mentioned earlier can be tied to at least one of the factors that can demote people status-wise: Being too much of an asshole to a woman makes her feel insulted and fear rejection. Being too aloof toward a woman makes her feel ignored and makes her fear rejection. Showing too much value to a woman makes her feel outclassed and makes her fear rejection. Moving too slow with a woman makes her feel sidelined, unimportant, and unwanted, and makes her fear rejection. So, the more women start seeing the causes mentioned earlier being expressed, the more they start feeling and fearing the factors listed just above, and the closer and closer they come to viewing a man as entirely unattainable and auto-rejecting him to preserve their status and protect themselves. STAYING OUT OF AUTO-REJECTION Throughout your seduction career, attainability and auto-rejection plays an interesting role. At first, you don't even notice it, so focused are you on building value. Then, you either become aware of the idea, or you begin to intuit it on your own, though you don't realize how universally it affects your interactions. Then you start noticing it everywhere and realize you're losing lots of women to auto-rejection. Next you usually go into a usually-brief backwards slide where you start trying to tone yourself down and be nicer and softer toward women to preempt auto-rejection, but you end up coming across too soft and your value takes a blow. Finally, you start adding challenge back into your interactions, but you do it in such a way that you learn to cushion the blows of your challenges and put women at ease immediately following them. Once you're doing that, you're close to reaching a high degree of effectiveness with attainability. Hopefully I can skip you some steps and get you right to focusing on that last one. As always, you need balance, and need to find that line in the middle to walk, and attainability is no exception to these demands. In fact, attainability is likely going to be one of the most frustrating, difficult things you will have to get down, in part because it can seem rather ephemeral at times, in part because it really is such a fine line, because the pit drops down so steeply on both sides (auto-rejection on one side, no challenge nice guy land on the other), and in part because that line you need to walk is in a different place with every woman you meet. But if you can get attainability down, everything else is icing on the cake. Fortunately, it doesn't take long for you to start seeing patterns with women, and armed with the right knowledge you know what to look for and your learning curve ought to be a lot less steep. Here are the tools you need to get attainability running smoothly and keep yourself away from auto-rejection: Become a Genuine Man. The genuine man is the one who is neither needy nor busy posturing or being aloof. He teases women lightly, but he's skilled enough with his voice tone and facial expressions that he very quickly sets their minds at ease that it's all in good fun; he uses expert eye contact and warm, sexy smiles, and he recognizes that his nonverbal communication here is absolutely key to getting the right message across. Master the Ability to Connect with People. I recently spent a few days training a friend of mine up in deep diving, and he proceeded to sleep with a few new girls in a hurry and credits deep diving with having turned around his interactions with women and people in general in a snap. He went from him being too aloof and people reacting in kind to him, to him now being warm and open and them now being warm and open toward him. Getting down the ability to connect with people deeply and rapidly has a way of making attainability problems simply melt away. Become a Humble Man. Humility is underrated these days, but if you pay close attention you'll notice just about all of the absolute coolest, most powerful, most successful men are humble. George Clooney is humble. Warren Buffet is humble. The most revered statesmen and leaders almost always tend to be humble. Humility is the powerful man's way of charming and connecting with others who might otherwise be blown away and swept into auto-rejection by his status. The higher in value you become, the more extreme the effect you have on others, and the more you must implement humbleness to remain relatable and attainable and make sure that extreme effect is a positive one. It becomes vital attainability technology for you to master as you improve. Move Faster. Finally, I probably sound like a broken record on this blog by this point, but yeah, move faster. If you're not routinely sleeping with women the day you meet them or on the first date, you have room to move faster. If you're not sleeping with women in under three or four hours of face time on average, you need to be moving faster. You don't have to do it all at once - you can certainly build up to it gradually - but you should be steadily moving faster and faster as you upgrade your abilities with women. The speed with which you move should be one of the key places you look to level up. Sorry for the video game terminology… too many years of Daggerfall and other TES games (just found out Skyrim is coming out later this year… I'm going to have to push to hit my quota of girls for the year before then, because once November 11th hits I'm going to be in front of my computer, eyes glued to the screen all day every day for at least a few weeks). If you get these things handled, you'll be much better served at avoiding and staying out of auto-rejection. As noted in "Escalation Windows," once you end up in the hole that is auto-rejection, it's a hell of a hard climb to get out. It's far better to simply never get into auto-rejection in the first place - treat the cause, and you'll have little need to worry about treating the symptoms. When you've gotten yourself focusing on the means lain out above for avoiding auto-rejection, you'll find girls will tend to be a lot more comfortable putting their guards down and just going with the flow of things around you, and you'll start finding you have more and more and faster and faster success with them. Because attainability really is a spectrum, and the better you get with it, and the closer you get to that ideal middle "line" to walk upon, the better women treat you, react to you, and like you.

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##Is Seduction Wrong? Just received a comment from an anonymous poster in response to a recent blog entry entitled "Baiting vs. Trading Information." I'll repost his/her comment in its entirety here: "Women will be interested in you when you stop treating them as though they are subhuman, or aliens you must develop strategies to "catch." You should fuck off and die." Well, now. My first reaction was defensive: who is this nameless, faceless person stepping up to attack so bitterly while hiding behind the veil of Internet anonymity? And where did he/she get the idea that I recommend "catching" women or treat them as subhuman or aliens? Cleary, this poster hasn't spent a great deal of time reviewing the content on this site. The poster presents an interesting question, though, and one very much worth addressing: Is seduction wrong? Is it wrong for a man to learn how to do well with women? Is learning how to get girls a bad thing? WHY SOME PEOPLE DON'T LIKE SEDUCTION The word "seduction" has some rather unfortunate connotations and cultural baggage attached to it in modern English. I'm really not too big a fan "seduction" as a word myself, just for all the dead weight it carries with it, but there aren't a lot of other choices for this industry and this is the word that people know, so that's what's used here. We're students of the seductive arts. Some people like seduction. Seduction, to those who look upon it favorably, is sexy; it's strong; it's that allure that draws one thing to another. It's about losing oneself to something else - hopefully, something greater than the sum of its parts, and far more romantic. That's one meaning for seduction. The other meaning for seduction that pops into a lot of people's heads when they hear it is "one person consciously leading another to do what he/she wants." And people don't like other people consciously leading others. Scratch that - people really don't like other people consciously leading others. Most people want other people to do things unconsciously - to follow whatever programming they've been brought up with, without consciously changing it, for reasons we'll address below - and most people want other people to be "fair." In fact, I'd say the majority of people on planet Earth think that everything should be 100% completely "fair." Fair meaning, of course, that no one is allowed to have any advantage over anyone else, and everyone is created equal and has absolutely the same exact chance at anything else that anyone else does. You, me, your next door neighbor, some kid living in Timbuktu - we've all got exactly the same chance at getting anything we want in the world, from $100 million to all the love and romance and sex and children we could possibly want from the most amazing partners on Earth. Of course, the world ain't fair, and it's nothing like that, and the people who don't scrape and struggle and work their assess off to get ahead and carve out a niche for themselves get left behind. Here's the thing that regular people don't feel so great about: one of the primary differentiators between the successful and the unsuccessful is knowledge and training. And if you get knowledge or training that others don't have, you have an advantage over them. And, other people do not want you to have an advantage, especially when it's an advantage they don't have and aren't going to take the time to develop. They think it's wrong, wrong, wrong. What it ends up coming down to, then, is two things: Someone doesn't want to put the time and effort into learning and developing a certain skill set, so He or she thinks it's wrong for you to do so too. CENSORSHIP AND FEAR OF INFORMATION If John Smith goes out and talks to women and women find him charming and lovely and they go to bed with him fast, and someone asks him how it happens and he says, "I don't know, it's just always been that way; girls simply like me," most people will smile and shake their heads and say, "Ah, this is just the way it is for this man." But if Bob Jones goes out and talks to women and women find him charming and lovely and they go to bed with him fast, and someone asks him how it happens and he says, "You know, I spent years studying psychology and how people think about the world, and I really worked on myself to make myself a very attractive guy to women and I learned a lot about leading women and leading conversations and got women to be quite drawn to me," there are a great many people who will recoil in horror and say, "This man is a VILLAIN!" Why is that? Two men, same results, just one had to think about it and learn it and the other didn't - but the two of them get wholly, utterly, completely different reception. Part of it is fear. There's a great fear of what isn't known, and something that could potentially impact another person's mating opportunities is potentially very scary. If you're a man, and you suck with women and can't get women, and then you hear about other men who also sucked with women but now they're turning themselves into men who get women, you feel one of either two emotions: You feel excitement, or You feel fear. What's the difference? Well, the excited guy gets thrilled at this opportunity to learn and develop himself and grow and says, "Holy crap, I can improve myself here too? This is wonderful and good and amazing!" But the scared guy, his thoughts are a little different. The scared guy thinks, "Oh my God, maybe these men will take all the best women and I'll be left with table scraps!" Similarly, a woman who hears about this either thinks, "Oh, that's great, men are improving themselves with women just like women always have with men. At last, some equality," or she thinks, "Oh God, men learning how to get women? Everything I've learned about how to get men will be jeopardized and I'll lose my advantage! This is terrible and morally reprehensible!" Those are the underlying thought processes, spelled out, though going through people's minds these thoughts are not spelled out, and instead are conveyed through split-second gut feelings. The feeling is either, "Wow, this is incredible!" or, "Jesus, this is so wrong." And then, people take action. The excited people take action on themselves. They immediately start learning as much as they can and beginning the improvement process. They seek to grow and build and develop. The fearful people though, they aren't going to take action on themselves. They're not looking to grow or build or develop. Instead, fearful people take action to control the perceived threat and limit any possible damage. I'm mostly spending my time in China right now, where my website is blocked. I cannot post to this website unless I use a VPN to access the Internet, which is getting harder and harder to do since the government has clamped down very tightly on most of the existing VPNs out there. I almost had to leave the country because it was becoming so difficult to do business. I'm not doing illegal business, mind you. Everything I'm doing here is perfectly legal according to Chinese law. The government just doesn't want me doing it anyway. Twitter is blocked here. Facebook is blocked here. YouTube is blocked here. Gmail, much of the time, is blocked here. If you try to search for something on Google, maybe one search gets through. Maybe two or three. But try doing four or five Google searches in the span of a few minutes, and suddenly you start getting "Page not found." And not by any fault of Google's. The Internet is censored here because the government is scared of what might happen if suddenly everyone could access all the information available. There is a great deal of censorship too in the Middle East. It used to be, in the past, that the Catholic Church censored a lot of stuff in the Middle Ages, and people died for information then, just like people die today in countries around the world for information. Information is power, and a lot of people out there don't want it getting out. The consequences of people getting access to the truth is... well, it's quite scary, for a number of individuals. Not the individuals who are improving themselves by leaps and bounds, mind you; it's the individuals who are standing still and don't want others overtaking them. They don't want to progress, so they don't want anyone else progressing, either. When it comes to individual Internet surfers, well, they don't have the power to censor everything they don't like - so, they go jihad on it instead. They hope that by attacking as bitterly and hatefully and spitefully as they can, they can crush the other person and defeat them into self-censorship and humility and surrender. Censorship and vitriol, though, is the recourse of the weak, and it's universally used by the team that ends up on the losing side of history. Strong people who are in the right don't need censorship. That's why that comment is still on this blog; I leave it to my readers to decide whom they think is in the right here. Fact is, if you need to lie to get something, or prevent others from knowing something, you're telling the world you're weak. You're telling everyone who's paying attention that you're afraid you'll lose if you're unable to stop information from becoming free; you're also telling everyone that you instinctively sense that you're getting some benefit from others being ignorant that you'll stop getting if they shed their ignorance. Before the American Civil War, when there was still slavery in the United States, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. Why? Because information is power. Information means you get to control your own life; do what you want to do; and not have to do what other people tell you to do. One of the slaves who learned to read was a man named Frederick Douglass, and he ended up becoming a freed man and a prolific and talented writer (at first, whites didn't believe a black man could possibly have written what he wrote and thought it must have been done by his white publicists to drive sales). Douglass went on to play a very important role in making whites in the Union realize that blacks were as deserving of freedom and equality as they were. He played an integral part in turning the sentiment of the North against human beings being treated as property. But, if Frederick Douglass never learned to read, maybe that doesn't happen. Information, you see, upsets the balance of power, and the spread of information can change history. Because of that reason, information is terrifying to the people who stand to lose control from others getting that information; and they will fight viciously to prevent that happening. IS SEDUCTION WRONG? Back to seduction. Who gets upset about men learning how to succeed with women? Is it the guys who are naturally good with women? Do they think it's wrong for other men to learn how to get women? Nope, it ain't them. How about the guys who are cleaning up in business? The high rollers, the guys who are working their assess off at their jobs and building and growing in that arena, making money and creating ever-more solid futures for themselves? Do they think it's wrong for men to learn how to get women? Nope, not at all; if you ask them, they think it's just fine too. How about socially well-adjusted women with lots of male friends and female friends who are happy and productive and getting the things they want out of life? Do those women think it's wrong for men to learn how to get women? Nope, because I have a lot of gorgeous, brilliant, educated (Master's degrees), successful (financially, career-wise, love-wise) female friends and former lovers who think that what I've learned and that I'm teaching it to other men is great and exciting and very noble. So, yeah, it ain't them either. Then who are the people who think it's a bad thing for men to learn what it takes to succeed with women? Who are the people who think you ought not learn this, and instead go out and fumble your way through conversation and just take whatever you can get without ever seeking to improve? Well, it's not the guys who do well with women already. It's not the guys who do well in business. It's not the gals who do well in their lives either. In other words, it's not the winners who don't want you to win. Winners don't care that you're trying to win. If anything, they'll root for you and encourage you and build you up, because winners like seeing other people win. The more you win, the more I can learn from you and maybe we can work together or at least inspire each other or share ideas. If you're winning, I'm thrilled, and if you're a winner I'm going to guess you'd be thrilled if I start winning too. No, it's not the winners in life who get upset that you're trying to get better and win with women. It's everyone else. Is seduction wrong? Well, that's really a question I can't answer. Is business wrong? Is making money wrong? Is technology wrong? Is it wrong for men to study social dynamics and learn how to attract and get women? Is it wrong for women to read women's magazines and talk to their friends and learn how to attract and get men? Is it wrong for men to get better at intriguing women? Is it wrong for women to get better at intriguing men? Is it wrong for men to dress better and get in shape and fix their postures? Is it wrong for women to do the same? What's wrong? What's right? And who gets to decide? Yeah, it isn't me, and I don't know, so don't ask me. All I know is I coach guys to succeed while staying ethical. Me, I'm honest with women, and I'm honorable and considerate and very warm with women, and they always, always tell me I was the best man of their lives. I'm assuming they wouldn't say that to a man who treats them like a subhuman alien he has to catch but hey, maybe my Master's degree educated, world traveling, brilliant, gorgeous, financially successful, highly sought-after and highly pursued girlfriends and ex-girlfriends have no idea what they're talking about. I don't actually think that's the case, though. PARTING THOUGHTS It sucks getting negative Internet comments from faceless people, but eh, it doesn't suck that bad. I guess there's no such thing as bad publicity, right? I used to run a website when I was in music, and I launched the website right around the time I first got in to music... and I was awful. I mean, I've almost never heard music on the Internet as bad as I was when I started. And I got some fan mail from people who really believed in me, and I got some hate mail from people who told me my music was terrible, I couldn't even stick to the beat, and I should go crawl in a hole and die. And you know what? There was actually a message worth listening to in the negativity; they were right. My music was bad. So, I went back, and I learned to stay on-beat. I advanced my compositions. I advanced my lyrics. I advanced my style. I poured years into becoming as good as I could, just to show those people who hated on me how far I could take it. I used their doubt in me as motivation to succeed. So, when people get angry at you, I'd say don't dismiss them outright. Recognize that, while yes, they may be being far too unreasonable, perhaps there's a way you can refine your approach a bit to be more considerate of other viewpoints. I've tried to make this site as positive and uplifting a place as possible, and I've tried to convey as much warmth toward and love for women as I could, because really, you won't get far with girls if you don't like girls. But perhaps, just maybe, in some posts, I'm still not doing as good a job as I could at not coming across manipulative or sneaky or however else this sort of material might come off to some people coming in with certain preconceived notions about what's being taught here. That said, if anyone thinks I'm going to start censoring myself, or getting politically correct, or start kissing up to the feminist movement that's emasculated men in the West... well, I won't tell them to do what the commenter who inspired this post told me to do, but I'll at least say this: you're barking up the wrong tree.

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##Sex and Alcohol A good, if somewhat disreputable, buddy of mine in Southern California who'd bedded a significant number of women he'd met primarily at dive bars once summed up his philosophy of getting girls to me like this: "Just get 'em drunk, bring 'em home, get 'em more drunk, and have sex!" Ah, the age-old combination of sex and alcohol. People've been doing it that way since the Ancient Greeks were sporting togas and spears. Sex and alcohol have gone hand-in-hand in human society for a long, long time. Stands to good reason there ought to be some good reasons for it, then, too. Everyone knows why the two make such good bedfellows: alcohol lowers inhibitions, and sex is something we tend to have a lot more when our inhibitions are in said lowered condition. Alcohol also serves as a social lubricant - liquid courage, if you will - making men more bold and women more willing. But it goes deeper than that - and if you truly want to master the seductive arts, you're going to need to be willing to loosen your grip on the bottle, too. WHY SEX AND ALCOHOL ARE SO PERVASIVE A COMBINATION The two go together like fries and ketchup. But why is that - just for the reasons stated above? In fact, it's a bit more complex than it might seem at first glance: Lowered inhibitions. This is the obvious one - we do things when we're drunk that we might not be so gung-ho about with less booze running through our veins. That includes meeting new people, and it includes sex, too. Casual flings happen far more often when people are drunk than they do when people are sober. Pro-social behavior. Even the quiet shy guy who never talks to anyone can become downright loquacious with alcohol. Drink makes people take down their mental filters - thinking less before talking, feeling less social pressure to restrain themselves, and assuming others find them more charming and engaging than when sober. Needless to say, to bed women, one must first talk to women (the vast majority of the time, anyway), so alcohol's tendency to turn imbibers into social butterflies aids the cause of mating. Increased arousal. Drunk people just tend to want more sex. Due to alcohol's effects on the brain, arousal is increased, and desire to mate goes up. Thus, sex becomes more likely to occur. Superstition and the placebo effect. People tend to believe funny things, and some men think they're better with women when they're drunk. Having this belief tends to make a man more reserved when he's sober - after all, he doesn't have the magic formula coursing through his body yet - and more confident when drunk. And, to an extent, anything that improves confidence is going to improve results with women. An excuse. From the woman's side of things, women often lean on alcohol as an excuse. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "Oh, I'm so drunk," from a girl who wanted me to sleep with her when I've known for a fact that she isn't more than a little buzzed. And when sex does happen, women use alcohol as their "Get out of jail free" card - "Wow, I was so drunk last night," they say. "Where am I?" asked another cutie to me rhetorically one recent morning-after. It allows a woman to tell friends that it wasn't her that decided to sleep with this new man, it was the alcohol - and it allows her to tell herself that as well, thereby preserving her self-image of being what society expects her to be. Sounds like my buddy had it right, then - alcohol really does go together quite well with sex. I mean, how many people do you see hooking up at the supermarket? No - it's bars and clubs and lounges and parties they're going home together from - the places with drinks. Alcohol, the great enabler. As it turns out though, there are a few very good reasons why alcohol consumption isn't really all that great for seduction - and in fact, why, at higher skill levels, it can be out-and-out counterproductive. BEGINNER'S LUCK, EXPERT'S FOLLY When you're just starting out in the social arts, any advantage you can get you'll tend to take. Drunk girls stumbling into your bed? Ah, a godsend! For most men, alcohol plays a pivotal role in their ability to bed new girls - women getting drunk and making bad decisions is the opportunity many unskilled men pray for and seek out. Why is that? Well, it's mostly because the men who are relying on women to get drunk - and on themselves to get drunk - don't feel confident leading women to intimacy without the help of a few drinks. Without alcohol, these men are powerless - like Superman in the presence of kryptonite. Sobriety is the unskilled man's kryptonite. As you increase in skill in the seductive arts, though, you'll find more and more that the disadvantages of alcohol outweigh the advantages. Here are just a few of those: Defensive friends (her). Drunken women's friends tend to get quite defensive of them. Friends who might otherwise let you and your girl walk out unchecked will swoop in and snatch her away if they think she's drunk and making a bad decision. Flightiness (her). Her inhibitions are lowered with you, sure - but they're also lowered with everyone and everything else. I've had girls who were all over me and ready to go home with me suddenly peel off and start flirting with or making out with other men, and it's a battle to pull them back away and get them home at that point. Fuses are shorter, girls go into auto-rejection more quickly and shut down and go cold on you, they'll try to make you jealous, or they're just very horny and looking for a man to go home with now, and if you miss the escalation window you've lost the girl and she's onto the next candidate. Alcohol makes women very flighty. Getting sick and passing out (her). I once had a girl in my bed wearing nothing but her panties and ready to become lovers with me, who suddenly got up, ran into the bathroom, and spent the next five minutes emptying the contents of her stomach into my toilet bowl. She then emerged, declared, "I'm sorry you won't get to bang me tonight," and then passed out in my bed. And indeed, I never did get to bang her, that night or any other. Too much alcohol can result in women throwing up or passing out - or, as in that girl's case, sometimes both. Buyer's remorse (her). On top of all of this, when you do manage to sleep with a girl, if she was drunk when you bedded her, she may very well wake up the next day and regret going to bed with you. Not by any fault of yours, but more because she will feel like she wasn't in complete control when she made the decision to take you as a lover, and may guess that in fact she mad a bad choice. No matter how great you are, if she was drunk when she slept with you, there's a good chance she writes you off as some drunken fling that she's embarrassed about and doesn't want to remember, let alone ever see again. Sloppiness (you). What happens when you get drunk? Well, many men like to believe they get more charming, but really, past the second drink or so for most men, they actually get more off-putting. Both drunk and sober women much prefer a man who's had two drinks to a man who's had seven. Once a man gets drunk, he starts acting poorly, getting sloppy, and making mistakes in his interactions with women, and most of the time he loses women he could've had easily had he been less inebriated. Inviting to challengers (you). When you obviously have your wits about you, other men are far less likely to challenge you for your woman or for their own amusement. When you're drunk, though, you're easy prey, and you'll find that men who get drunk also tend to get messed with quite a lot. Unless you're a very imposing, muscular guy, getting drunk is going to make you a target for men who want to steal your girl away or give you a rough time of things. There are actually some pretty significant drawbacks with drinking. For a guy who's good with girls, they're dealbreakers - he does much better with women sober than he does being drunk. And it's even better for his girl not to be too drunk, either. But what if you're like my pal from Southern California, and despite being good with women you still rely heavily upon alcohol - is that really a bad thing? After all, you can still get girls in bed when you go out and get drunk and meet drunk girls and get them more drunk. If it ain't broke, why would you want to fix it? THE RATIONALE FOR CUTTING BACK ON ALCOHOL I used to be a very heavy drinker myself, and I'd have drunken hook-ups that I hardly remembered at times, so despite all the drunken nights of coming home empty-handed, the drunken nights that ended in bedding girls made me feel like getting drunk worked. But I had a couple of bad incidents in 2009 after drinking too much - I drove home very drunk a few times and didn't even remember driving, or passed out in my car while my girlfriend was asleep in my apartment upstairs; I was thrown in jail one month; and in another incident a month later I was pick-pocketed - and after that I vowed to cut back on drink. I was drinking too much and getting too sloppy - it was getting dangerous. What I found was that at first it was a little tough, but it quickly became just fine. For a while, I didn't drink at all, and I had to get used to meeting girls and bedding girls while totally sober. I'd bedded my fair share of women sober already, so it wasn't that big a learning curve, but taking women to bed sober had always been a bit nerve-wracking for me prior to 2009. Once I quit drinking in '09 though, I got quite comfortable meeting women sans alcohol - primarily by setting up a time limit: no girl was allowed in my apartment more than ten minutes without being kissed. Once I had that limit in place, seductions happened a lot more reliably while sober. Here's the thing: when you're sober, everything is under your control. I think most guys prefer alcohol because they feel like everything is not as under their control, and they can kick back and hope it all works out, responsibility-free. When you're sober though, there's no kicking back and hoping things work out - when you're sober, if you want something to happen, you've got to make it happen yourself. For that reason, your skill set advances much more rapidly when you're taking women to bed sober. You're controlling everything, aware of everything that's going on, and consciously setting a course of action and following it. You know where you messed up when you make a mistake, and you have ideas about what to do differently next time. When you're drunk and things don't work out, you either get upset and don't understand why it didn't work, or you shrug your shoulders and move on to the next girl. When you're sober, you take the time to reflect, and you have a much easier time pinpointing what you did wrong so you can fix it. Once you switch to mostly sober, your results with women will typically take a dip in the short term as you adjust to a new paradigm, but over the long term your results increase at an accelerating rate, because you aren't just doing - you're learning. You're conscious of what it is you're doing, so you're able to move quickly and adjust on the fly, and when you make a mistake you tend to know what it is and you don't make it again. There is no such ability when you're boozed up. Cutting back on drink helps you become a better seducer in the long run - and gets you more girls, more reliably. Instead of placing the fate of your sex life into the hands of fickle alcohol, you place it in your own hands - hands that guide you to better and better outcomes with women as your skill as a seducer improves. DOES THAT MEAN ALCOHOL IS OUT? So, if sex and alcohol really aren't all that great a combination after all, should you throw in the towel and stop drinking entirely? Well, sure, I suppose you can - I've gone completely dry at times and its effects on my results were always negligible. So long as you're out there meeting new people and building social momentum, you'll be fine without alcohol, ultimately. These days, I have one or two drinks when I'm out, and I have no problem meeting women and bedding them. I just drink because I like it, and it's something to do to pass the time while I'm getting settled in at a bar or a nightclub. I could just as easily drink an energy drink or a club soda and be fine. So it's okay to have a drink or two. Really, the thing that ought to be out, then, is drunkenness; that position of relinquishing control of your interactions with women to the vagaries of drink. Keep your alcohol consumption under control, and you will keep your seductions under control, and learn to be a better, more effective romancer and seducer, bed more women, and build more successes.

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##Sex Logistics: How to Get Intimate in Unusual Places In "Book Excerpts: Get Girls in Bed (Without a Bed)," I mention a number of different places you can escalate to intimacy with women without being in bed at your home or her home, and a few of the details on doing so. However, guys have continued to ask about how exactly to pull this off... which I understand. If you've never taken a girl anywhere other than your bedchambers, taking her on a bench or a back alley somewhere can feel rather daunting. You may also even wonder that one thing many a man who's never done something yet with a woman will wonder: "Is she even going to go for this?" sex logistics Well, if that sounds like you, then fret no more, for this article is all about answering how to handle those outré sex logistics problems: how do you "get her to agree" to "weird" logistics for sex, how do you set the mood, and how do you actually, you know, physically do it? sex logistics Well, yes, of course, but she doesn't need to sign a damn contract with you or even necessarily need to verbally consent ("Oh, you want to have sex on the grass? Okay, I agree!"). This is one of the things men inexperienced with physically escalating with women in unconventional locations often stumble on, and often ask about. "How do you get her to agree to have sex with you there?" they'll ask, making it sound like sex is some kind of complex, rational negotiation between two deadlocked parties. It isn't. It's a joint, mutual decision between two parties emotionally and viscerally interested in mating with one another. And, just like sex in your bedroom or hers, you must treat it as such. A bad salesman asks you if you want to buy. A good salesman simply knows you do (or assumes you do if he's at that point in his process), and simply keeps moving things forward toward closing the sale, until you either buy or back out. Why? Because if you're already ready to say "yes" but someone starts asking you if you want to say "yes" or "no," that person communicates that he doesn't get you and doesn't relate to you, nuking your ability to relate to him. Obviously, if a woman says "no" or "stop," then stop. But if she's interested, if she's excited, and if she's moving forward with you as you move forward with her, that's all the agreement you really need - you don't need a letter of intent to copulate from her attorney. She wants you to take her as your lover; just take her. SEX LOGISTICS: BREAKING HER OUT OF AUTOPILOT One of the pieces in the email autoresponder when you sign up to receive the newsletter here is on breaking women out of autopilot. That is, shattering a woman's normal patterns of dealing with men - the ones she doesn't even have to think about, because she just does them over and over again. Guy walks up to hit on her? Reject him. Doesn't matter who he is or what he started to say, that isn't even considered. It's an automatic response. Guy asks her, "Can I get your number?" Panic, obfuscation, and refusal. Even if he'd been the most charming man in the world up until that point, she's heard this weak, needy statement from so many unattractive men that it immediately raises alarm bells and she writes him off without a thought. Guy starts kissing her on a date or in a bar or club, then invites her home? Panic, obfuscation, and refusal. She's been here before... she knows what this means. Kissing outside, and then an invitation back - that's an invite for sex. But is this a guy she wants to have sex with? Is she 100% sure? If not, just say "no" - it's easy to do. Everybody uses autopilot. It's a more efficient way of thinking and filtering for people. That way, instead of them having to mentally process every new thing they encounter, they can just throw it through the mental filter and let that deal with it. "Yes," "no," "no," "no," "yes," "no," "yes," "yes"... etc. Autopilot is your and her mental assembly line for decision making. That's why I tell guys to break patterns and do things differently as often as possible. The more you're doing things in ways that she's never seen or experienced before, the less likely you are to get snagged in a mental filter she's constructed and the more likely you are to be able to move things forward with her. If she likes you... if she's at least somewhat excited about you, or she's logically decided in your favor... at that point, all you need to do is not get caught in a filter and you're home free. And, just like with everything else, learning how to get a girl in bed in unconventional ways breaks patterns and ups your odds of success, too. THE THRILL OF THE UNEXPECTED Generally speaking, the less emotional a being you are, the more logical you are, and the more comfortable you are following orderly, structured, well-thought-out plans and schedules and the more you hate chaos and spontaneity. And, the more emotional a being you are, the less logical you are, and the more comfortable you are with chaotic, loose, spontaneous decisions and impromptu adventures and the more you hate order and structure. Well, wouldn't it surprise you to know that men, the less emotional sex, tend to prefer plans and order, while women, the more emotional sex, tend to prefer spontaneous adventures and unexpected surprises? Fact is, that's usually the case. I've known a few men who were more emotional than the norm and really loved to do things spontaneously. And I've known a few women who were more rational than the norm and preferred everything to be structured and planned out ahead of time and for that plan to be followed to the letter. But, it's usually the case that men like plans, and women like surprises. You will even sometimes get a girl alone with you sometimes in some unconventional place where she'd already made up her mind that she was not having sex with you... and then you got her somewhere thrilling and exciting and new, and she thought to herself, you know what, I've never had sex in a Laundromat, so why the heck not? I'm not a thrill seeker, a hedonist, or an exhibitionist by any extent of the imagination. I don't get off on an audience or on knowing I'm being watched with a girl, and I don't have sex simply for the thrill of having sex. But I've taken girls as lovers on beaches with people watching us and at the tops of waterfalls; in the back seats of cars in crowded areas, naked on balconies where half the city could see us, and in rooms with a bunch of other people sleeping, partying, or having sex themselves. Why the weird sex logistics, if I'm not naturally inclined to these? Because it's easier, and because women love it. And not just the thrill-seeking women. Shy women will seem to panic and be nervous, and tell you, trembling but thrilling at the same time: "Oh no! We couldn't! People will see!" But once you start escalating with them, they turn from kittens to killers, and the sex is often very passionate (if not always comfortable... depends on the environment you're getting intimate in). You will never find it easier to sleep with a girl than when you're doing so in unconventional places and in unconventional ways. But there are a few other benefits, too: When you sleep with girls in unconventional ways, you get around their autopilot and break through the mental filters they use to deny ordinary men sex When you sleep with girls in unconventional ways, you excite them a great deal and give them a chance to do something they've always dreamed of doing but usually never have When you sleep with girls in unconventional ways, you immediately establish yourself in their minds as a powerful, sexual man the likes of which they've only ever encountered few times (if any) before in their lives When you sleep with girls in unconventional ways, you give them a thrilling, exciting, highly memorable sexual experience that they will often cherish for a lifetime, with you responsible for it and right in the middle of it For these reasons, don't just use unconventional sex logistics with random girls you're picking up, either. Do it with girlfriends. They'll instantly slot you as a far more potent, virile, sexy man than any lover or boyfriend they've had before (except in the rare case they've had a man who gave them more standout, unique sexual experience than you have or will... but unless you're meeting girls in swingers' circles or who are strippers or porn actresses, it'll be uncommon indeed for you to run into women with experiences like this). sex logistics How do you set up an unconventional logistics scenario? There are three (3) things you want going for you when you dive into this: Seeming spontaneity Strong leadership / zero hesitation A smooth transition into the location and into intimacy Let's have a look at all three. SEEMING SPONTANEITY sex logisticsIf you tell a girl, "Hey, later we're going to have sex in the train bathroom, cool?" it just sort of loses its appeal, you know? You want some of that magic there. And a lot of the magic that there is in physical intimacy in unconventional places comes from the element of surprise and it not being expected. Women want to think it just happened. As a man, it's your responsibility to make it happen, but not rob your girl of her illusions. Let her pin it all on fate - she wants to. But as you and I both know, fate doesn't make anything "just happen." The man who's taking action does. This often means you don't tell a girl exactly where you're going, and you never tell her why. A friend of mine is in the habit of meeting girls in nightclubs, getting them worked up and aroused, then pulling them out with him and walking around until they come to a dark, secluded staircase he knows, before pulling them in and having relations with them there. He never tells them, "Let's go have sex in a staircase;" nor does he say, "Hey, there's a really cool dark staircase I know. Want to go see it?" Instead, he just says, "Let's go for a walk." Then, as they're walking along, turned on, flirty, and sexually excited, they simply happen to walk by that dark staircase... and he pulls them inside. STRONG LEADERSHIP AND ZERO HESITATION When you're taking a woman into an unusual situation for her that she suspects (even though she says she had no idea and it "just happened"... trust me, she knew) that something's about to go down, she'll be paying very close attention to your behavior. If you're leading strongly but considerately, and self-assuredly without hesitation, she'll be heartened and reassured. If, however, you are: Not strongly leading Inconsiderately leading Leading in an uncertain manner ... then be prepared to run right smack into a solid brick wall of resistance. Why? Because women don't want to follow men who don't know what they're doing and don't have much consideration for them into an unfamiliar situation. She needs to trust you... at least a little bit. Especially with a new girl, remember, you're still somewhat of a stranger, no matter how great that conversation you just had with her was. Even with a girl you've been seeing a while, there are few turn offs for women bigger than a man unconfident about sex: "Hey, so, do you think we should sneak into this abandoned school and do something, or...?" Much better: "I'm pretty sure there's nobody inside that school building at this time of year. Let's go in." The other thing that happens when someone can see that you are uncertain or hesitating or inconsiderate is that her own decision making will kick back in and she'll start asking herself if this is what she wants to do or if she should do something else. And if you're not making her feel wonderful with strong, certain, considerate leadership, chances are, she's going to want to do something else. Lead assuredly, keep her in mind and make sure she's attended to, and don't hesitate, and you'll be fine. A SMOOTH TRANSITION TO THE PLACE AND TO INTIMACY Transitions are immensely important all throughout a seduction, of course; and like we talked about in "Emotional Cresting: What It Is and How to Use It," transitioning well and during the right moment emotionally (i.e., before you've reached an emotional height where a girl is going to start crashing in emotions soon after if things aren't progressed to the next stage of a pickup) is instrumental in your seduction's success. There are two kinds of transitions you'll need to concern yourself with regarding intimacy with unconventional sex logistics: The transition to the location The transition to intimacy Here's how it breaks down for each. The Transition to Location The best thing I can say for this is "Be Prepared." That means: Scout the area and know your logistics spots (e.g., is there a hot tub place nearby? A love motel, if you're in a country that has those? A bench in a park that nobody ever goes through at night?) Know how long the walk is from where you'll be to where you want to get to, and know several routes if possible Have any supplies you'll need ready in advance (e.g., for sex on the beach, throw a towel in the trunk of your car; for sex in your car during winter, have the heat on full blast before you get out to try to have as much warmth as possible still in the car when you get back; for sex while out hiking and climbing, bring some hand sanitizer, because trust me, there's nothing worse than trying to put a condom on without your hands because they're both caked in branches, pebbles, and dirt) Even if you're a naturally spontaneous guy, you'll want to have some groundwork done beforehand... it makes it a lot easier to be spontaneous when you know exactly what you can and cannot easily do. The transition itself for a lot of these pulls is actually often rather easy. All you've normally got to say is, "Let's go [fill in the blank] in/at/on the [fill in the blank]." Like: "Let's go chill on the beach." "Let's go for a walk in the park." "Let's warm up in the car." "Let's sneak over here." [into this dark alley] "Let's go to the bathroom." ... and so on and so forth. Simpler is better than overlong. "Let's go for a walk in the park," beats, "Let's go for a walk in the park and look at the stars," every time because she's more likely to want to go for a walk in the park than she is to want to go for a walk in the park AND look at some stars, too (so you're less likely to get resistance or a mental disconnect). The Transition to Intimacy As you no doubt recall from some of the other articles on getting to sex (mentioned most recently in the post on first-date sex), the rule you normally want to follow is kissing a girl within 10 minutes of getting her alone with you in your apartment or hers... maximum. Faster is usually better though, unless she's a little nervous (sometimes, it's better then too). But how about when you're escalating to intimacy in an unconventional location? Should you still follow the 10-minute kiss rule? Absolutely not. You need to move to kissing her much sooner. Most of the time with non-bedroom / domicile sex logistics, you need to start immediately. Examples: In a bathroom, shower, coatroom, broom closet, alleyway, staircase, or other secluded corner where you're standing up with her, you need to press her up against a wall (be careful not to slam her head into it and hurt her... put your hand behind her head) or put her on a counter or raised platform and start kissing her passionately as soon as you get there sex logistics In a hot tub, pool, jacuzzi, hotel, love motel, or anywhere else you're likely to be sitting / floating, get settled in next to her, look at her, smile, let it linger a moment without a word while the two of you lock eyes, and then start kissing her On a beach, bench, hill, cliff, in your car's backseat, or in or on any other place where the two of you will be lying down, slowly and romantically lower yourself down on top of her to kiss her if she's lying on her back looking up at you or if she's on her side leaning into you. If she's lying facing away from you, cozy up right behind her so that your front is against her back (in the spoon position) and begin to kiss her neck and shoulder Then, escalate to sex. If for any reason she won't kiss you on the mouth, don't worry about it, and instead keep kissing her other places, touching her body, and removing her pants. How much clothing do you need off? Actually, as little as possible. Just get her pants off or, if she's wearing a skirt, her panties to the side, and enter her that way. This is another way of breaking autopilot - she's accustomed to men wanting to completely disrobe her before they begin sex, since that's what almost every man does. Be different. What if you'd really prefer to have sex in a bed? Unless you are 100% certain that you can absolutely without any doubt whatsoever take her as your lover later in a bed (in other words: never; or, only if she's already your lover), take her whenever you have the best chance to take her. Once you've been intimate somewhere already (that is, you've had sexual intercourse with her... not kissing, oral sex, etc.), it's much easier to get intimate again later in more comfortable environs. Much of the time though, if you pass up the chance to get intimate with a girl somewhere unconventional because you'd rather have sex with her in a bed later, you may end up never getting that chance. Attraction expires, as you may recall. UNCONVENTIONAL SEX Achieving intimacy in unconventional places is often actually a lot easier than it is to get a girl all the way back to your place, keep her in the right mood, and break past her autopilot mental filters to reach the point where the two of you can become lovers. Using logistics on-the-fly allows you to move faster, maintain momentum, and take women you'd otherwise have been unable to take. Remember, the benefits of unconventional sex logistics are: You blow past women's autopilot and ask them to assess you as an individual You thrill, excite, and titillate women with novel and original experiences for them You establish yourself as a powerful, sexy man unlike few or any of her past lovers You give women sexual experiences they will probably remember for the rest of their lives ... and to pull this off all you need to have is: Seeming spontaneity Strong leadership / zero hesitation A smooth transition into the location and into intimacy Nail all three of those, and you'll be taking women as lovers in fun, original, unexpected places, giving them thrilling once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and imprinting yourself indelibly in their minds as a man who was truly a potent, fecund, and real man.

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##Sext Like a Pro: Is Sexting Girls Worth Your Time? Sometime back, Franco (a sharp guy in his own right and the moderator of our discussion boards) commented on Chase's article on indirect game, asking the following about sexting: "Sexting. In most of your texting blog posts, you claim to keep texting to a bare minimum. Do you engage in sexting at all, or does it go against your mantra of "busy men don't have time to text?" If you do... maybe a blog post on this would be fun? ;)" Chase has said he doesn't indulge in sexting himself, but as he knows there's some interest in the topic, he asked me if I wouldn't mind tackling it. Now there's a fun and interesting topic. So, sexting. Somewhat taboo, but taboo things are intriguing... and I feel pretty well suited to write on this taboo. The only person who is more fit to write this particular article is probably Anthony Weiner. ... but, since he's not available to write for our site, you'll just have to make do with my guide on the subject. Read on, and I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about the phenomenon of sexting with girls - including whether it's worth your time (or not). sexting A little while back, I found myself texting a girl from social circle that I'd finally managed to physically escalate with after two years of chasing and missed opportunities. She was a pretty conservative girl (at least I thought she was) who was very religious, intelligent and generally wholesome. But that we were having a fairly serious text conversation that went quite differently this night. This conversation went something (roughly) like this: Her: I really appreciate the fact that you took it really slow in the beginning and didn't try to push anything with me [note her setting the frame of "It's nice that you're a nice guy... keep being that way"] Me: It's funny that you say that, because when I asked to kiss you [if you haven't guessed, this girl dated from back before I knew anything about women - I asked her if I could kiss her... ay caramba] not only did you say no, but you started dating Gary the next day. [note my reply of "Yeah, I tried that nice guy thing before - look how that worked out the first time"] Her: I was just confused, okay? And he was easy… I just didn't know what would happen between us. Me: I feel you. But, you know, I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to get a girl's loyalty unless you've hooked up with her ;) Her: That's not true! Lol. Some of us just take time. Me: Really? So, when did you ask me out on a date? Her: Um…after Marv's Halloween party I guess… Me: Right. After I decided that I was tired of this nonsense, and I took you in the side room and slammed you up against the wall, and started kissing you. Her: Hah… I remember that. I really liked that… Me: Oh yea? How much did you like it? And after this point, wouldn't you guess it, but she sent me several paragraphs of very explicit details of not only how much she liked that night, but what she wanted to do then and there. Now, at that point, I had sexted quite a bit. But only with girls I had serious relationships with and while one of us would be out of town. I never thought that a wholesome girl I had gotten physical with once (I hadn't even slept with her) would be so unbelievably lustful. It was another of those turning point moments. I started wondering, how many women secretly think like this? How many women secretly do this? A BRIEF HISTORY OF EXPLICIT COMMUNICATION Forms of discreet romantic communications have existed since human beings formed society. Before we had modern communication, people wrote love letters. And I'm sure before that cavemen had discreet ways of telling women of their desire for them (or… maybe not so discreet). Unfortunately there is still a large percentage of men that don't understand that women love sex. They don't understand that women are just as sexual as men. More importantly, even more don't fully understand the level of social pressure that women are constantly under. For each and every woman, social status is everything. So anyone who tries to lower a woman's status - be it a man or even another woman - will be quickly rebuffed and disregarded, even if the person had good intentions. Women are constantly in a struggle between fulfilling their sexual desires and maintaining their social reputation. sexting That's where discreet forms of sexual expression come in. That's where the "love" letter (outside of marriage) started. That's why women love reading erotic literature. And in the 20th Century, that's where the all-too-famous phone sex came from. Women could communicate their sexual desires to their lovers without any risk of social status. THE UNIQUE PROBLEM OF SEXTING And then came the camera phone and the smartphone. What a wonderful invention for people who wanted to express their desires! They didn't just have to listen to each other voices, but they could inconspicuously read texts wherever they were, and they could know send visual aids in the form of naughty picture and video messages. What could possibly go wrong? Well, unlike phone sex, the evidence of your extracurricular activities doesn't go away when you're done. And that's exactly how Mr. Weiner got burned. If a woman sends a man a sexy text/photo/video, she has just put her trust and confidence in that man to not share the photo etc. with anyone else privately and of course to not post it on the Internet. And thus is the crux of sexting - can she trust you with her text and images and video or not? There is just a whole new level of risk for the woman (and the man as well). &nabs; sexting I will say now that sexting successfully requires a large expenditure of effort. Usually just the effort to actually do it - to swap texts/photos, wait for replies, read, etc. is very time consuming. And this doesn't factor in the time that it will almost always take to get a girl warmed up and in the mood. Unless the girl is doing most of the work (which almost never happens), sexting, in many way, violates the Law of Least Effort and sprezzatura. I will also add that while I've used to a lot of sexting, it is comparatively more difficult to sext with a girl whom you haven't slept with or at least gotten physical with. You're going to be doing a lot of work, for, frequently, little (or no) payout when using this with women you aren't already in a sexual relationship with - but, if you're interested in exploring this option for option's sake, or because you just want to play around with it and have fun... then here we go. WHEN SEXTING IS USEFUL There are some times when sexting can prove useful to a man. Let's look at the main situations in which this is the case: You are dead tired from your day, and have no energy to visit a girl or to go out and find new ones You're bored at work or running errands and you need something to spice things up You want to make a certain girl's day a bit more interesting You want to gauge how sexual a certain girl is There are some other more minor ones, but those are the general situations in which you will take advantage of these activities. Additionally, there are generally only four (4) relational scenarios with a girl in which you will be sexting: You are actually in a committed or semi-committed relationship with a girl and are separated from her for one reason or another You have already been physical with a girl and are not in a position to see her in person You have swapped numbers with a girl you've met, and she is the kind of girl who just enjoys sexting with men as a sort of extended flirtation and self-validation (these girl are rarer, but they do exist) You have swapped numbers with a girl you've met, you gave off a sexy vibe and you use sexting as a tool to let her know exactly what to expect when she next sees you, and get her excited to get physical It's this last scenario that I want to focus on the most. Sending a risqué text or two and seeing if a girl bites can be a good way to get her excited and even anxious to be physical with you. But your success with this method will greatly depend on everything you do before you even type the first word. sexting This is because before you can sext with a girl, you have to get her number at some point. Not only do you have to get her number, but as I mentioned earlier, it is of the utmost importance that you come off as a sexy man. It doesn't matter why she gave you her number, if you don't come off as a sexy man, she is going to write you off as creepy, shallow or awkward for sexting her. You won't be the kind of man she's happy to receive a sext from. Also, you must always respect a girl's privacy. Sure, you can talk about it with your friends if you really want, but don't do anything that could damage her reputation. Keep it classy. THE PROCESS Now that we have the foundation down, let's get to the actual process. You can't just jump the gun and get right to sexting unless she was dying to jump into bed with you when you last saw her. Usually what you will have to do is build rapport with the girl while slowly throwing in sexual comments here and there. If you haven't already, check out these two posts on texting techniques and text message flirting. Now let's look at a quick example; imagine this is the beginning of a text conversation: You: Hey Jen, how did your week turn out... was it as crazy as you predicted? Her: Hey! Haha my boss was out of his mind and they said my car is going to be really expensive to fix. And my hair was frizzed out…but nothing like a quiet night to relax and unwind! You: Well, at least crazy things keep life interesting. But, you should probably eat some chocolate. That always makes a girl feel better, right? Her: Haha yes! And I'm way ahead of you! I'm already curled up with a pint of rocky road lol You: Boom. Nothing like a nice night to yourself. Though, I have no idea what you do when no one is looking ;) Now, at this point it can go one of two ways: She will catch on, laugh, and banter with you a little bit. She will catch on, give you a non-sexual answer, and keep the conversation more on the platonic side. In the second case, it doesn't necessarily mean she's not interested, but more that she is not fully sold on being sexual with you over text if you haven't taken her to bed. You can try a few more comments (which just solidifies your role as a sexual man), and if she doesn't bite, you didn't really hurt yourself, and in many cases, you can still get her out to meet you in person. If you find that she is bantering with you, after a few more banter texts, you can continue to escalate, like so: You: Well, too bad you don't have a strong man to keep you company ;) Her: Hmm…I don't know if you could handle all the excitement happening over here :) You: I'd take my chances. I've always been told I'm adventurous. I could tell you what would happen if I was there right now. But I'm not sure if *you* could handle it.. Her: Well, why don't you try me… At this point I would hope you would know what to do from here. Just use your imagination and set the tone. QUICK ESCALATION VIA SEXTING I once knew a man who would use sexting as a quick escalation method for taking women to bed the same night. Essentially, after swapping numbers with a girl, he would send her one raunchy text or emoticon. He had his fundamentals down solid, she would usually laugh, and every once in a while, it would lead to him taking her to bed. Even still, the process of just meeting women and going through the normal steps usually proved much more effective and a better use of his time. Sexting is fun, but it isn't efficient. BOYFRIEND TERRITORY I've personally never run into this problem with girls I didn't want anything serious with, but for many guys sexting with girls they've taken to bed can cause problems. After you've slept with a girl, you should not sext with her too often. No more than once every couple of weeks (if that), I would say. If you do it too often, it sends the wrong message, and unless you have a really chill girl, she will begin to slot you in boyfriend territory and you run the risk of hurting her if the boyfriend role wasn't your aim. So, unless you are very good about managing relationship expectations, keep your sexting seldom. sextingIf you've read the article about breaking porn addiction and being with real women instead, you understand the perspective of the writers on this site on using devices for pleasure - that is, that these just don't measure up to the real thing. These days, I almost never sext, because it's much more worth it to just meet women in person and try to escalate with them. It's much more satisfying, too. Why sext with a girl, when you can take her to bed instead? But every once in a while, it can still be a great way to spice up your day and have a little fun. And you now have the tools to make it happen... should the mood strike you. Just don't get so caught up in the virtual world of sexting and imagining that you miss out on experiencing her in the flesh, and you'll be all right.

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##Sexual Framing: More on Using This to Get Girls One of the themes that keeps coming up on this site is framing… and more specifically, sexual framing. We've covered this topic before in posts like "Chase Framing" and my original post on the sexual frame, and I'm returning to it here to answer some of the questions guys had for me over on sexual frame post #1 and flesh out the how-to of sexual framing a bit more. In terms of your fundamentals, it is really THE most important skill, because it determines the meaning of everything you say, and hence the impact of your words and therefore also the outcome of all your interactions! Once you're at ninja level with your verbal frame control skills, you can put any kind of "stamp" on any interaction with women… or with anyone else, really. You can turn any conversation sexual, which also means that you can turn almost any relationship sexual. By the same token, you can also turn any conversation into a monogamous relationship, if you so choose. BUT here's the problem: If you DON'T understand framing… if you DON'T have this skill down PAT, you will STILL be setting frames, but without being aware of it... because every word out of your mouth comes with a frame. That means that you will accidentally set relationship frames when you really just want to hook up with a girl. It also means that you will sometimes even accidentally set conflicting frames, which usually leads to girls feeling that something's a bit fishy here… and that's one of the main reasons why girls will drop you at some point, even if things were apparently going great. And the challenge is that frames can be a pretty abstract topic… I know for me, it took me quite a while to really wrap my head around it. Many guys even consider framing to be an advanced skill… but it doesn't have to be. As I said, you're already setting frames as it is… all it takes is some understanding to make sure you set the right frames… the ones that will lead to the outcome you want, be it sex with the girl in front of you tonight, or a fulfilling long-term relationship with the girl of your dreams. SEXUAL FRAMING: A CLOSER LOOK As a quick review, a frame is nothing more or less than the meaning we give a certain situation, statement or emotion. For example, you may have broken up with your girlfriend recently and may not even need to get over your ex - you might frame it as new-found freedom; OR you may view it as a disaster - same event, different frame… different outcome. Chase has a great example of this in "How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need;" the story about Pete, Jerry, and Sue is a classic example of different frame, different outcome. Here's another example: a girl can flirt with two guys in one evening. Even if they're both equally good looking and charismatic, even if they both have equal conversation skills, the outcome of the night will be very different for both of them, depending on the kinds of frames they set. For instance: If one of the guys is looking for a wife and thinks that only people who don't respect themselves hook up the first night, his words will betray that… even if he doesn't say it explicitly. If the other guy enjoys his freedom and is just out to have fun, if he values female sexuality and is non-judgmental about it, people will pick up on that fact as well. When the girl in our example above speaks to guy #1, she might well fall in line with his frame and agree with him. She might tell him that she would never have sex with a guy the first night, "because that's slutty and disgusting". The same girl might talk to guy #2 an hour later and go home with him to have sex, though. Since pretty much all people have both a wild, sexual side to their personalities, as well as an "appropriate, decent" side that they show in public and under the scrutiny of society's eyes, hooking up with a girl the first night is simply a matter of drawing out the wild side that she is hiding beneath the respectable exterior. TAKE IT FROM MEREDITH BROOKS… She's not the only one who's both a bitch and a lover, a sinner and a saint. She is also one of the few who do not feel ashamed… and that's where women need your help. You see… if you talk about weddings, "respectable" girls and high-horse "sexual morals" or even "purity," sex is not going to happen tonight. If you employ sexual framing and talk about sexual fantasies and about how you never kiss and tell, on the other hand, it is likely that she is going to go for it! Same girl! Different frame. Sometimes when I have sex with a girl within minutes of meeting her, I think about how her relationships with "nice guys" usually go down. They probably think she's a pristine pure angel whose sex-drive is non-existent unless she's truly, madly, deeply in love with her prince on a white horse. He will present himself accordingly, and she will NOT put out until he commits. Again… same girl. Different frame. You see… it's really not easy being a woman… they HAVE that wild side underneath the good-girl act… but since they also have to HIDE it most of the time, they usually carry a lot of pent up sexual frustration around. Something you can help them with, of course. But how, exactly? QUESTION FROM A READER William commented on the post about being a sexual man: "I understand all the frames thanks to this article but i dont fully understand how to communicate them without me coming off as a jerk if you could make another article or leave a comment I would be thankful" This is a simple but very important question, because William hits the nail on the head here talking about communication of the frame: sexual framing need to be set with just the right degree of subtlety. If you're not sexual enough, or if you deliver the frames as some sort of joke, it won't hit. On the other hand, if you take the sexual frames too far, you will only come across as a horny boy or maybe even as a creepy guy. So how can you strike the right balance? The first thing to realize is that in the context of other topics, you're probably already setting frames left and right. For example, if you have a conversation about politics or spirituality with a friend, you probably hold certain beliefs about those topics - and your words will reflect that, even when you don't directly talk about these beliefs. And that's how you want to set sexual frames as well - through a conversation that indirectly reflects what you believe in. This is also the reason why "inner game" and work on your own beliefs comes first. As long as you're still judgmental about female sexuality yourself, you won't be able to communicate sexual frames congruently. You will be stuck having to be the relationship guy. And even if what you WANT is a relationship, you will be stuck with every girl you meet pretending to be conservative and pure simply to not flip your "this girl isn"t relationship material" switch, and you'll never know what she's really like and she'll know it. There's little that affects a woman's respect for a man in a relationship like knowing that he thinks she's something she's not. When a sexual guy comes along who can make her feel like she's truly free to be herself around him, you may very well be in trouble if she's been walking on eggshells around you to maintain your conception of her as chaste and pure. You don't want to be that guy. You want to be the other guy - the one she's comfortable enough feeling she will not be judged that she can actually be totally honest with. sexual framing In a nutshell: it's not the frame that makes the man sexual… it's the sexual man who sets the right frame for hooking up quickly. The more experienced you are, the more you will do this properly, and automatically. FOUR HARD-HITTING TECHNIQUES TO SET SEXUAL FRAMES But until you get to that point, there are a couple of things you can do consciously to set the frames we discussed in the "Sexual Man" article… and I'm going to give you four specific examples right now: Set frames through stories. Rather than telling her that you don't kiss and tell, you could tell her a story about a girl who blabbed to all your mutual friends about the night you hooked up with her, and how lame you thought that was. See - you're not saying at all that you're one to keep a secret - but it is strongly implied, as you probably wouldn't complain so loudly about a behavior you engage in yourself. Set the Frame Dale Carnegie-style. In Dale's book How to Win Friends and Influence People, he talks about the psychological phenomenon that people want to live up to compliments you pay them. If you have a son who never listens, and you keep complimenting him on what a good listener is, that will be much more effective than telling him off for being distracted. This works on girls too… if you compliment a girl on how open-minded and adventurous she is, she will realize that you value that trait, and if she likes you, align herself more with it. Very useful if you have naughty plans for the evening! Qualify her on the frame you want her in. Rather than setting the frame, you test her on it: is she the jealous type? The clingy type? Does she gossip? Is she judgmental? And so forth… just subtly weave it into your conversation or your stories… but if you want a girl to be independent, a very good way of getting her to act independently is to tell her that you really like independent girls, and then make her jump through that hoop. Cialdini's book Influence talks about this one, and he calls it the "Commitment and Consistency" influence trigger: people are much more likely to behave in a way that they have made a commitment to, even if it was only a small verbal commitment. Cold read the frame. Simply tell her something like: "I can tell that you are xyz type of girl," with xyz being the frame you would like to set. You want to give her a reason… you could root it in her body language, her behaviorisms or even her star sign. If she's attracted, she won't argue with you, but the frame will be set. There are a lot more ways to do this, but these should get you started. I don't want to overwhelm you with 15 ways of setting frames… I'm actually more worried that four might be too much already. But I did want to give you a few options to choose from. Pick one or two for your next night out and start practicing them. Eventually, you will have them at unconscious competence - you will have achieved a level of expertise at sexual framing - and you will be setting frames without even realizing that you're doing it. At that point, the only thing you "realize" is that most girls sleep with you the first night… until that, too, becomes expected and if it doesn't happen for once you scratch your head. INFLUENCE AND ETHICS I'll add one more comment here about frames, just in case someone thinks this is manipulative. Here's the thing: you are always setting frames... I just want you to be more conscious of it. Every time you open your mouth to say something, your values and world views get communicated. We are teaching you to free yourself from some of the misguided values about sex our society has implanted in the great majority of us. Being a puritan and a prude was probably a great idea in New England a couple of hundred years ago… but in the 21st century, we have effective birth control and a much larger pool of people to date than the girls in our small town. If she doesn't view the world in this way, she won't be swayed by your stories and cold reads… you're not putting a gun to anyone's head. You're communicating an open-minded world view that gives party-pooping puritans the bird, and you're inviting her to let her repressed sexuality shine too… without her having to worry about judgment. If you haven't experienced it yet, take it from us… girls will LOVE you for it. They will be as honest with you about their sexuality as they have never been with any of their long-term conservative boyfriends… you get to see a more authentic side of her after three hours than they did after three years. Take it from Cyndy Lauper: "Girls just wanna have fun." They really don't have it easy with all the negative frames about female sexuality out there… Your job is to free that girl you like from those restraints. I really wouldn't want to be a girl - they're not allowed to act on their desires the way men are expected to. So do them a favor and let them enjoy life a bit, will ya. ;) FRAME REFUSAL The last thing you need to understand about sexual framing and frames in general is frame refusal… what to do if she disagrees with a frame YOU set, and how to disagree with a frame SHE might set. And the answer, in both cases, is simple… just ignore. If you set a sexual frame and she tries to invalidate it, debate you on it or plain set a contradictory frame, pretend you didn't hear it and move on. Your words will still have the desired effect… she has heard you, and she still understands what your views about sex are. That means later, when the right situation arises and she feels like going home with you, she can still be certain that you're okay with it and that you won't think any less of her because she has sexual desires, too… even though she is a woman (shocking, I know!). If you debate her, however, she will start defending her view point and begin to get entrenched in it. Arguing with her about sex is one of the most certain ways not to have sex with her. If she sets a frame that doesn't jive with the way you want your night to go, simply ignore that too. You're setting your frames and she's setting hers… that's fine. You're both just inviting each other into two different kinds of relationships. At the end of the day, both of you are free to accept each other's invitations, or not. And if she understands that you're really, positively not up for getting into a committed relationship before going to bed with a girl, she basically has two options… go home alone, or accept your invitation for a more passionate way of kicking things off with you. More often than not, the outcome is the latter… girls have needs too, you know. So there you have it… if you control the frame, you control the game. And now that you understand what frames are, how they're communicated and how you can use them to get into steaming hot sexual relationships with the hot girls you see every time you leave the house, well… leaving the house is exactly what you should be doing. You owe it to yourself… and you owe it to her. If you don't make an adventure happen, you both miss out… so pick one of the four ways of setting frames we discussed above and start giving it a spin.

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##Sexual Tension: 7 Ways to Make Women Excited and Randy Sometime back ago, when I was still new to learning about seduction, I shared with a friend the tale of a girl I'd gone out with and the sexual dialogue I'd tried using to get her mind going the right way... and how disappointed I was it hadn't seemed to have had the desired effect. "My man," I remember him saying to me at the time, "I notice you keep trying to use words to get women excited and turned on. But words aren't very good at this. You need to use sexual tension." And I heard this, and I thought it sounded like a great idea... except I had no idea how to create sexual tension, how to use it, or where to even start with it. And my friend, for all his wisdom, was at a loss to explain it. So, I did what any real student of anything does who is unable to find the answer by simpler means, and I embarked on a quest to discover the mechanisms of this phenomenon and to find the key to unlock its power for myself. Recently, years later, I found myself in the opposite position, recommending to readers that they use sexual tension, this time in the "How to Kiss a Girl" article from last week, and having the very first commenter on the post, a guy named Josh, remark: "I would like to see a post on sexual tension. How and when to create it and sustain it. I see you mention touching and proximity to create this and maybe some eye contact that last just a little to long. Those along with some playful banter maybe as well? It's amazing how much of flirting and seduction are non-verbal." Well Josh, the fortunate thing is, unlike my friend from that conversation past, this is one I had to put together over time and figure out the puzzle pieces for, and I can both tell you how to create it, and tell you how to use it. Now let me show you how you can build and direct sexual tension to drive the women you meet lusty, horny, and randy, in minutes or less. sexual tension The mistake I made early on trying to create sexual tension was the same one just about every guy makes: I tried to talk my way to tension. I initially tried talking to women about all kinds of things: Fake boobs Sex positions Orgasms What it takes to be good in bed Sexual escapades of my own Sexual escapades of hers And these led to some truly very fascinating discussions. I learned a lot about female sexuality that I perhaps otherwise wouldn't have learned if not for launching into these intellectual forays about the vagaries of sex. But one thing I didn't do was turn women on. Talking about sex did not make me sexy, I discovered. In fact, dry sex talk, I soon found, did NOT have the effect on women I was hoping it would at ALL... .. and if anything, I started realizing it was a full-on turn OFF for women! I struggled to understand this at first. Why would talking about sex turn women off and drive them away? Shouldn't the act of talking about something make them think about it, and if I'm talking about how open *I* am about sex and how good in bed I am, shouldn't that make them curious about sleeping with me and make the want to try me out? It took me a little while, but the reasons why sex talk doesn't lead to sexual tension in and of itself began dawning on me, one at a time: It kills intrigue. When everyone's cards are laid out on the table, suddenly the poker game is a lot less exciting. Women want anticipation in their seductions... and a seduction where all your cards are showing just makes them want to go find another table to play at. It's unromantic. Ever see a movie where a man's talking to a woman about sex outright? Occasionally you'll see it done well, and it seems romantic and scintillating, but usually it's just crude. It's very hard to do blatant sex talk correctly, and when you're focused on the talk, rather than the tension, you're almost assured of not getting it right. It's skepticism-inducing. Women have adapted in our society to be very skeptical of what men say, because men have adapted in our society to say next to anything in order to get in women's pants. A guy telling a girl he's a good lover is likely to give her the opposite impression... "If you have to say it, it isn't true," I always say, and women seem to have a natural understanding of this principle themselves. Honest sex talk has the other disadvantage that it can make you come across as the creepy guy if you really don't have the timing to discuss it at the right moments naturally or the vibe to remain calm and non-needy while talking about it, but even if you do these things alone aren't enough to build sexual tension. Because sexual tension is not built on talk. It's built on something else. SEXUAL TENSION IN WOMEN: YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED One of the biggest protests of some individuals who oppose the teaching and learning of seduction techniques is that a seducer is someone who takes advantage of, and knowingly manipulates, women. But once you are a seducer, you tend to see things in a very different light. I, for one, am well aware that I can create sexual tension pretty well these days. But I can't create it in every girl. Try as I might, I will sometimes meet women who simply seem immune to the creation of sexual tension. No matter how much I dial up my sexuality, they just... stay neutral. Why might this be? Well, as it turns out, Rosemary Bassoon of the University of British Colombia last year published a paper in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy entitled "The Female Sexual Response: A Different Model" that may just explain why: "Sensing an opportunity to be sexual, the partner's neediness, or an awareness of one or more potential benefits or rewards that are very important to them (but not necessarily sexual), women move from a sexual neutrality to seeking stimuli necessary to ignite sexual desire. This sexual desire would be experienced as a craving for sexual sensations for their own sake, it also might involve a desire to experience physical and subjective arousal and perhaps release of sexual tension. Sexual desire then is a responsive rather than spontaneous event." What Bassoon is saying here is that women in a neutral state don't become sexually turned on; women who want or need to be sexually turned on seek out the stimuli that can achieve this for them. Which gels nicely with my experience. A lot in seduction discusses "creating attraction" or "creating desire" within a woman. And often, as you build attraction up in a girl, or you build up sexual tension within her, you do seem to be creating it, nearly from thin air. But this overlooks the fact that most of the time this happens it's with women who were already interested in you. Women who from the start had some desire to get to know you further, to find out if you were who they thought you were. sexual tension Here's more from Bassoon: "Thus, for many women, it would appear that sexual arousal and a responsive-type of desire occur simultaneously at some point after the women have chosen to experience sexual stimulation[.]" If Bassoon is correct - and I do think she is, from everything I've seen over the years, the seducer does not CREATE the sexual tension a woman feels - he merely provides the stimuli... the key that unlocks the door to the room where a woman can be free to let her hair down and partake, once she's already at least somewhat LOOKING for it. It's why you hear so many experienced seducers saying they think women want sex more than men do, while so many men with little luck yet with women say they think women don't want sex at all. Because to the men who haven't learned how to unlock that door yet, women seem to be eternally closed off to sexual desire... while to the desirable, sexual men who have learned how to be the key to that lock, all the women in search of sexual stimuli in the world seem to be bursting through the doors. sexual tension You of course have heard the old expression about men and women that, "If a key opens many locks, it's a Master Key." Well, to become that Master Key, you must first master sexual tension. Sexual tension is the bittings, the teeth, on the key that lets you open those locks that are so begging for a man to open them. It is what enables you to free the women you meet to indulge in the raw sexuality they are seeking and desire, if they so choose. You cannot force a woman into wanting her. You can't trick her, or fool her, or manipulate her. You can only free her into her desire... if she is in search of it. If she does not want to feel desire though, nowhere in her heart, nothing you can do or say can affect her. The good news, of course, is that the more talented at creating sexual tension you become, the better able you are to unlock the desire in women who even have that desire buried somewhat under the surface... and the more women who do not have desire, or whom you do not desire, will step out of your way. The latter part has been particularly intriguing for me. As I've gotten better and better at creating sexual tension, I've noticed the following becomes true when you're very good at creating this tension: The women you want who want you too REALLY begin to want you The women who DON'T want you, or whom you don't want, understand why their friends DO want you, and understand it's their friends you want (and not them) and that it's you their friends want, and because this is mutual, they calmly clear the path You are speaking a sort of unspoken language that only women and very sexual men understand as you grow better at creating tension, and other people can see it. It's the "spark" women talk on and on about; that magic "thing" no one can seem to put a finger on. It is the magnetic pull between two individuals that combines charisma and desire and mutual interest and makes it something great than all of those things. And when other people see it between you and a girl - when they can tell it is mutual, and that she truly desire you, and you truly desire her - they get out of the way. No cock-blocking. No interventions. No pulling the friend away to "go to the bathroom," never to return. They just let the two lovers alone, because they can see that they will become lovers, and they should become lovers. This all probably sounds very new-agey to you if you haven't experienced what I'm talking about here yet. For the more advanced guys, you're probably nodding your heads in agreement, whether you know how to do this consistently right now or you've stumbled on this by accident from time to time. But anyway, I just wanted to give you a taste of what it feels like to have sexual tension decoded and in your pocket, ready to be pulled out to help you open locks whenever and wherever you need it. Let's get into the real nitty-gritty now of how you transform yourself into that Master Key. THE 7 KEYS OF SEXUAL TENSION If you want to be the man who creates sexual tension in women and draws those hidden desires out of them and liberates them, you'll have some tweaking and changing of how you interact with women and how you present yourself first. And to start with, you must, of course, be comfortable with being around tension... because you'll be creating, well, quite a bit of it. Key #1: Remain Calm in Tense Situations sexual tensionImagine a big, powerful, angry-looking man walks right up to you, stares you in the face, and says, in a booming voice, "Are you trying to pull something on me?" Could you respond calmly and intelligently and defuse the situation? Most men couldn't. Or suppose a stunning, beautiful woman in a tight, slinky, bright red dress strides up to you, stops with her hand on your chest, and says, in the most sexy voice you can imagine, "Do you want me?" Would you be able to remain in control, not miss a beat, and guide her toward the bedroom? Most men would fumble over their own words and drop the ball here. Before you can create tension, you must first be able to handle tension, and that means not flinching when ridiculous situations thrust themselves upon you. And there are exactly two components to this: Having had the experience already, or one like it; and Consciously knowing the correct way to respond. You won't get the first of those two until you've been out there and seen it all (or at least a lot of it), again and again. That's simply field experience, and it's why it's so important you're out there and meeting a lot of new women. Don't get the experiences, and you can't get the conditioning - and conditioning is crucial to your future growth. But the second of those two you can work on right now, without an ounce more experience in these types of situations than you had when you started reading this article. Here's how to respond in tense situations: Don't instantly react. When people panic or get overly excited, they tend to react quickly and instinctively. Thing is, if you don't have much experience in a given situation, your instincts tend to be wrong. Your first reaction to the big guy might be to sputter out excuses, or to violently push back and escalate the situation. Your first reaction to the beautiful vamp might be to say, "Yes, absolutely!" or to act overly cool and say, "Who said I want you?" None of these responses would be correct... they'd just blow the situation and lead to a bad end. So stay calm, and don't instantly react. Don't escalate. Many people escalate when others suddenly force things upon them. They challenge the guy to a fight, or they tell the girl they like her and ask if she likes them. This is wrong - because it's following the other person's lead instead of having them follow yours. Don't bow out. The other chunk of people bow out of tense situations - they tell they guy they're sorry and don't know what he's talking about, or the tell the girl, "Not really," and shoot her down if they're afraid she's just toying with them. This is wrong because it tends to make you look weak or afraid, or, in the case of the woman, it wrecks an otherwise great opportunity. DO ask clarifying / direction-changing questions. This takes the other person off the initiative and transfers the initiative to you, giving you time to regain balance and assess the situation. Asking the tough guy, "Begging your pardon?" then looking at him with a quizzical look, then following up his next exclamation (probably: "You know what I'm talking about!" or "You did this!") with another, disorienting question (e.g., "Do we know each other?") regains the initiative for you and steals his thunder. Asking the beautiful girl, "Is this how you normally greet strange men?" and the, when she responds with something along the lines of "only men as sexy as you," making a statement like, "Well, clearly you have good taste, but we should get to know each other before we go ramming our tongues down one another's throats. Do you have a name, or do they just call you 'man killer?'" will show her you aren't fazed and will bring her true intentions to light. From there, once you're back steering and directing things, you can talk intelligently with the tough guy, or gauge whether the girl's really sexually wound up (in which case, you'd escalate things very quickly, but on your terms) or simply thought you were cute but wanted to test you first (because she likes toying with men and wants to screen out all but the strongest and most experienced men), and take it from there. Key #2: Don't Spill Your Beans The majority of men in today's dating arena seem to follow a philosophy of, "Spill your beans to girls, and it'll all be fine." It's an absolutely atrocious approach, and women don't like it. The reason men adopt this "strategy" in the first place is because they see themselves not getting anywhere with women... and they reason their value must not be high enough. So they work harder to show what high value men they are. Then harder. Then harder still. After a little while in the game, they're spilling the beans on everything remotely interesting or exciting about themselves, and many things that aren't remotely interesting or exciting about themselves as well. Result? Zero intrigue. Zero curiosity. And zero sexual tension. Ever read a romance novel? Or watch a movie with a hero women swoon over? It isn't the guy with his entire life on display for all the world to see, or the guy who's totally transparent to the women he meets. It's the guy who's the mystery who makes women's hearts beat faster. Women are obsessed with the mysterious man with a mysterious life and a mysterious past. The mysterious man is the romantic man. They want to discover him: who is this mystery man? Most of the men they meet are in such a hurry to divulge every detail imaginable about themselves... and then, there's this guy. If you want to create sexual tension, you need to be that guy - you can't go spilling your beans around women and think you'll make them randy later. It doesn't work that way. Wear the cloak of mystery - it's essential. Key #3: Use Strong Eye Contact When it comes to creating tension, of any variety, the eyes have it: If you want to intimidate someone, stare into his or her eyes and don't say a word. If you want to show someone how serious you are about something, stare into his or her eyes and don't say a word. And if you want to create sexual tension with someone, stare into her eyes and don't say a word, too. It might seem odd that staring into a woman's eyes increases sexual tension, but I can tell you from my own experience it certainly does - and so can researchers Joan Kellerman, James Lewis, and James D. Laird in their Journal of Research in Personality studies published in the paper "Looking and loving: The effects of mutual gaze on feelings of romantic love:" "In two studies, subjects induced to exchange mutual unbroken gaze for 2 min with a stranger of the opposite sex reported increased feelings of passionate love for each other. In Study I, 96 subjects were run in the four combinations of gazing at the other's hands or eyes, or in a fifth condition in which the subject was asked to count the other's eye blinks. Subjects who were gazing at their partner's eyes, and whose partner was gazing back reported significantly higher feelings of affection than subjects in any other condition. They also reported greater liking than all subjects except those in the eye blink counting condition. In Study II, with 72 subjects, those who engaged in mutual gaze increased significantly their feelings of passionate love, dispositional love, and liking for their partner. This effect occurred only for subjects who were identified on a separate task as more likely to rely on cues from their own behavior in defining their attributes." Where should you be looking, precisely? As noted in "Eye Contact Flirting," you should be looking directly at the bridge of a woman's nose, in between her eyes, and not shifting back and forth from eye to eye as many individuals tend to do. Shifting from eye to eye shows a focus on reactions - the individual shifting eyes is trying to gauge how his or her conversation partner is reading, reacting to, and interpreting his or her actions, words, and behavior. It's great when you see women doing this to you... it means they're deeply interested in how you're feeling about them. But it's even better when they're staring deeply back into your eyes... because then they are signaling that they are every bit as into you as you are into them. Key #4: Keep Talk to a Minimum Opinions aren't sexy. Neither is what you had for lunch yesterday, or even your thoughts on silicone breast implants or a discussion of your favorite sex position. Those are not the things that make women lust for you. Sitting there quietly but intensely while she talks, or leading her silently but firmly through a crowd in a nightclub, or from one part of a café to another, all are things that increase sexual tension. sexual tension Talk should only be used in quantity (where you're doing most of the talking, rather than letting her do most of the talking and opinion-sharing and you're simply feeding back to her what she thinks and feels and actively listening) in situations where you want to defuse the tension. Thus, profuse talking from you is best used: During transition points, like going somewhere she doesn't know the destination of, or taking her to your home, where you risk having her shift emotionally along the way without topics for her to logically seize on and think about During spontaneous escalation and manhandle kiss situations where you need to both progress things physically and emotionally, yet provide engagement for her logically to stop the different parts of her brain from going to war with each other over their differing objectives During turnarounds where you're about to lose a girl and are instead working to get her to change her mind and stay (see: "Don't Let Her Go"). Otherwise, let her do the talking; all you need to do is stare into her eyes and listen... and lead the conversation forward with probing questions and effective deep diving, and lead the interaction forward with strong leading and consistently moving her to the next stage of things. Key #5: Employ the Power of Suggestion Have you ever had a woman stare you straight in the eyes and say something like, "You want me, don't you?" If so, how'd you feel? Most likely, if you wanted her a little bit before, you wanted her a lot afterward. That's the power of suggesting. What we talk about on here when we discuss chase frames and sexual frames of all sorts is exactly this: suggesting to a woman's conscious and to her subconscious that yes, she very much wants you. If she doesn't you at all, of course, this will annoy her and drive her away - which is great. If she doesn't want you at all, you're not going to convince her by spending another three hours talking to her, so it's better you found out early on she wasn't interested in mating with you and bailed than it was for this to happen much further into your courtship dance. But if she is interested in you, this serves as an amplifier for that interest - and it rockets sexual tension ahead. Don't be afraid of using suggestion (assuming you use it properly, of course - see the articles linked to above on chase frames and sexual frames); it merely acts as a filter and an amplifier for what's already there. Key #6: Use Touch Well Touch's relationship with sexual tension is intriguingly diverse: you can use it to increase sexual tension quite a bit, or you can use it sparingly to this effect... you can even refrain from using it altogether. The difference is, different ways of using touch get you different flavors of sexual tension. sexual tension Here's how they each work: Lots of touch: hot tension. Lots of touch leads to what you might call "hot tension." This is where you and the girl have been touching a LOT, she's thinking hard about sex with you, and she very much wants it. This is the kind of tension you'll see if you play around with rapid physical escalation in dance floor game and at parties and such. There are other places you can use it - long bus rides is a great one, for instance, where you're sitting next to the girl and can be very close and very physical - but those are the primary places. Strategic touch: excited tension. If you're hardly touching a girl, but strategically touch her here and there - you tap her stomach a few times while making a point, cup her elbow while doing so, at some point find an excuse to grab her head or one of her breasts as a demonstration of some story you're telling, or put your hand on her back as you guide her through an important transition - if it's infrequent, these can be very exciting moments for women. They raise tension substantially, and the thought that races through the girl's mind is, "Oh, wow, I think he DOES like me too! What if something happens, like... soon? Oh wow!" She becomes excited, and anticipation rapidly builds. No touch: nervous tension. Nervous tension is the hardest to work with, but it's the best for reserved and inexperienced women, or for women who are consciously trying to control themselves (e.g., women who've decided they've had their fill of hook ups and from here on out are ONLY going to allow themselves serious relationships, despite whatever desires they might really have). This is where you increase sexual tension purely using the other keys mentioned, and don't touch her at all... until the two of you are alone together and you create the first kiss. This one's only for pros - master hot tension and excited tension before you try to pull off nervous tension, or you'll probably end up with a heck of a whole lot of nothin'. If you're just learning sexual tension, I recommend starting out with hot tension, simply because it's the easiest to do and it generates the clearest reactions. It's also the most unstable kind of tension, however, and the most prone to blowing up in your face. Of the three of these, excited tension is the most stable, because it leads to the most natural, comfortable, and positive sort of tension - it's not an extreme emotion that's likely to crash if you make a single mistake. The only drawback of excited tension is that it's still a bit too "obvious" for reserved women, and for the women who are "pros." For those girls, you need to pull out your big guns (nervous tension), but again, that one's a high-wire act I only recommend you attempt once you're good with the other two types of tension. Key #7: Keep Her "Guessing" This one ties back to #2, and it relates quite a bit with what we talked about in the post on indirect game last week, the point being, of course, that while you imply you are interested in her... you never come quite out and say it. You can use this even with a direct opener - you simply follow up that up with all the rest of your conversation after never giving her full satisfaction about your motives. You can joke, and kid, and imply, you just can't say it outright - you'll rob her of that mystery we discussed in Key #2. Here's what a conversation with a girl will look like when she's trying to press for an answer from a man and he's keeping her guessing (although note: once you're good at creating tension, you'll be coming across like enough of an authority figure for most women that they simply won't challenge you like this... this one's simply for demonstration purposes): Her: So tell me... do you like me? Him: What do you think? Her: Well, I'm still trying to figure that out! Him: And why's it so important to figure out? Her: I'm just curious. Him: I'd say you are, yes. Her: And how about you... you're not curious if I like you? Him: I don't need to be curious. Her: Why not? Him: Because I already know the answer. Her: [laughs] So what is it? Him: Remind me to tell you sometime. Her: [laughs] Him: So how'd you end up here in this part of the world, anyway? You don't seem like a globe-trotting kind of girl... It's pretty obvious to anyone with a modicum of social intelligence that both people are attracted to one another in that conversation there. But he "keeps her guessing"... she's not really guessing, she knows he's attracted to her too, but his aptitude at keeping engaging banter like this on without bending and telling her exactly what she's asking displays his social finesse and his experience with women. He communicates being preselected to her through this verbal dance, and it makes her want him more. THE SEXUAL TENSION MASTER KEY Like my friend told me back in the day, talking about sex does not a lusty woman make. It's eliciting her lusty side, through employing the keys of sexual tension, that liberate her to be her aroused, excited self around you - and to realize that you are the one you can give her the things she's searching for in a sex partner. Those keys, to recap, of course are: Remain calm in tense situations, Don't spill your beans, Use strong eye contact, Keep talk to a minimum, Employ the power of suggestion, Use touch well, and Keep her "guessing" When you're using all of these, and you combine them with a sexy vibe, you turn yourself into a man women find completely irresistible... and the women who are "looking for something" start coming out of the woodwork, flirting with you, trying to catch your eye, trying to pique your interest. It becomes easy. sexual tension Which is a little strange, at first, especially when you're coming from a background where sex used to be this elusive thing that most men wanted and most women didn't want to give up. Suddenly the tables have turned, and women want it from you like crazy... meanwhile, most men out there are still standing around talking about how hard it is to get women to intimacy, and you begin having a harder and harder time understanding how they can even possibly think this, or why on Earth you ever did. You're a changed man, and the way women react to you has changed, and the ease of having the kinds of experiences you want to have in the world has changed. It changes everything. And the only difference between you and those guys standing there complaining bitterly about women is, you've turned yourself into a Master Key able to open many locks... while they're still milling about wondering why the door is closed to them in the first place. Time to get unlocking.

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##Sexy Body Language for Men (Learned from Hot Girls) I thought this would be a fun article to write. If you haven't spent much time learning body language and expressions from the very sexy and attractive women you meet, you've been missing out on a valuable source of highly applicable lessons in being sexy, seductive, and downright charming. Pretty women might seem like an odd place to learn about men's body language, but they are, in fact, one of your most invaluable sources of preciously good information. body language for men In "How Much Do Looks Matter for Romantic Success?" I mentioned learning how to do well with girls mostly from guys who were seemingly naturally good with women. One of the biggest differences between these guys and other guys, I feel like, is that these guys usually have game that mimics that of women. They get good by essentially taking what women do with them, and doing it right back toward women. Many of the things on this site that constitute some of my bigger contributions to "game tech" (e.g., deep diving, pre-opening, Law of Least Effort, etc.) are partly or wholly drawn from adapting things I've watched women do with me and others. I won't review the larger items here I've already covered in detail in other articles on the site - instead, this article will be focused on small little things you can do, that you might not have been aware of, that women do to you all the time and that are just as effective when you do them back. I've broken them down here into two classes: the physical, and facial expressions. body language for men First, I'd like to start off with some of the physical / nonverbal things I've picked up from women that work just as well on women when you use them yourself. In my opinion, these are all very strong ways to generate interest and attraction from girls without having to do all that much to get it. One note on these: these, and the tips from other sections, can be done in two different ways: demonstrative and subtle. To differentiate between the two, think: Demonstrative = Awesome Party Guy (e.g., Van Wilder) Subtle = Charming Smooth Seducer (e.g., James Bond) Each of these has its place - demonstrative is much more congruent when you're running higher energy approaches (if, say, you're approaching a lot of women on the street or in a nightclub), whereas subtle is better if you're doing lower energy approaches (if people are introducing you or you're doing a very good job with pre-opening and subtle opening at an event or in some casual situation). So imagine these and implement them accordingly - demonstrative when you're high energy, and subtle when you're low. THE ENTRANCE POSE body language for menWhen you first step into a girl's line of sight, stop and strike a pose. Not like as if someone's about to take your photograph... but rather as if you just needed to pause there, and somewhat dramatically toss your head back a bit, puff out your chest, and throw your shoulders back. It sounds a little exaggerated, and it is a little exaggerated. The idea is to command the room's attention - you want the pretty girls there to stop and take note of you, while you do not take note of them. You shouldn't be looking at them... they should look at you. What happens here is they get to "watch" you, which subconsciously places you in a kind of mini-celebrity position - suddenly you are being watched by her and her friends and everybody else, and you don't even notice them. When she meets you later, she'll have to pretend she didn't see you, but that mini-celebrity feeling remains. Head movements: you'll want to majestically look off in the distance of a room or place, while slowly counting to 3, then turn your head to look the other way for another 3 seconds, before continuing into the main area. For instance, you'd step in, stop, pose, and look forward and right, chin parallel to the ground and eyes up over the crowd; then, 3 long seconds later, look forward and left. You can modify this depending on how you're making your entrance; for instance, if you're striding up onto the beach after having been in the ocean, you can stop and put your head back and run your hands through your wet hair, eyes closed. The main idea is to get women looking at you and checking you out and feeling almost as if they are watching a model or a movie star or another kind of celebrity. It sounds silly... you may even find it silly the first few times you do it. But it gets you much warmer opens, and you will occasionally get comments about it, too (from the girls who are so excited by you they can't retain their composure - e.g., "I saw you when you came in. I really like your shirt!"). CHANGING DIRECTION: THE PIVOT TURN You'll see this with runway models: Obviously, this isn't how you want to walk normally. However, there's a very good time to employ the pivot turn, and that's when you need a sudden change in direction. Ever start walking one way, and suddenly realize you're going entirely the wrong way? You look a little silly if you suddenly turn around and walk back the other way... it looks like you don't know what you're doing. With the pivot turn, you look so graceful and collected that people don't know why you did it, but tend to assume you must've had a very good reason (which isn't the truth of course... the truth is, you just realized you needed to turn around, and did so in a way that was aesthetically appealing). If you're moving very quickly when you realize you need to course correct, you can do so exactly as the model does in the video above (except slightly blockier in your movements, to be a bit more masculine). If you're moving slowly, I'd recommend you stop, scan the area in front of you without moving your head, as if looking for someone or something, then pivot and go back the other way. How much does this matter? It's one of those things that probably doesn't matter 90% of the time, but the 10% that it does, you'll usually never realize that the girl you met later saw you pivot gracefully earlier and that made the difference between her writing you off as an uncollected klutz and hoping to meet you later for being a collected, elegant walker. You can also use the pivot as a means of getting noticed and creating that mini-celebrity effect when navigating around. e.g., say you want a girl to notice you before you approach her in a bar - you might walk up near a stage where a band is performing, stop and check them out for a few seconds, then pivot and begin walking back in her direction. Combined with a sexy walk, you catch a lot of attention and can frequently get a much warmer reception on "noticing" and opening the girl of your choice than you will by walking up to her and meeting her without her having had a chance to check you out and decide she liked you before. THE EAR TAP When you're in loud venues - lounges, bars, nightclubs, etc. - one way to get some easy early investment from women that it's almost impossible for them to resist - but that plants you very firmly in command - is to wait until she's talking to you, and tap your ear for her to lean in and speak to you more closely and more loudly. body language for men Don't do this too early - you need to have a little rapport first and she needs to feel like you are a warm person who likes her and accepts her... otherwise, she can auto-reject, because this one, while simple, is very commanding and feels like a lot of investment. You'll also need to reward her after she does - a warm (but mildly aloof) smile, coupled with putting your hand on her arm and/or approving of what she's told you works well here. The gist is, you want her to feel glad for having leaned in and complied. Pull this one off right, and it rockets forward investment (and greatly raises attraction). Oh, and for the record, when girls do this to you it's usually a bad sign - it's a sign they feel dominant enough to you that they can issue commands. Your best bet response-wise is to pull them in close to you so they can better hear - if they don't like you, they'll resist or act annoyed (but it wasn't going anywhere with them anyway); conversely, if they were flirting with you and testing you, they'll only become more interested. THE NONVERBAL INTERRUPTION It's not something you want to overuse - in fact, unless she's a real Chatty Cathy, you'll probably only use it once with any given girl - but interrupting a girl nonverbally is another powerful signal that you're the one in charge of the interaction, and something that gets her firmly following your lead. To pull this one off, when you have need to interrupt a girl: Hold up your fingers in a, "Hold on a second," gesture Widen your eyes and raise your eyebrows, to catch her attention If she continues talking, raise your other hand and send a tremor through your hands for emphasis Once you have her attention, point out what you wanted to point out - and it should be something relevant to what she was saying, usually (occasionally, you can point something else out if, say, you were discussing it earlier and an example walks by - say you're at a café where you were joking about a strange pastry on display earlier, and you notice someone buying it - you can interrupt her to point this out to her and both of you will laugh). Interrupting this way is very dominant, and communicates that you are more aware of the surroundings than she is and completely comfortable ordering and commanding women (and her, of course). THE "WHATEVER" SHRUG If a girl is teasing you about something you don't really want to engage on, shrugging is a good option... but only if you shrug the right way. If you shrug too casually or seriously, it looks like you're communicating you do not care about her opinion, and she can auto-reject. It's important you don't do this. However, if you shrug by doing this: Shrugging your shoulders quickly and lightly - sort of a fast "half shrug" Glancing quickly off to the side and turning your head somewhat Making an exaggerated "Okay, whatever," face as you look away ... you communicate ever so slightly that YOU are starting to go into auto-rejection... in a cool, socially-calibrated way. body language for men What happens here is this: girls will usually start chasing, begin to rein themselves in, and try and act more considerately toward you and spend more time focused on your reactions. What's the good in that? It's all investment. It might sound silly and slight, but this one can really get girls chasing you if done correctly... however, it must come as a response to a girl overstepping her bounds and being socially awkward and overly insulting in her teasing, and you can't go right back to being warm with her immediately after. You need to be tentative and on guard... she needs to gradually win you back and pull you out of auto-rejection. For that reason, this one is better saved until you really know what you're doing, and are comfortable enough using social pressure that you know how to build it and maintain it and use it in a way that lets girls gradually unwind the pressure, rather than you doing so yourself. Until you reach that point - the point where you can really play hard to get and let women pursue you - you're better off using the skeptical look when you hear weird things from women or things that move the interaction backwards. body language for men Next on the list are facial expressions. As with the physical tips above, you can do these either demonstrative (more exaggerated) or subtle (less exaggerated), and you'll want to adjust that to fit with your overall tone while approaching. Facial expressions are a very low effort way for you to communicate with women, and this makes them very attractive. Anything that ups your sprezzatura makes you appear a more dominant, more powerful, more attractive man. We've already discussed the skeptical look and the bored look before; now, we'll examine a few more expressions. THE CUTE AND SEXY LOOK Ever seen Zoolander? Well guess what... "Blue Steel" is real. Although, slightly less dramatic than Ben Stiller makes it out to be in that flick. body language for men I first noticed girls doing this, and then I started noticing that every guy I knew who was really good with girls did it too. My initial reaction was, "That's a sort of gay expression," but they'd do it whenever we were out, and get great receptions from women. I started paying attention to male actors in movies - they did it too. Even James Bond does it - Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig - all do the "cute and sexy look." body language for men The normal components of this look are: An underlook: chin tucked down, eyes peaking up Slightly pursed lips in a slight, impish smile Eyebrows: up if you need to look less intimidating (if you're generally very masculine), down if you need to look more intimidating (if you're still working on your masculinity) Optional: a hand or other object near your face to draw attention to this look When wearing this facial expression, you will: Get stronger initial attraction from women Get opened and get approached more frequently by women Get women chasing you more and investing in you more readily Get more leeway with women and much reduced odds of auto-rejection Get faster escalations and larger escalation windows body language for menThis facial expression really is a magical attraction amplifier, and it's one everyone who's very good with women learns to do naturally on his own anyway - it just gets such consistently good feedback from women. Why's this look so powerful? Why do men find it alluring when women do it, why do women find it alluring when men do it, and how has it become so famous that it even received its own ode / parody by Ben Stiller? Honestly, the best I've been able to do theory-wise is an assumption that it's some combination of looking both sexy and vulnerable that drives members of the opposite sex wild... but I'm not even sure how or why. It may be some kind of mating signal, signaling individuals that are receptive to sexual advances. Whatever the reason why it works though, it works, and it's a lot of fun to do. THE "WELL, ANYWAY" LOOK This expression is one used to both poke a little fun at your conversation partner, and to hint to her in no unsubtle terms that it's time to get off this topic and onto one that's moving the conversation forward, before it's too late. To get an idea of what this looks like, see the girl in the image below: body language for men ... now imagine that the second part of this is for her to close her mouth and exhale in a somewhat exasperated sigh. For added effect, she may slowly nod her head up and down a few times, all while looking off in the other direction. Step-by-step, it looks like this: Raise your eyebrows dramatically, while inhaling deeply, widening your eyes, turning your head to the side, and moving your eyes off to the side (it's as if you're looking at someone next to you and communicating, "Can you believe this?" except that there's nobody there) Open your mouth as if you're just about to say something... but, no, it isn't worth it. Slowly close it again Optional: after you close your mouth, keep your eyebrows up and slowly nod several times This creates some slight social pressure and social awkwardness that compels her to fix the situation. This is one that, like the "whatever" shrug, is best used when you know how to handle social pressure appropriately and use this only when girls are being awkward, aren't responding to your signals, or they're getting stuck on some bad topic or beating a dead horse too much. FACIAL TAPPING When you're somewhere seated - at a table, at a bar - and you're in intimate conversation with a girl, you can use something I call "facial tapping" to draw more attention to your face. Facial tapping includes: Tapping or rubbing your temple Stroking your chin or along your mouth Tapping your cheekbone (under your eye) or drumming your fingers on it Running your hand along the back of your neck just under your hairline Running your hand from the back of your neck along the front of your neck This was one I picked up wholly unconsciously and didn't realize I'd started doing until I had to describe to a friend how you can call attention to your eyes better when you're making sexual eye contact with women. But after I became aware of it, I started noticing that I was paying attention to women using similar gestures, as well as very sexually attractive men, and my assumption is I picked it up from them. Why would you want to draw more attention to your face? It makes your conversation partner focus more intently on your face, which amplifies the power of the facial expressions you're making and gets her more zeroed in on you in general. And the more focused on you someone feels, generally, the stronger she'll feel the connection between the two of you is, and the more powerful the bond feels. The more quickly you can move with her generally, too, and the more sexually excited she tends to become, assuming you're using your facial features to build sexual tension. BEDROOM EYES body language for menFor creating the right kind of sexual vibe, using bedroom eyes (and a bedroom voice) helps immensely. The easiest way to get yourself doing bedroom eyes is to have yourself look at a woman the same way you'd look at her in the bedroom... saucy, seductive, and sensual. Just imagine yourself in the bedroom instead of out in public as you gaze at her, and your eye contact will normally adjust automatically here. If you still struggle to get your head around what the difference is between bedroom eyes and any other sort of eye contact, here's the how-to: Lower your eyelids slightly - not enough that you look like you're asleep, but enough so that you look somewhat "dreamy" Unfocus your eyes just a bit - not so much that everything becomes blurry, but more as if you are only focused on what's directly in front of you (which, of course, is her) Even as your eyes are unfocused distance-wise, have them laser-focused on the face and eyes of the woman you're speaking with - the stare you're going for here is soft but intense Because of the mirror neurons that fire in her brain, when she's looking at you and you're making this face at her, her mirror neurons will cause her to begin to mimic your body language in this way... and to feel the effects of it. Through bedroom eyes, you can make women more sexually primed with your eyes alone. TRIANGLE GAZING This one's an old one but a good one. "Triangle gazing" is the old term given to looking from each of a girl's eyes down to her mouth and back. Because there are three points, your eyes are considered here to move in a "triangle." If you're using eye contact the way we've discussed on here before (e.g., in "Eye Contact Flirting"), you'll actually only be covering two points - the bridge of her nose in between her eyes, and her lips. People are extremely sensitive to even slight eye movements. You may not think something as minor as your eyes moving back and forth between her eyes and her lips will be noticed... but she will notice it. body language for men She probably will not be consciously aware of it. All she'll know consciously is that it seems like you are very attracted to her and very sexually interested in her... and if the feeling is mutual, she'll begin to become excited (if the feeling isn't mutual, of course, she'll start feeling awkward and most likely excuse herself). You can use this simple maneuver to: Increase the sexual tension between you and her Screen out women who aren't interested in you sexually Prepare her for a kiss The communication in triangle gazing is, "I'm looking at your mouth because I'm thinking about kissing it." Alternately, if you notice women staring at your mouth, unless you have a piece of food stuck in your teeth, you can usually safely assume this means the same thing (especially if they're staring at you with bedroom eyes, and their eyes are darting from mouth to eyes, eyes to mouth, and back repeatedly). THE POWER OF BODY LANGUAGE Body language is extremely important to creating desire in women and communicating power and dominance. The most attractive men are the men who've focused on their nonverbal fundamentals like body language and eye contact and facial expressions to the point where they have them down as well as the sexiest men and sexiest women. Women have a lot they can teach you on being very sexually attractive with your nonverbals, and if you're paying attention as you meet them and talk to them, you can pick these lessons up naturally and adopt them for your own use. Men's body language is something that's greatly under-discussed because it's something that usually doesn't lead to any strong visible reaction. Unlike something you say, you aren't able to say, "I did X, and as a results she said or did Y." Which can make figuring out the right nonverbals to use and the right time to use them a good deal more difficult. However, once you have these added to your toolbox, you've placed another set of effective new tools into use - and you'll be just as good at exciting the girls who see you doing this as you feel watching them do it.

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##She Doesn't Even Need to Know Your Name About 3 ½ years ago in Washington, D.C., I was getting frustrated because I was finding this consistent pattern of how I'd be telling girls all these amazing, fascinating things about myself, and they'd act bored or unimpressed and things would go nowhere and I'd lose them. This kept happening, and anytime I see something happen again and again, I make the problem a priority to focus on and iron out, so I decided to try what at the time seemed like a radical strategy and one I didn't really even think would work: I'd focus on telling women as little as possible about myself and just let them talk about themselves. My first time doing this was on a date with a 21 year old fashion model from Texas who'd just moved to town. I'd met her very briefly on the subway a few nights before, and she knew nothing about me other than my name and that I lived in town, and had only given me her email address. I put together a rather elaborate process to get her on a date despite these facts, which perhaps I'll go into in another post. She was unsure about me, and wanted to meet for coffee before heading to the comedy show I'd wanted to take her to go see, just to make sure I wasn't a weirdo and that she liked me. We sat at a Starbucks for about forty-five minutes, with her talking about herself, her friends, relationship problems her friends were having, and all manner of things, and me simply showing interest and doing some active listening, and saying nothing about myself and her asking me nothing about myself. When it got close to the time for the comedy show, I asked her if she wanted to go, and she replied with an enthusiastic "yes!" During the comedy show, I cracked a few jokes and got physically very close with her, and afterward I invited her home for a nightcap. We went straight home to my place and slept together. She later told me that she didn't date much and never had hook-ups or one-night stands. Since then, just about all of my fast lays have followed suit. Just a few days ago in Manila, a 20 year old college mathwhiz-turned-party girl, tall and pretty who rolled within high society and dressed fashionably and prided herself on the fact that all her friends were wealthy and well-connected, went home with me around 17 or 18 minutes after I started talking to her. We slept together within about 45 minutes of first meeting, and all I'd told her at that point was my name (which she forgot), my favorite drink (Jack and Coke), and where in town I was staying. She'd asked me nothing else, and I'd told her nothing else. Nothing. And I spent the night and the next morning being intimate with her. According to my host in Manila, who knew her a bit, she was rather conservative, had only recently lost her virginity, had resisted his talented natural buddy's efforts to woo her, and that that night with me was most likely her first one-night stand. THE COUNTERINTUITIVE LOGIC OF NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU At first, I was, oh, mildly bitter about this. Even after I shed my bitterness, it took me a long time to come to terms with how this really worked. The less a girl knows about you, I realized, the more likely she is to sleep with you quickly. The more she finds out about you, if it's amazing, interesting, wonderful stuff she's finding out, the more likely she is to slot you into the running as a potential boyfriend, and the less likely intimacy is to happen quickly - or, in fact, at all. The more I think about it, the more reasons I realize why things shake out this way. But I'll cut to the quick of it: when I talk with guys and I tell them this, I'll often get some push back: but I want to feel like a girl's getting to know me, they'll say. I want to feel that connection. My response to that? What do you want more - that some girl know you and care about you, or that some girl come home with you and shag your brains out? Because that's often what it comes down to. A girl who knows you too well is quite often not going to be willing to risk the connection she has with such a great guy on something as trifling as rapid intimacy. She saves that for guys she doesn't know so well and doesn't care so much about. If she knows you well, and you're a half-decent guy, the fun and release of fast sex isn't worth the risk it brings of losing you and your respect for her. Again, in other words, because I really want to pound this point home: the more a girl gets to know you, the more your chances of getting intimate with her quickly go down. Now, I recognize that's directly opposite of the majority of what you'll hear in the seduction community. Most of the seduction community's "attraction" game is based on telling stories that display valuable traits about oneself, showing off high value characteristics, etc. I believe those are valuable skills to get down, but at some point you're going to want to move beyond them - and sooner, rather than later. Who's cooler and sexier - the guy you ask what he does, and he tells you about his high flying job that takes him all over the world, or the guy you ask what he does, and he smiles a knowing smile, pauses a moment, and tells you, "I'm in business." Yeah, that's right - the second guy. The second guy is multitudes cooler. He is a super, ultra, wickedly sexy beast. The girl might ask him what kind of business he's in, and he'll reply with something like, "The kind where you make money. Haha, I'm kidding you… we just do some consulting for various companies on their business processes. Nothing terribly interesting. How about you, what do you do?" The reason he comes across as so powerful and sexy is because he impresses without trying to impress. He's following the Law of Least Effort to the tee and she's just eating it up. Because getting girls interested in you and pursuing you and chasing after you isn't about making a new friend or finding a confidant you can tell your innermost secrets to. It's about finding ways to attract and intrigue and spellbind beautiful women and make them dream of being together with you. And, strange as it may seem, the best way to do that is to reveal as little about yourself as possible. WAYS TO KEEP YOURSELF OFF-TOPIC Not talking about yourself is a bit of an art. Most of us talk about ourselves non-stop, all the time with everyone. My growth in this particular area of seduction has followed an interesting synergistic curve; basically, as I've gotten better at deep dives and chase frames, I've found it easier and easier to avoid shining the conversational spotlight on me. And so will you, if you make working on those things a priority. Here's something very peculiar I've noticed: I'm told repeatedly by people that I'm extremely charming, magnetic, and engaging. But as I've gotten better and better at reading body language and facial expressions, I've begun realizing that the more time I spend talking, the more uncomfortable people get and the more they look like they want to get back to being the ones doing the talking. So I've focused somewhat on cramming enough interesting, important details into as short a conversational space as possible, then shutting up and putting the focus back on the other person. Everything I say is geared to be interesting though, and that serves two functions: It makes people want to know more about me, and they will ask, if they feel the need to know more about me or don't have anything to talk about on their own, and It makes people excited to share things about themselves that are in the same vein or similarly interesting if they have anything to share. So, even back in the days when I used to have a corporate desk job, when women would ask me what I did, I'd tell them I was a writer and a traveler. Because it was true - I wrote, and I traveled. If the question of how I paid the bills came up, then I'd say I had a day job doing business consulting, but otherwise, the nature of my day job was moot. Being a business consulting is boring and average; being a writer and a traveler is exciting and mysterious. When women hear those things, they tend to ask more questions, or launch into trying to bond with you on commonalities ("No way, I love travel! Where's your favorite place?"). Remember that it's better to have women pushing for bonding and relating than it is for you to be doing it. And the second part of that is putting the focus back on the girl. You don't want the focus on you. If she's very interested in you, she may keep putting the focus back on you - and that's fine, and you'll give her a short answer with an interesting fact or two, and put the spotlight back on her again. Sometimes you'll get a back-and-forth where she tells you something about herself, then asks you about you, and you tell her something about yourself, then ask her about her, and that's fantastic - you get this really quick build up of intensity where you're both just fascinated with each other and wanting to get to know each other really quick. Other times, you'll get into this dynamic where she might ask you a little about yourself, then you'll put the spotlight back on her, and she'll regale you with impressive tales of things in her life - and that's also fantastic, she's working hard to get you feeling impressed and excited by her. The only scenario that we don't want is the one where we spend all the time talking about ourselves. That's how interactions go belly-up. So, a couple of examples so you know what I'm talking about here: Example of Back-and-Forth Guy: How do you spend your time? Girl: I'm an accountant and I work a few nights as a bartender downtown. What do you do? Guy: Oh no way. I'm a writer and a traveler. Being a bartending accountant… wow, that's cool. You're like the sexy nerd with glasses who knows how to party, huh? Girl: Haha, seriously. But wait, you're a writer… oh my God, I write too! Like, what do you write? Guy: Just some books and articles, mostly on leadership, getting the things you want out of life, that kind of stuff. I feel like most people never go for what they want and just float along, getting whatever comes their way instead of what they go out and put work in for. Girl: Totally. Guy: What do you write about? Girl: Mostly just poems, nothing too impressive. Guy: The fact that you write, account, and bartend all in the same week is impressive enough in its own right. I can already tell you've got to be a pretty dynamic person. You have to be, to keep up a pace like that. Girl: Haha, some of my friends say that, yeah. So, like, your writing, do you have anything published? Example of Girl Keeping the Focus on Herself Girl: So because of that, I knew that I wanted to be a philosophy student. Guy: Wow, that's awesome. Now I know who to bring all my existential life questions to. Why'd you choose the school you're going to - just a good school for that, all your friends are going there… what? Girl: Well, actually… it was the only one I got into! Haha, don't tell anyone! Guy: My lips are sealed! They'd have to bribe it out of me with money, alcohol, and beautiful, lusty women. Girl: Hahaha! Guy: So you get into this school that says, okay fine, we'll let this philosophy girl come here… Girl: Hahaha… Guy: Then what? Become a philosopher sitting in a cave somewhere thinking about forms and Plato's Republic? Girl: Wow, yeah, that's a good question. I still haven't figured out the answer to that one yet. Then what… hmm… That's generally how those two styles of conversation work. You'll notice there's more humor (at the girl's expense, but nothing that's cutting or insulting) in the second example; that's because when the girl is mostly talking about herself, using a little humor helps things stay light / keeps the conversation from getting too heavy, and shows that even though you're focused on her, you're not afraid to give her a bit of a friendly ribbing at the same time. You don't want to overdo it with the humor - it's just interspersed in there - because the real intent is to get her talking more about herself. The humor's just there to make the conversation a bit more fun and make it easier for her to talk more about herself and make her laugh and feel rewarded for opening up. In the former example, with the back-and-forth, you'll notice how the guy only makes brief comments about himself, giving only short, concise, yet interesting details. Eventually what will happen with this conversation is that one of the parties will ask a question that the other goes into greater detail on. If they guy is doing a good job of that, it will almost always be the women who goes that route, discussing in detail something significant about her life that's related to her dreams, ambitions, fears, hopes, etc. Check out the article on deep diving for a bit more on how to do that. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN YOUNGER WOMEN AND OLDER WOMEN Older women tend to be more socially experienced, and will do a better job interrogating you about yourself. Younger women tend to be less socially experienced, and will tend to view you as higher status than them if you are skillfully managing a social interaction, and so will tend to fall into the more submissive position of simply answering your questions and seeking to impress you with information about themselves. Many guys mistakenly take this as a sign these women are not interested - that's a mistake. Just because a girl is not asking you about yourself does NOT mean she isn't interested. Again, that goes against seduction community dogma. But some of the fastest pick ups I've had have been with women who've asked me virtually nothing about myself. But when I asked these girls later when they first wanted me, it was usually when they first saw me, stood next to me, or sat down next to me. The reason they didn't bother asking anything was because their minds were already made up. They were just waiting for me to run through the process and get them out of there to go get intimate somewhere. PARTING THOUGHTS This is one of those, "How deep does the rabbit hole go…" kind of deals, and I'll try and write more on it in the future, and I'm feverishly revising How to Make Girls Chase to include as much of my latest thinking on this as possible before publishing (hopefully before New Year's), and it's going to be part of what Spellbinding focuses on when I put that out early next year, but this is an incredibly detailed aspect of seduction that's incredibly under-talked about in the seduction community, I guess because almost no one does it, and those that do are natural at it who don't know how to properly explain it. I got into this trying to figure out how guys pulled off really fast pulls and slept with beautiful girls they'd just met quickly - girls who didn't usually do that kind of thing or never had before - but no one could explain it to my satisfaction. It seemed like it should be easy, but the more I studied it, the more nuanced I realized it was. So, I'm excited to keep fleshing out theory and findings on this - it's a super-fun topic. I was Mr. Relationship Management for a while - had a few people tell me I was in danger of becoming a Relationship Management guru - so now I want to take a step back from that and focus on discussing getting fast lays and making pick ups happen rapidly. So, when you think about girls not needing to, really, know anything about you - indeed, when we woke up Friday morning, and I made love to that 20 year old high society girl again in Manila, keep in mind that she didn't know my age, profession, where I was from, whether I was in college or employed or unemployed or independently wealthy or dirt poor and dead broke, she didn't know if I had a girlfriend or a wife or I'd been single for years, and she didn't even know my name; we'd talked for all of maybe 20 minutes the night before before leaving the bar, and only about the most rudimentary stuff - be rationale about it and don't take it personally. For me, anyway, I used to be a little offended, and say to myself, "That's it? I tell girls a lot about myself, and they won't do anything with me, but I keep my mouth shut and they sleep with me not long after I've met them?" But really, who's more honest than the man who says nothing? He does not tell a lie, he does not seek to impress, and he does not misrepresent himself. Because, for many women, heck, if I can be bold enough to say it, maybe even most women - they don't really need to hear that much about you. A woman can get a better feel for the kind of man you are simply by watching how you are with her, how you react to the things she says, and how you lead her and move her and how confident with her you act. That's what true seduction is really about, and all the talk is just filler that slows things down at best, and gunks up the gears of the seduction and makes it all fall apart at worst. So cut out the filler - talk about yourself less, and move things along more quickly. You might be surprised at what happens - I know I certainly was, back in 2007. Interesting experiment - even more interesting results.

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##Shoot First, Ask Questions Later By now you know I'm a big proponent of moving fast and playing to win. I consider these vital traits to succeeding with women in today's day and age, where we live in urban environments literally flooded with both millions of viable female options for you to end up with - and millions of viable male options for every woman you meet to end up with. Men who dally around get scraps. Or, quite often, nothing at all. One of the main mentalities I deem absolutely necessary to nurture in yourself is "shoot first, ask questions later." Action over inaction. Staying constantly in motion, and ensuring that that constant motion is pointed always in the direction in which victory lies. Getting sidetracked in a seduction is, quite often, a kiss of death, so you must stay focused. SHOOT FROM THE HIP As I noted a few months back in "When in Doubt, Forge Ahead," most women you don't push forward with you lose and never see again. Don't think that's true? Okay, answer me this: how many new women have you met over the past month or two? Got that number? Good. Now, how many of those gals did you bed? Got that one too? Okay. Forget about the girls you took to bed now. I'm betting, unless you're on some ungodly lucky streak, that in fact the majority of women you met didn't end up in your bed. In fact, maybe the majority of them you're not even in contact with. That's normal, and that's how it is for most men. Now let me ask you this: of those women you met but didn't bed, and maybe have even lost touch with, or maybe even never got contact details for in the first place - is there anything else you could possibly have done when you met them to try to move things forward? I'm betting that, with most of them, if you're being completely honest, the answer is yes: there's something you could've at least tried to push things forward a bit. Most guys don't do everything they could have though, usually because they hesitate, even if ever-so-slightly; they think, "Oh, I don't know if that'll work," and then the moment has passed, or they think, "Maybe better to call it a day now and see what I can get going on with this girl later," and then they let her go, presumably to follow up with her later. And then, she disappears, and they never see her again. They blinked; they hesitated. And the opportunity was gone. Just like a gunslinger in the Old West - blink and you're dead. You need to be the one who's quick to draw, and you need to be prepared to draw at all times. You need to shoot first and ask questions later. SHOOTING FIRST WITH WOMEN But all this is very metaphorical. What am I talking about, shooting first and asking questions later? Well, I certainly don't mean you ought to go out and buy a gun and start popping girls in the back of the head; that's not going to get you any dates other than quite possibly one in court. When I say "shoot first, ask questions later," I mean you need to focus on silencing that little voice of dissent in the back of your head that rather prefers you take it slow, and instead get used to springing immediately into action at the first opportunity. The first cold approach of my life - in January of 2005 - I did at a bar when I spotted three girls standing and staring at me. I'd written down the goal a month earlier that I was going to talk to three random women, and that was my first effort to accomplish that goal. I had no idea what I'd say, and not much hope it'd go well, but I figured if I wanted to start figuring women out, I was going to need to start meeting them sooner or later. When I spied those girls checking me out, I felt a great deal of apprehension; yet, nevertheless, I started my feet moving toward them, without having any idea what I was going to say when I got there. That's shooting first. A guy who asked questions first would stand there thinking, "Hmm, what should I go say to those girls? I probably ought to talk to the one in the middle, she seems the most interested in me. But, oh... her friends on both sides are kind of boxing me out. Maybe I'll wait for a better opportunity to go in. That's it, I'll just wait. Okay, they're changing position now. But - oh, right, what do I say? Oh man, I'm not really sure." At that rate, he'll never get himself approaching, and he certainly won't be taking women home to bed. Shooting first means leaping to action the moment the opportunity calls for it. In some things, careful deliberation wins out over bold action. Most of the time with women though, careful deliberation leads to the untimely demise of one's opportunities. While one man deliberates, another man takes bold action, and snatches up the girl the carefully deliberating man was laying out his plan to snag. The deliberative man gets the door prize perhaps of being just friends - not exactly what he had in mind by any stretch of the imagination. MAKING SHOOTING FIRST A HABIT If you're like most folks, you probably don't realize the thought processes you have running through your head most of the time. But, every now and again it's important to pop the hood and run a diagnostic on what you have going on underneath. What happens is, most people - the vast majority of them, I'd say - get into the habit of asking questions first, and then, only once those questions have sufficient enough answers, do they take aim and fire. Most folks asks questions first, and then maybe later, if they figure out an answer they're happy with, shoot. That's why most folks end up mired in mediocre lives with mediocre options with the opposite sex working mediocre jobs and set their dreams quietly aside. Too much thinking; not enough acting. Acting's what changes the world around you. Thinking doesn't change anything. Don't get me wrong, I don't think blind, random decisions are good; deliberation is a valuable thing for considering long-term options and strategies. But when you're there in the moment, you don't have time to deliberate. You only have time to act. Take a look at your own habits and thought processes. Do you tend to act fast and jump on opportunities, or do you find yourself hemming and hawing and trying to figure out the perfect opener, or follow-up conversation, or story to tell, before doing anything? If the latter, then recognize your progress will always be sluggish until you change your focus over to shooting first. Start your feet moving when you see a pretty girl, even if you don't know exactly what you're going to say. Like all habits, the more you shoot first, the more you're going to tend to shoot first, and the more this becomes an ingrained habit in you. One of the best things I did for myself early on was training myself to be a lot more decisive; instead of dilly-dallying when faced with opportunities, like I would've done in the past, I forced myself to step up. Any time you're learning a new habit, you're going to go through a period of having to force yourself to do it. Once you've forced yourself a few times though, it gets easier. Then easier. Then eventually you wouldn't even call it "forcing yourself" anymore; now it's just something you feel okay doing. Then it becomes something you do automatically without much thought. Then, it becomes something you actually enjoy doing, and perhaps even look forward to. So, don't ask questions when you see that cute girl by the bar or in the bookstore or waiting for the train. Just go talk to her. And don't ask questions when she clearly likes talking to you but you start getting that feeling like it's time to take action. Stand up and tell her the two of you are getting out of there. And don't ask questions when she's back at home sitting on your couch next to you. Put your finger on her chin and bring her in for a kiss. Take action. Take bold action. And always remember to shoot first. And, if you must ask questions, ask them later. But hey - if your shots hit... maybe you won't even need to.

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##Should You Make a Promise to Her? Things You Ought to Know A friend of mine has been going through some growing pains recently as he's grappled and come to grips with the fact that he makes promises all the time... and often doesn't deliver on them. I've longed been used to having people make a promise that doesn't get delivered on around me, and I've long since learned to not put much faith in people who do so. When I was first studying relationships in my teenage years, I noticed one theme occurring over and over, wherever women were hurt in a failed relationship: they were accusing men of breaking their promises. It was so incredibly common that I started to see this as a major pattern that a number of relationships hewed to: Man makes woman a promise, either to allay her concerns or in the height of passion Woman plans her life on the basis of that promise Man later breaks the promise Woman's life is turned upside down Now... women aren't necessarily totally innocent victims here either, and I'll explain why below. But as a man, you need to understand the impact and effect you have on a woman when you make a promise to her - and how a promise binds both you and her. THE NATURE OF A PROMISE From Dictionary.com: prom•ise [prom-is] noun 1. a declaration that something will or will not be done, given, etc., by one: unkept political promises. Promises are a tricky thing. We revere them in Western culture; a man making a promise is a noble figure... provided he keeps that promise. See: Douglas MacArthur's famous quote to the Philippines of, "I shall return," as he fled the country in the face of the Japanese invasion in World War II, and his triumphant fulfillment of that promise years later. Now there is a legendary promise, we think when we here about it. A wedding ring is a promise. A vow is a promise. But even men with girlfriends make their girlfriends promises. What is a promise, and why do we deliver them? Well, ask yourself this: Is it you who wants your girlfriend to promise you something? Or is it her who wants the promise? If you're like 96% of men out there, women want you to promise... not the other way around. But why? The reason why is because promises are something given by the person in control in a given situation. You can only promise what you can control. Therefore, Douglas MacArthur can promise he will return to save the Philippines from their Japanese invaders. All the Filipinos could promise, however, might have been that they would fight on... or that they would wait for him. Because that's all they controlled in the dynamic between the Philippines and MacArthur. And when MacArthur returns, he becomes a hero to the Filipinos. Had he failed to do so, he would've been crucified in Filipino history as a failure and a fake. But promises are also a giving up of control. When you promise someone you will be somewhere at a certain time, you look terrible if you try to reschedule a half hour before. The promise binds you to that commitment. You sacrifice control. Well, okay. A promise is a giving up of control by someone who has control to someone who has uncertainty. So what's the other party gain then? Answer: certainty and reassurance. A promise is a trade: you give away some of your control and power to allow the other party to feel secure and reassured. And simply because of the nature of male-female relationships, it is normally the woman who is pursuing security and reassurance from the man. Thus, this is the reason why the one being asked to make a promise is usually the man, and the asker is usually the woman. Do you see it the other way? Yes, occasionally. But only with weak men dating much stronger women. We won't talk about that dynamic here, because I'm assuming if you're using the material here you're well on your way to becoming a dominant man - and if you're not there yet, well, you won't be in the weak man's position for long. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MAKE A PROMISE? When I first started working in tire sales, I had a boss named Bill who gave out constant sage advice and pearls of wisdom about managing, sales, and life in general. I appreciated it then, but as I've worked more and more with all kinds of professionals from all walks of life, I've only realized how rare Bill's clarity of the principals of sound management and salesmanship were, and how lucky I was to have him as a supervisor and teacher at so formative a time in my own professional career. And one of the things Bill told me early on, after I'd just made an unrealistic promise to a customer that was going to be hell to deliver on, was this: "Never make a promise unless you are 100% sure you can deliver on it." Before I received this advice, I probably gave promises out as freely as anyone else. I can remember being a 7 year old in private school, causing trouble and having other kids threatening to go tell the teacher on me. "No, don't!" I'd cry. "Give me one more chance - I'll be better, I promise!" I must've said that a hundred times between first and third grade, before my third grade teacher whipped me into shape and transformed me into a model pupil. Bill's advice made me realize, though: giving promises puts you in a bad position. It puts you in the position of: Having strict guidelines you now need to follow; and Having no real benefit to the other party aside from a (usually small) confidence boost. How about potential gains and losses? As it turns out, that matters a great deal on the person. If it's someone with a high degree of uncertainty who's got a lot riding on the outcome, you'll be a saint to them if you make a promise and keep it, and a devil to them if you make a promise and break it. If the individual could care less about the specifics of the outcome, though (e.g., a customer doesn't care when his order is delivered, so long as it's delivered), he'll hardly notice if your promise is kept or broken. The impact of a promise made or a promise broken is entirely dependent on how dependent on the outcome the promisee is. And the more dependent on the outcome someone is, the more likely they are to plan their life around your promise, and the more likely they are to use every trick up their sleeves to hold you to it. THE TIES THAT BIND Let's say a man's in love. His new girlfriend seems perfect: she's beautiful, smart, witty, and really, really feminine. A charmer in every way. He feels feelings for her like he's never felt before, and in the heat of his passion he makes her a promise: "I will never leave you," he tells her. "I will spend the rest of my life making you happy." A few years pass, and his emotions fade, and he realizes she isn't quite as beautiful as he once thought, she isn't quite as smart as he once thought, her jokes that formerly seemed so witty now seem crude, and her femininity has disappeared as she's gotten comfortable with him and let herself go, both physically and in how she dresses. Where she used to be a charmer, now she's just... not. Eventually he tells her it isn't working out; she gets upset and tells him he can't leave her. He relents. Later, he meets another girl who is everything his girlfriend used to be... and he cheats on her, and she finds out. She breaks down, crying, and asks him how he could do this to her. "You promised you'd never leave me!" she cries; "You promised!" Here's the problem with a promise, particularly one with no end-point (forever and ever): it can be used as a tool to control. make a promise Things change. People change. Everyone wants to think that things are "forever"... but nothing is. The natural world is not forever. The way of the world is change and impermanence. If a man and a woman get together, and the woman continually becomes more beautiful and more successful and the man becomes a dependent slob, should the woman stay with the man because, well, they've gone this far, they might as well now spend forever together? Likewise, if a man and woman get together, and the man continually becomes more charming and more successful and the woman lets herself go, should the man stay together with the woman because he just should? People will use the promises you make to guilt trip you into staying in bad situations. And it isn't just that. Here are all the ways if you make a promise it can be used in your disfavor: To keep you in a bad situation you'd otherwise leave As a free pass to "let go" (you promised you wouldn't leave, so she can gain weight) To guilt trip you and shift bad emotions onto you if you leave To make you "responsible" for someone else's life I'm using "leaving" as the example here, but you could change it to anything else that men promise women: "I promise we'll have a family." "I promise we'll grow old together." "I promise I'll never hurt you." Now, note, and this is what I referred to earlier in this post... Most women will not take your promises at 100% face value, but they will act like they do. Why? Well... to hold you to them, of course! Women are masters of the guilt trip, and they are fantastic at both pressuring men into making promises (by implying they'll leave if they don't get them) and at pressuring men to fulfill them. It's not because women are evil and manipulative - don't be bitter and start thinking this - but rather because they're being self-interested and, get this - they're using men's own self-interested natures to further their own self-interest. Getting men to make promises is one of women's most fantastically ingenious ways of using another individual's selfishness for their own personal gain. How's this work? Here's a classic example: Man wants sex from a woman / doesn't want a woman to leave him. Woman tells a man she can't possibly give him what he wants... she doesn't feel sure. To get what he wants, the man knows he must make her feel "sure." To make her feel sure, the man gives the woman a promise. The man gets what he wants, but so does the woman. He gets sex / her... she gets a promise that she knows he will feel at least some obligation to uphold... and that she will pressure him to stick to, too. They pass a commitment point. Who's being selfish in this example? Both people! Both the man and the woman are being selfish, chasing after what they want. The puppet master in this instance, however, is the woman, most of the time; she's pulling the man's strings to get the promise she wants. Yet, there are the men who have no problem making promises to women they have no intention of keeping; these men are the puppet masters of the puppet masters, and let women think they have the upper hand when to the men themselves the promises that they've made are simply hot air. Women have an inherent understanding of this risk and realize they're taking a gamble; there's always a chance that a given man's promises may be no good. The more I've studied the tendency of men to make a promise and women to elicit those promises and hold men to them in romantic encounters and relationships, the more I've come to view promises as a deeply manipulative tool that both sides are using semi-consciously to get what they want. Men are after: Sex and companionship (short-term gains) Women are after: Relationships and support (long-term gains) The woman's position is necessarily more unstable (trying to elicit long-term commitment from someone in search of short-term benefits is an inherently unstable place to be), so she seeks to bind a man in commitments he makes himself to her. But she never really knows if she's the puppet master, or merely a puppet who can't see her strings. There's a far better way to run your relationships than this fool's dance of making promises and trying to stick to them... or not. MAKE A PROMISE NOT TO PROMISE make a promise"The only promise I can make you," I like to tell girls, "is that I will always try my best to be honest with you." I don't promise I will always be honest. I haven't met anyone who always is honest, though I've met many people who will get self-righteously angry at you and tell you you should always be honest... even though they aren't always honest themselves. But I promise I will do my best to be, and I do. There's not much I don't tell my girlfriends. I tell girls: That I don't want to hurt them, but that I might. That I wish I could promise I'd always be with them, but I might not be. That I never want to be one of those guys who promises the girl a world, and fails to deliver. And do you know what the result of this is? It isn't that they leave me. And it isn't that they think I'm some kind of rogue, or cad. No, quite the contrary. They tell me I'm the most honest man they've ever met. And they tell me they like it... a lot. And they come to trust me more than any man they've ever been with, and they open themselves up to me more than any man they've ever been with. They often end up having the strongest emotions for me they've ever had for a man, or may ever have for a man, despite my efforts these days to dampen the emotions women feel for me from getting too strong. But WHY? Why should a woman like you, respect you, and want you more when you won't promise her the world like every other guy? It's because of two things: A woman knows that a man who makes promises is a man who's giving up his power to get short-term gains (sex, companionship). She knows he's a man who's so desperate for these things he's willing to sacrifice control over his life to get them. And she views him as a weaker man because of this. A woman knows that without the dynamic of you making promises to get things from her, your relationship isn't a struggle to determine who's the puppet and who's the puppet master. Instead, it's a relationship between two willing people who admit that nothing is certain and things might not be permanent. You're not trying to pretend you'll always be there, and she isn't trying to pretend she has no fear you're not, or that she unquestioningly believes you will. This adds so much more clarity to your relationships you might not believe it. It's like operating at a higher level... actually, scratch that. It's not "like" operating at a higher level - it is operating at a higher level. So do yourself a favor. The next time you feel an urge to make a promise to a girl... stop. Are you really going to uphold that promise? Or are you just saying it so you can selfishly get what you want (whether that's sex now, or not to have her leave you)? I'm willing to bet it's the latter. Try not making promises on for size next time. You'll be surprised how refreshingly honest - and healthy - your relationships become. And you'll never risk having a girl derail her life to build it around a promise you might later break - or risk getting stuck in a situation you come to regret because you feel an obligation's been made you aren't willing to break. If you truly have a great relationship - if you are there because you want to be there, and she is there because she wants to be there - and if you truly work hard to keep each other happy, satisfied, and engaged... you will never need to make a promise to keep the relationship together. Because you'll just want to be.

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##Social Pressure: Surprisingly Important in Getting Girls Ever heard of the term "social pressure" before? Ever stopped and considered how you're using it with the women you meet? Well, here's a scary thought: what if I told you you were doing something with women right now that was completely wrong? Like, so wrong it was costing you more girls than you'll ever possibly know? In fact, what I'm going to do today is I'm really, honest to God, no two ways about it going to tell you about something that I'm confident 99.9% of guys reading this post today haven't even realized they're doing. That something has to do with social pressure, and it's one you don't really hear about ever in pick up or the social arts. Why? Well, because it's incredibly subtle... and I think guys just aren't fully consciously aware of it. Take a look at the image above and to the right: how do you think the guy feels with that girl? Think he feels like he needs to pursue her... to get her interested again... to win her back? That's her putting social pressure in action -- and it goes both ways. But no one talks about it. Hence, this post; created so that I can tell you why social pressure is so incredibly, unbelievably, unavoidably important and pervasive in just about all of your interactions with women (men, too), and how precisely you can start using it to your advantage -- instead of getting burned by it, like most guys do. Rather than get burned, you can learn to be a social pressure pro - and apply and alleviate it like only the most socially skilled socialites and the most beautiful, sought-after men and women can. NICE GUYS FINISH LAST... AND SOCIAL PRESSURE'S WHY I want to kick off this piece by defining social pressure, distilling it down to its basic components, and showing you just how ubiquitous it is in your day-to-day life, everywhere around you. If you've ever seen the movie The Matrix, the part where Morpheus alludes to the matrix for the first time while talking with Neo is a good quote to start us off on social pressure: "It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the wool that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Well, I'm not going to tell you the matrix has you. But social pressure, on the other hand, just might. Social pressure is, put simply, the tension and building stress and pressure you feel in social situations, that compels you to take a certain action. So, if you're a young guy at a party surrounded by a bunch of really cool, tough guys, all cheering you on at the top of their lungs to "chug, chug, chug!" that powerful feeling that you really have no choice but to down that whole pint of beer even if you don't really want to is social pressure. And if you walk up to a beautiful girl and she ignores you or she rejects you, that rapidly expanding feeling that you should tuck tail and make your exit is social pressure. That feeling that stops you from walking up to police officers or airport screening personnel and asking them silly things or unreasonable requests, that's social pressure, too. And if you're really shy or have a social phobia (as I did, in a distant, half-remembered past), you can even feel social pressure about something as simple as asking the guy at Subway to leave the pickles off your sandwich or the bag girl at the supermarket to give you paper bags instead of plastic. At the same time, social pressure that others feel does the following things for you: It prevents most people making unreasonable requests of you It stops most people from doing things that are annoying or bothersome It makes it likely that if you really want something and push for it enough, most people will fold and give it to you to alleviate the social pressure unless they're very experienced at shrugging off said pressure or they really want to say "no" When you stop and wonder why nice guys finish last, the answer is almost always largely do to social pressure. The guys who get slotted as "nice guys" for their un-pushy, un-confrontational demeanors feel social pressure more acutely than other men, and are more fearful about going against it, so they sit quietly and suck it up and don't go for what they want or get what they want. That's why they finish last, and that's why everyone else thinks they're so "nice" -- because they just accommodate others without ever seizing the day, taking charge, or making an effort to get their way or get what they want. I was never really considered a "nice guy," but I did suppress a lot of my wants and needs for a long period of my life, and man, I'll tell you... it kills you on the inside. You literally feel like you're suffocating yourself. But, in any event, this isn't a post on overcoming social phobias or social anxiety. If you're still struggling with that, I have a post up on overcoming approach anxiety that may help, and I may do a specific one on social anxiety at one point or another. I just wanted to define social pressure here, so you get a picture of what it is and how it impacts your life. And now that we've got it defined, we're going to dive into what you've very likely been doing wrong with it. SOCIAL PRESSURE AND THE MANAGER OF EMOTIONS Something I discuss fairly often on here is the need for you as the man to be managing the emotions of the women around you (and the men around you too, much of the time). Women don't go for men whose emotions they have to manage. Women go for men who manage theirs. What that means is, women don't like men who: They have to lead They have to put at ease and make comfortable They have to give a lot of hints to while on the other hand, women do like (very much) the men who: Lead them towards things they want Are able to put them at ease and make them comfortable Read them and meet their needs without them having to ask As an aside, most guys like people to do that stuff for them too, but women aren't going to do those things for you. It's not their role. It's their role to follow and be submissive; it's your role to be the commander and help them achieve what they want (being together with a strong guy like you). Social pressure plays a very important role in all of this. It basically comes down to the following: Inexperienced men dump a ton of social pressure on women, looking to them to lead, and quickly wear those women out and frighten them off. Experienced men take a lot of pressure off women, and only reapply it strategically as a leader when the girl is making mistakes to help her get back on track. How you apply social pressure strategically to lead an interaction toward good, positive things we'll discuss in the next part of this post. For now, I want to look at some of the mistakes inexperienced guys make with girls. An ordinary guy's interaction with a girl he's just met tends to proceed like this: He opens her, a little nervous, putting social pressure on her to relax him, or just making her uncomfortable too He tries to build a connection, but it's slow going and difficult, and she feels awkward and either tries to build a connection too, feeling increasingly uncomfortable, or just doesn't bother to get involved and feels pressure as she tries to be nice He talks about himself a lot, trying to be impressive or force rapport, and she feels social pressure to try and tell him how impressive he sounds and to try and relate to him on his own stuff Eventually she burns out from the social pressure and decides that the only way to alleviate it is to make her exit. "I've got to go to the bathroom," she says, or, "I have to go meet my friends." It ends, and the guy scratches his head and wonders why. You should be able to feel the awkwardness and discomfort and social pressure throughout that description there. It's so thick you could cut it with a knife. And I don't say this to yell at guys or call anyone out or make learning this stuff any harder than it has to be. You have to go through a period where you're doing it like this and it feels really awkward; you can't get to the place where you're managing social pressure without first going through the fire of floundering about a bit, unless you've been good with people since a young age or have already gone through this stage -- but if you're like most guys on Planet Earth, you quite possibly just haven't made it there yet. If you're like most guys out there, you still struggle with managing social pressure and putting too much of it on women. I'd even be willing to bet that most of the fairly advanced guys out there still struggle with this. I for one didn't solve the problem of putting social pressure and being a social burden on women until I had one important realization -- it hit me a few years back -- that changed my outlook on meeting women entirely. MAKE IT EASY FOR HER ^ that was my realization. The easier you make it for a woman to be with you and spend time with you and hang out with you, the more likely she is to stick around, to enjoy it, and to get together with you at some point. Now, that probably sounds common sense, but I want to strike the mainstream interpretation of that statement the hell out real fast. What I don't mean by "make it easy for her" is: Do everything for her Buy stuff for her Compliment her like crazy Show too much interest Cut out being a challenge Et cetera Doing that stuff is more like "make it boring for her." You still want to be fun, and you still want to be a challenge and a mystery and entrancing and intriguing and seductive. What I mean by "make it easy for her" is, instead, this: Be smooth and natural and sexy in sparking a conversation Lead the early conversation and quickly transition into getting to know a girl Use your skills as a talented conversationalist to keep things interesting and on-course and off of bad topics Be a good manager of social interactions, keep the focus on her, and avoid breaking circle and making her feel unimportant Pay close attention to what she's telling you nonverbally and manage her emotions accordingly Make decisions, lead decisively, and steadily progress things forward By being a good manager of your interaction with her like this, you alleviate a lot of the awkward social pressure that most guys inadvertently pile higher and higher on top of girls until the tower of pressure collapses in on her and she has to make an exit not to escape from it. This is how you transition from being the guy who repeatedly gets, "Pardon me, I have to go to the bathroom," which I used to get, into being the guy who repeatedly gets, "Wow, talking to you makes me feel just so free and refreshed!" which is what I get nowadays. But, like I said above, you don't just want to alleviate all pressure off of women -- that ruins the fun! If you really want to get girls attracted to you and girls chasing you, you've got to get them investing -- and as it were, you can use social pressure strategically to do just that. social pressure TURNING UP THE HEAT In this section, I want to talk to you about how to use social pressure strategically throughout an interaction with a girl. This is the part where the feminists come and bury me alive. But wait, not so fast. I'd like to point out to you that everything I'm about to discuss right now is entirely stuff I've picked up from the most socially savvy (and socially ruthless, if it's not too much to say) group in existence right now -- womankind. What we're going to discuss is using social pressure strategically. And before you tell me women don't, let's look at exactly how they do: Women ignore people and comments they don't like, placing pressure on those people to shape up or ship out (e.g., ignoring a guy who's just walked up to her, or acting bored and disinterested) Women ask pointed questions that pressure men into qualifying themselves or showing all their cards -- this is also referred to as women testing men (e.g., asking a guy if he's gay or why he's there by himself or why he's doing or wearing XYZ thing or if he thinks she's cute or sexy or awesome) Women ask men for investment, pressuring men to give in or explain themselves (e.g. "Can you buy me a drink?" "Can you hold this for me?" "Can you get that person for me?") Women break rapport, putting the onus on men to restart the conversation and rebuild rapport (e.g., letting the conversation drop after the guy goes on a boring tangent; acting bored and unresponsive if he disagrees with her or stays on a topic too long) Note that I'm not saying any of these are necessarily bad things. You should let a conversation trail off and die down and put pressure on people to get their acts in gear if they're going on and on about boring or repetitive topics. You should ask pointed questions to tease out the strength or flimsiness of a person's character, particularly in the mating game -- this is how women get men chasing them and vice versa. But I do want to point them out to you -- if you've been meeting new women, I have no doubt that you've had women use all of these tactics on you time and again. Now all I'm going to do is help you tweak them a little bit so you can use them on women, too. They're great techniques -- women have proven that already -- so let's just level the playing field. What using social pressure strategically / tactically does for you is it enables you to take charge of your own interactions and steer them toward your desired outcomes. Strategic social pressure use can be the difference between a nice, enriching conversation with a girl, and an entrancing conversation where the woman you're talking with begins to invest in you and chase you more and more. Just like what happens to men when women use social pressure on them appropriately, the same thing happens to women when men use it back. Here's how you can use social pressure to get girls chasing you soon into an interaction: Shrug off and ignore comments you don't like. When you're new, unwanted comments can really fluster you, because you don't know how to respond. e.g., you mention to a girl that you like stamp collecting, and she says, "My uncle collects stamps. I thought only old people did that." Rather than get flustered like a new guy might though, you can just shrug, ignore it, and move on with the conversation. "How about you, what do you do for hobbies?" you might ask after shrugging. That places pressure on her to not criticize you because she realizes it doesn't work on you socially. Ask her pointed questions. I developed deep diving as a technique based on the conversation style of a Peruvian ex-girlfriend of mine who'd always ask people sharp, pointed, personal questions without blinking or blushing. When you do this smoothly, it puts social pressure on people (the women you're talking to) to give you real, solid answers, quite often to explain themselves, and makes them understand that they're being assessed at a deep level -- you want to know them, not just spend time with them because they dressed up well that night. The pressure that comes from this is really good, positive pressure that drags women out of autopilot ("I'm in control; he's just talking to me because he wants to get in my pants") and puts them into a conversation where they're actually connecting with a fellow human being ("Oh wow, that's a good question; why do I like doing this thing he just asked me about?"). Ask her for investment. Most men, in their zeal to out-maneuver each other in the "Race to Be the Nicest, Most Generous, Most Undemanding Suitor" competition, renounce any and all attempts to ask women to contribute to and invest in their interactions. Needless to say, women come away from these interactions feeling unmoved, uninvolved, and often entirely unexcited about the guy. Chalk it up to old fashioned human psychology that people value more highly those things (and people!) in which they're actually literally invested in. When you ask women to do stuff -- "Hold my drink for a minute?" "Here, try this," "Let's grab a seat over there," "Let me see your hand," "Tell me about that," "So what's special about you?" "If you had to do anything other than what you were doing right now... can you tell me what that'd be?" -- you're putting pressure on them to either comply and invest, or break rapport and risk the interaction ending. And if you're giving girls a great interaction -- if it's warm and fun and friendly and sexy and mostly pressure-free (except when tactically employed by you) -- they won't want it to end. Thus, they invest, and thus, they become more interested, attracted, and engaged. At times break rapport. Use this one real carefully. I see lots of newer guys going crazy trying to break rapport, and they end up alienating women and exiling them into auto-rejection instead. You need to be targeted in your usage. In short, you should only break rapport when women say things that are boring or abrasive. Just like women do to socially uncalibrated guys, when girls go off on boring tangents with you, or go too long acting aloof and simultaneously not showing interest in you, or start trying to be funny but only end up being insulting, break rapport. Don't do this by being rude... do it by tossing a bored look onto your face and letting your attention drift gradually away until she takes action to get it back. Like so: Girl: And do you know what happened then? You: Hmm? Girl: Well, that's when XYZ thing happened and blah blah blah... You: [attention slowly drifting away] Girl: ... [noticing you've lost interest and she's losing you] Girl: [seeking to rebuild rapport] So what do you do for fun? Using social pressure strategically can really do wonderful things for your interactions with women. Tactically applied, social pressure can be the difference between a girl feeling like you're a "nice guy" who'll let her get away with anything, and feeling like you're a strong guy who's going to get what he wants and get bored with things that are not of interest to him or in his best interest in the interaction. It's also imperative that, when a woman does win your attention back, you make her feel good. That means you give her strong, directed, undivided attention, you're an active listener and feed her conversation back to her, and you move things forward progressively and eventually give her what she wants and needs (you). Note that this isn't about a power struggle. The worst thing you'll see new guys doing over and over is trying to "assert dominance" over women. They'll do things to try and steamroll girls with blunt, clumsy forms of social pressure (back turns; false time constraints; etc.) that communicate to women that "this is a battle" -- and encourage women to fight back or walk away. The point of social pressure is not to fire a volley over the bow of her ship. The point of social pressure is to get her to invest, or to communicate, succinctly and eloquently, that she has violated or is violating social norms, and that you're losing interest as she remains outside them. You want to compel her to take action of her own volition. If it's her choice, it's going to be a lot more "real" for her -- and she's a lot more likely to end up liking you, wanting you, and pursuing you. See you next time around the bend.

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##Social Skills 101: Reading and Using Body Language This is the first official installment in my new series on social interactions. In case you're just tuning in, the series kicked off last week with "Social Skills 101: Pushing Past Your Comfort Zone." Now it's time for us to really get into some solid, practical tips and tidbits you can start using as soon as you finish this article... this time on body language. using body language Chase just had a great post on putting together a sexy walk that went into detail on a very specific area of your body language (how you move through the world); and now I'm following it up with a broader-stroke post on general body language. On this site, we often reference reading body language and using body language, and while it may not seem all that important, it in fact can make or break a pick up or general social interaction. It can also get pretty complicated, so I wanted to get you an article on reading and using body language, and why it matters. Here it is. A WALK IS WORTH 1000 WORDS Once you get your fundamentals down pat, it doesn't matter what you say to a girl when you walk you walk up to her. If you don't have your fundamentals down pat yet, here are some things that you can say to get you started. What's interesting about social interactions is that what happens before you say anything is just as important. Many studies have concluded that about 80% of a person's first impression of you is made up in their mind before you open your mouth. Talk about pressure! So, if a girl isn't waiting for that "are you single?" line you're about to drop on her, what is she paying attention to? Well, this: Eye Contact - Western society values eye contact more than any other culture in the world. In many other cultures, maintaining eye contact can be seen as a sign of disrespect or even a threat (just as in the animal kingdom). But in our culture, eye contact is a sign of comfort, power and dominance. People who look down at the ground when they walk or sit are perceived as removed from a situation or trying to hide their emotions. And people who look off to side as they walk or sit are seen as nervous, distracted or untrustworthy. BUT, people who look up as they walk or sit are seen as playful or thoughtful, and people who look directly at others are seen as in control. And all of this talk of walking leads me to my next point. Your Walk - Besides eye contact, nothing tells more about you than the way you walk. Chase just covered this in great detail, but for the sake of completeness I'm reviewing the big-picture points here. In general while you walk you want to: Look straight ahead and have your chin parallel to the ground Have your back straight and chest slightly puffed out Relax when as take your steps (rigid movements say "nervous") Walk slowly On that last point: I cannot emphasize this last point enough. I am now going to coin a term, and it's going to be one that you'll hear me use often on this site: Act Fast, Move Slowly. What does this mean? It means when you're interacting with a girl, keep the interaction progressing toward taking her home with you (Act Fast). But when you're actually doing things - when you're walking with her, talking with her, or even getting sexual with her, keep a steady pace, because unless they absolutely have to be, powerful men are never in a rush (Move Slowly). So there it is, Act Fast, Move Slowly. Your Arms - This is pretty basic, but never cross your arms. Crossed arms are a sign of being closed off from social interaction or being self-conscious. People who have their arms down (uncrossed) are signalling they are "open" and are welcoming conversation with other people. We'll discuss the importance of arms some more a bit later. Your Smile - Remember mirror neurons? People project themselves the emotions that they see on your face. So if you walk around with a smile on your face, people will get a feeling of happiness from you and will be more likely to want you to come and talk to them. Also, people who walk around smiling stand out because 95% of people in this world are dissatisfied with their life and they let it show. Those who smile communicate success and life satisfaction. And if you're not in the mood, the physical act of smiling sends endorphins to your brain and can actually put you in a good mood. If you want to go a step further and truly master your emotions, read about state independence and state control (Ricardus discusses this in-depth in his "Success Factor" series). So there are the basics to using body language and reading it. If you keep these in mind while you're walking, people won't be able to help but gravitate toward you, and you'll be on your way to making a consistently good first impression. Body language is at the core of nonverbal attraction, and these tips are at the core of body language. But now what about when you actually start the interaction? What do you do then, you say? USING BODY LANGUAGE: THE DOS I'm glad you asked. Knowing how to properly use body language in your social interactions will catapult your success ratese forward, if simply because you will be triggering those mirror neurons in people and reassuring their subconsciouses that yes, you want to talk to them, and no, you are not crazy or weird or a threat. The more you dive into research on reading body language, the more you'll realize this is a very deep field with a lot of nuance. I'm not trying to overwhelm you here, though... I only want to cover the most critical nuances that are going to give you the biggest gains. Besides what's mentioned above, here are a few things you should do: Always stand to someone's side for the first few minutes of a new interaction. Pointing your body directly at someone can be seen as aggressive or threatening, so always open from the side and then slowly point your body toward her as the interaction progresses. Tilt your head to show sympathy. Tilting your head is a recognized sign of sympathy for serious situations, and playfulness for light situations, so definitely throw in a head tilt or two in your next interaction. If you're interested, mirror her body language. Mirroring someone's body language is a clear sign of interest and subconscious compatibility, so try mirroring body language to solidify a connection. Gesture with your hands and show your palms. Your hands and arms are incredibly important for your body language. People who talk with their hands seem more lively and engaging, and people who show their palms seem welcoming and warm. These are two things you want to go for in any interaction When listening, place your hand slightly over your mouth. Ever notice how distinguished older gentlemen place their hands near their mouth with an intent look on their face while they're listening to someone? That is because this gesture communicates to someone that you are giving your undivided attention. And since most conversations involve people just waiting for their turn to talk, this can be a very powerful gesture. Use just these five tips and the four body language adjustments from the section just before and you'll be more skilled and more effective at body language than 95% of the other men out there... you'll distinguish your self by your efficacy at using body language alone. But of course, no list of "dos" would be complete without a sister list of... USING BODY LANGUAGE: THE DON'TS using body languageI don't want to overwhelm you with too much information, so let's limit our coverage to just a few of the most important "don'ts" for body language: Don't close your hands or rub them together (unless you're cold). Rubbing your hands together is a sign of discomfort with a current situation and can be an easy tell that you're ready to hightail it out of a situation as fast as you can. Closing them is a sign of anger/frustration. Don't drag your feet. Dragging your feet is a sign that you're bored with a situation Don't make yourself seem smaller. Some people like to curl up when the sit or stand very rigid and thin when they talk. Remember: powerful men take up space (and if I haven't said that before, I'm saying it now). Take up as much space as you can and own a room. Don't fidget. People with social control are as steady as a rock, so even if you're nervous, try be aware of keeping your body still and relaxed. Simply by practicing not doing these things, you'll train your body to automatically knock it off and quit doing them. You might have to spend a month or so religiously monitoring your body language, but after a while everything you focus on becomes automatic. TIMING AND SPACING There are a lot of amazing things the human body can do (and no I don't mean that…at least not entirely). Some good examples of complete bodily mastery are gymnastics, dance, and martial arts. What do these have to do with social interactions? All of these things have two things in common: timing and spacing. It's the key to mastering any of these skills. If you can master your timing and spacing, you can turbo charge any of your pick ups or your social interactions. Here are a couple examples of spacing: Moving toward a girl when you're setting a frame. If you're setting a frame (especially a sexual frame or contentious frame) moving toward someone is a powerful way to cement to your frame. If you move toward someone while speaking and she doesn't move away (and if you've handled your fundamentals and sexy vibe, she won't), she is more likely to feel a higher level of comfort around you and accept your display of control. Touching your feet to hers. Touching your feet to someone else's is almost a universal sign of flirtation. And if a girl taps her feet while you're making contact and flirting, it's a sign of nervous excitement. This can be a great way to test the waters and discreetly break the touch barrier. Here are a couple examples of timing: Touching someone when making an important point. Touch is important in any interaction, but when you choose to touch someone can be just as important as the contact. If you touch someone at the wrong times, you risk making them nervous or comfortable. A good rule of thumb is touching someone when you make an important point. People are actually more likely to remember something you say if you touch them while you're saying, especially if it's a new person. Why? Because more adrenaline in our brain means clearer memory. New person + touch = more adrenaline. And more adrenaline means a strong and lasting memory, so pick your moments. Using a bored look if a topic isn't forwarding the interaction. The bored look is the look where you lean back and stare off into space so that a girl will pull you back into an interaction with a better topic. This is a perfect example of the importance of timing. If she's sharing a cherished childhood memory with you and you throw on a bored look, it's probably game over. If she's talking about how long it took to get her car fixed, and you throw on the bored look and move the conversation to a sexual topic, it's probably game on. A wise Korean friend of mine used to always say, "It's all about the timing - you have to think." This could not be more accurate. Learning when to touch during conversation will make your process that much more smooth. More than half of communication is nonverbal communication, so once you get enough experience reading body language and using body language under your belt, timing and spacing will be second nature to you. Solid process + timing + spacing = success. WRAPPING UP: WHAT TO WATCH FOR using body languageThe two things that you want to watch for in social interactions are how you're using your own body language, and reading other people's body language. Your own you can control, and others' you can adjust to. If someone is doing anything on the "don'ts" list or not following the tips that I laid out in this post, chances are they are nervous and you'll have to work a bit harder to open them. If someone is open with their body, you can focus on deep diving and building a connection. The next few times you go out - especially if you do it alone - take a few minutes to watch people and their body language. You'll pick up on cues of dominance and submission. Also, check out the post "How Girls Show Interest" for even more info on looking for reading body language cues. There was a lot of info in this post, but if you remember to: Handle Your Fundamentals Act Fast, Move Slowly Relax and Follow the Basic Dos and Don'ts Take Advantage of Timing and Spacing you'll be revving up your pick ups and social interactions in no time. Stay tuned for the next post in the social series. And in the meantime, get out there and speak some body language.

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##Social Status: Building It and Using It Social status: it's more than just something you get or don't get, have or don't have. Lots of people don't see it that way, though; they tend to think of social status as simply a dividing line between the people who are "in" and the people who are "out." The line, though, is not so clear. And even within the "in" and "out" groups, you can point out distinctions: the guy in the "in" group who's really only in it because he has some connection people need, otherwise they wouldn't include him at all; the girl who's "in" more than her girlfriends, who are kind of just along for the ride with her. The guy who's "out" but still has connections in the "in" group and only seems to be "out" by choice. The girl who's "out" and so far "out" it seems impossible she could be anything else, because that's how she chooses to define herself. Then there are the people who seem to step around conventional social status entirely; the ones who exude intrinsic status and can flow seamlessly among groups and be included quickly and easily wherever they see fit. These are the people we're talking about when we talk about ultimate social calibration; these are the folks who've stepped off the ladder and come up with a different way for moving socially. Because as it turns out, there's more than one way you can build and maintain and use social status, and climbing up the social ladder of the closest "scene" is only one of those. Let's start by talking about what status is good for. DRAWBACKS AND BENEFITS OF SOCIAL STATUS Status is one of those things that most either hate or chase after when they don't have it, and most others hate or jealously cling to when they do. Generally, you'll see these kinds of feelings about social status: People Without Status: "Who needs social status? It's just for mindless followers plugged into the system. I'll never play their game, and I'm going to do everything I can to show the world how silly they are." "Oh how I wish I had status. I need to be very careful to make the right contacts and impress the right people and not be seen with the wrong people if I want to build my status up. I've got to make it in." People in Possession of Status: "Being well-known socially is such a headache. So many people resent you and try to take from you or backstab you. I almost wish I was an unknown sometimes." "I need to maintain my status. I must make sure that no one impugns my honor and everyone respects me and no one gains in status over me, meanwhile I need to be surpassing those above me. I've got to make it to the top." People don't usually stop an analyze these thoughts though, of course; they just have them. Beliefs about the nature of social status are among the core beliefs that most people never stop and consider. It's quite rare to hear someone in metacognition inspecting his own views on status; our position socially and our view on our status and that of others is so core to how we identify ourselves that we rarely question it. For most people, their view of social status is just "how things are," and any view anyone else might hold to the contrary is, of course, clearly misguided. But the world, as it turns out, isn't black and white, and neither is social status. Social status isn't good, and it isn't bad. It's just a tool, and it's a tool that, if you know how to use it properly, you can maximize its benefits while minimizing its drawbacks. Here are the benefits of social status you'll want to maximize: It allows you to more easily get what you want in social situations It allows you to make friends and build alliances with a greater number of driven, successful, high quality individuals than you'd otherwise be able to It allows you to retain the attraction and loyalty of women in difficult situations - even when not present. And here are the drawbacks of social status you'll want to minimize: It's stressful and lends itself to constant monitoring of one's status in comparison to others' status It leads to falling outs between friends and lovers over status-related issues (such as perceived insults, condescension, or status-jockeying) It leads to out-group resentment and in-group envy So, some potentially potent benefits, and some equally potentially poisonous drawbacks. Having relatively high social status means you can often accomplish things others can't, like having service industry people make exceptions for you (cook you things that aren't on the menu, give you a refund outside the normal policy, hold the train or airplane for you, etc.), getting access to other high status / high value people (higher ups in your industry, women in high status positions like actresses or models, etc.), and avoiding social penalties (just take a look at how often celebrities, politicians, and businessmen avoid jail time when indicted for crimes). Relatively high social status also means you may very well get stuck with a number of stomach-churning disadvantages: friends turning on you, time being wasted obsessively checking and cross-checking your status versus others', people eying you jealously and resenting your success or gunning for your spot. In the face of all this, a lot of folks might wonder if social status is even worth the hassle. Really, is a little special treatment and some cooler, more successful friends really worth the trouble of having to watch your back and eye your social competitors? As it turns out though, you can maximize benefits while minimizing drawbacks. And where you'll want to start is with the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic social status. social status EXTRINSIC SOCIAL STATUS VS. INTRINSIC SOCIAL STATUS There are two basic kinds of social status: extrinsic and intrinsic. I'll define each. Extrinsic social status is status dependent upon outside influences; one's external social circumstances, if you will. A movie star who's liked because he's been in a few recent blockbusters, for instance, or a sports player who's liked because he's on a winning team. A guy who's liked socially because he leads a certain group or organization or he's dating a beautiful high society girl. Extrinsic social status is what the majority of people go for, because it seems easier, more tangible, and more readily achievable. "All I have to do is make it to the top spot," someone thinks, "and that top status is mine!" The path is straightforward, the goal understandable: make it to the top. And once you've made it there, the world will be yours. And for sure, there are some definite benefits that come with high extrinsic social status: you become very public, which means people are constantly being exposed to you and you're difficult to forget about or ignore; and as the leader or head or top guy in your domain, you become the default expert everyone turns to for guidance, advice, support, or an opinion. People defer to you, and treat you like a powerful person. But there are some strong drawbacks that come with extrinsic social status as well. Because securing that top spot in the extrinsic social hierarchy doesn't mean you've won, victory is forever assured, and now you can rest. Rather, it means you're King of the Hill - for the moment. But now you must defend that hill. The movie star needs to keep finding blockbusters to star in. The sports player needs his team to keep winning. The man heading up that certain group needs to keep heading it up, organizing things, and ensuring that his group is the top group, and the man dating the beautiful high society girl needs to make sure he keeps dating her and that she stays as desired as ever. What happens is, though, things don't go according to plan. The movie star stars in a couple of duds, and suddenly he isn't the star everyone's talking about anymore. He's yesterday's news. The sports player's team loses in the playoffs, and suddenly the fans aren't filling the stadium anymore. The guy in charge of his group stops having time to plan events, or the people in his group find newer, hipper groups to join; the guy dating the beautiful high society girl breaks up with her, or some newer, more beautiful girl enters the scene and his girl fades from the forefront of that scene. All the while, the man with top extrinsic value is fighting a losing battle to hold off the competition and stay relevant. Because one truth that's absolute in life is that you can never stand still; you are always either getting better, or getting worse. And when you've made it to the top of a social hierarchy, there's nowhere else to go but down. Enter intrinsic social status. Intrinsic social status is the kind of status that extends beyond external social hierarchies and circumstances. Intrinsic social status comes from the individual himself, not from his external social rank. In other words, it's personality-dependent, rather than situation-dependent. The Notorious B.I.G., one of the world's top rap artists until his murder in 1997, mentioned in an interview wanting to develop the kind of personality that would have people respect him and think of him as a cool, likeable guy even if he hadn't put out an album in years. He didn't want to end up being one of those washed up performers one day that people showed no respect to because his extrinsic status had dried up and disappeared. What B.I.G. was talking about when he talked about developing the kind of personality people just like and respect and think of as cool is intrinsic social status. He was talking about being the kind of person that other people just respond to. The movie star with intrinsic social status is the one people still think is a cool, likeable guy even when he hasn't had a good movie in years. The sports player with intrinsic social status is the one people still look up to even though his team fails to make the playoffs year after year. The guy with intrinsic social status is the one people respect and admire even if he doesn't lead any groups or have a high society girlfriend. Intrinsic social status is about who you are as opposed to what you do. And it gives you most of the benefits of extrinsic status without most of the drawbacks. Actually, it even gives you a few benefits that extrinsic social status doesn't. When you have intrinsic social status, you can flow effortlessly between groups. You aren't eyed suspiciously as "that guy who's known for X." Rather, you're just a cool, likeable guy whose company others enjoy. When you have intrinsic social status, you don't get people tooth-and-nailing it trying to scratch away your position and take it for themselves, because... you don't really have a position. You're just a cool guy that people like. When you have intrinsic social status, you're not concerned with fighting a losing war to maintain the status quo with you at the top of the pile. Instead, you've developed yourself to an extent that people simply like being around you, and that's something you will have forever. Furthermore, it's something you can always improve upon: you can always get a little better at meeting new people, a little better at making good first impressions, a little better at getting to know new acquaintances. Unlike with external social hierarchies, there's no ceiling limiting how far you can go when you're developing your intrinsic status. The only limit is your imagination, and your will to change. social status DEVELOPING INTRINSIC SOCIAL STATUS How do you become intrinsically high status? There are a few things to focus on: Warmth. I found this an intriguing concept when I first heard about it years ago, and I find it an essential element of my own interactions today. I remember hearing how people always said upon meeting American President Bill Clinton that he made everyone he met feel incredibly warm and personal, as if he'd known them for years and genuinely cared about them. Later I read in Leil Lowndes' wonderful book How to Talk to Anyone the great piece of advice that you should be as warm toward everyone you meet as if he or she was an old friend. Adding warmth to your presence opens so many doors it's a little hard to believe before you start doing it. Warmth is disarming and makes others want to accept you right away; they feel as if they already know you and have a good relationship with you. It makes getting to know them once you're talking to them immensely easier (because there's no "wall of unfamiliarity" there like there is usually with strangers), and it makes them want to get to know you. Who is this new person who feels so welcoming and familiar yet they don't know? Many people simply want to find out. Interest in others. The man who excels at winning over new people is the man who's genuinely interested in them. When you enter a group of people and truly want to get to know them - not to pretend as much, because you're merely trying to gain entry to their circle, like most people are, but when you truly want to understand them better - they tend to welcome you in. Everyone likes someone who's interested in really getting to know her. Something you may find useful to keep in mind if you don't naturally find others interesting (I always have, personally) is that by learning about others - no matter who those others are - you give yourself more reference points to understand the world from, and prepare yourself better to be successful at life and to relate successfully with future people you meet similar to those you're getting to know. Forcefulness, Power, and Coolness. Check out the posts on sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort for an understanding of the underlying dynamics of how people assess coolness. Basically, when most people try to accomplish things socially, they do so in a way that ends up with them expending too much effort to do so - and thus come off less forceful, less powerful, and less cool. If you work to develop an air of effortless about yourself, you'll find people come to like and you respect you all the more, because they view you as a man worthy of their respect and admiration. Conversational Ability. Succeeding at all things social requires some degree of success as a conversationalist. It's impossible to come across a high status man without being able to communicate one's interests, get to know others, and relate and be relatable. Developing your skill as a conversationalist is an imperative for any man who aspires to embody and use intrinsic social status. Directness. Getting to the point in one's dealings with others is a very high status trait. Lower status individuals tend to beat around the bush, hesitate, and stall. High status people just get to it. Being direct - still socially gracious, mind you, but direct nevertheless - gets you straight to the heart of the matter, and most people, when this is done tactfully, tend to appreciate this and respond to it very well. Fundamentals. Much of what people respond to in intrinsically high status individuals is nonverbal: body language, posture, eye contact, facial expressions. Voice tone is another one that's incredibly important. Intrinsically high status people have high status fundamentals. It's the primary way that others assess their intrinsic status upon first meeting them. As you develop in these areas, and build your proficiency in the qualities of a man who's intrinsically high status, you'll begin noticing that people respond to you increasingly warmly, respectfully, and at times deferentially. Men and women both are extraordinarily attuned to the signatures of status, and that includes both high and low status signatures (check out the post on ultimate social calibration for a further breakdown of the traits of high and low status individuals). The benefits of developing yourself as an intrinsically high status man are far reaching and well worth the effort. Best of all, once you have intrinsic social status, you're freed from needing the constraints of extrinsic social status - you don't have to tooth-and-nail it to the top of a social hierarchy, you don't have to make yourself into an A-list celebrity or be the team leader of the best team in sports, and you don't have to be a headlining DJ or a party promoter at the best club in town. All you have to do is show up, be yourself, and be sociable and be meeting new people, and you'll find you get treated well and others appreciate having you around. Best of all, when the limelight fades and the 15 minutes of fame that whatever source of extrinsic social status others were tapping disappears, those with intrinsic social status still get the respect and admiration they always had. Extrinsic social status isn't bad; there's certainly nothing wrong with being successful and enjoying some of the benefits of that success. But for the long haul, for creating lasting social status that doesn't peel and chip with time and a changing social landscape, focus your attention on the intrinsic side of things - you'll end up with a much deeper, much more genuine respect from others, and one that translates far outside the reach of any situational status you could develop instead.

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##Stillness When I was in high school, I focused really hard on being very still and moving slowly. I thought it made me seem more dominant and powerful, so I put a lot of energy into mastering it. Nowadays, paying more attention when I'm out and hanging with girls, I'm realizing this is a big thing, nonverbally. Women are very attuned to how still you are. Being still radiates power. One of the ways I've come to understand this better is through taking a camera acting class. You can see it with someone who keeps moving -- legs, arms, body, head, whatever -- vs. someone who is still. Someone who keeps moving puts his energy out through his body. Someone who is still keeps that energy inside of him and just radiates it out of him. This is one of the big things the entertainer guys are missing. They're moving around so much, spending so much energy, so busy being all over the place, that they never take the time to relax, direct their energy upon one person, really pull that person into their world, their vibe, their reality, and just be still. Stillness, I think, is a big part of "charisma" or "magnetism" or whatever you call it. It makes someone seem imposing, confident, in-control, and unreactive. Other people are moving around all about him, and there he is, relaxed, unharried, and comfortable in his own space.

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##Student of the Game: Becoming a Social Success When you set out upon the journey to truly master your skills with women, much of the time a big part of what you're really setting out on that journey to be is a bonafide social success. Yet, as you'll most likely quickly find the instant you start working toward that goal, that's usually a lot easier said that done. Now, it is said that people are naturally social; so how is it that so many social interactions end with a feeling of awkwardness or something left to be desired? This frustrated me for years, and it can be frustrating for any aspiring seducer or seducer-in-training. Despite what you might be told, the ability to charm or really connect with anyone doesn't come naturally to most people. But luckily, it can be learned. And today team, we're looking at how to become at social dynamo. LEAVING YOUR NICHE Some new (and not so new) seducers talk about finding your niche. In fact, one of the earliest posts on this site was a free ebook that Chase designed for newer students of the game to get up and running faster, called, simply enough, Finding Your Niche. Your "niche" is usually the place where you'll find the most success in your pick-ups. This can come in a couple of forms - here are the main two: Discovering a place where you're comfortable consistently meeting women Finding a type of woman you pull consistently (e.g. one of my friends is very good with strong political women) Finding a niche can definitely be really advantageous and fulfilling - and hell, some seducers specialize so much and get so good at doing what they do that they never end up leaving their niches. However, although these two niche scenarios can be helpful, they have inherent flaws. The flaw with the first is that although you're meeting a healthy mix of women, you're limiting yourself to the kinds of women who frequent that location. For example, if you keep trying to meet women in a club/lounge, you will only meet the kinds of women who frequent those places for the most part. And we all know what most of those women are like…! And don't get me wrong, having a few places where you're comfortable meeting women is important. But, you won't become a true social success if you only go to these same places. The flaw with the second form of "niching" is even easier to wrap your head around: you find almost all your success with only one or two types of women. Honestly speaking, for most men, this is probably enough, and it may be the case that that's your thing; but to achieve true versatility, to be able to go out and get the kind of women you want and bring them into your life no matter the time or the place or the circumstance, you want to focus on striving to learn how to charm women and people of all types. Because once you're a social success, everywhere is your niche. As with anything in life, the only way to improve is to push yourself constantly. The first step to getting social command is to step out of your comfort zone as often as you possibly can. Every time you do, you'll learn something (or many somethings), and you will only improve your sense of calm and social understanding. Once you gain a wide range of experiences, finding out what people want - and giving it to them - becomes second nature. SECRETS OF SOCIAL SUCCESS: OBSERVE FIRST; ACT SECOND I've learned from many insightful teachers and mentors in my life: from masters of seduction to masters of martial arts, and everything in between. And they all seemed to share the same belief: that a master observes first and acts second. The case is the same with navigating social situations. When being introduced to a new social context, don't be overwhelmed by the power of the moment. Take a minute to relax and see the room. One of my close female friends - a nursing student - recently invited me to a big party that she was hosting at her new house. I accepted her invitation, knowing that she would be the only person at the party I knew. The party ended up being pretty relaxed despite how many people were there. As soon as I walked through the door, I was surrounded by dozens of strangers. When I walked through the door, I was immediately surrounded by skeptical strangers. Rather than be fazed and immediately try to qualify myself, I smiled and nodded to a couple of people and proceeded to slowly strut over to the next room where my friend was. After talking to her for a few minutes, she gave me a tour of the house, which was the perfect opportunity to further observe the situation. What I first noticed was that everyone at the party was a nursing student, a med student, or a teacher - except for yours truly, that was. The next thing I noticed was that although there was a lot of alcohol at the party, everyone seemed to be talking about their careers… and nothing else. I soon found a spot in the kitchen and continued observing with a confident, but removed smile. After a few minutes, a gorgeous blonde approached me and asked how my night was going. I answered, and drew her into a long conversation. At the end of this interaction, after this long and revealing conversation, the last thing we talked about was how shocked she was that I wasn't a med student. How is this possible? How did I go in, mix myself into a party full of people studying a field that seems intimidatingly out of reach to most outsiders, and come out of it as the surprise of the night for one stunning blonde there, who could hardly believe I wasn't one of the "elite?" social success Now before you go and dig up a medical journal, keep reading. I spent about 10% of the entire interaction speaking - maybe even less. This girl was dying to tell someone how hard the first weeks of school had been. But everyone else there was too busy talking about work. Fortunately, she found yours truly to get her story (and her phone number). The key to this kind of social success is this: if you find yourself in over your head, listen as much you can. In those words oft attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Active listening and deep diving are the cornerstones of being a conversationalist; and the man embodying social success is always a capable conversationalist. If there is anything you take away from this article, let it be this: a situation is as natural, or as unnatural and awkward, as you make it. This blonde approached me, but turned out to be a pretty shy girl. This could have fazed me and ruined the entire interaction, but I relaxed, kept a smile on my face, and let her ease into the situation. This is how a potential social dynamo handles any potentially uncomfortable situation, with the utmost calm and genuine interest in how things will play out. After you observe, you can confidently hang back and wait for people to approach you, or you can coolly strike up a conversation with strangers and build up your social momentum. WHAT PEOPLE WANT In my opinion (based on countless hours of studying, observing and interacting with people), most people in this world feel neglected. We want to feel part of something greater than ourselves (which is why we seek religion, clubs, games, etc.), and we want to feel connected to other people (which is why we form communities, give to charity, and are open to conversations with strangers). While at this same party, I saw a cute brunette who was sitting on a couch and nursing a bottle of Portuguese wine. She looked a little down to say the least. Now, I happen to know a thing or two about wine, so I struck up a conversation with her about the exotic bottle she held in her hand. It didn't take long for me to deep dive and find out that she was sad because the wine always reminded her of how much she wanted to go to Europe. I eventually gave her some words of encouragement from my own travels, and told her that she would get to travel through Europe if she just took a leap of faith and did it. In what was a surprising and unexpected twist, she then suddenly, and right in the middle of this party, burst out into tears of joy. She told me that no one had ever really encouraged her to chase her dreams, and that no one appreciated the fine bottle of wine that she bought for the party either. Although she thanked me in other ways later than night… this moment sitting there with her crying in the middle of that party was a really powerful moment for me. I realized how many people are waiting for someone to come along and to validate them. People - and women especially - want to be heard, want to feel a legitimate emotional connection, and want to be fulfilled. There won't always be golden opportunities like the one I just shared. However, my philosophy in life is to know a lot about a little and little about a lot. If you adopt this philosophy, you can find something in every situation to connect with someone on. And if you can't, just stay silent and self-assured, and ask questions - then you'll always learn about something you can connect with people on in any situation. I had many conversations that night. In most of these conversations I said very little; but when I did speak, I either offered a connection or words of genuine validation. I'm genuinely passionate about giving people positive feelings, and if you do so sincerely, people will feed those feelings right back to you. Despite the fact that most people couldn't have told you the first thing about me at that party that night, everyone at the party loved me, and many of them were begging my friend to bring me to the next party… and the next one… and the one after that. And the funny thing is… this has become the norm for me. I don't say that to brag. And it certainly wasn't always the case for me, either. I say that to illustrate for you just a few of the benefits that enter into your life when you work on yourself to become a social success. And this has become the norm for me because I've done exactlyt hat. It can become the norm for you too. As long as you leave your niche, observe first, then give people value and validation (and repeat this process until you're a master), you will learn to breeze your way through any social situation, gain new reference points and ways of seeing the people and things around you, and open your world up to all different kinds of women and social connections. One last thing; people don't want validation from just anyone who comes along. They want it from someone who is charismatic, seems to have an understanding of the world, is self-assured, and is high-value. And if you read this site, and if you use the material that's available to you here, that social dynamo they want to meet and connect with and be inspired and recognized and even validated by will be you.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Command Women (and Have Them Listen) One of the hardest things for me to do when I first started out teaching myself how to seduce women was to give orders and command women. "You mean, I'm supposed to just tell girls to do stuff, and then they're going to, like... do it?" I thought. Impossible! And yet, as I started meeting men in 2006 who were already getting the kinds of results with women I wanted, I watched in awe as they commanded women to do things... and the women just did it. So, I started playing with that myself. I began with women I knew well. Then women I'd been talking to for a while. Then I started pushing the limits on my newfound ability to command women. I started doing it with women I'd just started talking to. With women I'd just met. I even started giving commands to women as the very first thing I said to them. And it just kept working. As I went, I learned how to command women better and better, in ways that they instantly followed - voice tone techniques, specific ways of wording a command, and a lot more - that made it easier and easier to pull off seemingly ridiculous things with women I hardly knew. This post is about how to do what I learned to do when it comes to commanding women. WHY COMMANDS ARE A GOOD THING If you're on this site, it's safe to assume by now you know the importance of moving fast with women. The guys who move fast get the girl; the guys who take their time have attraction expire on them and then they're chasing after girls forever after. And you probably know the importance of gaining investment with women; when a girl's invested in you, she's a lot more likely to follow your lead, a lot more likely to feel attraction for you (women are attracted to strong, powerful men who lead them... and not so much to weak men, who follow them / chase them, or to men they're neutral with who are neither commanding them nor following them), and a lot more likely to end up together with you, when all is said and done. Well, when you command women, you do both of these things. Commands: Help you speed up the process, and commands also Get women investing and following your lead. What's not to love? If you get good at commanding women, it becomes really easy to get success with a lot more women than you might believe. But... most guys never get good at this. Even a lot of men you'll see who are naturally very good with women often aren't able to command women to do things - and their seductions are more often left to chance than their own ability to steer and direct them. What's it take to learn to command? A couple of things. They are: You've got to swallow the pill and start commanding girls You've got to take the time to learn the right kinds of commands You've got to take the time to learn the right voice tone to get good results But once you've got those down, you get a very powerful new weapon in your arsenal: the ability to tell women what to do... and have them listen. Interested in having a tool like that in your toolbox? HOW TO COMMAND WOMEN command womenI'm going to talk about those three things now: starting doing it, the right kinds of commands, and the right voice tone. Let's talk about starting out first. If you're like most men, you've been trained since birth on how to be a gentleman. You know that, of course, a gentleman does nice things like hold a door for a lady and compliment a lady on her choice of attire; and you know that a gentleman always pays for a date and takes his lady somewhere respectable. And you also know that, aside from a few, "After you, miss," and, "Ladies first,"s, you never tell a woman to do anything. After all, it's all about freedom and equality in our society these days... nobody wants to be TOLD what to do - right? Well, right - at least, they don't want to be told what to do at work. And they don't want to be told what to do by their friends. And they don't want to be told what to do by their parents. And they'll tell you they don't want to be told what to do by their lovers. But who do women get attracted to? Do they get attracted to those nice, neutral guys who never ask anything of them and always just give? Do they sit there in a hot sweat at night thinking about how William held the door open for them? No way. Women get attracted to men who make them chase. Men who make them invest. Men like you - once you get comfortable giving commands, that is. You're most probably going to be fighting to overcome years of "agreeableness" training that Western society trains its youth with. "Don't step on anybody's toes," is great advice for not getting in fights with people, but it's not exactly great for getting a girl's pulse to quicken and face to flush. Instead, you've got to be a man... a commanding man. You've just got to start doing it, get over the discomfort, and become comfortable ordering women around. What kinds of commands should you give to women, anyway? Commands like this: "Have a seat." "Move over a little bit." "Slide down a bit on the bar here." "Give me your hand." "Let me try your drink." "Turn around, let me see your dress." "Don't leave, we just started talking." "Join me for lunch." "Let's head back and watch a movie." How often do you say things like that to a girl? If your answer is, "Not often," or, "Never," then you definitely need to overhaul your interactions with women. If that feels intimidating, stop for a second and ask yourself if you ever hear women talk this way with guys... or if they ever talk this way with you. You'll probably realize that you do. Women in our society are used to having to lead men, because many men are too agreeable - or too afraid, perhaps - to lead themselves. Of course, women aren't actually attracted to those men they're forced to lead. Instead, you want to be leading them. When do you command women like this? Throughout an interaction. And how do you command them? Here are examples of what your voice tones ought to sound like (note: thanks to Eric from the comment section below for helping to get this working): Wrong Voice Tone Right Voice Tone You want to be using the voice tones I use in the "right" example (on, fittingly enough, the right side of the table above). Notice how, "Give me your hand," sounds a lot more like, "Give me your hand?" When you intone a command like a question, you're a lot more likely to get compliance early on when a woman is still skeptical about you. But when you're telling her to come sit with you or go back to your place later, you'll want to drop this. So, Question-like tone early, when a woman's getting used to following you Firmer, more inviting tone later once she's accustomed to following now By using these, you can get women following you easily and well - and then you can start doing the crazy stuff. "Come, move over here with me," you can say as you first meet a girl. She'll seem a little confused, akin to "Who IS this guy?" but if you're confident and you guide her along and you say it with the right intonation, you've actually got a pretty high percentage chance of having her come with you if you're not making her walk very far. You can try all kinds of stuff, actually. I've opened girls with things like, "Let me see your hand," then brought the hand up around me and pulled the girl in and had girls try to kiss me (turn your head so they only get your cheek if you want a better chance of pulling them home with you without a lot of resistance later; alternately, if you're just having fun and seeing how far you can push things at the beginning, it's fine to let them kiss you). Basically, if you're not using commands with women, you're missing an important part of your pick up utility belt. So... start using them! See you 'round the bend.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Get Approached by Women Yesterday evening I was out walking home, when I noticed a tall, thin girl with long hair and a good body in front of me, walking very carefree in heels, tight jean shorts cut off just below the butt, and a tank top, swinging her hips very sexy as she went. She turned around and looked back in my direction, then started singing in a very sweet voice. She turned around to look back a few more times - I was walking faster than her, so gaining on her and closing the distance. I thought about approaching, but then thought about what it takes to get approached by women. Here was a girl throwing off tons of the things you'll see when girls show interest: She was blatantly looking back at me (she probably knew I was there before I knew she was; even when you're very socially aware, girls are still often going to be the first to spot you before you spot them) She kept looking back at me, which means there was something that was very interesting to her... or, she was trying to get my attention She started singing, which you might not realize, but women will often start to sing or talk on their phones to attract male attention (you can use this same tactic yourself; we'll see that in a moment) I didn't particularly feel like approaching - I was tired and worn out from a long day, and I wasn't dressed the best. So instead, I wanted to see if I could get approached. And that's what I'm going to talk with you about today: how can you get women to approach you instead of you having to always approach them? THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT GETTING APPROACHED All throughout high school and much of college, my only interactions came when women approached me. So I got pretty good at it. But even when you're good at it, it's still relatively rare. That's the big, flashing disclaimer on this post: if you rely on getting approached by women, you won't meet too many women. On the other hand, you will get a pretty fun choice of women: the women who approach tend to be spunky, self-confident, and often pretty good-looking (although, I have been approached by some women who were decidedly not good-looking, too... can't blame 'em for trying though, right?). Also, here's disclaimer number two: a big chunk of this is looks. My looks are... arguably good. I've been called handsome more often than I've been called ugly, let's say that much. But my friends who are legitimately good-looking guys do get cold approached by women a lot more often than I do. Them's the shakes. But remember that clothes make the man; when I'm dressed up in my best clothes, I get honest "Wow!" responses from women (admittedly, it took me years to get the fashion sense to be able to put together a look that got that kind of response). Though, this is the same for women: fun tip - next time you're out at a nightclub thinking how hot some girl looks, stop and look at just her face alone and ask if she's hot. Much of the time you'll realize that what's making her look hot is hair and clothes much more so than face. This is just as true for men as women. So before you tell me this doesn't apply because you're not good-looking, go give yourself a makeover and then try this out. Again, we've got two big disclaimers on this one: It's uncommon to get approached by women; don't rely on this one Getting approach has much to do with looks; so make yours look good Which reminds me, two articles this site badly needs are: Fashion, and Hairstyles I've got the one on cool facial hair up, though it needs an overhaul (and some pictures). But yes, you can make yourself look damn good if you try. On with the rest of the post. WHY WOMEN APPROACH Chances are, if you're reading this, you're probably already a guy who goes out and approaches new women. If you're not, start here: how to get a girl. You need to learn approaching women first before you worry about getting them to approach you, otherwise you're going to have a miserable time waiting and not getting much attention for a long time. If you're approaching regularly, unless you're an approach machine who's been meeting women so long you don't even think about it anymore, you know the feeling of seeing a girl you like, and then getting a bit of fear and excitement kicking in. That's uncertainty; uncertainty feels like fear and excitement. The more uncertainty, the stronger the emotions. This is magnified multiple times for many women because they don't approach and don't know what will happen. They also only to approach guys they really like, so the excitement is very high and the fear of rejection is too. That means that the instant a girl starts thinking about approaching you, she's going to feel some pretty strong emotions. And as you may know from your own approaching, if there are any strong reasons not to approach, those can kick in and fudge your chances: If you're in a conversation If you're with friends If you're moving too fast If you look angry If you're wearing headphones If you're doing something busily If you look cold / rude / uninviting She sees one of those and she won't approach. Women are risk averse; a gal's looking for a guy she can approach with minimal odds of rejection. Furthermore, a woman will not approach if she thinks there's a chance you'll approach her. She also will not approach if she thinks you considered approaching her, then decided not to (she'll probably get rejected if she tries, she figures, if you didn't want to bother meeting her). Sound complicated? In fact, it's pretty straightforward to get approached... in the right place, with the right girl, in the right situation - if you do things right. And here's how. HOW TO GET APPROACHED BY WOMEN If you want to get approached, there're only two things you need to get down: Being approachable Looking good Looking good I'm not going to go over here - that's a series of posts in and of itself. That's things like: Getting your fundamentals down (discussed in-depth in the eBook) Getting your fashion down, a cool hairstyle, and sexy facial hair Dropping excess fat / putting on some muscle / getting in-shape Being a sexy man What we are going to talk about is how to tailor yourself into being approachable enough that any girl who thinks you look good enough to her will approach you. Being approachable can be further boiled down to just a few things: Disarming girls' fear of rejection by seeming innocent / distracted / childlike Leaving things "open" enough for her that she feels comfortable approaching Not giving her any sign that you might approach her Let's look at each. Disarming Girls' Fear of Rejection That's right, earlier I said that being a sexual man is an important part of looking good, and then after that I said you need to come across innocent and childlike to disarm her. Paradox? Not quite. You know who are masters of both flirtation and innocence? Babies. Sound weird? In fact, babies - both male and female babies - start learning how to flirt at a very young age... somewhere around five or six months. They practice flirting before they can even sit up or crawl. This is an inborn instinct that all human beings have. Babies are the picture of innocence... and yet, they give people sexy looks. Of course, you don't get turned on by a baby (at least, I hope not), but it's a solid example that even at an early age, you can mix the two. As you play around with sexiness, you'll come to find there are two distinct "flavors" of sexiness: Sweet sexy, and Tough sexy Sweet sexy is the romantic Italian guy who sweeps a girl off her feet by innocently chasing after her and persisting and throwing himself at her, until she's charmed into acquiescing. Tough sexy is the guy who grunts and only ever gives women half smiles under his stubbly beard and spends more time chopping down more trees and carving things out of granite than he does talking to people, but he exudes manliness and sexiness and power. Both are good models to use, and when you get them down you can even switch back and forth between them, depending on your mood and what you're trying to accomplish. But tough sexy doesn't get approached. Not usually. Sweet sexy, on the other hand, does. How do you do sweet sexy? You look like this: get approached get approached If your first instinct upon seeing those photos is, "Whoa, those guys are totally gay!" that's because you're not used to seeing men look at you like that. And I don't recommend you look at other men that way (unless that's your thing...!). However, I do recommend you look at women this way. Because just like you felt something that said, "That guy's gay," when you looked at pictures of a man looking at you that way, a woman's going to think, "That guy's cute and sexy," when she sees a man looking at her that way (or looking off distracted somewhere that way). Also, noticed the facial hair stubble + clean shaven neck? This is my current facial hair style, too. It's sexy without being overly edgy. If you want very edgy / slightly grimy, go for chinstrap + soul patch (the current pick up artist standard... works best with American girls; stubble + clean shaven neck is a little too close to tame for them, though still gets better results than most things; it's a bit too edgy / dangerous for most other women, however). Just a quick aside on facial hair there... back to the post. What are the keys to that look? They are: Eyebrows raised (as if you were about to ask a question) Eyes wide Looking out of the corner of the eyes (sexy eye contact) Mouth drawn into a slight smile, raised more on one side of the mouth than the other Lips slightly pursed For a more dramatic example, see Ben Stiller in Zoolander doing "Blue Steel." Don't go that extreme, but the reason that's funny is because it's a more dramatic version of what you see in real life. Real life sexy men (of the sweet sexy variety) do Blue Steel... except, not so pronounced. Check out any male model in any magazine ad. Maybe 50% of them are wearing that facial expression. It's not a coincidence... it makes them look sexy and approachable. Every guy I've known who was naturally very good with women used this look. Every single one. They'd each independently arrived at it, and most didn't even realize they were doing it. They just had learned through talking to thousands of women that when they wore that expression, they got approached more, and women were a lot more open and a lot more receptive to them. This is one of the big ones... don't underestimate how important your facial expression is to your efforts to get approached. It's HUGELY important. Women won't approach you if you look like an angry man. You'll get approached in droves when you wear this look, though (well, droves relative to how much you'll get approached with other looks on your face). Here are the other things you can do to disarm women's fears of rejection: Do something with music. I have no idea why this works this way, I think it has something to do with getting attention while also showing confidence (most people are afraid to stand out by making music publicly), but I noticed it back in 7th grade: if you start drumming your fingers, or humming, women instantly feel a lot more comfortable and excited about striking up a conversation with you. When I used to rap, I'd get street-stopped by women I didn't know cold approaching me on the sidewalk when I'd be rapping quietly (not too loud or aggressive sounding) as I walked down the road. Doing something lightly musical (not too loud or intense) makes women want to talk to you. Look around widely. Curious men are a lot more disarming than focused man. A focused man is more likely to brush her off because he's trying to do whatever he's trying to do or trying to get wherever he's trying to get. If you're distracted and curious and looking around, though, you're a lot more likely to be willing to stop and talk if she opens you. Examine the environment. Similar to curiosity, checking out your environment means you're a lot more present in the moment, and less lost in thought (she'd be interrupting you if she approached) or focused on something like a book or phone call (again, she'd be interrupting you). If you're focused on what's going on around you, she won't be interrupting you to pull you into the present... because you're already present. And, she might even be able to use something in the environment to open you with - it's a natural segue into the two of you talking. Leaving Things Open Enough for Her to Talk with You When I go out to meet women, you'll almost always find me going out alone. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons. Among them: Not having to worry about / manage / help out friends Not having to integrate my group with her group Not having to go where friends want to go or convince them to go where I want But chief among them is this: not scaring off girls who want to approach. That's right: you're about 1,000,000 times more likely to get approached by yourself. That number might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's something close to that. Why's this so? Well, it's the same reason that a woman by herself in a nightclub gets descended on by men like a pack of ravening wolves, while women with even one friend get approached far less, and women with a group of friends have maybe five or six or seven guys talk to them all night. People are a lot more likely to be receptive when they don't have anyone to talk to. And if you're by yourself, women will assume you're easy game. You're far more attainable. This is one of the big reasons why I recommend that if you really want to meet girls, go out early and go out alone. Other ways to leave yourself open for her to talk to you (besides not having friends / being in a group): Walk slowly or stay in one place... Women feel a lot less comfortable chasing you down on the street if you're moving fast, and it takes them time to gather their courage to approach you in a bar, so stay in one spot... usually. ... or, move somewhere closer to her. This is the exception - if you're far away from a girl, and you can tell she's interested, reposition yourself somewhere close to her - optimally, right next to her. But do it smooth - don't make it obvious you're doing it so she'll talk to you. Make it seem like it "just happened." Girls like things to "just happen..." remember that. If you're with friends, be the bored outsider. One of the ways you can get opened more when you're in a group is to hang out on the outside of the group. Sometimes, if you're with a very cool group but you're just on the outside, this can get you opened more; the girl thinks, "Oh wow, his group is cool... why's he on the outside? Maybe I can talk to him." Not Giving Her Any Sign You'll Approach Her This one's super important, because the instant a girl thinks you might approach her, she will never again approach. The main way you pull this off is by never looking at her. But that's easier said than done. Why? Because women are masters of attention. If a girl wants you to look at her, unless you're a legitimate pro, you're probably going to look at her. And at that point, she will not approach you. If you want to get approached, you cannot look at women. At least, not the women you want to approach you. There's one exception to this: when you're giving a woman an invitation to sit or stand near you (see: "Eyes That Draw"). Then, you kind of sort of half look at her. At that point, though, when it works and she positions herself near you, it's on you to open her. If you want women opening you, you can't look at them at all. And they'll be using all the tricks I mentioned above; they'll be positioning themselves at you, they'll be giving you sideways looks, they'll be looking around curiously / distractedly, they'll be signing or humming or tapping their fingers, they'll be wearing a sweet sexy look on their faces. It's only when they've tried everything in their arsenal and you still haven't noticed them that you get approached. That's when a girl says, "All right, I tried it all and he doesn't know I exist. Time for me to suck it up and just go in." That's when it happens. REWARDING HER FOR THE APPROACH get approachedMost girls get really nervous on the approach. If she opens you, take over and make her feel good. That's your responsibility to her. I struggled with getting this one down for the longest time. When I first started approaching women a lot, it'd really throw me when girls I was about to open opened me first... I didn't know what to do, and it never worked. What I found you want to do is this: Maintain a nice-but-skeptical demeanor with her; sort of like, "Oh, it's nice that you opened me. You seem like you might be okay. Who are you?" Gradually open up more and more to her as she tells you more about herself Ask her normal questions and talk to her Introduce yourself early if she forgets to do this Lead strongly and move things forward That last one's important: if she opened you, she likes you a LOT. You should try to make things happen as quickly as possible... reward her for going out on a limb there. If you don't make things happen, she's going to feel bad and disappointed about talking to you. "God, I did that big scary thing, put myself out there and then... he just talked to me about boring stuff and didn't DO anything???" Don't make her say that to herself. That girl I mentioned at the start of this post did end up approaching me last night, and she was both very excited and very nervous about it. So, I escalated things with her quickly and moved it all along rapidly. And the end result of it all was, she came away delighted and satisfied to have approached me. And if you get approached by women - assuming they're desirable women - I think that's your duty too: leave her delighted and satisfied for going out on a limb and taking a bet on you. If she isn't desirable... hey, still be nice to her anyway. What goes around comes around, after all ;)

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Going Out Alone to Meet Women It has been said that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death… Seinfeld's little twist on this idea is that at a funeral, people would rather be lying in the coffin than giving the eulogy. I believe there is something that we fear even more than public speaking: approaching beautiful women. And this fear gets multiplied when we're going out alone, without our buddies and "wingmen" around. I remember the first time I went out ALONE to meet girls. Just the thought of it made me nervous, but I had been told that it's a great exercise to build confidence and social skills. Right after I left the house I realized I was hungry… and got something to eat. But while I was still waiting for my food, I became aware that this was nothing but creative avoidance - I was giving myself reasons to put off the dreaded exercise until the last possible moment! And once I had left the restaurant, I started REALLY getting nervous… and psyching myself out. After half an hour of this, I couldn't even have asked a girl what time it was… leave alone flirt with one! Thank God I've long since overcome this hurdle, but the question is… …WHY IN THE WORLD IS THIS SO DIFFICULT? There doesn't seem to be a reason why it should be, right? We've all talked to strangers before… we've all been out of the house alone before. And rationally, we know that nothing bad is going to happen. It's not like a girl is going to beat us up! In fact, I have a friend who's a Navy SEAL and he once said in frustration: "Man! I'm a WARRIOR! I've seen live combat in jungles and deserts and stuff! WHY am I afraid of these LITTLE GIRLS?!" A more obvious reason is that when you're going out alone, you don't have psychological "backup"… because while your rational mind knows that nothing bad is going to happen, your emotions evolved in a tribal and far more hostile environment. Approaching strangers, especially alone, was not unlikely to result in… DEATH! Second, it is really difficult to get (and stay) in an extroverted, fun and talkative state when you're out alone. The human mind specializes in whatever it has been doing for a while, and if you spend half an hour or more without talking to anybody, it's very easy to get quite literally "stuck" in your head. With friends on the other hand, it's easy to stay chatty and just transfer that conversational "momentum" to the next girl you meet! I was never willing to accept this. Surely there HAD to be a way? Isn't it possible to become that "ideal self" that we dream of being… the man who can just walk around town on his own, or show up in clubs without any friends, and within a few minutes he's meeting new people, making new friends, and chatting up girls… without any fear, approach anxiety, or hesitation? Well… YES! The good news is there ARE ways to deal with this problem. In fact, many of the greatest ladies' men I know (myself included), went from shy introvert to seduction superstars by practicing. But of course you have to know what to practice! STATE'S IMPACT ON GOING OUT ALONE As mentioned above, the problem is entirely psychological… more specifically, it's a question of state. When we get into introverted states… or God forbid, even bad states where negative thought loops start running around our head, there are two ways to deal with this. One is to develop state control… the other is to develop state independence. State Control means that we proactively do things to improve our state. Replaying successful interactions we've had with beautiful girls in the past (or any positive memory, really) is one way of doing this… it takes your mind off negative thoughts, because the human brain cannot hold two different thoughts at one time. Another thing that really helps is to change your posture, your breathing and your facial expression. Walking, talking and moving with an air of confidence quickly triggers actual feelings of confidence inside you. State Independence on the other hand means that we learn to be unaffected by our state… so that even if our thoughts and emotions aren't entirely positive and we're not in the ideal head space, we don't let it affect us. The best way to do this is to turn our attention away from our internal dialogue - the thoughts running through our head - and outward, to the environment, the present moment, the things going on around us. Walk around with a keen alertness and observe every detail of your environment… this shuts off all negative thought loops and makes it easier to interact with the world… including the beautiful women you see. WHO NEEDS OLD FRIENDS… going out alone…when you can make new friends? :) If your buddies were being lame and wanted to watch TV instead of coming out with you, there is a second tactic you can use: making new friends QUICKLY. Just because you went out alone doesn't mean you have to STAY alone! Recruit people as a social safety-net before approaching women. As you walk into the bar, club or other venue of your choice, immediately chat up a few people that seem really approachable. You don't need to befriend the two ice-queens in the corner booth with their backs to the room just yet… they'll get curious about you soon enough. But maybe you see a group of guys watching the game and you can break the ice by making a comment? Maybe there are some girls who aren't your ideal type, but they are laughing and seem open to meeting people? Or maybe you can chat up somebody else who's alone and ask a question about the night… who the band is, what other clubs are good in this part of town, where the hottest girls hang out? So don't hesitate going out alone if nobody is up for coming along. Keep your thoughts positive, maintain a powerful physiology and stay in the moment… and your state won't be an obstacle. And when you get to the venue, chat people up immediately and you won't even be alone for more than a few seconds.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: How to Touch Women (the Scientific Way) These are questions millions of men scratch their head over every day… should you touch her on the date, and if so, how much? Will she think you're creepy if you touch her too much… and how much IS too much? Will she think you're a shy wimp if you don't touch her enough… and how much IS enough? Let's have a look at what science has to say on how to touch women… what happens to a woman physiologically when you touch her, what kinds of hormones get released and how does this affect the way she will FEEL about YOU? BASICS OF TOUCH: TOUCHING HER SKIN Ever heard of oxytocin? The Wise Wikipedia says that oxytocin is "a mammalian hormone, best known for its roles in sexual reproduction." That's good news… because mammals… hey, that's US! You've probably guessed it by now… touching somebody, skin-to-skin, causes oxytocin to be released. That's more good news, for a few reasons: Oxytocin increases a woman's testosterone levels, which is responsible for the human sex drive (yes, also in women) Oxytocin is also the biochemical agent that triggers bonding feelings Oxytocin is a natural feel-good drug. In fact, all emotions are biochemical processes, and very addictive ones at that. Ever notice how you feel a sudden sexual tingling when you accidentally brush your skin against a girl in the subway... even if you haven't even seen her yet, or if you hadn't felt attracted to her before? Voilá… That's oxytocin at work. Mother Nature has even more good news: women respond much more strongly to oxytocin, because this process requires estrogen to function… and women have MUCH more estrogen than men do. Touching women... even lightly... can make them think about you differently, or even get aroused. It can build electricity between the a woman and you and trigger that primitive part of her brain… and bring naughty images to her mind. What's more, once oxytocin is released into the blood stream, it creates the desire to be touched even more… which will then lead to even more oxytocin being produced, and so forth… it's a loop that feeds on itself and spirals the desire higher and higher! This is also why touching is an essential ingredient if you want to turn a friend into a lover (if you really want to learn how to do this, read the article about "How to Get Out of the Friend Zone" here). Finally, oxytocin also plays a huge role part in building trust, and even in the bonding process. In fact, oxytocin is the very reason for motherly love - which many consider to be the strongest and purest form of love. BASICS OF TOUCH: TOUCHING HER CLOTHES So if it's all about skin-to-skin contact… does that mean that touching her on her clothes is pretty much useless? The answer is that it won't create the same biochemical response and arousal - but when given a choice of not touching her at all or touching her clothes, always go for the latter. This has a few benefits: It establishes that you're a comfortable touching people (just make sure that you don't touch ONLY beautiful girls… that might come across as creepy). It establishes your physical dominance - you're invading her space and exerting control. You can observe that when a politician greets somebody and shakes their hand, he will often try to touch their elbow with their free hand. You can touch the small of her back when she walks through the door, even if her clothes cover her skin - this still establishes a leading dynamic. And in courtship, much like in dancing, the man is expected to take the lead. It establishes rapport - if you touch somebody you've only just met the way you would touch an old friend, it will quickly seem like you've known them forever -to bystanders as well as to the girl you're talking to. TOUCHING WOMEN RIGHT: LIGHT TOUCHING Another piece of advice on how to touch women right - let your touch be gentle, macho man. Imagine a feather lightly brushing along her skin, giving her tingling sensations and goose bumps… a light touch is often better. Quick light taps on the back of her hand, or a brief touch when there is laughter. At other times, you want to physically take control of her with a strong lead; you might suddenly press her against a wall to make out with her, for example - mix it up! Something even more powerful: many women have very thin, almost invisible hair on their skin… If you can brush this hair with your skin, without actually touching her, this will trigger a lot of HIGHLY sensitive nerve endings. Breathe down her neck to achieve this same effect… once you're making out, you can even lick her skin, then blow some warm air on the moist spot - and the evaporating saliva will send chills up and down her spine! HOW TO TOUCH WOMEN LIKE A PRO: ADVANCED TOUCHING how to touch womenIf you're already more advanced, there is something else you can do… and that is to NOT touch her a lot early on. Wait… what? That's right… if she can tell that you're at ease with the situation, and that you COULD easily touch her but simply choose NOT to, just because you enjoy teasing her… this can build up powerful emotional response potential in her. It's what I usually do these days, and it can help to build a tremendous amount of sexual tension. You can even come close to her and ALMOST touch her… but then pull back again. What's women's FAVORITE word when it comes to sex? If you said "anticipation"… you're on the money. That said, don't hold back too long, because eventually you will have to touch her. No touching, no sex… I think we can all agree that this is sound logic. :) You want to smoothly lead into the physical escalation, and not have it be an abrupt transition, so you will probably have to start touching her some time before you make your big move. But keep your first touches very light, or refrain from touching her at all, to build that anticipation and sexual tension. If you haven't played much with anticipation before, you'll be amazed how much it drives women absolutely wild with desire. But that's exactly what it does - it turns them into burning, half-crazed lust MACHINES who can't wait to quench their thirst... for YOU.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Learn How to Be Relatable with These 7 Secrets of Relatability A reader writes in asking about attainability: "Hey Chase, Great blog man, top notch stuff. Never been part of the PUA community, but been doing self improvement (corresponding with my values) for 4 years or so, and your blog and TSM are pretty much the only two I read consistently. I've also read your book, and have a question on attainability. So here's the issue: Not to sound pretentious or arrogant, but I'm a pretty good looking guy, fantastic shape, fashionable, carry myself well, great job blah blah blah, and I have a lot of symptoms of having much too low of attainability. Only super confident women seem to have the guts to put themselves out there (which can be a good thing, they are my type), make eye contact passing by each other, or even manage a smile after eye contact is made. Now I am a very pleasant, outgoing person, and I always walk around with at least a pleased look on my face, so it's not like I'm walking around frowning or anything. I guess my question is, how can I raise my attainability through body language or the way I carry myself before words are spoken or even eye contact is made, so that more women are open to me? This isn't in my head, I live in a smaller town (50,000) people, half are college kids (I'm in my late 20's) and countless times friends tell me women ask about me all interested, and I'll end up knowing who they're talking about but have never had these girls so much as make eye contact or smile?! I don't want to walk around smiling like a goofball to make myself seem friendlier, help me man!" This goes deeper, to the issue of how to make yourself more relatable to people. In this reader's case, he's running into the same problem I used to have a lot -- that only the most confident women feel comfortable around him, and everybody else can't relate. I struggled with that for quite a while myself. These days though, I'm a pretty darn relatable guy. And you might be surprised by that, considering my lifestyle should make me all but unrelatable -- frequent international travel (often to places like Cambodia or Monaco instead of the "usual" places like Australia or England), starting up not just one business, but a whole host of them, meeting girls in bars, clubs, airports, and train stations, and a hard-line approach toward friendships and relationships that most people would probably politely describe as "extreme." Me, relatable? I don't even find the same things enjoyable that most other people do. Yet, should you ever meet me, chances are we'll get along just fine. We'll laugh; we'll trade stories; and, like so many people I meet, you'll quite possibly end up telling me you feel like we've been friends forever, despite the fact that we'll have met minutes before. That's because I sat down and put the time into figuring out how to be relatable, both in conversation and even on first appearance. And the great news is, anybody can pull it off -- all it takes is a little effort, and a bit of a push in the right direction to get you started. BEING RELATABLE: YOU ARE NOT YOUR OPINIONS Before we get into the specifics of being relatable in conversation and on appearance, I want to touch on this first, because it's vital to the concept of relatability. I've mentioned this on here before in the post on becoming a great conversationalist, but you really are not your opinions, despite the fact that so many people want to tie up their identities in their opinions for some reason I don't quite get. And this is the first secret to on how to be relatable. I get a lot of feedback from readers of this site that I come across as very genuine and very relatable. I get the same feedback in real life. In fact, that's something I've specifically trained up in myself; I really, honestly try to be a genuine, relatable guy, because I feel that's the best way to do whatever you want to do: Get to know people better and get them to open up Get information across and help people succeed Build a business and sell products No bones about it, being genuine and relatable is a boon. One of the big problems you see in this industry is guys using their sites and public engagements as platforms to try and "share their opinions." You know, the guys who get all riled up and try and "tell it like it is" and toss about value judgments. Those are the guys who say things like: "Men who want XYZ thing are weak and stupid." "Women who do ABC thing are manipulative and bad." That's all well and good if your objective is sparking conflicting, getting people to think, or pressing for wide sweeping change. That's not your objective in making friends or meeting new women though, just like it isn't my objective on this site. Your objective in making friends is to form some new connections and allies who can benefit your life. Your objective in meeting new women is to form new bonds with women who can be your friends, lovers, and partners. My objective with this site is to provide information on what I've found to work, to leave some manner of a legacy (however small) and at least get my findings down on paper because who knows how long I'll be doing this or when some plane I'm on will crash or some bus will careen onto the wrong side of the road as I'm crossing the street in a third world country and smack me into the next world, and of course to sell a few books and audio and videos to support myself and grow this business in the process. None of those objectives benefit from causing conflict (usually). None. Unless you're trying to win political office or make your mark in academia, you probably are going to do yourself more harm than good by waging a war of opinions with anybody. And you certainly won't be relatable. Yet, most folks just keep on tossing opinions out, casting judgment on stuff, and seeding conflict, and fighting with one another. Makes me look on in bemusement and shake my head most of the time. Sigh... humanity. HOW TO BE RELATABLE Most people like to talk. I'm going to ask you to listen. You see, the first secret to learning how to be relatable is becoming the Listener. The reason why the Listener is always more relatable than the Talker is because the Talker is relating to himself. The Listener, on the other hand, is relating to others. Two different scenarios: Scenario 1: You and I are in a conversation, and I'm a Talker Me: You know what I think about the current political and economic situation? You: No, what? Me: I'll tell you what I think about it. I think XYZ thing is all wrong, and ABC is completely being ignored and we're destroying ourselves because of that. And blah blah... Scenario 2: You and I are in a conversation, and I'm a Listener Me: So what do you think about the current political and economic situation? You: Hmm, well, let me give you my thoughts... In which scenario do you feel more related? Where do you feel like we're bonding more? Right, yeah -- the one where you get to share your opinions with me while I listen. The one where I steamroll you with my own opinions, you probably don't feel all that related. At best, we discover we're completely on the same page, and you get excited as I talk -- but not related. And at worst, you end up feeling completely put off by my grating opinions that conflict with yours. That gets us to the essence of what being relatable is all about: being relatable isn't about helping someone else relate to you -- it's about you relating to them. That's how you get others feeling that they're relating to you. So, as is our custom in deep diving, you get a girl telling you about herself, and you relate back to her. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg; relating to others instead of trying to force them to relate to you is only the first step. how to be relatable THE 7 SECRETS OF RELATABILITY As mentioned in my seduction ebook to which our reader above was referring, relatability is one of the aspects of attainability -- how much (or how little) a woman feels that she can "get" you. As relatability increases, so does attainability; as it goes down, so too does attainability, and the farther attainability drops, the closer you get to auto-rejection. In other words, if you want to avoid women shutting down and going cold on a regular basis, you'd do well to step up how relatable you are! There are two components to relatability, and if you want to really get down how to be relatable, you'll have to handle them both. Those components are: Nonverbal relatability, and Verbal relatability I'm going to list out the 7 secrets to relatability here, and I'm going to break them down by category, depending upon which one of those two components they're a part of. Nonverbal Relatability Having the right facial expressions. Your facial expressions are one of the most powerful means you have of getting women comfortable with you very soon into an interaction and making them feel like you can relate to them. Strong eye contact coupled with a warm, slow-spreading smile will get women feeling very comfortable with you before you even say "hello." Making use of eye contact flirting. By teasing women with your eyes and focusing on being sexual and flirtatious with them, you very quickly communicate to girls that you enjoy women and are warm and sexy. They may flirt back or may try and tease you with their own nonverbals, but they're melting and feeling you're more relatable all the while as they do. Getting quick, close proximity. Nothing kills relatability quite like standing far away from someone. It feels awkward, weird, and impersonal. Instead, close the distance and get out of the "polite zone." You should make it imperative to get as physically close to a new woman you've just met as you would if she was your girlfriend. Verbal Relatability Being the Listener instead of the Talker. As mentioned above -- the Talker tries to force others to relate to him by loading them up with his opinions, and succeeds only occasionally. The Listener encourages others to talk and to open up to him -- and relating happens almost automatically as a result. Deep diving. As you listen and she talks, get her to go deeper -- and relate back to her. Share brief experiences, build on what she's saying, and encourage her to continue relating more and more. This gets her relating ever more about herself, and feeling increasingly more related to you -- and you become increasingly more relatable yourself. Staying judgment-free. I still haven't gotten a proper post up on it, though I've been saying I will for the better part of a year, but remaining as free of judgment as you possibly can is key to staying relatable. If you want people to clam up fast and see you as cold, alien, and unrelatable, judging them is your surest bet to accomplish that. On the other hand, if you want women opening up to you and feeling comfortable around you, wanting to connect with you, and viewing you as a super-relatable guy, you've got to strive to be the most judgment-free man they've ever met. Note that this doesn't mean you aren't discriminating; of course, you're choosy about whom you allow in your life and whom you don't. Judging and discriminating are two different things; the latter is good (it's vital to effectively screening and qualifying women), while the former is quite hurtful to your relatability. Remaining humble. You'd be surprised how often men destroy their relatability by not being humble. This was one of my personal Achilles' heels early on. Humility doesn't mean "unconfident;" and in fact, some of the most confident men are quite humble. To picture this, try and imagine two kings who'd conquered all the surrounding lands on their glorious returns to their home city. One king says, "Together, we have emerged victorious; it was the work of all the soldiers, all the crop growers, all the merchants, priests, mothers and fathers, and all the citizens of this great land that allowed us to succeed," while the other says, "Today will be the day that goes down in history, marking the day in which I, triumphant king of this town, have put down the rebellions once and for all!" Which king do you think you'd rather have tea with? Which one do you think people find more likable, more charismatic, and more relatable? Yeah, it's the one who's saying, "Hey, we did it together," even though everyone knows it was him who did it. To wrap up, you can make yourself as relatable as possible if you: Use warm, sexy facial expressions and eye contact Get close and personal Be a listener and get to deep diving quickly Refrain from judging girls and keep yourself humble, even as you're impressive Keep your thumb firmly on all of these, and you'll find that problems with attainability and relatability start disappearing very fast. Until next time.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Listen to Women Better with Active Listening One piece of guidance I often give to guys looking to improve with women is to start doing active listening in order to better listen to women and build great connections with them fast. It's simple, straightforward advice that's easy to start implementing right away -- or at least, that was what I'd been thinking. A reader writes in reminding me of a realization I had years ago but since forgot about the right way to do active listening: "Wow man just had a great convo with my mom of all people about how to handle women. We talked a lot about things I already knew but it gave me a fresh perspective. But the one thing she told me about was "paraphrasing what she said" She told me that a lot of guys like "reiterate" what a woman says. For example if I was talking to a woman and she told me a story about jogging and how it makes her feel great. Reiterating would be me saying "Hmmm so what you're really saying is you feel great because of this...." Then the woman tells me "NO I'm feeling great because of what I just said! Your not listening to me!" Now that same situation as a paraphrase would go "so let me see if I understand you, your saying you feel great because of this..." then she says "Yes exactly I was feeling great because growing up my mom..." Now at that point I've got her opening up because she's feeling understoood. And sorry for the vocab lesson I"m sure you already knew this but it helps me illustrate my idea in my mind lol! But I'm just emailing you about this because I've noticed that A LOT of your game is based off of paraphrasing. When a woman is challenging you paraphrase. When you want to deep dive you paraphrase. When you try to connect with her emotionally you paraphrase. Once you can paraphrase her words she feels understood and now you guys can truly connect. And it was something that had been bothering me for YEARS man because I was trying SO HARD to listen to women lol! But I found out that I was just doing it the wrong way which was from a frame of reiteration (male comm) and not paraphrase (female comm). It's crazy because now I can look back at some of your old post and say OHHHHH that's how he did that! IT's amazing how much power paraphrasing gives you when it comes to communicating with others. Just wanted to share that with you because it really struck me as gold." After reading this email, in a flash, I remembered the years I spent straining and striving to understand women and feed back to them what they'd said, only to have my efforts be tossed right back in my face when girls replied with, "Uh, no, that's not what I meant," or tersely corrected me. Man, that was frustrating. But it doesn't happen anymore. Why? Well... let me tell you. You see, our good reader highlights the difference between what a guy who's learning tries to do, and a guy who's got it down does. And I'm going to delve deeper into doing it the right way here, in this post on active listening. THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING HOW TO LISTEN TO WOMEN Have you ever been in a conversation with a woman where you found yourself struggling to understand everything she was saying so you could feed it back to her well? Sitting there... mental wheels grinding... working hard to come up with an intelligent-sounding response to have ready for her before she's even done talking... only to have her look confused when you deliver that well-thought out response, or not even connect to it, or say, "Um, no, I actually meant this?" You were doing what our reader referred to as reiterating, or what I'd call interpretation -- he's trying to tell a girl what her words mean. So a girl says "Oh God, my classes are so hard." and the guy she's talking to replies with "So you're saying you don't like your major?" and the girl corrects him with "No, I love my major, it's just that my classes are really hard." The thing is, every time a girl needs to correct you or clarify, she feels a little bit more like you don't understand her. You aren't getting to know her, and you aren't connecting. But so many men make women correct them continually in conversations when they're trying to build an emotional connection by seeking to feed things back to girls. It's a road to hell, paved on good intentions. I'm guessing you've probably already been in plenty of conversations where this has happened, and you probably have a good idea what I'm talking about already. But, just for good measure, here's another example: Girl: I wish I could just fly away and go live in Spain for a year. Guy: So you're not happy here? Girl: No, I love Texas, I just think it'd be cool to live in Spain a while. And another: Girl: I think horses are the most amazing creatures on Earth. Guy: It's really cool that you love animals so much. Girl: I don't really like animals, actually; just horses. These misunderstandings come in two flavors: Guesses, and Assumptions A guess is when a guy isn't sure what a girl means, but guesses: "So you're saying you don't like spending time with family?" An assumption is when a guy assumes something about a girl based on something else she's said: "You must be a very creative person." But, to a woman, these statements (when wrong... and they often are) sound to her like the statements of a man who doesn't "get" her. He doesn't understand where she's coming from, why she's saying the things she's saying, or why she's doing the things she's doing. He just doesn't "get" it. Why? Because the men who really know how to listen to women tend to talk to them much differently. listen to women USING ACTIVE LISTENING TO GET WOMEN RIVETED The thing you'll find about active listening properly is, it's much easier than trying to guess what a woman means or assume you know! Because, what you'll be doing is, rather than try and interpret what she's saying yourself, you're going to involve her in the process of helping you to understand. Now, there's a degree of this that does come from experience. Once you've talked to thousands of different women, when one of them starts telling you she'd love to just quit her job and go travel the world, you know that she isn't really saying that she hates her job (she might love it), and she isn't really saying that she loves travel (she might never have traveled), but what she's actually saying is rather that she longs for a sense of adventure, excitement, the exotic, and newness in her life. You should look at active listening as putting together the pieces of a puzzle -- the puzzle of what a woman is telling you. It works like this: A girl tells you something she feels You ask her why she feels that Then, you tell her she feels the way she feels because of what she told you Like so: Girl: Sometimes I feel so frustrated with all the stupidity out there. Guy: Why? Why do you care if a lot of people are stupid? Girl: Because they could be doing such good things with their lives if they weren't! Guy: Good things like what? Girl: I don't know, like inventing things that make life better or more productive, or helping people who are less fortunate, or even writing great novels or painting great paintings. Guy: Okay. So you wish that people were less stupid because then they'd be able to contribute a lot to the world and make the world a better place. Girl: Exactly! In 30 seconds you've now recruited her help in allowing you to understand exactly what she feels and believes. Then, you fed it back to her (or "paraphrased it," using our reader's terminology). That's how you listen to women effectively, feed it back to them correctly, and do active listening right. Proper active listening is absolutely crucial to effective deep diving, and a mainstay of being a good conversationalist. It bolts down connection fast in your conversations with girls, and gets you and a girl you've just met vibing very quickly. If you look at that example above, guessers and assumers both would come up with different, but faulty, interpretations like this: Guessing: Girl: Sometimes I feel so frustrated with all the stupidity out there. Guy: You find the things that stupid people say and do annoying? Girl: No, it's not that, it's that they could be doing so much more with their lives! Assuming: Girl: Sometimes I feel so frustrated with all the stupidity out there. Guy: Yeah, I think they're kind of a waste of good breathing air too. Girl: That's not what I meant. What I meant was, they could be doing such good things with their lives if they only tried! Can you see the difference between the guessers, assumers, and active listeners? The guessers take a shot at proposing what they think she might mean The assumers state strongly what they think she might mean The active listeners assume they don't know what she means, and ask her Because of this, active listeners stand a much higher percentage chance in any individual exchange of effectively connecting with women, and a much lower chance of saying something that makes a girl feel like they don't "get" her, like the interpreters often do. If you follow the active listening process: A girl tells you something she feels You ask her why she feels that Then, you tell her she feels the way she feels because of what she told you ... you'll quickly find you start connecting with women a whole lot faster -- and a lot more easily. See you next time.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Making the First Phone Call to a Girl There used to be a time when from time to time I'd get a girl's phone number, and then I'd never talk to her again. No first text. No first phone call. Nothing. Making that first phone call to a girl felt like the hardest thing in the world to do. I was a mess of nerves every time I had to do it. And sometimes I couldn't. But you never know which one of those first phone calls might be one that'll set your life on a different path. There was a beautiful girl I'd met at a nightclub one night in the summer of 2006 with whom I swapped numbers, and, thinking about it the next day, I was almost too nervous to call. I took out my phone, and went to put it away; I knew if I didn't call her then, I'd never call her. But, unlike so many other occasions back then, I soldiered on and forced myself to make the call. That beautiful girl from the nightclub I almost didn't call answered my call, and ultimately ended up becoming one of the most important people I ever had in my life and gave me the deepest relationship I've ever had. And, because I'd been so afraid to call, I'd been a hare's breath away from missing it. So how do you kick your fear to the curb and get yourself calling the amazing women you meet? How do you get yourself bringing these women into your life, instead of wordlessly letting them slip away? Well, I devised a few simple, but handy, strategies in the intervening years to make sure that first phone call goes as smoothly, painlessly, and successfully as possible. And I'd like to share those with you here. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FIRST PHONE CALL There's a weird strangeness around the first phone call that only gets worse and doesn't go away until that call's been made. The weirdness is basically this: "Will he call, or won't he? And if he does, will it be normal... or will it be weird?" This tension naturally sets in with just about every girl you trade numbers with, and it gets worse as time progresses. Much worse. What that basically means then is that if you've ever heard the folks who'll tell you to wait 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, or a week before calling a new girl for the first time... that's just bad advice. In other words, you're best served by calling women soon. Now, if you know me, you know I'm a big advocate these days of texting girls. I wasn't always though. And, despite texting's ease and low scariness / risk factor, I strongly believe phone calls have a higher success rate than texting for newer guys. Why? Well, a phone call's more intimidating for a newer guy, sure. But, phone calls also give guys a chance to paint a more realistic picture of themselves to women than texting does (texting is, after all, just words on a screen; very hard to communicate much personality through it without coming across cheesy or tryhard), and thus those women tend to grant men they talk to on the phone more leeway than they do men they only communicate with over text. And if you're a newer guy, you probably haven't gotten either your texting or your phone calls down yet, which means you're going to want any extra leeway you can get, and you're going to want to go with the medium that's going to provide you the quickest path to a successful interaction. Which is why the first phone call is all the more important. It can do for you what texting can't; it gives you a fighting chance at reminding a girl how much she likes you if you didn't make a strong impression the first time around (texting doesn't offer this opportunity, despite the colorful / entertaining texts some guys try to use to accomplish as much). Despite the power of making that first call, most guys end up nervous. And then, they don't make that first phone call to a girl, or if they do they get anxious and drop the ball and end up kicking themselves after they hang up the phone. How, then, do you have a successful first call? first phone call to a girl KILLING IT ON THE FIRST PHONE CALL TO A GIRL, EVERY TIME I eventually ended up laying out a few simple steps that, for me, made sure I had a strong first phone call with a girl, nearly every single time. And if you adopt these steps yourself -- and they're all quite quick to put into action right away, trust me -- you're going to see a similar rapid adjustment in your attitude toward calling girls (it's suddenly going to improve a lot). The steps I laid out for myself back then, that I'll lay out for you now, are as follows... Text her after meeting her. Just a quick little, "Great to meet someone cool like you! - Jake" is all you need. Just something to break the ice on communicating via phone -- that way, when you call her later, it won't seem awkward or unexpected in the least (even if she doesn't text back, it's irrelevant; I've taken as lovers a number of girls who said nothing in reply to my first text, or didn't get back to me until days later). Call her the next day. Waiting until much later is no good. In fact, if you meet her in the morning or early afternoon, it's even fine to call her that night provided you don't do it too late. In my experience, the ideal times to call women are: • Saturday / Sunday between 11 AM and 2 PM (optimal) • Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday between 7 PM and 9 PM If she's in college, you can call her really just about any time, assuming she isn't in class. Regardless of where she is in life, the times you'll want to avoid are: • Thursday / Friday / Saturday nights because there's a good chance she's either out, or not answering her phone so you'll think she's out. She also gets a strong idea that you may not have much of a social life if you're calling then, too, so be mindful of what you're communicating with the times you choose to call. Alternatively, the girl who calls you on a Friday or Saturday night is basically telling you she wants to spend time with you as soon as humanly possible (e.g., 30 minutes in the future? Time to get moving if she calls you then!). The one exception to the "No calling girls on Thursday / Friday / Saturday" rule, of course, is if you met her the day before. Then, any time before 7 PM is fine. Have a story at the ready. There's nothing worse than jumping into a phone call, only to have it go like this: You: Hey Dana, how's tricks? Her: Great. How're you? You: I'm great. What's up with you these days? Her: Nothing much. Just school. How about you? You: Yeah, nothing much with me either. (awkward silence) You: So... up to anything interesting in school? *shiver* Instead, if you come armed with a story -- it doesn't have to be an amazing story, just something cool and simple and straightforward that happened recently in your life is all you need -- things'll go much better. Like so: You: Hey Dana, how's tricks? Her: Great. How're you? You: I'm great. What's up with you these days? Her: Nothing much. Just school. How about you? You: Not terribly a lot. I just had dinner at this new Mexican restaurant nearby. Have you eaten there yet? Her: No, I don't think I know it. You: Well, it's good. But, the waiter was the most awkward waiter I've ever had. He brought us the menus, and then literally just stood there and waited until we'd read the entire menu. You know, usually waiters give you some time to chat and go through the menu at your own pace. Not this guy though... he just stared us down until we ordered. Her: (laughs) So you like Mexican food? You: I do, yeah. How about you? That's much better, don't you think? Having a little story to jump into gives you something to kick start the conversation, even if she's just coming out of a long day and isn't in a super social mood. Keep it short. Unless it's a totally amazing call of course. Otherwise, keep things to about 10 minutes maximum, and try to be the first one off the call. Have something to do -- hop in the shower, head out for dinner, take out the dog, meet your buddies for happy hour... whatever. Whatever it is, make it reasonably pressing and not something you're just electing to do -- it's something that some external force is putting upon you (it's not your fault it's time to eat; the microwave is beeping). This gives you an easy, natural out, and let's you end the conversation while things are still good. You're not choosing to leave... you've just got to go. Be walking around. This one was huge for me when I used to get nervous about making a first phone call. Being in motion -- keeping your legs moving -- can do so much for getting your mind occupied and off of fears and nervousness. Especially if you can be out walking to get somewhere else (then you can often combine #s 4 and 5 if you time things right), but you can even walk around in your own home or room and it's almost as good. Don't undervalue pacing in circles in your living room while you make that call, at least as far as taking your mind off any stress is concerned. Chat her up in one call, ask her out in the next. I find the best way to use the phone to ask girls out is to chat with them in one call, and ask them out in another. If you ask them out every time you talk to them, it gets pressuring and annoying. By stretching it out to every other call, you give women time to get comfortable with you in the calls where you don't ask them out, and you make them a lot more likely to say yes in the calls where you do. That next call, by the way, should be probably about three days later if things go well on the first -- but if they go really well, you should call her the next day (and get her out pronto -- move fast, don't dally). The first call to a girl is something you've got to make, and you can't push it off or skip it just because you're a little nervous or you're not sure she'll bite. Doing so might just mean you miss out on a woman who would've been one of the most significant people of your life. Additionally, if you're a beginner and you've been ignoring the first call to focus on texting instead -- you'll probably want to knock that off. Texting's great once your communication skills are highly advanced -- but until then, you're going to have a much easier time, and a much more successful time, with making phone calls to girls. Talk to you again soon.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Mastering Playful Banter with Women Something that can be a great deal of fun to deploy when talking with some new girl is playful banter. You can quickly find yourself in a riveting, electrifying back and forth that leaves both you and her smiling and excited with this fresh new person you've each just met. However, if you haven't spent as much developing your technique, playful banter can, instead of being a lot of fun, end up being downright headache-inducing. Pop the aspirin and break out the Alka-Seltzer -- you'll need it (or maybe she will). And even if you have put time into building good wit, there's a good chance -- particularly if you're newer or even intermediate -- that you haven't learned the timing of using that wit and banter in a conversation with a new woman yet -- and that you may very well go over the top, or go for too long, straying into the land of the socially awkward or even calling up out-and-out auto-rejection via over-gaming, thereby costing yourself a girl who otherwise might've been yours. For that reason, figuring out the rules of bantering properly ends up being quite important for your early game -- you're not always going to deploy your wit in full force with every young woman you meet, but you will with enough of them that having it honed more or less to a razor's edge can end up making the difference between making it to the mid-game with that new pretty girl you like, or having to bow out early. Thus, this quick and dirty guide on getting down some of the basics of bantering playfully with women. 3 MISTAKES MEN MAKE WITH BANTERING Three mistakes most guys make with playful banter: Being competitive, Being insulting, and/or Dumping it in I'll explain. Being competitive means the banter takes on a "you vs. me" tone. Like so: Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now. Guy: Oh really? Well, I've been surfing for about 5. Take that! Girl: [laughs] Yeah, you got me there. But I'm pretty good. Guy: Bet I could kick your butt. Girl: I don't know about that...! Guy: Come on, let's do it. We're going to have a surfing competition, and I'm going to win. You'll be riding my wake the whole way to shore. Sounds fun, right? You might even see that and say, "What's so bad about that?" Well, the reason competitive's a problem is it because it makes the interaction not so much about the two of you joining forces as about her trying to beat you. Which is fun... until the competition ends. And it ends by either her winning -- in which case, it's "mission accomplished" and onto the next adventure for her, which, since she's done what she wanted to do with you (win), that likely won't include you -- or her losing -- and then she just ends up going cold on you because you "beat" her. If you lose, you lose. And even if you win, you still lose. Our next point, being insulting, is when the banter is stuff that's just mean: Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now. Guy: So in other words, you're a total California girl. Shouldn't you be using "like" every other word and bleaching your hair? Why's that bad? Well, for the simple reason that people don't respond well to being insulted. I don't think there's anyone out there who intentionally insults women, but a lot of newer guys fall into doing this in an effort to be funny (an effort that, needless to say, has gone horribly awry). Dumping it in basically means where your entire conversation, more or less, is banter. No getting to know a girl, no building an emotional connection, no deep diving, just straight up plowing her with banter and hoping that's going to get you somewhere. Which, very, very occasionally, it will. But, the vast majority of the time, it won't do anything but tire a girl out and make her run away. So those three things -- being competitive, being insulting, and dumping it in -- those'll kill you, from a making-good-progress-in-an-interaction-and-ultimately-having-it-lead-somewhere perspective. Having good playful banter means cutting those three things out -- and replacing them with their opposites. bantering THE 3 ELEMENTS OF GOOD BANTER As you might suspect, the 3 elements that comprise good banter we're going to highlight are the things that stand in opposition to those 3 mistakes we mentioned above. They are: Being cooperative or self-deprecating. Instead of pitting her versus yourself, use your banter to position the two of you together -- or even joke about her beating you at something that doesn't really matter. Like so: Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now. Guy: Wow, so you're pretty experienced. Girl: Yeah. Guy: So if we went out for, like, a big surfing competition, you'd probably kick my ass. Girl: Maybe. Guy: Or at least we could join forces and kick everybody else's asses. Girl: Definitely! Guy: Let's form a coalition surf team, then. Our team launches today. Deal? Girl: Deal! Guy: All right. Don't back out now, because I'm totally counting on you to be there to save my ass when the other surf teams try and gang up on us. Building her up. Rather than tearing her down with insulting banter -- as many inexperienced men inadvertently do -- instead, seek to build her up with value-giving bantering. Joke around with her in a way that makes her look good. That'd be like this: Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now. Guy: No way! So you're pretty good, then. Girl: I'm not bad. Guy: By "not bad," do you actually mean, "I kick everybody else's asses so hard on the waves that they give up and go home early?" Sprinkling it in. Sprinkling it in is when you're using banter intermittently throughout the course of an interaction with a girl. You don't want to lay it on super thick all the time -- you don't want to dump it in and suffocate her in banter -- but instead you just use it a little here, a little there, and give her some fun and some lightheartedness throughout the interaction. This keeps things from getting too heavy during the deepest parts of conversation, while also avoiding making it seem like banter is the only thing you know how to do with women. Sticking with these 3 rules -- be cooperative or self-deprecating, build her up, and sprinkle it in -- will keep your banter fresh, exciting, and invigorating for the women you meet, and it'll help you make sure they stick around and keep talking to you and enjoy talking with you. Talk to you soon.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Move Girls If you've been reading this site a while, I'm sure you've seen me recommend again and again that you move girls to get them committed to the interaction with you. You might have wondered exactly what that meant though, or exactly how to do it. It's a surprisingly simple piece of advice - "move girls" - but it makes a huge difference in how your interactions go. In fact, it's hands down my favorite exercise to do with coaching clients. Typically we go out, work on a little basic opening, some initial conversation, and then, the meat - I tell a guy, "All right, next, I want you to start moving these girls." I've seen this called "isolation" in some places, "extraction" in others. It's been given lots of longwinded technical explanations, like you need to move women in order to get them away from their friends, who'll interfere... or something like that. This is not so. Friends don't make much of a difference. What DOES make a difference is getting girls to commit to talking with you - and following your lead. And that's necessary for a couple of different reasons. WHY TO MOVE GIRLS Back when I first started going out to meet women in bars, nightclubs, cafeterias, and the like, it went well for a while, but I quickly hit a wall. For some reason, no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get conversations with new women to progress beyond flirting, banter, and polite conversation. I knew how to attract women, I reasoned. At least, they certainly seemed to be attracted enough. But I just couldn't make anything happen. And then I started asking girls to move with me. It's a funny thing that the scariest part of trying to move girls is the fear that maybe this girl is going to say "no." You think to yourself that if you ask her to move, and she says no... well, it's pretty much dead at that point. You just asked for a pretty big heap of investment, and she said no, so precedent is now stacked against you. Game over, you lose. So, you wait and wait and wait and nothing happens, and eventually she leaves on her own. For this reason, anxiety about asking a girl to move - or about inviting her home, or about physical escalation - is very similar to the more general approach anxiety you hear so much about. In fact, I consider all of these bigger than approach anxiety - approach anxiety is just about getting you started. All those other forms of anxiety are about getting you to finish. The way I see it, the key moments a man fails with a woman who might like him are: He fails to talk to her (approach anxiety) He fails to move her He fails to invite her home He fails to make a move He fails to sleep with her If you've got a girl who likes you, and you manage to talk to her, move her, invite her home, and physically escalate with her, you're probably going to end up together with her. Most men don't fail with women because women don't want them, or because they just aren't attractive to women. Most men fail with women because they just don't do anything. MAKING MEETING WOMEN A ZERO-SUM GAME What's the difference between a polite conversation, and a conversation between two interested parties? Commitment. Or, investment, or compliance. Call it what you may. Let's say you'd like to buy a new phone, and you walk into two different phone stores. The following two scenarios occur: Scenario 1: you meet a phone salesperson who talks to you about what kind of phone you want, then shows you a book of pictures of different phone models, their descriptions, and their prices. He answers any questions you have, but offers nothing beyond this. Scenario 2: you meet a phone salesperson who talks to you about what kind of phone you want, then invites you to walk over to where the display models are. You go with him, and he hands you the phone he thinks sounds like it's most like what you told him you were looking for. He asks you if you'd like to get the phone today. Which of those two salespeople are more likely to get your business? Of course, the salesperson who's taking initiative and leading things toward his best possible outcome (your business) is the one who's most likely to achieve his desired end result. For practical purposes, you can boil sales down to a zero-sum game: either you get the sale, or you don't (for realistic purposes, there can be other objectives too, but they're usually peripheral to the overarching goal). Meeting women is exactly like this. Don't think so? Okay, which of these are you really, really hoping will happen when you meet a pretty new girl?: For her to think you'd make a wonderful friend For her to introduce you to her pals and include you in her circle For her to go home with you that night, go to bed with you, and possibly become your lover or girlfriend It's probably that last one, right? Well, if that's your goal, you need to approach it as such: make picking up women a zero-sum game. That is, either you get the girl as your lover, or somebody else gets her and you don't. And the instant you do that, it becomes a lot easier and a lot less anxiety-provoking to move girls. HOW TO MOVE GIRLS (AND GET THEM INVESTED IN YOU) Once you're looking at success with women as zero-sum, moving women becomes a lot more intuitive and a lot more necessary. I'll share something I've found from my own experience: nothing ever happens with a woman if you can't get her to move with you. move girls I've asked a great deal of women to move with me in bars and nightclubs and the street, and in my earlier days I stuck it out with plenty of women who said "no." Findings? I can't recall a single girl I've ever slept with or even gotten a date with who refused moving with me (note: some women initially refuse but move with you after some cajoling; that's different from a hard, unbending "no"; see "Persuading Women"). Eventually, I came to this very simple understanding: If a girl likes you, she will move with you when you ask her to move in a one-on-one conversation with you If a girl won't move with you, she doesn't like you enough to commit to an interaction with you, which means it's time for you to move on There are a few rules you need to follow to maximize your chance of getting a "yes" when going to move girls, of course. And here they are: Get in a one-on-one conversation with her first. While you can occasionally meet girls in groups, talk to a few of them, then suddenly turn to one you've been ignoring and tell her to move somewhere alone with you and have her say "yes," you stand a better chance of getting a "yes" out of her if you talk to her and build a little connection with her first (although, it's TONS of fun when you pull that first scenario off, and can at times lead to lightning-fast seductions). Meet the friends if she's in a group. Talk to her friends briefly before going to move her if at all possible. Remember not to break circle and don't spend a great deal of time being a social butterfly with her social circle (they're her circle, not yours; and you want everyone there, her included, to know that you're there for her, not to be chatty with her friends); but do at least exchange names and smiles with them before you drag her off into the darkness. Give her a time limit if she's in a hurry or occupied. If you're out in a bar, club, or lounge, you can usually skip giving any kind of time constraint. This also applies to relaxed daytime settings, like the beach or a park bench where she's not doing anything. If she's walking somewhere, reading something, typing on a laptop, or otherwise engaged however - you'll usually see this by day - give her a time constraint for moving her when you ask her. "Let's go sit for a few minutes. I won't keep you long, I realize you're busy, but I'd like to get to talk with you for a few before I let you get back to your stuff." Give yourself a deadline to ask. For me, it's usually "move a girl within 10 minutes of talking to her," in more relaxed settings; this deadline drops the more frenzied and chaotic the setting. So for instance, in a really loud, crazy party environment, it's more like, "move her within a minute of meeting her," because people are moving around so rapidly and you've got to lock things in the moment you meet a cool, pretty girl who likes you before she's pulled away by someone or something else. For very relaxed environments, like the beach, you'll often prefer to wait 15 or 20 minutes to move girls. Remember that one move doesn't mean your job is done. ... you've still got to take her home, you know! At the very least, you've got to trade phone numbers with her - preferably just after you sit, when she's prime to trade numbers because she's committing to you right then and a number isn't much more commitment, and because you'll be flush off of moving and having her commit so asking for a number then won't feel like too big of a deal. Either way, go for a number right away if you're not sure what you want, or set a deadline to pull her by if you know you intend to take her home. A good deadline is anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes if you're good at forming connections. If you're still learning, and aren't somewhere you'll have other things trying to pull her away, you can aim for up to 90 minutes. After that, things usually start going stale. Once you start to move women with regularity, you'll notice (as I did) a sudden, dramatic surge in your success with them. And once you've got all four key transition points down: Talk to her Move her Invite her home Make a move on her Sleep with her you'll look back and realize that, hey, this isn't nearly as hard as you thought it was.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Pick Up and Emotional Validation A reader writes in, on the topic of emotional validation: "Hey there, been reading the site lately and I've noticed that one thing I haven't seen so far is a post about validation. Maybe you call it something different but I was talking to a female friend of mine and she brought something up that seemed similar to it. I was telling her about how I and my pops were watching a Laker game and my mom kept bringing up how "she needs to get her work done." It was starting to irritate me because she would say it and then leave it up in the air. After a while I barked back "well go do it then." I knew instinctively that wasn't the best thing to say but I really wanted her to quit with the empty statements lol! So, after the game ended I talked to her about it and she was telling me how I could have said "I know you gotta get your work done but how about you relax with us and watch the game and then go start on the work afterwards?" Now as soon as I heard her say that I immediately thought validation. I'm validating that thought or feeling by giving that response. While my response of "go do it" sounds like I'm rejecting her. So I was wondering if you all could drop a post on validation. Once I realized this whole idea of validating a woman it gave me that "aha" moment, really started to put a lot of my failed interactions into a new light, you know? It also helped me to understand the whole chase framing, push-pull, etc. concepts because by validating her all of that stuff is much easier to pull off. Because she knows that you're setting a frame but your pulling her along with you. Instead of making it seem like its her frame against yours like many other PUA's seem to advocate." Our reader raises a good point here. Validation is something I tend not to focus on much personally - it's something that fast becomes irrelevant when you're following the rule of thumb of always escalate and keep moving fast. But it's a real phenomenon, and it will affect your interactions with women - though, if you're doing things right, it should prove more a curiosity than a major distraction. Here's what I mean. IN SEARCH OF EMOTIONAL VALIDATION One of the newer things I'm working with in the field of social dynamics right now is a perspective revolving around dependent and independent social positions. This isn't a knock on anyone, nor is it calling anyone weak; these social positions are changeable and depend a great deal on both circumstantial and interpersonal scenarios - e.g., a body-builder may be in an independent social position in the gym, where people are coming to him for advice or admiring him, and he needs no one, but a dependent social position at, say, a ski lodge, if he's never skied before and has no idea what he's doing. I'll talk more about social positions another time, but it will help you to think of emotional validation as something that's a dependency - that is, it's something that someone else is depending on you (or someone, or something) to give to her - or, alternatively, it can be something that you're depending on someone (or something) to give to you. Let's say you just had a really tough day at work. You lost a major client that the firm really needed; you totally botched it. You feel awful. Now imagine your boss walks over, clasps his hand on your shoulder, and says, "Hey. You did as good as anybody could've done. You're still my ace in the hole here." How do you feel? That's emotional validation in action. You were feeling down in the dumps... and your boss came over and validated you right back up again. People need emotional validation for all kinds of reasons - here are a few of them: They've suffered a string of defeats They've watched others doing well but they haven't been They've seen others getting validated but they haven't been They see people around them having fun but they're left out They feel lonely They're in dependent social positions and need attention from caregivers They need someone to "recharge" their emotions Everybody wants or needs emotional validation at some point or another. How they go about getting it is different. Men get emotional validation through conquest, while women get emotional validation through bonding. I've seen men who really liked bonding, and women who thrilled at conquest, but even with these individuals, the bonding men still liked bonding in a way that established them as dominant, and the conquering women still liked to bond with others over their conquests. Until I see otherwise, I'm considering this principle anecdotally universal. Here's some anecdotal evidence: if you're a guy, and you're feeling worn down and beat up, what do you do? Do you: A) Talk about your emotions with a friend, or B) Go beat a video game, watch an action movie, or pick up a girl? Yep - for men, the conquest rejuvenates us. For women though, it's the opposite. They need bonding time. Here's the thing: women will at times sleep with a guy in pursuit of validation, but it's not for a conquest - it's for the bonding that comes with it. Do I have your attention? emotional validation BECOMING A CHANNEL FOR VALIDATION A few years ago, I'd largely thrown out the idea of "validation" as useless to seduction. Women either liked you or they didn't, and if you quickly weeded out the women who didn't like you and escalated with the women who did, any concept of emotional validation whether it was a real phenomenon or not was a moot point. But now that I've started thinking of things in terms of social positions, validation's become something worth considering again. The thing with validation is, it's finicky. A woman might want your validation... but the instant she starts feeling like she can't get it and you're going to make her feel worse for being around you, she's gone. That's the part the old school pick up artists who originated the idea never talked about. Yes, get women chasing validation from you... but you have to walk the fine line between not giving them so much that they're then satisfied and you're no longer interesting, and not giving them so little that they feel spurned and go storming off to seek validation elsewhere thinking, "I'll show HIM!" The way to use emotional validation is, rather, to become a channel for it. This is the part that's tough to explain. Think of it like this: there are three things you can be when it comes to validation - Someone who needs it Someone who gives it Someone who isn't even in the picture Imagine yourself in a nightclub, by yourself, feeling a little insecure because you aren't use to going out alone. You're someone who needs validation. A really cool guy who'd make you look good and include you in his group could probably give you validation. So could a cute girl who likes you. But some nerdy loser guy who also looks like he's by himself is irrelevant when it comes to your own personal levels of validation - he's not in the picture. You want to be #2 when it comes to any and every social situation you find yourself in. You always want to be the guy others seek validation from. So how do you get there? A lot of it is your baseline, fundamental value. Things like: Being a dominant man Knowing how to attract women - and doing that Always having an air of sprezzatura about you Letting others come to you as much as possible Not trying to force things unnecessarily Being a good conversationalist capable of keeping things going easily Get those things handled and you're 75% of the way there. What's the other 25%? It's learning the line and walking it. That's going to come from experience. But here are a few quick tips to help: Go for humbleness. The reason why humbleness is so attractive is that it demonstrates a freedom from a need for the emotional validation of others. The man who is proud needs others' praise to uphold his vanity; the man who is humble does not, and thus is more independent, powerful, and free. Showing others that you appreciate but don't need their praise through humility communicates to them that you are someone who gives validation - not someone who seeks it. Offer some validation, but not excessively so. I'm skeptical by nature and not easily impressed, and have had to learn to praise people with time, as it isn't something I'm naturally inclined to do. So, I praise now, and my praise is genuine, but not effusive. I might say, "You did a great job - keep it up," or, "Hey, you look fantastic," but my tone of voice is largely unchanged and it takes some of the excitement out of it. This has had a rather natural effect of, incidentally, causing people to highly value my validation - because it seems (and is) sincere. Employ this strategy when giving validation: say the words you'd say as if you were impressed, but keep a normal or even skeptical tone in your voice to maintain balance. Place commands before validation. Say a girl seems to really want to tell you things about herself - she wants to impress you and make you like her. That's great - now tell her to sit down next to you. When a woman is seeking validation from you is the perfect time to give her a command and get her investing in you - this moves things forward, and manages to communicate interest in her and give her even better validation than she was looking for at the same time - you're telling her you really want to bond. If a woman tries bonding with you but you don't try conquering her, one way or another, the validation feels a lot less satisfying to her. Give her what she wants from you instead. Don't let her go on for too long without moving things forward a lot. Believe it or not, you aren't her girlfriend - and you're under no obligation to act as such. Women know what they get with men - if she wants to bond with a girlfriend, she'll talk to one of her girlfriends. When she wants to bond with a man, she comes to a guy - a guy like you. She'll tell you otherwise - I've had girls I've slept with who told me, "I really just wanted someone to talk to!" - but what she's actually saying is, "I really wanted to feel wanted and needed by a man who made me feel special and gave me an experience to remember." Move her towards intimacy - or swap numbers and arrange a date. Being viewing yourself as a channel through which women (and people) can get validation, and build yourself up that way. As you do, you'll increasingly find that you have an easier time finding the kind of people you want and welcoming them into your life - because they are coming to you for their emotional needs. Of course, you need to genuinely be able to connect with people - but if you've been immersed with the material on offer at this site, that shouldn't be too much of a problem for you.

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##Tactics Tuesdays: Using the Pregnant Pause in Conversations with Women A man finds himself in conversation with a beautiful woman. Excited, and a little bit nervous, he starts to talk. And he talks more. And more. She can hardly get a word in edgewise. He feels -- no, he knows -- that if he lets the conversation die down, just for a second, she's apt to get up and leave. So, instead, he decides he must run this conversation like a man possessed... he's got to keep it going himself. He's just got to. And for a while he does. Sooner or later though, eventually, he hits a moment where he finishes what he was saying and doesn't know what to say next. There's a pause; it's an awkward pause. "Well," says the girl, "it was great talking to you. But I have to go find my friends now." "Uh - okay," says the man. "Nice meeting you." He never sees her again. "Drat," he thinks to himself, immediately after she leaves, "if only I'd been able to keep the conversation running a little longer, until we were able to find something that was interesting to her. Then it all would've been okay." I know this feeling -- I used to experience it myself all the time -- and I'd guess most guys reading this have probably felt it too. What it comes from, though, is a fundamental misconception about how a conversation with a new woman ought to run, and what that conversation is really all about -- and it also shows an inattention to using a very powerful conversational tool for getting things working in your favor: the pregnant pause. A FUNDAMENTAL MISCONCEPTION ABOUT CONVERSATION Did anything stand out about the way that guy in our example was thinking about the conversation to you? Here's what you should've noticed: He was viewing his conversation as being about trying to keep talking until he found a topic that interested the girl. That's bad. That's not what conversation should be about. I was guilty of this plenty of times in the past. I can remember many, many conversations where I was panicking internally, scrambling around trying to find something -- anything -- that a girl would connect with me on. Not wanting to let the conversation go until I'd found it. Not wanting to let her go until I'd found it. But conversation should never, ever be about you trying to get her interested in topics. Why? Because: You don't want women interested in your choice of topics; rather You want women interested in you Trying to get a girl intrigued in a conversation about daytime television or celebrity gossip or the thrill of adventure sports does not make her attracted to you. That's just getting her talking about some activity she enjoys. Now you're a fun guy to talk to; but not necessarily anywhere closer to being a sexy man she desires and pursues. See how this quickly gets you in a bad place? There you are, chasing after "finding a topic" when what you need to be doing is getting her investing in the conversation, building an emotional connection with you, and having her become increasingly interested in you -- not your topics. One of the tools you have at your disposal for that is the pregnant pause. Using the pregnant pause, you can add a lot of weight and heft to your conversations that the speedsters rushing to find good topics fail to add. Further, you can leave vacuums that literally place social pressure on women to fill them, compelling them to become more invested in getting to know you. Let me show you how this works. THE PREGNANT PAUSE: DYNAMITE FOR BUILDING INTRIGUE AND GETTING INVESTMENT Have you ever been talking to a woman, and asked her a question, and rather than respond right away, she just held -- she maintained eye contact and smiled a bit, perhaps, or she looked thoughtfully away and perhaps shrugged her eyebrows, before resuming eye contact with you again and answering. If you've ever had that happen -- or can imagine it happening -- how did it make you feel? I'm guessing it probably made it feel like she was in command. She was the one controlling the pace of the conversation -- she was calling the shots, and she was determining how things were going to play out. At the very least, the two of you were on equal footing. That's how completely, utterly, powerful pregnant pauses are. He who pauses controls the pace of the interaction and signals his command. Here's what pausing communicates to women when you use it: You're confident and comfortable. Men who are not confident that women like them and enjoy talking with them don't pause in conversation. Instead, they speed through discussions, trying to force as much content into the conversation as quickly as possible, trying their hardest to be as interesting as they possibly can in as short a time span as they can. Confident men, on the other hand, take their time -- they know a woman will be impressed with them, and don't feel any hurry to stuff content into their conversations. The very act of using pauses in speech communicates to women that you are this kind of confident man, and not the unconfident variety that speeds through talking and stuffs conversations. You're deliberate, or impulsive, depending on how you use your pauses. Deliberateness is a very attractive trait. Its opposite -- impulsiveness -- is attractive too. Each is attractive in different measures to different women. The thing that isn't attractive to women here is the conversational wasteland of uncertainty and anxiety, which is where the majority of men are when talking to new women. Instead, you want to be deliberate, or you want to be impulsive. Quick primer on those two: deliberate men use pauses throughout their conversation. They'll start saying something, then pause, as if considering exactly how they want to phrase it. They'll pause before answering thoughtfully. They'll employ pregnant pauses after posing intriguing questions, compelling women to answer. Impulsive men use pauses to punctuate their statements. An impulsive man will plunge into conversation breathlessly the moment he's asked a question or given an interesting thread to converse on, but he'll frequently end with a strong, opinionated statement or question, and then do a hard pause, waiting and expecting for a woman to answer him (and often to agree with him). Both men use pausing and social pressure to their great advantage. Being deliberate serves you better with educated and intellectual women, as well as with shier women. Being impulsive serves you better with countercultural women who like to party more and live alternative lifestyles, as well as with many more outgoing women. You may find yourself switching between styles depending on the personality type of the woman you're currently getting to know. You're in control. Women like men who are in control of things. Much as they might tell you otherwise if you ask, the men that women actually respond to, date, and become lovers and consorts with are the men who lead decisively and communicate through their actions and demeanor that they do so. Using pauses naturally and well throughout your conversation plants you firmly in the conversational driver's seat, and makes it clear to women who's in command of the interaction and conversation -- you are. And if you're doing a good job in the conversation, that can be quite freeing, quite reassuring, and quite exciting for a woman. In addition to all of this, there's one other thing that pregnant pauses do for you: You allow her to invest. By using pregnant pauses, you allow women to get a word in edgewise, to jump into the conversation, and to contribute. If you really want to get to know a girl, you've got to make the conversation about her telling you about herself and giving her chances to do so -- rather than trying to keep the spotlight on yourself instead. You can execute a pregnant pause simply enough: something like the bored look or the skeptical look can be used to joke with a woman or place a little pressure on her (depending on the context -- if she was teasing you or said something silly, or if she was being a bit mean or a little too boring). You can also simply pause after a statement or before giving an answer... look off thoughtfully into the distance... or stare at her expectantly awaiting a reply. Depends on whether you're going for deliberate or impulsive; choose accordingly. The pregnant pause tells women you're confident, it tells women you're comfortable, it tells women that you're either deliberate or impulsive -- but never uncertain -- and it tells women you're in control. And on top of that, it gives women an opportunity to contribute, invest, and start pursuing you and showing their interest. So don't go thinking that the onus is always entirely on you to carry a conversation on your back until you can find a fun topic or one that a girl can connect on. Conversation should never be about "finding good topics" -- instead, conversation should be about getting to know the woman you're talking to and giving her the opportunity to show you how wonderful and amazing she is. Don't try to be impressive -- use your pauses to give her the chance to impress you.

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##Take the Edge Off: Using Humbleness Like an Elite Man As you work on yourself and improve and become a higher and higher value person - a man who's really got his life together, with a solid group of high achieving friends and connections, with multiple options with beautiful women, with goals and dreams and ambitions and numerous pathways to success laid out ahead of you and accomplishments behind you - you become an increasingly imposing individual. And that's both good and bad. I originally was going to write this up as an article on being impressive. But I think impressiveness in its own right doesn't need a write-up; if you work on your fundamentals and you take care of business in things like body language and posture and voice tone and manner of speaking, you will naturally build yourself into an impressive, imposing individual. Throw in some intrigue into how you choose to define yourself and respond to questions and challenges, and you will rapidly develop into a very naturally impressive, imposing individual. It comes with the territory. What's a more difficult prospect, though, is how you make yourself approachable and accessible to people once you've gotten there. THE ISSUE WITH IMPRESSIVENESS Ah, it must be a fantastic thing being impressive and imposing, right? Everyone scrambling to be in your good graces, compelled to try and impress you simply by the way you are in their presence, deferring to you as though you are some person of the highest authority. And indeed, it does do some wonderful things for your seductions. Once you reach the point that your presence is so impressive that women feel nervousness and pressure to perform around you, you'll start seeing the following things: Visible anticipation in your presence: signs like women's lips trembling a little or pauses or hesitation in answering you, accompanied by slight stutters in their answers or a tremor in their voices. Concerted efforts to impress you: going into long, detailed stories about themselves and their accomplishments or things about their background they think you will like or be impressed by. Lots of spontaneous compliments and comments: when people are impressed by you, they quite often will talk about you a lot and compliment you a lot. Complimenting you on your singing just after you've sung a song is one thing, but when the compliments start appearing out of the blue is when you ought to pay attention. One or two compliments out of nowhere are a bit of a sign, but more than one or two is a loud, clear sign they may be feeling a little dazzled by you. And without humility, being overwhelmed is just a short step from being dazzled. You may be getting these already if your presence is very strong. If it isn't, buckle down and work on your fundamentals, and you'll start seeing more and more of this eventually. And it really is a good thing when people begin finding you so impressive that they get on-edge and nervous around you. It means you come off as a very, very high value, top caliber person. Problem is, if you don't quickly set their minds at ease, they'll also very quickly throw a wall up to protect themselves. Have you ever met a very impressive person and then, after meeting them, you very, very quickly ended the interaction? Maybe you met an extraordinarily beautiful woman, or a senior official in your company, or a celebrity or politician, or someone else who seemed unbelievably imposing. Maybe you talked to him or her for twenty or thirty seconds and then - you left. Why is that? Why'd you leave? It's an attainability problem, but not from anything the other person did. He or she probably wasn't mean to you. Nor did he or she act rude or imply that you were wasting time. No - rather, what happened was, you self-rejected. You said to yourself, "This person is way too imposing for me, I need to bow out rather than make a fool of myself." So bow out you did. The issue with being an impressive man with a strong presence is that women begin to do this around you, too. And the more impressive and imposing you become, the more women this affects, and the more severely it affects them. Women begin bowing out of interactions with you earlier and earlier, because they simply can't handle the social pressure of talking to a man with a presence like yours. It's easier for them to make their exit than it is to stick around trying to win over someone they don't realistically think they can win over. As you become an increasingly powerful, successful, high status men, more and more women (and men) feel like you're out of their social league, too high caliber for them, and simply start bowing out of talking to you quickly and early. It can get to the point where success starts feeling like a double-sided sword - all these women who should be feeling awed by you instead get cold and shut down and put a wall up because they feel like they can't really have you. THE "FULL OF YOURSELF THRESHOLD" There's a "full of yourself threshold" that you can cross that just turns a lot of people off. I've noticed it for a long time with all kinds of famous, semi-famous, and even just mildly successful people; many of them get high on their fame or success and begin acting supremely self-important. What then happens is that some people, blinded by the "VIPs'" risen star, continue to kiss up to them in the hopes of winning their favor, further reinforcing their sense of self-importance, while many other people grow disgusted by and disillusioned with them and cut ties and want nothing to do with them. The tragic part is that you will see this happen to people who formerly were very good and noble people who simply got caught up in the whirlwind of fame and success and seeming-importance. They cut off their friends who try to ground them and alienate anyone who doesn't support their view of themselves as Very Important People. What then ends up happening is they become surrounded only with insincere people who are trying to use them to further their own agendas, because all the sincere people who had their best interests at heart have been pushed away by the VIP's growing selfishness and entitlement mentality. And when they meet people, they will elicit one of only two reactions: Awe, or Dismissal. Awe occurs if the VIP seems so far above the person meeting him that she sees him as vastly superior to her and worthy of her reverence. Dismissal occurs if the VIP seems to be not that far above the person meeting him, or on her level or beneath her, or if she doesn't buy into whatever superior hierarchical value he's attempting to position himself as having (if he seems fake or tryhard to her, for instance). Either way, he doesn't get anything approximating a real connection from people genuinely appreciating him; the real people leave, and only the people who want to use him, feed off him, and ride his coattails remain. Too much pride without humility hurts the person guilty of it the most. Crossing the "full of yourself threshold" quickly undertows your social life, pushing away the best people and calling to a man's self the users, who respond to the loud cries of the self-important man like moths to a flame and come to get what they can from him. HUMILITY TO THE RESCUE In today's world, humility gets a bad rap. It's almost a kind of dirty word in modern parlance - humbleness, the dreaded self-descriptive word of the meek. Except, it really isn't. Meek, weak people aren't actually humble - they just don't have anything to brag about and aren't terribly impressive individuals. Strong, accomplished people who combine humility with their impressiveness though - now those are some mighty folks. Humility most significantly affects a man's likeableness and approachability. Take if you will the example of two kings. One king has conquered two new countries to add to his empire; he stands before his people and says, "Today, I have triumphed! Your all-powerful king has led us to yet another victory!" The other king has conquered two new countries to add to his empire; he stands before his people and says, "Today we have triumphed. The noble people of this empire have led us to yet another victory." Which king do you think the average subject will feel more comfortable sitting down and chatting with one-on-one? Which king do you think is most likely to be treated well by enemy kings if he is captured, or more likely to avoid a revolution by the people in rougher times? Too much pride divides; humility builds bridges. Particularly as you build a stronger and stronger presence, you can use and will need humbleness to take the edge off yourself in social situations. I'll give you an example. When I first started traveling overseas back in 2006, I started talking about it to everyone I could. I figured, traveling to foreign countries is such an impressive thing, people will like me even more! What I found surprised me though: women responded to me worse when I told them about my travels than they did if I refrained from doing so. One of the reasons I realized half a year after I started talking about travel was that many of the women I discussed my travels with couldn't relate to them; I might as well have been talking about astrophysics or my childhood Marvel comic book collection. For a while, this frustrated me to no end, that this really awesome, impressive thing I had to talk about simply seemed to fall flat on its face every time I tried to discuss it. Eventually I came with a solution, which at the time I didn't 100% understand, but it worked so I used it. I started talking about when I didn't want to travel at all and didn't like travel. And I'd tell people about how the only reason I got into travel at all in the first place was because I found myself living in Washington, DC, a very international city, and I had a few friends who were gung-ho about me going abroad with them, and I decided to push my limits, swallow the pill, and say, "Sure, why not?" And I ended up surprised to find that, in fact, I loved it. All the people who would've been formerly turned off by me talking about travel before now followed me with interest as I told this story, nodded their heads in agreement as I described not wanting to travel and being afraid of going overseas into an unknown land and culture where I didn't speak the language, and worked overtime to connect with me on my tales of adventures abroad, telling me the places they'd like to go someday and what they'd heard about travel from others who'd been off-continent. Suddenly they were all warm to me now. At the time, I chalked this up entirely to me being more relatable by describing being in a state of mind (scared to travel / disinterested in travel) that matched the way they currently felt. And I still think that's part of the reason this worked. But now I think the other part is that it makes me sound far more humble, approachable, and relatable. No longer was I saying, "Look how impressive I am; I travel the world!" I started instead saying, "I travel the world, but it wasn't always that way and I used to be downright intimidated at the prospect of it." And the response I got for it was excellent. BEING HUMBLE There are specific, actionable steps you can take to up your humility and play down your impressiveness - which, in fact, only makes you seem more impressive. Do you know any non-impressive people who say things like, "No, no, no, it was just pure luck that I became so successful, everyone else in my field is a lot smarter than me?" Didn't think so! It's only people who are truly, genuinely impressive who talk that way, so they don't come off like they're bludgeoning you over the head with their accomplishments like the showboaters do. Here are the things to think about and the things to do to position yourself as a successful-but-humble individual and take the edge off your accomplishments and impressiveness to let women connect to you better: State your achievements, endeavors, and interests, then downplay them. These days when people ask me what I do, my response is nearly always the same: "I'm finishing my first book and working on launching a couple of startup companies with a good friend of mine." They always say wow, that's so impressive, and I always reply like so: "Well, we'll see when the results come in. My book may sell four copies, and the companies… hey, maybe they'll make a lot of money, or maybe they'll make none at all! Only time will tell." Do this with anything impressive about you and it removes any fears the other person has of not being able to relate to you. Do not sell yourself short and act defeatist and pessimistic - this is what weak people do to try and elicit sympathy, and it's grating and annoying ("Oh, I don't know if my businesses will even succeed, it's so hard to be successful in business and 9 out of 10 businesses fail. I might be just another failure"). Instead, just be a little self-deprecating then move on. Turn it back to her. Just as noted in last week's post "The Conversationalist," you want to turn the conversation back to the person you're talking to as quickly as possible. This is especially true after you've just said something impressive. If someone asks you where you went to school, and the answer is that you went to Harvard University, downplay it quickly ("I'm still not sure how I got in"), then turn it back to her ("So where'd you go to school?"). You want to move on quickly from impressive topics because it gives you flexibility; if the woman you're talking to enjoys what you've mentioned and wants to focus on it more, trust that she'll bring it back up. If it's too much for her and makes her feel intimidated, you downplaying it and moving on lets her steer the conversation in a different direction she's more comfortable with, rather than being stuck on something that will lead to her self-rejecting. Be gracious toward others' accomplishments. So you're a freelance photographer who's had his work published in the New York Times and National Geographic? Great. Just because she's taking her first photography class though is no reason to brush her enthusiasm for her newfound pastime under the carpet. Give her some kudos - and don't overdo the advice unless she asks. Tell her how excited you are that she's taken up photography, and how you think it's one of the most wonderful arts there is and so liberating a form of artistic expression. Ask her how she likes it. Then move on - most people don't like being stuck on a topic where they're total novices talking to a professional who far outclasses them, it feels quite uncomfortable. If she instead she feels very comfortable with you and wants to come back to the topic and pick your brain a bit and bond over it excitedly, she will. Don't get hung up on topics. The last thing you want to be is the guy who mentions something impressive, then mentions it again later, and then once again later. Even when you think you're being subtle, people know what's going on if you mention it again later, "casually" in reference to something else or not. Wait for other people to bring it back up, and meantime find other things to discuss. The truly impressive man needs only mention something once - and a fleeting once, at that - to know its impact. Don't get specific unless asked. I'll break my own rule here and tell you I used to drive a Mercedes-Benz E320. It was an absolutely gorgeous car, and had a smoother, firmer ride than any other car I'd owned or perhaps even drove (and I used to work in a tire store back in the day and drive everything into the shop from Kias to Alfa Romeos). How this relates to conversation is that sometimes I will be talking to people who tell me what kind of car they drive, or what kind of car they used to drive. I never, ever discuss what kind of car I had. Very occasionally, it will come up in passing that we are discussing cars, or something like the ride in a car, and I will say, "I used to have a luxury car," and then I'll immediately downplay it, "kind of a reward for myself after the first two cars I had, oh man, those cars were a mess," and then I'll go on discussing whatever it was I intended to discuss about how luxury cars handle better. Only if people ask me what kind of car I had will I get specific. I'll give the make, and if they press further, I'll give the model. By this time, most of the people who are asking drive luxury cars themselves, and have far better and more expensive cars than an E320, so it's no problem from an impressiveness-standpoint, and I don't come off showboaty like the guy who comes out and lists his make and model uninvited. One final note is that there's another danger to being the guy who showboats as well: running into people that are able to show you up. There are people out there (myself included, admittedly) who enjoy nothing more than showing up a showboat. Some guy walks up and starts bragging about how accomplished he is in some way or another, and then one of his listeners very casually make a reference to something he or she has done that completely outclasses the showboat's accomplishment. He's now tanked his value and is in full retreat. This is when you see these guys get nervous and defensive and start searching for a way to regain their sense of self-importance. This is also the downfall of the hierarchy mentality I touched on a bit some time ago in "Ultimate Social Calibration." I ought to write a proper, updated post on hierarchical mindsets and what a bane they are to genuine, enduring social success… I'll get around to it eventually. Ultimately, humility and humbleness get a bad rap, but they're actually quite good and useful when you're an impressive guy. You don't even have to be a super-successful, over-accomplished chap; I'm a cat with no job and hardly any possessions to my name with perhaps delusions of grandeur of someday being a successful author and businessman. It's all in how you position yourself, really. When you say something impressive, then throw in some humility to take the edge off, it makes you especially warm and alluring. And somehow, that makes women find you all the more interesting, attractive, and relatable.

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##Take Women to Bed: Successful Physical Escalation A week ago one of the readers of this blog, Alex, requested I get a post up on physical escalation and getting on with the seduction once you've got a girl back somewhere private. Alex's comment: As for inviting her home, I would really love to see a post about transitioning to getting physically when she's at my place. Do you kino a lot before you invite her home or leave it like kissing for the right/better moment when two of you are all alone? Do you do more comfort stuff to make her feel connected and comfortable and then maybe some talking about sex topics to make her a little horny, how do you move closer to her both physically and mentally to have sex with her? How do you proceed and from your experience how much kino is needed before trying to sleep with her? Is it even required? On the other side, if there's no kino compliance before such as careessing, initimate hand holding (you know who puts much emphasis on it), but no problem with for example putting your hand on her lower back when shopping, should I be concerned about it? All very good questions, Alex. I'll share with you what I'm doing these days, and what I advise guys to do. PREPPING WOMEN FOR INTIMACY The road to a successful seduction starts outside the bedroom. One of the biggest mistakes most men make, in my opinion, is not being sexy. Why do guys do this? A lot of it is a focus on reactions instead of results; a guy gets more positive feedback from girls when he's harmless and friendly than he does when he's dangerous and edgy. Most guys train themselves to get maximal positive feedback and go the harmless and entertaining friendly guy route. Which, yeah, that'll get you lots of girls smiling and laughing and paying you attention… but not a whole lot of them breathing heavy and fantasizing about you bedding them as soon as humanly possible. So the first step is being sexy in general. A good starter for that one is "How to be a Sexy Man;" that'll give you the main points to focus on for developing that aspect (sexiness) of yourself. Chase frames also come in quite handy in this regard, though nothing beats improving your core, base sexiness. The improvements in your passive traits and characteristics tend to be the ones that have the biggest long-term impact. Chase frames, when used correctly, can either compliment your base sexiness, or compensate for a lack of development in sexiness; you can use them to effectively position yourself as a sexual man even if you aren't necessarily all that sexy by default yet. But truly, there's no real substitute for actually being sexy; you must work on this. Until you get to where you want to get, though, chase frames can help. You do not want to be obvious. Chase frames are all about subtlety; alluding to sexual topics without directly broaching them. What many guys do wrong is they blatantly discuss sex in the hopes that this will somehow get women turned on. But women don't work that way. Keep this rule in mind: Talking about sex does not equal being sexy. The two are different things. Talking about sex is usually either A) crude and disgusting (if done poorly), or B) interesting and conversationally stimulating (if done properly). Neither of those is, however, arousing. Sex talk can be arousing - but only if done by a sexy man. But a sexy man doesn't need sex talk to get women turned on. Therefore, sex talk in and of itself is largely irrelevant and only something I'd recommend using if you're already using it and seeing results out of it. You can play around with it if you like; who knows, maybe it'll get you some results. Typically though, it doesn't really help, and can often hinder - by putting women on alert and causing them to raise their guards. You see, there are a few different ways to broach sex, and they basically look like this: Seriously, rationally, logically, and directly. When you broach sex serious, as a serious topic, whether in a sexy way or not, you are forcing a woman to think about it logically and make a logical decision. The fact is that most women have a lot of issues around sex (such as what their friends will think, about trying to keep their numbers down and not sleep with too many men, about what the man they're with will think about them if they sleep with him too quickly, etc.), so when the issue is broached seriously and logically, they're forced to address it and come to a logical decision about it. So when a guy starts talking about sex itself with a woman, her brain goes, "Oh. He's talking about sex. He must want sex with me. Do I want sex with him?" The problem that occurs here is now the mixing of logic and emotions. Her logical brain asks, "Do I want sex with him?" Then, her emotional brain responds: "Well, let's see… I'm not turned on. I'm not horny right now. So… no, I don't want sex with him." And this is almost invariably what happens when sex is broached in a serious, direct, and logical manner: women consider sex with the man discussing it with them, then rule against him. I've had it happen to me more times than I can count; it's unfortunate, but that's how it generally works. There is only a very small minority of women - the very open-minded kind, with zero hang ups about sex - who are able to ask themselves, "Do I want sex with him?" and come back with the answer, "Well, I'm not turned on, but hey, why not? It's worth a shot." That's maybe 1 - 2% of the female population. The rest of women you lose when you go serious and logical. Humorously, emotionally, and indirectly. Have you ever been in a relationship and had a girl joke about marriage or babies? Like, you're sleeping with her and cumming in her without condoms and at some point she jokes, "We probably ought to start thinking about where we're going to put the crib." You probably laugh about this, maybe feel mildly alarmed and start acting more responsible, but certainly don't hate the girl for it. Now imagine you're seeing a girl who goes logical and serious on you: "Do you want to make me pregnant? If you get me pregnant, you're going to have to marry me." Yikes. Scary, right? This is the difference between directly and indirectly broaching sensitive topics conversationally. There are a number of reasons why indirect works so much better here; I'd list them out, but that'd be a blog post in its own right. Suffice it to say that the girl feels far less put upon when you're indirect about sex, and a lot of the mystery is preserved. Look again at that indirect comment about the baby: does the girl want you to get her pregnant and marry her or not? You can't really be sure from that, so her intentions are somewhat mysterious. This is the best way to approach something where people have conflicting emotions (e.g., modern man's base drive to reproduce versus his logic-driven desire to preserve his freedom and not be forced to settle down; if she says, "I want babies with you," you freak out thinking she wants to tie you down; if she says, "I don't want babies with you," you feel insulted and judged unworthy. Sex is like this for women; it's better not to give a clear indication of your intentions until you're intimate with them). As far as how much touch you should have with a woman prior to working on physical escalation… well. Here's the thing. If you're very sexy, you don't need to touch a woman at all prior to bringing her home. In fact, if you're very sexy, I'd probably go as far as to say you should avoid touching a girl unless it feels absolutely necessary. How come? Because when you reach out and touch a girl, you're expending a little extra effort, and chasing a little bit more, which sets up the wrong precedent. However - and this is a big one - until you get to the place where you're a very sexy man, you should absolutely be touching women a lot. Incidental touching is what you need to be using to get girls comfortable with your touch. In lieu of base sexiness, incidental touch can help close the gap and get women seeing you as a sexual man. Incidental touching also is extremely important for developing your sense of how and when to touch women when you're learning. Again, once you're a sexy man and you've mastered touch, you don't really need to touch a girl at all until you kiss her for the first time. Until you get there though, you really do need to be touching women at least a fair amount, and you'll find that incidental touch (things like having your hand on the small of a girl's back, having her lean her head against you, having your leg touching hers), this is all important. And when you're sexy, if you can get incidental touch while seeming to get it naturally and effortlessly, it only helps your cause. Note: Alex asks about caressing. Caressing is sexual touch and should only be done during the actual physical escalation when you're somewhere private with a girl proceeding towards intimacy. Doing it out in public is tantamount to talking about sex; it's too obvious, betrays your intentions, and causes women to push back as soon as the mood dissipates. Hand-holding is best avoided altogether as it's very couple-y and puts you into boyfriend territory, slowing things down and making women demand more of you. I have another post on this upcoming sometime soon specifically, but basically, yeah, you don't want to hold a girl's hand. THE TWO METHODS OF PHYSICAL ESCALATION There are really two ways of initiating physical escalation: When it's "on" already, and When it's not fully on yet When it's on already - when you can tell she's very turned on, breathing heavy, and completely ready to receive you - things are easy and the only thing you must do is act quickly. Delaying will cause her to cool off and be lost. You must get intimate with her upon walking in the door, ideally, or within five minutes maximum. You can wall slam her (put one hand behind her back and one behind her head and slam her into the wall, hitting only your hands, and kiss her passionately), and escalate quickly from there. You can sit down and pull her into you and begin escalating. All you have to do when it's on is get on with it, and you'll usually have only very minimal resistance to deal with. When it isn't fully on yet is where you need more process, which is what the remainder of the sections in this post are to be about. PUTTING A GIRL AT EASE The first thing you should look to do at your place or her place is to put a girl at ease. I recommend turning on the world news on television. Why the news? Here's why: I experimented first with music. That was good, but it didn't provide enough distraction for girls and they'd still be nervous. So then I started using movies. What happened? Well, girls'd get engrossed in whatever movie I put on, and then it'd be difficult to escalate. So I started using the news. TV news provides enough audio and visual distraction so women have something to focus on logically, but without the immersive experience of a movie or television show, thereby freeing their emotions for you. The news lets you capture a woman's emotions and escalate while her logic is occupied with the goings on of the world. Unless she's passionate about politics in Bangalore or earthquakes in Johannesburg she's not going to get all that sucked into the world news. Then, get her a glass of water. Not alcohol. Maybe tea if she really wants that. But water is easy, everybody likes it, and it gives her something to do with herself if she's feeling uncomfortable; she can hold the glass, play with it, drink from it. Why not alcohol? Because alcohol suggests you're trying to rob her of her inhibitions and get her to make bad decisions. You don't want her making bad decisions though - she should realize that you are confident she'll want you when she's dead sober. Your place should be set up well for seduction: a comfortable couch, no chairs (or stuff piled up on the chairs - how are you going to escalate if she's off on a chair somewhere instead of close to you?), ideally your bed nearby. I notice I have an easier time bedding girls in a small one room bachelor pad where my bed is sitting right next to my couch, which is right next to my kitchen table, than I did when I had a big place with a separate living room and bedroom. There's a weird subconscious undercurrent when a girl hadn't seen your whole place and your whole bed like, "What else is in those backrooms? Is he going to show me his bed at some point?" You can relieve this a bit by giving her a quick tour of your place, so if you have a big place maybe do that first. If you have a choice of apartments though, go small and cozy over big and spacious and cold. Also, side note: if you bring her to your place, have her take her shoes off first. I have all my shoes by the door these days, because, well, one, it makes for a much cleaner apartment, and two, it allows me to insist a girl take her shoes off before coming in. Her taking her shoes off is kind of a symbolic act that makes her feel like she'll stay awhile, like she's now more comfortable, and… that she's taken off an article of clothing in your home already. So, to sum up, for getting girls comfortable: Have them take off their shoes if at your place. Put on the world news (at your place or her place). Music videos are a close second. Get the both of you some glasses of water. Grab a seat together on a couch. If she sits in a chair, tell her to sit with you and that you don't want to do the whole, "I sit over here and you sit all the way over there like a couple of weirdos," thing. MAKING YOUR MOVE Know what the #1 thing most guys mess up when it comes to physical escalation is? They never make a move. How are you going to get intimate with a girl if you never do anything? The girl isn't going to do it for you. If you're having this problem - and you're not alone because lots of guys do - the best thing you can do for yourself is to make yourself a promise that no girl will be allowed in your apartment for more than ten minutes without you at least trying to kiss her. This will put the right kind of pressure on you and force you to act. Know what happens when you first start forcing yourself to kiss girls you've brought home where previously you failed to act? You start sleeping with them. It's a little surprising at first, because you'll be sitting there with a girl thinking, "Oh, shit, she isn't ready yet, she's going to freak out when I kiss her, damnnit, but my ten minutes are up and I've got to do it… okay… here goes…" And then you'll kiss her, and she'll kiss you passionately back, and then a few minutes later you become lovers. And you look back and you're like, "Whoa. I thought she wasn't even going to kiss me back, but we just had sex!" Yet, had you not forced yourself to kiss her, that never would've happened. You must force yourself to act. Here's what I recommend you do: stop right now and make me a promise, or make yourself a promise, or make the promise to whomever you need to make the promise to, that you are going to kiss every girl you go home with within ten minutes of being alone with her. I guarantee you that if you stick to this promise your women successfully bedded will double or treble or quadruple from this alone. So, stop reading and say that aloud: "I promise I will kiss every girl I bring home within ten minutes, maximum." Okay, good. If she doesn't like you, she'll just leave, and that's fine. Trust me when I tell you that if she leaves because you tried to kiss her, nothing was going to happen no matter how long you sat with her there. In my half decade in seduction, I've had a handful of girls stand up and leave because I tried to kiss them in my apartment… but a heck of a lot more that have kissed me back and gone to bed with me. You must make a move. This is probably the most important part of physical escalation; the rest is icing on the cake. THE KISS Sometimes you will need to use a manhandle kiss when a girl gives you resistance to kissing. That's probably considered assault or something the United States and Sweden, but whatever. If you watch old movies, this is how it used to be done in the States. Now I think you're supposed to sign a contract of mutual consent or something and go through a five day waiting period before engaging in any kind of physical contact. I'm kidding of course, but just to make the point: I think a lot of guys nowadays hear about taking a woman who's struggling against you and just pulling her in and forcing her to give you a peck on the lips anyway and go, "Oh no! He wants me to kiss rape a girl!" Well, you're not really kissing her, just giving her a peck on the lips, then dropping it. Sometimes you need to do it this way though. I have a lot of girls resist me on the first kiss. I pull them in hard anyway though, and give them a peck on the lips. Then, I let them go, and continue the conversation as if nothing had happened whatsoever. I'll talk about what's on the news, for instance. So it'll go like this: Me: I think it's kind of awesome how fast they deposed the Egyptian government. Girl: Yeah… Me: [stare at girl sexily for a moment. Pull girl's chin in my direction. Girl struggles and fights; I grab her head and pull her in, then plant a quick kiss on her lips. I loosen my hold on her, smile at her, then let her go entirely] Me: What do you think happens next now that the kicked Mubarak out? Does the military take power, or do they hold elections, or what? The casual conversation does a few really, really good things for you. Here's what it does: It communicates this is no big deal to you and you're totally comfortable. It short circuits the girl logically; she doesn't know how to compute a guy kissing her and then not going crazy talking about kissing or sex or trying to move things forward. It puts her at ease that you're not going to aggressively pursue her too far beyond her comfort level and while you'll push a bit, you're also not going to push too hard. After I reengage her logically, most girls are really flustered, and I'll just go in for another kiss and they love it. Some girls act completely chill and nonplussed, and those girls might resist you a bit again when you go for it again. So, in that case, just wash, rinse, and repeat. Once I am able to kiss a girl and have her just melt into it and kiss me back, I'll draw my lips away, look at her closely, and tell her her lips are so soft or that she tastes good. Then I'll go back to kissing. PHYSICAL ESCALATION I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he said he used to spend thirty or forty minutes making out with girls before sleeping with them. Thirty or forty minutes! I said, "I used to spend about six or seven minutes making out with girls before moving things forward." You should always try to move things forward as quickly as possible without moving too quickly. There's a fine line to walk in the escalation where you push limits, but don't have the girl push back. It's deserving of another post, but basically what you're aiming for is being able to physically escalate to the point where she's about to refuse or pull your hand away, but you stop or tone it down or move to another part of her body before she can. That way, you are always moving things forward without having her giving you resistance. Speaking of resistance, the old Star Trek "resistance is futile" line springs to mind. Never let resistance suck the wind out of your sails. Certainly respect a girl's resistance, and if she doesn't want you doing something, stop doing it… for at least a few minutes. Then start again. If she wants to stop you, she can stop you. Then you start again later. If she really doesn't want to go to bed with you, she will leave. If she's still there, but resisting, take it as her way of saying, "I want you and I like you and I'm attracted to you, but you need to get me more comfortable with you right now before I'm ready for this. Don't start thinking you'll put it off until later, because later never happens, and people's feelings change, and if a girl doesn't sleep with you you had a chance to sleep with, she'll look back and tell herself there was a reason it didn't happen. You need to close the deal while she's with you, which means you must be persistent. In "Walk the Line," I discuss a girl I slept with who gave me a great deal of resistance because she had a boyfriend she loved. It took me about two to two-and-a-half hours to break through her resistance and reach the point where I was able to enter her and complete the seduction. In my earlier days I would've given up after an hour or so, but these days I know that the longer you escalate on a girl and she sticks around, the closer and closer she gets to simply giving in and getting intimate with you. The more time you spend escalating on a girl, generally, so long as you're being passionate and aggressive, the more she's going to want to give in to you. That brings us to the Big Three of physical escalation: Passion Aggressiveness Persistence You must show passion to inspire passion in her and make her want you. You must be aggressive in moving things forward and getting ever more physical with her. And you must be persistent in trying and trying again and not losing faith even if she stops your ten or fifteen times, and you must not get upset or bitter and instead take it all in stride and understand that she simply isn't comfortable enough yet and it's your job to make her more comfortable with you touching her and getting increasingly more physical with her. Some tips on how best to physically escalate: Pull her into you. Have you ever had a girl yank you into her during a physical escalation? It's a big turn-on, right? Works both ways. It's also in good keeping with the Law of Least Effort; by pulling her into you, you get her coming to you, instead of you chasing after her and going to her. Much more effective for setting the proper tone during a seduction than leaning into her and pursuing her. And by physically moving her and having her comply, you're getting investment to boot. Run your hands up and down her body. Because she isn't comfortable at all with you yet, when you first start touching a woman's body she's often inclined to move your hand off of where you're touching, particularly if it's a sensitive area like her breast, butt, or pussy. When you keep your hands moving, though, and not stopping on any one place in particular, you're able to get her comfortable with your hands on her there without having her trying to stop you. Soon enough you're able to leave your hand where you want to leave it for a prolonged time. Pull shirts down rather than up. It's often pretty difficult to get a girl's shirt off and get to her breasts that way. So what I always do is pull down the neckline of her shirt or sweater, pull the top of her bra down, and start sucking on her nipples that way. It makes it immensely easier to get her shirt and bra off once you've already sucked on her nipples a few times - she reasons you've already seen and touched and licked the most private part there, and, besides - she's very turned on now! Get incidental vaginal stimulation. Originally a concept by Vin DiCarlo, incidental vaginal stimulation is touching a girl's pussy with something other than your hand or face; that is, while you're making out with her and physically escalating with her, your knee is pressed up against her crotch, or your arm, or your stomach. Why? Well, have you ever lain with a girl and had her leg against your crotch? You probably got pretty aroused, right? Same thing works with women. Get her panties off first. If you have a choice, always go for pants / panties over shirts and bras. It's sometimes easier to get a girl's pants and panties off first, and once they're off, everything else will come off to. Get to penetrative vaginal sex as soon as possible. I don't personally get much enjoyment out of oral or anal sex, so this one's a no-brainer for me, but I know a lot of guys who love getting blowjobs from girls and love giving girls anal sex. Nothing wrong with this, unless you go for these first: it's not always the case, but sometimes getting oral or anal sex first means you don't get anything else from a girl. Most women consider oral and anal to be "lower" on the totem pole of importance than anal; for instance, a girl might give a blowjob to a guy who's just okay but refuse him vaginal sex, and if you get a blowjob first but not vaginal sex, she might later refuse to do anything further with you. Once you are inside her pussy, everything else is open to you. A corollary of this rule is that if you have an opportunity to get to vaginal sex you should take it, even if it's somewhere you can't properly make love to a girl. Reason why is that once you've been inside her, it's already a done deal, and you can go back to it later; but the reverse is often not the case. If, for instance, you're making out in the back of a car, and she's ready for intimacy, but instead you take her out of the car and back to your place, expecting to sleep with her there, you may encounter a whole new wave of resistance in your bedroom and possibly not even sleep with her. If instead you simply pull her panties down in the car and insert yourself there, you can spend a minute or two inside her, then take her back to your place and you won't encounter any resistance. And that ought to do it. This post came out to be rather long, but hopefully contains some good information and a few insights that are new. This is most of what I'm doing seduction-wise these days and it's been working quite well; I predict that if you start implementing these tactics and techniques and mindsets into your endgame, you'll see a marked uptick in your returns with women. So, in that case - here's to your success!

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##Tell If a Girl Likes You: Are Her Walls Up, Or Down? Walking back from the gym this afternoon, under the hot summer sun, I was a bit of a mess. My shirt was drenched in sweat; my arms were stiff and wooden; my hair was a little messy; and I was still breathing a little heavy. I noticed a girl walking toward me, dressed in rather fancy garb, and as she saw me, she pulled her face into a mildly contorted look that spoke somewhat of disgust. But, at the same time, she also couldn't seem to take her eyes off of me, and I noticed those eyes scanning me up and down; she brushed her hair back, and as she walked toward me, she ever so slightly veered toward me. I've met lots of girls like this before. Girls that, on first glance, might appear to be completely put off by you. But if you read between the lines, their more subtle actions tell a different story. In fact, I've taken some of these women who gazed upon me with what looked like disgust as lovers, oftentimes rather quickly. What I want to get across here is, how to tell if a girl likes you -- or not -- isn't always as cut and dry a case as you might think. Sometimes it can even be the opposite of what you initially thought -- and that holds for both the girls you think like you, and the girls you think don't. THE MASKS WE WEAR Sometimes, when I'm out and about, if I find myself sitting somewhere, I'll end up with women looking at me. And, when I catch them looking at me, I'll look dramatically off into the distance, sigh as if I'm incredibly bored, and keep an expression on my face (the bored look, to be precise) as if life is just completely unexciting. Then, after a protracted pause, I'll turn to the girl who was staring at me, and start talking to her in an overly-bored tone. Some of the time this happens, women get quite nervous, thinking I legitimately am really bored and that they have to work hard to impress me and make me not bored. The rest of the time, they realize I'm just being dramatic, and they laugh a little, tease me a bit perhaps, and we get into a good conversation. This is called "being dramatic," and it's something I do sometimes to women, and it's something that women do sometimes to men. The reason I highlight it is because it's an instance of flirtation with an "unpleasant" expression. You see, a lot of guys tend to only read a girl's basic facial expression. Meaning, they assume that: If she looks bored, she must be bored If she looks angry, she must be angry If she looks disgusted, she must be disgusted And when you're a new guy starting out, this can be really tough. I remember how a girl looking bored or angry or disgusted used to instantly take all the wind right out of my sails some years back. If I caught a girl looking that way, I'd fold my hand and walk away from the table, every time. But actually, as it turns out, much of this is for show. Some of it is even flirtation. It's one of those weird things you kind of have to spend a long time attracting the opposite sex passively to understand, and since I spent most of my teenage years doing exactly that, allow me to explain it to you. If you like someone and you want to get that person to notice you, one way to do that is by making a face. Even a look of disgust can get noticed and get you opened by confident men if you're an attractive girl. In fact, as such looks are often attempts to get noticed by women, many men already interpret them as flirtation (which they often are... not always, mind you, but certainly sometimes), and act accordingly. Being a little dramatic yourself is an important part of being good at flirting with girls, and being able to recognize when women are being a little dramatic is an important part of not getting your steam lost when you catch a girl giving you a look that might otherwise be interpreted as unpleasant. But there're two sides to every coin, and men also frequently misinterpret signs the other way, too: She's smiling, so she must like me She's talking to me, so she must be interested She's asking me questions, so she must want to get to know me more Depending on the circumstance though, these interpretations might not be entirely on the mark either. WHEN SMILING IS "NO" AND EYE-ROLLING IS "YES" A while back, I found myself at a nightclub talking to a girl. She was smiling, upbeat, and fun, and she asked me things about myself and made an effort to connect with me. But, I could tell she was being polite. So, I told her to come sit with me, and she politely declined. I persisted, insisting that she join me; she said no, she wanted to stay where she was. I left. A little later, I spotted a pair of girls sitting at the bar together, looking particularly bored. One of them was pretty cute. I made my way over to the bar and sat down two seats down from the cute girl, and after a minute I leaned her way and began talking to her. She glanced at me, then rolled her eyes half the way and looked away. I sat there, calm, stared off into space looking bored for a moment, confident that she liked me, and then she turned back to me and asked me a question, still with a rather skeptical expression on her face. I started talking to her, and she gradually warmed up. Later, I told her to come to the dance floor with me, which, despite her sarcasm and eye-rolling, she did. I ended up grabbing her phone number, and proceeded to meet up with her a few weeks later, where we slept together not long into our first date. What happened? Well, as discussed in the post on how to tell if a girl is horny, women will often be mean when they're feeling some pent-up sexual frustration, but that's not all. Women will also be really nice and friendly to guys JUST BECAUSE. Because they're nice people. Because they find a guy interesting. Because they want to make new friends. A woman doesn't have to be interested in a guy romantically or sexually to be nice to him. She can have a whole host of other reasons why she's being that way. I consider women like this "distractions" when I'm out actively trying to meet a girl. There are, basically, four categories you can place women into in terms of level of interest when you're out looking to meet your next consort: Uninterested: these are the ones who reject you straight up and simply aren't interested, for one reason or another. Mean as they might seem, they actually save the man on a mission a lot of time. Distractions: these are the gals who, because they're really nice to everyone, or because they think you might make a cool friend, will be nice and sociable with you. For guys less adept at teasing out a woman's intentions though, they can be huge distractions, as a man plows a lot of time into trying to get to know a girl like this, only to find that it's impossible for him to get anywhere with her. Prospects: these women aren't completely sure that you're what they're looking for, but they're willing to give you a shot. You'll usually end up grabbing a phone number from a girl like this and planning to meet up with her later (once she's had a little time to realize you're actually a pretty awesome guy), but if you're doing very well or you're reasonably experienced in this scenario you can often transform these "warm" opportunities into "hot" ones. Sure-Things: these are the girls you meet, and it feels like there's a spark, or that it's "on" from the moment you first lock eyes. They're the ones you can say with confidence are definitely into you right off the bat. You've usually only got a limited escalation window in which to make things happen with a girl who feels that magic attraction for you, lest she start thinking that maybe she thought wrong and you weren't the guy she thought you were. Make sure you move fast with her. Those are our interest categories, anyway. But how do you tell who's who? The easiest, simplest, most straightforward and deadly accurate way to tell where a girl falls on this chart is to ask her to move with you. If she flat out says, "No," she's uninterested or she's a distraction. If she wavers back and forth on the fence, giving you a "maybe" or "well, I don't know..." or something equivalent to that, she's a prospect -- she might be interested, but she isn't sure; she still needs some convincing. If she says, "Okay," and willingly follows you, she's almost certainly a sure-thing. The thing is, you will almost assuredly never realize these differentiations exist until you start pushing to move girls early on (e.g., less than ten minutes into meeting them... optimally, less than five). It's only once you start asking women to move with you that you start realizing the distinctions between women with different levels of interest in you. "That's weird," you'll say once you start seeing this stuff, "Estelle was being so nice and I really thought she liked me, but she wouldn't go anywhere with me." Another time, you'll find yourself saying, "Hey, wait a minute... I thought Olivia didn't like me at all, but then I asked her to go with me somewhere, and she kind of acted like it was a huge pain, but then she followed pretty easily and we ended up making out a few minutes later. How'd that happen?" if a girl likes you WAYS TO TELL IF A GIRL LIKES YOU FOR REAL I may be biased, but I tend to consider the, "I like him as a friend," sentiment to be a fake kind of liking. Reason being, a man a woman likes as a partner or a prospect gets so much more respect than a man who's only her friend (and unworthy of her partnership) that it's not even funny. Try putting a girl's lifelong platonic guy pal up against her lover of two months for whom she has super intense feelings and let me know whose side she's going to take. Right -- it's the guy she's going to bed with. At best, she's going to tell her paramour not to hurt her guy pal -- because she's going to consider her lover strong, and her guy friend weak. If you want to know if a girl likes you for real -- if you want to know if she likes you and respects you in a romantic and sexual way -- that takes a little reading between the lines. There's something I call "walls," and I look for these with every woman I talk to. Reason why is, women who like you put their walls down, while women who don't or who are trying to stop themselves from having something happen keep their walls up. What I mean by "walls" is this: when a woman creates visible, perceptible distance between the two of you, she's created a wall. Examples of behavior women display when they've built a wall: They cross their arms or legs They turn their bodies away from you They seem vaguely uncomfortable or ill-at-ease They refuse compliance and often won't move with you They break rapport (disagree with you) rather than focusing on building it They avoid strong, intense eye contact They confound your efforts to deep dive and get to know them better The four chief reasons why women build walls: They want to use you as a friend (e.g., you have some valuable skill they'd like access to, or can help their career in some way, or can invite them to parties or bring them into a network they value, etc.) and are afraid of losing that opportunity should things get out of hand They can tell you're sexual and they want to "protect" themselves from getting too close to you (maybe they have a boyfriend; maybe they have intimacy issues) They value you as boyfriend material and are afraid of rushing too quickly to bed with you They realize they don't like you and are afraid of giving you the wrong signals You'll notice the common theme among those first three reasons is fear of the consequences of intimacy with a man: women afraid of becoming intimate with you for one reason or another will defend themselves with social / psychological "walls." Women a man's managed to alienate or send into auto-rejection will as well construct walls, though this is because they afraid of him thinking they like him rather than because they're afraid of ending up liking him. You might even go so far as to say that one part of being good with women is about not flipping the triggers that activate women's walls, but that's for another post. For now, suffice it to say that if you want to be able to tell if a girl likes you, look for whether her walls or up or her walls are down. So how do you know if a woman's walls are down? Well, it's not her playing with her hair, and it's not her laughing at your jokes -- those are reactions. Those can be faked, and women who've trained themselves as flirts fake those all the time. You tell if a girl likes you and if her walls are down by looking for behavior like this: Her arms and legs are uncrossed Her body's turned towards you, or she's leaning into you She seems quite comfortable around you -- maybe even excited She willingly offers compliance and goes with you when you ask She focuses on building rapport and finding commonalities with you She returns and maintains strong eye contact with you (or shy, flirty eye contact) She goes along easily with your deep dives and efforts to get to know her If you pay attention to these things, you'll get a much better read on whether a girl likes you than all those confusing mixed signals most guys hang their hats on. That girl I saw walking toward me today who looked a little disgusted at me but then couldn't stop looking at me and veered towards me I could tell had her walls down with me, and that's why I felt she was interested. That girl I talked to who was friendly but wouldn't go with me I knew was being polite because I could feel her walls, and that girl who rolled her eyes at me I knew liked me because I could sense her walls weren't up for me. Check girls' walls. The easiest test again is asking a gal to move with you, but there are lots of little ways -- pointed out just above -- that you can use to find how open and available to you a girl is. And of course, once you know she likes you, well, it's on!

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##Telling Women You're NOT Boyfriend Material Last weekend I spoke at a gathering of the San Diego pickup community. One of the things I skirted over briefly, due to time constraints, but that guys asked me to spend a little more time on and seemed very interested in hearing about, was on disqualifying yourself as a boyfriend. Why would any guy trying to get girls want to make girls not want to date him? Well, in answer to that, the long and short of it is this: women and men have different things to consider when it comes to having sex with someone new. And for women, the question of whether or not she wants a man as a boyfriend can muddy up the picture and make the decision to sleep with a guy quickly not so clear-cut. Deciding whether or not to have sex with some girl we like is easy for us guys. Go out, get laid with the girl you hit it off with as soon as possible, and, if you like her, start dating her. For girls, it isn't so straightforward. If a gal likes a guy, she typically wants to make sure she DOESN'T jump into the sack too fast with him. Because us men being what we are, we naturally tend to value women who sleep with us quickly lower than women it takes us longer to bed. Even among guys who think of themselves as more enlightened... look back at your past girlfriends. How many began as women you slept with the same night you met them? OK. Now how many of them were the girls that it took you forever to bed, but whom you really got to like and value in the meantime before you finally, after all that work, managed to wrestle into sleeping with you? Hmm. Yeah. If you're like 99% of men out there, you'll start picking up on a very noticeable trend. And women pick up on this trend that men have, too. They know men don't usually date the girls they hook up with quickly. That proclivity of men's is why, in some cases, you'll find that women in committed relationships are easier to sleep with than women who are single. Because women who already have a man (whether they tell you about him or not) are usually not looking for a new relationship. They're just looking for sex. So they don't worry as much about whether sleeping with a man too quickly will blow their chances at a relationship; they're not looking for one in the first place. But women who are single are usually looking not only for sex, but for a relationship, too. Here's the kicker though: they are not necessarily looking for those things from the same guy. I said something while speaking about this at that talk I gave that seemed to rattle some guys, excite others, and cause still more to lash out in disbelief. What I said was this: "Believe it or not, a woman does not have to like you to sleep with you. In fact, she's probably more likely to have sex with you the day you meet her if she doesn't like you a whole lot." Now hold up a minute, one guy said. If a girl doesn't like you, she's NOT going to sleep with you. Period. End of story. No happy ending. Well, I'm here to tell you that isn't so. This isn't something you see a lot when you're a beginner in the social arts; it's not something you're even all that aware of as a guy who's intermediate with women. But as you reach the top tiers of advancement, you'll start realizing that women have sex all the time with men they just don't like all that much. That guy they're hooking up with they value don't enough to want to date. In many cases, they don't even like him enough that they'd respond to a call or a text from him the next day, regardless of whether they slept with him or not. But, they will still sleep with him. If that starts feeling a little counterintuitive, think about it like this. Sex with a girl you're in love with feels great. It's probably the best sex you can have. Sex with a girl you kinda like is good too, though not quite as amazing, right? Now how about sex with a girl you don't even like all that much. Say, a girl who's cute but completely lacking in the personality department. Or a girl who's not even all that cute, but she's there, she's available, and you're horny. You'd never sleep with a girl in those conditions, right? Only a girl you like, right? Well, if you're like almost every other guy on the planet, that's wrong. You would. Probably wouldn't answer her call the next day, but the night you met her, if conditions were right, you'd hook up with her. Now here's the shocking thing for most guys: despite their generally having longer hair and bigger chests, women are in fact exactly the same when it comes to sex. They hook up with guys all the time they don't like all that much. In fact, there are a very wide variety of reasons a woman will seek sex with a man, and many of them have little to do with HIM and how much she likes him, and more to do with HER - and he, the guy, just happens to be available to fill a need for her. Here are some of those reasons a woman might sleep with a guy, despite not liking him all that much: She's horny, she wants to get laid, and he's the best option available She's been on a dry spell, and she decides he's "good enough" to shag All of her girlfriends are hooking up that night, and she doesn't want to be left out - and the guy in question just happens to be hanging around and available He's an unknown in her social circle (he's there on vacation, or she is, or they run in completely different circles), no one she knows will ever find out, and he's basically a "freebie" She wants revenge on a current or former lover, and this new guy looks to be the means to that end She's feeling down in the dumps and in need of the boost in self-esteem that comes from getting laid She's always wanted to try a guy like him (white / black / Asian / Hispanic / muscular / wealthy / punk / rocker / badboy / international from XYZ country) She just feels like it. There are probably a bunch more, too. But just as any girl who's tolerable will likely do when you are just feeling down and want to get laid, so too will just any GUY who's tolerable likely do when a girl is feeling down and just wants to get laid. Most men have this myth that women, especially top women, are incredibly picky. As a guy with a lot of dynamic, intelligent, beautiful, successful women in his life, it's my distinct experience that this is utter malarkey. Here's what I've seen: top tier women, dating or hooking up with men who were not cool, not attractive, and not successful. It's not that these guys were badboys and had some kind of mysterious sex appeal, either. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and the girl in question wasn't feeling all that picky. But those girls still tell me they're picky. They say things to me like, "It's hard for me to find someone I like, because I'm very picky when it comes to men," or, "I'm fine without a man in my life. I'd rather be single, actually." But when I look at their choices in men, they're getting together with these guys that don't meet the standards they continually profess to have (or, realistically, the quality of guy I'd assume they could get). And bizarrely, they often end up in friends-with-benefits relationships with men they don't really care for or respect all that much. They don't even really like these guys. The guys press for relationships, and the girls decline, because they're not all that into them. But these guys are still good enough for sex - even though they're not good enough to date. Women DON'T have to like you to sleep with you. Period. End of story. So, onto the whole disqualifying-yourself-as-a-boyfriend thing. The thing that disqualifying yourself as a boyfriend does is, it makes it much easier for a woman to decide that you're the guy to fill that short-term need, and it helps her cast aside any reservations about sleeping with you too quickly and how that might affect her long-term prospects with you. You've negated yourself as a long-term prospect. She doesn't have to worry about that anymore. Before I list some ways to do that, one final note: most guys don't do this. How come? It's because they believe that women only want relationships, and that if they rule themselves out of the "long-term potential" category, they'll lose the girl they're speaking with. So they play it safe, and try to make themselves seem to be the best boyfriend material they can muster - thereby shooting in the foot any shot they had at sleeping with their new female acquaintance the same night. If she's thinking of you as a potential boyfriend, and she thinks she legitimately has a shot, she's NOT going to sleep with you the same night. Guaranteed. Will you lose a few girls by disqualifying yourself as a boyfriend? Sure. But they're girls you wouldn't have hooked up with that night anyway, and unless your follow-up game is incredibly solid, probably wouldn't have hooked up with at all. And here's the funny thing: even the girls who don't hook up with you that night will like you more. They'll find you mysterious, intriguing, and… sexy. That guy who seems like he'd make a great boyfriend? Yeah, he's nice. But now, the guy she can't get into a relationship, at least not all that easily… THAT guy makes her think. Women (especially top-tier women who are used to getting their way) find challenges irresistible. As a guy who's off-limits from a dating perspective, you position yourself as a challenge. So how can you disqualify yourself as a potential boyfriend? Here are some common ways you might disqualify yourself as a boyfriend to a woman you've met: Let her know you have a girlfriend or are in a relationship Let her know you're newly out of a relationship and still recovering and not looking to get involved Let her know you're on travel and only in town another night or two Let her know you're moving out of town and will be far away Let her know you have all kinds of friends in your life, but that when it comes to serious dating, you usually only date girls of XYZ race / nationality (something different than her) Let her know you're not really all that sure about relationships anymore, and not even sure you want to have another one (in a very neutral, non-negative / pessimistic way) Use one of these (preferably, one that's truthful and matches up well with your situation - obviously, if you say you're on travel and you're actually not, and the two of you run into each other later on, there could be issues!) and you will find that, contrary to what most men might think, you'll see an increase in attraction from women, and you'll see that sex happens faster. Note that there can be a bit of a learning curve: delivery is essential, especially when all this seems new and unfamiliar and nerve-wracking. If a woman can sense that a man is nervous / needy when he disqualifies himself (e.g., he tells her he already has a girlfriend, then tenses up and gets quiet, as if waiting for her rejection), attraction will plummet. This has to be a natural, emotion-free declaration that you are not really on the market from a relationship standpoint. Guys who are off the market and nervous women will reject them are unattractive. But guys who are off the market and confident that women will want them are even more attractive than guys who are on the market and equally confident. They actually had an interesting little study recently that showed that women in committed relationships ranked photographs of men they were told were single as more attractive, while single women ranked photographs of men they were told were in committed relationships as more attractive. Get that? Single women are more attracted to men who are tied up. How come? Well, long story short, a guy who's got a girl already is basically communicating that he is wanted by other women. That guy who's single is an unknown variable - why is he single? Is it because he's just out of a relationship - or is it because there's something wrong with him and women don't want him? It's good to be off-the-market. It says a lot of attractive things about you. It also takes some pressure off the girl, because it implies you're not "looking" (and hence, judging). She is more free to be herself around you. Once you're using disqualifications like these and you're comfortable with them, it's mildly remarkable how things change with women. The planning / calculating / scheming side of women goes away as they lose their primary calculation objective ("net this guy into a relationship") and become free to enjoy or not enjoy you based on their whims and how the mood strikes them (and how you make them feel). Try it out - it's fun.

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##Text Girls to Success: Phone Secrets, Part I In "What to Text Girls", I gave you a quick and concise overview over ALL my best strategies and techniques for when it comes time to call and text girls. You could read that article and nothing else, and it would be the 20% that give you 80% of your results. However, there are a couple more things you can do here and there that will up your chances… and that's what I want to talk about today. These are the more advanced techniques and advanced mentalities behind texting in more challenging situations - e.g., when you have a girl who's being a bit more difficult to get than usual... and you need to pull out the BIG guns (textually speaking). Anyway, no grand introductions today - just pure tactics and techniques. Let's get right into it. GETTING HER PHONE NUMBER If you recall what we discussed way back in "Natural Number Swapping", the best way to get a girl's number is by not going after the number at all, but by scheduling another meet-up instead. Talk to her for a while, then ask her when she's free. As I have mentioned, you don't want to make a suggestion for a time to meet, because if she doesn't happen to be free then (which IS unlikely in this day and age), then you've got to start tossing out other times to meet, and instantly, you've put yourself into an IMMEDIATE dynamic of pursuing her… not good. In other words, don't ask her: "Say, are you free this Thursday?" Instead, ask her: "What days are you usually free?" Once she reveals her schedule, then you can make a suggestion for a time and place to get together. Speak with confidence and as if you expected a "yes" - hesitancy can kill your chances at this point, especially if she's on the fence about it. But if you take a strong lead, chances are she'll just follow - it's a quality women look for in a man (often unconsciously), not to mention people will tend to follow the path of least resistance, and in this instance, you're making that the path to saying "yes", and boom - now she's following your lead and now you've become more attractive to her. Now, let's talk techniques… because while they are not really necessary if you come from the right frame, they really can be useful when you're just starting out and you're not sure exactly what to say and do. At the very least, they're something to fall back on if you draw a blank in the middle of a conversation. Without further ado, some tactics for getting those digits of hers: Bait her into asking you for YOUR number. After you talk about meeting up again, you can simply ask her how the two of you could stay in touch… at this point, she will most likely suggest that you exchange phone numbers. You can then accuse her of being very forward, or pretend like you're reluctant to give your number out (don't worry, girls get the joke - although be delicate with this one if you're way higher in value than she is, or she's acting like she thinks you are)… and then swap digits. It can sometimes be a good idea to ask when a good time to call would be. People are busy, which is why I usually just text… but if I have a feeling I need to speak to a girl some more to make her comfortable with meeting up, I'll get that intel, just to make sure I won't call while she's with her boyfriend, with her parents or at work. You want to make sure you don't chase women, and you don't want to play phone tag, either. If you're picking her up in a situation where it's good to stay innocuous because there are a lot of people around that might throw her judgmental looks for letting herself get picked up, don't hold up your phone. Hold it in your hand next to your waist and punch the digits in blindly, then hit "send". You can save the number with her name later when you send her the first text (see: "How to Text a Girl"). A very nice, non-gimmicky wording to get a meet-up is a simple yes-ladder… which is, getting a girl to say yes to two simple statements first will make it more likely that she will also say yes to the third. Here's an example. When you have a nice vibe with her, say: "It's interesting talking to you." When she agrees, say: "We should talk again some time." And once she agrees to that as well, just ask: "When are you free to grab a drink?" At this point, she's already so used to saying "yes" to you that going along with the flow of the conversation is the most natural thing in the world - and the direction the conversation is flowing in, of course, is the two of you exchanging info and meeting again later. As I had mentioned above, you want to lead women, and come from a position of strength. Instead of asking for her number, TELL her to give it to you. "Write your number down." Most people are followers, and will do exactly what you want them to do, if you simply tell them to do it. That's often all it takes… it's magic. If she wants to exchange MSN, Skype, email or Facebook instead of a phone number, chances are she's not that interested - why else would she not want you to have her number? You can't text girls when all you have is their Twitter (well, you kind of could, but it's not the same). Of course there might be a hidden boyfriend in the picture, but it's more likely that giving you her email is just a friendly way of brushing you off. Take it anyway, but don't spend a lot of time sending emails - it's not a high probability lead. Next, let's have a look at some typical objections a girl might throw up when you ask her for the number, what her words REALLY mean and how you should deal with it: "My phone is broken," or anything along those lines. There are really two possibilities here - it's either a lame excuse because she doesn't want to give you her number, or - gasp - her phone might actually be broken. You will usually be able to tell from her demeanor which of the two it is, but in either case you're better off believing her. Telling her that you doubt the veracity of what she's saying implies that you're used to girls not wanting to give you their numbers. Just ask for another way to get in touch instead. "I don't know…" If she's hesitant to give out her number, take on the dominant frame of the leader again, and just give her a nudge. Say something like, "Go ahead, it's going to be okay." When she can tell that you're certain about what's going on, she will likely fall in line with what you want to have happen… people always look to other people to see who's the most certain about any given situation, and then they simply follow that person's lead. Just be that guy who's most certain, and they'll follow yours. If she asks for your number instead, I suggest you just pass - if she doesn't want you to call her, she won't call you either. Just say, "No, that's okay." If she's interested, she will often backpedal. And if she does not, you can still follow up with something like, "I don't give my number out… but we can trade if you want." That already violates the 80-20 rule of focusing your time on the women who are most interested in you, however. Or, as a sneaky alternative, you can simply agree with her and say, "Sure, let me put it in your phone", and then dial your number from her cell. Tricks like that can work, but if you need them you usually don't have enough attraction to take the interaction anywhere fruitful anyway, so I'd just go with option one - pass, or offer to trade numbers (or, even better: ditch the numbers, and try something crazy - ask her to go somewhere with you right then - "You know what? Forget the phone. Let's go on an adventure. Right now." This one doesn't always work, but it can lead to some surprising results with a girl you were otherwise probably never going to see again). MORE TIPS TO HELP YOU TEXT GIRLS Alright, you have her number... now what do you text her? Again, I highly recommend you keep it very simple, as we discussed in the previous articles linked to above about phone and text game… just ask her when she's free and get her to meet up. Simple. This advice follows Pareto's Law: 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your effort. That means that if you focus ONLY on those highly effective 20% and don't do the other 80% at ALL, you can do five TIMES as much of what REALLY works… and get five times the 80%. In other words, if you do nothing but apply Pareto's Law to everything you do, your output will quadruple. On some rare occasions, however, you might meet a girl that you're really interested in, and where you can just tell that the 20% wouldn't be enough to get her to come out on a date with you. Be careful not to get hung up on situations like that where you can't stop thinking about her and end up hung up on a girl who isn't yours, but making an additional two or three attempts in a case like that is fine. Some girls actually find persistence sexy, and with the right kind of follow up, they might just change their mind about you. Again, not something I'd recommend as a standard MO, but it might be worth a shot in a few exceptional cases. In that case, for those rare exceptional few, I give you - some texts you can text girls with that go beyond the simple "let's meet up" Pareto approach. BOILERPLATE TEXT MESSAGES text girlsThe following text was written by a very good friend of mine - he actually writes about sex and romance for women for a living, and he's also one of the best I've seen when it comes to word-smithing written communication… in a way that gets females first curious, then interested, next aroused and finally horny. This is the message: "I know you're already interested, I am too, and I would like us to get to know each other in person rather than through text. If I'm wrong about that, and I doubt it, then carry on and may you have a wonderful life. 4pm Friday, Starbucks." Do you remember that we talked about demonstrating that you're perfectly willing to walk away from a situation? We discussed this in detail in the articles about the perfect Hollywood movie seductions. My friend sandwiches this little demonstration of his detachment between very strong commands for her to move things forward with him. Of course this text only makes sense if you actually DID get her interested in you previously, and when she's only being non-responsive now because it's been a while, or because something else has come up in her life. If she was never keen on you to begin with, this message will just look silly. If you had some chemistry though, this text can be VERY powerful. Let's break it down into its elements: He calls out her interest, without being afraid to admit his own, and then tells her what to do (taking the lead again). Then he shows her that despite all of the above it's no big deal. Finally he nails her with a specific "call-to-action", as marketers call it - a very specific time and place to meet up. This kind of confidence and dominance combined with the obvious nonchalance that underlies this text is VERY intriguing to women, and works very well for my friend… so give it a try. You don't need to copy this text word by word obviously when you text girls, but if you can just learn something about the frame of mind it was written from, that alone will do wonders for you. TROUBLE SHOOT YOUR TEXTS TO GIRLS text girlsHere are some text message flirting problems you might run into, and some possible ways to handle them: If she's being testy or defiant, do NOT try to put her in her place over text. In fact, stay completely non-reactive. The best thing you can do is to simply ignore the text altogether, and resume communication a day or two later with something completely non-sequitur, by starting a completely new conversation thread. Path of least resistance, as you recall - and the easiest path of dealing with someone texting her that she needs to straighten out is she simply doesn't text back. If you ARE going to respond to texts that don't serve you, be playful about it. Exaggerate whatever point she's making to where it will be absurd and funny. Don't let your pride get involved - you don't need to debate her on anything, especially not over text where you don't have your voice tone to calibrate the impact your words will have. That means, if you ask her when she's free and she says she doesn't know, she's just SO busy... if you reply with something like "Come on, you can't be THAT busy," it looks weak; but if you text her something like "I know... you've got SO MUCH hair to wash, right?" it'll get her to laugh at herself (and perhaps suddenly remember when her schedule is open). If you get the vibe that she will probably flake on you, one thing you can do is to beat her to the punch. Suggest a time and date to meet up, but don't make a firm commitment. Instead, say "I'll call you then"… and then never actually call her. Girls flake on guys ALL THE TIME… but if she's on the receiving end, it will at least get her attention. You can then apologize later and reschedule. Again, it's usually better to focus on the 20%, but if she IS a girl you really want to pursue, this little technique will up the odds. Don't be afraid to break contact with her for a while. If you ask her out twice and she's busy both times, STOP talking to her for a month or maybe even three. If she was really interested but legitimately busy, she will reinitiate. If she doesn't, chances are she just can't go out on a date with you right now because she has something else going on in her life… that might change if you call here again 6-8 weeks later. Don't text girls to try to schedule dates a week before they will happen… unless she's either Japanese or a workaholic professional with a very busy schedule, it's better to be more spontaneous. Putting "fun" into the calendar days in advance also communicates that you're the provider, and not the lover - see "What Women Want" for more on that one. If you use these advanced tips to text girls with, you'll be able to up your odds - even in those situations where they aren't the greatest. And tomorrow, in Part II of my Phone Secrets series, I'll let you in on my techniques like this for when you make that first phone call - and beyond.

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##Top 10 Places to Meet Girls Newly single? In a rut? Or maybe you're just on the prowl and looking for a girlfriend? Whatever the reason, there's never a better time to get out and start meeting girls than right now. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Not this coming weekend. Now. Tomorrow never comes, goes the saying. Right? Well, the saying is correct. Guys who put off meeting girls until tomorrow -- "I'm not feeling like it tonight, I'll go out tomorrow," very often end up putting it off tomorrow, too. And then eventually they end up sitting around thinking to themselves how hard it is to meet women. Well, of course it's hard -- from your couch! You need to be out there where the people are -- and, more specifically, where attractive young women are. The good news is, if you live in even a decent-sized city, there are more likely than not tens of thousands of women your age in town. Which means tens of thousands of opportunities for you to meet girls you like. But where to start? To help you figure out where you want to begin your search, I've assembled a list of some common -- and not so common -- places and angles to meet the women you're looking for. Without further ado, let the count down begin. 10. Class Class can be a great place to meet girls. It offers the advantages of putting you constantly around the same group of people -- giving you ample opportunity to show the different sides of yourself, and an abundance of occassions to talk to a girl and ask her out. On the downside, there's not a lot of turnover -- not many new girls -- and it can sometimes be difficult to catch a moment alone with a girl to build a connection or ask her out. You want to be social with the class, but pay her a good amount of attention and conversation time too. Try to sit next to her or work on a project with her if at all possible; failing that, catch her on the way out of class. Sometimes girls will hover around the exit at the end, waiting for you to leave before they leave too. Take a cue from that and do the same yourself if you're the first one out, or look for them waiting for you. Make sure too that you're taking a class that attractive women sign up for, too. Physics 101 or Woodshop need not apply. Think more along the lines of Spanish I, Acting, Photography, Journalism, or Bartending classes. Many classes let you audit them before signing up for good -- go check it out and see if there are any cuties. Of course, make sure you're taking the class because you want to learn the subject, too! Nothing worse than being bored in class and attending just to try and meet girls. But if it's something you're interested in, class can be a great place to meet girls. 9. Online A few years ago, the only girls you could find online were ones you probably didn't want to date. Not so anymore. Nowadays, every girl and her mother (literally) is online looking for her next date. Dating sites have specialized, offering every kind of dating available -- from sites catering to folks looking for quick flings, to religious sites looking to arrange long-term relationships, to culture-specific sites helping daters meet others from their same culture in a foreign land. Whatever it is an online dater is looking for, it's probably out there. There are a few tricks to online dating. First, you need a great photograph or two. It pays to get your hair done professionally, dress sharp, and have some professional pictures taken, preferably in natural light and with a sexy look -- tired eyes and a wan, seductive smile. Online is the one place where looks matter most -- without great pictures, you fight an uphill battle. A guy with good pictures and a guy with bad pictures can have the same exact profile, but one will get bombarded with messages and the other gets nary a peep. Post your pictures on HotOrNot.com to get an idea of which of your photographs people find the most attractive. Another trick is that your profile needs to be short, brief, friendly, and to the point. It also needs to be packed with interesting information about you that women can relate to -- for instance, what sport do you play? Do you play a musical instrument? Where have you traveled? Do you cook? What's a self-deprecating story you can tell -- something both interesting and humbling? She needs to feel that you're both a fascinating individual, and a down-to-Earth, relatable man. A challenge, yes -- but when you get it right, online dating can be a great tool to compliment meeting women in real life. And never overlook the value of a Facebook or MySpace page -- keep your profile there short and make sure you have lots of pictures of you doing fun things with lots of people (guys and cute girls). 8. Grocery Stores If you only use grocery stores for buying food and toiletries, you've been missing out on a whole nother function they are prime to serve: that of meat market -- and not just for slabs of raw beef at bottom-barrel prices. Every girl in your town goes to the store to by groceries. She may be a homebody who never goes to bars, clubs, social events, or classes, but she has to eat sometime. And this is where she comes to do her shopping. Conversation can be easy to start in grocery stores. You can engage her with genuine interest -- start by complimenting her sincerely on something you genuinely like about her, and follow up immediately by introducing yourself. Or, you can comment on something in her cart (like how unhealthy her cart looks, and it's a good thing she threw that cabbage in there to balance it all out!). Shop at grocery stores where cute girls shop. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods consistently have a lot of pretty girls. And if you're into women of a different background, check out ethnic grocery stories -- Latin, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Korean grocery stores are common in a lot of coastal towns, and quite often have girls from those cultures roaming the aisles. 7. Coffee Shops Coffee shops are fun in that you'll find a lot of cute girls here alone, reading or doing homework. Look for the trendy places in your town -- Panera or Cosi are big ones. Starbucks still gets the job done from time to time, though its "cool factor" has gone down as its become so mainstream. Check out different coffee shops in your area and find the ones where women gravitate. Meet girls in line, or set up shop at a table next to the one a cutie is using. Or, if you're really bold, ask her if that seat is taken -- and tell her you hate to drink alone. 6. Social Events Whether it's your alma mater's alumni gatherings, or a Meetup.com group, or a young professionals organization, or a political get-together, or a charity event, or anything, many social events attract young, attractive women, and provide an instant social context about which to start a conversation and talk for a little while. Women often go to social events looking to make new friends -- or meet new guys. Be sociable, meet lots of people at the event, make yourself seen and heard, and you'll often even find women gravitating toward you as the event rolls on. 5. Bookstores Tired of party girls? Bookstores are a great place to meet intelligent, educated women. The big ones -- the Barnes & Nobles and Borders of the world -- often have multiple levels and offer a small coffee shop / eatery on the second or third level. Meet a girl near the racks, and take her upstairs to grab a cup of Joe or a milkshake and grab a seat and chat. Just don't ask her if she's read any good books lately! The best thing about bookstores is that the women here are quite often by themselves, and they're in a good position to have a more intelligent conversation, if that's your thing. So if you prefer conversation to partying, bookstores are always a solid choice. 4. Nightspots The thing that makes meeting women at nightspots easier for a lot of people is that women go out EXPECTING to meet new people, and new men. Some of them go out with the expectation they'll hook up that night. Others go out just wanting to party and have fun. Still others are dragged out by their friends and would rather be at home watching a movie. Still, regardless of the reason they're there, they know they're going to be running into people looking to meet new people. The thing that makes meeting women at nightspots harder is that because women expect to meet new people, their guard is up. They know most of the guys they're meeting really could care less about them as people, so they tend to be reserved. It's your job as a man interested in her to get past that reserve and get her comfortable with and interested in you. Note: it's rather unlikely you'll find a woman of the kind of quality you want to date at a nightspot. Most relationship-quality women don't visit these places a whole lot, or at all. It's still possible you'll meet one here or there, just very uncommon. There are differences between different kinds of venues. Here are a few: Bars often cater to groups of friends looking to put back a few pints and talk and relax. The key to doing well in bars is to roll with a group of fun, outgoing, preferably LOUD people, and add people and girls to your conversations (and group) as you move along. Lounges are low-key, more conversation-focused, and often darker. They have a more sexual, seductive quality. There's usually more dancing at a lounge than there is at a bar, but less so than a nightclub. Go to a lounge on a night where your energy is not quite up to the level of a bar or a nightclub. Nightclubs are loud, dark, intense places where people are most focused on dancing and being in the moment. It's important that you're very decisive and confident in nightclubs. Being social helps too -- women in nightclubs are very attuned to the people around them, as well as the perceived status of those people, and if you're meeting a lot of people and having conversations and flirting with girls, they pick up on it and want to meet you. When you go in to say hello, they receive you more warmly if they've seen you working the club than had they not. This is true of bars and lounges too, but it's most true of nightclubs, where everything is exaggerated and perception is at least a little distorted. 3. Parties Parties combine the fun and meet-new-people atmosphere of a bar or a nightclub with the comfort of meeting friends and friends of friends instead of strangers. Girls here are open to meeting new people, and their guards are lowered as people at a party tend to be considered more likely to be normal and trustworthy. If your desire is to escalate fast with the girls you're meeting, parties are a well-suited to your goals. Meet them, talk a little, dance a little, and then grab a phone number -- or take them by the hand and lead them to the back room. 2. Vacation Complete lack of social accountability. In other words, vacation offers a woman the chance to let off steam, let her hair down, and do things she'd never do back home for fear of it getting back to her friends and hurting her reputation. So you can find women who might otherwise be professional and conservative doing some pretty crazy things when they're off somewhere far away. The best places to meet girls on vacation are the ones where young people are gathering to get wild. Cancun for Spring Break, Rio de Janeiro for Carnival, Koh Phangon for the Full Moon Party, Munich for Oktoberfest -- all great places and events to meet a lot of girls who just want to have fun. 1. The Street and Public Transportation Sometimes one of the toughest places to meet women, but also one of the most rewarding. Meeting women on the street can be hard, especially for beginners -- there's a lot that can go wrong in the beginning, and small margin for error. However, you'll frequently find the most beautiful women completely alone -- women whom if you saw them at a nightclub at all would probably be surrounded by a cadre of friends and followers (and who might very well not even go to nightclubs). And meeting women in public transportation -- on the train or the plane, for instance -- is often easy (they're frequently alone, and are happy to have someone likeable to talk with) and convenient, especially if you travel by mass transit a lot. If you're looking for a new girlfriend, the street during the day may very well be your best bet. You're most likely to stumble upon quality women out and about completing their daily errands, and a phone number from a solid daytime interaction is likely to be more reliable than a phone number from a well-run nightspot conversation. Final note on meeting women during the daytime: genuine interest tends to work best here. No sense dancing around why you're there to talk to her, or trying to act disinterested. You've walked up to her in the daytime because you think she looks good and you want to find out more about her -- that takes cajones that most men don't have, and women respect you for that. Runner Up: Salsa Had to throw in here. Salsa lessons and salsa dancing sessions tend to attract a lot of very cute girls in most major cities, and a sizeable chunk of the women who go are there looking to meet guys. You don't even have to dance if you don't want to -- a lot of the success stories I know of men meeting women at salsa bars come from men who were just relaxing at the bar and met the women between (or after) lessons. And that wraps up the list. I hope you've found it useful, and learned a thing or two -- maybe even discovered a place to meet girls you hadn't thought of or visited before. Until next time -- game on.

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##Treading Water and Honest Ignorance I've just begun some very preliminary outlining for what I intend to be an audio CD product I'll be releasing hopefully early 2011, to follow on the heels of How to Make Girls Chase, which ought to be coming out sometime in December if everything continues according to plan. The audio project is tentatively titled "Spellbinding", and it'll focus on how to connect rapidly with women and get out of something I call treading water - getting stuck in that maddening no-man's land where you just can't find anything interesting that you have in common with a girl to talk about, and you can feel her slipping away by the minute. If there's one thing that drove me crazy for years, it was probably that. Spellbinding was originally set to be my second audio product; I was going to focus first on one on targeting and figuring out which girls are likely to be most receptive to you. But after talking working with the topic of connecting and getting out of "treading water" with a good guy recently, I started feeling like this is probably an area that a lot of guys could benefit from some help on, so I'm pushing the schedule on Spellbinding up. The same cool cat I spoke with about this topic sent me a follow up email with the following question: "Do you have any suggestions for me if I want to become better at associating to stuff girls say - Do you know of any books / techniques or specific training that can help improve my skills of association (and hence my small-talking skills) apart from just looking up a word in a book and talking about it for five minutes to myself?" Honestly, I realized I don't know of any products or training offhand that I'd be comfortable endorsing as being solid, well-thought out, well-defined approaches to mastering the art of building connections and commonalities and getting better at relating to women. Maybe I'm just not familiar with what's out there, but as far as I can tell it's a very hazy, poorly defined area in the world of date coaching. Which is kind of funny, because building a connection is really the backbone of a solid interaction - fail to connect with a woman, and you fail to get that woman, the vast majority of the time. And she's certainly not going to chase a man she lacks a feeling of connection to. Maybe there just aren't really any guys out there who understand it enough to be able to explain it to others. Well, that thought makes me excited - I feel like I'm collecting some pretty cutting edge stuff here; it'll be a fun product to put together. But anyway, this article is starting to sound like a sales pitch - let's get onto something interesting. HOW TO GET OUT OF TREADING WATER First, take a breather. A lot of men realize they're treading water and start panicking and trying to do something crazy to fix the situation. Treading water in conversation is a lot like treading water in the ocean - panicking is the worst thing you can do. Panicking is how you drown. I can attest to having made some really knuckleheaded moves in the past when I caught myself treading water and panicked. I've done stuff like suddenly ask a girl for a stupidly high amount of compliance that didn't feel natural or fit with the situation - kind of a Hail Mary pass to try and correct things. If she complies (rare at the point I'd try that at), she's a little bit warmer to you and at least you're moving in the right direction; if she doesn't comply (the usual, by the time you've reached the point you feel you need to rely on a Hail Mary pass), the interaction's probably over and you've lost the girl. Nothing like taking a gamble with a high risk and a low payout. Needless to say, this isn't the kind of thing you want to do. So, yeah - don't panic. You only end up shooting yourself in the foot. That's step number one. Step number two is to focus on what she's saying. You might be surprised how many women men lose simply by getting caught up in their own heads, trying to figure out what to say next, instead of simply listening to what the women they're speaking with are saying and just riffing off of that. A great habit to get into any time you start feeling stumped on what to say next is to simply listen to what a girl is talking about, and ask her to tell you more. Using that technique, you can keep conversations going for a long time. Simple enough, no? Listen to what she's saying, ask her to say more. Some examples: Girl: I just bought a new car two weeks ago. I love driving around in it. Guy: No way. What made you buy a new car - old one give out, or what? Girl: My pet turtle Scales passed yesterday. I'm still distraught. Guy: That's awful. How long had you had him? Girl: Three years. Guy: Short life for a turtle. He was only a teenager or so. Have you always had pets? Basic stuff like that. You don't have to do anything too tricky or complicated - get her talking, primarily. Step number three to get out of treading water is to start relating to her. Seek to tie your own experiences to hers. This is the part that a lot of guys trip on - this is one of those things there aren't a whole lot of shortcuts to. Best way to get good at relating to women? Meet lots of girls and practice trying to relate to them. At first, you do terribly, and your efforts to relate to what she says sound stilted and tryhard. Then, you get some procedures down, and you get down your various responses to all the different things women will say to you, and you worry less about those lower level concerns and can focus on higher level "steering the conversation" style. I'll give you a little trick to help you relate better, faster, and more consistently right now, though. Still not a substitute for just plain old getting exposure and experience and battle testing and putting in the work and making progress, but this'll help. The trick? Honest ignorance. HONEST IGNORANCE This isn't a complete walk-on-water, save-the-day tactic - if you've already lost a girl, this won't get her back. But if the interaction's still fresh and she's still warm toward you, this can keep things moving in the right direction even when you normally don't feel able to relate to what she's saying. Honest ignorance is, plainly and simply, admitting to a girl that you don't really know anything about whatever she's talking about - and then asking her to tell you more. Like so: Girl: "Once I graduated, I became a food scientist." Guy: "A food scientist? Hmm… I really don't know anything about food science! What exactly does a food scientist do? Something related to food, I'd assume, right?" Girl: "Haha, of course. A food scientist studies what food is made up of, and comes up with new formulas and new flavors and new foods." Guy: "Ah, got it. So if I decided I wasn't happy with the chipotle sauce currently on the market, a food scientist would be the one I'd turn to to fix that situation." Girl: "Right." Guy: "And why did you become a food scientist? Why not a veterinarian?" So, right there, we took an obscure topic that the guy knew nothing about, and used his honest ignorance to get us into the beginnings of connecting. Now she's going to tell him about why she chose the career path she did, and from there it's easy to jump into life goals and dreams and interesting stuff like that. He's not necessarily out of the woods yet, but he's got a little breathing room if he was feeling boxed in with nothing to talk about. There's nothing wrong with admitting you don't know anything about something, in a tactful way, and you'll find that the strongest people out there are also the ones who will most readily admit when they're ignorant about something (and will often say they're ignorant even when they know a fair amount, too). Women don't resent ignorance. They resent cocky guys who pretend to know stuff they don't (because those guys are trying to impress); the resent guys who don't know but also don't want to know. But women love men who don't know, and are curious. Curiosity is a trait that says all kinds of good things about a man - really, you should be excited about any chance you get to demonstrate to a woman that you have curiosity. The most curious men tend also to be the most intelligent, and intelligence (as shown through curiosity, humor, rapidity and depth of learning comprehension and retention, depth of knowledge, strength of memory, and other things of that nature) is a trait that, believe it or not, women are strongly attracted to and select for. So don't freak out the next time you find yourself treading water. Stay calm; focus on what she's saying; and express a little honest ignorance if you're at all confused, and use that to catapult yourself into a far more engaging - and rewarding - conversation.

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##Unmasking the Secrets of Beach Pickup: Why It's EASY What's better than spending a day at the beach? That's right… spending a day at the beach while picking up hot girls… and then taking them straight back to your place to sleep with them. When I started putting together the pieces of a perfect beach pickup, pulling girls from the beach back to my room for the sake of immediate hedonistic escapades, even some of the more experienced seducers among my friends said they were impressed… … but for the sake of full transparency, I'll have to admit that it's really not as hard as it sounds. Sure, you need to have the process of a proper pickup down, no doubt about it. But there are a couple of factors that make seducing women at the beach a lot easier than elsewhere. In fact, it can be one of the EASIEST types of pickup you'll ever do… if you know how. And today I'll teach you that "how" with another case study: beach-to-bed in 2-3 hours or less… step by step. WHY BEACH PICKUP IS EASY The first thing to realize is this: It is easier to sleep with a girl the day or night you meet her than it is to sleep with her on the second or third date! This is why we constantly harp here on getting guys to move faster. Moving slow not only makes the whole thing take longer… it actually reduces your odds of getting a girl. It's just another one of those counter-intuitive things that don't even seem to make sense at first. But you see, here's the thing: when you first meet a girl, you can start slow… and then gradually pick up momentum. You can stair-step the interaction towards the bedroom, little by little… And you can take her on an emotional journey. You can slowly but surely go from strangers… to acquaintances… to building chemistry… to getting more and more intimate. You can systematically take her from one emotional state to the next… creating the kind of experience for her that women read about in romance novels, and that they hope to experience at least once in their lives. If you just take her number, on the other hand, and then try to meet her again some other day, this is more difficult. Between the time that you exchange digits and the time you are supposed to meet again, life can throw all kinds of monkey wrenches in your plans: She is going to drop out of that "state journey" you take her on. In fact, her life will take her on a completely unrelated state journey… and the next time you get in touch with her, she is likely as far from the state you want her to be in as she could possibly be. She is going to get busy… life happens. We all have a lot going on this day and age… hey, it's the 21st century. Hot girls are no exception. If anything, they're usually MORE in demand than other people. Beach pickup is easy because it is focused on now… not later. BERMUDA, BAHAMAS… …come on pretty mama - getting swept off her feet by a handsome stranger at the beach is really one of THE most exciting female fantasies. The setting is perfect… what place could be more beautiful, more romantic, more sensual? And the mood is just right… especially if you meet girls in the late afternoon as the sky starts to turn from blue to golden to purple and finally to red… all before night falls so you can get intimate with one another under a perfect star sky. It doesn't really get much better than that! But let me give you a real world example of one of the girls I picked up as she was sunbathing a couple of feet from the ocean… that's going to give you a better idea about how to take advantage of this perfect setting. AN ANGEL, A DEVIL AND A VIXEN… If you've read any of my articles, then you know I'm not a huge fan of gimmicks. I don't think you should do anything goofy at all… James Bond is not a goof - he's suave and sexy. One of the best ways to approach a girl at the beach is to simply go in with an indirect opener and then transition into a normal conversation before framing the interaction sexually. We usually advocate direct openers during the day, but the main reason is that most women are busy when you run into them at the mall or at a train station. This is usually not the case at the beach… and you can take your time to build some chemistry before forcing her to make a decision about you. And that's how I went about it in today's beach pickup case study as well… I actually had every intention of getting some work done, I had brought my laptop to the beach with me and I was sitting in front of my bungalow having breakfast and answering some business emails, when I saw a beautiful Asian girl with jet black hair and the perfect slim figure sunbathing in her bikini… RIGHT in front of me. beach pick up So much for my productivity. Do you ever get those two little fellas sitting on your shoulders, the angel and the devil, whispering in your ear? The funny thing is, when you first start learning seduction, the devil's busy telling you to just give up and go home. But once you know that you have a very good shot at actually making something happen, it's the angel who reminds you that hey… you're here to get some work done, not for play time with sexy seashore vixens! But we've also discussed in previous articles that our limbic brain usually overpowers our cerebral cortex (or at least, that's my excuse!), and I simply couldn't resist her figure! As it turned out later, she was a professional dancer in a trendy club, and does ballet in her spare time… so you can't really blame me now can you? Business emails… less interesting… Half-naked Asian dancer… more interesting… THE APPROACH I thought of an excuse to chat her up - I just walked over to her and asked for some information. Again… you don't need any magic bullets here. Normal is good. Most guys don't have the confidence to be "normal" around hot girls, so that works just fine and is already enough to set you apart. From there, it's merely a matter of keeping the ball rolling… whatever answers she gives you are more ammunition for you to spin further conversation threads from, and if she's not totally disinterested, you should be able to get good rapport within 2-3 minutes tops. At that point, you start steering the interaction in the directions you want it to go… She's not the jealous type now, is she? Oh, that's good. I don't like jealous people… in fact, I quite like being single and I think variety is what makes life interesting… …and we're off to the races. (For more details on what to do after you approach a girl, check out our flagship eBook, How to Make Girls Chase). After about 20 minutes, I bounced her back to my room with some lame excuse… maybe some pictures I wanted to show her, or I may have told her that I need to pick up my sun screen. TO RAVISH OR NOT TO RAVISH… THAT IS THE QUESTION beach pickupIf you've read my articles about the California Pimp, you know that it is perfectly possible to have sex with a girl 20 minutes after first meeting her. Now, that doesn't work every time… but if you get the right vibe with a girl, you would be surprised how wild some of them can be, and how fast! In fact, a spontaneous sexual adventure with a stranger is many a woman's fantasy… so long as she feels safe and there are no consequences, most women are completely open to the idea. I'll say that again - there are two obstacles to "instant seductions:" safety, and the consequences she may fear. Safety: Maybe you've read about the study that identified the best sales people - the best closers are those who qualify the buyer better and build trust faster. That translates to seduction as follows: you need to only talk to girls who are actually interested in you, and you need to make them feel completely comfortable around you very quickly. If you can do that, the safety concern is gone. Consequences: Surprisingly, this doesn't usually refer to pregnancy or STDs. Most women are much more worried about the social consequences of hooking up with a stranger… meaning, their reputation. They don't want to be judged, neither by him, nor by their peers. But if you communicate to her that you're open-minded and non-judgmental, and that this adventure is going to be your little secret, you can put her mind at ease about the consequences as well. That said, escalating on a girl you've met a mere 20 minutes ago works only about two out of three times, in my experience… and that's if she's attracted and you do have the right vibe. One out of three will not engage and probably shut down… and then leave, never to be seen again. It's something everyone should try a couple of times, just to get a feel for how fast you can really escalate and how sexual women really are… but if you want to have a 95% chance of sleeping with a girl, spend 3 hours with her before you start making any moves. And that's what I opted for in this beach pickup as well… mostly because I could read her body language and it was obvious that she wasn't 100% comfortable with being in my room just yet. And so I took her back outside for a drink at the beach and then a swim before I was ready to try again. IT'S NOT SLUTTY IF IT'S DIFFERENT AREA CODES… Here's another reason why it's often a LOT easier to pick up women at the beach than elsewhere: most of them are on vacation! And on vacation, many of the usual rules go RIGHT out the window for most women. The same girl that will give you a kiss on the cheek goodnight and not go home with you because she wants you to think that "she's decent" may spend the next vacation on some island in Greece having a threesome with her surf instructor and his tall, dark and handsome friend, the hotel animator. Why? No social consequences! As we discussed above, often the ONLY thing that keeps women from being as wild as - AND WILDER THAN - men is their fear of being seen as an "easy slut"… they fear gossip and the judgmental eyes of their peers. But when they are thousands of kilometers from home, the rules change COMPLETELY. If you ask any Italian: who are the most difficult women in the world to pick up, he will undoubtedly tell you that it's the Italians. Whereas all the American tourists that come to Rome every year spread their legs at a moment's notice… On the other hand, any seducer in California will probably tell you that he has a much easier time picking up Italian tourists than he does his fellow American locals! Sure, a part of that is the "novelty factor" - women often go for foreign men because of the mystique of the exotic, because of the sexy accent and simply because it's something different that she hasn't tried before. But an even larger factor is simply this: she need not worry about society's rules and regulations when she steps out of her society for a week or two. And this is where YOU come in. B-) SEXY, SALTY, SENSUAL… As I mentioned, I took this girl for a swim, and that's really the best way to close the deal when you're picking up a girl at the beach. You can pick her up in the shallow water and dunk her under… … I'm sure you've heard that women find men who treat them like their bratty little sister insanely attractive? Or you can swim out with her to where no one can see you, and make out like teenagers and feel each other up… … except you're both wearing next to nothing, and the waves will press your bodies against each other. And once you're at that point, it's merely a matter of taking her back to your room for a shower. Just to get rid of the salt, of course. Not to do anything naughty at all. Never. A good friend of mine, a fellow dating coach from Hawaii, actually skips that step in his beach pickups altogether… he'll chat girls up at the beach, carry them piggy-back into the ocean and then has sex with them right there and then. (And you thought 20 minutes was too fast!) That's not my preference, because I find it a bit uncomfortable and I also like to always be safe… but, it certainly goes to show what's possible. beach pick up BEACH PICKUP: EASY AS PIE… Maybe you're starting to see how smooth and easy it all can go down when you spot a beautiful girl at the beach. The thing is - every time you approach a girl and she fully engages (what some people call the "hook point"), you SHOULD be able to sleep with her the same day, and in no more than three hours. The only reason why that would not happen is usually logistics - if you meet her in a big city, she's busy and you only have three minutes together. Then by the time you (try to) meet her again a few days later, all the emotional momentum from the initial encounter has been lost. If she comes out again, it will often be a rational choice at that point… she's no longer swept up in the moment. But at the beach, in a well-run beach pickup, you have her right there in front of you, in the perfect setting… with PERFECT logistics of (usually, if you're on vacation too) having your private room right there near the ocean. It's up to you to make HER sexual fantasy come true… …that's your duty and obligation as a seducer. It's a tough job, I know, but someone's got to do it…

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##Using Day Game to Get Girls: 14 Myths Debunked Let me tell you something that might shock you… Going to bars and clubs can actually PREVENT you from getting the girls you want! When I first started approaching women almost a decade ago now, I always went straight to the bars and clubs... and I always went with one or more friends. It seems to make sense, right? Lots of single women make themselves look pretty and go there to flirt... people have free time, alcohol serves as a social lubricant and everybody is having fun, listening to music and being social. Well... all that is true, and so for most men who want to meet a girl, bars and clubs are the INTUITIVE choice. But, as we know, most things in dating science are COUNTERINTUITIVE. And while I do still go to clubs and bars with friends sometimes to have a good time and maybe a flirt, I prefer to meet women during the day now, and when I'm alone. This article is about day game - about approaching women during the day - and the advantages that has over "night game". That doesn't mean that any of what you are about to read in this article is the gospel. The night definitely has its perks as well - but let me play devil's advocate here and lay out a bit of a different perspective for you. I deliberately wrote this in a controversial way to think outside the box a bit, and while some of the following "myths" are actually valid some of the time, one thing is always true: The more we question things we've believed for a long time... the more we realize that the opposite of a profound truth is often also a profound truth. DAY GAME MYTH #1: "IF YOU'RE SINGLE AND LOOKING, HIT THE NIGHTLIFE" The first question you need to ask yourself before you even leave the house is: What is your outcome? What kind of girl(s) do you want? Are you in this game for the rush of meeting the truly exceptional women who have enough going for themselves to keep you interested for MORE than just a few hours? The ones that are beautiful enough to stop traffic, but ALSO smart, sweet and interesting to talk to? Now, where would you find a girl who's not only stunning, but also really has her act together? Hint: that kind of girl doesn't get blind drunk 4 nights a week, shaking her ass in a club for validation from random dudes. It is common wisdom among seducers the world over that many of the girls you're going to meet at night are not necessarily the most psychologically healthy, nor the most emotionally stable. We teach approaching women in clubs because they are good places to practice your social skills - not necessarily to find your perfect girl. In fact, at one point I made a list of all my ex-girlfriends - where I had met them and how the relationships went. That was one huge farkin eye opener and really got me to focus on meeting women during the day - almost all relationships with girls I had met in nightlife went rather chaotic, to say the least - whereas some of the best relationships I've had were with girls I had met during the daytime. Some other great Casanovas I've talked to even told me that every girl they've dated for more than 2 weeks they met outside the club... and even studies have shown that bars and clubs are among the most unlikely places for a flirt to lead to a great relationship. It's simple, really. Meet crazy girls in crazy places... meet normal girls in normal places. You can meet a fit, mentally healthy girl in a yoga class, or a smart girl in a book store. What kind of women do YOU want in your life? day game DAY GAME MYTH #2: "I GO TO CLUBS JUST TO HOOK UP" Some guys will even agree with all of the above and say... "yes, but I don't go to bars and clubs to find a girlfriend. I go there to have fun." The thing is, once you get good at this game, your standards will rise (well, hopefully), and you will start going after the girls who are MOST your type. And that's playing with fire… because with these girls, you DO run the risk of falling in love - no matter whether that was your intention or not. Fact: We have NO control over who we fall in love with. It usually happens when we least expect it - the "when" and "why" has nothing to do with logic... whatsoever. And don't get me wrong, this can be totally awesome. I really think there is no experience as intense in this life as falling in love with a girl and making her fall in love with you… It is the greatest rush this side of Eden and to me, one of the things that make life worthwhile! Even sex with ten other hot girls you don't really care about will seem like masturbating to the picture of a pumpkin in comparison. But I highly recommended not to fall in love with a CLUB girl... if you do, prepare for a lot of drama. You have been warned. DAY GAME MYTH #3: "THERE ARE MORE WOMEN IN CLUBS" I don't know who came up with this rule, but it must have been somebody who either failed math, or doesn't live in a big city. How many girls are there in a club, on average? A few dozen? Maybe even one hundred? Two hundred? In any major metropolis, you just need to go to a central area and you will literally see tens of thousands of girls as they are going about their daily life. Just go to a central subway station, to the biggest mall, a central square or any other place where the masses congregate and you will see more women than you could possibly talk to, even if you did nothing but approach girls all day, every day, for the rest of your life. DAY GAME MYTH #4: "WOMEN IN CLUBS ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL" They actually only SEEM to be more pretty because you're drunk when you're there ;-p I once asked a friend of mine "Is your new girlfriend pretty?" and he replied: "Well… it's dark at night". Well, it's dark in clubs too. And what little mood lighting there is usually makes people look better than they really do in the daytime. In addition to this, women are wearing all their make up... and all that glitters is not gold in a club. Have you ever made out with a stunning girl and when you met her again in broad daylight you found she wasn't quite as close to your ideal type as you thought she was? Day game has the WYSIWYG guarantee: "what you see is what you get". If you want to date a model, the club really isn't the best place to do it. And most real models don't get drunk in clubs anyway... They're live healthy lives, wake up early, work out and prepare for their next photo shoot! DAY GAME MYTH #5: "WOMEN GO TO CLUBS TO LOOK FOR A LOVER OR BOYFRIEND" Many of my girlfriends and other female friends know or knew that I'm a dating coach, and so I've often had very candid conversations with them about the dating scene... and I've had a lot of them tell me that they and their girlfriends don't go to clubs to meet somebody. No, really! Many just want to meet their friends, and maybe show themselves off and enjoy the attention they get. Even the ones who do want to hook up with somebody at a club will often feel wary about getting into a relationship with a "club guy" - there is a saying in South America that goes "what starts in the night, ends in the night". And there is some truth to that - any girl would much rather introduce you to her friends as the guy she got into a conversation with because he asked her to change some money for the bus, than the guy who picked her up when she was dancing on a podium wasted. (Statistics show that most married couples actually met at work, by the way.) DAY GAME MYTH #6: "PICKING UP GIRLS IN CLUBS PROVES CONFIDENCE" If you're not accustomed to the club environment, it can be intimidating at first, that much is true. But I can tell you right now that a lot of guys only go to bars and clubs to meet women because they don't have the GUTS to approach a woman in broad daylight (I know I used to). In a club, it's socially expected to talk to people, so that helps with approach anxiety... and whatever fear you have left, you can get over with a little bit of liquid confidence. But in the daytime, most people are stuck in their internal dialogue and not in an extroverted state (that is true for both her and you, by the way)… So for most people, the fear of the approach is worse during the daytime, and that can work in your advantage for two reasons. For one, women often admire the balls it takes to do it, and second, there is simply nobody else doing it - zero competition! If you don't have to rely on social situations and alcohol as a crutch for pickup, a whole new world of dating opportunities will open up to you. DAY GAME MYTH #7: "THE OTHER GUYS IN CLUBS ARE NO REAL COMPETITION" "That's because we are master pickup artists! We have the super secret tricks and lines from the Internet and now nobody has a chance with women anymore except for us!" Well, think again. There are not only chumps and internet-pickupers out there. There are also a lot of guys who are able to very naturally be charismatic, or are very buff or good looking. Pssst... yes, women like handsome guys too. It's a secret… don't tell anybody who wants to believe otherwise! The truth is, a club is the place where you will have more competition than anywhere else. And even the guys who suck with women get drunk enough to dare approach them, so you're probably one in ten guys to talk to her that night. Yes, there are ways to deal with these problems, but why stack the cards against yourself from the get go? Approaching women in the daytime, I've had it happen that I was the first guy who EVER approached them in that setting in their LIVES… How is THAT for a chance to sweep her off her feet? day game DAY GAME MYTH #8: "THE DYNAMICS IN CLUBS ARE GOOD FOR FLIRTING" If you know NLP, you will realize that every time a girl goes to a club and a good dozen guys hit on her, she gets literally conditioned to feel like "the prize" in this kind of environment. Over the years this becomes a very powerful anchor, and I had an experience once that truly made me realize just how much this can influence a girl's behavior. I had just met a girl in the streets, and she was totally into me - she was laughing at all my jokes and hanging on my arm. I had to take her to a club a bit later because I had to meet somebody (and I don't recommend you do this unless you really HAVE to), and in the one minute it took us to walk into the club, a switch flipped inside her head and she went from chasing me to screening me. She went from putty in my hands to throwing me curve balls and playing hard to get. That's the effect a club environment has on a girl's mind... even a girl that's already into you. Some food for thought! DAY GAME MYTH #9: "THE MUSIC IN CLUBS MAKES PEOPLE MORE SOCIAL" I love music. I love loud music too. But in many countries, the volume in clubs is so high these days that it is literally impossible to talk to anybody without leaning in and screaming into their ears - not exactly my idea of having a good time. One night I went to the clubs with a close friend that I hadn't seen in a year, and of course we had a LOT to talk about. But even though our conversation was really stimulating, once we were inside the venue, we stopped talking to each other - simply because the music was way too loud for that! If a place is so noisy that you don't even want to continue an interesting conversation with a close friend - how much more difficult are you making it for yourself to start a new conversation with a stranger by putting yourself in that environment? Especially if you're like me and rely more on your golden tongue than on your looks to win a girl's heart, day game gives you the ultimate advantage over the hunks. DAY GAME MYTH #10: "WORK ALL WEEK, PARTY ALL WEEKEND" Another thing I really like about day game is that I can do it any time I want. It is not restricted to the weekend or to the late hours… I can do it while running errands, while going to the beach or on my way to work. I also don't have to put up with cigarette smoke in my eyes, in my clothes and in my hair (and, god forbid, in her kiss!). I don't have to compete with the ADD environment of lasers and steam and foam and whatnot in a club. I don't have to pay high cover charges, expensive drinks and the taxi fare to her place or my place later. And if you have a day job, you don't have to mess up your biorhythm by staying up all night on the weekend, and then painfully reset it back to 7am on Monday morning with the shrilling sound of your alarm clock… Day game fits into any life style you want to design for yourself. day game DAY GAME MYTH #11: "WOMEN OF EXCEPTIONAL BEAUTY ARE RARELY FOUND ALONE" This is one of the most famous rules of Seduction Version 2004, but guess what... it was written for clubs. During the daytime, this rule does not apply at all. Even drop dead beautiful women go to work alone, and do their shopping alone. They might go on their lunch break alone, or take a break in a coffee shop alone. They also walk the street alone, or ride the train and the bus alone. This is, of course, a double edged sword: On the one hand, you can't use her peer group to build social proof and to ignore her a little bit. But on the other hand, you don't need to handle "obstacles" and "interrupts" - it's just you and her. DAY GAME MYTH #12: "YOU CAN'T USE SOCIAL PROOF IN DAY GAME" Admittedly, it is a lot easier to build social proof in night game - and that really is the most powerful tool in your bag of tricks for building attraction. I've had nights where I didn't need to do anything to meet the hottest girls on the dance floor - I had a few pretty girls around me already, and the social proof alone was enough to just wave new hotties over… and they'd start gaming ME. That will be hard to pull of in day game, unless you specifically go out with a "wing girl" (that's a hint!). But there are several other ways of building social proof in day game. You can always talk to somebody near the girl you want to meet first, and then draw her into the conversation, for example… or you can tell her stories that show you are socially proofed. Social proof is also communicated through your nonverbal communication - if you have very confident and smooth behaviorisms (a learnable skill), this implies that you must be a very social guy. DAY GAME MYTH #13: "YOU SHOULD GO OUT WITH A WING MAN" I realized a few years ago that many of the best seducers out there were often going out alone without a "wing", and so I started trying it as well. And while going out with a friend can be very helpful to get some feedback on your "game" and to discover your blind spots, I now actually prefer to go out alone - especially in day game. Think about it - you will ultimately want to be alone with a woman you meet anyway. So especially in the daytime, when most women are by themselves, it really makes more sense to just go out alone in the first place. I've seen so many guys fall into this trap lately... they go out with a friend, boldly approaching girl after girl to prove their manliness to each other, and then EJECT out of the groups because they somehow feel like they have to get back to the friend they came with. This can also be a form of creative avoidance - but if you're going out alone, you will actually feel MORE comfortable staying with the group than leaving them, so the situation is set up to push you FORWARD rather than backwards. You're also much more flexible when you're out alone - and even if the girl is with her friends, you don't really need your wing: just befriend her peer group, and they won't "cockblock" - they will literally push her onto you. DAY GAME MYTH #14: "BARS AND CLUBS ARE BETTER FOR SNLS" The final myth is that nightlife is the place to go if you're looking for fast hookups - but the only reason why that would be true is the fact that alcohol is involved. And even then, it's just another limiting belief to weed out of the garden of your mind… I've several times gone home with girls I met in the daytime a few minutes after approaching them. That's right... No number close, no instant date, no time bridge, nothing - on several occasions, girls went STRAIGHT from the first meet back to my place with me, sober, in the daytime. Anything is possible - if you believe it is, and make it happen. The trick is to go out just after dark, even in day game - because then people tend to have more free time to spend with you, and the mood at twilight is simply better for escalating. SO DAY GAME IS THE ONE AND ONLY GAME, RICARDUS? day gameNo, of course not. As I said, there are advantages to club game as well, and it can be a TON of fun. Just like with direct game vs. indirect game, or with canned game vs. natural game, it's not a dogmatic "either-or" question, and you should at least try both extensively. In fact, I used to work in clubs several times in my life, as barkeeper, as promoter, as bar manager… and I have some great stories from those days. But maybe this article inspires you to think of your options in a different way, and to try something completely new. Maybe it helps you to see daytime approaches for the gold mine they really are... a gold mine that is now open to you. Day game isn't some strange, otherworldly thing that only the guys who can't master club game resort to - it's an entirely different avenue for meeting women, one you take a different approach to, and one you get different outcomes with - and different kinds of women from. And when all else is said and done, you might just find that it's the one you end up gladdest you started doing.

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##Using Intrigue to Get Girls Chasing You One big mistake I see a lot of men make when meeting new women is forgetting to allow for some mystery… a little intrigue. And a little bit goes a long way - it fascinates women, gets them thinking about you when you're not there, gets them frustrated - in a good way! - trying to figure you out. And as they try to figure you out, they're all the while investing more and more time thinking about you. And as we all know, the more invested in you a woman is, the more she'll LIKE you and the more she'll stick by you and the more she'll follow your lead. Intrigue is an awesome, AWESOME way to get girls chasing you! But hey, what do I mean, allow for some intrigue? Well, to put it in perspective, imagine this: You meet a beautiful girl at your favorite coffees shop or bar. You end up in a conversation with her. You ask her how old she is; she says, "Old enough; how old are you?" then no matter how much you ask, she refuses to tell you. Then you ask her where she's from, and she tells you, "A little town far away, but I'm here now, and I love it." Again, when you press for details, she won't give you a clear answer. She intrigues you. She ropes you into this exciting frustration of wanting to know yet having absolutely no idea how to get the answer. And not only do you not know the answer to her question, but you also don't know WHY she won't tell you, and that's the real fun in intrigue. Is she hiding something? Scared to talk about her past? What could her reasoning be??? A girl has NO IDEA what your reason is for deferring to answer. She becomes more and more intrigued, feeling more and more like you are this riddle, this puzzle she HAS to solve. All human beings love mystery. It's why there are so many movies about outer space - ANYTHING could be out there, we reason. It's why the men in women's romance novels are often mysterious, with foggy back stories and unknown origins - they could come from ANYWHERE, and thus have the ability to be ANYTHING that the woman desires. You can become such a man - a man of mystery, of unknown intentions and unknown origins. And it's relatively easy to do… get her interested enough to ask you questions, then dodge them with a non-answer that deflects the question by asking her something about herself or changing the topic entirely. Remember, the steps are: Non-answer Deflection A few examples: Girl: Why do you XYZ? You: Does it matter? (non-answer) Let's just enjoy ourselves right now, in this moment. (deflection) Girl: Are you ABC? You: I'm really not the kind of guy you can categorize as one thing or another. (non-answer) How about you? (deflection) Once you have intrigue generated, you must maintain it, at least for a while. She'll start pressing harder and harder for an answer - stay strong and stay mysterious. Once a man lets the intrigue slip - by giving her too many concrete answers - he's given up some of his power, the power of his own mystery, and made himself less interesting and mysterious. Avoid that pitfall and keep yourself shrouded in unanswered questions. You want to MAINTAIN your power, by maintaining your mystery. Another way you can create intrigue is by doing one thing and saying another. This is fun! For instance, tell a girl you're talking to that you're really shy with women, as you sit next to her, chatting her up confidently with your arm around her. Or tell her you don't believe in alcohol, then order a drink at the bar right in front of her. Or tell her how you're always trying to watch your weight and not eat too much, then order a gigantic pepperoni pizza all for yourself and ask her if she wants a slice. Contradictions like that cause conflicts in people's brains that they have trouble reconciling, and for women it makes you more intriguing, harder to figure out, and ultimately, more alluring and attractive! So the next time you're speaking with a woman you like, remember to intrigue her a little - it's an old staple of many women's flirtations (don't reveal too much too soon), and if you want to get girls tying themselves up in knots trying to figure you out, make it a part of your repartee - today!

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##Weight Loss for Men: 23 Tips to Blow Your Mind As I'm laying here writing this article I'm really feeling one main thing: elation. I really love my life right now. The french use a phrase to describe this ethereal feeling; they call it joie de vivre (zhwä duh veev-ruh), and there's really only a few things that make me feel this way: Women, Self-growth, Diet, and Exercise. I didn't used to be this way... in fact I used to be quite overweight. And I don't mean just a little extra here or there, I genuinely was fat. My body mass index (BMI) was close to obese (28.5) and I hadn't exercised in 2-3 years. I just sat on my butt every day and played video games, eating potato chips and drinking sprite all day long. What little social life I had was gone, or took place over the Internet. My life went to shit, and while I wasn't necessarily depressed... I certainly wasn't happy. So one day, I decided to change. Today's article is all about weight loss for men, and how you can shave all the extra pounds you're carrying around off (not just a few of them), whether it's a lot (like me before) or even just a little too much around your waistline. Because today, I want to tell you how I went from almost-obese to mean, lean, and trim instead, and why today I get women telling me how great my body is. weight loss for men I wasn't oblivious to all the messages society was sending me about what "good-looking" is - or that my friends and family were. I was tired of everyone giving me back-handed comments, and I was tired of being judged. I would go over to relatives' houses and they would try to get me to walk with them. They would make suggestions like: "You should eat this it's quite healthy" "You're eating a salad? Good for you!" "You really should walk, it's great for your health!" And it's not just me, a lot of overweight people get this; this is where you get the pro-fat campaigns and the plus size models from. A lot of overweight people resent society for pressuring them into changing to be, well, normal, but I didn't respond this way. At first, for me, it was simply apathy, as I really didn't care. But then, with time, I started to resent myself for my own stagnation. I became sick of my boring, unfulfilling life, and I wanted change. So I did what most people don't have the courage to do, and I began to take action against all the uncomfortable feelings I was challenged with. One day I went out and, on a whim, signed up for a martial arts class despite feeling strange, fat, and out of place. Just before I started I was 215 lbs, all fat, zero muscle. I would get winded simply walking around, and I hated it. I also hated the attention I would get from others just from not just from being overweight, but also challenging my normal lifestyle of being sedentary. In the end, I pushed myself through all those pressures. LIFE POST-FAT What was the result of all this hard work, self-challenging, striving, and struggle? The result is this: I love my life so much. Probably way more than someone with an equally awesome life who never was all that fat... you just appreciate being "normal" that much more. I now sit comfortably at 165 lbs, with 9-10% body fat (well, 12% now after Thanksgiving.. I went a little crazy) even while eating like a pig, and I've trained my body to release all excess food as heat rather than storing it as bodyfat (in fact I was just out sweating in 50 degree weather in shorts and a t-shirt). I lost 50-60 lbs while also gaining muscle. My waist is tight (I think I'm 30", pretty good for my height) while having shoulders that want to rip out of large jackets. The only downside is the money I had to spend replace my clothes that I no longer fit into. I've been through a lot and I love experimenting, so I've learned the ultimate path to weight loss for men who want to drop it off; the best way to drop weight while maintaining muscle. I've lost weight eating 4-5k (or more) calories per day, and I've lost weight eating nothing. I've done it with and without exercise as well (even with a broken foot). I've even gained 30 lbs on purpose, and lost it in a month or two. I've learned how to manipulate my weight in every imaginable way through testing everything, and I'm going to give you the best and quickest I've learned to do it (while also being incredibly healthy - no sacrificing your health for weight loss here). I learned all this simply because I had to, but then I realized something. I started to love it. I loved seeing how my body would react to certain ways, and while everyone's bodies may each be a bit different, different this guide will really help you change the way you look at food. weight loss for men First, let's look at the mainstream ways you'll hear about from a variety of sources, channels, and directions how weight loss for men is best carried out: Eating low fat diets Eating high fat diets Caloric restriction / deficit diets Caloric surplus diets Juice / liquid only diets Juice restriction diets Low carb diets High carb diets Breadless diets Vegetarian diets Meatless diets Exercise more Exercise less Low glycemic and/or low sugar diets High glycemic and/or high sugar diets High protein Low protein Notice anything in that list? That's right... everything you hear about weight loss contradicts something else you hear. This is so frustrating. These days you'll hear everything, and you can pretty much lose weight on anything. So where do we start? Well, perfectionist that I am, I've experimented with nearly all of these... so you don't actually have to. Instead of looking at the diets themselves, I've found, we're better served learning how the body actually responds to food (also the lack thereof). Let's start with one of the main power houses of the body. YOUR BODY AND INSULIN weight loss for menSo what exactly is insulin? You may have heard of diabetics needing to inject it, but you may not know exactly what it is. There are a few things that happen when you eat food. I'll try to sum this up shortly, sort of layman's guide to insulin, and if you're really interested you can research this a bunch and find out more. Insulin and your body works like this: One of the first responders to nutrients is the pancreas. The pancreas is effectively the moderator of your blood sugar levels. It senses heightened levels of glucose (sugar in the blood) and sends a signal, also known as insulin, to your cells to store nutrients. What I'm discussing here is not the latest diet fad or off-the-cuff conjecture... it's basic biochemistry. You also have different types of body cells: Fat cells Muscle cells Liver cells Brain cells Heart cells Skin cells Etc. You get the point. Some of these cells have a limited propensity to store energy (usually stored as something known as glycogen, but not always), such as the liver or brain. The brain typically needs to sock away about 25 grams of stored energy, while the liver typically can store about 100g. The amount of glycogen your muscles can store depends on your body weight and the amount of muscles you have. A safe estimate would be typically around 300g-400g, but you'll often hear about 7g per pound (or 15g/kg) of bodyweight. This is typically the spillover range so that's why 300-400g is a better figure to follow. Unfortunately, your fat cells have almost an unlimited propensity to store energy. And more energy is stored from fructose (one form of sugar) than glucose (another form of sugar) because your pancreas (that sugar regulating organ) tends to ignore it. So what happens when you've got: Muscle cells at full energy storage capacity Liver cells at full energy storage capacity Brain cells at full energy storage capacity Heart cells at full energy storage capacity Skin cells at full energy storage capacity ... and everything else at full storage capacity? Well, what happens when you have full nutrient stores and you start spilling over is this: your fat cells, with their unlimited ability to store energy, take up the rest of the storage (called "de novo lipogenesis"). At this point, your pancreas, alerted to the high levels of sugars in the body, starts freaking out and flooding the body with insulin (henceforth called insulin spikes), and while this isn't necessarily bad.. it causes some problems. Particularly one problem, pre-diabetes, or another problem, type 2 diabetes. If you eat a diet high in carbohydrates, your blood sugar levels are constantly high and you're constantly spilling over unused sugars. Your body's insulin levels are chronically high and your cells are always getting hit with the red alerts from the pancreas. Eventually they start to ignore it, and then the pancreas has to call out louder to the cells to deal with the blood sugar (your pancreas, and body overall, wants to maintain homeostasis, an optimal level of glucose in the blood). The result of this arms race between the pancreas telling the other body cells to batten down the hatches and prepare for a glucose deluge, and the other body cells getting tired of being told what to do and tuning out the pancreas until it shouts loder and louder, leads to something called "insulin resistance," and while this is good at low bodyfat levels (you resist storing excess energy), it's quite bad at higher levels. Another problem with insulin resistance is that while the liver and muscles quickly become resistant, your fat cells do not. You get stuck in a scenario where your muscles don't absorb nutrients, and you continually get fatter even despite eating less. It's worth noting that you are also most insulin resistant in evening as your cortisol (stress hormones) levels from waking settle, and you're the most sensitive to insulin in the mornings. It's actually quite a good idea to skip breakfast because of this. I'll go more into this later in the article when I get into hacking your body. HOW THE BODY RESPONDS TO FAT, CARBS, AND PROTEIN Interestingly enough.. the body responds quite differently to different types of nutrient, and often in ways we might not expect. The 23 most surprising tips I've learned about weight loss for men are these: Testosterone levels drop after eating, but NOT after eating fats Fast digesting foods create the largest spikes of insulin (whey protein, MCT oil, carbohydrates) Some protein is converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis Both deprivation and surplus of glucose causes insulin resistance Large boluses (food in stomach) at once result in a 14% net caloric reduction Your body becomes more energy efficient the larger you are (think of an elephant with a slow metabolism, compared to a rat with a high one) Protein and carbohydrates both elicit an insulin response but typically fats do not Fiber from plants is fermented into digestible fat. Herbivores such as gorillas have larger bellies and cows have multiple stomachs to do this. You'll also find herbivores to be quite larger in mass Whole foods (non-processed) are harder to digest by the body and have lower net calories Protein stays in the stomach until digested, and slowly at that. This is the reason why protein is so sating, and the recommended daily allowance of 25g of protein per day idea is a myth. Whey protein has an absorption rate of about 10g/h Vitamins have trouble being absorbed by the body without accompanying fats (hence the name fat-soluble vitamins). Vegetarians often have malnutrition problems because of this Higher fat intake is associated with higher longevity, while carbs are associated with higher mortality Insulin serum levels are at their lowest when fasted (10-30 pmol/L) and growth hormones may potentially be at their highest (1000%+) Your stomach has its own nervous system (essentially, a brain). The meaning "gut feelings" is quite literal. Fat seems to cure sadness, although it doesn't seem to prevent it. It's why you get people eating tubs of ice cream after breakups Body fat levels are the greatest indicators of health Cholesterol has little to no negative correlation with cardiovascular health. In fact, cholesterol is needed by the brain and on top of that plaque buildup in the arterial walls might even have a stabilizing effect on the cardiovascular system and prevent acute heart problems, such as myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) Grass-fed butter has a ratio close to 1:1 of omega 3 fatty acids to omega 6s. It optimizes your cholesterol levels and is perhaps one of the healthiest things to eat aside from seafood. Its vitamin K2 content is also vital for bone health, and it also contains CLA which has a myriad of other benefits Starvation mode is a myth. Your body's metabolism actually rises until approximately 72 hours after its last meal. It reaches its peak at this point and slowly tapers down Fasting upregulates most bodily functions. This can be thought of as being in a "hunting mode" where the body needs maximal power to find food. Senses are heightened, appetite is actually suppressed (real hunger is not felt in the stomach, but rather the throat), productivity is increased, and stubborn fats (subcutaneous, on men it's around the stomach. On women it's the thighs and hips) are mobilized The heart's preferred energy source is fat, via ketones (20% more efficient than other sources) Loose / excess skin is typically just subcutaneous fat (although there are some exceptions) Fructose bypasses the pancreas and is very easily stored as fat After heavy exercise (powerlifting), for about two hours your fat cells are resistant to nutrient uptake, and as such it's literally impossible to put on fat in this period Now, there's a lot of information there that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom you hear on TV... or at least, the wisdom tossed at you by people marketing their diet pills and diet strategies. If you don't believe me on one or more or even all of these that's quite alright; just search on Google using any of these bullet points. But, once you're back from combing the Internet, let's look at some takeaways from these interesting facts. The body's preferred energy source is fat The body is meant to fast Fat loss and mobilization (de novo lipolysis) is stalled by insulin (de novo lipogenesis) Carbohydrates are excellent for growth (as well as fat gain) Sugars are treated as a scarce commodity and stored quickly Whole foods are important Well now that we know these things, we can optimize our diet and lifestyle to hack our body. I'll go through three different things you can implement to build yourself a better body, all being optional. Choose which ones you want to do yourself of course... but the best solution for health and physique would be to combine all three. weight loss for men I'll arm you with three heavily-researched and heavily tested (by me personally, in my journey from fat to fit) methods for cutting rolls of fat off yourself in record time... and keeping it off, and not reverting to the yoyoing of fad diets that don't stick. These three methods are: Eating whole foods for healthy eating Using ketosis for big time weight loss Intermittent fasting for metabolism/hormone hacking We'll start with what you can best feed your body with for optimal health (and physique). EATING WHOLE FOODS Here's your rule of thumb for this: if it's packaged or processed, throw it out. Avoid: Milk/dairy that's not raw and whole Grains (bread, pasta, etc) Butter that's not grass-fed Processed/vegetable oils (soy, corn, sunflower, peanut, canola, cottonseed, etc) Foods with HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) Foods with PUFAs (polyunsaturated fats) Foods with added sugar (usually non-fat stuff like yogurt) Do have: Whole raw milk and full-fat yogurt Unlimited saturated fats (fish,beef,pork,lamb,unprocessed cheese, etc) Unlimited vegetables Unlimited grass-fed butter (irish kerrygold is best) Healthy plant fats (avocados,olive oil,cocoa butter,etc) Moderate to low amounts of fruits, rice, starch Moderate amounts of nuts (careful, these are very calorie-dense) Now this is the part where I get looks and people think I'm weird. They give me social pressure to conform to their beliefs and call me crazy. That's fine, and what I find hilarious is that the people who tell me this stuff to the contrary of what I'm telling them are usually overweight themselves. Meanwhile, I sit at a low body fat percentage (now), and these people end up not having a whole lot to say when I tell them this. Their only defense is usually to go straight to the cholesterol argument and how I'm going to have a heart attack if I keep eating like that. With a bit of research, though, you'll find that cholesterol is quite healthy (search for ‘HDL and saturated fats'). Funny.. my entire family eats the way I do now, and my mother has been complaining to me that she's having trouble keeping weight on. For those who know diets such as Paleo and the like, this is quite familiar. However, the problem with Paleo is that it's based on conjecture and emulation of ancestral diets. I'm not speaking from conjecture but rather just plain biochemistry. I'm also not entirely anti-bread or anti-sugar, as they both can be useful in their own ways. There's not enough evidence to definitively support some of the viewpoints from Paleo. The benefits of eating like this are many, but some important ones: Naturally lower in carbohydrates Naturally higher in fat Cholesterol optimizing Higher fat options simply taste better (rib-eye cooked in butter for example) Fat is very sating Effective for moderate weight loss Very low inflammation Less frequent insulin spikes Naturally lower in calories, no need to count The downside is that it can be quite expensive if you don't properly buy in bulk, and it's quite easy to gain weight binging on carbs like fruits/starches. Also, when I say unlimited saturated fats I really mean it. I've lost weight eating 12 eggs per meal cooked in sticks of butter, as well as entire packages of bacon. In fact that's what gave me the best recovery time for my sport. butter However, let's look at some better options for fat loss and body recomposition. Again, feel free to combine these. KETOSIS AND FAT BURNING Here's where the first part of the body hacking starts. While eating whole foods keeps you healthy, prevents you gaining weight, and allows you to maintain it quite easily.. the next two I'm covering are great for body recomposition and weight manipulation. Ketosis? The heck is that? Isn't that some Atkins fad thing or whatever? Well no, this has been around since the late 1800s, and is incredibly effective.. if you do it properly. It has only been since the 1960s that the low-fat craziness started, and as it were this is about the same time obesity rates in the United States began to significantly increase. From 12% of the population to today's whopping 35%. Even more saddening is that 17% of all children are now obese. Not just overweight, but clinically obese. Whether this is a result of low-fat diets, or sugar companies pushing their products, or some other reason would be conjecture so I'll just leave that there for you to speculate. Let's get back to the chemistry of it all, rather than the statistics. What exactly happens when your main source of energy is fat? We know that with carbohydrates the body elicits an insulin response to shuttle nutrients (insulin is only the signal; GLUTs are the shuttles, short for glucose transporters. These are also dependant on dietary cholesterol). Protein is the same, as it gets turned over through gluconeogenesis. So what about 80% fat? 100%? Is it possible? Is it sustainable? While 100% fat isn't too great to do, as the body tends to prefer a little protein.. it can do without carbs. To do this, the body needs to create a way of mobilizing fat and using it as energy. The liver senses a lack of glucose, and feels like it's starving. In response to this, it starts breaking down fatty acids into something called a ketone (plural would be ketones or ketone bodies). This process is called ketogenesis, and as an energy source ketogenesis has some big benefits that you simply can't get from glucose: It's the preferred energy source for the brain and heart It's one of the most energy inefficient processes in the body It suppresses hunger It mobilizes body fat It prevents de novo lipogenesis and promotes lipolysis So on top of mobilizing our body fat for energy, it's incredibly inefficient at it so our metabolism needs to be higher to process it, thus burning energy simply to get at the energy in it already? Awesome! Sign me up.. Wait no! What about the evil cholesterol from eating fats?! Oh right, never mind. Go on.. So how exactly do we get into ketosis, and what can we do to optimize ketogenesis? Well here are some requirements and things to keep in mind: Ketogenesis is highest in the morning after waking and also exercise Fats (especially a mid-triglyceride called MCT oil) promote ketone production Carbs prevent and knock you out of ketosis, and must be kept to less than 30g per day Fiber gets converted to fat so you may have an unlimited amount Protein needs to be moderated, as too much will raise your glycogen stores So what's a ketogenic meal look like? First let's take a normal meal.. let's say 3 eggs.. Now cook it in 2-3 tablespoons of grass-fed butter and some heavy cream. Voila. Holy fat, Batman. Let's take another meal... taco meat. Take some ground chuck (not the lean silliness that's ground sirloin)... Cook in 2-3 tablespoons butter. Add melted cheese and a bit of salsa. Skip the taco shells and voila! It's really that easy but you just need to remember to keep carbs below 30gs per day and you need to offset protein with lots of fat. I'll leave the rest of the meal planning and research up to you, so just search for stuff like "low carb meals," "ketogenic meals," etc. Snack on some bacon if you're hungry. Sounds awful doesn't it? MEAL TIMING AND INTERMITTENT FASTING One of the things that doesn't make much intuitive sense is the idea that we need to eat to lose weight. You'll often see top 10 lists showing the best foods to eat to burn or lower body fat. Wait a minute... How the hell did we mess this one up? Make sure you eat a large healthy balanced breakfast every day! No. This is making you fat(ter), and is one of the worst things you can do if you're trying to lose weight. But why is this? What makes breakfast so evil and fasting so great? Cortisol levels are highest in the morning due to your body moving out of a hibernative state. This is considered a stressful event from a physiological viewpoint Cortisol and insulin work together to store energy as fat (kind of) Growth hormones are highest while fasted Your insulin resistance increases throughout the day, so insulin-spiking foods should be saved for the evening (unless you're a powerlifter and need to get fat and strong) Insulin (and food) interrupts fat burning and promotes lipogenesis Ketogenesis is highest after waking and eating foods (except fat) interrupts this process Fat mobilization / burning starts to become very effective 14-16 hours after your last meal. Eating breakfast stops you at around the 8-10 hour mark Fasting can suppress hunger (after adapting to it) and teaches you to know when you're actually hungry instead of just craving carbs / sugar Strictly based off this, meals should go something like this: Skip breakfast Have fatty lunch Have protein and fat for dinner Have carbs late at night There's another thing we can do to benefit from fasting however, and that's condensing feeding windows. So for example if we allow an eating window of 8 hours, we need to fast for 16 hours (including sleep). If we allow only 4 hours we fast for 20 hours every day. There are different timings and such but here are a few benefits of condensed eating windows: Uninterrupted fat burning for long periods of time Allows for larger meals which make it difficult to overeat, and just in general are more satisfying Large refeed meals have a 14% reduction in overall calories, due to metabolism upregulation to deal with the surplus of food Tighter eating windows result in making it harder to reach your caloric needs, resulting in weight loss Large amounts of food cause a thermogenic effect, which causes the body to dissipate excess calories as heat Anyhow.. there are many different ways to do intermittent fasting, and while it isn't a magical pill... it is still an effective weight manipulation tool nonetheless. For more of this, just Google phrases like "intermittent fasting," "lean gains," and "alternate day fasting." The important part to note is that you cannot ingest more than 50 calories during this time, so basically just drink things like coffee/water/tea with no caloric additives. This includes diet soda. An exception would be something like.. Bulletproof Coffee, I'll get to that in a bit. KETO ADAPTING AND HUNGER PANGS So all this is great.. we've got whole foods for a healthy eating lifestyle, ketosis for MAJOR fat mobilization, and intermittent fasting for metabolism/hormone hacking. What's the downside to all this? It seems so easy... Unfortunately... if you're like most of the population... you've never once been in ketosis. From the moment you've come out of the womb you've been fed, but never very high fat and ultra low carbs. This means this is foreign to your body, and that also means your body is NOT going to like that.. not one bit. It's not pretty. Some of the side effects that can be incurred while keto-adapting are: Hunger Pangs This is usually not real hunger. The hunger you feel, that feeling of NEEDING food, is not real hunger. Real hunger is felt in the throat, and you'll start feeling it after a week (that's right... a week) of deprivation. Typically, when you feel hunger it will feel like a nagging sensation, rather than full on GET SOME FOOD OR YOU'RE GOING TO DIE. This is a sign of withdrawl from a carb addiction, and will occur when you restrict carbs. You need to eat a lot of fat during this period... this is so important. The main reason people fail on low-carb or ketogenic diets is that they ingest way too much protein, and stay away from fat. Eating too much protein is essentially like eating sugar and defeats the purpose. Hyperthermia and Sweating Things that could be contributing to this are foods and the lack thereof. Foods tend to have a thermic effect, especially in large quantities. Your body is also shifting it's energy system from glucose burning to fat burning. Enjoy the benefits of having a heightened metabolism and caloric expenditure. Reactive Hypoglycemia This is quite possibly the worst of it. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia: "Symptoms vary according to individuals' hydration level and sensitivity to the rate and/or magnitude of decline of their blood glucose concentration. Some of the food-induced hypoglycemia symptoms include double vision or blurry vision unclear thinking sleeping trouble heart palpitation or fibrillation fatigue dizziness light-headedness sweating headaches depression nervousness irritability tremors flushing craving sweets increased appetite rhinitis nausea, vomiting panic attack numbness/coldness in the extremities confusion coma can be a result in severe untreated episodes" Now.. anyone who has keto adapted before will tell you need not worry too much. If you eat food and hydrate yourself, you'll be fine. I went through this, my dad went through this, my sister, my sisters friends, etc. The worst you'll typically get is light-headedness, sleeping problems, irritability, etc. Me though? I jumped right into this, as well as intermittent fasting. I also tossed in some fat burners (caffeine, green tea extract, yohimbe, etc) to boost metabolism and lots of exercise to accelerate the process. I don't recommend this. I had every symptom above, with the exception of having palpitations and being put in a coma (fortunately on that last). I'm also quite sensitive to caffeine and the like, so this wasn't the greatest idea.. I had to hyperventilate in the car ride to school so I didn't blackout (and also the panic attack)... Just for the record, I'm glad I did this and do not regret it at all. But again, this is incredibly abnormal and completely due to my extreme measures. If you're worried, search for "keto adaption." Worth checking out if you have any pre-existing conditions that concern you, but if you're like 99% of the population, and you don't go Eric-extreme when you decide to go keto, you'll be fine. Anyhow, these only last from about a few days, to multiple weeks. Typically, once you've done this before you don't really get reinduction symptoms. Often it's described just as a feeling of "fogginess." OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS, VITAMIN D So we're getting near the end of the article and I just wanted to add some extra pieces here on supplementation as it impacts weight loss in men. There's always the big topic of omega fatty acids and health. Some say you want a 4:1 ratio of O3:O6 fats, while others say 1:1. I think generally it's accepted that omega-3s are bad, and that having many O6s without O3 is asking for trouble. There are various ways of supplementing with omega-3s... You're doing well if you get fish in about 1-2 days a week. You can supplement with fish oil pills, too. Grass-fed ruminants (beef, pork, etc) and butter (Kerrygold Irish butter) have nearly a 1:1 ratio, which is superb (but expensive). As for Vitamin D... get it. I don't care how much particularly, just get enough. The RDA recommendation is very low, and typically people can ingest 10k+ with no problems. My family's dermatologist has prescribed 50,000 IUs per day to my mother. COFFEE, BUTTER, AND MCT OIL I felt like this deserved a separate section, because it's one of my favorite tools in my toolbox. This was made particularly popular by Bulletproof Coffee, but this is also similar to yak tea. Other farming cultures would eat sticks of butter before going out to heat themselves up. My Swedish side of the family back in the olden days used to have their coffee this way as well. Basically, you want to get a quick way to ingest a good sum of fat. This'll do a few things: Stir up metabolic systems Put you in deeper ketosis Act as an appetite suppressant (caffeine + fat + ketosis) Give you a lot of energy (with no crash) Heavy cream also works here too. It even tastes amazing. MCT oil is an extract from coconut fat, and is absorbed by the body incredibly fast. The liver likes to churn these into ketone bodies. You'll have to blend or froth everything together. I use a hand mixer (aerolatte, $18), but prior I used a blender. SO WHERE DO I START? Well... it depends on your lifestyle. There are ways of success and failure for each person, but I'll give some recommendations to use for different people currently in different places: If you have trouble with suppressing your appetite and experience ravenous hunger during dieting, start with intermittent fasting. Work on shortening your eating window. If you normally allow yourself to eat from 8am to 8pm every day, change this to 1pm to 8pm. Then you'll keep making this window smaller and smaller. Next you'll eat from 3pm to 7pm. Next 4pm-6pm. Before you know it you'll be eating one meal per day and the drinking water for the remainder of the time. If you need to drop significant weight, do ketosis. This won't work if you're a huge glutton, but it will suppress your appetite. This isn't sustainable long term, so you need to transition into intermittent fasting or eating whole foods. Those two will help you reinforce healthy eating happens. Transition into eating whole foods to make it easy to maintain your weight and health. Now, I think some points should also be brought up on how you can fail, and some things you should not do. These diets/lifestyle work particularly well because they force you to change your lifestyle, and promote habits that allow you to keep weight off... however, they don't always work, and if you find yourself overeating there's not much else that will happen besides weight gain. If your body is at an energy surplus, it is inevitable that you WILL gain weight. The reason these three things help you are because they provide extremely inefficient (e.g., energy-wasteful) ways of using energy. They make your body throw away much of what you take in. Ketosis is naturally harder to expose yourself to huge amounts of calories, as it's hard to eat pounds and pounds of fat. There's appetite suppression, and caloric inefficiency when using fats for energy. Intermittent fasting prevents you from overeating, because the time allowed is quite shorter. Ghrelin levels are also manipulated, and your appetite is suppressed. There's also the caloric reduction in large amounts of food eaten at once (from thermogenesis, and also from metabolism regulation). Whole foods has a caloric reduction as well, because your body needs to process the foods (whereas pre-processed foods are simply uptaken by the body). 800 calories of unprocessed food is more like 700. The whole food diet I introduced also has a bit higher fat content, which is also satiating. So let's look at some things you should watch out for: Being a glutton is a recipe for disaster. Focus on keeping the amount of energy you ingest low, as this will allow you to mobilize fats. The diets above make this easier, but if you're chugging down heavy cream on ketosis don't expect to lose weight (and maybe even gain it). Don't add in more fats to your diet without lowering your carb intake. Another recipe for disaster. Not only will your carbohydrate intake spike your insulin, but you're adding fat to the mix as well. Lots of nutrient uptake possible here, which is an easy way to get fat. If you're not in ketosis, don't think you'll get away with lots of fat. Just because I said I eat unlimited fats does not mean I do it all the time, or when not in ketosis. Focus on a balanced diet, and try to eat less. Don't eat past satiety. If you're satisfied and sate, stop. Another rule that some follow is the drink rule: if you're thirsty and need a drink, stop. Don't go eating every meal to complete fullness. Now, that being said: here also some things you can do if you do somehow manage to start gaining weight, or stall: Start portion controlling by establishing a caloric limit using a basal metabolic rate calculator. Weight your foods, and don't pass that limit. The tools I gave above will make this easy, but if you also stay at a caloric balance, you'll have success. If you're in ketosis, consider taking away some saturated fats and substitute them with MCT oil. This'll cause thermogenesis, and rev up your body. Increase or decrease exercise and different types. Heavy lifting is better for nutrient partitioning than say.. running long distances. If you're not exercising, start walking up hills or do sprints. Likewise, If you're exercising too much and feeling weak you should taper down instead. Check for any pre-existing conditions that may be disrupting your hormone regulation, such as hyperthyroidism (or hypothyroidism), and evaluate with your physician. REFERENCES While I covered most of the important parts, I missed A LOT. There's a lot of research to do and reams of data and information that I just couldn't include in my article for you here without it being needlessly long or going on too many sidepaths. There simply is not enough space to do so. Instead, I'll give you some great links so you can start on this journey yourself: http://paleodietlifestyle.com/category/paleo-diet-articles/ http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/ http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/ http://archevore.com/ http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/ http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/ Dr. Lustig's video on fructose is good as well (but if I recall, demonizes it a bit): Ultimately, learning how your body works is a lot like learning how a car works, or a computer works, or any other piece of complex machinery integral to your life. It's a big mystery why things are going wrong when they are until you figure out the underlying mechanics of the entire system... but then once you've got that, it's a snap: you know what's wrong, how to fix it, and what to do right now. weight loss for men This article was designed to be your guide to hacking your own body: health, energy levels, physique, and, yes... fat. Because it makes a big difference. It really does. And if I can go from being an all-but-obese video game jockey whose relatives used to try and push him into going for a walk all in the hopes of getting him shedding a pound or two, into a guy with minimal body fat and an attractive physique that gets him compliments (and not complaints) from nearly everyone he meets... ... then I really don't see any reason why you should be hanging onto a little extra weight around the mid-section. Time to get fixing that.

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##What to Do to Get Past a Sticking Point On the outcome independence article, Balla made the following (exasperated) comment: "Chase, im letting you and myself down with my low success rate. Please help me find this missing piece to this puzzle and please understand why im going crazy. Im going mad with these girls. What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? It doesn't matter if the girls are cold approach girls or social circle girls. Nothing is popping off. I can get all the numbers I can care for but they dont mean shit if I cant sleep with these girls. I read the article that you wrote, "The 10 ways to make a girl take you seriously". I read your stuff religiously and apply it all. Im not even joking, everything you say to do I do. From moving girls, text and call only for dates, be sexy, be calm, be smooth. I read the serious article over and over again and apply all of the steps. I am really going mad right now, I never felt this bad before in my life. Im being 100% honest chase, I use all your stuff, but im still not sleeping with these girls. Im just getting phone numbers and attention, I dont even get damn dates. Im starting to get cold and bitter and getting ready to treat these girls like shit. Please Chase tell me what im doing wrong? Is it just that im not meant to get many girls to sleep with me? Is it that Luck is against me? I really dont know what to do, im trying not to vent but im frustrated beyond belief and enough is enough. I have an identity crisis also, after reading that comment you left for a reader about it and it makes me very angry that im all these good qualities but im not getting any action. People believe I sleep with alot of girls and it drives me crazy that im not. I even believe I should sleep with alot of girls but its not happening. Its been a year since I found this site and I havent bedded one girl I didnt know yet. Sorry for the long vent but I seriously don't know what im doing wrong. I still believe everything you write is true and it works, I just have no idea what I am doing wrong. Thank you Chase for everything." I can commiserate. In early 2006, when I had just started actively going out and approaching new women, I was frequently leaving similar notes on the message boards I participated in then. I was trying everything I knew to try... and it seemed like nothing was working. This is something called "plateauing" - where your progress stalls and you hit a level plain where things just don't seem to be getting any better. Plateaus are the result of running into sticking points. What's a sticking point? It's something that no matter what you do or try, you just can't seem to get around it. Today I want to talk about what your options are for when you hit these frustrating snags, and what you need to do to break free of their tangles and get yourself making progress with women - or with anything else - once more. sticking point If there's anything better at inspiring a little dose of victim mentality than a couple of tenacious sticking points, I couldn't tell you what. When you're trying everything you can and out of options or ideas about how to improve, it's pretty easy to start feeling trapped and victimized by life (or other people). Hitting a plateau doesn't mean the world is a flawed place, or that YOU are inherently flawed or disadvantaged. Rather, it means your strategy for learning and advancing is flawed in some way. Or, it might even mean you don't have a strategy for learning and advancing - and if you lack a strategy for this, you will stall at some point... almost guaranteed. WHO NEEDS STRATEGY? Wait, you mean not only do you need strategy for getting girls, but you need strategy for learning strategy for getting girls? This is just too much! As a matter of fact though, your learning strategy is NOT just for learning how to get better with women. Learning strategy is something you learn once, that then enables you to be able to pick up and learn just about anything you want to learn. Want to be really good at golf? Want to become excellent at negotiating? Want to become an all star computer programmer (I think we call those "hackers")? Want to be able to dance merengue with the best of them? Want to know how to snowboard like the pros do? The same learning strategy you'll use for teaching yourself how to get girls you'll use with all these too. The good news is if you have any skill you've learned to a high degree, learning anything else to a high degree is substantially easier. The second skill you want to learn is easier than the first. The third skill is easier than the second. The fourth is easier still. And so on and so forth. Because if you go about mastering something methodically, you don't just learn the thing itself... you learn how to learn, too. A BRIEF CAVEAT I detailed the process for mastery in my (quite long) article "How to Master Anything." I won't say that one is absolutely required reading for this article, but if you've already read it, you'll have more context reading this one. Now, a disclaimer: not everybody wants to or is interested in driving himself to a high degree of skill with women, or with anything. And that's fine. My personal preference is for skill set development, and the kind of people I tend to have around me are this way too. But people focused on chasing down new skill sets and mastering them to fairly high degrees are very unusual; most people are more interested in enjoying themselves as much as possible right now, in this moment, and most people are content with getting what they can get and aren't too crazy about personal uplift (as evidenced by some of the comments beneath "Just Be Yourself: The Worst Dating Advice Known to Man"). This article isn't about "how do you do some specific thing with girls," nor is it "how do you make yourself more attractive right now." This article is about "how do you learn things better and escape from plateaus and sticking points." If you're not all that interested in approaching learning things from a strategic, methodical perspective, this probably isn't all that useful for you. However, if learning is a passion of yours, if developing skill sets is something important to you, and/or if you're interested in developing your skills with women not just to the point where you can get pretty girls some of the time, but to the point where you can pretty consistently get pretty girls as much as you want, whenever you want... then read on. WHY WE HIT STICKING POINTS If you want to learn something, you should just go do it, and you'll learn it automatically, right? Isn't that the way the brain is supposed to work? In part, yes - the brain learns patterns through repeated exposure, and as it becomes more familiar with patterns, they get shifted to the subconscious to free up the conscious for analyzing more and more complex situations. A novice chess player is confused just looking at the board and trying to figure out which pieces can go where An intermediate chess player intuitively knows which pieces can go where, because his brain has learned and automated processing these patterns. He knows which pieces go where and is able to quickly assess (most of the time) which pieces of his are under threat from his opponent. He's generally thinking a few moves ahead at this point and predicting his opponent's reactions to his actions An advanced chess player intuitively knows a large number of different attack strategies and patterns. He knows from his opponent's opening moves what his most likely strategy is going to be, and plans out a general strategy to keep his opponent off-balance while advancing his position and capturing the other side's pieces This process of automating things that have been learned well and moving them to the subconscious to serve as intuition rather than conscious calculation makes success far easier to achieve and allows individuals to spend fewer mental resources trying to achieve that success. And indeed, research has shown that expert chess players think less and expend less mental energy during a chess match than novice players do. The better you get at a thing, the easier it gets to do (and win at). However, sometimes, instead of it becoming easier to do and easier to win, you stall out. You plateau. You hit a sticking point. Why's this happen? Well, imagine the novice chess player first learning to play chess. He tries out all the pieces, gets a feel for their movements, and learns them well. He begins to intuit - either from carefully analyzing the board, or from having it happen to him often enough - when a piece of his is in danger of being captured by his opponent. He forms a general opening strategy, middle game, and end game. And then he gets stuck. Whenever he plays opponents using certain strategies against him, he just can't beat them. He keeps trying, again and again... but he keeps losing. What's going on? Whenever I'm going through a chess learning period (and I'm working on improving my chess game), I actively seek out opponents who can beat me. The next thing I do is I reverse analyze their moves, and try their strategy out myself on other opponents. What happens when I use this strategy? What are its strengths? What weaknesses of this strategy do other opponents expose when I use it against them that I hadn't figured out when an opponent had used it against me? Eventually, I learn the strategy, and learn how to counter it. Then I can play opponents who use it against me, and I can win. This, in a nutshell, is the basis of how you overcome a sticking point: you start doing something different. And it's the one most people get wrong. sticking point "Wait a minute," you might say, "but I've tried everything!" Well, obviously not, if you're still stuck. But I'm not here to place blame; what I want to do is show you why the way you're approaching your sticking points is wrong, and what you need to do if you want to start beating them. So let's give you a strategy for getting off those plateaus. WHAT'S YOUR STICKING POINT? First off, riddle me this: what's your sticking point? If your answer was, "Girls don't like me," or, "Girls won't sleep with me," then you don't know your sticking point. sticking point "I suck at chess," is not a sticking point. "I keep getting beaten by the opponent's bishops," is a sticking point. "I keep getting caught in the opponent's reveals," is also a sticking point. Trying to tackle a broad, undefined problem is well nigh impossible. It's like saying, "Go become a billionaire." Nobody knows how to do that. But if you say, "Go build a company that provides something people desperately need, and does it better than anyone else, and cheaper than anyone else, and more efficiently than anyone else, and still manages to turn a tidy profit," that's a bit more specific and doable. Still a tall order, but you can start getting your mind around it. If you then say, "Go build a communications company that allows people to communicate instantly with anyone else in the world no matter where they are at any time via one low flat rate, via text or voice, and is more reliable and intuitive and easier to use than the current hodgepodge of SIM cards and apps and wireless Internet and satellite signals the world's telecommunications consists of," you now have an even clearer idea. Still not easy, but it's something you can get to work on. And as luck would have it, succeeding with women is a fair bit easier than building a multibillion dollar telecommunications empire. Before you can start figuring out HOW to improve, you need to know WHAT you need to improve in the first place. SOME COMMON STICKING POINTS I had to deal with plenty of my own sticking points, and I've coached legions of men through theirs, too, in person, over the phone, over email, and on forums. So I've seen a fair number of sticking points with this stuff. What are the most common ones? Here are the ones I've most commonly seen: He has too much approach anxiety and doesn't talk to women He doesn't open well and women aren't receptive to him He has trouble reaching the hook point after the opener He has difficulty creating a sexual vibe and building sexual tension Women treat him like just a friend and friend zone him quickly He fails to move fast with women and lets escalation windows close Women won't move with him and decline his invitations home He gets few phone numbers from girls, or can't get a date out of numbers He gets girls alone with him, but has difficult with physical escalation He's able to sleep with girls, but they vanish when he tries to start a relationship Chances are, if you're at a plateau right now, you can go through that list and find something that's bedeviling you. How's your approach anxiety? Are you approaching at least 5 or 6 women every time you go out? Are you going out at least 2 or 3 times a week to meet new girls? How's your opening? Are you getting warm receptions from women at least some of the time? Or only cold receptions? Do you struggle to reach the hook point, or is this not much of a concern? Do women become sexually excited around you, or do they still view you as kind of a nice guy friend? Are you moving fast with women and hitting escalation windows as soon as they appear? Or are you taking too long, letting attraction expire, and winding up with girls auto-rejecting or kicking you to the friend zone or into orbit? And so on and so forth. It goes like that. If you're not sure what your sticking point is, and the best you can do is, "I'm just not getting anywhere with girls!" then you need to sit and break down your interactions into tiny little pieces, and go through them one piece at a time, until you figure out what you're doing wrong. That should sound like this: "Okay, I'm doing fine on this..." "Yep, I'm all right on that one..." "I could be a little better about this, but this doesn't seem to be the big problem..." "This I've definitely got down well..." "Okay, yep - every time I try to do X, it isn't working. That's the problem." If you go through the list and throw your hands up and say, "I do EVERYTHING right! It doesn't make SENSE!" then the first thing you need to do is calm down, relax, take a breather, and chill out. Anger and upset is useful with some things, but learning isn't one of them. The next thing you need to do is say to yourself, "Okay. Either I'm missing something BIG here... or there's something I THINK I'm doing well at that I'm NOT doing well at." For reference, here's how to know if you've got each of these handled well: Approach anxiety: you're going out 2+ times a week to meet women, and approaching 4+ strangers every time (and that's the bare minimum; I'd recommend 4 outings a week as a beginner, with a minimum of 8 approaches each outing) Opening: when you open women smile warmly (not just politely), and stop to give you the time of day Hook point: you're able to get women participating in conversations with you, asking you questions, and actively trying to get to know you on their own Sexual vibe: women regularly become sexually aroused and excited in conversation with you and in your presence (both when you're talking to them and when you aren't yet - there's a very pretty, very excited girl playing with her hair like crazy right next to me in the airport as I write this, and we haven't spoken yet) Bad boy: women don't ask you for favors or treat you like just a friend because they know you're a bad boy who's going to laugh at them and turn them down and flirt with them instead Moving fast: finding yourself wondering, "Is this the right moment?" or, "When should I make a move?" is a thing of the past - you pounce on opportunities, and never leave a girl hanging when she signals you, no matter how small the signal, that she's ready for more Compliance: when you invite girls to move with you, they say "yes." When you invite women home, they say "okay" Phone numbers: you find these a breeze to get, and know how to text a girl to get her out on a date, and do, very consistently Escalation: you get girls alone with you easily, and kiss them and escalate to sex with them consistently and without too many problems or too much resistance Relationships: women stick around after you sleep with them, and quickly become infatuated and fall in love (sometimes despite your best efforts) If you see any of these that you're not yet amazing at, that's a sticking point. Which one should you target first? The first one in the list you're having problems with... if you get great at moving fast, it won't matter too much if you can't get most girls to hook - you'll never get the chance to move them fast in the first place. Focus on first things first - then move down the list. THE VALUE OF FIELD REPORTS On our discussion boards, we have a field reports section. A field report is where you write about a specific outing you had, and the women you met, and how the interaction went. So let's say you went out for a round of day game at the shopping mall. You were there for two hours, approached twelve women, talked to seven of them (five of them rejected or ignored you or otherwise wouldn't talk to you), and you really hit it off with two of them, and you swapped numbers with both of them with plans to meet up on a first date later. You'd then log onto the forum, and write this down as a report. "Here's how the first approach went... I said this, she said that, then this happened..." "Here's how the second approach went..." Et cetera. Sound boring? The act of writing down what happened during an outing forces you to go back over it, remember it, and analyze it. It's an amplifier for lesson learning. When I was new to picking up girls, I was absolutely religious about chronicling my outings. Every day or night after I got back from meeting new girls (or failing to meet new girls, as the case might have been), I'd sit down and write out everything that happened during the night. I'd write down what my handful of goals were for the evening before I went out (I was mostly going out to bars and clubs). I'd write about how I started the evening off - did I get to talking to people right away, or did I put it off and get off to a slow start (or no start)? How many women did I approach? Often I couldn't remember, but I'd know it was somewhere between 10 and 25. What was the worst approach? How did it unfold? What things could I tell I did wrong? What was the best approach? Was it dumb luck, or was it skill? What were the environmental factors outside my control that made the approach go so well, and how could I replicate them again in the future? These are the kinds of things I'd write down. Usually I wasn't even aware of them until I wrote them down. The processing of writing down what happened and analyzing it as I did forced me to think things through. Much of the time, as I was writing, I'd go, "Ahhhh, THAT'S what happened! Wow, it makes so much sense now. That was silly of me. I've got to start meeting women sooner in the evening next time / stop butterflying around so much / stop teasing women too hard when they clearly like me and shift into deep diving sooner to get them qualifying themselves / stop being too nice and not being playful enough." The number one reason why I'm able to write all these super-detailed articles on the nuances of seduction and social dynamics? Because I was a meticulous field reporter. My field reports were often broken down into multiple segments, just like these articles: the start of an outing, the first few girls I met, the girl I met that things went really well with, the pull attempt, how everything went to hell in the end, my takeaways and lessons. If you look at our field reports board right now, the guys who've been the most religious about going out, getting their approaches in, and then writing down reports are the ones who are improving the most. Check out NarrowJ or Tyme2K on the boards - there are two guys who started off not so much knowing what they were doing, but kept going out and pushing themselves to approach, and kept writing up their reports, and kept analyzing what they were doing wrong and what they needed to start doing better. And then they started posting more and more reports of girls they were sleeping with. Increasingly attractive girls, that they liked more and more. If you're not writing field reports, and you're not getting the results you want yet, it's time for you to start writing. Even if you can't remember many of the details when you start - well, neither could I. Once you get into the habit of writing though, your mind will remember more and more. And then, it will retain more and more, and learn faster and faster. Sit down to your keyboard and write something. DEALING WITH INFORMATION OVERLOAD When I was learning girl skills, there wasn't a site like Girls Chase to sit down and run through articles, so I was mostly learning from three things: Online forums Mentors and friends naturally good with women Trial and error out in the field What I'd find was that over time, I'd begin to consume more and more information from reading, until it got to the point there was too much in my head, too much to remember, and I'd start plateauing in the field. So, periodically, whenever it seemed like I was reading too much and doing too little, I'd take a break from online. I wouldn't read anything else and I wouldn't write anything else. I wouldn't even analyze my interactions all that much. I'd just go out and talk to girls and let all the things rolling around in my head gradually move from facts to intuition. This was my "level up" time, when I'd make my greatest strides with girls. Then, flush with all my newfound success, I'd get interested in talking about girls and reading about girls again, and I'd get back to writing, talking, and reading. As I did, I'd come across ideas that I'd seen before, but hadn't been able to use or hadn't made much sense, and suddenly they'd click. The stuff I'd be reading would be mixing in with my latest experiences, and producing a string of epiphanies. My results with women would continue to increase. But eventually, over time, I'd start reading more and more again, and getting out less, and I'd begin to plateau. Then I'd take another break. It ended up looking like this: sticking point The trend I noticed in myself thus was: Get out and practice and see improvement Start reading and studying, and the mixture of new experiences and new information from what I studied would lead to realizations and epiphanies, boosting my results further After a while, I'd start getting too much untested data and theory in my head, and I'd begin to plateau while out in the field meeting girls Eventually I'd start getting sick of reading too much, and having too much in my head, and I'd take a break and go out a lot and meet lots of girls, but otherwise not read or write or talk about it During this period, the theory in my head from before would get put into practice, and my brain would learn the patterns, absorb them into my subconscious, and automate them and free up my conscious brain to start analyzing and collecting more theory I'd go back to reading and writing and studying and analyzing again, and I'd start putting two and two together from my time away. "Oh, yeah, I started doing this and it works really well! I should do that more!" and, "Yes, I did that by accident, and didn't even realize I was doing it. Whoa, I should cut that out, that's no good!" and, "Oh man, I didn't even THINK of that, but that fits in perfectly with the new stuff I'm doing - I'm going to go out and use that tonight!" After a while, I'd start getting too much untested data and theory in my head, and I'd begin to plateau while out in the field meeting girls, and it'd be time for another break to consolidate all the new lessons, analysis, takeaways, and theory If you're starting to feel overwhelmed from reading and studying and learning too much... maybe you are overwhelmed. And it's time to shut the textbooks, close the computer, and go hit the streets, malls, nightclubs, bars, lounges, beaches, college campuses, grocery stores, and cafés hard, until all that theory and all those lessons get automated from practice and use, and what was once theory becomes experience, instead. At that point, you can go back, share your findings, and hit the books again, and start analyzing all the new experiences you've had and pulling more lessons from them again... until you hit information overload once more, and it's time to shut the books and hit the streets (or club) and go meet lots of girls. BESTING THOSE PLATEAUS Is that a lot to think about? I'll sum it up for you. When you hit a plateau - when you stop seeing progress, stall out, hit a wall that you just can't get through with women - it's because you have a sticking point or sticking points that you haven't figured up yet and that you're getting all snagged up in. To get unstuck you need to: Find your sticking points. Really break down your interactions and locate the patterns where you're failing with women. What are the things that make you go, "Ah, every TIME I try and do [X], girls say 'no!'" or, "Man, I can NEVER get women to go [Y]"? Once you know that, all you need to do next is sit down and say, "Okay, that's my weakness - now what can I try differently there that I haven't really tried yet (or have tried only a few times, or have tried but haven't gotten to work all that well)?" Start writing field reports. It'll do you a world of good. It'll get you thinking about your day or night, about the interactions you had with women, and it'll get the wheels turning in your head about why things went the way they did. It'll force you to pull lessons out of your experiences. It'll open you up to feedback and suggestions from other guys learning just like you are (or who've already been where you are now and can look at your reports and tell you things you can improve on that you didn't even realize you could). And it'll make you accountable - once you're participating in a community, you'll start wanting to not let your buddies down, and get out there more for the sake of putting in the hours and leveling yourself up. It's quite a bit like working out with friends - you're a lot more likely to stick to it. Mix it up between studying binges, and zero study / pure fieldwork binges. If all you do is study, eventually you'll start to burn out from having too much untested theory rolling around in your head. The only way around this is taking a little time off to focus purely on the fieldwork part of things, and let your brain work its magic, converting theory into experience, and experience into automated skills, instincts, and abilities. Once you've cleared all that theory out and turned it into intuition, you can hit the books again with a fresh mind, ready to put your new experience under the magnifying glass of theory and realize what you've been doing right that you weren't even aware of, and what you've been doing wrong, and new things you can try out that might've seemed to risky or hard or impossible before but now are well within the realm of possibilities for you. You need a good learning process to master a new skill. Pure studying isn't enough; neither is pure beat-your-head-against-the-wall fieldwork, usually. You need a one-two punch; study hard, then implement hard. It's normal to hit plateaus. And everybody has sticking points. The only thing that's important is: what do you do when you hit them? Because you can't just keep doing what you've been doing. A plateau is a sign it's time to switch it up. You've got the tools for that; you know what you need to do. So - go switch it up.

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##What to Do When a Girl Doesn't Text Back A reader writes in: I found something strange. Everytime Im having long interactions with girls in pickups on the streets, I bomb. I mean, she dont text back. It reminds me of Murphies law: If everything cant go wrong, IT WILL. I recently approached 10 women of which gave me attraction signals. They touched me, called me cute, called me the most interesting person, smiled, was high energy, stayd 20 minutes with me, and asked me to text them. I had good interactions with them and was smoothe and confident. I bonded wtih them and made plans to see them. They never texted back and I dont nkwo why. I did another experiment where I cutted my interaction short about 3 minutes and asked for the number. Most of the shorter ones agreed on dates and texted back, and note, most of them gave me negative signs first. Is it because women use guys that they give fake "attraction signals?" Why do they seem so much into me at first but never bother to actually get into contact again? It happens over and over so much that when a girl give me signals thats too good to be true,I can almost predict that I will never hear from her again and Im alwasy right. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but I think the women who give you immediate signals are maybe time waster"? And what is your thoughts, do you find the same? Brings back memories. When I stepped up my activity levels in 2006, I noticed an odd trend: the women I spoke to for longer periods of time, and seemed more into me, ended up being less likely to ever return my phone calls or texts. How bizarre, I thought to myself. This certainly doesn't make much sense. But the numbers didn't lie. So, I did the only logical thing I could think to do: I worked to shorten the time I'd spend with girls whose phone number I intended to grab, and only spend a longer time with girls I intended to take home that day or night. Almost overnight, the problem of girls not texting back and girls not calling back all but disappeared. But it still left me scratching my head a bit... why did spending more time with a girl and having her come to like you more lead to her falling off the face of the Earth and not returning text and calls later? THINGS THAT LEAD TO UNRETURNED TEXTS AND CALLS Think of a girl you met that you really liked, that you maybe spent 30 or 40 minutes talking to the first time you met her. She was charming, beautiful, exactly your type. Got her in your head? Good. Now, if you can, remember how you felt the first time you called her or texted her. Felt pretty darn nervous, didn't you? Heck, maybe you didn't even text or call her at all. Hopefully that wasn't the case, but there are plenty of guys out there that's happened to... it happened to me, too. In fact, I was this close to never calling the girl who went on to become my girlfriend for 2 1/2 years; it was just too nerve-wracking to dial her number on the phone. I almost didn't talk to her again after the night I met her. Guess what? Yep -- that happens to girls, too. It isn't always the reason, and in fact it's only one of four main reasons we're going to take a look at that can cause a girl to not reply to your text messages or phone calls. But girls being nervous and putting pressure on themselves is one of the Big 4 Reasons why they don't respond. It's probably the most surprising reason for a lot of guys, so that's why I chose to lead off with it. But there are three other reasons, too. The four reasons women might not reply to you are: Too much anticipation / nervousness: if a girl really likes you, she might be too shy to reply to your correspondence. She might end up putting a great deal of pressure on herself to do well with you -- or be too jittery to type out a reply or answer your call. She may really, really want to talk to you, but never end up doing so. Too much of a state-shift: this one's a little tougher to get your mind around at first, but if say you met a girl and both of you were really excited and high energy, and you call her back later or text her when she's feeling much lower energy than when you meet her, she's likely to look at that ringing phone or blinking text message and think to herself, "I can't talk to him right now; it's too much work." A bad ending: "The end is important in all things." So goes one of my favorite quotes from the Hagakure. Even if you had a dynamite opener and the majority of the interaction went swimmingly, if the ending goes awkward or stale, the chances you never hear from a girl again go up dramatically. She wasn't all that interested: this happens sometimes to everyone. Resist the temptation to attribute every non-responder to a girl not really being interested, as most guys do -- it's quite often one of the other three reasons that's too blame. But sometimes it's really is just that she wasn't as interested as she'd seemed. It happens. girl doesn't text back Of these four reasons, #3 and #4 are the most easily correctable. 3. -- bad endings -- gets fixed when you get your closing streamlined. Check out the post on getting a girl's phone number and get more practice going for closes and you'll begin to self-correct and get smoother and more natural with time. 4. -- getting contact info from girls who actually aren't all that interested -- gets fixed as you become more attuned to the signals women are giving you. You become more aware of how to tell a girl is interested in you, and you plainly and simply stop taking contact info from girls you know aren't all that interested. 1. -- girls being nervous to respond because they really like you -- is tougher to change. You have to do a lot to minimize nervousness and maximize comfort while you're there in-person with a girl, and you've got to make sure that the text messages you send afterward or voicemails you leave are exceedingly warm and friendly. She needs to feel comfortable responding to you, above all. 2. -- girls experiencing a state-shift between how they felt when they first met you and how they feel when you call or text -- is the hardest to change. It entails actually changing the way you interact with women when first meeting them so that when they receive your text or call later, in a calmer, lower energy state, they'll be a lot more likley to respond. That can mean you need to completely overhaul you interactions with women, especially if you're an energetic, high energy guy. Fortunately, there's a shortcut around all of these learning curves, however; and that shortcut is... SPEND LESS TIME WITH WOMEN AND GET THEM RESPONDING MORE Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but bear with me on this one. Spending less time with a woman before you go for her contact information does something very special for you. It allows you to screen out the women who aren't all that into you, while simultaneous eliminating the bad things -- girls getting so into you they're too afraid to talk to you later, girls getting used to talking to you in a too-different energy level from their usual energy level, and bad endings to your interactions with girls. Said differently, it's about as close to a cure-all to the problem of a girl not texting back or a girl not calling back or answering as you can get. The women who seem very interested in you on first meeting you aren't time-wasters, and they're not being insincere. They really may enjoy the long conversation they have with you -- or maybe they're trying to be polite and sociable with someone who's taken the time to come up and get to know them. But, it's vitally important to note the difference between reactions and results. The two are different thing altogether, and reactions can oftentimes be misleading. A girl's smiling and laughing and chatting with you are mostly reactions. Her moving somewhere with you, or giving you her number readily when you ask for it fast -- those are a few examples of results. Results are what you ultimately need, regardless how promising (or not) your reactions may be. When you ask for the number fast, you get a real result. The girls who like you will happily give theirs; the ones who aren't so inclined will hesitate, or refuse outright. Very fast way of sifting the wheat from the chaff. WHEN A GIRL DOESN'T TEXT BACK But, let's say regardless how your interaction went when you met the girl the first time, you ended up with her number, but now you've called or texted her and she hasn't replied. What do to? When a girl doesn't text back or when a girl doesn't call back, the first thing you want to do is not panic. It's not the end of the world, and it doesn't mean you've lost her for good. It just means she hasn't gotten back to you yet. I once had an interaction with a girl where I texted her the night I met her and got no reply. Then I called her a day later, and got no answer. I shot her a text in lieu of leaving a voicemail, and she texted back apologizing for not answer but saying she hadn't realized it was me. A few days later, I tried calling her again. Again, no answer. I texted her again, and again she texted back later. One week after first meeting her, I called her. Again, no answer. I left a voicemail. She called me back, complained that she had nothing to do that night, and I invited her over to have dinner and drinks with me in my apartment, and a few hours after she came over, I took her as my lover. Persistence. It's the difference between the men who want it -- and get it -- and the men who don't. I had a guy I was mentoring who'd have women disappear and act completely disinterested, but he'd just persist relentlessly and eventually women would reappear, agree to meet up with him, and he'd finally take some of them to bed. Persistence via text or phone can work wonders... BUT, it's quite important that you persist in a cool, laid-back, socially savvy way, because there are all kinds of wrong ways to persist, and men for some reason are particularly good at finding them. Don't fall into the traps that most men do of getting needy, whiney, compalin-y, or pissed off at women for not replying; that guarantees you don't get a reply! Instead, here are some things to keep in mind so that you're persisting in an intelligent, attractive way that'll make a girl far more likely to want to start talking to you again: Don't get mad or accusatory. Yes, it may seem rude that she hasn't replied, but... you're a stranger! She doesn't know you from Jack yet, and doesn't realize what an awesome guy you are. Getting mad is 100% guaranteed to scare her off, so refrain from anything like, "I don't understand why you're being so standoffish." Don't get whiney. Just as bad as mad is sad: whiney, complian-y men are a huge turn off to every woman on the planet. "I just want to talk to you -- I'm not trying to be too pushy, but blah blah blah." No. It isn't appealing to you to get something like that from a woman, and it isn't appealing to a woman to get something like that from a man. DO be nonchalant. "Hey Karen, figured I'd drop you a line since we haven't connected in a few weeks. Just got back from the East Coast and starting to delve back into work again... ugh. Hope life's been treating you excellent... let me know what's new with you! - Chase" Treat the situation as if no one is to blame and the two of you are just reconnecting after a little time being busy with your own things. If you have some hurt feelings, stifle them; phone calls and text messages are not the places to be airing grievances or bandying about bad emotions. You want to be a breath of fresh air; a provider of good feelings and peace. That's the kind of thing that will make a woman want to pick up the phone and start talking to you, because she probably doesn't get it anywhere else in her life. DO refrain from being overly entertaining. "Just saw the most amazing movie today!" "OMG, think my head is going to explode, you'll never believe what just happened to me...!!!" Anything like that is no good. That kind of stuff is okay -- maybe -- three or four texts into a conversation you're already having with a girl. But texting that to open a text conversation cold -- as your text opener -- drips of tryhard reaction-seeking. Worse, in my experience, it rarely works, and when it does it gets you attention from girls who are curious -- rather than girls who are interested. Stick to normal stuff and you'll be fine. girl doesn't text back Finally, don't be afraid to give a girl a little time off if she doesn't reply for a while. My rule of thumb is something like this: She doesn't reply once: give her a day of radio silence. She doesn't reply twice in a row: give her 2 - 3 days of radio silence. She doesn't reply three times in a row: give her a week of radio silence. Then, if she's still not replying, you may want to try something more bold and experimental, depending on the situation. There's no one-shot, surefire way to reengage a girl who isn't responding; it's going to vary enormously depending on why she isn't responding in the first place. If she's too shy, a nice, warm voicemail might do the trick, or toning down your texting if you're coming across to entertaining or too "loud." On the other hand, if it feels like too much of a state-shift for her, sharing some more normal details of your life and asking her about hers via text may turn out to be just what the doctor ordered for helping her to see you as more "human" and less a dynamo. It isn't always possible to turn things around when a girl doesn't text back... but sometimes it is. And, if you do things right, and you keep the time you spend with a girl you're going to grab a number from to under 5 to 10 minutes, you might just find you substantially increase your phone number conversion rate... strange as that may seem!

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##What Does She Want? The 8 Things You Must Ask Her Early in my seduction career, I studied everything I could from the guys I considered the "top guys" who'd come before me. But I especially focused on the guys who really good were but who didn't know how to market themselves... essentially, the hidden gems of seduction. What I realized was that the mainstream school of thought on picking up women was almost as dogmatic as mainstream society itself; while mainstream society believed in: Be nice to women Take things slow Just be yourself Pay for dates No sex until the third date The pickup community at the time I entered also had its own tenets, chiefly: Follow the 3-second rule of approaching Seductions must unfold over 7+ hours You must be impressive and show higher value You must follow a "method" - certain steps and procedures, routines, etc. Fast seductions were "fools mates" and only happened with "easy" women Which to me seemed a definite step up and an improvement from what mainstream society preaches, but... it still seemed a bit too limiting and contrived. Why do you need some complicated procedure to "show your value" to women? Why do you have to go through some whole song and dance just to get girls? I ended up searching out unconventional teachers and older guys in the community who'd largely vanished from the main forums and hang outs, convinced I could learn the things from them that the rest of the devotees of the social and seductive arts seemed not to know. And by and large, I did. And one of the greatest lessons I learned from these studies was how to find out the answer to the question "what does she want?" using a forgotten technique its originator called "eliciting values." I'm going to teach you that technique today. what does she want Both mainstream society and the pickup community share one common flaw in how they think about women: that women are all the same. That they all think the same ways, and want the same things. That their emotions respond identically to identical stimuli. That their buttons can all be pushed to the same effect, if pushed the same way. And it's not true. Not by a long shot. Here's what I mean - Take a look again at some typical advice from mainstream society: Be nice to women Take things slow Just be yourself Pay for dates No sex until the third date What's this assume? Well, it assumes that, no matter WHO you are or WHAT you're like or WHAT any particular woman may want or need or require in her life at any particular time, women universally: Do not like men who are jerks Do not like men who move fast Do not like men striving to be more than they are Do not like men who don't pay for them on dates Will not engage in sex with men prior to the third date Meanwhile, take a look again at some typical advice from the pickup community: Follow the 3-second rule of approaching Seductions must unfold over 7+ hours You must be impressive and show higher value You must follow a "method" - certain steps and procedures, routines, etc. Fast seductions were "fools mates" and only happened with "easy" women What's this assume? Well, this advice assumes that, once again, no matter WHO you are or WHAT you're like or WHAT any particular woman may want or need or require in her life at any particular time, women universally: Lose interest in all men who take longer than 3 seconds to say "hello" Are slow to warm up to men, and require time to become comfortable with them Are not interested in men until those men show them why they should be Are difficult to get, so you need a highly systematized procedure to get them Will not engage in sex with men earlier than 7 hours in (unless it's a "fools mate") Both sets of advice share the same core assumption: that women are all the same and all want the same things. Which is baloney. Think about a man. Are there men out there who want nothing but a sex partner as fast as possible? How about men out there who want a committed long term relationship? How about men who want romance and adventure? How about men who want... anything? Sure. You know there are. Well guess what? The same is true for women. And when you limit yourself to a core set of beliefs of "Women won't do this" and "Women always do that," you also limit your success with them - to only the women who want what you think they want. WHAT DOES SHE WANT? WELL, IT DEPENDS Further, both the mainstream and the standard pickup approaches forget that it depends. A long time ago, in management training school at my first real job, I learned the management adage that "The correct response to every question in management is the answer, 'It Depends.'" What does it depend on? In the case of women, when you're asking yourself, "What does she want?" the question depends primarily on two things: Her, and You. Let me give you an example. Take Cassie. Cassie's an ordinary, run-of-the-mill girl. She's pretty, she did well in school, and now she's 23 years old, totally single, and working at her first post-graduation job. Imagine now that Cassie meets four different men, and ask yourself what she wants from each of them: A really nice guy who texts her all the time to talk and goes shopping with her A charming, suave man she meets who has a good career and is fun to be with An older, fatherly gentleman who's her boss at work and gives her good advice A saucy, edgy rock musician who plays in a local band at some of the local bars What's she want from each of these guys? Is it the same thing... or could it be different? Yeah, of course - obviously it's going to be different. You don't need to take 4 years of women's studies to figure that out. Now, if you know a thing or two about what women want, you'll know that for Cassie, our Average Jane, it isn't just somewhat different things she wants from each of these men, but often the fact is she wants some very different things from each of them: She wants to just be friends with the nice guy she talks and shops with She wants a relationship with the charming guy she likes who has a good job She wants her advice-giving boss as a platonic supporter and father figure She wants to hook up with the exciting, edgy rock musician, no strings attached Why? Why does what she want differ for each of these men? It's because they have different things to offer her. The friendly guy's greatest value to her is as a friend. The charming guy with a good job has potential to be a great boyfriend. The boss's largest source of value to her life is as an advice-giving supporter. And the rock musician's greatest value to her life is as an exciting hook up. She's not going to get very excited about sex with the platonic guy friend or boss, after all... in fact, she'll cringe at the very thought of it! Conversely, she might be excited about sleeping with the charming guy... BUT, she doesn't want to risk losing what could be a great shot at a great relationship for something as trivial as a roll in the hay, so she'll make him wait, and try and get a relationship. The rock musician, on the other hand, she'd really enjoy sleeping with him, but if he wants to keep seeing her afterward he might find it doesn't last long, because he simply doesn't have much to offer an upwardly mobile career woman like herself aside from some cheap thrills and good sex. One woman. Four different men. Four different things she wants from each of them. what does she want Now, some questions to put this all in perspective. Let's say each of these four men would really like to date Cassie and have her as his girlfriend. Riddle me this: Of the four men, which is best served by the mainstream advice - you know, "Be yourself, don't move too fast, pay for her on dates," etc.? If you said "the boyfriend prospect"... you'd be right! And of the four men, which is best served by the pickup community advice - you know, "Show higher value, get 7+ hours of face and talk time with her, follow the method and do the right things," etc.? Again... it's the boyfriend prospect, isn't it? Imagine the friend, boss, or rock musician trying to "just be themselves," take three dates before they do anything, and pay for dates for Cassie. The first two get written off as not attractive enough, and the third gets written off as not being nearly as sexy or dominant as she thought he was. And it's the exact same story for the pickup community advice. Both lines of recommendations - mainstream and pickup - would have you prove your worth to her; show her, over a series of time, why YOU measure up better as a prospective boyfriend than any other contender... why you BLOW the competition out of the water. And unless you're Superman - unless you really are charming, and suave, and on-point, and you've got a great job, and do everything right - the only women you're going to get with either of these recommendations regularly are going to be women who are beneath what you should be getting in terms of looks, intellect, ambition, and personality. The purpose of advice is supposed to be helping you to get past the competition. But both of these paths just tell you to assume all women are the same, all women want the same thing out of every man they meet, and to just wade in there and try to be the shiniest object in every category possible. Whereas the whole time instead, you could've just asked yourself, "What does she want - really?" then become that, and skipped the competition entirely. what does she want I mentioned earlier something I learned in management training. Well, here's something I learned in sales. When I was new to sales, we learned about the four sales archetypes: Driver Analytical Expressive Amiable Each of these archetypes has a different way of interacting with the salesman: Drivers are very direct, speak loudly and firmly, and only want to know "what" something will do... they just want a basic answer, and don't want to get bogged down with details. Analyticals, in contrast to drivers, want to know every little detail about a thing; how's it work, how long will it work for, what happens if it doesn't work, what are its ratings in this area and that area and the other area, how long is the warranty for, what's the warranty cover, etc. They're logical, methodical, and highly detail-oriented. Expressives don't care so much about the product, per se - what they care about is YOU! They want to talk, bond, and form a connection - it's all about the human touch for them. Amiables are the ones who just want everybody to get along. They're soft spoken, meek, and humble, and they aren't comfortable saying "no." Instead, they'll say "yes," and then just not do something if they don't want to do it. They are, in a word, agreeable. And what would you think is the best sales tactic for each of these personality types? Using the same sales strategy with each one? Hardly. It turns out that each disposition responds best to a salesman who ALSO has that disposition. And in sales training, they teach you how to recognize these four personality types... and how to quickly assume their characteristics yourself to best sell to the prospect. If he's analytical, hit him with details; make him feel like he understands every nuance of the product. If he's expressive, get to know him; make small talk, make conversation, and make him feel connected. If he's amiable, just be nice, and don't be too loud. And if he's driver, DO be loud, and be direct, and DON'T crowd him with details. Just tell him what it is, how much it is, and ask him if he wants to get started. And women are just like this. BECOMING THE MIRROR Women are highly socially attuned creatures. Much of the time, they serve as "mirrors" to the individuals around them, because this is how you bond and connect at a social level. Essentially, a woman will normally quickly find out what you expect of women in general, and if she likes you and wants to keep you around her, she will become that around you. So, if you think that women are all chaste little angels and that women who sleep with men quickly are horrible dirty sluts, a girl will quickly pick up on signs of this from you and she will act for all the world like a chaste little angel and have you believe that she is, even if, were you to ever find out her real history, or how many partners she'd had, or her true feelings about sex, you might well relegate her to your "Horrible Dirty Sluts" bin. Conversely, if you think that women are wild crazy naughty things by default, and overly conservative women are more like nuns than girls, if a girl likes you she's going to show you this side of her personality as much as possible, even if she isn't exactly the wildest of the wild bunch. Women are mirrors because it helps them attain their objectives with men, which are several fold: Not suffer reputation damage that could impede future mating Keep sufficient male support from diverse enough men as a survival mechanism Find men to fulfill mating and relationship roles They go in that order of importance. If a woman risks suffering reputation damage by being honest with you, she will not be honest with you. This means, if you're judgmental, you won't get the full story because you can't be trusted not to think poorly of her, and make her feel bad, or spread rumors about her to others. If you're safe from causing reputation damage but you offer her enough support (see: "Can I Help You?"), her top priority becomes securing that support from you. If you're no threat to her reputation, don't offer her much or anything support-wise, but do offer her reproductive value, then the doors are open to you for fast intimacy. And depending on which stage you fall in, you'll see a different side of each woman. Reputation risk: she'll act like the penultimate good girl around you, and chances are you'll never be more than just friends. No reputation risk, but offer plenty of non-sexual value to her life: she'll act like a charming girl, coy and conservative, to keep you intrigued but at arms length, to make sure she has a steady supply of the value you provide without mixing sex (a risk factor for having things blow up and her losing your value) into it. No reputation risk, not much non-sexual value on offer, lots of sexual value offered: she'll be direct, blunt, short with you; or entranced, enamored, and affectionate with you; or, if she's inexperienced, very nervous and excited with you. But of course, that's all in how she reflects back to you what she sees in you. Obviously, you want to get her to #3 to have the best chance of getting together with her (and after you've slept with her, you can always start dialing up the non-sexual value offered to her as well if you want to move into a boyfriend role). So how do you get her to see you the way you want her to see her? By you becoming the mirror to her first, and allowing her to mirror you second, rather than you just being you and her mirroring you, as usually happens with men and women, and as happens in both the mainstream and the usual pickup community scenarios. You want to find out the answer to "What does she want?" And then, once you know it, you want to become it. THE WRONG KIND OF VALUE That archive of advice I dove into years ago was by a guy who used the handle "MrSex4uNYC," and he advocated using what he called "eliciting values" to find out what women wanted so that he could become it. In a bar, or on a date at a coffee shop, he'd sit and talk to women... and just ask them who they were, what they wanted out of life, and what kind of men they dated and relationships they had. And then he'd become it. This interested me so much back then that I set out to learn it. My early attempts at building eliciting values into my conversations with women were one of the things that led me to deep diving. Because the original poster on eliciting values didn't go much into his methodology, it was left to me to pick up the pieces and figure out how to do the actual execution on this on my own. Fortunately, breaking things down and putting them back together happens to be one of my stronger suits, so I set out doing just that. Eventually, I boiled it down to a series of questions - questions I'd ask women in conversation to find out what they were really looking for. I'd refrain from sharing too much of my own opinions before finding this out - when you don't know anything about her and you start spouting out opinions, this is how you turn off women you don't know very well yet and scare them away 99% of the time. It's where the pickup community goes wrong in its "show higher value" philosophy, because that philosophy isn't first preceded by, "find out what 'high value' IS to her... then show higher value." Mainstream society's advice seems to not make this mistake, but then you realize it doesn't actually give much advice about what to actually do with women at all, so this is hardly to its credit. Yes, there are forms of universal value - these are your fundamentals that you can get down. Things like being a sexy man and being dominant with women and leading them. Where most guys in pickup and in mainstream society alike go wrong though is launching into detailed stories about things that THEY think are high value... that the girl herself doesn't relate to at all! So the guy think's he's showing how impressive he is... and the girl just thinks he's being a dolt. She gets turned off, leaves, and he wonders what happened. He thought he was so valuable! But it was the wrong kind of value, because they didn't elicit out of her what she values first. ELICITING VALUES: WHAT DOES SHE WANT? As I reverse-engineered the process of eliciting values, I eventually came upon 8 key questions I started to ask women every time before I'd go into sharing things about myself that would make her view me as impressive and valuable. That way, I only painted myself as valuable in ways that she actually valued. When you adopt this strategy, you can save yourself a lot of wasted breath, and only show the sides of yourself that women will most relate to to them - thus becoming the kind of man they most want. what does she want (and if you feel disappointed to not be able to share EVERYTHING about yourself right away, realize that this is only the initial courtship and mating phase - once she realizes that she likes you a lot and the two of you become lovers, you can show every side of yourself to her that you care to and she'll be a lot more open to and accepting of the whole of you than she was before the two of you were together) Here are the questions you want to ask, and why you want to ask them: "Is that what you want to do forever?" The reason you ask this - about her career, or her planned career, if she's in school - is to find out how ambitious she is. If she wants an ordinary 9-to-5 job for the rest of her life and you start talking about your dream of someday having your own lunar colony, you're going to lose her. Conversely, if she tells you she wants to be the governor of Oklahoma and you tell her you'd be happy to spend the rest of your life fixing vacuum cleaners, you'll lose her there too. Find out how deep her ambitions go - then relate to her on them. "Have you traveled much, or do you want to?" If this is anything other than an emphatic "yes!" then you want to avoid the subject of travel like a plague. Some women find the idea of travel intoxicating and alluring - if this is the case, they'll make this clear as day the instant you ask about it, trust me. Then you're free to talk about traveling all you like and they'll view you as a man of romance and mystery. If, on the other hand, they think travel is weird and unusual and don't understand why anyone would want to do it, if you start talking about how well-traveled you are, guess what: now YOU'RE weird and unusual and unable to be understood! So, it's very important you broach this subject lightly first - and direct your conversation accordingly. "When you've got free time, what do you do?" Let's say you play video games, work out at the gym, and take salsa lessons. If she plays video games and you talk to her about working out, she's going to think you're a big dumb jock and potentially out of her league. If she takes dance lessons, and you talk about video games, she's going to think you're a nerd. If she's a fitness nut and you talk about dance, she's going to think you're not serious about your body. Find out what she does with her free time, and talk about the most related things that you do, leaving the unrelated things out of the discussion altogether. If all her activities are boring, just get off this topic ASAP. No need for you to relate to her on boring stuff and convince her that you're every bit as boring as her. Boring people don't want to be around other boring people, they want people who can bring a little enthusiasm (that they can relate to) into their lives. "Ever go on any crazy adventures?" This one's all about finding out how much of a thrill seeker she is. Generally speaking, the more of a thrill seeker she is, the bigger the green light you'll have to get sexual, move things fast, and be direct. The less of a thrill seeker she is, the more conservatively and cautiously you'll want to take things, and the less you'll want to talk about your own crazy adventures (and the more toned-down you'll want them to sound if you do). One exception: the girl who acts really bored at this question, like it's a big joke. THIS girl you can get sexual with and move faster on than almost anyone... as soon as you start picking up a relaxed "don't give a crap" attitude from a girl, that's a green light to move fast and be direct, because she doesn't like or tolerate longwinded conversations or much beating around the bush. "How far do you usually plan ahead?" The reason you ask this is to gauge her reaction. If she starts going into some detailed answer on her long-term planning, she's analytical and methodical, which means you need to take more time with her, really break down what she's looking for in a man, and be that. If she acts confused or annoyed at the question, she's kind of ditzy; just change the topic. If she laughs and says proudly that she DOESN'T plan ahead, she's a thrill seeker who lives for the moment - so you'll want to generate excitement, fun, and a thrilling ending for your date. "What was your childhood like?" This is another chance to find out more about her - was she a good student and a bookworm (in which case, she's most open to a captivating, romantic seducer who can bring to life the fantasies she read about so many times as a girl); was she a tomboy and troublemaker (in which case, you want to be more blunt and direct with her, and talk about some of the trouble YOU used to get in); did she have a rough childhood (in which case she needs a man to SAVE her, but you don't want to go overboard on this or she'll want to suck you into a long-term platonic savior role; instead, offer her words of condolence in an almost neutral voice tone to show you understand without becoming an emotional tampon). "What do you think of me so far?" This gets you her feedback on you, and helps you gauge where you're at - she'll tell you things she likes (you'll want to amplify them throughout the remainder of the conversation, with subtlety), things she doesn't understand (you'll want to avoid them for the remainder of the conversation), or she may tease you or flirt with you (if there's a sexual vibe there, it's time to take her home). "And is that good?" Ask her this after anything she says about you that's she doesn't attach a clear value judgment to (e.g., "Well, you're incredibly ambitious" when she hasn't mentioned whether she's ambitious herself or not yet). Remember to pay attention to her emotion, not her words ("Yeah, that's pretty good," said with unenthusiastic tones mean, "Not for me," whereas, "I think it's great," said with very warm tones means she likes it a LOT), and use this feedback to adjust accordingly. You'll notice I left a few things out, specifically: "What kind of guys do you date?" "What was your last boyfriend like?" "Think you'll ever settle down?" "What's the longest relationship you've ever had?" I've tested these and many other varieties, but they all tend to lead to the woman feeling like it's a higher-pressure "relationship evaluation" type date, where you're respecting her for how satisfactory she is as a relationship partner, or, conversely, what she looks for in a relationship partner. These questions cause her to slow down and place you in the prospective boyfriends bin. For that reason, I find it's generally better to NOT talk about relationships at all during an interaction with a woman, and simply get to know what she's looking for in men indirectly through the 8 questions I outlined above. That way, you as the conversationalist get your answer to "what does she want?" without having to actually come out and tell her you're trying to find out what she wants. All that's left for you after that then is for you to simply become it. Here's to being the mirror.

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##What Makes for a Bad First Date? I had a reader recently contact me, a little confused as to why a girl who'd seemed to like him had turned down the first date idea he'd proposed and counter-offered that they go golfing instead. His idea had been for the two of them to go swimming at the pool that she worked at, where he met her. This is one of those things that, on the surface, in the moment where you're trying to think of date ideas, it seems like a great one: should be easy for her (she works there, so she's already there and doesn't have to go anywhere), safe to assume she likes it (she wouldn't work at a pool if she didn't like swimming), and it's fun. But in fact, on further reflection, this is ends up being one of the great many bad first date ideas a man could have, and on top of that it's a very easy dating mistake to make. The reasons why this and many other first date ideas make for bad first dates are a little cloudy and a little hard to see until you're trained to look for them. Today, I'm going to break out what those factors are that differentiate a good first date from a bad first date, and help you make sure you only ever have great dates (or, at least, great date ideas!) going forward. You can thank me later -- when all your dates are awesome. THE MAKING OF A BAD FIRST DATE A long time ago, a mentor of mine talked about something he called "The Three Cs of Dating": Cheap, Convenient, and Conversation. At the time, I took those three Cs as kind of a rough guideline, but I didn't view them as absolute laws of dating that I had to stick by. These days though, for the most part, I do. I've personally seen the impact of not doing so again and again: Go on an expensive date, and the girl starts seeing you as boyfriend material and things slow way down and usually the two of you never get together. Go on an inconvenient date, and all manner of things can go wrong and you can be late or she can be late or logistics are bad or other things get in the way and feelings get hurt or too much time is spent managing the logistical nightmare that is the inconvenient date and it all falls apart. Go on a date with little conversation, and frequently attraction is stymied (but not always! This is the one rule I think you can play with some, and bend if not outright break -- in certain situations). Basically put, typically, if you mix in even one false element -- if your date is pricey; if it's inconvenient; and/or if there's little conversation -- it's going to be a bad date and it's going to crash and burn (or at least pathetically limp its way whimpering to the dating graveyard). Nowadays, I personally add two very important "Cs" to those list of Cs of dating, so I have my very own "Five Cs of Dating". My two additional Cs are Covert and Control. Let's look at covert first. Why covert? Because the instant people from her life know about you, they start asking her questions about you ("Hey, how'd it go with that guy you met?"), offering opinions on you ("Clarence seems like a great guy"), and monitoring her. And the instant she starts being pressured and monitored, she gets super cautious -- her reputation is potentially at stake. This slows things way down. In other words, a girl who might've gone to bed with you soon into your first date together if no one she knew had known much about you or known you were seeing each other will instead push things out -- potentially forever -- if her friends, family, coworkers, or other acquaintances know about your date. Last September, I met a tall, pretty Chinese girl with a goddess-like body while leaving a nightclub. She was excited to meet me, though when I invited her out to join a few friends and myself several days later (a kind of date I don't do anymore because of the "convenient" concern), she brought her girlfriend with her. The day afterward, I asked her to meet me again, and she asked if she could bring her friend -- that time I told her that I really just wanted to hang out with her, and we could hang out with her friend another time. About a week-and-a-half later, we became lovers (we had some crossed signals on that first date that ruined logistics when she went to meet me at the wrong place, and it took about a week more for us to get the next date scheduled). She was a fairly conservative girl though, and panicked a bit at first, saying it was too fast... but she quickly recovered from this when I reassured her it was okay, because nobody knew we were together. For the next two months, she kept me as her secret lover to avoid people in her circle knowing about me. Some of them later found out -- that girlfriend of hers we happened to run into at a restaurant while we were together, and the jig was, for all intents and purposes, up -- but I promise you, had people in her circle known about me from the outset, things would've gone a lot slower. That social circle girl'd thought we were just friends, and assumed my then-girlfriend hadn't seen me again after that first outing. Fact is, had people known about her and me, she would've had to keep up appearances. She would've had to make sure that everyone around her saw her as a cautious, responsible girl who didn't go to bed with just anyone -- and certainly didn't go to bed with anyone fast. We might never have gotten together. She for sure would've been a lot more on-guard and nervy around me, and definitely a lot less comfortable and natural and real. If you aren't covert in setting up your dates -- if you aren't taking pains to ensure a girl's social circle doesn't find out about the two of you -- you may very well end up shooting yourself in the foot, and may inadvertently end up on a date where the girl has to move slow and can't do anything... because otherwise, her circle will know, and they'll be watching her (and judging her). It's your responsibility to remove the possibility of her being judged. Fail to do so, and you'll hardly ever get the girl (except in the case of very liberal friends / nightclub pulls, etc.). And how about control, our fifth C of dating -- why control? Well, from experience, I've found it's almost never a good idea to go on the date a girl wants to go on with her. There's no faster path to becoming just friends than letting a girl choose the date location (they usually choose very safe, harmless date ideas... not exactly the setting for ramping up attraction and taking a gal to bed). Women just don't seem to feel attraction for men who let them take the lead in calling the shots. To build attraction with a woman on a date, your best bet lies in you being in control, you calling the shots (in a warm, inclusive way -- not oafishly, mind you) and you deciding what the two of you do. Remember, you must be inclusive. So, "What say we go grab a bite at a little café near here?" is you being in control while being inclusive. She may say "no", but you'll just persist and get her to come anyway. Alternatively, "We're going to to get some food at a café now." is you being in control while not being inclusive in the decision-making process. She may still come along, but you'll sacrifice attainability in the process -- she'll start feeling a little colder and a little less close to you. bad first date WHAT A BAD FIRST DATE LOOKS LIKE The first date is arguably the most important date, because it determines the entire progression of what is to come. Also, if you're like me and you're moving fast with women, the first date's going to be the date you most often end up taking women to bed! So you really want to try and cover the bases and make sure you're doing things right. A bad first date is a first date that violates any of our 5 Cs of Dating: It's not cheap It's not convenient It's not conducive to conversation It's not covert You're not in control / calling the shots I'll give you a few examples... Last fall, I had a date with a pretty blonde German girl with curly hair that was not cheap (she got us concert tickets for $30 apiece), not convenient (it was far away), and not conducive to conversation (it was a classical music concert... no talking during the show), and I was not calling the shots (she proposed the date, time, and set everything up). I ended up showing up 45 minutes late because of traffic and because I misjudged how long it'd take to get there, and we hardly talked the whole night because of the concert (can't talk over Chopin), so I wasn't able to calm her down from the upset of waiting almost an hour for me and missing part of the concert. No second date on that one, despite the fact that she'd chased me hard for the first date. Here's another one I blew, courtesy violating the Cs: Two years ago, I had an American girl chasing me hard, who called me up one night to invite me to go to a party at a nightclub her friends were throwing with her. At the point things were at, I had a strong feeling that whenever we next met we'd end up in bed together, and I was getting the vibe she certainly had the same feeling too. Foolishly, and despite knowing better, I accepted the invitation to the part; she picked me up, took us there, then proceeded to largely ignoring me the whole time once her friends (whom she hadn't seen in a while) arrived, dashing around meeting friend after friend, while I was forced into "impress the friends" mode for hours. Finally, I realized she was "showing me off" and could see her attraction for me plummeting as I showed off what a good, socially-integrated part of her life I could be. I called the rest of the night off and had her drive me home, and neither of us spoke to the other again. Had I just had her come over to my place another time, we would've became lovers. Instead, I went with her to the party, and she tried to shove me into the early boyfriend role and I lost her. Inconvenient, little conversation, and most definitely not covert and I was most definitely not in control. Conversely, almost all the dates I've gone on over the past 8 or 9 months have been structured to follow all the five Cs -- they're simple dates, where the girl meets me somewhere convenient for me, I pay nothing or next to nothing (a small meal at a café, perhaps, though many times the girls spring for that too), we have plenty of conversation, no one she knows knows about us, and I'm the one who sets everything up and arranges the date, time, and place. The majority of girls I take on dates like this end up becoming my lovers on the first date. Seeing the trend? Back to our reader's date idea. Why'd his girl counteroffer that they go golfing instead? It's because that first date swimming at her work was way too overt... instead of covert. They'd have their first date... right in front of all of her coworkers. People she spends eight hours a day with. They'd be talking to her about that guy she brought swimming forever. They'd want to know everything about him. How'd she meet him, what's he like, how're things going with him. She'd end up being under a tremendous amount of social pressure... all for a harmless little swimming date at work. Now, that'd be fine if he was her boyfriend of 2 or 3 months and she felt comfortable answering those kinds of questions. It's not so good if he's some guy she doesn't yet know from Jack and isn't even sure her coworkers will take to him kindly, or that she'll want to see again. Remember, a girl isn't sure she wants to see you again regularly and have you become her lover until you've already been lovers, and taken her to bed, at least 2 or 3 times. Before that point, you're on shaky ground. In addition to the violation of the "covert" rule, the swimming date also violates the "conversation" rule -- you can't do a lot of connecting and getting to know a girl while you're doing laps around the pool. It also violates the "convenient" rule -- both of them have to put a lot of effort into the date (swimming is fun, but it ain't easy), and it's not a location that it's easy to go to bed in (her coworkers are all around, lots of other people are around, and there's no easy way to get her to a bed somewhere). That's why she countered with golf -- something where her social circle isn't going to be watching and judging her (covert) and the two of them will be able to get to know one another (conversation). Golf's still a date our hero ought to counteroffer her counteroffer on -- it's a little inconvenient, and the logistics to pull from a golf course are horrible (unless you're the only ones on the course and there's a grove of trees somewhere you can take her to go get together in!). It's also potentially a little on the expensive side, and it's definitely not a date he's in control of or calling the shots about setting up. You've got to be in charge of arranging the date -- that's how you make sure you end up on a date that satisfies the Five Cs of Dating and that's how you give yourself the best possible shot at having a good outcome and having your girl end up becoming intimate with you. bad first date AVOIDING BAD FIRST DATES AND HAVING GOOD ONES If you stick to the Five Cs of Dating, you'll avoid bad dates and regularly end up on good ones. So, use them as your metric -- any time you're about to propose a date or agree to a date, ask yourself the following questions: Is it cheap? Are you going to pay little or no money -- or is money going to play a role in this date? Money can make things awkward -- trying to decide whether you should pay for a date -- and money can make a girl more likely to start seeing you as a boyfriend candidate -- and more likely to slow things down with you. Is it convenient? Is this date going to be easy for you and (relatively) easy for her? e.g., rock climbing is fun and all... but it's not convenient. Both of you have to head to some gym or some cliff face somewhere, put in a lot of work climbing rocks, and there are no beds anywhere nearby for you to turn this date into something more than a date (and that's really what it's all about, right? You're not going on a date to have a new fun activity pal for climbing rocks and hitting up comedy shows platonically). Somewhere close to where you live is best. Is there conversation? If you can't talk to her, you can't move things forward. You can violate this one at times -- if she's already very attracted to you, for instance, you can structure a date that gets straight to the point and gets the two of you together; or, if you're good at getting very physical during movie dates / comedy shows / concerts, you can often use touch to get a girl primed for intimacy there. But usually, you'll want conversation. Is it covert? Are her friends going to be watching her and judging her? Are other people going to be watching her and judging her (especially relevant when traveling overseas in a judgmental culture, particularly when you are dating outside your race -- e.g., if you're an Asian guy dating a white girl, or a black guy dating a Latina, or a white guy dating an Asian girl). Minimize social pressure on her and you maximize the odds of a positive outcome for you both. Do you keep control? Are you the one calling the shots, making it happen, and setting the time, place, and pace of the interaction? You don't have to have absolute control -- you can propose a date at 1 o'clock, and she counteroffers 3 o'clock, and you tell her that's fine -- but the basic structure of the date ought to be something you decide on. I'm at the point now where if I tell a girl she can meet me at my subway stop, and she counteroffers somewhere else, I'll often just cancel the date because I know it's very unlikely to amount to anything and isn't worth spending a lot of my time on. If you run through those five questions real quick in your head any time you're weighing a date option, you pretty much can't go wrong. Get used to structuring your dates to maximize success, and you can really get hitting them out of the park. Once you have a good date setup, it's really quite elementary and straightforward. All the time you spend wondering about what to do with this girl, that girl, which girl is ready for what... it all disappears when you have a good method and you stick to it and follow it. It's all process: follow a good process, and you get results. 'Til next time.

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##What Regular Guys Don't Understand Today I found myself reading an article on the Washington Post's website titled "Date Lab: A Matchmaking Year in Review". It was all about these blind dates that the newspaper had sent people on throughout the year. I clicked through and read about each of the dates discussed, and paid attention to why the dates that didn't pan out didn't. For every single one of them, it came down to the same exact story as what I used to read when things didn't work out in the monthly Pacific Beach magazine in Pacific Beach, San Diego, where they'd also have a blind date they sent a pair of readers out on each month. I've come to the conclusion, based on my own experiences, that of friends, and of all these blind dates I've read about, that dating doesn't work out the majority of the time because the guy doesn't measure up. If you read about the blind dates that don't work out in that Washington Post article, you'll notice a similar thread through all of them: the guy says When I saw her, I definitely was physically attracted to her, and the girl says When I saw him, I instantly knew he was not my type. Why is this so consistently the case? UNINSPIRING REGULAR GUYS All the guys in those blind dates - and most of the ones I used to read about in that monthly magazine in PB - look and seem pretty, well, regular. As in, not very interesting, engaging, charming, or sexy. Granted, many of the girls are pretty regular too, but guys are easy to impress. Show up with nice hair, a pair of breasts, not be too fat, and have a face anything better than plain (or sometimes less), and the majority of men will rate a girl as being "physically attractive." Because we men are built to, basically, mate with any girl who will take us, long-term considerations aside. Women, on the other hand, have a whole host of things they're looking for, both in potential boyfriends and in potential paramours. No girl wants to imagine herself with a "regular, average guy" even if she is, in fact, a regular average girl. Every girl wants a guy like she sees in the movies or reads about in romance novels. Weird thing I noticed as I went through the different blind date articles - all the guys look the same! With but a few exceptions, every single one of them: Has a closely-cropped "Regular Guy Hairdo" that probably cost $13 at the local SuperCuts, Is wearing a plain-looking button-down dress shirt a few sizes too big over some sort of t-shirt or undershirt - the "Regular Guy Uniform", Is smiling a friendly-guy smile instead of a sexy smile, and Is utterly lacking in any kind of sexy facial hair. All these guys look like they shop at the Gap and wear American size large when American size small would suffice, and they think the key to getting girls is being nice and friendly. Which is, really, what most people think, and what most people will tell you. That's the harm in taking advice from people who have no practical real-world experience - when their mothers try to tell them how to get girls, or they listen to people on TV who don't have much success with women themselves, they're bound to think and do the wrong things. Further, it's clear the men on most of these dates are a tad on the clueless side - like poor Jeremy, who looks like a deer-in-the-headlights in his picture, and didn't do much more than respond to questions Piers asked until she got him on the topic of computers, where he then proceeded to talk expansively about things she didn't understand and couldn't relate to. Good news for Jeremy is he realizes he needs more experience with women, and even mentions it was a good opportunity to get more dating under his belt. Hopefully he'll be more proactive in the future and get to work actively getting more experience. When a regular guy goes to a date, he usually goes like this: Regular, average, boring clothes, Regular, average, boring conversation, Regular, average, boring friendly vibe, and No idea how to run the date or manage it, instead hoping that somehow everything will work out on its own. This is why regular guys fail so much at dating and why so often women end up not being interested. For another perspective, let's take the regular guy approach to dating and apply that same approach to trying to get a job. The Regular Guy Approach to Dating, As Applied to Job Interviewing Show up to interview in baggy, oversized, average suit Talk about whatever comes to mind, generally average boring work experience, with no forethought or focus on highlights like accomplishments and achievements Have an average, unassuming, regular vibe Come in with no plan for the interview, simply assuming he'll just "wing it" and hoping he gets the job. Instead of showing up in crisp, powerful clothes, with well-thought out responses to interview questions and insightful comments and queries to make and ask back, a vibe of being excited, a go-getter, and an achiever, and coming in with a definite plan for how the interview will go - how he'll begin it, how he'll manage the middle, and how he'll close it out at the end - the regular guy comes in clueless, looking clueless, and just wings it, hoping for the best. Actually, there are lots of guys who treat their job interviews this way; it isn't just dating. You'd think people would do a better job with stuff like this. It's something that's important to a person, and they just decide to wing it. Makes you want to go up to the guy, smack him on the head, and tell him, "Dress better! Stop looking and acting like a friendly nice guy! Be interesting! Get a plan for your dates!" Argh. CLAWING OUT OF CLUELESSNESS Fortunately, being clueless is not a place you are eternally damned to. 4 ½ years ago, I used to have a close-cropped "Regular Guy Hairdo" and wear the boring oversize "Regular Guy Uniform" and come across much more normal (if still a little unconventional) than edgy and sexy. I knew it was a problem though, and while I wasn't entirely sure how to fix it, I focused on it and as a result steadily chipped away at the regular guy image until there was none left. I don't dress over the top, or have tattoos, or look like a punk, but I don't think there's anyone who would mistake me anymore for being a regular guy. Those badass guys some of the girls in the articles talk about with muscles and tattoos weren't born with those muscles and tattoos. They decided they wanted to be badass guys with muscles and tattoos, so they hit the gym and hit the tattoo parlor, and they learned how to be the kind of badass that those kinds of girls go for. You don't necessarily have to have those things - I don't have a single tattoo, and I don't think I'll ever get one, I change too much and I don't want to be stuck with something on me I can't change, and while I have worked out fairly religiously since I was 16 (though not in the past year or so, admittedly), I was never big - just toned. You can be skinny and sexy, too - you just need to have an edge. Regular guys don't realize this, though. They think if they show up and put on their best friendly Mr. Rogers smile and throw on a large-size button-down shirt and talk about their day in the office and their favorite sports team that women will somehow magically see them as sexual beasts, rather than be bored to tears, and want to be with them. Regular guys never stop and ask themselves, "What is it that turns a woman on? What makes her go wild for a man?" That's why they fail. Because they never bother to ask what women want. And because they don't know, they aren't able to give it to them. That's another shocking revelation for regular guys: that just being themselves is not enough. I'm not sure why it's so shocking. They ought to realize that the girls they get excited about on dates - the ones they refer to as "physically attractive" - are working hard doing all kinds of things to make themselves into the kinds of women that men want. They dress up in interesting, sexy outfits; they get fashionable hairstyles; they put on heels and push-up bras to make themselves seem taller and better endowed, respectively. They put makeup on their faces and paint on their nails; all this they do to seem appealing to men and to jockey for status with other women. They also typically read up incessantly on how to do better with men, how to be successful in dating, and how men think and what men want. See The Rules; see Why Men Marry Bitches; see He's Just Not That Into You. Women love this stuff; they eat it up. They want to know how men tick and how to succeed with men. The life of even a regular woman is about constantly learning how to be more attractive to men and adjusting herself accordingly. Regular men? No such ambition. They want to dress the same way they've been dressing since high school, talk about the same things with women they talk about with their buddies, and hope that, despite it being the man's responsibility to lead things forward, things will somehow magically work out on their own. That's what regular guys don't understand. As soon as they do understand it, though, it's a pretty straightforward process: just start working on getting better and more attractive to women all the time. It needs to become a hobby; a preoccupation, just as it is for women. Women are busting their asses to be attractive to the most attractive men out there; if a man wants to do well with them, he needs to be similarly working hard at being attractive to the most attractive women out there. This is how a man claws out of cluelessness and becomes the kind of dashing, debonair chap that women go nuts for, chase after, and generally just act like excited little girls who made some thrilling new discovery over (in the case of a guy who knows how to be attractive and is, these women have discovered a very sexy man they want to bed). The fact that you're reading this article means you're probably far better off than most of the guys in that article I linked to earlier, so cheers. But even if you're just starting out, you should be nothing but hopeful; once you realize the overarching reason behind why you haven't been having the success you want, you can start changing it. This is the real power of personal self-improvement; once you realize what it is you want to change, you just set about making that change happen, and with time, diligence, and the proper instruction, it does. That's another thing regular guys don't understand, but you, if you're reading this, do - that it isn't fate that's responsible for how your life and your success with women go. It's you. Here's to a happy and transformative New Year!

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##What to Text Girls to Get DATES There is a phase that every student of the Art of Seduction goes through... and that is the FLAKE phase. This post is about what to text girls to get yourself through that phase... as quickly as possible. You're already advanced enough to approach women, get them interested in you and even to get their phone numbers… but they just don't pick up the phone, answer your text messages or come out on another date with you! This is one of the most frustrating experiences, because while you have the numbers of twenty beautiful girls in your phone, you might as well have none. They enjoyed your approach and seemed into you, but suddenly it seems almost impossible to meet them again, and they hardly give you the time of day. I remember when I hit this plateau in learning how to seduce women myself. Now, I'm a real enthusiast when I want to learn a new skill (some of my friends might even say "obsessive"), so if I want to figure something out, I really dig my teeth into it until I have it NAILED. And I did the same with the topic of flakes, and text- and phone game. HOW COME THE NUMBERS DON'T LEAD ANYWHERE? I spent WEEKS doing nothing but going through all my journals looking for the best text messages I had ever sent to girls, to learn what to text girls to elicit the best returns. I went through all kinds of blogs, techniques, products and forum posts about how to text girls and how to call girls. I talked to all my friends who are good with women about it. I built myself a magical toolbox of text message flirting: open loops, qualification statements, buying temperature spikes, attraction pieces, funny texts, false-choice double-binds, frames… you name it. I collected all the best texts in one big spreadsheet and tested them SYSTEMATICALLY… one by one (if you're a girl reading this and you got one of those experimental texts, I sincerely apologize). I eventually perfected my "text game" to a point where, if a girl was going to be texting with me, it would probably be the most interesting text interaction of her life… and I mean that. This post is about the results of my experiments, and what I found to REALLY work. THE RESULT OF THOSE EXPERIMENTS...? You will probably like to hear what I found: It's all BS. None of the above is at all necessary. Now, I'm the first to caution students against anybody who says that getting good with women doesn't take a lot of work, and that it's easy… success is certainly SIMPLE, but there are no magic pills in this game. But you also can't trick women into sleeping with you by writing a clever text message! what to text girls In fact, now when I have a REALLY good SMS exchange with a girl, it's almost a red flag for me… because many of those I've had in the past didn't go anywhere. Think about it: If the girl was really into you, she would just come out and meet up with you, instead of spending days and weeks texting back and forth. If she WASN'T really into you… a text is not going to salvage what you weren't able to do when you had her RIGHT THERE in front of you… IN PERSON. When you had the advantage of being able to use body language and eye contact and vocal tonality and a million other little things we can do face to face. In fact, I've had SEVERAL interactions with girls that were so good, so clever and so funny, that I was thinking: "Damn, I HAVE to write these down and teach them to my students… these are brilliant!" In none of the cases did I end up getting involved with the girl. On the other hand, my BEST seductions, my HOTTEST affairs, my DEEPEST relationships, with the most ATTRACTIVE women… all seemed to be preceded by very SIMPLE text exchanges. WHAT TO TEXT GIRLS TO GET DATES My favorite first text to send to a girl I have just met is this: "Hi Julia, this is Ricardus… save my number." Yup… That's IT! I don't try to make her curious about the "crazy thing that just happened to me that she will never guess", I don't try to make her laugh, I don't use "callback humor" to remind her how awesome I am, I don't write ANYTHING to impress her, and I certainly don't try to TRICK her into a meet-up. The point is, doing any of the above is gimmicky... and working hard for her attention. In any social situation, whoever exerts less effort holds more power. See: sprezzatura, the Law of Least Effort. That's why coming up with clever texts reduces your power... she KNOWS you're trying hard to get her attention. Heck, *I* know a girl is trying to "game" me when she does any of that (and they do!). It's really transparent, and only makes her position weaker. I also can't imagine George Clooney doing any of these things… or Brad Pitt, or Hugh Jackman. The gimmicky type of text is simply not MASCULINE. A real man is the sun that the planets had better revolve around… he doesn't chase girls. He's also not responsible for her entertainment. These guys have nothing to prove… neither do I, and neither do you. The subtext of minimalist texting is one of utter confidence. She can TELL: "Oh… there's a guy who doesn't feel the need to try hard, like all the other 27 guys that I gave my number and who are texting non-stop now, trying to be clever and funny." So what's the difference between this minimalist approach and the boring generic regular guy? Good question! The answer is that this is all down to your first impression. If you've made a strong, masculine, solid first impression, then sending her a lot of gimmicky tricks and jokes to her phone will only serve to undermine that. The most impressive thing to a woman is a man who isn't trying to impress her. OTHER GOOD TEXTS THAT GET RESULTS I also like to use text to set up the next meet-up with a girl. The first rule is that you shouldn't just take phone numbers… you should always try and agree on when and where to meet her next. If you did this right, you won't ever have to text her, other than to confirm that the meet-up is still on. If you weren't able to do this, however, here's a great second text you can send her after the one above: "Hey Julia, what's your schedule like this week?" Notice I didn't ask her to meet me on a specific time or date. If you do that and she happens to genuinely be busy then, you've already started chasing her through her schedule. Instead, let HER make suggestions. Even if you DO make a suggestion and she turns it down, it might still be one of two things… she might be blowing you off, or she might be legitimately busy. Having her suggest an alternative is a quick and reliable way to figure out which one it is. Once you know when she's free, suggest a meet-up. Don't ask or whine or beg. Simply put it out there. Be a man, and take the lead… women expect it, in dating as much as on the dance floor. "Cool, meet me on Thursday for a drink at Mandala Bar… say 7 o'clock?" The last text I would probably send to a girl would be a simple message to check in whether the date is still on or not. This could be on the day of, or a day before. There are tricks and techniques here to trick her into not flaking… but just as before, you will make a much stronger impression if you keep it SIMPLE. Continue to be that guy who has nothing to prove and who's not overly concerned with this whole thing… it sub-communicates that you have a lot of options and a lot going on in your life, which is one of the most attractive things "Hey Julia, are we on for tonight?" If you live in a place where people usually follow through on what they say and show up on time just because of the culture, you probably won't have to worry about this, but if you're in Los Angeles or in a Southern Country, you might throw in another text just to tell her to be on time. "Whoever is late pays the first round!" If she is late, you don't actually have to make her pay the first round… in fact, I recommend you don't. It's pretty easy to pull off once you get good at dealing with women, but it's not the smoothest thing to do and you don't want to look like a cheapskate either. Just pay, and tell her something like: "Okay, don't worry about the bill - I'll get it, but you HAVE to be on time next time." I've actually had several girls tell me to put away my wallet at this time… they'd rather have the right to be a bit late than get their dates paid for! Either way you've taken the lead, and demonstrated that you have standards for how you will be treated. CALLING GIRLS: TEXTING IS BETTER Okay, if you liked the above… if you also consider it GOOD NEWS that you don't have to be overly clever and gimmicky in your texts… then you will REALLY like what I have to say about calling girls. I don't ever call girls anymore! what to text girls Just like with text game, I spent a LOT of time working on my "phone game". I studied it, practiced it, analyzed it, and collected a TON of empirical data about it, from the first phone call to the last one. And while I found that a minimalist approach often works best with texting, this is even more extreme with the phone: it's often best not to talk on the phone at all. I know some guys who are really good at talking to girls on the phone, getting them attracted by teasing them, breaking the ice and creating a nice vibe that will guarantee that the girl will meet them again… so this is a bit a matter of preference, and different things work for different people. But for me, there's a reason… …WHY I NEVER CALL GIRLS In most cases, it's highly likely the she's busy when you call. She might be with a friend (or a boyfriend, for that matter)… she might be sleeping, she might be at work, she might be doing one of a million things. When do people EVER have nothing to do other than sit waiting for a call… especially in this day and age? Pretty much never! If she doesn't pick up the phone, she will usually call back or send a text as soon as she's free… unless she wasn't attracted enough in the first place. She has SEEN your call… there is no good reason to start chasing after her like a puppy now. But a text is non-intrusive. She can answer whenever she's free. She WILL answer if she likes you…. So there is no need to mess around with phone calls. And if you know what to text girls, you will usually get a response sooner or later. Even if you're incredible at phone calls there's no guarantee she calls back. Phone calls with strangers can also be somewhat awkward. Sure, there are ways to consistently break the ice on the phone, or to even "script" your phone calls… but talking in person is a lot more natural. THE EXCEPTION TO THE NO-CALLS RULE There are a few rare exceptions to this rule. Sometimes it can really help to vibe with her a bit... maybe she's on the fence about meeting you, and if she can tell over the phone that you're a normal person and a cool dude that she can have a non-awkward conversation with, this might up your chances a lot. But even in that case, I prefer to at least ask her in text first when a good time to call would be. Once you have her on the phone, I recommend you still don't resort to any gimmicks: Continue to refrain from ALL convincing behavior. Stay chill, speak slowly and don't talk too much… I've had lots of girls tell me that some guys talk so much that you'd think they're a more talkative version of a gossipy teenage girl Focus on projecting your masculine voice, and speak with warmth, resonance and bass. (This has to be authentic… if it seems forced, it will only look lame, so record yourself and if necessary, hire a vocal coach). MASTERING WHAT TO TEXT GIRLS what to text girlsDon't work too hard - it will only make you look needy. Make a strong, solid first impression, and then don't worry too much about sending her a million text messages. Try to get a meet-up instead of wasting a ton of time on calls and texts… and always be chill. Once you get used to sending minimalist texts - and it might take a while or feel a little weird at first, especially if you fell into the habit of sending gamey or entertainer-like texts - you'll soon start seeing, perhaps surprisingly at first, that yes, less really is more. And you might be flummoxed at first - "That doesn't make sense! I send girls so many amazing texts, and they don't come out! But then I send them simple, minamilist texts and suddenly they can't help themselves!" - but don't be. Because any frustration you felt was frustration at yourself, for spending so much time doing extra work that didn't work, when the effective strategy was so much simpler. Texts that work are easy. They're straightforward. They cut the fat. Be excited instead, at this newfound power you have. The power of knowing what to text girls to get them out on dates. Now that's yours, too.

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##The White Knight: Superman Syndrome and Damsels in Distress "It's odd that men feel they must protect women, since for the most part, they must be protected from men." - Abigail Duniway One of the true but uncomfortable facts of life is that men and women treat each other the same way they treat other resources -- food, money, shelter, possessions. "You are mine," goes the thinking, much of the time. Or, alternatively, "You should be mine." You'll see this in women to some degree, both with guys they want as providers and with guys they want as friends (curiously, women don't seem as fixated on "keeping" men in the lover category), but where you'll really see it a lot is with men -- particularly, the kind of man who doesn't get the kind of success with women he needs to feel that women are an abundant resource. That kind of man is what you might call a "white knight." And he sees it as his mission in life to "save" women he views as "damsels in distress" -- only to make them his, of course. If you ask me, this "pretend heroism" is a particularly sleazy way to try and get girls. I'll share a personal anecdote: while I was out of town a few months back, my girlfriend, in a stressful position then, took to confiding in people about, well, everything that could possibly bother her. And, of course, as often happens in relationships, one of the primary things she confided about was me. As it were, one of the folks she confided to turned out to be a real white knight. He was a photographer on a shoot she did; while she modeled, she also talked. And she vented about me. And this noble, heroic man, he decided that my girlfriend needed to be "saved" from me. "I have to be honest, while we were shooting photographs today, I felt something for you," he told her in an email message afterward. "I want to take care of you," he continued. "This guy, your boyfriend, he doesn't realize what he's got. Maybe because he's too young -- he doesn't know how to value a woman as amazing as you are. I would treat you so well," he told her. "I want to take care of you after you break up with your boyfriend." Sigh... I go away for a few weeks, and this is what I get, huh? Here he comes to save the day. CALLING THE WHITE KNIGHT: THERE'S A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS! My girlfriend, well, she set this guy straight -- sort of -- she showed me this whole email chain afterward, where she told him that she loved her boyfriend and didn't want to break up with me and that she didn't need anyone to take care of her, even if we did break up. But then she also agreed to work with this guy again on another shoot, and told him they could be friends, just nothing more than that. What really annoyed me, though, was that this, in concert with an ex-girlfriend of mine telling my current girlfriend to break up with me too -- part of my ex's clever strategy of trying to get back together with me (I'll tell you how I put a stop to that one another time) -- led to my girl sending me a really long, bitter "I'm breaking up with you" email after she'd been fine days earlier. I defused that fast and then she was happy again, but geez... I needed a break from women and drama. Okay, so normally, I'm a "don't blame the player; blame the game" kind of guy, and I don't blame a guy making a play for a girl of mine before he knows me. All's fair in love and war; I've had my fair share of experiences with other men's girlfriends and, on occasion, wives (strangely, often newlyweds, whom you'd think would be blissfully happy to be married and not looking to look around). But one rule I have for myself is that I never attack the guy. Never -- it's bad business. I don't know him, I'm not in a position to know him, and I'd rather a woman choose to be with me on my own merits rather than because I'm tearing her man down and making her feel bad. There are guys that do this, though. They're usually called white knights; I had a friend a while back who called it Superman Syndrome. These are the guys who sit there, staring at women with what they assume are "bad boyfriends," and think to themselves: "Why is she with that guy??? I would treat her so much better! She doesn't even realize!!! I should save her!!!!!" They want to save the damsel in distress. They want to be a hero. Why? Well, it's about the same thing as any other man out there -- they want the girl for themselves. But they don't think about it that way. They think about it as them doing the girl a service -- they're going to "save" her from this awful man she's with right now. And then, heroic and gracious as they are, they're going to deign to allow her to be with them. jealous men THE KIND OF GIRLS WHITE KNIGHTS GET Before I talk about dealing with these kinds of men when they're trying to steal your girl, I first want to mention how things generally work for white knights, and recommend against you falling into the trap of trying to rescue damsels yourself. First off, as much as the movies like to depict the nice guy who saves the girl from her bad boy boyfriend as this noble, heroic savior, the white knight is NOT a bloody hero. He's just a man, trying to take a woman from another man, and make that woman his. Same damn thing every other man going for a girl who's already with a guy is doing. He just does it in a particularly underhanded way... by portraying himself as this upstanding citizen who stands as the gleaming, shining alternative to a girl's disreputable cad of a man. I've known white knights. Quite a few of them. I had a good pal once who did quite well with women, but tended to only date women he thought he needed to "fix;" he was the one who introduced me to the term "Superman Syndrome." He had it bad for a long time, he said, and it was disastrous. You see, a white knight doesn't end up with a woman like mine -- a strong, independent girl who's perfectly fine taking care of herself -- try thought he might. He may be able to wreck her relationship, but he'll almost never end up with her. The kind of women he gets is the one that's needy and dependent -- the one in need of saving. And those women tend to have the following characteristics: They're always in need of saving (something's always going wrong) They're always depressed They can't take care of themselves / need you to take care of them They're weak willed and easily picked off by charismatic men The girl I mentioned in "Walk the Line" had a raging case of "damsel in distress," which I deftly sidestepped, and then took to bed. Then of course she started crying about hurting her boyfriend of 4 months, who treated her so well and took such good care of her and loved her so much, but by the time she woke up the next day she was really, really happy to have spent the night with me. I doubt her "savior" was ever the wiser. In other words, the kinds of girls you get if you're a white knight are weak... and they're dangerous. What do you get if you bring a woman into your life who's always in trouble? You get a person who's now part of your life who's constantly making big mistakes and messing stuff up for herself... and for you. FIGHTING OFF SUPERMAN SYNDROME So, get yourself afflicted with Superman Syndrome, and before you know if you've opened the door to romantic disaster. Ever notice how superheroes never end up depicted as these really happy guys loving life and having everything they want? Yeah, that's because their lives aren't filled with happy, wonderful things -- instead, they spend all their time helping people in need. A hard truth I had to come to grips with a long time ago -- you don't want to surround yourself with people who desperately need your help. You want to surround yourself with equals and peers who can elevate you as you elevate them too. Here's what you get when you spend time with people who have their lives in order and don't need saving: Stress-free interactions (they aren't dumping their issues on you) Ideas, enthusiasm, and innovation (they're excited about life and play to win) Loyalty, genuine connection, and devotion ("What's that?" you say? I'll come back to this one in just a minute) And here's what you get when you're spending time with damsels in distress and others in need of saving: Constant stress and pressure (they always need your help fighting fires) Pessimism and defeatism (nothing ever goes right for them, and they put that on you too) Disloyalty, deceitfulness, and flakiness (see below) If you notice, I bolded the last point on each of those, because it directly contrasts with what most men assume to be true: Saving a girl doesn't engender loyalty, and not saving her doesn't fail to engender it. You see, most white knights -- most of the guys with Superman Syndrome -- these guys are operating under the incorrect assumption that if they can just do it -- if they can save a girl -- she will be forever grateful, forever loyal, and forever theirs. She feels, to them, like someone safe and secure. She'll be theirs. Which, in a perfectly sane, rational world, would be the correct assumption, assuming that the formula of "# of good deeds performed + level of investment made by man = degree of attraction and loyalty in woman" is the correct one. If women fully weighed and balanced everything a man had done for them and threw that into an equation and came up saying, "This man has done so much for me, therefore I ought to select him as my partner," then this would work. But, as we know from the failure of economics to predict market trends with anything approximating a degree of accuracy, people aren't sane or rational. We're intelligent apes who make emotional, gut-instinct decisions. Furthermore, attraction doesn't spring from how much you've "done" for a woman. Attraction comes from attraction... period. Superman can save a bus full of bikini babes from otherwise certain death, but if Superman's an annoying, unpleasant, jealous man, he's still not going to end up with one of those bikini babes on his arm. But wait, there's more... What about the women themselves -- is there a difference between women who need saving and women who don't? Well, the survey says... yes. Yes there is. A great big HELL yes, in fact. What I've noticed about damsels in distress over the years: They're always in distress. You save them from one problem, 10 more take its place. They're always in need of a hero. Even if you solve their problems for 3 years, eventually you'll run up against one you're having a tough time solving, or you're too busy with work or socializing or whatever to be there 100% of the time, and that's when they find another white knight to step in and rescue them. They readily put the blame for their issues on you. One of the glaring problems with damsels in distress is that it's never their fault. Whatever the problem is, it's because they're a victim, and the world is cruel. What this means is, sooner or later, as you date a damsel in distress, you start becoming the focal point of her victimhood, and she starts pinning the blame for whatever she's in need of saving over onto you. Talk about a raw deal. So if you catch yourself getting a touch of Superman Syndrome, knock it off -- the path of the white knight is not the path to security, loyalty, and love. It's the path to an infinity of headaches, endless scrambling just to stay in place, and eventual dumbfounded consternation as you watch a woman you've poured a gargantuan amount of time and effort into leave you for someone else because eventually you ran out of gas trying to save the world for her. damsels in distress DEALING WITH JEALOUS MEN: HOW TO BLOCK THE WHITE KNIGHT'S JOUST So let's say you screen out the damsels in distress, and end up with a girl who's normally confident and in control but for whatever reason is going through a really stressful period like my girl was at the time. How do you deal with white knights sticking their javelins all up in your life? Well, first, you need to assess the situation. Although the white knight approach is generally a weaker approach to getting girls, and most skilled men don't use this method, there are several situations in which white knights can pose a threat, even to men who are usually talented in relationships and have screened out damsels in distress. Bear this in mind: when there's conflict or doubt between your girl and you, a guy who's able to put himself in a trusted position with your girl stands to possibly be able to destroy things. White knights are rarely successful at maintaining relationships with women they "save," and sometimes don't even want to and only assume the mantle of "white knight" to score women in rocky positions, so their efforts are largely destructive efforts that ruin otherwise good relationships that simply had hit a rough patch. Things to consider when gauging a white knight's threat level: Is this guy trusted? If your girl has known him for a long time, thinks highly of him, or speaks well of him, he's likely in a trusted position in her life. That means she's more likely to listen to what he says without being too skeptical, and -- depending on how much she trusts him -- she might even follow his guidance over yours. Is this guy around her a lot? If he spends a lot of time with her, talks with her a lot, or otherwise has a large degree of contact with her, he stands to be able to influence her through sheer volume of contact. Keep a very watchful eye on a guy your girl has a lot of contact with who's working against you. Is this guy skilled? While many white knights are just dumb, jealous men who'll tell your girl stuff like what that guy told my girl -- "He doesn't deserve you! I'd treat you so much better!" -- which basically aids them in shooting themselves in the feet, there are white knights you'll run into now and again who are legitimately talented with women and will work against you with charm and sophistication. "He sounds like he really doesn't get what you need," such a man might say about you, or, "This guy sounds kind of clueless." If your girl is hearing things like that from a guy, you should be very wary of him. If a guy gets even one checkmark on that list above, he's a very legitimate threat to cause damage and torpedo your relationship, often just to get some quick sex with your girl or to embark on his own ill-fated relationship with her. If he gets more than one check, you need to act with haste. Of course, the more talented a white knight is, the more deeply he'll weave his way into a girl's life and psyche, and the more challenging a task you'll have rooting him out. Things to consider: Make it clear to your girl that this man is a threat to your relationship. She wasn't thinking about it that way, but you need to voice it and point it out. This means you need to tell her, "This guy is actively tearing me down, and he's trying to destroy our relationship." She may well defend him, and tell you he's just her friend; if she does, ask her what his motives are. "If you had three children with me and were married, do you think he'd be telling you the same things? What are his motives here really, do you think?" Avoid answering your own questions here -- it's very important that you pose the questions, and lead her into answering them herself. She needs to come to the realization herself that this man is after sex and trying to break her relationship, which is an idea she may fight against and refute and get closer to him on if you try to cram it hard down her throat. Alternatively, if she simply won't see it, you may have to just state it outright. "Okay, look, I know you're a trusting girl and you'd like to think this guy is a really nice, loyal friend who's totally selfless and only has your best intentions at heart. But I have never seen a man that spent so much time trying to tear a relationship apart who wasn't after something with the girl. Men only invest time in a girl like this when they want her for themselves." Ban him from her life. You may have to tell her to stop talking to this guy and cut off all contact with him. You don't want to be paranoid and prevent a girl from having any male friends; but the instant you detect a guy working against you, you need to cut him out before it gets too far. If you let it get too far along, eventually he'll reach a point where he'll be very difficult to extricate from your girl's life. You ideally want to have her do this -- you can supervise her and help her craft the email or text message response to a message from his if you like -- but it should be in her own words, and it shouldn't have anything in there like, "My boyfriend says I have to..." The message needs to come across as her hard-telling the guy to back off and not contact her anymore, because she doesn't want him continually planting seeds of doubt and discord into her mind. You may even want to point out to her that what he's doing is a kind of passive mind control, which it actually is, in a way... he's gradually planting more and more doubt in her head about you. Consider a restraining order. If the guy gets weird or aggressive, you need to point this out to your girl so she recognizes the unusual behavior patterns. This often happens with white knights when they realize their efforts to undermine a girl's relationship are failing; they'll start obsessing over her and contacting her too often. You should only consider a restraining order in extreme cases; but these can happen more often than you might expect if things progress to far and the guy becomes too invested. Consider scare tactics, but use very judiciously. This is having one of your buddies call the guy up and tell him he better watch himself, for instance. This can scare a lot of white knights off -- most of them are really rather cowardly guys who would far rather avoid conflict -- but there's a chance if the guy's really obsessed it'll push him over the edge. If he's a complete psycho, this kind of thing can potentially force him into desperation mode, which stands a chance of ending quite badly for everyone involved. Use at your own risk. Apologies if the last two points came across alarmist. You're usually not going to run into these, and most white knights give up after a while and walk away. When you're dating particularly beautiful girls though, you need to be prepared to deal with increasingly aggressive, obsessive men. In my case, I pointed out to my girl that this guy was potentially quite obsessive and potentially dangerous, and she wrote him and told him not to contact her. A couple of weeks after this, we ended up breaking up for a few days after an incident that upset her quite a bit, and my girl called this photographer guy and used him as an emotional tampon and he tried to set up another shoot to see her pronto. My girl and I got back together before that happened, and she shot him a quick email thanking him for listening and apologizing for having to flake, but that she didn't want to have any contact with him again. I warned her that because she opened the door again after shutting it previously, he was never going to believe her again and would probably continue contacting her forever... just hopefully it never became a full blown obsession for him where he started showing up outside her apartment or anything. And indeed, he has continued in the months since then sending her text messages and emails, trying to meet up, offering her money to see her, offering all kinds of things. It's really pretty ridiculous. The moral of the story though, is that there are guys out there who're like this, and they're lonely, and they're desperate, and they don't care what relationships they destroy or whom they burn in their rush to "save" these poor damsels in distress they fancy. And if you happen to have any of these men trying to steal your girl away, just be ready to take action and nip it in the bud before it gets bad. I've seen friends have their relationships destroyed by white knights, who often didn't even get the girl after succeeding at taking a wrecking ball to her love life, and I've had white knights interfere somewhat successfully in my life before. It's not terribly difficult when you know what you're doing to tear them down and expose them for the frauds and cowards they are, but they're still very dangerous if left to slowly and quietly plant doubt and discontent in the minds of the women you care for. Talk to you again real soon.

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##Why Chasing Women Doesn't Work and Why Persistence Does We've had a few questions on here lately about the difference between chasing women vs. persisting with women. A few weeks back William B. raised the point when I asked for ideas on what the new forum's bonus book should be on: "I'd like to see something fleshing out the nuances between chasing and persistence." And more recently, a commenter on the article on how to find the woman you want asked: "I guess what i want to know is how does all this play in with not chasing her...if you leave enough time between your proposals it doesn't count as chasing?" I've seen a few other people ask about it on other articles as well. What's the difference between chasing women and persisting with them, anyway? Aren't they one and the same? chasing women Actually, the two are VERY different - and women are right for desiring persistent men to a point... and fleeing from men who chase after that point. Let's have a look at why that is, and how you can better walk the line between chasing and persistence. chasing women First off, I want to say this: I don't think there's any guy out there in the world who likes chasing women. And by "chasing women," I don't mean that in the vaguely sarcastic tone of your buddy who's really good at picking up girls. When he says, "Let's go chase some women," what he really means is, "Let's go make some women helplessly attracted to us then go take them home." When I say "chasing women," what I'm referring to is the guy who's pursuing a woman who isn't his, is acting cold or distant or aloof to him, and is not giving him nearly what he wants from her... a man who isn't in control. What I'm talking about with chasing is when a man desperately wants a woman who doesn't want him. If you've ever chased a woman before - and most guys have, no need to feel too ashamed about it - you can probably think back on the emotions you felt about it and realize that it didn't feel all that great. Nowhere did you get emotions like, "Wow, this is wonderful!" Instead, all you feel while chasing are feelings of: Confusion Uncertainty Panic Fear Loss Need Desperation These are a deep, dark hole of bad emotions that drive you into feeling worse about yourself, and doing things very wrong with a girl from the point of being attractive. Chasing is very unattractive to women. It's off-putting. But if it's so horribly ineffective a behavior, why do men do it? THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHASING From what I've seen, the vast, vast majority of women who are chased by men are single women... women unattached from a committed marriage or relationship partner. I haven't seen many married women with a man chasing desperately after them, but I have seen many single women with chasers in hot pursuit. Why might this be? My theory is, the same "philosophy of women" that inspires a man to chase after an unattached woman also dissuades him from interest in an attached one. The theory goes like this: "Once I have a woman, she will be MINE FOREVER!" The corollary to that, of course, is: "Once a woman is with a man, she will NEVER LEAVE HIM." I don't think all men who chase women regularly and desperately think this way, but for a guy who's a habitual chaser or chases women over a long period of time, from what I've seen it's usually the mindset. A woman is something to be acquired, and once she is acquired, the acquisition is permanent. So, if a woman is attached, to the chaser, she is off the market and unattainable; if she's unattached, however, then it's a mad-grab free-for-all to acquire her, and whoever ends up with her at the end gets to keep her. If you're mildly unnerved by all this talk of "acquiring" and "keeping," you should be; it's an incorrect view of women, but its one that men who chase seem normally to possess in spades. Here's the really scary part for women - according to the paper "Courtship Behaviors, Relationship Violence, and Breakup Persistence in College Men and Women" by Stacey L. Williams and Irene Hanson Frieze, chasing is linked to violence... have a look: "This study assessed college men's (n= 85) and women's (n= 215) courtship persistence behaviors (approach, surveillance, intimidation, mild aggression), which have been linked to stalking, and examined their relations to initial courtship interest, relationship development, and future violence and persistence, while also exploring the role of gender in these relations. Findings showed individuals performed surveillance when initially more interested than the other. Whereas approach behaviors were positively associated with relationship establishment, surveillance and intimidation were negatively associated. As predicted, results showed continuity in persistence and violence over the course of dating relationships. For both genders, courtship mild aggression predicted relationship violence, and persistence behaviors predicted similar persistence at breakup. Early behaviors may foreshadow violence and stalking-related behaviors in both men and women." Here, the study breaks "persistence" down into multiple subcategories: Approach Surveillance Intimidation Mild Aggression In the study, the researchers define each subcategory as follows: Approach: sending notes, doing unrequested favors, attempting to communicate, asking the person out as a friend and asking the person out as a date. Surveillance: waiting where the person would be, going by the residence, showing up at events where the person would be, doing an activity to be closer to the person, asking friends about the person, and asking friends to talk to the person. Intimidation: following the person, taking the person's belongings, trying to manipulate the person into dating you, and spying on the person. Mild aggression: trying to scare the person, making threats, threatening to hurt emotionally, threatening to damage belongings, threatening to hurt someone else, threatening to hurt oneself, verbally abusing the person, physically harming slightly, and physically harming more than slightly. As an interesting aside, the researchers further noted, on differences between male and female courtship behaviors, that "[M]ales perform more approach, or regular courtship behaviors, whereas females are more likely to perform acts of surveillance, that is, attempts to make indirect contact with the love interest by way of (seeming) serendipity." Obviously, intimidation and mild aggression are pretty bad. Surveillance isn't terribly good either, as you're "pretending" it's fate while hiding true desires; women are more guilty of this one than men are, and according to the research there's less a chance that it leads to a relationship than a healthy interaction where the behavior isn't needed or used. So what's all this have to do with chasing women vs. persisting with women? Simple - this quote from the study: "During the earliest stages of courtship, a one-sided initial interest (i.e., a scenario in which one potential partner is more interested than the other) may reflect this unrequited love scenario and result in intensified initial courtship behaviors. Behaviors used to attract the potential partner may include stalking-related behaviors." What Williams and Frieze are saying here is this: intensified initial courtship behaviors (chasing) are the result of unrequited love. The difference between chasing and persistence is that chasing is one-sided interest and highly emotional, while persistence is largely mutual, and it's largely unemotional. chasing women What's the difference between a man who stands there at the end of a date or the end of the night, persisting in his insistence that a woman accompany him home, as we discussed in "Don't Let Her Go," and a man who continues to chase women long after it's clear they simply aren't interested? Volumes. The man who persists at the end of the night doesn't persist because he's deeply, ravishingly in love with a girl; he persists because he's trained himself to do it. Most men replete with unrequited love will not insist a girl do ANYTHING; they simply bug her and beg her and bother her in the hopes that somehow that will change her mind. And that's the biggest difference between a persistent man and a man chasing women: the persistent man persists when it COUNTS. The chasing man persists everywhere ELSE. chasing women Imagine you meet a girl. She's pretty, flirty, fun. You're really tired the night you meet her; you had a long day; and you really aren't feeling that great. You guys hit it off, but eventually you can hardly keep your eyes open, and you decide that, despite this cute girl in front of you, the only thing you want to do now is go home and hit the hay. Now let's say it can go in one of two possible directions: You tell her you're leaving, and she says, "No, stay. We're having a great time right now; I know you're tired but you can sleep later. Let's keep spending time together right now." You tell her you're leaving, and she says, "Okay." The two of you trade phone numbers. After you leave, you get a text message from her right away saying how much she liked meeting you and she hopes she'll see you soon. The next morning you have a text from her, saying, "Hey, how's it going?" Later she tries calling you to ask you out, but you're busy. Then you see she added you on Facebook. Suddenly, she's calling you, texting you, Facebook stalking you, and all the rest. Which of these girls is more attractive to you? That example makes it night and day, doesn't it... who wants to be on the receiving end of #2 (if you're currently frustrated with women / feeling a little desperate, you don't count! People only get into chase dynamics with individuals they can't get, rather than those eager to be with them)? There are other directions that scenario above could've gone too, of course (e.g., you leave and she never gets in touch; you leave and the two of you run into each other again later somewhere else; etc.), but for our purposes I wanted to contrast persistence with chasing for you there. Chasing is what's known as unrequited love, although it's really a form of infatuation. Chasing is NOT love, though many in pursuit of their object of desire will call it that and think it that. But as we talked about in the article on when you can't stop thinking about her, this isn't real love, and often you don't even really know HER at ALL... it's simply obsession with some idealized, fantastical version of her cooked up in your head. Women know this. They know it isn't them a chasing man wants... it's a fantasy woman that he's imagined is them. Sometimes it's initially cute; "Oh how cute, he's really got a thing for me, hasn't he?" Then it's annoying, once the cuteness wears off. And if it continues on long enough, and becomes intense enough, it can even become bothersome or scary. Most men chasing after women never reach the point of things becoming so extreme that it's an inconvenience to a woman's life or that she actually becomes afraid. But a LOT of men chase women enough to start annoying them. Is there a chance you've done this before? BOARD ANOTHER PLANE Chasing is not attractive... we've established that. You need to quit doing it. Especially for emotional men, this isn't always easy. Readers regularly post comments on this site about how they know they should stop chasing after some girl, but they just can't help themselves. Chasing is addictive. Where chasing comes from, in my opinion, is realizing that you might've had a shot, but didn't take it. Almost every man I've seen chasing women was chasing women that he'd say, "I could've had her... I SHOULD'VE had her! But I let her get away!" This inability to let go, coupled with a feeling that she is there, within reach, seems to push men over the edge and turn them into pursuers. There is a desire to get her, keep her, and snap her up before she gets snapped up "for good." Of course, this ignores the fact that attraction has an expiration date; it ignores the principle of escalation windows, that once a window has closed, it's more or less closed for good. Chasing after women fails to get the chaser women, then, because it is too little, too late. It's like trying to convince the check-in clerk to get the flight team to turn the airplane you were too late to board around and pick you back up after the plane's already off the tarmac and up in the air. You might be the most convincing man in the world, but it's probably not going to happen; and besides, there's someone else in your seat anyway. So what do you do? You board another plane. chasing women At this point, you've got a handle on what chasing is and why it's bad. Chasing usually happens when: A girl likes you, to some extent, or seems to You fail to make a move or miss an obvious sign You beat yourself up for it later, and resolve to get her You start trying to get her any way you can - calling, texting, etc. You refuse to give up on this girl, convinced you'll win her heart, despite the fact that she is not reciprocating So what do you do instead? Here's what persistence - proper persistence, not pursuing uninterested women - is all about: Acting now and not later. The thing that gets most men into trouble (chasing women) in the first place is a lack of proper persistence the first time around. Whether because the man is slow to realize he likes a girl, or hesitant about taking action and leading women, or simply doesn't know how to recognize how girls show interest, one way or another, he doesn't move fast and he doesn't make things happen when he has the chance to. Persistence is all about acting now. What the persistent man knows that other men don't is that when he gets a chance with a girl, it's probably going to be his ONLY chance with that girl. Opportunity knocks once, but if you don't welcome it in on its first visit, it goes and finds someone else a little more welcoming and stops coming by. Tomorrow never comes; if you have a chance to be with a girl now, then... be with her. Establishing leadership and staying on-target. Men who chase are lost; they flail about, unsure of what they're doing, hoping that if they can just talk to women enough or be around them enough or send them enough text messages or emails that those women are going to decide they're the men of their dreams and leap into their arms. Except... it doesn't work like that. You're the man, you must lead. That means that if you don't know where you're going... then you're not going anywhere. You need to be moving girls; you need to be progressing toward an end point; and you need to be focused on how you'll close an interaction (e.g., getting a phone number or taking a girl to bed), then doing it and keeping follow-up contact to a minimum until you're ready for the next step (e.g., the next time you'll see her). Being willing to walk away and meet someone else. Contrary to what most chasing men think, women are not a scarce resource. They are abundant; they're everywhere! A man needs to be prepared to walk away from a woman who will not come with him; who won't give him her phone number, who won't go on a date with him, who won't accompany him home, who won't become her lover. You cannot get every woman you want; in fact, you'll walk away from quite a few. And that's fine... so long as you continue to meet new girls, because as you meet new women, you'll learn and refine your process, and get better at persisting right away with women who are interested in you or on the fence, and dropping girls and moving on who aren't. Those three are all huge differences between the man who chases and the man who persists, but the last one is arguably the biggest: men who persist properly are willing and free to move on at a moment's notice; men who chase are not. There's one more thing that persistent men know that chasing men don't, though. WHY CHASING WOMEN IS SILLY (AND WASTES YOUR TIME) What persistent men, and men more talented with women, know is this: If she wants to be with you, it won't be that hard! chasing women It doesn't take weeks or months or years of pursuing a girl to get her. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard a man tell me he chased a girl for a long time and finally got her, and I've heard thousands of men's stories about the women they got together with. The long sought romance that finally became real: it doesn't happen. If a girl likes you, if she has any desire to be with you, it's not going to take a month or more to happen, unless YOU are really slow. And if you are really slow, she'll almost certainly have lost interest by the time you get around to doing what you should've done much earlier on, and she'll be lost (never to return). Chasing women isn't just annoying for the girl, and futile for you. It wastes your precious time, in addition to everything else. You only have a short amount of time on this rock to do the things you want to do. If you spend months or years of your life pursuing some other human being who has no interest in you, you might as well have spent that time sitting in a prison cell, or in a coma. It's time wasted, flushed down the drain, tossed away like yesterday's newspaper. It's gone, and you got nothing back for it. She was out partying with some guy she likes, didn't notice or care that you texted her, and you were sitting at home waiting to hear back, imagining a life together with her. But you could be out meeting women who like you... women who want you... women it isn't too late with yet, where you can move faster, take action, and make something real with. It isn't hard to get together with girls. And if you realize you've put a lot of time into a girl... you've chased after her... you've worked hard to get her... and you're still nowhere with her (e.g., you're not lovers, not romantic partners, you're still "working on" her), it's time to cut the chord. Back when I was inexperienced in the ways of women and dating, I overheard a conversation between two men about a girl one of the men had met. "This other guy's been working on her for a couple of weeks, so I'm not sure if I should go for her since he's already got a head start," the first man said. The second man laughed. "A couple of weeks? Go for her. If that other guy was EVER going to get her, he'd already HAVE her." When I heard this, even back then, I knew he was right. All the guys I'd seen "working on" girls... all the girls I'd spent time "working on"... it never worked out. The girls you got were the ones it happened relatively quickly with... and if it didn't happen within a few weeks max, it didn't happen. So don't waste time, and don't make things harder than they need to be. Life's too short to spend your ticking clock on people who don't want to be with you. Spend it on the ones who do - and on finding them, if there aren't any around at the moment. And, move fast and take action - you've got better things to do than chase around some girl who's busy living her life while you dream idle dreams of her. Persist - but don't chase.

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##Why "I Want to Be Liked" Makes You Unattractive to Others The other day a reader commented the following on the article about respect in a relationship: "What I've realized is my problem has never been being a closer. Once in a position to close I close. I escalate. Period. It's fun, it's sexy, it's adrenaline inducing! But until a woman starts showing signs of submitting to me or hinting that she likes me, I feel afraid. I feel like I might lose her if I do something stupid to make her upset. I feel like I can't communicate any of this fear to the woman because she will lose attraction for me. And so, it's a catch 22 because I know if I don't make a confident move, she won't do it first, and her attraction will eventually fade, yet if I make a move and she doesn't go for it (rejects me) I immediately will feel as if I like her more than she likes me. And I HATE with a PASSION for a woman to find out that I liked her more than she likes me. My logical mind says I shouldn't care and that I should just laugh it off and say "whatever", but my emotional mind doesn't agree yet. ... Have you ever closed girls that showed no visual signs at all of liking to be in your presence? What was your mindset in dealing with them? How'd you handle these girls? Was there any difference (whether subtle or more substantial) than girls who showed more signs of wanting to be seduced? How'd you change their minds if they were on the fence by persisting? And did you notice after the fact that initially aloof girls were glad you persisted and showed your emotions first?" When you want to be liked... that's a curious thing. In some ways, wanting to be liked is good and necessary to life as a human being: It stops you from being a social retard It prevents you from creating lots of enemies It makes you a more appealing person people will do more to help But, unchecked, a need to be liked can often be a very destructive thing. Unchecked, it leads to hesitation, over-deliberation, and, very often, inaction. It's not even about making your self-esteem dependent on other people or suffering from far too much anxiety. Those are what most advice dispensers hoist up as the reasons to not care too much about being liked... but they're mere child's play compared to the real reasons this mess you up. Because if you spent too much time trying to be well-liked, you will miss out on the all best things life has to offer you. want to be liked Being liked is useful. It's not all bad. There is in humans a natural need to be liked, and no one is free of it. I once heard a tale (perhaps more of a legend at this point; I can't verify its veracity) of a Buddhist monk who had studied and meditated for 10 years to rid himself of all worldly concerns. One day the monk met the president of his country, only to realize that he was nervous - a sign that he still cared. So, he stripped himself of his rank in the monastery and went right back down to being a novice monk all over again, convinced he still had much to learn. Anyone who tells you he "doesn't care" if people like him or not is lying. Everybody cares. Normal people care. Abnormal people care. Even crazy people care. But, there is a difference between having a preference for being liked, and wanting to be liked so badly that being liked becomes the dominant thing you are going for. Because when you want to be liked more than you want anything else, bad things start to happen. THE NEVER-ENDING OBJECTIVE Quick - when can you say someone likes you enough, and now you now can quit putting your energy into getting liked and go put it into something else? When do you reach that point that she likes you "enough?" Ever? No, never. She can never like you enough. "Liking" is a scale with no ceiling or floor; someone can always like you more, or she can always like you less: want to be liked The worst part is, there are no plateaus to be reached, no fortresses to be taken, no battlements to be captured and put to use along the way that can then not be just as easily lost in the game of being liked by putting in less face time or trying something with potentially negative consequences for that liking. If your primary goal is to be "liked," then your goal is a goal without a finish line, requiring an infinite amount of time, effort, and energy. You can never "win." There is always more to do. WANT TO BE LIKED? DON'T DO ANYTHING RISKY! There's something a lot worse about wanting to be liked first and foremost though: the best way to maximize being liked with minimal risk is to never do anything that might possibly result in a bad outcome. That means, if you want to make absolutely SURE that a girl likes you, don't: Use any sexual innuendo around her (she might be offended!) Make any big compliance demands (she might say "no"!) Be too much of a bad boy (she might prefer nice guys!) Physically escalate on you (she might not want that!) Try to kiss her (she could get upset about it!) Try to sleep with her (she may storm out!) What ends up happening to men holding "be liked" up as their utmost objective is they tend to put things off, and put things off, and put things off while they wait for the "right moment" to do something with a woman... all the while thinking more and more about her, investing more and more mental time and energy into her, and letting her attraction expire, too. Until finally, one day, long after her romantic interest in them has faded out of memory, they erupt; they can keep their love a secret no more; for once, they HAVE to take the risk, even if it means she won't like them as much anymore: "Casey, I never told you this, but I LIKE you! Like, REALLY like you!" And, after a moment's hesitation, she responds: "I like you too, Walt... but just as a friend." Inside though, she wonders, "Gosh, why didn't he tell me that 6 months ago, when I liked him too? Oh well... I have dinner with Gabe tonight." And that's the big problem with wanting to be liked more than anything else: you miss out on the women who want more from you, while continuing to hang around with the women who DON'T. want to be liked If you want to actually get anywhere with a girl, you've got to be ready to risk a little disliking in order to make some headway. That's right; you're going to have to risk having some women like you less in order to get the women who do like you. But if you think that means you'll be missing out on some women you should've had as girlfriends and scaring them away by being too aggressive, you've got another thing coming. ATTRACTION: NOT BUILT For the sake of argument, let's say you meet two women when you're out talking to strangers or friends: Girls who have solely platonic interest in you Girls who have sexual or romantic interest in you Of course, it's far more nuanced than that in the real world; you'll really meet: Women who want nothing to do with you Women who think you might be a good friend OR a good lover Women who aren't really sure WHAT box they want to put you in Women who want to use you for some reason (to make a boyfriend jealous, to get free drinks, to just have someone to talk to for a while, to get emotional validation, etc.) and might do nothing with you or might also sleep with you if that furthers their objective To keep things simple though, we can think of every woman as having either largely platonic or largely sexual/romantic intentions when she meets you and spends time with you. want to be liked Now here's the catch: women who have sexual/romantic interest in you lose that interest the longer it takes you to do anything. Attraction expires; escalation windows close. And on the opposite side, it's rather rare and quite time consuming to turn a woman with platonic interest in you into one with sexual interest in you. So what do most men do? Why of course: they plow all their time into trying to convince women platonically interested in them that they should be SEXUALLY interested in them. Now, in fairness to these men, a lot of guys have grown up being told that women aren't really all that interested in sex (news flash if that's you: women want sex), and assume that every woman they meet is starting off in platonic mode, PURELY interested in friendship AT BEST, and must be wooed over a long period of time as the man gradually convinces her of his attractive qualities. Which is utter bull. Happens occasionally, deep in social circle, but it is rare. People who are hooking up in social circle are usually not close friends who know each other incredibly well... they're usually strangers who've just met via social circle. That's because attraction is not something you "build" over time. You can spike attraction - a little bit - but if a girl is not interested in you from the outset, it's going to be very difficult and very slow going to convince her to change her mind. Does that mean it's out of your control which women find you attractive? Not at all. You can learn how to attract women, and get quite good at it. But when you are good at it, you won't be doing it over a period of hours, days, or weeks after meeting a girl. Instead, you will be spending your off time making yourself more and more attractive to more and more women, and when those women meet you, they will be attracted. A GOOD TRADE: "JUST FRIENDS" FOR JUST LOVERS When you first meet her, a girl either likes you in a sexual/romantic way, or she doesn't. If she doesn't, you probably aren't going to change her mind, no matter how smooth, suave, sexy, and sharp you are. Attraction is subconscious; it's based on nonverbal clues like your posture, your hairstyle, your facial hair, and your male scent. There is very little you can do with words to talk women into wanting you. All words do is assure her that you are as attractive as you seem, and get her comfortable enough with you to come along with you when you ask her to. Therefore, if you want to be liked, and you're trying to be liked, as a prime objective, you're doing it wrong. She already likes you. Or she doesn't. A little extra effort while you talk to her won't change that. That might sound like a let down, but it isn't. There are tons and TONS of things you can work on with yourself to go from plain to "very attractive" and have beautiful women intrigued in you from the outset. You just won't be doing those things WHILE you talk to them. You'll be doing them in your spare time. So what will you do when you're talking to them? Not "try to make them like you." Instead, it's this: find out which of them like you. That's right; if you're doing things correctly and you're talking to lots of girls, you're going to cycle through women fairly quickly, ignoring the ones who are merely platonically interested in you, and zeroing in on the ones who, like you, want something more. If you want new female friends, you can always go out to look for friends another time, or you can stop and get to know them when you're out and about, so long as you know that's what you're doing and aren't secretly hoping to sleep with them. Because if it's the latter, turning them into friends first is shooting yourself in the foot. When you meet a new woman and you're looking for lovers (not friends), you want to be: Using sexual innuendo around her Making big compliance demands and moving her Being a bad boy with a devil may care attitude Touching her and getting her used to your touch Kissing her, when it's time for that Sleeping with her, when it's time for that Will some women be uncomfortable with this? Yes they will. Will some women excuse themselves and leave with this? Yes they will. Will some women dislike you because you didn't "get it?" Yes they will. Now here's the thing: the "it" that you didn't GET was that you were just supposed to be a platonic guy who provides them with time, emotional validation, and feelings of security in exchange for... well, I'm not really sure in exchange for what, actually. Hope, maybe? Hope that someday she'll stop dating and sleeping with bad boys she's just met and will realize what amazing qualities you or one of the other 10 guys orbiting around her have? Fat chance. When you make a move and you work to progress things forward, women who are interested in you romantically or sexually are NOT offended. They're EXCITED! They say, "Yes, the guy that I want wants me TOO!" The only women who dislike you when you make moves are the women who aren't interested, and are disappointed you don't know your place - in the friend zone. All you're doing when you take "risks" is screening out the women who aren't actually interested in you, and screening in the women who are... women who might otherwise grow impatient and get upset and lose interest in you if you don't make a move. Are these "risks" really even "risks" at all? YOU WON'T ALWAYS KNOW want to be likedThe second part of our good reader's comment was to ask whether I've ever had any success with women who hadn't showed any real telling signs of interest. My answer to this? All the time. I STILL do. And I am not a knucklehead. I: Score in the 97 percentile on empathy tests Have had (many) women tell them I'm all but psychic Almost always know exactly the right thing to say or do Can read other people's emotions like a book Have had strong social intuition since I was fairly young Have been practicing pickup and seduction since 2005 I know people. And I know women. Extremely well. And I still am surprised. Not a lot; but sometimes. Even for me, there are women who give no indication they have any interest in me, and I've made things happen. I've had women I've met at bars who showed little interest in me and made little conversation with me, but when I asked for phone numbers, dates, to sit with me, or to go home with me, they came along and everything worked out well (see: "She Doesn't Even Need to Know Your Name") I've had women I've taken on dates who've enjoyed good conversation with me but otherwise showed me no indication of being sexually interested in me, but I followed the process, took them home, kissed them, and took them to bed. In fact, one of my long-term girlfriends was a girl I was CERTAIN was going to turn me down and leave my apartment when I went for the kiss, but I did it anyway. To my great surprise, she kissed back, and we went to bed Alternately, I've had plenty of women who've flirted with me very heavily, seeming for all the world to be dead serious about it and very interested, but would not move with me when I tried to move them, would not agree to go on a date with me when I asked them out, and would not come home with me (typically, these women are club queens and are very good at turning down men's requests to be alone, while countering with their own requests to join them at social functions and serve as attention-providing orbiters who help increase the girl's social status) The advice from "Reactions from Women or Results with Women?" holds here every bit as much as it does with meeting women in general; don't trust your instincts. Trust your results. Your instincts will be right much of the time, but they will mislead you with women who are skilled at flirting to get what they want, or women who suppress showing their interest in men. If you blindly trust gut feeling in these situations, you will frequently find yourself squandering large amounts of time on women who feel interested in you but aren't, while brushing by women who are interested in you but don't show it. Even when you have your social intuition honed to a razor's edge, trust your process, not your gut, when it comes to seeing how interested she is. DON'T WANT TO BE LIKED Humans are social creatures. It's hard to not want to be liked first and foremost. But you must learn not to have this as your primary objective. It's fine as a secondary or tertiary objective. In fact, that's probably where it stands best. You want your objectives to look like this: Find a girl I'm interested in who's interested in me too Run through my process with this girl and take her as my lover Be likeable and make sure others are responding well to me ... and not like this: Be likeable and make sure others are responding well to me Find a girl I'm interested in who's interested in me too Run through my process with this girl and take her as my lover "Being liked" as your top objective stops you from doing those "risky" things that put frowns on the faces of women who aren't romantically or sexually interested in you and gigantic megawatt smiles on the faces of the women who ARE. It trades being liked a LOT by some women and not very much by others for being liked a little by EVERYBODY. Which is fine and dandy... but it leaves you pretty sexually frustrated, and the women who are interested in you sexually frustrated, too (well, probably not for too long on that last - they'll just find someone else less concerned with "playing it safe"!). So I advise you, don't want to be liked - not too much. Instead, want to find out which women like you SEXUALLY. ROMANTICALLY. And want to find out which women do not. Because once you know that, then you can focus on being liked by the women who already really do like you a lot - and you can focus on making them like you by giving them all the romance, adventure, and lusty physical intimacy they desire from you. Follow your process. Worry about being liked second.

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##Why Nice Guys Finish Last Even before I dove into actively learning how to improve myself with women, I knew that nice guys finished last. I mean, it's basically a cliché at this point, right? Everyone knows it. Poor nice guys. But despite how common this knowledge seems to be, a lot of guys still don't seem to have realized it. We see men over and over again playing the role of nice guy. They think that if they move slowly and carefully and show women how respectful and gentlemanly they are, and cater to their every whim and listen to those women and do everything they ask of them, those women will be wooed and will fall for them. Instead, what invariably happens? Well, the same thing that always happen to those who move slow - they get left in the dust. Let's not focus on the slow-moving nature of most nice guys, though - that's covered in detail in the article Move Faster posted a few months ago here on this site. Rather, let's focus on why it is that nice guys are so ineffectual at getting what they want - what they really want. Why do nice guys finish last? One of the most ironic things for nice guys has got to be all the girls who sit around lamenting, "Why can't I ever find a nice guy?" The irony, think most nice guys, is that these same girls saying this are often making this very lament to their kind-hearted, respectful nice guy friends, who themselves would like nothing more than to be the nice guys these poor women are supposedly pining after, and save these damsels-in-distress from the apparently awful, endless cycle they find themselves in of ending up with men who just don't treat them right. But of course, if said nice guy friends ever suggest that maybe these girls should date them, because they are nice guys, the girls in question universally say something like, "You? But you're my friend! I would never want to risk losing your friendship by messing it up with dating / sex!" Then, sure enough, these girls end up with another bad boy yet again, while the nice guy friend watches helplessly and frustrated from the sidelines. The only time the nice guys actually get the girl is when she's finally had her fill of bad boys and decides that it's time to settle down with a nice guy who will take good care of her. The bad boys enjoy her when she's young and vivacious, and the nice guys get the leftovers. The nice guys do get the girl - they do finish - it's just that they finish last. Like the cliché. I'm kind of painting a pretty unfortunate picture here, for both nice guys and these poor women trapped in a cycle of one bad boy after another. So before I give you the wrong impression, let me clear a few things up: first, women like bad boys because they're addicted to the way that bad boys make them feel. And second, the men who are MOST successful with women are, quite often, believe it or not, some of the most genuinely NICE men you will ever meet. They are truly warm, caring, generous souls. The difference between these men and what most people think of when they hear the term "nice guy" is that the men who are good people and successful with women are strong men who are kind because they choose to be. Those are the kind of men women are talking about when they say, "Why can't I ever meet a nice guy?" What women actually mean when they say this is, "Why can't I ever meet a STRONG, SEXY man who also happens to have a good heart?" Your standard, run-of-the-mill nice guy, however, is not nice because he's a legitimately warm-hearted soul, like those strong men we just mentioned. Instead, he's nice because he's scared. He's scared that if he comes off as too assertive, or too aggressive, or too masculine, he will frighten women away and lose them. So he acts sweet and kind and gentlemanly and slow in an effort to not scare off women. And, in the end, all he scares off is their attraction. So, before we continue, let me just say that you CAN and SHOULD be a good person, be caring, kind, and generous, and get girls. You can be that way and get a LOT of girls. What a man can NOT be, and what most "nice guys" get wrong, is weak or scared. Women can smell these traits like bad body odor, and it turns them off even faster than it (actually, the right kind of body odor can be very attractive to women - but that's for another post). "Nice guys" dance around the question of what they really want with a woman. Men who actually get the girl do not. If a woman asks a strong man what he wants from her, he will either tell her directly (i.e., "You.") or he will flirt with her (i.e., "We just met an hour ago and already you're trying to get in my pants. Shame on you.") or be coy (i.e., "It's too early for expectations. Let's just enjoy the time we're spending together and see what happens."). If a woman asks a nice guy what he wants from her, he will get visibly nervous and defensive and tell her something like, "Nothing! I just like hanging out with you." He's so afraid of her finding out that he likes her that he tries to make it sound like he DOESN'T. As a result, women write him off as a suitor and look for another man. I had a conversation recently with an ex of mine, a very beautiful, passionate woman, about some of the men she dated and slept with after me. Some men she slept with quickly; others not at all. One of them, a guy she initially was very excited about but later slotted into the "friend zone", she defended by describing as a great guy that she liked a lot. I asked her why she hadn't slept with him then; her reply was that he was too nice and she didn't want to hurt his feelings. She said he was looking for something more serious than what she could give him at the time. I asked her why she said that; she said it was because he told her he was looking for a serious relationship. Do you think, for one moment, that had she told him, "Well, I'm just looking to hook up," he would've said, "Oh, no thank you." Of course not! I'm willing to bet you a hundred dollars that the entire reason he told her he was looking for a serious relationship was because that's what he thought she wanted to hear - he probably thought it was the "safest bet" at getting her. I'm sure he's a great guy, but when a man dances around like this and tries to act like he's not interested in sleeping with women fast, it kills attraction. Just like it did here. Other men, who weren't so timid about their intentions, got to sleep with my ex. But this poor nice guy didn't (at least so far as I know!). This is not an isolated case. This is how most women feel about nice guys. In fact, it's damn near universal. Women don't find nice guys sexy. They just don't lie there late at night fantasizing about a nice guy making love to them. The men that women want to get sweaty and naked with are the men who are everything nice guys are not: strong, challenging, independent, confident, certain of what they want, and unapologetic about their desires. Men who try to hide their desires are unattractive. That's one of the keys to the failure of men who are too nice. Their fear and cautiousness leads to unattractive behavior. Women want men who are fearless and take risks - because, in life, the men who are most successful are the men who take risks and find success. Men accustomed to taking risks and finding success tend to be confident and fearless - and the reverse is also true. Confidence communicates success. When women see you going for what you want, they tell themselves it must be because you're used to GETTING what you want. And that makes you sexy. So, for all the nice guys out there, here're a few pointers to help you get out of the no-man's land of dating and sexual frustration and on the road to taking control of your fate with the women you desire: Be an asshole. This is especially for those REALLY nice guys who are used to getting slotted firmly into friend territory by women and never getting into hook-up (or at least boyfriend) material. Your ultimate goal, five years down the road, is not actually to be an asshole; you ultimately want to be a good-hearted man who is also strong and sexy. But if you're coming from a position of being too nice / friendly, your goal now IS to be an asshole. Focus on adding that edge to your personality. Bad boys are sexy. See how far you can push it. You need to really push yourself to be an asshole before you start realizing where the right limits are. Be less accommodating. There's a fine line between being thoughtful and generous and being overnice and supplicating and getting taken advantage of (or at least for granted). Many men - most men, maybe - supplicate. That means that they do anything women ask of them, and practically go around acting like man-servants to women they like. THIS IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. That's bolded and capitalized for a reason. Men who supplicate do NOT get sex. They just don't. Case closed, end of story. Sex is reserved for strong men. Supplication is the realm of weak men. Supplication includes things like doing whatever she asks, letting her control the pace and flow of a conversation or interaction, letting her be disrespectful, etc. Be a strong man who does what he wants, and if you want to do something for a woman, make sure it's on your terms and not simply because she wants it. That is one of the keys to a woman's heart (and panties), and it's one that most men don't seem to get. Challenge her. I'll cover this a little more in an upcoming edition of "Secrets to Getting Girls", but for now suffice it to say that men who are difficult to get, and not pushovers, are attractive. If a man is easy to get, a woman unconsciously assumes it must be because he doesn't have a lot of options (or at least none as amazing as her). If he's a challenge to get, however (i.e., he plays a little coy, isn't afraid to tease her a bit, and asks her to put some work into their interactions), she values him far more greatly - and wants him all the more. Be honest about what you want, or be flirtatious about it. One of the scariest things for most nicer guys in the world is being direct. Ask a guy coming from a background of being a little too nice to women to go up to a woman and say something direct to her (i.e., "I saw you walking along, and just had to come tell you you have the most stunning features I've seen all day") and he will all but shrivel up into a ball and roll home. Train yourself to be able to be honest with women about your attraction for them, or at the very least to be flirtatious. You should be able to tease women about being attracted to you. At the end of the day though, the man who is able to set the teasing aside and state his intentions clearly and honestly is the man who gets the girl most often. He's the guy who, when she asks, "What do you want from me?" will be able to smile that knowing smile and pull her in for a passionate kiss, because he's not afraid of her finding out what he wants; he wants her to figure out what it is he wants. And he's excited at the prospect of her wanting it too. That should be enough to get you started. Always remember, there's a BIG difference - a world of difference - between being a lover of women who happens to have a heart, and being a pushover nice guy who supplicates to women and hides his intentions. One is sexy, the other is not. One gets girls, the other gets frustrated. Make sure you're being the right one ;)

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##Why to NOT Meet Girls on Facebook In the post on indirect game, Franco comments, in part: "Maintaining a good personal Facebook or Social Networking appearance. I think this would require a blog post (or maybe even a series of blog posts), but interacting with women on Facebook (whether directly or indirectly through posts/pictures) is a big part of the way individuals connect and socialize with each other today. Do you have knowledge or advice in this area?" If you're under 30 (or maybe even OVER 30, too) and you're living in the early 21st century, you've probably thought about how great it'd be if you could just meet girls on Facebook. I mean... you can browse through profiles... pick the HOTTEST girls you see... send them a message... and then, if they write BACK - suddenly now you've got a new potential girlfriend or lover! It's easy! meet girls on facebook In a digital age, what better way is there to meet girls for the technically-inclined than to just find them on the Internet and send them a message? I've done it myself - and I'll be the first to tell you, I've met a few gorgeous women off of Facebook. It works! But there's one thing all the posts, articles, teachers, and guides that propose to teach you how to find girls on Facebook don't cover... and that is that it's way more work than meeting girls in real life, your odds of success are way lower, and it takes way more time. Let me take you through my own personal adventures with Facebook - and why I ultimately decided to close my account and never log on again. meet girls on facebook Back when Facebook was new, it became a craze... I was in college, and EVERYBODY in college was on Facebook! I had three things working against me being an early adopter personally, though: I've always been slow to adopt things I've always been skeptical about things that "everyone" is doing At the time, I didn't have my social skills down yet... and didn't have friends to push me onto the site (just classmates and casual acquaintances who'd bug me periodically about getting on there) So, I brushed off the people who wanted me to get Facebook, and didn't bother until a few years after it'd been out. But once I did finally get an account... I fell in love! Finally, I could reconnect with all those old high school classmates and show them how cool I was! I could connect with those hot girls I liked in college I never got together with, and show them how many hot girls were around me now! I could connect with all the new people I was meeting, and give them access to my travel photos and let them see the exotic locales I was visiting! I built up a really cool, really happening Facebook account, with tons of photos of me with beautiful, scantily clad women, tons of photos of me on travel in faraway lands, and tons of witty, memorable status updates that got tons of admiring comments. I even started getting people talking to me about my Facebook in real life... "I've always got to check through this man's Facebook and see what kind of crazy things he's been up to," men would say about my profile in front of others. "I took one look at your Facebook and I knew you were trouble," girls would say to me in turned-on tones after we'd slept together and they couldn't wrestle me into a relationship... (and then they'd ask me if we could please see each other one more time). I met beautiful women through Facebook - girls with model looks, with incredible breasts, and tiny waists... girls I couldn't even find in real life at the time, let alone get together with. And we'd go on dates, and some of them I'd even take to bed. It was wonderful! It was amazing! And yet, I kept trying to pry myself off of there. I'd come back to it again and again... "I've got to get off Facebook," I'd think to myself. Then I'd realize what nonsense that was, and how many good things Facebook brought to my life. But one day, a year after these thoughts first began occurring to me, I took the time to sit down and ask myself why if Facebook was such a boon I kept wanting to close it out. And then I realized why. GETTING AN EDGE When you go to meet girls on Facebook, the first thing to realize is it's a lot like meeting girls on any other kind of online dating platform. And the thing about meeting women online is... looks are king. I'm a reasonably good-looking guy, or so I'm told... but even for me, even with incredible messages, online dating was often a crapshoot. I've gotten good results from it over the years, and I've tested hundreds of variations on messages, profile designs, and the like... and the one thing that ups results better than anything else you can possibly do in online dating is getting a better picture. I started out by testing pictures on HotOrNot.com to see which ones got the best ratings. I just checked, and it looks like it's turned completely into a dating site these days, but HotOrNot used to be a ratings site where you could post your pictures... and other people would rate how hot (or not) you were. So, I put a bunch of pictures of myself up there... and they all came back with 5, 6, or, if I was really lucky, 7. Finally, I had a great picture of me sitting on a mountaintop overlooking Machu Picchu in Peru, bright green grass and gray stony ruins below and behind me, and that one garnered me an 8.5. I started using that on Facebook and on online dating sites, and I got better results. Over the next year and a half or so, I only dabbled in online dating, and then I lost 20 pounds, upgraded my fashion, got a $60 haircut from the best fashion salon in town, and had some professional pictures done - and then I tested these on HotOrNot. Results? 9.2... 9.7... 9.9... 10. I had a winner. I put my best picture up, and my results with online went up markedly. But then I ran a test. THE TROUBLE WITH FACEBOOK meet girls on facebookI went on ModelMayhem.com, and found a picture of a really cool-looking, attractive guy, duplicated my profile on an online dating website, and changed only one thing - the pictures. And guess what? That profile got FLOODED with women saying hello, asking for dates, and sending their phone numbers in their VERY FIRST MESSAGE! I couldn't believe the difference... it was my same profile! Everything was the same, except the pictures! So much for my "10" picture... apparently, it wasn't in the same league as this guy's 10. Women never messaged me first. But this guy... he was a champ. I almost shot a message to the guy on Model Mayhem to tell him, "Hey brother, I've got about a hundred women here that want to meet you in Southern California if you're interested. FYI. You'll just have to go by the name 'Simon,' is all." So, over the course of 4 years of using Facebook and online dating to meet women, I discovered that there are exactly three (3) things that most impact your success rates: Looks Looks Looks Oh, I almost forgot, there's a fourth one too... looks! Now, looks are under your control to a degree. You can: Lose weight Get a better haircut Get a cool facial hair style Upgrade your fashion Get professional pictures done Get ripped abs and show these off (it helps) Don't make eye contact with the camera (look down and away) Don't smile Those last three tips are from OkCupid's blog, which has a number of fascinating analyses of the data from across its sites. And I used every single tip from that list above except the one on abs (still working on that, actually), and it did make a big difference in my online dating and Facebook success... ... but it was still nothing like Simon's. This isn't the only problem with Facebook, though. In addition to the looks problem, that you can improve quite a bit on but still never lap a guy who's just really good looking (unlike in real life, where looks are still important but a number of other things like social grace and leadership play much larger roles than they do on a computer), Facebook's got a few more strikes against it as a dating platform: It functions as a "high school environment" - basically, everything's about your social status on Facebook and about being "cool" It's not a pure dating platform - which means women are a lot less open to being picked up on Facebook than on, say, Plenty of Fish, or Ok Cupid There are a MILLION things competing for a woman's attention on Facebook... like her friend Stephanie's recent dramatic break up, or that weird guy Carl who keeps sending her stalkery messages - it can be nearly impossible to break through ... and worst of all, everything you build on Facebook fails to translate to real life What I mean by that last one is this: Facebook game is decidedly different from real life game. If you get good at meeting girls in bars or parties, for instance, you'll have a much easier time meeting girls in class or at work. Or if you get good running street game, you'll find that beach pickup is a snap to learn. But if you spend a year getting really, really good at posting amazing Facebook pictures and incredible status updates and cultivating a burgeoning online presence there, you'll have gotten no better at meeting girls anywhere other than Facebook. Period. And if you think building yourself up as a Facebook one-trick pony is a good investment, you might not have noticed the subtle shift in Facebook's demographics, with the trend makers more and more abandoning it, and only the late-comers and older folks adopting it in droves. Facebook's hair is graying, and its style is running out. meet girls on facebook There are, essentially, 3 recipes available to you if you want to meet girls on Facebook: Be exceptionally good-looking, and get professional pictures Get exceptionally ripped, and show off your abs Work really, really, really hard to build an amazing profile, turn your real life into a Facebook photo accumulation effort, learn to write exactly the kind of status updates that attract scads and scads of likes and comments, and get amazing at messaging girls I get called "handsome" sometimes, but I'm not #1. And I've been working out since I was a teenager and I still don't have #2, which means it's probably never going to happen. So for me, the only choice was #3, and because I'm a game enthusiast and essentially wanted to make sure I tapped every channel that was conceivably available to me, I did. It was a LOT of work. Way more work to get any one girl off Facebook than it was to get an equivalent girl in real life. Like, way more. What's worse is it makes you lazy. You meet a girl, and instead of pushing things forward with her, you think, "Oh, wait... I've got this KILLER Facebook profile. That means I don't HAVE to push things forward with her - I'll just get her on my Facebook, and then it'll be over! I won't even have to do any work!" So you trade Facebooks with her, and then... usually you never see her again. The few times you do see the girl again though, you chalk it up to Facebook. "Ah, my Facebook profile comes through again," you think. But did it? Was it your amazing Facebook profile that pushed you over the hump with this girl? Sure, she commented on it... but the truth is, the girls you get who liked your Facebook probably liked you already. It's just throwing another step in the funnel, and every step you add to a funnel reduces the percentage of women who make it to the end of the funnel (your bedroom). Here's what I know: Those people you connect with from high school are living a completely different life from you now (unless you're in a really small town) and you will never actually interact with them in real life again. So who cares if they think you're Internet cool? Those hot girls you connect with from college are off doing their jobs, hanging out with their friends, and dating their boyfriends. They don't really care how cool your profile is, and you're probably not going to meet them. You had plenty of shots with them in college... if it was going to happen, it would've happened. Those new people you're meeting whom you want to impress? They'll be a lot more impressed if you do it in person than over Facebook. Those new women you're meeting that you want to make headway with? You'll be a lot more likely to take girls to bed if you push things forward with them when you're in person with them, than if you refer them to your Facebook page and hope it pushes the right buttons for them. Those mega hotties you meet via Facebook? You can meet way more of them in a way shorter amount of time with way less work in real life via day game. And, you'll have a lot less competition (other guys doing the exact same thing you are to try to get them) on the street than you will in her Facebook inbox trying to nudge aside 100 other suitors. Once I realized these things, and realized how much I was shooting myself in the foot with girls I was meeting by referring them to my Facebook, and how much I was sabotaging my efforts to get girls by changing my outings into Facebook photo collection safaris instead of "pick up a girl and take her home" missions where I held myself accountable for actual results instead of patting myself on the back for netting 10 great pictures and 5 new hot Facebook friends, I knew what I had to do: I shut my Facebook account down. And you know what happened after that? Immediately, I started getting better with girls again by leaps and bounds, and I saw an instant uptick in the number of phone numbers, dates, kisses, and new lovers I took. BUT WHAT ABOUT MY FRIENDS? Whenever I have someone ask me how to meet girls on Facebook and I tell them don't meet girls on Facebook... in fact, don't be on there at all, they crack, put on a plaintive tone, and say, "But what about my FRIENDS? All my FRIENDS are on Facebook!" meet girls on facebook Aside from thinking of Facebook as just one more resource to get girls off of, this was the other thing I struggled with for the year that I wanted to leave Facebook but just... couldn't. I'd spent all that time reconnecting with people and building this profile... now I was just going to - what? Throw it all away? Something began to dawn on me, though. All my real friends had my phone number or email address. They could always just CALL me! Or write me! And I realized my real friends almost never visited my Facebook page. In fact, most of my real life friends never saw my last Facebook status update that I was leaving Facebook, and most of them didn't even realize I wasn't on there anymore until I told them, sometimes months later. So who were all these people hanging out on my Facebook page? They were voyeurs. People I didn't communicate with anymore through any other channels. Randoms I'd met in a bar somewhere in some town I'd probably never go to again. Classmates from high school and college living vicariously through me, the guy who'd broken out of the mold and was off living some eccentric wild man's life in California and Europe and Asia and every what where else. Former colleagues dropping by to say happy birthday who never wrote me any other time of the year and probably wouldn't have gone out for a drink with me even if I'd come back to town and given them a week's notice. They weren't real friends. It was all an illusion. A shallow ego-boost. Mark Zuckerberg's goal with Facebook is to "connect everyone in the world," but the connections built aren't real connections... it's not sharing a beer with your pal at the local bar, or taking some beautiful girl you just met home and making love to her, or shooting an email to your old pal you haven't spoken to in years to let him know how things have been going for you. It's just... empty posturing. And they aren't your friends. I put my email address on Facebook before I left. I said, if you want to get in touch with me, if we're friends in real life and not just online, shoot me an email sometime and let me know how things are going with you, and I'll write back and let you know how things are going with me, and let's really be friends. Nobody who commented on that last status update of mine to beg me not to go or to say they were sorry to see me leaving ever did. BUT I REALLY WANT TO MEET GIRLS ON FACEBOOK... CAN YOU TELL ME HOW?!? Chances are if you're on this site, you're a skeptic like me... you don't really believe anything anybody tells you until you've taken it for a spin yourself. So if you're reading this and saying, "This Chase Amante guy is too down on Facebook... I think *I* can make it work!" don't let me stop you. In fact, it's the attitude you should have - if you don't try everything out, you won't ever really know for sure whether it really isn't as solid a channel for meeting girls as something else, or if you just got fed incorrect, biased information. That in mind, let me share with you a few of the tips I accumulated over a few years of tweaking and testing my Facebook profile to help me get girls through it: A few GREAT pictures are better than a LOT of mediocre ones. Most guys who try to find girls on Facebook I see post tons and tons and tons of pictures. I did this at first too. After all, if you want to be popular on Facebook, you want to showcase as much of your life as possible, right? Actually, the Internet leads to some pretty harsh judging based off only a few pictures. If you've got 10 pictures up, and you look dead sexy in 5 of them, but ordinary in the other 5, she's going to go back and forth between, "Eh... he looks so hot in this one... but so meh in THIS one! I can't remember if I really LIKE him or not! Oh well... it's probably somewhere in the middle." Whereas if you only have the 5 pictures of you looking like a really sexy man in them up, you make it a lot easier for a girl to browse through your pictures and say, "Whoa, WHY am I not talking to him right now? Time to send him a message." You don't need a lot of pictures on Facebook. In fact, even if you've only got 6 or 7, if they're all really good you've instantly out-classed that guy with 4,000 pictures of his awesome party life in which he looks great in 600 of and ordinary or worse in 3,400 of. Don't try and be "top of mind." Always being on people's news feeds is not an attractive trait... it just makes it look like Facebook is your LIFE. It's much better to be the guy who DOESN'T keep popping up on her friend feed, and whom she either: Stumbles on in her friend page and thinks, "Oh yeah, HE was cute... how come I never hear anything from him? What's he up to these days?" or You reach out to out of the blue and she thinks that when she sees your message Just like in real life, it's a rookie mistake to throw all your value up so it's clear as day... a woman just assumes she knows everything about you, feels satisfied, and totally forgets about you, even if your life is wild or eccentric. But if she has no idea what's going on with you because you hardly post any updates... now she's intrigued. Keep your profile minimal. I don't know how this works in the age of timelines - timelines weren't introduced until some time after I'd removed my personal account, and I only briefly played around with it with the business's account here before taking that one down too - but back with the old profiles, you could have all kinds of stuff on them - group affiliations, things you liked, wall posts, status updates... the works. I nixed ALL that stuff. Those things are all distractions that pull the girl away from your photos and satisfy her curiosity about you. If there's nothing but a few great pictures, a couple of status updates, and an otherwise blank profile, she can't slake her curiosity about you, and it'll anywhere from bug her a bit to drive her crazy until she talks to you. The fewer things you have on your profile, the more likely you are to get girls talking to you... rather than get girls being overwhelmed by the unmanly accumulation of lots of pointless Internet "stuff" on your profile (chicks do this. Men should NEVER do this). Keep your messages BRIEF. It's come to my attention that Facebook severely restricts your ability to message people you don't know these days, so I don't know how you go about meeting new girls on Facebook... I can't help there. In my day, I'd just mass-message every beautiful girl in a 40-mile radius and see what I got back. What I CAN tell you is that writing long online messages is a kiss of DEATH with ANY girl on Facebook, whether you know her or not. If you've got more than two short paragraphs, or three really short paragraphs, in any one message, go back and revise it because you're probably not going to get a response. And even if you do get a response, she probably won't want to meet up with you now because you're chasing too hard. Want to meet her in real life and be something other than Internet pals? Keep it short, keep it brief, and get to the point (meeting up with her for food or a drink) in the first message, where possible - don't beat around the bush - keep the focus on setting up logistics. She knows that's why you're contacting her, anyway. Be a strong dude and just spit it out. Leave chat off - permanently. How many times have you sat there on chat waiting for that really hot girl to join, and being disappointed that she never does? Yeah, that's because the prettiest, most in-demand girls, and the coolest, most in-demand guys, don't use chat. You shouldn't either. It'll waste your time, and set you firmly in "guy who hangs out on Facebook all day and doesn't have much going on in his life" territory. If you want to talk to a girl, send her a message, don't stake her out in chat hoping she pops online so you can ambush her. Chicks don't dig that, trust me. Or, even better than sending her a message - ask her out in real life. Women appreciate that a lot more than getting a Facebook message to the same effect. meet girls on facebookIf you do all these things, there's an added bonus there, too - you limit your tendency to go to extremes (as I did) and turn your life into an extension of your Facebook profile. You may be able to turn Facebook into an effective channel for meeting new women. I used it to that effect, but it was a lot of work, and I found other channels (nightclubs, street, parties, other forms of online dating, even social circle, which I normally avoid due to its limitations) more efficient ways to get the same or better caliber girls than I got via Facebook. Still, if I have one recommendation for you, it's that you not meet girls on Facebook - devote your time, energy, and resources to other forms of game instead, that produce more for your efforts, and translate a lot better into other spheres of pickup, too. But I won't begrudge you if you don't listen. After all... I never listen either.

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##Why She Doesn't Need an "Instant Date" I've had a few guys ask me recently about the instant date, one of which is a comment I address further on down in this post. And the point I've been making here repeatedly is… instant dates are good where applicable. instant date But you don't need them to pick up girls. Let me start at the beginning though. Remember the post on getting your sexy vibe, where on the day I had a date with the virgin, but she had to leave early because her brother needed a ride? Well, the good thing about dating multiple women is that you're never empty-handed… no matter what happens. And after the first girl had left, I found myself alone in my apartment, and not yet ready for my evening to be over… chatting to some of my girls on Facebook, to see who would be up for some spontaneous naughtiness. The first girl to bite was one I actually hadn't met in over a year… and that's another great thing about the ideal relationship. You can stay friends with your girls forever. There is no need for "closure" if you stop seeing each other… there is no breaking up. You can pick up right where you left off any time… I've sometimes even done this as much as six years later. There is also no fighting, bickering or drama, so even when you're not sleeping with each other because she has a boyfriend at the moment, you will likely be friends for life… and when she's single again, she might come over for a night. But most importantly, there are no hard feelings anywhere… since the very foundation of the relationship was honesty and transparency, no one ever gets hurt and your girls will always be happy to see you, wherever and whenever you might run into them. And the final benefit… if a date goes nowhere, you have someone to call. ☺ A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SEDUCER - PART VII instant dateShe arrived at my apartment in dead-sexy boots above her knees and a black coat. Once inside my room, as she was sitting on my bed, I positioned myself behind her, slowly kissed her neck and then took off her coat... only to find that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. No underwear… no bra… NOTHING. Only the coat and the boots... HOT! (If you're a girl reading this, and you're looking for a way to surprise the guy you're dating… try it! It certainly got my attention!). This was even more exciting because her body just kept getting better and better… I don't think she does anything in life other than her studies, clubbing every night and hitting the gym HARD every evening. Except for the weekends… judging from her sexy bikini marks! But don't worry, this post isn't purely motivational… I have more in mind for today's lesson than just painting a vision of what your life will be like once you gain mastery in this skill. As always with these day-in-the-life posts, there are going to be practical takeaways and tips you can use TODAY to improve your dating life… So let's get into it: here's how I met this girl. BOOTS ON THE GROUND I approached 11 girls that day… and the reason why I still know not only the exact number but also the exact way every interaction unfolded is because I keep a journal. I highly recommend you do the same… all the people I consider to be the best with women were in the habit of journaling about every time they went out, and about every approach they made… at the very least while they were still learning. Be honest - write about failures and successes, about the plateau-leaps we discussed in "How to Seduce Women" as well as the setbacks. It will help you to analyze your progress and find patterns, as well as to reinforce everything you did right. At one point in my studies and analyses I even noticed a shocking correlation: the more pages someone had written in his journal, the better he ended up getting with women… absolutely proportional. Back when I learned how to meet women, I was studying blogs like this one, and reading the posts of accomplished seducers just as you are doing now… but I always found it hard to imagine what their lives really looked like. If I was to meet one of these guys and we were to go out and chat up chicks together… how successful are they really? How often do they strike out? And when they do succeed, how does it all go down? Well, if you and I had met up in person the day I met the boots-and-coat girl… and if we had hit the streets together to pick up on babes together, this is what you would have witnessed: (Feel free to skip this bit if you have several hundred approaches under your belt already - you won't find anything earth-shattering here in that case.) The 1st approach went pretty well, but up-close the girl looked really young and turned out to be 16 when I asked. Throw the little fish back in the water my friend - as I mentioned, we have all kinds of awesome stuff for sale here but get-out-of-jailfree cards like in Monopoly aren't in the catalog. The 2nd girl I talked to was not interested in me. Shocking, I know… hey, not every girl has good taste! ;) The 3rd girl didn't seem to be interested either. She said she was in a rush and kept walking. That's fine… all good. The day is young. The 4th girl I approached was on her way to a class, but only in town for one more night. We exchanged numbers, and I ended up meeting her later that night (no instant date, notice) and sleeping with her before she flew out - but she's not the girl this report is about, so I'll tell you more about her another time. Though one takeaway is that girls who are traveling or on vacation are always a lot more open to affairs, as they don't have to worry about social repercussions - see the post on beach pickup for more on this. I walked into a busy subway station and approached a girl standing right next to the gate. She looked as if she was waiting for someone, and that turned out to be true - just as I was about to take her number, her boyfriend showed up. That's why you should never keep your girl waiting… you never know if a Chase or a Ricardus is around. ;) The next girl left the subway as I approached her, and she had a really tired and grumpy look on her face. I approached her anyway, because if a girl is hot, I'm game to try and lighten her up… but she ignored me completely. It happens... don't stress it. It's about her, not about you. Next, I approached a stunning black girl - she was a lawyer and on her way to work, so all we had time for was swapping digits. This number also never went anywhere… I recommend you review the article on how to make her want you, where we talk about "filling and emptying the funnel" if you don't already have it top-of-mind. The 8th girl I talked to that day was as sexy as they come… tears in her pants, and a busty rack in a low cut shirt… but when I approached her, she said she was married. I went back to the streets, and saw a girl at a bus stop glance in my general direction twice… so I went and chatted her up. I wasn't sure if she'd actually been looking at me or if that had just been a coincidence, but I started the conversation by accusing her of checking me out anyway… that went quite well, and so we exchanged numbers... though once again, for the sake of full transparency on this blog and to cut all and any hype you see out there - nothing came of this number either and I never saw her again. Approach #10 was a girl whom I could have sworn was a professional model, but alas, she just worked at the post office. Fascinating, those girls who are beautiful but don't really know how much power that gives them. And the last approach was the one from the scene above with the boots and the coat… her first comment when I approached her was that I come across like somebody who's totally loaded… not because I was wearing expensive clothes that day, but because my vibe was carefree, I wasn't stressed or rushed like all the other cubicle busy bees, and I had the time and the nerve to stop a girl in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day. That, by the way, is why The Success Factor works… attraction is quintessentially based on social status, and that status is communicated in your vibe, in a million subtle ways. SOMEBODY POST THIS ON THE FAILBLOG! Damn, Ricardus… that's a lot of rejections, boyfriends, flakey numbers and husbands in the picture! Yup, it is… I never promised that you could walk up to five girls and make all five of them your girlfriends. I'm not an illusionist in a hat… and it is therefore not my intention to sell you an illusion! However, while you cannot get any hot girl you want at will, there is something else that you can do, and that is just as good: you can get as many hot girls as you want at will. At the end of the day (not actually the end of THAT day, but metaphorically), I still got into sexual relationships with two out of the eleven girls I approached. Somebody call the suicide prevention line… not! In fact, this afternoon was above average! If on any given day that you do approaches you can just meet ONE girl who will end up being (one of) your girlfriend(s), you're doing pretty good… …do the math! That means if you went out every day, you would sleep with 3,650 women in the next decade. The red pill or the blue pill, Neo? I'll take both… the red pill to wake up from the dream and begin designing your reality… and then the blue one for stamina! instant date You're starting to see how inconsequential rejections really are. They mean absolutely NOTHING… so long as you get a certain percentage of your interactions to go somewhere. Then it's just a matter of Gradually tweaking (see: "Seduce Her Every Time") your vibe, presentation and your skills little by little to improve that percentage, and Doing enough approaches to get as many dates as you like - having a different date every night is no problem if you just do the math and then do the approaches. WHEN SHE DOES NEED AN INSTANT DATE In the post about the sexy vibe and the virgin, Prince commented on instant dates: "Great posts man, keep it up! I have noticed neither you or Chase have made an article on 'Instant dates' and what you are think about them. And some of your blog entries contradict each other... e.g. Law of least effect is good, but when you apply that to texting a girl you only interacted with for 5 minutes on the street and you try to organise a date straight away in the first text or so... could be problematic? Could you PLEASE do an in depth article on day game and flake prevention, because a lot of people say it's a numbers game... but the pros know that you have to build a really strong connection in your interactions, so instead of a numbers game it becomes something else. Girls hand out their numbers like candy these days! And if you think about it, a girl who is approached by a confident, sexy guy etc. will give her number out because it has rarely or never happened to her and is caught up in the moment... which would/could easily lead to a flake especially with beautiful women who have many men that they could easily date from their social circle and what not. Also I think Chase mentioned that keeping an interaction short VS long was the way to go... but then there are instant dates which supposedly reduce the flake rate for daygame. In a short time frame can you build a really solid connection? I strongly agree it is detrimental to be Mr. Funny pants, super exciting etc. when approaching. I'm really calm myself and am into the whole vibes thing too. Honestly, it will be much appreciated if you gave your insights to what I have mentioned above in a blog entry. Regards, Prince " Prince… that's an excellent question. I don't think there is anyone who doesn't go through the phase you're currently struggling with… you get a ton of phone numbers, and while your friends are impressed, you know that you might as well have no numbers at all because none of these girls are picking up your calls! Check out this article about the topic if you haven't yet: "What to Text Girls to Get DATES." instant dateThat said, a couple of years ago, some of us dating coaches (I'm thinking of two of my colleagues in particular) stopped taking girls on instant dates. Their reasoning was simple: a short interaction will make her more curious and intrigued… she will be more curious to find out more. I have a slightly different take on this - as there are really three scenarios: She doesn't have a lot of time when you approach her, she's on her way somewhere and busy. This is going to happen in 90% of cases during the day, so you don't even have to worry about an instant date. Verdict: no instant date. She has 30 minutes, maybe an hour, to spend with you. In that case, I agree with the theory that an instant date, while building a certain connection with the girl, will greatly reduce the mystery and intrigue you can build with a quick, powerful approach. I never do instant dates in this situation anymore - ever. Verdict: again, no instant date. If I find out that she has 3-4 hours on her hands or more, then I will take her on an instant date… and afterwards, back to my place. See "Day Pick Up" for more on that one. Verdict: finally - instant date! You might've noticed that none of those girls I met earlier I took on an instant date - not even the two I later slept with. But wait Ricardus, you might be saying… what is an instant date? And how do I pull it off? An instant date is any time you take a girl you've just met and go on a little date, right there. Simple. You could take a girl you've met on the street or in a bookstore or grocery store or mall and go to: A coffee shop An ice cream parlor A park bench A picnic The beach The boardwalk A café A restaurant A bar Window-shopping in the mall … or almost anything else you can imagine. All you need, really, is for her to have some time free, and for you to get her to come with you. That's an instant date. So as you can see, it depends mostly on her logistics - something you want to ask her about pretty soon after the approach. This is one of your first big way points, and it allows you to make an informed decision on how to proceed. THE BEST THING A MAN CAN DO FOR HIS HEALTH In my last post, "Dating Tales," I talked about male brain chemistry and how it relates to a man's dating abundance… and about how men who don't have a lot of options in women easily fall in love and even develop obsessions and depression. On the other hand, once you get to a point where what we talked about above in this post sounds not only plausible but very familiar, you will experience the opposite of this phenomenon… and knowing that you are currently dating a good dozen girls, all of whom are hotter than the girls you were wishing you could get back in high school, you will be on a constant natural high. An abundance of women you're intimately involved with is THE healthiest thing for the male brain chemistry… and other seducers I know confirm this. You will always be glowing and smiling. You will walk through your days with a spontaneous energy. If you could master... and I'm talking about truly master... one skill in this life, what would it be? Kung Fu? The guitar? Ikebana? How about approaching the hottest girls you see downtown, taking them on an instant date then and there or grabbing their number and talking to them later, and finally taking them home for steaming hot sex… Sign ME up for that one.

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##Why to Use Scarcity with Girls You Meet A friend of mine (Ricardus, actually) recently pointed me at a new piece of Internet marketing software called Scarcity Samurai. The design is simple enough; you install it on your site, use it with any sales pages or product launches you're doing, and it attaches a countdown timer to the page, and lets you set up a redirect the instant the timer winds down. People who don't buy within the time limit miss the sale and the deal is closed. Why would anyone run a deal that closes? Well, because, on average, these kinds of promotions do around double the sales that promotions without a close date do. That's exciting news if you sell anything online, but - unless you're selling stuff online - you may be thinking, ah, what's that got to do with me? Well, what scarcity does for sales, it also does for seduction. Or, you thought women just throw themselves at rock stars the one time they get the chance to backstage because they figure they can come back and grab the guy whenever they feel like it? scarcity and dating In the second part of Ricardus's two-parter on phone secrets, he mentions scarcity as one of Robert Cialdini's six "influence triggers" that make someone more likely to be influenced by you - in what is normally an unconscious and automatic occurrence. Dictionary.com defines the word "scarcity" thus: scar•ci•ty [skair-si-tee] noun, plural scar·ci·ties. 1. insufficiency or shortness of supply; dearth. 2. rarity; infrequency. As it were, we are interested in both definitions here. Scarcity is a powerful motivator. It gets people to take action on things they were on the fence about and put off into the future. It's why most men who are good with women are so short on time around women. And it's why men who are in the friend zone almost always stay in the friend zone. MOST MEN USE SCARCITY ALL WRONG Most guys - the regular guys, the guys stuck being just friends with the girls they're secretly in love with - think about women the wrong way. Just like how we talked about most men make mistakes texting girls because they're not able (or don't take the time) to get inside women's heads and think, "What will she actually respond to? What is she feeling? What's life like being this girl, and how would I respond to this message or that message or the other message?" so too do men make the same mistake with their own scarcity and availability levels. These guys look around their own lives, and think to themselves, "Oh! If only a girl made herself available to me... I'd be so happy!" And then they decide that the way to a woman's heart must be by making themselves as freely available as possible. Because they assume that, naturally, she thinks and feels just like they do. Of course, this assumes her dating options are exactly like theirs... but they aren't. They're completely different. She has lonely men making themselves freely available to her all day long. Men compete for her by throwing time and availability at her. If she needed a man to "just be there" for her, she has 20 or 30 or 50 phone numbers in her phone she could call right now and have the guy be there for her. That doesn't mean she wants to call any of those guys. It just means she could. But she probably doesn't want to... because none of those guys are scarce. The guy she wants to call is the one she isn't certain will answer. WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME IN THE MORNING? I was with a girl once when a song came on where the singer was singing about a sad romance and asking her man if he would still love her when the morning came. My girl said, "It's a good song, but the lyrics are silly. She's talking about a one-night stand!" And I said, well, no, wait a second. If this singer really wanted a man who'd love her in the morning, she probably has tons of guys she could've gone to bed with who would've woken up the next day and said, "Oh, thank goodness, we're together, I love you sooooo much and am sooooo happy to be with you!!" But she isn't with one of those guys. Those guys don't do it for her. They don't rev her engines up, get her juices flowing. She wants the same thing that every woman wants: the man she doesn't know if she can have. My girl thought about this, and said yes, you're right; and actually, it's the same for men too. And I agreed with her; when I've taken new girls to bed and had them suddenly tell me the next day, after our first night together, that they loved me, it's always been like, "Whoa. You don't even know me." Getting that emotional, that fast, makes it seem your emotions are cheap and easy to be won. It makes it seem like you are cheap and easy to be won. And nobody wants to be with somebody who's cheap and easy. Everyone wants someone she has to work for. I commonly like to tell women that, "What every woman wants is the man that every other woman wants but that only she is able to get." All women but the paranoid control-freak types agree with me (the paranoid control-freak types retort with, "Actually, I want a man that only I want, so that he will never leave me!" But they're a small minority). A woman wants to wonder. She doesn't want to know. If she feels like she can rest safe knowing you're never going to go anywhere... you're doing it wrong. A MENTAL TRIGGER In the sales video for that Scarcity Samurai marketing product, the example of a parking space in a parking lot is used as something small and (largely) irrelevant that nevertheless triggers scarcity to kick in and get us racing to get something. Ever find yourself driving around and around in a crowded parking lot, then suddenly, after five minutes of driving, see one empty parking space... very far away? You almost certainly felt a surge of adrenaline and mild panic as a single thought fixed itself in your mind: I MUST get that parking space! It seems a little silly when you think about it now. All that hoopla over a measly old parking space. Yet, it's how the brain works. The brain is triggered to see scarcity and respond. scarcity and dating Sales at department stores (or anywhere else) work this way - you see an item, and it's your one chance to get it at this low price. I've seen some interesting research on sales quadrupling store revenue or greater. Zara, the clothing retailer and manufacturer, builds scarcity into its very business model. I mentioned it in the section on "Being a 'Scarce Resource'" in "10 Ways to Have a Girl Take You Seriously - and LOVE It"; by continually changing over the merchandise in its stores, Zara communicates to its customers that if they want something, they'd better buy it now - because it probably won't be there next time. So they do. Women who shop at Zara tell me they feel a greater sense of urgency there and buy more than they do at other stores, because at other stores they can always browse around, see something they like, then make up their minds later - it'll still be there. At Zara, it won't - so if you want it, you buy it. When a girl knows she can't make up her mind on you later - that you won't be around forever - that she must decide on you now - just like Zara, your results shoot through the roof. Why? It's because: Scarcity manufactures demand that wasn't completely there previously, and Scarcity prompts people to act now - or miss out forever And when you start using scarcity with the women you meet, you both free up a lot of your time and mental energy, and you make it a lot easier to get the girls you want - instead of getting strung along by the girls you want. scarcity and dating When I was new to approaching women, I had the same assumption in my head that most men have - no woman is going to do ANYTHING with me if she thinks I'm leaving soon. My assumption was, women only want men they can have relationships with, and if you're not going to be available, well, tough luck for you. Even when I met women while on travel - on business travel inside the country, or vacation travel outside of it - I'd tell women I thought I might be back, or that I was thinking about moving there - and I meant it. I really thought, "Wow, this girl's so beautiful, if things actually work out... maybe I will spend more time here!" Of course, they didn't usually work out. I didn't know it at the time, but all my talk of maybe moving there or maybe spending more time there was making women want to take things slower. And if you've been reassuring women about your availability, guess what - you're shooting yourself in the foot, too. BUT DON'T WOMEN WANT YOU TO BE AVAILABLE? Why, yes they do - but not for the reasons you think. Whenever you meet new women, one of the primary things those women do, most of the time, is check for your availability: Where do you work? Where do you live? How long have you been here? Where are you originally from? What are you doing here? How long will you stay here? Do you like it here? ... and every other kind of question along those lines imaginable. Your first thought on encountering these kinds of questions from women is almost certainly, "She's sizing me up for a relationship." Which is... partly correct. She is sizing you up for a relationship. However, she hasn't specified what that relationship is. Women are always in search of more close male friends and supporters they can turn to in a time of need. It's a survival mechanism... the woman with no supporters out on the savanna starves to death or gets eaten by a lion when she loses her partner and nobody's around to take care of her. The woman who has a lot of guys who all think they have a shot with her, though, is safe - those men will all be there in a pinch to give her an extra slice of hippo steak or chuck a couple of spears at that lion to stave it off. In the modern world, the dangers are more psychological than anything else - her fear of ending up alone, feeling unwanted, undesired. Knowing that you are there, as a backup option, sets her mind instantly at ease. And here's the catch: having a man as a backup option outweighs anything else she can have him as. That means, if you're a very sexy man who'd probably make a good lover, but you're also around a lot and make for a good backup option - you'll be a backup option (and not a lover). And that means, if you're an impressive, powerful guy who'd make an outstanding boyfriend or husband, and you're also around a lot and make for a solid backup plan - you'll be a backup option (and not a boyfriend or husband). I remember back when I was in college, listening to one girl complaining, tearfully, to another girl about how she'd just broken up with her boyfriend, and how a male friend of hers she liked had tried to kiss her. The female friend suggested maybe it'd be good for her to be with the guy; the girl cried back, "I can't! I don't want to lose him as my friend!" If you want a girl to be more than just a friend, acquaintance, or someone you meet who never becomes anything meaningful to you, you must take availability off the table. You must become scarce. AVAILABILITY: HER TICKET TO NOT DECIDING After hearing that girl in college, I set myself a rule: never be friends with any girl you want to be more than friends with. Being friends with girls you weren't all that interested in, or were abstaining from pursuing for one reason or another, was fine; but not with girls you wanted to sleep with or date. Big no-no there. Like what we discussed in "The Secret to Hooking Up with Friends," women don't date or sleep with their close friends - it's the guys on the periphery of their social circles they get together with. Why? Because - in part - those guys are scarce. The guys who aren't, women have a lifetime to decide. She might like you a lot, and she likes that guy Wilbur a lot less (but still likes him). But if you're around her, offer her your time, and are available, and Wilbur isn't, with you she will delay, delay, delay, while with Wilbur she will decide and either go to bed with him (if she likes him for that), or not. Give her your availability and you give her the power to simply never decide what she wants with you and just keep you on standby indefinitely. Not a good place to be as a man with things to do, places to go, and people to meet. However, there's another problem - how do you communicate scarcity in a non-social circle environment? Because if you approach girls fairly actively, you'll be running into a fair amount of women you won't run into socially... and if you don't communicate quickly and naturally that you're scarce, they may well just assume they can throw you on the back burner like most of the other men they meet. You need to know how to communicate scarcity, and do it quickly and do it convincingly. HOW TO BE SCARCE WITH WOMEN scarcity and datingIt took me a little while to get comfortable doing this - I probably didn't start really feeling comfortable using scarcity with women until I was 2 or 3 years into learning how to get girls. Before then, I always felt like I was taking myself out of contention by not being available. Turns out the opposite is true. You may struggle to do this. It might even be one of the hardest things you do with women. And I probably don't recommend it to anyone who's anything lower than "intermediate" with girls. Reason being that without a good sexy vibe going on and smooth, edgy game down to appeal to women and make them want them to take action quickly, you may struggle to convert girls who are on the fence into lovers if you try using too much scarcity as a beginner. It may well just be better to take the lumps and get the early reference points with women when you're starting out, even if that means you end up chasing women around a little too long and doing things a bit wrong. Now, before we get into specific rules on these, I want to advise you that real scarcity must come from the heart - you really need to have zero interest in tolerating women turning a pickup attempt into a social occasion. You've really got to be more interested in taking her to bed than you are in becoming besties with her and hobnobbing with her pals. Because if you aren't... if you really don't have the resolve to want her, and only her, not some social-fun-let's-party-with-my-friends-hey-come-on type deal, you won't be able to pull it off, I assure you. You must want her... not to be friends with her. Caveat aside, here are the rules to follow to turn yourself into a scarce man in the dating pool: Don't be "available." That means in any way. When people ask me when I'm free, my standard response is that I'm always busy, but I can clear a little time for important people and important things if I have some advance notice - and then I ask when they are free... assuming meeting up with them is something I can fit in and want to fit in. Also, when a girl asks you if you have a girlfriend... that's one you never want to answer too straightforwardly. If you appear too available on the dating front, you can kiss your preselection goodbye - along with any scarcity you might've had - unless you tell her you aren't dating right now, and she can see that you mean it. Don't waste time. And again, that's in any way - but most especially when interacting with her. Yet another reason why it's important to move fast with women - lots of guys sit around, dawdling, twiddling their thumbs with girls - not a good way of communicating that you and your time are scarce and valuable. In addition to all the other good things moving fast does for you - screening out girls who aren't interested, showing confidence, showing experience, reducing the time you have to make mistakes in - it does this for you, too: it boosts attraction by communicating your time is scarce, and paints you as a more valuable person because of it. Don't do group things. When girls aren't sure about you, they'll often try to deflect your advances into a group thing. Deflect these back in turn. Whether it's a, "Hey, why don't we go dance with my friends?!" at a nightclub or a, "I'm going to a party this weekend - why don't you come?" when you ask a girl out at a café, respond with a nonchalant, "Oh, I don't have the energy for that!" and see how she reacts. Then counteroffer with something the two of you can do together instead. Don't tolerate her making it a group thing. Sometimes women will break circle and turn your one-on-one conversations into group conversations, through no fault of your own. This can sometimes be because they aren't interested and are trying to get out of talking to you by throwing you to their group or ignoring you for other people, but it can also happen if they like you but are in social butterfly mode, don't see you as significantly higher value than themselves, or are inexperienced and don't realize they're inadvertently messing up their chances with you. The thing to do here is stay calm, be polite, and don't interact with the group too much. You want to apply some social pressure here for her to quit talking to the group and re-engage with you by being polite, but uninterested in too much group activity. She'll either take the hint and excuse herself to pick up with you again, or she won't. If not, after 4 or 5 minutes of her making it a group thing, politely excuse yourself while saying you'll be back later - "Hey, I'm going to go scout the place out some more; I'll be back later." Then don't come back - if she likes you, she'll find you. Decline social circle invitations. This one's very close to not doing group things. If she invites you to be a friend (read: fan) of hers on social media, politely decline; if she invites you to a party via text message, politely decline ("Oh no, I can't - I'm super tied up this weekend. But thanks for thinking of me! Let's do something soon!"). Don't be a friend. If you have any doubts about this one, just read these articles: Can I Help You? The Sad Tale of "Shopping Guy" Be leaving where she is. This one's most pertinent when you're on travel, whether business or pleasure. Any girl you meet knows a promise to come back soon is an empty one - and that it comes from a place of weakness, telling her what you think she wants to hear. Resist the temptation, and let her know instead that you'll be gone in a few days and you don't know when you'll be back, or if you ever will. Give her the romance and mystery she reads about and dreams about, instead of being the steady, predictable guy of her nightmares. And if you're in a town you don't think you'll spend the next 40 or so years in, tell her - I'm not sure how much longer I'll be staying here; I'm probably taking off sometime soon. It's amazing how this skyrockets your results. Girls really dig men they aren't sure if they can have. Refuse phone numbers. This one's only for pros, and only if you're willing to forego the possibility of landing her on a date to up your odds of taking her home now. When she offers you a phone number, tell her, "I'll get it later," and then keep spending time with her and escalating with her. Or, if she insists you take it because she has to go home, tell her why you won't be able to meet up with her later ("I work 80 hours a week and I don't have time for dating. All we have is right now"). This one's a results polarizer - it's going to lose you some girls you might have gotten had you agreed to dates, but it's also going to gain you some girls you would've lost somewhere between trading digits and actually getting them out on dates. Don't use it unless you're prepared to make that trade. THE SCARCE MAN COMETH If you haven't played much with scarcity yet, it's a really fun attraction trigger and, best of all, it gets girls moving. No more sitting around wasting time wondering if she's going to decide in your favor... or the other guy's... or the other guy's. Instead of thinking she has as long as she wants to decide whether or not she wants to be with you, she's faced with having to make a decision now. And that decision is either "yes," or it's "no." You will lose a few women you might've been able to woo had you given yourself more time by not being so scarce. However, you'll gain far more women than you'll have lost by being something that's coming off the market and about to not be available any longer. Try it on for size and see how it fits. Scarcity's one of those things that makes dating and picking up a lot smoother and easier, and way more efficient. And "way more efficient" means more time for more girls, more dating, and more of anything and everything else you'd care to fill your life and time with.

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##Why You Don't Want to Be Her Perfect Man We often mention on this site that "just be yourself" is bad advice; that if you really want to see yourself truly improve with women (and in general) you should continually upgrade you: your fundamentals, process, and work past any possible sticking points that you may run into. However, I've noticed that a lot of guys try to reach an idealized version of a man: a man who's smooth, confident, successful, fit… and, well… perfect, in every way. Not just good, mind you. But perfect. Today I want to talk about why trying to be the "perfect man" can actually hurt you… and what you can do to maximize your results with women, while steering clear of the danger of striving for a little too much perfection. perfect man I once knew a guy who was everything a girl could dream of. He was handsome; he was well-dressed; he was rich; he was smart; and he was everything else a girl could possibly check off her magic wish list. I would often introduce him to female friends of mine, and they would always be delighted to meet him. He would take them to bed, take them out on dates, and show them a generally good time. All was well and it always seemed like they would form a long lasting, deep connection with him. But something strange always happened. After about 4-8 weeks, the girls would consistently dump him or otherwise call it quits. They would dump him. Mr. Charming-and-Successful would always get kicked to the curb by girls who often considered him to be out their league. It wouldn't be messy or full of drama, but they would always decide that they had had enough. How could this be? It baffled me every time it happened. One day I finally got a chance to ask a couple of the girls why they had decided to dump to this great man. Without hesitation, they would invariably give me the same answer: "He was just so boring!" They would tell me that he was so good at everything, and so flawless, that there was nothing that stood out about him. It was always a consistently good time. But that's all it was… good. That's impossible! I would always think to myself. This guy is too "perfect' for these girls? Then what chance would an average guy have with these ladies? But then another interesting thing happened. These girls started dating guys who ranged from average to really great - yet still not as good as Mr. Perfect - and ended up dating these men for quite a while. And I finally came to a surprising realization: no woman wants to be with a man she sees as "perfect." THE PERFECT MAN ISN'T HUMAN perfect manI've found myself and many other guys falling into this trap as well. You so badly want to improve your skills that you imagine yourself as the perfect man - in every way - for a girl. You see a man who never upsets her, a man who always says the right thing, and a man who always keeps her happy. But the thing is, when you place yourself in this fantasy, you lose the qualities that actually make you stand out with women. Let's imagine that you had the choice of listening to one of two pianists. Imagine that one was the most technically sound pianist there ever was. He followed every note of every song with mathematical and technical precision, and from that standpoint, his playing was absolutely flawless. Now imagine that the other pianist was Beethoven; still technically sound, but full of improvisation, imagination, and unexpected notes that could be perceived as "imperfect" or even "mistakes" at times. Which pianist would people more likely listen to and admire? It wouldn't even be close. It would be Beethoven by a landslide. Why? It's because people can't relate to things that are perfect. Being a person means being flawed, impulsive and emotional. And when things are perfect, they become devoid of all of these things. They stop being human. And this is what happened to that poor acquaintance of mine. He became a caricature of a man that none of his girlfriends could relate to or understand. ON DRAMA So what do women really want in a man? Women will tell you that they want a guy who is nice and gentle and all of the other things that say out loud about their dream guys. But if this site has taught you anything, it's that you should never pay attention to what girls say, and always pay attention to what girls do. The fact of the matter is, women love drama. In fact, people love drama. And that includes you too, Dear Reader. This is why we watch plays/movies, read books, and keep track of the social lives of people we may not even like. If every book was about a flawless character who never had anything go wrong for them, people would never read books. Whether or not people will admit it, drama makes life more interesting. And understanding this fact about women and people will help you become the man that women are actually looking for. perfect man We've already established in the past that "be yourself" is bad advice. But it's important to go a bit deeper into what this actually means. Be yourself is bad advice when: You are awkward around women and don't have solid fundamentals, fashion or facial hair You are good at making girls laugh, and focus on reactions instead of results You have a victim mentality and think that everything that happens to you is the fault of someone or something else outside your control You don't have a solid process and don't understand the importance of logistics You don't move fast with women However, these all pertain to negative aspects of your mentalities toward life and women. This doesn't mean that you should stop being yourself if you have good traits to capitalize on. Although you should work to actively improve on these traits, you should keep these positive that are already netting you success with women and making you a powerful man. So, being is yourself is good advice when: You are smooth and understand how to remain in control You are aware of social dynamics and move gracefully through social situations You know how to put out a sexy vibe and take women to bed You have strong fundamentals You are well-respected, successful and happy Once again, if you already possess these positive character traits, then being yourself is good advice. But the point to emphasize is that there are always things to improve on. That being said, there is a third category associated with this subject as well. If you look at the two lists above, these traits are almost entirely focused on other people. How you interact with other people, how you attract women, etc. But the third category in being yourself is retaining things about you that won't change no matter what. These can be both positive and negative, but they are the things that separate you from everyone else. These are things like: Stubbornly wanting to master business or personal finance regardless of what other people think, because you want to better your life Having absolutely zero tolerance for people who waste your time Having a passion for skydiving or world travel Only starting serious relationships with women who don't go to clubs Having a passion for classic rock Being fiercely loyal to your friends until you have a reason to do otherwise If you pay close attention to this third list, you see that not everyone is going to agree with a man who holds any one of these beliefs. Not everyone is going to even get along with a man who has any of those qualities. But in the end, having a strong belief in something that matters to you, and you alone, is exactly what makes a man. And by extension, this is exactly what makes a man flawed. It's having parts of yourself that will always be important to you and may be misunderstood or misinterpreted by other people that make the exact a man the very antithesis of a perfect man. BYRONIC MEN VS. PERFECT MEN perfect manBesides the fact that no one can relate to someone who is "perfect," what being the perfect person really means is that said person is a people-pleaser. A man of perfection lives his life for the sake of other people, making sure that everyone always has the best opinion of him, and making sure that he never rocks the boat. My acquaintance, Mr. Perfect, was just like this. Always attending to his girlfriends at all times, making sure that they always had what they needed, or always did what they asked of him - even if he didn't necessarily have the time or the resources. But people who are perfect never leave legacies, and people who are perfect never keep the highest class of women. The best of everything goes to the men who are Byronic. These are the troubled savants like Mozart, the enlightened dreamers like Voltaire, the daringly audacious like Alexander the Great. In the end, this is the perfect man for a woman; a man who dedicates himself to a greater pursuit, maintains qualities that he doesn't compromise for anyone, and adds her to his life a boon to these qualities and goals. BE UNIQUE INSTEAD I've always been the biggest proponent of standing out. Whether it's as simple as wearing colorful clothing or rare accessories, or perfecting a skill that few other people have mastered - standing out is an important key to bringing friends and girls into your life. Standing out not only helps you attract the attention of other people, it's an indication of the fact that you place importance on things that you care about, and not on things that other people think you should care about. Instead of trying to impress people, you work on cultivating yourself; which, ironically, is the most effective way of impressing people (funny how that works). No matter how good you are now, or how good you may become in the future, you should always continue to improve your skills with women. As importantly, you should pursue the avenues that matter to you as an individual. As you better the skills that you learn on this site, while perfecting the traits that make you unique, you will reach the perfect balance of independent/Byronic man and talented seducer. And you'll avoid the danger of the "perfect man" trap. It's also important to say that despite what you may think, you don't want a perfect woman either. You don't want a woman who likes every single thing you like, and agrees with you on everything, and never challenges you in any way. God, that would be boring. Luckily for you, there is no perfect woman (or man for that matter). Those women only exist in the dreams of men who haven't had enough experiences with females in the real world. This is why it's so incredibly important to step out of your dreams and fantasies and see whatever girl you like as the flawed and wonderful person she actually is. perfect man Finding balance while improving your skills with women can be incredibly difficult. But it's important to remember what matters to you over what other people may expect of you. Once you have a solid identity and solid foundation, you can easily use the tools of seduction and social grace on other people. Just don't set unrealistic and detrimental standards for yourself. Be Byronic, be unique, and be spontaneous. This will give her all of the drama and excitement she could ever ask for - and will make you everything she could ever want you to be. Go get ‘em.

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##Women on Pedestals In modern day Western society, the gods and goddesses have largely disappeared. In the minds of many men, however, they seem to have been replaced by beautiful women. I can think of no other explanation for the amount of awe and reverence given to beautiful women by many men; it must be that these men see these women as goddesses. They certainly treat them as though they were. There's been a certain degree of drooling over pretty girls since the dawn of man. Helen was, after all, the face that launched a thousand ships; had she been less beautiful, perhaps we'd still have Troy today. But what we see today is exacerbated by media, and it's become damn near a compulsion. Men watch models and actresses and porn starlets all day long, and become obsessed with finding women who look just like them. And when they find the women who look that way, they lose their cool, get weak in the knees, and turn to silly putty. This is called placing women on pedestals. For as far as anyone is concerned, men doing this have raised beautiful women up to the same lofty ideal and level of respect and deference they once gave to goddesses. Beautiful women are to be sheltered, protected, treated with kid gloves, and doted upon. One must never mention sexual intimacy, lest her fragile sensibilities be shaken. And one must certainly be slow, deferential, and unfailingly a gentleman while courting her. Except, not every guy is like this. Some guys out there don't place those beautiful women on pedestals; some guys just treat beautiful women the same as all the other women they meet: like women. If you had to guess one, which one would you think women'd appreciate more? The man who holds her in awe, like some kind of rare, magnificent creature, or the man who treats her the same as he treats everybody else? BEAUTY, CELEBRITY, AND BEING JAMES BOND My girlfriend has a nickname for me; she calls me "Bond Guy" because, she says, I am just like James Bond. And just like women tend to do with James Bond, she fell hard for me and doted and could not resist me. So much so that she began talking about marriage far too often - another thing women tend to do around me. When you are a very high value guy, no matter how much you tell them your life is unstable and uncertain and you might be here today but gone tomorrow, women will still fall hard for you and still treat you like a rare, precious, incredible thing. And that tends to feel… not so great. Because you're not some perfect ideal; you're a person. I almost feel like I can't reveal too much about myself to my girlfriend, because she has this image of me being this shining example of the perfect man, and if I show her things about me that don't mesh with her fantasy image of me, there will be drama and problems and she might not treat me as well as she does now. Similarly, a girl who's being put on a pedestal by a man can't be too honest with him or tell him much about herself, anymore than Tiger Woods could have told an adoring fan about his mistresses before his scandal came out. Everyone saw him as this ideal, and being truthful and honest and real with them was out of the question. So, he just played to their fantasy about him in public, and lived his real life in private. If a woman sees a man putting her on a pedestal, she feels pressured to maintain the ideal image he has of her. So, rather than be honest and real with him, she acts like the goddess he presumes her to be. And, what precisely are the odds of a goddess have a fling with one of her loyal, devoted followers? Close to zilch… rest assured. People get tired of being placed on a pedestal. The people who put them there don't really know them, and don't really care to, either; they're in love with an ideal, and they're using this person as their image of that ideal. Celebrities complain about not being able to be sure who's a real friend and who's just there for the money and status and prestige; beautiful women complain that they in fact are really quite lonely, and that people are too busy treating them like sex symbols to bother treating them like people. And as for being James Bond… suffice it to say, you find it a little hard to swallow when women want to settle down with you knowing nothing about you and having known you for all of a week. It seems a bit ridiculous that a woman who doesn't really know you from Jack is set on having you as her husband-to-be; it makes you feel a lot less special, just like the beautiful woman feels less special around a man who pedestalizes her; she knows he only acts that way because he never gets women like her, not because of anything unique to her personally. BENEFITS OF AVOIDING PEDESTALIZING WOMEN, AND A FEW TIPS Here are the benefits of being a man who doesn't place beauty on a pedestal: You seem far more possessed, self-confident, and worldly to a woman when you're clear-eyed around her while every other man in her vicinity is swooning You're able to act according to your experience and do the right things to move an interaction with her forward, rather than getting nervous and supplicating and losing any shot at being with her, which is what most men do You get to see a woman for the person she is, rather than as some ideal creature of beauty that she doesn't really like being seen as You get women's respect, because rather than communicating you're beneath them, as men who place them on pedestals do, you communicate that the two of you are equals I'm sure there are many more, but those are the ones I came up with off the top of my head. As you can see though, there are a great deal of advantages to not worshipping the ground that beautiful women walk on. In life, there are leaders, and there are followers. The followers are the ones who look to others for guidance, and hold people up in elevated, near mythological positions, reverencing celebrities and politicians and beautiful women and people of that sort. Leaders respect those people, but rather than treat them reverentially, they treat them as equals, just with particularly good levels of success or ambition. Women are drawn to men who lead. The followers get any women left over after the leaders have dined. Needless to say, you want to be a leader, and part of being a leader means not being astounded or amazed by anything. Respect beauty, and admire it, certainly; be amazed by it, stunned by it, and mesmerized by it, certainly not. To wrap the post up, here are a few things you can start doing today to get yourself on the road to taking beautiful women off of pedestals and down on equal footing with yourself. Don't use the 10-point beauty rating scale. Rating women from 1 to 10 on attractiveness, in other words. Calling a woman a "9" or a "10" is horribly detrimental to a man's success with said "9"s and "10"s. The instant a man calls a woman a "10", he's saying to himself, "Okay, that girl is the best thing I could ever possibly get." But, he doesn't even know anything about her! And beauty is easy to fake, too. With the right hair and makeup and clothes, you'd be surprised how many women can pass for "10"s. Kick this one into the garbage pail, you don't need it. Get beautiful female friends. This goes a long way toward getting you comfortable around beautiful women and helping you to see them as people with their own lives and problems like anyone else. Should be at the top of your list if you pedestalize women at all. Get a beautiful girlfriend. Once you've dated a beautiful women or too, beautiful women will seem like less of a big deal. Think about it; who flips out over beautiful women? Is it the guy who's got a string of gorgeous ex-girlfriends? Nope, he's used to gorgeous women and they aren't a big deal. The guy who starts drooling on the ground around gorgeous women is the guy who doesn't get them. So, even if you are drooling a little bit, do your best to conceal it until you've gotten a beautiful girlfriend or two under your belt. I guarantee beauty will become more the norm and less the ideal for you after that. Should get you started. If you're doing it right now, try not to put women on pedestals - both beautiful women and successful men pick up on men who pedestalize women (you can tell just from the way they talk about women or look at women), and it says bad things about them - they look inexperienced, unsuccessful, and a bit clumsy (one, because they must not get beautiful girls, and two, because they're blatantly showing off socially that they must not get beautiful girls, something one would be better not voicing). Men who treat women as equals are respected and loved by beautiful women and socially skilled and successful men alike - just as placing women on pedestals says bad things about a man, treating women as equals says very good things about the man who does so. That's the kind of man you want to be - calm, confident, controlled, and appreciative but not overwhelmed. Beautiful women will feel infinitely more comfortable just being themselves around you then, and they will know you're the kind of guy they want in their lives.

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##Women as Sex Objects: Supercharge Your Game This is for reasonably experienced guys. Newer guys will struggle with making this effective, I believe - it might even backfire. But for guys who are reasonably adept with women - if girls are easily attracted to you, if you're good at getting them to follow your lead, if you have sex with different girls on a somewhat regular basis - this is something you want to read. Referencing scientific research here, but I'm not one to be politically correct anyway, sooo… let's talk about objectifying women. When I read this research recently, I got really excited. It ties in with a lot of thinking I've been doing lately on… well… thinking. About how men who are massively, consistently successful with women think about women versus how every other, less successful man thinks about women. My reasoning was, with lots of experience with certain kinds of women, men come to have automatic sexual responses to those kinds of women, and the women pick up on it, mirror the emotion, and get turned on and respond to the man much better: they can feel his genuine, confident, non-needy attraction. I was this way with a certain "look" in some Asian, Mediterranean, or Latin girls… they triggered past good memories and I felt instantly comfortable and adept with them, and they responded more warmly than other kinds of girls. One buddy of mine is this way with certain kinds of white girls who frequent dive bars. Another of my buddies is this way with party girls. They just love him. So I got to thinking, "Wow, if I'm right, maybe I can do some visualization and train myself to call up automatic good responses with ALL kinds of women and get them responding the same way." That's where my previous post, "Picture the Conquest", was coming from. And then this came along. Check the article / podcast out here. I'll sum it up if you want to skip the research: brain scans revealed that men viewing clothed women see them as people. Men viewing scantily clad or nude women view them as OBJECTS TO BE ACTED UPON. I had a revelation. The biggest issue I've had - that lots of guys have - is motivation. If you were TRULY motivated - if you firmly believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that that gorgeous girl sitting next to you would take you by the hand and lead you to her bedroom and take off her clothes and sleep with you TODAY if you just said hi to her and made a little conversation - no amount of anxiety or apathy in the WORLD would stop you from talking to her - because you'd know that it would result in sex. And you want sex with beautiful women. I know you do. Well, the world beats us down. Most of us grow up talking to girls around us and not getting sex from them. We stop associating sex with clothed women walking about in the world. As the article pointed out, we view women as "people" - things our mind commands us to "talk to and interact with socially." It's not until they take their clothes off that we see them as "sex objects" - things that our mind commands us to "proceed to mate with." But I remembered seventh grade, sitting next to a pretty blonde girl, staring at her legs all through math class every day with a rock hard erection in my pants, dying to have sex with her. What happened to that version of me? He learned to stop associating sex with clothed women, that's what. What if I could reawaken him though? What if, coupled with my current abilities with women, I reawakened that drive, that desire to meet and mate that I used to have? And that led me to another question: What if you could train yourself to view women as sex objects? What if you got EXCITED just sitting next to a pretty girl and HAD to talk to her, because you knew she would respond well and feel your energy? Why is it that guys on steroids get laid a lot more? Why is it that guys with a high sex drive get laid a lot more? It's because they're viewing women as sex objects. They're looking for sex. And women respond sexually to men who are looking for sex. In our increasingly sterile, asexual society, where men are desexualized and the push for equal rights has been twisted to mean everyone should be the same, a man who is confident in his sexuality is rare and attractive. Women love a guy who's a playful, sexual rascal - think Casanova. He's always falling in and out of love with women, feeling passionately towards them - that's his sex drive talking. As soon as I read this research, I decided to remap my brain. I've done it before - I dragged myself out of ten years of depression by consciously telling my brain how I wanted it to feel over a period of time. Now, I figured, was the time to use that power to change how I see and interact with women. So as I made my way through the world, I began undressing women with my eyes. Picturing them naked. Looking at their imaginary naked bodies. Then picturing in my head how good it would feel to put my naked flesh against theirs. Suddenly, my sex drive spiked. I'd be sitting at work in meetings with massive erections, something that hadn't happened in years. I noticed that women at work were playing with their hair around me a lot more than before; I noticed they started seeking me out to chat. Girls in my acting class, who'd begun losing some of their interest in me, became far more interested in me than they ever had been before. I started getting more and more attention from women everywhere I went. Sex with my girlfriend, lately kind of lackluster, became amazing. I became a passionate lover again, sexing her hard and long and well and making her orgasms return from little moans into gigantic roars again. Then I started hitting the bars and clubs hard once more, something I hadn't done in some time. The attention I received from women shifted dramatically. Girls I'd never spoken to before came up and grabbed my crotch and kissed me. Girls I'd just met started pelting me with questions, trying to figure out everything they could about me. Girls that used to NEVER like me suddenly became my biggest fans. And it's only been about a month since I started doing this. And I'm only about 15% to where I think I can go with it. The sky's the limit. If this first bit of my experimentation is any sign, by projecting your desires onto the women around you, you can supercharge your sex drive and their attraction for you. If you're already a confident, suave man, and you start projecting sexual interest and arousal, you'll find that a LOT more girls are attracted to you than were before. A lot. They respond better to you, act more aggressively towards you, and chase you harder. Get out there and start imagining how good it would feel to get with that girl sitting next to you on the bus or the train or sitting near you in a restaurant or talking to her friend near you in a bar. Enjoy her… she's a woman, she dresses up for YOU, for you to enjoy her, to seduce you, to make you want her. When she can FEEL that you want her - that you want to use her for your desire, and for her sex - she'll know it and feel it and love it too. I'm excited about this. I hope you're just as excited as I am.

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##Nonverbal Communication The chief tenet of the Law of Least Effort in seduction is that the less effort you put in while still achieving the desired result, the more powerful, attractive, and sexy you appear. One of the most powerful ways of doing this is by learning to communicate without the use of words. If you've ever studied very charismatic people - I have, and I recommend it - something you'll notice is that they frequently say things with fun, charming, wordless expressions. A smile and a wink, say, or a mischievous look. For instance, maybe someone asks a charismatic man if he can handle a certain situation - he gives them the skeptical look with just a hint of a knowing smile and then gets to it. Or maybe he gives a small smile, makes a thumbs up sign, and goes about his business. THE POWER OF NO WORDS The Law of Least Effort is not, in fact, the only reason why nonverbal communication positions someone to look powerful, charismatic, and sexually attractive. There's another reason too, and it goes to the heart of how human social status is weighed and assessed: that reason is assumption of understanding. Most people don't use nonverbal communication to the extent that charismatic people do because they're not confident they can pull it off properly. For instance, ask an average guy if he thinks he can handle something, and if he tries to reply nonverbally it will likely come off too harsh (his expression comes across as if he was insulted at the idea of it) or too patronizing (his expression comes across as if he is trying to say he's superior to the other person). A man must be extremely precise in his nonverbal communication to convey the right message without crossing signals. Nonverbal communication must be exact, yet subtle. This takes a large degree of social awareness and a sensitivity to how others will respond to messages communicated that only a man of elite social caliber possesses. So, effective nonverbal communication says two things about you: You are an extremely powerful, attractive man who gets maximal results for minimal effort, and You are an extremely socially attuned man who is highly aware of the thoughts and feelings of those around him and adept at communicating exactly the right message he intends to communicate with no mixed signals. These are the signs of a man in control of his own movements and outcomes socially, and the signs of a leader. People are drawn to other people who possess the uncommon ability to communicate without words effectively, and it's a part of what we call "charisma" or "magnetism." DEVELOPING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION To become effective communicating without words, you need practice doing so, which means you're going to have to start using nonverbal communication and have it be a little clunky for a while. That's okay, because as you use your communication, you'll continue to refine it, and become more skilled with it and better able to achieve your desired result socially with a minimum of effort. There are a handful of different forms of nonverbal communication I recommend you start with. Again, watch movies of strong, powerful, attractive men, and you'll notice them using these. I recommend you start using them yourself as well. The Skeptical Look: follow the link for more information. The skeptical look is an effective catch-all for people saying silly things to you (e.g., a girl telling you, "I bet you'd love to get in my pants right now"), people over-questioning you (e.g., you've already said you can or will do something, and someone asks you, "Are you sure?"), and people making requests you don't think are worth responding to (someone asks you, "Hey, give me your drink and go get another one," or, "Lend me a hundred bucks, will you?"). The Exasperated Look: the effect is the same as if you had sighed, except without being quite so demonstrative. We want to be exact, yet subtle, with our nonverbal communication. When you're trying to tell something to someone and she just isn't getting it, or if she keeps trying to get you to do something that you're not going to do, you can use this expression. To pull it off, you let your shoulders droop a bit, widen your eyes, raise your eyebrows, and give yourself a slightly sad mouth. The Thoughtful Look: used to communicate you're considering something. There are a couple of different ways you can pull this one off, though my favorite is to pucker my lips and take my eyes and look down and away, followed after a pause by turning my head slightly away. You can also raise your hand up and rest it on your chin thoughtfully as you look down and away with your eyes and preferably pucker your lips a bit. The Clueless Look: if someone asks you something you don't know, or for your opinion about something you don't have an opinion about (e.g., "Where should we go eat?"), you can respond by shrugging your shoulders, raising your eyebrows, widening your eyes, and pulling your mouth down in a slightly exaggerated frown to nonverbally say, "I don't know." Interesting note: the facial expression used here is a more exaggerated version of the one used in the exasperated look, with higher eyebrows, wider eyes, and a bigger frown - plus shrugging shoulders instead of drooping ones. The Cocky Smile: if someone asks you if you really think you can do something, or a girl makes a comment that builds you up (e.g., "Well aren't you cocky?" or, "Hmm, you must be really good in bed"), you can use this to reply in a very effective, very nonchalant way. You'll basically droop your eyelids just a bit - adopting "bedroom eyes" - turn your head so that you're looking at the girl out of the corner of your eyes (sexy eye contact), and smile more with one side of your mouth - a half-smile, though you're still smiling on the other side of your face, just not as pronounced. The "Okaaaaay…" Look: for when someone just says something very insulting or uncalled for or extremely random and bizarre. For this one, you'll pucker and purse your lips out, hold eye contact for a moment, then slide your eyes off to a corner looking to the side. You can follow this one up by changing your mouth to a half-grimace; check out Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man, he uses this expression a few times throughout the movie. Effective for throwing off people who are busting your balls. IMAGINE YOUR AUDIENCE When communicating without words, you'll find it helpful to imagine the audience of people watching you and monitoring your expressions. In social situations, there often are people watching how you react, and when they see you reacting nonverbally like this, they're often going to like you more and take your side over whatever the other person is saying, and there's a very good reason for this: The person who's more socially skilled is, generally speaking, far more likely to be "in the right" in social situations. What that means is, if you're the more socially skilled person in a two-person conversation you're in, you're generally going to be more aware of the other person's reactions to what you say and do than the other person is going to be to yours, and you're also going to be more aware of the reactions of everyone else in the vicinity to what you say and do than the other person is going to be of what she says and does. So you're more likely to be respectful, savvy, aware, and socially graceful. Thus, if a situation emerges where there is any kind of competition or combativeness, everyone watching - the audience - will be inclined to take the side of the person who is obviously more socially skilled and in-control, and that will quite often be the person putting in less effort and using more wordless communication. Even when there are no spectators though - even if you're alone in your home with just you and your girl - it's helpful to imagine an audience, though. The reason I say this is so is because there often won't be immediate feedback from your girl - she may be irritated and laying into and not respond immediately to a skeptical look, or she may be busting your balls and not respond to your "okaaaaay…" look. Without immediate feedback, particularly for people new to nonverbal responses, there's the chance that you end up second-guessing yourself and losing confidence in your nonverbal responses. Trust me though, even if she doesn't respond instantly, she's registering your nonverbal responses and recognizing you as a sexy, more powerful, more charismatic man. Even if you don't see it right away, trust that they're working, and if you must, do it for your imaginary audience. Wordless, nonverbal communication is one of these things that not a lot of people do but that you will see strong results from once you have it down. Personally, situations that used to drive me crazy are now sources of great satisfaction for me - for instance, a girl starts busting my balls, and I give her the skeptical look, and she cuts it out and instantly becomes a lot more romantically and sexually forward (note: girls giving you the hardest time are quite often also the horniest girls and are giving you a hard time because they're agitated and looking for a man who will put them in their place (socially) and give them what they need (sexually)). I recommend a lot of movie watching, mainly because there are certain things you simply can't teach via text. This is about as good a job as I can do of trying to describe facial expressions and nonverbal communication in a blog article; hopefully I didn't do too terrible a job, but I do recommend checking out movies and seeing if you can spot these communications. Seeing one of these gives you a much better idea how to execute it than any amount of type-written explanation. A picture's worth a thousand words, goes the saying… Highly suggest you start incorporating nonverbal communication as a top priority if you haven't already, though. It's a remarkable social tool that's under-discussed, under-used, but inordinately effective. If you want to cut time from your interactions, get past the bullshit, and move fast with girls, word-free communication will help you get there.

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## How to Vanquish Fear the Moment It Crops Up Whether it's the art of seduction, social prowess, travelling the world, starting a new business, or just picking up a new hobby, every man wants to be fearless. Every man wants to be able to take life by the horns, challenge his own hesitations, and take a step into making himself better. But how do you do it? How do you overcome fear? Not just with jobs, not just with your social life, but with everything? Today I'm going to talk about being fearless. I'm going to show you that you can transform yourself into a person who pursues his goals with endless determination. Let's go. In our modern world, you have technology that can do anything for you: Connect you to your loved ones in a matter of seconds Let you access information about anything you could ever imagine Give you tools to make every part of your life more convenient However, in this world of endless innovation, men have lost a sense of purpose and introspection. We try to focus on making our lives more convenient, bringing in more money, passing our time enjoyably, starting a family… and then we die. We are losing the ability to ask the greater questions that drive truly successful individuals. Every man who drives himself to move past his fears has one key attribute: a clear and unyielding sense of purpose. I remember that moment a while back when I was sitting in front of my computer. I was staring a travel website, wondering if I could be the kind of man who lived abroad and spent a lot of his time travelling the world. I had been to Europe a few times, and I had had brief stints in other parts of the world. But this time was much, much different. I was staring at a one-way ticket to Thailand, in a continent that I had never been to before, in a region of the world where I knew basically no one. My hand was trembling just thinking about it. There were so many reasons running through my head about why I shouldn't go. You have all of your friends here. It'll be easier to find a job here. It's better if you stick with what you know. Think about just going back to Europe. But, for some reason, despite how scared I was… something was telling me that I had to make this journey. That no matter how alien it seemed, it was a path that I had to walk down. But it took me hours upon hours of thinking to be able to truly articulate why I was so compelled to make this journey. QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF If you want to develop a deep sense of purpose, you have to find out what's important to you. If you don't know what you value, you won't be able to confront your sense of fear in order to achieve your goals. Ask yourself: What do I care about? What is the most important part of my life? What is the greatest challenge in my life currently? What are my short term goals? What are my long term goals? What tangible steps am I going to take to get there? HOW TO OVERCOME FEAR? GET SPECIFIC Next, you have to be specific. When thinking about being successful in life, you have to know exactly what you want. If you don't know exactly what you want, you won't know how to get there. Your mind deals in tangible goals. Since I love eating, I often use food analogies in terms of achieving goals. Let's say it's lunchtime. You're starving, and you decide that really want a sandwich. Your mind will go into overdrive with all the ways it could get a sandwich into your hands. You could go to the deli down the street, you could break out the bread and make one yourself, you could get a woman to do it for you (just kidding… unless she's willing)… But no matter how you end up getting the sandwich, you won't stop until your mouth is biting through two pieces of soft bread with something in between them. However, if instead you think "I just really want some food," you'll end up doing a lot of hemming and hawing about how you're actually going to feed yourself, and you will probably do one of three things: Settle for the first thing you can find Waste time trying to be decisive but failing Narrow down your options to something specific and choose something to eat for lunch The third option will probably leave you fed and pretty satisfied with your decision. The first two are a crapshoot. how to be fearless Until you figure out exactly what you want, you will have no idea of knowing whether or not you have it. So why do men choose to live their lives this way? Are you one of them? They'll say: "I really want to start my own business someday." You'll ask them what they want to do. They'll say: "I don't know, I just really want to help people." You'll ask them when they plan to get started with setting the foundation. They'll say: "I'm not sure yet. I'm just waiting for right moment. It'll happen someday." You'll ask them why they don't start today. They'll say: "That's way too soon! I'm not ready for that." It's too soon, you say? Steve Jobs founded Apple at the age of 20. Bill Gates founded Microsoft at the age of 20. F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first novel at the age of 24. And you can bet they were working on those projects, or something like them, long before then. It's never too soon to figure out exactly what you want to do and start setting out a plan to be able to actually execute it. BE DECISIVE I need to re-emphasize the power of decisiveness. In the earlier food example, no matter which route you ended up taking, you would eat something no matter what. You wouldn't let yourself just starve. Even if you ate something that you didn't like that much, you would feed yourself nonetheless. But in the lives of men, too often they hem and haw their way into life starvation. I'm going to go more in depth on this point a bit later. But one way or another, you have to learn how to pick an attractive option and then actually follow through with it. Decisiveness is not only the ability to narrow down your options; it's also the ability to follow through with the option that you do choose. RECOGNIZE SMALL DEFINING MOMENTS With several hours and a million-and-one thoughts racing through my head, wondering what the hell I was doing, I started realizing that whether or not I clicked that "book" button was a small defining moment in my life. I started thinking about the two paths that were presented before me. On one path, I could go down the same route that most twenty-somethings in America go down: Get a traditional 9-5 job for a somewhat respectable amount of money Settle into a comfortable routine Find a nice girl who is good - maybe not amazing - but good enough Eventually settle down with a mortgage and children Hope to make small advancements in the career along the way. Or… go down the corollary track of grad school On the second path… I could travel to a completely different land, have experiences that I wouldn't be able to imagine, meet some incredible women, and be able to live stories that I could tell for the rest of my life. But, I knew that even this second track was cliché. I didn't want to be the typical twenty-something backpacker seeing the world as a way to avoid making real-life decisions and running away from the responsibilities of adulthood. I knew that I wanted to make my travels a deeper experience. I wanted to collect stories that would give me subject matter that would improve my writing career. I wanted to use the opportunities of the Asian living experience to get a deeper grasp on my personhood and to absorb a better understanding of selflessness. I wanted to use the tranquility of travel to scheme the new business ventures that I had always dreamed of launching. And all of these thoughts were terrifying. But I knew that this was a defining moment. And I also knew how to overcome the fear I was feeling at this moment. I knew that I didn't want to wake up as an old man (or even a thirty-year-old) wondering why I was stupid enough to stop myself from taking the plunge. I hit "book"… and I never looked back. how to be fearless Once you get a strong grasp of yourself and the things that you care about, you'll be able to be a lot more confident in pursuing your goals with fearless determination. But that's only the foundation of being fearless; an important foundation, but still the foundation. Learning to be fearless also requires: Patience Visualization Normalcy Shifts Laser Focus Massive Effort Finding a Greater Fear Learning to Laugh Taking a Chance PATIENCE A fearless man is not something you become overnight. And being a fearless man on one occasion doesn't mean that you'll stay that way on another. You have to persist. This idea of patience and persistence applies to individual instances and the fearless life more generally. What I mean is that a lot of the fear and butterflies from any situation will come from the first 5 to 10 minutes of an occasion. The first minutes you talk to a new girl The first ten minutes of a job interview The first five minutes of a speech you have to give In the same way, most of the fear of a goal comes in the initial stages: Telling your family and friends that you're investing thousands in a new business Getting that first blog post up for your new blog Finding your way around for the first few days in a new country But, the funny thing is once you get past the initial stage: your fear turns into excitement and rational preparation. Your brain is amazing at returning to neutral no matter what you do. Make a billion dollars? You'll get used to it. Sleep with the world's top models? You'll get used to it. Become Iron Man? You'd even get used to that. The key is to understand that the initial discomfort is inevitable… but it will also pass. You have to stick with a situation and fight through the hesitation and awkwardness until you hit the point where you actually start to feel pretty comfortable. When I first landed in Thailand, everything was new. The people, the language, the food… it was all so dizzying and fascinating. But after being there for several months… I got used to it. Street vendors selling grilled scorpions? That's old news. Ladyboys at every turn? Check. Almost getting hit by a car every time I go for a walk? Cake. Once you get back to the neutral point, you start to wonder how you ever could have been scared to begin with. VISUALIZE Chase wrote a very comprehensive article on visualizing. Read it here. Visualizing is based on the premise that your brain really can't tell the difference between thoughts and reality if it's in a deep enough state. So if you visualize yourself overcoming your fears and achieving your goals, then your brain will essentially treat it like you already have. So when you face your fear, it's a lot easier because your brain "has already been through it." But, it's not enough to know what you want and visualize getting it just once or twice. You have to keep reminding yourself of your goals. It's going to be incredibly easy to lose your energy or sense of motivation and just fall into a trap of complacency. But if you visualize several times or week (or preferably every day), you'll stay clear on what it is you need to do - and more importantly - why you need to do it. GET USED TO IT Don't fall victim to pedastalizing your goals. If you have a goal in mind, think very rationally about it. Treat it as if it's already happened, and think about all of the issues that come along with it. Let's say that you really want to date a bombshell of a woman, but you're too scared to approach her. How do you overcome that fear? Well, when you think about her, instead fantasizing about how super-terrifically-amazing it would be, ask yourself some real questions about what it's like to be with another human being: How do I tell her if her breath smells or she keeps bad hygiene? Do I have to start keeping tampons in my bathroom? What if she starts getting really needy and interferes with my friendships? Is she the kind of person I could spend a quiet evening and watch movies with? What will it be like to see her in sweats and no make-up? Will I have time to comfort her if she gets really stressed out about work or family? These are all things that come with dating a real life woman. Of course there will be amazing parts; but there will be boring, mundane and sometimes even nasty parts too. how to be fearless And if you can shift your mindset to preparing to be with someone who's an actual person, you can shift to actually bringing yourself to be with that person… instead of a fantasy island version of them. This is what I call a normalcy shift. DON'T GET DISTRACTED If there's something you want to do, then do that thing. If there's someplace you want to go, then go to that place. Too many people are absolute experts at distracting themselves. They could be working on their business, but maybe they should spend a little more time working on their fantasy team and wondering why they didn't draft Peyton Manning They could be planning their dream trip to Mali, but instead they're on Facebook stalking their ex or playing Farmville And the thing is… it's comforting to distract yourself. I've seen so many people do 90% of the work to achieve their goal, and then distract themselves day after day while telling themselves that they're "basically done." They use these distractions as a crutch to avoid the fear of following all the way through on something that they really want. I've been there. We've all been there. But if you want to be fearless, you have to be deliberate with your time and effort. Keep your eye on the prize and don't stop until you get it. LEAVE IT ALL ON THE FIELD "In great matters, men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small matters - as they are." Learning how to be fearless means learning how to put forth your full effort in every situation. I know it's hard. I know it's tiring. But if you're learning to develop a sense of fearlessness it's too easy to give in to the "I could've done it if I had tried harder" mentality. You have to try hard all of the time. When opportunities present themselves, you have to go in knowing that you put in your absolute best. And that can be anywhere from just asking a girl for her number to making a large investment in your new business. I can't tell you how important it is to set a strong precedent during the small occasions. Always seek out and say yes to new opportunities. If you start to slowly build up that fearlessness muscle, it's going to be much easier to flex it when the chips are down. FIND A GREATER FEAR In life, doubt stops people from succeeding 10 times more often than failure ever does. Fear is really an indicator that you should do something. It's a resistance telling you that there's a challenge that you subconsciously want to overcome. But to overcome it, you have to find something that you fear more than what you're trying to do. I talked about this in my piece on demolishing approach anxiety. You should have a thought or idea that's 100 times more terrifying than facing your fears. For me, it's simple. And for me, it's only two words. What if. Those words have haunted me too many times in my life. The mere thought of those words make me shudder. I can't look at a beautiful girl - whether she's black, Latin or white - who's my type and go home wondering what would have happened if only I had talked to her. I can't look at a life opportunity that really gets me excited, and yield to the fear of putting myself out there only to wonder what could have been had I decided to throw my hat in the ring. For a lot of men, the fear of regret is enough of a motivation to keep them going. But everyone is different. No matter what your particular case may be, you have to find your motivation. Did you have a painful social experience that you never want to feel again? Then think about that every time you have social anxiety. Did you become obsessed with a girl? Think about never wanting that to happen again every time you want to run away from an approach. LEARN TO LAUGH AT YOURSELF I can't tell you how many times I've said something stupid in front of a girl, or during a meeting, or at a conference, or wherever else you don't want to say something stupid. But you have to learn to laugh at yourself. If you learn to laugh at yourself, you'll never be afraid to fail. You'll just find the humor in the crazy situations that life throws your way, and you'll be able to move on. And once you learn to find the humor, you'll learn that you need to fail in order to succeed. So next time something goes your way, just laugh about it. Make a joke and realize that in 98% of your interactions with strangers, you'll never see that person again, so it doesn't even matter. TAKE A CHANCE You'll never overcome fear by just staying in your head. You have to be decisive and learn to take a chance. Once you learn to laugh at yourself and find a greater fear, this becomes much easier. So if you find an interesting option, go for it and see how it turns out. Hit that "book" button. Try that new restaurant. Pick a girl and approach her. Be decisive, and jump at the chance - you may never have it again. OVERCOME FEAR Fear is not something that you will ever completely rid yourself of. There's really no such thing as being "fearless." Fear is actually a very healthy and necessary response for people. But what you can learn to do is develop the habit of acting in spite of fear. If you take the time to understand your purpose of action, and take the steps to move ever closer to seizing opportunities, then you too will be become fearless. The amazing thing about becoming fearless is that once you start tackling a fear in one area of life, you become addicted to the feeling, and you want to challenge yourself in every other area. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear." - Franklin Roosevelt See you on the other side of the world.

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## How to Have Sex with Lesbians (When You're a Guy) Normally when you see an article title referring to having sex with lesbians, you'd probably assume that it was think an article geared toward women. But, in today's case, you would be wrong. You would be very, very wrong. One of my friends is a suave South American stud, and I remember a few years ago he would constantly - and proudly - reference his ability to have sex with lesbian women, even if they had never had sex with a guy before. Sometimes he'd say that he could even convert them. But most of my friend group just laughed it off as idle talk. They said that the one lesbian (or at least what they thought was one) girl that he was able to hook up with had been a complete fluke. But I didn't adopt this incredulous attitude. Not I, Colt Williams. I looked at this situation with a great deal of intrigue. The man is a really good friend of mine, and I knew that not only had he hooked up with a couple of lesbians, but he was also dating a girl who had previously been a lesbian and had never even touched a man before. So I knew there had to be something to his claims; I knew there had to be some kind of method to the madness. And then as I started taking a more concerted look around me, I noticed something very interesting. My friend wasn't alone. I also thought of a couple of other acquaintances I had who were dating girls who used to be lesbians. And then to push things further, I thought of some of my girlfriends who were once entrenched lesbians but who now are dating guys (one of them just got married to a man, actually). So toward the end of last year, I made a more concerted effort to try to unravel this mystery of lesbians. And did I succeed? Well, you'll have to be the judge of that. I have always had a hunch about lesbians. And this hunch is based on what I've come to understand about women in general. VENUS VS. MARS When I was in high school and college, I was absolutely fearless in regards to asking girls about their sex lives and sexual practices. That's probably why being sexual is second nature to me these days. I find sexual dynamics fascinating, but I've always been wary of the limited scope that men bring to situations. Men are very dopamine-based creatures when it comes to the mating game. We just want to stick our little head in as many holes as possible, and get the neural reward for conquering another mountain. And that's pretty much what drives us toward sex. We are very straightforward about it. We want to know if it's happening or not. And with gay men, this paradigm is often taken to an extreme. Gay men look at each other, and know whether or not it's on. And if it is on: there's no hesitation. And an interesting observation I've made about homosexual men is that they have absolutely no sexual interest in females (once again, this applies to most cases. Have to consider the sweeping majority here. There are always exceptions to rules). Some gay men almost seem repulsed by the idea of being around the nether parts of a woman. But in terms of the mating game - and homosexuality - I've found women to be much, much different. First off, women can have a million different motivations in the mating game when it comes to having sex: Some do it for pure satisfaction (and oh, women do love sex). And in my opinion, they love it more than men do) Some do it to create another human being (the traditional reason, if you will) Some do it out of vengeance or competition with other women (they are also as competitive, if not in certain cases more so, than men) Some do it to keep a man around and secure his resources (not necessarily gold-diggers. It can be a very mutual and loving motivation to one day start a family or to just have a strong pair bond) Some do it to make a living (enough said here) Some do it to make themselves feel better (maybe they need validation because a guy dumped them or they feel unattractive) Some do it because they are bored (this is not a joke; some girls will actually just engage in sex for lack of better things to do) Some do it to experiment (bdsm, sex toys, black or Asian guys, etc.) There are so many other reasons too. And because women can have a million and one different motivations for having sex with a man, they will have a lot more flexible stances on sexual practices and sexual openness. So back to high school and college. When I was in high school and college, I was also fascinated by those Girls Gone Wild videos. On one hand, it was for obvious reasons (no pun intended). But on another hand, I was asking myself: "Who are these girls? Surely they aren't anyone *I* know." But I really wanted to find out. So rather than sit around and scratch my head, I set out and began asking. I asked about everything. I went to friends and acquaintances with questions like: Do you ever masturbate? If so, how often? Have you ever kissed a girl? Would you? Have you ever thought about having a threesome? With another girl? Another guy? Would you ever flash someone? Would you get naked in public if no one you knew would ever find out? I just asked question after question like these and gathered very valuable information. And this information led to my eventual hunch. NO TRUE SCOTSMAN I once read a fantastic quote that I like to reference often on this site. Men like sex. Women are sex. What this means is that women truly embody every aspect and facet of the sexual belief and practice. And this has really been confirmed through experience after experience after experience with women. And this led to my hunch: women are open to all kinds of sexual experiences, both with men and other women. The question is to what degree it'll be. sex with lesbians In my experience, I have never encountered a straight woman who would not at least kiss another straight woman. And I have rarely encountered a lesbian who would not at least kiss a straight man. And this is where women's embodiment of all things sexual comes in. And if you ever want to inquire for yourself, I really encourage you. It can be fascinating to take a look at these things from an insider perspective and hear them straight from the horse's mouth. So, no matter if they are straight or a lesbian, you have a chance to get sexual with all women. And though you can't necessarily have sex with any lesbian, there's a large population of those who are open to it. And my friend discovered this truth long before many other men. He was truly ahead of his time in this respect. So how do you do it? > 1: BE OPEN-MINDED A lot of the times when my South American friend would get messages from this certain girl who he had been hooking up with, he would often say things like: "the lesbian wants me to come over and hook up with her." And whenever he said things like this, he would either get looks of confusion or incredulity. That is because it simply was not in the schema of most men to think that a lesbian woman would want to hook up with a straight man. But what is interesting about the seduction game is that the limiting factor for all men in any area of women - from one night stands, to sex in public, to choking, to threesomes, and to sex with lesbians - is that they simply do not believe that it is possible. In many cases, this is the only thing that actually prevents men from having success. This is the only thing that prevents men from having wild, book-worthy stories. Well, in the sphere of lesbians, if you have read most or all of this article up to this point, you should now at the very least be open to the possibility of it. Women's sexuality is all over the spectrum, and once you understand this fact, you will find that it is actually not that strange for lesbians to have sex with straight men. So you should look at the situations with curiosity and openness rather than discomfort and limited thinking. Because if you go into a situation with limited thinking, you will likely fail to have success. Women (lesbians included) fear nothing more than being judged. So even if you encountered lesbians who would potentially want to sleep with you, you would not make any headway with them if you made them feel embarrassed or uncomfortable for having those thoughts. So stay nonjudgmental and open-mind. > 2: UNDERSTAND THAT MOST LESBIANS ARE HYPERSEXUAL I do yoga fairly regularly, and I have had this new, very funny and eccentric teacher who very often talks about being in touch with your body. And when she is demonstrating poses, she will make references to orgasmic breathing and really using your nether parts and sexual energy to anchor yourself while doing various poses during practice. And from the first 15 minutes that I sat in that first class, I knew without a doubt that she was a lesbian. Why? Two reasons: Most lesbians are hypersexual. They are very sensual people and very in touch with their bodies and their own sexual energy. But it is not that most straight women are not also as sexual. It is more so that: Lesbians have permission to be more sexual. As this woman was leading the class and making her sexual comments, a lot of the class already knew her. So people were generally laughing and smiling and celebrating her for her commentary. But had most people in the class not known that she was a lesbian, or at least expected it, then the reception probably would have been much different. Because straight women who are hypersexual are considered strange or fringe individuals. Whereas straight women get negative feedback for being openly sexual (read: slut shaming), lesbians are celebrated for their sexual freedom by both men and women alike (albeit for different reasons). So you have to understand that if you want to have sex with lesbians, then you yourself have to be very in touch with your deeply sexual side. And if you are not already deeply in touch with that side, then you have to be open and willing to get in touch with it. > 3: GO TO PLACES HIPPIES AND HIPSTERS WOULD GO sex with lesbiansIf you want to have sex with lesbians, it's probably useful to know that the non-hyper-masculine ones tend to be hipsters or full on hippies. You can normally find them in places like jam band shows, yoga studios, Buddhist/Taoist spiritual gatherings, hipster coffee shops, meditation centers or schools, acupuncture centers, burlesque performances, etc. And this is of course with the caveat that you should only do it if you're comfortable with these environments (or at least curious). Lesbians seem to be individuals who are very adamant about deviating from the norm, so they are usually quirky, deeply sexual, and deeply spiritual people. And as this is a post about having sex with lesbians, I thought I'd actually point out where you're most likely to find them. If you live in a big city, going to your capitol hill area is probably where you'll find the most lesbians who are open to sleeping with men. > 4: GAME LESBIANS LIKE YOU WOULD ANY OTHER WOMEN A few days ago one of my good friends came to me and said that he had met a girl at his yoga class. When I heard this, I was really excited for him (though not all that surprised, as he's quite good with women). But he added that the situation was kind of unusual. I was intrigued. His narrative went: "After the class was over, I flirted with her a little bit and then asked if she wanted to go for a walk. She gave me a great big smile and said that she was definitely up for it. We then went for a really nice hour-long walk and the sparks were really flying." "And then… out of nowhere… she starts talking about her girlfriend." At this point I stopped him. I leaned in and asked if this was a platonic woman or a romantic woman. He blushed and said ‘romantic'. And then I urged him to continue. "Yeah, so, we kept on walking and even though she mentioned her girlfriend multiple times, she kept being touchy and flirty with me. And then we got to right outside of her apartment and made out. And just when I was at my maximum level of confusion…she asked if I wanted to have a threesome!" I lost it at this point. His energy, excitement, and surprise upon saying this was so incredibly endearing and invigorating. I was really, really happy and excited for him. But I also told him that such things are normal for lesbians. As we already know, they can access all ends of the sexual spectrum, so her mutual attraction for both him and the girlfriend is not unusual by any means. But he did what all men should do: he didn't crack under the pressure of her girlfriend talk, and he kept gaming her as a normal girl. And that's exactly what you want to do. You want to keep the vibe extremely playful and sexual and continue to game her even if she mentions her girlfriend. She will test you to see how you react. But don't fool yourself. -If you think a girl is flirting with you, she is flirting you. Guys have this incredible way of second-guessing their instincts when it comes to flirtation. Just because she's a lesbian doesn't mean she's not flirting with you. MY FIRST LESBIAN So after all of this analysis and speaking with my South American friend, I knew I had to have the experience of sleeping with a lesbian myself. And my first opportunity came near the end of last year. I was having a party at my house and found myself in a refreshingly intellectually stimulating conversation with a girl who I thought had been flirting with my friend all night (don't worry, I didn't break the bro code, he ended up with someone else). Through a very deep and connective interaction, she eventually revealed that she was a lesbian. But she also added that she was very attracted to some men. She also told me about some insecurities that she had about men not finding her attractive. But she was certainly an attractive woman. So I kept flirting with her, and then knew that I had to move her as I would any other girl. So I unapologetically invited her up to our guest room in front of all the guests, and she happily acquiesced. As we were up in the room, I began to psychologically break down her insecurities, which were admittedly rather deep. And after escalating the sexual tone, I asked her: "What if I told you I wanted to kiss you right now?" She blushed, looked down, and didn't say anything. I knew this was a high-pressure question so I changed the subject to something more innocent while letting it marinate in her brain. And then she began to get antsy and continued to look down and blush even while we discussed very mundane subjects. I knew the thought of us together was something that was deeply intriguing her. And eventually, she brought it back up. She said that she wanted to have a good time with me. I responded by saying: "I do not want to end up being another guy you hate or resent." And she reassured me that that would not happen. And to add to the dynamics of the situation, she had told me that she had known a couple of her lesbian friends who had been disappointed by a couple of sexual encounters that they had had with men in the past. "One of my bi[sexual] friends told me one time that she had to jack a guy off with two fingers!!" "Hmm, maybe he just had a really small penis. I bet he was either white or Asian." "Colt! That's terrible! You cannot say things like that…" she paused "… okay he was Asian." And then I dropped one of my favorite lines: "Meredith… I just want you to know… and this is really important… I have a small penis." This only works if you don't have a particularly small penis (no hate whatsoever for the guys for whom this is the case). But it's a great tongue-in-cheek comment to say with a very serious face that releases some of the pressure of the situation but at the same time still keeping the sexual vibe going. We joked around for a few more minutes, and then I stopped for a second and gave her ‘the look.' And then I slowly moved toward her and made my move. And we began to make out for a few minutes. She definitely seemed like a fish out of water, and she voiced her reticent excitement: "I think you're really attractive, and I'm having a lot of fun, but I just don't like not being good at things in life…" "What do you mean?" I asked with feigned ignorance. "Well… I've just never really touched a… penis… before. I really do not want to be bad at it." A let out a hearty laugh and reassured her that I would show her the way. And that last statement capped off what led to an intriguing and enjoyable night. DO SOME GIRLS BECOME LESBIANS BECAUSE OF MEN? Or rather, I should probably ask: do some girls become lesbians because of a lack of men? It is a classic sitcom joke that a man disappoints or humiliates a woman and then she quickly turns to lesbianism. And although it seems like good fodder for TV, I'd have to say that there is a kernel of truth in these fictional narratives. I cannot say that this is the case for all girls by any means, but there are definitely some women out there - many who start out straight or at least consider themselves mostly as such - who experience some form of disillusionment because of a man, and quickly move over to experiment with lesbianism. When I started making a more concerted effort to think about lesbianism, I started more actively noticing and being reminded of how many girls I know who dated a guy - sometimes for quite a while - broke up with the guy, started dating a girl, broke up with the girl, and then went back to dating guys. This phenomenon is especially prevalent on college campuses. So it's good to be aware of the fact that some girls really do like men in their heart of hearts, but are just afraid to get hurt or experience another frustrating or disappointing man. WRAPPING UP So now let me ask you: Can you have sex with lesbians as a man? Absolutely. Even if close-minded people around you think that it is a ridiculous notion, it is really not that ridiculous of a phenomenon in the free willing society that we live in. The sexuality of women is wide, pliable, and constantly changing. So if a woman is truly attracted to you, she will not stop you from trying to make something happen with her, regardless of what kind of label she puts on herself. The main thing that will stop you is a lack of precedent that will force you to get in your own way. But now I have armed you with the best weapon for your arsenal: information. And now you have the insider scoop to have confidence in stepping out of your own way. It is just up to you as to whether or not you will put on the yoke of the intrepid pioneer. Will you be like my suave South American friend, trailblazing the way in order to transform the skeptics into nonbelievers? And will you have some pretty wild adventures and make some crazy stories along the way? Well, there is only one person who can answer that question.

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## Threesome How-To: Step-by-Step to Get Two Girls As promised in Chase's announcement 2 weeks ago about the updates on Girls Chase (especially about the new writers), here is my detailed report, from meet to threesome, about a very recent event that I feel deserves to be covered. Chase mentioned to me high interest in how to get threesomes from some of the readers here. It's my belief that sharing a detailed lay report on threesomes might not only be an exciting and fun way for me to kick off my series on these, but also very educational, as you can get an overall idea of how you can pull this off. Throughout this report, I will breakdown everything I do, show the stages and explain the overall vibe of the interaction. threesome how to This article chronicles events that took place a few weeks ago. I noted down every step in the interaction immediately the morning after while it was all still fresh, though the explanations of "why things are so-and-so" and what works and why I fleshed out later on. On with the report. threesome how to This was a Friday night where my friend and I went out to a popular trendy bar in the center of my city. The bar I was heading to is small, but the vibe there is magical - it is very social. It also has a smoking area outside, which makes it easier for everyone to socialize - you can actually talk to people there. Clothing I would like to briefly discuss my clothing, because my wardrobe here played a crucial role in the interaction. A quick note about men's fashion: if you dress like trash, you will face difficulties when you meet women. Dressing good won't help you out that much, because if you only dress decently, you are not so much different than most men out there. You are not standing out and you do not have a style that catches women's eyes. What you need to do is to dress really good. Clothes should never just look okay with each other. Your clothes might match, but that is not enough; they need to match perfectly. So that night I was wearing a slim fit (very slim) black pair of jeans from H&M. Completely black, (deep black color) no details, just plain black with a black leather belt (always leather belts!), and a black shirt (Zara), and some black classy leather boots (Clarks). When wearing a black jean and a black shirt, try to make sure that they are both similarly black (different black colors). Now this is classy and very simple, but over this I had a dress jacket with flowers on (TopShop) which I can't truly describe color-wise because it just has a bunch of flowers on it. This is the part of my outfit that is provocative and original, making me stand out in the crowd. When wearing something that is provocative, with strong colors or details, make sure you tone down the rest of your outfit like I did (if not you will come across as tacky and not classy). Social Momentum When out in a club or bar, do not focus on just approaching "sets". Rather, focus on having fun. Talk to anyone (including fat girls and guys), not just the hot "targets". This creates some social momentum (putting you in the right state). Not only does this make your night more enjoyable as you get into a social state, as just sitting there and focusing on approaching "sets" containing "targets" is just antisocial (not attractive) and everything will become more awkward. I like when things just flow naturally... it is more fun. In terms of results, I have experienced when things happen somewhat naturally - with a natural flow, the girls tend to be more receptive, and things just "happen" (often the wildest insanity ever). MEETING SOME GIRLS I walked around the bar just to see what was going on. I tried to get an overall idea of the vibe there - trying to feel the venue. But I didn't wait too long until I met a few guys from my social circle. We went out talked for a little. This got me in the perfect mood. I also met some girls who I am somewhat friends with (and girls I have previously slept with), but no friend zoned women (I don't often get friend zoned). At the time I was talking with a female friend of mine. We went outside for a smoke. I love smoking areas - allows you to actually talk to people, as most places have loud music inside. We shot the breeze for a little about random topics. After a while, a very sweet girl asked me if the seat beside was free. The venue is small and the number of seats in the smoking area is limited. threesome how to But again, here we see how just creating social momentum by talking to people (my male and female friends) automatically gets you in a social mode, allowing you to automatically get in touch with other people. I will call this new girl Katrine (although obviously not her real name). She was very sweet and small, however still very hot. She was from Sweden. Opening and Early Sexual Framing Here's how the opening dialogue unfolded: Katrine: Excuse me; is this seat free? [pointing at the seat beside me] Alek: Depends if you are a nice girl or not! [Just shooting up a very light qualifier here] Katrine: I am a very nice girl! [she qualifies, first light sign of interest from her] Alek: Actually, bad girls can be fun sometimes too… like my friend here [pointing at my female friend - who then started giggling]. Hope you are not too nice… because that is kind of boring. Katrine: I can be bad sometimes! Alek: Ah, I get it! Like… you are a good girl in the living room and bad in the bedroom, that is the way we like it don't we? [looking over to my female friend] Female Friend: Yeah! [laughs] Katrine: Yeah, that's what I am! If that's the way you want to put it! Alek: Love it! By the way, meet my friend [friend's name]. They shake hands. Minutes later my female friend had to go because a friend of hers popped up. This is good, because it allows me to be alone with my girl. There are a few things to note from the interaction so far: First is that I was in the proper mood due to the social momentum Secondly, I was lucky sitting outside with a free chair beside me Third, I was talking to a woman (my female friend) - which creates social proof / preselection Now, I am not really into that "social proofing" type of game; I usually don't really care about social proof... but when I can get some, it is just a nice benefit. The first thing I did when talking to Katrine was to challenge her a little - a quick qualifier (asking her a question with the hope of her qualifying herself back to you). This was a very flirty qualifier, yet very innocent. Again, such thing is not necessary but can be a fun thing to do as it does more good than harm. By using a very light qualifier right away, you can quickly screen for receptive girls. Girls who don't respond well to qualifiers are pretty much not interested (and in such cases, you should leave for greener pastures). In this case, she seemed rather on, so I took the next step and escalated the vibe up by qualifying her further. As mentioned in my previous post on assumptions, escalating the vibe is key; no matter whether you do it verbally or non-verbally. Always be escalating the vibe. As you saw in the conversation snippet above, the vibe went from very innocent to a slightly more sexual one - when I mentioned that I liked bad girls, we all knew that this was more sexually loaded - and I made the point more clear right after - "good girl in the living room, bad girl in the bedroom". Now as we see the vibe has escalated and we are about to set a sexual frame. From this point on I will try to get more and more sexual while creating some rapport in between (just in order to be a little polite). My main goal is to set a sexual frame in order to communicate to women that I am a good lover: A man that loves sex A man that understands that women love sex too, and That I am sexually confident and experienced I used a little bit of humor, only explicitly. I was not trying to be very funny. You should never try to be funny; that is just needy... which is everything but attractive. When I say something somewhat funny, it just happens on autopilot - and honestly I am not that much of a funny guy. My conclusion is that humor might have certain positive aspects, but avoid being try-hard and too funny - at least if your goal is to set a strong sexual frame. The reason is humor doesn't equal sexual tension: sexual tension is deeper and more intense and humor simply breaks rapport; or, in other words, kills the tension. But don't get me wrong, it's ok to be a little funny in the beginning in order to hook her in by making yourself perceived as a cool guy; just don't stick with it too much later on. Alek: So what is your name, I forgot to ask you! I think we should just get the boring question such as "what's your name", "how old are you", "what do you do" out of the way so that we can get straight into the exciting stuff. Katrine: Yeah, that sounds like a good idea - I am Katrine… Alek: Nice to meet you, I am Alek; I think you must be Swedish! We talked quickly about where she was from. She was Swedish. I started speaking English to her because I get a headache from speaking Swedish without truly mastering it. We had a quick fluff talk; nothing much interesting happened at that point. However, she gave me some signs of interest. I believe that a woman gets an early opinion about whether she likes you or not, without necessarily meaning that she will go to bed with you - that requires that you make it happen and that you manage to seduce her - easier said that done. threesome how to A little later, Katrine commented my jacket. She thought it was really cool (because it is, it is a very unique dress jacket and I love it). I thanked her for that. Now this is cool because you can use anything and everything a girls says to your own benefit. For example you can easily transition from something she says into something sexual - for example sex talk. This is very important because my main interest is to set a sexual frame. Why is that? Because I would like to have the sickest sex there is, in the simplest and fastest way possible. My intention is not to get a girlfriend (I would argue that you can easily transition from a sexual frame into a more relationship type of frame, but sadly not the topic for today), not get new friends or be perceived as a cool dude. My goal is to get her to bed and release her inner beast. You will now see how I transition from talking about my jacket into talking about sex step-by-step: Alek: Oh, thank you, I bought it in London! While I was living with some artist friends of mine, it was such an exciting trip! I lived with some really special people! Katrine: In what way were they special? Alek: Well, they were all photographers. My friend was a fashion photographer and the other one I lived with, who was a girl by the way, was constantly taking nude shots of people. Katrine: That sounds really cool! Alek: Yeah, and my third mate was more controversial. He was taking pictures of people practicing dogging in the park and selling them. Katrine: What is dogging? [I knew she was going to ask me this - it was a bait question for a more interesting topic] Alek: People who practice dogging are basically swingers who swing in public areas like forests and parks. Katrine: [laughs] Hilarious! SEXUAL REFRAMING - SHOWING SEXUAL OPEN-MINDEDNESS What you saw earlier was the transition. Now comes the sexual framing. Sexual framing is all about showing that you accept women for being sexual beings and that you appreciate it. This will communicate to them that they are free to release their inner beast - which they will most likely do (more on that a little later). Alek: Well, that is exactly what I love about London and other major cities in Europe; people are so sexually liberated there [this for instance is not a fact, just some random statement I am saying in order to get my point out]! That is an amazing thing, because sexual freedom is simply beautiful! And also frankly I think dogging sounds pretty hot! Katrine: Yeah, well, I agree with you. You know I think it is unfair that I can't just fuck whoever I want whenever I want. [90% of the women out there say something along these lines when this topic is discussed... surprising if you aren't used to getting women to open up like this] Alek: I couldn't agree more, why shouldn't you? Why should women be forced to act in such a purist way, simply because men want to be fooled with the idea of women being small, innocent, sex-disgusted creatures, when both you and I know that this is bullshit; we both know that you, like most women, have your fantasies, that you probably touch yourself, too. You love getting cocks in your holes - you simply want to live life! Katrine: Oh my God you are so clever! Yeah, we just want to have fun. Alek: Furthermore, it affects most men, because men believe women don't like sex that much; many men perceive sex as a reward for behaving like a pussy-whipped dog. Katrine: So true! Alek: So let me ask you, how can sex, with circumstances are like this, be good? How can your partners be good in bed when they believe you dislike sex? When they believe you are made of glass and are so careful with you? Katrine: Well, most sex I have with men is bad! SEXUAL PRIZING - MAKING GIRLS PERCEIVE YOU AS THE PERFECT LOVER Suddenly another girl sat next to me (where my female friend sat a little earlier). This new girl was Katrine's friend, whom we will call Freja. Katrine introduced me to her. I introduced myself back. Katrine told her how I was the coolest and most awesome guy she has met. This gives me a little leverage on her. So I follow up the conversation where we last left it and introduced Freja to it: Alek: So welcome, we were just talking about men who are pussies in bed. So let me ask you this Freja, and I expect you to answer me truly honestly! Freja: All right, shoot. Alek: If you had to choose between two guys… the first is a very nice man, who treats you well, he is rich and everybody likes him. He offers you gifts and takes you out to dinner. Then he brings you home and gently lays you down on the bed, stroking your whole body and saying sweet words to you. Then he takes his dick out and asks you if you are okay with him sticking it in you. For some weird reasons you say "okay". He fucks you in a weird and slowly way and asks you every 2 minutes if you are okay. He also asks if he can change position. Gladly he cums really fast and the sex was basically "in-out-in-out" followed with "splash-out". OR... Alek: Would you rather fuck a man [at this point I get in closer to her, lower my voice and look at her deeper in the eyes] who just grabs you in a dominant way [grabbing her neck in a dominant way], bends you [I pull her in] over and tells you that he will fuck the shit out of you. He holds your arms and sticks his huge dick deep inside your pussy. He starts fucking you hard from behind while he dominantly spanks your ass, and holds your arms. He turns you around without asking and sticks it even deeper inside of you while ordering you to look at him deep in the eyes while he releases his load deep inside your pussy! Freja: The sexy one of course! Alek: I guessed it… you dirty girl, so sexy. As you can see I am now communicating to Freja that I know what women like in bed. This way she can perceive me as a good lover. threesome how to I start by making fun of other men, creating an "us" versus "them" vibe, which is very powerful. I then proceed by creating a scenario that would make her horny, a scenario, which she can relate to pleasure. While describing it I make sure I do certain moves (like pulling her in), in order to symbolize that "if you like this, you know that I am a guy that do it that way", which obviously creates sexual attraction. Alek: And I am sure Katrine would like it too! [turning away to the other girl. It is very important to give them both similar amounts of attention] Katrine: Indeed I would. Alek: I know by the looks of it, Katrine: you do look very innocent and sweet! And I think it so sexy that you are such a freak! I am sure you have plenty of dirty and wild fantasies. In fact, you also love this kind of wild and dirty sex. [as she just admitted that she liked what I just said to her friend] Katrine: I am very sexually open! Alek: Awesome, actually you both seem very sexually open! Freja: We are! Alek: Nice, I love sexually open people. Come and give me a group hug. [in order to get physical in a more "threesome way"] THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY No chill out, I am not trying to be political. However, when it comes to threesomes, at any part of the interaction, in 90% of the cases you have to threat both women equally. This means that that you have to: Show equal interest in both Give them the equal amount of attention Escalate (verbally and non-verbally) as much on both If you don't, the usual result is that one girl (the one receiving less interest, attention, and/or escalation) feels a little outside and not attractive enough, so in order to save her ego, she will just leave the interaction and mess it all up. Even worse is if she starts to get moody and ruin the whole vibe. Jealousy is good, but not in this scenario. This is probably the most important thing to remember if you plan going for a threesome. Also, do not give too much attention to one for a prolonged period of time, as the other girl can get bored and start over-thinking. Just give both equal but short times of attention. Yes, it is indeed a back and forth interaction. That's the way it is played. threesome how to As I saw potentials in these girls, I quickly screened for logistics. This is something you would like to do as early as possible (and if you ask me honestly, I should have done this earlier) because you don't want to end up with two hot girl but stuck because of logistical problems. So what I did was asking them both if they lived together, and if they lived nearby, keeping an eye out for the following two things: First of all, if they live together, the threesome, logistically-speaking, becomes an easier task (they are somewhat most likely forced to leave the venue and head home together). Secondly, the reason I asked where they lived is because I personally have bad logistics, so I always screen for girls with good logistics in order to not waste some time with a girl that lives 2 hours away. It turns out they lived pretty close (15-20 minutes of walking). My plan now was to escalate things further and go for the close, even if it was only around 12.45- 01.00 am - who said you have to offer girls to go home near closing time? Close when the iron is hot, goddamn it! SEXUAL FRAMING IN A NUTSHELL threesome how toIt is key to get sexual as fast as possible. The reason is actually quite simple. By communicating that you are a sexual man by setting a sexual frame, you are framing yourself as a sex toy - women can and will only get a fun pleasurable sexy time with you. You are not displaying that you can provide anything else for her that women usually care about - i.e. safety, emotional support, financial support etc.... You are basically just showing her that you can offer her some dick. So what happens? Well she takes it or leaves it, but most of the times they take it because women are mostly always open for some casual random fun without the typical implications and expectations that results from standard dating. As a result, a girl finds it completely natural that you start escalating to sex if she keeps interacting with you, because she knows you are a sexual guy and that is what is expected from you. If she were not up for it, she would leave, because she knows what the deal is. This is good because it removes time-wasters without playing the numbers game too seriously. Further, it is very important to communicate that you are sexually open-minded. This is because women become much more comfortable being their true sexual self around you when they view you this way. We know that women hold themselves back around men for two reasons: "Anti-slut defense": the defense mechanism women have that make them behave anti-sexual in order to protect themselves from the "slut" label. "Madonna", not "whore": women believe that men find Madonnas who don't like sex attractive. This is a result of men's Madonna/whore complex. By communicating that you are sexually open, a woman feels that she can open herself up sexually without being judged. If you also communicate that you like women for being their true selves when it comes to sex, they will automatically start behaving that way - which is awesome. Also, when I discuss what women like in bed and share my insights on female sexuality I am communicating that I am a good lover. I am not bragging; instead, just saying what I said indirectly communicates how much of a good sex partner I am (okay, now I actually am bragging). This is a very strong attraction switch, as sexual satisfaction is a HUGE need for women, which, gladly for us, not many men are able to handle. Most of the time in fact, women have crappy sex. By coming off as the perfect lover you're going to make her go crazy (if communicated properly). I call this sexual prizing and it is my main tool for sexual attraction. You will see me post a lot more on the matter. ESCALATING THE VIBE FURTHER Alek: Katrine, as you are one innocent-looking, yet very dirty little girl; tell me something dirty you would have done with a guy! I am curious. If you'd like I can start telling you what I would have done with a girl! [in order to make her comfortable] Katrine: [she came closer to me while holding around my neck] I would take you home… undress you, tie you up, and fuck you really hard [nothing really original - but what was funny was that I asked her what she would have done with "a guy" and she automatically uses me in her description; strong sign of interest anyone?] Alek: Sounds really hot, actually. Careful girl, you are giving me a boner! [always important to compliment girls on good behaviors - i.e., when they behave in a sexual way] Katrine: That's good; I have a very tight pussy by the way. [holy crap - things are getting hot] Alek: Oh, that is so hot. You know, Freja [her friend who obviously heard everything as she was also holding around my neck while Katrine was sharing her dirty thoughts], your friend is a wild little girl! What about you, what would you do? Freja: I would undress you, put some cream all over your body and lick it off…. everywhere, especially your hard cock. [it is on] Alek: Oh my God that, is so hot, too. Oh my God you girls are wild, almost as wild as me, I love it. [giving both girls equal amount of attention, remember] Again we see can how I escalate things from something pretty light into something way more sexual. Always try to escalate the vibe. That is the only road to getting laid (aside from paying a hooker, where she basically only escalates the price). Katrine: Now it's your turn! Freja: Yeah, what happened about that? Alek: [dragging both girls closer to me] I honestly enjoy licking girls. Especially teasing them, like laying them down on the bed and tying them up and just lick back and forth but never get to the point… licking her belly, then her breasts… then her belly again, then her neck, then her belly, then her hips… and after a while she goes crazy and I just love watching it, but I am holding it off, and finally at the end I just lick her pussy like there was no tomorrow! [again here you see a brilliant example of "sexual prizing" in use, i.e. communicating that I am a good lover] Freja: Oh my God Katrine: am I the only one who got a little horny from this? Katrine: Not really! Alek: Glad I can be of help. Did you girls know what the three biggest fantasies are? Both: Tell us! Quick tip: create an open loop by having an open question and make them beg a little for the answer. It puts a little chasing frame. It is just a simple cool trick. But it is very helpful when you are going sexual, because making girls "beg you" to talk about sex is indeed a good frame. Alek: First of all is getting dominated - but that is not really a fantasy for me, more a common thing. I love to be dominant. [being a little cocky and show sexual confidence is always attractive] Freja: Hmm, sounds good! Alek: The second is sex in public, we all had sex in public, right... once - or often [laughs]! Both: Yeah! Alek: And the third, believe it or not are threesomes! With two girls and one man. Believe it or not, but having a threesome with two guys is further down on the list. It is sick how many women I meet who are into threesomes. I believe most women get really horny by the idea of having sex with another girl! Have you guys ever had threesomes? It is okay to mention threesomes if the vibe is so sexually open. But if you are not there, keep it low-key until you've escalated the vibe further. Talking too early about threesomes might pressure them a little too much and you might just come across as needy. But once you reach that point, you are pretty much creating an "it's on moment", making it clear that there is something special going on between you. Also, while talking about threesomes, do not talk about this in a way that implicitly communicates that you are planning to have a threesome with them; just talk about it indirectly, because it will indirectly (explicitly) communicate that a threesome can happen with you, within the right circumstances. You never want to lay out to a girl what your full intentions are; instead, you simply want to give clues, so that you let her wonder a little. This gives much more control as it sets a better frame. Additionally, you avoid a lot of anti-slut defense because women won't feel the need to protect to themselves, since you never made it clear that sex (or a threesome) is going to happen. Katrine: Yeah, I actually once had one with her [pointing at Freja], but it was really bad! Freja: He [the guy they had a threesome with] was so awkward. Alek: Oh, that is so sad, guess what, I agree with you both that most of the threesomes happening out there are awkward, but that is because the man is nervous; he hasn't done it before. If you have a threesome with a guy who has done it before, it will all go smoothly. Again, we see a form of sexual prizing come to play. It is very recommended that if you start talking about threesomes, that you use it for all it is worth. For example, by using sexual prizing. Sharing content that communicates that you are experienced with threesomes will make women perceive you as an experienced threesome partner - and hence increase the chance of them wanting to have a threesome with you. Examples could be: Sharing insights on what makes a threesome good Discussing common mistakes people make during threesomes Discussing different sex positions during a threesome If you've never had a threesome you can either say some baloney that sounds legit or keep an eye on Girls Chase and read the coming articles on threesomes for inspiration (if you don't have any experience with threesomes, why not use mine?). Katrine: Have you ever had a threesome before? Alek: Yeah I have had a few; I think it is really exciting. 3 persons, 3 times more love! Freja: Yeah! Communicating that you have had threesomes in the past helps a lot, especially if you are trying to communicate that you are experienced with threesomes. This makes women comfortable because they know that if they ever have a threesome with you, they know that you know your stuff - and are able to lead things properly in a masculine and dominant way. An option for you is to maybe share a few threesome stories to back up your claim and create a stronger "threesome vibe" by making sure they also share one of theirs. In my case here though, that would be overkill. threesome how to Then suddenly, the girls started talking to each other, whispering into each other's ear. Again they are both still sitting on each side of me. This is the position you need to be in - in the middle of it. They bend over, and they start tonguing each other right in front of my face. I think that was quite hot. After a few seconds they pull me in and I am kissing two girls in front of everyone - even some local lair guys (who were hanging in the same venue that night) looked rather impressed. I kissed them both similarly and we started touching each other. Awesomeness. Then a girl shouted my name. It was a girl who was the ex of a good friend of mine, who unfortunately is strongly into me. She definitely killed the vibe - goddamn cockblock. I tried to ignore. The girls started asking if she was my ex. I told them that she wasn't. They even asked her directly and she gladly responded honestly. I didn't want to cause any drama as for now my only goal is to seal the deal. USEFUL THREESOME ROUTINE Either way, such occurrences kill the tension. I now have to rebuild things quickly. So I used an old routine (not a lame one) that I once learned from a good old mASF poster called "razorjack" that forced the girls to escalate on me in the dirtiest way possible (we all know that this is a good thing right?). It goes like this: Alek: Girls, you are both so hot and sexy. But please tell me who of you has the most skills in handling a man? Freja: Me! Katrine: No, me! Alek: Okay, chill out, girls... well, at the moment we only have words versus words. So you have to prove your point in order to make me believe you. Freja goes straight for my neck and starts sucking it. Katrine quickly follows. They both lick and suck my neck at the same time. They go up to my ears and start playing with them (oh boy, I love that), while they both have their hands moving closer and closer to my crotch. I am about to get an erection, which they can start to see bumping up from my jeans. I stop them for a few seconds and tell them that the score so far is 1-1, justifying my claim by saying that Freja is more aggressive, whereas Katrine is more delicate. THREESOME ESCALATION PATTERN My conclusion was, however, that I liked them both, which generated some smiles. I grab both of their necks and pulled them into each other so that they could kiss each other, while I lead the escalation by controlling their hands by placing each of their hands on each of the other's body, making sure that they both touch each other equally. In other words, make sure that they escalate on each other - creating a physical connection between both, which is important. Let me explain this in details. Basically what I do is control their hands and make them escalate a classic physical escalation pattern on each other (i.e., make them touch each other's shoulders, bellies, hips, etc…). Yes, it is really that simple: just grab their hands and make it happen. Be dominant, that way you are taking the lead, which is required in a threesome. We men have to make it happen and if we do it with confidence it is very attractive to women. For instance, this is how you escalate into a threesome: You make sure that everyone gets a similar amount of attention and You make sure everybody is kissing each other equally and That everyone has to escalate physically in equal amounts on each other EXTRACTION - GOING TO THEIR PLACE The iron was hot a little earlier; I could have extracted by then. Unfortunately though, my friend's ex popped up and ruined it. So I had to rebuild the vibe - but gladly when you rebuild, it goes much faster. Right now there is no time to waste. I ask the girls if they have some booze at home. They both answer me that they do have some vodka. The reason I am asking for this is because I will use this in my excuse to leave the venue. My excuse to leave was "We are having such a good time, here don't you all agree? Let's get the hell out of this noisy bar and head to your place and have a drink, we can always come back later". This excuse contains an excuse to leave the place while it also explains why we should leave it (i.e. "We are having a good time and the noise and the lack of privacy here just ruins it") and an excuse to get to their place ("We can have a drink there"). Before the girls are able to agree, I grab both of their hands and leave the place (being dominant is always attractive). I throw them into a cab. The faster you get them away from the venue, the better. I actually paid the cab… gladly they didn't live far away so it wasn't too expensive. Again, my main goal was - get the heck out ASAP. THE FINAL MOVE threesome how toIn the cab we made out a little bit more and talked about some random sex topics. Nothing of much importance happened. Arriving at their place, which for instance was a small place, I went straight to the bathroom to take a leak. I always wash my dick right after (I want them to suck me off). I went back in, we got our vodka ready and we take a few sips. Again I am sitting in the middle between both girls, because I am the one that make things happen (the dominant one). I pull off Freja's shirt and pour some vodka on her belly and lick it up. Then redo it but this time I ask Katrine to lick it off Freja's boobs. She did it. I take of both girls' bras and I proceed kissing them both. I make sure to lick every breast that I can have my eyes on (in total 4) and I only lick them for a short period before I go for the other girl's breast - the key is again to make them both feel similarly attractive (I truly want to indoctrinate this point into your brains). Next round, I take off my shirt and pour vodka on my belly, and both girls lick it off. ANTI-LMR TECHNIQUE They are now close to my dick. So I open up my black jeans in order to pull my cock out. Now here is the clue: always make girls go for your dick before you go for their pussies. The reason is simple: women have an automatic response when you try to go for their pussy - they almost always pull your hand away. But once they suck or play with your dick, they will get so horny that you can with ease undress them and shag them or play with their pussies (up to you). Also, in this scenario, this works really well because you don't have to go for one of the girls' pussies first - instead you let them both go on you at the same time (it is possible to go for both girls' pussies at the same time, but it is practically way harder). This way you avoid unnecessary potential jealousy kicks. I order them to touch my dick. I push each of their heads down and they both suck my dick - which is the most awesome thing on earth. Katrine gets up to me, making me play with her pussy and breasts while Freja keeps sucking my erected dick. I then lay down and make Freja sit on my dick while Katrine sits on my face while they both kiss each other - the triangle (coolest position ever). The threesome is officially happening. We did multiple versions of this position (that is mostly what happens during threesomes). FINAL NOTES Now not to disappoint you guys, but the girls didn't lick each other's pussies that night. This is in my opinion a "next level threesome". It is possible to pull off and frankly most girls are actually okay with it but in my opinion I am happy with the night. Can't expect more than this for a first night. However, I got their numbers and we met up two nights later and some girl on girl action took place, but it was very short and very innocent. They just touched each other and licked each other's tits. What was funny though, was that I met Katrine and another friend of hers when I was out another night and believe it or not, she was actually ice-cold toward me. Most likely this other friend with her was a friend that she did not want knowing anything about our escapades together... the kind of friend who finds out about this sort of thing, and then everybody in her circle knows, instead of just her and Freja and me. This coldness when around people girls are afraid of being "found out" around happens sometimes. Keep in mind that the biggest key to threesomes is to just go for it. The reason you haven't had many threesomes yet (or none at all) is probably because you've never really gone for it. Ask yourself how many times you've actually tried to go for a threesome... and you will soon figure out the cause of your lack of them. The good news is that, in my opinion, most women (75%?) are up for threesomes. So now it is all about you - happy hunting. threesome how to This was a long (7,000-word) article. Let me now recap the major pointers from this report. There was a lot of content in this report, so I will try to be short and only point out the most crucial elements: Understand that women actually are into threesomes - communicating this awareness is key The man who is perceived as a lover and a lover only is the man women have crazy sex with (including threesomes). Sexual framing is therefore critical (and I hope this report gave you a good example of it) Showing open-mindedness and appreciation toward female sexuality opens women up sexually (making it again easier to go for a threesome) Being perceived as a man who can give good sex makes women really horny (always helpful) If you want to go for a threesome, it can (but not always - depending on the level of the girls' receptiveness) help to talk about threesomes... but never communicate directly that you are planning to have a threesome with them - it will only create resistance Always treat both women as equals: always give both similar amount of attention, and make sure you all get equally physical on each other Go for it! Hope you enjoyed. This is just the beginning. Many of the topics roughly covered here and many others concerning threesomes I will elaborate on in greater details in the near future. So we'll keep in touch. Questions and comments are welcome as always. -Alek Rolstad

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## 5 Steps that Let You Visualize Anything into Reality If you're the kind of hard-nosed, stubborn-headed realist I am, things like visualization usually sound like some kind of hippie-ish New Age flimflam to you the first 10 or 12 times you hear about them. That's how it was for me anyway, and I'd always laugh a little and shake my head dismissively when I'd hear people talking about "the power of visualization." how to visualize But the more I studied successful people, the more I kept running into things like visualization, meditation, and taking time out of your day to focus on what you want. Cases in point: Henry Ford would take time out of his day to clear his thoughts and imagine the kind of company he wanted to build and the benefits it would provide to people Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla - both rivals and peerless inventors, and both professed visualizers who imagined their inventions succeeding Tiger Woods visualizes how the golf ball will move and where it will stop before he ever hits it Arnold Schwarzenegger, before he spent much time bodybuilding and again once he started, spent time visualizing what it would feel like to win Mr. Universe, and began acting like he'd won it already a few years before he actually did Jim Carrey, feeling broken down and beaten by his lack of success in Tinseltown, wrote himself a check for $10 million for "acting services rendered," dated it for 10 years later, Thanksgiving 1995, and stuffed it in his wallet so he'd never forget it. 10 years later, just before Thanksgiving 1995, he was told he'd be paid $10 million for the film Dumb and Dumber, and he buried the check, now falling apart and in pieces, with his father - it had been both of their dreams that he'd find success Even Albert Einstein first hit upon the theory of relativity while visualizing it, and Steve Jobs talks about blocking out the outside noise to focus on the inner voice in his 2005 Stanford commencement address. I read about Olympic skiers and world class tennis players visualizing the slopes or the game. I read about martial artists visualizing a bout before it began. Business builders visualizing what their business would one day look like, years before it showed any signs of ever getting there back when everyone else thought they were crazy. And I thought, this isn't just some hippie New Age junk. There's something to this, and I'm not doing it, which means I'm missing out on it. how to visualize In 2007, I moved out to San Diego, California, from Washington, D.C. A friend of a friend was there to meet me, and he showed me around town, introducing me to many of the good little hole-in-the-wall restaurants and trendy, cool nightspots. We spent a good deal of time talking, and at one point he stopped and told me about his "vision board." I'd heard of the term once or twice before, but he went into some detail. He'd read The Secret, a book on imagining the things you want and some kind of mystical energy of the universe bringing them to you just by you focusing on them. It was, essentially, Napoleon Hill's "secret" - the one he mentions as the "the secret message of this book (in Think and Grow Rich)," boiled down into even simpler language and repackaged for a modern audience no longer so familiar with Hill. My friend at the time he'd made his vision board had been living in Michigan, where he'd grown tired of the cold winters and rotund women (being a bodybuilder himself), and had longed for a change in ladies and locales. So, after reading The Secret, he built his vision board - a big poster with pictures of all the things he wanted on it. Among the other things he put on it, he placed a picture of San Diego, and he stuck on too a picture of a gorgeous Puerto Rican fashion model he'd torn out of a magazine. For a few weeks, he'd focus intently on the board 10 minutes a day, and imagined bringing these things into his life. Eventually he stuck the board in a drawer in his desk, though, and largely forgot about it. Three months after he'd first put together that vision board, a friend of his called him out of the blue to tell him about a job he thought would be right up my friend's alley, doing Internet marketing for a new company just setting up shop. They could pay him well, and handle his moving expenses. The location? San Diego. My friend, of course, said "yes." When he made it to town, he was in a bit of a hurry to get settled in. He found a place off of Craig's List in a pretty good location for a decent amount of rent per month for the area, and met the landlord, liked the place, and signed for his room. He was told there were two girls renting the two other rooms, but he didn't meet them before signing or know anything about them. As he got settled in, he met his roommates, and hit it off with one of them. This girl he started going to parties with, hanging out with, and met all of her friends and inherited a social circle to spend time immediately after getting to town. Eventually, the girl fell for him, and begun trying to seduce him. He almost went for it... but then he thought better of going for a roommate, and relented. She spent a good deal of time baking cakes for him, posing seductively nearby him, and luring him into her room though, trying to get him to change his mind. One day one of his old roommates from Michigan, who'd been going through his Facebook pictures, called his cell phone and surprised him. After a few pleasantries, he got to the point: "Dude," he said, "that girl in your pictures! You know, the Puerto Rican-looking girl... the one who looks like a model!" "What about her?" my friend asked. "She looks exactly like the girl on your vision board!" the roommate said. My friend had forgotten all about that board. But his roommate was right - she did. MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE? how to visualizeNeedless to say, I put my own vision board together pretty quickly after my new friend telling me this story (I'd met the roommate, too; and he wasn't exaggerating - she was, indeed, quite beautiful). In addition to the vision board, I also started using affirmations and visualizations, things I'd never really dabbled with before. I read everything I could on them, and tried to find out the most effective ways to use them. I'd done goal setting before, and still did it (and still do), to relatively good effect. In my experience, I never got the things I wanted quite as fast I'd have liked to have gotten them, but I DID eventually get them. I thought (I hoped) that with things like visualization and a vision board, it would work the same way. To date, the only thing I actually got off my vision board (that I recall being on it) was a girl... one nearly identical in looks and body type to the one I'd put a picture up of (tall, slender, beautiful, and busty, of course - my first girlfriend in Asia, an architect). The other things - my income goal, commercial real estate property, a few more - are still pipe dreams, at least so far. But then again, my emotional desire for them was never quite as visceral as it was for that girl. Visualizing sans vision board I put to good effect, however - I didn't have much luck with bleached blonde beach girls when I first moved to Southern California; I considered them airheads, and they treated me coldly. But at one point, I decided I'd spend time visualizing having fantastic interactions with bleached blondes, feeling warmly toward them, and liking them a great deal. A few months later, I was getting warmer receptions from them than almost any other kind of girl - a complete reversal. I also visualized traveling the world, living in exotic locales... but I didn't know how I could, or when I could. I had a job paying me well enough not to leave, and a wonderful girlfriend treating me well enough not to part ways - leaving seemed impossible. But I visualized it and - in one of those "things work in mysterious ways" events - the girl broke up with me and the job more or less ended right around the same time. Both of them came back and offered me the chance to stay - the girl wanting to start up again, the job offering to let me stay on if I was willing to go back to Washington, D.C. But I took it as the sign I was looking for, and left for the next stage in life. I'm not convinced that "the universe" brings you what you want, though. It might... I wouldn't be surprised if someday we found out that, somehow, it did. But I think there's another explanation, one far less hung up on "the universe," and far more focused on you - and if you'll notice, all the people mentioned at the start of the article weren't people visualizing success and then just sitting around waiting for it. Rather, the people who use visualization and become runaway successes are using it as just another tool in their push to become truly exceptional. And visualization helps this push for success through three different effects. #1: TRAINING THE MIND'S EYE I'm going to show you a video just below, and we're going to see how good your attention to detail is. In the video, you are going to watch people in white t-shirts and people in black t-shirts passing basketballs back and forth. I want you to count how many passes of the basketball the people dressed in white make. Here's the video: https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo How many passes did you see? The answer's in the video; I won't spoil it here, in case you're skimming before you hit play. ... ... ... Now... did you see the gorilla? 46% of people watching this video who are paying close attention to it do not. That's sustained attention for you. It causes you to become blind to everything you're not otherwise looking for... even things that you'd think would be SUPER obvious. One of the things you'll see guys talking about while doing the newbie assignment approaching girls on the discussion boards here is that suddenly lots of women are noticing them and flirting with them and trying to catch their eyes when they start doing this. And certainly the improved posture and eye contact they're using is helping them in this; improving your fundamentals does make you more attractive, after all. But in years of teaching this stuff, one of the biggest differences I've seen is in what you notice; you weren't looking for women to be checking you out before. Now you are, and suddenly you're noticing women noticing you all over the place. One of the things that visualization does to help bring things into your life is this: it trains you to start looking for the things you want. Like that gorilla, opportunities that were there all along but that you weren't seeing start popping out at you, and instead of being blind to them and assuming they simply aren't there, you start seeing these opportunities - and, if you're using visualization as one of many tools and not your only one, you start seizing them, too. #2: REMOVING UNCERTAINTY In the movie Inception, it's mentioned that the fictional shared dreaming technology used by the protagonists was invented by the military to practice combat situations in dreams. But what if you could train yourself right now - inside your head? There is one reason above all others why people don't have the things they want in life. Fear and doubt. Fear and doubt stemming from lack of training, and lack of experience. Answer me this: If you went out, starting today, and asked 20 new beautiful women on a date each and every day, until you got one of those women as your girlfriend, could you have a gorgeous girlfriend in a month's time, no matter your experience level with women? Probably yes. If each day you wrote down 20 new companies you'd like to work for and you called those companies until you found someone who could direct you to someone with the authority to hire people at each company, and you spoke to that person and asked him what kind of people he was looking for and with what skills and what qualities and what background, could you find a hiring manager at a company you like who's looking for exactly your skill set and experience level and land yourself a well-fitting new job in a month? Probably yes. Why don't you? Fear of rejection, and doubt that this would even work in the first place. You'd probably just be wasting your time, you figure. So why bother? The lack of experience doing such things prevents you from doing them. It's a negative cycle where lacking experience means you don't do the thing, which means you don't get the experience needed to do the thing. Visualization trains your mind to have previous "experience" doing things you fear doing and doubt doing. It breaks the cycle. Men fear most what they do not understand - emotions are at their peaks of fear and doubt and uncertainty and, conversely, elation, enthusiasm, and joy, when you do not understand a thing, and when it seems outside your control. The more familiar with it you become, the calmer, the more collected, the more poised... and the more successful. This is what we talked about in, "Does Success = Confidence?" Real confidence is a byproduct of success, not a cause of it. When you've already been successful, you just know how to go out and succeed, regardless of your feelings. Visualization does something else here for you besides clear away doubt and uncertainty: it creates false "memories" that allow you to remain more poised, collected, and adept in real world situations - because you're already rehearsed and prepared in your mind. #3: CLARIFYING AND CRYSTALIZING WHAT IT IS YOU WANT Learning how to visualize allows you to do one other thing for yourself, as well: namely, it allows you to use visualization to crystalize your vision and clarify exactly what it is you want, down to its most distilled form. how to visualize Most people have only vague ideas about what they want... things like: I'd like to be rich. I'd like a great/hot girlfriend. I don't want to have to go to work in the morning. I want to travel the world. I want to be respected. ... and other "goals" along those lines - pseudo-goals that are more amorphous ideas than they are plans or objectives. When you visualize, though, you're forced to sit down and imagine things happening exactly... seeing things exactly as you want them to unfold, exactly where you'll end up, and exactly what you've got to do to get there. Visualization takes a hazy idea, and transforms it into a crystal clear objective. how to visualize Your goals in visualization are thus: Training yourself to see and respond to opportunities Creating simulated experiences to get yourself familiar with things and remove uncertainty, fear, and doubt Clarifying your path, mission, and objectives - hammering home for yourself what you really want and what you're really after These are all "intangibles" - you won't visualize for the first time ever in your life, then walk out tomorrow and be better at picking up girls or making a million dollars. Visualization is a long-term investment in getting better results tomorrow, for the most part (although as you get good at it, it can be used in short-term situations - we'll discuss how in a bit). If you want a quick fix, it isn't visualization. But if you've got a tough nut you're trying to crack that you're willing to put a little time into cracking, visualization may very well be one of the pieces you need to put together a proper nutcracker. EMOTIONS AND VISUALIZATION I'm going to tell you how to visualize in just a moment, but before I do, I'd like to stop and stress the importance of emotions. The brain learns better with emotions - memories and experiences stick more firmly in your mind, their impact is more profound, and they're more easily recalled when accompanied by emotion. If you want to maximize the experience of running the mental simulations that are visualization, you must cast emotion into the mix. And not just any kind of emotion. From "With Sadness Comes Accuracy; With Happiness, False Memory" of the journal Psychological Science, by Justin Storbeck and Gerald L. Clore: "The Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm lures people to produce false memories. Two experiments examined whether induced positive or negative moods would influence this false memory effect. The affect-as-information hypothesis predicts that, on the one hand, positive affective cues experienced as task-relevant feedback encourage relational processing during encoding, which should enhance false memory effects. On the other hand, negative affective cues are hypothesized to encourage item-specific processing at encoding, which should discourage such effects. The results of Experiment 1 are consistent with these predictions: Individuals in negative moods were significantly less likely to show false memory effects than those in positive moods or those whose mood was not manipulated. Experiment 2 introduced inclusion instructions to investigate whether moods had their effects at encoding or retrieval. The results replicated the false memory finding of Experiment 1 and provide evidence that moods influence the accessibility of lures at encoding, rather than influencing monitoring at retrieval of whether lures were actually presented." The researchers were conducting a study on the formation of false memories here, finding that people in bad moods don't form these very well - you need to feel good to form a false memory, most of the time. Visualization functions on much the same triggers. You are effectively planting false memories, of sorts, in your brain while visualizing - and this becomes infinitely more achievable when accompanied by positive emotion. Recall all the examples of using visualization to become successful from earlier in this article, and recall the ends that each individual visualized: Ford visualized the feeling of building a colossal company that made great products that people loved Edison and Tesla visualized creating profound inventions that changed the world of humanity forever Tiger Woods visualizes the feeling of having his golf ball make it into the hole Arnold Schwarzenegger visualized the feeling of being crowned Mr. Universe Jim Carrey concentrated on the feeling of receiving his $10 million check ... it's the feeling that each man is focused on; the feeling of success. That's a happy feeling. A very happy feeling. Two great books I've read - Body-4-LIFE, by Bill Phillips, and The Millionaire Fastlane, by M.J. DeMarco - both have authors who started out broke and visualizing buying their own Lamborghinis with the money they'd make off their future million-dollar businesses, and both men succeeded and both men bought their cars (Bill's was a blood red Diablo, M.J.'s was a silver one). The point is, visualizing works very similarly to false memory implantation - except that you are planting "memories" in your head of success. When it's time to act in real life, and do what you need to do, instead of flying blind, feeling nervous or unsteady or underprepared, or chickening out, like almost everybody else does, you're doing something you've already rehearsed time and again inside your head. You're doing it the same as you've done it a hundred times before - even if only in your mind. HOW TO VISUALIZE: THE 5 STEPS This visualization stuff sounds pretty cool, right? So how do you do it? There are five (5) steps to follow when setting up your own visualizations to give them the thrust, impact, and effectiveness of those of world class athletes, inventors, musicians, and titans of industry. Best of all, they don't take all that long to do. Here they are: Clear your thoughts. Visualization before and after clearing your thoughts is a completely different ballgame. Before clearing your thoughts, your visualization is just another thought stream competing for mental processing power with 8 or 9 or 10 other chains of thought spiraling through your mind. After clearing your thoughts, though, it's the only thing there, and gets your full focus, attention, and retention. Clearing your thoughts can be done like so: find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Sit comfortably down, and begin to breathe in and out, slowly. As you breathe in, "see" one of the thoughts running through your head. As you breathe out, release that thought. Repeat for as long as necessary (usually 5 to 10 minutes) to clear your head and silence your internal monologue. One tip to make this easier: focus on being entirely present (e.g., the thoughts about that bill you keep forgetting to pay or that date you've got tomorrow or that faux pas you made yesterday or that project report that's due this afternoon don't matter because none of them are happening now... all that's happening now is that you're sitting peacefully and in full tranquility). Imagine the process. Visualization is not just of the end you'll achieve. Those who use it most effectively visualize the entire process of achieving something - the beginning, middle, and end. You're taking your mind through a simulation of the thing you want - getting it and experiencing it and doing it. If you're visualizing a specific new girl you'd like to date, for instance, you'll visualize noticing her, meeting her, talking to her, setting up a date, bringing her home, taking her to bed, making love to her, and spending time with her later on happily. If you're visualizing a business success, you'll visualize building the business, the wonderful value you'll provide to your customers, how customers love your product so much because it benefits them so much that your business explodes in growth, and you'll imagine the financial rewards and notability you'll receive as a result of this. If you're visualizing an athletic competition, you'll visualize starting, playing or competing, and achieving victory. Feel the emotions. Of tremendous importance is that you feel the emotions: excitement, enthusiasm, pride, happiness, satisfaction. Really experience these as you run through your visualizations, and feel them every step of the way. Imagine the satisfaction you'll get looking at that gorgeous new girlfriend of yours, or driving that Lamborghini. Think of the pride you'll get from customers telling you you run the best XYZ business there is. Feel the freedom that being able to relax on an island in the South Pacific and not have to worry about alarm clocks or problems at work brings you because you own your business, instead of a business owning you. Feel the good emotions and let these simulated memories become ingrained in your psyche... so that when it's time to act for real, your subconscious will remember things as if you've already been there and done that. See and navigate the bumps and obstacles. In the Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, it is said that a true Samurai thinks always of death: he thinks of death when he wakes, and he thinks of death when he goes to sleep, and he thinks of death at every moment in between these two. The reason for this is so that whenever he must confront death, he will be ready for it. Of course, what he's really doing is preparing his mind to engage in mortal combat at any time. Like the samurai, you will be best prepared for success if you visualize not just the victory you will achieve, but the obstacles you'll face along the way and how you will overcome them. In this way, you train your mind to not be shaken when you encounter roadblocks on your way to success; when you do come across them, it will feel as though you've seen it all before, and you'll have a much easier time of it because of this. Achieve success and experience it. Actually achieving success and experiencing it (in your visualizations) is of course a big part of the process, too. This is the one thing that all extremely successful people using visualization have in common. They aren't thinking, "It'd sure be nice if I had a million dollars"; instead, they're thinking, "When I make my first million dollars, THIS is what it will feel like." If you want to really put some punch into your visualizations, you absolutely cannot leave this part out. You must know the joys of success and live them every time you imagine. To completely run through this process shouldn't take you more than 20 minutes. You can conceivably do it in 10, though you likely won't get as deep a visualization session in (and probably need to sacrifice completely clearing your mind to do so). But 20 minutes to build up the mental ability to seek out, notice, and capitalize on opportunities to get the things you want most is not so much time. WHEN TO VISUALIZE The next most important thing to knowing how to visualize is knowing when to visualize. Your brain has a variety of different wave patterns at various stages of consciousness, including: Beta waves: when you're fully awake and thinking Alpha waves: experienced during periods of relaxation Theta waves: dreaming / early sleep-stage brain waves Delta waves: the brain waves of a fully asleep brain brain waves The deeper you can get brain wave-wise, the more the lessons of visualization stick in your subconscious. You'll reach alpha simply by jumping into visualization with a modicum of mind-clearing first; if you clear your mind, and you visualize just after waking or right before going to sleep at night, you can reach theta during your visualization. Other reasons for doing visualization immediately after waking and immediately before sleeping are getting yourself focused for the day (in the morning), and both relaxing yourself and preparing your brain to focus on these items while asleep (at night). The brain also retains lessons learned better when followed not long after the lesson by sleep (a nap or a full night's sleep), giving you another reason to visualize before bed. Important note: you'll have a very difficult time visualizing effectively while tired. As your brain tries to fall asleep, theta waves become interspersed with a pair of wave structures called "sleep spindles" and "K complexes"; and what will happen is that, if you're too tired, your brain will override your visualizations and force you into uncontrolled dreaming instead. So make sure you get enough sleep if you want to properly visualize. A good schedule to get you started: 20 minutes each weekday, Monday through Friday, either in the morning when you wake up or at night before you go to sleep. It might be tempting to tell yourself you're going to start visualizing 7 days a week for an hour a time, but you'll burn yourself out quickly starting that way. Pick something manageable to start with, and as you get comfortable doing it and it becomes routine, decide only then if you want to do more. ADVANCED SHORT-TERM VISUALIZING how to visualizeIf you recall earlier, I mentioned that I'd tell you how to visualize to achieve short-term objectives in addition to long-term ones. Here's that trick. Once you have some experience under your belt visualizing already, you can switch into visualization mode to mentally "rehearse" right before you do something. You'll most commonly see this with sports stars - e.g., Woods mentally walking through a swing before he makes it with his club; a basketball player taking a moment to visualize a shot before he takes it. But you can do this with anything - a speech you're about to make, a martial arts movement you're about to perform, a new move you're going to try with that cute girl you've just met. This is easiest if you've already anchored getting focused and visualizing to a specific gesture or movement. If you always meditate and visualize with your thumb and middle finger forming a circle, for instance, your body begins to associate this gesture with a relaxed, cleared state of mind, and you begin to slip into this state automatically whenever you form a circle with your thumb and middle finger. The reason I say this is "advanced" is because until you're fairly adept at clearing your mind in a hurry and you know exactly what you want to visualize and how you're going to visualize it, not to mention yourself running yourself through the proper emotions without much prep time and switching off whatever emotions you were feeling a moment ago, you'll have a tough time crowding out all the sensory input that's streaming into your consciousness from the outside world (especially if, say, meeting girls in nightclubs). Until then, you'll mostly need to stick to using visualization as a long-term method of upping your intangibles - but even as just that, it's a very useful thing indeed. VISUALIZATION WRAP UP Visualization is a really excellent way to get yourself focused and headed down the road to success, done correctly. It has the following three effects: Training yourself to see and respond to opportunities Creating simulated experiences to get yourself familiar with things and remove uncertainty, fear, and doubt Clarifying your path, mission, and objectives - hammering home for yourself what you really want and what you're really after The steps for performing visualization effectively are: Clear your thoughts (5 to 10 minutes) Imagine the process (another 5 to 10 minutes) Feel the emotions as you do See and navigate the bumps and obstacles Imagine achieving success and really experience it Of utmost importance here is that you feel the emotions, and that they are positive ones: happiness, satisfaction, excitement, pride, discovery, awe, enthusiasm, ecstasy, pleasure, joy. This allows you to better reap the full effects of your visualization by planting these imagined experiences deeply in your mind. Visualize just after waking up, first thing in the morning (before breakfast, if you can) and just before going to bed at night when you can more easily reach alpha and sometimes theta waves for optimal results, and start out with something moderate - one session a day, every weekday is a good start. You may prefer morning over night, as it's generally much easier to clear your head and visualize for the day ahead than it is to try and convince yourself to do it later on when you may be tired or still busy. But of course, do remember, visualization is nothing uncombined with action. More opportunities will seem to come your way once you're actively visualizing - but it's still up to you to seize them. Just remember those men from the start of this article - all men of vision in their own ways, yes, but all men of action, too. Visualize - then act.

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## Anxiety in Men: Where It Comes From and How to Stop It There've been a handful of commenters recently asking about an article on anxiety in men, including this one, the first of these more recent requests: "Hi Chase, A slight digression from the post, hope you can add your two cents to this. You mentioned avoid being the guy who's "racked with anxiety". Throughout most of my life, I have been plagued with anxiety. My mother suffers from anxiety and I believe it has significantly influenced my development. In high school, though I was part of the cool crowd, i knew at the very core, I was extremely uncomfortable around other people. To hide my weakness, I would put on a facade that consisted of being a loud, obnoxious, "bad-ass" person. I have matured from this and instead of living through a mask, i want to tackle my anxiety head-on. My belief is that, just like anything, gradual exposure will ultimately desensitize. I have been forcing myself to approach strangers and make conversations on a daily basis with this belief in mind. It's been a difficult journey though. Correct me if I'm wrong but through reading your ebook and blog posts, I take it you've gone through a phase of social anxiety/general anxiety yourself as well. If you could be so kind to share with me how you tackled your social anxiety, specific "exercises" that you found extremely helpful, anything you think is worth mentioning, it would truly be a boon to my development. Many thanks, Jack" Jack, sure, I can go through this a bit. It's a little off topic from what we normally talk about, but I think it ties in well to being more successful with women and dating, so let's have a look. anxiety in men This'll be a more personal post for me, similar to the one on how to overcome depression, simply because it's one I've had a lot of experience with and spent a long time stuck in. Anxiety and depression are quite often part-and-parcel to one another, so you might even think of this as the sequel to that post: defeating anxiety. anxiety in men As a young boy, I used to lie awake at night, so filled with fear that my stomach was shriveled up in it, obsessing over and over in my mind ever tiny way that my latest fear fixation would hurt me: werewolves, vampires, trolls, needles from the doctor's office. I'd frequently get up and go down to my parents, but they couldn't offer much comfort; for once I was back upstairs in my bed again, the fears returned, and I was racked with terror until at last sleep took me. This went on for years. I often had terrible nightmares with horrible creatures chasing me, but for the first 5 or 6 years of my life these fears were restricted to nocturnal hours. But anxiety soon began creeping in and affecting me socially, too, not long after I began primary school. When I was six years old, in the first grade, there was this girl I liked - her name was Diana. I went about telling everyone how Diana and I were going to get married and go on a honeymoon to Bermuda (the Beach Boys song, Kokomo, was very popular then, and a favorite of mine, with its lyrics, "Bermuda, Bahamas, come on pretty mama..."). Diana was a second grader - way more mature than a first grader - and she was horrified that this little first grader was going around telling everyone how he was going to marry her. Eventually she told me flat out in front of a bunch of other people by the swing set in the recess yard that she was NOT going to marry me, and burst my bubble (although I still thought I could change her mind). For the next couple of months after that, I imagined every lunchtime that the entire school cafeteria, filled with its cacophony of other students' mealtime laughter and chatter, was ALL directed squarely at ME; they were all talking about me, about how foolish I'd been, and about how funny it was that Diana had roundly rejected me. And they were laughing at me. I felt ashamed. Still, I kept getting into trouble, and kept proclaiming my love to the girls I liked, for a few more years, but events conspired to undermine my extraversion and plunge me into a doubt and a hesitation that began to naturally stalk me everywhere I went. Eventually my outgoing personality faded, though my defiance remained, with me only following the rules enough not to get in trouble, but never liking it. Things changed in seventh grade, when the pretty girls, even the eighth grade pretty girls (a big deal for a seventh grader), started asking me on dates, and the cool kids started trying to hang out with me and inviting me to their parties. Suddenly, like a light had been switched on, everyone wanted to be around me and hang out with me. But all I could say to these overtures was no. Because by then, I had something that would plague me for over a decade more, and nearly claimed my life on multiple occasions, either through my own hand, or through my own recklessness with my mortality to prove my worth to myself. That something that plagued me and froze me and gnawed at me was this: A gripping, paralyzing social phobia. I did not just dabble with anxiety; anxiety ruled over me like a cruel king, limiting my freedom and keeping me locked away deep in the dungeon of my mind. So I stood there, watching the people around me live their lives as my teenage years wore on, wishing that I could live a real life too, and knowing that the only thing that stopped me from doing so wasn't even real; it was this barrier in my head. ANXIETY AS A MENTAL AFFLICTION I didn't know it until I was in my late twenties, but my mother suffered from depression and anxiety attacks all throughout my childhood. She'd always seemed happy and in control to me, but unknown to me she'd sometimes slip away into my parents' bedroom, shut the door, and just cry for no reason. She'd been suicidal. She'd had to go on medication. I never knew. She always seemed like the perfect mom... she never let her problems show through. My mother's mother, an American born of Irish stock, was, and still is, bipolar, and very likely borderline. When my mother was growing up, one moment her mother would be yelling and cursing at her for breaking something or getting into some trouble, as children do, or even for walking too heavily on the floor above; a minute later she'd be singing, free as a bird. My father's father, a German immigrant, had had an extreme personality as well, cutting off his family and divorcing my father's French-born, British-raised mother, leaving them penniless and alone, and creating so many enemies that eventually one of them murdered him, running him down in a pickup truck when my father was only 14. To get around the provision in the law that invalidated a last will and testament leaving nothing to one's children, he left one dollar each to each of his sons, so that the will would stand and his hated ex-wife would have no access to the fortune he inherited from wealthy European ancestors after he died. According to my father, not long before he died, he mentioned wanting to change it, but his foe whisked his life away before he did. Yet to me, growing up, despite the familial background of extremity and wild emotions, my parents had been the perfect picture of the traditional American family. My mother stayed at home, taking care of the children and the house, loving and cheerful; my father worked long hours and brought home the bacon. They almost never fought, our home was always impeccable and spotless, we had more toys and books and good things than anyone could ask for. My father was the stern-but-loving disciplinarian (with whom I frequently found myself in hot debate), while my mother was the big softie. Even today, when I've had friends or girlfriends meet my family, their impression has always been, "Wow, I REALLY like your family!" According to girlfriends I've had, most families in America are not nearly as close as mine. So I frequently wondered where on Earth my anxiety came from. I was so outgoing when I was very young; how had I become crippled by phobias as I grew older? The current research suggests the following as causes for anxiety problems: Genetic inheritance (e.g., chemical issues in the brain) Environmental inheritance from chronically anxious parents Trauma leading to chronic anxiety From the Wikipedia article on anxiety: "An evolutionary psychology explanation is that increased anxiety serves the purpose of increased vigilance regarding potential threats in the environment as well as increased tendency to take proactive actions regarding such possible threats. This may cause false positive reactions but an individual suffering from anxiety may also avoid real threats. This may explain why anxious people are less likely to die due to accidents." In essence, the theory here is that higher levels of anxiety lead to increased vigilance (being on edge for danger; defensiveness), leading to the individual being more careful, taking fewer risks, and ultimately having a lower chance of encountering real harm and danger. The article goes on to note that infants displaying higher vigilance and fear responses have been shown to have increased sensitivity in their nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that regulates pleasure, addiction, laughter, aggression, reward, and fear. But a restriction of risks doesn't only limit the chance to be harmed; it also limits the chance to gain victories, triumphs, achievements, and success... as many of the greatest rewards coming following great risks, too. Thus, anxiety serves as the great limiter - of both risks and rewards. And it can be gotten through blood; through life; or even through simply your parents having it, and you picking up on it. And once you have it, it can very quickly seize control of your heart and mind, keeping you "safe" from risk and reward... and imprisoning you inside the very place those cold and timid souls Theodore Roosevelt mentions in his immortal line know so very well, never to escape. anxiety in men anxiety in menMore women have anxiety than men, but I'd have to argue (much respect to our female readers) that anxiety in men is worse. Not to get into any kind of "who's the better victim" competition (no desire to promote victim mentality here), and anxious women certainly have a host of problems in their own right. But anxious women have one leg up on anxious men, and it's a big one: they can still get dates, lovers, and relationships. The most anxious woman in the world will still have men come up to her, ask her out, guide her through the date, take her as a lover, and enter into relationships with her. She may be anxious, but all she has to do is keep saying, "Okay," and eventually she'll get there. For the anxious man, there's no such reprieve. Anxiety in men, in extreme form, can lead to isolation, loneliness, and abandonment. Even when girls ask you out, they aren't going to make the move on dates, or make things happen to get together with you; in the end, your anxiety still wins the day. That's what the case was for me, in any event, but I recognized early on that the only way I was going to beat my fear was to look it in the face unblinking until it went away. The earliest memory I have of confronting a fear of mine was at the age of five, after I awoke from a terrifying nightmare wanting to run to my mother, only to find that one of the creatures from my dream was standing in the doorway to my room, semi-transparent, blocking my way out (I've done some research, and it's actually fairly common for children to hallucinate before or after sleep, so it's not just me). I walked up to it, yelled, "You're not real!" right in its face, and ran right through it, out of the room. I never had another hallucination again. In grade eight, I made myself ask out the girl I liked, the prettiest, most popular girl in school, who'd asked me out before months earlier, but I'd turned her down. When I went back and asked her out, it was in front of the entire school, since I couldn't seem to find a better opportunity than that. She said "no," but every guy in the class seemed to think I had balls of steel for doing it (it'd taken me 7 months and countless nights and days obsessing over it to work up the courage, though). I knew I didn't want to regret not asking her out, and I knew that, no matter what she said, at least I'd be able to look back in the future and say, "I did it; I tried." In high school I strode along the ledge of the Mayan temple Chichen-Itza, 80 feet above a sheer drop to the jungle floor, the safe part of the small ledge occupied by fearful tourists clinging to the sides of the structure, leaving nothing but a tiny edge for me. If I was going to rid myself of the fear of heights I'd developed after tumbling down a moving escalator at a young age, I needed to confront that fear head on and chance death, I reasoned. I walked through the ghetto of the city with the highest murder rate in America wearing a tan trench coat, two weeks after the Columbine massacre had made trench coats (albeit, black trench coats) an object of fear throughout the country. I stood in the middle of a busy four-lane road with cars whizzing by me uncaring on either side going in opposite directions, some of them coming so close, so fast, that they brushed my clothes. I did a number of things to challenge my fears and confront my anxiety. I don't advise this, at least not as dangerous and unpredictable as some of the things I did were, and I'll tell you right now the way I went about it was foolish. One slip on that pyramid ledge, one wrong glance in that ghetto, one driver not paying complete attention on that road, and I would not be writing this today. A lot of the adventures I've since had would never have happened. There would be no Girls Chase. But I share these with you to make a point: you don't beat anxiety by willing yourself through it; you beat it by confronting it. ANXIETY IN MEN: A SILVER LINING So how do you get rid of anxiety? Well, truth is - you don't. It never goes away completely. Personally, I'm still a somewhat anxious person. I'm just not anxious about a lot of the things I used to be anxious about, is all, and I don't spend time obsessing over it anymore. In fact, most of the time, I am content, calm, confident... Zen. Yet, every now and again, in some quiet moment, it begins to creep back in, and whisper doubts to me. But in all but the most extreme circumstances, I no longer listen. And the good news is, in my opinion, anxiety makes you stronger than non-anxious individuals if you can overcome it. Answer me this - who would you place more trust in in a dire, certainty-of-death type situation: A man who had struggled with fear and anxiety before, and overcome it, and now was confident and used to winning, or A man who had never known defeat, who had always been confident of success, and was accustomed to winning Me, I'd take the guy who's known fear and known apprehension, and overcome it, over the man who never really has, any day. Because the man who's always won is an unknown - you don't know how he's going to react to defeat or impossible odds. And chances are, because it's an unfamiliar feeling for him, it'll break him... at least for a while. And getting broken when you're learning is fine, but getting broken in the hour of need is bad business. The man who's struggled and overcome usually is the stronger man, because he has been on the wrong side of success and knows how to deal with it. His confidence is based on control of his thoughts and beliefs, rather than on purely a history of victories. He not only wins. He knows how to win, and he knows how to deal with uncertainty, anxiety, and defeat. An anxious disposition offers you a number of advantages less anxious individuals lack: Attention to detail that you simply can't get with lower levels of vigilance Social tuning and social intuition that, again, stems from that high degree of vigilance Resilience to setbacks that comes from having suffered "more" setbacks (likely the same in number and objective severity, but felt more strongly and more viscerally) than men without much anxiety Habitual fear confrontation that eventually becomes a very strong trait, because it leads to confronting and eliminating weaknesses regularly by necessity, turning originally weaker individuals into ultimately stronger ones The last point is interesting to think about. Take two men, one without anxiety, and one with. Let's say the man without anxiety has fears to the following extent: Women: he's not afraid to ask girls out or escalate things with them, only to let go of a girl he's invested heavily in when things go south in a long relationship. Career: he's not afraid to apply for jobs, interview, or ask his boss for a raise; he's only afraid to quit his job and start his own company, or to go back to school to get a better job (for fear of losing momentum in his career trajectory). And let's say the anxiety-prone man has the following fears: Women: he can't even talk to girls and is paralyzed by approach anxiety. Career: he's afraid to apply or interview, for fear of rejection; can't talk to his boss about a raise; and certainly can't leave his job for any reason. For the man with anxiety to get going at all, he needs to learn to overcome his anxiety to some degree. Many men only do this somewhat, and stop; but some men, once they've done a little bit, go further; then further; then further still. In fact, they go so far that they start confronting fears that ordinary men without anxiety have, and can't get around. Pretty soon, even the things that most people fear seem silly to them. Not every man with anxiety does this; but enough do - and once you're in the habit of confronting fears and demolishing them, you eventually start to get a bizarre affinity for feeling fear - and facing it head on. It's this part of the process I want to focus on to help you beat your own anxiety. LEARNING TO RELISH FIGHTING FEAR I don't know when exactly it happened, but I realized some years back that I had trained myself, unconsciously, to become excited at feeling fear, for I saw it as an opportunity to confront another weakness and wipe it away, becoming an even stronger man. My emotional / thought process these days goes like this: Fear: Oh no! This super muscular, angry-looking Canadian customs and border security guard is grilling me hard... what if he thinks I'm some kind of international terrorist and puts me in a Canadian prison cell? I don't even know anyone in Canada who can bail me out! Excitement: Ha HA! Listen to my weak, pathetic self. This is an EXCELLENT opportunity for me to go through the fire, be tested, and come out stronger. To battle! Conscious Mind: Oh - looks like Fear and Excitement are in the process of sorting out some new perceived threat. Hope they can iron this one out fast so I can get back to just dealing with this situation like a calm, cool, rational human being. What this does is it leads to automatic fear confrontation - that is, when you encounter something that strikes fear into your heart, you don't freeze... you don't run away... you engage. Reason? Because you're training yourself to be unafraid. It's a simple process, and it works. The steps are this: Feel your fear and admit it. You have to be able to consciously recognize that you're feeling fear or anxiety and own up to it. You can't make excuses for yourself, or this doesn't work, and you're stuck in neutral until you get more honest. If you're having trouble reading your emotions, just ask yourself what you REALLY want to have happen, and why you're not in the process of making that happen right now. As soon as you know it, say to yourself inside, "Okay, I'm afraid. I'm acting nervous and afraid and being weak right now." Don't justify it ("Well, I have a reason to be afraid, because..."). Don't scold it ("I SHOULDN'T be afraid, because...!"). Don't try and piece together some grand strategy ("Okay, so what I need to do right now is..."). Skip all of those, and go immediately to the next step in the process, namely... Tell yourself it's time to beat this fear. The problem with fear and anxiety is that the thing you are afraid of feels tough, or scary, or unpredictable, or confusing. The instant you make it about the fear, though, the fear largely vanishes. Why? Because you know what you have to do: you have to confront it. You have to go do the thing you're fearing doing. Then, Take action. Take action and confront the fear. Obviously, don't take your life in your hands like reckless teenage me, but DO get moving and go confront it right now. See a pretty girl? Feel fear because you're not sure how to meet her? Go take action to beat that fear - go talk to her right now. Want to start going to nightclubs but no friends to go with and they seem like intimidating places? Feel that fear, then take action and go anyway. Take away your ability to back out. The first time anyone asked me to travel abroad, I felt gripped with fear; there was so much unknown, so many things that could go wrong... so I immediately said "yes" and committed myself to doing it. Whenever I set new, scary goals for myself - pickup goals, business goals, anything goals - the first thing I do is set a hard limit: "Do this, and you can't come home until you do," "Do that, or no more vacations until you do," "Finish this, and you cannot start anything new until you do," etc. Whatever it is that you WANT to do, make it so that you cannot do it until you've finished the thing that you are pushing yourself to do. The emotion is normally split-second: fear ("Oh no!"), excitement ("Okay, let's do it!"), action (doing it, or removing the ability to back out if it takes a while to do, then doing it)... then done. All in the snap of a pair of fingers. WILLING YOURSELF TO VANQUISH ANXIETY anxiety in menYou cannot will yourself to victory. That's impossible. You will run out of gas long before you reach the finish line. However, what you can do is will yourself to remove the obstacles in your way before you start the race. Push the hurdles off the path, and suddenly the race ahead looks a whole lot easier, and a lot more fun. You must train yourself to feel fear, laugh at it, and fight it like a champion. For every man is born with fear; some more than others, but it's there in each of us. The men who get what they want out of life are not the ones born with less fear, but the ones better able to tackle and defeat the fear they have. And once you've vanquished a fear enough times, your brain does what it does best: picks up on patterns - and recognizes that there isn't anything there to fear at all. Then, suddenly, one day, out of the blue, seemingly, that thing that used to freeze you in your tracks and stop you in your boots doesn't even catch your attention anymore. And you don't even realize it until you notice, "Hey, I just asked my boss for a raise and I didn't even think about it," or, "Whoa! I just asked that girl out and it was completely on autopilot!" Your brain is a pattern recognition machine, and it learns that there isn't anything to fear there once it's seen a situation often enough. But it won't learn at all if it never gets to see those situations up close and personal - so go get it some data to play with. Go confront your fears. (Just, ideally not in the middle of traffic or on the side of a pyramid or somewhere a lot of people get shot / stabbed / mugged. Can't get girls chasing you when you're six feet under!)

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## Goal Setting Goal setting is one of those things that isn't a tactic, isn't a technique, and isn't a methodology, per se, for getting girls or having relationships. It isn't a cool new trick a guy can go out and employ and net himself a cute, sexy new companion right away, or a means of making the girls he has right now swoon all the harder. What goal setting is, rather, is a way of getting yourself results in both the short- and the long-term that you likely wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as quickly without setting goals. goal setting Your brain has a limited supply of a very precious substance known as "focus." Focus is what we use any time we have some objective we're zeroed in on and working hard to achieve. Focus is how we stay on-target. Most people spend the majority of their lives out of focus. They have no real idea what they want or what they're working for; they float along directionlessly, doing the things others have told them they need to do and living their lives according to rules inherited from their parents and teachers and bosses and others. It's significantly easier than forging their own paths, and it's significantly less scary and intimidating than doing so - as well as being infinitely less rewarding. These are the people you check back in on in ten or twenty years and find their lives haven't really changed that much. Still living in the same area, with the same friends, the same kind of job, the same everything. Very stable, and very static. Not much progress, change or improvement; a little here and there, but it's marginal. Setting goals, on the other hand, is one of the ways you can bring focus to your life and motivate yourself to start achieving. And it is one of the most effective tools you have available to yourself to get yourself out there doing the things you need to be doing to get yourself forging ahead. There are two kinds of goals: short-term, and long-term. It pays to be specific in both, but there are some differences in each that I'd like to have a look at with you here. SHORT-TERM GOALS Short-tem goals are what you use to motivate yourself in accomplishing the bits and pieces of learning seduction. These are for your day-to-day, step-by-step learning. The best way of using short-term goals, in my opinion, is writing up a "cheat sheet" to take with you when you go out to meet women that includes one or two or three things you want to focus on on that particular outing. Here are a few example cheat sheets to get you thinking about them: Cheat Sheet 1 Talk to five new women Screen and qualify at least three women Cheat Sheet Example 2 Move every girl talked to for more than five or six minutes Get a kiss Cheat Sheet Example 3 Invite every girl talked to for more than ten minutes home Tailor yours to where you're at right now. So, if you're a social beginner and you're just starting out, you might use something like Cheat Sheet 1. If you're intermediate, maybe Cheat Sheet 2. And if you're a veteran who's working on his skill at closing, you might use Cheat Sheet 3. You can put everything you're working on onto a cheat sheet - just remember to keep it manageable and keep it to one to three items per outing. More than that, and you can lose focus and feel overwhelmed or forget to accomplish some of them. And the beauty of having a little cheat sheet with you is that you can pull it out and take a look at it to remind yourself what your objectives are as the day or night goes on. Seeing it a few times throughout your outing can help keep you focused. LONG-TERM GOALS Long-term goals are a different animal than short-term. You'll still want to write these down, although the "how" part of it is a little different. When writing long-term goals, it's important to flesh out two things: Where you want to get to, and What you're going to do to get there You want to have your "where" - your end result, your finished product - there to keep you inspired and motivated. And you want to have you "what" - the steps you need to take - there to keep you on-task. The two of those together will go a long way toward pushing you to long-term success. What I recommend for long-term goals is creative a goal sheet or poster with images of what you want, with the end result written next to or below the image, and the steps you'll take to get there written next to that. So you might have a long term goal of being incredibly sexually attractive to women; printed out, it might look like this: [photograph of man with woman all over him] Can I become a man whom women lust after like no other? I work on my fundamentals to become extremely attractive, and I use chase framing and touch and a sexy tone of voice to give myself a sexual edge. When I was at the peak of my goal-setting, I had a number of these long-term goals printed out, and I'd spend a little time in the morning looking over them and reading them aloud and thinking about them, and I'd spend a little time in the evening doing the same. One of my goals really was to become a man women found sexually irresistible - in addition to setting the goal, I'd also spend my morning commute of about ten minutes going through a number of affirmations, saying to myself things like, "I am a man women are helpless around. I am a man women find incredibly sexually appealing. I am irresistible to women - they become weak in the knees simply upon laying eyes on me." In those days, I wasn't sexy at all. I did the goal setting and the visualizing and the affirmation for a few months, and I began improving a bit. The biggest way it helped though, I believe now, was that it focused my brain on wanting to become that way. So I began looking hard for ways to make myself more sexy, more irresistible, more charming to women. Fast forward two years, and I am by default a very sexy guy. I don't even have to think about it; I just am. I am constantly looking for ways to make myself more sexy; I am a big believer in the phrase, "You find what you're looking for." When you want to become something bad enough, over time you will. Had I not taken the time to write down the long-term goals I had, I doubt I'd be where I am today with them - some I've achieved included becoming a sexy, irresistible guy, and getting a girl with the absolutely perfect body of an erotic model named Jenya D that I liked - in fact, I'm seeing a girl with exactly the same body as her right now, actually; some I have yet to achieve were goals not as important to me at the time, like getting my income to a certain level significantly higher than where it was. The ones I haven't achieved yet, though, I feel much closer to achieving and have moved nearer to and learned a lot more about and am far better positioned to achieve now than I was two years ago. I focused myself on them, and I began positioning myself to achieve them. ~~~~~~~~~~ Goal setting is a big deal - it gets you focused on what you want to achieve, and helps you iron it out. Without set, written goals, and a focused approach on how you want to reach those goals, most people blow in the wind, drifting wherever life sees fit to push them. With goals and the steps you'll take to reach them decided upon, however, you can direct your life to go any direction you want it to go in - and you can expedite your advancement in seduction many times over. If you want girls to chase you, all you've got to do is write that down, and then write down the steps you're going to take to make that happen. Spend some time reviewing those goals every day, and imagining yourself succeeding at them, and take the steps in your life that you've laid out for yourself to make them happen, and you will be well on the road to make desires into reality.

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##The Secret to Hooking Up with Friends If you're in college, or you ever went to college, you're familiar with a phenomenon that's known widely today as "hook up culture:" the Western tradition of getting together for quick flings and casual intimacy with your friends. The way it's supposed to work is, you go out and get drunk, and you wake up the next day with some girl you're friends with. The two of you smile and laugh about it and then go about your lives as if nothing had happened. Or, perhaps, you hold a late night study session, and then the night goes a little later than either of you expected, and you end up in one another's arms. And then, the next day, maybe it's a little awkward, but again, you smile and laugh about it and shrug it off and it's on to the next one. But there's a problem with this idea of hook up culture, and it's a problem that drives lots of men crazy pulling their hair out and throwing monkey wrenches into their own efforts to bring women into their lives. The problem is, hooking up with friends is that it doesn't quite work as advertised. In fact, more often than not, it doesn't work at all. But why? THE FICTION ABOUT HOOK UP CULTURE We've all seen the movies. Wild sex-fests where every friend screws every other friend of the opposite sex. You hear the stories about the guy who shags every girl in a social circle. It seems like all you have to do if you want to make it happen is get good enough at social circle stuff, and then that magic will become yours too. But it turns out it doesn't quite work that way. You get good at social circle... and then you get really good. And as you get better with women, you find yourself sleeping with all kinds of girls really fast from outside your circle. But the better you get with women and with socializing, the further from success with girls you're friends with, it feels... in fact, you notice that they keep getting more and more reserved around you. You can tell they like you, but they police themselves increasingly hard around you. What gives? There is this myth it took me a long time to realize was a myth regarding "hook up culture" and hooking up with friends. The myth is that it's really easy to hook up with friends when you're cool and fun and sexy and you don't care. But the myth is wrong. Take a moment and think back over your experiences, if you've got a bit of a background in getting together with girls at this point. Of all the social circle hook ups you've had, how many were with women you knew well... and how many were with women on the periphery of your circle? Women you'd just met that night, or perhaps only once before? I can see all the experienced guys out there nodding with me. Yep - women hook up with guys on the periphery of their circles. They don't have flings with men they know well. Sure, it happens. Everyone who's been in the game a while probably has a tale of some girl he was friends with forever that he finally overcame the friend trap and bedded, and it was spectacular. But how many of his closer female friends did this happen with? Maybe one. Maybe two. For most guys, it's probably none. Almost every girl you take as a lover who comes from your social circle, you'll find, comes from the edges of your social circle - not from the center of it. Girls like: The girl who's friends with your friend The girl you bump into at a party The girl you kinda sorta knew from class or work or some activity you're in The girl you met once or twice before but didn't really talk to all that much Girls like that. It isn't the girls you're close with that you hook up with. It's the ones you aren't close with. It took me a long time to get this. Most men still don't get this. It's why you see so many guys plowing gargantuan heaps of time and resources into trying to woo women they've known forever, and not getting anywhere. It feels counterintuitive to say it, but the fact is, a guy is going to do much better with a woman he knows less, whom he's invested less in, and who sees him as less of a permanent fixture in her life. Because once he's become a fixture in her life, she doesn't want to upset the balance of things. She wants to maintain the status quo - and the status quo is, the two of them are just friends, and that's where she'd like to keep it. AN OFT OVERLOOKED DISCONNECTION Men are risk takers. Women aren't. Men often forget this. Think about it like this. There's one woman and two men. One of the men the woman knows very well and is comfortable with. The other she hardly knows. Who's she more likely to hook up with? If you think it's a trick question, that's because... it kinda is. Most folks - heck, almost everyone out there you talk to - is going to say, "Well, OF COURSE she'll hook up with the guy she knows! She's comfortable with him, and that other guy's a complete stranger!" But women are not risk takers. They're risk averse. And when a woman looks at a situation like this, her mind is looking at the risks. Here's what it says: Oh wow, I really like John, he's so cool and charming and sexy, and I've been into him for a long time. But if I sleep with him now, I might lose the chance to be with him later, or I might lose him as a friend. This other guy Chris, though, I don't know a whole lot about him, and he's just okay... but I don't think I'm ever going to see him again, so it doesn't really matter what happens. He is kind of cute and funny... okay, maybe I'll go for him. And then boom, she goes with the other guy she hardly knows that she likes a lot less, and the guy who knows her well goes home alone and curses the gods for not making any sense. He's put so much time and effort into this girl, and she goes home with that dirt bag she just met instead of him? There are probably about 3 billion men the world over who've been driven crazy by things like this at least once each, and oftentimes many more. This happens to just about every guy. It comes from a common disconnect between men and women. Men's goals are to sleep with as many attractive women as possible. Simple enough. You might see yourself as wanting to find your dream girl, but if you happened to know three girls who met your dream girl criteria, and they all wanted you... would you take only one and turn the others down? We're men. It's simple with us. Women's goals are also to sleep with attractive partners, yes, but in addition they want to keep a lot of men in standby, for a variety of reasons. Those men on standby can help them in their lives, do them favors (like I mentioned in the post about Shopping Guy), or serve as backups if things fall through with their man or they go through a dry spell or emotional turmoil. Women put a lot of time and effort into building their stables of men on standby. This is very important to realize as a man. Women will sleep with you if you do things right, but if not they're often just as happy to keep you around as one of their backups or social supports. It's not that they're trying to use you, any more than you're trying to use a girl when you want to sleep with her. Just like you're thinking, "Of course she's going to have a great time in bed with me; I'm great!" girls are saying to themselves, "Of course he's going to love being my friend; I'm wonderful!" And that's where the disconnect occurs. THE SECRET TO HOOKING UP WITH FRIENDS Then what about the guys who do succeed at hooking up with friends? What's the secret? There's one big, important secret all the men who do great at hooking up with female friends of theirs know that all other men don't know: They know not to become a fixture to women until they're prepared to strike. Men who hook up with friends don't spend a lot of time hanging out with those friends all the time. Unlike the guys who try to win women's hearts by just being around them constantly and getting to know them super well, these guys instead only make brief, sporadic appearances, and often speak very little to the girls. Maybe a few jokes here and there... and that's it. They don't get to know the girls in their circle very well, if ever. But wait, you might say - aren't I a huge proponent on here of deep diving and getting to know girls profoundly and intimately? Why, yes I am. I am indeed. But recall that I'm also a big proponent of moving very fast with women. There's a reason for that: if you get to know women well but don't move fast, you become a very good, very close friend of theirs, and a fixture in their lives. And that makes you far too valuable to risk losing over something as trivial as sex. So, you'll notice that any friend of yours who's reliably good at hooking up almost never gets to know a girl... until the night he takes her home. Only on that night does he pay any attention to her and get to know her and talk to her and flirt with her. Then, he closes the deal, invites her home, and they get together. Until that night, he was on her periphery. Until that night, he was not a fixture in her life. That's the secret. The secret to hooking up with friends is remaining on their periphery until the moment you decide to make something happen. That way, you prevent yourself become a fixture, and prevent yourself from running into women's risk-averse no-sex-with-good-friends policy that's flummoxed so many men over the ages. Just don't get too close with her before you do anything with her, and you're golden. What about the girls you're already close with? Well, keep them as friends. Or, if you don't like them much as friends, simply fade them from your life and find other people to fill your time with. It's a far more efficient use of your time to fade out women you've become a fixture for who aren't going to do anything with you and instead bring new women into your life you don't have that baggage with. And next time, of course, just make sure you move faster and proactively look to move women and invite them home and close deals with them. You'll thank me for advising you do so, I promise!

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## Secrets to Getting Girls: Addressing Women's Objections In the seductions of every man, there comes a time when his woman begins to object. "What are you doing?" she'll say. "I don't think we should be doing this." "We can't do this, it's too soon." "We can't do this, we're friends." Most of the time, this stops men cold, freezing them in their tracks with no recourse and no idea what to say or do. "Crap," the guy thinks. "She's protesting. What do I do now??" So, rather than take uncertain action with uncertain effects, he does nothing, and nothing happens, and the girl leaves. The seduction is forfeit, and he has lost his girl. But objections don't have to mark the end of a seduction. In fact, you can actually use objections to make a girl want you more, and make her more certain that you're the man for her. And it all ties back to some psychological basics to understand why. GETTING OBJECTIONS IS A GOOD THING Late in the year 2001, after I'd graduated from high school, my boss at the tire store I worked for plucked me from the back of the shop to have me be more than a simple grunt working on cars, and started sending me to sales training. Sales training was great for me; at a time I still struggled mightily with people, it gave me some tools to use in all kinds of situations that extended outside of sales. One of the most important lessons I took away from my sales training that year was about addressing objections. "Most people," my sales instructor said, "cringe when they get an objection. They shut down and stutter and stammer and they lose the sale. But not us. We love objections. Know why?" None of us did. "We love objections because," he continued, "objections give us the chance to sell the customer on the product further." He explained that when a customer raised an objection, that wasn't a problem - it was an opportunity. An opportunity to talk more about the product. An opportunity to showcase more of its features and explain more of its benefits. An opportunity to bring the customer one step farther from "no" and one step closer to "yes." Objections tell you she's thinking about it. Objections mean she's on the fence. If she's made up her mind and decided she wants you she says "yes," if she's made up her mind and decided she isn't interested she simply leaves. If she's resisting but staying put though - that girl, you know she's still trying to decide. And that's where a lot of guys mess up. They think because the girl is objecting, that she's already decided she isn't interested in them. But that's not what it means. Objections mean she's looking to you for more information; she needs to know more to make her decision. If you were in my store in 2004 once I'd become one of the top salesman in the region and I was showing you the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred, and I'd already explained that this was the best tire on the market, had the best wet weather traction, the best snow and ice traction, the smoothest, quietest ride, and it was cheaper than the leading Michelin MXV4 Plus, and we could get those tires on for you right now and have you out and finished in thirty minutes or we'd give you thirty dollars off the total price, and you raised the objection that they cost too much, I wouldn't hang my head, give up, and sell you some piece-of-crap, dirt cheap Superides instead. Nope. I'd explain to you that yes, tires are a bit of an investment, but that's because that's exactly what they are - an investment. An investment in your enjoyment of your ride. An investment in your vehicle. And an investment in your safety. And then I'd tell you about our 30 day, 300 mile guarantee, and that you could try these tires out for that period and bring them back if you weren't happy and exchange them for something else, no questions asked. And customers would almost always say yes to this, and once the tires were on a car, no one ever brought them back. The thing is, you can't sell yourself exactly the same way you'd sell a product. If you stand there and list all your great features and how they'll benefit the girl you're wooing, she's going to be turned off at the pomposity of it all and want nothing to do with you. But you definitely can use objections as an opportunity to sell a girl further on you. You just need to address objections women have about you a little differently than you would address objections a woman has about a product. In this post, we're going to discuss three different methods for disarming women's objections: > The Hard Push, > Throwing Back the Objection, and > Forcing Decisions THE HARD PUSH The sales technique I demonstrated in above in talking about selling tires is called a "push." This is when you logically list out information and rationale for why a buyer should buy, then ask or tell her to buy. We talked about the hard push before in "Don't Let Her Go," primarily about how to turn around situations where a girl is walking away or prepared to leave you, as well as in "Persist in Your Insistence." You can use the hard push in all kinds of instances, from opening to closing. The way the hard push works, basically, is like this: a girl states her reluctance to do something, or her outright refusal, and begins to withdraw or walk away. You then insist, calmly, gently, but firmly and invitingly, that she not leave and instead come with you. Here's an example: Girl: [getting up to leave] I'm going to head back to my friends. You: Sit with me a few more minutes. Girl: I have to go. They're probably worried about me! You: Sit a few more minutes, then you can go. If they're worried, they'll give you a call. Girl: But they're probably wondering where I am! You: Another three minutes of missing you isn't going to kill them. Sit back down. All this is said in a very warm, calm, friendly, inviting tone, with a warm, sexy smile. If done right, women will almost always comply. You're in a push situation if inaction will lead to you losing the girl. That is, if she isn't opening properly and will not talk to you without a push, or if she's leaving you and will be gone without a push, or if she isn't planning to come with you and you'll lose her without a push, or if you're demanding compliance and it'll set very bad precedent that leads to her losing interest in you without a push. When you're in the do-or-die moment where you're about to lose a girl, using the hard push can oftentimes change the course of a seduction. THROWING BACK THE OBJECTION Not every situation is do-or-die, though. What do you do when a woman objects to you, but she isn't about to leave? For instance, when you're sitting on a couch with a girl and she says, "We shouldn't do this, we're friends and it wouldn't be right," or when you're lying in bed together and you're physically escalating and she says, "It's too soon, I don't think we should do this" - what do you do then? In situations like that, you can use something I call throwing back the objection. It's a very simple but very powerful response to objections like this. The only things you need to pull it off are: > The ability to be a little bit of a wiseass, in a warm and sexy way, and > The ability to ask questions. All you do with this one is, when you get an objection, you turn on the charm - and then toss the objection back to the girl. Looks like this: Girl: We shouldn't do this. You: Oh, what should we do? Said with a smile and a wink of course. Here's another example: Girl: I don't know if we should do this. You: Yeah, of course not. We should totally get up and go play a game of checkers. One more, this one a longer example: Girl: I don't think we should move too fast. You: Oh, really? How fast should we move then? Girl: I don't know! Just not this fast! You: Right, of course not. Because moving this fast would be terrible. We should probably wait a few weeks or something. After you throw these objections back at the girl, you then pause and stare at her for a moment, then pick up where you left off with your escalation. This is especially potent when you're getting last minute resistance (LMR), or really any kind of resistance where the girl is already in a position where she's more or less entrenched with you and is just having some final reservations before taking the plunge. Why does throwing back the objection work so well? Two reasons, basically: You're short-circuiting her logic, and You're demonstrating a lot of attractive, powerful qualities. The "we shouldn't do this" objective isn't actually based out of any kind of logic, and when you ask a girl, "What should we be doing?" she's unable to come up with a satisfactory answer, and then mentally accepts that maybe you should be doing what you're doing. Similarly, when you use a silly alternative, like, "So you think we should stop and go play Monopoly?" she's forced to accept that what she's doing with you is a lot more enjoyable than a game of Monopoly, and thus becomes far more inclined to accept your advances. And, when you respond in a calm, confident, sexy way, you display all the primary characteristics that she's looking for in a man, and in particular, in the type of man she'll go to bed with quickly. She realizes you aren't going to back down so easily, and that makes her feel more comfortable both that you believe what you're doing is right, and that you're the kind of man she should be together with. FORCING DECISIONS There's one final tactic you can use for addressing women's objections: forcing a decision. This one's best when you have a girl who's on the fence, and you're relatively sure likes you, but she's absolutely not budging no matter what you do and you're at the end of your wits. Rather than give up or go crazy, you force her to decide then and there how she'll proceed. So, if you're trying to get a girl to go sit with you, and she's absolutely refusing or being flighty or saying, "But my friends…" and complaining that she can't leave them, you should know already that if she doesn't move with you, the interaction is dead. So since you've nothing to lose, you might as well try to force a decision regardless, and that looks like this: Girl: I'm sorry, I can't, I really can't leave my friends… You: Look, I like you. I think you're cool people, and I enjoy talking to you. I'm going to go sit down over there now; so what's it going to be - are you going to let me walk away, possibly forever, or are you going to come? You might get a "no," but you also might get a "yes." I've had this work a surprising number of times with girls who were hard cases and refusing to do what I wanted them to do. By putting them there in the moment and forcing them to make a decision though, you force them to crunch some numbers in their heads and decide: do I like this guy enough to go do what he wants to do instead of what I thought I wanted to do? Or not really? Note that there's a distinct structure to how you structure your decision push. These parts are all necessary: > A qualifying statement, > What you're going to do, > The suggestion that this may be her only chance to do it with you, and > Asking her to make a decision. The qualifying statement is the, "Look, I like you. I think you're cool people, and I enjoy talking to you," part of the above. It's where you help her understand why you want to keep spending time with her. What you're going to do is where you make it clear to her what the next step is to be. The suggestion that this may be her only chance to do it with you ("I'm going to go sit down over there" - you're walking away from her; "Are you going to let me walk away, possibly forever?" - she may never see you again if she lets you walk away) forces her to judge whether she cares enough about pursuing things with you further to sideline other things in her life or find a way to make things happen with you. Asking her to make a decision is, of course, how you get a decision out of her on the spot. That's the "forcing a decision" part of forcing a decision. Do this right and it can be quite effective. One more example - this one with a girl you've been struggling mightily with during physical escalation in bed: Girl: I just don't think we should do this. You: All right, stop, look. I like you. I think you're really cool people. I'm really glad we're together right now. I don't know what tomorrow brings, but I do know that if we don't get together now, we probably never get together because that's just how things usually end up. So, I guess, what I'm asking is… do you want me or not? You should let your voice get very soft and tender but still sexy at the end of that, because you don't want to seem pushy. If you say it right, you'll almost always get a, "Yes, I want you," to it. Then you respond with: "Then let's be together." And then there, you're done. Those are your tools for addressing objections, and they're all quite powerful. Again, they're: > The Hard Push, > Throwing Back the Objection, and > Forcing Decisions. Use these well and you'll come to start relishing objections as you begin to see - to really see - that objections are not rejections. They're just requests for a little more help deciding from a girl who's about to dive in head first. So don't be afraid of objections - they're a good thing to get. Use them, instead, to help you and the girl you like get together.

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## Secrets to Getting Girls: Addressing Women's Objections In the seductions of every man, there comes a time when his woman begins to object. "What are you doing?" she'll say. "I don't think we should be doing this." "We can't do this, it's too soon." "We can't do this, we're friends." Most of the time, this stops men cold, freezing them in their tracks with no recourse and no idea what to say or do. "Crap," the guy thinks. "She's protesting. What do I do now??" So, rather than take uncertain action with uncertain effects, he does nothing, and nothing happens, and the girl leaves. The seduction is forfeit, and he has lost his girl. But objections don't have to mark the end of a seduction. In fact, you can actually use objections to make a girl want you more, and make her more certain that you're the man for her. And it all ties back to some psychological basics to understand why. GETTING OBJECTIONS IS A GOOD THING Late in the year 2001, after I'd graduated from high school, my boss at the tire store I worked for plucked me from the back of the shop to have me be more than a simple grunt working on cars, and started sending me to sales training. Sales training was great for me; at a time I still struggled mightily with people, it gave me some tools to use in all kinds of situations that extended outside of sales. One of the most important lessons I took away from my sales training that year was about addressing objections. "Most people," my sales instructor said, "cringe when they get an objection. They shut down and stutter and stammer and they lose the sale. But not us. We love objections. Know why?" None of us did. "We love objections because," he continued, "objections give us the chance to sell the customer on the product further." He explained that when a customer raised an objection, that wasn't a problem - it was an opportunity. An opportunity to talk more about the product. An opportunity to showcase more of its features and explain more of its benefits. An opportunity to bring the customer one step farther from "no" and one step closer to "yes." Objections tell you she's thinking about it. Objections mean she's on the fence. If she's made up her mind and decided she wants you she says "yes," if she's made up her mind and decided she isn't interested she simply leaves. If she's resisting but staying put though - that girl, you know she's still trying to decide. And that's where a lot of guys mess up. They think because the girl is objecting, that she's already decided she isn't interested in them. But that's not what it means. Objections mean she's looking to you for more information; she needs to know more to make her decision. If you were in my store in 2004 once I'd become one of the top salesman in the region and I was showing you the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred, and I'd already explained that this was the best tire on the market, had the best wet weather traction, the best snow and ice traction, the smoothest, quietest ride, and it was cheaper than the leading Michelin MXV4 Plus, and we could get those tires on for you right now and have you out and finished in thirty minutes or we'd give you thirty dollars off the total price, and you raised the objection that they cost too much, I wouldn't hang my head, give up, and sell you some piece-of-crap, dirt cheap Superides instead. Nope. I'd explain to you that yes, tires are a bit of an investment, but that's because that's exactly what they are - an investment. An investment in your enjoyment of your ride. An investment in your vehicle. And an investment in your safety. And then I'd tell you about our 30 day, 300 mile guarantee, and that you could try these tires out for that period and bring them back if you weren't happy and exchange them for something else, no questions asked. And customers would almost always say yes to this, and once the tires were on a car, no one ever brought them back. The thing is, you can't sell yourself exactly the same way you'd sell a product. If you stand there and list all your great features and how they'll benefit the girl you're wooing, she's going to be turned off at the pomposity of it all and want nothing to do with you. But you definitely can use objections as an opportunity to sell a girl further on you. You just need to address objections women have about you a little differently than you would address objections a woman has about a product. In this post, we're going to discuss three different methods for disarming women's objections: > The Hard Push, > Throwing Back the Objection, and > Forcing Decisions THE HARD PUSH The sales technique I demonstrated in above in talking about selling tires is called a "push." This is when you logically list out information and rationale for why a buyer should buy, then ask or tell her to buy. We talked about the hard push before in "Don't Let Her Go," primarily about how to turn around situations where a girl is walking away or prepared to leave you, as well as in "Persist in Your Insistence." You can use the hard push in all kinds of instances, from opening to closing. The way the hard push works, basically, is like this: a girl states her reluctance to do something, or her outright refusal, and begins to withdraw or walk away. You then insist, calmly, gently, but firmly and invitingly, that she not leave and instead come with you. Here's an example: Girl: [getting up to leave] I'm going to head back to my friends. You: Sit with me a few more minutes. Girl: I have to go. They're probably worried about me! You: Sit a few more minutes, then you can go. If they're worried, they'll give you a call. Girl: But they're probably wondering where I am! You: Another three minutes of missing you isn't going to kill them. Sit back down. All this is said in a very warm, calm, friendly, inviting tone, with a warm, sexy smile. If done right, women will almost always comply. You're in a push situation if inaction will lead to you losing the girl. That is, if she isn't opening properly and will not talk to you without a push, or if she's leaving you and will be gone without a push, or if she isn't planning to come with you and you'll lose her without a push, or if you're demanding compliance and it'll set very bad precedent that leads to her losing interest in you without a push. When you're in the do-or-die moment where you're about to lose a girl, using the hard push can oftentimes change the course of a seduction. THROWING BACK THE OBJECTION Not every situation is do-or-die, though. What do you do when a woman objects to you, but she isn't about to leave? For instance, when you're sitting on a couch with a girl and she says, "We shouldn't do this, we're friends and it wouldn't be right," or when you're lying in bed together and you're physically escalating and she says, "It's too soon, I don't think we should do this" - what do you do then? In situations like that, you can use something I call throwing back the objection. It's a very simple but very powerful response to objections like this. The only things you need to pull it off are: > The ability to be a little bit of a wiseass, in a warm and sexy way, and > The ability to ask questions. All you do with this one is, when you get an objection, you turn on the charm - and then toss the objection back to the girl. Looks like this: Girl: We shouldn't do this. You: Oh, what should we do? Said with a smile and a wink of course. Here's another example: Girl: I don't know if we should do this. You: Yeah, of course not. We should totally get up and go play a game of checkers. One more, this one a longer example: Girl: I don't think we should move too fast. You: Oh, really? How fast should we move then? Girl: I don't know! Just not this fast! You: Right, of course not. Because moving this fast would be terrible. We should probably wait a few weeks or something. After you throw these objections back at the girl, you then pause and stare at her for a moment, then pick up where you left off with your escalation. This is especially potent when you're getting last minute resistance (LMR), or really any kind of resistance where the girl is already in a position where she's more or less entrenched with you and is just having some final reservations before taking the plunge. Why does throwing back the objection work so well? Two reasons, basically: You're short-circuiting her logic, and You're demonstrating a lot of attractive, powerful qualities. The "we shouldn't do this" objective isn't actually based out of any kind of logic, and when you ask a girl, "What should we be doing?" she's unable to come up with a satisfactory answer, and then mentally accepts that maybe you should be doing what you're doing. Similarly, when you use a silly alternative, like, "So you think we should stop and go play Monopoly?" she's forced to accept that what she's doing with you is a lot more enjoyable than a game of Monopoly, and thus becomes far more inclined to accept your advances. And, when you respond in a calm, confident, sexy way, you display all the primary characteristics that she's looking for in a man, and in particular, in the type of man she'll go to bed with quickly. She realizes you aren't going to back down so easily, and that makes her feel more comfortable both that you believe what you're doing is right, and that you're the kind of man she should be together with. FORCING DECISIONS There's one final tactic you can use for addressing women's objections: forcing a decision. This one's best when you have a girl who's on the fence, and you're relatively sure likes you, but she's absolutely not budging no matter what you do and you're at the end of your wits. Rather than give up or go crazy, you force her to decide then and there how she'll proceed. So, if you're trying to get a girl to go sit with you, and she's absolutely refusing or being flighty or saying, "But my friends…" and complaining that she can't leave them, you should know already that if she doesn't move with you, the interaction is dead. So since you've nothing to lose, you might as well try to force a decision regardless, and that looks like this: Girl: I'm sorry, I can't, I really can't leave my friends… You: Look, I like you. I think you're cool people, and I enjoy talking to you. I'm going to go sit down over there now; so what's it going to be - are you going to let me walk away, possibly forever, or are you going to come? You might get a "no," but you also might get a "yes." I've had this work a surprising number of times with girls who were hard cases and refusing to do what I wanted them to do. By putting them there in the moment and forcing them to make a decision though, you force them to crunch some numbers in their heads and decide: do I like this guy enough to go do what he wants to do instead of what I thought I wanted to do? Or not really? Note that there's a distinct structure to how you structure your decision push. These parts are all necessary: > A qualifying statement, > What you're going to do, > The suggestion that this may be her only chance to do it with you, and > Asking her to make a decision. The qualifying statement is the, "Look, I like you. I think you're cool people, and I enjoy talking to you," part of the above. It's where you help her understand why you want to keep spending time with her. What you're going to do is where you make it clear to her what the next step is to be. The suggestion that this may be her only chance to do it with you ("I'm going to go sit down over there" - you're walking away from her; "Are you going to let me walk away, possibly forever?" - she may never see you again if she lets you walk away) forces her to judge whether she cares enough about pursuing things with you further to sideline other things in her life or find a way to make things happen with you. Asking her to make a decision is, of course, how you get a decision out of her on the spot. That's the "forcing a decision" part of forcing a decision. Do this right and it can be quite effective. One more example - this one with a girl you've been struggling mightily with during physical escalation in bed: Girl: I just don't think we should do this. You: All right, stop, look. I like you. I think you're really cool people. I'm really glad we're together right now. I don't know what tomorrow brings, but I do know that if we don't get together now, we probably never get together because that's just how things usually end up. So, I guess, what I'm asking is… do you want me or not? You should let your voice get very soft and tender but still sexy at the end of that, because you don't want to seem pushy. If you say it right, you'll almost always get a, "Yes, I want you," to it. Then you respond with: "Then let's be together." And then there, you're done. Those are your tools for addressing objections, and they're all quite powerful. Again, they're: > The Hard Push, > Throwing Back the Objection, and > Forcing Decisions. Use these well and you'll come to start relishing objections as you begin to see - to really see - that objections are not rejections. They're just requests for a little more help deciding from a girl who's about to dive in head first. So don't be afraid of objections - they're a good thing to get. Use them, instead, to help you and the girl you like get together.