“A question I am asked a lot is ‘Am I a loser if I have to learn how to pick up women?’ This is a question I hate to hear. The reason I hate to hear it is because I hate that the question even exists. We have a notion in this world that we must go to school and get a good education so we can be successful in life. But I find, more often than not, the most important skills to learn are not only ignored by our schools and society at large, but actively shunned. Things like dating, sex, and finances – arguably three of the most important things in life – are completely overlooked in the development of human beings. Is it any wonder we have so many cases of depression, anxiety, loneliness, divorce, sexual dysfunction, and debt in the world? Often, we are left to our own devices to learn these skills on our own, through trial and error. Some succeed at it, but most do not. The people who don’t succeed in learning them on their own get caught in a vicious cycle where bad behaviors are re-enforced and skills stagnate instead of develop.” –Joseph Matthews (The Art of Approaching
“A few years ago when I was an advisor to undergraduates, I noticed that my friends and undergraduates were in a particular quandary. Even though they were young, good looking, intelligent, talented, funny guys at one of the best universities in the world, their dating lives were terrible. Some of these guys spent months, even years without a date or romantic prospect in sight. Even when they got a date, they didn’t know how to make it progress to the next level. And they were surrounded by young, single, intelligent, beautiful women who went to class with them every day, ate meals with them every day, lived literally right next door to them. And these women wanted to date them. So why wasn’t anything happening? The truth of the matter was simple. While these men had extensive training in how to do well at school, they hadn’t had any in how to deal with women. Even a task as simple as driving can’t be done well without some instruction, let alone the immensely complex task of navigating human relations.” –Dr Alex Benzer (The Tao of Dating)
Hot Chicks For Smart Men
Are you a smart man? Let me guess, the odds are that you are not particularly good with women. The irony, though, is that if you had just a little training, your results would improve disproportionately to the effort and you’d have a much better dating life. A fine gentleman–let us call him ‘The Great One’– once noticed that hackers (smart men) were like a masterpiece painting hanging from a wall in a dark room, dusty and crooked. A little dusting off, some polish, lighting and a deft nudge upwards on the right would reveal its full glory and magnificent splendor. A company was born that now elevates many from the dreary lower life form of the scrappy hacker to the higher plane of successful entrepreneur. Economically, the scrappy hacker doesn’t control his own destiny like the entrepreneur does. In much the same way, the clueless smart guy doesn’t really have choice with highly desirable women and has to make do with whatever scraps come his way. He is always worried that he may end up alone or insecure that she might leave. He may even have to put up with bad or manipulative behavior, just to get her to stay. How do I know? I was once him. The trained seducer, on the other hand, has a real abundance of quality hot chics. He can enjoy the amorous arts whenever he chooses and with whomever he pleases. He doesn’t chase, he’ll replace.
Years ago, I remember reading Napoleon Hill’s assertion that wrong choice of a mate is one of the well known 31 causes of failure in life. What if I don’t have a choice? I must be doomed, I concluded and almost accepted my fate. I had but little skill with women and even less choice. Put another way, I sucked royally! Fortunately I found David DeAngelo, Joseph Matthews , Dr Alex, Doc Amir and others who set me on a path to acquiring the skill. I would like to build on their work and advance the idea that smart men should get formal training in attracting and keeping the highly desirable women you want and who want you. Just keep in mind that as a smart man, you are both blessed and cursed. The blessings are what get you great results disproportionate to your efforts and are the reasons I focus on smart men. I will start with these:
- You are smart. This means you can literally master any skill you apply your mind to. Learning to seduce hot chics is a learnable skill just like any other. As they say, they know enough who know how to learn. You, my friend, are blessed beyond belief! No matter how much you dust off or polish it, the uninspiring Joe Shmoe landscape will never become the masterpiece painting!
- You have good prospects in life and otherwise have your shit together. This is a universally attractive quality and needs no further explanation.
- You are curious, widely knowledgeable and therefore interesting. Spend a lot of time on Hacker News? This generally means that you can show/teach women lots of cool things and have them look up to you as some kind of guru or leader. This is very powerful because women are genetically programmed to want to look up to their man for one or more important things (money, smarts, strength come to mind). You just have to do in the ‘here’s something cool and neat’ context NOT the ‘I know so much, I am so fucking smart and accomplished and therefore superior to you’ context. The latter is a major mistake we make.
- You have a capacious memory. This is important for two main reasons. If you want to get exceptionally good with women you are going to ha to devote as much time to it as you would to a serious hobby. There is no such thing as something for nothing and you’ll need to engage in ‘effortful study’.[1] You cannot simply read the occasional ‘How To Get her In Bed’ Men’s Health article and expect to do well. A capacious memory allows you to take in all the details of all your interactions with women and replay them back at will, ‘debugging’ the things that went wrong and reinforcing those that worked. Reinforcement and repetition lead to results. You can easily recall interactions that took place months or even years ago and gain new insights as you come across new and relevant information. Your memory affords you access to much more data than the average chump, if you will. The second advantage is that , used thoughtfully, it can help you become good with people, forge friendships and build a huge social circle. “No sound is sweeter than the sound of one’s name.”[2] When your remember people’s names and details about their lives (without smothering them) you can build a large social circle quickly. This is a skill star salesmen possess. I recommend this path (social circle game) rather than the going out five nights a week and doing ‘cold approaches’ that many pioneers of the seduction community favor. There are lots of good reasons that we will cover in a future newsletter. Stay tuned. For now, start by reading some of the Social Circle Mastery posts on our blog.
And now to the curses. If you are like me (a few years ago) and many of my smart friends today you have at least some of the following weaknesses:
- You are smart and (were probably told you were smart all your life). The linked article received so many votes on Hacker News that we can assume it describes the reality of most smart men. You are more afraid of failure and rejection and are therefore less likely to approach and ask women out because if you do and fail, then you can’t be that smart! If much of your identity is based on being smart, this is a big impediment. It is really quite simple. If you don’t approach and ask out a lot of hot chics, you don’t get lots of hot chics. Fortunately there are tools to make this easier which we will share in future newsletters. For now start by reading John Alanis and Mr L. Rx.
- You have a need for things to make sense. This means you tend to have logical conversations, a serious attraction killer. The basic conversational ingredient for flirting/generating attraction is banter (what David DeAngelo calls Cocky Funny or C&F). In my experience smart guys have a much harder time grasping this because it sounds like silly, inane jabber that is beneath you, whereas it is the default mode for many ‘cool’ guys I have observed who are extra-ordinarily successful with women but who may lack the capacity to have the deep, meaningful, intellectually stimulating conversations that you enjoy.
- You are shy. You might even be socially awkward. Geoffrey Miller (author of Mating Mind) has observed that, if you are smart and have spent lots time studying/thinking or developing a skill that requires long uninterrupted periods of concentration, that is time that you didn’t spend socializing. This is not a deficiency. It simply means that this part of you is underdeveloped. It can be developed with relative ease in about a year. The classic ‘cool’ guy who has spent much of his time socializing and ‘hanging out’ has a distinct edge over you in this area. You cannot become good with women without mastering social dynamics. On the flip side, the ‘cool guy’ is not usually particularly productive and cannot become so with relative ease in about a year
This is why you rule!
- You are ‘nice’, respectful and polite. This is also a serious attraction killer when it comes to getting hot chics. This does not mean you should become a jerk. While you may have heard that jerks get all the hot chics this isn’t necessarily true. Real jerks (who have stumbled upon a specific set of behaviors) get a particular kind of hot chic–low self esteem with lots of other baggage who expects to be treated poorly because of her poor self image. Treat her well, and she will freak out and run as this would be inconsistent with her self-image! Trust me, you don’t want these kind of women in your life! One of the best ‘naturals’ I have observed and learned from is a real jerk. He gets lots of hot chics but they are mostly younger low self-esteem women. Occasionally he attracts more quality, classy, mature women but what usually happens afterwards is instructive. They sleep with him fine, but are gone in a few weeks. They quickly sense that there isn’t much more to him besides having strong opening game based on being super cocky and funny, which quickly gets old. ”Quality women, ultimately want a connection with the man they choose to spend time with.”[3] He also realizes the woman is ‘out of his league’, so to speak, and sabotages himself. This is a lengthy and complex subject that we will undress in a future newsletter For now start by ignoring the feminist nonsense and learn to become more of the ‘Warrior’ archetype that Dr Paul describes in Deangelo’s Deep Inner Game program. The four archetypes are King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Most smart men are Kings, while most highly evolved people have developed each of the archetypes to the fullest extent possible–think leaders and CEOs. Also keep in mind that being nice to people is important for feeling good about yourself. When you treat people poorly, a part of your brain registers “I’ m a little shit who treats people poorly” and you end up feeling bad about yourself. “When you dehumanize someone else, whether you like it or not, you also dehumanize yourself.”[4] So no, don’t turn around and become a jerk! Extremes are easy. Aim for the difficult but rewarding path of balance.
- You don’t think you deserve hot chics. You may think of yourself as a geek, nerd or whatever other term that has been used to describe you that isn’t congruent with getting hot chics, and as result think hot chics are for not you. This is just bad programming that can be easily corrected by practicing the exercises in the book Psycho-Cybernetics, visualizing the outcome you want and finding credible reasons in your experience to make its fruition believable. This is the core principle of psycho cybernetics which is VERY DIFFERENT from positive thinking! A little inner dusting off and some polish will do wonders for the painting!
To truly enjoy life and feel complete as a man you need to have hot chics. Nothing you accomplish will ever make up for a lack of this. “A river may be dammed, and its water controlled for a time. But eventually, it will force an outlet. The same is true of the emotion of sex. It may be submerged and controlled for a time, but its very nature causes it to be an ever seeking means of expression.”[5] And guess what? The hot chics desire sex with you just as much, if not more. BUT. They want you to initiate it in a way that makes it socially ok for them to engage in it. And how can you know how to do this if you haven’t learned how? You may stumble on it once in a while but if don’t clearly understand each of the steps you are really just rolling the dice. Can you leave such an important aspect of your life to chance? Per the Dr Alex’s quotation above, it is ludicrous to think ‘you should just know this stuff’. Consider for a moment, a few of the things that could go wrong when you see that cute chic you want to talk to at the coffee shop?
- You are overcome by ‘approach anxiety’[6] become dumbfounded and fail to make a move
- You make a move but don’t know what to say and bungle it up. A creepy, nervous wreck isn’t exactly the stuff of romance novels to her.
- She perceives your ‘high value’ (or you over-game her), feels insecure and rejects you before you discover what a fraud she is and reject her. This actually happens more often than you think, especially for younger, inexperienced women.
- She really likes you, but doesn’t want her girlfriends to think that she is ‘easy’ and as a result feigns disinterest.
- You fail to read her subtle ‘approach invitation’ cues (ignore what she says Mr. Logic) and miss out on a sure one. Success begets success and capitalizing on high probability approaches is one sure way to become successful.
Do you know how to navigate each of these situations in the initial approach? How about all the distinct steps during comfort or the critical seduction stage?[7] With few exceptions, I’d wager not.
Because few men get an education on this stuff, few men approach and fewer still know how to truly please women. Have you ever played the hero in the romance novel? Approached her confidently when she least expected, swept her off her feet, made her day memorable? Do you know how to stack orgasms, each more intense than the last, leading up to a super-duper mega-crescendo of a climax? One that would leave even the most classy of women grunting in ecstasy like a wild boar?
As men it is incumbent upon us to learn and lead. In practice, since most men don’t learn [8] neither men nor women get to enjoy nature’s gifts to the fullest extent. The women find solace in romance book clubs, fantasize and wish it happens for them before they grown old and lose their beauty. We men, find our fix in porn. If you think this is just for those evil others from Soddom and Gomorrah, think again. Simple math suggests that there are just not enough of them to make YouPorn the 51st most trafficked site on the web, ahead of CNN.com and Apple.com! It has to be me and you!
Now think of all the good things that would happen if more smart men got an education on attracting women. For one, You’d have real choice with highly desirable women, never feeling beholden to any particular one. The women, in turn, would get to live out their romantic fantasies. No one is stuck with anyone. Everyone dates a lot, increasing the likelihood that if you choose to marry you find someone with whom you are most compatible. This, of course, leads to less divorce and maybe even world peace! A lot of aggression and unattractive behavior can be traced to sexual frustration. Some pundits even believe that China will cause the third world war, to re-channel the sex energy of all the men who can’t get laid or find wives because of years of the one child policy. These men usually end up becoming criminals and destabilizing their society. Personally, I know that when I’m getting laid, I am much more willing to give the homeless guy on the street corner a dollar. See? Happiness all around Get yourself an education and let the women of this world behold the full magnificence of your painting!
By Don DeMarco (aka ‘The Don’)
[1] I first came across this concept in the original Scientific American article that this blog post refers to: http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2006/09/schools-dont-create-experts_06.html
[2] Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People.
[3] John Alanis, Naughty Boy report
[4] A quotation often attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1984
[5] Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
[6] ‘Approach Anxiety’ is a term coined by Mystery aka Erik Von Markovich. In his book, he says that approach anxiety is a relic of the evolutionary process. Hundreds of thousands of years ago when rulers maintained harems and controlled access to most of the desirable women, you could easily get yourself killed for approaching a woman you didn’t know. The reckless and daring men got killed. The fearful ones survived long enough to sire your ancestors. You inherited their fear which served to keep them alive in the environment of the time but has no use in modern times. The corresponding fear for women Mystery has called ‘Last Minute Resistance’, the fear of having sex with a new partner the first time. She wants to, but some deep seated anxiety and fear takes a hold of her body and she literally locks up. This fear served to protect her when having a child out of wedlock meant she was doomed for life. She would generally be ostracized, she could only hope to be married off as a second or third wife, for a lot less property and would never be able to support herself or her child since she could not hunt. No man would brave the saber tooth tigers of the day to provide for someone else’s child. In today’s world women don’t understand why men have approach anxiety (”why can’t he just come talk to me?”) and men don’t understand Last Minute Resistance (”Why won’t she just give it up?”). Braddock also wrote a great post on Approach Anxiety and did an excellent Q&A on the subject here.
[7] The three main stages Attraction, Comfort, Seduction are described in Mystery’s Venusian Arts Handbook. I have personally never quite mastered the Mystery Method but it got me started years ago and I still find it useful to think broadly in those three stages. I prefer to use the various ’systems’ that I’ve learned from people like John Alanis and Mr L. Rx. They are much easier, I get to leverage my various strengths and generally meet more healthy (physically, mentally, emotionally) mature women.
[8] By ‘learn’ I mean ‘get a formal education’ in the same way you might receive instruction in learning how to drive a car or play an instrument.
[9] Women need to learn this stuff too but to a lesser degree than men. The analogy I like to use is formal dances. I am a dancer and in most formal dance forms, it takes about 3-5 times as much time/effort to learn the lead’s (man’s) part as it does the follows. For women, the primary skill needed is that of the coquette, as described in Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction. Women who are skilled at this know how to say, in essence, I sort of like you but you need to wait just a tad longer. They woo you subtly and string you along. Women who don’t know how to do this may be attracted to you but accidentally mess up your game in a hundred million different ways and then wonder why they are single! But that is a story for another day. This site is for men!
