Emotions

When I was three years old, I reached into a bag of potato chips up on the counter in the apartment my family lived in then and drew one of the chips out. Just then, my father walked into the room and caught me munching. "Who said you could have that chip?" he asked in his booming voice. I stood there stunned, looking at him like a deer in the headlights, a half eaten chip motionless in my frozen hand.

"Mommy," I said in response, eyes wide and voice trembling.

"Really?" my father said, disbelieving. "She said that from the shower?" He was right, my mother wasn't anywhere nearby -- she was in the bathroom getting washed. I could hear her singing from the kitchen. "Let's ask her."

I sat fearfully as my father walked into the bathroom and I heard him ask my mother if she said I could have a potato chip. I couldn't hear her response, but I guessed what it would be. My father walked back into the dining room. "She said she didn't," he said. I just stared at him. "You can't have these without asking first," he said, taking the bag away and putting it out of reach. I'd been caught red-handed (or salty-fingered). Fortunately, I escaped without a spanking, after I pleaded that it was "just one chip."

Ever since then, I've had a lifelong fascination with learning how to spot a liar, and how to not get found out oneself when on occasion pressed into lying. I hate lying, and avoid it whenever and wherever possible -- I wasn't very good at it when young, and came to the conclusion that lies always surface in the end, so it's better to just be honest -- but I'm all for being self-reliant, and very occasionally sometimes you've just got to know how to do it.

So how do you tell someone lying? There are a bunch of ways, and learning as many of them as you can is something that will benefit you enormously in all of your social interactions and relationships and friendships and parternships to come.

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 that you might care to think.

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.

I hear men whining and complaining to their girlfriends, wives, and women they're pursuing from time to time. Since I don't spend all my time following random couples around, I know it must happen a lot more often than I hear it, too. And every time I hear it, it's like nails on chalkboard.

Thing is, I don't think most guys realize they're doing it, and I don't think most guys realize that it's Rule #14 or so in maintaining attraction and relationships that you don't whine and you don't complain to women.

A little over 5 years ago, I made the rookie mistake of telling a girl I'd just started sleeping with that I wanted her to be my "main girl." This has all kinds of "wrong" and "incorrect" and "bad game" painted all over it, and I'd never do it now, but that was then and I said it.

Her response to this was, as you might suspect, a defiant "I will never be your 'main girl.'"

And I felt a welling up of despair inside my chest. I was about to say it... I almost said it... and then I stopped myself. The urge to belt out a plaintive, "Why???" was overwhelmingly powerful and almost undeniable, but in the end I squelched it, and instead shrugged off the remark, gave her a confident-sounding, "We'll see," and forced myself to keep on as if nothing had been said. I slept with her again that night, and gave her the most potent, memorable, fantastic night of bliss in her life, and she, in a throe of passion, proclaimed that she didn't think she could leave me.

And for the next 2 1/2 years after that, she didn't.

I guarantee though, beyond any shadow of a doubt, beyond all second guesses, beyond anything, that had I whined or complained in that moment instead, we never would've ended up together.

How come? Because whining and complaining positively, absolutely, unequivocally kill attraction.

Kill it. Bury it in the ground, cover it up with dirt.

And most guys do it unknowingly anyway.

Ever find yourself wondering just how to make the women you want want you?

The truth is, making women want you isn't as Herculean an undertaking as you might think from watching TV and the movies. You don't have to win a race, or make a million dollars, or give yourself a makeover (although if you can, don't let me stop you!). But you do need to have somewhat of an idea of what you're doing -- of what women need -- and of how best to give it to them.

If you're a regular guy living a regular day-to-day life, you'd be forgiven for thinking that women are busily immersed in their own lives and hardly ever notice anyone or anything else. But the fact is, women are just like men -- they have crushes, they get infatuated, someone with the right looks or qualities or intangibles catches their eyes and they fall for him.

And it isn't just male models that women fall for. Just like it isn't magazine celebrities you spend most of your time sweating over, dreaming about, and imagining a romance with, so it is with women -- they aren't dreaming about guys on reality TV; they're dreaming about real men, in their own real lives.

Making women want you, then, isn't about becoming the most amazing man in the world. Instead, it's much more about becoming the most amazing man in the room -- and if you've got even a semblance of a commitment to self-improvement, I'm quite confident we can get you there... probably pretty fast.

For that reason, I've put together 10 killer tips to make women want you. By the end of this post, I'm betting you'll find yourself glancing at that cute girl you keep running into with a new twinkle in your eye -- and I bet she'll be looking back with a twinkle of her own.

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.

Here's one for all the intermediate guys and up -- the ones who've already figured out the fundamentals enough that it's all started slowing down for them and they're better able to see the forest for the trees.

A reader (one who's had mail featured in a couple of articles on here already, in fact), wrote in a thoughtful, insightful break down of what he'd picked up about how I read what women need and give it to them. I'd been meaning to write something up on this, but he put it quite well:

“Basically what I've finally picked up on is how well you read minds. The thing that keeps you in control is knowing exactly what that girl needs to hear. And its funny because this is exactly how most women communicate.

They don't walk around imposing themselves on others they notice what the other person is going through and then converse from there. I've been noticing that I have a great grasp on a lot of things you post but where I have been falling short is in the area of understanding what she NEEDS in that moment you know?

I'll be thinking in my head okay now let's move onto this, gotta move her now... Basically what I've been doing is focusing on what I needed to get done not what she needed.

Now I understand when you say "I can tell she wanted to be moved." Because your actually paying attention and your always asking yourself what does she need right now. It's like when you think in terms of "what does she need?" Everything becomes so clear and you see her as almost like a game to be won.”

And that's pretty accurate. I do notice that most guys blindly and bluntly stumble their ways through interactions with women, and I do keep my own interactions more or less wholly contingent upon what the girl is telling me she needs in any given moment.

But that, of course, is more easily said than done for most men, because most men don't know how to tell what women need.

Instead, they stumble blindly in the dark, hoping to get that one shot in a thousand that they "get lucky" and happen to get all the pieces to line up just right (or have a girl who likes them enough that she doesn't mind if not all of the pieces match up... but how often does that happen?).

Well, I don't think you ought to have to stumble -- and believe me, women would prefer you didn't, too. And that's why I wrote this handbook -- everything you need to start reading the women around you.

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.

Once upon a time, there was one subject that absolutely terrified me when women brought it up in conversation: their past relationships.

I mean, if anything felt like a death sentence for forward progress with a woman, it was her digging up her troubled past and spilling it all over my lap. Time and again, I found that my interactions with women ended soon after they began divulging their storied relationship history -- "Great, another gal looking for a shoulder to cry on," I'd think. "I'm doomed."

It took me a little while to crack that nut, but I did. When women start telling me about their past relationships now, it's almost a slam dunk that we become lovers.

How'd I make such a dramatic shift, from past relationships being a conversation killer to them becoming seduction rocket fuel? Well, it came about from me deciphering a few important concepts -- and that utterly shifted the way I approached women discussing their past relationships.

If you've ever tried to take a girl home with you, or you've ever been in a relationship, you know that sometimes women need persuading. And when it comes to persuading women, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a near-universal point of suffering for most men.

About two months ago I wrote a post asking "should you apologize to women?" At the beginning of that post, I mentioned the television boyfriend and husband of the 1990s -- you know, that poor, beaten-down soul constantly stumbling over himself to belt out another apology to his scowling girlfriend or wife.

Well, this is the other thing the TV boyfriend / husband does really poorly -- persuade women to do what he wants. Men on TV are usually depicted as trying and failing to get women to do what they want, instead.

"Oh, come on!" you'll hear a guy cry to a gal. "It'll be fun!"

She just looks at him, shakes her head, and ignore his request. He groans, dejectedly. Again, the audience laughs.

Now, if you want to do better than that guy, you're going to have to take a different approach than the (largely ineffectual) one that he takes. And to get you doing just that, I've got 7 tips for you today that are going to change the way you handle persuading women.