Emotions

Any guy who has ever set his foot on a forum devoted to the study of seduction or who has purchased a book on the topic is likely to be familiar with the expressions “outer game” and “inner game”. He will know that “outer game” advice consists of learning new behaviors, while “inner game” advice is all about restructuring your cognition, or, in plain English, information processing and thought patterns.

However, not everybody knows that this is a kind of therapy that psychologists have been studying for decades and that they call “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” (commonly abbreviated CBT).

Its name indicates that it builds on the earlier method of pure cognitive therapy (CT) and also on behavior therapy (BT). Both psychologists and aspiring seducers have been discussing which therapy is more effective, but, at least among the psychologists, there is more or less agreement that the combination of CT (“inner game”) and BT (“outer game”) is more effective than either alone.

This should not be surprising; if you approach a problem from multiple angles you are more likely to solve it.

This first article in the new series I am kicking off on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will address the CT part and teach you how to systematically challenge and defeat negative though patterns and unproductive beliefs.

Nearly everybody has something to work with here; there are very few people who are totally free from what are commonly known as “issues”.

You know the feeling – the one where you see a group of people laughing about a movie you love or getting excited about an overseas location that you know like the back of your hand.

But there you are, standing on the outskirts of the group. Maybe you have a drink in your hand. Maybe you have your hands in your pockets. Maybe you have you arms crossed. Whatever the case may be, you feel intimidated, uneasy, and possibly even scared about the situation at hand.

You want to be a part of the fun. You know you have something to offer. But the prospect of approaching new people – or worse, approaching that beautiful girl across the room – is much too daunting for your brain to grasp. So you sit there. Doing nothing. Feeling awkward. And then you go home, not making a splash – not even making a ripple.

And you wonder to yourself: “Will things always be like this? Will I ever overcome my shyness and actually connect with people?”

Well, if you’ve been wondering about how to not be shy, wonder no more. I’ve put together a complete primer on how to overcome shyness.

Ever deal with a girlfriend causing drama by just trying to get her to forget it?

This can seem the expedient path, but rarely is it the most prudent one.

It is just human nature that we don’t want to forget the things that got the better of us. We dwell on the past to avoid getting bested again in the future.

However, in order to make sure the old wounds are not sabotaging us in the present, we have to remember that moving forwards is more important than reminding ourselves of the past.

We get stuck in a perpetual loop after bad things have happened sometimes, and that is okay, but sometimes we just need a little help to step outside of those troubles so we can start seeing ourselves acting normal again before we get past it.

Girls are just like anyone else when it comes to the past because they don’t know how to address the same issues if faced with them again in the future. When they face them again they will gain a heightened awareness of how fragile their situation is and worry about it.

Most guys address these concerns the wrong way: they make promises, ignore the looming possibility of reoccurrence of the issue, and target her “focusing on the past” as the problem to be eradicated. The only problem with that is GETTING HIT ONCE IS ENOUGH to double the pain when hit TWICE, so a girl is going exaggerate the importance of the issue if it is ignored.

Girls often mention the past because they are afraid that a positive stream of events they are having will be interrupted by the same BS. In order to help girls move past this, don’t make promises, don’t ignore that it can happen again, and don’t treat her memory and caution as the problem.

Commenting on “I Can’t Get Girls Because Girls Only Want [BLANK]”, TR asks the following about girls who appear to like you, yet ultimately sabotage their interactions with you due to hang-ups:

“I've noticed that even though I can have an outstanding interaction with a woman that clearly likes me, when it comes to closing she may still sabotage herself. This usually happens with women much taller than I am, and though I have no doubt that she really likes me, I'm also pretty certain that the height thing makes her a bit insecure. These women consistently fall over hard for me afterwards (lack of control + attraction is dynamite) but they have that mental block that sabotages them more often than not.

Do you think you could post up a follow-up article on how to handle things like this? Perhaps it has to do with setting the right frames, or maybe it's just a matter of letting go and looking for the right girls instead.”

This is a great topic, and it's something you'll run into repeatedly if you're out meeting women fairly often: those girls who clearly like you, are into you, are attracted to you... yet who just won't let themselves do anything with you.

It's a disconcerting affair the first couple of times you run into it. "I can tell she likes me," you say to youself. "Why the heck is she rejecting me?"

Ultimately, the problem always comes down to the same thing: attainability.

And no matter how swell a guy you are, how friendly, likeable, or attractive, for one reason or the other, she just doesn't view you as all that attainable... and ends up auto-rejecting.

While you can't always prevent this, once you understand why it's happening you can avoid it sometimes - either by preventing the problem from occurring in the first place, or by recognizing when it is occurring, and nipping it in the bud before it becomes something more dooming.

You’ve approached a woman. You went up to her and joked around about her polka dot dress and vintage style. She laughed, and made further inquiry into who this intrepid gentlemen is. You begin to tell her about yourself and launch into a quality conversation.

You starting thinking to yourself: “Wow. This girl is really something.” She tells you an embarrassing story about how she peed her pants when she was a kid. This makes her seem so down to earth despite how beautiful you find her.

You two like the same music. You’ve traveled to some of the same places. You have similar life values. You think, “This is it. Finally, I’ve found a quality woman.”

You ask her out. “Hey, Julia, I’ve really enjoyed spending time with you here…”

She replies. “Yes! I would love to!”

You’re elated. You swap numbers with her as your heart is pounding. Then you say your goodbyes, ready to leap out of your body with joy.

“It was great meeting you. I look forward to our adventure Julia!”

She reciprocates your goodbye: “It was great meeting you too! I look forward to going out… as friends.”

You stop dead in your tracks. You double-take to make sure you heard her correctly. Friends? Did she just say friends? How is that possible?

How is that possible? You did everything right, right? Wrong. In this scenario, you successfully connected with her, but you failed to arouse her.

Connection is an important component of arousal, but it’s far from the whole story.

So if you’ve ever found yourself in this – or a similar – situation, today I’m going to break down everything involved in how to arouse a woman.

One of our discussion forum members started a thread asking whether, when surrounded by women decrying the slut label, he should be truthful to himself and state that there’s a good reason behind this label, or whether he should tell women like this what they want to hear (and what he probably needs to say if he wants to sleep with them): that he thinks such a label is totally unreasonable... even if this is being untruthful to himself.

That’s an interesting question, but one I think that the answer to (supposing your goal is to become a real “knock her socks off” ladies man) is a fairly simple “fake it till you make it.”

That is to say, you may think she’s a “slut” now... but once you’ve got a significantly larger amount of sexual experience under your belt, you’re probably not going to care one way or the other about what label fits her best. So might as well just act like you’re already there and get the girl in the meantime. You’ll be glad you did later.

But that raised an interesting question for me: why is that newer guys and less experienced guys or, alternately, bitter guys (not necessarily the same as new/inexperienced guys), use the “slut” label on women... while more experienced guys who’ve made their peace with women’s sexuality don’t really care?

First time at a bar picking up girls or going out on a hunch? Here are the three things you should do to optimize your chance for growth... and a few things I would have done different my first time around if I could do it all again.

All three points I am going to share with you will serve to illustrate a deep principle at the heart of improving with women.

Whether it is your first time heading out or if you are just curious about how you measure up and if your fundamentals are good or not, there will be a few thought-provoking ideas to be found here.