Female Mind

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.