Female Mind

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.

When I first decided to start tackling women and dating as a skill set to methodically improve at the end of 2004, I went into it with three distinct aims:

• Be a seductive, charming bad boy,
• Constantly test the limits and push to improve, and
• Make women feel special.

I didn't know exactly what I was doing or how my learning curve would look, but I trusted that as I chipped away at learning the ability to do better with women, I would indeed get it down, as I had a diverse array of other skills.

It wasn't until a year later that I found the pick up community. Many parts of it excited me; I couldn't believe there was an entire group of men who'd worked to develop this same skill set too, some much further along than myself. But there was one part that mystified me:

These guys didn't seem to know how to make a girl feel special.

So much of their stuff revolved around spitting out scripted lines and "canned routines" at girls, which I tried, briefly, but tossed aside after only a few weeks. It didn't feel genuine at all, and it wasn't how I wanted my interactions with women to be.

They had lots of great advice, to be sure; studying the findings of these guys who'd already been down the path I'd set myself out on was immensely helpful. But in that one department -- in making girls feel special -- I was pretty sure I had something they didn't.

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.

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.

1. Keep it short,
2. Help her think, and
3. 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.

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 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.

A reader writes in a comment on the post about building emotional connections:

"This worked great with a beautiful young lady I was interested in. We had many things in common. She got presumptuous and began whining & nagging about her car repairs. I was a gentleman throughout yet she felt perfectly entitled to tool me!! How would you treat her inappropriate request? Oh I forgot to mention this demand was asked of me after the third date..."

That's an unfortunate outcome for our reader, losing a girl he had a great connection with to presumptuous requests, but it's all too common a scenario, and it's one that gives us an outstanding jumping off point for getting into a meaty topic: dealing with dating situations where women complain, try to get stuff from you, and push to use you.

For the relationship equivalent of this phenomenon, check out "Women and Drama." What I want to talk to you about today is dealing with this when it happens on dates -- and how you can sidestep, shut down, and otherwise flummox women's attempts to get favors and "gain the upper hand," so to speak.

I think you'll find it invaluable.