Social Commentary

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.

I sat there in a café by myself, staring blankly at a couple of abandoned plates of food.

"I won't let this make me bitter," I whispered under my breath.

I'd spent the night talking and moving from club to club with a girl I liked a lot and had been pursuing for months. She was smart, funny, tall -- beautiful. Everywhere she went, she attracted men to her, like moths to a flame. But she treated me different than all the other guys rotating around her; them she'd be polite but dismissive toward; me, she'd spend hours just sitting there talking to. She didn't do that with anyone else. That night, it'd been just us, the entire night -- and she'd been talking about the two of us going to an "after-party" together -- I started thinking that finally, after all this time and effort, I was getting somewhere with her. I suggested we could just chill at my apartment.

And then, in the middle of us eating at a café at the end of the night, before heading to our "after-party," some guy she knew happened to show up, just as she'd gotten up and was heading into the bathroom. She was excited to see him -- then, they disappeared around the corner together. When they came back, they were laughing like little kids... and they sat down next to each other across from me.

I'd been sitting next to her before she got up.

It was early 2006. I didn't know what I was doing -- I'd only been trying to get better with women for a year, and only actively doing it -- religiously -- for about 2 or 3 months now. But I figured I had to try to save this; I'd try anything I could. It couldn't fall apart -- not now. Not when we were so close, after months of hard work.

So I tried boyfriend destroyers, even though this guy wasn't her boyfriend.

I tried seeming as calm and nonplussed as possible as they flirted in front of me.

I tried going over the top and telling them what a beautiful couple they made as they fed each other food across the table from me, hoping she'd protest that they weren't a couple. Instead, she only played along more, telling me she'd been chasing this guy forever but that he kept turning her down.

And then, despite my efforts, the moment I went to the bathroom to collect my thoughts, they disappeared.

The bill was waiting on the table for me when I got back. And they were gone... off into the night together.

"Don't be bitter," I said to myself.

If there's one pet peeve I have right now, it's the current way being an "alpha male" is talked about in most pick up and dating circles. I've gotten to the point personally where I cringe every time I hear some guy talking about "being alpha."

But I don't want to go on an anti-alpha tirade here, because at it's core, the alpha male ideology is very correct; it's just that the term itself has become so laden with cultural baggage that "the alpha male" has just about become a stereotype -- a clownish, cartoon caricature of what an alpha male used to be.

Every time I hear the term "alpha" these days, I imagine some bald, shirtless, gargantuan, vein-popping 'roid-head screaming, "Alpha... ALPHA!!!" at the top of his lungs, and a crowd of skinny nerdy guys standing around him, pointing at him in awe, and whispering to each other, "That's alpha. That's how you get the ladies."

This post is my effort to wrestle back the term "alpha male" from the shadow of itself it's become, and redefine once and for all what the term really means -- and exactly how to be an alpha male... without turning yourself into a cartoon character.

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.

I was out last night with a friend at about midnight, and we stopped to ask for directions. I saw a pair of women on a patio as they were leaving a bar, and asked them if they knew where the place we were trying to find was. In the midst of them telling me as I stood there a bit beneath them on the street -- "Go to the cinema, then..." a large, obviously drunken man strode up to the edge of the patio they were standing on, towering over me.

"Oy," he said, and raised his fist in what sort of looked like a greeting.

"Hi," I said, and flashed him a smile. He dropped his fist smack into my forehead, and it connected with a dull thud and a mild sting.

Now, I come from a background of formerly having been a bit of an angry guy, and a bit of a fighter. I used to get in a fair amount of fights, about all kinds of pointless things. Anything that might just be considered disrespect, I used to be ready to go to war over.

These days, I don't make physical confrontation that much a priority for me. I'll use it when absolutely necessary -- I manhandled a guy a few days back who tried pickpocketing me late at night in the rain -- but the risk is often far greater than the reward.

And that's what I want to discuss today -- assessing combat situations well and accurately gauging the risk-reward ratio -- not just for yourself, but for your opponent. Because it's necessary that, as you make your way through the world, you learn when it's worth fighting -- and when it isn't.

The other day, my girlfriend was upset with me again and creating drama. This is to be expected, as she's a high energy, energetic girl with a lot going on right now; I understand and commiserate. This is how it is with women and drama. But there's one thing she was trying to do that irked me somewhat.

She was trying to change me.

To any man out there who's ever had a girlfriend before, you probably know what I'm talking about. Women universally want men to change. It's only in those rare moments during the honeymoon phase of the relationship -- usually the first 90 days or so -- that this doesn't go on.

You also get a brief reprieve following a major capitulation, but this doesn't last and only breeds more struggles in the long term.

In any event, there's a famous quote about marriage by the eminent physicist (and philanderer, as it turns out) Albert Einstein, which we can pretty easily extrapolate to relationships of all sorts. What Einstein said was this:

"Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed."

Hmm. Guess they should've given him a Noble prize in humanities, too.

"Can you get me a glass of water?" she asked me. "Please?" She gave me big, dewy doe eyes, and her cutest, most charming pursed lips.

"It's over there," I said playfully, pointing to the water cooler. "You can get it yourself."

"Oh!" she exclaimed in mock frustration, getting up to go get herself more water.

Does it offend your sensibilities that I told her to do that? It might offend some people's. How can a guy be so cold as to not even go and get a girl a glass of water? they think.

But it isn't about being cold. It's about returning to the basics of sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort; it's about understanding that the men who supplicate -- the men who kiss up -- the men who try to impress women -- those men end up holding the bag.

It's about understanding what women are really attracted to... and what causes them to lose that attraction. And it's about understanding that where the line is, and how much is too much when it comes to doing for women.