How to Be More Aggressive with Women, Dating, and Life

Zac–

Rob has a good point on grit. Whatever talent I have is “clumsy” talent… I make loads of mistakes while trying to learn something. I make loads of mistakes still even when I’m GOOD at something. I think the only thing that saves me is that I assume that if I want to get anything, I’ve simply got to see it through to the end.

You may be right on the correlation between closing out on the last 5% of things and on absolute abundance. For me, these two hit right about the same time: right as I started focusing on closing out the last 5% of a seduction better and better, that’s when I routinely started closing out on high quality girls very quickly as well – and those were the girls who were most likely to vanish without a trace after any kind of failed date or escalation. The higher quality the girl, the more unforgiving she is of mistakes, and getting good at closing out the last 5% is really the end stage of wrapping up your pickups into something truly tight.

Absolute abundance is tied to knowing that you can get a very high quality girlfriend within a short span of time – all you’ve got to do is go looking for her, and you’ll have her soon. And high quality girls are very intolerant of men making mistakes during seductions – one tiny uncorrected error, and you’re in the friend zone before you can blink. The last 5% is ironing out the last place most guys routinely make mistakes – putting the finishing touches on their seductions and actually taking girls who were receptive to them to bed.

If you want a simple way of thinking about this, think about improving your success rates in seduction as a process of identifying where mistakes occur, and removing those mistakes. When you can run through a seduction with a pretty girl without making any mistakes, you’ll end up with her in bed.

When you can do that routinely, you’ll end up with near-perfect abundance.

Chase

Allan–

I have a good friend from Denmark! Scandinavians always strike me as some of the most perceptive, good-humored, well-mannered people there are out there. Good people.

If you’re looking at friendships, the view needs to be, “What value do I bring to this person’s life, and what value does he bring to mine?” You need to know what you want in a friend (e.g., someone to do fun stuff with; someone knowledgeable in this area or that area; someone to have great conversations about business or women or life with; someone who could potentially be a business contact or business partner down the road; etc.), and then look for it and screen for it actively.

On getting people talking about their achievements, I have an article on that exactly – and the question it’s written in response to is from my Danish friend, in fact. Here it is:

Guy Talk: Here's How to Kick Butt at Talking to Other Men

Chase

Anon-

Glad to hear it on you and your friend! With the moving of girls, it's hard to tell, but it sounds as though the ask may be coming across too unsmooth. Generally you want something quick and commanding - "Let's grab a seat, it'll be more comfortable" followed by extending your arm for her to take or hand for her to grasp, and looking at her expectantly. If what you say takes too long, or you come across hesitant or uncertain in any other way, it won't work.

The other thing it may be is if either A) your fundamentals aren't strong enough that you have good initial attraction, and B) you aren't building up investment by getting other forms of compliance before you ask girls to move. If you have strong fundamentals and girls are into you right away, you can sometimes go straight into moving them after only a few minutes of conversation; and if your fundamentals aren't as strong but you do a good job escalating compliance, you can quickly move girls much of the time too. But if your fundamentals aren't there yet, and you aren't getting compliance, you face an uphill battle.

Check those three things and see if anything stands out:

• Too long / hesitant / not-very-commanding invitations to move
• Fundamentals that need some tightening up
• A lack of escalation of compliance prior to the move (getting her to invest more first)

Your problem is probably somewhere in there (my guess is the first one).

Also - if you check out the discussion boards (here), we have a field reports section where you can share the details of outings you've made and have other guys take a look and give you feedback. It's a valuable resource if you have any particular points where you're getting stuck or just want to start chronicling your outings to better remember things, parse the lessons from them, and learn better and quicker.

Chase

Wolf-

Fear's almost always a response to imagined, illusory danger. Fear's almost never in real proportion to danger. e.g., nobody's afraid of driving and hardly anybody's afraid of crossing the street on foot, even though those are statistically the most dangerous things by far most people do. Generally speaking, the more exposed you become to something, the more fear fades, recedes, and disappears altogether.

If a guy approaches a girl and is awkward, it will be awkward for her too. If a guy approaches a girl and is smooth and cool and charming and suave, on the other hand, she's going to be thinking about that approach for weeks to come. Of course, the only way you get from being the awkward guy to the smooth, cool, charming, suave guy is by doing enough approaches that you get it down. So, to a certain extent, you will need to swallow some pride and just go do it... but pride is the only thing you'll lose. If you're afraid of anything more than making a little bit of a fool of yourself, it's an irrational fear. If you're afraid of making a fool of yourself... it's just part of the learning curve. Get through a little while being a fool to get to a place where you never need to be a fool again - the price is paid upfront, and the dividends for that admission fee are paid out in a lifetime of being able to meet the women you want without worrying about it.

Chase

Walls-

Well, you may simply be a better-looking man than I am... I can't say I recall ever having had a similar experience!

However, my gut would be you simply don't want her to just walk up, plug her number in, and walk away. It's a ballsy move on her part, but it puts you completely into pursuit if you're trying to text her saying, "Uh, hello, Mystery Woman? This is that guy you gave your number to earlier tonight... my name's Walls. How's it going?"

If a girl tries this, I feel like you'd need to grill her at least a little bit - something like, "Whoa, hold your horses. Who are you and why would you like me to take your cell phone number?" She'll give some dismissive response about how you should take it because she's cute, or something, which puts you completely in pursuit if you text her (i.e., you're texting because she's attractive, not because you know anything about her).

This could be a validation play - the girl's just going around showing herself (or her friends) how much men want her because she just offers them her number and they take it, and then she gets to feel like a pretty princess later when random men start texting her.

Anyway, I'd call, rather than text. You need to start screening / deep diving her right away to give her a chance to impress you so that you have a reason for continuing to spend time on her, otherwise she'll (rightfully) assume you're only talking to her because she's cute (after all, that's all you know about her).

So, in this case, I wouldn't text at all, just call her, and be intrigued-but-skeptical, and get her explaining herself and talking about herself.

Chase

James-

Good catch. That's a hard one to make heads or tails of.

My guess would probably be that boys using overt aggression quickly learn to only use it if they're on top of the heap; i.e., the big boss who scolds subordinates or the high school or college jock who shoves scrawny kids.

In the full research paper, there's a chart plotting the findings, with a correlation of 0.42 for overt aggression to perceived popularity for boys, and 0.47 for relational aggression to perceived popularity for boys - both pretty close. So, according to those findings, overt aggression actually IS desirable for boys - although somewhat less desirable in comparison than relational aggression is.

When the effect of the different types of aggression on perceived popularity is done, the authors of the paper appear to have calculated this overall rather than separately for males and females. Unfortunately, math is not my strong suit, so they lose me on this formula, but if you're interested, it's here:

“Overt and relational aggression as predictors of social preference and perceived popularity

Finally, two more multiple regressions were performed. Overt and relational aggression served as simultaneous predictors of social preference in an examination of the unique relations between each type of aggression and social preference. They also served as simultaneous predictors of perceived popularity, in order to determine the relative contribution of each type of aggression to perceived popularity. When social preference served as the dependent variable R was not found to be different from zero [R2 = 0.007, F(2,400) = 1.41, p > 0.05]. Therefore, none of the aggression types significantly contributed to explaining variance associated with social preference. For the regression on perceived popularity, R was significantly different from zero [R2 = 0.225, F(2,400) = 59.26, p < 0.000]. Overt aggression was found to be a unique significant negative predictor of perceived popularity (β = –0.15, t = –2.95, p < 0.01), whereas relational aggression was a positive pre- dictor (β = 0.46, t = 10.25, p < 0.000).”

Chase

Lucacris-

I'll throw it on the article queue, a few guys have asked about this.

My thoughts on masturbation are that if you're actively going out to get girls, it's best saved for jump starting a dead battery if you go too long without getting a charge, but otherwise left alone.

The research on pornography shows that as viewing of pornography in a given country goes up, rape goes down, which is one signal that men are getting their needs for sex / power / dominance met virtually rather than actually. I've also seen a lot of anecdotal evidence on "porn escalation," where porn addicts escalate from one type of porn to another, more extreme type, and then from there to yet another, even more extreme type, and so on and so forth, to the point that real women don't really do it for them all that much anymore.

There are also studies that find that the men who masturbate the most are also the men having the most sex, simply because having a lot of sex shifts them into horniness overdrive. The masturbation doesn't seem to aid that boosting - rather, it seems to be an outlet for excess sexual energy build-up.

From everything I've seen, giving your sailor the ol' rub-and-tug serves mostly to deplete sexual energy and motivation to get girls. If you go on too long a dry spell though (say, more than two weeks without sex), you may find your sex drive begin to wan, and in that case one release can be enough to get you raring to go again, but more than that seems to dampen that urge. Pornography is the enemy of a sex drive for real women; if you must masturbate, you'll help your sex drive tremendously more by closing your eyes and imagining past lovers than you will by watching pornography, which is a very different (voyeuristic) experience than imagining you are actually having sex with a woman yourself.

Chase

Beamz-

I had a friend once refer to this as "catching lucky breaks," as in, "it's hard to start getting success with beautiful women before you've had success with beautiful women, so the best thing you can do is keep taking cracks at it until you catch a lucky break here or there and break into success."

There are a lot of things like that in seduction (and elsewhere)... sometimes really all you can do is just keep swinging for the fences until the day you hit one over, and after that you remember the feeling and not just imagine but KNOW what to do and can really get serious on learning how to do it consistently and on-demand.

Chase

Student-

From Wikipedia's article on testosterone:

“Men whose testosterone levels are slightly above average are less likely to have high blood pressure, less likely to experience a heart attack, less likely to be obese, and less likely to rate their own health as fair or poor. However, high testosterone men are more likely to report one or more injuries, more likely to consume five or more alcoholic drinks in a day, more likely to have had a sexually transmitted infection, and more likely to smoke.”

The heart attack risks and other health risks are mainly only at very high doses (i.e., the kinds used by some men who are bodybuilding, often illegally, depending on the country). At only mildly elevated levels, you'll actually see positive health effects.

So, unless you're injecting heavy amounts of steroids, the biggest risks to a long lifespan you face with testosterone are behavioral: because testosterone increases your propensity to take risks, that also increases your tendency to have brushes with death, and the likelihood that one of those brushes is more than a brush.

Best advice for a long life with elevated testosterone? Make sure you know your limits, and never let yourself forget them, no matter how unstoppable you may feel as a result of what's coursing through your veins.

Chase

Anon-

Yeah, I've been there. When I first started teaching myself this stuff I was writing reports of my outings every other night talking about how maybe other men could learn how to get women but I just couldn't, it just didn't work for me. Whatever other men had, I just didn't have it.

The only thing you can do when you're feeling that way is force yourself to just get out and just keep meeting lots of women. Bars, nightclubs, day game, whatever you have to do, be meeting 30 to 50 new women a week and keep working on your approach, on your fundamentals, and on everything.

You need to get your skill base down with women you AREN'T tripping over your feet over before you're ready to step up and play in the championship game (you know... the girls you really like). Nobody ever makes it to the playoffs without slogging his way through the regular season, first.

Build your skills with women up with lots of different women, so that when you meet the girls you REALLY like, you'll be able to execute according to the same process you've followed hundreds of times already during the regular season.

Keep at it and you'll get there - just keep getting back on the saddle.

And, post some reports on our field reports board on the discussion forums - there are lots of guys there who've already been there and can have a look at what you're doing now and help you pinpoint what you need to do different next time.

It worked for me when I was new, frustrated, and fatalistic ;)

Chase

Jeff-

Yes, with that kind of social situation where you're seeing her repeatedly, talk to her socially a few times first before you ask her out. It's somewhat similar to meeting a girl in class:

Cute Girls in Class? Stop Flirting and Start DATING

... although less constrained as you can take some time and really sit and hang out with her and get some good conversation going.

Treat it like a phone conversation, and don't plan to ask her out at the end of a long conversation - either have a long conversation, and plan to leave at the end of it, or ask her out right at the beginning if you've already talked to her a few times before and this is the time you'll ask her to come do something with you.

Chase

Doobie-

Non-touch pre-opening works best with highly socially aware and socially confident women because they're the ones most likely to readily meet the glance of someone looking at them and not shy away from it. But that's why usually for pre-opening you'll be using some sort of physical contact to get her to look at you - so that all those other women who aren't the "super aware" variety will bite, too.

Relying on eye contact as an opener is hit-or-miss. You'll get some girls (or customers), but mostly only the ones who are either very outgoing or very into you (or Thai food, as the case may be). So, you can use it - but it won't always work.

I was in a city a month or so ago where many of the nicer restaurants had people standing outside to greet passersby and invite them check out the menu. Most of these people I simply avoided eye contact with, and they said or did nothing - I mentally checked them off as "tentative." One guy in particular I recall - some young Indian kid - jumped right up in my face with the menu and a big smile and asked me very enthusiastically if I'd like to have a look at the menu. I couldn't help but smile back and tell him I might on my way back; I knew exactly where I wanted to eat that night, but I was still tempted to look.

Sometimes you've just got to get in front of people, face rejection, and win their attention to break them out of whatever autopilot it is they're in.

Chase

NBT-

Feeling jealous / suspicious with girls you still feel are out of your league is pretty common. It's actually a fairly logical response... your brain says, "This woman is out of my league. Therefore, she is only with me because I've managed to fool her into thinking she is NOT out of my league. However, as soon as she figures out she IS out of my league, I'm in big trouble, and I'm going to lose her."

There are two things you can focus on to reduce and eventually remove this:

• Understanding these "out of your league" girls more, and
• Learning how to provide as much value in relationships as you can (without breaking your back)

The first one is about making these women more relatable. They're still somewhat on a pedestal with you (see here: Women on Pedestals), which is no good for the relationship. You need them off those pedestals pronto, and learning enough about them that you fully realize they're nothing but normal, ordinary people, just with prettier looks than most, is what gets them there.

The second one is about becoming a very value-giving person in general. The reason a lot of the emphasis on this site is on conversation is because I view becoming very good at conversation as the most efficient way of providing lots of value to most people's lives in a hurry there is. When you're good at conversation - not just talking, but also the nuances, like cold reading, figuring people out to a nuanced degree, picking apart people's psychologies and telling them why they think and do the things they think and do - you're suddenly an enormously valuable person just to have around and talk with - a natural leader. Once you have that down, even very beautiful women will start thinking of you as out of their league.

Also, keep in mind, if you're a highly self-improvement oriented guy, and you're advancing and refining and tweaking and upgrading all the time, if you date a girl for long enough, even if she was out of your league when you met her, at some point you're going to catch up to her, and then pass her. Her looks decline as she ages, and if she's like 999 people out of 1,000 she isn't upgrading herself all that much as time goes by either. Most people get to where they're going to get to when they're young, and then they just stay there or decline. Very few actively, consistently upgrade and improve.

Chase

NBT-

It sounds like you're a highly emotional guy who's running on emotional spikes and falls (like what we talked about in the article on emotional cresting, except on a scale of weeks or months as opposed to in specific interactions), and this is more an emotional response to things going your way or not. Sound accurate?

If that's the case, I experienced that earlier on in learning seduction, though it went away after the first six months or so of going out hardcore (3 to 4 days a week). Most of the guys I've seen this happen with longer term were guys who weren't going out as consistently, and at that point, it really might be more random variation than anything else.

e.g., if you ever watch basketball, they'll talk about guys "getting hot" or "going on a hot streak." That's where a guy gets a bunch of baskets in a row, or doesn't miss a free throw for however many attempts. A team of researchers sat down and asked the question, "Does a guy on a hot streak really perform better, or is it pure chance?" What they found by averaging the guy's performance out is that he's no more likely to make a free throw during a "hot streak" than he is at any other time, based on his average free throw percentage. Both "hot streaks" and "cold streaks" are just the kind of lumpy stretches of inconsistency you expect with any highly variable endeavor. Flip a coin 50 times in a row, and you'll get a couple of stretches of 4 or 5 or 6 heads straight and 4 or 5 or 6 tails straight. Same with going out - you'll go on streaks (hot and cold) as well, and the less often you go out, the longer these hot and cold streaks can seem to last.

Typically, once you reach a certain degree of skill, your brain naturally acclimates to hot and cold streaks and these kinds of peaks and valleys stop affecting you emotionally. You come to see them as normal parts of going out, and simply work to shorten the lows and lengthen the highs, by getting more consistent and forging on ahead through the low periods.

Chase

Robby-

I wouldn't worry too much about confidence, actually. I've had plenty of nights where I went out and got shot down 10 or 15 times in a row and felt like dog food, and then I saw a pretty girl and said, "Sigh... what the heck, might as well go say 'hi,'" and a little bit later we were going back to my place. In fact, having a few nights in a row like this was one of the milestones in my development as a seducer - I went out one night, got shot down for hours by every girl I saw, was angry and upset at myself and nearly went home, and then ran into a pair of girls I immediately took home. The next night, same thing - getting shot down left and right, probably 15 or 20 rejections, and then I took a break from getting rejected to talk to my pals for a few minutes, spotted a really pretty girl staring at me, went over and said 'hi,' and that was that. After that, I never worried about "good nights" or "bad nights" again - it was all just random variation. Some nights she's the first girl you talk to, some nights she's the 20th. You won't know unless you keep talking to girls until you find her.

On the booty call - personal preference here, but I gave up friends with benefits in 2006 for this reason - not getting comfortable with a woman who isn't up to my usual standards. My philosophy is, a high caliber girlfriend - okay, that's valuable; she's someone I want to be with, I'm learning and benefiting from being around her, and I'm subconsciously reassuring myself that, yes, beautiful, intelligent, dynamic, strong women are crazy about me and want to be around me; picking up new girls - yes, that's valuable; I'm continuing to hone and test and refine my abilities, and I'm reaffirming to my brain that meeting women is not difficult, and even high quality women are relatively easy to snag, so I remain in an abundance mentality.

But friends with benefits I can't see a justification for... if you need sex, it's better to channel that urge into motivating yourself to go out and get better with women - then you're learning something, getting sharper, and improving. If you keep a mediocre girl around as a sexual release, you basically take that motivation - one of the most powerful motivations you can get as a man - and chuck it away. Finally, there's also the risk that you get so comfortable with a friend with benefits - and so used to going out that you lose any abundance mentality you had, and this girl who WAS mediocre begins to seem more and more special and rare - that you get locked in.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, but I much prefer to channel the sex drive into something productive, like forcing myself to go out and pick up and stay sharp or get sharper if I want a release, or transmuting that drive into working on an important project, like a business I'm building or a skill that I'm learning. Seeing a mediocre FWB simply struck me as too much waste of a good thing (the sex drive), to me.

Chase