Outcome Independence; or, Not Missing a Beat

Malcolm-

Porn will demotivate you for meeting real-world women, yes. It's a lot harder to get excited about girls walking around in non-sexual poses, with clothes on, when you're used to seeing them naked, screaming, sweating, and being sexy all the time. You see a girl without that and it's like, "Meh, boring." It desensitizes you.

I will do a post on it (already have it on the list, in fact), but for now - chuck your porn collection, and tell yourself you're not going to go to porn sites anymore. I've personally found that any time I started getting too addicted to something (video games, dessert, snacking, alcohol, pornography, etc.), the only way I could control myself was by taking whatever the thing was and getting it completely away from me - no snacks / dessert in the house, no drinking when I go to clubs, no porn on my computer, delete video game saves and uninstall the game, etc. Once you've had time away and you can control it you can always indulge in things again in moderation, but if it's out of control, you've got to just chuck it and not look back (and keep saying "no" to your urges to go back to the thing for the first few days until they subside and you calm back down).

Chase

Anon-

Still haven't been to India, though I would like to; when Indian girls are beautiful, they're very beautiful, and quite sensual.

As I understand it, India is one of the most conservative places for women in the world; the average Indian woman has something like 1.6 sex partners lifetime (although I would think that Arab countries with male-female segregation where the saying "girls are for children and boys are for pleasure" holds sway would likely give them a run for their money). I've heard a number of people say it's difficult meeting women in India; then again, I've heard that about other places too and not found it quite so difficult as described.

My best guess from what I've heard is go to a big city and hang out in a foreigner-friendly part of town; Delhi or Mumbai offer your best odds. Going overseas, if that's an option, you might try too; that might even be better for your learning phase, and then once you've cut your teeth on women easier to meet in other parts of the world, venture back to India to put your experience to use and figure out how to crack the tougher nut that is meeting girls there.

That said, you can always work on taking off edge on the approach if women are acting startled. Pay attention to your approach and find ways to calm in smoother, calmer, and more unassuming, and make sure to pre-open. If a girl is startled on approach, it's best to address it immediately, "Oh no, I startled you!" and then go into talking to her, so that she knows you registered it and aren't some oblivious sales robot selling yourself to her, and are instead responding to her emotions and pacing them.

Chase

Anon-

It seems you've built a great emotional connection with a girl here, sans any sexual attraction. She really values being able to talk to you and connect with you, but isn't so interested in meeting up with you in person or having anything physically go on with you.

See this article, it's on exactly this topic, and on what to do: "Are We Just Friends? Does She Like Me Back or Not?"

Chase

Anon-

Women's preferences on chest hair tend to be shaped by the prevailing tastes of their culture, and their own personal life experiences (similar to men's taste in breast size, or men and women's tastes in facial characteristics). You can find women who hate chest hair, and women who love chest hair, and women who don't care much either way. Regardless of her default preferences, after a while of being with you, if you are a very masculine man and do very well with her in bed, and you're unashamed about chest hair, women will convert fairly quickly from, "Chest hair... ugh," to, "Chest hair... wow, so manly!"

I talked about this a good bit in this thread on the discussion boards here: Re: Should men shave their chests?

Chase

Anon-

Great attitude. I know some folks who are this way naturally, all the time; I've always envied my friends like this. I personally had to put a lot of work in to develop it - but whether you're born with it or you build it, this is exactly the way you want to think about things while in the moment. Then, later, stopping to sit down and figure out what you could've done better, and being honest about it - seems like you're already doing this, with your mention of approach angles.

Chase

Wolf-

I used to get this when I was younger, because my voice was deeper than most of my peers'. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing - people imitate the girl with the sexy California voice too ("Oh my GOD! I'm, like, SO into hot pants right now!") - basically anything that sounds different, people will imitate for fun. It's usually not meant as an insult.

Still, if you're unsure and want more clarity, I'd advice recording yourself talking into your computer, then playing it back and listening to yourself. You may find you could add some range to your voice, or articulate your words a little better, or speak a little louder or more clearly - all good things to work on to improve your voice and make it more powerful and more attractive.

Chase

Surfer-

Subscription model's not doing too shabby. We've had some IT kinks with that and site speed and response time that have been really annoying and have required far more of my time than I'd have liked to have spend (e.g., random pages showing up for people as "Page not found"; site load times are about a good bit longer; etc.), but that's all part of rolling out something new... so long as I don't go crazy, it's probably okay.

Masturbation depends very much on your sex drive. I've known very high drive guys who could rub one out a couple of times a day and still be horny for new women; other guys lose all motivation to approach if they give themselves manual treatment at all. My recommendation is, save it to jump start your engines if you start losing your sex drive (e.g., from not having sex for a while), but don't get into doing it too much if you want to meet more girls or have more sex (it's better to channel that sexual energy into motivation to go out and find girls than it is to channel it into an empty tissue).

For sex, masturbation tends to desensitize you - a vagina simply isn't as firm a grip as your own hand is. You'll last longer, but enjoy less. If you're watching pornography, this can also kill interest in regular sex, especially if you get into "porn escalation," like some of my friends have reported - men who watch a lot of porn tend to watch harder and harder core porn (they go from lesbian porn, to hetero porn, to unusual positions, to gangbangs, to bondage, to simulated rape, to bestiality... they just need more and more stimulation to become excited), and become less and less interested in the (comparably tame) real world women lying naked in their beds.

Chase

Jake-

They do - "hot" is when they like you and think they can get you; "cold" is when they liked you (past tense), but decided they couldn't get you and auto-rejected as a form of ego protection.

They can sometimes warm back up with time if it seems like you've changed yourself - depending on how hard they auto-rejected, they can start thinking, "He's different... he's changed now. Maybe he'll be more open to me now."

Preselection is the easiest path to triggering this change, of course... but some combination of time and change can work too.

Chase

Tyler-

On not feeling good enough, that's really one you can only solve by doing - only by dating some women and seeing that, wow, they really think you're awesome do you come to change your view of how good you are for women.

The biggest problem you're having is approach anxiety - I imagine you've read "Overcoming Approach Anxiety"? It reaches a point where there's really not anything else you can say except, "Go do it, no matter how terrified you are."

Some things that help are getting disgusted with your fear - when I'd get it bad when starting out, I'd often just get angry at myself and say, "What, are you a pussy? You need mama to change your diaper and wipe your butt? Shut up and go say 'hello,' pussy." That would do the trick, but you've got to actually mean it and be genuinely pissed off at yourself for chickening out.

Another you can do is ease yourself into the water, one toe at a time, starting with things like eye contact and just saying "Hi" and nothing else. On the discussion boards we have a Newbie Assignment that's designed for exactly this - every guy who's gone through it has made some pretty solid leaps and bounds. I'd suggest checking that out, and, if you're up to it, posting your assignment on the Journals Board and pushing yourself to get a little public accountability to perform, if that'd be useful for you.

Chase

Phil-

I'm too late for last weekend, but maybe you can use this this weekend.

It depends very much on where you're at and what you've already got a handle on and what you haven't. If you're new to going out alone, I'd suggest you focus first on being a really sociable guy and meeting people in the bar or club as soon as you walk in the door. Get there early, when there aren't many people, and talk to the people who are already there, and bored - regulars, bouncers, bartenders. This will lead to a little more social butterflying than is ideal for pulling, but it'll get you comfortable in the nightspot environment by yourself, and you'll learn what the cast of characters is like in these kinds of places a lot better. It'll also help you shake off any feelings of weirdness or nervousness about being alone (e.g., will people think I'm a loser? Are guys going to fight me? etc.).

Once you're talking to girls, I'd probably focus on trying to get investment first. If you can get girls to move a little with you, turn their bodies a bit, come to the bar, go sit down, etc., that gives you a very solid results-focused indicator to work with, and you'll be able to have a rough idea of how well you're doing with being attractive and creating the right vibes with women. e.g., if women are giving you small amounts of early compliance but then quickly cool off, you'll know you're probably coming across too aloof and need to find ways to be more approachable. If they're being too nice and not complying, you'll know you need to challenge more and be a bit more dominant and shore up your fundamentals further.

Chase

M-

I was talking with a friend about this recently. There've been times in my life when I was doing tons of stuff with friends, but the past few years I've largely dropped doing things with friends to focus on work.

What seems to happen is that to be "in the loop," you NEED to be hanging out with a group of people pretty regularly - you need a clique. Otherwise, you need a platform that keeps you plugged in - e.g., websites you belong to that throw regular events, or a class or group or organization you regularly attend get togethers with. When you start cutting down on time spent with friends, they start cutting down on inviting you to things, too. If you want the invitations, you have to be going regularly.

One alternative is having "super connector" friends who invite you to things all the time at whom you make exceptions for. These friends do all the work of finding the good parties and assembling groups of people, and they invite you just because they enjoy hanging out with you, talking to you, etc. But they need maintenance too - if you start turning them down a lot, they'll stop inviting you a lot.

You can also work on cultivating a close friend or two - this would be a cool guy who'd be, say, your wingman when you go out, but you also grab dinner with him and have drinks with him and maybe you'll call him up when you're going to go food shopping and see if he'll come along and do his shopping there too, etc. Then you just chat and talk about life, and build your connections.

New friends are all about having the frontloaded value offers, like what's discussed in "How to Make Friends? The Master Key to New Friendships."

After that though, like any relationship, a friendship needs regular maintenance if you want it to endure.

As far as balance: this depends a good bit on your work, and how much time and focus that needs, and how big a distraction friends and going out will be to that (or how important these are to you). The times in my life when I've been entertaining large social circles and spending a lot of times with friends I've had little time for much else; the times in my life when I've been working quite hard (like now), my friendships have wilted or gone dormant, because I simply haven't had time for them. I think this really comes down to prioritizing based on what's important to you at any given stage of life: do you want to focus on getting a killer amount of work done right now, or do you want to focus on building up a social circle and advancing your social skills? It's very difficult to manage both - I certainly haven't been able to. Loads of work and loads of friend-time just is too difficult to balance - they're simply too different, at least for me.

Chase

Balla-

Sorry to hear this - I wrote this article in response to your comment here:

What to Do to Get Past a Sticking Point

I'd suggest really tearing into that one and getting to work figuring out:

• Are you going out enough? e.g., 3 to 4 times a week?
• Are you meeting enough new women? e.g., 30+ new women a week?
• Have you cut off social circle women? This is often a major source of frustration for guys (was for me starting out). See "I Don’t Chase 'Em, I Replace 'Em" if not. They can really take your ego through a ringer because you'll invest a massive amount of time or effort into "working on them" when in reality they're completely closed to you and are happily dating other men while you're stuck in orbit.
• Are you suffering from information overload and need to take a break to focus on fieldwork?

When you have the answers to those, and you've gone through the sticking point article and answered all the questions in it, you should know what you need to focus on.

Chase

Thanks Will!

Happy to hear this is your go-to place. Here's hoping it continues to be!

Chase