12 Limiting Beliefs Men Have About Women

If you have one of these beliefs about women, it's holding you back... and you probably don't even realize it.

Each man sees the world in a different way.

Some of the differences between how one man sees the world and how the next one does are slight. Other differences, though, are extreme.

If a man holds the right beliefs, he unshackles himself to achieve success beyond his most fantastic hopes and dreams. If he holds beliefs that limit him though, he may stumble into great ravines on the road to wish fulfillment... or he may chain himself fast, so that he never starts on the road to fulfillment at all.

There are four types of limiting beliefs men hold:

1. Inaccessibility ("I can't get/have what I want")

2. Over-accessibility ("I can have that whenever I want")

3. Transience ("Once I have it, I'm destined to lose it")

4. Permanence ("Once I have it, or someone else does, it's forever")

Those beliefs boil down into two dimensions: one of accessibility, and the other of transience/permanence.

The most accurate belief sets abandoned these extremes. Men who succeed most stop thinking about the world in terms of the blacks and whites of beliefs like these, and view it as a vast world of gray -- a promising world of gray, with boundaries and limitations, but where most things are achievable, though not always easy.

Today we're going to talk about 12 common limiting beliefs men have about women and dating. Hang onto these beliefs, you'll make costly mistakes, or never get far with women at all. Wouldn't it be neat though, to be free of these beliefs -- and free to meet the women you want, date them how you want, and get success with them that seems out of reach to most other men?

The best way to overturn limiting beliefs is through action, because action is where you put your beliefs to the test -- and find out which hold up, and which do not. We'll talk about this below too.

We'll begin with one of the most common limiting beliefs: that girls like that are simply too hot for you.

 

#1: Girls Like that Are Too Hot for Me

A guy sees a fashion model. Or a sexy gym bunny. Or some knockout airline stewardess.

"Man," he tells himself. "She's too hot for a guy like me. I'd have no chance with her."

Then he writes himself completely off. Doesn't try to talk to her. Doesn't try to improve himself to the point where he could talk to her. Just writes her off: impossible.

Sometime later, he sees another girl, just as hot as that girl, with some dumpy-looking guy who's less attractive than himself, less stylish than himself, and all around less cool. What does that guy know that he doesn't?

If he could talk to that guy about his beliefs, and really dig into them, he would almost certainly find the other guy held two beliefs that enabled him to approach this girl, talk to her, and date her while other men stood around and psyched themselves out about her. They are:

1. Different women in different emotional states respond very differently to the same man. Let's say you have 15 hot runway models. The first 14 reject you. Will #15 reject you too? Your answer tells me how experienced you are approaching women and how well you know women in general. If you say "yes", I know you're not experienced enough.

   Women have extremely varied tastes in male facial features, personality types, and approaches. Some girls are high self-esteem; others are low self-esteem (and these don't necessarily correlate with attractiveness at all). Some women have very high sex drives that make them excited for just about ANY guy with a pulse and the balls to approach them, regardless how hot they are or how ugly the guy is. Some women have just gotten out of a relationship and are desperate to meet some man, any man, who can make them feel like women again. You do not know where her head is at or what her preferences are (or whether you're a fit) until you approach.

2. You can improve yourself into many girls' range. You can't self-improve into every girl's range, because, again, what a woman likes varies enormously from woman to woman. Some things you do that make you more attractive to girls of Type X make you less attractive to girls of Types Y and Z. However, if you know what sort of girl you want, you can take steps to move yourself closer toward her ideal of a man -- and the closer you get, the more likely girls you meet like her are to receive you well.

Every guy I know who's good with girls has lots of stories of girls he thought were probably too attractive for him or too out of his league, whom he approached anyway, and ended up in bed with.

The difference between the guys who shatter this limiting belief (one rooted in inaccessibility) and the ones who hold it dear is, almost without fail, that the ones who hold onto it don't approach many women 'out of their league' women, and they don't take the steps necessary to craft themselves into 'out of their league' women's preferred type.

 

#2: Guys with Flaw X Can't Do Well with Attractive Girls

Are race or looks holding you back?

We've covered this angle repeatedly on this site, with regards to:

• Looks
• Height
• Age
• Money
• Race

There was even a comment thread (I've forgotten which article it was in) where we talked about guys with concave chests. One guy shared his own success story approaching on the beach with his shirt off despite his sunken chest (and discovering girls did not really care and were excited to meet him anyway). If he can do it with a collapsed chest, you can do it with your short height, light bank account, brown skin, or ugly mug.

I won't go into nuances here, except to say some men focus on something they can't easily change and peg that as the reason for their woes with women. The moment they do that, all counterevidence gets ignored or dismissed, and they turn themselves into perpetual victims, beyond redemption. It's an easy way to let yourself off the hook for not getting results, but every time you let yourself off the hook this way you sacrifice long-term results for short-term relief.

Like the first, this belief roots itself in the inaccessibility of desirable women; the flaw or feature the man who holds it targets as his excuse is not the real focus. He merely uses his focus to justify why women are inaccessible for him. If you could magically transport this man into a new life or body where he had the thing he claimed he needed to do well with women, he'd continue to fail with women even despite his new self, and soon come up with a new and equally irrefutable excuse.

We have tons of counterexamples for every one of these "this flaw prevents me from getting women" stories all over this site, its comment sections, it forum, and even among its authors, though. I'll link up a few of them here:

• A story about looks, height, money, and race (here)
• A pair of articles about short guy game (here) (here)
• A pair of articles about race (here) (here)
• A pair of podcasts about race (here) (here)
• A humorous article about looks and age (here)
• A science-based article about looks (here)
• An article about big muscles (here)

Are some traits more attractive in the mating market than others? Sure. Are there a lot of men born with all the most attractive traits? No -- there are very few. Most guys born with great looks or tall height don't bother to round out their other edges either. Very few men (including most guys with one or two of these advantages) are competition for a guy who's extensively worked on himself. Of course, when someone uses the "I don't have that advantage, therefore I'm not even going to bother" excuse to let himself off the hook, he isn't ever going to be much competition for the guys who extensively work on themselves either.

It can feel good right now in the moment to let yourself off easy by saying you don't have an advantage, so why bother? But most of the best guys don't have advantages. William Gupta, Varoon Rajah, and Franco's friend Amrit are brown men who do very well with women. William Gupta and Jerome Wu are short guys who do very well with women. Joseph South and J.J. Jones are older men who do very well with women. And none of the many talented playboys who write for this website are particularly rich or exceptionally good-looking (many of us -- myself included -- have been dead broke. In fact, I did better with women dead broke and unemployed than I did when I had a plum corporate job with a nice salary).

While this sort of belief can feel extremely real when you're in it, it is one that limits your potential. To break free of it, target two or three of the many different attraction factors that impact women's attraction and start to improve yourself in them. By the time you've made a few weeks or a month of progress in just those first two or three factors, you will realize your old limiting belief has begun to retreat from your mind, and a new belief in your own great potential has begun to replace it.

 

#3: Girls with Partners Are Unavailable

Not every girl who's off the market is 'off the market'.

Some men lose interest in a girl as soon as they find out she's attached, because they think that means she's unavailable.

Some women will be. But certainly not all. This limiting belief mixes together inaccessibility with permanence. "Her relationship is forever... or at the very least she's not available while she's in it."

Now, this is different from the man who knows he could get a girl in a relationship, but chooses not to for moral reasons. That's a moral decision, not a limiting belief. However, the man who'd like to date a girl and would if he could, but believes women are off-limits when they're with someone, that's a limiting belief.

Women have many reasons to make themselves available despite their attachments. A gal might be unhappy in her relationship. She might be looking for her next relationship (or just an escape hatch from her present one). She might be in an open relationship. She might want revenge on her man for something. She might be on vacation with an 'anything goes' mentality. She might be high sex drive and one man, no matter how great, simply is never enough for her.

There's a simple way to test whether she's interested and will move ahead with you or not: compliance tests. Do a few of these and you can find out quick whether an attached girl (or any girl, for that matter) is worth your pursuit.

See how far you can move things forward with an attached woman who seems interested. Don't bail; instead, see where it goes. You can tear this limiting belief up quite fast just by hanging in there and trying.

Also, check out these articles, and change how you look at things:

• What Women Think About Their Husbands
• Girl Has a Boyfriend? 3 Things to Do and 7 Things NOT To
• Says She Has a Boyfriend? Here's Why It Doesn't Matter
• How to Steal a Girl from Under Her Boyfriend's Nose
• What It Means When She Says She Has a Boyfriend

 

#4: Once She's Mine, the Work Stops

Think all your work is done once the girl is yours?

I count this as a 'limiting belief', due to the limitations it places on a man's success in his relationships.

Once you get into a relationship and discover tests and drama never end, if you thought they would you'll be sorely disappointed. If you thought you could take a dramatic woman and 'get over the hump with her' and all would be well, you'll be disappointed. If you thought her vetting of you finished once sex happened, or within the first 30 or 90 days of the relationship, you'll be disappointed.

Women don't ever stop vetting their man. A woman is always on alert to see if her man has fallen in quality or in his level of affection for or devotion to her. Women are perpetual evaluators, and their work is never finished.

The better way to think about a woman is like a quality assurance inspector. Imagine an inspector at a factory that makes consumable goods. At the very beginning, he does a lot of tests and works quite hard to make sure the quality of the goods is high (she tests you extensively at the beginning to see if you are the right caliber man for her). Satisfied it is, he green lights shipping the goods out to customers (satisfied you are, she green lights sexual intimacy). He then monitors production at an ongoing low level, doing occasional tests, and occasionally stopping production for a more major test if one of his readings is off (as the relationship proceeds, she continues to test you at a low level, occasionally pausing the relationship for a big fight if something trips one her sensors).

This is a role all women take in all their relationships: that inspector role, where they continually conduct low level 'background tests', sometimes ratcheting that up into a major test if one of the readings is off -- if you seem weaker than usual, let's say, or have begun to be less attentive to her than you used to be.

The work never stops, because a man is not a one-time purchase to a woman. He is, rather, more like a factory assembly that produces a continuous stream of value: sex value, companionship value, resource/provider value, genetic/reproductive value, parenting value, and so on. If a flaw enters into the production process and the quality of the product goes down, it's her job to figure out why that's happening, and urge the factory worker to get production back on track.

(men do this to women too... though men's standards are typically more lax, and they don't test or stop production nearly as often as women do. They still will, though; just think of the guy who gets very upset when his girlfriend starts hanging out more with her friends at nightclubs, so he causes drama for her that leads to the girlfriend cutting out those friends and spending all her time with him instead of at the club. Same process)

 

#5: No Girl Is Capable of Being Loyal

"Why does this keep happening?"

The antithesis of the "If she's in a relationship, I could never get her" mentality is the "No woman is loyal" one. It combines inaccessibility ("I'll never truly have a girl") with transience ("Nothing ever lasts").

You'll find this belief most frequently among experienced Lotharios (particularly those who frequent party/nighttime venues). You'll also find it among men who've been burned by a woman (or women), and among the legions of red pill manosphere guys who've read these men's chronicles.

The Lotharios have shagged enough attached women to never trust a woman again. The men who've been burned grow bitter, then head online or talk to friends and find other stories of men who've been burned and end up in an echo chamber. The manosphere guys often haven't slept with lots of attached women or been directly burned, but they've read so many reports of attached women doing depraved things with men who aren't their partners or of men getting burned by women that they don't trust women any farther than they can throw them.

Yet playboys in party and nightlife venues, or who do lots of online game, have entered an environment filled with people looking for fast, anonymous sex. If a woman is attached but wants fresh meat, she logs onto a dating app or heads to a club. On the other hand, women who are attached but don't want outside play simply do not go to these places. This creates selection bias; the player heads to where he can meet women who want sex, and women who want sex go there to make themselves available to him. He doesn't see all those attached women who aren't open to him; he just meets the attached women who are... and concludes all attached women must be that way.

But that's like going to NASCAR, seeing a bunch of middle-aged men there, and concluding "Middle-aged men love stock-car racing." Sure, some do -- but many don't. You just don't see the ones who dislike it at NASCAR.

Likewise, if after you went to NASCAR you posted a report online about how many middle-aged men there were there, guys who read your report might start to conclude NASCAR was middle-aged men's favorite hobby.

See this article for the full rundown on this limiting belief: "A Man's Girl Mix and His Jadedness."

And it is a sad thing when a man gets burned by a woman. Yet it's also a fairly preventable thing -- with proper screening, rewarding/punishing, and relationship maintenance.

Loyalty in women is a complex topic. This article might be the best place to start: "Why Can't You Find a Loyal Woman?" Also worthwhile:

• How to Prevent Cheating by Your Girlfriend
• The "Female Morality" series (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)
• How to Pick Better Women to Date

Be aware of your own sampling biases.

Don't get sucked into thinking "I've experienced women doing it / I've read about women doing it, therefore all women do it."

Otherwise you make the same mistake those bitter women do who claim that all men are good for nothing liars and cheats.

The way you break this belief: start meeting women in environments where you're more likely to meet women who don't log onto the dating app or head to the nightclub at the first sign of boredom. That might mean the street, the library, the grocery store, coffee shops, mass transit... you know, places people go not to hook up. You'll meet women who go to clubs and use dating apps there too, but you'll also meet the girls who don't. On the other hand, you'll never meet girls who don't go to clubs or use dating apps at clubs or on dating apps. To meet those girls, you must go where they are -- instead of wherever you might think meeting women is easiest.

 

#6: Good Girls Won't Put Out on the First Date

This belief always struck me as a little odd, but perhaps it's due to my own unusual pedigree with women. The first girl I slept with on a first date was a 'good girl'... a 20-year-old fashion model who'd only had a handful of boyfriends before and had never had first-date sex. After her, I made a habit of sleeping with 'good girls' on first dates.

I never called them 'good girls' and often was surprised to learn they were... I actually started off my seduction journey with a different belief ("All women sleep around a lot") and was surprised to discover many of the women I slept quickly with were obviously both sexually and romantically inexperienced. The quirk was, for me, for a long time, I had a great deal of trouble sleeping with 'sluts'. Girls who slept around a lot -- I could try to hook up with them the day I met them, on the first date, on a second date... it didn't matter. 80% of the time they'd keep their legs firmly shut to me. It mystified me.

Eventually I fixed that, and figured out how to get the girls I couldn't before. But that's the way it was for me for years.

I'm a bit of an exception, and there are certainly lots of guys with the opposite problem... they can easily bed slutty girls, but struggle to bed the 'good girls'. But just because a girl won't put out for one man doesn't mean she won't put out period.

One of the most important realizations about women you can have is almost any woman will put out in almost any situation, provided she is with the right man. You may or may not be, at present, the 'right' man for a given girl. For a long time I was often the 'right man' for 'good girls'... yet usually not the 'right man' for sluttier ones.

This carries over into all sorts of things. Many men will look at a girl and say "She'd never do X sexual thing" -- well, I bet she'd do it with me, or any of the other contributors to this site. That's not a brag; that's me saying I've experienced enough with women at this point that I know any girl will do pretty much anything sexually if the man she's about to do it with makes her feel the right things. Whatever you think she won't do, she'd do it with me -- and I bet she'd do it with you too if you had enough confidence to believe she'd do it (frame control) and made her feel good enough to want to do it. And maybe helped her through any resistance she might feel.

What makes 'good girls' and 'sluts' feel good enough for sex on the first date is a little different. A 'good girl' likes to feel like a man is reasonably high quality, but also a little naughty and probably not the safest bet as a reliable boyfriend (but still a guy she could see herself slipping into a relationship with... perhaps). Meanwhile, a 'slut' likes to feel like a man is extra special naughty and not really available as a boyfriend at all (or maybe even unavailable because he has a girlfriend).

The 'good girls' I've slept with on the first date have often told me things like "I think you're not a guy I should let myself fall in love with" or "We can see each other, but let me know when you've found a girlfriend", even without me overtly setting any clear expectations. Meanwhile the 'sluts' I've slept with on the first date usually just say "thanks", if they say anything at all about our sexual connection.

If good girls won't put out for you on Date #1, there's a good bet that (like me with sluttier girls) you simply aren't positioned right for them to. Tweak your positioning and come across differently, if first date sex with good girls is your goal.

However, there's another possibility as well... which may be that you simply don't push for more on the first date with 'good girls' either. I see a lot of guys do this... not because they've failed so many times with good girls, but because they just assumed first date sex with good girls wouldn't work and never tried. Next time you're on a first date with a 'good girl', try moving things forward a little farther than you usually do. She may just surprise you.

 

#7: If She Hooks Up on the First Date, She's Not a Good Girl

"I guess she wasn't a good girl..."

This limiting belief seems to be the inverse of the last one... but it's different, too. It's the game equivalent of "No True Scotsman."

In this case, it's "No Good Girl Hooks Up on the First Date." If a guy has this belief, and you tell him "Well, Amy Jones hooked up on the first date, and she's a good girl," he will tell you, "Then Amy Jones is no true good girl."

However, you can easily have scenarios like this:

• Amy Jones. Has had sex with one man before (her ex-boyfriend). Sleeps with Vince Studly on the first date (her second partner). Vince assumes she is "not a good girl" and ditches her. She later sleeps with Kevin Goodheart (her third partner), marries him, and never cheats on him or gets a divorce.

• Lilith Slade. Has had sex with thirty-seven men before. Makes Vince Studly wait until the fourth date. Vince assumes she is "a very good girl" and puts a ring on her finger. She has seven affairs while married to Vince before Vince has enough and kicks her out. She divorce rapes him via the court system. Vince concludes there is "no such thing as a loyal woman" (see Limiting Belief #4).

Which is the 'good girl' and which is the 'bad girl'? Was Vince right to conclude Amy Jones was a 'bad girl' and Lilith Slade a 'good girl'? Obviously not. He made a pair of kneejerk assumptions based on partial data, and reached incorrect conclusions.

I have seen this countless times... and I think a lot of men do not recognize it when they see it. I've talked to 'good girls' who've only had fast sex with one guy before me, and told me they were hurt when they realized the guy thought they were sluts because they went to bed with him too quick. And I've known highly sexually experienced women who made men wait forever... one female friend of mine who'd slept with more or less every guy under 40 in my department at work eventually met a 'marriage material' guy she made wait about four months for sex. Eventually once she decided she liked him enough, she stopped seeing the other men she was seeing (men her guy did not know she was seeing). He, as you might expect, knew nothing of her sexual history, and considered her a 'very good girl'.

Once you are good with girls, you reach a point where most 'good girls' don't have the game to resist you, and will fairly easily fall into bed fast if you come across well and don't make any big mistakes. Meanwhile, it's the experienced girls who better know how to counter your seduction moves, and will string things out longer if they sense any prospects for the future.

To test this yourself, make sure to always engage in pillow talk with women after sex... one good question can be "What's the quickest you've ever had sex with a guy?", especially because if you slept with her quick, it's hard for her to lie and say "You!" if you aren't her fastest (unless she's a practiced bald-faced liar), so this gets you some pretty honest and revealing answers. This question can get women divulging all sorts of things to you about their sexual histories in a flurry to give you a full picture of their sexual behavior... don't be surprised if she's only been with a handful of men but one of those times was quick. That's normal. Once you've asked this question with five or six women, you'll have a far more nuanced view of female sexuality -- and you'll be freer from some of the more limiting beliefs you hold about women's sexual behavior.

 

#8: Easy/Hard to Get for You, Easy/Hard to Get for Everyone

Was it easy to bed her? Then she must be easy to bed... right?

Very similar to our last belief. The two usually go hand-in-hand.

She slept with you easily, so you assume she's easy. Or she took you ages to bed, so you assume she's hard-to-get for everyone.

This is a general belief, that is often correct -- girls you bed quicker are more likely to be girls other men generally bed quicker, for instance. However, despite it being 'often correct', it's often incorrect too... and if you aren't aware of the exceptions, you'll make some big mistakes.

Just like with our examples in the #6, there are many exceptions. Her being fast or slow to bed for you does not mean she's fast or slow with other men. A woman's time-to-bed can vary greatly from man to man.

The way you get past this belief is the same as with #s 5 and 6. Talk to women after sex, peel back the shroud over their sexual histories, and learn how female sexuality really works. You'll find after a while that sometimes a girl who's slept with you fast has never done that with a man before... and other times a girl who took you ages to bed has had many other men very quickly (and very likely will again).

There's also a certain distrust in one's emotions you must cultivate here as well. For many men, there almost seems to be a hard-wired switch that causes men to value women more highly the longer it takes the man to get the woman into bed. Sexually experienced women are aware of this switch and exploit it to hook in more credible men. Sexually inexperienced women often do not realize it, or are overcome with liking for a guy, and jump into bed with him quick, not realizing they might sabotage their future with him by doing so (if he's the type who reacts to quick sex by saying "She must be easy for everyone... I can't date her").

 

#9: You Must Spend X Hours with a Girl Before She'll Hook Up

Just waiting for that time to tick by...

In the pickup community, this largely dates back to Mystery's rule of "seven hours to bed."

In Mystery's world, you had to spend seven hours with a woman before she'd go to bed with you. Anything under seven hours he considered "fool's mate" -- an easy lay you lucked into by chance (or bad game on the girl's part), not skill.

There is something helpful to the "spend X hours with a girl" mentality. It helps you realize that if she is not ready for intimacy yet, well, just keep spending time with her, working to progress things forward, and soon she may be.

However, it's also a dangerous mindset, because it can lead you to slow your game down and miss windows from women who are ready to go. There are lots of women, too, who will not signal you they're ready for sex, but who will comply when you invite them home and then start to escalate on them.

Personally, I find most women who are not:

1. Large of ego, and/or
2. Vetting me as a boyfriend/husband, and/or
3. Not otherwise highly skeptical of me

... don't need more than about 2.5 hours of face time total to bed. Often less. Sometimes much less. That might work out to, say, 15 minutes when I meet her, 1.5 hours on a date with her, 15 minutes going from the date to my/her place, and a half hour to escalate to intimacy.

If she has a big ego, you can run into "Oh. He went for sex too fast. He must not respect me" issues. For girls who obviously have a big ego, you just take a little longer or you do an extra good job making sure they know you moving fast is actually a sign of respect, rather than disrespect. Mystery (the 7-hour rule guy) devoted most of his time to picking up flashy bottle blondes in nightclubs, so I'm assuming he dealt with a lot more of the ego thing (thus, his rule).

If she's vetting you as a boyfriend/husband, you might've presented yourself wrong... although sometimes it's hard to get around with some women given your look/vibe too. In that case, spend a little more time with her.

And if she's highly skeptical of you (you can still get girls who are highly skeptical of you out on dates with a little doggedness and some good game), often it'll take more time to make her not-skeptical of you. (or, sometimes, if she's horny, you can get her in bed despite her skepticism)

When none of these three are the case though -- her ego is not too big, she's not putting you through the prospective boyfriend wringer, and she's relaxed and not skeptical with you -- it'll usually happen a lot quicker.

How quick comes down to your game.

Eventually you'll find you take an average of 4 hours, or 3 hours, or 2 hours, or 1.5 hours to bed the women you take out onto dates.

At which point you may conclude "You must spend X hours with a girl before she'll hook up."

When that happens, I'd challenge you with this: can you do it faster?

I'd bet you can.

 

#10: Every Girl Is Looking for the Bigger, Better Deal

She just bought the latest whiz-bang model of 'Man'. Don't tell her shabby old man yet!

You can't get laid because every girl is looking for a better guy than you.

You can't keep a girlfriend because sooner or later she'll jump ship for a better guy than you.

Right?

While this might actually be true if you live in the Middle East or Africa (where there is actual polygamy going on in large-enough numbers), in the West women are forced to not share men so much, which means those of us who might prefer to have, say, multiple wives are for the most part forced to choose one. Ultimately you end up with a "girl for every guy, and guy for every girl" scenario.

In practice, some chunk of the dating pool opts out and doesn't date. You might have a guy who's a 4-out-10 who only wants to date girls who are 6s and up, and a girl who's a 4-out-of-10 who only wants to date men who are 6s and up, and they won't date each other and they can't get any 6s to date them so they both end up alone. That's sad but things like that happen. However, for folks who are realistic (or, alternately, willing to work hard to bring themselves up to the standard of their desired mates' preferences), this isn't an issue.

But of course, we're not talking about marriage yet. What about dating? Aren't 80% of the women fighting for 20% of the men?

Well, it is not actually that extreme. Not in the real world.

There is one place it is that extreme: online dating. This fascinating Tinder study discovered on Tinder (which is super, super looks-based... as all online dating is), the top 78% most desirable women compete for the top 20% of men. The other 80% of leftover men are all left to fight over the bottom 22% of women.

Moral of the story: don't use a dating app unless you have scathingly good looks (or, alternately, a scathingly good outfitter and photographer).

Not coincidentally, it's been my experience that the most BBD-thinking ('Bigger, Better Deal'-thinking) men are men who primarily try to meet women online, and are in that bottom 80% of online men.

These men are not operating in the real world. They're operating in a strange digital space with extremely warped rules where women have naught but looks and a few lines of text to go on, so all women are funneled into going for the same handful of men.

The solution for these men is to delete the dating app and go meet girls in real life.

In the real world, you do also get multiple girls hooking up with the same man sometimes. However, many of these women are also hooking up with multiple men at once, too. Those who aren't rarely remain in a relationship where they don't have mutual exclusivity with the male, unless the male really knows what he is doing (and few do). By and large, offline, in the real world, there are girls out there for every guy who takes the time to look, and is willing to do a little work on himself and not be a total schlub.

Next on the BBD-believer scale, there are men who've been burned (sometimes repeatedly) by women. They might've been cheated on... or maybe they've just been dumped by a few girlfriends. When men do not understand why this happens, they often ascribe it to 'BBD' -- "She just found a guy she thought was better than me."

BBD (or hypergamy -- I have an article on this too) is almost never the direct reason a woman throws a relationship away though. People don't highly invest in a thing (as people do their relationships), then chuck it away on a whim. They go through a 'withdrawal process', where they gradually withdraw time, attention, and emotion from that thing while transferring it toward better avenues. So for instance... a man may genuinely have a woman who is leaving him behind in value. She's at the gym, getting in better shape; she's improving her ability to socialize and make more connections; she's dressing better and looking sexier. Meanwhile he's staying put, or if trying to improve, not really keeping up. She will go through a period where she tries to convince herself she's happy with him ("He's my man. I love him"). She'll start to make more and more excuses for him. Then eventually she'll start to resent him or feel depressed about him, at which point she'll begin to withdraw from the relationship (often at this point, he'll start to panic and give chase). Eventually she'll break up with him, and go find a guy to date who's closer to her (new and improved) valuation.

The guy in that scenario might conclude his woman was looking for a 'Bigger, Better Deal'... and perhaps she was. However this is no different from the women who say men are always 'thinking with their penises' and will throw away a great relationship for fresh tail (the female equivalent of the BBD). Very often, the man who leaves does so after his own withdrawal process -- often, as his career or social circle has improved, while his woman has stayed static or put on weight or gotten sloppy.

People naturally sort into relationships with those they think are right around what they think they can/should be able to get. The younger she is, the more likely she is to judge wrong, and end up with a guy who's either too far out of her league (and therefore doesn't value her / doesn't give her the relationship she wants) or too far beneath her league (and with whom she quickly becomes disappointed).

If you think back to the factory assembly line and quality assurance inspector example we used in limiting belief #4, you can think of it this way:

• If the factory assembly breaks too badly, and produces inferior goods for too long without being fixable, at some point the inspector will conclude the assembly needs to be replaced (i.e., if the man stops providing the mate/relationship value he used to provide for too long, at some point the woman will want to replace him)

• If the inspector needs a new/better kind of product, and the factory assembly cannot be upgraded or its upgrade costs are too great, at some point he'll conclude the factory assembly needs to be replaced (i.e., if she's been improving her mate value, and you haven't been improving yours, and she starts to pull away from you, and she determines you're not going to raise yours up or constantly pushing you to do so is too hard and ineffective, at some point she is going to say to herself "I can do better than Paul" and start to look around for a man who lines up better with her current wants)

There are very few women who operate according to the actual BBD caricature... where they swing from one guy to the next and better guy. There are some; Wendy Deng is the closest I can think of off the top of my head in terms of women with a public profile. Even in Deng's case, though, it isn't clear she operates from a clear 'BBD approach'; a 30-year-old violinist (Deng's boyfriend of 3 years ago) and a random 22-year-old male model (Deng's boyfriend as of a year ago) are not 'bigger, better deals' than Rupert Murdoch (her last ex-husband) or Tony Blair (whom she may have had an affair with while married to Murdoch). Perhaps past a certain age, women who pursue the BBD strategy put it out to pasture and just go have fun instead?

Any time I've ever had a man tell me his woman left him for a Bigger, Better Deal, if I really dug into the relationship I'd discover the guy did a sub-par job keeping his woman happy, and the new guy really is better. The funny thing is you see this same pattern with women who leave a guy and end up with someone worse (less attractive, less successful, less cool) than the man they left; in this case though, the man doesn't call it 'Bigger, Better Deal', he just says "I don't understand it."

How do you get over this limiting belief? Date enough women -- and if women split up with you, or choose another man other than you, look for behavioral reasons you can blame before pinning it on 'BBD'. What did you do (or not do) that precipitated her choice? Think long and hard before you write her off as simply having pursued someone who was a choicer option than you -- in my experience, aside from a handful of real gold diggers and other forms of * diggers, it's never truly the case.

 

#11: There Are No Good Girls Anymore

She may have gotten you a gift... but you mustn't let this melt your heart. It must stay impenetrable!

I covered this in-depth in "The Unicorn Hunter", so give that article a read if you want more.

However, men have been saying this since the time of Bathsheba (i.e., thousands of years ago), and they've said it in every place in every age since.

This is, again, another way for a man to let himself off the hook. He is saying "I haven't been able to find/date/retain 'good girls', therefore they don't exist. So I can relax and stop looking for them."

The vast majority of people in the world are 'good', in the conventional sense. They don't actively seek to hurt people, and usually will actively seek to avoid harming other people. Often they will do things explicitly to help people. People who do these things are good -- not bad. There are few 'devil women' out there who want to trick, hurt, and seduce you, cackling fiendishly in their hearts as they do so.

Likewise, there are many, many women with low partner counts and innocent (perhaps a bit naïve) views of love and relationships... though they may not be where you're looking for them. If, like a lot of men, you're meeting women via popular dating apps, or at bars, then yes -- you're going to have one heck of a tough time finding low count, more-traditional women that way. If you let these places color your overall view of what women are available out there, you'll have an inaccurate view.

Fact is, the girls most men consider 'good girls' don't go to bars and they aren't on dating apps. You're not going to meet them those places. If you want to change your thoughts about women, and discover the 'good girls' who exist right under your nose, do a little day game and learn to meet women in places other than where women who like to meet lots of men congregate to meet lots of men.

 

#12: If I Do X, Women Will Reject Me

He should have known better than to think that would work!

Our final limiting belief: if you do something (could be anything), girls will reject you.

That something might be:

• Moving faster
• Touching early into a conversation
• Touching in a powerful or sexual way
• Using sex talk, sex stories, sexual innuendo, or sex jokes
• Inviting women home with you
• Going for intimacy once she's alone with you
• Telling women you don't date exclusively
• Or even just approaching a girl or asking her out

It could be anything.

There are a million things men think "I could never do that. Women would reject me" about. Those might be things they think no man could do... or they might be things they think other men can do, but that will not work for them.

One way to overcome this limiting belief is to see the thing itself in action. That's one of the biggest benefits of workshops and bootcamps, in my opinion -- you get to see a coach (or other students... or yourself) do something you thought could never work, or would need to be perfect to work, and realize actually you don't have to do anything special or impressive to make that work. You just do it and it works.

Another way to overcome it is just to try the thing yourself. Try it at least a couple times -- ideally 20. Usually by the time you've tried something 20 times you'll have discovered it does indeed work, at least some of the time. And the rest of the time, you'll discover women's reactions are often far more nuanced than you suspected... almost never are they outright rejections.

This is one of the most liberating limiting beliefs to overcome.

Because once you've overcome it, you realize you can try just about anything with women -- and probably, at least some of the time, it's going to work.

 

Conclusion

There are a lot more limiting beliefs than these... I just covered the ones that popped out at me when I jotted down an outline for this piece before I wrote it. There may even be some important ones I left out (probably are).

Did I miss any important limiting beliefs? Let me know in the comment section any others you think are vital (also check out the comment section to see other beliefs the readers suggest you watch out for).

The main point of this article though, beyond highlighting specific beliefs to overcome, was also to challenge you to confront all your beliefs... any belief that places limitations on what you think you can accomplish with the opposite sex.

We live in a universe of bounds and limitations. So there will always be limits. You'll always be operating under constraints. If you tried to convince yourself you could consistently get sex with women in 60 seconds of face time, unless you have some very special circumstances (i.e., you're a semi-famous DJ who shags a lot of drunk party girls he's only just met late at night in after-parties), that probably will not happen.

However, when you examine your beliefs, you should keep an eye out for limits you believe you have that make you emotional. If there is an emotional element to a limit, there's an excellent chance that limit is not a real limitation, but one you use as an excuse.

Another shorthand for belief confrontation: if you believe in a limit that other men tell you is not there, trust what others say over yourself, and go test. I've discovered I can do a lot of things I didn't know I could by trusting others who said something was possible in spite of my own emotions and experience telling me it wasn't. Obviously don't be foolish about it (don't gamble all your money away on some impossible investment idea), but with most things -- you can test.

So, test limits like that. See what you can get away with. And think a little outside the box. If you say "I can't approach hot girls, they never want to talk to me", and you test that by making 10 approach to hot girls and none of them want to talk to you, rather than conclude you were right, ask yourself what you could change to change your result. Could you dress better? Stand taller? Use a more commanding voice tone? Approach in a different (cooler) way? Develop preselection before the approach?

Most of our limits, within reason, are self-imposed. They're only there so long as you work to maintain them. Work to break past those limits, and you will discover they fade away.

I should note this goes for men of every stage, at any level of advancement, in any field -- there are always self-imposed limits. I've seen far too many crusty old experienced seducers with limiting beliefs they acquired over time due to limits of the pools of women they draw their lays and girlfriends from. No one is free from limiting beliefs, and you can acquire new limiting beliefs even as you abandon others if you're not exceptionally careful about it.

Periodically, I suggest you audit your beliefs, and look for limits that make you emotional or that other people claim aren't limits for them or others. Those are your best targets for limitation busting -- they're the places you're most likely to next break free.

Merry Christmas,

Chase

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