Insights from the Mind of a Seducer

Should men pay for dates? Answer: not if they want to get the girl, erm, into bed. But they can if they’d rather be the perfect platonic gentleman!

It used to be the way things always were in love: if a man and a woman went on a date, the man paid. No two ways about it.

It's now not quite as ubiquitous as it used to be, but it is still a very common mindset. Many women expect men to pay for the first date. Many men would even feel embarrassed to not pay for the first date. Of course they pay for dates! That's just how it's done, and anything else would be classless and rude.

It remains the status quo to a large extent in countries around the world, in fact: I've heard many Latin women gripe about how they'll never see a man again if he doesn't pay for the first date, and when I've asked Asian women if the Asian guys they see on dates pay for them, they respond with, "Of course!" Even the guys they claim they only like as friends and will never date pay for them.

Everywhere you go, men pay for women. A lot of hoopla was made in the States about "going Dutch," which meant splitting the bill, but even the fact that it had to be given a name made it seem like some sort of big, extraordinary event.

Men are still expected to pay for dates.

I intend to show you today, however, that not only is paying for women unnecessary – it actually hurts your odds of ending up with a girl! Bear with me if that seems to insult your sensibilities a bit – before you pass judgment, allow me to invite you to come along down this rabbit hole with me.

Social status: it's more than just something you get or don't get, have or don't have. Lots of people don't see it that way, though; they tend to think of social status as simply a dividing line between the people who are "in" and the people who are "out."

The line, though, is not so clear. And even within the "in" and "out" groups, you can point out distinctions: the guy in the "in" group who's really only in it because he has some connection people need, otherwise they wouldn't include him at all; the girl who's "in" more than her girlfriends, who are kind of just along for the ride with her. The guy who's "out" but still has connections in the "in" group and only seems to be "out" by choice. The girl who's "out" and so far "out" it seems impossible she could be anything else, because that's how she chooses to define herself.

Then there are the people who seem to step around conventional social status entirely; the ones who exude intrinsic status and can flow seamlessly among groups and be included quickly and easily wherever they see fit. These are the people we're talking about when we talk about ultimate social calibration; these are the folks who've stepped off the ladder and come up with a different way for moving socially.

Because as it turns out, there's more than one way you can build and maintain and use social status, and climbing up the social ladder of the closest "scene" is only one of those.

Let's start by talking about what status is good for.