(1) Beginner

I’ve noticed as I’ve reviewed our discussion boards that lots of our posters are much more comfortable with meeting girls during the daytime, and find bars, nightclubs, and parties somewhat alien environments (although to be fair, there are also plenty of guys who are far more nighttime-oriented there as well).

When I stopped and thought about this, one of the things I realized was that when I first started hitting nightclubs, they were a pretty intimidating environment to experience:

• The loud, pounding, deafening music
• The big, imposing bouncers and other club patrons
• The flashy, intimidating-looking women
• The specter of approaching a girl only to meet her boyfriend’s fist
• The feeling that everyone else there belonged a lot more than you did
• The self-consciousness of knowing all these party people would see you get rejected if things didn’t go perfectly with a girl you went up to
  

Especially when you’re rolling solo, like I was most of the time early on, you feel like you stick out like a sore thumb, and make for an easy target for anyone looking for a fight and look like someone to be avoided for anyone trying to have a good time.

Everyone there who’s having fun – the people you want to be around... well, they don’t need you. You don’t even know how to break into the same category as them.

So this article’s going to serve as companion piece to my article on picking up girls in bars and clubs and your primer on how to be social: the 6 secrets every social man figures out sooner or later about how to work a venue, how to get comfortable in an intimidating environment like this, and how to set yourself up for more social (and sexual) success than you can shake a billy club at.

In “How to Use Astrology with Girls", Balla puts in a request in the comments section:

“Yo Chase, I think you should make an article about un sexy friendly guy traits. Like how you mention not to hug because it’s platonic, sending girls pictures/asking, laughing or smiling to much and a few other things guys might not know what they’re doing that are very hard to detect. You just point out all the negative mannerisms and characteristics and tell us what we should do instead. I think it’ll be a great article.”

I thought this would be both a fun article to do, and one that hopefully will point out to some guys some harmful thinking they might have going on, and things they’re doing with girls that they’re shooting themselves in the feet with.

So, here goes... 12 traits that all boring, unsexy nice guys have in common.

A reader writes in:

“Hey Girls Chase, I'm finding these articles to be quite eye opening. You guys seem to really get what's happening as opposed to other people out there who try to help guys with this stuff.

I think I'll finally be able to put myself together for a social life with your guidance.

I have a question. I haven't left my family's house, and I'm 27 years old. I have spent a long time in my life struggling with my own self-image and trying to figure out what it takes to have a life where I'm respecting myself. I said I'd be brief. So I'll just get right to it.

Is it possible for me to be attractive to women and get a social life? I'm not looking for sympathy. I just want to know how I should feel about my circumstances. I've always been shunned in school growing up and don't really have a deep positive impression of human beings. I've only ever had one girlfriend and long story short she was ugly and entitled. I know how to be civil and polite. I know how to feel happy, I can empathize with other people, but I don't know how to make people want to be a part of my life. Thankfully, there's more to me than this sob story.

I've been working out and reading a lot of this type of stuff and it's been helping me to be better noticed and better treated by members of the opposite sex. I'm determined to change my life but the girls are looking at me NOW. I'm about more than just “nothing”. Isn't there a way I can dive into sex and relationships?

Does me currently living with my mother and father automatically disqualify me from using the stuff I learn on your website on women and possibly experience the benefits? I've seen some SEXY women eyeing me and drawing close and the battle in my head is always the same. “You don't know what to tell her.” So I say to myself, “I'll learn” but then my head pull out the ol' “mama's boy still lives with his mama and daddy”.

Does it matter? If it does, how much does it matter? I have a feeling I'll find the answer to that soon enough as I read. I tried looking on your site for an article about this and the search turned up empty. So why not tell me what you think? If I still live with my parents will it get in the way of hooking up with or starting something regular with a girl I'd really like?

Thanks for your help

Jonathan”

Sounds very familiar.

This is something that I ran into quite often in the past. I thought it’d always be a good idea to put off doing things until later. I’d learn how to get better with women later on. I’d wait until I finally got to the point where I felt “sexy” enough to start approaching women. I’d put off improving my fundamentals so that I could fix something else in my life.

Eventually, I ended up becoming a huge procrastinator, and only ended up working on those things when I finally got so fed up with myself that I had to do something to dull the pain of failure.

It all started with excuses popping into my head, saying that I’d be better off doing things later. But, like most things that I put off until later, they just never got done. I never became better at seduction simply by thinking to myself, “I’ll do it later”. I only got better when I took action.

A little while back, when I was in my early 20s, I first read Dale Carnegie’s perennial bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People. Many of the approaches described within it were things I knew, or affirmed what I felt, but sometimes the best kind of advice is this way; you think you’re doing things right, and then someone far more experienced than you comes along and says, “Yep, you’ve got it. In fact, take what you’re doing now and do it more.”

Because it’s been nearly a decade since I’ve read it, most of its lessons have faded from my mind, and all I remember about it was one key lesson from it. However, that lesson has influenced how I’ve dealt with people in such a profound way that I don’t think I’ll ever forget it no matter how much time passes.

[edit: was rolling Napoleon Hill’s Laws of Success up as one of Carnegie’s works... forgive the brain fart]

Yet, pound-for-pound, the key takeaway from Win Friends and Influence People for me has been one of the best takeaways from any book I’ve yet read period.

Before I tell you what that is, let me tell you what I’ve noticed about how most people communicate with one another.

A few weeks back, in the comments section of “Real Empiricists Test”, a reader asked the following question regarding the gulf between mainstream dating advice and what’s taught on this site:

“Is there an article on this, or maybe someone can answer this outright. But why is it that mainstream dating advice is so contrary to the dating advice given on this site ? Why is it that there is almost no agreement ?”

The short answer, of course, is that what we focus on here is entirely techniques and strategies that:

1. Achieve efficient, effective, reproducible results

2. Are tested out and balanced against alternatives and discarded if found ineffective
   

3. Are coming from people who’ve devoted a large chunk of time specifically to this field

... whereas most mainstream dating advice is coming from regular folk with limited experience dating and even less time spent studying and analyzing dating and sex and relationships and social dynamics both in the field and with other likeminded folk.

But the fact of that matter is, it goes a lot deeper than this. There’s more to this clash of ideologies than simply field experience vs. non, and it mainly has to do with who’s giving the advice, and what their objectives are in giving it.

Something that everyone I coach always wants to know is how to be a good kisser. How do you kiss so well, so luxuriously, so lustily, so confidently, and so well that your partner looks at you after and just says, “Wow”?

Confident kissing is not only the mark of a man who can kiss well, it is the mark of a man who can win over women without need for words. It is little shock then that the way you kiss a woman can make or break her very perception of your character, and effect whether she will hang around or not.

It is a fortunate thing then that I am about to throw you in the deep end and drown you in the techniques that will have her begging for more.

I am going to run you through some aspects of kissing rather quickly, so fasten your seat belts and let your imaginations wander and do work! I will start with mindsets, then move to what is important: techniques to ensure you pull that off, and then advanced. I hope you all don’t mind me forcing you to keep up, but the way I see it, if you really want to kiss right, let us not mess around, let us get stuck in, and get those girls thinking “what a man”!

I’ve been seeing more of the writers and senior members on the discussion boards reminding guys that you must assume attraction recently. This is one of those things that comes second nature when you’re farther along the path of doing great with girls, but can be an odd piece of advice to encounter when you’re new.

“Assume attraction” is a necessary ingredient in your seductions if you want those seductions to get anywhere. It’s what stops you from spending endless time deliberating about whether a girl is interested or not, whether she likes you, and whether you ought to advance things with her... or not.

What happens is that most newer guys do not assume attraction, and instead spend their time looking for signs of attraction instead (without being all that adept at reading these signs).

They are waiting for women to signal to them that they should move forward with their seductions.

Yet, for similar reasons to what we covered in “The Paradox of the Flirty Girl” for why you shouldn’t put too much stock in flirtation, if you’re sitting there trying to figure out if she likes you before you do anything, you’re going to fall flat.

You’re going to miss out on 95% of the women who really do like you.

Because most of the time, they’re going to be too busy being attracted to you to worry about signaling to you that they are.