(1) Beginner

I've been pretty into TRON: Legacy lately. The visuals and audio are spectacular, so that's partly why I like it so much. Another big part of the reason though is that unlike most Hollywood movies, its hero (Sam Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund) isn't a pushover and doesn't get sensitive and emotional about trivial stuff. He's in-control, laid back, and down-to-Earth. He cracks jokes at times other people are stressing out and losing their heads. He wins despite the circumstances. In other words, he's cool. And in other words, he's a bad boy.

Even back when I was awful with girls, I still was never a "nice guy." I spent enough time watching TV and movies to know that being a nice guy didn't work. Girls like bad boys. And nice guys finish last.

Being the nice guy sucks. We talked about it in yesterday's post about the sad tale of Shopping Guy; nice guys end up holding the bag.

It's the bad boys who win; the rogues, the rascals. Guys like Sam Flynn or James Bond. Guys like Wolverine from the X-Men. Men who can't be tamed or taught or tied down. Just... held onto for a while, before the wild calls them away once more.

But, Average Joe might protest, why do women like these guys so much? It doesn't make sense. They aren't safe. They can't be a good provider; they can't take care of a girl. They never promise her the world; even if they do, girls know they can't and won't deliver on that promise. Bad boys are the antithesis of everything the nice, friendly, safe provider-types strive to embody.

And yet, in the competition for women's hearts, they win. Hands down. 99 times out of 100.

Why is this? Why do girls like bad boys so much?

In this post, I'd like to share with you a cautionary tale. I'd like to tell you the story of a man named Shopping Guy.

Shopping Guy isn't really his name. His family and his friends call him something else, no doubt; something closer to an actual name and less of a label. But I know him only as Shopping Guy.

Eye contact is one of those things that's a great deal of fun when you know what you're doing, but a real thorn in your side when you're still working on figuring it out. It's subcommunication at the very core level – talking in the absence of words. At once both more powerful than verbal conversation, and, until you've come to a better understanding of it, often distractingly unclear.

Eye contact flirting, in particular, can be a real head scratcher until you're pretty well versed in reading the various signals women are giving, and have figured out what signals you ought to be giving back. The eyes are used to communicate a wide range of feelings and messages, and what might seem trivial to an untrained guy may well be a crucial signal a more experienced man will jump all over.

My aim here was to write a very solid post that's going to cover all the bases with eye contact and get down to some real practical, point-by-point details so you'll be able to know with confidence exactly how to use your eyes with even the most beautiful, socially elite of women out there. The goal is to take the nuanced, difficult-to-pin down bits and pieces of eye contact flirting I've picked up over the years and get them down here so you can start applying them with the girls you meet today.

Just received a comment from an anonymous poster in response to a recent blog entry entitled "Baiting vs. Trading Information." I'll repost his/her comment in its entirety here:

"Women will be interested in you when you stop treating them as though they are subhuman, or aliens you must develop strategies to "catch." You should fuck off and die."

Well, now.

My first reaction was defensive: who is this nameless, faceless person stepping up to attack so bitterly while hiding behind the veil of Internet anonymity? And where did he/she get the idea that I recommend "catching" women or treat them as subhuman or aliens? Cleary, this poster hasn't spent a great deal of time reviewing the content on this site.

The poster presents an interesting question, though, and one very much worth addressing: Is seduction wrong? Is it wrong for a man to learn how to do well with women?

Is learning how to get girls a bad thing?

Women nearly universally display a social behavior with men they like that's often referred to as "testing." Testing is what women do when they're looking to see if a man is strong and congruent with himself; in other words, if he really is all the man he's presenting himself to be.

Asking a man to do something for her, or teasing him with sexual suggestions to see if he jumps at the opportunity or gets overexcited, or dropping hints with regards to her own promiscuity or relationship status to see if he gets defeated and walks away – all those are "tests," and there are many other varieties.

Testing often gets a bad rap with men. It gets called annoying, frustrating, or petty – but still, all but the absolute most innocent, trusting, inexperienced women – the ones who don't know men any better yet – do it. But why do women test men, and how do you act in testing situations? That's the subject of this post: what to do when women test you.

The other day I got told I was a very good flirt. And, I suppose, I am. Of course, I wasn't always a good flirt... well, perhaps I was always at least a little bit of a flirt.

What's it matter if you know how to flirt with a girl or not? In fact, it matters a good deal. Flirting is how you arouse a girl's interest and make her start imagining the two of you getting together. And once you've gotten her thinking about it – and gotten her thinking about it in a fun, suggestive way – you're a lot closer to taking it out of her and your imagination and into the real world.

In this post, we're going to focus on what most men do wrong when it comes to flirting with women, what the right mindsets are for a man who's a successful flirt, and what talented flirts do. So purse your lips and lower your eyelids a smidge; we're going to get flirty.

My girl was over and we were talking earlier about how difficult a time it is for a woman to find a quality guy she likes a lot. She spooled off a quick list of men she'd been on dates with who hadn't made the cut: there was the older doctor who lied about his age, and the guy she went to the movies with who had touched her arm and creeped her out. But the one who stood out the most to me was the one she described as her "good friend."

This was a guy who took her out to walk on the ice over a lake in town that had frozen over. There, the guy professed to her that he would satisfy all her needs. At the moment when he said that, she briefly asked herself, "Huh. Could I have sex with this guy?" Her answer was no, it'd be weird. He was her friend.

And then she said something that really stood out:

"I like him as a friend. We can talk about anything. I'm like his guy friend. And he's like my girlfriend."