(2) Intermediate

Direct game (where you never conceal your interest in a girl) gets a good wrap in men's circles. Yet it never works nearly as well as its proponents advertise…

Hey guys. Welcome back.

Last week, I attempted to debunk the perceived inequality between the sexes and their power on the dating market. It is easy for men to perceive women as more powerful because they get more attention, and therefore are more in control.

After all, men chase women for sex; they can say “yes” or “no” to their requests. Demand is high when it comes to sex with beautiful women.

Although both men and women seek validation, male and female sex drives differ in the source of validation.

Men get validation through sex, and women receive it through attention—more precisely, sexual attention—knowing that men find them desirable.

Both can enjoy sex and desire sex equally on a PHYSICAL and even EMOTIONAL level.

However, men are not only led by their drive toward sexual satisfaction but by their ego—their feeling of power and attractiveness from “conquering” a woman through sex.

Hence, men have two motivations to seek sexual encounters:

• Their sex drive, which they share with women

• Their ego drive

Females get satisfaction by having someone desiring them, which does not involve a need to put out.

We know that “putting out” and having sex left and right with men can lead to social consequences for women. Women fear the slut label, so they have fewer incentives to put out.

After 30, is it time to hang up your dating spurs? Not quite (well, unless you're married). In fact, if you're a guy, your thirties are the best time to date you'll get.

Dating in your thirties: if you learn cold approach and seduction, it’s absolutely the best time you’ll have in your dating life.

That’s considering you’re still single and not married with kids yet.

If you are, I’m sorry. ;)

Many of my clients in their late thirties are already divorced. They’ve spent a good chunk of their life in a monogamous relationship, and now they’re single again, lacking that skill that most young men develop: game.

Every time I go to a men’s forum, a pickup or seduction group, or Reddit, some dude is asking if it’s “too late” for him.

“I’m 27, is it too late to learn game?”

“I’m 25, is it over?”

“I’m 32, am I done?”

Let me share an anecdote about age.

All through my teens and twenties, I was horribly shy around women. I wanted to have a hot girlfriend, but if I managed to weasel my way sideways into a conversation with one, I’d have a panic attack.

I don’t mean a little bit of shyness or nerves. I’d have a full-blown, huff and puff, blow my house down, panic attack. It was absurd, embarrassing, and I hated it.

Anyone who suffers from social anxiety knows it’s not a logical process. Being told to “just be confident” or “just be yourself” doesn’t work, not when the mere thought of talking to a girl sends your heart racing. Yeah, I’ll just be myself, a quaking mess that can’t form vowels and consonants.

What's the best way to pick up girls? Is it tactic A or tactic B? Is Method M superior to Methods S and C? Here's the true exposé on what works best and why.

Wanna know one thing that will definitely never help you do better with girls?

Boasting about how your way to get girls is better than other guys' ways to get girls.

There was an old mASF discussion, back in '04 or '05, where the tired old, "What works better, indirect or direct?" debate got dredged up from the crypt and infused with new life.

I recall reading it in the archives.

Two of the participants were Style (Neil Strauss), the guy who wrote the best seller pick up artist book The Game, and Dimitri (Sebastian Drake), founder of the pick up artist training company theApproach, and a guy who served in a mentor role for me for many years.

Style's point was that you could not ever pick up a girl who was an "8 or better" with direct game. You could only use indirect for this.

Dimitri's point was that he had the most luck picking up girls who were "8s or better" with direct game.

I've never rolled with Style, but I spent a fair bit of time rolling with Dimitri, and I watched him pick up some of the most beautiful women I've witnessed any guy I've rolled with pick up, in the single fastest pickups I've seen guys I've rolled with pull off. A stunning young French stewardess he same-day laid off the beach right after we'd swum the Mediterranean (turned out we'd accidentally switched hotel keys, so he shagged her in my room and used my condoms. I had to call the cleaning service after, my room was so destroyed...). A pair of beautiful, flashy, and shapely Japanese girls we picked up off the street outside an L.A. club. Many others. All with direct openers.

I was a pure indirect guy at the beginning (more because I lacked the balls to go direct then, than that I didn't know how to do it). Dimitri urged me to try direct, so I did. And I found it worked very well for me.

I also found it worked better in some situations than in others. Some of the most beautiful, incredible girls I've been with I picked up I picked up with direct. Others of them I picked up with indirect.

I say all this to preface this post, which is not about direct vs. indirect, but instead something else: getting into stupid debates where you tell other guys that stuff they do that is working for them DOESN'T work is stupid.

What power do men have in dating? It may seem like women hold all the cards. Yet men have one special thing at their fingertips that women desperately crave…

Are men totally without power in the current dating game?

It could seem so to many.  Today I would like to discuss this subject while discussing what gives women that “power” and whether or not this ends up creating a skewed dating game.

Many of you will start seeing this article as some rant – but truth is, it is not. It will start of with the typical “the dating game is unfair” type of narrative – usually shared by the manosphere. However, I invite you to read the whole article, since I believe things are not as one-sided (and if you came here to get a confirmation for your flawed “the world is unfair” type of belief – you may leave disappointed).

As a matter of fact I will later in this article move on to discuss what power men actually have.

No, we are not talking about the typical “men have economical and political power” which is the argument most feminist would give.

Whether true or not (most likely some truth in it) is completely irrelevant to our discuss because whether there are more men making up the elite (political and economic) has very little impact on normal men’s dating lives.

In fact, when discussing the subject of equality (and inequalities) between the sexes, the subject is always surrounding political and economical power. Yet, we rarely see “legal” inequalities being discussed, most likely because the results of such discussion would be contrary to the current narrative (men are usually disfavoured in courts of law – especially in cases regarding parenting, etc.).

Although kind of relevant to pick up and seduction, political/economical/legal power will not be the subject of today's discussion, because it has little impact on actual dating strategies and the mating process.

Bad vibes can poison your interaction without you being aware of it. So how do you know if you have a bad vibe problem? And if so… how do you FIX it?

Why do some people simply not like you?

In this article we’re going to look at a common affliction guys have, which is to misinterpret or be unable to understand why others react in a certain – negative – way to their behaviour.

This then leads guys to assume that others are “out to get them” but that this isn’t their fault.

We’ll also go over how you can improve yourself so that others begin to enjoy your presence more, and some potential reasons why they may not be enjoying it presently.

The ego is adept at tricking you into protecting it and overvaluing it when you should be looking outside and not within. When you get too lost inside yourself it is akin to the side effects of clinical depression or chronic injury: you become less aware of your surroundings, to your detriment.

This can make sense from a purely technical point of view. If you have a chronic injury you need to attempt to placate the physical pain to whatever levels you can or, if possible, to heal it using all the tools at your disposal. So you get an added focus boost on this unsolved problem in order to be better poised to overcome it as best you can.

The problem here is that anything outside this problem (which is inside) is relegated to a secondary plane. When a person is suffering from chronic pain it is difficult for them not to transmit this vibe, because you can see it in their eyes, their pain.

And so others feel it by association.

How do you send a woman video messages that draw her in and get a response? There's a science to it… and it includes what you weave into the message, as well as the tone.

Hey guys, and welcome to part 2 of my two-part series on video messaging.

You can read Part 1 (on why video messaging girls is so powerful) here.

This will be the final article that will cover some practical guidelines on how to deliver the best video message ever.

Last week I shared with you my backstory and my failures when it came to texting my way to a date. This curse was finally broken once I started sending video messages instead – I saw an immediate big change, with girls either responding right away or at least sending a video response back (higher investment from her end). All my video messaging has translated into dates.

Last week, we covered all the reasons why one should opt for video messaging instead of texting (if possible). Some of the main reasons we listed were the following:

• Video messaging allows her to see you, your look, your vibe, your body language and so on. It also allows you to speak more freely, which is good if you are a verbose guy like me.  But the most important thing is that you get to remind her of who you are and how you made her feel – triggering anchors that may put her back into the mood she was in when she initially met you. Very important.

• It allows you to catch her attention when you are competing with tons of other guys trying to reach her. It is also low-pressure, unlike phone calls.

• It shows balls and confidence.

• If she responds with a video message herself you can see her, her vibe, her reaction and so on. This gives you key information to calibrate to.

We covered many more reasons in last week’s post, so consider checking it out. Today we get more into the practical realm on how to deliver proper video messages.