(2) Intermediate

I’ve seen a sickness in men, and it is chucking out validation like bread at the duck pond.

Here, I’ll show you what I mean.

Let’s say you compliment a girl, and she refuses it. Like so:

You: Your hair is spectacular.

Her: Oh, actually I haven’t even combed it today, haha.

What do you say next?

If you’re like most guys, you let girls off the hook with something along the lines of:

You: Well you can’t even tell. It looks awesome.

Or, let’s say you text a girl, ask her out, yet she declines (in a nice way). Like:

You: Andie, let’s go to this wine tasting they’re having Thursday night!

Her: Oh no, I sooo want to go, but my parents are in town this week! I have to spend time with them!

How do you respond? If you’re like most guys, it’s something like:

You: Oh man, well, I’ll miss you, but have fun with your parents!

Do you sense anything slightly wrong with these responses?

Is there an almost indecipherable air of excess ‘niceness’ in them?

That excess niceness you’re picking up on is validation – and letting her off the hook.

I saw a girl on the subway a few weeks ago. She was pretty, she had a scarf, and she was standing next to me. I open her by saying, “Nice scarf,” and she responded ,“You too.” We got to talking, the conversation was fun, but I could tell she was in her head. So what do I do? I recite a poem from my favorite West African poet.

Now I don’t know any West African poets, nor do I know any West African poems, and I definitely don’t speak Swahili, but I thought I would have fun and experiment with this interaction. So I recite a poem in a made up language on the spot and then translate it. She was blown away; her face was like “Did that really just happen?”, and when I told her that I had made all of that up, she burst into a huge fit of laughter. All of a sudden, she was out of her head and into the interaction. I would have never tried something like that if I hadn’t learned it in improv class the day before.

Now I am not saying reciting poems to girls in gibberish is the answer. What I am saying is that there are a lot of principles in improv that you can apply to seduction. This post will start with some of the philosophical underpinnings of improv that will help you with game, and then I will write about some exercises that you can do infield to warm up.

When you’re approaching girls in groups, one of the most vital tasks you have ahead of you is to quickly ferret out who is the leader of the group, and who are the followers.

If you can tell who the leader is, you know how to proceed with courting the girl you like. If you don’t know who the leader is, it’s easy to mess this up, have all the girls bail on you, and end up standing around wondering what the heck happened.

You’ll tend to develop a natural instinct for discerning the group leader from the other girls in the group as you gain more exposure, so if you’re a veteran of bar/club game or social circle pickup, you’ll probably find you intuitively know which girls the leaders are soon into an interaction (or even before you say hello).

So if that’s you, this article may be a little basic for you... though I’d encourage you to tune in for the later two installments in this 3-part series, which will focus on picking up followers (one article) and picking up leaders (another article), for some important process distinctions.

If you’re just beginning to dip your toes into meeting women in non-solo situations (e.g., she’s not some girl you’ve approached on the street all by her lonesome), this guide will be just the thing to help you understand who’s who in the girl groups you meet.

Last week, I tackled the common pickup / manosphere belief that the ‘alpha provider’ is a myth: both why men in these communities often think this way, as well as why men who actually are alpha providers don’t usually find their ways into such communities to bother providing themselves as counterexamples to the claims of their non-existence.

Today we dive into the ‘how to’ side of things.

How do you avoid the gradual erosion of authority in a long-term relationship with a woman, and instead retain her attraction, respect, and deference?

How do you continue to be the lover, even when you assume the role of provider as well?

I’ve broken it down here into seven (7) rules: four of them external/behavior based, and three of them internal/mentality based.

We’ll start with behavior, and move to mentalities.

Here we go.

Sometimes you’re out and about and you meet a girl and take a number from her.

And for whatever reason, she isn’t all that attracted to you.

Yet for whatever reason, she still gives you her phone number.

And then for whatever reason, she agrees to meet up with you.

But you can sense this one is going through the motions.

It might not quite be the friend zone yet, but it’s pretty darn close. And she doesn’t even know you.

So what do you do... just meet up with her anyway and hope you can change her mind?

Well, you CAN do that... but if you don’t have a game plan for it, it’s like opting for a few games of Black Jack when you don’t really understand how to play Black Jack.

There’s some chance you walk away with winnings, but most of the time you’re only going to waste your time, probably going to waste your money, and if your ego’s wrapped up in it you may well take a self-esteem hit too.

So let’s set out some strategy for those “friend zone” dates, and talk:

• Prevention,
• Treatment, and
• Cure
  

I previously said (in this post) my next article would be “How to Be an Alpha Provider”... however, I’m going to switch things up today. Today’s article is about sex symbols: those of the past and those of today. And we’ll get back to the alpha providers again next week. Onwards, then.

Today’s article comes in response to a question from Byron on my article about self-cultivation regarding my preference for older male sex symbols over the more current ones Hollywood has to offer. Here’s what Byron had to say:

“Hey,
I’ve recently come across several comments where you reference Sean Connery and Harrison ford as the epitome of raw sexiness. I was wondering if you could elaborate on this and why not the plethora of modern sex symbols, ie what makes them so different? Or if you could write an article on their appeal or a series on famous seducers/ role models I think that would be very interesting and relevant. Again just suggestions, I realize you are very busy. Thank you for this site!”

That’s a fantastic question. Why do I recommend the older guys more than the newer guys? I had a few reasons, but part of me kind of wondered if maybe I just had some kind of nostalgia-bias when this subject’s come up in the past... maybe I’m simply guilty of thinking older is better.

Fortunately, this article’s forced me to really get down to nuts and bolts, and in the process of writing it, I learned a lot. Let’s dive in.

Think about your old school, old fashioned male sex symbols. Men like:

• Gary Cooper
• Cary Grant
• James Garner
  
• Sean Connery
• James Dean
  
• Harrison Ford
  

Compare them to the sex symbols of modern cinema. Men like:

• Brad Pitt
• Ryan Gosling
• George Clooney
• Ian Somerhalder
  

Do you notice anything?

I like all the guys in both of these lists. All are masters of their crafts, and there are buckets you can learn from watching the facial expressions, body language, and little nonverbal tics of each, as well as studying the way each man uses his voice and his overall demeanor.

However, there’s a clear difference between these two groups of men (that span about two generations each)... a large enough difference that while I personally suggest you take the time to study all of these men, when it comes to my own preferences, the only ones I ever find myself wanting to model outright are the ones from before.

And I sat down today and the one question on my mind was, “How do I best explain this difference?”

Last time, we discussed how one should proceed to learn the art of seduction; how I would do things if I were a total beginner again. Today we will discuss the things I would recommend you to focus on if you are new – these are the things I would work on if I had to do the learning process all over again.

There is loads of information on this website and it can be very confusing to many newer readers to actually figure out what should be their priorities. I will list what I consider basics – or foundations – in this post. I will briefly explain the different elements, and will also provide links to more in depth articles throughout.

Now what will be discussed in this article are BASICS, but that doesn’t mean the material provided here is “beginner material”, quite the contrary, this article covers things that:

• Are the foundation to most other (more advanced) material out there – without many of the concepts covered in this article, pulling off more fancy stuff will not work well unless you have the foundations in check

• Many of the concepts in this article will be enough to get you laid.

• The concepts covered are things that most seducers (even advanced seducers) will have to apply in most situations. I will not go as far as to say the concepts apply to every scenario, but not far from it.

Now, this post will not cover elements such as style (and grooming), body language, and basic attractive attitudes. Although it is recommended to have those things in check for best results, this post will focus on “outer game” – i.e., techniques and practical elements of seduction. Again, this is NOT an in depth post about each of the concepts, just a list with some quick info.

The six basics we will cover are:

1. Opening

2. Hooking in

3. Isolation

4. Escalation

5. Extraction

6. Persistence

Let us begin with an obvious key element one should focus on.