(3) Journeyman

Is it better to go into a situation with a woman knowing nothing at all (the hopeful-but-clueless guy), or is it better to know the negatives and the struggles but not have any of the answers (the bitter-and-cynical guy)?

The answer might surprise you, because whilst you would expect knowledge of negatives to act as a disincentive to getting used or short-changed, being naïve can provide incentives, like getting the benefit of the doubt and more opportunities. Does this mean it’s better being naïve than jaded?

Put differently, is it better to know the downfalls and potentially avoid them, or to be given more opportunities yet possibly not take advantage of them?

Now here’s the answer:

It is a trick question, because in both scenarios the man cannot take opportunities or put women on their best behavior... meaning the results will always be that you have less opportunities and less respect than is ideal, whether you are naïve or you are jaded.

Sucks right?

Especially since with naïve or jaded, these are the two places we often start as men.

We have so far covered many aspects of dance floor seduction:

1. Dance game foundations
2. Warming up on the dance floor
3. Dance floor target selection
4. Opening on the dance floor
5. Building attraction on the dance floor
6. Physical escalation on the dance floor

In the two previous posts, we discussed escalation and attraction building on the dance floor. Escalation, although powerful, is not that simple - there are certain pitfalls you can face, and we will be addressing the following three of those today:

• Her friends cockblocking

• Her not feeling comfortable being touched publicly (afraid of how others will judge her)

• Her need of you being accepted by her friends

We address these issues by first learning how to deal with her friends on the dance floor, and then learning how to isolate her when the time was right.

General resistance, either caused by anti-slut defense or lack of attraction, is the topic we will be dealing with next week.

Previously we discussed how to build attraction by escalating physically. Today we will discuss this topic even further. There is a lot more to say about this topic. Consider this post an expansion of the previous one.

As mentioned last time, this is just a toolbox. This means that you can cherry-pick the techniques you like and disregard those you don’t. It is not like you have to use every one of these escalation techniques to get laid – sometimes just following a basic escalation ladder is all you need, while other times more is required.

I do recommend you to try out all these techniques though. Field experience is the only true way to find out whether something works for you or not. Try them all out at least a few times and add those you like to your arsenal. However, never disregard any technique completely, as maybe on a future occasion you might find it come in handy (in such cases you can always review this post).

Now, let us start straight away into the good stuff:

Hey, guys. A quick recap of the series thus far, in case you missed any of the articles and would like to go back and read them to catch up with us:

• Part 1: Why Men Get Married
• Part 2: What Men Hope Marriage is Like
• Part 3: Things that Ruin Marriages
• Part 4: What to Do When Marriage Doesn’t Match Expectations

In Part 5, we’re going to talk about what to do when your efforts to repair your marriage fail and a mutual decision is made to part ways for good.

Before we begin, I do want to note that family and divorce law varies significantly across not only continents and countries, but can even deviate a great deal within those (the degree of autonomy differs from country to country, but you get my point here).

Getting a divorce is extremely challenging in many ways, but probably the biggest hurdle of all is trying to work through all of the legal processes. Trying to accomplish all of it by yourself is overwhelming, and there will be many a decision that requires knowledge of the legal procedures and family law that is in place in your jurisdiction.

If you need legal advice, I strongly suggest you consult with a good family attorney with roots in your county/township/municipality who is highly familiar with the laws and processes of your local government.

So, you’re getting a divorce. It’s all utterly horrifying and you don’t know where to start! How do you manage all of this?

One of the most destructive limiting beliefs that holds back many men is that having a promiscuous lifestyle in which one sleeps with beautiful women seems somehow morally wrong. To them, it seems that there’s something wrong with being attracted to someone and desiring passionate sex with them.

It sounds silly when I put it like this, yet, unfortunately, in our minds this limiting belief rarely takes form as a simple, straightforward statement like this. If it did, getting rid of it would be easy.

No, instead it’s usually much more deceptive, and the result is that we find ourselves ashamed of our desires... we restrain ourselves from openly hitting on her and being sexual because we are afraid of public scrutiny, and when things don’t go our way, like she doesn’t reciprocate the attraction, just like a child who did something wrong, we feel the need to run back to our safe place.

The reasons why so many of us developed this unconscious belief that being sexual is wrong are diverse, but in most cases it boils down to social pressure to meet some very outdated norms.

But what if instead we operated in a manner so that deep down we knew that we were doing the right thing by trying to seduce her; by showing our sexual side? What if we knew that by leading the interaction towards sex we were also leading ourselves towards mutual happiness (or at least a happier state)?

Well,

Let me tell you that it’s liberating to play your part in the dance of seduction knowing consciously and unconsciously that you’re doing the right thing. Even more so, it does open up new doors, especially in social game.

Sadly, I can’t give you a surefire, step-by-step approach on how to overcome this limiting belief and instill in you a new one – every situation is unique and every man’s journey towards this goal will be different.

What I can do, is set you in the right direction by helping you establish a set of personal rules that you believe in: ones that will make sure that as long as you will abide them you will be true to yourself and in your mind you will be doing the right thing.

Gentlemen, welcome back.

Today in Part 4 we are going to take a look at:

1. What can happen when marriage doesn’t meet your expectations,

2. What (if anything) you can and should do about it when this happens, and,

3. A couple of things you should never do.

Because, as we found out in Part 2, let’s face it: no marriages meet all of the expectations that are set for them.

The percentage of Americans who divorce has been above 40 percent even since 1970s. There are a lot of reasons that that number is what it is. Unarguably though, is the notion that the inability to reconcile differences is what eventually makes things come to a head and is why we divorce.

Is infidelity the reason you got divorced? Roundabout, perhaps, yes. But it was really more because a reconciliation couldn’t be reached.

How about a financial crisis? Can two people just become so poor that some crazy law says they have to get a divorce? No, it’s because they can’t agree on how to repair the problem (or they just don’t).

Your marriage is never going to be as fruitful and perfect as you think it will be, and you’re going to deal with a whole slew of life problems that affect one or the both of you. It’s not the problems themselves that cause divorce to happen, it’s the people not being able to deal with them that is the biggest issue.

So what exactly happens when you end up in an unfulfilling, dead-as-nails marriage that suffers from one (or a multitude!) of the more serious relationship-downers that we discovered in Part 3?

I found that when my marriage was getting to the point where it had seen better days that the toughest thing I had to deal with by far was the shift in the balance of power that occurred when I actually started to sense things beginning to go haywire in the first place, and started scrambling to make things “right” again.

I feel as though the perfect follow-up to our last entry in this series, Part 2: What Men Think Marriage Will Be Like, is an article exploring all the bad things that happen when your relationship doesn't turn out quite as perfect as you thought it would and the whole thing starts to go haywire.

Also, if you're just jumping in here, see Part 1, where we explain in detail reasons why guys get married in the first place.

Usually it's not any one little thing that will sour the grapes, but rather a combination of a handful of different problems that really does a relationship in.

As a married couple, you are going to constantly face life situations head-on together, and while many of these can be avoided completely and others just come with the territory, all of these that we'll talk about in this article can end up being cause for divorce and should have the kibosh put on them as soon as you observe them.

In Chase's recent article The Key to Nipping Girlfriend Drama in the Bud in LTRs, we found that you can't be non-reactive and turn a blind eye to certain issues like you would early on in relationships. As explained in the article, the landscape changes significantly in a long-term relationship, and at times you actually need to be quite dogged in going about actually getting her to tell you about her concerns or problems in the first place.

Conflict resolution is important. However, conflict prevention is preferred, right? Though at some point there will be situations that either can't or just don't get prevented, so you end up having to deal with them.

As a final note before we get started: There's one really ginormous, obvious problem that I'm not even going to tear into here - and only because it is fairly cut and dry and I think most guys get this - and that is physical abuse. I just do not feel that it is a subject that warrants a copious amount of commentary. It is basically the lowest possible low that can happen in a relationship, far worse even than anything that follows.