(4) Advanced

When things are getting crazy, you can let the crazy get you, or you can keep a cool head. Don’t give in to the weirdness; keep your head screwed on straight.

I am seeing guys increasingly having trouble dealing with some of the social weirdness going on right now.

There are a couple of parallel mass hysterias happening at the moment. Almost everyone has been driven into one or the other of them at this point. That's what hysterias do... they push people to extremes and force them to pick sides.

We have been having guys vent on the forum about women buying into the mass panic. Others are debating whether they should relocate (to avoid lockdowns/lifestyle restrictions) or comply with various measures (or, if not, risk losing their livelihoods). It's rational to have concerns... any time anyone is pushing something on you, trying to force something on you, it's wise to be careful and move prudently.

However, no matter what is going on around you, if all the world's gone mad, even if people are forcing you to do things at gunpoint, whatever it is, you've got to keep a cool head.

You've got to keep a cool head for your own sake, and you've got to keep a cool head for the sake of anyone dependent or reliant on you in any way.

You will find, if you can keep a cool head, things rarely turn out as bad as you fear.

When people want power from you, they may pretend it’s in your interest, too. But is it? Power grabs may be cooperative, competitive, or competitive masquerading as cooperative.

I'm going to give you a way to think about power that will make many things in life clearer to you.

It is the perspective that contests of power are always zero-sum games, where anytime one person gains power, another loses it. There is no 'free creation of power' from nothing into a kind of power void. Power is always either seized or yielded by one person or group from/to others.

However, it is possible for individuals or entities to work together against external competitors to increase power jointly, at the expense of some external opponent.

You have probably been taught to not think about power this way.

You have been taught that power is 'inclusive'; that you can have power, and someone else can have power, and everyone can have power!

But the actual fact of the matter is power is exclusive; the more power one person or entity accrues, the more someone or something else loses it.

This is necessary to understand for interpersonal dynamics, and understanding societal power dynamics as well.

Environment has an outsized impact on mood. The right environment can almost seduce a woman by itself. By transitioning venues well, you can enhance a seduction.

How do you get a woman to change her mood?

The easiest way is by putting her into the right environment. Then you get to kick back and let the environment do the work.

Men create (or attempt to create) seductive environments for women all the time:

• They dim the lights and put romantic music on at home

• They take girls places they hope will set the proper mood

• They switch from one venue to a more intimate one as things progress

Yet for all this awareness, a lot of guys have a blind spot a lot of the time to the influence of environment.

The environment you're in plays a BIG role on the mood of your woman.

The more seductive the environment, the less work you must do to maintain a seductive mood within her.

Thus, the better a job you do managing the environments you find yourself in with women, the more effective a seducer you will tend to be.

Spice up your sex life with a little bedroom role-playing. You might not realize it, but she’s got fantasies – and you can bring them to life with just a bit of imagination.

This is a pleasant tactic to spice up sex sessions with both short- and long-term lovers.

It's the bedroom equivalent of our more general seduction role-playing tactic (which you can use outside the bedroom as well).

It works because, well, women are naughty girls who enjoy a dirty man.

Odds are your woman conjures fantasies some of the time while you're railing her.

She may or may not have talked to you about this.

Not all women will. Many fear you'll judge them... or that they'll hurt your pride or make you jealous if they do.

But just like sometimes you might imagine the girl you're giving it to is actually some actress, porn star, or pretty female workmate of yours, or else some other more idealized fantasy woman from a scenario you've cooked up in your head, women do this too.

Rather than stick to your own private fantasies while she sticks to hers, you may opt to have your fantasies join forces... and behold the power of the joint bedroom role-play.

When you run into a potentially awkward situation with a woman, you need to ask yourself: will she be the one who controls the frame, or will it be you who does?

How much of seduction is words, appearance, or actions... and how much of it is just frames?

If I walk up to a woman and she acts like she doesn't want me and I accept that frame, that was frames.

Likewise, if I walk up to a woman and she acts like she doesn't want me, then I persist with her in a charming way that conveys I know she really does want me, and she decides she finds me intriguing and starts to feel attraction, that was frames too.

If someone accuses me of something, and I accept the accusation and feel ashamed and bashfully apologize, that's frames.

Just the same, if someone accuses me of something, and I parry that accusation and making a convincing case that in fact I was in the right all along, and the other party backs down, well that too is frames.

Frames run as a constant undercurrent throughout all social interaction. If you've followed along with Alek Rolstad's latest series on frames, you know you can divide frames up into social and sexual, for instance. You know, from his series and our other pieces here on frame control, of various ways you can adjust, tweak, and impose your frames.

Good frame control consists of the expert interplay between known facts and offered explanations. If I saw someone grab my basketball and walk off the basketball court with it, and I believe he stole it and am about to alert the police officer standing nearby, you won't change my mind by insisting that I'm wrong and I didn't see it and that guy did not steal the basketball. However, you might change my mind by telling me he's a good guy and he only just took the basketball to reinflate it because it was low on air and getting flat, and that he'll be right back with it.

If you're telling the truth, you'll have saved a good Samaritan from a run-in with the police; if you're lying, you'll have allowed a thief to escape with my basketball. Either way, by pulling me into your frame, you have altered the course of events.

Frames won't always be as cut-and-dry as 'stealing or not stealing' either.

Many times what is being framed is something fuzzy:

• Are you the prize or is she?
• Is she interested in you or disinterested?
• Were you committing a faux pas or did she commit the faux pas (or no one did)?
• Whose views are more accurate: yours or hers? Or are both your views actually the same and she just did not realize it?

In the end, what determines how a great many things in your social life go is how good you are at framing: how expertly you frame, how well you tie the frames you establish to known facts and details, and how believably you convey your own belief in the frames you purport to hold.

When you’re about to let her go, yet she still hesitates, she may not be ready for things to end. Rather than end them there, you can extend your interactions… and go further.

You approached a girl on the beach, chatted, flirted, then took her contact info. Then, as you were about to depart, she looked at you, hair fluttering about her face in the wind, shy, hesitant, as if she wanted to say something, or was waiting for you to.

You approached a girl on the train, chatted, flirted, and took her contact info. As you arrived at her stop, three stops before yours, she seemed hesitant to leave, pausing, waiting, leaving dead space in the air as she stared into your eyes.

You approached a girl at a bar, chatter, flirted, moved her a bit, and took her contact info. As you prepared to return to your friends, she fell silent, gazing at you, as if wanting you to do something other than what you were.

You took a girl onto a date, connected with her, laughed with her, bounced her to the second venue you meant to bounce her to, and finally moved to wrap up the date. Yet as you told her you had a great time, she got quieter, told you that yeah, so did she, then lingered, not leaving, not turning away.

When you encounter situations like these, where you've made the approach or taken the girl onto the date, yet she hesitates at the end of it, waiting on you expectantly, surprising you (because you expected a nice simple cleave from the interaction here), what can you do?

The simplest answer is extend the interaction... and see if you can't go further.

Playboys aren’t like ordinary men. Students must realize that while you can adopt the playboy’s material to have more success, his goals will tend to be different than theirs.

Yesterday I wrote an article on having healthier relationships by focusing on turning relationships mutual, rather than adversarial. Not 'compromise', not 'give and take', mind you; mutual.

When I wrote that article, I dove into the research on agreeableness. I thought agreeableness might play a big role in that article, but it ended up with a small part.

However, I did find it relevant for a different conversation I was in. It consisted of a few long-time players I know, both in their 40s, who are in the midst of their wife hunts. The discussion they had, which I joined in, was why do so few playboys and seduction coaches marry beautiful, wholesome wives from their home countries in conventional monogamous marriages?

Obviously there are men who marry beautiful, wholesome wives from their home countries in conventional monogamous marriages. But this is typically not seduction coaches or natural playboys. Instead these men normally do one of the following:

• Marry a (sometimes beautiful) girl from their home country but have a non-monogamous marriage (i.e., they're swingers or they have an open marriage)

• Marry a girl from their home country in a monogamous marriage, but the girl is very unattractive (even if the guy in question historically dated good-looking girls)

• Marry a beautiful, wholesome girl into a wholesome relationship, but the girl is not from their home country (even if the guy has dated more girls from his home country than any other point of origin)

Their concern was, "Maybe the guys who are teaching this stuff and the guys who are learning this stuff are not so perfectly aligned."

The friends I had this discussion with are fairly advanced playboys, who have been in the seduction community for 15+ years, have perfectly respectable notch counts, and have studied under many of the more notable pickup instructors over the years.

Both are in the midst of 'wife hunts' and, struggling with this (i.e., they lay hot girls, but then those girls don't stick around... or they get girls who want to stick around, but those girls aren't hot, or they have problems), have started to question some of their methods and teachers.

The question I'll pose for today is... what is the difference between advanced seducers and ordinary men?

And does this mean if you are like 98% of men, and you are just an ordinary guy searching for an ordinary wife, you should be doing something different than what these teachers tell you?