(5) Master

Dating has been on the decline in the West for some time. There are 7 main sociocultural reasons why. Together, they weave a web of complexity fewer and fewer daters break through.

I want to take a break from tactical articles to talk today about a broader topic.

While this won't contain how-tos, it will contain important perspectives I think will help shape the way you think about the dating landscape.

We've talked for a while about how dating is getting harder for people. We mainly talk about ways it is getting harder for men here, since this is a male-oriented site, but it's actually getting harder for both sexes.

It can be hard to put a finger on gradual changes, and even harder to name specific contributing factors to those changes. Generally what you will see is people who have one pet theory and blame it for everything: "It's due to feminism!" "It's due to porn!" "It's due to Hollywood brainwashing!" "It's due to a decline in morals!"

Social systems are complex systems though. They are hard to understand because they have many moving parts, and all those moving parts interact with each other. There is almost never one single cause for a major breakdown in function within a complex system.

Today we'll be looking at what I find to be the seven (7) most important causes of our contemporary breakdown in dating -- one that's led to an enormous reduction in romantic activity among men and women, and an explosion of bitterness among both sexes.

James Bond.

Somehow he always seems to end up in bed with ALL the beautiful women he meets… no matter if they’re his side kicks or if they work for the bad guys.

Amazing!

I remember a time when I didn’t know how to date multiple women and didn’t think this kind of life would ever be possible for ME… but I still enjoyed living vicariously through Connery, Brosnan and Moore.

If you’re a red-blooded male, you can probably relate – there are certainly worse situations to find yourself in than hooking up with a wide variety of gorgeous women!

Maybe this is the reason why you’re reading this blog, and it’s your dream to live this kind of lifestyle… or maybe you just want to sow your wild oats for a while before settling down with the right girl.

Either way, I’m here to tell you that it is more than Hollywood fiction and very possible.

That doesn’t mean it’s as easy as it looks on the big screen though, there are a couple of hurdles you need to take – and this article will walk you through them.

About 3 ½ years ago in Washington, D.C., I was getting frustrated because I was finding this consistent pattern of how I’d be telling girls all these amazing, fascinating things about myself, and they’d act bored or unimpressed and things would go nowhere and I’d lose them.

This kept happening, and anytime I see something happen again and again, I make the problem a priority to focus on and iron out, so I decided to try what at the time seemed like a radical strategy and one I didn’t really even think would work: I’d focus on telling women as little as possible about myself and just let them talk about themselves.

My first time doing this was on a date with a 21 year old fashion model from Texas who’d just moved to town. I’d met her very briefly on the subway a few nights before, and she knew nothing about me other than my name and that I lived in town, and had only given me her email address. I put together a rather elaborate process to get her on a date despite these facts, which perhaps I’ll go into in another post. She was unsure about me, and wanted to meet for coffee before heading to the comedy show I’d wanted to take her to go see, just to make sure I wasn’t a weirdo and that she liked me.

We sat at a Starbucks for about forty-five minutes, with her talking about herself, her friends, relationship problems her friends were having, and all manner of things, and me simply showing interest and doing some active listening, and saying nothing about myself and her asking me nothing about myself. When it got close to the time for the comedy show, I asked her if she wanted to go, and she replied with an enthusiastic “yes!” During the comedy show, I cracked a few jokes and got physically very close with her, and afterward I invited her home for a nightcap. We went straight home to my place and slept together.

She later told me that she didn’t date much and never had hook-ups or one-night stands.