Tactics Tuesdays

These are questions millions of men scratch their head over every day… should you touch her on the date, and if so, how much?

Will she think you’re creepy if you touch her too much… and how much IS too much?

Will she think you’re a shy wimp if you don’t touch her enough… and how much IS enough?

Let’s have a look at what science has to say on how to touch women… what happens to a woman physiologically when you touch her, what kinds of hormones get released and how does this affect the way she will FEEL about YOU?

When I was three years old, I reached into a bag of potato chips up on the counter in the apartment my family lived in then and drew one of the chips out. Just then, my father walked into the room and caught me munching. "Who said you could have that chip?" he asked in his booming voice. I stood there stunned, looking at him like a deer in the headlights, a half eaten chip motionless in my frozen hand.

"Mommy," I said in response, eyes wide and voice trembling.

"Really?" my father said, disbelieving. "She said that from the shower?" He was right, my mother wasn't anywhere nearby -- she was in the bathroom getting washed. I could hear her singing from the kitchen. "Let's ask her."

I sat fearfully as my father walked into the bathroom and I heard him ask my mother if she said I could have a potato chip. I couldn't hear her response, but I guessed what it would be. My father walked back into the dining room. "She said she didn't," he said. I just stared at him. "You can't have these without asking first," he said, taking the bag away and putting it out of reach. I'd been caught red-handed (or salty-fingered). Fortunately, I escaped without a spanking, after I pleaded that it was "just one chip."

Ever since then, I've had a lifelong fascination with learning how to spot a liar, and how to not get found out oneself when on occasion pressed into lying. I hate lying, and avoid it whenever and wherever possible -- I wasn't very good at it when young, and came to the conclusion that lies always surface in the end, so it's better to just be honest -- but I'm all for being self-reliant, and very occasionally sometimes you've just got to know how to do it.

So how do you tell someone lying? There are a bunch of ways, and learning as many of them as you can is something that will benefit you enormously in all of your social interactions and relationships and friendships and parternships to come.

It has been said that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death… Seinfeld’s little twist on this idea is that at a funeral, people would rather be lying in the coffin than giving the eulogy.

I believe there is something that we fear even more than public speaking: approaching beautiful women. And this fear gets multiplied when we’re going out alone, without our buddies and “wingmen” around.

I remember the first time I went out ALONE to meet girls. Just the thought of it made me nervous, but I had been told that it’s a great exercise to build confidence and social skills.

Right after I left the house I realized I was hungry… and got something to eat. But while I was still waiting for my food, I became aware that this was nothing but creative avoidance – I was giving myself reasons to put off the dreaded exercise until the last possible moment!

And once I had left the restaurant, I started REALLY getting nervous… and psyching myself out. After half an hour of this, I couldn’t even have asked a girl what time it was… leave alone flirt with one!

Thank God I’ve long since overcome this hurdle, but the question is…

Tell me if you've ever been here before: you're talking to your girlfriend, or a girl you've started dating, or even (if she's really got gall) a girl you just met... and she starts nagging you, persistently, repeatedly, and annoyingly about something. She just won't let up.

I wrote this today to answer the question of how to deal with a nagging woman.

We've talked on here about angry women, and we've gone in-depth on women and drama, but this is something different. Nagging doesn't come from anger, and it isn't an attempt to stir up drama. Nagging is its own animal altogether.

Women nag all the time -- whether you're the spouse they've been together with for twenty years, or they've just met you that night. Usually men simply get frustrated at this, sigh deeply, and throw their hands up. I'm a strong believer that throwing your hands up is never the path to success though -- and this post is designed to help make sure you never have to (at least not when it comes to nagging!).

So if you're ready to stop nagging and get yourself on a smooth, even keel with the women you meet and the women in your life, read ahead.

I've been putting in 17 hour days, 7 days a week the past 2 weeks for a new business of mine I just launched, and I've been training a lot of new salesman recently for it, and it's forced me to talk on a number of great sales and psychology points. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm even finding myself training my staff with a number of terms from the pick up world that I've developed (if only they knew!). Anyway, now that I've got some breathing room again to get back to things like the blog here, one of the more interesting points I've touched on recently with the staff has been why you should never say no.

My sales guys are a little rough around the edges. One of them used to be a Texas car salesman. One used to sell suits in Wales. Another is a German guy with an unflappable ego who believes he can do anything, but he's never had anything to do with sales before.

Anyway, one of them I listened to while taking him through some drills several times told the mock client he was speaking to "no."

She asked him if he could do something, and he said "no." I corrected him, and he said, "We will not." Argh.

Because, you see, both in sales and in seduction, "no" is a big no-no -- and what I want to talk about with you today is why you should never say no.

There used to be a time when from time to time I'd get a girl's phone number, and then I'd never talk to her again. No first text. No first phone call. Nothing.

Making that first phone call to a girl felt like the hardest thing in the world to do. I was a mess of nerves every time I had to do it. And sometimes I couldn't.

But you never know which one of those first phone calls might be one that'll set your life on a different path. There was a beautiful girl I'd met at a nightclub one night in the summer of 2006 with whom I swapped numbers, and, thinking about it the next day, I was almost too nervous to call. I took out my phone, and went to put it away; I knew if I didn't call her then, I'd never call her. But, unlike so many other occasions back then, I soldiered on and forced myself to make the call.

That beautiful girl from the nightclub I almost didn't call answered my call, and ultimately ended up becoming one of the most important people I ever had in my life and gave me the deepest relationship I've ever had.

And, because I'd been so afraid to call, I'd been a hare's breath away from missing it.

So how do you kick your fear to the curb and get yourself calling the amazing women you meet? How do you get yourself bringing these women into your life, instead of wordlessly letting them slip away?

Well, I devised a few simple, but handy, strategies in the intervening years to make sure that first phone call goes as smoothly, painlessly, and successfully as possible. And I'd like to share those with you here.

One piece of guidance I often give to guys looking to improve with women is to start doing active listening in order to better listen to women and build great connections with them fast. It's simple, straightforward advice that's easy to start implementing right away -- or at least, that was what I'd been thinking.

A reader writes in reminding me of a realization I had years ago but since forgot about the right way to do active listening:

“Wow man just had a great convo with my mom of all people about how to handle women. We talked a lot about things I already knew but it gave me a fresh perspective. But the one thing she told me about was "paraphrasing what she said"

She told me that a lot of guys like "reiterate" what a woman says. For example if I was talking to a woman and she told me a story about jogging and how it makes her feel great. Reiterating would be me saying "Hmmm so what you're really saying is you feel great because of this...." Then the woman tells me "NO I'm feeling great because of what I just said! Your not listening to me!"

Now that same situation as a paraphrase would go "so let me see if I understand you, your saying you feel great because of this..." then she says "Yes exactly I was feeling great because growing up my mom..."

Now at that point I've got her opening up because she's feeling understoood. And sorry for the vocab lesson I"m sure you already knew this but it helps me illustrate my idea in my mind lol! But I'm just emailing you about this because I've noticed that A LOT of your game is based off of paraphrasing.

When a woman is challenging you paraphrase. When you want to deep dive you paraphrase. When you try to connect with her emotionally you paraphrase.

Once you can paraphrase her words she feels understood and now you guys can truly connect. And it was something that had been bothering me for YEARS man because I was trying SO HARD to listen to women lol! But I found out that I was just doing it the wrong way which was from a frame of reiteration (male comm) and not paraphrase (female comm).

It's crazy because now I can look back at some of your old post and say OHHHHH that's how he did that! IT's amazing how much power paraphrasing gives you when it comes to communicating with others.

Just wanted to share that with you because it really struck me as gold.”

After reading this email, in a flash, I remembered the years I spent straining and striving to understand women and feed back to them what they'd said, only to have my efforts be tossed right back in my face when girls replied with, "Uh, no, that's not what I meant," or tersely corrected me.

Man, that was frustrating. But it doesn't happen anymore. Why? Well... let me tell you.

You see, our good reader highlights the difference between what a guy who's learning tries to do, and a guy who's got it down does. And I'm going to delve deeper into doing it the right way here, in this post on active listening.