Investment

A reader with ruffled feathers writes in response to the article "Tell If a Girl Likes You: Are Her Walls Up Or Down?", saying:

“What a bunch of rubbish!

In all of your articles, you always encourage men to act weak. For example, phrases like this: "one part of being good with women is about not flipping the triggers that activate women's walls." What?? So, you think men should avoid trigging women's "walls"? This is utter rubbish!! A strong individual won't give a shit about a woman's walls! Only a weak, very passive and supplicated individual constantly afraid of offending women will look for walls and avoid them at all costs! Your position is inherently weak.

Only weak men are always cognisant of women's walls because they are afraid that her walls will go up and this comes from weakness, his weakness -- he is scared and doesn't have confidence. Women instinctively sense weakness without any training or experience necessary and you don't need me to tell you that women are not attracted to weaknesses. Nervous men (those afraid of triggering walls, the kind of man you encourage in this and other articles) are best left to nervous, fumbling women who have issues, not well-adjusted, confident and attractive women. All this boils down to confidence: if you are not truly confident of yourself, 100%, then you will always achieve less than you could have and this applies of course to more in life than just attracting the opposite sex.

A confident man is attractive and sexy. He knows exactly what he wants. He doesn't worry about girls' walls...or himself, nor does he care when women exhibit walls, he will always get exactly the kind of girl he wants. Looking in from the outside, this achievement will seem effortless and natural.

Girls put their walls up because of themselves, never because of you; if you think you act in a way that repulses them then you are (thinking in a way that is) repulsive to yourself. Get some confidence.”

I have a strong feeling this reader is one of those individuals who runs around the Internet screaming about the need for men to "be alpha" while simultaneously spending the majority of his time alone or with unusually large women, cursing womankind in general for not recognizing his glorious, manly, alpha attractiveness.

But I digress.

I share this comment with you because it poses an interesting question: is it possible to be SO attractive that you can run through life like a bull in a china shop and still land loads of hot women in your bed regardless - or perhaps even BECAUSE of it?

In yesterday's article on emotional contagion - Part I of this 2-parter on emotional transference - we discussed how the process of transferring emotions from person to person works. Namely, there are two steps:

1. Empower the other person around you first, then

2. Emote to the other person who, now empowered, will mirror you

Today's article is about the dark side of emotional contagion - something commonly called "psychic vampirism." That is, it's how some people have learned to use emotional contagion in reverse - rather than transfer energizing emotion to others, building them up and making them feel great, a psychic vampire has learned to use emotional transference to drain emotions the other way - feeding off the emotions of those he comes into contact with, making himself feel better at the expense of his conversation partner's emotional well-being.

Like the vampires of legend, a psychic vampire can "turn" you, too - with enough of your energy drained, you can become an energy drainer yourself, feeding off the positive emotions of others to sustain yourself.

But, just like emotional contagion, this is not some paranormal phenomenon - rather, it's simply down to empowering and emoting, seeing and mirroring.

A potent but under-discussed phenomenon in the fields of socializing and seduction is that of emotional contagion, the tendency for emotions between two or more people to converge.

Emotional contagion is the foundation of frame control, and is of vital importance too in creating sexual tension and social pressure, in remaining in command of yourself and others in high pressure situations, and in effectively leading women (and men, too).

You might say it's a case of "the person with the most solid and catchable emotions wins."

Todays article is the first of a two-part series on emotional transference, with two articles focused on:

1. How to transfer your emotions to others, and

2. How to protect yourself from others' negative emotional transfers

Done right, emotional transfer is an outstanding tool for creating the emotions in women that you want them to feel, and improving their experience, your experience, and the outcome of your interactions.

And while "emotional contagion" and "emotional transference" might sound at first like New Age-y touchy-feely mumbo jumbo, it is in fact hard science, and it all has to do with the fascinating little cells in your brain called "mirror neurons."

Something I've been asked from time to time on this site (most recently in a forum post by one of our members here) is why I don't date girls who club, party, drink, or have "girls' nights out".

The questions you most frequently get about this are:

• Doesn't every girl do these things?

• Who cares if she goes out and does a little drinking? I trust my girl to stay loyal.
  

• Aren't you a hypocrite if you do these things but expect her not to?

• Don't you trust your women to stay faithful to you? I thought you wrote in the article on how to prevent cheating that it was possible to be so great a partner than women wouldn't want to cheat?!

Most of these thoughts come from rather different places than where I come at relationships from, though. These thoughts revolve more around fear of loss, and/or a feeling of helplessness to control for or select against this behavior... neither of which I have.

This article will not be terribly helpful if you're still just starting out on your journey to get good with women, or are intermediate there, because you will not be able to follow it. Real screening is dependent on the ability to say "no," and until you reach the place where you truly have absolute abundance with women, there will always be women where your logic will say, "I'm not so sure about this one..," but your emotions will hit the override button and tell you, "Stop being silly - she's great."

So let's talk about why I recommend steering clear of these kinds of women if you want a stable, healthy relationship that is a boon to your existence, rather than the bane of it.

I recently completed an almost 2-hour interview with Glenn Pierce (formerly just Glenn P), a really sharp and talented guy who taught me a thing or two when I wanted to kick my daytime approaching up a notch back in early '07, for his upcoming interview series. While doing the interview - much of it something of a "how you got your start" type piece - we each shared stories of girls early on in our lives (both in junior high) who liked us, who were otherwise really cool girls, yet who, when we approached in awkward / socially unsavvy ways, threw us each under the bus socially, even as they still liked us.

When it happened to me, I immediately understood why it happened - why a girl who still liked me (she continued to flirt with me and give me hints and invitations for years after) - and same deal for Glenn... his girl still liked him (a friend of hers even told him so) - yet these girls so coolly and seemingly ruthlessly tossed us to the wolves, status-wise.

I think this is a thing a lot of guys don't get. Why would a girl do this? A girl who likes you - maybe she even likes you more than anybody else around her - yet she casts you aside.

Maybe you want to judge her. Maybe you want to say that clearly she's a petty person; she's weak; she cares too much what others think and not enough about what she wants.

Maybe you want to say that if she's not willing to take a risk to be with you, then who needs her?

Except this isn't the right approach. If you want success with women, you must have a mind for status - and you must have a mind for protecting and even enhancing the status of the women around you.

While my normal recommendations are that guys stay far out of boyfriend-territory and focus on sealing the deal with girls they like on the first date, the truth is sometimes you're going to move too slow by accident, or not feel confident enough moving quickly with a girl, and you'll wind up as a boyfriend candidate after all.

So what do you do then, when she's not seeing you as a lover, and you can't move fast?

Just give up?

Or do you play the game the way she wants you to play it... but with your own twist?

I'm going to introduce you to the concept of date compression in today's article - making dates count for more than a single date, and having a full boyfriend-candidacy dating process in a short amount of time, rather than the protracted courtship these frequently turn out to be.

In the end, you'll be able to take girls who view you as a boyfriend candidate as lovers and as girlfriends much more quickly and reliably than the men who stretch things out - and often lose the girls they like after plowing time and money into trying to get them.

Let's talk about speeding up the entire dating process without skipping steps.

In the piece on how to treat a woman, a reader shared a tale of having a wonderful date with a girl, ending it by holding hands with her as they walked together, her talking excitedly... only for things to fall apart and her get suddenly uncomfortable when they arrived at his place. He then commented this:

“I am in my 40s, well-paid mid-level manager in a prestigious organization. Most of the women I meet are around 25. Even if I don't tell them what I am doing for a living, they just can tell where I stand. The problem I face quite often is "this guy is not in my league, therefore he must be just playing". Can't tease too much, must be careful to show not too high value, and sometimes the move fast approach back fires, as described above.”

Thus enters the status dynamic: the man who is sufficiently high status compared to the girl that she does not want to just sleep with him quickly and one-and-done him, but who is not so high status that he can ask for whatever he wants with her and get it.

He is, in other words, ideal husband material - or, to put it differently, a whole lot more valuable to her as a long-term prospect than a simple fling.

Something I've called, for a long time, the boyfriend dilemma.