Female Mind

Here's one for all the intermediate guys and up -- the ones who've already figured out the fundamentals enough that it's all started slowing down for them and they're better able to see the forest for the trees.

A reader (one who's had mail featured in a couple of articles on here already, in fact), wrote in a thoughtful, insightful break down of what he'd picked up about how I read what women need and give it to them. I'd been meaning to write something up on this, but he put it quite well:

“Basically what I've finally picked up on is how well you read minds. The thing that keeps you in control is knowing exactly what that girl needs to hear. And its funny because this is exactly how most women communicate.

They don't walk around imposing themselves on others they notice what the other person is going through and then converse from there. I've been noticing that I have a great grasp on a lot of things you post but where I have been falling short is in the area of understanding what she NEEDS in that moment you know?

I'll be thinking in my head okay now let's move onto this, gotta move her now... Basically what I've been doing is focusing on what I needed to get done not what she needed.

Now I understand when you say "I can tell she wanted to be moved." Because your actually paying attention and your always asking yourself what does she need right now. It's like when you think in terms of "what does she need?" Everything becomes so clear and you see her as almost like a game to be won.”

And that's pretty accurate. I do notice that most guys blindly and bluntly stumble their ways through interactions with women, and I do keep my own interactions more or less wholly contingent upon what the girl is telling me she needs in any given moment.

But that, of course, is more easily said than done for most men, because most men don't know how to tell what women need.

Instead, they stumble blindly in the dark, hoping to get that one shot in a thousand that they "get lucky" and happen to get all the pieces to line up just right (or have a girl who likes them enough that she doesn't mind if not all of the pieces match up... but how often does that happen?).

Well, I don't think you ought to have to stumble -- and believe me, women would prefer you didn't, too. And that's why I wrote this handbook -- everything you need to start reading the women around you.

The other day, a reader wrote in with a question about keeping your cool when women are being flighty or slow to respond, in reference to the post on what to do when girls flake:

“In your article on girls not returning texts, I was wondering what your idea of a socially savvy way to deal with it was. I've found it hard not to take this personal, especially when it's from girls I've known longer that still do it. I understand it's quite common, but to me there's really no excuse. I'd much rather hear "I'm not interested" than waste my night waiting around, especially when considering how girls get when guys don't call them back.”

You know, a long, long time ago -- it almost seems like another life -- I made it a point to respond to every single person who texted or called me, no matter what. I looked at it as a matter of honor, and took it as a point of pride -- I was reliable.

And it annoyed me to no end when people didn't respond. Like the reader above, I couldn't understand people who didn't respond -- I thought it rude, and I considered it inexcusable.

Of course you can take 10 seconds to text a reply, or 10 minutes to return a phone call, I'd think to myself.

I considered it a personal slight, those people who didn't respond.

I see things a lot differently nowadays. Often, I don't even notice when one person or another -- when one girl or another -- hasn't responded, until maybe much later -- and perhaps never at all. And, for all my earlier "principles" on being 100% reliable in responding to those who contacted me, I'm now sitting at somewhere decidedly below a 100% response rate -- maybe 85%, maybe 90%. I still try to respond most times, but it's no longer an unbreakable rule.

The reason why I changed -- both in how I saw it when others didn't respond, and in why I don't chase women with texting or phone calls anymore and why I don't always respond when people chase me anymore -- is what I want to share with you here.

A few conversations I've had lately have revolved around me discussing with guys how simple things are with women. You just talk to them, and then... boom! They chase after you. You don't even have to do any work; girls take care of all that themselves.

Because that's how it's been for me lately. But I keep getting pulled back down to reality; guys confess it doesn't work that way for them. And then I stop and think, and for a long time it didn't work that way for me, either.

What changed it for me? Well, one of the biggest factors was figuring out what to say to girls. All you've got to do is get that figured out, and you're set.

But that's tough, you say. Why? Well, because you're not a girl. And if you're like a lot of guys out there, you have, starting out, no idea what it is women want to hear, what they like to hear, or what they need to hear, whatsoever.

Here's how it goes for most guys: they start out talking to women too literally, and the women get bored out of their skulls and leave. So then a guy tries a few witty pick up lines, or he tries busting on girls to be a challenge, only to have them start snapping at him and shutting down. Eventually he comes full circle again and decides to try to be a lot nicer than he was, only to find that, once again, the challenge has disappeared and the interest women showed at least some of the time when he was being a jerk has disappeared.

That's the point a guy realizes that, despite all the time he might've spent trying to get better with women, he still has no real idea about what to say to girls.

Argh.

Fortunately, all's not lost, and you can figure it out. In fact, that's why I made this post -- it's something of a guide on the wild, woolly world of talking to girls. In other words, herein lies the machete you'll need to hack a path through the conversational jungle and emerge on the other side with that beautiful, smiling girl you've had your eye on.

Once upon a time, there was one subject that absolutely terrified me when women brought it up in conversation: their past relationships.

I mean, if anything felt like a death sentence for forward progress with a woman, it was her digging up her troubled past and spilling it all over my lap. Time and again, I found that my interactions with women ended soon after they began divulging their storied relationship history -- "Great, another gal looking for a shoulder to cry on," I'd think. "I'm doomed."

It took me a little while to crack that nut, but I did. When women start telling me about their past relationships now, it's almost a slam dunk that we become lovers.

How'd I make such a dramatic shift, from past relationships being a conversation killer to them becoming seduction rocket fuel? Well, it came about from me deciphering a few important concepts -- and that utterly shifted the way I approached women discussing their past relationships.

I had a date Friday night with a young television anchor for one of the big TV stations in China and Hong Kong. Things started out innocently enough -- she put me in the hot seat early on, treating me almost like how I imagine she must treat her interviewees, asking me lots of questions and making it feel like an interview -- but I soon wrested control of the flow of conversation, and pretty soon things were going swimmingly. I used something known as the cold read to do it.

Before you knew it we were well into a deep dive, her telling me all about her past relationships and what she thinks the purpose of life is and what she really wants (children, namely). And it all happened, despite a little while of me being there in the hot seat, more or less effortlessly.

Even not so long ago, I struggled with transitioning into "real" conversation when I was facing women who were professional "talkers" -- reporters, saleswomen, any kind of gal who spoke effusively for a living. The problem was, women like that tend to snap into these routines of making their pitch or going into interview mode, and it can be hard to snap them out of it.

What I ended up returning to to solve this dilemma was something I've developed slowly -- almost unconsciously -- over the past half decade: cold reading.

It's largely because of cold reading that I had this girl who was so used to steering the conversation instead drinking in every moment with me, and by extension it's largely because of cold reading that I had this girl telling me how she'd drank too much (after a mere two drinks, spread across 2 1/2 hours) and all but announcing that I should invite her home to make some bad decisions.

Walking back from the gym this afternoon, under the hot summer sun, I was a bit of a mess. My shirt was drenched in sweat; my arms were stiff and wooden; my hair was a little messy; and I was still breathing a little heavy.

I noticed a girl walking toward me, dressed in rather fancy garb, and as she saw me, she pulled her face into a mildly contorted look that spoke somewhat of disgust. But, at the same time, she also couldn't seem to take her eyes off of me, and I noticed those eyes scanning me up and down; she brushed her hair back, and as she walked toward me, she ever so slightly veered toward me.

I've met lots of girls like this before. Girls that, on first glance, might appear to be completely put off by you. But if you read between the lines, their more subtle actions tell a different story. In fact, I've taken some of these women who gazed upon me with what looked like disgust as lovers, oftentimes rather quickly.

What I want to get across here is, how to tell if a girl likes you -- or not -- isn't always as cut and dry a case as you might think.

Sometimes it can even be the opposite of what you initially thought -- and that holds for both the girls you think like you, and the girls you think don't.

One of the things that it seems like a lot of guys have difficulty realizing is when women actually want them.

Chances are, you've heard some of the conventional ways on figuring out if a girl is horny. Some of them are:

• Check her heart rate
• Check her breathing rate -- the faster she's breathing, the more excited
• Check her pupil dilation
• Check her vaginal dilation or how lubricated she is... down there

Great stuff if you're an M.D. And you've got your stethoscope handy (or a pair of rubber gloves).

But how do you figure that out when you're standing across the room from a girl, or you're deep in conversation with her? Not exactly the right time for a lubrication check.

One of the most underrated skills for the man interested in getting together with women is the ability to quickly identify the women who are looking for the same thing that he is. This is a skill called "targeting," and it's one I've put a fair amount of work into cultivating in myself.

One of the most important aspects of targeting, it turns out, is figuring out how to tell if a girl is horny.