Female Mind

If you're in college, or you ever went to college, you're familiar with a phenomenon that's known widely today as "hook up culture:" the Western tradition of getting together for quick flings and casual intimacy with your friends. The way it's supposed to work is, you go out and get drunk, and you wake up the next day with some girl you're friends with. The two of you smile and laugh about it and then go about your lives as if nothing had happened. Or, perhaps, you hold a late night study session, and then the night goes a little later than either of you expected, and you end up in one another's arms. And then, the next day, maybe it's a little awkward, but again, you smile and laugh about it and shrug it off and it's on to the next one. But there's a problem with this idea of hook up culture, and it's a problem that drives lots of men crazy pulling their hair out and throwing monkey wrenches into their own efforts to bring women into their lives. The problem is, hooking up with friends is that it doesn't quite work as advertised. In fact, more often than not, it doesn't work at all. But why?

I've been pretty into TRON: Legacy lately. The visuals and audio are spectacular, so that's partly why I like it so much. Another big part of the reason though is that unlike most Hollywood movies, its hero (Sam Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund) isn't a pushover and doesn't get sensitive and emotional about trivial stuff. He's in-control, laid back, and down-to-Earth. He cracks jokes at times other people are stressing out and losing their heads. He wins despite the circumstances. In other words, he's cool. And in other words, he's a bad boy.

Even back when I was awful with girls, I still was never a "nice guy." I spent enough time watching TV and movies to know that being a nice guy didn't work. Girls like bad boys. And nice guys finish last.

Being the nice guy sucks. We talked about it in yesterday's post about the sad tale of Shopping Guy; nice guys end up holding the bag.

It's the bad boys who win; the rogues, the rascals. Guys like Sam Flynn or James Bond. Guys like Wolverine from the X-Men. Men who can't be tamed or taught or tied down. Just... held onto for a while, before the wild calls them away once more.

But, Average Joe might protest, why do women like these guys so much? It doesn't make sense. They aren't safe. They can't be a good provider; they can't take care of a girl. They never promise her the world; even if they do, girls know they can't and won't deliver on that promise. Bad boys are the antithesis of everything the nice, friendly, safe provider-types strive to embody.

And yet, in the competition for women's hearts, they win. Hands down. 99 times out of 100.

Why is this? Why do girls like bad boys so much?

Eye contact is one of those things that's a great deal of fun when you know what you're doing, but a real thorn in your side when you're still working on figuring it out. It's subcommunication at the very core level – talking in the absence of words. At once both more powerful than verbal conversation, and, until you've come to a better understanding of it, often distractingly unclear.

Eye contact flirting, in particular, can be a real head scratcher until you're pretty well versed in reading the various signals women are giving, and have figured out what signals you ought to be giving back. The eyes are used to communicate a wide range of feelings and messages, and what might seem trivial to an untrained guy may well be a crucial signal a more experienced man will jump all over.

My aim here was to write a very solid post that's going to cover all the bases with eye contact and get down to some real practical, point-by-point details so you'll be able to know with confidence exactly how to use your eyes with even the most beautiful, socially elite of women out there. The goal is to take the nuanced, difficult-to-pin down bits and pieces of eye contact flirting I've picked up over the years and get them down here so you can start applying them with the girls you meet today.

I was looking at my pal Mark's blog over on Practical Pick Up, and read through a blog post he has up on something he calls "Chronic Texter Syndrome," referring to American girls who are on their cell phones texting all the time, even throughout the course of a seduction.

I put a post up on phone calls and text messaging on dates in early February discussing exactly this phenomenon, and on Mark's blog I noted in a comment that this is by no means restricted to women in America. It happens in China too, and I've seen it in other countries I've visited over the past year. I dare say at this point that it's a worldwide phenomenon.

The other thing I noted in my comment to Mark's blog post is what I want to focus on in today's post here: specifically, on being girls' secret lover. Because often, when girls are calling or texting in front of you, the people they're contacting are the more "public" people in their lives, with whom they must keep up appearances. Oftentimes, the reason you're getting texted or called in front of in the first place is exactly because you aren't a public part of her life with public influence and accountability... and if you ask me, this is a very good thing.

Women nearly universally display a social behavior with men they like that's often referred to as "testing." Testing is what women do when they're looking to see if a man is strong and congruent with himself; in other words, if he really is all the man he's presenting himself to be.

Asking a man to do something for her, or teasing him with sexual suggestions to see if he jumps at the opportunity or gets overexcited, or dropping hints with regards to her own promiscuity or relationship status to see if he gets defeated and walks away – all those are "tests," and there are many other varieties.

Testing often gets a bad rap with men. It gets called annoying, frustrating, or petty – but still, all but the absolute most innocent, trusting, inexperienced women – the ones who don't know men any better yet – do it. But why do women test men, and how do you act in testing situations? That's the subject of this post: what to do when women test you.

My girl was over and we were talking earlier about how difficult a time it is for a woman to find a quality guy she likes a lot. She spooled off a quick list of men she'd been on dates with who hadn't made the cut: there was the older doctor who lied about his age, and the guy she went to the movies with who had touched her arm and creeped her out. But the one who stood out the most to me was the one she described as her "good friend."

This was a guy who took her out to walk on the ice over a lake in town that had frozen over. There, the guy professed to her that he would satisfy all her needs. At the moment when he said that, she briefly asked herself, "Huh. Could I have sex with this guy?" Her answer was no, it'd be weird. He was her friend.

And then she said something that really stood out:

"I like him as a friend. We can talk about anything. I'm like his guy friend. And he's like my girlfriend."

A good, if somewhat disreputable, buddy of mine in Southern California who'd bedded a significant number of women he'd met primarily at dive bars once summed up his philosophy of getting girls to me like this: "Just get 'em drunk, bring 'em home, get 'em more drunk, and have sex!" Ah, the age-old combination of sex and alcohol.

People've been doing it that way since the Ancient Greeks were sporting togas and spears. Sex and alcohol have gone hand-in-hand in human society for a long, long time. Stands to good reason there ought to be some good reasons for it, then, too.

Everyone knows why the two make such good bedfellows: alcohol lowers inhibitions, and sex is something we tend to have a lot more when our inhibitions are in said lowered condition. Alcohol also serves as a social lubricant – liquid courage, if you will – making men more bold and women more willing. But it goes deeper than that – and if you truly want to master the seductive arts, you're going to need to be willing to loosen your grip on the bottle, too.