Female Mind

Recently while scanning the good old Internet I came across a number of posts where guys talk down on beautiful women as being "shallow" and "bitches" and wonder about how to get "real girls." This seemed a little jarring and I like to cut myself off from negative stuff whenever possible, so I navigated away from those guys' pages.

But the thought was in my head: what is a "real girl?" Because to be sure, everyone defines it a bit differently.

A guy who sports a few tattoos and works construction might mean "a girl with a few tattoos herself who likes alternative rock and WWE" when he says "real girl." A guy who was a bit of a nerd in school and is a computer programmer now, on the other hand, might mean "a girl who appreciates sarcasm, digs anime, and plays WOW" when he says "real girl."

So who's right? Well, in a way, they both are – and neither of them are. Because what determines whether a girl is "real" or not isn't whether she rocks tattoos, surfs the web, or even whether she gets her hair dyed and her nails done or not. What determines "realness" runs a little deeper, and if you want to know how to get real girls, you need to know first what "realness" really is.

A guy meets a girl he likes. He starts talking to her, and there's electricity in the air. Attraction. He can tell she likes him. A lot, even.

She tells him all kinds of things about herself, her eyes wide and filled with excitement. It feels as though there's a bubble around them, in which only they exist; the outside world falls away.

For a while, as time passes, the energy and enthusiasm only builds. It builds and builds, until it hits a peak; a crescendo. And then... it begins to fade.

The guy panics mentally; he can tell he's losing this girl, whom he felt so sure was his only minutes before. He works hard, trying to turn things around, to reignite the passion that was there. But alas, his efforts fail, and the fire dies.

He's fallen victim to a painful fact of life and love: attraction has an expiration date.

But what's more painful is, guys almost never realize this is why they failed. Usually they assume it was a value problem, or that they need to get better at maintaining attraction.

If only they knew the truth: they did just fine with attraction. It was, ultimately, that failure to act in a timely enough manner that led them to losing the girl.

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.