Any plan is better than no plan, and anything that [list=a][li]Gets you out of the house, and Gets you asking women for dates[/list]is going to increase your chances of getting dates. [/li]
I disagree that there isn’t a cheat code. There is - you have to try. Women will not come to you. Real life is not like the movies.
Take a shower, wash your hair, brush your teeth, wear clean clothes. Come up with two or three things that you like to talk about. Then start looking around for women and see if they like talking about those things. If they don’t want to talk about those things, see what they like to talk about. If they don’t want to talk to you, move on to the next woman.
Free advice, and worth every penny.
Regards,
Shodan, Who Managed to Snag a First Date Forty Years Ago and Is Therefore An Expert
I read Mystery’s book and also another one called “The Game”. The second one was a horrifying cautionary tale, like looking under a rock in fascination at the worms. Can’t un-see them now. The author really dishes on Mystery, too.
Mystery’s book was interesting because I’ve experienced a lot of that as an amateur, a “target” and here it was all laid out with detailed flow charts.
Why did I read them? Because as a female I was having trouble on job interviews and I wanted to see if I could used these tactics to make hiring managers chase me down the street waving giant wads of cash. So far, no success.
No, OP, these are not ‘skills you need to master’ - these are guides written by sexist morons who think women are vending machines or video games. You put in the required tokens / the Konami code and POOF! out pops sex. That isn’t how dating, relationships or casual sex work.
Do yourself a favor and never waste any time on this useless dribble. It’s totally cool to want to improve your dating game, but you can do so without treating women like objects.
Take a glance through Dr Nerdlove’s website, if you want. He dishes out dating advice for geeks and condemns tactics usually pushed by PUAs (negging, etc). He’s a pretty cool guy who does paid-for coaching, but you can also just message him what your issue is and he’ll give free advice. His countless articles can also help a lot.
Editing to add: As a woman I will tell you straight up - pick up tactics do NOT work. You will only come off like a manipulative dumbass who thinks all women are alike, and will all respond the same way to the same thing.
Dominic Noble (formerly known as The Dom) on YouTube did a really funny review of Mystery’s book, if you want to look it up sometime. He really rips into it. He might mention The Game as well, or it could be that I recognize that title from Dr Nerdlove similarly ripping *it *apart.
Not sure why you seem to think one automatically excludes the other. Guys who use PUA tactics tend to feel entitled to sex/dating/a relationship. Guys who feel entitled like that are the type to assault someone when they don’t get what they want.
Forget hookups, these “PUA’s” said that you can develop long term relationships as well.
I understand that these systems are questionable, but they could be worse, am I right?
To be clear: I’m not looking to hook up with anyone at all, but I got friendzoned back in high school, along with not being interested in another girl, despite her liking me.
Maybe I’ll look into Dr. Nerdlove, or change my behaviors toward women. It’s easier said than done when it comes to meeting/dating women.
They’re selling you a load of horse manure. Don’t buy it.
I’ll admit, there are some emotionally damaged women out there who will be susceptible to PUA techniques. And there are some young and naive girls who can be trapped and manipulated into gray-area quasi-consensual sexual situations (maybe not legally rape, but definitely not enthusiastic consent) if you do what these douchebags tell you to do. But you will absolutely not get a loving, healthy relationship this way.
I really don’t see how they could be worse, honestly. They’re telling you to pretend to be someone you’re not in order to trick or intimidate a woman into doing something she doesn’t want to do. And they’re dehumanizing her in the process, making it easier for you to ignore her agency when it conflicts with your desires. What sort of dating advice are you imagining that’s worse?
And stop using the term “friendzoned.” This is a perfect example of the problem. You were romantically interested in a girl; she didn’t feel the same way. So she did this hurtful thing to you–she friendzoned you. You got friendzoned! Ouch! You poor thing! That utter bitch! Oh, but then when another girl liked you and you didn’t feel the same way, that’s just life, right? Kind of inconvenient for you, really. Reread your [eta: second-to-] last paragraph, and if you really don’t see the double standard, please leave all women alone until you do.
It’s interesting how I realize certain things later on in my life, but not in the moment: I got friendzoned by a girl, but did the same thing to another girl.
However, I got friendzoned by her because she was waiting for me to make the first move, but I didn’t know when she wanted me to, until it was too late. Now that I look back on it, I should’ve asked her out sooner.
Furthermore, I don’t plan on buying the systems, (outside of getting scammed). I created this post to gain more of an insight of what other people thought of these systems. The answer is simple:
Be yourself, treat everyone with respect, work on my confidence, and use appropriate methods.
Not sure about these “systems”, but usually any direct male self-improvement is looked upon in derision, from both sexes in my midwestern experience. Kind of a shame
I agree, it really boils down to grooming, be nice, try to find a common ground to start with - everything else can grow off that.
And honestly? I like a guy that is intelligent, amusing and gentle. I don’t want to feel like I am being pressured into anything, I don’t want to feel threatened, I want to be comfortable with the guy. I want him to be someone I would want to hang out with and be relaxed - I want to feel like I can hang out and do nachos and watch a movie and not be worried he is going to try and grab me. I want to talk about something random we both seem to be into and have it be a natural conversation.
You don’t need to be mr macho, or the class clown, or the jock or the awkward nerd. Forget stereotypes and try and be someone that is comfortable. If you are someone to hang out with, you can see if there is a spark of romance to develop.
OP, I’m glad to hear you’re receptive to our concerns about these “systems.” If I recall correctly, you’ve written before about having trouble making friends and interacting with people. If you’re looking for some non-sexist guidance in that area, which will probably help you get dates as much as it helps you make friends, I’ve heard a lot of praise for the book Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner. I read a snippet and was impressed with how he broke down a particular conversational skill: listening and asking follow-up questions instead of moving on to the next question you rehearsed, and why that makes for a better conversation. It seemed like a really good analytical perspective on something that comes so naturally to many neurotypical folks that it’s hard to explain, but for which some folks really need an explanation and a step-by-step guide.
In other words, you wanted somebody in high school who didn’t want you; and somebody wanted you who you didn’t want?
This is entirely normal. Happens to just about everybody, of any gender. Happens to adults, too.
The world is full of people. You’re potentially sexually interested in some of them, but not in all of them. Most of them are potentially sexually interested in some people, but not all of those are sexually interested in you. Again, this is utterly normal, and just how the world is.
What you’re looking for is the intersection between people you’re interested in, and people who are interested in you. This is a smaller group for some people than for others; but there’s nobody, or very close to nobody, for whom it’s a nonexistent group. And the point that I’m trying to make here is that the fact that some people aren’t interested in you doesn’t indicate that it’s a nonexistent group. Again, it’s utterly normal for some people to not be interested in you.
(Notice that I’m using the word ‘people’. Yes, as has been said repeatedly in this thread, women are people. And because the sort of systems you’re describing don’t treat women as people, yes they are worse than having no particular technique at all.)
Well, maybe. That’s a thing that can happen – but if so, it’s extremely unlikely that it was because it was ‘too late’ in the sense that she wrote you off for not asking sooner. If you mean ‘too late’ because she partnered with somebody else in the meantime, that’s possible. If you mean ‘too late’ because she grew into a different person who was no longer interested in you, that’s also possible – in which case it would have happened anyway; many high school relationships don’t last. But the number of people who think ‘I really really want to go out with X but only if he asks me by March, I’m not going to be interested at all if he doesn’t ask till April!’ has got to be miniscule, if it exists at all. (It’s certainly possible to ask somebody too late for a particular event; but that’s not the same thing.)
I haven’t dated in a long time (now married for a decade), but when I did, after years and years of (mostly) rejection I started to welcome it, with the following attitude (this was in my mid 20s) – something like “thank you! Now I no longer have to imagine whether we are compatible together, and can now move on to attempting to make a connection with someone else”. That attitude, at least for me, made rejection easy (and even good, in a way, because I found uncertainty to be so frustrating). One of the keys, at least for me, was to ask someone out EARLY – don’t wait to become friends and then develop strong feelings, but rather ask them out at the first possible sign that I might find them attractive or interesting (and assuming that they’re available). And I was usually rejected, but that was fine, because I hadn’t invested any significant emotion in the possibility of getting together with them. And this attitude made it easy to never have hard feelings for being rejected.
Complaining about getting “friendzoned” seems to be more of a NiceGuy thing than a PUA thing, but they’re just different branches on the poisonous misogyny tree. While the PUA technique centers around various methods of intimidation (from “negging” to using touch and physical positioning to keep her from leaving) with the goal of “scoring” with a large number of women, the NiceGuy schtick is about cozying up to one particular woman, hoping your fake friendship will inspire her to fall in love with you, and becoming angry (and often, in a breathtaking display of self-unawareness, accusing her of using you) when it doesn’t. Both tend to involve pursuing the most physically attractive women without regard to compatibility, which is, again, dehumanizing to her, but also rather self-defeating for him. Most people, whether male, female, or something else, are attracted to conventionally attractive members of the gender(s) they’re into. And most of us have to get used to the fact that we ourselves are not 10s, and the 10s of this world are therefore unlikely to sleep with us because they too would prefer other 10s, but they can actually get them. Yes, people do sometimes end up with more or less attractive people than themselves. When that happens, though, it’s not because the less-attractive person discovered some secret trick that you can learn. It’s either because they have something else to offer that the more attractive person wants–wealth, power, status, etc., which you probably don’t have and which wouldn’t really make for a great relationship anyway–or the couple share a genuine emotional connection based on shared interests and values, mutual respect and affection, and yes, some degree of mutual physical attraction. You can’t expect to find that if you’re only looking for a hottie.
Finding a good romantic partner requires being a good romantic partner. It also requires a little luck in finding someone compatible, which means for most people it requires patience. You will increase your odds of finding someone sooner if you interact with more people and especially if you ask more people out, but you’ll keep struggling if you haven’t done the work on yourself. These “strategies” encourage men to skip this step and use a shotgun approach (violent metaphor intended.) If you get good at these techniques, you might take someone down, but it’s not going to make you happy. If you’ve enjoyed genuine friendships with men and women and are just frustrated because it seems like all your other college-age friends are getting laid and you haven’t found someone yet, be patient. But if you’re struggling with social interactions across the board, work on that, and then use your awesome new social skills to connect with women too.
Give his site a try. It can’t hurt and you might feel like it helps. I’d tell you that if I were looking, I’d be a LOT more likely to respond positively to someone using advice from DNL than I would from someone acting like a PUA asshole.