- Joined
- Oct 9, 2012
- Messages
- 6,195
Quick PSA on beginning guys' self-diagnoses.
Something I have noticed over the years is that guys who are beginners have rather warped impressions of why they struggle with women.
They will attribute their struggles to all kinds of things... sometimes they blame the girl, sometimes they blame themselves, sometimes they blame society.
You'll see things like:
As a new guy myself, I was guilty of this. I always saw dating as a skill, but for me the excuse was "Every other guy out there has a 10-year head start on me. There is just no way I could ever catch up. And I can't even get the experience now because no woman who's been dating for 10 years is going to tolerate any amount of time with a guy who's completely clueless."
These assumptions about why you're not getting girls and won't be able to get girls tend to be really strongly held convictions.
It's very difficult to be talked out of them. Anyone who argues against them is often going to come up against a brick wall when he's arguing with you.
The thing is: you are not an expert.
You're not experienced with women.
These thoughts you have about how women work, how they think about things, the decisions they make, what they want out of men and life, they're very loosely based on any kind of reality.
If you're an inexperienced guy, your conception of how women think and how they form their judgments is based on:
You really need to be able to step outside yourself, just for a little bit, and say to yourself, "Well, I really don't feel like this will work for me, but I'll try it anyway."
You need to be able to logically say to yourself "I have these emotions, and the emotions say this is too hard, and it will not work, and I'll never get there. But, LOGICALLY, this is an area where I am not an expert, I am totally inexperienced, I do not know what I am doing whatsoever, so I am going to set my emotions aside and I am going to go and do the steps and test the processes and try things out and experiment to build a base of experience I do not currently have."
The best place you can start (and I think every new guy, and every guy shaking off a lot of major rust, should start here) is our Newbie Assignment.
You can find that here.
Everything there is in bite size chunks.
It starts out with stuff designed to be as un-scary to you as it can get when it comes to socializing.
Start with Day 1. Everybody wants to skip ahead, and assumes he's smarter than the exercise, so he goes and starts at Day N (not 1), it's too hard, and he gives up.
The point of the assignment is not just "do new things." It is build momentum, and get in a habit of going out, every day, and doing a little bit more. Starting with stuff that feels easy and simple, and building up to stuff that challenges you a little bit, then a little bit more, then a little bit more, until you are pushing on what you're comfortable with, and pulling off things you didn't think you could.
Do the days in order. Complete the assignment.
Suspend your disbelief in your own ability (because this is your ability we're talking about here... you're the one that has to make approaches, flirt, and self-improve; you're the one who either gets dates and women and girlfriends or doesn't -- it's you), and go gain some experience.
And trust that, no matter how sure you feel that you have "figured out" why women aren't interested in you, you're not an expert (either of dating or of female psychology), the data you have coming in is skewed, and your understanding of the issue is not on point.
So go out there, put a little time in, make the approaches, meet some women, test things out, experiment, and get some good data so you can get a more accurate view of women and the world.
Chase
Something I have noticed over the years is that guys who are beginners have rather warped impressions of why they struggle with women.
They will attribute their struggles to all kinds of things... sometimes they blame the girl, sometimes they blame themselves, sometimes they blame society.
You'll see things like:
- "I'm too ugly, and that's why no one will date me."
- "I can't get dates because I'm short."
- "Women won't date a guy of X race."
- "Girls only like these ALPHA CHADSs and I'm not that so I have no hope."
As a new guy myself, I was guilty of this. I always saw dating as a skill, but for me the excuse was "Every other guy out there has a 10-year head start on me. There is just no way I could ever catch up. And I can't even get the experience now because no woman who's been dating for 10 years is going to tolerate any amount of time with a guy who's completely clueless."
These assumptions about why you're not getting girls and won't be able to get girls tend to be really strongly held convictions.
It's very difficult to be talked out of them. Anyone who argues against them is often going to come up against a brick wall when he's arguing with you.
The thing is: you are not an expert.
You're not experienced with women.
These thoughts you have about how women work, how they think about things, the decisions they make, what they want out of men and life, they're very loosely based on any kind of reality.
If you're an inexperienced guy, your conception of how women think and how they form their judgments is based on:
- Movies and TV shows you've watched (fantasy, much of it written by script writers who are themselves clueless or idealistic about women/dating)
- Stuff you've read on the Internet (much of it filtered through selection bias -- a guy's angry at a woman in his life, so he damns all women; etc.)
- Unfortunate incidents you've had with a handful of women (almost certainly under 30 women total -- you can meet that many in a good weekend out) that you've blown up into a big deal in your head by thinking about again and again
- Missing the positive signals women send you (this is a big one... I used to coach men in-field. Guys who are relatively experienced with women will pick up on most signs, but there is a very, very consistent pattern of men below the "intermediate" level with women being completely blind to signals women send them, and thinking women aren't interested in them at all and never signal them. I've taken out many guys like this, and I will always find at least some women signaling them... when I send the guy in, he ends up amazed at how friendly the girl is, will ask me how I knew, and will say he did not see any of the signs at all I point out to him that to me seemed very, very obvious she wanted to meet a guy, and in particular was open to meeting him. Often he's disbelieving: "Was she really doing that? How did you even see it? How come I can't see that?" Guys at the beginner level are effectively handicapped in how blind they tend to be to these signals -- women are signaling all around them, sometimes in general, sometimes at them specifically, and these guys cannot see it)
- Things women have told you themselves, either when rejecting you or because you asked them for a reason (pro tip: everybody does this, and women do it even more than men, but when you ask someone "Why didn't you want to do X?" what you get is almost never the actual, in-their-bones reason, but just whatever popped into their heads at the time. The reasons people give you for why they did something are almost never their real reasons, and 99% of the time are something they just pulled completely out of their rear ends. Even as a very socially experienced guy, I have a very hard time getting anyone, man or woman alike, to verbally give me an accurate reason for why he or she chose to do something. No matter what the other person says, you can always dig into it, and it's never the reason he tells you. So when women tell you they don't want to date you because you are "Too nice" or "Not my type" or "Too young" or "Too old" or "Too short" or "Not talkative enough" or whatever it is, just throw that out. And don't ask women for reasons yourself, all you're getting is bad data that will just mess you up. I'll see if I can do a post or article on how to figure out why a woman's rejected you, but asking a woman for her opinion on why she did that relies on an assumption that humans are far more self-aware, and far less emotional, than they actually are. Nobody knows why he does things, and reasons typically are merely justifications. The real reasons are wrapped under layers of appearance-management and reasonable-sounding justifications, and very difficult to get at)
You really need to be able to step outside yourself, just for a little bit, and say to yourself, "Well, I really don't feel like this will work for me, but I'll try it anyway."
You need to be able to logically say to yourself "I have these emotions, and the emotions say this is too hard, and it will not work, and I'll never get there. But, LOGICALLY, this is an area where I am not an expert, I am totally inexperienced, I do not know what I am doing whatsoever, so I am going to set my emotions aside and I am going to go and do the steps and test the processes and try things out and experiment to build a base of experience I do not currently have."
The best place you can start (and I think every new guy, and every guy shaking off a lot of major rust, should start here) is our Newbie Assignment.
You can find that here.
Everything there is in bite size chunks.
It starts out with stuff designed to be as un-scary to you as it can get when it comes to socializing.
Start with Day 1. Everybody wants to skip ahead, and assumes he's smarter than the exercise, so he goes and starts at Day N (not 1), it's too hard, and he gives up.
The point of the assignment is not just "do new things." It is build momentum, and get in a habit of going out, every day, and doing a little bit more. Starting with stuff that feels easy and simple, and building up to stuff that challenges you a little bit, then a little bit more, then a little bit more, until you are pushing on what you're comfortable with, and pulling off things you didn't think you could.
Do the days in order. Complete the assignment.
Suspend your disbelief in your own ability (because this is your ability we're talking about here... you're the one that has to make approaches, flirt, and self-improve; you're the one who either gets dates and women and girlfriends or doesn't -- it's you), and go gain some experience.
And trust that, no matter how sure you feel that you have "figured out" why women aren't interested in you, you're not an expert (either of dating or of female psychology), the data you have coming in is skewed, and your understanding of the issue is not on point.
So go out there, put a little time in, make the approaches, meet some women, test things out, experiment, and get some good data so you can get a more accurate view of women and the world.
Chase
