The "Three Mistake Minimum" Rule on Dates

I've had a lot of girls ask recently how they can be more "open," more authentic, more vulnerable. They recognize that these dispositions not only allow them to be their true feminine selves, but are also attractive to men in a non-sexual way. This post is for them. If you are the kind of girl who prides herself for "speaking her mind" on dates, this post is not for you. In fact, you probably need to shut up more.

When my friend and I used to go out in San Diego, we would sometimes make a rule at the beginning of the night: no one could go home until they'd approached and been rejected five times by girls. If you were successful and chose to leave the interaction or got a phone number, it didn't count towards the total. Sometimes we would aim for three rejections, other times five rejections, and on ambitious nights we'd shoot for ten. It made for some fun times. The way we saw it, if we weren't getting rejected often, it meant we weren't trying hard enough. More importantly, it made approaching easier. If we knew we had to get rejected ten times anyway, we'd think "might as well get started now." It always worked. What at first seemed like recklessness actually made us successful, because our indifference to rejection gave us the bearing we needed to communicate our confidence; and women ended up liking us more.

As I pointed out in a seemingly unrelated post, taking risks is something we all need to do in order to succeed. We tend to avoid risks because they lead to failure, but risk-taking is also a prerequisite for success. We have to embrace the chance of failure if we want to succeed. This applies to dating as much as every other aspect of our lives. While there are many things we can control to attract the opposite sex, experience shows us that not everything can be manipulated, and there is a point at which we need to let go and accept the limits of our influence.

A lot of women find first dates nerve-racking. Whether or not they realize or admit it, they are nervous because they see a first date as a time to perform, a single opportunity to show their best side to a man, a critical chance to impress him. They are self-conscious because they want to avoid doing something stupid or unattractive. If you are one of these women, you know exactly what I am talking about. It can be paralyzing.

When you are having a conversation on a first date, all kinds of thoughts and reminders are constantly passing through your mind. Some of them seem appropriate and you verbalize them, but many you veto because you aren't sure if he'll agree, or whether he'll be interested. These are things that you would say without a moments' hesitation in front of a work acquaintance or a friend; but you don't want to say something that will turn off your date, or make him think that your tastes or opinions differ too much from his. So you leave these things unsaid.

Example 1 - He mentions a boring, generic Hollywood movie he saw the other day and really liked, and asks what the most recent movie you've seen was. You tell him that it was A Separation. When he asks how you liked it, you balk. You thought it was incredible, the best movie you've seen in years; but you are hesitant to tell him so because you doubt he appreciates foreign (let alone Persian) films, and he might even think you are a little weird because of it. You tell him "It was good... different, but good" and change the subject.

Example 2 -  You met online and it's your first date. He invites you to dinner but doesn't tell you the name of the restaurant ahead of time. You've had a long day so you are hoping for someplace casual where you can just kick back and have a beer with him. When he picks you up he is a lot hotter in-person than you expected. He takes you to a fairly fancy place, and when the waitress comes, he orders a cocktail. You do too, even though you never drink anything other than Bud Light and think cocktails are kind of pretentious.

In both instances you lack authenticity. This kind of guarded, deferential mentality is preventing you from being your true self. More to the point here, it is preventing you from finding a man that is truly compatible with you. I've been on dates with girls that have been very open and genuine, and I've had absolutely no interest in them because of it. They showed their true colors, and I didn't like them. But these girls are far closer to finding a guy than the women I've dated several times without ever feeling like I knew who they were. A few of these girls gave me glimpses of their true selves occasionally, and I loved what I saw. But the glimpses were far too brief and fleeting for me to really know whether it was representative or not - in other words, whether or not it was worth hanging around for. So I didn't.

You probably assume this guarded mentality in order to prevent yourself from failing with men (looking stupid); but it is also preventing you from succeeding with them. The kind of guy who would like what you decided against saying will think less of you for your silence, while the guy who would think poorly of you for it probably isn't right for you anyway. Your attempt to make the date work by avoiding your natural inclinations is futile, because, although your instinct is right - it will prevent you from looking stupid - it will also prevent you from being attractive to the men you are most suited for.

So next time you are on a date, do the equivalent of what my friends and I used to do in the bars of San Diego: do not go home until you've made a conscious effort to push through your reservations and express the things you would say in non-date situations - at least three times. In other words, don't go home until you've made three "mistakes." Remind yourself of this just before meeting him for the date, and then anytime you are alone during it (e.g. when you go to the bathroom). If you want to get hyper-practical about it, set an alert on your phone, so that you get a little vibrate reminder part-way into the date. If you get to the end of the date and still haven't hit three, just ask him anything you want  to know about him but "isn't appropriate" to ask.


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The Importance of Silence After a Break Up

If you've been reading this blog for any time now, you are familiar with the idea of cutting off a man after he breaks up with you. I want to explain a little more systematically the reasons why this is important. Keep in mind that by "break up" I mean any situation in which a man makes it clear that he is no longer interested in pursuing a sexual or romantic relationship with you: not calling after he gets your number, fading out after sex or a few dates, or explicitly ending a long term relationship. In any of these situations, cutting him off completely will accomplish five things:

1. It will show him that you are a woman of high value. It will demonstrate that you are a woman who isn't desperate or needy - a woman who can live without him (because you can). Men find this attractive in a woman. Although this demonstration is unlikely to increase his attraction for you enough to make him change his decision, you will avoid confirming him in his decision by showing him that you are needy, pathetic and desperate - all of which are obvious symptoms of being below his league.
2. It will show him what he is missing by way of contrast. By forcing him to experience life with you, and then suddenly without you (in other words, before and after the break up), you will emphasize whatever feelings he has as a result of his decision. First he has you, then he doesn't. The starker that contrast is, the more he will feel your absence, and the more likely it is that he will miss you and want you back. Again, it is unlikely that this effect will be enough to make him change his mind, but in some instances it will be. (Note: it is also possible that cutting him off will show him how much he doesn't miss you, but if this is this case then there is nothing you can gain by contacting him anyway - it is unquestionably over.)
3. It will force him to think about his options seriously. As long you stay in touch with him, he will know that he can have you back at any moment, and he will feel no urgency to reverse his decision. By staying in touch with him, you effectively give him a "safety net." Even if he doubts his decision, he will have nothing forcing him to act one way or the other. He will simply go about his life, waiting until his “feelings about you become clear” (which they never will). 
4. It will empower you. Although you have no control over his decision to break up with you or stop dating you, you can control what happens as a result of that decision. In fact, you are the sole person capable of "enforcing" the consequences of his decision. By hanging on and hoping to get him back, you give him all of the power. But if you force him to live with the consequences of his decision (i.e. making him live without you when he says "it's over"), you exercise your agency, your power. You seize what little control you can in the interaction. Although this probably won't change the outcome of the situation, it will go a long way towards bolstering your ego and self-esteem in the face of his rejection. You will transform yourself from someone who is pathetic and dejected in light of inevitable circumstances, into a person who exercises influence on the outcome of her situation - and her ex's situation. The added benefit (as explained in the other points of this post) is that by doing so you don't even sacrifice any of the likelihood that he will take you back - in fact, if anything, you increase it. 
5. It will make him doubt his future options. This is probably the most important mechanism at work in your attempt to get him back, and it will be powerful in proportion to the length of the relationship with you that he is ending. If you stay in touch with him in an attempt to salvage things, you will confirm his belief that he can find someone better (which is his implicit motive for dumping you). The longer you stay in touch with him after the break up, the more he will think "Hmm... if she wants me so badly, girls who are hotter and sweeter will probably like me enough to date me too. Why would I take her back when I know I could do better?” While he might not be so calculating as to have this thought explicitly, I absolutely guarantee you that this thought passes through his subconscious and has a profound influence on his thinking about the break up. And it will occur to him even if you aren't making an active effort to get him back, but "just" texting or calling each other from time to time. He knows you wouldn't stay in touch unless you were interested in getting back together - he knows being "just friends" isn't workable. But, if you cut him off, he won’t know whether or not he just threw away the best girl he could get, and that doubt is priceless in making him consider coming back to you.

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If you liked this post, you'll definitely like my book, Beyond the Breakup, in which I add a 6th point that I overlooked when writing this post originally. I also explain a lot more about the practical side of cutting a guy off - what to say, when is "too late," and what to do if he gets back in touch.

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What Men Think About Valentine's Day

The average guy doesn't like Valentine's day. Aside from the obvious fact that the holiday is driven by marketing hype much more than by the honest needs of relationships, men dislike Valentine's day because it places pressure on them to express their feelings in unnatural and effeminate ways, and often to a degree they feel unprepared for.

On Valentines's day, men are expected to show their undying love for their woman by following a script prescribed by Hallmark or Flowers.com, and promoted by Hollywood: flowers, fine dining, exuberant cards, rose petals, teddy bears, etc. If a man doesn't follow this script, he suffers the consequence of disrupting the relationship. But if he does follow it, he feels like an emasculated pushover, forced by social pressures into expressing feelings that he may or may not have in ways that would never have occurred to him naturally. Either way, he loses.

Not every man understands his own distaste for the holiday. Maybe a man's aversion to Valentine's day is manifested as nothing other than a small feeling of annoyance in the back of his mind as he tries to pick the least-gay card off the shelf in CVS (from among thousands of cards designed for women, by women). But this annoyance is rooted in the fact that he feels forced into expressing himself in unmanly ways.

A man demonstrates his love for you regularly in ways that aren't as ostentatious as a large bouquet of roses, but run deeper for their lack of overt exhibition: he commits to you willingly, he suppresses his desire to be with other women, he avoids reminding you of that desire, he attends to your emotional needs without complaint, he holds you and protects you, etc.

In addition, men are skeptical of Valentine's day because they know it is (at least partially) motivated by a woman's need to demonstrate to her friends how much she is loved - sometimes more so than it is motivated by a true need for the visible symbols of that love. Again, while most men might not recognize this consciously, it is implicit in their thought that the Valentine's day traditions seem overdone and excessive - because they are excessive if all that drives them is the woman's need for visible expressions of love.

I am not saying that no man likes to express his love through a card or flowers, or that men don't enjoy romantic dates. Some probably do. And I am not saying that there is no need for visible signs of affection in relationships, because there is. They have a time and a place (especially if the man and woman both express their love through gifts). What I am saying is that when a man doesn't get to choose that time and place, and when his hand is forced by the social pressures of a vacuous holiday, his masculine decisiveness and authority are called into question, and he resents it.

So this year I suggest you do three things to help your man through the awkwardness of Valentine's Day:

1. De-emphasize Valentine's Day by dismissing it openly to him as a marketing ploy. Say something like "Valentine's Day is such a farce; if there weren't decorations in the grocery store and commercials on TV, no one would even remember it after five years. It's purely driven by marketing." (Do not tell him not to get you anything, as this might give him the idea that you don't like receiving gifts.)
2. Get him something small. The biggest pressure on Valentine's Day comes from the "culture" within the relationship to make a big deal out of it. By only getting him something small (like a card or dressing up in lingerie), you take a lot of the pressure off him the next year.
3. Curb whatever desire you have to show off on Valentine's Day. Aside from fact that your single female coworkers will probably murder you when you receive roses and a huge teddy bear at the office, recognize that a truly confident woman who is secure in her relationship doesn't need the external affirmation of her peers' jealousy.
4. Recognize the existing expressions of his love for you, as described above. This will help you to realize that you don't need chocolates on some arbitrary day in February. (If there aren't any common expressions of love in your relationship, you probably shouldn't be together.)

Before you complain that taking the pressure off a man on Valentine's Day makes it "too easy for him," consider this: by stepping back and letting a man do that to which he is naturally inclined, you adopt the same attitude that you do when you don't initiate contact with a man, or when you cut off a guy that breaks up with you: you are stepping back and accepting what happens, even if it isn't what you expected and hoped for. Just like you gain nothing by artificially perpetuating a relationship by constantly contacting a guy who doesn't like you very enough, so too do you discern a man's true feelings for you by taking off the pressure and letting his actions on Valentine's Day (or at other times) reflect his true feelings for you. Don't deceive yourself by reveling in a forced sign of his affection.

If your man refuses to celebrate Valentine's Day, but you don't agree with him that it is ridiculous, your best bet is to employ the tactics of the author's wife in this post:
http://masculine-style.com/you-know-shes-a-keeper-when/


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Why Do You Want Him Back?

I get a lot of e-mails from women who are desperate to win back a guy that has slowly stopped contacting them, or explicitly broken up with them, or refused to engage in an exclusive relationship. They want to know what they can do to "make him want me again." Rather than giving them advice about what will hook him and pull him back in, I point out something to put the situation in perspective...

When a man rejects a woman, her desire to get him back usually consists of two parts:

(a) her desire to be with a man she really values and is attracted to, and
(b) her desire to prove that, deep down, he actually does want her.

In my experience, women are often (if not usually) motivated more by (b) than they are by (a). That is, they want to regain their pride more than they actually want to be with the guy in question. I've had a number of women even tell me (after taking a moment to think about it) that the guy they want back so badly is nothing like the man they imagine themselves marrying. In some cases, they admit that they probably would have ended things with him if he hadn't done it first - or even that they can see themselves ending things sometime down the road if he takes her back. Their authentic desire to be with him is rarely the motivating factor for wanting him back - even if it still plays a small part.

So before you drive yourself crazy trying to salvage a newly-ended relationship, think for a moment about your motivations: do you really want to be with him, or are you just trying to fix your wounded pride? Because your pride will naturally heal over time. But forcing yourself back into a relationship that he chose to end once already is a good recipe for having him end it again, which will just scar your ego further.

By acknowledging your real motivations, you will make it easier to come to terms with the breakup and be able to move on as quickly as possible.

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If you liked this post, you'll definitely like my book, Beyond the Breakup, which says a lot more about understanding your mindset and your ex's in the wake of a breakup.


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Men Don't Have Commitment Problems

A girl I used to sleep with is now dating a guy who refuses to make their relationship official, and she is constantly complaining to me about his "commitment problems." I've heard this before from other women in similar situations, so let me clarify something: men don't have commitment problems.

Claiming that men have commitment problems implies that men have some kind of commitment obligation. But there is no world view in which men are obligated to resist their desire for female variety and become monogomous. Even though some world views claim that this is a respectable or virtuous thing to do (as some religious views do), most men will not respect that opinion, let alone share it; and the few that do will have to fight their natural tendencies to follow it. By expecting men to commit against their natural inclinations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

Men only commit to women they have strong feelings for, and even then they are making a sacrifice. If you find yourself claiming that a guy you like "has commitment problems," be honest with yourself: the truth is that he doesn't like you enough to commit. Get over it.

Claiming that men have commitment problems is similar to men claiming that women are whores because they like a guy that is more successful or confident. Both are wrong, obnoxious, and rooted in self-deception; and both sexes need to stop using them as excuses.

If you suspect that he thinks he can do better than you (but can't), you are not going to bring his head out of the clouds by hanging around waiting for him to change his mind. This will only contribute to his self-delusion. The best thing you can do is to forget about him, move on, and work improving yourself. Then the next time you will be able to keep a guy of that caliber.

Never Tell a Man Why He Shouldn't Want to Date You

One of the funniest but wisest quotes I've ever read was from the recent bestselling book & Twitter feed "Shit My Dad Says." The author recounts a time when he was telling his father about a girl he'd just been on a date with. Dejected, he tells his dad that she is obviously out of his league. His dad replies:

"That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them."

Of course the advice in this specific instance is about sex and women. But encapsulated in his words is a lesson that many people - men and women - painfully need to learn. Regardless of how bad your situation in life is, you should always hold your head high and illustrate or describe your personal situation in the best light possible. There is simply never a need, under any circumstances, to highlight the negative aspects of your life. There will always be external factors working against you - biology, genetics, social stigmas, gossip, etc. You don't need to contribute to them. Never tell a man why he shouldn't want to date you.

I've been dumbfounded at some of the shit women tell me on dates. It reflects so poorly on them, yet they tell it to me voluntarily. I get the impression that they are trying to be "candid" or "unfiltered," but that intention is only appropriate for people who have nothing in their life that needs to be filtered.

Although there are some situations in which it is necessary to do so, as a rule you should never voluntarily talk about or even mention any of the following:

1. Guys that have broken up with you, or any failed relationships
2. Difficulties you have finding a guy
3. How much it sucks being single
4. That you have been raped or physically abused
5. Any bad life experiences you've had (or are having)
6. Family drama (e.g. that your mother despises your father's parents)
7. Your lack of a social life
8. Your dissatisfaction with your current life situation
9. Your struggles with depression, a disability, or being a single mother
10. How much you hate your job

I am not making this list up. I went on a second date with a girl once who spent the whole time telling me about her parents' ongoing divorce, how crazy it was and how she and her siblings kept fighting. Word-by-word, she painted a hugely unattractive picture of her life, and I lost attraction for her because of it. Another time - before we'd even gone on a date - a girl told me she'd been raped by two black men in college (she was trying to disarm a comment I made about her being "innocent"). I never asked her out.

It isn't as if all negative comments need to be purged from your conversation. It is fine to mention small things, like "God, it's so frustrating; the seats of my BMW are taking sooo long to break in..." or "Argh! I hate this cell phone, it is constantly auto-updating." While these kinds of comments might make you seem frivolous, it is better that these are the problems on your mind, rather than your upcoming psychiatric exam or how you can't possibly pay the rent next month. When it comes to big things, keep your mouth shut about anything negative.

If you have serious issues that you think your boyfriend should probably know about, like a serious STD or an alcoholic father, you can and probably should tell him about them - eventually. Bring up the bad things only after he's had a chance to see the positive aspects of your life that outweigh them.