With so much content out there about how to get good with women, it
gets a bit nauseating for beginners. You hear stuff from so many sects
of game that you find your head spinning from the sheer number of
articles and videos. So let me say something no one else seems to have
said thus far: being good at game
simply means being a cool,
witty guy
who can get the job done and not
be butt hurt if things don’t go well.
This is game in a nutshell.
If you are given advice that seems like something a “weird guy”
would do, go ahead and try it out, but chances are, it may not be an
attractive trait. Just be wary.
Often I find this thing called seduction is heavily
complicated. The ability to understand it in both a complicated and
simple way will help you grow and develop this skill. This
understanding can ultimately help you reach your desired end
result. So, considering that I usually go way in depth and overly
complicate every piece of seduction material, today I am going the
other route by breaking down game into its simplest components.
Your silence speaks volumes. But you don’t just need to use it to
be serious; you can use it to increase sexual tension, for better
communication, for humor, and more.
It’s where everything started and it is where everything will return
to.
Silence is the sweetest sound in the universe. It is the language of
God in purest form.
And you aren’t using it properly.
In the past, we’ve covered how to avoid saying something stupid by talking
less. We’ve also covered how to
use the pregnant pause. I also intend to write
some pieces on concision and replacing words with non-verbals whenever
possible; but for now, I simply want to talk about how and when to be
quiet, and why it is so powerful.
Women are supposed to like money. So why don’t nice cars, jobs,
and apartments always get men laid?
In June 2006, I graduated university and took a job. I had an
important-sounding job at a prestigious corporation. Everyone knew the
name of this company, and everyone knew it was a great company. At the
time, I had a less nuanced notion of status more than I do
now, and I figured my great job for a high status corporation would net
me major points on the dating scene. After five months of grinding it
out in college town nightclubs three or four nights a week as just
another student trying to pick up girls, now, at last, I had the magic
pass: I was a high prestige, high
status, money-making machine!
My first month in my new town of Washington, D.C., I made sure every
girl I met found out where I worked and what I did. I did it in a
smooth way; I wasn’t socially awkward about it. I made sure the girl
asked me first where I worked, before I said anything. Most seemed
impressed; I’d often get raised eyebrows and a pleasant, “Oh!” And
when, after a few weeks, I received my business cards, I felt confident
I was about to become unstoppable with girls. I often took to handing
these out to women after I’d made a great first impression, confident
they’d fast get back in touch.
Yet within a month, I’d stashed my business cards away in the corner
of a cabinet somewhere; not a single girl I’d given a card to had
texted or called (and I’d given out a lot of cards). I quit mentioning
my company or position to
girls altogether. But I hadn’t learned my lesson quite yet. A
year-and-a-half later, I went down the
same status symbol road with my sleek Mercedes-Benz, and ended up at
the
same destination: after a month or so of showing it off, I soon shelved
“the Mercedes approach” and began to hide my car from
girls instead.
The reason why was the same both times: when women found out I had a
good job, or a nice car, they didn’t put out. Dates were more awkward;
sex would not happen. Sexual vibes were almost impossible to create.
These status symbols, impressed as my friends and coworkers were,
worked against me with women.
That’s the paradox: make more
money, buy more expensive things, and... get laid less.
But why should this be, when everything you see on TV, the
commercials, and the movies says it’s supposed to work completely
opposite to this?
Jadedness and cynicism can go hand-in-hand with the playboy
lifestyle. But they don’t need to; it’s more effective to bring light.
Sometimes I encounter a funny problem with guys.
Their fundamentals are in good
shape. They have reams of passive value and are all around attractive
men, if you go by appearances.
And they’re great on the technical / social aspect of meeting women.
Their game is tight, they move confidently through the seduction
process, and they have great technique.
Yet they have this nagging issue where they consistently fail to get
results they want.
Maybe they get laid, but not with the girls they want. Or they get
the girls they want, but they won’t hang around. Or maybe they do
everything right, they think, but women reject them far too much.
It’s bizarre, because everything looks good on paper with the guy.
But he just isn’t doing all that great.
Then you get to know the guy a bit better and you figure it out: oh. He’s negative.
It’s just a little mindset difference. Negative vs. positive.
Wouldn’t think it’d have much impact on your dating success, right? But
it does – it has a large influence.
So, does that mean that once your hair has receded past the point of
no return, you’re pretty much screwed? Not at all.
On the contrary, a lot of guys end up realizing that going bald
actually improves their look. It makes them look more dominant,
masculine, tough – a neat combination, don’t you think?
Just read William
Gupta’s thoughts on the topic.
(Highly recommended)
For others, however, going bald means that they end up looking
sickly, older, or just straight-up goofy and weird.
With this piece, I’ll be sharing some practical tips to make sure
that once you make the decision to go bald, you’re in the former
category, not the latter.
What is masculinity? Who defines it – who makes the rules? Is it
intrinsic, or culturally determined? And is it even “real”?
Sometime back, I came across an intriguing double bind.
I found it in the comments section of some feminist website, on an
article written by a man about his enjoyment of pegging (i.e., when a
man lets a woman shag him with a
strap-on). Some male commenter had insulted this writer, and called him
less than a man.
But then, the feminist readers of the website piled onto this
commenter. And they all had the same attack
line for him:
“What’s the matter, are you
not
man enough to take it up the butt?”
It’s a fascinating rhetorical device. Either you agree to receptive
anal sex,
which has profound effects on the male psyche (anecdotally, men who
receive anal sex become more feminine, moodier, and bitchier),
effectively making you no longer a full ‘man’... Or you don’t agree to
receptive anal sex, in which case you are ‘not man enough’.
This double bind got me thinking: what is masculinity, anyway? How
do we define what is or isn’t masculine? Who in our society holds the
right to craft these definitions, women or men? Is masculinity decided
by the society, by the man, or by something else?
The answers will intrigue you, I think.
And don’t worry – in the end, we’ll address that feminist double
bind attack too, and show how a firm concept of masculinity makes
attacks like these run off you like water.
The bad guy compels because he isn’t afraid to speak truth and
break
rules. But more than this – he is a product of his zeitgeist.
There’s been a funny trend of late, in film and other media.
The bad guys are sexy.
They’re cool. Way, way cooler than the good guys.
Vincent in Collateral.
Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old
Men. The Joker in The Dark
Knight.
And among the coolest guys in cinema who aren’t out-and-out bad
guys? Well, the other cool guys aren’t good guys either. They’re
anti-heroes, like Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, Brad Pitt’s Tyler
Durden, or Guy Pearce’s Eric in The
Rover.
The bad guy hasn’t always been cool. In most older movies, the good
guy is significantly cooler, more interesting, and more relatable than
the bad guy.
Yet in more recent films, the good guy is often... Too gullible. Too
naïve. And he stays that way.
You watch old movies, and if the good guy starts off too naïve, he
eventually comes to understand the way of the world, yet remain a
strong, firm good guy at the end of it. In more recent films, the good
guy always finds a way to remain more or less entrenched in his bubble
of ‘correctness’, despite whatever pitfalls befall him along the way.
I propose that in topsy-turvy times, when black is white and up is
down and left is right, those men who attack and upend the established
order of things are those we most intuitively grasp as those who must
be ‘correct’. And because they see fit to buck a powerful trend that
has most individuals cowed, not only are they correct... they are powerful.
And power, no matter what the era, is always sexy and cool.
For our last case study, I wanted to pick someone taller in height,
since elongating the frame has been a big focus point in our first two
articles. This time, we’ll let our subject do that on his own.
An interesting fact about T – our case study for this article – is
a few years ago he was one of my first consultation clients and,
as you’ll see in just a moment, he’s already rocking an exceptional
style and gets the flattering feedback that is expected when you’re
doing a great job with your image.
This also means that even though I’ll cover the basics throughout
this article to make it helpful for guys who are just starting to
improve their fashion game, a major focus throughout this case study is
going to be tackling tougher issues, such as how to approach your image
to get the maximum advantage.
We’ll also get a bit pedantic with the little details. It might feel
like overkill for some, but once the fundamentals are covered, being
mindful about these little details leads to disproportionately big
results.
One last thing that makes this case study fascinating is that we’ll
discuss how we can – and whether we should – adjust our image over time
as our goals and priorities start to change.
This is our second article in the three part “How to Dress Case
Studies” series. You can check out the first part here.
If you haven’t read the first part, let me quickly remind you what
this article series is all about:
To show you how tailoring your image and dressing sexy comes to into
play in the real world, we’ve taken three guys (one for each article in
the series) with unique situations – age, physique, complexion,
climate, and their goals with women and image. And we’ll be tailoring a
few outfits they could very successfully rock in their daily lives and
when meeting women.
To protect the privacy of those who volunteered to participate in
these case studies, I’ve cut out their faces from the pictures and
designated them with one-letter nicknames.
Today’s case study is W, and he just might be the most challenging
and fascinating of them all.
Pedro Pascal’s portrayal of Oberyn Martell is unabashedly sexy. What makes his character so compelling? Fundamentals, panache, and finesse.
There are times in life when we cross paths with men – real men –
men whose very presence sparks a reaction within us: “Wow, here is a
man. I want to be just like him.”
This particular awe-inspiring male personality may differ from
person to person, but each of us have had that experience. Whether it’s
a father figure, a brother figure, a mentor, or a perfect stranger, we
hope to spend enough time around that person to absorb their traits and
learn what they know about masculinity, life, and women.
However, in a world where masculinity is becoming more demonized and
ridiculed, these men aren’t so easy to come by, and they aren’t always
in a position to teach us in a meaningful way. These days, it’s common
to be without access to powerful male role models. Sometimes all we
have to rely on are books and film. We watch a movie, a TV show, or
read a book... and into the scene strolls a man – he may be fictional,
but goddamn is he mesmerizing. So we pay attention.
We often connect more with someone on a screen or page than we do
with anyone else in real life. Personally, there are a host of
fictional characters who have played a more substantial role in my
growth as a man than most real men I’ve met. They were ideals of the
writer or creator transformed into beings worthy of emulation. And this
is nothing new. Ever since the first story was told, men have emulated
the traits of their heroes, real or fictional.
The inception of this series actually began with Giacomo Casanova.
While reading his memoirs, I thought “This guy’s story needs to be told
in a modern form.” I planned on rewriting his adventures, then deeply
analyzing his lays (which number over a hundred and include royalty) so
that GC readers wouldn’t have to work their way through the beautiful
yet difficult translations of his 17th century Italian.
When I dropped that project, however, a very similar idea came to me
– why not analyze the many men of television, cinema, literature, and
history, who are outstanding examples of power and sensuality?
Thus was born “Seduction Spotlight.” The name should speak for
itself.
I will show you in detail how these characters seduce women,
dominate their foes, and exemplify other masculine pursuits, such as
achieving one’s dreams. Through this analysis you should then be able
to truly understand how they do what they do, and, in turn, do it
yourself (adhering to the laws of your land and time, of course).
With this inaugural article, then, I will shine that spotlight on my
personal favorite, Oberyn Martell of the TV show Game of Thrones,
inspired by the Song of Fire and Ice book series written by
George R.R. Martin. Oberyn Martell is played by the actor Pedro Pascal.
Since Oberyn’s character only aired for a little under forty minutes
in the fourth season of Game of Thrones, I cover nearly all his scenes
in order to highlight his fundamentals, game, and mindsets. I’ll cite
the episodes if you want to follow along on your HBO Go, but I’ll also
provide YouTube links for each scene (some YouTube vids are censored).
Here are a pair of videos that cover every scene he’s in if you want
a
compilation:
