Men Style

Many guys think giant muscles are the key to getting laid. But are they? Do hulking muscles turn you into a babe magnet… or are their effects subtler and more nuanced than this?

We had a commentator asking me the other day why I don't talk about physique more.

He thought it was because maybe if I admitted that big muscles were really the key to getting laid, I'd have to close down Girls Chase and start selling supplements.

After all... who needs to learn game when you can just get ripped?

Once you've got gigantic muscles, beautiful women just chuck themselves at you. Don't they?

Well... not exactly.

But he's right, I should talk more about physique.

However, like many things here, I'm going to give you a perspective you probably won't get elsewhere.

I'm not going to tell you physique doesn't matter. But I'm also not going to tell you you need to be on gear, lifting hard at the gym 3 hours every day, eating raw steaks for lunch, getting your delts and traps as ridiculous as possible.

Instead I'm going to tell you something else.

Creepiness isn’t about how attractive you are. It’s about behavior. Creepy people behave in ways that set off alarms in others’ heads. Cool people don’t.

What is 'creepiness'?

How do you define it?

A lot of guys really dislike this term. There are all kinds of unfavorable definitions for it out there, such as "Creepy is just what a woman calls a man she does not find attractive."

But everyone's felt creeped out by someone at some point.

Even if you're a guy, I have no doubt you've felt creeped out. Whether by:

• Some shifty character you suspected was getting ready to mug you

• Some gay guy or transsexual you suspected wanted to get with you

• Some lonely individual tagging along with you or your friend group

... you've probably been creeped out by someone.

So what is this 'creepy feeling', exactly?

In the past, I've defined creepiness as being a result of someone hiding his true intentions (see: How to Not Be a Creepy Guy). However, today we'll go deeper still.

You see, there are certain rules that govern 'creepiness'.

The better you know them, the better you will be at not triggering the 'creepy switch'.

Playboys aren’t like ordinary men. Students must realize that while you can adopt the playboy’s material to have more success, his goals will tend to be different than theirs.

Yesterday I wrote an article on having healthier relationships by focusing on turning relationships mutual, rather than adversarial. Not 'compromise', not 'give and take', mind you; mutual.

When I wrote that article, I dove into the research on agreeableness. I thought agreeableness might play a big role in that article, but it ended up with a small part.

However, I did find it relevant for a different conversation I was in. It consisted of a few long-time players I know, both in their 40s, who are in the midst of their wife hunts. The discussion they had, which I joined in, was why do so few playboys and seduction coaches marry beautiful, wholesome wives from their home countries in conventional monogamous marriages?

Obviously there are men who marry beautiful, wholesome wives from their home countries in conventional monogamous marriages. But this is typically not seduction coaches or natural playboys. Instead these men normally do one of the following:

• Marry a (sometimes beautiful) girl from their home country but have a non-monogamous marriage (i.e., they're swingers or they have an open marriage)

• Marry a girl from their home country in a monogamous marriage, but the girl is very unattractive (even if the guy in question historically dated good-looking girls)

• Marry a beautiful, wholesome girl into a wholesome relationship, but the girl is not from their home country (even if the guy has dated more girls from his home country than any other point of origin)

Their concern was, "Maybe the guys who are teaching this stuff and the guys who are learning this stuff are not so perfectly aligned."

The friends I had this discussion with are fairly advanced playboys, who have been in the seduction community for 15+ years, have perfectly respectable notch counts, and have studied under many of the more notable pickup instructors over the years.

Both are in the midst of 'wife hunts' and, struggling with this (i.e., they lay hot girls, but then those girls don't stick around... or they get girls who want to stick around, but those girls aren't hot, or they have problems), have started to question some of their methods and teachers.

The question I'll pose for today is... what is the difference between advanced seducers and ordinary men?

And does this mean if you are like 98% of men, and you are just an ordinary guy searching for an ordinary wife, you should be doing something different than what these teachers tell you?

Introverted guys don't need to become extroverted to achieve consistent success with beautiful women.

Hey guys, and welcome back!

Alek’s recommended reading list. Included: books on philosophy and meaning, and a trove of tomes on sex, romance, and romantic relationships.

Hey everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.

Today I would like to share my reading list. Chase (part 1 | part 2) and Tony Depp (here) have done so in the past, and it’s time I joined the fold.

I usually read academic books that tend to be technical. Although some may be more challenging than others, which is good for you, none are on this list. I also read many scientific publications. I could write a separate article covering interesting papers that I like to read about sexuality and related subjects (within the theme of this site).

The books I am about to recommend are primarily related to the subjects of:

1. Dating

2. Sex

3. Relationships

Other books are about moral philosophy and political theory. They are interesting as they discuss themes like human nature and society.

If not directly related to our field, they can apply to the discussion. I will try to clarify how they tie in with what we look at here, although I will also leave ideas open for you to interpret and apply the theories as you please.

All books written by philosophers are academic with no pseudo-scientific literature. I’m not a fan of cheap self-help philosophy. There will be none of that here.

Without further ado, here is a list of my all-time favorite philosophy books.

The most attractive men stand out. But many men fear standing out too much; to do so is to invite criticism, exclusion, or attack. How do you stand out in positive ways, and not negative ones?

One of the biggest early revelations for me, and one I discussed with our charisma course, which we completed the launch for last week, was that by making myself stand out in various ways, all the way back in junior high school, I suddenly became much more attractive to women.

It wasn't like I became physically better looking, or taller, or more athletic. I'd only changed things like the way I dressed, my hair, my glasses, the way I walked and how fast, and other things. Then, suddenly, every junior high girl and her sister was chasing me for dates. The hottest cheerleaders in school asked me out, as did some cute regular girls (and a few not-so-cute girls too).

At the time I was totally struck by it and could not understand why suddenly I had become this object of fascination for my school's women. After all... I was this loner kid who read books too much, didn't play sports, and for years was considered the 'school nerd'. Why were all these pretty, popular girls chasing me?

Then it clicked for me that I had made myself stand out, in a variety of mostly attractive ways, and that was the reason why.

After that, I became obsessed with standing out. Everywhere I went, everything I did, I had to stand out -- and not just in any way, but in attractive ways.

This is a common thread I see in guys who get good with girls: they always stand out in a variety of attractive, visible ways. Some are ways they tweak their appearances and nonverbals (i.e., their fundamentals); some are ways they behave, and the things they say and do. But they all stand out. They are all recognizably different.

Likewise, I notice with guys who don't get good with girls there is an opposite common thread: they try to fully conform, keep their heads down, and not stand out. They fear standing out and will resist if you try to get them to do it. They will also exaggerate how much they stand out, both internally and to you, claiming they stand out a lot while to you and everyone else they barely stand out at all.

But if you want to get more women into you, and chasing you, and you also want more recognition from men, then you are going to need to stand out.

Byronic flaws make a man more interesting, and much more bondable in courtships and relationships. Yet there’s an art to revealing them that many men often get wrong...

I recently worked with a hard case guy on a repeated relationship problem he has. Periodically, his relationships fail, inexplicably to him, with every woman he dates peeling off and wanting out.

He's been unable to understand why, but with this latest girl she gave him a lot of very clear feedback, that also mirrors feedback he's gotten from other girlfriends, as well as mirrors my own feeling personally with him.

That feedback was this:

That the girl, despite six months of trying to peel back his layers, was never able to get to know the real him. She feels like, after six months of attempts, she's still right back where she started with him, and is tired of trying.

This is a guy who, in most on-paper respects, should be a desirable guy. He's tall, accomplished, has good fundamentals, and good game. He's well-nigh unshakeable in his frame and is relentlessly optimistic (without being unrealistic). He's an ex-military man and is tough-as-nails, yet is also a religious man and is caring and intelligent, if sometimes not always totally attuned to why a woman is doing what she's doing.

What I realized on looking at how this latest girlfriend quit the relationship is that he isn't letting women peel his layers back properly, and this is causing women to feel like they don't even really know him.

Which in turn causes those women to feel like failures, then causes them to leave.

What I said to him was, "You need to help women peel your layers back properly. You might also need to get more comfortable yourself showing people more of whom you are underneath your armor."