I want to provide three principles about dating advice that most people don’t realize are true. These lessons are from experience after taking and trying a lot of dating advice, some of which I paid a lot for.
1. Dating Advice Is Not Additive
There’s a lot of contradictory dating advice and people who believe they are experts who aren’t good at transferring their skills to others or just not good themselves. Most recently, there’s a bit of a rise in attractive women putting out daily talking head videos with dating advice for men and then charging a boatload for it. But they will give some impractical advice for a variety of reasons they’re unconscious of the fact that they’re looking from the perspective of what do they like with men they’re already attracted to. “Just be yourself. Women like men who read and meditate a lot.” They fail to realize there’s a bunch of authentic, skinny nice, socially awkward men that are doing those things that they wouldn’t piss on if they’re on fire. But there are handsome, high-status, charismatic, well-dressed men who they really want to accomplish those things.
Similarly, a lot of other advice, especially within the pick up artist sphere, clashes with other advice from other experts. One says to be authentic. Another says to go direct and express your intentions. The others say to go indirect as it gives you more of a chance beyond your initial looks and impression. People just have a lot of contradictory opinions and the more you learn, the more confusing and conflicting it gets.
Beginners fail to notice this because they’re new. I usually find classmates who are super open to advice and will take anyone and everyone’s advice, not realizing not all advice is created equal. I recommend trusting people who have accomplished what you’re after, preferably starting where you did, and have helped others achieve this consistently. It sounds obvious but I see people taking advice from friends, family, fellow classmates, associate coaches/employees of the coach that are good at business but not as good at dating.
Pick one and stick with it for a while.
2. Setting Boundaries Makes You Respected and Successful in Relationships And Prevents You From Being A Spineless, Unattractive Nice Guy
Boundaries isn’t a sexy piece of advice that goes viral on social media. But it can make or break you in dating. If you’re constantly chasing, needy, and putting your partner on a pedestal, they will test your boundaries and walk all over you. They’re looking for someone of equal and higher value. If you’re acting like a servant around them, you’re signaling you are lower value and they will treat you as such and move on from you.
This applies for business as well. Warren Buffett recently decided to live stream his annual shareholder meeting for the first time. I was watching an interview of the man from Yahoo! responsible for the live stream talk about the arrangement.
He said that Warren set a very clear and simple arrangement: we will give you the wire to the broadcast, plug it in, and if you don’t have it ready in X number of days, we will look to someone else.
He had a very specific number of days for the deadline (I used X to substitute the number since I don’t remember the exact number).
When you are operating on such a high level, you can easily clog up efficiency with inefficient deadlines or vague promises.
There comes a point where you have to set boundaries for your own health. Because people are out there who will manipulate, trick, scam, or push on those boundaries. It’s within their nature to see how much is this person willing to kiss my ass. It’s within a woman’s nature; they’re not being evil, just testing to see if you have a spine and self-respect.
If you are way too lenient, nice, or people-pleasing, it will show that you are weak or easily exploited and not a protective partner.
Here are some examples of how you can set a boundary:
- Meetings and deadlines. If a friend or employee keeps missing deadlines or rescheduling, it can show extreme lack of discipline and professionalism. If you show too much lenience too often, they will just get worse.
- Physical touch boundaries. Very important for women. Not saying anything could communicate the wrong implied message.
- Lack of respect when talking. If you don’t speak up and say something is wrong, they may not know.
A great way of keeping things firm is the “Do this or we walk” method from Warren Buffett.
It’s not super threatening and aggressive, but more than firm enough.
Examples include:
“If you don’t have the project in by March 15, we will find someone else to do it.”
Important things to note about the subtle tone of the situation:
- The requirements are not super difficult to reach. In Warren Buffett’s case, they were more than easily achievable: plug in the live stream wire and get it prepped to start working in time. Having impossible to reach deadlines makes you look like an unreasonable dick.
- It’s very clear what the deadline is and the consequences of not achieving it. I have experimented with using this myself when someone was very unprofessional and rescheduled a confirmed meeting I set time for: “I’ll reschedule just once more. If you fail, I’m not doing this anymore.” The consequence was clear. If you keep it vague and open like “Oh, yeah, whenever you are free.” They will feel more and more like it’s totally okay to be unprofessional and get worse. I’ve seen this before.
In romance, this could apply to a bigger relationship issue: “if you cheat on me, I am leaving you; no exceptions” or “if you continue to go out to nightclubs without me, we are no longer in a relationship.” You have to be able to walk if they break it. If not, you will look like a loser and they’ll leave you or know they can walk all over you and you lose a lot of respect and power.
3. Indictors of Interest (IOIs) Are Weak At Best
Back in the 2010s, it used to be that if you got a phone number or a nice look from a woman, you believed she was definitely interested in you. As we have learned after seeing many phone numbers flake, many Instagrams obtained that don’t follow you back, and many indicators of interest, like physical touch or playing with her hair, that don’t lead anywhere, we realized that these are not sure fire things. They’re weak indicators of possible interest at best.
Putting so much weight into any of these, kissing a woman, having a long conversation, or getting a phone number, is a mistake for novices. The kids on social media may celebrate that as a big win. But the experts know that women are sometimes just being nice or love attention, but they don’t actually have attraction towards you.
So how can we avoid that deep disappointment later when we find out the number is fake or they flake on the date? Don’t depend or rely so much on IOIs. Instead, invest in the skills of generating attraction and gauge compliance. For men, there’s at least a dozen if not two dozen things we can improve to attract women. We aren’t as dependent on just our looks as women because fertility wasn’t the most important biological factor for men. There’s leadership, humor, intelligence, athleticism, health, confidence, and so many other factors.
And we can gauge her interest with compliance. Is she willing to move around with me? Is she willing to go on a date with me? Is she actively doing things with me? I’ve seen some men get overly excited because a woman is talking to him for a long time, only to find out later that she never moved her feet, showed compliance, and it went nowhere with her.
