Throughout the summer, I went on a cross-country road trip from Wisconsin to Montana. If we’re being totally honest, driving across the country wasn’t my first choice on how I intended to spend my summer. My fiancée was the one who dragged me out to do it. Looking back, I’m glad she did. During my trip, I learned something that will change the way I live the rest of my life. Something I never would have learned in the city.
Continue reading The value of enough in a culture of scarcity
Society has a weird view on what it means to be a man. Like, really weird. Men aren’t supposed to cry or ask for help or get emotional. That’s…”girly”. I mean, what do you call a woman who acts like a man? A “tomboy”. Let’s flip that around. What do you call a man who acts more like a woman? There aren’t any words for that kind of person.
Scratch that. There aren’t any good words for that type of person.
It’s funny. Men who show emotion are labeled as weak. People say things such as “grow a pair” to guys who act that way. It’s as if we’re expected to die atop our white horses rather than have the luxury of being allowed to fall off.
I’m back, baby!
It certainly has been a while since my last article, hasn’t it? Throughout the summer, I’ve been taking a cross-country road trip from Wisconsin to Montana. Also, I’ve become fully convinced that North Dakota does not exist.
Seriously. I drove to the spot labeled “North Dakota” on the map and there was nothing there. What gives?
Today I want to share with you a script that you can use to get your next date. The next time you’re talking to a woman you’re interested in, feel free to use these exact words to ask her out. I’m going over this with you because there are a few good ways to properly ask her out, but almost infinite ways to suck at asking her out.
Continue reading Use these exact words to get your next date
Sometimes, I think back to how dumb I used to be and it makes me cringe.
Back in high school, I used to have a crush on my locker buddy, Olivia. We only had a couple of classes together all throughout high school, but every morning before classes began and every afternoon when we left school at around 3:15 pm we would meet up at our lockers and shoot the breeze for a few minutes. I always looked forward to that.
Honestly, I don’t remember what most of our talks were even about. I guess that’s the thing about memories. Those small details tend to fade away after a while. I no longer remember what we used to talk about or what she wore or even what my own locker combination was. If I went back to my old high school and look at it today, it would probably be much different than how I remember it.
Details fade away, but you remember 1) the people who were there and 2) the way they made you feel. Maybe that’s what really matters.
Continue reading What pickup gets wrong about being confident
There’s a lot of popular advice about how to be confident. When I was too nervous to talk to women, I always heard “Fake it until you make it” or “Just do it, man!” Neither of these really helped much.
Once I heard that you should approach 50 women to overcome your approach anxiety. I’ve encountered over 50 spiders in my lifetime and they still scare the living daylights out of me.
And then you have the dumb@$$ advice on how to be confident…you either “neg” her to undermine her self-confidence or you pretend to be completely indifferent even though deep down you actually do care. Please, don’t do this!
There’s a super counter-intuitive, mundane way to be confident. One that’s so boring that few people ever talk about it.
Continue reading The boring, mundane way to be confident with women
Warning: Political talk below. I had some thoughts about today’s tumultuous US political climate that I feel needed to be said aloud. This will be my first–and probably last–post about politics. If you’re not interested in reading about politics, feel free to skip over this article.
I’m not proud of what I did on my birthday.
One of my friends (who happens to be a male stripper) drove out across the country just so he could celebrate my special day with me. We were eating at McDonald’s and enjoying the best French Fries that fast food has to offer when politics somehow found its way into our conversation. I already knew that politics had a funny way of turning civil discussions into bitter arguments…but there was no way that could happen to me, right?
I was wrong. We learned that he supported Trump while I supported Hillary. It all went downhill after that. I tried to make him see things my way, and he did the same. The more we tried to change each other’s views, the more we just became entrenched in our own beliefs. What was supposed to be a happy day turned into a night of bitter anger.
He came all the way across the country to visit me, too. I wish I could take it all back.
Continue reading How to go high when others go low in today’s political climate
Back when I was in college, I always stressed out about dating. I believed that I absolutely needed to have a girlfriend before Christmas because the holidays are the time of year that you spend with a woman you love. Same thing with New Year’s. And don’t get me started on Valentine’s Day.
None of that helped, though. It just made dating much more stressful for me. If I could go back in time and give some advice to my younger self, I’d tell myself not to take it so seriously.
Dating is supposed to be fun. If you’re finding the whole thing to be a little bit too stressful, maybe it’s time to take a little break from it. There are no deadlines that you need to hit when it comes to finding love. Take some time and go work on yourself. Read a book. Watch your favorite TV. Work on your hobbies. Meet some new people.
Go enjoy yourself! When you’re living a life that you enjoy, dating becomes a lot less stressful and a lot more fun. I promise that the women of this world will still be here when you are ready.
A fellow blogger I know named Amin Lakhani wrote a very vulnerable post describing his most recent breakup. Based on what he wrote, I couldn’t help but reach out to him and offer my thoughts. Feel free to read his post for yourself if you like, but I’ll give you the TL:DR version here:
Amin himself is wheelchair-bound, and he basically says that he started 2018 by breaking up with a woman he was dating and then wondering if he had just made the biggest mistake of his life. He describes her as a very emotionally mature woman but says that he never felt challenged and became bored with her, which ultimately led him to break it off. He compares her to another woman he dated who provided more of a challenge and laments that his most recent ex couldn’t have been more like this other woman.
After I read his post I sympathized with his pain but I also couldn’t agree with a lot of what he was saying. I wrote him a letter expressing my condolences and explaining the things I disagreed with. You can read it for yourself below.
Pay attention to how I talk about:
Let’s talk about confidence.
When I first started looking for love, I always wished that I could be more confident around women. If only I were more confident, I could go right up to a woman that I was interested in and just start talking to her. No more feeling awkward or nervous. No second guessing myself.
However, I’d usually just find some way of talking myself out of it. I’d tell myself things such as, “She probably already has a boyfriend” or “Someone like her would never be interested in me”. If I had a crush on someone, I would try to psyche myself into asking her out beforehand but when the time came and I did see her I just told myself, “She’s probably busy. I’ll ask her out tomorrow.” Of course, when tomorrow came I would just tell myself the exact same thing.
How do you become more confident around women? Especially if you haven’t had a lot of success before?
Continue reading Three ways I made myself more confident around women
I recently got a message about a post I wrote a while ago about flirting. I wrote that when I’m talking to a woman for the first time, I like to lightly touch her on the arm and see how she reacts. One of my readers wrote to me, “But like do you just touch her in the middle of conversation? There has to be a reason for it, no?”
My response? You actually don’t need to have a reason.
This hits close to home for me because I used to struggle with this a lot.
When I was going to kiss my future fiancée for the first time, I was super nervous and super hesitant about it. The moment was right. The mood was right. But I still felt like I needed a reason to do it. So, instead of just doing it and kissing her for the first time, I just kinda let my face hover in front of hers for about half a minute. Like a weird statue.
She still teases me about it to this day.
When it came to interacting with women, I thought that if I was too forward with her or I came on too strongly then I would come off as a douchebag. So, I always thought that I needed a reason to flirt with her or to go up and talk to her or to grab her hand for the first time.
You don’t need a reason to do any of that! It’s okay to just do it.
Obviously, you do want to be aware of social boundaries. Don’t try to grab her or kiss her before you’ve even met her. That does make you a douchebag and hopefully you already knew that.
However, it’s okay to be bold when interacting with her romantically! If you’re talking to a compatible woman then deep down she already knows there’s a possibility that your interactions might become romantic. (And you know what? If you’re lucky enough that’s she’s interested in you as well, then she’s hoping for a romantic interaction!)
So, touch her lightly on the arm as you talk to her. Hug her at the end of the night after your date. Kiss her when the time is right. There’s no need to half-ass your romantic gestures by needing a reason for any of that!