This is a series about
relationships - why we need them, how we get them, and how we keep
them. There will be several parts. This is the second - it focuses on
the changes you have to make. Additional parts will (or already do)
include:
- identifying the target; (click here)
- how we take control of our environment to make it friendly to our efforts; (click here)
- the difference between getting relationships and keeping them;
- real interpersonal feedback - quantitative concurrence;
I'm sure there will be more to this as it evolves, but that's what you have to look forward to. Off we go.
So let's suppose you've set your sights on the kind of relationship(s)
you believe will best serve your quest for long-term happiness. And
let's further suppose that you've correctly assessed the market of
desirable targets, and that you've successfully enhanced your looks and
personality such that you now have wide access to the people with whom
you hope to become close. You're there, right? The world is your oyster. Not exactly.
The
interesting thing about the quest for ideal relationships is that what
you do to get in the door is not the same as what you do to develop and
maintain rewarding interpersonal connections. You see, the love game
is a bit like a funnel filtering system. You start by making yourself
as broadly attractive as possible (to your desired audience, that is) -
multitudes of candidates enter the wide top of your funnel. Then, you eliminate candidates that
don't work for you - winnowing them down until just the right one (or
ones) come out the narrow bottom of the funnel. Perhaps ironically,
the winnowing down part is dramatically different than the attraction
part in terms of strategy and tactics.
When you're attracting, you're working off a basic understanding of
human nature and what gets people interested in other people. So you
get the attention of your targets by looking like you have something
going for you and that care about how you're perceived (you're not
obsessed, you're just aware). Face it - relatively speaking, no one
worth a crap is interested in a total slob. On the flip side, no one's
interested in someone so obsessed with how they look that they've
strayed into the land of the orange tan, way over-sized fake books, and
duck-lips look (for women) and the land of the over-built, orange tan,
shaved head-to-toe, and perpetually in gym clothes look (for men).
Beyond looks, you emphasize the aspects of your personality that
separate you from others - you make sure you're interesting.
Additionally, you demonstrate value, as they say in the pick-up
community. You have something to offer. It could be that you're
always a barrel of laughs, or that you're exciting, or that you're rich
(and therefore able to provide endless luxuries and entertainment
possibilities). Whatever. The point is that you have a gimmick (or
gimmicks) - broad appeal during the attraction phase, which necessarily, though unfortunately,
means that you're likely to attract people with whom you have little
chance of any long-term connection. Here's where it gets dicey.
I've talked to guys who say that they can't even imagine having more
prospects for relationships than they might want. They're saying, "At
this point, I'll take what I can get." Aside from being a lame-ass
defeatest attitude, this is a recipe for disaster. Self-esteem is on
the line here. If you're a worthwhile human being, then there are
literally hundreds of perfect matches for you out there. Nevermind the
romantic fantasy of the one, the fact is that the numbers are
extremely in your favor. You just have to get your act together to
start feeding as many of your targets as possible through your funnel.
You have to become attractive and courageous, and anyone can do it.
The good news is that, though it may feel contrived at first, the
process of enhancing your looks and personality will help you develop
the self-esteem that you desperately need if you want to find lasting
relationships that are built on mutual respect and admiration (and this
is the grail, folks). So let's say you're making progress. You're trying to attract targets en masse into your funnel, and it's working. Then what?
Now you start screening. It's a delicate process, but what you're
essentially doing is gingerly revealing what really matters to you in
life, while making sure to keep the attraction strong. For example,
say you opened a woman at the cleaners with some witty banter about
fashion and what-not. She inferred from your looks and demeanor that
you're a confident person, and she inferred from the clothes you were
picking up that you are probably somewhat successful. She may have
even seen your car (if it's nice or novel) and inferred the same
thing. In any case, you ask for her number and she gives it to you.
Then what?
No dates. Read that again. You do not take her on a date. At least
not one where you pay, not at first. This is a chump move, and you're
not a chump. You find something that you can both go to or do that is
either low cost or no cost. In my single days, I would invent some
task that I had to perform and ask girls if they wanted to join me -
usually something during the day. For example, say you're in the
market for a new couch. This is perfect. You're spending time
together getting to know one another without any real pressure. There
are opportunities aplenty for horseplay and to see how each of you
deals with the general public, traffic, and so on. (All this stuff
tells you tons about people.) The money grubbers will be disappointed
that you're not showering them with expensive events to impress them,
so they'll wash right out of the program early. That's the plan.
(Quick sidenote - to avoid ending up in the "friend" category, it's imperative to make your intentions known up front. I told my a girl once - she is now my wife - that though she had a boyfriend and thought of us as just friends, I had every intention of kissing her one day and taking her away from him. She laughed, and so did I. But she knew I wasn't kidding, and there kindled the beginnings of real attraction. If a target says he or she only wants to be friends, I think Neil Strauss' response is great - "I never put that kind of limitation on my relationships." I love that. It sends the message loud and clear, and, to some extent, just having the confidence to push beyond the "let's just be friends" category is critical to winning hard targets.)
The idea underlying the slow revelation process is that you don't want someone who just likes
you because of some enhancement that doesn't really reflect who you are
or what really matters to you. I'm assuming that you're smart enough
to know that material success is no foundation upon which to build a
relationship. Nevertheless, part of your gimmick during the attraction
phase may very well be the appearance of success - clothes, car, home,
etc. So you use it to initiate attraction - yes, even the most
down-to-earth and high-quality people are attracted to successful
people - but you deemphasize it once the attraction is
established.
You're theme is something like, "Yeah, I'm successful,
but only so I can have more time to mountain bike or hang with my
friends or whatever." High-quality people will appreciate this.
Shallow people will be baffled - to them, material success,
particularly the appearance of it, is the end game. Shallow,
gold-diggers should never make it through your screening process. If
they do, your funnel has a leak near the top.
So you're making headway with this woman. She has accompanied you on
your couch shopping adventure, and you've both had a great time.
You've started talking on the phone regularly. You find yourself
thinking about her all the time, and you get the warm fuzzies when you
talk. In short, you feel that love is blooming. All is well, right?
Maybe, and maybe not.
There are two extremes to address when love begins to bloom. One is
the resistance to commitment; the other is the rush to commitment.
We'll start with the latter. There's a very real risk when you haven't
had many love experiences (especially recently) that your emotions
might overwhelm you and render your rational mind nothing more than a
hat rack. When those physiological processes start clicking in your
brain after being long dormant, it's a rush. It's meant to be. Your
caveman mind is wired to do whatever it takes to maintain these
feelings because they often lead to offspring, which, as we know, is
the true aim of our genes. Fortunately, however, we're tens of
thousands of years beyond being totally at the mercy of our genes. We
can now deliberately decide which emotions make sense and which ones
may not.
Think about the famous words of Percy Sledge in, "When a Man Loves a
Woman" - "He'll turn his back on his best friend if he put her down."
Does this make sense? Not usually, but love has that effect. It turns
our thinking minds to mush. The only defense against it is a rational,
prepared mind. So, even when love is blooming, we have to be aware
that we're still in the screening process. There's a lot that goes
into a lasting, meaningful relationship, and it takes time to determine
if it's all there. More importantly, it's critical to maintain the
willingness to walk away if things aren't working - and to advertise
that willingness.
Nothing will drive away a potential new love than overt neediness.
This demonstrates excessive vulnerability, which is the mother of all
turn-offs. Like I said, you have to maintain some of what you did
during the attraction phase in order to effectively navigate the
screening process. Some would say, "But I don't want to play games. I
just want to be honest about my feelings." Great, I'm right there with
you, but like it or not, this is a game, and losers show their hands
too soon. Feel free to spill your heart to your buddies. They'll
admire you for feeling so strongly while sticking to your tactical guns
and not turning into a clinger. This is necessary not just to avoid
turning your potential new love off, it's a critical part of rational screening.
The moment you let yourself turn to needy mush with a target, your
ability to rationally analyze whether the person is right for you in
the long term goes haywire. You're in loooove, and everything
is wonderful. So what if he's 40 living at home with his mom and still bouncing checks - he's a
sweet, family-oriented guy. Yeah. Suuuure. So what if she turns into
a bitchy princess when she's had too much to drink - she's so nice most
of the time, and you've never dated such a beauty. Uh huh. Whatever
you have to tell yourself. No, when you keep your distance during the
early days of love's bloom, you give yourself the absolute best chance
of success in the long-term. Guys, go rent, "The Tao of Steve" to see what I mean. Girls, just watch, "Wedding Crashers." It's all there.
The bottom line is that when you're attracting, the air of indifference
is essential. Targets need to get the impression that you could take
them or leave them. This naturally builds attraction. Once the
attraction is established and the relationship is progressing, you slowly
replace the indifference with interest, untimately ending in
vulnerability. It's a process that should, in most cases, move fairly
slowly. If you think you're just being honest by jumping to vulnerable
right away, you'll end up in love's gutter more often than not. The
measured indifference maintains the attraction and simultaneously gives
you the distance you need to properly execute the screening process to
determine if there's a long-term fit. I've dwelled on this a lot
because I think most attractive people with relationship problems do
this part wrong more than anything else. Now to the never-commit crowd.
There's a danger to being too good at the attraction phase. This is
the problem that plagues celebrities. You have so many options that
it's simply too easy to cut someone loose if things start getting
tough. I sat next to a gorgeous young lady on a plane from New York to
Atlanta a few months ago. We started chatting, and she eventually
confided that, though she dates all these mega-rich guys (with their
own private planes and the like), she can never keep them. I explained
to her that this only makes sense.
Why would any good-looking playboy want to settle down when he could
just find someone new anytime he wanted? (This kind of attitude
reflects a gross misunderstanding of how important long-term
relationships are to our happiness. Nevertheless, thanks to our genes,
it's pervasive.) She nodded that I was right. She said that she and
her girlfriends were always saying that they needed to stop dating
those kinds of guys. Alas, they're addicted to the lifestyle, so it'll
probably never happen. I told her that she should be on the lookout
for a good-looking ambitious guy who hasn't made it yet, but almost
certainly will. NYC is full of them. Those are the guys who will
appreciate a woman who chose them when they were nothing. And that's
the key - appreciating what you have.
This, I believe, is the epiphany that hit Neil Strauss
somewhere along his journey to pick-up artist fame. He was so good at
attracting and bedding ladies that he was never actually connecting
with any of them. Finally, he realized that what he was doing was
shallow and meaningless, so he decided to start screening. When he
did, he met the girl that I think he is still with. (See Part 2
in this series.) He recognized that the benefit in terms of long-term
happiness that comes with weathering storms with one person is immense,
especially when compared with what you get from just hooking up with
someone on a short-term basis. It's all about commitment.
Doing the screening process right is essential because the end game is
some sort of commitment. It doesn't have to be overt or official,
although that tends to help when things get tough. You're just
concluding that this is someone you want in your life for a long time,
maybe forever. Those who don't grasp how valuable it is to go through
hard times with someone and come out on top will jump ship at the first
sign of trouble. How many marriages in Hollywood last longer than even
five years? Not many. Those people are so attractive that their
funnel is virtually full at all times, so when the choice is to ride
out a tough spot with one person or shack up with someone ten years his
or her junior, we all know what usually happens. This is a shame. We should never forget the following maxim: it
is in our nature to get the most gratification and appreciation from the
things we have labored the most for. Relationships are no different,
and we can see the results of always going the easy way by noticing how
neurotic so many of these celebs are. Most of us should be thankful we
don't have it so good.
In closing this part, let me pose a question. If the end game is
commitment, how do you know when to be vulnerable, to be needy, to show
your cards, so to speak? How do you know when to commit? There's no
absolute right answer, but I think there's a way to approach it that
has a lot to offer. That'll be the subject of the next and final part
in this series - quantitative concurrence. Until then...