More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
When you’re with a woman, spend most of your time looking at her in general and plenty of time looking into her eyes specifically.
Conversation is the bedrock of romantic proof. The time, attention, and humor invested in the conversation matter more than the specific subject matter.
After she tells you her name, repeat her name to yourself until you remember it. Use active listening, pay attention to what she’s saying, and give little nods and reactions as she speaks. Ask about her background, interests, values, and preferences, and weave them into your dialogue. Show energy and enthusiasm in your words, face, and gestures.
Most young guys suck at paying real attention to a woman when they’re talking. They worry too much about sounding smart and not enough about being warm.
When you talk about women to a woman, make sure you are honest, caring, positive, and somewhat discreet.
you have to gradually let her know exactly which of her specific qualities you find uniquely irresistible so that no other woman is likely to sweep you away.
Focus on her qualities that most other guys would overlook—you know, like her personality. It might be her career, her intelligence, her extracurricular interests, her sense of humor, or refreshing honesty. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s something that is part of her identity, especially something she values or works on.
Most guys are intimidated by very smart women, but if you’re a smart guy who truly values a woman’s intelligence, let her know early and often that you appreciate her brains.
Most guys are also intimidated by very tall women, but if you adore long legs, show it by doing things that showcase her height—like playing volleyball, complimenting how great she looks in high heels at a party, or focusing a lot of sexual attention on her legs in bed.
When a woman asks you what you’re looking for, don’t fucking lie. Be honest and seek win-win relationships.
lying about your mating goals nukes your sexual confidence (if you have a conscience), risks your reputation, hurts women, undermines their trust in you, and cripples your mating strategy.
Plus, honesty is sexy to women. If you’re honest about your mating goals, there’s a good chance you’ll be honest about everything else, and honesty is very attractive to women.
The question is, how do you act after you’ve had sex?
Thus, women can use your response after sex as a cue to your mating intentions.
You might be Dr. Pussy Slayer the Sexual Superhero, but you can’t keep up text chatter with more than about five women at once. At least not without seriously fucking up.
The best gifts tap into your own traits; making something yourself is big romantic proof and showcases your practical intelligence, willpower, and aesthetic proof.
Women care a lot about you remembering relationship-specific dates (their birthday, the date and anniversary of your first contact, first date, first kiss, first sex, marriage, etc.), romantic holidays (Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve), and minor holidays that allow romantic extended-weekend getaways (Presidents’ Day, Labor Day). For each of these, you need to plan ahead—put work aside, get thoughtful gifts, make dinner and travel reservations.
relationships have lower satisfaction and worse outcomes if they aren’t integrated into the lovers’ social networks or if friends disapprove.
married couples with strongly overlapping social networks are less likely to get divorced.
Even declaring your “relationship status” on Facebook can be strong romantic proof.
Pay attention! There is nothing more romantic or indicative of true interest than paying attention to what a woman wants, thinks, feels, needs, or likes.
Where you decide to live, study, work and hang out are not just random, superficial lifestyle choices. They’re crucial to your success—or failure—with women. Most mating is local, so geography matters. A lot. The fact is, you can’t meet the right women if you’re in the wrong place.
your city, your college campus, your workplace, your gym, and your favorite coffee shop are not just physical locations. They’re also what scientists call “mating markets.”
Each person has a certain “dating radius”—the maximum distance they’re willing to go for a date. If they have to walk, that might be two miles; if they have a car, it might be twenty miles. Each person’s dating radius marks out a roughly circular territory—their pink or blue “dating zone.”
In mating markets, males and females exchange forms of biological value, like good genes, good partner traits, and good parent abilities, that have been important for hundreds of millions of years.
The exchanges that happen in mating markets tend to be mutually beneficial (win-win), not zero-sum.
Here’s why this matters to you: are you offering what women are looking for in your local mating market? Because if you aren’t, you will fail at mating.
In assortative mating, similar people tend to pair up together.
This overall “mate-value matching” ain’t fair, it ain’t nice, and it ain’t pretty. But it’s reality. And it speaks to the power of the human desire to connect, to pair up, to mate.
When it comes to mating markets, size matters. Lots of women means you have lots of choice—both in the aggregate and specific to your preferences.
In biology, sex ratio is defined as the ratio of males to females in a breeding population. If there’s a high sex ratio, like three guys for every woman (e.g., a typical Comic Con or computer science class), most of the guys will fail to mate. If there’s a low ratio, like two women for every man (e.g., College of Charleston or University of North Carolina), it’s a mating paradise for almost every guy.
When you’re looking for a mating market, pay as much attention to the men there, who are your rivals, as to the women there. Women aren’t measuring you against all the men on earth; they’re measuring you against the other men they have access to.
Women tend to prefer slightly older men.
if you’re a twenty-five-year-old guy in a place full of undergrads, you can do very well. Likewise if you’re a decent guy in your 40s in a place full of frustrated women in their 30s (like NYC), they’ve already realized that most of the men at their ideal age are either married, never-married losers, or divorced-and-damaged dads. You might be the droid they’ve been looking for.
Even among online dating sites, some (like OkCupid) make it much easier to find out enough about someone to send them an interesting personalized message; others (like Tinder) offer so little information in profiles that it’s harder to strike up a conversation.
Just remember these principles: be honest, seek win-win relationships.
Think about each potential mating market not just in terms of who’s there and what they want, but how you will actually meet them and interact with them in the most basic practical ways.
If you’re willing to move somewhere for the sake of a good education or a good job, shouldn’t you be willing to move for the sake of a good potential mate?
You didn’t know how much leverage the right geography could give you.
The city that’s ideal for you, given your goals and desires, is probably not the city you happen to be living in now. You should be willing to move to achieve the mating life you want.
Work is a major mating market: a lot of people hook up with coworkers and marry work colleagues.
Your social network isn’t just a form of social proof; it’s also a mating market in its own right.
Are you often hanging out with mixed-sex groups of friends who know other cool people, or are you just staying at home watching imaginary relationships between TV characters who can’t introduce you to anyone?
What fun things do you do on evenings and weekends? Do any women do those things?
On the other hand, if you take classes in salsa dancing or acroyoga or acting, you’ll probably have five single women for every guy, lots of opportunities to talk, and a teacher telling them to touch you!
Go where the women already are, doing the things they like.
But remember, online dating is only as good as your local mating market—unless you’re willing to take a plane to your first coffee date.
go where the women are.
Moving into better mating markets is a win-win for everybody. You’ll have a much easier time meeting more women who value you.
By redeploying yourself wherever more women will want you, you’re bringing more joy to more women and reducing their frustration that “there aren’t any good men out there”
