Introduction:
Most guys come off as awkward and creepy to girls, and they don’t even realize they are doing it, or how to stop. This episode describes what initial social interactions are like from a woman’s perspective, specifically details how guys go wrong in these interactions, describes the quick and easy things guys can do to solve this problem, and ultimately be more confident and effective in approaching women. Tucker also outlines the fundamental shift in mindset that led to a dramatic increase in his success with women (as well as making his life much more fun at the same time).
Podcast:
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Key takeaways:
Women’s deepest fear when interacting with a man is that he will kill/hurt her. A man’s deepest fear when interacting with a new woman is that she will sexually humiliate him. Understanding this can help you understand all male/female interactions.
Don’t go out with the goal of getting laid. Go out with the goal of meeting new people and having as much fun as possible. It’s a subtle shift but it makes you less desperate, less anxious, and you’ll enjoy yourself more, which will make you more attractive – and you’ll have better interactions with women as well.
It’s also an easier goal to achieve than “get laid”, so you’ll feel better about yourself afterwards, creating a positive feedback loop.
If you’re looking at a woman’s body and she sees you doing it, just make eye contact with her and give a genuine smile. Don’t look away, that codes as predatory to the mammalian brain.
In the same situation, if a woman sees you checking her out, most of the time you should go up and talk to her right away, and say something like “You caught me staring at your chest. I’m sorry, but that’s a great shirt.” Don’t compliment her on her tits – she knows you were looking at them, but by complimenting something she has a choice over (her clothes) you demonstrate social intelligence, you’re not objectifying her and you’re showing appreciation for the time and effort she took to look good.
It’s difficult for women to overtly reject men – but they have to do that if you make the interaction all about sex. If you frame the interaction in terms of having fun and meeting new people, a few things can happen. She’ll either decide later that she’s attracted to you, or if not, she probably has friends that are cool that she’ll introduce you to. These things can’t happen if she has to reject you straight away.
No girl ever wants to turn down a fun, playful, interesting conversation.
Three key things that you need to get right in female interactions: 1) make sure the woman feels physically safe; 2) make sure she feel’s socially protected; and 3) do some things that are attractive, e.g. be funny, have good conversation etc.
Don’t talk shit about your ex-girlfriend (or any other women) to her, because then she’ll instantly think that that’s how you’ll talk about her to other people.
Again: approach women with the goal of meeting new people and having fun, not sex. Sex comes as an indirect result, not a direct action.
Links from this episode
The podcast episode in which Tucker and Dr. Miller talk about what dating is like for women, using a gay bar as an example.
If you just want a female-shaped body to get sexual pleasure from, try a Fleshlite or a sex doll.
This article from Psychology Today talks more about the Taoist idea of wu-wei that Tucker mentions, and how it relates to love and happiness.
The movie The Tao of Steve. Don’t act like that guy.
Audio Transcription:
Tucker:
So, last podcast, we talked about how women see you leading right up to the conversation. We kind of went over what’s maybe anywhere from 30-80% of the battle, is literally the physical appearance, the signals, etc. We kind of stopped at conversation. Now, we’re gonna start at conversation and we’re gonna talk about how women perceive interaction with you once you’re actually talking, interacting in that sort of way. I think the first thing that guys need to understand – we’ve talked about this before, we’re gonna talk about it again. Most guys are boring or annoying or boorish or awkward or transparently objectifying of women. They literally look at women like a piece of meat.
Geoff:
They approach with fear and clear sexual intent.
Tucker:
Right! Exactly! Women notice this and this annoys the shit out of women as it probably would if it happened to you as a dude. Like, I forget which podcast we previously did, but Geoff, your example, the gay bar, is the perfect one. That’s such a good thought experiment, that as a dude you can put yourself into understanding sort of what a dating experience is like for women.
Geoff:
Yeah. Kind of imagine, you’re in the Whole Foods grocery store, hanging out, doing your produce shopping, and some huge, scary, tattooed gay dude comes up to you, a foot taller than you, and is just staring at your crotch, but also looking kind of shifty and nervous and comes…
Tucker:
Saying stupid things…”Hey, do you like to eat healthy?”
Geoff:
…comes out with some Pick-Up Artist one-liner and, like, is shifting his weight back and forth and being all awkward and…it would be uncomfortable. Right?
Tucker:
Yes. Even if you were into him!
Geoff:
Even if you thought he was kind of cute and you were, like, gay or bi, and yeah. That’s women’s daily experience.
Tucker:
Right. And again, this is not a “shame on you” thing. We’re not saying this for those reasons. It’s so that you can understand women’s experience so you can change your approach so you don’t do that stuff anymore. Think of it like a video game. You don’t barge into a video game, say, “I’m not gonna learn anything about the game. I’m just gonna play and hope for the best.” Fuck no. You learn something about the game. Same thing. Alright, here’s where I think we should start, Geoff, is a foundational basic understanding of male-female interaction. On a deep, unconscious level, women’s deepest fear is death or assault. When a man comes up. This is not a conscious thing. Most women do not walk around thinking, “Oh, my god, this dude’s gonna kill me.” But on a deep, unconscious, mammalian brain level, that is a concern. A deep, emotional, unconscious concern for every woman at the beginning of every interaction with a strange man. On the other hand, men have fears too, but it’s not about assault or death because women tend to be smaller. We talked about violence or size proximity for ability to commit violence. What men fear is sexual humiliation. They’re afraid a woman is not just gonna reject them, but humiliate them. Why don’t you talk about, for a minute, why sexual humiliation is such a deep, unconscious fear for men?
Geoff:
One thing you’ve got to remember is that back in the day, back in prehistory, men and women were interacting in these tribal groups where everybody could observe what you’re doing, you know pretty much everybody around you, there aren’t any strangers, and you know after language evolved half a million years ago, you know people are gonna gossip about everything interesting that they see.
Tucker:
Even if they don’t gossip. Baboons don’t gossip. They can’t talk, but everyone sees everything and it impacts your status in the group. Even without language.
Geoff:
Yeah. All eyes will swivel in the baboon troupe to whatever is most interesting that’s happening, and that’s fighting or mating. If you approach a woman, you carry that kind of instinctive expectation that, “Oh, if I fail, everybody in my social group is gonna know. And my status will be reduced. I will be embarrassed and shamed.” Even though that’s completely irrational now, if you’re in a big city – some woman in Manhattan rejects you on the street, nobody’s gonna know, at least until everybody wears Google Glass, and then it’s all over youtube…
Tucker:
That will never happen.
Geoff:
We still carry that instinctive fear that, “Oh, my god, everything I do that’s high-stakes in the mating game is quickly gonna become common knowledge.”
Tucker:
Right. “And it will negatively impact me.”
Geoff:
Yeah. “And it’ll reduce my future mating opportunities.”
Tucker:
So, just like women are unconsciously afraid of death or assault from men, men are unconsciously afraid of the negative impact of rejection. Sexual humiliation, I think, is a good way to put it. So, if you picture in your mind a bar, in America right now is sort of the default setting for men and women meeting, but you’ve got women on one side who are afraid, and then on the other side who are afraid, for totally different reasons. Really, for the most part, none of those reasons are applicable now. Yes, men can hurt women still, but for the most part, we live in the safest culture, one of the safest environments in the world, definitely the safest time. There’s less human violence than there’s ever been.
On the other hand, even if you get rejected, it’s not a big deal. You don’t need to feel ashamed, but we’re carrying the genetic legacies of tens of thousands of generations of mammalians. Hominids where it was, so these things don’t just go away. They’re a part of who you are. Understanding and recognizing it, though, because we are rational creatures and we can out think our own brains in certain ways, right? So, I think that’s the most important thing. Everything that we’re gonna talk about, about conversation and interaction of mating, it exists with that as the backdrop and the foundation. Right? Do you agree?
Geoff:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Tucker:
Alright, so now. Let’s talk about conversation. So, once you start talking to a woman, and we’re not gonna talk specifically about tactics. Like, how do you start a conversation in a bar? We’re gonna cover that in later podcasts, part three of the book, and we’re gonna have, I don’t know, ten podcasts where we very specifically cover how to talk to women. This is much more about interaction. The basis of interaction.
Geoff:
Yeah, it’s a framework for thinking about how to talk to women so that you have the right mindset before you even utter the first words.
Tucker:
Exactly. So, then, once we start telling you what to say, how to say it, or how to think about conversation, you can fit it into an intellectual framework where it makes total sense. That way, we’re not teaching you what to say. We’re actually teaching you how to speak so that you can have your own conversations and you’re not a robot repeating goofy, stupid pick-up lines. The difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him how to fish – same sort of thing. Now, let’s go back to the objectification thing. In a lot of ways, I hate using the word objectification because so many preposterous – the worst type of extreme, radical feminists use that as a weapon against guys. So, don’t think when we say objectification, we’re shaming you or using it the way that someone like Andrea Dworkin would use it. What does “objectify” mean in a sort of scientific sense? What does it really mean?
Geoff:
It means treating the other person as, literally, an object without consciousness, without awareness, without their own subjective experience. So, it’s kind of like thinking of a woman as a body and just a body without acknowledging that she has any preferences or interests. So, the problem with objectification is it leads you to be really bad at perspective-taking and not to put yourself in her shoes and not to add value to her life from her point of view.
Tucker:
Right. Exactly. So, a famous old-school joke is “What do you call the useless flesh around a vagina? A woman.” I mean, it’s funny, but it’s also really – if you actually think that – it’s really, horrifically objectifying, because you’re literally looking at women as, like, a cum dumpster. Like a receptacle for your semen, and nothing else. If that’s how you want to look at women, okay, fine, you probably have some emotional issues that you should address through therapy, but at the very least, understand that if you do that, you are going to be way less effective at finding women to be cum dumpsters for you. Even if that’s who you are, okay, fine, whatever. It’s your right to do that. You’re gonna be bad at it, if you don’t at least understand.
Another good example is…Listen, I love playing sort of multiplayer, whatever, online video games, where it’s, like, first-person shooters and there’s other people you’re competing against. You know, Golden Eye, we played for so long in college, and Call of Duty, and there’s a million of them, right? Would you ever go into one of those video games and think, “I’m not gonna think about what my opponent is doing? I’m just gonna run around and shoot”? Of course not! You’re gonna get fucked up, right? It’s not different. I wouldn’t advise looking at sex as an oppositional sort of thing, where you’re fighting someone else to achieve an end. You can actually look at sex as more collaborative. “I’m trying to find someone to pair up and do something together with.” But, as an example, as a metaphor, I think it’ll help some young guys understand. You need to understand the opposition, the other side, the opponent, or the cooperator, whatever, in order to understand the best thing to do.
Geoff:
The other problem with objectification, guys, is that you’re actually fooling yourself about what you really want out of mating. If you actually just wanted a female-shaped body to get sexual pleasure from, just buy a fleshlight from Amazon or a real doll or a sex doll or…because if that’s literally all you want, if you want to treat women as a sex doll, it’s so much cheaper and easier to just buy one. So, objectification is fooling yourself into thinking that you don’t really want female approval or acceptance, and that’s just a loser’s game, because if what you want is a conscious woman to choose you and make you feel better about being a guy and accept you sexually and emotionally and physically, then you might as well start with the premise that, “Hey, I’m not actually interested in treating women as objects.” They’re so difficult as objects, compared to other products out there.
Tucker:
Hold on, I want to make a point, though. Because I can absolutely already hear certain people thinking….listening to what you said, I know what you mean, but I can hear people listening to what you just said and thinking, “My job isn’t to go out and get chosen by women. I get to choose women!” Of course you do. The last thing on earth Geoff and I are saying is that you just make yourself look great in the hope of having women pick you and you’re some second-class, obsequious sort of supplicant, begging women to choose you. Absolutely not. Do not think that. That is not what we’re saying. Both people choose each other. There are definitely times when power dynamics can shift, but they’re very fluid and it’s never all-or-nothing. Ever. If you listen to what we tell you and do it, then you’ll actually create a situation where women are essentially…I don’t want to oversell this, but it’s not real hard to get in a situation where you have a lot of women competing to be chosen by you. Like we talked about in another podcast, and we’re gonna talk about again, men, basically, are trying to be chosen for sex. Women are trying to be chosen for relationships. They’re different things. The gatekeepers are at different places for men and women. We’ll get back to that in a later podcast.
What I want to talk about now, is let’s keep going with objectification, ‘cause this is really important, and I see this all the time with guys. I’ll literally look at them and watch them doing it and they have no fucking idea. It doesn’t even have to be a bar. It can be anywhere, where the guy might even have some good approach or he has some reason to talk to her, gets introduced, it doesn’t matter. Conversation starts and the guy is, like, staring at her tits, basically…He’s doing everything but saying, “Hey, you wanna, like, get out of here?” I used to do that. I would go to bars, and if I was talking to a girl I really wasn’t into, as a joke, it was funny, I’d be like, “Hey, you wanna get out of here?” Especially girls that weren’t into me. Because that’s what made it funny. Like, “Obviously, I can see where things are going. You ready to get out of here?” The girl’s like, “What?! No!” And then it was funny, which also, by the way, is a defense against sexual rejection and sexual humiliation, is to make a joke of it early.
Geoff:
A lot of self-sabotage is actually a defense against humiliation.
Tucker:
I was, like, doing two things at once: defending against rejection and then also being funny, so raising status with other girls.
Geoff:
I was never clever enough to do that.
Tucker:
We have different strategies.
Geoff:
Clearly.
Tucker:
We’re totally different people. Anyways, so let’s reground this podcast in something very actionable for guys. So, you’re talking to girls. Let’s say I’m a 19-year-old guy, and I don’t want to objectify women. Just on strategy, just…moral stuff, whatever. I don’t care. I’m 19. I can’t even think about morals. I just want to get laid. I don’t want to objectify women. I want to have sex with women who want to have sex with me, and I want to have great sex with them, and I want everything to be fun and we both have a great time. But, my goal is to have sex with a lot of women, which is totally valid. There’s no problem with that. What do I do? Dr. Miller, what do I do to stop objectifying women?
Geoff:
Well, the key thing is go back to women’s fear of sexual harassment, stalking, and rape. You want to put yourself on the positive side of the divide between honest courtship and appreciation versus being a creepy stalker who’s a threat to them. Now, what does a creepy stalker do? He checks out women furtively…
Tucker:
He leers at them!
Geoff:
He leers at them. He stares at their tits and their butt, and then if they make eye contact with him and notice him doing it, he’ll look away quickly. Like a predator going after a gazelle, will pretend it’s not stalking. Now, a confident guy who’s honestly appreciating a woman’s beauty. If she sees him looking at her body, he might keep looking another couple seconds and then make eye contact and then give a genuine smile. Now, that makes a world of difference, because it means he’s got no covert agenda. He’s not hiding anything. He’s honestly appreciating her femininity, and women like that. Women like to be appreciated and glowing and, you know…
Tucker:
Let’s actually talk about that for a second. The difference between appreciation and creepy leering, because a lot of guys don’t understand the difference. What’ll happen is women will give very confusing signals about what they like and don’t like. They’re actually really not confusing, once you understand women, but guys get confused. Then, guys get upset at women. Women think they’re being clear, but the signals are very confusing to guys and – we’re even talking about good guys. No stalkers or rapists, whatever. Like, that small percentage of awful sociopaths, we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about normal, good dudes who don’t wanna do anything bad, who really just wanna have, like, a good time. There’s nothing wrong with looking at women or appreciating women. If a woman wears a low-cut dress or is exposing cleavage, that’s not an accident. She’s cool with you looking at her and appreciating her. Now, let’s be very specific. What is the difference between attention that is positive and rewarding to women and shit that crosses a line into, like, “this dude’s a fucking creepy stalker”?
Geoff:
I think what’s positive and rewarding is, okay, let’s say you’re out on the street or at the grocery store, and a woman’s wearing a low-cut dress. She chose that that morning for a reason. She wants attention from the select group of guys who can appreciate it in a mature, respectful way. And if you can kind of give off the vibe that, “Wow, you’ve got a great body. I appreciate it. You know you’ve got a great body. I know it. We’re in a little conspiracy of appreciating your beauty together,” that makes all the difference.
Tucker:
Let’s talk about specifically. What are some, just pick a generic social situation. I see a girl in a great dress, right? Or whatever she’s wearing. She’s hot. She’s got a great body and she’s wearing clothes that are revealing, right? What do I do?
Geoff:
I think, look and make eye contact and spend at least half of your looking time looking at her. Looking at her face, looking at her eyes. And if you can show you can confidently switch from eye contact to body appreciation and you can smile, which says, “I’m not a threat”…
Tucker:
A real smile.
Geoff:
A real, genuine smile where the corners of your eyes are crinkling up and you’re radiating warmth. Not a psychopath smile.
Tucker:
So, I’ll tell you a specific thing, and I learned this trick early on, and it was great. Whenever a girl caught me staring at her, I would almost immediately, if it was possible, I would walk up and talk to her. Because at that point – I’m not saying you have to. There are definitely situations where going back and forth and staring, looking at each other can totally work and can be a flirtatious precursor to something, no doubt. But, let’s say 70-80% of the time, if you’re staring at a girl when she’s not looking at you and catches you, exactly what you said. Don’t retreat or go away. ‘Cause then, literally, the mammalian brain codes that as predator. Right? So, what I would do is I would walk up to the girl and I’d say something that fully recognized what I was doing, acknowledge it, and then made a joke or whatever. So, I’d be like…something very simple. Like, “You totally caught me staring at your chest. I’m sorry, but that’s a great shirt.” Don’t say, “Those are great tits.” There are times where telling a girl she has great tits is actually fantastic, usually when you’re naked together.
Geoff:
Right. In bed, when your hands are already there and she wants your hands there.
Tucker:
Right. Exactly. But, if you say, “That’s a great dress,” she knows what you’re talking about, but she’s gonna be ten times more attracted to you than if you said “great tits.” Actually, it’s not more attracted. One’s unattractive. One is attractive. The reason is by saying, “You have a great dress,” you are showing that you’re socially intelligent. You’re not uncouth. You’re not objectifying her, even though you are, in a way. You have the social intelligence to show that, “I’m not going to pretend I’m not looking at you, but at the same time, I’m not gonna lie to you.”
Geoff:
Yeah. It’s also praising her for something she has under her control. She chose the dress. She didn’t choose to grow the boobs, right? So, you’re praising…When she chose the dress in the morning, she was already thinking, “Oh, if I meet a cute guy, will this leave a positive impression? Will this get his attention?” She made a choice, and you’re acknowledging, “You made a choice and it was a good one.” It’s also acknowledging the courage it takes a woman to express her femininity, and that’s a huge boost and a great thing for a woman, because just the way it takes you courage to express your masculinity and to own your sexuality, it takes courage for women to own their femininity, to put themselves out there, to show off their bodies. If you can acknowledge, “Wow, that was a choice and it took guts and effort and risk to do that. I appreciate that.” That’s kind of the subtext of saying, “Hey, great dress.”
Tucker:
Exactly. So, acknowledge. Approach, generally speaking, unless you’re playing a game with her and it’s working, like, an eye game. Acknowledge, but don’t acknowledge…I wouldn’t say don’t acknowledge the body. More, acknowledge the things that are under her control, the decisions she made, not things that she has no control and that every other dude says. “Hey, great tits.” No. I won’t say there’s never a time where that makes sense in an external social situation, but they’re, like, strip clubs and stuff. That’s where shit like that makes sense.
Geoff:
Where she’s made the choice to pay for it. And it’s like, “Yeah, I did do a good job with the cosmetic surgeon.”
Tucker:
That was a fantastic aside. Let’s get back to the main question, though. I’m 19. I want to get laid, but I go out looking at women, right? No problem, necessarily, but maybe I’m just not very good at not objectifying women. What can I do to stop objectifying? Here’s what I tell young guys. I wanna get your opinion on this. I tell guys to stop thinking about sex, stop going out to get laid. I’m not saying stop going out. Keep going out. I’m not saying don’t have sex. Have sex. But there’s a Chinese principle called Wu fe or something. For, like, 2,000 years, this was the dominant thing that the Chinese wrote about. Basically, the idea is, the things you want in life, especially the difficult ephemeral things, you can almost never get by directly going after them. For example, if you want to be famous, you can’t just be famous, right? Even someone who’s famous for being famous, like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. They didn’t just be famous. There are things you have to do that will get you famous.
I think sex works the same way. If you go out looking for sex, unless you’re trying to find a prostitute which is a transactional thing, not normal sex. If you’re looking for prostitutes, there’s no reason to listen to this fucking podcast. Go on Craigslist and pay them. It’s no problem. If you go out directly looking for sex, you’re not gonna get it, but if your goal is doing things that can lead to sex, you can get quite a bit. What I tell guys to do is go out with the agenda that “I’m gonna meet new people and have as much fun as possible.” One or the other or both. Right? So, if that’s your goal, there’s a couple things. First off, it can alleviate all your anxiety, because if your goal is to get sex, and you fail the goal, you’re gonna feel bad about yourself. If your goal is to meet people, it’s almost impossible to fail at that. It’s really hard to go to social situations and not meet people. You almost have to make an effort. And, if your goal is to have fun, especially if you go out with two or three cool, fun friends, it’s not hard to have fun. You know? So, you’re always reaching your goal. And then that does two things. Meeting new people will either get you to meet the girls you want to sleep with, or you’ll meet their friends who, if you’re fun, will introduce you to the girls you want to sleep with. And then also, what it does is that it stops you from objectifying women. Now, you’re not looking at women as the ways you accomplish your goals. Sexual goals. So, you’re no longer a creepy, leering sex predator or you’re not giving off that vibe. Instead, you’re like going into a bar thinking, “Who’s cool? Who are we gonna have fun with? Who are we gonna meet?” Then you do that and it’s like, “Oh, this girl’s into me. She wants to have sex. Cool. I wanna have sex, too.” What do you think about this?
Geoff:
Yeah. Absolutely. Just being playful, right? If you approach it, like, “How can I add value to this woman’s life? How can I do something memorable that lightens up her day? How can I break her boredom? How can I give to her socially in a playful way?” that’ll kind of put her back in the mindset of third grade when it used to be fun just to chase boys around and there was nothing sexual going on, and when it was easy to interact with the other sex and before all that puberty and complication and tension and hidden agendas, right?
Tucker:
Tension comes from the agenda being hidden, sex. That’s the whole point. It’s not that you stop wanting sex. There’s this one movie called The Tao of Steve, where – do you know what I’m talking about, Jason? Do you know this movie? When it came out, it was like this big sensation, because this guy’s philosophy – the movie’s made about a real dude, and his philosophy for getting girls was release your desires. It’s very Buddhist. He read a couple crappy, Buddhist rip-off texts and then like, “Oh, yeah, if you don’t have any desire for sex, then sex comes your way.” It’s like, that’s like asking a dog not to eat meat. That’s fucking stupid and that doesn’t work. That was the funny thing in the movie, is that you basically see him as the pathetic loser he is. You cannot deny who and what you are. But what you can do is make your direct goals something achievable and positive for everyone, and then by doing that, you reach your ultimate goal through an indirect way without rejecting it or lying to yourself or denying it or anything like that. We will never, in this book or podcast or anything we do, tell you to not be who you are or to reject your desires or something like that. With the general assumption that your desires are things that don’t hurt other people. If you’re like, “Hey, I wanna stab and rape this girl,” alright, then you should reject that desire. But everything that’s normal, that people do that’s positive for people? It’s not a bad thing. Ever.
Geoff:
Yeah. The problem is most guys approach women, particularly young guys, with no agenda other than wanting to get laid. And we’re not saying reject that lust. We’re just saying, kind of on top of it or to the side of it, add, “I want to have fun. I want to be playful. I want to meet new people.” Women are great to talk to, and you have to frame your interactions with them as, “If—
Tucker:
Hold on. Some women are great to talk to.
Geoff:
Yeah, some. If she’s not fun to talk to, then don’t talk to her.
Tucker:
Yeah. Well, why would you wanna fuck her if she’s not fun to talk to? Although, there are definitely women that I’ve wanted to fuck and had a great time sleeping with that were not really that fun to talk to. So, okay. That can happen. But generally speaking, the best sex is with girls that you have fun being around. You don’t necessarily have to be in love, although that is actually usually the best, best sex, but even when we’re talking about casual sex. The best casual sex is someone that you like being around, that you have fun with, you have some sort of connection with, even if it’s just humor, you tell the same jokes, or you both like shooting or what the fuck ever.
Geoff:
Yeah. So, if you can tap into that, just don’t talk to a woman if she wouldn’t make a good girlfriend, because she might be a girlfriend anyway, and if she’s not, there can be all sorts of freaky blowback from her if she’s psycho. We’ll get into that later. The key point, though, is you have to frame it as, “If I have a great conversation with a woman, that’s a win. If she doesn’t sleep with me, that’s okay. I can live with that.” If you approach the conversation with that mindset, that if we have fun for the next five minutes, that’s a win. That’s a plus one. Then, the sex will follow.
Tucker:
Absolutely. Unequivocally. I learned that at about 24. It was one of those mind-blowing things where I stopped going out to get laid and I just went out to have fun with my friends and meet new people and it was like…I didn’t have enough dick to fuck all the pussy thrown at me. I was doing everything right except getting in my own way, because I was going out for sex. There are very, very few girls, women who find it attractive for a guy to utterly, sexually objectify them. I’m not saying it’s never going to work. I have stories where I essentially looked at a woman like a piece of meat, and because she was in a certain mindset at the time, it worked. That’s, like, less than 5% of the sexual interactions that I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot of experiences. So, it’s not that it’s an utterly ineffective strategy. It’s just that it’s really a very sub-optimal strategy. And especially for most guys, ‘cause to do that, you generally have to be a certain type of guy that’s gonna hook up with a certain type of woman, and most guys don’t fit in that category and aren’t meeting those types of women.
Let’s talk about why, because this podcast is about how women see interaction with you. Here’s a big thing that guys don’t understand. Another reason this strategy works about sort of going out to meet people and have fun and not going out to have sex as the main goal. Sex is something you always want, but not the reason you’re talking to a woman. So, I think guys don’t understand how painful and difficult and annoying it is for women to have to reject guys. Here’s basically what happens is that a woman’s had a ton of experiences in her life where guys have hit on her, right? And then if she tries to subtly reject them, a lot of guys don’t pick it up, and it’s like, “How do I get rid of this fucking annoying dude,” right? And if she’s very direct, then they get really butthurt and upset about it, and then lash out at her, which relates back to the sexual humiliation thing we were talking about. So, why don’t you talk for a second about what it’s like to be a woman dealing with this balance of rejecting a guy, making it clear to a guy that you don’t want to have sex with him, but not hurting his ego? You know what I’m saying?
Geoff:
Again, it goes back to the prehistoric situation where, if one woman’s interacting with a guy, he’s probably in her tribe or a nearby tribe, and she will interact with him again. If she rejects him brutally in a way that he loses face, then it’s gonna have blowback to her. He’s gonna have some kind of future relationship with her, and she wants to minimize the cost and maximize the benefits. She doesn’t want to alienate him. From a woman’s point of view, the ideal situation is basically for all the local males who aren’t her blood relatives to like her, respect her, take care of her, protect her, be friends, and then for her to be able to choose which one she wants to have sex with. But, if she’s surrounded by guys she’s rejected and who take it badly, that’s a really dangerous situation for her. So, women like to try to do the minimally upsetting rejection so they have to kind of escalate it.
Tucker:
‘Cause a lot of guys are oblivious about this shit. Either guys are way too risk averse, and they think everything’s a rejection, or they’re fucking idiots and they think anything short of “get the fuck out of my face” is not a rejection.
Geoff:
Yeah.
Tucker:
Right, so I think the point we’re trying to make is that because the discussion’s about sex, the interaction’s about sex. That’s the subtext. Then the girl feels like she has to reject this dude if she doesn’t wanna have sex with him. But if the subtext is not sex, then there doesn’t have to be a rejection. So, what you’re doing is you’re giving yourself way more time to talk to her and to deal with her so she might end up deciding she likes you more later, which happens all the time, right? Or, even if it’s just never gonna be on the table, guess what? If this woman thinks you’re a good dude, she has friends. Especially if she’s a high-status female, she’s got a lot of friends who are not as high-status as her who need boyfriends or just guys to fuck or whatever. She can introduce you to them if you are not a creepy, sex-obsessed weirdo.
Geoff:
Yeah. That’s a really good point. It’s a very powerful way to think, that when you’re talking to a woman, she’s not an isolated woman. She has her own social network, including lots of other women who might make awesome girlfriends. Tucker’s exactly right. If you make the conversation about sex, she is forced to decide, “Do I accept or reject potential sex with this guy?” And that’s uncomfortable for everybody. But if you make it about, “Hey, do you want to have a playful, fun conversation with me?” most women will go, “Fuck yeah, that’s great.” That has zero cost, low risk. There’s no downside.
Tucker:
It’s fun. Everyone wants to have more fun in their lives.
Geoff:
Yeah. It’s fun. It alleviates boredom. And she knows perfectly well, she has known since puberty, that yeah, there’s sex always, potentially, in the background in the future. She knows that.
Tucker:
Wanna know the perfect example of this? I should’ve thought of this earlier. Why do you think old men at bars do so great with women? I’m not saying they’re doing so great fucking them, but you go into almost any bar where there’s a ton of people, usually if there’s an old dude there, all the hot girls like him. Assuming he has any personality at all or whatever, right? I’m not talking about creepy, alcoholic bars. I’m talking about more like Cancun, big fun bars. Why do women love that old dude?
Geoff:
Tell me, I don’t know. Apart from being the most interesting guy in the world.
Tucker:
I’ll tell you exactly. I don’t mean old like you. You’re not old. I mean old, like seventies or something, right? I’ll tell you why. Because they know immediately he’s not a sexual threat. It’s why they love children. “I’m not fucking this 12-year-old kid or this 8-year-old kid. He’s just cute.” There’s no possibility of an agenda or a sexual threat or whatever. Same with old guys. Usually, guys at that age at those sort of bars are probably either there with their wives or their wives died and they’re just going out to have fun. Like, they’ve given up on the sexual agenda and even if they want to have sex with young girls, which is totally normal and fine, they’re not going out to have sex. They’re going out to have fun, ‘cause that’s actually the only strategy they can have, ‘cause god knows they can’t compete on any other thing. But that’s the crazy thing, is they usually do great. I’m not even saying necessarily sexually. They do great socially because they don’t give a shit about – sex is nowhere near the front of their minds. What’s in the front of their minds is, “I want to be around pretty girls and have fun and talk to them and whatever,” and girls love that because those people are fun and interesting.
Like we’ve said over and over, most people have boring, tedious, crappy lives, and if you can make them better instead of make them worse, they will want you in their life. That’s why those dudes crush. Crush. By the same token, I know so many guys who are like, you know, “I can talk to old ladies really well. Why can’t I talk to cute girls like that?” It’s like, because sex is the first thing in your mind and you’re fucking choking. Like, you’re seizing up because you’re pretending that sex isn’t what you’re talking to her about but it really is, so that cognitive dissonance chokes you up and literally creates chokings. All signs of choking – this is exactly why it happens. I tell guys, stop thinking about sex. Or stop making that the agenda to talk to her. Sorry. You can think about it all you want. But, if your agenda is, “I am going to make this girl laugh, have fun with her, see if she’s interesting, meet new people,” then your mating chances triple, quadruple, 10X, they go up so…I literally, at 24-years-old, I went from three to four girls a month, so less than one a week averaging, to at least three a week, and I could’ve done more, except I was in law school. I had to do things, although I wasn’t really going to class. I at least tripled, quadrupled my sexual interactions with girls, changing nothing except what my goal was going out, because that totally changed how women saw me and perceived me and interacted with me.
Geoff:
Another example of this effect is that if you’re a guy over age 24 or whatever, you’ve had the experience of, “Oh, it’s really hard to attract women if I’m single and not in a relationship, and then I get a girlfriend and then suddenly women are really into me.” Why is that?
Tucker:
I see that with rings all the time, yeah.
Geoff:
Okay. If you’re getting sex on a regular basis with a girlfriend, and then you’re interacting with other women, they can sense already that you’re not sexually desperate.
Tucker:
Exactly. You’re not pursuing them sexually!
Geoff:
You’re don’t need them for sex. You can just enjoy the fun of the conversation and the pleasure of their company, as they called it in Victorian Britain. Right?
Tucker:
But the pressure’s gone, off you and her.
Geoff:
The pressure’s gone, and there’s also some kind of magic that happens in terms of male self-esteem once you’ve got a girlfriend. But I think there’s also the fact that you’re not giving off these sexual vibes from the get-go, because you just had sex last night or whatever.
Tucker:
You can do this without having a girlfriend, too. It really is just a simple state of mind. Alright, so, I want to kind of get to the keys of the kingdom here, because we’ve talked about this over and over and over the last couple of podcasts, the last four or so. Understanding what women think, how they perceive you, and how they’re perceiving your interactions. We’re gonna go over this again and again, but really, there are three basic things that, if you do right, that conversations and interactions are gonna work really well. The first thing is you must remember, this girl’s a mammal, and also a hominid and a human. Before she’s the girl in the bar, she’s all those three things. You have to make sure that the way that you approach her and interact with her does not make her feel physically unsafe. Obviously, from legal and moral standpoints, too, but I’m talking about even just from a pure mating standpoint. If you are in any way, shape, or form making her feel that way, it’s gonna go bad. That’s foundational. That’s basic. That’s not a really hard thing to do. It’s not hard to not be threatening physically, right?
The next thing is she must feel socially protected. We’ve talked about this before. I think the last podcast, we talked about female-female competition and how guys don’t realize that a big barrier to sex for most women is they’re worried what their female friends and family are gonna think, if they’re around. And even if they’re not around, they’re worried, “Is this guy gonna talk about me?” Even if it’s unconscious. In a way, it’s not a physical threat, but that’s a threat. Social threats code in the brain almost exactly the same way physical threats do. So, these things are both very threatening on a deep, mammalian level. Also, on a conscious level.
I think the third thing you have to understand is there something about you or several things, ideally, that she wants to connect with and have more of? So, if those are your rubrics of interaction, you’re gonna be great. If everything you do is coming from the domain of, “I’m not gonna make her feel physically unsafe. I’m gonna ensure that she knows she’s socially protected with me, like, if it happens, it’s only between us, etc.” And you’re doing at least one or two things that are attractive, like being funny, having good conversation, even forgetting if you’re tall, dark, and handsome. That’s great. But if you forget that, okay, fine, you can do all these things, and what you’ve done is you’re accounting for how she perceives you, and you’re making it really easy for her to connect with you. Correct?
Geoff:
Yeah. Absolutely. So, you’re not imposing hurt or possible rape on her. You’re not going to embarrass or shame her. Social costs. And then you’re adding some kind of value to her life in a way she wants more of it. These all fit together, particularly in terms of not being socially embarrassing. If you’re clearly interacting with her and she’s having a good time, even if you’re physically not that attractive, even if you’re not well-dressed, it doesn’t lower her status in the eyes of her friends if she’s clearly enjoying interaction. ‘Cause she’s getting fun out of her night out, and that’s never a bad thing.
Tucker:
The thing I was gonna say, too, ‘cause again, this podcast is about how women interpret interaction with you. Physically safe. What are some of the easy, obvious ways to be physically safe? We talked about, like, don’t look and look away, don’t have predator-type behaviors. I know it seems weird to say predator behaviors, but we’re talking more on a mammalian animal level, right? This is a thing I think a lot of guys don’t understand with social interactions. A lot of times, women will ask you what you say about things, other women, whatever, determines what women think about how you’re gonna treat them. For example, if you’re talking, you’re having a great time, and then let’s say the girl’s a little into you, she’s like, “Do you have a girlfriend?” “No. I’m single now because my ex was a fucking cunt and that goddamn bitch blah blah…” Dude, what are you doing? You just threw a fucking bomb in between you two, right? Look, your ex might have been a cunt. Whatever. But it’s never a good thing with people you barely know, especially women, to shit all over other women, because the first thing that girl you’re talking to is gonna think is that this is how you’re gonna treat her. This is who you are. You’re showing her, “Oh…oh, he’s one of those.”
Geoff:
Yeah. Even if you’re being critical of an ex-girlfriend, which you shouldn’t be, be critical in a really subtle way, like, “She just had a little bit of a difficult personality,” and the woman will hear that as, “Oh, my god, she was a total cunt, wasn’t she?” And then you can go, “Well, kinda, yeah.” But you have to show respect for previous women in your life. ‘Cause if you can show respect for women and perspective-taking and understand them, whether you’re talking about your sister, your niece, your own mom, women will read that as, “Oh. This guy’s view of women is healthy and positive, and I’m socially safe with him because he’s not gonna go out and trash my reputation without regard to my feelings or my vulnerability to sexual shaming…”
Tucker:
“And is not a sociopath or an asshole. I’m not worried.” Here’s the thing. Every interaction that you have with a woman, she is going to interpret your mood, your attitude, the things you say as being about her. Even if it’s not. If you’ve had a terrible day at work, it’s got nothing to do with her, it doesn’t matter. She’s gonna interpret that. Everyone does this. Not just women at bars or whatever. But, like, you need to understand, especially early on, people are desperately looking for information about who you really are, which is signaling. We’re gonna talk about signaling in the next podcast. We’re gonna dive really deep into that, ‘cause it’s a super interesting thing. But, the important part for this podcast is, everything you say and do is creating an impression, a model of who you are for this woman. And being physically and socially protected are super important. Here’s the thing with attraction. Literally, this is the entire point of this entire podcast series and books. Almost the entire point is teaching guys how to be more attractive to women so that you can be more successful with them, ‘cause that’s sort of the key, right?
Even if you haven’t started on any of these things yet, you’re going out tonight and you’re like, “I don’t know what to do,” right? Well, take a shower. Some of the easy things. But then, stop approaching girls with sex as the goal. Start approaching them with fun, meeting new people as the goal. Really, fun is the best goal, ‘cause those two things kind of go together. Even if everything else is wrong, you’re going to be much more attractive to that girl, and that will lead somewhere good. You hang out with enough people, even if you’re doing almost everything else wrong, if you’re fun, whether it’s you’re funny or you make great conversation or…any number of ways to be fun, ‘cause fun can vary depending on the social group you’re in, your age, etc. If you’re fun to be with, you are going to be more attractive and have tons more opportunities.
Geoff:
And it’ll keep you motivated to keep going out there and meeting people.
Tucker:
You can’t lose! It’s always a win.
Geoff:
You can’t lose. Yeah. If you go out there with the goal of sex and you only get sex 10% of the time, you’re getting mostly negative feedback and your little internal learning system goes, “That sucked. That was a waste of time. Go home and play World of Warcraft.” But if you go out with the goal of having fun and you succeed 90% of the time, your inner learning system goes, “I want more of that. I’ll do that again tomorrow.” It’ll make you more extroverted, and you’ll get better at having fun faster than you’ll get better at having sex, because you’ll be having fun…
Tucker:
Which will lead to…
Geoff:
Which will lead to sex.
Tucker:
More sex. Exactly. I know, guys, this seems like one of those weird, indirect things, but trust me, after 80 combined, 90 combined years of experience, this is very counter-intuitive, but it’s also very true and it very much works. It’s not a difficult switch. Actually, let’s end with this story. I’m gonna tell you guys one last metaphor that may help some guys understand who are still a little bit confused on this.
One day, I called my editor, Jeremie Ruby-Strauss at Simon. This is when I was doing my second book, and I was talking about all the marketing and where did I think it was going to debut on the New York Times Best Seller List, blah blah blah. I was talking about all the results of the book, and I was still in the middle of writing it. Jeremie waited for me to kind of talk myself out, like when I get on a little rant. He didn’t say anything. And he said, “Tucker, if you aim at the target, you will hit it and you’ll get all your trophies. But if you look at the trophies, you won’t see the target and you’ll miss it and you’ll get nothing. Finish the book first. Make it great. And then you’ll get everything you want.” I was like, “Fuck you, you little Zen Buddhist motherfucker.” But, he was totally right. Aim at the target. You’ll hit it and get your trophy. So, in this case, the target is having fun in social situations and meeting people, and the trophy is sex with girls that you like who like you and wanna have sex with you. So, if you’re staring at sex, you’re not gonna hit the target. If you’re staring at having fun, you’re staring at the target, you’re gonna hit it and you get trophies. Pretty simple. Alright, cool, I think we’re done.