Introduction:
When you leave school (high school or college), your mate value drops through the floor. You’re suddenly competing with guys older, more experienced and more attractive than you are, and at the same time, all the girls your age are realizing how high their own mate value is. This is not a good situation to be in.
But there are ways to level the playing field. Tucker and Dr. Miller talk you through the steps you need to take, including where to live (or travel), where you should meet women, and how to make your social life an extension of your mating life.
Podcast:
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Key takeaways:
No matter how high your mate value in college or high school, it will drop hugely when you leave school, because all of a sudden you’re competing against guys older and more experienced and with more resources than you.
Not only that, but all the women in their early to mid-twenties are realizing how high their mate value actually is, because they have so many guys interested in them.
One thing you can do is stay around your college town for an extra year or so after you graduate, tending bar or something. When you’re a college senior, this is the highest your mate value will be for a few years to come, so it’s understandable that you want to prolong this for a little white.
One thing Tucker did when he graduated law school was teach the LSAT. Even though he didn’t have much money, teaching the LSAT meant he was in a position of authority, demonstrating intelligence and empathy to all the women in the class, who are still ranking him against other college guys. That’s an example of putting yourself in a situation where you can demonstrate your value while limiting the competition.
If you want to meet lots of women, then you have to live in places where there are lots of women. That means a big city.
If you don’t have a job right out of school, then one of the best things you can do is travel: for example, go and teach English as a foreign language somewhere. If you’re an America, who speaks English, and is a teacher, then that instantly gives you very high mate value in a lot of countries.
Also, foreign women can be very different to American women. If you know what you’re looking for, then you can speak to people who have travelled, find out what the women tend to be like in different countries, and then go to those countries to meet the kind of women you want to meet.
Don’t compare yourself to guys who are older than you and expect to be able to have the things he has and do the things he does.
Here’s a thought experiment: how good were you with women at 12 years old? You were awful. At 22, you’re much better than you were at 12. So by the time you get to 32, you’ll be much better again. Your life is long and things will change and improve constantly, if you put in the effort.
This is key to remember: now, Tucker and Geoff are very good with women, but that’s because they worked on it for years. And they also failed a lot along the way. You will fail a lot as well. This is fine. Just keep learning and improving.
If you’ve got a job in a big city, then to meet women you should start filling your social calendar with lots of activities, classes and so on. Essentially, make your social life an extension of your mating life.
For example, if you’re going to exercise (and you should), then do something like yoga or Crossfit. If you want to learn how to talk to people, then take improv classes. Then through those classes you’ll meet lots of new people and lots of women.
As an added benefit, taking a yoga class, even a few times, gives you something to talk about with the hundreds of women who are interested in yoga. The same goes for photography, painting, spin class, etc.
With yoga classes, just find one of the bigger yoga studios, and call them up and ask about beginner classes. One of two things will happen. They will either have beginner classes, where you get to meet a bunch of people who are also beginners, and you can get to know all of them, or the instructor will actually take you through it herself, in which case you get to meet someone who is probably a young, attractive women, or at the very least knows tons of young, attractive women who are into yoga.
The problem with meeting women in bars and clubs is that what matters in those situations are external signs of mate value: height, money, access, power, verbal skills and so on. Guys that are 5-10 years older than you will probably be better at all of those things.
In situations like a yoga or improv class, that’s not an issue, because you automatically have something in common, and you can get to know women over a period of days or weeks, so she’s not apprehensive or afraid of you, as she might be in a bar/club scenario.
The more you do these types of new activities, the easier it becomes to learn other new activities – you learn how to learn. Then you can become the cool guy who tries lots of things and has a bunch of different, interesting skills.
Another big thing is volunteering. Something like volunteering at a dog shelter is great, because usually a majority of the volunteers are female, and you have something in common with them, as well as being able to demonstrate lots of attractive qualities, like empathy, doing something socially valuable, etc.
Links from this episode
Check out the first two episodes in this mini-series: What Men Need To Know About High School (Ages 14-18) and What Men Need To Know About College (Ages 18-22)
Compare the demographics of Houston, TX, with Lake Charles, LA. There are almost five times as many women in their 20s in Houston as there are TOTAL women in Lake Charles.
If you want to teach English abroad, start with TEFL.
Matt Kepnes and Tim Ferriss both have lots of advice about travelling abroad, as does Chris Guillebeau.
For an example of passionate Chilean women, listen to Tucker’s interview with Isabel Behncke.
This study showed no relation between age and wisdom between the ages of 20 and 75.
Find a Crossfit affiliate near you.
If you want to learn to ride a motorcycle like Dr. Miller did, start by taking the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course.
Austin Pets Alive, where there’s no such thing as a single male volunteer.
Podcast Audio Transcription:
Tucker:
Alright, so this is the third of this little series of podcasts. The first one was puberty and high school and we kind of covered what to expect, what’s normal, how to improve sort of situations if they’re not good for you, then we did the same thing for college. Puberty and high school is about twelve to eighteen. Then, we did college, which is about eighteen to twenty-two. Now, this is sort of young adulthood. Now, for those of you guys who don’t go to college – and there are plenty of you who don’t go and it’s probably a good decision – you probably want to skip the college podcast if you haven’t already and just do this one, ‘cause this one is about eighteen to twenty-nineish is about what we’re going to cover. And this is essentially once you leave school and you enter the workforce, okay? This could either be post-high school or post-college. Pretty much all of the analysis is going to be the same. Alright, so don’t think we’re only – we might say post-college. We’re not only talking about post-college. Now, there’s a couple things that you need to understand. Here’s the most important one, I think. It didn’t matter how good your mate value was in high school or college. It might have been pretty high. You might have done pretty well. You should basically expect, as soon as you leave school and move into the workforce, for your mate value to drop precipitously. You’re going to hit a temporary bottom in your life for mate value. Now, if you were already in the bottom and you sucked, well, it probably won’t get much worse. In fact, it might even get better. But it’s going to get bad for a little while, and here’s why.
Let’s just take post-college as an example. Once everyone leaves and let’s say you and everyone in your college go to New York City, right? So, now the girls have it way better than you do. They are now – they’re actually, in a lot of ways, their mate prime. They’re hitting their prime. Twenty-two to about twenty-eight is, generally speaking, the highest female mate value years, ‘because they have the best combination of youth, beauty, experience, and intelligence. The multiple peaks have kind of converged on that window for them. And if you’re in a city, especially, New York City, San Francisco, LA, Austin, Chicago, now women have direct exposure and access to very high status, high mate value guys. They’re going to Crossfit or going to bars or going to acting classes with guys who are in their late twenties, early thirties who are far more successful than you are, far richer than you are, far more socially connected. They are everything better. And especially, like…listen, if the guys are too old – a 50-year-old in a lot of ways isn’t as good as a 23-year-old guy for certain things, especially for a younger women, but a 28-year-old is better than you in every single way, for the most part. He is still potent and vibrant enough to be considered young, but he’s more experienced, more socially intelligent, richer…He’s got everything better than you. And so, generally speaking, like if all of the other things are equal, right? So, what that means is the women are now sort of on a playing field where they have all of these really, really great guys who are way better than the guys around them in college, whereas you as a guy now have to compete with those guys and you really can’t in a lot of ways. In most ways, you’re not going to be able to compete with those guys. So, you’re kind of fucked in a lot of ways. Now, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to do well. It doesn’t mean you can’t improve. It doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to sort of play to your advantages. But, understand that your mating life will get worse and suck for a little while, at least as compared to how it was in college or high school.
Geoff:
Yeah. So, high school, college, you’re in this environment where it’s chronologically stratified by age, and basically that means you’re surrounded by women your age and the older guys who’d kind of like to date those women if they could are kind of excluded geographically and socially. Then, after college or once you enter the workforce, suddenly all the women in their twenties at peak fertility, peak beauty, peak attractiveness to all men, everybody from your 23-year-old junior associate at the law firm or whatever to the 50-year-old billionaires are all competing for those women. You know, we talked a lot about local sex ratio. Well, now the sex ratio isn’t just your chronological age mates. It’s all the guys who are interested in those women, and you just have to have a little patience, ‘because your mate value is not peaking yet, but the women that you’re interested in, their mate value is peaking.
Tucker:
Right. And remember how we’ve been telling you over and over that given the same age, women are far more mature, intellectually, emotionally, socially, than you are. That’s normal. You don’t need to be ashamed about it, right? What that means is a 22-year-old girl, 23-year-old girl in New York City is not – she’s going to look at you now, the same 22-year-old girl that maybe you were dating in college, like you guys were seniors, you were in a cool frat, she was in a cool sorority, you were supposed to be together. It was the perfect match for your college. You get out, and now all of a sudden, she goes to a bar and she meets me, and you don’t look so fucking good. Because I’m everything that you are except times fifty. I’m famous and I’m rich and I’m popular and I’m ten times funnier than you are and I can fucking punk you in every situation. It’s not because you suck. I got punked at twenty-two also. Like, that’s how it works, okay? The guys who are really good, they know what the young, upcoming guys are like. They used to be those guys. I used to be you and now I’m me, okay? And so she doesn’t look at you the same anymore, because now, if she’s really hot – and I don’t mean this literally, I have a girlfriend, but like…four years ago, I’d mean this literally. Like, I was out looking at the same girls you were and I was beating you as a 22-year-old guy, and I was beating you for girls every fucking time because you couldn’t – how could you compete with me? You can’t, dude. This really hot girl is 23 years old. She’s going to find me – we’re talking about, you know, in the aggregate – always going to find me more attractive, and in college when she was a senior, she didn’t know she could get me a lot of times. Now, I meet her out, and she’s like, “Oh, wow. This dude’s into me,” and now her understanding of her own mate value changes, and not only do you look less attractive, she understands that she can do better than you. And dude, don’t take this as an insult. God, if I sat here and thought about it…I don’t really want to, but if I sat here and thought about it, I could probably think of twenty times in my early twenties where I was with girls and, like, either I was already sleeping with them or I was trying to get with them and some dude who was older, richer, smarter came along and, like, she basically picked him instead of me. That happened to me so many times. Like…
Geoff:
You can see this all the time, like, at science conferences, right? The female PhD students, 22- to 26-year-olds, aren’t looking at the male PhD students as possible mates. They’re looking at the professors and the post-docs. And the young guys are typically not even aware of this. They’re so used to thinking people are supposed to mate by chronological age, ‘because that’s how it worked in high school and college and they’re not even tuned into the fact that she’s eyeing up the 40-year-old professor even though she’s twenty-four.
Tucker:
Yes.
Geoff:
Very, like, “That’s not even on my radar. How could that work?” Well, the 40-year-old professor sure as hell is noticing her attention, and you’re kind of frozen out. So, it’s important at this time to just understand that that’s happening and be aware that you are no longer, like, the most salient thing in these women’s lives, and they…as soon as they graduate college or enter the workforce, they experience their mate value skyrocketing.
Tucker:
It’s not that it goes up that much. It’s that they understand how high their mate value actually is. I mean, it’s not like in May, they’re going to UT and they have a certain mate value and in July, they’re working and they have a different mate value. Their mate value is the same in those three months. It’s that they’re now exposed to all these other potential mates and they see that their mate value is much higher than what they realized.
Geoff:
It’s supply and demand. There’s suddenly ten times as many consumers, males, competing for them, as there were before.
Tucker:
Exactly. So, a really quick thing you can do for the first six months or year that will help you sort of find mates is – and there’s a reason guys graduate colleges and don’t leave their college towns. It’s because when you’re a college senior, that’s the peak mate value you’re going to have for the next two or three or five years, and so a lot of guys will take an extra year or something or maybe they’ll keep bartending at some local college bar, whatever, for a while or whatever the equivalent of that is. Or even lamer is, like, they’ll graduate high school and they, like, come back, hang out at the high school. I don’t know, whatever, they hang out with high school kids. That’s actually not that lame for a lot of guys. That’s actually a very rational choice because that’s how they can get access to the highest value women possible. And so, if you do that for a little while, as a guy, look man, some people will make fun of you and they probably should, but on the other hand, I get it. You know, like, there’s no doubt that I – when I first left…That’s kind of what I did in law school. We’ve talked about it, I would go to UNC and pick up UNC undergrads because it was like…undergrad girls, for whatever reason, most – there are definitely some that will date older guys, and when I say older I mean twenty-five, twenty-six, right? ‘Cause if they live in bigger cities, like, Columbia girls, I’m sure, realize real quick they don’t have to date Columbia guys. They can go out into New York City, right?
But a lot of schools, you know, places like even UT is in Austin and it’s like, it’s a big school, they’re kind of all around each other all the time. A lot of college girls don’t understand, but the ones that do will date outside. I remember when I moved…after law school, I went…whatever, I ended up in Chicago, and one of the ways I met girls early on, especially when I had no money was I was teaching the LSAT. Right? So, that did two things. One, it puts me in a position of authority around women, right? So, my local mate value looks high in that specific situation, right? Also, I can display empathy, intelligence, all of those things to the girls in my class. But who takes the LSAT? College girls. So, at that point I was, like, twenty-five. I’d already graduated from Duke Law School, living in Chicago, and it’s 20-, 21-, 22-year-old, maybe 23-year-old college girls. One of their only exposures for most of them to young, attractive, single adult males was me, right? So, that’s a good example of how at twenty-five, I was about as low mate-value as I could have because, like, I didn’t have any money, I hadn’t done anything, whatever. I mean, I was still smart. I was all these other things I worked on to improve, but so were a lot of other guys in Chicago, and they had jobs. They had money. So, having those sort of things that you think are valued in college don’t matter when all your competition has all those things plus money and power. But then, what you can do is put yourself in situations where you’re still exposed to college girls and they don’t think about you as a young professional. They’re still ranking you against college guys.
Geoff:
It kind of depends on the college, though, ‘cause this’ll work in a lot of colleges, but, like, as a grad student trying to date a couple of Stanford undergrads, oh, my god, they were very savvy about what they could get, and I dated this one beautiful woman, like, Stanford volleyball team, super bright, and she had just broken up with a boyfriend who had been, like, one of the early co-founders of Oracle…you know, the computer company. And her interview – I wouldn’t call it a date as much as an interview, was like, “How many patents do you have? What stock options do you have in which companies?”
Tucker:
She asked you this? Yeah, she sounds like an awful person.
Geoff:
Well, she was just…she knew her mate value. “How many companies have you started?”
Tucker:
But she didn’t worry about whether she liked you or not. The first questions were, like, how much were you worth.
Geoff:
Well, these weren’t the first questions, but she was clearly dating in a pool of Silicon Valley guys who were local, and that was my competition and I didn’t realize it was my competition. So, I would’ve done way better just going across the bay to Berkeley, honestly. So, these mating markets can be—
Tucker:
Well, you would’ve done way better with a girl who’s not a horrific gold digger. I mean, let’s call something what it is, dude. That’s…look, it’s one thing for a woman – it’s very rational and reasonable for a woman to care about those things ‘cause they’re…not only are they resources, whatever. There’s all the reasons why. But to come out on, like, a first date, and treat it as essentially a forensic interview is, like…what the fuck? I don’t know.
Geoff:
Yeah. So, guys, if that happens to you, don’t go home and be crushed for two weeks like I was. “I don’t have any patents. I must be a failure. I’ll never get a girlfriend.”
Tucker:
No. Yeah, no. Exactly. Don’t be crushed. Just realize, “Alright, this girl’s clearly looking for something that I don’t have.” That’s…my goodness. I’ve absolutely had girls like that on dates, and I basically end those dates real quick. Even before I had money or was famous or whatever, those dates are…ugh. Because, look, here’s the problem with that. Even if you have all the things she’s looking for, if someone is searching for a thing and not a person, they’re probably a disaster to deal with. Think about it in reverse. What’s the reverse? We’ve talked about this – we castigate guys about this all the time. The reverse is a guy who’s like…”How tall are you? How big are your breasts?” If you treat a woman as an object – we’ve said this to you over and over, guys – you treat a woman as an object, she’s not going to be attracted to you and that’s true. That’s her treating you as an object.
Geoff:
Yeah, but here’s the crucial thing. It is very, very hard when you’re twenty-three or twenty-four and you’re really attracted to a woman who is beautiful and intelligent to go, “Oh, her mate preferences are either invalid or misguided or morally bankrupt or…Well, fuck her for asking about my patent count.” Right. It’s really hard to have the self-confidence to go, “Oh, we’re just a mismatch. I can offer things that she doesn’t want.”
Tucker:
She’s also objectifying you!
Geoff:
She’s objectifying me as a status symbol.
Tucker:
Right. That shit has to go both ways, man. We lecture guys about this all the time. That’s an example of a girl doing to you what we lecture guys not to do to women, and we’re right and I’m right about this. Yes, clearly her preferences are different, but also, the way she went about it probably indicates some issues on her part. That’s a woman that, like, if I had patents and money, I wouldn’t want to date anyway, ‘cause if she’s only after me for that, then she doesn’t give a fuck about me. That’s not a relationship. That’s a transaction.
Geoff:
Easy for you to say not having seen her, but she is really pretty. My main point here is, guys, if you’re on a date and a woman’s rejecting you and you don’t have some stuff she’s looking for…
Tucker:
Don’t feel bad about yourself.
Geoff:
Don’t take it too seriously. There are plenty of other women who have different preferences where you’ll fit their preferences better. And you’ll grow into your own success and your talents and your capabilities. You’re not there yet.
Tucker:
Yes. So, right, and we say this over and over. It’s still true in this podcast and for this subject. Understand that you have to be attractive to the woman, but the woman also has to be attractive to you, and this goes both ways. We mainly focus on you, on guys, ‘cause we’re trying to teach you guys, but always keep that in the back of your mind, that it does go both ways, okay? So, we already went over a couple of really easy ways…Basically, once you get out of college, if you can stay exposed to college girls for six months or a year, it’ll actually increase your mate value in that pool, for the most part. Okay? Now, let’s talk about guys who can’t do that, so an average guy. Let’s think about…this is actually something guys don’t think about that I think is really important, so let’s talk about this, about understanding the mating market you’re in and picking where you live based on sort of the mating market, right? So, what should we go over? Cities first or how to pick a city or what?
Geoff:
Yeah, I think cities is a good kind of unit of analysis because it’s one a lot of guys don’t think consciously about, but it’s one of the highest leverage, most efficient ways to position yourself so that you can be romantically successful with women and actually go to where the women want you. Go to where there’s a lack of good guys. So, yeah, let’s talk about choice of cities, and make it a conscious choice. After high school, if you go to work somewhere. After college, you go to your first job. Where do you move? Americans are highly mobile. Unlike Germany, where everybody stays within fifty miles of their hometown, Americans are free to move and we do and it’s normal.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff:
Take advantage of that.
Tucker:
Right. So, here’s the thing. You don’t necessarily have…picking where you live doesn’t have to be based on women only, but you should be thinking about this. Because the reality is, most of what you do in your life is to get women and to be attractive to women, so make sure you fucking go to a place where there are women. If you’re like, “Hey, I’m going to go live in Alaska,” because of some random reason, hey, guess what, there are no fucking women up there. It’s terrible. Okay? So, if you already have a girlfriend, you’re married, don’t worry about it. But if you actually want to meet women, if you want to engage women, find women to have relationships with, you should go places there are women. Okay? Generally speaking, that’s going to mean cities. New York, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, whatever, Atlanta. Almost all of those cities have more professional women than professional men. Okay? Not all of them. I think there’s one or two of them….San Francisco, I think the city has more women than men, but, like, if you count the whole Bay Area, there’s more men because of Silicon Valley south or whatever.
Geoff:
We can do links on the site that actually break down…
Tucker:
But you’ve got to be careful with those. Those demographic things are fucked up. Like, the way they count, because if you’re a young professional, you’re looking at single, young professionals and only within certain socioeconomic groups or whatever, and the way they count that a lot of times is really fucked up. Generally speaking, go to a city. Okay? Let’s say you have two job offers with engineering companies or whatever. One puts you in Houston. One puts you in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Like…where the fuck should you go? Even if the Lake Charles one pays 25% more, go to Houston. Houston’s a huge city. There’s a bunch of women there. Lake Charles is a bum-fuck town in the middle of Louisiana. There’s no one there, but divorced single moms. One’s a fucking disaster. One is a rich pool for you to choose from. Okay? That’s just one easy example, and here’s the best part. If you don’t have a job – let’s actually talk about that for a second. If you don’t have a job, what do you do?
Geoff:
What do you do, Tucker?
Tucker:
Well, there’s a lot of things you could do. I actually think that you should probably go travel. If you don’t have a job and you don’t know what to do and you also want to meet a lot of women…Guys, there’s maybe nothing better – there’s probably about twenty jobs you could do that could take you around the world. You might not get paid much, but you’re going to see a lot of experience, meet women all over the world. I might teach English as a foreign language somewhere. If you teach English in Taiwan or Brazil or any of these countries, automatically you go from being a 22-year-old jobless shit bird in America with a very low mate value to very high status in the country you’re going into because you’re American, you can speak English, you’re the teacher, and you have a job that pays well. I know probably ten guys who went to Asia to teach English at some point in their lives – and these are guys who didn’t get women in America, who were really pathetic and bad – and all of them, like, “Why don’t you go teach English in Taiwan?” and they’re like, “Why would I do that?” I’m like, “Do you like girls?” “Yeah.” “Do you like Asian girls at all?” “Yeah, Asian girls can be hot.” “Hello! Asian girls think American guys are hot, you know? Even guys like you.” And they’re like, “Really?” “Go.” And they go and they come back. They’re like, “Dude. That was amazing. Thank you so much,” and some of them come back married. Some of them come back after sleeping with, who knows, twenty-five girls, which, to them, is a flood. Like, more than they could ever imagine. I know one guy who lost his virginity doing that. Not even kidding. Not saying you have to go teach English…you should just do that to get women, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, if you don’t have a job, you want to travel, you want to meet girls, that is the best way I know of, other than someone giving you a bunch of money and you can travel without having to work or something.
Geoff:
Yeah. When in doubt, travel. Have adventures. Learn skills. When I was giving talks in Taiwan about six months ago, you know, there were a handful of American and European male grad students who were like, “Well, I could’ve stayed in Berlin for my PhD or gone to Taipei.” And they were some of the geekiest guys I’ve ever met, but they were doing really, really well with the Taiwanese women because they have citizenship and a cool place. U.S. citizenship or European Union citizenship is gold to most women in most of the world. They were exotic, right, instead of being, like, weird Asperger’s guy. But oh, no. There, it’s intriguing. And honestly, they had quite a bit more game than some of the local guys, so…yeah. Travel. Teach skills…
Tucker:
Yes. Oh, if you think you’re bad with women, compare yourself to a Chinese or Indian guy. You’re doing great. Like, in their home country…We still – I think half our traffic on Mating Grounds is people from countries like that, and we get so much. Our site’s not even that big yet. We don’t have much on it. It’s not a destination site, and already, we’re getting flooded with overseas traffic because those guys are so bad with women and America’s bad, but at least there’s something in America. You know? There’s some idea that you can talk to women, whatever. Like, in China, India…Like, lots of places all over the world, like, they’re in the dark ages compared to us, and we’re in the dark ages. So, you can be bad in America and go to certain South Asian or Asian countries or maybe even some South American countries and be like, “Oh, wow. This is…” You’re actually high value.
Geoff:
And you know, having adventures is golden. This is the time in your life where you have maximum freedom and there will be some time, ten or twenty or thirty years later, when very likely, statistically, you’ll be married, you’ll have kids, and if you look back and go, “Oh, I was twenty-three, unattached. What did I do with my life? Did I—“
Tucker:
“I sat in an office in a suburb and did nothing.” That sucks.
Geoff:
Yeah. You will regret it. You will regret it. And the women you meet will kind of regret it on your behalf because you won’t have cool stories to tell them. So, basically, anything you do that isn’t crazy dangerous, anything that makes for an interesting story later, go do it.
Tucker:
Right. And don’t think…Listen, I don’t want to make this whole podcast about all the things you can do overseas to make money. There’s entire sites dedicated to how to travel with basically no money. I mean, Matt Kepnes and Tim Ferriss and…there’s entire corpuses of information about this. We’ll link a bunch of them on the page on the Mating Grounds for this podcast. You’re welcome to start there. But everything in mating guys, you need to do some fucking effort on your own. Okay? English as a foreign language is the easy and obvious one, teaching that overseas. There’s a million other things you can do. If you have any skill at all, there’s almost always a huge demand for it is overseas, especially a hard skill. Engineering, things like that. It might make a lot of sense if you’re young, single, unattached, to go overseas. Now, I don’t want to make this podcast about foreign women as well, but there are a lot of people who think foreign women are better. I disagree. What they are is different. I think American women…there are certain things that a lot of American women do or ideas they have that are annoying, but overall – I’ve travelled the world – overall, American women are still some of the best, I’ll tell you, top to bottom. But they’re not for everyone and different foreign women are very different. They’re not all the same. You know, Taiwanese women are very different than Vietnamese women. Vietnamese women are very different than Costa Ricans, very different than Brazilians.
You might like a certain type of women, like…you know, at this point, I’m sure you’ve listened to the podcast we did with Dr. Behncke. She’s Chilean, very aggressive, very fiery, very passionate. A lot of South American women tend to be that way. Not all, by any stretch, but especially Chilean women and Brazilian women are very much like that. Colombian, too, right? If you like that, there are a lot of countries where there’ll be a lot of those women. Taiwanese women tend to be, you know, quieter. Not more passive, they just operate in a different way. They’re more reserved in certain ways. If you like that, that’s better. Indian women have lots of different attributes. And then within India, there’s tons of different types of women. You know, Muslims are very different than Hindu Hares, etc. So, at this point, if you know what you’re looking for, do a lot of research, talk to people who have travelled. There might be a country where they are full of the type of women that you’re looking for, either physically or mentally or emotionally. If you’re having problems finding them in America, it might make sense to go overseas.
Geoff:
And it’s also important what the women there are looking for. So, there’s certain countries where the women typically have a certain set of mate values and where, like, young American guys are, they’re super attractive or super unattractive. It depends a lot.
Tucker:
Yes. Like, you know what’s crazy? A buddy of mine was telling me American guys do really badly in Nordic countries. Like, in Sweden, in Norway. If you meet those girls traveling, he said it’s a different thing. That’s why you never hear about guys like, “Oh, I went to Norway for vacation.” And Norway’s, like, a beautiful country. There’s beautiful women there. For whatever reason, American guys, I guess maybe they’re seen as brutish and obnoxious and annoying in Scandinavian countries. As an example of what you’re saying.
Geoff:
Yeah. Or like, you know, there are a lot of Russian women who are really, really into money, and it’s a stereotype but it’s got a grain of truth.
Tucker:
Yeah, no. Not a grain. That’s a beach full of truth.
Geoff:
And so, if you go to Moscow and you’re absolutely loaded, good for you. But if you go there as an impoverished 24-year-old and expect Russian women to be all over you, you will be heartbroken and you’ll freeze to death and be killed by mobsters. It’ll be disastrous.
Tucker:
Yeah. Yeah, so our point is, if that’s a path you want to take, do research. Talk to people who’ve been to those countries, okay? Lots of them. Not just one or two. ‘Cause there’s always some asshole who’s like, “Oh, I’ve traveled everywhere and I know this and that,” and you listen to him and what he says is different from everyone else, probably ‘cause that guy’s a fucking idiot, okay? Read a lot. Do a lot of research. That is a viable path, especially for a year or two. No one’s saying you need to be a vagabond the rest of your life, but traveling for a year – we’ve talked about doing gap years before college, why that can really help you in college. Doing a gap year a year or two before you maybe come back to America and establish your sort of job or whatever. I think that can work really well.
Geoff:
A crucial thing, though, is, you know, if you’re traveling, you’re in a foreign country, remember the women there are also people, too. They are no less intelligent than American women—
Tucker:
Chinese people aren’t people! Come on, you’re talking nonsense, Dr. Miller.
Geoff:
I see a lot of young American guys who, like – they go to Britain and they treat the British girls as, like, non-people, in disrespectful ways they would never treat American women.
Tucker:
Doesn’t work.
Geoff:
So, bear in mind, human nature is universal. Female choice and preferences tend to be pretty universal, give or take a little bit. And if you go to some…wherever, if you go to India and you think, “Well, I’m American. I’ve got…”
Tucker:
“I’ll stomp around and break shit.”
Geoff:
Yeah. Yeah. No! They…In certain ways, they’re going to be even more sophisticated and skeptical and choosey than American women of their age because they’ve often been, you know, exposed to more struggle and life challenges and disaster and trauma and all of that. So, don’t go over there thinking, you know, they’re going to be easy or you’ll have some—
Tucker:
Or stupid.
Geoff:
Yeah, or stupid.
Tucker:
They will not be.
Geoff:
They’re still people. They’re still choosey. They’re still women, and show them some respect and also realize you don’t understand their culture. Like, I moved to Britain and honestly, it took me about five years before I even started to understand British culture and the class system and the mating system.
Tucker:
Well, Britain’s a tough culture to crack, ‘cause everything’s quiet and hidden and there’s meaning behind meaning behind meaning. Britain’s tough. But other places don’t take that long, usually, if you are at all observant or at all sort of, like…look around. That’s one of the only things I kind of regret when I was young. I didn’t travel a lot, and by the time I had money, I was too addicted to American convenience. So, I haven’t traveled anywhere near as much. I kind of wish I spent maybe, like…I don’t know, a year in Brazil or something when I was twenty-two. That would’ve been a lot of fun. I always actually thought I would end up with a South American woman ‘cause they’re so passionate, they’re so direct, they’re so self-reliant in so many ways, but then they’re also very empathetic and caring. I ended up with a woman very much like that. She’s just American. But it’s funny, I always thought…yeah, I thought about that a lot, but I just never went down there which is probably why I didn’t end up with one. That’s what happens if you’re like, “Oh, I’ll go down there someday.” Nope. You won’t. Go down there now, or go down there when you’re young. It’s much easier. Even though you don’t have money, that’s actually the best time to do it.
Alright, so let’s actually talk about – we kind of skimmed over something at the beginning I think we need to make guys understand. We already talked about when you get out of school, your mate value’s going to drop a lot and you’re probably going to be depressed, kind of like you went through that in a microcosm when you went through that interview with that awful gold digger at Stanford, right? Here’s what you need to understand, guys, is a lot of guys make this mistake. Here’s what I’m going to say. A lot of guys look at me or even look at you and they’re like, “Ugh. They’re so experienced. They’ve been doing this…You know, they’re so famous. They’re so smart. They get these girls.” They see us as we are today and they can’t see a path from where they are to us. Let me be very clear about this, guys. I used to be where you are. Dr. Miller used to be where you are. Like, I didn’t step out of my mom’s womb clocking hoes. You know? It took me a long time to learn this stuff and to understand this stuff and I made every fucking mistake possible along the way, usually multiple times ‘cause I’m a fucking idiot. And some of those times were funny. I wrote about them and that’s what I did with my life. Dr. Miller studied these sort of things and made the mistakes in his own life and corrected them, etc. Right? So, what I’m about to tell you is hard one advice from me. There’s two things. One, never compare yourself to a guy older than you and expect you to be able to have what he has. Now, if you’re twenty-four and you’ve done amazing shit and you’re doing great, that’s great. Then maybe you can compare yourself to someone older and match up and that’s fantastic. But if you’re twenty-four and you’re struggling and you haven’t met many girls and you’re not doing good, guys, I didn’t start writing until I was twenty-seven. Right? I didn’t get famous until I was in my thirties, really. I didn’t really even start making money till…thirty-two, thirty-three. Like, I had some money, but not real money. Not even money, like enough to buy nice cars or whatever. Thirty-three! That’s ten years after I’d left college. My point, my overall point is – point one is don’t compare yourself to older guys ‘cause you’re not the same. Point two, the derivation of that. You’re not the same because shit changes in that time. Your life is very long. You’re going to have sex the whole time, and you can change and improve so much.
If you don’t get that, there’s a very easy thought experiment you can use to understand that. When you were twelve, how good were you with women? Terrible, obviously. You’re fucking twelve. Well, how good were you at twenty-two? Much better. I don’t care how bad you are. You’re better at twenty-two than you were at twelve. Okay? You’re going to be probably ten times better at thirty-two, and you can fuck a lot at thirty-two. You can do all kinds of stuff. I’m thirty-eight. I’m basically starting my sort of marriage, girlfriend, family stages now. You know, I’ve been dating her for a little while, so about thirty-six, thirty-seven is when I really started that phase of my life. That means I had two decades – if we assume I started at sixteen, two decades of sex and women and dating and being single or being in sort of dating relationships. Two decades. Right? Guys, you’re probably going to have close to the same – you can have that long if you want. You’re going to at least have a decade. So, don’t expect everything to happen right away. If you suck now, it doesn’t mean you will suck tomorrow. You can get better. I used to suck. I got better. Dr. Miller used to suck. He got better. Everyone who’s good at anything in life, including relationships and women, used to suck and they got better.
Geoff:
Absolutely. Like, I often think – and this’ll sound really weird to 20-year-old guys, but oh my god, if I knew at forty what I know now at forty-nine, I would’ve done so much better. You never stop learning. It’s very easy to think if you’re twenty-two or whatever, “Oh, sex is only going to be good till I’m thirty and then it’ll stop and I’ll be settled and married with kids.” No, no, no. It’ll keep going. Maybe you’ll settle down and stay with the same woman forever, but chances are, probably not. You’ll meet a lot of older men who say, “Wow. I didn’t really understand women until I was, like, fifty or sixty,” or whatever.
Tucker:
Well, actually, do you know…Adam Grant just linked to a study on Twitter. We’ll put the link to the actual study. Do you know past the age of twenty-five, there’s no relationship between age and wisdom? Under twenty-five, there’s a big relationship, right? Basically, around twenty-five, guys, your brains are going to stop growing and you’re going to…whatever. You’re going to solidify as a person. Women solidify in their early twenties. It takes you to your mid-twenties. But there’s no relationship between age and wisdom. What does that tell you guys? It tells you the more you try to improve, the more you try to learn, the more you try to get better, the wiser you can get. But age alone does not fucking do it. It doesn’t.
Geoff:
It takes experience plus effort and insight and intelligence, and yeah, oh, my god, I know a lot of guys in their fifties who really are no better with women than they were when they were twelve.
Tucker:
‘Cause they’ve stopped improving. They’ve stopped learning. They’ve stopped all that sort of shit. I mean, I’ll actually reveal something to you guys. There’s a reason that we focus on younger guys with our advice. It’s not because it doesn’t apply to older guys. It does apply to older guys. Let me tell you something about most older guys. They won’t take advice because it makes them feel incompetent because they feel like they should already know this stuff, even if they don’t and most of them don’t. Most of my friends are terrible with women. Most guys I know of any age are awful. Awful. Like, really bad. Really embarrassingly bad. You wouldn’t believe how many people…Like, one of the things we’re doing with interviews is bringing on not just research experts but also people who are good in other fields and talking to them about women and relationships. And a lot of people, like big, famous people, I can’t bring on or we’ll do interviews with and we won’t show them because, like, it kind of reveals how mortifyingly bad they are with women and how little they understand and how little the effort they’ve put into understanding this stuff. Right? That’s why we focus on young guys, because young guys are young enough where they think, “Okay. I’m still learning.” Right? They’re not embarrassed that they’re failing and they want to get better, but at some point in most guys’ lives, they stop that. For whatever reason, generally because they think they’re supposed to have it together and they’re too embarrassed to admit that they don’t or something happens and they think they have it together and they don’t. Or they get married and they stop…Guys, that shit will not help you, ever. The only thing that’s going to help you is understanding that you need to work on this your whole life. Like, I’m still working on this. I mean, I’m not working on getting women anymore. I’m working on being in a relationship. It’s still the same basic stuff, except now I’m trying to understand relating to someone, connecting with them, that kind of stuff. But it’s all the same continuation of stuff, guys. Okay? So, here’s the point. If you’re bad now, don’t feel bad. It will get better, but it will only get better if you work at it. But if you work at it, you will get better. I’ve worked at this my whole life, and I’m really fucking good at it and that’s why I’m good at this.
I can’t tell you how many guys – we actually had a lot of guys send emails about this, asking me to talk about when I was young because they’re like, “I read your books and I think, like, you were just always good with women. It just seemed like you were always good with women.” And it confuses me, ‘cause I’ll say to the guys, I’m like, “Guys. If you read the books, you’ll realize in at least half of the stories or more, I’m failing. I’m throwing up on myself or shitting myself or a girl’s turning me down.” One guy actually wrote and answered back, and it was really smart. He said, “Yeah, but the fact is, you’re talking to girls. So, even though you’re failing with girls in your stories, those are the funny stories and the implication is you have so many success stories that these are just the failures.” And I thought about that and I realized he was really right. I only put the funny stuff in my books, guys. That’s the point. But let me be clear about this if I haven’t been. There’s almost nothing you’re going to do in your life failure-wise that other guys haven’t done before, myself included. And probably you, too, Dr. Miller.
Geoff:
Yeah. I mean, like, if you look at my career, you know, I’ve worked on mate choice and sex and, you know, my whole career has been trying to understand women and what they want and how that’s shaped human evolution. Well, basically, every chapter of my dissertation came out of personal experience of, like, trying to understand why did I fail with that girlfriend? Oh, I failed ‘cause my verbal courtship, my conversation, sucked. So, that’s my chapter on evolution and language. Right? Or, my chapter on evolution and moral virtues. Oh, I had a moral failing with that girlfriend. There’s a whole story of heartbreak and failure behind virtually every chapter, every paper I’ve ever written. And I turned that personal experience into science and tried to get insight into it, just the way you turned your failures into funny stories. And I think that’s the experience of a lot of people who work on kind of sexual science, is we want to understand why we sucked so badly when we were younger and make sense of it.
Tucker:
Right. So, there’s not much else to say on that, guys. It’s just the big thing is, everything we’re telling you about, we’ve worked through in our lives. From one angle or another, between the two of us, there’s almost nothing we haven’t failed at. Almost no embarrassment we haven’t suffered. Almost no failure we haven’t had to deal with, and we worked through them. So, like…Geoff and I are very different people, different types of person. You’re close to one or the other of us, I’m sure. And so understand that, like, guys, your failures are not unique. They’re not just your own. We’ve all done them and we’ve all worked through them, okay? And the young professional time of your life might be, for a lot of you guys, the hardest time mating-wise ‘cause you don’t understand. Like, “I used to be popular. I got girls in college some, but now I can’t.” Well, you’re going to grow up. You’re going to learn these things, especially if you listen to the stuff we’re saying and implement it, you’re going to get better at life, better at your work, better at relationships, and better at women and then all of these things will develop and then you’ll get to where you want to go. Neither of us started out as who we are. We earned this. You’ve got to earn your spot in the world, okay?
One more thing I want to talk about. I think, Dr. Miller, we should talk about how to meet women post-college. So, let’s say I’m a 23-year-old and I’m listening to this and I’m like, “Alright. I’ve got it. I can’t travel for whatever reason, ‘cause I got this amazing job where I started a company or something cool like that. And I live in a cool city. I live in Austin or something like that. You’re right. It’s hard for me to compete with guys. So, what do I do? Where do I meet women? And I don’t want to go meet college girls. I want to meet adults.” Okay. So, what does that guy do?
Geoff:
Well, I think a key thing is actually looking at your little Google calendar and fill up your evenings and weekends with scheduled activities and classes and going out and getting off your butt and not just watching TV every evening. That’s probably the number one thing. Don’t think, “Okay. I can basically just slack off the whole week and then hope to go out on Friday night to a bar and do all my mating then.” No. Work the mating effort into the rest of your life. Commit. Commit to classes and repeated activities where you’re getting introduced to new people on a regular basis. You know, one thing I want to talk about with young adults is that there’s a tendency after college to think, “My learning phase is over. Now real life starts.” No. You didn’t learn hardly anything in college that’s actually sexually attractive to women. Now, finally, you’ve got the time to do things like learn sports and music and how to sing and how to draw and how to do all that stuff that’s actually romantically attractive that universities don’t bother to teach you. And, you can do it in classes that include women.
Tucker:
Well, hopefully you learned some of that in college, right? And then maybe you can teach those classes afterwards. So, let me sum up what Dr. Miller just said ‘cause he’s exactly right. What he means is make your social life an extension of your mating life. Okay? So, as two specific examples. If you’ve been listening to our podcasts, I think this one actually might come before the workout and health podcast. Guys, you need to fucking be in shape. Okay? Like, we’re going to have a whole podcast where I say that twenty times and I yell at you about it. So, I’m just presaging that sort of podcast, but you need to be in shape. You need to work out. So, let’s assume you’re like, “Okay, of course, Tucker. I’m going to work out.” Well, why not workout with women? What’s the best way to do that? There’s a lot. If you want to do yoga, you can do yoga. Whatever. I do Crossfit. Crossfit’s super fun, it’s a great workout, puts you in amazing shape, oh, and PS, fucking a lot of really hot cool girls do it! I mean, there’s like an unofficial motto for Crossfit called “turning sevens into tens.” It’s like, it’s a little bit kind of goofy and sexist, but I think actually a woman came up with that, because it’s true. It makes women really attractiven physically. It makes guys attractive, too, ‘cause you get in shape. And the type of woman who does Crossfit is really cool. I met my girlfriend through Crossfit. Not even though my class, though. I’ve never worked out with her. She was friends with my instructor, who introduced me to her. So, that’s one example.
Or, let’s say you’re really bad with conversation and you’re trying to learn how to get better. We’re going to talk about this in the conversation podcast, which is coming later. You take improv classes, which is one of the best ways to learn how to talk to people and how to be funny, right? You killed two birds with one stone. Oh, by the way, improv classes are about 60-70% women. So, now, every night once a week or twice a week, you get to go hang out with ten girls who you’re supposed to interact with. Oh, guess what? Those girls have friends. All of them have ten or twenty friends. So, now you just increased your social circle by 150 girls, potentially. Even if none of those girls in that class are sexually attracted to you or they all have boyfriends or whatever, you now have ten girls that you can befriend and be cool with who are like, “Oh, you’re so cool, you should meet my friend.” Or, “I’m having a party. Come to the party.” Whatever. Okay? Those are two very specific examples of what Dr. Miller was talking about. He’s not saying go out and do stuff for no reason, right? Don’t just go learn how to be an opera singer and then expect women to show up. No, no, no, no. Go do things that you like in groups of people that are, preferably…not bisexual. Mixed groups. I was going to say bisexual groups. I was like, hold on a minute. Mixed groups, because that’s how you meet people. Okay, my favorite part of college was intramural sports. Intramural sports are awesome. Guess what? You can do those as young adults, too. They have entire leagues for them! They’re fucking awesome and fun, and unlike college where you can’t have beer at the college softball games, young adults, you have fucking kegs at first and third base. It’s awesome. Right? You can meet tons of girls, then you go on parties as groups, etc. It doesn’t really matter what you like. You can do it in a group.
Geoff:
And I think it’s also – this is a great time when you can try a bunch of different things. Experiment. Probably most women in America have taken yoga classes, and if you look on match.com, online dating, a lot of women list yoga as an interest. Most guys have never taken a single yoga class. I disdained yoga. I thought yoga was wimpy, it’s weird, I don’t believe any of this spiritual bullshit. But that’s stupid, because why not just try it? Once you try it, you’ll learn more than most guys know about let’s say, yoga, if you just go to ten classes. Ten hours. And then you can talk to any woman out there about one additional topic that you couldn’t talk about before.
Tucker:
Yep.
Geoff:
Right, and it’s the same with any—
Tucker:
Instead of saying, “Oh, yoga’s stupid,” you actually have something to say now.
Geoff:
At least you know what downward dog is or whatever some positions are. The same with whatever, photography or painting or…you can try a lot of different things. Have you ever taken a spin class? If not, why not? Of course, Crossfit’s probably a better workout—
Tucker:
But if you like spin, do spin!
Geoff:
But you can try it, and don’t prejudge any of this. If you haven’t tried it, you don’t know.
Tucker:
Here’s the thing, too, with yoga. So, just to give you a pro-tip on yoga. Yes, Dr. Miller’s exactly right. Take some yoga classes. But, for a lot of guys, for a lot of people, doing anything new is intimidating, right? And so they’re afraid of crossing that chasm. Alright, if you’re afraid, that’s cool, man. I get it. Here’s how to get over that with yoga. So, like, if your life in Austin, I would make it a point to find what are the bigger, more popular yoga studios because you want to meet more girls than less girls. No problem with that. And then call the up and say, “Hey. I’m a beginner. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Just own your lack of ability, and you can even own your fears. Say, “I’m a little bit nervous about this.” Which, first off, will be endearing, because you’re being honest whereas most guys aren’t. “I’m a little bit nervous about this. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I want to try it. What should I do?” My guess is they either have beginner classes, right? Intro classes where everyone in there is a beginner. Or, they’ll be super cool and say, “Yeah. I’ll walk you through it,” whatever. That does one of two things. Either you’ll go to the beginner class and everyone’s a beginner. You can go out for drinks afterwards and talk to them, whatever, it’s cool. Make friends, right? And then you decide do you want to do it or not? Maybe you want to do it for a little while. Maybe you don’t. Or, the instructor walks you through everything. You meet, hopefully, a hot instructor, ‘cause yoga has some of the fucking hottest women ever teach yoga, at least in Austin, and then you make friends with her, ‘cause she knows a lot of women who do yoga. It’s so fucking simple if you just actually make a little bit of effort and think a little bit about it. Okay?
This is why we tell guys, young guys especially. The bar scene is really fun in college because you’re all college kids going to college bars and you all basically know each other and you all have something in common. Bar scene works really well in college. What a lot of guys realize is they get out of college and the bar scene doesn’t work as well anymore. It can work, don’t get me wrong. I was really good at picking up girls in bars. Some guys are, but most guys are not. Most guys do really bad, and they don’t understand why. Here’s why. When you’re twenty-three out at a bar, you don’t automatically have anything in common with a girl you meet anymore, ‘cause you’re not going to th