Introduction:
If ever you want an example of a normal guy who went from awful to fantastic with women, then Charlie Hoehn is your guy. He went from being an embarrassed, ashamed, ignorant teenager to a guy who does really well, and who surrounds himself with smart, beautiful women and lives an incredible life.
In this episode, Charlie reveals, very openly and honestly, how he did it and what mistakes he made along the way. He also tells some hilarious stories about his earlier failings with women and his journey to overcome those and become the man he is today.
Podcast:
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Video:
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Key takeaways:
Charlie is great with women now, but it has taken him a long time and a lot of work to get to where he is. He made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of embarrassing shit, just like every other guy. The key is to learn from what you did wrong and do better next time.
In fact, the guys who do great in high school and sleep with lots of girls usually end up failing in life, because they stick with what worked for them at that time and stop learning and growing. Unfortunately for them, the things that make you successful in high school aren’t the things that make you successful out in the real world.
Women are just as sexual as men are, but they want to be safe first – and safety refers not only to physical safety, but also social safety, e.g. you’re not going to go around bragging about it and hurting her reputation if the two of you have sex.
That’s why Charlie’s buddy got laid so much in high school, and it’s why Laird Hamilton has had sex with so many Hollywood stars. If you want to sleep with a lot of women, you have to be attractive<, but you also have to be discreet and safe.
Focus less on what you’re saying and more on how you’re saying it – try watching standup comedy to learn about tonality, delivery speed and so on. Also think about what everything else, like your body language and the social context, is signalling about you. Just trying to find the right “pickup line” is pointless.
Also pay attention to people with charisma who can hold other people’s attention, and think about what they do effectively that you can learn from.
It is much, much easier to find the type of relationship he wanted when he was honest about it with himself and with other people – whatever that type of relationship is. If you want to go out and sleep with tons of girls, no problem. If you want a relationship, that’s fine too. You just have to be honest about it. Lying can work, but it’s not the most effective strategy.
Just by being upfront about it, you’re giving women their agency back. You’re basically saying to them “I’m only interested in having fun”, and they don’t have to waste time figuring out if you’re lying or not. So they basically can just decide whether or not they want to have a short-term hookup, and there are lots of girls out there who want exactly that, and then at that point, all you have to do is be clean, be in decent shape, and be basically funny and you’re good.
You can be a nice guy without being a doormat and letting people treat you like crap. Don’t mistake kindness and empathy for letting people treat you however they want. You have to have a line that you don’t want people to cross. Being a nice guy does not mean being passive or cowardly.
We’ve mentioned this before and we’ll say it again: your goal shouldn’t be to have sex, it should be to go out, have fun and meet new people. It’s an easier goal to achieve and it takes the pressure off you, and also means that you come across a lot less needy and desperate. You’re focused on the process, not the outcome.
It sounds obvious, but it sometimes needs saying: treat people as people, with their own thoughts, feelings and emotions. If you can truly understand that and deal with people on that level, your entire life, as well as your sex life, will be much more rewarding.
Links from this episode
Listen to our earlier podcast with John Durant
Laird Hamilton
The Game by Neil Strauss
Tucker’s article Why You Shouldn’t Go To Law School
David DeAngelo’s Double Your Dating, which Charlie tried at first (to limited success, and does not recommend)
The movie Kids – this is not a good film to watch with a girl.
Charlie’s Bio:
Author, marketer and entrepreneur
Has worked for Seth Godin, Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferriss, as well as Tucker
Author of Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure For Anxiety, which tells Charlie’s story of burning out while working for Tim Ferriss and how he cured his anxiety.
Also wrote Recession Proof Graduate, a guide to getting great jobs with successful entrepreneurs by working for free
Blogs at CharlieHoehn.com
Further reading on Charlie Hoehn:
Charlie on Twitter
Charlie’s TEDx talk
Charlie’s series on Tim Ferriss’s blog about burnout and curing anxiety: part 1 and part 2.
Podcast Audio Transcription:
Tucker:
Alright, so doing a Mating Grounds podcast with Charlie Hoehn. So we generally have two types of experts that we interview for the Mating Grounds podcast. One are actual experts who do real research in various related fields, sex, dating, mating behavior, stuff like that, and we’ve had a bunch of those. And then the other sort of person we interview are people who aren’t really direct experts about women or sex and dating and sort in any sort of credentialed sense. But they’re people that I know really well and who have very interesting stories that I think would be really useful for guys to hear and learn a lot from. So a good example was John Durant came on, and you know, I mean he’s just a fucking caveman weirdo, right? But John actually had a lot of great stories. He was basically a pathetic coward in college, especially with women, and then he kind of turned it all around. He talked very specifically about how he did it and what he learned and all that kind of stuff, and I think a lot of guys who don’t necessarily care about “Oh, I don’t really care about your monkey research. Like, tell me what I can do today with women” can benefit, I think, from your story, because you bring a lot of it…very different from John, but the same sort of thing. So let’s start with – where do you want to start? In high school for you or what?
Charlie:
Yeah, I suppose that would make sense. I think middle school, I was still in the phase where I think most guys are where they’re just… everything’s going over their head because the girls around them are more aggressive; and back then, all I cared about was making people laugh and making jokes.
Tucker:
Actually, let’s do this. Let’s start with this first. I’ve known Charlie for – how long have we known each other? Eight years or something like that?
Charlie:
We met each other, I think, first in 2008.
Tucker:
Yeah. Okay. So a long time. About eight years.
Charlie:
Six.
Tucker:
Charlie basically since the day I’ve known him does really well with women. I mean he’s obviously a good-looking dude, but, I mean he doesn’t, as far as I know, sleep with a ton of women, but that’s not really Charlie’s goal necessarily, but the last year or so, he’s pretty much lived with me in Austin and whenever Charlie feels like “Oh, I’m going to bring a bunch of hot girls over,” he has girls around him all the time. Charlie’s very successful in life, but also very successful with women; and I think Charlie’s – and correct me if I get anything wrong – your goal is not quantity, it’s much more quality. “I want to have really great women around me that I really like and enjoy, and have relationships with them.” And the one or two girls that I’ve met that you’ve been dating in Austin have been – first they’re all pretty, they’re really pretty. I’m like “Oh, she’s pretty.” Then I’ll talk to them, I’m like “Wow. This girl’s actually really fucking cool. She’s not just… whatever.” So for whatever –
Charlie:
That’s good to hear you say that, by the way. I’m glad to hear that. Thank you.
Tucker:
Well, I don’t want to get like serenading, but the girl from Ole Miss that you ‘d… bring her home the other day, she’s fantastic. Like, she’s a really –
Charlie:
You like her?
Tucker:
Oh, yeah.
Charlie:
Awesome.
Tucker:
She’s a great girl. Have we never talked about this, Charlie? Have I never opened up about what I think of your girlfriends? No, they’re fantastic.
Charlie:
Well, yeah. Awesome.
Tucker:
Anyway, so for whatever it’s worth, a lot of people will know who you are just because they’ll have heard your name in other places or read one of your books, or “Yeah. Oh, he worked for Tim Ferriss,” or “He worked for…” whatever, but you don’t really talk about women or whatever, but I’ve seen it for eight years. Not only do you always have pretty girls around you, but they’re always fucking cool and they interact with you in a way that I think a lot of guys could learn a whole lot from. So let’s start with –
Charlie:
Okay.
Tucker:
I know. We talked about this. That’s why I wanted you to come on the podcast is because you don’t even really realize – because it’s your life. Most people don’t realize that their own life is like “I didn’t realize I was an outlier,” until you look around and you’re like “Oh, I’m really tall,” or “I’m really…” whatever. So we’re going to get to that part at the end, but let’s just start with where most guys start thinking about women, which is about middle school.
Charlie:
Okay. I should I guess precede that by saying that I grew up in a family of almost all women, and they’re all very strong personalities, all very pretty girls, and just good people in general, so I grew up being the only guy in my family apart from dads and uncles and stuff, so I became very comfortable with talking with girls early on. In middle school, I guess, I mean there’s not too much noteworthy there apart from memories of – Well, actually, I was totally in love with this one girl and I just remembered like not having any idea what to do. I became best friends with her.
Tucker:
Right. So how old were you?
Charlie:
How old was I? I think I was 13.
Tucker:
So you’re hitting puberty at this point.
Charlie:
Right. Yeah. I remember just being really infatuated with her because she was so bubbly and friendly, and it wouldn’t pain me actually when I saw her like dating other guys. That was the age when I was just like “Oh my God. We greet each other by hugging and it’s amazing.” Seriously. Because I hadn’t really experienced that before where… I don’t know. I distinctly remember those memories in middle school of being able to like hug really attractive girls and then like wanting that, and it was like “This is enough for me.”
Tucker:
Wow. Really?
Charlie:
Yeah. Yeah. Back then –
Tucker:
All I wanted to do was fuck the dog shit out of all of them.
Charlie:
Not at that age. Not for me. Like, that came much later – not much later, but definitely later. I have a few memories from middle school that are kind of ridiculous. I remember the most attractive girl in my middle school class – This is how so many things were going over my head. The most attractive girl – I look back on it and like “How did I miss that?” but she would find herself in situations like where we hug too aggressively and would say stuff like “Oh my Gosh. We almost kissed.” I’d be like “Yeah, that’s pretty weird.”
Tucker:
And then just go, “I got baseball. See you later.”
Charlie:
Yeah. “Take it easy.”
Tucker:
So this is why women like – Dude, it’s so funny, because you hear all the time, women are like “Why don’t guys pick up signals?” It’s because of shit like you. You’re fucking it up for the rest of us.
Charlie:
Yeah. Totally. Totally. It’s taken me probably a good like 13 or 14 years before I was like consistently getting 90% of the signals.
Tucker:
The obvious ones, like “Oh boy. Didn’t want to kiss. That was so close there. Hint, hint, Charlie.”
Charlie:
“Oh my God. I almost just gave you a hand job right on the spot there.” Yeah. So there were… I mean, I remember, I was really good friends with this other girl named Katie and – I don’t know, I had a number of instances with girls where they would tell me they were really into me. With Katie, I remember being over at her house and her dad coming down like every few minutes to check on us, and like, he came down to program the clock on the VCR because he thought l was just going to hook up with her. She would just tell me about like instances where she’d masturbated and all this stuff, and I was just like “Wow. This is really crazy. Glad we’re such good friends.” It was totally lost on me. There’s so many situations like that.
Tucker:
I didn’t know you were going to tell stories. This is awesome.
Charlie:
Yeah, it was just a weird phase, I guess, middle school.
Tucker:
At 13 years old, I’m pretty sure I would’ve shot in my pants if that’d happened.
Charlie:
Yeah, that didn’t come until I was like 14 or 15. I was just at that age where it was like I was still in limbo.
Tucker:
Yeah. That makes sense.
Charlie:
Yeah. I got to high school and I transferred to a new school. I transferred to a Catholic school and it went from a public to a private school. So I didn’t have friends basically when I first got there, but started making friends once I started playing sports. I was kind of stuck up, I think, when I got there. I was just like “Ah, the girls aren’t as attractive,” which was actually true.
Tucker:
But they fuck a lot more in the butt, especially, the Catholic school.
Charlie:
Later on. But during those years, everyone was running dry as far as we knew.
Tucker:
Well, it’s Catholic school and you’re 14. In Kentucky, where I was from, there were definitely people hooking up, but that’s Kentucky. They’re trashy bumpkins. It’s different.
Charlie:
Yeah. I guess in high school, I wanted to do stuff with a few girls, but I didn’t have the confidence because my best friends – In Colorado, girls don’t know this, but Denver’s consistently ranked as like one of the top places for females to go. There are a lot of really attractive, really solid guys there, and all of my friends like had higher status or were better looking than me.
Tucker:
Your male friends, you mean?
Charlie:
Yeah. Like, one of my friends, his dad was the governor. Another one of my friends – They were all richer than I was; and they all were good friends, so I was –
Tucker:
So you were like Kenny of South Park.
Charlie:
And I died every single day. I got killed. So, yeah, I think I had kind of a distorted sense of my worth and I tried really hard to like be in with that group; and I think all of us just kind of generally didn’t know what we were doing with girls. Like, we were nice, but we’d get nervous if anything escalated. Yeah, high school was almost, I think, completely nothing for me.
Tucker:
So you weren’t hooking up with girls in high school?
Charlie:
No. Uh-uh.
Tucker:
Why not?
Charlie:
I don’t have a good answer for that, I guess. It was just like one – I’ll tell you. This was like the definitive instance in high school of like my total failure.
Tucker:
Right.
Charlie:
So it was after, I think, homecoming or Sadie Hawkins. We would all go over to my friend’s – he’s now not my friend anymore, but we’d all go over to his house after each…They would host parties all the time. His mom would buy booze for all of us.
Tucker:
Nice.
Charlie:
But, anyway, we would go over to his house and hang out there, and that was like the one sanctuary we had where like anything goes and we can drink and do whatever.
Tucker:
Sounded like fucking heaven, man. I didn’t have any of this shit.
Charlie:
Well, yeah. So I went over there and this girl who was one year younger, she was known, at least among all my friends and all the guys, like “This is one of the hottest girls in the school.” Like, she was really into me, but she was dating a guy that I played baseball with, who was also a year younger than me, and he and I were friends. And I remember like she was still dating him and he left. And it was, I think, one in the morning and she like grabbed my hand, took me downstairs and like we just spooned all night, and like I –
Tucker:
Did she want more, or you don’t know?
Charlie:
She was dating one of my friends and, I think, obviously, now I know she did –
Tucker:
Well, a trampy high school girl there.
Charlie:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. But it was just like “I don’t know what to do in this situation because it’s like I don’t want to do that to my friend, but also like this is the most attractive girl I’ve ever met.”
Tucker:
And how old were you, 17 or something?
Charlie:
I think I had to have been 16 or 17. I think 17. But, yeah, I think that was like one of those for sure moments where I was just like – I probably made the right call, but it was –
Tucker:
I mean, yeah, I don’t know how… Girls didn’t do that with me, man. Like, girls weren’t like “Oh, come spoon with me,” or “You’re so safe.” No.
Charlie:
“You just give such a feeling of comfort and safety.”
Tucker:
Quite different high school experiences, man. Plus, I would have like, assuming obviously she wanted to have sex, there would’ve been… I don’t give a fuck if Jesus Christ was her boyfriend.
Charlie:
Well, that was the thing that was really tough for me in high school was I, when I was 15, basically became secular. I won’t go into the reasons for it, but I started finding –
Tucker:
You mean actually religious secular or sexually secular?
Charlie:
Religiously secular.
Tucker:
Okay. Alright.
Charlie:
So I self defined as an atheist, and this was like a point of isolation. This made me feel extremely isolated from…
Tucker:
You were in Catholic school.
Charlie:
…both my family and all of my friends.
Tucker:
Because you were in Catholic – Alright. Okay.
Charlie:
Yeah. Yeah. So none of my closest friends identified as that, and one of my friends told me he thought I was going to hell, so it was shitty.
Tucker:
So much for Christ the forgiver, right?
Charlie:
You’re right. Yeah. Exactly. So forgive me. Yeah, it made things a little tougher for me, I think, back then.
Tucker:
You said you were secular, so like it isolated you from girls.
Charlie:
Oh, yeah. This is why I wanted to say that. So I still had like the Catholic guilt, I think, instilled in me, and I was very much… I was afraid of a girl like saying I’d done something, and spreading bad rumors about me.
Tucker:
Or gossip, right?
Charlie:
Gossip.
Tucker:
Yeah. You’re very much afraid of being judged in gossip.
Charlie:
Yeah, totally. I was afraid of being judged, because I was so close to my friends and I loved my friends so much, but we also totally would break each other’s balls on any situation for like the smallest thing.
Tucker:
Of course, ‘cause guys do that.
Charlie:
Yeah. Yeah. So it was just like avoiding embarrassment from the guys. We just all totally sabotaged each other’s attempts to get –
Tucker:
Right. Well, I mean, that’s, of course.
Charlie:
Yeah.
Tucker:
Alright. So then you leave high school, you go to Colorado State, right?
Charlie:
Yeah. So Colorado State –
Tucker:
That’s when you turned into a monster and you were just fucking everything you could find.
Charlie:
Well, that was –
Tucker:
Fucking stovepipes, whatever.
Charlie:
I think that was actually the most definitive… freshman year was the most definitive year, because what happened was I met a girl who lived on the same floor as me and it was the first time in my life where I was like “I’m totally in love with this girl.” Like, she was amazing, like the most charismatic, magnetic personality I’d ever encountered. Like, she had all these traits that I wanted, and she’s –
Tucker:
You’re hoping to suck them out of her through her vagina or something?
Charlie:
So, like, I was just so infatuated with this girl, just head over heels, thought she was the greatest thing ever.
Tucker:
Dude, it’s so funny, ‘cause – hold on just for one second, I’m going to interrupt – the way that you describe girls, it’s not bad at all, it’s just very different than most guys. Like, if I were describing like the equivalent-type women in my life, the first thing I would mention for all of them, “She’s so hot,” or “She had big tits,” or whatever. You hardly even… you used beautiful for the one girl who was spooning with you and the rest, you don’t even talk about what they look like. I’m sure they were pretty, but that’s not even – It’s not a good or bad thing. I’m just like pointing that out. Actually, it’s going to be relevant later. I’m going to make a point for the listeners. I think it’s pretty important. But keep going.
Charlie:
Yeah. So…
Tucker:
You were talking about…
Charlie:
…it is really interesting.
Tucker:
…she’s was a magnetic person – We’re going to get back to that.
Charlie:
Okay.
Tucker:
So a magnetic personality, you really like her, like bubbly, whatever. You were totally in love with her.
Charlie:
Yeah. So she and I are very flirtatious with each other and I hear from a friend of mine – and this other girl who was her sweet mate was like really aggressively flirting with me and I was not into her at all, and so I –
Tucker:
Which by the way is hilarious. For the listeners, I’ve seen girls throw themselves at Charlie and Charlie’s very nice to them always, but looking at their face like a dog looking at someone’s dog’s poop, like “Hmm. No, I’m not into that.”
Charlie:
Like Murphy.
Tucker:
“No. I’m not into that.” It’s hilarious.
Charlie:
It’s one of those quality problems to have, but it also just gives you… it’s just uncomfortable. It’s happened a lot when I was just like “I have zero attraction to this person.” So we were flirting with each other and it was one of those instances where I was just like so aggressive – or it’s so pathetic in how I communicated my interest for her.
Tucker:
So like how?
Charlie:
I think I wrote it on a piece of paper and gave it to –
Tucker:
Like you look at a notebook paper?
Charlie:
Yeah. Seriously. Laugh all you want, that’s how it went down. And she was one of those girls that, like, tons of guys liked, because she was just so immediately… like “Wow, there’s something different about this girl.”
Tucker:
Of course.
Charlie:
And she started… she dated a guy who I viewed as like “This is such a loser.” He was a hippie, he had Tourette’s and he did all these drugs and –
Tucker:
White dude or black dude?
Charlie:
Yeah, he was white. She dated him for a little bit, and then she got in a long-term relationship with a guy who like did much heavier drugs and was just… I thought he was a total dick. I think that was the point where I was just like “I don’t know what I’m doing;” like if another situation like this came about and there was a girl who was that caliber, I don’t want to mess that up ever again. Like, that hurt, and it made me –
Tucker:
So, hold on. You’re skipping over the really interesting parts.
Charlie:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think –
Tucker:
So you made an overture to her, that was pathetic, on notebook paper. What happened then?
Charlie:
She was basically like “Ha ha ha. I like you too, but not that way.” I know, just thinking back on it, that it was the way – It was not just the notebook paper. Like, there’s way of doing that that can totally work. It was the body language. It was the patheticness to it. It was the desperation that –
Tucker:
That’s it. Desperation.
Charlie:
Yeah. It was the fearing of losing and of being rejected that came across so strongly. And I should say that before this, I don’t think I was… I was a late bloomer, Tucker. I think I had my first like real kiss my freshman year of college and I didn’t even know what I was doing. It was, again, this girl who lived in another dorm, she was into me. I went out with her one night. I came back to her dorm room and we were just spooning, watching TV, and she turned back to me and she was the one who initiated, started kissing me, and I think I was initially so bad at it that she was like “Well, I got an early morning. I got to get to bed.”
Tucker:
Oh, this is great.
Charlie:
And I remember going back to my dorm being like “Yes. I finally like had the first real session,” and looking back, it was just so pathetic.
Tucker:
And now you’re like “Wow.”
Charlie:
Yeah.
Tucker:
That’s awesome.
Charlie:
But I mean of all the nice things you said at the beginning, it just makes me laugh inside because I think back on all these memories of just –
Tucker:
‘Cause you’re used to –
Charlie:
Yeah, just totally clawing my way to figuring this stuff out and following.
Tucker:
We all did.
Charlie:
Yeah. I know. Yeah.
Tucker:
We all did and I think a lot of young guys don’t understand that, and we all different ways to do it and there’s nothing out there that really tells you what’s going on, what’s normal, what’s not normal, what’s okay, what’s not okay, how things work, and that’s why Geoff and I are fucking doing this.
Charlie:
Yeah, I know, and that’s why it’s so helpful.
Tucker:
Yeah, so don’t feel bad. I mean, I’m laughing ‘cause it’s hilarious…
Charlie:
Oh, I don’t feel bad now.
Tucker:
…and because I have the same stories. They’re totally different stories, but they’re the same stories of desperation, patheticness, confusion, preposterous absurdity, all that shit.
Charlie:
Yeah.
Tucker:
Alright, so you blew it with –
Charlie:
Real fast, I’m personally curious, what do you think has been for you – Do you have a defining story like that when you were young, where you were like “Man. If only I knew back then what I would go on to become compared to…”
Tucker:
I mean, no, not really. Like, I wasn’t –
Charlie:
You know, you have to have it. You just said we all have those embarrassing stories.
Tucker:
Right. But I don’t have like a defining one. There’s not one where I’m like “That’s seared into my brain” as like “That girl rejected me” or “That girl kissed me and it changed the trajectory of my life.”
Charlie:
Your earliest failure that you can remember, or earliest rejection that you’re like “That is really kind of embarrassing.”
Tucker:
Oh, God. I have so many. I don’t even know where to begin… I don’t know.
Charlie:
Because it is actually important for guys to hear this stuff, because they only know the successful Tucker Max.
Tucker:
Hey, buddy. Let me run my podcast my way. No, I really honestly don’t know. I’m not really sure where I’d begin. I mean, there’s tons of stories of me being rejected in my books, but, right, most of my books cover law school forward, teeny little bit of college, basically no high school. You know, to be quite honest, I’m not entirely sure I put myself out there all that much in high school. I probably… I think by the time I graduated from high school, I’d slept with, I don’t remember, anywhere from three to six girls. I honestly can’t remember it. It was more than one, but it wasn’t –
Charlie:
Three to six.
Tucker:
Right. It wasn’t that many.
Charlie:
Yeah.
Tucker:
It was like enough where I didn’t feel like pathetic, but it wasn’t like a lot. It wasn’t like, you know…
Charlie:
It’s interesting. So in my mind, in college, I had the number six as like “This is…,” ‘cause I read that that’s like the average that an adult has, in American, in the course of their lifetime. In Brazil, it’s like 600 or whatever. It’s all culturally relative. But, in my mind, when I was first getting started, I was like “That’s a number I’d have to hit in order to feel adequate.”
Tucker:
Right. Yeah. I can’t… I’m trying to think, I really can’t remember. Honestly, I think I was very, in a lot of ways, socially oblivious. Like 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.
Charlie:
19, 20, 21, 22.
Tucker:
Yeah, right.
Charlie:
Through 30.
Tucker:
Right. I don’t know. I’m sure there were times where I got rejected or whatever – No, I know there were. I can’t really think of them. None of them are like prominent searing memories in my head. I just don’t… I don’t know. I mean, if I really struggle, I could think of some really… I’m sure I can think of awkward moments I had with girls that I was kind of trying to hook up with or whatever, but even those aren’t… It’s weird. They weren’t that big of stories or that crazy. I don’t know. I’d have to actually sit down and think about it. But, yeah, I had a ton. We’ve talked about this in other parts of the podcasts and talk about it, I’m sure, over and over. The only dudes who are really smooth and cool and pull a lot of girls in high school and do everything right, those are the guys who almost invariably go on to become failures, in life I mean, because usually what works in high school doesn’t work in the rest of the world, and if you’re really successful in high school, you stop learning and changing, and that’s who you are. Jerry Seinfeld made a great joke about this. He said that you can tell the year that your dad had his best year because his wardrobe freezes at that moment. I think his point is really good is that a lot of men –
Charlie:
Disco Stu.
Tucker:
Right. So a lot of guys, when they reach the top of the status hierarchy, whatever their status hierarchy is, they stop evolving and changing because they’re at the top, so why would you do anything different, right? And if you’re one of those guys, it’s actually unfortunate a lot of times if you hit the very top of the status hierarchy in high school, unless you’re really smart and you go on and do other things or you’re ambitious, it’s not impossible, but a lot of guys who – and women too – hit that status hierarchy, that tiptop, never change and never evolve. The reason that’s the joke about high school reunion is because it’s true.
Charlie:
Yeah.
Tucker:
Yeah, so I wasn’t at the bottom, but I wasn’t at the top. I was just somewhere in the middle; and I was a weird dude because I played sports, so there was a minimum level of coolness you have to have to play sports or you get if you play sports, and then I was good looking enough that I wasn’t… like “Oh, look at this dude an eye on the back of his head or something,” I looked normal, but I was really smart, so I was in all the advanced classes, but I didn’t like anyone. I didn’t like all the fucking nerds in all my smart classes because they were fucking – A lot of them were nice and smart and cool, but nerds. They couldn’t do anything socially. They couldn’t function. The guys I played sports with, most of them were fucking dicks or idiots and I couldn’t stand them. And a lot of the girls were really bitchy or I didn’t understand them; and this is all on top of whatever my problems were, which I can’t remember because no one really knows themself, at least I didn’t know myself very well. So on top of all my issues, high school, it wasn’t lonely for me. I just felt in high school like “This isn’t my place, like this something I have to go through and I’m going to get to my place.”
Charlie:
That’s so common. So many people go through that.
Tucker:
Right. I wasn’t an outcast though. It was weird. I had one teacher tell me – It was so funny, I forget what I did. I did something, because I was pretty funny in high school, not class clown funny, but more like snarky, like kind of, not jaded, but snarky smartass funny. I made some joke about something, who knows, whatever, George Washington, I don’t know; and I remember one of the teachers was like, he said “Tucker, if you…,” he’s like “You could be the king of this high school if you weren’t such an asshole,” and I was like “Well, aren’t you supposed to be my teacher? You’re supposed to be objective,” or something like that. I remember I got all angry.
Charlie:
Of course you come back with a rational argument to that. Like, you don’t even absorb what he just said.
Tucker:
No. I didn’t listen at all. I didn’t listen at all. I know it’s pretty funny. That actually I remember more than anything with girls.
Charlie:
Huh? That’s interesting.
Tucker:
Yeah. That’s pretty funny. Alright. So enough about my shit. Let’s get back to you and desperately failing with women in college, because that’s also funny.
Charlie:
Yeah. Of course. The whole thing with you –
Tucker:
So, the hot girl you liked –
Charlie:
You triggered a couple of memories while you were talking about that, but I remember there was a guy at my high school who was the ultimate outlier compared to all of us. Everyone at my high school came from a good family, so that was also partially to explain why everyone was running dry. It was like people came… they were raised right, I think. But there was this one who… he was this pretty good looking guy. I don’t know. He was relatively good looking, super in shape and stuff. But he was having sex with everyone, it seemed like. No exaggeration. In high school, he was up close to a hundred if not past it.
Tucker:
In high school?
Charlie:
In high school. Yeah. He was hooking up with all the most attractive girls in our high school and girls from other schools, and he developed this reputation as the guy that like…
Tucker:
Oh, that all the girls would sleep with.
Charlie:
… and so all the girls went to him.
Tucker:
Oh, so I bet… Without knowing anything else about him, I can probably tell you three things. One, he was not in, like, the social circle. So his parents didn’t know everyone else’s parents, right?
Charlie:
That’s accurate.
Tucker:
Two, he shut the fuck up and didn’t brag about it to anyone. The girls may have told other girls, but he never talked about it to guys.
Charlie:
If he did, he didn’t… I can’t say that’s totally accurate, but he wouldn’t like boast about it openly.
Tucker:
You never heard about it from him, did you?
Charlie:
Later, for sure.
Tucker:
Oh, I’m talking about in high school.
Charlie:
Oh, in high school. No, not really.
Tucker:
Oh, after high school. That’s when the fucking horse is out of the barn. No, I’m talking about in high school.
Charlie:
Back then, the way he would talk about it, made me feel uncomfortable.
Tucker:
What do you mean?
Charlie:
He would ask guys questions like “What’s the farthest you’ve gone with a girl?” and it’s just like “I don’t even know you. Why are you asking this?”
Tucker:
Right. Out of the social circle. That’s right.
Charlie:
Yeah.
Tucker:
And then the third thing is he probably had, I don’t know about abusive, but absentee parents. He was like a latchkey kid.
Charlie:
Yes.
Tucker:
Boom.
Charlie:
Boom.
Tucker:
Boom. Yes.
Charlie:
“I’ve read books.”
Tucker:
No, it’s more than reading books.
Charlie:
No, no, no. I’m joking.
Tucker:
No, it makes total sense because, listen, I tell guys this all the time. I’m sure you know it. Women are just as sexual as men. They want to have sex basically just as much, but women have a couple of concerns that stop them generally that don’t stop guys. They care very much about their safety, so that they want to be with like a guy who makes them feel safe, they know, etc. That’s physical safety. They care about their social safety as well and their reputation, and if they’re going to be fucking guys, they want to fuck guys, if it’s sort of uncommitted sex, I mean, who they know aren’t either out of their social circles or they know will not talk, will shut the fuck up. Those are not things that a lot of guys do well. And then the other thing is about him specifically. So the fact that he doesn’t have parents around, he probably had to learn at a very young age how to be charismatic and how to be very compelling to people. He had to learn how to seduce people to get attention. And his parents aren’t there, so he’s got a place to do it, the ability to persuade, out of social circles, but still known, and doesn’t talk about it. That’s like the perfect storm for hooking up with a ton of girls in high school, unless, the other thing is being at the top of the social status ladder. So one or the other. Being sort of out of it – Dude, do you know who Laird Hamilton is, the surfer? I can talk about this now because he’s married. I’ll tell you. This is a fucking hilarious story. Laird probably wouldn’t like me to tell this to story, but I don’t care, he’s married. So I got to know Laird, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Do you realize that dude used to bang basically every actress in Hollywood on the regular?
Charlie:
No.
Tucker:
Okay. Do you know how he did it? It’s fucking nuts. So he lives in Hawaii. He’s a surfer and lives in Hawaii, like on the North Shore where the big waves are… whatever.
Charlie:
The perfect storm for banging celebs.
Tucker:
Listen.
Charlie:
Oh, okay.
Tucker:
No, I’m serious man. So obviously, he’s well known. He’s not super famous, but for what he does, he’s well known; a good looking guy, so obviously all that stuff is there. He… I forget which one, he dated one of them, Cameron Diaz or whatever, relatively young, and then basically was just a very cool guy, like nice dude, but he didn’t tell anyone, like no paparazzi, no nothing; and plus the fact that he’s on the North Shore, his house is like hard to get to. Basically, so, without getting into actresses, they’re essentially… If you think of them as little sociopathic high school girls, you’re going to be exactly right, and through her he went to Hollywood parties, met a bunch of the other actresses. Basically all the –
Charlie:
Through her?
Tucker:
Through Cameron Diaz.
Charlie:
Oh, okay.
Tucker:
He met all the other actresses; or through her, he essentially became known as the guy that you go to when you just want to fuck, who is totally safe, totally cool, good in bed, and no one will ever know. So Laird Hamilton –
Charlie:
It’s quite the niche business he carved out for himself.
Tucker:
Dude, I’m telling you. Name an actress that was famous in the last 15 years –
Charlie:
Natalie Portman.
Tucker:
Oh, yeah. Chances are about 50 –
Charlie:
Jessica Alba.
Tucker:
Of course. She’s fucked everybody, dude – 50-plus percent. Like, her kid with Cash Warren might not even be his, and I’m actually very confident that it’s not because I know the guy that I’m pretty sure knocked her up.
Charlie:
Does this fall under slander right now?
Tucker:
Uh, no.
Charlie:
Okay.
Tucker:
Maybe. Let her sue me. It’ll just make me more famous. I don’t care. And then hopefully a DNA test will be done and we’ll see, and then I’ll fucking really win. It’s not mine.
Charlie:
Podcast is number one.
Tucker:
We are number one in health right now and now we’re trying to get number one overall. It’s not my kid. I’m just saying –
Charlie:
That was not my next question.
Tucker:
And no, if I’d fucked Jessica Alba, I would’ve told you by now. I’m just saying, I’m fairly confident that it’s not. But anyway, you can hardly name an actress that’s been famous the last 15 years, probably about a 50% chance that she’s gone to Hawaii and spent three or four days with Laird Hamilton, just fucking him.
Charlie:
Wow. That’s crazy.
Tucker:
Yeah. I don’t know. We tell guys all the time, be Laird Hamilton –
Charlie:
Was he turning business away?
Tucker:
Women? I don’t know.
Charlie:
No, celebrities. Was he like “I’m sorry. I’ve got a…” –
Tucker:
I don’t know him that well. I don’t know him that well. Actually he didn’t even tell me this –
Charlie:
I’m handling Barbara Streisand this weekend.
Tucker:
He didn’t even tell me this story. I heard it from someone who knows him well and really would know this basically, the person who booked women to his place.
Charlie:
Oh my gosh.
Tucker:
Yeah, I know.
Charlie:
This is crazy.
Tucker:
I know. I know. But it’s a very similar thing. I tell guys this all the time, like “If really what you care about getting laid, if that’s your thing, and sleeping with as many women as possible, being attractive is very important, but just as important is being safe and discreet are just – and being good in bed, I guess, if you want to fuck them more than one, but being safe and discreet, knowing it’s physically safe and socially discreet, hugely important, because basically once he fucked one or two of them, they all told their friends, like “Oh, you should go see Laird,” almost like “Oh, you should go see my chiropractor,” “You should go see Laird.” Seriously, dude. And so he wasn’t trying to get this. He’s a young guy, single, he had no problem banging actresses, Jennifer Aniston. You could down the list, dude, all of them.
Charlie:
Wow.
Tucker:
All of them. I know. Alright, so let’s get back to your story.
Charlie:
Okay. Well, I brought up that guy, actually, because he comes up later, the guy in my high school who’d hooked up with like a hundred girls. So after I failed with this girl who I was over the moon with in my freshman year, that was when I sort of realized like “I got to get this area of my life handled. This is something I have to learn. I’m clearly, I think, behind, or at least I feel painfully inadequate in this area of my life. I’m really good at befriending girls, but I also have a history of just befriending them, and them wanting more and me not knowing what to do necessarily. So I remember, actually, I wasn’t even really friends with that guy. I kind of knew him and we hung out like once or twice. I remember calling him, but not –
Tucker:
Are you serious?
Charlie:
Yeah, I’m dead serious. He was like one of the first places I turned and I couldn’t get a – I called him twice, I think, and he never called back, so I was just like “Yeah, whatever.” But if I’d gotten on the phone with him, I would’ve asked him like what do I do basically; what are the first steps in this?
Tucker:
Oh, God. That would’ve been such a great conversation. I wish I could’ve recorded that.
Charlie:
Yeah. But this is how I started going down the rabbit hole on the internet, and back then, that was before Neil Strauss had written The Game and everything.
Tucker:
Right. That was even before really pickup artists existed.
Charlie:
Right. I found your material not for looking for advice on girls, but I think I read your “Why You Shouldn’t Go To Law School” article, and I was like “Oh my God. This is so honest and good,” and that was what initially drew me into your writing was just the honesty. I started reading your stories, they made me laugh really hard. I sold a few copies of your book to friends of mine, just recommending it. But I started trolling the forums that you ran back in the day and there was a lot of advice on there that was actionable, it was anecdotal, it was really useful for somebody in my position who had no idea on this stuff. To finally read somebody who was – Looking back, I think I tried to emulate you in a handful of situations, and your behavior. I would posture –
Tucker:
What you thought was my behavior.
Charlie:
What I thought your behavior would be, and frankly sometimes it worked, but the interaction wasn’t exactly something I was comfortable with.
Tucker:
Because it’s not who you are.
Charlie:
Yeah, it was inauthentic. So I went through this phase where basically I was trying all these different things. With some girls, they just responded like… oh my God, it was crazy. With other girls, it was still like –
Tucker:
“Why are you being mean, Charlie?”
Charlie:
Yeah. I mean there’s so many stories in can bring up here. I remember I think I ordered one of David DeAngelo’s products…
Tucker:
And you know Eban now. Yeah.
Charlie:
…and his interviews that he did with an expert or something, and I had it in my room, and this girl who had a crush me, while I was in class, broke into my room and put post-it notes everywhere in my room, and she found the CD and wrote “Ha ha” or something on it and I was so embarrassed by it, because I was like, man, this girl not only broke in, and my idiot roommates let her in, but she saw this –
Tucker:
The post-it notes everywhere, that’s also weird.
Charlie:
It’s a prank, I guess. I don’t know.
Tucker:
Oh, okay.
Charlie:
Yeah. It’s not she wrote on all of them or anything. Yeah, it just made me… I was really embarrassed that I was seeking out like –
Tucker:
Were you ashamed that you had to learn about this or were you ashamed of the actual thing itself?
Charlie:
I think both. I was kind of embarrassed that I just felt so clueless. Looking back, talking to all my friends, it’s just like we were lying about our success with girls because we just wanted to appear –
Tucker:
Every young guy does this. It’s fine.
Charlie:
Yeah. Of course. But none of us really knew what we were doing, or so it seemed, so I was like “Well, I’m going to seek some outside help here and I’m going to be discreet about it.” So my first real girlfriend – it’s kind of a crazy story. This was when I lost my virginity. My roommate my sophomore year, he was best friends with this girl that he always told me about, but I never met, and he and my other roommate, who’s one of my best friends, they lived in the dorms with this girl. So they knew her really well. My roommate who was best friends with her would just say… he would say all the time “You guys would get along so well. You guys are so similar in how you think,” and blah, blah, blah, and he was telling her this too.
Tucker:
Social proof, baby.
Charlie:
Right. But he was in love with this girl. I didn’t fully realize the extent of how much he was in love with her.
Tucker:
Of course not. You were a sophomore in college.
Charlie:
Right. So we threw a party at our place and she came over, and she was really, really pretty, and she was cool, and both of us had the foundational knowledge of “We’re predisposed to liking each other basically.”
Tucker:
Yeah. We’re supposed to like each other, so we will.
Charlie:
Yeah. So immediately – And by this time, I actually had the posture of somebody who’s comfortable with flirting, or at least is passing for something that looks like he’s enjoying it. So, yeah, we were both very flirtatious. Oh my God. I’m just realizing what happened there.
Tucker:
So please tell the whole story.
Charlie:
We were both super flirtatious. She decided to stay, but she didn’t want to sleep together, so we went downstairs and we were like “Let’s watch a movie.” We watched Kids.
Tucker:
Oh my God. Oh my God.
Charlie:
NC-17 Kids.
Tucker:
So the people who don’t what this movie is, it’s about… Oh my God, it’s about this dude who has AIDS and skates around New York City trying to give AIDS to girls.
Charlie:
A teenager.
Tucker:
Right. A teenager.
Charlie:
Yeah, and his friend rapes a girl at the end and gives AIDS to her – or he contracts AIDS. It’s the most messed up – You can’t think of a worse first date, so to speak, with any girl than “Hey, let’s go check out this Kids movie.” So it was the worst. It was a terrible, terrible choice. Yeah. We watched Kids.
Tucker:
Did you guys kiss or something?
Charlie:
No, totally not. We’d kind of killed the mood with that. So, anyway, in spite of that, we still were into each other and we got together I think the next weekend or something, and both of us had been drinking, and we hooked up and it was like… I remember that – please forgive me mom if you ever listen to this, but I remember that experience and just being like “I don’t this is how sex is supposed to go” because it lasted so long, but I was –
Tucker:
Your first time?
Charlie:
Yeah. It lasted a really long time.
Tucker:
You’re a total weirdo, dude.
Charlie:
I know. It was like I was using condoms and everything, but I was also kind of drunk.
Tucker:
I mean come on. I was using probably two condoms and I busted, I don’t know, 60 seconds, maybe, 15 seconds, something like that.
Charlie:
I was shocked because I had so much control. But then the next time I had sex, it was fast. But, yeah, the first time it was just like “Wow. I can’t believe I did that. I should just kiss my biceps and look in the mirror for a while.”
Tucker:
Charlie Hoehn.
Charlie:
Yeah. And she found out because my friend told her.
Tucker:
That you were a virgin?
Charlie:
Yeah, he told her after we’d had sex a few times and she was like “I had no idea.”
Tucker:
So this is the friend that loved her.
Charlie:
I think so. I think he was the one or it may have been my best friend just messing with me. So she had no idea. But anyway, we dated for an extended period of time. I think we dated for about eight months and it was a really dramatic relationship.
Tucker:
What do you mean dramatic?
Charlie:
Before we started dating, her ex-boyfriend messaged me on Facebook and he was like “Hey, just giving you a heads up. You should not date this girl…” blah, blah, blah, “for these reasons. She’s a total slut.” I still think –
Tucker:
Bitter boyfriend reasons, or?
Charlie:
Bitter boyfriend reasons, I’m pretty sure. I don’t think he was looking out to help me. I think he was just angry at her. He said some stuff like “We’re still hooking up,” blah, blah, blah, which may have been true, but it was just like “I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt here. It’s not a big deal to me.” It was a really good relationship. Both of us were very much into each other, and this is – Okay, I was still very good friends with the girl I was in love with from my freshman year in the dorm.
Tucker:
She was into you now?
Charlie:
She was still dating that guy, but they broke up; and he was a drug addict, and so she was going through her own mess with him.
Tucker:
This is not a good commercial for Colorado State, by the way.
Charlie:
Oh, man. And a couple –
Tucker:
You’re the only bright spot of this story.
Charlie:
Yeah. I’m making myself look really good. Colorado State I love by the way. Fort Collins is amazing. There aren’t a lot of drug problems there. There’s a lot of weed there. I’ll say that. I remember the first time that she met my girlfriend, her face turned bright red, because we’d just bumped into each other at King’s Supers or something, and I kind of gave her a hard time on the spot about that. I was like “Why’s your face turning red?” Anyway, so –
Tucker:
Because she didn’t realize you were actually a high-status guy, not pathetic, ‘cause you were with this hot girl.
Charlie:
Yeah. Even my friends were into my girlfriend. She was a looker and she was cool. She was very sweet. Apart from the drama – and I can get more into that if you want. There’s some ridiculous stories about how we broke up. This was kind of the craziest thing. My girlfriend would sleep over at my house. Then my best friend, this other girl, she went through this breakup with this guy who was crazy, and he would show up at 3 AM at her house staring through the window at her. Seriously. He was such a sketch ball and basically all I could say was “What did I tell you? This guy is an idiot and he’s a dick and he’s clearly crazy.” And so she had girlfriends, but she wasn’t super, super close with any of them there, and we had this huge place to ourselves and we had an extra futon out in this nice area, so she was like “Can I crash in here for a little while the dust settles?” So I remember coming back. I ran an errand and I came back. My girlfriend was in my bed and so was my best friend, and they were just chatting – and this was late at night.
Tucker:
I hope at this point, if this gets into you joining them, this is a good story.
Charlie:
I did join them, but here’s the thing. So my best friend, she was very much like Catholic. I don’t think she lost her virginity until she was like 22 or whatever. So she was very much like a very – I don’t know the right word for it, but a very conservative girl. Anyway, so I joined them and we were just like talking and hanging out, and I fall asleep spooning with my girlfriend and the other girl, my best friend’s behind me, and she’s just kind of laying with her back up, and in my head, I’m like “This is crazy. This is insane. I don’t know what to do right now because I’m with…” –
Tucker:
Start fucking your girlfriend and hope the other one joins in.
Charlie:
I was in love with both of them, but it was a different type of love. So I started fooling around with my girlfriend and the other girl eventually, I think, felt that there was movement and she got out and went to the futon, and then my girlfriend and I hooked up. But it was