Monkey See, Monkey Do

When you imagine improving your love life, what comes to mind?

Do you envision wild nightclubs? Crazy party girls with fake boobs shoved in your face? Acting like a wild rock star? Living the idealized frat house life that you missed out on in your college years?

Those were the images that used to come to my mind. For a while, I thought that improving my success with women was an irreverent adventure fit for an American Pie movie.

That “vision” led me down an interesting rabbit hole. I chased a new type of girl. I spent my weekends in a new type of venue. I dressed with a new sense of fashion.

If things felt weird or unnatural, I reassured myself with a familiar maxim: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” I was convinced that I was pushing my “comfort zone.”

Through the Looking-Glass

I’m not condemning my decisions, nor do I regret I path I took. It’s all I knew at the time and it certainly helped. I even discovered I liked some of new things I tried. I expanded my horizons and put myself on the path to a rewarding and fulfilling dating life.

Though, some aspects of the “rabbit hole” were completely ridiculous, unnecessary, and toxic to my success with women—and my success as a human. More importantly, acting so outrageously out of character alienated me from people who didn’t understand why I was doing what I was doing. People like my friends.

At ease and happy around women: I believe that feeling is the end goal of every guy who studies dating advice.

At this point, I’ve gotten everything I’ll ever want from dating advice. I’ve gratified all my “fantasies,” tickled my every fancy, and feel absolutely no lingering insecurities about myself, my sexual experience, or my dating life. Currently, I’m dating a girl I truly care about and who I think is completely awesome. And, should that relationship end, I have enough confidence in myself to know that I’ll be just fine.

Put simply: this area of my life just isn’t an issue anymore—it’s an asset.

My dating and sex life is where I’ve always wanted it to be. Put simply: I no longer feel inadequate around women. Whether it be on a date, in a nightclub, around an old crush, or just a woman I meet briefly going about my day, I feel completely at ease and happy.

At ease and happy around women: I believe that feeling is the end goal of every guy who studies dating advice. Unless delusional or retarded, no guy holds onto to the belief that he can get “every girl” for too long. (If you want to believe that fantasy, please stop reading this blog.)

If realistic, most of us want to reach a point where we give ourselves the best chance to attract the girls we really want. That’s a completely sensible and achievable goal. Plus, the quality of girl you can attract when you know how to put your absolute best (and most attractive) foot forward will pleasantly surprise you. (I know it pleasantly surprised me.)

You’re more than you give yourself credit for—trust me.

Sift Away the Assumptions

What’s important, however, is to distinguish your goals from the marketing muck. We’re not rock stars. We’re not in an American Pie movie. We probably don’t even want half the shit the shoved down our throat and packaged as “the lifestyle.” We’re normal guys. We just want to become better at meeting women.

And so that brings us to the caveat: beware of toxic assumptions. Studying dating advice can be the best or worst thing that’s ever happened to you. It all lies in the application. Sift away the assumptions that contradict who you are.

As an example, I hate when I hear guys label other guys “average frustrated chumps” or “beta males.” The assumption that a guy who isn’t donning his pickup superhero cape is somehow average, frustrated, and a chump, or he’s below an “alpha” in the pecking order is contemptible, in my not-so-humble opinion.

(And don’t even get me started on this whole “alpha male” bullshit…)

I don’t want to spend too much time smashing the assumptions I hate like a Mexican piñata because they’re just that: the assumptions I hate. My only hope is that you smash you hate—probably which you never even stopped to examine.

Again, for students of dating advice, there’s a lot of good information out there. But there are also a lot of bad assumptions mixed in with that good information. If you don’t sift the good stuff from the bad, you’re going to stifle your progress. And you’re going to come off super weird and like super deuce. (Trust me: I that super weird super deuce.)

What you’re going to find when all is said and done is normalcy. The stupidities you uncover are the assumptions that lead to weirdness. Meeting (quality) women doesn’t happen when you’re the pickup superhero. Meeting the types of women you want to meet will happen when you’re the most potent, distilled version of your most attractive personality.

Dating advice can help you get there, but it will also add unnecessary byproducts. It’s up to you to sift them out. Be normal. Get girls.