The catch 22 of meeting women - your thoughts?

[theshortmannn]

Hello,

Please don't flame me too hard - I'm new to this forum. Well, at least in terms of posting. I've followed these forums here and there to get a little bit of tips, knowledge, inspiration, whatever. So I apologize if this topic has already been covered, in which case please redirect me to the thread.

Let me introduce myself briefly and then get the ball rolling quickly with a question I had in mind. I just graduated from college a year ago, I'm 22 years old and I'm practically on my own now working a full-time job. I've never had a serious girlfriend ever in my life, though I've hung out with tons of girls one on one, made out with some girls, but never anything more than that. I'm still a virgin (yeah, shame, I know....), but I'm trying to change that, that's why I'm here.

So here goes:

To those who are more experienced with women, or have good insight into this, feel free to reply: I haven't seriously talked to women in very long (when I say serious, I mean flirting, going on dates, etc. Not even getting to the physical part, just plain DATING.) I want to change that but I find it so hard because I feel like I can't muster up the confidence (by the way, I'm really short, which you can already tell by my alias, but this short-man, self-esteem stuff is a topic for later) to really attract women.

I've studied a ton of theory here and there, but I've never been really able to apply it, mainly because I am so damn shy and lack a lot of confidence to attract them in general. The problem I see here is that I find myself in this huge paradox, dilemma, catch 22, whatever have you. The way I see it is...it's like the pre-requisite to even attracting women in the first place is to possess this inner/outer game, but the only way to even have this confidence is to have a woman or even just date a woman in general first. Do you see the paradox here?

How do I even break out of it? How do I even begin to change? Quite honestly it's not easy for me to 'front' things. I'm not a good salesman, I'm not a good liar, I'm not good at exaggerating things. I present things for the way I feel that I am, just me. I just naturally don't like the feeling of presenting myself as somebody else. It just doesn't feel right.

Any thoughts, suggestions are appreciated. And please speak real...Don't mean to bash on anyone here (well, sorta), but I feel like there's a lot of bull **** on this forum from a lot of bull****ters. So real men, with real experience,
please enlighten.

Thanks,
theshortmann

 

[evansblue]

That's the important thing to remember, it is a catch 22. You can read loads of material, theory, etc. That gives you insight. It isn't a substitute for confidence. This is where I see a lot of guys getting mixed up. They think if they read everything there is to know about pickup, they'll be set. It's a common misconception. Knowing and applying are to different things, as evident by your post. There's plenty of guys out there that have the "know", but no "go" because they're missing the crucial ingredient called confidence. And the reason they don't have success is because they're under the impression that they need confidence before they start approaching. Huge mistake. The ONLY possibly way to be confident in situations around women is when one puts himself in those situations repeatedly.

Your mind is your own worst enemy and is putting unrealistic expectations on yourself. You're never going to get every girl. You're never going to close the deal 100% of the time. Once you understand and accept this it's going to be a lot easier.

Approach, approach, approach, approach, approach. This will unlock your confidence, I guarantee you.

 

[aura]

There's no magic formula. Go out there and meet people. Experience is your only teacher.

So here goes:

Any thoughts, suggestions are appreciated. And please speak real...Don't mean to bash on anyone here (well, sorta), but I feel like there's a lot of bull **** on this forum from a lot of bull****ters. So real men, with real experience,
please enlighten.

Thanks,
theshortmann

 

[xdreamz]

the catch 22 is that there is no catch 22. there is no waste of time but it will eventually fall. let's say i were to buy a girl flowers. wel that may make her receptive to a date, make her blush, heavy IOI's... but if you're not man enough, if you lack a vision, then where will it lead?

 

[Ease]

There is no real inner or outer game/confidence. There is only confidence. Confidence comes from success like you said. You can't read to acquire it, you need experience.

You need to throw yourself in at the deep end. Like learning how to swim, if you spend long enough you will learn. You can ask a friend who is a good swimmer to show you some moves, thats the best way of learning.

There is no nice way about it. All the material is useless.

 

[LuisGarcia10]

OK, I'm going to try and explain this as I understand it to be, I'll use my own experiences to illustrate it and hopefully it makes sense!

I've been on these forums since I was 17 which was when I was entering my first year of college (that isn't university, in England you go to college to get grades needed for uni.) I read all the theory, applied it early on and had some success, I generated attraction in girls, but due to the fact that up until my 17th birthday I had litereally got no where with girls, not so much as a kiss, I couldn't close the deal. Looking back now, I think there were at least 4 girls in my class that I could have dated had I known what I was doing, and a few other UGS that made it clear they liked me, this was simply because I had good confidence, mainly derived from this site, and I applied it. But after a while, I still hadn't gotten anywhere because I didn't know how to get to the next step, I started putting on weight (probably about 3 stone in total, over the course of 12 months,) got lazy, drank more and more alcohol and then by the time I got to uni I was as AFC as you can get- honestly I was a joke. So despite reading all the material on here, and being absolutely aware of what an AFC is, I still managed to become that exact person- why? Lack of confidence and self belief- I was fat, and I'm not the kind of person that can get away with being fat, my face baloons out and I look awful, add to that it caused me to sweat a lot, and I was failing uni, I was of low value- I befriended a HB8 at uni, who I'm still friends with now loosely, but at the time developed 3 year one-itis for her, only briefly being broken half way through that period when I developed one-itis for a different girl, as you can imagine neither ended up with anything other than me crying into a bed pillow, one time I was on holiday in the f*cking carribean, amazing place, yet still crying over a girl, pathetic. So in the course of 3-4 years, I've actually managed to seriously revert- from a c*cky, funny, likeable 17 year old who got AAB in his A levels, to a fat, borderline alcoholic, failed uni, got fired from 2 jobs and ended up back at home with his mum and dad- and I'm giving you the mild version of events here, lets just say there was more to me than alcohol.
Suffice to say during my time at uni I had ZERO sex, or anything even suggesting sex, I managed to lose a bit of weight which helped, but I got no where, basically.
Why did this happen? I've got no excuses, no abusive family, no horrendous incidents, simply laziness and confidence slowly diminishing, it really can happen without you noticing and it can be destructive.

Now, onto the good part of the story;

Since then I've lost loads of weight, hit the gym a bit, got some really good friends who happen to be good with girls and gradually have gotten into meeting girls etc. I am absolutely by no means an expert, but just over 12 months ago, the only girl I'd slept with was a hidious beast of an UG, I'm not joking she was f*cking horrendous. In the past 12 months however I've had more bar/club make outs than I can remember, slept with 5 girls, 2 of whom were really hot, had one 3 month relationship (ended in me getting dumped but from what I can gather that's no uncommon for a first relationship), and am comfortable around women. And the thing is you don 't notice it happening. 12 months ago I was just as thin as I am now, just as attractive, but never got anywhere with girls, because I was making small, almost subconcious mistakes. Now, I get girls inviting me back to their house out of the blue sometimes, that actually happened to me last week, I've had random girls make out with me, turn round half way through a conversation and say "you're really hot," I'm not under any illusions here, these aren't high quality women and I have a long way to go, but this never happened to me a year ago, ever, what's changed? The confidence that my own mannerisms exuberate, I'm 12 months more experienced in speaking to women and it shows, the point I'm trying to make is that experience is something that you can't teach, and is a million times more helpful than anything you read on this website, because with experience comes a natural personna. You don't have to sit there with a girl trying to remember a load of PUA lines you read on the internet, because the right way to act in order to attract a girl will come automatically, because it's your personality now, you're not putting it on. And it probably won't happen over night, I'm still getting flaked, dumped etc by girls I like now, and I'm still not as successful as my friends that I met 18 months or so ago, but compared to 18 months ago I'm a million times better with girls. Patience is key. This website is brilliant for learning how to view women, how not to go buying them drinks to get into their pants etc, that stuff is brilliant, but in terms of actually meeting and attracting women, without experience and confidence you'll be an actor trotting out a load of canned lines, and that may get you some success, in fact it probably will, but it will only get you so far.
So my advice to you, get some friends who know where they're doing with girls, get yourself a good diet to make you feel more wide awake, with it, alert and happy, hit the gym to push those feel good endorphins, and allow it to gradually happen. I don't necessarily *approach* girls, because it doesn't feel like this big awkward introduction, it's just talking to someone in the same way I might talk to a guy I don't know. You see what I'm getting at? Your demenour and personality will naturally change if you allow it. Make changes in your life unreleated to girls and I guarentee you the success will come, as long as you continually put yourself in situations where you can meet women, and you develop your character in the mean time, then I 100% guarentee that success will follow, perhaps not quickly, but it will happen- and in the mean time you're getting leaner, more happy, confident and meeting some new friends, so it's not as if you're wasting time.
Best of luck.

 

[theshortmannn]

Thanks for all the replies, guys. The underlying thread I'm seeing here is: practice, practice, practice. Now I don't want to make any more excuses, but how do you guys deal with rejection anyway? I've put myself out there a few times, but I don't deal well with rejection...but I guess it all depends on what 'rejection' is to a person. For me, I guess I was only flat out rejected like 2 times, for other times, I guess I just didn't feel the vibe with her, and I sensed it was mutual feelings and therefore took that as rejection.

How do you guys manage to pick yourselves up and move forward after a failure?

Thanks.

 

[pdx1138]

If you want an easy & simple solution to at least get you started without causing fear, I would suggest signing on to a dating site. That way you don't have to worry about approach anxiety. You can use this as a springboard for getting your confidence up and you might end up dating several women to get your experience. But know that a lot of women don't even respond...maybe 3 in 10 will.

Match.com is good, as is okcupid.com (free)

 

[gaspipe]

Thanks for all the replies, guys. The underlying thread I'm seeing here is: practice, practice, practice. Now I don't want to make any more excuses, but how do you guys deal with rejection anyway? I've put myself out there a few times, but I don't deal well with rejection...but I guess it all depends on what 'rejection' is to a person. For me, I guess I was only flat out rejected like 2 times, for other times, I guess I just didn't feel the vibe with her, and I sensed it was mutual feelings and therefore took that as rejection.

How do you guys manage to pick yourselves up and move forward after a failure?

Thanks.

The best way to deal with rejection is 1) accept the fact that rejection is a part of life and that it happens to the best of us. Case in point: there is this PUA guru. I forgot his name but the point is he is extremely good looking and doesnt need to dress funny or use scripted lines to attract women and claims in one of his books that he has bedded something like 500 hot women in 3 or 4 years by doing cold approaches. But to get to that level he suffered like 2500-3000 rejections in approaching women during that time. So basically his failure rate was about 80%.

Get the point?

Now this guy pretty much made a living off approaching women and then made a book about it. Most of us dont have that luxury. But the basic premise is that it is a numbers game and your are most likely to fail at first but if you approach enough women and dont give up eventually you are going to start getting results and the sting of rejection will also fade away.

 

[Chamber36]

I am so damn shy and lack a lot of confidence to attract them in general. The problem I see here is that I find myself in this huge paradox, dilemma, catch 22, whatever have you. The way I see it is...it's like the pre-requisite to even attracting women in the first place is to possess this inner/outer game, but the only way to even have this confidence is to have a woman or even just date a woman in general first. Do you see the paradox here?

See that's a problem many people have in their heads. You don't need to be a porn star to be attractive. You can be a virgin and still be attractive. As long as the women don't know you're a virgin, haha. It's all in your mind. You don't need an excuse to be confident. That's what David DeAngelo said.

And for dealing with rejection. I use it as a tool for learning from my mistakes. Every time I get rejected I learned where I made a mistake. It's better to make a move and get rejected than not to make a move at all.

The best thing is to talk to a girl like a little girl.

If you treat them nicely, and they explode in your face, then something is obviously wrong with them. It happened to me today at school. All I did is ask her what time I had to be back in class. I'm going to trust my instincts and say this one is a B*tch.

I got rejected friday by a girl I opened with: "Are you ALSO so hungry?!". But it could also be said that I blew myself out through my tone.

Another girl friday was giving me plenty of IOI's, but I didn't manage to build up enough kino with her because I was afraid of rejection. I have to fortify my suaveness and my leadership skills. Make girls do compliance tests.

 

[aura]

There is a link at the bottom of the page entitled "DJ Bible." Read it. For a beginner like yourself, it will answer most of your questions.

Experience will teach you the rest.

I am posting the link for you. Read as much as you can, and follow the bootcamp:

http://www.jbspencer.com/djb/

Thanks for all the replies, guys. The underlying thread I'm seeing here is: practice, practice, practice. Now I don't want to make any more excuses, but how do you guys deal with rejection anyway?

 

[CuriousGirl]

First of all the virgin thing really doesn't matter and you shouldn't let that worry you. If you are worried about girls reaction you either don't have to tell them or you can mention it to excuse inexperience but make out like it's your choice, you've turned down other girls before.

Secondly yeah it's just practice, putting yourself out there and chatting to girls. You will get rejected a lot, and it might not even be anything to do with you. There have been times where I have rejected guys because I've just not been in the mood for being chatted up, the guys themselves did nothing wrong. At the end of the day it's no great insult to be rejected by a near enough stranger, they know nothing about you.
Also the more you approach women, the more you'll get rejected, the more used to it you'll be and the more you won't care that much. A girl can always tell apart the guys who fear rejection, the balanced guys, and the guys so used to rejection they'll approach anyone. So keep some dignity.

Thirdly if you are generally shy then there is a general lack of self-confidence, not specific to women. So is your performance with women feeding your lack of self-confidence or is your lack of self-confidence feeding your performance with women? Probably both, but if you can work on your general self-confidence (within male friendship groups, education/career, everyday life) it will make your confidence with women come more naturally. What makes you feel confident? What are you good at? What about you makes you feel good to be you? Etc.

 

[nismo-4]

If there were a quick an easy way for a man to talk to a woman and get her, we'd all be doing it right now.

But there isn't (Assuming you aren't rich), so you'll have to just go talk to some girls and see what works and what doesn't. Develop your own game, and there's no one game that easily gets girls. It's the person using it. Read my sig.

 

[Fumbduck]

Whats up bro, the only way to improve is to fail; and LEARN from your mistakes. You say you are inexperienced with women, the only way to change that is to get yourself out there! It's going to be a fun, and exciting road for you.

There are tons of theories out there, i've read a bunch and the more you read, the more you become a keyboard jockey and remove yourself from the game. Use the stuff you find online to boost your confidence. Go out and "be yourself", do your own thing and bring girls with you. Use all these "theories" you learn online if there's ever a lull in the conversation when you're interacting with a girl. If a date is going well, you'll know. The conversation will be two sided, it will be flirty and you'll both give and receive kino.

The hard part (or so you think) is initially meeting women. Believe it or not, it's not that hard. Go out and be vulnerable, ask for her name, introduce yourself and STAND TALL, be confident when you speak to girls. They are doing themselves a favor by allowing you to speak to them. Get the number and set up a 1 on 1 date.

Best of luck man

 

[omkara]

nvm

 

[Sh0t]

Number one road block in this game is the fear of failure.

It never goes away either. Even the best of us get rejected weekly, but you won't care about it in 5 years.

Don't be passive about it. Make it your goal to go out and fail. It will teach you that nothing bad really happens. There is ZERO downside to hitting on girls.