There’s not a lot of help for drowning men.

When a man starts falling behind in life, it can be surprisingly easy for everyone around him to simply leave him there. He stops making friends, stops going out, stops dating, becomes increasingly isolated, increasingly bitter and increasingly convinced that everyone else has figured out some basic part of life that he somehow missed and the further behind he gets, the harder it becomes to explain to anybody else what is actually wrong.

People tell him to “just talk to people.” They tell him to go outside, make some friends, talk to girls, put himself out there. They mean well, but to a man who has spent years avoiding people because he doesn’t know how to interact with them, this advice can sound almost absurd.

You have to understand what it feels like to be that far behind.

Imagine being told to run when you don’t even know how to walk.

That was me.

I spent a huge chunk of my life completely isolated from other people. I was not simply a virgin who wanted to have sex. I had almost no social life, almost no social skills, and almost no idea how normal people actually interacted with one another. I didn’t know how to make friends. I didn’t know how to hold a conversation. I didn’t know how to flirt with a girl. I didn’t know how to make myself interesting to people and cos I didn’t know how to do any of those things, I did what a lot of socially isolated men do: I built fantasies around them instead.

Maybe some girl would eventually recognize how great I was underneath everything and fall in love with me. Maybe I would become successful or famous and suddenly all the things I wanted would come to me. Maybe I could somehow skip the part where I actually had to develop the social skills I was missing.

The problem was that none of those things were going to happen.

Nobody was coming to rescue me.

That was one of the harsh truths I eventually had to accept.

I couldn’t wait around for a woman to discover me. I couldn’t wait for confidence to magically appear. I couldn’t wait until I somehow became successful enough that my lack of social exp stopped mattering. I couldn’t keep telling myself that my situation was going to change while continuing to do exactly the same things that had created it.

Eventually, I had to admit that if I wanted a different life, I was going to have to become a different man and that meant doing something I had spent years convincing myself was impossible: I had to start interacting with people.

I had to learn how to make friends. I had to learn how to talk to women. I had to learn how to flirt. I had to approach women even though I was terrified of rejection. I had to experience rejection. I had to make embarrassing mistakes and survive them. I had to slowly accumulate the experiences that normal socially competent people had been accumulating since they were teenagers.

That process eventually changed my life completely.

Today, I have had relationships with beautiful women, slept with women I once would have considered completely out of my league, built a large social circle, made friends all over the world, etc but none of that is particularly interesting by itself.

The interesting part is that there was a time when I couldn’t imagine any of it happening.

I couldn’t see a path from where I was to where I wanted to be and that’s why I’m writing this.

There are lots of men who will tell you that being an incel is simply a matter of being unattractive, unlucky, socially awkward, genetically inferior, or whatever explanation is fashionable at the moment. There are also plenty of people on the other side who will tell you that you just need to “work on yourself,” “be confident,” and “put yourself out there.”

Neither explanation is particularly useful to the guy who is actually stuck.

If you have never had a gf, never kissed a girl, barely have any friends, spend most of your free time alone, and are so socially inexperienced that the idea of having a girl feels completely insane, telling you to “just be confident” isn’t going to solve the problem.

You have a gap to close and closing that gap takes time.

It takes learning things you should probably have learned years ago. It takes getting uncomfortable. It takes making mistakes. It takes putting yourself in situations where you don’t know what you’re doing and gradually becoming the guy who does.

That is what I want to explain in this post.

I’m not going to tell you that women are the enemy. I’m not going to tell you that you need to become some caricature of an “alpha male.” I’m not going to tell you that you should stop caring about sex and relationships and somehow convince yourself that you never wanted them anyway.

I’m not going to sell you some magic system that will turn you into a ladies’ man in thirty days.

If you’re genuinely stuck, your first job isn’t learning game.

Your first job is becoming a functioning social human being.

You need to get yourself out of the hole first then you can worry about becoming good with women cos the problem isn’t simply that you’re an incel.

The problem is that you’ve become disconnected from the normal experiences that teach men how to participate in social and romantic life and the way out is to start participating again.

The Problem Wasn’t What I Thought

One interesting and weird face about me is: I am, not good at judging men’s looks.

I have almost no ability to distinguish between a good-looking man and an ugly one. I can pick up on general themes. I know that bulbous noses are usually considered unattractive, or that certain haircuts are generally considered uncool. I can tell when a guy is well-dressed, badly dressed, has good posture, or looks like he takes care of himself but when it comes to the actual face underneath all that, I am basically useless.

Every time I think I have finally figured out that XYZ guy is unattractive or ABC guy is a hottie, I’ll eventually hear a group of girls talking about how some guy I thought was probably ugly as sin is actually really hot, or how some guy I assumed must be a hottie is actually pretty average.

I don’t know why I can’t tell men’s looks when other men seem to be able to. Maybe other men are secretly 1% gay and therefore have some tiny residual ability to appreciate male beauty, while I am 0% gay and simply don’t have the software installed.

I have no idea but this weird defect has actually been useful to me cos men’s looks are basically invisible to me, I don’t factor them into my calculations very much. When I see a guy doing extremely well with women, I’m forced to look for other explanations. I can’t just look at his face and say, “Well, obviously. He’s handsome.”

And after years of watching men and women interact, I noticed something that became extremely important to me.

Every guy who does really well with women is cool and every guy who consistently sucks with women is not.

Now, before somebody gets pedantic, I know there are good-looking guys who aren’t particularly cool. I know there are cool guys who aren’t especially good-looking. I have even asked people directly to compare guys for me because I’m so bad at this. “Is that guy good-looking? Which one is better looking, him, me, or that other guy?”

So I’m not saying looks don’t exist or that physical attractiveness has no effect on dating.

I’m saying something much narrower.

You will never find a guy who is seriously fucking cool, genuinely socially capable, and universally enjoyable to be around, who also consistently sucks with women.

It just doesn’t happen.

And by “cool,” I don’t mean “subjectively cool.”

I’m not talking about the guy in your Dungeons & Dragons group who knows everything there is to know about beholders, ruby dragons, and accounting, and therefore your group has unanimously decided that he is a cool guy who should someday be CFO of Wizards of the Coast.

I mean something much more basic than that.

I mean the kind of guy that almost everyone instinctively likes. A guy who can walk into a room without becoming nervous about what everyone thinks of him. A guy who can talk to different kinds of people without seeming like he’s a tryhard. A guy who can handle teasing, awkwardness, disagreement, rejection, silence, attention, and unexpected situations without completely falling apart.

A guy who knows how to participate in a social interaction. That was the part I didn’t understand when I was younger.

I tried very hard to be “pretty cool” in high school and college. From the outside, I could sometimes pull it off. I had the clothes, the interests, the jokes, whatever. I could create the appearance of being reasonably confident but once I actually had to spend a long period of time around people, the façade started falling apart.

I would get uptight. I would become self-conscious. I would start thinking about what I should say next. I would worry about how I was coming across. I would overthink people’s reactions. I would become uncomfortable with pauses. I would have no idea how to move a conversation forward.

In other words, I didn’t know how to be cool when being cool actually required me to interact with another human being for more than thirty seconds.

The guys who get laid all the fucking time aren’t necessarily handsome. Some are. Some aren’t. They’re not necessarily rich. Some are broke. They’re not necessarily tall. Some are short. They’re not necessarily muscular. Some are skinny or fat. They don’t all dress particularly well, either but put them in almost any social situation and they can handle themselves.

They can talk to people.

They can make people laugh.

They can take a joke without getting defensive.

They can flirt without making everything feel incredibly serious.

They can recover when something awkward happens.

They can meet somebody new without immediately worrying about whether that person approves of them.

They can make other people feel comfortable and perhaps most importantly, they don’t spend the entire interaction trapped inside their own heads.

That’s what I eventually started noticing and once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

This is why I think a lot of incels get trapped by the wrong problem.

One guy becomes obsessed with looksmaxxing. He spends hours analyzing his jawline, his cheekbones, his eye area, his height, his hairline, his facial ratios. Another guy decides that the real problem is that women have become impossible to approach and that women today simply don’t want men talking to them anymore.

Some of those men may genuinely have appearance problems. Some women may genuinely reject approaches in certain environments. Of course those things matter but often they are looking for an explanation that doesn’t require them to confront the much more uncomfortable possibility.

They aren’t socially competent.

I have met numerous incels who will spend hours explaining to you why women don’t like them. They’ll tell you that they’re disadvantaged genetically, that women are too shallow, that modern women only want the top 1% of men, that women don’t want to be approached anymore, that dating apps have ruined everything and meanwhile, as I’m listening to the guy talk, I’m thinking:

“Man, this dude is really fucking nerdy, obsessive, and uncomfortable.”

He’s just socially difficult to be around and the frustrating part is that he often has absolutely no idea that this is how he’s coming across.

This is where I think the biggest realization has to happen.

Appearance problems are often surmountable.

You can lose weight. You can gain muscle. You can fix your haircut. You can improve your clothes. You can groom yourself better. You can take better care of your skin and teeth. You can learn how to present yourself well and even when there are physical limitations you can’t change, you can still become considerably better socially but if you have spent ten years avoiding people, you can’t fix the resulting social deficit by changing your haircut.

You have to actually develop the missing ability.

You have to learn how to talk to people. You have to learn how to listen. You have to learn how to read reactions. You have to learn how to keep conversations going. You have to learn how to handle awkwardness without panicking. You have to learn how to disagree without becoming defensive. You have to learn how to make people comfortable around you. You have to learn how to flirt and show interest without turning into a nervous wreck and, you have to get enough real-world experience that eventually these things stop requiring conscious thought.

That was the realization that started thawing my own social winter.

I had spent years thinking I needed to somehow become worthy of being accepted by other people before I could participate in their lives.

In reality, I needed to participate in their lives in order to become socially capable.

I didn’t need to become handsome enough first.

I didn’t need to become rich enough first.

I didn’t need to become famous first.

I needed to get out of my own head and start accumulating social experience.

That is the first thing I would tell almost every genuinely isolated man reading this:

Before you worry about becoming attractive to women, learn how to be comfortable around human beings.

Because if you can’t do that, learning game is going to be like putting racing tires on a car with no engine and once you understand that, getting out of the hole becomes a much more practical problem.

You no longer have to figure out why women as a species have rejected you.

You have to figure out which social skills you are missing, and then start building them.

You Need to Blame the Right Thing

If you want to stop being an incel, you have to get very careful about where you put the blame.

If you’re completely convinced that women don’t want you because your chin is too narrow, your head is too broad, your shoulders are too thin, you’re too short, or you’re the wrong race, there isn’t much I can say to you right now that is going to help.

Not because appearance doesn’t matter. It does.

The problem is that you have taken something you believe is difficult or impossible to change and turned it into the explanation for your entire life. Once you do that, you have basically made improvement impossible before you have even started.

There are a few things I want to clear up here, though, because I don’t want you walking away from this thinking I’m telling you that looks don’t matter:

Don’t Let Dating Apps Poison Your Brain

One of the reasons I think incels become so obsessed with looks is that so many of them spend enormous amounts of time on dating apps (and social media but let’s just talk about the apps)

Dating apps are an unusually visual environment. Your first impression is basically a handful of photographs. Before a woman knows how you talk, how funny you are, how socially comfortable you are, how you carry yourself, or what you’re like in person, she’s looking at pictures of your face and body.

That makes dating apps a terrible laboratory for figuring out how attractive you are to women in general.

You’re taking a medium that heavily emphasizes photographs and then using your results on that medium as evidence for how women respond to you as a human being.

Of course you’re going to become obsessed with your face and there is research suggesting that dating-app use can be associated with exactly this kind of appearance anxiety. One study found that Tinder users reported lower satisfaction with their faces and bodies and higher levels of appearance comparison, internalization, body shame, and appearance surveillance than non-users. Male Tinder users also reported lower self-esteem than male and female non-users.

That doesn’t mean Tinder caused every guy’s insecurity, or that every man who uses an app will become a looksmaxxing obsessive but it should make you think twice about spending hours staring at a screen, comparing your face to hundreds of other men’s carefully selected photographs, and then treating the results as an objective measurement of your worth.

I especially don’t recommend dating apps to beginners.

If you’re already socially isolated, insecure about women, and convinced that your looks are the reason you can’t get dates, spending your evenings swiping through carefully selected pictures of other men is probably not going to improve your mental state. It can send you down a very specific rabbit hole.

You start thinking about your jaw.

Then your cheekbones.

Then your hairline.

Then your height.

Then your facial ratios.

Then whether your eyes are the right shape.

Then you discover some guy online explaining that the reason you aren’t getting matches is because of a two-millimeter difference in your midface.

Pretty soon you’re spending more time analyzing your face than actually meeting women.

Don’t do that.

Male looks matter. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise but looks are also highly adjustable. You can get into better shape. You can improve your haircut, clothes, grooming, skin, teeth, posture, and overall presentation. You can take photographs that actually represent you well. You can become healthier and more physically attractive.

And beyond a certain point, you’re going to get diminishing returns from endlessly optimizing your appearance anyway.

Every time I say that behavior is extremely important with women, I get some guy yelling, “So you think looks don’t matter, HUH?!”

No, mate.

I said behavior is important.

Your appearance is your foot in the door. It can make things easier. It can increase your initial attraction and give you a boost once the interaction starts. You should absolutely handle it but if you want to ride across the finish line, you need social skills. You need to know how to talk to women. You need to know how to flirt. You need to know how to make an interaction enjoyable.

If you were somehow forced to choose between being extremely handsome but socially inept and being average-looking but extremely socially capable, I would take the second option.

Realistically, though, you don’t have to choose.

Become as attractive as you reasonably can, and become socially competent too.

Just don’t make the mistake of thinking your face is the thing standing between you and a normal dating life when you haven’t even learned how to interact with women.

Women Don’t Hate Being Approached

The other excuse I see constantly is:

“Women don’t want men approaching them anymore.”

This one can become another very convenient prison.

There are women who don’t want to be approached. Obviously. There are also places and situations where approaching somebody would be inappropriate. You need basic social awareness and you need to respect a woman’s answer when she’s not interested but that is very different from believing women, as a group, don’t want men to approach them.

I have approached a lot of women (the result is there in my archive)

Women are often happy to be approached when the approach is normal, respectful, and appropriate to the situation and most women complain about the opposite problem: men don’t approach them anymore.

The Internet makes this much harder to understand because the Internet isn’t a representative sample of normal human beings.

You can spend three hours scrolling through arguments about whether women hate male attention, whether approaching women is harassment, whether feminism has ruined dating, or whether women secretly want men to approach them, and come away believing you have discovered some great truth about female psychology.

Then you go outside and discover that actual human beings are considerably less ideological than the people arguing online.

Most normal people aren’t spending their evenings writing manifestos about dating.

They’re living their lives.

This is one reason I think socially isolated men need to spend more time offline. If most of your info about women comes from angry men on forums, angry women on social media, dating-app statistics, rage-bait clips, and arguments between people who have never met one another, you’re going to develop a very strange picture of reality.

Go outside.

Talk to people.

Watch how men and women actually behave around each other.

You’ll learn more from a few months of real-world interaction than you will from another thousand hours of Internet arguments and yes, women want to meet men.

They don’t necessarily want every man who approaches them. That’s an important distinction.

The reasonable version of the incel complaint is, “Women only want men they’re attracted to.”

That’s closer to reality, but even that is too simplistic.

Most women aren’t going to spontaneously become attracted to every guy who approaches them but most women are perfectly happy to have a normal conversation with a guy they’re not immediately attracted to, provided he is socially calibrated, respectful, and not being weird or pushy.

Which brings us right back to the actual problem.

You need to become a normal guy then, preferably, you need to become a cool guy.

The Excuse Becomes the Prison

Almost every seriously stuck incel eventually finds a reason for why he is helpless and the reason is almost always something he believes he cannot change.

For me, it was social skills.

I thought I was simply too far behind. I believed that everyone else had learned how to socialize years ago and that I had missed the window. If I started talking to people, they would discover how inexperienced I was and reject me. So I couldn’t really try.

That explanation felt completely true.

It wasn’t.

For another guy, the explanation might be his height.

For another, his face.

For another, his race.

For another, his hairline.

For another, it’s women.

“Women are feminists now.”

“Women have unrealistic standards.”

“Women only want the top 1%.”

“Women don’t want to be approached.”

“Women only care about money.”

Maybe there are pieces of truth in some of these observations. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

A belief doesn’t have to be completely false to become a prison.

If you use a particular fact about dating to explain why you personally cannot do anything about your situation, you have turned information into an excuse and the more you repeat the excuse, the more evidence you’ll find for it.

That’s how learned helplessness works.

You don’t necessarily start out believing you’re helpless. You experience failure, you try to explain it, and eventually you settle on an explanation that protects you from having to try again.

Because if the problem is your height, what can you do?

If the problem is your race, what can you do?

If the problem is women’s standards, what can you do?

If the problem is that women don’t want to be approached anymore, what can you do?

Nothing and that’s precisely why these explanations are so psychologically attractive.

They give you an answer while simultaneously relieving you of responsibility.

My answer to you is different.

Stop asking, “What is the thing about me or the world that makes success impossible?”

Start asking, “What can I actually change?”

Maybe you’re genuinely unattractive. Fine. Improve what you can.

Maybe you’re short. Fine. You can’t change your height, so stop spending your life thinking about it and improve everything else.

Maybe you have had terrible experiences with women. Fine. Learn from them.

Maybe women really are more selective than you would like. Fine. Become better at meeting them and better at attracting the women who do like you.

Maybe you’re twenty-five and have the social experience of a fourteen-year-old.

Then that’s your problem and unlike your height or your race, that is a problem you can actually work on. This is the change I want every incel to make.

Stop looking for the one immutable thing that explains why you’re doomed.

Look for the skills you’re missing.

If you’re hopelessly behind socially, then accept that you’re hopelessly behind socially for now.

That’s a much better diagnosis cos if you’re behind, you can catch up and once you stop defending the idea that you’re permanently fucked, you can finally start doing something about it.

How You Actually Get Out

I’m not going to tell you to start cold approaching tomorrow, and I’m not going to sell you some product that promises to get you laid in 30 days.

If you’re genuinely stuck in this hole, you’re probably not ready for that yet.

You need to start at the root: your mindset, your mental state, and your basic social skills.

1. First, Get Your Head Right

A lot of men who end up deeply isolated are depressed, whether they recognize it or not and it creates a nasty feedback loop.

You’re depressed because you’re isolated, you’re isolated because you don’t socialize, you don’t socialize because you feel like shit, and feeling like shit makes you retreat even further.

You have to break that loop somewhere.

That might mean therapy. It might mean talking to someone. It might mean fixing your sleep, getting outside, exercising, seeing friends, or simply forcing yourself back into the world even when you don’t feel like it.

You don’t need to have your entire mental health figured out before you start improving your social life but you do need to take it seriously.

2. Stop Making ‘Incel’ Your Identity

This is one of the things I hate most about identity labels.

Once you start identifying with a group, the label starts explaining everything for you.

“I am an incel.”

“I am unattractive.”

“Women don’t want men like me.”

“This happened to me because I’m short.”

Eventually the label becomes a prison.

You stop thinking about what you can change and start collecting evidence for why you’re fucked.

Become allergic to that.

You are not an incel.

You’re a man who hasn’t been laid.

Maybe you haven’t had sex in years. Maybe you have never had sex at all.

That’s a situation. It isn’t an identity and situations can change.

3. You Need Social Reps

I’m still not telling you to cold approach.

Start smaller.

Find social events. Go to them. Watch what people do.

Pay attention to how people enter conversations, how they leave them, what they talk about, how they tease each other, how they change subjects, how they handle awkward moments, and how they make other people feel comfortable.

Then try it yourself.

You’ll fuck it up.

Good.

Go again.

Your first goal isn’t to become some charismatic social god. It’s to become slightly better than you were last week.

Maybe you talk to one stranger.

Maybe you attend one social event.

Maybe you stay in a group conversation five minutes longer than you normally would.

Make the goal small enough that you can actually do it. Then observe what happened and try again.

That’s how social skills are built.

A Note for Autistic Men

Some men genuinely have a harder time reading social cues. Autism can make this especially difficult but there’s one adjustment that I think is useful for anyone who struggles socially: stop assuming bad intentions without evidence.

If someone doesn’t invite you somewhere, don’t immediately decide they hate you.

If someone doesn’t laugh at your joke, don’t decide they’re an asshole.

If a woman rejects you, don’t immediately decide she’s shallow.

You may be wrong and when you constantly assign malicious motives to other people, you start behaving defensively toward people who haven’t actually done anything to you.

Then they react to your behavior, and you take that reaction as proof that your original assumption was correct.

That’s another feedback loop.

Break it.

You’re Going to Suck at First

Social skills are different from lifting weights or making money. You can go to the gym and get stronger without anybody watching you fail.

You can build a business without having every mistake happen directly in front of another human being. Social skills require other people.

That means your inadequacy is going to be visible.

You’re going to say something stupid.

You’re going to misread a situation.

Someone is going to ignore you or reject you.

You’re going to walk away from an interaction and spend the next three hours thinking about the stupid thing you said.

This is where pride becomes a 100-foot wall.

The funny thing is that nobody cares about your mistakes as much as you do.

They’re too busy thinking about themselves and their own mistakes. You have to swallow your pride.

The same thing that makes socializing so painful at first is what eventually makes you good at it: you have to expose yourself to situations where you’re not good yet and eventually, you get better.

You have a body, a brain, vocal organs, two eyes, two ears, a nervous system, and all this incredible biological machinery that somehow allows you to interact with other human beings but none of that machinery comes with ten thousand hours of social experience installed.

You have to use it.

Social skills are worth developing because almost everything you want in life involves other people.

Friends.

Women.

Jobs.

Business.

Networking.

Leadership.

Even getting people to help you with something.

The better you become at dealing with people, the easier it becomes to get what you want while making other people actually want to help you and the earlier you swallow your pride, the prouder you can stand later.

A lot of my own pride was fragile because I didn’t have much social evidence behind it. I didn’t have many friends. I wasn’t good with women. I didn’t know how to handle myself around people.

It is easy to mistake that fragile pride for self-respect. It isn’t.

Real confidence comes after you have gone through enough experiences to know that you can handle yourself. That’s why the process is worth it.

Start Climbing

You don’t need to solve your entire life today.

You just need to stop digging.

Get your mental state under control. Take care of your body and appearance. Get out of your room. Spend less time consuming shit on the Internet that makes you hate yourself or women. Talk to people. Make friends. Put yourself in situations where you can be awkward and survive it.

Dating comes later.

That order matters.

If you have spent years isolated, your first objective isn’t becoming a master seducer. It’s becoming a participant in normal human life again.

Then you build from there and don’t wait until you feel ready.

You were awkward before you started trying.

At least now you’re awkward while getting better.

You’re going to get rejected. You’re going to embarrass yourself. You’re going to have terrible conversations.

That’s fine.

Those experiences are data.

Study them.

Don’t turn other men into evidence that you’re inferior. Watch what they do. Figure out what they’re doing differently. Steal what works.

Most importantly, stop treating your current situation as a prediction of your permanent future.

Those things can change.

Start there.

Hope this helps a bro,

• Man Of Steel

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a coaching client who was confused about a girl he had met through cold approach.

She had seemed interested when they met. They had a good enough interaction for him to get her number and set up a date, so there was no obvious reason to think she wasn’t interested.

The problem was her texting.

She responded to his messages, but her replies were extremely short and matter-of-fact. There was almost no emotion in them, and she wasn’t doing much to keep the conversation going.

Their exchange looked something like this:

Read more

Let’s talk about a problem I have noticed with several experienced guys lately: the playboy’s retention problem.

He can get laid easily.

He can get laid with attractive women easily.

He can even get a girl to keep seeing him for a while and then, somehow, he loses her.

Sometimes she leaves because she wants something more serious or she gets tired of waiting or she meets another guy or nothing dramatic happens at all, she just slowly becomes less interested until the relationship dies.

This can be particularly frustrating when you actually liked the girl.

Getting women was never the problem. You know how to meet them, attract them, get them into bed and keep things exciting for a while. You may even have enough experience to know that you could replace her with another woman fairly quickly.

But that isn’t really the point, is it?

You don’t want another woman.

You want her and this is where some of the habits that made you successful with women in the first place can start working against you.

The playboy learns to stay cool. Don’t chase. Don’t become too available. Don’t show too much interest. Keep your options open. Never let a woman feel like she has completely got you.

All of that can be useful when you’re creating attraction but eventually, the woman you’re sleeping with starts asking a different question.

“Can I actually build the kind of relationship I want with this guy?”

And that is where a lot of otherwise successful playboys start dropping the ball.

If you’re sleeping with a woman, you’re already attractive enough to her. You don’t need to become even more attractive just to keep her around.

The problem is usually somewhere else.

She is now paying very close attention to what you actually intend to do with her.

She is looking at your words, your actions, your willingness to commit, how quickly you move things forward, and whether the future you seem to be offering her resembles the future she actually wants.

If you seem too easy to “rope in,” she may start wondering whether you were really as valuable as she thought but if you seem impossible to pin down, another problem appears: she starts wondering whether there is any point in investing more of herself in you and then there is the biggest question of all:

Do you actually want the same things she wants?

You might genuinely like her. You might genuinely fucking her. You might genuinely think she would make a fantastic girlfriend or wife but what if she wants marriage in the next two years and you’re thinking about marriage in ten?

What if she wants children and you don’t?

What if she wants an exclusive relationship and you want to keep things open?

What if you tell her that you’re open to those things “eventually,” but she has no idea when eventually is?

These aren’t small problems and this is where a lot of playboys fail the retention test.

They simply haven’t thought seriously enough about what the woman is actually waiting for.

So before we get into the tactics of keeping women around, I want you to ask yourself one question:

Can I give this woman what she wants, within a timeframe that is reasonable to her?

If the answer is yes, keep reading.

If the answer is no, then you have a different problem. No amount of clever game, teasing, sexual tension or relationship management is going to solve a fundamental disagreement about what the two of you want your lives to look like.

You can sometimes get a woman to wait.

You can sometimes get her to compromise but the more valuable the woman is, the more options she usually has, and the less reason she has to spend years waiting around for a man who isn’t sure whether he wants the same future she does.

That is where the real retention problem begins.

When She Stops Don’t Believing You

The dating world is harsh.

People are often deceptive and, like it or not, men are often deceptive with women, particularly when it comes to teasing commitment to keep the pussy tap open:

“I’m open to marriage… someday. Just not right now.”

“I definitely want to get serious eventually. I’m just still too young for that.”

“I might want to have kids later. I’m just not in a position for it yet.”

This creates a timetable dilemma.

Yes, you MAY want what she wants someday but what day will that be?

How much older will she be by then? How much will her sexual market value (SMV) have changed? How many other high-value men will still be available to her? And what are the odds that you decide to drop her after she has spent years waiting for you, only to give a younger woman everything you told her you weren’t ready for?

She doesn’t know the answers to those questions but she does know that the longer you put things off, the less attractive the situation becomes for her.

She starts thinking:

What if I’m much older by the time he’s finally ready?

What if I’ve lost some of my options by then?

What if I wait for years and he still decides he doesn’t want me?

And that’s the problem with the playboy who keeps saying “later.”

“MOS, I would never do that!” I hear you say. “I really do mean it when I say I’ll do those things later. I just don’t want to do them now.”

But there’s a problem with that argument.

If you are genuinely 100% certain that you’re going to do something, why are you waiting? If you know you’re going to start exercising, you don’t have to wait until next year. You can start now.

If you know you want to learn Python, you don’t have to wait six months. You can start learning it now.

If you know you want to buy a particular house, you can start saving for it now.

Of course, life gets in the way. Circumstances change and sometimes “not now” really does mean “not now” but I have seen enough people say, “I’ll definitely do that later” and then watch that 100% certainty slowly turn into 50%, then 20%, then nothing at all.

Time has a funny way of doing that.

Women understand this.

It can be incredibly painful for a woman to leave a relationship she’s invested in, especially when she’s in love with the man but if that man cannot give her the relationship she wants, promises about some vague future eventually stop being enough.

She has to decide whether to keep waiting or get out and find someone whose plans are more aligned with hers and this is where time becomes important.

If you keep telling a woman, “Maybe someday,” or “Perhaps a few years down the road,” take note of what you’re actually communicating.

You’re telling her, indirectly:

“I don’t want that with you right now.”

She may accept that answer for a while but she cannot wait forever.

How Long Will She Wait For You?

How long a woman is willing to wait for you depends on four main things:

Read more

asked me a question after reading a post of mine:

“Why do men lose attraction for women they’re dating?”

I thought about it for a while because there is an easy answer to this question, and then there is the answer that actually explains what happens.

The easy answer is to give women a list of things men hate like:

• Don’t be needy.

• Don’t gain weight.

• Don’t argue too much.

• Don’t be too emotional.

• Don’t sleep around.

• Keep yourself attractive.

That kind of advice gets attention because it gives you something simple to blame. The problem is that attraction between two people rarely works that neatly.

Men are not machines. You can do everything that you read on the internet to do and still have a man lose interest. You can also do things that would supposedly “kill attraction” and have a man remain completely crazy about you.

What I have noticed is that attraction usually changes when the experience of being in the relationship changes.

The woman he was crazy about six months ago may still look almost exactly the same. She may still be kind, still love him or be a good person but the way he feels when he is around her has changed.

Understanding this explains why attraction can disappear even when neither person can point to one huge event that caused it.

When being with you starts feeling like work

Think about the beginning of a relationship.

He wants to see you, looks forward to your messages, plans things and wants to impress you. Even ordinary things feel exciting because there is still so much to discover about each other.

Then the relationship settles into everyday life.

That is normal. Every relationship eventually loses some of the novelty of the first few months.

The problem begins when the relationship becomes a constant list of obligations.

He has to call at a certain time. He has to explain why he liked a girl’s Instagram post. He has to reassure you whenever you’re anxious. He has to remember every small detail or deal with an argument when he forgets. He has to account for where he is, who he is with and why he didn’t respond quickly enough.

None of these things, by themselves, necessarily mean there is a problem. Being in a relationship means you both have responsibilities toward each other, and are allowed to have needs.

The problem is what happens when almost every interaction starts carrying a cost.

A man can handle a difficult period in a relationship. What becomes exhausting is feeling like there is no longer a peaceful version of the relationship.

There is an important difference between seeing someone who wants to hear about your day and seeing someone but you are already wondering what you are going to have to defend yourself over. That difference accumulates.

Eventually, he may still love you while quietly becoming less excited to be around you.

The deeper thing underneath this is freedom. Men generally do better in a relationship when they still feel like they can be themselves inside it, rather than feeling managed by the person they love. That does not mean a woman should never ask her bf to change anything. It means the relationship should still feel like a place where two adults are choosing each other rather than one person constantly managing the other.

He stops feeling desired

This is probably the point I would emphasize most because women are rarely told how important it is for a man to feel wanted.

Men are usually taught that they are supposed to provide desire, attention and validation while women receive it.

Real relationships are more complicated.

A man wants to know that his gf isn’t merely grateful to have a good bf. He wants to feel that she actually wants him.

There is a difference between being appreciated and being desired.

“I love you because you’re such a good man” is appreciation.

“I can’t keep my hands off you” is desire.

Both are important in a relationship.

You don’t need to spend your entire relationship trying to keep a man sexually excited since affection can disappear from a relationship surprisingly easily. You stop initiating or even touching each other for no reason. Compliments become rare. Sex becomes something that happens when everything else is finished. Eventually, he starts feeling less like your lover and more like your roommate.

That can change how he sees the relationship.

The same thing happens to women, of course. Nobody enjoys feeling like their lover is merely fulfilling an obligation. Desire tends to survive when intimacy feels mutually wanted rather than like something one person owes the other.

That sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but a lot of long-term relationships slowly lose exactly this.

When respect starts disappearing

There is another change that can be even more damaging.

The way you treat him.

A relationship can survive disagreements. They can survive arguments. They can even survive periods where both people are irritated with each other.

What becomes much harder to recover from is contempt.

A friend told me a story of how he got promoted at work and comes home excited to tell his girlfriend (they were cohabiting after 2 years in the relationship). Instead of being happy for him, she laughs and says, “Don’t get too excited. It’s not like you’re the CEO.” Like wtf why would you say something like that??

Maybe she means it as a joke.

Then it happens again.

She makes fun of his ambitions around her friends. She compares his career to that of herex. She rolls her eyes when he talks about something important to him like his LEGO collection. She starts speaking to him as though he is incompetent. YOu see my point?

None of these moments has to be dramatic but after enough of them, something changes. He may still be committed to the relationship. He may still tell himself that the jokes don’t bother him but the woman he loves has gradually become someone he feels he has to defend himself against.

That is a very different emotional environment.

Contempt also tends to go public before it goes private. I have watched a woman make a joke about her man at a dinner table, something small about his job or his weight or a mistake he made, the kind of joke she has clearly decided is harmless, and I have watched his face do a quiet thing that she never noticed. He laughed along. He always laughs along but something closed in him at that table, and she had no idea it happened, because to her it was a joke and to him it was his girl deciding he was worth less in front of the people whose opinion he cares about.

Those are the moments that add up which is not the big fights but the small disrecpectful and annoying things she does but forgets by dessert and he remembers for a year.

This is also why I think the common advice that “men only care about sex” misses something important. A man can have loads of sex with a woman and still lose his desire to be with her if he consistently feels belittled by her.

Sex can keep a relationship physically connected for a while.

It cannot manufacture admiration/longetivity.

When she starts managing him instead of loving him

I want to be careful with this one, because it almost never starts as controlling. It starts as love.

No woman decides one day to start mothering her man. It creeps in through care. You remind him about the appointment because you don’t want him to miss it. You handle the thing because it’s faster than waiting. You keep the mental list of what needs doing because someone has to, and it always seems to end up being you.

Women are rarely allowed to say this out loud. You don’t feel like a tyrant. You feel exhausted. You feel like the only adult in the house, the only one holding the whole thing together, and mothering him doesn’t feel like control, it feels like the only way to keep the ship from sinking but there is a trap here, and it is a cruel one.

The more you carry, the less he carries. The more you manage, the less he steps up, because a man who is managed slowly stops trying, and a man who stops trying leaves you carrying even more. So your exhaustion creates the exact passivity that exhausts you. You end up resenting him for behaving like a child, inside a dynamic where you have quietly become the parent and underneath your exhaustion, something happens to attraction too.

It is very hard to desire someone you are managing. The moment he becomes one more thing on your to-do list, he stops being the man you wanted and starts being the biggest child you look after. That is death for the romantic part of a relationship, for both of you, because he can feel himself becoming your project instead of your man.

None of this means you are wrong to want help or to help. If your bf genuinely refuses to work, contribute or handle his own life, that is a real problem, and not saying anything about it will only grow the resentment but the answer is not to manage him harder. It is to stop trying to manage him long enough to find out whether he will actually rise to fill the space, and to be honest with yourself about what you see when you do. Sometimes he steps up the moment you stop doing it for him. Sometimes he doesn’t, and that tells you something you needed to know.

You can have standards without becoming the manager of another adult’s whole life and the relationship you actually want is one where you finally get to put that weight down.

The relationship slowly becomes boring

People sometimes misunderstand this point because they hear “boring” and assume the answer is to manufacture mystery or start playing games.

That’s not what I mean.

Long-term relationships are supposed to become more predictable in certain ways. You should know each other’s habits. You should feel comfortable together. You should be able to spend a quiet Sunday doing absolutely nothing.

The problem is when everything becomes predictable.

Every weekend is the same. Every date is the same restaurant.

Every conversation is about work, bills etc.

You stop doing things because you are comfortable, and eventually the relationship becomes nothing more than managing your shared life.

Almost every relationship are susceptible to this. They aren’t fighting or cheating or miserable.

They have simply stopped doing anything that makes them feel like lovers and thats the problem right there

You don’t need to constantly entertain your bf or vice versa. You just need to keep having a life together that is bigger than your responsibilities. Go somewhere neither of you has been. Try something stupid.

Take a random trip. Go whitewater rafting or kayaking rapids or skydiving.

Give yourselves new memories.

Novelty doesn’t replace compatibility, but it can remind two people why they enjoyed each other’s company in the first place.

He stops liking the relationship, even though he still likes you

This is the uncomfortable one.

Sometimes a man doesn’t lose attraction because you suddenly became unattractive.

He loses attraction because he finally understands that he doesn’t actually like the relationship like:

• Maybe the chemistry was incredible, but you wanted completely different lives.

• Maybe the sex was great, but you fought constantly.

• Maybe he loved the attention you gave him, but he never felt peaceful around you.

• Maybe he liked having you around but couldn’t imagine building a life together.

This is where people confuse feelings with compatibility.

They aren’t the same thing.

You can have feelings with someone who would make a terrible bf.

You can also have a relationship where attraction grows slowly because you both genuinely enjoy being around each other.

Lots of relationships are seen as “great on social media” because they both looked perfect together but behind closed doors, they probably couldn’t stand being around each other for more than a few hours without arguing.

Everything looked right but the relationship felt wrong.

That is why I don’t think every relationship should be saved simply because two people still love each other. Love and desire matters enormously but so does whether you actually enjoy being together.

What happens when she stops having her own life

There is another pattern that gets misunderstood because people often confuse closeness with becoming completely dependent on each other. Funny how this is a common thing both ways

When you first meet a woman, she has a life that exists without you.

like…

• She has friends you don’t know.

• Places you haven’t been.

• Interests you don’t understand.

• Stories you haven’t heard.

• Plans that don’t include you.

Part of what makes getting to know someone exciting is discovering that world.

Then the relationship becomes serious and she slowly gives all of it up.

She stops seeing her friends. Her hobbies disappear.

Every free evening belongs to him. Every problem goes to him.

Every weekend revolves around him. He becomes her bf, best friend, therapist, entertainment and entire social life.

It sounds romantic until you realize how much pressure that puts on one person.

A healthy relationship should add another world to your life rather than replace the one you already had. Keep your friends, hobbies and ambitions. Let him have his own things too.

Then you have somewhere to return to each other from.

The woman he fell for is allowed to change

There is a more difficult explanation that doesn’t get enough attention.

People change.

The woman he is dating may not be the same woman after a couple of months or years.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing cos she may become more ambitious, more ‘independent’, her priorities may change and his may change too.

Sometimes two people grow together. Other times they grow in different directions.

That can be painful because there isn’t always a villain.

You can look back at the relationship and honestly say that neither person was terrible. You loved each other. You had good years together. You tried.

You simply became different people. That is one of the hardest realities of relationships because it means there isn’t always something you can fix.

So does this mean women have to constantly maintain a man’s attraction?

No.

If you read everything above and come away thinking, “Great, now I have to make sure I never annoy my boyfriend, never gain weight, never criticize him, always initiate sex and keep the relationship exciting,” you have missed the point.

Men do the same things cos men can become lazy, stop taking care of themselves, become emotionally unavailable, stop listening, stop dating their gfs, take good women for granted, become controlling, become boring and can slowly destroy attraction too.

The goal isn’t to become a perfect gf but to build a relationship where both people still enjoy the person they have chosen.

That means being able to disagree without constantly humiliating each other. It means maintaining your own identity while building a life together. It means making each other feel wanted rather than merely useful. It means giving each other room to breathe while still making the relationship a priority.

And when something starts feeling wrong, tell him what you’re noticing.

Ask him what he’s experiencing. You may discover that the problem is completely fixable.

You may discover that both of you have neglected the relationship or you may discover that you have simply grown apart.

All three answers are better than spending six months trying to decode each other’s behavior.

See u soon,

• Man of Steel

You have approached a girl, or maybe you’re already on a date.

Things were going well at first. She was engaged, the conversation was flowing, and you felt like you were getting somewhere.

Then something changes…

Her answers get shorter or she stops asking you questions or she starts looking around etc. The energy just isn’t there anymore, and you can feel the interaction slipping away. Most guys respond by investing more.

They start teasing more, telling better stories, trying harder to demonstrate value, becoming more animated, or pulling out some weird line they know.

They start working harder to get her interested again and that’s where they can make things worse.

When her interest is dropping and you respond by putting even more effort into getting her attention, it can quickly turn into chasing. You’re trying to pull her back in, and she can feel that you’re trying to win her over.

Instead of continuing to invest in a girl who is pulling away, you can do something else.

Get her to invest.

One of the easiest ways to do that is through a compliance request.

Give her something small to do. Get her involved in what you’re doing instead of continuing to carry the whole interaction yourself.

You’re not trying to suddenly become 10X more interesting just because she’s getting bored. You’re giving her a reason to participate again and that small change can sometimes be enough to bring a dying interaction back to life.

Stop Trying Harder When She Pulls Away

Everything I mentioned above (teasing, flirting, being entertaining etc.) is stuff women generally enjoy and if she enjoys something, it can function as a reward.

You reward the behavior you want to see more of. You don’t keep rewarding behavior you want less of. The problem is that a lot of guys completely forget this when an interaction starts going downhill.

The girl gets less interested, so they start doing more. They tease more, tell more jokes, tell another story, give her more attention, and start trying even harder to impress her.

They’re chasing her interest while she is actively pulling away.

At that point, you’re usually making the problem worse.

You might be able to keep her around for another few minutes by pulling out some impressive story or trying to entertain her, especially if she still has some goodwill toward you but she’s going to be sitting there in skeptical mode.

You’re trying to win her back, she can feel it, and now everything you do starts to look like an attempt to get her attention. There is another way to handle it.

Instead of immediately giving her more stimulation, get her to invest first.

If she complies with something you ask her to do, you now have a different interaction to work with.

The Move That Gets Her Involved Again

Let’s say she’s getting bored.

Obviously, you need to change something but if you suddenly start trying harder (telling better stories, teasing more, showing off more) you are still doing all the work.

So how do you create more stimulation without making it look like you’re desperately trying to get her interested again?

Get her to do something then build on that investment with more attention and stimulation.

Compare these two scenarios.

Read more

A woman is doing something you would rather she did differently.

Maybe she is taking too long to get ready. Maybe she keeps changing the plans. Maybe you want her to come somewhere with you. Maybe you want her to do something for you.

What do you say?

“Maybe we should…”

“Would you mind…”

“Do you want to…” Or do you simply tell her what you want?

Most men have never seriously considered the difference.

They use whichever approach feels safest in the moment and usually, the safest approach is asking. That makes sense.

Asking gives the other person a choice. If she says no, you can tell yourself that you were merely being respectful. You do not have to risk looking demanding, controlling, or presumptuous but there is a cost to making approval your highest priority.

A man who is constantly worried about whether a woman will like his tone eventually stops leading. He turns decisions into questions, preferences into suggestions, and simple statements into negotiations.

He is not necessarily being considerate.

Sometimes he is simply afraid of hearing no. This is where the difference between a command, a suggestion, and a request becomes useful.

A request says “I want this, but the decision is yours.”

A suggestion says “I think this is what we should do.”

A command says “This is what we’re doing.”

None of these is automatically superior. A man who commands everything is not necessarily dominant. He may simply be insecure and obsessed with proving that he is in control. The real skill is being able to choose between them.

Can you ask when asking is appropriate? Can you suggest when you want to lead while leaving room for her input?

Can you command when the situation supports it? and, perhaps most importantly, can you remain completely comfortable when she says no?

That is the subject of this article.

Why Most People Submit to the Social Order

Acceptance is one of the most valuable currencies people have.

That is not irrational. Being accepted by the people around you provides companionship, security, status, and often material support. Humans are social creatures, and rejection can carry serious consequences.

This is why people spend so much of their lives trying not to be disliked.

The problem begins when acceptance becomes more important than autonomy.

If you need other people’s approval badly enough, you become beholden to them. You begin adjusting your behavior around what they will tolerate. You watch your tone, soften your opinions, avoid confrontation, and learn to anticipate what will make other people comfortable.

In exchange, you remain inside the group.

That is the trade.

The desire for acceptance is one reason hierarchy works so well. Most people are constantly navigating relationships with people above them, below them, and beside them. The language changes depending on the relationship.

We are more direct with people we have authority over. We are more diplomatic with peers. We are more deferential toward people who have authority over us.

Commands belong naturally to the first category. Requests belong naturally to the third. Suggestions sit somewhere in between.

When the subject is compliance, the difference becomes particularly important.

A request gives the other person the greatest amount of control.

A suggestion gives you some influence while leaving room for her to participate in the decision. A command takes the greatest amount of responsibility for the decision and assumes that you have enough authority, confidence, or situational control to make it.

This gives us a basic hierarchy:

Command > Suggestion > Request

But this hierarchy does not mean you should command everything.

It means that the three forms of communication carry different amounts of directness, risk, and responsibility. Dating is where men often become confused about this.

A man may be decisive everywhere else in his life and become strangely hesitant around a woman he finds attractive.

Suddenly everything becomes a question.

“Do you want to go here?”

“Would you like to come over?”

“Maybe we could…”

“Would it be okay if…”

Again, there is nothing wrong with asking.

The problem is when the question exists primarily because the man cannot tolerate the possibility of rejection. That becomes approval-seeking.

The Degree Of Directness

There is more nuance than simply commanding, suggesting, or asking.

You can modify the perceived dominance of a statement through delivery.

For example, upward inflection can soften a command or suggestion and turn it into a hybrid.

Command: “Let’s head to the club.”

Hybrid Command: “Let’s head to the club?”

Suggestion: “We should head to the club.”

Hybrid Suggestion: “Should we head to the club?”

You can also increase directness by removing unnecessary words.

Terse Command: “Let’s go.”

Terse Suggestion: “We should leave.”

And you can combine the two:

Terse Hybrid Command: “Let’s go?”

Terse Hybrid Suggestion: “Should we leave?”

The exact hierarchy is less important than understanding what is changing.

Every modification adjusts how much you are asserting versus how much you are inviting but fundamentals still matter more than wording.

The video on this:

Your words are only the vehicle.

Tone, volume, rhythm, facial expression, posture, eye contact, and body language determine how those words actually land. A perfectly constructed command delivered nervously will not suddenly make you dominant.

Likewise, a simple sentence delivered calmly and confidently can carry considerably more authority than an elaborate one. This is especially important with women because the literal meaning of your words is only part of what they experience.

Your delivery communicates how comfortable you are with your own decisions, how much you need her approval, and whether you are genuinely leading or simply performing dominance.

The Ten Laws of Compliance

The framework becomes much easier to understand once you look at what happens after you communicate what you want.

Paid part:

Read more

Most guys understand how to generate initial attraction. They know how to be interesting in conversation, how to text without seeming desperate, how to create momentum during the first few interactions. Then one of three common situations happens and they completely fumble it. She says she’s busy, or she goes quiet for a few days, or schedules make it impossible to meet for a few weeks. These moments kill more promising interactions than bad approaches or boring conversations ever do, and they kill them because guys either panic and overcompensate or they back off completely and let everything fade.

The problem is that these situations feel like tests or rejections when they’re usually just normal friction that comes with dating. She’s not necessarily losing interest when she says she’s busy. She’s not ghosting you when she doesn’t respond for two days. The relationship isn’t dead because you can’t see each other for three weeks. But how you handle these moments determines whether the interaction survives or whether it joins the long list of connections that just faded without any clear reason why.

Situation 1: When She Says “I’m Busy”

You suggest meeting up and she hits you with some variation of “I’m really busy right now” or “This week is crazy” or “I have so much going on.” Most guys interpret this as soft rejection and either back off entirely or start chasing harder by suggesting multiple alternative times. Both responses kill the interaction because they’re reacting to what they think is happening rather than what’s actually happening.

When a woman says she’s busy after you suggest meeting up, she’s usually doing one of two things. She’s either genuinely busy and seeing if you’ll still pursue despite the obstacle, or she’s giving herself room to decide if she actually wants to meet you without committing either way. Neither of these is an outright rejection. She’s not saying no at least she’s saying not right now, and the difference matters because your response should acknowledge her situation without letting it derail your momentum.

The mistake most guys make is treating “I’m busy” like it requires negotiation or accommodation. They respond with “No worries, just let me know when you’re free” which hands her all the control and kills any forward movement, or they respond with “What about Sunday? Or next week?” which makes them look like they’re chasing and don’t have other options. Both of these responses communicate that you’re more invested in making this happen than she is, and that imbalance kills attraction faster than almost anything else.

What actually works is acknowledging that she’s busy without making it the focal point of the conversation, and then giving her a concrete plan with a specific time. You’re not asking when she’s free and you’re not backing off completely. You’re telling her when you’re available and making it easy for her to say yes if she’s actually interested. This keeps you in the position of leading rather than reacting, and it removes the decision-making burden from her which makes it more likely she’ll commit.

The frame you’re establishing is that you’re interested but you’re not going to rearrange your entire schedule to accommodate her uncertainty. If she’s genuinely interested, she’ll make it work. If she’s not, she’ll stay vague and you’ll know to move on. Either way, you’re not wasting time trying to convince someone who isn’t already somewhat invested.

Situation 2: When She Goes Quiet for a Few Days

You’ve been texting back and forth with decent momentum and then suddenly she stops responding. A day passes, then two, then three, and you’re sitting there wondering if you said something wrong or if she’s just busy or if she lost interest completely. Most guys either send multiple follow-up texts trying to re-engage, which looks desperate, or they decide she’s not interested and stop reaching out entirely, which kills any chance of reviving the interaction.

Going quiet for a few days doesn’t mean what you think it means. Women have lives that don’t revolve around the guys they’re texting. She got busy with work, or family stuff came up, or she’s dealing with something that has nothing to do with you. She might have even forgotten to respond and now feels awkward about the time gap. What matters is whether she was engaged before she went quiet, because that tells you if the silence is about disinterest or just normal life friction.

If your conversations before the silence were good - she was asking questions, contributing to the conversation, responding with more than one-word answers then the silence is probably just life happening. If your conversations were always one-sided with you doing all the work, then the silence is her fading and you should let it go. The difference between these two situations is whether you should re-engage or move on, and most guys get this wrong because they either give up too early on genuine interest or waste time chasing girls who were never that invested.

When you do re-engage after a few days of silence, don’t acknowledge the gap or apologize for not texting. Don’t send “Hey, haven’t heard from you in a while” or “You still alive?” because both of these make the silence into a bigger deal than it needs to be. Just pick up where the conversation left off or start fresh with something relevant to your previous interaction. You’re treating the gap as normal rather than as evidence that something went wrong.

If she responds and re-engages, you know the silence was just life and you can continue building momentum. If she doesn’t respond or gives you a weak response with no investment, you know she’s not interested and you stop wasting energy. The goal is to make one clean attempt to revive the interaction without seeming like you were sitting around waiting for her to text back.

Situation 3: When You Can’t Meet for 2-3 Weeks

You’ve been talking to her and there’s clear interest but schedules make it impossible to actually meet up for the next few weeks. Maybe she’s traveling, or you’re swamped with work, or it’s the holidays and everyone’s unavailable. Most guys either try to maintain constant text conversation during this time, which gets exhausting and kills mystery, or they go completely silent and hope to pick things up when schedules align, which lets the connection go cold.

The problem with trying to have deep text conversations during a multi-week gap is that you’re trying to build connection through a medium that doesn’t support it. Text is good for maintaining awareness and creating momentum toward meeting up, but it’s terrible for actually getting to know someone or building real rapport. If you’re texting constantly for three weeks before you meet, you’ve already exhausted most of the interesting conversation topics and the actual date feels like a formality rather than a discovery.

Going completely silent is worse because attraction doesn’t maintain itself through absence at this stage. If you’ve only met once or you’re still in the early texting phase, three weeks of zero contact means you’re essentially starting over when you try to reconnect. She’s not sitting around thinking about you during that time—she’s meeting other guys, dealing with her life, and forgetting why she was interested in the first place.

What works is staying in light contact without trying to have real conversations. You’re texting every few days with something low-effort that doesn’t require a long response. Maybe it’s a funny observation, or a reference to something you talked about before, or a quick check-in that acknowledges she’s busy without making it a big deal. You’re staying in her awareness without demanding her attention, and you’re not trying to build connection through text during this gap.

The goal during a multi-week break is just to make sure that when you’re both available again, you’re not starting from scratch. She should remember who you are and why she was interested, and there should be a natural opening to suggest meeting up without it feeling forced or out of nowhere. Some connections will fade during this time no matter what you do, and that’s fine—those are the ones that weren’t strong enough to survive normal life friction anyway.

Why These Situations Matter More Than You Think

These three situations come up constantly in dating. You will face “I’m busy” responses multiple times with any woman you’re pursuing. You will deal with periods of silence that make you question if she’s still interested. You will hit scheduling conflicts that make it hard to actually meet up. How you handle these moments determines whether your interactions survive normal friction or whether they die for no clear reason.

Most guys lose women during these moments not because they said something wrong or because the attraction wasn’t there, but because they respond to normal dating friction like it’s a crisis. They either chase too hard and seem desperate, or they back off completely and let momentum die. Both approaches fail because they’re treating temporary obstacles like permanent problems.

The difference between guys who maintain momentum and guys who constantly lose women to vague fading is simple: they understand that these situations aren’t tests or rejections, they’re just normal parts of dating that require you to stay calm and maintain your frame. You’re not trying to convince her or chase her or accommodate her uncertainty. You’re staying consistent, leading when you need to lead, and giving her room to either match your interest or fade naturally.

When she says she’s busy, you give her a concrete plan. When she goes quiet, you re-engage once without being weird about the gap. When you can’t meet for a few weeks, you stay in light contact without trying to build a connection through text. None of this is complicated, but it requires you to stop interpreting normal friction as evidence that something’s wrong.

See u soon,

• Man Of Steel

Sometimes you’ll meet girls who won’t add much to the conversation. When this happens, you’ll have to take the lead and do most of the talking yourself.

One of my paid subscribers Matt asked me this:

"I tend to ask girls a lot of questions. How can I not make it seem like an interview or an audition? That’s the vibe I get when I do it, and it feels a bit awkward."

Of course, one of the main points of a conversation with a girl is to avoid making it feel like an interview... which means that after a certain number of questions, if she still hasn’t started to talk much, you need to change your questions into statements. You can do this with cold reads (instead of: “What do you do for work?”, say: “You look like either an anthropologist or an entrepreneur, I can’t tell which”). And beyond that, if she still doesn’t talk more, you’ll have to start telling stories and steering the conversation with your own material.

The stronger game, the faster you draw girls in... and the more likely you are to end up in conversations where girls ask you questions or open up about themselves right away. Still, even if your fundamentals are top-notch, you’ll meet women who are, for lack of a better term, ‘bad at conversation’.

Maybe she’s not interested or she’s not feeling social. Maybe she’s just a quiet person and doesn’t talk much.

But if you find yourself in a conversation like this, with a girl who stays and passes your compliance tests (so you know she’s not uninterested), yet still doesn’t contribute much, you’ll need a different approach.

You’ll have to know how to carry the conversation even when the girl barely adds anything.

When You Meet a Girl Who Just Doesn’t Talk

Once you get good at convos, you’ll find that most interested women will open up to you easily. All they need is a little push, and from there, the conversation flows smoothly.

If you struggle with the “how do I not make it feel like an interview?” problem the paid sub Matt had, here are a few tips:

• Don’t ask more than four or five dull or ordinary questions at the start.

• If you have already asked your questions and she still hasn’t opened up or started asking you questions, it’s time to switch to statements.

• Statements can be comments about her, guesses or cold reads about her, compliments, things you notice in the environment, or stories about yourself... basically anything. Personal topics are always better (“That’s a really nice scarf” helps the courtship far more than “That scandal everyone’s talking about is crazy”).

• Keep using statements until she either starts making her own or begins to ask you questions.

Some women just take more time to warm up. Some won’t loosen up until three or four minutes into the convo. You can’t keep asking questions for four minutes straight, so you’ll need to fill the time with your own conversation until she gets more relaxed and begins to join in or ask questions.

Some women take even longer. Ideally, you should be able to keep a conversation going for about ten minutes and handle most or all of the talking yourself if needed. You don’t want to have to do this, and usually you won’t need to. Half the time you try, the girl might lose interest in your conversation and leave.

But with some girls, this is exactly what works best.

Most women respond well to a talkative style, just as much as they do to a quiet, more curious one and some women barely contribute to conversations at all. Some will stay completely quiet from the moment you start talking to them to the moment you take off their panties in bed and get intimate (and even then, they might stay quiet which depends on the girl).

When you meet girls who don’t talk much, your job is simple: you do the talking yourself.

How Stories Save You When She Doesn’t Talk

Better than cold reads, better than compliments, are stories - they fill silence and build connection with girls who don’t talk much.

Cold reads and compliments are solid tools. Cold reads show her that you understand her, compliments show her that you like her.

But stories? Stories fill space (valuable space) that gives you room to do other things, like:

• Touch her

• Move her around

• Make flirty expressions at her

• Change venues with her

Stories also speak to what some women respond to most. If she’s generally a passive type (not just quiet because she’s bored or not that into you), she’ll often feel most comfortable with a man who tells stories. It lets her relax, sit back, and get drawn in by this interesting man who has interesting things to say.

You should tell stories with all girls you have a convo with. Stories are an amazing way to relate your feelings and experiences to women who open up to you. She tells you a story, you tell her one. Stories let you share things about yourself too that is not always required, but often useful. With normal talkative girls, your stories will usually be shorter, and your main goal is to relate to her, not just entertain or talk about yourself.

With quiet girls, it’s different. When she gives you nothing to work with, you’ll talk mostly about what excites you and makes for good story material.

Here’s an example of storytelling with an average-level talkative girl:

Her: [long story about why she’s afraid of rabbits]

You: That’s wild. I’m glad you didn’t lose your fingertip from that rabbit bite.

Her: I know!

You: I don’t think I could hang out with you if you were disabled.

Her: [laughs]

You: You know, I don’t hate rabbits, but I can’t stand what eats them - snakes. You like snakes?

Her: Ew, no! Not as much as rabbits, but they’re still gross!

You: Right? Rabbits can bite your fingertip off, but big snakes like anacondas can crush your ribs and eat you. I hate snakes because, where I grew up, we had this basement that was half underground. You know, like those basements built into a hill, with a door and windows on one side?

Her: Oh my God, yes, I used to live in a house with a basement just like that! My sister and I always played down there and thought it was haunted. There were these lights that would always go off whenever we... [tells story]

At that point, she’ll go into her own story and might later ask you to finish yours about the snake or maybe the topic just changes. That’s normal back-and-forth storytelling.

With girls who don’t talk much, you’ll do the same thing but start sooner, make your stories longer, and don’t wait for her to share something first. Most of the time, your stories will come from what pops into your head or what’s happening around you.

If she doesn’t talk, you must be able to carry the conversation yourself.

Here’s an example of storytelling early in a convo with a girl who doesn’t say much. Let’s say you’re about 2 or 3 minutes in, and this girl has complied with you, but she isn’t giving you much in the talk. So you think she’s into you, but she’s quiet. Let’s jump in:

You: Why’d you move out here?

Her: Just for work.

You: Ah, I see. I used to have to move around for work a lot. Which – ah, hey. You know what the craziest place I ever had to work at was? Well let me ask you, ever been to Camden, New Jersey?

Her: No.

You: Okay, well. Camden is really poor. They used to be the murder capital of America but I think that’s Baltimore now. Or it could be Chicago, Chicago is coming up on that fast. Anyway, Camden is just super poor, and it has this hood culture there. And so you get a lot of black and Latin guys and they are 100% hood. And if you work in a retail place anywhere around there, whoever the guys are who are working there they will mostly be black and Latin guys from out the hood. Well, it was crazy, because I worked in Cherry Hill, which is this really rich part of New Jersey. Right? It’s all fancy.

Her: Yeah.

You: So all the customers were rich white middle-aged folks. And all the guys in the back were young black and Hispanic guys from the hood. Some of them had criminal records. That sort of thing. Well man, there was such a culture clash. Because I would have to be up front all day with these rich white customers, and I would have to look proper to these folks and come across in a way they felt fine with. And then I would have to go into the back in the tire shop and behave in a way that the guys in the back could respect. Even still, there would be these small gaps I would run into over and over again. One of them was over how to wear my chain, for example. Are you familiar with hood chain culture?

Her: No.

You: All right, so, in the hood, you wear your chain on the outside. All your jewelry on the outside. It’s a way of peacocking. You are showing off both how rich you are and how well your set reps, because you can show off your jewelry and not get robbed. Now if you TUCK your chain, everybody thinks you’re weak. You look like a mark. It’s like saying you’re not strong and you’re scared you’ll get mugged. Well, among the rich white customers, if you wear a chain out with THEM you look hood and unfit and they’re less likely to want to buy anything you’re selling. A chain on the outside of your shirt quietly tells any rich white person “I am not from your world.” It pushes you away. I had this gold chain I wore around my neck at the time, and I would always leave it inside my shirt, because I didn’t want to scare off the white customers. But then I would go into the back and some of the guys would be yelling “MARK!” because I had my chain tucked in. For a while I even took to pulling out my chain every time I stepped in the back, then tucking it back in when I went up front, like some of the other guys there did. But I’m forgetful and I’d forget to do it and my chain would be out while I’d be talking to customers, looking all hood, and they’d be not as easy. So I just said screw it, I’m leaving the damn thing tucked in. Well that was when these guys in the back decided I was a mark. This skinny little tattooed Hispanic guy with a high voice kept pointing at me and laughing and yelling about how my chain was tucked in and I was a mark. And telling me to run it... you know what ‘run it’ means?

Her: No.

You: Ah, okay. Well, it’s hood slang for “hand over the goods”, basically. In the end, I got pissed off enough to stop it. I just shouted at the whole back room full of guys that look, we have WHITE customers up front, and you look like a hood rat if you come out there with a chain on so yes, it HAS to be tucked in. And then I caught the skinny tattoo guy and pointed at his watch and told him, “RUN THE WATCH! RUN IT!” in front of everyone. That ended the chain issue, but there was always stuff like that.

Her: Wow.

You: Yeah, I mean... let’s sit over here.

Her: Okay.

[you both sit down]

You: I mean, that was the craziest place I’ve had to work, I think. That was back in my tire salesman days though. I had another place I was at after I became a business worker, this place Bremerton, Washington. Ever been there? Or, like, Seattle?

Her: I’ve been to Seattle.

You: Did you like it? Cool town?

Her: It was okay.

You: Huh. ‘Okay’. Well, I’ve only driven through Seattle. But Bremerton I spent some time in. And let me tell you about Bremerton...

So you just drive the talk forward with stories.

(notice you don’t try to force her to chim in here? No questions about her thoughts in Seattle... she’s been quiet so far, and her words on Seattle make it clear she has no real thought on it and isn’t in the mood to talk about it anyway. So you don’t bother. Instead, it’s onward to the rest of your tale)

As you tell your stories, you touch her, move her around, use sexual body language with her, and later change spots or take her home.

At some point she may open up but some girls are just quiet types who don’t really talk with anyone about anything, they just listen. If you want these kinds of girls, you have to be able to talk yourself.

Adding Sexual Topics When You Do Most of the Talking

I can tell you this: for me, when I am the one talking, the key is to talk about things I find interesting and think will interest others. Then I show excitement about those things, get the girl to agree to small requests, touch her, and move her closer to me as we get to know each other.

Every natural talker I have known always focuses on topics he truly loves. This seems to be the most important point. You need to find subjects that thrill you and that you think will thrill her too.

If you tell stories like mine, which are not sexual in their content, you should find sexual ways to joke and flirt with her. For example, when I start my Bremerton story, if I want to add a little sexuality, I might do it like this:

Me: ... yeah so, in Bremerton, it’s gloomy, rainy, everyone is overweight and in a bad mood. ... no cute guys... you’d hate it.

Her: [laughs] Yeah. ‘Cause I have to be somewhere with cute guys.

Me: Of course you do. We’re all human. Food, sleep, water, sex. We all need it.

Her: True.

Me: You know, the problem with a place like Bremerton is all the sex is probably really gloomy. So like two people hook up at the bar and they both frown at each other as they have sex. [frown at her]

... and now she will be laughing (plus, you can ask her to your place later to ‘frown at each other’).

A good thing about quiet but agreeable girls is they usually push back less in conversation. They might still resist at first if you suggest something they are unsure about (like admitting they enjoy sex), but once they accept your way of thinking, you can talk all you want and they will mostly let it continue without challenge.

Sex talk gets her to have realizations (“So true!”), which also makes her more open to your sexual ideas

Sex talk is clearly the more direct of the two, which makes its impact stronger on women who accept its ideas. Hinting is a bit more flexible (easier to use while waiting in line for coffee, for example), and is something you can use with less sexually open girls (who might resist more with direct sex talk).

Anyway, either of these will add sexual energy to a conversation where you are doing 80-95% of the talking.

As long as you keep moving the courtship forward, keep increasing touch, and add sexual ideas to the conversation, this is basically all you need to do to guide things toward sex, no matter how much or how little she is willing to add to the talk.

Girls Who Do Not Talk Much

Deep conversations are great, but you cannot use them all the time or in every talk.

Some girls need more time to feel comfortable before they will really join the conversation. Sometimes that could be 3-4 minutes. Sometimes that could be 10 minutes. You need to be ready to handle the conversation until she begins to add more herself. This means you should be able to use:

• Things you notice about her

• Guesses or assumptions about her

• Praise for her

• Remarks about your surroundings

• Stories you tell about yourself

...and you should be able to create an interesting enough talk from this for at least 10 minutes, until she is ready to jump in and contribute more. With many girls you will not need to go for 10 minutes, and they will start to contribute earlier. But for the best skill, you want to be able to do 10 minutes of what is basically a semi-speech.

There are some girls who never start to contribute more. They are simply quiet people who do not like to talk or do not have much to say, and you will have to do most of the talking if you want to win them. Use compliance tests to avoid wasting time (i.e., if she will not do what you ask, she is usually not a girl you should chase)... however, as long as she is agreeable, you can do all the talking and just lead her along as you talk and she listens and follows.

As long as the signs are there, it does not matter if she stays quiet.

Make your conversation engaging. Follow the rules of good storytelling, and use your stories and other talk to pull her in with your words, while you move the courtship forward in action and touch. Then add sexual content to your conversation, either with chase frames or sex talk.

The learning process for 'you do all the talking' is longer for most men than the process is when you can have a deep conversation and let the girl talk more. Although if you are already a talkative person, you might find this easier than when you have to stay quiet and listen to her talk. And either way, once you master this method, it is another very useful tool for your collection.

You will not meet too many completely silent girls you have to do 95% of the talking with (who are still interested in you, anyway. You will meet many more silent girls who are just not interested! As always, compliance is the key to knowing which group she is in). But you will meet plenty of girls who do not join the conversation until 3 minutes in, 4 minutes in, or 10 minutes in. And for these girls, you need to be prepared to carry the conversation until they are warmed up.

If you feel frustrated with girls who will talk less, or who always seem to resist your conversation no matter what you try, do not worry. With some practice, and a few good stories to tell, you can do the talking yourself until she decides to join the conversation... or even until she decides to go to bed with you.

It is a different style but it works just as well and it is just as enjoyable.

Until next time,

• Man Of Steel

I made a lot of mistakes across thirteen weeks, but one of them cost me more than the others, and the worst part is that it didn’t look like a mistake while I was making it.

It looked like effort. It looked like me doing the work instead of giving up when an interaction wasn’t going my way.

That is what made it so difficult to grasp.

The mistake was simple:

When a woman gave me nothing, I gave her more.

What it looked like

I remember one interaction from the early part of the arc that captures this perfectly.

Read more

I have been helping men with their love lives for over six years, and there’s one question that comes up again and again:

“Why did this girl I had an amazing connection with suddenly disappear?”

It’s confusing because the experience seems contradictory. You had a great conversation, she seemed engaged and there was chemistry. Maybe you even exchanged numbers.

So why would she disappear afterward?

There are three common reasons, and they’re not always the ones men expect.

3 Reasons She Vanished

1. You felt a connection, but she didn’t feel the same one.

2. She wasn’t actually available.

3. She couldn’t see a role for you in her life.

Let’s break down each one.

Reason #1: She Didn’t Feel the Same Connection

The most common reason a woman you felt a strong connection with disappears is also the simplest:

The connection was one-sided.

You felt it but she didn’t.

That sounds strange because we tend to assume that connection is automatically mutual. It isn’t.

Back in 2018 I had a gf who was exceptionally good at getting people to open up. Within minutes of meeting her, people would tell her about their dreams, insecurities, relationships, family problems, and everything else they normally kept to themselves.

Afterward, those people would often tell her how much they enjoyed talking to her and how easy it was to connect with her.

The funny thing was that she often didn’t feel particularly connected to them at all.

Why?

Because they had opened up to her, but she hadn’t opened up to them.

Scientific research on how people form connections shows that we feel more connected to others as we disclose things about ourselves.

One study found that building an intimate connection follows these steps:

• Person A shares personal feelings or information with Person B.

• Person B responds supportively and empathetically.

• If Person A feels understood, validated, and cared for, they feel a more intimate connection.

However, this process doesn’t address how Person B feels about the connection. Person B also needs to share personal information and feel supported and validated by Person A to experience the same level of connection.

The convos I often have with guys who report a great connection, only to have the girl disappear, usually sounds something like this:

Him: “We had this amazing connection, but now she won’t respond to my texts.”

Me: “What did you tell her about yourself?”

Him: “A lot. I told her about my work, my goals, some personal stuff…”

Me: “What did she tell you about herself?”

Him: “Well, she told me where she worked and where she was from…”

Me: “Anything deeper?”

Him: “Not really.”

There’s the problem.

He felt connected because he had revealed meaningful parts of himself and she had listened, empathized, and responded warmly.

From his perspective, the conversation felt intimate.

From her perspective, she may have simply enjoyed talking to him.

That’s why you can’t use your own feeling of connection as proof that she felt the same thing and this is where men often get confused.

They’ll say, “But she was flirting with me.”

Sure, she might have been but people can flirt, laugh, tease, and enjoy a conversation without feeling the same level of attraction or connection that you do.

The lesson isn’t to stop opening up. It’s to pay attention to whether she is opening up too. If you’re constantly revealing more while she stays on the surface, you may be creating the feeling of connection almost entirely inside your own head.

Reason #2: She Wasn’t Actually Available

Sometimes the connection was real.

She enjoyed talking to you, was attracted to you, genuinely liked your company and it still goes nowhere because she wasn’t available.

This can happen for obvious reasons.

• She might already be in a relationship.

• She might be leaving town.

• She might be overwhelmed with work or school.

• She might simply have too much going on in her life to make room for somebody new.

You can have a fantastic convo with a woman who lives three hours away and is leaving the city tomorrow.

You can have great chemistry with a woman who is already committed to someone else. You can meet someone who is genuinely attracted to you but is dealing with a major life situation that makes dating the last thing on her mind.

None of those situations require you to have done anything wrong.

This is why I think men sometimes put too much weight on the quality of the interaction.

They assume:

Great conversation → strong connection → she should want to see me again.

Not necessarily.

The connection is only one part of the equation.

She also has to be available and you should find that out sooner rather than later.

You don’t need to interrogate her about her relationship status. Usually, normal convo will tell you enough.

• Ask about her life.

• Ask what she has going on.

• Find out whether she lives nearby, whether she’s seeing someone, and what her schedule looks like.

The point isn’t to screen women like they’re filling out an application but to simply avoid building a fantasy around someone who was never realistically available to begin with.

Reason #3: She Couldn’t See a Role for You in Her Life

This one is harder to explain, but it’s probably the most interesting.

Sometimes a woman enjoys you.

She likes talking to you.

She may even be attracted to you but she can’t figure out where you fit into her life.

Think about the last time you had an unexpectedly great conversation with a stranger while traveling.

Maybe you sat beside someone on a flight and spent three hours talking about everything from relationships to politics to your childhoods. By the time you landed, you felt like you had known each other for years.

You exchange contact informationthen you go home.

How often do you actually stay in touch? Usually, you don’t and its not because the conversation wasn’t real.

It just doesn’t fit anywhere.

You don’t live in the same city, share a social circle or have a reason to see each other again. There’s no obvious place for that person in your life.

Dating can work the same way. A woman might have a great time talking to you and still leave wondering:

“What exactly would I do with this guy?”

Is he someone she would date?

Someone she would hook up with?

Someone she would become friends with?

Someone she would invite into her social circle?

Sometimes she doesn’t know and when people don’t know what to do with something, they often do nothing.

This can happen especially when you spend a long time talking without actually moving things forward.

The longer you stay in a convo, the more information she collects about you. Eventually, you’re no longer just an attractive stranger she met ten minutes ago. You’re becoming a specific person in her mind and once you’re a specific person, she has to figure out where you fit.

That’s why a long conversation isn’t automatically better than a short one.

You can talk to someone for an hour and still have no idea whether there is any romantic potential.

Or you can have a 15-minute conversation, establish attraction, exchange numbers, and meet again when there’s actually enough time to explore the connection.

So What Do You Do About It?

If you don’t want women disappearing after great interactions, there are a few things you can do.

1. Make sure the connection isn’t happening entirely on your side.

Don’t spend the entire interaction telling her your life story while she plays interviewer.

Let her talk.

Pay attention to what she volunteers without being asked. Look for the things she actually cares about. Find out what she wants, what she enjoys, what she’s working toward, and what kind of life she’s building and notice whether she is curious about you too.

It takes two to tango

2. Find out whether she’s actually available.

You don’t need to make this weird.

If you’re talking about dating, ask whether she’s seeing anyone.

If she tells you she’s leaving town next week, take that into account.

If she’s constantly talking about how overwhelmed she is with work, don’t pretend you didn’t hear it. You don’t need to convince an unavailable woman to become available.

You just need to recognize when she isn’t.

3. Don’t spend forever in the initial interaction.

This is one of the biggest lessons I have learned from approaching women.

The goal of the initial interaction isn’t to tell her everything about yourself.

You don’t need to prove that you’re fascinating. You don’t need to have the deepest conversation of her life.

You need to establish enough attraction and rapport that meeting again makes sense then get her contact information and move on.

Save some of the deeper stuff for the date.

There is something useful about leaving a woman with a clear impression of you while still giving her more to discover later. You don’t need to be deliberately mysterious.

Just don’t give someone your entire autobiography before you’ve even gone on a date.

CONCLUSION

When a woman disappears after what felt like an amazing interaction, don’t immediately assume you messed something up.

Sometimes she wasn’t as interested as you thought.

Sometimes she wasn’t available.

Sometimes she liked you but couldn’t see how you fit into her life and sometimes there is a fourth possibility that men hate admitting:

You simply don’t know.

You can never perfectly read another person’s mind.

You can make a reasonable judgment based on what happened, ask her out, and see what she does next. That’s much more useful than replaying a 45-minute conversation in your head trying to find the exact moment where you supposedly ruined everything.

The goal isn’t to engineer every interaction so that a woman can’t possibly lose interest. That’s impossible.

The goal is to get better at recognizing mutual interest, moving things forward when it’s there, and walking away when it isn’t.

So if you find yourself thinking, “But we had such a great connection. Why did she disappear?”

Start there.

Ask yourself three questions:

Did she actually feel the same connection I felt?

Was she genuinely available?

Did I give the interaction somewhere to go?

Those questions will usually tell you more than another three hours of analyzing her texts.

• Man Of Steel

I have spent the last year testing a lot of things in the real world. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some things I thought I understood turned out to be completely wrong once I actually had to live them.

The cold approach arc obviously taught me a lot about women, dating, and social skills, but the bigger lessons had very little to do with women.

They were about work, failure, family, momentum, confidence, boredom, and learning how to actually live.

So here are 36 things I have learned so far.

1. Do the work today.

I have a tendency toward perfectionism, and perfectionism is a very convenient way to procrastinate.

You tell yourself you’re trying to get something right when really you’re avoiding the discomfort of getting started.

The work rarely becomes easier because you waited until tomorrow. Usually you just have the same work sitting there, except now you’ve added the stress of knowing you should have done it yesterday.

Do what needs to be done today.

2. Complacency is the death of progress.

This is one I still struggle with.

My life tends to move in “feast and famine cycles”When things are going badly, I become extremely focused. When things start going well, I relax, enjoy the momentum, and stop sharpening the same edges that got me there.

Then the “famine” comes and I have to rebuild.

I have started thinking about this as a simple rule: I don’t want to relax for more than two days in a row.

Rest is necessary but not too much that it dulls my edge.

3. Momentum is everything.

2024 was one of the best years of my life because I was completely in the zone.

Everything seemed to click. I met people I never thought I would get close to. I was doing things I had previously convinced myself were out of reach. The trajectory was ridiculous.

The biggest difference wasn’t that I suddenly became smarter or more talented.

I was simply moving.

Small things were getting done every day, and those small things created momentum, and momentum made the next thing easier.

Never underestimate what happens when you get the ball rolling.

4. Treat your people well.

If you have people working with you, underneath you, or alongside you, take care of them.

The people doing the work deserve to be treated well. It’s fair, but it also makes practical sense. People remember how you treated them when they had nothing to gain from you.

Goodwill compounds too.

5. Family is everything.

I have had my issues with my dad but whenever I’m down and I talk to him, he has my back.

Plus he’s getting older.

That fact becomes harder to ignore as you get older yourself. You start realizing that some of the people you assume will always be around simply won’t be.

So talk to your family. Spend time with them.

Call your dad.

Call your mother.

Don’t wait until you have a reason.

6. The best dating advice I received this year was incredibly simple.

A friend told me:

“Anything you want to do involving women should be filtered through the lens of: if I was a woman, would I do this?”

That question has stopped me from doing a lot of stupid things and it also forces you to step outside your own lust for a second and look at the situation from the other side.

7. Cold approach isn’t dead, neither are the apps.

I think people make dating more complicated than it needs to be.

Cold approach works.

Dating apps work.

Social circles work.

None of them are magic.

Use all three.

8. Warm approach is underrated.

I think social environments are going to become increasingly important.

People are tired of the weirdness of online dating, and there are only so many situations where walking up to a complete stranger feels natural.

Being able to meet someone through mutual friends, communities, hobbies, events, work, or social circles gives you something apps can’t: context.

9. Social skills is the new meta.

One of the best things you can do is become someone who can comfortably talk to almost anybody.

Befriend a beautiful woman and you may eventually meet her beautiful friends.

People trust people who are already trusted.

That kind of social proof is difficult to manufacture.

Yes, I know some of you will tell me men and women can’t be friends so I’m not going to argue that so…

Fair enough.

10. Life is boring.

Sometimes I genuinely think I have ADHD because I hate sitting still and doing boring work.

Every day I want something interesting to happen but most of life is not interesting.

There are emails to answer, Work to finish, Clients to handle and Skills to practice.

The boring parts of life exist for a reason.

Learn how to use them.

11. Stop reading if you know you aren’t living.

Stop reading books if you know you are not out actively living life. It’s same as porn cos you are reading instead of doing.

Just try to experience life a bit then read and you will see how the lessons in the book hit different

12. I underestimate how much work it takes to get what I want.

You probably do too.

I constantly underestimate the amount of repetition required to become genuinely good at something.

You see the finished product and imagine the person got there through some brilliant insight.

Usually they just did the thing thousands of times.

The gap between wanting something and actually having it is usually much larger than you think.

13. All forms of self sabotage is just the mind and body in a deep terror of rejection/failure.

If you are comfortable with both, u will go far my friend

36 lessons I’ve learned from dating, business, failure, family, and just living life.

Paid subscribers can keep reading and because it’s my birthday, the annual subscription is 30% off for a limited time.

Read more

I was sitting across from a woman at a bar one night 2 months ago, and the conversation had been going well enough that I had started to relax.

We had been talking for a while. She was witty, and actually giving me something to work with. It wasn’t one of those conversations where you’re asking question after question and desperately trying to keep the thing alive. There was a rhythm to it.

At some point I leaned into the conversation, made a joke, and she laughed.

Then she looked at me for a second and said:

“So, do you always try this hard with girls?”

There it was.

It isn’t a serious accusation or even particularly harsh.

Just a little jab and I nearly handled it badly.

The funny thing about these situations is that you usually know exactly what not to do. I have enough dating advice to know the standard mistakes

• Don’t get defensive.

• Don’t over-explain.

• Don’t start arguing with her.

• Don’t suddenly become serious because she made a joke at your expense.

Knowing that doesn’t mean your brain automatically cooperates when you’re sitting there in the moment. For a second, mine didn’t.

I could feel myself considering all the possible responses.

I could deny it.

“No, I wasn’t trying hard.”

I could explain myself.

“I’m not usually like this. I was just joking around with you.”

Or I could get irritated.

“Why would you even say that?”

All three responses have the same underlying problem.

I’m accepting her premise and then scrambling to defend myself against it which is usually where guys get themselves into trouble.

What I Think Guys Get Wrong About “Shit Tests”

I still use the term because it’s common in the dating world, but I have become much less convinced by the mythology surrounding it.

A woman makes a teasing comment and suddenly guys start talking about subconscious tests, evolutionary psychology, frame control and whether she is secretly evaluating their ability to protect a family from a saber-toothed tiger.

Come on.

Sometimes she’s testing you.

Sometimes she’s flirting.

Sometimes she’s making a joke.

Sometimes she just noticed something and said it.

You don’t actually know what is going on inside her head and you don’t need to.

Which is the part I think gets missed.

If a woman looks at you and says, “Do you always try this hard with girls?” you don’t need to figure out whether she has just administered a psychological examination.

You need to deal with what is actually happening.

She’s teasing you so play with it.

That’s it.

The mistake is treating the comment like a courtroom accusation that requires a defense. It doesn’t.

Why Guys Get Defensive

The reason these moments can throw men off is that the comment often attacks something they are already worried about.

“Do you always try this hard?”

Translation, in your head:

She thinks I’m trying too hard.

She thinks I’m needy.

She thinks I’m using lines.

She thinks I’m not naturally attractive.

Suddenly you are no longer having a conversation with her.

You are having a convo with the insecurities inside your head. That’s when you start trying to correct her perception.

You explain what you were actually doing. You tell her that you’re not normally like this. You point out that she was flirting too.

You start trying to prove that you weren’t trying to impress her and the more you explain, the more serious the interaction becomes.

She made one playful comment and you started acting weird so what do you do in this situations?

What I Almost Did

For a moment, I actually considered explaining myself.

I could have said something like:

“I’m not trying hard. I’m just having fun with you.”

Technically, there is nothing wrong with that sentence but listen to how it sounds.

She is teasing me about trying too hard, and I have immediately started explaining why she is wrong.

That puts me in the position of proving something to her and what exactly am I trying to prove? That I don’t care whether she likes me?

While sitting across from her trying to convince her that I don’t care whether she likes me? That’s the sort of thing that makes you realize you’re already losing the interaction.

So I caught myself.

I leaned back, gave her the same look she had just given me, and said:

“Only with troublemakers like you.”

She laughed and that was it.

I didn’t sit there waiting to see whether the line had “worked” or explain it.

I didn’t try to stack another clever response on top of it.

I just moved on with the conversation. The moment disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. The response wasn’t particularly brilliant.

It didn’t need to be.

You Don’t Need to Win the Exchange

This is where I think a lot of guys misunderstand playful challenges.

They turn them into a competition. She says something and you have to come up with the perfect comeback.

She pushes.

You push harder.

She teases you.

You need to tease her better.

Pretty soon you’re not talking to a woman anymore but a debate partner.

The goal isn’t to defeat her but to stay comfortable.

If she makes fun of you and you can laugh about it, that’s usually enough.

If she gives you a playful accusation, you can exaggerate it.

If she makes a ridiculous assumption about you, you can run with it.

If she says something that genuinely bothers you, you don’t have to pretend it doesn’t. You can address it normally.

The important thing is that you don’t suddenly abandon your personality because you think you’ve been challenged. That’s what I mean by holding your frame.

The Three Bad Responses

There are three responses I see guys fall into repeatedly.

The first is denial.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’m not trying hard.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea.”

The problem isn’t that these statements are factually wrong. The problem is that you’re accepting the premise that you need to defend yourself.

The second is over-explaining.

“Look, I’m actually not usually like this. I was just joking around. I don’t normally talk to women like this. I wasn’t trying to impress you.”

Now you have taken a 10sec tease and turned it into a discussion about your intentions.

She probably forgot the comment five minutes ago. You’re still presenting evidence.

The third is getting annoyed.

“Why are you trying to make me look bad?”

This one is particularly bad because now the playful interaction has become a conflict.

She made a joke.

You made it serious and once you have made it serious, you can’t really blame her for responding seriously.

All three responses come from the same place: you feel the need to control how she perceives you. You don’t.

The Better Response

The better response is usually much simpler. Accept the playful premise and add something to it.

She says:

“Do you always try this hard with girls?”

You can say:

“Only with troublemakers like you.”

She says:

“You’re definitely a player.”

You might say:

“That’s a serious accusation. I’m going to need my lawyer.”

She says:

“You probably say that to every girl.”

You might say:

“Only the ones who ask suspicious questions.”

The exact wording doesn’t matter much.

In fact, memorizing ten responses is probably counterproductive.

The point is the mechanism.

She gives you a playful frame. You don’t rush to escape it/defend yourself/try to convince her that she’s wrong.

You take what she gave you and play with it. That is much easier to do when you stop thinking of the interaction as a test you have to pass.

There is another reason I like this skill. It makes the conversation more honest.

If you’re constantly trying to make sure you say the “right” thing, you’re going to become incredibly self-conscious.

You will be listening to her words while simultaneously monitoring your act.

Was that attractive?

Did she like that?

Was that too needy?

Should I tease her now?

Was that a shit test?

That’s exhausting and ironically, it makes you less socially calibrated.

The best conversationalists I have encountered aren’t constantly searching for the perfect response. They hear what was said, notice the emotional direction of the conversation, and respond to it.

That’s what happened that night.

She teased me, I recognized it as teasing, I played along and then we continued talking. There was no secret technique hiding underneath it.

Sometimes You Shouldn’t Play Along

This is important because dating advice can turn everything into a game if you let it.

Cos not every uncomfortable comment is a shit test. Sometimes a woman is genuinely criticizing you. Sometimes she’s being disrespectful.

Sometimes she says something that actually bothers you and sometimes the right response isn’t a clever comeback.

It’s simply:

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Or:

“I’m not really into that.”

Or you just move on.

Being unbothered doesn’t mean allowing someone to treat you however they want.

It means you are capable of deciding how much importance something deserves before reacting to it. That’s a much more useful skill than memorizing comebacks.

Until next time,

• Man Of Steel

P.S. My birthday promotion is still running. The annual subscription is 30% off for the promotion period. If you HAve been reading the free posts and want access to the full paid archive, this is the best time to lock in the annual subscription before the discount disappears.

=> CLICK HERE

After the last two posts, I want to zoom out a little.

We have talked about reading a woman in the moment, and we have talked about what her behavior tells you after you made a move but there’s a question underneath both:

How do you know when it’s actually time to ask her out?

Most guys try to answer this by looking for attraction signs.

She played with her hair.

She laughed at everything you said.

She touched your arm.

She kept eye contact.

Maybe those things mean something. Maybe they don’t. That’s the problem.

You are interpreting them and when you really want a woman to like you, it’s very easy to interpret everything she does in the most flattering way possible.

So during my 13-week approach experiment, I started paying less attention to “signs of attraction” and more attention to something I could actually observe:

investment.

Which is not what I thought her behavior meant but what she was actually putting into the interaction.

Over 262 approaches, I kept coming back to three things.

Engagement.

Reciprocity.

Cooperation.

They are not foolproof signs that a woman is interested in you.

Nothing is but together, they give you a much better idea of whether you are dealing with genuine interest or simply a woman who’s being pleasant.

1. Engagement

First question:

Is she actually participating?

There’s a difference between a woman answering your questions and a woman being engaged with you.

A polite woman can answer everything you throw at her.

“Where are you from?”

“Toronto.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a nurse.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, it’s alright.”

Technically, you’re having a conversation but who’s carrying it?

You are.

An engaged woman gives you something back.

She asks you questions.

She volunteers information you didn’t ask for.

She picks up something you said earlier.

She introduces a new topic instead of waiting for you to keep the conversation alive.

This was something I became much more sensitive to during the arc.

Early on, I would sometimes walk away from an interaction thinking it went great because we had talked for ten minutes and she had been friendly the entire time.

Then I would look back at it more objectively. I had asked almost every question. I had introduced almost every topic.

I had kept the interaction moving. She had mostly responded.

That’s not necessarily a bad interaction but there’s a big difference between “she didn’t mind talking to me” and “she was interested in talking to me.”

That’s the first thing I look for.

2. Reciprocity

Engagement tells you she is participating.

Reciprocity tells you whether she’s giving the energy back. This is where things get more interesting.

You tease her. Does she tease you back?

You make a slightly flirtier comment.

Does she play along or give you a polite laugh and change the subject?

You give her something to work with.

Does she pick it up and add something of her own?

There’s a huge difference between a woman who is simply receptive to your energy and one who starts creating some of that energy herself.

One of my better interactions during the arc happened in a wine aisle.

I gave a woman some unsolicited opinion about the bottle she was looking at.

She could have easily laughed, said something polite, and gone back to what she was doing.

Instead, she pushed back and started giving me shit about the fact that some random guy had apparently decided he was qualified to advise her on wine.

Now we’re playing. That’s what I mean by reciprocity. I wasn’t doing all the work of creating the dynamic.

She was helping create it too and that’s important because a guy can manufacture a surprising amount of chemistry by himself if he’s sufficiently motivated.

He can tease, flirt, tell stories, escalate and can keep throwing energy into the interaction until he convinces himself that the woman is reciprocating simply because she hasn’t walked away.

I don’t want to be responsible for creating the entire dynamic. I want to see what she does when I give her something to work with.

Does she give it back?

That’s a much better question.

3. Cooperation

The third one is what I pay attention to when the interaction starts moving somewhere.

Does she help?

You suggest getting a drink.

She can’t make that night, but she tells you another day that works.

You mention a place.

She tells you she’s been there and suggests something else nearby.

You say you’re free Saturday.

She isn’t, but she tells you Sunday works.

That’s cooperation.

She’s not necessarily making herself instantly available. She’s contributing to making the interaction happen and this is where a lot of guys get confused.

They think interest means availability.

It doesn’t. A girl can genuinely like you and still be busy.

The more useful question is whether she’s helping you find a way around the obstacle.

That’s why “I’m busy” by itself doesn’t tell you much.

“I’m busy” followed by:

“But I’m free Sunday.”

is very different from:

“I’m busy.”

followed by another vague excuse when you make a reasonable suggestion.

Put Them Together

So the basic model is:

• Engagement: Is she actually in the conversation?

• Reciprocity: Is she giving the energy back?

• Cooperation: Does she help move things forward?

Each one tells you something different.

You can have engagement without much reciprocity. She might enjoy talking to you but not feel much romantic chemistry.

You can have reciprocity without cooperation.

There might be genuine chemistry in the moment, but she’s not interested enough to turn it into anything outside that interaction and you can have cooperation without much engagement.

A girl can be agreeable without being particularly interested.

That’s why I don’t put much weight on one isolated “sign.”

I’m looking at the pattern. The more of these three I see, the more comfortable I am making a move and when I don’t see them?

I’m much less interested in trying to convince myself that some random hair twirl or laugh means she’s secretly attracted cos that’s the trap.

When you really want the answer to be yes, almost anything can become evidence.

She smiled.

“She likes me.”

She laughed.

“She likes me.”

She answered my question.

“She likes me.”

Now you’re building an entire theory around behavior that might simply mean she’s a friendly person.

Investment is harder to bullshit yourself with.

She asks you something.

She keeps the conversation going.

She gives you energy back.

She helps make the next step happen. Those things actually occurred.

That’s why I have found it much more useful to stop asking:

“What are the signs that she’s attracted to me?”

and start asking:

“What is she actually putting into this interaction?”

That question won’t give you certainty.

Nothing will but it gives you something much better than certainty which is evidence and once you start paying attention to that, you’ll notice that reading interest becomes a lot less about trying to decode women and a lot more about simply paying attention to what they’re doing.

One thing before you go

It’s my birthday this week.

So I’m doing something I don’t normally do.

For the next 72 hours, I’m giving free subscribers 30% off an annual Man of Steel subscription.

If you have been reading my free posts for a while and have been considering joining the paid side, this is the best price I’m going to offer for a while.

The paid side is where I go deeper.

Real interactions, Field reports and Texting breakdowns. The mistakes that actually happened. The things that worked, the things that didn’t, and why.

You also get access to the entire paid archive.

30% off the annual subscription until 8th of August

If you have been waiting for a reason to join, here it is.

Subscribe now

See you on the other side,

• Man of Steel

Most guys hear “I’m busy” and immediately try to figure out what it means.

Is she actually busy?

Is she rejecting me?

Is she testing me?

Should I back off?

Should I try again?

That’s the wrong question.

“I’m busy” is ambiguous. Sometimes she really is busy or she likes you but isn’t ready to commit to a plan or she is giving you a polite way of saying she’s not interested.

You usually can’t tell from the sentence alone.

What matters is what happens next.

Your job isn’t to decode her response. It’s to give her one clear opportunity to turn the vague answer into an actual plan, then pay attention to whether she takes it.

I learned this the hard way because I used to treat these situations as something I needed to solve. Eventually I realised the better approach was much simpler: make the invitation concrete, don’t become reactive, and let her response give you the information.

The Setup

It was Thursday afternoon, and we have been texting back and forth for a few days.

I had met her on the street during my cold approach arc. We had exchanged numbers, and since then the texting had been light but consistent. She wasn’t giving me one-word answers or making me drag the conversation along. She was actually engaging, and there was enough back and forth that setting up the date didn’t feel like I was forcing something that wasn’t there.

We were already talking about something unrelated when there was a natural opening so I took it.

Me: “You free this weekend? Let’s grab drinks Saturday.”

A little while later, her response came through.

Her: “I’m really busy this week, got family stuff and work is crazy.”

There it was.

The sentence that makes a lot of guys immediately start trying to figure out what they did wrong.

Was she actually busy?

Was that her way of rejecting me?

Should I leave it alone?

Should I suggest another day?

Should I push?

Read more

She read your message six hours ago.

You know she saw it because the read receipt is staring back at you, or you have watched her post two Instagram stories since then.

Now you’re stuck wondering what to do next.

Do you follow up?

Do you wait?

Do you pretend you don’t care?

Most men fall into one of two camps.

The first group panics.

Within an hour or two they send another message.

“Hey, did you see my last text?”

“Just checking in.”

Or they awkwardly pretend the previous conversation never happened and start an entirely new one. The second group swings to the opposite extreme.

They never text again. Partly out of pride or because they convince themselves she’s obviously not interested and there’s no point trying.

Neither response comes from good judgement.

They both come from emotion. One is driven by anxiety. The other is driven by ego.

The better question isn’t whether you should follow up.

It’s what your follow-up is trying to accomplish.

Most advice misunderstands the goal

A lot of dating advice treats the second text as a way to get a response. That’s the wrong objective.

Your follow-up isn’t there to convince someone to like you. It isn’t there to pressure her into replying. It’s there to give the interaction one clean opportunity to recover without making things worse if it doesn’t.

That’s an important distinction. Sometimes girls genuinely get busy.

Sometimes they open a message while they are working, intend to reply later, and completely forget. Sometimes they don’t know what to say.

Sometimes they’re unsure how interested they are and take longer to respond and sometimes they’re simply not interested.

You usually can’t tell which situation you’re dealing with. The beauty of a good follow-up is that it works reasonably well across all of them.

If she was simply distracted, it gives her an easy way back into the conversation.

If she wasn’t interested, it allows you to find that out without chasing.

Why waiting actually helps

When people hear “wait 24 to 48 hours,” they often assume the reason is to play hard to get.

The point isn’t to manipulate her perception of you. It’s to avoid turning your follow-up into a request for reassurance.

If you text again an hour later, you have created pressure where none needed to exist. Your second message tells her you were watching for a reply.

Whether that’s true or not, that’s the impression it creates. Waiting a day or two changes the emotional frame entirely.

Now your follow-up feels like someone continuing their life rather than someone waiting for permission to continue it.

You are giving the conversation room to breathe. If she simply forgot, you’ve reminded her.

If she wanted a little space, you have respected it. Either way, your message arrives without demanding an explanation.

Treating silence as a topic

The biggest mistake men make is treating the silence as the topic.

They ask:

“Did you see my last message?”

“Guess you’ve been busy.”

“Everything okay?”

All three force her to explain why she didn’t reply.

That’s awkward. Most girls would rather avoid awkwardness than answer it.

A better follow-up simply assumes the gap isn’t a big deal. Imagine you asked how her week was going on Thursday night. She read it Friday morning.

Nothing.

Instead of asking about the silence on Saturday, continue the interaction naturally.

“Getting coffee at that place near campus tomorrow around two. You should join.”

Or:

“Finally started that show you recommended. You weren’t lying, it’s actually good.”

Notice what’s happening. You are not asking her to defend herself.

You are giving her an easy place to step back into the conversation.

Match the follow-up to the conversation

One thing I noticed during my cold approach project was that conversations almost never recovered because I acknowledged the silence.

The ones that recovered did so because the conversation simply kept moving.

That changed how I approached follow-ups.

If my last text was a question she ignored, I stopped asking another question.

Questions demand effort. Statements invite reactions so instead of asking again what she was doing that weekend, I might text:

“Walked past that taco place you mentioned. The queue was ridiculous.”

Or:

“You seriously oversold that bakery. I’m expecting a refund.”

Those messages don’t require her to explain anything. They simply reopen the conversation.

If my last message suggested plans and she didn’t reply, I don’t ask whether we’re still on.

Instead, I present a fresh opportunity.

“Change of plans. I’m checking out the place on Fifth tomorrow instead if you’re around.”

It’s relaxed. There’s no guilt attached to saying yes or no.

What never works

There are a few follow-ups that almost always make your position worse.

A lonely “hey.”

A passive-aggressive joke about being ignored.

A message asking whether she saw your previous text.

A paragraph explaining why you decided to message again.

Every one of them communicates the same thing:

“I’ve been thinking about your silence more than I should have.”

Whether that’s true isn’t the point. That’s what they communicate and perception is what matters.

Accept that some conversations are over

This is the part most guys don’t want to hear.

Sometimes your follow-up won’t get a reply.

That’s okay. No text will work on a girl who simply isn’t interested.

The point of sending one thoughtful follow-up isn’t to guarantee a response.

It’s to remove uncertainty. If she replies, great.

Carry on.

If she reads it and disappears again (or never answers at all) you’ve learned something valuable.

The conversation has run its course. Now you can move on without wondering whether one more text might have changed everything.

Conclusion

Being left on read isn’t a problem to solve. It’s information. Responding well means refusing to let that info dictate your emotions.

Don’t chase reassurance instead create one reasonable opportunity for the conversation to continue.

Then let the girl choose. That’s the mindset you’re trying to develop.

Your follow-up isn’t asking for attention.

It’s reopening a door. If she walks through it, great.

If she doesn’t, you close the door and keep walking.

That’s the difference between pursuing and chasing.

Until next time,

– MOS

He is fine once a woman starts investing. If she is laughing, teasing him back, or volunteering stories, he knows what to do. He builds on what she gives him and the conversation takes care of itself.

The problem is the first minute.

When she is still deciding what to make of him. When her answers are short and watching more than she is talking.

That’s when he reaches for one of his routines.

He got a playful one where he tells women they look like trouble and asks whether he is going to be safe around them. It works often enough that he kept using it, but he noticed something. Sometimes it lands perfectly, and other times it feels like he forced it into the convo.

His question was simple:

“How do I transition into my routines so they don’t feel scripted?”

It’s a good question but after thinking about it, I don’t think transitions are the real problem.

The routine isn’t the problem

That is the mistake.

The routine only feels forced because of when you are using it. You pull it out in the exact moment she is giving you nothing (She goes quiet, gives a short answer etc), which means it has nothing to attach to.

Using a line in that instance makes it unnatural cos it feels like a line you say to every girl cos it doesn’t correlate with anything in the convo so far.

The routine becomes a safety net and safety nets almost always look like safety nets.

Imagine she gives you a little smirk after dodging a question about her weekend.

Read more

So here I was sitting on the bench watching two lads who (I’m guessing) are in their early 20s decide whether to approach a stunning lady walking her dog (she is 8).

She was walking her dog in white trainers, light blue jeans, and a cream knit sweater with the sleeves pushed up to her forearms. She looked relaxed, mildly bored, and completely unaware that two guys sitting on a bench twenty metres away were arguing over whether either of them should go and say hello.

This is how the convo went btw the two lads:

“Go talk to her.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“She’s got a dog, bro.”

“So?”

“So.” The one talking didn’t look up from his phone. “You seen the videos on TikTok? Girl films you, next thing you’re on someone’s page getting called a loser or a creep.”

“You’ve never been filmed once in your life.”

“Doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. One phone comes out and you’re done.”

“Okay. So what’s the plan then.”

A shrug. “Dunno. Get money, I guess.”

“Get money.”

“That’s the whole thing. Tall, rich, they come to you. I’m five-seven with nothing. Be for real.”

“Last week it was your age.”

“…what?”

“You said girls only wanted older guys. Week before that you were too short.”

He laughed, still on the phone. “Alright, alright.”

“New reason every week with you.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Every man has a reason-

Fuck that, every inexperienced man has a reason for not talking to girls cos they are hooked up on what they have (looks, status, money, height, muscles etc)

I have seen so many variations of that convo above.

You see it on the internet with:

“You need to have 6 figures and be 6’4” to date girls”

“You need to be looksmaxxing like Clavicular to get girls”

Blah blah blah

Every guy who counts himself out does this very “hysterical mumbling” first. He decides what women want, decides he doesn’t have it, and quits before he opens his mouth.

The strange part is that the guy who is sucks with women is somehow always certain he knows exactly what women want. He treats his theory as a fact and he never once checks whether the fact is true, because checking would mean walking over to her and finding out. Instead he outsources the whole thing to an anonymous account on X or to his own worst imagination.

He speaks for women he has never met. He decides what they think before they have the chance to tell him themselves.

That is why so many men lose before they even start. They reject themselves, then blame women for agreeing with a decision the women never made.

I have approached enough women to know one thing for certain. Women are far less predictable than men imagine. The woman you think will reject you sometimes likes you. The woman you think is interested sometimes isn’t. You cannot know until you have the convo.

Most men spend years trying to fix what they think they lack.

They get a better job, more money, a well chielsed body and ofc status.

There is nothing wrong with improving those things (in fact you should strive to have more of these) but you see…

The mistake is believing they decide everything.

Attraction is far more personal than that. It is not built only on what you have. It is built on how she feels when she is with you.

ITS ALL ABOUT HER FEELINGS

Picture two guys meeting the same woman on a date.

Guy A is like 6’4”, jacked, good looking and earns $200k/year. Good prospect right? Well sure, this puts him in like top 20% but there is a slight issue…

His game is bland, 0 flirtation skill and checks with her on every thing (“do you think we should…” “I like that but we can go with what you want” “How about this” “Is this okay?” “What do you want to do?”) rather than leading her confidently.

Her pussy will be drier than the Atacama Desert.

All these is him playing it safe while looking for permission to move things forward.

Nothing is wrong with him, but nothing is happening either. After ten minutes she is looking for a reason to leave.

Later that week she meets another guy.

Guy B who is like 5’7”, $45k/year, built like a twink and not as handsome as guy A.

But for her, talking to him feels different. He teases her, good flirtation, makes observations about her that no one else notices (he is mostly guessing)

When she starts investing in the convo, he takes the lead instead of asking for permission every step of the way.

An hour later she has forgotten the first guy even existed.

The first guy meets the criteria but has 0 girls but the second guy is just chilling and has none of this criteria and he bags her.

Why?

Its cos Guy A is hoping all the stuff he accumulated will do the work for him, while Guy B knows he has none of that stuff, so he focuses on the only thing left, which is what he makes her feel.

YOU ARE FOCUSED ON THE WRONG THING

We all have things we are insecure about, and mine used to run my head the same way. I would look at some feature I couldn’t change and decide it was the reason women would pass on me.

For example; when I was 16 years, I made a stupid mistake that lead to a facial laceration which became a cheek scar same thing like Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI (very good game).

The scar healed by the time I was 21 but I used to be so insecure about it cos I thought it would repel women from me.

Turned out it was all in my head, sure I got made fun of but at the end it wasn’t a big deal as I thought.

You probably have insecurities too and your questions are along the line of “Do women notice or care?”

Some women will, some women won’t and neither of us can know which in advance, so spending your energy there is a waste.

Instead I focus on a few things that will make her FEEL:

• Annoyance (light)

• Excitement

• Uncertain

• Challenge (a bit of this goes a long way)

• Teased

• Seen (very good one but not too much of this in the early stages)

Once the conversation starts landing on those, the things you thought mattered so much start to matter a lot less. She stops thinking about your height, your income, or whether your jawline is perfect. She is too busy enjoying the conversation in front of her.

That does not mean those things never matter. It means they stop being the main story cos what matters the most is HOW YOU MAKE HER FEEL.

MEETING HER CRITERIA DOES NOT DETERMINE HER FEELINGS

During my cold approach arc, I met a beautiful girl who was in her early 20s. Her name is Allison, she is an Instagram model with a ton of followers and DMs full of men with money offering to fly her places. She is exactly the girl that ninety guys out of a hundred look at and think “no chance, she has better options than me, I will lose.” So they never even find out.

I found out. She was in my place the same week, easily, no money and no flights involved. It didn’t work out for reasons I wrote about in the arc, and that is not the point. The point is that everything her profile screamed about who she would want turned out to predict nothing about what actually happened when we talked.

Most of the people making these arguments have never tested them.

They repeat things they have heard online.

“Women only want tall men.”

“If you’re broke, don’t bother.”

“If you’re not good-looking, it’s over.”

Those statements sound certain, but they usually come from people who have already decided not to put themselves out there.

The truth is much messier than that.

Yes, some women care more about height. Some care more about money. Some care more about ambition, humour, confidence, kindness, or a hundred other things. There is no single checklist that every woman follows.

That is why predicting the outcome before you have even met her makes no sense.

I have seen average-looking men date beautiful women.

I have seen women reject men who looked perfect on paper, then choose someone who had none of the things the internet insists are “must-haves.”

After a while, you stop trying to guess.

You stop asking, “Would a woman like me?”

Instead, you ask, “What happens when we actually talk?”

That question changed everything for me.

If you reject yourself because of your height, your income, your race, or anything else, you also reject every woman who might have liked you anyway.

You never give her the chance to surprise you.

That is why I stopped trying to predict attraction before it happened.

I just started having conversations.

You Can Tell What a Man Believes by What He Obsesses Over

Spend five minutes reading dating forums and you will notice something. One guy is asking if he’s too short.

Another wants to know how much money he needs before he can date. Someone else is convinced his race is the reason women reject him.

They all have different problems, but they’re asking the same question.

“What do I need before I’m allowed to succeed?”

The men who do well with women ask different questions.

“How do I have better conversations?”

“How do I stop chasing approval?”

“How do I make women feel comfortable enough to be themselves around me?”

Their attention has moved away from what they have and onto what they do.

That quality of questions changes everything.

The more experience I got, the less interested I became in debating whether height matters or money matters.

Of course they matter to some women.

The better question is whether they matter enough to stop you before you have even started.

Most of the time, they don’t. The men who do well are not pretending that their weakness/insecurities doesn’t exist, they just refused to make those weaknesses/insecurities the centre of every conversation they had with themselves.

So…

Build your career.

Get in shape.

Dress well.

Take care of yourself.

All of those things help.

Just don’t mistake them for the whole game.

At some point, she stops responding to your résumé and starts responding to what it feels like to spend time with you.

That is the game right there so…

The next time you catch yourself thinking, “She’ll never like me because…”, stop.

You don’t know that.

Have the conversation first.

Let her decide.

Don’t reject yourself on her behalf.

See you Thursday,

• Man Of Steel

Thursday post made the argument that women read need instead of confidence. Saturday gave you the four systems for building certainty on purpose.

Today I’m walking you through five real moments from the arc, because the systems only make sense once you watch them win and fail in actual conversations. Two of these went wrong, and those two are worth more than the three that went right.

Case 1: Eaton Centre, Week 1. The one that still bothers me.

The first week of the arc I was chasing a quota of 40 approaches, and one afternoon in Eaton Centre I saw a woman walking ahead of me and made the worst decision of the thirteen weeks. I sped up and chased her shoulder through a moving crowd. Think about what that looks like from her side. A stranger is suddenly walking faster behind her, cutting through people to catch up, and she has no idea who he is or what he wants. I scared her badly enough that I sat on a bench for twenty minutes afterward feeling like garbage, and I never approached in a mall again.

Looking back, the mall wasn’t the real problem. I was. I needed that approach because I was chasing a number, and she felt that before I even opened my mouth. She never heard a word I said. Every alarm went off, and I don’t blame her. Most bad approaches don’t fail because of the opener. They fail because the other person can feel you’re trying to take something from them. Once that happens, the conversation is over before it begins. That afternoon changed the way I approached for the rest of the arc.

Case 2: The nurse, Week 5. Certainty by accident.

You know this one from Thursday, so I’ll add the part I left out. That date happened on the most drained day of the entire arc. I had nothing left, no teasing, no clever lines, no reading her face for signals, and I was only there because I had already agreed to show up. Forty-five minutes into a walk she stopped and told me she usually feels like she has to “act” on first dates, but with me she felt like she could just breathe.

What I left out on Thursday is what happened next, which is nothing. The connection was mild and I let it fade, and that is exactly why this case matters. I wasn’t calm because I had figured something out. I was calm because I was exhausted. She couldn’t tell the difference, and neither could I at the time. All she felt was that there was no pressure coming from me. I would never tell you to get exhausted on purpose. The next case is the reason why, because the same state that made this date easy ruined a much better one three weeks later.

Case 3: Eira, Week 8. The fake version

This is the longest case because it is the one I have never fully written, and it is the most expensive lesson in the whole post.

Read more

My worst week of the whole experiment was the week I tried the hardest, and my best conversion rate, 38%, came in week 12 while I was packing boxes with a one-way ticket already booked and nothing riding on any single conversation.

That creates an obvious problem. Telling you to book a flight out of the country is useless advice. If certainty only shows up when you truly have nothing to lose, and Thursday’s whole point was that you can’t fake having nothing to lose, then it sounds like a door you can’t open.

The good news is that the plane ticket only did a few simple things to my head, and once I understood what those things were, I found that each one can be built on purpose. The back half of the arc was me figuring that out, mostly by accident and sometimes the hard way. This post is the full system. It has four parts plus a section on how to keep the whole thing running, and it’s going into the playbook as the chapter I would keep if I could only keep one.

Part 1: Know Your Real Numbers

Start here, because everything else in this post sits on top of it.

My final funnel across 13 weeks was 262 approaches, 58 numbers, and 31 dates. That works out to 22% of approaches becoming numbers, 53% of numbers becoming dates, and one date for every 8.5 approaches overall.

Now read that funnel from the other direction. Roughly seven and a half out of every 8.5 women I approached were never going to become a date, no matter what I said, no matter how well the conversation went, and no matter what kind of day I was having. That was already true before I walked up to any of them.

Before I started tracking, every no felt like information about me. I would walk away thinking it was the wrong opener, or the wrong energy, or the wrong something. After about five weeks of data, most of those nos stopped carrying any information at all. They were just the normal rate showing up on schedule. A woman says no thanks, and nothing has gone wrong, because the numbers already predicted her before I opened my mouth.

The same logic covers flakes. If 53% of my numbers became dates, then 47% of my numbers were always going to die in text, every single week, and no clever follow-up message was going to change that by much. Once I understood that, a flaked number stopped feeling like a small insult and started feeling like a coin landing on tails. Nobody gets angry at a coin.

Part 2: Volume Protects You, and Venue Decides What It Costs

Read more

Everyone says women want confidence.

My spreadsheet says they’re wrong.

I spent 13 weeks approaching women in Toronto. My highest conversion rate came the week I stopped caring whether any individual woman liked me.

My worst conversion rate of the entire arc came in week 1, when I was trying hardest. 41 approaches, fully switched on, running everything I knew. 14.6%, and most of those numbers died in the first few texts. My best rate came in week 12, when I was packing boxes to leave the country and barely paying attention. 13 approaches squeezed in between errands, 38%. Almost triple. The week I wanted it most produced the worst numbers of the arc. The week I could not have cared less produced the best.

You could say I just got better over 12 weeks. I did but skill doesn’t explain week 5. Same skill I had in week 4, and my conversion dropped from 21% to 16%, because I was exhausted and running on autopilot. The words were right and there was nothing underneath them, and women felt the difference even when they couldn’t name it. My Game didn’t go anywhere that week. The results still tanked so whatever women are responding to, it isn’t the skill and I can’t blame a confidence dip either.

On paper I was confident in week 1. Pumped, prepared, technically fine. I was confident in week 5 too, six weeks of daily reps behind me by then. Didn’t matter either time.

The clearest evidence came from a date in week 5, on the day I was most depleted of the whole arc. A nurse I had met at the grocery store. I was too tired to run any of my usual calibration. Too tired to be charming, too tired to manage the conversation, just there because I had said I would be. Forty-five minutes into a walk she stopped and said, “I usually feel like I have to pretend on first dates, but I feel like I can just breathe with you.”

What she read as calm was me having nothing left to add and she liked it more than anything I had ever added. I never took her on a second date (my call, and probably a wrong one) but that one sentence taught me more than half the arc did.

That’s the thing women are actually reading. It was never confidence. It’s what you need from the interaction. When you need it to go well, it leaks. Your voice tightens. You talk a little fast. You watch her face too closely and laugh too hard at her joke. She doesn’t clock any of it on purpose, she just feels pressure coming off you, and now she’s managing you instead of enjoying your presence. She’ll leave as fast as she can be polite about it. Week 1 me was leaking everywhere. Week 12 me had a plane ticket and nothing riding on any single conversation, and every woman I talked to could feel that too.

Call it certainty. It has nothing to do with believing she’ll say yes. It’s having nothing riding on her answer, for real, because this can’t be faked. “Just don’t be needy” is the most useless advice in the space. If you want the number, you want the number, and telling yourself you don’t is a lie stacked on a lie. She feels that too.

I got mine by accident. A one-way flight will do it for you but you can build it on purpose, and the back half of the arc was me figuring out how. The math that makes rejection stop being about you. The experiment where I took the number ask off the table completely and what it exposed. The walk-away rule that saved me more than once after week 3. That’s Saturday’s post, paid, and it’s going in the playbook.

See u Saturday,

• Man of Steel