Dispelling male myths about dating – part 2
This is the second part in the series ‘Dispelling male myths about dating’. The first part can be found HERE.
“Just be yourself”:
This is the killer, usually said by women who have got to know you, bypassed all your crummy social conditioning and realised that you are a nice guy underneath… just not one they want to sleep with! Else it is said by men who are already confident and experienced with women, but haven’t actually analysed the behaviour and skills that got them to that point during childhood.
If “being yourself” has not worked in the past, what makes you think that it would work now? My advice to this is not to try and fake being someone you are not – although modelling people you admire works wonders in the short term – but to practice becoming the person you actually WANT to be, with your core values and true personality on display for all to see. Be that new self, your BEST self, one that has all the limiting beliefs and negative thoughts stripped away.
“I tried to chat her up at a club but she was a bitch”:
No she wasn’t, you just interacted with her badly! She’s most likely a nice, normal girl who likes all the things other women like. Had you met her at work, she might even be your best friend by now. Tonight though, like most nights out, she has had guys coming up to her constantly, drunk, asking her the same boring questions and throwing out clichéd lines. She made a quick judgement and assumed you were the same.
I remember asking a good female friend of mine how many times she gets approached in any given night (she is a model so the numbers are probably on the high end) and she said upwards of twenty times. She’s 25 years old and goes out several times a week. You don’t have to be a genius at maths to know that she has had to be “a bitch” to a lot of guys during her adult life to ever get a minute to herself.
Had you approached her with something unique, funny and interesting, in a confident manner, she would be far kinder to you. In the club environment, women have to create shields against the undesirable men, so they actually get time to meet the desirable ones!
“Men have to make all the moves”:
Sadly, this one has some truth as it is something that has been imbedded in to social psychology since the dawn of time, when men hunted for food and women stayed at home and looked after the family and dwelling. Women rarely approach men because they don’t need to!
If you are a man who wants to get better at dating, you must accept that you will have to more often than not have to lead at first. With that said, there are several ways in which you can flip the script slightly. What I like to do at every opportunity is give women a reason to chase me, vie for my attention and prove they are up to my standards… All done in a benevolent and respectful manner of course.
“Rejection is too much to handle”:
This is a common one I get from my students, which is usually used as an excuse not to take any action towards a better dating life.
It’s a lot “safer” and more comfortable to change nothing and continue living with no risk of female rejection. The irony is that by not doing anything, or not approaching people you’re attracted to, you are actually being rejected by everyone! What you must also realise is that although humans judge others very quickly on first impressions, it’s rarely founded on factors that represent YOU as a person. It takes a substantial amount of time for someone to really get to know you, so anytime you get rejected prior to this, it’s nothing to do with your core personality but more to do with some of your actions. Fortunately these external actions can be learned, changed and improved very easily.
Successful people see minor mistakes and failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Rejection can be seen as a failure, hence you can use this same concept to learn something from each rejection. I used to do this all the time as I realised that if I was shunned by a woman, it was because of something, however minor, that I had done wrong… NOT that anything about me was inherently wrong. 🙂
Much love,
Samuel