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Can You Relate?

Rob Says3 Comments

woman wearing white high top shoes

I went out with a friend of mine on Sunday and he introduced me to another guy who is approximately 18 years younger than me. This younger guy is a cool cat, he’s got his shit dialed in as far as I can tell. Let’s put it this way: I like him so far and he’s likeable.

The three of us went out and a some food and a drink at a microbrewery that I had never been to before and for the most part it was a really good time. The television was on in the background and thank god the volume was muted. The closed captioning however, was there in all of its glory.

The whole BLM and racism thing was going full force and the creators of the advertisements and the programs were going at it hard. It left a foul taste in my mouth. If people aren’t racist already, they will be when this whole thing is “over.” Instead of eradicating racism, it’s being created. I wonder if that is actually the goal.

While we were sitting there, commenting to one another about the ads and the programs that were going full force on the television, I felt uneasy. I felt watched. I felt like a target. I almost wanted to say to my friends, “Not so loud, you don’t want the other’s in here to hear you.” Not that they would have done anything necessarily, but it’s the idea that they could. As edgy and even as hostile as some people have become recently, who knows what could have happened?

I hate wearing masks. I hate that this virus has people running scared and hiding in their homes. I hate the riots. I hate all of it. I especially hate the fact that I don’t feel like I can relate to people as well as I did before the pandemic. Even “getting out there” isn’t the same as before, and I hate that the most.

My Father thinks that masks are going to be the norm from now on. Same with social distancing. I really hate thinking that he is probably right. What good is the world when you hate what it has become and the direction that it is going? All I can say is, I’m pretty sure that I’ll hate it even more than I already do.

I hate feeling paranoid and social media doesn’t help. Twitter is becoming a cancer to me. If I get off of it completely though I won’t have the interactions with my friends that I have there and I won’t sacrifice that. It’s too good to give that up.

Alcohol only goes so far in numbing some of the bullshit and after several beers the low is worse than what I felt before drinking, so boozing it up to complete excess and self medicating isn’t the answer. Maybe MDMA is. Hahahaha! I’ve never done that one, but I’ve heard great things about it. Problem is, I don’t know anybody who has some. That and I don’t trust strangers. I don’t want to get ripped off or get more than I bargained and paid for. So that’s pretty much out of the question.

Sex is a great placebo for a minute, but then it’s back to reality. I now understand the line from a Korn song where they say, “All I want to do is fuck it away.”

Writing about it all helps though, as weird as that may seem. Putting it “out there,” onscreen makes it seem more manageable and more petty that what is brewing in my head. The trivialities of an existential crisis. Life is absurd and since there’s no inherent meaning to life, you get to choose what life means to you. Except sometimes in the deep, dark, quiet of the night, life is just absurd with no meaning and pleasant sounding words and the click of the keys on a keyboard don’t kill the dread.

Can you relate? I started off with that title and when I typed those words, it had a different meaning than the one that is coming to me as I’m typing these words. How’s that for a swift kick in the ass?

I started off thinking, “I’m having a helluva time relating to people with everything that is going on, are you able to relate to the people around you? Can you relate to others?” and now I’m at, “Do you get me? Do you understand? Are you going through something similar?” Can you fucking relate?

This is almost stream of consciousness for you kiddies. Number of beers drank while writing this? Zero. Sobriety at one hundred percent. Jesus, what would it look like if I was drunk? I have no idea, but it would probably make more sense and it would be more entertaining. Maybe even relatable.

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It’s An Invitation.

Rob SaysLeave a comment

red envelope with fresh red flowers inside

A guy I follow on Twitter posed an interesting question:

A good-looking (7.5) extremely fit girl in the gym that I see often engage in some dribble of a conversation then tells me her boyfriend has been sent to overseas for an assignment. Is this an opening or a way to keep me away :-)?

I told him: It’s an invitation.

Whether he wants to do anything with that information is totally up to him. I don’t care either way.

Other people chimed in with their two cents, some saying yay, and some saying nay. I’m going to get into that in a minute as well. For right now, I just want to focus on the question or more precisely, the mindset to have in this situation, should it ever arise for you.

Always assume the sale.

If she’s talking to you, she may not want sex, at least at that moment, but she’s interested. If she does more than nod at you or talk to you in one word answers, she interested in you. Women are fantastic at not fucking guys they don’t want to fuck. Women are fantastic at letting you know when they are not interested in you, all you need to do is pay attention.

Most guys fuck this up though because they are stuck in their heads, too busy overanalyzing the situation. When you’re stuck in your head, you aren’t paying attention to what she is saying or how she is saying it. You’re too busy thinking what you’re going to say next. You’re not really listening, you’re just waiting your turn to talk. When you’re stuck in your head, you miss all the little cues and body language and whatnot that she is literally throwing at you. When you are stuck in your head overanalyzing things, odds are that you are overanalyzing the wrong things. You’re worried about if you are coming off as “cool,” or “witty,” or “funny,” or “smart,” or any number of things.

That shit doesn’t matter. You’re focusing on the wrong things. Ideally you should be focusing on her.

It’s always better to assume the sale than to not assume the sale.

I don’t know how many times I see guys fucking it up for themselves and either giving her a reason to not fuck him, or he talks himself out of a damn near sure thing. The 80/20 Rule is big on Twitter yet again, (what is old is new again) and I guess guys want to take it from a guideline to a Law.

Seduction and talking to women is an art, not a science. There are no hard “laws” when it comes to it. This isn’t chemistry or physics, this is talking to women. All the statistics, graphs, data, hypotheses, and logic don’t mean shit when it comes time to walk over and talk to her.

Sure the odds are against you. They are against all men, even “Chad.” Women are the selectors when it comes to sex. Even “Chad” has to work at it to get laid, he may not have to work at it as hard or as much as you or I do, but he still has to work at it.

It’s better to assume the sale and think that she’s interested in you than not. Thinking she’s not interested in you is just a form of defeat. You’ve already lost before you even showed up. Since we are creatures that have confirmation bias, if you think she’s not interested in you, then those are the signs and signals that you will look for. You literally won’t be able to see signs of interest from her. It’s better to assume the sale and see signs of interest, even if they aren’t actually there.

Since seduction isn’t a “hard science,” you can and do affect the outcome of any and every interaction that you have with women. If you assume she’s interested, she may very well be interested from the get-go, or she may become interested in a short period of time while you are conversing with her. But you’ll never know that if you assume she isn’t interested. Not to sound all new agey, but your thoughts and beliefs do affect your outcomes and results. I do think a lot of the “pick up” guys would agree with me on this one. Call it “vibe” or whatever you like.

Another thing I noticed in the interaction with the guy who asked the question I quoted was not only the yay’s and nay’s, but particularly the reasoning behind the nay’s, even though he didn’t ask for it.

The naysayers were mostly coming from a place of morality:

“If she has a bf she has a bf… that should be the end of it.”

“Stay clear either way… If she is signaling that her BF is away and she wants to play, then she has no morals avoid. If she is hedging you…avoid.”

“Who cares? She has a bf, find a single girl to pursue.”

Women who want to fuck will find a way and find someone to fuck. It might be you, it might be me, it may very well be somebody else, but she’ll do it. In my opinion, it might as well be me.

Guys that tend to use morality and shame men into not fucking women, whether those women are “taken” or not, tend to be “low value men” as far as I’m concerned. Why do any of these guys care what the questioner does or not? It’s not their girlfriend is it? So why care?

Scarcity mentality and the fact that the guy doing the shaming and projecting his morality onto others because he isn’t getting any sex or doesn’t have many options is why. I have a feeling that this type of guy would make a horrible wing man if you were to ever go out to meet women. I think he would be the type to either end up cockblocking you or he would throw you under the bus because he wants a stab at the girl that you are talking to in addition to the girl that he may or may not be talking to. He wants them all because there just aren’t “enough to go around.”

I believe it was Rollo who said something to the extent of, “Alpha’s don’t commit to just one woman because they have options. Beta’s commit and invest heavily into one woman because they don’t have options.” I’m paraphrasing heavily here, but you get the idea.

If women “break rules for Alpha’s and make rules for Beta’s,” it’s also Beta men who make “rules” for other men to follow. Especially when it comes to women.

Keep that in mind when you are dealing with another man, whether online or in real life.

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Overanalyzing and TL;DR

Rob Says3 Comments

chart close up data desk

One thing that I have encountered time and time again is guys overanalyzing things. I get it, hell I do it too. I used to be really bad at it in fact. I would go over things so many times and in all the painful detail that I possibly could, that it would end up paralyzing me into inaction. Hence the term, overanalysis leads to paralysis.

One of the things that I’ve learned watching and interacting with other men, is not only do they tend to overanalyze pretty much everything, they tend to put too much attention, meaning, and effort into things that don’t matter all that much. Basically they overanalyze the wrong things.

Instead of focusing on what you are going to say to someone, maybe focus on them and what they are saying?

Instead of noticing proximity, IOI’s, and little itty-bitty nuances in body language, how about you just approach instead?

How about instead of worrying about “leaning in,” you just put your arm around her and escalate?

Let me ask you guys this:

Are you genuinely interested in meeting people, women specifically, or are you just flexing for your buds on the internet? Are you doing any of what you are doing in order to facilitate a connection that hopefully leads to sex, or are you doing what you are doing to pad or inflate your ego?

There’s no wrong answer here, and I don’t care what your reasoning is, just that you have a reason. Just be honest with yourself. Is it validation you are seeking or a connection? Asking yourself that question and then being honest about the answer will get you further than anything else you have done so far.

During my time on Twitter specifically, and on the internet in general, I’ve encountered a couple of different groups of guys:

Group One is the group of guys who break everything down into the most granular level as possible. These are the guys who tend to overanalyze everything. They are also the biggest group when it comes to worrying about shit that doesn’t matter all that much. This is the “Don’t Lean In” crowd. This is the “You must be 6’4 to ride this ride” crowd. This is the “chiseled jawline” crowd. Guess what? If you lose weight, you too can have a chiseled jaw.

The point is, you can’t do jack shit about your height, so you might as well not worry about that. And the “don’t lean in” guys are missing the context which is far more important than the behavior of leaning in. They are overanalyzing and worrying about shit that doesn’t matter. Same goes for analyzing photos and drawing green lines on people in those photos. Talk about talking about shit that doesn’t matter. Same goes with the “that’s alpha, or that’s beta” crowd. You guys are missing the point entirely. Oh well, enjoy your jerkoff session because that’s all you are doing.

Guys, if you are going to overanalyze things, at least overanalyze the things that are useful.

Group Two is the Too Long Didn’t Read (TL;DR) crowd. I get this one too and I have been a part of it as well. These guys are interested in a topic, but not really. It’s a passing interest at best. Ask me how I know. I have realized that dealing with the guys who want the “Cliff’s Notes” version are a waste of time. Most of them can’t be bothered to do any of the work and want to be spoon-fed.

When I was younger, the internet either didn’t exist, or when it did, you needed to know where to look to find information on a subject. Now all you have to do is type something in your favorite search engine and the information is there for you. The problem today is an overload of information vs a scarcity of information and a lot of the information out there is worthless at best and detrimental at worst.

It’s on you to do the work and sift through the detritus to get to the nuggets of gold. There’s really no shortcut here, you have to do the work. Anything else is you telling me that either you want to be willfully ignorant or that you’re not really interested in a topic and just want to be spoon-fed. Either way you get to burn. I had to do the heavy lifting for myself, why should I deprive you of that experience? After all, first hand experience is the best teacher.

Besides, when you are really interested in a topic or subject, digging through the bullshit to get to the diamonds is part of the fun and the joy of the subject. Trust me, research isn’t one of my favorite things to do, but I’ll do it gladly when it comes to the things that I enjoy or things that I’m genuinely interested in learning about.

To wrap it up for today:

Get out of your head and get into your body.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, then you didn’t read anything that I said earlier.

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