Sarah Jones says that pick-up, one of the most widespread genres of men’s dating advice, is founded on three false premises, all of which set men up for failure from the beginning. There is a much better way.
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Not all dating advice is helpful, to say the least. This is particularly true when it comes to the most common advice for men, which lies in the realm of pick-up artistry, or PUA.
In some ways, general pick-up can be helpful because it can lead a man from the funk of inaction into tangible action, even if that action is somewhat misguided.
Even though moving from inaction to action can be positive, doing so through the teachings of traditional pick-up is definitely not ideal.
There are three fatal flaws of common pick-up: three ways in which the entire premise is based on faulty assumptions.
In this article, I’ll go through each of these flaws and then provide a helpful alternative.
Faulty Premise #1: Men can’t attract women naturally.
A major premise of most pick-up is that guys aren’t good enough or attractive enough in and of themselves.
That’s the only logical explanation for why they would ever need to use tricks; otherwise they’d be good to go.
Since one of the core benefits men look for from pick-up is confidence-building, this faulty premise stops them before they start.
Assuming, “I’m not good enough on my own, so I need tricks,” is counter-productive when it comes to building any kind of confidence or natural attractiveness.
While it does help guys graduate from feeling totally helpless and hopeless, it quickly backfires because the tricks are only a weak crutch for confidence (and they know it).
The men who use tricks only do so because they believe they are not attractive enough on their own.
If they did believe they could be genuinely attractive, they would just work on basic social skills, build light escalation skills, and be done with it.
Instead, they rely on tricks and vacant techniques because some seemingly alpha dude told them to.
Even if they go out and get laid, they know they’ve fail to attract anyone through their own merit, which can actually hurt their self-esteem.
They’ve only “attracted” women by leaning against the shaky brace of somebody else’s tricks.
If they already had fear of not being good enough before using common pick-up tricks, they’ll have that same fear during and after, along with the added guilt of using tricks on people.
They will certainly be no further along on understanding what makes them uniquely attractive.
In fact, they will likely even be further behind because they’re even more out of touch with themselves and what works for them, having blindly followed someone else’s instructions, even when those instructions felt “off.”
Faulty Premise #2: Women are ignorant machines.
Another faulty premise of most pick-up is that women are ignorant uncooperative “machines” that need to be tricked.
This is a recipe for disaster. It’s at the root of their resentment and disrespect towards women, and in turn cycling around to resentment from women towards men.
Imagine building a relationship on that foundation!
A man can never have a truly fulfilling relationship with a woman he sees as an unwilling and uncooperative machine he had to finagle into bed. Yuck.
Imagine from the woman’s point of view: why would a healthy, self-respecting woman choose a man who sees her as ignorant and difficult?
Not all men who practice pick-up want a relationship of course, and I understand that.
That said, through talking with hundreds of men one-on-one about their love lives, I have found that it is an extremely small minority of men who don’t want more than just physical intimacy with women.
In fact, as surprising as it was for me at first, I’ve never spoken to a man who doesn’t sooner or later want an intimate relationship.
Whether a man does or doesn’t is perfectly fine; it’s no matter.
The point is that when it comes to the vast majority of men who do want satisfying relationships (and at least the ability to attract healthy women in the first place), twisting their minds into seeing women’s brains as fully-programmable, pathetic machines is counterproductive to say the least.
Even for the men who do NOT want relationships, but who just want to date and play, seeing women in this demeaning way is rarely if ever personally fulfilling.
Faulty Premise #3: Fulfilling connection is not possible.
A third faulty premise of traditional pick-up is that men and women are unable to be genuinely attracted and connected to each other.
That’s the only plausible explanation for why women apparently need to be tricked, and why men apparently need to trick.
The problem with a framework that sees true connection as impossible is that, by design, its teachings can only produce pseudo-intimacy and pseudo-confidence.
An example of pseudo-intimacy is when a man sleeps with someone he doesn’t even like (and in fact resents because he had to work so hard using weird tactics in order to trick her into bed).
I don’t know how that sounds to you, but to me it doesn’t sound too fun.
From that experience, the most that can be gained is the pseudo-confidence of luring her into bed – through no genuine attractiveness of his own, mind you, but through by-the-book usage of somebody else’s empty tactics.
Not so hot.
The reason it’s not fulfilling is that it doesn’t feel real or genuine. Intrinsically, it cannot increase self-esteem or happiness.
It can never provide the real thing because as a framework, it doesn’t even think the real thing exists.
Traditional pick-up can be compared to a man who’s struggled his whole life to make ends meet. To him, true luxury and extravagance doesn’t exist. It’s not even real in his eyes, much less relevant.
In reality though, people are enjoying luxury upon luxury. Extravagance is not only real, but attainable with the proper mindset and strategic hard work.
It’s a luxury to have a super-hot, fulfilling sexual experience with a woman – whether it lasts for a night or a lifetime.
(Same thing goes both ways, of course. For women who love men, it’s a luxury to have an adventure, short- or long-term, with a strong, honest, sexy man.)
Those luxuries are available to be earned, and the earning process is fun!
Another simile is a seminar on coupon-tearing frugality compared to a course on making your own profitable, artisanal online business.
Two completely different conversations with polar-opposite foundational assumptions: one assumes scarcity, and the other assumes abundance.
The same is true when it comes to chemistry and attraction.
Anything based on less than integrity and respect is slumming it, just picking up the scraps: when a man tricks a woman into bed, that is a “scraps” experience for both of them.
However, when a man consensually and artfully seduces a woman into bed, that is an abundant adventure for both of them.
An Alternative:
An alternative to pick-up is building on your own abundant natural strengths as a man – what makes YOU genuinely attractive – so you can attract women genuinely, based on that.
What if you could use your own natural attractiveness, instead of somebody else’s tricks, to attract beautiful, kind, intelligent women?
Awesome, right? You can do that.
Once you finally understand what’s attractive about you, you can up-level your confidence in a genuine, sustainable, and sexy way.
When you use what you have already going for you, you’re instantly 1,000% more attractive, especially to the right women for you.
You can finally attract women who are kind to you, respect you, and are really into you – not because you used some douchey trick, but because you’re a badass, you know it, and you see yourself as equals with her – not above her or below her, but together in sexy camaraderie.
From there, you can connect with her and feel great about it.
One night stand? Awesome. That can be fun and hot for both of you.
Long-term partnership? Great! You connect with her deeply because you respect her and yourself.
A great way to get started with the first step of finding what’s uniquely attractive about you is listing out your deepest values and the compliments you get most often.
That’s your starting point for discovering your unique vibe. From there, you can ask yourself what your specific values mean to you personally, as well as where you can see those compliments evidenced in your life.
Once you have this basis to work from, the core of who you uniquely are as a man, you can start attracting women naturally.
When you know yourself, you can hone your attraction skills in a way that is right for you, using strategies that are founded in true respect for yourself and for women.
That is way more fun than blindly following someone else’s tricks.
Does it take creativity and courage to look at yourself like that? Yes, it does. Is it the difference between scraps and luxury? It certainly puts you on a promising path.
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For a fun and helpful exercise on finding what is uniquely attractive about you, go to page 17 of Sarah Jones’s 60-page ebook, “Why PUA Doesn’t Work For Introverts & What Works Instead.” Get your free copy at introvertedalpha.com/gmp.
Photo courtesy of DepositPhotos.com
“the compliments you get most often.” Men compliment my muscles, women say I look young. I think this might be common to a lot of men, but I don’t receive any compliments usually. It’s normal for me to go several months if not years without someone saying something complimentary. The only thing I ever get compliments on regularly are my car, which is just something I bought. It’s made me more aware of the reality that I don’t receive any compliments. I thought that was just the normal state of the world to keep your feelings to yourself, but now… Read more »
“What if you could use your own natural attractiveness, instead of somebody else’s tricks, to attract beautiful, kind, intelligent women?”
That’s… not an answer. Or an alternative. That’s just a result of what PUA and all that junk tries to promise. People (not me) turn to PUA because 1-3 become readily apparent for them in their personal lives
When it comes to sheer attraction, women are somewhat machinelike, unfortunately. Biceps, nice haircut, maybe some tattoos… okay, they’re attracted. Well that was difficult.
Pretty good post Sarah but I think your concept of the Pickup community and PUAs is limited to the stereotypical idea. The entire pickup ideal is not built around the ideas that you talk about in this post. There are definitely “groups” teaching naturalness, some teach being vulnerable and open and some even teach not focusing on women at all but simply focusing on your goal in life and letting women come as they may. So while I agree with some of the points made it pretty much describes a specific, more fundamental idea of pick up. Not that I’m… Read more »
Also, what’s often neglected is the fact that as men, the cultural “burden”/expectation of approaching and initiating falls heavily upon us. But there are rules set up for this, at least if you are a somewhat ordinary man. This means that A) You’re not supposed to just hit on any girl, that’s way too shallow and superficial. You’re supposed to get to know her first, get a feeling for her attractions and uniqueness. But then again B) You’re not supposed to put any value on the approach to an individual girl. As a rejection by her doesn’t reflect upon you… Read more »
Thank you, Thinking Thoughts, You appear to have been able to somehow lasso Sarah’s misguided concepts and given this a bit of a “grown up” polish based on real life. Sarah threw down a little crazy talk.
Before I start, I’d just like to clarify that I don’t agree with the PUA concept, and hate the emotional manipulation of women. This is not intended to be a defence of something hurtful only an empathetic view of the appeal for it. That being said… The attraction that I can see to the PUA concept is that it gives guys a set of clear instructions. A template if you will for not making a complete idiot of yourself and, most importantly, NOT GETTING HURT. This article provides yet another wishy washy “Just be yourself blah blah” answer that people… Read more »
Starting off simply asserting that pick-up is about “tricks” is misleading and undermines the author’s credibility as an honest broker without providing some argument or evidence as to why “tricks” is the appropriate term rather than education, awareness, skills, training, etc. Now, to be clear, I am not a PUA – I only have indirect and incomplete knowledge of pick-up world and its practices and I have no problem with people taking an honest and critical look at what is actually being taught and applied. However, my sense is that a major draw of pick-up is that one’s attractiveness and… Read more »
Hi Theorema and Erin, thanks for your comments! I think both of you make great points. Theorema: Certainly, if technique is like the baby and PUA is like the bathwater, we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater! Technique is great when it’s used underneath a sound strategic umbrella. And Erin: Agreed. I mean to imply beautiful *to him* etc, and many times I say that directly. At the same time, I agree with you that I could take even more care to be direct about it, as it’s important to acknowledge more widely that every man… Read more »
1) Being genuinely attractive is not something some men (or even all men) naturally have. It is a skill. It is a performance. So the distinction “attractive through their own merit” and “attractive through trickery” makes no sense. I reject PUA tricks because I feel they are not sustainable, and can only help you so far anyway – in short they are the wrong technique. But they are not wrong because they are a technique. Being charming, witty, charismatic, assertive and ripped is a technique as well. The (male) bird that does not sing will stay alone. 2) PUAs try… Read more »
I think there are important things to take away from Sarah’s piece as there are your comments Theorema. I liked what you both had to say alot. I might tweek one thing in Sarah’s piece. When she said, ” What if you could use your own natural attractiveness, instead of somebody else’s tricks, to attract beautiful, kind, intelligent women?” How about men use their own natural attractiveness to attract women who are beautiful *to him*, kind and intelligent *to him*. I realize that this a very small nuance but I think it’s an important one around how men assert their… Read more »
Thank you for your kind words. Let me tell you that with me you are preaching to the choir. For some reason or other my perception of beauty has always been different from that of the men (and women) around me. I remember clearly how when I was in school people gave me flak for finding the wrong assistant teacher attractive (i.e. not the one everybody else found attractive). On a Machiavellian level I’m kind of glad about that because it gives me less competition in dating. My ex-gf swore I had been the first man ever to take notice… Read more »