Incels. Sex robots. #MeToo. Red pills. MRAs. Rape culture. “Redistribution of Sex.”
The lengths to which straight men — yes, like me! — will go to assert their entitlement to sex with women are astonishing, abhorrent and asinine.
We have been poisoned: Poisoned by patriarchy. Poisoned by pick-up artists. Poisoned by culture. Poisoned by ego.
Poisoned by our own insecurity and fragility. But this poisoning is nothing new — we’re just now finally willing to accept that the feminist, progressive and LGBTQ movements are shining a light from which the cockroaches can no longer run. Time’s up. Time to collect our belongings, take our boots off the throats of the people we’re oppressing and have a seat with everybody else at the table. Now that we’re here, it’s time to talk about how attraction actually works.
Why am I the one telling you this? Because we’re not doing a great job of listening to women, so hopefully you’ll listen to someone like me — someone who is very much like you. But before all that, it’s time to cleanse your mind: You need to stop trying to get laid.
Tracy Moore dropped some fire bars in “Lifehack: Let Women Make The First Move.” It’s expertly written, deeply felt and backed by science. In it, she posits that if we flipped the tables and let women do the initiation at every point in the process leading up to sex, that the world would be a kinder, more equitable place.
She’s right, of course. We can trace a great deal of violence, societal ill and inequality to men’s role as sexual aggressors, and their frustration that results when their efforts “fail.” You’ll read the piece in its entirety; and I’ll call out a couple key thoughts here.
Getting men to walk away from gamifying sexual encounters by getting the most they can is important. If we can direct women to seek out the encounters they want, and men to also look for encounters where it’s mutually felt, it’s win-win for everyone.
Could not agree more. Men too often (meaning, more than never) validate themselves by trying to run up high scores in a “game” (fuck off, Neil Strauss) that’s stacked against women and shouldn’t even exist in the goddamned first place. So, if male sexual aggression isn’t acceptable or ethical or moral — and let me state, again, that it definitively, unequivocally isn’t — then just how will straight men ever get laid or find everlasting love? Again, from Tracy Moore:
If men have to wait to be asked out, they’ll have to do what women have forever so people will ask them out: cultivate an approachable, fun, attractive, sexy, welcoming vibe that makes people want to take a chance on sauntering over.
Exactly.
And, as she immediately qualifies: “Do that for more than a few hours, even once, and you will feel immediately sorry for women, because that shit is exhausting.”
It can be. It often is. Some men already know this, because the way in which men have been conditioned to go about cultivating this “approachable, fun, attractive, sexy, welcoming vibe” is mind-blowing in its idiocy, counter-intuition, complexity and — most paramount — in its lack of respect for women’s sexual agency.
Problematic, over-complicated advice is dished out in guides the length of textbooks, or in exhaustive listicles, always in pathologically misogynistic terms and methods, with dog-whistle words like “seduction” standing in for what they’re really trying to teach you, which is, flatly: “How to trick women into wanting to fuck you.” Stop tricking women. It’s, you know … inauthentic, ineffective and irrefutably immoral. Women are not trophies or puzzles to solve. Attraction is not calculus. If you really, truly, want to get laid more often, I’ll tell you how, but you need to first promise me that you’re going to stop trying to fuck everything.
Now … two heartfelt confessions.
Confession #1: I love, love, love, love sex. It’s fantastic. It’s fun. It’s transcendent. It’s magical. It’s romantic. It’s beautiful. I almost never say no to it … which leads me to
Confession #2: I’ve had more than my fair share of sex with more than enough partners. I still regularly talk to nearly half of them, and in some cases, we’ve even become good friends.
That shouldn’t be possible. I mean, look at me. I’m kinda short. Kinda pudgy. My arms look like T-Rex twigs stuck to the side of a snowman. My speaking voice sounds like a cockatoo with a tracheotomy.
I’ve only recently become anything other than buried under a crippling amount of debt. I’m not even especially charming. I’m not famous. I‘m most notorious for penning a blog where I talk about (my own) hypochondria, substance abuse, anxiety and depression. I generally go to bars alone and stare into my phone until someone talks to me, and when they do, I tell them dad-jokes.
I wouldn’t fuck me, but here we are. Must be something, right? Cool. Enough about me, then. Here’s what I think are the elements of how attraction happens.
1. Be Visible
The first element of attraction is “Visibility.” It’s hard to be attracted to someone, or something, you don’t notice. You can be more visible by doing many things: You could start by leaving the house to go to more places, surround yourself with more people, sing a song in public, keep an active Instagram, or write a marginally mediocre Medium blog that somehow has 16,000 followers. By putting yourself in the public eye, it’s easier to be seen.
Now, if you’re choosing to venture out into the physical world, it also helps to, as Ms. Moore suggested, “Start Thinking a Fuck Ton More About How You Look.” Workout. Try to find matching clothes that fit your body type. Iron them. Brush your teeth. Groom your beard. Basic little things that make a world of fucking difference. You don’t have to be the brightest star in the sky to be seen, you just need to be brighter than the night is dark.
Anyway, Element #1: Be Visible. But what do you do when people start to notice you?
2. Be Excellent
The second element of attraction is “excellence.” People — no matter their gender, race, orientation, culture — love to surround themselves with excellence. Remember how I told you to work on little things in the previous section? Excellence, and the pursuit thereof, is where you work on the big things: yourself and your contributions to the world around you. Fellas, you have been lulled and poisoned into mediocrity by your straight male entitlement. You have lost the drive to pursue excellence for its own sake. It’s time we fix that.
You need to become a better, more complete person. Take care of yourself. Eat healthier. Stop smoking. Maybe don’t drown yourself in whiskey four nights a week. Give a shit about your job. Perform it better. Pursue your passions. Develop diverse skill sets. Discover your hidden talents and cultivate them. Tidy up around the house. Travel. Backpack through South America. Volunteer in your community. Lead people. Live by a moral code.
Work on improving yourself. Be grateful for the world around you, and work on improving that, too. You need to be seen, but more importantly, you need to be seen being your most awesome, brilliant self. If you put half the effort into being your best you as you do into trying to swindle women into sex with your painfully average ass, you’ll find life to be far more fulfilling, rewarding and enjoyable than you ever dreamed it could be. (I think the kids call this “living my best life” or something.)
Element #2: Be excellent. Just by being visibly excellent, you’ll start to turn more heads without trying than you ever thought you could. But there’s more to attraction than just being immersed in attention and adoration when you’re out in public. You need to be able to master yourself (not a euphemism) in private, too.
3. Be Consistent
The third element of attraction is “consistency.” People don’t like surprises. I mean, sometimes they do — I’m here for a surprise party, or a gift I wasn’t expecting, or an unexpected break my way — but when it comes to matters of the heart, by and large, people mostly just want their expectations met. From Kris Gage’s seminal “The Sexiest Thing You Can Do As A Dude:”
Demonstrate stability. Do things that suggest that you are stable and you offer stability. Be gritty. Because stability is “safe.” And safe is sexy. Maybe it’s such a fucking turn-on because sex is a different act for straight women that it is for men — our end of the act renders us more vulnerable, so enjoying it requires feeling safe and thinking you’re a safe person.”
At every point during the course of attraction, sex and a romantic relationship, it’s monumental to be stable. How do you become that? By mastering your emotions. By putting in the work to understand yourself, understand what triggers your mood swings, changes in mindset and behavioral glitches. Study yourself. Go to therapy if you need to. Being in control of your mind, your heart and your soul, and being consistent in the way you treat yourself and others will drastically improve your chances of finding someone willing to take a risk on you.
Because it’s all a risk. Sex is an investment someone else is making on you. You need to demonstrate a track record of providing quality ROI. Cultivate healthy habits, go easy on the vices, meditate, learn, maintain a calm demeanor, stop playing mind-games, and get into a routine of demonstrating integrity, security and transparency.
(Author’s note: This is admittedly the area in which I struggle the most, so I’m just as much talking to myself on this one as I am talking to you.)
Element #3: Be consistent. In being routinely, visibly excellent, people will be magnetized to you. You’re going to receive a lot more unexpected admiration from unexpected places than you’re used to. Now let’s talk about how you handle it.
4. Be respectful.
The fourth element of attraction is “respect.” So now you’re getting attention, adoration and admiration from people. Some of whom you might be sexually attracted to, some of whom you might not be sexually attracted to. Show everyone, regardless of who’s choosing to take time out of their day and yours to interact with you, the same high level of respect you’d want shown to you. Be kind. Be gentle. Behave appropriately.
This is also the part where I talk to you about not violating women’s boundaries, and not persisting when they say no, and not getting defensive when women attack you or men in general for being trash. The data is out. They have the receipts.
Looking for a man is like blindly reaching into a jar of cookies that’s also filled with razor-blades. They’re on guard for you to be a razor-blade. The onus is on you to prove you’re a cookie — even, and especially, after they’ve taken their first bite.
Element #4: Be respectful. Value other people’s time and attention. Better still, value them for their whole being and innermost essence. And, of course, respect yourself, too.
Alright, let’s say you just skimmed through all that and you were like, “this is too fucking long, and probably poorly written, and I don’t have time to get into it.” Okay, fine.
Let’s put a bow on this by introducing you to the one quote I keep coming back to when it comes to how I see, approach and execute cultivating a more attractive self. If you take nothing else away from this piece, take away the following snippet.
Highlight it. Screencap it. Print it. Write it on a post-it note.
Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
Anne Lamott
Where did I first read this?
In an Instagram bio of a woman I find extraordinarily attractive. Makes sense — she embodies exactly that. She doesn’t date much. She’s not an over-sharer. She’s not a superfluous flirt. She doesn’t draw attention to herself that she doesn’t merit. She’s just consistently, visibly excellent, and respectful to the world around her. And it works.
Fellas, stop taking swings at everything. That’s how you strikeout. Wait for your pitch. Stop lashing out at women because you’re angry and frustrated. Start questioning what you’ve been taught. Stop drinking the poisoned kool-aid of patriarchy and pick-up culture. Stop making “first moves.” In fact, stop giving a shit about sex altogether. Just work on being more visible, more excellent, more consistent and more respectful.
Instead of indulging in your darkest impulses, be a light. The boats will come find you. I promise.
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Previously Published on P.S. I Love You
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