Attract Women, Don’t Chase Women

A week ago, I found out I was being toyed with. She showed strong signs of interest. Yet, she never seemed too hot or too cold — a true pro. Saturday night, because she left my house drunk and couldn’t be reached, my friend drove me to her house to check in on her. Only to bump into her and the guy she brought over at 2 A.M.

I take some of the blame because I’ve been hesitant to make a move within the past 6 months of meeting her, from not picking up on her cues to acting a bit too aloof. As men, it feels like we’re obligated to figure out what a woman is thinking, what she wants, and how to navigate through her forever changing and confusing signals.

I should have been more attentive when she came over to my house. It was my job to initiate more conversations in messaging and in real life. Me, the guy, should have been actively trying to connect with her on a deeper level and even touch her in subtle ways. There’s a playbook on how to communicate with women, which I was oblivious to.

After hearing lectures from my mother and friends, I darted between blaming myself for missing the opportunity and feeling like I had actually done nothing wrong. Yes, that’s the conclusion I came out with — I was the authentic me, and that’s all I needed to do.

Dating advice lowers your value as a man

Through years of reading and watching pick-up/relationship advice, I found a glaring hole in these strategies that nobody ever mentions. Besides the obvious fact that every woman and man is different and a one-size-fits-all formula can prove to be more harmful than beneficial most times, I also felt skeptical about placing ourselves lower than women. It’s one thing to understand how females think and operate. However, most dating experts preach passing all of the women’s tests and meeting their qualifications. It seems as though men are always underneath, working their way up to deserve a quality woman.

For instance, as guys, we’re supposed to learn how to say the right things at the right time to a woman. Be cautious about stepping on any toes while displaying enough masculinity. Everything surrounds how to make “her” happy. But truly attractive men don’t need to do that. They’re not supposed to do that.

See, a man has just as much value as a woman. Even in a feminist society today where gentlemen are usually expected to court the ladies, we also need to maintain our own standards. What do I mean by that? The woman is often the chooser, the person in the authority position who gets to select whether she wants the relationship to continue. This puts men in a passive position. The only thing we can do is to play by women’s rules and differ to their needs.

But life experience has shown me that the men who are truly successful with women are always the ones in charge. It’s the women who do the chasing. It’s the women who try hard to impress. It’s the woman who wait in front of her phone while studying various dating advice to capture a man’s heart. That’s the problem with most dating advice for men out there. They teach you to talk and walk a certain way, shaping yourself into the perfect man that all women drool over.

But it’s counterintuitive. The more you modify yourself for the sake of impressing a woman, the less you’re respecting yourself. You’re telling the world that you aren’t worthy of them and that you need to change who you are to gain their attention. They won’t find your authentic self attractive. Ultimately, by trying to increase your value, you’re actually decreasing your value.

What you’re doing is chasing them, not attracting them. And that’s the reason most men struggle in dating. They think adapting an “alpha male” personality improves their appeal when in reality, it makes them feel inadequate deep down to the women they’re pursuing. It also reeks of flakiness. If your coolness is fake, it implies you’re trying too hard, which ironically is very uncool.

The best dating advice I’ve ever come across is very simple. Be you. No gimmicks. No mind games. No strategies. Just stay the way you’ve always been regardless of the result. A truly confident man is someone that doesn’t alter their personality for the sake of being liked. And that in itself is extremely alluring to both sexes.

Instead of learning more strategies on seducing women, work on yourself and live an interesting life. When your single life is abundant, you’ll become less needy and feel less of a need to chase women. They’ll wonder about you. When that happens, the dynamic completely shifts as you become the chooser as opposed to being chosen.

Don’t think about how to impress and please. Whoever puts in more effort has a lower value in a relationship.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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