The Core Fundamentals Required To Do Well With Women
This article is a general overview of the site's philosophy and the topics it will discuss. It's not anything particularly profound, but the way it's organized helps me at least.
There are several general areas a guy has to have a handle on in order to do okay with women. Each has several sub-categories as well. They're all equally important in their own way. I think they are:
Basic dating skills
- Being able to meet women
- Being able to talk to women you like and present yourself well
- Being able to arrange dates with women you're interested in
- Being able to initiate physical/sexual contact
- Having attitudes about yourself, dating, and women in place that allow you to succeed
This fundamental is about knowing what to do. It's about all the factors that go into how to best interact with women. No matter what angle to take towards getting girls, you have to be able to perform these tasks. There's a lot to these seemingly simple skills though, and you could potentially spend a lot of time trying to hone your abilities in this area.
For the most part this site won't talk about this area. There's more than enough information on this topic available through other sources, often written by people more qualified to talk about it than me. I'll focus on the stuff below:
Handling nervousness
- Having the guts to talk to girls you're interested in
- Being able to interact with girls without getting too nervous
- Having the guts to ask things of girls (e.g., to hang out, for their number, etc)
- Having the guts to try and kiss a girl
- Being comfortable around people in general
This fundamental is about being able to do it. You can know everything in the world about dating, but if you don't have the confidence to carry it out, then you won't get anywhere.
Real world application
- Putting effort into getting women in real life (i.e., not doing nothing and waiting for someone to drop into your life)
- Applying any dating advice you've read in real life and practicing it (i.e., not just reading advice endlessly and never using it)
This fundamental is about actually doing it. You can know everything, and have the guts to do it, but if you don't get out there and actually go after what you want, you still won't have any results.
Basic social skills and personality
- Having basic social skills
- Being able to get along with all kinds of other people, not just women, without coming across as awkward or annoying
- Having basic conversation skills
- Having a fairly together and appealing personality
- Having good mental health
This fundamental is about being attractive, effective, and healthy with people overall, not just with the women you're interested in. Dating skills are a sub-type of this deeper foundation.
Sexual and relationship experience
- Being experienced and comfortable with kissing, foreplay, sex, etc.
- Having experience with dating and relationships
This fundamental is about having the basic underlying comfort and ease with women that experience brings. Obviously you can't have this one if you're physically inexperienced or never dated, but in terms of having consistent and continuing success, it's important.
To just get some simple sexual experience or a girlfriend, you need to have a groundwork level of skill in all of these fundamentals. Aside from some drastic measures, there's no way that I know of to get girls when you fall below that minimum threshold. Once you've got the foundations laid down, increasing in the fundamentals improves your overall success with women further.
Guys who are lady's men are just pretty well developed in all the areas above. They've honed their dating skills. They have the guts to approach women other guys would be too scared to. They're usually pretty cool people on the whole. Their experience with women shows and makes them more attractive. But that's an advanced level, we're not talking about that. First things first.
The other articles in this site will go into each of these in more detail. For now I'll talk about the importance of these fundamentals.
Guys sometimes focus on the wrong fundamental for their personal situation
This is the overall point I want to make with this article. I've seen plenty of guys think they need to work on X to improve, but really their main issue is a weakness in Y. They'd do a lot better for themselves if they realized Y was their real handicap and started working on that. Some quick examples:
- Guys who think they need to learn more about dating and women to get better, when they really need to address their nerves.
- Guys who think they need better dating skills when they just need to get out there more.
- Guys who think they need to try harder when they really could use a better attitude towards the opposite sex.
- Guys who think they need better dating skills when they actually need better overall social skills.
Guys may not be aware certain fundamentals are holding them back
I think most guys recognize when their dating skills could use some brushing up and when their nerves are getting in the way. Some of the other fundamentals fly under the radar at bit more. Personally, it took me a while to realize part of my own problems with women could be traced back to my overall social awkwardness and dorky personality. Because it's a deeper set of skills, I'd say the Basic Social Skills And Personality 'pillar' is the one that most often gets overlooked. I also wasn't clued into the fact that I never really tried to go after girls, and instead passively waited for them to come into my life.
If you're not aware of some of your weaknesses you may have a hard time improving but not be able to pinpoint why. For example, a relatively common scenario is for a socially stunted guy to learn a bunch of good dating advice, try to put it into use, but not get many results. They don't realize how much their larger lack of interpersonal skills interferes with their ability to make the dating advice work. Another example is how some guys aren't totally in touch with how much their anxiety around women interferes with their success, and instead keep looking towards advice on dating for a solution.
If your fundamentals aren't solid, it may seem like nothing works for you
Something I've heard a few times from hard-up guys is that they've tried everything and nothing has worked. I can't speak to anyone's individual situation, but overall I think if your foundation is weak all around, then no matter what you try, you're not going to do well. Like how an out of shape, obese guy with a bad knee isn't going to succeed in any sports.
If you took my anxious, weird, dorky younger self and had him try to get a girl through friends, at a bar, through work, dinner dates, speed dating, blind dates, the online personals, applying secret seduction techniques, whatever, he'd screw up in all of them. Lots of people do just fine romantically through these avenues so there's nothing inherently wrong with them, but my poor groundwork would have sabotaged me in whatever I tried.
Conversely, if you took a guy who was naturally interesting, socially savvy, and confident, and gave him some basic knowledge to work with, he could probably do okay for himself using all of these paths to getting women.
You can still get by neglecting some fundamentals, but your improvement will be more slow and frustrating
Men have gotten women in the past without being solid in all the fundamental areas I've laid out. Awkward guys still get girlfriends. Guys who don't try to meet anyone still stumble into relationships. Men who are unaware of various dating tips find girls who like them. I'd say though that if you're bad with women and setting out to improve, ignoring some of the fundamentals will make the process more drawn-out and discouraging than it has to be. Like the guy with poor social skills I mentioned earlier, if he tries to apply his dating advice for long enough eventually he'll probably get the hang out it. But if he put some effort into correcting his social faults as well, he'd have a much easier time of things.
Be aware of the fundamentals and work on all of them
That's the message of this article, as you probably already know. What foundations are you weak in? Where are you currently putting your focus? Is there anything I mentioned that is a problem for you that you hadn't considered before?
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