The Importance Of Basic Social Skills In Doing Well With Women

When you're interacting with a girl you're using two overall varieties of social skills. The first are what you could call dating skills. These are things like flirting, presenting yourself as an attractive potential partner, talking about the right things, being confident in yourself sexually, having good game, etc. Their purpose is geared towards getting a girl interested in you. A lot of dating advice focuses on these skills, and a lot of guys who have trouble with women work on them. And they're important so that's only a logical thing to do.

Secondly, you also draw on your overall social skills. These are more broad and basic and determine how well you do with all kinds of people, not just women you're attracted to. Dating skills are more specialized and are built on top of your more general aptitude with people. If your basic social skills are weak, your dating skills will be sabotaged. You'll do things like say something witty, but with such awkward delivery that it comes off badly. Or you'll pull off the witty line and then shoot yourself in the foot a moment later by getting into a dorky argument with the girl.

I think social skills are more detailed and complex than people sometimes portray them as, and that you can't neatly list the 'Six Key Social Skills' in 200 words and be done with it. Still, for the purposes of this article here are some things I think general social skills cover:

I think you get the idea. More importantly, we're all pretty good instinctive judges of whether someone is socially capable or not. If someone is savvy and charismatic you just like them. If someone is socially inappropriate you just feel put off. We're not as good at evaluating ourselves though...

One common mistake guys make is focusing on their dating skills when their basic social skills are weak

Some guys who need help with women are pretty cool and normal. You look at them and your first thought is, "You can't get girls?...Naaaaaaah. Sure you can man. What's stopping you?" These guys may be a little rough around the edges, but their social skills are okay overall. They need help, but in other areas such as managing their anxiety.

As you know I'm going to say, there's a second type of guy who have problems with their deeper social skills. It's not that they don't know how to talk to girls, though they may have issues with that too, they just come across as dorky, awkward people. They don't get women partially because they aren't good at relating to people in general.

Often these guys don't realize that's their fundamental problem. They seem to have a blind spot towards their own lack of social abilities. I was one of these guys. Assuming they're actively trying to get better with girls, you'll see them trying all sorts of things to improve their situation. They'll read websites on how to pick up girls. They'll try to get over their nervousness. They'll set up a profile on an online dating site. But for some reason that escapes them, they don't seem to be making progress as fast as they should be.

Women are people too

When you read a lot of advice on dating and having good game you can almost forget that women are regular people too, not these mysterious creatures that only respond to esoteric conversational techniques that are custom formulated to work on them. Hitting it off with a cute girl at a party draws on a lot of the same traits and skills that would allow you get along well with a guy you'd just met. It's as much about being able to approach someone you don't know, hold a conversation, and present yourself well as it is about knowing a bunch of flirting techniques. Many of the things that allow you do well with people in general will allow you to do well with women:

Women judge you on how attractive you actually seem to be, not just on your game

Another thing about focusing too much on dating skills is you can think that's the only thing that determines how well you'll do with girls. And it is part of the equation. But when you chat up a girl she can't help but size you up. It's something everyone does. She's going to partially be influenced by what you're saying and how you're acting in the moment. But she's also going to form an impression of what you're like overall: Do you seem normal or awkward? What type of person are you? What categories do you fall into? Do the words coming out of your mouth seem to match up with this more global picture she has of you?

If you're socially weak and of so-so attractiveness she's going to notice, even if your words are supposedly smooth or you understand female psychology. And if you're a genuinely cool, attractive guy she'll pick up on that as well. The truly cool guy is in a much better position. He just has to be himself and his attractiveness will show through without him even trying. If he has decent game on top of that he's in a really good position. Someone with good game, but who's awkward at his core may have some success here or there, but it's probably in spite of his social issues.

Working on your basic social skills is an easy, effective way to become better with women

I've being going on about how social skills are important, so of course you should try to improve them if you're lacking in that area. What you'll find is that as you get better with people overall, your interactions with women will similarly improve. And while directly working on your skills with women can be nerve racking and discouraging, developing your social skills is much more painless. You can just spend more time with your friends, learning to be a fun, easygoing guy, or get rid of your bad habit of interrupting people or making corny jokes, or a million other things. Then when you talk to women again it will all seem strangely easy and effortless compared to before. It's a very "Wax on, wax off" kind of way to improve.

Working on my own social skills was the turning point for me. For a long time I was one of those dorky guys who wasn't quite in touch with what a dweeb he was. I had other problems with women too, don't get me wrong, but I remember that as soon as started tackling my awkwardness directly, things started to fall into place. I actually took some time off from trying to get girls and committed myself to becoming a more normal, adjusted guy. After a month or two of that I went out to a bar with my friends and tried chatting to some girls. I was shocked with how much more smoothly things went. From then on out I devoted a good chunk of my 'getting better with women' time towards becoming more cool in general.

My other site

Other people give 'be cooler' or 'have better social skills' type of advice as well. I hardly invented the concept. However I always just saw that kind of advice being given with little explanation of exactly what it meant to 'be cooler' or 'have better social skills'. That's one reason I started writing my other site, www.succeedsocially.com. It has dozens of free articles on it devoted to the topic of, "Basic social skills, getting along with people, and getting your act together - all written by a former shy, awkward guy". They're long, dense articles as well. If you're already fairly competent in that area, a lot of it will seem basic and too obvious, but if you're a dork of the variety I used to be, then you may find a lot of the advice really useful. Also, a lot of what it has to say could be applied to doing better with women, you just have to mentally replace 'make friends' with 'get girls'. Check it out, here are a few of the articles:

How to Make Friends And Get a Social Life
Some "Bigger Picture" Thoughts on Making Conversation
Traits That Help You Hang Out With Other People
How to be More Fun
Getting Along With New Groups
Thoughts On Seeming Less Weird
How to Dance - For Average Guys


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