Put Direct Effort Into Getting Better With Women
It sounds overly obvious, but some guys don't get girls because they don't really ever actually try to get them. Thinking back to my own inexperienced days, this was a missing fundamental for me. I desperately wanted to have more success with women, but I often didn't put much direct work into meeting my goals.
When I was more innocent and naive it honestly never dawned on me that if I wanted a girl I'd have to go out and make it happen for myself. I'd constantly dwell on how much I wanted a girlfriend or sex. I'd hope a girl would come into my life somehow. Maybe the girl I had a crush on would suddenly decide she liked me. Maybe I'd stumble into a one night stand if I went to a bar and stood around. I thought things like, "This semester of school was a dud. But maybe next semester I'll sit beside a cute girl in one of my classes and she'll be into me." Sometimes I'd get groundlessly hopeful and optimistic and spend a few days daydreaming about how things were going to turn around for me any second now, even though nothing had changed in my life to warrant me thinking that way. It truly never occurred to me that I'd have to, say, go talk to women or ask them out.
Be consistent about trying to get better
Eventually I realized I'd actually have to, you know, do something if I ever wanted a girlfriend or a sex life. I responded to this life changing insight by trying to actually get a girl for maybe a week. Then I went back to my regular routine of watching T.V., playing video games, and surfing the internet during all of my spare time. Every few months I'd get a little burst of either motivation and/or desperation and try to improve myself for another few days. Then back to the couch. Maybe during that time I thought about women, or read advice on how to get girls, but I wouldn't apply it in real life.
Don't make the mistake I did that set my progress back a few years. If you're going to put effort into getting girls, be consistent about it. Don't get into it for a few days then lose interest for half a year.
When you try to get better, put a decent amount of work into it
So back to my story. When I said every so often I actively tried to get girls, in practice I was really, really half-assed about it. I'd go to a bar telling myself I was going to try and pick someone up and stand against the wall for an hour, then go home early. I'd be walking around with the constant attitude of, "I'm going to meet some girls. I'm going to get some women", but I never acted on those thoughts. I'd do things like join online dating sites but then barely put any effort into creating a good profile, or trying to contact any girls to arrange a get together.
That's mistake number two I made. Plain not putting in enough effort. If you're going to try to get girls you shouldn't kinda, sorta do it.
However you decide to try and get women, be persistent with it
This ties into the mistakes above. I took several approaches to doing better with girls, but I never stuck with them. I was too quick to give up and not give ideas a fair chance. Like with online dating I threw in the towel within weeks, if that. Not only that, I went, "Online dating doesn't work anyways. I don't need it." And I just wrote a few lines earlier that I wasn't even really trying to get the most out of it. If I went to bars, actually talked to some girls, but didn't get any sex during a total of three visits, I'd conclude bars sucked.
Of course nothing is going to work if you only give it two weeks to bare fruit. I had no persistence. I flitted from one strategy to get girls to another, never practicing anything long enough to build up some skill in it. Basically, if something didn't work easily and instantly I discarded it and moved on to the next possibility. Unfortunately, there are lots of things to try out there, so I was never at a loss for the next flavor of the week.
After many wasted years I started getting more serious, and I finally got better. If I could do it all over again and cut out all the wasted time and sub-par effort, I'd have gotten over my issues in a fraction of the time.
I think there are some very understandable reasons guys are inconsistent, half assed, or not persistent when they try to get better though:
Trying is nerve racking
Trying to get better with women usually involves interacting with them in some way. You may have to ask someone out, call someone on the phone, or summon the courage to talk to that cute girl at your job or approach a stranger at a club. Many guys get nervous doing these things. If we lived in a world where guys weren't afraid of women then I'm sure we could all get out there every day and just keeping talking to girls until we got the hang of it. That's not so easy when every single practice situation makes you feel shaky and nauseous. Even though it's not in your longterm best interests, at the moment you're feeling jittery it's often easier to avoid the discomfort. I did that for years basically.
Trying can be difficult and discouraging
Even if you can handle the nerves, being a bumbling beginner with women can be frustrating. It's hardly always a horrendous time, but there are down moments. You'll screw up and feel bad about yourself. You'll get rejected. You'll think you've met a girl you can succeed with, only to have it fizzle out. You'll know what to do on paper but struggle to make it work in real life. You'll work so hard to overcome one barrier, only to fall on your face at the one that appears right afterward. If they're putting a lot of work into something and not getting any rewards out of it, any normal human is going to want to scale back his efforts. Going back to his regular habits will feel warm and comforting.
The rewards of dating are fun, but getting them isn't always a blast
I think a lot of guys like it when they end up with a cool girl, but they feel the process of actually trying to meet one is a bit of a chore. It's great when you hit it off with a woman at a bar and get her number. It's not as fun when you try initiating conversations and get shut down all night. It's cool when you meet someone interesting online. It can feel like a job to send out lots of messages and comb through profiles. Sometimes we'd rather skip that stuff, even if we really should be putting up with the tedious moments to get to the good stuff. Of course ideally, trying to meet women should be fun, and it can be, but I'm just saying some guys don't feel that way, and that prevents them from putting more effort into it.
Not trying can protect your ego
If you do something and give it your all and still fail, that's a blow to your self-esteem. When I made partial efforts in the past, I think some of my motivation was in wanting to shield my ego from harm. If I did something in a half-hearted way then if I failed I could tell myself I wasn't really trying anyways. I could hold onto the belief that I was a cool, attractive guy that could get women if he actually applied himself. By putting in minimal efforts I avoided putting that self-perception to any kind of real test. I'd unconsciously sabotage myself from potentially succeeding because I couldn't face the possibility of being revealed as less worthy than I wanted to think I was.
You don't have a plan of action
You need to start somewhere, to have some rough idea of how to interact with women, or a plan to improve your skills with them. In my earlier days of involuntary celibacy I didn't have any kind of road map. I wasn't really sure how guys got women. I just hoped it would happen to me somehow. Later on I discovered lots of dating advice, and while other factors such as nervousness and laziness held me back, in theory I at least knew what I had to do.
Your fundamentals are so weak all around that it's hard to start
This affected me too. I was so awkward, in so many ways, that it was really hard for me to get off the ground at first. I was like a guy trying to learn a new sport while having asthma, a broken leg, poor vision, and weighing 300 pounds. There were so many areas I needed to improve upon to even get to a more normal person's starting point that it was hard to get out there. Over time I chipped away at enough of my problems that I could finally get myself in the position of saying, "Okay, I'm halfway normal after all this time. Now what do I need to do to start getting girls?"
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