I'm not talking about learning relationships through, I'm talking about dating. And through pasting over the insecurities, and let's face it we all have them, these otherwise social rejects will gain the confidence that they are artificially exuding and then naturally exude it.

Edit: Didn't mean to imply that Bratty etc. are social rejects. Just mean those that usually go in for the books.

They may even work on some girls, but if you're looking for a steady relationship you have to be yourself. Otherwise you're just going to be exposed for the fraud you are sooner or later. You can't hide your personality, so really that has to be what you lead with.

And anyway, quite a few relationships happen when both parties are under the influence, as such, your true personality is a little harder to hide, there really is no point in reading from a book on this subject.

As for the 'social rejects' as you like to put, they not be so rejected, okay they may not be out every Saturday night getting so trashed they can't feel feelings any more, but that doesn't mean they're completely remote from people, they have their own social circles as well.

I think you should leave those books on the shelf and start to listen to what people are saying here. Books do not hold the answer.

It's just something that is supposed to be a part of the skill set of interaction with women, if you want to learn it.

Developing comfort is a major factor in developing something into a relationship. No comfort leads to no seeing each other any more. If you naturally get on well then the comfortable in each other's presence stage is already done for you. But what about going on a first date to a restaurant? Very uncomfortable situations to start with. But if you can develop comfort, such as through natural conversation then things can go well. I've been on a bad date before in such a situation where comfort never developed and all there was was stilted conversation.

Not for me, I'm afraid. I've never really had a problem in that department, and the relationship I'm in right now is looking like it could well be my last (in a good way).

I don't drink alcoholic beverages; at all. It is true that the vast majority of males and females get drunk so that they can get together.

I guess that I promote the PUA way, because drinking's just not an option for me, and also it's not necessarily the one that's going to lead to the best dating/relationship outcomes.

Fair enough Assassin8tor, I get where your coming from. I know if I ever had to do dating I'd have a horrid feeling in my stomach, in fact, I probably wouldn't get that far..

My thoughts are that I couldn't walk up to someone based on looks alone, I wouldn't have gone for someone I didn't already know in some way.
If you know someone, you know something about them, so I can see it would make situations easier.

I'm someone who actually does have a qualification in psychology. I heard about this kind of stuff a while ago and read 'The Game' out of curiousity, to see if there was any real science behind it. What I discovered is that they are about 10% evidence and 90% supposition. They make the classical lay fallacy of noting a particular stimulus promotes a particular behaviour and making a deduction about why that is without anything approaching an appropriate amount of evidence to back up their hypothesis.

They may work. They may not. But they don't actually know for certain *why* they work when they do. They have an idea, they make a guess. But they can't really prove any of it.

Aside from all of that there are two points I'd like to throw out

1) Do you think any of the women you meet might not also have read those books, out of curiousity? How far do you think you'll get with a woman who knows you're following a 'cookbook' and in fact don't have an original idea in your head?

2) The stuff in the books has a problem similar to the old 'tell a lie' conundrum. if you tell someone a lie, you have to remember the lie you told them, whereas if you tell them the truth, you don't have anything extra to remember. With these books and ideas, if you have to act a certain way which is in some sense out of character to get the result they propose, you're going to have to continue to act out of character to maintain things. Most people find that very hard. In fact very few people can keep it up for any length of time at all. If you believe the things in the books work, as soon as you stop doing them - and eventually you will - aren't you going to be on a road to disappointment?

3) Given they're selling a lifestyle, do you really think they're going to tell you about the times it hasn't worked? They're advocates of a philosophy, they're not about to give you objective evidence.

The one thing I have found I agree with that they say is that confidence always helps. This is definitely true and it's been shown in various proper experiments in what is usually called interpersonal psychology. If you aren't a confident person, doing things to gain some confidence will help you in interactions with all sorts of people in all sorts of ways. This is A Good Thing, in general, like watching what you eat or getting some exercise.

I neither want nor feel able to offer anyone else specific advice on how to live their lives. I will merely mention one philosophy that predates all of the stuff in those books that can be expressed very simply - 'To thine own self be true'.

Jon

Fair enough, that's your choice.

Also, reading a book isn't going to gain you confidence is it. And it's not going to go down well when she/he asks you why you asked them, "Well, I read a book on it", not going to go down well. I wouldn't take the advice from a book purely because it won't be relevant to me, nor anyone else for that fact. Whilst a few helpful pointers on the correct etiquette on a date (granted some women wouldn't want this, but each to their own) is fine, telling you how to get a girl to sleep with you? That's just ridiculous, seriously, all women are different, you can't say, you do this, this and this, then this will happen. I mean, common, who was this written by?

*sigh*

Too tired of attempting to rationally reply to your misdirection and too angry generally.

Hope you find the compliant doormat you're looking for and that she conforms to all your requirements.

Couple things.
There is value in "those books", providing they're taken in context and not assumed to be the font of all knowledge on living life etc.
Also, jobbwfc, no offence (and I happen to find it very interesting), but psychology has been deemed as pseudo-science by professionals and academics in some other fields.

I wouldn't expect to read the bible and know exactly how to live my life, but I might things from it that I deem appropriate. There have been books about "how to live life" for centuries and they wouldn't still be around if people didn't read them.

Undoubtedly so. And there are fundamental issues which differentiate psychology from the 'hard' sciences like physics for example. But psychology as a discipline does use objective evidence and analysis, whereas the book I read seemed largely anecdotal. Now, that's OK if you want to agree with it, but it's not the same as the way psychologists validate their theories.


You're not wrong; the 'self help' industry - of which this is a specialist area - is worth an awful lot of money every year. I'm not sure overall as a population we're any happier or more well adjusted than we would have been without it though.

Jon

Not really got much of a choice in it.



Do almost all women have vaginas, breasts, different proportion of grey/white matter in their brains to males etc?

I don't think that you, and many of the other people on the forum, quite get that the point is that women are mentally designed to a certain general pattern of behaviour.



edit: I'll respond a little more when I get home. My mobile's not the best tool for browsing and researching.

all females have aspergers you learn something every day