David Clare’s Applied Romance

[Mar. 6, 2008]

February is over.

Actually, winter is over. Winter is a state of mind for me, and I’m done with it.

[Feb. 22, 2008]

February is is a really hard month. Lots of holidays, birthdays and taxes crammed into a month already too short!

I have lots of new material percolating, but little time to develop it.

Very frustrating.

[Feb 16, 2008]

I’ll be attending the PickUp101 Rapport Conference Feb 29-Mar 2, 2008. This has an interesting lineup where Lance and instructors will be sharing the stage with David Wygant, Brent Smith, Decker, Zan and Dave M.

We’re making solid, steady progress on PFP. Our collaboration has been interesting from a number of different perspectives. For example, all three of us are accustomed to being leaders rather than followers, yet in this venture, each of us must accede leadership to another at various times. We like to tell each other we are as 3 kings in alliance, each fully sovereign. Our deep understanding of social dynamics has made it relatively easy to accomodate our inevitable conflicts as necessary.

[Jan 28, 2008]

Instead of filling up the page with largely content free posts, I’ll just keep updating this one.

Good stuff happening in day job right now, which is keeping me really busy. Which is good!

Alert readers of other forums now know the Franco, Joseph and I are nearly finished with our book “Practical Female Psychology” (PFP). We’re on the Duke Nukem III schedule: It will be done when it’s done. That being said, I think it’s more weeks than months now.

Relationship crises are matters of the heart, requiring emotional strength.

Many times, relationship crises result from a man’s inability or ignorance to properly respond to the woman’s emotional desires. Often, the man caves in, or “collapses” as his heart softens to her pleas of emotional distress and conspires with his inability to lead her emotions away from self-destructive energy. Or, the man may harden his heart, lashing out in frustration with truly damaging words and actions, some men with physical violence.

A better way is being strong hearted, allowing her self-destructive emotional energy to dissipate against a masculine strength, where a man’s heart is exposed and vulnerable, yet strong enough to deal with any fury she sends his way.

Soft hearted

You are not doing a woman a favor by being “soft-hearted.” By giving in to a tantrum, sulking, pouting or any other sort of “bad behavior,” you enable a woman to emotionally manipulate you. This not good for you, and it is not good for her. “Soft-heartedness” is usually a frame coming from weakness. The time and place for soft-heartedness is in empathy, when you share sad and hurtful emotions with her.

Hard hearted

Neither is it good to be hard-hearted. The hard-hearted man emotionally divorces himself from empathy. The hard hearted man will add insult to injury, neither knowing nor caring about the emotional consequences.

Strong hearted

Vitality is being strong-hearted. Strength of heart is hardness, but a hardness based in love. A hardness acknowledging her emotional pain, not judging her for it. Strength of heart is being willing to carry through pain until resolution is achieved.

Strike the balance

There may be times when each of these emotional states are appropriate. Some women may require hardness over strength. Other women, of gentler disposition, may require very little in the way of hardness, and need only the occasional reassurance of masculine strength in the relationship.

We are roughly halfway through the “Season.” You know, that time between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s day when relationships become filled with wonderful, powerful emotions! Also known as the Dark Days for single men (and women, but for different reasons).

In any case, it’s Christmas! So, Merry Christmas!

Two important aspects (of many) to Christmas are gift giving and gift receiving. Many people are good at one or the other, but truly enjoying Christmas requires being good at both.

Gift giving

Most women already know this: buying Christmas gifts starts December 26th! Yep. Buying for Christmas is a year-long activity. When you have such a mind set, you will never, ever be in a bind for finding appropriate gifts. Your shopping will be done by Thanksgiving (end of November for non-USians), and you will be free of the panic associated with last minute excursions to that alien wasteland AKA The Shopping Mall.

Furthermore, not just possible future gifts, but wrapping paper, cards, ornaments, the whole nine yards, on sale at clearance prices. Last year, a trip to Target a couple of days after Christmas netted a large bag of bows and 2-3 years worth of gift wrapping paper. All I had to buy this year was some extra scotch tape. Contrast this to the nervous, twitchy “dad dude” in line at Long’s Drugs with 3 Christmas stockings late afternoon Christmas Eve! Wanna bet he’s divorced (no wedding band, I checked), without custody of his children? I wouldn’t bet against it.

Gift receiving

Let’s face it: most women usually do pretty well by their men, but having your heart set on what you really want (e.g., the Swedish Bikini Team, or maybe a new bait casting reel) is a recipe for hurt feelings and disaster.

Instead, use the gifts you are given as insight into her thoughts and personality.

For example, my girlfriend gave me… hrm… never mind, shouldn’t use this example (pity, that). Let’s just say I acted on that one right after we opened presents… This one is better: she gave me a nice pair of Ugg fleece lined slippers shoes. Uggs are definitely congruent (I surf), and these slippers definitely upgrade my wardrobe. Now, there probably isn’t any real “hint” here, but if there were, it would be “Dave, your stuff is getting tatty.” But I already know that, and even purchased a new shirt when I was out shopping. Most women appreciate a stylish, well-dressed man, and developing costs time more than it costs money. Any man can make the effort.

Mission: Birthday

Gentlemen, Christmas presents the perfect opportunity to implement your new gift giving and shopping strategy. The days between Christmas and New Years are typically slack no matter one works. And the days after Christmas are intensely active shopping days. An enormous amount of merchandise is steeply discounted. Your wife or girlfriend *will* be going shopping. Go with her. Or go shopping yourself while she is out. Your mission is to select a birthday gift for her. Now is the perfect time. And yes, I already have something for my girlfriend’s birthday… already wrapped too! If you’re currently single, build a good habit and get something for your mother.

I have a female acquaintance who has difficulty with men. Part of her difficulty is that she focuses on her social differences rather than her social commonalities. She makes it very difficult to establish rapport by insisting on how she is “different.”

Breaking rapport seems rampant in two particular types of people:

• Self-centered people possibly with low self-esteem.
• Member of subcultures defined by social differences with society at large.

Such people seem to self-identify on “differences,” thus finding commonalities with people “not like me” apparently threatens their identity. In my acquaintance’s case, she is an active member of what could be called the “Outdoor Adventure” subculture, and being attractive, certainly enjoys the benefit of a 10:1 male/female ratio.

But it’s much more fun to connect with people on the basis of positive shared experiences and common interests than it is to be drawn together through circles of mutual dislikes. If you use the rapport breaking words in an offhand way, creating unwarranted negativity in your immediate surroundings, consider eliminating them from your vocabulary completely. It can be done. I never use “My problem is.” I only express dislikes in when pressed for an honest opinion.

Rapport breakers

This is a pretty easy trait to recognize. In emotionally challenging situations, especially faced with possibility for connection, such people often preface their speech with either:

I don’t like…

or

My problem is…

Accurately reading someone requires understanding that either of these figures of speech could simply be bad habit on the part of the speaker, without indicating any underlying issue blocking rapport. It’s really important to watch the other person’s body language and listen very carefully to their tone of voice. It’s crucial to evaluate how such words make you feel. If the speaker is expressing internal frustration or exasperation concerningn an external circumstance or personal foible, no big deal. If these words are used to block rapport, you may well be better spending your time with someone else.

Your habits

Do you use these figures of speech?

If so, what does it indicate to people about yourself?

Do you have consistent difficulty connecting with attractive women? With anyone? Everyone? Do all your friends use these figures of speech as well?

If you consistent break rapport or refuse honest attempts at connection while at the same time desiring such connections, consider taking a really good look at yourself to evaluate the difference between your desire and the results you are getting.

When interacting with attractive women, consider her reaction to the following:

• You: “I hate people that do XYZ!”
  She thinks: “Ohmigod! I really like XYZ. This guy seemed so cool. But now I feel bad.”
• You: “I love it when women do ABC.”
  She thinks: “Wow! A man that knows what he likes!”

How do you interact with attractive women? Do you encourage rapport by finding commonalities? Or discourage rapport by focusing on your differences to society at large, and perhaps the woman in front of you?

Because if you aren’t taking your time with her, she will take your time from you.

And you won’t like it.

There are no exceptions.

When you accept a woman into your life, when you decide you want to have a relationship with a woman, when you choose her for a relationship, you must ensure that you have a chosen a woman that you can spend your time with.

When you choose a woman for a relationship, you have chosen a relationship where she expects you to lead. You must lead. If you do not, you are implicitly abrogating your contract with her. Expect drama. Lots of drama.

Make her feel

It’s really important that when you spend time with a woman, she feels that you are taking your time with her on purpose. That you aren’t just wasting time with her. That when you are with her, it’s because you want to be with her, not because it’s what you are supposed to be doing, especially, not because you don’t have anything else to do. What she craves is feeling your engaged, masculine presence. Do not short change her.

Masculine Presence

In a relationship with a woman, masculine presence is that emotional capacity to accept with equanimity, even cheer, what may appear to be random, passionate, possibly radical changes in your woman’s emotional state. The ability to accept, without judgement, that what she says, may not be what she means. The ability to overlook her words and accept her pain. The ability to stand in the way of the storm, as a rock draws the violence of the wind, the violence of the wave. Standing without falling. Without being sucked into her emotional turbulence, such that you are both cast adrift in her furies.

Long term compatibility

On the other hand, one measure of a woman’s potential for long term compatibility is whether she requires your presence all the time. A man’s attention is a precious thing, not to be squandered. Think carefully about making a commitment to a woman who thinks nothing of wasting your time.

Back in the days of yore, that is, before women won the “right” to be admitted to what used to be exclusively male clubs and venues, men could talk freely and frankly about personal matters such as relationships with women.

Now, men are isolated from each other, and subject to possibly severe penalties for sexual harassment if such discussion makes a woman “feel uncomfortable.” (Basing legal rights on emotional state is a topic for future investigation.) And popular culture insists that men are relationship morons, with the emotional range of teaspoons.

These popular notions have had exactly the opposite effect of what was intended: instead of bringing men and women together, there is large and growing wedge between men and women. Men are isolated from each other, wondering why they are doing everything society demands of them, to the best of their ability, yet they are punished for it. As a result, men feel shame even talking about their relationships.

This is ridiculous.

And it has to stop.

Women have vast amounts of material available to them, in the form of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, bookshelves full of tomes from “relationship experts,” and the ready ear of close female friends always happy listen, and be listened to, on the subject of relationships with men.

Men, have nothing.

Unless a man has had the opportunity to share crucial information about women with his peers WHO ARE SUCCESSFUL WITH WOMEN, in a non-judgemental fashion (perhaps in a fraternity or on a sports team), he has had nothing. The game is rigged against him, and conspires to keep him weak within a relationship by constant negative social reinforcement.

Breaking this cycle of madness is hard self-development work, and must be done by each man individually. In many cases, men may need formal counseling to erase socially induced shame. And all men, no matter how adroit with women and relationships, can improve with coaching. Counseling and coaching form the head and tail of the coin of self-development. What follows is part 2 of an article concerning this coin.

Tails: Counseling

Counseling is double-edged sword. Effective counseling will bring a man up to par, help him get him right with himself. Ineffective counseling is worse than no counseling, and could make a bad situation worse. In two cases I know of, the husband and wife both agreed that they didn’t need counseling. One of those cases finally ended in divorce (i.e., mine), the other is ongoing.

From my personal experience, and from listening to and reading about many other men, one of the most pernicious aspects is the socially-induced sense of shame men feel when their relationships with women fail. What is never discussed is how men who excel in the socially prescribed mechanics of relationships are practicing a theory that does not work! These men (I was one of them) do everything right. They are exemplary husbands and boyfriends. Faithful, loyal, good providers, good fathers to their children, yet totally unattractive if not despised by their wives.

Men do not deal well with such incongruity, and tend to internalize the incongruity between their outward success and inward misery as feelings of shame and failure. These feelings are further reinforced by popular books on relationships and by the marriage counseling industry, where relationship problems are blamed on the men.

Heads: Coaching

Good coaching takes what is already in a man, and brings it the forefront. Coaches can point out weaknesses we are blind to, allowing us to either strengthen our weaks points, compensate for them in other ways, or simply develop a strategy more capable of leveraging our strengths.

In a large number of fields, coaching is readily available. Certainly for sports of all kinds, coaches are considered indispensable. Life coaching is becoming popular enough to warrant it’s own membership body and certification training (though not state-sanctioned certification).

Relationship coaching is still in it’s infancy. Contemporary society still suffers from outdated notions of love and romance. Notions such as “men have the emotional range of a teaspoon,” and “Soul mates are for life.” In the context of such notions, counseling becomes the only accepted practice: if a relationship is dysfunctional, then it’s “bad” and there is “something wrong.” Growing experience in the seduction and relationship coaching communities is showing that this is incorrect. A dysfunctional relationship may be either rapidly fixed or rapidly dissolved, often to all parties satisfaction, when the man clearly understands his role in the relationship, and has the tools to fulfill this role. Very often and perhaps unstated or implicitly defined, the man’s role is to lead the relationship, or failing that, at least hold his own without collapsing in the face of feminine energy. Relationship coaching can help men understand relationship dynamics, within the context of their own relationships.

Synergy

There is a large and growing selection of self-help books, seminars and multimedia CDs and DVDs covering both sides of the coin of the coin of self-development. Those of us willing to spend the time and energy can literally counsel and coach ourselves.

A remarkable synergy erupts when effective counseling is combined with effective coaching. The counseling brings a man up to par, helps him understand and transform his sense of shame into productive action. Coaching helps a man build on his strengths, to help him use his natural masculinity for organizing his life and his relationships with women to his personal sense of satisfaction. When these paths are traveled together, each step forward provides reinforcement.

For example, men have a natural desire to be around women, both a sexual desire and simply because women are fun to be around. In both cases, neither desire is anything at all to be ashamed of. Sexual desire is natural. Enjoy it! Here is the key: if you as a man are not ashamed of your sexual desire, women will not be ashamed of your sexual desire either. Eliminate the shame (counseling), learn to communicate your desire in female-friendly language (coaching), and feel how women respond, because they will respond.

I had an epiphany on this point a few months ago. I was walking down the sidewalk to the coffee shop, sort of strutting my stuff. An older women (probably mid-60s) approaching me looked down and away, then tucked her hair behind her ear as she passed. I had to laugh, because I could hear her thinking “I wish I were 40 again.” The game never ends.

The notion that “pickup” gives a man “power over women” is laughable.

The power of pickup is the power a man develops over himself.

Decisiveness is an attractive trait. People in general feel comfortable around men (and women) who know what they want and how to make it happen, and not as comfortable around wishy washy people that hem and haw. But few of us are always on point, and it feels good sometimes to just go with the flow, letting the onus of leadership (and the responsibility) fall on others shoulders.

We become indecisive.

There are several kinds of indecisiveness, each operating from a particular frame of reference, it pays for a man to know exactly which is operating and what the consequences are.

• Supplicative, being indecisive because you are worried about what other’s will think.
• Apathetic, when you really don’t care at all
• “Go with the flow,” when the crowd is moving in a sensible direction, don’t be a buzzkill.

Supplicative

Supplicative indecisive is when you subsume your actual desire in order to appease a woman, or to get something from her. If this occurs because you lack the balls to have an opinion, a desire or a point of view, you’re in a world of hurt with women, likely sooner than later.

Apathetic

Apathetic indecisiveness is when you truly don’t care. Black, white, whatever. This can be extremely useful in many ways.

1. If you truly don’t care, you can just say whatever comes to mind and go with it. Risk here is AB Indecision double bind from the woman.
2. You can use this to put her to work making you feel good.
3. Remember that in many cases, a woman that loves you wants to do things for you to make you both feel good. She wants you to tell her what will make you feel good. If you really don’t care, put her to making a surprise for you. This will engage her creativity.

Go with the flow

Sometimes, it nice for someone else to take charge. Especially in group situations where it’s someone else’s responsibility. This works with your woman, because you and her can enjoy just having fun and feeling good.

Use it wisely

Indecision is not knowing whether to decide or not. Deliberately not making a decision is a decision, and can be done from a very powerful frame. When taking responsibility for a decision induces material risk, or results from unwanted social pressure, or would result in an unwanted or unfulfilling leadership role, by all means, choose not to decide.

What I am going to try to explain is at once really simple, and really hard. It’s along the lines of getting yourself un-betaized. It can happen in an instant. It’s completely internal, and it will invert any congruency issues you have. That is, your inner game becomes more solid than your outer game.

Before I get started… my main audience is the roughly 1/2 to 3/4 of you reading that are either now in are will end up in a long term relationship or married, but you are NOT interested in weak, namby-pamby Dad’s-an-idiot kind of relationship. All of it applies as well to pickup and to young boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, but when you are faced with picking up the same chick over and over again, for years, owning the high level frame is critical.

Frame control: strategy vs tactics

Basically, the idea is to relate inner and outer frames in a way similar to the way strategy is related to tactics. Both support each
other, both are necessary, but strategy is developed and practiced by general officers; tactics by lieutenants. There aren’t very many books on strategy, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Macchievelli’s Discourses (not The Prince). And too many to count on tactics. Furthermore, strategy in war, business and seduction is more closely related than not. Tactics are decidedly more domain-specific.

Strategy becomes a metaframe for tactics, a structure allowing tactics (here we speak of outer game) to work effectively.

Now, being a master strategist, mastering a metaframe of seduction, takes time. But *deciding* to practice mastery puts you
on that road, instantly.

Instantly.

How to know

With a strategy that works, the tactics fall into line.

It’s the difference between worrying about whether her last txt message indicates that you are “beta” versus deciding whether she is worth your time and energy. That is, “alpha” or “beta” don’t even figure into the equation. Which is, surprise surprise,
alpha behavior.

Old tactical frame: “I will ignore her disrespectful txt message for 2 days, then send a Cocky/Funny reply.”

New tactical frame: “I don’t have time for a weird chick right now.”

In the old, the focus was on the woman.

In the new, the focus is on your mission.

Here is where it gets really interesting: at a strategic level, the outcome of any particular battle (shit test) is irrelevant by itself. What matters is patterns. Effective rulers (generals, CEOs, kings, the original tyrants of Rome) all understand this principle and create large, effective empires that live for year or decades after they pass.

They don’t sweat the small shit.

Good field officers and good vice-presidents will *continually* test their leadership with initiative, taking action that could cost lives or money. Effective generals don’t give orders that won’t be obeyed. Successful CEOs allow subordinates to learn by experience, by making mistakes.

In a relationship with a woman, similar practice applies. She will test continually. Owning the metaframe in a relationship requires allowing some slack. Keep the tension too high, something will snap. And not in a good way.

Here’s the take home, field tested practice resulting from women I have been in relationships with (or screened out of relationships). Note this is all high level advice. I’m not going to tell you to “wait 3 days to call” or some shit, because those kinds of tactics fall out of the higher level frame. You can work those details out for yourself.

Practical advice

Here we go:

1. If you are obsessed, or even worried, by any 1 single action your women does, she owns the metaframe. And she will come to fear your demonstrated reactions to her behavior, and only low self-esteem, low value women will tolerate this, and you will get what you deserve. High self-esteem, high value women fear your potential actions. There is a difference. When your focus is on the higher level mechanics of the relationship, most of the small shit gets dealt with automatically, and you will be better able to figure out what’s important and what’s not. You will sleep better at night.
2. If a woman you desire wants a relationship, and you feel in your gut that something isn’t right, she owns the metaframe. Your gut won’t lie to you. Trust it.
3. If you desire a relationship with a woman, and she is cold to it, you have three real choices: A. Drop her instantly. B. LJBF her for the long game queue, don’t put much energy into her. She may come back on her own, it’s happened to me several times. C. Pursue her *relentlessly.* No bullshit. Steve Wynn did it, his wife is solid gold. A geeky colleague of mine snagged a bonafide 10 by relentless pursuit. (Whether he keeps her or not is a different story, but by God, he got her!). I did it with my first girlfriend. R. Don Steele (look him up) did this as well, repeatedly. In this case, your frame is “I’m a man and I get what I want. No matter what it takes.” This is attractive to women. Otherwise, she owns the metaframe.
4. If the woman is controlling your material existence (your wallet, your house, your stuff) to your detriment, she owns the metaframe. If you consistently spend more than you want to spend with her, she owns the metaframe. This is actually really simple. She either costs you money, or she makes you money. Do a Google search for “Trading Goddess.” Read Proverbs 31. If she can be trusted to manage your resources, you owns the metaframe.

You can decide, right now, to master your metaframe.

Barry Bonds, an US baseball player, is in the news for allegedly lying to a grand jury. The comments from readers are more interesting than the article:

• Most of these commenters dislike Bonds because he is arrogant.
• Most of these same commenters are willing to judge him guilty a priori of the trial.

My interest in this is whether Bonds has the balls enough to carry through and risk serving the sentence (like Martha Stewart), or whether he is a poser and will eventually break in plea bargain of sorts (like Don Imus getting fired).

The only thing this trial will really tell us what kind of man Barry Bonds really is. My money is that he will tell the grand jury to fuck off and risk serving 30 months at the country club. If he is convicted, and acts as he always does, he will be lauded as a hero for standing firm to his principles and telling the US government to fuck off. If he doesn’t, he will be savaged as a weakling and completely finished in the public eye.

Guess which action is more attractive to women…

What kind of man are you? What would do you think you would do?

On a side note, US society is evolving socially such that jail time is no longer the social stigma it once was. Anyone who is anyone these days seems bound to run afoul of some point of law, merely by having an opinion of their own and the balls enough to tell people to piss off when it isn’t any of their business. Does the notion of this kind of incarceration remind anyone here of any other well-known social systems? Does me.