BONUS LAW:
Never Mess Up a Sure Thing
Perhaps the biggest mistake men make with women is not responding to the signals of interest that they send out or otherwise messing up what should have been a sure thing.
There used to a concept in the community called “fool’s mate,” which referred to those instances where a guy would essentially “get lucky,” i.e., he would attract a woman seemingly by chance rather than through “good game.” It doesn’t count , the thinking went, because she liked him anyway.
Now, absurd as it may sound, there is some merit in this idea, which was founded on the belief that you should develop a strong set of tools enabling you to attract women consistently rather than simply picking off so-called “low- hanging fruit”—the tools given to you in this book. But if the endgame is to meet and attract more women, then it doesn’t really matter how they come to you.
It has been said many times that “game” is the art of not messing things up, and this is true. If you get a strong indication of interest from a woman in whatever form, say, for example, she gives you eye contact on a train carriage or in a shop, or she says something flirtatious to you at a party, then you must , whatever you do, follow up, using the techniques outlined in this book, of course. Don’t feel that it “doesn’t count” somehow because she initiated it. Life is too short for such an attitude, and anyway, as you start to become proficient with women, you will find that more avenues open up before you naturally, and you will also become more aware of the micro-indicators given out by a woman likely to respond positively to you.
How to Avoid Messing Up:
Dealing with Tests and Annoyances
One thing you will find is that dealing with women, particularly multiple women, can be challenging. The road is never easy, and they will throw in plenty of curve balls to make it even more difficult. These include tests of all kinds, as well as “forgotten” dates, fake phone numbers, tantrums, crying, emotional blackmail, and many other pieces of assorted nonsense. Of course, each individual situation is different, and you should seek your male friends’ counsel as things come up, but in general, your MO should be grace under pressure : be unreactive. The easiest way to mess up with a woman is to get sucked into her behaviour and start reacting to her. Practice your poker face. Far better, when she throws something at you, is simply to smile at her with a kind of aloof detachment. Remember: nothing is ever a big deal. There is a world of abundance out there, and if she wants to play games, in the end, you can simply get up, say goodbye politely, and move on to the next one.
The Paradox of Increased Knowledge
Now you have come this far, reading and internalising the Seven Laws and going out and practicing them in many, many differnetinteractions with real women, you will hopefully have had some positive experiences and seen how well things can go in best-case scenarios. With this can come a very specific problem. Every time you approach a woman and it doesn’t go your way—say she brushes you off, or won’t give you her contact details, or says she has a boyfriend—then you might find you have a tendency to scrutinise what you did and then blame yourself: ‘Perhaps I wasn’t dominant enough,’ ‘If only I’d maintained better eye contact,’ ‘If only I’d come up with a wittier retort,’ etc. While striving hard to obtain knowledge of what does work you have also picked up a stick with which to beat yourself along the way. The irony in this is that many guys, me included, end up castigating themselves for ‘failing’ with girls who would they would previously have regarded as unobtainable.
Of course, this way of thinking is unproductive. The fact is we are dealing with human interactions, and the complete unpredictability of another person’s behaviour. Sometimes you can do everything right and still not get the result you desire. So whatever you do don’t get hung up on individual occurrences. By all means think about what, if anything, you could have done better, but don’t dwell on it: look back, don’t stare . Instead, you should congratulate yourself on having had the courage to approach in the first place, and on having gained a new reference experience which will benefit you in the future. Remember—each time you interact with a woman you didn’t previously know, however badly it goes, you are still normalising the experience and making yourself more comfortable in socialising in this way. Make the process your focus rather than the outcome and you’ll be surprised to find that your results improve naturally anyway.