What holds people back in the path to being a sociopath in the Gervais Principle sense, is their desire to be a “good person”. This usually means that other people like them. And if you want people to like you, you won’t be able to focus on real gains.
(Unless of course, you’re playing at that higher level where people liking you is a tool to get what you really want. )
But in most cases, people are held back by their desire to be liked. They may lose the negotiation but they take comfort in the fact that people like them. And it’s true. It’s easy for everyone to like the loser. They can look down on them and feel pity–and even better feel a sense of superiority.
So what’s not to like?
If you’re like me though, the sight of a loser just reminds you of how low a human can go and you recognize the same ineffective, destructive characteristics in yourself so that the loser is a constant reminder of what might happen to you if I don’t make the hard choices.
I was thinking about this last night because one of my clients was on a date with a girl. He’s known her from about 4 years ago but because she lives in Taiwan and he lives in San Diego, he hasn’t been able to meet her even though they’ve kept in touch over Facebook all this time.
He’s leaving in only two days and even though he’s been trying to schedule her for the past week, he wasn’t able to until last night when he invited her out for drinks. After drinks he brought her back to our place where he’s staying in the extra bedroom and tried to “make a move”.
She was pretty unreceptive and started looking for an uber soon after. Lols!
We assured him that this is not unusual and that he learned the most important thing…that she wasn’t interested in sex with him.
Many guys would feel bad about that. Those same guys will be angry when she chooses to be with some “asshole” instead of them after taking a girl on date after date after date for months and being the nice respectful gentlemen .
These guys, are more concerned with feeling good about themselves and be liked than with getting what they want. And because of that, they often forfeit what they want. Many times, in the dating and pickup space, people tell you to not care what other people think.
That’s a pretty high hurdle in my opinion, so I think that step one is making this shift from wanting to be liked to focusing on getting what you want. it’s not as hard as it may seem. Because in the moment of decision, you can think, “what do I want, and what can I do to get it.”
Women might read it and cry, “rape!” but the fact is that guys have, across agricultural societies and into modern times, been the ones who chase.
And that means showing intent.
That’s quite a bit different from force. Showing intent is going to try to kiss a girl and pausing a few centimeters from her face so she has the option to turn her head away or lean away before it actually happens and that’s very different from grabbing a girl’s head and forcing her lips onto yours.
Totally different.
Because if you don’t show intent, other people won’t even know what you want and that robs them of the ability to give it to you. There is that scene in the movie Fight Club that illustrates this perfectly:
https://youtu.be/KbGw-fnlf1Q
There are a lot of ways to ask and some of them are better than others, but a lot of guys when they are on a date are like the Ed Norton in that scene. Hoping the girl is going to get the hint and throw themselves at him.
It happens so rarely, it’s not even worth discussing. And it’s best to assume it never happens because that will drive you toward right action–action that will get you the results you want–on a consistent basis.
The goal of learning pickup and dating skills is the same as memorizing the percentages of each hand in poker. If you know the precentages then you can make the right decisions based on the probability of each hand winning.
If you want to be liked, you’ll miss out on some of your best plays.