The Manual: What Women Want and How to Give It to Them (21 page)

When you are straightforward with what you want and in a mode of positive expectations (when you are optimistic), the most likely reaction from those around you will also be in your favor. You make it easy for people to follow and agree with you when you
assume
they will, while they have to make more of an effort not to do so. This is partly why it is better to
state
, “I want to have dinner with you tonight!” if you “ask” a woman out to dinner, than to really
ask
, “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” for example. Since you bring the matter up without really asking her it also means you are taking the responsibility even if she accepts.

You are basically saying the same thing, but how you phrase your intentions makes the difference as it reveals your personality. This also means that it is not something that you should only be doing every now and then with the women you want. Assertive is how you should always be when talking to women, despite that it goes against our socialization of not being selfish and that it is more polite to always ask for everything.

If you are not used to being assertive, it means you have to start more sentences with the word “I” and to make more statements. A statement takes a position, unlike a question. It shows
courage
as you announce something about yourself before you know other people will approve of it. Even to proclaim that you
prefer cats is taking a risk with a woman as she could be a dog person for goodness sake!

Start putting yourself first, both figuratively and literary, and begin to think aloud in front of women the same way you do with company you are already comfortable with.

Think Aloud

A man is confident enough to think aloud because he is comfortable with himself and with women. He is unafraid to speak his mind because he knows that it is okay to disagree with women occasionally and does not fear their disapproval for doing so; instead, he knows they appreciate a confident male regardless.

By being able to think aloud, to express your emotions, opinions, and ideas freely, you will never have to worry about running out of words or having interesting things to talk about. And when you do speak your mind with a woman you just met, she will feel much more comfortable doing the same herself; she will lower her guard and open up instead of giving bare minimum responses that risk making the conversation stall.

This is yet another reason why it is so crucial to expand your comfort zone, to lose your social inhibitions, and to let go of beliefs about being inadequate, so you feel free to be
yourself
in women’s company. If necessary, you can overcome any tendencies to overthink the conversation with women by putting yourself in situations where you tend to, over and over, until you start to deal with them just like you deal with all other conversations. The trick is not to memorize lines or stories or follow a script, but to lower your guard and to open up.

It is impossible to write and plan an entire conversation, but it is also unnecessary and undesirable when it comes to conversing with women. As long as you have regular social skills and are
able to hold normal conversations with your family and friends, you should be able to talk to women as well. However, if you rely on canned material, you will be wasting your time developing and practicing conversations, wasting money to buy new ideas, and risk being thrown off by interruptions and unexpected turns.

Allowing your words to flow
naturally
is the most obvious sign of confidence when you are speaking, and it is crucial for you to be able to do this since talking is what you will usually spend most of the time doing with a woman (though not necessarily a long time) at first.

A male who talks effortlessly is sometimes referred to as “smooth,” because that is how you will appear if you are relaxed, allowing your personality to be revealed without any noticeable social inhibitions. This should be your goal and it requires speed of thought, but speed of thought is not a skill on its own or something that should be practiced; it only requires thinking aloud.

On one hand, it is a good idea for you to think before you speak so that you do not say something foolish, as you are talking to women with a purpose. At the same time, it is much more important that you be quick and not wait too long to respond during the conversation, giving the impression that you are trying to figure out something
good
to say instead of being genuine and honest. Women want to feel that a man is real so that they trust that he will not hurt them when they are alone eventually, and while honesty itself is not actually required, the appearance of it is because people are comfortable when you appear not to be hiding anything from them (as long as what you show is nothing but friendliness, of course).

However, a male does not have to be a perfect man to get girls, and if he opens up and tells women even embarrassing or silly things that he has done, they will just enjoy it and have a good
time with him, granted that the stories do not convey a lack of masculinity, confidence, charm, or responsibility. If a male tries to appear flawless, women will know that he is only pretending. They will sense that he is trying to impress or deceive them, which will ruin his chances immediately. It is hard to come across as genuine if you always say the
right
things. No one is perfect, so do not pretend to be.

For a man who has been masculine, confident, charming, and responsible all his life, any story from his past will keep his appearance of being attractive congruent, but a male who has not been these things will need to pay more attention not to shoot himself in the foot when relating past experiences. Ultimately, it is the way you are today that women are attracted to, the same way you do not care if a female
was
ugly or obese when she was young if she no longer is so. The key is to take care in relating experiences of being feminine, uncertain, afraid, or insecure that happened recently. The longer ago your stories happened, the less of an issue they present if they paint you in an unfavorable light. Just make it clear that such stories relate how you
were
in the past, not how you are today.

FLIRTATIOUS

While a normal conversation and regular small talk are fine in general to make a woman feel comfortable, you have to
flirt
with the woman you are interested in if you want to avoid ending up as nothing more than a friend. And you must do more than just
talk
to a woman to flirt with her. Sometimes women do not even understand that a male is interested in them if he is too indirect and few females realize that males rarely strike up a conversation with an unknown female unless they are attracted to her.

When you talk to a woman you want, you should make it clear
that you are interested in a romantic or sexual relationship, not friendship. You do this best by creating sexual tension that is not found between friends, by letting her know your intentions while keeping her desires in mind: You have to convey that you are interested in the woman
sexually
, that you are sexually attracted to her, and why you are, while also keeping in mind what is important to her.

However, you still need to let her get to know you
somewhat
by opening up and expressing your thoughts and feelings freely so that she trusts you enough to know you will not hurt her once the two of you are alone. But keep the extent of your getting-to-know-you conversation to just becoming comfortable enough to be alone and naked with each other, not to become best friends.

The classic manner of flirting would be to make romantic or sexual overtures
without
actually saying anything that breaches any social norms, such as suggesting or hinting about a greater level of intimacy than you actually have established; being playful; using wit, irony, or double entendres; making sexual innuendos; pretending to hear the woman say something sexual; or deliberately misinterpreting her as if she were coming on to you. Such approaches are all fine, but a male can be much more direct than that, and if he is confident and unaffected by socialization, he definitely would be.

Desire

You have to clearly show your true intentions at some point when talking to a woman you want to make it obvious that you are interested in her on a romantic or sexual level. The most confident and therefore best way to make your interest clear is to actually
tell
women that you are attracted to and interested in them. When they know that you are, and are unafraid of letting them know it,
they see that you are full of confidence, unlike other males who avoid eye contact, act disinterested, pretend to bump into women, talk to women’s friends first, ask for directions somewhere, or start a normal casual conversation about something unimportant.

It is brilliant for a man to be so confident that he appears casual, but that does not mean it is a good idea for him to strike up a casual conversation and hide his intentions. Anyone can strike up a casual conversation about nothing of importance, and males can often do so with confidence, but as soon as they want to flirt, their confidence vanishes.

Hiding your intentions is not confident or charming, nor is it what women respond to or dream about. You do not sweep a woman off her feet by waiting for weeks, pondering, and then concluding that you want her. How attractive is she really if it takes you that long to see it and make up your mind? How flattered do you think she will be if you wait, compared to if you do it right away? How confident are you if you hesitate to tell her how you feel?

Although the ability to approach a woman at all is a sign of
some
confidence, when it is not followed up with more confident behavior, a male cuts himself short. And sooner or later he will have to reveal his intentions anyway, so it is only foolish to postpone it as it increases the risk of ending up with an asexual relationship like friendship.

Clearly presenting your intentions not only displays confidence, charm, and responsibility, it also shows honesty and candor, clears any confusion, and speeds things up, and women cannot get enough of it. You have to keep in mind though that there is only
one
way that counts, and that is to explicitly tell a woman that you are interested in her — by saying it to her face while looking into her eyes — although there are of course endless ways of wording it.

Males who
hide
their intentions do so for several reasons. They
may lack the confidence to be straightforward, or fear rejection and believe if the woman does not really know that she is being hit on, there is less risk of being rejected. But some of them also think that hiding their intentions, such as by playing hard to get, dragging things out, or acting aloof, will actually
improve
their chances because it demonstrates a confident cool. However, there is actually nothing wrong with showing interest and enthusiasm when interacting with a woman you desire; in fact, you definitely should, but it is essential to show interest without impatience: You must not be eager.

When you are eager, you are not only showing a lot of interest but you are doing so in combination with impatience. And you never want to come off as impatient because it makes you act as if whatever is happening is too good to be true, you are no longer relaxed, and you will seem to want to get things over with before the woman changes her mind or before you become interested in someone else. That is neither very confident nor very charming.

It is perfectly fine to attempt to get a woman into bed within an hour of meeting her as long as you do not appear to lose any interest in her if you fail. That is how you demonstrate great interest without impatience.

Some males are indirect because they also believe that females are less interested in sex than males are or even that females dislike sex, and males must thus tread softly not to scare women off. In reality, females like sex as much as males do, and they absolutely love to be seduced by men, as it gives them what they want without having to take the responsibility for making it happen. It is what women dream of, what some wait for all their lives to experience, and what millions of romance novels that are sold each year are all about. Thus, there is no point in trying to hide it. Women will not stop you mid-sentence and say, “Wait a minute! You are trying to
seduce me!” Instead, they will enjoy it, and if you do a good job of it, they will take great pleasure in
allowing
themselves to be seduced, much the same way males enjoy looking at a professional stripper gracefully take off her clothes.

Women will let you know if they are not interested, regardless of whether you tread softly or not, but if they are interested and you are too “cautious,” which you should read as unconfident and feminine, you only risk making them lose that interest, losing the opportunity, or having a man take them before you do because you are wasting so much time.

The males who believe that showing their intentions will actually turn women off have often had bad experiences in the past and made the mistake of associating the wrong cause and effect. If you are scared to show your intentions because you have had bad experiences by doing so, you need to reckon that it was not the
display
that caused the woman to reject you. You messed up other things prior to it, but the natural time for the woman to reject you was obviously not until you put your cards on the table. You had been acting like an idiot or like a woman for a long time, but she was fine with it because you had not told her that you wanted more than friendship.

The truth is that you never scare a woman off by showing your intentions. You scare her off by acting feminine, unconfident, unworthy, desperate, irresponsible, lame, or weird. If you have been doing that and finally show your true intentions you will be rejected, but not because you showed your intentions.

Way too many males have had a secret crush on a woman for a long time while acting like one of her close female friends without telling her how they
really
feel, only to confess their true emotions one day when the burden becomes unbearable or they become too drunk. That is when they are hugged into let-us-just-be-friends-land,
and it might appear as it was because they showed their intentions, but that is just an illusion.