The Basics Archives

5 Mistakes That Keep You From Finding A Relationship

April 20, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

We talk a lot about what it takes to become someone that women want to date – working from the internal to the external, from attitude to presentation. But there’re times when it feels like you’re in a classic Red Queen’s Race: running as fast as you can and getting nowhere.

Man in sportswear walking on a treadmill and looking at his smartwatch at home — “I don’t get it, I’ve been on this for an hour and I haven’t gotten anywhere…”

Sure, you’re putting in a lot of effort to get your presentation down and you’re trying to put yourself out there… so why isn’t it working?

Well the answer is that while you’ve made great strides in some areas, you’ve been neglecting others. In fact, many times, the problem is that you’ve been making mistakes that have actively hindered your ability to meet and date amazing women. What often confuses folks is that these aren’t mistakes that drive women away. Instead, these are mistakes that have hindered your personal development or your ability to connect with people in the way you need to forge a connection. These are foundational problems, ones that undermine both your self-image and your ability to meet and connect with people. You can tweak your style and grooming all you want, hit the gym until your joints give out or chat up as many sexy singles as you can… but if you haven’t fixed these common foundational mistakes, whatever you build is going to come tumbling down around you.

Let’s talk about how to fix some of the most common mistakes that are keeping you from meeting that special someone or someones.

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5 Mistakes That Men Make Approaching Women

December 15, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

So, I have a confession to make: I have a perverse love of weird, dumb or just plain batshit dating advice that gets passed around like golden nuggets of wisdom. This means that Twitter is a bonanza of bullshit to comb through for laughs that range from “wait, this has to be fake” to “oh God you’re serious.”

Now, occasionally this means that you get things like the Green Arrows dude who goes on and on about where people’s junk is pointing.

screenshot of a Twitter post. Image features two African American celebrities in front of a backdrop for a Nike event.Michael Jordan is standing with green text printed over him and an arrow pointing down. Text reads "cock confidence". LeBron is standing with his hands folded, with text and an x superimposed. Text reads "cock shame" — You will never find people more obsessed with dicks than straight dudes.

Other times, however, you get the “How Do You Open” meme. The format is incredibly simple: a would-be nu-PUA guru posts a picture of an attractive woman (usually yanked from Instagram models’ Twitter feeds) with some weird backstory to set the scene. Each ends with the same question: “How do you open?”

screenshot of a Twitter post with an image of a busty young white oman with her hand on her hip. Text reads: You're at your friend's house party and decide to chill in the backyard. You're about to take a seat, but you notice this attractive young woman. How do you open? — This is a prime example of why you aren’t allowed to pick your own nickname…

These are a series of thought experiments that are intended to get you to apply the poster’s lessons on talking to women, while also goosing the algorithm via cheap engagement. And while their chief value is in the parody posts that are so absurd that you can’t be sure if they’re jokes, I find them kind of fascinating on an anthropological level.

However, the thing that makes these interesting to me is how much they contrast with the number of folks who are terrified of approaching women.

That’s not a joke; I hear from guys all the time who’ve mainlined hundreds of Reddit posts and TikTok videos from women complaining about guys hitting on them. This often gets paired with dudes who go trawling for more “proof” of the “It’s Not Creepy When Brad Pitt Does It” argument.

What makes this interesting to me is that both of these groups have a large stumbling block in common: they get the concept of “approaching” wrong. And to be fair: I’ve made that mistake too. Hell, I’ve promoted many of those mistaken ideas myself. But what’s significant is that these shared misconceptions make it harder to meet women, particularly in person. The issue isn’t that approaching women you find attractive is inherently bad, it’s that their technique, their mindset, even their very conception of “doing approaches”, “opening” or what-have-you is wrong.

So let’s talk about the mistakes men make when approaching women, and how to fix them.

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How to Be Someone People Love To Talk To

October 27, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

We talk a lot about the importance of developing your social skills. However, one of the mistakes I see people make over and over again is how often they focus on the flashier skills; the ones that seem bigger or more impressive. People will, for example, get hung up on all the possible ways of approaching someone at a bar, or in the street or at a coffeeshop. But while those skills seem impressive, they’re actually far less important than people realize.

In fact, people get so focused on the flash that they neglect one of the most undervalued social skills imaginable: being a good conversationalist.

No. Seriously. While making approaches or taking people home gets all the attention, being a sterling conversationalist is what makes everything work. What do you think happens after you make the approach? What do you do to get them to want to stick around? The men who do the best with women are men who people love to talk to. If you don’t know how to engage someone intellectually and emotionally, you’re not going to engage with them physically either.

After all, almost every woman alive has been on dates with dudes who spend the entire time talking at them, not with them. Worse, they tend to run into the ones who only want to talk about themselves and never show the slightest interest in their dates.

Side view portrait of laughing Asian couple enjoying date in cafe — Look, if you want to get in her bed, get in her head first.

The truth is that good conversation is a powerful tool. Most of my jobs and my relationships have come about because I’ve had a great time talking with people I’ve just met. A good friend of mine would fall in love with someone specifically because she had amazing conversations with them. Being able to connect with folks on an intimate and intense level is an invaluable skill to have.

Whether you’re networking, making friends or looking for love, being a great conversationalist is a skill you can’t afford to neglect. So let’s talk about what makes you someone people love to talk to.

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How To Talk To Women (And Get Them To Like You)

September 1, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Let’s talk about some common misconceptions when it comes to meeting women.

One of the most common questions I get from men is “where do I go to meet women?”

More often than not, the people who ask me this aren’t asking the right question. They see women all the time, throughout their day to day lives. The disconnect is that they don’t know what to do; they’ve absorbed so many conflicting ideas of when it is or isn’t appropriate to approach women or how to do so that they’re left feeling caught in a trap.

Two friends looking at a woman sitting on a park bench — “Go talk to her bro!”
“Dude, the wind is blowing in the wrong direction and the moon is in the wrong house. This is how you get canceled…”

If they don’t thread the needle of “right time/right place/right method” just so, they’re doomed to be accused of being a creeper. They’re terrified that they will screw up by accident and a good-faith attempt to talk to somebody will crash and burn in a spectacular fashion. Next thing you know, they’re in the final reels of Frankenstein, being chased by a torch-and-pitchfork wielding mob of faceless anti-creep vigilantes. In reality, the worst they’re likely to face is an awkward conversation that is easily forgotten as soon as they leave that person’s eye-line. However, our fears our rarely rational and logical.

The problem that they’re having isn’t that they’re not meeting women, it’s that they don’t know how to meet them. They’re seeing meeting women in terms of a cold-approach scenario, where they’re trying to approach a total stranger and impress her enough to make her consider starting a sexual or romantic relationship with them… and this doesn’t work. In fact, the scenarios most men imagine are almost perfectly designed to backfire in their faces for one very simple reason: women are tired of strangers trying to ‘pick them up’.

The men who are the best at meeting and dating awesome women understand this; they know how to connect with women in ways that bypass the feeling of “he’s just trying to pick me up” and create an immediate and powerful connection. You don’t need the gift of gab or to be a Hollywood celebrity. You simply have to know the right way to approach and talk to women.

Here’s how.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Why Is It So Hard For Me To Meet Women?

August 27, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc,

I have never had much luck dating. Whenever I ask anyone about this, they tell me I need to focus on myself. I need to find interests, work out, work on other goals. Then I do all of that… but still no luck. Then I’m told I need to do them for their own sake, not for women. So then I do that, still no luck. This feels downright Sisyphean, just constant shifting of the goalposts, still having no idea how to approach without being creepy, how to flirt, how to properly attract women.

When do these goalposts stop moving? When can I actually learn the skills I need to date? No matter how much I can lift, no matter how long and fast I can swim, no matter how many hobbies I pick up, that still won’t teach me how to properly approach, be not creepy, and flirt.

When does this happen that I finally learn?

Stuck In First Gear

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