1. Get Over Anxieties

- Social Anxiety: Approach regularly, relax into conversations, be able to build rapport consistently and easily.
- Sexual Anxiety: Be able to physically escalate, go for closes, talk sexually and fuck well.
- The only way to get over anxieties is by CONFRONTING THEM. People will use anything and everything to rationalize ways to avoid confronting their anxieties, the chief of which is inner game.

2. Balance Comfort and Attraction

- Attraction Heavy: A lot of guys are naturally attraction-heavy. They try too hard. They focus more on entertaining, joking, and excitement than actually connecting. They’re usually great at the first 5 minutes and bad at the rest. Girls flake on them constantly, give them tons of LMR, don’t stick around and are generally distrustful. These guys tend to have more sexual anxiety than social anxiety
- Comfort Heavy: Guys who are naturally comfort-heavy end up in the friend zone. They are more focused on connecting, building rapport, talking about life, experiences and genuine topics. They usually get blown out for being too boring and not expressive enough. They’re awful at the first 5 minutes but tend to be very good if a girl already likes them. They have trouble building attraction, but once they get it, girls rarely flake or give them LMR. These guys tend to have much more social anxiety than sexual anxiety.
- Balancing comfort and attraction is calibration. Every guy must learn to balance these two sides within themselves and also for each woman they talk to.
- Calibration is built through applying pick up theory through experience.

Side note: Most “naturals” are comfort-heavy guys who have some sort of natural attraction advantage. For instance, they’re good looking, in a rock band, nightclub promoter, etc. Their natural status or looks takes care of the attraction so they don’t ever have to.

Side note: Inner game is only useful inasmuch as it makes one aware of his anxieties and how to confront them.

That’s it.

Some highlights:

“The male brain on sex reacts similar to the way a cocaine addict’s does.”

“Your body now harbors 20 times the level of testosterone found in girls your age, which accounts for your sexual obsessions.
Unfortunately, your brain is maladapted for sociability, so she can overwhelm you with words, and all you have to counter them is silent (thank goodness) adolescent lust. It’s an advantage she has that you’ll never make up.”

“Guys with high levels were also 50 percent less likely to marry in the first place. Men with the least testosterone were more likely to get and stay married, maybe because lower testosterone levels make men more cooperative. If you’re too cooperative for your own good, build some muscle: It will increase testosterone levels over time.”

“Why you shouldn’t marry until you’re 25: Quite simply, a man’s brain is incomplete before then. Sure, his sexual organs are all present and accounted for, but his prefrontal cortex (PFC) is still developing. Which is too bad, because that’s the part of his brain that’s involved in judgment, impulse control, organization, planning, forethought, and learning from mistakes. And it won’t be fully developed until he’s 25.”

“Performance anxiety is about the fear of being judged or not living up to expectations. The body is programmed to see anxiety as a threat, and the nervous system sets up the fight-or-flight response, sending out chemicals to protect us: Our heart races, muscles tense, and blood is shunted from our hands, feet, and penis to the large muscles of the shoulders and hips so we can fight or run away. That’s not such a good strategy in bed, however.”

“Blame vasopressin. This hormone is involved in regulating sexual persistence, assertiveness, dominance, and territorial marking. And men have lots of it, naturally. In male voles (night-loving rodents, which probably describes you perfectly), the levels of vasopressin seem to make the difference between stay-at-home dads and one-night-stand artists. Your hormone levels are probably set at the genetics factory, but the more you give in to vasopressin, the more of it you produce. It’s your choice.”

1) The laws of passive/active attraction. This has been discussed ad nauseum on this blog in the last two months: here, here, and here. The cliff’s notes? Basically if a woman perceives you to ALREADY have more value than her, than you have to DLV yourself, compliment her and act “chodey” to get her. I just explained this in my calibration post and even provided examples! For anyone who thinks this guy is a “chode,” please go back and read all of those articles.

With that said, this guy is a BILLIONAIRE, well-connected, good-looking for his age (59), educated and probably smart as hell. His passive attraction is through the goddamn roof. Also, this woman most likely met him through a social circle and was probably already attracted to him. For this guy to do ANYTHING but write a sweet, emotional letter professing his feelings for her would be a mis-step.

2) For those of you who have listened to my audio course (downloadable from the front page), I make the point that attraction = value. Basically, we’re all attracted to what we find value in — this is true for men and women. For instance, if we value petty sex, we’ll be attracted to care-free party girls who are really hot. If we value emotional connection and a relationship, we’ll be more attracted to girls with character and personality. Aside from his billion dollars and his baseball team, this guy is demonstrating that he’s romantic, passionate and courageous (as she even points out). How many 30-year-old single women out there are looking for a rich man who’s romantic, passionate and successful? Uhh… practically all of them.

3) I tried to emphasize the point that at no point did he “give up his power” as Tyler Durden would say. This is a HUGE point for guys to understand about emotional connection, because most guys who get good at this automatically assume that anything that makes you emotionally vulnerable = chodey and needy. Not true. Pussies use their emotional vulnerability to because they’re putting the woman on a pedestal. This guy isn’t. He even says, “you don’t need to respond, I just wanted to let you know.” From an inner game perspective, he’s not being needy in the slightest, what he’s conveying is complete genuine interest — which, as we know, is one of the biggest turn-ons in a woman.

4) We need to remove the words “Chode” and “AFC” from our vocabulary. If there’s one point I’ve been constantly hammering home the last few months, it’s that “chodey” and “AFC” behavior works better than any PUA material if it’s used in the right situation and for the right reasons. There’s a reason 95% of the population uses it. I was recorded in-field by DJFuji last fall. I made out with a girl and pulled her and he commented the next day, “Dude, I don’t even know what you did. You barely said anything after you opened her. You like complimented her, bought her a drink and then took her home and fucked her.” It’s because if you have the right frame and aren’t needy, a lot of this “chodey” shit works like a charm. You just have to know when to use it.

Hopefully this makes more sense. I threw this up because this is an example contrary to typical PUA pick ups in a lot of ways. It’s good because it gets us thinking “outside the box.” And not only that, but if we’re going to have any theories about attraction and pick up, they need to be consistent in all situations, not just club skanks and college girls.

I totally agree with you that being physically imposing can be a big drawback once it comes to kino’ing. Being 6′, 220 lbs. at only 5% bodyfat, I get lots of looks and compliments from girls, and well honestly, gay guys and bisexuals too, on how I dress or how I look, but I have trouble escalating on sets that I open myself (as opposed to the ones who come to me) for the reasons you described. Do you have any tips on how to escalate as someone whose advantages are always getting in his way?

- Anonymous

OK, everyone all together now, “Aww, you’re too good looking, YOU POOR MOTHERFUCKER!”

There, now that we got that out of the way. The answer to your question is easy, based on the rules of passive/active attraction (which I lay out in the “Personalizing Pickup” series).

You’re overvalued. You’re trying to build attraction and get sexual when your look is already attractive and sexual. Therefore you come across as if you’re compensating for something.

What I recommend is to run 90% comfort game. Compliment girls more. Tell them you find them sexy. They’re assuming that you hook up with girls constantly, so they need to feel special or unique before they fuck you (or at least most of them will).

Hey Entropy,

I’m having a problem attracting women that I don’t find attractive. I’m in my late 30’s, pretty good-looking for my age and very successful. The women I attract tend to also be in their thirty’s and honestly, they’ve kind of let themselves go. What should I do?

- Jason

Date younger women. If you don’t want a committed relationship and want women who are in great shape, why the hell are you dating women in their 30’s? My guess is you have some sort of limiting belief concerning your age. I have a friend who is 49 and dates women in their mid to late 20’s. It should be no problem for you if what you say is true.

Time to ditch the hotel bars and hit the night clubs.

Is 5 supposed to represent the median girl, or the average one? Because the ugliest girls are far ugly than the hottest ones are hot. So that would mean the median girl must be significantly hotter than the average.

- Aaron

This is what I never understood about the 1-10 scale. For the vast majority it breaks down like this: 10 = ungodly hot, 9 = really hot, 8 = I’d do her, 7 = I’d do her, but I wouldn’t be proud, 6 = only if I’m really drunk and desparate, 5 and below = ugly with varying degrees.

This never made sense to me. This is another reason I recommend guys raising their standards, to have 2/3 of the scale dedicated to girls you’re not interested in seems silly. What ends up happening is you get guys debating with themselves whether she’s an 8.5 or an 8.75.

Here’s my scale:
10 = doesn’t exist except for on magazine covers and in Photoshop.
9 = A model.
8 = Super hot, the hottest girl in a nice club on any given Friday night.
7 = Hot, hottest girl in a regular bar on any given Friday night.
6 = Attractive, but not going to cause any car accidents just by walking down the street. You’ll see maybe a dozen of these on any given Friday night out.
5 = Cute, but nothing you’d be too proud of.
4 = Have to be really drunk.
3 = Ugly-but-has-potential
2 = Ugly-but-no-potential
1 = Vomit-inducing

And a side-note for all the self-righteous “You shouldn’t rate girls” assholes. I don’t care if you have a binary scale, a 1-4 scale, or a 1-52 scale, it’s all arbitrary. Answer the following question: are some women more physically attractive than others? YES! Then whether we distinguish that with a 10-point scale or a 2-point scale is completely arbitrary and not even worth arguing.

And no, just because we rate women’s attractiveness (something that every man on the planet has been doing since adolescence) doesn’t mean we’re “de-valuing” her in some way. My girlfriend is a 6.5 on my scale (8.5 on most guys’ scales) but that doesn’t mean I treat her as a 6.5. Some of the hottest girls I’ve ever gotten with were shitty people. Were they still 9’s? Hell yeah, they were.

OK, end rant.

Hey Entropy,

Can you escalate too quickly if your goal is an LTR?

- Skulder

Great question! I teach in my relationship management seminars that you ideally want to have sex with a woman AS SOON AS POSSIBLE because it gives you the widest available options as far as where to take the relationship. So you would assume the answer is “no.”

Well, surprisingly, the answer is “yes,” but to escalate too quickly you have to escalate at lightning fucking speed.

If I had to estimate, having sex with a girl in under an hour of meeting her will nix you from her “long-term” potential. Anything under 30 minutes, no question. I don’t know what it is, but when you hook up with a girl exceedingly fast, it’s like she almost doesn’t even feel like you’re real. I noticed this last year when I was getting a bunch of 30-second make-outs, the kissing would end and then there’d just be this awkward moment where the girl felt like she was in a dream or something and we had nothing to say to each other. It’s the same for fast bathroom pulls… afterward is just a horribly awkward experience.

I suppose theoretically it’s possible, but in general, the slower you escalate, the more you sub-communicate LTR expectations, the faster you escalate the less you do. In my experience, the cut off would be around an 30-60 minutes.

I hate the feeling of sleeping with/hooking up with girls that I am not that attracted to. I always feel shitty after the fact and while I might enjoy the experience I pray not to bump into that person again after. A lot of that could be due to immaturity and shallowness in general (i.e. thinking that a girls looks define how successful you are). However, I am sure that this is something that must comes up a lot in guys developments. Its not as if I am sleeping with anyone now so I always think that I should push myself to just sleep with as many girls as possible. However, I came into this to find girls that I could really like a lot not to put up numbers.

I know having standards that are too high is just a dumb copout. Intellectually that makes total sense. But there just feels something peverse about forcing yourself to hookup.

What are your thoughts on this?

This is a question I get a lot and it’s tough because my answer varies depending on the guy asking it and why he’s asking it.

Here are the two arguments:

1. The argument for hooking up with girls you’re not that attracted to is the “practice” argument. Basically, it gets you used to escalating, to getting physical and sexual, to reading signals from a girl who likes you, etc.

2. The argument AGAINST hooking up with girls you’re not into is, well… it’s that it’s not that fun.

I’ve always fallen into the second camp myself. I know some guys don’t mind sleeping with a fat chick now and then, but if I don’t find a girl attractive, I literally am not enjoying myself… I’d rather be masturbating.

So the answer here has more to do with priorities and what exactly a guy is struggling with. Doc used to regularly recommend guys with little or no sexual experience to lower their standards to get over a lot of their fears and anxieties surrounding women and being sexual. On many points, I agree with him.

But at the same time, if you don’t really have any sexual hang-ups, if you have some experience in the past, if you’ve been with attractive women before, there’s really NO acceptable reason to slum it other than to pad your stats.

Sleeping with a slew of mediocre girls is a validation trap, and in the end, it won’t get the moderately experienced guy any better with girls he’s ACTUALLY attracted to.

This quote got me thinking about how first impressions aren’t talked about enough in the community. Everyone is always talking about newest opener, the best way to develop inner game, frames, routines, and all kinds of other shit that doesn’t matter if you can’t get your foot in the door and start a conversation with someone.

Most people meet members of the opposite sex through their social circle or through common interests. If a girl meets a guy at a convention for doctors a lot is assumed and this affects her first impression of the guy. She can assume that he is successful, smart, educated, etc. before even looking at him. The fact that his shirt is a size too big is easily overlooked because of all the passive value he brings to the table just for being a doctor.

But we’re trying to learn COLD approach. On a cold approach you know nothing about the girl you’re going to start a conversation with and she know nothing about you. All she has to judge you on is the first impression you give off. If you’re well dressed, well groomed, carry yourself well, and make eye contact she’s much more likely to give you the time of day than if you have bad posture, need to shave, and all your clothes are a size too big.

But lets bring this all back to day game.

Day game is the coldest of the cold approach. You literally know nothing about the girl except that she shops in whatever store you happen to meet her in. You’re also in a situation where it’s not the social norm to hit on strangers. And finally you’re opening direct. Needless to say your first impression is pretty important.

I noticed a weird phenomenon that happened with my day game sets that I never really understood until recently. Women would always think that stuff I did was bolder and more direct than it actually was. I could talk about dropping out of college and they’d tell me they wish they could just do that and do what they wanted to do with life.

Everything I said and did was framed under the first impression that I was a man who went after what I wanted. The act of me going out of my way during the day and picking them up made such a lasting impression on them that everything I did afterward was framed around that first impression.

So how do you create a good first impression?

Sinn always said ‘Anyone who’s trying to get good at pickup and doesn’t dress well is retarded.” He’s right. Fashion and grooming is the first place to start. I’m not going to write a fashion guide though. GQ and Details are both excellent men’s fashion magazines and Kinowear is a great blog all about dressing for success.

For grooming you’re going to want to go get a “good” haircut. A good haircut should cost about $40. Salons that charge much more than that usually are just charging for the experience of being there and will have more complimentary services like bathrobes, head massages, drinks, etc. Unless you’re going for the 5 o’clock shadow look you want to shave daily. You want to keep your nails short and clean. Get rid of excessive body hair, especially on visible areas like your neck. And it should go without saying but brush your teeth, apply deodorant, and shower at least once a day.

The second thing you’re going to want to fix is your nonverbal communication. This means body language, eye contact, vocal tonality, facial expressions, etc. There are a ton of good books written on all of these subjects. A good one to start with is The Definitive Book of Body Language

Finally I like to add that you should have a good handshake. It should be firm but not rough and ff your dad didn’t teach you read this article or go to a car dealership and shake all the sales guys hands. Odds are that they’ll have a good handshake.

I can guarantee that the better your first impression is the better all of your interactions with women are going to go.

What are your thoughts on dealing with ADD chicks around there friends? Calling them out on it didn’t appear to work (I think they were sorority girls from some college), and they got distracted by every shiny object in the venue. We eventually ejected and opened another set that hooked, but the fact that these chicks didn’t bugs me for some reason. Any thoughts on dealing with this?

Guys and girls go out at night for two different reasons. Guys go out to get laid (most treat the process like being in the right place at the right time, as if it were being struck by lightning). Girls go out to have fun. That doesn’t mean they don’t fuck. It doesn’t mean that they don’t hook up. They obviously do. It just has to be really fun for them to do it.

ADD club chicks (and sorority chicks) in particular are looking for something in addition to having fun: to look cool in front of their friends — whether it being the prettiest girl, or dancing with the hottest guy, or knowing the DJ, or whatever.

These girls are constantly value-scanning the venue looking for something exciting to do or looking for something that’s going to make them look cooler than everybody else.

If you’re not exciting them or making them looking cooler than everybody else, then you’re done. They’re gone.

This is why these are the girls who complain (complain, can you believe it?) that some guys came and hit on them, and then two minutes later are tonguing down some meat-head in an Affliction shirt.

Why? Because Affliction guy is a bouncer and has muscles and looks cool, and the other guys are just plain average dudes.

To answer your question, girls like this require massive amounts of energy and kino. You have to be fun as shit and super aggressive at the same time. Forget having any semblance of a serious conversation with them. Forget your DHV stories — seriously, she doesn’t give a fuck if you scuba-dived on the Great Barrier Reef — grab her ass, spin her around, make fun of her shoes, treat her like a bratty five year old and then make out with her. Tell her retarded shit like you’re friends with the manager and that you hung out with T-Pain once and then five minutes later tell her you were kidding and that she’s stupid for believing you. Seriously, the game changes with these kinds of girls. It’s hard, but they’re typically the hottest girls around.

If you want a real “in” with ADD club girls, become a club promoter or start a cocaine habit… Hah, or better yet, do both! You think I’m kidding…

I have a love-hate relationship with these kinds of girls. But recently, I don’t bother with them much anymore. They’re good for SNL’s and bathroom lays if you can get them, but most of them have vapid personalities.

This past weekend, circumstance had it that I got absolutely shit-housed two nights. Friday night, about halfway into the night, I found myself enmeshed in like a 15-set of Indian girls. The fat one LOVED me and kept putting shots of Patron under my nose. It was pretty awesome, as even though she wanted to bang me, I was able to use her to pivot to all of her cute friends.

Me: “Who’s that over there. Do you know her?”
Her: “Yeah, hey HBRandomIndian! Come meet Entropy! He’s great!”

The drawback was that the Patron caught up to me pretty quickly. For the first time since I was in college, I actually fell on my ass I was so fucking drunk. Next time you want to lose a SNL try falling over like a moron. Field-tested, Entropy approved.

Sunday night, a student who works in the film industry invited me to a wrap party. Basically a wrap party is the party they throw when filming is finished and all of the crews, extras, actors and of course, actresses are invited. The bad news was there were only a few decent sets. The worse news (or great news) was the open bar. Once again, I proceeded to mentally annihilate myself.

Now, to the point of this post. The longer I do this and the more I analyze what we’re all doing, the more I realize how almost EVERYTHING comes down to calibration. It doesn’t matter how good your skills are, if you can’t calibrate, you’re cooked.

I never noticed it back when I used to drink all of the time, but since I took about 6-8 months of little drinking, I notice it now. Getting drunk RUINS your calibration. I would give examples and details here, but honestly, I can barely remember them. I just remember saying things that seemed to be fucking money and the girls looked at me like I was a retard. This happened multiple times. Both nights I got some numbers that seemed really solid, but the next morning when I went over the night in my head, I realized they weren’t solid at all.

Guys love to drink because it makes you feel like you’re invincible. If you feel you’re invincible, you can open easier, escalate faster, and be bolder. But unfortunately, it kills your calibration, so many of your sets aren’t going to go nearly as far as they normally would. When you’re sober, you can always force yourself to open, escalate and be bold. But when you’re drunk, there’s no recovering your social calibration skills.

This isn’t to say I don’t drink or don’t think you should either. Community dogma is to never drink. I honestly think I get better with a couple drinks. One or two drinks loosens me up and pumps my state a bit. I enjoy it. The important thing is that you should never NEED alcohol and that you should try to avoid getting hammered.