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.

Interesting discussion came up on the Boston boards about rating girls and guys having trouble “getting the 9’s and 10’s.” This is a pretty common problem, and the solution I found to it a while back isn’t obvious by any means.

Some people say ditch the ratings scale, which isn’t a bad idea. Guys who get too obsessed with the ratings scale and adjusting their game to it end up objectifying women a great deal. Although physical beauty CAN be judged, its correlation to a girl’s personality is loose at best.

So ditching it is better than being married to it. But I’ve found that you can use it to help you.

The rest of the post is written in response to a guy who said: “6’s and 7’s are easy and I’m not that into them. I don’t have to try. 9’s and 10’s are hard and I get really nervous around them. How do you get over this?”

The rating scale is all in your head, so you can use it to fuck you up (like you’re doing now), or you can use it to your advantage.

“Quality” girls is a relative term. We’ve all known this — your 10 could be my 6 and vice-versa.

But it’s also relative to you. For instance, I had a big realization when I ran into some FB’s from like 3 years ago. What used to be a 9 was now a 7 at best. The girl that three years before I was shaking in my shoes trying to hook up with became a girl who would be lucky if I called her back. It’s relative IN YOUR HEAD TOO.

When you go out, you say that 6’s and 7’s are easy. 9’s and 10’s are hard. We can deduce that you are valuing yourself at about an 8 (this is all pretty normal by the way).

The 6’s are easy because you don’t perceive them to be worth your time or energy to pursue. As a result, you act non-reactive, un-needy and laid back around them creating a lot of attraction.

On the other hand, you perceive the 9’s and 10’s the have more value than you, so you are more inclined to be try-hard, needy and sensitive.

If you change your perception of what’s a 9 and 10, then you can fix these problems.

Basically, just move your scale up. What used to be your 9 is now your 7. That HB7 FB you have is now a 5. What would your new 9 or 10 be?

Now go after them. What you’ll find is, you’ll start laying 6’s and 7’s pretty easily again with some practice… except these are 6’s and 7’s that used to be your 9’s and 10’s.

The only drawback to this, is you develop obscenely high standards. And your friends think you’re a snob. LOL.

Once the new set of 6’s and 7’s become too easy, slide your scale up again. What ends up happening is your definition of a 9 become a Maxim model and your 10 ceases to exist, hahaha.

But this is what I mean by using the rating scale to your ADVANTAGE rather than limiting yourself by it. When you keep it and obsess over it and keep it so limited, you’ll always be stuck going for the “9’s and 10’s.” But if you slide it up repeatedly, what you’re actually doing is tricking your mind to slide up your own perceived value, which in turns causes you to be non-needy, unreactive, chilled out and really cool around REALLY hot chicks.

Basically, you want your scale to slide up along with your success. Guys who adapt insanely high standards without any success or experience are just making excuses. But if your standards are always ONE STEP AHEAD of your experience, you’ll constantly be improving.

And then suddenly one day, you’ll run into an old fuck buddy of yours from three years ago, and realize she isn’t even close to as hot as you remember her.