How To Succeed With Women | (#087) The Masculine Psychology Podcast with David Tian

Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast, where we answer key questions in dating, relationships, success, and fulfillment, and explore the psychology of masculinity. Now, here’s your host, world-renowned therapist and life coach, David Tian.

David: Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast. I’m David Tian, your host. In this episode, I’m going to be zooming out to give you the bigger picture on how to succeed with women, whether you’re looking for a relationship, whether you want to have more casual hookups and live the bachelor life, or whether you’re currently in a relationship and want to improve and deepen your connection and passion in that relationship, or even if you’re just listening to this podcast to help a friend. By the end of this episode, you should know exactly which steps to take to achieve success, given your situation. [00:54.6]

So, for those who are looking to succeed with women, whether it’s in a relationship or with many women in a single life as a bachelor, I’ll be going through my recommendations for what to do, given your current situation and your current goals. This is very important because I actually serve many different audiences, and it may not be clear through the episode title or the content of the episode which audience I’m serving or primarily speaking to in any given episode.

Plus, this is Episode 87 now, and that means that I’ve had 86 episodes up until now. Each episode is 30 to 50 minutes long, roughly, and that represents at least 43 hours of me talking alone continuously. The average book can be read in seven hours, read out loud in seven hours, so I have produced, unwittingly, through this weekly podcast, the equivalent of six books worth of content. [01:55.3]

So, for those sifting through the previous episodes, and that doesn’t even include all of the content I have already made before I started this podcast—I had three other podcasts going that you can find on my YouTube channel—got lots of this free content, plus, our free masterclass. All you need to do is opt in with your email on my website, DavidTianPhD.com, and we’ve got 14 and counting master classes on there, for how to succeed in relationships, how to succeed in your single life, how to be more social, make more friends, the whole thing. We’ve got e-books, video courses, audio courses, so 14 different masterclasses for free in there.

Before putting out more material, because I could do this endlessly, I would like to take the time to give you a kind of guide through the material that I’ve produced so far in this podcast with regards to– not all of the episodes have to do with succeeding with women, by the way. I’ve got some movie analyses in there. Some of the episodes are far more purely therapeutic or purely psychotherapeutic. But my primary audiences are men who are seeking to be better with women to improve their results, whether that’s in dating or in relationships with women. So, I’m going to zoom out now and give you the broader overview of what to do given your situation. [03:15.0]

Also, because sometimes guys don’t realize that any particular episode, they may not be the primary audience for that episode, and then they don’t listen very carefully and they think that they are, and then they get confused. So, I’m zooming out now to give you the sort of the bigger-picture blueprints for what to do and in how to succeed, whether you’re in a relationship or single, whether you’re single and want to be in a relationship, or whether you’re single and want to optimize your bachelor dating life and hook up with as many attractive women as you can for a period of time, as long as it’s between consenting adults and you’re not lying or misrepresenting yourself, and you’re doing it for a relatively short period of time, like a couple years, a few years. Hey, I did it for several years. Of course, I went really extreme with it and created personas that became false selves. It’s important to have that distinction. [04:12.6]

By the way, that is not within the scope of this episode. It would go too deep in one particular area, but I do make an important difference between the false self and the persona, and I’ve covered that in other material, including the free material and video seminars, and in this podcast. I also covered in depth in my course Invincible, especially in Module 2, Invincible 5.0, the new version, the newest latest version, because I’m continually updating Invincible, as of now anyway. I also lead Invincible live a couple times a year.

Anyway, the latest version of Invincible, which is Invincible 5.0, in Module 2, I go in depth on the difference between the persona, the false self and the true self. I also get asked the question of “What if I haven’t experienced it?” The question was asking, “What if I haven’t experienced the dating life much? And I know, eventually, I would like to settle down, but, right now, I just want to date around and I can’t because I don’t really have the skills or know what I’m doing there. But I’d like to do that for a period of time. Is that a bad thing?” [05:14.7]

I’d say the younger you are, the less bad it is, so if you’re in your teens and you just want to party a bit, there’s very little harm there because you’re really just exploring and accruing important life experience. This will help you to appreciate the committed, monogamous relationship that you end up settling into later and the family that you create. Otherwise, you’re going to have the white-picket-fence problem, if you settle too early, and always be wondering if the grass is greener on the other side.

This is a very common phenomenon for men and for women and a lot of the judgmental red pill, MGTOW, incel manosphere world, judges women for now going through this period of the women saying, “I don’t want to experience later in life, wishing that you had lived it up a bit more,” because the grass is greener on the other side and now you’ve settled for the white picket fence. [06:08.8]

Okay, so the same applies to the men. Get it out of your system. The younger you are, the less dangerous it is. I did it, beginning as I was turning 30, as a result of separating from my first wife, paired with leaving a very conservative evangelical faith. By the way, I’m writing a book in which I’ll chart all the details about this, in case you’re interested.

I did it relatively late, so I had to do a lot of changing of myself. It’s the changing of yourself in order to hook up with a lot of women that is the dangerous part from a mental-health perspective. If you naturally get lots of women just by being the way you are and all you’re doing is saying yes to consenting women that “Yes, you may have sex with me,” that kind of thing, and you just indulge for a period of time, there’s nothing really wrong with that, and that may actually be a good thing because you aren’t going to be curious about it later on. It’s developing a false self in order to get this thing that you don’t naturally get that becomes a dangerous proposition from a mental-health perspective. [07:15.8]

So, addressing that question that was posed to me that is part of the reason why I’m zooming out at this point in the podcast—the question about do I regret going through that phase, the player phase—I regret some of it. I went too extreme in some respects. But I don’t regret the actual experiences I’ve had, because now I have zero curiosity about that lifestyle and I definitely don’t see the grass as being greener over there, whereas I have plenty of friends and acquaintances in their 40s and 50s, and late-30s, who are definitely experiencing that FOMO or “the grass is greener” phenomena, that kind of fantasizing and envying of that bachelor-player casual-hookup lifestyle. [08:02.8]

Actually, I will be addressing those men like myself, who actually did or are able to get good at game, so to speak, through learning things that they didn’t know before and practicing them until they get internalized, because I’m going to address why that’s a problem and what to do about it later on.

But that’s one of the many variables that I’ll be addressing. I’ll be addressing the five most common audience variations that I get for men who wants to succeed with women, and in four out of the five cases, and I would argue, all five, the best course of action to get to that success in life and with women is not what most of the advice you get on the internet is telling you, and by most, I mean 99 percent. [08:50.4]

Okay, so let’s get into it. I have in front of me a kind of flowchart. It’s sort of like a truth tree, a decision tree—and that’s one of the drawbacks of doing an audio-only podcast or audio first. For visual thinkers like myself, it might benefit you to just see it all at a glance, so let me know if that’s you. Or if you prefer to consume content on audio, I’ll just walk you through it. But if you’re a minority that likes diagrams like me, let me know, I’ll see if I can get our graphics guy to draw up something cool that we can post somewhere.

First, I’m going to deal with the easiest case, guys who are currently in relationships. I don’t make a lot of content for guys who are currently in relationships, because through our research, we’ve found that most guys who are in relationships are lazy and think all of the work has already been done, because now they’re in a relationship or they’re married.

Now, of course, they’re in for a rude awakening, but they don’t usually figure that out until they’re almost in hell, at which point they’re in such serious damage control because they weren’t really paying attention to it. For many of them, they’re too deep in it that they don’t respect relationship skills or psychology, or psychotherapy, in general. That’s most guys who are in troubled relationships, which is most relationships. [10:02.3]

But if you are in a relationship and you’re listening to this to get help with that relationship, you are awesome and you are already in the elite minority, so awesome, props to you. And let me know if you are in a relationship and you have questions, because I would love to make more content for and address the issues of people who are in relationships. I just don’t know whether that will get much engagement among men. Most relationship material trends a lot more with women.

So, let me know. I’ve created an entire course that is my pride and joy and it is called Rock Solid Relationships. The most recent version is 2.0 and I lead it live. I’m currently leading a class going through the 10-week course live, which can also get access to, Rock Solid Relationships, the course, through our Platinum Partnership. You can just write to our support team and they’ll let you know how it works. [10:55.6]

Rock Solid Relationships is the way to go and it is very psychotherapeutic. We go through your shadow, your shadow parts. We do a lot of shadow work. We go through toxic shame and there’s a whole sequence on grief work and encountering your inner child and imagery rescripting. There’s quite a bit of parts work. There’s a lot of Gestalt work in there.

Then we get into assertiveness, attachment styles. There’s a whole module on each of those, assertiveness and attachment styles. Then we get into sex and sex psychology, and then we get into nontraditional relationships, like open relationships. We also cover a lot of masculinity and masculine energy, including natural ways of boosting your testosterone.

It is very detailed, very thorough, and I’m so proud of it and I love this course, and my heart is still totally in it. I’d actually love to make more content for this. I’m married, I’m very much in a marriage with a kid now, and all of these issues are very present current issues that I’d love to get into, so let me know if that interests you. [11:55.4]

Okay, so that’s one, guys who are in relationships. I know that most of the guys, through our surveying, are single, even the guys who buy and sign up for Rock Solid Relationships. Power to them for getting started before they get into relationship, which is actually the crucial period, because 90 to 95 percent of success in relationship has to do with your choice of mate, so the fact that they’re signing up early is even a bigger props to them.

Addressing the single audience now, I’ve got four different variations on this audience. Okay, so let’s figure out which one you’re in. The first variation is guys who are single, but are primarily interested in getting into a relationship. Then the other three variations are guys who are interested for the medium, short to medium term, most interested or more interested in getting a lot of casual hookups. Or let’s just call it what it is, sex with hot women, okay, and they don’t want to do it just through just sex alone. They want to have the connection and the flirting, and very likely, they want to have the ego validation, the ego boost and the confirmation that they are masculine men, etc. [13:02.3]

All of that needs to be addressed in therapy. But the clear goal is more hot sex with more women. That’s very different from being in a loving relationship, right? The first split on the decision tree for single men is, on the one hand, you want a relationship; on the other, you want hot sex with lots of women. That’s the first big split. I’m going to address one side of that split, one of the two branches, and then I’ll go to the other branch, which is the hot sex with many women, which subdivides into three more branches.

Okay, so before I go there, let’s deal with the one that doesn’t subdivide, the one which is single men who are most interested right now in creating a loving relationship.

A lot of the episodes in this podcast, especially recently have been addressing this audience, especially the point about optimizing for a long-term relationship rather than lots of short-term casual hookups, because the way that you will present yourself, the way that you will interact, the way that you will be “testing,” quote-unquote, women, the kind of challenges you’ll be putting up, the kind of evaluative measures you’ll be using, will be a lot more stringent and a lot more polarizing. [14:16.8]

Because you’re looking for that one top-one woman that you will invest your life into, building a life together, your life partner, is very different and a lot more stringent, and should be a lot more demanding than the standard that you would present for just a one-night stand, right? That’s kind of obvious, but I want to make that point, because a lot of guys mess this up right off the bat.

The myth is, for most single guys in the Western world, “I’m going to date lots and lots of women, as many as I can, and then I’ll just choose one of them.” The part where they’re like, I’m going to choose one of them for a marriage, they’re not thinking about optimizing that. They’re thinking about presenting themselves in such a way that they will have the maximum number of women saying yes to them. This is what I call or this is what I refer to as optimizing for the short term. In so doing, they actually change how they are. [15:10.7]

Optimizing for the long term, if you’re a single guy and you’re trying to get a relationship, optimizing for a long-term relationship means that you’re going to be leading with the things about yourself that are authentically you. This is what I’ve been referring to as optimizing. Mark Manson uses the term “polarizing.” The effect is the same. There is a natural way to do this and that is through what I’ve been referring to as the seven steps, the therapeutic process, the seven steps of the therapeutic process, and I’ve dedicated an entire podcast episode to the seven steps.

Okay, in addition to that, what I’ve been doing recently in the past few episodes is pointing out that, in addition to the seven steps, you can also use the therapeutic process to access and grow parts of you that are already naturally attractive, and help them to be even more attractive and more seductive, and enjoy it the whole time, and they’ll be even happier. These parts of you will be even happier, as a result. [16:12.3]

As a result, you will get more women who will be attracted to you, and so more women to choose from, but you’ll be doing it in an authentic way because you’re putting yourself out there in the most authentic way possible. That’s what I mean when I say you’re optimizing for the long term, not optimizing for the short term. This is what I’m referring to in terms of the long tail.

As an easy, quick example from me, I am of Taiwanese heritage. I am proudly Asian and I, in fact, did my PhD, my home department was the Asian Cultures Department, and as of now, I’ve lived more than half my life in Asia. I love Asian food, I love Asian culture, and so on. I have tattooed on my arm beautiful Chinese calligraphy, in my opinion, and I wear that proudly. A lot of what I talk about is the best Asian food, Asian restaurants. I talk a lot about places in Asia. I’m hanging out and living, most of the time, in Asia, and so all of that’s taken care of. [17:11.7]

I know there are a lot of Asian Americans and second-generation Asian men who are living in Western countries who don’t love Asian culture very much. Not usually that they hate it. It is sort of like their comfort zone for when they were kids, but a part of them resents it because it hampered them and it might have led to some bullying when they went to school. I totally get that. I grew up in suburban Toronto and in Kansas City, Missouri, before that, and in New York, so I understand where they’re coming from.

But what’s authentic for me is my love for Asian food and Asian culture, and so on, so I’m not going to temper that down. I’m not going to downplay it. I’m not going to hide it. I’m going to be pretty much in your face with it when you meet me in person. So, if being Asian or Asian culture makes you uncomfortable or something like that, I want to find out as fast as possible and turn you off so that you’re not going to waste my time and we’re not going to waste each other’s time. [18:09.4]

And that’s just one out of dozens of things that I’ve thought through about what is authentic to me that the only way that would change is if I had some kind of, I don’t know, traumatic brain injury that gave me a whole different personality that started to dominate. But all of the parts of me are very proud of my Asian heritage, so if you can’t handle that, then I want to polarize you. I want to optimize to select you out as quick as possible so we don’t waste time. [18:38.0]

No matter their physical strength, for many men, emotions are too much for them to handle. It’s why they can’t give women the deeper levels of emotional intimacy and connection that they crave. It’s why they fail to be the man that modern women desire most: a man with inner strength, a man who has mastered his emotions.

Find out how to master your emotions through David Tian’s “Emotional Mastery” program. The Emotional Mastery program is a step-by-step system that integrates the best of empirically-verified psychotherapy methods and reveals how to master your internal state and develop the inner strength that makes you naturally attractive, happy, and fulfilled.

Learn more about this transformational program by going to DavidTianPhD.com/EmotionalMastery.

That’s D-A-V-I-D-T-I-A-N-P-H-D [dot] com [slash] emotional mastery.

Now, speaking to my Asian-American brothers, the second-generation Asian whatever it’s called, Western brothers, if you’re going to optimize for getting as many sexual encounters with women in the West as you can, I think Asians represent 5 percent or less of the whole population of any Western country so that would be really stupid to be optimizing for 5%, so you would want to optimize for white girls. [20:04.8]

When I was starting out learning game pickup in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that’s exactly what I did. I had to translate a lot of my cultural experiences into white people talk. But I couldn’t tell them about the Buddhist temples that I was visiting for my PhD research. I had to tell them about Indiana Jones and then draw that connection through a really kind of horrible orientalism. But I just swallowed it and said, “Suck it up, if you want to hook up with these 21-year-old college chicks who have never left, in many cases, the Midwest.”

And they’re not racist on purpose or anything. They’re just ignorant. Don’t take her for your first date to a sashimi place that only has sashimi, unless you’re doing that to polarize to optimize to select her out, or if you just want to kind of screw with her and kind of put her down like a subtle nag or something, though, if you have any value at all, that will come off as just insensitive rather than a kind of flirtatious tease. [21:02.6]

I’m just drawing one example, I could go on for dozens more, and, hopefully, you get the point. If what you’re looking for is a relationship with one human being, one woman out of 8 billion people on this planet, the best thing you can do is to figure out who you are, get to know yourself the best, and then put that out there in the most authentic way where you’re not thinking about attracting her at all. You’re just focused on presenting you most authentically.

And how can you get to that point where you don’t even give a fuck about whether she likes you or not, and you’re just giving a fuck about whether you’re true to yourself as a main priority? It’s the therapeutic seven steps. That’s what you do.

Okay, so that’s the first audience, the first variation. Single guys who are most interested in finding a relationship right now, I’ve been making lots of episodes for you guys. Optimize for the long-term relationship. Don’t optimize for lots and lots of short-term relationships or short-term hookups, one-night stands and that sort of thing. The best way to condition yourself to practice, to train in optimizing in this way, is the therapeutic seven steps, the therapeutic process. [22:11.7]

Okay, and then on top of that, if you want to draw out more of your attractive parts and train them in an enjoyable way for them, there’s even more IFS type of work that you could do on top of that. But you’ve got to be a fair way along the seven steps to be able to do that in an emotionally and mentally healthy way.

Okay, now going to the other side of the decision tree—so we’re now leaving the guys who are single who most want a relationship—we’re now moving into the guys who are single who want to have lots of casual sex.

Okay, among the casual sex group, there are branches off into three different variations. I’ll dispose of the first one pretty quickly. The first one is if you’re already naturally, so to speak, really good with women, and there are various ways in which that would have come about, but almost always that what you have in common is, early on in your life, maybe in your pre-teens, you had a role model or maybe an older sister who opened the doors for you, like with Tom Cruise, it was the older sister. [23:09.0]

When he was 10 years old or whatever, they sat him on the sink at home and his older sisters lined up to practice kissing with little Tommy so that they could be great kissers with the guys their age. Of course, Tom Cruise was the beneficiary of this training and got lots of confidence naturally as a result of that, and that was happening when he was 10 years old, from what I remember.

You might have had a really supportive, emotionally-healthy mother and father. I hope that my son, pretty much expect him to have these natural mindsets. He kind of already does. He was starting around eight months or so. He was blowing kisses to little girls walking by, at the point where my wife’s father was like, Hey, hey, who do you think you are, a rock star? because a row of three little girls walked by, and he was like eight months, at the restaurant, and he’ll turn and blow them these kisses. Then when they all turned because he’s really cute and they started waving, he waves and then he just turns away, and then they come back and they’re waving and he just ignores them, already a little baby player. [24:11.7]

So, this can happen. You can become a natural with women, so to speak, and if that’s the case—I’m not sure why you’re listening or found me somehow. Maybe it’s for a friend, and I do get plenty of men and women writing to me to ask for advice for their friends, real or imagined, and if that’s the case—and you’re a natural and you’re now seeking something deeper, because maybe you’ve devoted a decade of your life just screwing everything that said yes to you and you’re finding emptiness and meaninglessness in the hedonism, and you’re wondering if there’s more and somehow you found my podcast– I had an earlier podcast called the DTPHD Podcast that was a lot more focused on philosophical issues, like the meaning of life. Maybe you found me through there. If that’s the case, then, straight up, psychotherapy is the way to go with these existential issues and, in particular, kind of philosophical psychotherapy. [25:01.6]

By that I don’t mean that you have philosophical debates in therapy, but a more philosophically-inclined type of psychotherapy that is also experiential like IFS, but also more philosophically-inclined, like the existential psychotherapy of Irvin Yalom.

I’ve recently become, as a latecomer to this, a big fan of existential psychotherapy as practiced and championed by Irvin Yalom, where you’re digging deep into the meaning of life and death, and what would make life worth living. Don’t take that for granted, as if it were just an obvious yes. It’s not an obvious yes, if you’re smart, if you’re a deep thinker. Anyway, I would recommend that, just straight-up psychotherapy, if you’re a natural and you found this.

I’m going to now move on to the second out of the three variations. The second is if you’re in the top 5 percent, roughly, of single men who are currently struggling with women, who could learn game just through the advice and then practicing it, and then doing lots and lots of practice and internalizing the mindsets and behaviors. [26:08.6]

What this assumes, which is different from the situation with the, quote-unquote, “naturals”, this assumes that you, currently, when you started out before you started learning the details of the game, that you weren’t good at it. And that means that most of the parts that have been running your system—that is, the parts of you that are dominant in your personality that you’re inhabiting for most of the day. These could be parts that are in charge of or handle a lot of your work, your day job, and the parts that are out when you’re, I don’t know, maybe at the pub with your other guy friends or whatever; and maybe the parts of you that are out and handle social situations with women—those parts, I’m assuming, aren’t naturally good at attracting and escalating with the women that you are attracted to, because if they were, you’d be in the first category. I would consider you to be the natural. [27:00.6]

But now I’m addressing this second category, which is the small minority of men who currently struggle with women, but who could get good with women through mere effort and willpower, and forcing it through practice and going through the grind, what PUA used to call beginner’s hell, and learning the game and practicing strategies, and all this sort of thing.

This is such a small percentage of men, I would say, maybe less than 5 percent, where it’s actually possible for you to get really good at game to the point where it becomes naturalized, internalized, and fully assimilated, in which case, what you have done is, if that’s the case, you didn’t have it before and then you practice and you forced it, and through willpower and through this hell period, you managed to make it like you’re almost a natural. You would have then created false selves or, which was the case for me, you had personas or parts of you that came to the fore and became or stood in the role of false selves. [27:59.5]

Either way, it’s not pretty, because what you’ve created is what works for short-term mating, for maximizing your results, and it’s getting maximum sex with as many women as you can who are attracted to you. In order to do that, the people who have or the most of the men who have the most success doing that have dark-triad traits, and the one that leads in the long term is the narcissistic personality.

Of course, there’s also one that’s not very well-defined, which is a kind of thing called Machiavellianism, constantly, in your mind, playing these games. It’s like a chess master who has gotten really good at it, so you’re still calculating, but it’s fast and it’s almost unconscious, right? But what’s driving it is the mindsets where it comes from the narcissism, the narcissistic personality.

If you don’t know already, the dark triad is psychopathy, psychopaths, where you have lack of empathy. You have some impulsiveness. That’s psychopathy. Then you’ve got the game-playing of the Machiavellians and they’ll do whatever it takes, lie, dissemble, represent themselves deceptively, right? That’s Machiavellianism. Then kind of the bedrock of it, in my opinion, is the narcissistic personality, because that’s really the mindset. That’s like the inner game of it, and if you master that, then all of the behaviors become second nature. [29:12.2]

So, if you’ve sucked with women before or struggled with him, in order to optimize now as a second-nature thing that you’ve taken on, you would have had to take on these dark-triad traits to some degree, and the more natural you are at it, the more likely you’ve internalized a lot of narcissistic-personality traits. This is what I call compensatory narcissism. I’ve devoted a whole other podcast episode going in depth on this problem. It begins with the title “Compensatory Narcissism”, and I’m writing a book that charts this out in a lot of detail.

What I would recommend for those who are actually able to get really good at game, if you’re listening to this, you’re probably still in that phase of a struggle, hard work, and some of it is working, some of it is not, and you’re still training. Maybe you have an inkling that this isn’t very emotionally or mentally healthy and now you’re paying attention to what I’m saying, which is awesome, kudos to you, and for you, I would say the same as I would to the naturals. [30:10.6]

You’re probably getting to the point of realizing the underlying existential problems of life of the meaninglessness of this pursuit of mere pleasure and you’re wondering, where’s your true self? You’re wondering, Why should I stay alive? That sort of thing. If it’s just accruing more sex and pleasure, and that sort of status and ego validation, the whole thing seems empty, because you, unlike the natural, are working really hard for this. You’re sacrificing a lot and I bet there are parts of you that are exhausted of this, the sort of running the rat race in this area of the social-dating arena.

What I would recommend to you is also the therapeutic process, but not just the seven steps, but maybe something even deeper, like I would for the naturals, depending on how far along you are in internalizing these mindsets, the narcissistic mindsets, just pure psychotherapy, and, again, with a philosophical, existential bent. [31:04.8]

As I’ve charted it out, most guys don’t fall into this category, because only about 5 percent, one out of 20 guys who struggle with women currently would actually be able to succeed through dint of effort, willpower, hard work, practice for years, and four nights a week of socializing and clubbing, bar-hopping or whatever it is. Right? Just going on endless dates, Tinder dates that you set up, right? There’s a whole period. It’s going to take this whole period that could be months. Years, it could be for some people.

For most of the guys who are single, who want lots of sex with lots of different attractive women, who aren’t able to get results or not massively different results from implementing any online dating advice—they might get some tweaks here and there, copy-and-paste Tinder profile kind of thing or copy-and-paste some Tinder messages, but when they show up and meet in person, that’s all them and maybe they’re trying to remember some things that they heard or whatever. But, generally speaking, 19 out of 20 guys who currently struggle with women are not going to be able to get better with women through applying game advice, through applying the advice they find online—they’re not going to be able to drastically improve their results through that. [32:16.3]

The reason why is because of the toxic shame that they’re suffering from and their core insecurities, and what that looks like to them on the surface is approach anxiety, social anxiety, not knowing what to say, going blank, maybe having physiological reactions of sweaty palms and an elevated heart rate, and just extreme nervousness and not being able to relax and be themselves when they’re around women.

Those are all symptoms of the toxic shame that they’re dealing with, which can be also cashed as the belief that they’re not enough, specifically, that they’re not worthy or enough for love just in who they are, just by being them, just by existing. For most people, not just achievers, the belief is that you’re not enough, unless you earn it, so you’ve got to go and do stuff for it, to achieve it, to earn it. [33:04.6]

That’s getting manifested in this very nerve-wracking experience of trying to propagate your genes, which is like the evolutionary imperative, like whether you are given the permission to now procreate is like the whole point, from an evolutionary perspective, of your existence.

You might get sweaty palms and nervous when giving a speech in your, I don’t know, sixth-grade class and there are reasons for that, but that may not have to do with your toxic shame. But what’s coming up when you’re at this juncture of the mating dance and whatever it can resemble that will trigger in the more primitive parts of your brain, the amygdala, and so on, this primal urge to procreate and, in a way, in terms of sort of the selfish-gene view of evolution, the whole point of your existence, it’s all riding on this, and so there’s a lot of anxiety that comes up here. [33:58.5]

Often, guys think that they’re in the 5 percent who can get good at it through advice, and they spend a lot of effort and they spin their wheels, and they’d hardly get any improvement or results, but they put in a lot of work, in their perspective, and they become, as a result–

Because they don’t get the results, or they get some results and then they get cheated on or they lose the game, basically, they lose a Machiavellian game, they’re not as good at the game-playing as they thought they were. They thought they were playing a different game, probably, but then they found out that the woman that they were with plays much better at a much higher level than they do.

I also am working on explaining this in much more detail, this whole phenomena, in my upcoming book, and let me know if you want to hear more because I can do this in a podcast episode in the future.

But these guys end up being really bitter, and they end up in the manosphere, and that can be the incel crowd, MGTOW, red pill, and they’re driven by this sort of bitterness and anger towards women and toward their lot in life, not recognizing that there’s an actual way out and not understanding the underlying reasons why they struggle with women so much. [35:02.7]

These 95-percent guys, I would also recommend the same thing I would for the guys who are single, but who mostly want a relationship: the therapeutic process of the seven steps, because you’re not going to get the results you’re looking for, or lots of casual sex with lots of hot women, by trying to implement the online dating advice, which is really just surface level. And even if it does work so you make it deep, you’ve now internalized narcissistic-personality traits.

This is assuming you don’t look like an Adonis unnaturally, because you could just be a really good-looking, really charming guy naturally, genetically or maybe through your upbringing, and so then that wouldn’t be narcissistic personality per se.

But what I’m saying is, if you currently struggle with it, which assumes that, implies that you’re not good-looking enough to get the kind of results you’re after and you have to put it on as a second nature, that second nature very likely, if you’re getting, really, a drastic difference in results with women, is going to be along the lines of the dark triad, and that’s going to really mess you up for happiness. [36:04.5]

It’s basically going to block your long-term happiness and fulfillment in life, and it will attract to you lots of emotional-vampire type women, because they’re most attracted to that type of energy, that type of game-playing. They’re like, Aha, someone who knows the game like I do, and it’s like an advanced vampire now feasting on an advanced victim.

So, don’t go down that route of spending a lot of time learning the game and how to optimize for the short term, because 95 percent of you won’t be able to do it, won’t be able to pull it off, because there’s too much toxic shame, core insecurities, the therapeutic problems blocking your success in even implementing them—and thank God, because, otherwise, you’re in that 5-percent game category that I’ve addressed that will end up developing narcissistic personality traits, as well as possibly psychopathy and definitely Machiavellianism. And maybe even sadism, that’s a fourth dimension. Then they all need deeper psychotherapy beyond just the seven steps, right? [37:00.2]

So, in a way, thank God that you’re not, because your problems are less severe because you didn’t go down that rabbit hole, but don’t get into the bitter side. The 95 percent branches off to two ways. You could end up in the bitter manosphere or you could do what I’ve been recommending, which is the seven steps of a therapeutic process.

Okay, there is an add-on to that as well. If you get pretty good at the seven steps or you go some way into it, you can also access and train and educate your naturally-attractive parts.

Okay, so I went into that in a lot more detail than I expected, because I’m looking at literally just a post-it note flowchart diagram here. To recap, I’ve covered the five variations that are most common in my audience: Those who are in a relationship and want to improve that relationship, what to do there. Those who are single and are most interested in creating a loving relationship. Those who are single, but want to maximize their casual-sex hookups. [37:57.0]

Then that branches off to three variations of those who are naturally good at it, so to speak, the top 5 percent. Or I shouldn’t say “top.” The 5 percent of single men who currently struggle with women who could get good at short-term hookups, just through willpower and effort, and the dangers of that. Then to the vast majority, the 95 percent, who are blocked because of overwhelming toxic shame and core insecurities that need to be addressed first, and what to do about it in each of those five different cases.

Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear your feedback. Give me your comments. Hit a like, if you liked, this on whatever platform you’re watching or listening to this on. And if you’ve benefited from this in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think would benefit from it.Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. David Tian, signing out. [38:50.4]

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