Why Knowing ‘How to Text Her’ Is Not The Problem | (#019) 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 a new episode of the Masculine Psychology Podcast. I’m your host, David Tian.

In this episode, I’m doing something a little different from how I usually do it. Normally, I am working off issues presented to me by my one-on-one clients, my private clients, and in this episode, I’m going to be getting into texting, and that’s because I get a ton of questions about texting sent to me by email and private message. I think that a lot of guys are dealing with issues around texting, so I want to address that here and it’s kind of going in a different direction from how I usually do it, but let’s get into it. [00:54.5]

This is kicking off a series on texting, and this is also that you can experience a life in which texting is effortless for you. Can you imagine that? Because I see the viral videos online in the dating niche for men’s dating advice, mostly, it seems, about texting. Those are the dominant ones.

I get it that, now that dating, especially in the age of the pandemic or post-pandemic, people are forced onto their phones and onto dating apps, even those who are late adopters, and now they are finding that the first phases of dating are through facing this handheld device. It’s not so much even in a bar or on the streets or in a party, or even in your classroom for the younger guys or your office for the older guys. It’s now through the phone, and there’s so much anxiety where guys are just facing it like it’s the anxiety, I think, that people used to face staring at a blank screen when they were trying to type the first sentence of their term paper, that kind of like writer’s block, but it’s texting block and it’s texting anxiety. [02:02.6]

It doesn’t have to be that way. There’s actually a way in which men who are naturally attractive—who have become naturally attractive to the point where the way they are just as attractive, so they don’t have to do anything more than the way they are in order to be attractive to the women that they want, so these more naturally-attractive men—text in an effortless way, where they do it almost like an afterthought. They don’t need to put in a lot of extra effort or thought into it. When they send the text out, they’re not checking their phone every few seconds or minutes to see if she has responded. They just put it out there and there’s no extra anxiety around it. That can be the case for any man who implements what I’m covering in this episode and over the next couple of episodes. [02:48.8]

That’s really what this is about, effortless texting, where you can just text the way you think that there’s no extra effort needed to come up with any kind of clever lines or clever gimmick or cheat codes into tricking her into replying or tricking her into meeting up, that it’s just an effortless expression of however you are thinking and feeling at that time, because the way that you were thinking and feeling at the time is naturally attractive.

How do we get there? In this episode, I’ve got three points to share with you, but before I get into those, I’ve got a big myth to break for you and the big myth here that I need to dispel is that you think texting is your problem. The big myth about texting is that you think texting is the problem.

Texting is not your problem. Any problems that you encounter in texting are the results of a deeper cause. Texting is just a symptom of a deeper problem, a deeper problem in terms of your insecurities, your neediness, your lack of confidence, and the lack of self-acceptance and self-worth. [04:02.5]

This is the same structural problem as is encountered when guys ask for what to say. Simply switching the medium from in-person communication through words and sound waves, and switching that into a device, a handheld device that’s digital doesn’t actually change the problem. It has just shifted the platform or the media, or the device or the channel, by which this problem is perceived. It’s still the same problem.

It’s the problem that you’re looking at the branches when the disease or the problem that needs fixing started at the root. The rot is in the trunk is in the roots, but you’re only noticing it at the branches where there is no fruit. If you want to heal the tree and get healthy fruit, it doesn’t do you any good to just prune the branches when the rot is in the roots. You’ve got to go to the root of the problem, so to speak. [05:01.8]

It also doesn’t do any good to just substitute fruit and kind of have fake fruit hanging from the trees, like you hang them like ornaments and hope nobody notices, or you take somebody else’s fruit and transplant it onto the branch somehow and sort of hang it there and hope that you can trick the passersby or whatever the people that you’re trying to entice with your fruit to think that it’s your fruit, which is exactly what’s happening when guys are going online, Googling or YouTube-searching what to text a girl, because it’s futile. It’s pointless. I’m going to get into the three reasons why that’s so and then I’ll introduce what to do about it.

Okay, so the first of the three points is that there is a huge world of difference between short-term dating versus long-term dating, and from a scientific perspective, this is just normally couched as short-term mating versus long-term mating strategies. It really makes a difference, especially in the kind of hyper-focused world of dating apps. [06:05.8]

In the dating-apps situation, you have split seconds to make an impression. You have that first photo and then she needs to decide, based on the little bit of bio-data there and your first photo, whether to swipe right or left, and in that way it’s hyper-focused, and in that way, the difference between short-term mating strategies and then the long-term mating strategy really make a huge difference—whereas if you were in a more organic situation, where you’re in person, let’s say, at a social bar or a lounge kind of setting where people generally don’t come in for split seconds and leave, kind of just look around the room and then leave, they kind of hang out for a bit. They get a drink. They kind of lounge around, so you have a longer time and more leeway and margin of error to make an impression or to suss people out, sort of evaluate people, and people aren’t forced to make split-second decisions or there’s no pressure to do so. [07:02.8]

In a dating-app situation, which is, I assume, how most people are beginning a lot of their dating—I know that now that things are opening up, especially in America, and this is already dating this episode—now we’re moving back into more organic situations without face masks and all of that, so it may be that people are moving off the dating apps.

But what I’ve heard is that since the pandemic started, even the late adopters who were holding off on going onto dating apps have ended up on there because there was no other avenue to meet new people, and eventually they were getting bored of being quarantined or isolated so long, they just got curious and made profile and then started getting in there. Now they’re confronting the same problem that all these other people who started on dating apps earlier were dealing with.

That first point about whether you are optimizing for short-term mating strategies or long-term mating is huge here because, in the hyper-focus world of the dating app, you have split seconds in which to make an impression and often you have seconds in which to decide whether to follow up with somebody and swipe right or left. [08:13.4]

Some guys I know just swipe right for everything and just see what they get, but it’s really important to get clear, because what I am referring to here in terms of effortless texting is not primarily for optimizing for short-term mating. If you’re somehow on my channel, on this podcast, and your main objective is just to hook up with as many women as possible to get as much sex as possible with as many hot girls as you can, this is not for you. Most of my material is not for you, so let’s just get that clear. I don’t mind if you now back out and go watch something else or listen to something else.

If you have chosen to take the short-term mating, it’s going to be a tough game, and I understand why you might cheat, copy and paste, get other people to text for you, maybe put some fake or doctored photos kind of just tricking the girl into a meetup so that it’s like, oh, now she’s here, so you’re hoping maybe your impression over digital was so good that she would overlook your presentation in person. [09:18.4]

Maybe even in your presentation in person, you’re starting to just mouth things that you read somewhere else and none of it was really authentic, and you’re just hoping to trick her long enough so you can trick her into bed, and then you’re done and then you go through and move on to the next girl. If that’s you and you’re trying to maximize a short-term mating strategy, then my material isn’t for you. There’s tons of other material online aimed at what you’re trying to do, but this is not for you. I’m not for you.

Okay, you’re still listening. Great, so I’m assuming here we’re on the same page that what you’re not after primarily a short-term dating or mating, and I know that many of you who have never experienced an abundance of short-term mating are still interested in that, but if that’s your primary goal, then you should optimize for that. [10:04.7]

But when you optimize for short-term hookups, you’re going to be doing things that will sabotage your success in long-term relationships down the road, and I’ve made an entire other episode just on that one point and I think it’s Episode 10, how casual dating, optimizing for casual dating, really optimizing for it, not just casually dating, but optimizing for it, will, actually, if you do it long enough, sabotage your success in a long-term relationship down the road.

Also, you should know, if you haven’t figured it out already, in visually-driven apps like Tinder, that first photo is so important for getting your matches, and if you don’t get the match, you can’t even take it any further, right? What women are doing on that app who are also looking for primarily casual-dating hookups, sex, in other words, they’re looking for the hottest guy who just isn’t a total douchebag and, hopefully, won’t record a video of them having sex and uploaded or something like that. [11:07.6]

So, he has to have a minimal level of ethics and not be a total douchebag or an abuser or a rapist or whatever, but still just be hot. He just has to be hot and meet this minimum threshold for not being a total creep. It turns out that the Pareto distribution on just pure short-term mating is going to be as extreme as you would assume it is. The top five percent of men on Tinder are going to get the majority of the matches, so that women are much more selective and swiping right then the men are.

Okay, I’m assuming now, if you’re still listening to this, that you’re not purely or primarily interested in optimizing for short-term mating strategies here, because if you are, it’s an uphill battle. [11:53.3]

But if you are interested in a committed relationship at some point, sooner than later, and you’re on these apps for that purpose, then there is good news, because there is a way to come across authentically and naturally to text effortlessly, and it involves not doing almost everything that you hear from YouTube videos or online articles on how to hack dating apps and texting. That’s the first point getting clear on whether you’re in it for the short-term or the long-term, and playing for the long term. This is also a recurring theme in a lot of the podcast episodes here.

That brings me to the second point. The second point being don’t get caught into or get trapped into copying and pasting, or any variation or permutation of that. A lot of the online advice about texting and dating-apps optimization is about “Here, this has worked for me and it has worked for a lot of guys, so go ahead and use it, but, of course, customize it for yourself and all of that.” [13:02.8]

Now on the surface of it, this is not morally objectionable if you really customize it, to kind of give you a template and you customize it. The problem is a lot of guys don’t do much customization and they also don’t understand the mindset or the attitude or the principles behind why this technique would work in the first place or the guy’s mindset when he first sent this.

He’s, in fact, just taking somebody else’s persona, or, really, the outcome, the product, or the output of another person’s persona, another guy’s persona, and then just like a mask, putting it on his own face, and then hoping that this becomes himself or that she won’t notice and that he can just keep playing along copying and pasting. Any variation of that, and obviously the worst is just literally just copying and pasting somebody else’s lines, and you see that a lot, especially as a kind of click-baiting title, “Use this opening line, it gets all of these results.” [14:03.8]

Again, if you’re optimizing for short-term mating, maybe it will get results, because it’s still relatively early in the world of dating and courtship, this dating app kind of atmosphere or environment, or these gimmicks are still kind of new. If you fast forward five years from now or 10 years from now, a lot of women will be able to see right through this. It’s just like the way a lot of people can see right through the canned pickup lines of the 2000s with the negs and all of that kind of thing.

Of course, the obvious objection here is the inauthenticity, the kind of lack of integrity of just copying and pasting somebody else’s technique that worked for you. I get why you might do it if what you’re doing is just maximizing for short-term hookups and you’re just going to go through later or hook up with a bunch of times and then just sort of disappear. If that’s your MO, okay. Just realize that you become what you repeatedly do and then you shouldn’t be too surprised when later on you find it difficult to create an intimate relationship of unconditional love. [15:10.7]

This copying and pasting problem is bringing up the age-old issue that you see in depictions of pickup artists from 20 years ago, for example, the movie Hitch, starring Will Smith, and their concern towards the end of the movie when the public finds out that all of these men paid Will Smith’s character to dating coach them, because the concern was actually that these men were not authentic. They were just parroting lines or doing the things like robots that Will Smith told them to do, so they weren’t accurately representing themselves, because the worry later on was that the main character wasn’t doing those things that made her fall in love with them.

Then there’s that encounter between the main female character and Will Smith towards the end of the movie where she was saying, “And that thing that he did,” and Will Smith’s character saying, “That was all him.” [16:02.8]

“And that other thing he did?”

“That was all him, too.”

“And that other thing he did?”

“That was all him, too.”

Will Smith’s character then taking a step back and thinking, Wait, you fell for that stuff? And that sort of the encapsulates the whole crux of the problem, which is that what women and people, what really bothers them about the dating coach or up the artists or the guy who goes online looking for advice is that the guy will just parrot the advice and trick the girl into liking somebody who is not him. It’s not so much the fact that people need advice. It’s that the advice will cover over who the person really is, so he’s manipulating or tricking or deceiving in some way, so copying and pasting is exactly along those lines.

Besides just the ethical aspect of it, you’re also getting a woman who actually doesn’t like you, or even worse, you don’t know whether she likes you for you, because you’re presenting a front that isn’t even you, so she doesn’t even get to reject you. You don’t even get the data point whether she likes you for you, or doesn’t like you for you. All you get is that she likes this other presentation that isn’t you. [17:12.7]

Even worse, whenever you copy and paste, and then you get a positive result, what you’re reinforcing there each time you do that is that the original you isn’t good enough that you’ve got to hide these other parts of you that you can’t trust, so you’ve got to put your trust in some other person and just pair it what they say because only that would work. Over time, the parts of you that would have otherwise wanted to text or something, they get the message that they’re not good enough and if they want to keep this woman in their lives, and I’m talking about the parts that are like real people in you, that they’re going to have to stay hidden. [17:52.6]

Guess what’s going to happen further along in that relationship? That deep insecurity that you have that there are parts of you that aren’t attractive and that, if she met them, she would reject you, continue to nag you, to eat away at you, the further along you go in this relationship, because you’ve already deemed and conditioned to them, the condition in you, that they aren’t good enough to present to this woman, that, in fact, there are no parts in you that are good enough to present to this woman. So, you’ve got to take somebody else’s words and techniques, hacks and gimmicks, and cheap tricks, and use those to snare her into a date. But eventually that ruse will be up, if what you’re after is a long-term relationship.

Again, you could just be a psychopath and the Machiavellian narcissist who just lies all the way through just to get into her pants and then maybe keep it going for like four hours of contact time and then you’re out. I can see that happening, and you can come up with basically material for four hours and then just kind of fudge it and hope she doesn’t notice or have too much regret. [19:04.8]

But, hopefully, you haven’t taken that route, and if you go that route, it’s also a lot more competitive. You’re actually competing with guys who are probably a lot more naturally better-looking than you who don’t need to do all of these lines. In fact, they might even do better the more that they shut up. You’d end up having to compensate or overcompensate with material, with words that you’re just learning from somebody else and just parroting.

At the end of the day, even if it works, you’re going to have that nagging doubt that will eat away and sabotage your happiness and the authenticity of any kind of emotion like love that arises, which is that “Does she even like me for me?” Right? And that’s just liking it. If you can’t even get past the liking, then there’s definitely no room for love, starting the entire relationship on the wrong footing. Stop all this copying and pasting. Stop looking for gimmicks. [20:03.8]

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I know that there are companies out there that, if you paid them, they would just take over your Tinder profile and hook up dates for you and you’re not even involved in the conversations or the chats at all, and then they just text you where to show up for the date and you show up. I suppose, you’re supposed to read all the chat history so you can know what she’s referring to. [21:02.8]

But that’s the ultimate bait and switch in a way that is actually really obviously unethical, but even worse, she’s on this date with you and she didn’t respond to you at all. Doesn’t that make it feel like a faker, like a fraud? And it must eat away at your parts with the kind of shame that they couldn’t even do this themselves, because it’s not even that they’re scaling you, right? They’re actually coming up with the texting off some formula that they’re basically doing as a template for every man they take on, and this is just based on gimmicks that they’ve found through A/B testing that worked to allure women in, so beyond the pure deception, there’s also the cheating out of you that you’re not actually entering into a relationship.

Now, if you’re just using this, again, just as a proxy for cheap or free sex, you don’t have the balls to just be upfront about the fact that you just want a lot of sex from women that you don’t want to get emotionally involved in, instead you prey on women who are going to end up being more emotionally vulnerable because of this deception—and if that’s you, this isn’t for you, so I shouldn’t be addressing that any longer because you’re probably not listening to this, but I guess part of it is in case you’re attempted to do that. [22:14.8]

You should just know that this is going to sear your conscience and create a character for you that you’ll have to deal with in terms of integrity down the line, and you’re going to have to learn how to create a moral character later because that’s what’s required for a love relationship. It’s going to make it harder down the road.

Okay, so that’s Point 2, don’t copy and paste. I know a lot of guys are tempted to do that just based on the click-baity titles that are getting millions of views on the internet.

The third point is don’t pimp your profile. I’m going to be getting into this in the next episode in a deeper way in terms of psychology, but one thing I’ve noticed a lot is that the advice is, because you’re going to hook up, a lot of guys hook up their Instagram account with their Tinder profile. I’ve heard if you don’t do that, women might suspect that you’re hiding something, so since they can’t do the research on you, they may not bother, because they have so many choices. I mean, there’s so much competition for attractive women in Tinder that this is stacked against you if you don’t. I’m assuming that you’re going to link up your Instagram profile. [23:17.7]

Then the temptation will be, okay, now that you know prospective dating matches are looking through your Instagram profile, now you’re going to be tempted with a different approach to your Instagram or what you do with your Instagram. Then if you only thought Grandma, and I don’t know if Grandma is on Instagram, you think your close friends, people that have friended you or know your handle, close friends—I read somewhere that the average Instagram profile only has about 150 friends, so I can imagine that sounds like the Dunbar tribe number, 150 friends, I can see that as being people that you might have all met in person—but now that you hook it up to your Tinder profile, you’re going to be tempted to pimp it out, and by pimping it out, a lot of it is going to be a kind of fakery. [24:05.5]

I know that that’s the MO for Instagram around the world, especially with attractive women who are trying to get significant validation through the jealousy or adoration, or just even attention, that is given to their Instagram profile based on the best photo of the day or whatever that they share. It’s all crafted to create a certain effect and a lot of it from a mental-health standpoint is not going to lead to happiness.

Now speaking specifically of the dating context where you’re hooking it up to your Tinder is that, if you go down the route of pimping your profile, the type of women that will actually be impressed with the type of pimping that goes on, so this is where you take a list of all of the attractive traits that you think are attractive in a male—your six pack, your outdoor activities, maybe you get a photo with your dog. Maybe you get a photo for social proof with a whole bunch of other girls at a party and just pimp it out—and what that means is you look like you’re a party boy. [25:08.3]

You end up pushing it towards kind of high-status fuckboy, right? You’re going to maybe even, and I’ve seen this as well, rent a luxury vehicle or a sports supercar and pose next to it, obviously pretending it’s yours or something, and not say it, maybe leave it vague, so you’re not outright lying. It may be certain guys just posting all these photos of the Rolexes or whatever it is.

Then they’re surprised when they get gold-diggers. Now, this is one area where even my private clients have trouble with because of pimping their profiles. They’re not really on Tinder as much or using it as much as what it seems like the average person is, but pimping their profile, that’s something that they’re encouraged to do because it’s part of keeping up with their peers, and luckily many of them are too busy to do much on social media. [25:59.6]

But if you’re doing it right, you can use Instagram in a way that actually will draw in the right women for you for a long-term relationship and repel women who are only interested in something that, if you were to get involved with them, it would lead to a kind of vampiric, predatory relationship.

I think it’s important to not waste your time with emotional vampires, not to even get sexually involved for a one night stand with them. Obviously, if you just spend a very little amount of time with them, the damage to your character will be minimal. But the more that you get hooked in, that part of the problem is that it’s hard to [get out]. Especially if she identifies you as prey because you now have shown off your high status and your willingness to spend, right? She’s going to hook her tentacles into you and now you’re kind of in her web and you think you’re going to get out. So many guys think that, right, but the very fact that you’re even tempted to pimp your profile already tells me that you are lacking in your self-worth and that you’re driven by these insecurities. [27:04.4]

Just notice that. Pimping your profile is something that we’ve all done. That’s partly what Instagram as a platform is sort of set up in a way to do, because if you’re just posting visuals, right? It’s visually attuned, just like Tinder is, a platform that’s optimized for photos and videos, so you can’t tell this complex story. It’s not like you’re writing articles on Medium or something. It’s not really optimized for caption writing. It’s just optimized for visuals and it’s very easy to take an optimal photo that day and kind of paint your life in a certain way that is inauthentic.

And then guys are wondering why, so many guys, these bitter guys are wondering why all women are users and players and liars and cheaters and manipulators. That’s because the authentic woman saw your pimped out profile and then rejected you, because she didn’t want anything to do with that, because there are a ton of douchebags and fuckboys. [28:05.0]

What you do get are the women who are low self-esteem or predatory emotional vampires, and then you end up becoming bitter and embroiled in a kind of toxic relationship over and over and over because you’re driven by your own core insecurities that attract these emotional vampires. Pimping a profile then becomes a symptom.

Like I was saying, all of these things are symptoms that you see down the branches where the fruit is rotten, but it’s not the branches that are the problem, so simply changing your profile up isn’t going to fix the problem. The problem is visible in the pimping of the profile of displaying these things that the man believes will attract women and optimizing his whole Instagram for that, right? It’s so obvious to people who know what to look for because they’ve been around the block. It’s the same with copying and pasting, sort of gimmicky kind of texting. [29:02.0]

It can work in the short term because it’s relatively easy to just put out a front and trick women long enough to get in bed with them, four hours or whatever is required, right? But that’s a tough game to play because competition is stiff, and it will actually harm you in the long run the more you do it because you end up conditioning a character.

And now you’ve also ruined your Instagram account, so that the women who are good for a long-term relationship, who would actually succeed in that, the rare women who are capable of unconditional love for themselves and for you, will see all of these things you are doing and be turned off—and that’s actually the worst regret you can have, to be rejected not even for you, but to be rejected for copying and pasting and pimping advice that isn’t even you, but because of your insecurities, you were forced.

You were so afraid that you followed this advice because of your insecurities and they didn’t even get a chance to get to know the real you and reject the real you. But now they’ve rejected you, and so it’s much harder at that point to get them back. [30:05.8]

And you’re still putting out the wrong message, right? You’re repelling the ones that are good for you that are good for creating a long-term intimate relationship with unconditional love, and you’re attracting, through all of these rotten fruits, you’re attracting the emotional vampires. Okay, so the original root issue is in the roots.

Okay, so that’s what we’re going to be getting into in the next episode. Just to recap the three points:

• Pointing out the difference between short-term versus long-term mating strategies, it’s really important that you get clear which one you’re optimizing for.
• The second point being stop the copying and pasting for various ethical reasons and that you also ended up cheating yourself.
• The third is stop trying to pimp your profile on Instagram for similar reasons of hurting yourself in the long run. Almost all of the advice in terms of tactics techniques, “use this line,” “text this, text that,” are along these three lines here, along these three points, and they all are doing a lot more harm than any short-term good. [31:05.8]

I know all of this by personal lessons because I’ve fallen for all three of these and all three of these traps. I pimped up my profile. I did that for years. I’ll share more about that in the next episode. Copying and pasting, right? In fact, I encouraged others.

I created some great texts that worked a lot and I just encouraged other guys, “Hey, go ahead and use these. Obviously, customize them for yourself.” If they understand the principle and they agree with it, and it feels natural for them and it’s like, Yeah, that’s a good way to put what I would like to convey, then it would work because it’s just different wording.

It’s not the words that matter. Again, it’s not the branches that are the problem, but it’s just that if it’s a false self that is not authentic to any part of you—and that’s because of your core insecurities that you’re taking on somebody else’s persona to present, to cover over the parts of you that you’re ashamed of—then we’ve got a real problem, especially in terms of your mental health, but also in terms of just cheating yourself out of an at-bat with a woman who would be good or is able to make a successful long-term intimate relationship. [32:16.0]

You don’t want to be in that position where you get rejected for not even yourself, but that that’s your at-bat, that’s it, that’s your chance, and she rejects you but not even for you. At least if she rejects you, she should reject you for who you really are because then you know that you have some really great information that you weren’t a good match. But it’s even sadder when you would’ve been a good match if you just had the fricking guts and courage to be yourself, and you would never know because you were too afraid to present yourself accurately. If you present yourself accurately, you’re going to grow authentically. [32:56.6]

I’ll leave you with one other analogy. It just occurred to me. What this is doing is it’s sort of like when you go to the gym and you’re cheating yourself out of the results because you’re just pretending to everyone else in the gym because you think it might pick up some girls that way, that you’re really that strong.

So, maybe you put some fake weights on. It says 25kg or 45 pounds or whatever it is on these weights, but they’re filled with some other material, so it’s actually super light and maybe they’re empty, and it just looks impressive. In the meantime, you’re cheating yourself out of real muscle growth, out of real conditioning growth and strength conditioning. You’re really cheating yourself.

You’re cheating yourself and then you might trick a girl maybe with fake muscles and fake weights that you’re strong and she might go, Wow, you’re a strong guy, but who cares? You’re cheating yourself in the long run and, of course, you’re cheating her, right? Maybe she wants it. Maybe she also is an emotional vampire.

But now you’re now you’re embroiling yourself in that mindset because you’re playing with fire here and all of that will lead to cheating, lying, manipulating deception, Machiavellian game-playing, and then it will lead to Red Pill, incel, maybe you go make MGTOW, who knows. [34:07.6]

Why? Because you started off with deception. You started off compromising your own values—I’m going to assume you have values that say don’t lie and cheat if you can avoid it, right? I’m assuming you have a conscience—but because you’ve already gone against it by copying and pasting, by pimping up your profile and puffing yourself up in a way that’s actually optimizing for the wrong things for a long-term relationship, and then you wonder why you can’t find unconditional love, this is the problem, because you’ve started off on the wrong footing and you’ve actually put a false persona or mask that covers over the you that if you’d opened up and did the real thing, and maybe in this analogy, you can only lift five pounds, 5kg, whatever, but that’s authentic. You’ve got to start there, and if you just keep at it, you will grow.

But now you’re cheating yourself out of real growth and you’re cheating yourself out of a person, a woman, who can spot that, that you’re really being authentic here, you’re a real person here, you’re really you, and somebody like that would forgive these other things that maybe on the surface science tells you a really important. [35:09.8]

But if she’s looking for those other things and those are the priority for her, she’s actually not ready for an unconditional-love relationship and this is why this is the minority of women, of course, and it is going to be difficult. You’re not going to get that many at-bats. I shouldn’t scare you. If you put yourself out there enough, you get plenty enough, but don’t take it for granted, and the longer you do this, the longer you sear your conscience and create a character that will come to hurt you in the long run. You don’t want that to be you.

In the next episode, I’m going to be getting into what to do instead. Okay, David, so you covered what not to do—don’t follow this advice. Don’t optimize for short-term. I get it. Don’t cheat and lie—but what should I do? I’ll cover that in the next episode. Come back to that.

If you liked this, please share it with anyone that you think would enjoy it as well and benefit from it, and leave us a rating on apple podcasts. I’d really appreciate that, and thank you for all the comments and for all the encouragement from the previous episodes. I hope you liked this one, too. Let me know what you think and I’ll see you in the next episode. David Tian, signing out. [36:12.2]

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