Thoughtmagnet

Cajun and I have been really busy recently, drinking, fishing, combing our hair, pickin’ up ladies and stuff. But we got together one day a few weeks ago and put together a new low-budget video PUA podcast. We do this because we love you guys!

A student asked me this question on the Lovesystems Lounge (a private forum we have for former students that you get access to after a bootcamp). It touches on something a lot of guys have problems with, so I thought I would repost it here.

There’s tons of info about how you get the girl into your house, but what’s the best place to get her out after sex? Some of the girls take a hint and leave, but others don’t. I’m talking about both ONS’s and FB’s here.

The morning after is often a pretty awkward situation, and the way you handle it can have a really big impact on whether you wind up falling into a relationship you don’t want, wind up cultivating a good relationship that makes you both happy, or wind up making a woman feel cheap and used.

It isn’t hard to get a woman to leave in the morning – the key is to occupy the moral high ground, and then to be firm yet kind with her. Yes, they’ll act a bit clingy and they’ll want to stay, but if you don’t know how to put your foot down with a woman, and feel the need to avoid confrontation, you’re going to have a rough ride in your relationships.

First of all, I follow proper etiquette. That means that a girl who is back at my place after 3AM gets to spend the night in my bed, and we have a quick breakfast in the morning (if there’s time). If she’s keeping me up at night, I have no problems telling her to get onto her side of the bed, stop snoring, or even sleep on the couch if it’s bad enough.

All this advice presumes that the woman you pulled home isn’t so monstrous that you really can’t stand sleeping next to her, or sharing a quick breakfast with her. In that case, you really need to raise your standards, or drink less. I’ve been there, it’s not pretty.

Anyways, when I’m getting a woman to leave in the morning, there are a couple principles I follow.

1 – Make plans for later in the week – This gives you the moral high ground, and allows you to be firmer without making her feel cheap, or coming off like a jerk. You want to communicate that you like her, but you just can’t hang out right now.

2 – You don’t need some big excuse to get rid of her. Just tell her you have “things to do”. It can be laundry, shopping, cleaning or any other thing that you need to do on a Sunday. You have a life, and your life is important. She has no right to demand you put your life (even the trivial bits) on hold for her. Do not make up some big excuse; that’s a weak man’s way of avoiding confrontation.

3 – If she is being clingy, show you are annoyed – Women know that clingy behavior is a turn off. If she acts clingy, look at her disapprovingly. She’ll realize what she’s doing and head off. She’ll also learn that you’re not a pushover. Learn to communicate when she’s pissing you off. It’s better for both of you in the long run.

4 – As long as you follow basic etiquette and keep the moral high ground, you have every right to your privacy. If she tries to linger, shoo her out the door. Women often ask more of you than they are entitled to, it’s your job to set your boundaries and stick to them firmly. In the long run, she’ll respect you more and your relationship will be stronger if you stick to your guns – even if she pouts and complains.

Here’s how a typical conversation for me might go.

Tenmagnet: Alright babe, I have stuff to do today. Let’s hang out on Wednesday.

Her: Awww… what do you have to do today?

10: Lots of stuff, laundry, emails….

Her:
Why don’t we sit around for a bit.

10: No, seriously, put your shoes on, we’ll hang this week.

Her: Hrrumph.

Women often get pouty when you kick them out this way, but that’s life. In the end they lean to respect you and your space, and learn that you’re not a pushover, which is very important as your relationship progresses.

For those of you who can’t get enough of the minutia of my life, I’ve created a twitter account so you can get your Tenmagnet fix on a more regular basis. Follow me at http://twitter.com/LS_Tenmagnet

You can also follow me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tenmagnet

Well, we just got back from our Miami Bootcamp, and the reviews so far are awesome as usual.

Just to give you an update, Cajun and I will be coming to Montreal (for the Jazz Festival!), Orlando and Los Angeles over the next two months. Montreal promises to be an awesome time, as the Jazz festival is one of the best places for picking up women in the entire world.

Also, out Los Angeles program is going to be a pretty big deal. As you may know, Braddock and The Don, two other Lovesystems instructors, live in Los Angeles. That means that Cajun and I almost NEVER go down there to teach a bootcamp. Well, we’ve decided to do a trade. Braddock will be doing a Toronto bootcamp, and Cajun and I will be doing a Los Angeles bootcamp. This is the first ever time that Cajun or I have ever held a bootcamp in Southern California, and probably the LAST time we’re going to do one for at least a year. So if you live in LA, and wanted a chance to attend a program with Cajun or myself, sign up now at Love Systems.com

 “I need you to wing me”, those were the first words out of Dave’s mouth when I picked up the phone “I’m meeting with this girl tonight, and she’s bringing a friend, a cute Asian girl. Can you help me.”

Dave is a good friend of mine, who isn’t really into game too much. He and I had already had plans to meet up that night, but we were supposed to go out picking up. I knew the background; Dave had been talking earlier about  a gorgeous Italian girl he met earlier that week at a business event.

They had hit it off pretty well, but Dave was horny and over-eager, so when she asked him if he wanted to hang out with her and her friends on Saturday night, he jumped at the opportunity. Blinded by pussy, he was walking straight into a dating ambush. 

A dating ambush involves going on a date where you have no reasonable hope of hooking up, or even building good chemistry.  At their best, ambushes just waste your time and money. At their worst, an ambush can completely destroy your chemistry with a woman and leave her thinking you’re a tool. Game can help you a bit in these scenarios, but your best solution is not to fall into her trap in the first place.

I told him he was being an idiot and he should cancel. He told me it was too late – she was already on her way. He begged me and I relented. Loyalty outweighed my better sense, but I was already feeling contempt for his eagerness. I could only imagine how annoying it would be to be a woman, on the receiving end of that perky desperation. We met up and headed out to a cheesy bar on the other side of town…

How to Avoid a Dating Ambush

Dave got fucked over because he violated a few, important rules.

Rule #1 – Never agree to a date that involves a chaperone.

Never, ever, ever, allow yourself to be shoehorned into a date in which the woman gets to bring along one of her friends. This is the dating equivalent of inviting a Taliban into your Humvee without checking his rucksack.

Not only will her friend prevent you from getting laid, she will also destroy any chemistry you might have with your date by subtly sabotaging your game. Usually this is because she’s a frigid bitch, who was invited along because her friend feels sorry for her. Sometimes, though, she is actually an interesting person, in which case she will mess with your game by being interesting and preventing you and your girl from having any 1 on 1 time at all. Either way, you lose.

Rule #2 – Never change plans on your buddies to make time for a woman.

There are a couple reasons why you shouldn’t do this.

First – she doesn’t appreciate the sacrifice. If she knows you cancelled on your friends, it will just make you look more like a sex-starved loser who will sell out his buddies for the faintest hope of getting laid. And she’s still likely to flake or change plans on you, which will leave you alone at home waiting by the telephone.

Second – It puts you on a bad footing. When you cancel plans to meet up with a woman, you put yourself at a disadvantage because you care more about the date than she does. If she flakes, you’ll probably get pissed off because you canceled plans, if she shows up, you’ll still feel more pressure to have the date turn into something. Either way, you’re going to have a needy vibe that probably comes through. You want to go into a date not giving a shit and cancelling on your buddies before it even starts makes that a lot harder.

Third – Your buddies.  They’re going to lose respect for you if you pick poon over them too often.

Fourth – The Universe. The universe punishes you for being weak and horny like this. You will have bad luck on your date, guaranteed.

The only exception to this rule is if you’re really so busy that it would be impossible to schedule anything without cancelling other plans.

Rule #3 – Never schedule a first date on a Friday or Saturday night.

What are you, a loser? You should NEVER, EVER, schedule a first date for a Friday or Saturday night. . You look like a loser who has nothing better to do, and most places are busier and noisier than they would be any other night of the week. Most importantly, you should be keeping your weekends free for picking up new women.

If you have already hooked up with a woman, this rule can be broken.

The story, continued.

You probably want to know what happened at the ambush. This is actually a pretty typical dating ambush situation.  Actually, it was a bit better than average, because I managed to escape around midnight.

We arrived at the bar, and waited almost two hours for this girl to show up, so we got drunk and flirted with the bartenders. This is what happens when you break the rules.

When the girls showed up, her “cute Asian friend” had turned into a mean-faced blonde girl who had brought along some douchebag named Clint who wore his hat on backwards 1997-style and never said a word for the half-hour or so that I stayed in the bar. I introduced myself and went back to gaming the bartenders.

Thankfully though, this meant I was freed from my obligation. Thanks to Clint, Dave didn’t need a wingman after all. I called up a girl (I always have backup plans) wished Dave good luck, and took off. 

It turns out Dave did alright. He didn’t get laid, but he made plans to meet up with this girl again later in the week. Not a disaster, but nothing he couldn’t have achieved with a nice 10 minute phone conversation either. 

See also: my post on treating dates like options, not priorities. 

People don’t realize that the things that happen to you in life aren’t nearly as important as the way you react to those things that happen to you. So when Derek (Cajun) got his face smashed up by thugs in Sydney earlier this month, we both made a conscious decision to make sure this incident didn’t ruin our fun.

After all, getting beat up and robbed can mess up your vacation. Or you can just say fuck it and move on. We had three weeks to waste before Derek could get his eye fixed and fly back to Canada, so we rented a camper van.

We moved on.

If you’re imagining a nice, big, white caravan with two small beds and a toilet and a little BBQ stuck to the back, you’ve got it wrong. We didn’t have that kind of camper. If you’re imagining one of those Volkswagen Campers with a big hippie flower on the side and a surfboard on the top, you’re a little bit closer, but you’re still being too generous. Picture a minivan. Now picture it with the back seats removed, curtains on the windows, and bed thrown in the back. Now age it several years and spray paint it with graffiti. Add sweaty backpacker smell soaked into the seats and mattress. That was our home for three weeks.

Derek’s bad eye had a habit of going cross-eyed at times, and the thugs had stolen his driver’s license, so I was the driver. We left Sydney and went North, up the Pacific Highway towards Queensland. The landscape of New South Wales is semi-tropical and vaguely alien. Eucalyptus trees twist in ways that defy gravity, their leaves are glossy and strange. We drive by cliffs exposing the seashore of an ancient ocean, strange coral stones miles from the shore.

Long drives lead to long conversations and plenty of silence. I focused on the road while Derek played with the radio, periodically running his hand along the swollen side of his face. Soon we knew the words to every advertisement by heart, and aped the funny accents of the actors.

Finally, I asked Derek, because the question has been bothering me. “Why did you decide to fight those guys? You must have known you were going to lose.”

Derek sat back in the seat, “I don’t know… growing up I learned that sometimes you just need to act a bit crazy sometimes, you need to fight a losing battle, just so people know they can’t fuck with you. Even if you know you’ll get it worse than they do, you need to let people know you’re willing to take it.” He ran his fingers along the bandages on his face.

“So, pride basically?”

“I guess it’s pride… but where I came from it’s a lot more

than that. I had to teach those guys something… next time they’ll think twice before jumping a Canadian.”

I believe in picking my battles. Generally speaking, I don’t engage in conflict unless I think there’s something important at stake, or I think I can win. I’m not a coward, but I wouldn’t fight three guys over an empty wallet; Cajun would.

But maybe Cajun’s right; maybe you do need to fight a hopeless fight here and there, just to teach people not to fuck with you. Maybe losing battles serve a purpose too.

I know that when you’re playing poker, you need to bluff. If every hand you bet on is a good hand, your opponents will quickly learn to stop calling you. You need to lose a few hands, get called out a few times bluffing, to keep your opponent uncertain. That’s how you win.

So maybe picking your battles too carefully isn’t really a good strategy after all. Maybe you need to pick a few helpless causes here or there, if it will make people see you in a different light, if it will make them respect you and maybe even fear you a bit. I’m not just talking about physical fights here, but conflicts in general. Sometimes, when people know where your limits are, they will take advantage of that – they’ll take you to

the limits every time, but no further.  Sometimes when you say “this fight isn’t worth it”, you’re not looking at the bigger picture. What about the next fight, and the one after that?

I have to admit, at first I thought Cajun’s decision to stand and fight when those thugs surrounded him was pretty foolish. But I think I’ve changed my mind. Caution may be the better part of valor, but that doesn’t mean you always need to fight to win.

Oh yeah… and think twice before you fuck with a Canadian.

We just found out that Derek needs to get checked out at the hospital in Sydney on Thursday, so there’s really no way we can do the free talk in Melbourne on Thursday night as originally planned.

So, we’ve moved the Melbourne talk back to SUNDAY 26TH April at 7pm. Go to www.melb-lair.com and sign up to find out the location that we’ll be having the talk at.

See you there!

I’ve just found out that sometime next week, the Tyra Banks Show is going to do a feature on Lovesystems. I wish I could have been on there, despite the fact that the media generally prefers to paint PUA’s/Dating Coaches/whatever you want to call us as liars, douchebags or asshats (though to be fair, some are). Anyway, I think it showed a lot of courage and conviction for Braddock and Savoy to go on the show, despite the way that the media usually treats Dating Science.

To give an example of the kind of attitudes we have to deal with when we put ourselves out there in the media, have a look at  this article from the Boston Globe, which while not entirely negative, exhibits the same kind of willful ignorance and hypocrisy that most journalists show to our business.

The first line I take issue with is “If you’ve seen VH1’s reality show “The Pick-Up Artist,” you know what I’m talking about.” Oh god, please, please, please don’t compare us to Mystery!

Ok, to be fair, I can’t blame her for comparing Lovesystems to the worlds most famous PUA and my former boss, but really, that show has NOTHING in common with the kind of stuff that guys like Braddock, Cajun and I are teaching at our bootcamps. Seriously, if you see any Lovesystems instructor dressing like this on a bootcamp you have my permission to punch them in the face.

The author goes on to say

“A few hours later, when I met up with the men at Gypsy Bar to see them test their skills, I was horrified to see that the gags and methods worked.”

They mentioned their friends and families to prove they were “protectors of loved ones.” They made eye contact. I could see the women flipping their hair and laughing.

Those BASTARDS! Mentioning their friends and families. OPENING UP TO WOMEN. What creeps!

Skills included asking questions to start a conversation or using manipulative behavior like leaning back so that the woman is forced to lean in.

Leaning back only FORCES a woman to lean in if your heads are superglued together. Otherwise, leaning back makes a woman WANT to lean in, in part because she wants to hear you, but mostly because you look a lot cooler when you lean back. I fail to understand how this can be seen as manipulative – unless, of course, you were striving to find SOMETHING manipulative that you could write about. If you applied the same cynical attitude to a girl guide cookie drive you could probably find something to complain about too:

The girl guides learned manipulative tactics such as smiling when people opened the door, and painting flowers on their cookie boxes.

And finally, she goes to describe one of our students. This is the part that really got a bit under my skin, because it really illustrates the hypocritical social attitudes that men who are interested in self-improvement and Dating Science have to deal with on a daily basis.

He was a little guy, a student at one of the local universities. He was introverted with a meek smile. He seemed more comfortable talking to my friend and me than the women at the bar. He seemed to want a relationship. He seemed desperate for real company. He seemed like the kind of guy who might be better off without Love Systems and its methodology.

It’s quite ironic (and telling) that the one student that she approves of is the one she describes patronizingly as “little” and “meek”. So one student wins her approval at the cost of being emasculated, while the others are panted as jerks as she begrudgingly admits they get the girls. Kinda makes you want to be a jerk, doesn’t it.

It seems the true moral of her story is that the proper role of a man is to be a little, meek source of pleasant conversation, to give affection without ever receiving love or respect, and to accept his lot in life. I was that guy once too. Women love beta males, the way men love a loyal dog. But they don’t respect beta males, and they don’t love them the way a man wants to be loved, and that’s the problem. And that’s the attitude that we’re up against every time we’re in the media.

It’s that kind of hypocrisy that turns nice guys into bitter old misogynists with time. It’s that kind of hypocrisy that confuses men and leads them, week after week into our bootcamps and seminars, and it’s that kind of hypocrisy that I hope, someday, I will have a hand in eliminating. In the meantime, I’m glad that guys like Braddock and Savoy are out there facing it on the Tyra Banks show and elsewhere. I wish them luck.

Yo!

As you guys know now, Cajun and I are stuck in Australia for two more weeks, while Cajun’s skull heals. Never content to rest on our laurels, we’ve decided to organize a last-minute Melbourne Bootcamp and we’ve also scheduled a free talk to the Melbourne Lair for April 23rd April 26th (rescheduled).

If you’re interested in signing up for the bootcamp, check out the Lovesystems website (the listing is down right now, it should be back up this evening).

If you’re interested in the free talk, sign up for the Melbourne Lair at www.melb-lair.com, and check this post for the time and address.

Also, check out some of the reviews that were written about our recent Sydney Pickup Bootcamp, and some more Tenmagnet reviews here.

They say everything happens for a reason.

I opened our hotel door at 4 AM to see Derek (Cajun) with his left eye swollen shut, and blood dripping from his left ear.

He was smiling.

“Don’t worry man, I got ‘em!”, he said, as he walked to the bathroom to check himself out. “There were three of them, I broke the first one’s nose, I smashed the second one’s head against a wall…” he trailed off as he looked at his wounded eye.

“What about the third one”

“He got me”, said Derek, as he wiped the blood from his face.

Keychain was sharing the room with Derek and I; he gave me a concerned look.

“You need to get your ass to hospital” I said.

Derek was exploring the wounds on his scalp, “Yeah… I know.”

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