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The Big Mistake You Do Not Want to Make When Dating Beautiful Women
by Dr. Alex Benzer
of Tao of Dating
May 19th, 2008
In the process of training my students in the Metamorphosis program, some really interesting ideas have come up which I'd like to share with you.
For instance, I was thinking how much dating operates like a marketplace, and how the rules of economics apply to it.
For example, in a marketplace, there are goods being exchanged. Two parties reach an agreement, and a transaction is completed. One party is the buyer; another is the seller.
There are close parallels to all of that in the relationship marketplace. The goods are the people involved -- you, for example. And one party is buying, while the other one is selling.
So far, so good -- I'm not telling you anything you don't know already. But let's get a little more sophisticated with this.
For every item in the marketplace, there is a price. And the price is largely determined by the laws of supply and demand. The higher the demand for a commodity, the scarcer the commodity is, the higher the price.
Now, before we go any further, I just know that some wag out there is going to say, "Hey, but people aren't commodities! You can't be objectifying them!"
Yeah, whatever -- relax already. Nobody's saying people (men or women) are objects. It's just a metaphor. And if you listen closely, you may find out something about yourself which was right under your nose all along. Something that might make you a much happier person who's more successful with the babes.
So you're ready? Great. Let's move along.
So as guys, writ large, what we've been looking for in women for the past few hundred thousand years are youth, fertility and beauty (which is really just a proxy for youth and fertility). What we've had to offer in return are access to scarce resources and status (which is really just a proxy for access to resources).
In the vast majority of species, the male pursues the female. For better or for worse, it's true in Homo sapiens as well -- it's us dudes who are doing the chasing. Love it or leave it bro -- unless you want to join a nice herd of seahorses, this is what you're stuck with.
So generally speaking, your predetermined role in the relationship marketplace is that of the seller. "Hey, look at me babe, I've got cars, degrees, and a trust fund. Please hang out with me please please pretty please?"
Well, that's nice, but it's not necessarily a very empowering position to be in -- I encourage you all to assume the stance of the picky buyer.
Heck, you're smart, you're good-looking, you're older than her and therefore more experienced, and most likely have the higher income, so who's to say you're pretending?
When you assume the stance of the picky buyer, it's as good as true. I just went online, and to the best of my research there is not Picky-Buyer-O-Meter to prove whether this is true or not. It costs absolutely nothing to adopt this stance -- just a little bit of extra-large cojones.
In this article, I want you to take the concept of the 'picky buyer' one step further to the idea of the 'picky investor'.
Here's what I'm getting to. On the surface, it would seem as if the scarce commodity is the pretty woman.
There are some absolute standards of beauty out there -- facial symmetry, clear skin etc -- but essentially, pretty means prettier than the rest. Which means that a small percentage of the population ends up being pretty (unless you're in Iceland, in which case it's about 85%, no foolin').
This means that masses of dudes will now be competing for the attention of those few pretty women. Economically speaking, this is a Bad Thing.
Why? Because like investors flocking to buy dot-bomb bubble stock in the 1990s, they are driving the price up. The intrinsic value of the underlying commodity hasn't changed -- it's just a person. But the price you're going to pay for it just went up for no good reason.
When you decide to date or marry a woman, you are investing in her in a sense far more real than when you invest in something like the stock market. Because stocks and money, in the end, are abstractions of real goods -- like your time, energy, and emotional well-being.
And yet, for some strange reason, people are much more careful with their eminently replaceable money than they are with their time, which is the ultimately irretrievable, irreplaceable commodity.
Listen up, man -- you spend one, three, seventeen years of your life with some woman who makes you miserable, that time is gone FOREVER. And the pain you experienced with her is far more real than any bump-up in your stock portfolio can ever make up for.
The divorced guys who are reading this right now know what I'm talking about.
The main point: a good investor looks to buy undervalued assets. So let me ask you this: what are the chances that a hot babe surrounded by ten fawning guys is going to be an undervalued asset?
Slim to none, bro. And yet, every guy's still going for her.
This is like being at an auction. One item, many bidders. And guess what: nearly 100% of auction buyers overpay.
Don't be that guy. Because at an auction, even when you win, you lose. You've overpaid monstrously. Now if you're a bajillionaire and don't give a flying fig whether you paid $10 million or $110 million for that Monet, more power to ya. Overpay all you want. And, incidentally why the hell are you doing reading this article?
Realize that what makes guys overpay for an asset -- Monet, hot babe, whatev -- is one thing and one thing only: ego. Because it just doesn't make sense. "Ah, I must conquer! I must beat out all the other suitors and bidders! I will do so by paying 10 times what this is worth!"
Alas, this will usually land you in trouble. Remember that fulfillment is not a person -- it's a FEELING. And if the person is giving you the wrong feelings, it's the wrong person. So don't be that guy who puts himself in a situation that makes it likely to get stuck with the wrong person.
Remember this: if you think she's a prize, and you somehow end up winning that prize, chances are very good that she's not going to think you're a prize right back. Chew on that for a minute.
Now, before I give you some ideas for getting around this challenge, I want to make clear that I'm not saying that you should avoid pretty women.
Hell no! You should be with women you find incredibly attractive. It's your birthright as a man. I just want you to be savvy and alert so you don’t get CARRIED AWAY by the fact that she's pretty, then end up shooting yourself in the foot.
And I want you to be especially savvy and alert when dealing with women who get a disproportionate amount of attention because of their appearance. Are we clear? Oh good.
So here are your winning strategies:
1) The Diamond-in-the-rough Strategy
Good investors look for undervalued assets, and savvy daters look for the quality women who tend to be a little underappreciated.
Actually, every quality woman is, by definition, underappreciated. It's only the rare man who can see her as the incarnation of the divine goddess that she really is and hold her to that vision in a way that allows her to grow into it fully.
So, if you're that guy, you're already on easy street. For the rest of us, we can keep an eagle eye out for the hidden gems out there.
For example, my friend met this grad student at a mixer recently. She'd just come to the event from the lab, and was casually dressed, no makeup.
Let me tell ya: this girl is tall, athletic, and unusually beautiful. And she's sweet. But she's not all glammed up all the time, which means she could escape the attention of the less observant.
But not you, my eagle-eyed friend. She's the one you're going to talk to at the party, and the one you're going to ask out. Definite girlfriend material.
2) The Me-Bay Strategy
We said when you put yourself in an auction situation, you're just asking for a bad outcome, because even the auction winner still 'loses' by having overpaid.
But of course, you being one sharp dude, you're thinking: "What if *I* were on the auction block?"
Brilliant insight, my friend. Because now the girls are bidding for YOU. And you cannot lose.
There are some tried-and-true ways of doing this. Be Hugh Hefner, for example. Or some rock star, seriously loaded dude, or otherwise member of the club known as the Rich & Famous.
Okay, that was not very helpful. But wait! There's more. As I describe in The Tao of Dating, you don't have to be a GLOBAL superstar to have more success with women than you can possibly handle. A local one will do.
You can be big in Japan, or Tuscaloosa, or amongst your circle of friends. You can be a LOCAL maximum. Do this by being a social hub, the guy who throws the parties, the guy who knows everyone, is friends with the doormen and bartenders at the cool places, is captain of the team, plays in the popular local band, otherwise performs in public, writes a book, etc etc.
Of course, the best way of being a local maximum wherever you are is to be a world-class dude. And you don’t need to be rich or famous to do that.
As I said before, if you are that guy who can bring out the inner goddess in a woman, the guy who sees and openly appreciates her inner and outer beauty, a guy who has the skill, courage and heart to take her through extraordinary experiences while having the backbone to hew to his own inner purpose -- man, where's she going to go?
That's what the whole Metamorphosis Mentorship Program is about. You can access the recording of the first session of that program for free, where we discuss more of that. You can't sign up for the program, but you can listen to the audio:
www.thetaoofdating.com/metamorphosis
3) Move around.
This is basically an extension of the Me-Bay strategy: you're putting yourself in an advantageous spot.
You can do this by traveling, for example. Generally speaking, a guy from a more affluent country will do well in a less affluent country. There are places where you -- yes, ordinary little you -- will seem exotic. Go there. For example, darker-complexioned dudes tend to do well in countries with lots of fair people. Americans are exotic in Mongolia.
And let's not forget the importance of sex ratio -- number of men per 100 women in a population. It seems like some deep-down evolutionary mechanism is acutely aware of this number, such that it changes behavior on a mass level.
Where the sex ratio is low, women tend to be friendlier and much more open. I discussed this extensively in a previous article, and this is not just statistical mumbo-jumbo, my friends: it's totally true.
The low-ratio champs are Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine, and reports from my boys have it that they get mobbed by women just by walking into a bar. And even the least skilled of them had adventures that he couldn't write home about. Uncanny.
The places with more favorable (= low) ratios will give you better dating odds and attitudes. And the beauty of it is, you don't have to travel overseas to be somewhere with a better ratio. In fact, if you're American, here's an online list of the ratios in all US counties:
http://www.epodunk.com/county_data2/mw5.html
Stark County, Ohio (ratio = an unreal 74) good. Juneau, Alaska (125) bad. Travel or move house accordingly.
That's all for this article, my friend. The key point to take away is that there are overvalued assets out there and undervalued ones, and the undervalued ones tend to be better long-term investments of your most valuable commodity -- namely, your life.
The power is within you,
Dr Alex
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