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The Dark Secret to Success with Women (and Everything Else)
by Dr. Alex Benzer
of Tao of Dating
February 9th, 2008
I remember drawing upon a lot of different resources when I first embarked on my journey to get better at this whole dating thing.
One thing that struck me as peculiar was that all of the various teachers had some version of an 'anti-flake clause' in their material.
I mean, here were these guys, ostensibly highly successful with women and with enough of them around such that they didn't have to particularly worry about any one woman's responsiveness to their approach.
And yet, they cared enough about this to put in big, bold, letters a clause for all their readers: "Do this so the women won't flake on you as much."
One of them called it his 'phone rules' -- and he dispensed them like some kind of 3 Commandments brought from on high. The other had similar boilerplate to eliminate such potential unreliability from the get-go. Heck -- even I put in a 'flake insurance' segment in The Tao of Dating.
Now let's think of someone who is an archetype of success with women -- Hugh Hefner, say. Can you imagine him worrying about whether a 22yr old girl will return his calls? Hard to imagine. We'll get back to that in a moment.
This comparison brought me to an insight: even when a guy is very good with women, he is still the pursuer. In every animal species, there is one gender which is courted, and another which does the courting. And as a male Homo sapiens, you will never escape the fact that you are the pursuer.
Sure, you can deploy some clever techniques for portraying yourself as cool and interesting enough such that a woman becomes interested and joins in the courtship dance. But the woman will almost never initiate the dance.
Unless -- you have enough resources and a priori name recognition (also known as being 'rich and famous') such that they pursue you. That is the domain of a very small percentage of men, and I'm assuming that those people do not constitute the bulk of my readership because they're doing just fine on their own.
So going back to our original train of thought: if these dispensers of dating advice thought it was important enough to include an anti-flake clause in their teachings, we can conclude that is must have happened to them. A lot.
And it caused them enough pain such that they didn't want it to happen to you. Because they're good teachers and didn't want you to experience that pain.
And so this brings us to the main topic of this article, which is the Price of Success.
And that price is the ability to bear failure. Repeatedly.
In the business world, this comes in the form of failed ventures, getting fired, having ideas rejected, being passed over for promotions, not getting funded for a project, etc. In the dating world, it comes in the form of not getting phone numbers, not getting calls returned, being stood up, being dumped, and being divorced.
In Taoist thought, this is known as the unity of opposites. There are no coins with only one side. There are no mountains that cast no shadow. As stated in Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching:
"Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other."
Thus it is a law of the world that success does not exist without failure. If there were no failure, what would success be measured against?
So know beyond a shadow of a doubt that any person who has been good with women (or in business or anything else) has had his share of failures.
I'll even let you in on another secret: more often than not, the failures outnumber the successes by a large margin. It's absolutely true.
Therefore, it follows that if you wish to be successful with women, you are absolutely, incontrovertibly going to encounter failure in its various forms. And the more success you want with them, the more failure you will encounter.
The question then becomes: How badly do you want it? Do you want it badly enough to be able to sacrifice your pride? Do you have the courage, the internal fortitude to stomach the fluctuations that are intrinsic to any success process?
I'll use a poker metaphor here: there is no player in the world that wins every hand. Not a single one. There isn’t even a single player who wins every week or every month. The really good players know that there are fluctuations inherent to success, accept that, and flow with it.
So consider yourself forewarned. The price of being good with women is to encounter a good deal of failure. You will succeed a fraction of the time, and you won't succeed the remaining times.
The price of being phenomenally good with women is to encounter phenomenal failure and to handle it phenomenally well.
If you can't deal with the bad breaks, you could become bitter, disillusioned and not very fun to be around. For you, the cost may not outweigh the benefit.
But wait a second, you say. There are people out there who *are* very good with women, and they are happy and well-adjusted.
And there are people who have billions of dollars to their name and didn't seem to fail. How do you account for the Rockefellers, Gateses and Dells of the world?
Ahh, you're catching on, my friend. There is a secret to make the unity of opposites work for you.
The secret is this: arrange things such that when you win, you win big. So big that the wins absolutely dwarf the losses.
The mountain does cast a shadow. But if you visit the mountain around noon, the shadow is smallest. Pick your opportunities.
Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fired from every job he had. And John D. Rockefeller, the oil titan of the early 20th century, openly admitted that he had a lot more failures than triumphs.
But when Rockefeller won, he won HUGE. And when Mark Cuban won, he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for 5.7 billion bucks. That's 'billion', with a 'B'.
So let's bring this back to dating. You will not succeed with every woman you meet (however you choose to define success). So pick your battles such that when you do win, you win big.
You do this by figuring out what kind of woman would truly fulfill you, and then to make a point of only pursuing that kind of woman. To chase down every woman in hope that something might come of it is like playing every hand you get in poker in hope that it will develop into a winning hand. All you do is squander your energy, your spirit and your funds and end up a guaranteed loser.
I don't want you to be a loser. I want you to be a winner -- a huge winner.
What you have to remember is that in life, it doesn't take that much to be a big winner. The most successful guys I know end up settling down with that one amazing woman who truly fulfills them, whether it's a long-term girlfriend or a wife.
Think of it this way: You've been on a long journey through the jungle. You've gotten muddy and sweaty, you've been pelted by monkeys, you're grimy and dirty and big mess. Let me ask you this: how many showers does it take to make you shiny and clean again?
One. That's it.
And, similarly, that one massive success -- whether it's a company sold after 14 years of hard work like one of my buddies just did, or whether it's meeting that one woman who truly fulfills you and validates everything that you stand for -- redeems everything that happened beforehand.
And a funny thing is, when you have that success, it will feel as if it's always been that way. Moreover, you're free to feel that success right now, because feelings are free, and it's going to happen anyway, and why the heck postpone joy?
So feel the joy and be grateful for it already, because that's how you accelerate the process of bringing that success into your life. But that's a topic for a different day.
Another thing is that if you continue to apply patience and good judgment, success will build upon success. That first success becomes a second, a third, a fourth, and then a habit.
So, to recap:
1) There is no success without failure. This is as true in dating as in every other sphere of endeavor.
2) The bigger the size of the success you desire, the more failure you must be willing to stomach. If you don't think you have the courage and maturity to deal with that fact, you may be better off settling for mediocrity.
3) Pick your battles. Stay away from the mediocre opportunities and longshots. That way when you win, you win big.
4) When you do win big, it will feel as it's always been that way. So start feeling like that winner right now, because you're still that guy and feelings are free.
The power is within you,
Dr Alex
PS: Can you think of two friends who would also find this article useful? Then send it to them! They'll thank you for it.
PPS: I'm interested in your questions and comments regarding dating, persuasion and networking, so please do send them to me. I can be reached at dra***x@th***.com[ ? ]
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