Searching for a Partner

Warning! This document contains links to sections about the human sexuality. Those sections are specifically marked. Educational or not, you might not want to read sexual content.

Quick links to the conversation topics: desktop, smartphone.

Introduction

This article is specifically designed for people who are strictly looking for a long-term and sexually monogamous relationship, want a partner who is looking for the same, and it's not meant to create a connection with a stranger, but it's meant to show if there already is a connection, bring it out and amplify it. If you have to insist in order to convince a stranger to have a conversation with you, walk away because your person of interest doesn't feel passion for your physical presence, and you can't have a happy long-term relationship with someone who needs convincing.

This study found that only 1 person out of 7 is strictly looking for a committed relationship; this is the target audience of this article. The study was done only for the USA.

What's written here can work only for people who have and work to build high standards for themselves, have similar standards for their partners, and discuss those standards from the start of a relationship (be it romantic or sexual). Also, it can only work for people whose expectations are matching what their partner says that he / she can offer, and don't expect the partner to change what he / she can offer.

Don't believe for a moment that you have the slightest chance of getting into a relationship with more than a fraction of all the people that you desire, because your type of personality can't match with all the other types of personality, and physical attraction isn't any indication of compatibility of personalities.

If you're only pretending to be looking for a long-term relationship, you will be wasting a lot of time. If you're looking for a casual relationship, a fleeting connection or making friends, you should use a different approach because your target audience has a different type of personality, with different standards and needs. For example, the people who aren't strictly looking for a long-term and sexually monogamous relationship, aren't interested in clarifying anything about the relationship, like their own involvement, sexual monogamy or a future together. Instead, they talk about things that are irrelevant for a long-term relationship.

If you're asking yourself how you can remember everything that's written in this article, the answer is that you shouldn't. The goal is not for you to use these things to find a partner and then return to your old self, but to change so you can be like that every day. Change your personality so that these things become a part of you. Let your brain rewire itself so that all these things become instinctual to you rather than rational. While you practice these things, you will confirm them rationally, but the closer you get to the goal (= being with your person of interest), the less rational you have to be and the more instinctual you have to become.

Being uneducated about relationships and hoping to find a good one is like jumping into the void and hoping that the ground is close enough to stop you from getting hurt.

Dating apps

Dating apps are purposefully designed to retain users. For this, they are designed to promote a low investment effort in finding and selecting partners, specifically focused on physical appearance and other quickly visible criteria, across the widest geographical area. The side effect of this is the destruction of the possibility to have high investment, long-term relationships.

Using dating apps requires no effort to meet a person. It's like eating fast-food instead of cooking at home. For these reasons, they are overwhelmingly used by:

Women who aren't interested in dating, but want to be emotionally validation by men who compliment them.
Men who compliment women and believe that they have a chance to be with them. The men don't see how many other men do the same thing, so they don't see the hundreds or thousands of men they are in competition with.
Women who are overwhelmed with attention from men, so they select only the best looking men, and the men who appear the wealthiest.
Women who found an easy way to express their sexual freedom, so they have no reason to be with a single man.
The best looking and most successful men, men who have no interest in being with a single woman because all women want to be with these men, so they can go from one to another, realizing that none of those women can give them what they want (outside of sex).
People who want casual sex and short term relationships.

My experience

For me, learning how to search for a partner was like trying to save 10 cats from a tree, with all the desperate clinging, scratching and meowing; the cats represent my previous personality. I've lost great opportunities and there have been enough of them to force my logical focus to shift in order to understand how to fix the problem, and for that understanding to eventually sink into my emotional mental layers, layers which are the driver behind wanting (to approach potential) partners.

Before I started my research into how to approach women, I was the average nice guy, scared to look at the women I really liked, but still wanting to be with them. The simple idea of trying to talk to such a woman was almost paralyzing from fear since I didn't know what to do, although I was still able to do it, even though the wrong way.

Once I did the work to build my confidence, that fear of going out in the "wild" to see beautiful women passing by, while being unable to approach most of them, that feeling of extreme anxiety in the stomach, transformed almost entirely into excitement and pleasure to (think that I'm about to) see all those women.

When women reject my request to get to know each other, I can simply turn and walk away like they never existed (at least until I see them again, in some cases). That moment right there, that power to walk away is incredibly freeing and empowering. That moment makes me understand that I have the responsibility to make the choice because the Universe will not provide, it makes me understand that I have the ability to choose whoever I want (from those that I see and accept my invitation), it makes me understand that I have the power to choose.

My path led me from the nice guy who believed that every beautiful woman he was seeing was his last chance to a happy life (after all, how can you find another woman like that?), to a guy who literally can't decide which woman to choose because there are too many to choose from.

My life transformed from "I can't find a woman, I'm gonna die alone" to "I have no idea which woman from this river of women is compatible with my personality, so I'm gonna die alone because I can't choose this one over that one." Not much improvement after all the effort.

During the transformation, I started to slowly lose my desperation for a partner, but at the same time I started to find that very few women were interesting beyond some (much-reduced) physical attraction. I still see women who intimidate me, but very few compared to before, and my confidence is much better in their presence.

In-person encounters

The physical world provides unrivaled advantages over the online world because of the instant access to the full human communication: seeing a person's face and body in reality (not in a few selected and overprocessed, or even fake, photos), body movement and posture, body decoration (clothes, shoes, hairstyle, makeup, jewelry, purse), cleanliness, display of confidence, facial reactions, talking (voice characteristics, words selection), the need to slow down and focus your attention only on the person you're interacting with.

It's much more likely to meet an interesting person among strangers, because you see thousands of times more people, although most don't want to connect with strangers, compared with the tiny circle of friends and colleagues in which people normally look for their partner. You can ask the ones you like for the opportunity to have a conversation, and see where you go from there.

Meeting in person with a stranger, recognizing the signs of mutual interest that you were oblivious to until then, understanding that there is mutual attraction that can be explored, finding the confidence to talk to those people, and discovering their personalities is a wonderful experience even if it doesn't lead to a deeper connection.

Around the year 1900, a woman was helping a man (stranger) to approach her by dropping her handkerchief in front of the man that she was interested in, showing her availability and approachability. The man was supposed to pick it up and ask the woman if it belonged to her, thusly starting a conversation. There was even a handkerchief language for flirting from a distance. In time, this habit has disappeared.

Today, people are told to not look too intensely at strangers but to steal glances instead. Stories about soulmates are made to make people believe that they are supposed to meet their soulmate because it's meant to be, because the Universe should put them together, meaning that neither person should make any effort to meet the other. People are told that a single look is all it takes to know that they've found their soulmate, and women are told that men who don't approach them aren't interested enough in them.

If you're a woman who believes in fairy tales or that you're an expert at men and dating, try approaching strangers with whom you would like to have a long-term relationship. Since men are likely to accept such requests because they think they'll get to have sex, make it clear that sex is off the table for 3 months or more. Write down what you've felt and why you've failed miserably at every step of the process. After you make the approaches, after many such failures, once your beliefs in your expertise in dating are turned upside-down, you can say that you are beginning to understand men and dating. If you're just sitting around, looking pretty, waiting for men to approach you, you're not an expert, you've simply observed that some men will approach any pretty woman who looks available, and you've also observed that this way you're spared of the awkwardness and humiliation of being rejected by someone who doesn't need you (except for sex, maybe).

And when you think that things just can't get any worse, people who think they've found their soulmate and are looking right in the eyes of that person, still expect the other person to approach them... because magic is supposed to bring them together.

Making no effort whatsoever to find a partner is supposed to make a relationship work for decades, through all the hardships of life, while making a huge effort to research and build the confidence to approach people is supposed to be the wrong way. It's as if society wants to give evil advice to people who want good relationships.

But that's not how patterns work. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people want to build success, whereas unsuccessful people want to have (, copy, use) success and wait for the Universe to provide it.

The result of these elements combined is that people lack the confidence to express their interest, at least by looking for longer than a glance, and approach their persons of interest. People wouldn't know how to start a conversation even if they had the confidence to approach someone they like, even if their persons of interest were to start an unrelated conversation in order to show their availability and approachability.

Besides, if men look at women for longer than a glance, especially without saying something (friendly), women perceive them either as threatening or needy / desperate, and label them as creepy.

People don't know how to behave in order to get into relationships, and how to behave in relationships, and instead believe that it's supposed to work naturally. When did you hear last about a skilled professional who was good at a job without years of learning? [... Crickets ...] That's the probability that people are naturally good at relationships.

Society doesn't educate people on how to approach their persons of interest, on how to start a conversation, on what to talk about in order to see if they have compatible personalities, or on how to reject people or be rejected.

The bad effects of all these things feel worse when you think that you can literally see the most interesting people of your life passing by, an arm away from you, and you can't do anything because society has made it nearly impossible for people to communicate with strangers about attraction.

The Internet has changed everything because anyone in the world can transmit to the entire world what they've learned and what they've built. The smartphone has also changed everything since it can be used to store information, instantly access information on the Internet, and instantly transmit information between (potential) partners. Maybe they will make a difference.

Summary

In order to be able to talk to a person of interest that is a stranger to you, you have to learn a few things:

Become confident about yourself, about your power of attraction.
Recognize in seconds whether your interest in a person is only sexual or also romantic.
Recognize in seconds the body language that indicates someone's interest in you.
Learn how to approach someone and how to start a short conversation.
Learn how to carry a long conversation.

Body language

Most people can't usually understand the subtle body language that other people send to show their interest or disinterest, and get intimidated when a stranger looks at them. They can't understand the interest in that moment, in real-time. They might understand it later, but that's too late to talk, and they usually brush it off by telling themselves that they wouldn't know what to say anyway.

How should you express your interest in someone? Make direct eye contact with that person, sustain the eye contact for several seconds, and be confident, bold and friendly in your posture and gestures; maybe smile subtly. If you can't sustain the eye contact and you interrupt it, look again at your person of interest as soon as you can. Express your interest as clearly as possible, even from a distance, even though anyone looking could think that your look indicates curiosity, not attraction. Nothing comes even remotely close to the significance of prolonged eye contact, be it continuous or interrupted.

If your person of interest looks at you, don't avoid his / her look, because he / she will easily start to think that you're not interested or you're weak. Don't try to hide, don't lower your body, sustain the eye contact with a look and body posture that shows relaxation, seriousness, confidence and determination, with the eyes not wide open. Don't raise your neck, like a giraffe, to look at your person of interest. If you're intimidated, do not look in the opposite direction (of your person of interest) because that makes you look dismissive and arrogant.

If you see each other (multiple times) and make eye contact, don't look away, don't look startled. Remain calm and assertive, and don't get intimidated. If you were to look away then your person of interest wouldn't know whether you're interested but intimidated, or you're not interested.

Friendliness (including smiling) is a bad indication of interest.

When someone is only glancing at you it can be just normal visual filtering, but it can also be a sign of interest because people are sometimes instantly intimidated by eye contact, and can't sustain it for more than a fraction of a second.

When someone looks at you first and appears startled when you then look at him / her, it's a fair indication (but not a certainty) of interest.

Blinking fast is a fair indication (but not a certainty) of interest. This occurs when someone wants to look at you but they feel intimidated because you're looking at him / her.

When someone looks at you for longer than a glance it's a fair indication (but not a certainty) of interest. Such a look could last anywhere between half of a second and several seconds.

The lingering look is a good indication (but not a certainty) of interest. This occurs when someone looks at you, but his / her face or body is turned slightly away from you, so he / she appears to want to look or move away from you, but instead continues to look at you for longer than a glance.

Multiple interrupted eye contact is a good indication (but not a certainty) of interest. This occurs when someone wants to look at you but they feel intimidated because you're looking at him / her, so they can't look for too long at a time at you. This happens because some people become more delicate when they are interested in someone; men do this to show that they are not a threat, women do this to show themselves as being more feminine. People who look in an interrupted way at a person of interest do so not necessarily because they are intimidated, but to evaluate if that person also feels interest (because he / she looks for a long time), or has lost interest (because he / she doesn't look anymore).

The following look is a very good indication (but not a certainty) of interest. This occurs when someone looks at you and turns his / her head to follow you.

When someone's eyes get wider when he / she sees you, it's a very good indication (but not a certainty) of interest.

When someone's eyes get wet when he / she sees you or when he / she starts talking to you, it's an excellent indication (but not a certainty) of interest, unless his / her body shows signs of retreat (which means he / she fears you). This is sometimes known as "twinkle in the eyes" or "sparkly eyes" because the extra fluid that covers the eyes changes the light's reflection and causes specular reflections. Such wet eyes are a sign of true passion, not merely physical, of abandonment, for you.

The mesmerized / magnetized / hypnotized look is an excellent indication (but not a certainty) of interest. This occurs when someone looks at you with a fixed look, as if he / she just saw something of extreme interest and he / she had to focus his / her attention intensely, as if time stopped for a few seconds. It can also happen when someone accidentally looks at you, looks away and instinctively realizes that he / she must look back at you very intensely because something about you was very interesting. In such a case, his / her entire body posture changes, not just the look. The body can freeze (because his / her attention is fully focused on you), it could straighten up to become more visible, or could move to become more exposed to you.

In a shop, where it's possible to pretend to look at something on a shelf, when someone gets close to you, like a forearm away and stays there for 10 seconds or so, while doing virtually nothing, it's a good indication (but not a certainty) of interest.

If you feel intimidated and interrupt the eye contact, don't look in the opposite direction because the people who see this perceive it as dismissive and arrogant, especially when the head is also turned in that direction. Also, don't look down because you appear weak.

Interrupting the eye contact reduces the possibility of connecting because one of you is likely to not look again. Many women who are initially interested, aren't willing to look again and give a second chance to a man who wasn't confident enough to approach her the first time.

If both of you look at each other for a significant amount of time, a lack of change, of action, will be interpreted as uninteresting, as boring, and your person of interest will most likely walk away. So, take action, don't wait too long!

When you and your person of interest look at each other, you can try to show him / her a big confident smile. If he / she isn't interested in you, he / she will not smile back. If he / she is interested in you, he / she might not smile, but he / she might also not be able to resist smiling back at you.

You will have to learn, in time, what people's reactions to your presence are most likely to mean. When you look at people for longer than a glance, their reactions vary, so they may: completely ignore you, ignore you with a head turn meant as a reproach for your attention, glance quickly, freeze like a deer in headlights, frown, stare at you, stare at you and gesture to show their confusion (or even anger) about your attention, show an exasperated look on their face.

While your person of interest may enjoy your attention and may look at you and giggle, he / she may be uninterested in talking to you, and may not even stop if you try to approach him / her.

Some people look uptight and unapproachable because they expect and fear that those who look at them are potential enemies, that is, people who want to lie to them, manipulate them, exploit them, and profit from them. Women, in particular, behave like this because they are more fearful than men, so they need to trust more men's intentions.

Some people feel a stranger's attention like an attack, and may even start to panic if you continuously look into their eyes for 3 seconds. Like a mouse hypnotized by a cat's eyes, they can't realize in that moment that they can simply look away and nothing bad would happen. It's good to smile subtly when looking at someone for a few seconds, to show friendliness.

When you look for the first time at your person of interest, there are two ways to do it:

For beginners: Don't have the full front of your body facing him / her, but have a body posture as if you're doing something and you just saw this interesting person that you had to look at, even though the posture is uncomfortable for looking at that person. This is by no means to pretend that you were only accidentally watching him / her, but because body-front facing is instinctively interpreted as a potential charging attack and intimidates the people you're watching. If you're already facing your person of interest with the full front of your body, try to look sideways at him / her in order to appear friendlier, so turn your face / head slightly away from that person, while keeping the eyes toward him / her. This posture isn't for talking.
(Stop and) Turn to face your person of interest. Women may easily misinterpret this as threatening. Men's look must show calm, interest, openness, expansiveness and determination. Practice (by looking in the mirror) the way you look to your person of interest: direct, without a shadow of hiding, awkwardness, fear or uncertainty. Relax your body, but don't slow down your body movements; body rigidity appears creepy and stalkish (because predators have that when they get ready to attack their prey). Don't tilt your head. Try to sustain the eye contact with a confident and relaxed look, with the eyes not enlarged.

Mutual interest is not an indication of compatible personalities, so just because you like one another doesn't mean that you could have a happy long-term relationship. Mutual interest is a mechanism that people use to not waste time, to reduce the number of attempts to have bad relationships, since they can't know anyone's personality just by looking at him / her. Someone's personality and the compatibility between people never was and never will be readable from the face, height, chest / breasts, ass, or fashion style of a person. You can see some elements that are compatible or incompatible, but you can't see most of the personality and compatibility between two people.

Don't stare at a person in silence, like a surveillance videocamera. Don't freeze, move your eyes, and say something to him / her. People, women in particular, will in just a few seconds start to think that the people who stare at them in silence and with no facial expression or body language are creepy, even though, perhaps, they are just shy (and can't conjure enough courage to approach him / her).

On top of this, even if your person of interest is interested in you but doesn't have the time to look at you to evaluate you without being watched, he / she will become annoyed and label you as creepy.

Remember that whatever you think is happening, it could be only in your imagination, and unless you ask, it really is only in your imagination.

Approaching people

It's virtually impossible to tell why people look at someone, by only seeing them look and not knowing what their personalities are like, because people are usually good at hiding their intentions.

If you saw each other and there is no good eye contact (it can be interrupted), walk away!

Eye contact is not a guarantee of mutual interest, as some people perceive prolonged eye contact as a bad thing, like an attack, and they don't stop looking at you, thereby feeding their own negative perception.

Eye contact, or its avoidance, expresses the expectations that people have from you, potential partner or enemy, which shows the convergence or divergence of your personalities. Not everyone will appreciate being approached, which shows the divergence of your personalities. You want to connect with people with personalities that converge with yours.

Don't approach people randomly. If both you and your person of interest look at each other in any of the ways described above, if you think that he / she has noticed you in a positive way and you feel a strong attraction for him / her, approach that person and try to have a conversation. Don't force yourself to approach people otherwise! Focus on your goal of getting in a long-term relationship!

The people you approach will fall in one of the following categories:

Fearful to you and your approach. Their expectations are that strangers are potential enemies, that is, people who want to lie to them, manipulate them, exploit them, and profit from them; at least that's how he / she sees you. Such people either avoid your look, or look at you like everything is your fault. You two are in different mental places, that is, your progressions are divergent. There is nothing that you can say to turn fear into attraction, so walk away. Moreover, if you were to get together but he / she would later feel estranged from you, he / she would see you again as a potential enemy.
Indifferent to you and your approach. Same as above.
Interested in you. Their expectations are that strangers are potential friends; at least that's how he / she sees you. There is a decent probability of being able to have a longer conversation with them, so continue.

People look around for three main reasons:

They are curious and find something interesting to watch. These people are, by default, interested in building something.
They fear and are trying to ascertain potential danger. These people are, by default, avoiding to build something because they fear that they could get hurt in the process.
They want to dominate the environment and possibly destroy what doesn't obey their wishes. These people are, by default, interested in destroying something, because they will always find something to be in their way.

Approach only a person of interest who looks at you without pretending that he / she isn't interested in you, a person who doesn't show signs of deceit (because deceit in the present means deceit in the future).

To show your interest, look into the eyes of your person of interest for longer than a glance, even if you interrupt the eye contact.

If the interest doesn't appear to be mutual then move on and look for someone else.

When all you do is look at your person of interest for a few seconds, if he / she appears to be bothered, offended or despaired by your presence, has an air of superiority, freezes like a deer in headlights, frowns when you look at him / her, has an exasperated look on his / her face (like a woman who thinks "Oh, no, another (average) man is looking at me"), appears to shrink or cringe when you look at him / her, appears disgusted, appears fearful, or avoids looking at you (directly) then walk away because he / she can't communicate like an adult, by simply looking away, and blames you for whatever he / she imagines that you are, and that pattern would repeat later.

Don't approach people who, when you look at them, look or even turn away quickly, since this indicates fear, a lack of interest or a need to be pursued. Same reaction but done slowly indicates that he / she is intimidated, but could like you. The slowest reaction is the lingering look when his / her eyes appear to slide off you.

It's irrelevant whether two people would be attracted to each other if they had enough time to get to know one another. What matters is the default state of mind of each of them, when confronted with unknown situations. Be very wary of misinterpretation of intent, on both sides, because that's likely to repeat. This is particularly important when it happens between strangers, because it shows major differences in how people perceive and handle unpredictable life (events).

If your person of interest misinterprets your body language and intentions, and initially believes that you are bad (for him / her), he / she is likely to do the same later, especially when trust matters most. That person doesn't need an opportunity to see that you're a good person, to trust you. That gut reaction showed you what he / she thinks about you at the deepest level, and, even if you were to get together in an apparently happy relationship, that's what he / she would feel every time there would be a misunderstanding between you two. In other words, if he / she doesn't trust you enough from the beginning, and needs you to convince him / her of your intentions, there would always be moments like that later, moments when you would have to convince him / her again. Why would you want to swim against the current? What do you think that would bring other than suffering?

His / her perception about you is negative, and that negativity is his / her default state of mind when confronted with unknown or uncertain things, which is crucial for your future. That pattern will repeat and he / she won't build constructively over misinterpretations, miscommunications and misunderstandings. That person would not give you what you expect: passion for your presence, like you feel for his / her presence. Walk away!

Passion either exists before trust is formed, or will never be there; don't confuse trust (that occurs over time) with passion. In the absence of passion, a relationship is transactional, it's a negotiation of control. If you see that you have to extract passion out of your person of interest, avoid the desperate and disastrous way of thinking that passion will come after he / she gets to know you, and walk away.

All men should, but unfortunately can't, experience the raw reaction that their women of interest have when they meet as strangers, reaction that shows the presence or absence of real passion, admiration and trust. That reaction should show interest, admiration, timidity. Once people become familiar, the man can't know whether the woman's feelings are born out of instinctual passion or, the more likely case, because she realized that he's a good provider (of resources).

For most people, talking to a stranger about a potential relationship feels like jumping into a void. For your person of interest, being asked to communicate with a stranger is very difficult because he / she doesn't know anything about your personality, so he / she doesn't know whether you two are compatible or not, and what path his / her life would take together with you. It's like trying to understand what's inside a (black) box by looking at the box (from the outside). If there are several boxes, how do you know which contains what you need, the thing which is the most valuable to you? There is a very tinny advantage that these boxes decorate themselves, on the outside, so you get a general feel of what's inside.

Some women believe that men who give attention to women (strangers) are obsessed by and a danger to those women, rather than mildly curious or mildly interested in their appearance. Any kind of attention from men (be it looks longer than a glance, tips about something, or a compliment followed by walking away) makes those women believe that they are the center of attention of those men, and start to imagine that those men are enemies. That's the personality that made the witch hunters of the past. This problem is dramatically amplified if those men and women see themselves repeatedly because they frequent the same location.

The biggest problem occurs when those women look insistently at those men, and amplify their own fear because the men look at them as well. Those women don't understand that if they are not interested they could and should just look away, and don't understand that their default expectations (of being hurt) and men's default expectations (of mutual interest) may be in stark contrast. These conflicting expectations will always be there, if those men and women were to get together.

Some women are so afraid that they construct a mental box in their minds, from which they can't escape, where any attention from men drives them to run around in panic.

How badly do women misinterpret men's behavior? If a stranger man looks at a woman, she looks at him, and he continues to look at her, as he passes by her, in many cases the woman enters into panic and starts to fantasize bad scenarios, despite the fact that most men look out of curiosity and interest, not to hurt the woman.

For me it was a stunning revelation that came after decades of not understanding what the hell is women's problem when you look at them. A man's mere presence and his look, as he passes by, is enough to drive women into panic mode, although they may hide the panic well.

Yet, many women continue to look at those men while thinking either "Why is this creep looking at me?" or "Please go away! Vanish magically!", and not for a second do they understand that they are also looking at the men, look that men (who aren't afraid by default of women) take as a sign of interest from women. Those women are literally acting like hunted animals, filled with fear, staring at the predator, whereas men are acting friendly and interested. To men, this behavior appears to be batshit crazy, when in fact it shows the personality of those women, it shows how those women view men by default, view that will be brought into any relationship.

If you let people who are fearful, desperate or chaotic lead and tell you what to do, they will destroy you, just like a person who is about to drown will try to drown the people who are trying to help them.

Some people believe that they have a sixth sense that helps them "read" the personality and intentions of strangers. In reality, their brain remembers past experiences during which strong connections were made between something seen and a result, and now believes that the connection is between a cause and its effect. Such extrapolations say nothing about the personality of strangers, and when applied to the world at large, they are more likely to be wrong than right.

Women fear weak men. This is an instinct, not a choice. Women perceive soft men who linger around them as being creepy because it reminds them of a predator stalking pray, and perceive men's submissive behavior like that of a critter that is always watching for the right moment to slip inside the (woman's) body. This forces women to always keep their guard up until a man proves that he can provide something useful to a woman.

In contrast, when a confident man goes to a (stranger) woman and ask her out, if the woman refuses (because she didn't trust him, not because she was uninterested) and the man turns around and walks away, the woman asks herself "What just happened?" What happened is that she lost an opportunity and her brain knows it. She may have feared him because he was a potential aggressor, but the potential threat also disappeared quickly, taking with it the opportunity to meet. Some men can be confident enough and open enough that they can make (some) women safe enough to have a conversation, in fractions of a second, without saying a single word, simply through body language.

The more bizarre cases are when a man gives attention to a woman, perhaps with a compliment, but walks away. Then, over many months, they see each other randomly, few times, for a few seconds, as they pass by, maybe because they frequent the same location. During all this time the woman appears to be fine. Suddenly, during another encounter, that woman (or a friend or family member) erupts (in public) and accuses the man of stalking the woman. The man is absolutely oblivious because he didn't pay further attention to that woman, not more than simply recognizing her "Mmm, she looks like that woman from that time."

Don't take these as theoretical scenarios, they actually happen. Different people who observe the same events fabricate very different stories in their minds about why events happen, because they have observational biases of very different intensities.

This knowledge isn't meant to push you to avoid looking at strangers, but, to the contrary, to tell you to not let your life be controlled by such people, and not build your own mental box from which you can't escape. You are not responsible for the mental traps that other people's build inside their minds! The only recommendation is to walk away from such people.

How can it happen?

Women are more expressive than men in their physical appearance, for example by adorning their bodies with makeup, jewelry and clothes, so men have a slight advantage when trying to understand women's personalities, at a glance.

You could understand someone's personality by observing them for a long time, but you don't have that time, so the only way to understand someone's personality is to interact and talk even if it's only for a few seconds.

In just a few seconds of looking at a person of interest, you must make a decision either to approach him / her or to walk away. It's understandable that you would want to see his / her full face, and for that you may need more time. The reason for this short time isn't that you should follow your instinct because it's magical, but because it builds the pattern to remove indecision from your mind and build your confidence. Will you walk away from good potential partners this way? Sure, but there will be others, and the built confidence will be so much more important for the next approach. If you do walk away, make sure that it's not because you're too afraid to approach him / her, but because there is something which is missing from the attraction, or because you see something (in his / her personality) which is incompatible with your personality.

Don't get intimidated by his / her intimidation, and continue with either one of the two choices you have: walk away or start a conversation.

If you're walking toward one another, slow down and stop before you're next to him / her and let him / her walk toward you. It's important to stop at a distance that gives him / her 2...3 seconds to get next to you. Stop sideway from his / her path so that he / she can see that he / she can continue to walk safely past you, but also so that you can turn your face and body in order to follow him / her.

If you're undecided but your person of interest turns his / her head to look at you, you should approach him / her; it's a conversation request, not a marriage proposal.

You should approach even if you feel that the age difference is too high, for the simple reason that, even if you don't get into a relationship with your person of interest, he / she could accept to have a conversation, so both of you could get to practice your ability to communicate and make each other's life better. Approach such persons of interest with the maximum seriousness and determination, and do not mention the age difference! The age difference doesn't matter for a conversation.

Indetermination makes you weak and leaves you feeling shaky. The more you hesitate to say something to your person of interest, the less confident you become, and the chance of you saying anything decreases exponentially.

When your knees feel soft because you're looking at your "perfect match", your entire body language must exude strength and determination, not shifty softness.

People can handle well only very few separate, but close in time, encounters. If more encounters occur, people feel the need to react differently, but don't know how, so they feel embarrassed, which then transforms into awkwardness, which can then transform into a negative reaction toward the other person, like annoyance, instead of assuming half of the responsibility for the failure of the interaction.

For example, two people who like each other and pass by each other twice while walking around in a limited space (like a store), may smile at each other every time, but from the third time onward they feel that the behavior is too repetitive, don't know how else to react, and end up replacing the smile with ignoring the other person. If there is an unbalance in the interest, so one person likes the other much more, the target of the higher interest starts to push back emotionally and starts feeling annoyed. Make sure that you keep your interest under control.

During an in-person encounter, men usually have only one or two opportunities to talk to a woman. If a man and a woman happen to pass by each other and they look at one another, that's when the man should seize the opportunity to talk to her. If they see each other again after a few minutes, the woman may think that it's just a coincidence, but if they see each other a third time then the woman will start to think that the man is creepy. This happens because the woman has time to think that she's the focus of attention of a man, and may therefore be in danger, and while she knows that the man wants her physically, she doesn't know (and fears) how the man intends to get there, and whether he can gracefully accept a rejection. The man has to (subtly) address these fears during the conversation. Be very careful, you can't reason fear out of someone, and you could end up being accused of stalking.

Sometimes you will simply have back luck, like when your person of interest gets a phone call right when you wanted to approach him / her. If you leave then you've lost the opportunity. If you stick around until the call ends, he / she is likely to notice you and will think that you're creepy. Sometimes you just can't win.

If your person of interest is with someone who you may think is his / her girlfriend / boyfriend, and your person of interest looks at you intensely, you should ask him / her if they are involved in a romantic relationship (with one another). After all, they could be relatives or friends.

When you approach someone, do not come directly in front of them, in their path, and do not stop in front of them! Not even if you're a woman trying to get the attention of a man. Always come from a side and stop in the field of view of your person of interest, slightly farther than a fully extended arm (80...90 centimeters, 3 feet), and make sure that you're clearly visible to him / her once you stop.

There are scenarios when stopping in front of someone can be fine, but they are very particular and you can't know in advance what will happen. For example, I was once pushing a cartwheel through a store, and a petite woman came quickly from the front-right and deliberately stopped in front of the cartwheel to bend toward a trashcan in order to throw something, forcing me to stop abruptly. She raised her face to look at me, and smiled. I actually liked her and enjoyed her naughtiness, but she couldn't have known in advance that I would like her and not look angry. Thinking back, that sounds like a good way to see how a man reacts to the "charms" of a woman.

It's best to approach someone when he / she is stationary.

Don't try to shake the hand of a stranger because you were told it would create a connection between you two. If the connection isn't already there for both of you, you'll look like a beggar trying to create familiarity with someone before asking for money.

If your person of interest is sitting:

Stand at a distance of about one and a half fully extended arm (120 centimeters, 4 feet). This way, he / she won't feel that you're overtowering him / her.
Try to have your face at the same height as his / her face, so sit on the same park bench (or table). This is a risky thing to do because it amplifies whatever he / she feels about you, so it creates a more polarized situation.
If he / she sits very low, try to have your face at the same height as his / her face.

When you say your conversation starter, try to sustain the eye contact with a confident and relaxed look, with the eyes not wide open. Smiling is fine. Don't smirk and don't laugh.

When you look in someone's eyes, focus on a single eye, on a single point. Don't switch your focus between his / her eyes.

A simple "Hi" can start a conversation, but be ready to say more than that. Saying "Hi" to a stranger may surprise and confuse them, so without further help from you they might not respond even if they are interested.

Instead of talking, you can also wave your hand lightly, which, if you're shy or feel intimidated, is very good because you can see if your person of interest responds favorably, without bothering him / her and risking a verbal rejection. This is good to draw the attention of someone who is at a bit of a distance, or someone who wears headphones. If you wave, keep your palm at shoulder or chest level. However, it's not clear to whom you're waving your hand at and why, so saying something makes your intentions much clearer.

If he / she responds, next you should say what you want, for example, that you would like to know him / her, to have a conversation.

It's your responsibility to fill the void between you two with confidence and conversations, to create a bridge. Such a bridge already exists in the case of people who look at each other for a few seconds, which expresses / conveys interest, curiosity and softness, or in a word, attraction.

Don't wait for magic and fate to bring you together with your person of interest. Reality and happiness are mostly about choices made, not magic or fate. Be confident and take action!

Overcoming shyness

If you're shy and you can't directly approach your persons of interest, an option is try to start a conversation unrelated to a romantic interest, in order to show that you're approachable, and see if your person of interest is approachable.

This way you don't reveal your romantic interest, you simply show that you're approachable. After all, this doesn't oblige you to anything other than a bit of conversation. Maybe you'll realize that you're not compatible or he / she isn't interesting enough, maybe the time is too short or the context is not right, but you'll get the best chance possible.

For example, in a shop, give your person of interest small tips. If you would like to continue with a conversation starter because a person is interesting enough, you have two advantages:

The conversation would start in a unique way every time.
Giving non-emotional tips allows you to see how your person of interest reacts to your presence and approach. The reactions can range from total indifference as if you're not there, to becoming defensive as if you're trying to deceive them, to becoming talkative up to the point where it's difficult for you to walk away without appearing rude. I would say that around one in three people that I've tried to give tips to, have ignored me or have behaved like I was trying to deceive them or sell them something.

If you see that the conversation doesn't work, walk away without any expectations.

Being rejected

I've never been worried about being told "no", so being rejected. I've always been terrified about being told "yes", so being accepted, because I feared that I would discover that we have incompatible personalities and I would have to reject her (even though I was the one approaching her). I've also been afraid of realizing that she doesn't need me, my interest for her, my compliments and attention.

When you approach your person of interest, you want an opportunity to not miss a great chance, to tell your story, but most people aren't interested in the attention of others, so don't feel offended when you're rejected.

If you've approached someone but you didn't get a date, and you realize that you should have said or asked something else, and you want to go back to try again, walk away because you don't know what you're doing. Learn more, then approach someone else. This is especially true for men who approach women, men who think that the approach was the problem, when in reality the problem is that they don't know what they're doing and act desperately. Learn first!

If your person of interest rejects you with an obvious lie, do not ever comment on the lie. Ever! Some possible lies are: saying that he / she is in a hurry even though he / she is walking slowly, saying that he / she is married even though he / she doesn't have a marriage ring.

When you are rejected, even if you feel lied to, simply (thank him / her for his / her answer and) walk away. The slightest hint of mockery in your reactions, the slightest attempt to bully him / her into submission, makes you a part of the reason why he / she feels the need to lie to you.

If you think that you've made significant effort to approach someone, so you deserve a bit of attention from his / her part, note that your person of interest did not ask you to make that effort and did not ask for your attention.

Your person of interest doesn't owe you anything, not even a chance to tell your story, not even an answer for your request. Your person of interest doesn't owe you attention just because you think that you're nice. If he / she doesn't give you the chance to tell your story, then move on. You are not less important than your person of interest, but you are also not more important than he / she is.

Being rejected with mockery, like derisive snorting, is a different issue because it's a psychological manipulation technique intended to hurt.

A particular case of mockery is when a man looks at a woman and she changes her facial expression to indicate that she's exasperated or offended because the man, a nobody in her eyes, dares to look at her. Women sure don't owe men attention, but neither do men owe women tolerance for showing men mockery and contempt.

Walk away from any woman who shows the slightest sign of an exasperated-looking, entitled princess who thinks "Oh, no, another (average) man is looking at me." This is not a general behavior of women, only a few do this. Interestingly, I haven't seen this behavior in the most attractive women, perhaps because they are intimidating to almost all men, so these women feel in control of the situation.

Avoid expressions in your language and gestures that may be interpreted as dominant or aggressive. Laughter can be born out of mockery or admiration (although in this case it's usually smiling or giggling, very rarely laughter). Miscommunication (be it through looks, gestures, clothes or words) can instantly become confrontational, even if given enough time to remove the misunderstanding, a constructive connection could be established.

Confronted

A quick look is not enough to decide whether to approach someone, so you'll always be tempted to look for as long as possible at your person of interest. Some people feel a stranger's attention like an attack.

If your person of interest appears confrontational by gesturing or asking you something like "Do you want something (from me)?" then do not retreat by saying "Nothing", just walk away. You don't need an aggressive partner.

A staring contest

Some people that you admire may look at you and after a few seconds start to act shocked or annoyed, trying to signal that you have a problem, because you're looking at them (for too long).

In such a case, ignore them and walk away because the observational bias is so strong in those people that they can't understand that they are also looking at you when they could just break the look, like they demand you to do.

They can't see the symmetry of the context, they can't understand that they are looking at you, and they can't see that you are just as entitled as they are to have the same opinion about them.

In a relationship, this pattern would manifest as them blaming you simply because they can't see the symmetry of the context, that is, they can't see that they could be just as responsible as you are.

There are people who behave like this but who also consider themselves to be dominant / alpha. In such a case, not only will they blame you for looking at them and starting (what they think is) a staring contest, but they could start mocking you or become violent if you don't look away first. This happens because while they could have just looked away (since they are not interested in your look), and therefore stop what they think is a staring contest, their bias of dominance amplifies their belief that you are the problem, not themselves, even though they are bothered by your look, not you.

Believing that you are being mocked

If you feel that you are being rejected badly, perhaps you feel that you are being mocked, understand that you are lucky because your person of interest is showing his / her personality from the start, and you've avoided months or years of being in a destructive relationship. You should be thanking to whatever or whoever you want, for the opportunity of seeing how your person of interest really is.

If you think that your person of interest is mocking you, simply walk away. Don't rush, walk slowly, without even looking in his / her direction, maybe do something on your phone, as if you're busy. If you show control of your emotions, if you appear emotionally unaffected, his / her contempt will be reduced.

If someone is rejecting you by using words meant to insult you, simply say "Thank you for the compliment!"

Encountering someone who ignored / rejected you

If you encounter again someone with whom you've already talked and who rejected you, you may be tempted to look at him / her in an attempt to (unconsciously) signal that you've seen that person again and that you're safe to be around and have no intentions to hurt that person, as shown by the fact that you're just walking by (not approach him / her again).

If you were to avoid looking at that person, but he / she were to see you, you (unconsciously) believe that he / she could think that he / she is safe only because you didn't see him / her, and that if you were to see him / her then you could do something bad.

Unfortunately, this belief doesn't work well in practice. There are people who simply enter in panic mode because you look at them after they rejected you, that is, what you believe and what they believe by default is in stark contrast, and the belief of your person of interest can easily escalate to panic.

If you are tempted to explain yourself to someone who appears to be panicked, don't do it because you can't reason fear out of someone, and you could end up being accused of stalking.

If you see such a person who is trying to hide from you, or is trying to quickly walk away from you, don't talk, don't smile, don't even look to that person, just walk away because that person is in panic mode.

Don't take this advice as just a theoretical scenario. Some people misinterpret benign encounters, and believe that other people who look at them are enemies stalking them.

This could especially happen if you frequent a place daily, like a shop or a bus stop, and from time to time you encounter the same person. Some people believe that you are there for them. They can't see the most likely explanation that you go there often, so even if they go there rarely, it's still possible to see each other again. And even if they think about this possibility, they still choose the scenario where they are a victim. If you were to get together with such a person, this pattern would repeat: he / she would always be the victim and you always would be the aggressor, and your life together would be miserable.

Confidence

In a romantic context, a confident man is a man who openly (= direct and focused), fully (= to the greatest extent) and intimately declares his interest, attraction, passion and love for a woman, but appears unaffected by (either his or her) emotions, keeps his composure and rationality, a man that the woman knows she can rely on for rock-solid support.

A confident man doesn't ignore women. Confidence doesn't mean eliminating emotions, it means keeping your composure and rationality when emotions try to make you submissive.

At the same time, the man has to show that he can understand the woman's emotions and vulnerabilities. Women want to be able to explore and express their emotions within this supportive context. Women want men to be strong, so they can be delicate.

A confident man chooses a woman to be in a relationship with, and, if he is rejected by one, he simply moves to another woman. A soft man is chosen by a woman, and, if he is rejected by one, he becomes desperate, thinking that he lost his "soulmate".

The path of a confident man is emotional self-control and a stone cold attitude, despite the volcano of emotions that erupts unseen in the background.

But this is only half of the story. The purpose of a romantic relationship is to be with another person. This means that confidence isn't just an internal feeling that a man has, but includes how women perceive that confidence. The internal confidence of a man that has no options (of women) results in a lack of confidence that shows in the man's body language, lack that women can see as easy as they can see night from day. Confidence truly arises from having options, not from an internal feeling of confidence.

One day, in a mall, I saw a young man who was dressed fine, looked good (face and body), looked as if he was going to the gym often, and was walking confidently. But there was one problem: he was walking with his chest puffed out and with his arms slightly raised to the sides. When I saw him, I immediately thought that he was perfect example of a cave man screaming "Everybody get out of my way, I'm huntn' pussy!" In other words, he reeked desperation. He was a man without options. If I saw that in his body language, you can be sure that all the women who saw him were thinking "Run for your lives, sisters!" He was a desperate, horny teenager. He was the cat among the pigeons. It was so cringe and funny at the same time that I was imagining individual vaginas scattering around in desperation, squeaking and squealing, like field mice do when an eagle dives amongst them. The internal feeling of confidence of a man means nothing when women don't perceive him as a man who has options. That guy needed to dial his attitude down by 90%.

When you're looking at someone, confidence can be translated into: look at that person without any subterfuge, make your interest visible, don't cower away when the other person looks at you, and show that you are in control of your interest and emotions. That's all there is to it, but do understand that only a fraction of all people will be interested back.

To visualize this, picture James Bond saying "I love you!" How is he? Confident, leading, mysterious.

Most women like confident men, but men also like confident women, that is, men don't like women who act like scared teenagers, and many women's default state of mind is to fear men (at least when the men are strangers).

Women dislike and fear weak men, weakness that they can instinctively see in men's body language; they may say the opposite so as to not hurt men's feelings. That is what women "read" in men, not their personalities. Weakness, confidence and dominance can be read in the body language of people, but their personalities can't.

A confident man is not submissive to women, but this doesn't mean that he's dominant. To become more attractive to women, men have to replace weakness with confidence, not dominance.

Most women expect men to lead in the relationship, so most women are not interested in being with men who can't lead, because they appear to be weak. In other words, women are interested in being the woman in the relationship, not the man in the relationship, where these gender specific roles are established by biology and culture. This means that women want men to approach them because they have the strength to lead.

This is true despite the fact that many women will try to lead indirectly by talking, behavior know as "giving instructions", while not being interested in making the physical actions that constitute leading by action. This conflict leads to the behavior known as "nagging".

Understand that the word "lead" doesn't mean "dominate", "bad boy", "hard to get" or "make them work for it", as is believed by many people. Leadership arises out of confidence and encourages people to follow the leader, using constructive goals and behaviors, like being the example to follow. Domination arises out of arrogance and it's an attempt to force people to follow the dominator, using destructive goals and behaviors, like intimidation, overpowering, imposing, harassing, bullying, aggressing, violating, exploiting weakness.

To be able to lead, you have to remove from your mind the feeling of intimidation that you get when you look at a person of interest, the feeling that forces you to hide, to shrink, to disappear, feeling which appears because you believe that you're not worthy of your person of interest. This is the wrong mindset to have. This feeling is how Nature separates the leaders from the followers: the leaders survive it, the followers are engulfed by it. Whatever you feel, think or believe is instantly displayed in your body language, producing the so called "vibe". If you feel intimidated, your body language (rigid, slow, uncontrolled, lingering) will show it, it will be seen by your person of interest and it will be instantly (and involuntarily) replicated and felt by him / her, after which it will be converted to a label: creepy. Never wonder whether you are worthy of his / her attention.

Through body language, a confident man has to tell a woman that he isn't interested in entering her world, but he might allow her to enter in his world, and if she fusses about it then he simply goes to the next woman.

Sometimes, your persons of interest will actively try to intimidate you through their unapproachable behavior which was built because they expect and fear that those who look at them want to lie to them, manipulate them, exploit them, and profit from them. Since they don't know anything about you, they'll keep this intimidation wall between them and you, and you'll have to pass it using confidence. This means that you should approach your person of interest even if he / she appears unapproachable. However, keep in mind that you have to avoid the people who use intimidation as a manipulation tool, people who behave as if they are superior to you (for your entire interaction).

Examples of this unapproachable behavior are: completely ignoring you, or looking fixed into your eyes, which feels like a predator watching you move, until you flinch. Flinching shows that he / she controls his / her emotions better than you, so you're the one pursuing, and therefore he / she is the leader and you the follower. This means that in the future, he / she will be (more likely to be) able to make you do what he / she wants. Flinching means any sign of weakness, like looking away, lowering your head, your eyes getting wet, swallowing visibly, or entering in a submissive body posture.

The lack of eye contact doesn't necessarily show a lack of interest. Some people will avoid looking in the eyes of their persons of interest because they know that they would get intimidated, flinch and lose control of the situation.

If you get intimidated, if you're wondering if you're good enough for him / her, if you're worthy of him / her, your eyes may get wet, or your may look away from him / her, or your body movements will become slow, rigid and controlled. This is either because you're intimidated like a dear under headlights, or because you fear that you might scare him / her away. Your person of interest may instantly (and involuntarily) replicate and feel those same emotions, ending up feeling awkward and ashamed, and may possibly feel that you're creepy.

Why is a man who appears intimidated by a woman that he's attracted to, generally ignored by that woman? Because the woman literally has no idea what the man's personality and potential future are, so she uses the only thing she can: the man's self evaluation about how he compares himself to the woman. If the man considers himself way below the woman's level of attraction, this shows in his behavior as being intimidated, so the woman is most likely to consider him the same way: way below her potential, and therefore undesirable.

How do you remove the intimidation from your mind? There is no magic, there is no formula. The problem is that you're about to expose your sensibility to another person, sensibility which would be hurt by a badly formed rejection (possibly involving mockery).

The fear that you're not worthy of attention, that you're doing something wrong by trying to approach your person of interest, will devastate your confidence and will make you want to hide (from your person of interest), which will show in your body language, and your person of interest will instantly feel the need to hide from you as well.

Even James Bond would look silly if a woman he complimented were to stare at him with blank eyes, turn and walk away. There is no way to make this look good for the man, no matter how you stage it, so don't think that you can do anything about it.

A confident man isn't submissive to women, and isn't a validation dispenser for them.

You have to stop being weak and submissive, and confidence will start to trickle in the available space. When you look at your person of interest, your eyes have to exude your confidence, power of attraction and passion for him / her, not beg for his / her attention. You have to give, not take, so don't "steal a look", as is commonly known and repeated, but instead give away your strength and passion, give all of you, show in your look what you can be with that person because he / she brings out the best in you.

Stop being weak! Stop beating around the bush! Stop playing games that hide your intentions! Stop trying to deceive your (potential) partner! Express your interest! Express your emotions! Express the emotions that show what you want from your person of interest, but show that you control those emotions. For this, use both body language and words.

If you fail in a relationship, it's not because you didn't play the game well enough, it's because you didn't understood what was happening, the constraints of reality. The game is merely another obstacle in your way to understand what is happening in your relationships.

To grow your confidence, do these:

Focus on your goal! Be direct! Don't beat around the bush! If you want to grow your confidence, if you need to improve yourself, then do exactly that, don't get diverted. To clarify, at this point your focus is your personal development, not meeting (many) strangers.
Keep your voice normal, don't modulate it in any way. Your voice should sound neutral, emotionally unaffected. Absolutely avoid the whiny / begging voice tonality, tonality which would show that you're weak, so not a partner on which one could rely on for support in times of pressure. Don't raise the volume of your voice. Don't allow your voice to switch to a high tone (which can make you sound like a child). Keep your speech's speed rate normal, don't speak fast. Your voice should sound like speech, not poetry reading. Your voice should not sound like you're begging for attention, for a relationship, for love.
Watch your voice tone when you ask something, because people tend to raise the pitch of the voice toward the end of a question, something which is perceived as weak.
Remove the expression of surprise from your face and body language.
Your body language has to show expansiveness. Make sure your posture and behavior are expansive, not contracting.
Stand as tall as possible, don't stoop. Push your shoulders backward and your chest forward. Keep your head high and shoulders low so that your neck is long not short. High shoulders indicate stress.
Don't lean your body forward when you speak, in an attempt to get your face closer to your person of interest.
Your body movements must be energetic, determined and quick. Movements that are soft, lacking purpose, bent inward, rigid indicate weakness.
Do strenuous physical activities, like sports.
If you shake hands then do it firmly, but not forcefully.
Remove all irrelevant information from your body movements, voice and words. Be precise, laser focused.
Don't talk all the time.
Hair style, clothes and accessories, have a big impact on confidence.
Learn to say "no" the other person, when it matters to you. If asked, explain why it's important for you to say "no".

The nice guy

If you think that you're a nice guy who can't get a woman because of some imagined flaws that women (as a whole gender) have, stop.

You're using the word "nice" to tell yourself how you would like to be, a good partner / catch, and at the same time lie to yourself about how you really are.

Most likely the word "nice" is hiding someone who is timid (= fearful and lacking confidence), insecure, submissive, desperate, and maybe even resentful (of women). Women, overwhelmingly, aren't attracted to such personalities and they never will be.

Lying to yourself will never build your confidence. Patterns don't work this way. Weakness builds weakness. Strength builds strength.

To be attractive to women, you have to be a confident (nice) guy.

You'll likely think "So what, I want to be just a nice guy because I'm looking for the same type of woman." The problem is that you're not actually looking, you're waiting for a woman like you, and your type of personality, the type of patterns that have built your mind, will dramatically reduce the probability that you'll meet someone like you because each of you will just sit in their usual location and wait, and wait, and wait, and none of you is making any steps towards the other. You're not going to meet this way, so one of you has to move toward the other, and the path to do it is confidence.

Men who have a very low level of confidence, commonly know as shy, tend to linger around the women they like, without saying anything, and appear creepy because women start believing that they can't get away from them.

Some men have a very high level of confidence, so they handle women dramatically different than men who have a very low level of confidence. They know that for any woman who turns her back to them, there are hundreds of other women who may be willing to be the center of those men's attention, so they can and do walk away from the women who don't want them.

Men who understand their high power of attraction, can and do walk away from women that they are attracted to, so women don't perceive them as needy followers, but as independent leaders. Of course, this also means that those women have lost their opportunity, but that realization comes too late, if ever. Women like it when men have the power to walk away. This doesn't mean that they would like it if the men were to return, they like men who have the self control to walk away. Yes, that's strange, but women can't reason this behavior out of their emotional layers because they are attracted to (emotional) strength, to what's known as masculinity. Men don't exhibit this behavior because they are attracted to (emotional) softness, to delicacy, to what's known as femininity.

The power to choose

Women don't get aroused by men with a submissive "excuse me for bothering you" attitude, but they do get aroused by the carefree, confident, "go suck a lemon", bad boy attitude.

The ability of men to walk away from women, as if the men don't care, is perceived by women as strength, and women are attracted to men's strength for evolutionary reasons (because that indicates the potential ability to protect the women and children).

The problem is that this perception was formed in times when the males had to go out to fight the monsters, but this perception isn't indicative of modern reality since the modern bad boys aren't the males who fought the monsters back in immemorial times, and don't have the same goals as those males.

Women, from fragile to bossy, dislike and fear weak men, men with the begging puppy look on their face (conveying "Pleeease give me attention! Reproduce with me!"), men who have the habit of excusing themselves for inconveniencing women, men who orbit and linger around women, be they men from the friend zone or strangers, men who can't accept a rejection in a mere heartbeat.

Women may say they like soft men, but that's because they feel safer when dealing with obedient men, not because they are sexually aroused by them. But if those men were to transform into bad boys, with all the look and attitude of a bad boy, apparently full of testosterone, with the attitude of a leader, with the ability to ignore the women, with the ability to walk away from women in a heartbeat (because they can accept rejection instantly), women would find themselves interested in those men.

This means that men have to be confident, not weak or badly mannered, and must have the self-control to accept a rejection instantly.

Women generally believe that they have the power to choose the men they want to be in relationships with. And they generally have that power because most men, the nice guys, give them a lot of attention, become very soft with their women of interest, and treat them like porcelain dolls, when those same women would explode of pleasure when treated like powerless sex toys by bad boys who know how to get them there.

Since women generally have the attention of the nice guys, they see no difficulty in choosing a man, so they treat them like "just men" who would do anything a woman asks. Nice guys make themselves average, ordinary, replaceable. Women simply have to wait for a man that stands out.

A nice guy is generally ignored by women, but if he dresses well and looks like a carefree, confident, "go suck a lemon", bad boy with a fit body and fit clothes, he starts getting long looks from women.

During a man's development of confidence, there is a spot in between the nice guy and the confident man where some women smirk derisively, and even laugh at him because they see that something doesn't fit in his body language, as if something is fake, as if he's "trying to hard". In popular language, women can still smell the (sexual) desperation of that man. Women don't yet see that man as a leader, and know that they still have the power to choose that man or not.

If a man becomes confident enough, at some point women realize that they have no control over him, so they relinquish their power.

Getting to the point where the body language of a man exudes confidence and power of choice (of women) is a long and difficult process, and most men who want to achieve that level aren't willing to do the work to get there, or don't know what to do (since they can't analyze the feedback they get from women, and correct their behavior to integrate the received input).

Generally, a man who puts a lot of effort into his personal development needs 18 months to build his confidence, but results can be seen after 12 months. It's likely to take some 24 months to lose the desperation for women, become the leader of your relationships and understand that you have the power to choose your partner at least as much as women have.

The saying "feel like a million bucks" represents a point where men have the power of choice, but merely repeating these words doesn't get men anywhere closer to that. Actually getting there mentally, gets men there.

Men have to eliminate the emotional reactions they have to women's rejections and approvals, because having them shows that men need to feel validated by women, meaning they don't lead women, they pursue them.

A man who persists in building his confidence will be surprised to see that he starts losing his desperation, his obsession, his irrational view of relationships as fairy tales, even his interest in almost all women. Women can somehow see the confidence and disinterest of that man, and start giving him long looks. But that's too late because that man has seen the new reality that's behind the veil of fairy tales and manipulation.

When a man loses his desperation, he may reach the point where his thinking about women shifts from desperation to a lack of desire to make the effort to approach women. He may start to think that it's a nuisance for him to even try. It's the mentality of "I'd fuck her, but I wouldn't bother to fucker her." This shows that evolution did well when it made men desperate by default. Without it, men wouldn't approach or pursue women, and since women don't approach men, there wouldn't be enough reproduction to sustain the species.

If a man ever achieves a great level of confidence, but later loses that confidence, he'll likely lose the woman he is in a relationship with, at least in the sense that she'll seize power and both will be unhappy.

Men expressing vulnerability

Can a man be vulnerable in front of his woman partner?

Absolutely. The answer to this question is often controversial because each side of the argument doesn't clarify the context of the answer.

A man can be sensitive and vulnerable in front of the woman, can be the best friend of the woman, can be an intimate confidant, and can even cry in front of the woman. The vulnerable man and the woman can potentially live a quiet and happy life.

The disadvantage is that such a man will never be the animalistic, body-quiver inducing stud that fucks that woman's brains out, both because he doesn't have the necessary attitude and because she doesn't feel sexually aroused by his soft attitude.

Communication

All people want their partner's personality to be surprising from time to time, that is, they want to feel like they haven't reach the end of their partner's mind where the partner starts to sound like a chatbot rather than a person full of surprises and mysteries. You can appear surprising through smarts, humor and teasing.

The kind of confidence which brings success is born from your ability to handle the tools that bridge communication: the human language and the body language.

Confidence also arises from the understanding that while you're physically attracted to your person of interest, your intent is to explore his / her personality, not live under the illusion that you've found your future spouse and soulmate (especially when it's after just one look), illusion which would make you think that you must hold onto that person as if you're holding to your dear life.

The most important tool that you have at your disposal is your mind. This doesn't mean that you need to be a genius in order to be successful. You need to be smart and realize that you're in a competition, with other people like you, to get the attention of your person of interest. To win the competition, especially as a man, since women have a lot of offers to choose from, you have to stand out through your communication skill.

This skill is not simply about your ability to put words together, but about your ability to convey, through adaptation to the real context, through body language and words, what you want from your person of interest, what you're searching for, and what you saw in him / her that made you try to have a conversation.

Be confident, be decisive, be determined in your voice, posture, gestures and actions. Make sure that your voice is loud enough to be heard, and your voice tone doesn't sound like you're begging for attention. Talk as if you're talking to a good friend, to someone that you know for a long time, that is, talk with the same confidence that you use when talking to a friend.

Emotions create a feedback loop, so what you feel will be instantly replicated and felt by your person of interest. A fearful, shy or ashamed behavior, which lacks confidence and shows a fear of the unknown, a belief that you might not deserve your person of interest, will instantly induce the same emotions in your person of interest, will make you stumble while trying to talk, and will exponentially decrease your chances to get the opportunity to have a conversations.

Most likely, your biggest fear is, even if you don't realize it, that you'll look awkward because you have nothing (interesting) to talk about. After all, what can you talk about with a stranger? This fear will make you take long breaks in your conversation, will make your voice weak, will restrain your body language, will make your body stiff / rigid, you will look less confident and will start believing that you don't deserve your person of interest, all of which amplify your fear, which in turn makes you even less confident, and instantly transfers to your person of interest.

Don't fear silence. If you get into a period of silence and start to think it's awkward, say to your person of interest "It's deeply relaxing to spend time with you in silence." This would relax both of you.

Sometimes, a man lacks confidence because he doesn't know anything about the woman he likes, so he has no idea if that women passes his compatibility requirements. This leads to a conflict between the attraction he feels and the fear that he could be incompatible with that woman, which means that he may have to reject her later. This conflict creates indecision, and indecision erodes confidence. Remember that this entire article is about long-term relationships, not about casual relationships (where the compatibility requirements are limited only to attraction), so the man is motivated to filter the woman even before he approaches her.

If your person of interest appears shy, timid or undecided, you'll have to take lead and control the conversation. Be prepared for this.

From time to time, tease your person of interest. Teasing is a cat-and-mouse game which many people who like one another enjoy playing, game which is a form of mental foreplay.

Sensibility is its own enemy

Consider the scenario in which two strangers, a man and a women, full of sensibility, cross their paths, from time to time.

The man likes the woman and, after several such encounters, he initiates a conversation with her, saying that he would like to talk to her so that they get to know each other.

It turns out, from the body language and her smile, that the woman is impressed enough to make her eyes wet. While what she says appears to be a rejection, the way she says it shows that she wants to know him. What she says, while fidgeting, with a tone of regret (sounds a bit whiny), anxious that she can't accept the invitation, is "But I have a boooyfriend..."

Then, they walk away to their separate lives.

Without sensibility in the way, the man could have asked if her relationship is too serious to prevent them from having a conversation, and they could have had a conversation. But instead of that, sensibility has stopped a potential interaction between them, interaction which could have created a beautiful progression (even though not necessarily a romantic relationship).

The moral of the story is that sensibility will sometimes get in the way of happiness, even if that happiness could never be fulfilled to its greatest (desired) extent (because the people involved would never see each other again).

Style for men

This section is not about fashion style, but about fashion style that maximizes the sexual interest of the women who are looking at you. If your style polarizes opinions, good! This means that you stand out whether those looking at you like you or not. It's good publicity.

All you have to do is control your emotions and realize that any woman who doesn't like the way you look, is a woman who doesn't feel physical passion for your presence, and you know that before you even approach her. Don't dress to please others, dress to attract your persons of interest. Wear your stylish and body-fit clothes with confidence! Also, get your body fit.

If the way you dress and look makes women think "He looks so nice", "He's such a nice guy" or "He knows how to dress", it's bad. You want a woman to think "Fuck me! Now!" This doesn't mean that she should want to have casual sex with you, but is an indication of the passion that she should feel for your physical presence.

Women are very impressionable by men's (fashion) style, and the mere color of a shirt can make a difference like night and day. Simple things like loose T-shirt sleeves (instead of tight), and hair that makes the man look like a nice guy (instead of a bad boy), makes women's attention and lingering looks plummet. This is because for women it matters the entire lifestyle and presentation of a man, whereas for men matters mostly the body of a woman.

Men like to dress in clothes that are comfortable and can withstand wear. The overwhelming majority of women see in this a lack of effort, men who aren't affluent but have to work hard to get resources, so they see no reason to choose these men when they have so many other men to choose from, men who give them excessive attention.

Women want to see that a man is serious (about providing for and protecting the women), not playful like a puppy.

Clothes must be fit on the body! The body should be fit or slim. Ideally, the pants should not need a belt to stay on your waist. Note that "fit" doesn't mean "tight", at least not for pants. Generally clothes should not look like your body is about to burst out of them, although tight shirts on a fit body are very attractive (for both men and women).

Women like to see men's wide shoulders, broad chest and slim middle / belly and hips, which is why they like to see men's fit clothes on a fit body. Women are most attracted when a man's fit torso is emphasized (because it shows more masculinity).

Dark, neutrally or cold colored clothes give gravitas to the wearer. This is why elegant clothes are colored neutrally and have simple lines. Fabric quality, texture and basic geometry contribute dramatically to elegance.

Men should dress in clothes with dark, neutral or cold colors, like black. The fabric should generally be matte, but some shine can be good as well, especially for dress / buttoned shirts.

Visible fabric texture and light colors are perceived as softening the overall look, especially for pants, so they can be used to soften a bad boy look.

All clothes other than shirts should be colored neutrally. Men who want to wear clothes with non-neutral colors should try dark colors with various hues, like dark yellow or dark red, or brown. Turquoise and blue shirts look good in the summer, especially as they remind of the sky and water at the beach. Colors with a medium to dark lightness and a low saturation also work fine, like dark gray, dark beige and olive.

Lightness or color inversions between pants and shirt are esthetic, so black pants with a white (or beige, dark yellow, dark red) shirt work well. Same for white pants and a black shirt. Double color inversions also look great, like a white shirt with black pants and a black jacket.

If you have to choose between white pants with a black shirt, or black pants with a white shirt, choose the first combination because the black torso is higher up and therefore closer to the center of attention of women (/ the eyes), so it appears darker and more masculine, while the white shirt softens your appearance. Keep in mind that white pants get dirty very easily.

The most successful combination is: very well fit, long white pants with a black, tight (including the sleeves) shirt. This softens a man's look, but at the same time emphasizes his torso. All black clothes work fine, but there should be something softening the man's look, like a dress / buttoned shirt (instead of a casual shirt). All white clothes are too soft.

Some rough color pattern, like dark denim-looking, is fine, but should be limited. White pants with a black or blue denim-looking shirt, all fit and the shirt tucked in the pants, is a great look.

Avoid denim shirts with bright silver (snap) buttons, or make sure they're as small as possible.

If the pants, belt, shirt and even socks and shoes have the same color, the body appears taller, especially if it's slim. Black is the easiest color with which to achieve this effect. Hair long on top of the head, and puffed up, also makes the body appear taller.

Horizontal stripes on shirts give a compressed look to the torso, making it appear shorter; the effect is even worse on pants.

Avoid patterned clothes, other than the simplest patterns made through the knitting of the fabric.

Avoid at all costs clothes with text writing, drawings or logos on them.

Avoid at all costs pockets on the (outside of the) chest of shirts and jackets because they fragment the look of the chest and soften the look of a man. Leather jackets look fine with chest pockets.

Try to avoid pants with back pockets, or make sure that the pockets are tight on the body and barely visible.

Dress / buttoned shirts give an elegant look. The buttons should have the same color as the fabric, unless they are really fancy and you want them.

Avoid T-shirts that have V-shaped necks (in front), including polo shirts (which have a collar), because they soften a man's look too much and make him look like a nice guy.

Shoes should be black. Dark brown leather shoes are also good, especially if they have color variation, like lighter and darker shades. If they are made of leather, a bit of shine gives you a more formal look, whereas a lack of shine gives you a more casual look. Leather that has a bit of shine is much easier to clean, for both shoes and jackets.

Black and dark brown leather jackets can give a big boost to your confidence. Men should avoid the feminized jackets with diagonal zippers, bright silver zippers, or with smooth leather (with no "character"). Look for jackets with skin texture and blackened / dirty silver zippers. Cheap leather jackets leak dye on the clothes, that can be visible on white clothes, and you probably breathe in the chemicals from it.

Brown leather jackets and brown shoes are a good match for black, blue or white clothes.

For comfort, the only underwear men should wear are cotton trunks or boxer briefs. These have a U-shaped crotch, similar to simple briefs, that's very comfortable on the crotch area. They look like tight short pants, but without the V-shaped crotch that's very annoying on boxers and pants (because the hanging body parts move to only one side). The most practical color is dark gray.

Women generally prefer men with a stubble (a few days old) over a clean shave or a beard.

The hair style should give a slim, tall look to the face and head, which usually means very short hair on the sides of the head, but long on top.

If men look too good in terms of presentation (like clothes and hair style), women might think that such men are playboys who are trying to pick them up, so they might try to avoid (eye) contact. Dark colored clothes amplify the appearance of a bad boy that many women like but avoid because of what they think the potential consequences would be to be in a relationship with such a man.

If you believe that you can't change the way you look, take a look at Fred when he looked like a nice guy who believes that looks is a genetic lottery, and a few years later when he learned how much his choices matter. It's the same person with a different hairstyle, a beard and a lot of confidence. If you don't see the difference, then that's your main problem, not the way you look. In case you don't know what those videos contain, it's ASMR.

Average sized men will have to put in a lot more effort than taller and more muscular men because women are impressed by men's body size, since they interpret it as being proportional with the capacity to protect the women. When women see an average sized man who looks confident and is dressed well and fit, women feel that should not be the case, that average men can't look that good, that they can't be aroused (since they aren't getting the protection they need), and feel that such characteristics are reserved to large men. Any softening, like light colors and fabric textures, makes average sized men looks even weaker.

One other thing. Don't walk with a hand in a pocket (of your pants). It was cool in fashion photos, and maybe when there was only one guy doing that in an entire city.

Shirt in or out of pants

Should men wear a buttonless shirt in or out of pants, especially of short pants?

There are reasons for wearing it on the outside:

To hide the abdominal fat.
To reduce the short, compressed look of the torso that occurs when the shirt is in the pants (especially when the pants are too high on the abdomen).
Women like to see the slim middle / belly and hips of a man's body.

But on a fit body, if the shirt is fit (tight can also work), it can also be worn in the pants, which is in contrast to what most people do.

Many people want to wear shirts in pants because it gives men a soft, boyish look, it feminizes them. Most men want this because they don't want to look at the puffed up chests and masculine trapeze formed between the middle of the body and the shoulders of fit men. Women want to see this because it makes men soft and easy to control.

Next time someone tells you to take your shirt out of your pants, ask why. If that person says that it looks better, ask how that works, what makes it look better. That person won't know, which means he / she also doesn't know what the other side of the argument is.

Short pants

Short pants usually look horrible on men because they are almost always too wide and too long over the thighs, and this creates a vertically compressed body look. The length isn't a problem, since the pants can be tailored to length.

Pants that shrink at the top (because a lace keeps them on the waist), or flare / swell around the hem of legs of the pants make the body appear curvy and feminized. Make sure that the (side) pockets don't flare out on the hips.

To reduce the compressed look, wear pants fit on the thighs and hips.

Wearing the shirt on the outside reduces the compressed look, but also gives you a soft, nice guy look.

The pants leg length is measured from the inseam (= where all the seams intersect between the legs of the pants) to the hem.

How long should pants be depends on the man's height, but also on the body proportions. In general, for an elegant look, the distance between the hem and the top of the kneecap (when the leg is straight, not bent) should be 6...9 cm (2.4...3.5 in). This is easy to measure while wearing pants. This means that the pants leg length depends on the height of the man and his body proportions.

A very short pants leg length, like 8...10 cm (3...4 in) gives you a sporty look. You might think that this is a problem because trunks (underwear) have about the same leg length. However, you have to keep in mind that trunks are snug to the body, while pants hang lower due to their V-shaped crotch (that would be unbearable if worn snug to the body). In this case, the pants leg length depends on the length of the upper part of the pants.

If the pants leg length is very short, the pockets have to be short, so that they don't push out through the hem; zippers can keep large objects inside short pockets.

Most men will feel uncomfortable with very short pants, as such pants are not meant to be worn outside of sports dedicated environments.

If you have a light colored skin, black / dark short pants (together with black shoes) will create a high contrast between the skin and the pants, that you might find unpleasant. In such a case, white pants are a better choice.

Personally, I had to buy long pants and tailor them to length.

Fragrance

Fragrances should be sprayed on clothes because:

Clothes have a much larger area that can be sprayed on, compared to the body.
The fragrance persists on clothes and accumulates in time, which gives clothes a nice, low intensity scent even if you don't spray them with a fragrance.
The fragrance isn't affected by the chemistry of the skin, so it's scent is more consistent, long term.
Once the clothes are taken off, there is no fragrances left on the body, so you don't have to constantly breath air with a fragrance in it.
It's safer because the skin won't absorb the oils from the fragrance.

Personally, I spray fragrances on my shoulders because:

The fragrance isn't directly raising into my nose, so it's not saturating my sense of smell.
I can smell it when I turn my head around.
Weaker fragrances can be felt for longer because the distance to the nose is smaller.
It's close to the nose of anyone who is close to me.
Since the shoulders are a large area, the fragrance gets sprayed on my body, it's not wasted.

Other areas where I spray fragrances on are the arms and torso sides.

Some fragrances may stain clothes, so test them on hidden areas of clothes. Also, spray fragrances from a distance of 20...30 cm (8...12 in) from clothes.

It can be fine to combine several fragrances on you, but spray them on different areas of the body, like one on each shoulder; don't spray them on top of each other. If you combine fragrances, use ones that have contrasting types of scent, like sweet and non-sweet.

The most practical bottles are round and have a small push cap. Some bottles are so impractical that they have to be used with both hands.

Giving compliments

Don't make a goal from giving compliments! Don't be a validation dispenser for other people! Don't compliment random strangers! Don't compliment people at your workplace!

Focus on your goal of understanding who may be a potential partner!

Give compliments to very few people, only when you mean it, when you feel an emotional connection (not just attraction) with those people.

Only give compliments when you mean it, when you feel it's true, else it will become banal and tiring, which will show on you and everyone will forever feel that something is missing from your behavior.

Only give compliments to people who look into your eyes to indicate some interest in you. For example, a stranger who passes by you, looks in your eyes for longer than a glance, is showing you some interest (be it good or bad).

Only give compliments to people who have the sensuality that's needed to understand the meaning of a compliment, mature people.

Try to compliment your person of interest for what you've felt his / her personality is like, or for something that he / she has worked to make happen. He / she will like it very much if you notice something that even he / she didn't notice about himself / herself.

Compliments about the physical appearance don't work because:

Since everyone can see the physical traits of other people, such compliments are easy to give, and therefore are overused and have become trivial, especially for women. Since they're easy to give, giving them indicates a lack of creativity, so the receiver immediately sees that the giver is not the best potential partner.
They indicate a physical attraction, not an emotional one, and an emotional connection is required to form a long-term relationship.

Complimenting women

Is it worth complimenting women?

A woman can be particularly skittish when a man looks at her for longer than a glance because he finds her very interesting, and can get intimidated very quickly. If the man decides not to approach her, a compliment can make her understand what his intentions were, and not leave her with a sour taste after seeing him.

It feels satisfying to hear a woman giggle, see her smile, see her getting relaxed, or even hear her say "Thank you!" Some women's eyes get wet.

Does this compensate the time, energy and focus wasted on the indifference, avoidance and complete misinterpretation of men's intentions by some women? Does this compensate the belief of some women that men should never compliment / approach strangers? That's for you to answer.

Be very careful, or you could end up being accused of stalking. Some people misinterpret benign encounters, and believe that strangers who look at them are enemies stalking them. Give compliments to very few people, only when you mean it, when you feel an emotional connection (not just attraction) with those people.

Keep in mind that men give excessive attention and flattery to the majority of young women (that they are not in a relationship with), and some women start to believe that they are entitled to validation, and that men are bad if they don't validate the women, as if it's the men's job to do so. It's every person's responsibility to develop their own personalities, not to wait for validation from others. Because such women are very vocal about themselves, it may appear that most women are like this, even though that's not necessarily so.

Avoid complimenting a woman who avoids (looking at) you.

Avoid complimenting a woman who appears arrogant (= has an air of superiority, frowns at you, appears disgusted, is mocking you). Arrogance results from an overinflated ego, from too much attention from men, attention that makes her believe that she is superior to men and that men have to provide to her whatever material and immaterial things she wants, while she doesn't feel compelled to reciprocate in at least an equal amount. Arrogance is different than the attempt to intimidate men with her unapproachable behavior (which is her way of filtering out weak men).

Best matches

If you want a happy long-term relationship, never pretend to be / want something other than you actually are / want. Never play "pretend" games. Don't be too cool for the truth. If you want something to happen, ask for it.

Many people use psychological manipulation in order to obtain control over the people around them, and especially over their partners.

People who are intimidated by their partner's independence and power of attraction, are people who lack confidence and are most likely to fall victims to psychological manipulation.

If you want to avoid this, either find a partner who doesn't try to manipulate you (which is rare), or change your behavior to show that you trust yourself to control your future, and show a charisma whose power of attraction is equivalent to that of your partner. In other words, create a balance between you and your partner.

Through your thoughts, words and gestures, in the beginning of a relationship don't treat your partner as if he / she is the one and only partner, your soulmate. Don't idolize your partner, don't put him / her on a pedestal, don't treat him / her like a prince / princess. If you were to not follow this advice and you were to ever feel that you're losing your partner, you would become desperate, and desperation only amplifies the disastrous outcome.

Behave like a person who has independence, someone who trusts himself / herself to control his / her own future. Absolutely avoid the whiny / begging voice tonality, tonality which would show that you're weak, so not a partner on which one could rely on for support in times of pressure.

You may be living under the illusion that soulmates exist, illusion created by romantic stories, novels and movies. What those stories don't tell you is that billions of other people did not meet their soulmate, thus creating an observational bias that tricks you into believing in something which isn't real.

All relationships must be built by the partners. There is no external magic and no soulmates that make relationships work.

Knowing that there are other people with whom you can have a long-term relationship means that if a deep connection is not formed between you and your partner, you don't have to settle for an inferior relationship with the current one, since you can move on and find another partner.

Deeply feel that each person of interest is a potential not a destiny.

Once you learn that you can approach any stranger for a conversation, you realize that the belief in the concept of "this is the one and only partner" is a lie fabricated by an uneducated brain who can't see that it has many opportunities to choose form. Once this happens, the desperation / neediness goes away and you no longer feel that you have to be with a specific person. At that point you understand that you don't have to settle with what you think is your last chance to happiness, because there will be other opportunities to choose from.

Your confidence grows dramatically and your potential partners interpret this confidence (and lack of desperation) in a positive way. You have to realize now that you are fully responsible for where you're going, for what you're choosing, whereas before your actions were driven by the desperation born out of fear of losing your one and only opportunity. You are now in charge of your future, rather than being controlled by randomness and mindlessness.

Happiness

If you're asking yourself whether you can have an everlasting happy relationship, you should start by asking what does happiness mean? What makes you happy? What's makes your partner happy?

If your definitions of happiness aren't compatible, you can't be happy no matter what, no matter how much time passes, no matter how much effort you put in.

It's like wanting to go through a door and banging your head in the door, expecting that at any time you will go through the door, if you try hard enough. Reality doesn't work like that, patterns don't work like that, and you must first realize that you have to push the door knob and open the door before you try to go through.

So, you must first realize what happiness means for each of you. Then, you must realize that your definitions of happiness may be different enough that you can't be happy with that partner (no matter how much time you bang your head in the door).

So the question really is whether you understand (and make the effort to understand) what makes you happy, and understand that you have to find a partner who is made happy by similar things, rather than trying to change the partner's personality.

Does this mean that you will find someone compatible? No. Does this mean that there is someone compatible with you somewhere in the world? No. It only means that if you want to be happy, you have to take action in that direction, by understanding where each pattern can end up. Not all patterns can build success and happiness.

You have to understand that you can't change the consequences of patterns, so you can't live your life in any way you want and yet expect the result that you want. You have to follow the patterns that can have the result that you want, which means that you have to change yourself by bringing in your life those patterns. Are you willing to do this, are you willing to change?

You should consider that you may have been looking in the wrong pool of people, that is, you were looking only at people with the same kind of behavior, yet every time you where expecting a different result.

You might think that you can be happy by changing the pool of potential partners. But, are you from that (new) pool of people, or are you only trying to get out of your past context by clinging to someone else as to a lifeline?

Physical attraction versus emotional attraction

During in-person encounters, the most difficult thing for you will be to understand, in just a few seconds of looking, not even from the best angle, if there is a good possibility for you and your person of interest to have a happy long-term relationship. This is the reality of dealing with in-person encounters with strangers, and you simply have to become able to do it.

You will have to be able to separate and contain the immediately felt physical attraction (for him / her) from the long lasting romantic attraction. The problem is that to see this normally requires multiple encounters separated by days, which is unlikely to happen.

The problem is that physical attraction can be so powerful that it blinds your ability to see what else does your person of interest have, and eliminating this effect requires time to observe your person of interest, time that you don't have when seeing a stranger.

An emotional connection is when you and your person of interest look in each other's eyes, and you both feel that there is a match beyond anything you've see in other persons of interest, an attraction to the body language rather than to the body. You can understand the existence of such a connection only after you've seen and compared a lot of persons of interest. This gut reaction is critical because it arises from the primitive emotional layers of the mind, the ones which are the first to interact with the world.

The presence of an emotional connection indicates a higher probability of compatible default states of mind, that is, that you both see and (first) react to the world in similar ways.

Look at your person of interest and ask yourself whether you feel an emotional connection. Ask yourself what you would miss if that person were to walk away. Do you feel the impact of his / her presence, when looking at him / her, does he / she warms your soul? Do you feel like you're melting when looking at him / her? If he / she didn't have that amazing butt or chest / breasts, would you still be interested? Would you still enjoy being with him / her daily for years? If you would, this is the kind of connection that you should follow.

Ask yourself what personality traits you see in your person of interest. Examples: confidence, trustworthiness, expansiveness / extroverted, strength, energy, curiosity, determination / drive, rebellion, shyness / timidity, delicacy (but not fragility), innocence, elegance, refinement, has the courage to look in your eyes.

If you can't see (in your person of interest) some personality traits that are important for you, if your main thought is something like "He / she is beautiful, I'd like to be with him / her", that doesn't sound like the start of a happy long-term relationship.

You will be on the right path when, upon seeing a potential partner, you'll automatically start by asking "Is he / she right for me?" instead of saying "I must be with him / her!"

Beauty and (power of) attraction are different things. There are people who appear physically stunning or mesmerizing at first sight, but who lose a bit of their charm and attractiveness every time you see them, that is, they lose their power of attraction (although they still appear beautiful). There are people who become more charming and attractive every time you see them, people that you slowly start to anxiously await to see again. This is the best way to tell the difference between physical attraction and romantic attraction, but it requires time to understand.

You'll have a breakthrough when you'll realize that a romantic relationship is not with a body, but with a personality, and that personality has to be compatible with yours.

Things that don't indicate compatible personalities: being nice people, (common) hobbies, (common) favorite movies, music, books or colors.

To understand which potential partners are part of the special category of people with whom you could truly have a happy relationship, you have to observe and compare potential partners, in time.

You will have to see how they look and how they behave, and push your mind to progress toward a state where it's able to extract (from apparent noise) the extremely fine details that tell you who is part of this special category. This ability will be severely limited by the reduced details that you can observe in a short time frame, but you only need it to reduce the number of people with whom to have a conversation.

It's a category of people because there will be several such potential partners, and there is absolutely no way for anyone to understand who is the "best match". There is no best match, there are several best matches.

This progression of the mind creates a huge set of information weaved together with your personality from birth, and can't be simplified and described into words because people are too different, so each person has to make the effort to build their own state of mind that allows them to filter potential partners, and understand who they should approach for a conversation. This state of mind will build slowly and with great difficulty because it has to overcome your personality that has built from birth.

Prioritize correctly

The quickest way for me to see whether I and a woman have incompatible personalities is whether she has any of the following: dyed hair (even a little bit), lots of makeup, lots of jewelry, long nails, nails dyed with intense colors or drawings, uses her phone while she eats. I have to ask myself what could possibly determine me, if I were a woman, to do those things and like them? The answer is: nothing. So, I don't see in those preferences the same structure and interests that I see in me.

A women who has long nails didn't wake up one day with long nails, forced to accept the situation. Her entire life, everything that happened, every choice she's made, led her to feel pleasure when seeing her long nails. My life has led me to dislike them; they are an obstacle. So the entire progressions of our lives form the reason why our personalities are incompatible. Also, how can they wipe their butt with long nails, never mind washing it?

Add to this the fact that I never saw a woman who I thought knew how to use makeup to look refined (I'm not talking about the ones done professionally); at least I don't remember a case, so it's practically the same thing.

Ironically, my biggest failure in life to seize an opportunity was when I was mesmerized by a woman, who appeared to share the feeling, as we gave each other several long looks, and I left (without saying anything) because she had three dotted nails (or something like that). For most people that sounds absurd, but that kind of obsession has built the work that you see, in part, on this website, to absurd detail, so I know how important tiny details are for the big picture.

That was the moment that fairy tales are made of. The problem is that, in reality, you also need the brain circuitry to recognize the importance of the moment in just a few seconds.

Other failures I can justify, but this remains my biggest. Unfortunately, an in-person encounter only gives you a few seconds to make a decision. On the other hand, the impact that this failure (and others) had on me has materialized into the details of this article.

So, if this happens to you, perhaps you will remember this story and you will not let your tinny obsessions overpower your feelings, when the feelings should have priority, as is the case when looking for a romantic relationship. You want to have a conversation, not make a marriage proposal, so you can ignore your tiny obsessions.

I do think that I saw her again; there were similarities and differences, so I'm not sure. She was still pretty, but the magic was gone. The second lesson of this story is that one look is never enough to tell you anything about a person, no matter how powerful the attraction is.

Give and take

What do you want to offer to your partner? What do you want to get from your partner? Happiness, passion, ecstasy?

What's standing in your way? Your, your partner's or both your ways of thinking?

Are you interested in making the effort to satisfy your partner, or do you want only to get satisfaction from your partner? Do you care?

Have you thought about how you're going to make your partner happy, and how you're going to make him / her shake uncontrollably in complete ecstasy?

Perhaps you're asking yourself why should you satisfy your partner while he / she reaps the benefits. That's the wrong question to ask, it's not the problem that you have to solve. If you're asking such a question, your problem is not that your partner reaps the benefits, it's that you can't find the partner you want, and solving this problem is not done by denying your partner to be satisfied.

If you're having trouble finding a partner that you would like to satisfy, you should take a long look at your target audience, that is, at the pool of potential partners in which you're looking. Perhaps so far you've been looking in the pool of potential partners who can't give you any reason to want to satisfy them. Perhaps the potential partners who can give you such a reason are ignoring you, in which case you should ask yourself what is it about you that makes them do that. Perhaps you are ignoring the potential partners who can give you such a reason, because you think they are not good enough for you.

Examples

I once saw a young couple in a store. She was attractive and he was a nice guy, about on par with her beauty. I was admiring her and saw her big, lovely eyes lingering on me for a bit. Not normally a problem, but it felt like she was looking for something, something not material.

As they were walking by, I felt a disconnect between the two of them, and she was clearly the one leading in the relationship; he was obviously lost about what he should do. At some point he saw that a large label was stuck on his shoe, and he removed it; at this point he was behind her. What came next left me stunned: he stuck the label on her coat.

She initially got angry, thinking that it might ruin her coat, but it didn't stick, so she took it in her hand and looked at it, not knowing where it came from. All I could think was how a man who had access to a beautiful woman thought that the best way to interact was to stick trash on her. What a lost opportunity to make a woman happy!

I insist on the beautiful aspect of her because that was a woman who would have no issue in getting another man in the shortest time possible, a woman who was already looking for something outside of her relationship, but who probably didn't know what she should do, and, more importantly, what she could have (if she were able to choose a knowledgeable man).

Another time I saw a very similar couple and, again, I was admiring her and saw her lovely eyes looking at me several times. But this time, her look was expressing only interest, not I-want-out-of-here. It was much less clear that she was leading, even though she was mostly in front and the man following her closely. But most importantly, in this case the man was doing a very different thing, unequivocally showing that he knew what he was doing: he was casually touching her back, patting her slightly and caressing her with attention. To make it clear, the relationship wasn't good because he was patting her on the back, but because the patting was only a small part of the rest of his similar behavior.

Another time I saw a young couple (slightly older than the couples above) with a kid; she was also a beautiful woman. There was a clear disconnect between them, with a marked physical distance. In this case, she wasn't leading, but nor was he. At some point she asked him about doing something, trying to get him involved, and he said "Do what you want", with a soft but neutral voice. She was also obsessively avoiding other people's looks, as if she wanted to avoid any temptation, but in fact isolating herself from reality. At some point her eyes did meet mine and she was surprised by the attention, but liked it (considering the multiple and soft eye contact). She was behaving like a woman who believed in excruciating faithfulness, but unfortunately faithfulness doesn't equal happiness. In this case, the lesson is that being distant from your partner degrades your relationship, whether you see it or not. I saw them several times.

First date

Men should not ask women where they want to go or what they want to do, they should plan the date, including some conversation topics.

For the first date, it's best do something that allows you two to sit next to each other rather than across a (dinner) table. Try to do some activity together, something that keeps you in close proximity.

Going in a crowded place forces you two to stay very close to each other, and likely touch (intentionally and unintentionally) several times.

If you sit across a table, try to find one with a small distance across, so that you can easily touch hands if you feel that the date is going well.

An invitation to dinner makes the person who's making the invitation appear much more serious than an invitation to a conversation.

A dinner can't be easily cut short if the date isn't going well.

If you go to a restaurant, sit next to each other, not in front of each other, so that you can touch arms both intentionally and unintentionally. This will likely sound strange to many people because they can't look in each other's eyes, but because you can't easily look in each other's eyes, it's easy to look around when the eye contact becomes too intense or when there is a long pause in talking.

You can't interact much while watching a movie, so, after the movie, make sure to go to a place where you can interact. Make sure that your person of interest knows where you will go after the movie.

Before you start the (serious) conversation, you could say "I'm going to put my phone on silent. I don't want phone calls to disturb us." This will allow your person of interest to do the same. You don't want any phone calls to disturb your time together.

Meeting with a stranger

If you've met online, talk extensively before meeting in person, preferably through video communication. Ask for his / her real name and clear photos of his / her face.

Agree to meet only in a public place with many people around.

Tell to a friend where you are going and when you will return. Give to that friend the online account, the real name and the photos of your person of interest.

Do not agree to be picked up from your home by your person of interest. Go to the meeting place on your own, and return from there on your own.

Do not let your drinks unsupervised. Drugs can be put into them while you are away.

Do not feel embarrassed by the precautions that you are taking. Some people may try to make you feel ashamed of your behavior / precautions, so that you lower your guard. If this happens, either strongly voice your desire / need to feel safe, or simply walk away.

Predators think that they are smart and can exploit your social behavior. For you, it's better to appear uncool than end up being hurt. Someone who cares about you would not try to make you feel ashamed about your safety precautions.

For example, if someone asks you "But don't you trust me?" just look into their eyes, smile and say confidently "No", or if you prefer a milder way then say "Not yet", or if you want to redirect the questioning then ask "Trust you with what?"

If at any point your person of interest shows the slightest sign of verbal, mental or physical aggression, walk away as soon as possible.

Touching

Don't touch strangers!

Don't rush to touch a person that you're dating the first time. You can try to get closer and closer to him / her. If he / she keeps steps back / away, don't touch him / her.

If he / she lets you get closer and doesn't step back, you can try some gentle touches on his / her arms. The forearm is a good part to touch when you are next to each other, or when you can't get too close. Avoid the wrists because touching them may feel like an attempt to restrain movement.

First kiss

If you want to kiss your person of interest for the first time, asking for permission would surely break the romantic mood. You also don't want to go for it without permission and risk a harsh rejection.

If you want to kiss him / her, and you feel that he / she might want the same, you can try to lean slightly toward him / her, moving your face toward his / her face, very slowly. If he / she doesn't do anything or leans toward you, lean a bit more, and so on until you kiss. If he / she moves a bit away from you, don't get upset, wait a moment and then move away as well. Then, just wait for another time, or even ask him / her about what happened, about why it was the wrong moment for a kiss.

An alternative is to introduce a bit of a teasing tone with a statement like "Looks (to me) like you want to kiss me."

By doing this, you allow him / her to either give you permission without being technical about it, but also to give you the lightest possible rejection, with either "Yes", "No" or "Maybe".

"Maybe" is a form of teasing, a cat-and-mouse game which many people who like one another enjoy playing, game which is a form of mental foreplay. If he / she says this then you could continue with "It's risky because if we kiss, you will want more."

A less emotionally intense alternative to the first kiss is the first peck. Simply put, instead of moving your lips toward the lips of your person of interest, move normally to peck him / her on the cheek. Make sure that it's clear that your moving toward his / her cheek, so come from a side of his / her face.

Paying the first time

A man who's willing to pay for dinner on the first date, without expecting anything in return, appears to be more serious.

If it wasn't previously decided who should pay for the first meal, if the woman offers to pay for her part, the man should let her.

Some women say that the man should pay even in this case because a woman who says that she wants to pay actually doesn't mean it, and if the man lets her pay then she will lose respect for him and will ignore him in the future.

What you're not told is that this is a good thing because a woman who's offering to pay but doesn't mean it, exhibits a pattern of deceit by saying one thing while believing the opposite. What will she do in the future? The exact same thing, repeatedly.

She's also trying to see if the man is easy to manipulate, that is, if he's willing to do things even though she pretends to not be interested in them.

A man who wants to be in a long-term, balanced relationship, should walk away in such a case because the pattern of deceit and manipulation will repeat, especially when the stakes are higher than the cost of a meal.

Asking immediately for a second date

If you and your person of interest went on a first date which went well, you probably want to go on a second date, but you don't know how to ask for one without appearing desperate / needy. A common solution is to play games where you pretend that you're too cool to express your feelings, and wait for a few days.

You can avoid such a game by saying, immediately after the first date ended, "I had a wonderful time and I want us to get together again." If your person of interest doesn't answer immediately, or criticizes the fact that you put him / her in the uncomfortable position of refusing you, add "Call me if you want that too."

He / she might say "No, no, you should call me in a few days." This is a big warning sign because he / she is likely trying to see if it's possible to manipulate you, to get you to do what he / she wants. Therefore, make it absolutely clear "If you have to think about it, you call me." This won't stop a determined manipulator, but it will make you see that you have the power to defend yourself. If he / she doesn't call you, do not ever call him / her to check about the decision!

This lets your person of interest know that you want a second date, but he / she isn't pressured to answer immediately, and can think about it for a while, yet it's his / her responsibility to contact you for a second date.

Asking later for a second date

If you didn't ask for a second date immediately after the first date ended, the next day you should send him / her a message saying something like "I had a wonderful time yesterday and I want us to get together again. Let me know when you're up for it."

Sexual lifestyle

Warning: sexual content included.

Sexual lifestyle means the way people regard / view sexual behavior, not the way they have sex. There are two main sexual lifestyle types: indulgent and controlled.

People with an indulgent sexual lifestyle first have sex and then decide whether they are compatible for a (long-term) relationship with their partner. For them, sex is a biological need, like eating, which is fulfilled when it appears, with whoever is available at the time, so they go with the flow in their relationships and sexual life. Having sex with a partner and separating later feels like they've gained sexual and life experience. This results in indulgent people having sex with many partners during their lifetime.

People with a controlled sexual lifestyle first decide whether they are compatible for a long-term relationship with their partner, and only then have sex. For them, having sex for the first time with a new partner is a serious decision, a huge investment in their partner, like trying to answer a big philosophical question, so they try to control their relationships and sexual life. They want to feel that they make a big investment in a person, person who is worth the effort, and want to build a relationship that lasts a long time. Having sex with a partner and separating later feels like losing a big part of who they are, that is, it feels like the dissolution of their personality. This results in controlled people having sex with few partners during their lifetime.

A controlled sexual lifestyle is not related to religious beliefs. A controlled sexual lifestyle is an internal drive, not an external one. Nobody else is telling a controlled person to feel that way, nobody else is telling him / her to have sex with very few people. When a controlled person leaves the family where the controlled lifestyle started, he / she will continue to behave the same. In contrast, a person whose sexual lifestyle was repressed within a family with strong religious beliefs, has a significant probability to become indulgent when leaving the family, as he / she finds freedom outside of it.

Monogamy

You may hear some people saying that monogamy is not in the human biology, that it's a practice. Certainly, it is so, but unfortunately this is said as an unspoken justification to promote the lack of monogamy.

There is one problem: biology is not the goal setter of humans, it's the limitation. Humans are what they are in spite of their biology, not because of it. Behavior, choices, non-biological traits are what separate humans from all other animals. Take them away and humans would go back to live in trees.

People have reached their unrivaled abilities because they went against their instincts and have built their future step by step, because they do things that animals aren't doing, regardless of biology. People choose to push their physical and mental abilities to the absolute biological limits, to the point where the body starts to break down. They do so against huge risks of catastrophic damage or death. They don't do it because biological traits are meant to be followed. So, what biology specifies is not a justification for how people should behave.

Monogamy is a choice, a practice, but saying this with the subtle undertone of "just a practice" shows a misunderstanding of what matters to and what made humans intellectually unrivaled among all animals: behavior.

Even more, when talking about biology and what's "natural" you end up with the analogy of animals where killing is natural. Does this mean that "natural" killing is a good thing that humans should adopt? No, it doesn't, because being "natural" has no concept of morality and of what should be. Humans aspire to be something, a behavior which is completely missing from animals and biology.

Does the past matter?

The desire to select (potential) partners based on their sexual past is a personal preference, and nobody has to justify it.

The reason for this preference is that you think you can find a partner without a rich sexual past, so you think you can do better. The people that you would reject for their past, subconsciously understand this, panic, and try to manipulate you by saying that the past doesn't matter.

If the sexual past matters to you, then ask your person of interest about it and accept nothing less than your standards.

However, you should calibrate your preferences based on what you can offer, because if you're looking for a partner who had very few sexual partners, but you had many sexual partners, Reality is going to call your bluff.

If you're interested to understand why a mind has preferences and standards (not necessarily about the sexual past) for potential partners, continue to read this section.

Can partners with different sexual lifestyles have compatible personalities? It's possible, but the correct question is whether it is likely and whether it is worth the risk to waste time and energy to find out.

To answer the latter question, you have to ask whether the (sexual) past matters. To some people the past matters, to some it doesn't.

Most indulgent people don't have a problem being in a relationship with a controlled person, since they decide on compatibility later in the relationship anyway.

Most controlled people do have a problem being in a relationship with indulgent people, since they prefer not to risk their future with people who make (compatibility) decisions only after they act.

People who say that the past doesn't matter are implying that controlled people should not have a problem being in a relationship with indulgent people, at least when both partners are ready to settle. When a person avoids talking about the past, that person is trying to hide it so that his / her partner can't decide on his / her own what matters and what doesn't.

The idea that the past doesn't matter arises from conflating being a good person with a having a personality compatible with someone else's. The sexual past is an unlikely indicator of being a good or a bad person, but people who are good people don't necessarily have compatible personalities. At the same time, physical appearance doesn't indicate behavior, and physical appearance and attraction don't indicate compatible personalities. But behavior indicates compatible personalities, and the past indicates that behavior. The future also indicates that behavior, but why wait for the future when you can look at the past? Because people change? Why should anyone risk their future because (some) people change? A good relationship is earned, not demanded. In the mean time, people can choose partners without a specific past.

Every person is the way he / she is because the past has built them, past which is encoded in their current mental state, state which is carried around throughout their lives and is making decisions at every moment. People's personalities are modeled by events that leave patterns in the mind, even if unseen on the outside.

A mind is not made of random neuron firings. Decisions were made in the past, and their progression has shaped the current state of the mind. There is continuity. The past shows what people are more inclined to do in the future, which is generally to continue the same patterns. Moreover, research shows that even regretting past sexual behavior doesn't lead to a change of that behavior.

Nobody can actually look at a person and understand their mental state and what their future will bring, especially when that person hides his / her past, especially the mistakes, from other people, but the likely future is nevertheless already in their mental state.

A claim that a person is a certain way now, even if in the past was different, is a mere claim not a proven fact, and whether another person wants to risk their future to find out whether the claim is a fact, is the decision of the latter person.

The past shows a person's standards, shows when people get and stay in bad situations, and shows that these people than blame their partners rather analyzing why they got there and why they stayed there.

The pattern of making (compatibility) decisions only after sex matters to some people, people who want their partners to have high standards for the selection of their own partners.

Here is a different way of putting all this. People don't wake up one day with a random personality and tell themselves "Well, I guess I have these weird recollections of something I didn't do." Their entire life, everything that happened, every choice they've made, led them to who they are.

But what does it mean that "they are"? Is it possible to write down what people are and then read that to understand them? No, which means that what people think and say that they are, shows only a part of how they will act in the future, which is why their past has to be added to the equation in order to better understand how the people will act in the future.

When some people are rejected because of something they did in the past, they may say:

The past doesn't matter!
- I decide if it matters or not to me. It's not your decision.
But I am the same person (you've fallen in love with)!
- You are the same person, but I didn't know what that was. I only saw your face / body and I had to discover your personality to understand that we're not compatible.

A face is not what makes a person, and physical attraction is not what makes a relationship work. A personality is not made by what is visible (on a person's face or body), but by everything that is invisible. The face is there for physical attraction. Behavior is there to make the personality, so, only it can show the potential compatibility between two people. Just because a pretty face can hide things or lie about what it did in the past, doesn't mean that what is invisible is the same thing as what is visible.

Still, the present is the result of the interaction of all the things from the past, not a mere slice of it, so your conversations have to take both the past and the present into account.

Success

Aside from the compatibility of partners with different sexual lifestyles, there is also the question of whether people with either sexual lifestyle type are more successful than people with the other type.

The answer to this question turns out to be quite simple, as the biggest giants of science, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, were at opposite ends the sexual lifestyle.

As far as it's known, Newton was virgin throughout his lifetime, whereas Einstein was unfaithful to his multiple wives, had numerous mistresses and was interested in love triangles.

So, as far as professional success goes, both types can reach the very peak of human achievements.

Conversations

Conversations, though time consuming, let people ask various questions which can open long, detailed and personalized conversations, with many related questions arising along the way.

Conversations can't evaluate someone's personality in an absolute way, can't say how people are, can't explain why people are the way they are, can't assign score points to personality traits or to individuals, can't categorize people and can't reference norms. There are no correct or wrong answers. There are no superior and inferior types of personalities.

Conversations can only help you compare your personality to that of another person, to see if there is a match between the two of you.

Conversations are meant to show the similarities and differences of personality, so that you can understand whether you're compatible, not whether one of you is better than the other. Compatibility of personalities in the context of a romantic relationship has nothing to do with having the same favorite colors, music, books, hobbies, jobs, all of which are irrelevant for a long-term relationship.

Try to create a friendly atmosphere in order to have a longer conversation. Being good at conversation requires spontaneity, that is, the ability to be relatively random in the way you make thought associations and jump from a conversation topic to another.

A stroll during the conversation forces you to focus on walking rather than looking in each other's eyes, so you won't see the insecurity / uncertainty on each other's face.

When your person of interest speaks, you must listen. Just shut up and listen. Let him / her see your interest in him / her. When you have something to say, don't speak before a couple of seconds of silence pass, unless he / she clearly expects you to talk.

How should a conversation look like between compatible people? Balanced, because neither person is trying to dominate the other. Do not judge, mock or shame your person of interest. The more one of the partners tries to dominate the other, the less happy their relationship will be. Arguing, criticism, negativity, (an air of) superiority, mockery, all erode and ultimately devastate a relationship.

Try to make conversations fun. Let's say that someone asks you if during sex you would squeal like a dolphin. What is the correct way to answer? It's not "Yes", it's not "No", it's not with an angry tone, it's "I would, but first show me how the dolphin does it." Why? Because this answer can start a conversation, a funny one, and laughter is what you need to build a relationship, not indifference, sadness, fear or anger.

Men must avoid indetermination. If the women asks the man what they should do together, where they should go, the man must avoid saying "I don't know" or "What / where you want". The woman is in fact saying that she trusts the man and that he should lead her. Also, if the man asks the woman out on a date, particularly the first one, he must not ask "Where do you want to go?". The man must find an answer that doesn't shift the responsibility from him to her. The man can give her two or three options (what to do, or where to go), but he must provide those options.

If your person of interest seems reticent, fearful or ashamed to discuss something, for example sex, tell them that you want to make them happy and satisfied. Use kind words to lead your person of interest to a mentally comfortable place.

Do not enter in an argument with your person of interest. Do not say and do not imply that your person of interest is wrong. Listen, then speak to share your view, but don't try to dominate the conversation.

Until you're sure that both your preferences match, avoid expressing extreme feelings, like saying or even implying that something is awful, disgusting, gross, unless they say the same thing first.

If another person is trying to dominate you verbally, for example by raising their voice, ask what they are trying to achieve. They might be passionately explaining their point of view, but explain that you have your own and you have no intention of changing either yours or theirs.

First conversation

The first conversation should always be face to face.

Ask questions that would make your person of interest talk about his / her personality. Try to steer the conversation toward large topics (that involve a lot of talking) and toward answers that induce emotions in your person of interest, that is, try to make them talk about what they like (to visit, watch, listen to, read, cook, do for hobbies, and so on).

Ask personal questions. Ask for his / her life story.

Try to make him / her smile. For example, while trying to talk to someone in a bar, you might ask "How was your night?" Your person of interest might say "Lousy!" Are you discouraged at this point, thinking that you're being rejected? Try a funny comeback like "Till I came along, wouldn't you say?" Funny questions and statements can make your person of interest smile or laugh and become more willing to communicate. (If you think that every second word you say is funny, note that it's likely that your person of interest doesn't think the same, so don't exaggerate.)

Questions like "Till I came along, wouldn't you say?" are more likely to lead to non-decisive answers like "Maybe" and "We'll see". Statements like "And then I came along" are less likely to produce such a result.

Non-decisive answers are a form of teasing, a cat-and-mouse game which many people who like one another enjoy playing, game which is a form of mental foreplay. In other words, your person of interest is not going to answer with "Okay, let's go have sex right now." There is a game involved, game that both must play because it's a form of mental foreplay.

Try to expand your questions and statements with details, in particular when you're not face to face and you can't intervene with something else if you see that something doesn't work. For example, instead of "Let's meet" say "I would feel so much better to meet face to face with you and have a real life conversation. What if we were to see each other during the weekend, for lunch?"

Especially during your first interaction and during your first conversation, avoid an overly sexual attitude, avoid talking about sex, avoid apologizing directly or indirectly, avoid asking for permission for all sort of (minor) things, and avoid negative linguistic constructs like "don't" and "can't". Expressions to avoid: "Do you have a minute", "I'm sorry", "Excuse me", "Please", "Because", "Just", "This is random, but".

If you absolutely feel the need to apologize in order to attract his / her attention toward you, try something indirect like "I know this feels strange, but", where all the words "I know feels strange" are key to show that you have an emotional understanding of the situation. After this, never excuse yourself without having a serious reason, like when making a mistake; even then, it's preferable to say "I've made a mistake" before or instead of "I'm sorry".

Avoid saying things like "May I ask you something?" and "I want to tell you something" because people become defensive when your intentions aren't clear from the start, and you're giving him / her time to think negatively of you. Also avoid expressions like: "I'm sorry", "Excuse me", "Please", "Because", "Just", and negative linguistic constructs like "Don't" and "Can't".

Avoid generic questions like "How are you?" and generic statements like "The weather is nice." Try to add details to your questions, like "What were you thinking about before you saw me?"

In your attempt to alleviate someone's fear, absolutely avoid saying words that indicate harm, even if you want to say that you mean no harm, like "I mean no harm", "I have no intention of hurting you", and "I don't want to hurt you".

Ghosting

If your person of interest disappears suddenly and you don't know why, you can attempt to contact him / her and say something like "If there is any problem and you don't want us to continue (the relationship), that's fine, but maybe there is a misunderstanding / miscommunication."

Absolutely do not ever say "Please", "Come back", "Let's talk about it", "Let's fix this", "We can fix this", "I need you" or any other expression that shows your desperation and inability to accept a rejection.

Conversation starters

A conversation starter is the first thing that you say to a complete stranger. This can vary wildly, depending on the actual context.

A conversation starter is the first critical point in the evolution of a relationship because it's the moment when the imagination of one person must face / become reality, when another person gets unequivocally involved, resulting in an interaction which is constrained by the will of two people rather than the unconstrained imagination of a single person.

The purpose of a conversation starter is strictly to see whether your person of interest reacts favorably to your approach, to see whether he / she is interested in having a longer conversation with you.

The biggest mistake people make is to believe that they have to convince their person of interest to have a conversation with them. If your person of interest likes you, he / she wants to talk with you and be in your presence. If you have to insist in order to convince a stranger to have a conversation with you, walk away because your person of interest doesn't feel passion for your physical presence, and you can't have a happy long-term relationship with someone who needs convincing. If you still want to get together and do so, you'll always be submissive and follow your partner's lead, and he / she will treat you like a tool to be used.

This is especially true for men who believe that they have to come up with something clever to convince a woman to talk to them and be with them. If a man has to convince a woman to be with him, it means that she feels no sexual arousal for him. If she accepts to have sex with that man, it's because she accepts, not because she wants him sexually. This appears impossible to men, since they are sexually aroused by the women they want to be with, but women can also have long-term relationships for reasons other than sexual attraction. While many, perhaps most, men would find such a relationship acceptable, this kind of relationship will be sexless after a few years.

Nobody can read minds and nobody should have to. It's you who have to communicate what you want, in words, and discover what he / she wants, because you have taken the initiative.

From the very first words, try to make your intentions clear so that your person of interest doesn't get the time to become defensive between the start of your speech and until your intentions become clear.

Try to tell to your person of interest that you find him / her interesting, and that's the reason why you've approached him / her. Don't leave any doubt about it, don't leave any room for confusion. Do not beat around the bush!

When you talk, your voice should sound lighthearted and lively, instead of heavyhearted and dull as if you are about to lose your soulmate. An alternative to lightheartedness is voice gravitas, that is, a low and deep voice that's meant to show power and self control.

If you're intimidated because you think that he / she doesn't need your attention, work on building your confidence.

Helping your person of interest with any small thing, like lifting a dropped object, or opening or closing a door for him / her (when he / she can't), or giving advice, is better received than a compliment because they are much more specific and rare events.

If your person of interest is undecided about what to say, the probability for you to be rejected grows exponentially the more you wait for an answer. Don't leave the other person time to doubt you! Don't wait in silence, be assertive, say something, ask a question that requires him / her to give a non-committing answer.

Don't put pressure on your person of interest, and, if possible, imply that he / she is in control of what she wants to do next. Make him / her feel comfortable talking to you for a longer time.

To summarize, if you have to insist in order to convince a stranger to have a conversation with you, walk away because your person of interest doesn't feel passion for your physical presence, and you can't have a happy long-term relationship with someone who needs convincing.

Make sure that you're at all times ready to exchange contact information, so have a smartphone loaded with your phone number, online messenger account names (like Telegram), social network account names, email address.

Examples of conversation starters:

Hi! I'm [first name]. I wanted to present myself because you have a special charm, and would like to get to know each other. Let's have dinner together.
Hi. I'm [first name]. Let's eat dinner together and get to know each other.

If your person of interest is interested in you, he / she is interested in your physical presence, not in your words. Focus on how you approach your person of interest, how you present yourself, your confidence, your body movements, your voice, your clothes, and on whether your person of interest feels any interest for you (so there already is a connection).

If he / she accepts your simple invitation, it's a good indicator of genuine attraction, an indicator of potential passion in the future. If you have to pursue your person of interest with more convincing arguments and compliments, you're setting yourself up for a disastrous relationship.

If there is an emotional connection between you and your person of interest then he / she will respond favorably, but if there isn't one then he / she won't respond favorably no matter what you say.

Remember that the standards for a long-term relationship are higher than for a casual relationship, so catchy words aren't enough. This is why what's written here can't work for people who are looking for short-term relationships: those people have to convince many persons of interest to have sex (most of whom have no such interest at that time), whereas the people who are looking for long-term relationships only have to be with one person, a person who becomes immediately interested in them.

Don't just voice your starter, feel it. Feel that it's true for the person that you're approaching!

Practice the starter by saying it out loud a lot, and watch your voice tone, face position, facial expression, subtle smile and body language, so that you appear friendly. Don't whisper, say it with the normal voice volume of people in general. Also, you should look into a mirror whenever you can, into your own eyes, so as to get used to looking into someone's eyes when you speak. The mirror exercise is much more difficult than you might think.

Think about what you want to say to your person of interest by switching genders. If you're a man, think that you're a woman and a random man comes to you in a public place and tells you whatever you intend to tell to your person of interest. Just pick a random man in a public place and ask yourself why, as a woman, would you be interested in whatever that man is saying to you? The obvious reason is that she already feels some interest when she saw you, before you spoke.

Dialog

The text that you should say is written in beige. Each indentation to the right side is a dialog switch between you and your person of interest.

Here are some conversation starters and fragments that you can combine and adapt as is demanded by the real context.

Keep your starter short but still capable to convey what you feel. There can be multiple sentences. A short starter, which includes at most one single compliment, sounds more natural, that is, not scripted, and short sentences are easier to rearrange on the fly. A short starter also allows your person of interest to process what you're saying.

Your person of interest doesn't need to hear poetry, he / she needs to know what you want from him / her, right from the start. A starter which shows that you aren't getting over involved, so a simple one, also shows that in the case of a rejection you are likely to move on.

A starter which is meant to be addressed to a woman should leave her intrigued by the unexpected realization that the man in front of her is not a scared boy looking up to his female idol, but a man who is confident in his power of attraction, that is, a leader.

When you translate the standard starters into your language, make the effort to adapt them to the subtleties of your language.

The effect of a starter will depend on your ability to actually remember it in moments of extreme emotion, so exercise it a lot, including right before you approach your person of interest.

If someone tells you any of the standard starters below, remember that everyone has to learn them from somewhere.

To draw the attention of your person of interest, you could say:

Hi! Make sure your voice is loud enough to be heard.

Pause for a moment so that he / she can focus his / her attention on you. This introduction is a critical moment that let's you see if he / she might be interested in you.

If he / she doesn't stop and turn to look at you, perhaps he / she didn't hear you, so make sure that you are in his / her field of view and say "Hi!" once again. Make sure that your voice is loud enough to be heard, and that your voice tone doesn't sound like you're begging for attention, but don't yell.

If it's clear that he / she heard you but doesn't stop or doesn't look at you, then walk away! This is a clear sign that he / she doesn't feel attraction for you, and shows that he / she doesn't respect you enough to even hear what you have to say. If he / she is even waving you while walking away from you, he / she is seeing you like a child that people wave good bye to, not like a sex partner. You were just spared of a life of misery together with someone who treats you like a child. Do not try to have a relationship, or any form of contact, with such a person. Walk away!

If your person of interest is looking at you, you could continue with your name in order to let him / her focus more on what your saying:

I'm [your name]. If your person of interest is with his / her family, address this to the entire group. Only then focus your attention to your person of interest.

Continue with one of the following fragments:

I wanted to present / introduce myself because you have a special / unusual / captivating charm, and would like to get to know each other.
I was looking long at you because you have a special / unusual / captivating charm, and would like to get to know each other.
I've admired you every time I saw you, and would like to get to know each other. Use this if you saw each other in several different days. A bridge, familiarity, already exists in such a case, and it makes it a bit easier for your person of interest to respond favorably to you.

Then, you should add a request for a date:

Let's have dinner together. Let's go to [restaurant] on [day of week], at [time of day] o'clock. Let's exchange phone numbers, to call in case we can't get there. An invitation to dinner makes you appear much more serious than one to a conversation.

If you don't get an answer to your request for a date, say "We'll see each other there" and leave. If you wait for an answer, the chances for you to get a favorable response decrease exponentially with every second your person of interest thinks. If you leave, the chances might not be higher, but they also won't be lower, and you show that you can walk away if your person of interest isn't interested in you.

You can't evaluate people's interest in you by the intensity of their reactions because some people are more controlled, while some people are more expressive with their emotions.

Your person of interest could react in different ways:

Blushes and his / her eyes get wet. This is a good sign of mutual interest.
Giggles (or laughs mildly).
Smiles.
Thank you! Don't say "You're welcome", as your instinct will be. Maybe tilt your head as acknowledgment.
Gets visibly relaxed. For example, his / her shoulders get lower.
Says with a neutral or cold voice "Ah, thank you!" He / she is / acts surprised, as if you were looking at something of little interest (from his / her point of view), or as if he / she misinterpreted your attention, so he / she is probably not interested in you.
Is indifferent and has virtually no reaction. In this case, walk away.
Avoids looking at you and walks away. In this case, walk away.

If your person of interest doesn't say anything but appears to like you, through his / her somewhat uncontrolled body language (like fidgeting, exclamations / onomatopoeia, blushing), you could continue with:

Did I leave you speechless?
Did I leave you without words?
You're all blushed. That is so cute!
Do you know that your eyes got wet when you saw me?
You were looking long at me. Why is that?

If your person of interest is undecided, the probability for you to be rejected grows exponentially the more you wait for an answer. So, don't wait in silence, be assertive, say something, ask a question. For example, you should quickly continue with something that requires him / her to give a non-committing answer:

What was your plan for the next hour?
Let's go for a walk / stroll and talk. A stroll during the conversation forces you to focus on walking rather than looking in each other's eyes, so that you won't see the insecurity / uncertainty on each other's face.
What's your name?
Any conversation topic that you think it's appropriate.

If your person of interest has answered favorably to you (for example by saying his / her name), and there is no problem with the time available right then, you should continue with the conversation topics.

If your person of interest answers favorably to you, but one of you doesn't have time to continue right then, or he / she is in a group of people, you could continue with:

Let's continue the conversation tomorrow at [time of day] o'clock, at [location]. Let's exchange phone numbers, to call in case we can't get there.
Let me call you later today, around [time of day] o'clock, to see when we can meet. What's your phone number?

Your person of interest could appear to reject you with a soft voice tone that appears to leave room for a follow up, as if he / she might be interested in you:

I'm in a relationship.
- Is the relationship too serious for us to have a conversation?
The age difference seems a bit too high.
- The age difference doesn't matter for a conversation.
What are you looking for?
- An emotional connection.
Why should I accept?
- It will be an interesting conversation; no favorite colors.
Why are you looking to talk with a stranger?
- It's more likely to meet an interesting man / woman among many strangers than among a few friends and colleagues.
Wasn't it too fast for you to be captivated?
- Reality taught me to make a decision in seconds, and this decision feels right. Otherwise, the opportunity disappears.
Did you rehearse this?
- In the past I've lost great opportunities because I didn't know what to say, and it has hurt a lot, so I've prepared.

You're quite confident / audacious / bold / cocky.
- You're interesting, so I've made the effort.
You sound like someone who is picking up women for casual sex.
- What would be the difference in the behavior of a man who is genuinely / authentically interested in your personality? Unable to approach you? Wouldn't know what to say to you? That's why I've learned what to say.

Your person of interest rejects you with a clear voice tone that doesn't leave room for a follow up, so accept the rejection gracefully and then walk away:

I'm in a hurry. / I'm in a relationship. / I'm married. / I'm not interested. / Sorry, I'm not interested.
- Okay. Maybe tilt your head as acknowledgment. Walk away.

If at any time you want to walk away but don't know how to reject your person of interest, you could say:

We have different personalities.
- What is the difference?
  - I would rather not say because it's a difference of personality, so you should change only what you feel the need to, it's not a problem that you should correct.
I have to feel an emotional connection, not just physical attraction.

If at any time you muddle up the words, you could say:

That was a disaster.
The words just didn't want to get out.

Conversation topics

A conversation is the next critical point in the evolution of a long-term relationship because it's meant to open a dialog between you and your person of interest in order to show your similarities and differences. Keep in mind that the big differences are far more important than anything else (including the big similarities).

The conversation topics have several purposes:

Spend time together with your person of interest, talking.
Open vast conversations about anything, starting from a narrow scope and continuing with less related subjects.
Read on your own, realize which ones fit your personality and select just a handful of topics to discuss with your person of interest.
Read about new things and realize that some of them are (very) interesting to you but you were never able to put them into words, things that you would like to talk or do with your partner.
Make available a large list from which you can select only a few topics that you want to discuss with your person of interest.
Hear the answers of your person of interest, but also see his / her reactions when he / she hears the topics and doesn't have a clear answer.
Ask seemingly innocuous questions, because you thought everyone would think like you do, but get answers that shock you (because other people are very different than you).
See what may constitute normal topics of conversation for other people.
Help you avoid people who want to manipulate you because you can't respond to their mental gymnastics (= asymmetric mental attacks that are easy to make but hard to respond to), because you now have potential answers that you were never able to put into words.

Show to your person of interest the list of topics from your smartphone and say this: "Let's use this list of (conversation topics) because it's large and detailed."

If your person of interest appears to negatively remark on the fact that you're looking on your smartphone for conversation topics, you can say "What would you like to talk about? What would you like to know about me?" If he / she doesn't come up with a conversation topic, say "Let's find something in the list."

There is no need to go through the sections with topics in order, top to bottom. Look at the table of contents and discuss what any of you two find interesting.

The topics within section should be discussed in order, but you can skip any topic (you can always return later). If the opportunity arises to talk about a topic that's not next in the list, by all means talk about it.

There is no need to read an entire topic in one go since it may contain multiple sub-topics which may have to be addressed separately.

If you don't like these topics, ask yourself what life together with someone is supposed to be about, if not about these things. You want to live together, so shouldn't you find out if you can? A conversation is much cheaper than months or years of your life spent in an incompatible relationship, time during which you're likely ignoring other good opportunities.

As you go through these topics, if you want to continue but your person of interest doesn't, or consistently avoids giving detailed answers, or shows that he / she is bored by the topics (how do you think it will be after a few years of relationship?), walk away because that person is from the wrong pool of potential partners. He / she doesn't want to clarify those subjects for you (and even for himself / herself). You want clarity, he / she wants confusion, so you have incompatible personalities.

Many people won't want to talk about so many topics because, aside from the required effort, the topics would show how incompatible people really are, and would show that right from the start, before an emotional adventure can be experienced. It's FOMO (= fear of missing out) for emotions, so for them anything that's in the way of emotions has to be avoided. In a relationship, the same desire for emotions makes people try to win arguments emotionally instead of solve them.

If your person of interest misinterprets too much what you're saying, and you keep having to explain yourself that you meant something else, walk away. This pattern would repeat in the relationship.

If you and your person of interest consistently use words with opposite meaning to describe something, it means that you two view the world in opposite ways, walk away. Examples of opposite meaning: beautiful versus ugly, good versus bad, glass half full versus glass half empty.

If your person of interest overuses expressions like "it depends", he / she is trying to muddle his / her answers. In such cases, ask him / her to clarify what it depends on, ask for examples, for clear scenarios that he / she has in mind; it's most that likely he / she won't be able to provide a scenario that involves himself / herself. This pattern would repeat in the relationship, so you should consider walking away now.

If your person of interest doesn't want to answer a topic that matters to you, like the sexual past, thank him / her for the conversation and walk away. If he / she asks you why you're leaving, you could say "We have different personalities. This subject matters to me, but it makes you feel uncomfortable. You don't feel a natural need to answer to me, so instead of insisting and making you more uncomfortable, I will leave."

How to talk

Don't go through the topics as if completing a to-do list. Talk extensively.

If the person who reads the topics changes often, the appearance of an interrogation is reduced.

If a single person were to read the topics, he / she could change his / her answers, based on what the person who answers first says, in order to pretend that he / she is a good match.

For each topic, starting with the person who didn't read the topic, each person should state his / her preferences and give his / her constructive opinions on the preferences of the other person. Define your expectations and standards. State the intensity of your needs. Answer based on what you want, not based on what you think your partner of conversation wants to hear, not based on what you think other people should do, or could do, or would do, not based on some exceptions you've heard about. What do you prefer / like / want? Don't lie. Do not judge, mock or shame your person of interest.

There is no need to prepare your answers in advance since this is neither a test nor a competition. The topics exist so you two can get to know each other by finding out each other's answer, but they also exist so you can spend time together, become aware of various things, see each other's reaction when reading a topic, and see the effort made while trying to find an answer. Some topics are very difficult to answer on the spot, so the reactions to them are far more important than the answers.

If you don't know how to answer a topic, you can ask the other person to answer it first, so that you can get inspired. If a topic is unclear, discuss what it could mean.

You can skip any topic. You can pass on answering any topic. You can return later to any topic. You can delay your answers or change them later.

You can negotiate answers, so you can ask the other person to not choose a certain answer, or to change his / her answer. Whether he / she accepts is entirely up to him / her.

You can transform the format of the topics from statements into questions, and the other way around, but keep in mind that the tone of questions can easily become tiring because they may start to appear mistrusting or whiny. Once a topic is open, you can ask questions. Statements show confidence, but they can become too complicated, so questions have to be used in such cases.

Don't be afraid to ask questions because your person of interest might get upset. If he / she gets upset, you should be thanking to whatever or whoever you want, for the opportunity of seeing how your person of interest really is, and then walk away.

If you can't evaluate the reactions, thoughts and feelings of your person of interest, you could ask for clarifications by saying "I can't see how you feel about this. Is your lack of a visible reaction of good thing, or a bad thing?"

During your first conversations, if at any time the conversation becomes heated, do not become combative, just change the topic. You can later consider if there is any point in continuing the relationship, or you can argue.

The conversation topics are available in:

Desktop friendly format.
Smartphone friendly format. You should save the list on your smartphone by right-clicking on the link and selecting "Save link as" from the menu.

Sunglasses

If your person of interest wears sunglasses while you talk, say "If I can't see your eyes, I'm tempted to look away (and you'll wrongly think that I'm not interested in you)."

This will allow your person of interest to choose what to do, if he / she didn't realize it until that moment.

Relationship compliments

These are compliments that you can use in a relationship. You can either say the compliment to your partner, or you can leave it as a note, in bed, on your pillow.

Say words of appreciation for your partner, preferably in unexpected situations.

There are attractive men / women who lose a bit of their charm every time you see them, but there are men / women who become a bit more interesting every time you see them, until you realize that you want to see them every day.

I appreciate you for existing (in my life).

You bring out the best in me.

It's deeply relaxing to spend time with you, without doing anything.

When I look at you sleeping and see your chest moving, I feel like I'm breathing you.

I want to hug you and never let go.

One thing I like with chocolate is you.

One thing I like with whipped cream and strawberries is you.

You are My Moon, You Light My Darkness.

Make love to me so I can touch the stars.

Make love to me so I can feel the stars embracing me.

Make love to me so I can feel the stars making love to me.

When I'm looking in your eyes, I feel like I'm melting inside you.

When I'm looking in your eyes, I feel like I'm seeing the history of the Universe from the Big Bang to you. (The black pupil surrounded by the colorful iris does look like a black hole that has given birth to a supernova / Universe.)

Cheeky

You are the most beautiful man / woman in this room. (Say this when he / she is the only man / woman in the room.)

The best part of my day is waking up next to you. (When you have to wake up before your partner, leave this as a note on your pillow, and also draw a stick figure of yourself.)

Tips for a successful relationship

Nobody can read minds and nobody should have to. Communicate what you want, in words, and discover what your partner wants.

Desperate men think that women are the solution to their problems.

Women dislike men who are desperate for women.

A woman who doesn't look up to a man, metaphorically, will treat that man like a child, not like a sexual partner, and will start looking for a replacement.

A woman who has to be convinced to accept a man's sexual passion, or who needs things to have an orgasm with a man, is a woman who allows that man sexual access to her, not a woman who feels sexual passion for that man. Most men would be fine with this, but they should keep in mind that the sexual relationship would easily dwindle over the years.

If your partner tries to convince you of something and you want to tease him / her, say "Convince me with a compliment."

Here is the one thing that could save your relationship: There is no one thing that could save your relationship. Stop trying to simplify the world! The fewer things you use to represent the state of your relationship, of the world, the lower the accuracy of your predictions of the (present and) future will be. A relationship requires many little things to work, not just a few big things. Do the work that's necessary to get you where you want to be!

Continuously work on yourself to meet your partner's expectations, and make changes when necessary. Ask yourself why you would want to be with a partner like yourself. Continuously evaluate whether your partner passes your expectations, and ask for changes when necessary. Always communicate with your partner, without playing "pretend" games.

Exasperation, mockery, arrogance / (an air of) superiority, arguing, negativity, criticism, all erode and ultimately devastate a relationship.

Don't "test" your partner. Never pretend to be / want something other than you actually are / want. Never play "pretend" games. Don't be too cool for the truth. If you want something to happen, ask for it.

Don't try to control your partner, don't tell him / her what and when to do.

Don't mock your partner.

Criticism which is not constructive is poisoning everything around. If you don't know how to criticize constructively, by giving mutually beneficial potential alternatives, then don't criticize. If your constructive criticism is ignored several times and you continue to criticize, then you are not solving the existing problem, you are creating a new one. If you don't like the situation, walk away.

Don't direct you aggression toward your partner. Aggression can be verbal, mental or physical.

During sex, don't make your partner feel bad for either asking or for refusing something.

See Preventing conflict.

Behavior and interaction

Sexual attraction

Men and women are almost just as interested in the physical attractiveness of the opposite gender. For women, the attractiveness of men is mainly represented by mental and physical strength.

Men and women are almost just as interested in sex (that satisfies them). Women have more conditions attached to engaging in sex, due to the power play between men and women, cyclic biological variations, and their slower biological response to arousal. However, for women, this interest is short term.

Men's and women's long-term goals in a relationship are different. Women's long-term expectations are to have a family, children, financial security, men who provide resources. Men usually expect sex. Because of this difference, women will try to steer men toward women's goals, which means that men who do what women say, will be in life-long sexless relationships, even if the women initially claimed to be sexually interested in the men.

How can a man see a woman's sexual interest in him? Watch her eyes. Does she give him long looks? If the answer is yes, then she's interested.

Another way is to show as much skin as possible (in public), like wear (short) shorts and T-shirts. If the woman doesn't like the way he looks, what do you think she'll feel when she'll see his entire naked body? If her eyes don't linger on or slide slowly off him (in shorts), his future with that woman is a life-long sexless relationship.

To get a better understanding of the situation, the man should ask the woman "You don't like the way I look in shorts? So you're not aroused. Then, how will you feel when you'll see me fully naked?" She'll have no answer because she knows that the answer doesn't favor her, she knows that she's not with that man because she's sexually aroused, but because she believes the man is a good provider.

Women find few men sexually arousing to the level that men find the majority of women sexually arousing. So, while the intensity of the sexual arousal can be the same, the focus of the desire is much narrower in women. This isn't a choice, it's a biological difference that maximizes the success rate of reproduction and of survival of children.

Men should understand that women can be in relationships without being sexual aroused by their partner. Women should understand that men who look intensely to them do it because men feel passion for most women's physical presence. Women become embarrassed in such cases, and confuse that feeling with a belief that men who look at them are creepy.

Pursuing women

If you pursue women who want to be pursued and treated like queens, who think that they are The Prize in the relationship, you will spend your life as a validation and financial tool for their benefit, and in exchange they will make your life hard.

For example, when some women see with the corner of their eyes that you look at them, they won't look back and instead they raise their chin and more prominently show a cheek. Their body language says that they want to be more valuable than you, and will try to see if they can be the leader in the interaction, waiting for you to follow / pursue them.

This pattern will repeat, so if you follow in this scenario, you will always have to experience that woman's lead. Unfortunately, most of the same women can't handle leadership and will be unbalanced, will be unhappy with a man who follows, and will trample over him, while subconsciously hoping to find a man who can stand up to them and lead them.

Value and entitlement

Job security, real estate, money, social status and intelligence are valuable assets to have and bring in a relationship. They usually increase in value from the beginning of adulthood until the late years of a person.

Many people want, due to a biological instinct, to get a partner who is physically beautiful. Their logic is blinded by this instinct into thinking that physical beauty is a valuable asset to have.

If anyone says that they are looking for a wealthy partner, and he / she brings in the relationship beauty and generic personality traits, consider that very few people are wealthy, and wealth doesn't fade away, whereas many more people have beauty, but beauty fades away rather quickly. At the same time, generic personality traits, like friendship and kindness, are common, so many people can bring them in a relationship. This means that you should be careful when you bring the money while your partner brings the beauty in a relationship.

This asymmetric exchange of beauty for money becomes a problem when the beautiful people feel entitled to have the money. Such people will get in relationships that are doomed to fail from the start, and will constantly try to psychologically manipulate their partner into submission. And if the relationships fail, they will use the law to get the largest possible portion of the valuable assets, in a divorce. Why do they do it? Because they can and they are successful in a very large proportion of cases. So, the people who have created the valuable assets would lose a lot of value if they are not careful when choosing their partners.

Some people say, usually during a divorce, that the partners of successful people are entitled to a large part of the wealth because they've inspired the success. This is the meaning of the saying "Behind every successful man is a woman." But reality is different: a successful man would become successful by marrying the average woman, whereas a woman wouldn't make the average man successful. This is also true if the genders are reversed. Success isn't achieved through inspiration, but through relentless determination to become successful.

People can't find good partners anymore

An imbalance of power and timing arises from the way in which each gender selects partners. Through their selectiveness of men, the vast majority of women decide when sexual relationships occur. Through their selectiveness of women, the men who have a high power of attraction, that women go for, decide when long-term relationships occur. This imbalance is virtually eliminated in the case of people who have a controlled sexual lifestyle, because they delay having sex, so the selectiveness of the partners is reduced to forming long-term relationships.

The Power of Attraction (PoA) is the level of attractiveness that people appear to have, to potential partners, for a romantic or sexual relationship.

The PoA is the result of human behavior and interaction, and is used by the brain to quickly and semiconsciously evaluate potential romantic or sexual partners. If more time is available to make the evaluation, the PoA can shift dramatically because the revealed invisible information can turn out to be very different than what's visible. However, the available evaluation time is usually short; it's a few seconds when looking at a stranger walking by, and a few seconds or minutes when looking at an online dating profile.

Why do men and women say that they can't find good partners anymore? Because the attraction between men and women is asymmetric, that is, each gender has (very) different partner selection criteria.

A man's criteria for wanting to get in a relationship with a woman are: attractiveness (youth, body fitness / firmness), a good mother to his children. Men are most interested in women who are 20...30 years old.

Men find that women's social status (stable and profitable job, position in society, ambitions) and education (intelligence) are either not important (when they are below men's), or off putting (when they exceed men's).

Men don't demand women to be at least as good as them, so many women fulfill their demands. For example men don't need women to have a financial situation or education similar to theirs, nor do they need women to be better looking than they are. Men's demands remain largely unchanged regardless of how many potential partners they see in the world around them.

Men tend to choose women who had few sexual partners. This is the source of the popular knowledge that "men want virgin women".

A woman's criteria for wanting to get in a relationship with a man are: attractiveness (mental and physical strength, height, youth, body fitness / firmness), confidence, social status (stable and profitable job, position in society, ambitions, wealth), education (intelligence), a good father to her children. Women are almost just as interested in the attractiveness of men, as men are interested in the attractiveness of women, but attractiveness is mainly represented by men's mental and physical strength, which indicate the ability to protect the women, which is why they like confident and leading men. Women are most interested in men that are about their age.

Women demand men to be at least as good as them, in most criteria, which means that few men can fulfill the demands of accomplished women. For example, a man neurosurgeon would have no problem in having a relationship with a shop assistant, but a woman neurosurgeon would want an equally accomplished man.

Financial success is one criteria where men and women differ fundamentally. For men, the fact that a potential (woman) partner has a successful career and makes a lot of money doesn't increase her power of attraction. For men, attraction consists of sexual arousal, which for them means physical beauty and youth. Women's success doesn't sexually arouse men.

However, for women, the fact that a potential (man) partner has a successful career and makes a lot of money does increase his power of attraction. For women, attraction is not limited to sexual arousal, but includes the financial status of men, which is why women want men who make more money then them.

Some women simply can't understand this asymmetry, try to belittle men and say that men are the problem because they aren't attracted to women who make a lot of money, and that women's success intimidates men. Some women become manipulative and try to divert the argument toward morality, saying "So you're saying that you prefer a prostitute?", despite the fact that the argument was about financial success, not morality.

Men then become repulsed by these women (who likes someone who mocks them?), and then these women complain even more about men being the problem. Men should walk away from women who divert the argument toward morality, because those women are showing that they believe that not making a lot of money means lacking morality, belief which mirrors their default state of mind, personality and behavior in such a context.

When analyzing what women say that they want in a man, it may appear that women aren't interested much in the men's physical attractiveness, whereas men appear interested only in women's physical attractiveness. This makes some people claim that only men are interested in physical attractiveness, whereas women aren't. This claim is wrong because of several things:

Women are interested in men's physical attractiveness as much as men are interested in women's physical attractiveness. However, women are just as demanding in other areas, like finance and education, whereas men aren't. So, it's not that women aren't interested in men's physical attractiveness, but that women are also just as demanding about other things, whereas men aren't.
There is a severe discrepancy between what women say that they are and what they want from a man, and what they say that other women are and want from men. This is because women want to create a better image of themselves. However, they aren't interested in making other women look as good as themselves, so they have no reason to embellish other women's image. This discrepancy doesn't appear in men.
Research shows that when a partner has to be chosen, both men and women make a decision mostly based on physical attractiveness.

Men dislike women who exhibit masculine behavior, that is, women who appear too strong, too bossy. Women dislike men who exhibit feminine behavior, that is, men who appear too soft, lacking confidence.

Women tend to choose men who appear mentally or physically strong, full of testosterone, which indicates the ability to protect the women, over men who had few sexual partners. This is the source of the popular knowledge that "women want bad boys". The main reason why women are attracted to a dominant man is that the behavior of that man shows his potential strength, his determination to take action, and even his potential to become violent, if the woman and her children are in natural danger or threatened by various animals or people.

Women's demands become higher as the number of potential partners they see increases, that is, they become pickier. Some statistics for online dating show that women think that 80% of men are below the average level of attractiveness, and only 7% are above (while 13% are average). But the bad part is that women perceive that the same men are either above or below average, that is, women's attraction is concentrated not distributed. While this effect isn't present in in-person encounters because the requirement for physical presence limits the number of potential partners, this shows what women really want when they don't have to limit their behavior to the context of the proximal world. This behavior will become prevalent as online dating and online validation become prevalent.

As women get older and their youth and beauty start to fade, and since men are mostly interested in youth and beauty rather than a woman's social status and education, men shift their interest from these women toward younger women, which means that women's PoA drops in an accelerated manner as they get older.

Women assign to men a PoA that increases with age because a man's social status increases with age, which means that men's PoA increases as they get older (up to some point).

Men give excessive attention and flattery to the majority of young women (that they are not in a relationship with), especially by looking at them for longer than a glance and turning their heads to look at the women. This makes young women overvalue what they believe their PoA is. As they get older, they preserve their belief about their PoA, but aren't yet aware that the way men perceive them has changed, and that the attention and flattery they've received were not promises for long-term relationships and don't count as credits toward future long-term relationships (certainly not with other men). Since women believe that their PoA is very high, they see no reason to recalibrate their demands, and these remain very high as women get older.

As women have achieved more freedom and equality with men, they've started to spend their youth getting better education, building a good social status, having sex with various partners (for fun / exploration / research) and delaying getting into life-long relationships.

When women reach 30 years old, with a good social status and good education, they start wanting to be in long-term, and even life-long, relationships. The problem is that at this point, their PoA has decreased a lot, as men have shifted their interest and attention toward younger women. The women could still find interested men that are 10...20 years older than them, men who still look very good, but they don't want to lower their demands. This results in little intersection of the interests of men and women.

The conclusion is that men can't find good women because those either aren't young, or are young but aren't looking for long-term relationships because they are building and living their independent life, or are in existing relationships, or men feel as if they are the backup plan to women who had their sexual fun with many other men. At the same time, women can't find good men because those either don't meet the women's high demands, or meet them but are looking for younger women, or are in existing relationships.

In the mean time, young women have their sexual fun with the men who do meet their high demands, but those demands don't involve long-term relationships (at that young age), so those men are intrinsically selected by women to be those who are interested only in sex. By the time women realize that they want long-term relationships, it's too late because at the smallest sign of long-term interest that women show, these same men move to other (younger) women (because they see no reason to stay).

This leaves many women who've spent their youth not building a long-term relationship to realize that they can't find a good partner. At the same time, many men are left with no partner because they don't meet the women's high demands.

Summary: Generally, women demand men to be at least as good as them, in most criteria, which means that few men can fulfill the demands of accomplished women. Men have fewer demands than women, so many women fulfill the demands of men (accomplished or not). The very few men that women go for, see a lot of attention and have no reason to get in long-term relationships; they are or become interested only in sex, and at the smallest sign of long-term interest that women show, these men move to other women. In time, women become disillusioned by these few men, while ignoring the rest of men because they don't meet their high demands, so they generalize their feelings to all men: "There are no good men left!" In the meantime, the rest of the men, who aren't able to get in relationships with any woman, become disillusioned by women, so they generalize their feelings to all women: "There are no good women left!"

Differences in attraction

As detailed above, men and women perceive attraction for each other in an asymmetric way, with women having more selection criteria than men have.

This difference can be understood and summarized from the language that men and women use when talking about relationships.

Women's language is saturated with words like: love, feelings, emotions, caring, empathy, compassion, safety, stability, support, fulfillment. But you won't hear them talk about feeling (physical) passion for men (in general).

This is because women find the vast majority of men as being below average in terms of attractiveness, so they don't feel passion for them. Women feel passion for (the same) very few men, men who won't have long-term relationships with women (because they don't have to settle, since they can choose from so many women).

Because of this, women have to focus on what they can give to the men they can be in long-term relationships with: love and empathy.

Men feel, first and foremost, physical passion for women (in general), and all the other concepts (that women use) are secondary to men.

The mysterious nature of women

For millennia, it's been common knowledge that men can't understand the nature of women, that they are mysterious. But there is no mystery from the point of view of evolution, it's psychological manipulation.

To understand this, we have to go back to the beginnings of human evolution, and even further, into the nature of animals.

There are many animal species that have two genders, male and female, where the female primarily raises the offsprings. The male does sometimes also provide resources and protection, to the females that he impregnated. Humans are one of those species.

Both males and females are instinctively driven to reproduce with a partner whose genetics would provide the best chances of survival. However, there is one difference that causes a fundamental shift in the behaviors of males and females: the male has complete control where he spends his resources (obtained by spending a lot of time and energy that he had available because he did nothing else with his time and strength), that is, where he spends resources that are very valuable to those who can't gather them, like females (who are busy raising the offsprings) and offsprings (who can't take care of themselves).

Evolutionary speaking, it was not important if the male was spending his resources on multiple females and their common offsprings, so long as the resources could cover the needs of all the females, although since there were very few males who had access to so many resources, it's become an imperative to spend the resources on a single female. Some species have formed small communities where the offsprings are raised together, and where the resources are shared.

The problem was that the female couldn't gather the resources because she was busy raising the offsprings, and she didn't have control of where the male was spending his resources. The female wanted to have as much stability and control as possible over the incoming stream of resources.

Evolution has provided a tool for the female to achieve this goal: psychological manipulation, albeit subconscious or semi-conscious, which attempts to make the male submissive and convince him that he is meant to be bound to the female, that he owes attention, resources and protection to the female.

In humans, this psychological manipulation has been refined through behavior to contain (indirect requests for) delicacy, gestures of kindness, compliments, gifts, courting, marriage. At the same time, arguing is done by using emotions instead of logic (since logic can't be manipulated easily, on the spot), pouting, begging, crying, yelling. All women had to do was to give men something to reach for, their sexuality, by amplifying men's instinctual attraction to women's beauty, an indication of good genetic potential. In exchange for resources and protection, women raised the children, but also cooked and cleaned for the men.

The need to have resources isn't to have a certain amount of them, but to have them (in an unspecified or unrestricted amount). This is why some women aren't satisfied to have the resources that they need, and instead chase as many resources as possible, and therefore as many options for resource providers (= men) as possible.

The search for resources is why:

Many women will have sex before they clarify what kind of relationship they want, and ask for clarifications only later. If the men don't accept to be in the same kind of relationship, those women will blame the men for taking advantage of them. Those women try to ingratiate themselves sexually into the lives of men, hoping that they can later manipulate those men into accepting a kind of relationship that the men aren't interested in (at that time).
Women's interest in men is split: they are sexually aroused by some men, but want to be provided resources (for their children) by other men, men who've spent most of their time getting those resources. For men there is no such split, that is, men want to have children with and are sexually aroused by the same women.
Many women become disinterested in sex, after marriage, outside of reproductive purposes. Some of this is due to the stress of daily life, but some is due to the fact that the interest in the husbands was for resources in the first place, and since those resources have been secured, there is no more need to attract those men. The biological imperative has vanished and was replaced by societal attachment (in the form of a non-sexual marriage).

The rise of feminism, female contraceptives and gender equality in the workplace led women to no longer need men to provide resources, although they still want that on an instinctual level. On top of this, modern communication tools (like magazines, radio, TV and Internet) have allowed men to validate women's attractiveness extremely easily, by swamping women with attention, which led women to think that the given attention is proportional with their potential for a (long-term) relationship where men share their resources with women.

The modern day result is that there are many women who use psychological manipulation to get men's resources, but without providing in return the primitive driver of this behavior: being the family binder. Even more, they believe that they are owed men's complete attention, thinking that women are a prize because they are pretty and allow access to sex. But sex isn't the reason why men are driven by biology to spend their resources on women, reproduction is, yet it's this reproduction within a family that had its role significantly reduced in the modern society.

This is why many modern women are disconnected from the biological reality and believe that they are a prize in themselves, as if beauty and sex are biological drivers (they are not, reproduction is), and many modern men are completely confused about what their role is in the modern society.

Does this mean that this kind of psychological manipulation is bad? It wasn't when it was balanced by biological drivers.

Does this mean that men and women must follow the traditional roles of the resource provider and child caregiver? Does this mean that men should not compliment women or make gestures of kindness? No, but it does mean that men and women must understand what their roles are in their particular relationship, what each of them brings in it, be it a relationship which is driven by biological imperatives, or one of deliberate choice against such imperatives.

Psychological manipulation has to be secret in order to have effect, which is why the belief that women's nature is unknown has persisted so long, but modern day changes in gender roles require understanding the possibilities and choices.

Keep in mind that manipulation is not a binary switch, so either present or absent, it's a range, that is, it's more or less intense and more or less successful.

From bad boys to nice guy

A behavior common to many women is to have casual, passionate sex with various men, the bad boys, that they find sexually arousing.

Because such a man won't commit to marriage (when the woman wants), the woman will say that she wants to settle and will start searching for a nice guy, a man who she thinks would be a good husband, but who she doesn't find sexually arousing.

The woman will withhold sex from the nice guy for a long time in order to pretend that she had a refrained past sexual behavior, or that she has at least changed. When asked about her sexual past, she will either avoid answering (likely saying that the past doesn't matter) or will lie in order to protect her pretense game and appear virtuous.

The sex she will have with the nice guy will be refrained, not passionate, and will only degrade in quality and frequency as time passes.

A similar pattern can be seen in women who flirt with various men, and at the same time claim that they are shy with the men that they really like. They are in fact sexually aroused by the men they flirt with, and are not aroused by the nice guys they pretend to really like.

Birth control

Men should always use condoms, unless they want the women to get pregnant.

Some women intentionally skip their own birth control method, like taking the pill, in order to get pregnant and force the men to commit to them and pay for raising the children.

Some women retrieve condoms from the trash bin and try to impregnate themselves with the semen that is still inside. To mitigate this, wash the condom inside, after finishing; if you are paranoid enough, you could spray some disinfectant in the condom; the disinfectant should be colored or stinky to be evident. Don't flush condoms in the toilet.

Some women try to puncture a sealed condom so that semen could leak out from the condom when it's used. To mitigate this, inspect the seal visually. If you can wet it with water, do so, then dry the seal and after taking the condom out of its seal, check if the condom is wet because that means that water has seeped in through a puncture. These methods are good for accidental tears and punctures as well.

Don't blindly trust a paternity claim made by, or DNA test provided by, a woman. There are women who fake pregnancy and DNA tests, with help from other women or companies.

Red flags

Walk away from a relationship with a partner who does any of these things; some of them could happen once, some several times. Regardless of what or who caused the underlying problem, walk away from that destructive relationship. You can expect these patterns regularly from such a relationship, and it isn't going to get better as time passes, but only worse. You should be thanking to whatever or whoever you want, for the opportunity of seeing how your partner really is, and then walk away. Once you walk away, never return to that partner.

When you tell him / her that you like him / her, he / she asks you to be friends instead. There is no romantic or sexual relationship for you there, so don't wait for one.

Says that school and career are more important for him / her than a long-term relationship. There is no romantic relationship for you there, so don't wait for one. Another thing to take into consideration is that the people who prioritize school and career will mostly have casual sexual relationships during that time, until they are ready to settle.

Expects you to tell him / her what kind of relationship you want to have with him / her, even tough he / she hasn't asked that, and hasn't told you what kind of relationship he / she wants to have with you. People don't have the same expectations, so the expectations must be clarified before the person who has them becomes seriously involved.

Doesn't clarify from the beginning what kind of relationship he / she wants, has sex with you, and after a while of being together blames you for not committing to him / her, treating you as if you've made a promise to commit.

Avoids saying what kind of relationship he / she wants, when you ask for clarification.

Tell you that he / she has options (other potential partners). If he / she tells you this, it means that you are not the main choice, but merely a backup.

Expects you to be able to "read" his / her mind.

Gets upset when you ask (certain) questions. The problem here isn't that your partner gives you an answer that you don't like, or that he / she is having difficulties communicating what he / she wants, but that you can't possibly know the answer without asking, yet your partner gets upset by your mere attempt to understand his / her personality and differences between you two. Nobody can read minds and nobody should have to. Walk away or you'll forever have to read his / her mind.

Has little respect for you, looks at you from a position of superiority, laughs (derisively) at you while thinking that he / she controls the relationship (because you are to desperate to reject him / her). Your partner should admire you.

You believe that he / she is sending you mixed signals. Examples: you are communicating often but then he / she vanishes for a few days.

Breaks promises often. Examples: tells you that he / she will call you at a certain time but does so only much later, agrees to meet at a certain time but is constantly late (more than a few minutes).

Cancels dates.

Expects you to answer to his / her messages in a short time, and motivates this by saying that you have your phone with you all the time and can respond to a simple message. Any logical person knows that it's not a "simple message", and if you respond, another message will follow, and then another, and another, and another, and then the next days the same will happen. Do your job, and answer to personal messages only when you have time available.

Answers your messages and calls with a delay of 2 days or more.

Tells you that the past doesn't matter. This isn't necessarily a problem, but when a person avoids talking about the past, that person is trying to hide it so that his / her partner can't decide on his / her own what matters and what doesn't. The next step for that person is to lie about his / her past, a pattern created by the past.

Doesn't admit his / her mistakes, doesn't accept responsibility for making them, never says "I was wrong" or "I'm sorry'. You may hear this in the form of expressions like "you can't hold my (past) choices against me". Expressions like "everybody makes mistakes" are attempts to dilute his / her personal responsibility in the sea of mistakes that all people make, even though only some people make mistakes of that specific type, and you may or may not be one of those people.

Tells you that he / she can do whatever he / she wants (with his / her body), and if you don't like that, it's your problem or you're insecure.

Behaves as if he / she is a victim and previous partners, or you, are to be blamed for the bad things in his / her life.

Says that his / her previous partners were bad people. If you could see his / her past, perhaps you would think the same, but this actually tells you that either he / she doesn't know how to select people, or he / she behaves as a victim by trying to make you feel pity for him / her and accept his / her past (that he / she won't tell you about, but is preparing the field just in case you find out).

Criticizes you and nags you about what you should do, or what should be done, implying that your way is the wrong one, and his / her way is the right one.

Tries to manipulate you psychologically / emotionally, by shaming and belittling you, for your preferences and standards that you say your partner must have.

Tries to manipulate you psychologically / emotionally when you don't do what he / she wants. He / she is a drama queen. Examples: pouts, yells / screams, begs, cries, throws tantrums, talks very quickly so you don't get time to think or say anything.

Ignores you when you don't give him / her enough attention and validation of his / her existence. This is important in the beginning, when you are trying to understand his / her personality and aren't yet sure that you want to be fully involved with him / her. In such a case you won't treat him / her like a king / queen and he / she will get upset and try to manipulate you by ignoring you and playing hard to get.

Is condescending, mocking, or insulting (uses ad-hominem attacks).

Mocks you, or at least you can hear the mocking tone in his / her voice.

Mocks strangers, like sneering derisively, for the way they look or dress, or for whatever choice they happen to make at the time. Some people like to mock other people, especially of the same gender, because they hate the competition that stands out, and they know they can't do the work that's necessary to get to the same level. An example is men who see other men that dress well or show more skin than most men, and say mockingly "Gay!" Another example are women who see other women that dress well or show more skin than most women, and say mockingly "Slut!" If your person of interest does this, ask "How do you know that?"

When he / she wants to emotionally manipulate you, he / she writes you messages instead of talking face-to-face, because this way he / she doesn't need to control his / her real reactions / emotions (which could expose his / her manipulation).

Argues about a small thing and exaggerates the argument to an extreme intensity, possibly even including sleeping separately. (This is likely a sign of a major complaint that has accumulated over the years, something that he / she wasn't able to talk to you about, so you might want to first try to find out what that is.)

Diverts arguments (= changes the context) toward something other than what's being argued, in order to hide the fact that he / she has failed to logically support his / her side of the argument, and is now throwing darts into the dark until you get exhausted and feel defeated, even if it's about something that didn't start the argument. He / she cares about winning the psychological battle, not about being right. He / she is deliberately (even tough maybe subconsciously) misinterpreting your intent, and this shows major differences in how you two perceive and handle life (events). Examples:

You're talking about something in general (like "I wake up every day at 6 o'clock"), while your partner keeps bringing up this and that exception that he / she knows about (like "You woke up at noon, on June 14th"). Exceptions don't even challenge, never mind invalidate, a rule. If a rule works for the majority of cases and there is no other rule that works better, bringing up exceptions is simply manipulation.
You're talking about what people do in general (like "There are people who do bad things"), while your partner behaves like you're saying what people should do (like "So, you're saying that everyone should do bad things?").
You're talking about how Reality is, while your partner says that the way Reality is it's immoral, as if the laws of physics would or should change because of people's morality. If your partner says that the laws of physics should change, he / she is disconnected from Reality and will constantly bring in your relationship the desperation to change things, but without having a solution that would work in the real world, for everyone involved. The laws of physics work for everyone in exactly the same way because they don't care about people, about each person's preferences and perceptions.
You're supporting an argument with logic and scientific research, while your partner brings up (people's) emotions, feelings and sensitivities, or what people can afford, as if the laws of physics would or should change because of people's feelings.

During arguments, throws objects around.

Treats other people badly, starting arguments or yelling at them. Observe how he / she treats the waitstaff at the restaurants you visit.

The woman makes subtle / veiled threats about what would happen if she were to accuse the man of doing bad things to her (although he didn't). Start recording her immediately, on your phone, without her knowing that. While you may have to check your country's laws, recording a conversation that you participate to is usually legal.

The woman creates various imaginary scenarios to see how you would protect her. She's asking to be lied and wants to pretend that she's safe because of a few words you say. Nobody is safe from life, nobody can know what can happen during an attack, especially with multiple attackers. Walk away, this isn't a job interview for Batman.

Offers for the relationship the same things that most people offer, yet demands to have things that only the most successful partners can offer. These demands are almost exclusively about physical looks and wealth.

Expects you to pursue / chase him / her, to fight for his / her attention, because he / she is The Prize.

Believes that he / she is The Prize, so demands that you treat him / her like a king / queen without him / her treating you in the same way.

Believes that he / she is The Prize, so thinks that he / she doesn't have to bring anything into the relationship and his / her presence is enough to be in a long-term relationship with a partner who is good looking and wealthy. In reality, given the wealth, the partner is The Prize.

Believes that he / she is The Prize, so you have to be rich in order to impress him / her. In reality, given the wealth, you are The Prize.

Says or believes that he / she is a Unicorn, a King / Queen, The Prize.

Tries to find out how much money you have and make, how wealthy you are, early in your interaction, like during the first date.

Tells you how much money he / she has and makes, how wealthy he / she is, early in your interaction, like during the first date.

Tries to make you jealous.

Calls you to check where you are, who you are with and what you're doing. Might even ask you to send him / her photos taken with your smartphone, as proof.

If he / she sees you talking with someone that he / she doesn't know, he / she watches to see what you are doing and then asks you who that person was, with a voice tone which implies that you did something wrong, that is, he / she isn't talking to you but is interrogating you.

Tells you that he / she needs to think (about the relationship), needs space or a break (away from the relationship).

Tells you that he / she wants to see other people, but he / she still wants a relationship with you. In fact, he / she wants to have sex with various people, but wants you to be the backup partner and the financial provider.

Walks away from your relationship but then tells you that he / she wants you two to be together again.

Is vengeful, particularly directed at you.

Cheats on you (sexually) and blames you for not giving him / her enough attention. He / she could have walked away from the relationship, but chose to stay because of the financial security and emotional predictability that you provide. Men and women cheat their partners in about equal proportion, so justifications like "men cheat more" have no practical relevance.

Lies to you, and you have the evidence.

After a sexual relationship between a man and a woman ends, the woman tells the man that she is pregnant with his child. The man must not trust any evidence which is provided by the woman. Such evidence can be fabricated or bought online. The man must request and witnesses an ultrasound of the baby. After the child is born, the man must request a DNA test, and must get its result directly; don't trust the woman to take a swab for the test, or to provide the result of the test. Until the man receives the result of the DNA test, he must not have sex with that woman because she might try to tamper with the birth control methods in order to actually get pregnant with that man.

If you've decided to have a prenuptial agreement and you are about to marry, but you partner keeps postponing signing the agreement even though the wedding day is near, the intent is to exploit you emotionally on the wedding day in order for you to accept to have no signed agreement.

Hits you.

QA

How can I make a good portrait photo?

A portrait photo means that a person is fit in the frame / photo from the top of the head down to shoulders or chest.

A good portrait photo is a photo where the face and the eyes are clearly visible, that is, they are not covered by sunglasses.

The photo can be taken either in portrait mode (with the narrow side of the camera / photo aligned horizontally with the ground) where nothing but the photographed person fits in the frame, or in landscape mode (with the wide side of the camera / photo aligned horizontally with the ground).

The focal length of the lens is a critical element in how the subject will appear in photos due to the geometric distortions introduced by the distance between the subject and the camera. The smaller the focal length of the lens is, the smaller the distance between the subject and the camera has to be (to fill the photos with a good portrait), distance which will make some facial features, like the nose and cheeks, appear bigger and narrower in the photos than what people see in reality. On the other hand, the larger the focal length is, the larger the distance between the subject and the camera has to be, distance which will make the same facial features appear smaller and wider. Different focal lengths make different people appear in photos either better or worse than in reality, so what focal length should be used has to be tested on every subject.

As a side note, the geometric perspective of the human eye is equivalent with a 43 mm focal length used on a full frame sensor, so a lens with this focal length will minimize the distortions the most. If the sensor diagonal differs from the full frame sensor, the focal length has to be scaled proportionally. Note that the actual focal length of the eye is 22 mm, but, unlike a full frame sensor, the eye is curved, which alters its geometric perspective.

If you are taking selfies, the small distance from which the photos are taken will automatically be small, so the facial features will appear bigger and narrower than in person.

To avoid such geometric distortions, have a friend take your portrait photo outside, in daylight. Have the camera 2...4 meters (7...14 feet) away from you, but adjust the (optical) zoom in order to fill the frame with your head and shoulders.

If the sun is bright, either position yourself to have it behind you, or move into a (lightly) shaded area; do this in order to avoid squinting, and to avoid harsh shadows forming on your face. Have both the camera and yourself inside the shadowy area, not just yourself.

Make sure that the camera confirms the focus on the face.

If the camera shows the hand-shake symbol, either manually increase the ISO or pop up the camera's flash. The environmental light should overwhelm the light coming from the flash; basically, the flash should only provide enough light to fill the shadows; avoid using a strong flash directly on the face.

A bit of psychology:

A good portrait photo will not necessarily bring more attention to you because the people looking at your photo may simply be used with and expecting a different type a photo, like selfies taken from arm's length (which look more natural because of the imperfections).
You may be tempted to cover your face with something like sunglasses. If you think about posting such a photo in your online profile, you should consider that the people who want to see your eyes may skip you, while those who are more interested in your body will contact you anyway.
Smiling is not necessary, but make sure that you don't have a sad face.
Add a personal touch. For example, a photo of someone looking like a model in an advertisement is impersonal. But someone taking a selfie, smiling or holding / waving a hand at the camera is going to be perceived as more approachable.

What if I look for a partner on a online professional network?

Professional networks have the disadvantage that all the information (including the photographs) is selected for a professional context, so it doesn't accurately reflect the personality and behavior of the profile owner in a personal context.

There are people on the Internet who have had success in getting dates on professional networks, and there are people who advise against looking for dates on such networks since they are not intended for romance. But the best part for using a professional network for finding a long-term partner is exactly that it's a professional network, so you can see what your potential partner has achieved in life, that is, you can see up front if he / she is a match for your success in life.

If you decide to approach someone on a professional network, avoid sending a generic connect request that would make your person of interest think that you are interested in a professional connection. You should send a direct message where you explain your interest for a connection not related to the profession, like asking whether you can ask a personal question, and clearly state that if he / she is not interested then he / she should ignore your message. This allows your person of interest to have total freedom of choice about getting in contact with you, and knowledge that his / her choice to ignore you will be respected.

First message online

If you're trying to meet with someone that you've seen online, write him / her a text message. The message must be detailed yet concise, and grammatically correct.

Write more than a generic message like "Hi beautiful" or "Let's get to know each other". Find something interesting in the profile of your person of interest and compose a message around that. If you can't, you'll have to be creative about why you find him / her attractive.

Ask clear questions whose responses matter to you.

If you send a message to someone outside of a dating service, you should state that if he / she is not interested then he / she should ignore your message. This allows your person of interest to have total freedom of choice about getting in contact with you, and knowledge that his / her choice to ignore you will be respected.

Avoid begging for attention or looking desperate in any way. Do not say "Please contact me!" Don't ask your person of interest out in your first message.

Avoid sending a second message to someone who has not responded to your first message. If you do send a second message, do it after about a week and say something like "You may have missed my previous message, so please let me try again."

How can I protect my online profile?

Your online profile must not display information which can be used to identify and track you in either the physical world or over the Internet, like: real name, home address, income amount, real names of friends, phone numbers, email addresses, the names of your accounts from other online services. Stop talking to people who insist that you give them this kind of information about yourself.

Always search online the photos of the people that you are contacting. Save on your computer the photo that you want to search. Go to Google's image search feature and upload the saved image (to their servers); click the camera icon from the right side of the search bar, and then select the photo that you've previously saved. You will then get a search result with the web-pages where the photo was found. If the photo was found somewhere else on the Internet, use your common sense to see if it really belongs to the owner of the profile or to someone else, like a photo-model.

Never send money to people who are not long-time, trustworthy friends.

Do not run computer programs which are sent to you by other people. On Windows, these are files which end with ".exe", ".bat" or ".cmd". Computer programs can be infected with malicious software which can send to others any information from your computer.

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