What is Your Weakness?: Understanding the Bottlenecks That Are Holding You Back

by RedpoleQ

You already have game.  Whether you have enough game to get what you want, though, is another question entirely.

Sweat and Frustration

I didn’t know there were dating experts out there who had advice that actually worked until 2004 when a guy from my crew sent me a Dave D’Angelo article.  By that time, I’d already been living in Japan for 4 years and I’d done thousands of approaches on the street, at cafe’s, in clubs, at McDonald’s at 4am and almost anywhere else you could think of.  But my yield was super low–the number of approaches that went beyond a (hopefully) fun and funny interaction was miniscule.

Like you now, I had a sticking point in my game…or what I prefer to call a bottleneck. While I had no problem approaching girls, once I was in the interaction, I didn’t have a very good plan for what to do. As a result, things that I did meant that most interactions went nowhere.

A History of Bottlenecks

When I first went to university at 18 I had a different bottleneck.  At that time, I didn’t know how to dress well at all.  Being a catholic school student, I wore a shirt , tie, and jacket to school everyday; as an all boys school student, I didn’t know any girls anyway so I just wore whatever hand-me-downs happened to show up in drawer.  I solved that bottleneck by reading GQ magazine religiously and shopping A LOT.  I even worked at a women’s clothing store at one point during college, which also had a men’s clothing division (…in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, ultimately.).

Later into my development, I was so good at approaching women that girls would almost always meet me for dates. When I took them back to my place, on the other hand, I’d get completely shut down.  The girls would be happy to see me again and again, but they’d always shut me down.  Eventually, I worked through that problem too but then ran into a new bottleneck  – getting girls to stick around.

Your Core Skills

And that’s how getting better with women goes.  Whoever you are, and whatever experience you have, you have some level of game.  You need to figure out what it is that’s holding you back from the results you want and move forward from there.  Essentially, there are 7 areas that you need to be good at to be successful:

1. Inner game
2. The initial approach
3. Dates
4.  Sex and sexual escalation (what we call “sexcalation”)
5. Relationship management
6. Fashion
7.  Lifestyle

Inner game is your mindsets, beliefs, and thought patterns.  Some guys have their lives totally together but, because their inner game is weak, they settle for less than they can get. I taught a guy a few years ago who always had a woman’s rapt attention but, because he believed they weren’t interested, he’d walk away in the middle of the conversation! Guys in their late 20s and beyond, because they’ve worked on their career, built social connections, and have had a few girlfriends, have pretty solid inner game by the time I meet them. Younger guys, often fresh out of University, are often still getting this stuff together.  The beliefs you have about yourself, about women, and about sex can easily cripple your ability to successfully interact with women.

The initial approach is a key skill to learn if you aren’t able to meet the kind of girls you want to be with.  I know some guys who are quite well off financially, who party a lot, and who are always surrounded by loads of amazing hot women, but they always complain that those girls only want money.  I know other guys who have a social circle full of really great female friends with great personalities, but no access to girls that make their heart rate jump at first sight. Other guys have the perfect social circle but haven’t figured out how to utilize it for maximum effect.  You have your own unique social situation and desires that will determine what level of approaching skills you need.  You may not need to be able to talk to the girl on train next to you because you are a fashion photographer and you meet new models every week. If this isn’t you, on the other hand, you’ll likely have to work hard on approaching to reach your goals.

There is no manual on what makes for a great date (actually, there is now!).  People are bombarded by images of expensive and boring dinners & movie dates.  Everything else seems so spontaneous and risky.  Then on the date there’s the typical get-to-know you conversation with complete with nerve-wracking silences.  Even if the date is fun, how do you know how to get her back to your house, when you should kiss her, or when you should follow up for the next date?  How can you spend less on dates, or how can you get the girl to chip in without looking cheap?  At one time I was so terrible at dating that I spent $150, got her back to my place, and even though we stopped to buy a toothbrush for her on the way, she went home after only being at my place for 30min. I had to take care of my sexual frustrations on my own. A few years later more than half of all my first dates ended in sex.

Let My Pain Be Your Gain

It wasn’t an easy process for me to find these bottlenecks as I struggled to get better.  I had a lot of long discussions with friends and weeks experimenting with different techniques, discarding one after another, in a long trial-and-error process. It took me months to work through a particular bottleneck before I sorted it out. I guess this is why I can remember each stage of frustration very, very well. I’m a slow learner, it seems…  Most of what you find on Asian Dating Monthly is from those long years of frustration. We’re working our hardest to ensure that your road to success is substantially easier. Make sure you check back next week to discover and tackle the bottlenecks that are holding you back.