Most men would rather not get rejected than get women. That one sentence encompasses every reason why men fail with women. Yet so many men don’t understand what it means. Or, if they do understand it, they don’t live by it. Can’t live it. So, the purpose of this article is unpacking the difference between “not getting rejected” and “getting women.”
What “Game” Are You Playing?
In dating, as in life, there are two ways to play the game: you can play to win, or you can play not to lose. The vast majority of people play “not to lose.” That means they “play it safe,” stay within the standard deviation of normalcy, and don’t make any bold moves. This is the strategy of the “nice guys.”
When you’re nice, people won’t be mean to you. But people also won’t like you much either. Instead, you’ll get exactly what you want: you won’t get rejected. But was that really what you wanted? Was your goal to “break even” when it comes to women and dating?
Doubtful.
Probably you want to win. You want to get the girl, you want the toe-curling sex, you want to feel like a champion, a winner. Well. Guess what. If you’re playing to win, you stand to lose. When you go “all in,” you could “lose it all.” You might end up hated, shunned, laughed at, or scorned.
Welcome to the game.
Why Most Dating Advice Doesn’t Work
My contempt for “traditional” dating advice is an eternal theme in my writing and teaching. I know I often come off as a curmudgeon, but I don’t care. The reason I hate most men’s dating advice is because it caters to cowards who just want to avoid rejection. Never are the stakes properly laid out. Never is an accurate picture of pickup and dating portrayed.
Instead, we get a “fantasy land” of how someone thinks dating advice should work. And people who don’t actually go out and meet women, but believe they’re qualified to give advice on it, often mistake “not getting rejected” for actual success.
Don’t make the same mistake. Accept the cost of success: playing to win means standing to lose. Embrace your loses. Understand that “losing” humanizes you. Only a superman wins all the time, and supermen are fictional. Moreover, cowards who are playing to “avoid rejection” are less human than those “playing to win.”
This is a key point, and one that should empower all my fellow winners—even if you haven’t won yet. Losing isn’t a complete loss. Sure, when you “lose” it stings and it sucks and you wish you’d won; however, you gain something from the experience. You gain a stronger sense of self, a greater piece of reality, a better understanding of what it means to be human.
This “ability” sharpens your personality, makes you an easier person to talk to, and—weirdly—makes you more likable. Ironically, the coward who wants to “avoid rejection” and actively tries to get people to like him by playing it safe is less likable because of this strategy.
The Cost of Success Pays for Itself
So the takeaway message from all this is trust. Trust yourself, trust the process, and trust that the biggest risk you’ll ever take is taking no risk at all. This applies to dating as much as it applies to life. Being human doesn’t mean avoid rejection. Being human means throwing yourself into the jaws of rejection without fear.
Only the winners of the world will understand what I’m taking about. Every success story I’ve ever heard began with a “play to win” attitude. And within that success story there were plenty of failure stories, as well. But ultimately those were only “short stories” in a larger treatise of absolute victory. In fact, those failures probably contributed to the ultimate success.
So, as one of my favorite sayings go, “The biggest risk in life is taking no risk at all.” If you take no risk, you won’t have to endure losing, but you also won’t enjoy wins. Moreover, you’ll rob yourself of the humanness of playing the game as it should be played. Playing it to win.
