Jack Lee - A Guide for the Heroic Nerd

Any conversational approach that is unusual, self-deprecating, and exudes confidence will work.

What if you’re dead set on learning something about the girl? If that’s how you want to play it, try to keep the usual boring questions like, “Where are you from? What do you do?” to a minimum. Try to ask questions no man has ever asked them before. One of my favorite opening lines was, “Everything about you screams ‘Virgin’ to me.”

Whenever I said this, I’d get embarrassed laughter. Then they’d ask why I got that vibe. I would list every trait that made the woman look like ‘a girl next door.’ I’d talk about the pastel colors she was wearing, the minimal, subtle make up she had on, and how her entire vibe gave me the impression, she wasn’t experienced.

I’d ask her if she’d picked the colors she was wearing on purpose. I’d get her talking about what kind of style she had and what kind of guys she thought she attracted with that style. I knew that things were going well if I could get the girl to tell me if she was a virgin or not.

Again, let’s pretend that you can’t ever see yourself telling anyone she looks like a virgin. What can you learn from this technique?

1. I wasn’t asking questions the girl had answered thousands of times before.

2. I was making her think. Women usually don’t consider why they’re picking one color versus another. Everyone knows that different colors convey different emotions. I made these women think about the message they were sending. Because of our conversation, the girl was learning something new about herself.

3. I was giving her a subtle compliment. Few women, especially women who have the ‘girl next door’ style want to look like sluts.

4. By bringing up what her appearance told me about her and getting the girl to confirm if I was right or not, I was provoking an actual back and forth conversation. Too often discussions between men and women devolve into just one person talking and the other relegated to saying ‘Uh-huh’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘how interesting’. These one-sided conversations are almost always deathly boring.

I’ll make these points over and over again: Be different! Be creative! And don’t be slimy. Body language is actually more important than the words you’re using. Instinctively we all know words can be lies. Instinctively we all know that very few people can use body language to lie. If you are undressing the girl in your mind, if you’re imagining having sex with her, she might not know why she’s uncomfortable but she’ll definitely be uncomfortable.

If all you’re focusing on when you talk to the girl is how to make your conversation fun for her, she’ll be able to sense that.

So what do you do if you aren’t funny or creative? You study and learn a topic that bores the hell out of most guys and interests most women, like palm reading, astrology, and fashion. The average guy will scoot away from you if you offer to read his palm. Most women are fascinated by this stuff. Buy a book on palm reading and astrology and learn enough about it that you actually know your stuff. Too many women actually know enough about these topics for it to be safe for you to bullshit your way through it. The women that know something about palm reading and astrology will be the ones who are most impressed by your knowledge. They’ll think, “Finally! Here is a man who knows something interesting.”

If you can’t force yourself to learn mystical mumbo-jumbo, try being the first heterosexual man she’s ever met who knows the difference between Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo shoes. Heterosexual men who know fashion are extremely rare. You’ll stand out. If fashion doesn’t work for you, find another topic women like.

Genius is one percent inspiration, nine-nine percent perspiration. It takes hard work and a lot of practice to become a great conversationalist. Being able to talk to girls is a skill like any other. It isn’t a trait that will effortlessly, miraculously appear from inside you. If you think, study, and practice, you don’t have to suck at it.

Dr. Louann Brizendine, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, claims that a woman uses about twenty thousand words per day, while a man uses about seven thousand. The corollary to this statement is that a woman can actually hear and process up to twenty thousand words a day while a man can only hear and process seven thousand. I’ve never read her work so I don’t know how robust her research is, but intuitively her claims make sense.

My life experiences tell me that the male and female brains are different and that the average woman uses way more words than an average man can hear and process.

I asked my wife to conduct an experiment with me. Like most wives, she has complained for years that I don’t hear a single word she says. I asked her to try to tell me the things she wanted me to remember in the mornings rather than the evenings. I wanted her to tell me important things before I’d reached the upper limits of words I was able to hear and process in a day. Our little experiment worked. I was much better at remembering things I heard in the morning than in the evening.

Since it is impossible for you to hear every word that a girl is saying to you, I’d advise you to stop trying. Men have a limited ability to listen to women. As long as a woman’s attractive, we have an unlimited ability to watch her. Since it’s inherently impossible for you to hear and remember every word she says, use her visual cues and her body language to determine what you need to hear and what you don’t.

Let’s be honest here—most women bore us in the same most men bore women. It is interesting to watch an attractive woman. More often than not, it is not interesting to listen to her. If you’re doing something interesting, you’re less likely to fall into a daydream. By watching her, you’ll be able to tell when you have to listen.

When people say something important to them, they tend to go completely still or they make a forceful motion. Watch for these signs; when you see them listen carefully. When you don’t it’s probably okay to let the woman’s words flow past you.

When you’re picking up a girl and when you’re on your first date, you’ll want to remember everything she thinks is important. Watch to see if she is leaning toward you or away from you—away is bad. Is she moving her hands as she talks or does she have her arms crossed—arms crossed is bad. The best of all signals is if she runs her fingers through her hair when she looks at you. This usually means she’s physically attracted to you.

When she shows you the bad signs, change what you’re doing—it isn’t working. When she shows you the right signs, you’re on the right track—keep it going.

After you’re married or if you’re living with a girl, life will be a lot easier for you if you take a second to take in the light of your life’s body language when you come home. If she gives you a quick kiss hello and then turns her head away from you talking to you as she does other stuff, you’re fine—it’s safe to let her words become white noise.

If she keeps eye contact with you—worse has her hands on her hips or arms crossed—you’re in deep shit; you’d better listen to what she has to say. She’s already pissed; you don’t want to piss her off more by making her repeat herself.

The end of the date tends to stressful for both men and women. The woman’s thinking, ‘Is he going to try to kiss me?’ The guy is thinking, ‘Is she going to let me kiss her?’ It doesn’t have to be this awkward.