But don’t be weird about it. I favor the drop-and-leave approach, which I encourage you to borrow. It involves dropping a thick compliment and immediately changing the subject before your target has a chance to feel awkward or even respond. If you compliment and then linger on the topic, your target will either feel awkward or act humble and deny the truth of it. When you do the drop-and-leave method, the compliment is delivered, and no one has time to feel awkward. Mission accomplished. Only use the drop-and-leave when you don’t know the person well enough to know how they will take a compliment. Someone you know well, such as your spouse, might want you to linger after a compliment, maybe suss out some details, view it from multiple angles—that sort of thing. You’ll know when to linger.
Discovering Your Sex Appeal
If you are universally attractive, you won’t need this reframe. But most of us could use some help.
Usual Frame: No one seems to find me attractive.
Reframe: I haven’t met enough people.
Instead of thinking about the 90 percent of people who are not attracted to your type (just to pick a number), think about the 10 percent who are. In my case, that means women who prefer smart men who are not likely to play in the NBA. If I meet a hundred women, maybe ten will care about my mind more than my appearance, age, or whatever. That’s a lot.
If settling for 10 percent sounds like a weak consolation prize, consider that even the most popular musical acts in the world are enjoyed by no more than 10 percent of the global public. If you can make 10 percent of the public like you—for any reason—you’re going to be rich. That’s how I got rich with the Dilbert comic. About 10 percent of the public likes it. That’s all I needed to become one of the most successful comic strip creators in history.
Your best strategy for attracting people for romance is to work hard on your fitness and diet. If you get those right, you’ll be one of the most attractive people in your environment, especially after the age of thirty. A woman once told me that any man with a job and a gym membership is already in the top 20 percent of desirable men. You can move to the top 10 percent by focusing on your fitness and your fashion—and by fixing your haircut.
The power of the 10 percent strategy is that it tells you exactly what to do if things aren’t working out for you in the romance department: Meet more people. That’s the whole strategy. Doesn’t matter how you do it. Play a sport, join a club, change jobs, whatever it takes. If you increase the number of people who know you, your odds of finding a match go way up. So forget about being attractive to everyone. Just use math to solve your problem: Meet more people any way you can.
My understanding is that dating apps only work for some types of people—generally the better-looking amongst us. As an unattractive person, I can confirm that no one ever asked to meet me because of my looks. But in person, I can present myself in a better light. Most people reading this book are in the same boat. The solution is to add more people to that boat so your odds of meeting someone the organic way are higher.
That said, meeting new people isn’t enough. You also need to signal some genetic advantages to get yourself a date.
Usual Frame: I need to go find someone to be my romantic partner.
Reframe: I need to signal my genetic advantages to attract a romantic partner.
Combining the two reframes in this chapter, your best strategy is to meet new people in a way that allows you to show off your skills, which translates in the minds of others to genetic advantages. And genetic advantages are what trigger people into wanting to mate with you. For example, if you’re good at sports, join a co-ed sports team. If you’re a good musician, find a way to perform in public, including playing the piano at a party, for example.
You don’t need a whole basket of obvious genetic advantages to attract a mate. Consider a rock star who has musical ability but is a loser in every other way. That guy has plenty of mating opportunities because the musical talent registers as a genetic advantage, even if it was nothing more than an average natural ability boosted by practice alone.
If you’re looking for an easy starting point for meeting new people, join a gym and work on your fitness. If you build some muscles and lose some fat, and enough people see your apparent genetic advantages, your odds of finding a romantic partner go way up.
Deciding Where to Eat
I have no idea if things work differently in the LGBTQ+ community when negotiating where to eat, but to keep the writing simple, I’ll describe a generic straight couple who frankly bore me.
There are two things a woman wants in a man:
A decisive man who takes charge.
Total dominion over dining decisions.
As you can imagine, this daily recurring nightmare causes a problem for a hungry man. He must make a dining decision via the process of taking charge while also not doing anything of the sort. If the man approaches this trap as a decision that must be made between two willing parties, he will be doomed to frustration. But if that clever man reframes the situation, it will be easy to navigate it.
Usual Frame: I’m trying to make a dining decision with a crazy person. Please shoot me.
Reframe: It’s not about food. It’s about the illusion of control.
Here’s how the man in this situation can solve the problem of taking charge and not taking charge at the same time: He can offer two restaurant choices—presumably out of many—and ask his partner to pick one. Narrowing the choices to two solves the “taking charge” part because it shows initiative while also providing some choice—but not too much—to his partner. Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, tells us that people become unhappy if they have too many options. The more options you have, the more likely you will be filled with self-doubt about whether you chose correctly. And I observe that to be the case. Whenever people have too many options, they get stressed out. If you don’t believe me, look at the faces of diners who are going to the Cheesecake Factory for the first time. The menu is the size of a dictionary. No one appears to be happy when they’re looking at it.
Okay, I know the imaginary woman in my example will reject both restaurant choices. But she will probably also make her own suggestion at that point, and the clever man accepts it immediately. Problem solved: The woman observes the man taking charge and doing something useful—narrowing the choices to two. Then when the woman rejects both choices and suggests one she would like instead, she also gets the dining option of her choice. The man gets a win for taking initiative, and he typically doesn’t care too much where he ends up eating. Everyone wins.
Framing the situation as a question of control instead of a food decision opens new options for a solution, including tweaking the decision-making process by narrowing the choices to two. In contrast, framing the struggle as trying to make a rational dining decision with an irrational partner doesn’t give you much to work with.
Before you start emailing me, I am aware that not all people are alike and that you are especially awesome and easy to work with. But I think more than a few readers of this book are living this dining-decision nightmare and will be happy to try my reframe.
If you find yourself on the receiving end of a “Where do you want to eat?” question, you need a different reframe. You might think that not hogging the decision to yourself is a polite position to take. But it probably isn’t because the asker might have wanted to share responsibility with someone for the decision. Not much good can come from, “I don’t care.”
A better way to frame that situation is that the asker wants a copilot for the decision, and nothing will happen until that position is filled. Here is the reframe.