Love from abroad?

Some men imagine they’ll find true love abroad. If you do any internet dating you will get the occasional message from some attractive woman in some remote part of the world. I’m not saying it can never work out, but with the right techniques you can attract women right here on your own doorstep. And if you can’t attract a woman in your own home town, how are you going to work the magic on this exotic woman, once you meet up?

Incidentally (off topic, but hey…) the same applies to overseas property investment. If you can’t make money in property investment within easy travelling distance from where you live (where you can keep an eye on things and make sure you’re not being ripped off) how do you imagine you will make money investing in a resort a few thousand miles away?

Anyway, here’s a short extract from my book, Dating – the missing manual:

Don’t be taken in

Remember that on the web no-one can see who you really are. Since you are on a genuine quest, you have no reason not to be honest. But there are some strange people out there.

Hot babes from other countries who allege that they just want to find an honest man to settle down with may be genuine, but then what’s wrong with the men in their own countries?

Could they be after a bogus marriage and a residence visa? Could they be after the thousand pounds or more that they need for a visa application and air fare so that they can some and see you? And oops! There was a last minute problem with the authorities so I cannot come my darling. (Needless to say the air fare was non-refundable.)

And could it be that the lovely Maya doesn’t exist, but some middle-aged man has found a nice photograph on the internet and is pretending to be Maya with her tempting body and pretty face, in order to extract money from you?

You are searching for something very important to you, and in this condition you are very vulnerable to believing whatever you are told.

Don’t be daft. Your chances with women in your own country are at least as good as they are with someone from elsewhere. If you follow the advice in this book you can have a lot of fun verifying this and at the same time minimise your risk of being taken for a ride.

This is simply because you will learn that you are a man with choices. If something isn’t quite right, you don’t have to settle for it, because you are not desperate.

Gender identity

A very interesting article on gender identity from the New York Times is reproduced in The Floating Library blog.

I do wonder whether our American cousins, even in so-called liberal areas, have more difficulty with this than we do in the UK. A nephew claimed he was gay and we all said, ok that’s fine. Later on he changed his mind and has no trouble picking up girlfriends. A niece came out as gay and likewise we all said, fine, be happy, sympathised when her girlfriend broke up with her and welcomed the girlfriend to family gatherings when the relationship was back on.

Ok, sexual orientation is not the same thing as gender identity. But the same principle applies: you are as God made you, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

We tried to be gender neutral in bringing up our daughters but the oldest always played with Sindies (or was it Barbies – whichever was the least politically incorrect). You can’t fight it, whether you’re liberal or the other way.

You’re children are what they are. You don’t order them à la carte.

Don’t buy my book!

I’m very excited now because my book “Dating – the missing manual – you can attract and keep the woman of your dreams (if they had taught this in school alongside algebra and French irregular verbs, my whole life would have been different)” now has the Look Inside feature working!

Link to Amazon.com for Dating – the missing manual

Link to Amazon.co.uk for Dating – the missing manual

I am also excited because I have the first review of my dating book on Amazon.com.

I’m going to come completely clean here. The reviewer is a friend. But before you discount his opinion, I have a few things to say.

You all know that many writers get their friends to write 5-star reviews of their books. Probably some authors even review their own books under false names. That’s why many people, myself included, often prefer to read the 3-star reviews to get the real low-down. I know this and you know this, and that’s why I want all the reviews of my books to be genuine. (You will note that so far I have not got any reviews for my other book, despite my giving away free copies no strings attached – the offer still stands, by the way.) So what’s all this about my friend reviewing my book?

First of all, I gave him a draft copy to read and comment on, before publication. I did this because at that time he was in the same situation I had been in, looking for a soulmate in vain and doubting his own ability to attract women. So I thought he would be an ideal person to test my book on. Why not pass on to a friend what had worked so well for me?

Some months passed, and as yet he hasn’t told me the full story of what happened. But suffice it to say, a short while ago I saw him with a very attractive woman, and the other day I saw them still together and she could hardly keep her hands off him. He also had a very big smile.

So I asked him, no pressure, but if you would please post an honest review of my book on Amazon.com I should be grateful. I emailed him, ‘If you are happy to do this it should be an honest review. Some new authors get their chums to write 5-star reviews but I suspect that if all the early reviews are 5-star people don’t believe them.’

Well, he gave the book 5 stars anyway.

So, why am I telling you not to buy my book? Because I am working on the Kindle edition and I am going to publish the Kindle edition free for a limited period, as Amazon allows. This is because I want the book to get known and I’m hoping for as many honest reviews as possible. So I don’t want any loyal followers of this blog to buy the paperback and then feel cross because they spent £5.50 (US$9.50) when they didn’t have to.

If you want to know about it as soon as the free promotion starts, all you have to do is follow this blog. The ‘follow’ button is at the top right of the page (or just below the posts if you are reading this on a mobile).

But if you can’t wait, £5.50 (US$9.50) is hardly going to blow a huge hole in your finances, is it?

Smells

Increase your chances of success in dating and in bed. A quick tip about the importance of smells.

It is said (and I have reason to believe it) that women are generally more sensitive to smells than men. It’s not that our noses aren’t as good as women’s. It’s that smells are more important to them than to us.

The part of the brain that deals with smells is one of the most primitive parts of the brain, and our initial reactions to smells are unconscious and powerful.

 So, let’s cut to the chase. Be clean. That means shower at least once a day. If you’ve been working hard all day, shower again before you go out in the evening. Use deodorant. This is about removing unpleasantness.

You expect a kiss (or more?) – then brush your teeth. If you’ve not been to the dentist for a while, go. Tartar builds up around the base of the teeth and harbours bacteria that give off a bad smell. A trip to the dental hygienist will sort this out.

For an additional touch, a modest amount of a male perfume helps create attraction. Women appreciate it.

Even if you’re happily married and don’t need to ‘pull,’ following these tips will very likely get you more sex with your beloved. Don’t slack off!

Casual sex

Casual sex because what you really want is a stable intimate relationship? An unusual take on casual sex comes up in this woman’s blog post. She writes:

…the emotional aspects of sex were actually hurting my search for a stable intimate relationship.  I, like many women I know, had a difficult time separating emotion from sex.  The two were interlinked in my mind.  If I had sex with someone, if I shared myself in that intimate way, I was supposed to feel an emotional connection to them and I did.  There was no such thing as casual sex for me even when it was clear at the onset that sex was the only thing on the menu.  I was what my blogger friend referred to as “chickastalkarazzi.” I would be desperate to drag out something that never was, only prolonging my misery.

It was instilled in me before I hit puberty that women only had sex with men they loved and that the gift of giving yourself to a man meant a connection that would last a lifetime.  It meant forever.  In essence I grew up believing sex meant you were automatically in love and that in some way sex meant a relationship.  As I became sexually active I learned that this was not the truth yet still I felt that my relationships with men were anomalies.  So I tried over and over until I became frustrated with the idea of a lasting relationship and stopped dating until earlier this year when I found myself hurt, yet again, by the myth that was ingrained in me as a youth.

After a considerable amount of heartbreak I decided to address the one thing I felt was truly holding me back from an honest connection that could result in a relationship, my premature emotional attachment.  I began to date casually; the sole purpose for those dates was to develop a physical connection with someone I found attractive without becoming irrationally emotionally attached to men who were not emotionally available.

So, this woman’s need for sex got mixed up with her need for love. It’s an easy mistake to make, and I’ve made it myself.

Everyone is different, but we all have a need for sex (however this is expressed) and we all have a need for love. The two are not the same. If one person just wants sex and the other wants love, there’s bound to be unhappiness. I’ve known people get married with this confusion of desires. Perhaps neither of them knew what they really wanted or saw clearly enough what the other wanted.

I’m not necessarily advocating casual sex as a solution. Another woman posted a reply to the blog post I have quoted from:

I was set to start an argument about your defending casual sex but you laid it out in a way that made good sense. I so wish I had it in me but I can’t do it. Sex, whether casual or not, is a very intimate act…

I doubt whether casual sex can lead to finding the stable intimate relationship that the blogger (and quite possibly you, the reader) are looking for. But at any rate she was avoiding settling for someone unsuitable because of the confusion of needs.

This is how she explains what she was doing:

It really wasn’t about the sex for me but about changing a mindset that had crippled me emotionally. (I also abstained from sex for thirteen years so having lots of it was nice as well.)  I had rules during this exercise.

• No more dates once we slept together.
• No one spent the night and I never slept at anyone’s house.
• I forced myself to be open with them.

I stuck to the rules and not once did I confuse what I was feeling.  I also learned a lot that I have carried with me as resumed my search.

• If you are completely open without fear of judgment the judgment seems less harsh if there is judgment at all.
• You realize far earlier on whether or not there is potential for something more significant than just a few dates.
•  If you are honest and unashamed then men will be honest too.  You may not like that honesty but then you can make an informed decision about whether or not proceed.  You are basing your decision to proceed on things he has admitted to you rather than what you assume.

Presumably if she falls for someone she won’t sleep with him. That makes sense too, if you think about it. I’ll leave you, gentle reader, to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s in the comments section.

…

Plug time! Readers of this blog will know by now that I am a big believer in finding a real soulmate. That’s why I wrote my book on dating.

US Amazon link here: Dating – the missing manual (paperback, 130 pages) – $9.50

UK Amazon link here: Dating – the missing manual (paperback, 130 pages) – £5.50

Do you believe in love at first sight?

Extracted from my book on dating:

Love at first sight.

Yes, it can happen.

In rare cases it really works out. Lovers sometimes feel that they must have met in a previous life. Whether they really did or not neither they nor anyone else can tell, but sometimes it works out.

But it isn’t the only way and these feelings are not always reliable. I’m not saying they’re never true, but us humans are also very good at fooling ourselves.

It is quite possible to fall in love because of our own unmet need for warmth and affection. No doubt the desire for sex plays a big part in this too. For some, the sex part looms largest, for others sex follows on from love. Either way, a starving man will accept any food.

We must beware our own unmet needs.

Serious mistakes can be made, such as unwanted sticky relationships. Obvious perhaps, but such mistakes are common.

Be skeptical of your own falling in love, be cautious, don’t commit too soon.

I have heard it said that falling in love lasts for twelve weeks, or in rare cases if you are exceptionally lucky, thirteen. (I don’t think this is absolutely accurate, but you get the point.)

Sure, it is fine indeed to see everything bathed in unusual light, to know that the world is a dream, to feel the strangeness and the ache of being in love.

Trying to avoid this state is either going to fail or turn you into a grey zombie. You can’t and shouldn’t fight it.

But don’t promise anything you may not be able to deliver. You don’t need to make promises to keep a woman. You just need to be yourself, and if she’s right for you, it will work out.

Relationships that are good for the long haul will evolve over time.

Falling in love is the match that lights the candle. The candle may or may not be lit by the time the match goes out.

For others, it is a slow burn process – they meet, they kind of like each other but aren’t sure, they hang around each other some more, and gradually like a smoky bonfire of damp wood, steam comes and then the fire.

How home cooking can cure premature ejaculation

Really?

Read on and I shall explain all.

So, your loved one has cooked you a delicious meal. We shall assume two things here.

One is that your loved one has indeed cooked you a delicious meal, even if she isn’t normally a good cook. Maybe she bought one of those upmarket pre-prepared meals and hid the packaging or maybe she tried something tasty and simple and really paid attention to buying the freshest ingredients and got the oven timings just right. Or maybe she just is an inspired cook. For the purpose of this discussion it doesn’t matter.

The other thing we shall assume is that you do the same for her as often as you can. Fair’s fair after all. If cooking is going to be mixed up with sex we might as well get that established right at the beginning.

You sit down to eat. You admire the presentation and smell the food. You know this is going to be good.

You take the first bite. It’s delicious. You can taste all the flavours and how they compliment each other. The sensations are wonderful. You compliment her on her cooking and a conversation starts. Meanwhile you continue eating until it’s all gone. Chomp chomp chomp, nom nom nom.

What happened between the first bite and the end of the meal?

Now fine, you have that sense of satisfaction that your stomach that was once empty is now full, and you also sort of enjoyed the other mouthfuls too. But how many of the bites did you taste with the full awareness of the first one? Did you really do justice to the effort she made?

You may want to argue that you were distracted by the conversation. But it is quite possible to be fully aware of each bite as we put it in our mouths, to get that full taste sensation again every time, and still be aware of her talking. There is no rush, after all, and we can listen to her, perhaps with the piece of food resting on the fork, so that we can give her our full attention, and then at the next pause we can pop the morsel into our mouth and again really taste it.

It’s the same with beer. It’s been a hot day and someone serves us a cold beer. That first sip! Mmm! Amazing! But how much do we enjoy or even notice the rest of the sips?

We are not used to living fully. We rush at life and miss things, even when there is no rush.

How does this relate to sex?

We make the same mistake with sex that we make with eating and drinking. We stop paying attention to what is actually happening and get distracted, not by her talking, which would be fine, but to some dialogue in our heads, some imagination about sex other than what it actually happening now, or sometimes by some entirely unrelated thought. If we could stay present to our actual bodily sensations, and at the same time to her needs and what works for her, we should enjoy sex much more.

This, perhaps unexpectedly, is also the key to overcoming premature ejaculation. It is imagination about sex during sex, rather than sex itself, that causes premature ejaculation. It’s like ‘chomp chomp chomp, nom nom nom’ when eating, instead of tasting each mouthful.

This is a little hard to explain, but here goes. In order really to taste a morsel of food, we have to create a little mental distance between us and the food. We have to rule our desire rather than be ruled by it. We have to create a little separation. Something in us wants to start eating straight away but we hold back for a moment, in order to allow the time and space in which to appreciate the food.

Another analogy. We’d like a glass of wine. Something in us wants to start drinking straight away. But what does a real wine connoisseur do? He or she looks at the colour of the wine, swirls it around the glass, watches how the drops run down inside the glass (called ‘legs’ – in this situation you can get away with saying ‘nice legs’), smells it, maybe pauses a moment, and only then takes a sip. Why do they do this? Is it because they like to show off? Maybe, but serious wine lovers do this because it very much increases their enjoyment of the wine. They stop their instinctive self indulging in an unaware mechanical fashion and by doing this they get much longer, more intense pleasure.

And longer, more intense pleasure is of course what we want.

How do we apply this to sex? It’s a matter of mental discipline.

It’s not a method applied once at the beginning of sex but a method applied repeatedly during sex. It is the equivalent of tasting each bite of food or each sip of beer. What we need to do is to keep being aware of our beloved, of what her needs and wants are. If we start imagining ourselves as some kind of stud and begin to lose ourselves in imagination about what is happening or what is going to happen, then we’re lost very quickly. Nom nom nom (you can supply the equivalent sounds yourself). It’s just as bad if we start worrying that we’re not satisfying her. Anxiety kills sex. If we find this happening we can create a little separation, a little pause in which to come back into the present moment and be with her.

Eye-contact is one very powerful tool here.

It is strange, but to remain present to our beloved actually requires continuous effort. Notice how something wants to drag the mind away from the present moment. Real pleasure requires effort. Why not?

Why should appreciating wine require effort but sex be automatic?

So, whether drinking, eating (I was tempted to say, ‘forking’) or making love, create a little separation between you and your desire, and be present to what is happening.

This works.

How can I attract a woman? – the magic of makeover

If you, like me, have a romantic view of life you may be thinking that it’s the inner you that counts, and a woman should be attracted to you for that. But the inner you isn’t what’s on public display. It’s like thinking that a shop will make money just by selling quality goods and therefore doesn’t need to bother with a window display. It doesn’t work like that.

I’m going to contradict myself, because the inner you does count and is absolutely crucial in the game of attraction. But we’ll come to that another time.

Presentation is important for two main reasons.

First, because first impressions count. To find your dream woman you have to attract her first.

The woman who became my wife told me much later that her mother had advised her to check a man’s shoes. No doubt that wasn’t her sole or even her main criterion for going out with me, but there it was anyway. Perhaps we’ll return to the topic of shoes and what they say about you later. Obviously there’s a lot more to it than shoes.

Second, presentation changes the way we feel about ourselves.

All along I’ve been emphasising the importance of confidence. I don’t mean swagger or conceitedness, but confidence. We need to develop the kind of confidence that stops us worrying about the impression we’re making (because without thinking about it we know it’s a good one) and focusses instead on other people, including the woman we are trying to attract.

Here’s the thing: a makeover can instantly change how we feel about ourselves.

Ok, it involves some expenditure. But it gives us a massive head start. If you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good you’ll be radiating the kind of energy that attracts women.

If you’re not sure where to start, ask a female friend or sister (assuming she has good taste and likes you enough to want to help) to sort out your wardrobe and put all the rejects in a box for the charity shop. Next, ask the female friend or sister to go clothes shopping with you. If you’re on a budget you can take this a step at a time. But make a start on it, because it’s really important.

How to construct a dating profile

How long do you have to wait to find THE ONE, your soulmate? A lot depends on meeting a lot of women (or men if you’re a woman, or women if you’re a lesbian, or … work it out for yourself), because it’s partly a numbers game, and if you’re doing it on-line, it depends on having a dating profile that produces results.

Here is a blog post from someone frustrated by the whole dating business:

There are some harsh realities that come with putting yourself out there into the dating scene (do we call it that? Is it The Game? No, that’s a rapper..).

You have to be patient, I’m told, which is funny because I’ve been patient for quite some time. Long enough that I should win the Most Patient Award… [read more]

She goes on to write about online dating:

So maybe the first couple nights I was a little slutty with the winking (it’s a feature where you basically send people a “wink” whose profile you liked). Aaaaaand nothing has come of it.

Oh, there was that one “No thanks” from someone, so that was cool…

It also tells you how many people have looked at your profile. Now, I’m not good at math, but I can tell you that my ratio thus far of views to responses is a bit on the unfortunate side. …

And all she really wants (after discussing this issue for a while) is:

…maybe just somebody to hold hands with at the movies.

Such a simple thing to want, and yet so full of depth. Yes, that really is important because it implies so much.

There is a lot of advice in my book about how to set up a dating profile that works. Let me tell you a story from the section How to construct a profile in my book Dating – the missing manual :

Learn from my mistakes.

I constructed a beautiful profile on one of the better sites. The profile was very serious and said what I was interested in and so on about myself.

There was nothing particularly wrong with it.

I even had a photographer friend take a number of photos of me and picked the one that made me look good.

The profile wasn’t a total dud. I did get two or three dates out of it, but I didn’t find a keeper that way.

When I did find my true love, as it happens by an entirely different method, I changed my profile to something like this:

“Two space vixens have been fighting over me with phasers set to stun, and the victorious one has now abducted me in her spaceship, so I am no longer available. Sorry to disappoint.”

This was my way of signing off, but to my surprise I then got a little windfall of interested replies within a very short space of time. Not logical, you might think. But there is a lesson in this.

My analysis: the serious profile says ‘boring.’ ‘This person takes himself too seriously.’

Note well: your dating site profile is not about information. It is about attraction. A fun profile makes the woman think, ‘this guy is a hoot; it would be fun to meet him.’

There are other lessons to be learned from this, which I go on to discuss in the book.

Dating is a numbers game. You are going to have to contact a lot of women (or men …etc.) to find THE ONE. The first step in making contact through a dating site is to have a profile that works for you.

You don’t need to tell everything about yourself. You do need to create attraction. Raising a smile is a very good start.

How can I attract a woman? Dealing with rebuffs

Why are we so scared of just going up to a woman we are attracted to and saying “hi”?

Of course, common sense says we don’t do this when she is in the company of her very large and scary boyfriend. (Disclaimer: you follow any suggestions on this blog entirely at your own risk.) But that isn’t what I’m talking about.

There is a woman you find instantly attractive and you want to start up a conversation, and fear makes your blood run cold. What’s that all about?

I think it is the fear of rebuff which hits at our own insecurity. We think: she’ll laugh at me because I’m not handsome/ attractive/ whatever. Why would she want a worm like me, to paraphrase one of John Betjeman’s poems? This hits at our most basic idea of self-worth – that a woman wouldn’t want us.

There will be many occasions in which the woman who catches your eye will not be interested. She may already have a boyfriend or permanent partner. You may not be her type. Some women like older men, some don’t, some prefer tall men, some don’t, some like muscled men, others are put off by them, and so on. One key thing to understand is that a ‘not interested’ response should not be taken personally.

There are two ways of dealing with this, and they go hand-in-hand.

One is to learn how to make light repartee, so that we don’t get rebuffed. If she isn’t interested, you’ll still have had a fun though brief interchange, nothing lost on either side. If she is interested, so much the better (there is more to be said on what to do next if that occurs).

The other is to build inner confidence. The kind of confidence that says to itself, she wasn’t interested, well, no matter, her loss, there will be other women and other times. And one very good way of building inner confidence in this area is precisely to practice light repartee, because you will not be rebuffed (or so rarely it won’t matter). Every time you do this, confidence builds.

There is a whole section on how to practice light conversation and repartee in my new book.

Officially published today!

Dating – the missing manual:

you can attract and keep the woman of your dreams

(if they had taught this in school alongside algebra and French irregular verbs, my whole life would have been different)

US Amazon link here: Dating – the missing manual (paperback, 130 pages) – $9.50

UK Amazon link here: Dating – the missing manual (paperback, 130 pages) – £5.50