I’m 23 years old and generally considered good looking and very intelligent, but I’ve never had any success with girls. I’ve been going to prostitutes once a month, and though they’re always lovely, in the end I feel horrible for doing this, instead of managing to get a girl by myself. Is there something I can do to be more attractive to women?
I’ve written on several occasions about how men can be more attractive to women; probably the best one for your purposes would be “Never Let ‘Em See You Sweat“. But since I’ve already answered that question, I’m going to ask you one instead: What the hell do you mean by “I feel horrible for doing this, instead of managing to get a girl by myself“? It seems to me that you are getting girls “by yourself”, in whatever quantity you can afford and whatever type you like. Do you mean someone else is paying for you, and that you’re concerned he might stop at some point? Or are you using counterfeit money or a stolen credit card, and feel horrible for hurting others by your theft? Or is it that you imagine paying directly with cash to be somehow morally inferior to paying indirectly with presents and entertainment? Surely you don’t feel “horrible” for fairly paying a woman the price she wants, instead of tricking her with bullshit…is it that you actually know the price and what you’re getting for it, rather than getting sex of indeterminate quality for a hidden price you won’t know until it’s too late, that could even include legal proceedings against you and/or two-decade long financial obligations? Because honestly, that doesn’t seem like something any sane man would prefer…is it a kink of some kind? Because if so, I’m sure you could find a professional who’d help you to indulge it far more safely than experimenting with some possibly-unbalanced and certainly-unpredictable amateur. Or maybe you’re laboring under the misapprehension that “real” men get sex for “free”, or something like that? Because I can guarantee you that isn’t the case; every man pays, and the only thing that varies is the method of payment. Help me out here, sweetheart; I simply can’t wrap my head around what you’re trying to say.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
Err, Maggie, unless you’re being so incredibly general as to make that statement virtually meaningless, I can assure you from personal experience it just ain’t true.
If you mean ‘pays with compliments’ or ‘pays with reciprocal sex’ or ‘pays with amusing banter’ or ‘at least on occasion every man pays with flowers or chocolates or a night on the town’ then you could have a point. But as someone who has never even considered marriage and had far more short term liaisons than long term relationships I think I can honestly say that most of my sexual partners were in it for the sex and didn’t even expect to be wined, dined or gifted in return.
Of course I was a surfer, in a band and was considered physically attractive by a fair proportion of women in my younger days, but I don’t really believe my experience has been unprecedented. Maybe you’ve been in contact with an unrepresentative sample of men. But I’ve also got to wonder about the women you’ve discussed this with.
Ding ding ding ding!!! We have a winner!
Not all payment is in monetizable form.
So why do you only ever apply your generalisation to men?
You could equally say all women pay for sex with their attractiveness (in the broadest sense of that word).
Please don’t be absurd. You know very well that IN GENERAL, sex qua sex is something men ten to demand from women, which is why there are very few heterosexual-only male sex workers and the vast, vast majority of clients are male. I don’t get very many letters from gals asking how they can get more recreational sex from guys.
But you didn’t say “in general”. You said “every man pays”. Then to justify it you used a definition of ‘pays’ that covers just about every possible interaction.
I’d be the first to admit that though I’ve often had a bit of a reputation for it, there have been very few periods of my life in which I got as much sex as I would have liked. When I have it’s usually (not always) been when I’ve been in a long term relationship in which I’m carrying most of the financial weight (if only because I had the greatest earning capacity and it would have been ridiculous to expect the woman I lived with to have a lower living standard than I).
But it seems perfectly reasonable to me for men in general and young ones in particular to aspire to have at least some non-transactional, entirely mutual, zipless sex in their life and it’s more than possible to do so. Why crush the questioner’s aspirations under a sweeping dismissal like “every man pays, and the only thing that varies is the method of payment”?
Because I read his entire lengthy email, and you didn’t.
As for the questioner, here’s what probably worked best for me when I was in my early 20s. Spelling it out here makes it sound manipulative but actually it’s only in retrospect I realised how it worked. It wasn’t something I did calculatingly at the time.
If you’re in regular contact with a woman who may be sexually attracted to you avoid entering into a relationship with her that might lead to sex. If you do have sex you’ll probably find it hard to avoid a long term commitment that will include a financial component. Instead, target her friends – especially the ones she talks to a lot but doesn’t see so often (e.g. out of town former school friends). If there’s sexual tension between you and the woman she’s almost certain to tell her girlfriends how ‘hot’ you are. Some of them will want to find out for themselves and some won’t be able to resist the challenge of ‘conquering’ someone their friend has failed to get into the sack.
How to meet women like that?
Well, up until my mid-30s I lived mostly in mixed share accommodation. It was mostly the women I lived with who talked me up to their girlfriends. There have also been women I’ve worked with or been involved in activist groups with who’ve done the fishing for me.
And that’s probably the best rule of thumb. Socialise with women for reasons that are not to do with finding partners. Don’t seem eager or needy for sex but be prepared to show you’re interested in the women you meet because they’re people. People are interesting. You’ll find the rest will just fall into place by itself.
A more straightforward and manipulative piece of advice?
Learn palmistry.
It’s bullshit but one thing it really works for is picking up girls at parties. Many young women can’t resist ‘having their fortunes told’ for free. You immediately get to hold their hand, run your finger across their palms, ask personal questions and say flattering things without instantly putting them on guard. You can talk straight off to a strange woman about her ‘Mount of Venus’ without getting slapped.
You’ll need to learn the basics about the various lines and mounts on the hand but you can pick it up quickly from any cheap palmistry book (I used Cheiro’s Language of the Hand, which is now available for free downloads) but the real trick to it is character reading. Pay attention to what she is saying, then slightly rearrange it and feed it back to her in a positive light after a few minutes delay. People aren’t used to being listened to and they’ll be amazed at how much you apparently know about them.
So you paid in time, effort, and ability to learn an unusual skill. More power to you! But her model still applies.
If you’re going to be that general about the definition of ‘payment’ then everyone pays all the time for everything. I ‘pay’ to stay alive with the ‘effort’ of breathing, for example. So Maggie’s model becomes meaningless semantics.
That is a faulty image, as you really do not have a choice in the matter.
Of course you do. You can choose to not breathe and not live. Thousands of Australian do that every year.
You can chose to sabotage your body (directly or indirectly), but unless you do, you will continue to draw breath. You cannot chose to stop breathing by choice, you can only get it a a secondary, indirect effect.
Well, if you’re speaking indirect effects, paying a sex worker with a credit card is no less indirect than stopping your breathing with a noose around your neck so I’m not sure what your point is.
Sex workers accept credit cards? That sounds unprofessional. But the thing is, if you stop you breathing with a noose, unless you are really, really deranged, the primary aim is not to stop your breathing, but something else, making the stopping of breathing a pure side-effect.
But lets just agree to disagree. I think we have established earlier that we both see the world quite differently. This exchange we are having looks like a side-effect of that.
Absolutely. Even small brothels here have a list of credit cards they accept on the front window. Typically it includes EFTPOS.
Sex work is also legal in Germany, no?
Are you saying they don’t accept credit cards there?
I’ve accepted credit cards through various means for the whole time I’ve been a sex worker. From 2000-2006 I could even accept them directly under my own company name.
First, I do not live in Germany and neither am I German. Sorry to disappoint you.
But my point was what happens in a country where prostitution is illegal if a customer disputes the transaction? Anyways, if it works, then fine. It is not anonymous like cash though.
I think CatTiger highlighted a problem with the lack of anonymity.
You pay a hardworking prostitute for a good honest fuck and your financial records suggest you’ve been involved in a capitalist conspiracy with bankers instead.
Many sex workers and brothels do accept credit cards. I have just returned from a trip to Europe, and I had a session with a very charming young lady in a brothel in Prague. I paid with a credi t card, and I have just received my statement. The cover name was for an investment company – not that I would ever have any dealings with an investment company in a foreign city, should anyone look at my statement.
Well, it does not seem to be so much of a general statement as an exhortation to the questioner to see for himself how he pays in different ways for different reasons.
I’ve taken up lifting after a mid-life crisis and am only now seeing a world of non-cash non-night-on-the-town style “payment,” to couch it in terms most people not familiar with this blog may find uncomfortable.
The only understanding I have of pay-as-in-cash vs pay-as-in-not-cash is as a matter of personal taste, as I have rejected judeo-christian morality decades ago, along with it’s twin conformity.
Just my 2 cents…
A number, not all, of the sex workers I’ve known personally, as friends, not clients, prided themselves in helping men like the one mentioned here get the simple social skills needed to be “in the running” for a “real” relationship. IMHO, a “real” relationship is a co-equal partnership, what Pepper Schwartz talks about in her book, “Peer Relationships”. Very different from conning someone into bed, a la “The Game”. Here is a very interesting interview by a leader in the polyamory community of two guys who got caught up in the dishonest seduction culture:
Eric Francis talks with Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens of Waking Life Espresso about “The Game” (Speed seduction), the Manosphere, and Red Pill culture.
http://planetwaves.fm/waking-life-coffee-interview/
I think your advice to pay for sex to take the edge off someone’s need for sex while taking it slow and easy looking for a relationship is very good. Sex for money with a consenting adult as an honest transaction that can include pleasure, and possibly healing, and maybe good counseling, but not the emotional (love) life partnership of a real relationship.
I do think that “being yourself” is the best way to find relationships that genuinely serve both you and your partner. Sometimes that might make you sweat. I have had decades long relationships that started off with me being severely nervous. One time I even went through a red light on a first date. But if you are with someone who sees something in you, it is possible to get past that. For some people, nervousness, which may translate into “knowing you is very important to me”, might be endearing.
I still feel the best advice is to stay out of bars and do things, like volunteering for a cause you believe in, is the best advice. That way you can find someone who shares your values. I think demonstrating commitment to shared values is the most attractive thing anyone can do.
Firstly, thank you Maggie and readers for your attention and help.
Now, answering your question, Maggie, I feel frustrated seeing my friends (some of them, others are in the same situation as myself) picking girls in clubs and parties and having girlfriends while my only resource for sex is prostitution. I deeply wanted to have the life they’re having. But seeing yout response to one Cabrogal’s post (“Because I read his entire lengthy email, and you didn’t.”), it seems that, seeing my situation, you consider that monetary payment for sex will be my fate.
To Cabrogal:
“I was a surfer, in a band and was considered physically attractive”
I’m thinking of taking some stuff like this. Besides that, thanks for your advice, I’ll remember that.
To Si:
“Do things, like volunteering for a cause you believe in, is the best advice. That way you can find someone who shares your values. I think demonstrating commitment to shared values is the most attractive thing anyone can do.”
While I don’t have a very active social life, I’ve met along my life a fair share of girls with diverse ponts in common with me, but I’ve never managed to be anything besides a friend with them (don’t worry, I won’t start whining about “friendzone”. If they don’t want me sexually, fine, but I still want to find sexual companionship).
Ps.:No, I’m not involved in anything illegal with my payments 😉
Hi CarPallo.
Maggie’s right. I haven’t read the email she has. Nor am I as au fait with US cultural mores as is she (Many Australians come back from the US expressing shock at how mercenary people there are. I guess it comes from having fewer social safety nets). But I’d be very surprised if Maggie is really capable of speaking for all the women you’re likely to meet.
At 23 many guys are still finding their feet socially and I think you’ll find your interactions with the opposite sex will change a lot over the next few years. Whether or not you’re able to draw attention with your appearance or with activities like playing music your drought will almost certainly break, and relatively soon. When it does you may well find yourself dealing with a flood.
A lot of people like to speculate about what sexually attracts a woman. In my experience nothing works better than the opinions of other women – unless it’s your own opinion of yourself. And despite what Maggie says, I find a lot of women (maybe not a majority – but a large proportion nonetheless) are quite keen to have sex simply for the sake of sex. And yes, that includes several American women of my acquaintance.
Maggie’s views have been formed by a breadth of experience few others will ever have. But it’s not likely to be a representative one.
Another piece of practical advice?
Travel. Alone. To places where women also holiday (in my case it was backpacking around S & SE Asia). Women not only become more sexually adventurous when on the road and away from their home communities, they also tend to travel with girlfriends and can become quite competitive for male attention. Even if you don’t score, travel is well worth doing for its own sake and the experiences will make you a more interesting person (as long as you don’t try to experience it through a lens and substitute boring photo or video displays for your own anecdotes).
Once again, thanks for all your help! Btw, I indeed have plans to make some backpacking travels.
Could you give me your e-mail? So I coud talk some more things with you in private, and send you the message I’ve sent to Maggie, so to know what you think about it.
And a little correction: I’m not American, but Brazilian, from São Paulo.
I’d rather not put my email in open up on a blog, but if you click on my username it will take you to my blog. If you leave a comment there I will get your email address (my blog readers can’t access it) and will send my email address to you.
I’m afraid I know even less about the culture and sexual mores of Brazil than I do of the US so I hope I’m not leading you astray with culturally inappropriate advice.
Ok! Have sent it.
And don’t worry, any advice is welcome. It will be just a question of testing it and see what works.
It’s on “about” page.
I think the problem lies very much at the root-cause for “in the end I feel horrible for doing this”. Typically, this stems from some disconnect from reality, because there really is no reason to feel “horribly” about having paid a fair price to some professional to deliver a good-quality service.
And while not all sex is transactional, it is a good rule of thumb, as it is mostly true. Even if the man is the “hot attractive one” a woman that sleeps with him for “free” diminishes his reputation and increases hers. Taking a trophy of this type is not generally free for the one it is taken from, even if you discount the effort for maintaining that image of being “hot”.
Huh?
I dunno how things work in Germany, Celos, but believe me, Australian men don’t diminish their reputation by having sex with lots of women, no matter how ‘hot’ the guy is. It doesn’t seem to leave people like Mick Jagger in ill repute either.
You forget the scales involved. And what it does for their reputation if they chose not to do it.
I honestly don’t follow you here Celos. What does what for whose reputation if they choose not to do what?
Your initial comment seemed to be arguing some kind of zero sum game for human interaction. If one person gains reputation via an interaction someone else must have lost some. That makes no more sense to me than Maggie’s contention that I ‘paid’ for sex by being a surfer and bass player in a rock band. As if having sex would somehow have made me less of a surfer and bass player.
And of course it presumes the sex act will become known to the public at large. I may have been on stage from time to time but I’m pretty sure I never had paparazzi taking snaps through my bedroom window.
Cabrogal,
You’re truly hilarious! “I was a rock band, a jock/surfer with an aussie accent and I never had a problem getting laid by visiting tourists” is about as funny as Jon Bon Jovi’s statements about his sex life. I mean, really, congratulations for having the right interests at exactly the right moments in life and your milieu! But your situation is far, far from normal. I’ve been LOL for minutes now that you can possibly think of your situation as normal!
Seriously, when the UK was getting rid of it’s undesirables, they sent the god-freaks to North America and the crims to Austrailia, and my side of the pond has been worse-off ever since! You have no idea what it’s like to live in a mercenary puritan country without any particularly noticeable advantage! You should worship the goddess Fortuana for you good fate!
You’re a real whiz-kid when it comes to the women for sure!
yours,
—
DG
Well, I wouldn’t say I was ever a jock. In fact I was and am pretty athletically incompetent on land and was never interested in team sports. And if you’d ever seen or heard me playing bass you’d have wondered that women ever came anywhere near me (my Mum sure did) – but there you go.
But yeah, growing up in the 70s in a NSW beach town an hour north of Sydney sure gave me a flying start. Us waxheads were pretty competitive with regards to the visiting female tourists in the season and the fantasies many of them picked up from Olivia Newton-John’s “Summer Lovin'” in Grease sure didn’t hurt. (A few years later Madonna was a fine role model too. Another tip: keep an eye on how popular culture flogs sexuality to young women and play to it. Saying “you remind me of Madonna” is a bit blatant but aiming complements at aspects of their image or behaviour that seem to reflect Madonna’s persona helped).
But wait, there’s more. I started my IT career aged 19 in 1981 (before the local unis started turning out computer science graduates in bulk) and could practically name my price. I didn’t mention that earlier because the women who came my way as a result fitted Maggie’s characterisations more than my arguments, but they were only ever a minority. Besides, until I was 22 just about my entire IT income disappeared up my sleeve anyway and even in the early 80s junkies weren’t considered very sexy. But when I got clean it went into traveling around Asia and that brought lots of fringe benefits too.
Was I paying for sex? Nope. I was paying to travel because I liked to travel and became obsessed with India. I payed for my surfing and music (both loss making exercises) because I love surfing and music. The fact they brought so much sex with them wasn’t even a secondary motivation. In fact it was quite a surprise at first. The palmistry OTOH was a deliberate strategy aimed at picking up girls.
So yeah, I did pretty well by comparison with most of my peers.
But nonetheless the majority of my male friends without my advantages still maintained fairly steady traffic to and from their bedrooms and I didn’t notice them lashing out on gifts and entertainment very often either. From talking to my nephew that seems to be the case with the current generation too.
Of course if you’re talking long term relationships instead of short flings I’m sure financial prospects become a bigger factor in many cases. But as well as all the above I’m bipolar (one) and aspie and have never been able to maintain long term relationships. Well, not pleasant ones anyway. My relationships don’t break up. They blow up.
Maggie is right – we, men, have to pay for sex, one way or another.
However, this statement has to be nuanced a bit. We are all human beings, and anything worthwhile we look for has to be paid for. In money, effort, time, attention. In a good long-standing relationship, such as my marriage, payment is mutual. If I contribute more financially to the common good, it is because I happen to earn more. My wife contributes more in other areas, where she has more to give. Neither of us looks on our transactions as unwelcome “payments” – we just do whatever it takes to keep the partnership going in a mutually satisfactory way..
In the general sense, the problem is that good relationships are hard to find and to keep going. Meanwhile, we crave both sex (men more than women, perhaps) and closeness/intimacy (women more than men, perhaps). If we are not in a good long-term relationship, including both sex and closeness / intimacy, we must make do with what we can find.
For many men, the sex drive is so strong that we are prepared to “pay” a lot for it. Going to professionals is one way – the cost is established ahead of time, there are (let’s hope) no hidden surprises, after an agreeable hour or two we can go our separate ways.
But if we don’t want to pay up front for it, then what? Good for the men who have no trouble finding casual bed partners, but most of us are not like that. Most of us will find that if we can find someone to sleep with us at all, there will be expectations if we hope the relationship to continue – not necessarily in terms of expensive gifts and restaurants, but in terms of time spent together, kowtowing to strange dietary/spiritual/social habits and spending time with her friends who might (frankly) bore us to tears.
I don’t know about other men, but my time is precious, and – without wanting to force my tastes on others – I really do not like to argue out what foods I like, what I believe in or who I spend time with.
So yes, unless a man finds the right companion (as I did), he is probably better off paying cold cash up front, rather than enter a relationship that is doomed from the beginning. And there should be no sense of shame in doing so, any more than going to a restaurant if we are hungry, or to the cinema or a sports event if we are in need of entertainment.
(There is also the sense of adventure / need for variety that even happily married men can enjoy when having sex with someone not their spouse – in which case going to a professional is even more advisable, as there is no danger of emotional complications).
“… kowtowing to strange dietary/spiritual/social habits and spending time with her friends who might (frankly) bore us to tears.”
Made me laugh 😉
Incidentally, there is a school-of-thought that that mandates a brief moment of shame when going to a restaurant, as they do cooking for money there. I do understand that idea, although I do not agree. I think cooking for money, just like sex-work, falls mostly under entertainment and there is no shame in providing or receiving entertainment. (Be without entertainment for a few weeks an then tell me it is not a basic human need…)
And to spin this even further, I do IT security consulting for a living. Now, some people think calling in an external consultant is shameful, as they are failing to do things themselves. I do not agree on that either: The important thing is to get the job done. If you manage that then you are competent. Whether you were competent to do it yourself or whether you where competent to get the right kind of help is a secondary consideration.
That should have been a comment to CatTiger.
We pay for every thing in life with effort. Paper money (or Bitcoin) is just a way of measuring and trading effort. This idea that buying something with money is not as good as working for it is not unique to sex. People who built their own house or grow their own food or take care of their senile parents themselves might have the feeling that other folks are more lazy or not as good as them.
For many things, it’s true that it’s a completely different experience if you buy it with money or work for it yourself. But we usually recognize that both ways have advantages and the decision depends on each person’s preference.
For sex work, many people have confused feelings about both sex and money. They can manage dealing with one or the other, but when you combine the two they just go into full panic.
No surprise. If you take a cold hard look at the combination of sex and money, most people have to question a lot of things they were taught as “truth”. Hence most people do not look to closely. That opens them up to manipulation and extortion.
extortion -> exploitation. (It is too late here…)
What it comes down to is this: if a man takes any financial loss (even just a few cents) in order to facilitate sex, then he is paying for it, whether it is a direct fee, a communication cost, travel costs etc.
Women also pay for sex, as they are mostly responsible for contraception: taking pills with annoying side effects every day, IUD’s which can cause infections and make period cramps worse (insertion can also be painful), or fear of pregnancy if they choose a less reliable birth control method because they are sick & tired of the invasive ones.
Personally, if I had the choice, I’d prefer to just pay a few hundred bucks…
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