CHAPTER 14: SHOW HER HOW YOU FEEL
(ROMANTIC PROOF)
Romance is everything.
—Gertrude Stein
Women want romance. Why do you think they consume most of the romance novels, romantic comedies, romantic TV shows, and news about celebrity romances out there? They even have their own “romantic” genre of “couples” porn, where lovers actually flirt, play, and talk for a few minutes before the blowjob begins. You mean they have names?? Exactly.
This romance stuff brings clear emotional benefits to women, but what’s in it for you guys? Well, sooner or later, you’re going to fall in love, and you’re probably going to fuck it up. We want to help you avoid that heartbreak. This chapter teaches you how to present the “romantic proof” that women crave.
Don’t worry. We’re not going to preach that you must fall in love before you have sex or that all women want long-term, committed relationships. In fact, romantic proof is just as important in your dating and mating life as social, material, or aesthetic proof—even if you’re only looking for short-term mates. Even for a one-night stand, a woman appreciates a guy who can play the romantic role and who can emotionally connect with her and eroticize whatever intimacy develops in a few hours of fun. Plus, it usually makes the sex much hotter.
BROADCASTING VS. NARROWCASTING
Broadcasting is anything you do as a guy that raises your attractiveness and apparent mate value to women in general.
Suppose you’re a rock star: you’re displaying your musical talent, creativity, humor, energy, and confidence onstage, and thousands of female fans respond by cheering and screaming, “Take me backstage!” or “Fill me with your tiny babies!” You might even sing a ballad or two, just to show you have a heart. But you’re broadcasting these traits and proofs to every woman in the stadium; you’re not focusing on any one woman.
Narrowcasting is focusing your mating effort and courtship displays on a particular woman. It’s usually much more private, like when the rock star serenades one particular groupie in his tour bus.
Narrowcast romantic proof shows you’re willing to take the time, energy, attention, and effort to prioritize a particular woman over other possible mates. Women find that very, very compelling, because you’re simultaneously saying, “You’re so awesome that you’re worth my best mating effort” and “You’re so much more awesome than all the other women out there that you’re getting my exclusive mating effort—at least for this conversation, this night, or this week.”
To women, a guy broadcasting his mate value often looks selfish, juvenile, sleazy, and sexually desperate, whereas a narrowcasting guy looks generous, mature, honorable, and sexually patient.
Of course, romantic proof doesn’t mean you have to devote 100 percent of your time, energy, attention, and penile rigidity to just one woman. It just means you’re investing enough in her, and giving up enough time that you could be spending with other women, that she’s confident you really care about her over the long term. Don’t automatically equate love with jealousy, romance with exclusivity, or long-term relationships with monogamy.
WHY WOMEN CARE ABOUT ROMANTIC PROOF
A lot of guys ask us, “How do I know if a woman’s into me?” If you like a woman, you’d also like to know if she likes you so that you can know whether to talk to her more, to tell her that you like her, to ask her out, right?
Women are the same way. They want to know what you think about them and what your intentions are on a romantic level, because that information is very valuable to them. Women feel intense anxiety if they are not getting romantic proof from a boyfriend or husband. Feeling invisible, neglected, or taken for granted drives women nuts, and it sparks a lot of breakups and divorces.
To understand why, it helps to think about the evolutionary logic of romantic proof: it’s all about showing a guy’s willingness to stay with a woman and to help take care of any kids that pop out. Remember March of the Penguins, when Morgan Freeman taught us all how male emperor penguins incubated little baby penguin eggs at their feet for four months? It’s no coincidence that women lost their shit over that movie.
Once a woman starts feeling safe around a man and is thinking about dating him, her self-protective instincts flare up, and she wonders, “If we have sex and I get pregnant, will he abandon me, or will he stay and help raise the kids?”
You can see this concern in pop music; most lyrics by women are basically asking, “Hey, boy, will you really love me forever, or are you just having fun?” Most lyrics by men are basically asking, “Hey, girl, are you really DTF tonight, or are you just teasing me?”
You might have very high mate value—a great body and brain, cool personality, awesome career, wonderful friends, good taste, and a romantic streak. But for a woman seeking a longer-term boyfriend or husband, that’s all meaningless if you don’t show romantic commitment to her in particular. To many women, a great guy who won’t commit is just an extra-dangerous source of potential heartbreak and bitter disappointment.
So understand that women’s craving for romantic proof is not some weird cultural programming, superficial whim, or capricious personality disorder. It’s at the heart of protecting themselves from being seduced, impregnated, and abandoned. And apart from reducing the risk of abandonment, romantic proof gives women lots of valuable information about your good gene, good partner, and good dad potential.
Men’s capacities for romantic proof couldn’t have evolved to be universal across cultures if they didn’t have a genetic basis. Romantic tendencies are not only stable across life but also reveal desirable, heritable personality traits and higher intelligence (higher IQ predicts lower likelihood of divorce).
For example, brighter guys will be faster to learn a woman’s details and history, will be better at remembering her preferences and birthday, and will be more resourceful in organizing their romantic activities. Romance depends on conscientiousness (willpower) and agreeableness (kindness): to make a long-term relationship work, a guy has to invest in his social role as a family man, show the self-control to fulfill his commitments and resist the temptation to sleep with other women, and have the altruism to care for his own girlfriend. Romantic proof also reveals emotional stability, because depression, anxiety, and irritability distract guys from being able to take care of a woman.
IMPROVE YOUR ROMANTIC PROOF
As with any kind of hard-to-fake proof, romantic proof doesn’t have to deliver any practical value to a woman; it just has to impose costs on you that would be unbearable if you tried to narrowcast them to any other woman. That’s what makes it a reliable signal of intent and commitment.
So the most romantic gestures are those that cost you the most, given your abilities, preferences, and resources. If you’re shy, a public declaration of love will seem especially touching. If you’re cash-rich but time-poor, a woman will be much more impressed that you took the time to handcraft a unique birthday gift than if you spent a few thousand dollars on jewelry from Amazon Prime. The more the romantic gesture costs you specifically, the more reliable and compelling it is as a signal of your mating interest.
That said, gradual escalation is key. Too much romantic proof too early smacks of immaturity, instability, and low mate-value. If you haven’t spent dozens of hours talking with a woman, you can’t possibly know enough about her to actually love her for herself. You probably only love her boobs, her smile, and her last ten Facebook status updates. By narrowcasting too much romantic proof too early, you are basically saying, “For no good reason, I’m romantically fixated on you even though I’ve never even talked to you and know nothing about you.” This reeks of desperation and is very unattractive.
What you need to understand is the typical script for how romantic signaling escalates in our culture. You already know this script at some level from watching hundreds of romances on TV and in movies; you just have to become more conscious about it so you know when you’re fucking it up; then you can slow it down and take it easier.
First, you pay attention to the woman. You look at her. Don’t stare like a predator, but smile and say hi. Then you talk to her and listen. This is called having a conversation: you learn about her, and she learns about you.
Then you invest more time in doing fun stuff together on dates, so you both learn more through shared activities and unexpected challenges. At some point you start making out and maybe having sex, so you get to know each other’s bodies, passions, and kinks.
All throughout this process, your mutual interest and sexual anticipation should build slowly. Genuine, mature, choosy love grows slowly and cautiously, on the knife’s edge between fear of heartbreak and hope for a shared future.
As we said, it freaks women out when you jump straight from a first date to a colossal romantic obsession without going through these stages. She knows you know nothing about her; she’s just a symbol to you. Why is this guy suddenly sending me heart emoticons and links to his YouTube love-song performances when I hardly know him? That’s what creeps and weirdos do. You might feel like you’re in love after a couple of hours with a woman, but you don’t have to say it or act overly romantic about it. Nurture that passion in private—that’s what masturbation fantasies are for.
However, escalating romantic proof too slowly shows you’re jaded, indecisive, or cynical, so women run away. Escalate just right, with your love growing in proportion to what you know about a woman, and she might just love you back and run toward a great future with you.
The best way to practice gradual escalation of romantic proof is to practice having actual medium-term and longer-term sexual relationships. You learn romantic skills by having girlfriends, learning from mistakes, resolving arguments, and understanding women better. And when you finally meet “the One” whom you want to marry and have kids with, your future wife will be thankful that you learned how to be romantic long before you met her.
DISPLAY ROMANTIC PROOF
Don’t fake being in love. Why? Aside from the moral arguments—it’s dishonest and it hurts women—it sets you up for catastrophic blowback. In England until 1970, a woman could have sued you for “breach of promise”; having sex was an implied promise of marriage, and if you didn’t follow through, a woman could sue for serious money and ruin your reputation. The law doesn’t exist anymore (thankfully), but women still feel moral outrage against guys who fake love just to get sex.
So, do not follow Ron Burgundy’s lead. Instead, escalate your romantic displays only when you’re actually falling in love and she’s clearly falling for you. In the meantime, there will be a pretty big gap between how much you feel (which might be a lot) and how much you say and act upon (which might be a little for a long time), and that’s exactly as it should be. What’s hot to women about romance novels is the hero feeling much more than he can say, not when he says much more than he feels.
That’s a high-level, strategic approach to romantic proof. Now on to the nitty-gritty, how-to, what the fuck do I do? parts of the equation.
Make Good Eye Contact
Have you ever been talking to someone who is looking around the room at everyone else and not paying attention to your words or your face? How does that make you feel? Like a disposable fucking loser?
It makes women feel the same way when you do it to them. And they’re even more attuned to gaze direction than you are.
The simplest, most ancient forms of romantic proof are simply looking at one woman rather than at other possible mates (no wandering eye) and paying attention to her behavior and conversation rather than getting lost in your own past memories, current agendas, and future plans (no wandering mind). For all primates, including us, gaze direction and mindful attention are reliable signals of social and sexual interest.
When you’re with a woman, spend most of your time looking at her in general and plenty of time looking into her eyes specifically. This doesn’t mean stare like a psychotic stalker, a CIA interrogator, or a Tantric sex guru. Just look at her a little more often than you normally would.
Cultivate Good Conversation
The first duty of love is to listen.
—Philosopher Paul Tillich
Conversation is the bedrock of romantic proof. The time, attention, and humor invested in the conversation matter more than the specific subject matter.
You can talk about anything in a way that shows romantic proof. As you know from watching couples in public who are sickeningly in love, they can talk total nonsense for hours in a totally loving way.
However, you can talk about love itself in a way that shows zero romantic proof if your conversational style is boring, lazy, inattentive, overbearing, mansplaining, cynical, or hostile. This is one place where style can trump substance.
So what conversational style makes for good romantic proof? The main thing is mental and social effort. After she tells you her name, repeat her name to yourself until you remember it. Use active listening, pay attention to what she’s saying, and give little nods and reactions as she speaks. Ask about her background, interests, values, and preferences, and weave them into your dialogue. Show energy and enthusiasm in your words, face, and gestures. Unleash your inner comedian, storyteller, reporter, and philosopher—all the creativity, knowledge, and humor that you can muster.
Above all, give her your full attention and interest. She wants mindful conversation, not mindless banter. If you’re preoccupied with which cocktail to order next or analyzing that conversation with some other hot woman yesterday, you’ll get that dead-eyed zombie look and she’ll know your brain has gone AWOL.
Most young guys suck at paying real attention to a woman when they’re talking. They worry too much about sounding smart and not enough about being warm. You can’t usually talk a woman into bed by saying clever things unless you’re legitimately hilarious, but you can build an emotional connection through conversation that makes her feel that spark of intimacy. And for women, there’s a very short leap from emotional intimacy to physical intimacy—hot, messy, passionate sex.
Talk Respectfully about Other Women
If a woman is interested in you, she’ll often ask, “Hey, what were your ex-girlfriends like?” Of course, she wants to find out what you’re attracted to and how she compares to them. But mostly she wants to assess your romantic capabilities (and mental health and empathy) through how you talk about them.
Do you show reliable signs of being able to feel real love for real women? Could you connect emotionally, mentally, and socially with them as people, or did you vacillate between idolizing them as goddesses and demonizing them as whores? Did your love make you committed enough to get through crises, disappointments, and arguments, or did your love evaporate at the first sign of trouble?
A woman can read all this and infer your loving-guy traits from how you talk about your exes, as well as about your sister, your mother, your female coworkers, or any other women in your life. In fact, your ability to love women as real people overlaps a lot with treating women in general as real people.
When you talk about women to a woman, make sure you are honest, caring, positive, and somewhat discreet. She is in information-gathering mode in conversations like this, but one of the things she doesn’t want to learn is that if the relationship doesn’t work, you’ll spill all her dirty laundry to the first pretty face who asks.
Focus on Her Unique Qualities
Satirist H. L. Mencken wrote, “Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.” He was wrong. Women do differ from each other in all the same ways that men do, and different men value different qualities in women. The key to a woman’s heart is not to praise her overall mate value by just calling her an “awesome 9”; any guy could do that, and he might trade up to a “10” if one comes along.
Rather, you have to gradually let her know exactly which of her specific qualities you find uniquely irresistible so that no other woman is likely to sweep you away.
Caution: If she has huge boobs, saying you especially love her boobs doesn’t make you stand out, because most guys love boobs. She’s tired of leading with her cleavage.
Focus on her qualities that most other guys would overlook—you know, like her personality. It might be her career, her intelligence, her extracurricular interests, her sense of humor, or refreshing honesty. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s something that is part of her identity, especially something she values or works on.
If you’re especially attracted to certain qualities in a woman that most guys would find neutral, intimidating, or repulsive, that’s especially valuable to her. Most guys are intimidated by very smart women, but if you’re a smart guy who truly values a woman’s intelligence, let her know early and often that you appreciate her brains. Don’t just say, “I love you because you’re smart”—that’s cheap talk. Rather, demonstrate that you value that trait by engaging your brain with hers.
Most guys are also intimidated by very tall women, but if you adore long legs, show it by doing things that showcase her height—like playing volleyball, complimenting how great she looks in high heels at a party, or focusing a lot of sexual attention on her legs in bed. Kids have probably made fun of her for being tall since fifth grade, she’s been self-conscious about it her whole life, and she’s craving a guy who sees her as a leggy supermodel rather than a gangly giraffe.
Tell the Truth about Your Intentions
Love is a game that two can play and both win.
—Actress Eva Gabor (married five times)
When a woman asks you what you’re looking for, don’t fucking lie. Be honest and seek win-win relationships.
Moralizing aside, lying about your mating goals nukes your sexual confidence (if you have a conscience), risks your reputation, hurts women, undermines their trust in you, and cripples your mating strategy. Most women assume that guys are lying when they’re talking about relationship intentions. Why? Because guys lie all the time: “I’m such a romantic,” “I’m dying to meet the One,” or “Love is so underrated these days.”
Most guys—especially when they’re young and horny—think they have to lure women for sex with the potential for a relationship. This is not accurate. There are MANY women who are willing to have sex without relationships, but only if you are honest.
If you are actually looking for a serious relationship, you can absolutely own it: hint on the second date that you’re open to having a girlfriend if the right woman comes along, and declare on the tenth date that finding a great wife is actually your main mating goal.
But if you’re not looking for a steady girlfriend, it’s best to take the opposite tack. Tell the complete truth in a socially intelligent but clear way. Say, “Look, I may want a girlfriend and a wife and kids at some point in my life, but that’s five or ten years away. Right now, I just want to have fun and meet new people and try new things.”
Once you tell the truth, the woman is immediately relieved because she can give truly informed consent to whatever the evening brings. You’ve shown your hand, and she can either fold (run away, if she’s really looking for a boyfriend) or raise you (keep flirting, if she’s really looking for a hookup).
This kind of radical honesty hits an emotional reset button in most women’s heads, reframing the whole interaction from “ordinary dating mind games between boy and girl” to “exciting, edgy, flirtatious conspiracy of daring truth tellers.” This fundamentally changes the mating dynamic and makes short-term mating much more likely and much less shameful.
Plus, honesty is sexy to women. If you’re honest about your mating goals, there’s a good chance you’ll be honest about everything else, and honesty is very attractive to women.
Socially intelligent honesty about your mating goals also saves your own sexual self-respect and your sense of integrity. By saying, “I’m looking to have fun and meet new people,” you’re NOT saying, “I just want to slay as much pussy as possible.” The moral framework here is that short-term sex is fun, playful, exploratory, and a great way to make new friends rather than shameful, sinful, exploitative, or misogynist.
Get Good at Foreplay
Great foreplay is one of the most emotionally compelling forms of romantic proof to women. It shows you’ve got the sexual patience for a longer-term relationship rather than being desperate for immediate sexual gratification.
The key to great foreplay is to focus on both people’s pleasure in each other’s bodies. She wants to feel that you’re doing the foreplay because you’re passionately attracted to and aesthetically fascinated by every part of her body, and you’re really appreciating every touch, kiss, and lick—not because you’re just trying to prime the pump or, god forbid, you think it’s a quid pro quo kind of situation.
For women in long-term relationships, being kissed frequently is strong romantic proof—a better signal of commitment than a boyfriend wanting sex with them. In fact, for women in longer-term relationships, foreplay really starts in the morning with the first “Hey, honey, you look great today!” or the after-lunch text that says, “My hands are going to give your hips a lot of attention tonight”; it’s not limited to the few minutes before you want sex.
Embrace Sexual Passion
You might think that romantic proof means you have to care more about a woman’s orgasm than about your sexual pleasure. That’s not true.
Many women find it more exciting when a man gets completely carried away and really enjoys fucking them than when he’s overly attentive to their own pleasure. That’s the way the pirate captains fuck in romance novels, which are marketed to women, not men.
The reason women love male passion is that if you clearly find sex with them to be awesomely rewarding, you’ll probably come back for more. You’re starting to get hooked on her, and she likes that.
However, if you’re focused only on whether a woman reaches orgasm with you, she is more likely to feel put on the spot, anxious, self-conscious, and worried that if she doesn’t “perform” for you by reaching orgasm, you’ll go off and find some other woman who’s easily multiorgasmic.
Come Correct with Cuddling
Women instinctively understand that you’ll use whatever seduction tactics you think are necessary to get them to have sex with you. The question is, how do you act after you’ve had sex?
Women especially value cuddling as romantic proof because it’s a reliable signal that you didn’t just want to fuck them once and that you actually have feelings for them that go beyond the heat of passion. Men oriented toward short-term mating view women as significantly less attractive after they come, whereas men oriented toward long-term mating experience less of this “affective shift” from preorgasmic desire to postorgasmic disgust. Thus, women can use your response after sex as a cue to your mating intentions.
Check In Regularly
The art of love is largely the art of persistence.
—Psychotherapist Albert Ellis
Many primates give regular “contact calls” in dense forest to let their mates know where they are. The modern equivalent is regular text messaging, liking your girlfriend’s Facebook status updates, returning her phone calls, answering her emails, and chatting with her regularly. The content of the messages isn’t as important as their reliability, kindness, and the time and attention required to maintain them. This is a very hard-to-fake signal of romantic commitment, because you couldn’t sustain it with multiple lovers.
You might be Dr. Pussy Slayer the Sexual Superhero, but you can’t keep up text chatter with more than about five women at once. At least not without seriously fucking up.
Of course, don’t check in with her more often than she checks in with you—you’re aiming to signal romantic reliability, not erotic obsession. And some women have a bottomless need for contact calls that no man could ever fill. You don’t need to give her everything she wants; you just need to give her enough. That is, give her a little more than less committed guys could stand to give.
Give Gifts That Require Thought, Research, and Creativity
Kindness in giving creates love.
—Lao Tzu
If it’s a gift you would get yourself, it’s not a romantic gift; it’s being selfish. If it’s something you would have gotten any ex-girlfriend, it’s not romantic; it’s being a dickhead. If you found it in five minutes on Amazon, it’s not romantic; it’s lazy.
Find out her favorite kinds of flowers before you buy her flowers. It doesn’t matter how pretty tiger lilies are; if she’s allergic, the only ones who benefit are the makers of Benadryl and Kleenex. The best gifts tap into your own traits; making something yourself is big romantic proof and showcases your practical intelligence, willpower, and aesthetic proof.
Women care a lot about you remembering relationship-specific dates (their birthday, the date and anniversary of your first contact, first date, first kiss, first sex, marriage, etc.), romantic holidays (Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve), and minor holidays that allow romantic extended-weekend getaways (Presidents’ Day, Labor Day). For each of these, you need to plan ahead—put work aside, get thoughtful gifts, make dinner and travel reservations.
Show Just Enough Jealousy
Jealousy evolved to protect a longer-term sexual relationship, so its expression reveals a mindset oriented toward longer-term commitment. Just don’t be an asshole about it.
Possessive, paranoid jealousy is annoying, controlling, and oppressive to women and predicts domestic violence in the relationship. But a moderate level of mate guarding and interest in their fantasies, flirtations, and male friends signals that you’re paying attention to their desires and you’re serious about the relationship.
Share Interests
If she loves snowboarding, take some lessons and try it. If you know how to survive Coachella comfortably, take her and show her. Don’t compartmentalize your passions. If you’re really into motorcycles but never show her your bike or take her out on it, she’ll assume that you’re not serious about her. She wants to be part of your life, and if you build a wall that excludes her from your favorite hobbies, she’ll feel disposable.
Show Deep Engagement Rather Than a Transactional Attitude
“Deep engagement” means you start to value the woman as an end in herself rather than a means to yours. Her happiness becomes essential to yours. You’d stick by her and care for her with a high degree of “irrational” commitment, even if she fell into a coma, got cervical cancer that required a hysterectomy, or developed schizophrenia. Economists call this “irrational” commitment because the relationship has become a net cost rather than a net benefit, so a “rational” man would leave. That’s precisely why staying is the romantic thing to do.
A transactional attitude toward relationships means a tit-for-tat accounting that keeps track of who does what for whom and who owes more—a huge turnoff and a red flag for women.
Go Public
Contrary to the Romeo and Juliet myth that social adversity makes love stronger, relationships have lower satisfaction and worse outcomes if they aren’t integrated into the lovers’ social networks or if friends disapprove. Secret relationships make women less happy, even early in the courtship. Just ask the woman Tucker fucked in law school and then hustled out the door under the cover of darkness before his roommates could see.
However, married couples with strongly overlapping social networks are less likely to get divorced. Meeting a woman’s friends and family, and making an effort to win their approval, is another potent signal of social accountability and reveals that you have “honorable” longer-term intentions. The more she’s integrated into your social network, the more confident she can feel that you won’t dump her lightly or cheat on her, because your friends would think you’re a douche.
Even declaring your “relationship status” on Facebook can be strong romantic proof. A woman knows it makes you socially accountable to social media friends, so if you switched back to “single,” they’d ask about why you broke up.
Takeaways
• The other traits and proofs are about broadcasting your innate qualities; romantic proof is narrowcasting your commitment to a specific woman about how you feel, whether it’s a short-, medium-, or long-term mating scenario.
• The key to romantic proof is gradual escalation. Do not express your undying love after one date or an extra-long hug in the hallway between classes. It has to develop and grow over time, based on your interactions with the woman.
• You cannot bullshit your way through romantic proof. There is an impulse to tell a woman what you think she wants to hear, but she’s heard that a thousand times. You have to be honest about your intentions and about how you feel at any given moment. That honesty tells her that your signals of interest are legitimate.
• Pay attention! There is nothing more romantic or indicative of true interest than paying attention to what a woman wants, thinks, feels, needs, or likes.