Ian On The Red Dot

Aaron was triggered by this post to blog a post called “No money, no honey?” which is a topic that is very close to my heart. He ends the post by saying ‘Don’t believe in the crap of those who say that only money can get women’.

Attracting and winning over a girl to get into a relationship ( be it the fuck-buddy kind, the eat-some-tohfu-but-don’t-want-to-pay kind, the she-is-my-gf-and-I-want-to -marry kind, she is my-gf-for-company-but-not-for-anything-else kind … ) is one thing. Maintaining the relationship is another. Both these stages in the relationship with the gal places different emphasis on different stuff.

So how to get a gal into a relationship? There are two ways. The attract way. And the ‘win-her-over’ way. The attract way is more of her wanting to be in a relationship with you. The ‘win-her-over’ way is more of you wanting to convince her that you are the right guy for her.

The 3 Variables Of Attracting / Winning A Girl Over

I believe there are three main variables that come into play. The first variable is looks. The second is achievements ( having lots of money is a subset of this category ). And finally, character.

The importance of these variables differ based on the circumstances you and the gal have gotten to know each other and the kind of exposure that both of you have towards each other.

So, say you meet this damn hot girl at a night club and you want to ONS with her. Assuming that she is also the kind who ONS, the first variable of looks is damn important the first time you meet her. If you are good looking, ka-ching! Now, don’t despair if you are not good looking though. After making first contact you still have the rest of the night to close the deal. The second and third variables have yet to come into play. You still have the rest of the night to tell her you are from some Ivy League college, about your investment banking job and your Porsche. Plus if you have money, you can get her really drunk such that you start looking good to her. Either way, you can use the second variable to reduce the importance of the first. Unfortunately, in the context of scoring a girl for ONS, the third variable rarely comes into play. A girl doesn’t really care if you are a good listener if she wants to have a good f*ck.

The above example is shallow. So I shall proceed to the next one.

Say you stay in hall. And you are damn good looking. Confirm all the girls talk about you the first few days when everyone starts moving in. CONFIRM. As the semester passes, some people will distinguish themselves in hall activities. This is the second variable coming into play. The girls will also start talking about such people. Some of the above mentioned talk will develop into crushes. CONFIRM.

Also, previously talked about people cos of their looks will not be able to maintain the same level of popularity if they get embroiled in some scandal or their character starts showing cracks or they turn out to be a real loser in terms of achievements. Here is touch and go. Some people can still maintain the same level of attractiveness even without much achievements based solely on looks. This is because at different stages, women have different threshold for their expectations for each of these variables and also assign different weights. Finding out the threshold and weights for an individual girl at each stage is more of an art than science but i think statistically most gals at university phase are still forgiving about the lack of achievement versus superficial trappings like looks.

Now, not all of us are blessed with good looks because genes are just unfair. And not everyone can be high-achievers – there is the bell curve for studies and genes does play a part in sporting and music potential and whatever. So the third variable comes into play – your character.

But for the girl to be attracted to your character, she would need continued exposure to you. And when I said continued exposure to you, I do not mean you stalk her or flash at her. What I do mean is that circumstances must allow you to show her what your character is. Such circumstances could be two of you being in the same club for the whole university period and consistently working on the same projects. It could be in the same supper group at hall. It could be many things. The key of course is not to contrive a set of circumstances. Once you do that, you are trying to ‘win-her-over’.

However, not all of us are blessed with circumstances where we can allow the more natural ‘attract’ her progression to occur ( at least to me it seems more natural ). For example, both of you might have met at an IT conference. Contacts were exchanged as per procedure. And that is the end of the exposure. You go back home and realize that there is something about the girl you like and you think maybe both of you are relationship material. So the ‘win-her-over’ way comes in.

Pause.

Some people here may notice that the guy himself isn’t sure about the girl as a girl-friend. He thinks she has potential. So why is he trying to ‘win-her-over’? The reason (and as usual this is my totally subjective opinion) is when a guy starts dating in these sort of circumstances, he starts by giving the girl 100 points (i.e. the two thoughts of her wanting to be a girl-friend and thinking she has the potential to be the right one are indistinguishable in his mind) while the girl starts dating by giving the guy zero points and then starts adding to it until the point where her thought that he could be a potential boyfriend meets the ‘I want him as a boyfriend’ thought.

Unpause

In this ‘win-her-over’ way, the ability to get her on a date and to continue dating you depends on those three variables too. At the initial stages of dating, the first two variables are more important. As you date longer, the last two become more important. Actually, I would say that looks is probably important only to get the first date going. If you have been fortunate enough to show off a little bit of your personality ( or even your achievements/money) at the first exposure and it matches the kind she likes then looks might be slightly less important in determining if you get the first date. Of course all this depends on the level of superficiality of the girl.

In the end, while having only money is probably not the way to sustain a relationship with a gal or get her in the first place, I do believe that money is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Like Aaron says, you still need to work on other stuff. But money is important. And the guy who triggered Aaron’s and my post is right in a certain sense. Relationships do get into trouble because of a lack of money. But having lots of it is not the complete solution.

Remember, money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a successful relationship. And it is not the shit-loads-of-money-until-I-can-use-ten-dollar-bills-to-wipe-my-ass kind of money that we are talking about. It is the meet-the-expectations-of-the-girl-you-love-and-exceed-it -without-compromising-your-relationship-with-her-while-getting-it kind.

So the key is to find a girl whose expectations are reasonable if not at least the kind you can meet. As guys, we would all love to have a dream girl-friend who looks like Megan Fox, drinks beer without going fat, plays sports, allow you to hang out with your guy friends whenever you want, allow you to devote time to computer games instead of shopping ( and many many more ). But wake-up!!! If our own expectations are so high, it is unlikely we will find a gal who is ok with us just delivering ok financial results, with a flabby tummy and moderate looks (plus average performance in many many more measurable stuff). Temper our expectations of what defines a great girl-friend and the favor will be returned.

The thing is, and here I disagree with Aaron, a guy who says only money can get women isn’t suffering from an inferiority complex. What is actually happening is he is going after the wrong thing.

Finally, getting the girl isn’t the adventure.

We guys should not live our lives like Indiana Jones slashing our way through a rain-forest, leaping over ravines and fighting Nazis to find a dream-girl in some lost city.  The girl isn’t the treasure.  Getting the girl shouldn’t be the aim of this adventure we call Life.

There are treasures of course in this adventure.  But the girl should not be one of it.  Instead, the girl should be the partner in this adventure.  The one who we save and equally who we get saved by.  Together, we are supposed to live this adventure.

Thinking about it this way, maybe then we would focus on making ourselves worthy partners instead of worrying how to get the treasure (i.e. girl).  If the girl is the treasure, then what happens when you get her?  You already got the treasure so what next?  Another adventure?  Another quest for another treasure?  Is it no wonder then some relationships do not last.