Please don’t tell my girlfriend… but I’ve cheated on her.

I’m so ashamed to say… but I couldn’t help it.  It was so hard for me to resist.  How can you say no to a woman like Miranda?

She’s so sexy in her tight white and black outfit!

When she walks around next to me, my mind just wanders.  When she runs around blasting through enemy territory covering my ass, she makes my heart beat faster.  Thump, thump, thump…

Just look at her!  How can I resist her fierce, confident demeanor?  After all, she WAS designed to be the perfect woman!

In some ways, she even looks like my girlfriend…

Admit it, you are a geek at heart.

Football season is over.  Valentine’s Day just passed around the corner (but that was such “not a guy thing” to get excited over).  So what’s to keep a man busy until baseball or baskteball season start?

Mass Effect 2 of course!  For the XBox 360 and PC.  In this Sci Fi role playing game, you assume the role of Commander Shepard, soldier extraordinaire on a mission to save humanity from evil evil Collector and Reaper aliens.

More importantly, you get to flirt with a bunch of beautiful human and alien females of your choice.  Hmmm… I get to play with big guns AND flirt with women, what’s not to like?

Just have your pick:  M-15 Vindicator assault rifle, M-98 Widow sniper rifle, Miranda Lawson the fierce, M-300 Claymore shotgun, Jack the psycho bitch, M-6 Carnifex Hand Cannon pistol, Kelly Chambers the naive, Samara the rightous, M-4 Shuriken machine pistol, Tali’Zorah the shy nerd, Geth pulse rifle or Morinth the dangerous…

Oops, I think I just mixed my women with my guns again.

After spending a week exploring and saving the galaxy so that you can all have better lives, I had to ponder:  is this what young men have come to:  romancing virtual girls and sexing them on our computer screen?  Is this the next generation of soft core porn?

What does Mass Effect 2 really teach us when it comes to flirting and “scoring” with the opposite sex?

For goodness’ sake,  let’s be honest, how many of you guys rubbed one out as you watched the lovely “romance” scene play out with the lady or man of your choice?

Unfortunately for you, if you were planning on getting yourself a copy of the game just so that you can go straight into making your virtual sexual fantasy a reality, your journey won’t be easy.  Even in the game, these women (or men for that matter, in case you picked to be a female Shepard at the beginning of the game) won’t be throwing themselves at you anytime soon.

When it comes to romance, the developers of Mass Effect 2 got it right.  Even a hero needs to know how to flirt.

So what can you learn from the game about attracting love into your life? (more…)

Once in a while, I get a very good question on my blog… and today is one of these days where I feel compelled to share my answer with all of you. One guy emailed me this:

Hi Khiem, I am trying to figure out the difference between chemistry and attraction. To me, it seems you can be attracted to someone, but feel no chemistry. That’s why a girl may be willing to go on an initial date with you, and you two can get along, but if there is no spark, she won’t see you again. Does that seem about right?

Ryan

Well, Ryan, you ask a very good question and interestingly, you seem to already know the answer but let me explain it further for you.

Attraction is basically the process in which a person gets attached to you. Attraction starts with a feeling of curiosity, a sense of intrigue about what you want to be attracted to. If you think about all the things you’ve decided to take on in your life, most things started with you being curious or intrigued about that something. Because you were curious about it, you decided to learn more about it, you decided to pursue it and therefore, you became attached and attracted to it.

Since intrigue is the beginning of attraction, then you can deduce that if you can get a woman to be curious about you, she’ll think of herself as attracted to you and will at least go on one date with you to find out what kind of guy you are.

When intrigued, most people feel the urge to satisfy their curiosity. This is why cliffhangers in movies work so well… this is why TV shows always make their weekly episode finish on a high… in a way to leave you hanging and wanting to know more.

Curiosity is one of human’s biggest driver and motivator. If you understand that, you can use it to your advantage to attract more women into your life. The great thing about intrigue is that it can take on many forms.

You can intrigue a woman by your good looks, by the way you tell stories, by the way you walk or by your demeanor, by the way other people respond to you in a venue (social proof), by your sense of expertise or authority (position of power or authority), etc. Basically, YOU can choose how you want to intrigue a woman based on which facet of yourself you want to convey to her first in order to arouse that curiosity in her.

During this process of intriguing the woman, she will perceive you as “different” from other men she’s seen. You are unique, you are interesting… and therefore, she goes on a date with you.

Chemistry on the other hand is more of a feeling inside of your body. Chemistry usually manifest itself as the feeling of deep arousal or deep emotional connection. It’s a sensation she gets when she is with you. People call it sparks, butterflies in the stomach or even love at first sight.

When you have chemistry with somebody, everything feels natural, good and right. Everything seems effortless because when you feel that chemistry, you feel like they are you, and you are them. It’s a feeling feeling of “togetherness”, or “oneness”.

When you have chemistry with someone, you are constantly aroused by them and you feel constantly the urge to bond with that person on a physical and chemical level.

Chemistry entails a sense of complicity, a sense of… it’s just you and me… it’s that sexual desire and urge that you can create through body language, tonality, eye contact, dirty talk, sexual innuendos and touch/caresses.

I want to make something clear though… chemistry is different from lust. Even though lust may feel like chemistry, lust is more a form of intrigue than it is a form of chemistry. Lust is more a type of curiosity in which she fantasizes or simply wonders about how it would be to be with you in bed.

So going back to your question, this is why when a woman feels attracted to you (aka curious), she’ll go on a first date with you… but she’ll only go on a second date with you if she feels chemistry (sexual arousal or deep connection).

If you guys ever want to learn more about how to attract women and how to become a powerful man, I highly recommend you checking out David Wygant’s Men’s Mastery Series and Vin DiCarlo’s The Attraction Code.

In theApproach Alumni forums, an interesting topic was brought up to light:  what is the difference between attraction and excitement?

Sebastian/Dimitri, the co-founder of VAC, wrote:
It can be easy to mistake excitement and attraction – it’s easy to get girls hyper and excited and out of control.  The thing this lacks – legitimacy.  Attainability.  So they’re pumped up and give you a number, but five minutes later, they auto-reject.  Any semblence of attraction is gone.

Why does this happen?  Because attraction is completely different from excitement.  If you look up the definition of each word on www.dictionary.com, this is what you get:

 at·tract [uh-trakt]
–verb (used with object)
1. to draw by a physical force causing or tending to cause to approach, adhere, or unite; pull (opposed to repel): The gravitational force of the earth attracts smaller bodies to it. 
2. to draw by appealing to the emotions or senses, by stimulating interest, or by exciting admiration; allure; invite: to attract attention; to attract admirers by one’s charm. 

ex·cite [ik-sahyt]
–verb (used with object), -cit·ed, -cit·ing.
1. to arouse or stir up the emotions or feelings of: to excite a person to anger; actions that excited his father’s wrath. 
2. to arouse or stir up (emotions or feelings): to excite jealousy or hatred. 
3. to cause; awaken: to excite interest or curiosity. 
4. to stir to action; provoke or stir up: to excite a dog by baiting him. 
5. Physiology. to stimulate: to excite a nerve. 
6. Electricity. to supply with electricity for producing electric activity or a magnetic field: to excite a dynamo. 
7. Physics. to raise (an atom, molecule, etc.) to an excited state. 

From the definitions alone, we can sense that attraction means drawing someone to you (implicitly for an undetermined period of time), whereas excitement simply means to arouse (implying its short term nature).  Therefore, one way to create attraction is through excitement, but there are many (and potentially better) ways to do it. 

Case in point:  we all know that under intense emotions, people tend to make irrational decisions.  Just watch some movies: how many women ended up hooking up with the action hero in the end?  You can see this phenomenon in business as well.  A lot of self-help and marketing gurus will work hard to get their audience excited about their new products.  They appeal to the person’s pleasure-seeking centers.  As the audience feels the high from feeling good, it turns around and buy in the new product/program.  This is what the Seduction Community calls “amping someone’s buying temperature.”  However, how many do you know will actually stick with the program or product after they bought it?

A lot of routine-based attraction models teach men to do just that:  get the woman excited so that they can get her number or have sex with her quickly.  Flip on as many of the woman’s attraction switches as possible.  These school of seductions also presume that the woman will try to see you again to rationalize her emotions for you.  There are 2 inherent flaws with that practice:
1.  Attraction based on excitement is temporary
2.  It sets a bad precedence for relationships, even if you were only interested in setting up a casual/fuck-buddy situation.

Attraction Based on Excitement is Temporary
As the woman leaves you for the night and goes back to her daily life, the excitement she felt by being with you dwindles down.  She is no longer “attracted” to you.  Her judgment is no longer impaired by stimulus (alcohol, music… etc) and her logical mind influenced by all societal and family values kicks back in.  There is no reason for her to be attracted to you beyond the temporary “fun” factor.  As Sebastian wrote earlier:  “there is no legitimacy” to her liking you.  

If you were to imagine the woman being a business evaluating her decision to further invest in you by letting you enter her life, she is practicing good due diligence by asking herself:  is my attraction for him real?  Is my attraction for him justified?  If it is not, the woman will not call you back or see you again.  And all this time, you thought she was attracted to you because she gave you her phone number. 

When stuck in this issue, you will be required to put up a lot more effort to attract her again in order to see her.   It is an effort that I am personally too lazy to make, especially if I can create long lasting attraction from the beginning.

Bad Precedence for Any Types of Relationships
As the woman realizes that her attraction to you is solely based on excitement, she will not take you seriously which will create problems later on if you want to change the type of relationship you want to maintain with her.  She will only give you the time of the day when she needs a little of entertainment in her life.  Any other time, she may ignore you completely.  She therefore controls the terms of when and how to see you.  For a lot of men, it doesn’t look like a huge deal breaker: “Just call me when you want to have fun, baby!” 

But for me, it is a problem.  I value my time.  I have self-respect.  If I was to setup a casual/open relationship, it has to be a decision made between 2 consenting adults.  There needs to be a common understanding that I am not her “boy toy” who she can call at any given time.  I will expect her to call me back if I contact her, and I will expect her to not flake on me if we decide to meet up, even if it’s just for fun.

So what’s the alternative?
Create real attraction from the beginning!  You may use games, humor, routines or gimmicks to bring excitement into the interaction and spike the attraction level from time to time, but it should be no substitute for having a personality.  You don’t want to be an entertainment monkey.  Show some real value in your life.  Have standards for the kind of people you keep in your life.  Real attraction is based on your ability to create a very personal/emotional connection and maintain a sexual undertone with the woman you are meeting.  She needs to feel comfortable opening up to you and sharing herself with you.  Allow her to discover you as naked as you can be and you won’t have to worry whether she will want to see you again or not.

Does this mean that attraction based on excitement is bad?
No.  Using excitement to build attraction is highly effective if you are looking for one-night stands, short term relationships and you enjoy women who do not have a lot of depth to themselves.  However, attraction based on excitement/entertainment alone is not as efficient if you plan on maintaining more meaningful relationships with high quality women, even if they are only casual in nature.