Just over a month ago, I wrote (very generally) on the intersection of Zen Buddhism and Seduction.
As that article details, I understand Zen as a Buddhist practice that paradoxically frees the doer from an action that is routinized, all the while encouraging the doer to pay attention to every task and mundanity of life, no matter how mean, for greater wisdom and an encounter with the divinity of the mundane.
Today I want to write about a very parallel idea — the idea of non-attachment — and how this idea, when applied to seduction, can improve your results.
Outcome (In)dependence
The idea of non-attachment has a different name in seduction literature and thinking: it’s called “outcome independence”. Let me begin in my explanation of outcome independence by detouring through its opposite, Neediness.
We should all have a pretty good understanding of “neediness”. Did you ever, in grade school, happen to meet a guy or girl who just seemed to latch onto you for no good reason? Maybe you two exchanged a few words, and you were nice to this person, maybe out of pity, because you could tell they were a little socially awkward and somewhat isolated.
Then suddenly they were your new best friend, following you around like a puppy.
This is neediness. While it was very decent of you to show kindness, you got more than you bargained for: unfortunately, to an insecure, isolated person, it is far too easy to latch onto your kindness, out of fear that it you are all the social validation they are going to get.
Being the source of 100% of someone’s social validation is no fun. It’s too great a burden, and most of us can sense that instantly; and, paradoxically, that is what compels us to drive off this insecure, isolated person. Their very neediness, their attachment to us as a source of social validation, has worked against them and imperiled, probably even destroyed, the one chance they had at forming a more durable social bond.
Replace “sex” with “social validation” in the above story, and picture yourself as an attractive woman in American society, and you’ve got a first-person story of what a lot of women go through on a depressingly regular basis.
A guy who is “sexually” isolated — that is, doesn’t get a lot of chances to hook up, or has only had one girlfriend in his entire life, or is still a virgin — is going to find it much easier to develop a crippling “outcome dependence”: in other words, a singular focus of his hopes and dreams on one particular girl.
The pitfalls of the overly outcome-dependent state are discussed at length in Overcoming Oneitis, so I won’t belabor them here, except to add one point that I think is important: the frequent end-state of the needy or outcome-dependent oneitis-sufferer: LJBF Land.
Neediness Leads to LJBF-Land
If you’re a girl, and the needy, clingy guy is obviously puppy-dogging about just hoping to get a piece of your ass (which he will talk about in the code-phraseology “Meaningful Relationship”), then the best thing to do (and what most girls DO do, inevitably) is the “LJBF” talk.
The other way a LJBF talk is triggered is by a needy, sexually isolated guy making a move (or attempting to make a move) on the hot girl who is the target of his desire. Often this move is very awkward, and the LJBF talk is triggered as much as a way to relieve that horrible awkwardness as to brush the guy off.
Many guys won’t make a move, however, but will instead opt for the aforementioned heavy-handed hints, or even come right out blurting something hopelessly tragic and ingratiatingly servile, such as:
Mary Jane, we’ve been friends for a long time now, and you’re the prettiest, smartest girl I know…so…I’ve been wondering…um…will, would you…y’know…consider, thinking about, um, maybe…please…goingoutwithme?
This, of course, like the unwanted and inept physical come-on, instantly triggers the LJBF Talk. It starts out like this:
“John, I really like you. You’re a great guy. You’re sweet, you’re funny, your everything a girl could want. But I think we should just be friends…”
There’s often a pause for effect (and for the guy’s heart to break into a million pieces) and then it ends like this:
“Any girl would be very lucky to have you. I’m sure you’ll meet a great girl some day.”
Simply crushing. And women think they are being gentle with this approach…
Outcome Independence: The Zen of Not Caring
So it should be pretty clear, after that little detour, that neediness leads to LJBF land, and to women crossing you off their list of sexy men for the year.
The opposite of neediness, outcome independence, or “non-neediness”, is the paragon of mental attitudes in dating and seduction.
It is, just like it says on the tin, the literal independence from any particular outcome of a given interaction.
It is the “I-don’t-give-a-shit” attitude that is irresistible to girls because it subcommunicates a host of attractive things about you: confidence, selective options, popularity, courage, etc: and it also happens to have a lot in common with the Buddhist practice of non-attachment.
I say “the Zen of not caring”, flippantly, but looking at actual Buddhist practice the concept is not so much Zen as it is non-attachment (some would say “detachment”, but that translation is not really an accurate rendering of the words in question).
In Buddhist teaching, one is supposed to practice resistance to the craving for various things — most famously sensual pleasure — and thereby disengage from the repetitive cycle of suffering which is characterized by desire, disappointment/fulfillment, and more desire.
In seduction, it has been found that our own investment in a certain outcome — getting a girl into bed, for instance — often betrays us, and pushes us towards actions and speech that belies neediness. Women, especially higher-value women, are naturally attracted to men who seem to be able to do without them (a subcommunication of higher value).
So, how do we avoid investment in a given outcome? How do we practice non-attached outcome-independence?
I’m tempted here to say “Just do it” and “just practice not caring”, but ultimately, it’s helpful to have a technique to go along with that advice. So what follows is a physical/mental technique you can use to achieve this end.
Reactive vs. Non-reactive
It’s generally true, in social interaction of any kind, that in a given interaction, everyone is reacting at different levels to different people.
For instance, some people are really reactive. Someone will say something mildly interesting, and the really reactive person will say, “WOW! That’s CRAZY…..” in other words, an out-of-proportion reaction to the information. These people are often called ‘dramatic’ or ‘melodramatic’.
Some other people are less reactive than average. Someone will say something that’s actually pretty crazy, and these people will just blink and maybe yawn or say in a dull, monotone voice, “That’s cool.” These people are either called ‘chill’ or ‘boring’, depending on who you ask.
That’s reactivity.
Now, what’s interesting is watching social interactions and noting carefully who is more reactive to whom.
After some study, you should uncover the general rule: people react more strongly to people they perceive to be higher value than them.
The application to seduction should be instantly obvious. Seen through the lens of reactivity, seduction can really be reduced to men and women constantly trying to establish higher value by shocking (provoking a strong reaction from) the other party. So guys tell awesome stories and hilarious jokes, and women flip shit at guys to see how they’ll react.
One of the worst things that can happen early on in an interaction is nothing — flat affect, no reaction on the part of the girl. I’d rather have a girl slap me or throw a drink in my face than have a girl sit there like a log being unreactive to me. Reactivity is that important.
So, in any interaction, the more a girl is testing you, consider it a good thing, as it’s usually a sign that she’s getting correspondingly more attracted to you. On the other hand, don’t crack; if you get reactive and allow her to provoke you, your congruency is disturbed, and her attraction will deflate.
Outcome independence can help with this. Did you know that, when you see a friend you really like, or a beautiful woman you are attracted to, your pupils dilate? True story. This is an unconscious, autonomic response that most of us have to the sight of a loved one, good friend, or desirable potential mate: our pupils enlarge to let in more light, so we can more fully perceive the object of our affection/desire.
Girls can tell when this happens; not consciously (at least, not usually), but unconsciously. Now while it is possible to get this pupil dilation effect and other autonomous physical responses (such as sweating, involuntary swallowing, stammering, tics, and more) under conscious control, it’s a lot of work to go through.
The same effect can be achieved by actually holding the mental attitude of outcome independence — by not caring.
Think about it. If you don’t care about someone, if you are unattached to one particular outcome with that person, are you going to react unconsciously to any statement they make? Not nearly as much as you otherwise would, and certainly not as much as if you had spent many hours building up hopes and dreams in your mind about this one person.
In fact, my hunch is that there is a correlation between the amount of reactivity one displays to a woman in an interaction and the amount of attraction she feels towards you. Less reactive = more attraction (and vice versa).
Some women will come right out and admit this; if they can get a guy reacting, dancing to their tune, he’s obviously not a challenge to them and therefore not worth their time (not interesting).
So, whether being nonreactive is achieved through mentally dismissing the object of your attention before you can start down the path of attachment and ego investment into an outcome, or just learning to control your autonomic “tells” extremely well (presenting a facade of nonreactivity while internally your heart may be racing), finding a way to become nonreactive, especially in the face of some heavy social artillery, is an important part of this whole seduction thing.
(Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you master your physical reactivity or your mind; they are two aspects of the same system, and they feed back into each other. You will find that calming your body quiets your mind, and vice versa).
A Practical Comparison of Two Guys
There’s a lot of seduction literature (well, rhetoric, really) about having strong GOALS and an unshakable REALITY and being a MAN, and driving forward regardless of what external reality presents to you — in other words, if you are THE MAN, and you decide before heading out the door “I am going to fuck a woman tonight” and are unshakable in that reality, it will come true.
This, to me, really borders on “The Secret”-style fantasy-based “personal manifestation” thinking that the masses lap up, but that is complete bunk in a scientific sense. Although if a guy is congruent enough with his reality (”I’m gonna get laid”) and responds with greater relaxation and confidence rather than increased anxiety and mental pressure, it’s likely to work out pretty well (as long as he’s flexible, and not dogmatic, about possible alternative outcomes), it is still not, in my opinion, the best way to method to use to improve your results. It is too rigid, too fault-intolerant.
The alternative, of course, is outcome independence: the mindset that says, “Tonight, I’m not going to worry about getting laid. I don’t even care. Yes, I would LIKE to get laid, that would be nice, but that’s not my focus or goal. My goal is to go out with my friends, have a great time, socialize and meet some cool people, and overall, have fun.”
That’s a much lower barrier to success that, instead of heaping expectations and pressure on a guy, strategically repositions expectations and places emphasis on things he can control (fun, friends, his own behavior), making it much more likely he will achieve his goal.
For most guys, this is how I think the two mindsets are going to play out:
Guy #1, THE MAN, who is outcome-dependent and really, REALLY cares about getting laid (who has in fact wrapped his entire ego for the night up in it) is going to get very emotionally and personally involved when hot women flip him shit later in the night. Maybe he gets so emotionally heated as the night winds down and his prospects are drying up (because of factors beyond his control), that he drinks more than he should have, reactively, and ends up in a bar brawl because somebody stepped on his shoe.
Or, maybe his game is tight enough that he flips shit right back at girls without missing a beat, amps attraction, and gets the girl. Point is, it’s his tight game that comes in and saves him, and tight game is not a product of his intense personal and emotional involvement, but rather prior practice.
Guy #2, chilled-out-Zen-like guy, who is outcome-independent and just out to have fun, having no ego about the night or his “performance” (and is in fact just thinking about how much he’s going to enjoy sucking down alcohol and teasing girls), will just laugh and grin when hot women flip him shit later in the night, and anyway be having so much fun that girls can’t help but be drawn to how cool and relaxed and fun-loving his frame is, and end up slipping him their numbers despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that he doesn’t even really seem to want them.
I’ve spoken with plenty of women who talk about the “Hunter” vibe they get off guys who are clearly out on a pussy mission; not just restricted to guys who enter a place and make a beeline straight for the hottest girl(s), but also the guys who sit by themselves for long periods of time and then spring into action when a hot new group of women walk into the place.
Avoiding this vibe is recommended, and the outcome independence / non-attachment mindset is the chief tool I would suggest to do that.
Again, try to stop thinking of all this as an exercise (mental or physical) or even ‘practice’ — and certainly not like “Okay, I’m gonna go do some pickup now” — that mechanistic mindset, while workable in the short term, will lead to a long-term devolution of your perspective on human relationships.
Instead, use “we’re gonna go socialize.” Or “we’re gonna go have fun”. That’s all anyone can really promise you, anyway.
Ultimately, non-attachment / outcome independence / “not caring” is about more than just avoiding a particular vibe. It is about clearing your mind of expectations and ego and rolling with the tempo of human interactions.
Learn it, and you will improve your interactions with women.