A Guide for the Heroic Nerd Read online

  If you say those words first, she won’t. If you’re the only one saying “We should slow down”, no one slows down. If she says “We need to slow down”, she will slow everything down.

  The probability is high that when you say these words, you will be lying—that you really do want to sleep with her tonight and you don’t want to go slow. If you’re a horrible liar, for God’s sake don’t lie. The point of using techniques is to improve your chances, not decrease them.

  I always used this line after the girl and I started making out. As soon as I felt her hesitate or tense slightly, I’d pull away and tell her I cared too much about the future of our relationship to want to hurry things. If I delivered the line right, her face would soften and then I’d start kissing her again.

  I can tell you from considerable personal experience the technique is extremely effective. I can’t tell you why. My best guess is that it’s one of those differences between male and female brains that often make us mutually incomprehensible to each other.

  Chapter 15: Know when to hold them; know when to fold them

  Never stay with a woman out of fear. There’s nothing more pitiful than a man who stays with a woman who’s not good enough because he thinks he can’t do better.

  If you learn how to pick up girls, you won’t ever have to be a coward. You’ll be able to break up with any woman, confident you’ll be able to get another.

  There are as many differences among human beings as there are similarities. From the very first, I’ve tried to make it clear that my techniques will only work for guys who know how to think. I’ve dated and have been with a lot of women, but I’m not trying to claim that my insights are universal to the rest of the 3.5 billion females on our planet. I feel that I have a reasonable statistical sampling, but my advice is based only on my personal experience.

  I encourage you to read this book with a skeptical mind. If my descriptions and analyses of women don’t match the women you know, make your own analyses and judgments.

  Life is better if you can problem solve. I often see men who have no problem debugging code or fixing engines freeze helplessly when they have woman problems. Yes, women are complicated, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your mind to figure them out.

  It’s ridiculous for a man who can learn how to use Linux to NOT learn how to predict women. It’s silly for a guy who can repair and maintain his home, vehicle, tools and equipment to not learn how to fix and maintain his own relationship.

  If you’re heterosexual, you need to prioritize! Women are more important than gear or video games!

  Nothing here is written in stone, and I am certainly not inspired by God. You don’t have to agree with me; my goal is to have you problem solve women and relationships the same way you do code, engines, plumbing, and wiring.

  If what I recommend makes sense, try to follow my advice. If it doesn’t, try to come up with your own solutions.

  There are countless books out there sorting women into different types. The American Psychiatric Association publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). If you want an exhaustive list of every mental disorder than people can get, this is a good resource

  For our purposes, I’ll separate women into three types: normal, victim, and vampire. I encourage you to stay with the normals and avoid the victims and vampires.

  Normal women react normally. If you treat them well, they’re happy. If you treat them badly, they’re not. When life goes well, they’re content. When bad things happen, they get depressed.

  Normal women’s brains are hardwired differently than normal men’s brains. Because of this, to a certain degree all women are crazy to all men and vice versa. But there are normal differences and abnormal differences. I’ll discuss victims and vampires in later chapters. I’ll focus on normal women in this chapter.

  Our desires come from our innermost instincts. Outside the need to survive, one of man’s strongest instinctive desires is to have sex with as many attractive women as possible. Further down the list of priorities is our need to be with a woman we love. It’s common for us to pursue a woman with everything we’ve got, and then completely lose interest as soon as we catch her. When this happens, it reveals that the only thing that was driving us was lust and that the woman had nothing else we wanted.

  It’s unfortunate, but most men (and this certainly includes me) are too dumb to know when their desire is driven by true attraction or just pure lust. I’m certain there are enormous advantages to being celibate until you get married. Never having tried that, I can’t tell you what they are. One of the advantages of premarital sex is that once you’re done, you get immediate visceral feedback about how you really feel about the woman you’re with.

  If you have sex with a girl and afterwards you immediately want to head for the horizon, then Run Forrest, Run—just as far and as fast as you can. Your subconscious is telling you that the only thing going on between you and her is physical, and that once your hormonal needs are satisfied, there’s nothing left.

  It’s not uncommon for a girl who makes you to want to flee to have great traits. If you pursued her and slept with her, by definition she was physically attractive. Often she’ll have other traits such as a good sense of humor or common interests. You might be tempted to try to make it work, especially after a few days when you’ve gotten horny again.

  All the guys I’ve seen overcome their initial visceral need to flee eventually regret it. They can’t ever get that small, quiet, nagging voice in the back of their heads to stop whispering that they could do better.

  Most normal women aren’t sluts. Most normal women don’t want to sleep with a man who has no intention of ever committing to them. It’s an asshole move to sleep with a girl when you know there’s no chance of anything coming out of it.

  As previously mentioned, there are already plenty of assholes, but I’d also encourage you to not be an asshole for your own sake. It’s a rare asshole who isn’t miserable. If you want a reasonable chance at happiness, DON’T be an asshole.

  Okay, what do you do when you sleep with a girl and afterwards you want to stay with her forever? You should trust your gut but verify that it’s correct.

  It’s much easier to break up with a girl you like than it is with a girl you love. Everyone is on their best behavior at the beginning of a relationship and it’s hard to keep level headed when you’ve just found someone new.

  If you think you’ve found THE ONE, I recommend you meet her friends and family as quickly as possible. You should also introduce her to your friends and family.

  It’s a rare man who volunteers to meet a girl’s parents early in a relationship. Every time I’ve asked to do that, the girl was pleased; it meant I was taking our relationship seriously. Your mental attitude makes a difference when you meet someone. Most of my friends were scared shitless the first time they met their girlfriend’s parents. My friends always made the mistake of waiting until they were totally in love. They had too much to lose if the parents didn’t like them.

  If I thought a girl could be the right one for me, I always tried to meet her parents when I just liked her. If they didn’t like me, it wasn’t as big of a deal. I looked for things like, ‘Was the mom overweight?’ ‘Was the dad a dick?’ ‘How well did the parents get along?’ and ‘Did the girl and her dad have issues?’

  Genetics matter—if the mom’s overweight, there’s a much higher probability that your girlfriend will eventually be overweight too. If the father is a complete dick or her mom’s a bitch, future family get togethers are going to be ugly. The environment that your girlfriend grew up in is important—if her parents get along well, the odds are good that she’ll know how to get along with a guy. If her parents don’t get along, the odds are that she won’t.

  One of a girl’s most important relationships is the one she has with her father. That relationship will color every other male relationship she ever has. If she has major daddy issues, you won’t be able
to avoid the aftermath.

  I was always too busy checking out the parents to worry about what they thought of me. I often got the feedback that I made my girlfriend’s parents a little nervous. It beat the alternative—being nervous around them. If someone has to do any judging, it might as well be you.

  You and the girl may be putting your best foot forward, but your friends and family members won’t be. If you find her friends and family members annoying, it’s a really bad sign. If your friends and family members don’t like her, again that’s a really bad sign. They have the ability to stay objective—they’re not sleeping with her. Our friends and family members usually have our best interests at heart. If they really don’t like the girl, they’ll usually have good reasons.

  Relationships take a lot of work. It helps to start off with as many advantages as possible. If her friends and family like you and your friends and family like her, your relationship is off to a great start. If there’s no group love, it doesn’t mean you have to call it off, but it should give you something to think about.

  Chapter 16: How I learned to avoid vampires

  A vampire is a beautiful woman who has an insatiable need for male attention. She can be recognized by the small harem of male worshippers she keeps around her. She usually has a boyfriend, but no one man can ever satisfy her need for positive male attention—hence the harem. The vampire doesn’t like competing for masculine attention. If she has female friends, those friends are always much, much less attractive than she is.

  The vampire’s preferred prey is a nerd who’s too inexperienced with women to know that he’ll never have anything real with her. If she sees any sign of the nerd finally losing interest, she’ll throw him a small emotional tidbit to keep him in his cage. On extremely rare occasions she might even sleep with him; when she does, it isn’t to build a relationship but to keep him semi-content in his chains. She is unbelievably good at keeping sex just out of reach of the nerd even after she’s slept with him.

  I met my first vampire when I was a sophomore in college, and I learned how to get her to date me by accident. I was taking a History of WWII class. There was only one girl in the entire class and she always came to class late.

  The first time she entered the classroom, our male instructor stopped in mid-sentence and stared at her. We all did. She had long silky black hair, olive complexion, and curves in places where most other women don’t even have places. She wore a tight tank top and short shorts that left little to imagination.

  Every single guy in the room was praying, “Please, please sit next to me.”

  A couple of the guys in the room knew her and waved her over to them. We all watched her bounce to her seat.

  She was at least ten minutes late for every class. Every time she walked in, all the guys except me stopped and watched her until she sat down. By then, I’d dated a number of women who were just as good-looking, and I’ve always been a contrarian; I’m naturally inclined to do the opposite of everyone else. The third time she was late, I didn’t look up when she came into the room. I made it a point to ignore her from then on. A couple weeks after I stopped paying attention to her, she began to sit next to me.

  It was so obvious that she wanted me to hit on her. I didn’t. It amused me to frustrate her.

  About a month into the class, I was in a student lounge completely wrapped up in a good book when I looked up. She was sitting at the same table I was. I saw from her face that I’d probably been accidentally ignoring her for awhile. I couldn’t help it; I laughed at how uncomfortable she looked and then asked, “Aren’t you in my History of WWII class?”

  She said, “Yes.”

  I introduced myself and then said, “I don’t know if you can tell, but most of the guys in our class find you unbelievably attractive.”

  I watched her as she began to smile and then stop when she figured out what I’d said wasn’t necessarily a compliment. I left immediately afterwards.

  Even back then, I knew the best way to attract a girl who seeks attention is to withhold it, and that one of the best ways to stand out from the pack to a woman who gets compliments all the time is to give her a backhanded one.

  She kept on sitting next to me in class. For the most part I ignored her. Every other class or so, I’d say hi. Near the end of the semester after a class, I asked her out on a date. I wasn’t surprised when she accepted. I found out on the date that she was seventeen and that she had skipped two years of school. She was extremely bright but also extremely young and inexperienced.

  I felt like I was on a date with a ten-year-old—she was that immature. I always considered myself narcissistic. She was so much better at it than me, I felt like a tiny dim candle sitting next to the sun. She spent our entire date talking about herself. The only thing I could interject was, ‘Uh huh’ from time to time.

  At the end of our date, I walked her to her door. I stepped in close; she lifted her face up toward mine, closed her eyes, and slightly opened her mouth. The girl had the body of a beautiful woman and emotional maturity of a ten-year-old. I couldn’t kiss her; I would have felt like a pedophile. I grabbed her right hand in a firm grip and shook her hand twice and said, “Thanks for an interesting night.” The shock in her now wide-open eyes was hilarious. It almost made up for the rest of the date. I told myself in the future to try to avoid that degree of narcissism. I didn’t know it at the time but I’d just had a date with a baby vampire.

  She was smart and beautiful. With time and experience, I’m sure she became a much better vampire.

  One of the greatest discoveries of modern medicine is the science of vaccinations. If a human being is exposed to a weakened or dead virus, we’re made immune to the stronger virus. I had no idea at the time, but my date with the baby vampire helped immunize me against the adult variety.

  The next vampire I met was when I was in graduate school. A friend of a friend was one of her victims and was totally in love with her. If the guy had been one of my friends, I wouldn’t have made a play for her.

  This vampire had skills. She had the hot librarian look down. She was intelligent, funny, and could talk gear and science like the best of guys. It was almost impossible for a nerd NOT to fall in love in her. I was totally intrigued by her because she didn’t make sense. Normal women use their body language to tell you if they want you or not. When you give a normal girl a friendly hug, you can tell by what she does with her center of balance if she views you as a potential lover or not. If she leans away, she’s repulsed by you. If her center of balance doesn’t shift, she thinks you’re just a friend. If she leans into you, she’s open to something physical.

  The vampire’s body language was contradictory. It was always come hither to a certain point, and then it was go away. There were times when she leaned into me and other times when she leaned away.

  I knew she gave other guys the, ‘I want to be friends’ speech all the time. I didn’t make an attempt to be her friend; by then I’d given up on fake friendships. My goal was to be a friendly acquaintance until I figured her out. After awhile, I could tell that it bothered her that I wasn’t in love with her like all her other ‘friends.’ I noticed she didn’t have a single girlfriend and that all her guy friends were worshipers. In some ways she reminded me of the baby vampire.

  So I tried an experiment. One day when we were alone, I told her she was beautiful, intelligent, and funny. For almost five minutes I praised her truthfully letting her know all the great things I noticed about her, and then when it was clear to me she was convinced I was in love with her and just about to start giving me the friend speech, I started lying.

  I told her I didn’t know how it was possible since she was so sexy and beautiful, but for some strange reason I wasn’t physically attracted to her as a woman. I told her that emotionally she felt just like a guy to me. In fact if I closed my eyes, I totally got the vibe she was a guy. I told her that I knew we’d be great friends because there wasn’t any sexual tension to get in the way
.

  Normal women react normally. Insult any normal woman—tell her she’s not sexually attractive at all— and she’ll want nothing to do with you. Abnormal women react differently. At the time, I didn’t know anything about vampires. All I knew was that normal techniques wouldn’t work on this girl, so I tried something different.

  After that conversation she stopped giving me mixed messages. She tried everything in her power to seduce me. Eventually I let her. After we had sex, I recognized the look on her face. It was the same look I got when I slept with the wrong girl. If I hadn’t been so good at hiding that look myself, I probably wouldn’t have known what I was seeing.

  It was a funny kind of sad to be on the opposite side of that look. I wasn’t upset. I have a lot of flaws, but hypocrisy isn’t one of them; I had no right to be upset about something I’d done so many times. I watched her get dressed and escape from the scene of the crime as fast as I’ve ever done. Even though I should have known better, I tried to make a relationship work with her. If I treated her well she lost interest, if I treated her like I didn’t want her she came back.

  The vampire and I had a lot in common. We had similar interests and a similar sense of humor. In a lot of ways good and bad, we deserved each other. When we talked about gear or philosophical questions, I had as much fun with her as I did with any of my best guy friends, but I got tired of having to ill treat someone I liked in order to be with her. I had no interest in becoming one of her worshippers, so I broke up with her after a few months. As expected, when I truly wanted to leave, she really tried to keep me in the relationship.

  I’m not one to ever a mistake just once so I had to date a couple more vampires before I learned it was a waste of time.

  Chapter 17: Why you should avoid victims

  A victim is a woman who is convinced she needs to be punished. She always gravitates to men who abuse her. If you treat her well, she’ll want to be your friend. She’ll have absolutely no interest in being your lover.