A guy meets a girl he likes. He starts talking to her, and there's electricity in the air. Attraction. He can tell she likes him. A lot, even.
She tells him all kinds of things about herself, her eyes wide and filled with excitement. It feels as though there's a bubble around them, in which only they exist; the outside world falls away.
For a while, as time passes, the energy and enthusiasm only builds. It builds and builds, until it hits a peak; a crescendo. And then... it begins to fade.
The guy panics mentally; he can tell he's losing this girl, whom he felt so sure was his only minutes before. He works hard, trying to turn things around, to reignite the passion that was there. But alas, his efforts fail, and the fire dies.
He's fallen victim to a painful fact of life and love: attraction has an expiration date.
But what's more painful is, guys almost never realize this is why they failed. Usually they assume it was a value problem, or that they need to get better at maintaining attraction.
If only they knew the truth: they did just fine with attraction. It was, ultimately, that failure to act in a timely enough manner that led them to losing the girl.
Does Attraction Expire?
The first time we talked about this subject on this blog was in "Move Faster," the original post about moving quickly with women to capitalize on open escalation windows. This post is going to cover some similar ground, but the phrasing is a little different and I think the concept of attraction having an expiration date is rather a new one and one worth writing on.
Personally, I am, by nature, a rather risk-averse guy. I tend toward inaction over action, like, most probably, a majority of people out of there. Now, I've pushed myself for a long time to take bold action and force myself into taking some risks, so I do tend to take a lot more risks than most folks, but I still have a tendency to fall back on risk-averse behavior in some circumstances.
Because of this, I've lost... oh, quite possibly hundreds of women. And that includes everything from sultry looks from beautiful women whom I absolutely should've opened and didn't, to women I had in my bed that I gave up on too soon and never closed the deal with. Girls I'd been well into the last 5% with; heck, some of them I'd been into the last 0.5% with.
Some of those I still kick myself over. The tall, sexy Brazilian girl who'd been making out with me in the nightclub, whose top I'd had off, who suddenly panicked last minute and charged out of the room. But she wasn't sure she wanted to leave; she needed me to reassure her. But I took too long, and lost her. The spunky, adventurous Thai girl I spent a night with and from whose bed I rose early without sleeping with her, only to have her kiss me passionately and all but beg me to stay, but I'd grown too weary and left when I should've just closed things out. The stunning Indian girl sprawled out on my bed, paging through my coffee table book SuperSex, that I should've just jumped onto bed with and given what we both wanted.
All those girls and a lot more I lost for want of capitalizing on their attraction while it was on the table. I ignored the dictum that attraction has an expiration date; and instead I let attraction expire. We never got together.
And when you miss a girl like this, your life's the poorer for it, and her life's the poorer for it. You miss out on incredible opportunities to experience each other because of your inaction. Because make no mistake, women won't take action for you. They're waiting for you to take action.
And while they wait, the clock is ticking.
Attraction's Expiration Date
Why does attraction expire? If two people are suited for each other, they ought to have all the time in the world to get together, one might think.
I first noticed that attraction had an expiration date back in college. I noticed that girls in my classes who'd stare at me all day and smile at me and flirt with me would only do it for a time; gradually, as they flirted and I took no action, they'd come to lose interest, and eventually they'd move on.
And then, they'd even end up being outright cold. I didn't know it at the time, but what I was experiencing from them was auto-rejection – and it was I who was to blame for their coldness.
Inaction on the part of the man leads women to give up and lose hope.
But when I actively started cold-approaching, it all happened so fast I had to learn it all over again. It seemed like something different altogether; whereas before, attraction's expiration date with girls in my classes seemed to be months or even years after I first met them, the expiration date on strangers I'd just met seemed to at times be minutes or even seconds later.
So, at first, I didn't think it was the same phenomenon. It couldn't be. Could it?
I did the thing most guys do, and I focused on pumping my value. I made myself into a more and more attractive guy. I got a cooler and cooler life: a well-regarded, prestigious job; travel to fun, exotic places; invitations to exclusive clubs, parties, and events.
But it seemed like the more amazing a man I made myself, the quicker girls went cold on me. And it began to drive me absolutely crazy. "How on Earth do I fix this?" I'd think to myself.
Eventually some of the pieces started coming together. I learned to talk about myself a lot less and get girls talking about themselves much more. It didn't make much sense at first, but I couldn't dispute the fact that women seemed to be more interested in me when I told them fewer cool things about myself, and just focused on exuding coolness and sexiness without talking about it.
And I learned to move faster. I even found that I had a far higher percentage chance of sleeping with a girl on the first date than I did on the second. That blew my mind a little bit.
To think I used to not try to sleep with girls on the first date because I thought I might lose them that way. Turns out, the opposite is true: NOT trying to sleep with girls on the first date was what was losing them for me.
And that's because, as it turns out, attraction has an expiration date. It's only good while it lasts. Get girls while they're hot. For a limited time only. Going, going... gone.
Once I realized it, it changed things for me in a BIG way. No more hemming and hawing and thinking, "Maybe I'll just wait a little longer." No more internal clocks saying, "It's too soon for this to happen!" No more inaction because too little time had passed.
Instead, I started moving a lot more speedily, I skipped steps and cut corners wherever I could, and my results went up. A lot. Like, it wasn't even close.
And, as thrilled as I was at the huge boost in success rates, I had to ask myself: "Why is this so? Why are women so much more willing to go to bed with men who move fast with them, and why is there a sell-by date stamped onto attraction?"
Best If Used By
The funny thing about attraction is that men tend to internally take full personal responsibility for it, but never stop to consider that, perhaps, women might also be doing the same exact thing.
But in fact, they often are.
When I point out to girls that a guy likes them whom they don't want to like them, at times I've had them ask me if they were doing something wrong or coming off in a way that made the guy interested.
They're taking responsibility for his interest.
Likewise, if a girl likes you, but you don't do anything... again, she'll take responsibility. And inside, she'll tell herself she failed to attract you.
And failure don't feel so great.
So, what women end up doing is the same thing men end up doing when they decide someone doesn't like them and isn't responding to them; they write them off.
"Ah, who needs him?" a girl thinks. "Who cares if he doesn't like me?"
Now, you might be saying, "But I TOLD her I like her!" And, that might be true. But if you didn't tell her soon enough, and if you didn't back your words up with action, it wasn't enough.
Women can turn their opinions of a man on a dime. They can be in love with him and going crazy hoping he walks up to them one moment, and then he hesitates a split second and they decide they hate his guts. Let her linger with the feeling she hates you for 5 seconds, and then you decide to approach her... by the time you get there, she doesn't even want to talk to you anymore.
Sometimes the girls who give you puppy dog eyes before you meet them will be colder to you than anyone else if they think they were obvious about their attraction and you took too long to come meet them.
As a guy, this probably sounds crazy to you. So, let me explain.
Another lifetime ago, I had a social phobia. I was literally afraid of doing anything actively with people. I turned the cool kids down when they invited me to their parties, and I turned the pretty, popular girls down when they asked me out, because I was afraid to say yes. Sounds crazy, I know, but I was. The only way I could get any kind of attention was by attracting people's interest and having them come up to me.
And let me tell you... it sucked. It absolutely, positively SUCKS big time to be sitting there waiting and hoping for someone to come talk to you. Waiting and hoping that cute girl you like comes and flirts with you and maybe even asks you out. And if she doesn't, well, some of the time you'll even shrug and say to yourself, "Eh, who needs her."
This is how women feel ALL THE TIME, because most women are trapped in a perpetual state of waiting and hoping for men to take action. They aren't going to walk up to you and start talking to you, 99.7% of the time; it violates every law of male-female dynamics.
So all they can do is look at you longingly and hope you come talk to them.
All they can do is hint to you in conversation they want you to stop joking around and start getting to know them.
All they can do is suggest to you they want you to take them home and give them a night to remember.
All they can do is joke to you they want you to become lovers with them.
And, if their efforts to get you moving things forward fall on deaf ears, and you don't take action, and you don't move things forward, they become bitter for it, and they close off to your future efforts.
