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Man Law #62 – Institute “Always-Already”
The term “Always-Already” was first introduced to me while sitting in a Social Theory class by a professor who made her own clothes. Despite her waist length dread locks reminiscent of a 70s hippy at Woodstock, she had a great way of teaching and getting the class involved in the subject manner.
Acting "As If" you already know the person is more important than WHAT you say. Your confidence and calmness will show you are first rate.
In this particular class, “Always-Already” was applied to society as things that were always in motion as if “without question”. For instance, we use money and would never think of any other form of payment. Our parents used money, their parents before them, and their parents before them, all used paper currency in transactions. Although people may work out different arrangements such as the barter system, it’s generally accepted in modern society that at the end of the two week period, our paycheck will come in the form of monetary compensation and not a four-week supply of milk.
This concept also can effectively be applied to a person-to-person situation. Instead of thinking of a formal meet-and-greet (“Hi, My Name Is”) that you might use in a business setting, when you are at a party/bar/lounge, it’s BEST to act as-if you already know each other – “Always-Already”. It works. For instance, if you are at a bar, and you are standing next to a girl and the bartender looks to you for payment, point to her and say “She’s got this round.” I have done this countless times with complete strangers and it has never failed to break the ice. But the power of it is that it doesn’t have to be at a bar or a party, you can use this “Always-Already” concept anywhere. It turns out that “What you say” is less important than “How you say it“. If you are completely comfortable in the situation and don’t come across as overly eager or ogling at her, she will easily play along. In fact, many women are masters at using this to “pick-up” guys. They are so good at this that most of the time, we don’t even know its happening.
Another instance to practice this is in something I’d like to call the “Elevator Exercise”. The elevator is a great place to strike up conversations with strangers. Chances are, you will NEVER see these people again. You only have a few seconds to make a clever statement. No matter what the person looks like – male, female, old, young, fat, skinny – act as if you already know the person and say something. While you would guess this would be a no-pressure situation yet for some reason, many people feel awkward when standing in a confined space with a complete stranger. It might seem odd to try this out at first, but if you can walk away with a person’s contact information such as a business card from a few seconds interaction, you’ve successfully mastered this concept. The key component is to not act like you are going to be there that long or that you are walking into a job interview with an “Ask me anything” expression. You have a purpose and reason to be where you are, and just couldn’t resist the brunette standing next to you.
Matt Damon in The Departed did this perfectly…Observe. Take Notes. This is the absolute epitome of a great pick up:
Man Theory – Master The Culinary Seductive Arts – The World’s First Natural Aphrodisiac
Tens of thousands of years ago, few destinations were available for males to take their mates and newly minted couples. Movie theaters were only open during normal 9-5 office hours, and sadly restaurants only served the kings and queens of society. What was a young savage and pagan to do prior to the advent of electricity, carnivals, and fancy yacht rides?
When humans were simply groups of nomads roaming the plains of the African Savanna, few things were considered more romantic than the sharing of food. Because food had yet to enter mass production and the opening of McDonalds was still a few years away, to share one’s life energy, food, was to ultimately “include” them in your family. If you had spent all day hunting caribou, you would be damned to offer your capture to the neighboring rival tribe.
Women have been using food to seduce men for centuries! It's about time we wised up!
To this day, in dining halls across the country and Corporate Cafeterias around the world, humans still tend to “eat” with those who are closest to us – Executives eat with executives, athletes eat with other athletes, Frat boys eat with other frat boys, and those who play Dungeons and Dragons, still eat alone. To dine in a social setting is to tacitly be accepted in ones group and have them fall under your “protection”. We are partaking in an ancient ritual that stated that “If you eat with us, you are ONE of us.”
Italian men learned this secret hundreds of years ago. They knew that if they MASTERED the Culinary Arts, Women would literally fall to pieces and naturally be attracted to them. It’s for this reason that Italy has some of the best food on the planet and not surprisingly, some of the best seducers of all time have called Italy home at one point.
The seductive power of cooking for ones mate was SO potent, that those Kings and Lords in charge ruled it a feminine task. You couldn’t have the game keeper cooking for the Queen or else all sorts of affairs would start taking place from within the palace. If you were a male and you knew this powerful art, to admit to having this skill risked being ousted from your group. Thus, males interested in the culinary arts were confined to their homes in the world’s first form of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
The 60s changed all of that. The second wave of the Feminist Movement gave rise to the idea that Women COULD perform outside of the house and could be included in the workplace alongside their male counterparts. With women now entering the workforce in greater and greater numbers, American males discovered this ancient secret that had been long forgotten with the exception of those Italian males who had passed this tradition from father to son, generation after generation.
In college, I experienced this directly on multiple occasions. With some of my closest friends being from very Italian areas of Long Island, when you came over, it was customary to have one of the guys living there to “cook” for the group. Cooking for ones boys was not seen as unmanly, you were simply taking care of your family. Watch this Youtube Clip of Clemenza in Godfather, starting at :32 (Re: Godfather I, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eea8vp8z8Jg ).
Enter the Present Day.
Taking a woman out for dinner is the worst thing you can do on a first date. It’s so common it’s seen as unoriginal. You are attempting to forgo a crucial aspect of the seduction process by initiating her into your group without any sort of qualification on her part. You are treating her as “family” before you even know who she is or what she’s about. With dating, its best to do things that are active that get her involved in the process and thus, cooking for someone and better yet, cooking together is seen as much more romantic.
You don’t need to cook like Emeril Lagasse (http://www.emerils.com/) to snag a few dates. All you have to do is have a few (4-5) solid dishes you can pull out on occasion. I tend to go for more Italian style cooking but as a general rule, cooking a dish of a certain country (i.e. “Spanish” dish, “Italian”, “Mediterranean”) will win you more points with her than Hamburgers and Fries cooked on your Foreman Grill.
She may not be up for "body sushi" on a first date, but Hey, there's a first time for everything!
If American food is all you know, there is a real simple solution to this – Buy some exotic seasoning (ask someone working at the store for advice), and give it a clever name. If all you cooked was chicken with some lemon juice on it, pick a language that your date doesn’t know (If she’s Chinese, pick Farsi; If she’s French; pick Swahili; If she’s German, pick Cherokee). There are a ton of resources on the web for translating into a foreign language on the fly, but by far my favorite is Google’s Translation Dictionary: http://translate.google.com/translate_t# . Whatever language you choose – make sure it’s a language she doesn’t know so you aren’t forced to explain why you just cooked her “Frog Testicles”.
The TIMING of when you offer to fix her a dish is crucial. Women are inclined to turn down any offer that requires them to be at your place of residence BEFORE its established that there is any sort of romantic/sexual connection between the two of you. This will send up red flags in her head. So, leave a cooking date until after you’ve been out with her a few times and you’ve kissed her once or twice or she has given you the “It’s on” look. Yes, of course you may get the girls that meet you on Tuesday and she feels comfortable enough around you to come over that Friday but these types of girls are few and far between so don’t bank on it. She may genuinely be interested in you but turn down any invitations that are remotely close to your bedroom.
As mentioned before, it’s even better if you two cook dinner together – Offer to fix the main dish and she prepares the appetizer and desert. For some reason, this act of cooking unlocks some dormant aphrodisiac and causes the pheromones to shoot through the roof. If she’s weary of going to your home right away, take her out to a picnic. Go to a grocery store together and shop for ingredients. Locate a nice place beforehand such as a local park or a lake, grab a blanket, an iPod with portable MP3 speakers, throw on some music, pop a bottle of wine, and you just gave her one of the best dates she’s been on in the past year.
A picnic at a remote location is one of Man's Best Kept Secret. Search around your area for scenic parks that would be conducive to this! They are literally everywhere!
So, ditch the Ramen noodles and McDonalds and cook for yourself, your friends and family to build up your culinary skills. If a community center is offering cooking, take a few classes there. You’ll have an UNCANNY power at your hands and because so few guys are willing to do this, it will set you light years ahead of your competition…Bon Appetite Gentlemen, and your woman will thank you later.
There are a ton of sites dedicated to easy recipes on the web, here are just a few:
Man Theory – Opportunity Cost and the Mythical Male “Fear” of Commitment
Possibly one of the most important concepts that I walked out of Tydings Hall of the University of Maryland with was the understanding of “Opportunity Cost”. Little did I know at the time, “Opportunity Cost” could be applied to many situations outside of ECON200. I can wager that the original Economic theorist that thought of “Opportunity Cost” had nothing to do with any monetary relationship. The gentlemen was most likely a successful young player and waking up next to a beautiful young women one morning, before walking to teach his class at Yale thought to himself “Why give the life of bachelorhood up, when there is so much out there?”
Thus, “Opportunity Cost” was born.
Most women love to list all the "benefits" of a relationship. Proceed with Caution when listening to female propaganda Gentlemen. This has seduced many powerful men in the past.
Although most people reading this blog are probably familiar with this concept already, “Opportunity Cost” is what you give up in order to pursue what is in your best interest. For instance, if you take a year off of working to pursue Graduate School, not only would your cost be tuition, room and board, and whatever additional expenses associated with the University, your Opportunity Cost would be the salary you WOULD have made while you took that year off. When making this decision, you decided that the cost of Graduate School plus the year of salary lost by attending, would pay off afterwards as your financial value would be noticeably greater.
So think about that for a second – In order for you to pursue a relationship with one woman, you are subsequently giving up the opportunity to pursue however many woman MIGHT have crossed your path in that year (or more). To make matters worse, not only has your value increased to many single women while you are no longer available (That which you can not have, appears more attractive) , your value does not necessarily increase after the relationship ends. Although you have gained important “relationship” experience, if it does not end on a good note, you may come out of the relationship emotionally drained.
When this post originally went up it sparked some heated debate and some fueled personal e-mail messages. Could I possibly be suggesting that men have NOTHING to gain from a serious relationship? Am I saying that women do not give up anything if not more when entering a relationship?
Absolutely not. For the record some of the best personal growth I have made has been when I was a part of a serious boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. I suggest to all men that you have at the very least one long-term relationship. It’s important to realize on any date or any new girl that you meet that both of you are open to potentially having a serious relationship. Although I know many women out there think otherwise, The Unbreakable Man Laws are not about leading a ridiculously promiscuous lifestyle full of perpetual bachelorhood. It IS about having choices and not settling for less than you are worth. It’s my understanding that many women feel the same way as many will not hesitate to axe a potential relationship if they come across something they don’t like or agree with. The Laws are designed to give men understanding of why “She just didn’t feel the same way” as you. How can a man be a better boyfriend if he’s only dated one girl in the past? Does the act of being able to lead a successful relationship not require work on his part? Any progress on the relationship front comes through trial and error, blood, sweat, and in many cases tears.
With response to the other question I also received frequently, “Don’t women give up a lot in relationships?” I’d say women give up the same if not more than the men do. In fact, her “opportunity cost” to enter a relationship is greater than the mans. If she agrees to a monogamous relationship, she is (hopefully) turning down all potential suitors for however long the relationship last. Never before have women had as many choices for men as now. It may be because of these endless choices that the divorce rate continues to grow. Perhaps she is realizing her own “opportunity cost” and what she is giving up to be with a man when she has so many other options at her disposal. It is not unrealistic to think that she is going through the very same “thinking” process as the man is when determining whether to stop seeing other people. It’s for that reason that until both individuals “decide” to make things official, both parties have the right to see other people. Or as many women have said to me in the past in one form or another “I don’t have a boyfriend, but I know someone who would be pretty pissed off if I said that…”
Back to the topic heading, most men are born with this innate understanding of “Opportunity Cost”. Most need only look at their fathers to understand they better know what they are getting themselves in to when settling down or choosing to enter a monogamous relationship. Anyone who has been part of a long-term relationship will attest, its not all fun and games and there are many messy moments in between that can seemingly pop up out of nowhere from the man’s point of view.
So thus, in the hazardous “dating” world, we are forced to decide whether we should enter a monogamous relationship with one person or keep our options open.
To a man, a commitment is not necessarily a win/win situation. Yes, there are definite benefits to both genders becoming monogamous, however, he has just entered a “contract” agreement that has basically sold his sex life to one woman. Although women love to throw statistics at men that married men are more “stable”, “live longer”, are “healthier”, most men are not thinking that far in advance. They are looking at their “Opportunity Cost” and all of those women they haven’t slept with YET. Keep in mind, that at no point is “Opportunity Cost” greater than at the very beginning of the dating sequence, so within the first month or two, this should be considered.
Did she just say "Commitment"?
Women came up with their own strategy to combat this “Opportunity Cost” theory – they called them “afraid” to commit. Nothing will get under a man’s fragile ego quicker than calling him “afraid” to do something. Don’t fall for this psychological reversal, gentlemen. You are not afraid. You want to make sure you have an increased return on investment. And from your perspective, the only person benefiting from a monogamous relationship is her!
Ladies, I know many of you are furious that I have said such a thing – Am I suggesting that the only person benefiting from a serious relationship is the woman? No, there are plenty of benefits to a monogamous relationship. This “theory” hopes to explain why a guy might not want anything “serious” right away. He may get to know you and decide that regardless of entering an official relationship with you, he has decided NOT to pursue other women while he sees you. However, it is this “opportunity cost” that I hope women take away from this and why he might not be in as much of a “rush” or ready to move in with you after going on three good dates.
During a man’s time single, in order to make sure he gets an adequate return on investment and finding the RIGHT one, he wishes to engage in mutual funds and diversify his portfolio. Why have your sex life dependent on one individual when spreading it out amongst many will pay off (hopefully) in the long run? Is it not better to partially invest in many women and hold off for the one “sure” hit? This does not mean sleeping with as many women as possible, it does mean that you are “dating” and “open” to finding the right one.
With that said, it is not “Fear” of commitment that affects most men, it is the “Fear” of loss of self, individualism, and all of those qualities that will take away from what he considers “freedom”. Thus, the woman who successfully “captures” this man is not the one who challenges his very existence as a man by challenging his “fragile” ego but the one who compliments his existence, helps him become a stronger individual and is genuinely considerate of his well – being. In return, he promises to support her goals and dreams which she has done her best not to sacrifice on his behalf.
Bottom Line – Invest Wisely!
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