The Mating Grounds: What You Don't Already Know About Yourself

Let me start off by admitting something pretty embarrassing about myself: contrary to what my narcissistic self thought, throughout high school I was about the same as everyone else. I was trying to master the art of being myself and wrongfully thought that by "not caring what others thought" I could somehow manage this. I was wrong. And probably most of you are wrong too, whether you’re in high school or at any other point in your life, this applies to us all.

The funny thing about advice, especially in the digital age we live in, is that most people giving it don’t actually care about what they are saying as long as it attracts a large audience.

Think of every advice article or website that you come across, as a news station. What do most of the big stations rely on? Money. How do they get that money? By attracting the biggest amount of viewers they can. And in order for them to do so, they have to exploit your deepest insecurities and at the same time make you think that there’s an easy way to fix them.

Well I’m here, mostly as a middle man, to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Mating Grounds is a website designed by best-selling author Tucker Max and the leading evolutionary psychologist of our time, Geoffrey Miller, to help improve the lives of men worldwide (and by doing so, help women too).

At first glance, it seems like a website about sex and dating advice for men. AND IT IS! But what most people fail to understand is that in order to become better with women, you have to become better at life! That’s why this website separates itself from just about any other dating advice or pick up artist website out there.

You can’t trick women into being attracted to you. I mean, you can do it and get away with it for a while, but unless you’re a sociopath who hates women, that’s not ever going to really fulfill you. And that’s what all these other websites try to teach men, because like I mentioned already, they see an opportunity to exploit men who feel insecure about their dating life, and they try to sell (this being the key word) bullshit information about pick-up lines and tricks and hacks that will “get you women”.

But if you’re like most men and you actually want to have meaningful relationships, relationships that are beneficial to both you and women no matter how long they last, then you need to understand that the first step is looking in the mirror and starting on yourself.

Here’s how you do that.

If you’re leading a pathetic lifestyle, you can’t really think that “being yourself” and “not caring about what people think” is going to attract women. Obviously that’s an extreme example, but it gets the point across. And you don’t want to focus only on becoming a more attractive person, but also on learning how to show that you are this kind of person. And by show I don’t mean taking girls out on expensive dates to show them you’re wealthy. That’s pick up artist bullshit.

No, as Tucker and Geoffrey mention over and over, you need to learn how to make it a part of your interaction.

Another extreme example they go over in the podcasts is mental health. Many men suffer from mental health problems, enough of them that it’s something you have to prove you aren’t suffering from.

So how do you do this?

One way could be humor. It’s very hard for men with mental health issues to understand how to use humor. So by making women laugh during an interaction, you automatically let them know that you’re all there mentally.

And that’s just one way to show that you’re attractive.

I would get into all of them, but I think I’ve stolen enough information from Tucker and Geoffrey. So I’ll end it with this.

Regardless of where you land on your dating life spectrum, terrible or amazing, there is always room for improvement. Once you think you’ve mastered it all, that’s when you stop trying to improve and as a reaction of that, start to decline.

So I encourage everyone to at least check out a couple of the podcasts on The Mating Grounds, or if listening's not your thing, you can wait for their book Mate: Become the Man Women Want to come out on September 15th, 2015. The work that Tucker and Geoffrey are putting out there for free is some of the most recent research and most scientifically accurate information at the moment.

Everything you think you know about becoming a more attractive person, you’ve probably learned from movies, music, stories, or some other form of entertainment/media. Go get real with your life, and stop wasting time trying to find easy ways out. Improvement takes time.

And no, as much as I would like to say that they did, The Mating Grounds had no involvement in my writing of this.