This past weekend I was talking to two girls, and I pretty much had it in the bag with one of them. Then this guy comes over and interrupts. Apparently he'd been buying her drinks earlier that night. He completely ignored me and started making moves on her.

He was not doing well at all. She was being polite and indulging him, and I could tell he genuinely believed he had a shot. Then he asked for her Snapchat (amateur move, btw). She got super awkward, pulled out her phone, and was clearly stuck between adding him and trying to find a way out of it without being rude.

He said something like, "I'm just trying to be nice." That's when I started messing with him. I started saying stuff like, "Aren't you going to be nice to me too? Why don't you ask for my Snapchat?" He got visibly deflated but still tried to save it, mumbling, "You're not really my..."  so I said something like "What, I'm not your type to be nice to?" By this point, both girls were laughing hard at him.

I could see him break. He looked genuinely sad, almost like he was about to cry (the guy seemed around 35–40). He just said, "OK, I see how it is," and walked away with his head down.

It's been days, and I still feel a little bad about it. 

On one hand, he was technically there "first", he'd been buying her drinks all night, and even though she wasn't interested, she kept letting him do it without ever saying anything. I'm not a fan of women stringing a guy along for free drinks.

On the other hand, I can't stand guys who barge in like that mid convo.

So I would like to hear your opinion. Was I the bad guy here? Should I have just let him do his thing without interrupting? What would you say is the best way to handle these situations?

Hey everyone! I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book on dating and I would like some help with choosing the cover.

I've got a few options and I'd like to get your thoughts on which one you think is best. If you would like to help out, shoot me a DM and I'll show them to you! Thanks!

Hey everyone! I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book on dating and I would like some help with choosing the cover.

I've got a few options and I'd like to get your thoughts on which one you think is best. If you would like to help out, shoot me a DM and I'll show them to you! Thanks!

Four lines. Three of them are a complete attraction system. The fourth is the cheat code nobody teaches.

I have studied human nature my whole life. I’ve spent over a decade coaching men and women through countless dating and life situations.

And one of the most accurate and best pieces of advice on dating that I have ever seen… is a meme.

The meme says:

Getting girls is easy.

1. Find a girl that you like.
2. Assume she is attracted to you.
3. Flirting is just talking to her like she’s already your girlfriend.
4. You have autism.

I laughed for a solid minute the first time. Then I went quiet, because I realized this dumb joke is actually some of the best advice of the dating advice industry.

The first three steps? Genuinely elite advice. Compressed, but elite.

And the fourth line isn’t the punchline. It’s the ingredient. It’s the meme telling you why the first three steps work effortlessly for one kind of guy and detonate for everyone else: the guy in the meme doesn’t register rejection. A lukewarm reply doesn’t compute. A mixed signal bounces off him. The thing that collapses every other man’s confidence in future interactions never even reaches him, so his frame stays intact, and the system keeps running.

Whether you read that as a joke or genuine advice, the meme has a point. Today I’m going to show you how to install that advice, no diagnosis required.

Step 1: Find a girl that you like

Read it again, slowly. Not “find a girl who might accept you.” Not “find any girl at all.” A girl you like.

This one line quietly installs an important frame in dating: you are the chooser. The man who’s selecting is automatically operating from standards, and standards are magnetic. The man who’s just hoping to get picked radiates the opposite, and women can smell it.

There’s a practical bonus too. When you actually like something about her beyond her face, her humor, her weird taste in music, the way she argues, you have real material. Curiosity writes better conversation than approval seeking ever will.

Step 2: Assume she is attracted to you

This sounds delusional. It’s actually one of the most evidence-backed moves in social psychology.

In a famous study, researchers gave men a photo of a woman they were about to talk to on the phone, some got a photo of a very attractive woman, some didn’t. The photos were fake, the woman was the same. The men who believed they were talking to a stunner became warmer, funnier, more confident on the call. And here’s the wild part, the women who knew nothing about any photo, responded by actually becoming warmer and more charming, as judged by independent listeners who heard only her side of the call.

The assumption created the reality. Psychologists call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I call it the cheapest upgrade in the game.

When you assume she’s attracted to you, everything about you changes without effort: you relax, you tease, you hold eye contact, you lead. You act like a man who’s already welcome, which is precisely the behavior that makes you welcome.

Step 3: Talk to her like she’s already your girlfriend

This is the entire skill of flirting in one sentence, and most men will scroll past it.

Think about how you’d talk to a girlfriend of six months. No interview questions. No performing. You’d tease her about her ridiculous coffee order. You’d tell her the dumb story from your day with zero fear of being judged. Relaxed. Playful. Warm. Assuming the connection instead of auditioning for it.

Now think about how most men talk to a woman they just met: “So, what do you do? Where are you from?”, a job interview.

The girlfriend frame skips the audition. It borrows the comfort of familiarity, the teasing, the us-frames, the imagined futures (“you’d be a nightmare at IKEA, we’re never going”), and delivers it to someone new, which her brain experiences as instant chemistry. This is why it feels like you’ve “known someone for years” after twenty minutes with a charismatic person. They ran the girlfriend frame on you.

To be clear about what you’re borrowing: the frame, not the history. You borrow the playfulness and ease, not the entitlement. You’re skipping the small talk, not the consent. And even if she is your girlfriend, always make sure you have her consent!

If you want to read the full article and all 4 steps, you can read it here on Medium for free: https://medium.com/@alialialialiali2996/the-meme-that-contains-one-of-the-best-dating-advice-youll-ever-read-21ceb4a1d740?sharedUserId=alialialialiali2996

You’re not in love. You’re in withdrawal from a girl you don’t even have. Here’s the chemistry running your obsession, and how to shut it off.

You ever get obsessed with a girl so fast it freaked you out?

You met her once. Maybe twice. A quick conversation, a smile, a laugh that hit different.

And boom, she’s all you think about. You’re checking her stories. Rereading the same six texts like there’s a hidden message in them. Replaying every moment like a scene from a movie, except in your version the ending’s perfect. She’s yours.

Except she’s not. You barely know her.

So why does your brain do this? Why her, and not the girl from last month who actually liked you back?

I’ve spent my whole life studying human nature, and this is one of my favorite questions to break down, because the answer changes how you date forever. Let’s get into it.

Your brain is high right now

Here’s what happened the night you met her.

There was a spark. Her smile hit different. She said your name a certain way. And your brain lit up like Vegas.

That light show has a name: dopamine. Same chemical that fires when you win money, eat junk food, or hit a new PR at the gym. Your brain tasted her presence and went, “Yeah. I want more of that.”

Then norepinephrine joins the party. That’s the butterflies. The racing pulse. That tight feeling in your chest like you just racked a heavy bench. You’re wired and jumpy and somehow frozen at the same time.

And while those two spike, your serotonin dips, the chemical that keeps your thoughts from looping. Researchers who studied people newly “in love” found serotonin levels that looked like OCD patients. Read that again.

So no, you’re not crazy. You’re running the literal brain state of obsession… over someone you’ve spoken to twice.

You’re not in love. You’re in withdrawal. From a girl you don’t even have.

Every story you check is another dose

Here’s the part nobody tells you: you’re the one keeping the high alive.

Psychologists have known for decades about the mere exposure effect, the more you see someone, the more attractive they become to you. Nothing new has to happen. Exposure alone does the work.

Now think about what you’ve been doing all week. Checking her stories. Scrolling her photos. Rereading texts. That’s exposure. You’ve become your own dealer, handing your brain a fresh hit of her every couple of hours, then wondering why you can’t stop thinking about her.

It’s not her. It’s the pattern.

And underneath all of it sits a weirder truth: you’re not even obsessed with her.

If you want to to read the full article, you can read it for free on Medium here: https://medium.com/@alialialialiali2996/how-to-get-her-out-of-your-head-permanently-b8ca66540124

It wasn’t fear of rejection, part of you is getting tricked into stalling. Here are the five questions that expose the hidden payoff and end the freeze for good.

Let me describe a night most men have lived.

The conversation is working. She’s laughing at things that aren’t that funny. She’s found three reasons to touch your arm. Her friends left twenty minutes ago and she’s still here, angled toward you like the rest of the bar doesn’t exist.

The window is wide open. You can feel it. She can feel it. Somewhere in your head, you even hear the announcement: this is the moment. Take her hand. Pull her in. Tell her “let’s get out of here.”

And then the voice starts talking in your head. Not yet. Don’t rush it. One more good story first. I don’t want to ruin the vibe. I’ll do it when the moment is right.

The night ends with a warm hug and “this was really fun.” You walk home replaying it, and the voice in your head delivers its official report:

“The moment just wasn’t right.”

Brother, the moment was right for forty-five minutes. You watched it be right. What you’re calling patience was a decision, made by a part of you that you’ve never interrogated.

Tonight we interrogate it.

Why “just go for it” bounces off you

You already know the standard advice. Be bold. Fortune favors the brave. She’s waiting for you to lead, which, by the way, is true. Many men have experienced this mistake that has cost them multiple times a beautiful and cool chick.

But here’s what a decade of coaching taught me: for a certain kind of man, willpower advice bounces right off. He knows the window is open. He wants to move. And at the decisive second, something inside him votes no. Every time. Then it hands him a dignified excuse on the way out.

Here’s the uncomfortable explanation:

Your hesitation is not a malfunction. It’s a strategy.

Somewhere in your head, a part of you has run the numbers and concluded that not escalating is the winning play, that keeping things in the warm, flirty, nothing-ventured zone is protecting something or paying you something.

Psychologists call this a secondary gain: the hidden benefit of keeping a problem. And as long as not making the move pays you anything at all, no amount of “just go for it” will out muscle it at the critical second.

You can’t defeat an enemy you refuse to name. So let’s name it.

The Five Questions

Next time you have to decide if you should make your move and escalate, ask yourself these five questions, and take the move you keep not making (the kiss, the pull, the “come with me,” the hand you never take) through these five questions.

1. If I finally got what I want here, what negative consequences might arise?

Negative consequences of success. If the kiss lands, if she comes home with you, the whole thing becomes real. Real intimacy, real performance, a real thing that can now really fail. The flirty in between is a safe little universe where you’re winning and nothing can be lost yet.

Part of you knows escalating ends that universe. That’s precisely what the voice in your head is using against you. So it stalls, not to protect you from her rejection, but from the reality of her yes.

Ignore that voice and be realistic and rational with your answer to this question.

2. Would I lose anything if I succeeded?

If you would like to read the complete article, you can check it out here on Medium for free:

https://medium.com/@alialialialiali2996/she-gave-you-every-signal-you-still-went-home-alone-1826b4f7c5ad

Most men flatline the interaction in the first ten minutes, not because they did something wrong, but because they did nothing at all. Here’s the fix.

Every man reading this has lived through the same horror story at least once.

You meet a woman. The conversation flows. She’s laughing at your jokes, holding eye contact a beat longer than necessary, angling her body toward you like you’re the only man in the room.

Then somewhere around minute fifteen… it flatlines. She checks her phone. You get the “it was really nice meeting you.” And she’s gone.

You spend the next week replaying it, hunting for the mistake.

Here’s the truth: you didn’t do anything wrong.

You did nothing at all. And in attraction, neutral is a death sentence.

Attraction isn’t a feeling. It’s tension.

I’ve spent over a decade coaching men, every background, every “impossible case” you can imagine. Before that, I was the teenage psychology nerd, so I studied human nature the way other kids studied video games. (Years later, psychologists tested me at roughly 89% observational accuracy on reading people. The nerd thing paid off.)

If I had to compress everything I know about making women want you into one sentence, it’s this:

Desire is tension, created, released, and rebuilt.

Think about your favorite song. It’s not one flat note. It builds, it drops, it builds again. All tension with no release is noise. All release with no tension is elevator music.

Most men run elevator-music game. Polite. Pleasant. Agreeable. Try-hard. Comedian. Forgettable.

The men women chase understand the loop: create tension, release it, rebuild it higher. Over and over, each wave bigger than the last.

Three skills drive this loop. Old-school players called them prizing, vibing, and sexualizing. No gimmicks, no pills of any color, just fundamentals that make women invest naturally. Miss any one of the three and the whole thing collapses.

Skill #1: Prizing, the tension

Prizing means one thing: in this interaction, you are the prize.

Not arrogant. Not fake-aloof. Not playing games with your text response times. Prizing is the natural behavior of a man who genuinely believes his time, attention, and approval are worth something, because he knows he is enough to make a woman have a good time.

Here’s the psychology. When she senses you’re the prize, she feels tension. An open loop: “Can I get this guy or not?” The human brain hates open loops, so she starts investing to close it, asking questions, qualifying herself, touching your arm, sticking around longer than she planned.

And here’s the part most guys never learn: investment creates attraction, not the other way around. The more she invests, the harder her brain works to justify that investment. “Why am I trying to impress him? …I must really like him.” Psychologists call it effort justification. I call it the engine of chasing.

Practical prizing looks like:

• Having standards and screening for them
• Playfully disagreeing instead of nodding along like a bobblehead
• Rewarding what you like, withdrawing attention from what you don’t
• Being genuinely okay walking away

Most men do the exact opposite. They make her the prize from hello, agree with everything, hover, compliment on a loop. All release, no tension. She’s flattered for five minutes and bored by minute six.

Skill #2: Vibing, the connection

Now, before you sprint off to become the Grandmaster of Tension, understand this: tension without connection doesn’t read as attractive. It reads as too much.

Vibing is the release valve. It’s pulling her out of the stranger frame and into your world, shared jokes, shared reality, that feeling of “I’ve somehow known this guy way longer than twenty minutes.”

If you want to read the rest of this article, you can read it fully for free on medium here: https://medium.com/@alialialialiali2996/desire-is-tension-the-3-frameworks-that-decide-whether-she-wants-you-or-not-d4ba63800155?sharedUserId=alialialialiali2996

Most men flatline the interaction in the first ten minutes, not because they did something wrong, but because they did nothing at all. Here’s the fix.

Every man reading this has lived through the same horror story at least once.

You meet a woman. The conversation flows. She’s laughing at your jokes, holding eye contact a beat longer than necessary, angling her body toward you like you’re the only man in the room.

Then somewhere around minute fifteen… it flatlines. She checks her phone. You get the “it was really nice meeting you.” And she’s gone.

You spend the next week replaying it, hunting for the mistake.

Here’s the truth: you didn’t do anything wrong.

You did nothing at all. And in attraction, neutral is a death sentence.

Attraction isn’t a feeling. It’s tension.

I’ve spent over a decade coaching men, every background, every “impossible case” you can imagine. Before that, I was the teenage psychology nerd, so I studied human nature the way other kids studied video games. (Years later, psychologists tested me at roughly 89% observational accuracy on reading people. The nerd thing paid off.)

If I had to compress everything I know about making women want you into one sentence, it’s this:

Desire is tension, created, released, and rebuilt.

Think about your favorite song. It’s not one flat note. It builds, it drops, it builds again. All tension with no release is noise. All release with no tension is elevator music.

Most men run elevator-music game. Polite. Pleasant. Agreeable. Try-hard. Comedian. Forgettable.

The men women chase understand the loop: create tension, release it, rebuild it higher. Over and over, each wave bigger than the last.

Three skills drive this loop. Old-school players called them prizing, vibing, and sexualizing. No gimmicks, no pills of any color, just fundamentals that make women invest naturally. Miss any one of the three and the whole thing collapses.

Skill #1: Prizing, the tension

Prizing means one thing: in this interaction, you are the prize.

Not arrogant. Not fake-aloof. Not playing games with your text response times. Prizing is the natural behavior of a man who genuinely believes his time, attention, and approval are worth something, because he knows he is enough to make a woman have a good time.

Here’s the psychology. When she senses you’re the prize, she feels tension. An open loop: “Can I get this guy or not?” The human brain hates open loops, so she starts investing to close it, asking questions, qualifying herself, touching your arm, sticking around longer than she planned.

And here’s the part most guys never learn: investment creates attraction, not the other way around. The more she invests, the harder her brain works to justify that investment. “Why am I trying to impress him? …I must really like him.” Psychologists call it effort justification. I call it the engine of chasing.

Practical prizing looks like:

• Having standards and screening for them
• Playfully disagreeing instead of nodding along like a bobblehead
• Rewarding what you like, withdrawing attention from what you don’t
• Being genuinely okay walking away

Most men do the exact opposite. They make her the prize from hello, agree with everything, hover, compliment on a loop. All release, no tension. She’s flattered for five minutes and bored by minute six.

Skill #2: Vibing, the connection

Now, before you sprint off to become the Grandmaster of Tension, understand this: tension without connection doesn’t read as attractive. It reads as too much.

Vibing is the release valve. It’s pulling her out of the stranger frame and into your world, shared jokes, shared reality, that feeling of “I’ve somehow known this guy way longer than twenty minutes.”

If you want to read the rest of this article, you can read it fully for free on medium here: https://medium.com/@alialialialiali2996/desire-is-tension-the-3-frameworks-that-decide-whether-she-wants-you-or-not-d4ba63800155?sharedUserId=alialialialiali2996

Most men flatline the interaction in the first ten minutes, not because they did something wrong, but because they did nothing at all. Here’s the fix.

Every man reading this has lived through the same horror story at least once.

You meet a woman. The conversation flows. She’s laughing at your jokes, holding eye contact a beat longer than necessary, angling her body toward you like you’re the only man in the room.

Then somewhere around minute fifteen… it flatlines. She checks her phone. You get the “it was really nice meeting you.” And she’s gone.

You spend the next week replaying it, hunting for the mistake.

Here’s the truth: you didn’t do anything wrong.

You did nothing at all. And in attraction, neutral is a death sentence.

Attraction isn’t a feeling. It’s tension.

I’ve spent over a decade coaching men, every background, every “impossible case” you can imagine. Before that, I was the teenage psychology nerd, so I studied human nature the way other kids studied video games. (Years later, psychologists tested me at roughly 89% observational accuracy on reading people. The nerd thing paid off.)

If I had to compress everything I know about making women want you into one sentence, it’s this:

Desire is tension, created, released, and rebuilt.

Think about your favorite song. It’s not one flat note. It builds, it drops, it builds again. All tension with no release is noise. All release with no tension is elevator music.

Most men run elevator-music game. Polite. Pleasant. Agreeable. Try-hard. Comedian. Forgettable.

The men women chase understand the loop: create tension, release it, rebuild it higher. Over and over, each wave bigger than the last.

Three skills drive this loop. Old-school players called them prizing, vibing, and sexualizing. No gimmicks, no pills of any color, just fundamentals that make women invest naturally. Miss any one of the three and the whole thing collapses.

Skill #1: Prizing, the tension

Prizing means one thing: in this interaction, you are the prize.

Not arrogant. Not fake-aloof. Not playing games with your text response times. Prizing is the natural behavior of a man who genuinely believes his time, attention, and approval are worth something, because he knows he is enough to make a woman have a good time.

Here’s the psychology. When she senses you’re the prize, she feels tension. An open loop: “Can I get this guy or not?” The human brain hates open loops, so she starts investing to close it, asking questions, qualifying herself, touching your arm, sticking around longer than she planned.

And here’s the part most guys never learn: investment creates attraction, not the other way around. The more she invests, the harder her brain works to justify that investment. “Why am I trying to impress him? …I must really like him.” Psychologists call it effort justification. I call it the engine of chasing.

Practical prizing looks like:

• Having standards and screening for them
• Playfully disagreeing instead of nodding along like a bobblehead
• Rewarding what you like, withdrawing attention from what you don’t
• Being genuinely okay walking away

Most men do the exact opposite. They make her the prize from hello, agree with everything, hover, compliment on a loop. All release, no tension. She’s flattered for five minutes and bored by minute six.

Skill #2: Vibing, the connection

Now, before you sprint off to become the Grandmaster of Tension, understand this: tension without connection doesn’t read as attractive. It reads as too much.

Vibing is the release valve. It’s pulling her out of the stranger frame and into your world, shared jokes, shared reality, that feeling of “I’ve somehow known this guy way longer than twenty minutes.”

If you want to read the rest of this article, you can read it fully for free on medium here: https://medium.com/@alialialialiali2996/desire-is-tension-the-3-frameworks-that-decide-whether-she-wants-you-or-not-d4ba63800155?sharedUserId=alialialialiali2996