The term “pickup artists” to me is just a cool way of saying womanizer. Every guy wants to be a ladies man: a handsome, strong, charming man that all the women would die to have.  That desire to be a ladies man sometimes gets mixed up with the idea of being a pickup artist. A ladies man is not a pickup artist, and a pickup artist is not a ladies man. A pickup artist is a con man and a womanizer who plays on female emotions to manipulate  them.

I started this site because I was tired of all the junk information out their on all those other junk websites. I decided to call this site Super Awesome Dating to poke fun at the lameness of the other sites and their lame names (think seduction love diary chronicles journey). I wanted to create  something culturally relevant for today’s dating world that mixed personal development, dating and relationship advice, life skills, and humor to help you become your higher self. To become your best, so you can attract the best. To have a fun fulfilling relationship and find love and happiness. So please, I am sincerely asking you to kill the belief that being called a pickup artist is a good thing; and that striving to be as such is a good life goal.

Pickup Artists are Con Artists which make them a type of Sexual Predator

Sexual predator sounds a bit harsh and dirty but preying on women and manipulating them just for sex and eventually hurting them is what makes them a predator.  What two (or three, or four) consensual adults do behind closed doors is fine as long as it is consensual, but when one side is tricking the other, then it stops being consensual. Tricking a woman into thinking your someone she can trust and who cares about her when really your only looking to get in her pants results in you hurting her. You end up making her feel used and abused. Leaving her to decry publicly that your a player/playboy/womanizer/jerk in an effort for her to save face for being duped and dumped by you.

Now, learning how to talk to girls, how to ask girls out, how to improve your social skills, how to understand what women want, learning what women find attractive is fine. Social skills are just that, skills. Meaning its part nature part nurture. Your just not going to magically know, you need to practice and learn. Personal development is critical for success in life and in any relationship you have with anyone.

When becoming a PUA (pickup artist) becomes your goal, you stop being cool and start being Creepy

Instead of striving to become popular, fun, and sociable. To get to a point where you like and are happy with yourself. Enough so to be able to introduce your awesome self to other women as to have a good time with them and uplift yourself as well as others. You instead you start to view the attraction and love of women NOT as what it is, love and attraction, but as something to prove to OTHER MEN. “Look how cool I am because I can sleep with these girls”, “look how many girls I can get” ,”I can sleep with 50 girls a month” become your mantra. You stop viewing women as individuals who deserve to be loved by someone and start viewing them as trophies to prove your manhood to a bunch of other creepy guys.

Guys who talk about girls as UG5.5 and HB8 and whatever else they use (not sure about the terminology) were on a track of personal development in the sense they wanted to improve their relationship with women, but sadly fell of track when it only became only about seduction, sex, and hooking up. Learn to sincerely enjoy the company of girls that attract you genuinely; but not only on a physical level, but also on an intellectual and emotional level. One of the biggest advantage for a man to have a relationship with a woman is that a man can share how he feels about sensitive subjects more easily with a girl, than he could with his male friends watching the game or at a round of drinks after work.

What I want is for guys is to start dating dating girls instead of just hanging out with them. What I want is for more guys to develop confidence and self respect in themselves to enjoy life more, enjoy talking to girls, date more, enjoy life more, and build a better life for themselves.

Pickup Artists: Why I don’t Like Them

Guys who strive to become  pickup artists, or who like to think of themselves  as skilled pickup artists are creepy. Don’t be creepy.

A guy crosses the line of creepyness. He makes the journey from stranger to boyfriend to ex to stalker. This weeks question:

I dated this guy for a year and a half. He was very controlling and very insecure. He would always accuse me of cheating. I never cheated, but I got so sick and tired of being called a whore and a liar that I ended it. It has been 3 months and he still calls me almost every day. Sometimes 10 times a day. Why?

Because he is crazy. Sorry I know that is not the nicest, most politically correct or philosophical answer, but I think it best describes his behavior. This behavior he is showing is an EXTREME form of persistence that most men demonstrate towards women at one time or another. I say extreme because it is a normal behavior for most men to be persistent and aggressive when pursuing  a woman. Remember, when a man  locks in,  he locks in. That is, their is no nice or right way to tell a guy to back off or that you are not interested. Their will always be men who operate on the boarder of your relationship.  I know this from my experience being in relationships with physically beautiful women. The constant texting, Facebook messaging, instant messaging is all very annoying. They know she has a boyfriend (me) but they don’t care. It is a silly game that is played, put that is how it is.

However, he crossed the line though. Three months and he still calls aggressively? He has not only crossed the line of creepyness, he has jumped it and is now on a 3 mile dash to the finish. This is not normal behavior. You should be concerned for your safety rather than simply wondering why he does what he does. Take stalking seriously. Here are some steps you should take:

-Have a friend or expert help you end the relationship. You may have broken it off, but it might be best to enlist the help of someone to make it crystal clear to him that it is over and to leave you alone and to stop calling you.

-When it is over, it is over. Do not send mixed messages, do not answer his calls. He no longer exists, and you no longer exist for him.

-Agree with one another over a period of no contact. Be direct and make it absolutely clear that both of you are not going to talk anymore. YOU are not going to call him, and he is not going to call you.

-Do you have mutual friends? After a year and a half I am sure you would. As such, do not talk about him with them. Do not talk about your relationship even if they want to talk about it. When it is over, it is over. He no longer exists remember?

-Try your best to avoid places where both you frequent.

-When you start dating again make sure your not going out with friends of friends or any of his co-workers. Basically anyone separated by one degree from him is off limits. Also make sure your friends keep your dating life quiet. No need for them to run around telling everyone: “guess who is dating who”.

-Your from the US, blocking numbers is a bit more tricky here than say in the UK. You can  block his number so your phone won’t ring, but you will still see missed calls from him. Their is no way you can make it so he will not be able to call you if your in the US unless you change your phone number. This is a last resort, but keep it as a potential option.

-Do not be nice to him, then mean to him. That is sending mixed signals. He no longer exists.

-Be direct and tell him that his behavior is creepy and that you want him to stop calling you. Tell him once that it is over and to move one. Do not concern yourself with letting him down easy as to avoid conflict or hurting his feelings. Just tell him it is over and do not explain yourself.

-Do not give him ANY reason to think about you (see above steps).

-Their must be NO contact.

-If all else fails, seek legal or professional help. You  do not have to put up with this.

This behavior is weird and creepy. It is the behavior of a stalker. He needs to move on for his own sanity and yours. Implementing these steps may seem mean spirited towards him but your really doing him a favor. Both of you need to end contact with one another so both of you can move on and find that love and happiness you both want and need. We are all spiritual beings in my opinion and we all deserve to be loved. Even your crazy ex boyfriend.

Men reading this, remember, never cross the line of creepyness with women. It never works at getting her to love you. For example: You send flowers to her once a month, your thoughtful. You send flowers to her every day for a week, your romantic. You send flowers everyday to her for a month with cards that have cut out words from a newspaper, your a stalker.

Do yourself a favor and kill your online dating profile once you commit to someone. Why do you need to have a profile on a dating site if your someones boyfriend or girlfriend? This whole “not single, not looking” business is a bit silly to me and I think I understand the motives behind it, but I still think it is silly. Correct me if you disagree, but I believe the motives are: 1) Keep it as a backup plan just in case things don’t workout and 2) Not being able to make that mental transition from being single, to being in a relationship and 3) Being to lazy to create a new profile if you delete your old one.

Social media is certainly a proverbial monkey wrench in the art of dating, finding love, and being happy. Sites like Facebook with some 300,000,000 million users (no joke, that’s a crazy number isn’t it?) allows us to connect in very new ways, but it also keeps us connected when it might be best to just let go and move on. Our relationships are so intertwined because of social media that it is difficult to cut the cord (think facestalk). This mentality sometimes lends itself in a bad way with online dating. Since online dating sites are a type of social media, but not necessarily a social network.

If you are now committed to someone, just delete your profile and save yourself the headache of creating pointless conflict within your relationship. It may cause insecurity and worry in the other person. “If your dating me why do you need to keep a profile”? Their really is not good answer for that unless your doing research like I do for my upcoming profile writing and consulting project I intend to launch here. The process with profile deletion usually goes something like this:

1) First you decide your dating exclusively. You make that transition from being single to being in a relationship.

2) Next you have the talk about “why you still on that site”.

3) Third, because of that talk, and the conflict it is causing, you decide to keep your profile; but make it clear your not single.

4) Then you delete your pictures. So you still have your account, but it is just a pictureless profile that is not single and not looking.

5) Then finally, you delete your profile.

Why do this? Why don’t you just skip 2,3, and 4 and kill your online dating profile. Do not be lazy, selfish, or stupid. Trust that your decision to enter into a relationship with someone is the right move. Stop trying to have your cake and eat it to. That is, commit to one person but still talk and flirt to other people just in case things blow up.

To keep a profile on a dating site regardless if you make it clear your single is not right. If your a woman, men will still email you regardless of what you say, and the man your with knows that. This is a potential conflict source. The revers is not true however. If your a man who makes it clear your not single, woman will NOT email you. But try explaining that to a girl your dating. She is eventually going to start thinking your doing something behind her back, even if your really not. When you do decide to delete your profile, just remember to save the text you wrote in a word file so all you have to do is copy and paste it in, just in case things do not work out and you find yourself back on the web looking for love. So do the right thing. Kill your online dating profile when you make that transition into a relationship. Your going to end up doing it anyways, so just do it now and not tomorrow.

Lets talk about interpersonal relationships and how they work. Interpersonal simply means your relationship with other people. Could be romantic (which is the theme of this site of course) could be friendship, or could be business among other things.  We all have a variety of interpersonal relationships just by being alive; and the one thing I have come to understand is that the relationships you have with other people is also the same relationship you have with yourself. Wait, what? Let me say that again, the relationship you have with other people is also the relationship you have with yourself. They are one in the same. Seriously. This might not make sense to you so let me explain.

You attract what you project so it should be no surprise then that the way you see yourself is the way the world will come to see you. You CAN NOT be something that is not congruent with who you are or how you see yourself. That means, its all in your head. Say your significantly overweight. You have a negative image of yourself and low self esteem and you generally don’t like yourself. You want to lose the weight, but you just think that it is impossible. Thoughts that race through your head. Perhaps something like this: diets never work, I’m just naturally big, I could never lose the weight, I’m fat and I’m always going to be fat. The relationship you have with yourself is a negative one. You see yourself as a worthless person because of your weight. You feel insecure and unattractive. No one could ever like you right? No surprise that the relationship you have with yourself is reflective of those with other people. How could someone else like you if you do not like yourself? It comes down to mindset, how you see yourself, your relationship with yourself, that has some of the most powerful influence on your relationships with other people. To give another example of mindset, lets talk about exercise. What if I took the mind out of this guy:

and put it into the body of this guy:

The result would be obvious. The bottom picture would become the top picture. Yes of course this would happen because of exercise, but it is not simply because of working out in and of itself. The other big piece is mindset, the internal spiritual part you don’t see directly. You only see the effects but not the cause. The guy at the top is fit, good looking, and knows it. The relationship he has with himself is positive. He knows he is the man and any girl would be lucky to have him. It is just how he sees himself. If you planted his mind into the guy in second pic, he would wake up one day and think “this is unacceptable” and start a strict workout routine to get himself the way he sees himself; to be congruent with the relationship he has with himself. Now this is not a gripe against being overweight or anything. It is just to demonstrate for you how your mindset effects your interpersonal relationships. Another good example of someone who understands how the relationship you have with yourself is the relationship you have with others is none other than Gabourey Sidibay of the movie Precious:

In an interview with one of the TV Celeb News Magazines (Extra, Inside Edition,) she talked about how her grandmother always told her to love your self. That sounds a bit warm and fuzzy, kind of makes your eyes roll back in your head, (yea love yourself right). But she knows something at her young age most other do not, something that I did not figure out until I was in my 20’s. Regardless of her weight, she has a positive self image and she has a fantastic relationship with herself. She loves herself truly. She accepts who she is and does not let it get to her if other do not. Because of that genuine respect for herself, and confidence in herself, others have come to treat her the way she sees herself.

Understanding how Interpersonal Relationships are Subjective

Mindset is powerful stuff. Your mindset determines how you filter your life experiences, how you interpret things. Like this example: When I drive I used to get so annoyed when someone slow would just pull out in front of me. I would think that “god every single time I get on the road, some grandma has to get in front of me”. Over time, I learned to leave earlier to my destination, but also learned to look at it as a chance for me to slow down and relax a bit more. That perhaps I am going to fast. That I will save more money on gas. To look around and enjoy the scenery. Change my mindset to interpret what was happening differently. Turn a positive into a negative so it does not pointlessly stress me out.

While your relationships do exists in some objective reality: That is, he is my father, she is my girlfriend. Your always viewing your relationship filtered through your mindset. You can not see the objective reality, you only see the subjective reality since your mind through touch, feelings, sight, sound, interprets everything for you. This might be odd or frustrating for you; once you realize that you can never ever see anything objectively 100%; including your relationships. That you do not see them for for what they are, just what you think they are. But take comfort, because that is how it is for everyone, including me!

The value of this post is trying to convince you that this is true. Ironically, depending on your level of acceptance for personal development, that will effect weather or not you read this and it resonates with you. If it does, then good. Understanding that you can never view your relationships form an objective standpoint will save you a lot of time, frustration, and heart ace. Those that view, or try to view relationships as some object. As something apart from them like a car, or tree, are wasting their time as they try to relate to other people, fail at it, get mad at the world, and remain stuck because they don’t know what is wrong with their approach. You will remain stuck until you realize that the relationship you have with other people is a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself.

If you want to Improve Your Interpersonal Relationships Work on Yourself First

The good news is this. If you view your relationships as subjective that means you can always improve your external relationships by improving your internal relationships (aka yourself). Improving your self esteem for starters will improve your self image and the relationship you have with yourself. By doing this, it will clearly have a positive impact on your relationships with other people, aka, your external relationships.

Complaints about others sometimes are really complains about Yourself

Honestly, how many conservative southern Republicans who oppose gay marriage, criticize states like New York and California, then turn out to be gay themselves? Quite a few: Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Bob Alen, Craig Murph Jr, are just some that come to my mind. My point is not about Republican hypocrisy, it is about how your complaints against others are really complaints about yourself.  This goes for anyone. Growing up Christian conservative, these men are embarrassed and perhaps even hate the fact that they are gay. They don’t like this side of themselves. This bad romance they have with themselves is reflected outwardly with their social positions. What they should have done is admit to themselves their complaints about gay America are really about their own embarrassment with being gay.

The upside of admitting your relationship issues with yourself is that it reveals a path for you to grow and improve, and also a direction of where to improve. As such, developing relationships with other people is critical if you yourself want to grow as a person. By interacting with other people, be it dating women, or dating me, making new friends, whatever, you will learn things about yourself by others people reaction towards you. Basically, the more you interact with others, the more you learn about yourself. The more you learn about yourself, the better off you will be towards finding love and happiness.

Your relationships can be a positive, powerful force of nature with regards to love, fulfillment, and companionship. But it starts with the relationship you have with yourself. If you can love, accept, work on, and forgive parts of yourself; you will be able to do so in others. The more congruent your thoughts and feeling are with the person you strive deeply to become, the more harmonious your relationships with other will become. It should be no surprise then that birds of a feather flock together. Where do you think that saying comes from? You attract what you project, the way you see yourself is how the rest of the world will come to see you. Understand that, and you can more easily understand your interpersonal relationships.

When does needing space turn into breaking up? That’s the theme of this weeks question. Honestly if your dating someone and they tell you they need space, or they need a “break”, it means their breaking up with you. Not sure why this is confusing to some. However, what makes this question a bit more interesting is that what if the person your seeing  just stops calling you? Yea, what if they do not officially break it off with you and just stop calling you. Here is the question:

I have been dating this guy for about  four months. We talked pretty much every day and saw each other regularly. At minimum every Friday or Saturday. We talked recently about how he likes his space. I told him that when he does not call or text me for days I don’t like it. It makes me feel insecure and I wonder what he is doing. Is that crazy? I don’t understand why it is such a big deal for him to call me for 5 minutes. I feel like I pushed him away.

Since we had our little talk on him needing space, he has completely disappeared. I have not heard from him at all. At what point do I move on? If I start dating other guys do I owe him anything? Like if I do date someone else should I tell him? I want to call him really bad, but I think it will come off as chasing him, what should I do?

The first thing you should do is read what I wrote on how to tell I a guy your seeing is your boyfriend. Men are simple and men will behave in a certain way if they have eyes for you. I’m sorry to say but it sounds like this guy is just not that into you. Like I said in the beginning, needing space is a euphemism for wanting to break up. Be it if a man or woman says it. Breaking up with someone is hard, unpleasant work. Thoughts that perhaps you might be making a mistake run through your head, and it is also never fun to break someones heart; but if your not happy in the relationship, breaking up is necessary. No point in having two unhappy people. Besides, what breaking up really means is simply your telling the other person: Hey your nice, but I’m just not sure I want to spend the next 40 years of my life with you“. That seems pretty reasonable to me. “Needing space/taking a break”, is an easy way to let someone down. Learn from this relationship and be thankful that he set you free so you can find that right person for you.

If a man likes you and sees himself as your boyfriend he will:

-Contact you in one way or another EVERY DAY
-Will call himself your boyfriend
-Will Make plans to see you every Friday and Saturday
-Talks about a future with you
-Makes it clear he does not want you seeing or talking to other men
-You have sex with him regularly
-He says he loves you without you having to ask him (don’t expect a guy to say this right away. Right way = < 3 months)

After 4 or 5 months if he is not doing 90% these things, he is not interested in you. When you had that phone conversation about him needing space, that was his way of telling you to back off he is not going to commit to you. Clearly your left with the impression that your still dating him and he just needs space and it is your fault for being emotional. That is non sense. Communication is the core of your problem. When you were speaking with him and he told you he needed space, did you ask him if he wants to continue seeing you? It can be uncomfortable but be direct with a man. Ask him, “are you breaking up with me”.  Make it crystal clear that your breaking up and you will both be seeing other people, for your own sanity. Have strength, even if you feel vulnerable. If he says he needs space, you tell him that you need more from a man. You might feel like that you don’t want to be confrontational because you don’t want to lose him or push him away, but your already losing him. Pulling this one on him might make him question himself.

I’m sure your hurt and I am sorry for that, but their is nothing wrong with wanting him to call you every day. It has nothing to do with you being emotional and pushing him away. Every single girl I have ever dated required that of me. It is part of the deal with being a girls boyfriend. In fact the guy will want to call everyday, you should not have to force him. If he is not doing his job, then do exactly what you did and tell him. Tell him you want him to contact you more. Men are not mind readers and some guys will be completely oblivious that your hurt if he does not contact you every day. If after you tell him, his behavior does not change, consider breaking it off with him. To make a guy do what you want you need to set levels of expectations. If he is not interested in you, he just won’t care.

When does needing space tun into breaking up? The day you had that phone conversation with him about him needing more space.

At what point do i move on? Yesterday would have been a good start.

I feel like calling him. Don’t, you will regret it.

Do I owe him anything if I start dating other guys? Nope, he is not interested in you. Meaning, move on he is NOT your boyfriend. If you do start dating and he pops his head back into your life, do not stand for it. When it comes to your romantic relationships, live by this rule:

If you can not treat me the way that I want, what the hell good are you?

By following this mantra, you will create value in yourself. Things of value are not easy to come by, their rare. Make yourself rare, make yourself valuable by letting men know that if they want to be your boyfriend they have to treat you right.