PRESELECTION: THE FIRST PILLAR OF ATTRACTION
In the last article in this series, we gave an overview of the three pillars of attraction.
In this one, we’re going to zoom in on the first of those pillars: Preselection.
Let’s get right into it.
The Two Halves Of Preselection
Within each pillar of attraction, there are a number of traits and characteristics a guy must have. These aspects are divided between comfort and desire.
(Read: What Women Really Want From Men)
Ideally, you are going to want to have a balance of both comfort and desire. Men who are able to create both comfort and desire are the most attractive men out there. And the more this comfort and desire is spread throughout each pillar, the better.
In preselection, the traits that create comfort are as follows:
- Physical Strength. If you are a big, strong guy, this is going to make a woman feel safe around you. She will think of you as a protector. This makes her stress out less about the actions of other men.
- Money. We have examined this in greater detail before, but suffice to say the more comfortable of a lifestyle you can provide for a woman, the more attracted to you she will be.
- Popularity Through Networking. This clunky expression refers to when you’re a guy who’s popular and knows everybody but isn’t the guy who “leads.” In other words, the friendly, likable guy everybody knows. If you position yourself this way socially, you will create comfort for a girl because it shows you have access to cool environments and are accepted by cool people.
Preselection traits that create desire, on the other hand, are related but different:
- Aesthetic Beauty. If you are a chiseled, “greek god”-looking man with proportional features, you are going to be considered desirable by a woman. Think definition over strength. If she wants to look at you, she wants to make love to you. End of story.
- Fame. Being the center of attention is one of the most sure-fire ways to get girls to desire you. Fame can be a transient form of preselection, but it can also be built over time. To create it, always leverage situations and accomplishments to your advantage.
- Popularity Through Leadership. Unlike the above, this form of popularity is derived from being a leader; being the man people look to in social situations to get the party going. As a leader, you might not be the center of attention and you might not be the friendliest person around. But you have presence and authority. This social power makes women crave you.
Achieving all six of these things in a meaningful sense is difficult. Fortunately, it is also unnecessary. If you can achieve two in both desire and comfort (4 total), that is enough to get you in the top 10% of preselected men.
And you know what that means: more opportunities with women than you could ever need.
Preselection Creates Opportunities (And Strengthens The Other Pillars)
As we discussed, Preselection is the creator of opportunities with women.
The more preselected you are, the more:
- Receptive women are to your approaches
- Likely women are to approach you
- Women will “happen to” be around you
- Access you will have to exclusive groups that have top-tier women
This is important, because to a large extent dating is a numbers game. It is inevitable when dating that some interactions aren’t going to pan out, even if your game is tight. Preselection solves for this. It dumps women onto your lap, so even if you mess up with some girls, other ones are right around the corner. No big deal.
Indeed, this abundance of women has a some positive feedback effects on the other pillars of attraction – Persona and Personality – as well.
How Preselection Strengthens Persona
Persona, as you remember, is your social intelligence and game. It is you ability to make girls attracted to you through your behavior.
But one of the things that is inescapable in attraction is that your behavior is always judged in relationship to your status.
This means how your game is received depends – you guessed it – entirely on your preselection.
The higher the preselection? The easier (and better) your game lands.
For instance, if you are a preselected guy, it doesn’t matter if you stumble over your words a bit. It doesn’t matter if your flirting isn’t anything special. Hell, it might not even matter if you’re a little creepy (but don’t push the envelope on this one). Girls go into the conversation thinking you’re hot shit – they start out in your frame – so they interpret your actions in a more favorable light.
The truth is, if you have high preselection, you can get away with a lot. You get the “benefit of the doubt.” Your game essentially has a huge handicap. Things you say will be considered funnier just because you are saying them. Mistakes you make won’t be interpreted as weird, they’ll be interpreted as cute.
Additionally, your game and understanding of women gets better the more contact you have with girls. And since preselected guys have more opportunities to do that, that means more time to practice and improve. Many “naturals” are just men who have spent a lot more time around women than other men, and have had women interact with them in a more flirtatious way. That’s exactly what preselection gives you.
How Preselection Strengthens Personality
In contrast to Persona, Personality is not a behavior you put on, it’s your distinct self – the crux of who you are. Your personality usually attracts women through authenticity, confidence, chemistry, and shared values. When it is “healthy” – in other words, when you are in a good place – it comes across its most attractive.
Yet a healthy, attractive personality requires things such as openness and strength, and much of that depends on self-esteem. Ergo, since men derive so much of their self-esteem from how women treat them, a man who has a poor dating life is far more likely than another to have an unhealthy personality.
Preselection makes this much less of an issue. When attractive women are a normal part of a guy’s life – when women are giving him looks all the time – it’s much tougher for him to feel down on himself. Female attention has a remarkable, confidence-boosting effect on a man’s ego.
We talk a lot in the dating community about guys getting “tunnel vision” with a girl. Tunnel vision – or “oneitis” – is when a guy gets it in his head that one girl is perfect for him. This is an unhealthy and dangerous dating mindset to have, but it is largely due to one thing: a lack of other high quality female options. This is a plight common to many men, but not to the preselected.
Understand: It is very difficult for a guy to put a girl on a pedestal when other girls are trying to get him. Abundance in life breeds an abundance mindset. Preselected men have a good life with a lot of women around them. It’s hard to have an unhealthy personality and be down on yourself when everything in your world is working in your favor.
Why Preselection Works (And When It Works Best)
Preselection works because preselection means you are considered (or assumed) to be valuable.
Yet that value can change dramatically depending on the environment. Switch up where you go, and your preselection will either increase or decrease. This is why your “scene” is so important; it’s where you have built up high social proof. Leaving your scene usually means lowering your preselection and so your overall attractiveness – a risky venture, especially if your Persona is lacking.
If you want to maximize your chances with women, you must do whatever you can to meet girls in places where your preselection is high.
Not all environments will get you the same advantage, so you must be strategic about which places you go to meet women. There is a lot to be said about having “your bar” where everybody knows who you are. Indeed, this is why hosting a successful party is one of the best ways out there to increase your preselection. Not only does it put you in your scene, but it shows you are the leader of it.
Preselection is social in nature. With the exception of looks (which have a social component to them, but a more universal one), preselection requires a favorable environment to work.
Usually, as discussed above, being preselected depends on having an environment filled with people you know well or who know about you. But in some cases, being preselected matters entirely on where you’re from or – indeed – what color your skin is.
One of the major reasons western men find so much success with women while traveling, for instance, is the effect of preselection. Any traveler to a foreign land is “exotic,” but western men traveling to South America, Asia, and (to a lesser extent) Eastern Europe are also preselected because they have come from “richer” countries or more “attractive” cultures. Men who go to these countries find that women are more open to them there. Make fun of men for this if you want, but it works. And the reason why is no different than why girls are more attracted to the popular jock than the nerd.
What To Do If Your Preselection Is Very High
Although the higher your preselection, the more attractive you are, at a certain point a man’s preselection can ironically become somewhat of a burden. This is especially true if you are a man of high wealth, fame, and status.
This may seem counterintuitive, but in fact makes sense. At a certain point, you simply don’t need any more options. Quantity of women is not an issue; screening them is. It becomes hard to find out whether a girl likes you and not what you have. Sycophants and clinger-ons surround you. It becomes close to impossible to cut through the fat and find a girl of quality.
This may sound absurd if you haven’t lived this sort of life. But think about it. If a man is known for being extraordinarily in-demand, he will begin to suspect the attention he receives from girls is shallow. Once the novelty of having superficial relationships with beautiful women wears off, he will begin to lose attraction for the women who surround him. They are playthings, not women to be taken seriously.
To get around this, the strategy for these guys is counterintuitive. They must try to conceal their preselection. That way, they can assess a girl for “long term” material, and see if they connect on the Persona and Personality pillars. Only later once that has been proven should such men reveal their inordinately high levels of preselection.
This has a couple of benefits. One, it helps a guy to establish a more genuine connection with a woman. But two, it allows him to create more mystery. If you are a high status / wealthy guy and don’t show it, a woman is going to be wondering what the actual “story” is with you. When she finds out, it will be a pleasant surprise for her; plus, it makes you look down-to-earth and modest despite your assets. These are all very good things when it comes to high quality women.
Understand: while each pillar of attraction is important, you need to be careful of which one you lead with.
If you lead with preselection – if you name drop or flash your assets and social connections – you will attract women, but women who predominantly care about that stuff. Unfortunately, these women are not the sort of women who really love you – or at least, they only love you under the contingency that you maintain that degree of preselection. If you lose it, expect cheating or a jarring break up. Thus, if you are a guy with high preselection, you need to be careful that your preselection doesn’t do too much of the talking for you. Or at the very least, you need to know what you’re getting into.
For meaningful relationships, preselection is best used in the background of an interaction. It should never become front and center; it should be felt subtly and passively. That is where it does what it does best: magnifying the other pillars, and making girls more open to talking to you to begin with.
Preselection’s Role In Relationships
Preselection’s main advantage might be getting a woman interested in you initially, but its job doesn’t stop there — it plays an enduring role in a relationship’s stability and passion.
Understand, the value of your Preselection to a woman is as much intrinsic as comparative, because a woman values you based on how much other women value you.
Continuing to look good in a relationship, sustaining yourself financially, having a broad social network — these things are all appealing to a woman for the aesthetics and lifestyle they afford. But women are also motivated on a base level by Hypergamy, and how much they have compared to other women. You cannot ignore the role your Preselection (or anticipated Preselection) had in this equation when she initially expressed interest in you.
If she meets you and you’re in shape and successful, and a few years later you’re overweight and broke, her attraction for you will be shattered. After all, she expected that level of Preselection to at a minimum be maintained. Any decrease of it, to her, is considered “breaking the deal,” like false advertising.
Preselection is thus essential at keeping a woman objectively aware of your value. It stabilizes a relationship. So while you may only see the benefits of Preselection in your relationship at the beginning from the interest of your woman, realize that its built into the attraction you already have with her. It becomes the source of the baseline. The only way it gets amplified is if from the attention other women show you for your Preselection — an important underlying competitive dynamic that in healthy relationships is recognized, and helps keep the passion alive.
(Read: 5 Ways To Have Great Sex In A Relationship)
Final Thoughts: Why You Can’t Rely On Preselection
Preselection gets a man options. It gives him opportunities with women. But make no mistake: it doesn’t give him the women itself.
If you’re a man with high levels of preselection but that’s all you have, your dating life will be mediocre. This is true even if you are a celebrity.
Women will be persistent and tolerant with the social mistakes and insecurities of a preselected man, but their patience is not unlimited – especially with girls who are looking for more than resources and access. You can get pitched as many baseballs as you’d like, but if you can’t hit them you won’t get to first base (literally). Preselection gets you the throws, but it doesn’t teach you how to swing.
So, while you shouldn’t doubt the power of preselection, don’t fall for the loser mindset guys pass around that “you need to get rich to attract women.” If that’s what you think, you are screwed. Money helps get pretty girls around you, but it doesn’t get them to love you, and it definitely doesn’t stop them from using you.
The best thing about preselection and why you should pursue it is that it just makes your life easier. If you’re introverted, you don’t have to stress as much about approaching. The environment works in your favor and you can just enjoy yourself as girls come to you.
And once they’re there?
Time for the next step: “catching” them.
And for that you need Persona.
Stay tuned – we’ll talk about that next time.
– Pat
PS If you want to build up your preselection, you might like working with me because I used to be really unpopular. Seriously. I was a big loser, much worse than anything you can imagine. And yet, I turned my social life upside down. I can show you how too.
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