Shy? How to attract women!

Will getting strong and muscular get you a girlfriend? Will getting ripped washboard abs make all the women at the beach swoon over you? Thats what a lot of advertisers want you to believe! Its the oldest trick in the book, preying on men’s insecurities to make a buck. Take this Charles Atlas ad from the early 40’s:

It seems that to get girlfriends in 1940 you needed to buy Charles Atlas’ strength training program so you could look like the big guy on the right and kick sand in the 97 pound weakling’s face. Seems that profitable sales tactics don’t change with the decades. Seventy years later, sixpackshortcuts is using the same strategy to make millions – promising that “quality hot women will drool over you” if you buy his $97 eBook:

There is just one little problem, it doesn’t work. Not only are there no studies I can find that show women are attracted to guys with sixpack abs, there is a very good study to the contrary. This study from the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences indicated that an optimal bodyfat level for males wanting to attract females is 12% – very few men show any abs at 12% bodyfat! Despite what men seem to desperately want to believe, women like fit men but not scary-ripped or hyper-muscular men.

Will lifting weights help you attract women?

Lifting weights WILL help you get dates but not for the reason you think and its important that you understand how it helps you because it can make the difference between dates and no dates. As much as many want to believe, getting dates is not about chiseled jaws, huge pecs, and rippling abs. In the studies and serious articles I have seen describing what women are attracted to in men, I never saw sixpack abs, arms and pecs in the top 10 criteria. By the way, what I mean by “attracted to in men” is not hypothetical interest but real interest in dating. For example, there was a great study that showed women were really attracted to men with lower voices but because they associate low voices with infidelity, they tend to disqualify these men for long term relationships. Anyway, after reading a lot of articles, I distilled the lists down the best I could and came up with these top 9 criteria:

sense of humor.
talent and professional passion.
self confidence.
great smile.
grounded and humble.
kindness.
positive outlook and drama free life.
intelligence.
good active listener.

With that list, how on earth could working out with weights help you? I’ll explain in a bit. Many guys look at this list, see humor at the top of these lists and go memorizing jokes. Trying to be funny when you are NOT is a BIG turn off. Why? Look at #3, self confidence is very important. If you are trying hard to make someone like you by forcing jokes, you might as well put a red flashing beacon on your head that says “Insecure”. Insecure is NOT attractive, its a big red warning flag. When you try to be someone you are not, people see right thru it.

A lot of the above items are ones that you cant really do anything about but there ARE ones that you can easily improve and thats where lifting weights comes in. Amongst guys, its typically a sign of weakness to them if you are really nice – truly nice. It takes someone REALLY confident to be nice, and women dig both NICE and CONFIDENT. So what does confidence and nice have to do with lifting weights?

Many young men are lacking in confidence and its no wonder when they compare themselves to the likes of Taylor Lautner, Jeff Seid, and Justin Beeber who seemed to sprout muscles overnight. Many teens are told they are stupid, ugly, and good for nothing, and they start to believe it. This lack of self-esteem and confidence is what is most preventing them from getting girlfriends, not the lack of abs and big pecs.

Lifting weights is a GREAT way to build your self-esteem and your confidence!!! When people start to lift weights, a wonderful transformation occurs. They start out so embarrassed about themselves that they cant even workout at a gym or take their shirt off when its hot so they do home workouts. They set their goals for gaining strength and getting leaner and make progress week by week. When these folks start to lose bodyfat and their shirts slowly start to get tighter in the chest and looser around the waist, they realize that they are NOT losers and they can accomplish what they set out to do – in short, they get self confidence that transfers over to all aspects of their life. Self confidence allows you to be yourself without feeling you need to impress – confident, grounded, humble, and comfortable in your skin is sexy every single time. That self confidence makes them much more attractive and so they get dates – not because of the abs and pecs but because of the self confidence and the ability to be them selves. Don’t make the mistake of confusing self confidence with cockiness. Cockiness is a real turn off, true humble confidence is a date-magnet. Being a cocky jerk may impress your friends but its a big turn off when it comes to the dating scene.

Do other sports help attract women too?

Other sports can be just as effective at improving self confidence as lifting weights is. Martial arts is a great example of this. Many teens who are painfully shy with low self esteem have bloomed with martial arts training. Virtually all sports help with self esteem as long as its actually something that is of interest to the child. Of course, the tough part for parents is to figure out when to force their teen to take a class and when to back off. Many a teen who HATED their parents for forcing them to participate in a sport has thanked them profusely for decades after for making a pivotal change in their life. Parenting is a tough job.

What about shortcuts?

There are a lot of shortcuts to getting washboard abs and big muscles – illegal drugs and surgery to name a few. Will they get you dates sooner? Ask yourself this, when you were a kid, did you ever cheat on a test or in a game? Do you remember how it made you feel? Typically cheating might make you win but it does nothing for your self-esteem or self confidence to know that you didn’t earn your victory. Since this is all about improving self confidence and self esteem, its quite likely that cheating shortcuts wont help you that much on the dating scene. You gotta earn your gainz!

Do you have to lift weights to attract women?

Do you have to lift weights to be a “babe magnet”? Of course not! We all recall seemingly odd situations in high school where women seemed to flock to some men who didn’t seem handsome or attractive in the slightest, clearly something other than muscles were at play here. Look at the above list again, a lot of these things have nothing at all to do with weights. Take #9 above, “active listening”. How many times have you seen a couple at the beach where you shook your head and thought – “how did he get HER? – she is incredibly attractive and he looks very ordinary.” Men and women are very different in what characteristics attract them. In John Gray’s landmark book “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” the many differences between men and women are pointed out and many of them are very applicable to the dating scene. Gray points out the importance of communication styles is pointed out and the difference in styles between men and women. Men are far more likely to immediately go into bulldozer problem-solving mode when often all the woman wants is to know that you understand the pain of the situation and sympathize with it – active listening. You can learn to be a good active listener without going to the gym!

Another example, take #2 “talent and professional passion”. One of the easiest ways to be be more attractive to women is to be truly passionate about your work/hobby/vocation/calling. There was a study published in the Psychology of Music that showed that the same man carrying a guitar case instead of a gym bag was 3x more likely to get a woman’s phone number! If you want yet another reason to work on time management so that you can follow your true passions , this is it. Not only will succeeding at your passion make you one of the happiest people on the planet but it will make you very attractive as well. If you live and breathe music, it might not lead to Carnegie Hall but it will very likely improve your dating scene.

#1 “Sense of humor” is very broad and is not limited to being a good joke teller. “Sense of humor” is being able to laugh at yourself when you do something stupid. “Sense of humor” is being able to see the humor even in stressful, bad situations. Deadpan or “dry humor” can be just as funny as a knee-slapping joke. You cant learn to be funny, you either are or you are not; however, when you become self confident its much easier to laugh at yourself :)

Lift weights for yourself, not for anyone else!

Summarize for me, will you?

Enough beating around the bush, lets talk about the 900 pound gorilla in the room. Despite what advertisers want men to believe, big arms, huge pecs, tree-trunk thighs, and washboard abs don’t attract women – the truth is that they are more effective at attracting gay men. If you want to get huge and ripped, thats awesome, but realize that you are doing it for yourself and no one else. To attract women you need to be confident and comfortable in your own skin without feeling any need to impress or pretend to be someone you are not. Lifting weights is certainly the easiest way to gain self confidence in my opinion although its certainly not the only way. Certainly, women prefer healthy and fit to sedentary flab but once past that low fitness threshold, the factors 1-9 above are far more important than chest and bicep measurements in your ability to get dates and develop quality, long term relationships.

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Shy? How to attract women!