This has to be the best thing about the whole subject that I've ever read (if somebody knows who wrote it, let me know and I'll give them credit):

Ten uncomfortable truths...
I posted part of this as a response to another thread, but someone pointed out to me that it probably shouldn't be buried on page 4 of a forgotten thread, so I thought I'd post it as a new thread and expand on it a bit.

Let me enlighten you to a few uncomfortable truths that you absolutely must accept if you ever want to have a good relationship with a woman, ever. Guys seem to have the hardest time understanding and accepting these things, and nearly every this one girl/one-itis post, nearly every "I just can't get past my limiting beliefs" post, and nearly every "this doesn't work for me" post can be addressed by understanding and accepting one or more of these truths. These are in no particular order, so don't take them as ordered by importance or whatever. I'm going to format it like a question was posed, and then answer it.

1. How do I know if she wants to be my girlfriend, or if she just wants to be friends?

Women know within the first 5 minutes whether they want to have sex with you or not. If they don't, it's an uphill battle changing their minds. If they do, all you you have to do is not fuck it up and you'll be having sex with her as soon as she is comfortable enough with you. A woman is never undecided about it after you've been hanging out talking to her for an hour or so, she is never saying to herself "Do I like this guy? Do I want to be his friend or his lover?", that's just not how it works. She decides immediately which category you fit into, and if she puts you into the lover category, it is up to you to show her that you're man enough to fill that role. If not, you kind of automatically fall into the friend category. This is why you should treat every woman as if you are going to be her lover. Sarge on like you expect to lay her, and if she has already decided that she never wants to fuck you, she'll let you know.

Women, by and large, want men to take charge and make decisions. If you don't take charge and decide that you're going to be her lover, you won't be. It's that simple. The man who sits there and says "What does she want? Does she want me to touch her? Does she want me to kiss her? Does she want me to fuck her?", is a man who never has a satisfying relationship with a woman.

2. How do I be her friend if she doesn't want to be more than friends?

Ok, first of all this is a terrible question that should never even enter your head. You should meet every woman with the intention of being her friend AND her lover (assuming she's attractive and interesting enough). If the chemistry just isn't there for one or both of you, you should still be able to be friends with her.

It is easy to try to be her lover, fuck it up, and become her friend. It is extremely difficult to try to be her friend, and then decide later that you want to be her lover. So if there is any chance whatsoever that you could have a sexual/romantic relationship with a woman, and I mean any miniscule iota of a chance, you behave as if you want to be her lover. Let her tell you she only wants to be friends after you fuck it up, and at least you tried. But going back to lovers from friends after you've fucked it up is extremely difficult.

3. What if I don't want to fuck her on the first night? Or day 2? Or month 2?

If you are going to have a sexual relationship with a woman, it necessarily must happen within the first, say, 20 hours* of knowing her. Mystery Method teaches men how to do it in 4-10 hours, but you can take longer than that without blowing it. However, if you haven't fucked her within about 20 hours, she has already decided that you're not man enough to be her lover, because real men want sex and they seek it actively. In her mind, you have become an androginous, sexless friend after 20 hours without making any moves. Unless you have a valid disqualifier, like one or both of you are in an exclusive relationship (and even that one is iffy), you should be having sex with her in under 20 hours. If she's a friend of your girlfriend or something like that, then you still want to attract her as if you want to have sex with her, but you just can't cross that line into actually trying to have sex with her until the disqualifier is nullified. So there are some circumstances where you might know her for longer, but once you have actually started trying to close, the clock is ticking.

The bottom line here is that if you don't want sex there is something inherently inferior about you as a man, because the major biological drive for males of any species is reproduction. It is higher priority than feeding yourself, covering yourself from the weather, and even saving your own life. There is no way to spread your seed without a sex drive, which is why it is the most basic and fundamental biological imperative you have. If you don't have a sex drive, work on that shit. You are not a man without it.

You can say that sex isn't that important, that you'd rather have a relationship, but what you have to realize is that sex is how the relationship starts. Prior to sex, you're just some guy, maybe with the potential to become a lover, but you're not her lover until you are having sex. So if you want to have a relationship, you do that by first having sex with her. So, for those of you who say you don't want to have casual sex with tons of women, not only are you liars trying to cover up some issue with your self-esteem, you are causing your own problems. You can't know if a relationship is even possible with a woman until after you've had sex with her.

Additionally, bad sex can absolutely ruin a relationship. Not only does it lead to cheating, but it leads to all kinds of other arguments and disagreements and resentment that can and will spell the end no matter how strong the rest of the relationship is. You have to know what the sex will be like, and whether you can both handle what it will be before you can know if you'll be able to maintain a lasting relationship. If you postpone sex until later, not only do you risk getting LJBF'd, but what if everything is perfect, and then you realize that you are completely incompatible in bed? The relationship is already over, it's just a question of how long you intend to drag out the death throes.

(* 20 hours means time together, not total time passed. e.g. a 30 minute date, a 2 hour date, a 3 hour date, and a 2.5 hour date = 8 hours, even it they happen over a 2 week period)

4. I don't want to have one night stands/bang every chick that comes along/etc, I only want to use TMM on "this one special girl", how do I do everything right when she comes along?

This is important. The only way to get better at sex is to have more of it. The only way to get better at picking up women is to pick up more of them. Your approach is fundamentally flawed. You can't be doing this to learn "how to spark attraction for those few really great chicks I happen to meet...".(quote from a previous thread where I was answering a posters specific question)

That's like saying you want to learn to throw knives but you don't want to have to throw them every day. You just want to learn so that when that once in a lifetime chance comes up to get up on stage and throw knives at the woman on the rotating wheel, you'll be able to do it. But if you don't throw knives every day leading up to that moment, you're going to skewer the bitch. Same thing here. If you want to be able to attract that special woman, you're going to have to practice on hundreds of un-special women to get it right. If you want to impress that special woman in bed, you're going to have to practice on, at the very least, dozens of un-special women to get it right. If you want to have a good relationship with that one special woman, you have to practice having a relationship with dozens of un-special women in order to learn how. It's just a fact of life.

Let me give you a personal example. I breathe fire. I'm a singer in a band, and as part of my stage I act I breathe fire using 151 proof rum. The shit tastes horrible, it burns your mouth and leaves your lips numb, and is quite a shock to the system when you have to hold a mouthful for 20-30 seconds while you time your burst correctly. It's 75% pure alcohol after all. But if I can't stand holding the shit in my mouth, if my eyes are tearing up and my tongue feels like it's on fire, I'm going to miss my mark. So you know what I do? I breathe fire at home, when no one is around. It's not fun (well, maybe a little bit ), it doesn't entertain anyone, I do it to get used to the feel of the fuel in my mouth, to practice doing it safely, and to learn how best to get a good, impressive flame. That way, when I'm on stage, and the show is going on, and everything's hitting on all cylinders, and I have 300 people looking at me, waiting to see what I'm going to do, I blow an 8 foot flame over the crowd's heads, and people oooh and ahhh, and panties drop all over the room like I just pulled out a 14 inch cock. When the time comes, I can do it right because I spent time practicing, even when the crowd I was preparing for wasn't there. I prepare, because the worst possible thing that could happen would be for the moment to arrive when I'm supposed to do my thing, and instead of blowing an impressive flame, I blow out my torch, gag on the rum, cough pure alcohol all over the crowd, and look like an asshole. Or worse, accidentally set my face on fire, burn down the stage, and ruin the whole show. In stead of everyone being impressed, everyone would think I'm a dumb asshole and they'd never come see me again. If you don't put in the time preparing, you will, without a doubt, fuck it up when that "special" woman comes along.

5. This girl is different/special/whatever...

This might be the most important point of all. No one woman is "special". Sorry, hate to break you pretty little world view, but women are all the same. Each one is a little different when it comes to personality, intelligence, quirks, etc, just like men, but they all have the same drives, the same needs, the same emotions. This one or that one might be more to your taste or be more compatible for you because of your own tastes and quirks, but that doesn't make her special, just more tasty or compatible. She's not special, just better for you.

This is something my friend and I have discussed a lot lately, because he's having this same problem. There's "this one girl" that he likes, he has a lot of respect for her based on her personality, she's really his type, everything. Seems to be a great match. He absolutely refuses to game her, and won't even make a move to get to know her better. It's not one-itis, it's wishful one-itis. He's afraid that when he starts talking to her and putting the moves on her, she'll go for exactly the same things that women he has no respect for always go for, and he will lose his respect for her because she's just like every other woman. You have to realize that this is your problem, not womens'. They are what they are, and you you can rely on them to continue to be what they are. It is your own limiting beliefs that make this a bad thing. The truth is, women are women, and they all want the same thing: a good man. It doesn't matter if it's a party girl you met in a bar or your dreamgirl that you met in church, they both want the same thing. And if you can come across like a good man, they will both fall for you in exactly the same way. To see that as a negative is simply selling yourself short.