In my last post, I talked about my experience with a dating coach. If you’ve read it, you know my experience was pretty positive. I had a blast, learned some new things about dating and seduction and about myself, and came away with a stronger sense of confidence. Maybe some of you have been thinking about seeing a dating coach and aren’t sure if you should take the plunge or not. In this post I’ll share some thoughts about when I think it’s a good idea and when it isn’t.
Bad Idea If: You don’t have the basics under control
By “the basics” I mean areas of your life that will be important to attracting women but aren’t directly related to dating and seduction. How you define “the basics” will be slightly different for each person, but there are a few fundamentals that I think apply to almost everyone: physique, fashion and grooming, education and career, basic social skills, life experience, and self confidence.
If you’re too fat or too skinny, the first think you should do is get in the gym and start eating a better diet. You should at least have an average looking body before you start investing money in dating skills. Of course – there are fat guys and skinny guys out there who can get girls. But they’re doing it in spite of their body type, and I’d argue they have to work harder in other areas like style, money, and personality. This whole thing becomes much easier if you’re in decent shape.
Also, don’t ignore grooming and fashion. If you’re still wearing your cargo shorts and baggy t-shirts to the bar, it’s time for an upgrade. If you don’t pay attention to your beard and/or your hair, it’s time to start. Sloppy grooming and clothing choices can kill your attractiveness. And you don’t have to look like something out of GQ either. Some simple, well-fitting shirts and pants can totally transform your look. If money is an issue, you can find some good stuff at Target if you live in the US.
If you’re working a dead end job and aren’t in school or planning to go to school soon, that’s an issue too. Now, this doesn’t mean you need to get some job as an investment banker making high six figures. That’s not realistic for most people. As long as you’re making a solid income in a career that you enjoy, or are studying or working to get there, you’ll do just fine.
Basic social skills are a tough one. It’s not something you can easily fix with a few hundred dollars and a trip to Target or even with a better nutrition plan and a few months at the gym. There’s no specific set of guidelines for how to get better at this, and no specific set of criteria for what bad social skills look like. But if you struggle to hold a conversation with people and find yourself not relating to many people, that’s probably a bad sign. And I want to clarify – this is not the same as being an introvert. There are plenty of introverts who are successful with women. I know because I’m one of them. It’s fine to be introverted and enjoy your alone time as long as you’re able to do well in social situations when the time comes.
Life experience and self confidence are also kind of hard to define. But there are some situations where it’s obvious. Are you pushing 30 and never stopped living in your parent’s basement? Do you make decent money but you’ve never traveled out of the country? Have you been hanging out with the same two or three friends since high school? Then you probably lack some life experience. Before spending money on dating coaches, go take a trip abroad. Get your own apartment. Move to a new city and make new friends. Then worry about dating coaches if you want. Same goes for self confidence. Are you generally down on yourself about everything? Do you hesitate to take risks in life because you’re convinced you’ll fail? Maybe your self confidence needs work. If it’s really bad, it could be a case of depression or something similar and you might need medical care. But if it’s something you think you can improve on your own, try seeking out new experiences and broadening your horizons. That’s one of the things that helped me get my confidence up over the years.
If you already have all of these down, you might be ready for a dating coach.
Bad Idea If: You’re a virgin (or close to it)
I know some dudes want to see a dating coach because they haven’t lost their virginity well into their 20s and beyond. For a lot of these guys, working on the things in my last point should probably be their first priority. So I imagine there’s a lot of overlap between these two groups.
Either way, I don’t think it’s a good idea to see a dating coach at this point. Here’s why. Most dating coaches tend to focus on cold approach. For those not familiar with the lingo, cold approach means meeting girls by going up and talking to random women in bars and clubs and night and on the street or at events during the day. Coaches do this because usually you’ll be spending no more than a couple days with them, and cold approach and gives instant results. There’s no waiting for a girl on a dating app to message back and then waiting another three days before your date. The problem is, most guys find cold approach super difficult. And for someone with no experience with seduction, this is like learning how to mountain climb by starting with Mount Everest. Chances are you’ll either get frustrated and give up or you’ll end up getting hurt (emotionally in this case) and decide not to keep going.
If you’re a virgin, I’d recommend getting a little experience under your belt first. Start with girls in your social circle or from online dating. There are plenty of resources out there to help you make that first move, so I won’t get into that here. But you’ll probably have a much easier time and enjoy the process a lot more if you save cold approach for later.
Bad Idea If: Your expectations are unreasonable
Ok so maybe you have the basics under control and you’ve had some success with women. Maybe you’ve had a girlfriend or two in the past and have slept with few girls over the years. But you want to develop superpowers. You want to have a new girl every night of the week, get threesomes regularly, date a supermodel, or whatever it is you fantasize about. Well I have some bad news – seeing a dating coach probably won’t make that happen right away.
That isn’t to say that a dating coach can’t help you build the fundamentals you need to make that happen one day. But one day or even one weekend with a dating coach probably won’t improve your skills enough to let you achieve all your fantasies.
Bad Idea If: You don’t know what you want out of it
Do you have a vague sense that you want to be better with women but have no idea what exactly you need to improve? Then it’s probably not the right time to see a dating coach. The problem is, there are a million different ways to get better with women, and the dating coach won’t automatically know which of these you want to focus on. So you might end up paying a lot of money for sessions that address things you later realize weren’t all that helpful.
Let’s say your problem is getting a girl to come home with you at the end of the night. Maybe you have no issue approaching, maintaining a conversation, or getting dates from the apps. But every time you ask a girl back to your place, she declines. If you know that that’s your problem, the coach will be able to design your time together in a way that will address these issues. But if you don’t specifically address this with your coach, you might end up spending most of your time on approaches or keeping a conversation going, which won’t really help you.
So if you know you want to improve your dating and seduction skills but don’t know where you need work, I’d encourage you to do some intense reflection. Think about your past interactions with women and your emotions surrounding these interactions. Have all of your dates been from the dating apps because you’re terrified to approach a girl in person? Do you regularly get dates but can never convince her to come home with you? Or maybe you have no problem getting girls back to your place, but they don’t want to have sex when they get there. All of these are different issues and they’re things dating coaches have heard a million times. If you can identify where you need the most work, it’ll help you get the most out of your time with the coach.
Bad Idea If: You don’t know which coach to see
There are a lot of dating coaches out there. And because of the nature of the industry, they generally don’t have tons of reviews the way a popular bar or restaurant does. Some of them will have a few reviews, but even those will take some research to find. They might be buried in a pickup forum somewhere or on someone’s old Facebook page. So it can be tough to know who’s legit and who’s going to waste your money.
I’d recommend doing some reading on forums like Seddit to get look for opinions on different coaches. All of them will have their own individual styles. I remember reading that coaches with bigger companies like RSD were hit and miss. Some focused a lot on prepackaged routines and didn’t tailor things to individual students. And some of the independent guys I read about were a little too aggressive for me. I want to be assertive and dominant but I don’t want to do anything that will get me accused of sexual harassment.
There were a few coaches I thought about before I made a decision. But you have to go with the person who you think is the best fit for your needs and personality. Don’t just pick someone randomly or without doing some research.
Good Idea If: You have the basics under control, you have some dating experience, your expectations are reasonable, you know who you want to work with, and you know what you want out of it
That’s right. The only time I’d recommend seeing a dating coach is when you’ve taken care of all the things I talked about in my other points. Does it seem a little restrictive? Here’s why I think it isn’t.
Despite what they want you to believe, dating coaches aren’t miracle workers. They can’t take a fat dude with bad grooming habits, no career or education, and no experience with women and have him dating Emily Ratajkowski in one weekend. It’s just never going to happen. Dating coaches will not radically transform your dating life, they will not turn you from a loser into a player in a weekend, and they can’t make your other flaws disappear. Maybe if you commit to working with a dating coach long term, for at least six months or so, they can move you in that direction. But most guys don’t have the money for that, and even then, the coach will only be effective to the extent that you work on other aspects of yourself during that time.
What dating coaches can do is help you fix one or two specific aspects of your dating life that you want to fix. For me, it was cold approach. For other guys, it might be building enough attraction that she goes home with you at the end of the night. And for others it might be working on how to keep a conversation going during a date. If you go into the experience with a specific, reasonable thing you want to work on, they can probably help.
I’m very glad I worked with a dating coach and would absolutely recommend it to someone in my situation. If after reading everything here you’re ready to take the plunge, you’re probably in a good position to benefit from it.
