The One Flirting Secret that Changes Everything—from Apps to Dates to Charming Approaches

A woman's not going to fall for your resume.

Okay, she's going to fall for how you make her feel.

Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.

I am your host, dating coach, Connell Barrett.

I am your podcast dating coach here to help you flirt with confidence, get more dates, and get a great girlfriend, and do it all by being authentic.

No toxic, sketchy, pickup artist moves needed.

And I want to ask you if you ever struggle with how the heck do you talk to women?

How do I flirt?

What do I say?

Why do I have dates?

It seems to go well, but then she says just not feeling it.

And today I want to help you fix that issue and share with you what I call man-to-woman communication, which is a turbocharged form of flirting that is,

I wouldn't call it a quick fix, but it's really a superpower in dating.

Once you are able to get on the wavelength of man-to-woman communication, you're going to get out of the friend zone and you're going to know what to say and do, and it will make things go so much better, both in person, but when you're texting, when you're approaching.

Man-to-woman communication is like a lens through which you look at all of dating, communicate through all parts of dating.

What is it?

It's better for me to show you than to tell you, perhaps, or tell you a quick story.

I want to tell you about Trevor.

Trevor is one of my clients from, oh man, it's before my book came out, six, seven years ago.

And Trevor came to me because he was stuck in the friend zone.

He called it Alcatraz.

He was like, oh, I'm stuck in Alcatraz.

Trevor was having date after date after date, and women women just kept saying, hey, I'm just not feeling it, but you're a nice guy.

And then he had a date lined up with a woman named Becca.

And Becca and Trevor, they actually had a little pre-date phone chat just to sort of do a little chemistry test.

And she even said to him on their phone call, she said, just so you know, the last three or four guys I've met, I haven't really been feeling it.

So don't feel bad if we're not, you know, right for each other.

If there's no connection.

It was almost like a preemptive friend zoning.

She wasn't doing it to play games.

She was just trying to give him a heads up.

She was actually trying to be trying to be sweet because she just very was very picky.

And I know a little bit about Becca.

Trevor told me she's a brunette.

She's very pretty.

She's a very successful chef at a fancy New York City Trebeca restaurant.

Anyway, so Trevor had been struggling, but I was coaching him on man-to-woman communication.

Okay.

So

he meets her at this bar.

Becca's running a few minutes late.

She says, hey, I'm running behind.

I'll be there soon.

Trevor texts her, well, just so you know,

you're going to have to give me one free drink for every minute you're late.

And I like the good stuff.

So take your time.

Winky face.

And she wrote back lol.

Okay, I brought my, I brought my credit cards.

Then Becca arrived at the date.

And there was a really telling moment Trevor told me about.

She was talking about her weekend, what she had done, shoe shopping, makeup shopping, something that was a perfectly valid topic for a woman to talk about, but it wasn't helping the date.

And one of the things I told Trevor to do is take leadership,

take a conversational leadership role.

And if the conversation isn't conducive to a good date, step in, take charge.

And in the middle of the story she was telling, Trevor said, hey, you know what?

Let me jump in here.

I've actually totally lost interest in that story, but let me tell you what happened to me this weekend.

And then he told a story about his weekend.

And he told me how scared he was in that moment to cut her off and lead the conversation into a different direction.

He told me that she cocked her head and looked at him as if to say, did you really just interrupt me?

But she kind of liked it.

And then he did a couple other little moves,

a light tease here, a sincere compliment there.

And then about 15 or 20 minutes into the date, she crawled across on top, not on top of him, but she crawled over and sat on his lap and said, I want to sit on your lap.

This looks much much more comfortable and they were all over each other

they were making out she's sitting on his lap the bartender the people in the bar are like giving them the all the get a room guys

look

so what changed oh and by the way their second date

was a couples massage and that was her idea She said, hey, you know what we should do for our second date?

I have a pass to get couples massage.

Let's go get a couple's massage.

That was their second date.

And you can imagine how well that went

when the two masseurs left them alone in the room.

It's a pretty good second date, right?

Now, talk about getting out of the friend zone.

So, what changed?

Well, what changed was that I was coaching Trevor on the art of man-to-woman communication.

Women don't put us in the friend zone.

As men, we do it to ourselves by playing it safe and by treating a woman more like a friend than a woman.

And basically, Becca was saying to Trevor, thank you.

Thank you for being that rare guy who teases me, who leads, who's authentic and sincere, who tells me I'm sexy and who takes charge of the date.

Now, by the way, I want to make an important point here.

I am not, repeat, I am not recommending that you shush

women or

interrupt them.

That is not the lesson here.

In fact, I probably wouldn't coach that to almost any guy, but in Trevor's case, it worked because he showed a sense of steel and strength.

Take charge.

He basically said to her, you know what, your story is not helping our date.

My story is more fun.

And women love a leader.

Women love a man who leads.

And that's what made her so attracted to him in that moment, apart from them just having good chemistry.

So

why does this work?

I want you to think of there being three channels, three social channels.

There's pretty much only three social channels for all of your interactions with everyone in life, excluding your family.

Taking family out of this.

Every single interaction you have with other people falls into one of three categories.

Channel number one is friend to friend.

This is a purely platonic channel.

There's no sexual subtext when you're talking to a friend, right?

This is just you and your buddy Mike talking about last night's game, right?

So this is that friend-to-friend channel.

Channel two

is

patron to professional.

Basically business slash patron to professional.

Every interaction you have at work is channel two.

Or if you're going shopping and you're buying jeans and the woman who is helping you you try on some jeans at the clothing store, at the mall, that's a business transactional conversation, right?

So that's channel two.

And then channel three is what I call man-to-woman communication.

This is that romantic frequency.

It's a frame.

It's a social frame where your masculine energy and intent connects with her feminine energy.

There's flirtatiousness, there's sexual tension, and it's an electric feeling that helps you both think and feel, damn, there is something here.

There are some romantic sparks here.

So, those are the three channels.

Think about this.

Every single social interaction you have with anyone outside of your family falls into one of these three, three, these three channels.

This blew my mind when I first learned about and started to use this concept.

I realized, oh my God, everything is either, it's either friend to friend, friend,

business/slash transactional, or man-to-woman.

And here's the problem.

Most men are walking around,

and by default, you're defaulting to friend to friend with women when you want to be man to woman.

Mostly friend to friend.

So you might meet a woman you're attracted to, and it's kind of like these, there's these three channels on a TV set, and you automatically default to friend to friend because you might think, hey, I want to be respectful.

I don't want to be a creep.

I don't want to say something wrong.

And that's coming from a good place, but that can create a certain timidity,

safeness that essentially puts you in that friend to friend channel.

And that essentially tells women how to feel.

So a woman just feels like, you know what, I'm getting more friend vibes from him.

And then you get stuck in the friend zone.

And

I know this from my own experience.

I was a lot like Trevor.

I got friend zoned so many times back in the day.

And I had to learn how to smash out of it.

And

so typically what's happening is you default to friend to friend, or you might default to business and transactional.

Have you ever had a crush on the cute Starbucks barista or the attractive bartender at your favorite bar.

Well, if you ever asked her out or wanted to, but leading up to it, all you did is talk about the business, the coffee, how busy it was,

then you were in that business transactional frame.

And then you might have asked her out.

And then she said, oh,

no, thanks, or I'm seeing somebody.

She wasn't rejecting you necessarily.

She was probably just saying, well, I don't know how I feel about you because you and I have been having a business professional transactional conversation.

And now you're asking me out.

She's basically saying, dude, you got to be man-to-woman with me before I can decide how I feel about you.

So this is good news.

I want you to know this is good news because what this means is that women who maybe have friend zoned you or women who just haven't seen you the way you want, it's not that you are not enough.

It's that you're just on the wrong channel.

You're on that friend to friend channel instead of the man-to-woman channel.

That's what Trevor was doing wrong.

The dates leading up to his date with Becca, Trevor had been playing it very safe, not flirting, not taking risks, not making any moves at all.

Now, you might be thinking, okay, I want to be man-to-woman, but Connell, what if I come on too strong?

What if I make her uncomfortable?

Well, that's a valid concern.

And I'm glad you're thinking that way because that shows what a good, hearted, kind guy you are.

But here's what I've learned after coaching hundreds and hundreds of men one-on-one, actually thousands of men one-on-one, and tens and tens and tens of thousands in

a broader way, is women want you to flirt with them.

Women want you to get on that man-to-woman channel.

At least if they're on a date with you, they do.

And often they want to.

They want you to if you are at a bar or if you're at the gym and you're chatting them up.

They want to feel that sense of romantic connection and intention,

as long as you're doing it with

empathy and class and charm.

Bottom line is women are not looking for another platonic friend.

Okay.

They've got plenty of friends.

women beautiful attractive dateable women they have their girlfriends they have gay friends they have some male friends they're not looking for more of those.

They're looking for a man-to-woman connection.

And the real key to doing this is doing it with class, with authenticity, with emotional intelligence.

You struggle with dating, right?

Sure, you have a good job and cool friends, but you just aren't sure how to flirt.

The apps don't work for you.

And sometimes women put you in the friend zone.

It's frustrating.

Hey, I struggled with dating too.

As an introvert and a total nerd, I didn't just live in the friend zone.

I owned real estate there.

But I escaped using the dating philosophy of radical authenticity, which I've used to help thousands of men in 17 countries find love.

It's what I wrote about in my best-selling book, Dating Sucks But You Don't.

And radical authenticity is why Psychology Today called me the best dating coach in America.

And now I want to personally help you attract your dream girlfriend.

So go to datingtransformation.com and book a free call with me.

On our call, I'll tell you how my one-on-one coaching will help you find your dream girlfriend.

And you'll be doing it by flirting with confidence and authenticity.

No creepy pickup tricks needed.

So go to datingtransformation.com, book a free call today, and let my personalized coaching help you get a great girlfriend.

So let's get into it.

Let me, let me...

give you the three pillars of man-to-woman communication.

Okay, here are the three pillars.

Here's how we get on that man-to-woman frequency.

It comes down to three core things.

The first pillar is showing clear interest.

This might sound obvious, but you'd be shocked how many guys hide their romantic intentions.

They're afraid of rejection, so they camouflage their interest behind friendship or playing it safe.

So they might ask a woman to hang out instead of, I want to take you on a date.

They might compliment compliment her,

I don't know, nice shoes instead of complimenting what a beautiful person she is or

what a cool, interesting woman she is.

And so the first rule of man-to-woman communication is making your interest crystal clear.

Not in a vulgar way, just in a clear way.

Think

innocent, but crystal clear.

I approached an incredible woman named Alexandra many years ago.

And I remember I approached her.

She was walking out of a Forever 21 with her friend.

And I approached and I walked up to her and I said, Hey, I just saw you and you're absolutely adorable.

I had to meet you.

The nice little smile on my face, just warm.

And the key word was adorable.

And she loved it.

Her face lit up.

Got her number.

We went on a date or two.

And I remember we were lying in bed.

And after the first time we were had sex, we were the first time we were intimate.

And she said, you know what I loved about how you approached me?

It was so innocent.

And I thought that was hilarious that she said that to me at that moment because we had just gotten done having some wonderfully raunchy sex on pretty much every piece of furniture in my apartment.

And it was after this, she said, It was so innocent the way you approached me.

So man-to-woman communication can absolutely be G-rated.

In fact, it should be at first.

You don't want to walk up to a woman or be vulgar on a date or vulgar when you approach.

Don't make it about sex.

Don't make it about her body parts, but it can be, hey, you're adorable.

I had to meet you.

That's disarming and innocent to women, but it's still intentful.

It's man-to-woman because you're showing that clear intent.

You're putting a card on the table, right?

Or you're at a bar.

You could be a little bit more PG at a bar

than

when a woman is walking outside of a store on a Saturday afternoon.

You can say something like, hey, you're absolutely stunning.

I wanted to meet you.

Or you seem really interesting, or you seem like my type.

I had to come say hi to you.

Boom, that is direct man-to-woman intent.

So

clarity does two things.

Clarity eliminates confusion.

She knows exactly why you're talking to her.

Okay.

A lot of women aren't quite sure why a man is talking to her.

Now,

she certainly has an idea, but she doesn't know for sure.

So I like clear intent.

When I'm approaching a woman or if I'm on a date and I'm starting to really like her, then I'm going to say, I like you.

I really like you.

Let's go out again.

I want to take you on another date or I want to take you on a date.

So you want to give women the gift of clarity.

And that's part of man-to-woman communication, which I'll get to in a second, is leading.

That's part of leading the dating dance.

Men today,

just like in the olden days,

need to lead this dating dance.

The Me Too era did not change that.

We still want to lead the dating dance.

Our jobs as men is to ask a woman to dance, so to speak.

Her job is to say yes, or no, thank you, and it's fine either way.

So the first rule of man-to-woman communication is clarity.

I'm interested in you, okay?

The second pillar of man-to-woman communication is communicate emotionally with women, not logically.

This is something men get very, very wrong.

for understandable reasons, especially men like you probably, and definitely like me, men who are very logical, analytical, in very logical, analytical careers, we tend to default to analytical, logical conversation, sharing facts, figures, information, talking about things in a factual, logical way.

And

that is more in the friend-to-friend category.

Okay.

Or it's also more of a business slash transactional social frame.

And man-to-woman communication at its heart is about emotional connection, not swapping information.

I was on a first date once with a woman named Jessica.

Second date, it was a second date.

And we were talking a little bit about my job as a dating coach.

The topic came up when I was dating

last time I was single and dating.

And the topic of my job came up and

Jessica said, we're sitting on a a rooftop bar and she's looking around us and she's basically speaking for all women.

She says, we don't want to just, we don't want to go out and swap a bunch of information, trade information.

We want to laugh.

We want to have fun.

We just want to have a good time.

We want to be silly, basically.

She's basically saying, we're here for emotion, not information.

And yeah, a woman's not going to fall for your resume.

Okay.

She's going to fall for how you make her feel.

And this means instead of telling her what you do for work,

you know, you might instead want to talk about how your work makes you feel about what you do.

You know, instead of asking her,

instead of just asking her where she's from,

you might ask her what it was like growing up where she's from or what she loves most about her home state or her hometown, wherever she's from.

Yeah, so there's another client I worked worked with, a guy named Jacob.

And Jacob

is a big shot Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.

And he made the mistake early on when he would approach a woman, he would talk about his job, his status through the lens of his title, his job, his status, thinking that would impress women.

And on some level, it's impressive.

Don't get me wrong.

A woman certainly is more than open to dating a very successful doctor.

What woman wouldn't want to at least be open to that?

But where he was going wrong is he was trying to impress her with facts, figures, and status, as opposed to

emotionally impacting her by talking about

what his plastic surgery job, plastic surgeon job allows him to feel and do.

So I made a correction with him.

I said, hey, Jacob, no more talking about your job status,

your cool position.

Talk about how

your job as a plastic surgeon lets you give back

the passion you have for it.

Why did you get into being a plastic surgeon?

He said, oh, I wanted to help people who had disfiguring scars, who had misshapen faces, who had like noses and all kinds of

different medical problems.

I wanted to help them overhaul their self-confidence and feel good about themselves.

I was like, dude, that's what you want to tell women.

That is so attractive because it's emotion-based and it's warm and generous and giving.

And that changed everything for him, the way he talked about his job.

And women just lit up because he was lit up.

Make sense?

Anyway, so the second pillar of man-to-woman communication is communicate emotionally, not logically.

Here's a quick way to do that.

A simple, practical way to do it.

One thing you can do is use the words

love and hate when you're talking about something.

So don't just say, oh, my favorite movie is

blank, Godfather.

Say, oh, I love the Godfather because,

you know, it's such a great, incredible film, powerful.

But I hate Godfather Part 3

because

they didn't pay Robert Duvall enough to appear in the movie and they ruined a great franchise.

I'm a movie nerd.

I'm always talking about movies.

Use love and hate in your conversation.

Sprinkle it in.

Love is a powerful emotional word, right?

But you can also say hate a little bit.

I don't mean be negative.

You don't want to be hate this, hate that.

But it's fine to say, oh,

I love this kind of music.

I love that, but I hate this.

On my first first date with my girlfriend, Jess, she

talked about, we both talked about how much we loved Italian food.

We loved our families, but she said how much she hates ketchup.

And I said how much I hate mushrooms.

So we peppered in things that we disliked.

Oh, we hate jogging.

We hate, hate, hate jogging.

We still watch people jogging past us and say, what's wrong with them?

We don't like what they're doing.

So it's okay to have some hate mixed in with some love in your conversation.

This makes your conversation more compelling to women because women are addicted to emotions.

Another thing you can do when talking to women is start off sentences with, here's how I feel.

I feel this way.

Here's how I feel.

Here's how I feel about what you just said.

Starting sentences with, I feel,

primes your psychology and your mind, your brain to start communicating in a more emotional way instead of what you might be doing now, which is defaulting to facts and figures.

Okay.

And another thing you can do is when you're done sharing how you feel about something, you can ask her how she feels.

Wow, so today was your first day in your new job.

So cool.

How did it feel?

How do you feel things are going?

Don't say, how long did it take you to get the promotion?

What is your new title?

Or don't just talk about facts and figures.

Get her to open up about how she feels.

This is all part of the art of getting women to kind of, not getting them to do anything, but helping her feel the way she and you both want to feel, which is emotionally connected.

All right.

And the third pillar of man-to-woman communication is lead, don't follow.

Women are very attracted to leadership.

Not dominance, not control, but leadership.

This means you make decisions, or you at least lead the charge to make decisions.

You take charge of interactions.

You guide the conversation and the logistics.

Just like that story I told you about Trevor, that was Trevor basically saying, I'm going to lead this conversation in a win-win

place,

or try to anyway.

And Becca loved that.

She could feel that sense of leadership and she could see that he was doing it with good intentions.

Pretty soon she was sitting on his lap planning their sexy

couple's massage for date number two.

How do we lead?

Instead of asking, what do you want to do?

You can ask a woman out by saying, hey, I know this amazing little wine bar.

You and I are going to go there.

You're going to love it.

What night's good for you?

So

instead of, where do you want to sit?

You lead her to the perfect spot.

You know, instead of sitting down on a date and saying, so what should we talk about?

No, you decide what to talk about.

You go first.

You lead, women follow.

Women love a man who leads.

Again, I'm not saying be pushy.

Do not be pushy.

Do not ignore her preferences.

This is a collaboration, but it's also a dance.

It's kind of like a date, just like dancing.

Typically in dating, sorry, typically in dancing, men lead, women follow.

That's a sort of a natural order of things, generally.

And leadership is about you taking responsibility for the both of you having the best time possible.

And here's the really beautiful thing.

When you lead with real certainty and confidence, she gets to relax into her feminine energy.

She just gets to say, okay, he's taking the leadership role.

I can just let go and be feminine, be soft.

And

that's man to woman, communication.

I dated a wonderful woman named Lorraine.

She's my, was my girlfriend at the time.

And Lorraine

has, at the time, anyway, she had a very kind of natural masculine side to her.

Don't get me wrong, very beautiful, very feminine in a lot of ways, very physically attractive, but she had kind of a little bit of a tomboy vibe.

Now, she's going to med school.

She was not afraid to speak her mind.

So she had masculine traits.

But at the same time, she is a woman and the first couple of dates

I planned everything to the T.

I basically said to her hey you just need to show up and look amazing which you always do and she just could not she just loved what a planner I was she said it over and over again you're such a good planner you're such a good planner and I was able to allow Lorraine I think to

let go of a lot of her masculine traits and feel feminine, feel really pretty, feel like a a young woman as opposed to a young professional badass chick i got her to let go of that identity early on which she wanted to do so even if a woman has masculine traits generally i found that generally that women like to feel feminine at least in that courtship phase of dating

and okay so let's go back to Here's a good metaphor I like to use for

man-to-woman communication.

And this is more about the conversation.

It's an EKG analogy.

And this is in my book.

If you want a good visual, obviously this is a podcast, so I can't show you a good visual.

But if you want to check out my book, Dating Sucks But You Don't, there's a couple of good visuals that show like an EKG, right?

This is a good concept for understanding man-to-woman communication,

at least conversationally, the pure conversation of it.

Picture a heart monitor, like in a heart, like in a hospital, right?

Like, you know, those those machines that, that show those heartbeat spiky lines that go up and down.

A healthy heartbeat has a very steady baseline with those regular spikes and dips.

And of course, if that line goes completely flat,

that person is dead, right?

So, and if it's spiking wildly all over the place, that person is...

having some kind of heart attack issue.

And so I want you to think of your man-to-woman conversations with women the same way.

Imagine like a healthy, normal EKG baseline.

Most of an EKG is a normal relaxed, sorry, most of an EKG is a normal

horizontal line with those occasional spikes up and spikes down, right?

Think of a good like first date conversation or first approach conversation or when you're texting a woman early on on the apps or off the apps,

that baseline is going to look like an EKG.

So what I mean by that is 80% of your conversation is going to be just normal, sincere.

You being yourself, you being authentic, normal you.

And I would say about 20% of those spikes are going to be man to woman moves, for lack of a better term.

Okay?

Man-to-woman moves, right?

And think of these as like positive spikes and negative spikes.

The little upward spikes are going to be flirty comments, you showing interest, you teasing her,

you maybe doing some physical touch, if that's what you and she like.

So think of like positive spikes that are

essentially flirting or showing your man-to-woman interest.

Okay.

And then you also can have some negative spikes.

And don't worry, I don't mean these are actually negative things.

What I mean is they're little playful,

disarming things that playfully push her away.

Playfully, not really, playfully.

And I'll give you an example here in a second, but negative spikes would be like a playful tease,

challenging her,

giving her a hard time about something silly, basically creating some tension, right?

On my first date, let me give you an example of a positive spike and a negative spike.

On my first date with Jess, my girlfriend, I remember saying to her, you know what's really sexy about you?

You're so witty and funny.

I'm trying to keep up with you.

Usually I'm the funny one on the date, and I'm just trying to keep up with your wit.

It's very sexy.

That's a big positive spike.

I was putting a big man-to-woman card on the table, letting her know you are sexy and here's why.

Earlier in the date, I had teased her with some fun negative spikes.

My book had come out and I was teasing her and pretending that

she was like Annie Wilkes in the movie Misery, stalking me, an author, just like in the movie, an author.

James Kahn plays an author who is injured and essentially kidnapped by a crazy fan.

And so I was teasing my girlfriend on our first date saying, are you going to like tie me to a bed and basically torture me?

I'm a little worried here.

Those are negative spikes.

I was teasing her.

So,

but most of our conversation, going back to that EKG analogy, was like horizontal, normal, horizontal conversation, just me being genuine.

authentic, sincere, being myself, in other words.

That's why I talk so much about authenticity and sincerity, is that the normal, regular, authentic you is enough,

more than enough for so many women.

But it's the negative and positive spikes that's what creates the emotional and the romantic

surges of good feelings that women like.

It's a little bit like being on a roller coaster, switching metaphors.

I'm sorry, I'm all over the map here with metaphors, EKG to roller coasters.

But

anyway, I hope that all makes sense.

So yeah,

so a conversation on a first date or an approach, again, 70, 80% normal, sincere, just you being yourself, and then 10 to maybe 20% at most of those spikes.

So yeah, I might just be having a conversation with a woman.

Oh, yeah, so I'm a dating coach.

I've been doing it since 2013, 2012, 2013.

I love it.

I love helping men, just kind of being genuine, talking about things I'm into.

And then I might say, oh, by the way, you look really really adorable when you,

I don't know, bite your lower lip like that.

That's really cute.

Oh, anyway, like I was saying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I might give her a little compliment.

That's a positive spike.

Or maybe she tells me in a conversation, I'm asking about favorite movies or favorite TV shows.

And she says, oh my God, I hated Breaking Bad.

I couldn't get into it.

And I might say, what?

You didn't like Breaking Bad, the greatest TV show of all time?

Okay, well, let me get the check.

Clearly, this is not going to work out.

But it was nice meeting you.

That's a tease, negative spike.

But again, 80% of my conversation is going to be just normal chit chat.

All right.

So I like the idea of the EKG.

That's a visual that I found to be very helpful.

Okay,

so let's talk about some practical tools to help you apply man-to-woman communication.

I want to give you some nuts and bolts and some tools here.

Here are three or four tools, three or four techniques.

Technique number one, and this can be on a date.

Ideally, this would be a date, a first date, or you've approached and you're five, 10 minutes into a conversation, like at a bar or at some kind of social event.

Technique number one is the power complement.

What is a power complement?

A power complement is a specific, authentic

compliment

that tells a woman

one of her traits is charming or attractive to you.

Power compliment is you find her trait special, sexy, charming, incredible.

There's nothing wrong with

less powerful compliments.

You might say, oh, you look nice.

Or you might say, oh, wow, you have

you're, I don't know,

you have good taste in music.

That's fine.

Nothing wrong with those compliments.

But a really powerful compliment is

telling a woman something special about her.

Like the example I gave you when I told my then future girlfriend that her wit, her intelligence was just absolutely knocking me out and I found it sexy.

So that's a power compliment.

A power compliment can also be behavioral.

Something about her is making you feel something as a man.

Something about her woman-ness is making you feel something as a man.

I briefly dated a wonderful woman from Peru.

I'll call her Cassandra.

And Cassandra was

in New York for a brief period of time.

We had a little

short-term little fling.

And I remember on my second date with cassandra

uh i'm sorry first date with cassandra she had this beautiful lilting laugh very feminine and i just found myself overcome

with

being charmed by her laugh and i said you have you have

i i just said i love your laugh your laugh makes me smile your laugh makes my soul smile I love the way you laugh.

And I said it with a deep eye, you know, deep, strong, hopefully eye eye contact

and a tone in my voice that was man to woman by the way the way you use your voice is man to woman can be right so i didn't say i like your i like your laugh i said by the way i love your laugh cassandra your laugh makes my soul smile keep doing it with a little sly grin And I could, I could feel her

swoon a little bit.

And that was the night.

Oh, it was our second.

Okay, now I'm remembering.

It was our second date.

We did not kiss on our first date.

Our second date, we did kiss.

And it was not long after I gave her that power

compliment.

I made her, helped her to feel the way she wanted to feel.

Very simple, right?

These are not fancy moves, but they're honest, authentic, and true moves.

I was not just pulling this out of my

non-existent ass.

I was telling Cassandra something I deeply felt in that moment anyway.

Hey, I love your laugh.

It is so cute, adorable.

It's making me feel, making my soul smile.

Keep doing it.

And she, I could see her just get all starting to blush and swoon.

And then we kissed later that night.

Now, if I'd played it safe the whole night saying, oh, so how has your trip been going?

Tell me more about Peru.

Wouldn't have gone anywhere, probably.

She would have said, well, nice guy, but I'm just not feeling it.

So give a woman a power compliment, okay?

A power compliment, it's specific,

it's emotion-based, and it's telling, you're telling her how she is making you feel.

And make it a trait.

Make it about her,

could be her laugh, could be her confidence, her wit, her ambition.

Don't make it, or just her overall energy.

Don't make it about just her looks.

Okay.

If you can help it, try not to make it just about her looks because that makes it land more deeply.

Technique number two, playful teasing.

Classic, a classic, playful teasing.

This is where a lot of guys

go wrong.

Either they don't tease at all, which is leaving a powerful tool in your in your tool belt.

You don't want to do that.

Or they overdo it.

They tease too much or they tease about the wrong things.

So here's the simple rule on teasing.

Tease her about silly, trivial things that a reasonable person could not take personally.

You know, let's say she's five, 10 minutes late.

You can tease her about being, you know, hey, did you win Miss Punctuality in college?

You know, you could tease her that way.

If her favorite movie is like a cheesy movie, you could be like, no way, your favorite movie is the notebook?

Oh boy.

Why do all the really pretty girls have the worst taste in movies?

You could tease about surface level things, like being clumsy.

I had a date once where this woman, Jen, she kept dropping

sushi on the floor.

She did it two or three times.

And I got to tease her about what a clumsy,

how bad she is with chopsticks.

No reasonable person is going to get upset because you tease them about being bad at chopsticks.

Here's what not to tease women about.

Don't tease them about how much they're drinking.

Don't tease them about

their ugly dog because I did that once.

Oh, man.

I once

told a woman her dog looked like a rat.

She got really upset.

Understandably so.

I screwed that up.

Obviously, don't tease about things like weight or appearance.

Stay away from that.

Tease about surface level things.

Or tease about totally made up things.

Like I teased Jess about her being

a stalker, like in the movie Misery.

Obviously, that was just completely absurd.

So nothing for her to get offended by.

So that's the art of teasing.

Here's the thing to remember about teasing.

Any tease

has a deeper truth to it.

And we want the deeper truth to be trivial.

and nothing she get upset about.

If you make fun, I had a client who

teased a woman about being, oh, God, don't do this.

I had a client,

the date was going great.

She's a few years older than he is.

He's in his early 30s.

She's pushing 40.

He teased her about being a cougar.

And that was not an established thing that they had already joked about.

And she got upset.

She basically ended the date because he's teasing about her being old or older.

And that's something that she feels insecure about.

Understandably so.

So, remember, every tease has a deeper truth.

If the deeper truth is you're klutzy with chopsticks, you're fine.

If the deeper truth is you're old or you drink too much, a lot of women won't be fine with that.

So, that's one rule about teasing.

The other rule about teasing is less is more.

Less is more.

Think of teasing as

pepper in a dish.

Maybe salt, maybe,

if she really likes it, but it is not the dish.

It's not the actual meal.

It's just pepper.

So less is more.

Please take that lesson to heart because boy, did I make that mistake.

I used to think, oh, teasing, that's the secret to dating.

I'll just tease, tease, tease.

And I came off like an insult comic.

I was insulting.

I overdid it.

It killed some otherwise good possible connections.

I felt like a jerk.

So less is more.

Keep it light.

Very, very light.

Okay.

Technique number three is:

let's go with being physical, physical expressiveness.

Technique number three, physical expressiveness is just being free to

touch a little bit on a date

and maybe a little bit more if it's going well

and then noticing how she's feeling

again

we don't want no physical touch man-to-woman communication

should probably include some kind of physical touch probably

if a woman is relatively attracted to you and vice versa now some women it's going to absolutely depend on her given blueprint for what she's comfortable with.

And what I like to do is, if I'm on a first date or if I'm coaching one of my clients, I'm going to say,

yeah, give her a nice, warm,

G-rated hug at the start of the date, if it's appropriate,

unless her body language is screaming, don't touch me.

But give her a little, friendly, quick little hug, hello.

And then small step, maybe a brief touch on her arm early when you're making a point.

Maybe a high five that you hold for just a beat longer than normal.

Maybe at some point you escalate things.

While noticing how she's responding to touch, you might take her hand

and

for a few seconds, ask her about a piece of jewelry.

Oh, hey, what's the story behind this jade bracelet?

What's this about?

And then give her her hand back.

And of course, along the way, you're going to notice, is she reciprocating?

Is she touching you back?

When you do the high five and hold it does she pull her hand away right away or does she hold it right up to yours she's giving you a signal that she's liking it she might lean into you oh back to back to trevor trevor and becca

on that amazing first date that trevor had with becca he reported back to me he said yeah you know she you know i high fived her she high fived me back

She threw her leg over his leg.

This was before she sat on his lap and they started kissing.

She at one point casually threw her leg up over his leg.

They were sitting next to each other in this bar slash lounge.

So it was logistically easy for her to do that.

And the physical touch, they were both getting closer and closer and closer.

And so you want to kind of think of like escalating stair steps of physical touch.

Go up a stair step.

Does she like it?

Go up another stair step.

Does she not like it?

Does she pull back?

Stay on that stair step or go one step back.

Sometimes a woman needs a little bit more time to be physically expressive with you, or sometimes that's just not how she likes to flirt.

And that's totally okay.

So one size does not fit all here with physical touch.

Some women love it.

Some women, maybe, some women, it depends on their mood.

Some women, hell no, do not touch me until date number two.

Everybody's got their own blueprint, and that is totally fine.

But you do want to at least test the waters here.

And another really important rule of physical expressiveness, this might be the simplest, most practical rule, is have a reason for the touch to make it not creepy and actually seem normal and

confident.

Have a reason for the touch.

So in other words, don't just put your hand on her thigh and leave it there for 30 seconds without any sense of why you're doing it.

Instead, you might, you want to have a reason for that touch.

You might say, oh, whoa, what a cool tattoo.

Can I see this?

And you maybe briefly touch her tattoo or her, you know, where her tattoo is on her arm.

Or

I.

I liked to have a reason.

Like, I've had a few dates over the years with women who either work out or in a couple cases, well, many dates with women who work out, but a couple cases with women who had just come from the gym or a couple of cases they were personal trainers.

And we talked a little bit about physical fitness and hitting the gym.

And I said, no way, you're a trainer or you've been working on your training.

Oh, make a muscle.

I want to see how big your muscles are.

She makes a muscle.

And then I just touch her bicep.

It's a reason to touch.

There's a reason to,

if she understands why you're touching and the reason is G-rated at first, early on in a date, then it'll be fine.

It makes sense to her.

But if you just touch because it's time to escalate physical touch, because that's what that weird toxic pickup guy on TikTok told me to do, that's going to make you seem really weird and creepy.

So don't do that.

Have a reason for the touch.

And the last tool I'll mention, I already stated this essentially, but I want to say it again.

This is really important.

I want to give you the concept of the 80-20 rule.

The 80-20 rule is this.

80% of your conversation with a woman on a first date or texting or approaching basically all parts of dating courtship in the first few dates, 80%,

maybe more.

but 80% at least will just be authentic, sincere conversation.

You being you.

You are enough.

You do not have to be Mr.

Perfect Game, Mr.

Charismatic, awesome flirting moves.

80% is just you being authentically, awesomely you.

20% at most is all these man-to-woman moves I've been talking about.

That's 20%

at most.

80-20.

It's not the other way around.

Sometimes...

Like I had a client call recently where my client said,

no way.

80% can just me me being, can just be me being a Doug?

I can just be Doug.

I don't have to do all these fancy backflip flirting moves.

I said, absolutely.

More Doug is better.

We just want about 20% early on to have a little bit of that man-to-woman oomph, right?

The tease or the joke or the compliment.

But 80% or more should be just you being you.

It's not the other way around.

Less is more in this world.

So think of, think of like,

think of like a cake, a delicious chocolate cake.

The frosting is only, you know, the top 10 or 20% of it, the outer 10 to 20%.

The frosting is what makes it delicious, really delicious.

But if it's all frosting,

that's way too much.

That's way too much of a good thing.

It's the same with flirting.

It's the same with these man-to-woman moves.

If your quote-unquote man-to-woman moves are 50, 60% of the date, not only is that really hard to keep up it's not constructive to connection it makes you seem like a weird flirting robot instead of a normal genuine person and women want a relatable normal guy not some charismatic flirting machine so that's part of the um the thing that that's a big secret I want to make sure that not a big secret, but an insight I had to share with you.

So yeah, let me give you kind of a quick real-world story from my own dating life about all of this in action.

I was in Venice Beach once, and I met this incredible woman named Valerie at a patio bar.

She's a very ambitious fashion expert, very smart, very successful, just gorgeous, cool.

And

from the very first moment we started talking, I made sure I was on that man-to-woman frequency, right?

I wasn't

interviewing her about her job or just making small talk about the weather.

Instead, I was being authentic myself, but along the way, creating those emotional spikes, right?

Building tension, showing interest.

And there are two moments that stand out from

my

couple of interactions with Valerie, first couple.

In our very first conversation, I remember asking her, so

what do you like to read?

I love a woman who's into novels and books because I'm a writer.

I'm a journalist.

At the time, I was not a dating coach.

And she said, and she kind of paused a little bit, like,

read?

Well, yeah, I like to read.

And she seemed to be almost be getting nervous.

And I said, uh-oh, you can read, right?

Please tell me you're not one of those beautiful but illiterate women who can only read her Instagram feed.

So that's a playful negative spike tease.

Okay.

She was laughing and joking.

She could tell I was kidding.

Obviously, I wasn't actually accusing her of being illiterate.

And she claimed she read these books.

And we went back to our normal conversation.

And

then fast forward two nights later, we had our first date.

About two hours.

on this patio bar in Venice.

And

one of the man-to-woman tools, I didn't talk about it that much here, but one of the man-to-woman tools is eye contact,

what I call wolfish eye contact.

And I'm on this patio bar with Valerie, and I just find myself growing more and more attracted to her.

You know, it's been several hours at this point of us talking.

We're on our first date, essentially.

And

it wasn't so much what I was saying, but it was how I was looking at her Because you're a man, she's a woman.

And if you're attracted to her, you're going to look at her differently than you're going to look at a friend or a coworker, right?

And at one point, she said,

wow, you're looking at me like I'm dessert.

And

that was a really powerful moment.

And I don't remember what I said.

I think I said something like, well, can you blame me?

Look how stunning you are.

You're the hottest woman here by far.

And just very direct.

And

about a half hour later, we left the bar.

Just so happens, my hotel room was

300 yards away, less than that, probably a hundred-yard walk away.

So we leave the bar.

We go back to my hotel, and we are still in the hotel lobby.

I'm sorry, not lobby.

We're still in the hotel hallway, walking toward my room, and she starts unbuttoning her top.

She starts taking off her clothes before she even gets into my hotel room.

That might have been the sexiest moment of my life up to that moment.

Just the visual of a woman basically saying, I am so attracted to you.

I'm going to start taking off my clothes, even though we're not in your hotel room yet.

Now, I'm not saying any of this to brag or to come off like I'm God's gift.

All I did was allowed natural, normal, genuine chemistry

to

flower, to bloom, to ignite.

I didn't do magic tricks.

I didn't say magical lines per se.

I just got Valerie and I.

We were on that Manda Woman wavelength.

She felt feminine.

She felt seen.

She felt safe.

I'm confident in saying.

She,

yeah, she felt turned on both

because I was looking at her, looking at her, talking to her, both with respect as a gentleman, but also as a wolf who was like very attracted to her.

And then we basically had a fling the whole week together.

And that's what man-to-woman communication is about.

It's about letting the natural state of things take its course.

Okay, let's finish up with,

I want to give you a couple of marching orders.

Things I would love for you to do on

going forward beyond listening to this episode, because you might be thinking, hey, this all sounds good, but what do I do now?

Well, I have three things I want you to do.

I want you to start practicing applying man-to-woman communication

just like any other skill.

It's like playing guitar or cooking or getting better at a musical instrument, right?

It takes practice.

So, step one is: I want you to practice using emotional language with people and, of course, gravitating toward women.

So, I want you to start describing your experiences in terms of how they made you feel, not just the facts and figures of what happened.

So, instead of I went to a concert, you might say, I went to this rock and roll show, and the energy of the room was absolutely electric.

And you could feel everybody connected to the music, right?

And you can practice this with everyone,

not just women you're attracted to.

And the more natural it becomes, the easier it's going to be for you to use in a dating context.

So, mission number one is practice emotional language, or what I call man-to-woman emotional language.

And you can also practice using phrases like, I love, I hate, or I feel, how do you feel?

Second mission is when you are interested in a woman, stop hiding your romantic intentions.

If you find a woman attractive, let her know in an authentic, G-rated way.

It's not creepy to let a woman know you're interested as long as you make it about her as a person, not just her body parts or not just about sex.

So let her know.

You can say things like, you're adorable.

I want to take you on a date.

Or, or tell her what you find attractive about her that's trait-based, not just about her physicality.

Although there's nothing wrong with being physically attracted to a woman,

but what makes it feel more meaningful to a woman is, wow, he likes me for me, not just my physical attractiveness, right?

So I want you to show clear interest.

Now you have to read the room and adjust your behavior for a given context.

Do not do this at work.

Do not tell the office stunner, hey, I am really attracted to your sexy lips.

No, don't do that.

You're at work, okay?

Ask yourself, will this make the person feel comfortable or uncomfortable?

Think about the context, right?

So say these things on a date or on a dating app

or with your crush, assuming you don't work with your crush, okay?

So anyway, use phrases like you're adorable or you know what's really charming about you.

And then tell her what's charming about her.

And if it's a woman who you do want to go out with and ask out, again, assuming it's appropriate.

Assuming you don't work with them,

then you can use that clear, simple language, right?

The first rule of man-to-woman communication is clarity.

So you could just say, hey, I find you really charming and I want to get to know you better.

Would you like to go on a date with me?

It can be that simple.

Clarity is way more important than clever.

I can't tell you how many women I've gone out with.

And all I did, and by the way, I have the clever.

gears.

I can be clever and witty on my better days, but sometimes I just didn't have anything super clever or fancy.

And I just said, hey, I'd like to get to know you better.

Can I take you on a date?

You're charming.

I want to know more about you.

Oh my God, women love that.

Women love that.

So mission number two is find ways to show a woman or women some clear interest.

Again, assuming it's appropriate in the context.

And mission number three is

with the next date you're on or the next woman you are

interested in and you're, for lack of a better term, pursuing, lead the interaction.

Take charge of

everything from logistics to conversation.

Take the lead.

You lead, women follow.

So take charge of conversations.

Take charge of logistics.

Suggest where the two of you might go.

Suggest what you might do.

Lead the conversation.

Don't ask for permission.

Make positive assumptions.

And along the way, if she needs to correct you or if she wants to jump in, fine.

It's okay.

I'm happy to let a woman lead for a while or lead with me, maybe take turns.

So I'm not asking you to be a,

you know, I'm not asking you to overdo it.

But you do always want to listen and show her you're hearing her.

But essentially, I want you to lead the dance and get her, check in with her and see how she's feeling about what you're doing.

Again, this is not about being controlling or dominating, not even close.

I love when women ask me out, or in the past, the few times they have.

I love when a woman says, hey, I want to take you out.

Oh, man, that's the best.

You can say Deehawkins me all you want, ladies, if I was single.

But bottom line is early on, those first one to three dates, women want to see a man who is leading that charge.

So be certain in your leadership and know that women really like it.

Okay, thank you so much for listening.

I hope this

this these concepts make sense.

Man-to-woman communication,

there's no magic bullets, no quick fixes that instantly fix everything in dating.

But

other than becoming radically authentic, other than that, I think man-to-woman communication is the closest thing there is to like a secret weapon that can really change the game quickly.

And actually, radical authenticity and man-to-woman communication, these are part of the same,

these are equal sides of the same coin, right?

What's more authentic than you as a straight man, looking for love and romance from a straight woman?

What's more authentic than you giving a woman a compliment, going after what you want, taking good, good,

authentic action, and shooting your shot at romance?

What's more authentic than that?

So, being man-to-woman to me, that's a core part of our authentic selves as men.

Okay, until next time, thank you so much for listening.

And don't forget, your dream girlfriend is out there and she is going to love you.

She's just going to have to meet the real, authentic you.

Until next time.