I’m frustrated, if you didn’t notice.

“Não entendo,” I reply, for probably the twelfth time. It means “I don’t understand.” One of the only Portuguese phrases I know.

The coy smile she had given me the first few times I said it are now replaced with an aching impatience. She frowns at me, then the phone, and then sighs. She pulls out a Post-It note, scrawls some Portuguese on it, hands it to me along with my dysfunctional new phone and slowly instructs me to go to another store in the mall and have them deal with it. She has to repeat these instructions three times before I understand them. This is the fourth cell phone store I am being sent to. Apparently there are a lot of bureaucratic procedures involved with buying a cell phone in Brazil, the details of which are obviously sailing clear over my head. And since none of the store clerks speak English, they’ve all eventually reached a breaking point, lost patience and sent me down to the next store to be somebody else’s headache.

The entire process has taken close to three hours… and it’s still not over. The mall cell phone nightmare continues.

(Although to be honest, it should have only been about an hour and a half, I fell asleep in the Claro store waiting for a customer service rep to call my number. I awoke 45 minutes later to find they had proceeded half a dozen customers beyond me. I strained to convince the rep to take me next since I had been there an hour. But my Portuguese persuasion skills weren’t very effective… OK, since we’re being honest right now, they were non-existent. I couldn’t say a thing, and therefore I hardly raised a fuss. Thus I took a new number and sat my ass back down, this time forcing myself to remain awake for the ensuing 30 minutes I would wait… again.)

I never resolved cell phone issue that day. I finally found an old man in the mall who spoke English and was kind enough to come translate for me — yes, I walked around a Brazilian mall cold approaching people to find someone to translate for me. It turns out that Brazil requires an identification number to activate any cell phone bought within the country, the equivalent of having a Social Security Number in the US to buy a cell phone. There’s a whole formal process that’s required and if you’re a foreigner and don’t work for a Brazilian company, then you’re screwed unless you can get a friend to come in and register your phone under their name. As is probably obvious, I did not have any Brazilian friends with me. So almost four hours after arriving, I left the mall, having paid too much for a phone I still couldn’t use.

…And then got lost going home.

This was my first day in Sao Paulo. And I would be lying if I said days like this were rare. They don’t happen that often, but with enough regularity that the seething frustration, the awkward self-consciousness, the mental exhaustion, and the unavoidable sense of isolation, they’ve all become familiar to me now.

Today, internet entrepreneurship is the latest rage. Attachment-free mobile living is the new dream. And you don’t have to look much further than the 4 Hour Work Week to see the romanticization of such a post-modern lifestyle.

But as with any lifestyle, there are strengths and weaknesses to it. It’s not all a bed of roses. You sacrifice some things to gain others. And don’t worry, I’m not here to complain about every trying moment I’ve come across in two and a half years of traveling. There have been far, far, far more good days than bad. And I would not take back a life single decision I’ve made.

But I do want to paint a realistic picture of what this lifestyle entails, the highs with the lows. And posit that perhaps the biggest difference between this lifestyle and a conventional one, is simply that the highs are higher and the lows lower, thus reoriented what one values spending their time on.

Because this is what you don’t hear, and that Tim Ferriss would never tell you: that day after the Brazilian cell phone debacle, after finally finding my way back to my hotel at dusk, I went and sat in my hotel room by myself. Without TV. Without Wifi. No movies. No friends (not like I’d be able to call them anyway). Nothing to do. I went home and laid in bed for most of the evening. Physically and mentally drained and miserable.

And alone.

There’s nothing new about a bad day. We all have them. And we all have our own strategies to unravel our negative emotions. Sometimes we call up a friend and unload on them, perhaps over beers. Or we call up mom or dad and look for a little reassurance. Maybe we put on a movie with our girlfriend and just forget about everything for a few hours. Or maybe we hit the gym or take it out on a basketball court.

But life on the road, it’s quite often that you don’t have any friends to have beers with, you can’t call a parent and lean on them for some support, you don’t have a movie to watch or a girl to curl up with, no gym membership, no basketball court. Often you have to take the brunt of your emotions alone, with nothing to distract you from them.

And it’s hard. But it makes you stronger, more mentally resilient, more centered. When you do eventually bounce back, life feels much lighter. And those joyous experiences you feel in contrast to the dark and lonely ones become that much better. In fact, I’ve found that the stark contrast between highs and lows has actually begun to redefine what those joyous moments are.

Some of my happiest memories from last year were going out and just having beers with some friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Something which I did weekly for years and years prior to this new lifestyle and that was always available to me.

It’s a bizarrely paradoxical effect on one’s emotional life: the extreme highs and novelty of experience render certain “exciting” activities to feel meaningless, and the extreme lows of isolation and frustration make many “normal” activities feel exciting and fulfilling. A Fourth of July parade looks a lot different after you’ve been to Carnaval in Brazil (twice) and stayed up three days straight partying in Ibiza. And I’ll give you a hint: it becomes really boring.

A road trip to the beach back home seems silly in comparison to living on the beach in Thailand, or taking surfing lessons in the swells of Bali. In many ways, you become jaded to your former life.

But on the other hand, the dark times of loneliness, depression, frustration, and isolation make other routine daily events of life — events which you and everyone else take for granted — that much better and more significant.

Last year, I got terribly sick in a rural town in India — possibly the last place on earth you would want to be sick. I had a scorching fever, cold chills and a headache that jackhammered the inside of my skull. I ran out of potable water at about 10PM, and the only stores in town had closed down for the night. I laid in bed through the entire night, unable to sleep due to fever and sweats. No medicine. Dehydrated and incredibly thirsty. And just to make things more interesting, a few hundred bugs swarmed into the room and were now crawling and buzzing around the walls, and occasionally me.

Mom’s Christmas dinner tastes a lot better after an experience like that.

Which I guess is what the paradox resolves into: a devaluing of superficial pleasures and an greater appreciation for simple, authentic ones. I don’t really enjoy the presents at Christmas anymore, the fireworks at fourth of July, or even the parties on New Year’s Eve. I’ve seen bigger parties, been to more beautiful places, and already own everything I’ll ever want in this life. But unlike before, I appreciate every day spent with those who mean a lot to me. A quiet beer on a patio. Watching a basketball game together. Going to a birthday party or a barbecue. These are the events I look forward to now and get excited about, days and weeks ahead of time… And that’s probably the way it should be.

And besides… what’s more fun than answering questions about yourself? Enjoy…

Thank you for the continued support. Your answers do a lot to help me improve the site and the user experience. And don’t worry, the regular site design will return later this week.

Issue #1: The Crane Neck

The Problem: If you walk through a doorway and your chin enters long before the rest of you does, you’ve got a Crane Neck. Guys with Crane Neck always look confused and lost. Crane neck often occurs in guys who spend an inordinate amount of time staring at a computer or television screen. Your head should be in alignment with the rest of your body, meaning that the base of your skull should be in a straight line with your upper spine, not sticking forwards.

The Fix: You can do a movement known as Quadruped Chin Tucks to help strengthen the muscles in the rear of your neck to pull your skull back into it’s proper position. In between sets of a lower-body weight lifting exercise, get on all fours and look straight down at the ground. Let gravity pull your head downwards and then use the muscles in the rear of your neck to retract your head back. Hold that position for a count of 5, slowly let your head return to the down position and then repeat, doing 5-6 reps.

Issue #2: The Rounded Shoulders

The Problem: This is the typical meat-head posture. Too much benching and anterior shoulder work has left countless gym rats with shoulders that round forward and throw their arms out in front of the body. Functionally, this closes the space in the AC joint of the shoulder and leads to impingement and shoulder pain. Physically, it just makes you look like a douche.

The Fix: The first movement we can do to help with Rounded Shoulders is called the Scapular Pushup. This move can be done in between sets of any exercise. To do it, assume the starting position of a regular pushup. Keeping your elbows locked, push through the ground and move your shoulders forward so that the movement of your shoulder blades (the scapula) causes your body to rise. Return slowly to the starting position, letting your shoulder blades return to their natural position and then repeat, doing 8-10 reps.

The next movement we want to do is Band Pullaparts. I like to pair these in between my pushing exercises, like bench presses or pushups, but they can be done in between lower-body lifts as well. This will require the elastic resistance bands that are found in most gyms, but if you do not have access to those, you can do this movement using a cable machine instead. Using an elastic band, take a grip approximately shoulder width apart and hold the band straight in front of you, elbows straight, palms facing down, and arms perpendicular to the floor. Now simply pull the band apart by moving your arms back into the T-position. Your elbows should stay straight and your hands should move in a semi-circular pattern. Use only your rear deltoids to pull the band apart. Return to the starting position and repeat, doing 10-12 reps.

Issue #3: The Sway Back

The Problem: The Sway Back occurs from an issue known as Anterior Pelvic Tilt. Essentially this means that the top of the pelvis is tilted forwards, which leads to an ass-out, chest first posture which makes you look very stiff and unrelaxed. This also gives the impression of a beer belly, even in people who are quite lean.

The Fix: The primary culprit in creating the Sway Back is glute muscles that are not functioning properly. Sitting on our glutes places them in a stretched position for long periods of time, can cause us to not use them efficiently. To fix this problem, a simple movement called the Supine Bridge can help us more consciously activate our glute muscles and bring them back to life. The Supine Bridge can be done in between sets of almost any exercise but I personally like to do them in between sets of squats or deadlifts as it helps me bring my glutes into play more effectively while doing those exercises. To do a Supine Bridge, lay on your back with your knees bent and feet pulled in, as you would while doing a traditional sit-up. Your hands and arms will go flat at your sides. Now, using your glutes, raise your hips until your upper legs are in a straight line with your torso. It is important that you do not let your hamstrings extend the hip and that knee movement is minimized. This will keep the focus on your glutes. At the top, it should feel like you are squeezing your butt cheeks together. Return to the starting position and then repeat, doing 8-10 reps.

Putting it All Together

If you can do three sets of each of these exercises two or three times each week, you should be well on your way to clearing up any of the glaring posture problems that have women mistaking you for Quasi Modo. The effort required to do these in between sets when you would normally just be sitting around is very minimal and the payoff is huge.

However, being conscious of these things in your day-to-day life will pay equal, if not higher, dividends. So consciously keep your head back, don’t let your shoulders fall forward, and walk using your glutes. Position yourself at your desk or TV so that you can keep your back straight and your head back. Stand up and take frequent breaks if you work long durations at a desk. Keep your TV or monitor at eye level if at all possible. Make sure that the workout programs you are on are well-designed and evenly balanced or have someone design a quality program for you. The more you can pin point the areas of your day-to-day life that are contributing to any problems you have, the faster and more effective the fixes above will become.

“You’re witty. You know you’re the only person on the tour I truly enjoy hanging out with.”

I smiled and looked into her eyes and enjoyed this perfect moment in paradise. My bliss was broken as I heard “Sofia!” and a beer bottle get shoved in between us.

“That’s my husband,” she smirked as she held up an origami paper ring on her finger, a gift earlier in the night from the Thai bar man flagrantly ruining my moment. I rolled my eyes at the cheesy gesture and prepared to easily brush off this irritating intrusion. I continued talking for a moment before the local got up and pulled Sofia away as she said to me “I’ll be right back.” I ordered another drink confident the lame attempt would fail and she would be sitting next to me on the bar stool once again. I chatted with our tour guide and occasionally glanced over and saw the Thai bar man playing some sort of grade school patti-cake game with Sofia. I cringed. After a particularly wild and engaging story from our guide I glanced over again to see that both Sofia and bar local were gone. I scanned the bar with my eyes for several minutes before finally spotting them, in a hammock above the DJ booth smoking cigarettes and chatting. My friend brought over two French girls who under different circumstances would have made perfectly nice subjects to my charms if I hadn’t been transfixed on the spectacle I was witnessing: Sofia and the Thai bar man now wrapped up in each other, arms around one another. The chatting turned into kissing which turned into grinding to the sound of house and techno blaring from the bar — not to mention the subtle grinding of teeth of a very perplexed Xander, who was finally put out of his misery when the bar man and Sofia retired to the adjacent bedroom above the DJ booth.

As I lay in bed unable to fall asleep later that night I contemplated what had just transpired and considered how of all the attempts made at this girl throughout the trip, the eventual conqueror employed what I thought were such corny and transparent methods, undoubtedly repeated almost nightly on other Australian girls on vacation. Among the factors is an oft neglected thing I use with some effectiveness back home – romance.

As we pass the one day a year set aside for love and romance, I’d like to posit to that a touch of romance in your relations with women can go a long way. In recent years, volumes have been written in books and magazines about the “hook up culture” and how for a variety of sociological reasons, American men are setting the rules of dating and those rules include absolutely minimal effort and relationships on their terms. And yet at the same time, evidence is strong that despite the celebration of sex positive attitudes among modern Western women, the ultimate desire for love, commitment, companionship and, yes, romance is peeking forth like a plant titling its stems towards a just-out-of-reach ray of light.

When men think of romance they may think of Fabio on the cover of a cheesy romance novel or teenagers lined up to see a silly vampire movie. Or maybe painful reminders of cruelly rebuffed gestures of teenage desire. Or worse yet, maybe they associate the word with a mild form of worship whereby the man spends considerable resources on flowers and gifts, writes poetry or lays his jacket over a puddle hoping for a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night. If you’ve really been warped like I have then the word romance creates a knee-jerk reaction whereby your masculinity must be defended; that you aren’t “beta” or “supplicating” that you are a bro and you don’t love them hoes. Hopefully you’ve realized that romance is really not any of these things and many of these attitudes come from feelings of hurt from past rejections. So if you know what romance isn’t, let’s take a look at some of that make up what I consider romance and how they’ve helped me.

Romance is setting and ambiance
In the story above, much of what was greasing the wheels of that hook up, as well as countless others on the island that night and over the trip, was beauty of Thailand. Whether it’s a pristine beach in the South Pacific, a rooftop view of the city lights in Manhattan or just a dark corner of a candlelit restaurant, the setting and ambiance gets women in the mood for love/sex. The taking in of beauty, of any kind, stirs the emotions in women and thus enables romance to happen. I think the hot new social network Pinterest, which boasts a more that 80% female membership, is an interesting window into the female mind. And what you’ll find between the pictures of food is an appreciation of all things pretty.

Romance is barriers
As Mark discussed in a previous post, barriers to love create sexual tension and ultimately romance. Whether it’s language and cultural barriers, parental disapproval, existing relationships in the way, or emotional unavailability, barriers to a hookup take make said hookup take on erotic qualities, especially for women (but for men as well). Of course the most obvious example is the most romantic story of all time – Romeo and Juliet – where the barrier was the long standing feud between the Capulets and the Montagues

Romance is slightly adversarial
Related to the previous quality, romance that is precipitated by an adversarial relationship can amp up the sexual tension. One study showed that agreeableness in men is linked to lower sexual success and another showed that couples who played tennis against each other were much more likely to have sex later than those on the same doubles team. Virtually every romantic comedy Hollywood puts out begins with a man and woman who initially despise each other only to end up in bed and in love by the time the curtains comes back up. Some light disagreements or even lively debates on dates can increase your chances of success.

Romance is different / unique
There’s a pretty loud voice in our society portraying men and their attitudes towards dating in a certain light. Women will often operate under the assumption that men will screw anything, that their primary interest is sex and that if they do get in a relationship, they are likely to cheat. Whether it’s true or not there is certainly ample evidence to support this attitude, whether it’s Tucker Max or philandering politicians or horny drunk dudes pawing at women at a club. Something I often hear women say is that “men are all the same.” Of course, if you are reading this it’s because you aren’t the same (or at least hope not to be). And that’s where showing yourself to be different in and of itself is romantic. For within romance is the idea that not only this person is different from others but that the two people make something that is different, together.

Romance is in the details
Whether it’s the attention paid to fold of your handkerchief or the table settings for a night in at your apartment, attention to detail shows an effort that is not only a signal of interest in her but a sign of competence that you’ll be capable in a variety of circumstances which in turn engenders trust – trust that she can depend on you for her very survival.

Romance is fatalistic
Again as Mark pointed out when discussing the serendipity bias, when coincidence or perceived acts of fate enter into an interaction between a man and woman, that interaction can often taken on greater significance, as if destiny and the hands of the Gods were working to bring these two people together. Whatever your actual philosophy is, the romance of fatalism can light a spark into a first meeting that can burn long and bright. Anyone who has witnessed a long married couple light up when telling a story of how they first met has seen this in action first hand.

Romance is created through shared experience
Feelings of love can be created and heightened through shared experience. When you meet someone under strained or exceptional conditions, the feelings that are stirred up create attraction. Many people look at the drab day-in-day-out realities of marriage and family life and raising kids as a sex-killing tedium. What they don’t realize is that shared daily experience, through thick and thin, can increase a couple’s intimacy and make romantic moments that easier to spark.

Romance is connection
Above all romance is about connecting at an emotional level. Beyond the bells and whistles and superficialities, ultimately everyone wants someone who understands them deeply and shares their values and goals. Love and romance are after all, feelings.

I would definitely not argue that you should return to the days of Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary and pour the preceding all over the object of your desire. Such a grand, anachronistic departure from the cultural norm will likely be met with skepticism. But in the way that a tough boss or father sprinkles in praise for maximum effect, so too can you sprinkle in romance in your pursuit whether it’s on the beach in Thailand or at your local sports bar. Finding ways to infuse romance into your interaction not only make it more enjoyable, but increase the emotional significance of everything that happens. Try it. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Is it me, or does it seem like everyone ages 20-40 is starting a company these days?

I’m being facetious, of course, but it’s not without a kernel of truth. Start-up culture has become ubiquitous; legions of even the most marginally ambitious people are either starting companies or seriously considering doing so. Just look at the numbers: an average of 565,000 new U.S. businesses were started per month in 2010, and $30.6 billion in venture capital was raised in 2011 – the highest one-year total since 2001. Even in a down economy, people are swinging for the fences in droves.

Including me. I’m a 33-year-old, first-time entrepreneur. My partner and I work full-time on a self-funded website we launched just one month ago. We love our product, our users love our product, and while there’s certainly room for improvement, we’re deeply confident that we’re onto something. But don’t let the pitch-talk fool you: I’m scared out of my fucking mind.

This is the first in a series of tell-alls about first-time entrepreneurship, and let me save you the suspense: there won’t be any fairy-tale endings about the guy who risked it all, failed a dozen times, and then found unparalleled success. Rather, it’s about a guy who’s currently neck-deep in his maiden voyage, doesn’t know what to expect, and while hopeful, is still quivering more than most entrepreneurs will openly admit. My hope is that in sharing these experiences, I’ll help others avoid some all-too-common pitfalls, as well as elicit helpful advice from those of you with start-up expertise.

Here in Part 1, we’ll start with the decision to become an entrepreneur, and then move on to how to actually mobilize on a new business venture when you’re stuck. If you’ve started a company, are thinking about starting a company, or think people are batshit crazy for starting companies, this one’s for you.

The Great Escape

Many successful entrepreneurs claim to have been “born to do it.” They’ll regale you with stories of lemonade stands at age 8, baseball-card businesses at 11, or lawn-mowing conglomerates at 15. Not me. I’ve worked for The Man since my first job waiting tables in high school, never even grasping the concept of “starting companies” until well after college. I’d always just thought companies magically appeared and people worked for them. Perhaps I was ignorant, risk-averse, or both.

While I can deal with being called “ignorant”, no one wants to admit he’s risk-averse. But let’s call a spade a spade: from the time I graduated college, I never leapt off of one professional lilypad without having another to land on. I worked for three large corporations over the course of 11 years, enjoying the stability of paychecks, the camaraderie of co-workers, and the availability of resources. Hardly the stuff of cowboys. Starting a company was something I vaguely romanticized but never actually pursued. I always just assumed that somewhere down the line, I’d bump into someone with a brilliant idea and the entrepreneurial magic would take over. And if it didn’t happen, so what? Life was pretty good.

Until it wasn’t. By Summer 2009, I’d been working for three years at a once-dominant social media company (any guesses?). The company wasn’t doing well, and the pressure from our corporate parent to right the ship was intense. The hours were long, the work was fruitless, and the company made one failed desperation play after the next. I was getting physically sick and thoroughly demoralized as a result of the bureaucracy and chaos, and I’d finally had it – it was time for an exit plan. After poring over my finances, I decided that I’d quit in exactly one year, which would leave me with enough financial cushion to dabble a bit after my departure. Once this was decided, I bought a hanging calendar, pinned it to my bedroom wall, and circled my exit date. 365 red X’s later, I made my departure, informing everyone that I’d be pursuing “entrepreneurial opportunities.”

Failure to Launch

“Entrepreneurial opportunities?!” Who was I kidding – I had nothing in the works. At best, I had a couple of half-assed ideas I could invoke for the sake of conversation, but none were of substance. This much, however, I was sure of: I was thoroughly fed up with all things “big company” and yearned to start something of my own. Sure, I was “faking it” to a certain extent, but I knew I was done with the rat race and owed it to myself to explore the alternative.

So here I was, voluntarily unemployed with some money in the bank and no immediate responsibilities. Now I could take some distraction-free time to figure out what the heck to do with my career, and I couldn’t wait to get started. I got out of bed that first Monday morning and got right to … studying.

Yes, studying. I tracked down every start-up-related book, podcast, and blog that I could find and started gorging on the material. I did what any risk-averse, over-educated, wannabe-entrepreneur might do – that is, anything but the actual doing. If I just kept absorbing prep material, a plan-of-action would present itself, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong. Sure, I was filling my days with “stuff to do” that seemed relevant, but after five months, all the Start-Up 101 content was beginning to blur and repeat itself. It finally hit me that I wasn’t any further along than when I started: I had no strong new business ideas, nor had I taken any real action toward exploring whatever ideas I did have. It was like I’d been training for a marathon by researching running sneakers. I finally realized that I’d have to ditch the aimless “research” and start getting my hands dirty if I wanted to make any real progress.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

Seasoned entrepreneurs may have the chutzpah to tackle new business opportunities alone, but newbies often need partners in crime. When operating alone, it’s easy to lose focus, let deadlines slip, steal a mid-day nap … you get the idea. Having a partner, however, keeps you motivated, accountable, and on task, because, if nothing else, you don’t want to let him or her down. I was having trouble getting the ball rolling myself, so I tracked down an old friend in a similar situation.

That friend – now my business partner – is a college buddy I’ve known for 15 years. At the time I came calling, he’d recently quit his job for reasons similar to mine and was trying to figure out his next step. We spoke at length about what we felt working life should be: meaningful, fulfilling, and … dare I say … fun. Sure enough, we started volleying new business ideas until we finally came up with one that seemed interesting, timely, and doable. It wasn’t a “big” idea – it was a podcast – so we had no disillusionment about it being a real money-maker. We just wanted to create something we cared about. If nothing else, it would be a good starter lesson in taking something from “idea” to “product.”

So we got right to work. Let me repeat: we got right to work. We didn’t spend weeks and months researching the merit of the idea, second-guessing ourselves into the ground. With enough analysis, you can always find a reason to talk yourself out of any business opportunity. But we knew this project was something we’d enjoy doing and wouldn’t take a great deal of time or capital. In such a case, there are no spreadsheets or Powerpoint presentations required; just make it happen.

And we did. We purchased equipment, recorded a dozen shows, and in less than 3 months, had an arsenal of podcasts that frankly, weren’t half bad. We weren’t ready to crown ourselves the next Marc Maron or Adam Carolla, but there was something extremely gratifying about creating something of quality out of thin air. But shortly thereafter, we realized there was a larger opportunity in creating a website based on the podcast’s theme – job-related Q&A – so we pivoted accordingly. We contracted a developer and after six months, we launched said website and are currently building a userbase to support it.

To recap: we started with a podcast. The podcast morphed into a website. Perhaps later on we’ll pivot again to a different business model. But the lesson is, had we not started somewhere, we wouldn’t have arrived anywhere. As we learned, avoiding the “What should we do first?” paralysis is crucial; just pick a lane and start moving. Having to course-correct is sure to happen no matter what, so there’s no sense in delaying the inevitable.

More to Come …

As we continue the series on first-time entrepreneurship, I’ll delve into such topics as money matters, where (and where not) to look for advice, the roles of friends and family in your plight, and of course, the psychological highs and lows of a new venture. If there are other areas you’d like covered, please let me know.

I just finished recording some audio for a future product. I’ll be frank. I hate recording audio. I don’t know why. Usually I’m pretty productive and get on top of whatever I need to do. But when it comes time to record myself, I find the most amazing ways to procrastinate.

This has been a consistent problem for years now. But after a period of time, following the Do Something Principle, I’ve trained myself to just open up the software that I need and load up the proper file. That’s it. Just load everything up and then I can go back to stalking girls on Facebook or whatever I was doing before.

After another bout of procrastination, when I full pull myself together to do something else, it’s usually just to test the mic, and do a quick sound check. That’s all. Make sure it sounds OK.

And through another bout of procrastination, recording starts to not feel daunting or difficult at all. As a matter of fact, everything’s loaded up, tested and ready to go. Inevitably within a few minutes I’m off and running. Yet for whatever reason, I always follow this same pattern every time it comes time to record something.

I’m not defeating procrastination as much as slowly nudging it back with a stick.

In psychology, this is something called “implementation intention.” Yeah, sounds kind of lame. But it’s a useful goal-setting tool that I want to share with you, as it can be applied to just about anything. And its results have been shown to be fantastic.

The idea of implementation intention is closely tied to my own Do Something Principle. In fact, implimentation intention is kind of the psychological explanation for why the Do Something Principle works.

Psychology says that when we have a goal that we want to achieve and we’re avoiding setting out to do it, we actually receive just as much psychological benefit from working towards it in small baby steps as we do from simply forcing behavioral change.

So the idea of why the Do Something Principal works isn’t so much that it gets you one step closer to your goal (it often doesn’t, or only does in a very indirect fashion), it’s that you are interrupting your homeostasis — you’re forcing yourself to behavioral change, no matter how insignificant. Psychologists posit that interrupting this homeostasis and implementing a habit of behavioral change — no matter how ineffectual the actual behavior is — is more valuable than any tangible gains you make on achieving your goal. Implementation intention isn’t simply about doing something towards your goal, it’s programming your mind and body to follow a “If X then Y” algorithm.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you suck at approaching and want to approach 10 women in one night. But you rarely are able to approach more than one or two, and you need to be really drunk.

Typically, in “I should approach her” situations, your mind’s instant reaction is to find reasons or excuses to not do it.

“I don’t care.”
“She’s busy.”
“She’s not that hot anyway.”
“I’ll do it later.”
Etc.

Implementation intention means that you would program yourself with the following: Any time I’m in a “I should approach her situation,” my reaction is now to walk towards her. That’s all. Nothing is expected other than walking toward her.

What you’ll find is that the effort required to walk toward her is often greater than the effort required to open your mouth once you’re in front of her. That’s because breaking the homeostasis is often the hardest part. But once you train yourself to adapt these small, incremental behavioral habits, making the next step is often not far behind.

So brainstorm about what you want to achieve in your own life, but you keep putting off. How could you utilize this concept. Another way I used to use implementation intention without realizing it in university was one semester I began forcing myself to go to the library after class every day for at least an hour. Sure, some days I napped, or stalked girls on Facebook the entire time. But since I was already in the library, cracking my books open and studying became a much smaller leap in behavior than it would have been back at home. Non-coincidentally, when I began my library habit my grades shot way up. I continued it until I graduated.

Ask yourself what if-then habits you can implement in yourself that will eventuate in success at your goal. So many people see achieving goals as going from point A to point B with nothing in the middle. Either you do it or you don’t. They don’t realize that you can chunk down to smaller habits that will propel toward the major goal.

If you like psychological concepts like this and how they can be applied to approaching women, then you should check out my new Approach Women Program.

Remove a guy’s inability to act confidently in the face of his fears, and most of his lady troubles will resolve themselves with time and experience. He’ll stop fearing rejection, stop hesitating to take action, and become comfortable acting on opportunities as they present themselves. I’ve seen it time and time again.

But overcoming your anxiety is this is much easier said than done. Despite there being decades of psychological research on overcoming fears, social anxieties, building confidence, and acting despite being afraid of something, the men’s dating advice industry is woefully uninformed on these matters.

The first major piece of misinformation is the idea that anxiety around women is ever eliminated completely. Research and experience simply shows this is not true. In fact, forcing and expecting yourself to eliminate anxiety will often only make things worse in the long-run. It can actually make you even MORE anxious, and it can push one into disassociating with their emotions and empathy for other people.

A more accurate description of the solution is that anxiety is adapted. That is, instead of cowering in fear in the face of what we’re afraid of, we use the anxiety to energize us and excite us. You’ve probably felt this in other areas of your life, perhaps a sports competition, a test in a subject you were good at, giving a presentation on something you knew a lot about. It’s those butterflies in your stomach. And whether those butterflies make you relish the challenge or sick with worry depends on your belief on your ability to accomplish what’s before you.

For instance, if I told you right now that in an hour, you were required to fly an airplane full of 450 people across the Atlantic Ocean without any training or prior experience, you’d probably become sick with dread and doubt. You’re fucked. You’ve barely been in an airplane, much less flown a gigantic 777 by yourself.

Now, let’s pretend I told you that you’ve just been entered into a contest of how many internet articles you can read in a 6-hour period. If you win, you get $10,000. Chances are you’d still feel pretty nervous, but knowing my nerdy readership, you’d probably be pretty amped at your prospects. I mean, if you’re willing to sit through my 4,000 word treatises on a weekly basis, then I’m sure you’d kill it in that kind of competition. And you’d be excited about it. Nervous, but excited. You’d feel pumped up. And even though you’d have the same physiological reactions as you would in the airplane example, in this case, those physiological responses would help you become more focused, more energized, more alert; whereas in the airplane example, your mind would probably feel like a mess, you’d freeze up, you’d feel sick to your stomach, you’d begin rationalizing ways to get out of the situation, etc.

The difference is your confidence in your ability to complete the task in front of you.

So this puts us in a conundrum. How does a guy who has absolutely zero experience with women (or perhaps many negative experiences), suddenly build confidence in his ability with them?

There are a few ways to “fake” confidence with women, but the only true answer is to build up positive references experiences and create a perception of competence. This is the first key to pushing through your anxiety.

And this is where dating advice has completely missed. In most pick up theory, they tell a guy who is terrified to approach women to go out and say the most bizarre or embarrassing things to help him get over his fear. The idea is that he’ll suffer terrible embarrassment, realize it’s not so bad, and then not worry about it so much next time.

Unfortunately, this rarely works well, and certainly doesn’t work any better than the method I’m going to share with you in a moment.

The problem with this is that these reference experiences aren’t positive as much as they are not-as-negative-as-I-thought reference experiences. Pretty weak. And on top of that, guys with particularly rough self-esteem issues actually WILL experience the embarrassment and failure as horribly painful and it will only leave them worse off and less confident than when they started.

In psychology, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) works with patients with anxieties or past traumas by implementing gradual changes in behavior consistently over a period of time. This is the first key to overcoming anxiety: progressive desensitization.

What this means is that we begin with extremely simple behavioral changes that almost guarantee success… for instance, smiling and asking everyone you speak to one day how their day is going. The idea is that the little bit of confidence and momentum you build from doing this can then be carried over to the next day where you do something a little bit more uncomfortable, and so on and so on.

Approaching something you’re terrified to do in this way not only makes progress very apparent (raising motivation), but it also is enjoyable, since you’re consistently exposed to positive feedback… unlike running around telling women on the street that you’re a pink-purple-fairy-rapist and hoping it makes you feel better in the morning.

The other benefit to a progressive desensitization approach to conquering or adapting a fear is that it makes it easier to process one’s experiences in a healthy manner.

Again, using the approaching women example, if a guy signs up for a pick up bootcamp, has never approached an attractive woman in his life and is absolutely terrified of doing it, and is suddenly dropped into a nightclub environment (which makes him even more uncomfortable and insecure) and told to go tell the hottest girl in the room how her nails look fake… it’s likely that he will process the experience in a poor manner. He’ll approach. He’ll be terrified. It will go horribly. She’ll blow him off and perhaps even be rude to him. And he’ll come away reinforcing his negative beliefs about himself, about hot women, about nightclubs, and maybe about fake nails as well (damn those girls with fake nails!).

When adapting a fear by progressive desensitization, it leaves little room for processing experiences poorly because the experiences are so minor and the successes so consistent (even if small), it becomes hard to reinforce any negative or self-sabotaging beliefs one has about women, approaching, or hell, even fake nails.

And this is the second key to conquering any fear: processing your experiences in a healthy manner. You could go out and approach 1,000 women. But if you are not processing the feedback you receive from your experiences in a helpful or honest way, then you will never make progress. In fact, you can even make your situation worse.

Some people, particularly those with high self-esteem, naturally process their experiences in a healthy manner. But many do not. And generally, the longer a man has struggled to improve his dating life with no results, the worse he is at processing his experiences in a healthy and honest way. It’s a direct correlation.

Learning to process one’s experiences well is hard to do by oneself. Usually, one needs some sort of community, guide, therapist, or group feedback to see one’s blindspots.

And this brings us to the third key to conquering any fear: accountability and support. Our minds are experts at rationalizing ways out of confronting what we’re afraid of or what makes us feel uncomfortable or powerless. Keeping ourselves accountable, particularly by sharing our experiences with others, relieves a lot of that burden and keeps us obligated to continue to push ourselves.

And the fact is, staying accountable to ourselves — setting goals for ourselves and then achieving them consistently — builds lasting self-esteem and renewed situational confidence.

The other aspect about these three keys to conquering your fears, is that they operate best in tandem. Progressive desensitization works best if you’re being held accountable for your progress and processing your experiences in a positive manner. Processing your experiences well helps keep yourself accountable and motivated to push yourself slightly further.

It’s rare in men’s self-development industry to find even one of these keys present in a course or seminar. In the pick up industry, they’re all almost completely absent. And you’ll never find all three together in one place. But I’ve put together an online coaching program that utilizes all three keys to conquering your fear of approaching women in conjunction. So if you’ve always had trouble working up the nerve to talk to more women, then you’ll want to check it out.

What makes the Approach Women Program different than anything else:

• It’s interactive. All 20 lessons require user submission in order to move on to the next lesson. So every user MUST report back with their experiences after going out and doing each lesson.
• The progressive desensitization is more gradual. The biggest problem with the old G3 program was that the differences in difficulty from one lesson to the next was too large for many users, so they got frustrated and gave up. The Approach Women Program’s 20 lessons are stair-stepped very gradually so that anybody can get all the way through it, regardless of experience level or the severity of anxiety.
• Focus is put on processing your experiences in a positive and healthy manner. The biggest way guys sabotage themselves when they try to meet women is by interpreting their experiences very poorly, therefore lowering their confidence.
• Both day and night game are taught.
• Both volume of approaches and approaching in specific situations are focused on and practiced.
• 100% video content. No written content. Very little mental masturbation. The very little theory that is presented to you is directly applicable to doing the exercises and processing your experiences.
• Once completing it, you should be able to approach women in any situation, day or night, with little hesitation or nervousness.
• As with the original G3, if you finish the program, you get permanent access for free.

I’ll save the sales pitch and let you just watch the video if you want to learn more about it. If you’re a guy who has ever struggled with approaching women, had massive amounts of anxiety, or who has failed to be consistent in his results, then I highly recommend the program. It’s a program that built based on some basic principles of psychology, it’s completely interactive, it has accountability and feedback built into it, and it’s designed to create long-term success, unlike ebooks you read for one night and then never use.

In Models, I define neediness within romantic and social relationships as prioritizing another person’s perception of you over your perception of yourself, and that this prioritization leads to all unattractive behavior in men, whether directly or indirectly. So, when talking to an attractive woman, a needy man will expend his effort trying to piece together what her perception of him is and cater his behavior to what he thinks she wants, whereas a non-needy man will focus on what his perception of her is. If she thinks poorly of him, it will only affect him as much as he perceives her opinion as being valuable.

There are two ways in which men can become needy: by undervaluing themselves or by overvaluing the person with whom they’re interacting.

The former problem stems from run-of-the-mill low self-esteem and is experienced as low confidence in social situations, consciously realized by a series of negative beliefs about oneself, and finally, manifested through needy, unattractive behavior. An example of this would be a man with low self-esteem who feels a severe lack of confidence interacting with women (or anybody, really), and therefore has developed bizarre beliefs about why people would or would not like him. As such, he believes he needs to impress them with money or accomplishments, make fun of others, or pretend like he’s too cool for anyone else. As a result, these beliefs manifest themselves as needy behaviors and turn off many women.

Men with the latter problem probably suffer from some sort of complex surrounding women and likely had a complicated relationship with their mother growing up. Regardless, the end result is the same: pussy is put on a pedestal. So even though these men may be high self esteem individuals in other areas of their lives (successful in business, have tons of friends, etc.), when confronted with a woman they’re attracted to, they instinctively subjugate themselves to her opinion and become needy. One could argue that the elevation of women in pop culture could very well be having a massive influence on men in general, as it seems more men today than ever supplicate themselves and idolize female sexuality more than ever before.

Anyway, an example of a guy suffering from this would be your classic Nice Guy syndrome: successful, charming, interesting guy who stumbles over himself buy a girl gifts, taking her out to nice restaurants, checking his phone every hour to see if she’s called or texted. All in all, he’s a good guy, well put-together, confident in most situations, yet his valuation of women is massively skewed causing him to lose confidence in front of attractive dates, develop bizarre beliefs (you need to buy women flowers for them to like you), and ultimately, exhibiting needy behaviors (drunk voicemails crying over a girl he went on two dates with, etc.).

The two causes of needy behavior often go hand-in-hand, or at least appear to. But they appear separately quite often as well. The second type of needy man is usually the easier fix. It’s just a matter of re-orienting some of his unhealthy over-estimations of women and getting him to respect himself a little more in their presence. His foundation of self-esteem makes changing the proper behaviors easier, and the proper beliefs and perceptions soon follow.

It’s the first type of guy who takes more work, particularly because low self-esteem individuals are so poor at accurately interpreting their own experiences and behaviors. Until they’re able to learn to do this, progress occurs very slowly, or not at all.

So now that we’ve got kind of a better understanding of neediness and how it relates to men’s behavior (if you want the full rundown, I recommend buying the book), I want to address what some people on the board seem to have done, which is try and use non-neediness as their measuring stick for success.

First of all, let’s be clear. We’re all human. We all look for validation from those around us. We all care about what other people think to a certain degree. And barring sociopaths, we always will. The goal here is NOT to ELIMINATE neediness from our lives — it’s impossible to do this without completely gutting ourselves of all emotions or empathy — the goal here is to re-prioritize our perception of ourselves vis-a-vis the perceptions of the women we interact with. We want to focus on validating ourselves more and become less of a junkie for the validation we receive from others. The external validation will always exist and will always matter, but the more internal validation we create, the less the external validation will matter.

So it’s a relative goal we’re looking for, not an absolute. And it will shift from interaction to interaction. For instance, it’s healthy and normal to exhibit a higher need for validation and occasional neediness from your wife of 10 years. It’s not healthy or normal to need a lot of validation from a woman you’ve known for 15 minutes. For some reason, some guys are reading the neediness section of my book as a prescription to start measuring one’s own neediness in all scenarios and try to eliminate it completely.

But here’s the irony, and something that may blow your mind: The act of analyzing one’s own neediness while talking to a woman is, in itself, a needy behavior. Stop it.

Stop trying to quantify and maximize everything. Non-neediness is the ROOT of attractive behavior, not the attractive behavior itself. Standing there in your head and obsessing over your level of neediness while some girl is trying to connect with you or joke with you, is just going to inspire more needy behavior. In the book, I go into painstaking detail of what non-needy behavior looks like and how to practice it — in fact, like, 11 of the 15 chapters are dedicated to BEHAVIORS, not to the theory behind the behavior. Practicing the proper behaviors reduces your neediness. It’s not a coincidence that I dedicated the majority of the book to it.

Non-neediness is an experience, a feeling, a perspective. It’s not something you can maximize or measure. It’s simply a self-perception. Feeling it can be described in many forms. Many people around the dating industry try to describe what the experience of non-neediness consists of, whether it’s “being non-reactive,” or “centered and present,” or “not giving a fuck,” or whatever. These all kind of get at the experience, but don’t encapsulate the extent of it or how it comes about.

The best way I can describe the experience of non-neediness is by something a student of mine once described as “The Filter Switch.” What he meant by it is that suddenly one night he went on a date with a girl and realized that instead of sitting there and focusing on meeting her standards, as he had for years and years prior, now he was sitting there and evaluating whether she met his standards or not. Whether she was good enough for him had become far more important to him than trying to be good enough for her. Nothing objectively changed about the kind of girl he was out with, what they were doing, what they were talking about, or how he met her. He was likely saying the same jokes, telling similar stories, and being just as physical.

What did change was his perception of himself and his value relative to hers. She was a person he didn’t know well. And it’s healthy and normal to screen and filter people we don’t know well to see if we want them to become part of our lives. This is ostensibly the entire purpose of dates themselves: so that both people can sit down and see if the other person meets their standards and is capable of fulfilling many of their emotional needs.

That simple change in mindset and self-perception silently seeps into all of your actions and words, affecting everything, without thought or effort. It’s no coincidence that soon after having that experience, he landed a hot girlfriend.

And that’s the best description I can think of experiencing non-neediness: which direction is the filter pointing? Are you trying to pass through her filter? Or is she trying to pass through yours? In most interactions it won’t be 100% one or the other — as I said, we all do care what other people think and always will — but there will be a clear feeling within yourself which one you’re prioritizing more, who is prioritizing who more.

Is this something you can go out and practice? Not directly. And it’s definitely not going to change overnight. But like practicing behaviors, practicing mindsets can also positively influence your self-perception and help you become more accustomed to newer, healthier mindsets as you try to adopt them completely.

Likely though, developing the filter switch will be a gradual process, a result of a lot of time invested in yourself. It may be something you notice periodically as time goes on and from interaction to interaction. It’ll be a feeling. Something that arises into your consciousness. And perhaps an occasional reminder: “Wait, why am I trying to prove anything to this girl? I don’t know her or if I even like her yet.”

Finally, I’d like to pre-emptively bat away a question I’m sure will come up (it always does). The question goes something like this:

“If we’re supposed to be non-needy and be more concerned with what we think than what she thinks, and she’s supposed to prove herself to us and all of that, then how do you explain approaching and escalating and calling her first and all of that — isn’t that just needy behavior?”

Oi, again, this is covered in detail in the book. But the answer is no, it’s not necessarily needy behavior. It can be. But it isn’t always. When you want to buy a new car and you go to look at them, you’re approaching the car dealership, but do you try to convince the salesman of how good of a driver you are? Doubtful.

Any action or behavior can be needy or non-needy. What determines the degree of neediness is the intention behind the behavior. I can go out and approach 20 hot women for the sheer joy of it and not be needy with any of them. Or I can sit in a nightclub at a VIP table with $500 bottles of vodka and have 20 women approach me that night and be exhibiting extremely needy behavior the entire night.

And if that doesn’t make sense to you, then you really need to read the damn book.

The conversation had been good. We got into some personal topics. We talked about relationships and our ex’s. She had interesting perspectives on why people cheat and we had a fairly in-depth discussion on monogamy and how natural it was. She had ambitions, a broken family similar to mine, liked decent music, enjoyed partying. Really all you could ask for in a date.

At the end of the night, I drove her home. We had made out a little before in the bar, but for whatever reason I wasn’t really into it. Some invisible force seemed to be preventing my interest in her from escalating pass a basal level, despite her being an attractive girl. When we got to her apartment, it got awkward. She lingered in the car a bit too long, making strained small talk between a little more kissing. It became clear she was waiting for me to invite myself in, yet I didn’t really want to go in. It was a stand-off: her giving me every chance I needed and me consciously not taking them.

She shuffled through my iPod for the third time that night, anything to buy some more time. She began dropping obvious hints, like “You should check out this new album I got the other day. I’ve got it on my computer.” I felt like we were a high school couple where the guy sits in the car trying to think of ways to trick the girl into coming inside with him. Except she was the horny high school guy and I was the hot girl who wasn’t going to put out no matter what. And for some reason this dynamic just turned me off even more.

I just sat and let her stew in the awkwardness for a few minutes, patiently waiting until I could go home. There was a strange calmness about me. It came from indifference. Despite enjoying the girl’s company and finding her physically attractive, I was not emotionally invested in the least bit. I was… bored. And this baffled me. Here was an attractive girl, who was obviously really into me, fumbling around in my car as long as possible so that I would go inside with her. Yet I was turned off. Inexplicably turned off.

On paper, everything looked right. I had been in this situation and pulled the trigger dozens of times before. But now, for some reason, I just wanted to go home. Alone.

As many of you know, I’ve been living a mobile lifestyle the past two and a half years and have spent most of that time traveling and living in various countries abroad. In that time I’ve dated and/or hooked up with women of probably two dozen different nationalities. And although none of these relationships evolved into anything long-term, a handful of them developed strong emotional connections.

The experience above with the girl in my car would play out three separate times during my three-month stay in the US last year. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been on more than one date with an American girl in almost two years. Whether I had sex with them or not, I inevitably didn’t want to see them again.

It’d be easy here to lash out against American women and say they “suck” or that they’re entitled and high-maintenance, or make some other rampant generalization about our female population to fit my personal whim. As tempting as it is, and although there may be some valid criticisms there, it’s not entirely fair. I’ve met a number of guys from other countries who love dating American women. They can’t be all bad. And they aren’t.

So I began to consider what it was about my experiences with foreign women — not the particular women, but foreign women in general — that drove the changes in my experiences with American women, the ephemeral indifference that drapes each interaction, the spiritual ennui which makes connecting with them feel about as exciting as folding my laundry.

I’ve narrowed it down to three reasons: novelty, communication barriers, and cultural differences.

When dating foreign women, there’s an avalanche of novelty hitting you constantly. Big things and little things. The way she holds your hand to her ideas of what a good date consists of to which movies she has or hasn’t seen, to her beliefs about chivalry and courtesy, to her cultural background on femininity, to her expressiveness (or lack thereof) in bed. Dating foreign women constantly bombards you with new and unique twists to the everyday dating experiences.

According to the Three Loves Theory, novelty and newness of experience is the number one driving factor of passion within a relationship. It releases more endorphins, creates stronger senses of bonding, raises adrenaline, piques more interest, demands more focus, etc. The same reason why old, stale couples do crazy and inventive trips and activities together to rekindle their flame is what drives foreign couples into passionate connections quicker than is normal. The constant “newness,” the endless stream of idiosyncratic differences between her and every other girl you’ve ever met keeps you as enthralled as a 16-year-old with his first girlfriend all over again.

Novelty isn’t the entire story, but I’m convinced it skews the perception of foreign women being more passionate in all of us — whether we’re from the US or Germany or Colombia. It’s also why dating regular, cute, girl-next-door types back home emotionally lulls me to sleep — it’s not novel, it’s not new, it’s not fresh. I’ve been here before. It’s the same old story.

The second reason I think American women feel ruined for me is that there’s no barrier to communication. That may sound crazy, as communication is possibly the most important factor in determining the success and pleasure in a relationship. But when presented with language barriers (however slight), different conceptions of traditional relationship roles, differing expectations, or flat out misunderstanding each other, these barriers create a perceptual bias towards valuing one another more.

It’s a fact that as humans, when we perceive ourselves to have worked harder for something, we value it more. Dating foreign women requires more effort, more focus, more diligence and understanding. A big reason for that is the constant micro-miscommunications that go on, the stuttering around each other’s languages, the cultural differences (which we’ll get to in a minute). When you overcome these things together, it creates a greater sense of bonding and purpose between both of you. The result is a deeper attraction much quicker. I’ve often commented that emotionally I often reach a point with foreign women within a week or two that it would take months to reach with American women. A large part of this is the perception of us overcoming barrier after barrier together.

But part of it is also cultural differences. When traveling, everywhere you go, every society you enmesh yourself into, you expose yourself to different a subset of values. Some cultures value family and friendship more, some value material success, some value emotional expression, others value silent suffering. What you begin to notice is that every country and culture has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, and it becomes less a question of which culture is “best” and more of which one aligns with your personal values the most.

In my opinion, the great weakness of English-speaking culture is our reluctance to share our emotions authentically, and the repression of our sexualities. These two cultural traits also happen to be two of the cultural traits I value the most, and therefore I find much more value in creating relationships in culture which do value these things: authentic communication, emotional expression, loyalty, being fun-loving and enjoying life first. And most of these cultural factors are better found outside of the United States.

The United States has a lot of great things going for it, but most of them revolve around seeking personal success, social stature, making tons of money, or material wealth. And many of these values, shared greatly by the women as well, compromise the values that I do hold most important. Therefore it makes sense that I find forming relationships and bonds within the US less appealing now than before — by default the girl has been raised in a culture whose values no longer completely align with my own.

This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for me to find a great girl in the US. There are plenty of amazing American women. I’m just saying that this traveling has made it less likely that I connect with them, and the emotional rollercoaster dating foreign women has given me has made many conventional dating scenarios back home feel dull and empty. Call it be over-exposed to a good thing. Or call it a “high quality problem.” I’m not complaining, but just here to share my (bizarre) experience, of actually finding going home alone more appealing than going home with your average attractive 20-something back home.

Right now, I’d put the odds of me settling down in the US permanently at 50/50, and the odds of me settling down with an American woman at maybe 20%. One of my best friends who has traveled quite a bit with me puts those odds at 80% (I settle abroad) and 0% (I marry an American woman). I’m not sure which one of us has more perspective.

But I do know that my perceptions and relationships back home have irreversibly shifted. Whether this is a good shift or not, I don’t know. But I imagine for the American women who persist in awkward small talk, hoping or expecting me to take them home with me, it’s probably a bad thing.