Last week I wrote a thread on the 3 areas men struggle in with women.

I went into more detail about them in the thread, but these 3 areas: Confronting Fear, Expanding Awareness, and Operating In Good Faith cover every problem I’ve ever worked on with a man. Although there is obvious bleed over amongst them, they are all distinct vectors of growth. If you were to try to lump them all together, they would become practically-speaking meaningless.

But what I like most about this paradigm is that it is scalable to other domains — you can use the same formula for topics besides dating and relationships. Indeed, you might look at this as a formula not simply for succeeding with women, but for conquering reality. All you need to change is which fear you are confronting, what you are expanding awareness about, and who you are operating in good faith with. The subject material changes; the concepts do not. It’s a recipe for greatness in anything, whether business, parenting, or even warfare.

I also like the paradigm because the overlap explains something odd I’ve noticed about work with my clients.

Obviously, most of the time breakthroughs happen when a client and I tackle one of these areas with women directly. A guy confronts his fear of approaching and his dating life improves. He expands his understanding of female psychology and does better in his marriage. He starts operating in good faith on his dates and attracts a higher caliber woman.

But sometimes something strange happens. A guy doesn’t approach women, but he leaves his corporate job to start his own business. Or maybe he doesn’t meet more women but he makes an effort to make more friends. Maybe he can’t level with his girlfriend, but he starts to be more vulnerable and real with his parents and siblings after decades of putting up a front.

What happens much of the time is his problem with women afterwards becomes less difficult of a problem to tackle. The guy has less fear about the unknown with women because of his business leap, he is more capable of interacting with women because he’s learned how to form friendships, and he’s more willing to extend himself emotionally because he’s healed the damaged trust amongst his family.

In other words, he made progress with women by going in a different direction.

I don’t prefer taking this route with clients, of course. That’s not usually why they paid me. It’s better if I see job, friend, and family changes on the backend of our own work with women. I like those improvements to be bonuses, while success with women is the goal.

But sometimes you’re with a client who resists a direct approach for whatever reason, and you come to understand that he needs to make a change in a different area of his life before he can really make a leap forward with women.

Why am I mentioning all of this?

Because I think it’s worth guys understanding that you are always improving with women, even if you’re not focusing on them, so long as you are on your edge in some other way.

I will give you an example of this through a horse I hopefully haven’t beaten to death too much at this point: prison.

As you know, I went to prison for a year. I did not get a lot of experience with women over that time period! I wrote intimate letters to my wife every few weeks, and her to me, and I had maybe an hour every 1-2 weeks at visitation to spend talking with her openly and freely. But aside from these lush and green moments of life, I was interacting with men and only men. It was a man’s world there. Undoubtably, it was the most masculine environment I have ever been in; considering the integration of sexes in western militaries, probably the most masculine one in the western world.

And yet I came out of prison an even better husband than I was before. My marriage is almost perfect. That doesn’t mean I don’t expect we’ll have some issues again at some point (life is dynamic), and I know there are even greater levels of passion and intimacy we still haven’t reached. I know I can do better than I have, for sure. But I also know I’m doing pretty well, and for the past two years, it’s been basically constant improvement.

I can thank teachers like Dovid Feldman for kickstarting that growth in 2022. There was certainly a lot of humility I had to learn in how to show up as a husband correctly, and he helped me to do it.

But since then I have been growing as a man mostly through my ability to endure the onslaught of a feral federal government. I’ve had to go to trial, go to prison, go through de facto bankruptcy — go through all the suffering entailed by a public, political prosecution. It’s been a near constant existence of “being on my edge.” I’ve had to over and over again face myself and come to terms with my flaws, as well as face my fears and overcome them.

Which has meant, inadvertently, things that used to scare me to broach with my wife don’t intimidate me at all anymore. I can talk about sex more freely than ever, and I’m less triggered by nonsense. I’m not worried about rejection and being perceived as weak, considering all I’ve survived.

In other words, I’ve become more confident because I’ve grown from other experiences that put me on my edge. Which has made me a much more attractive man, and a better husband.

(It helps also my wife has grown in the same way from her portion of these trials, including the consequences of her practically becoming a single mother without my help, making her a better wife!)

The takeaway from all of this is simple.

While I think it’s best for you to tackle your problems with women head-on if you have them, the most important thing for you to do is to seek challenge and growth across the board in your life.

Not simply because of everything I’ve said above. But because so many of the problems men have with women are downstream of stagnation in the rest of their lives. It is SO much easier to improve the love life of a man who is firing on all cylinders elsewhere. The energy of momentum transfers over, there are more opportunities to meet women, and best of all less pressure on women to provide meaning for the man in his life.


Indeed, meeting women is usually only a good use of a guy’s time if his life is otherwise moving pretty well, OR if his desire to improve with women is an all-consuming identity issue for him (i.e., it transcends other concerns like work). This means women aren’t an escape, but a potential channel of energy that might change his whole life. I wouldn’t say this is the most common path, but it certainly was for mine.

The point is though, to simply embrace the call to adventure. I see way too much caution from men who really have nothing to lose. Unfurl your sails and get out there. The world is an exciting place filled with opportunity, if only you’re willing to let yourself be uncomfortable.

And if you need another hand on deck to help you do that, and navigate the open seas?

– Pat