Below is a newsletter I got from Mystery. As everyone who reads this site knows I am a huge fan of everything he puts out. This newsletter is no different. There are different views on who pays for dates and this should help some of you decide for yourself.

Who Should Pay for Dates 

1. Who pays for drinks and dates ?

We get a lot of questions about money. Should you buy a girl a drink? Should you pay for a date? Should you take her somewhere expensive? What if you have a lot of money? What if you don’t?

There is a lot of bad information floating around the internet on this. This is kind of strange, because this isn’t all that complicated.

Let’s start with some basic principles first. We’ll call this the Four Don’ts.

1. Don’t make a woman feel like you are trying to win her over with money or things money can buy. This implies that you have nothing else going for you, and that you think of dating as a money-for-sex transaction. Most women don’t like to feel like a prostitute.
2. Don’t let a woman use you for money or feel that she can do so. She may be testing you to see if you are willing to stand up to her. If you give in, she’ll think you are weak or have nothing going for you other than money.
3. Don’t use money to try to impress a woman. Guys have already tried that on her, and its tactless. Don’t hide the fact that you are successful, if you are, but let things speak for themselves. If you pick her up in a nice car, well, you picked her up in a nice car. But don’t hang around a coffee shop talking about how great your Ferrari is.
4. Don’t make a situation socially awkward by adhering too strictly to any of the first three rules

If you keep these in mind, the answers to common questions become obvious. All of these questions have been asked by bootcamp students on bootcamps that I have personally been teaching.

Q. Should I buy a woman a drink?
A. Yes. It’s common, it’s polite, and it’s social convention. If you’re sitting at a bar with a woman you just met, and you order a drink, ask her what she’s drinking and buy it for her. Don’t make it a big deal. There’s no way that drawing attention to the fact that you’ve paid $10 for her drink is going to help you. You’re avoiding a negative situation, not creating a positive one.

Q. Okay, then. So I can go up to women and offer to buy them a drink?
A. Noooooooo. This is not at all acceptable. You have infinitely better ways of attracting a woman than spending $10 on alcohol for her. In the previous example, you’re in a position where failure to offer her a drink would create social awkwardness and a negative situation (Rule #4). Going up to her and deliberately creating a situation where money is in play violates Rule #1, Rule #2, and Rule #3. Congratulations, you hit the jackpot.

Q. What if she says “buy me a drink” or asks me to buy her a drink?
A. Don’t. She’s testing you. However, there is no real way to ‘win’ when you get to this situation. Mystery has come up with some good lines to deal with this in the past, but once you’ve hit this situation, it’s not good. Try to avoid this situation coming up.

Q. What if she tries to order drinks for her friends on your tab?
A. Again, no. It’s not an accident. Some women like to see what they can get men to do for them and their friends. It’s a sport for some women to see what they can get away with. At the last Special Bootcamp in Las Vegas, I saw Sinn and Savoy teach students how to get women they just met go get OTHER guys to buy them drinks for them. (That’s the great think about Special Bootcamps…all of the best guys in the world are there). I have to admit, it was kind of funny seeing men buy women drinks that they then brought back to the Mystery Method tables.

Q. What if I’m sitting at a table with friends and have bottle service and she wants a drink?
A. Of course. Don’t be stupid. You have a bottle. It’s one drink. But don’t let her use you. If she’s clearly not interested in you and not useful for social proof, cut her off. If she only comes back to your table for drinks and then disappears, cut her off. If she brings lots of friends to your table who only want drinks, cut them off. But if you have three girls each having three drinks, deal with it. You didn’t get a table and bottle service to be cheap.

Q. Should I pay for the first date?
A. In general, yes, but you have to use your judgment here. If your first date is a 5-star restaurant, she’ll feel that this is “too much”. She’ll wonder whether you think that spending all this money on her makes you think you are entitled to sleep with her or whether you are so lonely that you’re going all out for a woman you barely met. Anyway, what on earth are you doing taking her to dinner for the first date? If you’ve been reading the OAP, you know better than this. Either way, dates have to involve money – there are lots of great day2s that are free (there was just a great thread about this in The Forum).

Q. OK, so I’m paying for the first date. All of it? What if she offers to pay?
A. Judgment call again. In general, if she offers to pay, let her pay for something. Some women will feel devalidated if you absolutely refuse to let her pay for anything. In addition, paying for something is a small investment in you, and you do want her to be invested. However, you can still play the gentleman or the leader. If I’m taking a woman to, say, a comedy club, I might pay for the drinks, but if she offers to split the tab, I’ll tell her she can buy me desert after. This allows me to skip the trap of “she offered but maybe she didn’t really mean it”, allows me to still be the man who can take care of her, does not devalidate her contribution to the evening, and also implies a further location bounce. I’ve also used this formula to set up another meet. “I’ll pay for this, and next week you can take me to that wine bar you were telling me about”.

Q. What if she never offers to pay for anything?
A. This depends on you. Whether women offer to pay usually depends on how she was raised. Some women expect men to pay for everything and others don’t. Not all of the women in the first group are “users”. In many cultures, it would be even rude for the woman to offer to pay – it would be like implying that the man doesn’t have money. As for me, I personally don’t care. On the first couple of dates, we’re not talking about large sums of money. After I meet someone one or two times, I can tell if they are a gold digger anyway, and in that I’m not spending that much money or driving a fancy car, most gold diggers will disappear on their own initiative. Thus, I don’t especially care if she doesn’t offer to pay for things at first. Top Mystery Method instructors disagree on this; it’s a matter of preference.

Q. What if I do care? I don’t want to be with a woman who expects me to pay.
A. Then don’t date her. Don’t compromise on your principles. Seek out women who share your view. At least in North America, many women do. In this respect, as in many others, many women won’t meet your standards. Part of the point of the Mystery Method is that you will be so attractive that you are choosing the women you like, not vice versa. So if you don’t like something, address it or move on.

Q. What if she suggests going somewhere really expensive?
A. Gold digger alert. Women don’t “suggest” dates, especially not early on. If you meet a woman at a bar, you’ve already got your day2 plan lined up, right? (If not, you need to review old OAPs). Even if you don’t have a plan, and say something weak like that you’d like to see her again sometime, most women will not come back with “I’d love to see you again; why don’t you take me to the White Caviar Lounge?”. If she does, she’s a gold digger or she’s testing you. Avoid.

To wrap this up, in general your best strategy is to try to minimize the impact of money, at least until your game is super-advanced and you can avoid the millions of traps that exist. Don’t draw attention to money. If you have it, let it speak for itself; if you don’t, plan around it.
2. Q&A

Dear Mystery Method,

I checked out the video of Mystery out in clubs from the last OAP and I was blown away. I mean, I read The Game and all, but like a lot of guys, I couldn’t help wondering whether this was all real.

One thing confuses me, though. Sometimes Mystery negs a woman once, and sometimes he seems to do it 6 or 7 times. I’m confused. How do you know when you’ve negged enough?

*

W.K., Oshawa, ON

Dear W.K.,

You live about 25 minutes from where I grew up, so your letter gets answered first.

I assume that the video you are referring to was the one shot at the last Special Bootcamp in Las Vegas (www.current.tv/video/?id=1758929). Glad you liked it. I hope you also saw the prep video for Chicago too – check it at www.mysterymethod.com/sbvideo.

The short answer to your question is “as many as it takes”. A properly done neg will make a woman more attracted to you. When she is attracted enough to you, she will give you Indicators of Interest (IOIs), such as asking you personal questions about yourself, or smiling and touching you.

That’s a bit TOO simple, however. To understand why, you need to understand how a neg works. Let’s assume that everyone has an idea of what their social value is at a given moment, from 1 to 10. If Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt walked into a bar, they would be 10s, since everyone would be making way for them or treating them as if they are superior. Since women are generally the ones who are choosing men, not the other way around (as explained in Magic Bullets), women generally feel themselves to have a higher social value than most men. This is especially true at public places where men and women meet each other. By the time you approach a woman, she’s been hit on thousands of times, and probably a few times already that day. You haven’t.

This doesn’t mean women tend to feel superior to men. Not at all. It simply means that a very attractive woman at a club (say, a “9” on a scale from 1-10 in terms of how desirable she feels she is) isn’t likely to be interested in you right away, even if you are a reasonably attractive man. Reasonably attractive men hit on her all the time, so she’d probably think of you as a “5”. Generic. Boring. Like other guys.

Now, this can be changed through things like being seen with lots of other attractive women, peacocking, and other behaviors that women tend to associate with men who are 9s and 10s as opposed to 5s. But that will only take you so far. You need to go talk to her, and, most of the time, you’ll be coming in at a disadvantage.

So, let’s say that you are a reasonably attractive man, without anything special going for yourself, looks wise. So you’re a 5. But after a bootcamp or some hard work by yourself, you dress very fashionably, peacock a bit, have women around you, and exhibit confident body language. Well, golly gee, now you’re a 7. That’s great. You can walk up to 7s and some will be instantly attracted to you. This doesn’t mean they’ll sleep with you – remember, attraction is just the second of nine phases you need to get through. But it does mean that you can move right into qualification (the third phase).

By the way, if these phases are confusing you, OAP #2 gave a quick summary of this. For a comprehensive treatment, you need Magic Bullets, but I’m not selling you anything here. You can get the basic Mystery Method structure for free because they made Chapter 3 – which explains structure - available free for download in our publications section:

Anyway, the 7s we are talking about are irrelevant. We’re not after 7s. So even though you might be able to make yourself a 7 on a good night, you’re still looking for 9s and 10s. So you have to bridge the gap, and the neg is a fantastic tool for this.

When you neg a woman “hey, nice nails…are they real?” you are noticing little imperfections about her. This does two things. First, it brings her down a little bit. She was feeling confident and the center of attention before, but you have noticed a flaw. Maybe now she feels like an 8.5 (women’s moods, especially related to their looks, change rapidly). Second, you are implying that you do not perceive there to be a value gap between the two of you. Now she looks at you again, since, in her experience, 7s don’t say this kind of thing to 8.5s. Only someone who is her equal or superior would do that. So now she wants to know if you are really at least her equal or if you are just delusional.

This, by the way, can be seen in many social relationships. If your boss tells a joke, you might force yourself to laugh. That’s what people do for other people who have a higher value. If one of your employees tells a joke that you don’t think is funny, you might not laugh. If your brother is friends with a star athlete and this person asks to borrow your cell phone, you might not care if he is on the call for 30 minutes. If it’s just your little brother’s nerdy friend you might ask for the phone back after 5 minutes.

So, back to our story. A 7 would never notice out loud that an 8.5 has fake nails. So she’s confused. And then you blow your nose in front of her. People don’t blow their noses in front of people whom they are trying to impress. Now she’s thinking, wow, do I look that ugly tonight that this random guy doesn’t care about impressing me? I thought I was a 9 and he was a 7. Am I really just a 7 tonight? Or is this guy so cool that he has lots of women like me already attracted to him? Or even hotter women? Is he a 9? What should I do now to get his attention? Well, let me talk to him and touch him and see what happens

Of course, no one is actually thinking “is he a 9?” – this is all shorthand. She’s thinking “does this guy have a lot going for him?” Using numbers here makes the model easier to understand, but don’t go around a party talking about 6s and 8s, since you won’t make any sense.…

Anyway, in our little scenario, it appears that two negs were enough. Further negs would lead to “over-negging”. If you overneg, one of two bad things will happen:

1.

You are opening up such a value gap between you and her (now she feels like you are a 10 and she is a 6) that she rejects you before you can reject her. She knows 10s don’t go after 6s, so she thinks she is being toyed with and gets angry. Or she just doesn’t want to be rejected later, so she rejects you now. After all, what makes a woman feel better than rejecting a 10?

2.

She’ll think you are a jerk for being so negative about her.

This starts to explain the underlying reasons why we teach men to neg a 10 far more than an 8. And possibly not even to neg a 6 or a 7 at all.

Unfortunately, this is still an overview. Negs are complex, and crucial to get right. For a bit more detail on negs, you can also refer back to OAP 3 or to Mystery’s own original article on negs in our publications section on our website. Both of these are free. For a thorough and comprehensive treatment, check out the 2 nd edition of Magic Bullets especially Chapter 5. (Pages 97-103 go really hardcore on negs, but the rest of the chapter is crucial to understanding how they work)

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