pulled your pants down you would most likely feel embarrassed without being able to explain where those feelings all of a sudden came from. Yet, in some parts of the world, tribes are still walking around naked, and that is still how we all come into the world when we are born. This proves that even some of our personal feelings, such as shame, are actually learned responses; they are not natural. But if you learned it a very long time ago, you will have a hard time telling the difference.
Most of our socialization is good and helps speed up our learning process of how the world works. Since humans are social creatures, we have the ability to learn from others, which saves us a lot of time and trouble as opposed to relying on trial anderror and firsthand experience. However, there is a flip side of the coin; not everything we learn through socialization is accurate or helpful. Some of the beliefs and behavior we inherit are actually bad, and when it comes to dating,
most
beliefs are actually inaccurate and most behaviors are actually counterproductive.
The interesting thing then is how social conditioning applies to all aspects of dating. What are the grand beliefs that we inherit regarding women and how to attract them? By studying our language, the words and phrases that we use, our stories, how movies are structured, how products are marketed, people’s attitudes, and the way in which everyday discussions go, it becomes obvious how males are
supposed
to get girls: Females must be earned.
Earned
A common plot in stories told through literature and film is a situation involving a damsel in distress. While this scene may no longer be as obvious as it once was, with an utterly helpless princess trapped in an ivory tower waiting for a hero to come and rescue her, the same formula lives on today. The modern hero might no longer be a knight in shining armor or a prince, but instead an average male with extraordinary abilities or a superhero with superpowers who lives through an ordeal and gets the sexy girl in the end.
Think about what happened to the main male character in the last few movies you have seen. What did he get in the end after saving the entire world from evil aliens, monkeys, asteroids, zombies, pirates, clones, orchs, robots, monsters, terrorists, or Nazis? What did he get after winning the race, tournament, league, war, or fight against all odds?
He got the beautiful girl, the one he met at the beginning of the movie who was not particularly interested in him. In the end, hegot her as though she were some sort of reward for his extraordinary achievement, once he proved that he deserved her.
Everywhere you look, male’s achievements are being associated with getting girls, an idea males learn in much the same way Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to link the sound of a bell to the serving of food. That is the environment most of us have grown up in: an environment filled with the message that a male is not good enough for a female until he has proved his worth. Achieve something great, and then you can have the woman you want. To succeed is to become sexy and good enough for a woman. Success equals sex.
Simply growing up immersed in an environment that is based on this idea — reading books, listening to stories, watching movies, seeing ads, and overhearing conversations based on it — is more than enough to communicate the idea and instill in you the very same belief, that without doing something incredible, you do not deserve women and that you
do
have to deserve them.
All of us are very receptive to adopting beliefs when we are young, but the idea that success leads to sex is not something that is only hammered into kids as they grow up; this is an ongoing process, and most are unaware of it. Our culture is full of expressions that are based on these beliefs and used without any thought of their implications, such as, “getting lucky,” “that girl is out of your league,” “you do not deserve