Tony Vakirtzis - Hack your mating: An evolutionary psychologist’s guide to a life of sexual abundance

HACK YOUR MATING

An evolutionary psychologists guide to a life of sexual abundance

Tony Vakirtzis, PhD.

Copyright 2018 Antonios Vakirtzis

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the copyright holder, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

Old Marston Press

ISBN: 978-1-9996301-1-9

Cover design by ciusan.com

To Chris Deoudes.

I am grateful to the people who gave valuable feedback on earlier versions of this book: Chris Murray, Patricia Vakirtzi, William Knight, Maria Delioglani, George Tsouvelas and Ioannis Stavrakas. Cheryl Harding and Elaine Hatfield kindly allowed me to quote from their works; permission was also obtained from Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis, respectively. The male images used in Figures 2 and 3 are publicly available on the web courtesy of Lisa DeBruine and Benedict Jones.

Hack
noun (informal): method for solving a problem or gaining large benefits with modest time and effort; shortcut

A girl once asked me if I had ever been rejected. I dont remember who or where. We were around seventeen, this much I remember. I looked her in the eye and proudly told her I had never been rejected, and it was the truth. What I didnt tell her was that Id barely been kissed. If the girl asked me the same question today, more than twenty years later, I would tell her Ive been rejected more times than a man could possibly remember. With a gun to my head Id say probably between two and three thousand times, maybe more. If I could somehow count the rejections of my father, and his father, and the father of his father, hundreds of generations back, I would confidently predict Ive been rejected more times than all those men combined. But Ive also had a better mating life than any of them. Better, I suspect, than all but a small minority of men who ever lived. Ive done things with women that to my ancestors would seem like magic. They would seem like magic to me a few years back. And I did them not because I was richer, smarter or better looking. It was because I hacked my mating: I aligned my behavior to the social reality around me. When people ask me to describe my book in one sentence, I tell them it is about the cost of rejection in modern environments. There is none . Understanding this and acting accordingly - is all you need to change your relationship with women and your life.

A few words about my background, so you can better understand the origin and nature of this book. I am an evolutionary psychologist by training. After undergraduate psychology studies in Greece, where I am from, I came to the UK in 2005 to do a masters degree in evolutionary psychology at the University of Liverpool. The program was run out of the biology department, and we were instructed by a group of biologists and psychologists. Two years later I went on to do a PhD at the same university. My thesis was in female mate choice, or the way in which women select their sexual partners. For three years I studied a phenomenon known as nonindependent mate choice. This is when women are influenced in their choice of men by what they see other women doing - in particular who other attractive women are selecting. If you ever dated a very attractive woman you might know what I mean - you probably found yourself getting more attention next to her than any other time in your life. While baffling from a sociological perspective - why should other women be interested in a taken man, after all? - biologically the phenomenon is straightforward, and we will visit it briefly in the second chapter.

What is evolutionary psychology? In one sentence, it is psychology that is informed by biology, especially evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychologists overarching principle is that their theories and research programs must agree with what is known in biology, just like those of biology must agree with chemistry, those of chemistry must agree with physics and so forth. This principle of interdisciplinary compatibility is referred to as conceptual integration.

The most studied area in evolutionary psychology is human mate choice, and mating behavior in general. Like all people, scientists like to pick the low hanging fruit first. In this case the low hanging fruit was the wealth of biological research on other species mating behavior which psychologists had not, up to that point, even bothered to look at. Evolutionary psychologists have spent four decades turning what did not even exist as a field into one of the hottest areas of research in all of psychology. We will put their most relevant findings to good use throughout this book.

What evolutionary psychology is still lacking, however, is practical interventions for peoples daily lives. As far as I am aware there has been no popular evolutionary psychological method for fighting depression, for example, or a book for child-rearing. And there has been, sadly, no attempt to help men improve their mating life. This is not that surprising. Scientists primary research priorities are that their topics be easy to study (low hanging fruit) and fit nicely within their existing theories. The social usefulness of their research - the degree to which it can help real people - is usually of little importance to them. Consequently, the areas they study are often of no immediate benefit to society. Also, the format in which findings are produced and disseminated is not designed with the common man in mind, and evolutionary psychologists are no more interested in applying their knowledge to their own personal lives than, say, chemists or geologists. Your average evolutionary psychologist, even the one who studies human mating behavior - I can assure you from personal experience - has no more success with women than the man on the street. He simply has not been trained to think in these practical terms and wouldn't know where to start if the task were presented to him.

In the absence of science, the void has been filled with lay Pickup Artist (PUA) and seduction community material. I will use the umbrella term psychological methods to refer to commercially available taught methods that are supposed to enhance a mans sexual success via scripted language or behavior. A substantial part of this book will be devoted to explaining why psychological methods simply cannot work as marketed. But you don't have to be familiar with psychological methods to make the most of this book. It is written in a way that will benefit the largest male audience, including men who have never heard of PUA or have never picked up a book on women before. The only thing you will need is motivation, the sincere desire to improve your mating life. The specifics of your motivation are irrelevant. The book will work regardless of what you want from women: have sex with as many of them as possible, find and marry the love of your life, or anything in between.

I won't promise you that after reading this book you'll be able to have any woman you want. You won't. Nor will I promise a secret technique that will effortlessly have women approaching you. Unless you're a celebrity or a millionaire, that's never going to happen in the real world, and we will see why in the very first chapter. Much less will I promise you that you can have your ex-girlfriend back, money-back guaranteed. Your ex-girlfriend has already evaluated you thoroughly and rejected you it is very unlikely she will ever want you back. A man who has gone without a woman for some time will often get so desperate as to eagerly hand over his money in exchange for ridiculous promises like these, promises which I took from popular seduction websites. But if you are willing to give up on psychological methods and on the idea of having any one particular woman, I can assure you that no other book will transform your relationship with women as quickly and dramatically. It is your best chance of turning the corner and joining the very small and elite group of men who have hacked their mating and can have as many women as they want. At the end of the book I will share some thoughts on the knock-on effects this hack can have on other areas of your life and how it can be the impetus for your transformation into a better all-around man.