Harris O’Malley - Simplified Dating

The Ultimate Guide to Mastering The Art of Dating Quickly.

Harris O'Malley

Copyright 2016 Harris O'Malley

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover illustrated by Martin Thomas

ISBN: 978-0-9963772-1-8

Acknowledgements

To my friends the Sk8 Jesuits (VHive, yo!) who suggested that I needed to start actually writing a blog. To my friends Liz and Elise who patiently listened to me as I badgered them with question after question about the potential of ebooks and self-publishing. To Kira for being my proof-reader and of course my wife Cat for her patience, endurance, encouragement and willingness to put up with my crimes against grammar.

And to the men and women of the LEOG who helped make Dr. NerdLove happen in the first place.

Long Live The League.

INTRODUCTION

Our Story Thus Far...

P ARDON ME WHILE I drop something painfully obvious on you:

Dating is complicated.

Now, before you roll your eyes at me and start looking up how to get a refund, let me explain where Im going with this.

Unlike many of my friends, I was not a natural when it came to dating or knowing how to interact with women. In fact, I was pretty much the furthest thing possible that you could imagine.

I was, to put it mildly, a huge goddamn geek. I was chubby, schlubby and pale, with the sort of skin tone that can only be achieved by bathing in the cathode ray glow of the TV while playing hours of Super Nintendo. I was into comics back when comics were still the province of pimply superhero fans or pretentious faux-intellectuals who wanted to pretend that graphic novels were somehow different than DC or Marvels output. I was into anime and manga when the only options available were dubious fan-subtitled offerings that were third or fourth generation copies - this was the days long before Sailor Moon or Pokmon popularized the medium in the US. I was into computers, gaming consoles, fantasy novels just about everything you could imagine that made vagina disappear like magic.

And oh boy did it ever.

Back in what I now call the bad old days, I was just about every cliche you could imagine when it came to nerds trying to date. I spent so much time in The Friend Zone that I could declare it my primary residence and run for political office. I met my first girlfriend - in as much as you could call her that - on a glorified BBS system; we dated for less than two months before she cheated on me.

Id never gotten past second base with her.

She was the last girlfriend - hell, the last date - Id have for years

The majority of my love-life, before and since, had been a long and glorious tradition of being the classic Nice Guy - the insincere friend who did his best to trying to get girls to like him through what I call The Platonic Best Friend Backdoor Gambit. I would be their bestest friend in the whole world, collecting Nice Guy tokens - bringing them soup when they were sick, buying them things they mentioned liking offhand, letting them cry on my shoulder whenever their asshole boyfriends would break their hearts - all in hopes that I could cash in those tokens and upgrade to relationship or at least a couple nights of squishy noises.

It worked about as well as you might think - which is to say, not at all. In fact, I was far more likely to alienate my so-called friends by my actions; after all, I wasnt really their friend. If I was perfectly honest, then I was just pretending to be friends for as long as it took for me to get what I wanted. And really, who wants a friendship thats based on an agenda?

It wasnt until years later at my brothers wedding that I had what I refer to as my Batman moment. I had gone head to head with one of my oldest friends - a man who attracts women the way that cheese attracts mice - over a young woman and lost. Badly. As he was accompanying her back to her place, I was in my hotel room, alone, crying and masturbating out of frustration. In many ways, it was hitting rock bottom for me; I was determined that this could never happen to me ever again. The next day, I tripped over a copy of Neil Strauss The Game at my local book-store and it blew my ever-lovin monkey mind. The idea that skill with women wasnt just inborn, but could be studied, learned like any other skill was a revelation to me. I took it as a sign. Yes father, I vowed, I will become a pick-up artist.

I spent years studying the intricacies of pick-up, fashion, seduction, sexology, social psychology, marketing and dating with the laser-like focus that only nerds and religious zealots can achieve. I studied people who were naturally gifted with women and people whod learned how to improve themselves like I did. I read every book I could get my hand on and pushed myself far beyond what I had thought were my limits. I went out three or four nights a week minimum - approaching every woman I found vaguely attractive. I practiced pick-up lines, flirting, touching, teasing and fucking up every opportunity I could. I failed - a lot - and got shot down more times than I could count but I was learning.

It wasnt the healthiest time of my life to be sure; when youre spending that much time doing little more than trying to teach yourself how to get women to sleep with you, youre going to be taking yourself to some dark places. I didnt like a lot of what the pick-up artist community had to say about women, and I certainly didnt like the person I found myself turning into. Eventually my path lead me away from a lot of those toxic beliefs and away from the pick-up community. I continued my self-directed education, finding ways of integrating what Id learned with the man I wanted to be - someone who could be successful with women without being a noxious manipulator.

But it was an incredibly valuable experience. I learned more about myself and about social interactions than Id ever known and pushed myself beyond what I would soon learn were my own self-limiting beliefs. Id reinvented myself from the ground up. And Id had a lot of fun doing it.

Especially when it came to dating.

Ive lost track of how many people Ive known whove told me they hate dating. They hate stress of trying to meet new people, the anxiety of planning the first date, the constant sense of uncertainty, the mind games, never knowing whether theyre being too interested or not interested enough

And to be honest, I thought they were crazy. Yeah, Id been like that back in my bad old days, but dear God after those years of study, dating to me was one of the greatest adventures imaginable. I loved the thrill of the chase, the intoxicating nervousness and manic energy that came from getting to know somebody new. The verbal sparring as wed flirt back and forth, feeling each other out, the heady rush of sexual energy towards the end of the night when you knew you were standing on the precipice - would there be a good-night kiss, or might there be something