[Intermediate to advanced game] Valentine’s Day is coming up. That can be a comfort test.

I obviously wrote this one before Valentine’s Day, but the basic idea applies to many other circumstances. Small comfort-building activities are important. Most guys overdo the comfort for so long that when they eventually learn to lean heavier on aloof game they totally forget about comfort.

Everyone reading this should be familiar with shit tests and if you are not then quit this post and read the sidebar. For 90% of guys, shit tests are the sticking point they face. For guys who’ve overcome most shit tests, however, comfort tests can be the bigger problem, especially for medium-term FWBs. A while ago I saw a post titled, “Be careful of being too Alpha, Comfort Tests are far more lethal than Shit-Tests,” and it reminded me of the issue.

Valentine’s day can be a comfort test, but it’s one that’s easy to fail by either doing too much or too little. Gifts are an element of retention. When you start banging girls you don’t have to worry too much about keeping them around, but the vast majority of women consciously or subconsciously want to “advance” their relationship with a good guy. Most women also bond with guys who are fucking them and giving them orgasms. This is doubly true if you’re going bare.

Like I said, it’s easy to fuck up through doing too much (if you are a novice at fucking hot women or more than one woman at a time, quit reading and get more experience). When I was way younger I had the bad habit of thinking that grand romantic gestures and gifts would endear me to women, because that’s what I saw in movies and read in novels. But when I tried grand romantic gestures in real life they totally flopped. As a younger guy I had no idea why. Now I do. Women love romantic gestures but only from a guy they consider to be higher status than they are.

So if you have a woman you’ve been fucking somewhat regularly, consider getting her a small present for Valentine’s Day. You should only give gifts to women you’ve been sleeping with semi-regularly. I’d say at least three times or for longer than a week, but there is no hard and fast rule. Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVES GIFTS TO WOMEN YOU HAVE NOT FUCKED. You will lower your own value in doing so and will decrease the likelihood you will ever fuck her.

The gift shouldn’t be expensive. A stuffed animal or bar of chocolate or inexpensive necklace will do. If she thinks she’s earned the gift, she will value it more than she will a $10,000 engagement ring or an expensive, fancy, uncomfortable dinner with a guy trying to buy her love and her pussy. The best gift I ever got a girl was for a girl who loved pickles and so I got her some for her birthday.

If you deliver a little bit of comfort you will set yourself off from most player assholes. The key phrase is “a little bit.” One of the commenters to that post said,

Shit Test – Too little masculine polarity.

Comfort Test – Too much masculine polarity.

Well-stated. I have been both and while you should err towards too much masculine polarity, you can overdo it. I have, and I made women pointlessly suffer by being too aloof.

For most guys this post is not going to be helpful because you will not yet be at the stage where comfort rather than shit is your biggest sticking point. But if you are like me, you might get over your initial challenges and then decide that you’re too badass to deal with her feelings or to deign to remember birthdays or holidays.

This will both make her feel bad (as well as used) and reduce your performance. A couple dollars, a box, and an air of mystery will go a long way. A little comfort also goes a long way and you should be 80 – 90% aloof, mysterious asshole, but that tenderness will up your game. There is a good book called Mate: Become the Man Women Want that uses the term “Tender Defender” for what women want and like. They want a guy who isn’t a pussy but who isn’t mean to them. When I was younger I went through phases where I was like, “I’m so fucking hard, I’m the boss, I don’t do fucking Valentine’s day,” dumb shit like that. That was a slightly better stance than giving girls I hadn’t fucked flowers in public, but it wasn’t ideal either.

This Valentine’s Day I don’t have anyone I’m seeing who’d be appropriate for this, and lately I’ve gotten kinda tired of women, maybe because I’m getting older. I wish I’d better known how to handle momentous days when I was younger, especially for FWBs-type situations where I want to keep the woman around but I don’t want a conventional “relationship.”