Dating

The time cost of women

Despite MGTOW sites growing in popularity, the average red-blooded male is still very much concerned about getting laid. True, he may not get a lot of pussy, but he’s certainly spending a lot of money on its pursuit. Thus, more or less every guy can easily be made aware of the enormous monetary cost of chasing women. We have had discussions on my old blog on this topic before, where people generally agreed that escorts are a more cost-effective alternative than trying to pick up random women, besides the fact that a professional is likely to better satisfy your sexual urges than a random Six in a tight skirt.

The other day I was talking to an old friend of mine, a guy I used to hang out frequently when we were living in the same city. For him, women were a phase he went through. These days, he’s focussing on his job and making bank. Of course, if you don’t happen to get a cushy subsidized government job, this means that you regularly work more than 40 hours a week. He remarked that he doesn’t much bother with women, but when the opportunity is there, he goes for it, like when some HR ditz at a conference makes eyes at him. This is indeed where experience pays off because you just need to read the signals and figure out logistics, instead of fumbling from your “opener” to, somehow, sex.

I think the attitude of my friend is more common among older guys who deliberately choose to remain single. Because such guys tend to have busy lives, they are not particularly inclined to spend their weekends on dates or in bars. Younger guys may fret that they can’t afford dates or going to clubs a lot. Yet, once you’ve gotten a real job, you probably value time a lot more than money. Sometimes people make the following somewhat absurd argument: They earn x amount of money, which boils down to a certain hourly rate. Thus, a two-hour date would “cost” a certain amount of money. However, this argument may not be so convincing if you draw a salary because you don’t get paid in your spare time, which is why I consider that version of the argument flawed. On the other hand, if you worked as a freelancer with a fixed hourly rate, this argument would indeed be convincing: let’s say you work with the current flavor-of-the-month web framework and your client pays you $100/hour. If you didn’t work for two hours because you took some ditz out for lunch, you indeed didn’t make $200 in two hours, so the numbers don’t look so favorably.

In general, I’d like to suggest the following thought experiment: put a dollar-value on an hour of your time, and then calculate how much chasing women costs you. The result may surprise you. You may find that a moderately successful guy is pissing away thousands of dollars to get laid just once. Let’s say you freelance and your time is worth $50. You can work as much as you want, and there is plenty of work available because you are charging below market rates. Now, assuming you are a regular dude who does not particularly well with the ladies. You get a few numbers, some of which turn into dates, a smaller fraction into second dates, and every now and again you end up banging a moderately attractive chick, if you are lucky. That’s an opportunity cost of a few grand, buddy! Do you want to make a guess about what caliber of woman you could have banged with that amount of money, had you chosen to make money instead of wasting all those hours? Alternatively, you could put those hours to better use by working out or learning some useful skill, which would be beneficial in many more ways than just making it easier for you to get laid.

9 thoughts on “The time cost of women

  1. I’m thinking about doing the escort route. I’m one of those guys who doesn’t have a lot of time to spend in night venues nor the patience to deal with them (Where I live all the bars/clubs only cater to the preppy sports crowd).

  2. This is indeed where experience pays off because you just need to read the signals and figure out logistics, instead of fumbling from your “opener” to, somehow, sex.

    Which is a great thing to point out.

    Even if you build a lifestyle revolving around low-investment lays and escorts, you still need to know how to make use of those easy lays.

    So going through a phase of building experience isn’t completely bad. What’s irrational is doing it for 10-15 years like the RSD folks. Only doing it until you get a good foundation (readings signs, knowing how to escalate, bla bla)… Is good enough.

    It relates to that minmaxing conversation we had on the old blog.

    – You can minmax seduction and work on it for 15 years until you get into the top 1% of flirting ability
    (i say flirting ability coz I refuse to use the word game)

    OR

    – You can spend 1-2 years on it to reach 80/20
    – Then achieve above average results in your physique
    – Achieve above average status in some niche
    – Achieve above average earnings

    This combination of being above average in 5-6 things makes the “price per lay” go down much lower. It will take you 4-5 years to achieve, and you’ll get many more easy lays than the guy who minmaxed “game” for 15 years.

    1. The RSD “method” such as it is, involves spam approaching and going out every night of the week. Success involves the law of large numbers more than some development of imaginary pick up skills. Unless you are independently wealthy and have no aspirations in life other than a high lay count, this lifestyle is not going to work for most guys. As Alek says, the alternative method is not only easier but is vastly more viable.

  3. “Sometimes people make the following somewhat absurd argument: They earn x amount of money, which boils down to a certain hourly rate. Thus, a two-hour date would “cost” a certain amount of money. However, this argument may not be so convincing if you draw a salary because you don’t get paid in your spare time, which is why I consider that version of the argument flawed.”

    – opportunity cost is always working, even if you work for a salary, you could start a side hustle in your spare time instead of chasing women.

    Most people aren’t aware of opportunity cost. Some take their savings and buy a car for 50k to “impress” women, just to find out that women don’t care. They could have banged 50 high class escorts for the money. As my friend use to say: ” If you only want to fuck, go to a brothel.”

    1. ”If you only want to fuck, go to a brothel.” => that’s an excellent good statement!!!

      If you desire female validation and the thrill of the chase by timely ravishing the deer, then hit on the women who’re offering themselves to you sleazy-style.

  4. I feel these days, going through a phase where you get rid of your social anxieties, get in good shape, know how to talk and make a woman feel good, have decent social skills etc. is an investment that’s totally worth it. This probably takes 2 years of regular going out and pushing yourself.

    What I have seen is, a lot of these foundations and decent social awareness is important and carries over to every context.

    E.g. at work, if you are reasonably senior, you probably have to work with different departments and get stuff done through influence. This is where basic social awareness and being able to get along and understand different kinds of people really helps. On a recent project, I just randomly took my developers and QA folks for pizza and beer. Just this small gesture made them wrap up something in 2 days, which was otherwise going to take at least a week.

    Beyond the basic foundations though, I doubt this is worth pursuing for very long.

    1. @Tobie – what the video also doesn’t mean is that women are JUST as clueless about reading women’s signals.

      In experiments they had people act as a readers (there were both both men and women asked to act as readers). These readers were then allowed to view flirting interactions. They were asked to judge if the woman in the observed interaction is interested or disinterested in the guy.

      Guess what happened. ALL readers failed (couldn’t read above chance) AND female readers were JUST AS bad at reading if an observed woman was interested.

      Why is this important? It proves the signal giver is the one who’s doing a shitty job (i.e. women are the ones messing up)… not that men are “clueless and lame readers”. But asking society to ask women with taking responsibility seems a big ask. They’d rather frame the problem as “those dumb clueless men har har”.

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