Connell Barrett

I would say three or four times over the course of our being together, I quote unquote escalated.

And that's the big insight I'm having here as I'm sort of working this out right now on this podcast is I think the word, the very word, the very idea of escalation is creepy.

Now, call it what you will, men need to lead the dating dance, generally, and women like to follow.

Men lead and women follow, typically.

At the same time, the big lesson for me from this night is stop focusing on what you want, Connell.

Focus on making her feel comfortable and just enjoying you.

If I hadn't been so focused on trying to get sex or trying to escalate the way my pickup artist coaches were encouraging me to, I don't know.

Maybe we would have hooked up.

Maybe by trying less, we would have hooked up.

Or maybe we wouldn't have.

But I would have felt better about myself.

By the way, I'm not some hardcore sex-crazed escalation dude.

Again, this is another example of me not really being who I actually am.

I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do, according to my teachers.

It's not my teacher's fault.

But I remember at one point, Katie just said, hey, this is moving kind of fast for me.

can we just slow down?

And I said, sure, no problem.

And then, you know, I tried 10 or 15 minutes later and she spent the night.

Um, I did stop escalating at some point.