---
title: 'THE tip for meeting women (yes, THE)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=uqQ6g6OY2tc'
video_id: 'uqQ6g6OY2tc'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 1132
---

# THE tip for meeting women (yes, THE)

> Source: [THE tip for meeting women (yes, THE)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uqQ6g6OY2tc)

## Summary

Adam Ragusea offers his primary tip for young men struggling to meet romantic partners: build genuine friendships with women through real-life community activities, rather than relying solely on dating apps or superficial traits. He critiques online dating culture and the 'friend zone' myth, arguing that emotional connection and shared experiences are more important than physical attributes like height.

### Key Points

- **Cooking as a dating skill** [0:00] — Cooking can help attract a partner, but only if you sincerely cook something they'll enjoy, not just to impress.
- **The one big tip** [1:09] — The mother of all tips: be in real-life community with women—join groups, work together, and form genuine friendships.
- **Gen Z dating statistics** [3:13] — 44% of Gen Z men reported no romantic partner during teenage years, compared to 20% of Boomers. 2/3 of US men under 30 are single, vs. 1/3 of women.
- **The internet height debate** [4:26] — Ragusea argues against simplistic evolutionary biology claims that women only want tall men. He cites examples like Tom Holland and Michael B. Jordan (both under 6 ft) as proof.
- **Real-life vs. online views of women** [7:23] — Men who only know women from the internet misunderstand them. Real-life interaction reveals women as complex individuals.
- **How to meet women in real life** [7:45] — Go to school, join a study group, a band, a choir, get a job at a restaurant—places with balanced gender makeup and natural interaction.
- **Emotional connection supersedes looks** [9:53] — When you develop a sincere emotional bond through shared activities, it can override factors like height or conventional attractiveness.
- **Make friends with women** [10:31] — Not just to date them, but because they make good friends and colleagues. Friendships can lead to romantic sparks when timing is right.
- **Let women make the first move** [12:08] — In an era of female empowerment, let connections blossom organically and let her be the one to nudge first—it gives her safety and control.
- **Rejection is normal** [12:59] — Not everyone will like you back. The 'friend zone' is a myth—friendship doesn't rule you out; lack of chemistry does.
- **Hard does not equal impossible** [15:04] — It's harder for young people to meet in real life due to loss of third places and screens, but it's still possible—improvise, adapt.
- **Critique of objectifying women** [15:19] — If you treat women as objects or instinct-driven animals, they will sense it. You need to show genuine interest in them as people.
- **Bonus tip: Read romance novels** [17:17] — Romance novels are a cheat code to understand what women want—written by women for women. Visit a local romance bookstore to learn.

### Conclusion

The key to finding a romantic partner is to live an involved life with women as genuine friends and collaborators, not to rely on dating apps or superficial attributes. Real-world community and emotional connection are irreplaceable.

## Transcript

Hi, internet cook and noted heterosexual
Adam Ragusea here. Yes, cooking can
absolutely help you to attract a
romantic partner, and I hope that I have
given my overwhelmingly young and male
audience plenty to work with through the
years. I do get emails sometimes from
fellas who report using a recipe of mine
on a date night with things apparently
going well afterward.
Being a guy who cooks is great, just as
long as you aren't obnoxious about it.
Just as long as you are sincerely trying
to cook somebody something that they
will actually enjoy instead of something
that you think will impress them. When
in doubt, center the other person's
pleasure.
Being a guy who cooks is great, but on
this, the day of my 19th wedding
anniversary, I feel both empowered and
compelled to offer some more substantive
tips on sex and romance. Actually, just
one tip. The mother of all tips for
young men to find young women with whom
they are romantically and sexually
compatible.
Yes, this tip absolutely is also useful
for boys looking to find boys and girls
looking to find girls and grown ass
women looking to find women or looking
to find men or for trans people looking
to find whomever they want to share
their bed with, perhaps on a mattress
from Helix Sleep, sponsor of this video.
Let me thank them real quick before we
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site for other sales, too. Thank you,
Helix Sleep. Anyway, my one big tip for
finding somebody. It is applicable to
anyone, but this video is specifically
directed at young men looking to find
young women. In part because that is
where my own expertise lies primarily,
but also because young men looking for
young women are doing especially badly
these days.
According to the Survey Center on
American Life, 44% of Gen Z guys
reported having no girlfriend or
boyfriend at all during their teenage
years.
For Boomer men, that number was only
20%.
23% for Gen Xers, 32% for Millennials
such as myself. There is a famous Pew
finding from a few years ago that found
2/3 of US men under 30 are single now,
compared to only 1/3 of US women.
All of these stats are questionable and
have been questioned. Many Gen Z'ers
don't do the whole boyfriend-girlfriend
thing these days, from what I hear. And
maybe their their situationships are
less likely to be captured in these
kinds of surveys. Gen Z'ers are
certainly having way less sex than prior
generations of young people. That is
well established.
The Institute for Family Studies reports
that 1/4 of US adults under 30 have had
zero sex in the last year. That is
double what it was in 2010, not that
long ago.
Something is definitely going on here,
and I will now turn to my purely
anecdotal impressions. I got into a
stupid internet fight the other day.
It was in the comments on a video where
a woman was pointing out that so many of
the world's most desired men, the
singers, the actors, the the pretty
faces on the billboards, so many of the
idols of hetero female desire are
significantly under 6 ft tall.
In the era of dating apps with filters,
women are setting the height filter to a
minimum of 6 ft, perhaps imagining 6 ft
to be about average, when in fact, 6 ft
is quite above average. US average adult
male height is 5 ft 9 in.
My height.
Some [snorts] people comment on my
height sometimes, and I find that odd,
considering my height literally could
not be any less remarkable. It is
literally as normal as it gets.
Anyway,
>> [snorts]
>> the woman in this video was basically
saying, "Look, ladies, a true 6 ft is
probably taller than what you are
envisioning.
A 5'8 guy might actually be tall enough
for you. And if he is, lowering that
filter a tick or two will enormously
improve your odds of finding the man
that you're looking for." Now, I did not
get into a fight with the woman in the
video. I got into a fight with a guy in
the comments making the kind of
simplistic evolutionary biology
arguments that tend to be popular among
the world's worst people.
This guy was like,
"Bullshit. Women are programmed to want
big, tall protectors, and so the tall
guys always end up getting all the
women, and the women want the tall men
so badly that many will settle for not
being the only woman, and thus sex is a
winner-take-all economy that leaves
shorter men out in the cold unless they
are rich."
And I was like, "Dude, no.
I mean, yeah, like a little, but
the world is full of happy couples where
the man is not much taller than the
woman, or in many cases, he's shorter,
and he is not always rich.
Look at all of the totems of female
desire mentioned in this video that
we're both commenting on. Women love
Jeremy Allen White and Michael B. Jordan
and Tom Holland despite them all being
under 6-ft and not just because they are
rich."
Yes, Michael B. Jordan is under 6-ft, no
matter what his official bio says.
Anyway,
this guy shot back,
"Have you seen the videos of women
meeting Tom Holland for the first time
and laughing because he's so much
shorter than they were expecting?"
And at that point, I felt that I had
diagnosed the problem with this guy.
This is a guy who pretty much only knows
women from the internet and not from
real life.
Because here's how it works in real
life, boys. Gather around and listen to
old man Ragusea. Here's how it works in
real life. In real life, you
do things.
You go places. You go to school where
you meet lots of women about your age.
You go to a study group at the library
where you meet lots more women. You join
a student organization. You join a band.
You join a choir. Oh,
the women I used to meet in choir
practice.
You get a job at a real physical place
where you do real physical work with
other physical people. Forget the dating
app. Get a job at a restaurant, for
God's sake.
Between the front and back of house,
restaurants tend to have a pretty
balanced gender makeup, and it's a place
that centers corporeal pleasure and
alcohol and staying up late, and
everybody is sleeping with everybody
else at nearly any restaurant you go to.
Working at a restaurant is like being in
Fleetwood Mac.
You get a job.
You get involved. Join a political
organization or a faith community or a
fan community. Anything where people get
together in physical meatspace and it's
not just a sausage party.
When you just live life out of the
house,
when you do interesting things with
interesting people,
chemicals will react
often in unexpected ways.
Back in my dating days,
I had relationships with women who were
taller than me, shorter than me,
prettier than me, less pretty than me,
all of that, because when you meet
actual women, when you engage with them
as something other than a potential sex
partner, when you work with women, when
you create things with women, when you
go places with women, you learn things
with women, you will find that a woman
becomes interesting to you, not just
because of how she looks, but because
she is interesting.
Because you are invested in her as a
human being in her own right.
And then that goes the other way, too.
Yes, most people, most women, care about
looks when seeking a partner, but that
that doesn't mean looks are the only
thing they care about. When you develop
a sincere emotional bond with somebody
by living life with that person, by
doing things with them, that emotional
connection can supersede a whole lot of
other factors that people consider when
choosing each other. This is my tip, the
tip for young men looking for young
women.
Make friends with women.
And not just so that you can hit on
them, but because you need friends.
Friends are good.
Women make really good friends.
And colleagues. And bandmates, or
whatever.
If you live an interesting, involved
life with women,
you will make
pre-romantic connections with far more
women than you could ever even have a
relationship with. I was friends with so
many women where we had an obvious spark
between us, but we were never both
single at the same time, you know, the
stars never aligned, and so nothing ever
happened. But the stars did align enough
times.
More than enough times, perhaps too many
for my own good. Just be in community
with women.
And nature will take its course.
As it has done for all prior
generations.
Uh you might say, "Well, what do you
know, old man Ragusea? Nowadays,
everybody meets on dating apps, and so
flirting in real life is regarded as
harassment."
I mean, yes, the standards and practices
of flirting have changed a lot over the
last several generations, but one
advantage of the female empowerment that
you may decry is that most women feel
perfectly comfortable making the first
move these days, and so, generally
speaking, you should let them.
Let the connection blossom organically.
Let it grow to the point where you both
obviously know that something is going
on, but you haven't quite acknowledged
it yet, and let her be the one to first
nudge her toe over that imaginary line
between you. She lives in a world that
is legitimately dangerous, so give her
the safety of controlling that first
move.
And if she never does,
do not blame the friend zone.
There are guys who think that being
friends with a woman will cause her to
rule you out as a romantic partner.
There is no evidence of such an effect.
The far more likely explanation is that
she would have ruled you out as a
romantic partner no matter what. The
fact that you are friends with her is
incidental.
Not everyone you like is going to like
you back, and you have to be a big boy
and deal with that.
Is it harder now for young people today
to be in physical community with each
other to allow these chemical reactions
to occur? Yeah, absolutely. It sucks. It
sucks that we've lost so many third
places, you know, a physical place that
is neither home nor work where young
people can just be
together
without necessarily having to buy
something.
It sucks that we've created an
inherently atomizing, alienating built
environment where we don't walk or take
the train in close proximity to
strangers anymore. You are in your
automotive or your suburban pod safely
quarantined from everybody else in the
matrix. That sucks.
It sucks that we walk around with
addictive screens in our pockets that
offer some of what you get from physical
community, but not everything.
The internet is like a diet of a of a
seafarer of yore. It has enough calories
and it seems like it should keep you
alive, but it's actually lacking some
crucial micronutrients that are not
immediately obvious and eventually you
will get scurvy and die.
The internet is like that as a social
food. It offers some of the substance of
what you need, but not everything. And
if you only get your social food on the
internet, you will slowly get sicker and
sicker
even as you cram more and more of it
into your face to compensate. It is
simply lacking in certain key nutrients.
I don't blame you, my young male
audience, for the way that you struggle
to find real community with lots of
other people including women with whom
you might connect even if you don't look
compatible on a dating app.
It's harder for you guys to meet people,
but hard does not equal impossible. Ask
any disabled or neurodivergent person
about that.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
I I blame you guys when I see you
talking about women as though they are
animals acting purely on instinct as
though they have no interests in men
beyond what the ancient reptile part of
their brain tells them to pursue.
Hey, maybe you are projecting my guy.
There are guys who want women as sex
objects and as domestic servants who
have no interest in women beyond any of
that.
Maybe the reason she doesn't like you is
that she can tell that you don't like
her.
You aren't interested in her. You aren't
curious about her.
You're not invested in her success or
self-actualization.
You just want a nicely shaped body that
folds laundry.
Well, my guy,
if you're a shallow
then the only women who are really
visible to you are also going to be
shallow
Maybe you deserve each other.
The rest of us
have never needed dating apps or even
bars to meet. I met a woman in a bar one
time and it did not prove to be a
particularly good choice.
Everyone else I ever got involved with I
just met by existing in the world with
women.
By being in partnership with women and
by caring about women beyond my own
desire for them.
Now, I will admit that despite my own
neuro divergence and
unremarkable physical attributes, I do
have higher than average game with
women. I've got good chat as the Brits
would say. You might have a less
intuitive sense of what women want from
you when they're getting to know you.
Well, here's a bonus tip for you.
Get off the internet,
pick up a god damned romance novel.
There is this huge and rapidly growing
industry that is mostly women writing
stories for other women about what women
want.
It's a cheat code and it's waiting right
there for you to learn it.
Don't know which book to read? Go to
your local romance book store.
Even in a modest size city like
Knoxville, Tennessee, we have multiple
such establishments at this point
including Good Girl Books, which my wife
of 19 years, Lauren Moral, co-owns with
her friend Rayanne. Their favorite kind
of customer there is the clueless dude
who shows up and says, "Oh, I'm not sure
what I should get.
Can you help me? I'm kind of awkward."
They love that guy because his very
presence in a romance book store
indicates that he is interested in the
inner lives of women.
If you want people to be interested in
you,
you generally got to show some interest
in them.
Be in community with women in real life.
Eventually,
one of them will probably look past your
superficial shortcomings and perhaps you
will learn to do the same.
Now,
stop watching YouTube and
join a choir. Swear to you guys. Choir.