Would you drop $3K on dating lessons? Not your typical How to pick up girls lesson in a book, but more like hands on instruction that includes five-hour instructional sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, supplemented by “field” sessions on Friday and Saturday night. Training for battle and then being dropped into a firefight on foreign soil, as it were.

The owners of several programs like these are often so confident in their company’s program that they’ll throw in a money-back, no-questions-asked guarantee—a clause they say is invoked less than 0.5 percent of the time. 

While there are obviously a lot cheaper ways to get laid, what these programs teach supposedly buys you a lifetime of beautiful women.

So what are they teaching? According to some dating instructors, they are teaching the “science of dating”, which is a focus on the process, not the outcome. This means the actual dating, so getting laid is up to you.

Lessons include more than prepping you for conversation. but might include how to meet girls in a club, at the airport, or how to plant the seeds of sex in her mind early in conversation.

It seems like a numbers game, with graduates of such dating seminars playing the odds. Most guys won’t approach more than 1 or 2 women in a nightclub, but if you hit on 20 girls in a night, the odds are that at least one will find you somewhat charming.

With a number of mind tricks and a little psychology under your belt, your chances are pretty good you’ll find a mate for the evening using some of the techniques taught by some of these pickup artists. What they are is a confidence builder, not to say anyone can’t do well with a little preparation.

But it seems that if you’re looking for true romance, this type of dating technique isn’t going to help find the love of your life. You might even regard this as an underhanded way of gaining more notches on the bed post, but have very little to do with actual love.