Dating

When you plan out a date, it’s just easier to plan it for somewhere close to you. If you’ve been trying to meet girls “halfway”, you’ve been doing it wrong.

Short article. This won’t be anything terribly new or earth-shattering if you’re a longtime reader. But it might be a worthwhile refresher.

Was talking to one of our grizzled GC veterans whom I’d unfortunately missed a series of phone calls with. He’s a punctual guy, and I missed three calls I had scheduled with him in a row. I miss a lot of calls (I’m the worst at schedules. Punctuality is not my strong suit), but I’ve never missed three in a row with one person before, I don’t think. He felt understandably bothered/devalued by my missing scheduled calls with him. The first time was me being absentminded, but the second two missed calls were black swan woman-related chaos (I almost never have women derail my business or personal plans, and the only two days I can remember where I missed calls due to a woman were both days I had calls with the GC veteran in question).

Anyway, I felt bad, but once a call is missed, there’s little you can do. You are just that unreliable jerk who disrespects other people’s time. You are an asshole.

But it isn’t just scheduled calls I miss. I’ve long been very flakey about meeting girls for dates, too. I forget about dates, I show up an hour late, I go to the wrong place, etc. Sometimes it works out okay; I’ve had girls show up to the next date ready to go to bed after I’d stood them up on Date #1 (always by accident; I have never stood anyone up on purpose, and don’t expect I ever will). But often you’ll just never hear from her again. It’s not a reliable way to turn strangers into lovers.

So, as a result of my flakiness, I adopted the strategy I’ll review with you today: make her come to you.

Not sure what to talk about on dates? No problem. These 20 topics take your date from start to finish with pizzazz.

Ever find yourself wondering what to talk about on dates?

Sure, you probably know some of the basics, and you might even be able to get past small talk, but what then?

Do you know how to hit the right topics to progress the date, connect with her, and lay the groundwork for taking her home?

For most guys, the answer is NO. They go with the flow and perhaps occasionally hit some of the right topics by accident. But the “go with the flow” mentality won’t help you get consistent success on dates.

It’s better to take a more deliberate approach by first understanding which topics are the most powerful on your dates.

A good conversation topic does at least one of three things:

1. Helps you connect with her (usually by revealing something about her)

2. Pushes the date forward (escalates things, moves her someplace more intimate)

3. Handles the logistics (resolve timeframes and any other issues related with things to come)

(Bonus points if the topic also shines a positive light on you, but remember: you should keep talking about yourself to a minimum.)

If you’re on a topic that doesn’t do one of these things, you should move on quickly. Otherwise, you risk the conversation stalling and the connection fading.

With this in mind, I’ll cover topics that fit into each of these three categories.

You’ll notice that many of these topics allow you to:

• Screen her for potential relationship material (whether it be hook up, friends with benefits, or girlfriend)

• Qualify her so that she feels like she’s winning you over little by little

• Communicate with her on an emotional level (which is best for connecting with her)

• Keep the conversation focused on her so she feels like you already know her well

• And relate back to her with positive traits and stories about yourself

(Note: You shouldn’t try to cycle through all of these topics on your dates. Instead, deep dive on a few of them, and save the rest for future dates with the girl.)

Let’s cover the first set of topics – those that will help you connect with her.

When a girl asks you out, it should seem obvious what to do: say yes, right? Yet guys botch this one surprisingly often. Here’s how not to.

You’re in the classroom looking at your notebook, or you’re in the office leaned up against a cubicle wall. A girl you know stops by to say hello and makes a little light chitchat with you. You talk with her, it’s fun; at one point she laughs. And then all at once she tells you, “We should hang out sometime.”

“Yeah, totally,” you tell her.

“All right, I need to get back to work,” she says. “I’ll see you.”

“See you!” you tell her.

You spend the next week mulling over what to do. Should you walk up to her and ask her for her phone number? Should you go tell her about the date idea you cooked up? Should you wait for her to re-approach you and make something happen then?

The more time goes by, the more awkward it gets.

Finally, two weeks later, you bump into her again and tell her, “We should get some coffee or something.”

She says, “Yeah, just let me know.” Then drifts off.

Still, you don’t have her contact info.

The date never happens.

How should you have dealt with the situation?

Attraction is there at the beginning, or it never fully shows up to the same extent. What determines attraction – and why can’t you ‘create’ it?

This is going to be a weird article for some readers.

On the one hand, I’m going to challenge some basic assumptions you may have. But on the other hand, not really.

If you’ve read here a while, you’ve seen me comment that attraction is either there or it isn’t; you cannot ‘create’ or ‘build’ attraction. Though if you read enough of my articles, you can probably find instances of me using the phrase ‘create attraction’ or ‘build attraction’ to talk about something I’m suggesting you do. This article is about what, exactly, it is you cannot ‘create’ or ‘build’... and what other thing(s) you can build/create. Along the way, as we go, I hope you will discover some new ways of looking at attraction that lets you better use it in your courtships with women.

To get away from the confusion, in this article I will divide the thing we commonly call attraction into two (2) discrete daughter elements:

• Fascination, and
• Excitement

How these two play off each other throughout a courtship will be our focus today.

When a girl asks you why you want to date her… what should you say? You *could* just tell her… But don’t do this if you actually want her.

Once you enter into the dance of gaming girls, you instantly notice the avalanche of tests come rolling down at high speed to crush your lay of the day. Girls with at least some experience will throw them at you. The question in the title is one of those big snowballs that you either avoid like a pro... or suffocate under like a noob.

You’ll especially face this test when you start to go fast with girls and come across as more of a sexual man.

Let’s first talk about the game situations that lead to this question and what it tells you about the girl, then we’ll see the underlying psychology of this question before giving you all the knowledge to answer it in the best possible way.

Women conceal the past. So how do you get the skinny on them on touchy topics… Without them shutting down or blowing up?

A reader named Eric writes in:

“Hey, just wondering how do you screen a girl for topics that she might not want to talk about or for things that wouldn’t be in her best interest to tell you like daddy issues or if she has ever cheated in a relationship without coming off as too insecure or too aggressive?”

This is a pretty fun topic. How do you get girls to be straight with you on stuff they’d rather not be?

Two days ago, I published “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want?”, which is all about women’s tendency toward the vague and ambiguous. This can make it hard to nail a girl down on some topics... Especially the topics she doesn’t want you to nail her down on.

Further, women usually cloak the less marketable parts of their pasts in secrecy (and even go so far as to discourage investigation into their pasts: “Why does it matter?” “The past is irrelevant!”). Men do this too, but the female version of the murky past is the big leagues; men are the J.V. squad of concealment, compared to how women do.

Yet, those parts of her past she doesn’t want you to know about may be exactly the things you need to know about most. In “Why Her Past Matters If You Want Something Serious”, I shared a trio of scientific investigations into women’s age at first sex, their tendencies to sleep with male friends, and their religious service attendance... and how these three things relate to the level of fidelity you can expect from them, on average. And in “How Many Partners Has Your Girlfriend Had? Find Out Here”, I highlight a study that finds a woman’s infidelity risk rises 7% for each additional sex partner she has.

Particularly if you want a long-term relationship with a girl, there’s a good chance you want to know the things she may not want you to. But how do you find these things out, without her lying to you or spiraling into auto-rejection?

Beyond dates and girlfriends, what should you look for in a wife? 6 things: genes, background, personality, beliefs, age, and life goals.

Bit of a departure from our usual fare, but commenting on “Why Madonna/Whore is Intimately Linked with the West”, Jimbo asks:

“What kind of girl and where to find it? Now what I want is a girl who isn’t too keen on working or a career, because: 1) I don’t see myself changing diapers or nurturing babies and little children except on rare necessary occasions, 2) if she’s gonna do all that with seven or more kids, keep the house tidy, and put food on the table, she obviously has to not work. Basically I’d just do the providing and the steering of the ship, and she’d take care of the nurturing and keeping the ship tidy.

But besides wanting the girl to be markedly younger than I am and be somewhat malleable and a follower (at least to me), I still don’t have a clear picture for what kind of girl to look for for that role. Do I cradle-rob one from high school? Or take a high school dropout because I’ll be sure she won’t want a career? But at the same time, isn’t it better to have a mother with some academic literacy to keep up with the kids’ education? Your thoughts on this one would be much appreciated.”

So, today, we’ll be talking about picking a wife.

I will kick off by recommending you always have you wife-screening (or, alternately, mother-of-my-children screening) default to ‘on’. The chief two reasons are to not miss great girls, and to not get trapped by the wrong girls.

Getting trapped is what happens to most men who don’t default to ‘on’ with their wife-screening. Which is the majority of men. Most men say, “Ah, I’ll never get married,” or, “Maybe I’ll get married, but it won’t be until years and years from now,” and then they meet a girl they kind of dig, date her for a while, and marry her (see: “Why People Settle Down: The 3-Step Settling Curve”). All the while they’ve never actually screened her, and she may not be a good fit for marriage with them (or marriage with anyone).

Missing great girls is what happens when a guy meets a girl he clicks with, but fails to realize what a find she is because he doesn’t screen her right away, and so doesn’t push as hard as he could have to be with her, and ultimately doesn’t get her. She might’ve been the perfect wife for you (or at least a top flight girlfriend), but some other guy gets to date her now because you let her go too easily.

If your heart is twisted up in knots and you’re screaming, “No Chase! I never want to be married! Don’t say it!”, well, I urge you to read on anyway. Forewarned is forearmed. And you might just find you’re less likely to fall into a marriage than most men who swear they don’t want it and will never do it (the majority of whom eventually marry despite their protests – though, because they are unprepared for it, their marriages tend to be much more on the girls’ terms instead of on their own).