Relationships

When I was three years old, I reached into a bag of potato chips up on the counter in the apartment my family lived in then and drew one of the chips out. Just then, my father walked into the room and caught me munching. "Who said you could have that chip?" he asked in his booming voice. I stood there stunned, looking at him like a deer in the headlights, a half eaten chip motionless in my frozen hand.

"Mommy," I said in response, eyes wide and voice trembling.

"Really?" my father said, disbelieving. "She said that from the shower?" He was right, my mother wasn't anywhere nearby -- she was in the bathroom getting washed. I could hear her singing from the kitchen. "Let's ask her."

I sat fearfully as my father walked into the bathroom and I heard him ask my mother if she said I could have a potato chip. I couldn't hear her response, but I guessed what it would be. My father walked back into the dining room. "She said she didn't," he said. I just stared at him. "You can't have these without asking first," he said, taking the bag away and putting it out of reach. I'd been caught red-handed (or salty-fingered). Fortunately, I escaped without a spanking, after I pleaded that it was "just one chip."

Ever since then, I've had a lifelong fascination with learning how to spot a liar, and how to not get found out oneself when on occasion pressed into lying. I hate lying, and avoid it whenever and wherever possible -- I wasn't very good at it when young, and came to the conclusion that lies always surface in the end, so it's better to just be honest -- but I'm all for being self-reliant, and very occasionally sometimes you've just got to know how to do it.

So how do you tell someone lying? There are a bunch of ways, and learning as many of them as you can is something that will benefit you enormously in all of your social interactions and relationships and friendships and parternships to come.

I tend to focus primarily on pick up and seduction on the blog here, and only infrequently touch on relationship topics, particularly the long term relationship. I write to what I think most folks are interested in, and I generally find it more fun these days to talk about meeting new women anyway. This might belie the fact though that I got started on all this back in 2005 with a focus primarily on building wonderful and amazing long term relationships.

A reader writes in:

“Hey Chase,

I've read and applied all of your techniques for a good few months along with what i've already known / practiced and it's worked me wonders. Now though, after my last fling, there's this new girl I'm after. She's different though, more popular at my college than most others, the academic, social, sporty type.... Yea, a more difficult target.

Anyways, when you're dealing with a girl that you want a long term relationship with, do you still do the same things you do with shorter term ones?

I want to move fast but I don't think she's the type to follow that quickly, I might be wrong, but I'm just actually really scared I'll screw this up because for the first time in a long time, I care about the results. One important question though. When and how often should I meet her if she already feels comfortable around me. Should i still keep things brief? Play hard?

I think this area is something that can add more dynamic. Girls that you want to chase and be with you longer

cheers”

The main question I see here is this one: "... when you're dealing with a girl that you want a long term relationship with, do you still do the same things you do with shorter ones?"

And the quick answer to that question is: yes, yes you most certainly do.

Reckless of me, you say? I must not know long term relationships, you retort? Or perhaps it's that I only ever date loose, easy women, and that these other girls -- these ones you, the reader (not the fellow who wrote in above; "you" as in "everyone reading this right now"), are interested in -- they're different from those loose, easy women who give in to my rapid seductions. They don't fall for such things; they're better than that.

Well, you know me; I'm here to bust your bubble, free your mind, and get you operating on a higher level. So if you were thinking that moving slowly and carefully was the key to getting a long term relationship with the girl of your dreams, you were sure of it, it was an unbreachable fortress of certainty, even, this post is going to tear down that castle in your head and build back up a gleaming new one that casts aside idealism and actually solidly works.

Tell me if you've ever been here before: you're talking to your girlfriend, or a girl you've started dating, or even (if she's really got gall) a girl you just met... and she starts nagging you, persistently, repeatedly, and annoyingly about something. She just won't let up.

I wrote this today to answer the question of how to deal with a nagging woman.

We've talked on here about angry women, and we've gone in-depth on women and drama, but this is something different. Nagging doesn't come from anger, and it isn't an attempt to stir up drama. Nagging is its own animal altogether.

Women nag all the time -- whether you're the spouse they've been together with for twenty years, or they've just met you that night. Usually men simply get frustrated at this, sigh deeply, and throw their hands up. I'm a strong believer that throwing your hands up is never the path to success though -- and this post is designed to help make sure you never have to (at least not when it comes to nagging!).

So if you're ready to stop nagging and get yourself on a smooth, even keel with the women you meet and the women in your life, read ahead.

I hear men whining and complaining to their girlfriends, wives, and women they're pursuing from time to time. Since I don't spend all my time following random couples around, I know it must happen a lot more often than I hear it, too. And every time I hear it, it's like nails on chalkboard.

Thing is, I don't think most guys realize they're doing it, and I don't think most guys realize that it's Rule #14 or so in maintaining attraction and relationships that you don't whine and you don't complain to women.

A little over 5 years ago, I made the rookie mistake of telling a girl I'd just started sleeping with that I wanted her to be my "main girl." This has all kinds of "wrong" and "incorrect" and "bad game" painted all over it, and I'd never do it now, but that was then and I said it.

Her response to this was, as you might suspect, a defiant "I will never be your 'main girl.'"

And I felt a welling up of despair inside my chest. I was about to say it... I almost said it... and then I stopped myself. The urge to belt out a plaintive, "Why???" was overwhelmingly powerful and almost undeniable, but in the end I squelched it, and instead shrugged off the remark, gave her a confident-sounding, "We'll see," and forced myself to keep on as if nothing had been said. I slept with her again that night, and gave her the most potent, memorable, fantastic night of bliss in her life, and she, in a throe of passion, proclaimed that she didn't think she could leave me.

And for the next 2 1/2 years after that, she didn't.

I guarantee though, beyond any shadow of a doubt, beyond all second guesses, beyond anything, that had I whined or complained in that moment instead, we never would've ended up together.

How come? Because whining and complaining positively, absolutely, unequivocally kill attraction.

Kill it. Bury it in the ground, cover it up with dirt.

And most guys do it unknowingly anyway.

I'm sitting at Washington-Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, listening to the ticket lady bark orders at a crowd of passengers trying to board a plane to Denver.

"Seating Areas 1 and 2 only!" she shouts. "If you're Seating Area 3 or 4, feel free to have a seat and make yourself comfortable, there's no need to stand. If you're Seating Area 3 or 4 and traveling with someone else you may board, but if not please wait for me to call your Seating Area. Boarding Seating Areas 1 and 2! Areas 1 and 2 only!!"

It strikes me that this woman is a stickler for the rules. And, that her admonition is probably entirely directed at those who prefer to break the rules -- the ones who can't stand the rules.

And that made me think about how different people deal with rules differently.

Some people need rules, and define themselves by them. If you take away the rules, they become scared and confused. If they see or hear about people breaking the rules, they become angry and upset and work to get those people back in line. If you give them new rules to follow and explain why those rules are necessary, they're the fastest to adapt and learn to work within them and uphold them.

Other people can't tolerate rules at all, and try to break them whenever possible. These are the crazy, dynamic people who never are still, and this personality type probably defines the founders of a majority of businesses and governments and new branches of art and science out there -- and they're also the ones you see ending up in shouting matches trying to get their ways, or ending up in prison for going too far.

And then you've got people in the middle -- I'm one of those. I don't like the rules, and I'm happiest when the rules disappear, but I'm fine operating within them if I need to so long as I know I'm working toward a place where I can be free and do what I want to do. People like me also tend to be good at using one rule to break another, thereby getting our way but making it difficult for the rule makers who comprise the majority of society to argue with us, because hey, there was a conflict in the rules -- we just chose one of them instead of the other.

It's my belief that whether you play by the rules or not is a big determinant of the trajectory you take learning to get better with women, what's easy for you, what's hard, and where you eventually even want to get to.

So let's talk some about the rule makers and the rule breakers.

"It's odd that men feel they must protect women, since for the most part, they must be protected from men."

- Abigail Duniway

One of the true but uncomfortable facts of life is that men and women treat each other the same way they treat other resources -- food, money, shelter, possessions. "You are mine," goes the thinking, much of the time. Or, alternatively, "You should be mine."

You'll see this in women to some degree, both with guys they want as providers and with guys they want as friends (curiously, women don't seem as fixated on "keeping" men in the lover category), but where you'll really see it a lot is with men -- particularly, the kind of man who doesn't get the kind of success with women he needs to feel that women are an abundant resource.

That kind of man is what you might call a "white knight." And he sees it as his mission in life to "save" women he views as "damsels in distress" -- only to make them his, of course.

If you ask me, this "pretend heroism" is a particularly sleazy way to try and get girls.

I'll share a personal anecdote: while I was out of town a few months back, my girlfriend, in a stressful position then, took to confiding in people about, well, everything that could possibly bother her. And, of course, as often happens in relationships, one of the primary things she confided about was me.

As it were, one of the folks she confided to turned out to be a real white knight. He was a photographer on a shoot she did; while she modeled, she also talked. And she vented about me. And this noble, heroic man, he decided that my girlfriend needed to be "saved" from me.

"I have to be honest, while we were shooting photographs today, I felt something for you," he told her in an email message afterward. "I want to take care of you," he continued. "This guy, your boyfriend, he doesn't realize what he's got. Maybe because he's too young -- he doesn't know how to value a woman as amazing as you are. I would treat you so well," he told her. "I want to take care of you after you break up with your boyfriend."

Sigh... I go away for a few weeks, and this is what I get, huh? Here he comes to save the day.

You know, I've been called a lot of things. I've been called an extremely warm person; I've been called a cold man. And at times, I've been called a romantic.

To me, romanticism is an ideal, of sorts. It's a refusal to accept the baseness and ugliness of the "real" world, as most consider it. And, it's the creation, in your own self and in the life you lead, as well as in the life you help those around you to lead, of another world -- a world where things are filled with meaning, where people truly matter, and where we all are the authors of our own spectacular, riveting stories.

As a romantic man, you become able to touch others' lives and bring hope to those who lack it. You inspire; you motivate; and you energize. You take those for whom the world had been empty and cold, and make it feel as though it's buzzing with electricity and potential. And best of all, you take the fantasies that women read about so avidly in their romance novels, and you can bring them to life.

Striving to become romantic is, to me, something very much worth striving for -- romanticism gives you an ability to affect others' lives that is in some ways without equal.

Breaking up with a girl is quite often one of the toughest things you'll do. It involves cleaving yourself from someone else you've likely grown quite close to, and have quite possibly been with for a long time and shared a lot of experiences with.

It's often said that the end of a long-term relationship can have the same emotional impact on someone as the death of a loved one. It can be that strong.

So it's no wonder that most people have a really hard time breaking up -- and that relationships frequently limp on long after they should've finished. Instead, people wait, and put the decision off, hoping that somehow, it'll just take care of itself.

It never does, of course. What I'm going to talk about with you today, then, is how you recognize the signs that it's time for you to break up with a girl.

"I'm sorry!"

To me, these are the two words that define the '90s era boyfriend / husband on television situational comedies. I haven't watched television since 2002 (with the exception of the entire series of Lost, which I watched online over the space of a month after getting laid off from work last year -- ah, it was great!), so I don't know if it's still been the same the past decade, but I'd imagine it hasn't changed all that much.

Woman gets upset. Man begs forgiveness. Audience laughs.

You might go so far as to say, "That's just the way it is." I've heard it said that for men being in a relationship means saying you're sorry, even when it wasn't your fault.

Listening to grown men talk that way, in all honesty, makes me cringe.

It does raise an interesting question, though: whether right or wrong, should you apologize? Is it the right course of action -- does it fix things between you and a girl? And what kind of impact does it have on attraction?

The other day, my girlfriend was upset with me again and creating drama. This is to be expected, as she's a high energy, energetic girl with a lot going on right now; I understand and commiserate. This is how it is with women and drama. But there's one thing she was trying to do that irked me somewhat.

She was trying to change me.

To any man out there who's ever had a girlfriend before, you probably know what I'm talking about. Women universally want men to change. It's only in those rare moments during the honeymoon phase of the relationship -- usually the first 90 days or so -- that this doesn't go on.

You also get a brief reprieve following a major capitulation, but this doesn't last and only breeds more struggles in the long term.

In any event, there's a famous quote about marriage by the eminent physicist (and philanderer, as it turns out) Albert Einstein, which we can pretty easily extrapolate to relationships of all sorts. What Einstein said was this:

"Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed."

Hmm. Guess they should've given him a Noble prize in humanities, too.