Socializing

Use these 10 rhetorical techniques to beat back anyone who condescends toward you. Plus: why the heck do people do this, anyway?

Guys have been asking me for more stuff on debating for a while now (since the piece on Donald Trump persuasion).

In this article, we’ll take a brief foray away from girl-getting, into the land of general social calibration.

In particular, we’ll talk about defending yourself against smug, condescending attacks:

“Oh, you think that, do you? Well, you’re just misinformed.”

This form of condescension has become extremely common among some populations in the early 21st Century West. My typical advice is to avoid smug individuals. Smugness is a giveaway for social ladder climbing behavior; those who engage in it are not fruitful contacts for the active, ambitious man, and are better avoided.

It didn’t used to be like this; Christian conservatives in the 1990s used moral superiority, but they did not condescend to the same extent other groups do today. If you’re a free-thinking man, the attacks you’ll find yourself up against today are some of the dirtiest, most dastardly attacks humans can wield in the verbal arena... and if you want to defend yourself, you’re going to need some tools to do it.

Craigslist is a great resource for those living The Lifestyle – swinging, sex parties, and more. There are 6 worthwhile categories on CL, and each needs its own approach.

This is Part 2 of my series on “The Lifestyle”, on sex parties, orgies, swinging, and polyamory. You can read Part 1 of the series here: “The Lifestyle, Part 1: How to Get Into Sex Parties, Swinging, and Polyamory.” In today’s article, we’ll talk about how to find new partners on Craigslist.

An author named Esther Perel has become really famous for turning public discourse on infidelity and the nature of human sexuality on its head.

She has focused on the question: Why do good people cheat?

Esther – along with many other historians and thinkers – has posited that human beings were never designed to be monogamous. While designed to be in groups, we are primates who are constantly shifting in sexual desires and sexual partners. She adds that monogamy has served more as power structure and agrarian vestige than anything else.

Those societies that held chastity as a sacred virtue often had stricter discipline and enjoyed economic and military conquest. Moreover, young women from various fiefdoms and kingdoms were married off to princes and kings of other fiefdoms and kingdoms in order to form alliances and unions.

In the agrarian age, marriage was a sensible safeguard to produce a family that could help a mother and father till land, and produce goods that would bolster future generations.

Thus, monogamy has always had a sensible function in the human dynamic. But it has never been about love. Perel argues that the combining of monogamy with love was a way to justify a seemingly strange practice.

But biologically speaking, it’s rather unreasonable to say that you do not deeply care about someone or even love them if you don’t have a desire to sleep with only them for 50+ years.

And this tension generates the conundrum that a lot of good people face: their biology versus their vows. Perel argues that ultimately, biology has the stronger pull. And so that is why good people end up engaging in infidelity.

And it is also from this tension that The Lifestyle of sexual liberation was born. Perel posits one central question of her own: What if, in love, we could explore different orientations of sexual partners, situations, and desires while still maintaining a strong bond and commitment?

And it’s exactly these different orientations of love and sexual gratification that Perel explores.

In the last post, I explored “The Lifestyle” from the perspective of public events.

And now, we look at it from the private side of things. But before I dive into The Lifestyle on the private side, I want to highlight a juxtaposition that Perel outlines. She argues that in every romantic pairing (especially traditional male-female), there is always one person who is afraid of losing their partner and being alone. And there’s always one person who is afraid of losing themselves in the relationship. It’s often the person who is afraid of losing him or herself that has the stronger pull toward a more sexually liberal situation.

For any guys who are currently in, or have been in, a serious relationship: have you ever felt this way? I would imagine many have.

So a lot of couples are constantly asking how to make sure that both partners are satisfied in a pair dynamic.

And thus, that is why Perel argues that it’s ultimately healthy to explore sexuality beyond just a pair in a relationship. So in this post, I’ll go through the different orientations you are likely to see, and how to get involved in these myriad Lifestyle situations.

The next post will be dedicated to handling emotional hiccups, jealousy, and some additional resources about The Lifestyle.

Little questions with big-impact answers: how long have you been in town, why are you single, and what do you do?

Quick post on a small but impactful distinction.

How you present several details about yourself often makes a big difference in how women receive you. The details we’ll discuss today are how long you’ve been in town, your relationship status, and your employment status.

Depending on your answer to these questions, women will see you in very different lights... as the result of your answers’ impacts on two different metrics: your value and your attainability.

Let me note up front that not everyone will be able to use all these all the time. That is not the purpose of this article (there seems to be a rise in dogma/absolutism recently where guys are thinking everything Chase says is something they have to do always. So I’m going to start including caveats like this more). Rather, the point of this article is to raise your awareness to these details (and others like them), so that when you can make use of them, you do.

Everybody says you need more in your life than just approaching girls. But when ‘girls’ becomes your obsession, how do you balance it out?

If you’re at beginner or intermediate status with women, you might be in this position. You shouldn’t have girls as your primary (or only!) hobby. You know that. You’ve heard it from countless skilled guys. Women are most attracted to men who have their lives together, have other things going on, and are, well, interesting. It makes perfect sense to you, and you agree, of course.

Yet nevertheless, meeting girls is still your #1 hobby. It might even be your only hobby. You’re girl crazy. ‘Girls’ is the pastime that occupies your head space and free time almost exclusively.

This is a pretty natural thing to have happen when you’re deep into learning a skill. People who focus on skill acquisition in a hardcore way usually restructure their lives around the skill they’re learning. If you aim to become a bodybuilder, you restructure your entire life around putting on muscle and the gym. If you aim to become a novelist, you restructure your life around writing and editing. Everything else takes a back seat.

But here’s the challenge: what you talk to women about is going to reflect how you spend your time. And if all you do is go out to meet girls, what the heck can you talk about with them then?

An introduction to “The Lifestyle”: sex parties, swinging, orgies, polyamory, and bringing new people into an existing relationship.

I was on the East Coast visiting a female friend a while back. As a night of delicious food and good conversation settled into our hearts and minds, she said, “Let’s go to a party.”

I acquiesced. Even though I don’t go to many parties these days, she is a classy lady and I knew that it would definitely be an interesting affair if she was involved.

And an interesting affair it certainly was.

It wasn’t like any party I had been to up to that point. We drove miles and miles until we arrived at a beautiful mansion outside the city we were in. We walked up the beautiful marble stairs that led up to a massive arched door.

The first thing I saw caught me off guard. After walking through the front door, I beheld a large, circular birdcage, inside of which was a woman who was completely naked with nipple clamps and a small chain hanging from her breasts.

As we continued to enter the foyer, there were several people in various animal costumes and masks who were barely clothed. After a few seconds of looking around, the maître d’ came out from behind the counter wearing one of those old French maid outfits.

“Welcome. What room would we like to go to this evening?” she asked.

My friend, without a second of hesitation, named one of the particular rooms.

“Good choice,” the maître d’ replied.

My friend handed her a credit card and looked back at me. “Let’s go.”

If you want to be respected, you must set boundaries. But how do you set these, without looking reactive, defensive, or weak?

A former student of mine asked:

“Hey, Denton, how do you balance being grounded and not being affected by others while also not being weak, a pushover, or being seen as passive?”

How can you assert boundaries without appearing reactionary? When your girlfriend is acting up, you cannot possibly ignore her. If a guy is aggressively crossing the line, you cannot simply stand by. What is one to do?

These are great questions! And they are often a source of dilemma for many guys.

Well, I find the biggest misunderstanding is the huge difference between being grounded and being passive.

There are tons of great dating and self-improvement advice to turn yourself into a slick Casanova. But how many guys actually listen?

The inspiration for this article came from reading the Girls Chase forums, where I’ve noticed various flame wars initiated over the years by certain users who ask a detailed question about how to improve an aspect of their dating lives. The user then receives superb advice from fellow members who come with various levels of experience and angles... but the user doesn’t just ignore the angles presented, he flat-out rejects them.

Other concerned members step in and suggest that the user honestly consider the advice with an open mind – most importantly, to try it out before dismissing it.

In many cases, the advice has something to do with an obvious fundamental barrier that the asker is simply unwilling to explore. He thinks the issue isn’t important, or that it doesn’t apply to him, so he continues to ignore it, remains open only to the answers he came to hear, and eventually the discussion fizzles after everyone bails out of frustration.

Then, months later, the same forum user returns, asks the same question, and proceeds to reject the advice he is given – again. The cycle repeats.

Our friend remains in his bubble, static, unmoved, destined to repeat the same failures over and over again until he learns his lesson some other way – most likely the hard way – or never at all. That’s his choice. It's a conniving paradox. At his disposal is an invaluable resource – a group of like-minded men who will undoubtedly help him accelerate his goals. His inability to just shut up, open his mind, and trust the advice of experienced teachers and peers render his efforts practically futile.

It boggles the mind. How is a student able to judge good advice? How can a student know that a particular piece of advice is not at all applicable to him? How can someone who is seeking knowledge close his mind when multiple, experienced, well-intentioned peers are telling him the same thing?