A Guy with [X] Is Like A Girl with [Y]
Articles by Author: Chase Amante
Tactics Tuesdays: How to Compartmentalize Your Lifestyles
Compartmentalization lets you keep separate areas of your life separate – and avoid fallout from ideological clashes or failing relationships.
As you become more active socially, some things get hairier. You meet more and different kinds of people. You start to run in some very different circles. And eventually you end up with friends and connections who are completely incompatible with one another. The broader and more diverse the people in your life become, the more you need to take care who you introduce to whom.
Further, the more integrated your various circles and lifestyles are, the easier it is for problems in one to snake their way into others.
To fend off mismatches and problems bleeding from one area into another, you use lifestyle compartmentalization.
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The ability to compartmentalize your lifestyle is a handy one to have. It lets you prevent mismatched acquaintances clashing. It lets you avoid friends wanting you to choose themselves or others. It keeps you out of scenarios where your girlfriends judge your buddies and try to get you to stop hanging out with them.
It's easy to compartmentalize your lifestyle, yet it's something not a lot of people do. It feels good to introduce people we like to other people we like. It's lazier too - rather than do one thing and talk about certain topics with your buddy Eric, and do another thing and talk about other topics with your buddy Kevin, and do yet another thing and talk about still more/different topics with Kate, the girl you've been seeing for a couple months, why not invite them all to hang out together and do one thing, and talk about the same things with them all?
Yet failure to compartmentalize your life leads to a more limited life - because when those different people from different walks clash, they tend to decide a.) maybe they didn't know you as well as they thought, if you have this type of friend, and b.) you're going to have to decide who you really want to be with: themselves, or those other folks?
Do You Really Need to Know, or Is It Just Mental Masturbation?
Information is good to have, and plans can be useful. Nevertheless, sometimes it goes too far – into the realm of mental masturbation.
There's a term from the mid-2000-naughts, somewhat less popular now, called 'mental masturbation'. Mental masturbation is any line of thought people spend time on that is, for all intents and purposes, useless. It doesn't help achieve any goals or shed any worthwhile insight. The mind is engaged, but its output is worthless.
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I never much liked the term. It's crude, and often dismissive. Most things, at some level, are worth thinking about. When the 'mental masturbation' meme took over mASF (the now-defunct pick up artist community forum) years back, it fast became overused to the point of inanity. New, shy guys would ask some question or other, and veterans would tell them "That question is just mental masturbation!" Which to me always sounded like the natural's retort: "Who cares about those details. Just talk to girls!" Useful for some, but a door shut in the face of others.
Yet there's certainly something to the 'mental masturbation' concept... because there absolutely is a limit beyond which continued focus on the details is pointless:
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You're worried about getting a girl pregnant, but you haven't been laid in four months? Mental masturbation.
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You're trying to dream up a new way to hook up with sorority girls, yet you've never hooked up with a sorority girl before? Mental masturbation.
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You're thinking about how cool it'd be to have a playboy lifestyle, when you mostly stay at home with no social or romantic life? Mental masturbation.
It's important to realize when you've slid into mental masturbation... if only to stop wasting your time (and perhaps others') with go-nowhere fantasies and lines of inquiry.
How to Escape a Woman's "Gotcha" Questions
Ever have a girl hit you with a "gotcha" question, at the worst possible moment? You had just asked her out, or to come home with you, or got to bed. Then – GOTCHA!
Under my article on women not counting men they've slept with, SZ asked:
"How do we not get into the settle down relationship thing ? A girl might admit she's a slut, but she'll say something like, "you have to promise me you'll stay with me if we have sex, you have to tell me you won't leave me, will you leave me? Will you be my boyfriend? Etc.""
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These are what we call "gotcha" questions. Women will hit you with them when you least expect it, and are worst prepared for it. They're tests... aimed at you at the most inconvenient of moments.
Example "gotcha" questions include:
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You're about to sleep with her, but she stops you to ask you if you'll be her boyfriend
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You ask her out, and she says "okay", then says "Wait, what will we do on this date?"
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You give her a drink, and she asks "You're not trying to get me drunk, are you?"
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You invite her home with you, and she asks "Are you trying to have sex with me?"
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You move to kiss her and she stops you to say "This is as far as we go, right?"
I'm sure you've seen other similar questions too.
These questions may be conscious traps. Or the girl may just find her in a suddenly uncertain situation, and want a little clarity from you.
Regardless her reason for asking though, the effect on you can often amount to "Geez, what do I say here?"
Should You Ever Date a Girl with Baggage? The SMV Discussion
Every girl has baggage. But should you date one with a lot of
baggage... And how do you deal with baggage a girlfriend brings into
your relationships?
Commenting on my article about starting a relationship with a new girlfriend, a reader named Arik writes:
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4. Alternative to Being a Mule
5. Screening for Girls w/o Baggage
“Hi Chase,
I’ve been gaming for a while and defintively gotten amazing things from it in all areas of my life. I met a girl that I really like and would like to move foward with her. She has had a bad experience with getting cheated on and feels scared of going through that again.I met her through cold approach. She is scared of me doing this all the time. If she were to find out that I do and flirt with girls boldy like that daily, it will definitively hurt her bad. I dont want stuff like that in my conciense I already talked to her about my intentions with her and pretty much following your points. Nothing official yet but clearly the ‘we can see other people until then’ wont fly well. At the same time, I know that if I stop approaching and doing game, just like with he gym, my gains will be gone and that will drive her away. I’ve seen it so many times happen to others. I am not sure how to handle this, since this is the first girl I want to push things with from game. All this time I’ve been focused on getting good and refusing to settle with girls I met. You talked briefly on ideas of how to handle this, but If you could elaborate further, I would greatly appreciate it .
Thanks!”
First, a few notes directly to Arik’s situation. If a girl is adamant that you don’t approach other women, and you assure her you won’t, you’ve made a choice. You could lie and do it anyway... whether you are comfortable with that or want to deal with the fallout from it is a personal decision. That said, you can still flirt with women in your day-to-day life, sans cold approach... that will maintain some degree of abundance (albeit not to the level that taking things farther along with women will).
That said, what we’ll focus on in this article is not the question of Arik’s comment but rather one that occurs to me based on the situation he details. It’s that of ‘women with baggage’ – for example, this girl who’s been cheated on... and fears a repeat. Should you date a girl with baggage... and how do you manage it if you do?
