Articles by Author: Chase Amante | Girls Chase

Articles by Author: Chase Amante

What Caused the Trust Collapse Between Women and Men?

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men women trustA recent article on loneliness exploded to the top of Hacker News (the Reddit-like programming and entrepreneurship newsboard). The article clearly struck a chord. The thrust of the article was that the decline of the family has led to an epidemic of lonely people.

In the comment section below the article, a reader had this to say:

After numerous attempts to find a reasonable/semi-normal female "life-companion" I gave up at 50. I tried to overlook the hostility and conceit they had towards men in general at first, until neurosis and personality disorders would reveal themselves later - if the relationship got that far. I felt like I was in a competition and she was determined to "win".

It's many things, but the enmity and distrust that feminism has caused between men and women is by far the most significant contributor. Men are the "enemy" that must be defeated. Why are the majority of homeless white men? They surrendered.

It's a sentiment that seems to be bursting out of the stitches among more and more people. Women express similar sentiments as often as men -- this isn't a purely male issue.

At the core of it, the real center of the issue, is the cultural phenomenon of 'trust collapse'.

The great tragedy of our time is this breakdown in trust between the people... and, particular to this website's mission, the breakdown in trust between the sexes. When the sexes trust each other, anything is possible. When they do not, society comes undone at the seams.

The sexes have battled throughout history; a little tension is nothing new. Yet rarely does the fight grow as embittered as it's today become.

Today more and more women are distrustful toward men. They worry there are rapists behind every tree. They opine that women are paid less than men (and thus, implicitly undervalued). They jump when a stranger approaches, or chide men not to walk up to them in the first place. At the same time, they wonder where the good men have gone, and instruct men that now that they are ready to marry, it's time for those men to be ready too.

Just as women's trust in men has crumbled, so too has men's in women. Many men fear false accusations of harassment (described as "sometimes just a different perspective" in this article), false accusations of sexual assault, or false accusations of rape. Men with good careers walk on eggshells around female colleagues, wary not to become easy prey for unscrupulous corporate climbers (all a woman has to do is say a man did something to her, the same way the football player feigns injury to penalize his opponent and benefit his own team). Many men fear the power women wield in marriage courts, and the loss of their children and assets and lives in the event of a divorce. Some swear off marriage under current Western law; others swear off dating entirely. In a recent 'sexual harassment backlash' survey by the very feminist Lean In organization, 60% of male managers report now being uncomfortable mentoring, working alone with, or socializing outside of work with female employees.

While not everyone has caught it as bad as the more sensitive (and paranoid) among us, everyone has felt it to some extent. And plenty have felt it to large extent... between 2008 and 2018, a mere 10 year gap, the number of 18-29 year old men not having sex in America rocketed up from 10% of them to a whopping 28%.

As the relations between the sexes have increasingly frayed, more and more individuals have come out as preferring their own same sex instead. That number increased by 17% in only four years, between 2012 and 2016. Among millennials, in 2012, 5.8% were homosexual; just four years later, in 2016, a full 7.3% were out of the closet (so much for the ol' "only 1-2% of the population is gay" chestnut you used to hear, huh?). And the fertility rate in the U.S. hits new all-time lows pretty much every year.

How do make heads or tails of all this?

What is happening to the mating market in the West?

Is there any sense we can make of this at all, or is it all just a bunch of unfathomable deep civilizational processes, layers beneath layers, impossible to peel back?

Well, we're going to peel the layers back. And we'll see if we can arrive at an understanding of just what's afoot in all these tremors we've felt in the modern mating market.

Fortunately, there are white polished stones that lead the way us to follow. Let's see where those stones lead.

Tactics Tuesdays: The 'Too Distracted' Opener

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too distracted by you opener
A simple, fun, direct opener to use on girls who are stationary and alone. "I'm too distracted by you" puts the blame on HER for being too cute.

This is a little gem from the old mASF seduction forums (credit: Lifeguard).

It goes like this: you're out somewhere and see a pretty girl, so you approach, give your name, tell her she distracted you with her cuteness, and ask her name.

Example:

You're in the café and see a girl. You approach her and tell her, "Hi, I'm Lucas. I was sitting over there trying to read my book but I am too distracted by how cute you are. What's your name?"

This opener combines direct with situational relevance, so it's to-the-point but still grounded.

It's also versatile (useful in a lot of different situations), as we'll see just below.

Girls Who Want to Sleep with You Usually Know It Right Away

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girls know right away
When you walk up, and she looks up at you, she knows if she could go to bed with you later. What comes after is simply leading her there, and making her feel allowed to go.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to sex.

One school of thought is what you might call the 'normal guy school'. In this school, a woman will not go to bed with you until you have 'gotten her ready'. The ways a normal guy tries to make a woman want him / tries to 'get her ready' include:

  • Spending time with her
  • Connecting enough with her
  • Making her laugh
  • Showing her whom he is
  • Displaying valuable things about himself
  • Communicating to her she 'qualifies' for him

Once she has seen enough of the guy's good qualities, goes this school of thought, she will then open up to the idea of sex.

The other school of thought though is what we might call the 'lover school'. In this school, if a woman is going to go to bed with you, she knows it the moment you approach. You still will end up doing things like:

  • Spending time with her
  • Connecting enough with her
  • Making her laugh
  • Showing her whom you are
  • Displaying valuable things about yourself
  • Communicating to her she 'qualifies' for you

However, these actions serve the purpose of moving things along and getting her comfortable enough to let her guard down with you. They are not to 'make her want you'... not really.

Because she already wanted you. You're just trying to help her feel like it's okay to give into what she wants.

Although the actions are superficially the same, the intentions behind these actions are dramatically different between these two men. These intentions drive differences in how the man carries out these actions, how much of them he feels he needs, and how fast with women he thinks he can move.

The more you think like the men in the second school of thought (the lover school), the more natural, easy, and fluid you will find getting together with new women becomes.

Tactics Tuesdays: Zero Small Talk Flirtation

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By: Chase Amante

zero small talk
Don’t get stuck in boring go-nowhere conversations with girls. Ditch the small talk, and flirt with ‘small talk zero’ instead.

This is for any guy who runs into this issue:

You're in a situation, start to talk to a girl, make small talk about the setting/situation, then get trapped in a platonic conversation where you talk about boring situational things that neither you nor the girl care about. She loses interest and slips away.

If this happens to you, there's an easy tactic you can use, and that is to go 'small talk zero'. Instead of make small talk, your entire early conversation consists of flirtatious banter.

Sometimes you can make small talk work perfectly fine, especially if you are confident in how you do it and don't spend too long on it. However, if you're nervous, or don't feel in control of the situation, it's easy to fall into a small talk loop, where small talk leads to more small talk, which leads to boredom, and women leaving.

Since we don't want attractive women leaving, instead of getting trapped in an endless small talk loop, we can use 'zero small talk' flirtation instead.

4 Ways to Use the Contrast Principle in Your Love Life

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By: Chase Amante

contrast principle
The contrast principle allows you to guide people to the choice you want them to make with the use of a powerful psychological feature: contrast.

On my article about fun ways to use reverse psychology, a reader named 'America's Ass' asks:

Hey Chase, I loved this article! Would you mind doing one on the "contrast principle". It seems to be a great tool in fields like sales, negotiation and persuasion in general. Looking forward to your wisdom on how one could use this in a courtship scenario. Aufwiedersehen!

What is the contrast principle America's Ass is referring to?

It is the idea we do not judge things in absolutes.

Rather, we contrast one thing against something else.

When you say "This pastry is delicious," you really mean "This pastry is delicious contrasted against other pastries I've had." When you say "That person is a jerk," you really mean "That person is a jerk contrasted against the other people around me usually."

There are many ways you can see the contrast principle in life:

  • The Hot Girl (Guy) in the Room Effect: everyone's been stuck in a classroom or office space where another person present is the most attractive around. Maybe you developed a big crush on this person over a few weeks or months. But when one day you saw this person outside class/the office, out in the real world, next to all the other people in public, suddenly that person was rather plain. How did this individual look so good in class or the office, yet so plain in public? Because, contrasted against your (few... or zero) other romantic options in the classroom/office, this person was the best, and the contrast principle inflated her (or his) attractiveness. Out in the real world, where there are many more options to choose from, some of them much more attractive than the classroom/office hottie, this person becomes pretty plain in contrast.

  • Fruit Sweetness. If you eat a lot of cakes, cookies, candies, soda, and ice cream, when you bite into a fruit, it's not that sweet, and it may not be that enjoyable or rewarding. The reason why is because fruits use sugar to make themselves yummier. But cakes, cookies, candies, soda, and ice cream have far more sugar packed into them than fruit does, and if you regularly eat them, it will seem like the sugar content of fruit is not that high in contrast. Yet, if you take a break from confections, and cut the cakes, cookies, candies, soda, and ice cream out of your diet, within a month or so fruits begin to seem much sweeter, and become an enjoyable dessert to have after a meal. Because you no longer contrast them against foods much sweeter than them, fruits now seem like the sweetest thing in the world to you.

  • Good vs. Bad Interviewees. If a job interviewer interviews a candidate who seems like a bad candidate for the role, the next candidate the interviewer speaks with (unless that candidate is even worse) will seem better than he otherwise would have in contrast. On the other hand, if the interviewer interviews a great candidate who really blows his socks off, the next candidate, even if that candidate is objectively pretty good, will seem much worse in contrast (unless the candidate is actually better than the first one). This works the same way on the interviewee side when interviewing for jobs. Interview with a place that leaves you saying "I would never want to work there!" and the next place will seem like the Promised Land in contrast. However, interview with a place where you conclude you would definitely like to work, and the next company you interview at will seem like a much bigger disappointment than it would've seemed had you interviewed at it first.

The two examples we just covered with people are somewhat outside your control (the fruit sweetness example, however, is 100% within your control). You can't completely control whether you are the most attractive member of your sex in a given room (though you can dress better, improve your posture, and do other things to make you a more attractive option). And you can't control how good or bad the interviewee is before you (though you can make yourself as good an interviewee as possible, to hopefully stand out in positive contrast to whomever came before).

So below, I'll give you a handful of ways you can use the contrast principle to actively influence the way other people see you... and, in turn, influence the results you get, both socially and romantically.

Tactics Tuesdays: Getting Free of Local Dating Norms

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dating norms
Every group or society has norms it expects members to follow. These norms extend to dating and romance as well. But what if you aren't from the same norm group?

I've done quite a bit of travel and lived in a variety of places, all very different from each other, with people who were all quite different too. Everywhere I have gone, I have encountered many men who told me the women in whatever city or country I was in were 'traditional' and 'hard to get anywhere with'. Often I would have men telling me this after I had already quickly slept with several normal, local women, with normal dating histories (not wild party girls, sluts, or 'exceptions to the rule'). I never want to rub it in a guy's face, so usually I will just say "Well, the girls here seem pretty normal and not too uptight to me."

I am not the only guy this happens to. Everywhere I've lived or traveled for any good amount of time, for every 10 guys I meet who tell me the women there are 'difficult' or 'traditional', I'll meet at least one man who tells me the women there are unbelievably easy. Often these guys sleep with multiple new women a week, oblivious to the guys who spend months or years without girlfriends or lays.

I could spend 10 posts unpacking the differences between the 'girls here are hard to get' guys and the 'girls here are so easy' guys... and in many ways, this website is devoted to just this mission.

Today though, I want to talk about one specific wrinkle of the successful guys' success: playing dumb on dating norms.

Inclusiveness vs. Exclusiveness

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inclusiveness vs. exclusiveness
To succeed socially, you must make people feel included. But there's a catch: people most want to be included by those they see as EXCLUSIVE.

One of the best feelings in the world is to feel like you are included in an exclusive group.

Humans by nature want to join groups. More specifically, they want to join valuable groups, that they benefit by being members of. One of the primary ways humans determine the value of a group is by how exclusive it is.

Just think of that old Groucho Marx quote:

"I refuse to join any club that would have me."

It's funny, because the humor is self-deprecating ("any club that finds me acceptable as a member can't be a club worth joining"). But it also highlights a subtle truth: the value of the club hinges on how exclusive it is.

Nobody feels good about his inclusion in a broadly inclusive group. People want to be included into exclusive things.

This simple truth has a great deal of weight for your social and romantic interactions, too... because excellence with other people often comes down to how included you make them feel, in your own personal exclusive club.

Secrets to Getting Girls: Fast Baby Steps

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seduction steps
Some guys slowly circle, other guys charge in. But if you want the most consistent results with girls, you'll do neither such thing…

It'd be nice if you could approach a girl, do a few things, and she just goes right to being your girl right after that, right?

Most women you'll meet aren't ready to go the moment you meet them, however.

Instead, you have to take them through a process.

You have to get them comfortable with you. You have to get them to follow your lead. You have to awaken their lusts. You have to create situations where they are alone with you and can slip into a more intimate interaction. You have to invite, and you have to lead.

The approach an ordinary man takes with women typically falls to one of two extremes:

  1. He takes baby steps, but too few and too slowly. These men are the hesitant men, who don't want to blow it with a girl, so they go slow and walk soft. They stay well within the bounds of acceptability, but end up so tentative girls don't realize they like them, or if they do realize it, they find the guys too tame and aren't interested.

  2. The other type of guy takes big steps, but rushes. These men are the aggressive men, who don't want to waste time on uninterested women, so they go fast and make bold moves. They cross the bounds of acceptability with many women, since these bounds are different for every girl and if you're trying to move bold and move fast (and aren't using much finesse as you do it) you don't have time to figure out where each individual girl's boundaries are. The result is men like this succeed with the women who were open to what they wanted and whose bounds matched their moves (a minority of women), while they blow themselves out or scare off the women for whom they make too many bold moves, too fast, or go too far out of bounds (the majority of women they meet).

It's better to be Guy B than it is to be Guy A, generally. Guy B at least will get some decent success with girls, even if he blows it with most of them. But you have to be a bit of an asshole to pull off the Guy B approach.

Guy A spends too much of his time pining away after girls who may not even realize he likes them, or do realize it but don't feel anything for him (and never will, since he never really does anything with them).

Both men are extremes though.

One moves too slowly and softly, like a seduction sloth.

The other moves too brazenly and rushed, like a seduction rhinoceros.

The way the most adept seducers move is neither like the slow-moving, soft sloth, nor the brazen, rushed rhino.

The best seducers move like a cat: lots of little steps, made quickly, before they pounce.

How to Get Dates with Girls from Groups and Events

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get dates from groups and events
How do you meet a girl and get a date from a group or event... without standing around not knowing whom to talk to or what to do?

While I will always recommend you put cold approach (walking up to girls you don't know) first, you can excellently supplement the women you meet this way with girls you meet via groups and events.

If you are active enough socially, it can even be possible to make groups and events your primary channel to meet new women.

There are several benefits to getting your dates via events and group activities. The biggest is that women you meet this way are both more open to socializing, and less guarded. This typically means:

The interactions are also slower paced and less pressured, which means they aren't as 'do or die' as higher pressure street, bar, grocery, etc. approaches (or even class, office, or library approaches).

You have more time to make things happen in group and event situations; you don't need to move quite as fast, and the escalation windows don't close so quick. Attraction sticks around longer before expiring, too.

Below, we'll cover some tips and tactics to make getting dates from groups and events a breeze, and have a lot more fun at these places, too.

Don't Date Women on Pills or with Issues

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By: Chase Amante

don't date girls on pills
25% of modern women are on pills of some sort. If you have any choice at all with women, though, you should not be dating these girls on pills.

In the 2019 psychological horror movie Midsommar, a girl with psychological problems accompanies her boyfriend and his pals to a weird cult festival in Sweden. The movie itself is bizarre. And it's pure fiction (and rather extremely so. The director dreamed up a death cult more depraved than the ancient Aztecs or Assyrians... and placed it in modern hippie Sweden).

However, there is one moral present in the movie I think is worth a highlight: don't date women on pills. Or women with severe psychological issues, for that matter.

In the same year that movie premiered, 2019, 23.70% of Americans were on a psychiatric drug. That includes things like:

  • Antidepressants (13.40% of the population)
  • Antipsychotics (3.53% of the population)
  • Mood stabilizers (7.40% of the population)

... and a host of other assorted brain-altering cocktails.

These pills have all kinds of effects on the brains of those who use them.

The numbers are slightly higher for older adults. But not much. 18-44 year olds make up 36.5% of the American population, and 33.8% of the American pill-using population.

The sex differences are stark. Women are 67% more likely to use psychiatric drugs than men are. If you go out enough, and meet enough women, you are going to meet a lot of women on pills.

What should you do with these women?

Should you treat them as normal?

Or should you treat them the same way their psychologist does -- as people who have something wrong with them -- and stay away?