Articles by Author: Chase Amante | Girls Chase
  1. Articles by Author
  2. Articles by Author: Chase Amante

Articles by Author: Chase Amante

Tactics Tuesdays: How to Compartmentalize Your Lifestyles

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

compartmentalize lifestyle
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.

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?

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

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.

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:

  • You're worried about getting a girl pregnant, but you haven't been laid in four months? Mental masturbation.

  • 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.

  • 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

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

gotcha question
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.""

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:

  • You're about to sleep with her, but she stops you to ask you if you'll be her boyfriend

  • You ask her out, and she says "okay", then says "Wait, what will we do on this date?"

  • You give her a drink, and she asks "You're not trying to get me drunk, are you?"

  • You invite her home with you, and she asks "Are you trying to have sex with me?"

  • 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

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

girl with baggage
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:

“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?

Tactics Tuesdays: Realigning a Girlfriend's Beliefs

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

realigning a girlfriend's beliefs
How do you change a girlfriend’s beliefs, and bring them inline with yours? By shifting her personal Overton window – to alter her ideological environment.

Commenting under a prior Tactics Tuesdays article on dismissing ideological fights you want no part of, Kaelos asked:

“How about in a long-term relationship with a woman, where you share similar beliefs/views but there are some mild to moderate differences on topics like feminism, frugality vs spending, child-rearing practices, small differences in religious beliefs, etc.

Is there a strategy to implement so that her beliefs/views more closely match your own well-researched beliefs/views over the long term?”

We’ve talked about behavior modification on Girls Chase plenty.

What about belief modification?

Well, yes. You can absolutely change someone’s beliefs... to an extent.

To do that, first, we’re going to focus on shifting a woman’s own personal Overton window.

For Getting Girls, What You 'Cost' a Woman Is Vital

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

what you cost to date
Once you’ve made yourself an attractive man women want, the battle is half won. The next step: finding ways to lower your cost, to make it easy for women who want you.

Most of what men focus on when they think about doing better with women is what they have to offer women. They think about how they can sell themselves to women; what women have to gain from them. Their value. Being impressive, taking women on fun dates, getting muscular, showing off their successes, having cool stories to tell – all these are ways to better display what you have to offer to a woman.

Much of what we focus on on the attraction side for men at Girls Chase focuses on bolstering what you have to offer, too. With better fundamentals you become a man women are more and more interested in. And with better game you make it easier and easier to showcase your attractive sides and find ways to get girls to go come with you.

Yet there’s another side of the equation to any value offering. It is not just how valuable something is, but also what its costs are.

That’s ‘costs’ plural, because there are always multiple costs to anything you acquire or add to your life. Costs like:

  • Time: how much time does it take to get this thing?

  • Money: do you need to spend money to get it? If so, how much?

  • Image: are there costs to your image if you acquire this thing?

  • Motivation: do you have to exert willpower or fight inertia to get this thing?

  • Opportunity: by choosing this option, do you give up something else?

... and more.

When it comes to dating and seduction, every woman you meet faces these and other costs when she considers you.

Tactics Tuesdays: Imagine Games

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

imagine game
Fun personality games you can use with women you talk to, ‘imagine games’ increase a girl’s immersion and connection – when you use them right.

There’s a class of game or gambit we can call ‘imagine games’. An imagine game is when you ask a girl to imagine something, like that she is wealthy or can travel anywhere she wants to. You then spin her answer into a cold read, which escalates the courtship forward and makes her feel like you know her very well (thus establishing some similarity).

Imagine games are similar to, but different from, other games I’ve talked about on Girls Chase before, like:

These sorts of games (imagine games, and the games above) have the added advantage of creating a bubble with a girl, where she zeroes in on you and becomes intensely focused on you, and the outside world drops away, immersing her.

(the downside of this much immersion, this fast, is that it’s difficult to sustain for long, and if you don’t bring her out of it on your own terms, the spell breaks. So, just make sure you bring her back up to the surface on your own so she feels you’re in control and it never gets awkward – you can always re-immerse her later on)

We’re going to take a quick look at ‘imagine games’ – how they work, wrong ways to use them, and right ways to use them – below.

Fixing Your Woman's Bad Behavior with Sex

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

fix bad behavior with sex
Want the most enjoyable way to fix a girlfriend’s bad behavior? Do it with sex! However, you must be careful to do this the RIGHT way…

I was too late with yesterday’s Recommended Reading list to make Tactics Tuesdays this week. But we’ll still cover a useful tactic for your relationships regardless.

Today’s tactic focuses on fixing a female partner’s behavioral problem through a mix of calling a problem out both before and during (good, but not great) sex.

This is an ‘intermediate’ level tactic and up. I don’t suggest it for beginners... you need to be fairly dominant already with women to pull it off, and you need fairly solid social calibration/timing. If you’re still building your confidence around women, save this tactic for once you’ve built up more.

You’ll also want to save this for your more girlfriend-level relationships. Using it with friends with benefits is too much; while it’s a great technique for behavior-shaping, it also communicates to the girl that you are really looking out for her, and this is a bit too much for casual relationships.

The gist of the technique is you will tell a girl to knock off a bad behavior... then begin sex with her... then, when the sex is good (but not before then), you’ll tell her in a dominant-yet-protective way that you want her to cut off the behavior and how it is for her own good.

Before we get to the technique though, we need to talk about one aspect of it.

Recommended Reading 2018: Lubbock's List and More

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

recommended reading
A collection of books across many genres Chase recommends. History, business, biography, psychology, spirituality, self-defense… there’s much to read.

I wrote a post in 2012 about books I’d read and would recommend to readers. It’s been six years since then, and I’ve had numerous folks over the years ask me for an updated list. This is that updated list.

I won’t include books already on my 2012 list, but I still recommend them all. The books on that list by Jared Diamond have come under academic scrutiny more recently, and have not necessarily stood the test of time. Still, even those books were fun reads... and everything else on my 2012 list I’d continue to heartily recommend. You can see that list here.

Full disclosure: there are Amazon affiliate links for these books in this post. I almost left them out, since Amazon affiliate pays such trinkets, but if we’re going to send them traffic I guess if you buy through those links some of it might as well come back here rather than all stay with Amazon. Note however that many of these books are available free online (especially the ones written prior 1950, most of which are no longer covered under copyright), so if you want to pick them up that way, you can likely find them with a quick search engine query.

Tactics Tuesdays: 5 Mid-Pull Tips for Multiple Girls with a Wing

Chase Amante's picture

By: Chase Amante

pull girls with a wingman
You and your wingman want to pull a couple of girls back home. Use these 5 tips to make sure the pull goes smooth and the girls come along.

Today’s Tactics Tuesdays is an assortment of five (5) little tactics to mind when you pull a couple girls with a wingman. These hold true whether it’s you and a buddy and you’ve pulled two girls together, or you and a buddy pull three girls, or you and three buddies pull two or three girls, or you and a buddy or buddies pull a group of guys and girls... all these tips hold regardless.

Before we begin, you may want to check Daniel’s article out, which is about inviting multiple girls home to after-parties. Though not required reading, this is generally the easiest way to invite multiple girls home at night (whom you meet in bars and clubs, or via nighttime street game) – just invite them to an after-party.

We won’t talk about the specifics of how to invite girls home in this article. You can learn more about those subjects in these articles:

This article focuses on the transition itself, mid-pull. You’ve gotten a few girls to agree to go somewhere private with you and a friend or two... now how do you keep things smooth and make sure your gals don’t decide to ditch?