Dating Rules

Have social media and dating apps made modern dating disposable? Not quite – the problem goes back farther than them, to mid-20th Century “throw-away culture.”

Two months back, a reader asked the following question:

“Hey Chase could you possible do an article discussing whether men are disposable due to online services like Tinder & Co.? I mean when a man doesn’t put out a good performance on date, a woman can just say “next!” and go on Tinder for more endless matches. I currently feel that way and I thought another perspective man bring some fresh air.”

It’s a pertinent question... although not as new of one as apps like Tinder might suggest.

American society (dating apps like Tinder originate from America too) has been accused as far back as 1955 as being a ‘throwaway society’. We have articles on the American habit of throwing away too much; articles that accuse corporations of being at least partly to blame, building things not to last or to become obsolete so consumers pay to upgrade to more recent versions. Other discussions focus on the abundance of material goods in our society, which by extension causes us to devalue those same goods.

This isn’t limited only to the economy and material wealth, either.

There are articles all over the Internet about disposable dating culture. Here’s an article that talks about disposable dating in New York and San Francisco. Here’s a blog post from a woman who talks about ‘recycling’ all the men she’s dated back into the dating pool. Here’s a more general one that discusses how to know if you’ve been in a ‘disposable relationship’.

You could make an argument that some portion of Girls Chase philosophy treats dating relationships like disposable goods. The recommendation to replace rather than chase assumes romantic partners are substitutable goods, and you can ditch one and get another one. The basis behind the advice in articles like “Can’t Stop Thinking About Her” and “Just Friends: A Man’s Worst Nightmare” is this too. I strongly recommend these articles and the perspectives in them, of course; they are necessary tools for navigating the romantic terrain in any developed, urbanized society. However, they reflect upon the nature of dating in a society like that as well as they teach how to navigate it.

Dating apps (like Tinder, Bumble, and Bagel Meets Coffee) ultimately are just the latest iteration of this modern American approach to personal relationships.

But is our approach these days truly disposable? Is it so only with men, or with women too? And if dating has become disposable, how much of online dating and social media is the culprit?

While it certainly may entrap you, the I/A double-bind can be countered – or even better, using the strategies here, entirely avoided.

Welcome to Part 2 of our series about the investment-attainability double-bind.

In Part 1, we talked about why the double-bind happens:

• A woman stalls courtship to seek more information through a man’s investment, but this kind of investment reduces a woman’s attraction to him.

• A woman stalls courtship when a man seems unattainable, which means he seems very attractive but she hopes to rope him into a commitment by making him invest more before sex.

• Both these elements combined create an unwinnable scenario for either party – by the time a man has invested enough to seem attainable to her, he has also killed his attraction and she no longer wants what she once wanted.

Now let’s dive into strategies to counter the double-bind – and ways not to.

Women you meet in nightclubs can be super flakey. Why do they flake so much later – and what can you do to reduce their ghosting/flaking?

Spend any amount of time in nightlife, and you fast learn a rule: don’t go for phone numbers; go for same-night lays.

I did much of my early approaching in nightclubs, and took plenty of phone numbers from them. Yet time and again, the numbers that panned out were almost all from the minority of approaches I did outside the club – in transit, on the street, via social circle.

Even if I met a girl who liked to party and club on the street or in transit, I was still a lot more likely to get a date with her that way than had I met her in the club.

There were exceptions, of course. I took phone numbers from girls I met in nightclubs and bars and managed to sleep with them sometimes. But it was so infrequent it stood out.

Yet eventually, I fixed it. After enough years in the game, I reached the point where phone numbers from nightclubs are almost as reliable as phone numbers from girls from other places. How to fix the club-flake problem is the subject of this post.

If a girl likes you but withholds sex past a few dates, an investment-attainability double bind may be the culprit.

Have you ever gone on a first date with a girl and things went well with both of you seemingly enjoying each other… then found yourself struggling to take her home and shag her, and instead of doing so, you agree to meet once again for yet another date?

Have you then found yourself going on multiple dates with that woman – some of them quite intensive and creative – and yet, she still refuses to go home with you. Or if she does go home with you, she shies away from having sex? Has this gone on for over five meets?

Today, we’re going to talk about one of the most common double-bind situations in courtship, where a girl’s desire to get a guy to commit to her results in additional investment-seeking – in the form of deferring sex.

This draws out the courtship and causes her to lose interest in him, and they never get together or have sex. Instead, both the man and woman just waste a bunch of time and leave the situation unhappy, not getting what they wanted.

One minute, she’s into you; the next, she’s gone cold. Why does this happen? Well, because if you’re not climbing a ladder, you’re sliding down a chute.

I like video game analogies for explaining social situations, but there is one element to a video game that sadly does not apply to real life.

When it comes to women, there are no save points and no pausing.

Take the Dark Souls games – although you get save points, there is no pausing. If you go into the menu during the game, it continues without you. Enemies can still attack you. Think of life this way.

Or more accurately, you may be old enough to remember the board game Chutes and Ladders, a modern take on the ancient Indian game Snakes and Ladders.

You roll the dice. If the roll brings you to a ladder, you climb up the board. But if you roll onto a snake, you slide back down to the snake’s tail. This can happen even if you’re only steps away from winning the game.

Seduction and relationships are like this. There are ladders, and there are chutes.

Truly hot women are scarce in the world of online dating apps. If you want to meet them, give your swiping finger a rest and focus on your in-real-life game.

Throughout 2017, I’ve noticed two strong trends that have put questions in my mind about the future direction of teaching and practicing social arts.

1. The increasing reliance of men on Tinder and dating apps as their main resource to meet women; many of these men are frustrated with their results on the app

2. The simultaneous frustration in women who meet men using dating apps like Tinder

The conclusion I’ve derived from both observations is that Tinder is now well on its way out of the limelight, and guys are far better off in the long term if they learn to meet, date, and sleep with women without using these apps.

Now, I’m not saying Tinder doesn’t have any utility. We have posted some great guides on Girls Chase on how to use Tinder. I’ve even used them myself, meeting, dating, and having sex with girls using the methods described therein. I’ve seen it work for men around me, too.

So the crux of this article is not to argue that you should never use Tinder, because it definitely has its uses, particularly for guys who just want to get laid without spending the time necessary to meet women elsewhere. If Tinder and similar apps get you everything you want with the quality of women you desire, great.

My point with this post is that guys can get better-quality women if they take the time to learn to meet them in person rather than relying solely on online and app-based dating systems. In short, when you get good at meeting girls in person, there’s little reason to use Tinder to meet them.

When it comes to dating and seduction, most guys understand value. Be as valuable as you can. Become smooth, cool, learn game, get cool clothes, a nice haircut, and get in shape. But what most guys miss is that attainability loses you a lot more girls than you think.

In this video, I go over the three types of attainability problems that lose you girls, how to recognize them, and how to fix them.