Dating Rules

In this article, I will share some advice on how to have literally safe sex. “Safe sex” does not only mean knowing how to avoid STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) or unwanted pregnancies – there are also many more risks out there to be aware of.

Now, I hope I will not scare you away from seducing women – that is not my purpose. In most cases, casual sex does not lead to any dramatic consequences, but, very rarely, they do happen. In this post I will share some advice that will reduce the risk of any negative consequences from having casual sex.

Again, most of the time, you will be fine. Serious consequences from having casual sex occur rarely, yet they do happen, and if you have forgotten to read this post, you may regret it later. Fact is, this post might not be the most exciting to read, but it will cover some simple tools that allow you to have a lot of fun without worrying.

I can recall with distinct clarity a time in my life when I thought it was a must that you go all out when planning a first date. I’d heard it from my mother, read it in magazines and books, saw it on television, and even heard it from the horse’s mouth. Yes, even the women I’d known as friends or romantic interests were telling me I needed to pony up and make that first date as extravagant as possible!

However, the real way to make a great first impression has absolutely nothing to do with the activity itself or the amount of money you spend – it’s all about:

1. Your fundamentals, such as your style of clothing and voice and body language

2. The actual interaction itself, your conversation skills, and how well you are able to lead her

3. Your ability to hit escalation windows and pick up on opportunities to move things forward

So as Ricardus taught us, you really can go “From Street to Bed in a Snap”, and that most certainly does not require an 8-hour date at an amusement park or a $100 dinner.

I found myself seated several evenings ago next to a young couple who were obviously on a first date. The girl was thin and okay-looking, though she’d lopped her hair off into a not-very-attractive medium-length boy cut, while the man was tall and lanky with a somewhat awkward accent I couldn’t quite place, but otherwise not too bad. She was dressed more fashionably than he was, her in a frilly white button down shirt, while he seemed to just be wearing a standard t-shirt or polo shirt.

My ears perked up because it was obvious from the moment I sat down that the guy had some game; what I’m always curious of in these types of situations, though, is, “How much?”

As it turned out, the guy had just enough game to get the girl extremely excited about him... before running the date straight into a concrete wall.

And that’s what I want to talk about today, because the things this guy did right and the ones he did wrong are something I see lots of newer guys making in their dates and interactions, and ones I certainly made a lot myself early on.

Because it often isn’t the “grabbing her interest and exciting her” part guys fail at; it’s all the stuff that comes after that.

A reader writes in, asking the following questions:

“”Chase,

I’ve read several of your articles, and I can relate to quite a bit of what you say. However, it seems to me that in your scenarios, the guy is always the one who is at fault. It’s as though the girl is fully functional, prepared to choose who she is interested in and whether or not the guy fits in to one of her categories,  I guess robotic in a way. What I’m trying to get at mainly is the no second chance with women idea. Like if you don’t move fast enough she is gone for good. Is it really the case that the guy has to do everything right or else he is out? This perplexes me as we live in a society where equal opportunity for race, genders, and sexuality is at the forefront. In the corporate world and in the military, women are continually given more and more power/leadership/etc. They are no longer viewed as the traditional queen role from what I see. In this respect, why must the guy solely be the one to make things happen fast, take her as his lover before she flees to the next guy, and so on.

Perhaps I have read your writings incorrectly, but your advice (though as I said much of it rings true with me) seems to put the vast majority of the burden on the guy’s shoulders.

Also, let’s say that I screwed it up with a chick. I took her as my lover, but then later decided she was no longer interested. Walked away, realized I made a mistake. Apologized a couple weeks later, she says she has moved on to someone else. Your principles seem to be true here at first, but when she blames me for the fallout, then comes to the bar that night and makes out with me, only to run off and go kiss on some guy’s cheek, and give all sorts of mixed signals thereafter, things get hazy. No second chances, but I’ll make out with you? It just doesn’t click with me that anyone has all of this figured out. Life isn’t black and white, I don’t think.

I would appreciate your reply!””

So, there are a lot of interesting questions and themes in here worth addressing:

• Are there no second chances with women?
• Is it all on the man to make things happen?
• What about equality?
• Why do women send mixed signals?
• Why do women flirt if they don’t want you?
  

I’m not really going to talk about the other bullets here – I addressed the “do/should guys REALLY have to do EVERYTHING?” question here a few weeks ago: “What Role Should Women Play in the Mating Game?” I’ll throw a quick bone to that one though because I have a couple more things to say on it you should find interesting. The third bullet is addressed in that post, and the fourth and fifth in these two: “Mixed Signals from a Girl: What These Mean” and “The Paradox of the Flirty Girl.”

Let’s talk about second chances though, because that’s one it seems like a lot of guys want to know about, and it’s worth discussing for sure.

Commenting on “What to Do When a Girl Won’t Go Home with You”, Blogster asks about what women’s responsibilities are in the mating game and where a man must “draw the line” when it comes to trying to make a girl his:

“Do take your point on this one. However, at what point does all the game advice for men cross into the territory of a woman’s jurisdiction?

With each piece of advice about how to handle situations and tighten your game, it sees more and more of the woman’s responsibility being transferred over to men.

One of the admirable traits of men generally is that we are self-motivated and proactive and take charge. We look for our own mistakes and correct. However I feel the manosphere and valuable dating advice sources such as girlschase makes the mistake of swinging too far with the attitude of ‘if it didn’t go well, you the man did something wrong, or should of done something better’. Accountability is good, assuming complete agency is ridiculous and unrealistic, as it assumes the man has the capacity to control all relevant circumstances affecting a pickup and that by improving and fine tuning technique results will come.

The implications for this are obvious – women are just automatons and have no individual preference, attraction will occur reasonably successfully if you master the right techniques smoothly and ultimately, that women have no agency as adults.

It also plays into and reinforces current societies frame regarding relationships – that the man must do all the work and its the man’s fault if something goes wrong or the seduction doesn’t occur.

Increasingly also I see double standards in advice being doled out. For example, a recent post spoke about how to deal with judgement. It says its crucial not to judge women, yet women are by far the more judgemental sex and constantly do so on a broader range of factors.

A man is expected to skilfully disarm a woman’s judgements, but a woman is not expected too because otherwise she ‘won’t open up’. Does it occur to you that maybe men don’t open up because of female judgement and thus lose out? Yet the onus seems always on the man. Put it this way, if your friend was constantly dodging responsibility and being unnecessarily judgemental would you pander to him?

A man is expected to overcome his approach anxiety by himself. Is there any advice anywhere that says about how women should ‘help the man through his approach anxiety’? Of course not, yet there is plenty of expectation that a man should smooth and ease the women in the last moments before seduction.

In this instance, I feel it pushes the ‘responsibility balance’ of game even further towards the man. Soon all the woman will have to do is show up!”

This comment no doubt reflects a lot of men’s frustrations over the travails of mating – I’ve heard them the world over, in any number of different cultures, and if you read back through history you can read of men from all ages complaining of the same things.

So what are women’s responsibilities in dating and mating? Do they serve as just passive recipients of men’s advances? And if at first you don’t succeed – how many times should you really try and try again?

A hot topic on the discussion boards as of late has been the concept of escalation windows: how to spot them, and what you should do when one of these colossal portals to hanky-panky town is unlocked before your eager eyes. Escalation windows can be hard to spot, and when detected, you must act quickly and with conviction.

If you’re not quite sure exactly what we mean by the term “escalation window”, you should probably go ahead and give this 2011 article by Chase a quick read to get your feet wet.

Basically, escalation is an out-and-out requirement if you want to sleep with women. Why’s that, you ask?

To paraphrase a nice little tidbit that a very wise mentor once best owed upon me: “No Escalation, No Lovin’…”

So with that in mind, if you don’t escalate things… well, you know what will happen. Or, more precisely, what won’t happen.

Note from Chase: Ross is one of our senior discussion board members, with a very steady hand and plenty of sage advice to go around for men aspiring to excel with women. Ross’s shared a few guest articles on GC before in early 2013, and I’m really happy to announce he's joining the team as one of our new regular contributors. Please welcome him back to writing for the site! Without further ado, I give you Ross.

A situation that has been popping up more frequently on the discussion boards entails a scenario where guys think girls are chasing after them. These guys get frustrated, as they believe that the girl is chasing after them, yet they cannot figure out why things still aren’t working out. They’ll often point to some behavior that’s supposed to be indicative of chasing, yet this doesn’t necessarily provide insight into all of the dynamics at play between the guy and girl here.

The ever-so-popular stand-up gig that pokes fun at women for being illogical in arguments comes to mind when I think of this issue. The husband will argue with his wife using facts, only to be completely shut down by her emotionally charged response. On paper, it will look like he’s won. However, anyone viewing the event could tell you that he obviously lost.

As a result, it’s difficult for someone critiquing a guy’s interactions to tell whether he’s really winning with girls... or only paper-winning. All a forum member can do is read what people have written about their interactions with women, and form opinions and give feedback based off of that. Thus, many guys will receive positive reinforcement that they are doing a good job, even though in real life they just aren’t getting results or reaching their goals.

Today, I hope to relieve some of the issues surrounding this misinterpretation of data. It’s time for a mental model update, because the dynamic of chasing goes much deeper than the surface.