Dating

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.

In “How to Use Astrology with Girls", Balla puts in a request in the comments section:

“Yo Chase, I think you should make an article about un sexy friendly guy traits. Like how you mention not to hug because it’s platonic, sending girls pictures/asking, laughing or smiling to much and a few other things guys might not know what they’re doing that are very hard to detect. You just point out all the negative mannerisms and characteristics and tell us what we should do instead. I think it’ll be a great article.”

I thought this would be both a fun article to do, and one that hopefully will point out to some guys some harmful thinking they might have going on, and things they’re doing with girls that they’re shooting themselves in the feet with.

So, here goes... 12 traits that all boring, unsexy nice guys have in common.

A few weeks back, in the comments section of “Real Empiricists Test”, a reader asked the following question regarding the gulf between mainstream dating advice and what’s taught on this site:

“Is there an article on this, or maybe someone can answer this outright. But why is it that mainstream dating advice is so contrary to the dating advice given on this site ? Why is it that there is almost no agreement ?”

The short answer, of course, is that what we focus on here is entirely techniques and strategies that:

1. Achieve efficient, effective, reproducible results

2. Are tested out and balanced against alternatives and discarded if found ineffective
   

3. Are coming from people who’ve devoted a large chunk of time specifically to this field

... whereas most mainstream dating advice is coming from regular folk with limited experience dating and even less time spent studying and analyzing dating and sex and relationships and social dynamics both in the field and with other likeminded folk.

But the fact of that matter is, it goes a lot deeper than this. There’s more to this clash of ideologies than simply field experience vs. non, and it mainly has to do with who’s giving the advice, and what their objectives are in giving it.

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.

We’ve talked about the friend zone on Girls Chase before: why it’s bad, what it looks like, and how to get out of it.

But you’ve asked for more.

You’ve asked for clear signs you can look for that are undeniable proof you’ve careened off the Road to Sexytimes and into the Bog of Asexuality. Irrefutable sign posts that the good times of dreaming about lovingly gazing into one another’s eyes are long behind you, and you now exist solely to stroke her ego as proof that she is so charming, so wonderful, and so hypnotically mesmerizing that great guys like you will just hang around in awe of her... all while she samples her fill of sexy bad boys.

Well, never fear. While the greatest danger of the friend zone is your own denial, all the rest we will solve with this enlightening post.

So, provided you can handle the healthy dose of cognitive dissonance you’ll receive from discovering that the girl you were so certain you were just one more funny text message away from talking onto your johnston really doesn’t think of you “that way" and probably never will, let’s dive in...

... and arm you with the 14 Terrible Signs You’re Deep in the Friend Zone.

Beautiful women – they are the desire of men the world over. You could look at them, talk to them, talk about them, and be in their presence until the day’s end.

Or could you? Is having a beautiful woman at your side the key to your happiness…or is there more? Today I’m going to break down the concept of beauty and what we men really need to be happy in the long term with the women in our lives.