Dating

I tend to keep my focus on this site primarily to things that are as broadly applicable as possible -- things you can do no matter who you are or where you are in life to do better with women.

But the other day I had a reader write in asking about dating in college, and I thought the topic might be on worth getting a post up on. He writes:

“Dear Chase,

First off, terrific website. I haven't found anything on the web like the quality of articles you write and the depth you explore.

I'm 21 and I've finally finished university and I'm back at home. I recently got out of a 3 year relationship which lasted all the way through my time at college. A lot of the growing pains of being a young single and meeting girls has passed me by in this time. I've been on 2 dates in my whole life - both when I was 17 years old.

For a 21 year old guy, what is the best way of throwing myself into single life? Much of the dating advice out there seems aimed for an older audience than myself. It's unlikely I'm going to find girls my age doing the weekly grocery shop for example!

Thanks for any help!”

I shot him back a reply highlighting some of the things I'm going to touch on in this post, but I think there some advice here I can offer guys in college that'll help them meet more girls and succeed with more girls.

And if you're not in college, well, you might just want to give this one a read anyway -- a lot of the things I'm going to recommend you don't necessarily need an alma mater to pull off.

Every guy's beaten himself up over how to ask out a girl he likes.

She's there, she looks great, you want to ask her out... so bad... but you just can't form the words. Or maybe even approach her in the first place.

Making the ask, as hard as it seems now, is, in fact, remarkably easy to do once you have a few simple tools to do it...

However, you can spend endless amounts of time stressed out over it when you don't.

So let's give you some AWESOME tips to making asking girls out SIMPLE.

Before we get to tips, a quick story.

When I was 14 years old, I asked a girl out for the first time.

I walked up to her in front of the whole school (her name was Sarah), and flat out asked her to go to the school dance at the end of the year with me.

She was the prettiest, most popular girl in school (not to mention head cheerleader), and she'd flirted with me and chased me hard for a year.

In fact, she'd asked me out about 6 months earlier (but I was too scared to say "yes")!

Yet by the time I finally asked her out, she'd given up on me -- the window had passed, and so had my shot with Sarah.

At the time I didn't know you only had a certain window of time to ask a girl out in... though I guessed something like that might be the case.

I soon found out it definitely was.

As you could've guess, Sarah said "no" to me, albeit in a very gracious way.

She told me she wanted "to be friends first", which I knew meant we weren't going to the dance together.

I never got a date with Sarah.

However, in the many years after, I eventually asked hundreds of girls out on dates. Some said no... but many more said yes.

And along the way, I've learned a thing or two about how to ask a girl out and get that "yes."

I've planned to write on how to ask girls out for a while now. However, a reader just wrote in asking about asking girls out specifically -- so, it's time to cover it. Our reader says:

“Man chase I really have been in a funk lately. I'm back in school and I feel like a social retard now lol! I need some advice, I really need help with asking girls out on dates and what that actually looks like you know? I'm reading your articles and a lot of it is making sense but closing the deal and getting dates is weird for me. I guess I really haven't actually asked a girl out on a proper date before my last GF I got with because I was able to escalate things with her fast.”

To answer our reader's question, I've put together this guide to asking women out.

This guide will teach you -- emphatically, unequivocally, and without fluff, huff, or pomp of any kind -- how to ask a girl out... and always (or almost always, anyway!) get a "yes."

Once upon a time, there was one subject that absolutely terrified me when women brought it up in conversation: their past relationships.

I mean, if anything felt like a death sentence for forward progress with a woman, it was her digging up her troubled past and spilling it all over my lap. Time and again, I found that my interactions with women ended soon after they began divulging their storied relationship history -- "Great, another gal looking for a shoulder to cry on," I'd think. "I'm doomed."

It took me a little while to crack that nut, but I did. When women start telling me about their past relationships now, it's almost a slam dunk that we become lovers.

How'd I make such a dramatic shift, from past relationships being a conversation killer to them becoming seduction rocket fuel? Well, it came about from me deciphering a few important concepts -- and that utterly shifted the way I approached women discussing their past relationships.

The most frequent email I get from readers is of the very gracious, magnanimous variety, with readers reaching out to say thanks for writing your blog, your book, etc., and sharing perhaps some of the successes that have come from, in part, applying what they've learned from my materials.

But hands down the second most frequent email I get is the one that reads something akin to this:

“Hi Chase, I've been reading your site and I wish I'd come across it sooner. You see, there's this girl I like, and I guess I didn't move fast enough with her, because now she's cold and distant and I don't know what to do. Is there anything you can recommend I do to turn it around?”

I get about 2 or 3 of these emails a week. And as traffic to this site continues rising, I'm confident the number of them coming in will only increase.

And I commiserate. I've been there lots of times; watching a girl you really liked shut down and go cold on you when formerly it seemed like she was yours for the picking is maddening, gut-wrenching, and about as big a sucker punch as you can get. It's awful.

So, I want to lay it down here today, for all those guys out there pulling their hair out like I used to -- a complete guide on how to get a girl back.

A reader writes in a comment on the post about building emotional connections:

"This worked great with a beautiful young lady I was interested in. We had many things in common. She got presumptuous and began whining & nagging about her car repairs. I was a gentleman throughout yet she felt perfectly entitled to tool me!! How would you treat her inappropriate request? Oh I forgot to mention this demand was asked of me after the third date..."

That's an unfortunate outcome for our reader, losing a girl he had a great connection with to presumptuous requests, but it's all too common a scenario, and it's one that gives us an outstanding jumping off point for getting into a meaty topic: dealing with dating situations where women complain, try to get stuff from you, and push to use you.

For the relationship equivalent of this phenomenon, check out "Women and Drama." What I want to talk to you about today is dealing with this when it happens on dates -- and how you can sidestep, shut down, and otherwise flummox women's attempts to get favors and "gain the upper hand," so to speak.

I think you'll find it invaluable.

I had a reader recently contact me, a little confused as to why a girl who'd seemed to like him had turned down the first date idea he'd proposed and counter-offered that they go golfing instead. His idea had been for the two of them to go swimming at the pool that she worked at, where he met her.

This is one of those things that, on the surface, in the moment where you're trying to think of date ideas, it seems like a great one: should be easy for her (she works there, so she's already there and doesn't have to go anywhere), safe to assume she likes it (she wouldn't work at a pool if she didn't like swimming), and it's fun.

But in fact, on further reflection, this is ends up being one of the great many bad first date ideas a man could have, and on top of that it's a very easy dating mistake to make. The reasons why this and many other first date ideas make for bad first dates are a little cloudy and a little hard to see until you're trained to look for them.

Today, I'm going to break out what those factors are that differentiate a good first date from a bad first date, and help you make sure you only ever have great dates (or, at least, great date ideas!) going forward.

You can thank me later -- when all your dates are awesome.

In the recent post that discusses whether you should pay for a date, a reader comments:

A woman's perspective: If you invite her, you pay. If the guy asked me, so he should pay. I really don't think this is unreasonable. I do, however, think that it is unreasonable to invite someone out and then expect them to pay for themself or for both of you- probably they would, out of politeness, but would be very angry about it and would never see you again.

I once met a great guy who basically made me pay for the dinner he invited me to. I wrote him off and never saw him again. What a cheapskate!!

All I'm saying is that basically, if you follow this man's advice and don't pay for a woman on a date when you invited, you will lose your chance with her. Nobody expects you to spend a week's wages on a fancy meal. But if you invite, you should pay. Same as when I invite (and I do, and so do many women), I pay.

Lisa

Anyone who knows me in real life knows I think women kick ass. All my current and former lovers count me as one of their best friends, if not their very best friend, and I frequently discuss a lot of deep relationship and social dynamic stuff with women. I find that the average woman has a much firmer intuitive grasp of the way people are and the way people work than the average man does, and when you explain advanced social concepts, women are often quicker to parse them, pick them up, and arrive at intuitive mental corollaries than men are.

That said, and I hope no one takes it personal, but... women are the WORST on the planet at giving out dating advice for men.