Emotions

A guy meets a girl he thinks he might really like. She's cute, she has a great energy about her, and there's something about her – the way she looks at him, the way she smiles and laughs when he says something funny, the way he feels just being in her presence – that makes him get a little excited about her.

What comes next though is that one thing that's troubled so many men throughout history: once you've found one that you like, how do you get to know a girl?

In this post, I'm going to take a look with you at the old concept of "screening and qualifying," at how men usually get to know girls – and the mistakes they make – and at deep diving once again.

Best of all, I'm going to introduce you to a very different way of thinking about getting to know women from the traditional screening and qualifying mindset that's so pervasive out there right now, that's guaranteed to help you fit the pieces together in a much more streamlined way.

Let's dive in.

I'm being driven nuts right now about a discussion I'm having with my girlfriend about something we've already discussed and I thought was settled. It has to do with a difference in belief systems; I show her solid evidence and research from the West proving my position, she returns to hearsay, word-of-mouth, and ingrained beliefs she's getting from friends in the East who aren't actually informed on the matters at hand but have firm beliefs on them nonetheless.

She's normally a very logical, rational girl, but this specific matter is driving her uncharacteristically batty, and she's falling back to fears refuted by science but given weight by popular opinion. Understanding why this happens to otherwise sane, rational individuals is key to understanding how people's views of the world are built and maintained.

It's similar to the autism-vaccine "debate" that's going on in the States right now, or the electricity-cancer "debate." No matter how much research is done to show that there is absolutely, positively, no link whatsoever between vaccines and autism, or power stations and cancer, people continue to believe there are causal links anyway, because they've seen and heard sources that support their position.

The worst part is, it doesn't matter where those sources got their information from. It doesn't even matter if the sources outright say, "I just know it." The only thing that matters is that there are, indeed, sources that support the position.

Enter reference points: something I've mentioned at times on this blog but haven't devoted an actual post on (see "How to Get Real Girls" and "Social Status: Building It and Using It" for the latest posts that mentioned these). Reference points and reference experiences are what we use to define our belief systems, worldviews, and ideas about reality, and they're absolutely crucial to the way we see life on Planet Earth.

A reader writes in:

Hi Chase,

Just a quick message to say I've learnt a lot from your insights and blog over the last year. I decided to improve myself after hitting an embarrassing rock bottom with a girl I had been chasing after for over a year and your website has helped me do just that. These days I know I can go out and acheive high success with very attractive women of my choosing.

The problem is, I have now reached a point where I would like a girlfriend and I currently have two 2nd dates and 3 first dates with potential girlfriends. I am at a point where its almost too easy to get girls highly interested even past the first date. You teach a lot about how to get girls interested but I wondered if you had any advice about how to let girls down easy without coming across like an asshole. I enjoy having a choice of women for the first time in my life (!) but I don't like the idea of just enjoying the 'sport' of it.

I know there's probably no easier thing to do than to just to pick the one I like the most and dump the others but I just thought I'd ask your thoughts anyway,

Ta,
E

No doubt, that can be a tough one: how do you let a girl down without being a bad guy or a total heartbreaker? It can make you feel like a pretty underhanded guy – maybe even like you were just leading her on – when you have to turn her down when you know she was hoping to be with you.

But, in fact, there is a right way to do it.

I've been getting called "gentle" and "a gentleman" quite a bit recently. Me, of all people! The man who prides himself on taking women as lovers within a few hours of meeting them, and who hardly ever goes on second dates because he either sleeps with a girl on the first date, or burns the house down trying.

Yet I am, according to more and more women I meet these days, a gentleman.

I've had an interesting and at times soap opera-y progression of events over the past week in which my girlfriend has contacted an ex-girlfriend of mine, whom she'd never met or spoken to, in order to, at first, vent about me and seek her guidance, and now to be friends with her. My ex-girlfriend and I have since reconciled, and my current girlfriend and my ex-girlfriend have been comparing notes on me: the good and the bad.

I have a big belly (I'm skinny by American standards, but... I'm not in America anymore).

My face gets red very easily.

I'm troublesome and not simple. Just when they think they have me figured out... they realize they were wrong.

And, I'm a gentleman. I have gentle eyes. I'm a gentle person.

That last one is no accident, mind you. Being a gentleman is something I've long aspired to be. I'm a big believer that a man can be fast, powerful, and incredibly seductive – and yet, still manage to be dashing, enchanting, and considerate.

James Bond is a rogue and a knave, and he shoots bad guys and beds women – a LOT of women – with speed and expertise.

But he's still a gentleman. And if you aren't – well, I think you should aim to be, too.

Recently while scanning the good old Internet I came across a number of posts where guys talk down on beautiful women as being "shallow" and "bitches" and wonder about how to get "real girls." This seemed a little jarring and I like to cut myself off from negative stuff whenever possible, so I navigated away from those guys' pages.

But the thought was in my head: what is a "real girl?" Because to be sure, everyone defines it a bit differently.

A guy who sports a few tattoos and works construction might mean "a girl with a few tattoos herself who likes alternative rock and WWE" when he says "real girl." A guy who was a bit of a nerd in school and is a computer programmer now, on the other hand, might mean "a girl who appreciates sarcasm, digs anime, and plays WOW" when he says "real girl."

So who's right? Well, in a way, they both are – and neither of them are. Because what determines whether a girl is "real" or not isn't whether she rocks tattoos, surfs the web, or even whether she gets her hair dyed and her nails done or not. What determines "realness" runs a little deeper, and if you want to know how to get real girls, you need to know first what "realness" really is.

Ever find yourself talking to a really cute girl, and have her start acting bored and distracted?

You probably began scrambling hard to try and get her interested again. And, if you succeeded, you likely felt like you'd won a crucial victory, and you felt like things with this girl were now stronger than ever. You'd been on the brink, and recovered.

You also probably were very careful to keep her interested after that, and stay on topics she'd find engaging, and off topics she wouldn't like. You worked harder to make things work, and likely came to value her more highly than you do other women who never seemed bored with you.

I want to work on getting you doing the same thing now with women. We've talked about nonverbal communication before here; this is another piece of the nonverbal puzzle. In this post, I'm going to show you how you can use boredom and the bored look to keep women off of bad topics and on good ones, and make them pay more attention and invest more in your conversations.

This is a strategy that women use all the time. So let's even the odds a little bit and get you using it too.

Was discussing this on a forum with a guy; I used to talk about it a fair amount, some time back, but it's sort of faded from my life in significance. It just isn't on my mind much these days anymore, but I do remember how big a deal it was for me once, and hopefully my story and process can help a few people.

I used to be depressed. Really depressed. For about ten years, I was so utterly despondent and resigned about life, I thought the rest of my life would be that way. I was often filled with anger and resentment toward the world, and felt like I was fighting against everybody else. Forced outside the system and viewed as an unwelcome interloper, I was friendless and without companionship, isolated and alone. I didn't belong anywhere.

How I turned things around, and transformed myself into a guy who's constantly positive and optimistic – and no, it ain't an act, I really am optimistic, in a realistic, practical, still-somewhat-cautious way, all the time – and filled with a can-do spirit and good at getting what he wants and succeeding at most things he tries, at least over the long term – how I turned myself into that kind of guy from the complete opposite, well, that's the subject of today's post.

And I feel it's worth saying before the jump, that yes, you can do it too. There's nothing all that exceptional about what I did – but you're going to have to be a little stubborn to do it. If you ever struggle with not feeling so great though, and you think you're ready to start pulling yourself up by your bootstraps now, read on.