Emotions

You can't win every fight. But how you handle the situations where you must back down a bit determines how those you're in the fight with treat you.

Jimbo commented in my article on meeting girls while staying safe in a paranoid dating society, asking me to review a recent, controversial article on the Washington Post. The article was titled "Thanks for not raping us, all you 'good men.' But it's not enough."

The article itself is a screed against the male sex, both the 'bad men' who aren't conciliatory and inclusive enough toward women, and the 'good men' who are, but who lack the spine to put the bad men in their place and don't in any event ever really change things to make the world a sufficiently female-inclusive one.

I don't want to comment much on the argument itself... I don't think I need to, given our audience. The positions and arguments are nonsensical; the beliefs hyperbolic. The vast majority of commentators in the comment section of the article take the author to task for her abusiveness toward her cowed, yoked husband.

And I'll comment only briefly on the dynamic. It looks like the dynamic you get in a long-term relationship with a strong-willed, opinionated woman, and a quiet, acquiescent man. The woman becomes increasingly emboldened, abusive, and sometimes vampiric over time. The man, with his quiet acceptance of her behavior, serves as her enabler and as a source of narcissistic supply. You can have this dynamic with the sexes reversed too: domineering husband, codependent/enabling wife, or domineering wife, codependent/enabling husband. It's an unhealthy dynamic for both parties, and it's created by both parties. A domineering partner cannot domineer without the retreat and acquiescence of the codependent one. You're only seeing one blowup fight in this article... but in my experience looking at the woman's writing style, how she frames the fight, and her pride in putting it out there and expecting to be patted on the back for her righteousness (rather than ashamed at this uncharacteristic explosion, which is how most women are when they do something nasty that is truly out of character), all that fits the pattern of a domineering partner enabled to the point of delusions of grandeur ("Fighting the good fight -- for all womankind!") by her codependent.

That out of the way, what I'd actually like to focus on in this article is the husband's reaction. Because there's a telling passage in the article about how this fight went:

"My husband of 50 years did not have to stifle a laugh. He took it dead seriously. He did not defend his remark, he did not defend men. He sat, hunched and hurt, and he listened. For a moment, it occurred to me to be grateful that I’m married to a man who will listen to a woman. The winds calmed ever so slightly in that moment. And then the storm surge welled up in me as I realized the pathetic impotence of nice men’s plan to rebuild the wreckage by listening to women. As my rage rushed through the streets of my mind, toppling every memory of every good thing my husband has ever done (and there are scores of memories), I said the meanest thing I’ve ever said to him: Don’t you dare sit there and sympathetically promise to change. Don’t say you will stop yourself before you blurt out some impatient, annoyed, controlling remark. No, I said, you can’t change. You are unable to change. You don’t have the skills and you won’t do it. You, I said, are one of the good men. You respect women, you believe in women, you like women, you don’t hit women or rape women or in any way abuse women. You have applauded and funded feminism for a half-century. You are one of the good men. And you cannot change. You can listen all you want, but that will not create one iota of change."

This fight could've been over in three minutes instead of 30, the screed avoided, and this clusterbomb of an article the author wrote never written, had the husband done the one thing his wife and I both agree he failed to do:

Grow a pair of balls, straighten his spine out, and stand up for something for once.

The only thing his wife and I disagree with is what he must stand up on -- but as we'll see in just a minute, even then, we don't really disagree.

We each fall somewhere on the 9-sided moral alignment die. Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil… where do you fall, and how does it impact things?

This should be a fun article. Or even an insightful one... depends how much you like personality tests.

... but most of us like personality tests, don't we?

And this one's a fairly useful one, as far as personality tests go.

A recent study discovered six 'dark' traits (egoism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism, psychopathy, and spitefulness) all stem from the same underlying 'dark core'... something the researchers dubbed 'the Dark Factor of Personality'. The result is that if you have one dark trait, you are likely to have others -- because they all come from that same dark center.

Over the last few years I've thought a lot about dark and light. I discussed the phenomenon of younger 'dark' guys who reform when older in "The Civilized Man." I talked about the choice between goodness and wickedness in "The Good King." And I went in-depth on some of the research into the 'light side' of personality in "Be the Lightbringer: Dating and the Sublime Benefits of Positivity." And of course, aside from these, we've always urged you to do right by women and other people, and avoid bitterness yourself... as much for your own sake as for others'.

The seduction space can serve as a magnet for dark characters... even if most of the men in it are neutral- or light-oriented. The dark characters rarely reach levels of prominence within the community -- whether it's more because their methods repel the non-dark men too much, or they just don't care to help/teach other men enough to carve out a niche, I couldn't say. But there are guys like this who become instructors, or rise to this or that level of prominence within seduction communities... sometimes concealing their dark side, sometimes wearing it on their sleeves.

One of the reasons I won't teach 'dark side tech' -- things like reverse supplication, sexual power reversal, one-sided monogamy, taming/dependency, or the infamous October Man sequence --is the existence of 'dark-side' guys within the community (all the non-dark guys who'd cause damage purely by accident are the other part of the reason). If everyone was light-side, we could perhaps talk about this stuff and trust most guys to use it responsibly... but not everyone is, so this stuff stays tucked away under lock and key.

Why do people have these different dispositions? How different are the dispositions anyway -- are people just a little different from one another, or are the differences BIG? And how do these differences come about in the first place?

By pure chance, one day I came across a Dungeons & Dragons 'alignment test'. The test allowed you to sniff out where on the 'alignment scale' you fall... good or evil? Lawful, neutral, or chaotic?

I thought it would be a fun thing to play with. But in fact, it's turned out to be accurate for real people I've used it with, to quite a surprising degree.

Your state of mind creates a vibe that can attract or repel women. Use these tips to develop an aura of love that attracts women like bears to honey.

Many years ago, I was on Vacation, visiting a friend from the PUA community. He lived in a small town in Northern Canada with a surprisingly big nightlife. After a long evening at the bar, he asked if I wanted to go to an after party. Of course I did.

“Here, take one of these,” he said, handing the group a bag of white pills.

“What is it?” I asked.

“MDMA.”

I’d only tried MDMA once, and it was a crazy adventure. So I decided to give it one more shot. I popped the pill and we headed out to the party.

MDMA basically turns your dopamine up from zero to twelve, and as our group walked to the party, we all started giggling like school girls. By the time we got there, we were tripping hard. I felt this incredible joy and love for everyone and everything.

I sat down beside this pretty girl, and in about ten seconds, we were making out. I don’t remember what I said, but I felt an intense attraction, mixed with incredible vulnerability. It wasn’t my words that seduced her, but my vibe.

The problem with drugs and alcohol is that they come at a cost. Alcohol causes hangovers that wreck your day. Drugs like MDMA are the same – you get an emotional hangover. What goes up must come down. I don’t advocate using hard drugs, and I haven’t touched them since. But I did learn something powerful that night: that whatever you feel, she feels.

Our brains are super good at talking us out of doing stuff, even good stuff. Here’s how to switch roles and talk your brain into shutting up and getting laid.

We’ve all been there. You see that sexy creature and you want to approach her, but that little voice starts chirping, “All these people will see you. You don't want to come off as creepy, do you? You can try again tomorrow when you're in a better state. She’s on her phone, you don’t want to be annoying. Yeah, let’s try later.”

Excuses, justifications, and avoidance. The more you think, the less you do. The less you do, the more you think. It’s frustrating. It feels like you’re a broken man, especially after watching all those infield vids on YouTube and reading all those Girls Chase articles that make it sound like common sense, like it’s so easy. But it’s not, is it?

When guys ask me what I think about when I approach, I tell them “Nothing.” And it’s true. I try to do all my approaches and everything that happens after as close to “the moment” as possible. And I’m pretty successful at it. But I wasn’t always so awesome.

The first time I went to a bar alone for the sole purpose of pickup – 11 years ago – I completely froze. I was in a room full of sexy women, completely packed, shoulder to shoulder. The longer I stood there, the deeper I went into my head. The excuses just piled on top of each other.

• “Everyone is here with someone, except me.”

• “They all know each other, and I don’t know anyone.”

• “They’re all looking at me.”

• “They know I’m alone – and terrified.”

Blah, blah, blah, excuses, fear, etc.

And even worse, I’d spent all night memorizing pickup routines. But as soon as that adrenaline spiked, approach anxiety overwhelmed me, and I either forgot all of them or convinced myself that I had because I was too terrified to try.

It’s amazing how great your ego is at talking you out of improving your life. It makes you think that by approaching women, you’re going to somehow die – a social death at least.

That summer night, I pedaled home through the humid Montreal streets on my bike, and I told myself, “Never again will I go out and not at least try.” But things didn’t really get better until I met a guy named Steve Piccus at a local seduction lair meeting, who claimed to be a master hypnotist. He was famous for being featured in the book The Game.

Steve showed us a simple meditation meant to clear our minds of chatter. He called it “silence the tongue”, the tongue being the voice that goes “Blah, blah, blah,” keeping us from achieving our goals. That short lesson, delivered to a room full of lonely, horny men, changed my life.

At times you will go out to meet girls and not meet any, or encounter other similar situations. And doubt takes you. How do you deal with this kind of doubt?

Several times throughout my seduction career, I've found myself in a curious place. I'd have had a little time off, where I'd focused on work or girlfriends and not approached new women. But then came the time to go chat up new girls again.

I'd go out, go somewhere social like a bar or a networking event, approach anxiety would hit, and I wouldn't talk to anyone. At the end of it, I'd head back home.

And then, I'd wrestle with doubt. Do I really want to do this? I'd ask myself. Go out and talk to strangers and try to find women to bed? Isn't it kind of embarrassing, just putting yourself out there to get shot down? Isn't it sometimes so much grinding?

And for a while the self-doubt would be strong. I'd think about all the other things I could be doing other than approach girls. I already have a beautiful girlfriend, I'd tell myself. She'd love to be shagging my brains out right now. Instead I am standing around not talking to anyone trying to get myself meeting chicks again? Or I might think I could've been at the putting on muscle or getting into work early and staying late to get ahead. Instead I just went out and failed to talk to women.

This crushing sense of am I really doing the right thing with my life? would soak through my bones.

Then, all at once, I'd realize something: "This is the gayest thought process ever. I didn't even talk to any women and got zero new information about anything. Why the heck am I suddenly trying to make a major life decision based on zero new information?"

After I experienced the 'self-doubt, then realization' process enough times, I've become almost immune to doubt... once I realized that, at least for me, almost all the doubt I experience comes as a result of inaction, rather than action.

Information is good to have, and plans can be useful. Nevertheless, sometimes it goes too far – into the realm of mental masturbation.

There's a term from the mid-2000-naughts, somewhat less popular now, called 'mental masturbation'. Mental masturbation is any line of thought people spend time on that is, for all intents and purposes, useless. It doesn't help achieve any goals or shed any worthwhile insight. The mind is engaged, but its output is worthless.

I never much liked the term. It's crude, and often dismissive. Most things, at some level, are worth thinking about. When the 'mental masturbation' meme took over mASF (the now-defunct pick up artist community forum) years back, it fast became overused to the point of inanity. New, shy guys would ask some question or other, and veterans would tell them "That question is just mental masturbation!" Which to me always sounded like the natural's retort: "Who cares about those details. Just talk to girls!" Useful for some, but a door shut in the face of others.

Yet there's certainly something to the 'mental masturbation' concept... because there absolutely is a limit beyond which continued focus on the details is pointless:

• You're worried about getting a girl pregnant, but you haven't been laid in four months? Mental masturbation.

• You're trying to dream up a new way to hook up with sorority girls, yet you've never hooked up with a sorority girl before? Mental masturbation.

• You're thinking about how cool it'd be to have a playboy lifestyle, when you mostly stay at home with no social or romantic life? Mental masturbation.

It's important to realize when you've slid into mental masturbation... if only to stop wasting your time (and perhaps others') with go-nowhere fantasies and lines of inquiry.

Every girl has baggage. But should you date one with a lot of baggage... And how do you deal with baggage a girlfriend brings into your relationships?

Commenting on my article about starting a relationship with a new girlfriend, a reader named Arik writes:

“Hi Chase,

I’ve been gaming for a while and defintively gotten amazing things from it in all areas of my life. I met a girl that I really like and would like to move foward with her. She has had a bad experience with getting cheated on and feels scared of going through that again.I met her through cold approach. She is scared of me doing this all the time. If she were to find out that I do and flirt with girls boldy like that daily, it will definitively hurt her bad. I dont want stuff like that in my conciense I already talked to her about my intentions with her and pretty much following your points. Nothing official yet but clearly the ‘we can see other people until then’ wont fly well. At the same time, I know that if I stop approaching and doing game, just like with he gym, my gains will be gone and that will drive her away. I’ve seen it so many times happen to others. I am not sure how to handle this, since this is the first girl I want to push things with from game. All this time I’ve been focused on getting good and refusing to settle with girls I met. You talked briefly on ideas of how to handle this, but If you could elaborate further, I would greatly appreciate it .

Thanks!”

First, a few notes directly to Arik’s situation. If a girl is adamant that you don’t approach other women, and you assure her you won’t, you’ve made a choice. You could lie and do it anyway... whether you are comfortable with that or want to deal with the fallout from it is a personal decision. That said, you can still flirt with women in your day-to-day life, sans cold approach... that will maintain some degree of abundance (albeit not to the level that taking things farther along with women will).

That said, what we’ll focus on in this article is not the question of Arik’s comment but rather one that occurs to me based on the situation he details. It’s that of ‘women with baggage’ – for example, this girl who’s been cheated on... and fears a repeat. Should you date a girl with baggage... and how do you manage it if you do?