Female Mind

I haven't touched much on last minute resistance on this site, and it's about the time I got a proper post up on it. Before we jump in, I want to share a note from a reader who wrote in asking about how to get a girl in bed to illustrate what I'll be talking about and provide us an example case to work from:

“Hi Chase, Firstly I'd like to say that I love your blog and that many things have started to make sense (especially about moving fast). After taking your advice I decided to try it out and act as though the only night I had a chance of sleeping with a girl was that night.

It started with me being introduced to a girl through a friend at a party, we flirted a bit and I intentionally moved her around. When we got to town everyone got separated and we were together, after moving her around more I persuaded her to take me back to hers for a "sandwich".

We got back to hers she made me a sandwich and after that it started getting a bit steamy in the bedroom. However when I went to take her panties off she wouldn't let me, even after trying about 5 times. She then claimed that she was too tired and we should try in the morning. When the morning came she avoided sex again and I managed to find out that she though sex was pointless if we weren't in a relationship.

To say the least I was confused and angry but also felt a sense of failure as though I wasn't good enough to be her lover. I mean why would a girl take me to hers, heavily make out with me and then refuse to have sex even if she wanted a boyfriend? I wanted to be put in the lover zone not the boyfriend zone.

A reply to this would be much appreciated but a blog post on why a girl would do this would be awesome.”

Our reader's case here is a classic case of last minute resistance, or LMR -- that thing that happens when it feels for all the world like you're just about to sleep with a girl, that it's totally inevitable, that all that either of the two of you want in all of existence is to just be together... and then she suddenly, inexplicably, unexpectedly throws a wall up and won't let you proceed. Why's that happen, and what can you do about it?

To show you how to get a girl in bed and overcome last minute resistance, first we're going to have to get you to understand why women react this way -- and then we're going to have to teach you what you can do about it.

I hear men whining and complaining to their girlfriends, wives, and women they're pursuing from time to time. Since I don't spend all my time following random couples around, I know it must happen a lot more often than I hear it, too. And every time I hear it, it's like nails on chalkboard.

Thing is, I don't think most guys realize they're doing it, and I don't think most guys realize that it's Rule #14 or so in maintaining attraction and relationships that you don't whine and you don't complain to women.

A little over 5 years ago, I made the rookie mistake of telling a girl I'd just started sleeping with that I wanted her to be my "main girl." This has all kinds of "wrong" and "incorrect" and "bad game" painted all over it, and I'd never do it now, but that was then and I said it.

Her response to this was, as you might suspect, a defiant "I will never be your 'main girl.'"

And I felt a welling up of despair inside my chest. I was about to say it... I almost said it... and then I stopped myself. The urge to belt out a plaintive, "Why???" was overwhelmingly powerful and almost undeniable, but in the end I squelched it, and instead shrugged off the remark, gave her a confident-sounding, "We'll see," and forced myself to keep on as if nothing had been said. I slept with her again that night, and gave her the most potent, memorable, fantastic night of bliss in her life, and she, in a throe of passion, proclaimed that she didn't think she could leave me.

And for the next 2 1/2 years after that, she didn't.

I guarantee though, beyond any shadow of a doubt, beyond all second guesses, beyond anything, that had I whined or complained in that moment instead, we never would've ended up together.

How come? Because whining and complaining positively, absolutely, unequivocally kill attraction.

Kill it. Bury it in the ground, cover it up with dirt.

And most guys do it unknowingly anyway.

What's the best way to pick up girls? You might be surprised by what can influence a woman's receptiveness... even something like being on birth control or not.

A fascinating study, "Relationship satisfaction and outcome in women who meet their partner while using oral contraception," was several days ago published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Researchers from the UK decided to look at the differences in women who began dating men while on birth control, and those who started dating men when they weren't on birth control.

What they found was this:

“Women who used OC scored lower on measures of sexual satisfaction and partner attraction, experienced increasing sexual dissatisfaction during the relationship, and were more likely to be the one to initiate an eventual separation if it occurred. However, the same women were more satisfied with their partner's paternal provision, and thus had longer relationships and were less likely to separate.”

In other words, using birth control (or oral contraception -- "OC") leads to women ending up with men they're less attracted to, are sexually dissatisfied with, increasingly become more sexually dissatisfied with as the relationship progresses, and the women more often are the ones to call the relationship off eventually. On the plus side, the men women on birth control end up with usually make better husbands and fathers, and their relationships lasted an average of two years longer.

The flip side of this is that women off birth control choose to mate and date with sexy men -- men they find more attractive, who give them better sex, and who they're less likely to initiate a breakup with -- but the breakups still happened, on average two years earlier than the men women met while on contraception. And it's more often the men doing the breaking up -- likely because these are more attractive men with more options with women who don't like staying tied down too long.

The reason for these huge differences in dating preferences -- why women on the pill are ending up with nice guys they're unsatisfied with but who make good dads, and why women off the pill end up with sexy guys they're excited by but who break up with them -- comes down to what the pill does chemically to women's brains -- and that works out to be some interesting stuff. Read on if you dare...

Ever find yourself wondering just how to make the women you want want you?

The truth is, making women want you isn't as Herculean an undertaking as you might think from watching TV and the movies. You don't have to win a race, or make a million dollars, or give yourself a makeover (although if you can, don't let me stop you!). But you do need to have somewhat of an idea of what you're doing -- of what women need -- and of how best to give it to them.

If you're a regular guy living a regular day-to-day life, you'd be forgiven for thinking that women are busily immersed in their own lives and hardly ever notice anyone or anything else. But the fact is, women are just like men -- they have crushes, they get infatuated, someone with the right looks or qualities or intangibles catches their eyes and they fall for him.

And it isn't just male models that women fall for. Just like it isn't magazine celebrities you spend most of your time sweating over, dreaming about, and imagining a romance with, so it is with women -- they aren't dreaming about guys on reality TV; they're dreaming about real men, in their own real lives.

Making women want you, then, isn't about becoming the most amazing man in the world. Instead, it's much more about becoming the most amazing man in the room -- and if you've got even a semblance of a commitment to self-improvement, I'm quite confident we can get you there... probably pretty fast.

For that reason, I've put together 10 killer tips to make women want you. By the end of this post, I'm betting you'll find yourself glancing at that cute girl you keep running into with a new twinkle in your eye -- and I bet she'll be looking back with a twinkle of her own.

Here's one for all the intermediate guys and up -- the ones who've already figured out the fundamentals enough that it's all started slowing down for them and they're better able to see the forest for the trees.

A reader (one who's had mail featured in a couple of articles on here already, in fact), wrote in a thoughtful, insightful break down of what he'd picked up about how I read what women need and give it to them. I'd been meaning to write something up on this, but he put it quite well:

“Basically what I've finally picked up on is how well you read minds. The thing that keeps you in control is knowing exactly what that girl needs to hear. And its funny because this is exactly how most women communicate.

They don't walk around imposing themselves on others they notice what the other person is going through and then converse from there. I've been noticing that I have a great grasp on a lot of things you post but where I have been falling short is in the area of understanding what she NEEDS in that moment you know?

I'll be thinking in my head okay now let's move onto this, gotta move her now... Basically what I've been doing is focusing on what I needed to get done not what she needed.

Now I understand when you say "I can tell she wanted to be moved." Because your actually paying attention and your always asking yourself what does she need right now. It's like when you think in terms of "what does she need?" Everything becomes so clear and you see her as almost like a game to be won.”

And that's pretty accurate. I do notice that most guys blindly and bluntly stumble their ways through interactions with women, and I do keep my own interactions more or less wholly contingent upon what the girl is telling me she needs in any given moment.

But that, of course, is more easily said than done for most men, because most men don't know how to tell what women need.

Instead, they stumble blindly in the dark, hoping to get that one shot in a thousand that they "get lucky" and happen to get all the pieces to line up just right (or have a girl who likes them enough that she doesn't mind if not all of the pieces match up... but how often does that happen?).

Well, I don't think you ought to have to stumble -- and believe me, women would prefer you didn't, too. And that's why I wrote this handbook -- everything you need to start reading the women around you.

The other day, a reader wrote in with a question about keeping your cool when women are being flighty or slow to respond, in reference to the post on what to do when girls flake:

“In your article on girls not returning texts, I was wondering what your idea of a socially savvy way to deal with it was. I've found it hard not to take this personal, especially when it's from girls I've known longer that still do it. I understand it's quite common, but to me there's really no excuse. I'd much rather hear "I'm not interested" than waste my night waiting around, especially when considering how girls get when guys don't call them back.”

You know, a long, long time ago -- it almost seems like another life -- I made it a point to respond to every single person who texted or called me, no matter what. I looked at it as a matter of honor, and took it as a point of pride -- I was reliable.

And it annoyed me to no end when people didn't respond. Like the reader above, I couldn't understand people who didn't respond -- I thought it rude, and I considered it inexcusable.

Of course you can take 10 seconds to text a reply, or 10 minutes to return a phone call, I'd think to myself.

I considered it a personal slight, those people who didn't respond.

I see things a lot differently nowadays. Often, I don't even notice when one person or another -- when one girl or another -- hasn't responded, until maybe much later -- and perhaps never at all. And, for all my earlier "principles" on being 100% reliable in responding to those who contacted me, I'm now sitting at somewhere decidedly below a 100% response rate -- maybe 85%, maybe 90%. I still try to respond most times, but it's no longer an unbreakable rule.

The reason why I changed -- both in how I saw it when others didn't respond, and in why I don't chase women with texting or phone calls anymore and why I don't always respond when people chase me anymore -- is what I want to share with you here.

A few conversations I've had lately have revolved around me discussing with guys how simple things are with women. You just talk to them, and then... boom! They chase after you. You don't even have to do any work; girls take care of all that themselves.

Because that's how it's been for me lately. But I keep getting pulled back down to reality; guys confess it doesn't work that way for them. And then I stop and think, and for a long time it didn't work that way for me, either.

What changed it for me? Well, one of the biggest factors was figuring out what to say to girls. All you've got to do is get that figured out, and you're set.

But that's tough, you say. Why? Well, because you're not a girl. And if you're like a lot of guys out there, you have, starting out, no idea what it is women want to hear, what they like to hear, or what they need to hear, whatsoever.

Here's how it goes for most guys: they start out talking to women too literally, and the women get bored out of their skulls and leave. So then a guy tries a few witty pick up lines, or he tries busting on girls to be a challenge, only to have them start snapping at him and shutting down. Eventually he comes full circle again and decides to try to be a lot nicer than he was, only to find that, once again, the challenge has disappeared and the interest women showed at least some of the time when he was being a jerk has disappeared.

That's the point a guy realizes that, despite all the time he might've spent trying to get better with women, he still has no real idea about what to say to girls.

Argh.

Fortunately, all's not lost, and you can figure it out. In fact, that's why I made this post -- it's something of a guide on the wild, woolly world of talking to girls. In other words, herein lies the machete you'll need to hack a path through the conversational jungle and emerge on the other side with that beautiful, smiling girl you've had your eye on.