Investment

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.

If you've ever tried to take a girl home with you, or you've ever been in a relationship, you know that sometimes women need persuading. And when it comes to persuading women, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a near-universal point of suffering for most men.

About two months ago I wrote a post asking "should you apologize to women?" At the beginning of that post, I mentioned the television boyfriend and husband of the 1990s -- you know, that poor, beaten-down soul constantly stumbling over himself to belt out another apology to his scowling girlfriend or wife.

Well, this is the other thing the TV boyfriend / husband does really poorly -- persuade women to do what he wants. Men on TV are usually depicted as trying and failing to get women to do what they want, instead.

"Oh, come on!" you'll hear a guy cry to a gal. "It'll be fun!"

She just looks at him, shakes her head, and ignore his request. He groans, dejectedly. Again, the audience laughs.

Now, if you want to do better than that guy, you're going to have to take a different approach than the (largely ineffectual) one that he takes. And to get you doing just that, I've got 7 tips for you today that are going to change the way you handle persuading women.

A buddy of mine recently asked me to write on how to meet girls in groups, as it's something I don't talk about a great deal on here. The most I've touched on the topic before has been in "Breaking Circle," the post on maintaining attraction despite distractions around you or even other people trying interrupt you.

But, as my friend noted, I haven't gotten a proper treatment on meeting women in groups up yet, so this is it.

Meeting girls in groups is one of those things that, assuming you're doing much nighttime approaching, you're going to run into reasonably regularly. In fact, it may very well be the meat and potatoes of your approaches -- you might just find yourself in groups most of the time.

Groups aren't ideal, of course. Things tend to move faster and more smoothly the majority of the time when it's just you and your girl, and there are no interruptions or distractions to knock the two of you off course.

However, when handled appropriately, any negatives of groups can usually be negated, and in fact you can sometimes even get groups working for you with the women you meet. So it doesn't always have to be unfortunate that that pretty girl you like is in the middle of a group -- sometimes groups make it even easier for the two of you to get together.

If there's one pet peeve I have right now, it's the current way being an "alpha male" is talked about in most pick up and dating circles. I've gotten to the point personally where I cringe every time I hear some guy talking about "being alpha."

But I don't want to go on an anti-alpha tirade here, because at it's core, the alpha male ideology is very correct; it's just that the term itself has become so laden with cultural baggage that "the alpha male" has just about become a stereotype -- a clownish, cartoon caricature of what an alpha male used to be.

Every time I hear the term "alpha" these days, I imagine some bald, shirtless, gargantuan, vein-popping 'roid-head screaming, "Alpha... ALPHA!!!" at the top of his lungs, and a crowd of skinny nerdy guys standing around him, pointing at him in awe, and whispering to each other, "That's alpha. That's how you get the ladies."

This post is my effort to wrestle back the term "alpha male" from the shadow of itself it's become, and redefine once and for all what the term really means -- and exactly how to be an alpha male... without turning yourself into a cartoon character.

1. Keep it short,
2. Help her think, and
3. Walk a mile in her shoes.

I don't usually start off a post with the impact points right at the beginning. But I want to lay these out first -- because they're so vital to solid message writing -- and we'll get into the "whys" and the "hows" in a moment.

I was going to write about something else today -- I have a couple of big-concept posts I've been meaning to write up and get around to -- but, heck, the last post I put up was a big-concept post so I figured let's have a quick breather from that and get something a little lighter up first.

This topic came up as I got to an email from a reader. A very well-spoken and clearly an educated guy, he sent me a message detailing a situation with a girl he knew... and boy, was it detailed. I mean, it was long. Really long.

I've been all too guilty of this myself -- sending super-long messages. And what I found was that I was often disappointed -- I'd put all this time and effort into a monster of a message, and then... I'd get no response.

There are a bunch of lessons I eventually took away from those experiences that I'll share with you today. The basic gist of today's post is, basically, that this -- what we're about to talk about -- is how you write online dating messages and emails that don't get ignored... and, in fact, get you exactly what you want: responses, phone numbers, dates, and success.

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.

A few days ago, a reader going by the name of Jimbob asked a very good question about feigning disinterest or playing hard to get with women. Here's the segment of his comment that had to do with it (I've added a few paragraph splits to increase readability):

"But anyway what I wanted to ask you is regarding what I sometimes read about when I stumble on to PUA forums or other dating websites. Apparently you're supposed to mix showing interest and feigned disinterest with girls, to make them want you more and try and come after you a little bit and win your approval.

"I've never really tried this consciously, but in my experience showing interest and then showing a lack of interest for whatever reason results in the girl recoiling as if she has been rejected and then she feigns disinterest with the “Oh, I wasn’t really interested in him" attitude you mentioned. Even with really beautiful girls I've seen this, they rarely respond positively to interest mixed with disinterest, sometimes they just act confused, once I actually saw a look of anguish on this girls face because she thought I was rejecting her by not flirting with her, after that she ignored me for quite a while.

"I think it's maybe a self esteem issue or issues they have surrounding rejection, or maybe they've been burnt too many times, but it seems that even the beautiful women have average self esteem these days (I live in the UK by the way). Maybe because they're so gorgeous they're used to guys hounding them 24/7 so if you show disinterest they take it literally, I don't know, but to me it seems like a pointless and hit and miss technique."

Jimbob, this is a great, sharp observation on your part. It took me about 2-3 years of actively approaching women and trying to improve with them before I started noticing this:

Playing too hard to get costs you women. Lots of women, quite often.

Why does playing too hard to get lose you women? Jimbob touched on the answer in his comment -- and I'm going to take you down that rabbit hole in this post.