Investment

I'm a reasonably well-traveled fellow. I've lived on two continents and ventured around on four, with time spent in between on islands in the Pacific and the Atlantic. When you travel a lot, one of the first quandaries you come across is this: how do you get foreign girls who don't speak English?

Well, if you listen to most of your fellow travelers, you learn the local language. If you're in Russia, you learn Russian. Brazil, Portuguese. Columbia, Spanish. Japan, Japanese. After all, you can't very well talk to girls if you neither of you speaks the other's language... right?

And if you can't talk to them, you certainly can't get anywhere with them... isn't that also right?

I'm here to tell you it isn't. It isn't right at all.

And in fact, what you'll generally find is, the most successful guys typically don't speak the girl's language, period. The guys who know the language struggle with moderate success, while men who can't even say "hello" are taking foreign girls to bed by the bushel.

How's it work, and what's going on? That's the subject of today's post. So step right up and listen while I tell you a few tales -- some of my own, and some the tales of a handful of the men I've met along the way...

Wouldn't it be great to have the girl you want green-eyed with envy and madly competing for you?

It'd be awesome... right?

Well, as you know, there are two sides to every coin. On the one side you have the oftentimes huge spike in attraction and investment you gain from a girl when she realizes she's jealous over you.

And on the other side... you risk becoming too aloof, too hard to get, and losing her altogether.

But, no risk, no reward, as they say. Learning how to make a girl jealous can be another mighty weapon in your seducer's arsenal. If you're not careful though, it can be a weapon you end up using with devastating effect... on yourself.

My intention here is to walk you through the mechanics of jealousy, using jealously plotlines to drive attraction and investment, and walking the tightrope between making girls chase you and sending them off ablaze in search of vengeance and validation.

As with any powerful technique, I must of course warn you... caveat emptor. Proceed here at your own discretion -- and at your own risk.

The other day I was walking down the street with a friend of mine when I happened to see a couple walking toward us. The man in that couple then lifted his arm up and wrapped it around the girl's shoulders; immediately though, she reached up and removed his hand from her shoulders, and a sheepish grin spread across his face. When he noticed that I'd been watching, he then hung his head a little lower.

I laughed, but it made me think. It's quite demeaning as a man when a woman does that -- when she pushes you aside or ignores you.

And when it happens in a bar or a nightclub -- when there are other, aggressive males around -- it can be downright dangerous.

Hence, this post, about competitive men trying to steal your girl, and about blood in the water. I want to identify a common but under-discussed phenomenon you'll run into when you're out with women -- and I want to teach you how to avoid falling victim to the sharks.

The other day, my girlfriend was upset with me again and creating drama. This is to be expected, as she's a high energy, energetic girl with a lot going on right now; I understand and commiserate. This is how it is with women and drama. But there's one thing she was trying to do that irked me somewhat.

She was trying to change me.

To any man out there who's ever had a girlfriend before, you probably know what I'm talking about. Women universally want men to change. It's only in those rare moments during the honeymoon phase of the relationship -- usually the first 90 days or so -- that this doesn't go on.

You also get a brief reprieve following a major capitulation, but this doesn't last and only breeds more struggles in the long term.

In any event, there's a famous quote about marriage by the eminent physicist (and philanderer, as it turns out) Albert Einstein, which we can pretty easily extrapolate to relationships of all sorts. What Einstein said was this:

"Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed."

Hmm. Guess they should've given him a Noble prize in humanities, too.

"Can you get me a glass of water?" she asked me. "Please?" She gave me big, dewy doe eyes, and her cutest, most charming pursed lips.

"It's over there," I said playfully, pointing to the water cooler. "You can get it yourself."

"Oh!" she exclaimed in mock frustration, getting up to go get herself more water.

Does it offend your sensibilities that I told her to do that? It might offend some people's. How can a guy be so cold as to not even go and get a girl a glass of water? they think.

But it isn't about being cold. It's about returning to the basics of sprezzatura and the Law of Least Effort; it's about understanding that the men who supplicate -- the men who kiss up -- the men who try to impress women -- those men end up holding the bag.

It's about understanding what women are really attracted to... and what causes them to lose that attraction. And it's about understanding that where the line is, and how much is too much when it comes to doing for women.

Question from a reader named Sam yesterday:

Hi Chase,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great advice and content you post here. Some of this stuff is pure gold because I have had a few "ah ha" moments, especially about the interchangeability of value and good feelings, and this I think will take my game to a better level. More importantly though, it has greatly increased my understanding of relationships, not because you didn't know this, but you "just couldn't put it into words".

Another thing I learned here was that I was making the mistake of investment, but from what I have read here, there are a few things to fix here and there on this part. Can you please write up a comprehensive post on investment? (haven't come across one here yet) And some of the dos and don'ts of it. You did mention in one of your posts (chase framing post) your would write about "comprehensive investment / compliance post".

You probably hear a lot of praise, but I'm just putting it out there that this is indeed great stuff. I honestly do wish I had come across your site earlier. All in all, you now have a regular reader.

Investment's a great topic. It's one of those things that boggled the heck out of me early on, but it pays such incredible dividends in the end. Once you really get down a strong, solid gameplan for investment and you know what you're doing with it and you have your strategy for approaching investment in whatever situation, your interactions with women run so much more smoothly.

Of course... getting there, well, that's the challenging part.

In this post, I'd like to share with you a cautionary tale. I'd like to tell you the story of a man named Shopping Guy.

Shopping Guy isn't really his name. His family and his friends call him something else, no doubt; something closer to an actual name and less of a label. But I know him only as Shopping Guy.