Secrets of Dating High Quality Women

Thanks Maximilian :)

I generally agree with you, though it is important to point out that men with high self-esteem have lower standards for short-term partners while they maintain higher standards for longer-term ones. This article is solely focused on the long term ones.

Perhaps I should have added somewhere that if you are a sexually inexperienced man, you likely are screening every girl you meet for girlfriend material, which means you're going to have unreasonably high standards for short term relationships like one-night stands or friends with benefits. And this then could make you overly closed off to a whole array of viable opportunities.

Here's an article by Chase that dives into that topic more deeply:

http://www.girlschase.com/content/lower-your-standards-and-date-hotter-g...

Ethan

Hey thanks man,

I honestly didn't expect people to be this interested in the walking article. I'll put it in my queue of things to write!

Cheers,
Ethan

It sounds like a piece of the puzzle you may currently be lacking is a playful vibe. If you aren't enjoying the interaction, the girl probably won't either. Remember, a playful attitude isn't just for the girl, it's also for you. It helps you loosen up, it makes you feel more free in what you say and do, and it just makes the interaction more fun; lighter. Here're a few articles that flesh this idea out in more detail:

http://www.girlschase.com/content/tactics-tuesdays-mastering-playful-ban...

http://www.girlschase.com/content/playfulnonverbal-openers-meeting-new-g...

http://www.girlschase.com/content/how-be-playful-4-tips-youll-need

Thank Bolt -- will do. I should have a new one coming out pretty soon here!

This is an extension of the old "girls are silly and cute" paradigm. A man who is used to getting results in his endeavors, who usually gets his way, and who has missions he's working on that are highly absorbing has little time or interest in posturing or reacting to someone trying to get him to invest his time and energy in them. However, he doesn't grudge people their attention-seeking behavior either.

He knows that his life will be no worse off if he just moves on. Yet he is still usually a lover of people, and is comfortable giving people a second chance and a ready ear, because he holds no grudges and focuses primarily on the positive elements of an interaction.

If a girl flakes, it's no big deal, and he can either give her a second chance if the flake is reasonable, or, if it's obvious she's being really gamey (most likely because she's not all that enamored yet) it's also no big deal. He can screen her out for that and resolve to boost his value and fix any attainability problems, or resolve to get together and see if he can't make something happen with her anyway, for the practice.

He actively looks for opportunities to grow and learn, and giving people the benefit of the doubt can be a way to increase your opportunities -- though that doesn't mean to not still be discerning, of course. Screening people in and out fast is vital.

Shakespeare explains this better than I ever could when he has his character Polonious say to Laertes in Hamlet...

"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade."

Apply this to women, and a lot of issues like obsessive thinking and neediness are immediately abbreviated.

But back to the whole "girls are silly and cute"" thing: at no point does a relationship ever become "serious" in my opinion. Seriousness in the solemn sense is rarely important in maintaining a healthy relationship, and actually often hinders it. Sincerity and authenticity develop, yes, but I see no reason to get all wrapped up and serious about, well, damn near anything, tbh -- least of all the particularly wild and wandering minds of women.

Ethan

Lucifer,

No, I don't think a guy NEEDS to go through a jerk phase to become "high quality" (unless being a jerk is part of how he defines high quality for himself. We've all go different values, after all). He doesn't even need to go through it to get attractive girls and make cool friends. Just look at so called naturals for proof of this.

Consider this question: wherein lies the value of being a jerk? As far as I can tell, its value lies primarily in...

1) Helping boost your edginess.

2) Teaching you to stand up for yourself against loud-mouths, cockblocks, and other people testing to see if they can take advantage of you, as well as how to persist through a girl's resistance.

3) Giving you experience commanding people, and if people start perceiving you as a leader it will reflexively encourage you to start acting more like one. So in this way it helps train you to be more dominant.

The mistake I think a lot of people make here is that they value jerkness in and of itself instead of seeing it simply as a tool for enabling social experimentation.

Yet it's the experimentation that is boosting your social sensitivity and control, not the attitude that gets you into those new and challenging situations.

Adopting the persona of the jerk is simply one way of exposing yourself to more diverse people and practicing being assertive.

Yet some cultures are naturally more assertive than others.

This was how I more or less skipped the jerk phase: traveling to new, socially challenging environments.

More specifically, when I was 20-22 I lived in a rather poor region in Southern Russia. My attitude there probably would have constituted acting like a jerk in the US or Western Europe, but there it was accepted, so I didn't get any negative feedback and was actually encouraged by my friends to be more forceful and assertive to get what I want (like sexy Russian babes).

It wasn't because I consciously decided "I'm going to start being inconsiderate and aloof", it was more of an inevitable byproduct of my being a foreigner, not speaking the language well (especially in the beginning), and also having a wide range of interesting people constantly knocking on my door and indirectly challenging my basic assumptions as to the nature of a good life.

So I was swimming in new social experiences all the time, even when I didn't feel like it.

Also, the thing about Russia is, the people there tend to be much more aggressive than those in the country I grew up in (the US).

For example, there is no such things as lines at most train stations. If you want to buy a ticket, you either push and shove your way to the front of the crowd, or you send in an attractive girl who more people will then let through without being so violent. So I had to adapt quickly.

Generally, the poorer the region, the more its people have to be assertive to get what they want (and the more they have to figure out exactly what they want. Vagueness in purpose is less effective when a large portion of the populace is struggling to meet basic survival needs).

I went up to Finland and Austria immediately after being in Russia, and getting girls was just so much easier than it had been than before I left; resistance I would have struggled with beforehand wasn't even on my radar anymore -- I wouldn't even notice it until after the fact.

I've also spent a good bit of time hanging out with charming Italian guys (for some reason, everywhere I go I always seem to befriend Italians!), and I've picked up some dominant habits from them as well.

So you see, each of the points of value of being a jerk I mentioned earlier can be addressed in other ways:

1) You can become edgy by training yourself to be non-reactive and confident that you can handle a situation and by having a wider frame than everyone else. People who are truly edgy (not just pretending to be edgy) are usually highly competent, as it's their competence that allows them to be so independent and value their own opinion more than anyone else's, and also often makes them so distracted and somewhat aloof, which usually helps them in the meeting women/forming relationships department, as it demonstrates non-neediness.

How I see it, edginess is to being a jerk as being judgmental is to being discerning. Seemingly similar, but essentially different.

2) You can expose yourself to more aggressive and disruptive people by leaving the suburbs or Academia and trying to achieve things outside of those safer more controlled environments.

This one's practically impossible to avoid. Most people seem to figure it out before their mid-to-late-twenties.

At your age, it's pretty likely that you've dealt with your fair share of disruptive people and can deal with them fairly well; you're not getting steam-rolled by people with big mouths, most likely. It's one of the things anyone who is around people enough will get good at. It seems to be an exposure thing more than anything.

3) You can also assume leadership without fronting by sincerely caring about the well-being of your group. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, after all. You don't have to put them above everything, but a little bit of courtesy and paying attention to more than just the words they are saying goes a long way.

Sometimes you may need to be a jerk, but usually you don't.

As for how it works for attracting girls though, I've seen some guys make it work and get girls that I would bang and probably even date.

Being a jerk is often taught because it's more viable than being a push-over. There's also an LA club-scene subscript going on here, where a lot of the guys teaching pick-up have always been guys in cities like LA who focused on more of a club scene, and the advice given for those scenes has been carried over for other ones, even ones where alternative attitudes may be superior for your goals.

The whole jerk thing is usually for younger guys, as far as I can tell, as being a jerk is one of the more immediately accessible way to get reference experiences without making a big move to some foreign land.

It's a reasonable strategy when you don't have much agency to back yourself up with. If you feel like you're just one of the crowd, you naturally want to emphasize the point that you are different. This works on attracting some younger girls, but after a certain age it becomes significantly less effective, as girls figure out that the really different/interesting guys don't need to make any special points to advertise their individuality.

Ethan

Thanks for the comment T --

I recommend not getting too hung up on the idea of dating up or down. As I explore later on in this article, what constitutes this dynamic are YOUR values. In particular, the social value you percieve yourself as having, and the social value you percieve the other person as having.

It's by and large a matter of your own subjective interpretation of the value dynamic.

This is where learning to consciously frame/reframe a value dynamic comes in -- e.g. things like assuming attraction and treating her like she's "silly and cute".

Ethan