Attainability Woes; or, Why Girls Who Like You Reject You

Commenting on “I Can’t Get Girls Because Girls Only Want [BLANK]”, TR asks the following about girls who appear to like you, yet ultimately sabotage their interactions with you due to hang-ups:

“I've noticed that even though I can have an outstanding interaction with a woman that clearly likes me, when it comes to closing she may still sabotage herself. This usually happens with women much taller than I am, and though I have no doubt that she really likes me, I'm also pretty certain that the height thing makes her a bit insecure. These women consistently fall over hard for me afterwards (lack of control + attraction is dynamite) but they have that mental block that sabotages them more often than not.

Do you think you could post up a follow-up article on how to handle things like this? Perhaps it has to do with setting the right frames, or maybe it's just a matter of letting go and looking for the right girls instead.”

This is a great topic, and it's something you'll run into repeatedly if you're out meeting women fairly often: those girls who clearly like you, are into you, are attracted to you... yet who just won't let themselves do anything with you.

It's a disconcerting affair the first couple of times you run into it. "I can tell she likes me," you say to youself. "Why the heck is she rejecting me?"

Ultimately, the problem always comes down to the same thing: attainability.

And no matter how swell a guy you are, how friendly, likeable, or attractive, for one reason or the other, she just doesn't view you as all that attainable... and ends up auto-rejecting.

While you can't always prevent this, once you understand why it's happening you can avoid it sometimes - either by preventing the problem from occurring in the first place, or by recognizing when it is occurring, and nipping it in the bud before it becomes something more dooming.

If you're new to Girls Chase, don't own the eBook, or otherwise haven't read much on attainability, I'd recommend you do some reading on that subject first, as it's an important one to grasp but a little counterintuitive to get your head around initially... especially when you're accustomed to thinking of most problems you have with women as being value problems, like most men are wont to.

I won't make this article a tutorial on attainability; I'll assume you're already familiar with the concept. If you need a quick refresher, your attainability is a measure of how accessible you seem to be to a woman.

If she thinks you're chasing her, or are too needy or too available, then your attainability is too high, and you're not someone she wants, even if you're otherwise a high value guy and she's more invested in you than you are in her.

You're too easy, which implies her read on your value must be wrong and there must be some kind of hidden flaw with you for you to be acting this way to her (a man who's legitimately high value isn't going to chase after her or put her on a pedestal, excepting that rare sort of man who chases a woman romantically / emphatically in an attractive way).

If you're very aloof, or not relatable, or she feels like you're being insincere or not genuine, then your attainability is too low, and she will auto-reject to protect her ego.

Basically, she feels like you don't care about her, or are having a laugh at her expense, or aren't someone she can connect with, or are likely to break her heart at a moment's notice, and so she protects herself by getting away from you.

This latter problem is the problem you're running into when girls who seem to like you (and aren't flirty girls or girls who like you in a friendly way that you're simply misreading as showing romantic/sexual interest in you) proceed to reject you.

Problem #1: Your "Type" is Alien to Her

Imagine the quiet bookworm girl who suddenly gets approached by the loud, brash jock athlete. He might be attractive to her, and she might feel some primal urges around him... yet, she brushes him off with an awkward smile and dashes away, books clutched against her chest anyway, fearful of his intentions.

Or imagine the girl from the rock music or punk/emo/hipster scene, dressed in her going out gear, who runs into a polished, attractive office worker from downtown in his tailored suit. She may find this clean cut, self-assured man charming or even sexy, but she'll cut the interaction short and get moving regardless, fearing his judgment of her as low class or slutty and wanting to avoid dealing with that uncomfortable but probable scenario.

Or, imagine the tall girl who meets the short man, like in TR's example, and finds him attractive, yet fears the inevitable (she thinks) result: he gets uncomfortable and starts treating her like the tall, awkward girl, and cheats on her or leaves her for someone short. Maybe due to his own insecurities (he gets tired of buddies teasing him about being with a taller woman), or maybe due to his own preferences (men generally tend to prefer women shorter than them). So, fearing this outcome, she tells him it was nice meeting him, overrides her own interest in him, and exits stage left.

All of these are attainability problems. They all stem from a girl thinking that a girl like her cannot get a guy like you... it's not realistic.

To some extent, the best way to resolve issues like this is to adjust your identity to conform more closely to the kind of women that you want:

• You can get nerdy bookworm chicks as a big jock athlete, but you'll have much more luck if you can bring your identity closer to a nerdy bookworm and further from a big jock athlete

• You can get rock/punk/emo/hipster girls dressed in your 9-to-5 corner office attire, but you'll tend to fare a lot better if you style yourself closer to a rock/punk/emo/hipster look than not

• You can get taller girls being the short guy, but you'll tend to do better if you wear lifts and alter your energy to emulate taller male energy (slower, less energetic, more laconic) rather than shorter male energy (faster, more dynamic, less deliberate)

There's a lot more you can do with attainability than just conform to a girl's type; however, conformity is a major way to do it. In addition to conforming to her type, other types of conformity / chameleon-like adaptability include:

• Mirroring her social style
• Mirroring her time orientation
• Mirroring her energy levels
• Mirroring her interests/opinions
  

I hear the peanut gallery out there: but I don't WANT to act like someone I'm not just to get a girl!

First and foremost, if you're doing it right, you're not pretending to be someone else, you're highlighting the aspects of yourself that match hers and ignoring those that don't.

Secondly... the man who wants more success with women learns to be flexible. The inflexible man must settle for "perfect matches" rather than "acceptable matches", which greatly limits his range. If you're only looking for Miss Right, that's one way to go about it (though if you never make it to an abundance mentality due to this and Miss Right gets weirded out and leaves because she's used to more secure and less cling/needy men, don't say I didn't warn you), but if you're looking for anything else, you're cutting your own feet off from stubbornness and rigidity.

The closer you can get your type to match what she is attracted to and familiar with, the better you will tend to do with girls like her.

Caveat: not every woman is looking for her male double.

You will find the punk chick who's tired of punk guys and is just wishing she could meet a clean cut office guy; you'll find the bookworm girl who's fed up with slow-moving bookworm guys and fantasizes about a sexy jock who will sweep her off her feet; you'll meet the tall girl who's annoyed with tall guys' frequent low energy and silly humor (not all of them, but many of them), and desperately wants a sexual short guy who'll climb all over her.

However, you should go in assuming that on average, most of the women you'll meet are looking for someone closer to them than not.

Problem #2: Your Energy Levels are Off

One of the issues men run into when they're starting out learning game is that they come in acting like entertainers because they think to themselves: "Well, girls are so flaky and so prone to ignoring men, if I want to capture a girl's attention, I need to be entertaining: to be energetic, funny, very expressive, loud, and emotive. She needs the greatest show on Earth!"

They get stuck on this because being the entertainer receives great reactions... even if his actual results are meager.

Why are his results meager? Because who can CONNECT to a person like this?

When you're watching a female presenter up on stage cracking jokes and telling stories, you might think, "Gee, she sure is entertaining," but you're probably not going to think, "I'd sure love to grab a burger with her, get to know her, and shag her brains out after." She doesn't really strike you as someone you could possibly do those things with (or want to).

Guess what... same deal for the entertainer. The entertainer is low attainability. He comes in, he grabs attention, he mesmerizes... but he builds precisely no connection to the girl, gets zero sexual tension accrued, and only serves as a sideshow attraction.

Sure, everybody bulges their eyes out when the clown swallows the flaming sword. But they don't want to go to bed with the clown.

On the other extreme, it's possible to be too low energy... this is the guy who opens her, but acts really apathetic, not expressive at all, monotone, boring. He's phoning it in, and she can tell it.

The guy girls go for is the guy with the right balance of energy: he's neither the mope nor the entertainer, but the guy in the middle... the one who's alert, witty, and interested, but also easily bored and distracted if she isn't interesting him.

This way, she must earn his attention, and when she has it, it's good attention and she feels connected and rewarded. And when she doesn't, she feels compelled to get it back.

If you're being apathetic or too much fun though, kiss your attainability goodbye - because you don't seem remotely interested (if acting apathetic), or because you don't seem remotely real (if acting too over-the-top).

How big is attainability?

It's huge. HUGE.

If you aren't actively working on it all the time, you've almost certainly got a giant hole in your game.

You're a high value guy who gets girls investing? Great! Oh, but you're not attainable...?

How odd... despite your high value and mounds of compliance, you still can't get girls on dates or into bed. What causes this? Attainability.

You could be the descendent of James Dean and look and act every bit the part. You could have her investing in you like crazy. Yet, if you are coming across unattainably (or, alternately, overly attainably), you won't get girls.

The Irony of Attainability

One of the reasons the lover has an easier time with women than the boyfriend candidate is because the former is frankly more attainable.

In many ways, the lover will actually be a lower value guy to the boyfriend candidate. He likely:

• Isn't as wealthy (pool boy vs. home owner)
• Isn't as intelligent (college dropout vs. MBA holder)
• Isn't as accomplished (unsuccessful artist vs. successful businessman)

... all of which results in him coming across as infinitely more attainable.

When a woman examines a potential boyfriend candidate (some guy she likes enough to want to date), here are some of the things that go through her head:

• Is he going to like me?
• Am I going to be good enough for him?
• Is he going to think I'm too slutty? Or not experienced enough?
• Am I too young for him? Or too old for him?
• What if he thinks I'm boring?
• What if I'm not what he's looking for?
  

And do you know how many of those things she worries about with the potential lover (some guy she mostly just wants to sleep with)?

Almost none of them. Or perhaps even none of them, period.

Guess what that does for attainability? That's right - the lover has a far easier time of it attainability-wise because she doesn't care about his opinion on so many of these other things.

If he's an okay guy, and attractive, and available enough, but still a challenge, and he gets her investing, and teases her enough to get her hot-and-bothered but not so much he sends her into auto-rejection or stalls out the interaction, that's generally enough.

He doesn't need to think she's a saint or his dream girl. He just has to want to shag her.

Because of that, the same guy doing the same exact things and interacting with her exactly the same way seems infinitely more attainable to her if she views him as a potential lover than he does if she views him as a potential boyfriend.

Of course, getting out of boyfriend consideration is another topic in and of itself, and not the subject of this piece. But it is something to consider when you're weighing how hard you need to work on your attainability: is she vetting you for a lover role, or a boyfriend one?

Troubleshooting Hidden Attainability Woes

If you detect your attainability tanking before the interaction has drawn to a real close, you still may have a shot to turn it around.

The best way to do this usually consists of:

• Upping your warmth
• Getting her talking more about herself then qualifying her on this
• Starting the interaction moving forward again
• Touching her more
  

These are usually the areas you're slacking off in when attainability starts to drop, and they're normally your best shots for bringing it back up to acceptable levels:

Doing more warm, considerate things with her; getting her to open up more and making her feel good about what she shares; giving her a feeling of progress in the interaction so she knows it's going somewhere and you aren't just yanking her chain; touching her more so she feels a physical connection with you and doesn't think you just like her as a friend or are purely pursuing something non-sexual with her.

If she has identity-level issues with you, it's also EXTREMELY important to suss out what these are and address them. That means:

• If she's the quiet bookworm about to auto-reject because you're the loud, brash athlete, you need to tone it down and show her that really this is all for show and actually you're a huge nerd who's into Dragonball Z or you've been reading through some literature classics in your spare time (whatever you're reading that's closest to what she reads, break that out in conversation)

• If she's the hipster chick and you're the business type and you can tell she's holding herself back out of fear of being judged, find out what kind of music she likes and discuss a similar, related band you enjoy and your adventures with it, or talk about how you used to make music or how you're a secret concert junkie but no one at work suspects it because they'd all freak out if you told them
  

• If she's tall and you're short, do something short men and tall women never do because it makes their height differences so very obvious, like invite her to come dance with you (and then persist until she relents and agrees - assuming you're a good dancer, of course)
  

Notice those first two are about portraying yourself as an "undercover" version of her type - you look different, but it's just an act; the real you is more like her.

It's also a good idea to compliment her more than you would a woman who doesn't have attainability issues with you, including/especially on things you think she may fear you'll dislike in her:

• Compliment the bookworm on how cute she looks with her glasses and books and tell her she's got this very unique allure about her that it's hard for you to put your finger on

• Compliment the hipster on her hairstyle and how well it suits her face and really brings out the most attractive parts of her look

• Compliment the tall girl on her poise and how her poise together with her height lends her this very elegant air that is very attractive and very sexy

If you can give her a genuine compliment that is both personal (e.g., NOT "You have great taste in literature" or "Your favorite band really is excellent, yeah") and unique (e.g., ties together multiple details on her person), you will go a long way toward obliterating much of your attainability difficulties with her.

You Can't Always Win

Even if you're ace at attainability, you'll still meet women from time to time who are just so rigidly into their heads and so fearful of rejection or dismissal that they won't listen to anything you say about their attractiveness or how much you relate to them or anything along those lines, and will excuse themselves and scurry off because they fear you harming their egos.

This is one reason I prefer very confident women myself; they're just easier to work with, and low attainability is much less of a concern (you don't have to worry as much about seeming too hard to get when she thinks she can get any man on the planet).

However, it's worth learning attainability tech, because the very confident women you meet will be relatively uncommon, and most girls have average levels of confidence - which means that the more attractive you become, the more work you're going to have to do to not seem out of their leagues.

I even had a friend once who embarked on a mission to date ugly girls for a while and see how long he could keep them in a relationship with him just to work on his attainability game (since this was something he needed a lot of work in). If you can get good at attainability, it opens up a world of possibilities to you - because not every girl who finds you intimidating or not her type is ugly; many of them are quite attractive.

Whenever you lose a girl like this, who was into you but rejected you, say this to yourself: "I must improve at attainability." Of course, it's always a balance - you can't go purely for making yourself super attainable, because if you go too far you can swing into "overly available" and kill intrigue and attraction.

The right balance is being attainable enough that a girl feels you are just at the limit of what she can attain - and of course, that needs tweaking and calibration on a case-by-case basis, since every single woman you meet is a different person, has different life experiences, and a different base level of self-confidence.

Which only makes the game all the more fun; it never stops being fresh when it's different every time.

Yours,
Chase Amante