(2) Intermediate

If you have herpes, how do you tell the women you’re dating… and how does it affect your romantic relationships?

Hey guys and welcome.

Last week, I wrote a post about living with herpes and how you can have a good sex life while avoiding transmitting it to others.

To recap the last post:

1. Get properly diagnosed.

2. Take your meds and get into full remission.

3. Once you obtain full remission, wait two to three days to ensure the lesions are gone, so your odds for transmission are close to zero.

I would still recommend using condoms with strangers.

In this post, I’ll go over how to deal with the social part of herpes. I’ll discuss how and when you should tell women about it and how to have a relationship (F-buddy or long-term, monogamous) as an HSV-positive person.

It feels odd to write this post because I’ve never considered herpes a big issue. For me, it was just “get cured,” and “get in remission,” and stay at home when I had an outbreak. I also never thought many guys had issues with this.

People kept asking me on forums, kept messaging me about it, and some even found my work email to ask me privately. They probably read somewhere that I had herpes.

I felt this was a non-subject and, I would rather have spent time writing about something else. But the questions keep coming in, so I decided to dedicate a two-part article on this subject.

I truly hope these two articles answer all your questions about herpes and living with it as a seducer.

When should you plan your next date with her for? It depends on a few “next date determiners”, including her eagerness, both your busyness, and more.

How soon should you see a girl again after the date you just had?

Should it be the next day, a few days later, a week, or more?

Timing for your next date will often be crucial. Rush it, and you can seem over-eager or too available.

Delay too long, though, and your date may decide you aren't interested and auto-reject... or someone else may snap her up while you're waiting. Or life may intervene (she gets busy, a loved one dies, her job moves her away to Alaska, etc.).

We'll look at a few crucial factors that help determine how long (or short) you should wait to plan that next date with her.

If you get herpes, does it mean your dating life is over… or you’re condemned to “condoms forever”? In fact, you can be responsible, while still leading a good life.

Hey guys.

I will be deadly honest here. I never thought I would write this post. But I keep getting messages on forums about it. I even got emails about it, and very experienced seducers have asked me about this (I won’t mention names out of respect).

The herpes simplex virus causes herpes, a very contagious virus that gives those nasty bumps that ulcerate, and then you get those tell-tale sores. Yes, a cold sore is a herpes virus. There are two strains of herpes: herpes-1 and herpes-2. Herpes-1 is commonly seen on the lip, and herpes-2 shows up on your dick and balls.

However, you can get herpes-1 on your dick and herpes-2 on your mouth. So, the distinction between the two is not that important. What is important to remember is:

• They both can be painful and have similar symptoms.

• They are both very contagious.

• They both have a pattern of flare-ups followed by periods of remission.

• Herpes is almost not contagious during remission.

• Herpes is very contagious during flare-ups (especially when you have a blister or an ulcer).

• Condoms limit the odds of transmission but do not protect fully (unlike HIV and other STDs, for which condoms offer nearly 100% protection). Condoms are also not good protection against HPV (human papillomavirus), which can give you nasty warts.

• Flare-ups usually last between one to two weeks but can last longer.

• You are more contagious when you have ulcers and blisters.

• Both types respond to treatment with Acyclovir or Valacyclovir.

Symptoms: Herpes usually starts with some redness, and you may feel a bit of itchiness. Then, a few large blisters form, or you may see a cluster of smaller blisters. The blisters burst and develop ulcers, which can cause scars if the sores break open.

You are most contagious during the ulceration phase, but during this entire phase, you will be contagious, too infectious in my opinion, for sexual intercourse.

In remission, the odds of transmission are minimal.

She’s beautiful. She can sleep with anyone she wants to. So, if she’s a beautiful girl, why WOULDN’T she sleep around with every hot guy she can get?

Commenting on my article on picking up girls with a jealousy plotline, a reader asks:

Hey Chase,

I've gotten together with a girl I met in a cafe.

That marks my first lay ever from day game!

It was not super straightforward to get her in bed but I managed.

She's beautiful, very smart, great personality, pretty good body- amazing girl.

The thing which shocks me is this:

After sleeping together, I casually asked her how many partners she's had before. I always do this and never come across as judgemental, so chicks always give me the full list, including guys who don't "really count"

So I know she's been honest with and freely opened up. She told me she had one serious boyfriend and that's it. One partner only.

I asked "What about any casual wild adventures? Some naughty action at parties or something?" She laughed and said she's not really a party kinda of person. She can drink socially but never got drunk and passed out and she despises clubs.

I guess what really confuses me is: if she's telling the truth, why on earth would a sexy girl like her not hook up? Guys check her out all the time, I'm sure they must have hit on her. It's so easy for her to have sex, yet she claims she only had one serious boyfriend.

It does not make sense to me because beautiful women can get sex on demand, so why on earth would she not use that opportunity?

It's interesting the range of expectations you see among men for what beautiful women's sex lives must look like.

There are men who expect the most beautiful women to be almost virginal. There are others who expect them to be total nymphomaniacs.

The actual truth of course is beautiful women are just like normal women.

They have the same kind of range in sexual inclinations and experience you find in the general population of girls: some with many lovers, some with few, most somewhere in the middle... with the added twist that as women get more beautiful, they trend toward fewer overall lifetime sex partners.

But... why?

Why wouldn't these girls, given the opportunity to hook up with so many hot guys, indulge?

Or, on the flip side, given the ability to not have to hook up, why wouldn't they stay virgins till marriage?

If you’ve been hurt by women, can you ever become a lover of women? To love women is not to ignore their flaws, but to enjoy them for their blessings.

I have always loved women.

They haven't always been perfectly kind to me. On some (fleeting) occasions, women have really been quite cruel to me. Of course, I don't think of it as "she is being so cruel to me!" because that is not how I think about things... instead I think, at worst, "Geez, here is an unpleasant person!"

I'm not a masochist; I don't stay in bad situations, and I am rather ruthless about cutting value-draining people from my life, including unpleasant or nasty women.

However, my dislike for a particular unpleasant person (or woman) does not dent my overall warmth toward womankind in general.

In this way, I suppose I'm opposite a great many men, who seem to have a general distrust of womankind, and instead busy themselves seeking out a singular "good woman" who is "not like the rest" to lash their hopes and dreams to.

Indeed, this is a human thing to do: there are just as many women distrustful of most men yet who search restlessly for that "one good man" who is "not like all the rest", just as men search for that among women.

Not every man may want to move from general distrust + "seeking the exception" to something closer to how I view women.

However, should you wish it, let me lay out a path for you to this kind of thinking.

A simple tactic that makes gobs of difference: just be friendly. Opening’s easier, hooking’s easier, and social proof becomes well-nigh automatic.

Here's a deceptively simple tactic:

Be friendly to every person you encounter.

Just yesterday we talked about conflict escalation and the dog-eat-dog world inside the prison system.

The good news is, you're a free man, and you're not in that kind of world. In this world, unless you venture into a bad part of town, you can and should be friendly to everybody.

Any time I've felt some rust or a renewed sense of approach anxiety, "be friendly to people" is the primary tactic I use to shake that off. Alek followed this same advice recently when he sought to warm up his social momentum after over a year of almost uninterrupted citywide lockdowns. It's simple, basic advice but it really works.

"Be friendly" has a ton of upsides for getting yourself approaching more easily with a lot less fear.

If you've only been doing targeted approaching -- where the only people you approach are sufficiently good-looking girls -- you may well find this alternate tactic a breath of fresh air.

When you talk to one group, others take note of you. This is the “spill over effect”: a way to meet more people by meeting other people first.

Hey guys, and welcome back!

Last time I shared insights on building social micro momentum or “warming up” socially before going for the girl you really want.

Why is it a good idea to warm up?

• To eliminate approach anxiety

• To feel warmed-up socially so you approach girls confidently and smoothly, increasing your chances of success

• To acquire benefits like social proof and familiarity with girls so that you can re-engage later if needed

How do you build social momentum?

• Start early

• Select a warm venue if you feel like you are at risk of getting rejected

• Approach in the most indirect and risk-averse way possible. The goal is to keep a few conversations going here and there

• Interactions shouldn’t last less than five minutes or more than 20 minutes. Ideally, strive for 10 – 15 minutes

• Don’t approach the girl you want yet, since you do not want to waste the opportunity when warming up

Once you feel ready to play seriously, you will be warmed up. Now you can approach those hot girls. You don’t need warm-ups because hotter girls are harder to approach (but not necessarily). You are probably feeling more anxious about approaching them because you find them attractive.

After all, isn’t it better to approach a girl you like when you are warmed up and have higher chances of succeeding with your approach, rather than doing so when your social muscle is still cold, and your approach may be unsmooth?