(3) Journeyman

In my article "Why I Quit Dating Girls Who Club, Party, or Drink", Balla asks the following questions about spotting a crazy girl (so that he might stay far, far away):

“How do you know if a girl is crazy before its too late? What early signs do girls show you?

How do you know you if a girl is lying to you about not being a club girl? Say if you met her during the day?

Don't club girls run around during the day too? How do you know you're not picking up a club girl during the day?”

Now, that's not to say that all girls who head to nightclubs every so often are crazy (although... most of them are at least somewhat more narcissistic women).

What we're talking about here when we say a girl is a "crazy girl" is that she is a woman who's more likely to be unstable in a relationship. That's it. She may function perfectly in every aspect of her life besides romantic / sexual relationships, but that's unimportant to us here for our purposes - this website is about selecting women as lovers and long-term partners, and we're most concerned with how those women are going to serve in those roles, how they'll affect us, and how stable (or not) they're going to be in that position.

To make some of these red flags easier to spot, I'm going to break them down into different red flags across three distinct categories, which may or may not be controversial for some people... and if so, well, them's the ropes. We're simply looking for the most useful tool here for making general predictions about the effects a given woman is going to have on your sanity as a man down the line in a relationship of any variety with her.

It occurs to me that there is a certain percentage of the readership here that has been reading Girls Chase for a fairly long time but not taking much or any action.

Some guys work on their fundamentals enough to get more attraction, but have difficulty ever talking to new women.

Some guys view all this self-improvement hoopla as something of a curiosity to be read about, enjoyed, and perhaps considered, but not something to be done, at least not right now.

Some guys meet women in their social circles, but not really in the way that Peter discusses in his series on social circle; more in a just freeform, unguided, I'll-meet-women-whenever-they-meet-me kind of way, that doesn't lead to a whole bunch of outstanding results but does lend itself nicely to ending up fixated on one or two women you just can't seem to get.

For those readers - all the guys who'd like to start, someday maybe, or even right now but just can't seem to get past their approach anxiety no matter how much they read or how much they do, I'd like to suggest something that's been a boon to me in skill building of all types, classes, and varieties: something I call the 100 hour rule.

A little while back, in the article on bitter women, JD asked a great question about the proper way to break up:

“[G]irls easily fall in love with me, and I'm not really considerate towards their feelings. Last time I broke up with someone it almost caused everyone to hate me... Obviously that's not something I'd like to happen. So how do you break up? How do you leave women thinking; 'wow, he was awesome, too bad he's moved on'?”

Breaking up is a wrenching affair much of the time, especially for the partner who's trying to hold on while the other lets go. Break ups are rarely mutual... far more often, they're one-sided, with one partner giving the other the boot, while the booted party feels hurt, shocked, injured, and helpless.

Especially if you've had a longer relationship (6+ months or so), you're usually going to be in for a bumpy road, emotionally.

How do you deal with all these emotions, and how do you figure out how to break up with a girl in a way that's fair to both people involved and doesn't leave a lot of smashed, hurt, broken feelings?

A few weeks ago an anonymous GC reader made a very simple request:

“Can you write an article on leadership?”

Yes, certainly; I’m very happy to oblige. Leadership is a quality coveted by men the world over. It’s not only the ability to lead individual men and women, but the ability to compel larger groups to work harder and achieve more than they ever would on their own.

Similar to improving your skill with women, there is a common misconception about leadership that it’s just something people are born with and can never be learned. But today I’m going to break down leadership, and show that it can be learned by anyone... anyone willing to put in the time and effort to learn it, of course.

Much of men’s dating advice tells you to be confident, but after a certain point a man with little to fear might just ask the question, “Can being shy be turned to one’s advantage?”

As it turns out, shy combined with moments of confidence can create an incredibly alluring contrast, and yes, be incredibly attractive. In fact, the right use of “shyness” can show off a deeper internal confidence than just being extroverted and outgoing all the time can.

Being shy-natured can be a powerful way to separate yourself from the noise of the crowd and heighten the experience of sharing a moment with you.

When I first started lifting weights regularly, there were plenty of days I did not want to go to the gym at all - days I felt sick, days I felt tired, days I was down in the dumps. But I made myself go anyway, because I had committed myself to it, and I knew that if I started skipping days at the gym, I'd skip more and more, and whatever gains I actually made would be slow and, likely, negligible.

So, I went, time and again, when I did not want to go at all. The feeling after was always triumphant - I had vanquished my emotions and managed to achieve in spite of myself. And six months after I'd begun working out three times a week, every week, I was back in front of a bunch of my old colleagues, and everyone was impressed at how much muscle I'd put on.

I hadn't even realized; because I saw myself in the mirror every day, I hadn't seen the transformation. All I'd seen was that I kept lifting heavier and heavier amounts of weight.

Going out to meet women is just like this; the important thing is not being "ready" to go out and meet women - the important thing is going out and meeting women.

But a lot of men have trouble doing this.

In "The Purpose of Life from a Practical Point of View", Zac wanted to know why 'scare tactics' within relationships don't work:

“It will be cool to have an article on "Scare tactics", and why it doesn't work when there is no genuine honest and open communication.”

The question was posed in the context of styles of leadership and how to stop playing games in a relationship – which are actually two topics with a whole lot in common.

In this article, you're going to learn what a scare tactic is, why people use them, why they're ineffective in the long term and what techniques you can use to avoid them to have longer, more fruitful relationships, romantically and platonically.

First though, let's get an understanding of scare tactics.