(3) Journeyman

Once upon a time, there was one subject that absolutely terrified me when women brought it up in conversation: their past relationships.

I mean, if anything felt like a death sentence for forward progress with a woman, it was her digging up her troubled past and spilling it all over my lap. Time and again, I found that my interactions with women ended soon after they began divulging their storied relationship history -- "Great, another gal looking for a shoulder to cry on," I'd think. "I'm doomed."

It took me a little while to crack that nut, but I did. When women start telling me about their past relationships now, it's almost a slam dunk that we become lovers.

How'd I make such a dramatic shift, from past relationships being a conversation killer to them becoming seduction rocket fuel? Well, it came about from me deciphering a few important concepts -- and that utterly shifted the way I approached women discussing their past relationships.

I had a date Friday night with a young television anchor for one of the big TV stations in China and Hong Kong. Things started out innocently enough -- she put me in the hot seat early on, treating me almost like how I imagine she must treat her interviewees, asking me lots of questions and making it feel like an interview -- but I soon wrested control of the flow of conversation, and pretty soon things were going swimmingly. I used something known as the cold read to do it.

Before you knew it we were well into a deep dive, her telling me all about her past relationships and what she thinks the purpose of life is and what she really wants (children, namely). And it all happened, despite a little while of me being there in the hot seat, more or less effortlessly.

Even not so long ago, I struggled with transitioning into "real" conversation when I was facing women who were professional "talkers" -- reporters, saleswomen, any kind of gal who spoke effusively for a living. The problem was, women like that tend to snap into these routines of making their pitch or going into interview mode, and it can be hard to snap them out of it.

What I ended up returning to to solve this dilemma was something I've developed slowly -- almost unconsciously -- over the past half decade: cold reading.

It's largely because of cold reading that I had this girl who was so used to steering the conversation instead drinking in every moment with me, and by extension it's largely because of cold reading that I had this girl telling me how she'd drank too much (after a mere two drinks, spread across 2 1/2 hours) and all but announcing that I should invite her home to make some bad decisions.

The most frequent email I get from readers is of the very gracious, magnanimous variety, with readers reaching out to say thanks for writing your blog, your book, etc., and sharing perhaps some of the successes that have come from, in part, applying what they've learned from my materials.

But hands down the second most frequent email I get is the one that reads something akin to this:

“Hi Chase, I've been reading your site and I wish I'd come across it sooner. You see, there's this girl I like, and I guess I didn't move fast enough with her, because now she's cold and distant and I don't know what to do. Is there anything you can recommend I do to turn it around?”

I get about 2 or 3 of these emails a week. And as traffic to this site continues rising, I'm confident the number of them coming in will only increase.

And I commiserate. I've been there lots of times; watching a girl you really liked shut down and go cold on you when formerly it seemed like she was yours for the picking is maddening, gut-wrenching, and about as big a sucker punch as you can get. It's awful.

So, I want to lay it down here today, for all those guys out there pulling their hair out like I used to -- a complete guide on how to get a girl back.

A buddy of mine recently asked me to write on how to meet girls in groups, as it's something I don't talk about a great deal on here. The most I've touched on the topic before has been in "Breaking Circle," the post on maintaining attraction despite distractions around you or even other people trying interrupt you.

But, as my friend noted, I haven't gotten a proper treatment on meeting women in groups up yet, so this is it.

Meeting girls in groups is one of those things that, assuming you're doing much nighttime approaching, you're going to run into reasonably regularly. In fact, it may very well be the meat and potatoes of your approaches -- you might just find yourself in groups most of the time.

Groups aren't ideal, of course. Things tend to move faster and more smoothly the majority of the time when it's just you and your girl, and there are no interruptions or distractions to knock the two of you off course.

However, when handled appropriately, any negatives of groups can usually be negated, and in fact you can sometimes even get groups working for you with the women you meet. So it doesn't always have to be unfortunate that that pretty girl you like is in the middle of a group -- sometimes groups make it even easier for the two of you to get together.

When I first decided to start tackling women and dating as a skill set to methodically improve at the end of 2004, I went into it with three distinct aims:

• Be a seductive, charming bad boy,
• Constantly test the limits and push to improve, and
• Make women feel special.

I didn't know exactly what I was doing or how my learning curve would look, but I trusted that as I chipped away at learning the ability to do better with women, I would indeed get it down, as I had a diverse array of other skills.

It wasn't until a year later that I found the pick up community. Many parts of it excited me; I couldn't believe there was an entire group of men who'd worked to develop this same skill set too, some much further along than myself. But there was one part that mystified me:

These guys didn't seem to know how to make a girl feel special.

So much of their stuff revolved around spitting out scripted lines and "canned routines" at girls, which I tried, briefly, but tossed aside after only a few weeks. It didn't feel genuine at all, and it wasn't how I wanted my interactions with women to be.

They had lots of great advice, to be sure; studying the findings of these guys who'd already been down the path I'd set myself out on was immensely helpful. But in that one department -- in making girls feel special -- I was pretty sure I had something they didn't.

Breaking up with a girl is quite often one of the toughest things you'll do. It involves cleaving yourself from someone else you've likely grown quite close to, and have quite possibly been with for a long time and shared a lot of experiences with.

It's often said that the end of a long-term relationship can have the same emotional impact on someone as the death of a loved one. It can be that strong.

So it's no wonder that most people have a really hard time breaking up -- and that relationships frequently limp on long after they should've finished. Instead, people wait, and put the decision off, hoping that somehow, it'll just take care of itself.

It never does, of course. What I'm going to talk about with you today, then, is how you recognize the signs that it's time for you to break up with a girl.

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.