Investment

Something I see guys doing that always makes me want to hold up my hands and go, “Wait! Too extreme!” is getting miffed and walking away from women without giving them a properly put-together parting shot.

I was guilty of it for a long time, and when you’re still being emotionally affected by the women you’re meeting (i.e., before it’s become more or less pure process with little emotional involvement), it’s pretty easy to fall into this trap.

That is, the trap of realizing that things aren’t going your way with a given girl, getting upset, and storming off out of the interaction with a spiteful “Huh. She’ll realize what she’s lost when I’m gone!” attitude.

Ever do this? I bet you have, and if you’re like most men I bet you sometimes still do.

Thing is, how often do those girls you abruptly cut contact with like this ever get back in touch with you and turn things around? Never, right? Occasionally they may reconnect with you, but ever notice how they treat you rather patronizingly in those cases? They know they’ve gotten to you.

At best, all you ever get out of ending things with girls this way is a psychic victory... you get to think to yourself that you “won” because you walked off and left her hanging.

But you didn’t win, not really. You didn’t get the girl.

There is a way you can though – not all the time, but a whole lot more often than you will with the “get irked and storm off” approach, in any event.

I call it “the parting shot.”

Growing up, I was shown again and again in film, books, and television that there was precisely one (1) path a man could follow with women, romantically-speaking: date a few people, find the right girl, and settle down.

This never sat entirely right with me, because while I enjoyed the idea of pairing up intensely with some amazing woman, my tastes also changed enough that I also enjoyed fantasizing about pairing up with lots of different amazing women. Not all at once (what a headache!), but mostly more or less one after another. Maybe having children with the different various amazing women along the way. Even while fixated on that one special girl, I could never imagine more than a year or two out into a relationship with her... sort of like most Hollywood films. The movie in my head always ended after the exciting part.

When I discovered the seduction community, I found two more beliefs about how relationships could go, coexisting rather uncomfortably side-by-side with that first. Plenty of men learning how to get girls still aimed for a settled life with one girl they’d commit to more or less forever; some of them because of a lack of abundance mentality, but many of them because that was just what they really wanted, and the cultural narrative gelled with their own intrinsic desires.

Those other two views on relationships are the ones I want to discuss today. I won’t go much into the conventional mainstream view of relationships – you already know that one plenty well enough (and, for the record, I think it’s a perfectly fine and doable path for those who want it), so instead, I want to talk about the other two:

1. The “Committed Relationships are Bad for Men” View, and
2. The “Committed Relationships are Playgrounds for Men” View

... and I’ll also talk about where both of these views come from, and how and why your lifestyle radically colors your perception of relationships.

In “Should You Buy Gifts for a Girlfriend?”, Troy asks about how to word your requests such that they stand the highest likelihood of success with the lowest likelihood of rejection. He says:

“The right way shows consideration and gives a command at the same time. So in the right way I’d ask you Chase: “ I’d like to see an article on giving commands (and words to use) while showing consideration for the other person to up your chance of getting a YES! I’ve had trouble giving commands to people that give them a way out but also make them more likely to go with my request. Thanks!”

First off, you’ll never get everyone to say “yes” to all your requests, all of the time. If you ask someone to buy you a new car, unless it’s one of your parents or a fairly wealthy and extremely generous lover, you’re probably not going to get a “yes” to that.

However, what I can show you is how to word your requests in such a way that even if the other person does not comply, it’s not really a rejection and stacks up little or no negative compliance against you... and, I can show you how to escalate your compliance requests so that you stand the best possible chance to get a “yes” to whatever you may be asking.

Following up my piece yesterday on "The 4 Stages of Every Friends with Benefits Relationship", today I'm going to get into the nuts and bolts of running your casual relationships by giving you 8 friends with benefits rules that are absolutely mandatory you follow... to not have everything go to hell in a hand basket, that is.

Friends with benefits are lots of fun, but these relationships are also loaded with the potential to get messy on the turn of a dime. All it takes is a little bending of the rules, and you can very quickly find yourself:

• With a friend with benefits who's falling in love with you

• Falling in love with your friend with benefits yourself

• Experiencing confusion in your social circle about where you stand

• Enjoying reputation damage or drama or other bad effects from things gone awry

Break the rules, and you're playing with fire without a fire extinguisher handy.

Adhere to them, and, well, let's just say you're handling fire in a responsible, fun, and mostly safe way.

So what are these rules you've got to stick to, anyway?

In my travels, I've been fortunate to have met a number of different men with different personalities who've all found success with women their own unique ways. One of the patterns I've picked up on has been that each of these men's "vibes", if you will, fall into one of three rough categories:

• Brooding / sad
• Smooth / charming
• Talkative / dynamic
  

No one of these vibes (or airs, or auras, or whatever term you like) is better than another, though each one appeals to different subsets of women. Some are more popular at different times of life - most of the teen male heartthrobs you'll see in books and movies are brooding, for instance, while the majority of mature (30+) male sex symbols hew more closely to the "smooth" way of doing things - but each can be used successfully at any point in a guy's life; there are plenty of talkative young guys who clean up with women, and I've seen my fair share of brooding older guys who do well with the vibe despite their lack of youth.

This article is broken down into three major sections: one on each of the 3 flavors of vibe. So read on, and find out which kind of sexual vibe is best suited to you - and, how you can learn to adapt each of these vibes for your own use, where needed.

Over the past month, 340Breeze, one of our members and commenters here, has made a couple of insightful comments and asked a few thoughtful questions about a subject that can be fairly boiled down to "the wrapping and the present".

His first comment was in the article on specialness (comment here).

And his second was in the piece on reversing poor precedent (comment here).

The first comment discussed his experiences meeting women who seemed outwardly impressive at first, but lacking in substance after he got to know them; in the second comment, he asked whether it was better for a woman interested in capturing a good man to focus more on playing coy and drawing things out with men (what I'd term "game" and "fundamentals", or style), or on becoming such all-around awesome people that they were simply naturally already in very high demand (who you really are as a person, friend, and mate - your substance).

In fact, this dichotomy - of fundamentals and game vs. who you are, style vs. substance, or the wrapping vs. the present - is one that underlies all of social dynamics, whether mating and dating, or choosing whom you want to be friends with, or hiring employees, bringing on consultants, or selecting the company you want to go work for.

The key here, and what everyone's trying to do, is to avoid being suckered by nice wrapping that isn't backed up by an equally impressive present underneath... but also not miss the great presents hiding under crummy wrapping paper.

Yet, that isn't so easy to do.

We're in the midst of the gift-giving season, and one of the big questions that comes up this time of year is both whether you ought to buy gifts for a girlfriend - and, if so, what kinds of gifts... and how many?

My phys ed teacher in high school, a guy named Mr. Myers, was known for dumping his girlfriends a few weeks before Christmas because he didn't want to buy them presents - all the boys thought this was hilarious and badass, and the girls thought it was despicable (but still flirted with him anyway). He was one of those assholes who wasn't completely magnetic, but he had this half-sleazy, half-charming way of grinning that told you he probably did all right with the fairer sex regardless.

When I was younger, and a bit more white knight-y, I thought this was just poor behavior of his; "If I had a girlfriend, I'd sure buy her Christmas presents!" I thought to myself.

But when I got a little bit older, and picked up a bit more actual life experience with women, I began to reconsider that position: was it possible that Mr. Myers had a point?

Might it be better to be Scrooge than Santa during the season of holiday cheer and good will toward men?