Investment

Today I want to talk about a strange and confusing topic for a lot of guys - namely, getting mixed signals from a girl.

You know what mixed signals are: one moment, she's flirty and warm with you, and you get excited, thinking you're getting somewhere with her. The next moment, she's cool and aloof - and you're really not sure what happened.

Then, out of nowhere - BAM! You're back get warm, flirty behavior from her.

So does that mean she likes you, or does that mean she doesn't?

A commenter on "Why Chasing Women Doesn’t Work" writes:

“just over a two months ago i was intruduced to a girl by a couple i know, started off texting and getting to know each other. when we first met it was fantastic, got along great , we have met up every weekend since. As we have got to know each other a bit more and opened up to each other, she has a few issues with one of her ex partners who she left for stealing from her. (she was engaged to him )

she is in the process of talking to him again and getting her stuff back, but now i feel on the outer with her , hardly talks to me ect. i feel ive done somthing wrong i dunno, it all started great ,told each other how we feel , she stated she isnt ready for a relationship 'just yet', which i respect and kinda understand. I dont no if i should keep trying to talk to her or just give her a break and wait till she gets in touch with me .”

Now, for this commenter's situation specifically of course, the problem's compounded by a lack of moving fast enough and attraction expiring. Those will cause the slow death of a potential relationship every time, ex-boyfriend or not.

But when her ex-boyfriend is in the picture, this is particularly exacerbated - because everything you have the might be good with her is less good, and everything that isn't the best gets worse.

Ex-boyfriends, in any way, shape, or form, are invariably bad news for any kind of relationship you want to get going with girls.

In "Guy Talk: Here's How to Kick Butt at Talking to Other Men," JFav (a commenter singlehandedly responsible for perhaps 20% of the "a reader writes in" type articles I've written here) writes in asking about how to make female friends:

“Hey Chase,

Was reading through this article again and it's great stuff! Can't believe I haven't been using it all this time. Though as I was reading though a thought popped into my head, could there be a companion article to this concerning women?

I'm not sure if what I'm asking isn't already covered on here but I thought I'd ask anyways. I've always been fascinated with those guys that just get women and can instantly turn them into a friend or ally. Much like the way you said you can turn any man into an ally I'm sure you can do that with a woman too.

So, I was wondering if you could a write up on this kind of thing. You talked about this subject briefly in Girls Chase ebook where you compared the female and male conversational style.

I'm asking about this because I'm in a spot in my life where being active in pick up difficult for me so having some female companionship in terms of having invites to parties or clubs is my best bet right now.”

And just the other day, Ryan had a similar question in the latest Carnival of Dating Advice:

“Hey Chase,
I was wondering if you could write an article about what to do if you want to be good friends with a girl. All your articles have been really helpful but i'm not sure how to apply the techniques to a girl whom seducing would be inappropriate, but you still want her to admire and respect you as a good friend. Could you write something about this please? Thank you :)”

JFav and Ryan are right - there isn't an article on Girls Chase yet about turning women into friends - so let's correct that situation.

In The Law of Success, a very, very good book by Napoleon Hill - perhaps one of my favorites all time, in fact - Hill discusses, as one of the 16 tenets of success, the necessity of having a pleasing personality. Part of his recommendation is for listeners to be agreeable.

If you look at most people in Western society, I don't think this aspect of a pleasing personality - being agreeable - is much of a problem for them. In fact, I think one of the overriding problems for Westerners is in being too agreeable - so much so that anyone willing to be a bit less agreeable is able to easily steamroll them into uncomfortable submission.

But, that's a topic for another time. What I want to discuss in this article is why it's a good thing to be a little hard to please... at least some of the time.

Because if you've long made a habit of being overly agreeable - and there really can be too much of a good thing - a little dose of pickiness may just be in order.

I've fielded a number of comments and questions from guys over the years on how to start a relationship off right with a new girl they've just started seeing. After all, you've used all the material on this site on how to turn yourself into a smooth, edgy, sexy man; and you've learned everything you need to know about how to get girls, you knew what to look for in a girlfriend, and you've found her, met her, and everything went perfectly. You took her to bed as your lover, and now she's yours.

Now what?

Most people treat dating and relationships as some big, mythical, emotionally-driven process these days, devoid of much logical forethought or planning. It's reached a point in Western thought where "giving in to your emotions" has become the ultimate ideal to be striven for and attained; you should seek to "just feel" and "go with your heart."

But while emotion is a very important piece of your actions and decision making as a human, it's only half the story, and, worse for relationships... it's the short term half of the story.

Emotions will have you shortchange your tomorrow for a better today.

What I'm going to tell you to do in THIS article, however, is to take command of yourself, and build a relationship designed to be strong, successful, and rewarding long after the fires of early emotion quit burning so brightly, or even quit burning at all.

This is, you might say, the anti-guide to falling in love: it's the guide not to getting there, but to staying there, and like all good stories it starts at the beginning.

Back on the article about gym pickup, The Tool (one of our forum members as well) commented in asking about ways he could meet girls in the gym as a member of the staff, without overstepping professional boundaries:

“It was 8 am and this girl wanted to Tan and she had another hour before she could tan (24 hour law) so she begged and i told her to wait another hour, she stayed in the locker room and came out an hour later, she asked If she could tan yet, I told her 5 more minutes and asked her "so what brings you to the gym this early on a saturday? working out before work or to flirt with the guy at the front desk? She said Haha I am not. I said "you totally are and now your lieing about it...jeeze." she said haha I guess I am. anyway jist of it I deepdived a bit and got her digits saying your a cool girl we should get some coffee sometime. she said sure and baddabing.

Anyway as a staff member things like this are risky for I can lose my job if it was ever found out or I made it awkward for a girl. So would you advise that those guys who are in fact the staff not try to pick up girls at their own gym? ”

My advice to The Tool was to use barriers to get these girls chasing him; it was, in effect, this: be a challenge to women.

In the article excerpt from my eBook entitled "How to Challenge Women," I discussed why you want to be challenging women, how it helps you, and what the potential risks are if you take it too far. And I offered a few strategies from the book on not being too little of a challenge.

But what about really being a challenge to women? Is it possible to use conversation and communication to set things up so that women are pursuing you, regardless of whether they were or weren't at first?

Sure, it's absolutely possible.

And, it's a heck of a lot easier than you might think.

Note from Chase: Eric is one of the members of the new Girls Chase forum who showed up on the scene with a bang. Offering sage advice to many of the beginner and intermediate-level members, he's quickly demonstrated both an intuitive grasp of a lot of the more advanced concepts in seduction, and a solid and developing ability to break down those concepts into understandable chunks. He asked me if I might be interested in letting him write a few things for the site - I told him I'd be honored. Here's Eric, with his debut article.

In case you aren't quite acquainted with me, I'm a frequent member of the site as well as on the new forum (which is doing quite well - we have a great community thus far). You've probably seen me replying to posts on the blog here in the comments section as "Anon."

Earlier this week I went through a few questions on our forums, and I stumbled across one in particular from a student of the game. I was about to go more in-depth, but I realized to properly explain it, it was going to take a proper write-up, and I thought the answer I had to give would benefit a lot more guys than just whoever reads that forum post.

I wanted to put it on the blog.

I briefly explained the concept a little on the forums, in a response that focused on getting your conversation into "automatic," and the reception was, essentially, this:

“Wow, the insights here are incredible. All the things you said, just these behavioral changes seem so simple, but I can see it working. Is there a certain guide to doing just that? How to make normal conversation or “autopilot” conversation be able to turn on a girl?”

I sent a message to Chase wondering if I should write some stuff up, if that'd be something he'd be open to and something he'd have, and he gave me the go ahead.

Thus, this post - on the other side of effort: efficiency in seduction.