Confidence

A reader writes in with the following question:

“Hi Chase,

You are one of the best writers on the web about this topic. I am mainly sending this to thank you, and [because] I have something else to also ask, I will get right down to it. You obviously live a type of life that is not the typical 9-5. Society frowns upon it, but you seem to be embrace it. I would also love to do what you do, but I have this fear that I will fail. There is also all the pressure from family and friends to follow a traditional path.

So, Chase, please tell me: How do manage to stay unorthodox and happy?

Your student for life,
Arnold”

It's a good question. I know plenty of people on both the "orthodox" and the "unorthodox" side of things who claim to be "happy", yet whose actions and behaviors betray a deep lack of satisfaction with their lives.

I think most people are lost, and looking, or have given up looking, and meanwhile resent the pressures that others put upon them - whether they kowtow to those pressures, or they struggle against them.

And the people putting those pressures upon them are just as lost and unsatisfied as those they press down on.

This cycle of confusion and dissatisfaction seems to be an inherent quality of human life, and has been down through the ages. One of the things I set out to do a long while ago, though, and seduction was something that fell under the umbrella of this, was not have to worry about this like other people did.

Before stumbling into the world of pickup in late 2005, I'd never used the 1-to-10 scale. Maybe that's because I didn't really have friends; I wasn't comparing notes on girls. Or maybe it was because I wasn't trying to impress anyone by telling him I'd nailed a "total 10."

But in pickup, it seemed everyone used the 1-to-10 scale. Girls were 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s. Debate raged about whether a girl could ever really be a "perfect 10", or if true "10s" were naught but a myth.

Men would post photographs of the girls they slept with, and label a girl an "8", only for other men to chime in and ridicule them: "Dude, THAT girl is an 8? She's a 6, at best! Stop inflating your ratings!"

Then those same men doing the ridiculing would post pictures of girls that they were dating, and claim that these girls were "8s" or "9s"... and they wouldn't look any different from the women those men had just finished calling "5s" and "6s."

If all this seems silly, trite, and petty to you... it is. It's no better than other form of status jockeying and social ladder climbing, where guys try to seize bragging rights and "prove their worth", frequently by simply reporting the number rating of the girls they've gotten and trusting that everyone else knows what that means.

But not only is the 1-to-10 scale highly subjective and an absolutely terrible metric to use for comparing results across multiple individuals... but it destroys your ability to get truly beautiful women, too.

C. Wong posed a question on the article about social value several weeks back, trying to tease out what exactly is the difference between a lover and a loser:

“Dear Chase,

This is another enlightening post, it clarify a lot of misconceptions that confuse men. I am currently digesting the first 200 pages of your ebook (Prob would take me some time to digest everything...those 400+ pgs have too much concepts and details). Anyway, I have a question on your ebook (and your previous article) regarding to the Lover's Value: http://www.girlschase.com/content/does-she-want-you-boyfriend-or-someth...

I understand your pt that the girl would slow things down with us if she noticed we men have lots of achievements, advance degree, and an admirable career etc because it shows we can be a long term husband candidate.

HOWEVER, what is the difference between "a man who offer lots of Lover's Value" and "a man who is plain loser" ? I am confuse, really confuse! Because somewhere in your ebook and your previous articles, u mentioned that u will only tell your woman that you are a writer/author who travel a lot instead of someone who run a business etc...BUT, THE MOST CRAZY PART is that u will even tell the girl that u are currently unemployed (Or unemployed for a very long time) in order for u to get out of the Provider Category. I think THIS IS INSANE!!

Wouldn't the girl think we are a loser if we say that we are unemployed or have been unemployed for a while? I mean, as a lover, your job is to provide romantic experience to the woman. Your job is to be a good "gene donor" who provide great genes.<--[Please tell me is this sentence and my understanding of your thinking is correct, Chase]

Wouldn't the girl think your genes are in low and bad quality if u tell them that you are unemployed in order to get out of the Lover Category? Wouldn't it make more sense if u tell them that you are a senior level engineer, accountant, doctor, lawyer, or business man BUT u will not stay in one location, you are going back to your home state etc? So she would think that u have good genes to gain resource (thus attractive to u), but too bad, u are not local etc?

Thank you very much Chase! Your ebook definitely worth my time and my money.

Warm Regards”

It's an necessary distinction to make, and reaching the point where you HAVE to make this decision is something the average man daren't even try to do... when you haven't raised up your value as a lover high enough, dropping your value as a boyfriend candidate can very quickly leave you with a whole lot of nothing in the dating circuit.

So what is the difference between being a lover... or just being an out-and-out loser?

I’ve been getting fairly a large number of PMs of late over on the forum side of things here on GC asking about vibe, so here I am in this article to (properly) tackle the beast!

So what is vibe, anyway?

Chase and the amazing writers of Girls Chase have a number of fantastic articles on vibe already, and I recommend you check these out before giving this piece a read:

• Constructing Your Sexy Vibe (and Making Girls Go Nuts)
• How to be Smooth with Girls Every Time
• How to Be Edgy (and Turn Women On)
• How to Pick Up Girls: The Success Factor Part I
• Sexual Tension: 7 Ways to Make Women Excited and Randy

The difference between those pieces and this piece is that the articles above are zeroed in on specific vibes, rather than how to learn and develop a vibe overall in the very first place... and if they don’t answer questions you have about getting vibe down, then keep reading, as I shed some light on the matter of building your vibe.

In my previous article here, "You Really Should be Having Sex", about the importance of closing things out with women regularly, Wes comments:

“Those ARE reasons enough for me to sleep with a girl who isn't completely amazing but still, HOW do you get turned on by these girls?

Back in June, I had two girls over on separate occasions. Both weren't amazing and I was doing it for the practice. The first girl, I couldn't even "get it up" and i fingered her until she was done and didn't want to go on anymore.

The second girl, I made out with at a pool party and quickly led it to her coming over. I wasn't attracted to her body at all. The only thing pretty was her face and she had nice hair and I couldn't see myself ripping her clothes off and having sex.

I ended up making an excuse for why she needed to leave instead of trying to escalate.

Don't get me wrong, I was telling myself the things you said above but, that doesn't get me hard.

I didn't want to be rude and tell the girls that they need to turn me on. They'd probably get offended. "So you're saying I don't turn you on?! You think I'm ugly?!"

During your years of taking women to bed who were anything but amazing, what personal tricks did you use to "get it up"?”

That's a very good question, and one I want to handle in a post targeting two dual and related reasons that men have for not finishing the last half-mile of the marathon and moving from physical escalation to full-on intercourse:

1. Not being turned on, and

2. Performance anxiety kicking in

Let's talk about both.

Should you sleep with women you're not all that excited about, purely for the sake of the sex itself?

It's kind of a loaded question - isn't it?

It's one you encounter with guys who are new to the idea of approaching their success with women as a skill set - you'd like to be good with women, but you're not a crazy sex-aholic who's ready to jump on anything or anyone who'll take him, and in all honesty there's really only a small, select subset of women who really do it for you.

We've had a few questions to this effect recently on the site - here's Mike, on "Girl Has a Boyfriend? 3 Things to Do and 7 Things NOT To":

“I'm almost to the point where I feel the need to buy sex, not so-much because I haven't had it in so long that it's driving me crazy, or that it will build my confidence, but merely because I sense the women I'm interested in ( all of whom have boyfriends) sense in me, to borrow an expression, a 40 year-old-virgin syndrome. I don't believe I can lower my standards, taking on a girlfriend I'm not sexually attracted to, merely to get in the game and end my prolonged period on the market ( I live in a relatively small community where everyone seems to know everyone else's business.) But do you advise that's what I'll have to do before I can land the big fish? Or do you believe there is some amorphous "clinical" benefit ( again, not related to building confidence) to getting laid once in a while even when you have to pay for it?”

... and here's Michel, with a similar question a day later on "The 100 Hour Rule":

“[W]ith my girlfriends before, I knew each and every time that we would be lovers in the first 10 seconds after meeting her. Then there is no question of approach anxiety or of bad technique (even though I'm sure that technique helps make the relationship better, and that all I read on this site will one day prove useful!). But without this feeling I really don't feel attracted to a girl. The idea of having sex with these random strangers I meet every day is even mildly disgusting.”

Thus, we arrive at the beginner's dilemma: you'd really like to have more success with women, just... you'd like it to be with the women that YOU want to have success with, not merely whatever you can get.

So what do you do?

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.