Confidence

Many guys think giant muscles are the key to getting laid. But are they? Do hulking muscles turn you into a babe magnet… or are their effects subtler and more nuanced than this?

We had a commentator asking me the other day why I don't talk about physique more.

He thought it was because maybe if I admitted that big muscles were really the key to getting laid, I'd have to close down Girls Chase and start selling supplements.

After all... who needs to learn game when you can just get ripped?

Once you've got gigantic muscles, beautiful women just chuck themselves at you. Don't they?

Well... not exactly.

But he's right, I should talk more about physique.

However, like many things here, I'm going to give you a perspective you probably won't get elsewhere.

I'm not going to tell you physique doesn't matter. But I'm also not going to tell you you need to be on gear, lifting hard at the gym 3 hours every day, eating raw steaks for lunch, getting your delts and traps as ridiculous as possible.

Instead I'm going to tell you something else.

When you go out with the guys, do you need to be the alpha male? What if your girlfriend is there and she’s watching – will she lose respect for you if you’re not alpha?

On my article about screening vs. qualifying, reader therock asked about the necessity of being the alpha male:

Hey Chase,

I'm not sure there's an article about this specific issue on the site so I thought I'd ask.

I noticed a curious thing when I'm with my girlfriend in a social circle situation.

Say we're all going to get pizza, all close friends, including my girlfriend.

Now there's always someone who's in the lead.

Simple stuff like where to go, what to check out, etc

While I'm clearly in the leadership position with my girlfriend, I find myself in a situation where we're both being led by another guy.

I'm much more of an interpersonal leadership kinda guy. One to one with a girl I clearly lead. But in groups, it's a bit different.

I considered trying out leading he group but found it counter effective for these reasons:

1. One guy's gonna come out of top and if it's not me, I lose even more power points for trying AND failing.
2. Most of the time the guy was doing an excellent job at leading the group. He knows the best restaurants, knows where we'll have a good time (he knows the city much more than the rest of us). So no one's complaining. I've had situations where other guys made leadership faux pas and i jumped in, doing what's best for the group.
3. The leader is my friend, not hostile and never pulls crap like trying to flirt with my girlfriend.

My question to you: is it mandatory that I always lead any group I find myself in with my girlfriend?

What is its impact on attraction?

And what can one do to minimise the effects of being led by another man in front of his girl?

This is a good question, and it's a common one for guys who're starting out.

The answer is a bit nuanced, too.

Creepiness isn’t about how attractive you are. It’s about behavior. Creepy people behave in ways that set off alarms in others’ heads. Cool people don’t.

What is 'creepiness'?

How do you define it?

A lot of guys really dislike this term. There are all kinds of unfavorable definitions for it out there, such as "Creepy is just what a woman calls a man she does not find attractive."

But everyone's felt creeped out by someone at some point.

Even if you're a guy, I have no doubt you've felt creeped out. Whether by:

• Some shifty character you suspected was getting ready to mug you

• Some gay guy or transsexual you suspected wanted to get with you

• Some lonely individual tagging along with you or your friend group

... you've probably been creeped out by someone.

So what is this 'creepy feeling', exactly?

In the past, I've defined creepiness as being a result of someone hiding his true intentions (see: How to Not Be a Creepy Guy). However, today we'll go deeper still.

You see, there are certain rules that govern 'creepiness'.

The better you know them, the better you will be at not triggering the 'creepy switch'.

Do women not notice you’re there? Are you… invisible to women? If so, there are a few key reasons why. And the solutions are not as hard as you might think.

I spent most of my teens and early twenties alone and depressed.

The one constant thought in my mind, the biggest source of despair, was over how invisible I was to women.

Men often inadvertently spark frame wars with women they’re courting. Ways they do this include over-playing their tactics, failing to make the girl feel special, and more.

Hey guys. Welcome back!

It’s normal to feel frustrated when you don’t get what you want. But rather than let yourself hate “the game”… why not just get good at the game instead?

On my article about your opinions about women betraying your success (or lack thereof) with women, a reader comments:

When it comes to bitterness it's usually not towards women as a whole. Sure some of the negative qualities of women can irritate me like not being consistent with their emotions/feelings/thoughts and their obliviousness in general. But I still have love for women and I always remind myself of this.

My bitterness is more directed towards the game and the dynamics of the sexual marketplace where women are buyers and men are sellers and to get attractive quality women men have to do a lot of work and grinding just to increase the probabilities of getting them. In addition to that they gotta deal with the bs society throws at them with their man shaming,masculinity draining tactics,"empowerment" of women which makes it harder for men to play their role as the aggressor,and makes women even more difficult to have as a ltr. Even if you become a high value man with good fundamentals you never ever really stop becoming a seller you just have a better product,but you still have to go around and market it and hope women like what you have to offer. You've probably heard the peasant/begger analogy before do you believe it's a bad comparison? I don't feel like a begger when I cold approach,but it's still not efficient. Even when you're good there will always be assymetric returns.

Personally I know I need to get better and I still approach women occasionally. Although when I do I fight a lot of internal resistance and always have this attitude of "sigh I need to go approach women because I don't currently have any and I need to be smooth and perfect as I do it or I will just get flaky numbers at best.

Coaches say that you need to enjoy the process and have fun with learning seduction and treat it like a game,but how do you have fun with it? How do you have fun with doing something you suck at doing,can be unpleasant and difficult at times and don't know when or it will payoff?

You could be turning your wheels for nothing and put all that effort only to end up having to settle for average looking women who don't fufill you.

It's a good comment. "I don't dislike women, but I do dislike the game," we might sum our reader's comment up as.

Of course, most everyone who's successful at anything learns to enjoy it.

I think we all know naturally that guys who have fun meeting girls tend to do a lot better at it than guys who do not.

The challenge is, before you're getting great results, how can doing this thing, which is nerve-wracking, that exposes you to rejection, that often sucks up time before producing any results, be enjoyable?

What is a frame war? This phenomenon occurs when someone seeks to seize control of the frame from you and you seek to seize it back.

Hey guys. Welcome back!

Last week we looked at the meta-frame and how to set it. To recap, the meta-frame is the “frame of frames,” a frame that must be respected and set to acquire the benefits from other key frames (social and sexual frames). This is the frame where you are the prize, and she chases you, which must be set and maintained. Every other frame you set must be coherent with the meta-frame.

The meta-frame positions you as the prize, and she chases you. All frame control becomes difficult or nearly impossible without it since the prize has the most power and compliance over the other, so that person will be the dominant one in the interaction.

Dominance is not about being a dick toward other men or acting like an obnoxious bad boy. It involves your ability to set and control the interaction's frames and having people accept them. That’s dominance. And women like dominant men, which means they like men who set and maintain frames.

The meta-frame makes her compliant to you – very compliant if strong enough. Yet something interesting happens sometimes: frame wars.

You are in a frame war when you have the meta-frame (she is chasing you), and the girl wants to turn it around and steal the meta-frame.

A frame war emerges when you both want the other to chase. Wars are always devastating, and the same applies here: it usually generates tons of collateral damage.

Today’s subject is frame wars and their implications. Next week I will discuss how to avoid them and deal with them when they occur.

So, first things first: how do you know when you are in a frame war?