Articles by Author: Chase Amante | Girls Chase
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  2. Articles by Author: Chase Amante

Articles by Author: Chase Amante

Learning to Love Women

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By: Chase Amante

learning to love womenIf you’ve been hurt by women, can you ever become a lover of women? To love women is not to ignore their flaws, but to enjoy them for their blessings.

I have always loved women.

They haven't always been perfectly kind to me. On some (fleeting) occasions, women have really been quite cruel to me. Of course, I don't think of it as "she is being so cruel to me!" because that is not how I think about things... instead I think, at worst, "Geez, here is an unpleasant person!"

I'm not a masochist; I don't stay in bad situations, and I am rather ruthless about cutting value-draining people from my life, including unpleasant or nasty women.

However, my dislike for a particular unpleasant person (or woman) does not dent my overall warmth toward womankind in general.

In this way, I suppose I'm opposite a great many men, who seem to have a general distrust of womankind, and instead busy themselves seeking out a singular "good woman" who is "not like the rest" to lash their hopes and dreams to.

Indeed, this is a human thing to do: there are just as many women distrustful of most men yet who search restlessly for that "one good man" who is "not like all the rest", just as men search for that among women.

Not every man may want to move from general distrust + "seeking the exception" to something closer to how I view women.

However, should you wish it, let me lay out a path for you to this kind of thinking.

Tactics Tuesdays: Be Friendly

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By: Chase Amante

be friendlyA simple tactic that makes gobs of difference: just be friendly. Opening’s easier, hooking’s easier, and social proof becomes well-nigh automatic.

Here's a deceptively simple tactic:

Be friendly to every person you encounter.

Just yesterday we talked about conflict escalation and the dog-eat-dog world inside the prison system.

The good news is, you're a free man, and you're not in that kind of world. In this world, unless you venture into a bad part of town, you can and should be friendly to everybody.

Any time I've felt some rust or a renewed sense of approach anxiety, "be friendly to people" is the primary tactic I use to shake that off. Alek followed this same advice recently when he sought to warm up his social momentum after over a year of almost uninterrupted citywide lockdowns. It's simple, basic advice but it really works.

"Be friendly" has a ton of upsides for getting yourself approaching more easily with a lot less fear.

If you've only been doing targeted approaching -- where the only people you approach are sufficiently good-looking girls -- you may well find this alternate tactic a breath of fresh air.

Respect Maintenance: Conflict Escalation & De-escalation

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By: Chase Amante

escalating a confrontationWhen you find yourself in a conflict, you can back down… or you can escalate. How far should you take it? How do you know what the right thing to do is? A few simple rules can guide you.

I recently binge-read a series of colorful Quora answers from ex-convict Matthew Holmes. Holmes was someone who grew up, more or less, inside the US penitentiary system, and shares advice on how to survive the hostile conditions there. He contrasts the prison world with the outside world; inside the prison system, a prisoner's life is a Hobbesian war of all-against-all, where there is no real law and no one you can trust to have your back but you.

One of the many repeating sentiments in Holmes's prison advice is you must be prepared to defend your reputation at any time, and go to almost any length to do so. Holmes stopped short of killing anyone in prison (as doing so would've added an automatic life sentence to his 10-year term), but came close to it on several occasions, where he severely beat inmates who tried to fight or rob from him.

In terms of general principles, I'd call his approach to conflict "always escalate a confrontation until you win."

For some time, I've followed 'always escalate' as a general (but not absolute) rule. I generally follow it with:

  • Girlfriend drama
  • Some business disputes
  • Some physical confrontations
  • Moral high ground debates
  • Any kind of interpersonal argument

However, the real world isn't a penitentiary. It is not (for the most part) a Hobbesian situation of all-against-all.

Thus, much of the time, you will not want to continue escalating to the extremes in real life situations. In many cases it's counterproductive; the gains you get from continuing to escalate outweigh the costs.

Today I want to talk about the 'always escalate' philosophy -- which is one I've long found helpful -- and where the limits are to it where you decide to hop off that train and not always escalate.

If Every Girl's a Bitch, You're Doing Something Wrong

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By: Chase Amante

every girl's a bitchDoes it seem like most girls are awful, horrid, mean-spirited bitches? If it does, it’s a sign you’re doing something wrong – and that’s a good thing (it means you can fix it).

Does it seem to you that almost every girl you meet is just an unnecessarily mean person?

Do you ever find yourself wondering why so many girls are just horrid, ruthless bitches?

Commenting on my article that "Female Bad Behavior Is Often Defensive", Xander writes:

Ok. I agree if bad behavior is one-off interaction that doesn’t mean anything. However, even in this case if that negative reaction is overly negative i.e. overly expressed toward guy (and most women do this at least where I live) that is also the sign that particular woman can be considered as bad person. Many guys (at least what I have seen) don’t do overly annoying things with women and still get overly negative reactions from uninterested/unsure/insecure women.

Also, what I have seen is that the majority of women where I live rarely changes previously negative attitude toward guy. If she is negative during approach, initial interaction or later in courtship she stays that way no matter what guy will do. In live interactions they are rude, bitchy, aloof or disrespectful and it just increases no matter what new tech or moment guy will choose. In online/text interactions they ghost immediately after 2-3 messages, no matter how message is interesting, non-pushy, polite and easy to reply.

I feel sad whenever I read comments like these, for the person who writes them, because you know that person's dating life is hard.

I have read many, many comments by men talking about how horrible most women are. I have also read many, many analogous comments by women panning men (on various Reddit boards and what have you; here's an article about how horrid men are to women, with a bunch of women commenting their bad experiences).

If you take these comments at face value, both most men and most women are absolutely loathsome people: bad dates, bad lovers, and almost all men and women are totally undatable, unpleasant individuals.

It makes you wonder how the species perpetuates itself at all.

Of course, the reality is most men and most women are actually just fine, normal, nice, pleasant people... but that people who have continually negative experiences cause this in others, or misinterpret that from others, almost always without realizing they're causing it or misinterpreting it.

Tactics Tuesdays: Self-Monitoring Setting: LOW

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By: Chase Amante

self-monitoring lowSelf-monitoring allows you to adapt yourself to the people around you. It’s a good thing… but too much of it can really cramp your style (and the naturalness of your interactions).

If you've gone through my charisma course, Charisma In A Bottle (which, incidentally, I'll be re-releasing soon), you're familiar with the concept of 'self-monitoring'.

A self-monitor is someone who keeps a mental eye on himself, observing his own actions, making sure he is acting in 'correct' ways and not screwing things up.

Charismatic people are high self-monitors. While they might seem to be the most casual, relaxed folks out there, they are in fact carefully monitoring and adjusting their social presentation.

Dating is another area that turns men into high self-monitors. You go out to approach girls and you focus relentlessly on:

  • How nervous vs. confident you seem
  • Whether you approach from the right angle
  • If you're delivering an opener she'll respond to
  • If you're getting enough compliance from her fast enough
  • Whether you've moved her soon enough
  • Whether you're dominant enough
  • Whether you're bantering enough
  • What your value is relative to hers
  • What your attainability is relative to hers

... plus a whole bunch of other things you are doing or that are about you.

And while this is useful for spotting your weak points and improving on what you want to improve at, it hobbles your ability to truly be in-the-moment with a girl and interact with her in a truly smooth, natural way.

Thus, some of the time, you are going to want to do things the opposite way, and turn your self-monitoring way down.

Social Skills 101: Calibrating Yourself to Other People

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By: Chase Amante

calibrating yourself to other peopleCalibration allows you to fluidly conduct social interactions with others. How do you develop it, though? There are several ways, but they all involve talking with other people.

Other people are similar to you in many ways. Yet they also have their differences.

People tend to veer too far in one way or the other, either assuming excess similarity or assuming excess differences between people. Depending on which way you veer, your baseline approach to calibration will differ.

For example, if you tend to assume everyone is just like you, your main calibration task becomes to identify ways people are different, and adjust your behavior to compensate for the differences between you and them.

On the other hand, if you are someone who assumes most people are nothing like you, you need to train yourself to be much more aware of the similarities between yourself and others, to bridge the gaps between you.

Achieving a balanced sense of how alike someone is to you, as well as in what particular ways he is different, and what he is most responsive to, and using that sense to adapt your interaction with him, leads you to calibration.

All calibration is is the treatment of someone in a way effective for that individual; a way that gels with his likes, preferences, and motivators.

The better you calibrate, the more easily people will like and respond to you, plus do what you ask them to do.

People will view a calibrated individual as more alike them, more understanding of them, and less mysterious and unfathomable to them, too.

Arousal vs. Similarity

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By: Chase Amante

attraction vs. connectionArousal excites a girl with desire for you. Similarity fills her with trust in you. Yet most men focus more on one than the other… so, what happens when you do?

In romance, many men focus more on arousal, while many others focus more on similarity.

Arousal guys do a range of things to excite the women they talk to, such as:

Similarity guys do a range of things to make women trust them more, like:

Both sides of a courtship are powerful, attractive, and necessary.

However, many men favor one area much more than the other, leading to what we might call 'lopsided seductions'.

I'll explain.

The Eject Button (for When You Get Too Stuck in Life)

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By: Chase Amante

eject buttonA man is only as stuck as he allows himself to be. It can take some time to climb out, but you can cultivate options and knowhow, and build a life of freedom for yourself – if you choose.

On our forum, one of our long-time members writes:

My personal fears of the future, has me losing hope, I see no way to live the life I desire (that may be untrue and that what I want is possible) and that has me running to my addictions, instead of having enough hope and groundedness to overcome my problems. I don’t want to let this feeling of hopelessness drive me down my own rabbit hole anymore.

When I was a teen and early twenty-something, I was depressed to the point of despair.

Sometimes I got to dwelling on hitting 'eject', but the only kind of eject I could think of was ejecting from life.

I got over that eventually, and began to branch out into trying all these different things, meeting all these different people, traveling to and living in all these different places.

And I discovered a way of living that was the opposite of how I'd lived when depressed:

Rather than get stuck somewhere, trapped in a situation, with no way out, I could simply step out of any situation and enter a completely new one, any time I liked.

From any situation, at any time, I could hit 'eject', and be free.

“20% of the Men Are Doing 80% of the Dating”

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By: Chase Amante

20% men20% of the men are getting 80% of the women. But are they? We play it out, going step-by-step, looking at all the numbers.

"20% of the men are doing 80% of the dating."

Such goes the conventional wisdom pumped out of the manosphere these days.

I have heard this statistic bandied about just about everywhere, including by guys in our own community.

It's ubiquitous.

However, I've never seen anyone actually work out the numbers on it.

What would a city look like if 20% of the men did 80% of the dating?

You need a fairly good grasp of the 80/20 principle (also called the Pareto principle, first identified in 1896) to really understand this.

I recently reread the book 80/20 Sales and Marketing, by Perry Marshal, a force behind the re-popularization of the concept in the mid-2010s.

First, I'm going to introduce you to how 80/20 works.

Then, we're going to put all the single people in a hypothetical city into 80/20, and we'll see what that looks like, and how closely it matches what we see in the modern sexual marketplace.

Picking Up Girls: Possibility vs. Probability

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By: Chase Amante

pickup probabilityWhat’re the odds you pick up a given sort of girl in a given sort of place? Well, it depends on a few different factors that affect that probability.

We had a conversation over on the forum where a forum member was asking where to find beautiful girls who aren't club goers, social media validation junkies, or nymphomaniacs. He reports that all the hottest girls he's been with came via dating apps, and all these girls were hot-but-broken. He's struggled to meet equally hot girls in-the-flesh via cold approach.

I replied with my thoughts, which included me stating that you are much more likely to find women with high partner counts and personality disorders in nightclubs and in any kind of show-off-y place (like with a prominent social media following) than you are elsewhere.

So, if he wanted to avoid those sorts of women, he'd be better off looking places other than in nightclubs and on dating apps or social media.

This triggered another member to jump on the thread and argue with me that the women you meet in nightclubs, the women you meet on dating apps, and the women you meet via daytime approaching (he even threw in "the women you meet in church") are all exactly one and the same, and any kind of differentiating between such girls is your imagination.

However, I soon realized we were talking about different things:

  • He was talking about possibility, saying things like "You can meet a girl who's a virgin in a nightclub"

  • I was talking about probability, saying things like "You are far less likely to meet a girl who's a virgin in a nightclub than in a campus library"

In seduction, the distinction between possibility and probability is a key one to make, as it influences so much of what you do, where you go to do it, and how exactly you go about it.