Socializing

One of the things that’s bizarre for me to read among all many of the comments, emails, and forum posts from new guys just discovering Girls Chase or who’ve mostly just been reading occasionally but not putting into practice is the prevalence of the “this girl or this group or this environment is TREMENDOUSLY important and I can’t mess it up” mentality.

It’s been ages since I’ve had a mentality like that... but I can relate. I felt that way often in high school, and at times after in university. Once I dialed down my involvement with social circles and began approaching women, that feeling went away and never came back.

I was free.

At the same time, I led a more rewarding social life than just about anyone I knew – my hands full with pretty girls, and all the cool / admirable / successful male friends I could want.

Why would anybody leave themselves in such restrictive conditions that they felt like achieving one specific outcome with one tiny group of people was life or death?

We discussed this re: girls a guy might be obsessing over in “Can’t Stop Thinking About Her? Here’s Why You Need to Meet More Girls”... but it goes deeper than this, too; both with women, and with freedom in general.

We only have as much freedom as we allow ourselves, you see.

Since the dawn of time, men have made the fatal mistake of taking the words of women at face value. I can’t blame our kind, as we are logical beings who say what we mean and mean what we say.

But women…women are masters of subtlety. Subtlety and subtext are their hallmarks. And until you become well-versed in the language of the female, you can easily find yourself dumbfounded and in a storm of fury.

No treacherous territory should be treaded without a map. And no reasonable man should allow himself to be saddened, deluded, or maddened by his inability to understand what a girl actually means.

So today I’m going to lay out such a road map. I’m going to outline the common phrases you’ll hear from women in various contexts and what they really mean. I hope this will prevent you from being confused, frustrated, dumbfounded, or from having to ask yourself: what does she mean?

A little while back, when I was in my early 20s, I first read Dale Carnegie’s perennial bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People. Many of the approaches described within it were things I knew, or affirmed what I felt, but sometimes the best kind of advice is this way; you think you’re doing things right, and then someone far more experienced than you comes along and says, “Yep, you’ve got it. In fact, take what you’re doing now and do it more.”

Because it’s been nearly a decade since I’ve read it, most of its lessons have faded from my mind, and all I remember about it was one key lesson from it. However, that lesson has influenced how I’ve dealt with people in such a profound way that I don’t think I’ll ever forget it no matter how much time passes.

[edit: was rolling Napoleon Hill’s Laws of Success up as one of Carnegie’s works... forgive the brain fart]

Yet, pound-for-pound, the key takeaway from Win Friends and Influence People for me has been one of the best takeaways from any book I’ve yet read period.

Before I tell you what that is, let me tell you what I’ve noticed about how most people communicate with one another.

We’ve talked about the friend zone on Girls Chase before: why it’s bad, what it looks like, and how to get out of it.

But you’ve asked for more.

You’ve asked for clear signs you can look for that are undeniable proof you’ve careened off the Road to Sexytimes and into the Bog of Asexuality. Irrefutable sign posts that the good times of dreaming about lovingly gazing into one another’s eyes are long behind you, and you now exist solely to stroke her ego as proof that she is so charming, so wonderful, and so hypnotically mesmerizing that great guys like you will just hang around in awe of her... all while she samples her fill of sexy bad boys.

Well, never fear. While the greatest danger of the friend zone is your own denial, all the rest we will solve with this enlightening post.

So, provided you can handle the healthy dose of cognitive dissonance you’ll receive from discovering that the girl you were so certain you were just one more funny text message away from talking onto your johnston really doesn’t think of you “that way" and probably never will, let’s dive in...

... and arm you with the 14 Terrible Signs You’re Deep in the Friend Zone.

Note from Chase: this is our second guest post from Will Legend; Will’s first article here was his piece on social anxiety. This article gives you some solid reasons why guys getting started should not get too hung up worrying about preselection and social proof and use the lack of these as an excuse to not approach new women.

If you haven’t read Robert Cialdini’s Influence, I highly, highly recommend it. It explains the psychology of compliance and what the factors are that drive a person to say “yes”. Cialdini comes up with six factors that influence a person to comply with a request, and one of these six factors is social proof.

Now, social proof has been talked about as a critical component of seduction, and we’ll get into that in a bit. But first, let’s talk about what social proof is and give some examples of it.

I’ve been seeing more questions lately in both the article comments sections and on the boards from men who are ending up in awkward situations where some girl they’ve flirted with and expressed interest has turned them down... but they keep running into her socially.

How do you act around a girl like this? What do you do? What if she’s cold to you and ignores you, or treats you like you’re beneath her?

I’m going to assume for the purposes of this article that you’re at least somewhat socially savvy, and that most people like you and find you reasonably attractive and cool. If that’s not the case, and you are universally socially shunned or socially ostracized (more or less), this post won’t help with that, and you’ll need to focus on leveling up your social calibration, and getting other “coolness factors” handled, like edginess, sprezzatura, and a devil may care attitude, first.

But if you’re normally a pretty well-liked guy, yet suddenly find yourself dealing with some girl things have gotten awkward around or who is downright treating you as subhuman, then this article is for you; it’s all about saving face, and turning her reaction to you right around.

Quick preface: this article assumes you’re coming from a place of social awareness and aptitude, professional or romantic capability (as the case may be), and at least enough confidence to tell it like it is and not be shy about doing so. If yes, you’ll love this piece; if not, focus on elevating your social, professional, and/or romantic competence first, then circle back to this, because you genuinely need to be the one with the social skills upper hand to pull this off.

We’ve had a number of people on here ask about office politics: how do you deal with it? Indeed, office politics can be a quagmire... you get stuck in it, and it can feel almost impossible to get out. All your attempts to are like wading through waist-deep mud.

But the solutions to office politics are not exclusive to the world of checkout counters, clock-in devices, and cubicles. Rather, by and large, they’re the same exact things you’ll use for dealing with any passive-aggressive situation.

Because, just like other forms of passive-aggression, most aspects of office politics only work if you insist on playing by their rules... instead of you getting them playing by yours.