Are There No Second Chances with Women?

A reader writes in, asking the following questions:

“”Chase,

I’ve read several of your articles, and I can relate to quite a bit of what you say. However, it seems to me that in your scenarios, the guy is always the one who is at fault. It’s as though the girl is fully functional, prepared to choose who she is interested in and whether or not the guy fits in to one of her categories,  I guess robotic in a way. What I’m trying to get at mainly is the no second chance with women idea. Like if you don’t move fast enough she is gone for good. Is it really the case that the guy has to do everything right or else he is out? This perplexes me as we live in a society where equal opportunity for race, genders, and sexuality is at the forefront. In the corporate world and in the military, women are continually given more and more power/leadership/etc. They are no longer viewed as the traditional queen role from what I see. In this respect, why must the guy solely be the one to make things happen fast, take her as his lover before she flees to the next guy, and so on.

Perhaps I have read your writings incorrectly, but your advice (though as I said much of it rings true with me) seems to put the vast majority of the burden on the guy’s shoulders.

Also, let’s say that I screwed it up with a chick. I took her as my lover, but then later decided she was no longer interested. Walked away, realized I made a mistake. Apologized a couple weeks later, she says she has moved on to someone else. Your principles seem to be true here at first, but when she blames me for the fallout, then comes to the bar that night and makes out with me, only to run off and go kiss on some guy’s cheek, and give all sorts of mixed signals thereafter, things get hazy. No second chances, but I’ll make out with you? It just doesn’t click with me that anyone has all of this figured out. Life isn’t black and white, I don’t think.

I would appreciate your reply!””

So, there are a lot of interesting questions and themes in here worth addressing:

• Are there no second chances with women?
• Is it all on the man to make things happen?
• What about equality?
• Why do women send mixed signals?
• Why do women flirt if they don’t want you?
  

I’m not really going to talk about the other bullets here – I addressed the “do/should guys REALLY have to do EVERYTHING?” question here a few weeks ago: “What Role Should Women Play in the Mating Game?” I’ll throw a quick bone to that one though because I have a couple more things to say on it you should find interesting. The third bullet is addressed in that post, and the fourth and fifth in these two: “Mixed Signals from a Girl: What These Mean” and “The Paradox of the Flirty Girl.”

Let’s talk about second chances though, because that’s one it seems like a lot of guys want to know about, and it’s worth discussing for sure.