Tactics Tuesdays

What happens if you just aren’t getting anywhere with girls? Should you grind it out? No – instead, enter the tactical reset.

Have you ever seen those a guy who tries to learn game, but no matter what, he just can’t get results?

He could spend months – or in the extreme, years – and never progress beyond getting phone numbers from girls (that never lead to dates) or make-outs with them (that never lead to sex).

Hopefully, you haven’t experienced anything quite so bad (the worst-case guys do seem to be a small minority). But maybe you’ve seen some flavor of this... You’ve hit a plateau, tried to grind it out, and just nothing was working. How do you deal with these situations?

In today’s article, I’m going to share with you the approach I’ve found most helpful for resolving this issue: it’s what I call a ‘tactical reset’.

Before we get to that though, let’s talk about why these hang-ups happen.

Some girls you do well with, some girls not so well. What’s the difference? One of the big ones: do you treat her hot and horny, or not.

This post is probably best suited to men who are intermediate and up with girls. If you’re just starting out, it’s still worth reading to know what mindset to aim for, but you may not be able to implement it just yet if you don’t have at least one type of girl you do well with consistently.

Commenting on my article “When She Picks You, It’s Vital She Feels It’s Her Choice”, a reader named Asian Guy asks:

“Hi Chase!

I sort of have a question I have been hoping to find the answer to for a while but am not sure really where to look. I’ve bought your spellbinding book and even looked at a how to date korean women book done by one of your friends. However, to this day I am still not sure how to go after korean women who are raised in a conservative society. As an example, recently I met a korean girl and after going on a few dates with her, she wouldn’t even try to really hug in public. I was told by my korean guy friends that korean girls tend not to do anything touchy feely public. After going out on 4 dates with her, I tried to go to her place (my place not logistically possible). She hemmed and hawed and said something like how she just moved in and her place isn’t ready to have people over.

A lot of the techniques here are literal gold when it comes to american women or americanized asian women, but for asian women from asia, I am still having problems. For example, a lot of times when I propose to go home with a conservative asian girl on the the first or second date, they actually seem to get offended or completely creeped out. This never happens to me with americanized asian girls, who “get” the whole thing. I’ve never been able to date the more conservative ones because they tend to be extremely cautious and the techniques that would normally work for other girls fail here. It seems that they are into a boyfriend candidate all the time. I have tried a lot to disqualify, but these girls seem hard-wired to want a boyfriend, and the moment I disqualify, they are gone.

I was curious if you had any ideas or experiences what to do here. It seems with most conservative asian girls it takes up to 6-9 dates to really go anywhere. I have recognized that there exist a lot of conservative asian girls who do sleep with men fast, but it seems those are the more rebellious type, which you can usually tell. For the ones that tend to stay home, not drink, go to the library, etc, do you have any ideas how or if you would tailor everything?

Thanks Chase!!”

First off, although this comment is about girls from Asia (and Korea in particular), it’s a microcosm of a phenomenon men face across their courtships with all girls.

That’s because just like there are men who think Asian girls from Asia are too conservative and too hard to get, there are men who think they’re ridiculously easy. Just like there are men who specialize in deflowering girls who’ve resisted sex with other men for years. And like there are men who think X type of girl is easy, even though other men think X type of girl is impossible.

So, I’m going to answer Asian Guy’s question. But in so doing, I’m also going to give you a tweak to how you approach the girls you approach that, if you implement it, will supercharge your results with them.

When you start to change your appearance or behavior, people can call you fake. Or you might even feel fake. Yet with Practice Mentality, you can avoid all this.

In my August article on seven major dating mistakes, a reader asks about people who view (or attack) self-improvement efforts or general behavior as ‘being fake’ or ‘not being real’:

“This is regarding barriers to improving fundamentals and improving your life in general:

Did you notice how people label any potential improvement as fake? If they improve, they think, people won’t like them for who they are and that’s bad. For people who have had advantages for a long time it seems like a natural part of them.

For example:

– Someone who is fat thinks that if he loses weight and women start liking him more, then they don’t like him for who he really is. They are just a bunch of superficial cunts. But, if you’ve been thin for a long time, it seems like a part of you.

– If you dress poorly, improving your fashion will seem as fake. Who cares how you dress? People should like you for who you are. But, those who dress well will tell you it’s just a part of them – part of who they are.

– Being famous or wealthy and getting great results with women also seems fake to many people (99.999% of people don’t have access to fame or great wealth). So, you’ll hear terms like ‘fame-digger’ or ‘gold-digger’ used to describe those superficial women who like rock stars, football players or bankers/CEOs.

– The same goes for learning ‘game’. If you’re learning it, then you’re just a fake manipulator.

etc.

What do you think about this phenomenon? Is it even real or am I delusional?”

Well, first off, this is absolutely a genuine phenomenon, and it’s something every man who sits down to improve himself in one dimension or another encounters.

You start to change something about yourself, and somebody calls you fake. Or you see others change their reactions toward you as you change superficial details about yourself, and you decide they are fake. Or maybe you even look at your outward displays, deem them nothing like whom you are on the inside, and label yourself a fake.

I’m going to talk briefly about why people view people engaged in self-improvement as fake, and then I’m going to give you a useful mindset I’ve long used to not have to worry about this.

I call it the ‘Practice Mentality’. But we’ll get to that.

Our society trains men to be helpless, for several of its own reasons. But it’s important you know helplessness is learned... not inborn.

Learned helplessness is the behavior shift that occurs when an animal or individual decides its situation is impossible to change. At this point, the individual decides he is helpless to affect the outcome, and simply gives up trying.

Some of the most tragic stories of crushed spirits come when you discuss learned helplessness. Animals who’ve been caged so long they won’t try to leave even if you leave their cage doors open. Prisoners who aren’t able to operate outside the penal system, so commit crimes to go back to the familiar comfort of the prison yard. And men who’ve been unsuccessful with women so long they don’t even try to meet them.

In a recent popular thread on our Beginners’ Forum, a forum member starts off by asking why women like dominant men and men who take the lead. But it quickly becomes clear his real issue is not a philosophical question of why women prefer dominant men, but an exploration of his desire for women, yet lack of motivation to take steps to meet, date, and sleep with them.

This article will not be about why girls desire dominance and leadership, per se. If you’d like more on those topics, see these articles:

• How to Be a Dominant Man: What You Didn’t Know About the ‘Winner Effect’

• A Failed Relationship is a Failure of Leadership

• Why Leadership is so Key to Seducing Women

• The Real Reason Many Men Can’t Get a Girl

Rather, this article will be about the phenomenon of learned helplessness in the modern male – where it comes from, who’s responsible for it, and what you can do to shake it off.

What do you do when a girl tests you and you’re suddenly out of your depth? Sidestep! The sidestep lets you avoid all manner of traps, snares, and pitfalls.

The sidestep: it’s an incredibly powerful move and the antidote for a lot of men’s problems when facing resistance.

When a man encounters a wall in a conversation or with a girl, his first reaction is either to give up or to push past the resistance. The flaw in giving up is obvious: neither of you win. You don’t show up to play the game, and it’s over.

The flaw with pushing past resistance is that most guys do it in a needy or overly aggressive way.

They concede to her way of thinking and find a way to please her or assuage her concern.

Or, if they do choose to face her frame head to head, they attempt to strong-arm her emotions at a much more severe emotional level than that at which she resisted. Their brute conversational force scares her off.

Instead, when a man faces resistance, he should consider sidestepping or moving around the obstacle rather than wrestling against it, which usually leaves either your two egos broken.

Parry her loving strikes.

But before we get into the how-to, allow me to illustrate how badly you can embarrass yourself when you try to outmaneuver a much more dominant and socially savvy girl... By sharing with you perhaps one of my most shameful stories.

You’ve met a girl, it’s going fine, and then you just... Eject, too soon. You leave too early. You beat yourself up about it later – but what could you have done then?

Want a simple way to get more success out of your dates, courtships, pickups, etc.?

Here it is: don’t eject so fast.

Early ejection plagues beginners in seduction. And the wound is a self-inflicted one.

This sound at all familiar?:

You got up the nerve to approach a girl. She’s cute. Real cute. Your heart rate is going 200 beats per minute. And it’s going okay. She smiled when you walked up, she said “hello”, and now she’s responding to your questions and asking you some back. You make a light joke and she laughs. Yet the pressure just builds and builds. Finally, you excuse yourself: “All right, well, it was nice to meet you!” And then you leave.

You didn’t ask her out; you didn’t take her phone number. Things were going okay, but then you bailed. You had to hit the eject button.

Why does this happen? Well, fear, mostly.

What can you do about it? Well, we’re going to talk about that.

If you need to move things along on a date or in a pickup but it’s too soon to take her home, often the next best option is to change venues.

At times you’ll have things going well with a girl, but not well enough yet you’re ready to take her home. Even still, you reach one of those moments in the courtship where, like it or not, you’ve got to move her.

Moving her around in the same venue won’t work at this point. It works terrific early on, but you’re too far along for it now and it’ll feel like you’re treading water... or even going backwards.

You need movement, but you can’t stay there. And you can’t take her home. So what can you do?

You change venues. One venue to another venue.

The venue change is a handy tool in both dates and pickups. It’s a vital element of instant dates, structured dates, and often many guys’ one-night stand processes. But it’s also a tactic rife with potential to drop the ball.

Take her to the wrong place, and you kill the vibe.

Fail to handle the transition well, and you kill the vibe.

Misread her desires and change venues when she really wanted you to just take her home, and you risk missing the escalation window, and kill the vibe.

So let’s arm you with a few tools to let you read her right, take her to the right spot, and make your venue change as likely to lead to a pull home at the end of your date or pickup as anything else.