Americans are raised on a plethora of proverbs like "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Persistence is valued as a great virtue. Of course, we've all experienced too much of a good thing, as anyone who's had a stalker can tell you. W.C. Fields said, " If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it."
Recently, I learned of a guy who's been interested in a young woman for a while. Only recently has he become emboldened enough to pursue her. Trouble is, she's sorta kinda still got lots of drama with an ex, and isn't really available in the way he would like. Plus, she is not attracted to him. This has all become clear to him as he has witnessed her out with her ex, heard that they're still fighting/hooking up, and confronted her, only to be rejected outright.
His response to this situation as described over beers with a mutual friend?
"I'm not giving up, I'm going to keep trying. I'll get her."
When is persistence a bad thing, a creepy thing, a thing that makes you look and act like a tool?
I was only eight when the Beatles exploded onto the U.S. scene. I played their records on my tiny phonograph and dreamed about Paul. That summer I organized a neighborhood karaoke contest (yes, I was an attention whore even then). I chose to perform the B side of She Loves You, a 1963 song called I'll Get You that remains one of my favorite Beatles songs, even though it was never a hit.
Oh yeh, oh yeh.
Imagine, I'm in love with you,
It's easy 'cos I know,
I've imagined, I'm in love with you,
Many, many, many times before.
It's not like me to pretend,
But I'll get you in the end,
Yes I will, I'll get you in the end, oh yeh, oh yeh.
I think about you night and day,
I need you 'cos it's true.
When I think about you, I can say,
I'm never, never, never, never blue.
So I'm telling you, my friend,
That I'll get you, I'll get you in the end,
Yes I will, I'll get you in the end, oh yeh, oh yeh.
Well, there's gonna be a time,
Well I'm gonna change your mind.
So you might as well resign yourself to me, oh yeh.
Charming, even noble, but is it good advice?
Eric Barker wrote about persistence, and throwing in the towel in Can Being a Quitter Pay Off?
"The notion that persistence is essential for success and happiness is deeply embedded in popular and scientific writings. However, when people are faced with situations in which they cannot realize a key life goal, the most adaptive response for mental and physical health may be to disengage from that goal."
Scientists followed 90 adolescents for a year, and kept track of the physiological effects of unattainable goals. Kids who refused to quit had higher concentrations of an inflammatory molecule C-reactive protein (CRP), which is linked to bad stuff like obesity, smoking and depression.
Don't make yourself sick longing for something you will never have.
19 comments:
I recently dropped pursuit of a girl once it became apparent she was no longer interested. We bump into each other frequently, which is how we met, but after I got her number, I didn't communicate intent nor flirt nor touch. I didn't even initiate a hug. This is all basic stuff, but for some reason I didn't do any of it.
By the time I did call for a date, she said "yes" but I could tell it was no longer a welcome proposition. I let it go. When I see her now, she gets tense. She's both beautiful and quite interesting, so it sucks, but there's nothing to be gained by continues pursuit.
Banging a different girl behind a bar seems to have alleviated the suckage, though.
I had a coworker at my last job (a real shrew if I had to be honest, though she could be ok) who told me one day about how her husband had pursued her for such a long time before she agreed to be with him. He'd even proposed once and been turned down once they were together before she later "decided to marry him". My first response was that its not surprising he is now massively whipped given what she forced him to go through.
Guys think that when they pursue and eventually get what they want that this shows their ability, when quite the opposite true. What it does is put them into a position to constantly be pursuing where and where SHE is the one who decides what happens and when, so while he thinks he is being proactive, really he is letting her call all the shots
Nate, can you write a post about how to calibrate game for Christian girls from the Bible belt? They are just as horny as regular girls, but as a Christian myself, I've always floundered after the first couple steps of Game, because I've always been taught that marriages come before intimacy.
Nate, I've been pursuing a girl for 2 years now, and what you said about your co-worker concerns me. Is it possible to pursue that long, then turn the tables?
Tigger,
Well you might have me confused with the Nate who is a poster here but I can certainly give a few observations gleaned from my own bad beats
The rules of the attraction fall the same for any girl, christian or not, and they will respond to confidence and assertiveness just like any other woman. Sure if they are a TRUE christian woman they may have a better control over their following the Tingle and not accelerate to physical intimacy as fast but they will still have that attraction. And you are very right, they are JUST as horny on average. I've been shocked how many times just by casual game, joking, teasing etc I have managed to end up in bed with women when I wasn't even thinking that far ahead (maybe it was precisely because I wasn't
As for the girl you're pursuing, that would really depend on the circumstances, what sort of interest she is showing etc. Its never too late to start turning things around, but the longer you've known a girl, the harder it will be to break her of the image she already has of you. If she has always seen you as a platonic acquaintance, she will likely continue to see you that way, but nothing is beyond hope. But just like being in a relationship with a girl and fighting beta tendency, the sooner you start, the better off you are and the less painful it will be to change.
More importantly though it's better not too focus too much on this one girl and the perceived challenge of 'getting' her because that just narrows your focus. Instead of thinking about how to improve and have more options you are just thinking about how to impress her, which will have the opposite effect
Yes, the Nate over on Vox' blog was talking about how he was in threesomes with "Christian" church girls. I'm just wondering how church girl game is different from regular game. Or if it is different at all.
You see, I also saw for a long time on Roissy's blog, this guy called "Thursday" who was trying to calibrate game to catch church girls in Canada in the largely Dutch/German Christian small-town prairies. He had no success and gave up.
Most Game (Mystery) is geared toward the one night stand. I've never seen a Christian do his own take on Mystery method, calibrated to a Gamma that wants to learn Game, but without being unchaste.
For instance, if you don't believe in sex until marriage, how far and how fast do you take kino? Because I do really well right up to the point where I get the feeling that I need to start on the kino. I'm not very verbal, so I tend to get to the kino stage before I've even learned enough to know whether I want to make a relationship out of it. Then the women see that I'm ignoring their cues, and get frustrated and walk off.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And in Viking saga, hell was a cold, cold place. That is what it is like when the ladies shut you out after giving you lots of openings.
I chased a woman for a couple of years. We were on and off, but every few months she would tell me how it was never going to work out, we were too different, etc. We'd split up for a month or so and then drift back together.
Then I started learning game.
She was very headstrong and we began a contest of wills. The next time she inevitably broke it off, some very harsh words were exchanged and we hardly spoke for several months. In the meantime, I began applying game with other women and in business and other social relationships.
Eventually we began behaving as friends again, but only at arms length. During one conversation I told her a little about the personal growth I'd been experiencing (minus game) and was very clear that I didn't need her anymore, that I was doing just fine on my own.
Within two weeks we were "friends with benefits". Again, I made sure she understood I didn't see a future together as very likely, that I was dating other women, and I'd probably marry someone else within a few years. Four months later we were engaged. Six months after that we were married.
Since then, acting (and BEING!) stronger, smarter, and more decisive than her has kept her flaky tendencies in check.
In Howard Bloom's book, the Lucifer Principle was a chapter on abandoning fruitless pursuits.
What's the point of Christian game? Do you still want pre-marital sex? Are you seeking a wife? You better be clear about that first.
Adjust your game accordingly. If you want a wife, you need to be crystal clear on what traits you want and do not want in a wife. Then you can escalate and screen accordingly. Screen ruthlessly. That way YOU can call off the relationship before the kino leads them on too far, if they fail a crucial test.
If they pass your ruthless screening, you can move on to engagement leading to marriage and the increasing physical nature can be handled in that context.
So, screen first, then kino... I've had people telling me to do kino now, and I'm not even close to finished screening. And I've found with these Christian girls, they interpret the lack of kino as lack of interest, and go into "woman scorned" freeze-out mode. Guess I'll have to be much more agressive about my screening and get it over with quickly. It involves some pretty intimate questions, ones that aren't usually covered in casual conversation. Like, what kind of birth control do you use. When did you last have sex. With who. Do you have any STD's. When was your last period. Do you have any history of mental illness in your family. Diabetes. Etc.
When you say "be crystal clear", you mean in your own mind? Because you then say "escalate and screen accordingly". That is the part I'd like written up. So many of these girls are flightly and like to be elusive and enjoy being chased.
What is the point of Christian game? Yes, marriage. And preferably not to one of the sluts that lurk hidden in every church, leading double lives and pretending to be something they aren't. Someone that can control her Tingle.
Two more important points of Christian game are to stay married and to make your marriage work the way God intended it to work.
jay c, I'm fine once the girl is "hooked". It is getting to the hook point without her interpreting my lack of kino escalation as me rejecting her.
I don't think there's anything wrong with using kino with a Christian girl as long as her father approves of you and you don't let it go too far. It's just another tool for courting.
Kino just means to touch. You should Kino a girl the first time you meet her. At least when you ask for her number, you should reach out and touch her elbow for a few seconds. You scratch your cat or dog, right? It just the same thing only with a girl.
On Christian Dating, you should at the very least try to kiss her on the first date and be making out with her by the third date. Anything less and she is just not into you. Find somebody else. I run this on MORMON GIRLS, the hardest girls to get in the world. I am sure that if you take that attitude with Christian Girls you will find lots of success.
Thanks Ives, that is the kind of calibration info I needed.
Wait a minute... I heard from an insider that Mormon men were so repressed by their bishops and having to confess to any "impure thoughts" once a week, Mormen women have become very aggressive in how they pursue men. Some kind of mechanism of the universe balancing itself out.
So, Mormon girls being hardest to get in the world? I heard very differently. But then, my source was 6'4" tall, well-muscled, and very alpha.
Tigger4Christ, you may want to think about the image you are projecting and how it reflects on the person you desire to be. A Tiger4Christ is a great thing, but Tigger from the Pooh stories is at best a little boy and at worst a sexless stuffed animal. Tigger projects fun and high energy but more cute than man. We need to become Mighty Men of God and not Veggie Tales. Watch cartoons with girls but never be a cartoon to a girl.
I'm having a bit of a facepalm moment myself, reading this. Tigger, no offense, but you come across as someone so eager to connect with the girl that you practically foam at the mouth trying to get your thoughts out. All this talk of "calibrating" and such sort of feeds my impression of you as slightly obsessive/compulsive. I could be wrong, of course. You might want to slow down your movements and just take your time when talking or answering questions.
I picture you going "OK, what's my checklist: kino up front, kiss on the first date, qualifying questions on the 3rd date, etc..." Take it easy, man. For one thing, most of your qualification can be done by simple observation: meet her family and friends, watch how she eats, start her talking about whatever and steer toward topics you want to know more about, like family health issues, but let the conversation flow naturally. You can't just plop a checklist in front of her.
As Anonymous says, you have to be The Man in the relationship. You don't owe her anything, get that? Decide what your boundaries are, and the relationship happens on your terms or not at all.
If a girl despises you because you don't move fast enough physically, that is actually just another sort of fitness test. She feels that she is sexually higher-ranking than you, so how dare you not want sex with her NOW, you pathetic little creature! And if you fall into that frame, she will despise you even more.
On the other hand, if you are hitting all the right attraction buttons, you have another problem. The reality is that most Christian girls will gladly fall into bed with a man they find attractive enough, as long as they can convince themselves that the relationship is "on the way" toward marriage. Rationalization is supreme. If you are serious about waiting until marriage, you have to realize it will be you, not her that sets this boundary.
There is nothing wrong with kissing on the first date, but it is not a requirement. At whatever point you move forward physically, sooner or later you might have to say something like "I find you very attractive--honestly I can barely keep my hands off you, but I have made my commitment, and I want to do things right." I know it sounds lame to any PUA types out there, but this is exactly the point where the girl will either respect you or try an all-out attack to seduce you. *Either way*, if you handle things right, she might be a keeper. If you don't stand by your word, then you damage her respect for you in the long term. By saying that, you have painted the relationship into a corner. It's not easy, so don't make this move too soon, but if you do, stand by it. If she gives you the standard huffy "who do you think you are?" sort of line, just shrug and tell her "the door is that way." She might come back, she might not; but at least it is you running the test.
@Anonymous, @rycamor
Thanks. You both addressed valid points, very helpful. Thank you.
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