When she tells you “I’m not feeling it”

The topic of consent and when “no means no” has been an ongoing issue since the beginning of humanity and it seems to have grown awry especially in today’s society where false accusations and most people cannot come to a consensus on the definition of consent.

The article “When she tells you I’m just not feeling it” by Chase Amante, owner of the Girls Chase website specializing in articles contributed by “dating experts” aimed at men who are interested in pursuing sexual relationships with women, provided a list of tactics on a ” few superior options you can use to deal with objections like this”. With the use of the word “objection”, it is made to seem like a simple opinion that can be changed instead of an outright rejection where it is the final say.

Amante says that “There’s a certain category of rejection girls can hit you with, where they object to the potential between you and them. Usually this takes the form of a girl telling you it just doesn’t ‘feel’ right, in this way or that. Examples:

  • “I just don’t feel any chemistry”
  • “The spark just isn’t there”
  • “I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it”

This could have been a ordinary article teaching guys how to pursue women, if not for the fact that the end product of these tactics seem to nearly always be sex.

His three tactics for tackling the “I’m not feeling it” rejection from women includes:

#1 “WE’LL GET THERE”

#2: DISTRACT/FRACTIONATE

#3: INVESTIGATE

Out of the three, only #3 seemed to be non sex motivated. In both #1 and #2, Amante spoke about how you can use these methods to change a woman’s mind about how she does not feel like having sex/ continuing intimacy. His argument seems to stem from the mentality of how a woman’s “no” is not really a “no”. Like what Don Kulick said in his article “No”, “a woman’s ‘no’ is constrained by cultural expectations… and the illocutionary force of a woman’s ‘no’ to sex is consistently thwarted and distorted to mean ‘keep trying’, or even its inversion, ‘yes’ “(Kulick, 2003, p.141).

In his #2 tactic , he talks about how to change a woman’s mind by distracting her with something else and then attempting to arouse her when she has temporarily forgotten about the first botched attempt. Perhaps it is a concept misunderstood by me, but it seems pretty disturbing when a man is so intent on getting a woman to cave in to his advances even after rejections. Why is it that society gives praise to persistent young men who thinks that it is manly and admirable to keep on trying with women even after rejections? Many love novels and movies romanticize the concept of a man who never stops trying, i.e. the notebook – where Noah was very persistent in his pursue of Allie to the point of threatening to kill himself if she does not go on a date with him. (Context: Noah hanging onto a Ferris-wheel ride in front of Allie until she agrees.)

Amante also spoke about how he used to think that “not feeling a spark” meant that it is absolute and there is nothing a man can do to change this, until he grew up and amassed a flurry of relationships with women with whom he has had “tremendous chemistry” and yet told him that they were not feeling it when he kisses them or goes in for sex! He thought that it was weird since these women were usually up for sex with him thus it did not make sense to him as to why he could be rejected when he had been successful before. He eventually attributed this “feeling it / not feeling it” thing to being mood-dependent, situational, and subject to change. Which applies for both girls he wanted to sleep with but hadn’t slept with yet, and girls he had as girlfriends.

Here we can see how Amante found it ridiculous how he was denied sex/ intimacy when he has already been “granted access” before, and how he eventually signed it off as a petty argument that can be changed with a change of tactic in pursuing. Amante either does not understand the concept of respecting someone’s opinion and not pushing for the other party to agree with you or has internalised the concept of a women’s “no” to mean “keep trying”. Both of which are pretty bad.