Ladies! There is a difference between "I admire you" and "I m romantically interested in you"

As men are the hunters and women are often the persued  things sometimes become confusing... to both genders,     I've had a few questions from a few people  lately about the difference between chasing women vs. persisting with women. A few weeks back a gentleman . raised the point  :

“I'd like to see something fleshing out the nuances between chasing and persistence.”

“I guess what I want to know is how does all this play in with not chasing her...if you leave enough time between your proposals it doesn't count as chasing, does it?”

I've seen a few other people ask about it on other articles that I read as well.

What's the difference between chasing women and persisting with them, anyway? Aren't they one and the same?

Actually, the two are VERY different - and women are right for desiring persistent men to a point... and fleeing from men who chase after them that point.

Let's have a look at why that is, and how you can better walk the line between chasing and persistence.

Chasing women: Why  is it So B.A.D?

First off, I want to say this: I don't think there's any guy out there in the world who likes chasing women.

And by "chasing women," I don't mean that in the vaguely sarcastic tone of your buddy who's really good at picking up girls. When he says, "Let's go chase some women," what he really means is, "Let's go make some women helplessly attracted to us then  take them home!"

When I say "chasing women," what I'm referring to is the guy who's pursuing a woman who isn't his, is acting cold or distant or aloof to him, and is not giving him nearly what he wants from her... a man who isn't in control of the situation.

What I'm talking about with chasing is when a man desperately wants a woman who doesn't want him.

If you've ever chased a woman before - and most guys have, no need to feel too ashamed about it - you can probably think back on the emotions you felt about it and realize that it didn't feel all that great. Nowhere did you get emotions like, "Wow, this is wonderful!" Instead, all you feel while chasing are feelings of:

• Confusion
• Uncertainty
• Panic
• Fear
• Loss
• Need
• Desperation

These are a deep, dark hole of bad emotions that drive you into feeling worse about yourself, and doing things very wrong with a girl from the point of being attractive.

Chasing is very unattractive to women.

It's off-putting.

But if it's so horribly ineffective a behavior, why do men do it?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHASING

From what I've seen, the vast majority of women who are chased by men are single women... women unattached from a committed marriage or relationship partner. I haven't seen many married women with a man chasing desperately after them, but I have seen many single women with chasers in hot pursuit.

Why might this be?

My theory is, the same "philosophy of women" that inspires a man to chase after an unattached woman also dissuades him from being  interest in an attached one.

The theory goes like this:

"Once I have a woman, she will be MINE FOREVER!"

The corollary to that, of course, is:

"Once a woman is with a man, she will NEVER LEAVE HIM????"

I don't think all men who chase women regularly and desperately think this way, but for a guy who's a habitual chaser or chases women over a long period of time, from what I've seen it's usually the mindset. In his mind... A woman is something to be acquired, and once she is acquired, the acquisition is permanent.

So, if a woman is attached, to the chaser, she is off the market and unattainable; if she's unattached, however, then it's a mad-grab free-for-all to acquire her, and whoever ends up with her at the end gets to keep her.

If you're mildly unnerved by all this talk of "acquiring" and "keeping," you should be; it's an incorrect view of women, but its one that men who chase seem normally to possess in spades.

Here's the really scary part for women - according to the paper "Courtship Behaviors, Relationship Violence, and Breakup Persistence in College Men and Women" by Stacey L. Williams and Irene Hanson Frieze, chasing is linked to violence... have a look:

“This study assessed college men's (n= 85) and women's (n= 215) courtship persistence behaviors (approach, surveillance, intimidation, mild aggression), which have been linked to stalking, and examined their relations to initial courtship interest, relationship development, and future violence and persistence, while also exploring the role of gender in these relations. Findings showed individuals performed surveillance when initially more interested than the other. Whereas approach behaviors were positively associated with relationship establishment, surveillance and intimidation were negatively associated. As predicted, results showed continuity in persistence and violence over the course of dating relationships. For both genders, courtship mild aggression predicted relationship violence, and persistence behaviors predicted similar persistence at breakup. Early behaviors may foreshadow violence and stalking-related behaviors in both men and women.”

Here, the study breaks "persistence" down into multiple subcategories:

• Approach
• Surveillance
• Intimidation
• Mild Aggression

In the study, the researchers define each subcategory as follows:

• Approach: sending notes, doing un-requested favors, attempting to communicate, asking the person out as a friend and asking the person out as a date.
• Surveillance: waiting where the person would be, going by the residence, showing up at events where the person would be, doing an activity to be closer to the person, asking friends about the person, and asking friends to talk to the person.
• Intimidation: following the person, taking the person’s belongings, trying to manipulate the person into dating you, and spying on the person.
• Mild aggression: trying to scare the person, making threats, threatening to hurt emotionally, threatening to damage belongings, threatening to hurt someone else, threatening to hurt oneself, verbally abusing the person, physically harming slightly, and physically harming more than slightly.

As an interesting aside, the researchers further noted, on differences between male and female courtship behaviors, that

“Males perform more approach, or regular courtship behaviors, whereas females are more likely to perform acts of surveillance, that is, attempts to make indirect contact with the love interest by way of (seeming) serendipity.”

Obviously, intimidation and mild aggression are pretty bad. Surveillance isn't terribly good either, as you're "pretending" it's fate while hiding true desires; women are more guilty of this one than men are, and according to the research there's less of  a chance that it leads to a relationship than a healthy interaction where the behavior isn't needed or used.

So what's all this have to do with chasing women vs. persisting with women?

Simple - this quote from the study:

“During the earliest stages of courtship, a one-sided initial interest (i.e., a scenario in which one potential partner is more interested than the other) may reflect this unrequited love scenario and result in intensified initial courtship behaviors. Behaviors used to attract the potential partner may include stalking-related behaviors.”

What Williams and Frieze are said here is this: intensified initial courtship behaviors (chasing) are the result of unrequited love.

The difference between chasing and persistence is that chasing is one-sided interest and highly emotional, while persistence is largely mutual, and it's largely unemotional.