Ramblings about a change in perspective towards game and life

(Warning: Low value and un-actionable ramblings about feelings ahead. You may want to skip this one, especially if you’re a beginning player and don’t yet have strong fundamentals. If you’re a guy reading RP or player ideas, you should prefer actionable ideas over ramblings. Yet if you’ve been in it for a while, it’s hard not to think about the bigger picture sometimes. I’ll never say that sex is bad or that pickup isn’t worth it. But I feel my feelings changing in ways that I wouldn’t have expected.)

Lately I’ve been lackadaisical about chasing women and sex. This is somewhat different from being lazy, because I’ve been lazy too and being lazy means wanting sex and knowing that getting sex will be worth it but not wanting to put in the effort to get up and make things happen. As a man, it is pretty much always your job to make things happen, whether you want that to be true or not.

Over the past couple years, I’ve noticed more often that after I have sex with a random woman, I feel more of that “hollow” sense that I’ve read about before and used to think was stupid. Yet now I’m feeling it. I don’t think I’m tired of sex, because the sex itself is still fun, but seeking it isn’t as strong an animating force as it used to be for me. Especially after sex, I find myself holding the woman and doing aftercare but feeling totally void, instead of the satisfied pleasure mixed with the feeling of a job well done that used to be common for me. I can go longer without sex without craving it.

Otherwise I feel good. Most of my life is “successful” by typical definitions, although I have a strong minimalism streak that puzzles most of my friends and colleagues, who don’t get that I don’t care about houses, TVs, cars, and the other crap people waste money on. I don’t think the call of the void after sex is a sign of generalized depression. I can’t rule that out altogether but don’t think that’s “it.”

I have to wonder what’s up. It could be a change in life course. I have been chasing (and fucking) women since not that long after I hit puberty. I think I had a more normal teenage life than a lot of pickup guys and players, many of whom seem to have been un-sexed or undersexed “nice guys” well into their 20s. I was never a “natural” but I did fine and started having sex at a normal to young age, so I wonder if I don’t have the need to “catch up” that seems to drive a fair number of players. I never had a decade-long relationship that ended in years of dead bedroom, or some of the other experiences that drive guys to be players.

Maybe I’ve had enough sex and things are all right for me. To be sure I still have some regulars on rotation and there are new prospects on the docket. I’m just not as excited. Motivation is its own challenge, but it’s not one that I’m familiar with because sex has for so long been a central motivation.

Although I’m not as excited about lots of sex with varied women as I used to be, I don’t know what the alternative is. I can’t imagine cohabitating with a woman ever again. Marriage is completely out. Can I build a successful long-term, open relationship with a woman? One that yields to my own need for novelty, which, left unsatiated, has always come back? It doesn’t seem likely. So maybe the issue lies elsewhere. I may have exhausted some of my need to have a lot of sex.

Like I said, this is kind of a garbage post for most guys, but it is what I’m feeling. The incredible pleasures of sex with new women just don’t seem so incredible as they did. I don’t know what that means for me going forward. Since I broke up with that much younger girl, who I’ve mentioned occasionally on this blog, I feel more like an artist making a work of art when I seduce women, and less like a man chasing a primal, urgent, animal need for sex.

Maybe I’m overthinking. Maybe this means nothing. Could it mean something? Or am I just turning into a bitch? Seriously, any intellectually honest guy writing shit like this has to ask himself if he’s turning into a bitch. Every guy should honestly ask himself once a year if he’s a bitch or turning into one. That would help a ton of guys.

I can still pull women, I still like some of the unusual things I’m into like non-monogamy and making sex tapes, but more often I feel like a hamster on a wheel. If I get off the wheel, what happens? My job is going really well and I’ve defeated the financial demons of child support. So what happens?

I’ve honestly thought about becoming a part-time dating coach. Another bitch thing to say, but it’s true, and I see inept guys of all ages all around me. Yet I think thinking about such things, like “dating coaching,” is better than what the average person does, which is smother their thoughts and feelings under the oleaginous, disgusting weight of TV, Facebook, and bullshit.

Friends ask me how I have time to do “all” the things I do. I don’t have any more time than anyone else, but I’ve learned to cut the typical timewasters out and that leaves a lot of possibility for growth, development, knowledge, and of course sex. Or write this ridiculously long whine, haha.

But it also leaves time for getting in touch with whatever’s within me. For a long time, the top thing within me has been work, creativity, and most of all sex with the next pretty girl. If none of those things drives me anymore, what is left?

I look around me and out of the married people I see, I’d guess under 20% are in truly functional relationships, let alone growth-oriented relationships. I’m old enough to see people’s marriages crumble as their kids leave for college, leaving the couple in the relationship to re-meet each other and discover the stranger within and the stranger they’ve been living with. I’ve chosen to avoid that path, but I cannot avoid the perils of the path I’m on.

After two decades+ of being driven by varied, hedonistic sex and sex experiences, what if those kinds of things aren’t the driving thing for me anymore? I will not say I’ve mastered the game, because it’s clear that other guys have game far superior to mine, but I’ve done it well enough for my purposes.

I wonder if all guys who get deeply into the varied, hedonistic sex game eventually find that its urgency wanes. Most of the guys who write about the game seem to have been deeply into it for less than a decade. Like I said, many seem to be making up for lost times and opportunities. They don’t want to be the good boy, the nice guy, anymore. Totally legit, by the way. I’m not knocking it. But I’ve been doing the sex thing for longer, and that might affect my outlook.

This ramble doesn’t have answers. So many moment-by-moment tactical things have answers: sex spike; seek number; invite her back to your place; open her; ask her sex questions; provide comfort. Many of the strategic things do too: live in the center of the city or the center of the nightlife district; don’t eat sugar; lift. But what I’m feeling now doesn’t have an answer. Maybe this is why many artists turn mystic over time. They’ve transcended the medium and are trying to tap into or develop something else. What is that something else?

Guys around my age who don’t have kids would probably be thinking about kids, but I’ve already been there. Another thing that’s different about me compared to most players, I think.

How many times can I go through the process before the process itself is boring?

Maybe I need to learn or master a new skill. I am not the master of game, but I’m good enough to have achieved as much as I want to achieve. The sex I’ve had recently has been good. The void may pass with time. Maybe I need a real break for an extended period of time, and that will recharge my need. Bizarrely, I wonder if I can do it.

“She’ll accept the value proposition you’re offering at the start”

“She’ll accept the value proposition you’re offering at the start, whatever the form. The guy sets the frame, and it’s hard to change once in place.”

Does this sound familiar? I wrote an essay, “Women want to follow your lead: a story about a woman presenting two ways,” covering similar territory.

The more you know about women, the more you get that the vast majority live in a gray area, not in black or white. Maybe some (the religious, the dedicated polyamorous)  live in a black or white world, but the vast majority don’t.

“She’d always fancied me but her circumstances had changed”

“I thus conclude she’d always fancied me but her circumstances had changed in the interim.” Complete story at the link. Something similar likely happened to the woman I wrote about in “Snapchat in game: ‘Wish this was you.’” The girl from this story is an even longer example, in terms of time passed between initial contact and lay.

If you get a hard “no” from a woman, never contact her again. But time resets a lot of clocks, and there’s often no reason to totally burn a cold lead. Cold leads can warm suddenly.

Downside is, enough time often turns attractive women fat. In the last year I’ve gotten renewed contact from three women I knew years ago, all of whom had gotten fat enough for me to be uninterested. A very strange thing and maybe a sign of getting older. One I met for a coffee, and she went nuts when I evaded her offers of drinks and dinners and said that I don’t see her in a romantic way. I pulled a total girl move, in other words. A longer story for another time. I probably ought not to have talked as much as I did about zero sugar. I also have this thing where I like to invite fatties to workout with me. They never do it.

[FR] Met by accident on a bike

This morning I was riding and came to a tricky section, and a girl was slowing down in front of me. I told her to take lead, and she told me to, so I did. When we passed the tricky section I slowed down and said that I was glad we’d gotten through there. She agreed and I asked where she’s going. She said yoga (a good sign) and I told I’d been trying it as a supplement to weightlifting. A little too gay and friendly, maybe, but it popped out. We talked about yoga and I told her to wait at the next light, because I want to get her number.

At the light I pulled out my phone and gave it to her and said that life is like waiting at the light: if you don’t act quickly the opportunity goes away.

A pretty basic interaction overall, but her energy was high. I’ve promised myself that I’m going to stop hitting on women and dating for a while in order to recover myself, but this morning I slipped into old habits, but I brought more energy to the interaction than I have in many recent interactions. When you’ve conditioned yourself to flirt as long as I have, you get used to acting in the moment. She gave me the phone back and I said I looked forward to seeing her and gave her hand a little squeeze. That surprised her. Not sure if it’s in a good or bad way.

She rode off and I caught up to my kids, who’d seen the number exchange. I really ought to hide things better from them, but the moment is everything. Instead of being terrifying, being in the moment has become thrilling.

When the model goes totally out the window

I love this story from Tom Torero. Sometimes things go bizarrely for reasons mostly outside your control. In this case, he snagged a definite “yes girl” almost by accident. Some of the most confusing times can occur when there are no obstacles. I’m trying to think of a story similar to his, but none have that combination of fast sex with a total stranger met on public transport. A couple times I’ve slept with friends of women I’ve been sleeping with, but those situations were more social proof and seeing the moment than game.

“I fired a girl | red flags, female encroachment”

“I fired a girl | red flags, female encroachment” is good. This is how pretty much all my relationships have ended since I broke up with the woman who I lived with and who I had two kids with:

Usually the girl would try to raise the stakes — to encroach on my territory, you might say. A mix of being less agreeable, less sexual, and more demanding. That is a fucking retarded plan for a girl to roll-out, but I’ve seen it over and over.

I see it over and over again, in my own relationships and my friends’s relationships. After living with a woman and painfully breaking up with her in my 20s (a story I might tell here) I vowed that I was never going to live with a woman again. So pretty much every relationship I’ve had dies when the woman wants to move in with me, or find a timeline for moving in.

Only two of them were really hard to let go. One was a younger girl I met in a coffeeshop and who I dated for almost two years, starting when she was 19. Not only had I vowed never to move in with a woman again, but she was way too young for that to work. Only experience can or will teach her that. Last I heard she’s in a relationship with a guy who is modestly older than her, instead of way too old for her.

The other was with a woman who wasn’t exactly a nymphomaniac, but she’d either been told or figured out that keeping a man’s balls empty is a good way of keeping a man. While she loved sex, I’m not sure she loved it more than the average girl. She also loved giving head and that did set her apart from the average girl. She would give it at every opportunity. Morning. Nights. Afternoons. I could barely keep up with her demands in that department. They never dropped off. When she was on her period, she wanted to make sure I was okay. I’ve never seen one like her before. We only broke it off because I wouldn’t marry or cohabitate. It took me a long time to get out of that script. Now that I’m out I’m likely never going back. If not never, then not for many years. I wonder what I’ll be like at age 60. By then maybe I will have mellowed enough.

She married the guy after me. No surprise. I don’t talk to her anymore but I bet he’s as happy as he can be in a marriage. When I hear women complain about guys I think about her. She didn’t complain. She wasn’t an expert cook but she would cook. And that sex. Those lips. The willingness. Her thrills. I doubt she’s been cheated on. Who would have the time or energy? If my ex (who I had the kids with) had been like her, we’d probably still be together and you wouldn’t be reading this. She, the highly sexed girl, wasn’t perfect (no one is, including me), but she had incredible fundamentals.

 

“Salt Dating 101: How To Sleep With Sugar Babies Without Actually Paying Them”

This is pretty accurate, although I think its success will vary by area. You should also recognize its basic outlines because I wrote a similar post (that girl I mentioned? I dropped her as she went more pro). But success will also vary by vibe and by your masculine energy. If your masculine energy and presence are low, you probably aren’t going to “salt date.”

I also don’t think this situation is going to last forever. As more guys figure out that pretending to be rich can work, girls will get wise to it. Kind of like Tinder. I heard about Tinder before it hit pop culture. For the first two years it was a gold mine. Today it’s a pile of shit. Market conditions change as people learn about the conditions and adjust their behaviors.