How to drop a bomb on a group conversation

Last night I was having dinner with three women who I’ve known for a very long time. I dated one many years ago, and we’ve stayed friends since. Today, one is still single and basically a spinster, one is divorced, and one is married (this sounds like the setup to a sitcom, I know).

So we’re chatting, and I tell them that as usual I’m not seeing anyone seriously, and they want to know why not. They’re pretty familiar with my ways but for some reason the spinster and divorced ones want to know when I’m going to “settle down.” I tell them about Mating in Captivity and  then about how I’m seeing Bike Girl… they comment about how young she is (she’s not) and I say it:

“I don’t really like dating women over 30.”

To be sure, I said it with a cheeky grin and a bashful, “What can you do?” posture. The reaction was amazing. What was wrong with me? Was I immature? Did I have a complex from childhood? Did I not understand what older women have to offer? There were many others in this vein.

One of my friends even said I was disgusting.

I agreed and told her that she loves me because I’m disgusting and willing to tell the truth when most people lie.

This is the sort of thing that should only be said if you’re willing to play the pariah for a while. I was happy to and I knew them all well. This is NOT the sort of thing I’d usually say, especially to people I don’t know well, though I have sometimes used the “I don’t really date women over 30, but there’s something different about you” line on women over 30 I want to sleep with (or have been sleeping with, or am ramping up to sleeping with).

It’s a high-variance line that tends to create anger and fire. Be careful using it! Only do it if you’re willing to create a lot of anger (but also sometimes comedy, if it’s done well).

In some sense saying this kind of thing is socially stupid. But I did it anyway because I thought it was funny. I also don’t mind being ganged up on; it usually makes me laugh.

Plus, wine.

“It’s OK for alpha males”

“It’s OK for alpha males: Sexual harassment is a crime committed by beta-males who think they can get away with alpha behaviour.” Yes, yes, and yes.

Want to see how the top guys live? Raise your sexual marketplace value.

I by and large don’t drink at the company trough because I think that leads to too many problems. Better to pay for it. But I have had some interesting experiences with former colleagues / interns, at least when I no longer directly supervise them, and that only works if you’re towards the top.

There are so many women out there, though, that it’s not worth messing around in most work environments. Exceptions might be bars or other low-level jobs that are basically just selling sex anyway.

New Year’s Eve

“My friend is having a New Year’s party. Maybe we should go to that instead.”

“Have you been to his parties before?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s fun.”

“Is it a dozen people standing around drinking and awkwardly eyeing each other up, only to have none of them go home with each other at the end?”

“Haha.”

“Like I said, we can go to the sex party, where instead of people wondering what everyone looks like naked, they can find out for themselves. You’ve liked the things we’ve gone to, right?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Right. So I have to give them money towards the hotel, so if we’re going to agree to do this, we need to do this.”

“Okay. I feel bad because usually I hang out with [the usual friends.]”

“That’s okay. I don’t think your friends are down for this, but ‘Melissa’ might be. You can talk to her about it if you want.”

“Haha, okay.”

This is something like “soft leadership:” redirecting the energy of the conversation toward the right end. I also HATE most NYE parties, because they are either in loud, overpriced clubs/bars or they’re groups of people standing around holding champagne wondering where their lives are going. The best parties, are usually the ones not advertised… and often not the ones in which everyone keeps on their clothes.

You don’t get to the best places by doing what everyone else does. You get to better places by working smarter and harder than other people, and then exploiting market inefficiencies. Sometimes that means doing nothing. It means saying no and NOT doing what everyone else does. Some of my best NYEs have been alone or with one person. The worst have been in large crowds and being alone in the mass.

This kind of thing (group sex) isn’t for everyone (I know that and get feedback from guys who think group sex is disgusting. Fine with me. Lots of girls fantasize about it. I have a longer post about RP and it… for now this post covers some of the material). But I find it much more satisfying and interesting than typical NYE status jockeying.

Like a lot of girls, Bike Girl has two – three actual friends and a bunch of people she sometimes hangs out with who are her “friends.” Those straight male “friends” want to nail her, except for one guy who is enough of a player to not care much. Also like most girls, she has no idea what she really wants and thus will conform to the people she’s around.

When I was younger I was hesitant to lead because I didn’t want to be the boss or boss people around. Now I realize that I’d picked up poor notions of leadership from the larger culture. Leadership is much subtler and it means being willing to make things happen, being willing to negotiate, and perhaps most importantly having a direction to go.

Most people have no direction, so them leading anywhere is impossible.

“Come on, let’s do x,” is a powerful force. Sometimes, “x” is “sex parties.”

The deep psychology that keeps men in the game

I think most basic guys who get into game just want to find a pretty, acceptable girlfriend, and when they find one they drop off. Maybe they eventually break up, only to start the cycle anew. Or they have kids, and that’s another set of issues not conducive to game writing.

Then there are the guys who get into the game, maybe to find a girlfriend or maybe to just sleep with a lot of women, and they succeed: over time, they have amazing and awful experiences and they rack notches. They have amazing stories and many pleasures (as well as many pains).

Eventually, racking notches loses some of its appeal, and the “why am I doing this? What am I doing?” questions rise up. Most women are not that good outside of bed; they’re annoying to be around; they themselves lose their personal discipline; and the Coolidge Effect kicks in. So guys start to feel what I call “the Groundhog Day effect,” where nailing yet another rando loses some of its thrill. SOME: not all, of course. Most intelligent guys, sooner or later, also want to create something more lasting than random bangs. Usually that means kids. Often the desire for a family becomes acute in the mid 30s to early 40s… one can imagine biological reasoning for that, or the realities of aging and death as one’s parents die or become elderly and infirm. A lot of guys who marry or de-facto marry in their 20s do the opposite and seem to break up in the 35 – 40 period, maybe because they realize their opportunities to relatively easily close 20-something women are going to dwindle. There is a “wall” for men as well as women, though the male wall is further out.

(Yes, I know, the Internet is full of 45- and 55-year-old guys with their HB9 24-year-old girlfriends… maybe… I’m sure it happens, and it’s not impossible, but I don’t see much of it in my own life.)

Maybe the apotheosis of the “pack it in” guys is Neil Strauss, since he wrote The Game and then wrote The Truth, which can be read many ways… one being that he got tired of the game. His own psychology or biology were tired of the chase.

Granted, he is also a famous millionaire and married a 20-something swimsuit model. [Addendum: He seems also to have filed for divorce, so so much for Strauss as an example of quitting the game.]

We have two classes of guys so far: the ones just looking for an okay girlfriend, then the ones who do it for three to ten years before deciding to have kids or otherwise change.

Then there are guys who are in it for the long haul.

They are the guys who write the most intense blogs for long periods of time. Then the blog becomes fodder for a book. Most guys write for a while then disappear into monogamy or kids… or boredom with only speaking to pseudonymous guys online: I’m likely to disappear at some point; I don’t make money doing this, will never start a coaching business, and will run out of stuff to say. Yes, there is daily outrage against men in the news, and I’m prone to writing about that, but I think I will quit due to diminishing returns. There is only so much news outrage before outrage fatigue sets in.

The long haul guys are Krauser, Tom Torero, probably some other guys I’m not aware of… leave comments with others I’m leaving out. For them game seems like a total life practice and purpose, not a phase. Seduction is their art… or their demon.

Art or demon? In a comment to another post, I said that I wonder about the psychology of some of the hardest-core game guys. Neil Strauss wrote about his own psychological demons in The Truth. Tucker Max isn’t exactly a game guy but he too has written about his demons, especially as they relate to his messed-up mother. Krauser has written about his domineering mother too (very similar to Max and Strauss, and this may be a pattern worth exploring). I don’t want to go all Freudian, but I have to think about whether some of the more extreme cases of long-term game obsession come from bad places in childhood.

And, specifically, from men with bad mothers. Max, or his therapist, thinks there’s a psychological pattern. Does it take being somewhat messed up to really succeed at the highest levels of conscious game? Nash’s post “Tom Torero is a Thief | Street Hustle Book Review” got me thinking about these issues… be sure to read the fruitful comments as well. I don’t know what to make of the post because I don’t know Torero personally and he doesn’t seem immediately slimy to me, but what Nash says isn’t impossible.

Psychological explanations about declining long-term game motivation, loneliness, and a desire for substance are easy to dismiss as “blue pill” thinking, but I don’t think all of psychology is “blue pill.” I don’t even think the drive to pair-bond, which most people experience in various ways, is BP. Many BP guys suffer from oneitis because they can’t do any better, but some RP guys get tired of the game, of female bullshit, and the tedium of the chase. Even the joy of sleeping with a new chick can become a drug. Drug metaphors are common in game. Drugs can lead to abuse and the need for abstention and, ultimately, recovery.

To guys who’ve never had a lot of women, the last paragraph may sound like BS. So be it. Unless you’ve had five+ years of active game or sexual success, though, I don’t want to hear your arguments.

Get the experience, then you can tell me it’s BS.

Actually, I want you to have five+ years and be over age 30. Contemporary guys aren’t ready to have families and that kind of thing until at least age 30, more likely age 35. If you are age 21 or 26… talk to me in ten years. Enjoy chasing skirt today. I’m in favor of skirt chasing and there are millions of chicks out there who are actually thin and also want to get f**ked. Go seduce them, promise you’ll pull out, then don’t.

This has turned into a hell of a ramble post, but I’m going to keep going.

Almost all the guys in game, or realistically writing about game because I don’t know anything about the guys whose writing I haven’t encountered, have a common narrative: they were sexual nobodies or nonstarters in high school and usually college. Some didn’t get going in earnest until age 30 or later. Often they were or are jealous of their more successful-seeming rivals. Usually they don’t understand women’s feral sexual nature and are shocked to discover it, as shocked as Europeans finding the new world. They don’t understand that evolutionary psychology compels women to have an official purity narrative layered on top of their actual sex drive and behaviors. They learn game and change their lives enormously.

That is a common narrative for game guys and it isn’t my narrative. I’m coming from a world where I’ve probably had above-average success for most of my life. I’ve had struggles and I still struggle, and I am not laying chicks like a Hollywood actor, but I have done and am doing fine. Positive feelings and thinking tends to beget more positive feeling and thinking. To me, game formalized a lot of things I already sensed and helped me improve weak points. But I am not reacting against extreme failures in my past, or against an acute sense of missing out.

So my past and key reference experiences are different than the game guys I’ve read. I did “okay” in high school. At the time I perceived it to be below average, but now I realize I was above average, though not at the very peak. In retrospect I had a lot of problems with pedestalizing, weak eye contact, and, during initial encounters, subservient behaviors. But I had a lot of advantages from sports teams, reading, and decent willingness to approach (what would now be called “warm approach” in a school, university, or work environment). Given enough green lights I would escalate up to sex. I had a reasonable number of girlfriends and what I would now call positive reference experiences. Many guys get into the game because they feel they underperformed through most of their lives.

In college no one knew about “the game,” and while I wouldn’t call myself one of the ultra-high-achieving naturals, I did fine. I kept up with sports discipline, so I looked better than most guys. I did the default baggy college guy outfit and although it worked fine in retrospect I should’ve tuned what I wore better (in “fashion,” 10% of the effort gets at least 80% of the value). I relied on pure body more than fashion. I also wish I’d learned about black iron compound lifting earlier. At the time I believed that fancy Nautilus machines were safer and better. They’re more advanced and technological, right? WRONG. But I didn’t know better then. I also thought fat was bad and carbs were good, because that was the dominant thinking at the time and the government must be right. Fat makes you fat, right?

Hahahaha, I know, in retrospect I’m laughing at my naiveté too. I didn’t know any better. Neither did many other people.

But I tolerated rejection tolerably well and by the time I was in college I had a pretty simple setup: I figured out early on that I should stock beer, vodka, and a mixer. My strategy was simple: “Come over to the dorm [or house] for a beer later.” Drink a beer or two, listen to music, watch a movie, escalate. When you are surrounded by young hot unencumbered girls… a minimal amount of game can be very powerful.

I bobbled lots of stuff and didn’t persist through LMR. One of the most beautiful girls I ever tried for came over, took off her shirt, but said no to more, and for some reason I just stopped pursuing her. Years later she said she had a huge crush on me and wanted to know why I didn’t like her back. I told her that I didn’t think she liked me. In college opportunities for sex with hot chicks are just there, like breathing. Later in life, they typically must be pursued.

There are many other missed opportunity stories I could tell, but I had a strategy of sorts that was good enough and it was better than most guys. Game is often like running from a bear: you don’t have to be the fastest, you just have to be faster than the other guys. College guys are real slow. I’m sure that if I posted many of the things I did and said to the Internet, an army of couch-PUAs would tell me everything I did wrong, but it worked well enough.

Colleges basically set up warm approaches. Middle class and middle class+ college kids also have nothing better to do besides sit around and gossip, so I got a reputation as a “player,” which of course helped me with like 80% of girls. The reputation wasn’t really deserved, since I just ran the simple algorithm… but I wasn’t complaining either.

I also didn’t know how to keep girls on rotation, so if a girl wanted to be my “girlfriend” I would say yes, and “be her boyfriend,” most often until I got bored with her, at which point I’d suddenly break up with her and she would cry, because I didn’t know how to set appropriate expectations. Or she’d eventually catch me with another girl and get angry. I had a couple of those sitcom-y conversations where the girl would say, “But you’re my boyfriend, how could you do this to me?” and I would reply, “Because I knew that if I didn’t, you wouldn’t have sex with me | would stop having sex with me.” She would be… confused, more than anything, I think.

The right answer, of course, is to say, “I’m seeking something casual and we’re both in college and we’re too young to get serious…” but I wasn’t that sophisticated and back then no one was talking about poly or open relationships. I did intuit how to be sex positive, albeit without knowing that term. Not slut-shaming girls and being the chill guy they can come to for sex that won’t get back to their friends was super smart.

I also had not come to my fundamental realization, that there are really only two kinds of relationships: relationships with a woman with whom you plan to have kids… and all other kinds of relationships. When I came to understand that, much became clear that had previously been mysterious. Have you knocked her up, or would you? That’s one thing. Would you not, or not deliberately? That’s another.

Because of my sex-or-nothing attitude in later college, I became a somewhat polarizing person, as I (eventually) learned not to be faux friends with girls I actually wanted to sleep with. At the start of college I was… not so good at this and did some embarrassing things.

After college I somehow got the idea that it was time to “get serious” and “settle down.” Don’t ask me how or why. I don’t know. Other guys did similar things. If you love to raw dog you may wind up with kids earlier than you intend.

Overall I did well for a long time and that must have affected me and my expectations. Like I said, at the time I didn’t know about the joy of the barbell, and I didn’t formally know or intuitively understand that neither men nor women have much control over who they’re attracted to. Women’s attraction is often sub-verbal, visceral, and not optional.

Evolutionary biology is the foundation of game: a fact so important that I have to keep saying it. Attraction starts of course with looks and the body, which is why every RP and game writer says that lifting (or any exercise really) is such a vital place to start. Women don’t have much control over attraction… so maximize what you can control. That starts with the body’s motions and what a guy puts in his body.

It doesn’t end there and I’ve seen really attractive guys underperform because of personality flaws, being too passive/needy, etc. Having the whole package is best but not an option for most guys, since we have to develop what we have. Most guys never study the game properly.

The other side, of course, is that men only have so much choice in who we’re attracted to. Women wear makeup, hit the gym, choose high heels, etc. because they know they’re in competition for the very top guys. Every time I read a woman write about how women should quit high heels I laugh. Go ahead and do it… but your competitors won’t… and their raised, wiggling asses will attract the eyes of men.

Women know guys like youth, health, fertility cues, etc., even if no woman who isn’t an evolutionary biologist would use those terms. A given woman may defect from optimal strategy but if she does the higher-value guys will get taken by women who don’t defect, so the vast majority of women conform to male preferences… like guys who want to get laid conform to female preferences. You may have seen defectors who cut their hair short, quit shaving, and go vegan. Actually I only see them if they’re in my way, otherwise they’re pretty much invisible to me, like they are to the vast majority of straight guys.

Part of the game is learning those opposite-sex preferences. I didn’t know them in high school or college but I learned them well enough, and the formal component came later. It’s not necessary to know the formal component (virtually no men who have ever lived and reproduced knew it) but it will help, just like it’s possible to dominate a high school basketball court without lifting, but lifting will make any athlete better.

I wonder about the psychological effects of being a relative outcast during the formative years. I have my own psychological quirks, but they don’t stem from utter failure when I was young, which seems like such a common game origin story. A lot of guys who get into game at age 30+ may be going through a phase that I started when I was like age 18.

This is not a “shame guys” post, as I think everyone should pursue happiness and satisfaction as they see fit. In some sense I will likely always be in the game as long as I am physically viable, since I’m not interested in total monogamy and likely never will be.

How much tail does one need before one is basically satiated? When I am 50 or 55 or 60 will I still want to be stopping women and saying that I have to say that they’re cute, but they look like they’re ready for a yoga class? Are they poseurs or really going? Etc. I have seen the old people at the sex clubs and they don’t seem to be having fun and few of the younger people want them there.

Like most normal people, I’m also subject to feelings of loneliness. Friends help with that but are not a panacea. I’ve chosen a weirder life course than most people around me, and that makes having friends and maintaining friendships harder. Most people around me are married. Those who aren’t, are almost all divorced (and then most often re-married). I’m the guy at weddings and holidays without a spouse… or with an “inappropriate” date. Yes, I know that I shouldn’t care and should be a proud lone wolf, but I haven’t gotten to where I am in the business world by ignoring social cues. Almost no one gets to the top alone. The further up you go, the more soft and people skills matter. I’m good enough to mostly get away with my other life, but I can also listen to what people say.

I don’t think I have the psychology to be permanently in the game. I wonder about the guys who are in it for decades. Do they get bored? Do they wonder if there’s anything greater out there? Have their formative experiences so scarred them that, once in game, they can’t get out? I’m clearly not anti-game or anti-sex, but I wonder about these issues. Maybe I’m in a weird place because I’ve also already done some of the empire-building that is common to guys starting around ages 35 – 40.

I have a job and no desire to turn game into money. I don’t see sex as a validation of who or what I am. That’s part of the reason I’m happy paying for it, if the circumstances are right. Though I haven’t paid for it for a while, because I’ve been seeing women pretty steadily. To me paying or not paying for it isn’t a matter of pride. To me, the physical pleasure of sex is the best part. I’m susceptible to that feeling of intimacy and closeness that comes from sex, even though my conscious self knows it’s a lie. I don’t chase skirt for the ego trip (as best I can tell). There seem to be some number of guys writing about the game who want to f**k pretty girls just to see if they can and just to then say that they can do it. My motivations are more immediate and physical.

Most of the guys I know who have kids and a strong relationship are much more pleased than the guys without. We evolved to live around families and to raise kids. Most men who never do that are broken… “most” but not all… if you are a man who doesn’t want kids and know you’d be a lousy father don’t have them: enough unwanted children live in the world already.

A lot of people who never have a family, something is either wrong with their heads from an early age or goes wrong as the loneliness of transient f**ks messes with their heads over time. I use the phrase “a lot of people” instead of “all people” deliberately: you may be an exception. In human affairs, there are always exceptions, but you may also be lying to yourself and thinking you are the exception. Most of this ramble is targeted at guys over age 30 and likely over age 35. If you are 25 and have gotten this far, just bookmark this page and come back in five or ten years. For now, go bang all the hot chicks you can. Younger guys need the experience and need to get the call of the wild out.

Older guys, though, older guys who have been plowing a lot of chicks… who find themselves looking at the ceiling after the latest random is passing out next to him… who want to build the future by having a family… you guys are wondering about the long-term psychology, like I am. This ramble is for you. It does not tell you what to do, for that is not my way. It does attempt to help you think about what the good life is. The good life at age 24, may not be the good life at age 40. Maybe, though, you are a pickup artist. Artists are often maniacs, obsessed with their art until they die. If that is you, so be it.

Can We Be Honest About Women? Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men

“Can We Be Honest About Women? Here’s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty.” This is a “no-shit” article and I wish the mainstream media were not so chickenshit as to refuse to take up its theme.

This is also a reminder to GET OFF the internet. The internet is not the real world. In the real world, normal women LOVE men and men are equally enamored of women. Guys who learn game should slough off hate, hit the gym, and enjoy the fact that 98% of women love flirting, love guys, and are fantasizing about and looking for sex.

The perils of younger women

Last night I slept with a woman I first met a while ago. We met when she was on a bad date (I’ve actually picked up a couple women this way). She was in her early 40s, still very lithe, but no honest guy prefers a woman in her early 40s to a woman in her 20s, all else being equal, for sex. There are obviously fatties in their 20s and some women are still lingeringly cute in their 40s, but the 2o-something overwhelmingly wins.

Between the last time I saw her and now, this woman got in a semi-serious relationship with another guy and the relationship fizzled, so she sent a “how are you?” feeler text to me, we got drinks, and then the usual.

But I wasn’t that excited about her. Bike Girl is in her 20s and man, after getting used to an attractive woman in her 20s, going back to a 40+ woman is hard. Harder than it should be. Objectively, this one is still attractive and, if I’d not had sex for a week, I’m sure I’d have been all over her. But with Bike Girl eager for sex even more often than I am, I just didn’t have the umph necessary to make it work, and I think lithe former dancer knew as much.

This one also has something sad about her. She was in a 10+ year relationship and it was never the “right time” to have kids. Reading between the lines, I think she just got bored of her guy, and vice-versa…. she basically blew her fertility window on nothing. She’d have been better served by leveling with the guy and saying, “Let’s have kids and co-parent together.” But she couldn’t overcome her own hypergamy, her own tendency to need novel stimulation, and where is she now? Still being seduced by the occasional charming player, but to what end? Where is she going? The wall is nigh, and she’s seeing whatever remaining fertility she has dwindle by the month.

I meet a lot of women like this. They usually have one major LTR that “didn’t work out” or some similar female nonsense and deeply regret not having kids. Or they’re furiously trying to find a guy to have kids with, but they’re finding that their whole dating market structure changed a lot, without them really noticing, between 22 and 35. None have read an older article, “Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough,” because they’re too busy with Cosmo or whatever other dumb shit most women read, if they read at all. “Marry Him!” is written by a raging narcissist, which is why it’s perfectly obvious, banal observation is treated like some kind of revelation.

They’ve bought into the bullshit feminism that says “You don’t need a man or a child!” Except you do. Natural, evolved instinct is a lot older than modern ideological feminism. What are spinsters going to do as they age out of sexual attractiveness, but without the family they crave, and that gives their lives meaning? They’d be better off coparenting with not-optimal guys than aging alone.

Enough of that. The last ten or so cold approaches I’ve done (a couple on the street, one in a grocery store, a couple in coffee shops) have gone nowhere. A couple of weak numbers. I may lack the necessary intent. And the time.

Bike Girl is also getting more comfortable with non-monogamy. We had the foursome, and soon we’re going to try a MFM threeway with my “threesome buddy.” He’s into the non-monogamy swinging community and we’ve done this many times before. Bike Girl is apprehensive, but in a cute way. She says she’s never met anyone like me before, but I tell her, truthfully, that she likely has, but without recognizing it.

I do think I’m making her a little too insecure for non-monogamy.

Of course, it’s also possible that she’s seeing someone on the side and not telling me. I learned a long time ago that there is no such thing as “not that kind of girl.” Or if there is, I (and men in general) can’t reliably distinguish between “not that kind of girl” and “that kind of girl.”

Girls are also experts at compartmentalizing. Most guys don’t know this or don’t want to know it. They prefer a “purity” fantasy. Ha.

Haha.

I have seen too much of life and women to buy the purity fantasy. The male fantasy of utter female wantonness is also a fantasy. The truth lies between the poles.

I started this post about the older woman and almost immediately shifted it to being about other women, so I suppose that’s all I need to know about that.

The holidays are coming up: shit tests, comfort tests, and gifts [intermediate and above]

Everyone reading this should be familiar with shit tests and if you are not then quit this post and read. For 90% of guys, shit tests are a sticking point and this post is useless. For guys who’ve overcome most shit tests, however, comfort tests can be the bigger problem, especially for medium-term FWBs / lovers (relationship skills and pickup/seduction skills overlap some, but there’s a lot of space separating them… it is possible to be better at one than the other). A while ago I saw a post titled, “Be careful of being too Alpha, Comfort Tests are far more lethal than Shit-Tests.” Good advice.

The holidays can present comfort tests for guys with medium- or long-term FWBs (or even girlfriends). Guys who are focused on one-night stands or very short-term things can ignore this.

The comfort test is easy to fail by either doing too much (many guys) or too little (players). Gifts are an element of retention. When you first start banging girls you don’t have to worry too much about keeping them around, but over time the vast majority of women consciously or subconsciously want to “advance” their relationship with a good guy. Most women also bond with guys who are fucking them and giving them orgasms. This is doubly true if you’re going bare. (Almost no one talks about the overwhelming, primal intimacy of unprotected sex.)

Like I said, it’s easy to fuck up through doing too much comfort (if you are a novice at fucking hot women or more than one woman at a time, quit reading and get more experience). When I was way younger I had the bad habit of thinking that grand romantic gestures and gifts would endear me to women, because that’s what I saw in movies and read in novels. But when I tried grand romantic gestures in real life they totally flopped.

As a younger guy I had no idea why. Now I do. I used to think that the women didn’t like me. Now I know Women love romantic gestures but only from a guy they consider to be higher status than they are.

Women love romantic gestures that the woman has earned and achieved. Romantic gestures and gifts are trophies for her. She has vanquished other women, who are her romantic rivals, and she has won the heart of a hard-to-get man, who is finally willing to show his affection towards her in the form of a gift. All those other women have LOST, and she has won. What a sweet victory for her. Women love to compete too, just in domains that are adjacent to the ones where men want to compete.

I wouldn’t accept a judo black belt because I haven’t earned it. I wouldn’t accept a PhD diploma because I haven’t earned it. Women don’t really want gifts they haven’t earned. Of course they often will take free shit if someone foists valuable free shit into their hands, just like you probably would, but they might feel grimy about it. If they have any character, they will feel grimy about it (although they might still take it). Normal people know that almost nothing valuable is “free,” and valuable things that are “given away” have strings attached. When you give a woman unearned gifts, especially expensive ones, she thinks you’re trying to bargain for sex with material goods… and there is already a profession devoted to that practice.

Only use gifts to reward good behavior. Never use gifts as a bargain, to curry favor, or as a trade. Fucking you on a regular basis is good behavior that should be positively reinforced.

I’m sure many of you are about to write comments about how giving things to chicks is BETA. In the wrong circumstances, it is. In the right circumstances, it’s not. Context changes the perception of a given action. Guys at the start of their journey shouldn’t worry about this at all. Guys with regular FWBs might think about it.

Giving a gift, especially an unexpected gift, can be an element of what Tom Torero calls “contrast game.” Listen to the whole podcast, please, if you are at least intermediate level. A guy who is mostly aloof and does push-pull and is mostly focused on sex can improve his connection with a woman by sometimes (not often, but sometimes) doing the opposite.

Preferably unexpectedly.

The unexpected gift, especially from a guy she’s been casually seeing yet who she worries will not commit to her, will get her wondering, “What does this mean?” She may ask her girlfriends about what her mystery man could mean. She thinks he’s f**king other girls (he is) but he also gave her a necklace for Christmas. Does that mean he’s serious about her? That he likes her more than other girls?

And on and on. Think of it as the positive side of the hamster.

So if you have a woman you’ve been fucking somewhat regularly, consider getting her a small present for the holidays. Only give gifts to women you’ve been sleeping with semi-regularly. I’d say at least three times or for longer than a week, but there is no hard and fast rule. Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVES GIFTS TO WOMEN YOU HAVE NOT FUCKED. Not now, not ever. You will lower your own value in doing so and will decrease the likelihood you will ever f**k her.

I put this in all caps because guys who are skimming this and about to write a moronic rebuttal comment need to see it.

The gift shouldn’t be as expensive as possible; it is truly the thought that counts. A stuffed animal or bar of chocolate or inexpensive necklace will do. If she thinks she’s earned the gift, she will value it more than she will a $10,000 engagement ring or an expensive, fancy, uncomfortable dinner with a guy trying to buy her love and her sex. The best gift I ever got a girl was for a girl who loved pickles and so I got her some for her birthday.

For girls who’ve been around longer or more consistently, high-quality but inexpensive jewelry can be good. For example the company Diamond Foundry makes cultivated diamonds. I know and you should know that diamonds are bullshit but most chicks have been brainwashed and marketed into loving them anyway. Diamond Foundry will sell necklaces with real gold and real diamonds far cheaper than conventional jewelers. If you know a guy in the jewelry business (I do), he may also be able to help you buy pre-owned necklaces, which are far cheaper than new ones. Don’t go this route unless you have a trusted expert, however, as there is probably no industry except modeling that is more lie-filled than jewelry.

Ignore the above if you’re short of cash. If you have lots of cash,  consider it.

Vibrators and other sex toys also make good gifts.

Anyway, a guy who delivers a little bit of comfort you will set yourself off from most player assholes. The key phrase is “a little bit.” One of the commenters to my earlier post said,

Shit Test – Too little masculine polarity.

Comfort Test – Too much masculine polarity.

Well-stated. I have been both and while you should err towards too much masculine polarity, you can overdo it. I have, and I made women pointlessly suffer by being too aloof. I’ve also made women drop off far faster than they would have otherwise.

If you are like me, you might get over your initial challenges and then decide that you’re too badass to deal with her feelings or to deign to remember birthdays or holidays.

This will both make her feel bad (as well as used) and reduce your performance. A couple dollars, a box, and an air of mystery will go a long way. A little comfort also goes a long way and you should be 80 – 90% aloof, mysterious asshole, but that tenderness will up your game. There is a good book, Mate: Become the Man Women Want, that uses the term “Tender Defender” for what women want and like. They want a guy who isn’t a p***y but who isn’t mean to them. When I was younger I went through phases where I was like, “I’m so fucking hard, I’m the boss, I don’t do fucking Valentine’s day,” dumb shit like that. That was a slightly better stance than giving girls I hadn’t fucked flowers in public… but it wasn’t ideal either.

If a girl is investing emotionally in a guy, she may start testing him for comfort, as she doesn’t want to invest deeply in a guy who is going to hurt her or who just wants t ouse her for sex. Contrary to what some pickup guys say, girls DO get very emotionally invested in a guy… just a very small subset of guys who she picks to get emotionally invested in. Once she’s become invested in a guy, she wants to protect herself, and she’ll do that by testing to see if the guy is invested in her as well. That’s the comfort test. If you don’t comfort her when she needs comfort, she will disengage and bitterly call you a “player” or “fuck boy” or similar.

(Adapted from a previous version, [Intermediate to advanced game] Valentine’s Day is coming up. That can be a comfort test. Similar ideas apply to Christmas and Valentine’s Day. I was listening to the Torero podcast on contrasts and realized I should update.)

Bizarrely, Pamela Anderson is the voice of reason: “You know what you’re getting into if you’re going into a hotel room alone”

I’m as surprised as anyone by “Pamela Anderson Doesn’t Care If You Disagree With Her Hollywood Sexual-Harassment Stance: ‘Backlash Is Good’:”

“You know what you’re getting into if you’re going into a hotel room alone,” Anderson explained on Thursday’s program. “Don’t go into a hotel room alone. If someone answers the door in a bathrobe, leave. This is things that are common sense, but I know Hollywood is very seductive and the people want to be famous. Sometimes you think you are going to be safe with an adult in a room. I don’t know where this security comes from, but somehow I dodged it all.” She also recounted her sole encounter with Weinstein while working on the film Superhero Movie, whom she called “very intimidating.”

I wouldn’t have thought Pamela Anderson would be one of the very few sane voices in the mainstream media, but she is. She also seems to want women to be treated like adults, rather than children (or adults when it’s convenient and children when it’s not).

There is not much to this post apart from surprise and a statement that it’s pleasant to see someone, somewhere, stand up for personal responsibility, rather than calling for witch hunts and infantilization.

Some other women who stand up for personal responsibility include Camille Paglia and Laura Kipnis. Too many so-called “feminists” are just whiners and complainers.

The best books for learning game

Guys should start with Neil Strauss, The Game and Rules of the Game: they’re slightly dated and anything about “negging” should be ignored, at least at first… know that “Negging” is really push-pull or what Torero and Krauser call “fractionation.” The rest of the book is still more right than not, and Neil Strauss is a very good writer… both books are also “mainstream” enough to give to your friends, even as a joke. Neil Strauss describes how he read evolutionary biology books that reinforced and supported the game he was learning. Another early writer is Mystery and his book The Mystery Method also has a lot of present-day applicability. If you are an intermediate or advanced guy, my own free book about sex clubs and non-monogamy is useful and, to my knowledge, original: no one else has covered this subject. But it assumes the guy already has solid game skills.

For clueless guys and even some intermediate guys, it’s helpful to understand biological programming. Whether you want it to or not, biology drives us more than culture. Women don’t have that much choice in who they are attracted to, just like guys don’t. Guys can try to force themselves to be attracted to older or fatter women, but it just doesn’t work, right? The number of 45 or 50 year old women a guy will be attracted to is very close to zero, unless the guy himself is aged 60+. A 22-year-old hottie will make any guy look twice, especially over his 45-year-old wife. Maybe he’ll overcome his primal urge through conscious effort but it will remain. Girls are the same way but their criteria is not exactly the same for reasons that make sense from an evolutionary biology perspective.

I actually don’t think it matters very much where you start with game books, as long as you read a lot and more importantly immediately try to apply what you read. Too much reading in the absence of practice is masturbatory.

What else a guy should read depends on where he starts and what sticking points he has. Guys in high school and college will have different needs and ecosystems than guys who are 30 or 40 or 40+. If guys in high school and college try London daygame cold approach or Strauss-Mystery Method they are going to become weird outcasts quickly. They need more friendship, social circle, and connection techniques. Some techniques and mindsets described by London daygame and Strauss-Mystery are still applicable, but “cold approach” is for big, anonymous cities.

“Sticking points” will occur at different levels. For example the Reddit user MattyAnon suggests The Sex God Method, and that is a good book but will be of less use to very inexperienced guys. For guys who are getting laid but are not skilled or confident enough in bed it will be extremely useful, maybe even essential. The book She Comes First is also useful and extremely recommended. Teenage guys should all be gifted a copy of this book, and even sexual veterans can probably learn a thing or two.

One of the best game posts I’ve read is by Krauser, “Reveal vs Restructure,”

I think it comes down to which side of this divide you fall on. Is your Journey a process of:

* Uncovering a pre-existing SMV and personality that is attractive to women, or;

* Ridding yourself of a Pussy Repellent virus and then building an attractive man from scratch.

A guy who is uncovering preexisting value will be different from a guy who has to build a lot of value. The latter guy may be a fat, psychologically messed up guy who needs to learn how to cook, how to quit eating sugar, how to use the gym, how to move his body, how to dress himself properly and get his clothes tailored, and why he needs to physically move to a city and get out of suburbs or rural areas. He must start now, though results may not come for a very long time. But he has no choice. He must struggle, or pay for it, or be alone. Chicks are savage in their evaluation of men.

Although this isn’t a book, I like the website Good Looking Loser because it’s about an attractive guy overcoming his own psychological barriers, and more attractive guys than you’d think need help with that. Some attractive guys have limiting beliefs and other issues that prevent them from achieving up to their level. The guy who wrote GLL has some problems and limits of his own, which I leave it as an exercise to the reader to spot. Also he advertises a bunch of garbage (“Kratom”) that needs to be ignored.

For books, I wrote about the Torero book Daygame, and that is a good read. Krauser has good books too. There is a purple pill book, Mate, by evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller and writer Tucker Max, and I think it’s worth reading as well.

For guys who need help with fitness, Starting Strength is good and so is the 5×5 method or any number of others. The important thing is to start and make some progress, and track progress.

Many people like the Mark Manson book Models. It isn’t my favorite but so many guys like it that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

Over time it is very important to understand how women think and how women evaluate men. There isn’t a single book that is best for this subject but all of the books recommended will help build this mental map.

My Secret Garden, by Nancy Friday, is all about women’s depraved sex fantasies, so if you have trouble realizing that chicks want to be totally dominated and used hard by the right guy, read it. Women prefer written porn and guys prefer visual porn, so to understand what gets women off you need to read, while also realizing that erotic material has its place but also often differs from real life.

Personally, I used to read a lot more novels than I do now. Great fiction is still wonderful but so much fiction is about people who are psychologically damaged or who are just dumb. For game-aware guys, watching fictional guys step on their dicks is painful. Usually the answer to their dilemmas is “escalate,” “lift,” or “find a new girl.” In most novels the answer is to keep pouring attention into a single hot girl, who by the end of the story comes around, exactly like most girls don’t in real life.

There is still great fiction but it is usually not about relationships… fiction teaches you about how people think and interact, and not reading it is a mistake.

If you haven’t already, on your journey you will learn that there is life beyond game and,  without personality and outside interests, you will never break into the highest girl tier for longer-term relationships, whether open or closed. Sex is like oxygen or water, because when you’re getting enough it recedes in importance, and when you’re not getting enough it becomes the focal point of your entire life (not my original metaphor but it’s a good one). When you’re confident that you can get acceptable sex in a tolerable timeframe your whole outlook changes and that’s what people mean by “abundance mentality.” It’s not just a mentality, it’s a fact of existence. Abundance mentality ensures that no chick can occupy your entire mental space without your consent. There are also “threshold effects” for many chicks, in terms not only of hotness but also, for many, in terms of  interests, psychology, life functioning, etc. If you are an attractive guy with decent game but no other interests, for example, a lot of hot girls who have an IQ threshold or “energy” threshold will not be that into you.

The more you read and learn, the more you will realize how most people, including most girls, are dumb… or if not “dumb,” then they don’t connect their behaviors to their lives. You also learn that almost no one has a complete and total handle on the game and sex. There is always another nuance.

“More than half of U.S. kids will be obese by the time they’re 35, study predicts”

“More than half of U.S. kids will be obese by the time they’re 35, study predicts.” No shit. Just look around. Outside of a handful of elite enclaves (L.A., Denver), the United States is full of fatties stuffing simple sugars into their faces. Anyone who wants supernormal outcomes must put forth supernormal effort.

If you want good results, don’t be like the fatties. Quit sugar.