What to learn from famous guys, acting over the long term

I’m interested in what we can learn from famous guys, the actors and athletes and musicians, and how they structure their romantic lives, and you can see that interest in rambles like “When you’ve done it all, what then?” Those famous guys can get any and every kind of woman they want, and a lot of them spend some years laying out a lot of women. But… most of them wind up with long-term girlfriends and most of them even marry (then a lot of them divorce, like everyone else). Adam Sandler, to pick one example, could still be in the game as much as he wants… instead, “Movies shoot in summer, so he can bring his kids to set. During the year, the workday is arranged to allow him to drop them off at school and pick them up.” This isn’t a guy trying to max out his body count. Lots of other famous guys, guys who could have whoever, also don’t seem to be trying to max their body counts. What’s that mean?

Being in the game is many things, and one of those things is “amplifying normal ups and downs.” The highs can be very high but the lows very low, and extreme promiscuity comes with costs. I think about the highs because, as with drugs, loving the “high” too much can be dangerous, particularly for older guys. Building a peer group is important for almost every person, and guys into the game seem to also be alienated loners, often struggling with our own pasts, presents, and personalities. It’s also harder to build a real-world peer group when you’re constantly chasing chicks, in a way that few guys do, and that few guys can relate to.

There is something to the idea that “Age is just a state of mind.” To the idea, “You’re only as old as the woman you feel.” But there is also something to the idea that, over time, doors do close. Lives change. People change. Peer groups change. Paul Janka hits this on the Torero podcast, and he says he got out of the game for a bunch of reasons, including that his friends were hanging up their pickup spurs and getting married and having kids.

I don’t really have a place I’m going with this. I’m thinking aloud. Some people, guys and women, like the sex club thing as a couple because that allows the intimacy and partnership of a relationship with the novelty and ecstacy of the chase and new partners. The most successful couples in that world still put each other first. I bet a lot of the Hollywood guys, the musician guys, who get into long-term things have a little something on the side now and then, but they put their primary person first. To do otherwise is to destroy the integrity of the primary relationship. The famous guys have problems with loneliness and meaning, like the rest of us. Maybe worse, in some ways, because someone always wants something from them (women know what straight guys are after, too). If I stop hustling, very soon, no one but my real friends and my family will want anything from me. Parts of the human conditions are real dark, and they are contingent on performance. We can try to understand it, but we cannot overcome it.

Think about girls, too. There is a lot of red pill talk about hypergamy and girls behaving badly, and there’s truth to that. However, in addition to the truth, there’s also some selection bias. I don’t want to repeat the whole essay at the link, but… “Guys who have successful relationships with functional women don’t seem very likely to end up writing for the Red Pill. Guys who get cheated on, dumped, etc. seem much more likely to end up reading the Red Pill, looking for answers, and venting on it.” “The women who react to street pickup are probably not a random sample of women, so drawing conclusions about all women can be dangerous.” Same with the women you meet online. I know some women, some of them very hot, who have never done online. I also know some women who did online for a very short period because they wanted a long-term relationship and when they found a guy who they like and who is reasonably within reasonable parameters, they stuck with him. Those are the kinds of women who are repelled by player vibes.

Game, at its best, allows human connections to flourish, “I will confess… the two ‘bottomed out’ periods of my life coincided with me backing off of game. I’m not certain the lack of game CAUSED those periods, I don’t think that was true… but game is an organizational force in my life, and I realize the utility there.” At its worst, it is guys trying to extract value, and extracting it from women who know what’s going on and are maybe attracted to that kind of thing. Trying to maintain that positive mindset can be one of the toughest things in game… and in life, in the face of adversity, rejection, etc. It’s something I struggle with. One way to contextualize struggle is to look at what others are doing and how they are dealing with the same conditions. Rich famous guys are different in many ways from normal guys, but not totally different, and we should think about what they choose to do.

All dogmas are to be avoided.