“Where PUAs go to die”

Tom Torero has an interesting essay, “Where PUAs go to die,” which has some notes you’ll recognize from “I was also wondering if I really wanted to stay in the Game.” Beginner guys should not read either, but intermediate and advanced guys age 30+ might find them profitable.

Torero point #3, “Boredom,” is tied to and precedes Torero point #1, “They get married / under-the-thumb and denounce the player life.” Except I don’t think guys who quit being players have to denounce being a player (although maybe they do; we all have a narrative and our narrative memes we like to propagate almost as much as our genetic legacy).

I’m not sure I have enough experience or lifestyle to be a “player,” though some women have told me I am. But I have been feeling bored with the pickup-seduction-bed-repeat process. The end result, sex, is still worthwhile, but the process is less exciting and I’m less willing to put up with female bullshit in pursuit of sex than I used to be.

Tom has had at least some similar feeling, because in his book Daygame he says near the end, “Despite all of this sounding like a rock star’s life, the novelty of having lots of sex with hot girls had really worn off.” For me the novelty has worn off a little bit, but I still like the sex just not the process. Somewhere in the book I’m pretty sure Tom says that he likes the seduction challenge as much as or even more than the sex, while I feel the opposite way…  or I am lazier, which is a hypothesis that should never be discarded.

Boredom is often a sign that we need to find new challenges and develop new skills. When I first started dating and sleeping with women as a teenager I was never bored and I was a total hound for sex. Now I’m too often bored and I almost “know” too much about sex. The prettiest women often have underdeveloped personalities, too. Not all of them, certainly, but a lot.

Guys who experience enough boredom probably look to kids and the next generation as their next challenge. Maybe I will never have the life mate that blue pill society tells us to find. That’s okay with me as I’m not seeking one, but I also can’t foresee myself forever chasing fresh tail.

Almost all the guys in game have a narrative about doing poorly with women in high school and their 20s. I had the opposite experience (with many errors that I now recognize of course, neediness and too little escalating being more prominent) and I theorize that after 50 – 100 different girls the hunger for pure novelty is lessened or more satisfied. One begins to seek other qualities or challenges.

For now, tail is good. I brought Bike Girl to that sex party, and it was successful, I thought, and she kissed some women (something she claimed to have only done once before, “claimed” being the key word). I will write more about that later. I also am meaning to finish my writing about Tom’s book Daygame, which is highly recommended. Work, sex, and real life have been occupying me.

I also have a post about sex clubs, non-monogamy, and game. That route may be a way of “weaseling” out of cold approach. Or as I think of it, efficiency. Regardless of what it’s called, I’m still surprised more game guys don’t try it.

I will never denounce players! The game goes on forever, even when I exit this earth and find it left to the guys after me.

Maybe lies make the social world go round.

Feminism’s internal contradictions as seen through Playboy

“The Contradictory Feminist Legacy Of Playboy’s Hugh Hefner” is hilarious because it doesn’t actually say anything about Hefner. Hefner wanted to sleep with tons of hot girls and he did it. There is nothing really contradictory there. He liked sex positivity and sexual freedom for women because those things aided his interests in sleeping with tons of hot girls.

Real players like sex positivity and sexual freedom for women for the same reasons. Encouraging women to be sexually free and have lots of sex is in the interest of players. A lot of low-status guys who are learning Red Pill teachings are still angry about female nature or hate the way they have to offer support, resources, and their entire being just entice a woman to be with them.

Feminists are ambivalent. Some are sex positive because “freedom” or “equality” or just cause they like sex too. At the same time, though, being sex positive lowers the “cost” of sex to men. So guys, especially top guys, are less willing to invest time, resources, and energy into any individual woman. So when women get out of their 20s and want kids and “something serious…” they suddenly find that most of the top guys won’t go for it!

Oh no! What horror! The guy won’t invest in them. Which is what most women (still) want. Material conditions have changed a lot in the last 50 years, but human psychology still hasn’t.

Women also want to perceive themselves as victims. I have a half-written post on that subject as well. If anything goes wrong in a woman’s life, or if she doesn’t like her choices, it’s the fault of a man or men in general.

But Hefner in the end is simple. He wanted hot girls and lots of them. And he got them. All players are to some extent living his legacy.

So are women. Many are not so happy about it as early feminists thought they’d be. It turns out that when men don’t have to invest resources in a woman to get sex in return, a lot of men won’t invest resources in a woman.

Remember that evolutionary biology underlies game. Learn it, and a lot of female ambivalence and internal contradiction becomes clear.

The original HuffPo writer detects a little of these basic forces, but she’s like a pre-scientific-revolution person seeing a solar eclipse. She can see the sun occluded and understands darkness, but she has no idea why. Hell, I can tell her why, but I don’t think she’ll want to listen.

“But this other guy says…”

There’s a genre of response to game and RP writing that goes, “But this other guy says x and you say y, what gives? Is he right? Don’t you want to be right?” Some guy read “Anyone doing any online dating needs to learn basic photography skills” and also read others saying the opposite.

Don’t believe everything you read online and try things yourself. In my view, “Red Pill” thinking is about giving guys the tools to think about their lives and make the changes necessary to succeed—whatever “success” means in their life. If online dating works, and it’s hard to do well for all but the absurdly attractive, then great. If it doesn’t, then don’t do it. I’ve learned through a lot of trial and error what works and what doesn’t. Over more than a decade I’ve built up the photography skills and lifestyle to make it work for me. Sometimes, somewhat.

What do you need? I have no idea. I’ve never met you and know zero about you. Life is so full of richness and context that I see these absurd threads online where guys ask this or that, and often I’m like, “Without knowing so, so much more about you, I have no idea.” That’s part of the reason I like game writers who also write books: the good books break down so much material in a way that can’t be done in 300 word chunks on forums.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to live their life, but I am sharing some of the things I’ve learned or think I’ve learned. Some of them are probably wrong, which is why you need to try things for yourself. I also have weaknesses of my own and am sure that my own game is technically weaker than many of the guys in the sidebar. That’s why they’re listed in the sidebar.

I’m not a woman screeching about how the other guy is WRONG WRONG WRONG and don’t you think so too, Katelyn, right, tell me Katelyn, how WRONG is that?!? Like I said, try things for yourself. Think for yourself. I don’t have all the answers. I am not a guru. I can only encourage you to read for yourself, think about your goals, and take action to pursue them. You will learn more from one hour on the streets than in ten hours of reading guys online.

Any kind of success in a significant field comes from the mastery of many details. It’s rarely, maybe never, the single detail that matters. It’s putting them together the right way. That’s why most guys who write about game emphasize style, fit, hobbies, development, storytelling, escalation, overcoming AA, getting finances in order, lifting, logistics, and a couple of other topics. Lots of guys get one or two of those things right. Putting them all together in the right way is what wins.

Guys, branch swinging, and the low-effort shot

This morning I chatted up a girl in a coffeeshop whose order was screwed up. Don’t remember everything I said but I told her that it sucks to be at the stage of your career when you’re getting other people coffee. It was a cold read but a true one. We chatted for a bit and I told her to give me her number and we’ll get together sometime. She said she had a boyfriend, I said that’s okay, and she laughed and still said no.

A completely normal interaction, but I thought about it because I’ve been seeing Bike Girl but I still want to keep my skills somewhat sharp. Approach and escalation skills can deteriorate fast.

It’s also good to take the random shots that show up in your life because you never know when one might succeed. Around the time I started writing about the Red Pill I was closing out a relationship with a girl who I started seeing when she was 19. That was a low-effort shot and I happened to snare a “yes girl” who was looking for something exciting in her life. She was (and likely still is) the somewhat rare girl who is considerably hotter nude than clothed; clothed I judge her a center-of-the-road 7, and nude I judge her a high 8 (if she learns how to dress better she will get more and high-quality male attention).

We saw each other for about a year and a half. Like some other girls she required very little “game.” Well, apart from status, style, frame, posture… all the pre-reqs. Point is, it’s always a good idea to take the low effort shots when they appear. Sometimes the girls are ready for something new in their life. This morning’s girl wasn’t, but if I’d met her at another point she might’ve been.

I’m seeing Bike Girl, but just as girls “branch swing” into new relationships, it’s useful for guys to test their place in the sexual marketplace too. Not necessarily for a better offer, not automatically, but to see who is reacting and how they’re reacting (it’s possible to “friend zone” chicks in order to keep them on deck, but most guys lack the game and lifestyle to make this a reality). Girls can sense a guy with options and when you take the easy shot you make sure, first of all to yourself, that you have options.

Sex clubs, swingers, and game

I’m sure that some of you read #8 in “Why so many women cheat on their husbands” and were like, “LOL What? No:” that’s okay, it’s cool, hedonistic top sexual experiences aren’t for everybody… yet I’m surprised I’ve not read any of the better game writers confront this subject. Lots discuss basic threeways (there are a bunch of threeway stories in Tom Torero’s Daygame) but none I’ve read  have gone so far as to systematize group sex. Am I missing a writer who has gone this road? Shoot me a comment.

Consensual non-monogamy is harder to pitch to the average chick than one-on-one dating, but in my opinion it’s more honest for a guy uninterested in a wife and family. It’s an especially useful frame for players. Beyond honesty, it may be more efficient, too… about a quarter of girls dump me or flat out refuse when I mention it. About a quarter are gung-ho. About half are ambivalent. I don’t think it’s wise to bring up non-monogamy until you’ve been sleeping together for a while and she’s firmly converted into your frame. Players know the tipping point when chicks flip from evaluating the man for sex to knowing the man is evaluating her for a relationship. For most chicks, it’s valuable to get past that point before dropping the sex-club omb.

Three very good sex sessions is a rule of thumb for strong conversion, but every guy must learn for himself what strong conversion means and how long it takes a given girl to get there. Some girls are also fundamentally non-monogamous in a masculine sort of way and they will never be deeply converted. Some guys don’t want to recognize this but it’s true.

Neil Strauss’s Game sequel, The Truth (a great book you should also read even if you disagree with the end) has him exploring non-monogamy:

I look up and see a yoga stud from Kamala’s pod.

“Have you rounded up any more girls?” the orbiter asks him.

Kamala Devi and Shamal Helena said polyamory was about loving relationships, not casual sex. But these guys seem more like next-level pickup artists, coming to these conferences with the intention of sucking any available women into their powerful reality.

“These guys seem more like next-level pickup artists:” let that sink in.

Why haven’t pick-up artists figured this out? It’s a way to more efficiently up your notch count through girl-trading.

I rarely see attractive and super overtly polyamorous people… the attractive ones are usually quiet about their unusual lifestyle, rather than trying to flaunt it and be political about it. But I have seen lots of attractive open relationship people, and when the guy is driving it can be very powerful. Granted, some of the girls in that scene are more psycho than average. The people deepest in, I stay away from. But some of the girls in the scene are fantastic. Remember that there is no escape from frame or sexual market value (SMV). If the former is strong and the latter is high, it can be next-level game.

I’ve not written comprehensively about open relationships and game but I did talk about them in “Women want to follow your lead: a story about a woman presenting two ways.”

Guys who are doing it right are trading hot women. That’s it, value for value. Obviously people try to defect but defectors can be punished. A guy who does not bring value to the venue will fail. A guy who brings hot chicks to the venue will often succeed. Game enables a guy to meet, seduce, and then introduce the hot chicks. Without game, even good-looking guys will often fail, not succeed as they should.

In my view, non-monogamy could be the next level of game. Most guys, however, don’t understand how non-monogamy can be used by players to solve retention problems and increase novelty.

Addition: This post and others like it form the basis of the free ebook I wrote about sex clubs, non-monogamy, and game. If you want a comprehensive of how this world works, the hidden principles underlying sex clubs, and how to integrate non-monogamy into the game, read the book.

I sensed the “what are we?” conversation

I sensed the “what are we?” conversation with Bike Girl, but, before it could happen, I preempted it by asking if she wants to go to a sex party some friends are hosting. I know she’ll be very popular there, maybe too popular. She was hesitant and asked a million questions but we have a tentative agreement to go and not have sex with anyone else there. A good first effort, one that I wasn’t sure would be successful. A lot of girls will break over this issue. She may break.

The other day I was meeting her at a bar and had this intense conversation with a beautiful woman, and I fell into auto-game with her, despite the many blowouts recently. I mean intense: eye to eye, light touching, her facing me quickly, rapport. As my forebrain kicked in to demand that I try for a number and roll off, Bike Girl showed.

Still a nice reminder after the failures.

Bike Girl likes being my model, likes it when I tape sex (whatever, it’s a thing for me), likes lots of other stuff. But her apartment is a horror show. Not hoarder-level, but definitely “I could never live with you,” level. That I’m thinking about it is a weakness.

I like her.

“Why so many women cheat on their husbands”

I love it when the Red Pill leaks into the larger media, as it does in “Why so many women cheat on their husbands: Women are cheating more than ever. So what does that tell us about marriage?” I’m tempted to answer, “Who cares? The important thing guys need to know is simple: Don’t get married. No marriage, no problem.” While true, there are a few deeper lessons.

1. Be the guy she cheats with, not the guy she cheats on. All guys specialize to some degree in being the provider guy or the bad boy sex guy. In today’s society the latter wins. Women make more money than ever and are more independent than ever. Even women who don’t make any money would still rather sleep with fun bad boys. Specialize accordingly.
2. Evolutionary biology underpins game. Learn it and understand it. In a resource-constrained society, provider guys are much more likely to win and fun-loving bad boys are much more likely to die (unless they’re rich). That describes a lot of human history since the development of agriculture, but it sure doesn’t describe today.
3. Hit the gym. Pretty obvious.
4. Learn game. Be entertaining. Women are surrounded by a sea of boring guys.
5. Always with the paternity test. You never really know it’s yours until the DNA says as much.
6. Don’t get married, but you already know that. Have kids without the marriage contract. Marriage was a fine contract in a world that enforced fidelity and monogamy, but it makes no sense in a world that doesn’t.
7. Don’t be her emotional tampon:

Not long after, another told me that while she’d never had sex with another man, she’d had so many emotional affairs and inappropriate email correspondences over the years that she’d had to buy a separate hard drive to store them all.

Always move to the physical and if you can’t get there, cut her off. I’ve had women like these, who love the thrill but won’t go the distance. Get rid of them. Up or out.

8. Because she’s never yours and it’s only your turn, I prefer consensual, mutual non-monogamy in the form of swinging and sex clubs. They’re more fun and more honest than pretending to be monogamous and then not doing that. Most guys who go have no game, so they always bring the same person; if you bring different hot girls into that atmosphere you will have your pick.

The more game I’ve needed the worse the relationship has been

I was reading “Honest observations after eight years in the game” and got to thinking: the more game I’ve needed to get a particular girl, or the more I’ve had to run game on her, the worse the relationship has been. The ones who are bitchy, constantly testing, and most difficult can be good in bed but the relationships themselves are never the best. Those women are only good as friends with benefits, and even then the “friends” part stretches the definition of the word.

The ones who just wanted me and the sex and let everything lead into that have been the most pleasant to deal with and over time the best in bed. Over time this has become my own test: How much game did I need to get this woman? The more game, the more likely I am to jettison her or keep her in a distant rotation.

It’s amazing to me that many women think playing hard to get and being unpleasant to be around is somehow a way to get and keep a man: maybe they think they’re somehow testing men, without realizing that they’re filtering out the best guys, and the ones who stick around can’t find pleasant women. Being unpleasant will likely yield up some casual sex for women, from men who persevere despite their attitude, but it’s a terrible way to get a relationship. Over time, the guys who persist most will be the ones with no other options. Guys with options will find a woman who’s more pleasant to be around, and “pleasant to be around” starts with the first interaction. Soiling the first interaction is often like screwing up the foundation of a building: there’s no real way to fix some problems.

Bike Girl was pleasant when I met her, pleasant in texting, pleasant on the first date, and has been pleasant since. So was the gorgeous 19-year-old I met a couple years ago and dated for almost two. Most of the relationships I’ve ended prematurely ended because the girl was the opposite. The more “game,” I’ve needed, the more I realized (usually sooner) that the girl couldn’t and shouldn’t be anything more than a lover or FWB. The more I’ve felt “tested,” the more I’ve known the girl is no good or no good for me. Next!

No wonder relationships in the U.S. are f**ked.

This isn’t an “actionable” post and doesn’t matter much for guys who want to hit ‘n’ run. But guys who are still being chosen, rather than being the choosers, should know that your whole world changes when you do more choosing. You learn a lot, quickly.

My pet theory: people get discontent with what they have

I have a pet theory: People who are in very long-term relationships get bored of their partner and eventually crave something new, different, or novel. You may read that sentence and go, “Oh yeah, then I should be a player forever!”

The other part of the pet theory is that people who are always having short-term relationships and experiences eventually feel anomie, loneliness, existential meaninglessness, and a longing for deeper connection to another human being. Cue me: “Ramblings about a change in perspective towards game and life.”

I don’t see a way of resolving that tension. The long-term players I read (Krauser, Tom Torero, etc.) make me wonder if they really are going to be picking up girls forever—in another decade, are they still going to be stopping a girl to say that she looks like a greyhound, or like she just got out of yoga but didn’t have time to change?

Maybe the answer is yes. This is not going to be one of those dumb posts about how PUAs are eventually going to recant and shack up. I’ve shacked up (too young, granted) and I’ve been on the market for a long time and neither worked for me. Looking at the world around me, I see most couples eventually tiring of each other and descending into squabbling, and I see most singles tiring of the dating grind and the Groundhog Day effect of casual sex.

I begin to think that humans are by our nature discontent, and there is no final answer.

But I don’t know how a person lays out a life or plans well for the future that way.

For a long time I’ve been a sex-positive, sex-is-the-center-of-life person. Now I’m reading the Mark Regnerus book Cheap Sex, first referenced here, and he lays out many of the downsides of the sex-for-all, all-the-time culture that I believe in. He is wrong or at least misguided about some things, like the way he underemphasizes the extent to which modern sex and dating is driven by women’s desires to date and marry “up.” Women who consciously stop playing that game find a guy and get married. Women who feel the need to always move up, they often don’t.

But his chapter on “The Genital Life” makes me think. Maybe there is something hollow about what I’ve been doing. Maybe like everything, done long enough, it gets boring eventually. I don’t know. But I do know I’ve been at it for a long time. But if I really changed and “settled down” (I hate that phrase), I think I’d eventually get bored again.

Like I said in my ramble, I think it’s telling that almost all the online PUAs who write books and keep blogs had a substandard high school, college, and early 20s experience. Just like Neil Strauss.

Maybe guys do eventually work it out of their system.

To be sure, I’m not saying that I think tagging new chicks is bad. I still get that thrill. But afterwards, now, I more often get the, “Is that it?” feeling. And it is more of a feeling than a verbal question. The answer might be “yes,” and I have to focus on the positive. Most guys never achieve game skills or abundance, I think. So even getting to that point is amazing and I’m blessed for it.

The question is… what’s next? What then?

Maybe I know too much for long-term relationships. Knowledge can poison. For most guys, the answer is likely children.

Game starts with concrete skills and ends with philosophy.

Frame control technique: “You only get to ask one question, then I get a question!”

I met a couple of bike girl‘s friends tonight and one in particular kept shit testing me, hard (which is weird because bike girl does almost no shit testing, and I like that, a lot, about her). I used a favorite technique for redirecting conversation: when a bunch of rapid fire questions come in a row, announce, “You get a question, then I get a question.” Kind of like the trade-off in truth or date.

Delivered correctly, this will often redirect the conversation, and the shit test will be forgotten. Tonight, one of the friends wanted to know my age, and I gave some variant of my favorite shit answer (“old enough to know better but young enough not to care”). This, along with some other stuff, got her riled, but I actually did pretty well by treating her like a puppy. When she called me condescending I just shrugged, nodded, and smiled a little. At some point she gave me some bullshit again and I pulled another favorite line that I’ve been tinkering with over the past couple years, “What can I say? I’m used to giving people orders.”

It leads either to a subject change or a great set of follow-ups. It’s also somewhat true in my case. I wish I hadn’t fallen for so many shit tests in high school and college, but back then no one openly discussed them and there was no “game” like there is now.

I see that Tom Torero has a podcast about shit tests as well. Probably a good listen for anyone with shit tests as a sticking point. I’m not that good at them most of the time, but I am very good at being non-reactive (a side effect of not being good at neutrality when I was younger and would rise to the bait).