Bike Girl is finally over

I think Bike Girl is finally over. She wants to move in and I don’t want her to. Years ago I swore off cohabitating with a woman, and although I think I’ll break that “rule” eventually, it won’t be for Bike Girl. She’s just inside the lower bound of the age range I’d consider, but she reads younger in a lot of ways and is too immature for me.

I don’t think she’s ever met a guy with definite boundaries before. The more she invests in me, the more I pull away, and the more she invests. For the last couple months that’s been driving her crazy.  I think she thinks I’m playing some kind of game with her, and if she can just find the optimal strategy, she can win.

Except that’s totally wrong. I’m not playing a game, I’m living my life. And my life has a bunch of features that most people’s lives don’t have. I don’t want to “advance” the relationship towards cohabitation and, eventually I suspect, kids. It is very hard for someone who thinks in terms of games to interact with someone who doesn’t. There is a negotiation component to my work and there is not a negotiation component to Bike Girl’s work.

She’s already threatened to break up with me before, and I said, “Okay.” I don’t think she expected that.

I’m occasionally seeing someone (a few someones… they’re like comets, swinging back in for a bang…) from the non-monogamous scene, and if I can see the chick from the scene once or twice a week, that would be fantastic. Since late September or early October I’ve been seeing Bike Girl around every other day.

The likely outcome from here is that Bike Girl and I keep having occasional sex (most girls will indulge in relapse sex with an ex because it doesn’t “count”) until she finds her next guy. I don’t think she has an active branch swing planned, but with chicks you never know for sure. I’ve never looked through her phone or attempted to invade her privacy and in my view if she thinks she has a better offer, she should take it.

It’s an attitude not a lot of guys have. I didn’t have it in my early 20s. It took time to develop.

I think Bike Girl learned a lot from me. I taught her about photography (a couple of pics she took may end up on future dating profiles, if or when I use online dating again), cooking, and how to think about career. She is smart but unfocused and has reached an age where “smart but unfocused” just reads as “unfocused.” A kid can get away with having potential. An adult must convert potential into achievement.

One day, if I cohabitate again, it will be with separate bedrooms. Sleepovers will be a choice. Too little distance extinguishes the erotic spark. Women press for smothering togetherness then act surprised when that act extinguishes their libido. It makes them complacent. As guys, we have to learn how relationships work and how to lead.

I talk a big game in the paragraphs above, but I feel melancholy. I like Bike Girl. But I also don’t want to waste years of her prime childbearing life . I’m kind of glad she is making the right long-term choice for herself. I feel the temptation to fold and hang onto her, even as I know that’s the wrong choice for her and for me.  She is fun in bed and has a personality that works with mine, in this stage of our relationship.

I also wonder if she will keep pursuing open relationships and other women without me pushing for it. I don’t think so but give it a 33% chance.

I find myself wondering when I’ll start my last new relationship. Right now I have this powerful sense of déjà vu. Been there, done that, doing it again. It makes me feel old. Sometimes I feel very young. Not right now. Right now, I feel like I’ve done this too many times. I know the steps too well. I need a different dance. How can you tell the dancer from the dance?

“I don’t know who I am anymore”

Bike Girl told me, “I don’t know who I am anymore,” and she was referencing sex clubs and group sex dates. I didn’t handle her as well as I could have, I think because I’ve been through this before and I couldn’t get up the emotional affect necessary to deal with it properly. Instead, I was half engaged during the conversation, and the lack of true engagement about what she saw as a huge issue confused her and, I think, made her try even harder to explain what she was feeling. She’s pretty and used to guys being deeply into her… I am deeply into her p***y, I’ll say that much.

I reassured her that she is a good girl and that I’m watching out for her and that she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do. The conversation is one I’ve had before, too many times, and I didn’t adequately hide that. I think she fears losing me to other women at sex parties… for kind of good reasons. Sex with a new person is very intense and humans, especially women, are primed to pair bond with guys they have sex with. I don’t know how to say this without being arrogant, but I combine looks / masculinity / presence and career / money / earning effectively, or more effectively than most guys. Most guys do the one or the other. Realistically, most guys do neither, but most attractive, dominant guys have weak careers and most strong career guys are fat and repulsive. Or at least look like they’ve spent their life on their careers.

So Bike Girl is having, both an identity and relationship crisis (or doubts) at once. Having caught her, I need to release her. We’ve been talking explicitly about open relationships and how to live non-monogamously, and for her I think it’s a lot to take in. For most girls it is. Some chicks have been searching for this kind of thing for their entire lives and take right to it, but they’re in the minority.

It takes some delicate, consistent re-programming to get an average woman into a non-monogamous mindset. There are non-average women who like sex enough, or who have sufficiently damaged emotions, or who have adventurous personalities, to jump right in. They’re the exception. It may also depend on who has greater investment in the relationship, and how good the guy is at soothing the woman. Since I’m almost always less invested than the woman, the women is more worried about losing me.

But with non-monogamy, she can lose me two ways: she can lose me by agreeing (and thus seeing me have sex with other women) but she can also lose me by not agreeing, because she’s not doing what all those other dirty chicks will do. I’m good at implying, without being too explicit, what all those other girls did… will this one live up to their examples? I hope she wants to win. Her serving me is an excellent frame for a relationships.

Bike Girl is caught, psychologically, in other words, and last night I saw her thrashing in this trap. This contradiction. To her it’s all new. But to me it’s not. I’ve been in it for long enough to see the problems. Because of my relative experience, I’ve held back more, and let her take a lot of the first steps with others, and worked to let her get comfortable. For example, it’s common for a person (guy, realistically) with a new partner to let her be the focus of the other couple, and for the person (guy) not to have sex with the other woman the first time, in order to let the partner acclimate.

I’ve done some of that. Last night was also a reaction to the couple from New Year’s Eve, who I mentioned. The woman is incredibly beautiful, and she makes Bike Girl nervous. Bike Girl is in the same league but the blonde is a solid point higher. The blonde’s guy seems to have his virtues but I think I’m a bit better and kinkier in bed than he is. Bike Girl is worried about the heat between the blonde and me, which is not quite matched by what is between her and the other guy.

This is speculation and I don’t know for sure, but it matches experience and what I know of female psychology, as well as Bike Girl’s personality. Bike Girl has been with me long enough to be past the casual stage, so she wants to figure out if she’s going to be with me and non-monogamous over the long term, or with me and make me monogamous, or if she should get rid of me and protect herself emotionally or psychologically. I respect that last choice, which is probably the rational one for her, if she snag me for real, which she probably knows will be tough. Many girls have the street smarts to know that, if their love isn’t reciprocated, they should leave, however much it hurts.

I don’t know where things will go with Bike Girl, and she must know or suspect that, on some nights I’ve not been with her, I’ve been with other women, though she doesn’t want to hear explicitly what I’ve been up to. I frankly don’t have the time or sexual energy to have numerous relationships and sexual assignations all the time… not anymore. Sex every other day is now plenty for me (in college I’d prefer twice a day).

I don’t say that I’ve seen other women to Bike Girl, I don’t rub her face in it, and I’m not trying to be mean to her, but it is what it is. We’re not 100% into the same things. I’ve also seen fewer other women simply because Bike Girl is good at meeting my sexual needs, and she knows that the better she is about that, the better things will be between us. But she’s also figuring out that on a lot of weekends I’d rather do sex parties, or a specific number of other things, than I’d like to do her dumb chick activities. I tell her to do those alone and she is torn: she wants to be with me on the one hand but knows my independent nature on the other. In some ways I’m very patterned, very mechanical, choosing a small number of activities very specifically. Some chicks get bored with my way of being. They don’t like that I don’t care about their friend’s birthday or about seeing that movie or doing stuff for the Instagram pic.

Bike Girl isn’t accustomed to guys with options. I get the sense she’s used to “dating down.” I don’t know why, because she has a great body, but I think her exes have either been very short FWBs or guys who are more into her than she was into them. So now she’s in a reversed situation and it disorients her.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in the midst of it I told her that I love her, which I probably shouldn’t have done either. Oops. I have a thing about telling chicks I love them… usually during sex… then never mentioning it again. Probably bad game and bad for the chick’s emotional health. But I did it. Can’t take it back now.

So that is where we stand. We are supposed to see another couple tonight and I think that’s going to happen. I will have to get a hotel room because my place will be off-limits.

Bike Girl understands a lot without being able to articulate what she understands. Like, she understands that a person who is really serious about fitness and diet is also serious about sex. Why is a man so diligent about the gym that he won’t be thrown off by female needs? Because he’s serious about finding another woman if the current one doesn’t work out. Other women have also seen my obsessions with swimming, working out, and not eating sugar as a threat to them. And they’re a little right about that.

Maybe I need to take another week off. That typically restores me to equilibrium. This isn’t much of a “game” post. Get good enough at game (or being) and the problem becomes relationships, not sex.

I don’t know if Bike Girl will re-mold her personality, break, or suffer. They all seem possible. But now we’ve got to the point where she has to accept this as her new normal or start again. Re-molding a personality is very hard and I’ve been through it multiple times. Being outside the mainstream and outside typical cultural expectations has its costs.

What’s with guys who are with considerably uglier women? [FR?]

Like I said, Bike Girl and I went to a friend’s sex party last night, and it was fantastic. I did notice one thing: three guys in pretty good shape escorting women considerably fatter and uglier than ones those guys should’ve been with. I looked at the guys with pity but also curiosity: if you see one severely mismatched couple, that’s normal. Three, though, all with relatively more attractive men, is weird. Whenever you see a guy with a fat chick, think to yourself, “this is why game matters.”

One of the fat chicks was seriously interested in us, and while fucking her probably would’ve been better than a sea anemone, I wasn’t interested.

When I’m around fat chicks I have a habit of becoming a gym bore and discuss squat mechanics in detail. Probably I should be subtler, but fuck it.

Three solidly hot girls were there: Bike Girl and two others. One was a stunner in her 20s, a blonde high 8 in my view, and her and her new boyfriend are just getting into the scene. After round one I brought out some massage oil to use on Bike Girl. I caught the other couple’s eyes and waved them over, then offered supposed massage tips. The other guy and I spent time massaging the girls we brought, then we switched girls, and the massages acted as foreplay and led smoothly into fucking.

Overall it was a great experience, although Bike Girl expressed reservations on the way home because she says she doesn’t like fucking strangers. I reassured her that what we’d done was fun, natural, and okay. That is a component of leading and to be expected among many girls, but especially among girls who are having sexual novelty they may not be totally equipped to mentally handle. Remember that most girls don’t know what they want and are psychologically equipped to tell stories about their sexual experiences that deny their own agency. Chicks rely on guys to calibrate their internal psychological levels. If you aren’t strong enough to do that you’re going to have a lot of wayward unhappy girls in your life.

I think what happened doesn’t even qualify as “game.” It was being in the right place at the right with the right energy and letting a thing happen. The other couple wanted what they wanted and got it. Most couples aren’t good at leading either, so someone has to be willing to put themselves out there and that someone turned out to be me.

I have a longer post about how chicks deny their own sexual agency coming up.

Happy New Year! If you’re a guy in a stagnant relationship with a fat chick, this is the time to make new plans. If you’re a fat guy yourself, this is the year to quit sugar and hit the gym. It’s possible to use game to overcome body deficiencies but boy is it hard.

Most people are too lazy to make changes, which is why I have the experiences I’ve had and most guys don’t have those experiences.

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.”

Bike Girl: Good and Bad

Good:

1. Sex. Does everything I want. Likes being submissive. Likes the sex tapes. Sex is extremely good. She follows well and trusts me to lead.

2. Fitness. Not much into lifting but likes yoga. A solid seven who is considerably younger than me and deeply into me: probably not that uncommon for the top game guys, but not that common for guys not putting in much effort, I think. Her food habits aren’t great but I bring them up.

3. Likes to read, or reads when I read. A lot of girls demand constant stimulation or spend their lives staring into their phones; when I read, she reads.

4. Seems to like me. There are a lot of girls who will have a lot of sex, but they don’t seem to really like me that much (or the guy they’re dating, if they’re dating someone else and I’m observing them). Don’t really get why this dynamic happens but it’s common enough to note it.

5. Strong feminine vibes. Again, hard to define what this means but I know it when I see it.

6. We had our first four-way (switching with another couple) and it went well. When I have more than two minutes I’ll write about that. It was pretty standard from my perspective and pretty standard is very good.

Bad:

1. Messiness. Extremely messy apartment, although she’s tried to make an effort to change because she can figure out my reaction to it. This will prevent any attempt at co-habitation.

2. Kind of basic. Hard to describe exactly what this means too, but she’s not that smart and not that motivated. I think she’s a gallon of water that takes the shape of whatever man she pours herself into. But it sounds like she’s not had a lot of long-term relationships, so maybe she just goes from guy to guy. Because I don’t believe most of what women say (everyone has a narrative) I can’t judge her relationship past well. She speaks well of exes, which is a good sign in my view. When I’m not around I think she’s on her phone all the time, but she can turn it off when I’m around. For now.

3. Related to #2, I think she wants a way out of the office grind and sees me as a potential way out. I downplay income stuff deliberately but if you’re around someone long enough, they put it together (just as I put it together with her). Plus one of my go-to lines is, “I’m used to telling people what to do.” Which is somewhat true… but also works well.

4. A little clingy. Not real bad, and this could be a “good” sign because she really likes me, and relationships are always better when the woman is more into the man than vice-versa. Women need someone to look up to.

5. Doesn’t have many actual skills. This is related to #3. So few girls know how to cook or clean or just manage life. It’s like, “What do I need you for?” Sex is cheap and girls seem not to have figured this out. If she only brings sex to a relationship then the relationship is probably not going to last, because all the other things in life still need doing. I have talked to Bike Girl about this a little bit, but she thinks that love conquers all. No, honey, it doesn’t. Infatuation makes people think that in the thrill of a new relationship, but the real world works differently.

Neutral:

1. As usual, after a couple months the girl I thought was OMG so hot is still pretty but no longer captivating. I wish it weren’t true but it is.

2. She is open to the idea of an MFF threesome.

3. She has close friends and confidants, whereas a lot of girls are totally lonely or have “friends” who aren’t really friends.

4. She actually wants more sex than me on average, and having so much with her drains me enough to prevent me from pursing other leads. Sounds like a plus, but whenever a guy stops approaching the well dries up. My well stays somewhat full due to kink and non-monogamy, but the highest-caliber girls don’t usually come from there.

I don’t know how other guys deal with career, primary partner, family, and gym. I’m efficient but it feels like something’s gotta give among those four.

As always I don’t know how to evaluate many things.

Warning about falling into the girl’s frame

I had an educational experience with Bike Girl and one of her friends, who was complaining about the way five (!?) of her ex-boyfriends had cheated on her. At first I was quiet and Bike Girl was commiserating with the friend. Finally the friend wanted my view, and I asked the common question, What do all five of those guys have in common?

The obvious answer is, Her. She picked all of them. She’s also a pretty girl so she can pick from a wide range of guys.

Most likely, a girl with a long history of “cheating” exes is more desperate than usual for attention from very high value guys. Those guys have lots of options, which they are only too happy to exercise. The girl eventually finds out and then whines to her girlfriends about how guys are scum, totally ignoring her own role in picking guys who are oriented towards sleeping with lots of women.

I didn’t put it exactly like that, which is too RP, and when the friend began to fight back, I backed off some and said that it’s her life and she should live it however she wants. That is something I do believe, just like I believe most people lived in a world so heavily wrapped in illusion that they can’t discern the outer light.

There was no way I was going to enter this girl’s frame about how men are cheating scum. It is true that most men feel the need to sleep with as many women as possible, but it’s also true that anyone who consistently gets together with consistent, bold cheaters is somewhat complicit in the cheating. Five times means there is something inside the friend, not in the five exes.

After, Bike Girl asked what I thought, and I told her the truth: I think her friend is a fool and is old enough to know something of herself, men, and dating. That she doesn’t, speaks to who she is, mentally and psychologically. In an inexperienced girl of 21 or 22 such ignorance would be reasonable. In a chick older than 25, one who should have the reading and experience to know better, it becomes appalling, or a sign of intellectual deficit or inability to face the interior self.

Most interesting is Bike Girl’s reaction, which was respect for knowledge. Being able to know things and to distribute knowledge in a way that’s not off-putting is a hard balance. Given some of our experiences I also think Bike Girl knows a lot about my dim views on monogamy. I haven’t told her everything in my past and never will, but she gets the main point.

I am not a master PUA but I’m not a beta supplicant either, and I think Bike Girl’s friend wasn’t expecting someone to disagree with her girlish nonsense… or be skeptical of it. Yet disagreeing, amiably yet directly, also I think increased Bike Girl’s attraction to me. So did being able to imply her friend is dumb and misguided without being crude enough to say so. People can read the sentiment beneath the words. Sometimes being direct is optimal, but sometimes being politic is.

One of my favorite books is Being Wrong. Read it! And know too that if you are not reading books you are likely much dumber than you would be if you did read regularly. This is a harsh thing to say, but it’s also important and true. Almost all the really smart people I know are heavy readers. You don’t have to be a heavy reader to get the girl, but if you want access to smarter girls and you want the ability to maintain a mental connection in a relationship, get reading and talk about what you’re reading.

Bike Girl at the party

Like I mentioned, I took Bike Girl to the sex party, and from my perspective it went pretty well. She was incredibly, cutely nervous and anxious and kept talking about calling it off. But I told her that I’d RSVPed and that being a flake is bad. She’s a woman, though, so flaking is in her nature.

I knew about half the people there, so the social proof aspect was high. I encouraged her to kiss other women, which she was reluctant to do at first but after two drinks and some gentle encouragement from me and the crowd she got into it. Like most women she wants to be led, gently but firmly, and I was in my element while she was out of hers.

Bike didn’t sleep with anyone else and neither did I (a low-stakes strategy I recommend in the free book). I think this was an “eye opening” experience for her, though, and it expanded the range of her possibilities. We talked a lot about what it would be like before and what it would be like after.

Bad news is that the hosts of the party don’t have the face control they could. There were about four other attractive couples and one or two other attractive women, and far too many overweight people. But, water finds its own level and people tend to find their level of attractiveness. I’ve left parties without any attractive counterparties in them, and you should too.

We’re going to go back to another one, I’m sure. Most interesting from a game perspective, near the end of the party I was getting another drink and spotted one of the other attractive women coming back from the bathroom. Chatted for a minute and then got her phone # on a napkin. I’ve been seeing Bike Girl every other day or so, but last week on one of the off days I went to get a drink with this girl. She knew what was up, I think, and didn’t tell her boyfriend about it.

Now, this is pretty unusual, and I’ve tried this before and more often than not it fails. Most women will not do things independently without their partner; in this case, if she’d been unwilling, I would’ve tried to set up a 2:2 date. But she was willing and there was very little game; she was a “yes girl” and I already knew her secret, as she knew mine. That’s one reason I like the non-monogamy community: done well it’s an easy, easy place to fish. Downside is that few 8+ women exist in it. They’re often in private groups and parties. If your goal is to hit the very top of the attractiveness curve hit the streets, hit the gym, don’t think too much about this scene, unless you’ve got an attractive girl already into it, at which point your goal becomes filtering.

But if you want some easy novelty and like group sex like I do, simple pickup can work.

I hesitate to post about this because, like I said, the Party Girl situation fails more often than not, and there isn’t a lot of lesson to take other than “take the shot.” I don’t think my game is strong and that’s part of the reason I post those links in the sidebar. The guys listed there likely have far stronger technical game.

In a couple weeks I’m going to try and take Bike Girl to a sex club. She’s hesitant about making this a regular thing but she’s not saying no. I wrote this in another post, but in my experience about a quarter of girls are excited by non-monogamy and sex clubs. About a quarter say no outright. About half are intrigued and can be led to it. Bike Girl is in that half.

Most guys in the scene have zero game, so they aren’t good at bringing new girls in. I have some game, so over the years I’ve built up a reputation that Bike Girl has reinforced. This opened up and opens up a lot of new opportunities, because no one really knows how attractive a guy is, including girls, but everyone knows how pretty the girl a guy has is. Bring in pretty girls and the girls will want you more.

To me this is next-level game. Not many guys think this way, from what I can tell. Most guys are also bad in bed, which limits their appeal in the scene. But for a put-together guy, it can be a gold mine.

Last week or two have been crazy. Almost too crazy. I said I was getting bored of the game, and I am, but then when it’s right in front of me, I don’t act bored.

I’ve said before that I think sex drives me more than the ego boost from seduction. I wonder if in actuality fear of reliance on a single woman drives me more than anything else. That doesn’t seem likely to me but it doesn’t seem impossible either.

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.

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).

[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 her I’d been trying it as a supplement to weightlifting (turns out I needed time on the vibrating foam roller more than yoga, but that’s another story). 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 the 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.

Yeah, yeah, I know that I wrote about how I almost never write field reports… only to keep writing field reports. If I notice a situation that might have useful learning points for other guys I’ll write about it.