This is accurate. Most of the attractive, single women I’ve known are able to recognize these strategies very quickly. It is actually a common theme in our, “You won’t believe what this idiot said to me” stories.
So, basically, a “confidence man.”
You’re not selling this very well.
Stranger
Does this mean I should never put on side one of Led Zeppline IV? 
I think your radar for creepy and/or hilarious words and thinking is a little broken. “Operator”? What, like a spy?
Yeah, Stranger, that’s an excellent site. I’m going to file that away for future threads about this sort of thing.
Hirsute chest beating knuckle draggers don’t seem all that admirable in any civilized context, nor do violent egomaniacs with entirely self centered views of life. But they positively reek of testosterone, in a very real and literal sense. Take a species whose procreative behaviors evolved in an environment which no longer exists. Increase their socialization opportunities from ten to thirty members of the opposite sex in a lifetime to hundreds of thousands of such opportunities. Now mix in hundreds of highly ritualized sets of social rules, mostly conflicting in both intent, and structure, and you find that most people have no clue how to find a mate.
No, it’s not new. But it is a marketing opportunity.
Take an average person. Have that person notice that overtly indiscriminate seekers of sexual gratification have, in general more sexual activity than highly discriminating people. After a while, those observations tend to override the ethical consideration that exploiting stereotypes, and pretending to have ethical attitude while acting dishonestly might not be a good idea. The fact is that all those pick up artists have something in common. They “get laid” more on the average than honestly open ethical folks.
Misogynistic lying scumbags always have a girlfriend. Usually more than one.
Tris
Meanwhile they’re using their own pickup tactics - clothes, makeup, even boob jobs. You’d be shocked at how common boob jobs are. You can’t get much more fake than that.
And it’s downright hilarious for someone to dismiss PUA’s when she won’t ever walk up to a guy and actually talk to him. Because striking up a conversation is a man’s duty handed down by God. :rolleyes:
Or maybe she’s shy too? Oh, no, bitches ain’t shy. Bitches ain’t human!
Note again the anger and resentment present here. Jaq, I don’t think you understand that this isn’t how normal people conceive of relationships. Normal people date each other because they like each other. Most relationships are two people who enjoy each other’s company and are also sexually attracted to each other. It’s not some kind of red-in-tooth-and-claw adversarial battle for everyone.
Not all PUAs are like this, of course, but it does seem to be a common theme in some parts of the movement. I could never figure out why people who dislike women so much would spend so much time thinking about them.
Asimovian and I are currently exploring the idea of Engagement Deathmatch 2011. I think I can take him.
“Mommy, why were you and Daddy wrestling?”
Not that I have a brief for the PUA community, but all the people reflexively shouting “lies! it’s all lies!” without any evidence one way or another remind me of people who are convinced that the hard sell would never work on them.
Frankly, I think a lot of it is misogynistic. But there have been stories in major newspapers that at least prima facie verify that some of this stuff works. I remember reading one in the Times I think, where the guy was saying that how rapt the women were with him after just a session or two made him very uncomfortable.
pdts
Hi, I’m a Pick-Up Artist! Been studying and practicing it for about 6 years. Figured I’d comment on stuff on the last page because the thread is super-long.
I realized halfway through typing this that it’s unlikely anyone will actually sit through and read all this, but hey, in the interest of fighting ignorance it’s right here for you to read if you really want to understand the PUA mindset. 
To answer the actual question in the OP, it’s neither good or bad. It’s like martial arts or a knife, you can use them to kill someone or you can use them to defend someone (or make a sandwich!). It comes down to the individuals.
That’s how the VAST majority of people in the world date. They meet someone through friends, friends of friends, school, work, activity groups, etc. A cold-approach that leads to an actual long-term relationship is completely possible, but nowhere near as common as social circle relationships.
Social circles are a billion times easier to pick up through than cold-approaching. There are actually guys who specifically teach “social circle game” (it’s a slower type game where you aren’t making big bold moves because no one cares if you weird out a club girl you’ll never see again but if you weird out a girl in your social circle it can cause drama and ostracization). Personally I like the challenge of cold-approach and actively avoid going for girls in my social circles because if things don’t work out (say we date for a few months and break up), I don’t like the akwardness of having to see the person regularly. I like my life drama-free. On the flip side I have a friend (natural with girls, not a PUA) who gets his girls to set him up with their friends haha He likes the chaos!
This was my story. Never even got to hold a girls hand, let alone kiss a girl or go on dates like normal guys did, till I was 23. I wasn’t inherently an unattractive guy, I just didn’t have any experience or confidence. The first 3 girls I asked out in high-school said no, so my reference experience was that “girls aren’t into me”. Another guy might have gotten a yes where I got a no, so their reference experience was “some girls like me!”. Guys we call “naturals” got a yes all 3 times so their reference experience was “every girl likes me!”. Check in on those guys in 10 years and their love lives will be pretty predictable.
The actual negative mysogyny varies from system to system and marketing campaign to marketing campaign, but what you’re saying is the jist behind why women become "HB"s and the community uses lingo like “2-set” and “obstacle”. If a guy thinks “I see an attractive, intelligent looking woman who is completely my type and the sort of girl I’ve always dreamt about being lucky enough to date, and she’s with a less attractive friend who doesn’t look like she’s having fun, and I’d like to demonstrate that I’m a good guy to the friend so that she won’t mind if I ask my dream girl out on a date…” Well hell, that’s pretty intimidating. He’s already built the girl up in his head like crazy, and he’s already approaching from a needy “I don’t know anything about you but I can tell you’re amazing will you please give me a chance to show you that you could maybe like me?” perspective.
If that same guy thinks “Alright, there’s a 2-set, and I want the HB but I’ll chat up the obstacle first to build some value so the HB will be attracted”, it’s way less intimidating. You have a gameplan, and you’re approaching from a mindset of being able to handle the situation, which helps you exude confidence when you approach and keeps you from talking yourself out of it by building the dream girl up in your head. It’s not a negative attitude per say, you still like the girl and want to get to know her, but you’re doing it from a much more attracive place.
Peacocking works, but it’s been taken to some pretty ridiculous extremes haha I ventured into fuzzy hat territory back when I first started, but now peacocking for me is wearing a plain black dress shirt because every other guy is wearing sparkly Affliction shirts. Or wearing a ball cap when other people are dressed up. It’s the same concept (girls give you the “how come you aren’t conforming to what everyone else looks like??” shit-test, and then you run game from there) but when you’ve done pick-up long enough that it settles into being something normal and natural to you, you don’t need to be as ridiculously extreme with it.
It’s because after the intial “hey, we get along when we hang out” stage, ultimately you want to have sex with her and you’re just being friends as a way to get in her pants. You’ll do nice little things for her over the years (buy her a thoughtful gift on her birthday, listen to her complain about guys to you and try to reassure her there are some good guys out there, bring her a flower on valentine’s day just to make her feel good, etc.) as you fall more and more head over heels for her…and you’ll say “I do those things because I feel good doing them, it’s not to get into her pants!!” but that’s usually because society has brainwashed you to feel bad for wanting to have sex. So in the end, you’re doing all this roundabout stuff that isn’t actually acknowledging honestly “I am attracted to this girl and would like to have a sexual relationship with her”. Whereas a PUA is going “Look, I think you’re cute, I think we have a good vibe, and I am going to make moves on you. If you’re into me, awesome, let’s have some fun!” Even if he does it through round-about “hey can I ask a woman’s opinion on this made up story?”, he’s doing it with the intention of progressing things forward toward what he really deep down wants.
You can become friends after you have sex. That’s what cuddling the morning after is for.
This is pretty much it. I would add “interact with women while following the lead of more socially competent men than themselves”. You can’t get a date if you don’t talk to a girl, but you also still won’t get the date if you don’t learn to demonstrate your attractive qualities.
Since learning pick-up I actually feel WORSE for women. If I see a girl I like, I know I have the ability to go over and chat her up and see if things work out. But if a girl sees a guy she likes, she has to dress nice, laugh at his jokes, stand near him as much as possible, try to get eye contact from him without looking like she’s trying to get eye contact from him, and if he doesn’t happen to notice her or can’t work up the guts to approach her and say hello, she’s stuck going home by herself…how frustrating must THAT be?? If my friend gets eye contact from a girl and is talking himself out of approaching I remind him that she WANTS him to approach her, because she CAN’T approach him (yes it happens, but societal conditioning and all that tends to make a girl feel slutty for expressing interest in a guyI first).
It would absolutely blow guys’ minds to realize just how many women go home alone or are unhappy with the types of men that approach them and go for years without dating or having sex. The craziest part is often the hotter the girl, the worse it is. Imagine being a “10”…you know every guy in the bar is watching you, but none of them have the balls to approach you. Bartenders are giving you free drinks, but you know you can’t get too drunk because if you lose control people will judge you as a slutty bar skank so you have to drink waters and maintain a proper image. You make eye contact with a guy you’re attracted to but since you’re surrounded by guys you’re not into trying to get your attention that guy will never come over. Every guy just assumes you have a boyfriend because you’re so beautiful so they don’t bother approaching you. Guys see you done up and just assume you’ll shoot them down hard and be a bitch because you accidentally weren’t smiling for a couple minutes. 2am comes around, and even after working out all month to maintain your figure, dolling yourself up in expensive makeup and your hottest outfit, going out to a place FULL of men looking FOR women like you and wishing they had a girl like you…you go home alone to a vibrator or fuckbuddy.
Meanwhile if a guy had been confident and just come over and said “Hi!”, you might have finally had someone you WANTED to send you flowers on valentine’s day.
You are pretty much every normal guy, so don’t worry. Society brings us up to believe that showing romantic interest is wrong, and wanting sex is dirty, and that sleeping with a woman is hurting her, etc. etc. so naturally you’re hesitant to show intent. This comes down to fixing your own mindset more than an actual “grab her by the waist and whisper blah blah into her ear”. Look at someone like Russell Brand, he’ll flirt with ANY girl, and he’ll do it with no shame whatsoever, he’s just having fun. If she’s into it, great, if she’s not that’s okay too…and by him having that “flirting is okay!” attitude, generally the girls like it because he’s not making it into a big serious epic deal. He’s not making it this dramatic life-changing event in both their lives the way you subconsciously are.
The way to learn that flirting isn’t a big deal is to do it a lot. That’s why PUAs go out regularly and flirt a lot, it teaches you that it’s really no big deal to be rejected, and that as long as you laugh it off and don’t let it emotionally cripple you, often the girl will come around because she sees you’re confident and easy-going.
I have a friend who comes out to the bar with me a lot and he never asks for girls phone numbers. Ever. Even if he LIKES them, he won’t, he talks himself out of it or hesitates. He only wants the number of the perfect girl. But what will happen is he’ll meet that perfect girl, and she’ll dig him but he’ll be running on instinct because his perfect girl is right there right in his face holy crap this is so amazing, and he’ll do exactly what he’s trained himself to do and hesitate grabbing her number and miss out on possibly the best relationship of his life. So I encourage him to ask for girls numbers, some will give them, some won’t, but the point of doing it is just so it feels natural and like not a big deal…because then when he meets that perfect girl, he doesn’t panic and he ends up with her number.
I’m “sketchier” than my friend, so I follow the same rule but with going for makeouts or trying to get girls to leave the bar with me. But I’m looking for sex and he’s looking for a relationship. The same “practice blocking an attack in your martial arts class so when the time comes you do it instinctively with confidence” concept applies though!
Your tone is a little harsh here, but I’d say the jist of this sentence is why society has such a witch-hunt mentality with PUA. These “socially inept” guys were supposed to just accept the cards life dealt them. “Some guys have it, and some don’t!” “Some guys have swagger, but you can’t learn swagger it’s just something you have!” The problem with this is the people saying these things aren’t acknowledging the reality of what those statements mean. I didn’t get to hold a girl’s hand until I was 23. HOLDING A GIRL’S HAND. Like, the most basic of human touch and feeling worthy of someone wanting you…till 23. So when you tell me “well some guys have it and some don’t” and wander off into the distance, I’m stuck sitting there going “wait…so this is what my life is going to be? I am doomed to never touch a girl or be touched by a girl?? THIS is what my life has to be forever and I have to just accept this?? WTF did I do wrong?? How come I get dealt this hand and Bob the person who just told me I’m out of luck gets to be married??”
So when you talk about your shy male/female friends and say “well, some have it and some don’t, that’s just how it goes!” you are, in a round-about way, helping condemn them to a life of loneliness and depression.
The PUA attitude is “okay, some guys learned it early, and some guys weren’t fortunate enough to have good role models or be in situations that taught them these things growing up like those other guys, but if you study those guys and put some actual effort into improving this part of your life, you can learn to be as socially competant as they are. It will take work, but this is a goal that is achievable!”
Unfortunately, society isn’t a big fan of people making radical changes in themselves. It’s much easier to label someone and classify them and then be done with it. “Leopard’s don’t change their spots!” and all that…because if the leopard changed his spots you’d have to re-evaluate the leopard and re-classify him and it’s way easier to just say “Dude. You’re a leopard, suck it up and act leopardy, you’re disrupting my view of the world, thanks.”
I actually got a LOT of resentment and “why are you acting so different?? this isn’t YOU.” lectures, even from friends when I started acting differently. I understand why I got it, so I just pushed through it, but it was a very difficult time and is often what stops guys from progressing past barely dabbling in PUA. I’ve made a complete 180 overhaul on my personality through pick-up so I know it was worth all of that trouble but at the time it was rough and frustrating. It’s like trying to go on a diet and people telling you you’re supposed to stay fat…like come on, I’m working on myself here, please support me on this, I need you guys!!
Oddly, now that I’ve changed myself I actually can barely relate to my old self and my old ways of thinking, and no one gives me shit because now being a social, out-going, flirty fun guy IS my leopard spots.
I’m typing this next bit more as an exercise in sharing vast experience in this category, but I honestly don’t expect you to agree with it or believe me because I think you’ve already made up your mind on the subject. This is more for other people reading the thread:
PUA techniques work BEST on women with high self esteem who have their shit together. A PUA at his best is a guy who can, while totally sober, approach a girl expecting her to like him (confidence), start up an interesting conversation with her (intelligence), tease her a bit in a fun way that makes her giggle if she does something silly or bratty (this is flirting and this works both ways…if I trip as I approach a girl and she giggles and tells me “THAT was smooth”, that’s fun and flirting and I have high enough self-esteem to laugh at myself a little instead of getting righteous and going “SHE SHOULD ACCEPT ME, WHAT A HORRIBLE PERSON FOR LAUGHING AT ME ALMOST HURTING MYSELF!!!”), make fun of himself a little bit (humble), and then read her comfort levels to tell if she’s into him or if he should back off (socially calibrated/competant), and if she’s into him, escalate the situation at a comfortable pace where it’s not stuck in the friend zone but it’s definately leading to something both parties want and that she can’t say out loud that she wants because society will judge her (sexually confident and non-judgemental).
What high-self esteem quality girl ISN’T looking for a guy like that?
Now let’s take a look at different types of girls, if that guy approaches her:
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ugly low self-esteem girls - they won’t believe the PUA is actually into them, they’re the ones that will call the guy a player and say he just wants to get in their pants so they can raise their own self-esteem and feel good shooting him down…they’re playing their own silly games, and even if they end up dating the guy they’ll constantly cause drama to make sure he’s “really into them” because she comes from a place of feeling inadequate. Most game doesn’t really work on these girls because they hate themselves too much.
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hot low self-esteem girls - they respond awesomely to negs because if you act like you’re not interested, they NEED to get you interested so their fragile self-esteem isn’t shattered, because their whole world is based around people liking them. These girls are a fucking gongshow. I was cuddled up with one shooting the shit about life and she told me that she wished people WOULDN’T let her get away with stuff. She purposely acts like a bitch to people, even her close friends, because secretly she’s hoping that one of them will call her out on it and scold her. She had all sorts of daddy issues I’m sure, but it was interesting to see her admit it flat out. She was hot as hell, and came across like she has high self-esteem, but under it all she was LSE. These are the most frustrating girls because you want so bad for them to be high self-esteem that you give them extra chances and end up in relationships with them only to finally have to admit one day that they aren’t perfect and it all just goes to chaos from there. Over time you can learn to spot these girls. Pick-up works great on them and they’re the majority of the girls you’ll find at the bar, but they’re not girls a PUA willingly gets into a serious relationship with.
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drunk chicks at the bar - they can barely stand straight, let alone get all the witty innuendo and subtleties in the guy’s flirting…personally I won’t even approach a chick if she’s clearly drunk, and will pass her up if she approaches me, just because I like to have actual back and forth conversations with a girl and I can’t with a drunk chick that won’t even remember me the next morning. You can caveman these girls out of the bar (throw them over your shoulder and carry them out) or escalate to a quick sloppy drunken makeout but personally this isn’t my thing. It’s too easy, and it crosses moral issues for me if the girl is drunk past a certain point.
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ugly high self-esteem girls - these are the equivalent of a PUA who has confidence, charm, social skills, etc. but isn’t an attractive looking guy. Like the fat guy who’s the life of the party. A girl who isn’t physically blessed can still land all sorts of guys if she’s outgoing and awesome and confident. I admire these girls the most because they’re the ones demonstrating that it doesn’t matter what you have, as long as you know how to work it, which is essentially what PUA teaches. Game works like gangbusters on these girls because they’re confident and sassy and can take a little fun joking around and they can return it. It’s like two good tennis players going back and forth. Often these girls don’t even drink much.
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hot high self-esteem girls - these girls are what game was built for. They’re usually sober, they have their act together, they don’t NEED you and they don’t care if you aren’t into them because they’re confident and independant. These girls respond awesomely to the PUA I described up above because he’s basically her equivalent and compared to the guys around her who are usually pretty lame, it’s a welcome relief. These girls know when you tease them that you’re flirting, and they know they can tease you back and you won’t get all sad the way a low self-esteem guy would. These are girls where you end up in situations like “In fact I’m so NOT into you, that I’m going to take your phone number just so I can call you and tell you over dinner how much I’m not into you!” and her going “That’s fine with me, I’m going to GIVE you my number just so I can NOT answer my phone when you call me tomorrow between 5 and 7pm when I get off work!” These girls are the most fun.
PUAs when they start out will tend to stick to the low-self esteem and drunk girls, but as they mature and develop standards of what they want in a woman, they end up sticking to the high self-esteem girls just because low-self esteem becomes unattractive to them.
Agreed. What a lot of people don’t understand is that the guys who actually learn PUA “for real” are guys that put in a LOT of time and energy. They’re not the guy who watched a couple episodes of Mystery’s show and went around asking girls if their nails are real. An actual PUA has put in thousands of approaches and had both success and failure after failure, to slowly piece together the skills most normal socially adept people picked up. So a lot of the creepy lame PUAs you run into are the equivalent of the guy that takes a couple months of a martial arts class and walks around talking like he’s a badass…it’s silly and incongruent and gives the art a bad name. But actually changing your personality to this degree is such a massive undertaking that most guys can’t stick it through to the end and those are the guys you laugh at at the bar wearing their fuzzy hats and trying to neg girls.
A PUA who’s come out the other side of it all just seems like a naturally confident alpha male who’s really in tune with other people’s feelings and the vibe in the room.
That’s exactly what happened. It’s actually a known stage in PUA training…At first you think you’re a pimp because you can talk to girls. Then you think you’re even awesomer because you can get phone numbers like crazy. You go out and collect a bunch of numbers (I’ve gotten like a dozen in a night, no sweat). And you’re all psyched up like hell ya I’m such a player and your friends saw that and because in Hollywood getting a phone number means the two main characters will have a huge romantic relationship everyone gives you props and says you’re the man and blah blah blah
And then none of those numbers pick up. Or return your voicemail. Or answer your text. Or they text “who’s this?” Or you go on a date and it’s akward. Or you go on a date and then never hear from them again. And you’re shell-shocked and go “wtf!!” in confusion. This is generally where most guys will give up on pick-up.
The smart guys though, will look at that and go “okay, what’s going on here? She was into me at the bar, but now she won’t even text me back?” and realize “oh well you know what, we didn’t even really bond on any deep level…why WOULD she text me back? I guess I should think about asking more questions and maybe slow down a bit and spend some time with her, find out what she does for a living and how she feels about her family and get to know what she’s like before I get her number.” And yes, that’s a calculated “move”, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t actually interested in knowing those things about her, it’s just you didn’t realize you needed to ask those things BEFORE the first date and not ON the first date.
I’ve made out with totally sober girls in the bar and it’s looked completely on, they were dying to go home with me that night, but then I text them the next day and don’t get a response. Why? Because I escalated too fast, I ran flash game that’s fun in the moment and can be escalated to sex that night, but if it doesn’t lead to sex then they get buyer’s remorse and feel slutty and if they respond to my text the next day they’re basically admitting they want to have sex and they can’t do that. This is TOTALLY understandable, and I know it’ll happen when I do it (I just like kissing so I do it anyway haha but I know it’s not going to result in a relationship if I push too fast). So if my goal isn’t to just makeout at the bar, and it’s to get an actual date, then I hold back a bit and build some comfort and sexual tension and wait to kiss her on our date.
This is a perfect summary! That’s why the marketing is toward getting laid, we want instant results the same way people want a diet that’ll promise you lose 10lbs in 24hrs etc. That’s what lures us in. But then over time you get to know a lot of girls and you learn what you like and don’t like, and you become a little more choosy. And then down the road when you decide to settle down, you do it with a girl who meets all your standards you’ve learned you have.
Because that’s the thing people don’t get. A lot of socially inept guys who’ve never dated don’t KNOW what they want in a woman. Sure, they think they do, but they’ve never really been around a woman long enough to understand what is and isn’t stuff they’ll be content with long-term. Before I found PUA, my ideal girl was the shy quiet slightly nerdy girl next door chick…because I was a shy quiet slightly nerdy guy next door. But I’ve met enough of them to learn that I actually get bored with quiet girls because I have to hold up the whole conversation and as you can see from this massive post, I like to talk. I’ve also met enough outgoing loud “obnoxious” girls who take up the whole room with their personalities, girls that I used to think were annoying…but that I’ve now learned are actually girls I’m into because those ones can keep up with my back and forth shit-talking and teasing and they keep me on my toes conversationally. My buddy isn’t into those girls at all, he likes the quiet girl next door types, but he only learned that from meeting a lot of different women and finding out what he’s into. If he meets a quiet girl with a loud friend he goes “You should meet my buddy. :)” and introduces me because he knows I love those girls.
Now the question is: if I had found a shy quiet girl back in my high school years and married her, would I really have been content? Or after years of marriage would I have realized I wasn’t really into her as much anymore and I don’t know why but the loud out-going secretary at work that teases me is super attractive to me compared to my wife and blah blah blah until I become just another “cheated on his wife, now divorced with a kid” statistic?
Whereas now if I decide to settle down, it will be with a girl that I KNOW is exactly what I’m looking for, because I will have chosen her over the thousands of other girls and personalities I’ve met over the years, and I’ll stick with her because I’ll already know what all those other girls have to offer because I already did my “playing the field” so I don’t have any reason to bail on her because I know she’s better than them. I’d like to think that’s a much better and healthier marriage.
That’s totally fine, a lot of people aren’t into it. Personally, I love it.
The rush of adrenalynn of two people, attracted to eachother sexually, meeting and escalating things in a flurry of passion through the night, full of spontaneous pinned-against-the-wall makeouts and kicking-in-the-bedroom-door, flinging-clothes-onto-the-lamp ripping eachother’s clothes off sex to be phenominally fun. I spent 2 years in a serious relationship and I found no more awesomeness in having a deep connection with my girlfriend than I did with random sex. In fact once we fell into the routine “this is the way I like to have sex” night after night it got kind of monotonous. Part of the fun of sex with a new person is experiencing new ways to have sex, new kinks, new moves, new feelings, it’s so much fun!!
If there’s reservation and reluctance, it’s because one or both parties don’t feel comfortable enough that they won’t be judged by the other person…how COULD you enjoy sex like that? But if you can learn to make the girl feel comfortable expressing her sexuality around you, and you can learn to be confident and express your sexuality around her, it can be pretty damn fun.
People imagine that I live a depressing shallow life-style covering up some big deep depression and hole in my soul. They picture me kicking the girl out when I’m “done with her” and as she closes the door feeling used and shamed I lay back on my bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling contemplating how empty my life truly is as a single tear trickles down my cheek and I count the minutes down till I can go get hammered at the bar and try to fill that void with yet another meaningless fling.
But like, shit, it’s not like that at all haha After we finish up, I pull her in to cuddle with and we joke around and talk about the night and what our friends did and get to know eachother a bit more until we kiss goodnight and fall asleep. The next morning we wake up, joke about how akward it’s supposed to be, laugh at eachother’s sex-hair, wash up a bit and grab breakfast, and if we want to see eachother again we exchange numbers, if not we wish eachother luck and both go on about our lives with a fun pleasant experience to remember.
I’m not saying there aren’t guys that just kick the girl out, I’m friends with one and he’s pretty hardcore about it, but he’s an extreme case and despite how he treats women he really does like them. He just doesn’t want them to get the idea that they’ll be seeing him again because he likes to go for new girls all the time and he’s found it’s best to just be cold and cruel with it, whereas I like dating a girl casually for a while. Ultimately we both love women deep down though…they’re amazing haha
Exactly. PUA has reached into so many parts of my life, from business to personal relationships…hell, even setting goals to go out and approach X number of women helps discipline you so you can go out to the gym and do X number of sets or go to a business lunch and collect X number of business cards, etc. I’ve helped MANY friends, men and women, through relationship issues simply by calling out what’s going on and explaining why they’re being silly and helping them get back to normal. I’ve been out at bars every Fri/Sat minimum for almost 6 years straight, hitting on girls who occasionally have boyfriends, and being around drunk guys who are looking to fight to save face after a girl shoots them down etc. etc. and I haven’t been in a fight once. I’ve been in situations that could VERY EASILY have resulted in me getting my ass kicked (I’m not a big guy and I don’t fight haha)…but I’ve talked my way out of those situations because the psychology I’ve learned from PUA has helped me go “okay this guy feels low value because he was into this girl who’s now into me and he thinks he has a chance with her because he has no idea she doesn’t like him that way, so I’m going to have to back down and apologize and say I didn’t realize she was his friend and build his ego up a bit to encourage him thinking she’s into him so I can get the fuck out of here before he stomps my head into the cement”.
Most people will never do it unless forced. Most people can’t even go to a bar by themselves, let alone go to a bar and have fun and make new friends all alone. At first I thought girls would think it was creepy that I was out by myself, but as I admitted it to enough of them most of them responded stuff like “wow!! really?? I could NEVER go to a bar by myself that’s amazing!” especially after seeing me chatting with people and seemingly knowing everyone.
But what most people do is they attach their self-worth to their approach. “There’s a beautiful girl, I’m going to say hi. Oh no, she turned her back to me, fuck, am I really that much of a loser? I must be ugly…man, she doesn’t even know me what a bitch…this is stupid, I hate bars. And there’s Bob over there with ANOTHER girl falling over him, wtf does he have that I don’t have? I have a better suit than him!! I worked so hard to get this high paying job so I could afford it and this stupid girl won’t even say HI back to me!! fuck, life sucks…I’m a loser…whatever, some guys have it some don’t I guess… :(”
Hell, I did it back in high-school. Everyone does. But you’ll find the people who are really out-going and social are the people who don’t care if people don’t like them. They’ll go up and say “Hi!” and if the girl turns her back he’ll go “Don’t be rude, you’re out at a bar, you can say hi. :)” with a big ol’ chuckle and smile and the girl will warm up and realize she was being silly and open up. This extends to being the “life of the party” or the person at work who makes new employees feel welcome by inviting them out to the group movie nights or arranging a meetup.com group.
PUA teaches you that a rejection isn’t a rejection of you as a person, it’s a rejection of your approach. She didn’t snub you, she just didn’t get the opportunity to realize what an awesome wonderful guy you are! Maybe you can push that a bit and show her, but if she doesn’t want to see it, that’s okay, there’s another girl over there who may be lucky enough to find out about you!
You summed it up great in the rest of your post but just to add to this: Those of us who’ve changed our lives remember what it was like to know we wouldn’t have a date, yet AGAIN, for Valentine’s Day. We remember what it was like to watch all our friends having fun dating and having sex while we sat on the sidelines feeling confused and lost and wondering why we weren’t lucky enough to get to experience that stuff. We remember what it was like to sit at home playing videogames and masturbating to porn every weekend while our friends were going on dates and having fun. We remember the feeling of giving up and accepting that we weren’t worthy of being loved by anyone and that we would probably die alone. We remember the feeling of knowing we would never have kids or a white-picket fence like everyone else got to because we were just socially inept unattractive guys who “just don’t have IT”.
So when we find a way to fix all that, ya, we want to help other guys fix themselves. Nowadays the community has gotten super commercial, but back when it started out (pre-The Game) guys would literally travel city to city, sleeping on eachother’s couches, and give free lectures and seminars on this stuff purely out of the fact that they felt good being able to help other guys grow into men. It’s sad to me that nowadays random Joe’s who may or may not even be good with women, will sell their courses that are just cut and pasted notes from the community for thousands of dollars marketing to low self-esteem guys who are desperate for change…but you have to understand, it really did start from a pure place back in the day.
They recognize those strategies in guys who are still new to the game and learning and are incongruent with what they’re trying to do. Some of those guys are sleazy losers, and I laugh at them too (and then approach the girls and joke about how creepy the guy was, thanks for the easy opener CreepyGuy!), but some of those guys you’re making fun of are just trying to fix their lives so that one day they can become the guy your attractive single girlfriends say “wow, you won’t believe the guy I met today!” A lot of them won’t make it, but at least they’re trying.
It’s unfortunate that your friends are the ones that get the brunt of the akward creepy uncalibrated approaches, because I mean, all they did was go out looking good there’s no reason they should have to put up with that (no sarcasm here, seriously). But when you learn a new skillset, you spend the first few months or years of it fucking it up and crossing into the extremes on both ends until down the road you settle down into the middle.
Shit, I have a handful of asian friends and it is MYSTIFYING to me how they reproduce haha We’ll go out together and you can’t tell who’s a couple and who isn’t, they won’t even hold hands or kiss in public. It’s mind-blowing to me because I’m very affectionate. They’ll date for months before they have sex and I just can’t even comprehend that. But then one day one of them showed me a Chinese movie (can’t remember the name of it, but this old guy tries online dating and meets a bunch of different girls and a chick commits suicide at the end if I remember right)…and the movie showed a bunch of dates and in all of them, the guy and girl would sit opposite from eachother and quietly and politely ask about eachother’s family history and jobs and stuff…like super super repressed stuff. And I realized ya, if this was the type of media your culture promoted growing up, of course you’d grow up scared to put your arm around a girl or make a move on a first date!
People from cultures where expressing sexual intent is frowned upon have an EXTREMELY difficult time unwiring all their learned behaviors to adapt to a PUA mindset. Whereas European guys look at us getting one night stands and go “what? You only took ONE of them home? You should have just had a threesome duh.” haha
I don’t expect you to believe this because it will be outside of your reality, but I don’t lie to girls to get them into bed. I tell them up front that I’m not relationship material, and that if they’re not okay with that, that’s cool we can just be friends, but generally they’re fine with it. I tend to stay away from virgins because I know they get attached to their “first” and I don’t want to end up breaking their hearts down the road (I’ve had girls literally offer up their virginity because they trusted me and knew I wouldn’t make them feel used or anything and they wanted their first time to be with a good guy, but I’ve turned them down and told them trust me, they don’t want me to be that guy, they should wait till they find someone they love, etc.). If I can tell a girl is going to be clingy, I won’t go for it. For me, I like casual sexual relationships, so I look for girls that are looking for the same thing. But I’ve known guys who are looking for actual relationships, so the clingy girls are for them, and they settle down and live the lives they want to together.
My current girlfriend has always been monogamous, but she’s learning to try to understand my mindset and why, in my mind, my having sex with another girl doesn’t affect my feelings for my girlfriend in any way, and that she has no competition. It’s been difficult for her, but I’ve been very open and honest about it because I don’t like to lie to people in general.
Contrast that with a lot of traditional monogamous relationships I see around me where people are cheating, wanting to cheat, dreaming about cheating, lying to eachother about their feelings, accusing eachother of cheating, looking through eachother’s E-Mails for clues, getting jealous over a platonic friend of the opposite sex, etc. etc.
Personally, I feel like my way is much healthier for everyone involved.
PUA started basically because us men don’t have Cosmo to read with “10 tips to land that special guy!” The playing field is just even now, that’s all.
The thing is, this stuff is just putting your best self forward. Sure, you could roll out of bed in your sweats and crazy hair, no makeup, not shower or brush your teeth, throw on some flip-flops and a baggy sweatshirt with food stains on it and head out to the bar or a date…but really? Don’t you care about yourself enough to put some effort into presenting yourself in your best way? Not even to impress a guy, but just for your OWN self? I get my haircut pretty regularly and wear dress shirts and take care of my grooming, but it’s not because I need to to impress girls. I’ve picked girls up (even well-dressed classy type ones) looking like a complete slob. I do those things for myself, because it’s important to me to be my best.
Someone put it “When you approach a girl, how you look is you telling the world “this is my view of what a man should look like”. So if you’re dressed like a slob, is that REALLY what you think a man should look like? No? So take care of yourself.” and that’s stuck with me. So when a girl does her clothes, make-up, (even gets a boob-job, if that’s what she wants to do for herself), then I appreciate that. I don’t look at it as some underhanded trick to “get me into bed”.
Basically. And really, a good PUA (not the random guys who watch Keys to the VIP and think they’re pimps negging girls) is just a charming, confident guy who presents himself in the best possible light and is up front about what he wants and goes for it…why would you want that to NOT work on you?? That’s silly.
- TheWhoToTheWhatNow
P.S. There was a motto in the PUA community, back when I started that said “Leave them better than you found them.” It’s been lost over time thanks to the commercialization and the influx of “newbies” who just want to trick girls into fucking them, but I still go by that motto. If you asked the girls I’ve been with about me, whether I was with them for one night or for a long relationship, pretty much none of them would have anything bad to say about me (aside from “he has commitment issues” haha), and most of them I’ve improved their lives (helping them sort through drama as we chit-chat in bed, helping them feel more confident and beautiful by expressing that they deserve good things out of life, helping them feel more comfortable expressing their sexuality instead of being ashamed by it, etc.).
So basically, you wear them into submission by talking their ears off?
It’s cheaper than the roofies.
- TheWhoToTheWhatNow
That’s all very interesting, thank you for sharing. I do know your type, and I don’t have any problem at all with the way you conduct yourself. In fact, I wish more guys would “master” the art of fliriting/picking up women the way you have. Instead I get the dudes who’ve read one website and think they’re being oh so clever when they “neg” me or my friend.
Don’t you feel stupid typing those words out?
This has been fascinating and educational, TheWhoToTheWhatNow, thank you so much for posting it. I know, it’s a shame that everyone’s just brushing it off with snarky comments, especially since you spent so much time writing it out. Well, I read it, at any rate.