Category Archives: understanding humanity

IDK! …srsly…

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Dude 1: …will be quick

Dudette: I hope so.

Dude 2: That’s what she said.

Dude 3: Indeed, she said it.

Dudette: I hope I never say it in that way.

Dude 2: Depends. Those kids have to get to school.

Dudette: Ummmmm… ?

Dude 2: I have no idea.

Dudette: Depends are diapers for adults.

Dude 1: Hahah- What?

Dude 2: I took that from a Dave Attel line, but it didn’t really work. “Some people say drunk driving is wrong, and I call those people the police. But hey… sometimes those kids gotta get to school.”

Dudette: …

Why Pick Up When You Can Eat In or Take Out?

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Why do I mind? Why is my open-minded brain unable to be completely comfortable with the idea of the open-ended relationship? Why does the prospect of him picking up women really get to me. …or as he asked,

“What are you so afraid of?”

Besides the obvious, losing what happiness I’ve gained, not being able to get closer and missing an opportunity to be closer, not being used to this position… Besides the negative connotations of pick-up with ideas of manipulating people for sex… There is more.

I was finally able to get the clarification from the boy on the subject of pickup. There are many methods of pickup apparently, and apparently one of them goes along with what I was thinking and Steve described in one of his quotes on a post:

“I compensate for my lack of self-confidence by deceiving others.”

The boy admitted that a lot of guys do that. He admitted he tried it, and it failed horribly. He wasn’t comfortable with being fake and it showed. It also wasn’t getting him what he wanted.

And what does he want?

According to him, he uses techniques learned in pick-up to break the ice and be able to display his best qualities to someone. He can project the kind of person he wants and what he wants from that person.

There are two camps of people in pick-up apparently. One of them is the people who use pickup to rack up their ‘score’ in the game, like notches on the belt. The other is the people who use pickup to learn how to approach and get the women they want and then move on to relationships with those people. These people are not necessarily lacking in confidence in other areas of their lives, they just have a hard time meeting and getting anywhere with women. The latter type eventually move out of pickup, while the former stay there and rack up their ‘score’.

So where does the boy fall in this broader picture? He says he will at some point fall into the latter, but is not done with the journey. He feels like he has more to learn and experience. He may stay in it for not much longer, he may stay in it for a while yet. He doesn’t know.

I do have to ask, with how close and how serious we’ve been getting, why pickup now?

He admitted he wasn’t seeing anyone else right now, the people he was seeing when we started out were long gone. He’s been going to his pickup meetings, but hasn’t been picking anyone up.

He admitted that his intentions were to use pickup to attract people he wanted to eventually settle with. The settling itself though still scares him. It comes down to the classic fear of commitment. Like, he could buy a house right now. It’s a good market to buy a house. His rent is too high, it’d be a good investment. He doesn’t want to though. Why? He’s afraid it would ‘root him to a place’. Even though he could sell or rent it later, he sees this as an all or nothing, as if he’ll die in the house he buys. It’s symbolic more than anything, and the metaphor frightens him. This is the all or nothing syndrome I talked about him having before.

This fear goes even deeper into his relationship history: fear of repeating old mistakes.

The boy has had two major relationships in his life and both of them: unhealthy. One of the girls he lived with, and even financially supported. He was needy and so were they. He expected too much from them and as a result gave more and more hoping for himself to get back what he wanted and be fulfilled. He didn’t know how to express or get what it was he wanted. There was no good communication, expectations were unreasonable, and there was too much too fast.

Even with only two relationships, he’s gone further than I have, and made some of the same mistakes as me only even more hardcore.

He has been very needy in the past and is now firmly on two feet. According to him, what we have right now is the most healthy relationship he’s ever had.

He told me what he was afraid of: afraid of repeating the past and slipping back into bring this needy person. This is something I understand all too well, a common theme in my own worries.

Now I at least understand why our official relationship status is what it is. He’s afraid once he relabels what we have, things will change and the worst may come.

Now that I understand his fears, let me come full circle on my own. I didn’t realize this until we started talking, but the big issue really is that I am following relationship rules that I didn’t make and I don’t fully understand. They’re becoming defined, but I didn’t define them: he did. I’m still expected to follow these rules or stop seeing him. That’s an uncomfortable bit of control I’m giving him. I know that in other relationships I’ve had, I didn’t exactly control the parameters either- they were defined by canned traditions.

Things weren’t one hundred percent defined at the beginning, and they still aren’t. In one of my last posts I talked about whether or not people we both knew were off limits or not. We never talked about it, but he told me one day that yes, people who we consider friends are at least. There wasn’t a discussion, it was just something he felt like he needed so: new rule. The rule itself I don’t disagree with, but I do take issue with these rules seeming like they’re being made up as we go along and he’s the one making them. I know they are being made up as we go along because this is new ground for both of us. Even if I were to find myself being fully comfortable with a non-traditional relationship, feeling like I’m following someone else’s rules feels like it is against every fiber of my being. I am fiercely independent and fear people trying to control me.

The other side of that is with these rules, I can see other people. I don’t want to, however. I could try to make myself do it, but doing it because he is? That sounds like a bad idea.

I can flirt with other people, but so can he. Another undefined place is how far we’re allowed to take that while with each other. I don’t want to do the drama jealousy game when we’re out together. I also don’t want to have a double standard. This is the next thing we need to talk about.

I hate that I feel like I’m always the one who says, “We need to talk.” even if I only do it once in awhile. Even if parts of me feel better after wards, I’d rather be having fun than these sorts of discussions.

I’m all set with reading the rest of The Game. Maybe I should have forced the issue of talking about PUA sooner. He asked me why I didn’t. I asked him why he didn’t bring it up if he was waiting for me to. We were both scared of where that discussion would go. We can’t let ourselves be afraid of communicating, though. This isn’t likely the most scary discussion we’re going to have. Really, if we are too frightened to talk to each other at all, that’s where we should break it off.

So what do we do? The obvious answer is we keep talking, and discussing, and figuring these things out. We’ll see where things go from there…

The Game: Part Deux

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This post is a follow up to some research I’m doing on PUA and a book I’m reading on it called The Game. Click on the category link above to see other posts on this.

Here’s the meet and greet for the characters. By the first few pages, you identify with and feel bad for each and every one except the big guy who was going to commit suicide. He’s now the mentor that has taken pity on these poor souls and will lead them to salvation. Surely this is a noble quest to get laid as these guys have no chance of getting some of having a happy life or confident persona. This book so far has been mixing the concepts of going out a getting laid with self confidence and image. I feel like it’s trying to project that to have both, you need both. You’re not a confident, happy person unless you’re getting laid by women. You’re not getting laid by women unless you’re happy and confident.

Let’s face it, neither of those is true. I’ve had boyfriends to prove it, negative, unhappy emo-kids get laid too. There’s a certain kind of attraction reserved for the damaged victims and I’m one that’s fallen for it quite a bit. They also don’t seem to find happiness by getting sex either. People need more than that for fullment.

And I think that happiness can be had without lots of sex with lots of people. I know it sounds shocking. I know this might sounds like a chicken and the egg thing too, but I actually think now to find good connection and sex you have to be a happy and whole person FIRST. Using sex to become happy and confident seems really, really weird to me. I see this as the cart going before the horse. The source of your confidence being your ability to pick up women is maybe as good as any, but I prefer to have a wider and deeper source of why I’m awesome. I have a lot going for me. Sure, I have confidence in my looks and my social interactions, but I don’t let that alone define my source of self worth.

I feel like the more I try to understand, the harder it is to get these shoes on. My feet just don’t fit. I’m still trying to walk this mile.

So the chapter continues and the big guy, Mystery he calls himself (no, not a member of the Xmen or some other comic), starts to get into what they’re going to do over the next days. They’re going to play a game. Well, sure, it’s the title of the book. At first, I think of the Leisure Suit Larry series and laugh a little. Mystery tells his pupils that the game is surprisingly linear. Ah, I say, like an old-school RPG. Then I get to the first line that makes me think that reading this book is as misguided as the Bible reading experiment.

Captain Mystery is talking about how to get the girl you want and essentially says ignore her and become chums with everyone around her. That reverse psychology makes sense. Then he puts on the brass knuckles:

…the pickup artist must intrigue her while pretending to be unaffected by her charm. This is accomplished through use of what is called a neg. Neither a compliment or an insult- a neg is something in between- an accidental insult or a backhanded compliment. The purpose of a neg is to lower a woman’s self esteem…

Did you say what? Did you… oh no you…

Hey all you guys out there, go out and attract women by lowering their self esteem! It’s a well known fact that women fall for assholes time and time again. As their personas get stripped down and they fall helplessly in your laps, you will have the game to thank.

I may just rename this book to How To Be That Asshole I Dated That One Time. Okay, maybe it wasn’t just one time.

My mind races to the questions of, “Has this been used on my by the boy.” The answer: no. Thank ye gods, no. Why? It’ wouldn’t work. As it is, any of his attempts of improving me or any ‘negs’ dropped that I can think have been met with me laughing and throwing it back at him.

Last night, he was trying to get me to stand up straighter. This is a new one. The other day when he did it, I told him the story of a woman I used to work with who said the same thing and qualified it with, “You have nice boobs, sit up strait and let the world see them!”. I teased him, telling him he just wanted to see my boobs better. We joke a lot.

It came up again. I told him another anecdote about how a friend of mine who has immaculate posture actually went out with a guy who told her to stop sitting up so strait and goddamn relax sometimes. It’s a true story.

The moral is if I want to work on my posture, I will for me and my reasons.

The examples Mystery gives are offering a piece of gum after a woman speaks for the first time (implying they have bad breath).

I would do one of two things:

1. I’d say no to the weird guy I just met offering me gum. Maybe there’s a roofie in it. I don’t take candy from strangers. The last time I accepted gum from a coworker it had as much caffeine in it as an energy drink.

2. It’s completely lost on me as a neg. I don’t do certain kinds of social subtlety very well, probably because I don’t give a flying pig crap. So, I take the gum, say thanks, and go about my night.

The other example Mystery gives is saying the woman has lipstick on her teeth…

I don’t wear makeup. I am reminded that these women they’re picking up are not the same kinds of women as me. If it was one of the rare occasions I was wearing makeup, I’d probably say, “Oh, hey, thanks. I don’t wear this crap often, so I have no idea if there’s like a trick to have it not do that. Did you know that a lot of lipsticks supposedly have lead in it? Yeah, and I just ate some. Awesome. Imagine people who wear this stuff all the time- I wonder if people actually get lead poisoning- probably brain damage at least. What do you think?”

No, really, that’s the kind of thing I’d say. I’m a weirdo, remember? And I don’t give a flying wicked witch monkey poo, remember?

I think I’m done reading this book. It’s time to go talk to the boy and try to find my answers that way.

Update: Did last night… but no time to talk about it now. Those thoughts may eventually make there way here.

Sports Bras

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Yes, this will be the second post in which I gripe about womens’ clothing.

I realized I don’t understand sports bras.

I’m a C. I like a lot of support. I like pads, tough, tight, under wire frames, and other things to keep things secure. I’m not saying that bouncing is bad, I’m saying that they still bounce even if the best support, so…

I started doing jiu-jistu, I figure I should get some athletic clothes. I have my gi, but in addition I should be wearing appropriate clothes with it and under it.

I tried on some sports bras.

Fact: I bounce about 75% more with a sports bra than with my regular bras.

Fact: My regular bras provide my chest 100% more protection from being hurt. Padding may not be equivalent to the cups men wear, but yeah, when knee-on-stomach is accidentally knee-on-chest, it helps.

Is this just another joke, like womens’ pant sizes?

I looked it up online and apparently that normal, pull-over sports bras only really work for ‘normal breast sizes’ which apparently is up to a B. So, no wonder I had no luck. I mean, I didn’t know that there was a kind of sports bar that wasn’t a pull-over.

Apparently I need something called an “encapsulation style” sports bra, like my bra is going to be frozen in a capsule so it may be able to wake up in a future time? An encapsulation style sports bra apparently has adjustable back clasps, shoulder straps, and are made in non-stretch fabric. Wait… this sounds like a regular bra. I’m confused.

Now I know what to shop for. I wonder when I try one if I’ll say, “Wow, this feels like a regular bra that I normally wear.”

I also wonder how much of an arm and a leg they’re going to try to charge me for these ‘special’ sports bras.

Woo. Clothing.

Meaning in Mating

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The boy admitted to me today that he felt like sex had lost some of it’s meaning.

It’ not a great thing to hear, but he immediately qualified it. He didn’t mean sex with me, he meant the concept of sex in general.

He said that before he started the road to self improvement and read No More Mr. Nice Guy, dropped a bunch of belt sizes, and started learning about women, he used sex as a way to try to make girls close and keep girls close. It was a controlling mechanism more than anything. He finally realized that was what he was doing and let that go. Now he is trying to figure out what is left.

Right now there’s pleasure, fun, and exploration. What’s missing?

I told him that for me sex is getting closer to someone, taking things to the next level of trust and closeness. I told him I thought it was sad he didn’t have that kind of meaning.

I couldn’t help myself. I also told him it was probably because he only had these short non-relationships. Yes, I did it, I implied that his sexual exploration could be responsible for cheapening his sex life. I doubt he actually agreed with me, but he’s not the kind of guy to get annoyed or angry. He left it with a “Hmm, I don’t know.”

He told me that he’d found other ways to get closer to someone, conversation, cuddling, experiences together other than sex, and it’s a good point. Sex isn’t what’s needed to get closer, other things do that in a deeper fashion.

I do think it’s sad though. If he was using sex for control before, I can see how it would feel like there’s something missing. It doesn’t sound like there was ever a deeper meaning for him. I think most people at least start out with a romantic notion of sex. For him, what he had was actually a desperate notion. Now, he’s looking for meaning after the fact.

Maybe it’s part of the exploration. I know I can’t help him find meaning, it’s a pretty personal concept. I actually pity him as I don’t feel like things are missing. There is more every time and every time it’s that much better and I feel a little closer.

I don’t really know what he’s exactly looking for and I don’t think he does either, but I do hope he finds it.

Update:

Apparently some of what’s missing is giving himself permission to not feel guilt or pre-programmed notions of what one does during sex.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but he’s one of the most creative guys I’ve dated and he’s extremely open-minded, so I’m kind of curious what will happen once he sheds off those demons.

It seems incongruous probably due to the whole “I’m learning to be part of a secret society of guys who are so cool no woman can resist us” thing.

Sometimes I wonder what we would have thought of each other if we’d met a each other at a different time. How many recent big changes in himself and his life has he made? It seems like a lot, and every now and then something comes up that seems like is part of a different person. I sometimes wonder who that person was and in what capacity he might still exist.

The Game

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My biggest issue with my new love interest is that he insists on ‘just dating’ (rather than being in a relationship) even though we’re now going on three months.

I don’t take issue with much. I don’t sweat the small stuff. Snoring? I can deal with that. I wear earplugs.

I’m not the kind of woman that still believes that someday soon before I die some guy will come into my life that is perfect in every way including no snoring. Having flaws is part of being human. If it even were possibly to be that perfect, too perfect is ultimately unattractive since you can’t connect with someone you can’t relate to. How could you relate to an perfect person when you have your own baggage and regiment you follow for self-improvement?

So now that I’m entirely off topic, it’s not just that which makes me uncomfortable, hesitant, and slightly distant. The whole only seeing each other even though we spend a lot of time with each other and have become close is part of it. The other part is part of the why he insists on this.

Part of what makes up his self-improvement regiment is that he wants to learn to be good with women, and he’s got it in his head that he has to learn about women by dating a lot of women.

I didn’t know about this when we first started seeing each other, but he is part, or is learning to be a part of, a secret society of pickup artists. Really. I’m serious. Stop laughing. He goes to these meeting things every Tuesday night that I can only guess is where a bunch of guys sit in a circle and talk about how to figure out and get into womens’ panties and build their own self confidence to do so.

Life is so weird, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

He belongs to an online forum for them, they call them lairs (seriously, stop laughing). He has a bunch of books in his house on the subject of picking up women complete with workbooks and cheesiness. I raised my eyebrows at this the first time I was over his house and laughed:

“AD&D Players Handbook Third Edition… Oracle SQL Interactive Workbook… Visual Basic .Net Programmer’s Reference… The Art of Japanese Swordsmanship… Business Plans for Dummies… A Complete Hacker’s Handbook… Palmistry… How to Attract Anyone, Anytime, Anyplace…?”

…and there were worse sounding titles than that.

Until then, minus all of my art books, and a different flavor of programming books, the library reads similar to mine. I expect the nightstand to have porn, but all of the sex self help wasn’t as expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about self help. I’ve read interpretations of the Kama Sutra. I approve of that.

I picked up some and read chapters of some of the books he has, but I’ve been avoiding anything too sketchy looking. Anything with the implications that it’s one of those pick up artist (PUA) guides makes me a little leery.

It’s maybe like getting to know someone and getting real close and then finding out they belong to a cult. I’m trying not to judge, but anything that calls itself a secret society registers as cultish anyways. Anything that is dedicated to getting women in bed makes my feminist sensibilities hurt. The fact that I’ve gotten this close to someone who belongs to any kind of secret society makes me nervous. The fact I’ve gotten this close to someone who I guess is some kind of player in training is just… I don’t even know.

Like I’ve said, I’ve been meeting some of the friends. One of them I’ve been over his house a few times on my own to hang out, make cookies, and watch X-men. It occurred to me before I met him that it could be a fellow PUA. As I was meeting him, it didn’t take me long, I was sure. I didn’t see the tell-tale books about his house, but I did spy a magazine on his coffee table that told all. When I picked on him for it, he told me he read it for the cool gadgets they show every issue. I’m sure he also get’s porn for the articles too, right? I told him to stop acting ashamed about it- if you’re going to be something be it. I may not understand the scene at all, know much about it, or even approve once I get to know more, but if you’re choosing to be something, you better be okay enough with it to be able to say, “Yeah, so, and? Fuck you if you don’t approve.”

He asked me how much the boy had told me about PUA. I told him truthfully that I’ve been told nothing directly, but I did find his blog which talks a about it complete with thick jargon without a glossary.

What I didn’t go on about was that I’m smart, though. I read books. I surf the internet. I’ve read between the lines on things he’s talked about with self-improvement and groups things that have helped him. I even read between the lines when he tries something out on me. I know that some things are his own creation, and some things are from things he’s learned that he wants to try out (and some things a combination of the two).

Really, though, I don’t know enough about PUA and the more secretive people act, the closer I get to the boy, the more I want to know.

This friend of the boy’s was asking how much I was told as if he would then turn around and give the boy a talking to. It seemed like he disapproved that the boy leaves stuff around. Maybe he was just disgusted at the lack of style, or maybe he was worried he would reveal their secrets or something.

And yet, he was the one who gave me the idea where to start researching.

A book has come up a bunch, and the friend has it listed as his favorite book. I’m not going to read every book, system, and watch every DVD and video clip at the boy’s house. I’d rather read and study the SQL books, but I probably won’t do that either. Still, I want a better understanding of the thing that makes me uncomfortable about a person I am getting closer to as time goes on. He won’t talk about it, so this book seems like a good place to start.

Don’t get me wrong. Dating and meeting his friends and having him meet my friends and taking trips, it’s taking up a lot of my time. I don’t want to spend all of my time researching this and trying to understand him. I still need to focus on me and my goals. I know my blog has been hijacked by him in this indirect fashion lately, but it’s an outlet to keep it him from distracting me the rest of the time. If it doesn’t go into words on here or on paper, it stays in my head playing a bad game of Breakout. Boing, boing. Get the picture?

The title of the book is The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. Okay, now you’re laughing again.

I just started reading it, and am doing so slowly and hesitantly. It’s like the time I tried reading the Bible (Old to New Testament). I didn’t get far. I did it with the idea that doing so would give me a better understanding and respect for people who chose to follow it. At some point while reading, it started to do the opposite. Then I realized most people who call themselves religious or followers of the Bible have read snippets at best, so reading it wasn’t going to help me understand them anyways.

I hope this doesn’t do the same, but if it does, then I at least will be able to have a rational issues with it. Right now it’s more that I’m wary of it because I don’t get it, and I shouldn’t be afraid of it for those reasons. I don’t understand why when things are going so well between us, when he has no time for much else, when he has other more important seeming goals that he feels like he needs to spend time seeing other women or study being a PUA. Who knows if he actually does even see other women. If he does I don’t know when he has time to. It’s not something I want to ask about because it’s not something I think I’d really want to know the specifics of.

Maybe it has something to do with building self confidence and stroking ego. Maybe it has to do with exploring masculinity and breaking away from societies conventions and definitions of what being man means, though one could argue PUA is just following yet another ‘supposed to’ for men. Right now, though, I don’t have much of a basis for my ideas, so I begin to read.

My first impression of the book left me both impressed and disgusted:

If you are reading this, I want you to know I wasn’t running game on you. I was being sincere. Really. You were different.

I laughed and threw up a little in my mouth.

But then he quotes The Feminine Mystique:

Men weren’t really the enemy- They were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

Food for thought, yes, I do believe sexism is not just an issue that women face. Men have their own stereotypes and issues to overcome that I will never fully know or understand having faced my own journey being a woman. I’m not sure what this has to do with the game exactly, yet, but the use of the quote does intrigue me. Is it a rationalization for behavior, or a statement that the Game is learning to breaking from it?

You might be wondering why I don’t discuss this with the boy, as communication is the way as I’ve said over and over on the blog. The answer is that it’s a secret society. I can’t even get him to say what really goes on Tuesday nights. The only reason I know he meets with a group was vague answers, and then once I’d assumed he was doing worse things, he clarified.

I have tried to push this with direct questions as well as jibes and joking and so far I haven’t been able to draw him into conversation on the subject, so I will continue my outside research.

Maybe you think I should leave this alone, but I’m not one for ignorance. If I’m going to be with someone who plays this game, I want to know what it is.