Tag Archives: pua

A Creep?

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Every now and then when I need a break from work, but still want to feel productive, I do things like clean up my desktop icons or go through and organize my bookmarks. Tonight I was going through bookmarks and I came across the link for an ex’s blog. I forgot I had it. Funny thing is, for the most part, I wrote in my blog extensively while we were together. He didn’t post anything in that time period it looks like.

Mostly his blog is about pickup and self improvement (which I guess for someone in PUA they might tell you they’re the same thing). There weren’t any recent posts, but there were a few from a few weeks after we broke up. They were him trying to get back into PUA and being… well… unsuccessful and creepy.

The thought has occurred to me lately that even though I didn’t initiate that breakup, I’m the one that came better out of it. Even though I’m not going out with anyone, I get the impression I have my shit more together than he does. I think I’ve had more success in being with new people since then. I don’t mean that pick-up style, I mean that just meeting new people. I’m certainly not being the desperate, creepy one.

I think that might be part of his and some other people’s problems. The obsession and focus of meeting the preferred sex for finding a mate is going to make you come off in a particular unattractive way if you let it consume you.

1. You think you need it.

You don’t need to get laid. You don’t need a boy/girlfriend. Life goes on. Great things happen either way. People who think they need it will give off the desperate vibe. The desperate vibe makes a woman feel creeped out, unsafe, and not special at all. I too have fallen into this trap, and I know it doesn’t come off as a good vibe to guys either (at least not the ones you want to attract).

2. It’s your number one motivator for meeting, talking to, and getting to know people.

You only talk to them if you think they might be your type. At the mention of a boy/girlfriend, you’re not interested in communicating with them any more.

This is what I told one of my friends: he may not be your next boyfriend, but what if his brother or best friend is your soulmate? Friends are very valuable to life in general. They can also help you find that next someone. There’s nothing wrong with just making friends.

This also is a problem in the way you approach people. You can flirt without using crappy pickup lines. If you’re smiling a bunch, using good body language, being interested, asking questions about their life, etc., you don’t need to say something like, “Hey, nice shoes… wanna f-“.

I think openers are stupid. Sorry, PUA people. They are. They are just alternate phrasing for crappy pickup line. They’re not any better. Try some genuine, off the top you’re your head, not creepy, real world conversation starters. Walking up to some random person on the street and calling them cute is a no. I’m sorry if someone who uses that is reading this and being offended, but someone has to tell you before you get maced. You may hate me now, but thank me later.

3. You’re approaching it as a player in a game rather than yourself.

As I got to know what PUA was, I didn’t gain much respect for it, and this is one of the big reasons. I love games. You might even call me a gamer. However, meeting people is not going to be won with cheat codes. I don’t care how many books your read, lines you put together based on those, or methods you use. To find someone lasting, you have to put your actual self out there (that includes to meet good friends and significant others).

Are you only interested in shallow acquaintances? Awkward lays? Maybe those lines could work for you then.

I guess the big question is: who are you and what do you want?

I’d like to find someone worth sticking my neck out for again, but I’m in no hurry either. There are a lot of great connections to be made with people out there without expecting them to be the next anything. I want to have fun. I want to meet people. But… I don’t need anything from these people. I’m comfortable here with myself, by myself both growing and existing. I don’t need another half, because I’m already a whole. One day I’d like to meet another whole person, a partner who fits me well, but I know it’s not going to happen by any kind of force.

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…

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.

How the Game Was One/Won

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This is a continuation of my posts on exploring The Game, both the book and the whole secret society of guys trying to get girls (because it’s a big secret guys try to do this..? Why not a secret society of breathing?). It has it’s own category above if you’d like to catch up on the posts and read them in order.

Here are my impressions of chapter one:

Here I expect we’ll get right into the women and picking up, but instead the book opens with the supposed master of all PUA wanting to commit suicide. It’s apparently on behalf of a girl. How’s that for confusing?

It’s a good hook and it reads like a very intentional hook. You expect the book to start in one general place, and next thing you know, you’re in a mental hospital. Wow, how did that happen? I guess I have to read the whole thing now. Yay literary devices!

I wasn’t disappointed completely. Before the end of the chapter, the very hot psychiatrist is told that in a different time, different place, she too would be swept off her feet by Mystery: PUA extraordinaire. The narrator who calls himself Style, the author himself I assume, lays it on thick that this is the absolute truth: Mystery is the man. Style says he’s the man too, but Mystery’s a man’s man (man). They are both the man, and yet Mystery is trying to kill himself.

And meanwhile you wonder what killing yourself has to do with pickup.

Also, I’m left to empathize with the woman behind the desk who gives the, “Uh,-huh, suuuuuuure.” politeness. I roll my eyes with her.

I hope there is meaning to this chapter by the end of the book, and this isn’t just a hook. I enjoy meaning. If suicidal tendencies can be turned into a good meaning, I’m all for it. I’m just hoping that meaning isn’t going in the direction of, “See what happens when you fall for a girl? They ruin you and you want to commit suicide, so stay in the game and don’t fall for the stupid bitches.” I automatically plot out possibilities as I read books. Maybe it’s just my previous prejudices and preconceptions showing, but it’s possible at this point things may be headed in that direction.