Lovekey is a member of the mASF forum. Acronyms used in this article can be looked up on the acronyms page. To get involved in discussions like this, you can join the mASF discussion forum at fastseduction.com/discussion.
Original discussion thread: http://fastseduction.com/discussion/fs?action=9&boardid=2&read=87715&fid=23
I will attempt to answer the following questions:
* What really happens for most gamers out there in the long run?
Before I begin, let me give you a little bit of a background on myself and my relationship to the community. Before entering the community at the age of 25, I had 1 LTR for 2 years, followed by 3 years of no sex, with only 2 dates in between, and no k-closes whatsoever. I had no cool friends and no good role models, and very little access to hot chicks, or even chicks in general, because of my interest in hard sciences. As far as I know this is a worse-than-average start.
Before you dismiss this post, or think about flaming, make no mistake about it: I have done my fucking homework. I have been out in the field 3-4 days a week for the last 4 years. I have pushed my boundaries, I have addressed my sticking points, I have worked on my own self and having a fuller life, I have posted, and I have read, I have taken workshops, and I have applied what I could. But I didn’t quite make it as far as I hoped for. Now, 4 years later, I have achieved a lot, but I have also fallen far short of where I thought I would be 4 years down the line. Where are my 3-somes? where are my HB9s? Where is my harem of FBs? Where are my 2-3 lays a month? I am nowhere near , and neither are most gamers I know. I am here to tell you, not everyone makes it in this game. Not even those that apply themselves hard.
THE GREAT EXPECTATIONS
When I entered into the community at the end of 2004, I was really inspired. I have read posts by TD, Mystery, Juggler, Gunwitch, Toecutter, Style, etc. , all the classics, and I immediately knew their shit was gold, that’s what I was missing. Then I went out there, I tried this stuff out, I opened, I got numbers, and good reactions from girls and mild attraction. Everything seemed to be on the right track. I just didn’t know how far I was from the ultimate goal of becoming a PUA (which basically means having free choice of women, or at least getting laid at least once a week with a new girl of good quality). I knew I couldn’t achieve it at the time, but I thought I would surely get it some day, as long as I kept at it. This is what most Gurus out there would like you to believe. I am here to tell you, it’s not true. While the knowledge base leads you in the right direction, not everyone can put the pieces together to make it work all the way to the end, consistently.
The thing about this game is that it requires you to have your shit together at every level. It is not enough just to not make simple rookie mistakes and have the right body language». You gotta be positive, confident, outcome independent, driven, a quick learner, have some baseline social skills. It helps to have a little bit of extra money and a LOT of extra time, it helps to have good memory, and an ability to think quickly in real time. Good looks don’t hurt either. If you got most of those things, you got a really good start. If you don’t have almost any of it at the beginning, you’re really working against the wind.
The game is a set of skills that anybody can apply to their lives in order to maximize their chances of getting laid with the women that they're interested in, and of course getting into relationships with.
However, the question now becomes, can anybody achieve any level of success with women? This is what a lot of people in the community would like you to believe. The premise is that if you don't succeed, you haven't done enough work.
But indeed as we all know deep down, that is not the reality. Even the pickup coaches secretly know this as well, but they will deny it, because their bottom line often depends on building castles in the air, as well as teaching real skills and providing inspiration.
Here I am speaking not only from my own results, but also from results of dozens of community guys I know well, and hundreds I know of indirectly or have some basic contact with. I have been very active in the community, including organizing a local lair, and there is a whole spectrum of guys out there, most of whom nobody likes to talk about. Some of them do make it, some of them are total failures, and some are somewhere in the middle.
PEOPLE WHO DON’T MAKE IT
So 4 years down the line, what happens to the people in the community?
* Some have opened the door (by checking up one of the websites or getting Style’s book), but quickly closed it, because they either didn’t believe it or felt too uncomfortable about the conclusions.
* Some are still get up and running and get into the routine of going out.
I think in general the community has neglected the real hard cases, people like Spoon, Fred, or Scott from VH1’s “The Pickup Artist”, if anybody remembers that show.
Not to take away credit from those people who had success. God knows they had to go thru a lot of shit to get where they are. They got rejections and they persevered. They learned from their mistakes. They also went thru sweat, blood and tears to get where they're at. Props and thousands of rounds of applause. A lot of people have the same advantages and don't choose the high road.
What about the people who actually do make it?
Typically people who succeed are one of the following types.
The first type is those that are already pretty good with women, and now they discovered this skill set and the community and begin to learn the skills on top of their existing set. They are fairly well calibrated with women, they can typically get women in their social circles or within a certain environment, and that gives them the calibration in many respects to apply that skill to other women. So if they can polish their opening and attraction skills, perhaps their inner game» is already together, and their escalation is already calibrated. This includes people such as Savoy, Stevie PUA, Lovedrop, possibly Mystery (we don't really know his true story before the community). And many other gurus around the community were already good with women by any standard of people outside the community.
There is another category of people that succeeds. Those who are extremely motivated in nature, and will often have had a record of success in other fields, such as starting a business, or winning a major sports championship, or whatever.You see those people, as they enter the game, and you are amazed at their drive. They go out there, and they will hear about a technique and will hear about how to put it all together, they will read about the Mystery method», they will learn all routines, they will just go thru the steps. As we all know there are a few prescriptions out there that take you from A to Z. If you do the steps, you massively increase your chances of getting the women you want. The original, routine-based Mystery Method» is one of those prescriptions, and that is what TD and Style started with.
So let's look at Style and The Game, as an example most people here are familiar with. I have met Style twice, once during a Mystery workshop and once during a book signing. From these encounters and indirect accounts from other people, I have grounds to believe that the gist of that book, namely the story of Style's success, is true, just written finely and embellished a tiny bit for reader's enjoyment.
So what is the secret behind Style's success?
1. Before entering the community, he was already a successful writer, and it takes a certain personality type to get to that level of success in this world outside the game
Thus in this case, the benefits of being promising are magnified 10-fold. I will speculate that with the drive that Style had, he could have probably succeeded even without direct supervision of Mystery and others. He just wouldn't have been one of the greatest PUAs of all times. Also typically people who succeed in the game have the following qualities
* The ability to focus intensely
Once again, all this is learnable, but if you don't have any of this figured out from the beginning, your journey is very much uphill.
SO WHY DON’T SOME PEOPLE MAKE IT?
Even though prescriptions exists of how to go from A to Z, from virginity to PUA-dom, the majority of people aren't exactly able to take it all in at once and go thru the steps that are necessary. Why is that? There are several reasons:
1) Not everyone can take the hit to the ego and move on, and overcome the 1000s of rejections that are about to come
A guy who is coming out of nowhere striving toward PUA-dom, will have about as much of a chance as a high school drop-out in getting the Ph.D. Most people would think the latter feat is insane, and would even try to discourage the guy from trying, not because they don't want him to succeed, but because they are afraid he will burn out and waste his time and energy for nothing. Nobody in their right mind will, or should, put their money on this person's success.
Compare that to a student who has a bachelors in math, a network of people to help him out, good knowlegde of the field, and confidence that he can make it, and the motivation to move forward. Now we're talking!. There are a lot of differences between the Math Ph.D. and the game, but in many respects, the skill sets are equally hard; if you're coming out of nowhere, it really helps to already have some basic foundations down.
THE POSITIVE CONCLUSION
So now that I established not everyone can make it in this game, where do we go from here?
Well it's not an easy realization, but nevertheless a useful one.
I have to give up on some dreams that I may have previously had.
* I will probably never have a threesome
To shoot for these goals would be foolish at this point. It is a silly chase for unachievable dreams, and not a statement of limiting beliefs.
However, to describe my results as failure would be a mistake. In fact what I have achieved is a success relative to where I started. My lay count is now up from 1 to 18. I have had ONSes and learned to set the non-exclusive frame. Most people think i am cool, and I have good social skills. I have access to good social circles, great close friends and great wings (I've been really blessed in that regard, so thanks guys).
I have dates every 1-2 weeks. I get a new lay about every two months on average. I get a chance with a high quality girl that meets my standards every 2-3 months or so. Mostly I blow it, but I'm doing better and better, and I know within the next year or so, I could be laying these girls more consistently.
* I have learned to be more positive
Thus I got a lot out of this community, and I will continue to do so. I am still inspired by the RSD blog, and by the guys from Charisma Arts, who have been the reason for major improvements in my game in the past year.
The community Gurus are giving good advice and pointing in the right direction. Just remember you don't have to be a superstar to be happy. I found that striving for more realistic goals motivates me more than striving for the unreachable. Luckily I got enough positive feedback from my efforts to keep going, and I feel good about where I am, and also where I can be realistically.
I think when Style wrote the game, he did not describe the journey from A to Z. I think what he described is the journey from somewhere in the middle of the alphabet.
* Is it possible to get from A to Z in the first place?
I know all this A to Z stuff is pretty vague, if I had to expand on that, this post would have to drag on quite a bit longer
This post is about my experience in the game after 4 years, and the real results, both mine and other people’s.
* What people make it and what people don’t?
* Why do some people make it further than others?
* Where do we go from here?
I have been active in the game for the past 4 years, in the course of which I took 3 workshops. I have also been a president of a local lair for the last 2.5 years, I have met many many community guys, and seen what really happens to guys on the road to PUA-dom. I have seen the successes and the failures, I have seen what happens to guys after workshops, how much they really learn, how far they really go, how useful this stuff really is (or sometimes is not).
* Some do really well for a while, and look promising, and all of the sudden they run out of steam and crash, never to get back up again.
* Some hammer away aimlessly without actually being able to figure out their sticking points. They go from one school of PU to another, and none of the methods really seem to work for them no matter what. They just can't figure it out! They eventually run out of energy because there are no rewards to be reaped
* Some seem to be gaming, but when you get down to it, they have too many limiting beliefs and simply weird issues that prevent from even trying in certain areas.
* Some take workshop after workshop, and only put in the field work under a coach's supervision. After which they proceed to erase their gains by doing nothing to solidify their knowledge. They stop sarging until the next workshop.
* Some get real success in terms of getting laid, but fall short of finding happiness in the process.
* Some get real success only for a short amount of time, but they can’t seem to replicate it, again and again falling short of their best result
* Some get tired of gaming and become KJs, or give too much advice, while doing too little themselves
* There is another category of people, that basically get in the game, and then the first girl they score, they think that this is the success and they settle. Maybe she is good enough, but most likely they're just tired of gaming.
But there are a lot of other guys who also went thru the sweat, blood and tears, but either didn't make it, or didn't make it that far. And not thru lack of trying.
PEOPLE WHO DO MAKE IT
2. He's already tried standup comedy, and that is a skill that helps a lot with getting women, because you're exposing yourself to public pressure
3. A lot of people rightly note that Style had the incredible position in the pickup world where he entered at the right time and at the right place, and was surrounded with the best PU minds in the community.
4. What a lot of people also forget about this is that Mystery chose him because he was already very promising!!!
* The ability to be in the now
* Outcome independence
* Good memory
* Being a quick learner
* The ability to act quickly and on impulse
* The ability to think quickly on the spot
2) Not everyone will get results sufficiently fast. And if you don't get them, you get fatigued, you get exhausted, disappointed, your inner game» suffers, your efforts are dampened, and you tend to withdraw. For those who don’t get results quick, this road has much more thorns than roses. Many people I know quit the game, and stop gaming pretty much altogether, or go out once a month, which is absolutely insufficient, partly because of this.
A good analogy for trying to become a full-fledged PUA with bells & whistles, is trying to get a Ph.D. in math from a prestigious university
* I will probably never lay a true HB9
* I will never get to the point where I get 1 lay per week consistently
* Maybe I will achieve all of the above in another 10 years, but I am not willing to put my money on that horse. I got better things to do.
* I have learned some extremely useful conversational techniques (credit Juggler)
* I have learned to be more outcome independent.
* I have learned what women are attracted to.
* I have learned to control my state, and manage my stress, both in the field and in other areas of my life.
* I have learned not to gear everything I say and do towards getting a girl
* I have learned to put myself first, and my game second.
* I have learned to live my life according to my own expectations, and not other people's.
The interesting questions then are:
* If it is, is it worth the effort?
* What would it take to get from A to the middle of the alphabet?
