I ran into this hyper-analytical PUA stuff which was not what I was expecting or looking for, but I looked into it anyways. Initially, all the acronyms and the hardcore frat-bro vibe that surrounded it looked pretty douchey and immature to me. I hope I'm not stepping on too many toes by saying that, but the whole thing just looked like a bunch of guys over-obsessing with interactions with women and getting laid, it just looked like a bunch of kids that belonged on a reality TV show like Jersey Shore. After looking into it more, I really liked the self-improvement aspects of this stuff and the confidence building ideas, as these concepts seemed to be applicable and useful all aspects of life rather than just "getting laid." So here I am.



I got cheated on and subsequently dumped by my girlfriend of 6 years. I was very good to this chick. I was helping her little sister with math homework, going to all the family funerals, always encouraging and helping her to chase her dreams, and forcing her to take my hand and walk down the beach to build her confidence when she thought she was fat (she wasn't, and she was reasonably attractive, I'd call her a 6 or 7 now that the halo effect is gone). I even got her into grad school when she would not have otherwise (I can say this with certainty.)

I made a fatal mistake with this girl, I was a pretty cool guy before I met her. I poured all my energy into her, lost all my friends, and became incredibly boring and stagnant. Not that it would have mattered if I hadn't done this, because she was never truly committed in the relationship, always putting me down, clearly just hanging around to make use of me and my family as her personal cheerleaders. At one point she tried to convince me to not get a college degree so I could be her cheerleader full time. I was settling in a major way. If it did work out, I would have been miserable for the rest of my life.

She talked about marriage for ages. Right around when I finally felt ready and started looking for a ring, she fed me some lie to turn around when I was making the bi-weekly half-day trip to visit her. She cheated on me that night. Afterwards, she went from zero to sixty with some guy in a matter of weeks while still leading me on for about a month, getting extremely sexual with me on the phone and talking about having my babies and shit.

I don't know much about this guy, but from what I can glean off of the internet, he is great with women and extremely confident but in all other respects the guy is a total rube. It really showed me how sophistication, intelligence, loyalty, kindness, and support are pretty much completely independent from attractiveness. These qualities are useless to a girl unless it piggybacks on being confident socially (I am not bitter about this at all, rather, I am excited to come to understand this.)

After about 3 months of working out to lose all the weight I gained (which I accomplished), having reasonable success with approaching women on the street, and punching myself in the dick staring at photos of my ex and replacement for me until I was numb, I can say with certainty that I no longer care in the slightest about her. I don't even mind that she is still using ideas and work that I did to help her a year ago in her portfolio, passing it off as her own. I am now completely motivated to be the man she held me back from becoming. Thank God I got burned rather than trapped, because now I am the blank slate I need to be to make the changes I want to make.






The problem is, socially, I am starting at the bottom of the totem pole here with a disadvantage, and I am not quite sure how to break out of this situation. I am still a college student, but I am an unconventional student because I am much older (took a few years off), so I don't get all that natural network building icebreaker crap you get naturally when you go in as a freshman. I lost all my previous friends as they graduated and moved away, and my fraternity vanished and isn't really an option to go back to for networking. I was NEVER any good at night-life social situations. I literally have almost zero experience even being in a bar, and even the idea of going into one is intimidating. I suck at talking to people in loud settings.

I can walk up to almost any girl during the day (I still get paralyzed by the ones that are more attractive than my ex) and start up a conversation, but I have only landed a few numbers out of pure luck rather than my own intent and action. At night when they are all gussied up and drunk doing the bar-crawls, I suck at approaching, because the town turns practically into an enormous bar. It helps that I am reasonably good looking though, I catch girls checking me out fairly often and sometimes they make the approach. When I add in my badass German Shepherd and go on a walk, I get stopped and talked to by almost every third girl I pass and sometimes I can strike up a good conversation there, but this doesn't challenge my approach anxiety at all because I don't end up doing much work or overcoming any fears.

Worse than that though, is that I have no male friends here, and it is twice as hard for me to approach a guy and chat it up than a girl. At least with a girl, the excuse to talk is implied and in some way that validates my actions, but with a guy, the only validation I can come up with is that I need some damn friends and that isn't exactly ego-empowering. Plus, women are generally far more receptive to being approached and chatted up than men, in my experience.

I jumped out of a plane after the break-up, thinking I would challenge my fears that way and somehow get some courage, but it turns out, I'm not really afraid of that kind of thing to begin with. I considered making some radical life-choices that would be even more frightening than that, before I realized that social situations are at the core of my problems and I was just dodging it. I simply suck at approaching people and making friends out of the blue, and without friends, it is tough to get myself into venues to meet people. Vicious cycle. I really need to get to a point with a few guys and girls where I am close enough friends to go out to bars and stuff with them, so that I can challenge myself in the social situations that I fear and expand my network of friends.

I'm joining organizations and stuff, and studio-type art classes are awesome for meeting people because you just chill and listen to music and hang out with people for hours rather than hammer out equations with your head down like in my engineering classes, but I just can't seem to land outside-of-class meetups and hangouts with the acquaintances I am making. For example, this one really cool girl that I met has a boyfriend, and I knew that when she approached me so I sought to befriend her right away rather than burn that opportunity by coming onto her. So far we keep in touch regularly and have pretty decent conversations with a wide range of intelligent subject matter and emotional content, but I cannot for the life of me get her to just hang out with me. I tried including the boyfriend, who wasn't hostile to me but had zero interest in talking to me. I regularly try to sneak in little hints that I am not going after her as a romantic interest by casually mentioning other girls I meet and including her boyfriend as a positive point in conversation or even talking him up when she says something about him, yet she still flakes on me every time I suggest or hint that we hang out. She initiates conversation with me via text message all the time which is cool, so she isn't running for the hills, but something I am doing is preventing this from becoming a real valuable friendship because I cannot get her to hang out. Not only am I missing out on hanging out with this girl that is intelligent, attractive, interesting, and fun, but I am missing out on the other networking opportunities I would have by hanging out with her and meeting her friends. I am doing something fundamentally wrong when it comes to interacting with people in general.

Any advice?

Hey Bitework,

You know, this is very funny because I have almost exactly a similar story to yours. About two months ago, I found myself with a girl who I thought that I was going to marry cheated on me, and was lying. I however, blamed myself for all of the crap going on because I was a bad boyfriend from the start of the relationship, and only in the last 9 months of it, did I start to turn things around.. Only to get hurt.

I am very good looking, but getting back into the game is tough. I let this girl pretty much kill all my friends. I've never been a guy to have a bunch of male friends anyway.

I also find it very difficult to meet guys, but I also realize that it is key in order to build what PUA's call "social value". Have you tried going to the gym? I find that this is the easiest place to meet cool guys around. I just make eye contact, give a quick "nod" or "sup" and keep going. Usually we get talking about working out or something, or they ask me to spot, but people usually open up about other aspects of their lives during that time.

I now have a roommate, who was an old friend that I stopped talking to partially because of my ex. We go out often, and it is much cooler/different to have a guy around all the time. We motivate each other to work out, to go out, to hit on women. There is a noticeable testosterone boost, just hanging out with another dude.

The dog is a great idea. I would be going out with that thing all the time. Even bring it on campus if your campus lets you, that way you know that you will see the girl that stops to pet it again, and it is a great conversation starter and ice breaker.

In my opinion, I would ditch the girl that you are trying to hang with her and her bf. Either she likes you, so she doesn't want her boyfriend to be involved in your "relationship", thinks it would be weird for you two to meet because it would put her in an embarrassing situation. Either find girls who will introduce you to their friends if they have a boyfriend (quite a bit of my relationships/one night stands were set up by a girl who was trying to 'set me up'), or hang out with like-minded guys.

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Bangor, Maine

I know my situation is not unusual and I am by no means special nor have I any right to feel the slightest bit sorry for myself. However it is nice to hear that others are dealing with something similar so I appreciate that.

As for the dog, you are damn right about it. Originally I had thought to get an "approachable looking" dog but abandoned the idea and rescued a German shepherd that looks rather like a starving military dog (she's an eastern European shepherd with black sable coat, she looks bad as a motherfucker from a distance and has an adorable face up close). I have her trained well enough to stay at my side off leash so I take her around campus and get stopped left and right by people asking how she is so well behaved. Once they meet her they fall in love. One girl even cried and hugged me then thanked me for rescuing her. I wish I had taken the opportunity to get her number, I thought that was incredibly hot, motherly instinct and all, falls in that category along with other primal turn ons like child bearing hips. This girl was serious girlfriend material. Well, another will come along.

So she turned out to be an awesome opener for girls, even when I didn't intend her to be.