You are totally welcome, bro. It's something ALL our fathers try to tell us... but for a lot of reasons either we don't hear it, or we forget.

NEVER forget.

Take what you want with Love.

_________________
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Sean Messenger
http://LVo3.com

"War is not the answer. Love is."

Thanks Sean, this is an excellent post and thread - probably the best I've read on the site. I'm 33, and I've been through my share of both deep and meaningless relationships over the years. I'm no longer interested in sowing my oats, and my interest in this pick-up thing is largely focused on building better relationships than the ones I've had (although I won't complain if there are a few fun flings along the way). It's really nice to read posts like these to confirm that I came to the right place when I stumbled onto this site (to find the "cure" for oneitis, haha). Obviously, there are a lot of different people at different points in their lives, all having different problems or goals that come with a lot of different answers. However, buried in all of that are gems like this one that really help!

Alright, I'd like you to indulge my ego for a moment while I make a very important point that NEEDS to be made, because I get the feeling that guys think that these realizations only come to guys that have slept with masses of women.

I'm the highest contributing member to this forum, it's pretty much an addiction for me. I love human psychology, especially when it's dealing with sex, love and relationships; it utterly fascinates me and I can and do spend entire days entertained by discussing nothing else. I have made more posts than anyone else on this forum and the vast majority of them are far far longer than what people typically post. As a result of my passion, I can pretty safely say that I'm probably the most well known and respected member in this place [edit: after Zip because as Chief pointed out she is a hot, smart blonde chick and I'm just a bald dude ] (see, there's the ego I was warning you of ). Many people over the past year haven't even LIKED me, but they still respected me because of my morals and the fact that I'm completely and utterly open and have disclosed a great quantity of my life for you guys to read and learn from.

I've been running workshops for the past 7 months or so, without a single unhappy student yet. I've done this from Miami to New York and from Vancouver to Toronto.

The thing that shocks most guys that I talk to though, is that I'm NOT sleeping with tons of women all the time. Seriously. I actually made myself a promise that greatly restricts the number of women that I sleep with. I promised to myself that I would never sleep with a girl that I wasn't interested in and didn't have a connection with again, because merely being attracted to her physically isn't enough. As a result, my number of partners is probably lower than many of you new guys who's only focus is sleeping with thousands of women. As a result, about half the men I've taught have had higher numbers of partners than me. BUT, guess who's happier!

Understand that I CAN go out and sleep with lots of women if I so choose. As Hobbit said, he can indulge in the buffet if he wants, but he chooses not to. I have no problems not having sex for months though if that's what my true happiness requires.

I remember the deepest darkest depths that I've been to and aside from when my uncle died, the worst I've ever been; the most depressed I've ever been was when I disregarded that promise to myself and slept with a girl that I was attracted to, but not interested in. Immediately after she left my place I could be found leaning over my toilette, praying to the porcelain god because I was sure that I was gonna throw up (didn't happen though). Right after that, I brushed my teeth for about 5 minutes and then hopped in an overly hot shower and scoured my entire body, trying to remove whatever filth was causing me to feel so completely dirty.

There was only one other time in life that I felt quite like that and it was when I used to work as a prostitute, oops, I'm sorry pornstar. It's an easy mistake to make when you're only being paid $50 to blow a wad on a girl's face on camera, or $100 if you're lucky enough to be one of the guys that is actually having full on intercourse in the scene. Being 1 of 16 guys to tag team a girl really gives you that dirty feeling and even more so when you're being paid less than an actual prostitute would make.

Some of you guys may have glorified dreams of becoming a pornstar, or even are already. I'm not gonna hate on you guys and I have absolutely nothing against guys or girls that work as pornstars, strippers or prostitutes. Under certain conditions those jobs are actually not bad at all, but under the conditions I worked in, I felt like trash and that's exactly how I've felt every time I've ever done something with a girl that I had no connection with.

So perhaps you have aspirations of sleeping with hundreds of women in order to redeem yourself of the days when you couldn't get even one. Who are you trying to impress though? Maybe you're just trying to do as Johnny said and validate yourself because of a feeling that without sleeping with those women, you won't be able to prove how worthy you are. Well that's just silly, cause many of the most amazing people I know are still virgins or can count the number of women they've been with on one hand.

Now I'm a pretty decent judge of people, that's what makes me good at what I do. I don't think Sean is saying anything bad about guys that want to sleep with lots of women, I know if I told him that I felt like I needed to sleep with a few hundred, he would understand and wouldn't give me shit for it. What he's trying to say is that if you feel sleeping with all those women is going to fill that hole inside, make that void go away, then you're mistaken. If you aren't trying to fill the void with all that sex, then it's not an issue, but if you are (and I know I've been there, as he told you he has and so has Johnny), then we're giving you something else to consider.

Consider that happiness doesn't come from external sources like sleeping with tons of women and that instead it will come from loving yourself fully and completely. Consider that when you are able to truly love and accept yourself, you will be able to find women that you do connect with and are able to have outstandingly fulfilling relationship with and you may never even want another woman again.

We're only trying to save you guys the same kind of pain we went through in coming to these realizations. If you feel the only way you can learn this lesson is by taking the hard road and making yourself feel like crap until it finally hits home, then I'm not gonna stop you, I'll even help you on your way in the hopes that I can save you some of that anguish. I promise though, one day you will wake up and realise something is missing and the awesome thing is that you don't actually have to go through all that in order to come to that realization, you can just look inwards and see if it's inside you waiting to be discovered already. If not, then no harm done right? But if so, you may have saved yourself from spending years of your life that you'll never get back, in search of something you never really wanted and were only after because society (and even more so the community) has told you you want.

_________________
"The 'Brick Walls' are there to allow you to prove how badly you want something!" ~ Randy Pausch

~ Rye

Zip's got the claim to fame here. She's got the "I'm a hot blonde chick who's actually smart" advantage. Sorry to burst your ego bubble, but it's what I do.

Great thread, guys. However, my first reaction to this thread was, "Wow, I'm so young. Guys like Sean Messenger and Johnny Soporno have transcended so far above me with all that life experience." And then I realized that it's the experience that makes the man.

We all go through life with both continuity and stages, and you just can't get to some stages without having been through the murky depths of some of the stages you guys are collectively frowning upon. Well, let me tell ya somethin.

The reason you guys are at the place of wisdom you are at now is because you've been through hell and back. I'll quote Fight Club, "It's only once we've lost everything are we free to do anything." I wouldn't deny any man the opportunity to fall into the temptation of a shitty externally validated lifestyle as long as he has this community to help him through it and mature from it. That's where you guys come in, of course, but no one will truly understand what the heck you're talking about unless they've been through hell and back themselves.

We need to take a dive down into those dark depths before we are able to see the value of the sunny surface. Sure, you can call The Game a lie NOW, but it wouldn't be a lie and you wouldn't have been enlightened with the keys to happiness you have now if you hadn't personally gone through that lie, played that game, followed its rules, conquered it, and eventually made your own game, your own life.

I used to want an everlasting love with one girl. They told me I had oneitis. I "cured" it. I've been through the stage where I saw the AFC lifestyle as a lie. It evolved me. I became a better man. I wouldn't be me today if I hadn't followed the rules of the PUA game for at least a while.

Every stage you transcend will look like a lie to you when you're looking back, caught in the illusion that you could have gone straight to the enlightenment you have now. The terrible truth, however, is that even though you think that you didn't have to work your ass off in the previous stage to understand the world as you do now... you did. The Game isn't a lie; I think it represents a very important stage that every man should go through to become a man. It's like a rite of passage to become enlightened.

Nowadays I'm not too clear on my romantic goals. Maybe I'm in a transitional stage. I don't want an exclusive relationship because I now see that permanent monogamy is an unnatural social construct created to oppress women and monopolize their abundant sexuality. I don't want to go out and bang hundreds of chicks because I never really wanted to do that in the first place - it's not ME - and thus doing so would be external validation and fake ego gratification. Whatever the future holds for me, though, I'm smiling now. I'm looking back at all the shit scum and lies I've put myself through and I'm smiling. I'm looking forward expecting more adversity and reframes and I'm smiling. I appreciate the journey of life I'm on now and I appreciate the journey I've been on. And I think that the greatest gift I could give to a man would be a personal journey through all that shit scum and lies.

I always thought that somewhere along the line I could find happiness, but then I realized I had it within me the whole time. I needed to go through the "lies" I've been through to realize and understand that.

I realized that I don't actually need anything from women (or anyone else, for that matter) to validate myself. I needed to try to get that validation as hard as I possibly could, as if my life depended on it, to realize and understand this.

Bring on the lies, I can't get enough. I don't want to stop growing. I'll never stop.

Chief, great points, and I want to push this one even further.

What about the men who never do sleep with hundreds of women (i'm one of them). What about the men who never "sow their oats," but find a great girl and are truly happy with their lives and with her?

Cos those men exist. It can be valuable to suffer to learn a lesson, but is that always true? Do I need to jump off a bridge and break my leg in order to learn to not do that, or can I learn that wisdom from someone else's expereince?

Reason I'm saying this is because I never heard ANYONE, EVER, tell me before I found "pickup" that sleeping with tons of women and chasing tail could actually bring you more pain than happiness. In fact, every message I got from advertising to movies to friends to song to art re-inforced the idea of the playboy as the happiest stud in the stud farm.

If just one man I respected had said, "listen dude, sleeping with tons of girls may be fun, and it may sound fun, but for me it really was way more pain than pleasure, and if i had to do it again, i'd do it differently," I might have listened.

Maybe not. I'm stubborn like a pig. But it would have been nice to hear that I had a choice.

_________________
===

Sean Messenger
http://LVo3.com

"War is not the answer. Love is."

btw, i know i'm gonna sound like a right prick for saying this, but i am blown away at the maturity and wisdom i'm finding here. i admit, i thought this was gonna be like old-school masf shit.

but y'all make me fucking proud just to be a tiny, tiny flaccid member in this big thick community.

_________________
===

Sean Messenger
http://LVo3.com

"War is not the answer. Love is."

I think that if you really do understand what you're talking about, that means you've been through something just as worse to understand it "indirectly," so to speak.

For example, I learned a lot about life through the tough process of pledging a Fraternity. The pledge process isn't actually an exact replica of the harshest turmoils a man can go through in his life, and neither is learning the pickup arts.

I chose my words carefully in the part you quoted in. I think it represents a very important stage. I don't think it's a necessary thing that every man should go do, but I think we should endeavor a similar struggle where we are "lied to" and forces us to rethink and reorganize our values and lifestyle... as long as it isn't a regression.

the game is not all about bringin chicks and get em laid.

it is about self development.

There's a very important lesson that I learned about 5 years ago while taking a steel fabrication course in college. One of the other guys in the program said, "You will learn more from your mistakes than you EVER will from your successes." For a long time I thought this was one of the most brilliant things I had ever heard and so I often made mistakes, afterwards telling myself that it was all good because I could learn more from that than I ever could have if I'd just done it right.

Then I sat down with Sean and had a beer one day. I said this quote to him and he frowned. He said, "I don't like the way that sounds. It makes it sound like you should go out and purposely make mistakes in order to learn from them. You don't need to make mistakes in order to learn from them, but when you DO make a mistake, then you have to make sure that you do learn from it." Now THAT was one of the most brilliant things I've ever heard.

I changed this mantra to "You CAN learn more from your mistakes than you ever will from your successes." Chief, by saying that every guy should go out seeking to put himself through hell and despair in the depths of depression, over why all the pussy in the world isn't granting him happiness, you are saying that you should purposely go out and make mistakes! Don't pursue the mistakes just because you know you will learn from them! When they happen, then learn all that you can from them, because otherwise you're gonna keep making them, but those mistakes are gonna happen whether you seek them, or happen by them naturally, so seeking them out is only going to cause you more grief than you truly require.

_________________
"The 'Brick Walls' are there to allow you to prove how badly you want something!" ~ Randy Pausch

~ Rye

Admitting it IS the first step to recovery, Rye
You might want to reconsider your choices of terms here:

You were not performing an act of prostitution if you were not being directly compensated explicitly for providing 'sexual services' for purposes of sexual gratification to a person or people whom you would otherwise not have served.

If all the participants are being compensated for providing 'sexual services' to entertain an audience, then they are classified as 'performance artists'. (Porn Stars fall into that category - that is why while prostitution is criminal in most US states, it IS legal to have sex-for-money as a porn star, on camera, when ALL performers are being paid.)

In North America, virtually all commercial 'porn' is shot under this classification, and performance artists (aka 'Talent') are alarmingly better compensated (>300-600% of what you received) than you described.

I can appreciate your feeling cheap at those rates!
Hmm... it depends. If you're doing it as 'performance art', but only being paid a nominal or token amount, because the producers know you'd do it for nothing, just to get to fuck some girl, then I agree. That could certainly force a man to acknowledge his own desperation, and make him feel unseemly about it afterwards.

On the other hand, if some girlfriend of yours wants to host a bukkake-party on her face, or 'pull a train' or whatever other colourful metaphor she chooses, AND you wish to indulge her by helping to satisfy her fantasies, then participating might make you feel more confident, actualized, and joyful. (I know it always has for me! )
This much I understand! Where there is neither emotional connection, psychological communion, or physical passion, then sex is a joyless and potentially even miserable experience - PARTICULARLY 'spite sex' - where you're doing it to 'get even' or to harm someone.

Passion is the antithesis of precision, and in my own quest for validation through sexual precision, I completely abandoned my own sexual passion, instead concentrating holistically on providing an unforgettable experience for my partners [clients? subjects? patients?!] and strictly going-through-the-motions until they were overwhelmed.

Great for them, not so much for me... and when they wanted a repeat encounter, REGARDLESS OF THEIR OFTEN STAGGERING HOTNESS, my enthusiasm was sadly lacking - because I'd ALREADY DONE THEM, and was ready for the next 'challenge'.

Having recognized that I was missing out on the BEST PART, I began to reconnect to my own passions... which I can ONLY bring to bear when I ACTUALLY FEEL THAT CONNECTION - that sense of authentic, primal intimacy which endures.


I know Sean knows what I'm talking about, I know AFC Adam does, also... I hope each of you eventually learns what it is I'm describing, for yourselves!

Johnny Soporno
Worthy Playboy

Hehehe. Johnny I kept thinking of you while I wrote most of that post actually, knowing you would have something decidedly brilliant to say! In an attempt to keep the moral and mental hurdles to a minimum for everyone else, I decided not to include them.


I wouldn't consider what I did actual technical prostitution, but I use the term in order to assist others in understanding the actual depths of degredation to which I had sunk at that point in my life and how it made me feel. Unfortunately that is also highly unfair to any actual prostitutes that are treated well and enjoy their lifestyles and I'm mostly just perpetuating a negative connotation.

Again, I agree with what you've said about having mass gangbangs with partners out of pure enjoyment and I guess I could have put that in there, but again I was going to emphasis... I'm a terrible spin-doctor that way I suppose.

_________________
"The 'Brick Walls' are there to allow you to prove how badly you want something!" ~ Randy Pausch

~ Rye

the way I see 'the game' is a guide to enhance my own weaknesses in certain aspects of the process of getting into relationships. In the past I've been naive and gotten into things I wouldnt have if i'd known better. Since it mostly seems to be based on psychology I take the theories and use them in my own fashion. To some extent 'I reinvent the wheel' but I've always been a figure things out for myself kind of person. Some things I needed pointing in the right direction, thats where pua came in. I don't really hold with following some pre-set game plan, even though I don't doubt it "works". I'd rather go off on a tangent and figure my own way. Anyway my point is there's nothing that says you have to take "the game", the whole "game" and nothing but "the game".

look guys, i dont want to just sound like a machine on repeat here... but this is the way I have come to look at the game.

before i was told by a friend to read the game, i was.... well i dont want to say a total nerd, but not exactly the coolest guy around. i read the game, joined this forum, talk to you guys, and honestly, it changed me. i feel completely different than i did before. yes i love to sarge and its very entertaining to get a close on an HB, but this society is so much more than that. at least to me

i have taken what i have learned in just the past 2 months and changed my outlook on life! i am confident now! im no longer just the quiet guy in the corner, i am now that fun guy that hangs out with guys and girls! now that i actually have friends that are girls, i sometimes help them with their problems as well as getting help with mine! i no longer fear meeting unknown people, i look forward to it! i get to impose my new personality on someone that didnt know the old me! a fresh start! openers are not just for getting chicks, they can be used to break the ice with some group of guys you just met and now have to hang with.

basically what im getting at is, Sean i understand what you mean, but to some of us out there this "game" could never be just a game. its hope! its a true underdog story of the guy that never could succeed finally getting a second chance!

sorry if that was a little repeditive, but i thought the pro's might want to hear the opinion of an amateaur. i say thanks to this forum, for helping me become a better person. i hope everyone understands what im sayin.

_________________
Who is the 5th of the Final Five?

I'll keep this short. My wife just left. I met her through the Game and totally and wholly, with everything I am, fell in love with her. She is now leaving me for her exhusband (the father of her child). I came back here as a sort or rebound-validation-familiarity-whatever thing. I know that I enjoy living and playing the Game, but I would trade it all (like I did before) to have her love back. Bottom Line: Right on bro, very insightful!

_________________
"You can't have no in your Heart" -Joe Dirt

Jesus, bro.

You know what? You do have that Love. Even if it's not coming from her directly every day in the best way (and I know how much that sucks), the fact that you can man up and feel that all the way as Love, not pain or anger or bitterness or any of the things that we men try to hide till they turn into cancerous tumors and kill us...

You've got it. And you'll never lose it.

_________________
===

Sean Messenger
http://LVo3.com

"War is not the answer. Love is."