I have been lurking researching the topic of PUA for a while, and I have a number of problems that feel unique. I however know that I am not a "special snowflake" and that statistically each of these individual problems must have been encountered by someone else. Given that, would some such individuals like to share?

-I have studied the theories and concepts behind pick-up, and they all seem quite sound, in fact my background in evolutionary science and psychology has been conducive to a strong theoretical understanding. The problem is I still can’t DO IT. I’ve even coached some of my friends into being better at attraction, but this still is of no help to me. Trying to pick up women with this knowledge alone feels like trying to play baseball using projectile motion algorithms… sure they explain how the process works very elegantly and accurately, but they don’t make the process itself any easier.

-While all the theories are evolutionarily sound, the unnecessary “douchiness” of current defined terms is throwing off my “Inner Game.” The two largest examples of this are “AFC” and “SNL.” With regards to the latter… there was already a perfectly good existing term for same night lay, which has the exact same number of syllables and words: one night stand, which just doesn’t sound as “douchy.” I want to “be my best self” as you folks tend to say, not a pink shirt wearing, collar-popping frat boy wannabe. With regards to the former, I have worked very hard to achieve success in my professional and academic endeavors, and calling myself a “chump” just because women don’t like me feels like it is trivializing every accomplishment I have made that doesn’t involve women. (side-bar) before anyone responds with “how can you succeed in a modern business environment without knowing how to deal with women,” I’ll just go ahead and answer that too. I visualize every woman I work with academically and professionally as a man, and treat her/him accordingly (calling them “dude” a lot tends to help.)

-I have a bit of a problem that makes me especially susceptible to “one-itis” as you like to call it. Sex, in and of itself, has little real value to me. 9/10 times, after the act, my first thought is “meh, if THAT was what I wanted, I could have done it myself and saved the time and effort spent getting you into bed.” Due to this, when I meet the proverbial 10th outlier, I’m very prone to fall into the “one-it is” trap. Interestingly enough, the fact that the act itself bores me has made me particularly good in bed (once I finally get there that is,) because I’ve had to come up with ways to amuse myself before and during he act… which apparently the nebulous “she” tends to like. Of course this does me no good, as one could be the best damn golfer in the world, but if no-one lets him on the course, it’s a useless skill.

-On a related note, because all five of the women that I have in fact slept with had submission fetishes, I have unfortunately developed the alternate. It has become a necessary part in order for me to even enjoy the act at all, but I would never force it on a girl who wasn’t into it (while I may be new to the PUA community, I am not new to the fetish community and that is cardinal rule #1.) According to census data, 10 percent of the population is in to that sort of thing, and given an even split between one the other, and both, that’s roughly %7 of the dating pool. This knowledge serves to worsen approach anxiety and increase the chance of one-itis given an encounter with a girl that I know to be within that extremely limited pool.

-When I meet girls naturally (i.e. unintentionally) they seem to very quickly want a LTR with me, but there are problems with this, and I recognize that this isn’t genuine attraction. It’s almost as though they just want the LTR, and that any physical relation is just an afterthought that can be put up with in exchange for said LTR. This of course vanishes after the first real lay for the reasons mentioned above, but by that point the power dynamic has been thrown out of whack by he initiation process, and I’m socially expected to be her “whipped bitch.” The only way I’m to ever get around this is to know that I am capable of having someone else if I so choose, thus giving me the strength to fight this tendency. The only way to convince a scientific mind like mine is through empirical evidence, and so even if I don’t want a “SNL” (because of the statistical improbability of it being enjoyable) I need have a statistically signifigant number to prove to myself that I can whenever I want. What particular aspects of the PUA skill set should I work on to change this conduciveness for LTR desire into genuine PUA skills. On a side note, I know that I could just lie and pretend to be interested in a LTR when I’m not, but I haven’t told a lie in over two years, and I don’t intend to start now.

-My absolute refusal to lie rules out the majority of canned material.

-Since the 5th grade, the exact rules and regulations of American sexual harassment law have been hammered into my head through workshop after workshop. Every year without fail, at least one guy would sexually harass at least one girl, which would necessitate a mandatory sexual harassment workshop for all the male students. By the time I graduated high school, I haven’t been able to easily approach women, because I know the law too well, and know that by the strictest most literal interpretation of the law, any “game,” and even a simple “hi” is technically sexual harassment if she didn’t want you to talk to her. I was scared enough of talking to women when it was an irrational instinct stemming from a small dating pool in a tribal environment, but the addition of a very real and rational fear of going to prison multiplies approach anxiety many fold.

As I stated above, I’m sure that each of these problems has been encountered by at least one man on his personal journey to attractiveness; would one or more of these people please offer up some advice? Thank you.