I am questioning this new lifestyle. I have gained a lot of confidence and have become a really social and outgoing person. My luck with girls has gone way up from where I was just a couple months ago let alone a year ago. The downside is I have been feeling lonely and kind of want a girlfriend. I have met a girl but I dont think I should be using this stuff on her.

The only valuable use of pickup is to push men out the door and start approaching and meeting women. To build up social intelligence and to grasp the concept of attraction and value. Anyone that sticks around in the community after that is either making money off of it or is addicted to the validation he receives off the community. The downside of the pickup community is it breeds a lot of narcissism and unhealthy views of relationships and women. The goal should be to gain control over your dating life and to learn how to behave attractively. Once that goal is achieved, there is nothing wrong with having a girlfriend. Do whatever it is that makes you happy. Don't conform to some ridiculous idea that you need to stay some pua machine.

It's a lifestyle change man.

Here's what most guys who get involved in the pick up community wind up doing... They go out for 6 months, get a girlfriend, and then slowly go back to their old chump selves. They think its something temporary. It's not. You have actually improved yourself and changed... Why not continue?

There's nothing wrong with having a girlfriend... fuck, I actually encourage it. Have 3 girlfriends if you want to. You build the lifestyle for yourself that YOU want. Just don't go back to your same old habits.

You have to cherry pick the good stuff, and ignore the bad. Depending on how analytic you are as a person, you should be able to integrate some of the PUA stuff into your personality and become a natural. I did that by constantly criticize every theory and every technique I learned, and asked myself questions like "what do I achieve by using this technique, and what effect does it have on the girl?" and "how does this relate to how normal people behave?".

I encourage you to still go out and meet people, and be social, no matter whether you have a girlfriend or if you are "in the game". If you find a girl you have chemistry with, there is nothing to think about! Go for it and make her your girlfriend!

It can be a good thing to quit PUA after a while, and let it sink into your mind and mature. I had been into PUA for three months in 2012 when I met my girlfriend. During a whole year after that, my knowledge about pickup matured and I realized that my ability to make girls interested in me increased. The only thing that is lost by being in a relationship is my social momentum. But that is easy to get back. So what am I still doing here, in this community, you ask. I give people good advice, of course!

This is the trajectory for many guys in the community:

1. Sarge mode, hit on lots of girls
2. Monogamous relationship when they get tired of "meaningless" sex, only to revert to an AFC within the relationship. After it goes sour, they go back to....
1. Sarge mode, hit on lots of girls. That is, until...
2. Monogamous relationship

And so on and so forth.

The best solution I've found so far, for myself:

1. Open relationships, if any at all, which allows for both the closeness and intimacy of relationships while still giving me full freedom to be in...
2. Sarge mode

It's a balance that took me years to get to. You'll figure it out. Just do whatever you want. You want to sarge, do that. You want a girlfriend, get one. Keep trying stuff and following your instincts and eventually you'll either strike a balance, like I did, or do something retarded like get married.

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For my unfiltered rants on Game and Gender Dynamics, check out "The Mask And Rose:"
http://themaskandrose.wordpress.com

I hate the word "sarge."

I'll put it to you this way... Do you want to be a pick up artist or do you want to be a guy who's naturally good with women?

Guys who are naturally good with women don't go out "sarging for day game" or whatever. Guy's who are naturals just are out having a good time. Over the years doing this, I've become friends with guys who are naturally good with women... we would never use the phrase "Hey bro, you wanna go out SARGING?"

Go out. Talk to girls. If you want a girlfriend and be in a monogamous relationship, all the power to you... But that doesn't mean you have to stop talking to other girls. Be a guy who's naturally good with women and get what you want out of life. Don't let the PUA shit get to your head too much...

So true.
I made about 3 really good friends in the community from 2009-2011, all of us ended up becoming naturally good with women and left the local lair and the community end of 2011. (I only come on here occasionally to give advice to new guys). There was nothing left for us to gain and at that point the community can get really old.
All of us slowly weeded out pretty much all pickup terms and gimmicks and stopped going out to sarge, but just to go out. If we did go out to find some girls, we wouldn't call it sarging or nightgame or daygame or anything like that.
.... And none of us consider ourselves pickup artists. I honestly don't understand why some guys stay in this shit for 10 years and consider themselves gurus or whatever. It just seems so pointless to me.
I've had an awesome girlfriend for almost 2 years, my buddies get girlfriends or have them or just get laid.
I think what it comes down to is a man should get to the point where getting laid or meeting girls isn't like the main focus of his life. It should be an afterthought. It's all about learning to love yourself and having abundance. When you go out into the world, meeting women should just be automatic.

It's like those full pledged martial artists who punch cows and break bricks, grow old, and still practice without actually getting into a real life-and-death fight. Some of us get addicted to a hobby like martial arts or the pick up arts.

In martial arts, we beat up 15 to 20 guys every other night for several years and then after all of that fighting, we only get to use the skill in a real life situation once or twice and it's done and over with in less than 3 minutes.

At least in the pick up arts, we can use the skill every now and then. Women are awesome human beings. They should be part of any man's team.

You can add surfing, racing, hang gliding, cooking and so on and so forth to your list. As Majikal pointed out, it's a lifestyle.

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Approach. Open. Escalate. Isolate

Here are my two essential rules on texting that will save you tons of time and money:

general-questions/topic137931.html

(1) Depending on how you define PUA it can be for everyone.
(2) It is totally normal to want a girlfriend, however, DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF GAMING HER DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE YOU LIKE HER. This is a KILLER. USE WHAT YOU KNOW WORKS ON WOMEN!! I cannot emphasize this enough. 90% of the guys here who have game but come here with oneitis is because they gamed a girl they liked differently (usually like a needy pussy) instead of doing what WORKS.

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http://www.joshsway.com -- dating, online dating, fitness, fashion, and more...

PUA should be used like space shuttle booster rockets, its just there to get you into space, but once there you dump the booster rockets.

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It came to me in a drreeeaaammmm

Hey man
I was like a total AFC and a Wuss just about 3 months ago; I had no social life, for I was extremely shy, had no social intuition(Humour, Wit, Jocking personality..etc), and didn't care about style and fashion.
It was when I accidentally came across with the video "Gambler's Stealth Seduction."
The first time I saw the video, I was like "WTF, it's all bullshit." But after a few days, I went back to the video and had a look once again. Then I was completely submerged into the Pickup world. I was crazy enough to buy more than 30 materials to read, and scrutinized on'em for a month, every day, at least 3 hours per day reading about PUA, Seduction, NLP, Bodylanguage...bla bla bla.

Reading so many PUA related books might sound geeky or nerdy, but I realised one day that Pick-up ain't everything about TECHNIQUES. It's not evil and something BAD. I am still the same person, but I say I evolved a little bit (I'm still a newbie, I'm not bragging, I still have a lot to learn:))

Yes, I agree that depending solely on canned openers might sound sinister and evil, but the more you practice what you read and saw online or in books, the more you'll change, and one day, you might find yourself speaking and acting like an attractive man so naturally, as if it has been your identity. Although you might not seem like a casanova, you will still notice yourself becoming a better and sociable person.

Don't worry man, it doesn't matter with what you deliver your intent as long as what you are feeling is real:)