This is a much-needed update and revision to that first document. Information and theory in the PUA industry has evolved quite a bit since early 2008. Not to mention my own understanding of people’s development.

There’s a lot of information out there to sift through and a lot of people telling you that THEIR way is the CORRECT way. The truth is, developing your skills with women is a personal journey, and everyone is going to gravitate towards their own style and interests. But there are some common sign posts that we all pass along the way which I hope to elucidate here.

This is my best attempt of organizing everything out there into a comprehensible “big picture” format to base your learning around. Focus is on what types of practice and action you should be taking, not just theory.

Finally, as I said in the last version of this document, the common denominator in everyone’s success with this stuff is the same as it is with any other skill-set: the effort you put in and your willingness to change your behavior. Nothing written below will mean anything to you if you’re not willing to humble yourself enough to learn or put in the necessary effort to achieve the results you want.

A few notes before we begin:

1. The recommended time frames below are assuming regular activity and practice. They’re based on my observations of dozens, if not hundreds, of guys over the past five years. Obviously there are exceptions, but I find these time-frames to be the most common.
2. Like many things, learning pick up is not completely linear. In fact, it’s probably impossible to lay out a perfect linear progression that everyone must follow, as everyone’s preferences, natural strengths/weaknesses, lifestyles, etc. differ very widely. Chances are your particular progression will bleed over between phases slightly. So don’t be alarmed if you see a little of yourself in one stage ahead and/or behind where you are. That’s probably normal.
3. Recommended products are the ones I’ve found of highest quality and most applicable to that particular sticking point. All links are not affiliated.

Stage 1: Newbie

Experience: Varies widely. Commonalities usually includes being very passive and supplicant, failed relationships or complete lack of relationships in the past. Social skills range from decent to abysmal. Personal lifestyle ranges from very strong to very weak.
Purpose: To educate himself and try just enough to figure out what works for him and what doesn’t.
Average Timeframe: 0 – 6 Months

We all come from very different backgrounds. From 18-year-old high school students to 55-year-old retired professors. Divorcees and virgins. Engineers and artists. Every country, all walks of life, rich or poor. Some of us come wanting a new girlfriend/wife. Others want to fuck everything that will stop and let us. Either way, the idea that we all should be taught the same thing or that there’s a one-size-fits-all-formula is ridiculous.

As a newbie, you must take it upon yourself to educate yourself as much as possible and then experiment enough to understand what works well for you and what doesn’t. Everything out there is “right” in one way or another — in that it worked for the author. But that doesn’t mean it will necessarily work for you. So you must try it out and see how it feels. It’s also your responsibility to get your baseline lifestyle in order to even give yourself a chance to meet and attract new women.

• Reach a Baseline Lifestyle – A baseline lifestyle is the very basic components of a lifestyle that you need to even be considered an option to any self-respecting woman. Baseline lifestyle requires health, profession and friends. This is basically what “having a life” is, and if you don’t have one, no amount of practice, theory or tricks will ever help you. You will have horribly inconsistent success and when you do manage to get laid, you will never keep a woman around. Ever.Health means you are at least healthy. You don’t have to be ripped or run a marathon. But be healthy. If you’re obese, you need to lose weight. If you’re skinny, you should join a gym. If you’re chronically ill or very sick, you need to get it under control first.

  Profession means that you have some sort of purpose with your life. It means you’re employed and if you don’t have a career, you at least have plans for one. I don’t care how good-looking and charming you are, no woman dates a broke deadbeat with no job. Or at least no woman we’d ever want to hook up with.

  Friends means you have friends. World of Warcraft Guild members don’t count. Facebook friends don’t count. IRC chat buddies don’t count. Friends. Real friends that you see in person, hang out with, go out with and do things with. If you don’t have friends, there’s nothing PUA can do for you. Take care of that first.

• Learn and Understand All of the Fundamentals – Fundamental seduction and pick up knowledge is a must to even get started. There are more than enough available books out there covering the basics (recommendations below). Get your hands on them and try to understand everything in them.The most important topics to understand are the following: how attraction is built and the many ways to do it, basics of conversation and rapport, basics of texting/phone calls/follow up, dates, escalation and roughly the steps it’s done in, fashion and style, body language. If you feel like you’re weak at any specific topic, spend more time on it. All of the above topics are MANDATORY.

  Other pick up concepts that you should understand: the difference between day game, night game, and social circle game. The concept of social proof and social status. Canned game (routines) versus natural game. Direct versus indirect.

• Learn to Approach – The first one will always be the hardest, so get it over with as soon as you can. A lot of guys wait a long time before they grow the balls to get out there and actually do it (it took me over three months to do my first approach). Right now, unless you’re working with a coach, most of your approaches will not go well. That’s fine and expected. Get used to the awkwardness. Learn that it’s not such a big deal.

• Figure Out What Works for You and What Doesn’t – Everyone responds to different pick up and seduction material differently. I personally gravitated towards natural game and David DeAngelo’s material. I mostly went out at night. I have friends who gravitated towards canned routines and became very good. I know guys who did mostly day game and went direct. Chances are, you’re going to suck at almost everything right now, so figure out what FEELS MOST COMFORTABLE. Figure out what material and theory makes you say, “I could do this for the next few years and enjoy it.” Once you find that method, coach or specific school of thought, stick with it.

• Seek Out Wingmen – Motivating yourself becomes 100 times easier if you can find like-minded guys in your area willing to go out with you. Wingmen are critical when you start out. Not only to help and learn from each other, but to push each other and keep each other motivated. Look into a local lair. If the lair sucks (many do), then post on some message boards or look around Facebook.

Recommended Products for Newbies:

1. Practical Pickup by Entropy (http://www.practicalpickup.com)
2. Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo (http://www.doubleyourdating.com)
3. Magic Bullets by Savoy (http://www.lovesystems.com)
4. The Game by Neil Strauss (Check Amazon)

Stage 2: Intermediate

Experience: Able to open and hook many sets. Can consistently get phone numbers when going out. Has a solid understanding of basic pick up theory. Has been going out for a few months. Has probably gotten laid a few times, although it’s very inconsistent and feels “lucky.” Most importantly, understands what works for him and is able to focus on that.
Purpose: To improve their results from inconsistent to consistent.
Average Timeframe: 6 Months – 2 Years

Guys in the intermediate stage can often be deceiving and to an untrained eye often appear better than they actually are. They can open and hook many sets, often in a very charming and exciting manner, and to most civilians and newbies this looks very impressive. Unfortunately, they don’t get laid often and when they do, it’s usually because the girl is very easy and/or she puts in most of the effort escalating. A lot of intermediate guys start believing they’re better than they are as well, and often begin coaching. Which is fine, as long as they’re coaching newbies.

Intermediate guy’s worst enemy is lack of persistence. His lack of persistence comes from the fact that he’s still somewhat sexually inexperienced and he hasn’t developed much emotional resilience to the unforgiving ups and downs of chasing women. Intermediate guys often complain of their state. They also often eject too often congratulating themselves that they got a girl attracted to them or a make-out, yet not having the balls or persistence to take things sexual.

Intermediate guys have the fundamentals under their belt and have a good understanding of what works with their personality and purpose. Now it’s just a matter of honing that into results on a consistent basis.

• Developing Emotional Resilience – Or what is referred to in psychology as an “internal locus of evaluation.” This was also commonly referred to in the community as “state control” a few years ago. But basically the idea is that responses you receive from women vary widely, from amazingly awesome (”OMG, she loves me!”) to abysmal (”OMG, she told me to fuck off and die!”). Early on, most guys let their emotions become determined by these responses and therefore they become mood-based pick up artists. When they feel great, they do great. When they feel like crap, they do poorly.There’s no short answer for this outside of experience, and a very particular type of experience. Guys must learn to detach the reactions they get from women from their ego and their self-esteem. A common favorite among coaches is to create “blow out” games or other fun approaching games designed to turn bad responses into something fun and interesting for wingmen to laugh about. A lot of bootcamps revolve around this as well as “inner game” based coaching.

  Unfortunately though, the only long-term cure for this is sexual experience and many positive reference experiences. How long it will take a guy to develop this will depend on two things: his pre-community experiences with women (including his mother), and his determination and will-power. A lack in either department will create one of those moody and drama-queen PUA’s that probably all of us have been out with at one point or another.

• Master Sexual Escalation – It’s actually pretty surprising how many guys get stuck at this. Again, because it’s so easy to be perceived as “good” without actually getting laid and because it’s so easy to receive validation from women (more on that later) without getting laid, many complacent guys never put in the effort to succumb to the vast amount of awkward moments mastering that sexual escalation demands.But if you put a gun to my head and said, “what’s the one thing I can learn that will get me the laid the most the fastest,” it’d be sexual escalation. If you went out and just escalated like a pervert on every girl you met, you’d get slapped a lot, you’d get rejected a lot, but you’d get laid a lot as well. It wouldn’t be pretty, but hey, if that’s what you’re looking for, there you go.

  Sexual escalation is a complicated topic because of the sexual anxiety that most guys possess to varying degrees. The process of mastering this is often more complicated than simply “touch X, then touch Y, then say Z,” although once mastered, that’s what it looks like. It’s also important to understand the basics of same night lays, primarily the importance of logistics.

• Understand Basic Inner Game – It was a fad for a couple years recently that “inner game is the only game.” Unfortunately, I think this has proved to be both untrue and and impractical approach to improving with women. The simple truth is that I’ve personally met too many complete headcases and nut-jobs who were amazing with women for it to be true.But it still holds that inner game is very important to understand and that by the time a guy has reached the Intermediate Stage, a lot of his pesky outer sticking points actually have a deep-seated internal cause.

  Basic concepts to understand are the ideas of emotional state, seeking validation, being non-reactive, positive thinking, self esteem and various other topics. Honestly, the vast majority of information in the PUA community on inner game has simply been ripped off from Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle and other self help gurus, so you may even be better off going straight to the source.

• Become Great in Bed – Towards the end of the intermediate stage, you should be getting laid with some sort of regularity. And once you start getting laid regularly, the rush of simply getting laid recedes enough to need to become a good lover in bed.Hell, don’t be a good lover, be a phenomenal one. The benefits of a great sex life and sexual confidence bleed over to all of your interactions big-time. Knowing you can make a girl cum in three different places will remove a lot of your anxiety when it comes time to make a move.

  Also, not to mention that once you learn how to be every girls best lover, they’ll NEVER stop coming back to you (no pun intended). Easiest way to keep high quality girls is to give them orgasms. It’s that simple.

Recommended products for Intermediate guys:

1. Date Hotter Girls by Rob Judge and Zack Bauer (http://www.datehottergirls.com)
2. The Complete Game System by 60 Years of Challenge (http://www.60yearsofchallenge.com)
3. Flawless Natural by Real Social Dynamics (http://www.realsocialdynamics.com)
4. Sex God Method by Dan Rose (http://www.sexgodmethod.com)
5. No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover (Paper and Glue)

Stage 3: Advanced

Experience: Can get results with some consistency. Almost always has sexual options. Has had and maintained multiple casual relationships. Has 20-30 lays under his belt. Is versatile in that he can meet and seduce women in many situations (day and night) and in various ways (direct and indirect). Able to travel to a different city or country and fares a solid chance of picking up a woman there in a short amount of time.
Purpose: To come to terms with the emotional realities of their social and sex life.
Average Timeframe: 2 Years – 5 Years

Advanced guys are what we used to refer to as “mPUA’s” back in the day. They get laid. They usually get laid a lot. And when they talk about it, it’s immediately apparent that it’s true. They’ve gotten laid and dated girls in a wide enough variety of circumstances that they can formulate some pretty deep thinking about the topic and about their own success.

These days, guys either start coaching when they hit this stage — if they didn’t already start as an Intermediate (”ZOMG! He approaches so many girls!”) — or they slowly remove themselves from the community. For years and years, our metric for success was little more than lay count, and perhaps looks of the women involved. As such, advanced guys have been treated as the pinnacle of seduction until very recently.

Luckily, as more time goes on and more is understood and the more we all evolve, this mentality is falling by the wayside. Racking up a ton of lays (some guys up into multiple hundreds) is not only being seen more and more as a bit excessive, but some times as a compensation.

The easiest way to explain the plight of the advanced guy is to sum it up like this: self image and identity always lag behind how we actually are. Fat people who lose 80 pounds usually still perceive themselves as fat for years afterward. Well, guys who all the sudden rack up 35 lays and a few girlfriends over two years still feel themselves to be that nerdy loser who couldn’t get a kiss if his life depended on it. This causes some serious internal dissonance and often erupts in behavior that’s self-sabotaging, misogynistic, or painfully over-compensating.

Their emotional self or what’s sometimes referred to as “core confidence” hasn’t caught up to their outer results. And this actually causes a number of problems.

The biggest problem is that most guys who reach this stage (very few, maybe 1% of guys who join the community) do so because they’re driven by something deep down. Often it’s some sort of emotional issue, past trauma, or baggage from their life. Learning to get this good with women — and let’s be honest, learning how to go out and bang 100 women is not a reasonable use of one’s time by most of the world’s standards — it usually comes from some sort of emotional quirk.

Advanced guys are forced to face this quirk eventually. I can tell you from experience, the rush and the validation from banging more women eventually runs out. Eventually you hit a point where sleeping with number 87 makes you feel absolutely NO different than you felt after 86. They become interchangeable faces and ironically, might as well all be the same vagina for all you care. Once this happens, once the need for validation and affection runs its course, you’re faced to confront what’s actually driving you in your sexual deviance.

Most guys realize that they’ve been compensating for their lack of masculinity. Some realize that they have issues with mom. Some realize that they’ve been exacting emotional revenge for the bitch that cheated on them and dumped them. Some of these guys have some sort of neuroses or compulsive disorder. Some are actually sex addicts (seriously).

Either way, the next step is to confront this original impetus and resolve it. If you’re the domineering and compensating short guy, it’s time to chill out and realize that you don’t have to prove yourself anymore. If you have some strange obsession with female attention because of your family life, it’s time to let it go. If you have some neurosis that causes you to constantly seek validation from people, then you need to come to terms with that.

In my experience, this can’t really be forced. Some guys figure it out pretty quickly and confront it. Some guys need to sleep with 50 girls to get their fill before they start realizing that they need to chill out. Some guys need to go nuts for years and bang 200 or more and have dozens and dozens of relationships blow up in their face before they finally confront. It’s a different pace for everyone, and unfortunately, I’ve met a number of guys who seem perpetually stuck here indefinitely (they’re fucking amazing in-field though).

• Relationship Management – Learning how to juggle multiple women, build a rotation and even flirt with bringing them together for threesomes. But most importantly, learning to open up and become intimate with a girlfriend.Here’s a dirty little secret nobody talks about: having a happy and healthy long-term relationship will teach you more about women and help your inner game more than 1,000 cold approaches and 50 lays. By its very nature, a long-term relationship forces you to open up and come to terms with yourself emotionally. Which brings me to really the only major goal for the advanced guy…

• Master Your Emotions as a Man – Again, this is so much easier said than done. Most guys I run into are completely oblivious to their emotions, much less in control of them. Like I said, a long-term girlfriend, if you’ve never had one, will do wonders for this. Therapy can also help a lot if you have some deep-seated problems.Once you open up emotionally, the whole “game” takes on a completely different view. I fucking hate this cliche, but it really is like “Seeing the Matrix.” Words cease to matter. You only see intentions and emotions. You realize anything you say or do only matters as much as the emotion it creates within her and within yourself. Everything you say and do is designed to play with this emotional string that vibrates between you and her. You begin to have entire emotional conversations with women with depth and meaning without actually talking about anything substantive. You are able to read people and situations better than they can read themselves, and you begin to connect with women on a completely new level. A level so powerful that concepts such as LMR, cockblocks, value, and shit tests go out the window. But first one must develop a sensitivity, both to your own emotions and to other people’s.

  I think it’s much easier to rather than describe what mastering this looks like, what NOT mastering it looks like. If you DON’T master your emotions and the motivations that brought you to the community, this is what you can look forward to: a constant fixation on sex and women’s reactions to you, an addiction to validation from women (and men), a constant and nagging feeling of “not enough” that will persist and never go away, an unhealthy lifestyle that will grow old while your friends grow up, and an inability to ever maintain a relationship of any significant satisfaction. Your social life will be less about enjoyment and more about achievement. Friends and lovers turn into numbers and statistics. Every conversation you have will simply be a ladder rung to get to your next destination and victory… one that you will celebrate by yourself in your own mind.

  For this reason, accomplishing this goal usually involves leaving the community. The community simply validates and objectifies behavior that at its core is an emotional behavior. At it’s core, seduction is an emotional action, and to try to measure it only disassociates it from our emotional well-being.

Recommendations for Advanced guys:

1. Way of the Superior Man by David Deida (Paper and Glue)
2. Therapy
3. A Girlfriend
4. Leaving the Community

Stage 4: Integrated

Experience: Has more than his share of notches on his bedpost (probably at least 50-100). Has experienced the ecstasies of serious multi-year relationships, the excitement of one night stands, and appreciates them both. He’s integrated his love and pursuit of women with his emotional desires. He’s more or less impervious to rejection as he sees it as women screening themselves out of his life. He’s experienced a wide variety of women of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and personalities and is pretty clear on what he enjoys and likes.
Purpose: To organize his lifestyle as best possible to efficiently screen for the women who will make him happiest.
Average Timeframe: 5+ Years

Eventually you come to a point where the behavior you’ve spent so long studying and practicing is simply integrated into your being. You may still push yourself here and there, but women come through your life fairly naturally and you know how to capitalize on opportunities.

As an integrated man, you no longer have a pressing emotional need driving your seduction. An integrated man is cool with one night stands, but he’s not necessarily looking for them. He’s also cool with a long-term monogamous relationship, but he’s not necessarily looking for that either. He’s open to everything yet seeking nothing. His actions are based upon what he wants, not what the each woman he meets wants.

The clear cut sign that you’ve made it to this phase is that you regularly turn down women that you’re pretty confident you could sleep with if you wanted to. In fact, you probably turn down five to ten women for each one you end up with. The reasons can vary widely, anything from looks to personality, to a lack of emotional interest, to logistical issues. You’ve gone from trying to be chosen to the one doing the choosing. You no longer seek to meet women’s standards but seek women who meet your own. Whereas a newbie will walk into a bar and be grateful to have ANY girl in it, the integrated man will often walk into a bar, talk to the few he finds physically attractive and find he has no interest in any of them.

The crux of the matter is that you no longer receive validation from sex or women’s attention, therefore you’re free to exercise 100% command and control of your interactions and which women you allow into your life.

The problem for the Integrated Man is finding a woman who meets his ridiculously high (and hard-earned) standards. He’s done everything and slept with everyone. He knows what he likes and sets about to get it.

The name of the game changes from effort (as a newbie or intermediate) to effort versus reward. An integrated man isn’t willing to spend his valuable time chasing a woman who he’s fairly sure he won’t enjoy his time with that much.

Since effort/reward is the new name of the game, the goal has changed from persistence to efficiency. The integrated man invites rejection and experiences it regularly. Everything is a screening process, and everything he does and lives is designed for the qualities he’s looking for in women. He loves artsy girls? He schedules his life around concerts and gallery showings and immediately screens for women with his similar interests. If he’s looking for intelligent women, he’ll purposely speak very rationally and logically about in-depth topics to weed out the ditzes and party girls.

This is far easier said than done and is a constantly ongoing process. This isn’t to say that the integrated man has flawless game… he usually hasn’t mastered everything. But he’s experienced to the point where he knows his strengths and weaknesses and knows how to use what he’s got to get what he wants.

Another progression to look at is newbies usually focus on day game because of it’s ease and how casual it is. Intermediate guys and advanced guys usually focus on night game because it’s the most challenging, makes you improve the fastest and rewards you with sex the quickest and in exciting fashion.

Integrated men focus on lifestyle and social circle. They realize that the odds of meeting a woman who meets their criteria in a random bar is fairly low and that the effort required for even a one night stand with most women no longer seems worth the meager amount of excitement (and mediocre sex).

He realizes that the most significant relationships one can have — casual or not — are borne out of similar interests and social connections, and therefore he spends his time positioning his lifestyle in such a way that it automatically attracts the appropriate women into his life. Whether this is starting a band, learning photography, becoming a teacher, or whatever. They then use their strong pick up skills to convert these high quality women with a startling consistency. By this stage, integrated men have usually developed their lifestyle to a high enough point that it makes them incredibly attractive in their own right.

They also understand that the constant approach-a-thon of classic pick up is a hamster wheel — designed only to train your muscles, not to actually get you to a real destination. Fulfillment comes from emotional connections and shared experience, not accomplishments and notches birthed from hundreds of nights out at the club.

About the Author
Entropy has been a part of the PUA community since 2005 and coaching since 2007. You can learn more about him at http://www.entropypua.com/blog

If you got something out of this document, I encourage you to email it to others, post it to other forums (if not sticky it) so that others may gain from it as well. Please do not edit it. Thank you.

“Isn’t part of successfully being with someone long term not about finding the perfect, flawless person, but in finding someone who’s more or less what you’re looking for, and then accepting that no one will be totally perfect, and making peace with their flaws?

That attitude is something that comes from within. If you have this sense that no one is good enough for you, then the answer isn’t in some perfect woman out there, it’s in changing your view of things.”

Yes to the first paragraph, no to the second. You’re absolutely right that there’s no “flawless” woman out there for us. The defining aspect of love is that we accept and even cherish a person’s flaws.

What I’m referring to is actually what the first commenter gets at: fulfilling emotional needs. The more developed one comes, the more sophisticated ones emotional needs are, and by definition, the rarer it is to find somebody who meets them.

To give you an example. Most newbies, and this was true for myself at one time, have a large need for validation in their relationships when they’re inexperienced. That’s why almost any semi-attractive girl who comes along and makes them feel like a king, they become attached to. But as time goes on, the more our identity accepts that we are loved by women, the less validation we look for from them — or at least, the validation changes. These days, it’s far more important that I feel understood by a woman than simply cared for by her. I feel like she needs to understand my motivations and dreams and passions and empathize with them. It’s very easy to find a woman who thinks the world of me these days. It’s very hard to find one who understands my world.

You also mentioned the BradP quote. You’re totally right and got me there. I have two responses to that, though: 1) I made that comment when I was happily in a relationship, and 2) I have no problem ever finding COOL women. I find cool women all the time. Every night. In fact, I feel like the better my game gets, the more I come to appreciate how cool each individual girl is. What I DO find more and more difficult is a woman who fulfills my emotional needs. If that’s what Brad meant, then I was unfair to criticize him. But if he really meant that he can never find a cool girl anymore, then he’s just shallow and I stand by that.

The other thing this post made me think of was that idea that for men, getting into a serious, long-term relationship is more a frame of mind than anything to do with a girl. It’s that saying, “Women are ready to settle down when they feel they’ve found the right guy. For men, the ‘right girl’ is whoever they’re with when they’re finally decide they want to settle down”

Fantastic point. This may very well be true.

“For example, if we take self-development as a measure of success, then let’s take a look at some giants of self-help; Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Steve Covey, Brian Tracey…”

One thing I’ve always found interesting is that rock stars, porn stars, movie stars, etc., ALWAYS end up married and monogamous. But at the same time, “self-development” doesn’t necessarily equate emotional fulfillment or having emotional needs met. Half those people you listed have dark streaks and strong criticisms against their character. Even Gandhi.

But whoever said I was probably being a little dramatic with my last line is right. There’s no such thing as a person who is 100% emotionally stable, 100% baggage-free, 100% non-validation-seeking, and 100% happy at all times. Therefore, there’s always somebody for everybody, no matter how developed they become. But that’s the nature of the paradox… the more developed and experienced you become, the rarer and rarer it is to get your needs met while your ability to meet other people’s sexual and emotional needs expands and expands.

Think of someone like Jay-Z or Brad Pitt. On the one hand, half the women in the country would go to bed with them and marry them at the drop of a hat. But on the other hand, Brad Pitt’s selection of suitable women is really limited to super models, movie stars and other extremely high status people. Before you argue this, ask yourself, how many women out there can really even grasp the world he lives in? Very few. Really, only other famous people, people in the stratosphere of social status can even begin to relate to him emotionally. Now, before we all cry Brad a river, that’s an extremely small selection of women… maybe 100-200 worldwide. Maybe that’s why most stars end up with other stars or living somewhat lonely lives?

As for the rest of your post… I feel like you’re making my point for me. You’re naming nothing but celebrity and public figure after celebrity and public figure to meet a certain criteria. Honestly, how many women walking around in a club in your average US city fit even one of those criteria? It’s very rare.

Look, there are women out there SOMEWHERE for me. I suppose the melancholy tone of the article was the fact that five years ago, I would have been happy to date any decent-looking girl I met who gave me the time of day. Now, I’ll spend a whole night in a venue and not meet one I’m interested in seeing regularly.

“Nevertheless, it seems to me that you’re still blind to your own obsession with physical beauty. You may have reached a level where you can date a ‘7′, and not feel that her looks matter to you in making that decision. What if the women I’ve mentioned above fulfilled all of your criteria in terms of intellectual, emotional capacity, and spiritual development? Would you date them, despite the fact that they are not even ‘7’s? Personally, I don’t know if I would, and that’s something I know I have to overcome.”

You’re right. I’ll be 100% honest. I loved my ex to death. But her looks was something I never completely got past. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, and I obviously didn’t ever raise it as an issue or bring it out. But it was like a constant itch that pestered me. I do have abnormal standards and pre-occupation with physical beauty. Part of that may come from my job. Part of it may just be the bi-product of the amount of my experiences. But as time goes on, my standards in that department only go up. And as much as it hurts to say this, one of the primary things I’m looking for in my next girlfriend is a large upgrade in that department. It’s superficial, but I take a lot of pleasure from walking around with a really hot girl. I think every guy does.

Can I get over that? Maybe… One day, I’ll have to. Will I? I imagine when once a few kids pop out and I’m married, I’ll stop caring. But it’s important to me. And another thing I’ve noticed… I’ve lost about 30 pounds in the last year (waiting for the six pack before I post about it), and since losing all of this weight… I’ve become even stricter on physical looks and feel justified for it. My thinking is, “Well, I busted my ass and ate right and lost all that weight, why can’t she?” Call it what you will, but that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.

But often people’s tastes in women immediately after a relationship tend to be a reaction to the person they just broke up with.

And one last thing, before I get way too off-topic. I’m a fan of Pavlina’s as well, although I don’t read him religiously. But who’s to say dating an uglier woman is a noble thing? Who’s to say it wasn’t a confidence issue in him? From what I hear, he got very excited upon hearing about PUA a few years back, and in my experience, most guys who get turned on by PUA are guys who have something deep down they’re looking to resolve in regards to women.

Anyway, moving on…

“I think it would help if you could narrow this down a bit. Can you give an example of an intellectual interest of yours that girls should share, but don’t? I’ve found that few girls share my intellectual interests, but I don’t disqualify them for that.”

She doesn’t have to share my intellectual interests. She just needs to keep up with me intellectually. And I mean, she doesn’t even have to be a super-genius or anything. She just has to have something going on upstairs. If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m constantly intellectualizing shit. She needs to be able to handle that and at least converse.

What’s more unique about me though — and this isn’t true about all guys — is that I link intelligence with sexual attraction. This especially has become true the more time has gone on. Stupid girls sexually turn me off. Intelligent girls sexually turn me on. Just how I’m wired. *shrug*

At the end of the day (and this is directed at both Lou and Eros), all other things equal, every guy will happily trade up in the looks department. It’s more of a question of how much trouble are you willing to go through to find quality women who are also extremely beautiful, and/or what other qualities are you willing to sacrifice?

Like I said earlier, as I get older, the more I value things such as intelligence, personality, energy, humor, etc. and the less I value looks (despite my standards going up). And I imagine one day it’ll become a non-issue. But as for now… I’m entering my prime as a male. I’d like to try and find the best of all worlds if possible.

And finally…

“A guy I very much respect once said, the goal of pu/self development should be that you are able to give yourself everything you need and all you need your partner for is sex, because it’s more fun with two people involved.”

In theory, yes, we would all like to be emotionally self-sufficient. But in practice, I think this is a very anti-social and terrible way to look at things. Sex is actually pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I’d rather have a woman I’m madly in love and be crippled (hello Sean Stephenson) than have all the sex I want and never feel anything with the women I fuck.

Everywhere you go, things are different, but they’re mostly the same. I have a theory (surprise, surprise). There are different phases of visiting a new place. The first phase is the honeymoon/vacation phase. It’s the first 1-2 weeks you’re somewhere. During this period, everything seems incredibly unique and different. All of the minor alterations to your daily life are vastly apparent — look, they drive on the left side, oh their street musicians play African music, children pickpocket!

Eventually, this subsides and you segue into the next phase, the adjustment phase. This lasts anywhere from 1-3 months. It’s when you slowly enmesh yourself in all of these slight differences, and you begin to notice that really, all of the important things are the same from country to country. People go to dinner with their families the same way, friends invite each other out the same way, people view vacations and work the same way, people even complain about traffic the same way. What’s different are the minor details.

What consistently amused me in my travels is how every place I went, people would tell me with pride that, “this is how we do things in X country!” not realizing that they do things the exact same way in 11 other countries. By the same token, I was consistently amused by silly questions about America… stuff like, “How big are the highways there?” Or “Are university campuses bigger than this in America?” or “How friendly are the drivers in America?” These questions can’t possibly be answered. America has 300 million people and is very diverse. In fact, the answer is the same as every country: it depends. There are asshole drivers in Holland just like there are in the US and Argentina. There are good friends and bad friends in Argentina just as there are in England and Israel. The details change. That’s it.

Cold approaching is a horrible way to make friends. This was a stark realization I had while in England. After traveling more or less non-stop for 9 months, I realized something horrifying: I had barely made any true, life-lasting friendships. That’s terrible. That’s one of the major reasons for traveling.

Don’t get me wrong, I met TONS of people. But they were all acquaintances, short-term friendships, or little flings. Very, very, very few of them I could see myself keeping in touch with long-term or ever seeing again. But what really blew me away was when I looked at how I got to know the few people I planned to keep in touch with. Despite cold approaching hundreds of people, and hooking up with a couple dozen girls, today I only keep in touch with two. And they’re both women I slept with.

Everybody else that I still keep in touch with (anywhere from five to 10 friends), I met through social circles, events or in hostels. This is despite spending the vast majority of my time cold approaching. Imagine if I had just spent my time making friends instead!

This really became apparent to me when I looked back on my experience in Argentina. My friend and I basically spent a six weeks straight going out and approaching girls. Unfortunately, we had very, very little results to show for it, especially in the long-term. Before I had arrived, he had gotten in with some guys he met at tango classes and had a large and wide social circle of friends to hang out with. After about 30 nights of cold approaching, we had next to nothing to show for it as far as meaningful connections or relationships. Just a couple drunk hook-ups and girls who were flaking on us.

England was what hit the point home though, as I spent my entire time there coaching. When you’re coaching you don’t have time to go out and make friends, you’re too busy coaching and cold approaching everybody. I can honestly say, despite the dozens of people I approached and the two girls I hooked up with, I will never see or speak to any of them again.

This brings me to my next conclusion…

Having a stable social circle and emotional home is highly underrated. I worked for a solid year straight in order to be able to live this lifestyle. I dreamed about it, fantasized about it and really thought I’d be kind of operating on a new plane of existence as far as lifestyle was concerned.

In a lot of ways, that’s true. On the surface, it’s absolutely true. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining for a second about all of the traveling I’ve gotten to do and all of the experiences I’ve been fortunate enough to have. But socially, what I’ve gotten is dozens of acquaintances and short-term friends, and I’ve barely spent any time with my long-term friends, my real friends.

This really does a number on you. File this under the “should have been obvious,” but having a stable social circle is totally integral to being happy and emotionally stable. The last month or so of my traveling has been filled with depression and homesickness. I’m dying to get back to the US. One, for the familiarity and some stability, but primarily because I can hang out with people who really know me… my real friends.

And chalk up yet another reason why cold approach sucks. When you remove casual sex from the equation — which after five years, I think is finally gone from mine — cold approach is high effort for little long-term reward. I’m not saying that I’m NOT going to cold approach… but I think prioritizing it to such a high level in the community may be a mistake. And it’s DEFINITELY a mistake for guys who don’t have a stable circle of friends and people who care about them.

Pick up is a uniquely Western development. And finally, the last observation, is that in some countries, parts or all of PUA theory just cease to work. You begin to realize that things such as language barriers, race and pre-selection play just as big of a role, if not far bigger, in many places than your actual game does. Pick up is a wholly western idea, designed for western women, to be used by western men. This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t work at all in a place like Japan or Ukraine or Egypt… it’s just to say that you should expect some major differences and expect to spend a lot of time calibrating yourself.

People Are Less Sexual
Both the men and women. Guys approach less here and girls are less flirty. Cockblocking seems slightly more common and you see more large social groups. One interesting thing that I’ve noticed in the limited number of sets I’ve done is that there seems to be a limit to the aggression for a lot of women. In America, it’s hard to be TOO aggressive… especially in cities like NYC, Vegas, LA, etc. But I ran into a couple situations here where stuff I said was deemed too edgy or too sexual too early.

Brits Are More Polite
This is true for all of Europe, but the British are indeed very polite people. Every time someone bumps into me or steps on my foot, they apologize… a novelty in the US. People hold the doors for each other, say “Excuse me” and “Cheers” all the time, and a “bad” blow out here may be something like, “No thanks,” or “Nice try,” whereas in the US you get stuff like, “Fuck off,” or other mean comments.

The Brits Can’t Hold Their Liquor
Yes, I said it. The English can’t hold their liquor worth a damn. This is particularly more true in the north (Manchester) than the south, but seems to be true most places I go. I don’t think I’ve seen so many drunk, stumbling people by 11:30PM in my life. Coming across puke and fights each night isn’t a question of if, but when. And honestly, for a country that serves shots that are HALF the size of the rest of the world, there’s really no excuse. The Brits I hung out with in Argentina commented on how I could drink them under the table, which I thought was strange considering… well, they’re Brits. But I get here and nobody can hold their liquor. No wonder the rest of Europe things they’re a bunch of babbling, drunk idiots… they are. Pull yourselves together man. Stop stepping on my shoes. And stop spilling your fucking drinks everywhere.

Girls Love My Accent
As Americans, we’re conditioned to believe the rest of the world hates us. But go to the UK or Australia and they LOVE your accent fellas. Pretty sweet deal.

Their Ugliness is Greatly Exaggerated
Now, I’m not going to go so far as to say the girls in this country are hot. They’re not. But they’re not as hideous as the reputation they get. It gets worse in the north and progressively gets better as you go south. But surprisingly, you can find a handful of good looking women each night. It may take longer and you may have to sift through more trolls than you’re used to, but they’re there. In fact, being a leg-guy myself, one thing I appreciate about this country is that pretty much every girl between 18-25 wears high heels and short skirts every night. It’s like there’s a law or something. Surprisingly, there are nice legs and asses everywhere… unfortunately, beer guts, fat faces and bad teeth are just as common as well… so tread carefully.

But all in all, British girls seem to be cheery, and for the most part pleasant. Honestly, I think all girls of all English-speaking countries are more or less 95% the same.

Anyway… cheers!

Believe it or not, PUA game isn’t universal. It’s based heavily on the English speaking world: US, UK and Australia. It was invented by this part of the world, based on the women in this part of the world… and unfortunately, straying too far out of it leaves you screwed pretty quickly. But this is good, it’s always good to be exposed to as many pick up situations and cultures as possible… the idea is that it will make you as good as possible overall.

Argentinian women are a full step up from those in the US in terms of looks. They tend to be very skinny and often have much bigger tits than would seem normal for women that thin. Height can be an issue, as can the faces… but all in all, the average Argentinian girl is a full point higher than the average American in my opinion.

This is probably all the motivation you need to become interested in going and partying there. But throw on top the fact that cost of living is maybe 1/3 of what it is back home, and the fact that the nightlife regularly goes until 5-6AM every night, and you have a recipe for pick up heaven, right? Especially if you know Spanish… right?

Eh… it’s a bit more complicated. I’ll be honest to a fault here: Buenos Aires kicked my ass. For the amount of time, effort and energy I put into picking up girls down here, my results probably would have been triple in the States. That’s not an exaggeration: 22-23 nights in the last month, all of which lasted 6-8 hours.

Unfortunately, from a pick up perspective, BA is not all that it’s cracked up to be… in fact, it’s actually deceiving in that it’s not even that great. First of all, the clubs, while going off almost every night of the week, suffer from a lack of quantity. Either they’re stuffed with tourists, or they’re empty, or their ratios are awful (3-to-1 and even 4-to-1 were not uncommon). At first, we thought we just didn’t know the right places… but it didn’t get that much better when we DID get to the right places.

The other problem is that Argentinian culture is notoriously stand-offish and reserved. Every foreigner I talked to from Brazilians to Colombians to Mexicans to Germans complained about this. Argentina is also much more of a social circle culture. This actually explains the horrible ratios at the clubs. Girls only go with a group of friends. The only people who DON’T go with groups of friends are other guys looking to pick up girls. Which reminds me, the guys here are insanely aggressive. It’s not uncommon to literally wait in a queue for a girl to finish blowing 2-3 other guys out before you go and take your turn at her.

The way to go is day game, the casual bars, and social events like tango classes and house parties. Work your way into a social circle, and then hit the club with them. That’s really the only consistent way my friends and I were successful. Even splurging for tables yielded nothing but girls hunting for cocaine.

It sucks that it took me over an entire month to figure this out. Looking back, I was trying to shove my classic American-style PUA game into a completely foreign culture and set of standards. I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and as a result, I just beat my head against the wall incessantly. It’s no surprise that out of the few girls I DID succeed on picking up, all were Brazilian, British or American. Only one was Argentinian.

If you get out of Buenos Aires, the people (read: girls) become much, much friendlier… I only went to Mendoza. The quality was a step down, the quantity and ratios were just as bad, but I don’t remember getting blown out there once. Once you get out of the mega-cities, people become enamored with your foreign status, whereas in the mega-city they think you’re just another gringo schmuck there for cheap drugs and hookers.

Everything I’ve read and heard points me to Cordoba. Better quality, quantity and nicer people. I can’t say for sure. But next time I’m in South America, I’ll be sure to hit it.

The other factor of this experience is the massive amount of rejection I’ve had to live through again. I have to say, having a girlfriend for two years was nice and cozy. And even beyond that, picking up in the US, I rarely ever have to experience more than 2-3 blow outs in a single night. And it’s REALLY rare to suffer more than 10 in any given week without getting laid at some point.

Argentina was brutal in this regard… Mainly because of the language barrier, partly because of the cultural differences, partly because of the god-awful ratios everywhere, but it was blow out city… for me and every guy I winged with over the months. As I wrote last week, it has been dearly humbling, and has actually made me take a long hard look at myself in terms of dealing with rejection.

Even when I was a newbie, I never got rejected a whole lot. But getting blown out 8-10 times in a in a row is fucking rough. Now do it every night for 3-4 nights, and it’s easy to get pretty upset. And although I’ve seen students go through it for years, I never truly appreciated how rough it actually is. It’s making me think that maybe I’m not nearly as good at dealing with rejection as I thought. And for how bummed out/frustrated I became, it made me examine my motives and my needs a little bit more closely. Why am I STILL taking this shit personally? I know it’s a crap-shoot over and over and a complete joke in that the girl is literally judging me within seconds based on some shitty Spanish I blurt out… but it still fucking sucks. I have no idea why.

All in all though, what I’m hoping (and thinking) the outcome is going to be, is that I’m going to go back to the US and shit’s going to be easy… like stupid easy. Like, “I can do this shit blindfolded” easy. Vamos a ver…

Leaving is bittersweet and I have a lot of thoughts about the city and Argentina in general, but I’ll save those for a post tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m grateful that I got to live with a good friend of mine, and hang out with some really awesome people — Argentinian, British, American, Israeli, etc. In particular, there were a handful of high-roller American dudes who have been down here visiting at various times that were a blast to party with. These guys were all a fucking riot and in combination with the absolutely degenerate and non-stop night-life down here, a lot of hilarious quotes and situations occurred. So, in homage to this fucking insane city, I present some of the highlights below.

Buenos Aires, I bid you adieu… much love, but fuck you, I’m going to Cordoba next time.

———————————————————

Entropy: “I thought she was kinda cute with her little accent… well, except for that whole desperate whore thing…”

Entropy: “Out of all of us, why do all the trannies come and talk to me?”
Charlie: “Because you’re the only one taller than them…”

Argentinian Girl: “Do you want to go to an after party?”
Entropy: “You realize most people are going to work right now, right?”
Argentinian Girl: “It starts at 9AM.”

Jon (to me): “Don’t you hate it when you’re trying to have a spiritual experience with a girl, and she asks you for cocaine?”

Cruise (on the phone talking to someone): “Yeah, Anthony couldn’t make it out tonight… He was puking at like 8PM… No, no, he was just still drinking from the night before…”

Taxi Driver: “You guys want some cocaine?”
Us: “No, thanks.”
Taxi Driver: *Shrugs* “More for me…” *Pulls out his stash and does a line while speeding down the highway with his knees*
Jason: “We’re going to die tonight, aren’t we?”
Entropy: “Welcome to Argentina, buddy.”

*Walking, holding hands with an Argentinean girl on the street, little kid comes up to me and begs for change*
Entropy: “No, kid. Sorry…”
Kid: “Please, sir.”
Entropy: “Sorry, I have no money.”
Kid: “If you can pay for her, then you can pay for me…”
Girl: *Hits kid with her bag* “FUCK OFF!”

*Club bouncer screws us over, and ends up asking for over double the cover from us because we’re gringos. We get upset and decide to leave.*
Jason: “Doesn’t he realize we are ‘Fuck You’ rich?”
Entropy: “What’s ‘Fuck You’ rich?”
Jason: “When you have enough money to get anyone fired… where’s the club owner? Fuck this guy. I’ve got an AMEX.”
(Note: We did not, in fact, get the bouncer fired. And Jason was not, in fact, ‘Fuck You’ rich… just very drunk.)

Toryn: “Gentlemen, under principle, I refuse to take part in a porn site that I would not jerk off to myself.”

Weird American Girl: “You have no books in your room!”
Entropy: “Yeah, I just moved in last week.”
Weird American Girl: “Oh my God, I don’t think I can sleep with a guy with an empty bookshelf.”

Jason (asking Toryn to translate): “Tell her that my penis, while not big, is quite rich.”

*An old prostitute, probably in her 40’s, approaches Barrett and I*
Prostitute (in Spanish): “I want you two.”
Entropy (in Spanish): “No thanks.”
Prostitute: “At same time” *points at us*
Entropy (in Spanish): “No thanks.”
Barrett: “Wait, at least ask her how much…”
Entropy (in Spanish): “How much?”
Prostitute (in Spanish): “200 pesos.” (Equivalent to about $50US)
Entropy: “She says 200 pesos. That’s like $25US each. I don’t know, man. She’s pretty busted.”
Barrett: “Yeah, but you can buy a pizza for more than that…”
Entropy: “I think I respect the pizza more than I respect her.”
Barrett: “True… Tell her we’ll get back to her…”
(Note: Despite getting quite a bit more drunk, we did not double team a gross hooker for the price of two large pepperoni pizzas.)

I dealt with this in spades recently. I gamed a little bit while having a girlfriend, but even then, I probably only averaged 1-2 sets a week for two entire years, and I rarely pursued any of the women further than the first couple minutes.

So becoming single again at the end of last year was a big shock to my system. I felt completely different — in some ways better and in some ways way worse. Some things came back easily, some still feel like they haven’t really come back, and just seem completely different from before.

Since then, I’ve talked to a number of students who have had the exact same issues, and we’ve talked a lot about how to overcome them. So here’s a nice little laundry list. If you’re currently rusty, hopefully this will help you shake it off. If you’re currently taking a break or in an “off” period, this is what you can expect when you come back.

I’ll take each skill one by one and talk about how I think they’re effected by a long break.

Lifestyle/Inner Game: Generally improves while you’re away. Whether you left for a relationship, to get your career in order, or to just relax and explore other hobbies, you generally come back with a more solid foundation.

Approaching: This is the first and most obvious thing that you lose. Approach anxiety definitely comes back, but the good news here is that getting over it comes back just as fast as well. Usually within 4-5 approaches and you’re more or less where you left off. 1-2 days to recover this tops.

Connecting: I find this gets better while you’re away from the game if you were in a relationship. A girlfriend will emotionally open you up and make you more sensitive and calibrated to the emotions of others around you. If you weren’t in a relationship, this was breakeven.

Flirting: This one takes a bit longer. When you’ve been away, you get very accustomed to non-sexual and plain friendly conversations. As a result, the next issue you usually hit coming back after getting the approaching back is the, “we had a nice 45 minute boring conversation about our jobs,” — i.e., you become the friend zone guy again, i.e., she never calls you back.

Good news, is again, this comes back kind of like riding a bike. I’d say 4-5 nights out tops, and you’re going at 90% of where you used to be. Just take a couple nights, or maybe about 10 sets and focus on teasing the hell out of them and seeing what happens.

Follow Up: This one will mind-fuck you for a while. Depending on how long you were away, all of the second-guessing and awkwardness of following up with girls comes back. This one really drove me nuts and made me feel like a newbie again for a few weeks. Just remember to trust your gut, you’ll doubt yourself, but just go with it. Eventually you’ll fall back into a comfortable groove of calling and texting the girls you meet.

Escalation: Here’s the biggie. For whatever reason, the single hardest thing to work up when you’ve lost it is your sexual aggression. The habit takes massive repetition and concerted effort. The first 4-6 weeks I started going out again, I can’t tell you how many times I lost a lay because I simply wasn’t pushing things hard enough where I should have… and recognizing that afterward created massive frustration. But hey, just use that frustration to promise yourself that you won’t let it happen again.

This eventually comes back, but it’s definitely the most long and painful part of the process. Still at two months going out again, I still feel like I’m only at maybe 85% aggression that I used to be at.

It’s the opposite of American chicks… who will decide to make out with you after 2 minutes, flirt, talk a ton of shit, and then you go to bring her home and she’s like… “oh, well my friends are going to this club, and I don’t know…”

So last night, we threw a house party, and a few American girls show up. This one mediocre girl shows up. Proceeds to get shit-house drunk on my booze, and then starts mouth-raping me. So I’m figuring, whatever, she’s there… my beds there… Let’s get this over with and if I’m quick I can still hit the club (it was only like 2AM at this point; early for Argentina).

So I shove her into my room, onto my bed, start fingering her, everything off but her panties… and… and… she starts head-turning me. Pushing me off her. “What are you doing?”

It was so prototypical American, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know if you read Roosh’s blog, but he’s been living in South America for like a year and he says how he can’t deal with American girls anymore, because the whole cock-tease, LMR, we-want-attention thing just 100% turns him off now.

Well, I’m starting to see what he’s talking about. I’m immediately turned off. Lose hard-on. (Remember, this girl is like a 7, and that was probably my beer-goggles being generous). So she says, “What are you doing?” I say, “going to a club, apparently,” and get up and start getting dressed. So she starts flipping the fuck out at me, and then BLAMING ME for not being aggressive enough with her — explaining to me that I’m “supposed” to keep trying even though she’s telling me to stop and that once I try enough, that’s when she’ll do it, even though she wanted to the whole time anyway… This was like a full 5-minute convoluted explanation — in her underwear on my bed, mind you. Sex drive is plummeting. I told her only way sex was happening after that was if she let me turn porn on and happened to fall on my dick. She didn’t appreciate that comment very much. But still awkwardly slept naked in my bed for the rest of the night…

Fucking Americans….

(If you didn’t read the article, you should: here)

This is actually an easier question than it may seem. It’s going to be different for every guy, but by FAR the most common deep emotional problems and fears that I come across in the PUA crowd are: ex-girlfriend or ex-wife that broke our heart and/or ruined us, divorced parents, death of a loved one, death of a parent, or just repeated emotional beatdowns growing up — whether it be growing up in the hood, being verbally abused by girls your entire childhood for being fat, etc., etc.

A lot of guys can relate to at least one of the above. I know I can.

Anyway, it’s painful to go back and deal with a lot of that. Some of it REALLY painful. And we don’t do it. We put it off for years. I came here and was motivated primarily by my ex-girlfriend of four years cheating on me and leaving me. That fucking hurt. I thought I got over it, but I didn’t get over it for years. And when I looked deeper, I just realized that that had just been irritating a deeper wound stemming from my divorced parents and family situation growing up. That one STILL hurts. And I think the circumstances in which I grew up in is the largest reason why I’ve dedicated so much time, effort, thought and emotion to picking up women.

It’s not normal. And I accept that.

The Greatest Feeling in the World is when you and a woman are so intimate emotionally, that the physical limitations of your body become stifling. You yearn to melt one another and mix yourselves into some kind of concoction. Sex is a by-product of this process; the ultimate act of physical intimacy. A last-ditch effort to become one with one-another.

When you have The Greatest Feeling in the World, logistics fall by the wayside. The idea of LMR is as absurd as returning money you just won in the lottery. Cockblocks, if they even existed, would be helpless to penetrate your new-found love-bubble. Creating an entire system and library of pick up theory around the banal goal of simply fucking, sells ourselves short. It goes much further than that. Move the goal posts back: aim for the Greatest Feeling in the World, and sex becomes merely a pleasurable side-effect.

It’s always been assumed that it took dating someone months or even years to reach this place. But it can be reached in a matter of hours. And she doesn’t even have to speak your language…

11PM: Buenos Aires. Tourist bar. Mostly Europeans and a few Americans (boring), but also a smattering of South American travelers (more interesting). Quality is mediocre. I seek out the hottest girl there. Found her. She looks Brazilian — as only Brazilians have a smorgasbord of mixed genetics like her. Upon further inspection, she is way, way over-dressed for this place (typical Brazilian behavior) and doesn’t shy away from eye contact when made (only Brazilian girls do this).

She’s talking to two guys. Can’t tell if they’re with her or if they just opened her. I’m busy scavenging for munchies, as I hadn’t eaten yet that night.

We catch eye contact again. Has to be Brazilian. I interrupt their conversation, “You must be Brazilian.” She smiles, “Yes, how did you know?” in broken English. The guys are definitely not with her. They try to remain engaged in the conversation, but it’s apparent within a few minutes that I’m the only one she wants to talk to. They each drop off within a few minutes.

1AM: Dancing. Spinning. Falling (figuratively, not literally). Light kissing. We’re inseparable now. The bubble is forming. No one else dares speak to us. We’re either dancing together, or I’m sitting with my arms wrapped around her. We physically don’t disconnect, ever.

She speaks A+ Portuguese, B+ Spanish and C- English; I speak A+ English, B- Spanish and D Portuguese. Conversations are a linguistic jungle-gym, falling in and out of all three languages. We don’t understand half the shit the other one says. But verbal mis-fires are more than compensated with smiles, eye contact and touch. Remember, the words don’t matter, only the emotions they create.

3AM: Leaving the club now. We lost track of the main group of tourists hours ago although we don’t really care. We made a token effort to figure out which bar they went to, but really it was an excuse for us to do something together. Taxi!

5AM: At my hostel, with my laptop, we buy tickets for a getaway at a beach resort about 5 hours outside Buenos Aires. We book a room on the beach together and plan on leaving the next day.

We’re on day three of our little tryst right now. This is the first time I’ve done an “insta-vacation” with a girl, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous going through with it. But it’s been fine, wonderful even. Our bubble is slowly fading, as the long days together have forced reality to set in a little bit. We’re not in love. We’re not going to get married and have a million babies. We probably won’t even keep in touch. And that’s OK.

But we still love each other’s company. We still laugh together, dance together in inappropriate places, and over-dress everywhere we go and make heads turn, as we are Brazilian and American, and that’s what we do.

On the beach, with her perfect body and tiny bikini (thong), she rubs sun tan lotion on me every afternoon. Every night, we bang and she lives up to the hype of every Brazilian stereotype I’ve heard.

I’m her “American Revolution,” she’s my “Capirinha.” We speak to each other in broken Spanish. We’re creating memories together. And for only a week, we occasionally share The Greatest Feeling in the World.