1. Get Over Anxieties

- Social Anxiety: Approach regularly, relax into conversations, be able to build rapport consistently and easily.
- Sexual Anxiety: Be able to physically escalate, go for closes, talk sexually and fuck well.
- The only way to get over anxieties is by CONFRONTING THEM. People will use anything and everything to rationalize ways to avoid confronting their anxieties, the chief of which is inner game.

2. Balance Comfort and Attraction

- Attraction Heavy: A lot of guys are naturally attraction-heavy. They try too hard. They focus more on entertaining, joking, and excitement than actually connecting. They’re usually great at the first 5 minutes and bad at the rest. Girls flake on them constantly, give them tons of LMR, don’t stick around and are generally distrustful. These guys tend to have more sexual anxiety than social anxiety
- Comfort Heavy: Guys who are naturally comfort-heavy end up in the friend zone. They are more focused on connecting, building rapport, talking about life, experiences and genuine topics. They usually get blown out for being too boring and not expressive enough. They’re awful at the first 5 minutes but tend to be very good if a girl already likes them. They have trouble building attraction, but once they get it, girls rarely flake or give them LMR. These guys tend to have much more social anxiety than sexual anxiety.
- Balancing comfort and attraction is calibration. Every guy must learn to balance these two sides within themselves and also for each woman they talk to.
- Calibration is built through applying pick up theory through experience.

Side note: Most “naturals” are comfort-heavy guys who have some sort of natural attraction advantage. For instance, they’re good looking, in a rock band, nightclub promoter, etc. Their natural status or looks takes care of the attraction so they don’t ever have to.

Side note: Inner game is only useful inasmuch as it makes one aware of his anxieties and how to confront them.

That’s it.

John Henry:

Dear Linda,
A man needs a muse. Well, he doesn’t really. He doesn’t need nearly as much as he generally thinks he does. A man is greedy. Greedy for what he doesn’t think he has and what he thinks he wants. We probably wouldn’t have wandered far beyond the basic necessities without that pushing us. Progress is one of its most important byproducts.

So you will ask, “Why are you writing this?” Because a brief encounter-and-a-half with you gave a cool spin to this little blue planet from my vantage point.

We feted the Celtics tonight and the skies opened. The sun emerged and created a giant rainbow between the city and the park. We were transfixed. You only saw it if you were in the right place. I was in the right place when I noticed you.

I barely know you. I don’t have any illusions about capturing your heart. But the world is brighter, better, lighter and warmer when a man imbues a woman he knows — even tabula rasa — with the attributes that I believe reside in you. It’s the small things that ultimately matter, the subtle things.

I am honest. I don’t play games. And I see no reason not to say that I’ve been smitten by you and you’ve done me a great service.
You’ve very innocently made my world brighter, better, lighter and warmer.

So thanks.

No response is necessary because a man doesn’t need nearly as much as he thinks he does.

Wow… Well, if anything, he’s definitely poetic and a good writer. But did this work? She does end up with him. Here’s her response:

A man may not need as much as he thinks he does, but courage and honesty should be acknowledged. I am not so naive as to believe I actually possess the qualities you attribute to me. But thank you.

Before we jump into this, there are a few things to keep in mind: 1) They’re older, 59 and 30, 2) They’re both probably looking for long-term relationships, 3) They’re both obviously very educated and have had serious relationships (or marriages) in the past.

So let’s look at this in terms of the Seven Immutable Laws of Pickup because as you guys know, the only “model” that I subscribe to is whether a certain guy is offering value to a certain girl — negs, bantering, teasing, etc., etc., is incidental.

1. Rejection – He’s obviously completely resigned and immune to her rejection. An email like this out of the blew says, “I’m putting myself out there” more than almost anything you could do.
2. Lifestyle – Billionaire. Owns the Red Sox. Check.
3. Aggression – Again, he’s sending this email out of the blue stating his interest in her. He’s pushing the issue, he’s not sitting idly and hoping she becomes interested in him.
4. Sub-Communication – This is huge because sub-communication is always determining where the attraction comes from. What does Henry’s letter sub-communicate to her? He’s poetic, that sub-communicates a depth of emotion and passion. Very attractive. He’s intelligent and well-spoken (who says “tabula rasa?”). He states his interest intently, and THEN — and this is the most important part of the letter — he says, “no response is necessary because a man doesn’t need nearly as much as he think he does.” A bit over the top, but this just bleeds of genuinity and sincerity. There’s no pressure on her. He’s shared his emotions beautifully and intelligently and she has no pressure to respond or return it. Not only that, but his interest was light. He didn’t say, “OMG, I LOVE YOU,” or that she’s the love of his life. He simply says, “you make things lighter, warmer,” etc.
5. Connection – he’s sharing his emotions wonderfully. Apparently she resonates with them, although she’s a bit coy. What’s interesting is her humility which indicates a lot of flattery.
6. Relationships – He’s indicating that he’s interested in an emotional connection and commitment. She can take it or leave it.
7. Inertia – Doesn’t apply to a single situation.

So assuming the following things, he’s hitting it on all cylinders: she’s interested in an emotional connection and commitment, she’s intelligent and romantic, she’s not turned off by an older man worth billions of dollars, this is going to hit her in exactly the right ways. I realize this goes against a lot of classic PUA community dogma, but if you haven’t figured it out yet by reading this blog, a lot of PUA community dogma is plain wrong.

Kudos, Mr. Henry and congratulations.

Long-time readers and friends will know that I kind of “peaked” last summer. This was when I was still going out 4-5 nights a week and getting really great results. About a year ago, I began coaching. I slowed down my sarging in the Spring for real-life reasons and then basically stopped completely by the summer-time.

This was partly due to the lifestyle adjustments to coaching PUA full-time — I actually grew to HATE sarging and actively avoided it unless I was doing demo sets for students. It was also partly because I completely emotionally committed myself to my girlfriend and had little interest or desire in other girls for a while.

My trip to Argentina really seemed to change a lot of that. Since then I’ve been sarging for myself sporadically. When I say, “sarge for myself,” I basically mean when I’m not teaching or just fucking around with friends.

Over the last two months, I’ve only sarged for myself maybe two nights a month. Most of my weekends are booked and most of my weeknights are spent with my girlfriend. But when I do get out, I’m enjoying gaming again.

And I’ve noticed something. The last two months my results have been retardedly good.

I don’t mean crazy good as in going out every night and getting eight lays in two weeks — as far as I know, Sinn is still the king of that.

I mean my batting average has been ridiculous. My consistency has been obscene.

If I had to put some numbers to it, these would be my estimates: five nights, 10-12 sets total; two SNL’s, one threesome, two make-outs, two lays that I turned down, two girls with long-term boyfriends forcing their phone numbers on me anyway (I don’t home-wreck anymore). I can only think of one blow out. I can only think of one set that I fucked up. Two of the nights were literally one-set-nights: one and done. One girl who I ejected from one night after poor logistics hunted me down on Facebook a month later and told me that I was so “memorable,” she had to try to find me (in case you’re wondering, my open relationship status scared her away).

Two of these five nights were filmed and will be viewable sometime in 2009, results and all.

On top of the stupid results, every night I’ve been having fun, not pressuring myself to perform or open, and feel 100% centered and present from the second I open until I close in each set. I know this isn’t a coincidence, as inner game and outer game always correlate with one another.

But I’ve been trying to figure out what changed during my Post PUA Life Crisis that did this.

Now, I’ll be first to admit that since I sarge so seldomly, I am pre-selecting more often. I’ll also be the first to point out that there’s always a large element of luck involved in gaming, and I could very well have just found the right girls on the right nights.

But from an subjective point of view, I definitely feel different when I sarge now. Something has changed. And as always, I have theories:

1) Emotional Maturity – A lot of this can be attributed to my girlfriend (who is still fucking amazing by the way). Looking back, I used to be a very emotionally guarded and often a cold person. It’s obvious to me now that I was terrified of making myself vulnerable to women for fear of getting hurt again. My girlfriend and the evolution of our relationship has helped me realize that no matter how emotionally vulnerable I make myself, I’m still invincible. No one can control my self-esteem and value except for myself — so there’s NEVER a reason to not give myself 100% to everyone.

I love being vulnerable with girls now. It’s my favorite part of the whole process. Because when I make myself vulnerable, she does the same and we experience an actual emotional connection — which is really the only aspect of game that I enjoy these days.

Embracing my vulnerability in sets has not only lead to a large drop off in any anxiety or reticence in set, but it engages girls so much quicker and deeper than straight-up banter and flirting does. So sarging is not only more fun now, but more fulfilling.

Now, a lot of guys associate vulnerability with weakness and not being “Alpha.” But if you think about it, what signifies inner strength more than a man who’s capable of sharing any part of himself to any one at any time?

2) Embracing the Outcomes – This kind of piggy-backs off of number one. I always felt like I was very good at being “outcome independent” — if I got blown out, I got over it pretty quick and would often joke about it, if I had an awesome lay, I’d enjoy it and then be over it a day later or so. But these days, it’s different. I don’t try to ignore the outcome as much as I embrace them, regardless of what they are. I’m discovering there’s some sort of sick pleasure in getting rejected. I still enjoy taking a girl home after an hour or a date. I enjoy having deep, beautiful conversations in the corner of the club and kissing passionately. In the end, all of these results are slowly blurring and becoming similar for me — they’re all unique and dynamic human interactions with their own stories, flavors and shapes, each one has some experience to add to my life and therefore none are “better” than another — they’re just different, some wider-reaching and some deeper.

3) Being Present and Centered – This is something I kind of started learning to do in the Spring, particularly with the Virgin LR, and describe somewhat in this post: simply being emotionally present with whichever girl I’m speaking to.

A lot is made in outer game about mirroring, rapport techniques, kino, but little is mentioned about matching a girl’s emotional state with yours and then leading her. It takes a lot of focus, but it’s so fucking awesome.

I recently went out with a big name coach from another company and he commented to me, “Dude, you don’t talk in set… like ever. I think every girl you opened ended up carrying 80% of the conversation. But you still made it work every time.”

It boggles my mind now that this is looked down on by some other companies and methods as poor form. If a woman is spending her Friday night confiding and sharing herself with me for hours at a time, what does that imply about my value to her? You throw in the fact that I’m both mentally and emotionally present with her — can it get better? That’s intimacy. And when you focus on the intimacy first and sex second, the sex just naturally happens as if it’s an after-thought, LMR ceases to exist, and you wake up the next day, week or month and can still smile about the experience.

When I say being non-judgmental I don’t just mean the SNL frame. I guess that’s why I first starting thinking about this topic however many months ago it was but there’s a lot more to it than that.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with what I’m talking about, there’s a concept of force framing that Sinn, Captain Jack, El Topo, Levo, Puzzler, and a few other guys at MM have been working on lately. Basically you put a frame out there, let’s stick to SNL frames and use “being discrete.” So you’re going to mention being discrete, then tell a story about it, and finally bring it back to you and how you’re discrete. And why would you want a woman to think you’re discrete? Because when she fucks you it’s nice for her to know you’re not going to tell the whole world about it, she doesn’t want to be seen as a slut, and if no one finds out she won’t be.

I’ll give an example of force framing on a woman that you’re a person people like to be around… I don’t see any practical pick up value to force framing that but I want to give an example without giving away one of my stories for an SNL frame.

You know what is just like the best thing in the world? People who you make you feel good just by being around them. <- I just put the frame out
Like I used to know this guy who was just so friendly and warm to everyone. You could be in the worst pissed off mood ever but as soon as he came around you just started to feel better. It was amazing, and I haven’t met many people like that but when I do I know that they’re just like special and someone I should be around. You know? <- Telling a story relating to the frame
And you know, I was with my sister the other day. And she’s going through a real rough patch in her life right now but like we were talking and she told me that just me being around her made her feel that everything was going to be alright. And like right away I thought of the guy I used to know that could always cheer anyone up <-Relating the frame to yourself

Now I just came up with that off the top of my head but it gives you the idea of how it works and I’m sure you can imagine how powerful something like that could be with sexual frames.

So I was doing something like the example above only the frame I was putting out was “I’m non-judgmental.” The whole point of that frame was to show women I wouldn’t judge them for having sex with me and think of them as sluts. Also it led to crazier sex later on down the line because they knew I’d be down for and not think less of them because they went ass to mouth.

And it worked, less LMR and more sex. But because of my crazy comfort game already creating such a deep connection and then adding in the I won’t judge them for anything frame. The end result was women started telling me some pretty fucked up shit about their lives.

At first I was really taken aback by it all, stuff like cutting, prior drug use, attempted suicide, crazy number of sexual partners, going to mental hospitals, going to jail, getting raped, the list goes on and on.

More and more women started sharing their fucked up past with me and I realized that a lot of it was very common, most women have done or gone through something from the list about they just don’t share it with everyone. So they have all this fucked up baggage right? But they’re still amazing women, with great personalities, senses of humor, and are obviously very beautiful.

I started to really not be able to judge people. Women were opening themselves up to me and telling me things that they didn’t tell anyone, how could I judge or look down on them after they were that open with me? They very well could have kept it a secret and I’d have never known all this stuff about them. But then I wouldn’t really know them would I? There would always be a disconnect between us.

This is more of an inner game thing. You have to be pretty secure in yourself and who you are to honestly not think less of people for mistakes they’ve made.

But here’s the thing, we’re all humans, we’re not perfect, we fuck up, we make mistakes, and just all around do shit that we probably shouldn’t have done. I know I have. But we learn from it and move on.

I’m seeing a girl who used to really be into drugs, and some really bad stuff happened because of it. She said to me “If we had met four years ago, I never would have gotten involved in all that stuff and we’d probably be married.” And I said “Babe, the things we do make us who we are, I’m not the same person I am today that I was four years ago, and I know you’re not either. Yeah some stuff happened, and it probably wasn’t right. But it happened and it made you who you are and I wouldn’t want you any other way.” I honestly believe that.

I guess it all comes down to that you just have to accept people for who they are. Everyone has done things they’re not proud of and if you say you haven’t you’re probably full of shit.

Pickup can really change who you are at a deep level, let it.