Great post, Entropy — You’re the only pick up artist I know of who actually reflects on the community *as a lifestyle,* not just peddling new openers or things like that. Keep it up!

I’d like to see you address more thoroughly some of the comments made by readers in the previous post regarding the complexity of relationships vs. pickup.

Yes, “scoring” lay after meaningless lay amounts to running away from deeper emotional needs which can only be fulfilled with an actual relationship. But so to is clinging to a dysfunctional relationship because of societal convention or fear of loneliness after the breakup. I can give you countless stories of people I know who are married to someone they don’t really love, or are caught in destructive and codependent relationships. Clearly, I would rather be single and playing the field than in one of those — Even though my emotional life would be superficial, at least I would have my freedom and my boundaries respected. And I think that is a legitimate complaint about “standard” relationships.

Ultimately, I think it gets boiled down to a couple of questions: What is a healthy relationship/ attitude about relationships? How can we use the skills learned in pickup to *deepen* our relationships — not just to get phone numbers and SNLs. What say you?

Thanks a lot for this follow up post. Really clarified things for me.
And mad respect that you post your issues on the internet for everyone to see. Don’t know if I could do that. Maybe a sign, that I am not over them yet?

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think I’m in the community because I used to be an AFC and I want a kind of revenge. I want to get from women what they denied me so much for being shy and have no game. And I can’t deny it, it feels good to get attention from women and have options. At the same time I’m afraid of being commited to a girl because I know by own experience and for what I saw in my family that is not an easy job to make it work. The routine, the loss of passion, the temptation, etc. Thank god I’ve been seeing a shrink for a long time.

[...] posts from last week on the community and how it relates to our emotional issues spurred a question from a friend of [...]