First off, to clarify, I don’t mean luck IN SET, what I mean by luck is all of the external factors that influence chasing tail… all external factors are out of your control and are therefore random and considered “luck.” Go out and venues are dead? That’s out of your control and luck. Open a girl and her friend just puked and passed out? Luck. Opened another girl and she’s insanely horny and loves guys who look just like you? Luck.

I am arguing that the vast majority of factors in pick up are external, therefore the vast majority of picking up girls is luck. Again, your actual “game,” no matter how good or bad, probably only influences 20% of your chances with women… It’s not much, but it adds up VERY FAST over the long-term (20 lays a year versus 2, for example).

Game will always give you the best chance to capitalize on the situations presented to you… but short of throwing yourself into as many situations as possible, you have no control over which situations you’re given. And the majority of situations are not going to be stacked in your favor. In fact, the vast majority of situations, you’re going to have little to no chance… That’s what I mean when I say luck.

Even if a guy stands in a bar all night and waits for a girl who’s horny to approach him… he’s still surrendering the majority of control over his outcomes to luck. He’s basically hoping for a drunk, horny girl to show up. Most nights, she won’t. But every now and then, she will. And even if he escalates perfectly and fucks her in the bathroom, he’s only controlled a tiny minority of his outcome.

I have a question: can you set yourself up for luck? Like, screen like crazy for girls that are really horny and receptive to escalation (if you’re going for SNL, bathroom, whatever)?

Absolutely. It’s called pre-selection, and we all do it to varying degrees. We all tend to avoid sets that we think would yield a poor result — tons of guys, seated sets, large groups, etc. — and focus on sets that we think we have a higher probability with. Again, this varies from guy to guy, and you could argue it’s even a skill unto itself. These days, I can scan a venue and find women who look like they’d be very receptive, both to me and in general.

This is how you hear some of these stories like, “two nights in a row, it was one and done. I opened one girl and took her home.” This DOES happen. I’ve done it. But you walk into a large venue, find the easiest looking girl and approach her. Or sometimes, guys will hang out for a few hours waiting for an “opportunity” to pop up. Nothing wrong with this, I do this quite a bit when I’m with friends now… But it’s definitely pre-selection, and you’re leaving a lot of pussy on the table by only approaching the low-hanging-fruit.

I have a small question, do you drink when you go out to on the ‘field’?

Yes, no, and yes. I get asked this constantly. The answer is yes, I do drink. Although I rarely get hammered, or even that drunk when chasing girls. When I first started, I had to get very, very drunk to work up the nerve to approach. After some time, I decided to stop on the booze for a while. In some ways, it made me better, but I decided that I enjoyed myself more with a couple drinks. So I’m back to drinking again, but not as hard or as often. I often won’t drink while coaching though. And some nights I’ll go crazy with some friends. My Achilles’ Heel is if a girl starts buying me shots… then it’s all over. In more ways than one…

Should you drink? My answer is always, it’s up to you. But if you feel you HAVE TO drink when you go out, then you need to learn to go out sober. Once you can go out sober, then make the decision. Gaming sober is pretty different and has its advantages, so I think every guy should try it.

If you have health concerns, like you’re an athlete or something, and you can’t afford to drink every night (those calories add up REAL fast), then no, don’t drink when you go out. Maybe save it for the weekends or something and just do shots of Vodka or something if you really want to.

Why do you think outer game should be learned first? Do you think that a solid inner reframe can naturally allow things like body language and interaction skills to enhance?

Only if the guy already has those body language and interaction skills. Some do, many don’t. Let’s take an example of a student: he’s a smart, confident and successful business man who can be very dominant and commanding in proper business situations. Then yes, it’s about fixing his inner game around women. It’s just a matter of transferring his confident behavior from his professional contexts to his social contexts.

But if you have a student who has spent most of his life behind a computer, has had few to no friends, has always been shy and awkward — in every situation his entire life — getting him to “open up” and “express himself” is just going to make him continue to express his awkwardness. He never learned good body language habits or social skills initially, so there’s nothing TO open up to. RSD always talks about how game is just learning to be “unstifled.” Well, what if you don’t even have enough to be stifle with?

Outer game needs to be taught first because it gives you reference experiences in the context of women in which to develop the important inner game qualities. Again, a guy who runs around yelling, “MY GAME IS A 10!” between 15 blow outs isn’t reframing anything. He’s deluding himself and avoiding dealing with some very fundamental outer game issues. First, he needs to develop the basic outer game skills — get women to talk to him, get a few phone numbers, make a few friends — before he even has a chance to worry about things like confidence, state, etc.

The other reason outer game should always be taught first is that it’s so easy to fix. Inner game issues take months if not years to overcome, and wax and wane from day to day. Outer game stuff can be fixed immediately and results can be improved immediately. And honestly, NOBODY has perfect outer game, so there are always new things to be focusing on.

It just comes back to that every guy has a unique situation. These days, probably 1/2 of the guys who come into the community already naturally have most of their outer game stuff handled. That’s why you see such an inner game focus in general these days… that’s the way the market’s shifted and most of the new coaches these days only had to fix their inner game, so they assume that’s all anybody has to fix.

Things in life are almost never as clear cut as “All you need is X.” Pick up is no different.

How much of success is inner game and how much is outer game? A lot of people say all you need is inner game, which makes sense to me. What else do you say to a guy whose whole reality is “I’m bad with women?”

That he’s probably right and needs to fix some basic things about himself. Anyone who knows me knows that the whole “inner game only” trend drives me absolutely nutty because I think it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. A guy with bad outer game and great inner game will never get laid. A guy with great outer game and bad inner game will get laid all the time — he’ll just lay low quality girls and not be able to keep them around or be happy.

No matter how awesome the shit going on inside your head is, it’s just that: going on inside your head. All a woman ever experiences is your outer game.

If you want to change a guy’s reality that is “I’m bad with women,” then you change it by giving him good outer game first. Fixing your inner game is a luxury of those who already have outer game. I’ve never understood why having this reality is such a bad thing if the guy never gets girls. If you never get girls, then it’s true and you should face it. The problem begins when you meet a guy with 200+ lays who says the same thing: “I’m bad with women.” To have a newbie virgin deny this reality is just shooting himself in the foot. It reminds me of the RSD monkeys I’ve coached who walk around clubs shouting out, “MY GAME IS A 10!” in between getting blown out 11 times in a row… They’re not doing themselves any favors… just deluding themselves from the painful reality: they have a lot of work to do.

Also, second question: how much is just dumb luck? Every guy I talk to with a high lay count has a couple stories that are just lucky.

Or quite a lot of stories… the more experience I get, the more I realize how much is out of our control (And hers too sometimes) and is just dumb luck. I can usually judge a guy’s experience-level these days based on how aware he is of how much luck is involved. It’s always the guys who tell me with a straight face that they’re practicing cold approach threesomes, or that they’re currently working on their bathroom lay technique that I immediately assume have no idea what they’re doing but think they do because they have like 20 lays or something. There’s no technique… you just find a really fucking horny girl (the luck), escalate fast (the skill) and then drag her to the bathroom. She either goes with you or doesn’t… no technique involved.

For instance, when I first came into the community, I was sold on the idea (marketing) that we could control 90-100% of our fate with a certain girl. When I got out into field, I soon realized that was probably much more like 50%. After I banged a few dozen girls and had some ultra-wacky and crazy experiences under my belt, I realized it was a minority, probably 30%.

These days, I honestly think, even when you include all the inner game stuff, the social circle stuff, the lifestyle stuff, on top of all of the mechanics and techniques… we’re talking 20% control of our own fate with any particular girl — and that’s probably still a HUGELY generous estimate — come to South America some time and see how much control you have over the interactions…

Fact remains, the absolute best thing you can do to get laid or get girls, is to just go out and meet as many women in as many situations as possible. Everything you learn, study, practice, think about, etc. is completely supplementary. Give me an average guy will all the pick up theory and skills who goes out twice a week, and give me an average guy who is clueless and goes out five times a week, and the guy who goes out five times will (usually) have better results in the long-run… There are just far, far, far too many intangible and extraneous forces that you can’t learn about until you’ve been forced to face them. I think really the difference between a guy who’s amazing with women and a guy who isn’t is a 90% fail rate versus a 99% fail rate. It doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of 100 sets a month, it adds up very fast.

It’s only when you’re going out all the time that that 20% advantage theory gives you adds up over time. If you’re not putting yourself out there consistently, then there’s nothing anybody can do for you.

As always, field is king.

That’s all.

(Thanks Clarence for the correction.)

“Joe is turning sixteen. All he wants in life is to have a car. He’d give anything for it. Sarah, who has a car, has never had a boyfriend. She’s dying to have a boyfriend. Tracy has a boyfriend, and is about to have his baby. The kid was a mistake and she would do anything to turn back time and not conceive. Dale, who has no kids, just lost his job and desperately wants to make money. George, a billionaire, would give up his fortune to be young again, like Joe.”

It’s a great and short article. Check it out here: http://tynan.net/appreciation-why-it-should-be-impossible-to-be-unhappy/

Interesting discussion came up on the Boston boards about rating girls and guys having trouble “getting the 9’s and 10’s.” This is a pretty common problem, and the solution I found to it a while back isn’t obvious by any means.

Some people say ditch the ratings scale, which isn’t a bad idea. Guys who get too obsessed with the ratings scale and adjusting their game to it end up objectifying women a great deal. Although physical beauty CAN be judged, its correlation to a girl’s personality is loose at best.

So ditching it is better than being married to it. But I’ve found that you can use it to help you.

The rest of the post is written in response to a guy who said: “6’s and 7’s are easy and I’m not that into them. I don’t have to try. 9’s and 10’s are hard and I get really nervous around them. How do you get over this?”

The rating scale is all in your head, so you can use it to fuck you up (like you’re doing now), or you can use it to your advantage.

“Quality” girls is a relative term. We’ve all known this — your 10 could be my 6 and vice-versa.

But it’s also relative to you. For instance, I had a big realization when I ran into some FB’s from like 3 years ago. What used to be a 9 was now a 7 at best. The girl that three years before I was shaking in my shoes trying to hook up with became a girl who would be lucky if I called her back. It’s relative IN YOUR HEAD TOO.

When you go out, you say that 6’s and 7’s are easy. 9’s and 10’s are hard. We can deduce that you are valuing yourself at about an 8 (this is all pretty normal by the way).

The 6’s are easy because you don’t perceive them to be worth your time or energy to pursue. As a result, you act non-reactive, un-needy and laid back around them creating a lot of attraction.

On the other hand, you perceive the 9’s and 10’s the have more value than you, so you are more inclined to be try-hard, needy and sensitive.

If you change your perception of what’s a 9 and 10, then you can fix these problems.

Basically, just move your scale up. What used to be your 9 is now your 7. That HB7 FB you have is now a 5. What would your new 9 or 10 be?

Now go after them. What you’ll find is, you’ll start laying 6’s and 7’s pretty easily again with some practice… except these are 6’s and 7’s that used to be your 9’s and 10’s.

The only drawback to this, is you develop obscenely high standards. And your friends think you’re a snob. LOL.

Once the new set of 6’s and 7’s become too easy, slide your scale up again. What ends up happening is your definition of a 9 become a Maxim model and your 10 ceases to exist, hahaha.

But this is what I mean by using the rating scale to your ADVANTAGE rather than limiting yourself by it. When you keep it and obsess over it and keep it so limited, you’ll always be stuck going for the “9’s and 10’s.” But if you slide it up repeatedly, what you’re actually doing is tricking your mind to slide up your own perceived value, which in turns causes you to be non-needy, unreactive, chilled out and really cool around REALLY hot chicks.

Basically, you want your scale to slide up along with your success. Guys who adapt insanely high standards without any success or experience are just making excuses. But if your standards are always ONE STEP AHEAD of your experience, you’ll constantly be improving.

And then suddenly one day, you’ll run into an old fuck buddy of yours from three years ago, and realize she isn’t even close to as hot as you remember her.

I’ve been getting some great questions. So keep them coming. Send them to: entropy@practicalpickup.com.

Do you think that in dealing with sexual anxiety that finding a good therapist to work with is the best method?

- Dan

Lots of talk of therapy going around lately. I’ll say this: therapy helped MY sexual anxiety and inner game in general more than about anything else. Now granted, I had a SHIT TON of baggage (previous relationship, parent issues, messed up adolescence, etc.) which was the root of my sexual anxiety and most of my inner game issues.

Would I recommend therapy to anybody who’s gotten out of an absolutely atrocious relationship? Yes. Absolutely. Would I recommend therapy to anyone who had a fucked up childhood or has horrible relations with their parents. YES! No question.

But don’t take therapy as a cure-all for inner game issues. There’s a lot of stuff that it won’t fix.

And I have to say this again, because it’s crucial. THERAPY WILL NOT WORK IF YOU DO NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHANGING YOURSELF. I think most people tend to show up to therapy, plop down on the couch and expect the shrink to fix them. No, you are fixing yourself and the shrink is there to facilitate it.

I’ve been meeting new girls constantly from college. I don’t want to be a PUA. I just want to be, like you say, a normal guy. But a socially successful normal guy. A guy that has fun wherever, whenever. Dating science has been helping me tons with it. Is it worth it spending all that money going out and all that time spent? What if I already know what I want?

- Rodrigo

If you already know what you want, then just focus on that. Don’t focus on what ebooks, DVD courses and forums tell you to be. Focus on what YOU want to be. It sounds like you have a pretty solid lifestyle already. Use PUA to supplement it, not replace it.

You’re a guy I would tell not to pay for coaching. Read stuff. Get some advice. Try it out in your regular social life. That should suit your needs.

Could you touch on building attraction in bars / clubs / book stores in a future post? This area is a bit of a mystery to me, and I’m curious how you go about generating attraction prior to moving to comfort game.

- TR

I give the girl my patented “blue steel.” We make out within 30 seconds. Then if I decide I like her, we fuck in the bathroom. If she’s good in the bathroom, then I go into comfort game. If she’s cool and we fall in love before last call (2AM in Boston), then I’ll take her phone number. If not, I open another set.

Seriously though, what you just asked is the subject of like 5,000 pages and 60 hours of seminar. But how do I build attraction? Teasing and banter mostly.

Hey Entropy I know BradP learned a lot from naturals but what exactly do your naturals do differently than a mpua or is it something intangible that they have? I know a couple naturals in my school but I don’t necessarily think they are naturals they are just good looking guys is that the case here?

- Anonymous

Absolutely not. The word “natural” is one of the most misconstrued terms in the PUA community. That’s why I tend to call these two guys “supernaturals.” You have to have 300+ lays and have fucked a model from a major magazine to qualify as a supernatural. These guys both have (Maxim and Vogue-Italy respectively).

But to answer your question, “do they do things that mPUA’s don’t?” Yes and no. I would say they do FEWER things, because they only do what works and nothing else, although they’re not aware of it. Are the things they do similar to mPUA’s? Yeah. They just do them a lot better, so they don’t have to do as MUCH stuff.

I heard faking body language can be IMPOSSIBLE due to micro movements, lightining fast eyebrow raises, pupil dilation, etc…

What do you think?

- Love Potion

Interesting question. On a conscious level, yes, it’s totally fake-able. But those micro movements are only noticed sub-consciously — i.e., it’s those micro movements that tell us a “vibe” a person has. So you can be doing the right body language overtly, but your “vibe” will be off, and you’ll seem incongruent.

This is fine and a phase pretty much everybody goes through when they start out. The other thing about body language though is that you can actually train your mind by changing your body language. For instance, if you fix your body language, your mind will begin to reflect the postures you create.

So in time, the micro movements will catch up to the conscious movement.

If you have questions you want answered, pickup-related or otherwise, serious or humorous, personal or philosophical, anything, feel free to email them to me at: entropy@practicalpickup.com or leave it as a comment to this post.

Could you possibly tell us what you learned from those 2 naturals? Could you interview them?

- Anonymous

My first natural friend — the one who helped me get good exceedingly fast — had more dominance than anyone I’ve ever met. His frame and inner game was generally impenetrable. As a result, him going direct was just lethal. No matter how the girl reacted, he wouldn’t back down or be phased.

The second one I met about a year ago. Most of the deep comfort and connection stuff you read about from me was inspired by him. When I met him, the stuff he talked about I couldn’t even fathom before (getting girls to cry tears of joy while talking to him, etc.).

The first one I have lost touch with as he moved to Florida a year or two ago. The second one I still keep in periodic email contact with, although we don’t talk about pick up much anymore.

The first one I doubt I could ever interview. The second one, I have about 75-100 pages worth of email exchange on the subject of pickup with that I may do something with one day (he’s given me permission). These were all long emails (some as long as 20 pages) and very involved. It’s advanced content, but the content of those emails trumps most products I’ve ever seen. Many of the “new” ideas that I’ve had on this blog were inspired by him.

Is it healthy to take rejection and roll it off and laugh about it? Or to take it and work on yourself to get better ?

- Broken Dreams NYC

Ideally, the answer would be both. We all get rejected, so we all need to deal with it. I would say in the moment you get rejected, it’s never bad to laugh it off. Getting rejected sucks, and anything you can do to keep your spirits up in the moment is worthwhile.

I think down the road you need to analyze the situation and fix whatever caused the rejection. What I typically do and tell students is wait until the next day. For instance, if you go out Friday night, I wait until Saturday to think about all my sets and analyze everything or journal/write field reports. Sleeping on it detaches your emotions from it and gives you perspective. There are a lot of times that I would be upset about bombing with some girl and then I’d wake up the next day and not care anymore and actually be able to objectively figure out what I did wrong.

You wrote: “Some guys are simply horrible at instituting new behaviors. They don’t know how to change themselves. Other guys are horribly un-disciplined. A lot of guys don’t hold themselves to high standards, or have poor beliefs about themselves.”

Ok, that’s me. Is there an answer beyond “get some balls?”

- Pure Win

Yes. There is something fundamental, deep down, and probably emotional, that’s holding you back. Starting probing yourself for WHY you don’t want to improve, why you believe shitty stuff about yourself, why you don’t push yourself. I guarantee it’s a deep, underlying emotional issue that you haven’t resolved. Look into therapy if you have trouble.

How do you handle mixed sets? I have read various things on approaching mixed sets, and it appears some folks take the go directly to the girl vs. befriend everyone and then work the target angle. Personally, I prefer to approach the target and then work on the friends. And pointers for working mixed sets?

Keep up the killer posts!
- TR

Well, I don’t really know the “official” way to do mixed sets, but I’ll tell you how I do them.

- If there are more guys then girls, I approach and befriend the guys first and find out how they all know each other.
- If there are more girls than guys and the guys look like a bunch of pushovers — i.e., dorky work friends who have no chance at dating any of the girls — I approach the girls directly. I’ve noticed in these situations, when girls are with what you would call “beta” (I fucking hate that term) males, if you approach confidently and dominate the conversation, these guys will just kind of slink into the background. They don’t really need to be befriend other than for logistical reasons.
- If there are more girls than guys, but the guys don’t look like pussies — i.e., if he looks like he could actually be fucking at least one of the girls — I may approach the girls or him (depends on situation I guess), but I make a point to befriend him and figure out his logistical situation within the group. For instance, if he’s obviously gaming one girl, I’ll respect him by going for the other.

Mixed sets make a lot of guys nervous. The truth is, 90% of guys are harmless as long as you’re respectful to them. Often all it takes is a handshake and introduction to disarm an AMOG.

Guys who are shorter or smaller are going to always have a harder time with other guys. If you’re a bigger guy, you’ll just about never get AMOG’d, ever.

So here’s the run-down:

In The Beginning:
When: Late 2005
Situation: Had just read “The Game”. Could barely even fathom approaching hot girls, much less envision myself actually doing it. Had just gotten dumped by the love of my life, still dealing with some baggage and depression. Hadn’t had sex in almost a year.
Natural Strengths: Tall and decent-looking. Could hold a good conversation. Good sense of humor. Had some friends. If I got drunk enough, I wasn’t afraid to try and make out with a girl.
Natural Weaknesses: Scared to death of approaching. Had serious commitment/self-esteem/sexual anxiety issues. Honestly believed that I’d never get another girl as amazing as my ex to ever like me again.

Phase 1: OMG, She Talked to Me!
When: Winter and Spring of 2006
Progress Report: It took me three months to actually work up the nerve to cold approach a girl. When I finally did, I was so nervous and self-conscious, I actually apologized for talking to her. I focused mainly on going to parties and meeting girls through my friends. I used some of David DeAngelo’s Cocky/Funny to turn my humor on girls and actually got some mediocre results. A drunk make-out here, an ugly girl’s phone number there. Still no real results though.

I read the Venusian Arts Handbook (basically what became Magic Bullets) and decided to memorize some routines, magic tricks and even some palm-reading. In my first couple dozen sets of my life, I would try these and they would fail miserably. I suck at magic. One girl, while getting a palm-read, looked at me and said, “Why are you touching me?” Another girl, after a botched magic trick looked at me and said, “You should just try being normal.” Little did I know, she gave me better advice than 80% of the PUA community.

Sticking Points: I still had awful approach anxiety. Anything more than one set a night was a “good night.” Attraction game was all over the place, uncalibrated, and awkward. I sucked at routines.

Phase 2: Afraid of Sex
When: May – July of 2006
Progress Report: I took the girl’s advice and tried to just act normal on cold approaches. To my utter amazement, my results got better. I stuck with the Cocky/Funny I used at my friend’s parties and actually started getting phone numbers off cold approach.

My social circle game really started coming into its own. My occasional drunk make-outs finally turned into hook ups and in April, I ended a 16-month sex drought. The experience was terrifying.

When I got sexual with girls, I freaked out that they’d become emotional attached or involved with me (baggage from my relationship; me projecting), and would quit answering their calls. I held the limiting belief that any girl who would sleep with me wanted to be my girlfriend. Seriously…

In June, I met up with a local Boston guy through the lair. He could approach all night but couldn’t hold conversations. I could hold conversations all night but couldn’t approach because I still had crippling approach anxiety. He proceeded to approach about eight sets in the first hour. I stood by stunned and horrified at the groups he fearlessly started talking to. By the end of the night I calmed down and even opened a few sets myself. My AA finally became manageable.

It was in July in which I met a super-natural. We met because the same girl invited us both to a party of hers. To this day, I have yet to meet anyone in the community better than him. Over the next year, I would go out with him and watch him pull smoking hot girls home consistently and without hesitation. I owe a lot of the speed and extent of my development to him.

Sticking Points: Bad sexual anxiety. Sloppy escalation. Would act like a jack ass on day 2’s.

Phase 3: Finally Getting It
When: August – December 2006
Progress Report: I continued to go out five nights a week, half of which I spent with my natural wing, the other half with community guys or college friends.

Watching my natural friend interact with women quickly influenced my dominance and how sexual I was willing to be around girls. The stuff he pulled off was amazing and consistently tested my beliefs and reality.

That summer, I took a girl home from a party. She was very aggressive and it was apparently within an hour or two that we’d have sex. When we got back to my place, once again I ran into severe sexual anxiety and started freaking out that this girl was going to want to date me or something. I decided to take the bluntly honest route and talk to her, set expectations. I told her after sex, “Hey, you’re cool but you need to know this isn’t going to go anywhere.”

She laughed in my face and said, “Who said I wanted to see you again?” This experience was HUGE.

My college party/social circle game hit its peak. I had a night in August where I hooked up with three girls in one night. My college friends and their parties would continue to supply the majority of my lays for the next six months.

I got my first fuck buddies, although I was still bad at keeping them around. I still over-gamed on day 2’s and girls I had already slept with, mostly out of a lack of confidence, but also out of habit.

During this period, I probably slept with 10-12 girls, tripling the amount of women I had been with in my entire life.

On paper, I suppose I had reached legitimate “PUA” status. Within only eight months, I had gone from being a stumbling newbie who needed help approaching, to the guy most guys came to for advice in the lair. I got one night stands. I had a fuck buddy or two.

But I still had a lot of inner game work and emotional work to do — stuff I had never planned on working on, but would soon bite me in the ass.

Sticking Points: Inner game — seeking way too much validation, becoming addicted to sarging. Emotionally vacant. Still had sexual anxiety issues.

Interlude: The Salvadorean Woman
When: January – May 2007
Progress Report: I began to get frustrated in December of 2006. I still had a lot of irrational fears about girls I was seeing — I’d inexplicably stop calling them back and decide that they were needy and crazy — and kept fighting bouts of sexual anxiety.

I decided to check myself into therapy. I did some research, found a guy near my apartment who my insurance covered and I could relate to (went to same college, had been a musician and a slacker, used to womanize when he was young).

What started out as, “Hey Doc, help me keep my pecker hard,” turned into a long dialog that delved into my emotional issues — first, my ex-girlfriend (predictable) and then my parent’s divorce (whoa, didn’t see that coming) and then finally my entire adolescence.

I’m not one of those guys who shits on therapy at all. I think if you find the right therapist, it’s incredibly helpful. You just have to find the right person and be willing to open yourself up and work on yourself. I was extremely engaged every week. Every week I’d figure something out about myself, my emotional inner works, my past, my issues, etc. and then I’d spend the rest of the week turning the ideas over in my head. Eventually, after about 4-5 months, I showed up one day and it felt like I didn’t have anything to talk about. So I stopped. That was it. All in all, seeking therapy was one of the smartest things I ever did.

The other thing that happened was I met a woman. She was foreign (love it), older (also love it), beautiful, smart and rich. Our first date consisted of her buying a bottle of Johnny Walker and us sitting in her apartment until 4AM speaking in broken English (her) and broken Spanish (me). It was wonderful.

Now, as with all the other previous girls that I had really liked, I was still scared shitless of commitment, but this woman was too amazing to not commit to. She was mature and handled her emotions well, which is what I needed in the girl I dated at the time. She was fun and playful, had a sexy accent, and spoiled the shit out of me. It’s really hard to ditch a woman when she’s sexy, fun AND perfectly willing to spend $1000 on you without thinking twice.

It was good for me. It was perfect for me really. It restored my confidence, my emotional stability, helped me open myself up again. I wasn’t afraid of intimacy or relationships anymore.

Eventually, she had to move back to her country. Her family worked in the government (which in Central America is a huge deal). She finagled a job for me at the US Embassy down there and invited me to go down to live with her.

As fantastic as it all sounded, I realized she and I wanted different things. I had just gotten out of college. She wanted to settle down, probably marry and have kids. The idea that a woman was actually willing to marry me — and not even that, a woman of THAT caliber really did a number on my reality.

Unfortunately, I had to turn her down. We lost touch. She was such a blessing and I still think about her now and again.

Phase 4: Put Me Back in the Game Coach
When: May – December 2007
Progress Report: When I came back, I was rusty for a few weeks. But in no time, I was hitting it hard again, five nights a week, and the results started pouring in like there was no tomorrow. Probably a new girl every week or two for six months.

But the difference was that I was actually keeping girls around now. I was keeping them around for three, six, even eight months at a time. We always seemed to enjoy our time together. And when it came time for them to move on, I was remaining friends with them. There were almost never any hard feelings or awful drama.

Within a few months I had a large rotation of girls that I maintained until the end of the year.

Sticking Points: I still remained emotionally shallow with my girls. Also, my lifestyle had become dominated by pick up. I reached a point where I was unemployed, broke, living on a friend’s couch, and was dating four girls and going out three nights a week. It was stupid. And I quickly became miserable.

Phase 5: Girlfriend, Coaching and the Post-PUA Life
When: January – September 2008
Progress Report: I decided to put my life in order. On top of being a mess personally and financially, I was getting burnt out from all of the sarging. I don’t know about you, but after about a dozen 4-month-long casual relationships, it starts to get a bit old. The one night stands got old even way before that.

This period, I found myself slowly falling into another serious long-term relationship with my current girlfriend. She started as a FB about six months prior.

This period also saw me begin coaching which created a bizarre effect on my social life and general psyche for a while. This is documented on this blog in my “Post PUA Life” posts from the summer of 2008.

But a lot of this was just getting back to being a normal person again. As fucked up as that sounds, it was true. Learning how to NOT go out five nights a week. Learning how to go out and NOT approach girls and still have fun.

Phase 6: Emotional Freedom, Polyamory, and Beyond?
When: September 2008 – Present
Progress Report: The evolution I’ve gone through the last six months has been a deeply emotional/relationship management one. It has also been chronicles on this blog here. My saga with Erika has also been a product of this personal evolution.

Sticking Points: I’d say my sticking points now involve managing multiple deep emotional relationships simultaneously — you could call it “love logistics.” I still think when it comes down to it, the first five minutes are my weakest minutes of any cold approach. I could do better opening large groups and handling night-game logistics. But these are all things that I don’t really plan on addressing until I become single again, move and starting going out again.

When I started getting my inner game together a few years ago, I was soon able to point out the “toxic” people in my life — the people who consistently detract value without adding it; the people who consistently start drama and stress rather than connection and joy.

I soon became ruthless about not allowing these people in my life. I coldly cut some of them out of my life, and others slowly faded to the background. I pride myself a great deal in that I don’t put up with unnecessary bullshit from people, and won’t hesitate removing them from my social life.

Well, I’ve been put in a frustrating situation in the last few months. My girlfriend’s sister moved to Boston and has recently been a large part of our social life together. And well, she sucks. She’s one of those people that just plain fails at life. And I don’t mean in any worldly sense: she’s incredibly smart, successful, has a lot of friends, etc. I mean from a happiness, centered perspective, she fails on just about all marks.

The problem is, she’s started making my girlfriend’s life hell, and transitively my life hell. She’s one of the most toxic people I’ve met in a long time. The problem is, I can’t simply cut her out and neither can my girlfriend. She consistently sucks my girlfriend into bullshit drama, and then manages to get me sucked in as well, and the results well… suck.

So in ode to the girlfriend’s sister, I want to run down a list a ways to fail at life. As you read these, ask yourself these questions: “am I like this?” and “do I know someone who’s like this?”

If you answer yes to the former, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CHANGE YOURSELF. NOW. FOR YOUR OWN SAKE AND EVERYONE WHO KNOWS YOU, CHANGE.

If you answer yes to the latter, consider cutting that person out of your life (if reasonable).

1. Take responsibility for your actions and emotions – This drives me absolutely crazy in people. It’s not coincidence that the people who are constantly miserable, complaining or involved in some sort of drama are always the people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions.

Case in point: sister calls girlfriend, says we should all meet up and hang out. No specific time is given, and sister never shows up. Girlfriend and I give up and leave. Sister calls the next day screaming that girlfriend stood her up and then proceeded to blame it on me for no justifiable reason.

Truth: It was a mis-communication, and although my girlfriend took responsibility for leaving and not telling sister, sister never took responsibility for no-showing. As a result, sister remains pissed off and feels like she’s owed something.

2. Don’t judge people until you actually get to know them. – I have a zero tolerance policy on judgmental people. Until you really get to know someone’s character, there’s no sense in judging them on any external part of them: i.e., how they dress, how they look, their job, their friends, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve assumed someone was a douchebag or bitch, but once I talked to them a bit, they were a really incredible person.

Case in point: sister meets me for the first time, musters up a meager conversation. Things are stilted and awkward. I find out later that she knows about my job and greatly disapproves of it. Instead of actually talking to me about it and trying to get to know me, she goes and tells my girlfriend’s family that I’m a scumbag, don’t actually love her and was inconsiderate when I met her.

Truth: The verdict was in before she even met me. Instead of getting to know me, she just observed the little she needed to support her pre-ordained opinion about me. As a result, every interaction we’ve had since then has been twisted to support the conclusion she had about me before she even met me. She still doesn’t like me. We still haven’t had an actual conversation.

3. Don’t build rapport through negativity – Having a mutual complaint with someone else is a very quick way to build rapport. But this rapport is unstable and unhealthy, as it just amplifies the unhealthy emotions within yourself.

I think everyone has known or met someone who makes and maintains friendships through complaining or talking shit about other people. Although everyone experiences some negativity to a degree, relying on negativity to create a social life is unhealthy and unproductive. You’ll end up alienating just as many people as you make friends.

4. Don’t be dramatic. Get over yourself. Be humble. – Have you ever played with third world kids who are happy just to eat once a day? Have you ever had to sit in a hospital and console a teenager who got stabbed over $200 worth of drugs? Have you ever watched your friend drown right in front of you?

No? Then shut the fuck up about someone canceling a Sunday brunch, acting as if it’s the it’s the end of the fucking world. It doesn’t matter and neither do your bitchy fucking complaints. Get over yourself and shut the fuck up.

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OK, I feel better now…