confused people

Okay, if you say so…

Are you talking about a dance move or what? 😂 Jk, I agree with you actually, but that's where I am, my authentic self is the need for a result and I know that's not helping my case, so I'll take your comment as advice to get out of that mindset… but to talk about the inner journey for a sec, it's hard for me to make progress on myself (as I define it) and relate to many people based on that. I have become more social, less awkward and more socially calibrated, but what I truly care about has little to do with these things or what other people care about en masse. On the other hand there are a lot of game-related things that would help me directly as well, so maybe it's wise to focus on those first. Still, I'd be lying of I claimed I'm not interested in just getting laid (assuming there is connection, etc., etc.). The majority here are.

So so far on my dating journey I've had one or two major breakthroughs. By far the biggest one was when I started approaching (or rather "asking out people I found attractive" which I hadn't done almost at all before). Suddenly there were all these women who were clearly interested in/attracted to me which I had no idea existed, all that was required of me the whole time was the tiny push of asking for a date. I felt so silly afterwards. The other possible breakthrough came before that and was becoming more social/outgoing. You wouldn't be in a position to ask out anyone if you don't go out, but it didn't really feel like one at first, since it alone (without asking people out) wasn't enough. Until it was and I lucked out and got laid for the first time basically without doing any approaches. Anyways, after a first relationship I'm trying to continue the journey, but I'm feeling like I've hit a plateau. For one thing, one of the things that gave me confidence before was that I was looking for a relationship and believed I would be a great boyfriend (which is true, I was), but now I'm not exactly looking for a relationship and so don't have this visceral belief that I'm exactly right for the person I'm approaching. I didn't let that stop me, though, and kept going, but I dunno, something feels missing. It might be, I just need to stick to it and it'll solve itself eventually, perhaps when I'm in a position where I fully stop feeling like I *need* anyone and am just my own person or when I start not giving a shit what people think of me, but this is just me speculating (also, still living in a rather small city, so there is one obvious "breakthrough" that could happen). What's been your experience? What were the changes in your personality/strategy/style/etc. that made a palpable difference in the results?

I'm in Germany, I don't believe it's that different over here, it still depresses me that what I'm getting out of dating isn't based on mutual interests for the most part, but information asymmetry, it does seem that girls looking only for casual relationships are a small minority. Also, it doesn't help that girls I like to hang out with are more of a relationship type than others. I could leave the possibility of a relationship open in theory, but only commit if I'm fully convinced and emotionally on board (which to me seems inconceivable at the moment).

I could answer that question in many ways, but all I said was that *I* am a drama-free person.

@Yimpa I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to...

@NoSelfSelf Interesting... I never thought about it directly in the following sense, but if there are some women for whom sex without the possibility of a committed relationship is out of question then logically, I would like to weed them out as soon as possible (for their benefits as well as mine). But I have this insecurity on how it would come across to the rest of them if I'm direct about it like that (but I guess if they're actually open about it, then they would like to know somehow what it is I'm looking for, so it shouldn't be off-putting). Also, it's true, I am a drama-free man, but describing myself as that doesn't seem to fit my personality quite well. But at the same time, it has a vibe of assertiveness about the sort of person you are, which I think I lack (historically because I've been more often in the process of figuring out the person I am than presenting who I am while owning it). Anyway, I digress... thanks for the tip.

If you're, say, cold approaching women in public in the city or area that you are in, you'll most likely go for a date (as opposed to pulling someone right away or something). And with dating the basic assumption is that you're looking for a relationship. But what do you do if you know you're not ready for a relationship and just looking to get laid, experiment and gain experience? Are you just upfront with it, or wait for them to bring it up? Is it sort of a "if it happens on the first date it's okay" thing so that you'll try to aim for that (since in that case you can't be blamed for assuming the a relationship isn't the first thing on her mind). I think with the current culture in the West, if you go on, say, three dates and sleep with the other person on the third date, a good portion of them would be hurt if you told them you're not interested in a romantic relationship after that and that you knew that from the beginning or feel like they've wasted their time, even if they enjoyed the experience. Maybe I'm missing some basic thing, but I don't feel like things like this are discussed often in the PUA/dating advice communities, so I'd like your opinions on it. My most recent experience with dating has been one of committing to a relationship because I hadn't ever been in a relationship before and liked the person, while also knowing that I'm not ready for long-term commitment. I fooled myself into thinking that I'd be fine with that and that it would be an acceptable thing to do, while I hadn't realized the significance of a committed relationship and wasn't ready to accept the possibility of staying with that person forever without having experienced more of what the world has to offer sexually and that obviously led to the relationship ending and that person being hurt. This (namely what commitment means) is another topic onto itself, and I'm still developing my thoughts on that, but in this thread, I'm specifically interested in advice on how to avoid hurting or taking advantage of anyone whenever I decide to go back into dating (which would be with the goal of gaining more experience instead of looking for a relationship).

Thanks for all the recommendations, it really helped. I can't really travel outside EU at the moment, although I would love to explore some of the countries there as well. I guess I'll start with Eastern Europe. Though, I would actually start inside Germany and see how different the results could be if I chose to only speak English. I speak very good German, most people here don't even realize I'm a non-native speaker, but it's still far from the level that would be needed for good verbal game in a dating context, so I find it's actually a minus when it comes to dating. If you speak English to women whose English is not that great, they either discount the whole verbal skills arena, since they can't assess you on it or view it as a plus if you speak significantly better English than them. They might overlook your verbal skills if you're speaking to them in their native language and they notice you're not a native speaker, but if they don't, it becomes sort of an "uncanny valley" thing where the difference between being a non-native and actual poor verbal skills isn't quite clear, so it can be very detrimental to your game, I've found. That said, it's usually (or at least used to be) a topic on my mind when interacting with women, so I guess the insecurity from that was a bigger factor in my results than the actual inability to carry on a conversation, use humor, flirt, etc. due to insufficient verbal skills. But yeah, if they can sense neither of you are speaking a language either of you is a native speaker, of then it comes down to other things.

Hi! Thanks to Leo's advice, I can ask out women in public and go on dates now and have been to bars and clubs a few times. My goal at this point of my pickup journey is to have more sexual experiences (it doesn't have to be actual sex, anything more than making out is a bonus). The problem is I live in a relatively small city (there is not enough volume and there's like one bar in the whole city where you can expect to take someone home at the end of the night). I'm gonna move to a bigger city at some point, but I'm thinking traveling might be the best option at the moment if my goal is to have more sexual experiences. Which cities in Europe have the most sexually open people and would be the best option considering my aim? I just turned 25, am 6'2" (or 188cm), can speak very good English, have lived in Europe for the past third of my life and am originally from the Middle East, although almost no one profiles me as that, I often get told I look French, Portuguese, Spanish, basically southern European. I don't smoke and would like to avoid drinking as much as possible.

I didn't agree with Leo at first when he said Obama is yellow. He really isn't, think about the wars he started, the drone strikes, NSA surveillance, the promises he never kept, which all suggest he's your normal orange run-of-the-mill politician). He also supported identity politics during and near the end of his second term, which hints that he may have been transitioning into green (he also may have been somewhat green from the start considering his, albeit not adequate, support for the environment, healthcare and denuclearization). But I still couldn't see how he was yellow. That's until now. I just saw this clip of him yesterday that suggests even though he may not have been yellow all along, he is now hopefully transitioning into yellow and that makes me happy (remember, this is a totally new thing that everyone's shocked by, he never said stuff like this before the election when he so desperately wanted Clinton to win, not a yellow attitude): Also, for those who think Jordan Peterson is orange:

Proof that the culture is shifting toward yellow (at least in the US/anglophone countries)? I for one am optimistic. P.S.: I know both Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson have arguably a lot of orange green in them. But this is a conversation between two people with opposing views who try not to attack each other and understand the opposing side's arguments as best as they can and work toward finding a common ground. A discussion where listeners don't pick sides and are more interested in the intellectual aspects. You'd have to accept that such an event is greatly characterized by yellow. It has very little green in it, maybe some orange, but there must be something other than pure personality cults drawing so many people in (even if that's not true, this could rather be a "come for orange, stay for yellow" situation, as both Harris and Peterson are more interested in the ideas than their personal benefit). Also, this is by far not the only example, more and more people are listening to long-form media everyday where deep ideas are discussed (Joe Rogan's podcast, Sam Harris's podcast, Leo's videos, Dave Rubin's show, audiobooks).

Eric Weinstein Most of his deeper and more insightful ideas have been expressed in long podcasts and panel discussions. These are some short videos that are good nonetheless: Jonathan Blow Again, he has given a lot of talks and has been interviewed a lot. These are just some of the short clips of him that contain pretty great insight themselves (by the way, the game he has made is about non-dualism among other things, so check that out too if you can): Bret Weinstein Eric's brother, he's an evolutionary biologist and a great systems thinker (just random videos I took from his channel, which has videos that are all good): Scott Adams Definitely yellow (the video doesn't even remotely capture all he's got to say, he talks about this long almost every day): Heather Heying Bret Weinstein's wife, also an evolutionary biologist (I don't think this video is fully representative and I myself don't fully agree with some of her points here, but it's one of the short ones): David Chalmers: Shane Carruth: Thomas Sowell: Don Hoffman: Some of these people aren't fully yellow (most are really yellow in one dimension and green or maybe even orange in others). Other people worth mentioning that are to varying degrees yellow (in most cases I just couldn't find videos of them that really fit the description of yellow, whatever that is; also, this has already become a gigantic post): Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, Julia Galef, Diana Fleischman, Geoffry Miller, Bryan Caplan, Claire Lehman, Aubrey de Grey, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Gad Saad, Ted Chiang, Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Bret Victor