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@Molaric Do you think you could be misdiagnosing the problem? Unless you’re on the autism spectrum, most people with an average upbringing are perfectly capable of reading social cues. Your brain is literally wired to do this, the same way we could say a dog’s nose is wired to smell. So if you can’t do what a human being is meant to do, consider that the problem isn’t that you haven’t read enough books or watched enough YT videos on socializing. Consider that the problem is that you are not intune with your own signals. Most likely because you struggle with relaxing, and therefore your nervous system is in a state of fight-or-flight, which is anti-social. You can of course read books and study body language. Charisma on Command is a good YT channel for this. But that’s honestly not what is going to make the biggest difference for people. The biggest difference is going to come from relaxing your nervous system and socializing a lot. Of course now that I said this, relaxing may become the new thing that you start to stress about. Is my nervous system relaxed enough??? Am I in fight or flight??? But you gotta start somewhere.

@Javfly33 this has been discussed many times. You needs wings and you need to baby step your way into approaching. Maybe just start by saying “hi” to people if that’s all you can muster. Take the pressure off, don’t try to hit a home run. When you’re not approaching, you want to stay in a relatively positive / social state. This is just who you are and what you do 24/7. When you go to the grocery store, talk to the cashier. Talk to your Uber driver. Get lunch with friends. Pregame before you go out if you’re doing night game. Final piece is to do the inner work. There’s endless techniques when it comes to it. See if you can become aware of why you have the anxiety. What exactly are you anxious of? Start also building a habit of pushing your comfort zone little everyday so you have that muscle. Cold showers can help here. If you do all of that, approaching may still sometimes be awkward, but in general it will be significantly easier.

@Raptorsin7 In a way, highly collectivist societies have always had a influence over who people date. There’s never just been 100% freedom. If you were in a stage Purple tribe, you’d be constrained on dating by a) who was a member of your tribe (which was already highly constrained by geography) and perhaps also b) some sort of arranged marriage, which would have been based off of the well-being of the tribe. That’s also why sacrifice has been an important part of these cultures. You are expected to surrender to the needs of the tribe, so that we can then all live a successful life. What you’re describing sounds like a more modern version of an arranged marriage. It’s sort of the equivalent of your father coming to you and saying “you need to marry so-and-so because then we’ll get X benefits”. Now in our modern society, that seems crazy. We want people to get married because they fall in love organically, not out of coercion. We want personal freedom to choose. We want to feel like it was an internal decision, not one forced upon us. And there’s good reason for that. Many arranged marriages end up not being good ones. If someone feels they were coerced into a relationship, they may not fully invest in it because they see it as an “obligation” vs something they want to do. And what if you get stuck with someone who is abusive or who you just aren’t compatible with? My grandparents had an arranged marriage and I don’t think I ever saw much love there. It was purely a survival move. At the same time, I doubt that societies that regularly had arranged marriages saw their situation as “dystopian”. I suspect they just saw it as a part of life, and many of them were able to find happiness regardless. You have to remember that autonomy and freedom of choice is really an SD Orange value. Anywhere else on the spiral does not place such a high value on this. Even Red does not value “personal freedom” on the whole, as someone at Stage Red is okay being a warlord / dictator that enslaves people. So my conclusion is that life would go on. Yes, there be a lot of problems with government trying to arrange marriages. But people would do it temporarily for the sake of survival, until we no longer felt it was at stake. There is also a cost for freedom. How much emotional and mental energy have you spent trying to figure out your dating life? The more freedom you have, the more decisions you have to make. While I like personal freedom, too much freedom can very quickly backfire, leaving you stuck in paralysis and making your life miserable.

I've been compiling a list of insights I've had around “neediness” and relationships. In particular, I feel that neediness has become a bit of a bad word on this forum, so I wanted to shake things up a bit. Some of my influences in writing this were Dr. Marshall Rosenberg (Non-Violent Communication), Teal Swan and Charles Eisenstein. You may wish to check out their work if you resonate with what I've written here. Would love to hear what you think! **Note** I will be using the word “need” is a colloquial way that is synonymous with the word “want”. **Note 2** This advice should be read with extra discernment by those with anxious attachment style or enmeshment trauma. It's also not for people in abusive or codependent relationships. If you're in these situations, please honor your needs and consider leaving. I am mostly concerned here with helping move people from independence to interdependence. 1. Non-Neediness vs non-neediness We can think of capital Non-Neediness in a Absolute spiritual sense. God is without self and form, yet simultaneously is all things. It is without lack, including even the ability to lack. Therefore we could say God needs nothing. It is Complete. From this perspective, all needs are in fact imaginary, as life itself is a thought in the Mind of God. You as this ego are a thought. We can think of lower case “non-neediness” as more of a relative non-neediness. If I just ate a huge meal, I don't need food at that moment. If I just slept 8 hours, I don't need to sleep more. Needs in this category are generally finite and satiable. They are the needs we are mostly concerned with. We can tap into the Absolute perspective of Non-Neediness, which grounds us. It's sort of a “checks and balance” to living as this finite form. But as a finite entity, perfect non-neediness is impossible to achieve. Even if we are only imagining our neediness. Which brings me maybe the single most important point in all of this... 2. All human relationships are based on meeting needs Asking people to be totally non-needy in relationships is asking people for the impossible. We cannot not have needs in relationships. In fact, if there are no needs being met, then there is no relationship at all. Needs create relationships. If I truly need nothing from you, and you need nothing from me, there is no reason for us to have a relationship. *note* don't confuse this with a “harsh pragmatism” that sees the world purely from a utilitarian perspective. Your needs actually go far beyond this. Contribution is a need. Love is a need. 3. You cannot meet all your needs on your own This may be the most controversial piece of this post. We are often taught in spiritual circles to love ourselves, be sovereign, be whole and complete, and to not be attached to anything. Peace comes from within. But these truisms can easily get misconstrued. Not only is it impossible for you to meet all your basic survival needs on your own (food, shelter, clothing, etc), I am going to go one step further. You cannot meet all your emotional needs on your own. People who love themselves and who feel whole and complete do not just sit in a room loving themselves. It's because they love themselves that they seek out and meet their needs. Which often involves others. Self-love includes having others meet your needs, not excludes it. **Note** yes, at the highest levels of nonduality where the distinction of “self/other” collapses, this line gets blurry and nonsensical. But it is still practical to make this distinction for our purposes here. 4. You can either meet your needs consciously or unconsciously There are two choices regarding your needs: a) Meet your needs consciously and deliberately or b) unconsciously manipulate your way to meeting your needs. There simply is no option to be non-needy. Often when people talk about being non-needy, they are only doing so as a strategy to meet their needs. They've learned that when they act not-needy, they (sometimes) get their needs met. When we meet our needs consciously, we can often build synergistic and win/win scenarios with others. We actually become psychologically healthier and can avoid many of the toxic elements of neediness. When we manipulate and go unconscious, it often falls into lose/lose scenarios. Our neediness becomes more toxic and damaging to others. 5. Clarity of needs is key What do we really need? Much of the toxicity of “neediness” comes not from having needs themselves, but on poorly answering this question. We mistake what we really need all the time. We may think we need a mansion, the latest gadget, or another partner. The potential list of what we could think we need is endless. And due to a lot of trauma and social programming, this list is often thoroughly misguided. If we due not distinguish what our true needs are vs what we have been unconsciously programmed with, that is a recipe for disaster both individually and collectively. What I've found is that most of my real needs are incredibly basic. They tend not to be flashy. Simple things will do just fine. So while it is possible that this clarity will reduce the number of needs you have or tone them down, that is NOT the goal. We are not seeking to get rid of needs. We are seeking clarity, and to let the needs fall where they may. If a surrendering is needed, it will then take place naturally once proper clarity is found. 6. Commitment requires neediness To commit to a relationship with someone is inherently needy. When we are non-committal and prioritize optionality, it allows us to keep things non-needy. No one is investing too much. We can always change our minds. But when we commit to someone, we are investing. It is no longer non-needy. And yet, the strongest and most fulfilling relationships are based in equally strong commitment. Commitment in a relationship allows for repair when inevitably the relationship struggles. 7. People want to be needed This one also goes a bit against the grain. We are told to be non-needy because no one wants to feel pressured. Better to play it cool. And certainly there is some truth there. Coercion or making demands is usually socially unpopular. But in our attempts to play it cool or maybe be seen as “alpha”, we often overlook an obvious point. People want to be needed. To be needed means you are valuable or desirable. It makes people feel like they are bringing something to the table, even if it's just being themselves. 8. Needing people is where you will find your greatest joy There is a real payoff from isolation that must be acknowledged. That payoff is that you will stay safe. Alone, there is no conflict. No differing agendas or opinions. No one who can let you down or hurt you. No one who can break your heart. No one who can judge you. You can more easily feel into who you truly are, away previous cultural programming. And in this, there is a certain safety. It's important to not demand the part of ourselves that desires this safety to give that up. If that is you, stay safe as long as you need. But eventually some of us will inevitably ask ourselves, is safety our highest priority? Could we maybe redefine safety not as avoiding conflict, but as including it? Could we be safe while still in the jungle that is relationships? Because that is where the most fun is. The complimenting and collaboration of unique forms IS part of the point of being alive and in this world based in duality. But this requires that we NEED each other. And all the vulnerability that goes along with that. 9. Our social problems come from a lack of meeting needs Why climate change? Why homelessness? Why racism? Why pandemics? These are, of course, extremely complex problems. A full discussion of this is beyond this post. But I will offer one lens here to view these problems, which is a lack of us truly meeting our own needs as well as others. When these shadow needs run unconsciously, it can create havoc socially. It is true that win/win scenarios can be good for those involved but bad for the collective. For example, a corrupt government official and a CEO who work out a deal that is good for both of them, but bad for the country. However, even in a case like this, the problem is that not ENOUGH needs are being taken into account. They are not accounting for the needs of the whole country, just for a small percentage of people. 10. Telling the truth and honest dialogue requires addressing needs If you do not feel that a person you are talking with is taking into account your needs, you will not listen to them. And that goes equally for the person talking to you. But when everyone's needs are known and on the table, and people feel these needs are being taken into account, it's amazing the dialogue that can open up. We sometimes like to hit people over the heads with the “hard truth” of our opinions. This often never goes far in convincing people, and then we blame them for being closed minded. But often in these scenarios, there are no needs being taken into account by either party. We have to understand that giving harsh feedback is earned through trust and relationship. And this can only occur if needs are being addressed. 11. Intimacy requires neediness If I don't know what you need, then I don't understand you. And if I don't understand you, we don't have intimacy. So we must know what this person you are in a relationship needs. This causes the person to feel seen, understood, and builds trust. And while intimacy is certainly more complicated that someone knowing your needs, it is nonetheless a necessary prerequisite.

@ivankiss I’m also a singer and I’ve thought about this a lot as well. When I really hit into my falsetto, it actually can start to sound like a woman is singing. Whereas my chest voice obviously sounds more stereotypically masculine. It does feel therefore like there is both a woman and a man in this body. Which would make sense spiritually. There is also something tremendously special and the Mix voice. That place where you’re neither in deep falsetto nor deep in your chest, but blending the two. I find that is my favorite place to sing and what tends to sound best. While occasionally popping out to the extremes for effect. Which then makes me wonder if there is a metaphor there. When we “mix” our masculine and feminine and blur the lines between them, we are unifying the energies. Which creates an amazing sound. Speculation of course, but I think there’s something to it.

Yeah dude, that’s often how girls are. They can be extremely subtle. The fact she reached out at all is huge. I wouldn’t expect most girls to go beyond that. Especially at this early stage. Be careful not to just project what YOU would want a girl to do onto what is actually the best advice for Somegirl. Of course if you’re a guy that has struggled reading girl’s intentions, you would probably love it if a girl was super overtly flirty. But that doesn’t mean it’s in her best interest. What is in her best interests IMO is that she sees that he is reciprocating. Which so far it sounds like he is not. Even if she hits him over the head with her intentions and he likes it, it doesn’t mean he actually likes her all that much. It just means she made it easy for him, so maybe he’ll go along with it.

@somegirl I’m going to disagree with everyone else on this. If dude hasn’t already gotten the hint...forget it. Maybe you were just being friendly and not flirty, but come on. Either he doesn’t get it, in which case it’s bizarre he’s dropping the ball that much. Or he’s just not that into it. I’d pull back a bit and see if he comes forward.

@Space I’m with Leo on this. You gotta get your money right at least enough so you can afford to live in the city. It doesn’t have to be forever, even just a year could be enough if you went hard. House share is fine. Ideally do it with other guys who are also learning game. Temporary solution might be taking the train but that doesn’t seem long term sustainable to me. Might be enough to hold you over until you rent a new place. If you have no particular love for London than maybe consider moving to another city as well.

Yeah it’s very nuanced. You can get away with all sorts of crazy behavior in a night club. So pua teachers want to teach you that and show you that you’re not limited. And that you can bend social norms in your favor. At the same time, there’s always still social cues and calibration that is going on. So it’s not so much that you abandon all social rules in a night club. It’s more like you enter a new reality with much different rules. Anyway, there’s no YT video or anything like that I’d recommend. You know what it looks like when a girl is interested. You have a functioning brain that has evolved over thousands of years to read social cues. It’s very, very good at this. You just have to listen to your own cues. And if you really feel like you don’t know, maybe just google “pua IOIs (indicators of interest)”. But any list you will find online will be very limited and not robust enough for the complexity and nuance of real life socializing.

@PepperBlossoms We’ve definitely swung as a society in the direction of “cheap, easy” over “beautiful and sustainable”. So I suspect a correction is coming. The problem is, even if people want to create something “beautiful and sustainable”, they often are economically incentivized to do the exact opposite. So what I think needs to happen is that economics needs to be realigned with beauty. We want our economics incentivizing beauty, not the other way around. And there may be some hard limits to that realignment. But we haven’t hit them yet. We’ve collectively barely even tried.

“Too early” can be very subjective. It’s not like there’s a rule that you can only kiss a girl after X amount of time. Especially at a nightclub. More than likely what happened was your timing was just off. You probably went for it out of nowhere and came off as uncalibrated to the situation. These mistakes are how you learn. Nothing has gone wrong, this is the process. 1am?? That makes no sense. So if you get there at 12am, you’re just going to sit there in the corner by yourself, not talking to anyone for a whole hour? Meanwhile, you’re getting more and more in your head every minute that goes by. And then some magic flip is going to switch at 1am and you’ll be super social? Nah. Talk about awkward. Unless you’re already with a group of friends and having fun, you need to be talking to people as much as possible. Pickup at a night club is like swimming. If you stop being social (swimming), you drown and die. You talk bullshit. Substance matters basically zero. It just has to be fun. I strongly dislike clubs as well, but you can still have a fun time if you choose to make it fun. And since they are the ideal environment in many ways for learning, you kind of just have to do it. I would say your biggest lesson is not to not move as fast. It’s to learn how to read when it’s appropriate to kiss or not. That could be 30 seconds in, or it could be 30 minutes or 30 hours or never. What are the green lights that let you know a girl is open for a kiss? That’s a better question.

If she is really deadset on this job and moving than it honestly just sounds like a compatibility issue. You’re both clear with what you want, both with yourselves and each other. But in this case that just doesn’t seem to be lining up. In my experience, it’s common that there’s sort of “that one fight” that keeps coming up in a relationship. And it sounds like this is yours. Some couples make it through that fight, some don’t. In my past relationships “that one fight” broke us up every time. But if you make it through I imagine you guys will be stronger for it. It will really cement the bond. If you have other couple friends, I would maybe talk to them about it. Find people who have worked it out in similar situations and see how they did it. Wish you guys the best.

You’re welcome!

Well first off, I don’t think Cal is pushing people to just grind through a job / career they hate. The whole point of the book is based on the question of “how can I get the most satisfaction out of my career? How can I find truly fulfilling work”? He just takes a bit of a different approach. I reconcile the differences by realizing that his perspective is partial. I do think there are things I tend to be more naturally passionate about and intuitively guided towards. But I also recognize that you need skills. You want to be very, very good at what you do. And what I put into my career tends to be what I get out.

@rush It's a good book with a lot of valid points. General synopsis is no one is going to pay you just because you are passionate about something. You have to actually have skills that people consider valuable. And often the more we commit to something, the more passionate we become about it. So instead of getting stuck in this never-ending search for what you're passionate about, commit to a craft and as you invest you'll come to love it. It's not bad advice overall. My biggest nitpick with his book though is that he doesn't seem to fundamentally understand why "follow your passion" is important advice. "Passion", from a spiritual perspective, is literal communication from your higher self. That feeling, that intuition, is how spirit nudges you in certain directions. And if you're not attuned to that, big problems. Cal Newport strikes me as a guy who is highly rational / analytical. He's more or less a materialist as far as I can tell. So his perspective, while valuable, I still find limiting.

I would look deeper into the beliefs you have around this. Attraction is not as simple as “who has the most money / status?” Introspect on where that fear is actually coming from and why.

Yes that’s another really potentially toxic belief. It’s sort of a favorite in the redpill / pua community. I do think there’s a place for being conscious of power dynamics in relationships. Like if I’m just investing, investing, investing and it’s not being reciprocated, then I’d want to know that. But it very quickly can devolve into cynicism and an unhealthy competitive frame. If you’re spending the majority of your time in your relationships thinking about power dynamics, that’s a really bad sign. Because the fact you even have to think about that shows how unsafe you feel in that relationship. Awareness is half the battle. Glad it helped! Thanks for sharing ?

Absolutely. One of the first things I tend to do when I really need emotional support is reach out to someone who I know is good for that. Feels very natural and helps a lot. In general I’d say that’s right. I think we need to be cautious of that mindset though. Thinking that way feels like it can fall into the trap of forcing oneself to be less needy in order to get something. Which as I mentioned in this post should not be the goal. But of course, if that’s where you’re at, that’s where you are at. Denial of that could also be a denial of needs.

Thank you. That certainly could be one way that people use the term neediness. People will use different terms differently, which is part of what can make explaining this so challenging.

@PepperBlossoms Yep that’s our stage Orange culture showing itself. Some people deal with it by doing what your interviewers are doing, i.e basically just going along with it because you have to pay your own bills. Otherwise you have to find a company that is more conscious or create your own business. Those are really your only options. If you decide to create your own business, it can still pay to have a job for a while to keep you financially a float. But you have to be planning your exit strategy at the same time.

You just said “it’s not really a belief” and then went on to state a bunch of beliefs. You say you don’t have a rule about it, but it feels to me very much the opposite. It feels very much like you are at least somewhat closed off to the possibility of a relationship before sex. Maybe I am wrong. But that’s my read. But it’s sort of implied by saying that if you don’t sleep with her first, you will lose some girls. The implication being that dating is numbers game where we should seek to maximize our potential odds of success. Which I also disagree with. This is another belief about dating and how relationships work. And I know it comes from PUA / red pill thinking because I was taught the same thing. But you don’t have to actually do that. It’s really more of a power game than anything else, born out of having poor boundaries in the past. And it’s potentially toxic by making people feel like they need to have the upper hand.

?thanks!

How are we defining “nice” or “finish last”? I find these are really vague terms. In general, if a woman is messing around with guys who are narcissistic or otherwise unhealthy, I take that more as her trauma than an objective truth about women. And it doesn’t sound like the kind of person I’d want to be in a relationship with anyway. This is where we diverge then. I think this “no relationship without sex first” belief is a toxic for guys looking to get into healthy relationships. If you’re into PUA, then it’s a great belief. And I’m not saying everyone must now wait until they’re married until they have sex. What I’m really trying to convey is that I don’t have a rule about it. The rule comes from insecurity. And I have too. We all have to work at properly putting forward our intentions and being vulnerable. But you can also miss relationships from insisting that sex must come first. Sure, if you’re in a night club and you’re trying to pick up girls. Then you definitely benefit from a more aggressive approach. That’s undeniable. But the world is not a night club. And ultimately, I’m not trying to act in a way that will get me the MOST girls. I’m interested in a solid relationship, which means only one person. So the percentages and calculations about what works the most number of times doesn’t matter to me. I trust the universe to bring who is right into my life, just like it always does. Regardless of “odds”.

@Raptorsin7 No, I haven’t transcended “unjust” dating. But it is possible to transcend a lot of the bitterness relative to this topic. All relationships are based on meeting needs. To ask people to not be selective about who they date is the equivalent of asking them to enter into a relationship where their needs won’t get met. Which will never happen if both parties are relatively conscious. The good news is that pretty much anyone is capable of ending up in a relationship where they are relatively fulfilled and their needs are being met. There may be some rare outliers, like perhaps people with severe physical deformities. But this is such a low percentage of the population it’s not worth forming a world view around how unjust the dating world is. And even people in these extreme outlier examples can still find happiness,

My worry here is that this sets a potentially toxic “battle of the sexes” frame. If we believe that women are “punishing us” for essentially being better human beings, then maybe our problem is not women. But what we are men are defining as our “reward”. If our reward is sex as quickly and easily as possible, then that might be true. You’re better off looking like a player who she has no possible future with. But actually, if our reward is a deep, meaningful relationship and intimate experience that fulfills us, then it might be right to wait to have sex. It could actually make it “more special”. Not by suppressing anything, but by feeling into the natural timing of things and not forcing anything. For puas, their goal is as much sex as fast as possible. So of course this doesn’t interest them. But if guys weren’t in scarcity around sex, like a lot of women, then waiting isn’t a scary thing. You know it’s coming. So you want the full experience. Not just to get it in as soon as possible.