Valach

Never been. Would love to in the future

I live in Central Europe.

hmmm, hard to say. I did change cities but at 19 right after finishing high school so it is not really measurable. Doing cold approach pickup with dedicating coach did give me some benefits, but the biggest one by far is doing a true inner work and spiritual practices related to that. Nothing even compares. But I am quite new to the path.

Those are very basic needs. I do need others in the sense that I would perish otherwise. But I do not need the validation of woman. You do need some sort of tribe and close connections to thrive, but you do not get that by manipulating. You get that by being truly yourself and the right people will gravitate towards you. Manipulation is not so much about what you do or what you say. It is about why you say/do these things. If you say that out of wanting to provoke some sort of reaction, that is a manipulation. If you say that as a genuine expression of yourself, then that is fine. You need to cultivate strong inner connection first to even recognize it in yourself.

I am not dennying that increasing your real or percieved value does not bring benefits of getting the attention of others. I am simply saying that it is based on faulty premises that you need others in some ways. You do not. You only need that when your childhood was not great (which is almost everyone) and you feel like you need to gain your value by work achievments, getting woman etc. Essentially it all boils down to - instead of asking yourself how, ask yourself why. And it requires a lot of self awareness to answer that question.

@LordFall I can share a story regarding the manipulation and being vulnerable. I went on a date couple of months ago with a woman I was attracted to. Funnily enough I met her at one of the speed dating events. The date was "going well", we were vibing, we clicked and she was clearly attracted to me. At some point during the date she asked me "how do you do it that you are so confident, have you always been like that"? I could have rode this wave of validation and "manipulate" it into my gain. But I stopped and said to myself "lets be fucking real". And then I responded something like: "You know, I am actually not that confident. Couple of minutes ago you talked about how you are attracted to gym guys with great bodies. And I am not one (I am quite skinny). And now I feel inadequate for you." And I said that full well knowing that it is not the "correct" thing to say. That it is not attractive. And actually it made us connect even more - but that is not the point. The really satisfying thing was the self connection to my inner self I felt in the moment. That no matter the reaction I stay connected to myself and honor the stuff that is going on in me and express it freely. This is really in my opinion the road towards true connections and towards healthy self esteem. Not the performative pickup bullshit.

I am not offended by that. We have been there already in other topics. I went through the journey just like many of my friends. This desire is just stemming from bad childhood experiences and lack of self esteem, nothing. What else but manipulation is this? Sure, you can learn social skills a little bit. Though I have my opinions on that, but that is deeper topic. But at the end of the day whenever you act some way to get something from the other party, you are manipulating. When you surpress your bad sides that are unattractive in your opinion, that is text book manipulation just like lying about your job, intentions etc.. I agree with the connection. But connection is not about winning people over. It is about absolute vulnerability. And it start with a self connection firstly - with your inner child and the needs it has.

What do you mean by ego? The whole intention of trying to bed a lot of woman and attractive woman etc. is mostly just a plain old ego gratification. If you felt truly good about yourself, you felt worthy and loved yourself - you would then not think about ways to "improve" yoursself or to manipulate others into giving you validation. You would simply express yourself in the moment, even if you knew it might not be attractive. The core of this is self acceptance really. I am not talking about you specifically. Just a general "guy". I think you are cool dude, we just differ in our opinions.

I have tried that. I didn't feel like it increased my match ration much. Though I have to admit I did not do online dating that much since then. The thing is that it still does not resonate with myself, that I have to curate my profile artificially to appeal. I understand the dynamic, I just don't want to play it. I have issue with this approach. Firstly it assumes that woman can objectively describe what triggers and what does not trigger attraction in them. And that is not truth in my experience. Secondly, this is my whole issue with most of pickup industry. It is trying to artificially bend your personality to be validated more. It is the ultimate self abandonment. Really, when you think about it, it is coming from the same place as people pleasing - trying to change your behaviour/looks to be accepted and loved. Sure, you might get more/better woman because of that but it does not lead to long term happiness or healthy self esteem.

Yup. I have. the same opinion on them and experience. I really struggled getting good dates with them (attractive or interesting woman). When I compare it to the results I got in the real life it barely makes sense for me to use dating apps. And I would say I am even fairly good looking and quite tall. Just not really photogenic. And you can not convey personality on your dating profile much. it definitely is interesting how woman who like me when they meet me in real life would not really give me the like on the dating app.

Pickup is almost an anti thesis of good relationships.

How do you feel with dating apps? Do you like using them? I kind of see your point about the structure, but I highly value authenticity (though obviously it's very complex to describe what is actually means to be authetic) and I find that dating apps sort of force everyone to curate their profile for maximum reach and has an "off" feeling for me.

The guys also want the "best" possible partner.

In the future, I might. I am not dating at the moment.

@LordFall I have attended multiple in the last year. Probably because at some point I just got lazy with meeting people and there was this event being thrown regularly in a coffee place like 5 minutes from mine, so it was very convenient. The setup was simple and same as you can see in movies. There were about ~15 tables with woman sitting and men were rotating after 5 minutes with a break in the middle. Most of the woman I did not click with, but that happens every time if you select random 15 woman from population. But I had dates off of it with some really nice ladies so I had fair share of success off of it I guess - got plenty of "likes" pretty much everytime. From my understanding most of the guys on there really struggled with getting likes, but that's how it is with dating. Not sure there is any specific advice I could share. It's just 5 minutes so you really do not have much time to feel off the vibe of the person. What you can do and what I did is to stay after the event to catch a drink and chit chat with the woman you liked (get's little complicated if you liked multiple). Also coming in early can be nice advantage if you first table is a woman you like because you get a lot more time with her (but I always came dead last lol). All the woman there arrive in groups, so it can be nice to make a good impression on even the ones you do not like since they have their friends there and you know..woman talk. But that depends on how gamey you want to be. Do you have any specific questions regarding this? Also, I know you are from Canada. I am an european so there might be some cultural differences between the events I went to and the ones in Canada.

From my experience in the real world. Looks are vastly overrated (probably not here), especially for men. Met plenty of not so good looking men doing well and plenty of conventionally attractive men who did quite poorly.

I would say that low self esteem coming from less than ideal childhood made you to move away from people and thus gravitate towards technical fields. It's a defence mechanism.

I am talking both, they lack both usually. Social skills and inner game are very closely related in my experience - actually I would even dare to say that social skills are a manifestation of high self esteem or inner game. I have never met a person with high self esteem who had really poor social skills.

Depends how you define "having money". But as a software engineer with a lots of colleagues who have a lot of money (it is easily one of the most lucrative jobs in my country), so many of them do not have any innergame despite being financially succesfull.

Dating and sex is often an addiction just like any other. It is very normalized addiction in our society, but that does not make it healthy.

It is not inherently a negative thing but it will be in most people from my experience. Most people who get into high body counts do so because of their inability to hold relationships, low self esteem and pure hedonism, which are all connected. Was case for me, for most of my friends with high body counts and most of the girls I dated with high bodycounts. Especially if we talking really high numbers like 100 and more. In my experience the people who "won" it in life by being born into really good families with great parents simply pair up fairly quickly and do not leave those relationships and get off the market relatively quickly and are obviously thus not increasing their body counts.

What happened to him?

Sure, who knows what happens then. But the pattern seems to be clear. I have said it in other topic.

I am the same actually. I do have deep friendships and generally speaking deep relationships with woman as well. There is this stereotype of avoidants being really surface level oriented but I do not think that is true. I think there is just this strategy of being intimate and deep in a very safe way. But it also depends if this is not working out for you in some way. I can totally see how I am sabotaging my relationships so I have no choice but to work on it.. That was basically all my point. I just sometimes struggle to explain it since I am not native speaker and tend to rush my thoughts in the text.

That was me for a long time so I can relate. My experience in general is that a lot of what pickup/self-development does is that it takes a bunch of guys who are anxiously attached and makes them into avoidants. Underlying emotion is still a fear. So what are we affraid of? I mean yes. It's hard to find the balance for that for sure. Noone is pure hedonist and noone is pure non-hedonist. Where is the healthy line? I don't know personally. But you can refine your "pleasures" to be more soothing. In the past I might find a lot of pleasure in going to a party, drinking some alcohol and hooking up with someone. Now it's more like going with a close friend of mine for a ginger tea and being present with each other. Both are pleasures and in a way hedonistic but they are way different. There is not as much "high" in the second one and it's way more filling if it makes sense. But it took me long time to develop the connection to my body to judge correctly what is actually satiating to me internally and what is not. That is sort of what pushed me away from the pickup, party lifestyle etc. It's not that I considered the lifestyle to be inherently wrong. It's more about the more I was becoming aware of my inner child and how different things actually impact me the more I could clearly see that this is just a way to distract myself. And I could also clearly see in other taking part in this that they are not content and happy either. Just living on that high high.