Valach

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.

I think you know the guy, you shared a video from him at some point

There is growth in it, that is true. Though a lot of guys I met also used prolonged "casual" dating phase as a way to avoid confronting other fears of theirs (fear of intimacy, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough etc..).I am not saying it is inherently wrong - I am just saying it is of "lower" values. I mean stoics spoke about this 2500 years ago. Hedonism in itself does not lead to happy, fulfilled life. And what most of our society considers as "fun" or "pleasure" is a refined strategy to avoid our own inner wounds. Dating in general is the most common way for people to numb out. Edit: 69th comment in this topic, nice

You really underestimate how much stuff will woman let slide if you have charisma and they like you. I have told a woman that she was my 5th approach of the day and she went out with me. I have had woman see me hit on other woman and still go out with me. Or even I have had happen that I approached woman on the street - she rejected me, couple of months I run into her again not remembering her and she went out with me. There is not much difference between daygame and nightgame in this regard. I dont really want to promote either things because I feel like it's quite troublesome but it really was a really effective way to date a lot of attractive woman. And I was not really manipulating (at least not in the pickup type of terms), obviously any human interaction is gonna be prone to some level of manipulation. But as I stated I still feel like it is problematic thing and it is not coming from healthy place. But to be honest I feel the same about nightclubs and partying in general so go figure. I have actually recently attended a sort of retreat related to healing inner wounds and self esteem and its manifestation to the relationships we have (primarly romantic ones). On there I asked the "teacher" on what is his experience with how do healthy people with high self esteem go about dating and he said basically the same thing I arrived at: Healthy people simply do not put much priority on their dating or sex lives. They don't really have the drive to go around and hookup or go around and approach a lot or constantly swipe on tinder etc. They just sort of live their life and either they meet someone or they don't but they don't really care much about it because they do not have any self wort tied to this. Obviously when you reach that point your energy/vibe is gonna be really attractive so it will probably be quite hard to not meet someone. Hoping I can reach that stage at some point.

I have even met plenty of woman who said that about me. It's not gendered. But guys do it more often probably.

Your approach to dating is definitely important and I hope everyone around here does it ethically. But you are still pursuing pleasure, nothing else. There is no virtuousness or high consciousness about this. Just as watching football on the TV is not gonna be high consciousness pursuit even if you do it "consciously".

I am not here to talk down on dating casually and whatnot. Do that if you are in that phase. But we are on a platform about consciousness and related stuff and I feel like it is fair to not glamorize this lifestyle and not pretend like it is some high value thing to do.

So anyone who does not place high value on sex is just not sexually comfortable for you? Can't you see how reductionist you are in all your arguments?

I personally do not like this approach as well anymore. I find it problematic - specially because you are probably putting too much priority on dating by doing this and that is rooted is some low self esteem. That being said I have met plenty of guys who had incredible results doing this and I had some very nice results doing this in the past as well. What woman consider creepy or not essentially boils down to how much charisma you have. Some people just do not have interest and hobbies that would align well with meeting people and that is fine. Some goes to value - it is highly contextual. But agree with the general premise, it's not the healthiest thing.

What worked for me the most - Deep relationships, especially platonic ones. Inner journey and inner healing, healing my self esteem and overcoming shame I had in myself. And living according to my values (higher ones but that is hard to define). And obviously life purpose. Pickup is problematic of course. So is general hedonistic lifestyle, which is really the only way to get into high body counts. I mean you are talking about some argument but what is your argument? When I say "sleeping around and making dating priority of your life is not fulfilling and low consciousness from my personal experience and from experience of guys who went though this and matured up" you come up with argument "you just did it in the wrong way". Have you taken Leo's life purpose course? He even talks about sex being of lower value in there. As I have said I don't have issue with guys when they want to pursue this lifestyle. But why come to forum about consciousness and develpement and talk about how high up this stuff is when even the creator of this forum says its not?

I am sorry, but I am seriously disappointed by you at this point. You are just trying to always try to spin it off as that there must be something wrong with me. My statement in the spam approaching was in completely different context - you were literally praising social momentum and that was my counter argument - it does not address the deeper issue. I have done plenty of different approaches and bottom line is -> sleeping around is low consciousness and is not fulfilling no matter which way you stretch it. I mean you follow Leo I assume since you are on the forum - he says exactly the same thing. I seriously doubt anyone who is yellow would even say stuff like "I want to have bodycount of 100". Like common brother. I don't want to give get into any personal anecdotes around here. Just stop spinning the stuff around here so much. If you just want to fuck around, be my host. But don't present it as some higher virtue. It's not.

No worries