Isn't Pickup Unconscious?

[AtmoShark]

On 10/5/2020 at 10:29 AM, Preety_India said:

I mean I get it a lot of guys are into this thing called pickup game. 

But this thought was in my mind about how unhealthy or unconscious this has to be. 

Guys view dating as a game. They think of it as a sport. They think of it as hunting, fishing or gaming. I mean these are the labels that can be used to describe this phenomenon. 

Then, the question that arises in my mind is, wouldn't I consider the guy a predator? 

The one who hunts is considered a predator. 

So a pua guy picking up my heart isn't a predator? 

I somehow cannot wrap my mind around this whole pickup game and think it's normal or caring.. It looks super predatory to me. 

Also my heart is always looking for true love. I don't want a gamer. But a true lover..

At a time when I'm trying to raise my spiritual vibration, I should condemn something that I see as low conscious or unhealthy. 

I want people to look for real love and cultivate the path to conscious love and not look at love as a means to an end. 

Love should be about loving someone and not hunting or grifting someone to snatch what you want 

Did that make sense at all or nah? 

 

It is men's masculine nature to initiate the mating interaction. Your inherent feminine nature does not resonate with that, and therefore you have extreme difficulty wrapping your mind around it. Men's nature is to penetrate, overcome, push through obstacles, improve themselves and their environment. 

I've been studying dating success (what you crudely call "pickup game") for over 12 years now. In order for a man to become successful in that area of life, he has to engage with life in a holistic way, and that's the large part of learning dating success that isn't quite apparent, especially to women.

You initially start by approaching women; they reject you. Your thoughts, words, and actions are not where they need to be. You do some inner reflection, seek feedback, and continue practicing until you develop a personality that naturally attracts not only women, but people in general. You change your appearance in a positive manner, through better fashion, better nutrition, and better exercise habits. Your mindset changes from one of lack and scarcity, to one of abundance and sharing.

Now you're starting to attract more women. But you've noticed that you need to gather more resources to pay for the newfound habits you've implemented that led to that success. You start to learn how to offer more value to the world, and then you are rewarded for that value through financial compensation (as well as intangible benefits from learning that valuable behavior). Now you can purchase better food, supplements, exercise equipment, etc.

You continue to educate yourself, through reading books about a variety of topics (finance, philosophy, history, spirituality, health, dating, science, autobiographies, etc.), attending seminars, and socializing with other high-level men. 

Yes, you started this journey because you wanted to attract women. But you ended up getting on the path to self-actualization, and ended up at a different destination than you originally set out for.

Does this sound low conscious or unhealthy to you, @Preety_India? Can you see why men who have been through this process may not respect your rather shallow opinion of the matter?

[AtmoShark]

On 10/6/2020 at 5:10 PM, Beard said:

Id really prefer if he didnt spend his time on this tbh. Its much easier to figure out on your own naturally than the deeper abstract topics are. Really comes down to throwing yourself out there, seeing what works and what doesnt, and learning while being as authentic as you can be. When I was in that pickup phase the largest obstacle was being to in my head too much and not aware of the unique perspective of the people I was interacting with. Focus on the process of connecting like any friend instead of thinking about the end goal of wanting to sleep with women. Also think about why you want to. Is it for self or peer validation? Is that still gonna be important to you in 5-10 years? My best tip would be to stop looking for strategies and formulas because that just leads to disconnect and anxiety in my experience. Be you, throw yourself out there and learn lol you dont wanna be in your head bro.

Why waste time figuring it out on your own when you can just get a coach/advice/read books & forums/attend seminars/watch videos?

You wouldn't try to fix a car by "figuring it out on your own". Just watch a video or read instructions and move on to other areas of your life.

[The0Self]

On 10/29/2020 at 11:38 AM, AtmoShark said:

Why waste time figuring it out on your own when you can just get a coach/advice/read books & forums/attend seminars/watch videos?

You wouldn't try to fix a car by "figuring it out on your own". Just watch a video or read instructions and move on to other areas of your life.

The amount that you need to learn academically is tiny. What gives success in this area is truly 90 percent kindness, intuition, counter-intuition, fun, playfulness, practice, and non-neediness/non-neuroticism. Knowing stuff won't really help much in pickup; trying stuff will. Try anything with relaxed diligence and fun. The people that have the most problem with this are guys who are decent-looking but very shy or fearful -- these guys often have secret admirers from afar (as does any decent-looking human) that they'll never know about, and if they do find out, their awkwardness or neediness usually drives the girl away. Fearlessness, humility, and confidence derived from humility and self-love rather than arrogance, is what will provide success. If your mood when picking up women is primarily one of gratitude, you're golden. And if you've done enough consciousness work to be in a transcendent-integrated state, it really doesn't matter what you do, unless you're somehow deficient in creativity, in which case you could research how to be more creative and spontaneous. Don't do it with the goal of trying to get something from women though.

[AtmoShark]

On 11/5/2020 at 11:13 AM, The0Self said:

The amount that you need to learn academically is tiny. What gives success in this area is truly 90 percent kindness, intuition, counter-intuition, fun, playfulness, practice, and non-neediness/non-neuroticism. Knowing stuff won't really help much in pickup; trying stuff will. Try anything with relaxed diligence and fun. The people that have the most problem with this are guys who are decent-looking but very shy or fearful -- these guys often have secret admirers from afar (as does any decent-looking human) that they'll never know about, and if they do find out, their awkwardness or neediness usually drives the girl away. Fearlessness, humility, and confidence derived from humility and self-love rather than arrogance, is what will provide success. If your mood when picking up women is primarily one of gratitude, you're golden. And if you've done enough consciousness work to be in a transcendent-integrated state, it really doesn't matter what you do, unless you're somehow deficient in creativity, in which case you could research how to be more creative and spontaneous. Don't do it with the goal of trying to get something from women though.

I don't understand how you can possibly interpret the example of getting a coach as "academic learning".

The rest of your post has a lot of fluffy buzzwords that aren't pragmatic or actionable. There's a degree of external action-taking that this forum tends to overlook because of the top-heavy focus on "inner game", and general mental masturbation about spiral dynamics and how it theoretically will translate to dating success.

Tell me, how much actual success have you had IN THE FIELD? Because while you're not wrong on the back end, the front end of game (the action part) is going to be deficient if that's all you focus on. Your "transcendent-integrated state" is useless when you see a woman you're interested in in yoga class and experience the natural fear/hesitation that comes up when you approach her. It's useless when drunk dudes try to disrupt your interaction. It's useless in the chaos of the night when a fight breaks out and you need to lead your group out of there. 

[tsuki]

Awesome thread, learned a TON by reading it!

On 7.10.2020 at 6:34 AM, Leo Gura said:

Edgy means saying and acting is slightly outrageous ways. Edginess spikes the woman's emotions and makes her feel alive and adventurous. An edgy guy keeps the woman's emotions stimulated by saying and doing bold and unusual things. This is what creates that classic "bad boy" vibe.

@Leo Gura @Etherial Cat @Preety_India 
Since you seem to agree that this is the case, why do you think edgy behavior (as Leo defined it) makes women tick?

Does this project the promise of adventure, or is it maybe about safety?

_______

Or, to put it in a different way: what kind of person did you @Leo Gura become when you learned this skill? 

And: what kind of women are you @Etherial Cat and @Preety_India when you encounter such a man?

I mean, describe the experience. What is it about?

Edited November 13, 2020 by tsuki

[tsuki]

@Etherial Cat I find it interesting that on one hand you agreed that there are male behaviors that make (or made) you go crazy and on the other hand you are saying that a good relationship is adventurous enough. I don't think that you're being honest here and I wonder why. Is it because your man does not do this for you and you want to protect your conscious decision to be with him from your unconscious judgement based in survival? I can relate to this sentiment from the other end of sex/gender. It is very destructive for me to judge myself for not "scoring" hundreds of women even if I consciously recognize that it is not an optimal way of getting what I really want. I will not deny the existence of this impulse though and can describe what drives it when asked.

I was thinking that you, as a conscious women that I consider you to be, can describe yours. What I got instead is the answer why intimate relationships are okay, which I'm not denying as I'm in one myself.

Edited November 13, 2020 by tsuki

[Gesundheit]

@tsuki

There are no rules for attraction. I could ask you why do you love your favorite food? The answer is I don't know, chemistry maybe.

[tsuki]

6 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

@tsuki

There are no rules for attraction. I could ask you why do you love your favorite food? The answer is I don't know, chemistry maybe.

The fact that attraction is prior to deliberation does not mean that it can't be understood and expressed openly.
Every single thing that we do has a purpose.

[tsuki]

12 minutes ago, Etherial Cat said:

22 minutes ago, tsuki said:

I find it interesting that on one hand you agreed that there are male behaviors that make (or made) you go crazy and on the other hand you are saying that a good relationship is adventurous enough.

I am having a hard time understanding what is your point here? How are these two things at odds? 

Because a man can make you go crazy before you are in a relationship with him.
The driver of this craziness is prior to conscious choice and I'm interested in it.
These two things are not necessarily at odds, they are unrelated, orthogonal.

Since you have the experience of "craziness", you can describe it from your "end".

Edited November 13, 2020 by tsuki

[Preety_India]

@tsuki

2 hours ago, tsuki said:

And: what kind of women are you @Etherial Cat and @Preety_India when you encounter such a man?

I mean, describe the experience. What is it about?

My answer is going to be a bit naked. 

I fell in love with a bad boy. The reason is because the edgy confidence is a turn on. This is true. Not that I want an asshole. But a bit of confidence and macho behavior is sexy to me. 

But the problem is that it's not a full package. Most guys with such traits turn out to be assholes. So eventually I gave up. Because the relationship doesn't work long time. So I decided to look for good guys even if they are not attractive. I've crossed/passed the stage of falling for fuck boys and bad boys. I have reached the maturity where I am no longer attracted to such men. I'm now attracted to good men aka nice boys. 

 

 

[Gesundheit]

1 minute ago, tsuki said:

The fact that attraction is prior to deliberation does not mean that it can't be understood and expressed openly.
Every single thing that we do has a purpose.

Well then, you might better ask yourself why do I want to understand attraction? That is, if pure understanding is your ultimate objective. For most people it's not. For most people, understanding is desired because of its usefulness. In this case, attraction - there are literally no rules why anything is attractive to anyone. We could say that on some level there are certain psychological needs that are starving to be fulfilled, but those needs would have to be specific to each person, and even to each moment of the relationship because we change all the time. Imo, the most practical application of this understanding would be to be to create an environment where it's easy to have communication with the partner all the time and make sure that there's complete trust, transparency, and honesty between you and them. Communication is the key here because otherwise it would be manipulation, but maybe the partner would like being manipulated?

[Gesundheit]

12 minutes ago, Etherial Cat said:

It depends what you call a "relationship".

If by relationship, you're talking about the moment when two people agree on "being in a relationship" as in "being a couple" like middleschoolers do, maybe. But a relationship in my usage is just a sustained contact between individuals

Nowadays, I also don't get smitten and taken away abruptly by a man. I could get excited if he'd fulfill a lot of what I recognize as good signs and our energy are compatible, but I'm not a 16 year old.  I'm very well aware that the ego starts with a limerence/idealization phase and that one has to navigate this carefully.

But a nice guy would still not be able to turn you on like an edgy man. Right?

I think @tsuki is asking specifically about the unconscious component of attraction underneath the conscious layer of the mind. It's not about what you want after filtering things out. It's about the desired traits before the filtering process, and a lot of times even after. Same as it is for us guys, a good looking woman is always attractive regardless of how much we try to filter her out through awareness. It's very hard to break out of attraction.

Edited November 13, 2020 by Gesundheit

[tsuki]

31 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

The reason is because the edgy confidence is a turn on.

@Preety_India See? This is what I'm talking about. There is a reason why "edgy confidence is a turn on". I know that you are not thinking about it, you are not consciously choosing that this guy is sexy and that guy is not, but your mind is making that judgement in response to signs that you are picking up. What I am asking is: what is the promise that the edgy guy is making that this "turn on" is expressing? What do you assume that this edginess speaks about this guy? Why is confidence sexy? What will a confident guy do for you? Take care of you? Give you some good time? Take you on an adventure? Be your father? Complete you? 

It's like @Etherial Cat says - it is an idealization, a fantasy, that this person is something. What is that thing? That is what the PUA folks capitalize on. This is not exploitative or wrong if the promise is delivered, but if it's weaponized then it is harmful. I am wondering whether it can really be delivered because if it happens unconsciously, then there is really no guarantee of that.

[tsuki]

4 minutes ago, Etherial Cat said:

Again, what type of edgy man are we talking about?

The one that makes you, personally, tick. @Preety_India's observation that the answers are naked is accurate.

[mandyjw]

Love is just something that turns off your survival mode of functioning. Because sex is historically incredibly risky for women, we're wired so that a man who throws caution to the wind actually makes us feel safe to do the same. 

[tsuki]

40 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

Well then, you might better ask yourself why do I want to understand attraction?

That is a deep question, but I do have an answer.

I do not end where my conscious experience does. If I am attracted to women and women expect something of me, then there is an unconscious drive for me to become that. I want to know what that thing is so that I can be my relative self more fully. Having a genuine description from woman's POV would be invaluable.

47 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

That is, if pure understanding is your ultimate objective. For most people it's not. For most people, understanding is desired because of its usefulness.

Within the domain of survival, usefulness is the ultimate objective. As long as I don't confuse that with the absolute, pursuing that is fine.

48 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

Imo, the most practical application of this understanding would be to be to create an environment where it's easy to have communication with the partner all the time and make sure that there's complete trust, transparency, and honesty between you and them. Communication is the key here because otherwise it would be manipulation, but maybe the partner would like being manipulated?

And that is the description of a genuine, mature, relationship. There is no conflict between that, and trying to understand attraction. On the contrary.

[Preety_India]

 

21 minutes ago, tsuki said:

@Preety_India See? This is what I'm talking about. There is a reason why "edgy confidence is a turn on". I know that you are not thinking about it, you are not consciously choosing that this guy is sexy and that guy is not, but your mind is making that judgement in response to signs that you are picking up. What I am asking is: what is the promise that the edgy guy is making that this "turn on" is expressing? What do you assume that this edginess speaks about this guy? Why is confidence sexy? What will a confident guy do for you? Take care of you? Give you some good time? Take you on an adventure? Be your father? Complete you? 

It's like @Etherial Cat says - it is an idealization, a fantasy, that this person is something. What is that thing? That is what the PUA folks capitalize on. This is not exploitative or wrong if the promise is delivered, but if it's weaponized then it is harmful. I am wondering whether it can really be delivered because if it happens unconsciously, then there is really no guarantee of that.

Historically and evolution wise, women have been primed to think that confidence means success. Any guy who is confident is considered to be a source of comfort, protection, survival, good boyfriend vibes, good husband vibes and good daddy vibes. This has been entrenched in a woman's psyche since centuries. Because in ancient times during war, confident men seized opportunities for better survival, defeated opponents, rescued women in distress and provided comfort, restored law and order and brought resources from far lands and built communities. To a woman this is a sign of success. A man who has such supreme confidence in his abilities is a great sign of safety, security and progress. That's why women feel free while interacting with generous, affectionate, kind, big hearted guys because it gives out the vibe "hey woman I'm here for you", the confidence in a man is very reassuring to the fragile chaotic gentle nature of a woman. Over time this trait got registered as an attractive trait in women's psyche. Whenever women saw a bold confident man, there was an instant chemical attraction fueled by evolutionary influences. 

That's how confidence came to regarded as sexy because to a woman its a good news, a great potential mate 

Now the brain is primed to respond to impulses without much conscious thinking. So it's hard to convince a brain to dissect someone's confidence level. 

Some guys are confident but it's fake. It's a show. It does not mean they are going to be good providers or lovers. This can be a false sign. It's a mimicry. 

But whatever is happening unconsciously cannot be prevented. Eventually the woman realizes that his confidence is false and that diffuses the attraction she had for him. Nevertheless she is always going to be inevitably attracted to a confident man. Now whether he is truly confident or if it's just a farce is up to her to test. 

[tsuki]

19 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

we're wired so that a man who throws caution to the wind actually makes us feel safe to do the same.

So you are looking for encouragement to feel safe. I suppose that this safety is not reflected upon, but you follow the energy of the situation?

A man "throws caution to the wind" when he is careless, grounded in his skill, or what @Etherial Cat calls "Godlike". This corresponds with how mastery is evolving. From posturing, through apprenticeship, to unconscious competence. Does this correspond with what you feel to be sexy, or am I fantasizing?

[mandyjw]

@tsuki I don't know. All sexuality is just a murky reflection of desire for God. If you know how one works you know how the other works. It starts with the deception of other than, so that they can merge. Ultimate safety and throwing caution to the wind completely is a paradox that exists without conflict only outside of mind. So we lose our minds when we fall in love. Physical attraction uses this same mechanism for its own manifestation. 

When you master something, you do it almost mindlessly, no need to think, it just happens. So true mastery mimics that state of no mind which is naturally, prime territory for attraction.

[tsuki]

6 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Historically and evolution wise, women have been primed to think that confidence means success. Any guy who is confident is considered to be a source of comfort, protection, survival, good boyfriend vibes, good husband vibes and good daddy vibes. This has been entrenched in a woman's psyche since centuries. Because in ancient times during war, confident men seized opportunities for better survival, defeated opponents, rescued women in distress and provided comfort, restored law and order and brought resources from far lands and built communities. To a woman this is a sign of success. A man who has such supreme confidence in his abilities is a great sign of safety, security and progress. That's why women feel free while interacting with generous, affectionate, kind, big hearted guys because it gives out the vibe "hey woman I'm here for you", the confidence in a man is very reassuring to the fragile chaotic gentle nature of a woman. Over time this trait got registered as an attractive trait in women's psyche. Whenever women saw a bold confident man, there was an instant chemical attraction fueled by evolutionary influences. 

@Preety_India While this story is believable in of itself, I find it improbable that you are actually experiencing it. It reeks of contamination by masculine fantasy and is filled with objective reasons for subjective experience. I am asking about you, specifically, not a generic woman. This may be a difficult question because of your history with that man. Remember a specific situation, like a date, when you went crazy for a guy. Savor the feelings and see what they were expressing. Was it really historically based, or was it more personal?