As I lie here in my hammock listening to the clatter of squirrels running up and down my garden trees, soft jazz on my speakers, I consider getting up to replace the now-melting ice in my tumbler of Johnnie Walker Double Black. It’s roasting hot, the London weather having finally turned good. Not that I was here for the bad weather. All of February was spent on the beaches of Rio, sandwiched on either side by two trips to Barcelona to bang my Belarussian and Romanian girls respectively. I guess there’s alot of guys sitting in cubicles this afternoon. The lucky ones have window seats so they can at least look at the weather I’m enjoying.

But where was I? Ah…. something about enjoying the decline….

Not strictly accurate

A couple of weeks ago during my tour of several FSU countries I had one of those Fridays that stick in the memory. I woke up in my downtown apartment and shuffled off to a cafe for an 11am breakfast with Anastasia, a 21yr old Russian microbiologist. We had a walk around the nearby park, kissed a little then I let her go. 3pm was an afternoon coffee first date with Deria, a 23yr old fashion designer. We chatted, held hands a bit and then made out at the steps to her subway home. Just before that date I’d seen Dasha walking into a grocery store and introduced myself. She’s a slim 23yr old too so we swapped numbers and I had a 4:30pm drink with her. Another makeout which she said was strange “because I have a boyfriend and we just met”. Round about 6pm the sky takes on an early dusk tinge and my tummy is rumbling. So I take Elena out for pizza, my new 22yr old ballerina girlfriend. I round off the day with a two-hour 9pm cocktail bar drink with Inna, a tall 19 year old dancer who has her hand on my dick before rushing off to join her friends for some nightclubbing. I go home, close my eyes and wonder….. am I really living this?

I dated five “eights” in one day, all the right side of 25, all exquisitely feminine, all thrilled to be in my company and all good hard make outs. All on a multi-country Euro tour that I booked on a whim, without saving up and without asking permission from anybody.

I don’t do this everyday, but it does happen.

Minimalists design their own covers

Aaron Clarey‘s new book Enjoy The Decline finishes with an impassioned plea to live life to its utmost because we only get one time on this earth and living well is the best revenge on the Leftists who have destroyed our civilisation. Judging by the hater comments I delete, I guess that’s what I’m doing. I just finished his book in one sitting so I guess a review is in order.

Much has been made recently on the bitter taste of the red pill, that destabilising sense of loss as your pretty lies perish and you realise that as a right-of-the-bell-curve male you are the power plant that the rest of society lives off and yet…. you don’t get to enjoy any of its fruits. How do you hold yourself together as reality crumbles and the white picket fence respectability you were taught to crave has been exposed as an unattainable high-risk at best, or a decorated gulag cabin at worst? How are we to navigate the minefield? I’ve written two of three parts on my path. Foundations. Accumulation… and I needn’t write the last part because this book does a more comprehensive version that I’m about 90% in agreement with. Let’s recap Ayn Rand’s Aaron’s basic thesis.

America (and construed widely, the West as a whole) has unequivocably and permanently chosen socialism. We are therefore fucked, the path to ruin and decivilisation locked in. As the producers of the world are we to throw ourselves under the bus for the good of the moochers and looters, or should we shrug as did Atlas? Aaron suggests we Go Galt and spends his book laying out the case.

That’s you, that is

First up is an economic summary which will be familiar to Mish‘s readers. It’s an Austrian-lite summary for non-specialists going through the basic problems of debt-to-GDP, unfunded liabilities, overtaxation and public sector crowding out. The economic conclusion is that employment opportunities in the traditional careers are dead, the boomer generation will milk its descendents dry and just don’t bother. The American Dream is dead. It’s all sound stuff. He seems to err towards inflationism whereas I’m of the opinion we are in a permanent deflationary spiral but that’s a minor objection.

The solution is to embrace minimalism and self-interest. Declare to yourself that you live for yourself first. To throw off the parasites you will starve the beast by deliberately ratcheting down your income to the minimum threshold necessary for the quality of life you require. Efficient cost control keeps this number low in a Fight Club-esque “the stuff you own ends up owning you” mentality. The cost control side is low-tech and really just a psychological downshift. On the income side he recommends learning a trade (i.e. plumber, electrician) or STEM career or to hold off on careerism until you’re 35 and just treat employment as a source of cash and no more.

Downshifting frees up your time and this is the major win of enjoying the decline. You no longer covet the McMansion, the new lease car, the caribbean family holiday. You no longer feel compelled to marry and have kids. From this expansion in your freedom comes a great peace with the world as all the stress of modern life evaporates. A single man needs very little to get by.

More chapters follow on psychological adaptation (mostly about accepting your mortality and therefore commiting to live your life now instead of constantly deferring your pleasure), the importance of high quality people in your life, and to avoid the temptation to build up a pot of gold that a future wife / socialist government can steal from you. This is all good advice. Strangely he doesn’t mention Game despite his blog showing a clear awareness of it and Roosh’s book being mentioned at the end. Perhaps he doesn’t feel qualified to advise, or perhaps its to avoid tailoring the book to just single men – though it is this category who stands to win most from Going Galt because they are the host upon whom everyone else is a parasite.

Most of the book is accepted knowledge within the manosphere. I’ve written myself on the psychological declaration we must make when unplugging. I’ve written about the importance of building a group of high value friends. I write about building the international lifestyle and turning yourself into the Most Interesting Man In The World. There’s nothing new in Aaron’s book. Nonetheless I still read it cover-to-cover in one sitting because it gives you two things that amply justify the cover price:

1. Another voice of a man who has been-there-done-it reassuring you that this is a great path to go down with rich rewards for your quality of life. We all get 4am moments, those dark nights of the soul, when we wonder Cypher-like “wouldn’t it be better to plug back in”. This book helps banish them for those of you still wavering. Aaron is one of the older guys who isn’t bitter from divorce, isn’t an ex-pat loser, and isn’t a wannabe-baller. Just a regular guy who made smart choices and can pass on the thought process.
2. It’s a concise single volume with relatively mild tone that can be passed on to a young lad you think ready for unplugging.

I’ve long believed that I should be ending each year in a better position than I started it according to whatever metrics I deem relevant. My pillars of finance, health, career, social, girls…. whatever it happens to be. The metrics will change over my life cycle and according to interests. A man’s life must be an arrow travelling forwards. He needs a mission. Should you ever take your foot off the pedal then the forces of lethargy and mediocrity will take root.

That’s a long-winded way of saying I was thinking about my girl stats for 2012.

Long-suffering readers will be aware how the tone of my blog changed in late 2011 as I went through a cycle of game-revulsion. I changed from the high-approach/high-adventure phase to a low-approach/maturity phase. At the time I thought it was a permanent shift, now I’m not so sure. Perhaps its cyclical. A couple of weeks ago I started reading Tom Torero’s daygame book and it rekindled the old hunger. Like when I walk into a boxing gym and smell the dried sweat on leather, hear the thumping of bagwork, the whistle of a jump rope and I’m immediately in state to train. I was reading his lay reports, his joy/obsession for going out every day, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed it.

The greatest

2012 was the year I switched gears. 2010 was brute-force approaching to get the sets in the bank, with some decent success. 2011 was more brute-force but developing the artistry side and upping the quality. But by the end of 2011 I was still thinking “it shouldn’t have to be such hard work”. There must be a way of making it all easier and more efficient. Thus 2012 I worked hard on lifestyle, masculine value, and removing my niggling career doubts. I cut the approaches right down. Here’s my stats. Estimates because I never tracked numbers.

• Approachs: I’d estimate 250 in total, about 200 outside of the UK. Of the total about 150 went nowhere, 20 idates, about 100 numbers/facebooks with vaying degrees of flakiness.
• Dates: I had day twos with about ten girls who I made out with / got sexual with but didn’t actually bang. There were another five girls where the day two went nowhere at all. The remaining dates led to sex.
• Sex: Seventeen new girls, plus a few continuing on rotation from 2011.

Overall the lesson is I had more sex, better sex, more fun and with higher quality girls. Nonetheless I gradually got the nagging feeling of scarcity as I stopped approaching. It’s important to feel abundance in lead-creation, not merely abundance in having regulars on rotation.

I’ve not put up many infield videos of late. Despite doing plenty of sets in Croatia while I was wearing my watchcam, I kept forgetting to press the record button before stopping the girl. Clearly this isn’t absentmindedness, I’ve just had an aversion to doing so. Recording yourself takes you out of the moment and hurts your authenticity. My plan was to get some girls, not impress my long-suffering readers.

Fortunately my buddy Steve has given me a fallback with one of his own videos.

Approach with sexual intent

Steve’s a bit of a legendary figure in the London community. Back when pickup was new to Europe there weren’t any domestic companies here except regional offshoots from the big US companies like Mystery Method, RSD, and Shit Systems. Then along came a guy called Richard La Ruina who created the behemoth that is now PUATraining, the gorilla in the UK pickup room, a company that most of the big name UK guys passed through at some point (Beckster, Adam Lyons, Yad, Uncle B etc).

I hear conflicting things about Richard’s pick-up prowess and business ethics. I’ve never met him personally so anything I can add is just hearsay. However, Richard often makes reference to a “natural” he met years ago who is amazing with women and taught him everything he knows. That’s Steve. I do know Steve personally and I know the top fashion model he’s dating too. It’s not hearsay when I opine that he’s the real deal.

So here’s some flash game…. a quickie street kiss close… with my commentary. The man himself gives a detailed breakdown here. It’s solid stuff, just bear in mind it’s his commercial site. He’s my buddy but I don’t get a penny from any of this. Maybe I can twist his arm to have him cook me a steak for every 1,000 hits I send his way. That’ll get me in the shadowy PUA SEO cartel!

0:02 – Not every street stop has to be a run-around-jump-in-front. This is still a clear attempt to command her attention but done casually from comfortable distance. It’s still important to show conviction rather than timidly bend over like a chugger.

0:10 – And here’s the clear Stop command. There must always be one, preferably early, to avoid falling into her frame. It’s also a compliance test for initial availability which will save you wasting time.

0:24 – The main value is in the confident body language, early touch, and closing down of distance so it’s slightly invasive but not scary. Her beaming smile is a green light. She already fancies him. You can rely on this when you’ve built up your personal charismatic value so high that you assume good-looking women will fancy you. Old school game is designed for people who don’t believe they have that value. Times have changed.

0:30 – Lots of daygame IOIs are in the legs. Any kind of twitching, nervous energy or movement that is not indicating a motion to leave is an IOI.

0:33 – Bold pull, followed by a push away. This is a combination of intent and the fact the girl is so clearly receptive it’s possible to move quick.

0:36 – Note the constant eye contact from Steve even when she’s looking away. She can feel this and it’ll quickly spazz her out. This is textbook indirect-direct – he hasn’t overtly hit on her but there’s absolutely no question in her mind that he fancies her.

0:46 – Confirmation of hook point. “Where are you from?”

0:52 – Her tongue is almost hanging out at this point. She’s already decided she’ll fuck him so long as he escalates correctly, though maybe her forebrain hasn’t yet received the memo. This is what I mean about projecting a masculine vibe. It’s taken her less than a minute to reach this point because of how Steve projects himself. It’s presence and vibe. The intrigue and mastery will come later.

1:00 – The verbals are boring as shit and limited by language. Although verbal dexterity is a great plus it isn’t necessary when the subcommunication and intent is strong. This conversation is between two hindbrains.

1:05 – This is something I’ve only recently added into my game – unabashed, almost child-like directness about intention and emotion. There’s no coyness. No I-won’t-tell-her-I-like-her-until-she-IOIs-me. Just come out and say it with clarity. It’s not a vulgar “I want to fuck you” it’s an authentic statement of interest.

1:18 – There are no DHVs, no attempt to impress her. The attraction was completed within the first ten seconds

Early last year one of JJ‘s good buddies Belinda gave him a styling makeover to turn him from a shifty joy-riding chav into a Libertines-esque indie bad boy. It worked. He looked almost cool. So then Toe had a session and she was able to hide his unflattering curves and Aussie classlessness. If she can make those two reprobates presentable to the opposite sex I figured she might be able to take my dress sense that last step towards perfection. So as the New Year dawns I hear she’s about to go back to Melbourne. If I want to catch her I’ll have to stop procrastinating.

In advance I tell her I’m going for a dishevelled rock/rough look and send a few photos of guys I think look cool. I’m open to try new looks but need to keep the masculine edge. The last thing I need is to dress like Gok Wan.

Yes, I think these guys are cool

We spend a few hours in changing rooms experimenting with looks. I learn which jeans look right on me and how to wear them (e.g. “Put the pockets and buckle down so they rest over your hipbone. The belt is not to hold your trousers up, it’s an accessory”), the importance of layering and so on. We snap off a bunch of photos for different looks….

Being a tight bastard this was all done on a budget so I was going for clothes that can be used across a number of looks. In the end All Saints, Top Man and H&M were £300 richer and I had three new pairs of jeans, some boots, a few simple t-shirts for layering, and a couple of pullovers etc. Looking at the photos I see we were softening alot of the bad boy vibe and making me more street legal.

It feels good getting properly styled, getting small touches here and there and the occassional big change. I don’t have to think “am I well-dressed? does this work?” but instead can hit the streets knowing I have my fashion together. That’ll help my frame. Assanova is always banging on about how important it is to be the best-dressed man the girl has seen all day and now I can kinda see what he’s getting at.

Belinda is in Australia now and can be contacted for styling at Bella Charisma

Let’s get the conclusion out the way first. This is a very good book. If you have an interest for the meta-game / societal ideas I discuss on this blog then you’ll find Delusion Damage interesting. But rather than review the book the usual way I just want to expand on a feeling I had when reading it.

“I thought I was the only person who thought that”

As we progress through life we encounter many scenarios that make us think. We ruminate upon their meaning and develop our own little tricks and strategies, our analogies that help us impose a pattern upon the chaotic world. We nip, tuck and simplify. We assign helpful labels to phenomena that appear unrelated on a surface level but are thematically or fundamentally related. The main feeling I had when reading this book is the (anonymous) writer perceives the world like I do. I thought I’d exclude the really obvious commonalities – such as the evopsych basis of human behaviour or the matrix metaphors – and concentrate on the knick knacks.

Frame control as a tool in your own intellectual development: When arguing a point I never concede ground and change my mind during the debate itself. I believe holding a strong frame and repelling borders is crucial to a strong boundary function. A man who lets himself be dragged off-centre during a debate is a weak man who can be convinced of anything. Conversely, sticking to your guns over the medium term will end in delusion and hubris. I sincerely want to be right. I don’t mean my ego wants to defends the current opinions I hold – I mean that I want my map of the world to be as close to the terrain as possible. Thus when arguing I will pay keen attention to the other parties and try to understand / unpack / destroy their claims but the whole time I will store their ideas in a quarantined cage. Then, like coffee slowly perculating through a machine, in the days and weeks that follow I will deal with any intriguing ideas on my own terms to see if they can improve my map. Thus in the heat of debate I seem pig-headed, arrogant and stubborn but over time my frame survives and improves. On page 315 of Delusion Damage we see a similar process regarding telesales.

This didn't end well

Mastery is overrated as a life skill: While I respect mastery in a skill set, I consider it to be a result of unbalanced life priorities. I used to look at top professional fighters in awe of their skills and dedication but as I started to know them I realised they were destroying themselves in pursuit of mastery. These men would look superhuman in the ring but when sitting having a drink with them they’d tell of their permanent nagging injuries that stop them sleeping well, the joys of life they miss from spending all day in the gym, and a generally shocking one-dimensional character. The same goes with the top pick-up gurus who have fucked 500+ women. Aside from the obvious questions (wouldn’t it be great to have so much sex, wouldn’t it be weird how that would affect your mind etc) I found myself thinking “given the extreme effort and sacrifice required to achieve such mastery, what on earth is missing from his life to compel him down such a difficult path”. It’s no coincidence that the people I’ve met with the highest laycounts are actually far unhappier people than those in the 50-150 lays bracket. There is a steep cut-off of diminishing returns between accomplished amateur and grandmaster. I consider life far happier when you’re accomplished at dozens of expert systems rather than master of one. Page 193 begins the Delusion Damage discussion of related issues.

Life is meaningless, so create your own way: I don’t empathise with people’s constant scramble to find external meaning in their lives such as religion, science, herd approval, or political ideology. Way back in university I went through a four year journey of self discovery in which I read voraciously on every subject of human importance throughout the human and social sciences. I was determined to answer all of the big questions of life: Does God exist, What is the best system of political organisation, How do people relate in groups, What economics creates material abundance, What is the archetype of male development. After hours in the library and many Student Union bar / seminar room arguments I found my answers. When people try to argue this stuff with me now I just switch off because I have little to learn from 99% of the people who try. I’ve already read and thought more about this stuff than them, and argued the toss with people far smarter and experienced than they are. Ultimately the best position on the meaning of life I found came from (I think) Betrand Russell. When asked if it wasn’t depressing if you believe there is no God or importance to your life he said “No. I just turn my attention to other things.” The Delusion Damage book closes with a chapter on how to maintain psychological stability when all the pretty lies have perished.

There’s loads more – throwaway sentences here and there – which perked me up with a “I do that too!” response. Try the blog and if it speaks to you, give the book a go.

Postscript: I happen to disagree completely with his economic views starting page 66. He seems oblivious to the basic problems of political philosophy and advocates a system which is communism by a different name. Simple questions like “who makes the decisions”, “how are they enforced” and “how are people motivated to replenish the pool of wealth” go unasked yet these are precisely the questions that sink resource economics. I recommend a foray into Ludwig von Mises, particularly his 1922 book Socialism. Fortunately this chapter can be ignored without undermining the rest of the book

I can’t believe no-one thought of this before. Game is a toolbox and does not force you into the lifestyle of pickup artistry. Game is a way to transform your life (“successful masculinity” I call it) and learn to deal with women. It doesn’t logically follow that the only outlet for game is to hunt down girls in clubs and on the streets. How about using the same wisdom for getting new girls but for making your current girl happy and getting the type of relationship you want.

This is Game for long term relationships.

I'm guessing he designed the cover himself

It’s also marketing genius. The world is full of frustrated husbands who are not getting what they expected from married life and yet are morally commited (or just plain trapped) to marriage with the same woman for the rest of their lives. These guys need help but they aren’t going to run the gauntlet of cold approaching three times a week, and these guys have lots of time for blog reading. It’s also a sweet reframe of Game away from “pump and dump club sluts” towards “successful monogamy”.

I’ve been reading Athol Kay’s website for a while because I think much pick up advice is sorely limited by stopping at the false endpoint of getting the first lay. I’ve always been interested in how to manage relationships whether monogamous or harems. I genuinely enjoy spending time with girls in between fucks and for eight years pre-game I was extremely good at girl management. Athol’s not a top player. I believe he’s stated the only girl he ever banged was his current wife. But he knows how to handle an LTR.

I recommend the book for any player with interest in LTRs. It’s pure red pill, toned down a little for his target demographic. He doesn’t have the literary freedom for the plundering rape’n’pillage language that I have. Here’s some of the concepts I liked:

Sex Rank – A short-hand for the concept of hypergamy and women dating up. His core thesis is that an unsatisfactory sexless marriage is best fixed by working on yourself as a man (the Man Action Plan) to increase your sex rank above your wife’s. This will then trigger within her the impetus to improve herself, a large part of which is becoming more sexually available.

The Power of Semen – The book really goes into evo-psych on the power of semen to keep a girl attracted. Fascinating was the timeline of how if a wife doesn’t allow you to keep her vagina topped up with semen every five days or so, then she’s highly likely to be trying to deny you the ability to defend her against rival sperm. As in, she’s prone to cheating.

Body Agenda – This is a polite reframing of what I call the hindbrain. Women’s bodies have an agenda of their own and the brain is just along for the ride. Thus they dress up slutty and mew for male attention while ovulating. The rationalisation hamster is a logical construct that negotiates the wide chasm between what a woman’s body leads her to do, and what she actually believes she wants in life.

Get the wife you deserve – If you up your sex rank, do things right, and she still doesn’t comply then bin her. Move on to a woman who will comply. Athol actively discourages bachelors from getting married for all the reasons we at the manosphere already know. His book is written for guys who are already in the trap.

Captain / First Officer – Athol solves the dominance / submission quandry by offering a model that you can actually tell a girl without triggering her femocunt ideology. You are captain of the ship with final responsibility. She is the trusted confidant and second in command. She’s not co-captain but nor is she a crewmate or stowaway.

Timeline to Ultimatum – Upping your sex rank will purposefully destabilise the marriage and set it on a course towards an ultimatum where she gets her shit together or you dump her. Accept that sometimes this requires the marriage to end. But never force an ultimatum on a wife whose sex rank trumps yours.

Track the menstrual cycle – Learn to date and diarise your girl’s menstruation so you can get blowjobs while she’s bleeding, be the nice guy when she’s PMSing, and turn up the asshole when she’s ovulating (while keeping a careful eye on her wandering).

Alpha / Beta mix – Roissyites despise all things beta because for them beta = chump. Athol identifies beta as the nice guy / comfort behaviours required to keep the connection and trust in a girl who is already attracted to you by the alpha. A happy wife is married to a nice guy with a hard edge. He doesn’t suggest you take her shit.

That ought to be enough to give you a flavour. Don’t expect the next paradigm in game – it’s just a good book for how to run your LTR without losing your game.

Sometimes when I’ve finished watching a decent infield on youtube I’ll let it recommend a few related vids and watch them. There’s all the usual dross: faked daygame kiss closes, nerdy virgins doing a webcam piece-to-camera from mum’s lounge, a big-name upsell. The one that just came on tonight and inspired actual nausea in my gut was from the alleged bosses of the Vegas and NYC lairs.

Good lord, check this out…

Here’s my play-by-play thoughts. Bear in mind it was painful to watch the first time, nevermind the second. I’m just about to make myself person-non-grata in Vegas.

0:07 – He actually calls himself an MPUA. Here’s a rule of thumb – the more 2002 jargon a guy uses, the worse his game. Calling yourself an MPUA is almost a guarantee of not being one. Like Saint Margaret of Thatcher once said: “being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people, then you aren’t”
0:22 – A weird-looking MPUA. Here’s a second rule of thumb – daygame is a test of how socially normal you are. If you’re not normal you are almost certainly hopeless at daygame. Someone recently asked me if Yad is a personable guy to be around. I said “of course, how else could he be so good at daygame?”
0:28 – Who is that weirdo on the right and why is he biting his nails, covering his mouth, and starting a sentence he doesn’t finish?
0:57 – Oh holy fuck they are walking across broken glass to shatter their limiting beliefs. For fucks sake you fucking retards, stop being retarded
1:26 – Creepy body language to ambush a trapped girl then forced intimacy. Video cuts away before girl rejects him more obviously.
1:56 – Horrible opener by weird creepy guy doesn’t hit. There’s a surprise.
2:14 – I’d be alot more forgiving if they didn’t call themselves MPUAs and then talk to the camera like they have something valuable they can teach.
2:26 – Graphs = science
2:46 – Don’t tell me. Show me.
3:03 – Another creepy ambush of a girl who IODs immediately and shows social politeness, then the video cuts away from the impending blowout. For training purposes note he had aggressive body language, telegraphed too much interest, forced rapport too early with a handshake, and sat down without an invite far too quickly. He also offered no value.
3:22 – Weak open, little value, and then creepily follows. Read more Tolle bro. This set could’ve easily been rescued because they were amenable to a decent approach.
3:29 – Following an escaping girl while DHVing and building kino???? This guy has no understanding of daygame. Predictably, the set doesn’t even hook.
3:43 – More disinterested girls showing minimum politeness. A recurring theme.
3:48 – He actually did a salsa spin.
3:50 – Fuck. He did another one
3:53 – and again! Holy fuck, he puts the M in MPUA!!!!
4:03 – Did he actually do a cartwheel in the middle of the street? Hang on, I just rewatched that. He actually did do a cartwheel in the middle of the street. Look at the disgust on the girls’ faces.
4:21 – High five = definitely down to fuck
4:29 – finally a girl gives what looks like a genuinely pleased respond. Almost five minutes into the highlights and there’s one girl not trying to GTFO.
4:36 – “this’ll look good on Facebook” and no close
4:44 – More creepy stalking and inability to capture girl’s attention
4:52 – ambush!
5:00 – Walking up to girl and directly asking for number immediately = tight game. Mystery Method should’ve been one paragraph long.
5:45 – My guess is that a flaky number really is a rare treasure for this guy.
5:51 – When the skillz don’t work, turn to prayer
6:11 – “picking up women, what we do”. At least they have the balls to attempt an epic reframe on their youtube followers.

This is the worst video I’ve seen all week. No girls. Not even a hook. Lest you think this is a one-off, here they are flash-gaming / monkey-dancing for a couple of drunk trashbags.  This is what happens when MPUAs roll?

So why did my marriage fail?

That’s a long involved question. There’s the version my wife gave me and then there’s what I really think. Without going into huge detail, the woman’s version is that I was too mean, didn’t show enough interest in her, became dull, and that she fell out of love. My version is I betatised and lost most of the qualities that had attracted her in the first place. I focused too hard on being the GQ / Esquire / Hollywood version of a perfect husband and that led me to become boring, home-centred, and to care too much about making the marriage work. I also found her increasingly unattractive as she aged and became masculine through starting a new job and Westernising. There’s alot more to it than this, but they are key trends.

The first six months of 2010 were weird for my game. I was getting lots of dates, lots of attraction, and lots of almost f-closes. Then suddenly in June everything fell into place. Most of that was down to getting my alpha shit together, but there have been lots of outliers that couldn’t be explained by lacking alphaness. I’ve had about a dozen girls crazily attracted this past year, to the point where they’d say things like “before I come out to meet you my heart is beating fast and I’m short of breath” and they’d be super horny. And yet I failed to f-close them and they drifted away, much to my bemusement.

So what gives?

Masculine polarity

At the end of my free one-hour consultation session with Skeletor, as he was packing his notebook away he teased “I think I know what the problem is.” Guess I better sign up for those paid sessions then,…… thing is, he actually delivered.

A week later we had a three-hour sit down in a casino cafe. Mostly he was pumping me with questions. Delving deep into my attitudes on men and women, on my attitudes to sexuality, the relationship my parents have, whether I was popular at school etc. Then after a ciggie break he reflected everything back to me and took me through the theoretical basis.

Now it’s common for overly-enthusiastic reviewers to talk about sessions being “mindblowing” or “shattering my reality”. A teacher can give you a whole new orientation towards the world and open up a panorama of new possibilities.

This one didn’t.

The most helpful takeaway from the whole session was that we actually agreed about 90% on how the sexual marketplace works. It was freakishly similar. We have different models and different priorities but we essentially agreed about what Game is and how to get it. What this told me is I’m on the right track. All that theoretical knowledge I’ve worked on in the past 18 months, all the worldly wisdom I’ve picked up in the past 35 years – nothing Skeletor said invalidated that.

So the session wasn’t too useful, you ask? Fuck no, keep reading. The mindblowing bit was far more subtle. I’d gone into the sessions deciding all my barriers would be down, all the shields turned off, and the phasers set to stun. People who know me know I am an exceptionally open person but also strangely guarded without realising it. I knew Skeletor was going to need a direct unfiltered look into my character to do his work properly. There’s no point trying to hold stuff back or reframing stuff to impress him (and lets be honest, I wanted him to respect me so the temptation to qualify was there).

I was handing him full disclosure in a way no-one but my brother has ever seen before.and hoping he could work some magic. What he did was take pretty much my whole personal history and current sticking points and explain everything as stemming from two character traits, then explained the detail, then explained how to fix it.

That’s mindblowing. Not boom!smash!bang! mindblowing. It was just incredibly perceptive and reductionist. The two traits are:

1. I lack soft dominance
2. I look to the world for external validation of my self image as a high value man [I’ll go into this in the next post – it was mostly from the second paid session]

Soft Dominance
A woman looks to a man to lead her safely through the dangers of a hostile world. He has the ability to impress his will upon the world (rather than the reverse) and build an impregnable fortress within which the woman is safe. This is hard dominance. The woman feels safe and protected both physcially but also in her social status, which becomes attached to the man’s. I do this very well. Bad boys do this too, but they also have fleeting attractiveness that eventually turns the girls away. Why is this?

Girls also crave a garden paradise within the walls of the fortress. A warm beautiful space to express their true character without risk of judgement and to let all their love flow. They need to feel cherished, to feel needed, and to feel romantic connection with their protector. Otherwise the fortress is a prison and the girl feels trapped in her relationship. The analogy we came up with in the session is of a motorcycle helmet; The shell is the hard dominance, the padding is the soft dominance. What happens if one is missing? If the man is a beta pansy the force of a crash impacts upon the padding and kills the woman. If he’s a bad boy there’s just a shell and while the road doesn’t kill the woman, the shell does.

My heart, artist's impression

As we talked about my attitudes it became clear not just that I lacked soft dominance but also why:

• My father is a spineless beta and now a kitchen bitch. My mother is a confrontational aggressive, barely empathetic shrew. Thus the male-female roles were reversed through much of my upbringing. Don’t get me wrong – my parents have had a successful 40-year marriage, are still in love, and I’m close to them both. But I rebelled against the role reversal and vowed I’d never become a wuss like my father, and never allow a woman to treat me like my mother did my father.
• Growing up as an intellectually exceptional student but athletically unimpressive, I always tended towards bookish hobbies and developed a sense of physical lacking. In my late teenage I went on an over-compensatory quest to become physically competent that led me into boxing, BJJ, and muay thai. This is now an extremely strong part of my identity. I’m not a wuss.
• I credited (rightly) much of the success of my relationship with my wife as due to being strongly masculine, aloof and badass. I blamed (rightly) much of the relationship’s collapse to us losing this male-female polarity. Thus I became determined not to be a wuss.

Notice the W-word coming up a lot? I believe many of the softer characteristics of a man’s dealings with women are wussy, and I’m not a wuss. You see the issue? This explains why I missed all those f-closes earlier this year, and why my wife’s complaints during the marriage weren’t simply the rationalisation hamster but actually stemmed from real unmet needs.

Skeletor went on to outline his models and how to work on the soft dominance. I promised him I wouldn’t steal his proprietary material so I won’t go into detail here. The basic principles however are:

• During the hypnotic scanning phase (usually on a date, in deep rapport) the man is scanning for genetic fit while the woman is scanning for identity. Thus it’s crucial to have the inner game fixed and to drop the mask. This is why routine-based and dishonest game ultimately fails with high esteem women, and why earlier this year I was getting day 2s that went nowhere. I was able to show an attractive mask for the ten minutes of the street pickup but on the Day 2 when we had to actually get to know each other I would either keep the mask on, or let the girl see into an inner game that still had broken pieces jangling around from the divorce. Either way, the girl didn’t connect.
• Good game is creating a strong identity in alignment with your masculine core, then removing all the barriers that prevent that showing through in your interactions.
• Men and women can each be characterised according to confidence / competence (men) and beauty / esteem (women). This create a dual hierarchy of 4 types each. Durable relationships occur when the man and woman are from matching types.

It’s surprising how much you can get through in three hours. So far Skeletor is living up to his rep.

* UPDATE: I’ve removed the original review because I think it’s too negative and doesn’t give Jeremy sufficient credit for the social side of his method. Instead I’ve inserted a summary of my thoughts.

Daytime Dating fits neatly into history as the first “proper” daygame book from the London method which makes it historically important as a curio, but also completely outdated as a way of picking up girls. It’s like buying a Nintendo N64 now to see what all the fuss was about with Goldeneye – interesting, but it’s hardly Battlefield or Bioshock.

Students learning the London Daygame Model will typically progress through three stages:

• Beginner – For the first 500 sets you’re struggling with approach anxiety and everything is new and confusing. The big challenge is to simply open your mouth and make conversation. Thus the advice focuses on dealing with AA, getting some simple fundamental on how to open, and then the basics of making polite social conversation. You’ll only get laid from the strongest of Yes Girls, and it all takes 5x longer than it should.
• Intermediate – Once you’ve settled into being the chatty guy in cafes and on the street you realise all your numbers are flaking and getting laid from daygame is currently rare and random. So you make the move from social to sexual. The advice focuses on projecting sexual intent, flirting energy, and getting a more conscious control of the process so that getting laid is a direct result of what you do, rather than simply “flipping stones” and hoping for the best.
• Advanced – Now you’re getting laid regularly and you know it’s simply a case of playing the percentages. The goal becomes younger-hotter-tighter. The advice here is to optimise your game towards r-selection and become a pure Lover so your can pull hot girls fast and in industrial quantities.

Daygame is not as simple as reading one book, doing a bunch of sets, and then you’re getting laid. It’s a long tortuous process akin to learning chess or fencing. You’re trying to juggle six balls at once, so you start with the first, then add the second and so on. There’s no magic bullet.

Jeremy Soul’s Daytime Dating is very clearly a beginner’s book – the content is all about orienting your mind to the very possibility of daygame and then giving a structure to become the chatty guy. By following his advice you can expect to get through your first 500 sets without too much trauma. You probably won’t get laid, but you’ll probably not get shouted at either. Then you’ll realise the positive (your social skills have improved, you’re “doing daygame”) and also the negative (it’s unwieldy, inefficient, and is just a route to collecting flaky numbers).

This territory of teaching terrified noobs how to make polite five minute chats has since been conquered by Andy Yosha and Yad with their Daygame.com products. Thus my earlier statement that Jeremy’s book is interesting primarily as a curio. The business of teaching guys how to get laid from daygame has passed them all by and is currently best exemplified by my video instructional Daygame Overkill which includes all the theory and ten infields showcasing what real advanced daygame looks like. When you’re ready to move to Intermediate and Advanced I’d suggest my own books Daygame Nitro and Daygame Mastery respectively. Those books are about getting laid and they fully incorporate the advances the London Daygame Model has made in the six years since Jeremy Soul last put up an infield.

So no I don’t recommend his book but Jeremy has rightfully earned his place in the history of daygame as an early pioneer and the first guy to write a book on it.