Hate the Player, But Don’t Blame GAME

I'd also encourage women to be unafraid to walk away when Game hurts. Despite the fact that hooks ups seem to be de rigueur now, what hasn't changed is that men will respect women who won't put up with their shit. Will he go after you? Maybe, maybe not, but at least you'll have the satisfaction of having kept your dignity and self-respect intact, and that is something men will always find attractive.

great post! I've been hoping for followup on the idea of game since your alpha asshat post. I've wrote to you before about blair,the atractive, recently single friend of mine who employs game, perhaps unwittingly, but uses it none-the-less.
And from my view, being a girl who was lured in by the game, and then, when she was blantanly told by him that he wanted to be an fb, not a bf BEFORE things got out of hand, walked away, i have to agree with this post.
First of all, his confidence made him sexy. really, he's not that attractive, but the game helps him. Second, he was up-front about what he wanted sexually, allowing me to choose to avoid making a dumb hook up with him.
Sure the game works with other girls and him, but its their choice, right?
All my friends and i agreed that there was little to analyze about the situation. We'd rather deal with an upfront gamer than a beta in need of game who dithers and whines and sends mixed singles or an alpha who blantantly demands sex with no flirtation before.

HA!

I've been wondering when you were going to write this post. I didn't know anything about Obsidian, and I'm going to have to spend a couple of days digging through his blog. I did know that you and I have had more agreement than disagreement on things in “Game” that work, and as you say, Game is rooted in good psychology.

Oh, I should also add… Gudnuf, you're spot on about how polygamy hurts men. In nearly every polygamous culture ever documented, a small number of men have sex with most of the women. That's the evolutionary math at work. A tenth of a very rich man is better than all of a poor man. (And as we also know, most societies stratify enough that there are very rich men.)

Anyway, yes, I am also a proponent of Game. I think of it like The Force in Star Wars. The Force exists. Very few people know it. Some have the natural gift, but haven't been taught how to use it. Others just never seem to even acknowledge it, and go about ignorant, never benefiting from what it has to offer. It can be used for good or evil, and it's sometimes hard to tell if a guy is a Jedi or a Sith. You have to get to know them for a while to see through to their true intentions.

From my posts, you obviously know that I know and employ strategies from Game, and am a big fan of creating sexual tension and push-pull. I also believe in negging, but with several caveats. First, negs are best used on very attractive women — women who damn well ought to know how beautiful they are. These are the women who are complimented all the time. A guy who starts out with a neg is different, and therefore interesting — even if it's negative interest… interest is interest, and that's hard to get from very beautiful women. Negging against average looking women is just mean. Also, I think negs are best when they have something to do with something impermanent. A guy can neg a girl on the first impression she made, for instance. Or about how her skirt has static cling and is riding up to her ass. In other words, things she can change, and that aren't part of her. (It's more dangerous to make fun of the style of something she's wearing. Her taste is part of who she is.)

Now, watch me tie this in to something we talked about in the last week or so. (This will be neat. I promise.) Game is something that is learned. Some people are naturals, but even the naturals have a lot to gain by studying female (AND MALE) psychology and learning how to best be what women want. That's what Game is. It's teasing out the parts of a man that are what women want in men.

So…

What do all men want? Great sex. Remember that I once lamented that in other cultures, old women teach young women to be good lovers, but in America, we teach young women not to be too good for fear of being slutty?

Just as all the Game in the world won't save a douchebag from bad relationships, all the honesty, integrity, and green bean casserole in the world won't save a girl from bad blowjobs and boring sex. Women want confident, slightly cocky men who stand up for themselves and get what they want out of life. That's what Game teaches. Men want women who rock their world in bed. Women who know what buttons to push, and push them. I guarantee that Neil Strauss's LTR is a rock star in the sack. And from all I can tell about him, he's a good guy worth having. So… if there's a female version of Game, it's learning how to 1) Get what you want from a guy in exchange for sex, and then 2) Make the sex so good he doesn't think about going somewhere else.

Seems simple, and probably not PC, but for crying out loud… Game is about how to get sex. Men want sex. It's right out there for anybody to see. Get good at sex, and use your ability for good, and you'll keep that nice guy alpha.

This is an interesting comment. So the preference is for an honest cad, better than a dithering beta? But even an honest cad is still a cad … I mean, the guy wanted a fuck buddy, not anything more. Being upfront about it doesn't reduce the cadness of his actions. It just makes it easier to rationalize away.

How about the beta that doesn't dither, but is just is a little introverted? Or the beta who was pursuing his career because there hadn't been a time where someone had returned his awkward interest? Some betas had apparently outdated notions of chivalry that made them believe what women said, rather than how they acted.

Ah, but there's the uncomfortable fact that 80% of the women do indeed prefer the cads (whether honest or dishonest). It kind of makes it understandable why the majority of men are tuning out. But the clever man understands reality. Yes, 80% of women prefer the cads, but the discerning man bides his time, using game on the 80% for short terms relationships, but winnowing through the 20% who don't fall for the cads. It can take a while, if the one is interested in a lifetime relationship, but the reformed beta does have time on his side.

The interesting part of all this is that the lesson for the smart man seems to be: learn game, play around in your 20's, and take your time in your 30's to find a younger woman who hasn't fallen much for some other guy's game. I have a feeling that isn't something your average woman wants to hear.

In response to hamby: my grandmom used to say that to keep a man, you have to give him either the best sex he's ever had, or no sex at all. Unfortunately, men want women who are virginal but also amazing in bed. You can't have it both ways, and neither way will get you all the men. So my advice to women would be to pick one strategy and stick with it.

GFN, you've summed it up perfectly. You were fortunate in that the guy was upfront with you. He sacrificed sex with you, but maintained his integrity. Obviously, he had the confidence to know that other young women would come along soon and oblige him.

We'd rather deal with an upfront gamer than a beta in need of game who dithers and whines and sends mixed singles or an alpha who blantantly demands sex with no flirtation before.

Absolutely! And the best guys? Naturally kind Alphas and Betas with Game. Either or. Unfortunately, far too few of each to go around.

Brilliant Hamby! I knew you would like this post, I've figured you for a Game type for a while now, as you say. And you should definitely poke around Obsidian's blog – he writes about a variety of topics, not just Game, and I think you would find him a fine thinker and writer.

I have a question, which may seem obvious. Recently I wrote that rocking a guy's world in bed requires enthusiasm, boldness and focus. (It's always worked for me!) I said that a long weekend with someone you dig would be enough to teach you what you need to do to make a guy really happy in the sack?

Do you agree? Because telling women to get good at sex is kind of intimidating and alarming! I mean, where should they go to practice?

I think what we're seeing now is both genders acting against their own self-interests, and the thing is, it's a stalemate that nobody seems to want to break, because there's been a lot of heartache and suspicion going around. It's gotten a lot more complicated because nothing is straightforward anymore, except the seeming need for casual sex. I see a lot of us vs. them mentality between the genders with all the male/female bashing I see in other sites, and I do wish we could all put a moratorium on this, because it's not helping either of us in any way. When did we become so angry and adversarial?

I've always subscribed to the brand of feminism that would embrace equal treatment, even when we're different. It's not about acting like a man, it's about being treated with the same degree of respect and being accorded the same rights even though we're not one. But somewhere along the way for far too many women the definition of sexual equality mistakenly became synonymous with proving that we can (and will!) have as many sexual partners as men and not have it affect us, even when it clearly puts us at a disadvantage because, as Susan said, it doesn't bring us the long term commitment most of us look for. So you now have the hook up culture, you have Game inappropriately being used against both men and women, and the fallout has come to this.

Game is to beta males what magic feathers are to Dumbo the elephant–it will only take you so far.

What happened to me was, I became more succesful with women, but I attributed success to Game instead of me. I felt the women didn't like ME, they liked my game. And that caused me problems in my relationships.

Game is like training wheels on a bike. It might help you stay upright, but you're still responsible for pedalling. And at some point, you may find you can go faster and further without them.

In some ways, advising guys to get Game so as to increase their sexual attractiveness is like advising girls to get breast implants to increase their sexual attractiveness. It probably works in most instances, is very artificial, betrays a lack of self-esteem, and gets you the wrong kind of attention from the wrong people.

I don't see anything wrong with some self-confidence, lack of clinginess, and an ability to flirt, for either sex. But most proponets of Game aslo advise some very misogynistic behaviors towards women, and that is something I can't get behind.

BTW the term “spitting game” (as well as the word Game, meaning trying to charm the opposite sex) predates PUAs by several years at least. It originated in African-American slang. My suspicion is that some enterprising PUA took a look at what made black men so attractive to the opposite sex, and basically codified it. Now we have a bunch of dorky white guys trying to employ the strategies of the inner city denizens to get girls. Oh well, if it works…

Verie, I don't know how old you are, but odds are, your grandmother's philosophy was a lot more successful when divorce was a lot less acceptable. Don't get me wrong — that's what lots of women were taught fifty to seventy-five years ago. And it works if the guy is otherwise trapped. An ex's grandmother is that way. She hasn't had sex with her husband in thirty years. He's a hollow shell of a man, and miserable, but he still does everything he's supposed to do as a husband.

I should also add that until the 20th century, it was considered standard practice for men to go to brothels when their women stopped putting out for recreational sex. These days, it's a random hookup instead of a brothel, but the result is the same. You may be able to keep a husband without putting out, but you probably can't keep him celibate.

GudEnuf: GREAT ADVICE HERE!

First, I have read that random hookups are more about stories the next day with one's buddies than they are about the sex. If sex was the primary motivator, there'd be more guys going for relationship sex, which is bound to be better in a whole bunch of ways.

I've written about the peer pressure on guys to remain single, and this is an excellent suggestion for young women. That woman who rested her hand on her bf's crotch probably made him the envy of guys getting hit or miss sex while drunk, though they'd probably never admit it.

And how long is “very long”?? This is different for every guy. I hooked up with a guy 6 days after our first date…relationship lasted 4 months, with some of the hottest sex of my life. We still hook up for random every now and again, and he is currently in a year long relationship. Guy after him I waited til our third date, and never heard from him again.

And this whole “negging” bullshit. Sorry, but if some guy needs to employ 3rd grade playground mentality to get my attention, he is going to see the back of my head. Insults of any kind don't fly with me, and he is a guy I would never give the time of day too.

Hi SL, welcome, and thanks for commenting. It's funny, I can't really tell whether you're a guy or girl. I suppose it doesn't matter, it's just sort of interesting. I'll go with woman because you raise the issue of misogyny.

If you go back and read my Alpha Asshats post, you'll see some very, very misogynistic guys profiled. This is why it has taken me 4 months to study and evaluate Game based on its own merits, rather than the manner in which unethical men apply it. There are a lot of men behaving very badly with knowledge of Game, and that's why I write about how women can suffer from it.

However, Game is not in and of itself misogynistic (tho as I say, I do feel there's a touch of that in “negging”). Men who are born “naturals” use these concepts instinctively. They are the men who are very successful with women, regardless of how handsome they are. Game just gives guys an opportunity to walk onto the playing field and compete, rather than be relegated to the involuntary celibacy pile.

Interesting tidbit about the origin of 'spitting game.' Mystery did all his observing in Toronto, so I imagine it was pretty much a white crowd. In fact, Obsidian talks about how he had to adjust his Game as a black man – he definitely found it too dorky and white for his scene, haha.

No no I totally agree. Banter is one thing. Playful teasing and matching wits, yea I will admit to being a turn on. But the full on insults like the “baby fat” remark in your post. I'm sorry Target should have shown him what her drink looked like up close and walked away. I guess I don't understand the “needing validation from douchebags” mentality. Perhaps being 33 and a little wiser has its advantages.

No doubt!

Yes, ENY, I see your point. She probably would have gone along, hoping they were headed for something real if he hadn't clued her in. I'm not arguing the sexual appeal of cads, I put that in the post. And that's exactly why Game is something women should embrace. They can have a faux cad! All the time being kept on their toes, made to earn his commitment, but also knowing he is not a man who uses women. The real problem is that very few men will actually be able to learn about and implement Game in a way that benefits all parties. You were fortunate to have excellent “natural” role models in your life. But most guys will hunt around online, read Mystery Method, etc. And it's kind of complicated. Still, I endorse it. Any information men can absorb about the way women think and act will be beneficial.

Re the woman who likes the Beta: Haha, I got an email from her today! This is seriously becoming my own little soap opera – I kind of view it as my index case – can a Hot Babe successfully nab a good Beta man and make it work? If you read the thread, you know that his friend has been playing intermediary, but basically asking the girl to do more of the risk-taking. Until now, she has heard that he's interested off the record, but his behavior toward her is friendly, nothing more. Anyway, she saw him out last nite – they were in the same place with groups of their own friends. She felt awkward but said what the hell (I imagine she had a bit of liquid courage first) and went over to chat with him. She sat down next to him, and they were having a nice chat, laughing, etc. The next thing she knew they were kissing, hahahahaha. She said it was sudden and swift – he was saying something and then he was right there! She's on cloud 9 – of course these are VERY early days. But I give him credit, he made his move. She made herself very approachable, true, but she wasn't going to grab him, so if he hadn't pounced I'm pretty sure it would have just gone sort of stale. She was pretty sure he was not interested, despite his friend's claim to the contrary. She mentioned that he did NOT follow up with any request or pressure to hook up in a more serious way, which relieved and reassured her.

Re your advice wrt his fears of maintaining her sexual attraction, I told her pretty much the same thing. I specifically said she should not be observed flirting with a lot of guys, and should be careful about dressing too provocatively, which is an issue for college women in general, IMO. Even before he commits to anything, she will need to provide subtle reassurance – but in return, hopefully, she will get a good man.

Haha, Passer By, I claim no kinship with Denise Romano! For those reading this who don't know, she has equated Game, even seduction, with rape. She's ridiculous. She sent me the legal definition of rape with no other comment or explanation of who she is. Okaaaaay…

It's interesting – I read on a lot of Game blogs that women's primary objection to Game is that they can't stand the idea of Betas climbing up into the Alpha ranks. Obviously, you can see that I feel exactly the opposite! As you say, let's maximize the number of suitable men who can produce the tingle. It's win-win! For the life of me, I cannot understand what these women are thinking, or what they object to. I have to assume they speak in ignorance, both in terms of information, and also probably sexual experience in some cases.

“I mean, where should they go to practice?”

I'm prepared to sacrifice myself for this important endeavor. I promise to give constructive criticism and to be a fair grader. I will also always give extra points to those who try the hardest.

Oh man, this totally cracked me up. Fair enough, duly noted. We'll see if we get any takers.

A lot of talk about negging on this thread, and some misconceptions I believe. I think one of the many sins guy commit when they're first deploying Game is that they neg too much. The simple truth is that negs are really only necessary when a women is extremely physically attractive. You neg a 9 or a 10—not a 6 or 7 (also depends to some extent how attractive the guy is/how tight his Game is).

And please remember what a neg is—it's a false disqualifier used to deflate a (over)valued target. Yes, it could be talking about her baby fat or her shoes, but those tend to be clumsy and stupid. Better to improvise—be more subtle and/or use nonverbal negs. Done right, negs work and are very powerful against high-value women. If they weren't, guys wouldn't use them. Practice & calibration make perfect.

“The interesting part of all this is that the lesson for the smart man seems to be: learn game, play around in your 20's, and take your time in your 30's to find a younger woman who hasn't fallen much for some other guy's game. I have a feeling that isn't something your average woman wants to hear.”

Yes, exactly. This comment was glossed over, but it really cannot be stressed enough. A guy really doesn't lose anything at all by being a cad in his 20s and early 30's, if he plays his cards right. Men peak in their attractiveness to women in the early- to mid-30s…right as a women's value begins accelerating it's decline. The smart guys exploit this.

“It can take a while, if the one is interested in a lifetime relationship, but the reformed beta does have time on his side.”

Counting on it

By this reasoning, a young woman in her early 20s should date strictly in the 30+ age range?

She must also have no difficulty in accepting the fact that her partner may well have spent the last decade behaving like a cad towards women.

And that he may have had many, many sexual partners.

Forgive me if I believe that this is not such a sweet deal. I know that you will say yes, this is exactly what women want, but this argument hinges on the vagina tingle meaning everything when making mating decisions. It assumes that women select men for dominance, aggression and social status. That may be mostly true for short-term mating, but in general women are more likely to select for long-term mating traits as well. In fact, research shows this to be the case.

Those traits are more oriented toward character, and include things like ambition, determination, ability to work with others, honesty, and willingness to commit. Obs and I have argued along these lines, but the truth is, this comes right out of the work of the Evo Psychologists.

When a woman is looking for a partner, not just a lay, she is qualifying a man for co-parenting. The reformed beta who goes the cad route will not pass this test for most women.

The objection Romano et al have to Game is that they see it as “fraud”. Just playing devil's advocate for a paragraph or two … the idea is that guys who are running Game are basically adapting behaviors that, in this view, do not come “naturally” to them. So, in this view, Game is a projection of what the guy running Game is not naturally. The idea is that a woman who “falls for” a guy running Game is in the market for a “natural alpha” who runs Game naturally, not for a beta who has learned to run Game — and so the beta running Game is “defrauding” the woman by giving her a beta with Game instead of a natural alpha. In the Romano view, this is trickery and fraud. The way she gets to the rape idea is that she says that if a woman agrees to sleep with a beta with Game she's doing that on the basis that she thinks the guy is a natural alpha, and not a beta — on the basis of a “fraud” in this view — and therefore her consent to sex is invalid because it is based on deceit and fraud, making the sex non-consensual and therefore rape. It's convoluted to be sure but has its own twisted logic to it.

The main problems with the Romano view, of course, is that it both takes away true agency from women (portrayed in the Romano view as being virtually defenseless in the face of a presumed natural alpha presenting himself for breeding) and denies men the agency of being able to change and adapt themselves. In other words, it puts betas forever in the beta box, such that they are not *permitted* to learn Game skills because doing so would create a false impression that they are not betas. The Romano view would create a permanent sexual caste system for men — which is why the buzz around the men's net in reaction to her views about Game zeroed in on the idea that women like her basically think that betas should “know their place” and stick to it, rather than “confusing and tricking” women into sleeping with them on the basis that they are acting like they are natural alphas.

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On a separate, but related, note, one thing that has intrigued me about the growth of Game is whether there is a Game tipping point. I once asked Roissy about this, and he said he would post about it, but he never really has.

What I mean is this: if Game were to become very widely adopted by masses of betas, would this result in (1) more women being satisfied due to most men being more attractive or (2) women adapting, themselves, and beginning to use other criteria to “sort” men into a desirability hierarchy on some other basis? It's an interesting question because the entire premise of Game is that women seek the men at the top — men with confidence and social proof and so on — precisely because these are, and always have been, rare in relative terms among men, and are therefore markers of the “leaders” or “alphas” among the men. Much of Game revolves around becoming that guy who displays the alpha markers such that women identify him as being higher in the male hierarchy. But if a critical mass of men are running Game effectively, and the Gamesters and evo-psychers are correct about the underlying basis for why Game works, won't women come up with other selection criteria to determine which men, among the Game runners, really is higher in the hierarchy among them?

Some people say that this would not happen and use the opposite sex example to demonstrate why. In other words, if the world were suddenly populated with women between HB8 and HB10, would the men all suddenly find the HB8s unattractive, because they are at the “bottom” of the new scale? Probably not. But I don't think that this example works when flipped back to women due to the prevalence of hypergamy as a factor in female attraction — a key idea in both evo psych and Game. So, again, if more and more men are running Game, wouldn't evolved hypergamy suggest that women would simply find other criteria by which to sort men so as to ensure they are getting someone at or near the top of the male hierarchy (or at least as much as they can manage)?

It may very well be an academic question. People like Obsidian and The Fifth Horseman have noted that the reality is that most men won't (or can't) learn to run Game effectively, so that the number of effective Game runners would always be relatively small. Perhaps that's true. But I thought that in the context of this thread, where it's suggested that more men learning Game would benefit women, the question of how this would ultimately play out is an interesting one.

If you're offended by a neg, it means you're dealing with a novice PUA or an asshole. Every time a guy negs you and you hate it, RUN!!!

Exactly! Like I said to Rebekah above, a woman knows an insult when she hears one. If you feel intrigued by a guy who's teasing you, by all means stick around and see how things develop.

However, I've watched quite a bit of Mystery Method stuff on YouTube including the man himself in a club. I recall one example where he said to a woman, “I've only been talking to you for three minutes, but it feels like an hour!” She giggled and was utterly charmed. I think that's a pretty shitty thing for a guy to say. The question is, then, does a “neg” work because the woman is made to feel like a bore, and will work hard to prove otherwise? I believe that it the theory. She should be offended, but she's not, because he has succeeded in checking her self-esteem, and she will seek validation instead of walk away.

Another example is a popular Game move where a guy ignores a woman in a group that he is really interested in, while being quite attentive to her friends. I have no problem with that. He's under no obligation to demonstrate his interest. However, if he turns to his real target and says, “Hey, your friend is really hot, what's her deal?” that again is meant to injure her self-esteem.

I understand that negging is designed to make the over-confident woman question her ability to control men. But I have to say, I hear from very attractive women frequently, and know many personally, who get taken down a peg by a lot more guys than they get appreciated by. In addition, when men talk about hot women getting lots of attention from guys, it's important to remember that most of that attention is overtly sexual in tone. It's a whole lot of the wrong kind of attention. A beautiful woman really doesn't want or need to hear from yet another guy that her body is amazing, or be asked for the 1000th time whether her tits are real.

Much of what I'm describing happens in bars and such venues. But after all, that's where Game was developed and tested.

I think this is the thought process that Gamers want to attribute to Romano, so they assume that's what she thinks. I think it makes Gamer advocates feel better to ascribe those beliefs to her (I'm not a pyschologist, but I play on the internet). Admittedly, her writing is so rambling and incoherent that I suppose you can read almost anything into it if you have the patience to wade through it all (I confess I did not), but I think this doesn't really reflect her thinking. To hold these beliefs, she would be essentially required to think that it's totally appropriate and natural for all women to want to mate exclusively with alphas. But, unless she is advocating for polygyny (and I don't think she is), even she can see that the numbers don't add up in that scenario. So, it's a real stretch to assume that she is simply offended that women are being thwarted from their divine attempts to seek out alpha sperm.

I think her problem, in a sense, is the opposite, in that she does not really believe that women have any predisposition toward hypergamy or tendency to cloister around perceived alphas. Like most, she makes this mistake by conflating the desires of the thinking frontal lope with the attraction wiring of the more primitive elements of the brain. (In a sense, you are making the same mistake here by assuming that Ms. Romano's conscious arguments against game would reflect her hind-brain need to cloister around true alphas). She doesn't believe that “betas should know their place” because she doesn't even believe in the concept. She believes that, in a right world, we would all pair up in perfectly equal relationships, of mutual and equal and open communication blah blah blah, where men achieve the most success in relationships by acting like feminist women claim (used to claim?) they want them to act (even though their choices of men and their behavior in their own relationships often belie those claims), and that taking that approach is the best way for men to attract and please women. Having denied the hypergamy and other evo psych aspects, she is forced to come up with an alternative explanation as to why Game tactics appear to be successful in getting women into bed. To do so, she must find/fabricate nefarious reasons so that she can maintain her world view – MANIPULATION, FRAUD, DECEIPT, RAPE!!! AND WHO WOULD ADVOCATE FOR RAPE?!! “Rape” is a word that women like her have learned to throw around to end any argument about something they don't like. Sort of like “facist” and “nazi” used to be used. In her mind, anybody who disagrees with her, is advocating rape, and what kind of person would do that?

In answer to your broader question, assuming so-called inner/natural Game is as effective as some claim it to be (as opposed to running routines and so forth), there would be no need for such an adaptation. The key is that these behaviors are designed to appeal to the hind brain. The hind brain is reacting is fairly primitive cues, and is not smart enough to adapt and concern. In contrast, the logical frontal lobe has no reason to come up with strategies to defeat this, because women don't consciously want what the hindbrain wants. Consciously, they would prefer orderly monogomous pairing, so I see no reason for them to adopt strategies to defeat it (so long as their men continue to pass their so-called shit tests). For this to cease to work, the hindbrain would need to evolve to find different, more discerning, cues that would cause an involuntary arousal and attraction. We can check back to see if this happens in a million years or so, but that's a long time. Also, there is no reason to assume that, in today's world, a woman with a hindbrain that more accurately sniffs out true alphas would have any greater reproductive success (as measured by the number and reproductive success of her offspring).

But, like you said, it's probably all moot. The routines will get old and stale, and only so many guys can have the best new routines. As to inner game, even if you fully understand the concept, the whole inner game thing is VERY difficult to internalize, especially as you get older.

Hi Susan,

That the optimal strategy for a reformed beta is one thing does not imply the converse, that it's the best strategy for a woman in her 20's to follow. She'll have her own optimal strategies, which she can follow, if she thinks about it and has follow through.

Now, a majority of guys will not follow such reformed beta strategy. They'll muddle through, some large percentage dropping out, some other large percentage “settling”, and some other percentage relegated to the castoffs of the cads. And even for the reformed betas, some percentage, due to innate personality or inclination, will not become a “hookup a night” short term guy, even though game opens those possibilities up. After all, we all have some measure of reason, and a clever guy knows that riding the town bicycle can result in needing Valtrex for the rest on one's life, or god knows what other issues. So, some of us reformed betas were selective in who we'd hook up with, even with Game, because frankly, there are other things to enjoy in life than just boinking hot girls.

Now, truth be told, I don't know what percentage of reformed betas go the cad route full-time. From the online comments, it seems to be more than a majority, but it may be that the non-cads are just quieter about it. I frankly don't know. But, for a woman, it should be easy to spot…I mean, the reformed cad beta is still a cad, and it doesn't take much time to observe.

As for the optimal strategies for a woman in her 20's, there are likely a lot that depend on circumstances, but I imagine that for college-bound/educated women, there are two straightforward ones:

1) During the early 20's, take advantage of college/grad-school, to find the best betas. They're a captive audience, you can study their friends and family, and you can put yourself into situations to meet them in classes/activities/clubs, etc. And, if you choose wisely, the beta will, over time gain some alpha qualities from his career. This strategy only works if the woman is actually interested in a real LTR, and it's as important to her as her career is. I saw this strategy work quite well for a reasonable number of women in engineering and sciences, and the majority of the long term marriages I am acquainted with followed this model.

2) Mid to later 20's: For whatever reason, like career pursuit or family circumstances, strategy 1) didn't pan out. In this case, one possible strategy is to find a reformed “non-cad” beta, typically 2-6 years older. This usually is more difficult than strategy 1) since it requires more discernment and patience: confirming the guy is a good guy may be harder and it's more difficult to suss out, since you may not be able to meet his close friends/family as readily. It also requires the woman NOT to have succumbed to hookups with cads. The reformed beta is no dummy and will screen out such women for a LTR. This is the second type of long-term marriage I'm acquainted with, since it corresponds to my own experience, as well as several of my wife's friends.

For women in other circumstances, I can't really comment in detail, since it's outside my direct experience. The only things I can say with certainty is, if a LTR is important to, don't put off finding it. It won't necessarily fall in your lap, and it will require looking for qualities that may not be what brought on a crush when you were 16.

i was lucky in Blair's honesty, definetly, and oddly enough, ive become good friends with him. It really has given me a different outlook on the whole idea of game, and in fact, when he and i were discussing it today, he told me the idea of “negs” does baffle him. He doesnt use them, but he said it never fails to amaze him that a guy can be a complete jerk to a girl, and she'll like him more for it.
I tried to explain the fact that a neg can chip away at a girl's fragile self-esteem, but he honestly couldn't get that a hot girl could in fact, have bad self-esteem.
also, if you'd ever like a laugh, i'll have to tell you the story of the minutes after that failed hook up from his pov. its rather amusing

Whoa, I wish I had time to read every one of these posts in detail and then reread them … Here's my two cents, and I've written on the Game and PUA guys before. Game works on drunk girls with sub-par self-esteem. I don't buy this theory that the Game “gets you into bed with 10s.” It will work with some really insecure 8s and a lot of rabid 6s looking to feel hotter than their friend or the girl down the bar or the bartender the dude has been checking out. Females are, by nature, insanely competitive with each other, which is why they vie for a man's attention when he isn't giving it. If a PUA tells you your “dress is nice,” women automatically hear they aren't as hot as the next woman and it's time to prove this dude wrong.

Negging is embarrassing, pathetic, hilarious. Watch for it. Read up on it. My favorite of all time: My roommate and I were at a sports pub drinking a beer at the bar and a guy walked up right between us and put out his wrists saying, “I can't decide which of these colognes I like better, what do you girls think?” I couldn't help but laugh and after 2 minutes we gave him the polite but firm box-out. But he wouldn't leave. He was being pushy and whiny. Finally I had to turn and say, “Look, we're not interested, sorry,” to which he instantly responded: “You have something your teeth.” WOW. If I hadn't been familiar with negging and the Game I might have been inclined to check. Instead he got the classic bitch Brettan and I told him to fuck right off. He came off looking like the smallest, saddest man alive …

I guess I would have less issue with this whole thing if Mystery wasn't wearing guyliner, humongous earrings and a furry hat a la Pam Anderson in '96. No really, I'm all for confidence builders and conversation starters, but the girl who wants Tucker Max more the more he bags on her (“No seriously, you're ugly, I would never touch you …” “Oh Tucker, you're so funny!”) is just a sad example of a female. You're giving douchebags material.

In truth, the woman who DOESN”T fall for the Game, who keeps you on your toes, who is up for witty (non-mean) banter, and who can laugh at herself is the woman you want in bed and otherwise. That's a girlfriend, a partner, someone to have fun with, someone to evolve with.

Hi bblove! I hoped you'd come by, because I wrote that post on you and Roosh, and I remember you talking about effing PUAs, haha.

For the record, let me just take the opportunity to tell everyone that bblove is a SHB10, maybe even an 11, haha. Check out her blog and pine for her. So she has been shoveled quite a bit of ineffective Game in so. Cal. That guy in the bar, ouch. That fills me with embarrassment, and he's an example of a little Game being used to negative effect, no pun intended. That cologne routine was one that Neil Strauss used, and I can't imagine how it was effective – what guy would put on two different colognes? It's so rigged – someone told me it's meant to be used at the cologne counter at a department store, which makes more sense–this guy was obviously a total doofus.

You also raise another good point. Game was designed to work on women in bars, and Mystery was especially enamored of what he called “hired guns.” These were strippers, cocktail waitresses, and other people in the business of evening entertainment. I don't think hired guns were exactly the girls next door. In fact, Mystery's main girlfriend during the period The Game described was a stripper. This leads women to conclude that Game only works on “sluts.” However, after reading about it, I do find that it is based on a sound understanding of female psych. And I hear from a lot of women who are being Gamed by guys more naturally astute than the guy you encountered. I would agree that women with low self-esteem are especially vulnerable to “negging.” This is odd, because the concept of negging is apparently to take women down a notch who suffer from inflated self-esteem. Again, there is clearly a difference between Game in theory, and Game the way it is often applied.

I'm with you 100% on Mystery's appearance, and you know I hate Tucker Max, almost as much as the girls who fall all over him. Recently, he visited Tufts University here in Boston, and sent a lackey into the audience to give a message to a pretty girl that Tucker wanted to bang her. She was disgusted and reported it. He denied the whole thing, said he didn't know what that dude was up to, signing his name like that. Ugh!

However, you do say that you can appreciate guys gaining confidence. No one wants a dorky guy with no real social skills pulling out a deck of cards in a bar. It's embarrassing. But how about some cute guys who are naturally shy but can learn to step up their Game to compete with Alpha asshats? Would that not be a huge improvement?

Evolutionary biology is the end of the discussion of “True Equality Feminism.” Anyone who still espouses it is just ignorant. Plain and simple.

However, I don't see any reason why evo bio is a danger to the realistic desire for political, economic, and cultural equality for both genders. (Incidentally, did you see that Nevada has licensed its first legal male prostitute?)

What Game does is literally expose and tap into the gender differences between men and women. It teaches men to do things that cause “the tingle” regardless of what women think intellectually. That, I believe, is why it's so offensive to some women. It works, and it scares women to be exposed to the truth that they, just like men, are slaves to their own libidos — to a very large degree.

It would seem you are right, Hamby, but for the life of me I don't understand it. I just think that the more men who can produce the tingle, the better off we'll all be. Just imagine a world where everyone is getting as much sex as they want!

This may be true, but if you look at it hard enough, promiscuous women are penalized by both men AND women–the men thinking she's damaged goods (see Susan's newest post above) while the women think she's a slut. For the beta male who's celibate, it's really more about getting “street cred” he can flaunt amongst his male peers. I married what may be considered a beta male because he didn't sleep around while he was still single and preferred long term monogamous relationships, and far from taking it against him, I was grateful that he had his head screwed on tight enough not to indulge in reckless sex just to be able to be the BMOC amongst his friends.

Between the beta male who wasn't a man whore and a woman who gets a reputation for sleeping around, let's face it, it's the latter who has less of a chance in finding a long term relationship when she finally wants one.

Oh, and incidentally, it might be that the severity of the feminist backlash against game is part of a pendulum swing. Women were viewed as slaves to their emotions for so long, and then women's liberation came around and things seemed to be getting better, and now all of a sudden, scientists are telling them that they really ARE slaves to their emotions. It's gotta suck that the oppressors were right for the wrong reasons.

Where do religious/atheistic men of integrity fit in this brave new world, if they don't want to throw game at people who only _respond_ to game, and even worse, get angry when called to account for their previous bad choices?

Hi P Ray, thanks so much for leaving a comment! Hamby may want to weigh in here, because he is an atheist with enormous integrity and can speak to that.

First, my advice to men of integrity is that they seek women of integrity. Avoid women who have shown a particular weakness for bad boys – we are not all equally idiotic in this regard.

However, to your larger question, Game is amoral. It is a body of knowledge that was derived based on the study of female behavior. So, in a theoretical sense, all women would respond to Game. Where Game gets derailed is in the way it is applied, by men who lack integrity, for the most part. These are the guys whose objective it is to get a woman to make a “bad choice,” i.e. have sex with them right away.

A man of integrity who is armed with knowledge of how women think and what they find sexually attractive can be very successful with women without compromising his principles at all. This is what I found to be a revelation once I studied the subject.

P Ray, many men struggle with this exact question. From what I can tell, most of them feel strongly that they would only marry a woman who had not been with a lot of men who were cads. They generally feel resentful at the idea that women would put up with all that abuse while granting sexual favors, only to “settle” for them once they reach their 30s and are desperate for marriage and children. You can find a lot more that might interest you on Obsidian's blog, which is mostly guys.

I tell both men and women that they need to be careful about who they have relationships with, or even have sex with. A person of poor character is a very bad bet when you're sharing intimacy and trust. You need to search until you find a woman who did not spend her youth LJBFing the nice guys – there are many out there. On the other hand, you would do well to have the social skills in place to approach with confidence, not show interest too soon, etc. This is where Game can be helpful.

By the way, telling a woman you don't want to see her because it is not in HER best interest is not good Game, IMO. It sounds like you will wait around unselfishly with nothing better to do while she studies. You're better off asking for a plan, and if she's too busy studying, say “Ok, then, see ya.” You can approach her with confidence at a more opportune time. This isn't Mystery Method haha, I'm just applying common sense here about what women find attractive.

Susan, check my blog later today. You've inspired my next post.

Oh yeah, I should add that I refuse to do any kind of “sex before marriage” (and even the Clinton-esque definitions of same).
Thanks again!

You can be sincere, and have integrity, and still not show all your cards at once. It's a question of timing. Don't be too eager. When a man is too eager, it signals that he thinks this is his one shot, he has no other options. He increases his perceived value if the woman thinks that he does, but that he is choosing her. However, she wants the opportunity to earn his good opinion. She doesn't want it to be right there in the beginning. Then she thinks he is just after her based on her looks, and has nothing to lose so he's going for it. This makes a man look weak.

It's not lying, but it's important to hold back a bit. Don't demonstrate your interest in that way until you get clear signals of interest from her. It's much better to start teasing and flirting, and hold off on asking her out until you have a clear sense of her interest.

See above!

I'll go a step further than just PUA tactics playing off insecurities. I think some of their tactics are actually nothing more than screening mechanisms for insecurities. Negging hot women? Great way to pick out the hot women who don't really believe they're hot.

See, here's the funny thing. A lot of women that men think are amazingly snooty and not at all insecure because of how they look are actually quite insecure. Men see “HB10″, while the HB10 sees her mom's snub nose that she hated since high school and thinks her neck isn't long enough.

Further, another reason PUAs prefer to run game on younger women is that they're frankly, just more insecure. They have those luscious young bodies, juiced with fertile hormones. Most of them have no idea of the power they actually wield in the dating marketplace; they're like toddlers with loaded guns. Thank God Susan is trying to teach them to aim.

” My favorite alpha cad, my brother, would occasionally tell a woman he liked that he was bad for her. And it never had the effect of deterring her.
“
Uh huh.

“I'm toxic baby.”
-Mystery

Textbook Game. The False Disqualifier.

“Beta” and “Alpha” isn't divided by honesty and dishonesty either. Betas are attempting to manipulate women into being with them, but don't know what they are doing. Many, most even, are just as duplicitous as your average Player; but their duplicity doesn't garner results. Betas tell women what they think they want to hear in order to gain their affection, but habitually fail.

These same men, flung into an alternate universe where their clumsy attempts at gaining affection were extremely reliable and found themselves swimming in a sea of willing sexual partners would be just as debauched as those despised Players.

'Beta' loyalty isn't too far from desperation in way too many cases. A woman would rather have a cad that chooses to be loyal than a particularly inept beta because the beta isn't doing any choosing. He's just latching onto whatever he can get. A women that isn't suffering from serious self-esteem issues to begin with isn't going to be terribly satisfied with a partner that scraped her from the bottom of the barrel.

“Game works on drunk girls with sub-par self-esteem.”

A lot of Game, as Susan points out, as developed by Mystery and his coterie is designed for use in bars and clubs for strippers and cocktail waitresses, et cetera. A lot of Game does not work the same way, if at all on girls with low self-esteem. Actual Game materials address the “LSE girl” specifically.

The reason Game doesn't work the way you think it does on LSE girls is because they will not work to validate themselves to you no matter what you do. They don't believe themselves worthy of your affection. Any guy an LSE girl likes is a guy that she instantly disqualifies herself from having a chance with. A girl with low self-esteem isn't going to put themselves out on a limb to chase a guy no matter how exciting you make it, because it's too emotionally dangerous for them because their poor self-image makes the prospects of them getting anything but hurt and rejected extremely unlikely.

I can 'spit Game', and my current girlfriend (whom I care a great deal about) has some crippling low self-esteem (and hides it well), and my previous girlfriend had major LSE issues as well. Neither girl was very susceptible to a lot Game techniques because I put myself 'out of their league'. Both women are arguably more successful than I am, younger, attractive, and both have chronically freaked out proclaiming their confusion as to why I would even want to be with them (because apparently I'm 'amazing' or wtf ever). The former to the point that the relationship was essentially impossible.

A part of Game is displaying vulnerability. After you have disqualified yourself as being an emotionally unavailable douchebag, you show a little bit of your sensitive side to let your target know that you really are human, and perhaps you are a bit scarred from past experiences, and you might be able to be won over. For a lot of guys running Game this is basically true anyway. They are emotionally scarred Betas that want something other than debauchery; but they also have standards now, and aren't so easily won over.

A girl with LSE issues needs so much vulnerability, and overt displays of affection, and so much chasing out of the gate before she feels secure in being with you that there really isn't much “Game” involved at all. You can't really Neg, because any teasing at all is going to be taken at face value as being just the obvious truth of how undesirable they are; you can't push-pull because all pushing is just the expected pushing away, et cetera.

Negs do work on girls with LSE. But they are also the girls that pretend they are fucking goddesses while having that LSE. No one that is mentally stable thinks they are on some superior plateau of humanity because they happen to be like, really pretty. If you encounter such a person they are clinically narcissistic or neurotically incongruent. Much more likely the latter. The second group is ripe for the negging. They actually likely need a little bit of a *gasp* game in their mating ritual to really connect with someone.

In your example you weeded out a guy for basically trying to be attractive to you btw. He would have been just as weeded out and cast aside as the saddest, smallest man alive if he had come up and awkwardly asked for a date too, and you would have laughed just as hard about how inept he was; so Game doesn't really factor into it at all.

It's important to respect their judgment enough to let them live their own lives. Some people are self-destructive, and need intervention, and a firm hand that borders on an iron fist in their life. That is far from the norm though, and that type of person probably wasn't ever in any danger of studying for an exam in the first place.

She knows what her interests are, and how to look after them. Her interests consist of a lot more than a GPA or the results of a scantron; and she was looking for a man to fulfill them (and I'm not necessarily talking about sex here).

First, reformed cads are very rare in my experience, at least until the late 20s. Even then, men who decide they want to marry and begin a monogamy phase are not good long-term bets, IMO. They've become adjusted to the bliss of sexual variety, and they are likely to become bored and dissatisfied with one woman.

Second, it's true that women are repelled by ineptness. And perhaps most men would become cads if they had the opportunity. We are all shaped by the opportunities our natural gifts bring us, and how we choose to capitalize on those opportunities. But not all men are the same. A man's values, character and DNA all play a role in his behavior toward the opposite sex.

A nice guy who can develop his social skills and eradicate that fatal vibe of ineptness is well positioned to pursue what his nature desires. That's what Neil Strauss did.

Neil Strauss did not manage to see through that relationship to the situation of marriage. Lisa Leveridge left with Robbie Williams. Whichever way you look at it's not honest or productive.

Well I don't know the particulars of that breakup, but they were together for at least a couple of years, more like four I think. Game doesn't guarantee a woman will stay with you forever, obviously. As I said, it's only a tool to help attract a woman.

Whoa, lighten up! I am not saying that you are or are not attracted to anyone. All I'm saying is that Game is about sexual attraction. You can like someone and be attracted to them, or you can like someone very much but only as a friend.

Mating is a complicated process. It is best when two people understand each other, but yes, mating is a competition. This has always been true.

Theatrics don't trump sincerity. But sincere like and appreciation shown to a woman early will often not bring the desired result. One must have an appreciation for pace, timing. Also balance. This is just smart behavior. It's true in platonic friendships, workplace associations, all human relationships except the parent/child one, I would think.

I agree that we can all learn from our pain, and take comfort from that knowledge. However, our pain can also become a refuge that keeps us from attaining our goals.

“His blog states that the more you learn Game, the less you need it, and that's the goal.”

Yeah, that's definitely been my experience. What I find most interesting is over time there was a tipping point with Game as I grew into myself. At first it helped a little, then as I became more comfortable with myself Game didn't seem to make much of a difference one way or the other, and now I find that actively “Gaming” actually makes thing worse, not better.

I can't entirely wrap my head around it. I'm having more satisfying relationships and more women seem to be attracted to me than ever, yet I can't point to any particular thing or set of things I'm doing. If anything, I'm doing less.

I don't care anymore bout being alpha, I no longer see mating as a “competition,” and I don't feel the need to worry overly much what evolutionary science says I should or shouldn't be doing…and it seems to be working for me even though it flies in the face of everything I learned about Game.

Some chicks just dig beta males, I guess.

I think for all of those who question whether or not “game” works need to be reading the scientific evidence FIRST before delving into any of the traditional material (Mystery Method etc.).

Start with On the Origin of Species by Darwin

Read his stuff on Sexual Selection

Read E. O. Wilson's work on Sociobiology

Read Blank Slate by Pinker

Read Selfish Gene by Dawkins

Read The Red Queen by Ridley

Read Sperm Wars by Robin Baker (and then go back and read the academic text on which the book is based).

Peruse through the academic journals and look at all of the peer reviewed research.

Once you have done all that THEN go ahead and read game material. It will make a lot more sense.

Rashida Jones I believe. Which is perfect — she's a quirky, smart hottie herself.

Hi verie44.
Thanks for your message, and I've already replied. It must not be easy putting your address out there for all to see.
But I'm a bit puzzled by this statement that I saw on that page, coming from you:
“2) Sexual maturity does not take time to develop. It naturally happens with people you're comfortable with as long as you're comfortable with yourself. My last boyfriend told me I was much more uninhibited & fun in bed than any of the girls he'd ever dated. He said he was really shocked by it, because he expected me to suck, but it's not like I haven't seen porn or been exposed to mainstream society just like everyone else. He says most girls are somewhat ashamed of their bodies / won't keep the lights on or whatever. I have no hangups because no one has ever said anything critical to me & I haven't developed a sense of shame around sex. If you're a confident person, there's no reason you won't be amazing in bed even with little/no experience as long as you're with someone you like. I think the sexually amazing thing varies from person to person, and has nothing to do with virgin status or not.”

“My last boyfriend told me I was much more uninhibited & fun in bed than any of the girls he'd ever dated.” <- That bit stuck out for me, so excuse me if I need to ask about what you've just told me.

So is this “virginity virginity” or is this “technical virginity/secondary virginity”?

“Beta” and “Alpha” isn’t divided by honesty and dishonesty either. Betas are attempting to manipulate women into being with them, but don’t know what they are doing. Many, most even, are just as duplicitous as your average Player; but their duplicity doesn’t garner results. Betas tell women what they think they want to hear in order to gain their affection, but habitually fail.

These same men, flung into an alternate universe where their clumsy attempts at gaining affection were extremely reliable and found themselves swimming in a sea of willing sexual partners would be just as debauched as those despised Players.

‘Beta’ loyalty isn’t too far from desperation in way too many cases. A woman would rather have a cad that chooses to be loyal than a particularly inept beta because the beta isn’t doing any choosing. He’s just latching onto whatever he can get. A women that isn’t suffering from serious self-esteem issues to begin with isn’t going to be terribly satisfied with a partner that scraped her from the bottom of the barrel.

Shut the fuck up you son of a bitch. You think Betas are honest, responsible, and caring because they think those values get them chicks? They are like that because they have principles. You don’t just adopt principles nor give up principles based on their effect on attracting women.