Cesare: Now it is a matter of values to focus exclusively on Seducing women and leave the rest of your life to fall apart and no one here is advocating that. However, this is a site to meet and have relationships with women, so that is what we focus on here.
I agree with you 100%. I posted a statement similar to yours a couple months back and the overwhelming response was that this board is about self-improvement and being a man. Read, lift weights, eat red meat, etc.
I was baffled. When I came here, this was a site for picking up girls and learning not to make stupid moves that drive them away. The skills-techniques-field reports crowd has kept this spirit alive and I appreciate that.
There is however a large group of "Follow your dreams and you'll somehow become successful in your relationships with women along the way" crowd that is posting more and becoming more critical of field reports and seduction skills.
They (Pook and guys who place less emphasis on skill and more on "being a man") seem to be guys who have a fear of success in the game, a fear of doing the hard work of effectuating a change on a deeper level necessary to succeed with women on a larger scale. So they use this whole "focus on your hobbies" crap in order to justify being virgins or having zero experience with women.
There is no doubt in my mind that this could hold true for some of the individuals who embrace Pook's philosophy.
Most of the ones who give advice, however, are sold on the fact that "embracing sexuality" and "putting the emphasis on self-improvement" are what attract women. They don't talk about interest levels, weasel phrases, or opening with a Pez dispenser. Why? Entertain the posibility that these guys have developed enough skill over the years to be happy with the quantity and quality of their relationships, without having deliberately studied, scrutinized, and rehearsed all sorts of approaches, pick ups, and eye contact experiments.
Way back when, the captain of my school's football team got all the girls. He was the big athlete and girls loved him. He obviously was full of confidence and had enough experience leaving high school to understand women and how to attract them. Assuming he didn't graduate to become a big, lazy fatso you can almost imagine how much success he is having without learning Mystery Method or polishing his conversation skills. And if you asked him how to get the chicks, he'd probably say this:
"Uhh, just be yourself. Lift weights and stay in shape. You should probably play a sport and oh yeah, have a lot of stuff going for you because chicks dig a man with a plan. I don't even focus on them so much but they keep coming into my life. Also it helps to be big and strong like me, and usually if I'm feeling confident I can score with just about any woman I meet. So yeah, confidence is important... Double your Dating? What the hell's that?"
To use another analogy, you seem to be saying that if a guy works out at the gym a lot, he is probably someone who is a hardgainer and does not have any muscle, however, someone who does not feel the need to go to the gym and workout is probably naturally built and healthy. Something is flawed here.
Notice I'm not discounting the fact that our football captain has skill. He has a lot of skill but as you see, he is not attributing his success to skill. This guy is naturally built and healthy, meaning he has put in the work but either didn't think much of it or had some sort of advantage (let's say genetics or performance enhancement drugs). He does feel the need to go to the gym and workout and he does it, day in day out, but he does not feel the need to read volumes upon volumes of information on lifting weights or to join the bodybuilder discussion forum for that matter. Maybe he had some great instruction growing up and never even looked at Arnold's encyclopedia. To him, everybody has the potential to get big (even the hardgainers) as long as they just get to the gym and lift. He may not have specific advice or quality advice, but that doesn't detract from his level of success.
Anyone on this forum who advocates "Just act macho, lift weights, and focus on your future" as a method of improving relationships is either (a) on a different planet than the rest of us, (b) Cesare's theory that they're a bunch of virgins with zero experience with women, or (c) that's the best advice they can give because they never dissected their interactions with women; whether or not they ever knew what they were doing right, getting laid always seemed to happen for them.
I think Cesare, you're saying that I'm giving our members more credit than they deserve.
If you want to get good at anything, you have to study and practice it.
I normally advocate this angle but understand there are a lot of guys who are good at what they do without exactly scrutinizing what they do. There are personal trainers (I hear) who absolutely suck and have no idea what they're doing despite the fact they're built like tanks. There are pick up artists out there (i.e. according to PDX, his friend) who never studied and practiced the art of picking up women. They went out and they did. They are naturals because they happened to do everything right without giving it much thought. For most of us, however, that just doesn't work. We need to study and practice, or just forget we ever wanted something... and maybe that's what some of these pork eating self-helperoos are doing. We'll never figure it out, but what's important is that we realize they don't hold all the pieces to the puzzle like they say they do. "Embrace your ______" fill in the blank will do sh!t for you unless you know
how to do it
We can't all be as good as (Jordon), but if we want to come close, then the only way is to practice that particular game, and not embrace your testosterone and read Shakespearan plays.
Exactly!
One further thing deserves clarification:
ME: I bet most of these (skills oriented) guys were not as naturally successful with women for whatever reasons when they started and so they focus more on improving interpersonal skills than on self-improvement as a whole.
I could certainly be wrong about this but I have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of our seven thousand six hundred some-odd members came here because they wanted help with relationships. Some of these guys weren't complete duds but couldn't figure out why phone numbers weren't turning into dates. Other guys...
is THIS AFC? Well, how about THIS? How long should I wait to call her? How do I kiss a girl? Should I ask her if we are a couple??? etc. etc. etc.... THESE guys come here as AFCs. I did, and perhaps there lies tremendous bias.
So when guys say they don't care about skill and to just be yourself because it works for them, I think either they are full of it, or they just never had to work as hard as some of us to understand women or to attract women. When guys devote massive amounts of time to improving their seduction skills, it tells me these guys are aware of the skill it takes to seduce women and whereas most guys who are "naturals" don't think in terms of skills.
That does not imply that all skills oriented members had no skills prior to coming here. It is highly possible that some guys had skills and came here to get even better. I doubt that applies to everyone (understatement of the millenium). These "naturals" who wanted to get better are different from the be-your-self naturals in that they realize they could learn seduction as opposed to "embracing their masculinity" and waiting on the outcome.
DWK
