It is valuable to set aside time to consider what it takes to “live the life”—the life, that is, of a man committed to meeting and seducing a succession of new women. There’s much to consider. What proportion of one’s time should be spent on the hunt? How sustainable is “the life” long term? At what point should one “‘cash in” and enter into a relationship if at all? The problem that I face, and I suspect that this may apply to other men, too, is that due to time constraints I frequently have one foot in and one foot out of game, which in its many forms (daygame, night game, Tinder game, or a combination of each) remains essential as a set of tools for meeting and attracting women.
On the one hand, nothing appeals to me more than the idea of a succession of hookups with attractive young ladies. I am a libertarian at heart, and I find convention stifling. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with long-term relationships, but I find them difficult. I’ve had several of them in my life, each with cool girls with whom I shared great times, but temperamentally such a setup is not for me, particularly if we’re talking about living together. My focus is on my work and on writing.
The truth is that as much as relationships require “work” so do casual hookups. In my pickup manual The 7 Laws of Seduction , I recommend that men approach a hundred women a month, which is something I still do myself from time to time: it gets the motor running, sharpens my social skills, gives me incredible momentum and usually provides some good prospects for sex, but let’s be honest. Interacting with a hundred strangers takes emotional energy and a lot of time, and that’s before you get to the dating and seduction part.
Meeting up with a girl, if only for two drinks (recommended), making her excited for sex with you, getting her into a cab and back to your apartment, handling token resistance and other games before finally fucking her: all of this takes time, persistence, tenacity, and energy. On top of a job, side projects, exercise, and socialising, such a process takes its toll.
A lot of information is available about how to meet girls and get them into bed. Less discussed is what to do when you’ve gotten past that point and you’re attempting to juggle the women you meet with your work and the rest of your life, which should certainly be your primary focus.
This came to a head for me on the weekend when B stayed over at my flat. I’ve been seeing B since the beginning of the year, and she has become my primary girl almost by default. She scores well against all my personal requirements: B is twenty-three, very slim, long legs, long hair, great facial bone structure. Polish.
B stayed at my place on Saturday night. She woke up feeling lazy on Sunday morning and called her waitressing job and told them she had a temperature. I want to stay here with you. Fine, baby, but I need to work. That’s OK. I won’t disturb you.
I sat down at the computer. I am editing a novel, a process that requires concentration and, ideally, solitude. B lay in bed and ate toast. She painted her toenails. She called a friend and had an animated ten-minute conversation in Polish. B watched an episode of Gossip Girl. Finally, B had a crying jag and told me she couldn’t trust me.
The correct “alpha” response to this is something like you should have kicked her out of the house. Money over such women, bro. Never let a girl come before your work. You know what I mean.
True.
But life is rarely that simple. Two issues arise. First, most of the women I meet actually do very little with their lives. Second, unless you’re a complete psychopath, in every scenario a calculation must be made about how much you tolerate and how much you push back on without being really annoying.
Most people are aimless. As Will Self once observed, “A vast majority of [their] time is spent undertaking work that has little human or spiritual value.” They are consumers, not producers. They watch sports. They watch box sets. They discuss these box sets on social media. They update Instagram. They obsess over celebrities. They drink. They take drugs. They have a good time, but their lives have little substance. Put simply, they have nothing to do.
Perhaps my hunting grounds are to blame. I meet girls in shopping malls and in discos and in manmade pleasure resorts, such as Ibiza or Las Vegas—twenty-first century locales of superficiality. They are filled with people—women and men—who have nothing to do. The problem is that I do have things to do. I am merely visiting, dipping in, following the demands of my biological urge to have sex. The girls I meet, who I become intimate with (they spend the night with me; we wake together in my bedroom, a room where I also like to work), plucked from a landscape of banality are often banal themselves. There is a conflict when they expect me to be too.
Meet women in art galleries. Meet women in book shops. Done that. The problem persists. A woman who can discuss Almodovar films rather than Pitbull’s music is still a consumer. She doesn’t necessarily do anything either.
If you are someone who does something, such as getting up every day and working on a project that might change your life, be it writing, blogging, fitness, or business, you are rare because most other people don’t have such a project. Worse, aimless people tend to try to slow you down, to bring you down to their level. Perhaps this is because they are aware, and ashamed, of their own inactivity.
For me, this makes even short-term relationships with most women problematic. Novels don’t write themselves. As appealing as a lazy weekend may be for many, for me it is an anathema: I have to get to work.