Game.
Much of the men’s dating advice community swears by it.
Their mindset is – Women are attracted to high-status behavior in men. So if a man learns how to properly ACT around women, what exactly to say, that Y is the right thing to do when she does X… He’ll clean up, right?
I was quite a game-focused guy in the early days of my dating life. I’d read up on all sorts of tactics that would supposedly spike a girl’s attraction to me – displays of value, teasing her, sitting beside her on a date instead of across from her, canned lines, kino, etc – then go out in the field and test them out. I’d tried the pure authenticity “nice guy” approach, and all it got me was anxiety and heartbreak.
Learning game and applying it in the field was FUN. And it really helped me kill my “oneitis” mindset. For once, I felt some sense of power in my dating life after I got used to playing around with a girl like that. The tension of meeting a new pretty girl became half the fun instead of an “oh shit, what do I do now?” moment.
But it didn’t get me quality. I got good at recognizing a girl’s wants, needs, emotional triggers, and playing myself as the guy who could satisfy them… Except those of the girls I REALLY wanted.
Thanks to game, I finally got laid with some pretty girls I was super attracted to (after a summer of refining my prowess with it), but these girls didn’t stick around. And any time I’d meet an emotionally healthy girl with good values, my “game” never resonated with her. In fact, it did more to repel her than attract her!
Still, that time of my life was a fun one. I loved going out and gaming the ladies, even if they’d reject me. Getting them to dance with me, kiss me, laugh with me was empowering. But something about me was lacking.
When game DOESN’T work
During my hardcore redpill “game” days, I dated a sweet, good-natured, intelligent girl who was way more gorgeous in person than she was in her photos. And this girl was genuinely interested in getting to know me as a person. Refreshing.
So I gamed her.
Because I really wanted to fuck her.
Then she dumped me.
Ouch.
Truth is, I didn’t need game or redpill or PUA theory to get this girl. She was ALREADY attracted to me. And unconsciously, the fact that I thought I needed to apply it to keep her turned her off in the end.
Yet if I’d completely ditched the game with her, I still doubt I would have kept her around for long.
The real reason she lost attraction to me was because I LOST FRAME with her. I’d temporarily put up the image that I was a cool, attractive, honest guy, but I couldn’t cover up my core frame forever. I couldn’t keep covering up the fact that at the time, I was needy for sex and female validation.
My “game” wasn’t an attraction-builder, so much as a neediness-concealer.
Game + authenticity = the winning combo
Game works to attract a woman. Game works to keep a woman. It’s 100% necessary, gents. Don’t ever deny its importance in your dating life.
But a ton of guys learn game as a crutch. They have low self-esteem, validation issues, and psychological baggage that’s holding them back from integration. So rather than work through it head-on and uncover a more solid sense of self… They learn a bunch of words and tactics to cover up their fragile frame. These guys assume that game by itself is what works to attract women. Wrong.
Game escalates attraction. It doesn’t generate it.
Your ENERGY is what truly attracts women. Your game is simply the conduit for said energy. A woman can enjoy your game, but plenty of men come off as hollow, robotic, inauthentic when they do game. This can pique a girl’s interest at first, but the lack of congruent energy will turn her off sooner or later. Usually sooner, especially if she has high self-esteem.
Women aren’t attracted to your words or your routines. They’re attracted to YOU. If you don’t already viscerally understand that, you have much inner work ahead of you. You have a lot of trauma and dissonance that needs undoing.
Anyhoo, near the end of my hardcore “game” days, I knew something about me was lacking. I’d slept with some attractive girls, gone on my fair share of dates, but that wasn’t enough. My frame would always break with these girls, no matter how on-point my game was. Then I discovered the book that spearheaded the next stage of my “get good with girls” journey – Models: Attract Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson.
That book changed my life. I used to obsessively read it every day, internalizing the lessons. A lack of neediness is the root of male attractiveness. Pickup artists and their tactics fail because they’re inauthentic. Insecure, needy men get insecure, needy women. Confident, honest men get confident, honest women. Polarity attracts women; the more forthright you are about your authentic self, the quicker a woman will decide whether she likes you or not, and you’ll either strongly attract her or strongly repel her.
Then, my “game” started working FOR me 100% of the time. No longer was I using it as a crutch. I was using it as a means of self-expression, showing girls who I am without giving myself away too easily. Even if a girl rejected me, I felt good. I’d stood up for what I truly thought and felt instead of hiding it behind approval-seeking. I learned to see things in terms of her being wrong for me, not me failing to measure up to some imaginary standard of an attractive guy I’d assume she’d want.
Even after that, the lessons I’d learnt from Models got me burning down my old life, and creating a new one, a better, more aligned one. But that’s a story for another day.
If there’s one lesson I want you gents to get from this article, it’s that you need to have a healthy mindset around game. Learn it. Have fun with it. But be aware of its true nature. Game that comes from a frame of neediness and insecurity will only keep needy, insecure girls around you. Your frame is more important than your game.
If your masculine sexual energy is lacking, stifled, or unintegrated, no line, no game tactic, no theoretical knowledge about women and dating will turn around your results with women. A solid frame comes from doing the inner work. Success with women starts from the flowing current of sexual energy in your body.
For more guidance on understanding, developing, and expressing your masculine sexual energy… The energy that’s the KEY to attracting and retaining the highest-quality girls for you…
Take some action today,
– Ben
