Next!

It’s been a long time since my last post on here.  A lot has happened since then and I am not so sure if I even have Aspergers as it seems that five different medical professionals will give you five different answers.  What I do known is that I have very low tolerance levels for certain things and that commonly touted excuses and rationalisations for those things don’t wash with me.  This is particularly so when it comes to trying to understand the rituals of dating.

In my early 20s I became familiar with an online community known as “the seduction community” or “pickup artists (PUAs).  They are a controversial group and I don’t know how much I buy into what they say.  But I have been thinking today and I have come to the conclusion that they are right about one or two things.

Before I go into what those things are, I will explain what PUAs are all about.  Essentially, their community consists of a core of self-styled dating gurus and an outer core of fans.  There are numerous sub-sects within the community, but they are united in their adherence to one basic premise: that mainstream dating advice is fundamentally flawed as it confuses what women often say they want in a partner with what they actually go for in reality.  According to their argument, supplicating to women as traditional advice suggests merely makes you look weak, unmanly and destined to remain in the friend zone.  Instead, you want to look like you are a high status man with plentiful options so that girls will tend to feel like they have to work for you rather than the other way round.  Among the most famous PUAs is the author Neil Strauss.

As stated above, PUAs have attracted a fair amount of controversy because of how they purport to describe how women think and feel in less than flattering terms.  PUAs respond to this criticism by saying that they are simply responding to what women actually want on an instinctive level and that, therefore, by definition, what they are doing is a good thing.

Personally I don’t know how far down the PUA road I want to travel.  That’s not because I think they are sexist as charged, because at the end of the day, people want what they want and it does seem to work from what I’ve seen.  It’s mainly because I just don’t want to have to play head games to keep women interested as some of them advocate.  My assessment is that, once you get beyond a few basic pointers, you are really talking about amassing notches on your bedpost, and speaking as someone who really does want a serious relationship, I detest the thought of having to play head games to keep someone interested.

But there are some real gems among those basic pointers, and one of those is the concept of “nexting”.  This is the idea that the solution to 90% of the problems men encounter during dating is to just go and have sex with more women so that this one loss doesn’t seem like such a big deal.  And this is the argument that really does resonate with me.

It sounds very cold, harsh and perhaps even sexist – making it sound like you should treat women as sex objects and nothing more.  I say that this criticism is unfair.  Let’s consider it for a moment.

The desire to have sex is natural and harmless in and of itself.  Even if you (like me) are the kind of guy who would rather have a stable relationship than sleep around, you still need to be able to establish sexual attraction if you want to be seen as more than a friend.  And this element is extremely arbitrary and frustrating.  You can be as nice as pie and still get told that they just don’t “click” with you or feel a “spark” with you.  You are also aware that people may not tell you the bare truth because they feel awkward doing so.  Trying to understand their real reasons in an attempt to satisfy your hunger for justice and logic will simply drive you mad.  All you can really do is recognise that you made a bad investment, “next” the girl in question and stop wasting your time.  There are some people you just can’t win with and some problems you really can’t solve.  Life is too short.