I am very inexperienced when it comes to relationships. I feel like it’s something that other people just instinctively knew how to do and I missed the memo. I didn’t think too much of it when I was growing up; I just assumed that at some point, it would also come to me as it did to my friends around me. But as I got older and found myself in my twenties, still a virgin, and never having had a serious relationship, I had to admit to myself that it’s not that “it just hasn’t happened to me yet”, but that there really is something wrong with me – something that I’m doing wrong. This realisation on its own doesn’t help much, it’s pretty depressing actually. But then realising that if there’s something that I am doing wrong, there is something that the others are doing right.
That’s how I got interested in the world of pickup. I like this way of taking something that comes so naturally to some people and looking at it as a sort of algorithm, something you can take apart and reconstruct to make sense of it. I guess I’m a bit nerdy that way. It’s like learning a new game: you accept the rules and framework of the game and then find your own individual way to navigate it in order to succeed.
Ok, but that notion takes me to what I’ve been wondering lately: what is this success that I’m after? To me, it really isn’t about sex (btw, I did lose my virginity eventually at 24) or about finding “love”, whatever that is. So what is it then? I don’t quite have the answer, but I’ve been thinking about something that Neil Strauss wrote in his book
The Rules of the Game:
Quote:
“If you’re reading this book, it’s because something in your life hasn’t been working. And if something isn’t working, there’s only one way to fix it for good: Take it completely apart and rebuild it piece by piece. Only then can you make sure that every single component is functioning at its highest level, free of error, with the most up-to-date technology."
After having struggled with social anxiety throughout my childhood and youth (having been bullied and lonely a lot), I did manage to overcome that to a certain degree where I now find myself in a situation where I have a lot of wonderful friends and a big social circle. But there is still this one aspect of social interaction that I just can’t seem to crack on my own, and until I do, I will continue to feel incomplete and not in control of my own life. So I guess if I were to try and pinpoint what “success” in pickup would be for me, it would be to take charge of and responsibility for my own presence in the world instead of just taking what is given and making do with that.
Is this something that resonates with any of you guys? What’s your end goal in all this? Why do you do pickup?