What makes it impersonal from my perspective is not their priors, more that doing well at relationships is all about getting women to like you.
People who are bad at relationships are probably also bad at picking the right kind of girl for them. So they might well get into relationships that are damaging financially and emotionally. E.g. don’t pick a clingy woman if you need to be away for long periods of time for work.
What makes it impersonal from my perspective is not their priors, more that doing well at relationships is all about getting women to like you.
Doing well at relationships is about getting people to like you… right? Thinking of how best to fulfill other people’s criteria isn’t always the best way to think about dating from the inside (sometimes it’s better to display what you want and let people come to you); nevertheless, being successful at relationships is about fulfilling the criteria of people you want relationships with. Am I not understanding your post?
being successful at relationships is about fulfilling the criteria of people you want relationships with.
If the “people you want” is the same as the “people that would be good for you” then yes. If you are unskilled in relationships then they are less likely to be the same and it is possible to get into relationships that aren’t good for you. In this case being good at relationships is about knowing how to extract yourself from the situation with minimum drama.
From a casual exposure PUA don’t seem to care much or give advice about long term relationships. But a lot of men do. And the AMP stuff was explictly aimed at people interested in one partner.
At no point in this discussion has anyone specified that we are talking only about relationships that a PUA is interested in.
Oh I know that PUA don’t care about long term relationships.
Yes they do. You are attacking an entire culture of straw.
People who are bad at relationships are probably also bad at picking the right kind of girl for them. So they might well get into relationships that are damaging financially and emotionally. E.g. don’t pick a clingy woman if you need to be away for long periods of time for work.
People practising PUA methods tend to improve their ability to navigate personal relationships in those areas too. It is the sort of thing that is often covered or responded to by trainers and tends to go hand in hand with the concept of ‘inner game’.
Oh I know that PUA don’t care about long term relationships.
Yes they do. You are attacking an entire culture of straw.
Okay that may have been an unfairly broad brush.
It seems to be a tiny fraction of what this forum talks about. And from what I can read it is after the fact questions/advice rather than how to pick the woman with the right personality to start with.
Well, the relationships forum with it’s 9k posts is about a tenth the size of the general questions forum, and about a third the size of the approaching/opening forum.
Yes, there are some cynical ideas about relationships in the community, and there is plenty of support for men who just want to play the field for now. And actually, considering that many men in the seduction community have either very little experience with women or are recovering from a bad breakup, it may be smart to wait a while before jumping into a long-term relationship with the first women who is nice to them. PUAs are interested in relationships, but they want to achieve a skillset so they have choices and don’t feel like they are settling for someone. As soon as PUAs get some skill and choices, they suddenly become a lot more selective. And the fact is that for most men, the space of women they are attracted to is much larger than the space of women who they are also interested in a relationship with.
I think a big reason for the disparity is that men who are learning how to be successful with women spend orders of magnitude more time “stuck” on problems in the early stages of interaction. It’s the same reason that people playing arcade games spend most of their time in the lower levels of the game. (Yes, I did just compare women to an arcade game. But I really do think it’s a good analogy for both men and women dating new partners, because so many processes follow a linear progression. I wonder what level “marriage” is?)
And from what I can read it is after the fact questions/advice rather than how to pick the woman with the right personality to start with.
PUAs do talk about this. It’s called “screening.” The sex guru David Shade notably emphasizes dating women with high self-esteem and methods of testing for it.
Doing a search on mASF pulls up about 800 posts with screening in the title. Here are a few that I found interesting:
Screening is in the category of “things that outsiders don’t think PUAs care about based on their initial impression, but which PUAs actually do talk about have a rich literature on, even if perhaps they should be talking about those topics more or in different ways.”
I think the maximal controvery reduction with minimal hamming distance would be replacing “don’t” with “doesn’t.” The average Pick Up Artist likely cares deeply about the direction of his eventual long term relationship; but Pick Up Artistry is focused on successfully starting relationships to a much greater extent than continuing or ending them.
What makes it impersonal from my perspective is not their priors, more that doing well at relationships is all about getting women to like you.
People who are bad at relationships are probably also bad at picking the right kind of girl for them. So they might well get into relationships that are damaging financially and emotionally. E.g. don’t pick a clingy woman if you need to be away for long periods of time for work.
Doing well at relationships is about getting people to like you… right? Thinking of how best to fulfill other people’s criteria isn’t always the best way to think about dating from the inside (sometimes it’s better to display what you want and let people come to you); nevertheless, being successful at relationships is about fulfilling the criteria of people you want relationships with. Am I not understanding your post?
If the “people you want” is the same as the “people that would be good for you” then yes. If you are unskilled in relationships then they are less likely to be the same and it is possible to get into relationships that aren’t good for you. In this case being good at relationships is about knowing how to extract yourself from the situation with minimum drama.
You seem to have the influence and values of that culture approximately backwards.
Edited due to overbroad statement.
From a casual exposure PUA don’t seem to care much or give advice about long term relationships. But a lot of men do. And the AMP stuff was explictly aimed at people interested in one partner.
At no point in this discussion has anyone specified that we are talking only about relationships that a PUA is interested in.
Yes they do. You are attacking an entire culture of straw.
People practising PUA methods tend to improve their ability to navigate personal relationships in those areas too. It is the sort of thing that is often covered or responded to by trainers and tends to go hand in hand with the concept of ‘inner game’.
Okay that may have been an unfairly broad brush.
It seems to be a tiny fraction of what this forum talks about. And from what I can read it is after the fact questions/advice rather than how to pick the woman with the right personality to start with.
Well, the relationships forum with it’s 9k posts is about a tenth the size of the general questions forum, and about a third the size of the approaching/opening forum.
Yes, there are some cynical ideas about relationships in the community, and there is plenty of support for men who just want to play the field for now. And actually, considering that many men in the seduction community have either very little experience with women or are recovering from a bad breakup, it may be smart to wait a while before jumping into a long-term relationship with the first women who is nice to them. PUAs are interested in relationships, but they want to achieve a skillset so they have choices and don’t feel like they are settling for someone. As soon as PUAs get some skill and choices, they suddenly become a lot more selective. And the fact is that for most men, the space of women they are attracted to is much larger than the space of women who they are also interested in a relationship with.
I think a big reason for the disparity is that men who are learning how to be successful with women spend orders of magnitude more time “stuck” on problems in the early stages of interaction. It’s the same reason that people playing arcade games spend most of their time in the lower levels of the game. (Yes, I did just compare women to an arcade game. But I really do think it’s a good analogy for both men and women dating new partners, because so many processes follow a linear progression. I wonder what level “marriage” is?)
PUAs do talk about this. It’s called “screening.” The sex guru David Shade notably emphasizes dating women with high self-esteem and methods of testing for it.
Doing a search on mASF pulls up about 800 posts with screening in the title. Here are a few that I found interesting:
Screen for long-term
Screen self-esteem for relationships
The screening thread
The dangers of not screening
Screening out the unworthies
Screening is in the category of “things that outsiders don’t think PUAs care about based on their initial impression, but which PUAs actually do talk about have a rich literature on, even if perhaps they should be talking about those topics more or in different ways.”
I think the maximal controvery reduction with minimal hamming distance would be replacing “don’t” with “doesn’t.” The average Pick Up Artist likely cares deeply about the direction of his eventual long term relationship; but Pick Up Artistry is focused on successfully starting relationships to a much greater extent than continuing or ending them.