One of the hard parts about game and dating: when doing nothing is the best option

Game teaches men to control and channel our emotions, but one of the hardest parts about the game, in my experience and, it seems, in many others', is doing nothing. Saying nothing. Not responding, when every emotional fiber of one's being cries out to respond. Those are the times when a chick texts something, and I yearn to text back what I think, or to convince her to act, but in my rational mind, I know that saying zero is the right move, and that my emotional yearnings must be curtailed.

"Impatience" is often the handmaiden of failed game. A few days ago, I met a chick I've loosely known for about nine months. I have a lot of logistical complexity, and she has some too, and I've run hot and cold by accident, because I know I shouldn't try to bang her, but she's also a hot 8, and looks and smells like sex, so here I am, wanting to bang her.

We made plans to go out, and she wanted to bring her friend. Normally I'd say "no" to that, outright, but everything else about her seemed to be on, and I had the logistical moment, so I let her bring the friend. And then she did some irresponsible chick things, details of which I'll skip, but it led to the friend being angry at me (unjustifiably, as usual, but she's a girl, whatever). And the optimal response was… nothing. The lay seemed super close, and yet when the window closed, I realized that saying zip is the right thing to do. The day after, I thought about checking in with the chick, wanted to check in with her, but she's leaving to travel for a few weeks and thus she has no logistics… note that I didn't know about the traveling until we were on the date.

To do nothing is hard, a topic I covered recently regarding a guy's game dilemma. With the girl I'm describing, the one I want, she's been flakey, but responsive, and I think she's a go-along, get-along girl, driven by her emotions and by whoever is most directive in her life. Unfortunately, her bitchy friend is the assertive one, the girl I'm interested in the go-along one, so the bitchy friend won. More accurately, I put myself in a poor position, in part from impatience, and in part from hope. Maybe it'll happen in a few weeks. Probably it won't, but who knows.

Game demands that the guy do something, particularly at first. The guy must approach. The guy must lead the conversation. The guy must get her number and set up the date. The guy must execute the date. The guy must have a good place for sex set up and ready to go. Most of the time, the bias towards action and doing is correct. Talking is woman frame, action is man frame. Double-texting, though much hated online, works at times, because chicks are often too scattered to reply a specific text… and look, have you ever forgotten about a text some friend has sent, or some chick you're a little interested in but not that intersted in? I have. With chicks, also, their emotions change from moment to moment, so that no response might occur on a Sunday, but on a Wednesday, she replies because she's feeling fun and flirty at that moment. Knowing when to do nothing is its own challenge… I don't have an algorithm for it… but when you realize you're not on the path to a date, or a sex, in that moment, often "nothing" is the answer. Reset the board, try again later. Attention is the only tool modern men have, and a large segment of game is about doling out attention correctly. Most guys offer too little attention (they don't approach at all, or they open a chick and then expect her to do the initial conversational work (she can't)), or they offer too much, which turns the girl off due to neediness and desperation. I've been writing about the failure with that girl, but I do think I successfully projected a non-needy, non-desperate vibe. I wanted her, but didn't need her, and I think she sensed that. I'll give myself that credit. Probably I should have curtailed my impatience, though, and waited until the friend obstacle was gone, even if it meant weeks or months.

If there's a mistake and omission in this blog + record, it's probably emotions. It's the feeling of how the game feels. A lot of game entails controlling and channeling emotions, but too much control has costs, and probably I've not acknowledged those enough. Game writing is almost always produced by overly logical ("logical," I should say, logic and rationality being hard to define) male nerds. I don't know whether that's a solution to this, since most guys let our feelings f**k up our game. Yet turning down emotions too far has its own costs. Chicks love to feel a man's passion, properly exposed and expressed.

I think I ignored or didn't properly understand women's emotional worlds for a long time, either. Like, really understanding how passive and reactive most women are, particularly in dating… I think I thought I understood, but in some ways I still don't, not fully. So many chicks are fundamentally random, because whatever their emotions are in a given moment, is their entire reality. Forward planning and execution barely exist, particularly in romantic matters, which is part of the reason it's so useless for a guy to get angry with a chick for breaking dates, forgetting about them, not texting back, and so forth. This kind of behavior also explains why so many women lament being single in their 30s or 40s… often, their random behavior has alienated the better guys, and shown guys that they're great lays but lousy partners. For a young hot chick, this may not matter, because she's sleeping around and has an endless buffet of men. Prior to the sexual revolution, I suspect a lot of chicks' emotional whirlwind was much more heavily moderated by their families' influence. Starting around WWII, the influence of family on chicks' sexual behavior declined. By the time I arrive on the scene, family influence is effectively absent in most chicks' sex lives and behaviors by age 18. The whole society is still trying to make sense of this, and game is a response to it. Guys who can elicit emotional reactions, and who know when to be reactive and when to be non-reactive, can generate incredible experiences. Can f**k like a Sultan used to.

But the game is an emotional rollercoaster for guys, too (field reports are better than most professional fiction because the stakes are real… a lot of professional fiction is wanking… although the best is amazing and transformative, and guys who want to improve their storytelling and game skills should read it). With the chick mentioned above, I had a moment when I thought we were going to get rid of the friend and I was going to have the chick. But then the friend wouldn't leave, and the main chick wouldn't tell the friend to get lost. And there it went. I was all geared up to have this hot chick, and it took me hours to process through the excitement and passion she'd stirred up. Intellectually I "know" that this happens. Emotionally, I was kicking myself, moving from angry to analytical to angry to disappointed in rapid succession, unable to control my consciousness or direct it. My thoughts were discordant, my attention uncharacteristically scattered. The things I would have liked to have done, since I was going to get the girl, I couldn't do. Such is the drama of the player, and the beauty of the attempt. I wanted to reach out to the girl, while knowing that, after a certain point, that'd be counterproductive. Feeling that urge to lunge, while knowing that to lunge is to lose, is painful and irritating. It is one thing to know, it is another to do, and a third one to portray those feelings of frustrated desire, that seem so thin in text and were coursing so powerfully through me in the aftermath. That girl was (is) so hot, and so into me, and the combination is better than drugs, though maybe fundamentally shallow, like drugs.