Ramblings about a change in perspective towards game and life

(Warning: Low value and un-actionable ramblings about feelings ahead. You may want to skip this one, especially if you're a beginning player and don't yet have strong fundamentals. If you're a guy reading “red pill” or player ideas, you should prefer actionable ideas over ramblings. Yet if you've been in the game for a while, it's hard not to think about the bigger picture. I'll never say that sex is bad or that pickup isn't worth it. But I feel my feelings changing in ways that I wouldn't have expected.)

Lately I've been lackadaisical about chasing women and sex. This is somewhat different from being lazy, because I've been lazy too and being lazy means wanting sex and knowing that getting sex will be worth it but not wanting to put in the effort to get up and make things happen. As a man, it is pretty much always your job to make things happen, whether you want that to be true or not.

Over the past couple years, I've noticed more often that after I have sex with a random woman, I feel more of that "hollow" sense that I've read about before and used to think was stupid. Yet now I'm feeling it. I don't think I'm tired of sex, because the sex itself is still fun, but seeking it isn't as strong an animating force as it used to be for me. Especially after sex, I find myself holding the woman and doing aftercare but feeling totally void, instead of the satisfied pleasure mixed with the feeling of a job well done that used to be common for me. I can go longer without sex without craving it.

Otherwise I feel good. Most of my life is "successful" by typical definitions, although I have a strong minimalism streak that puzzles most of my friends and colleagues, who don't get that I don't care about houses, TVs, cars, and the other crap people waste money on. I don't think the call of the void after sex is a sign of generalized depression. I can't rule that out altogether but don't think that's "it."

I have to wonder what's up. It could be a change in life course. I have been chasing (and fucking) women since not that long after I hit puberty. I think I had a more normal teenage life than a lot of pickup guys and players, many of whom seem to have been un-sexed or undersexed "nice guys" well into their 20s. I was never a "natural" but I did fine and started having sex at a normal to young age, so I wonder if I don't have the need to "catch up" that seems to drive a fair number of players. I never had a decade-long relationship that ended in years of dead bedroom, or some of the other experiences that drive guys to be players.

Maybe I've had enough sex and things are all right for me. To be sure I still have some regulars on rotation and there are new prospects on the docket... I'm just not as excited… motivation is its own challenge, but it's not one that I'm familiar with because sex has for so long been a central motivation.

I don't know what the alternative is: I can't imagine cohabitating with a woman ever again. Can I build a successful long-term, open relationship with a woman? One that yields to my own need for novelty, which, left unsatiated, has always come back? It doesn't seem likely. So maybe the issue lies elsewhere. I may have exhausted some of my need to have a lot of sex.

I can still pull women, I still like some of the unusual things I'm into like non-monogamy and making sex tapes, but more often I feel like a hamster on a wheel. If I get off the wheel, what happens? My job is going reasonably well. So what happens?

I've honestly thought about becoming a part-time dating coach (although second thoughts make me reconsider). Another bitch thing to say, but it's true, and I see inept guys of all ages all around me. Yet I think thinking about such things, like "dating coaching," is better than what the average person does, which is smother their thoughts and feelings under the oleaginous, disgusting weight of TV, Facebook, and bullshit. Most people don't change cause they don't want to.

Friends ask me how I have time to do "all" the things I do. I don't have any more time than anyone else, but I've learned to cut the typical timewasters out and that leaves a lot of possibility for growth, development, knowledge, and of course sex. Or write this ridiculously long whine, haha.

But it also leaves time for getting in touch with whatever's within. For a long time, the top thing within me has been work, creativity, and most of all sex with the next pretty girl. If none of those things drives me anymore, what is left?

I look around me and out of the married people I see, I'd guess under 40% are in truly functional relationships, let alone growth-oriented relationships. I'm old enough to see people's marriages crumble as their kids leave for college, leaving the couple in the relationship to re-meet each other and discover the stranger within and the stranger they've been living with. I've chosen to avoid that path, but I cannot avoid the perils of the path I'm on.

After two decades+ of being driven by varied, hedonistic sex and sex experiences, what if those kinds of things aren't the driving thing for me anymore? I will not say I've mastered the game, because it's clear that other guys have game far superior to mine, but I've done it well enough for my purposes.

I wonder if all guys who get deeply into the varied, hedonistic sex game eventually find that its urgency wanes. Most of the guys who write about the game seem to have been deeply into it for less than a decade. Like I said, many seem to be making up for lost times and opportunities. They don't want to be the good boy, the nice guy, anymore. Totally legit, by the way. I'm not knocking it. But I've been doing the sex thing for longer, and that might affect my outlook.

This ramble doesn't have answers. So many moment-by-moment tactical things have answers: sex spike; seek number; invite her back to your place; open her; ask her sex questions; provide comfort. Many of the strategic things do too: live in the center of the city or the center of the nightlife district; don't eat sugar; lift. But what I'm feeling now doesn't have an answer. Maybe this is why many artists turn mystic over time. They've transcended the medium and are trying to tap into or develop something else. What is that something else?

Guys around my age who don't have kids would probably be thinking about kids.

How many times can I go through the process before the process itself is boring?

Maybe I need to learn or master a new skill. I am not the master of game, but I'm good enough to have achieved as much as I want to achieve. The sex I've had recently has been good. The void may pass with time. Maybe I need a real break for an extended period of time, and that will recharge my need. Bizarrely, I wonder if I can do it.