The post about naturals

Guys who are instinctively good with women and their limitations

A paid subscriber asked me to write about naturals, because of this, "But look around in the wild at naturals and you’ll often see a tremendous, effective level of self-entitlement that leads to epic blowouts and epic successes." I was stumped because I wasn't sure I had much to say about the guys who just get how to be good with girls... it must be nice to be a natural, but I'm not one, though I've been mistaken for one many times in the last 15 years.

A key downside to being a natural is that many naturals are context-dependent. Probably this is most obvious in high school or college, when the star athletes may do well but revert to the mean when their sporting abilities aren't compelling to women. Some star athletes develop a sense of entitlement and a killer instinct that serves them well throughout life, but not all do. The guys who struggle early and have to consciously study the seduction arts can develop a long-term advantage over the guys who get laid quick and without conscious thought. If you're reading this, you're probably from a culture that values quick shortcuts over long-term fundamentals, so you'd prefer get-laid quick too, but, if you're reading this, you also probably can't get laid quick, so if you'd like quality p***y, you're stuck with mastering boring fundamentals.

I didn't have a lot to say on this topic and wasn't going to write this post, but then I read something that says most of what I have to say about naturals,

I have a pet theory that one reason so many child prodigies never amount to anything is that when you’re very smart, most things come to you easily, and consequently you never learn the mental and emotional tools necessary for grappling with problems that aren’t easy. I was not a child prodigy, but my educational surroundings weren’t exalted either, so I don’t think I encountered a single mathematical idea that I couldn’t instantly grasp until I reached college.

All of this had catastrophic consequences for my intellectual development. A lifetime of school being too easy caused me to subconsciously internalize a conviction that learning was effortless if done correctly, and that needing to struggle or practice was prima facie evidence that one had chosen the wrong subject. A friend of mine who’s a professional athlete once told me that a similar pathology is common among the most preternaturally gifted child athletes. Everything is easy, so they never develop habits of practice, stick-to-itiveness, mental fortitude, or grit. Then one day, it’s no longer easy, falling back on natural ability is no longer enough, and they’re unable to progress any further.

What makes this sickness especially insidious is that it naturally gets tangled together with pride. The smart or sporty kid relishes the fact that things come easily to him, derives feelings of satisfaction and worth from the fact that unlike these other mortals he doesn’t need to practice or study. When one day that changes and coasting is demonstrably no longer good enough, to begin practicing or studying isn’t just difficult because it means developing a new habit at a time of great stress, it’s difficult because it’s an attack on his very identity. Much easier to turn away and reject the activity itself as dumb or pointless or “not what I’m good at”, or to tell a consoling story about how “I would have succeeded if I’d tried”, and then go find something else at which he can succeed effortlessly. The longer this lasts, the harder it is to break out of the cycle, because to do so now additionally means owning up to all the things you could’ve been good at if you hadn’t had your head up your ass.

Guys who aren't naturals but who succeed "learn the mental and emotional tools necessary for grappling with problems that aren’t easy." Guys who aren't naturals need to break down everything from the opener to the full close in order to be able to perform the correct actions in the correct sequence and make reasonable real-time adjustments. Most guys never get good at this and so underperform with women. Naturals who aren't dependent on their environment may laugh at the nerds learning game the slow way, but let them laugh, cause each guy must live his own life and f**k the chicks he f**ks. Guys who learn the seduction arts also have to learn a growth mindset, and tenacity, and a bunch of other mental skills and practices to make what we do effective.

Lots of guys develop good-enough game in a particular ecosystem, like photography, or acting, or dancing, or whatever gives them high-enough status with a large-enough number of chicks for them to get enough surface area to get laid some. Cold-approach pickup is supposed to be maximally generalizable, but few guys truly practice it and the guys who tend to be most attracted to it are weirdos with problems to begin with, which probably limits its effectiveness. But if a natural's environment changes, and he can't change with it, he'll see his ability to get laid diminish or even be extinguished. What then? If pride compels him not to adapt, he'll fail. Seduction arts are about adapting until success. Not every guy will apply the universal lessons of the seduction arts in the exact same way, but he'll hone whatever native skills and abilities he has until he hits whatever peak physical or other limitations may impose him (a 60-year-old man who decides he's going to learn the game is not going to have the same peak he would have had at 20).

Without the subscriber who emailed me, I'd probably never have written about naturals, because naturals don't matter to me or my life. That some guys now think I'm a natural is funny to me, but also indicative of a society that loves ease and hates true work. Fat guys are always saying that I must have a genetic propensity to be slender. Fat guys are never like, "You must have great nutrition." They never want to look in the mirror at the reason they're fat, so they blame their genes and not all the quesadillas, pizzas, and soda they stuff in their mouths.

The guys who try are more likely to succeed than the guys who don't, but it's easier not to try and so most guys don't. I might have another post about why I don't write beginner material, and the short version is that a guy who is too hapless to find beginner material isn't going to make it regardless of what I say.