You only see the tip of the spear

But it's the decades of practice that count most

In many lay reports and game stories, you only see the tip of the spear... you see the open, the initial interactions, some dates, and the lay. You (typically) don't see the numerous hours, days, months, years spent developing the skills necessary to get to the open and the lay.

I say this because I read some guys lamenting how game doesn't work for them, how they don't understand why it works for other guys, etc. To take myself as an example, I don't know how many hours I've spent in the gym, at the yoga studio, or playing sports. I haven't spent very much time on shopping/fashion, but I have spent more time on those things than the median guy (I have heard guys say things like, "I only shop at Costco"). I don't know how much time I've spent working, but it's a lot of time and seems to be more than average. I spend zero time on video games and very little on TV or social media. Many guys become invested in professional sports... why watch a bunch of millionaires you don't know, who don't care about you, doing something that doesn't matter? The time other guys spend watching millionaires chase one another around a ball, I am at the gym, dating, reading, cooking, going out with friends, etc.

These practices compound over time. A guy who has been doing compound lifts for a year has advantages over guys who have been doing them for a month. A guy who has a consistent work record had advantages over guys who don't. A guy with a lot of experience with women has advantages with the next woman.

You don't know how many books I've read about women, evolutionary psychology, and desire.

You don't know how many times I've failed.

You don't know how many times I've been frustrated, justifiably or not.

I'm writing all this because I read about a lot of guys who are starting from a super low level. Guys who don't realize that they are sometimes competing with guys who have spent many years improving themselves and their value delivery mechanisms. If you're a guy starting from a low place, you may need to spend a lot of time improving yourself, your life, and your value-delivery all at the same time. You cannot get where you want to go without great, effective effort.

("Effective" effort... a lot of guys seem to put in a lot of ineffective effort, then wonder why things are not working out for them.)

In some ways, I have been working on building and maintaining value since I was a teenager. That's true in social network terms, in sports/athletics terms, in work terms (I have had some kind of job more or less continuously since I was 16), and in skill terms. If you are an average flabby/overweight guy whose life consists of a boring job followed by fast food, video games, porn, and TV... you may need a complete life overhaul. I'm working with decades of continual effort, and an average guy is probably not going to see results with a week or two of effort. Since I'm not trying to sell a magic self-improvement program that will help you overhaul your life in just one month for a small initial fee of $99, I can say that.

There is no easy way; there is only the hard way. Some guys are reaping dividends from years, sometimes a lifetime, of work. Some guys come from relatively fortunate backgrounds. Some guys don't. If you come from a shit background, you may have to spend hours, days, months, years attempting to correct.

As a guy, you can start doing things right today, and your efforts may not pay dividends for months or years. But what is the alternative? That you never get where you want to go?

You are competing for young hot chicks. If you don't want to compete, hunt for older, not-hot chicks, and you will not have to compete as much. This is why sports are so useful for young people, and sometimes older people: they teach you how to compete.

Everyone has struggle. When you are looking at porn, remember that the chick is typically being paid to be there, and that porn caters to the male fantasy of having young hot chicks readily available for NSA sex. Just like romance novels (romance novels are porn for chicks: if you do not already know this, why don't you?), cater to the female fantasy of having a top 1% man prove his intense masculinity, then commit to a basic chick (the heroine) for no good reason. Fantasy has its place, I don't deny that, but if you indulge in too much, you don't get the feedback you need from reality. The Internet is filled with people, guys and chicks, who have too little reality feedback, or who can't accept the feedback reality gives them. I will save the "Internet people problem" for another time, but, if you are one of them, get offline, the sooner the better.

Guys who get unhappy that the chicks they want are rejecting them, need to improve their value and value-delivery mechanism (aka game). Chicks who get unhappy about the way guys don't attend to her at age 35 like they did at age 25 have the same issues... except they can't improve their value much... call me a feminist, but I feel compassionate towards chicks who mis-use their value. I've seen it put this way: imagine you're handed a million-dollar check at age 18. What would you do with it? Some guys would sensibly invest in an index fund and reap the gains for their lives, most would blow it on stupid shit. Hot chicks are getting a million-dollar check at age 18.

I don't know who first came up with that metaphor, but it's incredibly accurate. It is possible to get some normal chicks to behave like porn stars, for an individual guy, but it's typically a process... a process that we call game... and game is a combination of value + value delivery.

Many guys seem not to realize that attempting game without some underlying value will always be hard. Attempting game that is in no way congruent with a guy's underlying personality will always be hard. Many guys want fast results and don't see the failures, the value-building efforts, and the rejection that top guys have, or must take. Women are ruthless in evaluating men and most guys don't know what women actually like, want, and look for. Most guys want the same type of hot girls, often without building up through lower-value girls. Most guys have spent way too much time watching pornography and TV and way too little time with actual, real-world girls. Real-world girls provide the best educations, educations that can't be gotten only through reading. The more time spent with real-world girls, especially time spent trying to seduce and f**k them, the better the player will get. Older guys who've not put in this time will have problems. Younger guys should be striving to put in this time. These statements are compatible with Female “friends:” the comprehensive statement, if you read both posts carefully and comprehensively. Even time spent with girls who are on the border of attractiveness is better than time spent with phones and TVs.