About two and a half years ago, I wrote a post titled The Newbie Guide to PUA Development. It was designed to give newbies a blueprint to follow to help them improve and succeed as quickly as possible. It became widely popular, being stickied on various forums around the world and garnering tens of thousands of views and hundreds of replies.
This is a much-needed update and revision to that first document. Information and theory in the PUA industry has evolved quite a bit since early 2008. Not to mention my own understanding of people's development.
There's a lot of information out there to sift through and a lot of people telling you that THEIR way is the CORRECT way. The truth is, developing your skills with women is a personal journey, and everyone is going to gravitate towards their own style and interests. But there are some common sign posts that we all pass along the way which I hope to elucidate here.
This is my best attempt of organizing everything out there into a comprehensible "big picture" format to base your learning around. Focus is on what types of practice and action you should be taking, not just theory.
Finally, as I said in the last version of this document, the common denominator in everyone's success with this stuff is the same as it is with any other skill-set: the effort you put in and your willingness to change your behavior. Nothing written below will mean anything to you if you're not willing to humble yourself enough to learn or put in the necessary effort to achieve the results you want.
A few notes before we begin:
- The recommended time frames below are assuming regular activity and practice. They're based on my observations of dozens, if not hundreds, of guys over the past five years. Obviously there are exceptions, but I find these time-frames to be the most common.
- Like many things, learning pick up is not completely linear. In fact, it's probably impossible to lay out a perfect linear progression that everyone must follow, as everyone's preferences, natural strengths/weaknesses, lifestyles, etc. differ very widely. Chances are your particular progression will bleed over between phases slightly. So don't be alarmed if you see a little of yourself in one stage ahead and/or behind where you are. That's probably normal.
- Recommended products are the ones I've found of highest quality and most applicable to that particular sticking point. All links are not affiliated.
[SIZE="3"]Stage 1: Newbie[/SIZE]
Experience: Varies widely. Commonalities usually includes being very passive and supplicant, failed relationships or complete lack of relationships in the past. Social skills range from decent to abysmal. Personal lifestyle ranges from very strong to very weak.
Purpose: To educate himself and try just enough to figure out what works for him and what doesn't.
Average Timeframe: 0 - 6 Months
We all come from very different backgrounds. From 18-year-old high school students to 55-year-old retired professors. Divorcees and virgins. Engineers and artists. Every country, all walks of life, rich or poor. Some of us come wanting a new girlfriend/wife. Others want to fuck everything that will stop and let us. Either way, the idea that we all should be taught the same thing or that there's a one-size-fits-all-formula is ridiculous.
As a newbie, you must take it upon yourself to educate yourself as much as possible and then experiment enough to understand what works well for you and what doesn't. Everything out there is "right" in one way or another -- in that it worked for the author. But that doesn't mean it will necessarily work for you. So you must try it out and see how it feels. It's also your responsibility to get your baseline lifestyle in order to even give yourself a chance to meet and attract new women.
- Reach a Baseline Lifestyle - A baseline lifestyle is the very basic components of a lifestyle that you need to even be considered an option to any self-respecting woman. Baseline lifestyle requires health, profession and friends. This is basically what "having a life" is, and if you don't have one, no amount of practice, theory or tricks will ever help you. You will have horribly inconsistent success and when you do manage to get laid, you will never keep a woman around. Ever.
Health means you are at least healthy. You don't have to be ripped or run a marathon. But be healthy. If you're obese, you need to lose weight. If you're skinny, you should join a gym. If you're chronically ill or very sick, you need to get it under control first.
Profession means that you have some sort of purpose with your life. It means you're employed and if you don't have a career, you at least have plans for one. I don't care how good-looking and charming you are, no woman dates a broke deadbeat with no job. Or at least no woman we'd ever want to hook up with.
Friends means you have friends. World of Warcraft Guild members don't count. Facebook friends don't count. IRC chat buddies don't count. Friends. Real friends that you see in person, hang out with, go out with and do things with. If you don't have friends, there's nothing PUA can do for you. Take care of that first.
- Learn and Understand All of the Fundamentals - Fundamental seduction and pick up knowledge is a must to even get started. There are more than enough available books out there covering the basics (recommendations below). Get your hands on them and try to understand everything in them.
The most important topics to understand are the following: how attraction is built and the many ways to do it, basics of conversation and rapport, basics of texting/phone calls/follow up, dates, escalation and roughly the steps it's done in, fashion and style, body language. If you feel like you're weak at any specific topic, spend more time on it. All of the above topics are MANDATORY.
Other pick up concepts that you should understand: the difference between day game, night game, and social circle game. The concept of social proof and social status. Canned game (routines) versus natural game. Direct versus indirect.
- Learn to Approach - The first one will always be the hardest, so get it over with as soon as you can. A lot of guys wait a long time before they grow the balls to get out there and actually do it (it took me over three months to do my first approach). Right now, unless you're working with a coach, most of your approaches will not go well. That's fine and expected. Get used to the awkwardness. Learn that it's not such a big deal.
- Figure Out What Works for You and What Doesn't - Everyone responds to different pick up and seduction material differently. I personally gravitated towards natural game and David DeAngelo's material. I mostly went out at night. I have friends who gravitated towards canned routines and became very good. I know guys who did mostly day game and went direct. Chances are, you're going to suck at almost everything right now, so figure out what FEELS MOST COMFORTABLE. Figure out what material and theory makes you say, "I could do this for the next few years and enjoy it." Once you find that method, coach or specific school of thought, stick with it.
- Seek Out Wingmen - Motivating yourself becomes 100 times easier if you can find like-minded guys in your area willing to go out with you. Wingmen are critical when you start out. Not only to help and learn from each other, but to push each other and keep each other motivated. Look into a local lair. If the lair sucks (many do), then post on some message boards or look around Facebook.
Recommended Products for Newbies:
[SIZE="3"]Stage 2: Intermediate[/SIZE]
Experience: Able to open and hook many sets. Can consistently get phone numbers when going out. Has a solid understanding of basic pick up theory. Has been going out for a few months. Has probably gotten laid a few times, although it's very inconsistent and feels "lucky." Most importantly, understands what works for him and is able to focus on that.
Purpose: To improve their results from inconsistent to consistent.
Average Timeframe: 6 Months - 2 Years
Guys in the intermediate stage can often be deceiving and to an untrained eye often appear better than they actually are. They can open and hook many sets, often in a very charming and exciting manner, and to most civilians and newbies this looks very impressive. Unfortunately, they don't get laid often and when they do, it's usually because the girl is very easy and/or she puts in most of the effort escalating. A lot of intermediate guys start believing they're better than they are as well, and often begin coaching. Which is fine, as long as they're coaching newbies.
Intermediate guy's worst enemy is lack of persistence. His lack of persistence comes from the fact that he's still somewhat sexually inexperienced and he hasn't developed much emotional resilience to the unforgiving ups and downs of chasing women. Intermediate guys often complain of their state. They also often eject too often congratulating themselves that they got a girl attracted to them or a make-out, yet not having the balls or persistence to take things sexual.
Intermediate guys have the fundamentals under their belt and have a good understanding of what works with their personality and purpose. Now it's just a matter of honing that into results on a consistent basis.
- Developing Emotional Resilience - Or what is referred to in psychology as an "internal locus of evaluation." This was also commonly referred to in the community as "state control" a few years ago. But basically the idea is that responses you receive from women vary widely, from amazingly awesome ("OMG, she loves me!") to abysmal ("OMG, she told me to fuck off and die!"). Early on, most guys let their emotions become determined by these responses and therefore they become mood-based pick up artists. When they feel great, they do great. When they feel like crap, they do poorly.
There's no short answer for this outside of experience, and a very particular type of experience. Guys must learn to detach the reactions they get from women from their ego and their self-esteem. A common favorite among coaches is to create "blow out" games or other fun approaching games designed to turn bad responses into something fun and interesting for wingmen to laugh about. A lot of bootcamps revolve around this as well as "inner game" based coaching.
Unfortunately though, the only long-term cure for this is sexual experience and many positive reference experiences. How long it will take a guy to develop this will depend on two things: his pre-community experiences with women (including his mother), and his determination and will-power. A lack in either department will create one of those moody and drama-queen PUA's that probably all of us have been out with at one point or another.
- Master Sexual Escalation - It's actually pretty surprising how many guys get stuck at this. Again, because it's so easy to be perceived as "good" without actually getting laid and because it's so easy to receive validation from women (more on that later) without getting laid, many complacent guys never put in the effort to succumb to the vast amount of awkward moments mastering that sexual escalation demands.
But if you put a gun to my head and said, "what's the one thing I can learn that will get me the laid the most the fastest," it'd be sexual escalation. If you went out and just escalated like a pervert on every girl you met, you'd get slapped a lot, you'd get rejected a lot, but you'd get laid a lot as well. It wouldn't be pretty, but hey, if that's what you're looking for, there you go.
Sexual escalation is a complicated topic because of the sexual anxiety that most guys possess to varying degrees. The process of mastering this is often more complicated than simply "touch X, then touch Y, then say Z," although once mastered, that's what it looks like. It's also important to understand the basics of same night lays, primarily the importance of logistics.
- Understand Basic Inner Game - It was a fad for a couple years recently that "inner game is the only game." Unfortunately, I think this has proved to be both untrue and and impractical approach to improving with women. The simple truth is that I've personally met too many complete headcases and nut-jobs who were amazing with women for it to be true.
But it still holds that inner game is very important to understand and that by the time a guy has reached the Intermediate Stage, a lot of his pesky outer sticking points actually have a deep-seated internal cause.
Basic concepts to understand are the ideas of emotional state, seeking validation, being non-reactive, positive thinking, self esteem and various other topics. Honestly, the vast majority of information in the PUA community on inner game has simply been ripped off from Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle and other self help gurus, so you may even be better off going straight to the source.
- Become Great in Bed - Towards the end of the intermediate stage, you should be getting laid with some sort of regularity. And once you start getting laid regularly, the rush of simply getting laid recedes enough to need to become a good lover in bed.
Hell, don't be a good lover, be a phenomenal one. The benefits of a great sex life and sexual confidence bleed over to all of your interactions big-time. Knowing you can make a girl cum in three different places will remove a lot of your anxiety when it comes time to make a move.
Also, not to mention that once you learn how to be every girls best lover, they'll NEVER stop coming back to you (no pun intended). Easiest way to keep high quality girls is to give them orgasms. It's that simple.
Recommended products for Intermediate guys:
Mark Manson (Entropy) - Newbie Guide to PUA Development
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