Mark Manson (Entropy) - Newbie Guide to PUA Development

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[SIZE="3"]Stage 3: Advanced[/SIZE]

Experience: Can get results with some consistency. Almost always has sexual options. Has had and maintained multiple casual relationships. Has 20-30 lays under his belt. Is versatile in that he can meet and seduce women in many situations (day and night) and in various ways (direct and indirect). Able to travel to a different city or country and fares a solid chance of picking up a woman there in a short amount of time.
Purpose: To come to terms with the emotional realities of their social and sex life.
Average Timeframe: 2 Years - 5 Years

Advanced guys are what we used to refer to as "mPUA's" back in the day. They get laid. They usually get laid a lot. And when they talk about it, it's immediately apparent that it's true. They've gotten laid and dated girls in a wide enough variety of circumstances that they can formulate some pretty deep thinking about the topic and about their own success.

These days, guys either start coaching when they hit this stage -- if they didn't already start as an Intermediate ("ZOMG! He approaches so many girls!") -- or they slowly remove themselves from the community. For years and years, our metric for success was little more than lay count, and perhaps looks of the women involved. As such, advanced guys have been treated as the pinnacle of seduction until very recently.

Luckily, as more time goes on and more is understood and the more we all evolve, this mentality is falling by the wayside. Racking up a ton of lays (some guys up into multiple hundreds) is not only being seen more and more as a bit excessive, but some times as a compensation.

The easiest way to explain the plight of the advanced guy is to sum it up like this: self image and identity always lag behind how we actually are. Fat people who lose 80 pounds usually still perceive themselves as fat for years afterward. Well, guys who all the sudden rack up 35 lays and a few girlfriends over two years still feel themselves to be that nerdy loser who couldn't get a kiss if his life depended on it. This causes some serious internal dissonance and often erupts in behavior that's self-sabotaging, misogynistic, or painfully over-compensating.

Their emotional self or what's sometimes referred to as "core confidence" hasn't caught up to their outer results. And this actually causes a number of problems.

The biggest problem is that most guys who reach this stage (very few, maybe 1% of guys who join the community) do so because they're driven by something deep down. Often it's some sort of emotional issue, past trauma, or baggage from their life. Learning to get this good with women -- and let's be honest, learning how to go out and bang 100 women is not a reasonable use of one's time by most of the world's standards -- it usually comes from some sort of emotional quirk.

Advanced guys are forced to face this quirk eventually. I can tell you from experience, the rush and the validation from banging more women eventually runs out. Eventually you hit a point where sleeping with number 87 makes you feel absolutely NO different than you felt after 86. They become interchangeable faces and ironically, might as well all be the same vagina for all you care. Once this happens, once the need for validation and affection runs its course, you're faced to confront what's actually driving you in your sexual deviance.

Most guys realize that they've been compensating for their lack of masculinity. Some realize that they have issues with mom. Some realize that they've been exacting emotional revenge for the bitch that cheated on them and dumped them. Some of these guys have some sort of neuroses or compulsive disorder. Some are actually sex addicts (seriously).

Either way, the next step is to confront this original impetus and resolve it. If you're the domineering and compensating short guy, it's time to chill out and realize that you don't have to prove yourself anymore. If you have some strange obsession with female attention because of your family life, it's time to let it go. If you have some neurosis that causes you to constantly seek validation from people, then you need to come to terms with that.

In my experience, this can't really be forced. Some guys figure it out pretty quickly and confront it. Some guys need to sleep with 50 girls to get their fill before they start realizing that they need to chill out. Some guys need to go nuts for years and bang 200 or more and have dozens and dozens of relationships blow up in their face before they finally confront. It's a different pace for everyone, and unfortunately, I've met a number of guys who seem perpetually stuck here indefinitely (they're fucking amazing in-field though).

• Relationship Management - Learning how to juggle multiple women, build a rotation and even flirt with bringing them together for threesomes. But most importantly, learning to open up and become intimate with a girlfriend.
  
  Here's a dirty little secret nobody talks about: having a happy and healthy long-term relationship will teach you more about women and help your inner game more than 1,000 cold approaches and 50 lays. By its very nature, a long-term relationship forces you to open up and come to terms with yourself emotionally. Which brings me to really the only major goal for the advanced guy...
  
  
  
• Master Your Emotions as a Man - Again, this is so much easier said than done. Most guys I run into are completely oblivious to their emotions, much less in control of them. Like I said, a long-term girlfriend, if you've never had one, will do wonders for this. Therapy can also help a lot if you have some deep-seated problems.
  
  Once you open up emotionally, the whole "game" takes on a completely different view. I fucking hate this cliche, but it really is like "Seeing the Matrix." Words cease to matter. You only see intentions and emotions. You realize anything you say or do only matters as much as the emotion it creates within her and within yourself. Everything you say and do is designed to play with this emotional string that vibrates between you and her. You begin to have entire emotional conversations with women with depth and meaning without actually talking about anything substantive. You are able to read people and situations better than they can read themselves, and you begin to connect with women on a completely new level. A level so powerful that concepts such as LMR, cockblocks, value, and shit tests go out the window. But first one must develop a sensitivity, both to your own emotions and to other people's.
  
  I think it's much easier to rather than describe what mastering this looks like, what NOT mastering it looks like. If you DON'T master your emotions and the motivations that brought you to the community, this is what you can look forward to: a constant fixation on sex and women's reactions to you, an addiction to validation from women (and men), a constant and nagging feeling of "not enough" that will persist and never go away, an unhealthy lifestyle that will grow old while your friends grow up, and an inability to ever maintain a relationship of any significant satisfaction. Your social life will be less about enjoyment and more about achievement. Friends and lovers turn into numbers and statistics. Every conversation you have will simply be a ladder rung to get to your next destination and victory... one that you will celebrate by yourself in your own mind.
  
  For this reason, accomplishing this goal usually involves leaving the community. The community simply validates and objectifies behavior that at its core is an emotional behavior. At it's core, seduction is an emotional action, and to try to measure it only disassociates it from our emotional well-being.
  

Recommendations for Advanced guys:

• Way of the Superior Man by David Deida (Paper and Glue)
  
• Therapy
  
• A Girlfriend
  
• Leaving the Community
  

[SIZE="3"]Stage 4: Integrated[/SIZE]

Experience: Has more than his share of notches on his bedpost (probably at least 50-100). Has experienced the ecstasies of serious multi-year relationships, the excitement of one night stands, and appreciates them both. He's integrated his love and pursuit of women with his emotional desires. He's more or less impervious to rejection as he sees it as women screening themselves out of his life. He's experienced a wide variety of women of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and personalities and is pretty clear on what he enjoys and likes.
Purpose: To organize his lifestyle as best possible to efficiently screen for the women who will make him happiest.
Average Timeframe: 5+ Years

Eventually you come to a point where the behavior you've spent so long studying and practicing is simply integrated into your being. You may still push yourself here and there, but women come through your life fairly naturally and you know how to capitalize on opportunities.

As an integrated man, you no longer have a pressing emotional need driving your seduction. An integrated man is cool with one night stands, but he's not necessarily looking for them. He's also cool with a long-term monogamous relationship, but he's not necessarily looking for that either. He's open to everything yet seeking nothing. His actions are based upon what he wants, not what the each woman he meets wants.

The clear cut sign that you've made it to this phase is that you regularly turn down women that you're pretty confident you could sleep with if you wanted to. In fact, you probably turn down five to ten women for each one you end up with. The reasons can vary widely, anything from looks to personality, to a lack of emotional interest, to logistical issues. You've gone from trying to be chosen to the one doing the choosing. You no longer seek to meet women's standards but seek women who meet your own. Whereas a newbie will walk into a bar and be grateful to have ANY girl in it, the integrated man will often walk into a bar, talk to the few he finds physically attractive and find he has no interest in any of them.

The crux of the matter is that you no longer receive validation from sex or women's attention, therefore you're free to exercise 100% command and control of your interactions and which women you allow into your life.

The problem for the Integrated Man is finding a woman who meets his ridiculously high (and hard-earned) standards. He's done everything and slept with everyone. He knows what he likes and sets about to get it.

The name of the game changes from effort (as a newbie or intermediate) to effort versus reward. An integrated man isn't willing to spend his valuable time chasing a woman who he's fairly sure he won't enjoy his time with that much.

Since effort/reward is the new name of the game, the goal has changed from persistence to efficiency. The integrated man invites rejection and experiences it regularly. Everything is a screening process, and everything he does and lives is designed for the qualities he's looking for in women. He loves artsy girls? He schedules his life around concerts and gallery showings and immediately screens for women with his similar interests. If he's looking for intelligent women, he'll purposely speak very rationally and logically about in-depth topics to weed out the ditzes and party girls.

This is far easier said than done and is a constantly ongoing process. This isn't to say that the integrated man has flawless game... he usually hasn't mastered everything. But he's experienced to the point where he knows his strengths and weaknesses and knows how to use what he's got to get what he wants.

Another progression to look at is newbies usually focus on day game because of it's ease and how casual it is. Intermediate guys and advanced guys usually focus on night game because it's the most challenging, makes you improve the fastest and rewards you with sex the quickest and in exciting fashion.

Integrated men focus on lifestyle and social circle. They realize that the odds of meeting a woman who meets their criteria in a random bar is fairly low and that the effort required for even a one night stand with most women no longer seems worth the meager amount of excitement (and mediocre sex).

He realizes that the most significant relationships one can have -- casual or not -- are borne out of similar interests and social connections, and therefore he spends his time positioning his lifestyle in such a way that it automatically attracts the appropriate women into his life. Whether this is starting a band, learning photography, becoming a teacher, or whatever. They then use their strong pick up skills to convert these high quality women with a startling consistency. By this stage, integrated men have usually developed their lifestyle to a high enough point that it makes them incredibly attractive in their own right.

They also understand that the constant approach-a-thon of classic pick up is a hamster wheel -- designed only to train your muscles, not to actually get you to a real destination. Fulfillment comes from emotional connections and shared experience, not accomplishments and notches birthed from hundreds of nights out at the club.

About the Author
Entropy has been a part of the PUA community since 2005 and coaching since 2007. You can learn more about him at http://www.entropypua.com/blog

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