(This was originally a response to a blog comment, but I thought it’d be valuable for others to see so I made it into a full post. To see the original comments on this post (You Don’t Suck at Pickup…You Suck at Life!) click the link and scroll down to the comments.)
BLOG COMMENT FROM A READER:
I think Sovereign says to learn new skills isn’t to improve your seduction skills directly, but learning new things will give yourself some validation and improve your confidence/self esteem.
I understand your logic behind sexual improvement being the biggest help possible, but I don’t know how you can possibly think that it targets the same kind of people Sovereign was aiming his post at. So a guy has terrible at game and thus very rarely gets laid. He asks you for advice and you’d tell him to improve sexually?? C’mon
Don’t get me wrong though, I think you have something really strong with the sexual improvement idea, but theres a certain point in someones game where it is applicable (I personally think you give perfect advice for me and where I am at in my game), but to someone new, it’s almost pointless, wouldn’t you say?
tskill
Hey man,
I recognize that if you are not getting ANY girls, you will need to do things other than sexual improvement to start getting laid. I responded to Nowhere and others in my post:
Building Sexual Momentum When You’re Not Getting Laid
Basically, it comes down to showing up consistently, overcoming your fears, having positive role models, and not ever turning down sex. I also think that even *knowing* about sex can help a lot — even if a guy can’t realize the full benefits from practicing his knowledge, just knowing can take away some of the fear of escalation which comes from not knowing what you are doing. Sex if you have no idea what you’re doing inspires the fear of the unknown, the creeping insecurity of having no idea what you’re doing at something so integral to your self-esteem. While reading alone won’t make you an expert, it can help ease these fears. You should read and practice to get the full benefit, but even just knowing what you are doing will make you more confident.
It is like the difference between going hiking somewhere you’ve never been with a map and compass, and going hiking somewhere you’ve never been with nothing. In both cases it would be better to have traveled the territory countless times, while also having the map to guide you. But if you can’t have this, having the map and compass is still infinitely better than blundering around with nothing.
So while I recognize that there are other things you must do in order to start getting laid, I don’t think that knowing about sex is pointless even if you’re not having it. Just that sense of having a guide to something unfamiliar will ease the anxiety and insecurity, and make your game that much tighter. It won’t totally eliminate your fears as knowledge combined with practice will, but it give you enough confidence to overcome them and start getting laid. Then, you can start putting your knowledge into practice and put your fears to rest for good.
Where else, I don’t see how learning unrelated skills will improve your confidence with women at all. To be sure, learning how to become a good tap dancer will make you confident…that you are good tap dancer. It will not make you confident that women desire you sexually. I see this all the time from guys in my ju jitsu team…they are extremely confident in their ju jitsu, but not at all confident with women.
The point of this post is not to put down non-sexual hobbies, but to show people that they don’t affect your sexual confidence or how much you get laid. The only thing that helps this sexual confidence is proving to yourself that you are valuable sexually — that you are good in bed. Learning sexual skills and applying it will help your inner game massively if you are already having sex. If you are not having sex, learning sexual improvement in combination with the other things that I talk about iin earlier posts will still help you. They will be enough to start you getting laid, which in turn will lead to the real dramatic inner game improvements.
This is a good discussion — anybody else who has questions on this topic, feel free to add your two cents in the comments.
-Dan
Thanks for the well thought out response!
I want to make it clear that I think gaining sexual skill may be very powerful to focus on(I recently found your blog and still trying to figure out if I ‘buy it’…if you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a juggler method kind of guy!). The only thing I find I disagree with to a point would still be the whole confidence thing.
I agree that while becoming good at tap dancing will pretty much only increase your confidence about tap dancing, but becoming confident about several things will cause you to become confident about yourself in general. When you become confident about yourself in general your self esteem goes up and you are naturally more confident in all situations because you are now better at coping with things that make you uncomfortable….and certain things that used to make you uncomfortable will no longer have that effect on you.
In social psychology (what I am studying), self esteem is viewed as a pool of resources for facing adversity. The higher a persons self esteem, the more problems/stress that person can overcome before they really get to him/her. By becoming confident in multiple areas of life, you increase your self esteem and thus are less afraid of problems, in this case that may be cold approaching that woman at the store or the fear of rejection.
When I started with the community years ago, learning about ways to improve my sex would not have helped me much at all. In the beginning, I think people need to reach a very competent point of social skills. THEN, when they are seeing some success because they are able to attract girls with their personality/social skills/natural game/whatever you want to call it, is the perfect time to switch focus on to your sexual prowess.
This is actually the point where I think I am, but I am still unsure on buying your sex revolution handbook. Some of your stuff seems the ‘become more manly, be a macho man’ type, which I don’t particularly agree with all that much, but on the other hand, you write a lot of good stuff…..if you could point me out to what you think your stuff is really about, I would much appreciate it.
Wow, this post got long quickly!
Hey bro,
For me, sex vs. social skills in an inner game vs. outer game distinction. Social skills are important, to be sure. In my opinion, inner game is more important, but you definitely also need social skills to get laid.
The reason why I think sex is the best way to build inner game is because of my experiences. I originally subscribed to the theory that general self-improvement is the way to improve this inner game. However, I’ve found that this theory does not pan out in real life.
The most skilled natural I know has no hobbies, no job, and drinks and smokes entirely too much. He has family money, but is poor because he wastes it all on drugs, drunk driving fines, etc. His social skills are decent, but nothing extraordinary. But yet, he can attract beautiful, intelligent women with no effort. He’s not particularly good looking, but he just has that presence that attracts girls to him. And from living in the room next to him for a year and hearing his girls talk about how good sex with him was, I knew this confidence came from being good in bed.
Other naturals I know are not this extreme where they are actively fucking up the rest of their lives, but they are usually mediocre at everything else besides attracting women and having sex with them.
Where else, I have another friend who has a great, well-balanced life. He trains martial arts, is in great shape, and has won many tournaments. He’s also very intelligent, an entrepreneur, and has started his own successful software company. His social skills are very good, and he has a much larger social circle than I do myself. But yet, he can’t attract women. He’s constantly in dry spells, and gives off an asexual, platonic vibe.
Now, I personally want to be good in other areas of my life besides attracting women and keeping them in relationships. But in my experience, my self-improvement in other areas hasn’t done anything for my inner game. Before I started doing all this, I had seen success in other areas of my life. I was at the top of my class academically, wrote fiction as a hobby, and ran and lifted weights religiously. But yet, when I tried to approach a girl the fear would overcome me. Somehow, my success didn’t carry over.
Where else, when I improved my sexual skills I noticed a marked decrease in approach anxiety, nervousness, and hesitancy. I noticed that I could attract higher quality women while expending less effort.
This is why I believe so strongly in the power of sex to improve your inner game — my experience and those of my friends have shown me that it works.
And thanks for the comments…I find that I can express my views much better in a discussion than a monologue.
-Dan
I think that response right there has leaned me towards buying your book more than anything else I’ve read on this blog. I guess you could say that I’m still subscribed to the theory that general self-improvement is the way to go on inner game. You definitely just related to me well enough to peak my interest on your book though. I guess I should say well done, I’ll have to see what your book has to offer!
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