Str8wlkr writes:

"Oh na-na, what's my name?"

I’d like to have people’s opinion on this matter. I post on an automotive forum that has a relationships sections in the Off topic and this discussion erupted into something interesting.

Keep in mind that the thread was originally about “Do you let your girlfriend go to clubs?”

==> Now, a handful of guys don’t allow their girlfriends to go clubbing because they consider that the only reason a girl would go to a club is to hook up with guys, wich they don’t agree with and don’t want to deal with.

==> Other guys advocate freedom and allowing freedom to breed trust.

Here are some quotes from this thread :

“At first I don’t allow it but after some time when she has proved me she is trustworthy, she can go clubbing with her friends.”

“I don’t set limits to her behaviour and she doesn’t set limits to mine. We both know and understand what the significant other considers inappropriate or not so we don’t do it.”

“Boom. If you make every situation into some kind of forbidden fruit, she will eventually bite into it.”

“You shouldn’t control a women. Let her do whatever she wants. If it’s made to be, it’s made to be, and if not, then she’ll cheat on you. Preventing her will only postpone the inevitable.”

“So many members are whipped and don’t know it. Listen bro, Clubs are for what? Dancing and fucking.”

“It’s not that they are whipped, some men are just passive in the relationship. For instance if you take a woman with a really strong character and couple her with a man who has weak character the outcome will be : the man will be whipped. (however it is not his fault because thats how life and mother nature formed him throughout his life). Judging from many posts/replies on this forum, many of these kids would consider me insecure because I don’t let my woman do anything without my consent.I simply believe that there should be only 1 leader and he is the one who gives the final word. The man should be the head of the family/relationship (the woman is not the neck , she does not turn the head). Very few women are good leaders. And if you mutually compromise with each other all the time , somewhere along the line you will get fucked over.”

“The man has got to be the leader and in control, it has always been this way”

“I give freedom to her and she gives freedom to me we both love each other for it. I choose to let her do what she wants, it’s a conscious choice that I make because I expect the fucking same in return. If something is inappropriate, I will put my foot down and make my point loud and clear, but we both understand eachother’s boundaries pretty good so this didn’t happen a lot….I do not consider that I have to ask permission to anyone to do things, so I don’t think my girlfriend should have to do it either. some girls like to be told what to do because they get a feeling of security out of it, but it can’t work smoothly with all of them in my opinion.”

Then it ended up being a discussion about the difference between a leader and a controlling boyfriend.

The last quote is from me, so you know where I’m standing, but I wonder how the Natural Game considers this point.

I firmly believe that a true leader can decide to set someone free and be a leader for it.

I actually found this post really interesting because basically, this all comes down to how healthy one’s relationship with their woman is.  In order to have a healthy relationship, you need two things – trust and intimacy.  And if there is no trust, you can’t truly be intimate with someone.

So in a way, the question here isn’t really if you’re a “leader” or a “controller,” but about how much trust you have built in your relationship.  Because honestly, trying to control another person is always a failing proposition.  It might work for a while, but eventually they’ll resent you for it.

There is an argument to be made that bars or clubs are only good for “dancing and fucking.”  I mean, let’s face it, they are meat markets for the most part.  But they’re also places to go, socialize, and have a good time.  If you’re girl is going out with her friends to a bar or a club, that doesn’t mean she’s going there to cheat on you.  However, by their very nature, your girl WILL be hit on if she’s even halfway decent looking (and depending on the venue, even if she isn’t!).  This means that she’s putting herself in a position where she COULD cheat on you.  I mean, we’ve all heard of girls who went out, got drunk, and slept with some guy, then woke up the next morning and realized they cheated even though they didn’t mean to.

So there IS something to be worried about when you allow your girl to go out without you to party.  But this also comes down to the trust you’ve built in your relationship.  Healthy relationships allow both people a certain amount of freedom.  You can go out with your friends, she can go out with hers, and you both shouldn’t be worried about what the other might do while you’re away.  The minute that stops being the case, the two of you are no longer in a “healthy” relationship because somewhere along the way, trust got broken.

If a guy is insecure in his relationship, that usually means he’s insecure about himself, and he’ll see his girl jumping at any chance she can get to cheat on him.  This will not only drive the guy to do stupid stuff, but it will also eat away at the relationship in the long term.  If you want to build trust in a relationship, you have to be comfortable with yourself, you have to feel you deserve the relationship you’re in, and most of all, you have to know the character of the woman you’re with.

If the girl you’re in a relationship with is a party chick who likes to drink and stuff, you know that she’s more likely to cheat on you when she goes out than a girl who only drinks socially, for instance.  That is why it is important to establish boundaries in a relationship.  Every good relationship has ground rules that are built around the needs of both parties, and enforced by the trust they have for each other.

So if you know your girl *might* cheat on you if she goes out to a club with friends, you can set a ground-rule of “Babe, I don’t mind you going out with your friends, but I don’t want you going to a bar or a club with them unless I can come along.”

That’s not an unreasonable request.  Many of these relationship “ground rules” are established inadvertently to begin with, because often we just kinda fall into routines when we’re with someone.  But if one person or the other continually steps out of these ground-rules, you do have to put your foot down and call them on it.  This is the difference between having a strong hand in your relationship and being a push-over.  Your typical AFC will let the girl he’s with get away with anything she wants, even if she continually crosses the rules they established.  A strong man won’t let that behavior go unchecked.

The best solution?  Try to build trust with your partner, and make your ground-rules clear to each other.  Give them the freedom they deserve within the rules, but if they’re crossed, let them know about it.  I don’t really think you can ever truly “lead” a relationship, but you can police it, and bring your girl back in line if she steps out of bounds.  Just remember to treat her how you want her to treat you, and everything should be fine.

Fellow Pirates,

Have you ever noticed how when you’re not trying to pick up girls, they seem to be more interested in you? And when you deliberately try, it’s like they scatter away. There’s been many ways to explain this, (inner game issues, outcome attachment, a sixth sense that girls have, etc) I have been thinking about this for a few days, letting it brew since I got the original idea. I think there’s a scientific basis for it. Let me try and set this up for you so it makes sense.

I just finished reading a book by Daniel Pink called Drive, which is essentially a book on motivation. I don’t intend to summarize the whole book in one paragraph but I will give you a brief introduction. Pink introduces the idea of Motivation 2.0 which is the rewards/punishment model of behavioral psychology (he calls it carrots and sticks) and he makes the case that it is an outdated model that no longer works in our current business climate.

He then talks about a new kind of motivation, dubbed 3.0, which centers on the research of Edward Deci and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) Essentially this new model of motivation is based on 3 core needs all humans have in order to enjoy what they do. They are: Autonomy (to have the freedom to set your own schedule and choose your own projects), Mastery (to get better at something) and Purpose (to have your work mean something)

What researchers have found through experiments is that Motivation 2.0 works really well for tasks that are algorithmic in nature. So if a job is comprised of a series of steps that are clearly laid out, then carrots and sticks work really well, that is the larger the reward, the better the performance. However, this model falls really short when tasks are creative in nature, require conceptual thinking and are not clearly laid out. In fact it falls really flat. Time and time again, researchers found that the large reward cripples people’s ability to do even simpler tasks like solving a puzzle.

In fact there are several well-documented averse effects that rewards/punishments introduce when dealing with creative tasks: (I’m only listing the ones that are relevant to the discussion here as we’ll see in a bit)
1) First rewards/punishments really crush creativity and ingenuity.
2) Second, they can extinguish intrinsic motivation, so the activity becomes more work and less fun.
3) It narrows down thinking and encourages cheating, shortcuts and unethical behavior (like a salesperson lying to you so he can make his quota)
4) It fosters short-term thinking

So how is this relevant to our discussion?

When we look at the idea of attracting women, do you think that it’s an algorithmic (i.e. step by step) type of task or a more creative type of task? Regardless of what PUA’s tell you, I would argue that it’s more of a creative task requiring ingenuity, wit, creativity, etc. There is no system that is clearly laid out, step by step that will guarantee results.

Now, assuming this, when you go out with the sole purpose of approaching women or picking up women, what type of motivation do you have in mind? Again, I would argue that you’re operating more out of a reward/punishment mindset where the reward is sex (or maybe a relationship) and the punishment is loneliness.

Given this, it’s no wonder that your tongue gets tied and you’re stuck trying to think of what to say next. Your brain has a clear destination in sight and is asking for the algorithm (the formula) of how to get there!! All your creativity is gone and if you try to do this all the time, as many PUA’s say you should practice relentlessly, then it slowly starts to feel like work and it’s no longer fun. And the most dangerous part is that you’re now thinking short-term and you tend to disregard longer term consequences. You want to get laid and you’ll do it at any cost, thus behavior such as trying to get the girl drunk or trying to force her (unethical behavior) definitely comes to mind!! If you’re a good guy, you’ll just leave frustrated.

This is also known as being attached to the outcome, but given the rewards/punishment model and 30+ years of scientific research to back it up, it’s a lot simpler to understand if seen in this light.

On the other hand, when you’re out having fun and not even thinking about pick-up, you’re being yourself, your entire creative mind is available to you so you’re naturally witty, charming and creative, and if the reward doesn’t even enter your mind (or you somehow DON’T think of sex as a reward) then you’re free to act as you please and things end up in intimacy it’s no big deal.

It’s the equivalent of the painter who’s painting for fun rather than for a commissioned piece. He doesn’t know where the painting is going to end up, he has no fixed end in sight and is simply enjoying the process but is tweaking as he goes. Research in fact found the pieces produced through this process were seen as much better work (and thus of higher value) by art appraisers than pieces that were paid for in advance.

In conclusion, we’re faced with the question of “How do you implement this in a way that reverses the negative effects of reward/punishment thinking and act more naturally?”

I only have two ideas, but am leaving this open for discussion:

1) Don’t focus on sex or relationship as a reward and loneliness as punishment. Go out there with the focus on having fun and enjoying yourself, not to run game.

2) Change the meaning of sex/relationship from a reward you get to something that happens. It’s not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Sure it’s hard to ignore horniness when you see lots of scantily clad young women throwing their sexuality around like a status symbol. When sex is no longer a reward or loneliness no longer a punishment you’re finally free.

This is just a hypothesis of mine and clearly not a scientific theory so take it with a grain of salt. It’s just a different way of thinking that maybe will help you answer the question of what to do or understand what people mean by “just be yourself” or “do whatever you feel like doing”

As always, excellent advice from Zan.  :-)