How Important is Self Work?

A little about myself:

20 years old [M], nearly 21. Half Indian/ half white, but pretty good looking and I don’t really look Indian so no help for my Indian friends. Been lifting weights since like 12 because of middle school/high school wrestling, but only about 150 pounds. BJJ blue belt. Lost my virginity a week before my 14th birthday to my girlfriend at the time but she’s the only girl I’d fucked until I was 20. Being an early start felt cool, but I always felt like an early relationship kept me from getting needed experience and made me more dependent on female validation. I got GI issues at 16 which almost put me into a serious hospital visit or worse, so that had me spooked for a while. Had to drop out of a highly ranked college my freshman year and come back because of an autoimmune disease of my GI tract that I’d been continually struggling with. My mom traveled a lot and we didn’t have a great relationship, if that makes a difference. Got into TRP 2 years ago November. Most significant change of my life and completely changed the way I looked at myself and my life.

Pre TRP:

Got nearly no action. Went years without talking to a girl in somewhat of a romantic way. For a long time the only romantic connection I was getting was paying my ex-GF hundreds of dollars in not my money for nude pictures while she was hoeing around. This was at about 15/16. We tried getting back together and she fucked one of my friends. After that you'd have never seen a worse beta orbiter than me. There wasn’t a single female friend of mine I didn’t have a crush on. I would orbit girls that had zero interest in me for years. I took my best friends ex-girlfriend (now current girlfriend again) to prom because she showed slight interest in me. She ghosted after I asked her, she was hunting for a date. My breaking point was when I went to pick up a drunk girl up from a party post TRP and she was fucking a guy upstairs. I had too much knowledge at that point to not feel like an idiot. I had read everything but I decided I’d apply it and do everything right even if it was painful. I told her we had to ‘stop being friends’.

Pre-Field Report:

In the beginning of the last school year I got laid for the first time in like 3-4 years with like a 5, probably a 6 to some guys. She was in a lot of my classes and had a massive crush on me and we hung out a lot because I didn’t have a lot of other good friends on campus. I was never really that into her but I wanted to get one under my belt.

Later that year I kissed this HB8, also in one of my classes. I just approached her classic outside the room saying I saw her in my other class. We sat together most of the semester. I had zero experience so I didn’t think it’d go anywhere. She invited me and some other people over after a football game that she asked to tag along with me. We made out while this dude who was orbiting hard (and still is) and was in the bathroom. I felt like a badass. The problem was that she was drunker than I realized and I was sober, I don’t drink because of my GI issues. Anyway, she didn’t remember and I felt super beta and uncomfortable with that. Failed a few shit tests and it was dead. She was undeniably into me at some points but I got terminal oneitis and nothing else ever happened.

Field Report:

A girl [HB8 but in a different way] in my class, she was hot but I didn't pay much attention to her. She talked to my friend a lot. I was close to the professor and ‘TA-ing’ the class, aka doing no work and getting class credit. She asked me for the notes but because I was a TA I thought she was just giving me extra work, not flirting. I go to teach her some stuff from my notes and to my surprise she needs no help, so I got a little annoyed make fun of her boss, her job, and the whole idea of the department she was in (later she tells me she's wasn't thrilled about that). A couple weeks later I see her at Starbucks on campus (I’m not a big fan of Starbucks but gotta go fishing where the fish are), she was there saying hi to her friend, she asked to sit across from me to do work, and I chatted with her. She told me I was mean to her after a tease and I asked ‘if I’m so mean why are you sitting with me?’. She said ‘because you’re pretty’. Within a couple hours I was in her bed. I couldn’t get it up because of the nerves but it was the fastest escalating situation I’d ever been in. The most I’d talked to this girl was a few passing comments in class, and once after class where I asked her the single qualifier ‘why are you in this type of class?’ after she told me her major, before she asked for my notes. I actually get a boner the next time we see each other, logistics were perfect because we were in the downtown area near my house and it started to rain so we walked back.

We hung out a lot and it was oxytocin overload for me. We slept together a dozen times before she asked if we were exclusive and I said I was okay with it because I didn’t want her sleeping with anyone else and I wasn't. Things slowly got worse, more shit tests I was unprepared for, less enthusiasm about sex (from 3 times when she slept over to maybe once), pointless fighting, and a mix of attachment and anxiety about it from me that was driving me crazy. I had a lot of doubt about what I wanted and didn't want to do with this situation, especially with her acting up. Soon before classes ended, after a bad date, bad sex, and getting a lot of shit, I asked her why things were so bad and if she wanted to stay together for the summer. She said she hadn’t made up her mind yet, and I said I didn’t want to be with someone that wasn’t sure if they wanted to be with me. She gave me this whole thing about how it was because she was going to see her ex boyfriend for the first time since they split which she dated for 3 years and needed to tell him things were over on her own. After I realized I didn’t want a girlfriend in the first place, I reached out a few days later and suggested we keep talking but not be exclusive over the summer, in a sad attempt to have my cake and eat it too. Trying to reclaim my manhood after she agreed to that, I ignored her so hard and was so aloof that we eventually just faded out of talking, even when I reached back out.

Aftermath:

Every girl I’d ever had sex with had to make it painfully obvious they were into me. It was like every fish I’d ever caught had jumped on deck. So even though I was upset I was determined to make something happen for myself. Even though I wasn’t meeting as many girls because it wasn’t during the semester, I was getting numbers like crazy. The problem was my prior experience was giving the idea that every girl was into me like the other girl but just wasn’t as bold as her to make it obvious. That was definitely partly true but it doesn’t mean you can skip out playing the game.

It took me a while to figure it out and a few rejections from girls way less hot than her, but I made things happen for myself. I wanted to see what it was like to take control of my own life.

A couple examples of when it worked out:

  • I went on a bar date with a barista from Starbucks [HB6], she gave me her number with a line 20 people long behind me, polarized her when she was getting flakey, did the cube routine on her, and made out with her. Making out isn’t anything novel to me but it felt good to do something on the fruits of my own labor. Approach, number, bar date, spit some game, good logistics on my end, kiss her, that kind of thing. Her friend asked her to pick her up from a car accident but I think I could have smashed that night. I felt it went so well I over demonstrated a little interest, got too excited, and the fish slipped off the hook.
  • Another girl told was working as a hostess where it had turned out she went to an academic club run from by my old professor, she initially had no interest in hanging out but really wanted me to come to the club. One day I wasn’t doing something and figured doing something was better than doing nothing, so I went and talked to another girl for the first 3 club meetings. Otherwise just generally enjoyed myself and participated. I went for me, as this as one of the best professors I’d ever taken. Things changed drastically between us.
  • I underdressed my friend’s friend from school [HB7] in his bathroom at a day party with 20 guys and 3 girls. I’d known her for 45 minutes. She ‘didn’t want to have sex’ because it was his house and they had a history. He walked in on us. He then later had sex with her but I didn’t really care, I was sick and wasn’t even planning on coming, so it ended up being more experience then I had coming out of bed that morning.
  • Two other drunk girls wanted to hook up at two other parties, but I felt weird being sober while they were drunk. My friend fucked one of them that hit on my hard first before settling on him, which was annoying because I gamed perfectly and I’m not trying to have less sex.
  • A girl at my job said she'd hook up with me in the storage closet if she didn't have a boyfriend.

That's just a couple memorable things, nothing too special but a huge difference from even where I was a few months ago.

I know that writing this a few weeks away from being legally being able to drink, a lot of people are going to say I’m still so young and I seem silly for even worrying about it. I didn’t do myself any favors one date by telling her I was younger than her. I know I’m going to have more options as I get older, I’m happy to ride it out and keep getting experience.

Lessons My Recent Experiences Have Taught Me:

  • Women are taken so seriously because they’re a mirror. It’s like dropping acid, if you are comfortable in your own skin you won’t have a bad time, but if you have insecurities they’ll come up. Part of this is in shit testing and part of it is in the mental games you play with yourself. For example she lived on campus and was way more involved in campus community than me as a commuter. Some serious insecurities came up for me in the way I was living my life, I felt although maybe I allowed a physical condition to determine my life and wasn’t doing the right thing. This and insecurities like this persisted long after we stopped talking. I wondered if she was living better than I was while we weren’t talking somehow, which was total projection because I’m pretty sure I had far more intimate friendships than her. This happened both (all three?) times I got oneitis, but this was the first time I took genuine action to fix it.
  • Clarity in what you want is invaluable because then you can check back with yourself to see if a decision feels right. That's clarity I didn't have before this experience but now I'm glad to.
  • Don’t be overly cautious about red flags but don’t ignore. Things like if her dad died of cancer, still talks to her ex (even if it’s because he’s ‘suicidal after she left him’), gets masculine, is low mood, complains a lot or shows low social or emotional IQ, are all worth considering for the long run. I still had a really fun time hanging out with her but I think that’s because of the energy I brought. It’s worth reminding yourself when stuff is a little weird she have been broken when you found her.
  • Don’t overly invest into green flags. Classic trad-con bullshit from her, low n-count, doesn’t drink a lot, doesn’t smoke a lot, or that kind of thing. The low n-count especially inflated my ego because I thought I was the shit for having this girl who was selective be so into me. I had a super blue pill fantasy of showing her off to my friends like a trophy. I didn't realize no one cares if I get laid but me, and my friends don't doubt my ability as much as I did myself. I decided after that I’d rather hang out with a girl that was higher n-count but kept from constant complaints and had more positive energy.
  • You have to have more game than indifference game. When she’d act up, I’d try to go indifferent but I was too invested to make it work. In the beginning it’d work but not when it was my only trick in the bag. In the thick of it, I felt pretty invested, we were dealing in the currency of attention and slowing down the money supply by ignoring her texts or being aloof wasn’t making my demand go up. The only other game I had it was applying stuff from Sex God Method (worked like a charm in some aspects). I needed true IDGAF mentality, not a poor illusion of indifference, which means not going exclusive, not relying on her response for if I was doing it right, doing more leading, and having more clear direction on what I want. Not just from her but from my life. A strong sense of what you want leads to clear boundaries and that is something that I desperately needed but did not have.
  • If you define yourself in terms of women, your sense of self or success will be just as flakey and unpredictable as they are. I realized that defining myself on my variable success was a rollercoaster that was way to variable. I needed to be solid with myself no matter who was in it. The more raw data I get the more I realized I should have been confident about doing the right thing for a long time.
  • I was worried the first HB8 would be the hottest girl I ever got with. It really got the brain chemicals rushing. Then having some girl I barely knew jump on my biscuit after chatting at a Starbucks was an even more surreal experience. Even if things don’t seem like they’re progressing they are.
  • I was getting crippling anxiety towards the end of things, after we stopped being exclusive, and after we stopped talking. It was a lot of really bad fits and a couple small panic attacks before I felt like I needed to change something. I realized that I was trying (and succeeding) at rationalizing everything with RP concepts, but was never addressing how it actually felt. I knew how everything went down from a variety of purely red pill prospectives, but it still sucks to feel like you’re being left, or that you screwed up, or even to stop getting laid after your first bout of consistent sex in 4-5 years. Once I just let myself not feel perfect about things and dealt with a lot of negative self beliefs things got much better.
  • Reading a blog like Red Pill Dad helps with running day game because he’s taking 30 rejections on the chin like a man, which makes a few really seem small in comparison. Like my most alpha friend told me “no one gets to their deathbed and says, ‘I wish I had less sex’”.
  • Not demonstrating too much interest in a girl is merely a prerequisite because it gets her curious. That being said, you can’t control women, you can’t control whether she likes you tomorrow, wants to sleep with you, wants to leave, or anything else. That was one of the biggest things I had to learn. I can only follow my path unapologetically.
  • I was a little upset about my progress, but I’m not even at the two year mark, and writing this reminds me how much of a long way I’ve come, this is all without me running a lot of night game because I don’t drink and I’m not old enough for the bars. I still have a long way to go but I know that progress happens.
  • The more you go out and do things the more you make yourself available for a girl to see you and just because ecstatic to you exist. Talking to random girls can lead to cool experiences even if they aren't interested right away.
  • For me, I know monogamy is going to mean personal development jail at this point in my life. I’m okay with being okay with a girl fucking someone else if it means I’m free to do what I want. I don’t want to be in the business of controlling people and I don’t want to be controlled. I wasn't sure then, but I know now, I want freedom, and what I had was not true freedom. I wish I knew that better so I could broke cleaner and kept her on the back burner for the occasional booty call, but that’s just scarcity mentality popping up.

TL;DR (not really): The main point I was trying to get across is -

Self work is extremely important because insecurities will come up and serious concerns about how you’re living your life. If you aren’t comfortable with how your life is going, insecurities that pop up can be tortuous. Either own it or change it.