The Reality Method 2.0

Sex, Validation and Self-Concept

Both men and women get a lot of validation from being found attractive to the opposite sex.

If you think about it, there’s no mystery to this. In evolutionary terms, if we are attractive to the opposite sex, we’ll be able to reproduce with more success, so the signals that we get that tell us that we are sexually attractive — flirtation, stares, catcalls, good service — help us remain confident that we have a genetic future.

Additionally, being in a long-term relationship provides a constant source of that validation. In fact, being in a secure relationship provides so much validation to most people that they get lazy.

On the flip side, it can be scary to go through a period of not having validation. For many guys, their whole life has been validation-poor; for others, it’s the movement from a period of high validation (”on my game”) to low validation (”dry spell”) that is rough.

These periods of low validation — because we just got out of a relationship, are experiencing a lull in the action, or have yet to even get into the action — can be very difficult, because they usually bring up questions of self-worth, and/or at the very least make us re-evaluate our relative value as a mate.

Going through those periods of low validation without freaking out requires either a strong core sense of self and fundamental confidence, or a total resignation to the idea that you’re not worthy of that recognition.

This is why you’ll see some guys who haven’t gotten laid in years, and seem to have no problem with it, and other guys who you may consider to be highly successful with women, who seem to really freak out when their options dry up. Both reactions are normal.

That’s the whole game; being “outcome independent” really just means having a secure enough identity that the level of validation you are getting (or not getting) doesn’t fluster you too much.

Of course the validation is not totally unnecessary; to the contrary, it’s part of being human. We are social creatures, and need that contact, mutual positive regard, and feeling of belonging to remain healthy and high-functioning.

But where this gets complicated is when other people are looking for validation from sex from a place of insecurity and neediness, rather than from the place of the basic human needs mentioned above. Many people you will encounter are looking for sexual validation as a means to fill an existential void, rather than as a celebration of their existence. It can be very hard for these two types of people to maintain relationships.

To get any woman, you have to ’speak her language’. You have to treat her in the same way that she fundamentally treats herself. In other words, as part of the seduction process, you have to demonstrate to the woman that your treatment of her matches up to and reinforces her own self-concept.

It’s crucial to realize that her self-concept could be absolutely terrible, and you could be required to do terrible things to get into her pants.

But whether good or ill, if you try to treat her the way you see her, it won’t work; or even if you treat her the way you THINK she OUGHT to treat herself. No go. Of course there’s individual variance in this; but in general, your results will be best if your treatment of her closely lines up with her treatment of herself.

The easiest example of this is the battered wife. The reason she mysteriously “attracts” deadbeat guys who will literally assault her is that she is, in her own mind, convinced she deserves it, even if only on an unconscious level.

This is why the first stage of the pickup is invariably evaluation, whether we are conscious of it or not. Attraction is important, but in order to really generate attraction quickly and in the most efficient way possible, you’ll need to quickly and accurately evaluate a woman’s self-concept — where “self-concept” is just a more sophisticated and comprehensive way of articulating where the woman thinks she resides on the “Hot Babe Scale“.

So how does this advance our understanding of social dynamics? Well, take naturals, for example. A lot of what are called “naturals” are just guys that have a highly developed emotional intelligence; that is, the ability to cold-read women and what their self-concept is before they even open their mouths; and then the follow-up social skills of deploying the type of language and attitude that will hook that particular woman because it mimics and reflects her self-concept back to her so accurately.

This is something that takes years of experience and is not easily trainable; and that fact explains the existence of a lot of the gaps that exist, both in kind and degree, between the “naturals” in the field and the deliberate students of social dynamics.
What does all this mean for you? First and most importantly, that you have to make decisions as a pickup artist. Are you going to go after the pussy at all costs? What are your own choices about how you will treat others? Will you treat them how you think they deserve to be treated, or how they want to be treated? Will you take the time to learn the difference?

Let’s look at two mantras in the community.

Mantra 1: “Leave them better than you found them”

Mantra 2: “All pussy comes in different wrappers; don’t get caught up in the wrapper”

These are two somewhat divergent schools of thought. It is true that, if all you want is a wet hole, if you use the strategies and tactics of social dynamics taught here and elsewhere in the community, you can get a LOT of wet hole.

Example of a Mantra 2 player: I knew a guy once who fucked a stripper in the ass, raw, because she told him she had an STD — and he didn’t have a condom. Now that is a guy who is committed to getting his end wet, at any cost. A stupid player, no doubt, but a player who bagged a lot of tail.

Operating under Mantra 1, there’s guys who invest a little more into women, and try to have some positive impact. Now that might bounce them out of interactions with hot chicks sometimes, because the chick was self-destructive, and the guy had certain moral guidelines under which he refused to treat the girl in the way that would spark attraction in her (i.e., badly). But this is still an acceptable outcome for the Mantra 1 player, because it seems that guys who have some basic minimum standards about how they treat people usually also have the core confidence to ride out the “dry spells” of a temporary reduction in sexual validation.

And that, dear reader, is where I am ultimately coming from with this site. Sex is great, I love sex, and in fact I get a little sad if I’m not having as much as I would like.

But I won’t have it with just anyone. I want it to be a positive experience for both parties and leave us both better than we started. I get worried when I sense people are using my attention to validate themselves from a place of neediness; even if the interaction is not serious or high-level, I still strive to sidestep the temptation to give them validation, and instead give them something even more valuable.

So, how is this helping me get laid, 30?

Hopefully, thinking about these concepts, and reflecting on your own self-perception, is helping you get not just laid, but also closer to higher-quality interactions.

If you just want to get laid, go to the bar, find a drunk chick, and fools mate her. There’s thousands of unskilled, unattractive people hooking up out there every weekend; it’s not difficult to get laid.

What’s difficult is to do it right.

Related Articles:

• Identity-Level Beliefs and The Game
• Why Women Cheat
• The Power of Sex
• On The Variety of the Female Specimen