Dating is like playing a game of CLUE. You trust your instincts, search the evidence to confirm your suspicions and hope that in the end you find the right combination of weapons and motives for a successful arrest. And you can play this game again and again and come up with different scenarios every time.
Unfortunately, after a while, you get sick of snooping around secret corridors only to keep coming up dead.
Since my commitment to expanding my social horizons (hence my speed-dating adventures a few weeks back), I’ve decided, rather than stop playing the dating “game†(cuz I wouldn’t want to disappoint my readers), I’d figure out a way to cheat at it.
Lean in… you’ll want to hear this.
Apparently there are other key players in a ‘game’ that know more about the rules than I do. Rules I needed to learn if I ever planned on beating this game.
So, I’ve secretly penetrated the underground society of the MPUAs (aka Master PickUp Artists) only to learn there’s more to courtship than meets the eye.
For the longest time I had thought “pickup artist†to be synonymous with “player†and “womanizer†– a cultural cliché for wannabe Cassanovas and Don Juans. I’d never thought of it as a psychosocial art form. According to Google and wikipedia, a pickup artist is “a man who employs a learned, structured approach to attracting women.â€
Do Master PUAs genuinely exist? And if so, what possible purpose do they serve in the dating game? I needed to know.
In light of my ‘research’ I checked out “The Game†– the book on everything you need to know about becoming a pick up artist (published 2005, by Neil Strauss, in case you were wondering).
Girls – listen up. Get this book! Read it! You will learn a lot! You will see right through the transient “playahs†and recognize the genuine “arteeeests†in the game of courtship.
This is NOT a ‘how-to’ book on getting a woman into bed (though true PUAs often fight that stigma.) This book follows the journey the uber-loser-turned-world-famous-MPUA and what he learned about himself along the way. The story also tracks the tales of other MPUAs, weekend workshops in the Venutian arts, and globetrotting nightclub tests. It seems PUAs are the super heroes to the Geek Squad – coupled with cool code names (Mystery, Style, Formhandle, Aardvark, Tyler Durden), secret meeting lounges, field weapons, and black books.
I had no idea about any of this. Have I really been that sheltered? Does anyone else know about this stuff? Lemme rephrase – are there any GIRLS out there who’ve fallen victim PUAs and not even known it? Was I one of them?
I was curious to find out more. I wanted to know what these guys were teaching in these $3000-a-weekend seminars (yes, they cost THAT much), so I kept reading. Theories such as NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and Peacocking – did these techniques really work? Maybe on stupid babes, I thought. But not me – not the perceptive, worldly, educated smart girl.
But then I read – and I quote, “The smarter a girl is, the better it works. Party girls with ADD generally don’t stick around to hear the routines. A more perceptive, worldly, educated girl will listen and think, and soon find herself ensnared.â€
(I am SO screwed.)
Honestly, I thought I’d hate the book. More specifically, I thought I’d hate the idea that picking up woman came down to a silly set of rules. But the more I read, the more I realized this was not about learning pickup skills. No different than any book on social etiquette or self-esteem, it was more about learning who YOU were (but for a guy).
So why then, would a woman read this book? I’ll tell ya - I would have never really appreciated or understood the art of courtship until I went on a handful of excruciatingly painful first dates. Wow. (To all my single sistahs out there – I feel your pain.)
Sure, first dates are just a small step towards getting to know someone. I’m not advocating becoming a PUA for the sake of developing pretentious relationships. But how about putting some effort towards the possibility of a potential second date?
Let’s face it: some girls like a little mystery and some guys need to just get a CLUE!
