AA and Pride

I used to be a master at opening. I could open with anything, from Jealous Girlfriend, to I Like Salad, to I'm Going To Hit On You.

At my bootcamp, I had some awareness and some worry over what the girls might think, but I was much more afraid of looking like a loser in front of Grandmaster. I opened without hesitation. And for months afterward, I had very little trouble. I was a guy with underdeveloped social circuitry, pretending to have a defective circuit that made me talk to everyone. Pride was not a problem. I had no self-image to uphold. Any results were positive results.

Actually my social circuitry was not underdeveloped, it was just differently developed. Ugh, I can't believe I just wrote that. Anyway I have always been likable, and I make friends easily, so my normal "everyday" social wiring is healthy. But the bar/club vibe was completely alien to me, and I had extremely bad intuition when it came to courtship situations.

Now the bar/club setting is making more sense and becoming more familiar. I have better intuition with women. Now that I'm starting to see it as normal and not alien, all my old everyday social circuitry which was already healthy, is starting to come in and tell me what's good and what's fucked up and weird. I can't blame failures on me being not myself and dropped into an alien world. Now my results are actually me.

Here is where it starts to get tough. Here is where we find out what kind of Man I am.

The Transition from Girl to Woman

If the subject of age comes up (and it almost always does), I'll say this:

I've noticed women change a lot between 20 and 30. There is a sort of transition that happens. Sometimes it occurs earlier, sometimes it occurs later, but it usually happens between 20 and 30. Prior to the transition, a girl will be flaky, she won't really know what she wants in life, she'll pay way too much attention to what her friends think. After the transition, she'll have found herself, she knows what she likes and what she doesn't like, and if she sees something she wants she goes for it. She's grown up.

I just met you, so I don't really know if you've gone through the transition yet, but since you're 23, I'd say there's only a 30 percent chance you've gone through the transition...

Requiring Exclusivity

Twice now a girl has demanded exclusivity, and when I told her I couldn't be exclusive, she backed down and decided she was okay with it, even though she "never does that."

One case, she had asked for exclusivity, and I had agreed. And I kept my agreement even though I had other opportunities I had to turn down. Then eventually, I decided I really needed to not be exclusive and I told her. She was really unhappy and wanted to know if there was anything that could make it "like it was before." I told her I'm just not ready for getting serious like that, and while I've made good on my promise, I want to be honest and I just can't.

The other one, the subject of exclusivity had never come up. Now, previously I've taken the attitude that if it doesn't come up then it's no problem. This has gotten me in trouble because I tend to give off boyfriend signals through some of the things I do. This boyfriend vibe has led girls to believe that I'm in a position I'm not, even when no words have been said about it. So in this case I brought up the subject myself, and said that I couldn't be exclusive. She said she needed me to be exclusive and basically implied that I was playing her. I mentioned that I didn't have to say anything but I know I give off vibes like that and I don't want to hurt her. I said I'm telling you because I care about you and I don't want to hurt you.

For a while she didn't want to see me in person (though she was fine with talking online or on the phone). She needed time to think. She said her friends told her she shouldn't speak to me ever again. Then after a while she decided she was okay seeing me in person. Then she decided she was okay sleeping with me after all, even though she had been very emphatic in saying she "doesn't do that."

So much for that.