I typically don’t give advice here, but, having been in the same spot you are right now, I figured I’d chime in on the chorus of this thread.
A few things for you to consider for yourself, and it’s been said a few times, but I think we sometimes miss the point of it. Setting intentions is good, but, you don’t need to do that with the women per se. You need to set the intentions for yourself.
As in, what is it that you want? If it’s that you want to date hot women, then ask yourself why? I say this because if you do a deep dive of it, you might find that the only block you have is competing priorities. To be clear, dating a woman requires time and money. If that time is competing with starting a company, making more money, or something else you want more, then your intentions are all mixed up. If somewhere deep in the crevices of your mind, you know you want one thing more and another thing less, then you won’t get the other thing because your dominant focus is going to be on what you want more.
And I also want to be clear, when I talk about money here, it doesn’t necessarily mean wining and dining the woman, but, you step outside of your house, you’re burning cash, period. Whether that’s transportation costs, hanging at the bar or even splitting the bill.
Now, if your intention is to just have sex, then you need to be clear about that as well, because again, you might have competing requirements. How much time a week do you want to dedicate to meeting a girl and having it escalate to sex? You won’t always get it right, but the point of the exercise is so that it gets clear in your head and you untangle the mess of competing priorities. It does wonders. It’s almost like a journaling exercise in a way and it helps you see what you’re fighting against. The same way journaling helps you recognize the changes from your sub activity and what not. This will also untangle the competing points of whether you want a relationship or just to get laid. Get it all out on paper and be completely honest with yourself. Don’t sugarcoat it and don’t write what you think you should write. No one is reading this but you.
That’s the cursory stuff. The second part of this is to understand your self value.
Here’s where I’ll share my current experiences and how I view things.
What I own, how much money I make, who I know, don’t translate to how I value myself. I value myself above all external factors of validation. This is the self love piece that we all talk about on the forum. Hell, I look in the mirror all the time during the day and tell myself how much I love myself. Even in public bathrooms. I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. Why go to such extremes? because at the end of the day, you’re born alone and you will die alone. The only person who you really know or can experience in any true depth is yourself. You alone can only feel your own pain and your own pleasure. Why go through life fighting yourself or hating parts of you? And why let someone else determine what your own self value should be?
I have people all day, whether they mean to or not, try to tell me how I should live my life, point out flaws in my logic, call out my mistakes. We’re so programmed to do that, we don’t even know we’re doing it. Hell, look through this entire thread and you’ll see folks advising you on what you’re doing right and wrong, including me with this post.
Now, there is nothing wrong with this, and actually, it’s incredibly helpful. But, my point is, if you don’t have a sense of self validation, you’ll never find that from anyone else. The things we love and hate about another person are the reflections of what we love and hate about ourselves. Hence why people always talk about making a connection or sharing the same values. You can probably gather where I’m going with this. But in short, we tend to project our own experiences onto others instead of seeing the other for what and who they truly are. We do this because we expect the other person to in turn validate who we are by positively reinforcing what we project back to us.
So now let me bring all of this together in a way that makes cohesive sense. I personally, love being friends with women. Any woman I speak with, I try to be respectful to. That doesn’t mean I don’t banter, I happen to love bantering with women, it’s fun. But I don’t come off all sexually charged or machismo like, I don’t need to show them that I’ll drop them on a dime or play those games. I love women, I love the way they look, I love how soft their skin is, I especially love the smell of a good perfume on a woman. I love their energy.
I also happen to love art. I can walk into a museum and admire a beautiful painting. But, like my love for women, I don’t need to buy that art and have it hanging from my wall. I don’t need to own something (or in the case of another human being, be in a relationship with them) to appreciate it.
I go into every interaction I have with women pretty open and I have zero intentions other than just enjoying my time. More often than not, women will respond positively to me, and while we’re enjoying each others company, sometimes something more happens. Not always, but it happens more often than not. And when it does happen, I think to myself, this woman is extremely lucky to have had this time with me, because I enjoy the act of taking a woman to her absolute sexual pinnacle. I derive the greatest pleasure from knowing that I could take her there. This again is where your self intentions need to be clear. My intention if things become sexual with a woman is to give her the most incredible sexual experience of her life. And again, I’m not doing that for her (although she is on the receiving end of that incredible pleasure), I am doing that for myself, because I enjoy watching her reaction and knowing that I can bring her to this. I can make her feel this. I am the one giving her this incredible experience. Notice the I in this.
This may sound selfish or come off as egotistical or self serving, but is it really? Of course it is, but everything we do is self serving. Because you can’t serve anyone else if you don’t know how to serve yourself first.
At the end of the day, you have to pursue the things that make you happy, and as long as that isn’t destroying someone actively (as in you’re not murdering them or torturing them physically or some shit like that), then it doesn’t matter. If someone is emotionally hurt, you can’t control that. But you can manage the situation by always being upfront. I can’t control someone else’s emotions, I can only limit the damage by being brutally honest with them.
This is also why I disagree with a lot of dating advice and why I tend to focus on being the best version of myself rather than trying to act like something or someone. When you’re acting, you’re working in a glass house, meaning a situation will come up and that glass house will shatter into a million pieces around you. The best example of this is evident when someone is in a dire situation. You’ll see their true colors. If you’re not naturally a certain way or don’t naturally act in a certain manner, don’t pretend to be that thinking it’s going to win a woman. It might some of the time, as was evidenced by the PUA community, but, that will eventually fall apart for you and honestly, you’ll probably end up hurting yourself more than anyone else over the long term.
Again, not all women will respond the same way, and not all women will engage. Sometimes I’ll smile at a woman and she’ll give me an expression as if I slapped her across the face. I don’t take that personally, because that had nothing to do with me, that’s on her. It was her reaction, not mine. This is another example of how you can’t control someone else’s emotions.
There’s a lot in my post, take what you will, if anything, from it and see how it applies to your life. As for the subs I am currently using that have brought out these revelations that were within me, I’m currently running Khan Stage 4, Stark Black, and Minds Eye. I’ve gone through my sub history in other posts so won’t lay that out here.
My two cents for whatever that may be worth for you.