SAFFRON tribute posts

The 1 Hour Pull
saffron
I went to a meetup.com event tonight at a local bar. As is prone with these events, the attractiveness of girls isn't as high as the ones you'd find at the hot clubs on the weekends. But, the flipside is that the barrier to approach is much lower and the bitch shields are not on full blast. Also, the guys are mostly chodes.

But, sometimes you strike gold when you're least expecting it. When I walked in, I locked eyes with Victoria. She had silky long hair, a smile lingering with dimples, and a svelte body. As is always the case, there was some chode sitting right next to her, trying to talk her ear off, and I could tell by her body language that she was just being nice.

Realizing the energy of the venue, I came in with a very low key opener -- any flashy attraction material would be out of place.

Acting with no apologies, I walked over and said calmly,

"This is my first time here. I'm Saffron. "
"Hi, I'm Vanessa"
"Hi, I'm Chodey McChode."

I go straight into a topical transition about the venue and talk about how I recently just moved into town. She picked up the thread and we soon were talking about how she was from Japan.

"I hate Japan. Let me tell you why." -- I didn't disagree for the sake of disagreeing -- I just spoke my mind freely.

I went off, and she started arguing with me in a playful way. I verbally escalated and started talking about other commonalities that we had. We talked about our adventures, our goals, and things we liked to do for fun. We were deep into comfort.

About 30 minutes passed, and I mentioned an extraction excuse -- come check out this great restaurant near me. They serve some great late night food. She agreed and we left the venue.

We went to my house first to drop off her stuff -- this was key, because I knew that she would have to come back after we ate.

We headed out and I built more comfort at the restaurant--we talked about our childhoods, our drunk times, and our past relationships. We bounced backed to my place and went into my room. I looked at her silently, maintaining the silence for 10 seconds, then went in for the makeout.

It was a quick escalation, and then I threw her onto my bed. She started giving me LMR -- so I comforted her by telling her how much I valued her personality, how we were going to hang out tomorrow, and how it was her fault for turning me on so much.

Then I went right back into it. I escalated and clothes started flying off, but as if I was in some kind of terrible romantic comedy, her phone rings and her friend tells her that he's downstairs to pick her up. Apparently, this AFC was her personal driver and she texted him in the restaurant, expecting that she was heading home after the late night snack.

"Sorry. It's not going to happen tonight. You're going to have to wait until next time" she teased me.

"I wait for no one." I replied. "But, I still want to see you tomorrow, because you're a cool chick."

I walked her out and watched her get into the car.

Logistics are key to the SNL. If I had 10 more minutes of game time, the score might have ended up different, but you have to love the game because there are always new challenges to face.

Updated Aug 15 2008 2:59 PM
Posted Aug 15 2008 2:56 PM Internet Outage and Self-Improv
saffron
Updated Jul 9 2008 5:21 AM
Posted Jul 9 2008 5:18 AM Pick Up From the Female View
Saffron
Slightly racist, and mostly reflective of AFCs....just shows you how low the bar is and how you just need to take that small step to differentiate yourself from the norm.






And no, I don't just smile and open my eyes really big. I also say "hey baby, hey baby..."

Updated Jul 5 2008 6:47 PM
Posted Jul 3 2008 3:14 PM One Night Stands
Saffron
On a whim, I wikipedia'd One Night Stands. In the article, I found this snippet very, very interesting:


During sex females get such a strong dose of oxytocin that "when women think they can have sex and walk away just like guys do, they're having to suppress thousands of years of evolution that tells them to cuddle, stay in bed, and look forward to tomorrow. When they get up and walk out, they feel depressed and don't know why."[1] Researchers have found that women's feelings after one night stands are much more negative than men's. Feeling 'used' was the predominent negative emotion they felt the next morning and they also worried about their reputations and felt as if they had let themselves down. Professor Anne Campbell from Durham University said "What the women seemed to object to was not the briefness of the encounter but the fact that the man did not seem to appreciate her. The women thought this lack of gratitude implied that she did this with anybody."[2]



A lot of guys think that once they slept with a woman, their work is all over. For all the PUAs out there who wonder why they can't keep quality women around in their life, I'd take a second and ask yourself how you treat women AFTER sex. I'm a firm believer of the ethos "Leave Them Better Than When You Met Them." How do you do that? By appreciating her for something other than her physical appearance and her sexuality. There's nothing wrong with being direct and forward, but there will be a point in your life where you realize that sexuality is only the minimum requirement -- you are attracted to a woman because you appreciate who she is and what her personality is like.

Now that you appreciate her, the question becomes, how do you best show it? The Mystery Method talks a lot about qualification (a method where you elicit a girl's values and then reward her for having them). For me, it really is about authenticity. I simply show enthusiasm for traits that I cherish. And if she has traits that I don't respect, I will let her know that too. By doing both, you show her that you're not just supplicating and you also show her that you're a man of values. There's something to be said about being honest and straightforward in your interactions with women.

Ultimately, making a girl realize that you appreciate her BEFORE you sleep with her, will make the entire process easier, before and after sex. I view sex as a positive interaction, so if a girl walks away feeling negative about the interaction, I know that I seriously screwed up somewhere.

Updated Jun 30 2008 9:11 AM
Posted Jun 30 2008 9:05 AM Pitfalls of Pickup
Saffron

My good friend Toryn from the Boston Lair wrote one of the best posts I've read in a while and I had to post it here for you guys to read. Tons of value, so pull up some popcorn and plop yourself down and read this. I'll be honest, I've made some of the same mistakes too and struggle with my own ideals and the ideals that are commonly engrained in the community. Toryn is going to put up a blog soon, and I'll be sure to link him on my page, so you guys can get a daily dose of his wisdom.

Anyway, here it goes:

Learning pick-up has had so many positive effects on my life, including realizing new heights in my own self-confidence; understanding how to better interact in high-pressure social situations; and more and more understanding how to own my sexuality and desire around attractive women. And this is only a small bit of what I’ve learned since starting this process. As Groove noted in his Lair talk, this stuff can really change your life for the better if you allow it to do so.

All that being said, the more time I spend in the pick-up community, the more I become convinced that there are potentially serious pitfalls in each stage of learning these skills as well, which can do dangerous harm to your ability to form lasting and valuable relationships with women. The core questions that I've been grappling with recently, and that I try to address in this post, are these:

* Which aspects of learning pick-up are actually diminishing or degrading my ability to form a trusting and mutually-fulfilling relationship with a woman?
* How can I avoid these pitfalls so that I'm constantly moving forward in my social and emotional evolution?

I understand that not everyone will find this e-mail relevant right now. Some guys will be at stages in their emotional development where a lot of the things that I’m talking about below are just not on their radar screen yet. If that’s your case, that’s cool – I’d still recommend that you read on and think for a moment about the points that I’m trying to make here.

Pitfall #1: Objectifying Women

This one seems pretty obvious to me, so I’m not going to waste too much time talking about it. Yes, women are naturally the objects of our sexual desire, and yes, until you approach and get to know a new girl, she’s nothing more than a random attractive stranger. But when an entire community starts referring to people in code words such as HB8_Slut, the “target”, the “obstacle”, etc., you start to lose recognition of the fact that you’re talking about another human being.

Rating girls’ attractiveness on a scale has some value in terms of how you calibrate your approach and initial game material. Referring to girls as the “target” or “obstacle” has some value in terms of understanding the dynamics of a group set, especially when wings are involved. But in my opinion, once you’ve internalized these ideas into your behavior, get these labels out of your head as soon as possible, and save them for Field Reports or other times when you need them to discuss the mechanics of a set you ran. Don’t go through life thinking about every attractive girl you see as an HB# or as your “target.”

It’s been proven over and over again by psychological studies that one of the first steps in dehumanizing someone is to objectify them, to strip them in your mind of the qualities that would make you relate to them as another living, breathing person just like yourself. That girl who you’re interested in? At the end of the day she’s just a girl, with dreams, hopes, fears and ambitions just like you. Lose sight of that, and you lose part of what makes you human.

Pitfall #2: Focusing on “Padding Your Stats”

I went through a phase in the first few weeks after realizing my initial successes getting laid through game, and most guys who I’ve met in the community go through a similar phase. We have this feeling that can only be described as a sense of wonderment at our new powers with women. For those of us who weren’t born naturals, we’ve had years of frustration at screwing up with attractive women because we weren’t self-confident and socially experienced enough. Then pick-up skills give us that power, and we now feel that we’re more in control, that we’re no longer at the mercy of one beautiful girl’s opinion of us. It’s an intoxicating emotion, and for good reason.

You can see this intoxicating feeling reflected in guys’ posts on the forum. The first few Lay Reports that newer guys post up usually have this over-arching aura of “Oh my God, I can’t believe I actually accomplished this!” to them. During this stage when you’re realizing your first few successes, I think this feeling of wonderment is pretty much all positive. You’re rapidly gaining in self-confidence in an area that has plagued you for a while (you wouldn’t be in the community if it hadn’t), and you feel like a new man. All is good in the world.

Pretty soon however, the natural question arises of “What next?” Sure, there are always new skills to calibrate and internalize, new levels of inner game mastery to reach – but a lot of guys remain detached from what their true core goals are with learning all of this stuff. And when they become detached from their true core goals, they naturally fill that void with the goal of “Well, I want to bang as many hot girls as possible” or some variant (“have a threesome,” “fuck Asian twins”).

And so begins the danger of seeking external validation through sex. If you continue to neglect the other areas of your life which aren't together, you start to subconsciously look at getting laid as evidence that you are indeed the high-value, self-confident guy that you tell yourself you are. And when you think you’ve got a girl on the path to bed, but it doesn’t work out? Crash and burn inner game-wise my friends, and it hurts.

But here’s the thing: the guys I know who are truly secure in their own self-confidence and value aren’t overly concerned with whether they have ten women in the rotation at the same time or none. If they meet a girl who they’re attracted to, who they connect with and who they want to start a sexual relationship with, they do it. But if they go through a period where they aren’t meeting women who truly excite them, they don’t start to feel down or inferior because of it.

Again, this issue isn’t necessarily appropriate to every guy in the Lair right now, especially those guys who are younger. It very well may be that your goal at this stage of your life is to bang as many hot girls as possible with zero emotional connection, and that’s fine. It all comes down to whether your true core inner goals and desires and your outer behavior are in synch. Also, it’s good to understand that many guys’ life goals with women evolve over time, so it probably would be worthwhile to check in with yourself every few months to make sure that you’re still living according to your core goals.

Pitfall #3: Closing Yourself off to Emotion

You’ve done a ton of approaches, you’ve slept with some women, and now you’ve met one who you really connect with and who you like hanging out with. But every time that she tries to get you to open up to her emotionally, community dogma kicks back in. “Push-pull…control the frame…showing vulnerability is for chodes…one-itis is for pussies…an ‘alpha’ guy wouldn’t do this…”

A lot of the dogma that is good for breaking you free from your original fears approaching strange women in high-stress social situations can turn out to be crap when you relate it to relationships. Entropy is 1,000% correct when he says that relationships are a component of relating to women that on average the community has ass-backwards, and really doesn’t give nearly enough attention to. You think a girl is amazing? Tell her. She tells you about her deepest hopes and fears in life, and wants you to share yours with her as well? If you care about her, do it. Real men (edit: real PEOPLE) are not scared of their own emotions.

It all relates back to living with integrity and honesty. If you don’t care about a girl, you should be honest with her if she asks you. If you don’t care about her and you tell her that you really do, you’re a pussy. If you do have emotions for her, but you either tell her that you don’t or refuse to show them, you’re also a pussy.

But if you have emotions for a girl and you let yourself express them, that’s when the best moments in life can happen.

Pitfall #4: Making It All about the Sex

This is my new favorite, and it took me a while to identify and diagnose this in myself and in some of my Lair friends. Bear with me on this one, because I can’t seem to find a simple way to explain what I mean here.

You meet a girl, sleep with her, turn her into a regular thing, bond with her and genuinely care about her and her happiness in life, and things are going great. Then after a few months (it usually happens in this timeframe), the girl may come to you emotionally raw explaining that she’s starting to fall in love with you and just can’t do an open relationship any more, and that she wants to commit to you and to try being exclusive with each other.

But instead of committing, you get scared, and you begin thinking of reasons to tell her no. And what I’ve found both in myself and my friends is that more often than not we use the issue of sex as the primary reason to turn down exclusive relationships with really quality women. “I can’t be with just one girl, I want to consistently fuck new girls…she isn’t interested in having threesomes like we used to…I need variety in my sex life.” And on and on.

What I and the rest of guys who think this way are doing however is elevating sex above all of the other areas of compatibility that make good relationships with quality women really great. To an extent we’re ignoring whether the girl truly makes us happy, whether she challenges and excites us intellectually and emotionally, whether sharing with her feels like sharing with an old friend you’ve known forever.

A decision to not get exclusive with a girl based on sexual compatibility isn’t necessarily a bad thing or wrong in isolation. And per my comment above, it’s totally acceptable and understandable if a guy is not in the position in his life at this time where he wants a relationship at all. The problem has the potential to arise over time however, because the decisions you make in life form habits, and if you start consistently thinking about your relationships with women in this light, you could wind up making some very stupid choices.

I don’t mean to downplay sexual compatibility here either – it’s very important. But in my experience, after the first several months of hormone-driven craziness subside, the sexual health of a relationship exists because you and she stay connected on all other emotional and spiritual levels, not in spite of those connections.

The dirty secret that for some reason the community never talks about is that while it is absolutely true that attractive women are abundant, the number of attractive women in life with whom you will also feel a strong emotional, intellectual and spiritual connection as well are very few. Life being what it is, even if you sarge constantly, there will only be so many women who you are as excited about spending Sunday morning with as you were about fucking the previous Saturday night.

If finding a girl who will always be willing to have threesomes with you really is one of your core priorities in life, more power to you. But the girls who will be genuinely cool with this type of behavior are rare. It is the rule rather than the exception for a girl to want you to herself once she’s fallen in love with you. And more to the point, the girls who are cool with threesomes are not necessarily the ones who will satisfy you as well in the many other emotional, spiritual and intellectual areas that make a relationship lasting and great. And in the meantime, if you next all women who don’t fit the “threesome” category, you could very well wind up passing on women who really would have made you happier over the long run – all because you put sex above everything else.