If you haven’t had any, or many experiences with women, you can easily get caught up in something like this. The first woman I had a relationship with was pretty neurotic, but she was too gross for me to get attached to. Another one was pretty crazy but I didn’t really care about her either.

My first foreign girlfriend was difficult, but I really wanted to have a successful relationship with her and so it went on for a long time. The trouble is all women now seem to be crazy to me. Maybe Athol Kay has an answer to this, I’m going to look into his stuff more.

I had been planning to see my foreign girlfriend before starting that job, but delayed telling her because I had the feeling somehow it wasn’t a sure thing. I figured this would be a good chance to talk seriously about the future and getting a fiance visa. Then I let it slip, and she was really excited, so I used my airline miles to go see her for two and a half weeks.

But we had many problems. She is very jealous and gets angry at me very easily. We had problems before but this time it was much worse. I think she is ambivalent about the relationship and has been for a long time. I can’t blame her, as I have not had a steady job for a year and a half, and she is sick of the long distance relationship.

I just don’t know how to deal with angry, emotional women. I suppose the answer is “don’t”. I had one girlfriend who was pretty crazy, but it didn’t really bother me because I never was heavily invested in her. I had been hoping this would work out- I am sick of looking for love, it’s a difficult process and I don’t know if I can go through it again.

Matt Groening once said “Heartbreak is light and lively compared to unemployment.” I have been thinking a lot about how utterly critical decent employment is to life. I have actually made decent progress in my life when I had a job. You are relaxed and have money to spend on activities and self-improvement.

I have always wanted to get married and have kids. I have wanted to have two, but my foreign girlfriend seems pretty overwhelmed at the thought of one- she didn’t want to have kids particularly before meeting me. A sister recently had a baby, and she is crazy about him, but always talks about how hard it is with a kid.

I don’t relish the prospect of being an old bachelor. Neither my brother or sister has kids, so I wouldn’t even have a niece or nephew to visit me in the rest home. I don’t like the idea that other people fucked me up so much I can’t even complete a basic goal in life. But I guess we will see.

Hopefully I will get a job soon but the job market seems to me to have changed permanently for the worse. There are fewer jobs and they pay less. But you are lucky to have any job. I go to these job seeker groups, and they all tell you to network. But the only people you can network with are other people looking for jobs.

Well, there’s a little grim news from Omega Man to darken your day. Hopefully I’ll have something more positive in the near future.

The bigger boys run down the bank, over the log and the rocks easily. But for little PJ- tagging along with the big kids- the obstacle is a lot more frightening. He’s smaller, and has shorter legs. He’s younger and probably hasn’t been out of the yard away from his mom much, maybe never. The big drops of the embankment, the rough and possibly treacherous surface of the log and rocks maybe more than he can handle without falling and hurting himself. And worst of all the big kids are running ahead without him! Why can’t his brothers stay and help him down? Which is scarier, trying to climb down and catch up with the big boys, or turning around and going home?

PJ can probably learn easier and with less stress with a little help, but it looks like he will have to do it on his own. Unfortunately a lot of life is like that- we have to face difficult, scary new challenges all on our own. It’s easy to say “Climb down! It’s easy!” but harder to do.

I guess life is just one new obstacle to cross after another. All we can do is be as brave as we can manage.

Yeah, kind of like Groundhog Day. I wake up, read crap on the internet, check for jobs, apply for jobs, read more crap on the internet, eat something, take a shower, leave the house, maybe eat lunch out- although I’m cutting back- go to the coffee shop and idle my time away.

I have been to various interviews, but with no success. Buying air tickets in the summer without much notice is not cheap, and it pissed me off to spend close to $1000- after hotels and food- and get nothing. On the last one I think the guy who called me for the interview liked me, but maybe not his  boss. I was going to check back with him last week but I’ll try this week.

At one interview I took a bunch of tests, and was offered the opportunity to talk to a company psychologist about the results. I was pretty apprehensive about this- I was not offered the opportunity to go further, and I thought it might be ’cause they figured I was psycho. What they told me was I have a wonderfully balanced personality but could work on being more assertive. I guess I was able to successfully fake the balanced personality part.

Looking at the comments there was some weirdness. I don’t moderate comments, or ban people because I think people should be able to have their say. That’s not all positive- I suspect Sheila stopped coming because of some stuff Mahoney said.

I was thinking the other day for some reason about Hugh O’Connor, son of actor Carroll O’Connor. He appeared with his father on the TV show “In the Heat of the Night”. He had a cocaine problem, and finally committed suicide. I read he was supposed to go back to rehab, but couldn’t face it. On top of the pain of getting off the drug, you have all these people moralizing to you. And you have to spend the rest of your life going to meetings, which is like a bad evangelical church. I can see why killing yourself or overdosing might look like a better alternative.

Psychology and therapy are very moralistic. If only you would try hard enough, or push yourself hard enough, then you would be successful and not be such a loser.

I think eventually they will come up with pharmaceutical treatments for drug and alcohol addiction that will be far more effective and less painful than what is done now with addicts.

The advice now for socially inept people tends to be along the lines of “Subject yourself to many painful and distressing experiences and you will improve.” Talking to a couple people with experience with addicts, these people often have not had a good childhood, and what seems to help them is learning to enjoy life and be happy with positive experiences without using drugs.

Being with people should be happy and joyful. I would like to learn how to make it like that.

She mentioned it almost in passing on a rambling YouTube posting about a conference and sexism in the atheist community. There’s no point in watching it, I only include it for reference-

Rebecca Watson lacks a sense of irony. At the conference last year, she made a presentation on etiquette for atheists. (Because atheists, like some religious enthusiasts, lack a sense of where it is appropriate to share their beliefs.) The first thing she does, though, is blame the Danish people for the theft of her bicycle-

The discussion of Watson falls into a few categories

-The guy didn’t have no game. Clearly not, but what was he supposed to do? Of these comments Roissy had the most germane analysis, that direct game doesn’t work in elevators.

-Feminists are hypocrites who insist on being treated like special snowflakes. That’s something we see every day.

None of this really deals with the unfortunate guy in the elevator. I’ve been the guy in the elevator. You may have been the guy in the elevator. Men are advised to learn game by making many, many approaches. Unfortunately of you are inexperienced and have low status, this is particularly difficult and has additional barrier.

I talked about this somewhat in an old post on approaching fat women. But I’ll talk about it more generally.

Social interaction thrives on relaxation, a sense of fun, excitement, self-esteem and positive self-appraisal. There is a Celtic word for this, “craic”, pronounced “crack”. It means a kind of happy party vibe. The word “crackers” appears someplace in Shakespeare, used meaning “blowhards”, but while a cracker might be a braggart and a teller of tall tales, he would also probably be a fun guy to hang out with. The term migrated to the American South to mean lower class whites, the kind of people also called “good ol’ boys”.

Social interaction is poisoned by nervousness, fear, shame, and negative self-appraisal. Most people are at least a little nervous in social situations which is why alcohol is so commonly served at them, and why most “pick-up” activity occurs in bars.

“Craic” seems to me to be a great word to describe the best state for social interaction. “Craic” is a good mix of beta and alpha. It’s friendly but not polite or deferential, interested but not sympathetic. It’s not mean but isn’t really interested in your problems. I think the most important thing about it though is, it insists you want to have a good time as well. Relax, be friendly, look for happy people who also want to have fun.

I used to work with a natural who everybody loved. He was a one-man party. He was always in a happy, devil-may-care, we’re having a great time today mood. He was also a backstabbing jerk, but even when you knew he had done something behind your back you still couldn’t help liking him. His charm unfortunately didn’t outweigh lack of certain technical skills or his alcohol problem, but where ever he is now I’m sure he’s having a good time with an attractive woman.

State is a tricky thing. I suspect that Elevator Guy was not really fearful when he made his oh so salacious and improper proposal to the delicate flower Miss Watson, coffee at 4 AM. (Maybe if he had suggested decaf or herbal tea she would have been delighted to make an atheist baby with him, but we’ll never know.) He had worked up his courage and was running on a burst of adrenaline. He may not have been fearful, but I’m sure he wasn’t relaxed and indifferent.

Other people are the mirror in which we see ourselves. If you have had a lot of rejection, ignoring, bullying or other negative feedback from others it probably has you seeing yourself in a negative light, and makes relaxed bonding with others difficult. But how does this apply to the approachee?

As I intimated in “Fat Women and the Omega” each approach by a man tells a woman something about how the rest of the world sees her. All women want to think they are fairly desirable. I think most women are realistic enough to believe they can’t get a really high-level guy, but they have an idea of what kind of guy they think they should have. They believe their status is obvious and guys who aren’t at the level they want will not approach them.

If a guy who does not meet what she perceives as her entitled standard does approach her, her image of herself is challenged. And people really hate that. Maybe she doesn’t actually rate the cool, handsome, successful guy she thought. Maybe she’s really kind of fat and homely and boring and all she can get is this slightly nervous nerdy guy trying to talk to her about her iPhone! OMG!

Attractive women don’t have this problem. Lots of guys hit on them, and they either learn to take it in stride by the time they are 13 or they go nuts. She is not insulted when the 60-year-old janitor at her office tries to make lame small talk with her. She knows her beauty has a power men are helpless to resist.

A lower desirability woman who has had her ego bruised- unintentionally and unknowingly, by a guy who probably had good intentions- she can react a number of ways. She can be honest with herself and say, “I need to accept my sexual market value. Or I need to increase it.” She can laugh it off- ”Guys! Always horny, always after the vaj, even when they got no chance!” She will likely bitch to her friends about it- “This loser was hitting on me, oh my god it was awful.” She can try to embarrass the guy to punish him- either right then and there, or if she has a YouTube following, she can mention it there.

Rebecca Watson isn’t fat, or ugly, but the hot guys are ignoring her. Even the atheist nerd community hot guys aren’t into her, most likely. (I wonder if she fucked the old Chinese guy who appears at the beginning of the first video. My spidey sense says yes.)

If I had a good answer for this, I would be out approaching like a maniac. But a few things that my omega friends might remember. Avoid direct game, unless it is appropriate per Roissy. Above all be relaxed, happy, indifferent, bemused- all the opposites of horny and eager. Realize less-attractive women perceive approaches differently than attractive women, and will react accordingly.

Rebecca- since you love the Science so much, you probably should understand a horny guy inviting you to his hotel room is not “sexism” but “sex”, the method by which complex organisms reproduce themselves. In all mammal species, the male initiates. Go to the library and get a book on it. And in Western society, no, women are not obligated to have sex with anyone they don’t like, “No thanks, I’m tired” is all you need to say.

In approaching women, sometimes you will be Roissy or Roosh, but you may be Elevator Guy. But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with being Elevator Guy. He saw something he liked and went for it, which takes guts. Let’s raise our glasses to Elevator Guy, who has balls if not a whole lot of game. Better luck next time dude. Fuck that stuck-up bitch.

Briefly, Joseph manages to maintain his live-in relationship, despite quitting his job, and his friend Sam fails. Joseph makes a very important observation here, which is that while he comes from a healthy family environment, and can comfortably perform the beta aspect of a relationship, Sam does not and cannot.

I hate it when guys rip on betaness. 80% of enjoyable human life is based on betaness. Kindness, affection, caring, and even dependence are nothing to be scorned or feared, but rather to be embraced and treasured. Just because they aren’t everything doesn’t mean they are nothing, quite the opposite, the whole point of alphaness is to enable yourself to enjoy betaness.

Or I think it is for most guys; for me anyway. Some guys learn alpha traits without every learning beta traits. My semi-natural friend Carl is like this. His parents were both pretty type A people and his dad walked out when he was 14. He gets laid easily but has really bonded to only one woman, whom he met while working overseas after he was married. But he wouldn’t leave his wife- who he does not love, at least in the way I think of as love. I knew another guy, who had a very rough, nasty, type A, high-testosterone father, successful but a real asshole, who went through a lot of women. I suspect Roissy falls into this category also, but I don’t know his family history. Sam seems to be an extreme example of this, unusual in that he was an AFC, but learned game and got a lot of women.

This brings me back to myself, omegas, and students of game in general. I think of myself as a nice person, but maybe I’m not. I don’t like or trust many people- hardly any people really- and I’m suspicious of kindness, niceness, and charity, which from the way my mother believed in them seemed like sucker’s games. I’m capable of being very kind and tender but this is something I am very reserved with. My sister has some trouble with her employees, who seem to think she’s kind of difficult to work for and short-tempered. My sister is very giving with some people, who usually don’t deserve it from what I can tell, but she is locked in to the family rule of always putting others first and not looking after yourself.

Alpha behavior has a lot of value. It’s necessary to get what you want and avoid being manipulated by other people. But by itself it won’t allow you to enjoy warmth and closeness with other people. A guy with good beta traits but poor alpha traits will have good relationships with people, but without any control. A guy with good alpha traits but poor beta traits will be successful at getting what he wants from people, including sex from women, but will be frustrated in forming strong emotional bonds.

If you have neither, you are in a bit of a pickle. If you don’t have an avoidant personality, alpha traits- at least on some level- aren’t hard to learn. You have to deal with a lot of failure and rejection from women, but if you frame it as a learning experience and don’t care, it’s only a matter of a little practice. My big barrier in learning game is my avoidance.

Learning beta behavior? Trusting and opening up to others? Being appropriately caring, supportive and empathetic with others? I don’t know how you learn that as an adult. You are supposed to learn these things in your family of origin. If you don’t you are likely to see all these things as negatives, “acting beta” in the horrified observation of game practitioners, when being beta is a necessity of normal, healthy relationships. I get the feeling I have done a lot of uncaring asshole game completely without meaning it.

All I can say is, don’t be afraid of being beta when it seems socially appropriate. If your behavior with a woman- or other person- is fundamentally alpha in a positive way, that is assertive and self-respectful, you can show empathy and kindness and it will not only not harm you, it will benefit both you and the other person.

I think about her a lot, and usually in negative terms. I’m angry at her strict intolerance, and yet I feel sorry for her because she was a sensitive girl raised in a family of fairly hard people.

She was anxious all the time. My father was anxious a lot as well, but not as much as her. I think this environment has made all their children anxious. My mother had a very rigid and unrealistic idea about how you had to live life, which I have discarded intellectually but not emotionally. My sister struggles with this but I don’t think she has any idea what to replace it with.

My mother seemed to believe that life was a test, every day, with exceedingly high standards. You always had to put other people first, because they were more important, and their needs and wants were more important. Actually, their wants were more important than my needs. You must love and forgive everyone no matter what they do, and whether they stop doing it or not and whether they have any remorse for it or not. You must not express any negative emotions such as anger or frustration, or negative thoughts or judgments of other people. If you feel or think these things, they must be immediately suppressed. Certain authority figures-  teachers, priests, and older women- must never be questioned. Others might be under some circumstances. Sex is bad and dirty. Sex itself, and the associated emotions of desire and feelings of pleasure. You must not want anything. The most basic things- clothing to prevent nakedness and food to prevent hunger- will be provided. Anything else is vanity. You must not want attention or praise for anything.

That’s a recipe for insanity. For a brief period when I was 12 I figured my life was not going to work out for the better in any way and I was going to have to submerge myself in this and hope for relief in the afterlife. Then I thought, “No, this is bullshit, I shouldn’t have to live this way.”

There has to a happy medium for relating to people and living in the world, but I have never figured out what it is.

One thing struck a nerve with me- actually upset me. Cialdini gets to talking about “commitment” as a way of changing the subject’s thinking. He uses American POWs in the hands of the Chinese during the Korean war. Unlike the North Koreans they didn’t abuse prisoners, but tried to persuade them none the less. One thing they would do is try to get the prisoners to write out statements supporting the communists, even fairly innocuous ones like “America is not perfect” or “Unemployment is not a problem in China.”

What happened was the prisoners began to think of themselves as more friendly to the communists, just by having made in their own handwriting these statements. The papers could then be shown to other prisoners, who would think of the writers as collaborating. This induced another affect, which was that when other prisoners began to think of them as collaborators, they began to think of themselves as collaorators as well.

I had been reading “Bang” by Roosh as well, going over the part where he talks about doing a lot of approaches. I had been meaning to talk to the woman at the cupcake shop, but when I had the chance I just couldn’t.

Family and peer abuse then has a strong effect on the psyche. You must at some time submit to or cooperate with your abusers if you are around them daily for months or years. This then makes you think it is normal, and you deserve it. You are thrust into the social role of a weak, abused person which makes other people think it is normal and you deserve it.

Attached to this somehow is I had some bad memories come up. I have a lot of bad memories but these particular ones hadn’t returned to me in a long time. They have to do with people acting friendly, as a set up for something else.

There are two kinds of abuse. One is simple lashing out on the part of the abuser. He hits somebody, or shouts at somebody, or insults somebody in a fit of anger, which subsides as quickly as it arose. We are encouraged to see all abuse like this. And abusers will always try to classify their abuse like this, if called on it. He didn’t mean it, it’s not a big deal, forgive him.

Some abuse is like that. Much is deliberately intended to control the victim and have long-term effects. As with the brainwashing, when you have physical control over a person, you can mess with their mind quite a bit.

I had family problems and peer problems. Roosh says basically you need to “extinguish” your responses, to use a term from operant conditioning. I know this works in a lot of situations; you confront an anxiety-provoking situation and the anxiety is greatly reduced. But I still think there are situations for which it doesn’t work, and I can’t figure out what to do for that. I fundamentally don’t trust anyone which makes it real difficult to deal with people in unstructured situations.