Whenever I consult teenage guys or young adult men I’m always reminded about how my ‘Game’ has changed over the course of my lifetime. The 17 year old Rollo Tomassi would be be appalled at the mindset of the 46 year old Rollo Tomassi.
Granted, much of that shock would probably be attributed to the lack of experience my younger self had with regards to female nature, human nature and, if I’m honest, I suffered from the same naiveté most young men do when it comes to judging people’s character. In fact, at the time, my belief was that I shouldn’t ever judge anyone’s character, nor did I, nor should anyone really, have the right to.
Part of that assumption was from an undeveloped religious learning, but more so it was due to a youthful idealism I held – I’d been conditioned to believe not only that you “can’t judge a book by its cover”, but also that you shouldn’t do so, and ought to be ashamed for considering it.
I’m flattered that people might think I’m some phenomenal interpreter of psychology, the nature of women, intergender relations and a model upon which men should aspire to in order to get laid and still have a great (now 18 year) marriage. It has not always been so.
If I have any credibility now it’s not due to my getting everything miraculously right, but because I had everything so horribly wrong more often than not.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my time studying psychology and personality studies is that personality is alway in flux. Who you are today is not who you will be in another few years. Hopefully that’s for the better after learning something and applying it towards your own personal progress, but it could equally be a traumatic experience that changes you for the worse.
For better or worse, personality shifts – sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly – and while you may retain aspects of your personality, mannerisms, talents, past experiences and beliefs into the next iteration of yourself in a new phase of your life, rest assured, you will not be who you are now at any other time.
Game Changes
I’m sorry if this sounds all fortune cookie to you at the moment, but it’s a necessary preface to understanding how Game changes for men as their life situations and circumstances change during different phases of their lives and the shifts in their own personalities and learned perceptions change as they age.
It’s an easy step for me to assume that, were I to find myself single tomorrow, I wouldn’t approach Game in any degree as I would were I the 26 year old version of myself. Indeed, the primary reason I’ve involved myself in expanding the Preventative Medicine series into the next volume of The Rational Male is to help men at different phases of their own development understand what to expect from women (and themselves) during these periods of their life.
About two weeks ago I broached the subject of how Game should be a universal knowledge-tool for the everyman. My intent in Game and Circumstance was to shine some light on how Game and red pill awareness is (should be) a benefit for men regardless of their circumstance.
As I expected, the comparisons of Looks vs. Game was the inevitable discussion in the comment thread, because the presumption is that a man’s most evident condition is how he looks and how women are or are not aroused / attracted to their perception of him. I’ve written more about this Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks arousal dynamic than I care to review at the moment, but suffice it to say I do place a high importance on a man’s physical bearing.
However, my intent wasn’t to engage in a debate over the importance of looks, but rather that Game and red pill awareness is applicable for men of every social or personal condition – even the short, pudgy guy who empties the trash in your office. He may not have the potential to enjoy sex with a swimsuit model, but the tenets of Game can help him improve his life within his own circumstances.
Game Beyond PUA
When I was writing The Rational Male I specifically wrote and published a post on the Evolution of Game to be included in the book in order to demystify an impression of Game which I still think people (particularly the blue pill uninitiated), sometimes intentionally, misconstrue as some magical panacea to their ‘girl problems’. My definition was thus:
For the unfamiliar, just the word ‘Game’ seems to infer deception or manipulation. You’re not being real if you’re playing a Game, so from the outset we’re starting off from a disadvantage of perception. This is further compounded when attempting to explain Game concepts to a guy who’s only ever been conditioned to ‘just be himself‘ with women and how women allegedly hate guys “who play games” with them. As bad as that sounds, it’s really in the explanation of how Game is more than the common perception that prompts the discussion for the new reader to have it explained for them.
At its root level Game is a series of behavioral modifications to life skills based on psychological and sociological principles to facilitate intersexual relations between genders.
Game has more applications than just in the realm of intergender relations, but this is my best estimation of Game for the uninitiated. Game is the practical application of a new knowledge and increasingly broader awareness of intergender relations – often referred to, for convenience, as Red Pill awareness, by myself and others in the broader manosphere. Game begins with red pill awareness and using that awareness to develop Game.
The body of infield evidence collected by 15 years of PUA is far more reliable and valid than anything social science has produced on seduction – Nick Krauser
As I’ve written in the past, everyone has Game. Every guy you know right now has some idea, methodology or system of belief by which he thinks he can best put himself into a position of relating to, and becoming intimate with, a woman.
From even the most rank Beta plug-in to the 14 year old high school freshmen boy has some notion about what he, and by extension all men, should do in order to become intimate with a girl. I described this a bit in Beta Game where I outlined the Beta plan of identifying with women’s “needs” and adopting a feminine-primary mental point of origin in order to become more like the target(s) of his affection.
What ‘formalzed’ Game comes down to is what genuinely works for the betterment of his life. Men don’t seek out the manosphere because their Beta Game works so well for them.
I’ll admit, this was my own Game when I was in my late teens. Like most properly conditioned young men,I subscribed to the idea that men needed to be more empathetic and sensitive to women’s experience (rather than putting priority on his own) as the most deductive means to getting a girlfriend who’d appreciate my uniqueness for being so ‘in tune’ with the feminine.
If you’d have asked me at the time (the mid 80’s), my belief was that the best way to ‘get the girl’ was to take women at their word, use their “advice“, be their friend, make her comfortable, sacrifice your own (chauvinist) self-importance and support her importance, and mold your incorrect male self into a more perfect feminine ideal. The idea was that the lesser you made yourself, the more you made of her, and the more likely she was to reciprocate intimacy in appreciation.
That was my Game up until I learned through trial and painful error that women loath a man who needs to be instructed on how to actually be more attractive to women. I didn’t understand that by my subscribing to this spoon-fed feminization Game and overtly advocating for it I was only advertising to the very girls I wanted that I Just Didn’t Get It.
This was simply the first stage of Game changing for me, and I’m fairly certain that you’d read a similar story from most of the manosphere’s heaviest hitters. I’m peripherally familiar with the early histories of the likes of Roosh, Nick Krauser and even Mystery, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the Game they practice today would be foreign to their younger selves.
When I moved into my rock star 20’s I began practicing a new form of Game, one based on social proof and demonstrating higher value (DHV).
Of course I had no idea I was practicing any Game at the time. I had reinvented myself and my identity shifted into that of a guy who was Spinning Plates, being more self-concerned and enjoying the benefits of that social proof and DHV; but if you’d asked me what I’d done to effect that change, or how my Game was affected by it, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer then – Game was just instinctual for me.
Now in my married years, as a husband and the father of a teenage daughter, and my professional life in the liquor and casino world where I interact with beautiful women on a weekly basis, I still employ Game when I don’t realize I am.
However, that Game is the compounded, internalized result of what I’ve learned and used since the days I believed in the “be nice for girls to like you” teenage Game. Amused Mastery, Command Presence and a few other principles became much easier to employ as a mature man, but also a new grasp of how women’s lives have a more or less predictable pattern to them.
Thanks to my time studying behavioral psychology I understand the methods women use to prompt and provoke men (shit tests). Thanks to my red pill awareness and simple understand of how women’s biology influences hypergamy I now understand why they do so – and more importantly, how to avoid the traps of falling into the worst aspects of women’s dualistic sexual strategy.
All of this influences my ‘Game’ in the now. As before, I don’t play a constant, conscious game of mental chess in my dealings with women (and even the men in my social and professional life), I just live it.
So, in closing, it’s important to consider that the concept of Game you might be struggling with now was probably some other man’s experience before you encountered it. What is Game for me at 46, will most likely not have the exact same utility for me at 56, but if I stay sharp and learn along the way I’ll develop a new Game for that phase of life.
In Roosh’s most recent book, he has a quote in it that struck me (I paraphrase): There are a lot of men who tell me they wish they knew back then what they know now, but in all likelihood that knowledge wouldn’t serve them as well as they believe it would. They’d simply make new mistakes (and hopefully learn from them) based on the things they never had any experience of in the now.
There is always additional knowledge a man can know even when he possess the highest level of knowledge.
