Attachment Style and Game

A look back at old school Pick Up Artistry through the lens of Attachment Style theory.

Readership: All;
Theme: IOIs and Vetting
Length: 1,600 words
Reading Time: 9 minutes

How is Attachment Style Related to Relationship Failure?

One characteristic that Insecure Attachment Styles have in common is a drive to control others,* usually to ameliorate anxieties and insecurities related to the abnormalities of ones’ Insecure Attachment style. The fundamental constitution of ones’ Attachment Style — ones’ world orientation, ones’ view of self and others, and the associated habits — originate in childhood, so they have lived in this condition their entire lives. As a result, their skills in controlling others are thorougly explored and well practiced. Also, these individuals are typically unaware of their own dysfunctionality. They believe they can bring stability, peace, and contentment to themselves by controlling others, and therefore believe their controlling behaviors are fully justified, even normal. They may even project their controlling nature onto others.

* NOT ALL Insecure Attachment Styles seek to control. Some styles have subtypes marked by apathy / indifference in which they just want to be left alone (not to be confused with Avoidance Attachment which can be very controlling).

We’ve all heard stories of crazies who use sex or sex appeal or withholding sex as a tool to control men, or who get married and then divorced, or have a child OOW, all done in an effort to control a man and/or extract attention / cash / resources / security / status / etc. (a la the Curse of Eve).

Women who are repetitively pumped-and-dumped (repudiated), or wind up _ivorced and looking for the D (adulteresses) are most likely Insecurely Attached. Such experiences also foster, perpetuate, and reinforce Insecure Attachment in both men and women, but especially women and their children.

There are even voices that school women in how to do things like this, essentially teaching them how to make the most of their anti-social disposition and thereby hoodwinking them out of anything better. Women are their own worst enemies.

Moreover, the majority of women who do things like this are Insecurely Attached, in addition to having other psychopathic maladies. This is why Identifying Attachment Style is the New Game.

How is Attachment Style Related to Game?

Let’s take a look at old school Pick Up Artistry through the lens of Attachment Style theory.

In response to our coverage of Casey Zander in The Essence of the Black Pill (2023/8/11), commenter Dead Bedroom Dating pointed out that many PUA tactics prey on insecurely attached women to extract sex from them and also to satisfy the PUAs own Insecure Attachment (i.e. neediness).

I believe this is a valid observation for the following reasons.

The pinnacle “achievement” in PU Artistry is in successfully finding and Gaming an Insecurely Attached girl who is old enough to be sexually activated, yet young enough to be youthfully attractive and also too socially naïve to know she has an Insecure Attachment.

What is NEVER pointed out in polite society (and this is the golden key to Pick Up Artistry) is that the so called “targets” or “victims” of PUA guile are also looking to have their Insecure Attachment itch scratched, and it is left to the PUA to “pick up” on this and “not mess it up”. After all, it takes multiple misfits — both male and female — to do the mash.

You see, inside the PUA paradigm of Insecure Attachment, it is assumed that women have profane and perverse needs that they desperately want fulfilled. (As far as I know, I’ve been the only Manosphere voice who has pointed this out.) For example, when Casey Zander says, “Women DESPISE MEN who LOVE Them” and “WOMEN ONLY crave men who DO NOT NEED them”, he is citing decade-old Red Pill knowledge about the nature of debased women.  It is never mentioned that women with a healthy attachment style are not like this. The maxim “All Women Are Like That” (AWALT) is utilized to boost the PUA’s confidence and to provide the mindset necessary to seduce women into a fleshly fulfilling Insecure Attachment. All these morally inverted PUA Axioms (some of which are based on honest statements from women) are indeed “true” within the debased paradigms of the respective Insecure Attachment Styles.

Upon a closer inspection, we find that many PUA tactics are indeed characteristic of an Avoidant Attachment style, such as Amused Mastery, Bait and Switch, Blocking, Cat and Mouse games, Compatibility Testing, some types of Compliance Tests, False Time Constraints, Gotcha games, Inciting Jealousy, Negging, Shame Games, Silent Treatment, Spinning Plates, Transactional Mindset, and ZFG. In summary of all these tactics, the PUA playbook proposes displaying Avoidant Attachment behaviors, because that is what triggers Anxious Attachment in women, leading to those particular women giving chase. In fact, skillful Game as been known to make women come running. Why? Because it speaks to their Insecure Attachment style. IOW, Game exercises authentic authority over these broken women and this is what makes these men sexually “visible” to these women. This is the point at which arousal begins.

The effectiveness of these tactics are further amplified by the fact that avoidance is easily misinterpreted as high status, thereby triggering hypergamy.

Various types of approaches, each with their own set of time-tested tactics, were even called “styles”, unwittingly (?) identifying them as Insecure Attachment Styles.

The unstated necessary conditions for “success” are that (1) a woman must have an Insecure Attachment that can be exploited, and (2) she must be in a state of humiliation or vulnerability (e.g. desperate for attention and love, lacking agency, lacking Headship covering, living away from family, in rebellion against parents, unmarried, etc.). The stated emphasis on sex and scoring only serves to cloud the underlying emotional needs and the motivations thereof.

Moreover, old school PUA style Game tactics rely on a combination of theories about the fleshly nature of women, Red Pill praxeology, and skills in generating Attachment Style dynamics in order to genuflect charm, establish trust, inflict humility in women, and convey the promise of validation. In essence, Mystery, Strauss, Zander, et al. are teaching men how to develop co-dependent relationships with insecurely attached women.

Furthermore, old-school PUA Neil Strauss stated that most of the guys who came to him for help suffered from extreme social anxiety, which is a common trademark of Insecure Attachment. (This could also be due to flagging testosterone.)

Strauss also once said,

“To win the game was to leave it.”

That is Avoidant Attachment in a nutshell.

In conclusion, between the PUA gurus’ view of women as disposable commodities, the severe social anxieties of their disciples, the very nature of PUA tactics, and the kinds of women who respond to such tactics, archetypical Insecure Attachment styles are quite evident.

Concluding Statements

Alain de Botton said,

“…we are on a quest to suffer in ways that feel familiar. This radically undermines our ability to find a good partner.  We reject suitable potential partners simply because they are not able to make us suffer in the way that we need to suffer in order to feel that love is real.

We all have a particular “type” of person whom we find attractive, which may be a result of formative experiences in childhood and adolescence.  These “types” tend to instill those peculiar sorts of sufferings which we are most familiar with, although we remain ignorant of this and idolize the person instead.  One’s own particular “type” invariably proves to be challenging for one to deal with and manage. We have the idea that we should try to change the “type” we are attracted to, or change a particular individual we are attracted to into being someone fundamentally different. But instead of doing this, it may be wiser to learn how to deal with our type in a more mature way.”

As de Botton describes, and as I mentioned in a previous post, those who are not Securely Attached find it more difficult to land in a functioning relationship. Because of the high divorce rate over the past few decades, more and more young people have grown up in broken and/or dysfunctional homes and have developed Insecure Attachment as a result.

Pick Up Artistry was a response to this widespread depravity in that it succeeded in helping amoral, Insecurely Attached people — men and women alike — create provisional relationships in which they could have their emotional and sexual needs met.

As readers already know, a few years ago, the PUA industry went to the doghouse because women wised up to the games.  But unfortunately, this had nothing to do with women getting over their Attachment issues, learning to exercise boundaries, and growing past their solipsism. Instead, women upped the ante by filtering out all but the uber top tier men or else resorted to transactional interactions in order to make it worth getting burned.

An awareness of Attachment Styles may have saved a few heartbreaks.

Women with Secure Attachment don’t despise love, and they can deal with anxious, needy, and Insecurely Attached men in a forgiving manner.  As Dalrock, Deep Strength, ProfessorGBFM™, and others have pointed out, Pick Up Game (e.g. Zander’s advice) doesn’t “work” with emotionally healthy women. It only exposes you as an awkward, amateur wannabe who can’t read her well enough to know that she’s NOT broken / immature.  If you display emotionally unhealthy behavior to them, they simply drop you and move on.

As a final word, now it is more clear that the difference between PUA Game and Christian / Charismatic Game is one of Attachment Style. PUA Game is an unhealthy expression of Insecure Attachment, whereas Charismatic Game arises naturally from a Secure Attachment.

Related

• Σ Frame: On the Spiritual Significance and Social Value of Game (2019/11/3)
• Σ Frame: Why does Game work? (2019/12/9)
• Σ Frame: A Revised Understanding of Game (2020/9/14)
• Σ Frame: Game is an invitation to Humility (2022/10/25)