For example 78 years old widow man without an erection who is just looking into not dying alone, would perhaps go for 95% friendship and 5% erotic tension in a relationship.

The 22 years old guy looking for a quick lay and not much romantic attachment would go for the 95% erotic tension and 5% friendship.

The 40 years old guy looking to settle, maybe 50% - 50% ?

One possible way to cast Game in a perhaps more palatable light is that it is not even as much about being a cocky asshole, but more like expressing disagreement, expressing difference, giving unexpected, surprising answers, sending the general message of "I am a man, so I think and live totally different from you." It makes you interesting, exciting.

At some level every shit test passed is a disagreement expressed: it's a surprising answer that expresses difference between woman thinking and man thinking.

(In a society when women and men are raised really different there is hardly any Game: simply being honest is Game, as every manly answer is different from what the woman expects for her question to have.)

The friendzoned dude screwed it up not merely by being submissive or supplicating, even if he maintained a leadership kind of frame he just became boring by agreeing with too many things a woman said and thus rendered himself not exciting.

Even in a bluer-pilled type of common average LTR / marriage the man gains by sometimes saying no, sometimes expressing disagreement - this creates erotic tension, because it emphasizes difference.

So this is one way to talk about Game, that it is not really about being "bad" but being different from women. It's like "Hello, person from Venus. I am from Mars."

Maybe this is a good way to look at it for guys who are naturally nice. You are not trying to be bad, you are just expressing that you as a man are really different from women, which makes you exciting, and understanding that when she says "I really like band X" the worst possible answer is "Me too!" (+10 friendzone points instantly gained) because there is no sexual tension between a woman and a man who is basically her carbon copy in male form.

Any time a relationship is becoming too friendship-like, there is too much agreement... is a warning sign, the erotic tension may be dissipating.

Again as people get older, have lower sexual drives, look for more settled, less exciting lives, then it is OK to let more friendship, more agreement into a relationship... for example you just cannot do parenting together if you don't agree about how to and if your kids don't see you as friends there is obviously a problem.

Yet, for example amongst young and highly sexual people I have seen excellent relationships where they just could not talk to each other at all, their whole worldview being so radically different... but they were very hot for each other sexually.

This explains for me why guys who think like "Hey I will try my luck at a yoga or knitting class! Lots of women there!" usually fail. The women look at them and think "Hey, some dude who is into the same thing as me! How utterly boring."

Oh BTW this also explains to me international relationships. I mean there are cases when there is literally hardly any common language. What do you think that happens when a Portuguese guy and a Polish girl try to communicate in broken French? Or how did American soldiers pork the Italian girls in WW2? Not much talking, that is what happens. Ever wondered just how can that work? It can work because talking... is at some level a friendship kind of thing. An erotic relationship can work even with hardly any talking because it is the difference that creates the erotic tension and there is no need for much talking to feel that.

Perhaps this - the examples of passionate relationships when they can hardly speak each others language - demonstrates best why erotic tension is the opposite of friendship.