When I was 14 I was send to a few psychologist to figure out "what was wrong with me", 1 of the psychologists said if there was a point based system where if somebody had autism would be a score anywhere between 1 and 5 I would pretty much be a 5.5. Alas, no diagnosis and no help. (To note, nothing wrong with autism. Just to show how lacking my social skills where as that was the main reason I got send.) Fast forward to 4 years, I can socialize okay with guys but girls are still alien objects to me. Then at 1 point during the holiday a guy invites me and my friend to a bar and within 5 minutes he suddenly has a girl in each of his arms and brought them over to us. I was more shocked than being able to talk so the girls promptly left (my friend wasn't much different). After that I asked the guy how he did that and he started talking about pickup. And at this point it clicked for me, seduction and being attractive are a puzzle you can solve or a game you can play. Never spoke to him again, but he did recommend "The game" as a book to read and that's where it started.

  1. Now same holiday I am at a different hostel and first thing I do is talk to a girl at a bbq at the hostel. For some reason that went remarkably well (she apperantly really had a thing for Dutch guys) and we ended up in the same bed. That's where my first take-away comes from, just go for it. Put yourself in situations and you might play it well or you might get lucky, but def just go for it.
  2. After that, nothing more happened during that holiday the next 2 weeks and I feared I was just a 1 hit wonder but I started reading "The game" and then every book or resource I could find after that. And I became the typical keyboard warrior, theory without practice is nothing.
  3. Second point that comes from above, just because I did it and you see what you can do doesn't mean that it's a necessary for you to skip that step. Take it at your own pace, just be aware that you don't stay in homeostatis forever.
  4. Some tips from the resources I read where quite handy though in the long run. 1 of them was that I joined a local gym and trained in combat sports. It helped me improve my posture and the fact that I wasn't just a scrawny kid anymore does something for your mindset and confidence.
  5. Another tip from the books was that if you want to improve was making social skills your profession. I used to work in warehouse. After reading that I started a sales job (which I sucked at when I started out). But it did help me hone my skill and eventually I also became a trainer and coach (non pick-up related, mainly social skill) which still helps me hone my social skills to this day.
  6. When I was in my sales my job I was the geeky weird guy. Still far from being there, what worked however for me was that I had a notepad with me and I wrote down what worked for me. Writing everything down helped me reflect on what I was doing well and what didn't work, after a few months I was 1 of the top sales persons on that job, simply because I took it very very serious.
  7. At this point I had my first relationship, which in retrospect was terrible. My family still talks about it in a joking way, and so do I. I however learned a lot from this relationship, mostly that you can't take a relationship for granted, you have to work for it.
  8. Besides that point I learned to set my own boundaries in relationships as she generally walked over me and definetly wore the pants in the relationship. I had a relationship and I thought that was going to make me happy, however the way I acted in the relationship and the way she did made me actually feel worse than before. It left me with a feeling of: "is this really it?"
  9. During that relationship I was investing more and more in myself, meeting with people into self development, following courses and trying to undertake new adventures and I started to realise that that relationship wasn't for me. So eventually we broke up, which was still a terrible feeling after not being happy for 4 years, I still cared for her. Yet I would remain unhappy if I stayed. The investing in myself made all the difference in being able to make that decision and choosing for myself rather than choosing just for her.
  10. After that I also moved to a bigger city, I used to live in a small town of 3000 inhabitants, I moved to a bigger city of 800k+ inhabitants. Suddenly there was a much more open dating market. Moving to a place where I could freely talk with new girls without the burden of everybody judging me helped me. In hindsight I still could approached girls in and around my small town but I didn't feel comfortable with it at that time.
  11. Important factor in the freely talking to girls though was that it wasn't my main focus of my life. I tried building a healthy social life my starting a new job, joining clubs, going to meet ups. The girls came as a byproduct of improving my life.
  12. Then I fall into the trap of just dating every girl who gave me attention. Honestly I still came from a place of need and wanted to feel wanted. After dating girls and investing time in dates with girls who simply weren't my type was a good way of figuring out what my type was. Eventually I started to tone down the dating and focus more on the kind of girl I want and that would fit my lifestyle and my personality.
  13. Then I found a few girls that on paper would be wife material, however I didn't feel the connection that well and I'm happy I listened to my feeling here rather than my logic. There's more to a girl than her "stats" she can be beautiful, athletic, geeky, intelligent and funny and she might still not be a good person for you even though you rationally believe she must be.
  14. Going on with my life I got introduced to my currect gf by a mutual friend when he send us on a blind date and if you envision a shitty date, this was a prime example of it. We didn't really hit it off, and there was no connection whatsoever. However we did have some of the same humor so I still texted her after and we met up at parties and what not. We became friends based on our humor and send each other on blind dates with other friends for giggles. (The friend way is ofcourse not always the way, as it wasn't with all the other girls before. But you never know what happens if you remain in contact.)
  15. Another thing she and I had in common was that we both invest in ourselves and improve ourself. Eventually we connected on that and we found there was more behind eachother than we thought. We judged eachother to quickly based on a first impression in a loud crappy bar and wrote each other off based on that. So take your time actually getting to know someone before you write them off.

After this and between this a lot more stuff happened with me being on more dates (and a national dating show) and us breaking up for over a year because at first there were cracks in the relationship. But the general take away of that is: have fun, live your life and you will make good stuff happen