Little advice please Seddit, as I’ve been lurking for a while. I have no FRs, no approaches, nothing, as part of me wants to take the big step into this, but the other part feels very uncomfortable. Basically I am King of the AFCs. I feel like a ghost wandering through social environs and going unnoticed. I recently read The Game and it found unexpectedly (if briefly) changed my life as I immediately went on a diet, shed 35lbs, and bought new clothes – except I couldn’t change completely and now find myself slowly slipping into those ‘old ways’, eating junk food again, wearing shit shoes, avoiding the gym and no longer feeling alive. I didn’t reach my target weight. This meant I didn’t progress from my own personal Stage 1 to Stage 2 (beginning all this.) And then there’s my other problem. I avoided Neil’s book for years as I thought it was just a sad guide for sad men about how to fuck as many women as possible. And try as I might, I don’t find that particularly dignified (if not exactly unpleasant.) In a poor attempt to analyse this, my father & step-father are nice guys, but kept outta my way. My Mum & grandma did all my raising, leaving me with a huge respect for women. Long term, you could argue, this also made me a pussy as I’m a bumbling buffoon terrified about pickup. I’ve read a lot of material, and watched videos in the field with a certain amount of awe, but I also see those guys as The Enemy. I’ve had two disciplinary’s with two guys from two different companies as they were leeches (One, for example, followed a female friend into the women’s toilets on a drunken night out as he was in the middle of talking her into sex and wouldn’t let such a thing as anyone’s privacy put him off). Both men were tall, dark & handsome braggards who saw women as commodities. Point is, entering this world will make me feel like I’m trying to emulate a type I fucking despise. On the other hand, I’m in trouble. I’m 2 years shy of 40 next month and haven’t had a girlfriend and all the intimacy that involves since 2005. (In fact yesterday I emailed that gf out of the blue to say a pointless hello). I also bought The Game for a close friend – he’s 9 years older than me and didn’t like it as much, as we have similar concerns. It all seems so shallow, and all the ‘field reports’, the acronyms, the army mission feel, it all seems so clinical and impersonal - yet so fucking much of it makes sense. I need to do something. I have no real female contact with anyone anymore, and I have a real fear that I’ll die fat and alone in front of the TV where I’ll get eaten by my starving cat. Am I the only one who thinks like this? Are any of you out there tentative pre-Gamers too, or have you broken through these worries (as opposed to just diving in with no real qualms)?

TL;DR I want to begin Gaming, but I have concerns about what’s essentially trying to fuck as many women as possible and becoming a shallow, vacuous prick in the process (plus of course I have Approach Anxiety x 1 billion)