BACKGROUND

I’m 44 years old, just got of an 11-year relationship, and have been following (though not actively practicing) PUA for more than 20 years. After my relationship ended, I decided to test my knowledge to see if any of this seduction stuff even worked, and if so, how well. The results: I’m about six months post-breakup and have slept with around 20 women. That number could have easily been much higher, but I’ve already met two women that I like quite a bit and spend most of my free time with. So, based on these results, I’d say this stuff works. However! The problem I see though is that most of what’s being taught, and what dominates this subreddit, is either unhelpful or actively harmful for most guys trying to get good at game.

My goal with this post is to create a quick reference guide for guys who are actively trying to get good at game and want to know what to focus on. In the interest of keeping things short (ha!), I’m going to create a table showing the core skill or trait and a comment on why I think it’s important. I trust that if you’re here, you know how to use Google and AI to dig for more information on specific topics of interest to you. I’ll end it with a field report from this past weekend showing how, when, and where I put each skill or trait into practice and how it led to an easy same night lay (SNL).

SKILLS and TRAITS

I believe that seduction isn’t just a single skill, but rather a web of skills and traits that can be developed over time to make one more effective at game. I also believe time (and energy; especially as you get older) are our most limited resources, so you want to spend it learning things that actually work. If you want a seduction-specific resource that goes into this further, I recommend Minimal Game by Aaron Sleazy.

See the tables below to understand which skills and traits I find to be most important for seduction.

Skill or Trait Comment
Growth mindset You have to believe first and foremost that seduction is a skill that you can improve on.
A belief that women want to have sex; specifically with you. This belief is a total gamechanger once you’ve fully internalized it. There’s a course called “Godlike Power” that does a good job of breaking it down.
Fit, well-groomed, and good-looking Fit = 15% bodyfat. Well-groomed and good-looking are to the highest standards you can muster. It doesn’t matter what you look like relative to everyone else; it matters that you’re continually trying to look your best.
Knowing how to create and maintain a dating funnel People hate on them, but the apps have been a godsend for me in this area. I spend a few hours each month working on improving my profile, pay for premium access, then watch the dates roll in.
Free of negative beliefs about yourself, women, sex, and relationships. Basically, dump all the x-pilled garbage from your brain. Stop looking down on yourself and calling yourself average. And similarly, don’t disparage women just because they don’t do the things you want them to do. Learn to love them for who they are and you’ll be surprised how quickly they come to do the same for you.
Have enough money to support yourself currently, to date well, and to potentially support a family in the future. Most women aren’t looking to get rich off of dating you. In fact, most of the women I’ve met don’t care about money in the abstract at all. They just want to know that you’re not going to be a drag on their current lifestyle. If you can improve their lifestyle in some way, that’s a bonus, but not a huge one.
Generous but not wasteful in spending You don’t have to pay for the first date, but it helps. But by the same token, you should always date within your budget. If you’re feeling constrained by the costs of dating, you need to either make more money or find a different strategy for dating.
Comfortable interacting with men and women in non-sexual ways Women prioritize safety in a way that most men can’t fully comprehend. Demonstrating an ability to comfortably interact with everyone around you, not just your date, can go a long way towards putting her at ease.
Safe and discerning Specific to dating, you’ll (usually) want to present yourself as someone who isn’t going to ghost a girl, break her heart, ruin her reputation, or give her an STD. I say usually here because some women are attracted to aggressive fuckboys who break all these rules, but those women are the exception, not the norm.
Foundational conversational ability You should be able to hold a conversation with a women for hours. Seriously. If you’re not there yet, you should be more focused on building up your general conversation ability versus focusing on seduction.
Ability to plan and execute a date or a series of dates This one isn’t that hard. Work out a date and time. Figure out where they live (roughly; you don’t need an exact location) and decide on whether you want to date near their place or yours. Then call and reserve a spot.
Ability to a women through an interaction to where you and her want to go This is persuasion 101. You need to have an end destination in mind when you start the date and throughout. And to have a rough plan of how to lead the women from where you are now to the desired end state.
Understands logistics and how to manage them for the best outcome Another key skill. Basically, the shorter the distance between the date spot and your desired end spot, the easier it is to pull.
Knows when and how to pull At some point, you’ve gotta ask for the sale. The seduction community is full of gimmicks and tricks around this area, but I find almost all of them to be BS. I’ve had the best results with just being direct and straightforward.

FIELD REPORT

This following is a field report from last weekend where I show how to put these skills and traits into practice. The black text is background on what happened while the quoted text shows what skills and traits are reflected in the practice.

Six months ago, I split from my ex and moved from City A to City B. This past Friday, I went back to City A to gather up my things and move them into a storage unit in City B. Going into it, I had absolutely zero plans to hook up while in City A, but I decided to pack an overnight bag just in case.

Packing the overnight bag was a reflection of my belief that women want to have sex with me. I don’t always go out looking for sex, but I leave open the possibility that it can happen at any time and I try my best to be prepared for it.

Around 3:00 PM I received notification from a dating app that I had a new “like.” I checked out the profile, saw the girl was cute af and ten years younger than me. I decided to match with her. She sent me a message shortly afterwards asking if I was available for a date. I responded back and told her I don’t normally match with girls from City A since I’m in the process of moving, but that I thought she was too cute to pass up. I specifically mentioned that I’m not “husband material” (due to the move) but would be down for a fun date. She agreed and I started planning the date. A few messages later, and we had a date set up for later that night at a rooftop bar downtown in City A.

Again, this is just me leaning into the idea that women want to have sex with me. I just have to be safe and make it easy for them to do. No games. No delays. No overly flirty texting. Just connect and execute.
This is also reflection of date planning ability. I had already researched what places in City A are good date spots and had a plan ready to go if the opportunity presented itself.

The downtown bar was attached to a hotel, so I made a reservation and checked in about 90 minutes before the date. While checking in, I chatted up everyone nearby. One guy I met was from my same hometown, which was crazy to me since I grew up on the other side of the county in town of only 3,500 people.

About 20 minutes before my date, I went over to the hotel bar and settled in. When she got there, I stood up, gave her a hug, and jumped right into the conversation. We mostly talked about our experiences dating, some stuff about friends and family, and how glad I was to be moving away from City A. I mentioned my experience meeting the guy from my hometown and told her a little bit about my background growing up in rural America.

The only “gamey” parts of the conversation where when she started talking about her dating experiences. I asked her if she had a type. She did: fit, muscular, dark-skinned guys. I did a self-disqualification to judge her reaction (her: you’re plenty fit enough for me) and then told her it didn’t matter because she lives in the wrong city and is too young for me anyway. She also told me a story about how she used to cuck a previous boyfriend, at his request. I didn’t express any judgment towards her but added that I’m usually the one doing the cucking (vs the one being cucked).

There are a lot of things here worth noting: foundational conversational ability, free of negative beliefs about women sex and relationships (no slut-shaming), comfortable interacting with strangers (guy from elevator story), and leading the interaction (specifically toward sex and dating) are key. I assumed that since she was here with me that I met the "fit, well-groomed, and good-looking" box, too. The disqualification gambit was just an attempt to have her validate it in her own words.

So yeah, there’s a bit of the typical seduction stuff you all want to see. A bit of self-disqualification, push-pull, flirty banter, etc. But it made up less than 1% of the total conversational time. I’ll also note that at no point up to now did she give me any obvious IOIs until I prompted her to do so. She wasn’t exactly stone-faced. Just relaxed with an occasional laugh or two at conversational high points. Nothing crazy. You could have easily mistaken us as just two friends out having a drink.

After about 90 minutes of chatting, I closed our tab, paid the bill, then walked her arm-in-arm out to the rooftop area. I made light of the fact that I had barely touched her at all on our date, then told her what I really wanted to do was make out with her, but not in front of all the people gathered outside. She asked where I was staying and a took her hand, said “follow me,” and walked her back up to my room at the hotel.

Once in the room, I laid her down on my bed. We started making out, stopped to have a quick conversation around safe sex practices, then did the deed. She hung out for another 45 minutes or so afterwards, then we got up and I walked her back out to her car. We’ve been texting back and forth since then, and I’m planning a potential follow-up date in a couple of days.

This might sound like I’m leaving out a lot of relevant detail, but I can promise you I’m not. Dating and seduction are extremely straightforward once you master the basics. It really is as simple as believing that most women want to have sex with you then removing all obstacles to it happening so that it becomes easy for them. But most guys never get to this point because 1) they don’t believe its true, or 2) they’re not willing to put in the work to identify where the obstacles are and what they need to do to remove them. And most of those obstacles are internal. You don’t believe that women want to have sex with you, so you act in ways that support that belief. Then you come here looking for tips, tricks, and tactics, when what you should be doing is becoming the guy that women want to have sex with.

For those still following along, the key principles for this part of the date were assuming women want to have sex with me (again), managing logistics and having enough money to cover the bill for dinner and the hotel, being generous but not wasteful with money (I paid the full bill, not half), being safe and discerning (safe sex talk), leading the interaction, and knowing when and how to pull.

CONCLUSION

I want to end this by saying that I’m not some seduction guru or mPUA nor do I ever intend to be. By many accounts, I’m an average dude. I didn’t have my first regular sex partner until I was 23 years old. I was well into my 30s before I had even a basic understanding of game, and I got into a long-term relationship shortly afterwards. Coming out of that relationship, I floundered for a bit before working out which core principles actually made a difference in my dating success. Since then, I’ve been following the same basic practice and having SNLs (or quick turns, where we hookup within a few days of the first date) on about 70% of my dates.

The thing that makes this all work for me is that I took the time to figure out what works in dating (for me at least) and worked on improving those areas first and foremost. I spend almost no time thinking about PUA/seduction outside of the areas I've listed above because I genuinely don't have the time, and mastering those areas has already created more opportunities for me than I have time to pursue.