Be advised, this will contain a number of stories from my past in an attempt to distil RP moments from them, to piece together what contributed to my RP journey.

My RP experience was mostly subconscious. From an early age I was introverted, and extremely low in the social hierarchy. I read a lot ( A lot ), was bullied even more and never had many friends. By the time I was 13 I had developed humour as my primary valued trait, and started to become slowly extroverted. However, due to a variety of reasons, by 16 I was constantly angry, depressed and desperate for attention. I started smoking and selling drugs (I never took anything 'hard'). It was also at this age I lost my virginity to a one night stand off Tinder. By my 17th birthday, I was on trial for a firearm related offence (although I had been arrested whilst 16).

At some point during my incarceration, I was RP'd. I am not sure how exactly it happened. I have a feeling it started when many of the women in my life who said that they would stand by me, didn't. The How is not important. The fact that it happened, however, is. This set me down my unconscious RP journey. It was the first shattering of the pedestal I had placed Other People (Women) on.

The second shattering of a pedestal came shortly after. I had been no stranger to fights, for in my last year at school I had increasingly fought back against bullies. Not only to release pent up anger, but also to garner appreciation. My new identity had become The Kid Who Gives No Fucks. This however, could not have been further from the truth. I was desperate for attention, and by getting into fights, I got it.

That said, I had always placed the Masculine Man upon a pedestal. I had lived in a constant state of fight or flight due to my low social hierarchical position, and this resulted in me venerating those who I ran from. But in prison, you cannot run. Here is the story of how that particular pedestal was shattered:

I had been sent to a Young Offenders Institute for the first part of my Incarceration. In England, where I come from, these are extremely violent places, and I'm talking 3-8 fights a day, every day, the entire time I was there. I had been placed on a wing known as A1. The A1 boys had a reputation for 'beefing' other wings, in fact at the time I was there, they were involved in 'on sight' engagements with every other wing in the YOI. In particular, with the boys from B2.

Now the major issue arose when I was placed into an educational class composed entirely of B2 boys. I spent my first lesson in high alert mode, ready to scrap at a the first sign of aggression. This never surfaced beyond typical posturing. Looking back at this, it was clear that the leader-role A1 boys had fostered the idea of 'on sight' engagements with B2 as a way of controlling and exerting authority new kids on the wing. It was expected of you to attack B2 boys whenever you saw them, or you would be attacked in turn.

The lesson passed without more than the testing of each others social positioning, with everyone falling into the correct place about 15mins in. I found myself about 1/3 of the way up.

However, once I returned to the wing, all hell kicked off. I was confronted by a group of A1 boys who 'ran the landing'. They demanded to know why I hadn't attacked the boys in my class. For some reason I told them to go fuck themselves, that I wasn't going to be their 'hitter', and if they wanted to attack those boys they could do it themselves. I was sick of being told what to do, and tired of being at the bottom of the social scale.

As I returned to my cell from the excercise yard, I was hit in the back of the head. I spun around, and proceeded to beat the shit out of the kid who hit me. This was a boy whom I had previously been vary wary of, as he projected his masculinity and dominance well. It seemed to be that his threat level was extremely high. Despite this, he couldn't fight for shit. After his wild swing, I was able to get several quick jabs to the face in, driving him back. He relied on easy to dodge hay-makers that left him off balance, whilst I simply waited for him to be exposed and would land a two or three punch combo that eventually led to him falling into the Guard arriving to break up the fight. And, as the Guard restrained him, I put a sneaky boot in. I then walked away calmly, and let the Guards restrain me. The whole experience took about 190 seconds, but would dramatically change how I saw myself, and my social position.

I had finally embraced my shadow.

It's interesting to note that at this time my depression almost completely disappeared overnight. I was no longer constantly angry. And I became entirely happy with my identity. Yes, I was a nerd. Yes, I was skinny. And I would beat the shit out of you if you tried to impose your dominance on me.

Fast forward to my release. After some time in an adult prison, it was time to get back into society. It was around this time I decided to go back to Reddit, and see what had changed. This is when I discovered TRP. I also re-discovered the likes of Sargon (although he was less to my liking now) and other centrists. Whilst I agreed with them on many issues, I no longer cared about them beating the dead Feminist horse over and over again. In fact, I stopped looking to others to form my political opinions for me entirely.

I decided that as I had been in a cell 23hrs a day, I would go into the local shopping area once a day. I also decided that I would approach any women I found attractive, as I had always sucked miserably at this before. Note - I am 18 at this point in time.

There were a few notable women amongst the many, and I shall try to detail the interactions here (Names Changed):

First was Brandi. I'm sure I have talked about her in another post under a different name, but I'm not sure. I had met my mother in a coffee shop, and she had gone to order our drinks. I saw this incredibly attractive (to myself then) girl sat opposite me with her friend. I made up my mind and said fuck it. I went straight over, said she was cute and could I get her number? We went on a 3 hour date later that day. We hit it off immediately and dated for a little while. However, she was 16, and although not a legal issue in the UK, her maturity in certain areas were just not up to scratch. She was not completely honest with me, and was very hard to organise dates with. And so, despite the fact I found her very attractive and enjoyed her company, I made a decision I would never have made before. I cut her off.

This was my first major experience of 'dumping' someone. It had always been me getting dumped, and so this was a real eye opener.

Next came Irene. Now me and Irene had met on Tinder when were 16, back in the days when 16yr olds could use tinder. We had been on one date that resulted in her surprising me with an awful make out session in the middle of the road, and some sweaty hand holding. I decided, out of curiosity, to message her again and see how things might go. We went on a 'second first date' and it went well. We got along really well, but not romantically. I have a feeling she is somewhere on the spectrum, albeit high functioning. We ended up having another two dates before I could really make my mind up, and decided to call that off too.

Whilst seeing Irene, I also started seeing Jasmin. This was another step down my RP journey. I was accustomed to focussing my attentions on one girl, and this break from my norm was liberating. A cute girl from Australia, we went on two extremely successful dates, and I decided tlI would make my move as she left to catch her train. I had walked her to the train station after our date bowling, and as we went in t hug good bye, I lent in for a kiss. It landed, but she pulled away and hurried off, saying "sorry". I laughed it off and went home, happy just to have progressed in another area. We eventually stopped talking and called it quits amicably, despite her saying "she wanted it to happen, she just wasn't expecting it". However, she stopped putting effort in, I stopped giving her attention, and that was that.

Nota Bene: During the post-Brandi stage, I was talking to and dating a regularly changing group of about 15-20 girls at any one time. These ranged from old school acquaintances (20%), to tinder girls (50%), to Instagram girls (5%), to girls I met in real life (25%). Once it became clear these conversations would not progress further, or I was done dating with them, they were dropped and replaced.

Now, where am I at today? As of 05/06/18, I have a date lined up with an HB9 I met on tinder for this weekend. I currently have about 7-8 girls that I talk to and meet occasionally. This number is far more manageable, and frankly I have lost a lot of the desire to find a partner I had originally. I also excercise regularly, cycling roughly 15miles a week in smaller 3mile chunks, swimming for an hour or so every other day and running occasionally. My mental health is at an all time high, with depressive episodes lasting maybe an hour at max and occuring once every few months. I have no anger issues. However my sleep cycle is rather poorly adjusted due to not having a job with regular hours. I am in the process of joining the Army, in order to give myself a driving focus for my life, and to both fulfil a passion of mine and have a solid career.

The most important thing, in my eyes, was to have found my own identity. Once I found who I was, and no longer tried to change that to please others, everything else fell into place.

Dating wise, my current bookies odds for a successful relationship are with a girl I met on Tinder, let's call her Isolde. She is HB8.5 - undeniably attractive, but I'm in no way intimidated -, she can hold a good conversation, and we have similar senses of humour. Notably, she does her best to help coordinate finding a date, instead of just saying "I'm busy then". This to me has become a clear indictor of when a girl is genuinely interested, or just keeping you as backup. She returns from holiday soon, so we shall go on a date shortly after that.

I hope you found these observations helpful, even if they are not a clinical insight into TRP.

Feel free to leave your own observations on these events, and ask any further questions.

TL;DR If you can't be arsed to read a few paragraphs, you're already falling behind those who can.