Summary: For the first time in my life, I'm not that pressed for the next one.

Body:

I married my first adult girlfriend and enjoyed the confines of a dead bedroom for the majority of my 20s.

I sometimes refer to it as "invisible jail." The psychological issues associated with jail as well.

I spun plates for a few years, but the scarcity mentality lurked underneath. I always felt like I was "doing something wrong", but not committing to these girls. I would be honest about my intentions, but it always made me feel bad when inevitably I wouldn't commit.

I caught oneitis for one of my plates. We know how that one ends.

We say here that LTRs are the red pill on hard mode. Well, I can pick up pretty easily (not every night, but I do ok). LTRs are my next challenge. I'm shifting to do more "control game", something I've never done before.

Primary plate is doing pretty well. She's looking for me to take more control and have more influence in her life. How often we see each other, giving her assignments to help me in my life and show her how to earn that promotion.

As HSP says in the control guide, it's important to get a feel for it, and at least I see the signals now.

I don't have much practice with it yet. "Come over with wine at 8pm." "It'd be really cool if you made breakfast for my team." Stuff like that.

Just like learning pick up, I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone.

Well, I didn't exercise control well enough on this one. "you are now too invested to plausibly feign indifference." - this for sure. My start up takes a lot of time, and my lack of experience with control game means I wasn't sure how to utilize her correctly.

So she's off. She explicitly said "you're in that start up life and normally things move a little faster for me." Indifference game applied again "sounds good." Closed the book.

However, this particular break up was different as I can "see" my mistakes. I can "feel" where I needed to do things differently.

This plate was pretty hot, but I know there will be more. And for the first time in my life, I'm not that pressed. Feels pretty good just understanding the rules.

In the blue pill - things were always confusing to me. Why aren't things working the way I thought? The red pill at least makes the rules of the game clear.

Lesson: I'm 14 months into swallowing the pill. Learning control game is my next challenge. Feels different this time. Still getting used to the idea that I can shape a woman to act and behave in the way I want (until she changes her mind of course). Looking forward to the next one.