This will not apply for every guy, but it's what I went through, and noticed others go through as well.

Stage 1 = Have no idea you can improve your social skills. In this Stage, you also don't have an ego or identity about social skills.

Stage 2 = Decide to improve your social skills, so you go out hardcore and see improvements. This is when you aim to approach 5 or 10 women a night, you might try to get every woman to like you, and you start to make being 'good at talking to people your identity'. You may start to compare your social skills to others, and feel bad or upset if a guy has better social skills than you. You feel pressure to do well in conversations. The bad thing about this stage is you can develop a nervous, needy energy, and try too hard to get people to like you to maintain your identity of being good at talking. The benefit of this stage is your social skills improve.

Stage 3 = You decide you don't care anymore about maintaining the identity of being good at talking, and instead find another identity to focus on. You can go out and not feel like you need to approach women, or get people to like you. If you see a guy with better social skills than you, you either don't care or you're happy for him. But you don't feel negative. You no longer have a nervous, needy energy as you don't need people to like you. But you also now have the social skills you developed in Stage 2.

I noticed these Stages in myself, when before I studied Game, I didn't care whether women liked me, so I had better energy. I also had higher standards, as I only tried to connect with a few women. I would automatically qualify.

Then I got into Game, and would talk to anyone and anything. My conversation skills went up, but my energy went down.

One day I got sick of it, and left the Game. I stopped trying so hard to meet women, and didn't care if they liked me. I found a new identity of being a writer. But whenever I met a woman I was interested in, I found I could connect with her thanks to what I learnt in Stage 2.

I once told this to a dating coach I'm friends with, and he said he hears this all the time. Where a guy goes hardcore into Game and improving his social skills, but eventually gets tired because it does his head in, so he stops. But then he notices his results go up. The dating coach said this is because these guys improved their social skills. But when they gave up game, they also let go off the high expectations they placed on themselves, getting them even better results.

I also read something by a coach from the old days called Adam Lyons, where he advised guys not to spend more than 2 to 3 years going out doing hardcore game. He said spending more time than this will mess you up.

The guys at Stage 1 have no pressure on themselves. So when they're talking to a woman, they don't quickly try to fill the silence, or agree with everything she says, or try to get her contact details too soon, or make a joke and get visibly nervous or sad if she doesn't laugh at it, etc. It's why sometimes you see a guy without much social skills get the girl. Or sometimes you hear a guy say in his first month of approaching he got better results than 6 months into it. It's because 6 months into this he made this his identity, put too much pressure on himself, and messed it up.

But in Stage 3, you have no pressure on yourself, and you also have social skills. The way to get to Stage 3 from Stage 2 is to find a new purpose and identity for your life that has nothing to do with women and popularity. You also don't brag about how good you are with women, as Stage 3 is about having no identity or pressure on yourself to pick up women. Bragging about your skills makes you need women more, and you will give off a desperate energy, as well as find it harder to think of what to say.

This 3 Stage model is just one way of improving social skills. It doesn't apply to every guy. But for those who it does, I hope you find it useful.