Fair warning: This post isn't about how to run game in social circles, it's about understanding what type of social circles you have, because one of them is useful for pickup, and one is not. It's also going to be mostly diagnosis with not as much treatment, but I'll do what I can on that end.

As many of you have probably figured out, social circle game is an incredibly powerful way of meeting women. You've either learned it through direct experience (hooked up with someone from your social circle) or indirect experience (everyone you know who's hooked up has done so through their social circle). It makes sense why this works; people don't have their shields up so much when you meet through the normal, natural avenues. They're not looking to instantly reject you, you have time to let your personality come through, you have time to recover from small missteps, etc.

I noticed recently that my present social circle is in fact a terrible avenue for meeting women though, and a little mental prodding told me why. So first, my current situation: I'm 29 and pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing (we can debate the merits of this choice in some other thread) at a school in DC. The program is small, with about 30 total students and another 20 or so students in the Literature MA program. The group is incredibly active. We have an on-campus lounge we hang out in, we go to a bar every Thursday night, and there's lots of parties at people's houses. Not to mention the great girl:guy ratio in the program, and even better the hot:not ratio of girls is astounding.

So what's the problem? The social circle is what I'd call a Closed Social Circle. Nearly every student in the program is from a different city. I think there's literally just one person who was living here before the program, and she'd been at the same school for undergrad. We all have a social circle, but we also all have the same social circle. We don't know other people in DC, and we're taking classes almost exclusively with each other.

See the problem? The social circle does not provide avenues for meeting new people. You can't introduce me to someone new because I already know everyone you know. All of your friends are all of my friends and all of my friends are all of your friends.

Now compare this to an earlier situation in my life, undergrad, which is what I'm calling an Open Social Circle. In undergrad I lived with some guys I knew from high school. Sounds like the making of a closed social circle, but they were music majors and I studied English and philosophy. Immediately we're in different classes, different clubs, and meeting a completely new set of people. Now I'm making friends with people that they would never have encountered and when there's a party, instead of it being the same group of people everyone sees everytime there's a party, there's now a bunch of new connections being made. And my friends from English and philosophy classes, they've got classes I'm not taking, minors I'm not in, they've lived in different dorms, have friends from their own high schools.

I could represent grad school as just one circle, while undergrad would have been many circles with small bits overlapping. This provides so many opportunities to meet new people, and every time you meet someone new there's that person's social circle which has even more new people in it.

So, if you're wondering why you've got this awesome social circle and it's not producing any results for you in terms of meeting women, this might explain why.

What to do about it

This is tricky because there's some tension in the community these days between being authentic to yourself, getting your shit handled first, and letting pickup fall into place, and that conflicts with a more practical approach of building your life around what will bring women to you. Should you pick a university based on what sort of social circle it will bring? That's a tough question. On the one hand, you shouldn't let pickup guide your entire career and life. But on the other hand, a big part of college is the social experience. And it's not like romantic fulfillment isn't an incredibly important life goal. So I dunno, I think you have to weight these things on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't pursue a nursing degree just to meet women if I have no interest in nursing. I might join a club I'm on the fence about though, or consider a more social hobby even if it's not my top preference.

That aside, here's three things you can do without uprooting the rest of your life:

1. Sarge. Seriously, accept that your social circle isn't going to produce a girl for you, and get out there and sarge more.

2. Push your comfort zone. While you should be true to yourself, that doesn't mean being rigid. Being willing to try new things, participate in organizations you wouldn't have, try out new hobbies. There's lots of things you can do to potentially open your social circle that won't mean disrupting the rest of your life.

3. Push your social circle. My group tends to go to the same one bar every week, and that bar's other customers are largely, (1) old people, and (2) no one else because it's Thursday night at a dive bar in a less-busy neighborhood. So, the bar's entire social community when we go is very little more than the social circle we had in the lounge back on campus. Frack! If this is your situation, try to organize events at someplace different. Looking for specials is a good way to get that to happen, though I admit trying to change the habits of a large group can be like herding cats, so if it's not working, you're back to Sarging solo.