PUAing has made my life more miserable and was one of many reasons why my recent trip to Asia sucked. I know it’s odd hearing me say this after aggressively promoting Mystery Method and Project Mayhem. I still believe in the method and the project. I just have a problem with how the method is applied. The reason my life was more miserable was, I made the folly of allowing pickup to become a dominant issue in my life. Nothing kills confidence and renders you more powerless than having your happiness and sense of accomplishment determined by how strangers react to you.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that the PUA lifestyle is pretty depressing once you pass the initial hype. On Stylelife forums (Neil Strauss' official forum), you'll find most PUA students are generally unhappy. Most wind up quitting and, those who enjoy success, often return to their old selves. This approaching stuff is not natural to most. Even master PUAs often force themselves to approach (i.e., the Three Second Rule). I believe people are unhappiest when they have to force themselves to maintain a certain lifestyle.
Mystery is the ultimate example of this "PUA depression". Despite being the undisputed king of pickup, the guy is a fucking psychotic mess. In Neil Strauss' book, Mystery was depicted as someone who can't get a girlfriend, who trashed his house in depression, who acted in strange belligerent ways, and who attempted suicide twice. That's not exactly the glitzy life of a PUA many would want you to believe.
The truth is, guys are most successful in courtship when genuinely happy-go-lucky and feeling a true sense of worth. This creates a burning personal glow that naturally attracts girls and creates social opportunities. When people “go sarging”, they normally lack such a natural glow. So PUAs invent an artificial one through “inner game” tactics like positive self-talk, visualization methods, subliminal audio or loud upbeat music. Most of these tactics are just phony-baloney crap.
Most people turn to PUAing because, as someone in Project Mayhem put it, they feel they've been "dealt a bad hand". This belief, whether the problem is real or imagined, is the inner demon that holds us back. Unless the PUA overcomes these demons, all this pickup stuff is just a depressing short-term band-aid that doesn’t fix the long-term problem.
In the next article, I will offer a suggestion on battling those demons with something more substantive than just campy PUA "inner game" tactics.
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