There are a few distinctions to be made between approaching women and having actual relationships. I personally believe long term relationships are a completely different thing than pickup. In pickup you don’t have any obligations or responsibilities. If you find yourself in a situation you don’t like, you can eject. If you make a mistake, you never have to see the people around you ever again. Most of all, in pickup, you don’t have a reason to care about your marks yet.
Pickup is meant to give us all better and more opportunities to determine if people are worth caring about. When you approach a person for the first time, she is literally a total stranger. Tautology.
Being authentic in relationships
I will say this now: if you intend to “game” your way through a relationship, it’s going to be an empty husk of a thing. If you do not care about the other person, at least somewhat, you have no business being in a long term relationship with them. Not to mention how misguided a person must be to use tricks to get a girl to stay in such a relationship. You have to care; you have to be willing to – at times – be less of what you consider ideal, or alpha, or whatever you call it, for the sake of the other person.
That being said, there are good moves, and there are mistakes.
While it is more often appropriate in a relationship to flatter and “supplicate” your partner than it is to qualify yourself to a new set, you don’t want to suffocate your partner. Have boundaries; respect hers. Have other things going on in your life to keep you busy besides her.
The rules change
Many of the ideas I have encountered when picking up women has encouraged guys to never buy things (a drink) for a girl they haven’t already kissed or slept with. This is because the act of paying for a girl’s joy can say something about its own necessity. If you have to buy a drink to get a girl’s attention – to make her pleased – you’re not worth very much attention on your own.
This kind of thing doesn’t apply in a long term relationship. You and your partner know each other. She has a sense of what you’re worth as an integral of each experience you share together. You should never be afraid to do something nice for your significant other. There is nothing wrong with making the person you’re with happy. In fact, your goal in a relationship should be to craft as many positive experiences for your partner as you can. That’s how you keep interest.
The problem is, crafting experiences well takes a lot of… panache. You have to know what you’re doing, be confident, keep frame. You have to be all the things you have to be to pickup women, but that doesn’t mean you go about it the same way.
The main difference
The main difference between pickup and a long term relationship is, in pickup, you are competing with your target, in a sense. You’re playing a game on the opposite side of the table, where you don’t want to show your hand.
In a relationship, if you are competing against your partner, you’re doing it wrong. You should be cooperating. You should be communicating.
Most of all, you should be caring. If you feel like buying a girl flowers, great. Buy her flowers. If you don’t feel like buying her flowers, buying her flowers because it’s what you feel like you should be doing is useless. In fact, it’s obvious, in all cases, that it’s an empty gesture meant to appease. This is not what a good relationship is about. Learn more about reconciling a relationship here.
If you genuinely care about a person without objectifying her, romantic gestures will come naturally, and they will be signs of strength and “alphaness”. On the flip side, if you go through the motions to “keep her happy,” it will be perceived as a sign of weakness. Do not act out of fear or anxiety, but out of desire. If the desire is gone, what are you doing in an relationship with this person?
Trust and vulnerability
As far as vulnerability, that comes back to communication, trust, etc. Again, it should be a natural thing. There is a problem if you are artificially making yourself seem more vulnerable than you are. There’s an even bigger problem if you are actually making yourself more vulnerable than you want to be.
The key to success
Keeping a girl on her toes, on the other hand, comes back to crafting experiences. You want to be interesting. You want to be a person who has experiences, who makes experiences, without whom life would be boring, or even meaningless. Have interests, do things. Take her places. Stay interesting. Don’t expect the magic to stick around if you stop being magical to her. And that doesn’t mean negs and teasing; you’re past that. It’s about the ultimate demonstration of higher value. The kind you can’t fake.
As far as not taking shit, that’s a good point to bring up. I mentioned boundaries before. This includes acceptable boundaries of behavior. You have to be comfortable enough with your own company to go without sex for a while if your woman is the type to withhold it as a tool – long enough, that is, to make it clear that you won’t be caving and that such things are unacceptable. Desperation is your worst enemy here. When something matters, you can always hold out for it. Once you’ve established that fighting against you works, as opposed to cooperating with you, you no longer have a relationship. You have a battle.
But on the other side of the same coin, that doesn’t mean be stubborn and unreasonable. Like I said, it’s not a battle. You aren’t fighting, you’re waiting for an opportunity to talk it out like a pair of reasonable human beings. Be loyal and don’t cheat. Listen. Communicate. Apologize when you actually believe you’ve done something wrong. It’s a sign of strength, not weakness.
Full Credit: pickup_startist
