In this community, we have an abundance of material to help us learn how to create attraction, but not as much on how to keep it and grow it.
What happens after the day two?
Once attraction is established, how does one create and maintain a relationship?
This information is not as readily available, and there are some fairly simple reasons why. The most predominant one is a tendency to be looking for shortcuts rather than enjoying the experience as a whole. If you’re looking for something short-term, then shortcuts might work for you. If you want something more lasting, then it’s time to learn how to enjoy the journey rather than looking for the end game.
Let’s use martial arts as an example.
Traditionally, it takes years to learn the discipline required to not only perform the physical movements, but to develop strength of character and inner harmony along a path of self-discovery. Now, in America, there’s a dojo in every strip mall where a person can test for a new belt every six months. They can learn how to use weapons and kick someone’s theoretical ass in a couple of one-hour sessions each week and get a pretty new belt and bragging rights at the water cooler. They learn some of the physical tools but much less of the accompanying wisdom to govern how and when to use them. A large part of the core of the discipline is abandoned.
The same disconnect is rampant in the pickup community. In the initial excitement of learning new and seemingly powerful skills of attraction, the core skills of making lasting connections have been abandoned, or at least pushed to the side. For those who are making up for lost time in the world of women, speed and quantity override quality. For others, books and videos can teach the physical tools, but without the experience of having live humans react to those tools in a real-time setting, the true lesson is lost. It takes constant interaction to learn how to gauge what is acceptable and what is not, and how to read those signs in others. Learning about someone else teaches us about ourselves as well, and that’s where connection begins.
I meet a lot of new people in my life. Some stay, some go, but they’re all interesting to me in whatever time we have together. I had a conversation online with someone new not too long ago. He had moved recently, to a little place on the ocean, and now enjoys his own little paradise. He told me he had to get away from it all. The frantic, frenetic pace of his prior life has left him on the edge of sanity and he’d managed to catch himself before he fell.
He had worked hard to disconnect from his old behaviors that had led him to such an uncomfortable existence. Once the constant noise in his head had dissipated, he was able to reconnect to the world in a new way. He spoke of the calming lullaby of the ocean in his room at night and the inspiration he found in scent of the salty sea air during the day. He could enjoy the feel of the sand under his feet and the soft squish of mud between his toes. He said he started his day truly appreciating the dappled sunlight on his breakfast table in the mornings, the cheery greetings of his neighbors and the heartbeat of the local village as everyone went to market.
He wrote with such feeling about these small things that now meant so much to him. As I read, I felt he must have been really unhappy before he decided to make these changes. His words were so sincere, so appreciative, I felt that in taking care of himself, he was helping take care of the world in his own small way. I was so happy for him, I became happy for myself, that I had just met a person whose words made me feel so good.
And then he wrote that he felt sure that he could turn that into a great DHV story one day.
I swear I heard the screeching of brakes in my head. What was this? That whole wonderful story of appreciation and personal evolution was merely a fabrication to try and impress women in a bar? I told him that I had been moved and inspired by his words, but that I was confused. Did he really mean all that stuff, or was he just practicing his pickup skills? This was an important journey of personal discovery, something precious to share with those closest to him, not to be reduced to a bar story. He replied that it was real, but that he uses stories like that to create a quicker connection with the ladies.
A light went on in my head. Here was a shining example of the disconnect that causes some of the pervading unhappiness in parts of the community. The fact that he was using his spiritual inner journey as a way to pick up chicks only proved that he didn’t learn as much from it as he thought he did.
The first step to a successful long-term relationship is to release the mindset of quicker is better. “Good things come to those who wait,” might better be restated as, “Good things come to those who exercise patience,” but the basic idea is solid. Attraction to a potential mate might very well be immediate. We can be, and frequently are, attracted to many people over the course of a day, a week or a month. However, our long-term compatibility with these people to whom we’re attracted is a complete unknown. Just because she trips your trigger when you look at her doesn’t mean you necessarily have any kind of future together.
So attraction can be immediate, but connection takes time. It’s a journey that begins with having experiences together and seeing how each of you reacts, not only to each other, but also to the world around you when you’re together and when you’re not. Using stories in the manner that my new friend does can create a swift connection; however, that connection is shallowly based on hopeful ideals rather than strongly built on personal experience. He might very well create connections by sharing this story. It has many elements that are attractive. My own reaction is a perfect example.
I didn’t, and still don’t, know him well. However, his story made me feel things about him based on experiences from my own life, which I then ascribed to him as attractive. My attraction was based on my own ideals of what I would like to see in other people. When he made the DHV comment, I suddenly had a real, personal experience of him that showed him to be something other than what I’d hoped he was.
Now, imagine that none of this had happened. Imagine that I had met him in another circumstance and we were getting to know each other over the course of several of weeks by going on dates and talking on the phone. I would be consciously and subconsciously learning small things that would show me who he really was. I would be noting how he deals with things as we spent time together, how he acts and reacts to the world, and drawing my own conclusions about who he is and how we relate to each other.
Now, suppose that our time together was leading me to make positive conclusions about his personality. I decide that I like him and that I want to continue to know more about him. At that point, if he shared the same story with me in rapport, it would have an entirely different meaning. It would reinforce my positive feelings for him, based on my opinion of our experiences together.
Conversely, if over the course of those few weeks, I was discovering that he was likely not the kind of person I would want as part of my life, when he told me that story, I would likely be confused. It would be incongruent with my experience. If I had been slowly drawing the conclusion that he was a shallower person than I would want to be involved with, that story would cement my impression. It would likely come across as shallow, because my personal experience with him was that way.
He’s telling the same story in both scenarios. The difference comes from me investing the time to collect data with which to form a more logical and realistic perspective of who he is, rather than basing it on my own hopes and dreams. If your goal is to find someone with whom you could have a lasting relationship, you can’t speed up that time or substitute it for something else. You can pretend to speed it up in many different ways. You can bounce her to multiple locations on a date to create the impression of knowing each other longer, but the fact is that the actual time spent together is still exactly the same. You can invent the most fantastic stories to tell how amazing your life is, but if her actual experience with you shows her something else, the attraction will end.
Learning to create attraction is essential, without a doubt, and since it’s where the mating game begins, it’s a perfect place to start. However, in order to continue finding and cultivating a mate, one needs to be sure to not to skip the journey just to get to the destination. Meeting someone great and having sex with them are both wonderful experiences, but they’re tiny parts of a whole. A lot of life happens in between those two parts, and if you’re only focused on what happens before and what happen after, you’ll miss out on what you’re actually looking for.
