Hey fellas,
Well, the thing with 'good guy players' is that they usually end up going for somewhat more experienced / more dynamic women, who are the women more inclined towards skipping out on the relationship if it stops being interesting - they also test harder because they have higher standards for dominance in their men, and they're a lot more disappointed when that starts to slip.
If you're focused on a traditional monogamous relationship, that works much better with not-so-dynamic, not-so-sexually experienced women, because these women are simply better suited toward this relationship structure. You'll tend not to be so into them as you get more sexually experienced though - dynamic-but-not-experienced is fine (because she's got a contagious raw energy and enthusiasm), or maybe experienced-but-not-dynamic is fine (because even if she isn't super enthusiastic, she knows her stuff and knows how to please), but the low sex drive girl with low sexual experience is just not exciting for you once you've already been with a lot of women.
So what happens is that the guys who are players select themselves out of the market for the women most inclined to be loyal: low sex drive women with limited sexual experience whose goal in life is "find a man and keep him and never deviate". Instead, they get women who are more ambitious, or higher sex drive, and these women need to be continually re-attracted, which becomes increasingly difficult as the male bonds more, commits more, and watches his dominance slip as his testosterone levels do.
However, another thing to keep in mind: most guys won't end up being 'players' with high notch counts (even if that's their goal starting out) because they lack the emotional profile: either the 'driven by demons' drive to prove oneself by racking up a lot of lays, or the just pure super high sex drive to do so, or the blessed-by-the-gods born super good looking and naturally good with women and it's just always been easy scenario.
In my experience, the men who set long-term monogamy as their ultimate goal will go out, sleep with some women, and then find a relatively stable girlfriend to settle down with eventually, with these men somewhere between 10 and 35 partners or so (less than that, and they'll tend to pick more 'exciting' women as mates who later blow up on them... then they learn that if they want to avoid drama, it's better to pick stabler mates. But then if their notch counts get too high, the really super stable girls just become way too boring and uninteresting / unchallenging to them, so they pick women who are harder to hold onto in monogamy because these women are more on their level).
The worst place to be is really the low experience guy (sub-10 lays); it's a real crapshoot for this guy, because he isn't good at reading women and will get caught up in things like charisma and women's seduction prowess, etc., and then have difficulty pulling himself out of the situation or rebounding if he gets hurt. Over 10 and he generally realizes dynamic girls are tons of fun but probably not 'keepers', which is why you see these girls date lots of sexy, high value men, and then settle down with an inexperienced nice guy quite consistently. Sometimes the under-10 guy will stumble into a stable, quality long-term girlfriend, but even then he often won't be able to properly assess what he's got due to his inexperience and will leave her to seek out more alluring women instead, or may get that gnawing feeling that he's missing out on something, without being sure exactly what.
But yeah - if you want super stability without having to do a lot of relationship maintenance or maintain preselection, pick a low sex drive girl with limited sexual experience (and then move out into the suburbs, etc., where she isn't going to have a whole lot of tempting other options to make her mind start wandering). I talked about all or most of that in greater detail here:
How to Prevent Cheating by Your Girlfriend
If you really do hit player status though, you probably won't find this especially enticing, but that'll be okay because you'll have other tools at your disposal at that point for maintaining fidelity, especially since you are specifically studying relationship management, which is something that naturals and even most guys in PUA never do.
Draton said:
wouldn't pre-selection happen every time the guy goes out? Once you've honed your fundamentals they shouldn't ever leave you, so you'll be soaking up attraction everywhere you go. Whenever you go out with your girl you'll get girls giving you looks and stares and all these other things. So how would such a power dynamic play out between a monogamous guy and a monogamous girl, both of whom are in the upper echelons of getting the opposite sex?
Here's the thing about monogamy: a man who fully, completely commits himself to a monogamous relationship (i.e., stops sleeping with new women... stops looking for opportunities to sleep with new women... etc.) sees a plunge in testosterone levels to about half of what they are when he's single and looking / mating. That leads to a big libido hit, a major loss of aggression / assertiveness / confidence / dominance, but also opens him up to oxytocin and makes him much more loving and nurturing, making him a better provider and a better father to his children.
If you're planning to fully commit yourself to a woman, I strongly recommend making sure she is a woman who is low drive enough that you can lose half your sex drive and half your dominance and still be attractive in her eyes. e.g., a girl who doesn't really need a super dominant stud to keep her in line. The latter women tend to be the most captivating and alluring, but committing to them is a death trap, because the very nature of commitment's effects upon the male body means what made them so attracted to you disappears once they have you (you change into a lesser version of yourself; you aren't able to stand up to their tests of your dominance any longer; and they gradually lose more and more respect for you).
So - fundamentals and learned behaviors help. But when you're doing monogamy, you need to be taking the testosterone loss, and subsequent dominance and attractiveness loss, into account, and selecting women that you're still going to be attractive to at roughly half your base attractiveness when single.
That's probably the biggest cause of divorce, if you ask me - men choosing women who are very attractive to them, and then fully committing, killing their own attractiveness to these women, and then the woman gets bored or disgusted and leaves (and the man, because he's now a low testosterone man, which means he's higher in bonding chemicals and more emotional, will tend to be broken and distraught for a while, until his T-levels climb back up again).
Anyway, so yeah - they don't tell you THAT in Disney movies, eh?
There's plenty you can control for here, but you've got to be thinking about it, and not just 'following your heart' (need to include your emotions too of course, but the mix of logic + emotions is really what you need to set yourself up for long-term success or stability; just one of these is not enough).
Chase