@Colt Williams,
Good topic.
I'm curious is
@Chase has thoughts.
I think part of what happens mostly is that every guy passes out of that point where pickup is central to his identity.
When picking up girls is key to your identity, you try to maximize your notch count by sleeping with any girl who is not totally unfortunate looking, regardless a lot of other potential red flag issues.
Like:
- Will she get clingy? It's okay, I'll figure it out, I think I can lay this girl
- Is she nuts? She can't be that bad. It looks like I can get a lay
- Does this girl give me weird vibes I can't put my finger on? I'm sure it's nothing, she seems like she's DTF
Because you're so focused on 'get the lay' as this sort of personal benchmark of success or not, all other things move to the background.
But at some point you wake up and realize, "I did it. I reached the point I wanted to reach with women," and the motivation to always get laid at all costs starts to recede. The part of your identity attached to pickup fades away. Then it is something you know how to do, rather than something that defines who you are.
You also have enough of these situations where women get hurt or they cause you problems that you start walking away from situations where there's the potential there for one of those things to happen and you're just not feeling it with her.
The clingy/in-love girls you talked about (and also
@Seppuku and
@Skills) are one of the big ones.
Other ones for me:
- If I start to think she's crazy... in a dangerous or problematic way. Crazy girls are often clingy girls, but even if they're not, they carry all kinds of risks with them anyway. I don't want some girl who's going to punch holes in my condoms, or steal something from my pad because she's a kleptomaniac. If I get any sense of any of that (e.g., she tells me some weird story about one of her exes or she admits she used to steal stuff in high school because it was fun and I don't have a good read on whether that phase of her life is really over or not), I'll walk.
- If she starts talking about any kind of abuse scenarios. She was raped, she had an abusive ex (or, worse, a string of abusive exes), her stepfather molested her... I don't go looking for any of this info, and if it comes out before I've slept with her I am not going to sleep with her. These girls tend to have really whacked out emotions, and they're a lot more likely to (falsely) accuse you of sexual violence or sexual assault or any of a host of other things you didn't actually do than the general female population is.
- If I don't feel like she is actually into me, and I'm not either very horny or super into her. Like @naturalmikey said... I do get a thrill out of shagging girls who weren't super into me, if they're very hot. I will go for it with these girls, and if I get it, it still feels like a coup. Skill over fundamentals (or instinctive attraction)! My longest relationship was with a very beautiful girl who was really only interested in talking and hanging out with me, but when I got her back to my place, kissed her, and took my shirt off, she decided "What the heck, I'll go along with it" and we went to bed. Great girl, and great relationship. But if I'm with a girl and she's clearly not into it at all, and I don't think she's beautiful (maybe she's only kinda cute), but she is still following me around and compliant, I am not going to bother to invite her back, even if I think I might be able to pull off the lay. I just don't want to spend more time with a not-that-hot girl who maybe will hook up with me or maybe won't, and in any event isn't really into it. (and sometimes girls will surprise you... they weren't feeling it, but then you get them into bed and suddenly they get super turned on. This is especially the case for the distracted girls who are off in their own heads and aren't really thinking about men too much... they don't realize it's sex time until they're right up on it. But you also get girls who were 'whatever' about it before sex, and continue to be 'whatever' about it during sex, and that is really disappointing)
- Girls who annoy me in some way. This is less of a red flag and more of a just "I can't even bother with it" scenario. If she goes on a rant about politics, we are probably not going to shag. I will keep my mouth shut, because no good has ever come from arguing politics with a woman, but we will often have very different impressions by the end of the date. She will assume I must've agreed with her rant, or she'll have totally forgotten about it, and may be ready to head back to mine... meanwhile I'll be put off and will be telling her "All right. It's been fun. Catch you later" and she'll never hear from me again. Or if she starts doing or talking about or showing me something I am weirded out by. Your scruples go down a bit as a seducer (lol), but I still do not like chest or sleeve tattoos on women, for instance, and if she shows me those we are almost certainly not gonna shag (just can't bring myself to do it). Or breast implants... that's another one I really do not like. If I don't know they're implants until we get back to my place, I'll take one for the team and shag her, but if I figure it out before we go back she is probably not getting the D.
When I was in my "gotta get a notch, whatever the cost!" phase I would overlook this stuff and go for the lay anyway.
Because, I wanted lays. Each additional lay was another feather in my cap. And more proof to myself that I was good, and had good game, and could seduce women.
Once I was out of that phase, my emotions in these situations shifted to "Eh... do I
really want to deal with this girl's crap? Is a half hour in her pussy worth the stuff I am going to have to put up with to get there / after?"
Because at that point you are not thinking about notch counting, and you are only thinking about "What am I doing this for? For the pussy. Is the pussy worth it?
No."
There's a similar pattern in entrepreneurship.
When you're a novice entrepreneur, once you get your first business working reasonably well, people and opportunities start coming out of the woodwork. Everyone wants to work with you, and you get a lot of great ideas coming at you.
At first you think, "Oh man, these are all terrific ideas! I'm sure I can work on all of them."
I even read about this tendency before I was an entrepreneur, and sensibly chuckled to myself and said "Certainly when
I am an entrepreneur, no such silliness will come over
me!"
But once you get there, you feel like "Whoa, there are so many ways to build businesses. And actually I am sort of okay at this. Surely I should not pass up these chances!"
So you take on all these projects, and you're fairly indiscriminate about it. And you overload yourself, and many of the projects end up being more trouble than they're worth.
Within a 1-year span between 2011 and 2012 I was running:
- Girls Chase
- A real estate business
- An admissions consulting business
- An SEO AdWords business
- A by-invitation social club for elites
- A conversions optimization consultancy
- Another real estate business
... at every point at least 3 of these businesses at a time.
By the end of that 1-year stretch I was completely spent. I'd way overtaxed myself; all my projects suffered because none of them had my full attention; and while they were all good opportunities, many of them had issues, most of which I had sort of sensed from the get-go but tried to ignore because I wanted the successful business.
It works the same way with girls.
After you shag enough problem girls, and deal with the fallout from that, you start to pay a lot more attention to the red flags and listen to your gut on them. Whereas your notch blindness (or pussy blindness) made you ignore them before, now you see them loud and clear and say to yourself, "I don't need to put up with that for pussy. There are a million ways I can get laid and a million girls I can lay without having to put up with that. No thanks."
So you go meet some other girl instead, who doesn't have those flags, and you sleep with her.
It's a better time, and you deal with none of the hassle or fallout.
That's my take.
Chase