To win the game was to leave it.

I just finished The Game, and I'm so happy to have read it. I understand now that I am not trying to convert myself into a robotic clone of other PUAs, but I am trying to build up the confidence to bring out the best in me. I am very much like Style: I have a good job, a good lifestyle, and good friends, but I simply lack some social skills vis-a-vis women. Perhaps it's because my mom died when I was just a teenager that made me fear women because I didn't want to lose them. Perhaps it's because my dad never taught me anything about women except to marry one that was ten years younger than I. Perhaps it's because I had been in all-male education until college. Whatever the reason, I need to get these skills and play the game. Once I am done playing, I will be the same person, but with a refined social ability. Style even says he couldn't have picked up the girl he wanted unless he had joined the community, even though she liked him for all he had besides pickup. The best page of the book is 434 where he summarizes this:

"Everything I like about you, and everything that makes me think you're rad, is all the stuff you already had before you met those PUA guys. I would have liked you before all that self-improvement shit. I want you to be just Neil: balding, nerdy, glasses, and all."

Maybe she was right. Perhaps she would have liked the real me. But she never would have had the opportunity to meet him if I hadn't spent the last two years learning how to put my best foot forward. Without all that training, I never would have had the confidence to talk to and handle a girl like Lisa, who was a constant challenge.

I needed Mystery, Ross Jeffries, David DeAngelo, David X, Juggler, Steve P., Rasputin, and all those other pseudonyms. I needed them to discover what was me to begin with. And now that I had found that person, brought him out of his shell, and learned to accept him, perhaps I had outgrown them.

Then there is a fundamental lesson to learn that I was taught recently by a natural friend of mine, confirmed here in The Game:

If there was anything I'd learned, it's that the man never chooses the woman. All he can do is give her an opportunity to choose him.

Thanks for the advice, Style. Wish me luck finding that one great girl and, more importantly, my true self.