‘The game’ is a tricky beast because on the one hand, yes, it is a game. But on the other hand it also involves other people, and it is your life.
And that means that the results of the ‘game’ have real-world consequences also
A dirty secret of the ‘pickup’ industry is that a lot of the top players have girlfriends. They may not talk about it on YouTube, they may not write blog posts about it. But somewhere in the background, out of sight, is a sweet girls who cuddles PUA ZOG! and strokes his hair while they watch NetFlix and snuggle together on a Sunday afternoon.
Is that such a shocking thing? No, not really . . . except when you consider that the external message that a lot of guys are putting out there is that ‘the game’ is a joyful route to (relatively) easy freedom and a multiplicity of sexy women.
And if that’s the case, then why would any of these guys contemplate settling?
Quite simply, because ‘settling’ (which I don’t mean pejoratively here) is nice, and we all need a little bit of comfort in our lives.
The reason a high-value man who has options chooses to stay with one girl for a period of time is rarely, if ever solely to do with the sex. Yes, it helps if the sex is great, and certainly that is a glue that can bond people for a while. But the thing that really keeps a guy coming back for more is affection.
As Tom Torero has said, affection-addiction is a very real thing.
I myself have been involved in the dating community for over 15 years, but during that time I have ‘taken time off’, having had various long-term girlfriends. And the reason why I’ve elected to eschew others for those girls was because they were affectionate to me.
London Girl, for example, likes nothing more than to make me breakfast and then come cuddle me in bed while we watch the latest episode of some trashy reality TV show. It is not as though we do anything extraordinary together, and in fact it might be that in reality we don’t have a great deal in common. But it doesn’t matter. What is important is that she makes me feel good.
And therein lies a thorny issue. A relationship (in the short-medium term) can make you feel good. Cold-approach pickup, where you wander through bars and nightclubs putting a brave face on rejection while trying to spark attraction with ‘maybe’ girls, does not.
It might give you a momentary adrenalin shot, but it doesn’t give you the kind of nurturing glow you get from chilling with a ‘special’ girl.
Mini-Relationships
So why not just throw in the towel and get married? Because, as we know, while relationships can be nice in the short/medium term, in the longer term they often turn out to be anything but.
Most marriages fail for a reason—because monogamy is not the natural default setting for human beings, who are ‘mono-gamish’ at best.
So while in the early stages of a relationship it might seem like the best thing to hang up your player boots and settle into conjugal bliss instead, after a few years there’s a very good chance you are going to wind up wrung out to dry.
For this reason many players end up adopting a somewhat awkward halfway house solution. They engage in mini-relationships with girls, while also sleeping with other girls on the side.
They may or may not be honest about this with their ‘main girl’.
There isn’t a lot of information out there about how to handle this kind of a set-up, largely because not that many guys are honest about it. Most either pretend they don’t have a girlfriend, or suggest that she is the only one they are sleeping with. Few open up about the gaping grey space in between.
Avoid The Conversation
The simplest piece of advice I can give is that you must become skilled in ‘not having the conversation’. What do I mean by that? Well, normally after about 3 months of non-committed sex (perhaps less) a girl will want to know ‘where this is going’—by which I mean she will want to know if you are ‘girlfriend and boyfriend’ or not.
You must do everything you can to avoid this conversation, and to avoid confirming your status.
You see, once you’ve said, ‘yes, we are boyfriend and girlfriend’ then you have made a verbal contract with her that carries with it an expectation of monogamy, and inhibits your freedom accordingly. If she catches you in bed with a cocktail waitress six days later then she will have a right to admonish you since you’ve led her to believe you will be faithful.
If you don’t confirm your status then in theory she can say nothing about the cocktail waitress because you are not ‘an item’.
Now, in practice all of this gets very messy. For a start, even if you’re not ‘exclusive’, if she’s into you at all she’s likely to be very pissed about the waitress. And in any case, after a certain period of time has passed you will find that you have entered the ‘boyfriend zone’ by default. As a rough rule of thumb, I’d say that if you have been sleeping with her once or twice a week for four months, then she will definitely regard you are her partner. And that means that you are automatically signed-up to all the rules and obligations of a boyfriend.
So what is the answer to this? Tough talk: there isn’t one. Problem is, we all want our cake and to eat it. We want the thrill of the chase, the thrill of new and anonymous female company. But we also want those ‘nice’ feelings of comfort. Getting both at the same time is very, very hard.
So you must either:
- Lie and cheat your way through the whole thing. Have her as a girlfriend and hope she doesn’t find out about your other ‘activities’
- Throw in the towel and be monogamous for as long as the relationship lasts (I’ve done this and always regretted it. When you break up—which is likely to happen—you’ll be left high and dry wishing you hadn’t wasted your time and freedom)
- Become more cold-hearted and simply cut it off with girls before you get to the point of ‘being in a relationship’ (this is true renegade playboy style, and is certainly what many of my friends who travel do).
Trying to solve this puzzle is rather like the Brexit debacle that the British currently find themselves in—we want a solution that pleases everyone, but that is almost certainly impossible.
Therefore, we must find a solution which, while upsetting some, will at least prove to be a way forward.
Choose wisely.
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