Commentary on Presence's Breakthrough

Yesterday’s post was about the “breakthrough” of guy who calls himself Presence. He tells about his sudden shift of perceptions, and how this has made his interactions with women a lot better. Today, I want to discuss a few points that will surely be helpful for those of you who have problems with talking to women in a natural way.

 Also, it will cover what some people refer to as "inner game."


I have picked a few interesting quotes, and which I will discuss them in greater detail. The first is about the problem of approaching girls:

I was approaching a lot of girls, and mostly directly because I still can't think of much to say. (I still can't.) But this is simply not a problem for me anymore. I’m just direct.”

Everybody who has ever learnt an “opener” or practiced “routines” should give himself a big slap if he still hasn’t dropped this nonsense. Instead of thinking about what you say, you just follow your instincts, make some random comments, or say something nonchalant like “Hey, how is it going?” This is how people normally start conversations, and there is absolutely no need to overcomplicate this stage of the interactions.


Just think about it: If she likes you, it doesn’t matter all that much what you say (as long as you don’t say anything really stupid), but if she does not like you, then your “who lies more” routine won’t do anything at all for you. I thought that “routines” were not really popular anymore, but as I have recently learnt, the commercial seduction industry has hardly moved one iota. They still target insecure and inexperienced men, and they stand on call filling their heads with bullshit. However, talking to a woman you find interesting is the most normal thing on earth.

But, if that idea of how other people saw me was just my own projection, then other things were probably just projections as well.

I don’t want to make an over-generalization, but for the very most part you are hardly as important to other people as you think. Nobody in the club cares about you, and if you approach a girl like every other guy does (and don’t wear a furry hat), then you won’t draw much attention to you anyway. Even if you spend the whole night just standing around, it won’t matter because nobody will be looking at you. The other people in the club will be too busy trying to look cool and as if they are having fun.

Presence spoke of a “Zen moment”, meaning that he had this realization all of a sudden. This is indeed how those insights happen, and that’s why you could say it’s a sudden shift. It’s like this in many fields, actually. I won’t bother you with examples from geometry, but this is one of the subjects where people normally either get it or they don’t. It’s often just a few key insights that can make them get better grades in a short amount of time. For instance, I used to give private lessons in mathematics as a teenager, and the main issue of my students was that their teacher just didn’t properly explain the material. But once you get it, it just “clicks.”

Likewise, in pickup you may think that you have to have a “routines stack” or I don’t know what else. Once you have the key insight that you can actually just talk to women without any preparation, you will then realize how absurd mainstream pickup material really is. There is nothing that keeps you from approaching women (and now please don’t “read between the lines” that this is an endorsement of indiscriminate cold approaching, because it isn’t.)


I wanted the relationships to validate my and my view of the world. Of course, things don't work that way. The conscious awareness of my disappointment has been liberating: I don't have to project unrealistic ideas on women and relationships anymore.

This is an insight I wish more men would get. I have met so many people who thought that once they get “that special girl” or just any girl at all, their life will be complete. But this is not the case at all. It is true, though, that some men who go through a lot of women often do so to fill a void in their life. Some women are like that as well. But this prevents them from ever getting to know anyone better.

It is quite like any other addiction. Sure, you can down a bottle of vodka or smoke a ton of weed, but what happens once you are sober again? You’ll probably quickly realize that your life is as shitty and incomplete as it was before. Likewise, your proverbial seducer will find after he has had his orgasm that he hasn’t had any further interest in the woman at all. But instead of reflecting on that, he just goes out and hits the clubs again next weekend.

Presence’s story culminates in the following statement, and it’s one I think many guys should let sink in:

The game is exciting again. It was hard. But now it's just fun. I'm loving connecting with girls, where it used to be a chore before. When I see a pretty girl, my mind doesn't run through the programs looking to answer the question "how do I make her like me." That just seems weird to me now. Now, my mind asks "Is she cool enough for me to go and talk to her?"

Do you realize the key part? It’s that “game” is exciting again. This is the complete opposite from what you normally encounter in lairs or on mainstream pickup forums where many guys complain about their failures, or ask how they can keep themselves motivated. But this is the wrong approach. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to talk to girls. Instead, you should talk to girls you genuinely find interesting. What you will also learn is that there really aren’t that many interesting women around, and now please don’t tell me that your average PUA who hits on 50 women a day really wants to find out anything about them. He just wants to get laid, and he doesn’t really care about with whom.



But what if all those people who have either burnt out doing pickup or are still putting themselves under a lot of stress to approach girl after girl would just relax. Only approach her if you feel like approaching her. Let me tell you a big secret, and one the commercial gurus won’t tell you: You only feel approach anxiety because you don’t really want to approach dozens of women on the street or in the club. Who wants to feel like a used cars sales man, after all? On the other hand, if you found yourself, say, rock-climbing with a cool chick, you’d almost automatically end up asking her out. It really is that simple.

Maybe Presence can show some of you the way. When I was reading through his emails, I felt very happy because I realized that he's getting it and that he now knows what seduction and pickup really are all about, and I hope that sharing his story will give some of you who are still struggling some key insights as well.