Ben Gibbs*
Staff Writer
About a month ago, I sat in a bar with my gang of fellow perennially eligible bachelor friends having a discussion about male initiation rituals. Every tribal society has one, a challenge which young males must pass to be considered men. The Walkabout of Australian Aborigenes involves fending for your-self alone in the wilderness for a period of up to six months. The Maasai in the Sahara must kill a lion with only a shield and spear. The initiation ritual is considered by the tribes to be an integral process in a male’s development, facilitating the overcoming of fear and the strengthening of character, will and resolve. I observed the lack of such a ritual today in Western Society and suggested that its absence may be the reason for widespread inhibition amongst guys.
Shortly after that night, I was with another group, when a friend took me aside and asked if I’d read The Game by Neil Strauss, which he assured me, in hushed tones, is simultaneously both a terrific story and a dating manual for men. I tracked it down in the Psychology section of a book-store that same week and although I felt like I was breaching a social Taboo just reading the blurb, I was also excited. It felt like I was being let in on a big secret, entering a world I never knew existed. I decided to see what it was all about and bought the book.
Over the next few days I ate up the pages of the book, my thirst for it was difficult to subdue. I learned about concepts such as playing hard-to-get or the “cat-string theory”, the idea that someone is more attractive when unattainable, with the analogy being that when you dangle a string in front of a cat they pursue it relentlessly but if you drop it by their side they instantly lose interest. I’ve seen this happen with my cat countless times.
Another mind-blowing concept was that of the “bitch-shield”. This is when a woman acts ignorant or even stand-offish towards a guy. By acting disinterested, a woman challenges a man to keep going, to lead the interaction forward. The “bitch-shield” also takes the form of probing questions, used to test a man if a man is being genuine. I had always thought this happened simply because the women were rude or because I was interacting terribly. I learned that in fact, it is used as a defense-mechanism. Many men fall into the category of either liar or coward. The shield helps women filter out the fabrications from the truth and the wussies from the warriors, the boys from the men. With enough conversational ability, a man can make a woman transition from stand-offish to speaking freely like old friends within mere minutes.
The day after finishing the book, I set myself the target of talking to 5 groups of women. At first, it was a struggle just to open my mouth to talk to a stranger, and when I did muster up the courage to start a conversation I found myself freezing up and forgetting everything I was meant to be doing. This is AA (Approach Anxiety), and is what has blighted the life of my-self and millions of guys the world over. This concept is explained by Neil Strauss’ mentor, who goes by the name of Mystery. He reckons that it is hard-wired into our minds to fear rejection from women because, in tribal society, communities were much smaller. A man might only have had a hand-full of women to choose from. If one rejected him, word would spread and he could find himself rejected by the whole tribe, with minimal chance of achieving pre-creation. As evolution is a slow process, our minds have not yet adapted to modern-day life, where such scarcity is non-existent. AA can be confronted with practice, by approaching strangers, over and over again.
I walked around town, looking at all the groups of girls but mentally I had hit a brick wall. I just couldn’t find the confidence to talk to anyone. My inner voices composed a symphony of excuses and rationalizations for not approaching. “I can try again tomorrow”,” it’s not the right time of day”, “I’m only starting out, it would be easier with friends.” All excuses. At one point I found myself walking towards the bus-stop. I saw my bus about to pull up. I half-wanted to simply hop on and escape to the safe familiarity of home which I could feel drawing me in like iron to a magnet.
That was when I had to dig deep. I reminded myself why I was doing this; to do to death the inhibitions that had held me back for years. I remembered all the parties where I sat with the other shy guys while the confident extroverts had all the fun. I remembered watching movies like “Superbad” and “The Inbetweeners” and laughing along with everyone else while trying to conceal the inner anguish I felt as I realized I was the living embodiment of the awkward teenage protagonists. I pledged not to return home until my task was complete. I watched the bus pull away from the stop, and realized it was time for me to pull away from my comfort zone.
I succeeded that night and have never looked back. I felt a new-found sense of self, an inner strength I never recognized before. I felt like a champion after every conversation. I stopped caring about how a conversation went and started treating each one as a learning experience. Experts recommend to avoid playing games during the dating phase. DatingPilot says that old texting and calling rules don’t apply anymore. Don’t wait three days until you call and instead do it when you feel like it. This advice also helped me tremendously. Within a month I had met more girls than I had time to see them all in! My weekly timetable, previously filled out with mundane tasks like “go to the bank” now had enticing entries like “cocktails with Hermione in the Hogshead” (obviously not the actual names). I told my friends about it and was met with very mixed and generally skeptical responses. The reactions ranged from cautious curiosity to full-scale condemnation of what I was doing as a sleazy and superficial conquest of women.
Having experienced it, I explained that it has nothing to do with that. It’s about coming out of your shell, finding your inner strength, and developing the social skills and confidence that many of us lads simply had the misfortune not to develop naturally. It’s really about self-improvement. In the wrong hands, it could be used deceitfully. I don’t doubt that there are guys out there who have no qualms about using lies and deceipt to get what they want. But in the right hands, The Game is in the woman’s interest as much as the guys. By overcoming your fears and learning about how dating and relationships work you become a far more attractive and desirable individual. Being more confident in recognizing how slow is too slow in a relationship and acting upon it appropriately can go a long way in developing more positive relationships. Women seem to get dating tips everywhere, whether it’s in magazines like Cosmopolitan, on TV in Sex in The City or in books like The Rules but before coming across the writings of Neil Strauss I had never come across a genuine male equivalent. Having read and practiced The Game, I believe I have found my modern-day male- initiation ritual.
* Student’s name has been kept anonymous by request.
