Men Who Become Obsessive About Dating Advice and Dating Women

Many of us have unhealthy obsessions or addictions in our lives. Whether it be alcohol, partying, caffeine, junk food or... sex and women.

This article is about the latter, and where men let dating women become an obsession that sabotages the rest of their lives.

It shouldn't be surprising that this is a possible consequence of learning to get better with women.

President Clinton risked an affair with a woman and sabotaged his presidency. Tiger Woods sacrificed his brand name image, and millions of dollars of income through his pursuit of women.

Most of us have a lot less to lose. If driven and successful men like these can do it when so much is at stake, what hope does the average guy have of avoiding it?

Dating Advice = Opportunities = Temptation = Distraction

As we get better with women, we have more power and control over this part of our lives, and more enticing opportunities come our way.

Dating advice is today playing a huge role in improving the options of thousands if not millions of men at this point. When it does this, it gives them these more enticing opportunities, and I've seen, as have many of the guys who have known about dating advice for a long time, that this power can corrupt lives.

Many of us have unhealthy obsessions or addictions in our lives. Whether it be alcohol, partying, caffeine, junk food or... sex and women.

This article is about the latter, and where men let dating women become an obsession that sabotages the rest of their lives.

It shouldn't be surprising that this is a possible consequence of learning to get better with women.

President Clinton risked an affair with a woman and sabotaged his presidency. Tiger Woods sacrificed his brand name image, and millions of dollars of income through his pursuit of women.

Most of us have a lot less to lose. If driven and successful men like these can do it when so much is at stake, what hope does the average guy have of avoiding it?

Dating Advice = Opportunities = Temptation = Distraction

As we get better with women, we have more power and control over this part of our lives, and more enticing opportunities come our way.

Many of the guys I've met who use dating advice successfully over the years have let it get a little out of hand. They have over invested their time into it, and seen other areas of their life deteriorate. In the early stages I think this is perfectly okay. It can be substantiated by the gains you are making in the women sphere of your life, including social skills and increasing self awareness that will spread out to improve other areas of your life.

It is okay to give the rest of your life less attention for a while. Focus in our lives brings a more rapid development and growth in an area.

When guys discover dating advice many go at it with an obsessive dedication. This is a good way to learn a skillset quickly and move on to the next thing. But there is a fine line - when the at first exponential returns in learning and new positive experiences start to fall off, you need to reassess how much time and energy you are putting into the pursuit.

The problem comes when you continue to invest massive amounts of time and energy into it, with unjustified returns in learning and growth or life satisfaction.

You are losing out by sacrificing growth and satisfaction in other areas of your life, whether it be career, wealth, health, friendships, family etc.

Worse comes when other areas of your life start to 'fall apart' because of the lack of attention you've put on them. Or, your activities with dating women are actually harming other areas of your life (as with President Clinton and Tiger Woods).

Examples of Men Studying Dating Advice Who Have Suffered

It is unusual for men who have become successful with women to talk about the negative aspects of their success. They get a lot of status and respect from other men for their success. As a result most of them like to keep their doubts, and dissatisfaction to themselves.

However, as an insider of the dating advice industry, knowing many of the most successful guys who have studied dating advice I can tell you - that in personal conversations, we talk often about the issues that have grown out of our success with women.

Or the guys that we have seen get into seemingly self destructive paths because of it. The examples that have become public and I can tell you about are few, but they are great for giving you a more in depth perspective about our ability to take an obsessive and relatively self destructive interest in the area.

Darren - "I Am future"

The most graphic example I have seen of a guy letting his interest in dating advice and dating women get out of hand is in Channel 4's documentary of pick up artist lifestyles named "The Rules of Seduction".

It documented one pick up artist, named Darren (known by his peers as "I Am Future"), who had developed the skills to meet and attract many women. In the documentary you see Darren's life go from worse to worse to the point where he becomes homeless, living in a squatter house, and on the verge of clinical depression.

You can follow for yourself this account of Darren in the "Rules of Seduction" video below (Darren first appears around 2 minutes 25 seconds into the video):

Jeff Allen (Jeffy) - Real Social Dynamics Dating Coach

There is a great account of the repercussions of dating advice abuse in "Nine Ball", where Jeff Allen (Jeffy), now a dating coach from Real Social Dynamics, describes how his whole life became driven by his new found dating skills. He goes from a guy with little opportunities with women to become an extremely successful "Playa". However it leads him years later to a point of complete desolation where he finds that he is more hollow and unhappy than ever before in his life.

I highly recommend reading it to give you a better perspective of the extremes someone has taken this part of their life too, and the ultimate consequences - not as rosy as the majority of men would like to believe.

Jeff Allen gives a very "bare bones" genuine account, which is extremely rare to find from one who is so successful with women. Most guys paint a much 'rosier' picture than their reality to protect their self-image. Jeff has done us all a service by relating his experiences and feelings as they stand.

Steve Pavlina - Authority on Personal Development

Another interesting example, that is more recent, and more surprising is that of Steve Pavlina, a blogger about personal development who has built a solid reputation for writing high quality articles on everything surrounding the subject of personal growth (His book "Personal Development for Smart People" is the best self help book I have read). I have a lot of respect for Steve and his writing about self development. So the following events have intrigued me.

Steve Pavlina has openly talked about the amazing and intimate loving relationship he has had with his wife, Erin, of 15 years, since he became a public identity. They have two children together, and for many people were an exemplary example of the strength of a marriage and the potential of love.

In 2008, Steve Pavlina, turned his personal growth eye towards dating advice for men...

In May 2008 he showed the first signs of starting to read about dating advice for men when he published an article on "How to Be a Man" which contains some basic well known principles. Later he discusses how he has slowly been submerging himself and reading more dating advice for men and books from pick up artists and the seduction community.

This led to him announcing, at the beginning of 2009, that he would be moving his relationship with Erin from monagomy to polyamory as part of his yearly goals. It created a big stir among his large audience of readers.

"I believe in conscious choice. I can see that staying monogamous is wrong for me at this time." Steve Pavlina

In September 2009 he talks about some of the dating advice for men conferences and products he has been using, most notably those from David DeAngelo.

In October of 2009, just 10 month later he announced his separation from his wife, with her and the children moving to another house. He says this about separation and whether polyamory played a role in it, "To a certain extent, yes. It helped us discover new truths about ourselves."

If you read the sequence of events as he recounts them he is inconsistent in how he describes his feelings towards Erin. In February he announced that polyamory was making their relationship stronger, but in October he recounts that their relationship had been deteriorating even before he started his experiment with polyamory.

His justifications change. That's always a warning sign. At the end of the day his path doesn't look too different from all the other guys I have seen get seduced by their quest into dating advice.

Note: At the end of this article are the list of posts from Steve Pavlina documenting his change in mindset.

Reminder - Why are you reading dating advice?

The answer is to improve the quality of your life. Right now, you probably consider that the area of your life that you need to work on the most to improve your overall quality of life is your success with women.

If you are lagging behind in your dating and relationship experience, or in the quality of women in your life, it makes sense to focus on improving it to bring your standard up. Improving your dating life when it is lagging the rest of your life will make you more satisfied with life overall.

This is because "You will only feel as satisfied with your life as the weakest link". When that weakest link is women, which is very common in this day, because of too much focus on careers and absorption of bad social conditioning, you should work on that.

As soon as your weakest link becomes something else - it is time to reconsider. Putting more energy into learning about dating women when other areas of your life are less satisfactory will simply not reap the rewards in greater happiness that you are looking for.

Always keep this in mind...

What are the signs that you may have stepped over the line?

The first obvious sign is that you are unhappy. That you feel that you are neglecting other parts of your life, and that you shouldn't be putting so much time into your dating life. It's as simple as that. Listen to your feelings and your intuition about the situation.

The second sign is when you find yourself on a 'dating treadmill'. Are you constantly dating new women but not finding any of them worthy of deeper relationships? or investing more of your time in them? Often the issue comes from you and hollow motivations (e.g. chasing a 'score' of quantity of women that you've been with to brag about).

If you don't invest time in getting to know the woman in front of you, or you select the wrong type of woman in the first place, then you won't find any durable satisfaction with them. If you are on a 'dating treadmill' take some time out to consider what is missing. If you aren't growing, then there is something else behind your drive...

What Lies Behind the Obsession...

When the pursuit of women is an obsession that is detrimental to your overall quality of life, it is generally hiding something. Ask yourself these questions to find out where your obsession is coming from. Once you have identified its source, it is easier to start tackling it directly, rather than avoiding it.

1. Is your pursuit and use of dating advice coming from your need for status in the eyes of other men?

Men with the best quality and quantity of women have always been admired by many other men. How does your social circle or peer group influence you?

Is your motivation to invest in this area of your life coming from your own needs within or from the motivations and pressures from the people around you.

All it takes is the persistent topic of women coming up, with some guys bragging about it, to zap our egos and kick our competitive and status hungry genes into action. Don't under estimate the impact that having several friends who often talk about their new conquests or experiences with women may be having upon your motivations and drive.

The underlying issue that you are covering up here is an insecurity faced with other men. Are you using your accomplishments with women to fill in your insecurities about your status with other men?

2. Are there specific insecurities that you have towards women that you are avoiding resolving?

It is very common for men to study and learn and even master some dating skills and ignore others. On top of this, it is often the areas we most 'fear' - read where our greatest insecurities lie - that we ignore and avoid.

For example, you may learn how to approach and attraction women with a 70% success rate (that's pretty good). But you don't seek out to improve your sexual skills, and you have persistant insecurities about whether the women you sleep with are satisifed with sex with you.

This is actually very typical and leads to the guy pursuing strings of one night stands but never seeking to continue the relationship. He may take on this same behavior because he is afraid of 'intimacy' and is insecure about opening up and developing a relationship with someone. The same situation arises, but the area ignored in this case is relationship skills.

Insecurities are very difficult to penetrate. It takes real vigilance to weed them out. But the rule generally is, that if you haven't made an effort in one area - there is probably an insecurity hidden there, forcing you to ignore it.

The point here is that you need to target the insecurity to get over your obsession.

3. Absence of life purpose and unlooked at issues in your life

For some men an obsessive pursuit of women comes from a lack of other goals in their life. They do not find the other areas of their life enticing, because these areas of their lives are not fulfilling their needs and for whatever reason they feel unable to tackle them, or they have a blindspot. They refuse to look at the issues behind them.

This could be a career that they are not interested in, but have invested so much in that they are too scared to leave and do something else.

It could be frustrations with health that they are not getting over (e.g. obesity, smoking, drink abuse etc.). The habits are too strong and their efforts to get over them fall by the way side.

These men use dating women as a 'distraction'. While consumed with the drive of the 'dating treadmill' or the demands of relationships they have no time to look at the issues in their lives that are really bothering them. That's the way they like it. So the situation gets worse, and it feels at times that it is the women that are the problem.

Final Takeaways

If you having a feeling you may have crossed the line, the solution is pure and simple. Exert some self discipline to cut down on your 'self-distracting' dating activities, and identify and work on the area(s) of your life that actually need(s) the attention.

You may feel that you have a different cause than those noted above but when you think hard, it will link back to these issues in some way, or a mix of them. It will be a derivative of these issues. If you feel like your dating life is not giving you satisfaction, despite your success - it's your responsibility to take control and work on what you need to.

If you are still on the path to success with dating, stay aware of the role dating women and developing relationships with them has in your life. When you increase the role it is playing in your life, and the amount of attention and time investment you are making - step back for a moment.

Think to the long term. Am I doing this temporarily while I explore and learn from new dating experiences? Am I creating a dating lifestyle that is going to work longer term? Make sure women and dating keeps its rightful place as a positive contribution to your overall life quality and satisfaction.

Timeline of posts from Steve Pavlina related to his increasing immersion in dating advice for men: