Cakes were made to be eaten, not collected.

For some of you, what I am about to write might sound very disturbing. To others, very familiar.
If you are bothered at any point by what I am writing, then please read on. I just have to get some stuff off my chest now.

So here we go...

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"What are your goals?" He asked.
"My goals"?
"Yeah, unless you know where you're going, you won't know how to get there."
"I guess my goal is quantity, quality and variety. My goal is to make out with women I just met, get blow jobs in club bathrooms, sleep with a different woman every night, and find myself in strange sexual adventures with multiple women."
He sat in silence, listening, so I continued. I'd never articulated it before, either out loud or to myself. This was several years ago, just after I discovered the Rosetta Stone of attraction in the form of an underground society of master pickup artists. "I want to corrupt young virgins, reawaken passions in bored housewives, seduce and be seduced by stars, students, centerfolds, busineswomen, and Tantric godesses. And then, from amongst these women, I will choose one to love."
"How will you know when you've found her?" He asked.
"I guess I'll just know, because I won't want to be with other women anymore."
"Well, that sounds like a good plan. And it makes sense to a certain point." I waited. I knew he was about to find the flaw in my logic.
"But what happens after a year or two years, and the sex isn't as exciting anymore? What happens if you have a child with her, and she becomes less available for you emotionally and sexually? What happens if you go through a rough patch and start fighting all the time?"

"If those things happened, I'd probably want to sleep with other women." I watched him as he lifted his legs off the floor and crossed them on the couch in a position of spiritual superiority.
"But I'd just have to control myself. I suppose I could think of other women like cigarettes. Even though I desired them, I would refrain from indulging because I'd know it was bad for the health of the relationship."
And then I waited for it, the inevitable question. He was a music producer, yet he never seemed to work. Instead, I'd meet him at his house in Brussels, and we'd spend hours discussing the meaning of life while his Indian houseboy brought us bottles of water and plates of vegan food.
"So, " he said, " you'd be okay spending the next fifty years sleeping with only one woman?"
He walked me into the weakness in my romantic strategy, and probably in most men's.

I love women's laughter.
I love their lips, their hips, their skin, their touch, the way their faces look when they're in the throes of sexual ecstacy. I love the way they nurture, feel, care, intuit, understand unconditionally.

I yearn to create that bubble of passion, which draws us into the moment and connects us to the energy of he universe. And I cherish, more than anything, the moment in bed right after the first time, when all that there is to hold on to has been given.
"Well that would be difficult for me, " I admitted. " Ideally I'd like to be able to have my cake and eat it."
"I think that's a reasonable request, " he said. " After all, cake was meant to be eaten. Who actually orders a cake, then doesn't touch it?
"So what you are saying is that there's a way to be in a commited, loving relationship, yet still sleep with other women??"
" I didn't say that. All I said is that there is a way to have a cake and eat it."
"How? Even a monogamous relationship is a challenge. That's why twenty-five percent of all crimes are domestic violence, that's why the divorce rate is fifty percent, that's why the majority of most men and woman have cheated. Maybe the relationship paradigm that's been forced on us by society isn't natural."
He looked at me disapprovingly.
I continued anyway.
"Even if you're faithful for those fifity years, you still may check out a woman walking by or leaf through a copy of Maxim or look for porn on the internet one night. And this IS going to make your partner feel like she's not enough for you."
"This is true. You can't have a healthy relationship if you're partner doesn't feel secure."
"Exactly. So, considering the the nature of men, how is it possible to make a woman feel secure in a relationship?"
"Probably by not wanting to have your cake and eat it, " he said.
"But that's not natural. You just said that cake was meant to be eaten."
"Well then, " he said, "you'll have to find a way to eat it without hurting someone you love."
I hated him sometimes. For being right.
In the days that followed, I sifted through the conversations in my mind, searching for answers. I talked to men and women everywhere I went, asking each the same question: " If you didn't have to worry about having children and you didn't need someone to take care of you when you were older, would you still get married?"
Most men said no. Most women said yes.
And that's when I realized that the traditional relationship model is defined by a woman's needs, not a man's.
Then I started asking a new question:
"Let's say you met someone, clicked on every possible level, and wanted to date this person. But the person said that after two years, he or she would disappear from your life forever and there was nothing you could do about it. Would you still date this person?"
Most women said no. Most men said yes - some even said the scenario would be ideal.

So where does that leave the "one woman, one man, happily ever after" myth that is the basis of our entire civilization? Apparently, on an unbalanced scale, because the natural insticts of men seem to be to alternate between periods of love relationships and periods of hedonistic bachelorhood, with some traumatized kids thrown in as an evolutionary imperative.

When I next met my friend, I shared my conclusion. "That's kind of sad way to live one's life, " he said.
"Yeah, and the problem is that's exactly how I've been living mine. Except for the kids part. I don't want to traumatize them, so I'm waiting until I figure out a solution to this whole relationship dilemma that satisfies the need of both sexes."
"You'd make a good politician, " he said, not as a compliment. "You'te the type of guy who can't kill a fly,a bee, or a cockroach himself, but has no problem hiring an exterminator to kill a whole swarm of them."
"What's that supposed to mean"?
"It means, " he said, setting down his bottle of water, " that your ethics are fucked up."

We live in a society that likes to make clear-cut judgments between good and bad, right and wrong, succesful and unsuccesful.
But that is NOT how the universe works.
The universe does not judge. Since the dawn of time, it has operated on just two principles: the creative and the destructive. We have come to terms with the creative impulse - that, after all, is why we're here - but we live in fear of the detructive because that, one day, will be our reason for going.

I don't want to offer you any fancy advice and tell you that if you understand all of this your life will be better. There's another side to the game: the destructive side. And, the more succesful you are, the more you're going to rub against it. Especially since, more than any other instinct we have, the sexual impulse contains both the creative and the destructive.

The inspiration for this writing was the preceding series of conversations, which point to a seemingly irreconcilable disparity between the sexual and emotional needfs of men and women - not to mention a reluctance to admit and express them. They also underscore a similarity that transcends gender:
The fear of being alone - and the dramas and comedies that occur because, as the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder put it, "we were born to need each other, but we haven't learned how to live with each other."

So why did I write this all down? I have quit the game some time ago. It has given me good and bad, but in the end, it has messed up my own morals and ethics when it comes to relationships.

I try and loosely trace the metaphorical arc of a man's dating life, building toward the question that none of the pickup gurus I met while learning the game was able to answer:
What do you do after the orgasm?

Fiction writers are lucky: They can hide behind the flawed characters they create. Here, the only flawed character is me. In the process of approaching thousands of people to master the game and myself, the three engines driving my behavior - hereditary instincts, family upbringing, and social forces - came into constant conflict.

As a result, I hurt peoples feelings, made bad choices, took unhealthy risks, missed opportunities, and commited irreversible blunders.

I also had some amazing sex.
And therein lies the conflict.
From each of these experiences, Ive tried to extract a lesson. And that has not been easy.

Because some of these experiences never should have happened in the first place.

X

Pat.