Do We Enjoy Failure?

I recently asked Lee Cho and Mr White the same question:

“If you had to choose between these two options, which would you pick? Either, you get one lay in 100 approaches, but 99 of those approaches are blowouts, and then you get a SDL, or, you get one lay in 100 approaches but with a regular split of numbers and dates.”

They both chose the latter, and it raises an interesting question: do we enjoy failure? Why is it that we’d pick the option which costs so much more time? Especially when you consider possibly having to go on multiple dates before getting the lay. Not to mention time spent messaging girls where it ends up going nowhere. It could easily add up to hours of additional effort.

Taking myself as an example, from the two trips I’ve made to Prague, I got 69:1 and 84:1 as my approach to lay ratios. On the surface, the former trip was more successful since the A:L was better, but let’s dig a little deeper. On the former trip, I got much fewer (proper) dates and less girls responded to my feelers. That makes it sound even more time-efficient, but let’s go deeper still. That contributed to me feeling as if the process of Daygame had become like a black box, where good sets didn’t correspond to better results further down the line. This introduced apathy into my future approaches. The second trip had a much more typical split of responses and dates.

If I had to pick which trip’s Daygame was more enjoyable, the second one would win, hands down, even though I spent much more time on girls who eventually turned out to be “No’s.” That was because the box wasn’t black, it was typically translucent. This is another example of why it’s good to add qualitative – not just quantitative – analysis to your Daygame and why A:L doesn’t tell much of the story.

If I had to guess why we “enjoy failure,” in this sense, then it would come down to that idea of Daygame becoming a black box. It’s not as nice to be doing sets where you have no idea where they’ll go compared to the knowledge that a good set leads to a good number, good dating, etc. When we experience the typical numbers and dates – linear progression / filter – we get a greater feeling of control over the process. This is in addition to the obvious fact that 99 blowouts in a row will have a bad impact on your own psychology!

This links into what I was asking earlier this week as to whether “Game works:” are we actually unlocking the door to progress to the next stage, or are we simply finding the girl who’s willing to open it for us? In the question I posed to Lee and Mr White it would mean that that 1 in 100 girl was going to sleep with you either way, and therefore the numbers and dates in the second scenario were just platitudes gifted to you by Game to make you feel better.

And that’s all I have to say on that. I thought it would be interesting to pose that question and see what people think. I think it’s also a good thing to have in mind the next time things aren’t going your way. It’s commonly said that “every “no” brings you closer to a “yes”.” Getting results is much more a function of time than of skill on the day and therefore we should be, in a way, happy about the failures, as they’re just part of the process.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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