Conscious Choice: Becoming Mr. Right

October 2008

Becoming Mr. Right

I’m okay, you’re okay, right? Except for when, well, you’re not. A new pickup approach — part life coaching, part seduction seminar — is helping men confront what’s keeping them from finding connection

By Andy Isaacson

A naked mannequin, draped in a feather boa, stands in one corner of the living room; a stripper pole runs floor to ceiling in another. I am gathered with a group of other single men in the North Beach district of San Francisco, in a duplex apartment that serves as the headquarters of Pickup 101, a company that teaches men how to score with women. In walks guest speaker Zan Perrion, the 44-year old Canadian whose prowess as a lothario occupied an entire chapter in the international bestseller The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

Zan wears designer jeans, a loosely buttoned white shirt and black blazer. His wavy hair is brushed back; he’s sporting a pinky ring. “When we see a pretty girl, why do we hesitate?” Zan grills the enrapt crowd of pickup students. “Because we have given her the power to validate us. Everything you desire is inside yourself. Women can tell how you feel about yourself from across the room. When she asks, ‘What do you do?’ she wants to see who you believe you are. Integrity is attractive.”

Zan’s pronouncement sounds more like excerpts from a self-help manual than instructions for chasing tail. Yet it echoes “inner game,” the latest philosophy to sweep the once-secret society of self-proclaimed pickup artists. Inner game may sound suspiciously Jedi-like, but the premise reflects something women have long wished men understood: solid and grounded is sexy. Pinky ring and pick-up line not required.

Somewhere along the way, men lost that simple message. Pop culture icons, from the rebellious James Dean to the aloof Marlboro Man, only invited mimicry. The sexual revolution — granting independence to women and sensitivity to men — left many guys wanting for a playbook to help them navigate the newly complicated world of modern relationships. The now classic 1970 book How to Pick Up Girls! was one of the first to offer detailed strategies, with quaint chapter headings like “Smile! You’re picking up a girl” and “Be gallant.” Then things got deeper, or one might argue, darker. Ross Jeffries pioneered “Speed Seduction” techniques that drew from neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis. The Internet gave birth to the alt.seduction.fast newsgroup, an anonymous place for would-be Casanovas to seek advice and trade notes. It also set the platform for a multimillion-dollar industry to flower: pickup artists with pseudonyms like Mystery, Juggler and Style began teaching so-called “AFCs” (Average Frustrated Chumps) well-formulated tactics. Some encouraged behaviors familiar to viewers of Animal Planet, like being an alpha male, or “peacocking” (dressing flashily). Others were based on perceptions about female psychology: women form rapid judgments, so men should engage them immediately with compelling stories. (For help, Pickup 101 sells $897 Charismatic Conversations Take-Home Training Kits). Mr. Nice Guy is a stigma, students were told; bold is the new timid.

The wildly successful seduction tome The Game, published in 2005, exposed this subculture. Inspired by the book and subsequent reality TV spinoffs, thousands of men hungry for “results” have since swallowed so-called “outer game” techniques like a diet pill. Many are now realizing they’re more like antibiotics: they lose their efficacy with overuse. Most women can see through the posturing, and for the men like me who are uncomfortable opening with contrived stories and would rather leave peacocking to birds, the prescribed techniques feel inauthentic and empty.

“Men want to learn how to interact with women in a more meaningful way,” Zan told me recently, after returning from a workshop in Poland. “They realize they can get phone numbers, and might even be able to get a girl to bed that night. But nobody gets connection.” So Pickup 101 now teaches workshops in making and reading eye contact — paying attention to a woman, in other words, instead of playing a character. Author and dating coach David DeAngelo leads Ultimate Man courses designed to help men set life goals and a develop a sense of purpose that might ultimately make them more attractive.

Going further is the Authentic Man Program (AMP). AMP wasn’t designed as an inner game boot camp — in fact, they don’t even use the term — but everyone from pickup novices to master teachers like Pickup 101’s Lance Mason have been laying down $2,300 in San Francisco and New York for three-day courses and assorted DVD products. (An Authentic Woman Experience workshop run by the same company also helps women take control of their dating lives.)

I was a little dubious: AMP sounded like a detox program for disenchanted outer gamers with Charismatic Conversation Kits to burn. But I enrolled in the course and on a recent weekend arrived at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco’s SOMA district.

My fellow group of twelve students from across the world included an Australian in his fifties who described himself as “slippery” and a twentysomething who hoped to conquer “approach anxiety.” One was married, just looking to deepen relations with his wife. There were ten male coaches, many with backgrounds in personal growth and life coaching, who were later joined by ten attractive women, many of them therapists.

“The possibility of being able to create attraction with a woman instantly, and have her feel very seen and connected with you, and have it feel light and playful and adventurous and natural — that experience is teachable if you look at the fundamentals of what is actually going on,” AMP’s founder Decker Cunov told us the first day. Decker is tall and lanky, with prominent ears and a plain, boyish face that demonstrates an impressive range of emotional expression. When he speaks, it is usually in a hushed voice, and his eyes, intently gazing but not threatening, convey vulnerability. He’s the kind of guy of whom women recount, I don’t know, there was just something about him.

Decker and the other coaches started us off with exercises designed to tune us into our bodies, including a half-hour of heavy breathing on our backs while enigmatic sounds enveloped the space. “Attraction is not a thought,” Decker counseled. “It’s a felt bodily experience. For a rewarding dynamic to exist, you actually have to show up in this moment.” Mr. Approach Anxiety soon learned that he was totally numb to his own body — no wonder women didn’t feel comfortable or turned on in his presence.

Another exercise had us approaching women facilitators seated on sofas in pairs, simulating a cold approach at, say, a lounge. The women then reflected how they experienced us: (“I’m totally missing this basic, animalistic sexual drive in your being,” one man was told. To another: “Your gaze becomes a stare rather than a point of connection.”) We practiced maintaining grounded stances — in a breakout coaching session, one man wept after unlocking stored guilt over his father’s death that had left him always standing back on his heels.

“A lot of things go awry with women because we’re not okay with ourselves,” Decker told the room. “‘Appreciation’ is not trying to fix or impress her, it’s noticing and embracing whatever’s arising. Including the fact that this is another human being.”

To practice appreciation, we each sat across from a woman and were instructed to explore our curiosity about them — asking questions, or keeping silent with eye contact, but remaining connected. I found myself impulsively complimenting my partner on her earrings, then confessed I hadn’t noticed them before I said anything. In another exercise, a group of men were given a minute to argue why, if they were passengers on a crashing plane, they should receive one of the last parachutes. Instructed Decker, “Integrity is a man who is not just trying to get his sense of satisfaction from women all the time. He’s actually committed to something in his life much bigger than whether she approves of him.” He also isn’t afraid to say what he wants.

Later, as evocative music blared, the women confronted us individually — some seductively, others in tears. We were instructed to stand silent, while they evaluated whether we could be trusted to remain grounded in the face of raw emotional expression.

“As you know yourself more deeply, as your veils drop, where you’re fully engaged in your life and in touch with how you’re feeling, there is no cold approaching a woman — there’s just you living your life,” Decker said. “Things flow from that more naturally than you can ever plan or rehearse.”

Authenticity, we were told, is more than just being yourself, more than simply being genuine and not fake. Most of what we think of as “being ourselves” are patterns of behavior that mask deeper, repressed emotions. AMP leads men to those places. “The great thing about this pickup phenomenon is that it’s giving men a bread crumb trail back to disowned parts of themselves,” Decker added. “One of the most shallow environments — the bar scene — is actually triggering opportunities for some of the most profound inner work someone can do.”

Andy Isaacson lives in Brooklyn and the SF Bay Area, where he enjoys charismatic conversations with women who wear pinky rings.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: