Jerry Atrick, I find it interesting when you say that during the time that you were a player, every move you made pointed toward getting laid, and you describe it as being a full time job. This contradicts conventional wisdom that an attractive man is one who doesn't need women, because he's got a rich enough life without one, and draws confidence from this nonchalance. Would you say that for the serious player, this nonchalance is actually just a gentlemanly facade, masking a mind that focuses on really nothing but getting boinked? Because I'll tell you, call me a misguided nerd, but the idea of building my whole life around getting laid never did much for me, no matter how much my loins ached.
Hindsight is always 20/20. Looking back I realize that chasing girls, and doing it successfully, was probably over-compensation for other personal and social shortcomings I had. I was the youngest guy in my circle of friends and some of them used to give me shit and "bust my balls" to no end. I went to college in the Midwest and some of my friends used to make fun of me for being from Texas, being half-Mexican, being skinny, and having a lazy eye. Since I was smaller than all of them I couldn't beat any of them up, so my revenge was to sleep with more girls and make them jealous. For the most part, it worked.
I think confidence is something fluid, it isn't static. I was perfectly confident when talking to girls, but that only made up for a complete lack of confidence in other aspects of my life. I would say it is a facade. I was able to read a girl's personality while talking to her and determine whether I should act like I didn't need her or act like I really needed her. It didn't happen overnight, though, I really had to work at it. I went through a lot of trial and error learning what lines worked for which personality. It's all about feeling them out (pardon the pun) and pushing the limits of what you can say without pissing them off.
I'll tell you, as fun as the chase could be, often the next day I would feel completely empty inside. Instead of having a different girl, sometimes the only thing I really wanted was to have the same girl stick around. The only way to make that empty feeling go away was to go ahead and find another girl for one more night. Several years later when I started dabbling with heroin I had similar emotions. I would feel guilty and tell myself I shouldn't do it, but the only thing that would make those negative thoughts go away was to do it again. Anyways, I was only a player for a couple of years. I finally settled down with none other than one of my last conquests. Of course that relationship was doomed to fail from the start, but for those two and a half years waking up to the same beautiful face every morning made me the happiest guy in the world.
I still think these tactics only work on a subset of women. I was never one of those guys who thought he could have any woman.
As I think more about your "aching loins" statement, I think the actual sex was only a fraction of what my actions were about. For me it was more about the eye contact, the touching of the hands, the kissing, the talking, the laughing, the cuddling, the drug-like rush at the exact moment that I knew "it" was going to happen. It was like the beginning, middle, and end of a meaningful relationship all rolled into one magical night. Then emptiness until it happened again.
Now I'm the misguided nerd. I feel like George Costanza in that episode of Seinfeld where he gives up sex and becomes smart.
