Where do PLAYERS COME FROM?: when nice guys turn into bad boys

I'm Dr Orion taraban and this is cycax Better Living Through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is where do players come from so the myth of the natural is just that it's a myth there are very very few men who are naturally confident with women very very few men effortlessly attract women how do I know this because in every other domain of life nothing requires more effort than seeming effortless so why would success with women be any different the fact of the matter is that enjoying optionality with women requires a significant amount of

skill and while some men's natural talents will dovetail nicely with this particular skill set which will help to explain the variants and outcomes we observe a skill set remains at the end of the day a suite of behaviors that can be learned so if men who enjoy significant success with women are not born but made the question becomes how does this occur what are the circumstances that motivate men to invest the time energy and money necessary to acquire this skill set in general players are nice guys who got hurt one too many times and decided

to do something about it players are almost always former nice guys and often former Romantics which as I've discussed many times on this channel is an attitude toward life that always ends in tragedy and it's only the intense pain associated with these experiences that serves as sufficient motivation to master a skill set that almost by definition demands the learner undergo a substantial amount of personal rejection it's after a significant heartbreak sometimes one sometimes several that these guys due to their patently poor outcomes finally get around to examining their cherished beliefs about women and relationships and

submit themselves to that study of effectiveness rigorously the concept of Effectiveness is key as these guys are tired of not getting what they want and what works therefore has to Trump what they want to work or what they think should work when it comes to women it's actually a fairly scientific mindset and we can think of players as applied behavioral scientists who study the mating and dating behavior of women and like science it is best practiced with a kind of value neutrality because both players and scientists understand that reality has no obligation to conform to

our beliefs about how reality should operate one of my all-time favorite movies is the best cinematic example I know of this phenomenon if people know the Hong Kong film director Juan Kar y they are probably familiar with what is generally considered his Masterpiece In the Mood for Love It is currently ranked fifth on the Sight and Sound critics poll the greatest movies of all time people love this movie and to be fair it is a really excellent film however even fans of this movie Sometimes don't know that Wong made a sequel to this film called

2046 which in my opinion is even better like its title suggests in the mood for love is like a case study of a mood a particular moment of life it's brilliant but it's also kind of simple 2046 on the other hand is much more complex and to my mind more honest if In the Mood for Love is a still life then 2046 is a symbolic allegory highly recommended now before I go any further to explain what this has to do with where players come from if you're liking what you're hearing please consider sending this video

to someone who might benefit from its message because it's Word of Mouth referrals like this that really help to make the channel grow and you can also hit the super thanks button it's in the lower right hand corner beneath the video those three little dots and tip me in proportion to the value you feel you've received from this episode your support goes a long way and I really appreciate it in any case I feel comfortable discussing the main plot points of these movies because the Artistry of the films is such that even if you know

exactly what happens they are still worth watching in In the Mood for Love Tony lung plays a man named Chao who is married to a woman to whom he is faithful and devoted however about a third of the way through the movie he learns that his wife is having an affair with his next door neighbor's husband two of them Chao and his female neighbor Su Lee Chen kind of figure this out at the same time and this creates an opportunity for the two to commiserate with each other as they find themselves in the strange situation

of knowing that their spouses are cheating on them with each other over time Chao ends up falling in love with Suli Chen and this doesn't work out well for him either because we learn that she decides that she would rather remain faithful to her faithless husband than start a new life with ciao this is a real kick in the teeth for chow as he is functionally cucked twice by the same man whom we never see on camera that is the same man successfully wooed Chow's wife and successfully retained his own wife's affections both Chow's wife

and his neighbor prefer the cheating husband to him so ciao has his heart broken twice over the course of the movie and this presumably causes him to question both his life choices and his fundamental attitudes toward women and relationships and that's where In the Mood for Love ends the sequel 2046 picks up the story of Ciao's life a few years later and he's almost a completely different man he's grown this little like Clark Gable mustache he dresses really slick and he as he confesses in the opening voice over narration he has a lot of one-night

stands but hey nothing lasts forever anyway and this of course is the attitude of a man who has been significantly betrayed by women he thought he could trust his wife's commitment in marriage he couldn't he thought he could trust a woman's receptivity to his sincere love and affection he couldn't so rather than have his heart broken again he Embraces a world of temporary relationships and superficial interactions because hey at least you can get some pleasure here for a while and maybe that's the best we can really hope for in life you see this attitude most

clearly in Chow's relationship with bailing played by the beautiful Zhang ziyi who incidentally was Jen in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon you know how much I love that movie in one scene he discusses his pragmatic views of relationships with her namely that people just tend to borrow each other for a while and that makes sense he used to believe in marriage turns out his wife was just borrowing him for a while he used to believe in love turns out his neighbor was just borrowing him for a while we can get mad we can get sad or

we can accept that this is how it is we just sort of use each other until we don't and that is correct that is the nature of things and it's this indifference to the ephemerality of relationships that tends to characterize most players and that helps ciao pass through a series of gorgeous lovers that said at the end of the day this is a reactive position it's a defensive posture that more or less protects the individual from falling back into the fallacies that leave him vulnerable to pain and betrayal and we know this is a defensive

posture for child because we see occasional cracks in the facade for instance he plays it so cool with the fiery by Ling that she ends up falling in love with him and offers him a committed relationship now I believe that ciao fell in love with Bai too at least to a certain extent but his player code his defensive posture clearly forbade him from going down that path and in that scene he is like shaking with self-restraint like it takes every ounce of his strength to go against his emotions and tell by to get lost he

knows that he will lose by by doing so but he also knows that he will lose himself if he doesn't one of the many meanings of 2046 in the film is that it is the title of a science fiction story that Chao is writing about a man who tries to escape from a city where time stands still by analogy we can consider chao's various adventures with women as a collective attempt to escape to move on from the standstill the trauma of his heart breaks do check out both of these films as they are both excellent

movies in their own right and faithful portrayals of men's reactions to romantic failure and betrayal what do you think does this fit with your own experience let me know in the comments below and if you've gotten this far you might as well like this episode And subscribe to this channel you can also consider becoming a channel member with perks like priority review of comments or booking a paid consultation as always thank you for listening