THE AUTHENTIC MAN SERIES, Step 2: Debunking the "Heartless Player" Stereotype
Hey there, kids!
In the first part of this series, “The Authentic Man, Step 1: The Arrogant Man,” we talked a lot about how being arrogant can actually be a good thing. I hope you’ve been using those lessons well! Now let’s take a look at what comes from that effort.
Just a heads-up: this is a warning story.
THE MAN WHO FEELS NOTHING
You’ve likely met someone like this before. Or at least seen his type in TV shows, movies, or books.
He’s the guy who truly doesn’t care at all.
On a show, he’s the man who sleeps around like it’s just what he does. He finishes with a woman, puts on his clothes, and leaves. Most times, you won’t see that girl again in the show—it was a one-time thing.
If the show’s funny, the jokes start.
Some viewers laugh and admire him, “Haha, another one gone! He’s such a legend.”
Some viewers frown and get mad, “Wow, what a douche! This show hates women. One day he’ll be alone and realize he was wrong to treat women that way.”
And others? They watch proudly because they are that guy.
In movies, this guy sleeps with lots of women but avoids real love. He’s focused on spying, making money, or chasing power. He talks about not being attached to anyone and acts like he’s over love. If a woman leaves or gets taken away, he just moves on like nothing happened.
In real life, he’s the guy people think can’t be tied down. He says things like, “I don’t think love is real anymore,” and throws women away like they’re nothing. No way he’s falling for a girl—he’s got way too many choices!
And to a lot of men, this guy is the dream. He seems like the answer to all the pain they’ve been through like rejection, cheating, lonely nights. He charges into life without fear.
But let me show you what it’s really like to be that cold player. I’ll do that by telling you about myself in mid-2012 (don't know to be exact lol)
At that time, I’d been learning about game for nearly three years. I’d been on tons of dates, made out with lots of girls, gone down on them, and broken some beds. Not perfect, but pretty good for a guy who was a virgin just two years earlier.
Riding that wave, I got really cocky and became what people would call a “cold player” or a “jerk.” I copied my role model Tucker Max, went through a lot of girls, and broke more than a few hearts.
One moment I was especially proud of back then was sleeping with a girl who had a boyfriend—after meeting her in a cafeteria with a bold move: I sat down beside her, noticed I had no spoon for my cereal, looked to my right and said, “Hey, you should get me a spoon.” I didn’t know her name and had never seen her before. And yep—she got me the spoon… and a few days later, she also swallowed a lot of my cum.
So yeah, being rude got me laid.
None of my friends were at my level. I thought I was a young king becoming a legend. So when school started, it felt like heaven. Party after party, and a whole new class of girls ready to please me.
After a few wild nights, there was a quiet one when people took a break from drinking and sex. Still going strong, I decided to hang out with my bros at our party house. It was chill, but soon I got sleepy and wanted to head back. As I got up, three girls walked in. I already knew the first two, they weren’t very hot but fun to party with. The third girl though—I hadn’t seen her before. Then she stepped into the light, and I froze.
She was stunning. Her chest fit her body just right, and her ass… insane. To me, she was perfect.
I leaned to my bro and said, word for word, “I’m going to fuck that girl.”
About ninety minutes later, she was moaning my name as I ate her out. But even after making her finish, she just got dressed and left without doing anything more.
Once again, I was shocked. She clearly liked me and wanted to have sex—but why didn’t I seal the deal like usual? I’m a player now; this isn’t supposed to happen!
Even though we didn’t go all the way that night, we went out for dinner the next day, and then slept in the same bed for the next two nights (“shacking” = sleeping next to someone without always having sex; college slang is weird, I know). I think it was the second night that we finally had sex—so three “dates” for the close.
Still, I got the win! My pride came back!
After that night, we kept hooking up for five months as friends-with-benefits. Then one day she asked me to be exclusive, after finding a Facebook chat between me and another girl. She got super jealous, told me she thought “we had something real” and got mad about how I “spoke to that girl the same way you talk to me.” This was really funny, because she had always said she didn’t want anything serious.
Now her ego was being flipped...
So here I am, cold player MOS, with a smoking hot, smart, and strong girl begging me to be her man. Of course I was feeling myself. Now with such an awesome girlfriend, I truly felt like a top dawg.
My pride got so big that one night I decided to brag a little. I still remember how silly it was. I was sitting on my bed in my room, thinking about my wins: my grades were excellent, my fame was rising fast, and I had a great girlfriend. I then said out loud: “Come on life, throw anything at me. I can fucking handle it.”
Those were my exact words.
PRIDE GOES BEFORE THE FALL
Yeah, I was stupid.
Also, I didn’t handle the relationship the right way. We often played jealousy games, showing off our high-status dating value to each other, and spent too much time together, which made the relationship more like a wild craving loop than something to help each other grow and feel happy. Two sex and attention junkies feeding each other – it was the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows.
My wall of pride was still strong, but it was about to get hit with the Hammer of Humility.
Jump to summer. I got a bartending job in my college town while she went back to her hometown. We could’ve stayed together all summer since I lived close to her town, but I thought it was more important to make money and land a cool job than to spend the whole summer in a fun but rocky relationship. Looking back, it was a great choice. The only hard part was staying in the mindset of having many options. But hey, I could get any girl I wanted – I’m MOS! – so why worry?!
And I did stay sharp... for a bit. I had fun at my new job and made a few nice friends, but for the most part, the town was dead during summer. Besides a few college kids working, not many students stuck around. Now compare this to her life near a big city, full of parties and fun with her high school crew, and you can see how different our situations were.
My armor starts to rust and break.
Like you might guess, my feeling of having many choices started to fade. The quiet of the town, my jealous side, and her still busy social life quickly turned me into a needy, weak little loser.
One weekend, deep into summer, I went to visit her and she saw clearly how much my mind had fallen apart. On top of my weak mood, I still kept the same cold ways of the “heartless player” act.
Cold, distant, but also unsure and shaky? A mix ready to explode. After coming back from the not-so-great visit, I got a text from her that felt kind of... off.
“Hey, MOS, I’m staying with Alicia tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
The armor is falling, showing soft skin underneath.
Late the next day, she called me. After a few minutes, she stopped talking and said this to me,
“MOS... I thought about it a lot this past week… and... well I think we should take a break.”
No. This isn’t real. This can’t be happening! Not to me... because... I’m... well... I’m ME!
I stumbled over my words, finally managing to ask some weak questions: “Does this mean we sleep with other people? Why don’t we just break up? Are you in love with someone else?”
The armor is gone; only bare skin remains.
For three weeks after that call, I went through pain that was only close to a sadness I had three years earlier, the fight that started this huge journey.
My pride was like armor and it was very strong. But once it came off, all that was left was weak skin. I had been ignoring the need to build real inner strength and instead used pride like a quick fix.
After those never-ending three weeks went by, she came to visit me. We slept together a few times and she seemed a little interested again, but I kept trying to make us “officially” a couple again. When she didn’t seem sure, I just asked if she wanted to be single. She said “yes.”
If I hadn’t hooked up with a few girls during the break, I probably would’ve gone fully crazy. It took a trip to Europe and weeks of deep thought and non-stop approaching to find even a small part of my old strength.
Now class, what was the weak spot of our hero?
Pride.
Pride had built me up. It gave me the power to kill the weak, old MOS and gave me the armor to take many rejections, learn from failure, and become the girl-destroying machine I had become. But even the best armor in the world can’t hide a weak body underneath. When I finally met someone with more experience than me, my weak inside caused the second big fall in my story.
Now that this tale is told, I can say this: the “heartless player” isn’t real. He doesn’t exist. In rare moments of big wins, we think we’ve become him and start to believe he’s real. But it’s just a trick; a passing moment.
And just like my pride killed me, we see in shows that sooner or later, the “heartless player” lead character falls hard for one special girl who hits a deep place in him that no other girl ever did. He then drops his “bad habits” for her and settles down.
In the movies, the hero ends his quest early or changes his goal to serve the girl who lifts him up and saves him from his old dark life that was all about chasing and drifting; she helps him become the man he always dreamed of being.
In real life, the player loses when he meets his match; a girl just as or even more skilled than he is. But in his pride, he thinks he’s more emotionally cold than he really is; he thinks he can stay the same and not fall for her. Beyond just my own story, I’ve watched every “heartless player” I know end up tripping over the same mistake in the end.
ON YOUR BACK, LOOKING UP
If you’ve taken the journey, you’ll get everything I’m about to say. If you haven’t, well, this is something you need to live through. I can go on and on about how you’ll also end up falling for the same trap, but I doubt my words will stop you from needing to take the path yourself.
See, there’s knowledge – knowing something in theory by what people say or by thinking it through. Then, there’s understanding – mixing what others teach with your own thoughts and feelings based on real life, and blending them together for true understanding.
So for those who do understand, you’ve seen how the prideful armor helped you win, but also brought some problems you didn’t expect.
When you brag about your wins and hookups around your friends, you start to notice they act cold. You might annoy them so much that they stop reaching out to you, and when you bump into them, you feel a wall between you – they’ve put their guard up. That’s because you’ve made them feel small (side note: the better quality friends you make, the more they can deal with each other’s pride and shared big goals, so maybe losing weak friends is a nice side effect. Still, don’t treat your friends like trash; even the best friends will start to dislike your careless way of ignoring their feelings).
You’ve seen that in more structured or work settings, pride can hurt you, especially when you don’t have a title (meaning you're not in a role where you’ve earned the right to act proud). I was twice suspended from my bar job because people didn’t like how I acted proud. I thought I was just giving back the same bad energy they gave me, but no – the power of a proud guy is strong and so intense that they complained about me enough to get me suspended, twice. And just in a few days, I had to quit the job to avoid the mess that would’ve come if I went back and got fired later.
You’ve seen that when you boss around another guy in a strong tone with no reason, he’ll hate it (unless you’re a leader and he’s being lazy or not doing what he should). Right after getting cheated on or getting beat up, being unfairly bossed around by another guy is one of the worst feelings a man can have.
And the worst and sneakiest downside of being a proud asshole is that you’re bad at dating. You’ll likely think you’re better than you are and get crushed by a girl who has a smarter long-term plan for taking the lead.
Or in your pride, you might make a different mistake in a relationship.
To explain, I’ll go on with my story.
After breaking up with my girlfriend, I traveled to Europe, had some eye-opening moments, and came back a different man. When I returned, I won my girlfriend over again and she chased me for a second chance.
But soon I would find out that I didn’t fix my biggest issue – I still hadn’t tamed my pride. And because of that, I was going to learn just how badly pride can hurt the people around you.
Yes, in this second try I never became needy again, but, caught up in myself and focused inward, I didn’t pay enough attention to her feelings. So I kept making the same bad moves in our relationship and filled it with jealousy from the very start.
See, the day we got back together, she had asked me to come “check her computer.” Yeah, she didn’t do that just because I’m a tech nerd. We hooked up and the old feelings rushed back in. That night she came with me to party at my place. While we were talking, a girl I’d recently slept with came up to us. She looked at me like she wanted me bad. I tried to pass her off to a friend, but she shot back, “I don’t want him, I want you!”
Not good. Things blew up and my ex snapped, ripped the girl apart with words, and stormed out. I followed her out to calm her down, and then she burst out with this:
“Arghh, I’m still in love with you, MOS!”
Check. Mate.
Every guy’s dream, right? Have the girl who broke his heart come back begging for him. But I made two huge mistakes:
I thought I could fix a broken relationship
I let my pride and damaged ego lead the way
That second mistake ended up hurting her deeply. I mean, yeah, be the kind of guy every girl wants, and yes, it’s great if your girl knows you’re wanted by others. It keeps you feeling like you have options, makes her admire you more, and keeps you in the lead. But don’t use that to make her jealous and hurt her. Sadly, that’s what I did.
Every time we went out or walked together, she’d see a girl looking at me and ask, “Hey, did you sleep with her?” and bug me about the girls I was with while we were apart (I had a great streak that first week back at school, right before we got together again). This wasn’t all my fault, but where I failed was how I handled it. I’d usually just grin or mock her jealousy, as if that was fair payback for how she hurt me earlier. Things got so toxic that she became clingy and needed me all the time, and I had to break up with her. I didn’t do it kindly, either. I broke her heart.
“But didn’t she hurt you? Didn’t she sleep with other guys while you were “on a break” and then dump you? Doesn’t she deserve it?”
Nope, she didn’t deserve that.
And this is where most men get stuck in a never-ending cycle of anger.
They get pretty good with women, grow cocky, then end up getting their hearts broken again. They feel sorry for themselves, slowly get over it, and come back thinking, “I let a girl in. Damn, all women are lying, cheating whores! I either need to test a girl hard to find one who won’t cheat, or just forget about love forever!” So they just put on new armor instead of making the person underneath stronger (meaning their mind).
But this kind of cycle leads to the same crash as before. And men keep doing it because it’s the easy path. They give up taking charge of their own mind and feelings.
ARE YOU SAYING WE SHOULD BECOME SOME LIL BITCH?!
Look, I first learned game by reading the wild stories of the king of jerks, Tucker Max. This guy would outdo any jerk you bring up. And I swear, when I was at my worst, I could out-jerk anyone you know. I told women they were fat right to their faces, I called men “stupid faggots” in front of crowds, started fights with anyone, and tried to get girls in every possible setting just to prove I had no fear of doing what most guys won’t. You can’t show me some “alpha player” who would scare or impress me with fake toughness. I’ve seen that guy. I’ve been that guy.
This is where guys in movies, on TV, and most men in real life mess up on their journey. They think being a jerk is the final form, so when they hit a low point like I did, they think there are only two options:
Go back to being a jerk and ignore your feelings.
Go back to who you were and be a soft little guy again.
Forget both of those. Just because the raft we built to cross the river broke doesn’t mean it was useless — it just needs better pieces to be stronger :)
So Then What Is A Real Man, If Not A Jerk?
We’re almost there, but for now, I’ll just say the difference is small — at least in what you do. Even when I finish this series and explain how a jerk and a real man are different, you still won’t fully get it unless you live through it yourself. You have to go all the way. If you’re not there yet, enjoy your time being a “dick.” Get ready for both good times and bad.
But even if you’re not at that stage yet, keep reading. It’ll set you up for later and help you grow faster!
It Ain’t The Tool That’s Broken, It’s You
The point here isn’t to throw away arrogance. Notice how in this post, I kept calling arrogance “armor” instead of the “sword” I used in the first article. There’s a reason I changed the image. Arrogance is really a sword, not armor. But when we first get our hands on this weapon, we get excited by its power and think it’s all we need. A sword cuts well at first, but if you don’t take care of it and use it right, it breaks down.
That’s where humility shows up. Humility is the cover for arrogance. And in the next post, I’ll show you how to build that cover.
Part 3 drops tomorrow for paid subs. If you’ve been getting value, now’s the time to upgrade
For now, fight off the need to be a cold-hearted jerk, no matter how tempting it seems...
Until then, have a good day
-MOS