Brandon Builds - Doing a Little Kink Night Game; Found the One "Celibate" Girl in the Club

[colgate]

sorry this is completely irrelevant to your log but i laughed too hard at this unfortunate abbreviation of your post

スクリーンショット 2024-03-28 7.48.10.png

[Bman]

Update

So I’m officially in Denver. Been here less than a week. I had some troubles with the van and had to get repairs in a city halfway between. Spent a few days there including Easter while I waited for a part to come in. The repair itself only took a day. But she’s running just fine now.

Already explored a couple areas and probably going to do some hiking this weekend. Scoped out a wine bar to start up a professional networking event and it looks like it will work out just fine. So I will probably get the event up at the end of this week and scheduled out for a couple weeks to give time for marketing. Of course a little anxiety a minimal amount of people will show, but that’s exactly how I felt about the munch. Just do it anyway.

Last month in Austin was great. It was actually a little heartbreaking to say goodbye to my girls, my friends, and the people in the scene. A lot of people said nice things about me which made me feel a little bit like I was attending my own funeral. I held up pretty well until it was the day before I was leaving and I was moving out my mattress to the dumpster. I recalled so many memories on that mattress and got flooded with emotion. That’s when the weight of my decisions really hit me. Doubt crept in, but everything was in motion, there was no turning back (not that I really wanted to).

Also, there was a poly guy who got laid pretty decently (at least from what I could tell) and in the scene who asked about taking up my munch. So I made standard operating procedures for him and basically handed him the playbook, short of telling him how to use it to get laid. I think he’ll figure that out though.

Girls

My threesome didn’t end up happening because Nurse Girl was on her period and just wasn't feeling great mentally, so she backed out. Still saw Spiritual Girl that evening though.

However, Nurse Girl had regret she did not get to see me one more time before I left, though we did see each other earlier in the month. She said some really lovely things and wanted to stay in touch.

Spiritual Girl also said lovely things and was willing to come out somewhere to meet again in the future.

Property Girl just fizzled out. Didn’t see her again. That’s ok.

Politics Girl and I tried to make plans, they didn’t work out. Then she just ghosted at the end. I was actually disappointed about the outcome of that. She was one of my favorite girls in the harem. Based on her personality though, I think she has an avoidant attachment style, and her behavior over the last few months I was there was her way of coping with me leaving. However I’d still really like to know if there was a behavior or action I did that led to this outcome.

Bumble Girl was great. Posts above. Hope to see her again if we can make plans for her to come out wherever I am.

Obviously I’m down to 0 now, but chatting with a couple girls from Feeld and one from Bumble. And will hopefully be getting some social stuff going for the short time I’m here.

Not really worried about getting laid right now, though. I’m actually enjoying the time and mental energy that has been freed up by all the sudden not having a harem, social circle, or setting up dates. God damn do we do a lot just to get laid.

Seeing the Ex-Wife

I met up with my ex-wife yesterday. If you have any chance of reviewing major life decisions and their outcomes, take them. If you were right in your decisions, it will give you confidence like no other.

When I made the decision to get divorced, and I told her I wanted to, I was making the prediction that our lives would be better if separated and the next stages of development of ourselves would be best done separately. I knew the outcomes on my side, which were positive, but I barely knew the outcomes of her side.

So I wanted to find that out. I also wanted to explore if there was still an attraction there, and if there was, see if she wanted to be a part of the harem in some capacity.

So I planned a date just as normal. If the vibe was there, I had full intention of escalating. Even had a condom in my pocket.

However, we started chatting and two things occurred:

1) she's gained just a little weight. Not a lot, but noticeable. Not surprised considering I did the cooking and meal planning in the relationship, I was the one that planned our workouts, and I led us to get low BF%. Honestly, after being with so many women, that's just a turn off for me now. Shallow, I suppose, but I know what turns me on and off. I didn't want to escalate, not be as into it, and then create a bad experience for both of us.

2) More importantly though, I realized that I may be able to have my cake and eat it too. Meaning I may be able to experience what it's like to have a deep friendship and shared experience with a woman, like you would after having a long marriage, and still be able to be a fuckboy.

She told me about the last couple years and that she's been looking for the structure, groundness, perspective, non-judgment, and so on that I used to provide and that she can't get that from any friends, family, or even therapy.
She told me about talking about me with her friends and family. She still always respected and honored me in conversations and would get annoyed if someone was speaking ill of me, much like you’d want your wife to do.

She’s making fantastic money and was told she could be COO of a company with her skillset (which I told her she could but of course she didn’t fully believe then). She’s looking to buy a townhouse or condo.

Overall I can see a great improvement in her self confidence and stand up for herself. She leaned on me a lot to do that when we were together. She’s also taking life with greater grace, treating herself well, and learning to solve problems.

She has been helping out a friend of ours with her kid and she said she can feel the maternal instinct kicking in. So still unsure if she wants kids.

She had not dated at all. As far as I know, I'm still the only guy she has slept with. Who knows. She told me the apps were kinda weird and was a little self conscious about presenting herself well on there.

I told her that I had dated, but obviously not how many girls I’ve been with. I just told her that “I did pretty well on the apps”. I told her about being non-monogamous and doing causal relationships. I told her about my adventures in the BDSM scene, going to sex parties, and building a community there. She’s also on my instagram so she’s been seeing my boudoir posts. She said she was not surprised, good for me and really happy that I had done so.

We reflected on just how much shared history, experiences, and understanding we have of one another - 10 years worth - and that we both missed having someone to be able to talk with that had that. I’ve had the most and deepest shared life with this woman. When we talk, we still want what’s best for each other. We still respect each other. We still want to help each other. We still care for each other.

But I didn’t want to fold her into the harem. That type of attraction was not there, at least not for me, not at this moment. So I guess I friendzoned my ex-wife. I told her I'd like to continue our deep friendship and be able to still be there for one another, still revealing ourselves to one another because we have so much shared history and understand one another. Practically, that will probably look like a call with deep talks periodically, sort of like I do with men's group, but I'll get to have a female's perspective who still deeply cares about me.

That seemed waaaaaaay more valuable than sex. With a little work, I can get sex anytime. I can't get 10 years of shared experience with a woman anywhere.

If I’m honest, this is what I wanted from my time in Denver, closing an open loop on a question if I had made the right decision. Did my actions as a man actually have positive outcomes for her, not just the divorce, but the whole marriage? And were those actions so valuable that they were hard to find afterwards and missed when they were gone?

In my books, the marriage AND divorce were a success. We’re both better people and still have a great relationship. I don’t know what label you’d put on it but the beauty is that it’s just between her and I and we’ll call it whatever the hell we want, exactly how we’d want it to be.

I might even help her setup profiles on the apps so she can find someone as good or better than me. I know I have set a high bar and would like to see her get someone at that level who shares her desires in life, since I don't necessarily.

I also told her yesterday that right now I'm wandering, but I'm not lost. I'm just experiencing life right now. I have so much less certainty about what "happiness" is or how life should be lived, meaning if someone asked me, I could not give definitive guidelines that you should live a certain way.

I feel like I'm searching for answers to questions that I'm not even sure of what is being asked. I guess the perennial ones - what does it all mean, what is love, what is a good life, what does it mean to be a good man, ect.

I feel very secure and not like I'm really striving for anything. Like, I'm not suffering, I'm fulfilled, I have what I want. I don't even know if I'm happy, but I'm content, joyful, and peaceful and those words are not synonyms of being happy.

Honestly, not even entirely sure what I want right now, I'm just moving forward with intentions: leave the world a better place than when you came into it, starting with the person right in front of you.

The success of my life will not be measured in how much money I make, monuments built, achievements attained or the liking. It will be measured by the people whose lives I made better having been in it. It's all I have ever really wanted, to leave people better off than I found them.

Advice on Marriage/ LTRs

So in the spirit of that, Zug recently asked me some thoughtful questions about marriage and LTR’s that I thought may be useful for those also desiring those in the future. So here is what I responded to.

“What questions and discussions do you think you should have had prior to getting into a serious relationship/marriage last time?”

- My ex and I were college sweethearts, so we were too young to really know what our values were, however that should have been a discussion beforehand.
- In depth discussion about money, who's expected to make it, who will manage it, what the long term goals of each person is and what financial resources are required to reach those, combine finances or keep seperate, how much to save vs spend on extras
- Similar to last but a little different, what quality of living is each of us expecting. Class differences from childhood will change values and expectations when older
- Roles - they don't have to be traditional roles, but you need to talk about how the household will be managed. The more nuanced you get, the easier a time you will have. We did this later in the marriage and it made us highly effective together.
- As the man, you probably have a vision for where you are headed. You need to make sure she is bought into that and you are taking into account where she wants to go.

“Do you think there were important topics of contention you could have brought up earlier that while they wouldn't have saved the relationship, would have led to better outcomes?”

- Money. Bring it up as early as possible.
- Sex. Figure out what your relationship dynamic is and be sure that both parties actually want that.
- Family. Not just kids, but how important being around family is, how much they are a part of your life, ect.
- Anything that bothers you about their behavior. However, don't accuse or call them out. It's better to do this with communication styles like nonviolent communication. But if you hold resentment, it will kill attraction faster than anything else.

“How would you approach doing a serious LTR again knowing what you've learned since?”

I'm a little unorthodox, and don't want to get married again, so this approach is probably not for most, but I would:

- Have a talk early laying out everything I think she would hate about me. If I'm really considering her as someone who I'm spending my life with, then she needs to know who I am at my worst and I need to know she will stick around for that. I'd also want to know her worst. It's easy to love someone's best.
- We'd both be non-monogamous - it's impossible for one person to satisfy all needs, and I'm not just talking about sexual needs. Also you need for her to see that you still have options even though you're committed to her. I just think actually having options is much easier.
- I'd keep finances separate unless we had the same socioeconomic background and spending/saving/investing habits as I did.
- She'd need to want to go in my direction in life. I tried the compromising route - it just built resentment for feeling like I was being held back. I'm too ambitious for that. Not saying this is a good/bad thing, I just know myself.
- Although I wouldn't get legally married, I may do some sort of symbolic union that was significant to us. However that would be several years in. I did not marry my ex wife until after 4 years of dating.
- You both need lives separate from each other. It's ok to have friends groups and activities together, but you also need ones equally separate from each other.

Some resources for you:
- Esther Perel - Mating in Captivity
- John Gottman's research on LTRs/Marriage
- All of Relationship Theory from Tom & Lisa Bileyu - great examples of communication, deciding roles, dealing with conflict, and building a business together
- John Wineland's From the Core
- Non-violent communication
- Imago Relationship Therapy
- Captain/ First Mate dynamic from the Red Pill
- 12 Levels of Dread from the Married Red Pill - this gets manipulative and toxic towards the end, but its still worth the knowledge
- The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine
- Tim Ferriss - How to improve your relationships
- Tim Ferriss - Relationship Check Ins / Meetings
- Jordan Peterson’s views on marriage are pretty good, particularly around behavior conversations, though he's a bit jaded by the fact that he did not have many partners and they got together in a small town

[Slickbackkhair]

“Do you think there were important topics of contention you could have brought up earlier that while they wouldn't have saved the relationship, would have led to better outcomes?”

- Money. Bring it up as early as possible.
- Sex. Figure out what your relationship dynamic is and be sure that both parties actually want that.
- Family. Not just kids, but how important being around family is, how much they are a part of your life, ect.
- Anything that bothers you about their behavior. However, don't accuse or call them out. It's better to do this with communication styles like nonviolent communication. But if you hold resentment, it will kill attraction faster than anything else.

Do you have some idea of how this would look in the moment?

[Bman]

“Do you think there were important topics of contention you could have brought up earlier that while they wouldn't have saved the relationship, would have led to better outcomes?”

- Money. Bring it up as early as possible.
- Sex. Figure out what your relationship dynamic is and be sure that both parties actually want that.
- Family. Not just kids, but how important being around family is, how much they are a part of your life, ect.
- Anything that bothers you about their behavior. However, don't accuse or call them out. It's better to do this with communication styles like nonviolent communication. But if you hold resentment, it will kill attraction faster than anything else.

Do you have some idea of how this would look in the moment?

Each one of those topics are its own conversation, and most likely multiple conversations.

I do not remember where I first learned the concept of a "Relationship Check-in" (maybe from Tom & Lisa Bilyeu) but I heard it many years later from Tim Ferriss and realized that's what we had been doing forever.

My Ex-wife and I had a scheduled evening, EVERY WEEK, where we would take a walk away from the house to discuss heavy topics and the status of our relationship. We got to the point where if something major happened during the week where we wanted to confront the other, we said to to each other we will address it during the check-in, which quickly diffused a situation.

My reasoning for leaving the house was to make the home a sanctuary. Of course you can still have heavy discussions there, but I tried not to tie negative emotions to the space. I never, never, never, had heavy discussions in the bedroom. Its the same principal I apply now with casual girls. The bedroom is fantasyland, not reality.

My reasoning for walking is that sitting down is more confrontational. When your walking side by side, its if you're talking to a friend. Walking also helps you think.

You can structure them however you like, but the intention is to celebrate what's going well in the relationship, address what is not, or to discuss topics that are required to be addressed in order to make the relationship highly functional.

It may sound pretty structured and logical, but there were many of times that one of us had heavy emotions during those walks. In fact, I initiated the divorce on our last walk and we both cried.

Not only does this make you highly effective as a couple, but it gives you practice every week of saying hard things to the other. Where I was not as good, and I advise all of you to be better, is expressing gratitude and appreciation more during those walks.

My ex and I were really developing into a power couple. You just need to have that power pointed in the same direction.

[Zug]

Do you have some idea of how this would look in the moment?

I explicitly brought up all the uncomfortable topics and expectations I could during discussion about moving in.

Who's doing what chores, how much is she going to pay to live here, whats her ideal sexual cadence per week, what level of fitness are we going to maintain, etc. How would a 'divorce' work if living together doesn't work. What are her options in that scenario.

It was definitely uncomfortable, but went through everything from kids, how many, religion, politics, crazy family members, alone time, together time, incidental time, visions of the future, her career aspirations, etc.

As uncomortable as it was, it was also equally obvious how dumb it would be to try to do this conversation AFTER. It would be impossible. One thing I also considered was, we need to make a list of habits that are stuff we would do when living together, but wouldn't do when married: e.g. joint accounts, major house changes, etc.

Its important to list and make note of those, because its incredibly incredibly difficult to dislodge bad habits after they're set. So making aware of what habits are temporary only and both verbally acknowledging that seemed important.

I took 2-3 weeks researching what matters in a serious LTR where you're living together/married and made lists and lists of questions. Once I had everything I could think of I had it open in a word doc and we went through it one by one for several hours while she was sitting on my lap.

[Bman]

Good shit, @Zug.

There is no room for dancing around with this stuff. Just have the uncomfortable talks. Several hours of discomfort saves you years of suffering. You also set a frame early that this is stuff you will talk about and not shy away from.

Wish my naïve young ass knew this when I started. But I didn't. I learned. But you best believe that should I find a serious candidate for a primary partner, I'll be doing the same thing you did. Well done.

I'd recommend keeping that doc and revisiting periodically or when a major life event is about to occur. People change. Those answers will change as well.

[Zug]

I'd recommend keeping that doc and revisiting periodically or when a major life event is about to occur. People change. Those answers will change as well.

Haha, this was actually one of my questions. "What are we going to do and how are we going to handle when we change our mind about something important?"

[Bman]

Did a little kink night game yesterday. Zug gave me a heads up that one of the nightclubs here was having its quarterly kink night. Told me it gets hundreds of people, like Shrine did, and the hot ones come out for this. So figured, why not. Only downside for me is my regular bedtime is between 8-9, and the event started at 8 but didn't even pickup till 10ish. By that time I am tired, especially since I get up at 4:30am. I had the advantage with Shrine that it started at 6:30 and picked up by 8-9ish. This event is much more fetish night club focused and less play focused which brings a lot more kink tourists as we called in the scene in Austin. But the ratio of hotter girls was higher.

Rocked one of my red outfits with a nice red vest and no shirt underneath. Always makes my arms look bigger and body tapered. Funny, I got complimented 4 times on it. Met some guys from Wyoming who were here for a concert the next day. I had ran into them again later and they stopped me to show me they both had just bought red vests from one of the vendors there. Then ran into a different guy later in the night who was wearing a black outfit with a red blazer who stopped me and wanted me to try on his blazer to complete the outfit, said he would have given it to me had he not paid so much for it. Lol

Anyways, after getting over a little anxiety, I opened an alt girl who was actually one of the vendors there but didn't realize it. Ended up psyching myself out before we got anywhere substantial.

Later, I opened up a hot girl who was standing on her own while watching the performance happening on the middle stage. She was dressed a little more modestly but with some leather boots. Told her she didn't look she fit in with this crowd and just stumbled into the club. She told me she had come to the event last year, but has only really dabbled in stuff. Found out she was an airline attendant, she has a dream of opening up your typical Bali style yoga retreat center, and had just gotten out of a 2 year relationship and is focusing on herself and being free/ having some fun. We were talking around sex and finally got out of her she was celibate. Being that this is the second time this has happened to me, and looking back now, I should have pushed the celibacy thing, retorting that it was not very free of her, life is short, lets have an adventure, yada, yada. Next time.

I also counted about 3-4 girls who were eyeing me hard, that I'd pass a couple times as I wandered the club and continued to eye me hard when I'd see them again. They were average or above average. In the future, I would like to go to talk with these girls just for the practice. I think it will loosen me up more for when I go to open the hotter ones and I will probably do better.

I got real tired around 11ish and dipped so I could drive back to my parking spot and get at least 4+ hours of sleep.

It was fun though to do some in person stuff. Night game is not really my thing because I'm an old man and love my sleep way too much, but it did give me a hankering to do more approaching.

Fun side note that may be of interest to @nipple-flip : I had been on Feeld a few times in the city I'm staying in which is right outside the Denver downtown area. In that neighborhood, the ratio is garbage - 10% - 20% attractive girls I'd swipe on. Way worse ratio than Austin. When I was in the artsy neighborhood where the club was, 60-70% attractive girls I'd swipe on. Way better. Unlike Hinge, you can't drop yourself in any part of the city. Feeld has a few select cities you can passport to the center of, Austin being one of them, but not Denver. So my hypothesis is that the cities Feeld allows you to passport to the center of are hubs with lots of alternative people. Luckily Seattle is on that list and I'll be there later this year. For my time in Denver, looks like I just need to explore the neighborhoods more. Probably will try to find out when that artsy neighboorhood is high in foot traffic and spend some time doing daygame there.

[nipple-flip]

regarding your fun side note: i fucking love finding out how things work under the hood. please keep us all posted as you go off on these adventures