Why The World’s #1 Pickup Artist Left The Game Behind - Neil Strauss - #789

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Neil Strauss. He's a journalist, writer and an author. Neil was the world's most famous pickup artist who kickstarted much of the modern dating discourse. So looking back 20 years later, what has he come to realize about what really matters in life and how to find love and connection? Expect to learn the trajectory of Neil's views on relationships over the years, how Neil reflects on his book, The Game, why Neil is having a baby with his ex-wife, what went wrong with the world of pickup artistry, why faking status is not such a great idea, how to measure success in a relationship, how to rid yourself of other people's expectations and much more. Neil is a really fascinating human. He's also the guy that wrote Rick Rubin's book that broke the entire world over the last like two years. He wrote The Truth. He's ghostwritten a ton of bestselling books. I think he did Kevin Hart's biography or autobiography. He is a very insightful guy and I very much appreciated speaking to him today and getting to hear his insight as someone who's been at the forefront of the world of dating commentary for like two decades. Very, very interesting. Lots to take away from today. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Neil Strauss.
Talk to me about your trajectory of perspective on relationships over the last few years. What's the story arc that you've gone through there?

**Neil Strauss** (1:46)
Yeah, I mean, I have my private story arc and the public story arc, and they're kind of the same. And so I'll just tell you the arc the best I can, which is basically what I do is I just try to, I do the same thing you do, I just try to figure out things in life. And when I get stuck, I just do all the research and talk to all the people, as well as have all the experience that I need to to learn. And so the first place I got stuck in my life was just dating. And as a guy who was writing for the New York Times and Rolling Stone about music and around on tour with rock bands, around all kinds of wild decadence, I felt like I was a guy on the outside watching everyone else have all the fun. So the first book, obviously not the first book, I think it was my third or fourth, but The Game was probably the most infamous one, and it was me trying to figure out dating and being in this world of, and being fascinated by this world of these pickup artists and all the social implications of that at that time. And so that was me trying to solve the problem, let's say of courtship in my life. And then great, dating was a lot easier to solve than the next problem, which is relationships, right? People complain about their dating issues. When it comes to relationships, they don't just complain, they really struggle, grieve, go into locked boxes of stress and trauma and confusion that almost no one else can enter. Because it's fun to hear people talk about their bad dates, but talking about a bad relationship, most friends after one or two or three years, if someone experiences the same problem, actually get tired and this person's stuck in the situation. I mean, it's tough, it's easy to stop dating someone. You have a bad date, you have a bad date with someone who's horrible, you just send them a polite text or I guess ghost them. People do that, but if you have a bad relationship, how do you get out of that?
And does the other person accept your boundary that you want to leave? Usually they don't, usually as soon as they feel abandonment, they start chasing you and not letting you leave. Even if they don't want to be in the relationship, that rejection is so much to them. So The Game was the easy book. Figuring out the relationship part, and especially looking at my own issues and relationships and my own patterns and taking a tough look at myself with relationships and not even what drew me to The Game and those pickup artists. That was like the next step. So that was the next step of the journey and that's the next book. And maybe the third book is, so I ended up through everything I learned, having an awesome marriage, have a father of an eight year old, nine year old now and it's like the best. And I'm also have like an amazing divorce. So meaning that I'm like best friends with my son's mom. I feel like we really are like a mate. I love co-parenting and looking at the other side of how do you, and I guess it's such an amazing divorce that we're actually having another child together with my son's mom.