Neil Strauss's Blog - Posts Tagged "relationships"

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A confession: I’ve been holding out on you.

For the last few years, I've been deeply immersed in several underground communities and I didn’t share where I was, or everything I learned, with you.

Why?

For one thing, I couldn’t give it away yet to anyone, since it’s all part of the new book.

Two, it was all so wild and intense that . . . I didn't know where to begin.

So what have I been up to?

- Snuck into a free-love cult and got kicked out for the most ridiculous reason you’ve ever heard of.

- Went to an orgy run by a Hollywood celebrity, got slipped drugs, and passed out in the middle of a sex pile.

- Moved in with three girlfriends to form a quad relationship, and learned among other things that “who gets to sit in the front seat of the car” can actually be a serious issue in polyamorous relationships.

- Checked into sex addiction rehab and then escaped against medical advice.

- Opened up a relationship, and soon had an experience I don’t wish on anyone: sitting at home while the woman I loved went to a topless resort in Mexico with two other men.

- Started a commune based on principals of peace, freedom, and non-violent communication—and six days into it, someone in the house tried to kill me.

(So much for non-violent communication.)

- And met with some of the greatest geneticists, psychologists, neurologists, historians, sex gurus, and relationship healers of our time.

Why did I put myself through all this?

Because I wanted to answer a question that’s not only been central in my mind and life since The Game, but that so many of you have been asking me:

What happens if you are in love with someone, but you desire someone else?

Is that wrong?

Does this mean that you don’t actually love your partner?

When is it okay to act on it, whether physically, emotionally, or in your imagination?

Or is this just a normal evolutionary human behavior that we shouldn't be trying to repress?

And, most importantly, in relationships, is there a way to keep the romance, sex, love, and excitement hot over time instead of cooling down, bickering,
and growing apart?

So I set off to build a better type of relationship than the ones in our culture now—which have a statistically high chance of leading to unhappiness,
separation, or infidelity.

Here’s a surprising thing that happened, however:

I thought I was writing a book solely about relationships, but along the way it turned into a book about deep psychology.

Wait, you may be wondering: What do relationships have to do with deep psychology?

The answer: Everything!

It controls who you choose, why you choose them, whether you're happy, whether the sex stays hot, whether you have conflict, whether you end up in a "parallel relationship" (alone together), whether you break up with them, whether they break up with you, how hurt you are about it, whether you avoid relationships altogether . . . and so much more.

In fact, take any single person, and you can actually predict who they're going to fall in love with before they even know.

The process described in the book turned out to be the most transformative experience I’ve ever had.

In a way, The Game was a small shift that set me up for the really massive shift of The Truth—and gave me the key to a bigger happiness I didn’t even know was possible.

It’s a strange process to release a book, or anything, into the world.

Already, the first articles about the new book are turning into a strange narrative that is so far from The Truth.

So in preparation for you to read the book today, I want to tell you what my thoughts are on The Game and The Truth.

Just so whatever you may read, and however things may be presented, you know my direct thoughts.

I see them as bookends.

The Game leads to The Truth.

That’s why one is designed like a black bible and the other like a white bible.

In the media, The Game seems to be portrayed as the douchebag handbook by those who haven’t read it.

In real life, The Game is simply the story of my journey through the seduction community and the characters in it.

It’s what I thought was positive about that world, what I thought was negative, and what I thought was interesting. It’s how I got seduced by it and how I left it.

So it would be impossible for me to ever renounce The Game as a book. It was a part of my life.

However, the world of the pickup artists is another story, especially since a certain element of it has become increasingly hateful over the years.

But, despite all the insane behavior even I witnessed at the time, it has ultimately been the single most important positive influence on my life.

Up until The Truth.

If I had known about the things in The Truth, I wouldn’t have needed The Game.

This is true on a sexual level, because in The Truth I infiltrated sexual subcultures where you don’t need any Game to have a night of decadence and connection that you’ll never forget. Everyone is there solely to hook up.

And this is true on a transformational level, because in The Truth, I went straight into the operating system that is my mind and debugged it. Basically, everything related to Deep Psychology that I’ve been sharing with you over the last two years has The Truth as its source.

This is why when I look back not on The Game itself, but on the person I was during that period, I see a lot of problematic beliefs. Especially when I think about the reason I entered that world, which was based on a fear of rejection and a need for validation and control.

And this is a great shift in thinking to have.

Because if I hadn’t grown and changed, there would be no point in writing a new book.

It’s the next stage of the journey—if you’re ready for it.

On the surface, The Truth may be a journey through modern-day harems, scientists, swingers, sex addicts, sex anorexics, priestesses, leather families, former child actors, relationship gurus, murderers, geneticists, and the terrifying secrets of my past.

But it’s ultimately about getting to a place where the only validation you need is from yourself. And from there, you can then bring forth anything in your life from a place of true inner strength, confidence, and centeredness.

If The Game was about pretending to be non-needy, The Truth is about actually being non-needy.

It’s the best, most important book I’ve written. And it answers some of the biggest questions there are about sex, relationships, monogamy, and CNM (consensual non-monogamy).

So I’m excited to share it with you.

Thanks for continuing on this journey with me.

I have a feeling this new book is going to hit some of you hard.