The game is real always has been real, and always will be real, but I'm just beginning to understand that. Whether I took part or not, it has been going on all around me, I just didn't see it. I thought that I was "successful", in reality, I was just tall. Back then I thought that I was simply not playing the game, or rather that I was "above" the game. Really I was not "not playing" the game, but rather playing by the wrong set of rules. Each "success" predictably dissolved and I couldn't figure out why. Rollo talks about the concept of playing by the wrong set of rules from which I quote,

"They are convinced and conditioned to believe that women are playing by a set of rules and will honor the terms of those rules, only to find that after ego-investing themselves for a lifetime in the correctness and appropriateness of those rules does he discover in cruel and harsh terms that women are playing by another set of rules and wonder at how stupid he could be to have ever believed in the rules he was conditioned to expect everyone would abide by."

Now for the past year I have been playing by the correct set of rules--rules set by reality and not faulty idealism. And they are harsh. The real rules do not lend themselves to the relationship that I once wanted. The more time I spend around women the more I realize the fog of which I used to live. Part of my most recent realization is how dire the prospects of actually connecting and sharing something "more" with a woman are. I've read about it countless times. It's something that the manosphere definitely stresses; nonetheless, the bleak gravity of the situation is only now being hammered into my skull. Ultimately, it's a good reminder to keep my nose to the grindstone. Study hard. Lift hard. Learn hard.