7 Questions for Evgeny Genshaft

Video Interview

Interview hosted by Dr. Manhattan.

• Interview with Evgeny Genshaft 

Text Interview

00:00

– Today on the podcast we have Evgeny Genshaft. Give us a quick intro and tell us a bit about yourself.

– In the context of this community, I can say I'm proud that I managed to talk to a lot of people personally, you could say to some of the "gurus of the lineup."

I got into pickup because I was the king of the friend zone. I was friends with girls, but I couldn't move things any further. Then I got into medical school and started getting interested in NLP and pickup itself. At first I learned through books by Ross Jeffries, and later Neil Strauss opened my eyes to the wider community. I read everything I could get my hands on, tried all kinds of approaches, got in touch with Nick Savoy, and he asked me to translate a book.

I did a couple of interviews with Kezia Noble and her coach, I still have the recordings somewhere. I also got to talk to Zan Perrion, whom Mystery praised as the man he wished he could be like. A true natural, as they call him. He played himself in the movie about game. He only appears briefly, but he's considered a legendary figure.

Later, oddly enough, my interest in pickup started fading. That happened when Matt Artisan came to visit me. We spent three days talking and walking around Vitebsk, and I shared a few ideas with him. He said he was taking them for himself. That was a real moment of truth for me: an American guru had acknowledged me, and after that my interest in pickup started to slide. Gradually I shifted much more deeply toward psychotherapy.

Now I'm a psychiatrist. I've studied NLP, Gestalt therapy, psychoanalysis, completed specialization in sexology and trauma work, and spent the last three years working in a psychiatric hospital. There I ran trainings with patients, from psychosis to neurosis, more than two thousand groups, four hours a day. I've seen everything: alcoholics, patients with schizophrenia. So these days I'm much more in the mental health world than in pickup. I think I managed to leave something behind for the community too. We recorded a webinar called "Myths of Pickup." If the guys watch it, I'll be glad.

– We do have that recording on YouTube, I'll drop the link.

– Right. We tried to record it so many times, and it was like some kind of curse kept stopping us. But we got it done.

– Yeah, it was a good webinar. Thanks for the preview. Let's move on to the questions.

03:57

– The same old topic: approach anxiety. I'm interested in your take on it and how to deal with it.

– On this point I disagree with a lot of what the community says. I don't think it's a natural reaction. I've heard people say approach anxiety was basically invented by marketers to sell courses on overcoming it. Why don't I think this reaction is natural, meaning physiological?

First, we notice that approach anxiety gets stronger when there's real interest in the girl. I've never seen waiters suffer from approach anxiety. Do they skip the tables where the prettiest girls are sitting? Why not? Because in that moment they're operating in a different context: they're doing a job. The moment he starts thinking he has to walk up with the goal of starting a relationship with her, that's when the fear appears.

So there's clearly a cognitive component. You have to think something first in order to create approach anxiety in yourself. Some pickup coaches even mention that approach anxiety grows with experience, because the stakes get higher. An experienced guy isn't afraid like a beginner is. He's afraid of screwing it up. Approach anxiety is a conflict between your ambitions, your sexual interest, and your upbringing. It's about the idea that people will judge you if you mess up, that you'll lose a lot, that the stakes are huge. If you can remove that conflict, the need for approach anxiety gets smaller.

How do you deal with it? One route is self-exploration: notice yourself, watch when those fears show up, what earlier stories are affecting them. The second route is behavioral: prepare a territory where you can drill it. That's what Openers were invented for: so you don't have to search for words and can just get feedback.

Third, create conditions where approach anxiety is no longer necessary. I mean a lifestyle where there are plenty of girls around you and "approaching" isn't needed because the context does the work. That's the ideal setup. I got lucky: I live in Belarus, and when I was in medical school, there were fifteen girls for every two guys. There was no need for approach anxiety, so it just atrophied on its own. I simply got used to there being lots of women around. I think the main idea is clear: remove the high stakes, and approach anxiety stops being necessary.

10:00

– Tell us what kind of girls are good for relationships and how to identify them, and who it's better not to get involved with.

– I always say, why even answer this question? You'll still fall for the ones you shouldn't. You'll fall for the people who hook into your old psychological wounds. First you need to understand what you want a relationship for. But generally speaking, it's better to deal with girls who are more emotionally healthy than with girls who are less emotionally healthy. There's also another problem with the pickup movement here: girls with more psychological trauma tend to be more suggestible. If you want to use NLP, then sure, traumatised and suggestible girls are exactly what you need, but in a long-term relationship that will hit you hard and not where you'd like it to. That's the price of success, so to speak.

I'd recommend being more attentive. First: girls who have problems with substances and alcohol. Pay attention to her alcohol norm. If she drinks more than you do, if in that sense you're not a match, I'd be very cautious. What's waiting for you there, the role of her psychotherapist? Are you going to save her from a growing addiction? Sure, it's an ambitious project, but why spend your life on that?

Second: I'd also be careful with girls whose bodies are heavily covered in tattoos and piercings. Why? It can point to a kind of emotional emptiness that's being filled with pain, and to dissatisfaction with their body that they need to transform. We're talking about certain complexes that will also show up in the relationship. I can't tell you exactly how much is too much. Let's just say: the more damage there is to the body, the more complexes are likely underneath.

And one thing I'll say very clearly: run if you see marks across a girl's wrists. That's a suicidal tendency. It's a sign of serious emotional disturbance. Better to step on whatever part of your body is trying to move toward her. If you've already fallen in love, it will be very hard, and you'll end up taking a lot of problems onto yourself, noble as that may be. I'd sympathize with a man in that situation. It would be very hard for him. Those are my top three red flags for you. Beyond that, if it feels comfortable, thank God. There will be crises anyway, even if the girl is on your level. You can't build a relationship on routines, and you can't memorize material for forty years.

14:55

– Is there really such a thing as a suggestive orgasm, the kind people talk about?

– The shortest answer is yes. Of course, it has to do with suggestibility. There's a video someone posted in the group from a Mystery training in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Someone asked him about trance orgasm. I really liked his answer: "I don't believe in that crap, you don't believe in that crap, she believes in that crap!" There's something to that. It's a certain kind of hypnosis, almost stage hypnosis. What's the trick with stage hypnosis? All the effects only happen once the person has bought a ticket. Once they've agreed that something is going to happen to them. So if the girl agrees that there's going to be some kind of experiment that improves your interaction, from that moment on all of it can be treated as trance phenomena. For example: let's say your hands are glued together, imagine a ball in your stomach area... You can learn that stuff from videos. Oddly enough, the more confidence, trust, and simplicity there is around it, the better the effect.

17:20

– Thanks. As they say in academic circles, magic works on those who believe in it. Fourth question: what's your view on the men's rights movement? What's the fastest way to get rid of the urge to join it after a painful breakup?

– About the men's movement, I'd put it this way: you can do whatever you want as long as you understand why you're doing it. If you're joining a movement for divorced men's rights, but really you just want revenge on your woman, then it won't help you, it won't help the movement, and it definitely won't hurt the woman you broke up with. There has to be awareness and a real sense of purpose. Then either the desire becomes clearer and healthier, or you realize it doesn't make sense. A real vision would be: I got into a bad situation, a woman left me and took everything, and I'll join this movement so another man doesn't suffer the same way. That can be a noble goal and genuinely useful work. Or you may understand that it's pointless. Meaning is what decides everything here.

– Yeah, the context still isn't very clear.

– Right. If I want support from other men, that's a reasonable and healthy desire. But do I need to preach something I don't believe in? Probably not. There are plenty of male communities that stand for things close to me. And for that you don't have to break up with a woman.

19:57

– Thanks for the answer. Next question: what do you think about pickup coaches who talk about a thousand lays? Let's say it's true. Isn't that some kind of unhealthy mental bullshit, and how reasonable is it to go train with someone like that?

– There are two questions there. First, I think a man who has sexual experience with a thousand women would have a hard time building a solid coaching practice, because he simply wouldn't have the time or energy for it.

People joke about the business coach who doesn't have a business. But in reality, a good business coach usually won't have a big business of his own. He's busy studying successful businesses and showing those findings to students. He doesn't have time to build his own business. That's not what he's built for. In one video, I think Maxim Syrbu said that if a coach tells you that while working with a student he's the one sleeping with the girl, he wouldn't go to that coach. And neither would I. That means he's not earning the money you paid him, because in that moment he should be taking care of the student.

I'd choose a coach by a different criterion: how long he's stayed in the market. The information business runs on reputation and word of mouth. You can't fool people for ten years straight. If a man has lasted ten years inside the structure and students still come to him, then basically that's a good coach, even if he doesn't have some giant sexual resume. I would absolutely consider going to Phil Bogachev at RMES these days, because he stayed in the game and people keep coming to him. That means he managed to deliver some kind of results, even if not everyone supports his model. Time in the market and students. How far his students have surpassed him. That's a very strong indicator for me.

Why do we so often talk about Mystery? Look at his students. Many of them are now successful and well known. That says he earned his money honestly. He raised other strong seduction coaches. That's the criterion. And Mystery himself doesn't have a thousand women. That's not why he became a good coach.

– Yeah, I think he said something like three hundred and fifty. Maybe more by now.

– The second part is: how healthy is it? Matt Artisan came over and said something like, "Probably around two hundred and fifty girls, it's hard to count now." If a person counts them like stars and keeps measuring the number, I'm just curious how long anyone can stay interested in that topic. To devote that much time and still not want to move on, not lose interest in it... I don't know. What comes after a thousand women if you still don't feel like going off to a monastery?

– From meeting to sex you've got four to seven hours. If you're a bad player, fifteen to twenty. If you're top-tier, maybe four. Multiply that by a thousand, subtract all the dead-end approaches, and in all that time you never once wanted to continue? To move into relationships? That's the part I don't get. It's a mystery to me.

– Well, that raises a lot of questions. I don't know how I'd look at a man who's visited five hundred cities. Good for you, hero. But where's your home now?

26:14

– Over time I lost the desire to approach, and girls started seeming more or less the same to me. (The guy found his target audience.) Since this year I've been learning to game using the Mystery Method. I have results, but I understand I need more practice. How do I get my old fire and motivation back?

– Very much on topic, basically a continuation of the previous question. You realize you need a thousand, and now you don't even want it. It's like going to McDonald's for a week, enjoying it, and then suddenly you can't stand it anymore. My answer: go eat somewhere else.

You need a thousand approaches? Think about who needs that and for what. I get that maybe 90% of people are not planning to make this their profession, to coach and teach other men. I don't think there's some overwhelming need for it. You put it well in the question: you've found your target audience. Yes, I think at that point you need to grow and build a system for yourself so you don't have to be gaming all the time. If you're a hunter and you're tired of hunting constantly, if you feel you don't have the strength anymore, then it's time to think about building a fence and putting up a house, about creating relationships so that instead of a hunter you become a farmer.

28:33

– How do you improve conversion from number close to date? How do you spark interest effectively during the approach?

– Let's start with the first half of the question. The word "conversion" comes from business, really. How many real buyers came out of the pool of potential ones? What percentage moved from one stage to the next? If I'm not mistaken, conversion improves through targeting. Through knowing your target audience and being able to tune your communication to that target audience. And the more your communication fits your target audience, the more it will probably annoy everyone else.

So I think the first thing you need is to define what qualities you want in a girl and why, and then learn to screen actively. Give yourself the task of figuring out how to recognize whether a girl has the qualities you need. That's it. Naturally, you'll start asking questions that screen for those qualities. There was this British guy, Adam Lyons. He screened girls for openness to threesomes. So when they were out walking, he'd say: "Look at the way that girl is looking at you. I think she likes you." Then he'd watch her reaction. If she smiled, he understood there was same-sex interest there and he could move forward. If there wasn't, then there wasn't.

If you want someone who is spiritually engaged, ask the corresponding questions to find out what she's into. Say: "Do you believe in hatha yoga? And when was the last time you opened your chakras?" That question will feel natural to you and solve two things at once: you'll understand whether she's right for you, and she'll feel like she's being selected, which she'll either lean into or she won't. And you'll feel more confident. Over time your audience gets narrower, but your conversion goes up.

– The order of the questions should've been reversed. Structurally, you need to go through three phase transitions. A sign of interest is usually fairly low-order at first. You give one back. And once there are three of those signs, you've created enough interest and she'll most likely answer the phone. Structurally, those phase transitions need to happen in order. Don't jump between phases and stages.

33:04

– Two bonus questions left: qualification on the date, how to do it most effectively, and whether you should even qualify on a date at all.

– I come at this more from an "inner" angle. What still isn't clear to you about the girl when you're on a date? What matters for you to learn? In that sense it becomes something closer to comfort.

If we're talking about what actually needs clarifying, then it's deeper things: your values, her personal history, things like that. And if you want to kill three birds with one stone, I can offer a really cool routine I heard in sexology:

Describe your ideal romantic dinner. The absolutely perfect one. What would the circumstances be, the setting, the dishes you'd want there? And how would you eat them?

That one question covers a lot all at once. First, it creates a bit of comfort, a way to open up conversation, and a chance to listen very closely. Second, that story reveals a lot about her sexual desires and, loosely speaking, her sexual style. If she describes a very fancy dinner, expensive tableware, refined dishes, then she has a strong need both to receive and to give admiration, so in relationships and in later stages you'll need to find ways to blow her mind, to give her impressions she maybe hasn't had before. If it's something very stylized, say gothic, unique, full of specific requests, that suggests caution in moving forward and a strong need for safety. There probably needs to be a lot of foreplay, very carefully, with atmosphere and anticipation. If it's a home setting, a mug of coffee, a table, bathrobes, then it's more about partnership, about being together as equals. And how would you eat? If she says, "We'd grab everything with our hands and just tear into it," then that's probably also the pace of how she gets closer and transitions into sexual intimacy. If everything is careful and from a distance, she'll move into the intimate side of life the same way. To me, this one question can open up a lot at once. You get to place yourself in terms of how you'll act next and what kind of asks are coming, you let the girl open up a little more, and third, you create an atmosphere that's at the very least pleasant for the other person. You ask what she wants from life, and you create extra comfort.

38:03

– And the last question: how do you get rid of OCD jealousy?

– As I understand it, OCD jealousy refers to obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is a psychiatric diagnosis where a person performs certain rituals to relieve anxiety and ease their state. I'm not fully sure how that ties into jealousy as such. Maybe what we're really talking about is an overvalued idea, where a person constantly thinks the girl might be cheating on him.

Very often jealousy develops in people who are prone to heavy drinking. In that case jealousy can be a form of hypercompensation. Alcohol often reduces potency, and the inability to satisfy a woman gets projected into fantasies of infidelity. There's even a psychotic condition called alcoholic delusion of jealousy. People who drink heavily under the influence of that delusion can commit serious crimes. To put it bluntly, jealousy usually sits where some complexes are buried: "I feel inadequate in this relationship."

You have to sort out whether it's about you. Is this about my self-esteem with every new girl? No matter who I build a relationship with, do I feel inadequate and start imagining she's cheating on me? Or is this particular girl behaving in ways that make me think she might be seeing someone else? This needs a more individual approach.

– Thanks. That's all the questions we had. I wanted to ask one of my own, but you basically answered everything already. I don't even know what to ask now. Thanks for finding the time.

– Thank you for inviting me. I was glad to get the invitation, and thanks to everyone for the questions!