A bit of a blast from the past these things aren’t they? The good old days, where steadfast devotees pored over their stats, collating their approaches, numbers, socials, dates, lays and analytical trends, success and fuck ups into an epic refection mere moments from the chime of midnight on the dawn of the New Year. But the corner has changed. Now it’s quite different. Its all short form shite and spiritless parasite drones begging for tips and wings on game global groups now.

Anyway, this is a bit of a broad view take and I’m going to flesh out the main notes on the year. There is nothing interesting or novel in this post and fails on every metric to reach anywhere near the great reflections of other daygamers on their end of year reviews from years gone by. It’s basically just a macro look on how 2025 was two distinct halves with a bit of daygame across the second half.

2025: The first half

From a daygame stance, there wasn’t much to note here. I was in a relationship but the cracks, which first appeared 12 ago, started to widen. Despite this, I ploughed on because the good seemed to outweigh the bad – we were spending lots of meaningful time together, travelling and laughing for the most part and making memories. I was essentially out of the game both in spirit and mind. Spring arrived. We were planning various things across the year (Thailand for 3 months) and I was going to take her to Mexico for her birthday. One beautiful spring evening I walked her to the station for the 19:32 train and I watched it pull away. Little did I know then, I’d never see her again. Over the next two weeks, her intolerable behaviour started back up and I ended the relationship. I returned 2 weeks later to run the bootcamp with Krauser and she reached out wanting to talk – but I couldn’t. And that was that. Nick was with me when I met her (2 years previously, and with me when it ended). Ironic, that. Still, the two years I spent with her were two of the best of my life. Thankyou, daygame.

I took some time off and focussed on other things for a few weeks. I felt flat and demotivated to get back in The Grind. I started doing some daygame, but I was on autopilot in some ways. I wasn’t enjoying it. I put this down to the more meaningful things I had shared with my ex which genuinely outweighed the Daygame Ponzi. Anything I would achieve would just feel like empty calories compared to the things I shared and enjoyed in the relationship.

2025: The second half

But then I started getting the taste again. What other choice did I have? In the final analysis you’re left with little choice but to take action and brute force the enthusiasm. I started spending more time abroad (mainly Poland and Antalya a couple of times) and the +1s started dropping in. There was a flurry in Warsaw where I spent most of time (principally because my friends are based here now).

Anyway, I ended up with 11 +1s on the year which was insane considering I felt that I did very little daygame. A bunch of these +1s (5 of them!) were actually demo sets while coaching students which clearly shows that I wasn’t daygaming much and my stats would have looked shite had I not been coaching. I didn’t count stats, but I’m guessing that the A/L ratio was c. 25 or 30/1 which doesn’t reflect my internal feeling of how the year went – it felt way worse and with far less success.

I met some nice girls and unusually for me, one that I really like and who I spend a lot of time with – weekend trips, weekends at home – all the hallmarks of a relationship in some ways. Still seeing her now. This is the first time this has ever happened and I was always deeply suspicious of people who relationship skip so soon after a breakup. I am not saying that’s me as things are early days but the signs are there.

Did some revulsion creep in? I think so, but also pragmatic reality. The streets are changing, reactions are changing, I changed. Daygame is no longer a niche and its now a tool that many zombie observers in their 20s have copied and mutated into a weird mass spamming protocol that has in turn led to ‘not this again’ weariness in many women living in many mainstream capital (and tertiary) cities across Europe. For every guy charting his journey on X there are a 100 lurkers nipping in on the knowledge carcass and rinse-repeating their ‘hey I just saw you over there’ diarrhea 15 times a day, every day ad infinitum. Yes, the streets have changed and I saw that in 2025. I’m guessing 2026 will be the same.

So 2025 was a year of two halves. It actually feels like a daygame off year in many ways as I look back on it and feel that there was a load of other things that took precedent over it. But when I peel back that layer I was still pretty active both on the daygame and coaching front.

Anyway, we’re onto 26.

BroodingSea, January 2026