Articles from January 2012

The Gatekeepers

My Services Rendered post generated a lot of response in the comments, PMs and even sparked a good debate on the SoSuave forum. All of this got me thinking about economics in the SMP.

It’s funny, I can remember a time in the early 90s when getting your GF to shave her snatch clean was scandalous. It seemed to imply that a guy’s true desire was to bang prepubescent girls. Shaved pubes was ‘niche porn’ back then and you’d have to actually seek it out in the print and VHS days. Now it’s just incidental, and hairy bushes are the niche.

I also remember when I first saw strippers with navel piercings and thinking “goddam that is hot!” Then I started seeing hot ‘normal’ girls doing it, but there was this initial stigma that only sluts, porn stars and strippers got their belly buttons pierced so it was slow to catch on at first – which of course made it all the more hotter when you got with a girl who had one. Don’t even get me started on tongue piercings.

Same thing with tramp stamp tattoos. Initially hot, now, no big deal. I think maybe nipple piercings might be the next thing, but it’s not like average girls go about getting them and showing them off as readily as other “slutty” fashion statements.

I bring all this up as a starting point to illustrate the progression of how the feminine sexual arms race evolves in the sexual marketplace (SMP). It would be very easy to simply pass all of this off as just further indications of society’s moral decline, but that’s too easy an answer. Everyone thought Elvis Presley’s hips and rock & roll would be society’s ticket to Sodom and Gomorrah too. Sexual trends and catering to men’s sexual imperatives makes today’s fetishes tomorrow’s normalized expectations. I expect there was a time when getting a hummer was considered sexually deviant; now it’s expected sexual behavior to where it’s a point of pride for women to give a good one, thus making women uncomfortable with oral sex the deviants.

I can’t think of porn clip I’ve seen in recent memory where a woman didn’t have a navel piercing or shaved snatch. Porn sets a sexual standard, but it also takes it’s cues from larger society. When women complain that they can’t compete with porn stars (dubious in an age of instant amateur porn) you’re listening to a woman resorting to men’s preferred method of communication – overt communication. Essentially she’s exasperated to the point where she needs to make absolutely sure that men unmistakably understand her anxiety, so she speaks his language. “I can’t compete.”

Ironically it’s the same women who were ‘competitors’ in their youth, are the same women who consider their husbands viewing porn to be tantamount to marital infidelity.

The Gatekeepers

Controlling access to sex (women’s primary agency) is the most important aspect of a feminine-primary reality. This reality necessitates that Men’s sexual interests are by default, deviant, hurtful and shameful, while women’s sexual expressions are normative, correct and above reproach. Men are perverts when they masturbate, yet women are so sexy when they masturbate that there’s a niche for it in pornography. The problem the feminine faces in maintaining this control to sexual access is that the same competition that drives women to restrain it is the same competition that forces them to ‘up the ante’ and allow it in order to beat their competitors.

What’s interesting, and ironic, is that women’s push to ban pornography is motivated by the same impetus that makes pornography appealing. Pornography is simply a manifestation of men’s desire for unlimited access to unlimited sexuality. Women’s desire is rooted in hypergamy, from which the best possible situation would be unlimited access to the best quality males. In order to effect the best possible sexual outcomes, both sex’s mating schemas are at odds.

In a male-centric sexual reality, most women would simply never be able to compete; in fact unlimited access to unlimited sexuality ensures they will be outstripped at some point by a sexual competitor. Even in a feminine-centric reality this is at least the mitigated situation. They certainly cannot effect their own sexual schema under these conditions, so the recourse is to use that same sexual agency to control the narrative and enforce their own sexual primacy as the correct one. His access, in fact his very exposure, to sexual competitors must be limited in order for her to select from the most, best, suitors. Limit the experience, limit the options, make her sexual schema the primary normative, inflate the value of her sexuality as a reward, and enforce it with specifically defined moralism.

From a pragmatic, power retention point of view, it makes sense that women would expect men to submit to what best fits their reality and sublimate their sexual imperatives to accommodate a female sexual imperative. This can be effected by reward and punishment. Reward in that a man is allowed sexual access for compliance to her imperatives, and punishment via shame and ridicule for noncompliance or even being critical of it.

The Morality Clause

Appeals to religion or morality are simply convenient tools of this punishment to enforce a female-centric reality. It’s hard to argue against religion or puritanism in a “gender appropriate” debate – it’s unassailable. God / Polite Society dictates that women are to be respected, protected and valued as an unquestioned default position, and even when her actions do not match her words or convictions she’s to be given the benefit of the doubt; and even when she’s caught in her indiscretions it makes a man a Man when he forgives her.

At present, all tenets of conventional morality exist to serve a feminine imperative. That may seem like a bold statement, considering that moralism can be considered a form of ‘slut control’, but think of any example of a vice or a virtue and you can link it back to a latent purpose for it being considered such that serves a female reality. Pornography and prostitution are only considered vices by society at large because they conflict with a broader female-primary reality. Encouraging virtues like temperance and honesty, still serve a female specific reality in that men believe they will be considered higher value mating potential than men who do not possess these virtues – and they help to keep men rooted in one set of social rules while they are free to operate under another set.

Workarounds

As feminism progressively ’empowered’ a more overt feminine reality, so too were methods adapted to circumvent this by men (i.e. Game). Since the sexual revolution, men have been forced into 3 camps; those who embrace and function within the feminine imperative (male feminists), those who reject and remove themselves from it either temporarily or permanently (what Jay Hymowitz calls “man-boys” or “Kidults”), or those who learn the mechanics of the female imperative and subvert it to their own purpose (PUAs, DJs, Game).

These camps, and men’s increasing refusal or abdication to play in an overt, female-centric reality, is the reason for more and more litigation intended to get men to either comply or be legally bound to the responsibilities of living in a female reality. For centuries women have relied on passively engineered social conventions that were accepted into our cultural consciousness that carried shame or some attached social stigma for a man who wouldn’t comply with them. Since the beginning of the sexual revolution however, these social conventions have become increasingly less effective as women perceive them as vestiges of a male patriarchy. Men see women eschewing these “traditional” conventions, but are themselves still expected to abide by them while respecting women for NOT abiding by them. So over the course of 2 decades men become less controlled by the old social structure, and unwilling to participate in a female-centric reality. What to do?

Now, as men are becoming increasingly aware of the raw deal they’ve gotten, and with the advent of global interconnectivity with other men, the female-centric response is to legally force men into that reality. Thus the laws enacted which pertain to a specific gender become more and more gratuitous for women and more draconian for men. If men will not respect a feminine imperative by social means, then it will be necessary to petition the state to enforce their reality upon men.

The Disposables

Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of social proof.

After I finished my Chivalry vs. Altruism post, I had to kind of pause for a moment to consider the impact of ‘women & children first’ as an operative social convention. Even before the overt rise of the feminine imperative, this female protectionism was in effect, and I’m fairly certain that this was a result of our primal hind-brain wiring to protect our families. Most higher order animals have evolved this instinct so I don’t see that as much of a stretch. However, human’s being a much more complex species, I think that the social convention of WaCF goes a bit deeper than a simplistic protectionism. In fact, I’d argue that ‘familial protectionism’ is more of a convenient foil for women (and sympathetic men) who’d rather see men’s mortal sacrifice in honorific terms than the much uglier truth.

Tits for Tat

In its rawest form, the sexual marketplace of our early ancestors would’ve been one where feminine hypergamy and Alpha dominance would’ve been more or less in balance. Obviously men being the stronger sex would’ve forcibly put women into a weaker position in the earliest incarnations of the SMP, but also consider that men fought and killed each other for access to those breeding rights – short version; men were disposable. As our species began to socialize, collectivize and cooperate, our earliest social conventions would’ve revolved around the environmental prompts and biological stimuli that were essential to the survival of their more feral ancestors.

The earliest form of proto-Game would’ve been a sexual quid pro quo. Can’t figure out how to seduce that hot, hunter-gatherer woman in the tribe? Save her ass from being torn limb from limb by a sabre tooth tiger and she’ll reciprocate her gratitude with open legs. In other words, risk your life and women will reward you with sex in gratitude. Today that may not be a reality in practice, but it’s the A+B=C  logic that’s led to the psychological internalization and the social doctrines that follow it. It’s such a primal, male-deductive-logic principle that’s worked so successfully, for so long, that social contingencies were evolved to both mitigate it and exploit it. Don’t believe me? Promise a young middle eastern girl 70 virgins in heaven and see if she’ll strap explosives to herself. The downside to this is that men often do “die trying.”

All of this kind of brought me around to thinking about the psychological ‘software’ that’s been evolved into our species as a result of environmental adaptations of the past. In War Brides I went into detail about the Stockholm Syndrome women seem to have an inborn propensity for, which logically makes them predisposed to abandoning emotional investments more readily than men. Considering the brutality of our feral past, evolving a capacity for quick emotional abandonment and reinvestment would’ve been a valuable survival trait for women (thus insuring a perpetuation of the species), however, in the present it serves to complicate newly developed social dynamics in terms of parental and ethical considerations.

Likewise, men have evolved into the disposable sex as a result of that same feral past. In today’s environment it’s very easy for men to draw upon ethical indignation about our disposable status, but it’s not primarily due to social influences. To be sure, social influence has definitely exploited men’s disposability, but the root of that devaluation (in contrast to women’s) really lies in our evolutionary past and our biological make up. Men have always been disposable – so much so that women evolved psychological contingencies (War Brides) to cope with that disposability.

As socialization and acculturation progressed, so too did the social rationales for men’s disposability. It became honorable to sacrifice oneself, ostensibly for a greater cause, but subversively as a means to recognition.

Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of social proof.

Appreciating the Sacrifice

Unfortunately, as is women’s biological imperative, once a man’s martyred himself women seek a suitable substitute within the week. I’m still getting a lot of response on my Appreciation post, and predictably most of the criticism is rooted in assuming my intent was to illustrate women being inferior to men in terms of sincerely appreciating the sacrifices he must make to facilitate her reality. The inability of women appreciating men’s sacrifices isn’t an issue of who’s better than who, it’s merely an observation of facts and corollaries. What I think critics fail to recognize is that I’m simply relating the observed mechanics; any conditionality they choose to apply to those mechanics are their own opinions and biases.

“Yeah Rollo, it’s pretty fucked up that women have some inborn ability to ‘switch off’ their emotions for you in favor of a higher SMV male…”

You’re right it’s pretty messed up. It’s also unethical, insincere and duplicitous when you also consider the planning involved in dissociating her emotional investment in favor of a new investment; but all of these are social conditions we apply to the underlying mechanic. It’s also pretty fucked up that men’s lives intrinsically have less value than women’s – but we can apply esoteric principles of honor, duty and courage to men killing themselves and engaging in the dynamic of their own disposability. We can also apply principles of cowardice and betrayal to men who refuse that sacrifice in favor of self-preservation, but these are qualification of social conventions that we establish as a culture.

The biomechanics are what they are, irrespective of the social paint we color them with. It’s not that women lack an intellectual capacity to appreciate men’s sacrifices, it’s that this isn’t their evolved psychological predisposition. The social constructs which tells her to expect a man’s sacrifice, which normalizes his martyrdom, have evolved to better dissociate her own investment in her biological imperatives (i.e. Hypergamy). In English this means evolution has prepared her socially and psychologically for his sacrifice, and readies her to move to a better provisioning should one present itself in her surroundings. Likewise, men putting themselves in harms way is rooted in our competing for resources – in this case breeding rights.

Ravenous wolves tearing apart a moose aren’t evil; they’re doing what nature has prepared them to do in order to survive. This isn’t to give anyone, male or female, some biologically determined free pass for bad behavior, it’s just to understand where this behavior originates and how it came to be what we make of it today.

Free Lunch

“Rollo talks a lot about shaming tactics from women, and one I’m hearing now is that if the man doesn’t pay for the date, he is actually being feminine and passive, and is attracting more masculine, ball-busting like girls because he’s giving his role of pursuer up, and feminine women will be repelled by men who don’t pay for their drinks/dinner/dates etc.

To me, it just sounds like women being afraid of losing an advantage they’ve always had, free stuff.

How do you see it? First date is coffee, do you pay for that? Does she pay for her own? Do you look cheap if you buy that first cup? Do you look needy if you buy that first cup?”

Law 40: Despise the Free Lunch
What is offered for free is dangerous— it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price— there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.

Read this again, what has worth is worth paying for. The feminization of culture has simultaneously distorted the formality of a man paying for a date into a form of masculine control while still being a required masculine obligation. It’s a Catch 22 – screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t, and there are two conflicting perspectives for this.

As I’ve expressed on a few occasions; as a man in this life, you will ALWAYS pay for sex in one form or another. That may be buying coffee, drinks, dinner, a concert ticket, a wedding ring or a mortgage payment, but always trust that there is going to be a cost associated with you and sex. Whether it’s with your nebulous ‘Quality Woman’ or the prostitute you picked up off the Trail for half an hour – you’re going to pay.

The second perspective is the ‘Chivalry’s not dead’ approach. Nothing has served the feminine imperative better over the years than to convince the male populace at large that it’s his codified moral obligation to prove his provisioning capacity to her in an effort to qualify for her intimacy. This point of view has had a long history of perpetual requisites for a man, but the holdover, and starting point today is paying for the drinks / date / etc based on a traditional, gender specific, obligation.

In light of that, if it makes you feel a sense of completed duty in paying for a woman’s drinks / meal, then by all means continue to do so, but not because a woman’s convinced you of a moral obligation. My approach is to recognize this ‘tradition’ for what it really is. You’re a Man. Men of power despise a free lunch; not from business associates and certainly not from a woman he intends to make his pleasure.

What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit.

You also stay clear of obligation. There can never, and will never, be an egalitarian equality between the sexes: we are different. The good news is this is the way women want it in spite of their feminization conditionings. Covertly, women want a Man who initiates, approaches, drives, and yes, pays the tab. However, when overtly pressed about ‘paying her way’, she is forced into a position of denying this because her conditioning has taught her “she is her own person” and the expectations of her day say she should at least pay half, not be afraid to approach a man, initiate a date herself, etc. Make Sadie Hawkins proud.

These are masculine expectations, and much like the “virtues” of the professional woman, feminine masculinization conditions her to equate her value on masculine terms, while still being a woman. The fallacy being that a Man ‘should’ be attracted to the same masculine traits she finds attractive. And predictably, innate gender nature continues to contradict this.

So yes, pay for the drinks, date, etc., just know what you’re paying for. What has worth is worth paying for – is she worth the payment? You are the Prince, your attentions have value, does she appreciate them? Have a plan, make the decisions, direct the course of the date. If she’s unresponsive or only luke warm in her reciprocation – NEXT! Hypergamy makes ALL women opportunists by order of  degree; accept that, it’s simply how the world works. Golddiggers are women who overtly acknowledge this opportunism in word and behavior; they’re not too hard to recognize if you want to see them.

You’ll know more about her the morning after you bang her brains out than you ever will on a casual, comfy dinner date.

I want you to want me

,..but, Rollo I want it to be because of who I am, not what I can pay for.

This is an uncomfortable truth, and a lot of guys don’t like to hear it, but your capacity to pay is PART of who you are.

Your accomplishments, your career, your passions, your aspirations, your physique, are all PART of you. There are parts of you that are more attractive than others, but the sum is what makes you who you are. There was a thread on the SoSuave forum a week ago regarding career choices and how this relates to life and women etc. I realize this may be an unpopular opinion on this, but what you choose to do as a vocation is part of who you are. It may not be your source of personal identity, but for better or worse, your vocation and it’s associations become a part of your identity. It’s similar to how you look physically is part of you. It’s a comfortable fiction to think that women are less interested in a man’s physique, or should be attracted to a guy unbiased by what he does – but these are all part of a whole.

Egalitarian Equalism is self-defeating; it leaves a vaccuum of power or responsibilities to be filled by either sex in the wrong instances; for instance, expecting a man to possess the equitable feminine qualities he’s lacking yet still holding him accountable for them. In other words, if a wife feels her husband is incapable of providing for her and the kids with the decisive, confident security of leadership she will feel compelled to assume the role of the husband and he will be relegated to the role of being the passive, submissive wife. In the egalitarian model this is acceptable, socially reinforced and passed on as learned behavior to their children. And in this generation (and perhaps the one prior) it’s not a stretch to assume that contemporary male submissiveness was in fact taught to them by their own parents.This may seem like I’m being overly analytical, but look at this framework from the perspective of paying for a date / drinks / events etc. from the beginning stages of an LTR or even just spinning a plate. This egalitarian model has filtered into the male social identity to the point that a guy thinks it common place for a woman to initiate and approach him with a date proposition. He thinks it normal for a woman to want to pay the tab, open doors for him, etc. These are traditionally Men’s behaviors that AFCs believe women think are empowering and attractive in women.

Your Grandfather never pondered whether he or your then-to-be Grandmother would get the bill; it wasn’t even an afterthought. He payed the tab and Grandma was appreciative. And that’s what’s at issue – appreciation. Feminization has stacked the deck against a guy to the point where he questions a woman’s motives. Does she appreciate his generosity or does she feel entitled to it?

Chivalry vs. Altruism

Lonely ships, upon the water / Better save the women and children first.
Sail away with someone’s daughter / Better save the women and children first.

A lot has been made about the recent Costa Concordia shipwreck, and predictably the White Knights and Femcentrists are all tied up in knots about the condition of a society where humans with penises are unwilling less willing* to sacrifice their lives for humans with vaginas. The gravity of  gender dynamics in a potentially life threatening scenario is a fantastic opportunity to illustrate the Male Catch 22;

For the past 60 years feminization has built in the perfect Catch 22 social convention for anything masculine; The expectation to assume the responsibilities of being a man (Man Up) while at the same time denigrating asserting masculinity as a positive (Shut Up). What ever aspect of maleness that serves the feminine purpose is a man’s masculine responsibility, yet any aspect that disagrees with feminine primacy is labeled Patriarchy and Misogyny.

Gender issues in survival situations (greatly exaggerated) aside, I thought I’d take this opportunity to riff a bit on Chivalry.

Chivalry

Chivalry is simply one of many ideologies that was subsumed by westernized romanticism. Chivalry also applied toward things such as not hitting a man while he wasn’t looking or attacking a blatantly undefendable, inferior or even a respected foe. It was originally intended as a code of etheics determined by the Roman Catholic church to control the otherwise lawless and violent natures of soldiers and knights who, understandably, had a tendency for brigandism in the middle ages. What passes for most people’s understanding of chivalry is actually a classic interpretation and bastardization of western romanticisim and the ideologies of ‘courtly love’, which ironically enough was also an effort by the women of the period intended to better control the men of the early and high Renaissance. Essentially it amounted to a taming of the over-dominating masculine influence of the time by laying out a system of prescribed appropriate conditions necessary to satisfy a womans access to her intimacy.

Like today’s push for men to better identify with the feminine, the idea of courtly love was to ‘encourage’ men to explore their feminine sides with odes of divine expressions of love, offerings of fantastic (often life threatening) feats to prove one’s devotion or presenting gifts beyond compare to again prove ones worth and sincerity to the “object” of his desire – her’s being the only gauge for acceptance. The articles of courtly love are actually the inception of our tradition of buying an expensive wedding ring for a woman. And just like the women of today, their behaviors rarely matched their stated intents, but far be it from the objective eye to cast a doubt upon them for fear of social ostracization.

I’ll open doors for old women, my mother, my wife, my daughter and any other woman I happen to get to the door at the same time with, not because I have some intrinsic need to dominate the vaginas of the world, but because it’s my habit. Rituals don’t make a man what he is, but his character, confidence and bearing. We call something ‘courteous’ beacuse of this ‘courtly’ dynamic, but it’s the Man behind the courtesy that makes the difference. I don’t think twice about helping a man or a woman carry a heavy load, nor do I care what sex the person is I may help fix a flat tire.

One of the primary elements of charity is that if you expect any compensation for the act, it isn’t charity. I’ve stated in the past that women lack a fundamental capacity to appreciate the sacrifices Men must make in order to facilitate their feminine-centric reality. However, to take this one step further, Men need to be aware from the outset that any efforts they make will NOT be appreciated as being extraordinary. In the feminine centric reality, your sacrifices are a prescribed expectations and normalized – you’re supposed to ‘do the right thing’, and that right thing is always to promote the feminine imperative. So with this in mind, and within the social framework established by the feminine imperative, it serves a Man best to presume that any effort he makes will go entirely thankless.

Does that sound like a raw deal? It sure as hell does to me, but that’s the reward-center wiring my brain is prone to. It makes little sense to paint a masterpiece that no one but yourself will ever see, but yet here I am putting paint to canvas – why?  Feminism may have killed chivalry, but it still hasn’t touched the paradox of altruism.

Altruism

There are many examples in the natural world of what appears to be altruism, but the motivations behind the altruistic behavior are what gives it away. Meerkats live in a cooperative community and post guards to lookout for potential threats to that community. It’s common practice among these lookout Meerkats to sound a warning loud enough to alert the clan, but also specifically to draw attention to themselves. They often make no effort for self-preservation and allow themselves to be killed in order to forestall a predator and give time for the greater whole of the community members to reach safety.

This may appeal to our sense of morality as an altruistic act of self-sacrifice, but it’s really one example of species preservation among higher order animals. I read about a soldier falling on the grenade in Iraq and there are many other similar stories of exactly this same act in other conflicts throughout history. And while I can’t say for certain what a man’s personal reasons were for self-sacrifice, I do know the function for which the behavior occurs – sacrifice for the greater good. One dies so that a majority do not, makes for an efficient preservation of the whole. A bee stings, perhaps without knowing it will kill him, in order to preserve the collective. It’s written into it’s biology to react to threats in such a way. For the same reason I sincerely doubt that a soldier throwing himself on a grenade would have any premeditated concept of sacrifice for a whole. Nor would I say the guy gave any forethought, much less had the time to do so, to contemplate who in the group had kids to live for or assessing the individual value of their existence, or thinking he would live on in infamy – he just reacted.

Often what we call acts of courage, heroism, cowardice, or even greed are little more than necessary behaviors of what a particular condition demands of us. We can afford the luxury to call these behaviors what we’d like after the fact, but often we don’t have the time to contemplate the consequences of our reaction – we just do things autonomously sometimes. A soldier has 5-10 seconds to react to a live grenade, but we’ve got a lifetime to define what heroism is.

It’s in light of this reactionary altruism that I believe Men, more than women, have an innate capacity for self-sacrifice. In a life or death context this is an easy illustration, but in everyday life, the choices we make and the habits we take for granted stem from this hard-wired altruism. Let me make it clear that from a philosophical standpoint I don’t subscribe to the idea of selfless altruism: even if just on a subconscious level, we all do things with some expectation of reciprocity or reward. There’s a martyr in every Man that thinks his sacrifice will earn him accolades of pussy. When you can get a 16 year old boy to strap explosives to his body with the promise of 70 virgins in heaven, then you’ll begin to understand altruism from a male perspective.

Enter White Knight

Bear in mind that what we think of as chivalry today is a bastardization of the initial concept courtesy of Hollywood and romanicizations. Also consider that our popular concept of chivalry is a westernized idea that almost exclusively applied to the landed aristocracy of western Europe during the middle ages. The original, latent purpose of chivalry was to hold wealthy men accountable to the Holy Roman Empire and not kill each other or resort to banditry as was common at the time of it’s inception.

White Knghts and ‘liberated men’ who voluntarily serve the feminine imperative make a common mistake in associating ‘chivalrous’ behavior with westernized romanticism. The concept of Courtly Love, what would later be referred to as “Romance”, actually began with aristocratic women playing “romantic games” amongst themselves and a series of suitors – generally while their noblemen husbands were away on some military campaign. The contests would be tests of devotion, sometimes writing sonnets or poetry, other times it may’ve been slowly bleeding to death to prove their affections. Obviously taken to the extreme this had it’s downside, but the “games” took root in society and have evolved over the course of history.

I’m not saying being ‘chivalrous’ doesn’t have it’s uses, but like any gift or attention, the more a Man applies it the sooner it loses it’s appeal. See it for what it’s become, and what it began from.

Plate Theory VI: Abundance & Scarcity

Law 16: Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.

Plate Theory is for your benefit, not for women’s. That might sound harsh, but it’s a method intended to increase your value as a commodity that works on two levels. First, the external – by practicing honest, non-exclusive dating you communicate to your prospective plates that you are in demand. I’ve gone so far as to tell men to foster this sense by never answering the phone from Friday to Sunday evening, even when they have no other plans. The perception that your attention is sought after increases it’s value – it’s when men are too eager to get with a woman that their attention becomes worthless and IL declines. Nothing serves a man better than having 3 or 4 women competing for his exclusive attention and fostering in them that feminine competitivie anxiety in as subtle and covert a way as possible. It’s a real art that women are all too familiar with. Women are natural plate theorists, they simply use their varying degrees of physical attractiveness to line their plates up.

Secondly, plate theory is for a man’s own internal benefit. As I said in my original thread, it’s much easier for a man not to give a shit if he truly doesn’t give a shit. It’s far easier to deal with women on the basis of indifference when you have a subconscious knowledge that there are at least 3 other women who’ll be happy to have your attention if one plays games with you.

You will invariably pass most shit tests in this fashion. The reason men fail most shit tests is because they subconsciously telegraph too much interest in a single woman. Essentially a shit test is used by women to determine one, or a combination of these factors:

a.) Confidence – first and foremost
b.) Options – is this guy really into me because I’m ‘special’ or am I his only option?
c.) Security – is this guy capable of providing me with long term security?

By practicing Plate Theory, your mental attitude will be such (or should be such) that you will pass most shit test based simply on this practice. Abundance thinking is the root of Plate Theory. A lot has been written about approaching women (and really life in general) from a position of Abundance. People often make the mistake of assuming that having a wide variety of choices tends to cheapen the commodity, and to a degree this is accurate, but it also allows for a better, learned awareness of which choice amongst the pool is common and which is of higher quality.

,…but Rollo, I’m so busy that I have no choice but to ignore and postpone. They sense it and seek me out. I worry that I’ll create crazies. My weekends are jammed. At what point do we stop?

This is a the best problem you can have. You’ve successfully flipped the script; you’ve gotten to a point where it becomes instinctive and your plates actively seek out your attention. By default, you’re creating value by scarcity. At what point do you stop? How old are you? If you’re under 30 stay in the game. If you’re over 30, stay in the game, but cool things off occasionally – the only time a man should even contemplate monogamy is after experiencing abundance. If you’re innundated with women occupying your weekends, consider hooking up with a proven plate on a Thursday evening and reserve your weekends for your other pursuits.

Also, don’t be afraid to clear your schedule to hang out with friends or do other things that interest you. Remember, scarcity increases value. Too many guys think that plate spinning is something that needs a constant effort, it doesn’t. In fact applying yourself equally across all your active plates only pushes you closer to settling for one or two. Most guys think that they have to continually spin their plates, you don’t; if you’re doing it correctly they’ll spin themselves for you. The anxiety is that if you don’t keep applying attention to any one plate she’ll lose interest and fall off. Sometimes this is the case and you have to be prepared to accept it, some plates have to break in order to spin more, and that’s OK. More often than not however, your scarcity will create value and mystique, thus they will pursue you for their affirmation.

Plate theory of course can be a means to an LTR, but bear in mind that it’s essential that you practice it long enough and effectively enough to determine what a quality woman means to you and how to recognize her. As with most Game skills, the AFC will use them to some degree of success up to the point that he finds his idealized “girl of his dreams” and launch into a self-destructive LTR because his idealization was based on juvenile impressions rather than a mature understanding of what a quality woman’s characteristics are. This is all due to a lack of concrete experience.

Spin plates for as long as possible, because once you do commit to an LTR, even with the tightest of Game you will lose a measure of the competitive anxiety that made your attentions valuable to any one woman. All your plates fall off AND the girl you’re engaged in an LTR with relaxes. This is root of why men find that the woman they had hot sweaty monkey sex with when they were dating becomes more sexually reserved a few months after they’re a couple. The competitive anxiety is relieved and therefore sexual frequency and quality is no longer a proving trait for her. That’s not to say there aren’t methods to stoke this anxiety in an LTR, but, by comparisson to being single, the frame of the relationship doesn’t have to be contested when she and you understand that she is your only source of intimacy and sex. In a committed relationship, you simply cannot spin plates.

Borderline Personality Disorder

“Were you just looking at her?!! WERE YOU?!!,..I bet you just wanna fuck her don’t you?,.. DON’T YOUUU!!!”

One curious aspect of the manosphere community is it’s tendency to pick up on what I’d call ‘pet pathologies’. It’s very easy and comforting to ascribe a general lack of social intelligence or a retardation in social maturity on Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m not suggesting that Asperger’s isn’t a legitimate pathology, but I think the frequency with which men will conveniently attribute their social awkwardness to it delegitimizes the real illness. Most Betas often report a discomfort with approaches and Game in general because of varying degrees of social anxiety that they’ve internalized for the better part of their lives.

So, it’s a much simpler premise to attribute this to a psychological disorder than to admit that they’ve got a lot of work ahead of them in unlearning the hinderances the’ve been conditioned to believe about themselves for so long. I’m not saying guys (why is it rarely women?) don’t have Asperger’s, but I think some real introspection is due before diagnosing it for themselves. Another neurosis that gets attributed to women in the manosphere is BPD, Borderline Personality Disorder:

*DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships,  self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following: Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). Chronic feelings of emptiness. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

I struggled with deciding whether to write about this because in our current intergender environment, it’s very easy to conveniently ascribe these symptoms and tendencies to the ‘psycho bitches’ that men often complain about. She’s crazy in bed, but she’s also crazy out of bed. I would doubt that there’s a man dating in the last decade who hasn’t encountered one or some combination of neurosis listed in this clinical diagnosis with a woman he’s dating or has dated.

As the gender landscape has developed in the last 40 years, so to has the variety of  psychoses. So it’s for this reason that I think understanding true BPD neurosis in comparison to the common anxieties of insecurity that women are prone needs to be explored.

True BPDs

I had an LTR with a BPD woman for 4 years when I was in my 20s and I can tell you from experience, it’s nothing to laugh at or take lightly. It’s particularly damaging for AFCs locked into a BPDs negative feedback loop, especially when he’s developed a soul destroying ONEitis with her and associates himself as the source of her depression / psychosis.

True BPDs progressively convince their victims that they are the source of her neurosis. You are not yourself, you are who she’s molding you to be, and eventually you’ll come to believe that it’s in your best interest – indeed, your responsibility – to be who she wants you to be to sustain that neurosis.

You will gradually give up on your family and friends (or they give up on you), you will drop all ambitions and passions that directly focus on you, and you will abandon any genuine, independent identity you held for yourself, all because these are threats to the neurotic narrative she constructs for herself and lives out.

She will reward your conversion to her psychosis with the intermittent reward of crazy hot sex, but this is simply the reinforcer to keep you locked into her narrative. The YOU you know will cease to exist and the character she creates for you will take over. This is especially true for beta chumps who see their BPD as their best, only option for a long term romantic prospect. She’s an HB 9 (to him) and he’s never fucked better than a 5 in his whole life, so the risk of catastrophic loss is real and ever-present. It’s fate that brought them together, and if he can only help allay her fears they can live happily ever after.

In the latter stages of a BPD relationship you will get to the point where her overt cuckolding of you is an acceptable situation. You think you’ll mitigate it by negotiating some “open relationship” status with her. You will internalize the reasoning that negotiating for her desire is preferable to losing her. You’ll propose that an open relationship means you’re both free to fuck other parties, when in reality it’s the only way you can rationalize for yourself the fact that she’s going to go fuck other guys, and you’re going to accept it because you’re locked into her neurosis. It’s your fault she feels compelled to fuck other guys – and you’ll believe it.

That, or the mere suggestion of you being interested in sex with another woman will send her into fits of jealous, histrionic rage. You’re living in fear. You’re afraid she’ll commit suicide if you uproot yourself (a classic BPD unspoken threat), but trust me on this, it’ll be you who swallows a bullet long before she ever will. I’ve personally known two men who’ve done just this, and another who hung himself as the result of a BPD relationship.

I know it seems like most of the friends you still do have are simply passing you off by saying “get out” and move on, but your life literally depends on you doing so. Cutting you off and disengaging you from external perspectives about your twisted relationship is essential to a BPD’s neurosis. Eventually your friends and family will give up on the ‘new you’.

Also, I must add this, when and if you do finally muster the self-concern enough to actually leave her, expect a complete about-face in her mentality and behavior. The one thing a true BPD loathes more than her victim is the thought of having to ensnare another. There are plenty of other Beta chumps ready to fill that role, but the comfort and easy predictability you represent to her in the present builds an emotional dependency. BPDs will fight like wild animals not to lose their victim, so expect an extinction burst from her the likes of which are unimaginable.

For a guy so accustomed to her neurotic behavior, his first impression is that she’s making some real change for him in order to “improve the relationship.” It’s not, but so radical a shift in her behavior will convince you otherwise, and cause you to doubt her deception, particularly when you yourself have no options and believe you’ll never do any better than her.

NEXT

The opposite of love is not hate – the opposite of love is indifference.

I think one of the biggest mistakes guys against a 3 Strikes rule make is assuming that it means a guy would be so preoccupied with sex that you couldn’t wait for 4-6 dates. They assume that a 3 Strikes rule (or any rule dependent upon sexual reciprocation) makes them Players at best, superficial and sex-concerned at worst. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The mistake is to presume that a 3 date policy is some form of punishment for the girl for not having ‘put out’ soon enough to verify interest. It’s not punishment, it’s a fail-safe that serves to protect a guy from some protracted personal investment for a very limited return. For example, I play golf and when I want to improve my game I hire a golf pro. I pay him $120 for 3 lessons, so $40 per lesson (very similar to the $40 per date rule popularized by Tom Leykis). At the end of my 3rd lesson I assess whether or not my game’s improved and I can decide to continue with him or, if I see no improvement I can choose to find another pro and do the same. There are a lot of golf pros ready to work with me. I’m not punishing the pro for doing this, I’m simply looking for the best value in an area I wish to improve in. If I think my swing has improved or I notice my average go up, I’ll continue with with the pro.

The misunderstanding is to see a 3 Strikes rule as a threat. “She’d better put out after tonight or I’m outta here”. I can see why that would place a burden upon a woman, but you must take into account why a 3 Strike rule would even be a necessary concept. 3 dates (and I mean real dates, none of this coffee / lunch crap) over the course of 3 weeks should be ample time to make the assessment as to whether a woman has interest and attraction enough to become intimate. Anything beyond this is indicative of filibustering on a woman’s part and usually points to an only lukewarm IL if at all. In this way a 3 Strike rule benefits both men and women; why would either sex want to engage in a relationship that was lackluster from the start? Why would either want to be involved with a person who was settled on or settled for?

It’s urgency and anxiety that makes for genuine, chemical-fueled sexual desire – not comfort, not familiarity. This is precisely why I say Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait. It’s not that you can’t have sex with her, it’s that the sex is compromised, internally debated, choice-of-necessity sex. It becomes mundane before anyone’s clothes come off.

The Power of NEXT

I used the above situation as a prelude to illustrate the power of tapping into one of the most elusive and difficult to internalize principles of game – the power of NEXT. It’s very easy to casually type, “just NEXT her man” when you have no personal investment in the advice you give. It’s standard male deductive-logic pragmatism, and rightly so, to solve the problem by eliminating the source. Likewise when you lack a real understanding of the personal conditions and mental schemas the average guy (i.e. Matrix-Beta) is predisposed to, telling him to simply NEXT the only plate he’s got spinning is about as useful as telling him to Just Be Himself with the next girl he happens into.

Spinning Plates is actually the best starting point for mastering the power of NEXT. When you have other irons in the fire it’s much easier to shift the focus of your attention to another woman; at least in theory. There’s a certain degree of emotional dissociation that needs to be made and this is usually dependent upon the personal investment a Man puts into any one woman. Far too many men, and even practiced PUAs, have a very hard time with NEXT not only because of this dissociation, but also the doubt that comes from “what might’ve been.” Couple this with a soul-mate myth inspired ONEitis and you can see why most guys will fight to their own bitter end not to NEXT the girl they’re with.

It’s exactly this doubt that makes men think they’d be throwing the baby out with the bath water by NEXTing a woman. A lot of men think that NEXTing a girl is some knee-jerk response from guys who don’t have any other ideas of what to do, when in fact it should be a practiced, default response for the first indication that a woman is attempting to set the frame in her favor by manipulating a guy using her intimacy as a carrot to pull the cart. It’s men without options that find NEXTing a girl in some way ‘wrong’, and to a man with only one plate spinning this is entirely counterintuitive, but it’s important to remember that Rejection is better than Regret – even if you’re the one doing the rejecting. It’s better err on the side of NEXTing than be dragged into the quicksand of a woman’s frame.

Tactical NEXTing

The opposite of love is not hate – the opposite of love is indifference. When your silence inspires more anxiety than any spoken threat, that’s when you’re an Alpha.

Learning indifference is the key to mastering the power of NEXT. Women are masters of indifference for the same reason Men with options (i.e. Plate Spinners) find it useful; they derive confidence from having options. Since women (in their prime) are the primary sexual selectors, indifference is their natural default state. It’s only Men with options who make an impact enough to rattle a woman out of this default indifference and fire her imagination (caffeinate the Hamster).

NEXTing as a tool is one of the best ways to determine real interest level in a woman. Dumping a woman is one of the highest forms of DHV that a man possesses. Nine times out of ten the NEXTed woman will attempt to reconnect with the guy who’s got the personal confidence enough to walk away from her. Why is this? Because it shakes up the routine which you slip into by playing in her frame. In behavioral psychology terms she’s about to go into what’s called an extinction burst. You’ve removed her source of reward (i.e. attention, comfort, familiarity) and now she will frantically attempt to restore it. Uncertainty is exciting, particularly after you’ve set a pattern of behavior that she thinks is secure. Unpredictability is good. The guy who can walk away from a less than optimal situation is a man communicating that he has options and the confidence to be uncompromising (or at least less compromising) in what he’s willing to accept. The secret is that pussy is an easily had commodity and it’s up to a woman to convince you that her intimacy is in someway unique among all others. The hard truth, that she’s well aware of, is that no amount of sex is an equitable trade for a man’s complacency and/or compromising his identity.

In fact, a woman want’s you to walk away; it communicates that her intimacy has no control over you putting you decisively in control (where she wants you to be), increases her desire by planting a seed of doubt of her estimation of you, proves you to be (at least in appearance) a man with other irons in the fire, and finally, confirms for her that your attentions are valuable to other (potential competition) women.

Permanent NEXTing – Going Dark

There will come times when NEXTing a poisonous woman becomes a necessity. For any number of reasons, extracting her from your life may be essential to saving your own life. NEXTing under these conditions (really a break up) takes on much more gravity since the woman you’re cutting off will still experience the same extinction burst despite the factors (perhaps her own fault) that led to it. The same basic principles of emotional dissonance apply, but the emotional investment may make it impossible to achieve true indifference. It’s during these extinction burst when she opens up sexually to retain a your failing interest that prove the most difficult for men to resist. A starving man can’t help but want to eat from the most convenient buffet prepared for him, even when aresenic is on the menu.

As I mentioned in War Brides, women have an innate, hard-wired psychological facility in achieving this degree of indifference that men can scarcely believe they’re capable of – even after decades of an LTR or marriage. So imagining and enacting a disconnect of this emotional magnitude is kind of a foreign concept for men to embrace themselves. It not only goes against our deductive, problem solving natures, but it also conflicts with a feminine primacy acculturation that teaches us to stick with her no matter what, “all for love.”

Keep that in mind; the intent of your leaving isn’t punishment for her misbehavior, nor is it meant to teach her a lesson to learn from, it’s to save your own life from further damage. As I stated earlier, NEXTing a woman is DHV (demonstrating higher value) of the highest order. True or not, It implies you had other, better options than her. NEXTing her implies you’ve just gone from a comfortable, familiar beta to the indifferent Alpha that she never realized you had a capacity for. What serves as a benefit in Tactical NEXTing is liability in a Permanent NEXT, you will hear from her again. At first it will be desperate and crying, later it will be casual with feigned nonchalance – don’t take the bait.

The best thing you can do is go dark. Block her calls / texts, drop her from Facebook if you have one, cut off all contact. No messages via friends, no “hey howya doing?” nothing but indifference. You’re off the grid for her.

Learning indifference is the key to the power of NEXT. Presuming and cultivating that presence of indifference makes your attention that much more valuable and makes a permanent NEXT a much easier transition.

Setting the Rules

From SFS on SoSuave:

Been with my GF for 18 months now , tonight she tells me that we have a dinner with her family to celebrate her cousins B Day at a restaurant on Saturday.

At first I agree, then remember that my SF 49ers are playing a huge game, I tell her dont think Im gonna be able to make the supper because of the game.

She gives me a weird look shrugs her shoulders and give me the sarcastic do whatever you want babe.

To me this is a not brainer, staying home to watch the games.

Thoughts ? I wonder if she will really be upset.

Her cousin is like a brother to her.

I should probably set these rules early on.

Real simple, what do YOU want to do? Who’s frame are you living in?

You can rationalize a reason for either choice: 49ers playing a game that will never be repeated vs. her cousin’s B-Day that will, in all likelihood, come again next year, or you can make the case that football is frivolous compared to the cousin’s B-Day – it make no difference. It doesn’t even have to be football, it could be anything you have a passion for. What matters is that you set a precedent for controlling the frame of any future relationship.

Self-love is not so great a sin as self-neglect. She serves at your pleasure. That’s not to say you’re a callous inconsiderate asshole, just that your sacrifice (which will never be appreciated in girl-world) for commitment demands that you be the primary partner. Consider the magnanimity of you choosing not to watch football in order to do something for/with her in the future after having put her and the cousin off in the past. If you had caved in and went to the B-Day, she would never realize the future importance of you putting off watching a game. She could never appreciate the significance of your passion if you demonstrate that it doesn’t mean that much to you in the first place.

A lot of men who find themselves in relationships where they feel unappreciated by their committed partner are often there because they simply lacked the balls to make their primacy real for her in the beginning. As the majority of men are optionless Betas it comes as no surprise that most will readily sell themselves out in the beginning to keep the peace and keep the pussy open. Only later do they discover that their early supplications are precisely the reason she lacks respect and loses the lust for him. Men think, “she’ll love me more because I’ll do anything for her” while women think “he’s spineless and weak because he’ll do anything for me.”

Demonstrate, do not Explicate

In the greater scope of things, women can never appreciate the sacrifices men make in order to satisfy women’s socio-sexual imperatives. However, Men do possess the capacity to impress upon women the importance of their purpose or passions. In fact, when done with the appropriate art and intensity, impressing this upon women can be a fantastic tool of Game to stimulate genuine interest as well as ‘gina tingles’. Competition anxiety is a powerful force in the sexual marketplace for women, but within the confines of an LTR this stress tends to subside into a relaxed comfort and familiarity which is the antithesis of the lust-fueled sexual urgency prompted by the imaginings of losing a high value man to another competitor in the hypergamic arms race. To counteract this future situation, what needs to be established early in an LTR is a man’s genuine passion for something other than her. From the 16 Commandments of Poon:

III. You shall make your mission, not your woman, your priority

Forget all those romantic cliches of the leading man proclaiming his undying love for the woman who completes him. Despite whatever protestations to the contrary, women do not want to be “The One” or the center of a man’s existence. They in fact want to subordinate themselves to a worthy man’s life purpose, to help him achieve that purpose with their feminine support, and to follow the path he lays out. You must respect a woman’s integrity and not lie to her that she is “your everything”. She is not your everything, and if she is, she will soon not be anymore.

Since women fundamentally lack an appreciation for a Man’s experience, convincing a woman of your purpose or passion requires breaking a few eggs. You cannot be afraid to let things get messy. Demonstrating this purpose to her, early in the relationship, and particularly at the risk of destroying the relationship, is the lynchpin to authoritatively defining the future frame of any relationship. This applies equally to both LTRs and/or nonexclusive plates you’re spinning.

When she enters your world, she has to experience it first hand for it to have any legitimacy for her. This requires that you demonstrate what it means to live, or be in love, with a Man who’s purpose is NOT dependent upon her. You cannot explain to a woman what things are like to be with you – it only resounds with a puffed up rationalism that she cannot relate to, and thus has NO legitimacy for her. You have to make it real for her; your passion, your purpose, you direction and vitality must become the ‘other woman’ in the relationship. If that amount to something as simple as putting her off to watch an NFL Playoff game, so be it. If it requires you to be on an extended deployment in the middle east, or if you can think of nothing else but climbing K2, so be it.

Once a woman understands the gravity and legitimacy of your purpose / passion, only then can she come to appreciate the significance of you foregoing or postponing the dictates of that purpose for her. She will never feel more important to you than when you (occasionally) lift her above that legitimate, verified purpose.

Women will never appreciate a relationship that is a Man’s greatest ambition. For a very gritty depiction of this watch the movie Blue Valentine.