In the last comment thread Rational Male regular, Glenn, had an interesting exchange that went like this:
My marriage exactly. And she really did turn on me by the time my daughter was 2, also having two miscarriages. It was as though a switch went off and she simply fucking hated me. In my case, I had too much dignity and many women who were interested in me who seemed quite fine, so I put my foot down and my ex then just began an affair with a Plan B she had in the wings (hotties always have a Plan B guys, especially wives). She married him and destroyed him too, but it wrecked my relationship with my daughter along the way. So much destruction and pain.
I often look back on my marriage now from the RP perspective and have started to blame myself for not being more dominant and not seeing shit tests for what they were etc, but I also wonder if there was anything I could have done? She was hot, there were always good looking guys willing to fuck her – I mean, is it just inevitable for some women?
As I’m finishing up the final edits of the next book, I’m once again reminded of its main purpose – a cautionary explanation of what men can expect of contemporary women at the various phases of their maturity. In Anger Management I detailed the anger men direct at themselves, not at the women who followed a natural predictable ‘flow’ of rationalizations and social conventions they can be expected to as their conditions in life dictate. Naturally any anger a man may deal with or express in this regard is always presumed to be directed towards women. A feminine dominant social order is one founded on the innate solipsism of women.
Now, before I dig in a bit deeper here, I want to make clear that while Glenn’s comment started my thinking process about this week’s topic, what I’m going to get at here isn’t a reflection on anything personal. His story of being “turned on” by a wife he believed was playing on his team is a very common one related by many a post-divorced man using the hindsight of a Red Pill lens.
I’m adding this caveat since only Glenn can really say for himself whether his mindset at the time he first met, and later married, the wife who turned on him was colored by Blue Pill idealism and / or a Beta self-perception. My guess, as with most men in his situation, was that he actually had what was a realistic expectation of a reciprocal relationship based on what he thought would be her genuine appreciation of his efforts and merits.
Betas at the Epiphany
I’ve discussed in several prior threads the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks strategy women use in both the short and long term. What I think needs a bit more explanation is the long term effects of that strategy on the Beta man’s mindset as a result of his fem-centric conditioning.
When a woman approaches and enters into her Epiphany Phase, she has a limbic understanding that her genetic chips need to be cashed in with a man who has ‘proper’ long term provisioning potential. For the greater part, those men are at least expected by women to have a Blue Pill, Beta conditioning that will make them more compliant with, now, what’s becoming an unignorable open Hypergamy.
These are the men Sheryl Sandberg describes as,
“…someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home.”
These are nice euphemisms used to describe a man willing to accept his position of powerlessness in the grand scheme of feminine-primacy and open Hypergamy for his participation in realizing women’s dominant sexual strategy.
The Beta man encountering this new found attraction convinces himself that women’s interest in him is genuine and organic. In a sense it is, but although this attraction (not to be confused with arousal) is perceived as genuine on the part of women, it’s an attraction born of necessity. That necessity is the need to consolidate on monogamy with a man who’ll willingly ignore not just her past Alpha Fucks indiscretions, but participate in what he’s been conditioned to believe is his duty as a man from society and start to build a “mature adult” life with her.
A Beta at the Epiphany phase believes his ship has finally come in and his self-righteous AFC strategy of patience and perseverance will be rewarded. The social conventions at the time make him believe he’s to be more lauded for ‘forgiving’ a woman’s past, irrespective of whether he can expect praise for looking past her misgivings.
The Alpha Widow or carousel riding wife-to-be may then convince herself that she in fact actually sees an Alpha potential, or a potential for long term success, in ‘settling’ on that Beta in the long term. While I have had men relate horror stories about women knowing that they were settling and being insecure about their futures before or at the time of their wedding, I’m going to suggest that this foreknowledge is rarely a conscious aspect of women’s insight. “Turning” on their husband-to-be later in is life rarely a preconceived plan, but it is a predictable outcome for men who persist in a Beta mindset throughout their marriages.
Getting Her Settled Best
Saving the Best continues to be a seminal post on Rational Male, not the least of which because so many men could relate to the experience. However, this may not have been the experience of discovering a sexual past his wife had no intention of ever allowing him to share with her , but rather the expectation men have of receiving a woman’s ‘sexual best’ in marriage. That may not amount to the sexual experimentation she had in her Party Years, but for a Beta who believes his patience and virtue are to be rewarded at long last it is an expectation of enjoying the same or better sexual urgency his wife-to-be shared with her past lovers.
That Beta believes it’s his turn, because why else would a woman commit to a lifetime investment in a man she didn’t think was her best option?
Remember, during the Epiphany Phase a woman’s rationale for choosing the Beta for a long term investment is because she’s “experienced it all” and finally “knows better than to keep dating the Bad Boys who don’t appreciate her.” Thus the Beta believes he must be the best option for her by virtue of her investment in that belief.
And if she’s finally come to realize he’s the best option, why would she not expect to enjoy her best sexual performance with him? After all, even Sheryl Sandberg said, “…in time, nothing’s sexier.”
For the Alpha Widow marrying the Beta-in-waiting, the comparison of his sexual appeal with prior lovers conflicts with her need to finalize the long term security she couldn’t with her previous Alphas (or the men she perceived as Alpha). Thus comes reserved, self-restrained and self-conscious sex with her new Beta provider. She knows that sex with her Beta lacks the intensity of her prior lovers, but falls back on her Epiphany Phase rationalizations that she’s “doing it for the right reasons this time”.
That right reason being of course getting pregnant to further consolidate long term provisioning.
Our Beta simply lacks the same sexual experience as his wife-to-be to know any better (unless of course he finds proof of that experience later), but he gradually suspects her progressive lack of passion, reservations and self-consciousness by comparing it to porn or some of the other women’s he’s had sex with.
Social conventions abound for women to rely on as they become less incentivized to have sex with their Beta after the first child. Body image considerations, ‘mismatched libidos’ and “well, sex is supposed to taper off after marriage, everyone knows that” are just some of the prepackaged tropes ready for use.
The Turning
Once the first (and possibly second) child arrives, a woman’s order of intimate priorities changes, “turns” to that of the child. The sex “reward”, the ‘cookie time for good boy’, for desired behavior or performance ‘turns’ off, or sex is used as an intermittent reward for desired behavior (i.e. Choreplay). Sex becomes a utility; a positive reinforcer for her Beta increasing his provisioning capacity rather than the true visceral enjoyment she had with her past lovers.
This new functionality sex represents to a wife becomes ‘turning’ on her husband who believed he would always be her most intimate priority. In the instance of a woman marrying her ‘Alpha Provider’ this may in fact be the case, but as with the hierarchies of love that Alpha doesn’t have the same concern with, and didn’t marry his wife under the same pre-expectations a Beta does.
For the man who persists in his Beta mindset (or the guy who regresses into that mindset) this ‘turning’ becomes more and more pronounced. The turning comes out of the bedroom and into other aspects of their relationship – finances, familial ties, her expectations of his ambitiousness, his asserting himself at work or with their mutual friends – on more and more fronts he’s compared to other men and the ghosts of the Alphas she knows or has known.
Even though the Beta is aware his children are now his wife’s true priority, his Blue Pill conditioning still predisposes him to sacrifices. Again, he meets with ready-made social conventions that shame his discontent; “Is sex all that’s important to you?” It shouldn’t be, because it’s really “what’s on the inside that counts”, but he can’t shake the feeling he’s slipping out of her respect.
This is when Beta Dad doubles down. His Blue Pill expectations of himself require an all-consuming, self-sacrificing predisposition. The horse will work harder. His wife may have lost respect for him by this point, but his sense of honor and duty press him on. He doesn’t want to be like his oppressive or non-present father was. He wants to ‘out-support’ his father’s ghost, or what he believes ‘other guys’ would do when their marriages get tough.
So he waits it out, but she’s ‘turned’ on him by this point. It wasn’t planned, but all of his martyr-like determination only makes her that much more resentful for having settled on this Beta. After a certain stressing point, her disinterest or indignation goes even beyond his capacity to stay committed to a losing investment. These are the guys who tell me, “Damn Rollo, where where you when I was 30? I wish I’d known then what I know now.”
Do all marriages and relationships follow this schedule? No, but it’s important that men know the signs, understand what’s really expected of them and know when they’re being settled on despite all a woman’s self-interested refutations of that. It’s important they realize that performance isn’t limited to how well they meet a woman’s expectations, but that performance means ignoring those preconceptions and exceeding them because he has a passion to excel on his own, and for himself.
It’s important that he lives in his own Frame and that any woman, wife or otherwise, participates in his Frame at his pleasure. Beta men rarely have those expectations, beginning from a position of scarcity and a preconditioned responsibility to forgive a woman’s sexual strategy while still being gushingly appreciative that she chose him to settle on.
