You get the men you deserve ladies.
The latest hotness in feminine self-righteous indignation in the manosphere this week is the new Atlantic article by Kate Bolick (courtesy of Susan Walsh and her self-impressed 3rd page link). I generally don’t bother myself with bleating, overwritten catharsis articles bemoaning the woes of an HB 5, post-Wall, aging spinster upset with (beta) men not excusing her indiscretions by sharing in her entitlement to provide her with the loving stable relationship she maliciously turned down at 28. However, it did spark an interesting debate at SoSuave with regards to the variance in selectivity in mate selection respective to each gender.
I believe there’s an interesting misconception about the mutuality of shared criteria both men and women commonly seek in a life-partner. Women, steeped in their solipsistic ‘girl-world’ reality, tend to find it inconceivable that a man wouldn’t share in precisely the same life expectations and scheduling that women would. Their feminine imposed reality presume that men will autonomously know that what works best for women is ALWAYS the “right thing to do.”
However, I think we’re kind of assuming false equivalencies in respect to how either sex goes about choosing an acceptable mate for life. On this side of 40 (or hell, even 30) it’s real easy to reflect on our past experiences and presume we as men actually had any clue as to what qualities in a woman we knew were or weren’t deal breakers for commitment. Infidelity notwithstanding, what was really a red flag for you when you were in your mid-20s? Did you even know? I sure as hell didn’t.
Women’s hypergamous natures make them far more exacting in their selection process, far earlier in life, and their list of prerequisite attributes and characteristics more rigid than any man’s would ever be. This same innate hypergamy also makes them susceptible to a constant doubting about any selection they do commit to. Ergo, the biologically hard-wired need to shit test even after 10 years of marriage.
Not so for men. If she’s relatively hot, sexually accessible and marginally loving, we’re usually in. And you know why we’re in? Because it seems like a good idea at the time – and that’s what gets us into trouble in our youth. In fact we’re not encouraged to presume we could actually be selective. That would mean preempting women as the prime selectors for their imposed reality – men even being educated in what would account for a red flag is pretentiousness deserving of shame.. Men are far less prone to turn down a ‘sure thing’ that’s producing semi-regular rewards / reinforcement (sex) in favor of an ‘unsure thing’ that’s an unproven commodity for him. It’s only later in life, when we can remove ourselves from the game and look at things objectively that we get even an inclination of what characteristics a woman needs to possess beyond the physical and sexual for us to decide what works best for us.
And then, God forbid, a Man actually take action based on his personal assessment of the characteristics he does decide upon. From a societal standpoint men will never enjoy the same degree of social support women do for taking action in “doing what’s best for them.” Any Man with the forbearance enough to reject or break up with a woman based on his personal criteria is instantly labeled ‘shallow’ and shamed for daring to reject the poor victimized woman he was “lucky” to have had ever accept him.
The trick of women’s mate selectiveness lays in keeping men ignorant of what qualities (beyond the sexual) might make for the best LTR pairing long enough for her to capitalize on her beauty and youth, but not so long as to push past the expiration date of her hitting the Wall. This is why the 28 to 30 year mark is so pivotal to women. Her decade (or so) long window of prime beauty and selectivity is winding down. It’s not a woman’s mythical biological clock that’s prompting her to consider her maternal instincts – it’s the, now very real, actualization that she needs to lock down a commitment to provisioning from a man who, by the time he hits 30-35, should be awakening to the way women’s game is played and starts to feel more comfortable in qualifying women based on his learned experiences.
Nothing simultaneously frightens and excites a woman more than a Man who’s self-aware of his own sexual market value. This is why every effort is made via social conventions to repress him from realizing this, and every effort is made to shame and ostracize him once he’s conscious of it – and a prime example of this is the duplicitous nature of articles like Bolick’s decrying men’s unwillingness to grow up and give women the life they should know is “doing the right thing” after 20 years of berating men for not respecting them asserting their independence from men.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a 39 year old woman who is forced to grasp at the last strings of hope as she watches the remains of her sexual market capital swirl down the toilet as she faces the prospect of turning 40. And that’s what this is- with their value nearly depleted they have nothing left to do but try to blame and shame their way into getting what they want when they realize that the market for their deteriorated goods has dried up. It’s quite humorous to me that these women fail to… Read more »
I’ll tell you one thing, breaking up with such a woman is an education. I had a 37 year old single mother in my lineup for about a year and when I had to cut her loose…. H O L Y S H I T B A L L S ! ! !
I still get nastygrams from her in my Facebook from time to time, and it’s been the better part of a year. She’s that butthurt over it.
Its as if women discover they have a pot of gold coins between their legs, and in their teens and twenties eagerly throw those gold coins out to any dude that catches their eye. Then when they hit mid thirties they notice the pot is nearly empty, so they have to use the remaining booty (pun intended)sparingly in an attempt to reel in some poor sap.
When Tom Leykis was still doing his live radio shows back around 2004, I can remember him once suggesting that a woman needed a 2nd type of metric to evaluate her self-esteem in addition to her HB rating. So you could have an HB 8 with an SE rating of 4 and you could get a better baseline to judge how you’d approach interacting with her (she’s hot but insecure) The SE rating was there to give you an idea of how she perceived herself – so an SE 8 or 9 could be the stereotypical self-impressed, “professional” woman with… Read more »
I don’t know whay planet you’re from, but where I live the hotter the woman the bigger her ego. This rule has been true for thousands of years.
Ah, but the bigger the ego, the more impactful rapport breaks are (eg Negs) and the better they can handle them. And I guess it’s more than ego and more about the balance between HB and SE ratings. When a woman’s SE is high, but her HB is low, they actually have more fragile egos in my experience and try to qualify themselves more.
Every top-tier female I have known has been unfailingly pleasant, kind, and self-effacing. I cannot think of an exception. Beauty is not skin deep.
It’s a pretty striking oxymoron for sure. Some “hawt” girls are complete bitches, but they’re pretty damn rare from what I’ve found. Doubly so outside of bar/club environments, and even then if you talk to them early they’re still normal. It’s after they’ve been drinking, turn into woo girls, and been approached for the 10th time that they become problematic.
“This is why every effort is made via social conventions to repress him from realizing this, and every effort is made to shame and ostracize him once he’s conscious of it – and a prime example of this is the duplicitous nature of articles like Bolick’s decrying men’s unwillingness to grow up and give women the life they should know is “doing the right thing” after 20 years of berating men for not respecting them asserting their independence from men.” In one lucid paragraph you have just boiled things down to their bare essentials. I doff my hat to you,… Read more »
“I don’t know whay planet you’re from, but where I live the hotter the woman the bigger her ego. This rule has been true for thousands of years.” Not true at all. Ego doesn’t entirely track SMV. What about good looking women who grew up in poor or lower middle class households. Often they transfer that poor upbringing into poor self esteem, which carries into adulthood. A woman I recently broke it off with a solid 7 who had a poor upbringing, with divorced parents. I could do anything I wanted with her, I mean anything, because she was so… Read more »
Should read tool in a mans toolbox
‘Till not so long ago, I was a plugged-in beta chump. Now I’m just a beta chump. And yet, I often found myself unconsciously evaluating the women I was with, wondering if they were good enough for me. Some where too insecure; some weren’t good kissers, or really bad in bed, or simply not passionate enough; some complained all the time. This unconscious critizicing made me feel soul-crushingly guility. I had a nice girl in front of me and something inside of me screamed “Get the hell out! She’s too insecure!”, which went against what you’d consider common wisdom. “Don’t… Read more »
Please consider this positive reinforcement of the highest order.
Your insights resonate with me and your writing is really solid.
Carry on.
Gracias.
Brilliant as usual. You have been churning out quite a few high quality posts lately.
Echo commenters above, really solid output. Some of the best in this genre.
[…] The burden of selectivity – http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/the-burden-of-selectivity/ […]
[…] of sexual satisfaction mixed with the frustration of perfecting an optimized hypergamy with a selection of prospective men made for not only an award winning series, but was also responsible for the social saturation of a […]
[…] (enlace al original en ingles) […]