Gut Check

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell

Back in 2003 I lived in Reno, Nevada. I can remember one distinct morning I was driving from the gym into work and I was waiting at a stop light. It was around 8am and as I slowed and stopped at the intersection, along drives my wife in her car coming from the cross traffic. I knew it was her, I saw her in the driver’s seat and I knew the car (because I had bought it). I have to ashamedly admit that the first thing that crossed my mind was that she was running around on me. Instant jealousy, instant suspicion. I felt that all too familiar rush of chemicals flood my bloodstream as I wondered just what the hell she was doing at that time of the morning in that particular part of the town. I later realized that she had chosen that particular route to avoid an accident that was snarling traffic on the freeway to get to an early doctor’s appointment, but I can’t deny that my first impulse (however fleeting) was one of jealousy, suspicion or potential betrayal. My wife of (then) 7 years, who’d never in that time gave me pause to question her fidelity triggered, for about 10 minutes, a jealousy-suspicion – the effects of which we’re quantifiable in that adrenaline-endorphin rush leading to irrational imaginations.

Although I like to pride myself on pragmatism and rationality, I wont deny that my first impulse was suspicion. I think this is a fascinating aspect of our psycho-evolutionary development as a species so I did a bit of research. It was easy to find study after study of this jealousy effect not only in humans, but primates and most advanced mammals – hell, even some birds get jealous! All of this is triggered by certain environmental prompts according to situation, species, conditions, etc. A very complex cocktail of hormones is released into our bloodstreams when such conditions are met, leading exactly to the feelings and irrationality I experienced that morning. Jealousy is a very well studied dynamic and one that has latent survialism functions. Obviously one of our biological imperatives in this life time is ensuring the fidelity in the choice of our partners with whom we’ve decided to share parental investment (or potentially will share it with). So imperative is this that our own biologies have evolved to react to even the suspicion of infidelity. This is the root of these very volatile emotions.

Sherlock Holmes

One of the more common question I’ve been asked for advice on is whether a guy is justified in his “snooping” or spying on a lover. It’s always an interesting dynamic because it graphically illustrates the conflict between a man’s base, evolutionarily hardwired imperative to confirm fidelity in his (potential) parental investment mate and a socio-psychological countermeasure on the part of feminization and it’s primary imperative of hypergamy. That’s a lot of $10 words so let me distill it a bit more. Men are presented with an internal conflict that pits their instinct for suspicion against a social convention that accuses him of “trust issues”. As with most feminine social conventions, shame is the operative here, but he loses respect whether his suspicions are confirmed or not. If a man ‘spies’ and/or pieces together inconsistencies that confirm his suspicions, he still spied and is therefor guilty of “not respecting her privacy”. Needless to say a woman is socially reinforced for trusting her ‘feminine intuition’ if her suspicions are confirmed, but men cannot win in the game of relationship espionage.

To further complicate matters, a man must also struggle with his rational nature in the context of this feminized frame. Logic and rationality tells him that maybe his suspicions ARE unfounded and that he does in fact have a problem with trusting. It’s very easy to find reasons why your suspicions are really baseless, but that reasoning still grates against what your gut instinct is telling you.

The irony of it is that there’s really not much purpose in spying if you’re properly spinning plates as you should. Most of the men I’ve counseled on their suspicions all had one thing in common, they were over-invested in their relationship to the point that they had no other viable options. They HAD to spy, but in all their stories each of them were really only confirming things that they already knew. They were willfully ignoring the message in the Medium because their hindbrains knew that they had no other viable options to fall back on. They instinctually understood the inconsistencies in their women’s behaviors, mannerisms, nuances, etc., they knew and confirmed what had changed, but explained them away for fear of losing her. Men (alphas) with options don’t have ‘trust issues’ simply because when one of his plates has cause to consider putting him off for another lover he has 2 or 3 more women on his roster ready to fill her place.

Gut Check

Whenever you feel something isn’t quite right in your gut, what this is is your subconscious awareness alerting you to inconsistencies going on around you. We tend to ignore these signs in the thinking that our rational mind ‘knows better’ and things really aren’t what they seem. It’s not as bad as you’re imagining, and you can even feel shame or guilt with yourself for acknowledging that lack of trust. However, it’s just this internal rationalization that keeps us blind to the obvious that our subconscious is trying to warn us about. Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. So when that predictable behavior changes even marginally, our instinctual perceptions fire off all kinds of warnings. Some of which can actually effect us physically.

It’s at this point most guys make the mistake of acting on the “good communication solves everything” feminized meme and go the full disclosure truth route, which only really leads to more rationalizations and repression of what’s really going on. What they don’t realize is that the MEDIUM is the message; her behavior, her nuances, the incongruencies in her words and demeanor (and how your gut perceives them) is the real message. There is an irregularity in her behavior that your subconscious is alerting you to which your consciousness either cannot or will not recognize.

With so many varied stimuli in our environment, human beings had to evolve psychological mechanisms in order to cope with so much information. We simply cannot apply our focus and concentration on every stimulus bombarding us so we employ a peripheral, subconscious awareness of it until it warrants our attention. A lot has been written about human’s ability to multi-task, but it would be impossible to multi-task without this peripheral awareness.

What the ‘trust issues’ feminine social convention does is turn that peripheral awareness into a liability in order to promote the agenda of hypergamy. Trust your gut, but don’t trust it where a woman is involved. This is a very devious social convention in that it attempts to short-circuit millennia of evolved instinctual cues that confirm men’s interests in parental investment while promoting female hypergamy as the primary breeding strategy.

How to use the Medium

Now, for as much as that all sounds like some grand conspiracy, understand that this all operates under the surface, and for the most part is simply accepted as the norm. It is possible, not to mention profitable, to flip the script on women. For instance, when you just marginally deny her your (probably far too available) attention, what happenes? Does she resort to some vocalized confessions of you becoming distant, or express some need to rationally communicate to solve a problem? No, her gut instinct recognizes irregularities in your usually predictable behaviors and she reacts by changing her behavior accordingly. You ‘caffeinated the hamster’, and she takes the initiative to react accordingly without you having to say a thing more than give her some plausibly believable breadcrumb of your reasoning.

Bear this in mind; women just want to hear the music and dance; they rarely care about the lyrics, or the measure or the reasons that went into creating the music. The medium IS the message. Be the medium, understand the message in it, but NEVER attempt to explain the medium to her. That ruins the music.

Law 9: Win Through Your Actions, Never through Argument
Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.