Promise Keepers

I had a 25 year old guy relate to me recently how disappointed with himself he was. He’d gotten together with a new girlfriend, made that commitment of exclusive monogamy, and had all the noble intents most betas assume when they enter that form of pseudo-marriage. The problem was that he’d had a fuck buddy for some months prior to his ‘legitimately’ dating his now girlfriend and regrettably had to cut her out of his life. Predictably, the FB was upset as most become when presented with losing the investment of all those sexual encounters unencumbered with little or no emotional rewards. The guy was determined to honor his arrangement with the new GF, but the FB persisted and became more emotionally invested until they settled upon a ‘just friends’ solution to their prior involvement.

After a week the guy has doubts about the GF and since he and the FB are ‘still friends’ they get together to discuss said doubts. Needless to say this discussion then leads to comfortable, reliable, “sure thing” sex with the former fuck buddy and now we come to the regret and disappointment he feels about himself. One might think that this is a simple case of a 25 year old sorting out what works for him sexually and his struggle with monogamy in the light of having other actionable options, but his disappointment doesn’t originate in this.

“I feel like a piece of shit because i promised my self over 10 years ago I would never do this. I broke my only promise to my self that I always stuck with.”

I found it interesting that a then 15 year old boy would have the prescience to make some vow of fidelity to a future girlfriend (or wife) to himself. For obvious reasons he didn’t strike me as particularly religious – he didn’t have a ‘promise ring’ on either for that matter. So what was it?

“I can pick up girls and bed them no problem anymore, but when it comes to relationships, I’m lost completely. And yes I do feel like something is missing with my current GF.”

That explains part of it. Alpha while single, beta when monogamous is a very common theme for the feminized, preconditioned youth of today. And of course in light of having (and having had) other sexual options that Alpha-Single / Beta-Monogamous conflict about a girlfriend is to be expected, but that still didn’t explain the promise or the disappointment adequately.

“I felt like a piece of shit. Over 10 years ago when my Dad cheated on my mom, I PROMISED my self i will never be like my father and cheat. I never cheated ever, until tonight. I feel numb, confused, and dont know what to do.”

Slay the Father

One common theme I’ve encountered amongst the more zealous beta White Knights I’ve counseled over the years has been this determination, bordering on fanaticism, with outdoing the life-performance of their asshole fathers. Before I go on further, many of them had legitimately rotten, alcoholic dads, who were abusive to them and their mothers. Others had the perception of their fathers colored for them either by their ‘strong independent®’ single mothers, or by watching their fathers resolve their own beta tendencies in a post-divorce life. Whatever the case, each of these guys had a mission – to be a better man than their father was, protect their mothers, and by extension the future mother their girlfriends and wives would become for them. His father’s personal failings would be his personal triumphs.

The problem inherent in this modern day Oedipus scenario is that the feminine imperative is more than happy to use it to its universal social advantage. Feminization and its blue-pill conditioning of boys to be better “men” is defined by how well that “man” is acceptable to a feminine culture. Thus we get gender blurring, and boys are taught to pee sitting down by single mothers because “your asshole dad always made a mess and left the lid up.” Better ‘men’, uniquely feminine-acceptable men, pee like women.

The father-hating boy becomes the masculine-hating adult beta male. Feminine social conditioning is cruel to be sure, but nothing cements that conditioning in better than a living example of what a man is not to be and then committing your life to not becoming it. As I stated earlier, those considerations may be legitimate, but the end result is the same; a beta who thinks women will categorically appreciate his devotion to the feminine by his promise not to become like “other guys” – like his asshole dad.

This is in fact a very solid extension of Beta Game‘s presumption that women will view him as unique amongst other men for being so well adapted to identify with the feminine. And of course the majority of women who care more about dominant Alpha characteristics, who have no appreciation for his ‘promise to be a better man’ then become “low quality” common women to him.

This then is the root of the conflict the guy in my example is experiencing. He’s coming into a more mature understanding of what his father experienced with his mother and women, and it’s clashing with that adolescent declaration of devoting himself to what he thought, and what his conditioning at the time, was his imperative.

“If I’m a better man than dad I’ll be deserving of love the way I envision it, I’ll be appreciated and hypergamy will be inconsequential due to the equity I’ll invest in our relationship.”

Only at 25 he progressively finds that he is just as human, just as male, as his father was.

Beyond Oedipus

Unsurprisingly this is a very tough psychological schema to dig out of a beta who’s invested his ego in it for so long. Even when he experiences firsthand the trauma of realizing that women aren’t the way he’s always believed they would be and taking the red pill, this ‘promise to be better’ persists. Layer onto this the social reinforcement of the ridiculous / reprehensible male, and compound it with either his mother’s vulnerability or her consistently negative characterization of his asshole father, and you have a recipe for a permanent blue-pill existence.

That said, it’s not impossible to unplug ‘promise keepers’ with enough harsh, experiential reality to awaken them out of their adolescent paradigms. Making them aware is the toughest task, but introspect on their own part is the next step. It’s very important to recount the ways ‘bad dad’, and your reaction to him, has directed and influenced your interactions with women. It is a supremely uncomfortable epiphany for ‘promise keepers’ to realize that Mom is just as common as the women rejecting him, who are helping him realize his adolescent presumptions were wrong. Most ‘promise keepers’ are shaken awake by two sources: the consistently incongruous behavior-to-stated-motivations by women, or by his own internal struggle with keeping his promise in the face of what he can’t quite place is what’s in his best sexual interests.