The Gift

After reposting my seminal essay on Vagintine’s day last week an interesting topic arose. One of my assertions in the V-Day post was that a man ought never to buy his wife or girlfriend lingerie as a gift for Valentine’sDay, and, by extension, any other occasion, special or otherwise. As I considered the input from both Sunshinemary as well as commenter ‘Lingerie’ (odd for a male commenter, OK) I began to come to a better understanding of why I’ve always promoted this principle.

This is Lingerie’s take:

This is nuts:

“Note: Never buy a woman lingerie, she will never be happy with it. A woman has to do this on her own to “feel sexy”, make sure it fits her right, and it’s HER IDEA. When you buy it for her it’s contrived and it is overt and overt is often the kiss of death for a try-hard guy.”

Women in my home wear what they are commanded to wear. It’s not a decision left to them. In the beginning of a relationship I have to train them on proper apparel, which means taking them to the store and having them model garments for me so that I can show them what works and what doesn’t work, and why. After that, they know what clothing for themselves to buy for me so that I don’t have to go shopping with them.

This was Sunshinemary’s (albeit christianized) take:

LOL. Of course you should buy your wife lingerie. So what if she thinks it’s “really a gift for you”? Isn’t her body supposed to be a gift for you per 1 Corinthians 7:3-5? She should be happy you still want to see her in it.

In the interests of full disclosure, in the past, I have bought lingerie for both past girlfriends and Mrs. Tomassi; and I have learned my lesson. This is a lesson in genuine desire versus mitigated, obligated desire. If a woman doesn’t take the prerequisite effort on her own part to want to make herself more desirable and more sexy for you as your fuck-buddy, your girlfriend, your fiancé or your wife, you are not her first sexual or mental priority. It’s a simple as that.

Whether it’s the result of a prior ‘training regimen’ as in Lingerie’s case or the gift giving scenario Sunshinemary alludes to, the effect is the same – a genuine desire to please someone is always preferable to a coerced obligation to please them.

As I’ve stated before, a woman who want’s to fuck you will find a way to fuck you. If a woman needs to be ‘trained’ to be more sexual and less self-conscious than it takes for her to take the minimal effort to buy something to make herself look and feel more sexually appealing and less self-conscious to fuck you, then you’re dealing with a woman who (at least subconsciously) believes herself to be of a higher SMV status than yourself. In other words, if she has no desire to buy things, or prepare herself to be sexy for you, to entice you, to make your sexual experience with her more memorable than her prospective sexual competitors – you do not merit the optimization of her hypergamic interest, and her involvement with you is predicated upon something other than your genuine sexual appeal to her.

As I’ve elaborated before The Medium is the Message; when single women painstakingly prepare themselves primping and preening before a night out with her girlfriends to meet random guys – that medium is the message. When every look, every clothing option, every makeup and accessory selection is carefully considered to draw potential sexual attention to herself, the message is pretty clear – she’s making an effort to be more attractive for what she values as a reward. Women who are experiencing the hormonal changes associated with the proliferative phase of their menstrual cycle (just pre-ovulation) have a psychological predisposition to want to fuck the ‘good genes’ Alpha. This phase-condition also triggers shifts in female ornamentation; in other words, when women ovulate they dress to impress.

When a woman will put forth this concerted effort to achieve a socio-sexual reward, yet later fail to, or discontinues her previous efforts to, make the same effort to sustain your socio-sexual interests in her, that medium is also a message she’s broadcasting; she perceives your status (SMV) to be less valuable than the effort necessary to sustain your interest in her.

That isn’t to say every sexual instance you have should always be this side of professional porn, but it is to say that sexual spontaneity and her maintained effort to please you of her own volition are indicators of her perception of your sexual market value (SMV) as well as the biological dictates of her menstrual phase. In other words, (perceptual) Alphas get the ornamentation and enthusiasm of women who want to impress, Betas get the comfy, phone-it-in sex, after doing the convincing.

A Gift Must Be Given

Isn’t her body supposed to be a gift for you?

Yes, but a gift must be given, not taken by force or by due, else it’s not a gift anymore.

One principle I always suggest for Men spinning plates is that they make their attentions and interests in a woman a reward for that woman’s efforts and investments in him. From a PUA perspective this a flipping of the feminine script of qualifying for her rewards, but it’s a very important principle to understand and internalize on your own. Dread Game is founded on this principle, but it goes beyond just this utility – your merit, your attention and what it’s worth for a woman to invest herself in it will set the frame for any future relationship you have with her.

When that attention is given too liberally or a guy, as the result of his feminized conditioning, thinks women want full disclosure of feelings and a man gives his attention away without some kind of earning it dynamic on a woman’s part, his attentions become effectively worthless to her.

I’m prefacing with this because it’s important to recognize the value a Man’s attention has for women when you are assessing her real estimate of your personal value. Generally, women aren’t going to overtly give a man she’s involved with an honest assessment of his value to her. This is part of him Just Getting It and the unspoken understanding that he does get it, and on some level does understand what his value is to her. An Alpha doesn’t ask direct questions about his own status with women, he intrinsically understands it as reflected through women’s behavior around him.

However, women rarely disclose a Man’s impression on her – in fact the only time a woman is prompted to reveal ‘what she really thinks’ about a man is during or after a breakup. Rather, her continued assessment of him in a relationship (long or short term) is expressed in her attitudes, behaviors, physicality, ornamentation, and her willingness (or reservations) to want to please him.

I have a real tough time with the concept of a woman’s sexuality being a gift to give to a man. When a woman perceives a man’s SMV (or Alpha assessment) to be less than what her hypergamy could merit (realistically or not) for optimization, that is when the gifting-of-sex social convention becomes the dominant psychology for her. For a man who doesn’t merit it, or a Beta provider unused to the ‘reward’ of sex, this gifting becomes a situation of intermittent reinforcement of desired behavior (your continued Beta provisioning and comfort).

One, feminized, social indicator of this dynamic is a constant, male-psychological condition of self-deprecation. For example, I mentioned in last week’s post, most Valentines Day card’s messages from men to women is one of an unworthiness of her divine love, sex and patience with him. Essentially it’s a precondition of never meriting her intimacy. When this is a man’s operational psychology with respect to women, it only serves to perpetuate his qualifying for her gift and telegraphs his status of (at least mentally) being Beta. Men often ask me where the dynamic of pedestalization comes from and why it seems to be men’s default psychology with regard to women, its root is in this gift-to-merit social/psychological dependency.

Alpha Fucks & Beta Gifts

As with the woman in my illustration in Good Girls Do, Alpha men, or men that women preselect as possessing Alpha traits and attitudes, aren’t “given the gift’ of her sexuality, she simply has desired sex with him as opportunity and environment allow. The conditional reward, or sex-as-gift dynamic isn’t even a consideration, only sexual urgency and opportunism as buffered by the filters of her conscience, convictions or emotional barriers (or lack thereof). Alpha fucks isn’t a gift, it’s desired sex of opportunity and urgency.

I think it’s worth pointing out the obvious contrast this gift dynamic has with regards to the man who’s wife was provably more sexually adventurous in her past than she ever was with him for the duration of his marriage – Saving the Best. That post, and the 700+ comment thread that followed were cause for a lot of righteous indignation from men who’d also been on the receiving end of being sold one sexual personality, but later discovered his wife (previously or concurrently) had quite another.

As callous as this is going to sound, while I can understand feelings of betrayal at the duplicity, I also understand the mechanics behind women’s dualistic sexual strategy. The most common criticism of this husband was that he was a fool for ever having married a woman unwilling to give him her best sexually. He should’ve seen the red flags and avoided investing his life, and the life of a child, in a woman with sexual hangups,..with him.

It’s very easy to be an armchair life-coach after the fact, but I’m not sure most men realize what those red flags are when they see them. Most men, by way of a lifetime of feminine sensitivity training, take women at their word rather than see the message in her medium. They never have the opportunity to truly grasp the socio-sexual strategy women employ over the course of a lifetime to optimize hypergamy and Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks. And even after he’s been on the sharp end of that equation, most guys still don’t want to believe her medium was ever the message.

If a woman is reserved with you sexually, if her conditions for being sexual are based on a perceived reward or a gifting mentality, that is the message. If a woman needs convincing to be more sexual with you, that is the message. If a woman is sexually aggressive with you, if she exhibits behaviors that indicate she’s planning to create an environment that would facilitates your having sex, that is the message. Women who are into you won’t confuse you. Understand the mechanics of how her sexual strategy works, how the particulars of it are manifested in her words, attitudes and behaviors, and how to leverage it to your advantage or see the warning signs in it, and you will be better prepared to see those red flags before you invest yourself in a woman worth or not worth investing in.