Preventative Medicine – Part IV

From The Myth of the Quality Woman:

Back when he had a terrestrial radio show Tom Leykis did a topic about this: He had everyday women call in and tell their stories of how they used to be sexually (i.e. slutty) and how they are now. He came up with this after driving past a grade school on his way to the studio and seeing all of the women there waiting for their kids to come out and wondered about what their lives used to be like in their childless 20s. This was a wildly popular topic and the confessions just poured in like all of these women had been waiting for years to come clean anonymously about the sexual past that their husbands would never dream they were capable of. Each of these women sounded proud of themselves, almost nostalgic, as if they were some kind of past accomplishments.

This is why I laugh at the concept of the Quality woman. Don’t misinterpret that as a “women = shit” binary opinion. I mean it in the sense that most guy’s concept of a quality woman is an unrealistic idealization. There’s not a guy in the world who committed to monogamy with a woman who didn’t think she was ‘quality’ when he was with her. Even if she was a clinical neurotic before he hooked up with her, she’s still got “other redeeming qualities” that make her worth the effort. It’s only afterwards when the world he built up around her idealization comes crashing down in flames that she “really wasn’t a Quality Woman.”

The Schism

An interesting internal schism occurs for women during the latter half of the Security and through the Developmental Phase. The first aspect of this psychological schism is a drive for an unalterable sense of security. As she matures, the priority for an enduring security intensifies with each child she bears and / or each life incident where that degree of security is tested.

For the married woman who consolidated upon her best available provider male, this intensification usually manifests itself as a ceaseless series of shit testing, not only over his capacity to consistently deliver an ever increasing need for that provisioning, but also the Alpha suitability she convinced herself that he would mature into later. The primary conflict for her during these phases is that her provider male’s SMV Alpha potential never quite looks like or compares with the idealized memories of the Alpha men she entertained in her party years.

I’ve written several essays regarding the dynamics of the Alpha Widow, but at no other phase of a woman’s life is she more prone to mourning a prior Alpha lover than when she enters the Developmental stage. This is when the security a woman was so incensed to in her Epiphany Phase becomes a burden, but still a necessity of her life. Unless a man has reinvented himself and capitalized on his SMV potential so significantly as to separate himself from the prior impression of ‘providership acceptability’ a woman initially expected of him, five minutes of Alpha experience will always trump 5-10 years of Beta dedication.

If women can realize the Alpha Fucks aspect of hypergamy during her party years, and then realize the Beta Bucks aspects of hypergamy after the Epiphany Phase, then the internal schism a woman experiences in her Developmental phase becomes the difference between her reconciling those two aspects within the man she’s currently paired with.

The second aspect of this schism is a marked re-interest in the Alpha attributes of either the man she’s currently paired with, or the Alpha attributes of men outside that pairing. This side of the schism is particularly frustrating for both Alpha and Beta men paired to a woman experiencing it.

Deal with It

The more an Alpha man actualizes his SMV potential – through maintained (or improved)  looks, career, maturity, affluence, status, etc. – the more a woman’s need for enduring security becomes threatened as her SMV consistently decays in comparison. A woman’s logical response to this new form of competition anxiety usually manifests in two ways.

The first being an intense motivation to domineer and control her relationship by placing herself in a dominant role. She assumes (or attempts to assume) headship of the marriage / relationship by way of convenient conviction or from a self-created sense of her husband’s (really all men’s) untrustworthiness bolstered by social conventions that insist women need to be the head of the house (i.e. “she’s the real boss, heheh”). Her insecurity about her own comparative SMV manifests in her demanding he ‘do the right thing’ and limit his SMV potential for the sake of a more important role as her (and their family’s) dutiful provider.

Of course the problem with this is that a man acquiescing to such dominance not only loses out on his capacity to maximize his SMV peak potential, but also confirms for his wife that his status isn’t as Alpha as he’s confident it is. This Alpha disenfranchisement will play a significant part in a woman’s Redevelopment phase.

The second logical response is apathy and resentment. A disconnect from her SMV peaking mate may seem like a woman’s resigning herself to her non-competitive SMV fate, but it serves the same purpose as a woman’s insistence for relational dominance – an assurance of continued security and provisioning as the result of his limiting his SMV potential. This apathy is, by design, paired with the guilt that her mate is more focused on his own self-development than the importance he should be applying to her and any family. The result becomes one of a man chasing his own tail in order to satisfy this passive insecurity and failing passive shit tests.

In either instance the seeds of a man’s decline are rooted in his ability to identify this schism in relation to how it aligns with his SMV potential at the same time it affects his long term partner. The problem with the schism is that for all the limitations a woman would emplace against a man actualizing his SMV potential, the same limitations will also constitute a significant part of her justification for being dissatisfied with him during her Redevelopment phase.

Redevelopment / Reinsurance

The Redevelopment phase can either be a time of relational turmoil or one of a woman reconciling her hypergamous balance with the man she’s paired with.

The security side of this hypergamous balance has been established for her long term satisfaction and the Alpha reinterest begins to chafe at the ubiquitous certainty of that security. Bear in mind that the source of this certainty need not come from a provider male. There are a lot of eventualities to account for. It may come from a ‘never married’ woman’s capacity to provide it for herself, the financial support levied from a past husband(s) or father(s) of her children, government subsidies, family money, or any combination thereof.

In any event, while security may still be an important concern, the same security becomes stifling for her as she retrospectively contemplates the ‘excitement’ she used to enjoy with former, now contextually Alpha, lovers, or perhaps the “man her husband used to be”.

Dalrock has long covered the topic of women entering the Eat, Pray, Love phase very well, coining the term “She was unhaaaaaappy,..” This is the justification call of for women entering the Redevelopment phase.

Depending on when she consolidated on long term monogamy, her kids are at, or almost at an age of real independence. It may even be at the “20 year itch” empty nest stage I described in the last essay, but there is a fundamental reassessment of the man she’s paired with and how his now realized SMV potential has either proved a good bet, or a disastrous misstep. And as with the various prior phases of maturity, she finds there are convenient social conventions already pre-established for her to help justify the decisions she’ll make as a result of this reassessment.

The binding, cooperative arrangements of childrearing that necessitated her drive for security gradually decrease in importance, giving way to a new urgency – pairing with someone “she really connects with” before her (imagined or otherwise) SMV / looks are entirely spent on the provider male she now loathes the idea of spending a future with. This is the turning point at which most Beta men, hopefully reliant upon the false notions of Relational Equity, find themselves on the sharp end of the feminine hypergamy they cognitively dissociated themselves from for a lifetime.

It’s not all doom and gloom however. Depending upon a woman’s degree of self-awareness and realism about her late-stage SMV, the decision may simply be one of pragmatism – she understands she’s with the man who can now best embody a hypergamic balance for her in the long term – or she genuinely has a long term (feminine defined) love and affinity for the man she’s paired with, who finally Just Gets It. Other considerations factor in as well; it’s entirely possible his SMV peak will endure longer than her reassessment of him will take to determine, religious conviction may play a (albeit sometimes convenient) part in this reassessment, or she may realistically assess her own SMV as decayed to a point where staying with her provider male is her only tenable option.

There’s an interesting trend in the divorcing schedules of Baby Boomers that strongly correlate with this Redevelopment phase reassessment I’ve described here – it’s called Grey Divorce:

Americans over 50 are twice as likely to get divorced as people of that age were 20 years ago.

Jim Campbell, 55, of Boulder, Colo., says he and his wife grew apart after 34 years together. “The No. 1 best thing in common that my ex-wife and I had was raising kids,” Campbell says. When their two sons grew up, he says, “we just didn’t have enough activities, passions, interests that were in common. And when the boys were gone, that just became more and more — to me — obvious.”

As is the wont for a feminized media, the focus is on men who divorce their wives, but statistically it’s women who initiate over 70% of all divorces. It’s important to bear that in mind when considering the psychological impetus for women’s Redevelopment phase. In spite of that oversight, the ‘grey divorce’ stats dovetail with this mid-late life reassessment.

In the interest of fairness, a woman can also find herself forced into this Redevelopment as the result of a man who’d come to realize his SMV peak and became actively aware of how hypergamy had influenced his decisions for him. There is a minority of men who take the red pill or otherwise and exit a marriage they’d been ‘settled’ on for, or they may in fact want to redevelop themselves for the same reasons women make the reassessment and capitalize on what value their SMV has.

Regardless of how she comes to it, nothing is more daunting for a woman than to reenter the sexual market place at such a severe disadvantage. After the Wall, women dread the idea of having to start over in a sexual market place in which they are grossly outmatched, so even the slightest deviation from the ‘security forever’ script becomes a major ego threat. If that security is more or less assured, there are feminine social conventions ready to make that prospect more palatable. ’40 is the new 30′, “you still got it”, and of course the strong independent woman® brand offers a plan for ‘cougardom’.

Depending on a woman’s relative SMV (that is to say amongst her generation’s peers) she may entertain these convention more or less successfully, but this reinvention of a woman’s party years, still suffers from a need to reestablish a semblance of security after a point. While it may be ‘exciting’ to relearn how to maneuver in a new SMP, the underlying desire is still one of security.

Late Phase Security

Finally we come full circle and back to, an albeit new interpretation of, the same security a woman sought after her Epiphany Phase. During this late phase, that may last from a woman’s late 40’s, 50’s or even indefinitely, as a result of an inevitable SMV decay, the security side of a woman’s hypergamy swings into its final, permanent, position. It’s important to make the distinction that this security isn’t necessarily founded on financial provisioning, but rather an emotional, intimate dependence and acceptance for a woman from an acceptably masculine man – often in spite of a past that she would rather be (expects to be) forgiven for by virtue of her age and her perceived experiences.

While she may experience some desire to live vicariously through the experiences her now grown daughters or younger female friends in various phases themselves, her message to them is one of precaution, but tempered with the subconscious awareness of how hypergamy has set the frame for her past. This is the phase during which (hypocritically) women tend to cognitively rewrite their past for what they believe should be the benefit of younger women.

As an aside, I should point out that with the advent of the internet and the permanency of all things digital, this is becoming increasingly more difficult for mid-life women.

This is the phase during which a woman not only desires secure acceptance of who she is from a suitable man, but it’s also the phase she attempts to create a secure social paradigm for herself. To be sure this drive is firmly couched in a woman’s innate solipsism, but her desire for security extends beyond a want for her own personal, assured security, and to woman-kind in whole.

Women in this phase may be concerned for the futures of their daughters – and sons who may come into contact with women following the same hypergamic paradigm she used on their fathers – but the concern is voiced for society and women as a whole. Rarely is this social concern an admission or testament of her own regret, but rather it’s something she must address to reconcile the parts of her past, the undeniable results of her hypergamy, that  she can’t escape.

Once menopause ensues that retrospective need becomes more urgent.

Conclusion

I understand that this series probably wont address particular personal issues some readers will want it to, but that’s what comment threads are for. As I stated when I started this series, I could probably write a more comprehensive book about this entire process – I may do just that at some point.

I also understand that while I can provide this outline, it doesn’t really go in depth into how a man might use this knowledge to his best advantage with a particular woman. However, my hope is that it will put certain behaviors and mindsets you find in a woman, and how they align or don’t align with this outline, into something more understandable for your individual experience. This is in no way comprehensive or meant to account for every woman’s circumstance, but rather to help a man with what he can expect in various phases.

It’s preventative medicine, not a cure to any particular disease.

Thanks for sticking with this.

RT