One of the withdrawal symptoms of unplugging from the Matrix is usually an overwhelming nihilism that results from being torn away from the previous blue pill preconceptions a man has been conditioned to for most of his life. It’s my hope that in the future red pill men will make the necessary interventions and apply what they’ve learned from their unplugging and red pill truths in general towards their sons (and daughters) as well as other men they know or are related to. Until then, the process of breaking away from that conditioning is usually going to begin as the result of a traumatic breakup, a divorce, or having had the relational equity he thought he’d built a long term relationship on proved worthless in the face of hypergamy.
It’s a sad reality of unplugging that it most often starts as a result of emotional anguish, but to pour salt in those wounds is then having to live with the harsh realities that the red pill makes men aware of – that more or less everything they’d held as an ego-investment up to that point was founded on a feminine-primary conditioning. I summed this up in The Bitter Taste of the Red Pill:
The truth will set you free, but it doesn’t make truth hurt any less, nor does it make truth any prettier, and it certainly doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that truth requires. One of the biggest obstacles guys face in unplugging is accepting the hard truths that Game forces upon them. Among these is bearing the burden of realizing what you’ve been conditioned to believe for so long were comfortable ideals and loving expectations are really liabilities. Call them lies if you want, but there’s a certain hopeless nihilism that accompanies categorizing what really amounts to a system that you are now cut away from. It is not that you’re hopeless, it’s that you lack the insight at this point to see that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.
Try to keep this last part in mind as you read what I propose in these next two posts. I read a lot of guys in various forums getting despondent after having the red pill make sense to them, but that despondency is really a simple lack of not having a path already preset for them to follow. Instead of the easy answers and prerequisite responsibilities that the blue pill and the Feminine Imperative had ready for him to follow, now in his new awareness he’s tasked with making a new path for himself, and that’s both scary and exciting at the same time.
Love Styles
In almost 3 years of blogging and a book written, my three most popular posts have been the Love series – Women in Love, Men in Love and Of Love and War. Though my SMV graph gets the most link backs, these are easily the most viewed posts on Rational Male. Unfortunately they’re often the most misquoted and misunderstood.
One of the toughest revelations of the red pill is coming to terms with the difference in experience and concept that men and women apply to love. The core principle in Women in Love is often misunderstood. For different reasons, deliberate or otherwise, both men and women critically misunderstand the main premise of that post:
Iron Rule of Tomassi #6
Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.In its simplicity this speaks volumes about about the condition of Men. It accurately expresses a pervasive nihilism that Men must either confront and accept, or be driven insane in denial for the rest of their lives when they fail to come to terms with the disillusionment.
Women are incapable of loving men in a way that a man idealizes is possible, in a way he thinks she should be capable of.
Most critics of my differing assessment of how either sex interprets and considers love tend to blow past this last part. They oversimplify my meaning and sputter out something to the effect of, “That Tomassi guy thinks that women can’t ever really love men, what preposterous crap!”
Of course that isn’t my assertion, but I understand the want to dismiss this notion, particularly for men and women invested in the ideal of equalitarianism. It’s a threat to the ego-investment that men and women are anything less than fully equal and rational agents who come together for each other’s mutually agreeable benefit. The simple fact of women’s innate hypergamy puts the lie to this presumption, as well as confirms the relevancy of women’s constant, qualitative conditionality for whom (really what) they’ll love. I think it’s ironic that the same people who disparage this concept are among the first to readily embrace the pop-psychology notion of Love Languages.
I get why that premise pisses off women (and feminized men); it’s very unflattering to be accused of loving men from a position of opportunism. However, it’s important to understand that I don’t make this observation to condemn the way women approach love – although I’m sure it will follow, my point isn’t to presume a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way for women to love men or vice versa. There are beneficial and detrimental aspects of both women’s opportunistic approach to love, and men’s idealistic approach to love. That said, I happen to believe that the differing ways men and women love each other evolved to be complementary to the other and for the betterment of our species.
For all the “OMG I can’t believe this red pill asshole thinks women can’t really love men” misdirection, I should point out that well intentioned men, especially the newly red pill, are also guilty of the same oversimplification. Theirs is an attempt to find validation in the (usually recent) trauma of having been cut away from their prior blue pill conditioning. A similar, “Rollo says women can’t really love men, of course, it’s all so clear to me now” satisfies a simplistic need for confirmation of their former condition.
And again, it’s not a right or wrong way of loving, it’s the lack of recognizing the difference and being on the punishing side of that lack. Most men will want to apply their concepts of honor or justice in assessing how ‘right’ men’s idealistic love is, while women will still see the inherent value in loving what a man is as a prerequisite for loving who a man is. Hypergamy doesn’t care about men’s idealistic expectations of love, but neither does men’s rationality make concessions for what facilitates women’s opportunistic approach to love.
Romantic Souls
From The Red Pill subreddit:
My whole life, I’ve had it nailed into me that I would be able to find true love if I was honest and hardworking. As I grew older it was, “If I’m somewhat fit and have a good job making 60k-80k a year, I’ll find that beautiful girl that loves me as I love her“.
As I’ve stated on many occasions, it is men who are the True Romantics. Granted, it’s the unthoughtful result of centuries of evolved ‘courtly love’, but in the realm of what qualifies as a true act of romance, it’s men who are the primary actors; it’s men who ‘make’ (or want to make) romance happen. And of course therein lies the problem, a man cannot ‘make’ romance happen for a woman.
For all a man’s very imaginative, creative, endeavors to manufacture a romance that will endear a woman to him, his ‘trying’ to do so is what disqualifies his intent. For every carefully preplanned ‘date night’ after marriage, there’s a college girl swooning to bang her boyfriend living in a shithole, sheets over the windows, furniture from the dumpster, pounding shitty beer and sleeping on a soiled mattress on the floor. Romance isn’t created, romance just happens, and it’s a tough, but valuable, lesson when men come to realize that a happenstance bag of skittles, or a ring made from a gum wrapper at the right time meant more to a woman than every expensively contrived ‘romantic getaway’ he’d ever thought would satisfy her need for lofty romance.
An important part of the red pill is learning that the most memorable acts of love a man can commit with a woman are acts of (seeming or genuine) spontaneity and never apparently and overtly planned (and yes, that applies to sex as well). This is a source of real frustration for a man since his blue pill conditioning expects the opposite from him, and his romantic nature – the nature that wants her to love him as he loves her – conspires with his problem solving nature, thus prompting him to ever greater romantic planning for what he hopes will be an appreciated, reciprocated love.
The Hierarchy
The true source of a man’s frustration lies in his misdirected hope that a woman’s concept of love matches his own. His ideal is a beautiful girl that loves him the same way he loves her. The presumption (a romantic one perpetuated by the myth of egalitarian equalism) is that his concept of idealized love is a universal one which women share with men in general and him in particular.
Thanks mostly to men’s blue pill conditioning, what most men fail to ever consider is that women’s hypergamic based love always considers what he is, before who he is. For a more detailed explanation of this I’ll refer you to my post Love Story. This is the root of the intersexual hierarchy of love.
Before the rise of feminine social primacy, the above ‘flow chart’ of love prioritization would hardly have been an afterthought for a man. Through any number of evolutionary and sociological progressions the base understanding of how Men’s love began from a position of protecting, provisioning for and directing of the lives of both his wife and children wasn’t a concern worth too much of his consideration. Neither was a prevailing desire for a reciprocal model of love an overshadowing concern.
To be sure, a baseline requirement of a returned love, sex, respect and fidelity were important elements, but this wasn’t the originating basis of male desire for being loved; there was no expectation of a woman loving him as he loved her (and by extension their children). To be a man was to have the capacity to provide a surplus beyond his own provisioning.
“A man provides, and he does it even when he’s not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it, because he’s a man.”
Gustavo’s monologue in my opening video may seem like an anachronism, especially in the light of a red pill awareness of the potential for injustice and the veritable certainty of a provisioning arrangement that will almost always be a one-sided proposition for a man – whether he’s loved, respected, appreciated, married or divorced.
Undoubtedly there’ll be men reading this bristling at the idea of a non-equitable model for love, but I’d argue that the idea of an equitable model is the result of the conditioning an egalitarian equalism has predisposed men to believe is even possible.
Before the rise of feminine primacy, a man’s expression of love through his support and guidance simply weren’t things women or children had the capacity to reciprocate. The advent of women’s independence, real or imagined, has served to strip men of this core understanding of the differences between male and female concepts of love. In the effort to feminize men more fully, and position men in a condition of confusion about what constitutes masculinity, this concept of love was replaced by a feminine-primary model for love.
While a woman’s respect, and a degree of love may flow back to her man, her primary love and concern is directed towards her children. One reason we’re still shocked by women who kill their children (pre or post natal) is due to an inherent acknowledgement of this natural dynamic. Women’s brain function and biochemistry largely evolved to predispose them to bonding with their children, and thus ensure the survival of the species. Beyond the rigors of physically gestating a child, raising children to self-sufficiency required a considerable investment of effort and resources – not to mention a constant attention. Nature selected-for women with an innate capacity to nurture and direct love primarily towards children.
The internal psychology women evolved to vet for men who displayed traits for both Alpha physical prowess and parental investment / provisioning potential are a result of children being a priority for a woman’s love. While a degree of maintaining a man’s continued commitment to the family unit requires her attentions in the form of sex and affections, a woman’s primary love focus is directed towards children.
Granted, not all women are capable of having children (or some even desirous of them), but even in these instances substitute love priorities still supersede directing her primary attention towards a man. It may seem like I’m attempting to paint women’s love as callous or indifferent, but this ‘directioning’ isn’t a conscious act, but rather due to the innate understanding that a man is to direction his love towards her as a priority.
This should give readers a bit to chew on for a while. In Part II I’ll detail the alternative hierarchy models prevalent for modern, post-feminine primacy relationships.
@Badpainter, good thoughts, wish it could be so. “If the woman loves your mission you can keep her.” I have a missions story, maybe you’ll see the relevance. A friend of mine went to Bible college and graduated with a missions degree (yes, they have those). He met his girlfriend there, who was getting her mrs degree, I mean missions degree also. She was a PK, a pastor’s kid. They got married and she got pregnant, in that order, but lacking funds they didn’t go on the foreigns missions field right away but instead got jobs, and increasingly rarely evangelized… Read more »
I forgot to mention that my friend had remarked wryly to his wife at the time, about them leaving Kentucky, “You promised to follow me to Bolivia, and you won’t follow me to Alabama.”
jf12, Marriage is about as likely to payoff today as a coin flip. No sane man would bet half his wealth and 20% of future earnings on a coin toss that promised weekly sex for 25 years with same women who may get fat, and to whom he was responsible for feeding clothing, housing, entertaining, breeding,etc…. Your friend’s mission was derailed the moment he proposed. If he’d her left in the groupie position dangling marriage at some point in the future he may have lost the girl but fulfilled his originally intended mission. Which of the missions this man considered… Read more »
@Badpainter re: “Your friend’s mission was derailed the moment he proposed.” Correct. It’s in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 7:32-33.
Given that we all know that a woman’s conditional “love” for her man highly objectifies him (whether as a provision supplier, or entertainment provider, or spider-squashing provider), I ask the question “Why do women insist that they don’t objectify the men they love?” AWALT.
I answer the question: this is yet another backhanded way for women to diss the men they pretend to love. Since the women *clearly* do objectify those men, they therefore admit knowing they don’t love those men. Women DO harbor the romantic over-the-top love for apex alphas, that men harbor for ordinary women.
Va bene, Signor Tommassi, you’re seemingly one of the few minds who’ve got the awareness very few men do, even amongst most manosphere bloggers: Why? Because men want to believe that they can be happy, and sexually satisfied, and appreciated, and loved, and respected by a woman for who he is. It is men who are the real romantics, not women, but it is the grand design of hypergamy that men believe it is women who are the romantic ones. Men believe that love matters for the sake of it. Women love opportunistically. Indeed, very few men have this kind… Read more »
Note: Knowing that “Men believe that love matters for the sake of it. Women love opportunistically.”, one of the greatest pleasures I have nowadays is to drink a bottle of good wine, true the oldest Italian tradition. “In vino veritas.”
@badpainter – rather than a coin toss, I consider marriage to be playing Russian Roulette with three bullets. Add another bullet for every prior divorce that she’s had.
If your life and finances survive the first bullet through the head then consider carefully before you decide to reload and play again.
Enjoy the odds – and imagery.
Chokmah – in simpler terms,
What is the difference between a pussy and a cunt?
A pussy is a nice warm wet welcumming place that men desire.
A cunt is the thing that owns it!
A pussy is a nice warm wet welcumming place that men desire. A cunt is the thing that owns it! That’s why men are the real true romantics, and believe that love matters for the sake of it, while women love opportunistically. Paradoxically, this creates a male intrasexual competition in which the one who get it first wins. And if he invested less then other late comers, he had a competitive advantage. So it basically means that girl “tight game” amounts to realizing the best value with it, with the first winner. She is born with high inherent value and… Read more »
So, in simpler terms, although the cunt owns the pussy, her value is determined by intrasexual male competition, and how wisely she administer it. So, she does not own the rules through which her value is determined, precisely because she does not own male desire or idealistic love.
@Rollo: I will try to help you solve your philosophical dilemma:
Men’s concept of love: respectful, uncoerced, unobligated and voluntary female submission.
Kate I am from Slovak republic and I can say I totaly agree with Rollo in his post and especially with gregg what he wrote above about womens nature. I also spent some time in the USA..It is the same and the way men are fed by blue pill since being born in femisentric society is a disaster… I don´t blame AFC for what he is, bceause it is hard to be enlightened when society lies to you from the very beginning. In Europe women think they have the entitlement for everything, once you merry her, you are done..More than… Read more »
Chokmah says “she does not own the rules through which her value is determined” which seems vastly significant.
I can’t wait to see the flow charts of love prioritization for the alternative hierarchy models.
Despite the few Tiger Moms getting a lot of press, and despite that it makes psychological sense that a woman might push her child to succeed where she couldn’t, most of the moms that I see instead are grateful to use their children as excuses why they can’t succeed.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Kelly Clarkson’s hit “Because of You” was written as a teen to her beta nerd father, with her self-awareness that he was living a far more authentic emotion than she as woman was capable of.
“My heart can’t possibly break
When it wasn’t even whole to start with”
Wikipedia is wrong on that. Clarkson’s hit ballad ‘Because of You’ was written by Moody and Hodges (formerly of Evanescence) in 2004. That is why it sounds so much like the tragic ballads on 2003’s ‘Fallen’. Clarkson’s name was thrown on it in keeping of all the other fraudulent co-writing credits given to the chick pop stars of that era. The narrative claimed on Wikipedia was retrofitted to the song after it was written. If I am wrong, please provide a demo from the late 90s when this song was supposedly ‘written’. Thanks for bringing up the music references though… Read more »
So what you’re saying, Rollo, is that women don’t like contrived romance. This should come as absolutely no surprise to any man who has ever made a romantic approach to any woman and been shot down.
What’s sad, is when we do it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, hoping each time for a different result.
“Since no one’s asked the obvious yet, yes, this will be included in the Preventive Medicine book I’m working on now.”
Yeah, sorry, I’ve been busy lately. 😉
@Mike: I’m surprised because, according to a lot of people, eastern European women are supposed to be so much better than American women. Perhaps only American men feel that way and eastern European men know better.
… “she does not own the rules through which her value is determined” which seems vastly significant. Men do not have as much sexual power/choices as women do. There is no rosy way to state and/or swallow that. In fact, what’s even less rosy is the realization that his idealist love feelings will be most likely pragmatically or opportunistically used by them. Yet, I do think that male power resides solely upon having a firm stance upon whom he is willing to commit to. And in this regard women have little or no control, hence their need to control/dominate the… Read more »
Where I get confused is when do you give up on the super high smv girls (even if you have been gaming them correctly) and just settle for a less attractive girl to start a family….
It’s the same “opportunistic love” that @ROLLO is talking about. That’s like saying us men settle for a less SMV less hot girl for long term. Girls settle for the more committal beta.
So, does that mean we give up and just settle with a girl we are not as sexually attracted to?
Gotta clear these thoughts up somehow
Part 2 Part 2 Part 2. I’ve checked this every day to look for the next post. This is fabulous!
@Prov Erbs, good cooking takes time.
Especially when a hundred different cooks are ready to tell you about all the ingredients you missed in a recipe.
Kate, trust me I see no diference between american and european women.. not talking about high school girls but women at the peak around 25 and more.. The more beautiful she is – the bigger entitlement she thinks she deserves… no mercy..
Will – my answer would be that you never give up on the highest SMV girls. That’s the only girl ‘good enough’ to start a family with. And even at that, your committing to her will always be one hell of a gift to her, because you’re discarding opportunities to bed other women. As a man, time is on your side and there is no urgent need to ‘settle’ whatsoever. As for a man loving opportunistically for the end-goal of starting a family, I can see how counter-intuitively it would be a huge neg to the woman – in that… Read more »
Steve H – “You’re essentially stealing a woman’s love-style, rendering your relationship devoid of any romanticism and idealism that the man would naturally bring to it.”
And that would be bad because….?
Isn’t part of the woman’s love style the ability to create the illusion that it’s not a pay for play relationship?
Badpainter – right, I don’t think it’s ‘bad’. There’s nothing inherently dishonest or deceitful (aka ‘dishonorable’) about it. It’s just interesting to me how the man rather than the woman would be holding that card from the outset in this example.
Rollo – if part 2 is as good as part 1, I think most of us are willing to wait as long as it takes for it to be finalized.
It’s already in the can actually, I’ve just been experimenting with staggering my posts for mid-week reading lately.
That and a new greyhound has been keeping me busy.
Will, my take is this. If you really want a family, then start with that as the criteria. Go after the hot girls, but be brutal in your assesment of them as pertains motherhood. Fuck em for fun if they don’t meet your marriage desire, but don’t give it a second thought when you dump them for someone closer to your ideal. Also be brutal in your assesment of your own SMV. We are led to believe that a better chance of a long lasting marriage is too actually wed a woman who is a point or 2 below your… Read more »
Where I get confused is when do you give up on the super high smv girls (even if you have been gaming them correctly) and just settle for a less attractive girl to start a family…. They cannot be compared because: 1) Most guys will never have a chance at “super high smv” girls; and actually dream of “supper high mmv” girl with natural or average beauty; 2) Most women, in their natural state, provided she’s average beautiful, will be attractive enough to a lot of guys; the opposite is not true, because women don’t chase men around, either for… Read more »
@Mike: I guess that is the difference then: high school versus 25. I suppose the same would be true in the States. All the more argument for young, and, due to youth, arranged marriage.
This sentence is a little misleading/awkward because you don’t really mean “mens rationality”, I’m pretty certain you’re talking about men supplanting significant portions of their rationality with idealism. That’s a compromised rationality which is why it is twisted into something that cannot make such concessions.
That’s a compromised rationality which is why it is twisted into something that cannot make such concessions. Feminists didn’t count on this… 🙂 Because they cannot conceive that their “rationality” is outrageously offensive to men… It’s a natural defense mechanism, conditioned and forced by women themselves… unwittingly. Rollo nailed it again in part II: “…when a man’s idealistic approach to love is in the dominant frame (as in the conventional model) it acts as a buffer to women’s loving opportunism that would otherwise imbalance and threaten the endurance of that family and relationship… When a woman’s love concept is the… Read more »
Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.
Not exactly true. They are capable of loving a dominant man the way that a man expects to be loved.
Also be brutal in your assesment of your own SMV. We are led to believe that a better chance of a long lasting marriage is too actually wed a woman who is a point or 2 below your own SMV. SMV is important. It is not critical. I’m 69 and STILL get the occasional hot 20 something salivating after me. (keeps the mate on her toes) Why? Women can sense dominance. (maybe a pheromone). My father was the same. I got the red pill at age 18. From my first girlfriend no less. You practice dominance for years and it… Read more »
[…] For all a man’s very imaginative, creative, endeavors to manufacture a romance that will endear a woman to him, his ‘trying’ to do so is what disqualifies his intent. For every carefully preplanned ‘date night’ after marriage, there’s a college girl swooning to bang her boyfriend living in a shithole, sheets over the windows, furniture from the dumpster, pounding shitty beer and sleeping on a soiled mattress on the floor. Romance isn’t created, romance just happens, and it’s a tough, but valuable, lesson when men come to realize that a happenstance bag of skittles, or a ring made from a gum wrapper at the… Read more »
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Love
[…] a male reader of my Hierarchies of Love series grated against the idea that a conventional model of love would progress from Men to women, […]
[…] their distorted perception of masculinity. I made an attempt to address this influence in the Intersexual Hierarchies posts, however, I intended those essays to provide an outline of particular hierarchical models, […]
“While a woman’s respect, and a degree of love may flow back to her man, her primary love and concern is directed towards her children. One reason we’re still shocked by women who kill their children (pre or post natal) is due to an inherent acknowledgement of this natural dynamic. Women’s brain function and biochemistry largely evolved to predispose them to bonding with their children, and thus ensure the survival of the species. Beyond the rigors of physically gestating a child, raising children to self-sufficiency required a considerable investment of effort and resources – not to mention a constant attention.… Read more »
This imbalance is all a product of sex roles btw, if men did less providing and more nurturing things would be better.
Its not possible to love masculine traits because they demand receptive love. Until men develop the traits coded feminine in themselves they wont be able to be recipients of love bc they dont know how to recieve. Until women are allowed to fully develop the traits coded as masculine, the ones that allow her to seek on an instrumental level she won’t be capable of active love only receptive love (which is receiving someone else’s and shining a little back). The mothers love for the children is an active kind of love, because thats an active role for women. Seeking… Read more »
Its not possible to love masculine traits because they demand receptive love. Until men develop the traits coded feminine in themselves they wont be able to be recipients of love bc they dont know how to recieve. Until women are allowed to fully develop the traits coded as masculine, the ones that allow her to seek on an instrumental level she won’t be capable of active love towards men only receptive love (which is receiving someone else’s and shining a little back). The mothers love for the children is an active kind of love(but its nurturing), because thats an active… Read more »
The rules for the man are totally the opposite of that for children
What is true love is simply love that has no needs. Such love only comes from a totally abundant mentality, which is impossible. What actually happens is that love flows in the direction of greater needs.
> This imbalance is all a product of sex roles btw, if men did less providing and more nurturing things would be better.
Feel good in the moment BS.
“The true source of a man’s frustration lies in his misdirected hope that a woman’s concept of love matches his own. His ideal is a beautiful girl that loves him the same way he loves her. The presumption (a romantic one perpetuated by the myth of egalitarian equalism) is that his concept of idealized love is a universal one which women share with men in general and him in particular.” After being with my partner for 30 years, I’m faced with this grim reality. We have three teenage boys and I have seen this frustration with their mother evolve as they grow… Read more »
The idea that I’m ever going to receive the romanic love I so desire is a fantasy.*
Yep. YOUR fantasy. On par with having a twelvesome with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

But is this even a safe bet?
That people won’t change? No.
Learn skills..
work to my dying day
That Mastodon meat ain’t hunting itself…
Do your boys a favor. Give them TRM.