Even for the most abject Beta man there comes significant points in his life when he makes a Red Pill connection – a point at which, despite his feminine-primary socialization and for all his own participation in a system that deceives him, his circumstance or a trauma rattles him into a state of clarity.
As I wind my way through the Preventive Medicine timeline in the second draft of the next book I come to understand the periods at which these moments of clarity most commonly occur for Beta men.
Early in life that prompt may be the sting of having a high school sweetheart break up with him before she goes off to college. In or after college it might be the undoing of a long distance relationship he thought for sure his soul-mate would help him dutifully preserve. Later it maybe the realization of how much of his personal potential he truly lost after investing so much in a wife who divorced him and separated him from his children.
Not all of these events are as traumatic as this, but it’s during these Red Pill moments of clarity a man begins to see a hint of the code in the Matrix; a suspicion that maybe what he’s believed about how intergender relations should be really haven’t been directed toward his best interest.
So it was with a certain amount of interest I took notice of a man named Stephen when he petitioned advice from a mouthpiece of the Feminine Imperative this week. Though he doesn’t yet realize it, Stephen is at a Red Pill moment of clarity in his life, and as most Beta men are won’t to do, he seeks answers from the same feminine-primary trough that’s kept him in a state of patient stasis until his yet unrealized potential has now become useful to the Feminine Imperative.
Rather than simply allow the feminine crabs drag him back down into the barrel (until his next Red Pill moment of clarity), I’m going to re-post his plea for understanding here and give him (with the help of my esteemed commenters) the Red Pill truth he deserves at so critical a juncture in his life.
Lately I’ve been thinking about my college dating experiences. I’m 28 years old now and I’ve noticed a very odd phenomenon lately. I’m getting noticed (and approached) by women that never would’ve given me the time of day when I was in college. Successful, accomplished women! One in particular is incredibly hot, but they all are attractive. I am baffled by this. You may laugh, but this is making me extremely frustrated and stressed out.
Reading your blog has offered some explanations. I’m an analytical guy, so I’ve been very impressed with the social science you weave into your writing, and the research about how 28 is the ideal male age for women helped to explain what might be going on. But I still can’t figure out what’s going on, with me or with them. I feel emotions like resentment and suspicion, as well as desire, but I’m not at all flattered. I find myself unable to respond in any way, positively or negatively. I feel paralyzed.
Sometimes I think I’m just offended. These are the very same women who rejected me time and again in college. I mean, I know they’re not the same but…they’re the same. I wanted relationships (I tried casual sex…EPIC FAIL), they didn’t want me. My one serious college girlfriend cheated on me with her professor. I was really, really hurt, felt like a chump, etc.
To put it in a HUS context, the [college girls] preferred alpha males (I’m definitely a beta, introverted, overly intense, with a baby face.) Or maybe they were reluctant to get involved during college because they wanted to be free to move on after graduation and not be tied down.The thing is, I don’t think I’ve changed all that much. Frankly, I couldn’t change if I wanted to, even if it meant getting these women. I may have come out of my shell a little, but I honestly don’t think it’s me that’s different. It’s them, and I don’t think I like the difference. I think I’m the consolation prize. I think they still want the alphas but they’ve given up. Time to settle. I’m offended. I don’t trust these women.
Am I too proud? Getting my revenge? Guarded from past humiliations? Or have I just grown up and learned from my experiences?
Stephen
Stephen, the moment of Red Pill clarity you’re now experiencing is coming from your newly realized status. The women you describe being attracted to you (different than being aroused by you) are entering what I call The Epiphany Phase – the point at which their sexual market value begins to decay in earnest while a man’s begins his greatest potential to capitalize upon his own SMV as it steadily (should) increase.
This is a precarious time for women, usually the years between 28 and 30, where she makes attempts to reassess the last decade of her life. Women’s psychological rationalization engine (a.k.a. the Hamster) begins a furious effort to account for, and explain her reasonings for not having successfully secured a long term monogamous commitment from as Alpha a man as her attractiveness could attain for her. Even women married prior to this phase will go through some variation of self-doubt, or self-pity in dealing with the hypergamic uncertainty of her choice of husband (“Is he really the best I could do?”)
It’s during this stage that women will make radical shifts in the prioritization of what prerequisite traits qualify as ‘attractive’ in a man and attempt to turn over a new leaf by changing up their behaviors to align with this new persona they create for themselves. Since the physicality, sexual prowess and Alpha dominance that made up her former arousal cues in a Man aren’t as forthcoming from men as when she was in her sexual prime, she reprioritizes them with (presumed) preferences for more intrinsic male attributes that stress dependability, provisioning capacity, humor, intellect, and esoteric definitions of compatibility and intimacy.
Where you find yourself now, Stephen, is in the midst of these women coming to terms with their waning SMV and the increasing effort it takes women of that age bracket to effectively compete in a sexual marketplace where younger women simply outclass them with every new year that she doesn’t consolidate on a man who represents a good long term provisioning prospect.
As you suggest, these are the same women who found you sexually invisible when they were younger and enjoying the same SMV peak with the relatively more Alpha men they wanted to have short term sexual experiences with. These women were the younger competition they now find threatening their sexual selection today.
Are they exactly the same individual women? I don’t know for sure from your outline, but even if they aren’t, the Schedules of Mating script women follow is so common and predictable that they may as well effectively be the same women to you – and this is precisely what your subconscious instinct is attempting to relate to your conscious-self now.
…I honestly don’t think it’s me that’s different. It’s them, and I don’t think I like the difference.
Unless you’ve made a drastic improvement to your physical appearance or you’ve become more Game aware and have changed your intersexual outlook and behavior the obvious answer is, it is these women who’ve changed.
Now the question remains, why?
What has changed in these women’s lives that prompted this dramatic shift in how they’ve re-prioritized what they now find sexually acceptable? What is it about you in the now (and not back then) that makes you ideal for that acceptability?
Aunt Giggles wants to convince you to let bygones be bygones and follow along with the script the Feminine Imperative expects of you by shaming you for not forgiving a woman of her past indiscretions…
No doubt the girls at college rewarded the males who were early developers and exhibited masculine qualities then. Why take that personally?
I’ll tell you why, because the men they were interested in short term sexual prospects with then weren’t being asked to make anything resembling the life changing personal investment in these ‘reformed’ women she hopes you’ll man-up and be a ‘Better Beta’ for. Those men got the milk for free because the cow milked herself and gave it to them, gladly.
Now that’s a hell of a proposition for a guy who’s played by what his prior feminine conditioning would have him believe were the ‘rules’ for as long as you have. Is it really that far a stretch to want to protect the investment of your personal potential, not to mention your yet unrealized peak SMV potential, with women who now hope you’ll be sex, love and desire starved enough for the past 10 or so years to look past all the short term sex they had with more Alpha men in the Party Years of their early to mid 20s?
Maturation of Beta Bucks
Aunt Sue has always ridden the fence when it comes to acknowledging the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks nature of women’s sexual strategy. When it suits her narrative she agrees with Hypergamy, when it doesn’t, well, you’ll never know because those posts get scrubbed from her blog.
Fortunately you don’t need her input on Hypergamy to understand women’s pluralistic sexual strategy – there are many, much higher profile women than Susan Walsh who openly and publicly endorse exactly the strategy these women (who are suddenly attracted to you now) are using:
“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
And since we’re interested in the research perhaps we can ask Aunt Sue why it is nearly half of women in relationships retain a ‘Plan B’ guy:
Whether he’s the one that got away, the office husband, or a gym partner, chances are he is the “Plan B” man you fantasize about running away with. Like an insurance policy, this man is the handpicked boyfriend or husband replacement you have on standby once “plan A” starts to break down on you. According to a survey conducted by OnePoll.com, an online market research company, half of women who are married or in relationships have a Plan B man on standby who is “ready and waiting” because of “unfinished business.”
You see Stephen, it’s not those “Red Pill, Dark Triad cads” who perpetuate the “Beta Bux” theory; we don’t need to, it’s modern women who proudly, triumphantly, openly confirm their own Hypergamy and blatantly expect you to comply with it by default. In fact they’ll shame you, as all the commenters on HUS are doing now, for even questioning your expected role in affirming their sexual strategy.
So, with the knowledge of this new Red Pill truth, openly confirmed by the very same women who are ‘attracted’ to you now, how do you intend to benefit from it? Will you stick your head back in the blue pill sand of HUS, or will you become curious about the broader truths of the Red Pill. Just remember, now you’re aware of a Red Pill truth, there’s no going back.
However, bear in mind, you’re 28, the women you’re dealing with now have had a lot longer than just the 4 years they may have spent in high school to decide if you were attractive to them – these women have had the better part of the past 10 years and the benefit of experiencing the peak of their SMV potential up to this point in life.
Aunt Giggles’ would have you believe your new found SMV is the result some maturation process or change in your personal conditions when in fact it’s the very calculated result of an proudly confirmed, pre-designed sexual strategy. And it becomes really insidious when the operative feminine social convention in play accuses you of wanting “revenge” for acknowledging the same strategy that these women do openly already; you could be cowed into the fear of remaining alone, but that’s a myth to bust in another post.
Commenters, perhaps I’ve missed something here.
Please, feel free to post your advice for Stephen in the always open, never moderated and entirely uncensored comment section only here at The Rational Male.