Post Selection

Anonymous Reader on Dalrock’s thread had an interesting observation about women’s (wives’) dumbfounded response to discovering that the Beta chump they believed would be entirely optionless and adrift after they divorced, in fact, had far more SMV capital than her solipsism would allow her to acknowledge:

So, dear Lisa, you (a) had a husband but (b) decided you did not want him anymore and now (c) other women do want him? Whose fault is this, again? Great display of a version of preselection that ought to be called “post selection” (if Rollo or Heartiste or someone else hasn’t already thought of that).

Reminds me of a divorce I saw from a moderate distance a few years ago. Wife got a couple of promotions at her work, while her salesman husband just plodded along with the usual feast or famine of that business. She apparently got “married” to her job, putting in long hours serving the situational alpha men she worked for. Then at home made up for the long hours by showering attention on the kids while stiffarming “whats-his-name”. When he had an affair she was, by all accounts, surprised. When he had a second affair she divorced him. Both were churchgoing, and I agree that she had Bible-based grounds for divorce, there was no question he was cheating. But he wasn’t the roving-eye type for the first 5 to 10 years of marriage, so perhaps a certain lack of something tempted him to cheat? What could it have been?

Familiarity breeds contempt, but it also breeds complacency.

I’ve stated in many prior thread that familiarity, comfort, rapport, vulnerability and security are all anti-seductive attributes when it come to women’s sexual response. I’m not saying those elements aren’t intrinsically good or bad, just that men shouldn’t buy the boilerplate sexual filibustering of women who would have them believe they are in anyway arousal cues for women.

As Roissy’s maxim states – “‘Gina tingles are born in the defensive crouch.”

Iron Rule of Tomassi #3

Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait.

When a woman makes you wait for sex you are not her highest priority. Sexuality is spontaneous chemical reaction between two parties, not a process of negotiation. It’s sex first, then relationship, not the other way around. A woman who wants to fuck you will find a way to fuck you. She will fly across the country, crawl under barbwire, climb in through your second story bedroom window, fuck the shit out of you and wait patiently inside your closet if your wife comes home early from work – women who want to fuck will find a way to fuck. The girl who tells you she needs to be comfortable and wants a relationship first is the same girl who fucked the hot guy in the foam cannon party in Cancun on spring break just half an hour after meeting him.

If a girl is that into you she’ll have sex with you regardless of ASD or having her friends in the room videotaping it at a frat party. All women can be sluts, you just have to be the right guy to bring it out in them, and this happens before you go back to her place. If you have to plead your case cuddling and spooning on the bed or getting the occasional peck on the cheek at the end of the night, you need to go back to square one and start fresh.

The problem most husbands and LTR live-in boyfriends experience in this respect is that there is no opportunity for a fresh start once that pattern of familiarity and comfort has been established and is what’s expected from him.

This principle is easy for us to understand from the man’s side, but what about the woman’s?

Anonymous’ observations here tell a broader story. Dal’s quick-hit post and the article he linked there is well worth the read, but it essentially illustrates a common regret women are forced to acknowledge when they’ve opted out of a relationship, or were opted out of by their men as a result of their protracted dissatisfaction with those women – they simply cannot fathom that the Beta man they cut loose has a sexual market value that other women would not just appreciate, but jump at, far quicker than they imagined.

Considering that 70%+ of all divorces are initiated by women, women opting out is usually the case. If you track along with the time line I presented in Preventive Medicine you can also see that this opt out (first divorce) window usually coincides with the time a man is (should be) experiencing his SMV peak.

After 7 or so years of marriage the familiarity, the routine and the comfort a woman expects from her statistically Beta husband are cemented for her. Reliable, sensible, comforting and responsible make for a great security prospect, but a boring ‘fuck prospect’. Unless that woman is casually, but frequently put into the defensive crouch (via passive dread) that man’s Archetype is set in her mind for her. His behavior is predictable and familiar, and boring to the point that she suspects no woman but her would ‘tolerate’ him.

In fact this perception is reinforced for her, not just by a fem-centric culture, but her husband’s constant self-deprecating praise of how “lucky he is to have a woman like her who’d put up with a guy like him. Haha, LOL.” In spite of all this supplication, women still affirm that man as the unexciting Beta chump who she subconsciously pegs would be entirely optionless in the SMP were (when) he to be re-released back into the wild.

Women want to get with a man that other men want to be, and other women want to fuck.

This is an easy maxim for a woman who’s single, but it takes on new imperatives when that man is fighting against the familiarity and comfort elements that come with long term monogamy and living together. That familiar complacency combined with Hypergamic social expectations makes women doubt that the man they thought other women might compete for has morphed into an optionless schlub only she would have the patience to constantly tolerate.

One of the reasons I advise against men and women shacking up is because the comfort and regularity of that living situation eventually becomes a disincentive for women to maintain a consistent sexual desire and urgency for the man she’s paired with. Women are at their ‘sexual best’ when men keep them at arms reach, and this is primarily due to the anxiety she experiences in the doubt over whether she’ll be able to consolidate on an optimized Hypergamy with that guy.

Post Selection

As Anonymous hints at, there is a form of social proof a ‘released’ man enjoys once he’s been cut from women’s Hypergamous equation. To understand how this works we need to remember that Hypergamy is fundamentally rooted in doubt:

The Abdication Imperative

Hypergamy is rooted in doubt. Hypergamy is an inherently insecure system that constantly tests, assesses, retests and reassesses for optimal reproductive options, long-term provisioning, parental investment, and offspring and personal protection viability in a potential mate. Even under the most secure of prospects hypergamy still doubts. The evolutionary function of this incessant doubt would be a selected-for survival instinct, but the process of hypergamy’s assessment requires too much mental effort to be entirely relegated to women’s subconscious. Social imperatives had to be instituted not only to better facilitate the hypergamous process, but also to reassure the feminine that men were already socially pre-programmed to align with that process.

Dumping a woman is the highest form of social proof for a man.

In no uncertain terms he demonstrates to her that he has the supreme confidence he can find another woman with better prospect than her. Even if this isn’t the pretext of the breakup, this is the message in the medium that she understands; she doesn’t measure up to his expectations.

This then is further compounded by the unconscious knowledge that it should be women who are socially in charge of the sexual selection and approval process. When a man dumps a woman he demonstrably takes that agency away from her.

However, the effectiveness of that social proof for the dumped woman is only proportional to the doubt that he may have been a better, more optimal Hypergamic choice for her. We understand the effectiveness even a fabricated perception of preselection has on women, but depending on the psychological impact a man has, post-selection and the uncertainty of his long term fitness can be so powerful it can create an Alpha Widow of her.

Hypergamous doubt makes women creatures of constant comparison. Thus, when (if) she makes another intimate connection after that breakup, the new guy is held next to the comparison of the previous one. Once that comparison is made, that post-selection value of the previous guy (or lack thereof) becomes reinforced for her.

Starting Over

Women have a biological imperative to restart the Hypergamic process far more rapidly than men when they’re younger and closer to their SMV peak. They have more time to capitalize on it.

However, once they are on the opposite side of the Wall and men are ascending to their own SMV peak, “getting over” the relationship is equated with remarriage because men have the SMV advantage. That previous husband or LTR lover has the power of selection and confirmation she no longer holds as she did in her youth.

Women have far less marketability and prospect to restart that Hypergamic process once this agency exchanges hands with men. They’ve lost on a perceived long-term investment. Thus her brooding fixates on his ease of finding a new mate, with his remarriage being the context of finalizing that break with her.

I should also add that rarely is consideration is given to the incentives and reasons for the breakup whatsoever on her part. Convenient social conventions aid her in thinking she is blameless in the circumstances that led to the split and he is heartless for “getting over’ her at all, much less quickly. We are left to presume that it’s he who should suffer the same or more. He should be pining for her, he should be regretting the split.

It’s far easier for a man to move on with new women when his benchmark for intimacy was set by a sexless marriage to an authoritarian, shaming, shrew. Maybe it’s that thought that really hurts – it was easy to get over her because the opt out for him is sooooo much better a prospect than a lifetime of having to untangle her hangups about him.

Final Thought

Bear in mind this post-selection dynamic is only effective insofar as a man’s SMV can be actualized outside of his previous relationship.

Women only contemplate whether a man has moved on from her quickly when they care to concern themselves with it. If it was she who initiated the breakup with her Beta husband/LTR women are simply indifferent to what the guy is doing a year or so down the road.

Nothing is more satisfying to a woman than to believe she’s figured a man out using her mythical feminine intuition. This works in a positive sense when a man leads her to believe she’s genuinely got inside his head, but it also works in the self-convincing negative sense when she dismisses a guy who no longer qualifies for her long term (or short term sexual) hypergamic interests.

The satisfying feminine indignation comes from convincing herself he was never really as invested as he led her to believe he was. Thus the loss of investment is converted to betrayal and becomes a source of self-righteousness despite any circumstance she contributed to the break herself.