The Epiphany Phase Revisited

One of the best things about the Red Pill being a praxeology is that nothing’s set in stone. Like any good science there’s always room for reinterpretation and updating ideas per new information, or sometimes it’s simply something or some observation that seemingly went overlooked that adjust an old interpretation. Reader Playdontpay brought something to light in an old post, Three Strikes:

I agree with the 3 Strike rule for younger chicks of 30 and under but once she hits about 32 something seems to flip in their heads, women of this age and up seem determined to hold out longer even if they want to fuck.

It’s probably because at this age her clock is ticking and she doesn’t have time to “waste” on flings that would won’t lead to commitment, so she re-invents herself as a “quality woman” in the hope of convincing you that she is LTR/ marriage material.

It’s up to you to decide if you can push the envelope to 5-6 dates max but I would only do this if I was sure it was her ASD holding her back and not down to a low interest level.

If you wait to date 5-6 and the sex is sub par, don’t stick around waiting for it to improve as you’ve been sold a lemon and the juice ain’t worth the squeeze!

This seemingly innocuous comment made me think a lot about some of my older material and how newer readers might interpret it. There’s actually quite a bit to unpack in this short response, so with the benefit of over a decade of hindsight I thought I might riff on it.

“…once she hits about 32 something seems to flip in their heads, women of this age and up seem determined to hold out longer even if they want to fuck.”

Any long time reader of this blog will immediately associate this phenomenon with the Epiphany Phase women enter when the reality of their lessened capacity to compete intrasexually with their younger sisters becomes unignorable. Generally this phase comes at or around the ages of 29-31, however, depending on circumstance this may come sooner for some women (those whose attractiveness is already understood to be suboptimal), and sometimes much later for others (women who bought into the lie that their attractiveness is subjective and indefinite). I’ve written many essays about this phase and dedicated two sections of Preventive Medicine to it. It’s very recognizable, and very understandable when you have a good grasp of how women prioritize the ‘needs’ of their sexual strategy as they mature.

The Epiphany Phase is really a woman’s subconscious knowledge of The Wall coming into her cognitive acknowledgement. However, what’s not so easy to grasp is why a woman who’s come to this phase would actually make it more difficult for a prospective long-term, parentally invested, hopefully idealized, mate to become intimate with her?

On several occasions I’ve proposed just the opposite; that Hypergamy cannot afford to wait for 100% perfect confirmation of a man’s Alpha status before she has sex with him. This Hypergamic bypass is actually one vulnerability women have with respect to well calibrated Game. Even for women in the luteal phase of ovulatory shift, (when by all means she ought to be seeking the provisioning, comforting and rapport of more Beta men’s attentions) women will be prompted to sexual immediacy and urgency when presented with the prospects of fucking – and hopefully locking down – what she sees as an Alpha man. It is entirely possible to bypass women’s natural, ovulation-induced, Hypergamy when you present yourself as the right Alpha incentive to her (I’ve done this myself). This is the prioritization women’s natural sexual strategy has, and in reality, a woman faking an orgasm for a perceived Alpha, or having proceptive sex with him in her luteal phase only confirms the urgency women’s natural Hypergamy has with regard to locking down an optimal man.

But why would a woman who, for all intents, knows her capacity to attract men is waning be so insistent on delaying her becoming intimate with him? This seems counterintuitive, particularly in light of the fact that most women in their younger, Party Years eagerly had sex with men for whom they made little or no ‘rules’ for in order to become sexual with them. It’s a common enough idea in the manosphere that women will ride the ‘cock carousel’ in their 20s until they realize a lessened capacity to attract guys and then seek to cash out of the sexual marketplace before or around 30. Usually this ends up with a girl settling for a Beta in waiting.

But why would the rules and prerequisites be something she insists on now but didn’t while she was in her sexual peak years?

Vaginas and Moral Compasses

There was a recent article on the HuffPo quoting Cate Blanchett saying “My moral compass is in my vagina“, and while this might be the red meat clickbait the HuffPo relies upon for revenue, it adequately sums up how Hypergamy, a woman’s sexual agency and a woman’s capacity to utilize it throughout her life directs women’s intrinsic and extrinsic priorities throughout their lives. I realize this wasn’t how Cate intended her comment to be taken; she wanted to express some inherent guiding principle for women in an era she believes women are still repressed in, but in doing so she illustrates the real compass women have with regard to moral interpretations of their ideas and behaviors. If something gratifies, optimizes or otherwise benefits a woman’s driving impulse of Hypergamy, it sets a rationale for moral interpretation by her. Or in other words, if it’s good for what optimizes Hypergamy, it’s good for women.

As men we want the easy answer to be the best answer. So it seems obvious to us that a woman making arbitrarily ‘new’ rules of intimacy for her prospectively long-term suitors would follow some epiphany where she comes to her senses, realizes the error of her ways and strives for being some new ‘quality woman’ to represent herself as. As such, her quality should symmetrically be matched by a man’s quality. And that quality should logically take some time to determine. This is, in fact, most women’s self and public rationale for making a ‘quality’ man wait for her sexually when in the past she had no such obstacles for the hawt guy she met on spring break in the Cancun foam cannon party.

We want to believe this because we’re taught to expect such reasonings from a girl who now, at 29, wants to get right with God or “start doing things the right way” with guys. Social conventions abound that condition us to expect that once women, “get it out of their systems” (by following the Sandbergian sexual strategy) she’ll realize the errors of her youthful indiscretion and magically transform into a “Quality Woman”. We want to believe it, and it’s in women’s best interests that we do believe it.

Most Beta men (and not a few self-described Red Pill men) want to believe in a woman’s Epiphany about herself. They love nothing better than the idea of the reformed porn star who’s finally “grown up” and come to her senses about the error of her youth’s indiscretions with the guys they grew up to hate as an archetype. Better still, they’ll feed that rationale/fantasy in the hope that her Epiphany will include her saving her best sex for him since now she’s come to understand that it’s been the ‘nice guys’ all along she ought to have been getting with if not for ‘society’ convincing her otherwise.

The reformed-slut-with-epiphany archetype is a trope Beta men want to forgive because it represents vindication for their self-image, Blue Pill conviction and perseverance (they never gave up on her). Women with the pasts that make them good candidates for eliciting this rationale know men well enough to see the utility it has in securing Blue Pill men’s resources and long term security.

Socially, she’s got countless sources of ‘go grrrl’ moral reinforcement from both men and women. In fact, as a Man, just my bringing this to light makes me guilty of being “judgmental” in popular female-defined culture. And that’s the insurance women will always have in their Epiphany Phase – whether it’s a reformed slut coming to terms with the Wall at 29, or the ex-wife who frivorced her dutiful (but unexciting) Beta to have her own epiphany and discover herself a la Eat, Prey, Love, the social net of feminine-primacy is there with easy rationalizations to catch any and every woman’s Hypergamous fall.

Holding Out

Yet still she hesitates in giving herself to that Beta provisioner.

We excuse this hesitation by claiming it’s because, now, she wants to be extra sure about him. The Alpha men she so effortlessly gave herself to were all, of course, wolves in sheep’s clothing (e.g. men are evil) and in her epiphany she must exercise caution. And if you think it’s because of anything else, well, you’re a misogynist, so shut up.

A woman holding out on a guy during this phase of her life really isn’t about any moral epiphany, it’s really her hindbrain coming to terms with having to make herself become sexual with a type of guy whom previously she would never have naturally flowed into having sex with. We like to think a now ‘quality woman’ is deserving of putting a man through a set of qualifying tests, that seems like appropriate prudence, but in fact her reservation about fucking him comes from a deep seated, subconscious understanding that, while the guy might make for an excellent parental investment, he’s not going to be someone she feels a sexual urgency to fuck.

Later she’ll bemoan that she’d rather cry over an asshole than date a guy who bores her, but in the Epiphany she has to force this subconscious understanding down in order to better insure her Hypergamous security into the future.

This latent, limbic sexual uncertainty has nothing to do with vetting the ‘perfect guy’ for the ‘quality woman’ it’s about a woman, who likely for the first time in her life, is presented with the challenge of having to bypass her hindbrain Hypergamy in order to secure her long term security. Thus, we see this demographic of women make even more rules for a Beta to deserve her intimacy, while a more Alpha tingle-generating man she was more than willing to break rules to get to bed with.

It’s important that we focus on the idea that a man, any man, ought to be deserving of a woman’s sexual ‘gift’. We get this rationale from the affirmations of even the most well meaning of men. Even though the concept of Hypergamy is regularly proven through her Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks strategy prior to her epiphany, the Beta mindset is always ready to do more and expect more from men who would get with his ‘quality woman’. A woman on the expiration of her SMV likes nothing more than to be told, and to encourage the idea in men, that “she deserves better” in spite of her past decisions.

Yet still she hesitates having sex with the ‘perfect’ guy who is ready to overlook all of it.

This is an internal conflict between what her psyche knows she needs to do to ensure her security, and what her hindbrain wants in an exciting Alpha lover. What “flips” in a woman’s head is her inability to resolve her sexuality with her self-consciousness in having to force it to be with a man who likely doesn’t merit it for her – but this meriting her sex, up to now, has always been a process she left to her hindbrain to decide. In a sense it is quality control, but not for the self-righteous rationales we’re supposed to believe it is.

There is a lot of inner negotiation on the part of women entering their Epiphany Phase, trying to reconcile the long term security needs of her Super Ego and the visceral short term sexual needs of her Id. At some point, what sexualized qualities satisfies a woman’s Id she no longer has the capacity to maintain so there comes an inner conversation of negotiation over what available man represents the best compromise depending on her need and her acknowledgement of it – and her true capacity to satisfy her long term security with or without him.

Now introduce a Beta man into this inner negotiation; one who’s been preparing his whole life to be the best, most dependable provisioner that his conditioning would make of him. His influence enters the negotiation process, but her Id can never find satisfaction. Thus, the negotiation becomes one of her Ego negotiating with her Id trying to convince it to refigure it’s visceral Alpha Fucks needs to accommodate this guy since he represents just such long term security as the Super Ego needs.

There’s a bit more to this reevaluation of the Epiphany Phase I may do soon in another post. However, I think I should add here that a lot of not-so-genuine confusion on the part of well-meaning guys about why a woman would so easily break her own rules to fuck an Alpha guy while require them to jump through hoops to get to a mitigated sexuality with her is primarily due to a woman’s hindbrain expectation about what sex should be like with either type of guy.

I’ve related in the past how women will gladly engage in a same night lay with a guy they see as a hot Alpha sex opportunity, but would never consider if she saw the guy as “relationship material”. This situation is a clichéd joke now – we laugh at it as “chick logic”, but the more Blue Pill men become aware of the Myth of the Good Guy the more these quandaries will give them pause to think about the women whose pasts they’re ready to excuse and the women they’re simply never going to consider “relationship material” themselves. They’ll think twice about the social order that’s encouraging them to “man up and marry those sluts”.