With apologies to my regular readers and commentariat, I’m mid-stream through crafting my next essay and what do I see in the comment feed from last week’s post? Our (our soon to be formerly) Purple Pill friend Mitch returning to give us all an update on what was supposed to be his inevitable married bliss. Rather than allow Mitch’s saga get buried under pages of comments I thought I’d post the continuation of his in-progress unplugging here for others to benefit from. Be sure you read the first case study before you dig into his update below:
Hello Gentlemen,
It’s good to be back here reading your insightful, intelligent, funny, actionable posts. I’ve been away for awhile. Glad to see Rollo’s blog and books doing so well. Congratulations sir, and I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my purple-but-slowly-turning-red heart for your work. I am now eating my previous words about this being ideological and cult-like. lol. Some might remember that I was the eponymous subject of one of Rollo’s posts on purple pill, and the ensuing discussion about whether I was setting myself up for slaughter in marrying a Ukrainian I’d met online. I (basically) said I’m a big boy now at 50, and know what I’m doing with women, and would let ya’ll know how it worked out. Not that anyone gives a rat’s ass after all my bullshit, but whatever, here I am.
Funny thing is that I’d been thinking about posting this update a few days ago, after reconnecting with TRM blog, and I would have said something along the lines of: she has been here almost 9 months, we been married for 5, going reasonably well, regular and enjoyable sex, she cooks everything from scratch and takes good care of me and the house; she’s diligently studying english, meeting people, etc, seems mostly happy; without fail she packs my lunch every night – once she woke up at about 1 am and remembered she had not made my lunch for work next day, and even though I told her not to worry about it, she got up, and went downstairs and *cooked* me lunch. Her responsibility, she said. She also genuinely likes me, and is very loving and affectionate and passionate in bed. We’ve had some conflict, and I’ve mostly held my ground, but made some fairly key concessions in the spirit of playing fair (since she has, in actuality at this point, zero leverage in this relationship), and accommodating her wants and needs.
And hypergamy doesn’t give a fuck.
Lo and behold, yesterday the computer is open and I see a ‘Hi’ come across the screen from Skype from a male. Open the Skype window and she’s been chatting with this dude from New Hampshire or some shit, not long, but the kind of bare bones swapping of details – the guy’s on hunt for a wife, and she’s asking about the size of his town, and what’s the weather like, how many kids, etc. As the blood drains from my face, the veil parts, I see it for what it is, and I realize without a shadow of a doubt, this shit is real. Complete with the subsequent hamstering and total lack of accountability following.
I don’t believe she was actually interacting with this guy with any conscious intent to find someone else, but clearly she thinks about it, and is willing to “play” with the idea, even at a time when she has sooo much to lose. I could withdraw my petition to get her a green card in two seconds, and she’s done. I think she was/is bored and enjoys the attention and validation, and sense of (diminishing) power that she has over men.
So now I need to figure out what to do. i am beyond grateful for Rollo’s work, this blog, and forum, and having internalized RP to the limited extent that I have, and know I need to do A LOT more. It’s pretty humbling to be 50 and need to be totally schooled in something so basic. It’s fricking amazing that I have managed to hide myself from this knowledge for so long.
Thank you.
[…]
I meant to also say that I have learned a ton from you guys, and really appreciate the time and energy that many of you spent last fall trying to get me to get my head out of my ass. What can I say, I need to learn the hard way. Truth is, though, you guys were so vehement about it, that it definitely helped me to keep myself in reserve and react a bit more strategically to her.
Just to preface here, my intent isn’t to be cruel or pop of with ‘I todja so’, but I think it’s very important for guys in the various stages of unplugging to see Mitch’s situation as a clinical example. I’m not trying to flame you or pillory you Mitch, but your situation does serve as a good example.
As I mentioned in the first post about Mitch, there is a visceral desire on the part of Purple Pill men to force fit the parts of Red Pill awareness into Blue Pill idealisms and personal convictions because they simple cannot face the abyss of what a full Red Pill awareness presents to the belief set that the Blue Pill has conditioned them for. It is truly awful to be confronted with unflattering truths about the nature of women as well as a man’s coming to realize he’s got to drop all of his previous idealism and create a new, positive, paradigm for himself based on Red Pill awareness. For a lot of men inured by the Blue Pill it’s just too horrible to let go of those hopes based in a false awareness of their experience.
Thus, we get tropes like “well, the Red Pill is true, but it’s okay to have ONEitis for a girl because my new awareness insulates me from the worst effects of it.” Mitch even began his first entreaty by claiming this woman was “the ONE.”
I’d like to encourage men who still want a good wife to look East. As in, Russia, Ukraine and other former USSR counties. I cannot begin to tell you how encouraged and revitalized I am by this woman I met – and by most of the women I met and interacted with before I found “the One.”
Shades of Purple
I’m beginning to see that there are two varieties of Purple Pill men; the first is the guy whose revenue and wellbeing depends on his only accepting what the Red Pill presents to him in half-measure. These are the Man-Up, do the right thing moralists who only ever marginally warn against the nature of women while believing that the self-improvement imperative that the Red Pill represents to men will more than compensate for the very real dangers of a man not fully killing his inner Beta. These are usually the guys who at one time were solidly Red Pill and used that awareness to their personal benefit with women (and life), but at some stage their life’s circumstance demanded that they “change their ways” and shift back to believing that Blue Pill ideals can be had with Red Pill means. These are the men who follow The Script.
The second type of Purple Pill man is the one who never fully unplugged. I believe this was where Mitch was when I outlined his situation in the first essay. There is a certain class of men who simply cannot ignore the truths that the Red Pill presents to them, and they eagerly endorse the tenets and the understanding of women’s visceral natures. Hypergamy doesn’t care, they get the dynamics of Alpha Fucks/Beta Bucks, they even believe they’ve come to terms with their own (often Beta) nature and what it is they believe is necessary to effect a change in their lives; yet there are aspects of that Red Pill awareness that they desperately want to reconcile with their long-held Blue Pill idealistic hopes. So, as a result, they attempt to discard or ignore whatever aspect of the Red Pill that isn’t conducive to making those old Blue Pill dreams come true.
For as long as I’ve been writing in the Manosphere I’ve always made a point of telling men never to use my marriage (or other Red Pill married men’s marriages) as some kind of template or goal to be had with Red Pill awareness. I realize that my own Red Pill marriage seems like some ideal to strive for, but what I think most unmarried single men need to consider is that, for the vast majority of men who’ve been able to unplug, remake themselves and employ an internalized understanding of Red Pill awareness within their marriages and in their families, these men do so in spite of themselves.
Very few men I know of, whom I’d say are Red Pill aware husbands and fathers, did not set out to be so. I have no doubt that in the future I’ll encounter men who were formerly Blue Pill and Beta who changed themselves, unplugged, became Red Pill aware, internalized it and used it to enter into a marriage wherein his Frame was always the primary and his wife intrinsically recognized it and was attracted to him because of it. I do hope this is eventually the case for some men, but as it stands now, the far more common occurrence is the Blue Pill, Beta husband who was “awakened while married” and turned his marriage back from the brink – if indeed that is the case at all. Even more commonly it is divorced men put through the ringer who unplugged post-divorce.
As I mentioned in the first case study about Mitch is his story is engaging because it so faithfully follows the progression of rationales Purple Pill men will use in order to hold fast to their old, comfortable mindset – in this case it’s the Blue Pill dream of an idyllic marriage had through Red Pill means.
One danger I think should be apparent to Red Pill men having to deal with a Purple Pill guy who’s hostile and resistant to what they’re trying to tell him is the potential disaster a Purple Pill man is setting himself up for in his inability to really stare at the abyss, work through the anger and hopelessness, and then recreate himself. This, I feel, is where that resistance stems from. It’s not so much an inability to acknowledge the truth of what real Red Pill intersexual dynamics is showing him, but rather how he will internalize, process and use that to create a better life for himself. So you get anger, not at the message as much as the messenger, when you tell him his sincere hopes are based on a Blue Pill interpretation of what a ‘good marriage’ is:
Lol…you guys can go fuck yourselves. I appreciate where ya’ll are coming from, though. Trying to save me from myself. And i appreciate how naive my post must sound to a bunch of hard core red pillers like yourselves. However, I am not nearly as inexperienced with women and LTR’s as ya’ll assume. I have learned a lot from red pill in general and this site in particular – it’s very insightful and helpful, and I’ve adjusted my attitude and posture toward women because of it. At the same time, though, it strikes me that many of you are taking on red pill ideas as a kind of ideology, and that’s its own kind of danger. The absolute certainty that ya’ll think you know all you need to know about me and my woman and my relationship from that very brief post is what I mean. As if red-pill theory, or whatever it is, completely and concisely explains the total dynamic between a man and woman. Red pill explains a lot of things really well, but certainly not the totality of the mystery that is between a man a woman in a marriage.
And yet, it does and it did.
If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, then I feel sorry for you. Red pill helps me tremendously in seeing more clearly what is going on. I totally get that I am a beta provider for her, that a large part of my appeal is what I can provide, and I get that she is turned on by alpha traits. Both of these things can coexist in the same person. Understanding this and what’s behind it makes me feel less anxious and insecure about that, because I’m more clear about what to do.
Also, being a beta provider does not make me a bitch. Providing for my woman and family is a large part of what makes me a man, and I derive great satisfaction and pride in doing so.
Also, I am not in any way “settling” for a 44 yo woman. Younger women were/are available to me, but that is not what i choose.There’s a lot more to life than fucks and bucks, but if that’s all it is for you, then this is the type of woman you will attract. In a relationship, what you get is what you are. If I can’t find a way to live with an open heart, then I don’t know what the fucking point is. But, to each his own.
So, here we are. And again, it’s hard for this not to come off as a big ‘I toldja so’, but I think it’s even more important for Red Pill men who have it in them to want to help a Blue Pill guy unplug, or hell, just to even recognize the reasons why he’s in the personal circumstances he is, to remember that the Purple Pill guy is only lashing out because he fears the totality of the truth that Red Pill awareness brings into his life. As I always say, unplugging guys from the Matrix is dirty work, but I am genuinely glad to have Mitch back on track and hopefully he’s learned something from the experience. I think other Red Pill men should adopt the same spirit of welcoming a Blue/Purple Pill prodigal son back into the fold.
So that’s my take, but please feel free to comment on Mitch’s situation in the comments thread.