Choose Wisely

Potential vs. Struggle

“Women don’t care about the struggle. They wait at the finish line and fuck the winners.”

Rich Cooper

This is a popular belief in the Manosphere today. Hypergamous stress is so intense that women have turned into mercenaries with respect to vetting the men they’ll accept to plan a future with. I’ll admit, a lot of well-meaning Red Pill men believe women’s Hypergamous Filter is necessarily amoral if not overtly cruel. The ill-informed critics of Hypergamy believe in a binary extreme. They presume that all those Red Pill guys are self-defeated by the idea that all women are prostitutes and only “out to get theirs“. This is simplistic ignorance of the concept of Hypergamy meant to dissuade the curious from Red Pill truths that they refuse to process. But do they kind of have a point though?

Virtually every extreme of MGTOW and the Mens Rights Movement have some open variation of how Hypergamy is a straight jacket and

“Why bother with a woman for anything other than a short term fuck if her Hypergamous nature will just predispose her to jumping ship to the first guy who comes along with a bigger dick or a bigger wallet?”

I covered all of these is detail in Hypergamy – The Misconceptions a while ago in case you’re curious as to why these are unfounded, and more often deliberate, misunderstandings of women’s nature. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m backpedaling on anything I’ve ever written about Hypergamy.

A couple weeks ago I got wrapped up in a Twitter exchange about the conflict between whether women indeed wait for the winners at the finish line or they make calculated bets about a man’s future potential.

Women are not investors when it comes to men. They are not going to waste time with someone “going places”

They are capitalists, they will find a guy who already made it and jump on that band wagon instead

— Wall Street Playboys (@WallStPlayboys) May 12, 2019

From a pragmatic point of view I’m very much inclined to agree with this assessment. Yes, it makes women seem overly mercenary with respect to Hypergamy, but I’ve said it as much myself in any number of prior essays:

Women can only willingly want to please a man whose Frame is the dominant one. You’ve got to have that world established that she wants to enter and become a complementary, supportive (of you) and willing participant in. This world-building takes time. Women evolved to seek competency in men. Hypergamy cannot afford to bet all of a woman’s genetic legacy on a guy who has “potential” – they want the proven commodity. This is one reason women look for men older and taller than they are. More importantly, you need a woman who is playing on your team, not against you. And sadly this is the state of marriage promoted by the Feminine Imperative today. Egalitarianism doesn’t promote complementary cooperation, it promotes an adversarial state of competition between husband and wife.

The Marriage Game

In a purely evolutionary context it’s true; because a woman’s sexual market value – and ultimately her only agency with men – is perishable Hypergamy cannot afford for a woman to waste her time on a ‘good bet‘. This truth is a basic, Darwinistic, rule for women’s sexual strategy.

Despite all the social conventions to make them believe otherwise, women’s hindbrains know that their sexual agency and prime fertility window in life is limited. This creates a degree of urgency in a woman as she gets closer to, or ages past, the Wall. This understanding necessitates tradeoffs, but optimally a woman would prefer not to take chances with her reproductive future – and ultimately her life’s future.

For the more nihilistically inclined men of the ‘sphere, this Darwinistic determinism seems like a reproductive death sentence. If women only fuck the winners at the finish line, and you’re a loser, you may as well give up and go jerk off, right? This defeatism is a core tenet of the Black Pill.

All that said, a lot of people disagree with this assessment:

Jack knows I love him, but he is living with a girl much younger than himself. While I think that’s cool, and proof of Red Pill concept, he is actually living out the point being made here. Statistically, women tend to prefer men who are 5 to 7 years their senior. Another aspect of women’s evolved mental firmware is the natural attraction to older men as prospective long term mates. Women know that it takes men longer to mature into the genuine value that her Hypergamous Filters test for. An older rich man is always more believable than a younger rich man. Women tend to pair with a man their senior because Hypergamy doesn’t need to wait on his potential when he’s already a proven commodity.

Most of the criticism in this thread centers on exaggerating the age of “marriageable men” to the point of absurdity, but women do look for long term security as a prime requisite of the men they hope to pair for life with. There is a root-level presumption in women, correct or not, that an older man will have established the status and resources a woman needs in a long term partner. In fact, our feminine-primary social order shames men for not preparing to assume this role of security provider for women by a certain age (usually 30ish).

Alexander is also a good friend, but I’m going to disagree with half of his assessment. Women don’t readily recognize potential in men. In fact most of them are piss poor at it. This is because they’ve been socially conditioned to focus more on themselves (and exacerbated by their innate solipsism) than be concerned with making a good assessment of men’s potential for future success.

Now, before you think I’m siding with the Hypergamous nihilists, this did give me pause to step back and assess my stance on women reading men’s potentials to provide for their future security. And that last part is the most important because women’s sexual strategy has two parts: Alpha Fucks – short term sexual needs – and Beta Bucks – long term provisioning and security needs. It’s the latter that we’re discussing in this debate.

Women want to fuck the winners in the short term, but they will also assess a man’s potential for the long term.

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.

The Epiphany Phase Revisited

In the essay Women’s Existential Fear I also made the following proposition:

The Existential Fear in women is that their innate, Hypergamous Filter, their Feminine Intuition, might be fooled, and by being fooled she may either die or have her reproductive potential compromised for her lifetime by bearing and raising the child of man who is a suboptimal Hypergamous choice for her – a man who exerted his will over her Hypergamous choosing filters.

Making Choices

All of this presumes that a woman is in some way testing for a man’s potential. Even women’s autonomous shit testing is a confirmation of this. So yes, women do look for potential in men. Some better than others. The Hypergamous Filter is an imperfect tool which is exactly why women needed to mystify their feminine intuition in popular understanding. Men had to be kept in the dark as to a woman’s motives because their filters have always been intuitive guesswork. This is a vulnerability that men might exploit – with good Game for instance – if women were ever honest about it.

Not all women can fuck the winners so they have to make calculated bets on men. This is also a reason women rely on social proof and the preselection cues of other women. If other women find a guy to be a ‘good bet’ it provides her a short cut to getting to intimacy. Again, Hypergamy cannot afford to miss out on a socially confirmed ‘good bet’. And yes, this is also a vulnerability in women’s vetting process that men with good Game regularly exploit.

So, the tradeoff is this: when a woman is at her peak sexual market value (SMV) she has the leisure to fuck the winners at the finish line. The more her SMV decays the fewer her options become, and the more likely it is that her necessity requires her to make a ‘bet’ on a man’s future potential. This is the primary reason women opt for the Beta in Waiting around her Epiphany Phase. Necessity forces her to go with good potential.

One of the ways feminism and female-primacy sabotages women’s ability to vet for good potential is in the mythology surrounding their sexual viability as they get older. Social conventions constantly reinforce the false idea that a woman’s SMV is indefinite – and by extension her agency over men should also be indefinite. This is why Blank Slate idealism and Social Constructionism are a preferred mythology for women. Without the Blank Slate a woman would be forced to accept the evolved realities of her sex. The Blank Slate is a prime source of women’s solipsistic denial of her own nature.

Turnkey Men

Do women care about the struggle? Do women ever appreciate the sacrifices a man must make to facilitate their own realities? I explored this topic a long time ago in Appreciation and I’m still going with my old assessment, no.

It may be that a man of Rich Cooper’s age, affluence and status only attracts the ‘finish line girls’ because he’s already a made man. He’s an attractive catch because he’s already a proven commodity. Thus, he tends to attract women who are looking for a ‘Turnkey’ man with an established world into which they want to move.

I should also add that most middle aged women, past their sexual prime and well past any long term potential they may’ve had themselves universally look for the ‘Turnkey’ man – once they’re done playing cougar immediately after their divorce. This is another illustration of women’s sexual strategy from the post-Wall side. Alpha Fucks – Beta Bucks never changes, only the context does. Post divorce women go through a second Epiphany Phase right after the divorce. Play cougar and fuck the fun college guys if they can because it’s easy, but be on the lookout for a ‘Turnkey’ winner who’s still ignorant of his Blue Pill conditioning at 45.

Whether it’s a woman in her late 20s or a post-Wall ‘mature woman‘ a man’s struggles to become her ideal is largely irrelevant to her. WHile women are speculators with respect to men it’s the end result of those struggles that’s the operative for her. Almost every woman who disagreed in the Twitter thread above all had some success story of how their brilliant feminine intuition led to them investing in the man they’re so proud to call a husband now. None of them were about how they made a horrible mistake in betting their future on a losing horse. So it’s important to see how the results skew for women.

Women will readily make claims on Relational Equity as an insurance against his leaving her later, once he’s achieved that potential. His struggle and her bearing through it with him is only important in that it produced the positive results she’d hoped for. That ‘dedication’ of seeing it through is her relationship insurance. It’s why women despise and reinforce the “trophy wife” meme. It’s prime indignation to have a man betray her speculation on him by rewarding a younger, hotter, tighter woman at the finish line.

Your struggle is her burden despite you having to bear it under duress of her abandoning you if you failed. Women will never appreciate the sacrifices a man makes to facilitate a reality, her sexual/life strategy, she believes was always her due. You just did what you were supposed to do as a man. Women believe it is their due to pair with a man who is worthy of her social media inflated ego. If that sounds harsh remember that women regularly bemoan the lack of men who are their “equal partners” in both money and education well after their prime SMV years are past.

Finally, the reason the finish line metaphor is apt is because more women than ever are postponing marriage in the expectation that ‘Turnkey’ made men will be waiting and available when they hit 31-33 years old, rather than investing in men with good potential in their early to mid 20s. Doing so would mean sacrificing their peak SMV Party Years when someone like Sheryl Sandberg convinces them to wait for the ‘Right Guy‘. It’s simple pragmatism for a woman not to bet her reproductive future on an unproven commodity so early in life. If she does, and it works out for the best, she’s practically sainted by the Sisterhood for her prudence and sacrifice for him. Behind every great man is a woman, right?

But if she chooses unwisely and her life goes to hell she’s wasted her own potential on a bad bet. Social conventions can mitigate this of course. Men can always be blamed for her downfall, but she’s still saddled with the consequences of that bad bet. And it is exactly these consequences of a bad Hypergamous choice that the Feminine Imperative will bend all its power to legally and socially insure against for women (i.e. legal abortion, child support laws, #MeToo, the Duluth Model of feminism).

All of this is why women are pushing their decision to marry, if at all, back to older and older ages. The average age of first marriage today is 27-28 for women, and the overall marriage rate has been in free-fall for decades now. This is why. This evolved dynamic is conflicting with our present age’s social imperatives for women and the falsehoods they are conditioned to believe about their sex from the earliest ages.

If you liked this topic you can also listen to my discussion about it with Donovan Sharpe here: