Articles by Rollo Tomassi

Author of The Rational Male and The Rational Male, Preventive Medicine

“You’ve been with how many girls?!”

Rational reader Poker ran this one by me recently:

I’ve been seeing this girl and we’ve slept together a few times… Today, in bed, I got asked, “How may girls have I been with?” and “Why won’t I be her friend on Facebook?”

How many girls question…

Here’s how I handled it – would love to know if you think this was handled properly… (using cocky-funny attitude)

Me: “I don’t tell that.”
Her: “More or less than 20?”
Me: “I have some freedom of information forms in the car – you could fill one out and get your answer in 20 years.”
Her: “Don’t you want to know how many guys I’ve been with?”
Me: “No.”

Iron Rule of Tomassi # 2

NEVER, under pain of death, honestly or dishonestly reveal the number of women you’ve slept with or explain any detail of your sexual experiences with them to a current lover.

The single most disastrous AFC move a man can make is to OVERTLY describe past sexual experiences and/or give a number (accurate or not) to how many women he’s been with prior to the one he’s with. This simple act, whether you offered the information or she dragged it out of you, ALWAYS comes off as pretentiousness and is often the catalyst for an avalanche of emotional resentment, if not outright emotional blackmail from an insecure woman. This is a rookie mistake that will only take you once to learn.

If a woman puts you on the spot by directly asking you for this information always sidestep this COVERTLY. C&F works wonders in this situation and still keeps the air of mystery and challenge about you.

Her: “So how many girls have you been with?”
You: “You’re my first actually”
Her: “Really, how many girls have you been with?”
You:” You mean tonight?”
Her: “C’mon, how many girls have you been with?”
You: “You know, I really lost count after 50” (or something outrageous).

When a woman asks you this question she is seeking confirmation of what she already suspects – NEVER give her this satisfaction. When a woman resorts to OVERT communication (COVERT being her native language) she’s generally exhausted her patience to be COVERT and this is a desperation tactic for an insecure woman.

While this scenario may be fraught with potential disaster, it is also an opportunity to encourage her imagination and prompt some competition anxiety.

Her: “How many girls have you been with?”
You: “I have an idea, lets fuck and then you can tell me how many girls you think I’ve been with, OK?”

A lot of Game rookies think that since they’ve only been with 1 or 2 women in their lives what’s the harm in open, honest, full disclosure? Like most Betas they bought the “open communication is the secret to a good relationship” meme long ago, so the impulse to be upfront is their default response. They tend not to see the utility in  keeping that information, or being ambiguous about it, plants a seed of competition anxiety. When she KNOWS she’s your first, you’ve just abdicated the frame to her in any kind of relationship. Second, if she’s your 9th then every girl up to 8 becomes a stamp in her collection to use against you in the first fight you have. Every date you take her on she wonders “Did he take #6 here too?” It’s as if you cheated on her with every previous girl up to her. I should also add that this is the first question a BPD (borderline personality disorder) woman will ask you so she can feel horrible about herself for not measuring up to “your standards” and drag you into the emotional hell-pit with her.

Kill the Beta

Rational reader Paul recently sought out my guidance for probably the single most asked for advice I receive.

I’ve read through your blog entirely, and my biggest issue is, how do I kill the beta? Every girl I sleep with, or even fool around with, I end up developing feelings for. Even if it was a one night stand or the girl is cheating on a bf with me. It’s like I have no self control; like I’m a girl that agonizes over every guy she sleeps with.

I wish I honestly had a definitive answer for Paul. If I could construct some step-by-step program, a universal template that men could all follow in order to kill their inner Beta, I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams. Just as I said with about the Alpha Buddha, if I could find a way to bottle the essence of Alpha I’d be set for life. The real truth is that there is no simple answer to this, because each man’s conditions are unique to him. To be sure there are common roots to their problems, and common mindsets that form as results of attempting to formulate working sexual strategies (Beta Game) within the feminine Matrix, but undoing these mental schemas and reforming a better functional sexual strategy is unique to the individual.

I feel that this is the major reason Game is not taken as seriously as it should be – it’s a lot of work doing your own self-analysis and then creating a strategy to remake yourself. One of the reasons PUA gurus and the Game demigods of the last decade seem so cheap, like snake oil salesmen, is because they fail to take into account the degree of personalization necessary to truly kill the inner Beta that guys eventually have to confront. That’s an element of internalized Game that the guys doing seminars would rather not address because your degree of success, in truth how you even measure success, is entirely dependent upon you. Hooking up with girls you’d never had access to before may sell pick up DVDs; changing the inner workings of your personality is a much tougher order. If you ever look through the ‘self-help’ psychology section of a book store and wonder why there are so many books published in the topic, it’s exactly due to this dynamic – effecting a fundamental change in one’s life requires an effort that few people have the patience and perseverance for.

So with all of this in mind, let me say right now, I don’t have a map for you – anyone telling you they do is selling you something – however, I will attempt to point you in the right direction. I can’t say what will work, only you can find that out on your own, but try to bear in mind that changing yourself is a process that takes time. Even for the guy’s who have an easier go of transitioning to an internal Game-state personality, it’s still an ongoing process. I’d like to think of myself as at least a lesser Alpha (by Roissy’s measure), but that doesn’t mean I don’t trip up at times. This is what I mean by the process; you’re not going to be bulletproof and pass every shit test ever thrown at you, but be encouraged in knowing you learn from what you do wrong and adjust for the next time. There is no grand arrival moment when you know you’re an Alpha, or if you don’t like that term, there is no definitive point at which you’ve internalized Game. You don’t get some certificate of Game completion. You can, however, definitively change your thinking, it’s always on-going.

Knowing is half the battle

If there truly is a first step in internalization then it has to come from educating yourself. This is actually one of the most difficult tasks. If you’re a reader of my blog, or are at least peripherally aware of Game as a concept, this is going to seem pretty obvious, but remember that there’s an entire world of men who are still plugged in. Only a fraction of them will even be amenable to considering Game and positive masculinity, and fewer still will see its value. From our perspective it seems like a matter of course; we read the books/blogs, familiarize ourselves with the concepts, we pick what might work, experiment with ideas, evaluate the validity of them and adopt them or toss them. However what’s apparent to the unplugged seems like blaspheme to the plugged in.

Your “education” doesn’t stop once you’ve unplugged. In fact I’d argue that it’s even more vital in internalizing a new mindset since you’re now putting things into practice. One thing I remind guys who spit the red pill back up is that there is no going back. A lot of frustrated guys who discover Game and fail to apply it because they lack the social skills or they convinced themselves that PUArtistry was their easy magic formula to fuck the girl of their dreams, they tend to want to regress back into the comfortable shell of their former ignorance of intergender social dynamics. Only they find that there is no return. They see the truth in the what they’d been blind to no matter where they turn. The social interactions, the feminization, the raw deal they’ve been conditioned to accept as normal – all of that subtly reminds them of the truth they’re avoiding and they hate it. They become hostile to it.

I add this because it’s a very real danger for guys transitioning into internalizing positive masculinity. In the same respect you now have become (or should become) more sensitive to Game truths and the unplugged reality you now find yourself in. There’s a point of departure from what you thought was normal to seeing the signs around you. An easy illustration is really contemplating any gender related issue in popular media. You’ll hear a song, watch a sit-com, overhear a conversation in the lunch room, and begin to realize how surrounded you are by basic presumptions of a culture remade by feminine primacy. Understanding what your position in all of this is is crucial to internalizing a new mindset or backsliding into your old frame of thinking.

Practicing the change

It should be self-evident that applying what you’ve come to see as a new truth for yourself is vital. You need to get off the internet and field test the theories you learn here and elsewhere. Whether that means going to sarge at the clubs, or adopting a new attitude with your wife, or even the women you deal with at work, it’s really up to you. The hardest part of practicing change is the initial shock of having the people who know you question the validity of the new you. If you were to move to a new city, completely change your social circle and play the role of an asshole Alpha, no one is the wiser. However, make a radical shift in your personality with those who’ve known you for years and you’ll be a poser who’s “trying to be something he’s not”.

Human beings need predictability – it gives them a sense of control over others. When you alter yourself, or have your personality altered by an outside force, this is a threat to that predictability, so the logical counter is for others to attempt to put us back into our places. Shaming comes as a natural tactic for women, but the push is always to get you back into their frame. And that’s essentially the threat others interpret, the new you is a frame grab. Do it all at once and people will accuse your personality of being a disingenuous reaction to having been burned. Do it subtly and persistently over a time and people will be more willing to accept the change as genuine. Always insist on change, but never too quickly.

This is important to remember because your friends will be your biggest source of doubt in your transformation. They might mean well, but understand, that intent comes from a desire to see normalcy, not your best interest. The first time an old girl-friend you had a thing for calls the new you an “asshole”, it’s kind of a shock to the system. There’s always this stab at the old you who wants to set things rights, but you have to resist this impulse to take offense. It’s really hard to say “yeah, I am an asshole” as a point of pride when your whole prior life’s learning taught you not to offend others and particularly not girls you ever wanted to fuck. It’s counterintuitive to the beta in you. As sadistic as it sounds, you’ll be more consistently rewarded for your capacity to indirectly offend the women you want to get with, and the internal conflict this creates between the beta you and the burgeoning alpha you is the hardest part to reconcile. This is where most guys fail in transitioning, and this is primarily due to an unpracticed ability to keep their emotions in check.

Aesthetics vs. Social Robots

As I’ve stated before, men are the True Romantics, women are simply the vehicles for that rarely appreciated romanticism. One of the biggest gripes the post-sexual revolution feminization had with men was some prepackaged notion that men weren’t in touch with their feminine sides. We were “out of touch with our feelings”. God curse Carl Jung’s rotten corpse to hell for ever convincing popular culture that each sex had equal, but unexpressed, measures of feminine and masculine energies. Western culture has been so saturated with Jungian theory that we don’t recognize it as such. It’s become normalized to believe an idealized goal-state is a genderless, androgynous society.

Rants aside, up until the last 50 years, it has in fact been men who’ve been the sex with the most self-control regarding emotion. It’s been just this reservation that’s made Men more endearing to women. Either as enigmatic poets and artists to figure out, or as natural stoics who’s every measured expression of emotion is an event unto it’s self,  it’s been Men’s classic reservation of emotional inaccessiblity  that’s made women more interested in Men. In contemporary society, men are encouraged to express themselves as a primary way to accessing a woman’s intimacy – essentially killing any sense of mystery to unravel with full disclosure. Brain function gender differences aside, It would be my guess that men socially evolved a more reserved expression of emotion, not due to some juvenile insecurity, but rather because it so consistently worked in generating interest in women.

Not so in this age. At every instance boys and men are conditioned to think that emotional expression is a means to solving problems. Boys don’t cry, was instituted with a purpose. Unguarded easily expressed emotion is a feminine trait. It’s not that men should become social robots, deadened to all but the most intense emotion; it’s just become normalized to cheapen that expression by overuse. Displays of a Man’s emotions should be rarely given devine gifts  for women who are generally lacking in true appreciation as it is.

Unlearn what you have learned

It’s very difficult for a beta man, conditioned for so long to be emotionally available, to turn these emotions off. The good news is I’m not suggesting you do, I am suggesting you unlearn your reasons for developing emotional sentiments so easily. It’s easy to go emotionally cold as a result of being burned, it’s a much taller order to tamp that emotionality back into check when you’re really feeling good about it. Our emotions make us human and humane. It’s important to embrace that, but equally important to see how easily it’s used against you. You need to unlearn the reasons why you’re so easily emotional. Maybe it’s abandonment issues, maybe it’s a more deliberate conditioning in your upbringing.

Remember in high school, in drivers ed class, when you were taught to turn into a skid rather than turn with the skid? When we’re driving and we find ourselves in a skid our natural impulse is to slam on the the breaks and/or, worse still, to turn with the skid. Everything in our self-preservation instincts tells us to do this, but all it does is aggravate an already precarious situation. However, when we’re taught, and we practice, not hitting the brakes and not turning into the skid, often enough we make this our default reaction and we find that the car rights itself, we avoid disaster and continue safely on down the road.

You have to unlearn the old behaviors and condition new ones in order to right your course. This takes practice and repetition – even in the face of conditions that you would impulsively think would need to be reacted to otherwise.There is no substitute for perseverance.

Changing your mind about yourself is the first step. This is actually the most difficult step for guys because most don’t want to believe they need to internalize a new way of thinking about themselves. Lethargy, for the most part, can be the primary reason most guys don’t want to change. It’s far easier to create rationales for oneself as to why they are happy in their present condition than it is to critically confront and initiate real change.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you some standardized program to help you magically turn into the Man you hope to be. Only you can determine that course, but I will say this, the Man you wish to become requires you to take action. The goal posts for your own satisfaction will always keep moving away from you, and that’s a good thing. This is what inspires us to grow and mature and develop a capacity to overcome challenges. However, all this requires action on your part.

You can pore through all of the advice and sift out the wisdom from this blog and the community at large, but none of it will amount to anything for you if you wont act. I can’t begin to recall all of the times I’ve counseled young guys, giving them all manner of advice and encouraging them to put it into practice, only to have them constantly bemoan that they can’t find the motivation. More often than not it takes some traumatic experience or they have to be reduced to having nothing left to lose before they’ll really have the fire lit under their asses to become more than they are.

I don’t consider myself a motivational speaker, but at some point you have to cross the abyss and change your mind about yourself.

Learn to Read

The most important element of Game a guy can master is developing an ability to do cold reads. Have you ever been to a carnival and had some guy guess your age or weight within a certain range? Those guys are masters of the read. PUA skills are all useful tools and can be applied in a variety of settings, but being able to “read” your target will improve any other PUA techniques you apply. Once you’ve ‘read’ your mark you’ll have a better idea of what will or wont be useful in a given set, and this then will instruct you on which Game tools will work best for that job.

Most aspiring PUAs read up on technique, learn a few scripts, and indiscriminately fumble into an approach without concern that they’re simply barking up the wrong tree. Other times they use some pre-packaged C&F that may have worked for the seminar’s teaching PUA in a completely different environment with a completely different set of conditions with regard to the girl. What may work on an HB 9 at a high end martini bar wont play with an HB 8 Goth girl at a Slipknot concert. One of the first fallbacks critics of Game like to use is that Game appears to presume one-size-fits-all and all women will respond equally well to some standardized script. This is a very weak criticism since obviously the ‘art’ of pick up relies on how deftly a Man uses, and understands how best to apply it. The foundational principles of Game work on ALL women, however it’s the correct application of Game that separates those who’re successful at it from the frustrated chumps who try out a few techniques and get humiliated.

Obviously different approaches are warranted for different situations, but reading subtleties and looking for cues with a good read when you see a woman you’d like to approach, one who’s giving you IOIs already, or even a girl you’re already familiar with is important. A lot of mPUAs like to promote a 3 second rule in an effort to get AFCs past the “stage fright” period of cold sell approaches. This has it’s merits for guys unaccustomed to engaging with a woman, but once you’re comfortable enough in meeting new people on the fly you have to develop an ability to read your target and this takes a bit of calculation initially.

Assess the Environment

For example, lets assume you’re going to a bar or club to sarge. Before you even set foot in the establishment make some mental notes – What kind of woman goes to a place like this? What day of the week is it? Are you on vacation at a resort? What kind of place is this (a goth bar, a martini bar or Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville all require shifts in approach)? What’s the typical age range for the place? Is it ladies night? What part of town are you in? Understanding your venue is vital. What works on a college campus at noon, isn’t going to fly at midnight at a rave.

Assess your Target

Once you’ve established a good understanding of environment lets go further and assume you find an attractive target. First, and most important, has this girl given you IOIs? Eye contact, hair twirling, leg shifting? You need to train yourself to look for the nuances in body language. If so you’ll have to adjust game for that, if not, you’ll have to adjust to catch her attention. Next, read her appearance – what is she wearing? Is she in business casual (just got off of work), or made up in a short red dress (obviously looking)? Jeans and a tight shirt? Is she wearing a wedding ring? Estimate her age and education level (using “chick crack” works wonders for the less educated). Women are by nature attention seeking; virtually everything about a woman is written into her appearance, particularly so while deliberately presenting herself in a covertly competitive social situation (i.e. a club where people go to meet other people).

Assess the Social Conditions

After an initial read, then look around your target and read the social setting and immediate environment. Is she part of a group of girls (most likely)? What do they look like? Are they feeding her, or feeding off of her attention? Is it a bachelorette party? Are there male orbiters circling them or in their party? Any AMOG potentials? Do any of them look related (obvious twins or a family resemblance)?

All of this will help you apply your game more directly. C&F, neg hits, shut-outs, takeaways, openers, all of that can be more refined and more purposed if you take the time to observe your target and then make some calculated assumptions. If you find that you struggle with sustaining a conversation with a woman, usually this is due to a poor read of her prior to an approach. A lot of guys will argue that it takes too much effort to be that analytical, but after a while you’ll become sensitive to this reading ability and it will become second nature.

The Pheromonal Beta

You choke the chicken before any big date, don’t you? 

Anyone who’s seen Something About Mary is pretty familiar with the now classic ‘Hair Gel’ incident.

Dom: You choke the chicken before any big date, don’t you? Tell me you spank the monkey before any big date. Oh my God, he doesn’t flog the dolphin before a big date. Are you crazy? That’s like going out there with a loaded gun! Of course that’s why you’re nervous. Oh my dear friend, please sit, please. Look, um, after you’ve had sex with a girl, and you’re lying in bed with her, are you nervous? No, you’re not, why?

Ted: Cause I’m tired…

Dom: Wrong! It’s ’cause you ain’t got the baby batter on the brain anymore! Jesus, that stuff will fuck you’re head up! Look, the most honest moment in a man’s life are the few minutes after he’s blown his load – now that is a medical fact. And the reason for it is that you’re no longer trying to get laid, you’re actually… you’re thinking like a girl, and girls love that.

Even if you’ve never seen the film, it’s likely you’re at least peripherally aware of the Beta Game principle Dom is explaining here. Can you spot the inconsistency?

“.. you’re thinking like a girl, and girls love that.” No, they don’t. Sorry Dom, they want a loaded gun.

Desexualization as Game is one of the primary mistakes betas make. This is the ‘Something About Mary’ effect; the presumption that your biological impulse to desire sex is a hinderance to getting sex. From a rational standpoint this is ridiculous, but betas eat this idea up because it dovetails nicely into their misguided sexual conditioning that assumes like attracts like – identify more with the feminine to be more attractive to the feminine. Watching this movie is like an effort in deconstructing all the Beta Game tenets of the past 40 years.

I apologize for not having the sources to site for this, but I can remember reading case studies on the bio-chemical effect of human sexual interaction doing grad work in college. I believe they were done by Dr. Martie Hasselton, but they outlined the endorphin and hormonal profiles present in healthy adults bloodstream’s while in various phases of attraction, arousal, pre-sex and post-sex interaction between couples. The most dramatic one to look up is the similarities in the chemical properties of dopamine and heroin for people experiencing “love” or “infatuation” depending on who’s doing the study.

Even more fascinating is the effects hormones play on portions of men’s brains when assessing sexual cues in a potential sex partner. Healthy testosterone levels literally causes men to perceive women as sexual objects; stimulating the same portions of our brains used for cognitive problem solving. However, testosterone is mitigated by oxytocin, the hormone secreted just post orgasm. While testosterone is responsible for sex drive and aggressive impulses (not to mention muscular development, deepening of voice and hair growth), oxytocin is linked to feelings of nurturing, trust, and comfort. Oxytocin is believed to be a primary influence in post-sex, and post pregnancy, emotional attachment in women who produce the hormone in much higher amounts than men. Postpartum depression is actually a withdrawal symptom triggered by the decrease in oxytocin (and progesterone) in post-birth women.The effect of post-orgasm oxytocin in men is similar to women, however in men it is also serves as a buffering agent to heightened dopamine and testosterone levels.

Oxytocin plays a critical part in regulating a man’s testosterone levels. Just post-orgasm, the human body flushes oxytocin into the bloodstream to balance out the endorphin and dopamine high of sexual arousal. While this hormone promotes feelings of trust and comfort in men, it also serves to ‘calm the guy down’ sexually. Oxytocin is a testosterone buffer in men, thus resulting in you going limp for a while after busting a nut. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense in that it ensures the sperm deposited stays in a woman’s vagina, thus increasing fertility odds, instead of being shoveled out by a still erect penis. Not only that, but oxytocin serves as a ‘pair bonding’ hormone in that it fosters feelings of protective trust in men. Oxytocin discharge in humans is also triggered by pheromonal and environmental prompts.

In addition to all of this, there’s the role that pheromones play in regard to sexual attraction and arousal. You can google these, but there are several pheromonal studies that indicate that men with differing scents from those of women tend to attract opposite scents in women. From an evolutionary perspective the conclusion drawn is one that people of similar genus or genotype (i.e. blood related family members) will be less aroused sexually by persons of the their own genotype, thus ensuring biodiversity (nature’s prevention plan against inbreeding). However in the same “sweaty t-shirt” studies, the perspiration of men with higher testosterone levels were deemed more sexually viable or arousing by women than men with lower T levels.

You can attribute whatever legitimacy you want to studies like this, but the evidence points to higher testosterone levels as playing an influential part in sexual attraction. Also bear in mind that pheromones influence women living in close proximity to each other to synchronize their menstrual cycles – another evolutionary mechanism believed to ensure fertility and communal support for social animals.

The Pheromonal Beta

From a bio-mechanical perspective, the indication is that men who consistently masturbate are essentially broadcasting their status as Pheromonal Betas – and women’s bio-chemical mechanics subconsciously registers this for them. Higher testosterone males manifest their sexual viability in both sexual assertiveness and scent. If you are chronically depleted of testosterone, and/or subjected to the calming effects of oxytocin your sexual viability is at a disadvantage. In fact, from an evolutionary standpoint, the beta males of our feral hunter-gatherer beginnings would be more prone to masturbation as a sexual release since, theoretically, they would’ve had less access to breeding opportunities than Alpha males. It would then follow that definitive, subconscious behavioral and chemical cues would evolve to aid females in selecting the best mate for parental investment.

So, for as much as beta guys would like to have you believe that snapping your radish before a date will improve your chances of fucking the girl, odds are you’re shooting yourself in the foot. This stupid belief is rooted in the “Something about Mary” myth that women don’t want an overly sexualized man, but the biological truth is far from that. The myth is one that women need to be comfortable with a guy in order to sleep with him, so men will actively desexualize themselves in order to comply. However, all indications point to a need for sexual anxiety and tension in arousal to prompt sexual intercourse.

Comfort and trust are post-orgasm conditions; anxiety, arousal and sexual urgency are pre-orgasm conditions – and both have their own unique hormonal signatures.

Disclaimer

And now for the disclaimer; I’m not a endocrinologist, biochemist or physician. I’ll admit this is a work in conjecture, but it’s plausible conjecture. For the record, it’s not about ‘less’ desirable pheromones, it’s about a lower incidence of any sex-cue pheromones due to depletion. It stands to reason that women would be more attracted to men motivated to being sexual with them, manifesting this in chemistry and behavior, than sexually unmotivated men manifesting signs of disinterest.

I used to think that the primary issue with beating off was this feminine double standard – women masturbating is sexy, arousing and, nowadays, socially empowering. For men, masturbation is a perversion. It implies an inability to be ‘man enough’ to fuck a real woman; whacking off is failure for a man, but victory for a woman. Why would this social conditions exist, and what is it’s latent function?

I still see the double standard in all that, and while I think it’s valid, it kind of only brushes the surface of self-pleasure from a social convention perspective. Sigmund Freud once said, “all energy is sexual”, meaning that subliminally we will redirect our motivation for ungratified sexual impulse to other endeavors. Thus it’s men, being the sex with the highest amount of libido inducing testosterone, who must look for far more outlets to transfer this motivation to than women. So is it any real surprise that it’s historically been Men who’ve primarily been the empire builders, the conquerors, the creators, and destroyers who’ve (for better or worse) moved humanity the most significantly?

Masturbation defuses this impulse. It kills that drive, or at least sublimates it. So wouldn’t it stand to reason that a global social convention that shames men for masturbation would be beneficial to a society interested in expanding? So the cultural meme becomes men who jack off are losers, and Men who don’t thereby prove their sexual viability (because if they’re not beating off they MUST be fucking women semi-regularly) AND become motivated to redirect that impulse to the betterment of themselves and/or society.

Sorry,..

Apologizing for a lack of Game isn’t Game.

One disservice I think most men tend to overlook is an attitude of self-depreciation that they’ll resort to as a means of engendering interest in a potential woman by attempting to play to her sympathies.

Case in point (posted with permission):

Subject:
My apologies for being a complete douche
Body:
I actually wanted to call and talk to you tonight, but I just moved into my new place today and lost track of time and now its after midnight. Anyways, I was a complete tool the last time we talked. I thought about what you said to me, and I really have been lame lately. I think back to our first couple of “dates”, and I realize what a complete and boring reject I was. Those weren’t so much dates as me trying way too hard to impress you as someone that was mature (bad word choice, but I dunno what I was doing) and not myself. Anyways, I now realize I need to get this pole out of my ass and start having fun again in my life. Which is why I have been in a drunken stupor for the last 2 weekends.

I hope we can start hanging out again, because I do enjoy your company. But I promise if we do, I will drink, relax, and not be such a wallflower. I also promise no more gay-ass text messages. I hate when people do that to me, so I can only imagine how retarded i look when I do it.

-allen

This was an actual email passed on to me from a young woman I counsel after she blew this guy off over the course of three dates, and is one of many emails and IM texts I’ve gone over time and again with with women. This is a textbook example of how men will resort to self-depreciation tactics in order to provoke an “It’s OK, I understand” sympathy response from a woman with the expectation that she’ll take ‘pity’ on him for being a “flawed man” and give him a second (or third, or fourth) chance.

This is a direct manifestation of men being socially conditioned to recognize and acknowledge their weeknesses, and in confessing them they will become strentghs, and ergo, attractions (since they mistakenly believe that doing so will make them “not-like-OTHER-guys” and therefore unique). “You see? I’m really a sensitive, introspective guy willing to cop to his own character flaws, please love me.”

Iron Rule of Tomassi #9

Never Self-Deprecate under any circumstance. This is a Kiss of Death that you self-initiate and is the antithesis of the Prize Mentality. Once you’ve accepted yourself and presented yourself as a “complete douche” there’s no going back to confidence with a woman. Never appeal to a woman’s sympathies. Her sympathies are given by her own volition, never when they are begged for – women despise the obligation of sympathy. Nothing kills arousal like pity. Even if you don’t seriously consider yourself pathetic, it never serves your best interest to paint yourself as pathetic. Self-Depreciation is a misguided tool for the AFC, and not something that would even occur to an Alpha.

People seem to get confused about how self-deprecation really functions. I’m not suggesting that a Man take himself so seriously that he can’t laugh at himself; in fact a brilliant tactic is to present a prevailing, ambient sense of seriousness, then admit to and laugh at whatever goof it was that removes you from it. Nothing endears a man more to a woman than to think only she can break through your shell and get you to find humor in yourself. However, true self-deprecation is self-initiated. It’s not the “ha ha look I slipped on a banana peel” sense of deprecation, it’s the “I’m a complete douche, but really worth the effort” apologetic sense of deprecation. There is a marked difference between being pathetic and being able to laugh at yourself in good faith.

I’m not advocating that guys never own up to mistakes or wrongs they do; you should apologize in given situations depending on the conditions and do so appropriately, however Self-Depreciation is another mental schema entirely. Humility is a virtue (up to a point), but it’s simply not a virtue that a woman you’re interested in will ever appreciate in the manner you intend, and in fact often conveys the opposite intent. Virtuous humility is no substitute for self-confidence. If you are already involved with a woman, she may develop a socially mandated sense of appreciation, but again this is only up to the threshold of you trading her estimation of your confidence for your ability to address fault on your part. When a woman delivers a shit test based on this, and a guy submits through self-depreciation it’s damage done that’s not easily undone. Admitting fault is not a strength that inspires women, it’s still about the fault. It may be the honorable, necessary, truthful thing to do, but don’t believe for a moment women will value you more in the confession of fault.

That said, true self-depreciation is pervasive. Contemporary men have become so steeped in deprecation and male ridicule by popular media that it seems a normative way of attracting women. The message is ‘women love men who laugh at Men’. Thus, you have to be hyper-aware of it and unlearn it. You have to catch yourself in mid-sentence so to speak. Women operate in the sub-communications and when you overtly admit to a lack of confidence in yourself or your gender you may as well just LJBF yourself. That’s a strong impression you wont recover from easily if ever. Women want a competent, confident, decisive Man from the outset, not one who’s self-image is that of a “complete douche” or even a partial douche. The stereotype of the quirky, but lovable guy who bumbles his way into a woman’s heart may work for romantic comedies, but not in the real world. I should also add that when you become hyper-aware of this you can also turn it to your own advantage when AMOGing a competitor or you’re sarging a girl with a self-depreciative boyfriend or suitor. It’s all too easy to reinforce her estimation of a guy like this by covertly confirming it for her, while at the same time playing up your own confidence and value.

All of this is not to say that it’s wrong to recognize your own weaknesses and understanding when you’re in the wrong. It’s simply how you go about addressing it that’s the point. There are plenty of ways to assume the responsibilties of fault that aren’t self-depreciating. The easiest way is to always adopt the attitude that you’re ‘getting better all the time’. This mentality fosters confidence and projects ambition, whereas self-depreciation shoves your nose in the dog shit and says “please love me anyway?”

Rejection & Revenge

“There’s not a lot of money in revenge” – Inigo Montoya

Either directly or indirectly, I talk a lot about rejection here. Usually this is due to rejection, and the fear of it, being the root cause of so very many mental schemas, behaviors, rationales, etc. for guys. My thread Buffers outlines many of these rationales or conventions used to deaden the effect of rejection, but it’s rejection and how one accepts it that makes for a healthy or unhealthy response to it.

Recently I’ve been considering the principle of rejection and I think the, now proverbial, Pook had it right – Rejection is Better than Regret. However, for all the wisdom in that simple truth, applying it, learning from rejections and accepting rejection is what primarily trips men up.

I use men exclusively in this context because, as a Man, based on gender alone, you will experience rejection far more than any woman ever will. If that sounds like a bold statement let me clarify that, you should experience rejection more than any woman. In sports, in career, in education, in personal relations, and with the opposite sex, you will statistically experience more rejection than a woman. That understanding isn’t intended to wave the male power banner, or make Men the champions of virtue. Neither is it to presume women don’t experience rejection themselves; it is a simple observance of fact that rejection is an integral aspect of being male. Get used to it.

So, rejection is preferable to regret, we get that. What we don’t get is how to accept and deal with that rejection. I’m not going to type away here and pretend that I have it figured out yet, however I can tell you how men, boys, AFCs, Symps, and even PUAs will refuse to accept and/or deal with that rejection. Go look at Buffers, Buffers are how men prevent rejection not how they deal with it once they’re experiencing it. But just as men (and women) employ rationales and conventions to prevent or blunt a potential rejection, so too have they developed coping strategies, rationales and techniques that afford them the least amount of discomfort when they have been rejected – or in the case of women, when they are delivering that rejection.

Remember, rejection isn’t limited to just inter-gender instances. In fact that’s almost a more interesting aspect; your reaction to being rejected for a potential job will be far more measured than if you were rejected for intimacy with a woman. One reason we go to such great lengths to buffer ourselves against rejection is the fear of having to experience it, but often the fear of it is more debilitating than the actual experience.

Revenge

I mention this in particular because it’s easily the most common, and potentially the most damaging reaction men have with rejection. This can be from enacting something petty and annoying to the actual murder of the rejecting woman. This is the “how can I get back at her” response, and while it may seem satisfying to ‘teach her a lesson’ trust that this lesson will never be taught by revenge, no matter how justified or deserving she is.

Indifference speaks volumes. The very consideration of revenge is a waste of your time, a waste of your effort, that would be better spent learning and bettering yourself from that rejection. I can personally relate a story of a young man who was just released from prison. He killed the boyfriend who his ‘soulmate’ replaced him with when he was 16 by stabbing him 32 times. That was his revenge. If he’d been 2 years older he would’ve been put to death or served a life sentence. You may not be that extreme in pursuing a course of revenge, but the consequences are similar. For so long as you consider revenge, no matter how petty, you’ll still be attached to the emotions of that rejection. Accept the rejection, move on, rejection is better than regret – literally in this case.

Men aren’t being prepared, aren’t being raised to be Men. We constantly belabor this to the point that we make it a matter of personal pride and duty to instruct our fellow men less fortunate to realize it. Dealing with rejection is the lynchpin to this. When I read posts from Men I’d otherwise consider enlightened (to the Matrix or what have you) contemplate how best to enact their ‘revenge’ upon a woman who refused his approach, or in retaliation to a woman’s infidelity, I wonder if they are as enlightened as I gave them credit. In facing rejection, you have no choice but to accept it. How you’ll do so is a matter of your character. It’s important to cultivate an almost third-person approach to accepting rejection. For a lot of people, particularly those unaccustomed or new to deep personal rejection this is a tough order. We get emotionally invested and that’s never conducive to making good decisions, particularly for men who’d do better to rely on rationality and pragmatism. We’re particularly susceptible when we’re adolescents and young adults.

It’s part of the human condition to desire what we think is justice. It’s our nature to make comparisons, and in the instance of inequality, to see them corrected. And although we rarely consider the ultimate consequences of our actions, this isn’t the reason we should temper a desire for revenge. The thing we ought to consider is the overall efforts and resources necessary in order to exact revenge and weigh them against the things we might achieve for our own betterment by redirecting them to our own purposes. Even the efforts required for a slight revenge are better spent with concerns of our own.

This might seem like a longwinded way of saying “Living well is the best revenge”, and to a degree I think that’s true, but beware the ‘Well-lived’ life spent in pursuit of revenge. Revenge should never be the motivation for success. Even the time and mental effort needed to consider some appropriate way of making her aware of how she made you feel are resources better spent on meeting new prospective women who will reciprocate your interest. The root of confidence is developing, recognizing and acknowledging as many personal options as possible. Any effort you’d expend on revenge is a wasted opportunity to better yourself. Indifference to detractors and personal success are a far better revenge than any one sided injury you could inflict on them in return.

Law 36: Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge
By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.

3 Stories

One of my favorite ways of helping young men understand how unimportant their immediate concerns are over rejection is to put things into a larger perspective. When you’re in the moment and unable to see the forest for the trees, rejections seems so crushing. It’s when you look at things in terms of how they play out in the course of time you realize that instead of some horrible soul-destroying rejection you really dodged a bullet that would’ve radically altered the progression of the better person you become.

When I was 15 or 16 I was in total love (teenage lust) with this girl named Sarah. I did everything in the AFC handbook to get with this girl – played friend after a LJBF rejection, wrote to her, called her all the time, etc. I got “I’m not ready for a relationship now” line right before she got the hot monkey sex from one of my best friends. He was the Alpha Bad Boy and she couldn’t get enough of him even after he’d dumped her, and I of course played right along. Flash forward to when I was 22. I had gotten my shit together, I was in the gym religiously, I played in a very popular band in the area and I was walking through the outdoor halls of the college I attended when I hear some girl’s voice say “Rollo, hey!” I looked around and literally looked right past her at first wondering who was calling for me. Then she says, “Hey it’s me Sarah.” I look down, and sitting on this bench is this 300+lbs land monster with the barely recognizable face of this girl I’d obsessed over about 6 years earlier. I was floored. Apparently she’d gone through rehab for cocaine and ballooned after it because she replaced the drug with food. For the first time in my life I was speechless.

My second story was about this one girl Bridgette who I also had a major AFC crush on in high school and I lacked even the confidence to really approach – I self-rejected. Again, flash forward to about 22 and I pull this exact same girl in a club (who actually still looked pretty good), only now I can’t keep her off of me. I ended up turning her into a fantastic booty call. This girl would literally knock on my window and climb in through it to fuck me in the morning before I left for class. However, it got to the point where I dumped her, because she insisted on never taking birth control while assuring me she was and I had a close call with her, and I was tapping 4 or 5 other girls at the time that I thought were better plates to spin (even though I didn’t know what plate theory was then). What I couldn’t get in high school ended up my left-overs just 5 years later.

Lastly, I had my first ‘real’ girlfriend look me up online once. This was the girl I first had sex with at 17 and I ended up moving to the college town she was enrolling into so I could keep fucking her. I basically altered the course of my life for 2 years to accommodate her life decisions, only to have her cheat on me and break up with me after I’d moved. She was my ‘first’ so naturally I assumed she was the ONE and the better I “supported” her the more she’d appreciate me (i.e. fuck me), so I took it pretty hard. I had still tapped her once or twice after all this, but she dropped off my world over 20 years ago. I get this email from her and I guess she’d looked me up. I checked out pictures of her on a vanity site she has (not FaceBook), and I can’t say time has been kind to her. At 37 she looks about 55, makes about $32K tutoring kids how to read (after that terrific degree I moved to ‘help’ her get), she’s “married” to another woman (an open marriage so to speak). It was kind of an eerie feeling just barely being able to make out the girl I’d known at 17, now at 37.

In all of these situation, but particularly this one (after 20 years), it’s hard not to feel more than a little self-satisfied and think karma’s a bitch, but I wonder how many women I’d been rejected by who are doing better now after the years. I’d also like to think that men tend to do better with age, but I know this isn’t always the case. Though I’m aware that living well is the best revenge, I think that living well in order to exact that revenge is misguided. Thing’s like this will happen regardless so long as you put the emphasis on your own betterment.

Appreciation

I’ve had a fantastic marriage for over 15 years now, but I’m not going to sugar coat the facts that marriage involves life changing sacrifices for men that no woman will ever fully understand or appreciate. I’m not anti-marriage. I’m anti- uninformed, pollyanna, shoulda’-saw-it-coming, ONEitis fueled, shame induced, bound for bankruptcy, scarred my children for life, marriage.

A woman loves you when she takes you for granted. That sounds odd I know, but it’s when she’s not fawning all over you and you’re in your 10th year of marriage and it’s just part of everyday conversation. “OK, love you, bye” is at the end of every phone call. You’re not thinking about it, because you don’t need to. If you’re asking the question “how do you know when she loves you?” You’re not in it. It’s only when that familiarity and regular comfort is removed that she can appreciate it. Once the commonness of love is established women will only rarely express it overtly – in fact the expression will be what’s expected of you – so you have to look for it covertly.

All the flowery crap you read in your Hallmark card on Valentines Day or your Anniversary was written by someone else. And while it’s nice to have these gestures of appreciation occasionally, it’s more important to see the forest for the trees. It’s not individual acts of affection or appreciation so much as it is the whole of what you both do on a regular day-to-day basis. It’s what you and she are all about after your three hundredth bowl of oatmeal together on a Saturday morning and your kids are fighting for control of the TV remote while you’re sitting across the breakfast table discussing which bills need to be paid first this month and how bad the lawn needs mowing that defines love and marriage. Yes, precisely the things you’ll never think about when you’re sarging her or considering moving her up in your plate spinning line up.

This is what marriage is; not necessarily boring per se (although it certainly can be more often than not), but ordinary. It’s normal, common, or becomes so. Think about how many people who’ve lived, married and died on planet earth who did exactly the same things as you. That’s the real test of marriage that no one who hasn’t experienced it can really relate in any meaningful sense. The happy, Oprah-ized idea is that you have to “keep it fresh”, but even after a night of freshening it up and the Wal-Mart lingerie is in the clothes hamper, and you pick up the kids from spending the night at her sisters house the morning after, you go back to the day-to-day marriage you’ve always had. This is the shit no one tells you about when you’re being sold on the Marriage Goal – the “now what?” feeling that comes directly after you’ve found the ONE you’ve been looking for, or “did the right thing” with and married because she suddenly rediscovered religion AFTER you’d had marathon sex with her for 3 months straight and wouldn’t abort the pregnancy (and no, that didn’t happen to me).

Appreciation

I think what most men uniquely deceive themselves of is that they will ultimately be appreciated by women for their sacrifices. Learn this now, you wont. You can’t be because women fundamentally lack the ability to fully realize, much less appreciate the sacrifices a man makes to facilitate her reality. Even the most enlightened, appreciative woman you know still operates in a feminne-centric reality. Men making the personal sacrifices necessary to honor, respect and love her are commonplace. You’re supposed to do those things. You sacrificed your ambitions and potential to provide her with a better life? You were supposed to. You resisted temptation and didn’t cheat on your wife with the hot secretary who was DTF and ready to go? You were supposed to. Your responsibilities to maintaining a marriage, a home, your family, etc. are common – they’re expected. They are only appreciated in their absence.

This is the totality of the feminine-centric reality. Men only exist to facilitate the feminine reality, and any man who disputes this (or even analyzes its aspects) is therefore not a ‘man’. It just IS. Even the most self-serving, maverick among men is still beholden to the feminine imperative in that he’s only defined as a rebel because he doesn’t comply with the common practices of ‘men’ in a female defined reality. And ironically it’s just this maverick who is appreciated by the feminine above those men who would comply with it (or even promote it)  as a matter of course.

The concept of appreciation really dovetails into a lot of other aspects of intergender relations.

For instance in The Mature Man thread; assume for a moment that a 40 y.o. Man with the options to pursue younger women “does the right thing” and seeks out a relationship with a woman his own age. Would he be appreciated for essentially giving an aged woman a new lease on life? Or would he be viewed as doing what is to be expected of him?

Would a man who marries a single mother and helps with the parental investment of another man’s child be appreciated more for having done so? Would it even factor into a woman’s estimation of his character, or would he simply doing what’s expected of a man?  The question of appreciation is a real quandary for the White Knight.

Relationships aren’t work.

Familiarity does in fact breed contempt,..and mediocrity, and routine, and banality, and commonness,.. which is why so many marriages end up in the shit can. Men and women give up on themselves.

The “Relationships are work” meme is a Social Convention. How often do you hear men say these words? This has filtered into popular consciousness even with men now. For the LTR men who subscribe to this I’d also speculate that many of them are in relationships where THEY are “doing the work” for the women who are giving them the ‘grade’ so to speak. And of the single men who subscribe to this mythology, each had to be conditioned to believe this is the case in LTRs by women. This is rooted in the mistaken belief that men’s actions and sacrifices can ever be appreciated by women.

What would the best method be to get a man to live up to the idealizations a woman has as her perfect mate (however twisted and convoluted this may have been defined for her)? Women love the ‘fixer upper’. “He’d be such a great guy if only he would, _____” or she’ll say “I’m working on him.” It’s when the conditioning goes from “I’m working on him” to “We’re working on our relationship” that he has now internalized her frame control. This is where the mythology of Relationships-as-Work is derived from. How often is it the woman who needs the ‘work’ in the relationship? And if it is her, the terminology of the relationship and the associations change. ‘Work’ implies a man better conforming his identity to her ideal relationship, to better fit the feminine-centric reality. And what better way to initiate this than to psychologically condition him to want to embody her ideal – even before he’s ever met a woman or been involved in a relationship?

The Mature Man

I recently got into an interesting debate as to the reasonings why mature men tend to opt for younger women with whom to settle down with. As is to be expected from femme-screech and their mangina enablers the social shaming mechanisms abounded. Most of these are some variation of the “men’s fragile egos” canard or the “a real man would want to get with a woman his own age” trope. This quote pretty much summed up the opposing point:

Older guys want to bang college-age girls for the same reason that many older women like dating younger guys: to live in a state of suspended youth and be reminded that they “still have it”.

I half-agree. Older women definitely want to think they “still have it”, with regards to their capacity to hold the attention of younger guys they find themselves in competition with younger women for. However, older men who naturally pursue younger women come to realize that they’ve “finally got it”. Why wouldn’t a guy of 40 have a natural preference for the younger woman after reaching a level of maturity and accomplishment that allows him this? Professional women tied to the male template of life’s progression tend to think that they too should be entitled to the sexual attraction of ‘eligible’ men by virtue of their mature achievements, status, intellect and some imagined sense of knowing themselves better. They are mistaken.

The Associations of Maturity

First off,  it’s a mistake to just peg 40 y.o.s in this demographic. There are plenty of early to mid thirties guys that can and do pull girls 5 to 8 years younger than themselves regularly. Funny how there’s little shaming stigma with that age difference. It’s not a man’s physical age so much as what the age represents (or is perceived to) – maturity, accomplishment, better provisioning capacity, status, etc. Do ALL men actually realize these to their satisfaction by this time? Of course not, but it’s the perception that they SHOULD have actualized this that is the attractant in comparison to younger guys who haven’t, nor would really be expected to. Mature Men represent this perception of assumed accomplishment and security – exactly what women are looking for in a phase of life where their sexual marketability declines and their need for long term provisioning becomes more urgent..

Second, understand that the incidence of 30-40 y.o. men remaining single up to this time of life is far lower. Most guys (AFCs in particular) are already engaged by 25 y.o. and or have been serial monogamists up to this point. For all the recent hand wringing about ‘kidult’ men not manning up and marrying women, rare is the guy who remains single into his late 30s. At this point he’s either divorced once or on marriage number two. Still fewer come into the realization of their own vastly increased sexual market value assuming they’ve managed to stay in shape and accomplish things financially, emotionally and maturity-wise up to this point and THEN use this to their own advantage with younger women. An interesting aside here is that men get berated for being peter-pans in their late 20s for not living up to female entitlement, then get the same treatment for marrying younger women when they do mature into Men. This is a glaring illustration of the female imperative at work.

Now add to that a constant feminine social contrivance telling them they have “fragile egos” or shames them for dating young chippys (i.e. future trophy brides) instead of mature women (generally single mothers) with all their accompanying baggage. Unsurprisingly we see in most cultures older males striving for the attentions of the younger and more atractive females, but in western culture he becomes vilified and shamed for this – or at least that’s what western feminized women would like to be the case. The most common complaint women in their mid-thirties bemoan is that “There’s no good men” or they can’t understand why men just can’t “grow up”. Increasingly ‘career women’ desiring to finally start a family at age 35 find that men – particularly the ones that meet their provisioning criteria – in their age range (33-38) are not interested in women (to say nothing of ‘career women’) of their age. They’re interested in the 22 year olds who wouldn’t give them the time of day when they didn’t have the status (or maturity) that they’ve just discovered they now have. And of course the 35 year old career woman was one of these 22 year old girls, only 13 years prior, who was doing precisely the same thing the 22 year old girls are doing today.

Mid-Life Crisis Epiphany

These Men are not trying to relive anything; they’re newly aware of their own sexual market value – and nothing both frightens and attracts a woman so well as a Man aware of his own value. That’s the foundation of confidence. This represents a problem for women though. They want a Man with the confidence and maturity (derived from experience) to make important decisions, be an initiator, a good provider, etc., but not SO confident that he weighs his options and selects her out of his provisioning for a competing woman based on his primary requisite of sexual experience. So to counter this, the feminine creates social conventions that shame a Man for considering a woman too much younger than herself. This has the latent purpose of leveling the playing field in order for her to compete with women who are younger, hotter and more sexually available. He has to be kept ignorant of the whole process, but still ashamed enough into thinking his desire for the young and attractive mid 20s girl makes him “juvenile” or he has a “fragile ego”, or he’s “trying to recapture his youth”. The feminine reality demands he be dissuaded from pursuing his interests in favor of women’s sexual strategies, and the best way to do that is to slime his intersets as disgusting:

To most college-age girls, a guy in his 40s (even 30s) and up is usually the “creepy old man,” even if he takes good care of himself. The old guy usually ends up trying to fit into the young girl’s world instead of the other way around.

This is the Creepy Old Man tactic. I don’t necessarily disagree with this, however I think it’s contextual. I’m regularly at events (mixers, clubs, promos, vodka nights, etc.) as part of my work where I’m approached by much younger women. If the 40 y.o. guy is perceived to be attempting to “fit in” with that age’s social peers, then you’re absolutely correct. The disconnect comes from a man who’d otherwise be perceived as possessing the attributes he should have for his age trying to retrograde himself into another age’s social profile. THAT’S when he becomes the “old guy in the club”. When I’m on promos, or out socially as part of my job, I NEVER attempt to ‘backdate’ myself style-wise, linguistically, etc. If you’re attractive, the girls who want to associate with a mature Man will find you.

I work in the alcohol / spirits industry and as part of this I travel internationally about 3-4 times a year. I’m at bars, events, conventions, martini clubs and mixers fairly often. And with the exception of a few men older than myself, I’m a senior in my company and older by 5 to 10 years than most of the people I interact with. In all honesty, I find people my own age or in their mid 40s, and particularly women, insufferably boring.

Men become happier than women by mid-life and for the most part I think I can see why. Most women in their late 30s to mid 40s are, for the most part, chronic complainers. After going through the high drama phases of her 20s, into kids, marriages and divorces in her 30s, women tend to content themselves languishing in this dissatisfaction that her fantasy life isn’t panning out. Nothing measures up to the perceived ideals she thinks are her due. Most women in western culture who find themselves single at 38-42 are there after an earlier life that didn’t go as planned. They almost universally carry some kind of baggage. Can they be attractive? Uncommonly, but yes. However it’s a mistake to assume older (or at least age level peers) women to be more intellectually equitable with older men and therefore more compatible choices for LTRs / marriage. I’m sorry if this comes off as glossing myself, but honestly, I’ve encountered very few women I can relate to intellectually or that I’d consider equal in my particular interests, my life experiences, my passions, etc.

I wish this didn’t sound like conceit on my part because, in all humility, I think the better part of what I find important is really pretty mundane. It’s not that I hold a low opinion of women’s capacity to be more intellectually equitable; it’s simply their own general indifference to even trying to relate to that in comparison to their own distractions. I don’t think women (and particularly 35-40 y.o. women) feel it’s incumbent upon them to HAVE to be a good mate, intellectually stimulating, or a good mother, or even a good sexual partner for a Man’s consideration. I’d attribute most of that to the female sense of entitlement / victimhood that permeates feminine popular culture, but also to men and women’s interests really being disparate. In other words, with the extraordinarily rare exception, women will NEVER put forth the same effort a man will for a woman to better identify herself with his interests for the explicit purpose of being a better mate for him.

“Mature” Women

Obviously a more mature woman will have a greater urgency to settle into the long term provisioning security that marriage provides her, but this urgency gets confused with actual maturity. Just because a woman is more motivated to start a family and enter into a more traditionally domestic life doesn’t mean she’s an intellectual or mature equal, nor does it make her more compatible with you in this sense. It simply means she is more motivated to do so based on her conditions of diminishing sexual value.

I think on some level of consciousness, older, more mature men who’ve spent a good portion of their lives dealing with the experiences that create this baggage for older women, recognize a necessity to distance themselves from it. After making the sacrifices, and avoiding (or not) the pitfalls that he must to become the healthy, mature and accomplished man that older women complain are in such short supply, I think it’s pretty matter of fact to seek out a younger, hotter, more sexually available woman with little to no baggage. The counter to this is the feminine social contrivances of shame that I’ve already covered earlier.

Men on a basic functioning level are pragmatists, even when we do allow our emotions to get the better of us. One tenet we maintain is an understanding that women tend to operate from an emotional level, whereas men tend to operate from deductive reasoning. And while a hot piece of ass is it’s own motivation, I think on some level, after the necessary experiences, sacrifices and time it takes to get to a point of personal maturity, we see a younger woman with less baggage as a sort of double bonus. If I were to find myself single tomorrow, this would be exactly my motivation. Why would I invest my considerable capacity for financial, emotional, intellectual and security provisioning into complicating my own life with a woman fraught with the baggage of her own failings and inconsistencies of the last 10-15 years? For what I’ve become myself and what I know is valuable, why would I not look for a simplification considering what was required of me to get to that maturity? If middle age men are happier than women at this stage of life, it’s because they’ve arrived at a place where they don’t feel the need to qualify themselves to women any longer.

A rich man doesn’t need to tell you he’s rich. You can see it in his appearance, his mannerisms, his bearing. The same is true for a mature Man. In his maturity he’s comfortable in the knowledge that he doesn’t need to prove it by qualifying himself to a social contrivance that’s counter to his own self-interest and his well being.