Articles by Rollo Tomassi

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

Good Girls ‘Do’

Good girls are just bad girls who never got caught.

Allow me relate here a case study I counseled a friend on personally about 6 years ago. I have a very good friend, Ray, that I hired and work with. Though we started out as work associates he bcame one of my better friends and had the benefit of my personally having unplugged him from the Matrix. He was a good student (for lack of a better term), but in becoming so he went through a transformation process. Like most guys fed on a lifetime of feminine conditioning he patronizingly accepted what I was initially teaching him, but privately, he still clung to his AFC mentalities. That is, until the turning point came.

Unbeknownst to me Ray had entertained a flirtatious “friendship” with a semi-attractive PR girl we were working with for a while. He knew what I’d said about LJBF rejections and “playing friends” with women, so he left me out of the loop on the whole affair. He had “dated” her on several occasions, but beyond the infrequent “kiss while drunk” she kept him at arms distance using the standard fillibuster techniques women classically use – “I’m not ready for a relationship”, “I’m not looking for a BF”, “We’re good friends”, etc. She did however keep him in her ‘attention web’ with little carrots of affection for him to pull her cart for about 3 or 4 months. Mind you, Ray was never a chump. He’d hooked up with his share of women, but this cute, “good girl” who was at best an HB7 developed into a ONEitis for him.

This all came to a head when one night she had to do some work with Aaron Lewis (yes, from Staind) while he was doing his solo acoustic act at our casino. To make a long story short, the PR girl ended up buzzed on this night and fucked Aaron Lewis’ tour manager in a classic situation of right-alpha, right-environment, right-conditions. Her mistake was in feeling the need to confess her actions to Ray who’d felt betrayed considering all the investment he’d put into doing what he thought was the right way to go about things. Here was one guy on one night who she fucked in a moment of chemical reaction because “he was hot, I was drunk and one thing led to another,..” versus his 3-4 month personal investment.

This was of course when he consulted me and informed me of everything leading up to it, only now he was at an impass. She appologized profusely to him and held out (once again) the olive branch of a LJBF rejection. He asked me what he should say, and it was at this point he took the initiative to tell her “no, we can’t ‘just be friends’.” He did what I advised him to and he walked away from a woman for the first time in his life. This is when all hell broke loose for her. She’d never been met with this response before and all the cards went straight into Ray’s hands. She would consistently ‘bump into him’ at bars or events to “have another talk”, she did a complete 180 in her attitude with him all in an effort to “be his friend.”

Now I’m exceptionally proud of Ray because, unlike most guys finding the true power of a takeaway, he stuck with it rather than being contented with her chasing him and then giving into the LJBF. He had actually learned a valuable tool that he still uses now – the power of the takeaway. In addition he also came to understand the principle of understanding a woman, not by what she says, but by what she does – he learned the importance of reading behavior. Of course after about 6 or 8 months she stopped pursuing him “to be friends” and he has talked to her in the interim years, but the frame of their discourse has changed. She has respect for him that she never had when he was the pursuer and never would’ve had if he’d surrendered to another LJBF.

Good Girls

This girl, at every opportunity, loved to display her ‘properness’ and would always say she “wanted a man with a good heart” when asked what she looked for in a guy. She was very outgoing as befits a PR person, but at all times she presented herself as someone conscious of how people perceived her and her reputation. Hers was a classic case of basing estimations upon behavior above words. Biology trumps conviction – sexuality, for as much as we think we can, will not go unexpressed. Celibate priests, moralistic republican statesmen, and the pure-as-the-driven-snow virtuous girl you’ve got ONEitis for all want to get off, and they’ll find a way to do so. According to FaceBook she now lives in Montana with a thoroughly beta husband who likely has no idea that she had the capacity for raw, feral hypergamy.

One of the trappings of a woman a guy perceives as a ‘good girl’ is that he’ll have a tendency to pedestalize her by default. White Knights are a given, but even hardened PUAs are prone to want to read more into the personality of a ‘good girl’. A cute-ish HB8 ‘good girl’ is a recipe for ONEitis because she seems to be above seduction. “I just want a guy with a good heart” sound so fairytale perfect and with just the right amount of naivete applied, she comes off as a girl who truly believes Disney wishes really do come true. To guys with Game she’s a jewel in the rough amongst the bitch-shielded mean girls that populate the new hook-up paradigm. To chumpish White Knights she’s an archetype – the innocent damsel who needs to be saved from the world before it corrupts her soul and she turns into all the other women who wont date them. Both of them are equally shocked when she spontaneously fucks an Alpha tour manager.

If you haven’t done so yet, I highly recommend adding The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene to your reading list. In this seminal work he begins by profiling the archetypes of seducers and amongst them we find our ‘good girl’ is really The Natural; a child like innocence that masks a seductive motive. You may be inclined to think of a good girl as a prude, but this is often in error. The good girl needs to be seductively cute enough to make her hypergamy work for her. Any prudishness is reserved for putting a suitor into stasis long enough to evaluate better options, or in the case of our PR girl, the option to capitalize on an immediate Alpha experience.

The good girl’s Game is built around playing to the ‘Quality Woman’ mythos that men harbor. They want to believe she exists among a sea of vapid, self-absorbed sluts looking to cash in before they hit the wall. She’s not the prudish Madonna and she’s not the Whore of Babylon, she’s the cute good girl somewhere in between. She’s only an HB7-8, not the demi-goddess HB9+, so she also emanates a tantalizing potential of attainability. All of this makes for a very idealized, very cemented form of ONEitis until it’s graphically dispelled for the guy suffering from it.

Just like all men have some form of game, women have their own game. Since we live in a feminine defined reality, women’s game is not considered subterfuge, it’s simply how women are, or the feminine mystique. What makes a good girl contrast with ‘other girls’ is still founded within this feminine social normalization.The wise practitioner of Game knows what works best for him, but he must also be aware of the Game being used against him. One of the most important aspects of the principle of Amused Mastery is actually having the mastery to be amused. That may sound cryptic, but what it means is having the experience to know what to expect from feminne Game, mastering it and being able to riposte with an amused laugh.

For example, the operative goal of girl-game is to maximize hypergamy, this is a foundation of Game. So in knowing this, you can craft an amused response to any seduction methodology women use on you. The good girl is still looking for an Alpha, and will still stop the good girl car to get out and fuck him should the opportunity arise. When you deal with the good girl or any of her sister’s methods always see them beginning with the end in mind.

Strippers

In my 20s I dated (see :”banged regularly”) 4 strippers. It came with the territory in the late 80s / early 90s Hollywood music scene I found myself a part of at the time. After dating and knowing the stripper friends of strippers I can tell you that, as surprising as it may sound, strippers are rarely whores in the traditional sense. In fact I’d go so far as to say that, among ‘professionally beautiful’ women, with the exception of porn actresses, strippers are probably THE most difficult women to Game. Not because of the implied perception that they are out of the ‘league’ of most guys, but rather because there’s a difficulty for men in reading what is genuine and what is ‘acting’ in her responses. The reason I say this is because the profession of “exotic dance” puts a woman into the position of making her living from generating male attention. These women literally make a living from being praised and affirmed with male attention every night they work.

Good strippers have a unique set of social skills and (usually) a body to make them work. From a behavioral standpoint, they can turn their sexuality on and off at will, so it becomes a challenge for any man spending more time than it takes for a $20 lap dance to really understand what is in fact genuine and what is “just working” for them. These women do this for a living, they see how their behavior affects men on a nightly basis and their self-affirmation, in fact their financial livelihood, depends on their ability to manipulate the attention men will pay for the privilege to give to them. And every night they work it’s another study in male behaviorism.

The important thing to remember is that these women are paid to have attention given to them, so, assuming you really want to hit it with a stripper, you have to make your attention more sought after and more valuable a commodity than that of the constant flow of men in the place where she works. Your Negs must be flawless, and your timing and your freeze-out techniques have to be perfected to key on areas where you detect insecurities. Needless to say you’ll need to be somewhat good looking and be uncompromising in your determination. Strippers wont tolerate an AFC, in fact AFCs are their bread & butter in a club so there’s little margin for error.

NEVER try to sarge a stripper in the club she works at. All the perfect ‘reads’ you could do to gauge her interest will always be offset by the fact that she’s “working” so nothing is certain. There will always be some chode at the end of the bar with $100 who’ll get more attention than you. Isolation is a necessity, and that’s simply not possible when she’s working. Always arrange to meet up alone at a lounge later and never on the same night you run Game on her. The best way to bag a strippers is to find a way into her social circle. Most strippers hang out with other strippers on their off nights. Find out who her friends are. Do your reconnaissance work before hand and it’ll go much easier for you to accidentally “bump” into her in her non-stripper persona. Three of the four strippers I got with were the result of doing just a cursory background check to see where they worked out or what social gathering they’d be at. Call that stalking if you want, but strippers tend not to have too many hobbies, so meeting them at Barnes and Noble is pretty much out. Once you do approach, play a sucker to catch a sucker; don’t for an instant let on that you knew she was a dancer. If you do, you’ll be psychologically relegated to being one of her clientele.

Once you do establish some connection, from the outset, never give a stripper even the impression that her stripping in any way bothers you. That’s just a cold hard reality of being with a stripper. Many a man before you has attempted to “reform” a stripper. The guy who ever does most certainly wont be you – know this now, strippers only “reform” once they are forced to acknowledge (subconsciously or not) the Wall. There’s too much money, too much attention, too much ego gratification for most men to ever offer more than what she gets nightly. Remember this, the only reformed strippers existing in the world are the ones who are too old or got too fat to keep it up. If you even hint that you might be possessive enough ask them to quit in the future, you’re done.

As is the stereotype, most strippers have ‘daddy issues’; even the strong independent ones who’d have you believe they’re only dancing to put themselves through college. You can however use this to your advantage. The longer a girl strips the more she looks for stability. Young strippers probably wont respond to this, but if a girl’s been on the pole for a couple of years she’s going to be at least subconsciously looking for some kind of future stability. If you can play Alpha bad ass with just the right amount of implied ambition, command presence and an ambient sense of stability you can tap into this daddy dynamic she’s after. Rockstars are fun for a night, but ‘Daddy’ leaves a more lasting impression.

All that said, bear in mind that a stripper will virtually NEVER be a good choice for a LTR. Beware the single mommy stripper. If you can approach the girl with the intent of having a good time in the short term and moving on after the experience, you’ll do well. It’s the guys that buy into the “hooker with the heart of gold” myth that fall back on their AFC behaviors and develop ONEitis with a stripper who have substantial damage done to them, and often their lives.

The tool of ASD

I realize what I’m about to type here is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but I believe the concept of ASD as Game would define it is flawed – I don’t believe that anti-slut defense is what most guys make of it. I know that’s going to go against everything any PUA has ever established about overcoming ASD, but let me clarify a few things about this first. I’m not saying that women aren’t the filters of their own sexuality. I’m not proposing that women don’t feel some sense of personal accountability for their own sexual decision. Obviously it is in their own biological interest to be cautious with whom they’d mate with. What I am saying is that ASD is a feminine social convention.

Anti-Slut Defense is exactly that, a “defense.” It is an automatic moral high ground that any and every woman has the ability to claim. It is the feminine prerogative in it’s rawest form, but it is a social contrivance and possibly the single most useful tool a woman has next to her sexuality. It is one thing for a woman to be sexual, arousing, erotic and enticing, but it is quite another thing for her to be sexually available. This is the secret of feminine seduction; the prospect of sexual pleasure without the promise of sexual availability. And the tool – the social mechanism – used to effect this contrivance of feminine virtue is ASD. There had to be a sociological schema created – a set of common rules backed by an unassailable moral stance – that would allow a woman to operate, and practice her methods of sexual selection without the worry of the social accountability that her otherwise fickle and seemingly indecisive behaviors would draw attention to. Thus the importance of feminine virtue comes into the popular consciousness.

Slut Disclaimer

Before I continue, bear in mind right now, I’m NOT debating the merit of a woman’s wanting to avoid being considered a slut. Obviously fidelity is a prime requisite for men seeking to establish a monogamous relationship. What I am proposing is that ASD is less about avoiding that perception and more about being a convenient tool to reserve a woman’s sexual selection options. I don’t ‘beleive’ in ASD in the context that most PUAs seem to perceive it and certainly not in the way most AFCs do. I do not believe women are as worried about their “slut status” as most guys believe they are.

Sexual reputation for women is no doubt important, but I think that the social contrivance of ASD in the way that men understand it is far more overblown than how women really experience it. Women are all too eager to reinforce this male perception because it serves their purpose as a whole. The social mechanics of ASD make it unassailable and also bolster the “women-have-it-harder-than-men” victimhood that’s served them well for centuries. However, in light of a majority of women’s easily observable, contradictory behavior that occurs so often and under such obvious conditions it becomes predictable, I cannot think that ASD is considered anything more than the perfect tool to be used as fits a situation.

Let me also be clear in stating that I do not believe women have some grand scheme of manipulation in using ASD. It’s become so ingrained in modern culture since well before the 20th century that it’s part of both sexes upbringings and psychological gender understandings. My point is that ASD has been assimilated into the “have it all” mentality women use to simultaneously play virtuous, chaste “good girl” but still have the prerogative to be independent, liberated and free “bad girl” as their conditions warrant. And again, I’m not raging against it or trying to say women ought not to do so – I’m certainly not going to change so concrete a conviction no matter how questionable. I’m saying be aware of it and plan accordingly as a man.

The ASD Tool

With ASD as a tool, a woman can operate unhindered in her sexual selection. As much as people want to take issue with me about Plate Theory, women have been employing it for centuries and the tool that is ASD has only made them better at it. In today’s western culture (and a lot of others as well) she’s got the best of the new rules and the old. A woman can be as flirtatious as she wants, be as arousing and flighty as she pleases and still enjoys the female prerogative to “change her mind”, to be concerned with her virtue. And we, as properly conditioned chumps, nod our heads in agreement with the girl who just won the wet t-shirt contest when she says she wont sleep with us because she’s “not THAT kind of girl.”

Do the girls in Panama City on spring break flashing their tits, making out with random guys (and other girls) on camera and hooking up seem worried about being perceived as a slut? Do the self-shooters and amateur porn girls really worry about being perceived as a slut? Do the women at a club on a Girl’s Night Out really seem concerned with what their other girlfriends think of their sexual exploits? If anything they’re encouraged to be more sexually adventurous by their peers. Does the bride-to-be at her bachelorette party worry about coming off as a slut in Las Vegas? Women will do what they want to do and work out the rationalizations for it later, because they know they’ll be excused for their indescretions by no other means than feminine virtue. They know that there is already a well established social system that will happily accept her default victimization as a woman.

As I’m fond of saying, the girl fucking the hot guy she met an hour earlier in the foam cannon party on spring break in Cancun is the same girl who’ll tell you she’s “just not comfortable enough to have sex with you yet” after you’ve spooned her for 3 hours with a hardon in your bed. She gets away with it because she uses the ASD contrivance to filibuster your sexual desire.

So, I’m not going to suggest that you NEXT a woman out of hand for a lack of IL or even desire. What I will advise is an awareness of how a woman applies her version of Plate Theory and the tools with which she employs it. ASD is one of many tools in her toolbox; know when it’s being used against you and weigh the costs of dealing with it against the rewards of actually banging her. When I was dating Mrs. Tomassi it took 3 dates to bed her, but never did she tell me, “not yet, I’m just not comfortable with you”, never was I expected to play cuddle bitch and go home with blue balls. She never said “I’m making you wait for it.” She had more respect for ME than that, not the other way around. When we had sex, we HAD sex. We didn’t play games, I didn’t put it half-way-in, we didn’t dry-hump we had sex.

Women are concerned with reputation, of course. Women do have sexual hang ups as a result of this or upbringing too, but again, is the cost of dealing with this worth the reward of having sex with a woman with hang ups? Is it worth the investment required for a future LTR that by all indicators would be with a woman with hang ups or is settling for you?  Would your efforts be better spent with a new prospect in contrast to that perceived reward? People always think my blanket response is to NEXT a girl, but I’ve been down the ASD-game playing path often enough in my past, and know so many others who’ve done so as well, to see that a zero-tolerance policy is simply more pragmatic. The problem isn’t so much that she wasn’t instantaneously sexual with you from the word go, but more that she’s used the ASD contrivance to filibuster you. Look carefully at what’s working in her life now. What’s her background?  Is she a single mommy? Does she have other irons in the fire? She’s only been with 5 guys (that she’ll admit to) why? Because she’s virtuously cautious or because she’s evaluating you as one of her options?

Could a Man have written this?

Blame the Sexual Revolution not Men.

Mona Charen had a very concise critique of  the overwritten personal ad that passed for Kate Bolick’s life’s confession, All the Single Ladies.

I wont say that I don’t admire Mona for having the courage to write a less than favorable critique; particularly one that points the blame back on a feminization that enthusiastically looks to reinvent it’s own social conventions in order to rationalize away the post-Wall dire straits women like Bolick are finding themselves in. However, is anyone really surprised that it’s now women receiving public recognition for acknowledging psychological and sociological principles and dynamics that the manosphere has covered for over a decade now?

I’m glad to see it getting the publicity, but ONLY a woman could write this without suffering fem-screech backlash accusations of misogyny. This is the environment we’re in today. I have no doubt that Ms. Charen will receive her share of frothing hate from ego invested Jezebels, but at least her critique will register for them. No man could write this critique and be taken seriously, and therein lies the danger in women co-opting the message the manosphere has been compiling for 12 years now. The environment is such that anything remotely critical a man might offer is instantly suspect of misogyny or personal (‘he’s bitter”) bias, however, couch that message in a female perspective, play Mrs. Doubtfire, and you’ll at least reach the audience beginning with something like validity.

Not surprisingly this element of message delivery is lost on most women. Adopting the male perspective seems novel, something that might set a woman apart in a sea of common fem-speak, but it’s important for Men to understand that anything positive a ‘pro-man’ female author has to offer is still rooted in her female reality. In girl-world, what directly benefits women necessarily is presumed to benefit men, so what we’ll see is a new wave of female bloggers bastardizing the world-worn ideas that the manosphere has put together and repackaging it in a female context. It’s Man Up 2.0; make a token push to “re-empower” men just enough for them to idealize the romanticism of the responsibilities required for living up to women’s expectations.

A major illustration of this can be found in the ‘late-to-the-party’ resurgence of masculine ideals in mainstream evangelical christianity today. Like so much else in christian culture, they’re happy to use the popularity of a secular phenomenon and repackage it as kosher, the manosphere is no exception. Hacks like Mark Driscoll and more than few other “relevant” new order evangelical pastors have co-opted manosphere (MRA?) fundamentals – even ‘purified’ forms of Game – as their particular cause du jour for returning men back into their roles of accountability to the female imperative. This of course has an overwhelming appeal to White Knight prone guys, but the push is disingenuous for the same reason ‘pro-men’ female writers are – they still use the girl-world, female imperative rule book to define their outlook.

I’m once again painfully reminded of how women believe that they are the only lasting authority and irrefutable arbiters of anything that has to do with personal relationships. They have, and continue to control the language of anything relationship. Just look at the comment threads of any relationship article. Every female response is written from a position of authority. The same women who can’t articulate anything informative in other contexts  can write absolute volumes about relationship by-laws, etiquette, formalities and how it’s men’s honor bound duty to comply with their reality in a comment post.

We are acculturated into a world where the ‘common sense’ is to presume that social dynamics should ALWAYS default to a feminine imperative. In essences everyone, male or female, should agree with any social dynamic that benefits the feminine. Without even an afterthought you are cast into what would benefit a feminine frame and a female ideal. To the feminine mind (of both women and feminized men) this is just the way the world is.

Men are simply facilitators for a feminine reality.

Is Game Adversarial?

“My biggest problem with the Ro writers is that Game is by definition adversarial. It’s us against them, don’t let the bitch win. That is most definitely Rollo’s approach, yet he commands respect from men here. I can only assume that good men read a lot of Roissy, Roosh or Rollo, incorporate some small fraction of it, and use it to improve their relationships, rather than for nefarious means.”

Aunt Susan came up with this little gem and it got me thinking over the weekend. Is Game adversarial?

I can certainly understand how women with a vested interest in maximizing the dictates of their hypergamy would think so. It’s not in the collective best interest of women’s sexual selectivity (e.g. the feminine imperative) that men be educated in how best to access their vaginas. For the same reason porn and prostitution is socially stigmatized, any medium that makes for easier resolution of a man’s sexual demand necessarily devalues women’s most valuable agency – her sexuality. So from Aunt Sue’s side of the equation I can certainly see how Game could be considered adversarial, but is it really that malicious? Do we “not wanna let the bitch win?” I don’t think so.

Whenever I consider reasonings for Game I have to begin from the perspective of why Game developed in the first place. Game is the logical response, the inevitable countermeasure, to feminization and female primacy. In the foggy days of emerging internet proto-Game there wasn’t some diabolical PUA who thought “Ha! At last I’ve discovered the secret psychology to make those bitches pay for all their lies and wrongdoing!” There might be an MRA guy who has such a vendetta, but it’s not the PUA community. Game developed because men began to see the code in the Matrix. They used simple behaviorism, observable results and modified their social experiments until they could get to a relatively predictable, usable technique. The internet then gave them a global access to compare notes and develop their own approaches. Thus we have Game.

Firestarter

Now that Prometheus has stolen the fire of Game from Aphrodite and given it to mortal men, what will they do with it? Warm the hearts of women by knowing exactly what a man should be, or will they burn their homes to the ground in hedonistic pursuits? Let me allay some fears here first; it’s been my overwhelming experience that men would rather see Game as some, often underdeveloped, expedient to getting with their Dream Girl than to exact some revenge upon womankind. When they first become aware of Game, most chumps reject it wholesale – they’re too insulated in their feminization programming to accept it. Of those who don’t, the first tendency is to use it to get that one elusive girl who’s been forever out of reach, even if she’s just an idealization. Finally, there are the select few Men who really understand the mechanics of Game, internalize it and use it like an art.

For all the rationalizations against Game, very rarely is it used as a weapon. In fact Game doesn’t even approach the same level of weaponization with which women have classically used their sexuality as against men. Game’s been around for a decade, women have been wielding the power of the V for millennia. We take women weaponizing their vaginas as a matter of fact – men using Game, well that’s a major threat.

Now then, for the record, and to make Aunt Sue a bit more comfortable, let me express that I in no way believe that the sexes were meant to be adversarial. On the contrary, it is the adamant view of this blog’s proprietor that the sexes we’re, and are, meant to compliment one another. It is just in this belief that Game becomes a necessity as a logical step forward for masculinity in the face of the overwhelming feminization of the past 40 years. Game is only viewed as a retaliatory threat when it is interpreted from the perspective of  female imperative interests. True misogyny and misandry are both exceptionally rare social outliers, but a female imperative, cautious of protecting its eminence and control, will fling accusations of misogyny against anything it perceives as a threat to it. In fact the liberty with which misogynistic accusations are thrown about is the best evidence of the control female primacy exerts in society. If anything is adversarial it’s the deliberate 40 year push of feminization that imbalances the genders. Feminization has become so embedded and acculturated into society at this stage that anything that attempts to tip that scale back to the masculine side (i.e. Game) is automatically ridiculed at best or legally eradicated at worst. Ultimately, my intent is that Game – real, internalized, personality changing Game – will restore that complimentary balance to gender dynamics.

Aunt Sue’s beef isn’t about the utility of Game so much as what it’s used for. If I announced that there was this great new way of thinking that makes men want to be the best man possible to facilitate better committed relationships for women I could start my own cable channel and become a celebrity psychologist. Oddly enough, this is what most men want to do with Game; do exactly what women keep telling them is expected of them and man-the-fuck-up. Only when they do they’re called misogynists. All that being what it is, the root of the point of contention is that Game places men in a better position to facilitate their own sexual interests. If a technique could be developed that would virtually guarantee a desired sexual behavior from women it destroys their sex as the ultimate commodity for men. The root of every social convention women develop and normalize can be found in protecting the valuation of their sexuality. Take that away and they cease to become the ‘protected sex’ and join the ranks of the ‘disposable sex’.

Ladies, thank your lucky stars for Game. With any luck the strong, masculine, decisive, confidence necessary for applied Game will become internalized by men, thus giving you the Men you really want – the Man Up guys you love and hate so much, but really love all the more. Worry less about a guy using Game to create his personal harem and more about a guy not fully realizing what Game can really teach him.

Taking things Slow

Sex is the glue that holds relationships together.

“Taking things slow” is covert communication for “I have other irons in the fire, and you’re not the first best option.”

This is the law of diminishing returns; at what point is the yield out-valued by the effort needed to produce it? If you allow yourself to be put into a holding pattern with a “take it slow” woman you will ALWAYS expend more effort than the reward yield, if for no other reason than that you are ignoring other, potentially better, opportunities in exchange for your attention and effort.

The “take it slow” methodology capitalizes on a guy’s insecurity in that it automatically places him into a constant position of qualifying himself to the woman at the risk of his reputation. In other words, if he doesn’t take it slow (i.e forces the issue, pleads his case too emphatically) OR he ejects altogether, he risks becoming who she, conveniently, “fears he really is”, a Player only interested in getting in her panties. It’s a self-fulfilling social convention that protects a woman’s ego no matter what the outcome. However the converse of this is that he wastes his own resources (time, opportunity, attention, money) indefinitely while trying to negotiate terms for what he thinks is her genuine desire. Ultimately, assuming there is one, the reward (which initially is always sex) will never out-value the cost of the investment.

In most instances, a guy getting this response is one of multiple options she’s entertaining at the time and will conveniently be dismissed if a higher value guy becomes viable for her (i.e. the hot guy in Cancun). In a way this “take it slow” contrivance is a similar, but more manipulative version of the LJBF rejection. In the TIS method there is an implied presumption that a guy “may” qualify for her intimacy IF he can prove himself to be patient and match her set of prerequisites. There is no presumption in an LJBF and the guy simply takes it upon himself that he can qualify if he can only plead his case well enough.

the SEX might not be worth the wait, but the relationship might.

Beware of this rationale, sex is the glue that holds an LTR together. Sex is an integral part of an LTR and if it is established from the outset that a woman’s sexuality is a conditional reward for desired behavior from a man rather than a mutual experience based on mutually passionate desire, this LTR becomes fundamentally compromised. It is her frame, her world, that the waiting guy is entering from the very inception of what later may turn into an LTR. His first act of that LTR is capitulating to her terms for sex.

You can dress this up in esoteric reasonings as to how, later, she’ll appreciate him more for respecting her wishes to move slowly, but it doesn’t negate the fact that the Alpha traits women find the most attractive, and the most sexually arousing, have nothing to do with patience and everything to do with impulsivity. Women want to be pushed for sex. Women constantly complain that they need to feel sexy to want to have sex, and so long as it’s ‘the right guy’, nothing makes them feel sexier than knowing he’s hot for her to the point that he’s acting on impulse. The token resistance might seem cute or it’s used as some ASD ego preserving buffer, but it’s really a another way women prolong that feeling sexy dynamic which can be more rewarding than sex itself.

The nature of the Alpha guy that women crave pushes him to have sex, not wait for it. In fact that sexual insistence is a prime indicator that a woman is dealing with an Alpha. The man who’d agree to ‘taking it slow’ telegraphs Beta to her. Sexual impulsivity is an Alpha indicator that translates into a Man who insists on getting what he wants in other aspects of life – which benefits HER and her future offspring’s long term provisioning. In the long term, women want Men who other men want to be and other women want to bang. The man agreeing to the patience and effort needed to “take it slow” is indicating that he’s not accustomed to insisting on, and getting what he wants. If he can sublimate his most powerful biological imperative to get sex, what else is he willing to sublimate?

Sex is the deal breaker, but in my pointing it out I run the risk of coming across as “shallow” or “superficial.” It’s important, but it shouldn’t be that important, right?

Wrong. It is THAT important. Sex is the glue that holds relationships together.

If you encountered a woman who fit every ideal you ever had for a relationship – best friend, loving, 100% loyal, excellent mother, came from a great family, perfect HB 10, healthy both mentally and physically, emotionally available, intellectually stimulating, shared all your beliefs – who loved you unconditionally and wanted to marry you, but with one caveat; he/she would NEVER have sex with you under any circumstances, would you marry this person? You could have children together through insemination and they would always be platonically affectionate with you; knowing full well before you did, and pledging to be completely faithful yourself, would you spend the rest of your life in a completely sexless marriage with an otherwise ideal person?

Remember this sexless state doesn’t come after having had sex before (due to an injury or disability), it’s a pre-condition for the relationship. That’s the underlying message of  “taking it slow” – all the benefits and emotional perks of a relationship with no expectation of sex. It’s like men having a fuck buddy, all the sex he wants with no expectation of emotional investment.

This is how important sex is. People tend to think of love as coming in different varieties and colors – platonic, fraternal, familial, erotic, agape, etc. All of this is nonsense. Love is love, it’s how it’s expressed that’s different. I love my Mom, my brother, my best friend and my daughter, but I only fuck my wife – that’s what makes us husband and wife, not brother and sister. Sex can be an expression of love or it can be an act of recreation, but it is always a prerequisite for an intersexual relationship. It’s time we all stopped deemphasizing the importance of sex and accept it for what it is. Every time we think we’re taking some moral high-road by saying it’s superficial or shallow to place such importance on sex, we only do a disservice to ourselves and our lovers. We’re only screwing ourselves by thinking that we’re in some way above sexuality in some lame self-delusion that in stating so will make us more desirable and set us apart from the rest of the herd (who are also claiming to be above sex anyway). It IS that important, so start giving it the respect it deserves. You do yourself no favors by desexualizing yourself.

Plate Theory III: Transitioning

You cannot help anyone until you’ve first helped yourself.

The following was posted with permission from a consult I did.

Hi Rollo, my name is Akash and I am big fan of your posts. They are always lucid, logical, and insightful.

I discovered the community about 5 months ago after yet another failed relationship characterized by highly AFC behavior on my part. I ended it with a tremendous amount of guilt as I felt that because she was a “good person” I ought to have made it work even though I wasn’t in love with her. I am 27 years old.

Based on your posts I would really appreciate your advice on two issues:
(1) how to make the best use of my impending return to school in May for a second undergraduate degree and;
(2) how to overcome the cognitive dissonance I feel about pursuing women outside the confines of a committed relationship as I still suffer from social conditioning that tells me I will hurt women by pursuing primarily sexual relationships with them and so it is immoral to do so.

If you would like to post a reply on the forum, rather than by a PM, for the benefit of others that is fine with me. I wanted to direct these queries to you though as I believe I could benefit from your worldy wise opinion.

Sincerely look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Akash

Akash,

I’ll give you a run down of what I can gather from your initial post, but understand that what you’ve given me here is pretty limited as far as information is concerned. I can only assume certain things from the very brief description of your life so take what I write with that in mind. In the future give me a better account of what your AFC behaviors were, how your relationships have ended, family background, where you live, why you’re pursuing a second degree, etc. I can be more accurate and avoid assumptions this way.

To begin with, you’ve only been involved in the “community” for the past 5 months so the first thing I’m going to tell you is that it takes time to mold your personality and unlearn mental schemas you’ve become conditioned to consider integral parts of your current personality. One of the biggest obstacles most men have with accepting the fundaments of a positive masculine mindset is the attitude that personality is static and uncontrollable by them. A lot of this “that’s just how I am” mentality comes from this basic conditioning and needs to be addressed from the outset since this almost universally is an ego-investment on the part of a guy who’s probably emotionally distressed, confused and/or frustrated.

Understand now that personality is ultimately what YOU determine it to be. This isn’t to say that external factors don’t influence personality; indeed these variables and outside influences are exactly the reason men such as yourself do seek out the community. However, it is you who determine what is comfortable for you and what will constitute the traits that makes your personality your own. You are most definitely not a blank slate, but you have the capacity to erase parts you don’t like or are unusable and rewrite new parts that you like and prove efficient.

(1) how to make the best use of my impending return to school in May for a second undergraduate degree

This all depends on what your own personal goals are. The best use you can make of this time is to devote yourself completely to achieving the purpose for which you decided to pursue a second degree in the first place. I can only assume you are working for this degree with a set outcome in mind, but is this what you truly want? I ask this because I know far too many men who’ve altered the course of their lives to better accommodate the women in their lives or to facilitate their insecurities and fear of rejection. It’s not an unfamiliar story to me to hear of how a guy opted for a certain university or a career path because he’d convinced himself that it would sustain a relationship that he was fearful of loosing or he felt was his “responsibility as a man” to be supportive of her ambitions at the sacrifice of his own. The conclusion of this scenario, more often than not, ends with a bitter man, mad at himself with the long term results of his choices after the woman he’d strived so long to accommodate leaves him for another man who held fast to his own identity and ambition – which is exactly what makes him attractive.

I’m not sure how or if this fits into your conditions, but let it serve as an illustration for reclaiming and remolding your own personality. Only you have the hindsight to assess why you made certain decisions in your life. I’m only asking you to be as brutally critical of your true motivations for making them. Maybe it’s time you review why you decided to pursue a second degree?

(2) how to overcome the cognitive dissonance I feel about pursuing women outside the confines of a committed relationship as I still suffer from social conditioning that tells me I will hurt women by pursuing primarily sexual relationships with them and so it is immoral to do so.

Akash, any reasonably attractive woman knows you’d like to have sex with her. It’s a primal, chemical instinct and to be bluntly honest, there’s nothing wrong with it. In certain Muslim sects men are allowed to take “temporary” wives for a set period of time in addition to their “permanent” wives so long as they support them financially. Some Mormons practice open polygamy in a similar fashion. Some men marry and divorce multiple times (and support them congruously). All of these practices are considered, to a greater or lesser degree, moral. The dissonance occurs when the rationalizations for a behavior conflict with the motivations for it and the associative psycho-social stigmas that get attached to it. Sorry for the $10 words here, but your feelings of guilt or hesitancy in a desire to explore multiple relationships is a calculated result of a very effective social conditioning with a latent purpose meant to curb a natural impulse.

Recognizing this is the first step to progressing beyond it and actually using it (responsibly) to your own advantage. As men, our biological impetus is to have unlimited access to unlimited sexuality with females bearing the best physical attributes. This is a rudimentary fact and on some level of consciousness both men and women understand this. No amount of proselytizing or social conditioning will erase what God and evolution hard-coded into our collective bio-psychological desires and behaviors. Admittedly, social conventions have historically made a good run at limiting this drive, but it can never (nor should it ever) purge this, because in essence it is a survival-ensuring attribute for us.

I wont argue against the utility in the latent purpose of absolute monogamy. No other method proves more valuable in parental investment and developing a strong masculine and feminine psyche in a person than that of a committed, opposite sex, two-parent family. I feel it’s necessary to add here that I am thoroughly unconvinced that gender identity is exclusively a set of learned behaviors as many in the mainstream would try to convince us of. There is simply too much biological evidence and the resulting psychological/behavioral response to gender differences to accept this, making it vitally important that a child (and later a healthy adult) be taught a healthy appreciation for both the masculine and feminine influences in their psyches.

The genders were meant to be complimentary, not adversarial. I certainly would never condone infidelity based on just this principle alone since it seems the most beneficial for healthy adults. It’s when this healthy monogamy becomes clouded by infantile, emotionality and insecure romanticisms with the resulting expectations that are derived by them that it becomes necessary for a man to cultivate an attitude of being the PRIZE. Adopting this mindset broadens his selection of opportunities for monogamy to his greatest advantage prior to committing to monogamy. In other words, if you are essentially sacrificing your capacity to pursue your biological imperative (unlimited access to unlimited sexuality), pragmatically, you’ll want to choose a partner of the highest quality from the broadest pool of potential you are capable of attracting.

The downside of this proposition is twofold. First, your ability to attract a sizable pool of quality ‘applicants’ is limited by factors you immediately have available. At 37, if all goes well, you’ll be more financially stable and mature than you are at 27. The 37 year old Akash will, in theory, be more attractive to a long term prospect than the 27 year old Akash. Secondly, women’s sexual value decreases as they age, meaning there is no guarantee that your beautiful, vivacious, 27 year old bride will remain so at 37. In fact the odds are she wont.

All of this makes betting your biological imperative on monogamy critically important and thus deserving of the widest possible selection.

Men literally live and die according to their options, so it stands to reason they ought to entertain a prolonged period in their lives where they are open to exploring the most options they have access to while concurrently developing and improving themselves prior to making a commitment of this magnitude.

And this is precisely where most men fail. They buy into and internalize psychological social contrivances (i.e. ONEitis) that are little more than effective means of inculcating a self-expectation of accountability and liability to make this commitment, irrespective of maturity level or personal success (not simply financial success). The saddest ones, the AFC ones are the pitiable men who carry these contrivances into marriage and even old age without ever understanding that they had more potential which they squandered due to an inability to see past these contrivances and learn to be selective based on experience.

A truly powerful Man jealously guards his most precious resources; his independence and his ability to maneuver. In other words his options and his ability to exercise them. True power isn’t controlling others, but the degree to which you control the course of your own life and your own choices. Commitment to anything ALWAYS limits this. When you step through one door, a hundred more close behind you. You’re free to do what you want, right? You can always quit a job, divorce a wife, change your school, etc., but how many men do you know who are what they are today as a result of their own real doing, unfettered by how their choices impact their GF, wife, kids, parents, etc.? By comparison, how many guys do you know who dutifully stick with a dead-end job that’s slowly killing them because it’s better than dealing with the consequences and backlash it would have on his family? Are they free to quit? Sure, but not without an impact on their families and relationships.

So where does this leave you? You have 2 paths as I see it. You can sarge and explore your options with multiple LTRs and, should you decide to become sexually involved, do so while maintaining non-exclusivity with them. Put off and unlearn the expectations you’ve been conditioned to accept through (feminine beneficent) social contrivances and truly explore your opportunities while bettering your own conditions in anticipation for becoming monogamous at some later point. Or, you can remain in your sense of moral doctrine (no shame in this) and still non-exclusively date and explore your options while you continue to better yourself with the caveat that you know you’ll be limiting your depth of experience. I wont denigrate a decision to opt for this, but far too few religious men have the perseverance to stay objective in their decision to ‘hold out’ and overlook major character flaws in women they’d like to be their spouse in a furious rush to marry them and get to “the sex part.” Better to fall short in conviction than make hurried decisions that will alter your life.

And perhaps this isn’t even what you’re driving at? I don’t know if it’s a religious conviction or an internalized social contrivance that passes for one that’s the cause of your hesitancy, but isn’t it interesting that both are so closely associated? I know devout atheists who still believe in the fallacy of the ONE or the soulmate myth. Most women (and far too many men) look at me as if I’d denied the existence of God when I elaborate on why I think their eHarmony, induced fantasy of a soulmate is hogwash and psychologically damaging on a social scale.

Regardless, whatever your reasons, women should only ever be a compliment to a man’s life, never the focus of it. When you start living for a woman you become that woman. Never again compromise your own identity to receive the ever-changing approval she grants you. You have to be the PRIZE at all times, not just while you’re single. In fact, it’s imperative that you remain so into an LTR. My suggestion to you is not to even entertain the idea of monogamy until you are established in your career for 2 years, after your college is complete. Play the field, do whatever, but do not commit even to a girlfriend. Rather make a commitment to yourself, promise yourself you wont allow yourself to let emotionality and conditioned expectations of monogamy dictate what your goals will be or how you’ll achieve them.

It’s called enlightened self-interest; you cannot help anyone until you’ve first helped yourself.

Plate Theory II: Non-Exclusivity

Women would rather share a high value Man than be saddled by a faithful loser.

“I just started applying Plate Theory, and I have to say with all honesty that this is probably the best thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. The feeling of having options is addictive; the whole idea that you don’t come from a necessitous emotional state is genius, and in fact the more options you have, the more attractive you become to women (through the unconscious changes in your behavior), the more women become attracted to you, and the more options you have. Once you get it started, it’s hard to stop it.

Recently I’ve been Spinning Plates with some success, but there comes a point when I risk one girl finding out about another. How do I handle this without the risk of losing one of my plates? Should I even bother with the effort of spinning plates that aren’t as high a value as others?”

Real options are the cornerstone of confidence, so try not to think of it in terms of risk – as in you’re risking the loss of “a great girl”. Most guys get to a point where Game and plate spinning give them their first taste of real options to select from or fall back on when another doesn’t pan out. The problem arises when they spin enough plates successfully to the point where they think they’ve maxed out to their “best” option and the old scarcity mentality returns. Most times a guy who newly practices Game and plate spinning never really spins plates per se; he uses it for the first monogamous opportunity that’s been eluding him for so long and calls it quits. He never actualizes and internalizes an abundance mentality.

Spinning Plates doesn’t necessarily mean you’re fucking all of your plates. It’s more of a spreading out of your efforts across a wider pool of subjects. Some will reciprocate, and those you entertain. Others will not, or prove to be less desirable, and those you let fall. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds once you’ve established your own resolve to be non-exclusive. At some point women will attempt to corner you into exclusivity and this is where your resolve will be tested. Women love to say how they have Rules, well you must have Rules as well. This means not shacking up with a woman, not slipping into any routine with her, not calling her more than necessary to set up another sporadic date, saving your weekends for women who’ve had a proven IL in you (i.e. sex or intimacy) and relegating those who haven’t to Tuesdays & Wednesdays, etc. This may seem like a lot of micromanagement, but once you put it into practice in as pragmatic a way possible to accomodate your life you’ll find that the decisions you make regarding the plates you are choosing to spin will become automatic.

If you feel that you have something to lose with a particular girl, you’re no longer spinning plates – you’re thinking and approaching dating in terms of exclusivity. POOK’s great quote: “women would rather share a high value Man than be saddled by a faithful loser” A lot of guys (and almost every woman) have a big problem with the truth of this because they take it too literally. POOK was never suggesting that you overtly declare that you’ll be open to other options and that your girls should consciously be expected to accept this. Every woman takes this quote in this way, and with good reason because they don’t want to seem like an easy mark. When it’s on the table like that it unsurprisingly becomes an affront to their pride and self-worth. However, in practice, non-exclusivity has to be covert. It needs to be implied, not declared. Thus you see the truth in POOK’s observation – women’s behavior will bear him out. Imagination and competition anxiety paired with implied non-exclusivity are the tools for successful plate spinning.

Become the commodity she’s looking for.

A high value Man can spin plates, and sometimes those plates suspect there are, or know there are other plates in his rotation. They’ll tolerate it so long as he remains high enough value (or effectively presents that perception) or hypergamy wil move them along to another high value Man. As I state in Plate Theory, some plates fall off to be replaced by new plates. You must be willing and confident enough to let some of them fall. This is a tough reality for recovering chumps new to Game to accept. Deprivation has conditioned them to hang onto a “sure thing” and this becomes all the more difficult when the plate they happen to drop was the first woman they’d ever successfully applied Game to, or was hotter than any girl they’d previously been with.

As I stated earlier, you don’t have to be sexual with every one of the plates you’re spinning (this used to be called “dating” in the days before serial monogamy became the fashion). It’s the potential in knowing that you could be, or that there are women who will value your attention that prompts a competitive anxiety in women – often when you don’t even know you’re doing it. If you are sexual with some of the plates you’re spinning, so much the better since you know that they’re proven commodities and if one isn’t performing as you’d like, you have the unconscious knowledge that others will, or you have the proven ability to generate more options for yourself.

Monogamy is a byproduct, not a goal.

One of the biggest hurdles guys have with Plate Theory is breaking themselves of this ‘LTR-as-Goal’ mentality. Obviously I’m not anti-monogamy, however monogamy should never be a goal, it should be a by-product of Plate Theory, but only when you’ve properly filtered through enough plates to understand how options play into confidence and controlling the frame. If a woman is unwilling to be non-exclusive with you (i.e. “she’ll leave me if I see other girls” fear) she isn’t a plate to spin. This seems counterintuitive to a guy with an LTR-As-Goal mentality and it is, but the guy who can fearlessly, and honestly stay above-board with his intent is the one who’ll be spinning more plates. Most guys (AFCs in particular) are deathly afraid of losing that ONE perfect girl and so never even attempt to spin more than one plate, much less have any others to compare her ‘perfection’ to in the first place. I’ve even seen PUAs do exactly this. They’re so impressed with the success of newly perfected techniques that they settle for the ONE ‘dream girl’ and find that their attentions become valueless to her because she perceives she is his only option for intimacy, his script gets flipped on him, and he gets marginalized. It’s not a failure in technique, but rather a failure in his mindset.

So what do you do to establish your plates and be truly, and successfully, non-exclusive with women? Initially I’d suggest doing exactly what most women have perfected for the better part of their lifetimes, stay intentionally ambiguous. Women practice Plate Theory by default – they play the Coquette (hard to get), they know how to be ambiguous enough to keep their options open, but not so much as to let a guy’s interest fail. They naturally know that we only chase what runs away from us. They never commit fully, but still keep the carrot in front of the donkey.

Women communicate COVERTLY, with gesture, with looks, with veiled meanings – you have to communicate your intent to be non-exclusive COVERTLY. Never OVERTLY tell a woman you’ve got other plates than her spinning. Allow her to discover this by your mannerisms, your behaviors, and definitely by your availability to her. Create value through scarcity, don’t be so available to her, but just enough to keep her interest and allow her mind to consider that maybe you have other options. Even when you don’t, fomenting this anxiety is a VERY useful tool for you while you do get more plates to spin. Even the ambient confidence that comes from knowing you have a past, proven, ability to generate more sexual options for yourself will manifest itself in your personality and trigger this competition anxiety.

At some point a woman will resort to OVERT communications when she’s run out of options in her COVERT communications tool set. This is the point the anxiety becomes unbearable and the need for security forces her to be OVERT. This is usually the stage at which she’s ask something like “where is this going?” or “am I your girlfriend?” or she may even give you an ultimatum. See this for what it is, she feels powerless and this is a press to commit. This is the point at which you will end up as a “cheater” or you’ll continue to spin plates. You actually have a lot of options in this situation, in fact more than you will ever have with any individual woman. You can of course take the coward’s path and just agree to exclusivity with her, but in doing so you lose all options (for as far as you’re willing to commit) as she intently becomes your only means of intimacy. She becomes the broker for your sexuality and you lose power, whereas before YOU were in control of your sexual availability.

You could continue to spin her as well, but bear in mind she’s resorted to OVERTLY confronting you about it and it wont be the last you hear of it. Depending on how long you’ve had her around, you may simply just let her drop. You might also keep her going, but let her cool a bit and come back to her in a few week’s time. Again, this seems counterintuitive, but your attention will either wildly increase in her value of it or she’ll simply bug out in which case it wasn’t worth pursuing and you aren’t wasting your time and effort on a woman with less than 100% IL.

Confidence is derived from options.

Don’t think of plate theory as a filter so much as it is a means to reinforce confidence. If you were to step into the ring with a professional UFC fighter right now it’d probably be suicide for you. But train for a few years, spar with other fighters and win a few bouts and you’ll probably be confident enough in your past performances that you know you can hold your own in the ring. That’s the idea, confidence derived from the options of non-exclusive women in hand and from having successfully generated those options in the past.

It’s not a numbers game, it’s a non-exclusivity game. The goal isn’t racking up as many women as humanly possible in order to sift through the throng and find that one little golden flower. In fact that’s the key to disaster. There is no Quality Woman, that’s an idealization. Some are better than others of course, but you don’t find the perfect woman, you make the perfect woman. There is no needle in the haystack – that is Scarcity / ONEitis thinking – the point is to mold yourself and any woman who you do exclusively end up with into your own frame. This is a process that should come before you commit to exclusivity, not after. The world is filled with guys forever trying to catch up, control the frame and be the Man they should’ve been long before they entered an LTR. They spend the better part of their LTRs/Marriages trying to prove that they deserve their GF’s / Wife’s respect when they’d have done better in letting her come to that conclusion well before the commitment through a healthy dose of competition anxiety.