Game

16 Years On

On July 20th my wife and I celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. It’s no secret to my readers that I have a very good marriage and I’m constantly asked what my ‘secret’ is for keeping things positive, or the Oprah classic, “what do you do to ‘Keep It Fresh™‘?’. The manosphere is littered with stories of guys and their divorces contrasted against the stories of single guy’s decaying LTRs or dealing with recovering from them. I try not to make a habit of personalizing things that gloss myself, but when I do just understand it’s more from a sense of being a wild card. Guys with successful marriages (a dubious term at best) don’t really have the motivation to come to forums like the manosphere and share their insights. Why bother if that area of one’s life is more or less taken care of? So in light of this, I’ll share a few things I’ve learned in the last 16 years that make for a good marriage from my perspective.

Let me begin by giving you all some background; Mrs. Tomassi is my first marriage and Bebé Tomassi is my one and only daughter. As I’ve said before, by society’s current standards I’m a freak. I’m a freak in that I met my wife and we dated for 8 months (non-exclusively for 4) before I proposed to her. I was 28 when we married. After 2 years being married we decided to have one child – by design. My wife expected me to be a Man and I in turn expected her to be a Woman. I did not knock her up and then marry her. She was not a single mother, nor did she have excess baggage from previous relationships.

This is important to know, because when I relate stuff like this I often get the “well, you did everything right” response, when in fact every bit of what I enjoy with my wife today is due to me doing much more wrong. I had to unlearn what 26 or so years of feminized and emasculated teachings had taught me up to that point. Admittedly unaware, I had come across a unique situation – a woman who actually wanted a Man to be a Man, and in all honesty I was completely unprepared for it. I was an AFC (really a recovering AFC by that point due to a psychotic  relationship prior to all this) and there was no community back then to inform me otherwise. I had read some of Dr. Warren Farrell’s books, but that was the extent of my own self-understanding with regard to my own gender conditioning.

Being the Driver

Now I had come across a woman who on our first date insisted that I drive HER car. My truck was a piece of shit of course , but after years of this gender equalism brainwashing, a woman, upfront, wanted me to take control. Since then I’ve always been the driver (with the exception of her driving us home after I had my wisdom teeth pulled). This was symbolic of how the next 16 years would play out.

Mrs. Tomassi is no push-over and she most certainly gives me shit tests even to this day. In fact I’ve described marriage as one life long shit test and I still hold to that, but from the begining she expected me to be positively masculine – to be the decider, to be the initiator, to have the ideas and to confidently execute them. Even in my worst failures, the fact that I attempted honestly was more important than the outcome. This may not have been the case in the short term, but in the long term is where you can see the appreciation in the behavior. We compliment each other in our understanding of our gender roles.

When we met my wife was dating two very rich men (we were non-exclusive, remember?), I had 2 nickels and a beat up pickup truck to my name. Mrs. Tomassi is a medical professional and the men she’d dated prior were E.R. doctors and specialists; guys making well over $300K annually. They had boats, cars, large homes, status, dispoasable wealth, and yet despite all of that I’m the one she pursued and locked in with (her Mom thought she was insane to marry me at the time). They had it made, but for all that wealth they were still clueless when it came to being Men – they were uncomfortable in their own masculinity. A lot of guys mistakenly believe that having a large bank account is the key to getting women, and while that might help in the short term, in the long term it’s to your own detriment (she’ll end up with half after the divorce) if you don’t ultimately kill the inner AFC and fearlessly embrace the postiveness of your own masculinity.

The Ingredients

There are so many aspects I can detail about what makes for a good marriage, but all of these really boil down to two things, genuine desire and mutual respect. Too many couples become complacent and comfortable in their marriages and this leads to a decline in both of these areas. A certain degree of subtle anxiety and constructive discontent is necessary for a good marriage. That comes off as negative to the plug-ins of the Matrix, but it’s really what makes each partner want to be better for themselves and each other. Taken too far it becomes abusive, but none at all and the marriage becomes stagnant which is equally dangerous. In the right proportion, this anxiety makes for a marriage that retains it’s mutual desire (which is really analogous to Interest Level) and mutual respect.

So how does this anxiety manifest itself? An easy example is staying in shape together. I can honestly say my wife is still hot (if not more so since the boob job). I want to bang my wife as often as humanly possible; how many men married for 10 years can make that statement? My wife is a piece of ass and I see guys eye her all the time. Likewise I’m a bodybuilder and keep myself in peak condition. I get women in their 20’s flirting with me often enough, and this confirms for her and myself that we are both desirable people – this is one example of this anxiety, and we both recognize it and respect each other for it.

There are other ways this anxiety can be applied, for instance C&F (cocky & funny) goes a long way in marriage. Mrs. Tomassi loves just enough C&F attitude from me to reaffirm her perception of my confidence. As I said earlier, marriage is a life long set of shit tests and carefully used C&F is a tool that can be used to diffuse a lot of these before they even happen. Confidence is still the thing that makes a woman want a man, even in marriage. Generally a shit test IS a test of confidence. Prior to marriage, it’s latent purpose is to help a woman determine whether a guy can provide for her long term security. After marriage, a shit test is used to reassure a woman that she married the right guy.

I’ve come to find that Game is even more necessary in marriage than when you’re single – there’s far more at stake when the commitment is intended to be for a lifetime.

I have a lot of rules I pop off with about LTRs & marriage. I emphasize that a man not even become monogamous until he’s 30 and that he shouldn’t consider marriage until his mid 30s. Again, I state this not because I did so myself, but from my side of the fence I can see the huge advantages to doing so now. Marriage should be a last resort, something to be forestalled until a Man, by virtue of years of experience, has the ability to recognize with measurable accuracy, a woman who deserves what he provides her. The PRIZE mentality is essential. A man must be a Prince first, before he can be a King when he marries.

After 16 years of marriage I can honestly say there are no appreciable advantages (outside of raising children) that a man cannot enjoy single that he can married. That’s not meant to be pessimistic, but rather a caution to emphasize how important it is to disabuse yourselves of this AFC, romanticized, marriage-as-goal mentality. It’s also not to say marriage is never worth it – just that marriage is complete advantage for women with negligible, if any, benefit for men. Marriage will either make a man’s life or destroy his life; enter into thinking about it like this and you’ll make a better decision. Is this person deserving of what I provide? Women will NEVER, even in the best of marriages, fully appreciate the sacrifices a man has to make in order to fulfill his commitment of marriage. Entering into a life-long binding commitment of fidelity that offers a man very little appreciable advantage, and knowing the totality of the risk he’s assuming in accepting that sacrifice will never be fully understood or appreciated by the woman he marries. This is why you have put your head into thinking whether she’s deserving of your provisioning, security, confidence, attention, etc. even when it goes against what you think is your kind and good-hearted nature. If you’ve come to a point where in spite of the acknowledged risks you still want to make that commitment, you must be as self-concerned about marriage as you would be in saving your own life.

Value Added

There’s nothing more refreshing for me than to read the insights of new Rational Readers. Generally it’s not that most offer anything terribly novel (some do), but it’s the predictable, persistent, feminized societal interpretations that keep reusing the same tired rationales which gives me hope that positive masculinity is cracking that shell. In other words, girl-world isn’t really coming up with anything new; it’s just retreads of old tropes.

One new Rational Reader, ‘S’ (maybe for Susan?) decided to take me to task for my graphically detailed essay on Navigating the SMP. Have Hamster, will spin.

While S suffers from the common female malady of reverse rationalizing her ‘circumstances’, she does provide a perspective on a topic I have yet to cover here in her followup response:

Fine, I read that. I just don’t agree with you philosophy that women somehow have no purpose after the age of 30. What if say there were circumstances outside of her control that prevented her from getting married at what a simpleton might deem as an acceptable time…what if she never partied and slept around? There is more to a woman than physicality and it pisses me off that there are men like many of the above (bitter much?) who don’t appear to see worth in a women once her..what’s it called..sexual market value declines…it just strikes me a scarily misogynistic..like some creeped up from of American Psycho shit and it makes me scared for our society.

There is a lot to be said for developing true companionship with someone, having a kind of partner in crime relationship that endures…A woman of any age is appropriate for this.

To paraphrase Roissy’s inimitable words, the closer you get to the truth the louder the feminine will screech. As odd as this is going to sound I actually agree with most of S’s point here. You see, when I was detailing the timeline of men and women’s respective sexual market values, my intent was to provide a raw and unvarnished view of how, in contemporary social dynamics, men and women’s sexual market values differ over the course of time. I made the efforts (loose as they were) to reveal the slow-burn valuation of men’s SMV in contrast with women’s quick-burn SMV.

Emotional Response

Exposing uncomfortable truths is kind of a mixed bag when it comes to the emotional response to those truths. For instance when I read articles about feminist triumphalism regarding how much more ‘advanced’ women are over men today, or I read reviews like ‘The End of Men‘, the analytical portion of my brain gives way to the more emotive response. Why try right? If I’m obsolete, if the cards are stacked in women’s favor before I even get dealt a hand, why not go my own way? There’s a certain hopelessness to that initial emotional response, especially when there’s no hint of sympathy or contrition forthcoming from ‘powerful’ women and all the women aspiring to that empowerment. This is just how the game has shaken out, too bad for you men, you’re fucked now.

I imagine S probably feels the same way when she sees the landscape of the sexual marketplace on display in such Darwinian, graphic terms. Once you’ve hit the Wall ladies, your value begins its decline in earnest, so The Threat then becomes men becoming self-aware enough of their increasing SMV to capitalize upon his increase and your decrease accordingly. This is the nasty part of hypergamy; the countdown to the Wall is ever-present, but so is the subconsciousness-level doubt about having made the optimal hypergamic mating choice before the clock reaches zero. Every SMP opportunity after that point will always be colored by what opportunities she could’ve consolidated upon before it.

I often get called a cynic or uncaring in the delivery of my observations, but try to understand my approach is always about pragmatism. Should women’s overall value mean more than just her physicality and sexual availability? Yes, of course, just as Men’s intrinsic value ought to be more broadly appreciated for the qualities of his character and the sacrifices he makes to facilitate a woman’s reality. I would love nothing better than to think that the human spirit combined with mutual good-will and understanding could lift us above our base, innate drives. I would love to live in a world where men could get a hard-on based solely upon his estimation of a woman’s respective “worth”, and where women swoon for a humble, noble, loyal and devoted overweight and underemployed man with a negative balance in his bank account.

In the manosphere, every day I read about the conflict between what our higher selves should want in a woman. There’s no lack for articles and blog/forum responses making impassioned pleas for women’s fidelity, loyalty, intelligence, grace, femininity, appreciation, and a long list of other ephemeral qualities as being ideal for an LTR prospect. In fact I’d argue that the majority of men’s misreading women comes more from seeing past the red flags and attributing more importance to these qualities than a woman actually merits. For every divorced man who uttered the words “I never thought she was capable of this” I’ll show you a guy who rationalized his attraction to his ex based on what he thought were her ‘value added’ qualities.

Relationships – Nature and Nurture

I would never argue that a man or woman NOT aspire to be better than they are as human beings. There are always going to be human elements to any relationship that transcend what we’d expect the nature of the Game to dictate to us, but underneath that compassionate understanding, behind the flowery sentimentalism, is still the base drives, the feral hypergamy, the cruel reality of the Wall, etc. that we will never be exempt from. On Friday I’ll have been married for 16 years to a beautiful, loyal, feminine, woman. Mrs. Tomassi embodies a great many of the ideal qualities that most men would put on their LTR vetting list – she’s a great partner in crime for me, but my initial attraction to her had far less to do with those qualities and far more to do with how much she turned me on. However, as comfortable as I am with her, as intimate as we are with each other’s identities, warts and all, I still understand the base framework necessary for all of this to take place within.

A relationship based solely upon physicality and sexuality is every bit as weak as one based solely upon esoteric appreciations of ‘higher‘ value-added qualities.

The strongest, healthiest relationships are those in which both parties have a mature, mutual understanding and embrace of both the natural aspect and the nurturing aspect of the SMP. Women will never come to appreciate men’s intrinsic sacrifices made for them without coming to terms with naturalistic side of Game and the SMP. Likewise men need to come to terms with the reality of their conditioning and the fem-centric Matrix in order to appreciate the gravity of their decision to commit to a formalized monogamy / marriage. They need to appreciate the risk of the situation they find themselves in, but have hitherto ben unaware of. For both genders, coming to this understanding is often an ugly prospect.

Likewise it’s important to develop an appreciation for, and an embrace of those value-added qualities which move beyond the naturalistic side of the SMP. While being of primary importance, sex and the feral aspects of the SMP aren’t the only aspects of a healthy LTR. When it comes time to make the transition from spinning plates to informed, committed monogamy, you still have to live with that person and this is when those value-added attributes make or break the LTR.

I understand S’s and so many other women’s frustrations with the Game as it applies to women’s deficiencies. I’ve written at length about how women would rather have the Game changed to better suit their capacities to play it. In this instance S repeats a common moan in that she expects men to appreciate the ‘value added’ elements of a woman’s persona in priority to her base attractiveness. Her fears that men might adopt some policy of neglecting “quality” women in favor of “arousing” women, while understandable in terms of feminine competition anxiety, are really unfounded. If anything it’s the majority of beta men conditioned to believe that “it’s what on the inside that matters” who’ve borne the brunt of women’s social dissatisfaction for the past 40 years.

Guys don’t seek out the community because they’re getting too much pussy from being ‘Nice’ and appreciative of women’s ‘deeper’ qualities and they don’t know how to let down all these women easy. If anything compromises self-respect (assuming an AFC even has a concept of that) it’s a Scarcity/Sniper mentality. Worry less about the guys tapping their “harems” and more about the chump crucifying himself to be the martyr for his singular “dream girl”. He’s far more common.

Is Seduction Real?

From a SoSuave regular:

This has been driving me crazy for awhile so I got to post this question. Can you REALLY, honestly, seduce a girl? When I say “seduce” her I’m talking about taking a girl that just wants nothing to do with you at all for whatever reason that you might have no control over, and literally saying this or saying that and changing her mind?

Here’s what I’ve experienced:

1.) My “presentation” is mostly the same with every girl and really there’s no presentation at all. I’m about all personality. Most girls that I meet say that I’m “cute” (you know how girls talk) in the looks area, I always present myself wearing high fashion and my car is nice.

2.) But here’s the thing, the results I get depend upon the girl. There are girls that will love me, some that will just “go with the flow,” then some that will flat out say boy get lost. But here’s the WEIRD thing. I would have some average looking chick reject me to turn around and have a total dime accept my offers lol. Looking at it, it doesn’t make any sense, but I think it’s coming back to what I’m starting to see in the field and that’s the result of the interaction with the girl has more to do with the GIRL in question rather than you. I mean of course you need to work your Game, look good and do your thing, but what I’m finding is that the results often depend upon the state of the girl and her life and her background, etc.

I mean are guys here seriously whipping out “lines” and player shit to turn girls that are just totally not interested to being interested? I guess from reading the manosphere I’m more in line with the focus on the girl being interested when I show up rather than believing I can create interest.

Are you really seducing the girl or did the girl find you sexy when you walked in the door and already decided that she would fuck you JUST AS LONG as you didn’t come off as a loser, creep, etc?? Which means all this shyt comes down to is having the balls to go up and spark interesting convos, have an interesting personality, and knowing WHICH girl in the room to go up to and which ones not to?

There’s a PUA idiom that states 80% of seduction is simply not fucking up what’s already there. Attraction is not a choice – however, what you do from there is entirely up to you.

I think people get hung up on the word “seduction.” It conjures up melodramatic associations of doing something nefarious to tempt someone into doing something against their own interests. In some instances that may be the case, but far more often seduction is really just selling yourself effectively by manipulating the emotions and psychologies of others. Politicians, religious leaders, salesmen, etc. are all seducers of varying shades. There’s a very blurry line between influence and seduction, but in both cases there’s a willing participant always present. No seduction, or call-to-action was ever consummated with a person who wasn’t already somewhat desirous of being seduced.

Advertisers have known this for years; the best seductions are the ones where the target isn’t aware of being seduced, plays a willing part in their own seduction and are so rapt in their own involvement that they’ll prefer pathological denial when confronted with having been seduced. To varying degrees, people have an innate, limbic level ego-preservation mechanism that protects them from the damages that humiliation might injure them with. No one likes to think that they could be so inured or naive (i.e. suckered) that they’d fall for a seduction, yet whenever they buy a lottery ticket their heads are filled with fantasies of what they’ll do with all that money.

So, given all of that, naturally no one is going to ever get any concrete, totally verifiable feedback as to what produced an effective seduction from the target that was seduced. That’s the subjective nature of all seduction – you can only draw your conclusions from what worked and what didn’t according to your own observations of your own goals, not the target’s.

For instance, I’d argue that it’s a rare woman who’ll admit to having been seduced by a man. It’s a point of pride for women to think that they have some preternatural ability (feminine wiles) to seduce men (really by virtue of having a vagina). And for those women who would admit to having been seduced, it’s always couched in a sense of complimenting herself for being a woman of such value who could attract a man capable of seducing her.

Bear in mind, everyone has Game. Even the worst beta AFC in the world believes his supplication, pedestalization and outright prostration for a woman will separate him from the rest of the herd of “other guys” and increase his appeal to her. Everyone of us, learned or not, has a Game in that we approach our sexual interests in the way we believe will best produce the desired result – sexual response. The average chump wouldn’t think to call it “seduction”, but his ‘Game’ that’s evolved, misguided as it may be, is still an effort in influence and persuasion over a girl to get to sexual response.

Learning from Failure

In terms of learning seduction, failure is more beneficial than success, and this is exactly what guys fear because failure comes in the form of rejection, or in the case of the already committed chump, a fear of rejection. The young AFC will rely on a deductive reasoning (as most males do) which plots something like this:

I have a physical need for sex -> Women have the sex I need -> I must find out what women require for their sexuality -> I ask women what prerequisites they require for this exchange -> I must model my personality, behavior and ambitions to best exemplify these prerequisites -> I must perform these behaviors for her approval -> I get sex.

This is simple male logic and ultimately self-destructive because the women he petitions find it easier to require the dictates of social contrivances that they feel should be expected of him (and modified by their own set of contrivances) than to actually give him the honest truth which would likely set him on his ass in rejection, but moreover would help him better learn how to genuinely develop his own identity.

It’s this failure that teaches most accurately. On several occasions I’ve advised guys to be more wary of their successes than thier failures. Men meticulously pore over and analyze the minute details of why a date went sour or why a woman cheated on or LJBFed them, but the moment they F-Close for the first time, the minute they taste that sweet successs they’ve been aching for so long to achieve, the story changes to “OK Rollo, thanks for all of your help, I can take it from here.” I can think of at least 4 recovering chumps I’ve personally counseled that aped the behavior well enough to get their “ONE” dream girl then crashed and burned in exactly the way I warned them they would because they never paused to question why they succeeded.

The goal of their ambition was more important than the process of understanding how they came to achieve it.

When I was counseling, the single most common complaint I heard from older AFCs was how they got a “raw deal” for doing everything that was expected from them. They did, to the letter, everything that they thought women expected of them. They were “good guys”, they played by the rules (women had set for them), they weren’t ‘Players’, they paid their bills, they were “Supportive®”, sacrificed their own ambitions to benefit their wives and children, they fed the dog and took out the garbage; but these guys were miserable because the fear of rejection, the “I’d lose her for sure if I rock the boat” scarcity mentality was more powerful than recognizing a deficit in appreciation from their wives for the life-sacrifices they made in order to keep the peace and ensure a steady supply of mediocre sexual exchange.

However, for all of their complaints and commiserations they never stopped to look at the process of events that brought them to their condition. The ‘success’ of having found a woman who’d marry them was all that was important to them at the time. Much of that “don’t question it” mentality was due to them having a Scarcity Mentality, but as their relationships decayed the focus became more about repairing it and themselves rather than untangling the process of events that contributed to it. The car was running, the TV came on when they hit the power button, and that’s all that mattered – it’s only when the car breaks down and the TV wont come on that they finally get to the nuts and bolts.

Romantic seduction has never been one-size-fits-all. In fact this is expressly spelled out in the introduction of the Art of Seduction by Robert Greene (required reading for Rational Readers). A lot of men forget what the ‘A’ means in PUA – artist. You can’t just blindly expect one style of seduction to work for all types of women – that’s why it’s called an Art. Being a good artist of any sort requires time, discipline, an ability to improvise, creation, adaptation, attention to detail, etc. There are certain basic foundational principles women adhere to (hypergamy being the most universal) either due to social convention or biology, but the good seductive artist uses these as a basis for an individual seduction. For instance, the seduction of a church mouse and a goth chick require two separate seductive approaches, but they’ll both be influenced by the underlying influences common to all women (i.e. hypergamy, dominance, etc.). A Man’s Alpha prowess will appeal to those biological foundations, but his approach in seduction needs to be measured by the conditions presented by his target.

Backwards to Zero

Roissy has some definitive gems about Game deniers and haters in general in The Unbearable Triteness of Hating. These articles have to do with the most common forms of hate with regards to Game, but in that hate is an almost universal misinterpretation (or subjective redefinition) of what should be Alpha to the critic making the challenge (i.e. hate). Roissy is a bit flippant with a lot of his responses here – an attitude I can understand considering his standing in the manosphere – but there are the germs of some very important truths in his responses:

6. Unironic Internet Smear Hate

Hater: Alphas don’t blog. They’re too busy meeting women.

Because, you know, alphas don’t have hobbies. *alpha eye roll*

ps feel free to log off the internet any time.

Whenever I write an article with the topic of ‘Alpha’ anywhere in the title I’ve come to assume that all the resulting commentary will be contentions about what is or isn’t Alpha.

One of the most frequent and contentious responses I read is some variation of “No ‘True Alpha™’ would be blogging about, concerned about, or be peripherally aware of his Alpha status. Only losers spend their time so preoccupied with varying shades of Alpha-ness.” Ironically this is exactly the case I make for the Alpha Buddahs of the world – they are blissfully unaware of the latent Alpha ambience they broadcast. It’s just how they are, and you’ll never see a blog, read some ‘how-to’ article, nor ever see an objective opinion about his Alpha mojo. He just is.

What’s funny is it’s just this lack of Alpha self-awareness that infuriates ‘aware’ men – aware men have to work at being aware. If you’re reading this blog, if you’ve delved into the manosphere to any depth, hell, if you read AskMen or use online dating just out of curiosity, you’re not a Natural Alpha. The Corey Worthingtons of the world don’t write books on how to pick up chicks, he’s too busy fucking them (and dealing with the consequences) to have time for insight about himself, much less anyone else.

The Tao of the Natural Alpha may be a satisfying, if shortsighted, way to live, but it’s hardly sustainable. Eventually that Zen Alpha-ness creates circumstances that will create long term consequences. For the rest of us who must mentally work our way back to that feral Alpha mindset there is a lot of understanding and critical thought that goes into it. Personally I think appeals to “log off and get out and sarge” are exactly what most guys need. For all the PUA ‘charm’ readers like YaReally bring to my blog comments, he enthusiastically advocates for more time in the field and less time in the lab (i.e. the manosphere). KrauserPUA is also another favorite of mine since he actively combines Game theory with PUA applications.

The short version is Natural Alphas probably don’t blog or even have the awareness to consider the source, much less the applicability of their being Alpha, but the Learned Alpha, he does consider it, and that guy probably does blog – whether it’s out of vanity or altruism is for the reader to decide.

12. Fallacy of Misdirected Obsession Hate

Hater: A guy who spends his life obsessing over how to get women is a loser.

A guy who spends his life obsessing over climbing the corporate ladder to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who spends his life obsessing over mastering guitar and playing in a rock band to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who spends his life obsessing over pursuing financial rewards and acquiring resources to get more attention from women is a loser.
A guy who….. ah, you get the point.

The feminine imperative has used shaming tactics on men for more than half a century now, so it comes as no surprise that the feminine purpose for shaming would filter into men’s own narratives for shaming. When used by women, shaming has a different contextual quality than when used by men. For men, the root of shaming another man based on gender expectations are just as equally manipulative, but the appeal is to a man’s sense of pride and/or the way he’s chosen to live his life. In this context, the shame is used to disqualify a sexual competitor, while providing an ego affirmation for the accuser.

When women use shaming it’s generally used to force some compliance to their imperative. In other words “you should be ashamed for not embodying women’s (and by proxy, fem-centric society’s) expectations.” When men practice shame, either intentionally or unaware, even with the best of intentions, they are enforcing the feminine imperative from the standpoint that it is the societal normative. It “sounds right” for men to shame and discourage other men from learning how to better understand women. Remember, the most successful social conventions are those in which your target becomes an active, unaware, participant in his own exploitation.

By using shame, men dissuading other men from better understanding women serve the feminine imperative’s purpose in limiting The Threat of him becoming aware of his own sexual market value or potential value. Additionally, the shaming man protects the utility of the feminine mystique by perpetuating the myth that women are intrinsically unknowable creatures. “You’ll never figure women out, so don’t bother. Go back to Just Being Yourself and eventually you’ll meet the right ONE.” This is the mantra we’ve come to expect from White Knights, but it’s particularly damning for the Plugged-In when it comes from a Man they respect as an authority.

16. Dancing Monkey Hate

Hater: Men who run game are just doing the bidding of women. Alphas don’t entertain women.

If you want success with women, you are going to have to entertain them… one way or the other. The same is true of women. Once a woman stops entertaining men with her body, her femininity, and her commitment worthiness by getting fat, old, ugly, bitchy, or single mom-y, she stops having success with men. We are all doing the bidding of our biomechanical overlord, and on our knees to his will we surrender, by force or by choice. You fool yourself if you believe you have some plenary indulgence from this stark reality.
Or: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

For all of Men’s best intentions, for all our (dubious) aspirations of ‘higher-self’, what we do, what we are, what we achieve, will always be interpreted through the hypergamous filter of a woman’s perception of us. For all of our attempts to remove ourselves from the Game, Men cannot avoid this. By both biological impulse and social motivators, like it or not we are the performers, we are the approachers, we are the doers, even when (especially when) we think our purpose is not intended to be what we think it is. Abdicating from the Game does not excuse you from participating in the Game.

Whether you believe yourself the princely master of your own destiny or the pitiful victim of circumstance, on some level of consciousness you’re aware of the Game, and it’s a game of perceptions. Alpha’s, betas, Nice Guys, Bad Boys, and every guy in between, they ALL entertain women, even when they think they’ve gone their own way, even when they think they’re exempt from the Game, even when they’ve been married for 50 years.

It is a grave crime to tacitly or implicitly dissuade men from learning how better to master the Game. I can see how this misdirection might be used to disqualify a sexual competitor, but the same guys relying on rationalizations of higher-self-importance only better serve the feminine imperative they would otherwise rage against. Ironically it’s the feminine that’s arrogantly demanded every advantage in expecting society and reality itself to change for them in order better suit their gender’s drawbacks. They want to change the Game to better suit their ability to play it. They want to cheat the Game by playing in ‘God Mode’ and then wonder why it’s not fun to play any more.

I think we make the same mistake as men in our rationalizing expectations of the Game to accommodate us rather than learning to play it better.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

Think Like a Woman

Men perceive female interpretive reflexiveness in a male context. Women perceive male interpretive awareness in a female context.

Those are two $10 psychological ways of saying men instinctively think women will respond to their approaches (irrespective of Game prowess) on male terms. In other words, they expect women will respond in a rational manner similar to how they as men would. To be sure, this is a result of decades of gender equalist conditioning, but you can’t lay the dynamic entirely at the feet of equalism. Guy’s first order is to think deductively when constructing their mental schemas about how best to solve the problem of getting their sexual imperatives met (usually Beta Game). The disconnect comes when they presume that women are their gender equals and as such will react to their ‘game’ in a similar, reasoned fashion.

JDELA, from the SoSuave forum laments an understanding that comes from imposing a male perspective onto women’s perspectives. Case in point:

If a Neg hit works, not only does it show there’s a lack of self esteem and mental balance, but also the relationship will fail.

From a male perspective, this would make complete and rational sense. If a man were to Neg you or another man, the most rational response would be to interpret that as disrespect and to take offense. In truth, guy’s Neg each other all the time in the form of ‘giving his buddys some shit’ about something. Men do this as a form of unity building, but our inclination to rib each other stops there.

Now lets say that the guy getting Negged, not only accepts it, but becomes intrigued and friendly with the guy negging him. Would you have any respect for either one of them? Probably not. You’d say the guy doing the Negging was being an asshole (see AMOGing)  and the guy getting Negged suffered from a”lack of self-esteem.”

What you’re doing is casting what you’d expect a woman’s response to be in the male perspective. The most common complaint read on any dating site (SoSuave to Love Shack) comes from guys who are dumbfounded that women consistently opt for the Bad Boy Alpha Jerk instead of him and his Nice, loyal, respectful, dependable self. As bourn out by the experiences and observations of women’s behavior from countless millions of men for centuries, what we as men would expect to be the most logical, rational and pragmatic choice of action women could make is rarely proven by the ones they do make.

Don’t get lost in the details; this isn’t a debate about whether or not Negs work or the frequency with which women opt for a Bad Boy. It has everything to do with the fact that men base most of their actions, their beliefs, their personal investments, etc. upon deductive reasoning and predictable outcomes from what they believe is reliable information. So when all you ever hear from women is that they “want a guy with a good heart” or someone sensitive, respectful, humorous, etc. on down the list it would be cause for some considerable confusion when women consistently overlook guys like this in favor of one who is the opposite of her stated desires. Either the data is flawed, our interpretation of it is flawed, or the one relating it is flawed – and probably all three.

So in light of such a consistent conflict of purpose, we have to conclude that what women say and what women do are often at odds with each other. Negs work on women. There’s certainly an art to, and it’s not a one-size-fits-all, but they do work with enough consistency that you can generally predict an outcome. So the question is this: do the vast majority of women suffer from a lack of self-esteem or are we expecting them to act as men would?

It’s very easy to write off the women who’d opt for the Bad Boy as low-quality, but what do you do when your hi-quality woman does the same? You can shoot an arrow, paint the target around it, and get a bullseye every time, but you can’t ignore the incongruency. Breaking out of this plugged-in beta mindset that convinces men that women will react the same as they would is one of the most important transitions of taking the red pill.

The irony of this male-centric preconception is that even in instances where plugged-in men would agree that you “can’t treat a lady like that” the interaction is still colored by the assumption of a male interpretive perspective on the part of a woman. For plugged-in men this comes as an instinctual reflex – it’s one of many – that was part of his life’s conditioning.

Think Like a Woman

As I stated prior, unlearning what you know about women and your equalist mental preposition is usually one of the more difficult aspects of unplugging. Abandoning your old ways of interacting with women involves a very real risk of rejection, but keep in mind that relearning the reality of the differences in mental process between yourself and a prospective woman will make that transition easier.

A lot gets made about the advantages of ‘thinking like a woman’ in terms of Game. For all the variation of playing the Dandy or adjusting for a more feminine-identification technique, I think it’s very important not to actually become a woman in your mental outlook. Most plugged-in guys are already women in their perspective of gender. When I advocate a better understanding of the feminine mind, know that it’s always in terms of making what I study and profess here into actionable practices. Anticipate outcomes, predict results based on what you know a woman would be thinking; not what any equal and neutral, well-reasoned generic person would. Plugged-in guys avoid this even to the limbic root level of their own mental processing because it rings of sexism; and anything minutely associated with sexism is an automatic sexual disqualifier for men with the scarcity mentalities that fem-centrism has raised in them.

An effective Game-aware man has to accept a base understanding of sexism; sexism in the respective differences that characterize the differences between the sexes. Sexism will be used by you or on you, but you will not be exempted from it. You may have been raised into equalism, but clinging to gender equalism after the fact is simply one more Buffer against rejection, and it’s a buffer most guys have a very tough time recognizing in themselves.

Case Study – The Crazy

From a Rational Reader who shall remain anonymous:

I’m not sure what’s going on lately.

I’ve been in a weird way lately…about ready to jump off a bridge with the stress I’ve been feeling. I just don’t know who else to talk to.

Remember that long thread about the “obsessed girl” I was dating who I thought was “crazy”? I’ve been seeing her again…and it’s been a weird, weird story I can’t even get my head around.

I was honestly convinced she was borderline/insane, based on her murky past and her “unstable behavior”. I was done with her…had completely blown her off and was ready to wipe her out of my life forever. Then some crazy shit happened and we found ourselves forced to sit down and talk with each other about what had been going on.

She tells me that every time SHE came over my house, SHE was telling herself, “I can’t do this any more, I can’t keep seeing him, etc”. She said she saw a really great guy in me but the things I was saying and doing were driving her nuts.

She started rifling off this list of things that I did that drove her crazy/drove her to drink herself stupid…things like:

* Suggesting other women were interested
* Teasing her/negging her
* Staying detached
* Treating her like I didn’t need her/wasn’t that into her (she says, “like a call-girl”)

I’m sitting there thinking…god dammit, this all sounds familiar…Has becoming a “disciple” of all this Game bullshit been sabotaging me with women for years now?? Am I the “crazy one”? Has all of this nonsense just been a defense mechanism I built to deal with my OWN lack of self-worth??

I decided to drop all of the BS…and just give it a chance with this girl, legitimately, for real. No more Don Juan games…just seeing each other for who we really are. I’ll tell you…I’m at full-scale war with myself…and I’ve lost complete perspective over which side of me is “right”.

There’s one side of me that is absolutely in love with this girl. I mean, she is smoking hot, she’s intelligent and insightful (though she has what I’d consider to be “flakey” ideas about stuff), she has good practical skills (runs her own business), she’s VERY physical…more than me even. She does ALL of the good “wifey” things that everyone talks about…she cleans, she cooks (deliciously!), she dresses to impress when we go out together. She even tells me she doesn’t want to “monopolize all of my time” and constantly encourages me to do stuff I want to do.

As I said before, her past is a bit “wild”, but she honestly seems like she’s become more mature and intelligent and is REALLY taking steps to leave all of it behind. Who am I to deny her a chance at redemption??

 

“wild past”

“unstable behavior”

“obsessed”

“crazy”

These are your terms.

Her list of prerequisites to stay with a “crazy” woman:

* Suggesting other women were interested
* Teasing her/negging her
* Staying detached
* Treating her like I didn’t need her/wasn’t that into her (she says, “like a call-girl”)

One would rationally think a ‘normal’ woman would find any of these intolerable, yet there you are. So either she is in fact crazy, finds reward in abuse and lacks sufficient self-worth to NEXT you, OR, you are approaching your LTR (such as it is) from a healthy, self-interested perspective that she actually does respect; in fact so much so that she’ll pursue you in spite of it.

I think what you’re experiencing now is not so much confusion with her as you are in owning your role as being the primary partner in your LTR. This is a VERY tough transition for a former AFC to accept. In truth, I would say that accepting and internalizing a dominant role in an LTR for a nominally beta guy is more difficult than realizing that applying Game actually works in attracting women as well as thriving with them in an LTR/Marriage.

It’s really a second unplugging for guys. The first shock of ‘unplugging’ comes in the actualizing that everything feminized society, everything any woman ever told him about the ‘appropriate’ way to engage with women is almost entirely the opposite of what produces the results he wants. Once he’s become so frustrated by his dating life that he experiments with un-conventional Game and discovers that Negs work, C&F works, Amused Mastery works, etc. there comes a point of disillusionment – and sometimes despair.

This comes from the realization that everything he’s held as a long-loved ego investment about women falls apart. Half his life was spent in the ignorance of believing women were equally as rational, equally shared the same mutual desires, equally as sincere in her words. The idea of duplicity based on her being female, or not understanding the gender differences in how women communicate, was shamefully due to his inability to become more like her. In his plugged in life, any failure, any misstep, was the result of his inability to identify with her more perfectly.

So it comes as no surprise when his eyes are opened to how much he’s invested of himself in these female-primary conventions. This is where most men turn back. It’s too much to bear in the revelation that what he’s believed for so long could be other than what women have told him so he enters a rationalized denial. And of course there is a well established social network ready welcome him back and reward him for his denial.

The Second Unplugging

The second unplugging comes when a Man is forced to come to this power dynamic realization again when entering into an LTR. Most guys who reinvent themselves and accept their masculine primacy role after having been subjected to an egalitarian gender equality doctrine for most of their lives feel strange in owning it in an LTR and/or marriage. It’s really put up or shut up time. Essentially you need to become the Man you sold yourself as when you were spinning plates. Guys who unplug and employ Game are initially mimicking the behaviors that used to be respected and attractive to women. Now they’re considered socially inappropriate or rude at best, borderline abusive at worst under feminine social auspices. Regardless, the results are undeniable.

In an LTR you have to actually be THAT guy, and for a formerly plugged-in AFC, the old mental schema of equality returns. Guilt sets in because he doesn’t feel deserving of the primacy he holds because he still hasn’t let go of that antiquated equalism he thought was valid for so long. He wants to play fair, but what he doesn’t realize is his concept of what is ‘fair’ is still rooted in his plugged-in mindset. It’s at this critical point that most LTRs destruct, because the guy reverts back to his old AFC mental habitus, or the girl settles into the comfort knowing she controls the frame and can dictate the terms of her intimacy as she sees fit.

This is one reason I emphasize a complete internalization of why Game works. I catch all kinds of criticism for being primarily theory based in my approach, but if, and when, you transition to an LTR monogamous commitment, by God you’d better understand why those theories are the bedrock of Game.

This is where you’re at. Your distress is coming from a want to return to a simpler way of dealing with your personal life that really never existed. Bear in mind that the “abusive” behavior your “crazy” girlfriend is complaining about is the same behavior that attracted her to you. If you’re feeling guilt for playing X-Box while she waits on you, then put down the console and do something productive, just understand that feeling of guilt comes from you thinking you need to “play fair” with her in order to keep her. That’s the path to her controlling the frame of the LTR.

The Peacekeepers

Whenever I’m asked for examples of ‘successful marriages’ it’s usually in response to a comment or forum thread breaking down the cost-to-benefits ratio of the travesty that’s become Marriage 2.0. To me, the real irony in these evaluative debates is how often they arise. They come up so often it’s as if these men, in their most rational and prescient minds, are seeking permission from more experienced men to enter into marriage in spite of all the overwhelming downsides to what the institution has become. Even when they’re staring down the gun barrel, guys still want to get married. They want it to work like it’s supposed to.

‘Successful’ and ‘Failed’ Marriages

I’ve made prior posts about my own marriage and how I’ve developed it, but I’m always reluctant to hold myself up as some model for other men to follow because I’m painfully and personally aware of the marriage stories of other men. As good as it sounds, don’t use my marriage as your benchmark.

In fact I think the very idea of a “successful marriage” is a very abused, feel-good Oprah-esque term. ‘Successful’ and ‘Failed’ marriages are Matrix-speak. They’re goal oriented terms for a relational condition that’s constantly in flux. You have to stop thinking of a “successful marriage” in terms of years on the clock. There are people married for 50+ years who are absolutely miserable with each other, and there are couples married for 2 or 3 who have a better love and mutual respect for each other than their parents ever realized themselves after 40 years. Perpetuating a life-long state of misery because it became normalized is a much greater ‘failure’ than divorcing a woman who’s poisonous to your well-being, to say nothing of your family’s. Longevity does not equal ‘success’ in marriage.

Whenever I’m asked for examples of ‘successful marriages’, and particularly when asked by guys seeking to turn their Beta-framed marriage around, I always refer to this inspirational post from Dave in Hawaii. This is my go-to model for both the questioning unmarried man and the desperate beta-married man.

Experimentation

The underlying, root problem most men have with regard to women, intimacy, their relationships, etc. is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of isolation, fear of missing out on or fucking up what they’ve been taught should be their legitimate, socially approved desire. So pervasive is this fear that in trying to avoid the consequences of it, it trumps even the fear of death. I personally know Marines who’ve bravely faced real bullets shot at them, who’ll manically avoid any situation they think their wives or girlfriends would even remotely consider leaving them for. Bullets don’t scare them, but the chance of losing a girlfriend’s intimacy paralyzes them with fear. This is the “Yes Dear” fear.

In order to compensate for that fear men will devise all manner of rationales for their relations, but furthest from their mind would ever be ‘experimenting’ or engaging in risk taking situations with their LTR woman. So influential is that fear that they will never attempt changing their own positions no matter how beneficial it would be to both him and his partner. Guys embodying the peak of confidence in other aspects of their lives would still rather “keep the peace” in the face of a bad situation with their wives than risk that loss (of the ONE or otherwise), and be cast back into uncertain conditions where they may actually grow, but again be subject to real rejection.

Dave in Hawaii’s story I linked is an example of a guy who would’ve otherwise divorced his wife and was already in a “nothing left to lose” situation while married, so he overcame the fear and experimented. That led him to a new reframing of his relationship; one where his wife had a renewed respect for him. The possibility existed that she could have taken such offense to his behavior that she would’ve been prompted to leave him, but her leaving was already a foregone conclusion if he hadn’t initiated something new.

There comes a point in a Man’s life where the fear of experimenting with a potentially disastrous outcome is out weighed by the cost involved in not assuming that risk.

Whether it comes (preferably) before he’s committed to a situation (like marriage) or as a result of the conditions created by that commitment, at some point he realizes the truth that he will only get what he has gotten if keeps doing what he has done. This is the internal debate the ‘peacekeeper’ has to confront – is his peacekeeping so debilitating that he wont experiment with risking a new outcome? If you’re still having this internal dialog you haven’t reached that threshold yet.

In July I’ll have been married for 16 years. Mrs. Tomassi and I have always enjoyed a mature, adult, mutual respect and understanding of each other’s identities and how we relate to each other. I’ve been in LTRs where I was constantly walking on eggshells, nervous that any slight might mean the end of what was really a twisted, adolescent level BPD relationship. You cannot live like that forever; you will break it off, or you will commit suicide. For over 16 years I’ve fearlessly ‘checked out’ other women and ask my wife’s joking opinion about them. And yes, she playfully hits me back by saying some random guy is cute, but my confidence to roll with what we’re both aware is part of the Game only serves to amplify her continued attraction for me. That push-pull is an essential part of my wife’s respect for me. Experimentation and a sense of fearlessness is an intentional foundation of my marriage.

Tickle Me Emo

A Rational reader asks:

I realized some (not many, but some hot) chicks tend to fall for the sensitive sissy – the one labelled as “Wimpster” or “Emo” (I guess you know what I mean).

I think, these “men” are as pathetic as it gets. How do they manage to get hot chicks? I really saw some couples HB+Emo-Kid during the last months.

What do they have in order to attract hot women?
What sort of secret “quality” is it, that makes (some of) these poor, pathetic losers so successful?

Any idea?

You’re pigeon-holing the ‘Emo’ thing as a specific type, when it’s really just a manifestation of an archetype. Emo Game is really a variation of the Dandy. Playing the Dandy has been a time-tested seduction schema for centuries. In the late 70s and into the 80s you could make comparisons to David Bowie or even Jim Morisson (before they were famous) or the Glam Rock phase. You can even compare them to the pensive, Kurt Cobain style Grunge Rock ‘artists’. Emo guys are just the next check on the bill, and in fact I’d say their time is just about up as the herbilicious Indie-Rocker has pushed them to the side these days. Splitting hairs, I know.

But to answer your question, just break it down into understandable dynamics. Why does this type of guy attract women?

Exceptional Emos

First of all, only exceptional guys of this archetype really attract women with any regularity. The sissy-boy, sensitive, Emo guy is only going to get so far if he is exceptional in some way and even then, only with women who have the capacity to appreciate his characteristics. While most arousal cues are universal, women tend to base their learned attraction ‘preferences’ on what they think, at least subconsciously, is within the realm of attainability proportional to their capacity to attract that ‘type’ of guy with some degree of predictable success.

However, the notable Emo (dandy) guy must be exceptional in some respect to pull off his schema. By exceptional I mean they must posess some real demonstrable talents in order to play the stoically tragic, socially misunderstood, artist character. You don’t have to be an artist to play the Emo card, but this is the natural association women apply to the archetype. Remember, women are like casting agents for their own fantasies; the fat kid with nothing to back up his ’emotional nature’ (such as demonstrable artistic merit) is simply an even bigger, whining, ‘Baby Huey’ dressed in drag, mascara and painted nails, and has little success in pulling off the sensitive thing when no one is paying attention to him in the first place.

For the guys that can back up the character (such as Mystery); I can see why this would confuse the average guy wondering WTF is going on. These guys can pull tail and it seems to contradict (again) what women say they’re “looking for” in a guy. Remember that it is a woman’s behavior that is the benchmark of her intent, not her words. So why then do they opt for guys like this?

Emology

First of all, guys with this schema tend to place themselves and their passion (or at least the perception of it) above anything else – and this includes women. This is fundamental to the personality type as well as the legitimacy of the fantasy that women want to cast him in. Their passions are literally the ‘other woman’ to the women that are attracted to them. This establishes him in a position of power in that he presents the appearance of being so consumed with himself and his art that he becomes a challenge to her and this is what locks her into his intrigue. He sets the frame for her and she has no other choice but to follow. In so doing this, he places her in a position of him needing her less than she does and she therefore chases and qualifies herself to him.

Secondly, guys of this type have a demonstrated value of creative intelligence with at least the potential for long term successes. From the Evo-Psych perspective, behavioral cues of creative intelligence is sexy for women – it represents a capacity for innovation and survival skills – this is why the starving artist gets laid, often with more variety than does the typical ‘good provider’ male. In respect to women’s pluralistic breeding strategies, Emo Guy makes for a wonderful short-term breeding prospect (good genes), but usually a lousy choice for a long-term provisioning or parental investment prospect. This is the same reason why women will fuck the pool boy, but marry the lawyer. Many an Alpha Widow pines away her late adulthood for the artist boyfriend she left behind for the stable provider.

Lastly, it seems ‘right’ for certain women to want to nurture this ‘artist’ because it plays into the whole romantic, chick crack predestination idealism that so many women want to believe can happen for them. They’re making the world a better place by sponsoring one more male to explore his sensitivity and helping him to fully realize his feminine potential by mothering him and letting him fuck her in appreciation.

At this point I should add a caveat here in that my intent isn’t to vilify the nature of truly artistic men (I count myself among them, and I have played the dandy in my youth to great success). Rather my purpose is to explain the appeal this type of guy has for women. The average salt-of-the-earth guy will (most times accurately) associate a man ‘not playing by the masculine script’ as wishy-washy, effete and indecisive (i.e. effeminate), but the more exceptional characters of this type, the legitimate ones, are some of the most determined and persistent Men you will ever know. Jim Morrison was a tortured, addicted poet, but he was Alpha as fuck.

My advice is to watch by patiently and stick to your masculine guns in this respect. The women that would pass you up for this type of guy are few, very particular, and rarely worth the effort in encouraging them see this dynamic at work in themselves. Hold out for the much more plentiful women that do respond to pronounced masculinity. It’s really only a matter of time until this type of woman tires of the ‘sensitive guy’ after coming to terms with the inherent emasculation and the associated irresponsibility of this kind of male. Very few men can play the dandy indefinitely.

[Now I’ll go sit on pins and needles to await Emma the Emo’s inevitable response.]