Very interesting. First, I have to acknowledge that the CFM (cosmo for men) video was funded by the magazine, and the ass-cam was funded by Levis as part of a viral marketing effort, but look at the difference in approach to both of these. They’re essentially experimenting for the same purpose, but look where each gender places the emphasis and the methodology each uses to collect data. Yes, I know this is for entertainment purposes, but it’s really fascinating to see the differences “in the wild” so to speak.
For the women it was all about “busting” (i.e. shaming) men checking out their ass, while still enjoying the attention, all set to some club music(something bigger something better). It almost wasn’t worth the effort considering that women have a much more pronounced peripheral awareness than men and they’re only confirming what they already know; guys like a nice ass. As a rule, women love the chemical rush that accompanies experiencing indignation, so it’s no surprise that the overall production is one that prompts this – and this is especially true of the clips where a guy who is obviously ‘with’ another girl takes a moment to check out an ass in her presence. “Men are pigs and here’s the proof.”
Compare this to the much more elaborate men’s video, complete with an ‘onboard’ video unit backpack to support 4 different camera angles. The approach here is to gather covert information, not to shame women. While entertaining, the purpose is to empirically educate men in one of the prime tenets of Game, which also happens to be one of the prime tenets of behavioral psychology:
Behavior is the only reliable proof of motivation or intent. Believe what a woman does, not what she says.
The approach is one of deductive reasoning. What parts of a man’s body are reported by women to be the most attractive? And here we have it; how often do we read that women are first attracted to a man’s face or eyes? To be cute they might also mention how they like a nice butt on a man. Yet neither of these regions were targeted by women very often or at all in the case of eyes. The majority also report that they’re less attracted to “overly muscular men” yet if this experiment is accurate, it was this guy’s biceps that attracted the most attention for women, followed only by crotch gazing in frequency – another body part women would rarely admit to ‘checking out’ on a guy.
Take these videos with a grain of salt. As I started with, both of these were sponsored by business ventures with a vested interest in generating attention and sales. However, I can’t help but see the code in the Matrix here with regard to how each gender process the same idea. It’s the purpose behind the video that betrays the interest. I find this idea infinitely more educational than contrived PUA street demonstrations.
Women would rather share a successful Man than be attached to a faithful loser – Pook
One of the most common things I’m asked on SS is “how do you keep a marriage fresh Rollo?” Among my responses to this is usually how, contrary to the advice column Oprah-standard answer, a good relationship should be effortless. All of this “marriage is a constant work” is bullshit meant to keep a husband in a constant state of qualifying for his wife’s intimacy intended for her long term frame retention. Women in marriage and LTRs want to push past that nagging competition anxiety, they want security, not just financial, but emotional, and the security that comes from a locked in commitment in knowing they are the only source of sex & intimacy for their spouse/partner.
Pre-Commitment to Commitment
One of the reasons sexual frequency declines for women after a romantic commitment is that the urgency of sex that was necessary prior to the commitment is replaced with the agency of sex being a reward / reinforcer within that LTR. In single, uncommitted, non-exclusive life, sex, while being very enjoyable, becomes a proving ground for most women. In essence, it’s the free samples before the buy, and its urgency is fueled not only by (hopefully) genuine attraction, but also the at least subconscious knowing that she is in a sexual marketplace of competition. It’s one of the few times in life when a woman must qualify for a man’s approval. And admittedly, most men are so sex-deprived or so inexperienced early on in life that the sell is usually not a tough one for her. However, on some level of consciousness, even when the sell is virtually assured, she is aware that she could be replaced by a better competitor.
This then is the contrast for committed sexual interaction. The dynamic now shifts from qualification sex to utility sex. Now before anyone jumps to conclusions, yes, sex is still enjoyable, it can still be passionate, and she can definitely want it, but the impetus shifts. Sex is now a tool. In her uncommitted sex life it was a tool for qualification; in her LTR life it’s a tool for compliance. This is pretty obvious, and it may be more or less extreme depending upon the woman’s disposition or how important a particular issue is to her, but make no mistake, there isn’t a woman on the planet who doesn’t take her sexual agency into account when dealing with her LTR / husband. That agency may be more or less valuable – dependent upon her looks, demeanor, sexual availability, etc. – in comparison to the sexual market value of the man she’s paired with.
And this is where the Cardinal Rule of Relationships plays in. This is the constant interplay of vying for who is more dependent upon the other. Women have for the past 50+ years made a concerted effort, and using social conventions, to establish their sexuality as the end-all for men in power. Vagina = Authority and this is what all too many men parrot back and self-reinforce. “Change, do it, sublimate your desires, or there wont be any nookie for you tonight mister!” And on the surface it seems intuitive to ‘keep the peace’ and finish all the things on her honey-do list in the hopes that she’ll recover even a fraction of the desire she had when you were single, childless and getting blow jobs in the car after a date because she couldn’t wait to get home to fuck you.
The Upper Hand
Well LTR gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that, yes, you do in fact have an intrinsic upper hand in this regard if you’re fearless and willing to exercise your power. What I described in the last paragraph seems to be the most intuitive – do what she says = get sex – so it should come as no shock that the answer to it is counterintuitive. You must find ways to, subtly, return back to the state of competition anxiety she had in the beginning. I emphasize subtly, because, as with most everything else female, doing so overtly will be met with hostility, resentment and at best, obligated compliance. To get more (any?) sex, to retain the frame, to inspire more respect in her, you must disengage from her. That doesn’t mean becoming arrogantly aloof, or sulking like a child, or becoming an instant asshole; those are OVERT signs and methods. What is needed is incremental reassertion of yourself as the primary AND that her sexual agency, while still welcomed, is not a motivator for your own decisions.
I’m fond of saying no vagina is worth years of regret, yet this is exactly where most men find themselves, because they are either unwilling or unable to rock the vagina boat. They fail to understand that a woman’s imagination is the most powerful tool in the Don Juan toolbox. Now, the deductive and obvious way of stimulating that imagination would be to blurt out and say “look bitch, your pussy’s not made of gold and there are plenty of other girls ready to polish my nob if you don’t straighten up, see?” And this of course is met with either resistance or shame from her. What serves a Man better is to make incremental changes in himself that she will perceive as attractive to other women. Women want to be with Men who other women want to fuck, and other men want to be, but this cuts both ways. The more empowered he becomes, the better physical shape he attains, the more professional achievements he gathers, the more social proof and status he accrues, the more valuable he makes himself, the more anxiety is produce – and this is anxiety she can’t argue with.
One of the first things I tell men trapped in a ‘her-frame’ relationship is to get to the gym, train hard, look better. This has two effects; first it makes her interest in fucking increase, and second it fires up that imagination. “Why is he doing this? He’s really looking better these days, I see it, other women must see it too. Maybe I need to start working out? Gosh those girls at the gym look so much better than me.” She can’t argue with a healthy desire to look better, feel better, and be concerned with your health. Getting in better shape is the easiest, most immediate change you can effect. You may have little influence in getting a promotion at work, but you CAN change your body habitus right now. Women, being the calculating gender, know all too well to hit the gym months prior to a break up – she’s not getting in shape for you, she’s getting ready to hit the ground running with the next guy she’ll be fucking. They know this, so your manifesting the same behavior ‘caffeinates the hamster’ since it hits home for them.
Vagina is not authority
Don’t accept that her sexuality is the authority of the relationship. The better you make yourself the more authority you command, the more you abdicate to her the less authority (and respect) you command. Women need to be told “NO”, in fact they want you to tell them “NO”, especially in light of the 800 pound gorilla in the room – her sexual agency. When a woman controls the LTR frame with her vagina, it’s always going to color your dealings with her. THIS IS NO WAY TO GO THROUGH LIFE. It becomes this ever-present, unspoken understanding that she can ultimately play the pussy card and you’ll comply. And while this may gratify her in the short term, you will lose her respect in the long term. She wants to be told “NO” in spite of you knowing she’s going to hold out on you. This is the ultimate repudiation of her sexual agency – “if he says “NO” with the foreknowledge that you know you wont be getting any, her sexual powers are devalued.” If her sexual agency is called into question it leaves room for doubt and opens the door once again for competition anxiety to creep back in.
As I’ve said before, marriage is no insulation against the sexual marketplace, and no one knows this better than women who can rely on a society that rewards them for recognizing it. Use that to YOUR benefit now. Nothing is as simultaneously fear inspiring and arousing for women as a Man she suspects is self-aware of his own value. This is precisely why a feminized culture must continually confuse him, continually inspire doubt and humiliate him; feminization can’t afford men knowing their true value and potential.
In the end, who cares if you don’t get laid for a week? It’s well worth the price for increasing her respect for you as a commodity, and increasingly, an authority. If you want to maintain that anxiety, you must perpetuate yourself as being a commodity women will compete for, even in the confines of commitment.
Before I launch into this proper, let me define a few terms in the fashion that I interpret them. With the popularity of Roissy’s blog and a few notable others, there’s been a new push with regards to using the terms Alpha and Beta (and sometimes Omega) when describing certain classifications of males in modern culture. Allow me to go on record as viewing these ideas as mindsets whereas terms such as AFC or DJ are really states of being. For instance, an Alpha can still be an AFC (called a ‘paper alpha’) with regards to women. A Beta male can still be as wealthy and astute in status as his conditions and fortune have placed him in (often by circumstance). Some states necessitate certain mindsets – a positive masculine state requires an Alpha mindset as a requirement – others do not. Also, don’t make the mistake of associating success (personal and career) with an Alpha mindset. There are plenty of Alphas on hotchickswithdouchebags.com, however that doesn’t necessarily make them well rounded individuals. I tend to think of the ideas Alpha and Beta as subconscious energies or attitudes that manifest themselves in our thoughts, beliefs and actions.
Beta Game
Alright now, with this in mind I’d like to propose the idea of Beta Game. Since we’re using the Alpha and Beta terminology here, it’s important to grasp where it comes from. Anyone with even a cursory understanding about animal social hierarchies knows the principal of Alpha and Beta individuals within a social collective. Alphas tend to be the males who exhibit the best genetic characteristics and behavioral skills that put them at the top of the potential breeding pool. In fact Betas are rarely mentioned as such in scientific studies; the Beta term, in PUA lingo is really something of a novelty. Relating these terms to human social interactions, while at times a subjective stretch, isn’t to hard to find parallels in. We can see the similarity, and the applications in long term and short term breeding methodologies that mirror our own.
Like any other Beta animal, alternate methodologies had to be developed in order to facilitate human breeding under the harsh conditions of Alpha competition. In essence, and as found in the wild, Beta males have developed (evolved?) methods which attempt to ‘poach’ potential females from an Alpha’s harem, or at least in this case his perceived, potential harem.
Identification
Beta male game focuses primarily on identifying and assimilating themselves to be more like the women they hope to connect with, but it goes further than this. The methodology dictates that the Beta be perceived as being unique (or at least set apart) from the more “common” Alpha males whom his desired women naturally prefer. This is the beginning of the “not-like-other-guys” mental schema he hopes to evoke in his idealized woman.
Due to his inability to compete with an Alpha competitor in the physical, he must fight a psychological battle on his own terms. This involves convincing his target that her best parental investment should be with him (as per her stated requirements) as he more closely embodies her long term prerequisites. The Beta likens himself to her (and women in general) in an effort to maximize his compatibility and familiarity with her and the feminine.
This identification process is then further reinforced through the feminine social conventions he subscribes to. Feminine society (both beta men and women) rewards him for more closely assimilating its ideal – be more like an archetypal woman; sensitive, empathic, emotional, security-seeking, etc.. And not only this, but take de facto feminine offense when presented with anything to the contrary of a female-positive perspective. Lift women up, become less so they become more, and in reciprocation she’s more apt to breed with the Beta.
That’s the principle, not necessarily the reality. In some ways it’s a Cap’n Save a Ho mentality written on a grand scale. The fallacy in this of course is that like should attract like. They fail to understand that opposites attract, and most women don’t want to marry other women, least of all a carbon copy of herself.
Disqualification
When presented with a competitor of superior status, both sex’s innate, subconscious reaction is to disqualify that competitor from breeding in as expedient a method as possible. For animals this usually involves some kind of courtship performance or outright competitive hostility. And while the same could be said for human beings, our natural social impulse requires we take a bit more tact. “Look at that girl, she must be a slut to wear / act like that”, or “Yeah, he’s pretty good looking, but guys like that are usually fags” are an example of the standard social weapons people use to disqualify their respective sex. Disqualify the competitor on the most base level – question their sexuality. Literally cast doubt on competitor’s sexual fitness to breed with potential mates.
While most men (Alpha or Beta) will make similar attempts to disqualify, the Beta’s methodology ties back into his need for feminine identification in his disqualifying a competitor. Essentially he relies on feminine ways of disqualification by drawing upon his likeness to the women he hopes to emulate (thus furthering potential attraction as he thinks). The competitor may not be gay, but he must be cast as inferior to himself due to his competitor’s inability (or lessened ability) to identify and empathize with his desired female.
With Alpha competitors, the field has already been plowed for him by feminine social conventions, all he need do is plant the seeds. The fact that the Alpha tends to embody the masculine opposite of what he’s embraced also feeds this drive. Women aren’t attracted to the macho tough guy, they want a man who’s kind and thoughtful; a good listener. So the natural recourse is to amplify this disparity – he’s a 1950’s neanderthal throwback, he’s “bitter”, he’s a misogynist, he’s a child in a man’s body with a fragile ego only interested in fucking women and moving on. He’s unlike anything on women’s collective stated list of prerequisites for an acceptable male. He must be ridiculed – as all women ridicule – for his selfish hyper-masculinity.
Furthermore, the Beta needs to make the Alpha seem common, while making himself seem unique. In order to effectively AMOG an Alpha, the Beta has to show his empathy for the feminine, and she must appreciate it or it’s been all for nothing (which it usually is). Not only is this an ego preservation mechanism, but it’s also perceived as a tool for achieving the desired sexual reciprocation / appreciation he desires.
Interpretation
All of this really just scratches the surface of how Beta game has evolved. I’m sure there’ll be more input as to different methods that Betas use to facilitate breeding – sexual fetishes / preferences come to mind. I will add though that all of these methods come back to a common root; the need to breed under the duress of competition. Most of what I’ve gone into here, and primarily the feminine identity association, become ego-invested and internalized over the course of a lifetime. It gets to the point that under the auspices of relative anonymity (like the internet) that the Beta will still cling to his mental model, even in the face of very rational, empirical evidence to the contrary, for no other reason than that a woman, a potential mate with whom he could identify, might read his post and may become attracted to him. The Game is never dropped for him, even in light of proving his errors. Beta game is like the boy who decides to play on the girls team when a boys vs. girls kick ball game is started. He thinks it will endear himself to them, when all it really does is make him another girlfriend to giggle with.
Everyone has a Game in some respect. We don’t live in a vacuum, our ideas about seduction (in whatever form) is influenced and / or learned externally. The validity of that Game may be more or less effective, but at some point a man is going to adapt to a methodology of seduction as per his conditions and environment warrant. Even mPUAs still need to adapt their Game for differing environments – different clubs, types of women, socio-economic levels, countries, etc. – there needs to be adaptation and improvisation. The same applies for Betas, but the disparity is that the Beta tends to think of a one size fits all approach. For all the complaints of worry about the Game community turning into scripted ‘social robots’, it’s actually the Beta who adopts a far more embedded script and is less likely to variate from it. Betas tend to stick with what worked for them, what was reinforced for them, in the past.
Think of the best musician you can think of now. I’m a guitarist myself so I’m going to throw out some old school shredder’s names like EVH, George Lynch, Nuno Bettancourt, but you might think Jimmy Page or B.B. King, or maybe Andre Segovia really kick ass.
When you listen to a virtuoso – a guy so good he makes his talent seem effortless – you’re not listening to just him, you’re listening to all the musicians who influenced him, who inspired him, to become the musician he is now. You’re essentially listening to (or at least variations of) the riffs, licks, arpeggios, melodic stylings, etc. of all the musicians that came before him to which, out of passion, he was inspired to commit to memory.
It’s important to remember, when you hear a great guitarist that his ‘improvised’ guitar licks are still built upon a solid base of a series of learned patterns that harmonize within a given key of music.
A good musician practices his scales, and learns the runs of the guys who influenced him, note for note until they’re subconscious, then he can improvise with them. Likewise a good player caters his learned approaches to the tune of the woman and the environment.
Many critics of Game fail to understand what the ‘A’ stands for in PUA – “artist”. If it seems like a forced script to you, that’s because you haven’t practiced it enough to become a fluent ‘social artist’. Rote memorization of any subject is never conducive to actual internalized learning. All of the subroutines and “canned material” do in fact have a teaching purpose, but it will never seem ‘real’ for you until you understand that they are simply teaching tools to help a greater learning of an internalized Game.
This is why it’s seemingly easy for critics outside the community sphere to ridicule Game; it all seems like laughable parlor tricks and 70’s disco club pick up lines repackaged for the 21st century. All they see is the ‘how to play guitar’ book and the practice tablature intended to teach the skills needed to play the instrument. They don’t (refuse to?) see the jump between the practice and the learning, to the internalized skill, that to everyone else seems like a natural, enviable, ability. Even the guitarists who never create an original piece of music, but play cover songs so well they can play professionally are still equated with have an effortless skill.
In the starting of this blog I’ve recently been contemplating the last 6 or so years I’ve spent on SoSuave. Every time I consider the things I’ve written for the ‘community’ I always need to put them into the perspective of where I’ve come from and what I’ve learned in that time. I just reviewed a ‘single-mommy’ story in an other forum thread, one that I learned from almost 20 years ago. I also go into how things were before the advent of the internet occasionally.
I think it’s really hard for a generation of young Men to fully appreciate the progress that guys in their mid-30s, mid-40s and even 50s have made in their respective times. It’s hard for mid 20s and teenage guys to relate to a time before the level of communication we take for granted today. There was no term for an AFC, beta or “herb” in 1995. I didn’t own a cell phone until 2002 and never texted anyone regularly until 2005. When guys in their 30s and 40s now were learning the lessons I relate here, there were no forums, no PUAs (formally anyway), and the phenomenon we call feminization and the ‘Matrix’ was at the peak of it’s influence by virtue alone of no one questioning, let alone being aware of, its influence. We lacked the male-to-male social communication, certainly the global communication, to really bring common experiences together and form ideas from those observations. We were in the dark. Remember, no Tom Leykis, no internet, and the “how to pick up girls” books were what losers ordered by mail from an ad they saw in the back of a Hustler magazine. In fact porn was only accessible by renting it from the back room of a VHS rental store, by magazine or pirating the Spice channel from cable. Good times.
Now lets flash forward to 2011. I can’t go a day without having viagra or porn solicited to me in my email. Porn is now part of the utilities; it’s like hot and cold running water now, but moreover, so is the collected experience of literally a world of men considering the same nagging questions. Thanks to globalized, instant communications, a new generation of Men can collectively consider experiences and observations that were previously left unsaid. Where before there was a stigma of “not being man enough” just in asking questions and seeking relevant advice about women, now it’s been replaced by the ‘community’.
The internet is to Men what the sexual revolution was for women.
The genie is now out of the bottle, and for better or worse the information is liberating. This is the Meta-Game. Lets consider it for a moment: Just last week I added my voice to a chorus of other men from around the world to help out a young man struggling with his AFC problems. I joined guys from Britain, Australia, Spain, Canada, New York, Los Angeles, and anywhere in between. A global collective of Men advised this kid. That’s pretty powerful stuff. This is one world of men advising a young man about his situation with a girl acculturated in a world influenced by women for five decades.
This is the Meta-Masculine pushing back against the Meta-Feminized. We’re now aware that this Feminine Matrix is everywhere, and I think we all can appreciate how encompassing and pervasive it is. I know the LoveShack.orgs of the world are largely the antithesis of the Meta-Masculine. I didn’t say the mountain looked easy to climb. However, just the collectivity of the global community gives me hope. Every time we unplug a guy from the Matrix it’s a group effort. We are the collective fathers these sons never had.
Yes, there’s differences of opinion. The community advocates, Game gurus, and theorists of the world are going to lock horns over priorities, but the bigger pictures is making Men aware. The global collective waking them up is the first and best benefit. It is dirty, filthy, work unplugging Men from the Matrix, but that’s the start.
If I’m optimistic about anything it’s in the hope that the next generation of men will at least have the opportunity to be made aware of the “code” in the Matrix – that simply didn’t exist when I was struggling to unplug myself. By that I mean that a younger generation of men will develop at least a capacity, or at least a sensitivity to acknowledge that certain feminine social conventions exist, and were the gender roles reversed they’d be accused of sexism. I’ve always felt that making these comparisons is the first real step in understanding what the Matrix is. I am far more attentive to the veiled, socially excusable, feminine sexism that we casually pass off in common culture today because I realize the latent function those conventions serve. Like G.I. Joe says, knowing is half the battle.
The main obstacle for the positive-masculine Meta Game is that a majority of the same men it would serve are the unwitting (or at least willfully ignorant) pawns of the feminized Meta Game. I think its wrong to think of these men – the betas, the AFCs, the naive Alphas – as “recruits” for the feminine imperative. I come to that because it takes an entire feminized society to condition a young man over the course of a lifetime to psychologically ego-invest himself in the feminine Meta Game as a means to achieving his best interests. They need to be raised and trained before the ego-investment becomes self-propagating, at which point only extremely traumatic experiences will open his eyes to that conditioning.
I used the example of a typical rAFC or ‘seeking’ young man asking for advice from the collective at SoSuave. Almost universally the problems they want to solve are themes so tired and so thoroughly covered by the collective of men in the community that we’ll defer them to well-worn advice or rephrase old posts on the same topic. I do this myself, but think about the profundity of that for a moment. Here we have a questioning guy dealing with a problem I dealt with, sometimes, over 20 years ago, and men my senior dealt with 30 or even 40 years ago. The memes haven’t changed much in the past 60 years. I think a common missive is to think that the only reason guys seek out the community is to “get laid more” or “find the secret to getting their dream girl”. While that’s a definite motivator, so many more want solutions to relational problems that have existed in their current form for over half a century now. How do I get her back? Why did I just get LJBFed? Why does she fuck the Jerk, but tell me I’m a such a great guy? Do looks matter? How do I get my LTR to bang me now that we moved in together? There are countless others. Our Meta Game does a great disservice to ‘seekers’ when we dismiss them as just wanting to get their lay numbers up. Of course that’s only the recognizable motivator, but what they’re really searching for, what they’re unaware they’re searching for, is a real, positive, confidence in a masculinity that can rise above the chatter of the invectives of feminized Meta Game.
When I see 5 pages of advice explaining to that noob the reasons he’s in the situation he finds himself in, and instructing him how best to deal with it based on collective experiences while opening his perspective up to consider the greater landscape he’s in, that is the masculine Meta Game pushing back. Think of that; a poor, isolated kid, frustrated by how to approach, how to deal with a LJBF, how to man-up, etc. pits the influence of a world-wide collective of men’s experience against the behaviors and mindset of an individual girl who’s been socialized and acculturated by the feminized imperative. That is the Meta Game.
A lot of people get confused when I use this analogy and I thought it prudent to write a post on just what I mean in this regard.
A Man needs to have a lot of simultaneous prospects spinning together. Think of each plate as a separate woman you are pursuing. Some fall off and break, others you may wish to stop spinning altogether and some may not spin as fast as you’d like, but the essence of plate theory is that a man is as confident and valuable as his options. This is the essence of the abundance mindset – confidence is derived from options.
This principle is the key to solving so many of the problems that dog the heels of beta AFCs and recovering AFCs. In fact I would say that this ideology should be the cornerstone to success for a man in many facets of life, not simply attracting and keeping women. A man with options has power, and from these options and this sense of power, a natural sense of confidence will manifest itself. A man without options becomes necessitous and this leads to a lack of confidence and a scarcity mentality. Necessitous men are never free.
When a man spins more plates, when he has irons in the fire, when he is pursuing multiple women simultaneously, when he has options equally worth exploring, a man will have a natural, subconscious (but not exclusively) understanding that if one prospect does not expand, others very well may. This understanding has manifestations in a man’s behavior that women key on covertly. There are mannerisms and attitudes that a man with options will subconsciously convey to prospective women that they interpret, and give this man a value as a commodity to be competed for with other females.
On various sites in the PUA community, men are taught to emulate this behavior since it is a key element in attraction and interest. Cocky-Funny is one such technique that trains a confidence behavior that (more often than not) essentially masks a deficit of options. In other words, C&F is a natural behavior for men with options that must be compensated for by those who don’t have an apptitude for it. This is why the ‘natural’ Alpha male seems to exude C&F effortlessly while those without the benefit of more plates spinning (or the confidence in the ability of spinning more) struggle with simple things like eye contact or initiating approaches. This is also a fundamental principle in the “I don’t give a fuck” mentality that pervades community technique – it’s much easier to actually not “give a fuck” if you have other prospects going simultaneously.
Shotgun Logic
One very important benefit that Plate Theory provides for a man is that it greatly curbs the propensity for ONEitis both in and out of an LTR.
Outside of an LTR, most guys subscribe to what I call the Sniper mentality. This is the AFC that applies all of his time, effort and resources to patiently waiting out his target, waiting for that perfect opportunity to summon enough courage in the most precise of conditions to take his one shot at the girl, who by then is the focus of his ONEitis. This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few years in extreme cases, but all the while he voluntarily sacrifices his most valuable of resource – potential opportunity. The man who subscribes to Plate Theory can more easily avoid this situation as he goes hunting for women with a Shotgun; scattering as much influence across the broadest area possible. While the AFC fishes with a single line and a single hook, the Plate Theorist fishes with a trolling net, selecting the fish worth keeping and tossing back those who aren’t.
Inside an LTR, Plate Theory becomes more specified. The AFC placates and identifies with his partner because the balance has shifted to her advantage since he reinforces her understanding that she is his only source of intimacy. I can’t think of a better recipe for ONEitis since he become progressively more dependent on her as his only source of intimacy. The man that maintains, at the very least, the covert perception of options, either professionally or on an intersexual level (i.e. social proof that other women will compete for him) maintains this power balance. Most successful men have an innate understanding of this and this explains their popular reservations for committing to marriage, In an LTR, Plate Theory becomes a subtle dance of perception and recognizing how your partner interprets understanding a particular man’s options, but regardless, it reduces a guy’s tendency to regress into ONEitis in an LTR from his own self-perception and the confidence int inspires.
Natural Selection
As I illustrated in the fishing net analogy, spinning more plates allows you more opportunity to select from the largest pool of prospective choices and date them or drop them as you see fit. This has two benefits. First, it serves as valuable, though non-committed, experience for learning what a man requires for his own personal satisfaction. Experience teaches harsh, but it teaches best and the breadth of experience serves a man well. Who’s insight is more beneficial, the man who’s sailed the world over or the man who’s never ventured beyond a lake? Secondly, opportunity and options make a man the PRIZE. Rock stars, professional athletes and movie stars aren’t irresistible to women because of their celebrity, but because they blatantly, and with the highest form of social proof, prove they have options that other women will jealously compete for as well as the confidence that this unconscious knowledge naturally manifests itself in them.
What Plate Theory is not
My critics will often take a binary stance in their arguments with this idea citing that “they could never be with more than one woman at a time out of respect for her” or “so I should just lie to her and see other girls on the side?” To which I’d argue that these are feminized social conventions that attempt to thwart a man’s options in order to establish women as the prime selectors in intersexual relations. If it can be conditioned into a boy/man to ‘feel bad’ about seeing more than one woman at a time, it only better serves the female-as-chooser dynamic. To be sure, women are naturally the filters for their own intimacies, but it is essentially men who do the sexual selection. These convention’s latent purpose are designed to put selection of intimacy on a conditional basis that favors women, and as long as men will internalize this women will have a pre-constructed social high-ground.
The way to circumvent this dynamic is brutal honesty and a commitment to truthful, non-exclusivity with the plates you’re spinning. If you keep your options above board and are honest with any one girl and yourself about your choice to be non-exclusive, you not only remove the teeth from this convention, but you also reinforce yourself as a man with options (or at least perceived options). Further, critics will offer “well gee, if I did that with any woman she’d push off and dump me” to which I’ll refute – not if you establish this honestly from the outset. Most guys who’ve swallowed the ‘female power’ convention are too afraid or to preconditioned to even consider this as an option for seeing women. Letting a woman know, or covertly perceive, that you wont be exclusive to her pushes your commodity level up and implies options and potential success she’ll compete with other women to be associated with.
Plate Theory is also, most definitely not, a license to be indiscriminate with women. Just because you can spin a plate doesn’t necessarily mean you should spin that plate. Some aren’t worth spinning and a man with options should have no reservation about letting one go for a better one or two. In fact a man ought to be more discriminating in this regard since it affords him the best available from the largest selection.
