Relationship Game

Domain Dependence

domain_dependence

I received the following email from a reader this week:

Hi Rollo, I ran across the below thread on the TRP discussion on Reddit. I’m not normally a big follower of reddit but this one was good and is something that I’ve thought for a long time. Online Dating really, really, really sucks for men. And turns women into bitches. And has changed the world from an 80/20 market to a 95/5 market. The average male and actually for most above average males too … like SMV 6s and 7s have been completely shut out. And learning Game does little good for these men.

Was wondering if you’d care to discuss such things.

One of the founding Red Pill principles I explored over a decade ago was the tendency for men (and women) to create Buffers against rejection for themselves. I’ll still argue that men being the ‘initiator’ sex are subject to the consequences of rejection far more than women ever will be, but left unchecked, and if we’re honest, deliberately ignored, these rejection Buffers often develop into psychological schemas men internalize as a specific “preference” when it comes to interacting with with women:

Buffers are generally the paths of least rejection that become ego-invested “preferences.” Buffers aren’t so much about those “preferences” as they are about the motivations behind them.

At this point you might be thinking, “well, what the hell, I don’t want to feel rejection, why not employ buffers against it?” The main reason for embracing rejection is that rejection is better than regret. Scan back through this short list of buffers; how many of these have become greater, longer term problems for you than a briefly painful rejection would’ve been? Buffers also have a tendency to compound upon themselves in that one tends to dovetail into another, or more, until you no longer realize that they were originally rejection prevention methodologies and gradually become associated with your genuine personality. After a long enough period, these buffer become “just how I am.”

In the past Roosh has gone into some speculation that there will be a narrowing of the already harsh 80-20 rule of the SMP the closer western society gets to a total consolidation of feminine social primacy. Certain bloggers will debate the numbers, but I tend to agree with his proposition, though I’d say that a starting point of 80-20 might be a bit generous. However, considering the comfort with which women and popular culture are embracing open Hypergamy, I think I would actually step up his timetable for ‘Peak Hypergamy’.

For now, men are being presented with some very simple and pragmatic choices:

  • Learn Game, stay in the Game. Make the most of what they have to work with in their given circumstances and focus on self-motivated self-improvement. In a sense it’s a form of MGTOW, but with the expressed purpose of actively engaging in the SMP as it’s accessible to an individual guy. In other words, don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better – play the game better but always with yourself as your own mental point of origin.
  • Exit the Game. No one truly exits the Game, but they can minimize their active involvement in it. For the most part this doesn’t have to be a complete capitulation to one’s sexless, intimacy-less fate, but it does imply a degree of self-imposed indifference to women’s interest. Unfortunately this option seems the most pragmatic for men who either haven’t the patience or circumstance to opt for improving themselves and succeed at the Game, or they simply don’t see a commensurate reward for the investment they’d need to make in assuming the liabilities that come with dealing with most women these days.
  • Continue on in a Blue Pill ignorance. Although this ‘choice’ is the most common (i.e. at least 80% of Beta men) it will be the one to disappear the most rapidly. Even without a growing Red Pill community, Red Pill awareness is becoming more difficult for even the most plugged-in of men to ignore. Women’s flaunting of Open Hypergamy and blatant admission to a sexual strategy of Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks combined with a widespread Red Pill awareness will challenge even the most ardent of White Knight’s and idealistic ‘average frustrated chumps’. Still, there are diehard self-righteous Betas who’s dedication to the path that the Feminine Imperative has set before them has made any deviation from it unthinkable. They build a life of dependency on the untenable Blue Pill goals and the means to realize them.

The problem inherent to all of these options is that to a lesser or greater degree they rely on a static state of a particular environment, condition or domain.

Domain Dependency

Just for the record, yes, I’m quite familiar with the anti-fragile doctrine proposed by Taleb with regard to domain dependency. I do see a parallels in this with regard to Red Pill awareness, but this is in no way an endorsement of the book – I simply don’t have enough familiarity with it.

For Red Pill purposes though, Domain Dependence is being good at what you do in one setting, but completely unable to transfer that ability to another setting. I think this dependence is one of the more overstated preoccupations Game critics have in really accepting the validity of greater Red Pill truths.

A cheetah is a deadly and effective predator when he can use his speed to run down prey on the wide-open African plains, but put him in the Brazilian rainforest, with its dense jungle, and he’s probably going to sleep hungry more nights than not.

Translated into predictable Red Pill critique, the idea is similar – “Yeah, sure, game works well for picking up low self-esteem bar skanks, but I’m looking for a Quality Woman.” What’s implied isn’t necessarily incorrect; the most ridiculed, stereotypical examples of Game came from the trials and errors of early PUAs making observations and applying what they’d learned in a contextual domain – night clubs, bars, etc. While those observations were, and still are, invaluable information to a greater meta-understanding of Red Pill awareness, for the most part those early successes were dependent on that specific (club style) domain.

Game has branched out from that beginning to be applied in broader domains. Thus we have specific areas of application dependency based on what can produce at least somewhat replicable results in those settings. Nick Krauser writes the book on day Game, Roosh the book on South America and Northern & Eastern Europe, while other authors ply their trade writing about Game in marriage or under the auspices of religion(s).

And while I have a great deal of respect for the most of them, a creative mind doesn’t work like this. The creative mind has the ability to migrate from one realm to another without even thinking about it. It’s what allows us to connect this dot with that dot. There is a certain applied reasoning and science behind a Red Pill awareness, but it’s important to remember what the ‘A’ in PUA stands for – Artistry.

Crossing Domains

I’ve known a number of guys in my time who swear that there’s nothing hotter than a woman 15 – 20 years their senior. Others love to explain to me how behind the times I am by pointing out the inherent dangers and liabilities of dating single mothers (for anything more than a one time bang). Still others tell me how enthusiastic a lay the obese women they regularly bang are. All of these guys express a preference for the type of women they can reliably get into bed with and will staunchly defend and praise their preferred type of woman.

Their domain dependency became their internalized, ego-invested preference.

I’ve touched on this dynamic in a few of my earliest posts, but I think it’s important to realize that domain dependency isn’t just about the type of woman you’ve developed a preference for, but rather how you’re predictably rewarded (in this case with sex) within that particular domain. You can semi-reliably do well with Goth girls, fat girls, older women, single moms? It’s important to understand the specifics and motivations of the women within that domain. You went on a sex safari in Southeast Asia or the Philippines, yet get flaked on by every western girl you approach? There are (obviously) specifics that influence those domains.

After all of this, the Red Pill is universally applicable, or it’s not. The same fundamental Red Pill dynamics, operating within the context of a specific domain, are applicable with the correct art necessary for that domain.

Red Pill truths are domain independent. Hypergamy is the same to a girl in Brazil as it is to a girl in Vegas. The domain changes, and with it the necessary art based on a woman’s incentives and the priorities for that given domain, but the underlying purpose and requisites of Hypergamy is unchanged. Yes, cultural, religious and familial limitations of that Hypergamy may apply within that domain, but root level Red Pill truth is still the prime directive for women.

Within a man’s lifetime he will have no choice but to cross into, and adapt to unfamiliar domains many times. These domains are not just locales or social settings, but the specifics of a particular stage of a woman’s life as well as his own life. Marriage is a domain. Single man sex life plate spinning is a domain. Online dating, a dependency on impersonal texting, really any of the Buffers I’ve elaborated on in the past are all examples of a domain men develop a dependency on, and later a rewarded preference for.

While it’s vitally important for a man to have a solid grasp of the elements of his own, temporal, domain it’s equally important to understand how and why he came into it. What rewards did he receive or hope to receive that led to his developed “preferences”? Were those preferences dependent upon a Blue Pill condition for reward?

This is key in avoiding domain specific dependency. That’s a pretty tall order for most men, and actually it’s one of the prime reasons most Blue Pill men never come to Red Pill truths. The Blue Pill is itself a meta-domain that men are largely conditioned to be dependent upon. Coming to Red Pill truths requires the self-realization of a domain dependency on Blue Pill idealisms, their promised rewards and then letting them go.

It’s important for a man to develop a fluidity of transitioning from domain to domain. Red Pill awareness prepares him for fundaments that will be applicable in all domains, but accepting that those domains exist and influence (sometimes adversely) his ‘preferences’ is the first step in developing the art necessary to excel in a new domain.

Isolation is dangerous. The presumption that conditions will never change and / or the preoccupation with security is a woman’s realm. Men must accept that they must adapt themselves to adequately perform in changing domains.

Boundaries

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The Mate Guarding topic of last week’s post made for some lively debate. It usually does because it’s this behavior, and the root motivators of it, that gets to the heart of dynamics such as an Alpha / Beta mindset, the Scarcity Mentality, Hypergamy, issues of morality and maybe an uncomfortable realization that your LTR has been subject to those motivators.

The purpose and approach men have with regard to mate guarding usually comes down to two positions.

The first being a moral high-ground idea that women do in fact have a moral or rational agency and thus have an obligation to keep their own Hypergamy in check. This may be from a religious perspective, but more often it’s based upon men’s idealistic equalist hopes that a woman can rationally be expected to parse her own investment in what men think should be Relational Equity.

Or in other words, women should know better, and be expected to cooperate with a male imperative by self-regulating their Hypergamous impulses as a matter of personal and social responsibility.

On a limbic level Hypergamy doesn’t care about Relational Equity and openly appealing to a woman’s reason, rationality or sense of responsibility a man believes she should be beholden to is counterproductive in influencing her genuine desires. However, this is usually a self-guided hope that women will recognize and regulate those behaviors at the risk of being socially ostracized in an already feminine-primary social environment.

Again, this can be couched in a religious expectation, but in a secular-equalist sense it amounts to putting the burden of mate guarding on women by presuming their ‘equal rationality’ will result in women mate guarding themselves by policing their own Hypergamy in men’s best interests. Anything less either makes them convictionless or the nebulous “low quality woman” who wont play by the old-order rules and expectations.

The second approach is a proactive mate guarding based on the presumption that mate guarding is a ‘defense’ against mate poaching by other, presumably (but not necessarily) more Alpha men than the one doing the guarding.

Within that context it’s understandable why men would want to protect their personal investment in a woman. What woman wouldn’t be aroused by the prospect of being fought over by two men she perceives as Alpha rivals? It’s a strong affirmation of her desirability and SMV.

Where it turns into a Beta Tell is when a man’s lifestyle revolves around ‘keeping’ her in a possessive sense for fear of losing her because she’s his only viable option for sending his genetic material into the future. That kind of mate guarding is the kind inspired by a scarcity mentality, but it’s also due to long evolved, subconscious sensitivities to her behavioral inconsistencies at or around her time of ovulation.

This is what Dr. Hasselton was getting into in her studies – ovulatory shift in mate preferences created an evolved sensitivity of them in men which in turn produced contingency behaviors (mate guarding) to ensure he wasn’t wasting his parental investment efforts with a child that wasn’t his own.

An evolved mate guarding sensitivity and contingent strategy was basically insurance against men’s cuckoldry risks.

I would argue that a contingent mate guarding strategy evolved not as a direct response to Alpha (or even Beta) competition stresses, but rather due to women’s innate Hypergamy, their sexual pluralism and the potential for parental investment deception when women were left with their Hypergamy unchecked.

If a woman’s predominant perception of you is Alpha, if her mental point of origin is one in which she recognizes her own SMV as being subordinate to your own, she wont be asking your “permission” to go to Vegas with her girlfriends for a weekend because her desire for her Alpha will be stronger than her peers influence on her during her ovulation week.

In theory, no woman who sees you as her perceived Alpha and Hypergamous best interest will want to ‘cheat’ on you – so the idea wont even occur to her. I realize this sounds simplistic until you consider the readiness with which most men will similarly isolate themselves socially, putting off friends and family in preference to spending his time with what he believes is a high-value woman.

Demonstrate, Never Explicate

From The 48 Laws of Power

Law 9

Win through your Actions, Never through Argument

Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory:  The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion.  It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word.  Demonstrate, do not explicate.

There is no greater demonstration of higher value for a man than walking away from a woman. Even a woman’s strongest perception of higher value cannot compete with the self-certainty of value a man has when he disconnects himself from a woman who’s already accepted him for her intimacy.

While Dread (even passive dread) is a strong signal of a man’s higher value, removing your own intimate acceptance from a woman and confirming the value her Hypergamous nature questioned about you is the last word in DHV.

For the first half of their lives, even the most mediocre of women become accustomed to men qualifying for their attention, intimacy and sexual access. Women quickly learn the utility of their first, best, agency with men – the power of sexual control.

So when that agency is proven useless with a man, that control is eliminated and she begins to question her capacity for that control. By removing himself from dependency on that agency he confirms that his SMV is more valuable than her own.

A lot of men report that their unprompted disinterest in sex with a woman, a wife, a girlfriend, often provokes a woman’s imagination with regard to her control and/or inspires a greater sexual determination to please him in order to reestablish this control when they next engage in sex.

There’s precious little that’s more effective at reestablishing Frame for a man than the demonstration of higher value walking away from a woman’s accepted intimacy represents. Some of the best sex you’ll have in your life will come after a reunited breakup.

Now, the reason I’ve detailed this is because the foundations of a man maintaining Frame within a relationship are rooted in limiting or removing this sexual agency and demonstrating higher value as part of that process.

Establishing Boundaries

London Towers on the SoSuave forum started a fairly contentious debate on how a man ought to establish boundaries within a relationship last week:

In my last LTR I never set boundaries, let her hang with her ex, guys, never got jealous, just didn’t give a fuck…because my life was going well and I had no insecurity she wouldn’t do anything because I was the shit. She even wanted her ex to hang with us, just so she could show me off. This actually seemed to work for me as I had some natural alpha state for the first 1 year due to life success and she could feel this, thus other guys were just orbiters. I would even joke to her about who she found attractive in the bar, that’s how self confident I was. This would actually make her want me more.

Then cracks in my game came out, I was going through a rough patch with life and suddenly the game shifted. She would start to compare me to other guys including her ex in a negative way. I suddenly became insecure because I didn’t feel Alpha anymore due to life not going well and suddenly started enforcing boundaries which she would constantly test because she knew I lost my game unlike when I was Alpha and didn’t give a shit. Enforcing boundaries was actually coming from an insecure place and I don’t think your words mean shit if you ain’t got your game tight.

Now, I’m not too sure how I would handle my next LTR. I’m in the process of becoming alpha again, but now truly alpha as in my inner game this time. But would I now still have the not give a sh1t attitude if my girl still hung out with her ex/guys?

Part of me thinks if my game is tight, I give her great sex, pluck at her emotional spectrum, she rides on the magic carpet of my exciting life (which comes from knowing my life mission) she will be hooked on me in a multiple of ways and if she knew I would drop her cold and can easily replace her if she doesn’t provide me with the affection/sex that I need.. she will enforce her own boundaries.

This is the only true boundary I can provide. A girls attention will drop if she starts even emotionally to involve someone else. At that point you just freeze immediately. So the only boundary you can ever enforce is through your attention and her subtle awareness you have options and will walk away with ease at the very beginning of her not providing for your needs. That loss is something she could not deal with.

I’d encourage readers to take the time to read through that discussion and the various approaches to establishing boundaries within a relationship (or even non-exclusive plates you may be spinning). After picking through the differing perspectives I made the connection between establishing boundaries and men’s natural predilection for mate guarding behaviors.

Most of the expressed perspectives tend to side with either of the two mate guarding approaches I mentioned at the beginning of today’s post; one, in which women are rationally expected to police their own Hypergamous impulses, and the other, where an active (and equally reasoned) explicating of boundaries are overtly declared as an ultimatum in an effort to protect a man against the parental investment risks of being cuckolded by a woman he knows can’t be expected not to otherwise succumb to her Hypergamous impulses.

If you notice how London Towers’ story unfolds here he essentially proceeded by demonstrating his higher value, secure in the confidence of it, only to have that DHV eroded due to his life’s circumstance.

This is when the boundary of Alpha indifference he’d organically set (albeit unknowingly), based upon his value, was challenged in his drop of status and esteem. I’ve elaborated in the past about a man’s burden of performance or how women’s concept of ‘love’ is based on a passive opportunism of what a man is (rather than who he is), but you get the picture illustrated for you here.

Next, commenter Soolaimon picks up the opposite end of the extreme:

These boundary guys have it ass backwards.

They are judging women by their words instead of judging them by their actions.

Judge women by their actions and not their words.

Agreeing to a boundary is only her words that these guys think will keep her from cheating.

Women who cut out other men from their lives on their own is a woman who understands what an exclusive relationship is.

Those are her actions you judge her on.

Not useless words she can go back on at any moment.

[…]

Smart classy intelligent women already know what exclusivity means they don’t need to have it defined when they are defining it for you by removing other men on their own.

Women do that for Alphas and not betas who need to set a boundary out of fear.

Women that are really into you will agree to what you want with no problem.

When they lose interest they will still cheat on you making your boundary useless.

If your woman knows what exclusivity means and has the same values as you why are you so terrified to put a ring on her finger and marry her?

There’s a lot to consider when you establish boundaries with a woman. Essentially those boundaries men wish to establish and have respected by a woman really just amount to a codified form of mate guarding.

When you think about it, this is what (at least in an old social order) the marriage contract was meant to insure from a male-beneficial perspective – an assurance of fidelity, but also a contractual insurance against Hypergamy.

Considering the contemporary risks involved, in the current social environment there are any number of reasons men are wary of marrying a woman, but what marriage has become is really a challenge to what a man believes about mate guarding and his confidence in controlling a woman’s Hypergamous nature based upon his degree of desirability to her.

Though I don’t disagree in principle, Soolaimon’s exaggeration is founded on the idea that there’s always going to be a bigger fish; another AMOG to seize your woman’s interest should your combination of Game, material and emotional provisioning, or ambition for such be lacking.

Like most absolutists, he does little to contextualize the preconceptions a woman may have with a particular man they’re already involved with. A woman may fantasize about sex with a more Alpha male during her ovulatory phase, but that doesn’t mean she has the opportunity to realize it – even for “smart classy independent women”.

That said, and after London Towers’ example, it’s impossible not to come to a conclusion that implied, demonstrated boundaries – ones that have actionable consequences of intimate and invested loss (i.e. Dread) – are preferable to explicated, but ultimately appealed-reason declarations of boundaries that are negotiated insurance policies to limit her Hypergamy.

While I do believe boundaries are a necessary part of a relationship, it’s far better for women to discover them for what they are, and the consequences of them, by demonstration rather than overt explanation.

The hand burned by the stove teaches better than any warning.

The only person who’s behavior you can control is your own, but that behavior can have a significant impact on the behaviors of others.

 

Beta Tells

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TRP poster, needathrowawayplease from the Red Pill subreddit has a timely question / observation:

Knowing your SO’s menstrual cycle can be extremely powerful. [Indeed]

During the fertile stage of her cycle, thousands of years of evolution mean her body is screaming at her to get knocked up by an alpha male. A simple test to determine is she sees you as her alpha fucks is to not initiate during the fertile period of her cycle and observe her behavior: does she come to you to get fucked? Does her body language or physical behavior change when she’s fertile. Maybe she touches you more often or more intimately or plays the role of the seductress: things like coming to bed wearing lingerie where she usually wouldn’t? Even if she’s relatively low-sex drive and doesn’t initiate, does she at least respond more passionately to your sexual advances or orgasm more easily or intensely when she’s fertile?

You obviously can’t draw conclusions from a single cycle but you should eventually see a pattern – and the more she values you sexually during her fertile period the better. If she isn’t doing anything differently or reacting to you differently when she’s fertile, something’s up.

This test can have false negatives but not false positives. There’s no false positive case where she suddenly starts riding you while you’re watching the Packers game but she doesn’t see you as her alpha. But it can have false negatives where she doesn’t initiate but still sees you as her alpha. If she isn’t initiating when she’s fertile (and you aren’t initiating in order to test her reaction), it could be due to stress, lack of time, being too used to you doing the initiation, etc. But at the very least she should be demonstrating increased passion and sexual ecstasy during her fertile period.

At a high-level:

The best case: She initiates during her fertile period if you don’t. She gets cravings for your D.

The OK case: She responds more passionately and orgasms more easily during her fertile period.

The uh-oh, something might be wrong case: No observable change during her fertile period.

The beta case: Dead bedroom, what the fuck are you even doing (sorry if you got married and you can’t get out).

Of course if she’s an extremely sexual being and all of the above describes your sex life 24/7, then none of this should even concern you.

Disclaimer: Once again, this test is a tool that works best for women with higher sex drives (who really wanna get fucked when they’re fertile). If your 37 year old wife of 15 years fucks you when you want and isn’t cheating, you’re fine. I don’t think test applies to all women (LOL, broke /trp/ rules oops) but it’s useful nonetheless.

Lets presume for a moment that neither a controlled experiment nor an uncontrolled, but documented, correlatively scientific, sociological field study has ever been performed to test the principle of feminine Hypergamy. For a moment, as a man, imagine yourself living in a period of time prior to any formalized school of psychology; pre-turn of the 20th century. There is no Pavlov, there is no Skinner, there is no Freud.

Using only personal observations, observations of learned behaviors related by your father and brothers, male friends and the intergender experiences of a very socially isolated (by today’s standards) group of  people who make up your peers, and a restrictively limited access to any classic philosophical literature beyond the Judeo-Christian Bible – what would you presume would be the nature inimical to women and the feminine?

Would your observations, intuition and the education proffered by your father, brothers and other influential male friends and relations lead to an insight to know what Hypergamy is, how it motivates women and how to control for, or capitalize on it?

Not only do I believe it would, but I would argue that, up until the sexual revolution and the past 60 or so years, men have had an innate and learned understanding of Hypergamy, how it functions, and how to control for it.

To be sure, it didn’t have the formal name of ‘Hypergamy’ – in fact that term was until recently, strictly defined and reserved for “women with the tendency to marry above their socioeconomic level” in polite, pop-psychology circles – but men knew Hypergamy before the manopshere (re)exposed its true definition.

Waging Hypergamy

Resistance to the uncomfortable truths innate to the female experience is to be expected from women – until the advent of Open Hypergamy, the Feminine Imperative needed the sisterhood to be united and its secrets jealously guarded to the point of cognitive dissonance.

My guess is that most of my female critics would still agree with the basic parameters of Hypergamy, but what I doubt they’re aware of is that in denying the inherent biological nature of female Hypergamy women must also reject the sociological, psychological and (observably) behavioral aspects of Hypergamy inherent (and largely subconscious) in women.

Commenter Mookie:

“As women approach the Epiphany Phase (later the Wall) and realize the decay of their SMV (in comparison to younger women), they become progressively more incentivized towards attraction to the qualities a man possesses that will best satisfy the long-term security of the Beta Bucks side of her Hypergamy demands.”

Did your woman say, “you’re (so much) different than the guys I used to date.” Or, “I finally got smart and found a good guy.” If so, this is clear evidence that you are her Beta Bucks guy. Maybe she used to date DJs, NFL players, drug dealers, whatever. If these guys are different types of guys than you, do NOT continue the relationship. She has no clue, but she is rationalizing her choice in her mind. You will pay a severe price later, as in cheating, nonstop bitchiness, or sudden divorce. Find a girl that always dated guys like you. She may have swooned for the lead guitarist, but if she didn’t devote her early 20s to chasing him, you’re okay.

Beta Tells

One of the more common questions I’m asked in consults is whether something a guy did was ‘Beta’ or not. Usually it was a situation wherein the guy was instinctually sensitive to his own behavior in context to his Frame and how the woman he was dealing with perceived him. In most cases a man knows when he’s slipped in his perception of dominance with a woman, they just look for a third party confirmation of it – which is then followed by more rationalizations for why his behavior shouldn’t be considered Beta because they believe women are equally rational, equally forgiving, agents as men (really he is) are.

From Gut Check:

Whenever you feel something isn’t quite right in your gut, what this is is your subconscious awareness alerting you to inconsistencies going on around you. We tend to ignore these signs in the thinking that our rational mind ‘knows better’ and things really aren’t what they seem. It’s not as bad as you’re imagining, and you can even feel shame or guilt with yourself for acknowledging that lack of trust. However, it’s just this internal rationalization that keeps us blind to the obvious that our subconscious is trying to warn us about. Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. So when that predictable behavior changes even marginally, our instinctual perceptions fire off all kinds of warnings. Some of which can actually effect us physically.

It’s at this point most guys make the mistake of acting on the “good communication solves everything” feminized meme and go the full disclosure truth route, which only really leads to more rationalizations and repression of what’s really going on. What they don’t realize is that the MEDIUM is the message; her behavior, her nuances, the incongruousness in her words and demeanor (and how your gut perceives them) is the real message. There is an irregularity in her behavior that your subconscious is alerting you to which your consciousness either cannot or will not recognize.

I began the Alpha Tells post with the intent of recognizing how a woman behaves when she’s in the presence of a Man she perceives to be Alpha. A lot of men get hung up on trying to ‘act’ Alpha; wanting to ape (and hopefully internalize) the behavioral tells a more confident Alpha displays.

Consequently there’s a lot of debate about how men posture and how they naturally display these Alpha cues, but I think the best gauge of what defines those cues is not in men’s displays, but women’s behaviors and attitudes that are prompted by a perception of Alpha-ness.

And just as women will respond viscerally to an Alpha perception, they will also manifest behaviors which indicate her subconscious knows she’s dealing with a Beta aligned male.

It’s easy to pick apart what a guy thinks are his own Alpha tells, but it’s far more uncomfortable to dissect women’s Beta tells when they’re in the presence of men they perceive to be Beta. Much of what I’ll outline that follows will be hard to read for many guys, and as always you’re free to disagree.

My purpose here isn’t to bash Betas, rather it’s to increase awareness of women’s behaviors toward them. As I’ve explained above, try to put these behaviors into a Hypergamous context and how they would be perceived by women who’ve evolved to have an instinctual sensitivity to these Beta behaviors, as well as expressions of Beta attitudes in your words and emotional emphasis.

I could very easily compile a list of behaviors that are simply the reverse of the Alpha Tells I noted in the previous post, but it’s much more important to address the root reasons for these Beta Tells:

  • Does she initiate sex or affection spontaneously?
  • Does she entertain a large pool of “male friend” orbiters with the expectation of you being ‘mature enough’ to accept it?
  • Does she keep a core peer group of ‘girlfriends’ she insists on prioritizing over being with you? Frequent GNOs?
  • Has she explained to you how she was so different  in college and how she’s glad those days are behind her now?
  • Is she experiencing her Epiphany Phase?
  • Does she cite “mismatched libidos” as a reason for her lack of sexual interest in you now that you’re married or living together (even after she’s had better sex with you or a former lover when single)?
  • Is she averse or repulsed by your ejaculate being on her skin, in her mouth or overly concerned with soiling a bed sheet?
  • Will she have sex with you anywhere besides the bed?
  • Do you perform oral on her to get her off more than you have intercourse?
  • Is she a wide-eyed lover or does she squint her eyes closed while having sex? Is sex a chore for her to perform?
  • If you’re married, did she assume your last name, or did she insist on a hyphenated surname for herself?
  • When you’re together does her regular, unpracticed body posture indicate an openness or are you always having to break into her intimate space?
  • Is she preoccupied with her side of the family or a certain pet in preference to being concerned with your well-being?
  • Is she consciously aware of being 1-2 points above your own relative SMV? Is she overt about it?
  • Does she presume authority in your relationship? Do you accede this authority as a matter of (equalist) belief?

There are many more tells of course, and I hope more will be presented in the commentary, but it’s important to understand that these behaviors and attitudes are manifestations of a woman who on some level of consciousness understands that she’s dealing with a Beta man.

I should also mention that, as with Stephen’s case in Moments of Clarity, there are particular phases of a woman’s life when she becomes more attuned to dealing with Beta men due to perceived necessities on her part. A clear understanding of how these phases predispose women to convince themselves to be more accepting of Beta behaviors and a Beta mindset is imperative to avoiding the common pitfalls men encounter with regard to issues of Frame in their relationships.

Beta men are all too eager to believe they’ve matured into being a self-defined Alpha when a semi-attractive 29 year old in the midst of her Epiphany Phase is giving him wide-eyed indicators of interest in him. Only after she’s consolidated on that long-term security does he realize the plans her sexual strategy had for him.

Predisposition for Mate Guarding

One of the best Beta tells is how defensive a guy gets about the subject of mate guarding.

An Alpha has little preoccupation with mate guarding because subconsciously he knows he has sexual options. That applies both within and without monogamy. I’m presenting this here because the majority of what motivates Beta tells (and really a Beta mindset) is rooted in how men deal with a scarcity mentality. Beta tells are almost always indicators that a man believes he needs to guard his paired woman and thus telegraphs a Beta status to that woman as well as other women in her peer clutch.

Mate guarding, and its intrinsic set of subconscious suspicions and behaviors, is an evolved adaptation of ensuring paternity for a Beta-provider. These men must rely upon exchanging resources and external benefits for women’s sexual fidelity. In essence, it’s an unspoken awareness that Beta men must negotiate for what they hope will be a woman’s genuine desire in exchange for his provisioning, parental investment support and emotional involvement.

Beta men are aware on on a limbic level that Hypergamy dictates an Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks trade-off in women’s sexual strategy – thus a subconscious ‘mate guarding’ mindset evolved from Beta men’s heightened awareness of women’s preference for Alpha Fucks particularly around the proliferative phase time of women’s ovulation.

Paradoxically, the best assurance you have of fidelity with a woman is simply not to allow yourself to become exclusively monogamous with a woman and rather, have her make the efforts to pair with you under her own auspices you being Alpha. Romance is not required from a lover a woman perceives as Alpha, only his sexual interest – this represents a confirmation of Hypergamous optimization for a woman. The fuck-buddy dynamic – all sexual interests with no reciprocal expectation of emotional investment  – is a strong Alpha tell for a man.

The best gauge for determining a woman’s perception of you as either an Alpha or Beta type is examining yourself and your feeling a ‘need’ to mate guard her, to appease her, or an impulse to correct yourself in order to align with her terms for intimacy. A scarcity mentality is the mental point of origin for a Beta mindset – and that internalized mental model will manifest itself in a predisposition for Beta behaviors.

There’s a common belief that even the most Alpha of men will at times slip into a Beta behaviorism. You can’t be ‘on’ your game all of the time, and while that’s true it doesn’t invalidate that women have a mental model of your overall, predominant condition being either Alpha or Beta. A predominantly Alpha frame and mindset (and yes, looks), plus an acknowledged (real or perceived) SMV primacy will cover a multitude of Beta sins, but the predominant Beta has the sisyphean task of convincing a woman he’s more Alpha than she pegs him for.

So to answer the man asking whether or not something he did was Beta, your answer really lies in your motivation for behaving ‘Beta’ as you did in comparison to how a woman perceives your predominant character.

 

Game Works

game_works

Game, for lack of a better word, is good. Game is right. Game works.

After listening to myself on this weekend’s interview with Christian McQueen and Dagonet I realized that as I became more comfortable with the interview I found myself verbally ‘dialoging’ in much the same way that I scribble down fragments of ideas in my notebook or when I’m fleshing out a draft for some topic I’m considering in-post.

It’s always been a strange sensation for me to hear myself speak. Even when I record a voice message on my iPhone it always makes me self-conscious to listen to the message play back. However, as I was in the midst of listening to myself on the show I had the same familiar internal conversation and I picked up on a thought I had planned to write about, but I think it slipped my mind until now.

Towards the middle of our conversation I considered a few things about the benefits of Game, and it made me think about how Game has progressed to what it is today. One of the chapters in The Rational Male I specifically wrote for the book – and later converted to a blog post – was called The Evolution of Game. I added this as an effort to help uninitiated men have a better grasp of just what Game really is.

There’s been a lot of redefining of exactly what Game is over the past 12-13 years, but I’ve always considered Game an abstract term for a much larger concept.

Naturally, critics predisposed to a blue pill worldview want to portray “those red pill game guys” as throwbacks to the PUA set of the early 2000’s. This is a very shortsighted evaluation, usually proffered by guys ego-invested in a blue pill mindset and in need of easy definitions and buzz words to ridicule and move onto the next distraction.

Facing red pill truths is uncomfortable, and I understand the need to casually pass them off for fear of really having to critically reconsider ego-investments; that type of insight requires either real depth of character or an experience traumatic enough to shake one from beliefs that, in essence, make up part of their personality.

Both require a concentrated effort to learn from, and honestly, most people are too lethargic to consider red pill truths when there are more entertaining distraction to inure themselves with.

It’s just this lethargy that prevents them from understanding that Game and red pill awareness have matured far beyond the PUAs techniques of the past. Neil Strauss published The Game in 2003 – that’s 15 years since Mystery was wearing top hats and elevator boots.

Those caricatures may be comforting to laugh at, but in fifteen years the developed techniques and observations Game practitioners failed and succeeded with fed into what we would eventually come to understand as red pill awareness today.

Even some well meaning red pill Men may want to self-affirmingly ridicule the PUAs of the past and present, but if you have embraced a red pill awareness today, at least partially, you have these Men to thank for risking rejection and practicing techniques that laid a foundation for contemporary red pill awareness.

Now, imagine for a moment that, today, all men had to build on was the antiseptic studies and controlled experiments of a social science academia firmly steeped in a feminine-primary, feminine-correct social context. Imagine what red pill awareness would be if not for the guys in the field doing ‘experiments’. Imagine what marriage counselors and ‘relationship experts’ would (and honestly, still) advise men to do in order to change their lives with an understanding based solely on what a feminine- primary, controlled social science approved of.

Only the PUAs of then and now have had the unfettered freedom to perform in-field social experiments, and relate their collected evidence and observations with other men; the types of which social science has been forbidden from due either to ethical considerations or by feminine-primary social conventions.

Game does not Occur in a Vacuum

Recently the comment threads here have had a tendency to devolve into a “looks are all that matters so why bother learning Game?” line of reasoning. The commentariat can lean towards go-your-own-way defeatism, then to resolving to live in the gym until one inspire female arousal, or, to appeals to positive confidence.

And while I have always recognized – more than most other manosphere bloggers if I dare – the obvious truth that Looks are a prime requisite for arousal (and attraction), I also recognize an effort to discredit Game and red pill awareness by absolutes, extremes and absurdities.

For anyone with the sense that Game and red pill awareness is valueless and superfluous in the face of women’s primary drive for physical arousal, I suggest you read Advocatus Diaboli’s treatise on how to pragmatically use escorts (either that or relocate to the state of Nevada). Honestly, I hold no disapproval for men who feel this is the best way to satisfy their need for sex and female contact. It may indeed be your best option under the current social environment.

For anyone else, I think it’s very important to look at the benefits of Game both in an intergender and interpersonal context. If you consider yourself “red pill” (another useful, but abstract term) Game has benefitted you – because it was the early trials and errors of Game that led to red pill principles we understand now.

If you have even a cursory grasp of how women’s biology and menstrual cycle influences ovulatory shift behaviors in mate preferences and you’ve altered your perception of women, Game has benefitted you.

If you understand the basics of feminine hypergamy and the sexual strategies women use to optimize their mate selection, and then changed your intergender tact as a result of it, Game has benefitted you.

If you’ve internalized the core psychological principles underlying women’s perceptions of Amused Mastery, Command Presence, Agree & Amplify, Cocky & Funny, Social Proof, Dread and even Chick Crack, whether you’ve applied them or not, Game has expanded your consciousness of women’s behaviors and their motivators.

If you’ve had the insight to understand your blue pill conditioning, the reasons for your predispositions towards a Savior Schema, feminine identifying, why a LJBF is a rejection, why Beta Game comes naturally to men but is self defeating, or why SMV accrues and decays over the course of a lifetime, Game and the red pill have benefitted you.

If you’ve used or modified any of these principles to better your marriage, your dealings with co-workers, your daughter, mother or even your best friend’s domineering wife, you’ve benefitted from Game.

If you’ve saved or bettered another man’s life, or bettered his intergender relationships, you’ve both benefitted from Game.

I could go on, but if you honestly believe that women’s primary physical arousal cues trump any value that Game or red pill awareness really has, then you’re wasting your time here reading and commenting on what I have to offer. You’d be better served by focusing all your attentions to lifting in the gym and shifting your career goals toward a job that is physically demanding and keeps you at your physical best.

Ironically, getting in shape is also an aspect of Game. Even if your belief is “Looks are everything”, but yet your understanding of this comes as a result of your red pill awareness of the Alpha Fucks side of hypergamy, Game has benefitted you.

Just a familiarity with Game concepts, whether you accept them or not, still influence your perception of women and the motivations behind their behaviors.

Red pill awareness challenges feminine-primary thinking. Why do you think the mass dissemination of red pill awareness is so threatening to the Feminine Imperative?

Doing Something

What is the manosphere actually ‘doing’?

This is the first critique I expect from from a poor debate opponent – disqualifying the strength or validity of a premise by the ‘success’ or lack thereof of a proponent’s efforts to enact or convince others of that premise.

By this logic, one could make the case that the MRM is an utter failure, but it still doesn’t mean they aren’t correct in their efforts.

As I mentioned on the Christian McQueen Show, I’m of a bottom up, or an inside – out mind when it comes to enacting red pill ‘change. The manosphere is raising awareness and this needs time (maybe even a generation) to mature into personal consciousness and then popular consciousness.

It’s difficult to quantify the ‘results’ of the manosphere, red pill awareness and Game because its effects are individually subjective at this stage. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t receive an email, a forum/blog comment or a tweet about how my book or what I’ve written on the blog has changed (or literally saved) a man’s life.

That’s not meant to gloss myself, but rather to illustrate a point – the red pill (and Game) is doing something, it’s changing minds and lives. It’s not rallying men in the streets and waving banners, nor is it effecting legal or social policy (yet), but it’s making men aware of their condition and changing their beliefs.

No hate for what the MRM is doing, I recognize the intent and applaud it, but thus far it’s been impotent in effecting “real change in policy”, while red pill awareness has done more for men individually. For all of the MRM’s efforts to enact public change, all it takes is one White Knight in a position of authority to say “GTFO you misogynist creeps!” Now imagine in the future a man who’s red pill aware in a position to effect that policy.

Real change isn’t going to happen directly it’s going to happen indirectly, on a man by man basis. And not just publicly but personally.

That change will happen in men’s relationships with their wives, daughters and sons. That change may simply be a form of ‘civil disobedience’ in not marrying at all, or holding women accountable for their open embrace of hypergamy and their AFBB sexual strategy and only marrying / supporting women who make an effort to control their hypergamy.

That change will happen in the workplace and hiring practices. That change will filter into men’s better understanding as the red pill spreads and men reassume some of the social frame control the Feminine Imperative unilaterally legislates and provide to women now.

The red pill is ‘doing’ something, it’s planting the seeds for a greater shift in gender power with every man who becomes aware of how women ‘are’ and what they will predictably do.

A New Hope

hope

Towards the end of The Bitter Taste of the Red Pill I wrote this:

The truth will set you free, but it doesn’t make truth hurt any less, nor does it make truth any prettier, and it certainly doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that truth requires. One of the biggest obstacles guys face in unplugging is accepting the hard truths that Game forces upon them. Among these is bearing the burden of realizing what you’ve been conditioned to believe for so long were comfortable ideals and loving expectations are really liabilities. Call them lies if you want, but there’s a certain hopeless nihilism that accompanies categorizing what really amounts to a system that you are now cut away from. It is not that you’re hopeless, it’s that you lack the insight at this point to see that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn when I unplugged (such as it was) was throwing away ‘hope’.

Not real, internal, personal hope, but rather the ‘hope’ I had been led to believe was a realizable state – if circumstances, if personalities, if fate or some other condition defined by the feminine imperative would just align in such a way that I’d been conditioned to believe it could, then that feminine defined contentment could be actualized.

I wanted very much to realize that idealized state by defining hope (or having it defined for me) in a context that was never of my own real choosing. I got just as depressed as anyone else when I unplugged. I got angry. I didn’t want to think that I’d invested so much of myself in something that was fundamentally unattainable because the my understanding of it had been incorrect, either deliberately or by my own hopeful interpretations of it.

My own ‘unplugging’ was a gradual affair and came after a lot of drawn out trauma. And yes, to realize that all of that trauma amounted to nothing after hoping and struggling to mold myself into something that I was led to believe was achievable it was even more depressing.

It wasn’t until I realized that the hope I was sold came from the same social paradigm that never held my best interests as a priority that I threw it away. That was a tough day because I realized in doing so I would have to find a new sense of hope for myself. It seemed very nihilistic at the time, and I had to really make an effort not to make that choice from a sense of self-pity.

One particularly hard revelation I had to disabuse myself of was understanding that women love differently than men. That was tough to embrace because the old hope I was struggling to realize was based on the primary tenet of blue pill thinking; the equalist notion that men and women share a mutually recognized, mutually accepted concept of love.

Once I understood this was an idealization rather than a reality, and that women can and do love men deeply, but in an entirely different feminine-specific concept of love, I discovered that I no longer ‘hoped’ for that mutuality and embraced the hope that men and women could still genuinely love each other from their own perspectives of love without a mutual consensus.

I remembered then an older man I had done some peer counseling with while in college and how this man had essentially striven his entire life to please and content his ex-wife and his now second wife of more than 30 years. From his early 20s he’d spent his personal life in a hopeful attempt at contenting, appeasing and qualifying for a mutually shared state of love he believed these women (the only 2 he’d ever had sex with) had a real capacity for.

At 73 (now) he’s spent his life invested in a hope that simply doesn’t exist – that he can be loved as a man ideally believes a woman ought to be able to love him – just as all the romantic, feminine-defined ideals of love he’d learned from a feminine-centric social order had convinced him of for so long.

This is why I say men are the True Romantics, because the overwhelming majority will devote a lifetime to the effort of actualizing a belief in a male-idealized love to find fulfillment in a woman and for that woman.

Old Hope for New Hope

I hope that doesn’t sound too fortune cookie, but it’s a prime example of redefining hope in a new red pill-aware paradigm. You can hope and thrive in a new red pill context – I know I do – but it’s much easier when you internalize red pill truths and live with them in a red pill context instead of force-fitting them into your old, feminine-defined, blue pill context. I can imagine what my marriage would look like if I hadn’t made the red pill transition and learned to use that awareness in it. There are a lot of guys paying ‘marriage coaches’ $149 an hour because they never did.

There was a comment buried in last week’s comment thread from Hobbes that was too good not to include in its entirety here:

I think I get it!

For years I have been bitter about this need to “perform” about how this shows that women do not love us as we love etc.. And just now I was reviewing my old relationships and I recalled something.

In each of my relationships, prior to meeting the women I eventually fell in love with, I was constantly working on myself, I would get in shape, hang out with friends, explore my environment and work on myself and my music etc. As soon as I would “fall in love” I would slowly drop those activities, I’d focus on being a good bf, I would focus on providing and “being what she wanted” what I thought she wanted, better said.

But here is my Eureka moment, what I recalled each time was being unhappy, what I recall each time was feeling boxed in and kind of dull.. of feeling trapped.

Is this what Rollo means when he says our response to women is a conditioning, and that the sadness we get from Red Pill truth is the result of behaving and believing something that is not really our nature, but the result of having someone else’s behaviors and beliefs installed into us?

So I think I finally understand it for myself… the talk of putting yourself first, of “performing” etc is really just a way of saying “you don’t have to do what people say you’re supposed to do in a relationship – you don’t have to drop everything for her, you don’t have to stop doing what you like and love and you don’t have to kiss her ass”

In my case I dropped everything for two reasons. One was to do what I thought I was supposed to do.. what I heard women say they wanted from a man, what my mother said a man should be etc.. and the second reason was insecurity. I wanted her to love me, I didn’t want to rock the boat, I was scared of losing her.. so eventually I did. I believed that in order for me to be worthy of her, of her love, I had to go along and give her what she said she wanted, what I was taught she wanted.

Is this what Rollo and everyone else is talking about? Because I think I finally get it. Up to now I have faked my Game, to some extent. I just knew better than to do certain things or did things I knew would make me attractive, etc. to women. But seeing this now, not only am I realizing there is nothing to be bitter about – I was always happier working on myself and my interests and actually resentful of having to stop them – but that I am actually happier doing this thing women want of us we call “performing”.

In a way, you are performing, as Rollo says, either way. If you stop and think you can rest, in many ways you are doing so because you have been conditioned to believe, as I was, that you should. That real love meant you could and should.
Anyway, maybe this is simply me and my personal experience of it, but it makes sense to me.. and I think this has revealed to me something monumental, personally. Maybe other guys have a different experience of it, but this is how I have seen it played out in my life.

I feel better.

The key to living in a red pill context is to unlearn your blue pill expectations and dreams of finding  contentment in them, and replace them with expectations and aspirations based on realistic understandings of red pill truths.

Learn this now, you will never achieve contentment or emotional fulfillment in a blue pill context with red pill awareness.

Killing your inner Beta is a difficult task and part of that is discarding an old, comfortable, blue pill paradigm. For many newly unplugged, red pill aware, men the temptation is to think they can use this new understanding to achieve the goal-states of their preconditioned blue pill ideals. What they don’t understand is that, not only are these blue pill goal-states flawed, but they are also based on a flawed understanding of how to attain them.

Red pill awareness demands a red pill context for fulfillment. Oracle Z wrote a fantastic article on Return of Kings this week called Why you shouldn’t seek emotional fulfillment through women. It’s well worth the read, but what Oracle Z outlines here is a fulfillment based on feminine-primary, blue pill conditions for that contentment. Even when men achieve these blue pill goal-states, the ones they’re conditioned to believe they should want for themselves, they find themselves discontent with those states and trapped by the liabilities of them.

Just as Hobbes illustrated, the periods when he was not striving to achieve or maintain those blue pill goal-states were the times he was most fulfilled with his life, talents and ambitions.

As if this weren’t enough to convince a man he needs to re-imagine himself in a red pill-primary context, when women are presented with ‘the perfect guy‘ in a blue pill context they gradually (sometimes immediately) come to despise him. As proven by their actions, even women don’t want that blue pill perfected goal-state because it stagnates the otherwise exciting, self-important men they are aroused by, and attracted to in a red pill context.

I’ve stated this in prior posts, but it bears repeating,

“Women should only ever be a complement to a man’s life, never the focus of it.”

Living in a blue pill context, and hoping you can achieve fulfillment in its fundamentally flawed goal-states, conditions men to make women the focus of their lives. Throw that hope away and understand that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.

Game Changers

game-changer

Whenever I consult teenage guys or young adult men I’m always reminded about how my ‘Game’ has changed over the course of my lifetime. The 17 year old Rollo Tomassi would be be appalled at the mindset of the 46 year old Rollo Tomassi.

Granted, much of that shock would probably be attributed to the lack of experience my younger self had with regards to female nature, human nature and, if I’m honest, I suffered from the same naiveté most young men do when it comes to judging people’s character. In fact, at the time, my belief was that I shouldn’t ever judge anyone’s character, nor did I, nor should anyone really, have the right to.

Part of that assumption was from an undeveloped religious learning, but more so it was due to a youthful idealism I held – I’d been conditioned to believe not only that you “can’t judge a book by its cover”, but also that you shouldn’t do so, and ought to be ashamed for considering it.

I’m flattered that people might think I’m some phenomenal interpreter of psychology, the nature of women, intergender relations and a model upon which men should aspire to in order to get laid and still have a great (now 18 year) marriage. It has not always been so.

If I have any credibility now it’s not due to my getting everything miraculously right, but because I had everything so horribly wrong more often than not.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in my time studying psychology and personality studies is that personality is alway in flux. Who you are today is not who you will be in another few years. Hopefully that’s for the better after learning something and applying it towards your own personal progress, but it could equally be a traumatic experience that changes you for the worse.

For better or worse, personality shifts – sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly – and while you may retain aspects of your personality, mannerisms, talents, past experiences and beliefs into the next iteration of yourself in a new phase of your life, rest assured, you will not be who you are now at any other time.

Game Changes

I’m sorry if this sounds all fortune cookie to you at the moment, but it’s a necessary preface to understanding how Game changes for men as their life situations and circumstances change during different phases of their lives and the shifts in their own personalities and learned perceptions change as they age.

It’s an easy step for me to assume that, were I to find myself single tomorrow, I wouldn’t approach Game in any degree as I would were I the 26 year old version of myself. Indeed, the primary reason I’ve involved myself in expanding the Preventative Medicine series into the next volume of The Rational Male is to help men at different phases of their own development understand what to expect from women (and themselves) during these periods of their life.

About two weeks ago I broached the subject of how Game should be a universal knowledge-tool for the everyman. My intent in Game and Circumstance was to shine some light on how Game and red pill awareness is (should be) a benefit for men regardless of their circumstance.

As I expected, the comparisons of Looks vs. Game was the inevitable discussion in the comment thread, because the presumption is that a man’s most evident condition is how he looks and how women are or are not aroused / attracted to their perception of him. I’ve written more about this Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks arousal dynamic than I care to review at the moment, but suffice it to say I do place a high importance on a man’s physical bearing.

However, my intent wasn’t to engage in a debate over the importance of looks, but rather that Game and red pill awareness is applicable for men of every social or personal condition – even the short, pudgy guy who empties the trash in your office. He may not have the potential to enjoy sex with a swimsuit model, but the tenets of Game can help him improve his life within his own circumstances.

Game Beyond PUA

When I was writing The Rational Male I specifically wrote and published a post on the Evolution of Game to be included in the book in order to demystify an impression of Game which I still think people (particularly the blue pill uninitiated), sometimes intentionally, misconstrue as some magical panacea to their ‘girl problems’. My definition was thus:

For the unfamiliar, just the word ‘Game’ seems to infer deception or manipulation. You’re not being real if you’re playing a Game, so from the outset we’re starting off from a disadvantage of perception. This is further compounded when attempting to explain Game concepts to a guy who’s only ever been conditioned to ‘just be himself‘ with women and how women allegedly hate guys “who play games” with them. As bad as that sounds, it’s really in the explanation of how Game is more than the common perception that prompts the discussion for the new reader to have it explained for them.

At its root level Game is a series of behavioral modifications to life skills based on psychological and sociological principles to facilitate intersexual relations between genders.

Game has more applications than just in the realm of intergender relations, but this is my best estimation of Game for the uninitiated. Game is the practical application of a new knowledge and increasingly broader awareness of intergender relations – often referred to, for convenience, as Red Pill awareness, by myself and others in the broader manosphere. Game begins with red pill awareness and using that awareness to develop Game.

The body of infield evidence collected by 15 years of PUA is far more reliable and valid than anything social science has produced on seduction – Nick Krauser

As I’ve written in the past, everyone has Game. Every guy you know right now has some idea, methodology or system of belief by which he thinks he can best put himself into a position of relating to, and becoming intimate with, a woman.

From even the most rank Beta plug-in to the 14 year old high school freshmen boy has some notion about what he, and by extension all men, should do in order to become intimate with a girl. I described this a bit in Beta Game where I outlined the Beta plan of identifying with women’s “needs” and adopting a feminine-primary mental point of origin in order to become more like the target(s) of his affection.

What ‘formalzed’ Game comes down to is what genuinely works for the betterment of his life. Men don’t seek out the manosphere because their Beta Game works so well for them.

 

I’ll admit, this was my own Game when I was in my late teens. Like most properly conditioned young men,I subscribed to the idea that men needed to be more empathetic and sensitive to women’s experience (rather than putting priority on his own) as the most deductive means to getting a girlfriend who’d appreciate my uniqueness for being so ‘in tune’ with the feminine.

If you’d have asked me at the time (the mid 80’s), my belief was that the best way to ‘get the girl’ was to take women at their word, use their “advice“, be their friend, make her comfortable, sacrifice your own (chauvinist) self-importance and support her importance, and mold your incorrect male self into a more perfect feminine ideal. The idea was that the lesser you made yourself, the more you made of her, and the more likely she was to reciprocate intimacy in appreciation.

That was my Game up until I learned through trial and painful error that women loath a man who needs to be instructed on how to actually be more attractive to women. I didn’t understand that by my subscribing to this spoon-fed feminization Game and overtly advocating for it I was only advertising to the very girls I wanted that I Just Didn’t Get It.

This was simply the first stage of Game changing for me, and I’m fairly certain that you’d read a similar story from most of the manosphere’s heaviest hitters. I’m peripherally familiar with the early histories of the likes of Roosh, Nick Krauser and even Mystery, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the Game they practice today would be foreign to their younger selves.

When I moved into my rock star 20’s I began practicing a new form of Game, one based on social proof and demonstrating higher value (DHV).

Of course I had no idea I was practicing any Game at the time. I had reinvented myself and my identity shifted into that of a guy who was Spinning Plates, being more self-concerned and enjoying the benefits of that social proof and DHV; but if you’d asked me what I’d done to effect that change, or how my Game was affected by it, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer then – Game was just instinctual for me.

Now in my married years, as a husband and the father of a teenage daughter, and my professional life in the liquor and casino world where I interact with beautiful women on a weekly basis, I still employ Game when I don’t realize I am.

However, that Game is the compounded, internalized result of what I’ve learned and used since the days I believed in the “be nice for girls to like you” teenage Game. Amused Mastery, Command Presence and a few other principles became much easier to employ as a mature man, but also a new grasp of how women’s lives have a more or less predictable pattern to them.

Thanks to my time studying behavioral psychology I understand the methods women use to prompt and provoke men (shit tests). Thanks to my red pill awareness and simple understand of how women’s biology influences hypergamy I now understand why they do so – and more importantly, how to avoid the traps of falling into the worst aspects of women’s dualistic sexual strategy.

All of this influences my ‘Game’ in the now. As before, I don’t play a constant, conscious game of mental chess in my dealings with women (and even the men in my social and professional life), I just live it.

So, in closing, it’s important to consider that the concept of Game you might be struggling with now was probably some other man’s experience before you encountered it. What is Game for me at 46, will most likely not have the exact same utility for me at 56, but if I stay sharp and learn along the way I’ll develop a new Game for that phase of life.

In Roosh’s most recent book, he has a quote in it that struck me (I paraphrase): There are a lot of men who tell me they wish they knew back then what they know now, but in all likelihood that knowledge wouldn’t serve them as well as they believe it would. They’d simply make new mistakes (and hopefully learn from them) based on the things they never had any experience of in the now.

There is always additional knowledge a man can know even when he possess the highest level of knowledge.

 

 

Game and Circumstance

circumstance

“Don’t be mad E. It’s not our fault you were born without the sport fucking gene, come on.”

 

At the start of July, 2011 (a month before I began this blog in earnest) I took a backpacking trip through the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. This was due to my desire to unplug, go off the grid and get back into the real face-to-face world. It was only for 10 days but well worth burning 10 days of PTO for.

It was an educational experience meeting people, most of whom have very little online presence beyond using Twitter or FaceBook occasionally. I didn’t have cell service for most of the hike. The people I met along the way, and I’ll put this politely, were “salt of the earth” people. Some were other hikers, others were people who lived and worked in the few surrounding communities. It was good to reaffirm my ability to survive on my own and realize that there is a whole world of Men out there who live well, far beyond the influence of “men” who’ve never mowed their own lawns, much less lived by their own wit in the country. Guys who build muscle by working outdoors, not in a gym. I met beautiful women who worked in small diners you’ll never hear of. I fished rivers and streams, for dinner some nights, and I saw fireflies for the first time (I grew up in southern California, it’s a novelty).

At some point I think Men need to get back to their primal natures, they need to embrace it fearlessly and without shame. We’re far too insulated by the Buffers of technology. Even the more belligerent rednecks I encountered still preferred to text their girlfriends and came off as pussified for doing so.

I guess what I’ve come to realize is that we tend to view what we ‘know’ about men and women from the experiences we have reported to us from all over the world on blogs, forums, the manosphere  – and I still endorse the purpose of it’s unwritten mission – however, this trip reaffirmed for me that there is no substitute for real interaction. Game will work equally well with the cute blonde serving coffee in a rural diner as it would with the club girl in NYC. Both are equally given to the same feminine fundamentals we’ve untangled about women in the ‘sphere for over a decade, but the one we tend to use as a female archetype is the typical club girl for our examples. Daisy Duke is still subject to hypergamy, she just applies it differently.

I’m not turning into Roosh, but I’m considering burning a couple months doing the entire Appalachian trail all the way to Maine.

In my day to day life I deal with a lot of rich men. Every patron or boss, every general manager I’ve dealt with for the past 15 years has been a millionaire. The primary owner of one of my liquor brand is that many times over. None of the “business friends” I shoot golf with have weeded their own lawns or installed a radiator in 20+ years. When I was on the trail I thought about how ridiculous it would be to see a guy like that or some PUA guru having to dig his own toilet and take a dump in the woods, or hoist his pack in a tree so the damn bears don’t eat the only food he’s got for the next 3 days. These guys are insulated.

I want to run, and fight, and fuck, as well as I deal with the ‘civilized’ things I do. Imagine a guy like Mystery wringing out the sweat and filth of his clothes in a stream somewhere. Now, that’s some funny shit.

Game and Circumstance

I start off with this today because this experience wasn’t just humbling, but it also taught me that what I experience day to day isn’t at all what a majority of men experience. My past, my N count, my 18 year marriage, and what I do professionally sets me apart in a way that I sometimes don’t appreciate or take into consideration when I’m advising men.

It’s also very humbling and affirming when I receive emails or comments from men living in countries I’ve only seen in pictures who nevertheless share a common male experience that reinforces many of the things I write about – but even within that commonality, I have to remember, my circumstance is not theirs.

I walk through a casino almost every day now and I see the same people. Not the fun glamour you see in commercials or ads about Las Vegas (that’s usually night promos), but the real people, the overweight, housekeeping and table crew, the geriatric spending their savings and social security on a hope they’ll win something significant, the desperate and the people just looking for distraction.

I walk by some of these men and think “how is Game going to help a guy like that?” While I do believe that Game is universally beneficial on many levels (primarily between the sexes, but not exclusively) there’s a point where that improvement is going to be limited by a guy’s circumstance, where he is in life and what he’s made of it so far. It’s a manosphere cliché now, but most men aren’t ready for the red pill. The red pill awareness is simply too much for them to accept within the context of their circumstances.

That circumstance isn’t based on age or a particular demographic, but Game is only going to be as liberating for a man in as far as he’s willing to accept it in terms of his own circumstance.

Not Just Sex

Game gets a lot of misconstrued criticism in that ignorant critics presume Game only ever equals PUA and that “those guys are only interested in fucking as many low self-esteem sluts as humanly possible.” It’s much more difficult for them to confront that Game is far more than this, and applicable within relationships, in the workplace (with women and men) and even in their family dealings.

That’s kind of a scary prospect for men comfortable in living within their own contexts and circumstance. Sport fucking isn’t what most men think it is because they’ve never experienced anything beyond serial monogamy, nor is it what most (80%+ Beta) men even have the capacity to actualize for themselves. But, as Game has evolved, it isn’t just about Spinning Plates, or sport fucking, it’s more encompassing than this.

Game is, or should be, for the everyman.

“He only wants me for sex” or “I need to be sure he’s interested in me and not just sex” are the admonishments of women who really have no introspective interest in how a majority of men really approach becoming intimate with women. Oh it makes for a good rationale when women finally “want to get things right” with a provider, but even the excuse belies a lack of how most men organize their lives to accommodate women’s schedules of mating.

Mostly to their detriment, the vast majority of men follow a deductive,but anti-seductive, Beta Game plan of comfort, identification, familiarity and patience with women in the hopes that what they hear women tell them is the way to their intimacy will eventually pan out for them. Their Beta Game plan is in fact to prove they “aren’t just in it for the sex” in order to get to a point of having sex with a particular woman.

I always find it ironic when men tell me that their deductive plan for getting after it with a woman is to prove he’s not actually trying to get after it with her. However, this is what most men’s Game amounts to; deductively attempting to move into a long term monogamy based on what women, saturated in a presumption of gender equalism, tell him he ought to expect from himself in order to align himself with her intimate interest.

I could use the term “appeasement”, but that’s not what most men want to call it. Most men call it being a better man (for her), better than “other guys” who wont align themselves accordingly. It becomes their point of pride in fact.

Male Long Term Security

Most men, average men – and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense – want a form of security.

Most men are designed, perhaps bred, to be necessitous. To be sure , men need to be constant performers, constant qualifiers, in order to mitigate hypergamy. In the past, and to an extent now, this performance simply became a part of who he was as a man and didn’t require a constant effort, but increasingly, as male feminization has spread, men have been made to be necessitous of security.

I would say that desire for long term security differs significantly from women’s Beta Bucks side of hypergamy need since the drive to secure provisioning is an innate part of women’s firmware. The security average men need is rooted in a need for certainty in his ability to meet with a woman’s performance standards – and ultimately avoid feminine rejection.

In today’s feminine-centric social order, men are ceaselessly bombarded with masculine ridicule, ceaselessly reminded of their inadequacies, and endlessly conditioned to question and doubt any notion of how masculinity should be defined – in fact ridicule is the first response for any man attempting to objectively define it.

It’s this doubt, this constant consideration of his own adequacy to meet the shifting nature of women’s hypergamic drive, from which stems this need for security. The average man needs the certainty of knowing that he meets and exceeds a woman’s prerequisites in a social circumstance that constantly tells him he never will – and his just asking himself the question if he ever will makes him that much less of a man.

The average man will look for, or create his own rationales to salve this necessitousness. He’ll create his own ego in the image of what he thinks he embodies best as being “Alpha” or he’ll adopt the easy doctrines of equalism which tell him women and men are fundamentally the same rational actors and convince himself he’s not subject to the capricious whims of feminine hypergamy because men and women are more ‘evolved’ than that– but that nagging doubt will manifest when the right circumstances and right opportunities present themselves.

Changing Your Programming

I mention in the book that I am not a motivational speaker, I’m not anyone’s savior and I would rather men be the self-sustaining solutions to becoming the men they want and need to be – not Rollo Tomassi’s success stories, but their own success stories.

That said, let me add that I would not be writing what I do if I thought that biological determinism, circumstance and social conditioning were insurmountable factors in any Man’s life. Men can accomplish great things through acts of will, they can be masters of their circumstances and most importantly masters of themselves.

With a healthy understanding, respect and awareness of what influences his own condition, a Man can overcome and thrive within the context of them – but he must first be aware of, and accepting of, the conditions under which he operates and maneuvers.

You may not be able to control the actions of others, you may not be able to account for women’s hypergamy, but you can be prepared for them, you can protect yourself from the consequences of them and you can be ready to make educated decisions of your own based upon that knowledge.

You can unplug.

You can change your programming, and you can live a better life no matter your demographic, age, past regrets or present circumstances.

Balancing Act

balancing-life

Donal Graeme had some very relevant ‘musings’ about last week’s post that summed things up and provides me with a great prelude into this week’s post. I hadn’t intended these last couple of posts (and now this one) to become another series (again). I suppose they are now, but I don’t think I’ve quite hit this from all angles just yet. In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that these last three posts were inspired by the first section of the Preventive Medicine book I’m presently working on so it helps organize my thoughts.

From Donal Graeme’s Removing the Mask:

Many, if not most, men would not be content to marry a woman whom they realize is choosing to marry them solely as a meal ticket, and effectively a sperm donor as well. It should surprise no one that men don’t like to be used in that way, and will balk at it if they realize that is what is happening. Hence the importance of hiding what is going on from them.

On the other hand, this repulsion at being used is mitigated/countered by a sense of desperation in many men in the West. Owing to the nature of the SMP, they have limited options when it comes to female companionship. Naturally, this makes them desperate, and they are willing to take on women they wouldn’t otherwise if it gets them at least some measure of opportunity with them.

What seems to be happening is that many women are now certain that male desperation in the future will be greater than any sense of male self-respect, and so they can do whatever they want and not have to hide it. Part of me wonders if women see the ability to be open about their intentions/strategy as a status symbol- a woman who can act that way is a woman of value, and therefore a woman to be envied. The problem with this strategy, though, is that it relies on male desperation not having any limits. I suspect this to be a grave mistake. This is because the average quality of women in the West has been dropping fast, perhaps even faster than male desperation has been rising. If that is the case, we will soon reach a point where most men will simply not accept the (Western) women who are available, no matter how desperate they might have become.

All of this plays into part of this subject- the looming fight between women. Women at the margins of “value” will start to feel the pinch first. The “where have all the good men gone?” articles out there seem to indicate that this has already begun. It will only increase in tempo over time as more and more women drop below the acceptable rate for most men. Combine this with many men being burned or realizing what a danger most Western women are, and you get a huge disparity in outcome between the female “haves” and “have-nots”.

This may seem optimistic coming from me, but I think it will be ‘educated’ men who are the 3rd rail in this equation.

Men at the top end of the SMV curve will always be the commodity over which women will feel entitled to. Feminine hypergamy does not seek its own level, it looks for a better-than-market optimization. Thus the ideal ‘balance’ is one where there is a greater than 1-2 SMV degree difference between that of a man and the women he spins as plates or considers to become intimate with in the long term.

The Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies
For one sex’s sexual strategy to become realized, the other sex’s strategy must be compromised or abandoned entirely.

One of the greatest misdirections of gender understanding over the past 60 years has been the idea that both men and women should share the same sexual strategy. A naive equalitarian ideology dictates the need for both genders to have equally similar, cooperative gender life goals, and equally similar methods to realize them. But as with most feminine-primary social engineering, Mother Nature and men and women’s biological imperatives are always at odds with this.

Generally this assimilation of a commonized sexual strategy is ingrained early on in men’s feminization conditioning. I use the term ‘assimilation’ because men are taught and conditioned to presume that the feminine sexual strategy (however most women subjectively choose to define it) is universally the correct strategy – and any deviation from what ultimately serves feminine hypergamy is met with ridicule at best, accusations of misogyny and ostracization at worst.

The goal of feminism is to remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality.

Roissy dropped this maxim years ago, but in its simplicity it defines the Cardinal Rule of Sexual Strategies as they apply to a post-sexual revolution, feminine-primary society. Remove all constraints on hypergamy, maximally forcing men to compromise or abandon the male sexual strategy.

As I outlined in the last post, feminine hypergamy essentially revolves around optimizing (and maximally protracting) women’s unilateral sexual selection from Good Genes men and Good Dad’s men. Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks.

From a biological perspective men’s sexual imperative is one of unlimited access to unlimited sexual availability. This isn’t to discount the very strong impulse in men to seek assurances of paternity in the children they ultimately sire, however, prior to his parental investment, the male impetus is to seek unlimited access to unlimited sexuality.

When we consider a male sexual imperative in the biological respect, and the strategies men use to effect it, it becomes easier to understand the social conventions and engineering the Feminine Imperative uses to control and maximally restrict men as sexual selectors.

Widespread ubiquitous pornography and then the social pathologizing of the male sexual response (while empowering and encouraging the female sexual response) are two very easy observations of this control. However, when we consider paternity laws, legal bans on genetic paternity testing, outlawing testosterone while making female hormones readily available and many other legal and social trends that restrict the male control not just of women’s hypergamous priority, but any degree of a man’s shadow of his own sexual strategy’s control, Roissy’s maxim becomes all the more clear.

Is Game Adversarial?

Almost three years ago I considered this question in a post. My critic at the time posed this to me:

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

It took time for me to come into an understanding of the real nature of this distortion concern until May’s tragic events and the deliberate misdirections that followed it in the media and the blogosphere proper.

Game is adversarial because it has to be. I’ve gone on record stating that Game is the logical response to the changes feminism has wrought in society and gender relations over the course of the last 60 or so years, but it’s really more than that.

Game is a threat to feminine-primacy because it returns a degree of control of sexual strategy prioritization back into the hands of men. Game challenges that maximal restriction of male sexuality and leverages (however marginally) some of women’s hypergamous choice to his own purpose.

The Feminine Imperative hates Game because it’s an effective tool against its control – so anyone steeped in the conditioning of the imperative will naturally perceive that challenge as being adversarial. You’ll notice this (female) critic’s first concern was to presume men would use Game and a red pill awareness for ‘nefarious’ ends. This is a prime illustration of that terror of losing hypergamous control.

Tricks and Traps

As I mentioned at the beginning, hypergamy does not seek it’s own level. An ever pragmatic evolution drives hypergamy to seek a better-than-equal pairing. This is the evolutionary jackpot: to combine and send one’s genes into future generations with a (at least perceptually) better than equitable genetic match – and ensure one’s progeny with a better than SMV equitable provisioning.

For all of the handwringing about assortive mating recently, evolution’s capacity to adapt stagnates and stunts under conditions of homogeny. It may occur under less than ideal circumstance from a moral perspective, but assortive mating is regularly thwarted by the (usually hypergamous) drive to mate with a better than equitable sexual market value than the lesser partner.

The problem with the assortive mating equation is that hypergamy has two sides and two (often conflicting) aspects to optimizing it – Good Genes / Good Dad (Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks). Assortive mating is not the same order as assortive pairing.

Nature has selected-for women with an instinctual capacity to satisfy and optimize the visceral needs of short-term breeding and optimizing on the genetic aspects of hypergamy. However the better-than-SMV assortive pairing aspect  relies on men adhering to and behaving within defined roles in order to optimize it.

The Feminine Imperative needs honest provider males to behave predictably in order for women to select a better than equitable provider.

The Feminine Imperative demands assurances of both better than equitable breeding and better than equitable provisioning – and it’s got a very brief window of sexual peak SMV competitiveness in which to assure them.

The imperative needs men to fulfill these roles according to calculated and defined sexual stations of each man. So any duplicity or challenge on the part of men to this defined order is a threat to the assurances that women need to optimize hypergamy. Hypergamy’s optimal window of peak SMV for women can’t afford to be tricked into presuming men are anything less or more than their feminine sexual strategies define those men’s roles as.

Hypergamy can’t afford tricks, the ‘tricks’ that Game’s breaking of their sexual strategy’s code represents to women expecting to have their sexual strategy remain unilaterally dominant. As women’s comfort level has increased with the confidence that their strategy will contain that of men’s, they are that much more offended when their strategy is figured out and read back to them by red pill aware men.

It’s an uncomfortable reminder that they’ve traded their believed capacity to intuitively filter for themselves the men who best fill their hypergamous roles; traded that is for the comfort of having men socially controlled to expect to fulfill those roles as a default.

This outrage isn’t just limited to women’s hypergamous ‘exploratory’ years in her SMV peak. Whenever you read an article or hear some 33 year old woman lament the lack of marriageable men of ‘equal’ pairing to themselves (intellectually, professionally or otherwise) know that every cry of ‘Man Up’ is really a frustrated cry over men not playing by the conditioning the Feminine Imperative assured them men would play by, before or once they got to the point of losing the capacity to attract those men.

That’s the trap.