Inter-gender Communication

Plate Theory V: Lady’s Game

I had a good amount of response on last Friday’s Plate Theory post asking for a more complete idea of women being natural Plate Theorists, so I thought I’d elaborate on this.

Female Plate Theory

For as often as I’ve mentioned women being natural plate theorists, I don’t think I’ve ever gone into detail about it. I think it’s pretty well established that I completely disagree with idea that women will only fuck one guy at a time. I could outline several women I know from experience in this, but really, observing behavior will bear this out fairly predictably. I will however agree that they are predisposed to, and are socially encouraged to, seek monogamy, but as in all things female the talk rarely matches the behavior. Sexuality is a woman’s first, best agency and even the homeliest woman know this – even when they’re just complaining about other women using it.

The principle that a woman’s first priority is to seek out security is true, and we’d be wise to bear this in mind when evaluating motives for behavior, but their methodology is what’s in question here. There is an understandable confusion for guys in this respect. On one hand women present a constant facade that the fear of being perceived as a slut (i.e. concurrently fucking more than one guy at a time) is primary to their self-respect and respectability. However, this has to be tempered with the desire to experience a variety of men in order to ensure the security/provisioning from the best among them. So in order to facilitate this women must practice a kind of calculated hypocrisy that is socially reinforced by the gender as a whole as well as some men (usually those so optionless as to excuse the behavior in order to get to her sexuality, or guys so conditioned that they overlook it as normal).

It is socially acceptable for a woman to blatantly spin plates.

Does this sound outrageous? While a woman who makes her sexual practices a bit too overt runs the risk of being perceived as a slut (which is dubious in this age as it is), most relatively attractive women covertly have a constant bullpen of starters ready to go to bat at any one time – these are also known as ‘Orbiters’. These are the attention providers, the “maybe” guys. And it makes little difference in terms of available options which she chooses at any given time, the very fact that she has five or six of them pursuing her is enough to boost her sense of self-worth, her social status within her same-gender peers, and give her the confidence to drop any one of her plates at a moments notice for any reason knowing that 2 or 3 more guys (or 20 more on facebook) stand ready to take his place, no questions asked and prepared rationalizations at the ready.

In addition, this practice is socially reinforced by women doing the same thing and the social conventions constructed to excuse the behavior. It’s the unspoken rule of a woman’s prerogative; she can always change her mind. This is a powerful tool for women –  in any situation, if a woman doesn’t choose to be sexual it is necessarily forced (or obligated), even when it’s after the fact. Either the “Jerk” forced her, physically or emotionally, or she had thought she wanted to, but later reconsidered – it makes little difference. In all social situations the default is to side with the feminine, the “weaker sex” – women, from sympathy or empathy, and men, from a desire to eventually become intimate with them. Dalrock expertly describes this convention in his “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” post.

In either instance, the feminine prerogative is socially reinforced. That’s important to understand because even by my focusing on it here as a male, my motives for doing so become suspect. That’s how embedded this dynamic is – to question it risks ostracization. However, I also understand that for the greater part of women, this plate spinning dynamic isn’t a conscious effort on their part. In fact I’d suggest that it’s so thoroughly recognized that women default to it autonomously. Also, this is a good example of the first principle of power – when you have power, always feign powerlessness.

Free Reign

So, with a firm understanding that their behaviors will for the most part be excused, they are free to practice the feminine form of plate theory unhindered by social reprisal. The feminine plate spinning involves much more than sex though. Remember that attention is the coin of the realm in female society. The capacity to command attention determines self-esteem, peer status, sexual selectivity, and a host of other factors in a woman’s life, so spinning plates becomes more than just a “which guy am I gonna bang tonight” prospect. This dynamic and these factors are what makes women natural plate spinners. Even when a woman has no intention of ever becoming sexual with a “maybe” guy, his attention still has some value to her. It appeals to the long term prospective for security that’s a continuous subroutine running in her hindbrain. This is the rudimentary psychology behind hypergamy.

Now, combine all of this with women’s native language – covert communication – and it’s natural for a man to assume that a woman will only ever become sexual with one guy at a time. This serves the latent purpose of keeping him in a kind of stasis. If he assumes women will only be sexual under the precondition of commitment she is free to spin plates (essentially weighing options) as she pleases and sample at will what she sees as in her hypergamic best interest at the time. If the carrot looks good enough the guy will patiently pull the cart until such time as another, better carrot comes along. Either way he’s in that stasis. If a guy were to see her social and psychological machinations for what they are, he’d never pull the cart – so it serves women best that men think commitment should always be required for intimacy, even in the face of her behavior directly contradicting this.

Plate Wars

Lastly, this social dynamic serves as a very effective weapon for women against each other. As I stated in the last Plate Theory post, competition anxiety between women is something men can exploit for their own plate spinning, but the reason it is useful is because women so readily use it against each other. For a woman to say another is a “slut” translates into an overt betrayal of this unspoken social contrivance. She essentially is saying, “the rules are that women require commitment for sex, but here’s one who’ll never be worthy of any guy’s commitment because she wont play by the rules you suckers think she will.”

She is tacitly disqualified for a man’s commitment and is, at least in the accusing woman’s mind, a reduced threat in this feminine competition. She becomes exposed in the same game they’re all playing and in being so loses attention and therefore status and personal esteem. It seems petty to guys, but it’s really intra-gender warfare. Think of how many times an exceptionally attractive woman, that is completely anonymous to a group of women you happen to be with, berate her based on appearance alone. “She’s must be a tramp if she dressed like that.” These are the same women who’ll berate a man for basing his estimation of a woman on her outer appearance. This is feminine competition anxiety. Ask a woman to name the most attractive female actress they can think of. Odds are it will be a woman (who as a guy you’d never think of) who presents the least threat of this anxiety.

Gentlemen, as I’m fond of saying, women will fuck. They may not fuck you, they may not fuck me, but they will fuck someone. The girl who bangs the hot guy at the foam party in Cancun on Spring Break within 5 minutes of meeting him is the same girl who want’s you to believe that they’ll only fuck one guy at a time and then after commitment. All women are sexual, you just need to be the right guy at the right time for the job.

Point, Counterpoint

For women it’s the story of Me.

As I’ve mentioned in past essays, the communicative methods characteristic of each gender primarily stem from differences in both brain function and acculturation. Women tend to rely on emotive and experiential instincts to develop an opinion or belief; men tend to rely on deductive reasoning from generalized facts to specific premises to come to an opinion.

This then is reflected in either gender’s preferred method of communication – women in the nuanced and covert, men in the blunt and overt. Using this as a premise, I’m of the opinion that the vast majority of failings to come to what should be an easy, logical consensus among both genders is frustrated by each gender’s interpretation of a problem or a social issue.

From a male perspective there is an assumption that a well reasoned, well cited establishment of point will be understood and respected as fact for a general purpose of resolving a debate. Statistics, analysis, correlation of fact and connecting related ideas and information should all serve to make a cogent argument. This isn’t to say that men wont use personal experience to illustrate a point, but the purpose in doing so is rooted in making his example an easy to understand version of his reasoned perspective. For the greater part, men’s reasonings are derived from extrinsic sources, while using intrinsic sources to embellish or illustrate a specific premise.

Women on the other hand almost exclusively rely upon personal experience and anecdotal evidence to form a premise; only using extrinsic information to support their personal interpretations when the source agrees with that premise. The innate solipsism of women promotes a self-centric primary position as the beginning of forming a premise and then progresses to extrinsic sources for ancillary support.

Case in point: Careers and Marriage. This linked article is from a 2006 opinion piece published by Forbes Magazine. Bear in mind that this is roughly six years ago; well before the current ‘Man Up’ frenzy that the Hymowitz and Bollick’s articles inspired. As you read, notice the argumentative positions each author begins with. Michael Noer’s piece begins with a concise statement of premise and then followed by reasoned extrinsic data:

While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children. And if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women–even those with a “feminist” outlook–are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

Elizabeth Corcoran begins her counter opinion from her own personal perspective:

OK, call me a cougar. I’ve been working since the day I graduated from college 20-odd years ago. I have two grade-school-aged children. Work definitely takes up more than 35 hours a week for me. Thankfully, I do seem to make more than $30,000. All of which, according to Michael, should make me a wretched wife.

In spite of those dangerous statistics, my husband and I are about to celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary. You’ll see us snuggling at a mountain-winery concert this month, enjoying the occasion. I don’t think I’m all that unusual–so it seemed like a good time to test Michael’s grim assertions.

Peppy, sassy, and containing all the elements of indignation that women crave to hold their interest while wrapped in a personalization that puts women (her deliberate target readership), into an associative role. Essentially she’s inviting women to live vicariously through her exceptional experience to prove a counterpoint.

Many factors contribute to a stable marriage, including the marital status of your spouse’s parents (folks with divorced parents are significantly more likely to get divorced themselves), age at first marriage, race, religious beliefs and socio-economic status. And, of course, many working women are indeed happily and fruitfully married–it’s just that they are less likely to be so than nonworking women. And that, statistically speaking, is the rub

Here Michael reasons from statistical evidence and even makes a slight point of contrition to allow for exception to those statistics. Elizabeth then opts to redirect the debate:

The experts cited in his story think that professional women are more likely to get divorced, to cheat and to be grumpy about either having kids or not having them. But rather than rush to blame the woman, let’s not overlook the other key variable: What is the guy doing?

Note to guys: Start by going to the gym. Then try some new music. Or a book. Or a movie. Keep connected to the rest of the world. You’ll win–and so will your marriage.

It’s easy to see this as the shaming tactic it is, but it’s also an attempt to reframe the debate by focusing on what women always return to as preeminent in any debate – satisfying the feminine imperative. If Michael’s pont is in fact valid then the fault lies with men, not women. And how does a woman establish this premise? By casting herself and feminine primacy as the operative goal.

Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker argued that when the labor specialization in a marriage decreases–if, for example, both spouses have careers–the overall value of the marriage is lower for both partners because less of the total needed work is getting done, making life harder for both partners and divorce more likely. And, indeed, empirical studies have concluded just that.

Again, Michael provides expert witness to fortify his premise. Elizabeth continues with the story of Me:

For us, the list starts with taxes, vacation planning and investment management. My husband likes that stuff, and it leaves me yawning. Bless him for doing it. Give me the wireless Internet system, the garden or just about any routine home repairs, and I’m suddenly the savant. Tear us apart, and we’d both be pitiful idiots trying to learn unfamiliar routines.

Michael is right that longer work hours force two-career couples to try harder to clear out blocks of family time. When we do, though, we get to enjoy a lot more. We understand each other’s career jokes and frustrations. We’re better sounding boards on what to do next. And at dinner parties, we actually like to be seated at the same table.

Feel free to pick through the entire article, but you get the illustration here. Such as it is, I haven’t drawn attention to this to put women’s argumentative approach or opinion formation into a bad light. Rather I’ve done so to give Men a better perspective of what to expect when a difference of opinion arises. There is in fact some merit to calculating personal feelings and experiences into both sides of a debate. A feminine approach may help to buffer a man’s more cold understanding of fact, while a masculine rationalism serves to buffer women’s emotionalist perspective.

The problem with appreciating both of these approaches is that in the present feminine-centric environment we find ourselves in, feminine primacy takes precedent. A woman’s feelings and interpretations are the de facto correct ones, and statistical analysis or a more rational approach is an impediment to this. You’ll see this played out in any forum or blog comment thread in which there is disagreement between genders. For Men their position comes about by objective consensus and aggregate data; for women it’s the story of Me.

The Horse’s Mouth

Women would rather be objectified than idealized.

One of the best litmus tests for how unplugged a guy truly is is how he reacts to the words of his idealized woman. I briefly covered this idea in the Self-Righteous AFC:

You see, when an AFC clings to the mental schemas that make up an AFC mindset it requires a constant need for affirmation and reinforcement, particularly in light of their glaring lack of verifiable success with women while clinging to, and behaving in accordance with the mindset. AFCs are crabs in a barrel – once one get to the top to climb out another drags him back in. The AFC needs other AFCs to affirm his blatantly obvious lack of success. He needs other AFCs to tell him, “don’t worry just be yourself” or “she’s just not a quality woman because she can’t see how great a guy you are.”

So when an AFC finally does get a second date and then finally does get laid it becomes the ultimate validation for his mindset. “See, you just have to be a nice guy and the right ONE really does come along.” This is when the self-righteous phase begins and he can begin telling his Game / PUA friends that he’s “getting some” now without all the Positive Masculinity claptrap. In actuality he rationalizes away all of the conditions that lead up to him getting the girlfriend and the fundamental flaw that he’s settling for a woman “who’d fuck him”, but this doesn’t stop him from claiming a moral highground. His long wait is over and he’s finally hit paydirt.

This need for validation of a Beta Game mindset is very strong for guys – particularly when you consider a lifetime of being steeped fem-centrism’s conditioning. When you grow up in girl-world you want to believe the idealizations of women are actually attainable. This is what makes the ‘red pill’ so hard to swallow; men truly want the fantasy, the romanticism and love, in the context girl-world presents it to them for so long, to really exist for them. This is what makes believing women’s individualized words, rather than their globalized behaviors, so seductive for men – even for Men who’ve become self-aware in the feminine Matrix.

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

When a woman (or a man impersonating a woman) posts some self-description or personalized experience about how they conform more to this idealization than to the “silly caricatures of bitter misogynists” online, this triggers an internal conflict for men. Men want to believe that the exception to the rule could exist for them since it agrees with his initial social conditioning, but the learned, unplugged, conditioning he’s applying to see the forest for the trees, and factoring in women’s generalized, observable behaviors as a better method for determining intent, fights against this. Becoming Game-aware teaches Men that the medium is the message, but to varying degrees Men still want to believe that women are completely self-honest, rational agents, and cognizant of their internal motivations. Eventually applied behaviorism puts the truth to this deception, but it’s very hard to let go of that want for an easier answer.

In our ‘plugged in’ years, men rely on the same deductive pragmatism with women that we use to solve most other problems. Our problem solving natures predispose us to objectifying the elements of a problem to arrive at a solution. Even our neural wiring is designed to achieve this end, so it’s literally a ‘no-brainer’ to want reliable, rational data on which to base our plan to solve a problem – in this case getting laid and receiving intimate approval from a woman. Thus our next question is “what do women want?”

What Women Want

I can remember asking this very question uncounted times in my plugged-in teenage years. Hindsight being what it is, I can only laugh now when I read teenage guys still asking the same thing 4 generations later. It seems so intuitive and considerate of a woman’s sensibilities; guys think it presents the countenance that a man cares enough to create himself in her idealized image. Women and girls naturally love to answer this question because it gives them a default authority, while at the same time feeds their attention needs. It’s such a popular topic that even rom-com movies are based on the question and the zany misunderstandings that result from men’s ridiculous attempts to understand the oh-so unknowable, mysterious natures of women’s true desires. Silly, silly men.

The truth is much simpler. Women either lack the awareness and self-honesty to acknowledge what it is about men that women in general (not just individualized to themselves) want, or they deliberately misdirect and evade men’s efforts to make deductive sense of their motivations because, in truth, they want a guy who ‘gets it’ on his own without having to be told. In either case, whether due to ignorance or duplicity, the secret of the ugly, cruel truth of female hypergamy is to be protected and obfuscated as women’s first priority. So important is keeping this truth from men that the feminine imperative must socialize it into women’s collective psyches. One of the great threats that Game theory represents to feminine primacy is revealing the truth, and the atrocities that result from feminine hypergamy. What do women want? Maximized hypergamy with a man blissfully unaware of hypergamy. The perfect union of emotional investment, parental investment and provisional investment with her hypergamous nature.

However, men still want to believe that women earnestly want to communicate their intimate desires in an effort to make better men. We believe that women, the emotional, erratic, dramatic, mysterious and romantic creatures of story are also consistent, well-grounded pragmatists that rival men themselves and are only waiting for the man unique enough to listen to her. And the more her story agrees with our mental construct of what women should want, the more we want to believe she exists. If she’s convinced of the story this is all the validation most men ever need – he got it from the source, a woman who confirmed the fantasy.

Command Presence

A few years back I went to a popular martini bar for a mixer event that one of our agencies was throwing for my company. It is a very upscale bar, all the waitresses were easily HB 8s & 9s and the bartenders looked as if they got the job based on how close they resembled male models. If you know any about Central Florida and the sordid details about Tiger Woods’ affairs, this was one of his primary spots for a hook up. Whenever I’m in a professional / social outing such as this I tend to pay attention to social dynamics and take mental notes. I’m almost always in behavioral observation mode (which sometimes bugs me I’ll admit) and I apply these observations to what I know. I sometimes feel like Jane Goodall in Gorillas in the Mist when I’m at promo events. This night was one of those instances.

At the time I’d been studying what is called Command Presence. If you work in law enforcement, emergency services, or served in the military you’ll know this term. My brother was formerly in law enforcement and he explained it as taking control of, by appearing to have, authority in confrontational or high stress situations. When a cop stops you for a speeding ticket he is trained to instinctively adopt a Command Presence when approaching your car. This is what makes people think cops, generally seem egotistical or arrogant, but it’s this ‘presence’ that leads them to this. Google search ‘command presence’, there are hundreds of articles on it.

I decided this evening to experiment a bit with Command Presence. Rather than wear my usual club crawler attire I wore well tailored suit and tie with some very expensive dress shoes. I never wear a tie, even at work. I’ve always felt a good physique is the best form of peacocking and this met with a lot of success in my past, but a man in a well tailored suit projects a different presence and prompts different (though favorable) responses, not only from women, but men as well.

Command Presence is founded on the associations with an appearance of authority, so it helps when you actually do own that authority. I’m the art director for a major brand of vodka and liquor import company and this place had the full line of bottles I designed, as well as their proprietary vodka being my creation. I am the ‘authority’ in this regard and this is always an easy ‘in’ with club people. Within the first 5 minutes of being there I’d gotten multiple IOI and AIs from an exquisite brunette (HB 8.5 easy) after a deliberate push to use Command Presence and taking with her.

Next was the HB 9 waitress that led me up to our VIP section. Maybe 24 y.o. and absolutely stunning, she pulls me away from the bartender and kino-walks me to where our party was meeting. This isn’t a stripper, or a paid hostess, she fetches drinks. She initiates convo with me and I use my art director routine that worked with the bartender. All time I maintain an air of authority and take the fatherly role with her. She’s visibly impressed, more IOIs, and goes off to bring me a martini.

Later I’d met up with some web agency people and some coworkers from my office. We’re launching a new micro-website that I worked on with them. I worked with most of the creative team, but I hadn’t met the PR or research people. One of these was a fantastic blonde named Tawny. Maybe 25, an unbelievably hot HB 8.5, had a boyfriend, but not present. Our logistics girl was a squat, Puerto Rican lesbian and she whispers to me that she could get her before I could. I reminded her I was married and wouldn’t take her bait, but it was game on from that point. She already knew who I was so that angle was done. I got good eye contact from her and caught her looking twice before I introduced myself formally. I then went Dean Martin on her and added the Command Presence to my ‘knowing all about her’ attitude. She ate it up and it was at this point I had to dial it down because she was talking about sticking around after the party had broke up and I wasn’t about to consolidate anything.

One thing I think older single guys miss out on is exploiting the maturity and wisdom that younger women expect them to have. Think Rat Pack guys, Dean Martin, Sinatra, Hefner, these guys were PUAs well into their 60s (even when they were married). Sure they were celebrities, but modeling that attitude into your 40s can take you a long way with younger women.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) the Command Presence thing was working almost too well. At about the point I was trying to separate my attention from Tawny the waitress brings me a martini. This engagement made for one of the more fascinating observations of female communications I’ve seen. Tawny was sexy and in a busness casual outfit that certainly made her hot, but waitress (never got her name) is in tight black form fitting pants and a tight halter displaying a great rack and a perfectly flat stomach with navel piercing.

I’ve previously gone into about how women communicate on levels that men are rarely aware of and here I had the perfect opportunity to see this in actions. Facial gestures, applied kino, innuendo, subcommunication, you name it was all there. Tawny of course has the high ground because waitress is on duty and thus is in a service role, but wow.

I still have to pry myself out of the Tawny predicament and lead a bit about the boyfriend, to my surprise she says he’s not really her boyfriend anyway, “more like a friend.” Now I’m in trouble, but I hold the Presence and give her the principled opt out “it’s a Tuesday night and I probably shouldn’t even be drinking because it messes with my morning workout” Oops, shouldn’t have added the last part, but that was my non-Presence slipping in. I excused myself around 8:30pm, but not without her letting me know she hopes I’ll drop by their studio sometime soon. Pfeww,..

I posted this to encourage older guys to adopt a Command Presence as a means to interact, but it doesn’t have to be an act for you. The part of the story I ommitted is that while I got a lot of female attention this night, I also got solid in networking with some very influential men who picked up on this. They sought out my association. I could say it was an Alpha thing, but I think it’s about the application. I have legitimate confidence and I expressed it with my attitude, expression and appearance. Yes, I have legitimate authority in this instance, but I owned it in a way that was respected. Too many, tragically older, men are afraid to own their authority and/or confidence.

Amused Mastery & Command Pressence

As I began with, this experiment was from a few years back, and since then I’ve seen how Command Presence dovetails very well into Roissy’s principle of Amused Mastery. Amused Mastery is a good compliment to Command Presence. It tempers the ass-holish impulse that can result from taking Command Presence too far. It smooths down what can be taken for arrogance.

I think a lot of guys get hung up on the term “aloof”. The word conjures up the idea that a guy has to pretend to be looking down his nose at some girl he’s interested in in a lame effort to get her to qualify to him. When people read how a guy needs to perfect being “aloof” they tend to think “haughty” or feigned disinterest. Throw that term away right now, because you don’t want to be “aloof”. What you want is Amused Mastery.

Amused Mastery puts you into a position of maturity while still remaining playfully approachable and forcing a woman to qualify to you by acknowledging your mastery of her (really all women by association) and your surroundings. An attitude of Amused Mastery implies to women that by virtue of your maturity and/or authority you’ve “seen it all before”, you already know what women mean when they say or do what she is doing, and it’s amusing to you. You’ll play along, but only so far as to cleverly poke fun at her attempts to get you to qualify to her. It means you never take her seriously, like a bratty sister.

I’ll admit I never fully appreciated the potential of Amused Mastery until I had a daughter. I find myself naturally using it with her because that’s the actual, unforced relation I have with her. Especially now that she’s 13. However, I also notice my wife finds Amused Mastery just as appealing, to the point that she includes herself in my Mastery over my daughter. Command Presence is useful when others are only peripherally familiar with you, Amused Mastery is what you need to employ when you’re dealing with people who have familiarity with you.

It’s particularly effective for older men / younger women Game. Assuming you’re in reasonably good shape and have some degree of affluence, being older gives you a degree of authenticity. With maturity comes an expectation of knowledge and experience for Men. I’ve used Amused Mastery with my “pour girls” at promo events and it’s like cat nip for them. You become that Father figure to them (FILF?) that they crave, but can’t seem to get from younger guys.

Intergender Friendship

Women have boyfriends and girlfriends. If you’re not fucking her, you’re her girlfriend.

Ever since “When Harry Met Sally” was released there’s been a constant droning about the validity of intergender friendships. To even suggest that men and women couldn’t be strictly platonic, mature friends is to invite reproach from a society that’s been steeped in notions of egalitarian equalism. If men and women are fundamentally “the same” there should be no impediment to developing and maintaining a friendship in like terms to a same sex friendship.

First off, men and women cannot be friends in the way or to the degree that most people perceive same sex friendship to be. Now the natural resoponse to this is “I have lots of female friends” or “what are you trying to say, I can’t have female friends, they all haffta be enemies?” Which of course is the standard binary (black or white, all or nothing) retort and the trained AFC thinks anyone suggesting that men and women’s relations as friends could be anything less than equitable and fulfilling is just a neanderthal chauvinist thinking. However, they are incorrect – not because you wouldn’t want to actually be a woman’s friend. There are fundamental differences in the ways men and women view friendship within the framework of their own sex and the ways this transfers to the concept of intergender-friendship.

Quite simply there are limitations on the degree to which a friendship can develop between men and women. The easy illustration of this is that at some point your female “friend” will become intimately involved with another male; at which point the quality of what you perceived as a legitimate friendship will decay. It must decay for her intimate relationship to mature. For instance, I’ve been married for 15 years now; were I to entertain a deep friendship with another female (particularly an attractive female) other than my wife, my interest in this woman automatically becomes suspect of infidelity – and of course the same holds true for women with man-friends. This dynamic simply doesn’t exist for same sex friendships because the sexual aspect is inconsequential.

I understand how stupidly obvious this seems, but remember we’re qualifying the characteristics of intergender friendships in the face of a social undercurrent that wants to convince us that men and women are fundamentally equal. According to this precept, men should essentially possess the capacity to repress their sexual impulse to the point that it should have no bearing on his rational decision to engage in a platonic friendship. Likewise, a woman should be able to dissociate herself from her hypergamous nature to pursue a completely asexual friendship. And both genders should maturely pursue the friendship for their mutual enrichment, however, reality tells a different story.

Girl-Friends

All of this isn’t to say that you cannot have female acquaintances, or that you must necessarily be rude or ignore all women with contempt (that is binary thinking once again), but it is to say that the degree of friendship that you can experience with women (as a man) in comparison to same sex friendships will always be limited due to sexual differences. Most men will only ever engage in friendships with women that they initially find attractive which then, of course, is colored by their attraction to that woman. Now I’m sure the “not in my case” card will get played and attempt to make the anecdotal case for how much an exception to the rule you are, to which I’ll say, even if you legitimately are, it makes no difference. Because the very nature of an intergender friendship is ALWAYS going to be limited by sexual differences. Even if you can legitimately make the case that you aren’t now, or weren’t in the past, attracted to your opposite sex friend, your other intimate relationships will still modify and/or limit the depth of that friendship.

Even the best, most asexual, platonic, male-female friendships will be subject to mitigation based on sex. The easy example is; I’m sure you’d be jealous and suspect of your girlfriend were she to be spending any “quality time” with another ‘male-friend’. It’s simply time spent with another male who isn’t you and you’ll always question her desire to do so in favor of spending time with you.

Bear in mind that it’s also important to consider how women relate with their same-sex friends as a template for their intergender friendships. Remember each sex uses its same-sex model of friendship on which to base their understandings and expectations for an opposite sex friendship. Very few men have the patience to sort out how women interact with their women friends, so they opt for the easy answer that equalism gives them – we’re all the same, so your buddies are the same as women. Any guy that’s been in the circular hell of being a woman’s “phone-friend” knows this isn’t true. Girl-friends have a much different dynamic for friendship than do men, but likewise, and by way of her innate solipsism, she’s presuming her intersexual friendships will follow along a similar template to that of her girl-friends.

And why wouldn’t women expect their male friends to conform to their template for friendship? In a feminine-centric world it makes practical sense for men to realign themselves to women’s friendship frame. Men will all too readily tolerate behavior and attitudes from girl-friends that they’d come to physical blows were their male friends to do the same. Since the prerogative of maintaining that friendship is, by default, cast in a feminine-centric frame, women (generally) wouldn’t even think of altering their own interpretations of friendship to accommodate a male perspective.

Get it out of your head now that you’re even in a so called “friend zone” with any woman. There is no friend zone – there is only the limbo between you being fooled that a girl is actually a friend on an equitable level to your same sex friends, and you understanding that as soon as she becomes intimate with another guy your attentions will become a liability to any relationship she might want to have with the new sexual interest and she puts you off, or you do the same when you become so involved with another girl.

The Female Wingman

A lot of guys cling to this mistaken notion that they can parlay a female friendship into action with one of her hot friends. You may even have legitimate examples where that might’ve happened, but for each one, I’ll show you a girl who would’ve fucked you irrespective of whether or not you had a mutual female friend to vouch for you. That friendship may have been a convenient pivot into another hot girl, but it wasn’t the prior intergender – friendship that got you laid; it was that the girl who banged you found you attractive enough to fuck.

I’m not denying the utility of  ‘Social Circle Game’, nor am I ignoring that the conspicuous attention of hot women is good social proof – that’s not what the friend pivot is about. It’s about assuming a girl-friend will endorse you as a preselected, potential sexual partner.

You may think it’s great social proof to have some hot friend endorse you as a good lay for her other friends, but women talk. In fact it’s all they do most of the time. Your status as a friend gets transferred to her girlfriends. Why? First, if she was a prior target for you who turned into a LJBF, you already have that as an association of your friendship. Any of her girlfriends that would subsequently date you will know that she was your primary interest initially – not them. Secondly, assuming you even could have a completely innocuous, asexual, platonic beginning to your inter-gender friendship, there will be competition anxiety with the other girlfriends. This will result in a tendency for the original friend to filter your exposure to which of her girlfriends she finds the least threatening. You have to consider the balance between your value to her as another friend / orbiter against her endorsing you as a potential intimate for one of her girlfriends. Just because you have a girl-friend with a social circle of attractive female friends doesn’t mean you’ll get her endorsement for the one you’d prefer to get with.

To complete the circle here, all of this leads up to understanding that your female friend will NEVER be one of your guy friends. This silly notion is founded on the expectation that your female friend will hold the same interests and have the same reactions that your male friends will. Women are never going to be your wingman. One of the great downfalls of men today is too much female influence in their lives, to the point that it’s become stigma. Beware the guy with too many or exclusively female friends. This might make for the plot of stupid movies, but most women are wary of guys with so many female friends that they question their being able to relate with and be Men.


“You’ve been with how many girls?!”

Rational reader Poker ran this one by me recently:

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

How many girls question…

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

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

Iron Rule of Tomassi # 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry,..

Apologizing for a lack of Game isn’t Game.

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

Case in point (posted with permission):

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

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

-allen

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

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

Iron Rule of Tomassi #9

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

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

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

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

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

Appreciation

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

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

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

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

Appreciation

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

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

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

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

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

Relationships aren’t work.

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

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

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