
Becoming the Captain of My Boat dropped this comment in the This is now thread (emphasis mine):
You know, I found the RP about a year and a half ago. I’ve been working on applying things to my life, and for the most part things are going well.
Most of the articles though are about what to avoid, what to look out for, or how to think about women when you’re in your 20’s. The difficult thing is now being aware and seeing it all around you and being married.
I see the Sandberg quote, I hear it all the time from women in one form or another, and then my wife says similar shit. Like she dated the assholes, or had to find herself. Now I’m like, shit, I’m the nice guy she married. I don’t want to be that guy.
I was the asshole in college, what the fuck happened to me and how do I fix it quick? But there is no quick, once you’re in this it’s an uphill battle, a necessary one, but an uphill battle none the less.
I read the Rational Male, I’ve read a number of the books, but it get’s tricky when you’re already in it.
My wife isn’t a terrible person, and I can see firsthand how all this applies to her, but she isn’t malicious. This is subconscious shit reinforced by all their surroundings. Hell, my own betaization was subconscious shit reinforced by my surroundings.
I can say without a doubt that if your’e not already in a LTR or married and you’re younger than 30-35 don’t get in one. Read this stuff, make yourself a better man, fuck around and “find yourself” then you can get into a LTR, because it’s much harder to take control of a ship and right the course with your now demoted wife psychologically kicking and screaming than it is to captain a boat from the get go and then find a hot, willing first mate along the way when you’re already a seasoned salty captain.
He can only speak for himself of course, but Captian’s situation is not an uncommon one. Far too many men discover too late that the great relationship they swore they had with their wives was founded on their having fulfilled a Blue Pill set of achievements.
This belief is part of the plan Hypergamy had intended for him to follow, but as women’s sexual strategy has become more visible (if not outright flaunted) to him he begins to see the code in the Matrix he’s been a willing participant of. The machinations of Hypergamy are unignorable, or soon will be, but it’s one thing to be single and young enough to be able to leverage that plan to your own benefit when you still have the options and maneuverability to do so – it’s quite another to become aware of your own participation in it once you’re committed legally, emotionally and familially to going along with the plan.
For men, one of the more unfortunate consequences of Open Hypergamy is the degree of comfort their wives have in revealing the part their husbands play(ed) in their sexual strategy. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, in a previous social order it was simply a matter of course that women should keep the mechanics of Hypergamy secret from the men they paired with in the long term.
Amongst themselves women were (and are) very open and frank about their sexual exploits both in the short term sexual and the long term provisional. I’ve always been convinced that women’s insistence on proliferating the trope of men’s “locker room talk” or ‘Humble-Bragging’ about their sexual conquests is a distraction from their own peer clutch groups congratulating themselves on the successes of their sexual strategy.
In a prior social climate keeping these ‘hen house’ Hypergamous revelations to themselves made sense. There was little point to informing the men they depended upon for parental investment and security that they were really the best available option to be their means to an end.
Not so in the present social climate. There is an eager brazenness on the part of wives to openly explain the part their husbands play(ed) in her Hypergamy. I’d attribute most of this to a social climate that encourages women to believe they have nothing to lose by doing so, but there’s also a want to participate (even if vicariously) in the single-woman peer clutch that has openly embraced revealing the ins and outs of Hypergamy publicly.
It’s a rough transition for men to have their Blue Pill idealisms dispelled by the Red Pill community, but it’s far more devastating for men steeped in Blue Pill merit badge accomplishments to have their wives openly confirm what the Red Pill aware have been trying to awaken him to for some time.
Open Hypergamy isn’t just a game for single women; it’s made its way into contemporary marriages. It’s now part of the egalitarian equalist expectation of men in marriage – that in order for men to truly be men worthy of marrying a co-equal ‘modern woman’ he must dispense with any notion of ownership of her, forgive the worst of her Hypergamous indiscretions as part of her “finding herself” and then accept his role as the Plan B, Beta provider for her in the nick of time to help her fulfill her sexual strategy in the long term. All of this coming with no expectation of any reciprocal value on a woman’s part – in fact to believe so is tantamount to marital rape.
I see the Sandberg quote, I hear it all the time from women in one form or another, and then my wife says similar shit. Like she dated the assholes, or had to find herself. Now I’m like, shit, I’m the nice guy she married. I don’t want to be that guy.
I was the asshole in college, what the fuck happened to me and how do I fix it quick? But there is no quick, once you’re in this it’s an uphill battle, a necessary one, but an uphill battle none the less.
This is the revelation men in this situation find themselves in. Even the men who may have fulfilled the role of “a great living dildo” for women in their 20s can still find that their role may have shifted to that of ‘non-threatening relationship material guy’ who she’d never have sex with on the same night she met him.
Now granted, all of this comes back to the subconscious expectation of cuckoldry women place on the men they cast in the passive, supportive role. Women don’t expect the Beta Bucks men they pair with will ever be the Alpha Fucks men their biochemistry predisposes them to want to fuck. But ‘great Dad’ must believe he was chosen as her best option, her best choice for the balance of the two. Only later, once she’s consolidated on him with family, children, financial and professional liabilities to her, is she comfortable in letting him in on how the game was really played.
As I said, the truth of that is hard enough to hear from Red Pill writers on the internet, but to have it viscerally confirmed by a wife without the social filters of an older social climate is a much harder pill to swallow than the red one.
The Fix is In
That sounds like an awful lot of gloom and doom doesn’t it? I can’t speak for Captain, but a woman delivering the confirmation that a guy is really a Blue Pill consolation prize is rarely couched in so melodramatic and sinister delivery. I’ve had many men (mostly disillusioned husbands from MMSL) relate similar stories as Captain’s and none of them were screaming confessions of deceit on the part of their wives. Most were simply matter of fact comments in passing that aligned with their suspicions about themselves.
I hate to harp on Pixar’s Inside Out cartoon, but it’s the simple everyday open Hypergamy that goes unnoticed by Blue Pill idealists. It takes a Red Pill lens to even be sensitive to it, but when you see how casually the wife/mother in this movie fantasizes about her widowed Alpha, the Alpha fantasy she couldn’t consolidate on, and how frustrated she is every time her Beta husband fails a shit test, you begin to understand the passive nature of an overt Hypergamy in women.
Women get frustrated that Blue Pill men Just Don’t Get It. The Blue Pill idealism blinds them to having the insight needed to realize the role they’re supposed to play and the frustration comes from their being over-supportive and over-engaging in order to make things right for their women. Blue Pill men will graciously ‘play equal’ in their marriages in order to live up to the equalist goal-set they were taught would pay off for them for a lifetime if left uncheck or unchallenged.
It’s my belief that wives will use a married form of open, or certainly casually overt, revelations of Hypergamy in order to rouse a man to a Red Pill awareness in the hopes that he’ll Just Get It.
And to answer the inevitable question, yes, this is a meta-scale shit test on the part of wives. However, it’s important remember that Hypergamy is rooted in existential and life-security doubt for women – “Is he really the best I can do?” – and that the shit tests associated with this vary depending on the influences of a woman’s phase of maturity as well as which part of her menstrual cycle she happens to be in.
Revealing the machinations of Hypergamy to a husband has potentially disastrous consequences, or at least it used to. As I said before, women generally don’t sprout horns and a forked tail and say “Ha ha, sucker!” when they reveal Hypergamy; it’s usually a casual inference. If a Blue Pill husband isn’t Getting It about his participation in women sexual strategy from outside means (media, social networks) then the passive or overt shit tests about his awareness of it need to be implemented.
In a previous social order making men aware of this could just as likely result in a woman being divorced or ostracized socially. Today, in men’s never ending quest to satisfy “equalism’s” approval, men are less likely to even believe their role when a woman confirms it for them. Ego-investments meets cognitive dissonance. Not only does he not get it his ego refuses to get it.
This then is the pathetic state of 80%+ of contemporary men. Men so inured by Blue Pill conditioned idealism that they’ll entertain ‘open marriages‘ in order to make themselves ‘better husbands‘ according to an emasculated equalist ideal.
Help! Quick!
So now we come to a situation like Captains – one where that husband Just Gets It only he’s gotten the message, received the awareness, from his wife (either passively or overtly) and he’s both pissed off at his state and equally wants to improve it. I expect most men would advise Cap to sack up and dump that bitch; and they’d probably be right in that assessment. She was duplicitous and then felt so self-assured in her position (reinforced by feminine primary social influences) that she was comfortable in revealing it to him. What’s he gonna do about it, right?
The right answer is to preemptively detonate the marriage. When you consider he’ll be cast in the role of villain no matter who files for divorce (he’s an asshole, or he’s the asshole who couldn’t meet her needs) why not, right? Any kids, any family discord, certainly the financial liabilities, should all be small shrift, collateral damage, when we look at this in terms of justice. It’s just revenge for her double-cross.
And yet that’s not what the vast majority of men in Cap’s situation first consider. Their first thought is “How do I fix this? I’ve lost Frame! How do I get it back fast! Help?” For all of the duplicity inherent in Hypergamy, for all of the insult that comes from a wife confirming he’s her Beta ‘sure thing’ (not the ‘hawt’ college asshole), that guy still wants to make lemonade from lemons, knowing full well she deserves piss.
That husband wants to still be all things, the mythical Good Guy balance, to his wife. There’s something in men’s romantic natures that wants this to work for themselves and in spite of women who fundamentally lack the capacity to appreciate it.
The first question I think men in this situation need to confront is whether it’s worth the effort to attempt to change their wives’ impression of them. If you’re 35 and (should be) entering your SMV peak years, this open Hypergamy revelation is particularly tough to accept since it’s likely you’ve invested 7-8 years in a woman who’s just told you what you are to her (and confirming it’s not who you are that’s of primary importance to her). As I’ve stated many times before, going from a Beta character to an Alpha (or more Alpha) one is always an uphill battle:
How many of the simpering, socially conditioned, Betatized men these women seeth about would make for believable Alphas once they had a red pill epiphany? It is precisely because of this impressionistic, binary solipsism that women will never be happy with ‘fixing’ their Beta. This is why he has to Just Get It on his own.
It is a far better proposition to impress a woman with an organic Alpha dominance – Alpha can only be a man’s dominant personality origin. There is no Beta with a side of Alpha because that side of Alpha is NEVER believable when your overall perception is one of being Beta to begin with. This is why I stress Alpha traits above all else. It’s easy, and endearing to ‘reveal’ a flash of Beta sensitivity when a woman perceives you as predominantly Alpha. If your personality is predominantly Beta, any sporadic flashes of Alpha will seem like emotional tantrums at best, character flaws at worst.
Women may love the Beta, but they only respect the Alpha.
That’s not to say a real transformation isn’t possible, but rather it’s a question of whether the juice will ever be worth the squeeze. There is no ‘quick fix’, no magical formula that will reverse Frame to your favor. Even if you won the lottery tomorrow, you’d still be a Beta with more money to your openly Hypergamous wife now. Frame establishment (not re-establishment if you never had it to begin with) takes time and active, practicable Red Pill awareness.
As I was telling Goldmund in my interview, that awareness needs to become a man’s internalized nature. He needs to become his own self-important mental point of origin; that and a Red Pill aware nature take time to develop. Anyone telling you they have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ Red Pill solution that ‘guarantees results in your marriage’ is selling you something.
I say they’re selling you something because of one simple truth – no quick fix that could make you seem more Alpha, more like the asshole college guy your wife loved to fuck back in the day will ever be believable to her if it happens overnight. On a root, hindbrain level, your Beta designation was set for your wife when she was having her Epiphany Phase. She knows and is comfortable with what she expects your nature and your character to be.
As I illustrated in Archetypes , women need consistency in behavior – they expect you to be Beta and are so comfortable in that assessment that they feel no guilt and have no fear in revealing to you the role you play for her. Thus, any radical shift in that comfort doesn’t seem genuine, and in fact it seems childish that you wont accept your designation.
So, is it worth it? I think my advice in this instance would be this:
Iron Rule of Tomassi #7
It is always time and effort better spent developing new, fresh, prospective women than it will ever be in attempting to reconstruct a failed relationship. Never root through the trash once the garbage has been dragged to the curb. You get messy, your neighbors see you do it, and what you thought was worth digging for is never as valuable as you thought it was.
Once your wife has openly revealed your part in the plan, you’ve effectively broken up. Logistically that may not be the case, but I think most guys need to see this for what it is; a rejection of a husband’s authority, masculinity, his decisiveness and his capacity to read the nuances in behavior and a society that’s been (sometimes literally) screaming to him to Just Get It.
Your wife’s garbage can was dragged to the curb by your wife’s admissions, only the trash truck never comes for it because you’re committed to that can staying on the curb until you walk away from it. If you go digging through it to find what you think is valuable, prepare to get real dirty and look for a long time.
You’ve effectively been ‘friend zoned’ in your marriage. You may still have sex, you may still share special moments, but never forget, her confessions make you ‘just a friend’ in your marriage.
*Standard disclaimer: Yes, men should forego marriage altogether and/or stringently vet women for virginity, homemaking and childrearing. Importing wives from third world countries is duly noted. Rollo Tomassi has been married for 19 years to a magical unicorn he found after being a semi-pro rock star and lives an idyllic life of riches and extravagance. NAWALT. Your milage may vary. See dealer for details.