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I managed to get some time with Niko once again yesterday. He was kind enough to stay up late and get a talk in for another installment of our semi-regular podcast The Red Pill Monthly (more like bi-monthly recently).
I really liked this one because we delved into some new stuff about Frame and the importance of establishing and maintaining a solid sense of self and purpose in all aspects of a man’s life, but focusing on the interpersonal and intersexual importance of Frame.
The concept of Frame is not my original idea, it’s actually derived from interpersonal psychology. However, way back in my early days at SoSuave I made the connection to the psychological principle and what PUAs of the time were advocating as a means to control in seduction. I begin my Iron Rules of Tomassi with Frame because I’ve always felt that everything else in seduction, and life in general, hinges upon the realities we create for ourselves.
The pop-cultural term for it today is ‘mindset’, but I feel the concept of Frame extends beyond what’s generally a retreading of The Power of Positive Thinking that’s being promoted as mindset now. It certainly plays a part in the entirety of holding Frame, but the overall establishment of Frame with a woman, with other men, with your family or with your employer requires an art that extends past just how one thinks of himself.
Iron Rule of Tomassi #1
Frame is everything. Always be aware of the subconscious balance of who’s frame in which you are operating. Always control the Frame, but resist giving the impression that you are.
The concept of “frame” is yet another ephemeral idea that had need of a term in the very beginnings of the great masculine awakening that’s become the ‘community’. If memory serves I think it may have been Mystery who first picked up on what’s really a very rudimentary and well established psychological principle. In psych terms, frame is an often subconscious, mutually acknowledged personal narrative under which auspices people will be influenced. One’s capacity for personal decisions, choices for well-being, emotional investments, religious beliefs and political persuasions (amongst many others) are all influenced and biased by the psychological narrative ‘framework’ under which we are most apt to accept as normalcy.
Rather than go into too much depth here I’ll just encourage you to listen to the podcast and we’ll have an open comments thread about Frame. I think it’s good to review some older principles, not just for the benefit of newly Red Pill aware men, but also because I think it’s good to reconsider these ‘standards’ from a perspective of time and where we are as a Red Pill community today.
Frame, and understanding its importance, is the foundation of dozens of other Red Pill principles and applications. As most of my readers know, I try to avoid specific prescriptive advice. I’m not in the business of telling men how to live their lives with formulaic step-by-step Red Pill templates. The Red Pill isn’t one-size-fits-all and men need to interpret their Red Pill awareness according to their personalities, cultural context, social situations and personal beliefs.
That said, in the coming months I will be offering some more generalized, prescriptive ideas or suggestions as to how I feel men might apply certain Red Pill principles in their lives. The 9 Iron Rules are about as close as I come to prescriptive advice, and while I’m not in the business of making ‘Rational Male Men’, after reviewing them with Niko I think that some generalized advice according to Red Pill awareness might be something in the offing.
So, let me know what you think about this ideas as well as any questions or input you have about Frame once you’ve listened to our talk. It runs about an hour and a half. I’m also toying with the idea of discussing each of the Iron Rules in the coming RPM podcasts. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in listening to.
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.
I generally avoid troubling myself with the blatantly girl-world propaganda advice articles over at AskMen.com, but I had a friend refer this article to me. It’s the same predictable boilerplate reasoning I’ve come to expect from the Hooking Up Beta crowd when discussing the merits of Waiting for It. Side note: please do read the short bio of Giulia Simolofor an enlightening brief on what makes for a good ‘relationship correspondent’.
All this article does is reinforce the feminine as the primary sexual interest. As is the default pre-position of every solipsistic woman giving advice, every point she makes presumes the woman is the PRIZE. So lets break this down from a less orthodox presumption:
Waiting Creates Anticipation
Anticipation is already present from the moment you and she feel arousal for each other. Attraction isn’t a choice, and anticipation isn’t something “created” by intent. Trust me, no girl making you wait is thinking, “Oh I just want him to savor this delightful anticipation.”
Waiting Creates Challenge
Yeah, for you. I love how the feminine rationale is that it’s the Man who’s given the opportunity of creating the challenge, when in fact it’s classically been a woman’s realm for millennia to play the coquette. Who are we bullshitting here?
Waiting Shows You Don’t Think She’s A Slut
The only gender concerned with being perceived as a slut is women. Once again, feminine primacy. Every man loves a slut, he just wants her to be HIS slut. The importance is less about his perception of her being a slut and more about her self-concern about her moving past the thinking she’s one. When it comes to sex, single women filibuster with concerns about slut status, when in an LTR they filibuster with concerns about “feeling sexy” – in both instances sex is always about her, not you.
Waiting Keeps YOU Interested.
And again, feminine primacy. For centuries, nothing has served women better than an implied promise of future sexual release with her. The longer you stay in a state of suspended sexual interest, the less time and opportunity you’ll have to weigh other, better, options than what she may represent. However, you can only shake the shiny keys for so long before someone else shakes their own and draws attention away.
Waiting Shows You’re A Gentleman
Qualification for her pussy. Women don’t want to fuck gentlemen, they want to fuck Men who are sexual and have a mutual, covertly recognized desire to bang her.
Waiting Gives You Time To Evaluate Her
The only thing most men are evaluating about a woman they haven’t slept with is HOW to sleep with her. This may sound like logic, but it’s really an unassailable idealism meant to compliment a man’s ego. It’s complimentary; of course you’re a well rounded man of the world who’d be interested in qualifying her for your intimacy, you’re mature and experienced enough to know what’s best for you, right? Women ALWAYS play by the rules when they’re relaxed and show you their true colors while you’re waiting to fuck them. They’re incapable of hiding their character flaws in the time it takes for you to wait her out sexually, right?
Good Things Come To Those Who Wait
And of course what girl-world article would be complete without a trite aphorism at the end? At least we get down to brass tacks. She is the PRIZE. The carrot really is worth the effort of towing the feminine primacy cart. Play her filibuster games and there’s a nice piece of chocolate cake at the end of it for you. It’s the same piece of cake the outlaw biker got about 8 months ago due to her hormonally fueled urgency to fuck him immediately, but she’s turning over a new leaf with you. She’s trying to do things different now with you, because you’re really the ‘special’ one.
Coquetry
I was skimming through the Art of Seduction last night and I came across a passage there that reminded me of this article. The section was about coquetry. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, playing the coquette is by and large the natural (some would argue ‘unlearned’) default method of seduction for women; going from hot to cold, interest to feigned disinterest, the promise of fantastic sex and then a complete disconnected indifference. That is coquetry, and it hardly needs to be taught to women since for thousands of years it’s proven to be so effective in covertly drawing out what they want in men. As I’ve said in many prior posts, a woman’s best agency is always her sexuality. It’s their first best key to power over men (which explains why it’s so distressing for women as it decays with age).
What this article is attempting to do is convince men that they can play an effective coquette too – essentially adopt a female seduction method. While there is some merit in adopting female seduction methodologies (i.e. “flip-the-script” Game), when promoted by women giving men advice, the premise is disingenuous on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin with it. However, after re-reading it I can see the mechanics behind it. The idea is to draw men into thinking that they are the ones doing the resisting, when in fact they are only better playing into a woman’s coquetry and ultimately better facilitating the methods of her innate hypergamy.
The principle is this: the one who is doing the resisting is the one who is controlling the dynamic. It comes back to The Cardinal Rule of Relationships
In any relationship, the person with the most power is the one who needs the other the least.
The trick to feminine coquetry is incrementally rewarding her target(s) with marginal intimacy while simultaneously resisting him enough to keep him in the limbo necessary for her to assess the best options for breeding and provisioning from a pool of potential suitors.
Now, why would a woman want to do this? The polite answers, the pretty lies, are found in the bullet points in this article. Each of which is intended to convince men to play along with her coquetry (feminine seduction) and better facilitate the real function of her coquetry – sexual selection from amongst her best options (i.e. hypergamy). If a man can be convinced that it’s in fact he who is doing the resisting, for all the noble and acceptable reasonings, it only makes her coquetry easier.
Coquetry is a woman’s socially approved methodological equal of Plate Theory for men. And just like Plate Spinning, it requires a woman to keep a covert stable of potential suitors in rotation. They can’t implicitly know about each other. If they did, she runs the risk of them losing interest in frustration. So, how much the better if a Man is an active participant in her own coquetry? How much the better when he believes it’s his own idea to be his own coquette?
In Iron Rule #3 the reason I said waited-for sex is never worth the wait is because it reduces sexual tension and urgency. It’s essentially negotiated desire – “OK well play by your rules and fuck when you’re finally convinced that I’m worthy of your vagina.” By playing your own coquette, you may think you’re drawing her into YOUR web and she’ll be a foaming hot mess for you by the time YOU “allow” her to ride your cock, but you’re only fooling yourself. Assuming you even get to actual sex with her, it’s still her who’s doing the resisting, and now your sex is based on the implied negotiation you agreed to by waiting her out. And what were you waiting for? Her to come to the conclusion that she couldn’t do better than fuck you in the immediate future.
Every chump in human history has, in different versions, thought he was doing the right thing by playing the friend, waiting patiently, building comfort and trust, being a gentleman, being emotionally supportive and sensitive to a woman’s desires in the interim times when she’s not riding the Alpha Bad Boy’s cock. Women who are interested in you wont confuse you. If you are her “A” guy she wont make you wait (very long) to get after it with you. If she’s delaying and filibustering, rest assured you are her “B” or “C” guy, and she needs negotiated convincing to bump you up to being her starter.
Rollo mentioned that once a woman gets into a cohabitating situation, that her sexual availability markedly decreases. It seems to me that so long as the man is able to give and act out the ultimatum that “either I get a sexually satisfying relationship or I’m out (or you’re out, if it’s my place)”, then there should be no problem.
Sure, there are financial and legal entanglements, but this would be akin to dead money on any investment – sure it hurts, but that’s the risk one takes. And in the case of a lease, the man could always take the attitude that he wants out, and is only living in the apartment because he is on the lease (he could always go back to his available bachelor days.)
Interesting you used the word “ultimatum” here. It’s important that you understand what an ultimatum implies. Whenever a person delivers an ultimatum, always understand that this is a declaration of powerlessness. In other words, “I am so out of control in this circumstance you must do this or I will remove either myself or you from the circumstance.”
First off, in this particular instance it’s far more likely that you’ll be the one leaving considering the preference modern legalities give women today with regard to evicting them from such a situation. Secondly, it only confirms for her what she wants to know, that she is your one and ONLY source of sexual intimacy and by you cohabiting with her, emotionally, financially and logistically it makes it almost impossible for you to really make good on your ultimatum. You only consolidate her sexual monopoly by living with her.
I’ve already gone into all the practical reasons as to why a guy should never move in with a woman in Iron Rule #4, but I think it may be better to ask yourself why you do want to move in with her. What are you benefitting from in this situation that you aren’t by remaining independent of each other? For most guys the fantasy is more accessible sex, but if you’re living as you suggest here already, how is living together any different? And even if this were the case, that you had more sex with her by living together, you are still assuming a greater degree of responsibility, accountability and liability in your relationship and in your day to day life in exchange for that sexual accessibility. How is that an advantage? How is that not like marriage anyway?
As I’ve stated in the prior posts, when you commit to ANYTHING – women, career, education, family, etc. – you necessarily lose options and your ability to maneuver in taking advantage of them.
Ultimatums
Ultimatums are declarations of powerlessness because you are resorting to a direct threat to get someone to do what you want them to, and in doing so you OVERTLY confess your weak position. If you were in a genuine position of control it wouldn’t be necessary to resort to an ultimatum; you’d simply use that control. There are many ways to effect a change in another person, but ultimatums will never prompt a genuine change. If they change behavior it’s prompted by the threat, not unprompted, organic desire.
One of the primary tenets of my Game philosophy is that true desire cannot be negotiated. A natural, unsolicited desire state, unmitigated by obligation or concerns for resources exchange, is the ideal basis for any intergender relationship. Any factors that introduce elements that hinder this genuine desire – exchange, negotiations, obligations, reciprocity, etc. – weaken this desire and weaken the relationship. Delivering an ultimatum is the most direct, overt way to introduce exactly these elements into a relationship.
Now you might say that an ultimatum is implied in how you stated this it to her, or the context it was in. If this was your intent, you are still in a position of powerlessness since you are still trying to get this person to do what you want. It’s not what you can do to her (i.e. withdrawing your attentions) that’s the power issue, but the actual desired result, getting her to genuinely have a desire to do what she has no desire to do.
I should also add that ultimatums are, ultimately, self-defeating. You can keep your dog from running off by chaining him in the yard, but that dog still wants to run off. You cannot effect a genuine change of desire with an ultimatum as your relationship will be founded on that threat. And this is the real power issue; that you’d want a person to conform to your desire so badly that you’d use a threat to effect it in spite of the foreknowledge that it can never be a genuine conformation because they didn’t orginate it and did so only under duress.
So from your standpoint, yes you do have the power to affect your own actions (like walking away), but you are powerless to force her to do what you want (prompt a genuine desire in her), thus you resort to an ultimatum and only illustrate this OVERTLY.
Boundaries
It’s very important to make the distinction between setting boundaries and delivering ultimatums. Men with a head for absolutisms seem to think that avoiding ultimatums is the same as spinelessly avoiding laying down the law and setting the frame for a relationship (or even a particular plate they’re spinning). Establishing boundaries and assuming frame requires exemplification and demonstration. As with the 9th Law of Power: Win Through Your Actions, Never through Argument – demonstrate, do not explicate. There is no more overt an explication than your delivering an ultimatum. Ultimatums only lead to behavioral shifts based on the fear of repercussions, never a genuine desire for that behavior.
However, a continuous demonstration of what you necessitate in a relationship is vital to its health and your continued primacy of frame. Telling a woman what’s what or else often smacks of insecurity and childishness, but a firm discussion-less enacting of what is important to you and necessary for any future relationship viscerally teaches her what is expected by experiencing the very repercussions you ultimatum would only advertise to her.
Is the woman who applies make up everyday ‘being herself”? How about the woman with implants, is she ‘being herself’? What about the woman wearing high heels becasue it boosts her height 4 inches? Is the girl you see in nothing but party pics on FaceBook being herself? Lets turn it the other way, what of the woman wearing a business suit that emphasizes her shoulders with pads in the jacket is she ‘being herself’? If she colors her hair does this make her less genuine?
If being ourselves is an idealized state then I should reasonably be able to expect a like-minded fitness model to be attracted to me even if my greatest passion is to sit on my couch, eat a large pizza and wash it down with a 6 pack of Michelob while watching Monday Night Football, right? After all, I am just being myself – it’s who I am.
Believe and so you shall become
The hardest distinction the uninitiated have with the JBY (just be yourself) dynamic is that personality is malleable. Personality is always in flux. The person you are today isn’t who you were 2 years ago, nor the person you’ll be 2 years from now. There are traits and characteristics we may carry with us for a lifetime, but even these are subject to change depending upon circumstance. You define what being yourself is at any given moment and it’s relative to your personal conditions and environment. So where do you draw the line? When does a genuine change of character become legitimate rather than being ‘shallow’ or ‘superficial’? Those are just catch terms that women (and too many chumps) have used with success over the centuries and men have internalized as being states of perception that women think are undesirable, yet they never accurately define. Rather, they stay intentionally ambiguous and relative to an individual woman’s interpretation, while their behaviors indicate their own motivations.
You are who you believe you are, and you are who she perceives you to be.
One of the hardest things for anyone, male or female, to hear is that they need to change their lifestyle because it implies that their just ‘being themselves’ is in some way at fault for their present conditions. It’s analogous to telling someone they’re not living their lives ‘correctly’ or that they’re raising their kids wrong. If I have a friend that is shooting heroin and I actively encourage him to stop and make an effort to help him ‘clean up’, society calls me a hero or a savior. When I encourage my friend to quit smoking before she gets cancer, I’m a concerned good-friend helping my friend with a health risk behavior. But when I tell a friend he needs to change his approach to women and this is a reason for his unhappiness and he needs to change his outlook on, and approach with women, look better and feel better, then I’m a ‘shallow’ prick and insensitive to his ‘problem’. Worse still is even attempting to offer constructive criticism, in as positive a light possible, that a person can improve themselves by changing their outlook and modifying their behavior.
Personality is not only malleable, but it can change dramatically under specific conditions. An easy example of this is veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. These men were exposed to traumatic environments that fundamentally altered their personalities. While this is an extreme illustration it proves that becoming a ‘different person’ is a matter of conditions. If my conditions are such that I enjoy sitting at home eating a whole pizza, washing it down with a six pack of Budweiser and watching Anime on a Friday evening, can I realistically expect that hot fitness instructor at the gym to come on over and genuinely want to fuck my brains out? And why not? After all I’m only being myself and she should “love me for who I am”, right? If this were my case, the conditions that define my personality are incongruous with attracting and/or maintaining a relationship with someone whose conditions are not my own.
JBY is an operative social convention that aids hypergamy.
Women are only too happy to endorse and reinforce JBY for the conscious reasoning that it ‘sounds like the right thing to say’. It’s an unassailable position; who wouldn’t want you to be you? If what counts is all on the inside then anyone telling you to change MUST be manipulating you for their own selfish reasons. This dovetails nicely into the popularized fat-acceptance self-acceptance mantra most women will fall back on when the impact of the Wall begins to manifest itself in their physiques and they want to be loved for “who they are” rather than what they used to look like. However, on a subconscious level, the latent purpose of fostering the JBY social convention in men is yet another sexual selection filtering mechanism. Actually it’s more of a filtering failsafe in that by socially mandating a genuineness in the general populace of men, women are more secure in the accuracy of their sexual assessment of men. If all men are Just Being Themselves and are encouraged to be the person they ‘truly are’, this then aids a woman in determining which man will best satisfy her hypergamy.
As I’ve stated in many a prior post, women claim to want honesty from men, but no woman wants full disclosure. In a general sense I advise this because it serves to sustain a Man’s aura of mystery, only to be progressively discovered by women with the appropriate levels of interest and responsiveness to men. However, another reason to remain deliberately ambiguous is to defuse the JBY dynamic that women assume would be a man’s default psychology.
Always let a woman figure out why she wont ƒuck you, never do it for her.
An integral part of maintaining the feminine imperative as the societal imperative involves keeping women as the primary sexual selectors. As I’ve detailed in many prior comments and posts, this means that a woman’s sexual strategy necessitates that she be in as optimized a condition as her capacity (attractiveness) allows for her to choose from the best males available to satisfy that strategy.
JBY is a tool in maintaining the feminine imperative as the social imperative. Furthermore JBY serves in optimizing hypergamy in aiding a woman’s sense of security about assessing which man will best suit her hypergamy. Ironically, the JBY dynamic gets upended once a monogamous relationship is established by a woman’s anxiety for ‘fixing’ her partner once in that relationship. What was once the pseudo-genuineness of just him being himself is replace by “I’m working on him” in order for him to become the ideal man to meet with her hypergamic approval – thus exposing the calculated nonsense JBY really is to begin with.
We are who we say we are
We can alter our own personalities and have them altered by our conditions or any combination of the two, but to suggest that personality is static is a falsehood. The trap is to think that altering personality is in anyway disingenuous – there are certainly teriffic ‘actors’ or ‘poseurs’, and the like, that when we are confronted with them we sense (or even know) that they are pushing an envelope that they may not be entirely comfortable with, but there is merit to a ‘fake it till you make it’ doctrine. We only percieve it as being ‘false’, ‘superficial’ or as “trying to be something your not” when we have a concept or knowledge of a previous set of personality behaviors. If you met a likable cocky-funny guy at a club this weekend, how are you to know whether he’s the real deal or stretching the limits of his personality if you’ve never met him before?
Law 25: Re-Create Yourself Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions— your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
“Rollo, I’m newly Game-aware, red pill guy and I’ve been meeting girls with more and more success since my conversion, but I can’t help the feeling that the really hot girls I want to get with a so out of my league.
Any suggestions?”
Iron Rule of Tomassi #8
Always let a woman figure out why she wont ƒuck you, never do it for her.
An integral part of maintaining the feminine imperative as the societal imperative involves keeping women as the primary sexual selectors. As I’ve detailed in many prior comments and posts, this means that a woman’s sexual strategy necessitates that she be in as optimized a condition as her capacity (attractiveness) allows for her to choose from the best males available to satisfy that strategy.
This is really the definition of hypergamy, and on an individual level, I believe only the most plugged in of men don’t realize this to some degree of consciousness. However, what I think escapes a lot of men is the complex nature of hypergamy on a social scale. For hypergamy to sustain it’s dominant position as the default sexual strategy for our society, it’s necessary for the feminine imperative to maintain existing, foster new, and normalize complex social conventions that serve it. The scope of these conventions range from the individualized psychological conditioning early in life to the grand scale of social engineering (e.g. Feminism, Religion, Government, etc.)
One of these social conventions that operates in the spectrum of the personal to the societal is the idea of ‘leagues’. The fundamental idea that Social Matching Theory details is that “All things being equal, an individual will tend to be attracted to, and are more likely to pair off with, another individual who is of the same or like degree of physical attractiveness as themselves.” In a vacuum, this is the germ of the idea behind the ‘leagues’. The social convention of ‘leagues’ mentality is where ‘all things are not equal’ and used to support the feminine imperative, while conveniently still supporting the principle of social matching theory.
The latent function of ‘leagues’ is to encourage men to filter themselves out for women’s intimate approval.
As social conditions progress and become more complex, so too do men’s ability to mimic the personal attributes of providership and security. In other words, lesser men become intelligent enough to circumvent women’s existing sexual filters and thus thwart their sexual strategy. These ever increasing complexities made it hard to identify optimally suitable men from the pretenders, and women, being the primary sexual selector, needed various social constructs to sort the wheat from the chaff. With each subsequent generation they couldn’t be expected to do all of this detective work on their own so the feminine imperative enlisted the aid of the men themselves and created self-perpetuated, self-internalized social doctrines for men to comply with in order to exist in a feminine defined society.
The concept of leagues is just one of these doctrines. Your self-doubt about your worthiness of a woman’s intimacy stems from a preconditioned idea that ‘you’re out of her league’. The booster club optimist idea that “if you think you can’t, you’re right” is true, and boundless enthusiasm may overcome some obstacles, but to address the source of the disease it’s more important to ask yourself why you’ve been taught to think you can’t. A lot of approach anxiety comes from your own self-impression – Am I smooth, hot, affluent, funny, confident, interesting, decisive, well-dressed enough to earn an HB 9’s attention? How about an HB 6? Our great danger is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.
I’m not debating the legitimacy of the evaluative standards of the sexual market place – it’s a harsh, often cruel reality – what I’m really trying to do is open your eyes as to why you believe you’re only meritorious of an HB 7. Looks count for a lot, as does Game, affluence, personality, talent, etc. but is your self-estimation accurate, or are you a voluntary participant in your own self-devaluation in the SMP courtesy of the leagues mentality the feminine imperative would have you believe?
The Economy of the League
As I stated above the purpose of fomenting a stratified League mentality in men serves to autonomously filter the lesser from the greater men for women to chose from, however, it also functions to increase the valuation of the feminine as a commodity. Like any great economic entity, the feminine imperative lives and dies by its ability to inflate its value in the marketplace. Essentially the feminine imperative is a marketeer. One of the sad ironies of this, and the last, century is that the feminine imperative has attempted to base women’s SMP valuation on a collective importance to the detriment of the individual woman’s SMV. For men this is inverted; a man’s sexual valuation is primarily individualized, while men as a collective gender are devaluated in the SMP.
For further consideration lets assume that average men, most being varying degrees of beta, are blessed with the ‘miraculous gift’ of an average woman’s sexual attentions. The power dynamic is already pre-established to defer to a feminine frame, so it’s small wonder that men would be prone to ONEitis even with an objectively average woman. This is the intent of the League schema – to unobjectively predispose men to commitment with women who under objective condition couldn’t enjoy the same selectivity. Roissy once postulated that for a healthy relationship to exist the Man must be recognized by the woman to be 1-2 points above her own SMV. This is a pretty tall order considering the feminine imperative’s emphasis on women’s sexuality being the more valued as default. And this is to say nothing of contemporary women’s overinflated self-evaluations due to the rise of social media.
Gaming the League
All of the above isn’t to say that there isn’t a kernel of truth to the notion of leagues; it’s just not the “truth” men have been led to believe. For as much as the feminine imperative would have men subscribe to Leagues, it equally seeks to exempt women from the same League hierarchy by evaluating women as a whole. Needless to say men have their own rating systems – most popularly the ubiquitously physical HB 10 scale. I should add that it’s a foregone conclusion that any rating system men would establish for women in the feminine reality would necessarily need to be ridiculed, shamed and demonized, but you knew that already.
Irrational self-confidence is a good start to circumventing and unlearning the concept of Leagues; unlearning this conditioning being the operative goal. The Game-aware Man can actually use the concept of Leagues to his advantage with enough guile. When you approach a woman without regard to a League mentality or even a Zen-like obliviousness to it, you send the message that there’s more to you than a feminine reality can control. It’s exactly this disregard for the influence of the feminine imperative that makes the Alpha attractive; he’s unaware of, or indifferent to the rules his conditioning should’ve taught him earlier. Just in the attempt of Gaming a woman obviously “out of your league” you flip the feminine script by planting a seed of doubt (and prompting imagination) about your perceived value. Doubt is a very powerful tool, in fact the very concept of Leagues is founded upon men’s self-doubt. Turn that tool to your advantage by disregarding women’s social convention of Leagues.
For today’s post we’re going to do a little experiment. Before you press the play button, take a deep breath, and while it is work-safe, you may want to plug your headphones in or be in someplace where you can be uninterrupted for 10 minutes. Be forewarned that any women within casual listening distance will likely be provoked to indefensible, yet hysterical defense of the sisterhood after eavesdropping. Pay attention to your heart rate and do quick self assessment of your mood. As you listen to this, be aware of the chemical reaction percolating in your bloodstream as the inevitable end comes. Then be aware of how you physically feel afterwards. Ok, press play.
All done? How was that for you? Heart rate up?
I must admit, I got an adrenaline rush out of that. Kind of like watching a car wreck in slow motion. However, I find that kind of ironic since any number of daytime shows (i.e. Tyra Banks, et. al.) have been basically doing the same shit for decades now. A lot of guys acknowledge the power of the chemical rush, but it’s only episodes like this that make it real for them. I’m sure most of the guys hearing this felt it; the high of adrenaline, endorphins, dopamine, etc., this is the chemical cocktail that women come to crave. I’ve read the chemical profile is very similar to that of heroin. Indignation triggers it for women in the same way sex and death trigger it for Men.
The main reason I wanted to pick this apart is because there’s a lot of elements to the whole incident. There’s so much at play in this, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s interesting to read the responses to gauge what impacts people first. Women naturally lean toward the guy being classless for opting to hash this out in a very public forum, yet it feel fully justified for doing it themselves for decades. White Knights will come out of the woodwork to defend the indefensible in spite of the circumstance responding viscerally to a woman weeping. How did you feel when you heard the girl cry? We can pour through the reasons why the guy was a chump to have been living with her for as long as he did, but think of this more from the perspective of the physical effect it has upon the listeners.
Funny how even when a woman confesses to her infidelity we’ll look for ANY angle available to still cast her in the victim’s role. We’ll readily analyze the guy’s history, we’ll euphemize her misconduct as a “mistake” (or she’ll do it for us), and we’ll speculate “where her heart is really at.”
“but, Rollo, dumping the hor in private would have achieved the same end.”
I’m not so sure about that. I’ll be the first to advocate against revenge, but for pragmatic reasons (wasted effort), not so guys can cling to some self-righteous high ground. If the guy is resolved to break it off with her, and he has the opportunity to rub it in (on valentines day, caught red handed, thinking a proposal is due, etc.), but instead holds back and discreetly pulls up stakes, does it have the same impact? Would she genuinely appreciate the gesture? How would she ever know that he could’ve resorted to publicly humiliating her yet chose not to?
The guy opting for the “high-road” would be the only one capable of appreciating what he could’ve done if he hadn’t, and even his expressing his option to do so makes him sound vain and conceited. By all rights this woman was under the impression that he was going to propose to her on-air and was utterly crushed instead. How does a woman spared from this ever make that kind of acknowledgement?
The answer is she doesn’t. I’m not saying he should’ve done it, but in light of the life-altering gravity of entering into as binding a commitment as marriage (a topic of much discussion in the manosphere), I can understand why he’d consider it. We can call him a chump for living with the woman for 5 years, but he’s a chump who’d made the decision to commit and had the ring to prove his intent. She on the other hand, knew he’d decided to enter into this commitment, and not only betrayed that, but KNOWINGLY, and happily, was ready to let him propose in spite of herself.
“Is justice somehow rendered as “less than justice” when it is administered by your OWN HAND?”
Therein lies the rub. There will always exist an element of bias (revenge) whenever one enacts what they perceive as justice. Women are almost universally absolved of this. Carrie Underwood can write a chart topping song about vandalizing the truck of a cheating lover that women (and men) will gleefully memorize the lyrics and sing along with, but let a man publicly humiliate a caught-in-the-act, cheating lover and “he’s less of a man” and runs the risk of having his personal life ruined as a result.
As far as this guy breaking Iron Rule #4; yes, the guy’s a fool for having done so for 3 years, and I’d go so far as to say an even bigger fool for being monogamous with a solitary woman for 5 years during his prime (I assume Chris was in his 20’s). My point was to illustrate his degree of commitment (he bought a ring) not to justify his having lived with her as long as he did. Contrast this incident with Tiger Woods situation: a lot has been made about commitment being tantamount to male virtue, so my emphasis was his readiness to commit and the gravity it bears on a man’s life.
There was another aspect that I hadn’t considered in this. I don’t entirely believe that reversing the roles to understand a contrast would be applicable in this case. Generally women don’t ask men to marry them. I understand it happens, but never to the degree that a man must prepare to make a proposal of marriage. Chris had resolved in his mind to marry the girl, and acted on this resolve by buying a ring and planning to propose on V-Day. Men are the True Romantics; Women simply do not have a parallel experience for this.
I understand this is a bit of a stretch, but for a moment lets assume Chris knew exactly the future liabilities of his commitment – all of those high-road, morally binding liabilities Tiger reneged on in his marriage – should his response to her deception be any less measured than what he did when you think of what he’d almost committed to?
Think of the impact his commitment to her would’ve entailed; think of how it would effect their families, his career and / or educational opportunities, their future children and their personal decisions, his finances, his psychological well being, their quality of life, and the list goes on, but essentially he was betting his future life on this girl. The guy was a hair’s breadth from making that commitment when he discovered the deception. I think she got off rather lightly.
*I’ve got to give props to the guys over at the BodyBuilding.com forums for rediscovering this link for me. I had originally used this audio in a SoSuave forum post back in February of 2010 and lost the audio link. Thanks guys.
Today’s pull quote comes from Xpat Ranting’s blog. The discourse there is brief, but insightful:
I really, really, really hope the myth that girls are the hopeless romantics gets kicked to the curb ASAP. Everyone needs to realize that men are the “romantics pretending to be realists” and women; vice versa
I found this particularly thought provoking – Men are the romantics forced to be the realists, while women are the realists using romanticisms to effect their imperatives (hypergamy). This is a heaping mouthful of cruel reality to swallow, and dovetails nicely into the sixth Iron Rule of Tomassi:
Iron Rule of Tomassi #6 Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.
In its simplicity this speaks volumes about about the condition of Men. It accurately expresses a pervasive nihilism that Men must either confront and accept, or be driven insane in denial for the rest of their lives when they fail to come to terms with the disillusionment.
Women are incapable of loving men in a way that a man idealizes is possible, in a way he thinks she should be capable of.
In the same respect that women cannot appreciate the sacrifices men are expected to make in order to facilitate their imperatives, women can’t actualize how a man would have himself loved by her. It is not the natural state of women, and the moment he attempts to explain his ideal love, that’s the point at which his idealization becomes her obligation. Our girlfriends, our wives, daughters and even our mothers are all incapable of this idealized love. As nice as it would be to relax, trust and be vulnerable, upfront, rational and open, the great abyss is still the lack of an ability for women to love Men as Men would like them to.
For the plugged-in beta, this aspect of ‘awakening’ is very difficult to confront. Even in the face of constant, often traumatic, controversions to what a man hopes will be his reward for living up to qualifying for a woman’s love and intimacy, he’ll still hold onto that Disneyesque ideal.
It’s very important to understand that this love archetype is an artifact from our earliest feminized conditioning. It’s much healthier to accept that it isn’t possible and live within that framework. If she’s there, she’s there, if not, oh well. She’s not incapable of love in the way she defines it, she’s incapable of love as you would have it. She doesn’t lack the capacity for connection and emotional investment, she lacks the capacity for the connection you think would ideally suit you.
The resulting love that defines a long-term couple’s relationship is the result of coming to an understanding of this impossibility and re-imagining what it should be for Men. Men have been, and should be, the more dominant gender, not because of some imagined divine right or physical prowess, but because on some rudimentary psychological level we ought to realized that a woman’s love is contingent upon our capacity to maintain that love in spite of a woman’s hypergamy. By order of degrees, hypergamy will define who a woman loves and who she will not, depending upon her own opportunities and capacity to attract it.
