Social Conventions

The Myth of the Lonely Old Man

Is loneliness a disease that necessitates a cure? If men could be made to believe so, think of the potential profit to be made from, and the potential for manipulation of, men. The real test for a man is how he lives with himself, alone. Precious few men ever truly allow themselves to be alone and learn real independence and self-reliance. The vast majority of guys (see Betas), particularly in western culture, tend to transition from mother to wife with little or no intermission between. For the most part they subscribe to the feminine imperative, becoming serial monogamists going from LTR to LTR until they ‘settle’ without ever having learned and matured into how to interact as an adult.

The fear of loneliness is entirely too exaggerated in modern western romanticism. The popularized fear-mythology of becoming the “lonely old man who never loved” is the new ‘old maid’ myth made popular in an era when a woman’s worth was dependent upon her marital status and (at least now) equally as false a premise. But in our brave new ‘Generation AFC’, men (who’ve become women) are repackaged and shamed into believing this horse-shit as part & parcel of feminized gender role reversal. And thus we get Speed Dating and eHarmony and a host of other “conveniences” to pacify the insecurities that this reversal instills.

I’m going to suggest that most AFCs, most feminized, conditioned males, LIKE and embrace the lonely old man myth because it is a Buffer against potential rejection. Does that sound like a stretch? It shouldn’t. When used from a feminized perspective this myth is most certainly a ‘shaming’ social convention with the latent function of getting men to commit to a feminine frame – “you better change yourself soon, or your soulmate might pass you by and you’ll be lonely and desolate in your old age”. That’s the feminized use of the myth, however, the internalized AFC use of the myth is a Buffer. This then becomes his rationale for settling for a substandard LTR or marriage.

It’s really a triple whammy. There is the feminine reinforced fear of solitude. Then, the self-reinforced expectation of maturity or “doing the right thing”. And finally the use of it as a convenient retreat from rejection or potential rejection; and this is what I’m getting at when I refer to it as a Buffer.

Case example: I have a friend who is trapped in a passionless marriage with a woman, who’s set the frame from day one. He’d like to come off as dominant with his male friends, but it’s clear to most of our friends that his wife runs the marriage framing. Prior to meeting this girl our friend was a serial monogamist branch swinger. The LTR girl he’d been with prior to her ran the show in much the same way for almost 5 years. When he was finally freeing himself from her (with a bit of my own help), he started to see the value of being single and independent and began dating non-exclusively for about a 3 month period. After meeting his now wife he gradually tried to find suitable ways to withdraw and become exclusive. Knowing what our reaction would be, he began searching for all kinds of rationale to effect this – and settled on the myth of the lonely old man.

His story was the classic one where a guy shakes off his old ways of thinking about women and dating, and almost unplugs from the Matrix, but fails to kill his inner AFC and slides back into his old Beta mentality once he’d secured another ‘soulmate’. Here was a guy who’d spent more than half of his 20s in a miserable LTR who managed to briefly unplug for about 3 months before latching onto another ONEitis. Yet his reasoning was “I’m tired of the dating games. I need to settle down. I don’t want to be lonely when I’m 60.” This from a guy who’d only ever been single for 3 months of his life. It was his Buffer. Of course now he’s resentful and pensive about his marriage and lives life vicariously through his single friends, while at the same time self-righteously scolds them for still being single.

The Myth of the Lonely Old Man is a Buffer against rejection. It’s hiding in (settling for) relationships they’re told they must constantly work to perfect, because of the fear of potential rejection. In fact, they’re pre-set in this idea while still single – they see it as a valid reason and a desirable goal; get married quick, before it’s too late. What’s worse is that the rationale is unassailable. The foundation of the myth is associated with maturity, and who’s going to tell you not to be more mature? This is how we get the Peter Pan social convention women like to trot out; “He’ll never grow up!” The problem is that this lack of maturity is only paired with a Man’s willingness to commit or not to commit to their long term provisioning goals.

Don’t buy into the powder-puff idea that if you don’t find your mythological soulmate ONE by the time you’re 30 and ASAP you’ll tempt fate and risk a life of quiet desperation. This contrivance only serves the interests of women who’s imperative it is to enjoy their party years in their 20′s with as many Alphas as they can attract and have a stable Nice Guy who’s petrified he’ll live a life of loneliness and desperation waiting for them at 28-30 to marry and ensure their long term security.

Don’t buy this lie. The man who is comfortable with himself and confident in his true independence is the one that women will want to be associated with and to share in it. How you handle being alone and what you do with the opportunities that freedom allows is the real measure of a man. If you’re single and 50 you STILL have options if you’re only brave enough to explore them. I know divorced men in their 50s who’re dating mid 30s women right now and I know men in their 60s who’ve been trapped and emotionally blackmailed by their wives for 30 years. Mariage is no insulation from the sexual marketplace.

The Feminine Mystique

Perhaps the single most useful tool women have possessed for centuries is their unknowablity. I made that word up, but it’s applicable; women of all generations for hundreds of years have cultivated this sense of being unknowable, random or in worse case fickle or ambiguous. This is the feminine mystique and it goes hand in hand with the feminine prerogative – a woman always reserves the right to change her mind – and the (mythical) feminine intuition – “a woman just knows.” While a Man can never be respected for anything less than being forthright and resolute – say what you mean, mean what you say – women are rewarded and reinforced by society for being elusive and, dare I say, seemingly irrational. In fact, if done with the right art, it’s exactly this elusiveness that makes her both desirable and intolerably frustrating. However, to pull this off she must be (or seem to be) unknowable, and encourage all of male society to believe so.

The feminine mystique appeals to the feminine psyche for the same reasons ‘chick crack’ works so well in PUA technique. It appeals to the same ‘secret power’ dynamic that makes meta-physical associations so attractive (religion, superstition, intuition, etc.) One need look no further than women’s innate love of gossip to understand; There’s power in secrets for women. It’s hardly a surprise that connections with witchcraft have been associated with the feminine for so long. In an historically male dominated culture it follows that the power of secrecy and mysticism would need to be cultivated into the feminine as a resource for influencing the men in control of it. Sometimes that may have ended with a woman burned at the stake, but more often it was a means to becoming the ‘power behind the throne’ by degrees, and depending upon the status of the man she could enchant.

Combine that mysticism with sexuality, and you’ve got the feminine mystique – the most useful tool the feminine imperative possesses in it’s quest for optimal hypergamy.

The feminine mystique permeates inter-gender communication. On every forum response, on every blog comment, on every facebook post and in any article ever written by women with a personal, feminine investment in the subject, there is a residue of recognizing the feminine mystique. When a woman retorts to an observation of  female behavior that betrays female intent, the standard misdirection is ALWAYS saturated in the unknowable, unpredictably capricious, feminine mystique. The first (and second) rule of Fight Club for the feminine imperative is to protect the mystery of the female – and the sisterhood has no mercy for those who would betray that. To quote Roissy, the closer you get to truth the louder women screech.

For years I’ve striven to breakdown confusion and common problems by observing behavior. Women are human beings with the same basic motivations that men are subject to with some greater or lesser variation in their reasoning and methodologies. The point being is that women are every bit as subject to being as mundane or as extraordinary as men are, but the difference is that men don’t enjoy a masculine mystique. With rare exceptions, we don’t generally cultivate this sense of mystery because we’re not rewarded for it to the degree women are – and honestly, we haven’t needed to. But for a woman, if she can cultivate this mystique, her attentions become a reward unto themselves for the guy who is ‘lucky’ enough to tame her. Rest assured, when you think a woman is crazy, she’s crazy like a fox; she’s crazy with a reason. Women are every bit as calculating as men, in fact more so I’d argue because they have the mystique to hide a multitude of sins behind. They’re not irrational, they’re calculated – you just have to develop an ability to read a woman’s actions and behaviors and see the latent purpose behind them.

In contemporary times, men are far too ready to write off women as irrational agents. Even Freud was fooled by the hysterics of women’s responses and wrote them off as largely incapable, random and duplicitous to their own interests. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is to hear an elderly man say “women, I guess we’ll never really understand them, huh?” How many times have you been asked by a friend, “so, did ya get lucky with Kristy last night?” We don’t think much of this passing question, but it’s framed in such a way that men autonomously perpetuate the myth of this mystique. It’s not luck that gets you laid. I understand that circumstance and being the right guy at the right time most certainly plays a part, but that’s not the operative here. However, if we feel as though we got lucky, we won the lottery, or walked away with a rare and valuable PRIZE, it doesn’t help us to understand what it is we did correctly in a given instance. Not only that, it perpetuates women as the mysterious prize-givers and ensures they maintain an indirectly primary power role in embodying the prize that is feared to be lost. You were lucky to have gotten sex with this mysterious woman so it must be something rare and valuable indeed.

The feminine mystique discourages questioning the process or the motives involved in inter-gender relations; men are just happy to have had the chance of experiencing the unkowable woman they scarcely understand. When mixed with sexual deprivation, the lucky fate element makes the sex that much more absorbing. It’s this luck precognition for men and fostered by women that leads to the scarcity mentality and often (but not exclusively) ONEitis in men. It serve the feminine if men willingly adopt the feminine mystique mindset with regards to their intimacy. Sexuality is a woman’s first, best agency and any social mechanism that contributes to the value of it will always be encouraged.

Sexual Fluidity

As loathe as I am about doing so, I’m forced to refer today’s post topic to Oprah.com’s essays on Sexual Fluidity. I wont do this often as Oprah is the crowned queen of feminine matrix-think. However, these articles outline a what I see as the nascent development of a new feminine social convention – sexual fluidity is the newly developing rational for late-life sexual and gender dissatisfaction for post-wall ‘New Women’ . I’ve already touched on how feminine social conventions and their latent purposes effect inter-gender relations in a few prior posts, and I have forthcoming posts dedicated to better outlining established social conventions and their functions, but I think this newly developing convention may be a great starting point in understanding how they evolve.

The most recent post over at Heartiste / Roissy’s (?) site enumerating the post-wall woes of Sinead O’Conner reminded me of an interesting phenomenon that has been gathering popular cultural awareness now for almost 4 years – the newly accepted convention of sexual fluidity. Quoting Sinead O’Conner here:

And further posts [from Sinead] brought more. Prospective lovers can be lesbian; may even, she conceded, be christened Brian or Nigel; but anal sex is non-negotiable.

As distracting as it is let’s ignore the anal sex reference for now, we’ll return to it later. Here we have an illustration of an otherwise heterosexual woman petitioning the general public for a sexual partner. Male or female, the gender is irrelevant to her, all that matters now is her sexual gratification. What we observe here is an example of what cognitive (see, touchy-feely) psychologists are terming sexual fluidity. This new concept revolves around the idea that a person’s sexuality can turn on a dime; it is essentially fluid and can change throughout a person’s lifetime and in accord with one’s conditions.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the psychology of this per se, only how popular, feminized, culture is conveniently turning this idea to the purposes of its own imperatives. Heterosexual male prison inmates can and often do resort to homosexuality during their incarceration and return to heterosexuality upon their release. This is in effect a sexually fluid response to solving a sexual release imperative under the conditions of being sequestered in a same sex environment for a long period of time. The conditions dictate the response.

Feminized culture has embraced sexual fluidity, but has rejected the underlying reasons for it. As a new social convention, sexual fluidity becomes less about conditions and more about the individual for women. For the post-wall, aging spinster, the concept of sexual fluidity is a godsend. As a rationale for her lackluster personal life it becomes a salve for her ego – homosexuality becomes a realizable, socially acceptable option. The true reason for her long term unhappiness is that she was, in actuality, an unacknowledged lesbian for all these years. And naturally, for all women, there is a wide base of emotional support from the sisterhood ready to embrace and accept the ‘real’ her. The necessity of accepting homosexuality as her only, conditional, sexual option becomes a new virtue to be proud of in Oprah-world. Never is there a mention that the choices she’s made in life had any bearing on her present condition, nor is there any doubt that the measures she’s now forced to resort to were dictated by those choices.

Now, before I get too far along on the anti-femme-train I want to point out that much of the reasons for constructing a social convention such as this have a lot more to do with the conflict between social conditions and our innate biomechanics. If you read through the article Why Women are Leaving Men for Other Women, you can’t help but notice the commonalities of the testimonies coming from otherwise feminine women being attracted to more dominant, masculine women. Often these come from long married-with-children women who’ve divorced their beta husbands in favor of a more dominant, butch, Alpha lesbian.

Ironically—or not, as some might argue—it is certain “masculine” qualities that draw many straight-labeled women to female partners; that, in combination with emotional connection, intimacy, and intensity.

“Men can’t understand why I want to be with Jack, a lesbian, when I could be with a biological man,” says Gomez-Barris. “And at first I thought it would be threatening, but I have a rebellious spirit. He’s powerful, accomplished, and appealing. And in some ways, the experience is better than in heterosexual sex.

So what are we seeing here? Heterosexual women, still crave the masculine dominance that men cannot or will not provide her. Thus, we see condition dictate response. Kind of explains Sinead O’Conner’s exceptionalism for lesbian anal sex now doesn’t it?

In 2004, after earning her master’s degree in counseling at Loyola University New Orleans, (Bridget) Falcon met April Villa, now 34, who works as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “April is a beautiful, feminine woman,” says Falcon, “yet she’s so much like a guy, analytical but not overly introspective, and, just like my dad, she likes to build things and can fix anything.”

What are the commonalities we see in each of these? Past-prime, mostly well educated women, each dissatisfied with an inability to attract and marry “powerful, accomplished, and appealing” men who attempted to ‘have it all’ by starting families with the only betas they could attract. Later in life they grow even more uncomfortable with the proposition of spending their remaining years with the herb they married and so opt out of the marriage for the growingly more accepted idea of “sexually flowing” into a homosexual relationship with a woman who qualifies as powerful, accomplished, and appealing, ergo traditionally masculine, that her former husband did not.

The advent of embracing sexual fluidity in women is an attempt by feminized culture to put a bandaid on a lingering problem. As western feminized culture progresses onward from the late 60s, more and more women are awakening to the disillusionment that the choice they made to participate as an ‘equal’ in a masculine world required sacrifices of her femininity. Sacrifices that most come to regret later in life. Between 35 and 45 women are increasingly feeling the repercussions of their attempts to ‘have it all’ or have HAD it all, yet are left wondering why they’re not satisfied in sublimating their expectations – betraying their uniquely female biomechanics – to play the role of the New Woman.

That consensus is growing, even in Oprah-world, so what to do? What feminism has always done, move the goalposts and redefine the game. Men, for any variety of shameful reasonings, are cast as incapable of living up to the standards of being powerful, accomplished, and appealing, but even if you regret having married one, and possibly brought children into the world, you can still have a second chance at ‘having it all’ thanks to sexual fluidity. It’s not him, it’s the undiscovered homosexual you that’s been repressed all this time. Never mind that those infantile men are too preoccupied with youthful sexuality to appreciate your post-wall physique, there’s a world of lesbian women out there ready to deliver on the promise of powerful, accomplished, and appealing masculinity that your man is incapable of. It’s not that neo-feminism was wrong in promising you a satisfying life, it’s just that you were really a lesbian all this time and either didn’t know it, or were a victim of the Patriarchy and were repressed from it.

The newest feminine social convention, sexual fluidity, simply attempts to patch one of the many the holes that’s sinking the New Woman’s ship. Feminized culture needs a reason for the masculine disappointment it’s systematically acculturated into society for the past 50 years.