Indignation

In the absence of indignation, women will actively manufacture it for themselves.

Over the weekend, The Chateau had an interesting quick-hit post extolling the Game virtues of a man losing his cool. This is an interesting concept from a behavioral psychology perspective in that it unexpectedly rattles comfortable, predictable, behavioral patterns women come to expect from their men. When controlled and used tactically it can reinvigorate a woman’s failing interest level, but I should add the caveat that for it to be effective you already need to have established a relationship to the point that doing something unexpected conflicts with a set expectation of behavior from you. If a woman doesn’t know your character “losing your cool” will only make you seem erratic and unstable.

Lets dig a little deeper here – what makes this break in routine so appealing to women’s psyches? You can of course argue that it’s outburst of feral Alpha that sparka ‘gina tingle, and that’s definitely a visceral effect, but what drives that glandular response is the prompt of indignation. Women live in a quandary when it comes to security. On an evolutionary level, the security impulse is a primary directive. Long term provisioning, parental investment and the innate understanding of the rigors of hypergamy and it’s relation to breeding make ‘security seeking’ a woman’s primary impulse. This isn’t to discount the influence of other impulses – sex being the next in order – however, herein lies the problem; the very cues that fire a woman’s sexual triggers are the same that conflict with her security needs.

On the surface, women have a social responsibility to present the perception that their interests are those of the uniter. Everything should revolve around home and hearth and security above all, but their behaviors tell a much different story about their appetites. Women need indignation. Watch one episode of ‘Dance Moms‘ and you’ll get a much clearer picture of the value indignation holds for women. Whether the source is gossip, living vicariously through third parties or eating it up in popular media (Oprah, Tyra Banks, romance / fan fiction media), in the absence of indignation, women will actively manufacture it for themselves. A lot of men believe that this need for indignation is the calling card of a “high drama” woman when in fact it’s really psychological predisposition for women.

Women’s biology predisposes them toward security, but they chafe in a condition of total security. In contemporary terms this translates to living under the conditions of relative security whilst seeking out avenues to create that indignant spark. The wise Man will develop tactical, measured ways to make himself the focus of that need for indignation. The Chateau’s article actually illustrates the most common way Men stumble upon the usefulness of this dynamic. You get fed up and pissed off, either at some boundary she’s crossed or some 3rd party has, and your anger flares up. Your usually patient countenance is gone and you go caveman. The reason this is shocking is that most men will tolerate far more personal indiscretions from their romantic interests, or want to present the appearance of humility or patience with others while she’s around, in an effort to convince his LTR interest that he is a good security provider. And while this may appeal to her provisioning instincts it directly conflicts with her more feral instincts of physical attraction.

Most plugged-in men don’t like this reality. It’s far more comforting to think of women’s attraction as requiring less confrontation. Women who are grossly overt in this need for indignation are (rightly) labeled ‘Drama Queens’, but what they don’t consider is that ALL women have this innate need by order of degree. It can be a useful tool for a Man who can use it covertly and skillfully. Accepting a feminine need for indignation is the first step, the next is to center her focus for it on yourself – instead of Dance Moms and gossip. An occasional, well timed flare up is sometimes all it requires to grab her attention, but be damn sure you’re in the right about whatever issue you decide to explode upon. Send a perfectly good plate of food back at a restaurant. Find some issue that meets with your disapproval and “let it get to you”.

The Power of No

A perceived righteousness of purpose is often best when you “get upset”, however, it’s not always necessary. One very powerful assertion of frame control is simply the word “no”. For as often as men will blather off a complicit “yes” in order to keep the peace, women NEED to be told “no”. Get into the habit of saying no, even when it seems unreasonable. Get comfortable in saying no for the sake of establishing your authority. Most men don’t see the purpose or value in this to even consider experimenting with their respect and frame control. They just want to keep their heads down, not rock the pussy boat and get along. That’s the recipe for a beta-herb divorce.

Here’s an example: there was once a point in my life when Mrs. Tomassi asked me if we could buy a new bed for our daughter; I told her no. I had the money, it was really no issue, I just didn’t want to build a new bed at the time and get rid of the old one. Besides, her bed was more than fine for the time and Mrs. Tomassi really wanted it because of the style. She got indignant; “I don’t see why we can’t, it’s a good price,…blah blah blah,..” and against my first impulse toward contrition I again said “No. We’re not getting the damn bed.” At that point the dynamic of the conversation shifted. It wasn’t about a bed, it was about frame. Of course lesser men will laugh and think, “yeah, she turned off the pussy after that to I bet, heh, heh,..” and for about a week they’d be right, but learn this now:

No amount of negotiated pussy will ever be worth losing frame for.

It’s always better to fuck a woman who accepts you as her authority than some half-assed lay with a woman who’s only fucking you out of a sense of obligation. Learning to use indignation is a fantastic primer for frame control.

Dream Killers

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

How common it is today to be married or getting married before we’ve realized any of our potential. For all the articles I read moaning and groaning about what a listless generation of “kidult” males we’ve inherited, that’s far removed from the reality of the young men I do consults with. No, what they want is just enough Game knowledge to connect with their Dream Girl and relax into a blissful beta cocoon of monogamy. They want to commit. Their lifetime AFC psychological conditioning makes commitment an urgency.

It never ceases to amaze me when I talk with these young men in their teens and 20s and they try to impress me with their fierce independence in every other realm of their lives, yet they are the same guys who are so ready to limit that independence and ambition in exchange for dependable female intimacy. They’re far too eager to slap on the handcuffs of monogamy, rather than develop themselves into men of ambition and passion that women naturally want to be associated with.

The truth however is that the longer you remain uncommitted, the more opportunities will be available to you. It’s been stated by wiser Men than I that women are dream-killers – and while I agree with this, I’d say this is due more to the man involved, and their own complicity and apathy, than some grand scheme of women.

It’s actually in women’s best interest that you don’t commit to them for a variety of reasons. I realize how counterintuitive that reads, but in your being so readily available you decrease your value as a commodity to them. Scarcity increases value, and particularly when the reason for that scarcity is something that serves another’s interest (hers in this example). The mid-20s Man pursuing his ambition to become an attorney in law school or the pre-med intern spending long hours at the hospital with aspirations of becoming a doctor is hindered and encumbered with the complications that maintaining a monogamous relationship necessitates of him. His time and efforts need to be applied toward acheiving his goals to become an even higher value Man – not just in terms of financial success but for his own edification and confidence. Needless to say, the constraints and obligations that maintaining a monogamous relationship require – both in time and emotional investment – make achieving these ambitions far more difficult.

I tend to promote the idea that Men should be sexually and emotionally non-exclusive until age 30, but this is a minimal suggestion. I think 35 may even serve better for Men. The importance being that as a Man ages and matures in his career, his ambitions and passions, his personality, his ability to better judge character, his overall understanding of behavior and motivations, etc. he becomes more valuable to the most desirable women and therefore enjoys better opportunity in this respect. Women’s sexual value decreases as they age and it’s at this point the balance tips into the maturing Man’s favor. It’s the Men who realize this early and understand that bettering themselves in the now will pay off better in the future while still enjoying (and learning from) the opportunities that come from being non-exclusive and non-commital make him a Man that women will compete for in the long term.

In your mid-20s you are at the apex of your potential with regards to the direction you will influence your life to go. I’m not going to make any friends by pointing this out, but what pisses off most “serial monogamists” is the unspoken regret of having assumed the responsibilities, liabilities and accountability of what monogamy demands before they truly understood their potential.

If you are single at 35 with a moderate amount of personal success, you are the envy of man-dom because you possess two of the most valuable resources most men your age or older statistically do not – time and freedom. I envy you. You are unshackled by the responsibilities, liabilities and accountabilities that most men your age in marriages, LTRs, with children, or recovering from divorce must contend with daily. Without any intention you are in such a position that you can go in any direction of your choosing without considering the impact of your choice for anyone but yourself. Many other men, in the most ideal of LTRs, do not have this luxury.

When you think of all the responsibilities that are required of most men (and women) in modern life today, you have won the lottery! I was once asked what I’d buy if money were no object, to which I answered, time. Power isn’t financial resources, status or influence over others; power is the degree over which you control your own life, and right now you are powerful. Trust me, this is as good as it gets and this is made all the better because you are old enough to understand and appreciate what is really at work here.

Women are damaged goods for you now? So what? You have the freedom to sample as indiscriminately or as particularly as you choose. Can’t find a good LTR? Why would you want to?! Let her find you! You fear you’ll end up old and lonely? I’d fear ending up so paralyzed by a fear of loneliness that you’d settle for a lifetime of controlling misery in a passionless marriage.

I’m an adherent of the ‘build it and they will come’ school of thought in this regard. Women should only ever be a compliment to a man’s life – never the focus of it.

Is it better to choose the path of least resistance to get to an idealized, prefabricated intimacy or self-develop and get the same intimacy? True, both instances put women as the focus of a Man’s life, and this is a position that most women will find endearing at first, but suffocating in the end. Women want to ‘want’ their men. Women want a Man who other men want to be, and other women want to fuck. She doesn’t want a slave to her intimacy since this puts her in the masculine role. Rather, she wants a decisive mature man who has the confidence to put her off, to tell her ‘No’, in favor of his ambition and passions as this serves two purposes. First, it sets his direction as the one of authority and his development as the primary; the results of which she and her potential children will benefit from. Secondly, it puts her into a position of chasing after him – essentially his legitimate ambitions and passsions become the ‘other woman’ with which she must compete for his attention.

Note that I stated ‘legitimate’ ambitions here. A woman involved with a law student or an intern who have the potential to become lawyers and doctors are fairly solid bets for future security. An artist or musician, no matter how talented or committed to their passions will only be viewed as beneficial if they can prove their case to select women. However this can be offset by singleminded determination, once again, with select women with a capacity to appreciate this. This said, think about the fellow who’s chosen to be a plumber or a mechanic as his calling. The best plumber in the world is only going so far unless he has dreams to own his own business.

All of this is limited by a man’s attitude towards the opposite sex. Women are dream killers. Not because they have an agenda to be so, but because men will all too willingly sacrifice their ambitions for a steady supply of pussy and the responsibilities that women attach to this.

So yes it is better to develop yourself rather than take the path of least resistance. That’s not to say don’t sarge until you’re out of college, in your 30s and have your career in order. It is to say don’t consider monogamy until you are mature enough to understand it’s limitations and you’ve achieved a degeree of success to your own satisfaction according to your ambitions and passions. It is also to say that women should compliment and support your plans for your own life.

The Burden of Selectivity

 

You get the men you deserve ladies.

The latest hotness in feminine self-righteous indignation in the manosphere this week is the new Atlantic article by Kate Bolick (courtesy of Susan Walsh and her self-impressed 3rd page link). I generally don’t bother myself with bleating, overwritten catharsis articles bemoaning the woes of an HB 5, post-Wall, aging spinster upset with (beta) men not excusing her indiscretions by sharing in her entitlement to provide her with the loving stable relationship she maliciously turned down at 28. However, it did spark an interesting debate at SoSuave with regards to the variance in selectivity in mate selection respective to each gender.

I believe there’s an interesting misconception about the mutuality of shared criteria both men and women commonly seek in a life-partner. Women, steeped in their solipsistic ‘girl-world’ reality, tend to find it inconceivable that a man wouldn’t share in precisely the same life expectations and scheduling that women would. Their feminine imposed reality presume that men will autonomously know that what works best for women is ALWAYS the “right thing to do.”

However, I think we’re kind of assuming false equivalencies in respect to how either sex goes about choosing an acceptable mate for life. On this side of 40 (or hell, even 30) it’s real easy to reflect on our past experiences and presume we as men actually had any clue as to what qualities in a woman we knew were or weren’t deal breakers for commitment. Infidelity notwithstanding, what was really a red flag for you when you were in your mid-20s? Did you even know? I sure as hell didn’t.

Women’s hypergamous natures make them far more exacting in their selection process, far earlier in life, and their list of prerequisite attributes and characteristics more rigid than any man’s would ever be. This same innate hypergamy also makes them susceptible to a constant doubting about any selection they do commit to. Ergo, the biologically hard-wired need to shit test even after 10 years of marriage.

Not so for men. If she’s relatively hot, sexually accessible and marginally loving, we’re usually in. And you know why we’re in? Because it seems like a good idea at the time – and that’s what gets us into trouble in our youth. In fact we’re not encouraged to presume we could actually be selective. That would mean preempting women as the prime selectors for their imposed reality – men even being educated in what would account for a red flag is pretentiousness deserving of shame.. Men are far less prone to turn down a ‘sure thing’ that’s producing semi-regular rewards / reinforcement (sex) in favor of an ‘unsure thing’ that’s an unproven commodity for him. It’s only later in life, when we can remove ourselves from the game and look at things objectively that we get even an inclination of what characteristics a woman needs to possess beyond the physical and sexual for us to decide what works best for us.

And then, God forbid, a Man actually take action based on his personal assessment of the characteristics he does decide upon. From a societal standpoint men will never enjoy the same degree of social support women do for taking action in “doing what’s best for them.” Any Man with the forbearance enough to reject or break up with a woman based on his personal criteria is instantly labeled ‘shallow’ and shamed for daring to reject the poor victimized woman he was “lucky” to have had ever accept him.

The trick of women’s mate selectiveness lays in keeping men ignorant of what qualities (beyond the sexual) might make for the best LTR pairing long enough for her to capitalize on her beauty and youth, but not so long as to push past the expiration date of her hitting the Wall. This is why the 28 to 30 year mark is so pivotal to women. Her decade (or so) long window of prime beauty and selectivity is winding down. It’s not a woman’s mythical biological clock that’s prompting her to consider her maternal instincts – it’s the, now very real, actualization that she needs to lock down a commitment to provisioning from a man who, by the time he hits 30-35, should be awakening to the way women’s game is played and starts to feel more comfortable in qualifying women based on his learned experiences.

Nothing simultaneously frightens and excites a woman more than a Man who’s self-aware of his own sexual market value. This is why every effort is made via social conventions to repress him from realizing this, and every effort is made to shame and ostracize him once he’s conscious of it – and a prime example of this is the duplicitous nature of articles like Bolick’s decrying men’s unwillingness to grow up and give women the life they should know is “doing the right thing” after 20 years of berating men for not respecting them asserting their independence from men.

Frame

Iron Rule of Tomassi #1

Frame is everything. Always be aware of the subconscious balance of whose 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.

The concept of frame covers a lot of aspects of our daily lives, some of which we’re painfully aware of, others we are not, but nonetheless we are passively influenced by frame. What concerns us in terms of inter-gender relations however is the way in which frame sets the environment, the ambience, and the ‘reality’ in which we relate with both the woman we sarge at a bar and the relationship with the woman we’ve lived with for 20 years. One important fact to consider, before I launch into too much detail, is to understand that frame is NOT power. The act of controlling the frame may be an exercise in power for some, but let me be clear from the start that the concept of frame is who’s ‘reality’ in which you choose to operate in relation to a woman. Both gender’s internalized concept of  frame is influenced by our individual acculturation, socialization, psychological conditioning, upbringing, education, etc., but be clear on this, you are either operating in your own frame or you’re operating in hers. Also understand that the balance of frame often shifts. Frame is fluid and will find its own level when a deficit or a surplus of will is applied to change it. The forces that influence that lack or boost of will is irrelevant – just know that the conditions of an operative framework will shift because of them.

Pre-LTR Frame
Often I’ll see forum posts lamenting some loss of frame – “Lost the frame, how do I get it back?” A lot of times guys believe that because a woman initially gave them IOIs or was ‘really into them’ in the beginning that they had ‘frame’. This is another unfortunate misconception about frame – and I partly blame the PUA culture for it – but frame is not interest level (IL). Simply because a woman is attracted to you does not mean she’s ready to ‘enter your reality’. Her entering your frame may become a byproduct of that attraction, but it by no means guarantees it. In truth, under today’s social environment, I would expect a woman to resist tooth and nail from rushing into a man’s frame. This is why women have psychologically evolved a subconscious propensity to shit test; to verify the legitimacy of a man’s frame.

Most Game incongruencies develop around a guy’s inability to establish frame and opting in to a woman’s frame. What’s ironic is that on a base level, we understand frame imbalances instinctually. If you feel like you’re being led on, or being made to wait for sex, you’re operating in her frame. Are you in the ‘friend-zone’ or did you accept an LJBF rejection? You’re in her frame.

Ideally, you want a woman to enter your reality. Her genuine (unnegotiated) desire for you hinges upon you covertly establishing this narrative for her. Famous men, men with conspicuous affluence and status, and men with overwhelming social proof have very little difficulty in establishing frame – they can’t help but establish frame in a very overt fashion. A woman already wants to enter that world. She want’s an easy association with a man who’s unquestionably a proven commodity and offers her hypergamy not just a actualized fantasy, but also a high degree of personal affirmation in being the one a Man of this grandeur would choose above other women.

Unfortunately, you and I are not this Man, he’s a feminine idealization. However it’s important to understand how hypergamy plays into establishing frame. The Man who impassively accepts women’s hypergamous natures has a much easier time establishing frame from the outset. You or I may not be that be that famous guy with an automatic, overt frame control, but we can be by order of degrees depending upon our personal conditions and the conditions of the women with whom we choose to associate. The default pedestalization of women that men are prone to is a direct result of accepting that a woman’s frame is the only frame. It’s kind of hard for most ‘plugged in’ men to grasp that they can and should exert frame control in order to establish a healthy future relationship. This is hardly a surprise considering that every facet of their social understanding about gender frame has always defaulted to the feminine for the better part of their lifetimes. Whether that was conditioned into them by popular media or seeing it played out by their beta fathers, for most men in western culture, the feminine reality IS the normalized frame work. In order to establish a healthy male-frame, the first step is to rid themselves of the preconception that women control frame by default. They don’t, and honestly, they don’t want to.

Post LTR Frame
In most contemporary marriages and LTR arrangements, women tend to be the de facto authority. Men seek their wive’s “permission” to attempt even the most mundane activities they’d do without an afterthought while single. I have married friends tell me how ‘fortunate’ they are to be married to such an understanding wife that she’d “allow” him to watch hockey on their guest bedroom TV,…occasionally.

These are just a couple of gratuitous examples of men who entered into marriage with the frame firmly in control of their wives. They live in her reality, because anything can become normal. What these men failed to realize is that frame, like power, abhors a vacuum.  In the absence of the frame security a woman naturally seeks from a masculine male, this security need forces her to provide that security for herself. Thus we have the commonality of cuckold and submissive men in westernized culture, while women do the bills, earn the money, make the decisions, authorize their husband’s actions and deliver punishments. The woman is seeking the security that the man she pair-bonded with cannot or will not provide.

It is vital to the health of any LTR that a man establish his frame as the basis of their living together before any formal commitment is recognized. As I stated in the beginning, frame will be fluid and conditions will influence the balance, but the overall theme of your relationship needs to be led and molded by you. Even very influential, professional, intellectualizing women still crave the right man to establish his frame in her life. They may fight it bitterly, but ultimately it’s what will make for the best healthy balance she can achieve. There’s a growing undercurrent of mid-life women questioning and regretting their past decisions to remain single into spinsterhood. And for all their late game rationalizations, the one thing they still simply refuse to accept is acknowledging that a man’s frame, the frame their “fierce independence” wouldn’t allow for, was exactly the salve their egos so desperately wants now later in life.

Gentlemen, you will establish frame in any monogamous relationship you have. You will enter her reality or she will enter yours.

Compensation

One of the higher orders of physical standards women hold for men is height. There are countless threads in the community that address this, but I think that for the better part it’s not difficult to observe this in the ‘real world’. I should also add that this is one characteristic that is central to the Social Matching Theory in that human’s are sensitive to asymmetrics and imbalances.

Now, before I get told in so many ways that this isn’t always the case or the “not all girls are like that” exceptions to the rule, let me start by saying that this isn’t the point of this thread. I don’t want to debate the logistics of why women prefer a taller mate or the tendency for like to attract like in this respect. No, what I’m on about is really the root of the infamous “short man’s disease.” That’s right, you know who I’m talking about; the ultimate in compensation for inferiority, the dreaded ‘short man’s disease.’ You know the guy. About 5′ 6″, pounding out the weight on the bench press. Bad ass attitude, hangs with the bigger guys (which is pretty much all of them) and throws his ego around. What a tool, right?

But if you think this is only limited to short men (or women), you’re making a mistake. You see, in so many ways we all compensate for deficiencies. I recently read a thread on another “non-community” forum that saw fit to start a topic asking why men lie and it got me to thinking why any of us lie, man or woman. I’ve also been fielding a lot of questions regarding issues we kind of take for granted after having discussed them to death in the manosphere; one of those being the nature of personality and one’s ability to change their own or have it changed by circumstance, or often both. I think it’s a tragic miscalculation on our part to think of personality as static, unchangeable or to question the ingenuousness of that change, but more tragic is the doubting ourselves for that change.

One simple truism that a lot of people love to use as their convenient escape clause is the JBY (just be yourself) notion. This of course is just what ones says as advice when they really don’t know what else to say. Given that though, what is it that makes a personality shift ‘genuine’. Any number of us probably know an individual who began acting differently at some point in their life. This can be the result of some kind of tragedy or trauma (think PTSD) or it can be that the individual felt a need to change their fundamental way of thinking and made the change of their own accord. Usually in these cases we think of them as posers or try-hards, trying to be something they’re not. They reflect this change in their appearance, their regular practices, their friends or the people they associate with, attitudes, behaviors etc. And this is what’s jarring for people who knew their prior personality.

From the 48 Laws of Power:

Law 17: Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.

What makes us doubt the sincerity of a personal change is what’s at issue. If their change is something we agree with or generally think of as positive, we are less inclined to doubt the ingenuousness of this change. But when their change conflicts with our own interests, when it dramatically clashes with what we’ve come to expect of that individual, this is where we doubt their sincerity. We say “dude, stop trying to be something you’re not”, we tear it down, we fall back on JBY platitudes because it clashes with our interpretations. And in this doubt, we fish for reasons as to why a person would want that change; essentially, what are they compensating for? It may be funny to presume someone driving a monster truck down the highway is making up for a small penis, but the root of that ‘compensating’ is what makes us feel uncomfortable in our own internal compensating.

It’s a difficult enough task for an individual to critically assess their own personality, and even more so to effect a change in it, but the final insult is to have other’s doubt the veracity of it. What others fail to see is that at some point in the development of their own personalities, they themselves had to compensate for deficiencies, discontentments and prompts to grow and mature. This is a gigantic hurdle for most AFCs wanting to transition to being something more. On SoSuave we’ve always called that being a DJ (Don Juan), but that doesn’t encompass the entirety of maturing. I like the term positive masculinity, but the crux of all that is the ingenuousness of the actual change. Why are you changing?

There is a saying that AFCs are like a bunch of crabs in a barrel. As soon as one is about to climb out there are always half a dozen ready to pull him back in again. Add to this a self-doubt from societal conditionings that tell him to stay the same, not to aspire to more, he’s doing it right, and it’s amazing that any AFC becomes a DJ. This has been termed the ‘Societal Cockblock’; they tell him he’s compensating, and in a way they’re right, but for the wrong reason. PUA skills, DJ psychology, Positive Masculinity are all compensations for deficiencies. They go beyond behavior modification – that’s the easy answer. PUAs teach a set of behaviors and scripts to be aped in order to mask a deficit. These are easy pickings for the JBY apologists because they are actions that generally don’t match a person’s prior personality. They’re not “really” like that, so they’re posers, or worse, they’ve been duped by guys hawking the PUA brand of self-help tools. What they don’t see is the genuine desire to change and the reasons for it.

When we compensate, we improvise, we fake it till we make it; but who determines when we’ve stopped faking it? We do. I read all kinds of articles doubting the realized capacity a person has to adopt ‘natural Game’ into their personality. It’s an internalization process for sure, but there has to come a point of transition where a Man’s default response IS his Game response. That’s who he IS now.

Would you leave if she got fat?

Tony Romo would.

It appears that the topic du jour in the community this week has been, (how shall I state this?) women of “larger girth” and their oddly commensurate attitudes of entitlement, due to the the ‘love thyself’ body image apologists making their mark on popular culture.

I generally go into great detail on a lot of my posts about the conditions for intimacy women place on men. Roissy codified this as the “436 bullet point checklist’, but I just tend to distill women’s list of stated criteria a man needs to meet in order to be acceptable for her intimacy. He’s got to be attractive, tall, well employed or the potential to be so, he must have status (some call it power), be caring, sensitive, humorous, educated, not overbearing, decisive, confident, a good listener,..etc., etc. and the list goes on and on.

However, rarely do I have the chance to explain men’s one condition for intimacy – physical attraction. She’s GOT to be hot. Guys rarely start thread topics seeking advice in order to hook up with  HB 2s or 3s – they post about HB 7s to 9s.

That said, a Man’s one condition should be pretty important as well as effect the highest standard he’s capable of attaining. Not accounting for Game, men’s individual ability to attract women is based on a number of criteria (including his own appearance) and respective of his own physical conditions – in other words, fat guys are going to be limited in their ability to attract exceptionally fit women, and those that do so by meeting women’s other conditions for intimacy (most commonly wealth) will still be hindered in their ability to maintain a woman’s continuous interest level, genuine desire, arousal and passion. 

The same situation holds true for women only there is a much higher standard for maintaining her physical attraction. His one condition for intimacy is that she remain attractive and to a greater degree, sexually available to him. In order to circumvent this women for centuries have maintained a complex social dynamic that makes his one condition his greatest fault. Thus we hear how ‘shallow’ he is for not seeing her ‘inner beauty’. We are scolded for being ‘superficial’ and ridiculed as being unevolved troglodytes for those men with still enough testosterone to overtly say they’re looking for the most attractive woman they can get.

“It’s what’s on the inside that counts”, or “Beauty is only skin deep” has been the Disney mantra of westernized romanticism and ‘courtly love’ since the Renaissance. And why not? It works in a woman’s biological favor to breed with the male gifted with not only the best genes, but also the best ability to provide for her security and that of her offspring. What better social dictum than one that shames him for recognizing his one condition for intimacy while simultaneously giving her the advantage of better selection when she doesn’t measure up to what his standards would biologically be his preference? Human beings have many social practices that have the latent purpose of thwarting our evolved, biological best interests; this is one of them.



Just as a side note here, I should point out that the two most common reasons cited for divorce in western culture are sex and money, and in that order. Men most commonly complain that their wives are no longer in the shape that they were when they met and women generally complain of reasons relating to his ambition and economic status.

Every married man I’ve known has always expressed feelings that his wife isn’t as sexually available – in frequency or intensity (i.e. passion/desire) in comparisson to when they first encountered each other. Generally this is due to her “letting herself go” after marriage or childbirth and she no longer ‘feels sexy’ so sex becomes less important to her or worse still, it takes the status of becoming another ‘household chore’ to add to her list. This then becomes a vicious cycle; she’s let herself go, sex decreases in importance to her and she makes little attempt to, or has no time to take care of herself physically as she did in her youth when she had a prime motivation to maintain herself in peak physical shape (or as close as she could). Add to this the psycho-social dynamic that stresses that men ought not to be so concerned with the physical or place such importance upon sex, and goes as far as to shame him as a ‘deviant’ if he is unwilling to internalize and accept this. Her lack of desire is characterized as HIS problem.



He of course feels cheated and goes through the frustrating internal turmoil of dealing with a social dynamic that tells him he’s ‘bad’ for recognizing his wife is no longer the woman he married. This is the ‘bait & switch’. Her sex drive and physical condition is more than acceptable during courtship and pre-marital relations, but after the marriage he feels he got a raw deal and is powerless to even mention that she ought to take better care of herself for fear of driving that psychological wedge between them that the dynamic of ‘loving her for what she is and not her physical form’ dictates. Essentially he is stripped of his one condition for intimacy while her conditions remain and are even more pronounced in light of the responsibilities he assumes in marriage or an LTR.

How important does the role of attraction play in a relationship? The funniest thing is you can apply the same idea to women with regards to a man’s level of success. If a guy cheats on his girlfriend or wife after she ‘lets herself go’ and puts on 20 extra pounds he’s called ‘shallow’, yet if a woman, hypergamously, leaves a guy who’s out of work and/or lacks a certain level of ambition she’s just ‘being prudent’. That said, the definition of what is ‘shallow’ is generally defined by women. It’s a man’s biological imperative to mate with as many fit and attractive females, while it’s a woman’s imperative to choose the male who is best capable of providing her with security and by default to ultimately share in parental investment. But, feminized (not feminist) society calls a man shallow and a woman wise for accepting the roles nature has dealt for them. So it’s my advice that we stop accepting this epithet of ‘shallow’ as some kind of punishment for simply being a man.

In terms of life investments and capitalizing upon opportunity and ambition, men have FAR too much on the line in the long term NOT to be concerned with demanding the highest standard from a woman for an investment that goes beyond anything she could hope to genuinely appreciate or match by other means. It’s really up to you to make the judgement call, but by no means should you allow accusations of superficiality influence your decisions in which woman you ‘should’ find attractive. As a Man, you are well within your rights to expect a maintained physique from a woman, considering the far greater sacrifices she expects from you. Would you leave her if she got fat? Damn right you would. Would she leave you if you went beta-listless-unemployed-alcoholic? Damn right she would.

Shacking Up

Iron Rule of Tomassi #4
NEVER under any circumstance live with a woman you aren’t married to or are not planning to marry in within 6 months.

You are utterly powerless in this situation. NEVER buy a home with a girlfriend, NEVER sign a rental lease with a girlfriend. NEVER agree to move into her home and absolutely NEVER move a woman into your own established living arrangement. I’m adamantly opposed to the “shacking up” dynamic, it is a trap that far too many men allow themselves to fall into. My fervor against this isn’t based on some moral issue, it is simple pragmatism. If you live with a woman you may as well be married because upon doing so every liability and accountability of marriage is then in effect. You not only lose any freedom of anonymity, you commit to, legally, being responsible for the continuation of your living arrangements regardless of how your relationship decays.

I should also emphasize the point that when you commit (and it is a financial commitment) to cohabiting with a GF you will notice a marked decrease in her sexual availability and desire. The single most common complaint related to me in regards to how to reignite a woman’s desire comes as the result of the guy having moved into a living arrangement with his LTR. All of that competitive anxiety and it’s resulting sexual tension that made your single sex life so great is removed from her shoulders and she can comfortably relax in the knowledge that she is your ONLY source of sexual intimacy. Putting your name on that lease with her (even if it’s just your name) is akin to signing an insurance policy for her –

“I the undersigned promise not to fuck any woman but this girl for a one year term.”

She thinks, “if he wasn’t serious about me, he wouldn’t have signed the lease.” Now all of that impetus and energy that made having marathon sex with you an outright necessity is relaxed. She controls the frame and she’s got it in writing that it is for at least a year.

Just don’t do it. Relationships last best when you spin more plates or at the very least keep each other at arm’s distance.

There was a time when the hip, counter-culture thing to do was flip the establishment the bird and cohabit with a girlfriend, sans the marriage contract. In the swinging post-sexual-revolution 70’s, feminism was more than happy to encourage the idea until it ran into the problem of making men financially accountable for all the “free milk” the cows were giving away. However, that not withstanding, there’s still a kind of a lingering after effect feeling about “living together” that seems like a good idea to guys to this day.

Of all the reasonable excuses I’ve heard for men wanting to cohabit with their girlfriends, the most common is that they did so for financial reasons. He (or she) needed a roommate and why not one that they enjoy fucking? That’s the cover story, but underneath it there’s the semiconscious understanding that it would be far more convenient to have a continuous flow of pussy as part of the utilities, uninterrupted by the formalities of having to go on dates or drive somewhere to get it. I can’t say that, on the surface, this doesn’t make perfect sense. Leave it a man to find the most pragmatic solution to his problem. However, as with most things woman, what seems like the most deductive solution is often a cleverly disguised trap.

Shacking up, just as in marriage, affords a woman a reasonable sense of comfort. It becomes at least a marginal shelter from the competition anxiety that she had to endure while living on her own and dating a guy who still had at least the perceived option to be unpredictable. Not so in the quasi-marriage that living together dictates. And it’s just this sense of predictability that allows her to relax into familiarity, and later, into dictating the terms of her own intimacy. In other words, she’s in the perfect position to ration her sexuality; to negotiate the terms of her desire in exchange for a living arrangement.

By the same reasoning, most AFCs view cohabiting as an ideal arrangement. Few of them really have the real options, much less the will to experiment exercising them, to see shacking up as anything but a great way of exiting the SMP, limiting potential rejection, and locking down a consistent supply of pussy. Men who are spinning plates, men with options, men with ambition, rarely see cohabiting as anything but a limiting hinderance on their lives. On some level of consciousness women understand this dynamic; guys with options (the Alphas they’d prefer) wouldn’t consider cohabitation. So when a man agrees to, or suggests living together it impresses her with two things – either he’s an Alpha who she’s won over so completely that he’s ready to commit to exclusivity with her, or he’s a beta with no better propositions than to settle into living with what he believes is his ‘sure thing’. What’s jarring for a woman is that she may start her living arrangement thinking she’s found the elusive Alpha ready to commit, only to later find he was just a clever beta who reverts back into his former, comfortable, AFC self after they sign the lease agreement.

Now all that said, what makes more sense? To live independently and enjoy the options to live unhindered with a live-in girlfriend, or move her in and have to deal with her every waking moment? Moving in with a woman implies commitment, and whenever you commit to anything you lose your two most valuable resources, options and the ability to maneuver.

Dijo sin hablando

Dijo sin hablando – Told without speaking.

Communicate with your behavior. Never overtly tell a woman anything. Allow her to come to the conclusions you intend. Her imagination is the best tool in your Game toolbox. Learn how to use it.

This is the single greatest failing of average frustrated chumps: they vomit out everything about themselves, divulging the full truth of themselves to women in the mistaken belief that women desire that truth as a basis for qualifying for their intimacy or enduring commitment. Learn this now:

Women NEVER want full disclosure.

Nothing is more self-satisfying for a woman than to think she’s figured a Man out based solely on her mythical feminine intuition (i.e. imagination). When you blurt out your ‘feelings’ or overtly make known your optionless status, regardless of the context or the nobility of your intent, all you do is deny her this satisfaction. And like an easily distracted child she discards you for another, more entertaining, toy that holds some kind of mystery or puzzle for her figure out.

Always remember, women care less about the content of what’s being communicated and more about the context (the how) of what’s being communicated. Never buy the lie that good communication is the key to a good relationship with out considering how and what you communicate. Women are naturally solipsistic. Your ‘feelings’ aren’t important to her until you make them important to her.

Despite what any pop-psychologist has ingrained into you, communication is NOT the key to success in an LTR. It’s what and how it’s communicated that is. It seems counterintuitive to deliberately withhold information that you think would solve whatever problem you have. Every touchy-feely therapist will tell you to open up and express yourself, but all that leads to is the negotiation of desire and the disingenuous obligations based on those terms. You cannot ‘tell’ women anything, they must be led to your conclusion and be made to think that they are the ones coming to it with their own devices – preferably by way of her imagined feminine intuition. How you effect this is subject to your own situation with your LTR or your prospective woman, but understand that internalizing the idea that she can be made to understand your perspective indirectly is the first step in ‘real’ communication. Indirect communication is the foundation of effective Game.

Dijo sin hablando – Told without speaking.