HELP! I fucked up big time and I want her back! How do I get her back?
Easily one of the most common questions I’ve fielded at SoSuave over the past 7 years has been some variation of “how do I get her back?” It’s common for a reason; at some stage of life every guy believes that rejection is worse than regret. Lord knows I tried to recover an old lover or two in my own past. Whether due to infidelity on her part, your own or a regression back beta after initiating an LTR, there is one Iron Rule you should always refer back to:
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.
Even if you could go back to where you were, any relationship you might have with an ex will be colored by all of the issues that led up to the breakup. In other words, you know what the end result of those issues has been. It will always be the 800 pound. gorilla in the room in any future relationship. As I elaborated in the Desire Dynamic, healthy relationships are founded on genuine mutual desire, not a list of negotiated terms and obligations, and this is, by definition, exactly what any post-breakup relationship necessitates. You or she may promise to never do something again, you may promise to “rebuild the trust”, you may promise to be someone else, but you cannot promise to accept that the issues leading up to the breakup don’t have the potential to dissolve it again. The doubt is there. You may be married for 30 years, but there will always be that one time when you two broke up, or she fucked that other guy, and everything you think you’ve built with her over the years will always be compromised by that doubt of her desire.
You will never escape her impression that you were so optionless you had to beg her to rekindle her intimacy with you.
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.
I hate the term ‘Mixed Signals’ or ‘Mixed Messages’. “I dunno man, she sending me mixed messages” is a common refrain among many a Blue Pill man.
More often than not there’s nothing ‘Mixed’ being communicated, rather it’s a failure (willful or not) to read what a woman is communicating to a man. The average guy tends to ‘get’ exactly what a woman has implied with her words, but it takes practice to read her behavior and then more practice in self-control to apply it to his own interpretation.
When a woman goes from hot to cold and back again, THIS IS the message — she’s got buyers remorse, you’re not her first priority, she’s deliberating between you and what she perceives is a better Hypergamous prospect, you were better looking when she was drunk, etc. — the message isn’t the ‘what ifs’, the message IS her own hesitation and how her behavior manifests it. 10 dates before sex? This IS the message. Canceling dates? Flaking? strong interest to weak interest? This IS the message.
Women with high interest level (IL) wont confuse you. When a woman wants to fuck you she’ll find a way to fuck you. If she’s fluctuating between being into you and then not, put her away for a while and spin other plates. If she sorts it out for herself and pursues you, then you are still playing in your frame and you maintain the value of your attention to her. It’s when you patiently while away your time wondering what the magic formula is that’ll bring her around, that’s when you lean over into her frame. You need her more than she needs you and she will dictate the terms of her attentions.
What most guys think are ‘mixed messages’ or confusing behavior coming from a woman is simply due to their inability (or refusal) to make an accurate interpretation of why she’s behaving in such a manner. Usually this boils down to a guy getting so wrapped up in a girl that he’d rather make concessions for her behavior than see it for what it really is. In other words, it’s far easier to call it ‘mixed messages’ or fall back on the old chestnut of how fickle and random women are, when in fact it’s simply a rationale to keep themselves on the hook, so to speak, because they lack any real, viable, options with other women in their lives. A woman that has a high IL in a guy has no need (and less motivation) to engage in behaviors that would compromise her status with him. Women of all ILs will test a man’s fitness (i.e. shit test), and men will pass or fail accordingly, but a test is more easily recognizable when you consider the context in which they’re delivered.
More often than not women tell the complete truth with their mannerisms and behaviors, they just communicate it in a fashion that men can’t or wont understand. As a behaviorist, I’m a firm believer in the psychological principal that the only way to determine genuine motivation and/or intent is to observe the behavior of an individual. All one need do is compare behavior and the results of it to correlate intent.
A woman will communicate vast wealths of information and truths to a man if he’s only willing to accept her behavior, not exclusively her words, as the benchmark. He must also understand that the truth she betrays in her behavior is often not what he wants to accept.
We get frustrated because women communicate differently than we do. Women communicate covertly, men communicate overtly. Men convey information, women convey feeling. Men prioritize content and information, women prioritize context and feeling when they communicate. One of the great obfuscations fostered by feminization in the last quarter-century is this expectation that women are every bit as rational and inclined to analytical problem solving as men. It’s the result of an equalist mentality that misguides men into believing that women communicate no differently than men. That’s not to discount women learning to be problem solvers in their own right, but it flies in the face how women set about a specifically feminine form of communication. Scientific study after study illustrating the natural capacity women have for exceptionally complex forms of communication (to the point of proving their neural pathways are wired differently) are proudly waved in by a feminized media as proof of women’s innate merits. Yet as men, we’re expected to accept that she “means what she says, and she says what she means.”
More than a few women like to wear this as a badge of some kind of superiority, however it doesn’t necessarily mean that what they communicate is more important, or how they communicate it is more efficient, just that they have a greater capacity to understand nuances of communication better than do men. One of the easiest illustrations of this generational gender switch is to observe the communication methods of the “strong” women the media portray in popular fiction today. How do we know she’s a strong woman? The first cue is she communicates in an overt, information centered, masculine manner.
You don’t need to be psychic to understand women’s covert communication, you need to be observant. This often requires a patience that most men simply don’t have, so they write women off as duplicitous, fickle or conniving if the name fits. Even to the Men that are observant enough, and take the needed mental notes to really see it going on around them, it seems very inefficient and irrational. And why wouldn’t it? We’re Men. Our communications are (generally) information based, deductive and rational, that’s Men’s overt communication. Blunt, to the point, solve the problem and move on to the next. Feminine communication seems insane, it is a highly dysfunctional form of communication….,to be more specific, it’s a childish form of communication. This is what children do! They say one thing and do another. they throw temper tantrums. They react emotionally to everything. Yes, they do. And more often than not, they get what they’re really after — attention. Women are crazy, but it’s a calculated crazy.
Covert communication frustrates us every bit as much as overt communication frustrates women. Our language has no art to it for them, that’s why we seem dumb or simple at best to women. We filter for information to work from, not the subtle details that make communication enjoyable for women. This is the same reason we think of feminine communication as being obfuscating, confusing, even random. The difference is that our confusion and frustration is put to their ultimate use. So long as women remain unknowable, random, irrational creatures that men can’t hope to understand (but can always excuse), they can operate unhindered towards their goals. “Silly boy, you’ll never understand women, just give up” is exactly the M.O. Once you accept this, she’s earned a lifetime of get-out-of-jail-free cards. The myth of the ‘Feminine Mystique’ and a woman’s prerogative (to change her mind) is entirely dependent upon this covert communication.
Now as Men we’ll say, “Evil, immoral, manipulative woman! Shape up and do the right thing, saying one thing then doing another makes you a hypocrite!” and of course this is our rational nature overtly making itself heard and exposing a woman’s covert communication. An appeal to morality, that’ll get her, but,..it doesn’t.
This is because women instinctively know that their sexuality is their first, best agency, and covert communication is the best method to utilize it. Appeals to morality only work in her favor, because all she need do is agree with a Man’s overt assessment of her and suddenly he thinks he’s ‘getting through to her’. As Men, we have become so conditioned by the Feminine Mystique to expect a woman to be duplicitous with us that when she suddenly leans into masculine communication forms and resorts to our own, overt communication method and agrees with us, it seems she’s had an epiphany, or a moment of clarity. “Wow, this one’s really special, ‘high quality’, and seems to get it.” That is, so long as it suits her conditions to do so. When it doesn’t, the Feminine Mystique is there to explain it all away.
Have you ever been in a social setting, maybe a party or something, with a girlfriend or even a woman you may be dating and seemingly out of the blue she says to you privately, “ooh, did you see the dirty look that bitch just gave me?!” You were right there in her physical presence, saw the girl she was talking about, yet didn’t register a thing. Women’s natural preference for covert communication is recognizable by as early as five years old. They prefer to fight in the psychological, whereas boys fight in the physical.
Within their own peer group, little girls fight for dominance with the threat of ostracization from the group. “I wont be your friend anymore if,..” is just as much a threat to a girl as “I’m gonna punch you in the face if,..” is to a boy. This dynamic becomes much more complex as girls enter puberty, adolescence and adulthood, yet they still use the same psychological mode of combat as adults. Their covert way of communicating this using innuendo, body language, appearance, sub-communications, gestures, etc. conveys far more information than our overt, all on the table, way of communicating does. It may seem more efficient to us as Men, but our method doesn’t satisfy the same purpose.
Women enjoy the communication more than the information being transferred. It’s not a problem to be solved, it’s the communication that’s primary. When a chump supplies her with everything all at once we think, yeah, the mystery is gone, he’s not a challenge anymore, why would she be interested? This is true, but the reason that intrigue is gone is because there’s no more potential for stimulating that need for communication or her imagination. Too many men buy into the lie that ‘open communication’ is the key to a good relationship and do an ‘information dump’ believing their wives or girlfriends will appreciate it. In doing so a man denies his woman the satisfaction of communicating in teasing out the information.
Nothing is more self-satisfying for a woman than for her to believe she’s figured a man out by using her mythical ‘feminine intuition’. This intuition is really just a name given to her preferred form of communication.
Lastly, I should add that women are not above using overt communication when it serves their purposes. When a woman comes out and says something in such a fashion so as to leave no margin for misinterpretation, you can bet she’s been pushed to that point out of either fear or sheer exasperation when her covert methods wont work.
“Can’t we just be friends?” is a covert rejection, “Get away from me you creep!!” is an overt rejection. When a woman opts for the overt, rest assured, she’s out of covert ideas and knows she must use men’s form of communication. This is an easy example of this, but when a woman cries on you, screams at you, or issues an ultimatum to you she is self-acknowledging that she is powerless to the point of having to come over to your way of communicating.
Likewise, men can and do master the art of covert communications as well. Great politicians, military generals, businessmen, salesmen to be sure, and of course master pickup artists all use covert communications to achieve their goals. It’s incorrect to think of covert communication as inherently dishonest or amoral, or even in a moral context. It’s a means to an end, just as overt communication is a means to an end, and that end whether decided by men or women is what’s ethical or unethical. The medium is the message.
Below is a response I gave to a guy I was counseling and I thought it sufficiently insightfull to post here in regards to a pretty common topic that comes up here. I think you’ll agree.
Rollo, is it possible to identify with women without compromising yourself?
If it is a conscious effort on the guy’s part, no.
You bring up a good topic though, obviously when I refer to ‘identifying’ with a woman, this could use some explanation. What exactly is ‘identifying’ with a woman? The root of this word is ‘identity’, meaning who you are and what characteristics, traits and interests constitute your individual personality. ‘Identity’, in a way, is a pretty subjective and esoteric term – kind of like trying to define what art is – it can be argued that ‘identity’ is what you make of it. While at university, my field of specialization in behavioral psychology was personality studies, and I can tell you there are a lot of theories and interpretations of what constitutes identity. However, one article that is agreed upon almost universally is that identity and personality are never static and are malable and changeable by influencing variables and conditions. A very pronounced illustration of this would be soldiers retuning from combat with post traumatic stress disorder, a very identifiable and verifiable form of psychosis. These men are changed individuals and their identities are altered from the time they were subject to the psychological rigors of warfare to returning back to a normalized life. Some have the resiliencne to adjust their personalities back to a somewhat norlamized state, others sadly do not. Yet in each case the change was influenced by conditions and environment.
Likewise, most young men are subject to their own set of personal conditions and environments, and their personalities and identities reflect this accordingly. The guy who’s naturally “lucky with the ladies” is going to reflect this in his identity. The young man who doesn’t receive regular female attention for whatever reasons is going to manifest this condition in his identity. The guy who is focused on his own ambitions is going to reflect this in his own personality as well, but for all, when conditions are such that they feel deprived of certain experiences in their own life, this creates a conflict between a former identity and the altering of, or forming of a new one to meet the need for this experience. Couple this with the natural chemical/hormonal deisire for sexual experience and you can see how powerful an influence deprivation becomes.
Far too many young men maintain the notion that for them to receive the female intimacy they desire they should necessarily become more like the target of their affection in their own personality. In essence, to mold their own identify to better match the girl they think will best satisfy this need. So we see examples of men compromising their self-interests to better accomodate the interests of the woman they desire to facilitate this need for intimacy (i.e. sex). We all know the old adage women are all too aware of, “Guys will do anything to get laid” and this is certainly not limited to altering their individual identities and even conditions to better facilitate this. It’s all too common an example to see men select a college based on the available women at that college rather than academic merit to fit their own ambitions or even choose a college to better maintain a pre-existing relationship that a woman has chosen and the young man follows. In order to justify these choices he will alter his identity and personality by creating rationales and new mental schema to validate this ‘decision’ for himself. It becomes an ego protection for a decision he, on some level, knows was made for him.
This is just one glaring example of this identification, but thousands more subtle ones exist that men (and women) pass off as social mores and contrivances. The guy stuck in the ‘Friend Zone’ who got the LJBF (“lets just be freinds”) line when he attempted to become intimate with his target, will happily listen to her drone on for hours on the phone in order to find out how better to alter himself to fit her conditions for intimate acceptability. He will readily “change his mind” about even his own personal beliefs if it will better fit what he perceives as her criteria for compatibility with her. This is the compromise of identity – to fundamentally and voluntarily alter one’s own personality to achieve the acceptability of another. When we are directly and overtly faced with this sort of challenge to our beliefs we naturally recoil – you are your own person and would resist were your employer or parents to tell you how you should vote (political belief), but when it comes to personality and sexual/intimacy interests, and done voluntarily it’s suprising to see the limits of what men (and to an extent women) will do. Men will entertain the idea that a long distance relationship (LDR) is a desirable arrangement even if intimacy has never occured because the potential of that intimacy is perceived. These same guys will espouse every reasoning they can conceive as to why their “relationship is different” and that they ‘believe’ that “love conquers all” only to come full circle when he or she ‘cheats’ or breaks off the relation and the man comes back to his prior (though he thinks new) understanding that LDRs are in fact a bad prospect. His identity changed and then changed again to accomodate his conditions.
However, it’s not that he never truly changed or had the belief in the first place. Were these guys to take a polygraph test at the time they would indeed pass when asked if this was what they actually accepted as truth. Men will do what most deductively solves a problem and in this he is only following the tenants of pragmatism. “I need sex + women have the sex I want + I must discover what women want to give me sex + ask women + women want X = I will do X to get sex and alter my own identity in order to better facilitate X.” It should be this easy, but that’s rarely the case since more often than not women are unaware of what X really is, or X is subject to constant change depending on her own conditions.
Now, after all of this, is it possible that a man and a woman may in fact share genuine common interests? Of course. You may indeed find a perfectly beautiful woman that enjoys Nascar or Hockey as much as you. You may find a woman you’re attracted to who genuinely shares your passion for deep sea fishing. It’s not uncommon to share common interests, it’s when you alter your interest to better facilitate a connection that you force it. Making this determination of genuine interests and created interests is the hair that needs splitting. I’ve personally counseled guys who have literally changed careers to be in a better place to proposition a girl they fancied. I know men who’ve moved thousands of miles to live closer to women who’ve never reciprocated their interest in them, yet they continued to attempt to identify themselves with her. I know 65 year old men in 40 year marriages, who even after intimacy was resolved years ago with the woman, are still attempting to identify with their wives because they’ve internalized this identity compromise as a standard means to getting sex from her. Her expectations of him have become his identity and at 65 this mental schema has become so ego-invested that no amount of shedding light on his conditions will ever convince him anything to the opposite.
The most ironic thing about this ‘Identity Crisis’ is that the least attractive thing to most women is a man who is willing to compromise any part of his identity to placate to her, much less a wholesale sell out of it. Women are naturally attracted to that masculine independence as it represents a very strong cue of security and the potential to provide that security to her (and any children she may have). Women don’t want a man who’ll “do everything she says” because this sends the message that this man can be bought with even the prospect of a sexual encounter. Why would that indicate anything more than insecurity and a lack of confidence? Women want to be told “No”, and constantly test a man’s resolve to say this to her (i.e. shit testing) in order to affirm that she’s made the right choice (even in marriage) of a guy who’ll put his sexual impulse (knowing full-well how powerful it is with men) on hold to hold fast to his own self-interest, beliefs and ambitions. It covertly communicates to a woman that his goals and determination trump her one power over him – her sexuality. That is the man who is the PRIZE, the ‘great catch’, the male to be competed for with other women.
Before I launch into this proper, let me define a few terms in the fashion that I interpret them. With the popularity of Roissy’s blog and a few notable others, there’s been a new push with regards to using the terms Alpha and Beta (and sometimes Omega) when describing certain classifications of males in modern culture. Allow me to go on record as viewing these ideas as mindsets whereas terms such as AFC or DJ are really states of being. For instance, an Alpha can still be an AFC (called a ‘paper alpha’) with regards to women. A Beta male can still be as wealthy and astute in status as his conditions and fortune have placed him in (often by circumstance). Some states necessitate certain mindsets – a positive masculine state requires an Alpha mindset as a requirement – others do not. Also, don’t make the mistake of associating success (personal and career) with an Alpha mindset. There are plenty of Alphas on hotchickswithdouchebags.com, however that doesn’t necessarily make them well rounded individuals. I tend to think of the ideas Alpha and Beta as subconscious energies or attitudes that manifest themselves in our thoughts, beliefs and actions.
Beta Game
Alright now, with this in mind I’d like to propose the idea of Beta Game. Since we’re using the Alpha and Beta terminology here, it’s important to grasp where it comes from. Anyone with even a cursory understanding about animal social hierarchies knows the principal of Alpha and Beta individuals within a social collective. Alphas tend to be the males who exhibit the best genetic characteristics and behavioral skills that put them at the top of the potential breeding pool. In fact Betas are rarely mentioned as such in scientific studies; the Beta term, in PUA lingo is really something of a novelty. Relating these terms to human social interactions, while at times a subjective stretch, isn’t to hard to find parallels in. We can see the similarity, and the applications in long term and short term breeding methodologies that mirror our own.
Like any other Beta animal, alternate methodologies had to be developed in order to facilitate human breeding under the harsh conditions of Alpha competition. In essence, and as found in the wild, Beta males have developed (evolved?) methods which attempt to ‘poach’ potential females from an Alpha’s harem, or at least in this case his perceived, potential harem.
Identification
Beta male game focuses primarily on identifying and assimilating themselves to be more like the women they hope to connect with, but it goes further than this. The methodology dictates that the Beta be perceived as being unique (or at least set apart) from the more “common” Alpha males whom his desired women naturally prefer. This is the beginning of the “not-like-other-guys” mental schema he hopes to evoke in his idealized woman.
Due to his inability to compete with an Alpha competitor in the physical, he must fight a psychological battle on his own terms. This involves convincing his target that her best parental investment should be with him (as per her stated requirements) as he more closely embodies her long term prerequisites. The Beta likens himself to her (and women in general) in an effort to maximize his compatibility and familiarity with her and the feminine.
This identification process is then further reinforced through the feminine social conventions he subscribes to. Feminine society (both beta men and women) rewards him for more closely assimilating its ideal – be more like an archetypal woman; sensitive, empathic, emotional, security-seeking, etc.. And not only this, but take de facto feminine offense when presented with anything to the contrary of a female-positive perspective. Lift women up, become less so they become more, and in reciprocation she’s more apt to breed with the Beta.
That’s the principle, not necessarily the reality. In some ways it’s a Cap’n Save a Ho mentality written on a grand scale. The fallacy in this of course is that like should attract like. They fail to understand that opposites attract, and most women don’t want to marry other women, least of all a carbon copy of herself.
Disqualification
When presented with a competitor of superior status, both sex’s innate, subconscious reaction is to disqualify that competitor from breeding in as expedient a method as possible. For animals this usually involves some kind of courtship performance or outright competitive hostility. And while the same could be said for human beings, our natural social impulse requires we take a bit more tact. “Look at that girl, she must be a slut to wear / act like that”, or “Yeah, he’s pretty good looking, but guys like that are usually fags” are an example of the standard social weapons people use to disqualify their respective sex. Disqualify the competitor on the most base level – question their sexuality. Literally cast doubt on competitor’s sexual fitness to breed with potential mates.
While most men (Alpha or Beta) will make similar attempts to disqualify, the Beta’s methodology ties back into his need for feminine identification in his disqualifying a competitor. Essentially he relies on feminine ways of disqualification by drawing upon his likeness to the women he hopes to emulate (thus furthering potential attraction as he thinks). The competitor may not be gay, but he must be cast as inferior to himself due to his competitor’s inability (or lessened ability) to identify and empathize with his desired female.
With Alpha competitors, the field has already been plowed for him by feminine social conventions, all he need do is plant the seeds. The fact that the Alpha tends to embody the masculine opposite of what he’s embraced also feeds this drive. Women aren’t attracted to the macho tough guy, they want a man who’s kind and thoughtful; a good listener. So the natural recourse is to amplify this disparity – he’s a 1950’s neanderthal throwback, he’s “bitter”, he’s a misogynist, he’s a child in a man’s body with a fragile ego only interested in fucking women and moving on. He’s unlike anything on women’s collective stated list of prerequisites for an acceptable male. He must be ridiculed – as all women ridicule – for his selfish hyper-masculinity.
Furthermore, the Beta needs to make the Alpha seem common, while making himself seem unique. In order to effectively AMOG an Alpha, the Beta has to show his empathy for the feminine, and she must appreciate it or it’s been all for nothing (which it usually is). Not only is this an ego preservation mechanism, but it’s also perceived as a tool for achieving the desired sexual reciprocation / appreciation he desires.
Interpretation
All of this really just scratches the surface of how Beta game has evolved. I’m sure there’ll be more input as to different methods that Betas use to facilitate breeding – sexual fetishes / preferences come to mind. I will add though that all of these methods come back to a common root; the need to breed under the duress of competition. Most of what I’ve gone into here, and primarily the feminine identity association, become ego-invested and internalized over the course of a lifetime. It gets to the point that under the auspices of relative anonymity (like the internet) that the Beta will still cling to his mental model, even in the face of very rational, empirical evidence to the contrary, for no other reason than that a woman, a potential mate with whom he could identify, might read his post and may become attracted to him. The Game is never dropped for him, even in light of proving his errors. Beta game is like the boy who decides to play on the girls team when a boys vs. girls kick ball game is started. He thinks it will endear himself to them, when all it really does is make him another girlfriend to giggle with.
Everyone has a Game in some respect. We don’t live in a vacuum, our ideas about seduction (in whatever form) is influenced and / or learned externally. The validity of that Game may be more or less effective, but at some point a man is going to adapt to a methodology of seduction as per his conditions and environment warrant. Even mPUAs still need to adapt their Game for differing environments – different clubs, types of women, socio-economic levels, countries, etc. – there needs to be adaptation and improvisation. The same applies for Betas, but the disparity is that the Beta tends to think of a one size fits all approach. For all the complaints of worry about the Game community turning into scripted ‘social robots’, it’s actually the Beta who adopts a far more embedded script and is less likely to variate from it. Betas tend to stick with what worked for them, what was reinforced for them, in the past.
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.
Think of the best musician you can think of now. I’m a guitarist myself so I’m going to throw out some old school shredder’s names like EVH, George Lynch, Nuno Bettancourt, but you might think Jimmy Page or B.B. King, or maybe Andre Segovia really kick ass.
When you listen to a virtuoso – a guy so good he makes his talent seem effortless – you’re not listening to just him, you’re listening to all the musicians who influenced him, who inspired him, to become the musician he is now. You’re essentially listening to (or at least variations of) the riffs, licks, arpeggios, melodic stylings, etc. of all the musicians that came before him to which, out of passion, he was inspired to commit to memory.
It’s important to remember, when you hear a great guitarist that his ‘improvised’ guitar licks are still built upon a solid base of a series of learned patterns that harmonize within a given key of music.
A good musician practices his scales, and learns the runs of the guys who influenced him, note for note until they’re subconscious, then he can improvise with them. Likewise a good player caters his learned approaches to the tune of the woman and the environment.
Many critics of Game fail to understand what the ‘A’ stands for in PUA – “artist”. If it seems like a forced script to you, that’s because you haven’t practiced it enough to become a fluent ‘social artist’. Rote memorization of any subject is never conducive to actual internalized learning. All of the subroutines and “canned material” do in fact have a teaching purpose, but it will never seem ‘real’ for you until you understand that they are simply teaching tools to help a greater learning of an internalized Game.
This is why it’s seemingly easy for critics outside the community sphere to ridicule Game; it all seems like laughable parlor tricks and 70’s disco club pick up lines repackaged for the 21st century. All they see is the ‘how to play guitar’ book and the practice tablature intended to teach the skills needed to play the instrument. They don’t (refuse to?) see the jump between the practice and the learning, to the internalized skill, that to everyone else seems like a natural, enviable, ability. Even the guitarists who never create an original piece of music, but play cover songs so well they can play professionally are still equated with have an effortless skill.
ONEitis is paralysis. You cease to mature, you cease to move, you cease to be you.
There is no ONE. This is the soulmate myth. There are some good Ones and some bad Ones, but there is no ONE. Anyone telling you anything else is selling you something. There are LOTS of ‘special someones’ out there for you, just ask the divorced/widowed person who’s remarried after their “soulmate” has died or moved on.
This is what trips people up about the soul-mate myth, it is this fantasy that we all at least in some way share an idealization of – that there is ONE perfect mate for each of us, and as soon as the planets align and fate takes it’s course we’ll know that we’re ‘intended’ for each other. And while this may make for a gratifying romantic comedy plot, it’s hardly a realistic way to plan your life. In fact it’s usually paralyzing.
What I find even more fascinating is how common the idea is (mostly for guys) that a nuts & bolts view of life should be trumped by this fantasy in the area of inter-sexual relationships. Guys who would otherwise recognize the value of understanding psychology, biology, sociology, evolution, business, engineering, etc. and the interplay we see these take place in our lives on a daily basis, are some of the first guys to become violently opposed to the idea that maybe there isn’t ‘someone for everyone’ or that there are a lot more ONEs out there that could meet or exceed the criteria we subconsciously set for them to be the ONE. I think it comes off as nihilistic or this dread that maybe their ego investment in this belief is false- it’s like saying God is dead to the deeply religious. It’s just too terrible to contemplate that there maybe no ONE or there maybe several ONEs to spend their lives with. This western romanticized mythology is based on the premise that there is only ONE perfect mate for any single individual and as much as a lifetime can and should be spent in constant search of this ‘soulmate.’ So strong and so pervasive is this myth in our collective society that it has become akin to a religious statement and in fact has been integrated into many religious doctrines as feminization of western culture has spread.
I think there’s been a mischaracterization of ONEitis. It’s necessary to differentiate between a healthy relationship based on mutual respect and a lopsided ONEitis based relationship. I’ve had more than a few guys seeking my advice, or challenging my take on ONEitis, essentially ask me for permission to accept ONEitis as legitimate monogamy. In my estimation ONEitis is an unhealthy psychological dependency that is the direct result of the continuous socialization of the soulmate myth in pop culture. What’s truly frightening is that ONEitis has become associated with being a healthy normative aspect of an LTR or marriage.
I come to the conclusion that ONEitis is based in sociological roots, not only due to it being a statement of personal belief, but by the degree to which this ideology is disseminated and mass marketed in popular culture through media, music, literature, movies, etc. Dating services like eHarmony shamelessly marketeer and exploit exactly the insecurities that this dynamic engenders in people desperately searching for the ONE “they were intended for.” The idea that men possess a natural capacity for protection, provisioning and monogamy has merit from both a social and bio-psychological standpoint, but a ONEitis psychosis is not a byproduct of it. Rather, I would set it apart from this healthy protector/provider dynamic since ONEitis essentially sabotages what our natural propensities would otherwise filter.
ONEitis is insecurity run amok while a person is single, and potentially paralyzing when coupled with the object of that ONEitis in an LTR. The same neurotic desperation that drives a person to settle for their ONE whether healthy or unhealthy is the same insecurity that paralyzes them from abandoning a damaging relationship – This is their ONE and how could they ever live without them? Or, they’re my ONE, but all I need is to fix myself or fix them to have my idealized relationship. And this idealization of a relationship is at the root of ONEitis. With such a limiting, all-or-nothing binary approach to searching for ONE needle in the haystack, and investing emotional effort over the course of a lifetime, how do we mature into a healthy understanding of what that relationship should really entail? The very pollyanna, idealized relationship – the “happily ever after” – that belief in a ONE promotes as an ultimate end, is thwarted and contradicted by the costs of the constant pursuit of the ONE for which they’ll settle for. After the better part of a lifetime is invested in this ideology, how much more difficult will it be to come to the realization that the person they’re with isn’t their ONE? To what extents will a person go to in order to protect a lifetime of this ego investment?
At some point in a ONEitis relationship one participant will establish dominance based on the powerlessness that this ONEitis necessitates. There is no greater agency for a woman than to know beyond doubt that she is the only source of a man’s need for sex and intimacy. ONEitis only cements this into the understanding of both parties. For a man who believes that the emotionally and psychologically damaging relationship he has ego-invested himself is with the only person in his lifetime he’s ever going to be compatible with, there is nothing more paralyzing in his maturation. The same of course holds true for women, and this is why we shake our heads when the beautiful HB 9 goes chasing back to her abusive and indifferent Jerk boyfriend, because she believes he is her ONE and the only source of security available to her. Hypergamy may be her root imperative for sticking with him, but it’s the soul-mate myth, the fear of the “ONE that got away” that makes for the emotional investment.
The definition of Power is not financial success, status or influence over others, but the degree to which we have control over our own lives. Subscribing to the soulmate mythology necessitates that we recognize powerlessness in this arena of our lives. Better I think it would be to foster a healthy understanding that there is no ONE. There are some good Ones and there are some bad Ones, but there is no ONE.
