genuine desire

The Mystery of the Red Dress

Today’s quote is from the Biography of Steve Jobs. I did read the book in its entirety in 2010, but recently had this bit sent to me from a reader as an example of ‘How an Alpha should treat a Gold-digger‘. Mmm? No.

As an example of “alpha behavior” or an illustration of equal justice I can see why this incident might be construed as such, but there’s a much more valuable lesson to be learned in this exchange. The incident took place between Steve Jobs and singer Joan Baez, a woman who Jobs eventually had a relationship with.

In 1982, Jobs was introduced to Joan Baez by her sister Mimi Farina. He was 27 and she was 41. “It turned into a serious relationship between two accidental friends who became lovers,” said Jobs. Some of his friends believed that one thing that drew Jobs to Baez was the fact that she used to date Bob Dylan. “Steve loved that connection to Dylan,” said Jobs’ college friend Elizabeth Holmes.” The relationship fizzled out when it became clear that Jobs wanted children and Baez did not. 

Rolling Stone, 2011

Using a Red Pill Lens on this situation, we see a few apparent truths. The age difference was definitely a factor, but Jobs was well-known for what was called his “Reality Distortion Bubble“. In effect Steve Jobs had an intrinsic understanding of himself as his Mental Point of Origin. A lot of Type-A personalities have this in common – they innately make themselves the first thought they have in virtually all decisions they make. For some this can border on sociopathy, but most people we consider successes or geniuses had this sense of self as their starting point. Let me make this clear, you don’t have to be a sociopath or a solipsist to make yourself your Mental Point of Origin, but that is where these states begin.

Practically every very wealthy man I’ve ever worked for, or with, had himself in mind before a thought was give to anyone else’s consideration in his decision making process; family, spouse, employees, friends, we’re subordinate to his Mental Point of Origin. For most the process would start and end with themselves and their interests. These were the sociopaths. For a few that process started with themselves and ended with the consideration of others, but the process was a pragmatic one that facilitated a maintaining of power balance. As I’ve said in the past, I’m a proponent of enlightened self interest: I cannot help others until I help myself. Nor can I help others as effectively as when I help myself first. It’s not that you ought to become a selfish prick – you should think of the interests of others – but only after you’ve considered yourself in the scope of your own interests and how your interests facilitate the interests of others.

Now that this is settled, let me say that by this metric, Steve Jobs was none of this. According to the people he worked with, his family and friends, Jobs had all the characteristics of a solipsist. Yes, men can be solipsists too, though it’s more of a learned process rather than the innate proclivity women have to be solipsistic. From a business perspective, from a single-minded determination perspective, Jobs was certainly an Alpha. His mindset was that of an Alpha. His relationship history, however, was grossly influenced by Blue Pill idealism. One commonality you’ll find among men we consider great innovators, inventors, discoverers and entrepreneurial geniuses is they are almost invariably Blue Pill idealists with respect to their romantic lives. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are two current examples of this commonality. Argue their greatness if you like, their personal lives are classic examples of what happens to the Nerd, the autist, the high IQ guy, who’s afforded the money and success to live out their Blue Pill fueled impression of what a relationship with a woman should be like. And predatory women, with the savvy to understand (and have the patience for) the nature of Beta men, make these guys their bread and butter.

“There’s a beautiful red dress there that would be perfect for you.”

I’m not sure I would describe Jobs as an autist, or being on the Asperger’s spectrum, but he was certainly on the sociopath spectrum. Try not to conflate ‘sociopath’ with something negative in this instance. Sociopathic behaviors and character attributes can equally be attractive survival traits as they are evidence of megalomaniacal tyranny. Sociopathy is really by order of degree. Jobs most certainly began and ended his thinking with himself in mind.

My Red Pill Lens read on this is as follows: Something in Steve Job’s subconscious was testing Joan Baez for genuine desire.

I’m fairly certain most of my readers will understand the ovulatory shift implications of a red dress being the item in mention here, but there is a method to Job’s madness in this.

“I said to myself, far out, I’m with one of the world’s richest men and he wants me to have this beautiful dress.”

Joan doesn’t get it from the start here. She presumes that a rich man would want to purchase her affections via the transaction of a gift. Not uncommon for even 41 year old women, and yes, her thinking here is exactly the solipsistic mental point of origin women have a natural default for. Indignant guys will call her a Gold Digger, which is accurate, but moreover you have to look at the process here. She presumes that rich men buy expensive gifts for the women they’re interested in. But in typical Jobs fashion Steve flips the script without knowing that’s what he’s doing.

When they get to the store Steve points out the dress and says, “You oughta buy it.” She looked a little surprised, said she couldn’t really afford it, he said nothing and they left.

“Wouldn’t you think if someone (a rich man) had talked like that the whole evening they were going to buy it for you?”

It would be easy to dismiss this part as default female entitlement, but remember this was 1982, and while women (particularly attractive and famous women) did expect things from well-to-do men, the entitlement levels weren’t anything like they are now. I think she was genuinely confused. She really didn’t get it.

“The mystery of the Red Dress is in your hands. I felt a bit strange about it.”

He would giver her computers, but not a dress, and when he brought her flowers he would be sure to say they were leftover from an event in the office.

“He was both romantic, and afraid to be romantic.”

This end part is Baez’s last attempt to explain why an ‘eccentric‘ rich man wouldn’t buy her a dress he thought she’d look good in. I’m often asked how to go about vetting a woman for a long term relationship, and I’ve written essays about how most men simply never actually have the luxury of holding (much less developing) standards by which to ‘vet‘ a woman’s commitment-worthiness. Most men are not rich men, most men are Betas. Fewer still have the sense of self-value, or the access to so many optional women, as to presume to test a woman’s interest in him in any meaningful sense. Steve Jobs was not a necessitous man, he had, or could easily realize options when he wanted to. But even though he was idealistic in a Blue Pill conditioned sense, his subconscious wanted something it couldn’t buy – genuine desire from Joan Baez.

It’s easy to dismiss the Red Dress Incident as just another quirky personality flaw of a borderline sociopath who didn’t have the Game or the social intelligence to know he was offending or turning off a girl he kind of liked. Indeed, Joan tries to insert her own pop-culture psychoanalysis of Steve in the end; He was afraid to be the romantic she just knew he wanted to be. I expect this kind of rationalization from women who miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to optimize Hypergamy. But what if Steve wasn’t afraid? What if it was a form of his shit testing Joan to determine her genuine desire for him?

As I said, most men don’t have the luxury to shit test women at all. For low SMV men, which is to say most men, the thought of experimenting with testing a woman for desire, much less long term suitability is never a consideration. Most guys can’t believe their luck that a woman actually expressed interest in him because they’ve lacked romantic options for most of their lives. So to consciously experiment with determining honest signals from a woman seems like tempting fate. The Thirst is such that most men would do damn near anything not to screw things up with a girl who’s showing interest in him. Just be thankful your ship’s finally come in, right?

I’ll add again here that most women, particularly in this social media era, are well aware that most men will never vet them for anything beyond baseline arousal and sexual availability. Thirst serves the Feminine Imperative very well, but what about men who are Blue Pill idealists, that can actually afford the options? Men for whom money and access are no object, but still persist in the fairytale the Blue Pill told them was possible?

What I see happening here is Jobs’ request for Baez to buy the dress for herself was a test of her genuine desire for him. Steve could’ve easily bought her the dress, even the whole store, but that wasn’t the point. What Steve wanted was for her to want to please him. His expressing a like for the dress was his subconscious testing her desire to please him.

“I think you’d look good in this; It’s perfect for you” isn’t an offer, it’s a request. Will you sacrifice something to please me? 41 year old Joan Baez, could’ve afforded the dress. Hell, Ralph Lauren would have probably given it to her. But she expected Steve to buy it for her; that was her expectation then and it was the source of her confusion right up to Jobs’ biography interview. Her affinity for Jobs was transactional, not based in genuine desire. She failed the test.

Whether subconsciously or by design Steve wanted what most well-conditioned Blue Pill men want today: a genuine connection with a woman based on genuine (preferably unmitigated) desire. The Desire Dynamic is synonymous with The Rational Male. You cannot negotiate genuine desire is a foundational principle of both my work and all Red Pill awareness that follows from it. Steve’s ego wouldn’t allow him to negotiate for Joan’s real desire. His Mental Point of Origin and marginally sociopathic nature wouldn’t conceive it. But consciously or unconsciously he would test her (and other women he was involved with) for her desire to please him.

What is Your Red Dress?

It’s a cliché now for wealthy men to test women’s true interest in them. “Does she love me for me or because of my money/fame/status?” is a Blue Pill fantasy script for Beta men. This has been the plot of many popular stories and movies for centuries now (Coming to America with Eddie Murphy), but it’s a cliché because it accurately describes men’s subconscious coming to terms with women’s mating strategies and opportunistic concept of love. Women don’t fall in love with who a man is, they fall in love with what that man is. If a woman ever falls in love with who a man is it’s only after loving him for what he is first.

That’s some real cognitive dissonance a man has to confront in his life. The indignation that dissonance produces is very much the Red Meat most low SMV men love to wallow in, and commiserate in.

“She doesn’t love me! She loves what I can afford her! She’s a Gold Digger, I knew it!”

We love having women’s duplicity confirmed for us as men. It means we dodged a bullet by not investing in, and wasting our reproductive potential with, a woman who would be a bad bet for our future paternity. It provides the same chemical exhilaration and relief women feel when they think they’ve figured out a man’s “true” nature (Alpha Cad/Beta Dad). In the same way women get off on the indignation of discovering of men’s attempts to deceive women’s existential fear of false signals, so to do low SMV men get off on the indignation of discovering a woman only wants him for his money – not the real him.

What our subconscious truly wants is a pairing with a woman who has a genuine desire for us. Hot, unmitigated, Darwinistic monkey-sex is usually the manifestation of that genuine desire, but there are many more nuanced ways our male psyches will try to determine it. In past essays I’ve had men and women run me up the flagpole for suggesting a man never buy lingerie for his girlfriend or wife.

“How’s she supposed to know what I like if I don’t buy it for her?”
“I love getting something sexy from my man, sucks to be you.”

These, and more like them, are usually efforts in remaining self-ignorant of never having experienced genuine desire from a woman. If a woman has genuine desire for you she will be interested enough in you, and have the desire enough, to know how to please you without you explaining it to her. Genuine, organic desire is the foundation of all healthy relationships between men and women. Women who have genuine, unobligated desire for a man don’t ask him if they can go to Vegas for a girl’s weekend – her desire is for her man. Plates don’t require an active ‘spinning‘ on your part when she has real desire to be part of that man’s life. Women will eagerly share a worthy Alpha (rather than be saddled to a faithful Beta) if she has genuine desire for him.

…and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.

Genesis 3:16

When a woman has genuine desire for a man she Just Gets It when he suggests that a Red Dress would be “perfect for her” and she buys it, borrows it or steals it to wear it for him.

If Steve Jobs had purchased the Red Dress for Joan Baez, every time she wore it she would be wearing it for her, not for him. Something inside Steve knew this, and something in you does too.

Transactional vs. Validational Sex

You cannot negotiate genuine desire.

This is one of my best known quotes because it resonates with so many men. There was a time in the early 2000s when I was doing peer counseling for men – most of whom were at least a decade my senior – as part of my undergraduate study and one consistent theme I got from almost all of them was how their marriages (or LTRs) had been so much more sexually satisfying when they were dating their wives or before they’d committed to some kind of exclusivity. That’s always the crux of it for guys. They mistakenly believed that the hot monkey sex they were having with their women prior to “doing the right thing” and getting married or committed was something that would be characteristic of their quality woman into a long term relationship with them.

Why was this the case for guys? I can remember coming up with this quote as part of the advice I was giving while working for one of these men. He, like many of the other guys, had gotten to the point that he would do almost anything to get back to that real desire that convinced him to commit to his wife in the first place. And, like many of these guys, he’d convinced his wife to go to marriage counseling in order to find out what exactly it was that he needed to do to “get her to come around” to wanting to bang him. Nothing was working for him. Even after his sessions he was still either sexless or his wife only begrudgingly would have lackluster ‘starfish’ sex with him. We called that a ‘grudge fuck’ back then.

As a student of behavioral psychology my interest was (still is) in what motivates or incentivizes behavior in people (sometimes animals). What was it that inspires genuine desire as opposed to behavior that still has a purpose, but was more motivated by future outcome. You can make a case that genuine desire is also motivated by a perceived outcome, but in this instance I’m making a distinction between a natural, unsolicited desire as opposed to an incentive based on a preconceived outcome – if all goes according to plan.

This guy broke down in tears with me on at least two occasions. He just couldn’t understand why what was supposed to work (open communication, rational discourse and honest negotiation) wasn’t getting her to “come around” to having sex with him. It was then I thought, you cannot negotiate genuine desire. Either a woman wants  to fuck you or she doesn’t. There are definitely ways to prompt that genuine desire – most of which are behavioral and conditional – but as has been stated many times in the ‘sphere, attraction is not a choice. The key word there is choice. Few men would ‘choose’ to be attracted by an obese woman and in many ways this choice dynamic is why women promoting the ‘body acceptance’ narrative have a tough time of it. For all the nonsense about beauty being a social construct, arousal for men is very much rooted in evolved biology. Men can’t choose to get an erection for a woman they’re simply not aroused by.

The same holds true for women, but the conditions are different. Women can and do have sex for reasons other than genuine desire. Negotiated desire really isn’t desire at all, but women have readily used sexual access to achieve those perceived outcomes I mentioned above here. Negotiated desire only ever leads to obligated compliance. A talented hooker or stripper may be very convincing in her act that she’s really into having sex with a man, but the negotiation that takes place before the act can never make a woman want to have sex with her client. Attraction is not a choice, but really, arousal is not a choice either.

Hormonal

I am presently about half way through my read of Dr. Martie Haselton’s new book Hormonal. I was really anticipating this book’s release, and I had intended to do my first-ever book review of it here, but as I read through I’ve decided not to. I still highly recommend reading it. As you might guess it’s chock full of stats and research confirmation of so much of what I write here that I want to put it at the top of the required Rational Male reading list. I’ve been referencing Dr. Haselton’s (and her colleagues) work since I began this blog, but the delivery of the information was disappointing, and in a lot of instances, very immature and sophomoric. It’s written almost as an apologetic to feminists for having to kill a lot of sacred feminist social convention cows. I feel as if she’s writing ‘down’ to the women who she’ll inevitably market this book to, but, if you can get past her constant attempts to legitimize her feminist credentials, the information is absolute gold.

One aspect of female sexual dynamics that Haselton and her team detail quite a bit is the idea of an Estrus state in human females. I’m not sure how well appreciated this research is in the manosphere, which is one reason I included it in Positive Masculinity, but this concept is really integral to how we define Hypergamy. As most of my readers know, Hypergamy – women’s dualistic sexual strategy (and really life strategy) – is much more than a tendency of a woman to ‘marry up’. In Hormonal the ideas of Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks really solidify with the research.

However, as useful as it is as a catchy euphemism Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks could better be described as Alpha Seed and Beta Need. In a woman’s peak ovulatory phase of her menstrual cycle she enters an estrus state and becomes subject to behaviors that can only be defined as a pretext of seeking Alpha seed. In other words, nature and Hypergamy are very practical in maximizing the chances that a woman may get pregnant with the best available genetic specimen. Granted, the true outcome of all of that is subject to environment and a woman’s personal conditions, but the practicality of it remains the same as it has for 100,000 years. It’s also important to keep in mind that a woman’s behaviors, strategies, rationales and her own interpretation of all of them in those various times and conditions are also a part of the overall latent purpose of a woman consolidating on the best Alpha Seed and Beta to supply her needs.

While women are subject to an estrus state they still require the second half of Hypergamy – the Beta need for security, provisioning, protection, comfort and at least the sharing of parental investment responsibilities for any offspring. Estrus in women is concealed, meaning it is (or used to be) nearly, but not totally undetectable in women. There are in fact various ways men evolved to intuitively determine whether a woman is in an estrus state of fertility; most of these today are socially shamed in men so as to further confuse them and advantage women, but that’s a topic for another essay. A concealed estrus aids women in optimizing both Alpha Seed and Beta Need and it’s likely that much of what accounts for women’s sexual strategy is the result of this concealment.

Now, a lot has been written by myself and others about the impact of meeting a woman’s Beta Need aspect of Hypergamy being served by the state and/or direct or indirect transfers of resources from men to women. Most of my readers are well aware of how this side of Hypergamy has been progressively accommodated for over the past fifty years. In spite of this it’s important to remember that this accommodation of provisioning needs doesn’t eliminate the deeper needs that this side of Hypergamy engenders in women. It may be true that women have never been better provided for in history as far as money and opportunities go, but women still look for emotional security, protection, dominance and comfort in men as part of their innate mental firmware.

As a result of Hypergamy and this concealed estrus state women have been put into a condition of evaluating sex in different aspects today.

Validational Sex

When women look for that Alpha Seed in their peak ovulatory (proliferative) phase, the sex they seek is a desired sex with a man who meets evolutionary criteria. He’s the ‘hawt’ guy, or the man who leaves a woman with an perception of danger or excitement. A lot of men who don’t meet this criteria have a tendency to over-exaggerate this type of man as the ‘Alpha Chad’ and make a ridiculous parody of him as an ego protection mechanism for themselves. Let me state for the record here that every aspect and adjective that this type of guy embodies is mitigated by conditions and contexts. It is just as likely that this conventionally masculine dominant guy is only so according to his most immediate social situation. So spare me the “Chad Thundercock” anxieties.

The sex that women give “enthusiastic consent” for is validational for them. The easy assessment here is that women have a genuine desire to mate with conventionally masculine men who look and act the part – yes, behavioral congruency is vital. If you follow the research women consciously and unconsciously will actively put themselves into environments where the likelihood of their meeting a dominant masculine man who most closely matched that masculine ideal when they are in estrus. They openly and discreetly look of arousal cue from men who best embody what can only be described as Alpha Seed.

I should also add that women in “satisfying relationships” (meaning LTRs where a woman is still very hot for her husband/boyfriend) report an increase in sexual desire (proceptivity) for that guy during this phase. A lot of guys mistakenly think ANY woman will want to seek out extra-pair mating (cheating) opportunities when they’re in estrus. This is only true if a woman isn’t into her current man.

I don’t want to get too lost in the descriptions here. Rather, I want to focus on the associative feelings women get in and after having sex with that Alpha man during estrus. I would argue that Alpha Widows are made in the estrus phase. This is the sex women want to have and are enthusiastic in both the hunt and the act itself. This is largely (presumedly) the sex that men have with their wives-to-be before they marry. It’s this validational sex, the sex that women fantasize about, that men and women want to get back to once they are committed to each other monogamously but now have a dead bedroom. This sex validates a woman’s ego in that it proves to herself that a man of this SMV caliber would want to pin her to the bed and have marathon sex with her. Remember, the latent purpose of this sex, on this side of Hypergamy, is to access the sperm from men with high reproductive value as defined by what our evolved nature predisposes women to be aroused by. Validational sex is sex by choice and genuine desire, and is satisfying on both a psychological level and an evolutionary level.

Transactional Sex

One of the benefits of a concealed estrus is that it allows women a few luxuries. One of these was the ability to confuse men of their paternity. Today this confusion is little more difficult because we’ve got DNA figured out well enough to make accurate assessments, but in our evolutionary past it was important to trick cuckolded fathers into second guessing whether a child was his or not before he killed it and impregnated a woman on his own (this is also why men evolved mate guarding behaviors).

The other advantage of concealed estrus was essentially prostitution. Now, to pretty this up a bit, lets say that women who were sexual with men outside of their fertility window found that sex could be leveraged with non-Alpha men (men they didn’t want to have children with) to encourage them to help with a lot of the chores more Alpha men were less willing (but not entirely unwilling) to do. Enter transactional sex.

As mentioned, the most overt form of transactional sex is prostitution, but it’s impolite to call every woman a whore. In fact it’s impolite to even imply a woman may be having sex for other reasons than validational sex. Today women are contemplating whether or not transactional sex is itself rape since it technically meets the definition of rape (sex women don’t want to have). I discussed this “grey area sex” recently in another essay, but it’s interesting to see women wrestle with transactional sex in an era where the Future is Female and women ought to only have the (validational) sex they want to enthusiastically have.

For most men (i.e the 80% Beta men) transactional sex is where the rubber meets the road. In fact, I’d argue that for most Beta men transactional sex is the only definition of sex they ever really know. That’s kind of sad to think about, but most men never really experience the unfettered feral lust of a woman they’ve chosen to spend the rest of their lives with. I got into this in Saving the Best and Hats Off to the Bull, but I think it’s important for the average man today to acknowledge that it’s highly likely that their wives have shared parts of themselves with, and have lost all inhibitions with, men in their sexual pasts they may never know anything about. That’s a cold bucket of reality a lot of men who unplug from all this have to confront.

Marriage today is almost entirely predicated on on the transactional sex side of Hypergamy. I’m not saying it has to be, nor am I saying it always is, but I’m fairly comfortable in speculating that for most married women sex is reward she uses in the operant conditioning of her husband. And the very fact that this is effective with most husbands throws the power dynamic and Frame of the relationship firmly over to the wife. This has the effect of disqualifying that man from ever (or very rarely) being a candidate for validational sex within that marriage. And this too is another aspect of the transactional sex dynamic that modern feminists are contemplating today – if a woman doesn’t want to have sex with her husband, but does anyway, is it rape? But again, NAMALT, not all marriages are like this or have to be like this. I would also argue that a confident man whom a woman admires, who she recognizes as being above her SMV even if slightly and who has internalized Red Pill awareness within that marriage needn’t be doomed to transactional “duty” sex in his marriage.

Unnegotiated Desire

And so now we come full circle to the men I was counseling back in the day. Because all they’d ever known was transactional sex their deductive male brains attempted to solve their “sex problem” in the most logistical and pragmatic way – negotiate with her. If all sex ever is for a guy is a transaction – a quid pro quo – then it follows he’ll try to find the best way to ‘pay’ for his wife’s sexual access. Hunter Drew and I were recently discussing a man who Dean Abbot has been counseling and one thing we’ve all seen a lot of from young and old Blue Pill Beta men is this logical tendency for them to want to ‘sacrifice their way to happiness with their wives’. It’s as if the more they sacrifice the more they pay for that intimacy they seek, but what they never get is that this only buries their sex lives that much more.

One amazing turn around a lot of married and single Red Pill guys experience when they unplug is the attention they receive from women when they switch from a transactional disposition to a validational disposition with regard to sex. When a man unplugs and cuts himself away from his Blue Pill conditioning one change he makes is a shift from viewing sex as transactional to validational. In the beginning, when men are first learning Game and becoming more Red Pill aware about the nature of women they really don’t recognize this shift in attitude towards sex. When I say men need to make themselves the “prize” with regards to sex and their attention what happens is they go from the “how can I pay for sex to qualify for it with a woman” to “women will recognize that I represent and opportunity for validational sex”.

The Blue Pill conditions men to base their understanding of sex on a transactional paradigm. It’s all scarcity, and luck or providence that a woman might want to fuck them. This is why women get aggravated by the presumption that men might feel they are ‘owed sex‘ in exchange for what they do for them. And why wouldn’t men feel that way? They’ve been conditioned for half a life to believe that they should follow the old social contract and become a man with a lot to offer a woman, a wife. This is the transactional paradigm; I build my life to better accommodate a woman and she reciprocates with sex. Women know this too, so all pretenses of indignation about are complete bullshit. What upsets women is that a Beta man would feel entitled to her sexuality for having accommodated her. Alpha men are entitled to it, accommodations be damned, because he’s the man they want to have sex with.

Relationship Game – A Primer

I had a request from a comment thread to breakdown the function of Game within the confines of a marriage or LTR so at the risk of coming off as Athol on Married Man Sex I thought I’d elaborate a bit on maintaining a Game mindset into an LTR today.

Going Alpha

Before I dig in here I think it’s important to bear in mind that the principles of Game do not change in an LTR, only the context does. Every behavior set, every frame control tenet, every aspect of amused mastery and even PUAs skills like Cocky & Funny are all vitally necessary, if not more necessary in an LTR. One of the greatest failings married men begin their nuptials with is starting from a position of Betaness. I’ve encountered, and counseled, far too many men with the same story; they entered into their LTR or marriage from a default position of being the “supportive” submissive partner only to discover Game later in their relationship and then fight the very uphill battle of convincing their spouse that they’ve ‘genuinely’ experienced a radical shift in their outlook and personalities.

If all she’s ever known is the Beta you, convincing her you’ve gone Alpha is a tough road to hoe. An Alpha shift in an LTR is threatening to a woman who’s built a lifestyle around the predictability of the Beta guy she committed to. It stirs up the competition anxiety she’s been numbed to for a long time, and while that’s beneficial in prompting her genuine desire for you, it also upsets her sense of security. It’s for this reason that Beta men are reluctant to experiment with being more dominant; they carry over from their singlehood the same mistaken belief that women require comfort, familiarity and security in order to become intimate or “feel sexy”. They still fail to grasp, even in marriage, that sex by definition requires anxiety to be grounded in genuine desire. Sexual tension requires urgency.

So from the outset it’s important to acknowledge that going Alpha from a Beta default is going to require a measured, practiced effort. The ideal position is to begin an LTR from an incorrigible, irrationally self-confident, Alpha frame and encourage the belief in your partner that it was she who ‘mellowed’ you. It’s ingratiating and ego-flattering for a woman to believe that she has the capacity to charm the savage beast with her feminine wiles.

The Outline

If you are presently in an LTR, considering one or believe that you might be spinning a particular plate that may have that potential, I urge you to read through the Chateau’s 16 Commandments of Poon. This is one of Roissy’s seminal posts and should be required reading for every 18 year old young man upon graduating high school. This may seem like an odd place to begin relationship Game, but these tenets are not only the basis for good Game, but the foundations of a good, masculine primary LTR.

I’ll have been married for 16 years in July and in that time I can honestly say I’ve practiced every one of these tenets to varying degrees. However, I’ll focus on a few of the more contentious articles and explain the premises behind them:

II. Make her jealous
Flirt with other women in front of her.
Women don’t want a Man to cheat, but they love a Man who could cheat. Naturally you don’t want to appear to be seeking the flirtation – that would be OVERT – but rather playing along with it. I have encouraged or played along with casual flirtations with my wife present that leave her with the impression that other women find me desirable. When you’ve been together long enough and a strong emotional bond has formed, you will be surprised at how many shit tests and hypergamous evaluations you can avoid just by her perception of you being a commodity that other women are attracted to. Mrs. Tomassi has told me on at least a dozen occasions that she finds it flattering that other women would find me attractive. Always remember that your attractiveness to other women is an associative reflection on your spouse’s attractiveness to hold your sexual interest in the long term.

The trick to this is how you follow up after flirting. She has to be made to feel as though she’s still the one you choose to be with even though you have obvious, provable options. Women are always unconsciously evaluating the men they are with. Her self-worth is associated with his value. This is exactly why women in the stablest of relationships will still shit test. There are precious few ways for a Man in a long standing LTR to establish social proof and demonstrate higher value better than flirting, or reciprocating a flirt with other women. Nothing stimulates a tired LTR like suspicion and jealousy. Her Imagination is the most important tool in your DJ tool box. The hamster doesn’t stop spinning after marriage, but it’s incumbent upon you to make sure it keeps up the pace.

Far too many guys are too fearful to even attempt this because they subscribe to a scarcity mentality (see Rule 16)

This then dovetails nicely into,…

VII. Always keep two in the kitty
Never allow yourself to be a “kept man”. A man with options is a man without need.

I understand this may be a very tall order for most men, particularly those with scarcity mentalities. However, I would interpret this less as spinning plates while in an LTR and instead replace it with keeping your options open. One reason to flirt in front of your LTR is to establish the suspicion that you have those options, and then allay those fears. Again this goes back to being a man who could cheat, but chooses not to. Men think that their dependability and steadfastness makes for a sexualized woman – it doesn’t.

Particular to relationship Game is this idea: Never allow yourself to be a “kept man.” Don’t make the mistake that I’m promoting infidelity by this, but rather think of it as maintaining an ambient, unspoken cognisance that, while she is a compliment to your life, she is not the focus of it.

I’ll be very clear, I’ve never cheated on Mrs. Tomassi, but I do know I could be balls deep in pussy if we ever did split. I know this because I experience the receptiveness of women to whom I do flirt with. I realize this sounds like conceit, but even if I were completely in error about that receptiveness I do know I’m in better shape, have more Game and possess higher status and value than 90% of the men in my peer group. So keeping two in the kitty for me is knowing that I CAN generate options if necessary. This may or may not be your particular reality, but it needs to be your mental state.

V. Adhere to the golden ratio
Give your woman 2/3 of everything she gives you.

This isn’t hard once you internalize it. Too many guys think Game is a waste of time because it means a constant memorization of scripts and gestures that they can never hope to master in every situation for every eventuality. And they’d be right – if all they did was try to commit everything to rote memorization. But as any good teacher will tell you, that’s not learning. Once the golden ratio becomes part of who you are it’s effortless and becomes your default response. Remember this is an outline. I don’t think aloud to myself “hmmm, well Mrs. Tomassi gave me 3 kisses this morning, I must remember to give her only 2 when I get home from work.” It’s an outline for a principle that you need to get the ‘feel’ for. The point isn’t trying to keep some scorecard of tit for tat exchanges. The effect you’re establishing is,..

it establishes your greater value by making her chase you, and it demonstrates that you have the self-restraint to avoid getting swept up in her personal dramas. Refraining from reciprocating everything she does for you in equal measure instills in her the proper attitude of belief in your higher status.

All the bleating sounds popularized by the post-Wall demographic of women about how there are precious few available men with the capacity to Man-Up and be the high status Men they’re entitled to find their root in this principle. For all the ramblings of the equalists they still betray their true desires in their own complaints – women DEMAND a man of higher status than themselves.

I add this at the end of this primer to address the criticism that will inevitably follow; “So, a wife should just be your doting slave then Rollo?” No, and neither should a man be his wife’s self-convinced slave. If you get anything from my blog it should be this – I am always focused on the Desire Dynamic. A slave might behave in ways that please you, but you cannot negotiate genuine desire, nor can you extort genuine desire. Freewill is an interesting topic, especially in terms of intergender relations, but understanding the dynamics that promote genuine, unobligated desire is paramount to a good relationship.