iron rule

The Red Pill Monthly – Frame

If youtube isn’t your thing you can get the audio archive here.

 

I managed to get some time with Niko once again yesterday. He was kind enough to stay up late and get a talk in for another installment of our semi-regular podcast The Red Pill Monthly (more like bi-monthly recently).

I really liked this one because we delved into some new stuff about Frame and the importance of establishing and maintaining a solid sense of self and purpose in all aspects of a man’s life, but focusing on the interpersonal and intersexual importance of Frame.

The concept of Frame is not my original idea, it’s actually derived from interpersonal psychology. However, way back in my early days at SoSuave I made the connection to the psychological principle and what PUAs of the time were advocating as a means to control in seduction. I begin my Iron Rules of Tomassi with Frame because I’ve always felt that everything else in seduction, and life in general, hinges upon the realities we create for ourselves.

The pop-cultural term for it today is ‘mindset’, but I feel the concept of Frame extends beyond what’s generally a retreading of The Power of Positive Thinking that’s being promoted as mindset now. It certainly plays a part in the entirety of holding Frame, but the overall establishment of Frame with a woman, with other men, with your family or with your employer requires an art that extends past just how one thinks of himself.

Iron Rule of Tomassi #1

Frame is everything. Always be aware of the subconscious balance of who’s frame in which you are operating. Always control the Frame, but resist giving the impression that you are. 

The concept of “frame” is yet another ephemeral idea that had need of a term in the very beginnings of the great masculine awakening that’s become the ‘community’. If memory serves I think it may have been Mystery who first picked up on what’s really a very rudimentary and well established psychological principle. In psych terms, frame is an often subconscious, mutually acknowledged personal narrative under which auspices people will be influenced. One’s capacity for personal decisions, choices for well-being, emotional investments, religious beliefs and political persuasions (amongst many others) are all influenced and biased by the psychological narrative ‘framework’ under which we are most apt to accept as normalcy.

Rather than go into too much depth here I’ll just encourage you to listen to the podcast and we’ll have an open comments thread about Frame. I think it’s good to review some older principles, not just for the benefit of newly Red Pill aware men, but also because I think it’s good to reconsider these ‘standards’ from a perspective of time and where we are as a Red Pill community today.

Frame, and understanding its importance, is the foundation of dozens of other Red Pill principles and applications. As most of my readers know, I try to avoid specific prescriptive advice. I’m not in the business of telling men how to live their lives with formulaic step-by-step Red Pill templates. The Red Pill isn’t one-size-fits-all and men need to interpret their Red Pill awareness according to their personalities, cultural context, social situations and personal beliefs.

That said, in the coming months I will be offering some more generalized, prescriptive ideas or suggestions as to how I feel men might apply certain Red Pill principles in their lives. The 9 Iron Rules are about as close as I come to prescriptive advice, and while I’m not in the business of making ‘Rational Male Men’, after reviewing them with Niko I think that some generalized advice according to Red Pill awareness might be something in the offing.

So, let me know what you think about this ideas as well as any questions or input you have about Frame once you’ve listened to our talk. It runs about an hour and a half. I’m also toying with the idea of discussing each of the Iron Rules in the coming RPM podcasts. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in listening to.

Enjoy!

rollo_t

Blue Pill Frame

BluePillFrame

Establishing and internalizing a strong sense of Frame is one of the most fundamental aspects necessary for a man’s personal success. I’m hesitant to use the word “success” here because it subjectively means so much to men on an individual basis. “Success” is a relative term, but I intentionally began the Iron Rules of Tomassi with Frame because an understanding of this principle applies to so many different arenas in a man’s life.

It’s far too easy to conflate Frame (and the hoped-for success that can come about from it) with a power-of-positive-thinking motivational vibe. Developing, maintaining and internalizing a personal Frame isn’t derived from motivational thinking. That’s not to say it doesn’t help, but Frame can align either on realizable realities informed by Red Pill awareness or it can be founded on deeply ingrained investments in Blue Pill conditioning.

For some men, a Blue Pill mindset, and the conditioning principles that formed it, is the foundation of what they convince themselves is a very strong, very ‘correct’, establishment of Frame. It quite literally is the reality into which they expect a woman will want to be a part of and will want to readily cooperate within. The problem, of course, is that the Frame they’ve developed is informed by Old Rules/Blue Pill goals that mischaracterize the truer natures of women and what their motivations are.

This insistence of women adapting to a Blue Pill Frame is the root of many a Beta man’s downfall when a woman has finally run out of Alpha Fucks options during her Party Years and she’s “turned over a new leaf” in the necessitousness of her Epiphany Phase. Women aging out of the sexual marketplace are only too happy to appear to be a Beta man’s Blue Pill ship that’s finally come in.

Behold, Camelot

I have heard many times, from well-intended Blue Pill men, some variation of the Just Be Yourself self-righteous expectation that women should want to enter into his Frame. “If a woman can’t accept me for who I am, she’s not the right (quality) woman for me” is the standard refrain. The Frame is strong, the expectation is (seemingly) strong, but the Blue Pill foundation it’s built upon is flawed because it is influenced and conditioned by the Feminine Imperative that always expects him to focus outwardly instead of making himself his own mental point of origin.

If they were honest, these are the guys who will Beta Hamster their Blue Pill ideal of the ‘right’ girl being any one who acknowledges his Blue Pill Frame.

There’s usually some self-evincing rationale that sounds similar when a Blue Pill guy has his Frame challenged by a woman unwilling to play along with his “world”. Whether he comes to this by rejection or simply observing women’s solipsism and duplicity, the reasoning is never about the validity of what his Frame is based on, but rather the disqualification of a woman who contradicts his ego-investments in it (i.e. they become “low quality women” to him).

However, many a White Knight will have what, for all purposes, is a very strong personal Frame. This dedication to a Blue Pill conditioned mindset is central to their ego-investments and it’s a big reason why it’s so difficult to unplug a man from it apart from some trauma that shakes his investing his personality in it. And even then, it’s far easier to disqualify the women who want nothing to do with his Frame than it is to get him to reconsider his fundamental, Blue Pill, old books belief-set.

As I was picking apart the conditions that lead to a man like Steve from last week’s post to becoming what he is, I found it’s important to highlight the determination with which most men will defend their Blue Pill investments and defend the investments of other Blue Pill men with whom it aligns with.

From Enter White Knight:

Every random chump within earshot of your conversation about Game, about your ‘changed’ way of seeing inter-gender relations, about your most objective critical observations of how women ‘are’, etc. – understand, that chump waits everyday for an opportunity to “correct” you in as public a way as he’s able to muster. That AFC who’s been fed on a steady diet of noble intent, with ambitions of endearing a woman’s intimacy through his unique form of chivalry; that guy, he’s aching for an opportunity to prove his quality by publicly redressing a “villain” like you for your chauvinism. Even under the conditions of relative anonymity (like the internet), he’ll still cling to that want of proving his uniqueness just on the off chance that a woman might read his rebuff and be fatefully attracted to him.

The more invested a Blue Pill man is in his Frame, the more ardent a White Knight he’s likely to be. The problem in all of this is that his dedication to that Frame, and the expectation that ‘quality women’ will rationally and deductively appreciate it, is in error. Women fundamentally lack the ability to fully realize, much less appreciate the sacrifices a man makes to facilitate their reality. Even the most enlightened, appreciative woman you know still operates in a feminne-centric reality.

It’s easy to spot (and get annoyed with) a White Knight when he comes to the aid of M’Lady on an internet forum, but the defender-of-the-faith behavior also extends to other men, like himself, given to the same Blue Pill Frame and ideals. From a Red Pill perspective we know this is virtue signaling, but it’s also indicative of reaffirming a White Knight’s dedication to a Frame and belief-set that requires a constant reassurance in the face of so much observable contradiction.

Blue Pill Frame / Red Pill Awareness

In the manosphere, there’s a tendency to characterize the Blue Pill mindset with non-assertive “people pleaser” men conditioned from an early age to defer to women and sublimate themselves to the Feminine Imperative. For the most part, that generalization fits, but I think it’s important to understand that it’s entirely possible for otherwise very Alpha men to invest themselves in Blue Pill paradigms and then build Frames up around them.

While I was writing this, reader Softek had a very good take on how Frame can be applicable from both an Alpha and a Beta perspective:

Steve’s relationship is PERFECT.

It is in EXACT ALIGNMENT with his Frame.

His Frame, which he voluntarily maintains, is that of a Beta male. Weak, submissive, and priming him perfectly to be cuckolded.

Similarly, my relationship with my GF is perfect.

It’s in exact alignment with my Frame.

This is how it always works. It’s the only way it CAN work. Your Frame is your reality, period, end of story. I’m sticking to this idea of women having no Frame, because I think it can help men to realize that the man’s Frame – as far as the man is concerned – is the only thing that matters.

I’m going to stop here because this is one of his few assertions I don’t entirely agree with. Women’s innate sense of Frame is informed by their fundamentally solipsistic nature. How that solipsism is expressed can take different forms, but in all instances it places the experience of the woman as being central to her own importance.

The easy example is the Frame grab I outlined in The Talk where a woman (consciously or otherwise) seeks to assert her experience as being the primary Frame or when a man abdicates his Frame to satisfy a woman’s need for long-term security. The other side of this is that even when women are considered ‘powerless’, and they are acted upon (hypoagency), their solipsistic experience is still central to the nature of any Frame because that presumption of powerlessness informs her solipsism and she builds her Frame around it.

Women most definitely have a Frame; it is informed by solipsism and its state is determined by what her need for optimizing Hypergamy demands at any phase of her maturity and how well she is likely to consolidate on it. I understand what Softek is getting at here, but just observe Beta men who are trapped in submissive roles to their dominant wives and you’ll see how he’s acted upon within her Frame.

If your Frame is what you really want it to be, you’re all set. You will simply not put up with BS, so it won’t be necessary to calculate what kind of BS or shit tests are being thrown at you, because you’ll automatically pass them without even being conscious of them.

At a deeper level, there is no your reality vs. her reality, or who has more power in the relationship.

It all goes back to your relationship with yourself. Your Frame. You decide what you accept in your life, and what you don’t accept.

Everyone has been telling me to get out of my relationship. Why? Their Frame is different. Maybe they have more self-respect. Maybe they have more confidence. But ultimately, their Frame is different.

They would not put up with half the BS I’ve put up with. They would’ve been gone a long, long time ago and onto greener pastures.

I’m getting what I deserve. I’m getting the relationship that is PERFECT for me, which means it’s perfectly aligned with my [current, malleable, changeable] Frame.

Frame isn’t set in stone. It’s ours to control, and ours alone, because it belongs to us each individually.

If I want a different relationship, I need to change my Frame. What do I want? What am I willing to accept? What am I not willing to accept?

This is a very important point, to understand that Steve’s relationship is PERFECT….for him. A complete match with his Frame.

If you dig into WHY he’s in this relationship, it’s for that reason and that reason alone: it resonates with his Frame. It resonates with the perception he has of himself, and the rules he’s laid out for himself in his life.

He is doing exactly what an Alpha does: living 100% by his Frame.

It’s just that his Frame is weak and submissive instead of strong and self-serving.

It’s funny when you look at things like this. When you realize you’re already “Alpha” in the sense that you know how to live 100% in your Frame….what’s stopping you from changing your Frame?

You already know what it’s like to hold Frame. Not everyone can stay in an abusive, sexless relationship. It takes a pretty extreme Beta to put up with all that. I am a fucking Beta God. I will put up with more abuse than any man on this planet. I’m the most abject Beta in the world.

(I’m being deliberately hyperbolic here, bear with me)

The most abject Beta is simply the other side of the Apex Alpha coin.

Both stubbornly hold to their Frame. The Beta holds to his Frame to his inevitable cuckolding and destruction; the Alpha holds to his Frame to his self-gratification regardless of who tries to shame him or bring him down.

We need to stop thinking “Beta Bad” and “Alpha Good” and realize that Frame is subjective.

I may not agree with some of this, and considering Softek’s dependence on maintaining his relationship it’s easy to see why he feels this way, however, he does touch upon some foundational aspects of Frame. Yes, women get the men they deserve, or in this case, women enter into relations with the men who align with what they’ve created.

As I mention in Frame, yours should be a world women will want to enter or you will be entering her Frame. That said beware the motives of the woman who would eagerly embrace a Beta’s Frame. Those motives are rooted in necessity and not genuine desire. Just ask Saira Khan.

Understanding that a solid sense of Frame – literally creating a reality in which you live and expect others to interact within – is central to success is not a difficult concept to grasp for most men. Whether or not they feel an ownership of that Frame, or a motive to employ it, is what defines men’s understanding of it. And this discomfort men have in insisting upon a solid, active, Alpha Frame is precisely what the Feminine Imperative has sought to condition into men for going on five generations now.

Recently I’ve been commenting on yet another article of feminist triumphalism, glorying in the statistics that women are far happier after a divorce. This is standard feminist boilerplate, but the bloody handed cruelty of articles like this always ignore that the “men” they denigrate are the direct results of a generational conditioning that leads men to swallow Blue Pill idealism and abdicate Frame in the name of a nebulous egalitarian equalism.

As 39% more men put a gun in their mouths after a divorce, women will bemoan a generation of men the Feminine Imperative created to abdicate their Frame. So yes, when it comes to men becoming despondent and suicidal after having their Blue Pill idealistic ego-investments destroyed by the same imperative that invested it in them, yes, “Beta Bad” and “Alpha Good”.

Plan B

plan_b

Non-Exclusive Exclusives

I got a link back this week from another backwater blogger who was critical of my, or really a Red Pill, take on an abundance vs. scarcity mentality. I haven’t really felt a need to review Plate Theory for a while now, but ever since Holistic Game’s coffee house protests went down it seems that picking and pulling various bits from my Plate Theory series is some novelty.

I’ve been writing in the manosphere for so long now that the same predictable straw men arguments and out of context quotes have become de rigueur now. Any objective observation of women’s sexual strategy by a man is always synonymous with misogyny.

What I’ve always found entertaining about Blue Pill critics of Plate Theory is that the concept of non-exclusivity always borders on the criminal when a man suggests men ought to pursue a non-exclusive dating (and sex), yet we hold women up as empowered, prudent and/or exemplary of bucking the repression of an imaginary patriarchy when they suggest the same.

Of course the quick retort to this is that women are ‘slut shamed’ for being non-exclusive, but this is simply an old, convenient, sidestep to shame men while distracting from women’s practical sexual strategy.

As Open Hypergamy becomes more embraced among women the usefulness of drawing attention to ‘slut shaming’ actually becomes a hinderance to justifying women’s Hypergamous priorities (AFBB). When a high profile woman like Sheryl Sandberg suggests,…

“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.”

Sandberg’s epitaph here is every bit as “objectifying” as anything you’ll find in the ‘sphere, but the difference is we are expected to find her advice for assuming a state of sexual abundance practical as well as refreshingly progressive. I’ve stated this before, but it bears repeating that as women more proudly, openly, embrace the uglier aspects of Hypergamy it will be women who will prove the validity of Red Pill awareness far better than men could. Sample from the largest available pool of prospective sexual experience (Alpha Fucks) and presume that an ‘equal partner’ (Beta Bucks) provisioner will make himself readily available to you when can no longer reliably attract the men who represent your sexual priorities.

I covered this in Plate Theory V: Lady’s Game; the natural extension of women’s sexual strategy is, at least practically, best served from a presumption of abundance. And as such we also find that the vast majority of feminine-primary social conventions center on facilitating this presumption of abundance for women. Pop culture, social media and a feminine-primary social narrative fosters an over-inflated SMV and an exaggerated sense of self-worth for women, but functionally it convinces women that they can perpetuate a condition of abundance with regard to their sexual viability almost indefinitely.

Even in a condition of committed monogamy that background sense of sexual abundance simmers in women’s subconscious. We laud women with the guts to pursue that abundance after divorce or even reward them with popularity and movie opportunities when they write books about pursuing it while married. Either that or we pat them on the back for their ability to continually move the goalposts and convince themselves and others that spinsterhood is a goal state they sought to achieve their entire lives.

In all of these instances, whether legitimate or not, there is an impression that women can perpetuate a condition of abundance for themselves – and often far past their true sexual market viability. One reason I draw the ire of many a Blue Pill male and women is because my breakdown of the predictable schedule women follow throughout their lives with regards to their SMV and their dualistic sexual strategy is that it directly confronts the doubt that they can perpetuate a condition of abundance in spite of their personal choices in life.

And that’s the crux of women’s self-affirming social and psychological conventions; to avoid any accountability for the fallout that may be caused by the choices Hypergamy has led them to make. Roissy came up with the maxim that the end goal of feminism is to maximally enable women’s sexuality while maximally restricting men’s – and of course the consolidation of that enabling of women’s sexual strategy must also account for absolving them of misgivings and mistakes made in enacting it.

Failsafes

In Betas in Waiting I explored how a majority of boys have, for several generations now, been conditioned to be serviceable providers for women once they enter a phase of life when they find themselves becoming less able to compete intrasexually. Anyone familiar with Preventive Medicine understands this (Epiphany Phase) period as the point during which a woman’s Hypergamous priorities shift from short term Alpha Fucks to long term Beta Bucks.

I also outlined the underlying plan involved in ensuring this strategy in This is now.

That was then. Now at 30 and (hopefully) with a learned and earned degree of merit, success, developed judgement, character and a reasonably well kept physique, a man finds himself in a position like no other – his options and agency to enjoy the attentions of women seem to suddenly be at an apex.

The planning women had at 19 when they told him to “wait for me at 30” now becomes more urgent as she becomes more viscerally aware of the Wall.

She knew this day would come when she was just entering into her peak SMV years.

[…]

For men entertaining women embroiled in their Epiphany Phase inner conflicts, not only is this a very confusing phase for the uninitiated Beta, but it is also an equally precarious period with regard (once again) to the consequences of his life’s decisions with her. Most men find themselves players in women’s meta-sexual strategy at this time because they believe that their perseverance has finally paid off. All of that sacrifice and personal achievement has finally merited him the genuine interest of a “quality woman”.

For the men who never learn a Red Pill awareness what they fail to understand is that it’s at this point they’re are expected to abandon their own sexual strategy in order to complete that of the (now Epiphany Phase) woman they’re considering a pairing with. Whether they were literally asked to wait for a woman until she was 30, the effect is the same, they have waited their turn, they have waited to be of service, they have waited to fulfill a feminine primary sexual imperative.

Now I’ll ask you to draw your attention to the statistics in the picture I’ve included as today’s post image. These were sourced from this study. There are actually several more just like it, but what it illustrates is an example of how women’s subconscious will prepare failsafes in the event that the Alpha lover they hope to convert to a Beta provider doesn’t comply with her sexual strategy.

Whether he’s the one that got away, the office husband, or a gym partner, chances are he is the “Plan B” man you fantasize about running away with. Like an insurance policy, this man is the handpicked boyfriend or husband replacement you have on standby once “plan A” starts to break down on you. According to a survey conducted by OnePoll.com, an online market research company, half of women who are married or in relationships have a Plan B man on standby who is “ready and waiting” because of “unfinished business.”

It’s important to pick this apart from the get go here because, like most female written articles that describe unflattering facts about female nature, the narrative must be shifted to be the burden of men. You’ll notice the presumption here is that the ‘Plan A’ lover is always a woman’s preferred choice – thus pre-confirming women’s blamelessness from the outset – and that a ‘Plan B’ should only ever be considered if the ‘Plan A’ man somehow screws up in contenting a woman’s sexual strategy.

The entire article is founded on the principle of Dread – remember, the sort that when men use it are considered evil manipulators? However it should be noted that dread is always an element of any relationship, it’s just that since women’s imperatives are the socially correct ones today, only women can be held blameless in instituting it.

When there’s trouble in paradise, and eventually a break-up, women are left at the starting line again. This means there’s more ladies’ night, late-night rom-com marathons, and wine — lots of wine. However, to avoid playing the field and going through all the bases, women have taken a shortcut to get back to the finish line with a Plan B man. “The saying that ‘the grass isn’t always greener’ clearly isn’t deterring women of today. They understand that anything can happen and are ensuring they have a solid back-up plan should things go sour with their current man,” a spokesman for OnePoll.com told the Daily Mail.

As has been mentioned before the makings of an Alpha Widow generally begin in a woman’s Party Years; during the period during which she is at her SMV peak. And as was mentioned before, Hypergamy is always pragmatic. This Plan B insurance policy strategy is only further evidence of Hypergamy, but it is also pragmatic. Women’s hindbrains know that their SMV is a rapidly decaying asset, so yes that back up plan makes sense. What’s not so obvious in this study is that women also cling to the hope that the Plan B man with whom they consolidated long term security with might someday be replaced by the fantasy of an Alpha she’s widowed herself over.

I think the latter is not only a far more practical reasoning, but since it’s unflattering and exposing of the machinations of Hypergamy, the far more likely use of a ‘Plan B’ alternate.

You can read the rest of the article and pick up on the blatantly entitled male-qualification perspective and a bit more “you better not fuck things up” dread signaling, however, I think the last three stats are the most salient here. At least half of the men involved knew of the Plan B man, 1 in 5 was a friend of his, and 1 in 10 of the Plan B’s had already made an attempt to jump ladders to be intimate with her.

A couple of things make themselves apparent here: in a social order that is made of at least 80% Beta men women can get an ego boost in real time from the default dread they can inspire without really trying. And second, in generation Beta a default form of soft Beta cuckolding is not just known to them, but apparently it’s become normalized for them.

All of this really comes back to, once again, quelling the constant state of internal doubt that Hypergamy instills in women. The Plan B dynamic, and the normalization of it in a feminine centric social order, is yet another play for assurances of security in both the sexual and provisioning aspects of Hypergamy.

Now, so as not to leave you hanging here, I have to end this essay with a bit of actionable advice. I get criticized for outlining the problems very well, but leaving out what a man ought to do with this information.

As always, your first order of business is to be aware that this dynamic is in play. Understand that this Plan B insurance tactic is not just reserved for married men with dead bedrooms. You will likely see variations of it in your dealings with women while you’re single. Any man who’s sexed a girl who depends on a bevy of male orbiters to bolster her self-esteem knows the utility of them. In the next post I’ll be going into detail of how you can leverage the Betaness of most men to elevate your SMV.

Finally, if you are a married man experiencing this Plan B dynamic, you need to do some serious reassessing of your relationship and the status your wife holds you in. Are you one of the 50% of men who know who their wife’s Plan B is? Is he even a friend of yours?

What can you do to reinforce your Alpha dominance in this situation? Or maybe a better question is, is it worth your effort to do so? There will undoubtedly be the predictable comments about how marriage is never worth the effort, and I’ll acknowledge that here first, but are you a victim of endlessly rooting through garbage to reestablish an Alpha impression for your wife that she’s reserved for her Plan B alternate?

The Isolationists

isolation

Pandora at Sosuave has a conundrum for us to solve today:

It seems there are two contradictory schools of thought on dating:

1.) You hear from one side of the argument to pursue your interests in life and women will come to you. This is what the MGTOW movement espouses. Im not sure if men can even be totally indifferent to the power of pussy. But some believe the total indifference is the key to a fulfilling love life. I have found that if you are indifferent then you will get nothing and be celibate. This doesn’t sound very good.

2.) The other argument is that you should not be indifferent at all. This school of thought says that dating is purely a numbers game. Its similar to sales. The more women you meet the higher the likely hood of one of these women liking you. The more approaches you do the more lays you get. Simple statistics. This school of thought is the opposite of indifference. This is the way i personally go about dating and i have had mediocre results. This is represented by the NEXTING mentality.

Not sure which one to choose or which one is correct. I do know that i am tired of being a slave to vagina. I do OK but it takes a ton of work to get one mediocre lay. Its not good for your self esteem either. Being rejected or toyed with mentally is unhealthy for your psyche. Most of my friends are also slaves to getting laid. Roosh V made a post about how ” His Boner is his master”.

So is it ” Pursue your interests in life and women will take care of themselves” vs ” Go out and do the field work”..which one will lead to a more fulfilling life?

Before we get down to nuts and bolts here let me address this last part first. There is no such thing as a “fulfilled” life. God forbid you reach fulfillment in life. The human state is one of a perpetuated discontent, and so long as that discontent is constructively pursued, this is a good thing. When anyone presents you with a plan or an abstract for life fulfillment, understand that they are selling you something based on the very human want for a better life.

That said, the rest of the question makes for some interesting debate. I often read a common thread in the manosphere about how men should develop some mental disposition of “outcome independence.” I understand the sentiment and why it would be beneficial for any guy to simply shrug his shoulders and say “either way, yes, no, I’m good with it”, but what this really boils down to is another indirect Buffer against real rejection.

I’ve read some ‘life coaches’ rattle off something similar. The idea is that if you put yourself out there, just by doing so, a woman will appreciate the inherent risk of rejection in your approach and at least give you merit points for trying when she does reject you. It’s a flawed idea because it presumes the women you’d approach would have any capacity to recognize that risk, much less reward the effort. It presumes that women would have that rational insight in the moment and think “well, he must have confidence for just trying to hit on me” and add that to some subconscious list of pros and cons for accepting or rejecting him.

And of course when it comes to light that the majority of women don’t have any concept of the approach-risk appreciation they’re supposed to have, that’s when a guy is told he’s hitting on the wrong kind of woman – they’re not the “quality” women they should be risking themselves with.

So the next deductive step becomes one of insulating oneself against that rejection preemptively. Thus, outcome independence becomes not just a mindset, but also a (misguided) Game strategy. Therein lies the conflict; is outcome independence who you are or is it a strategy disconnected from yourself which you rely on to Buffer rejection?

I touched on this in Vulnerability:

The idea goes that if a man is truly outcome-independent with his being rejected by a woman, the first indicator of that independence is a freedom to be vulnerable with her. The approach then becomes one of “hey, I’m just gonna be my vulnerable self and if you’re not into me then I’m cool with that.”

The hope is that a woman will receive this approach as intended and find something refreshing about it, but the sad truth is that if this were the attraction key its promoters wish it was, every guy ‘just being himself‘ would be swimming in top shelf pussy. This is a central element to Beta Game – the hope that a man’s openness will set him apart from ‘other guys’ – it is common practice for men who believe in the equalist fantasy that women will rise above their feral natures when it comes to attraction, and base their sexual selection on his emotional intelligence.

The fact is that there is no such thing as outcome independence. The very act of your approaching a woman means you have made some effort to arrive at a favorable outcome with her. The fact that you’d believe a woman would even find your vulnerability attractive voids any pretense of outcome independence.

In a larger scope, there is no real outcome independence. Even making the effort to adopt that IDGAF mindset is itself an investment in an outcome. If you were truly indifferent to the outcome of a situation there would be no discussion about it.

Being truly indifferent to whether or not a woman accepts or rejects you implies a disinterest in that woman’s interests in you. There are certainly ways to insulate oneself against a negative outcome, but outcome independence is not Game itself. You will learn more from your failures than from your successes.

With that in mind Pandora raises some interesting propositions here:

1.) You hear from one side of the argument to pursue your interests in life and women will come to you. This is what the MGTOW movement espouses. I’m not sure if men can even be totally indifferent to the power of pussy. But some believe the total indifference is the key to a fulfilling love life. I have found that if you are indifferent then you will get nothing and be celibate. This doesn’t sound very good.

I think for the most part this want for indifference gets pushed to extremes. As I’ve stated many times, a woman should only ever be a complement to a man’s life, never the focus of it. However, that doesn’t mean a complete dissociation from women is healthy. For a woman to be a complement to your life you’ll need interact with, and understand the nature of, women.

Roissy summed this position up well in the 16 Commandments of Poon:

III. You shall make your mission, not your woman, your priority

Forget all those romantic cliches of the leading man proclaiming his undying love for the woman who completes him. Despite whatever protestations to the contrary, women do not want to be “The One” or the center of a man’s existence. They in fact want to subordinate themselves to a worthy man’s life purpose, to help him achieve that purpose with their feminine support, and to follow the path he lays out. You must respect a woman’s integrity and not lie to her that she is “your everything”. She is not your everything, and if she is, she will soon not be anymore.

What this commandment doesn’t presuppose is that there isn’t a woman in a man’s life to be superseded by his mission. It’s not all mission, no woman. The MGTOW branch of the manosphere is made up of a diverse set of guys. From my experience not all MGTOWs are interested in complete indifference to women; most would be happy to have women be interested in them enough to make an effort to associate themselves with them, they just don’t see the point in making a direct effort to make those connections. Others simply resign themselves to isolation and meeting their physical needs with porn or escorts while they ‘enjoy’ life and pursue their own interests absent of women.

There is an inherent problem in this latter MGTOW preference, they build a fortress around themselves:

Law 18: Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself— Isolation is Dangerous
The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere— everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from-it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people, find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

You cannot entirely remove yourself from the Game. You can cede the governance of your participation in intersexual dynamics to whatever or whomever you think may control it, but you cannot recuse yourself from its influences. This is a foundational truth I think some MRAs and the more isolationist MGTOWs believe they can in some way buffer for themselves. They believe that not playing the Game is a preferable situation to “dealing” with the means and efforts necessary to “succeed” with women.

The natural progression then becomes one of self-affirmation in the belief that they’re not ‘dealing’ with women, and any guy who is is little more than a slave doing the bidding of women by even his interest in applying an effort to understand and interact with them. Even the most marginal effort becomes ‘pussy begging’.

16. Dancing Monkey Hate

Hater: Men who run game are just doing the bidding of women. Alphas don’t entertain women.

If you want success with women, you are going to have to entertain them… one way or the other. The same is true of women. Once a woman stops entertaining men with her body, her femininity, and her commitment worthiness by getting fat, old, ugly, bitchy, or single mom-y, she stops having success with men. We are all doing the bidding of our biomechanical overlord, and on our knees to his will we surrender, by force or by choice. You fool yourself if you believe you have some plenary indulgence from this stark reality.
Or: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

The problem with the ‘pussy begging’ rationale becomes one of defining what degree of interest a man ought to have with women. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; the women who accommodate this level of (dis)interest become ‘quality women’ while those who don’t align with that impression serve as convenient proof of their isolationist belief. The latent rationale becomes one of sour grapes, disdain the things you can’t have while making necessity a virtue. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.The logic then becomes circular.

The opposite extreme, and one intersexual isolationists like to promote, is that it’s all a numbers game with regards to any “success” with women. If you throw enough spaghetti against the wall something will stick. Isolationists would have us believe that even what sticks is rarely worth the effort (sour grapes), but if you play the game often enough what you get is due more to persistence than any real accuracy of applied Game.

So is it ” Pursue your interests in life and women will take care of themselves” vs ” Go out and do the field work”..which one will lead to a more fulfilling life?

I’d say a measured balance of both. I don’t believe for a moment that any man is functionally indifferent to the influence of women. Men are the True Romantics; we want our idealistic impression of love to be impossibly reciprocated. We look for ways to buffer the frustration of trying to make our concept of love and female acceptance fit women’s when we don’t understand that each sex adheres to separate ideals. Outcome independence, isolationism, are ways some men think they can enforce our ideal as the standard for women.

With the Feminine Imperative in social ascendance women enforce a Hypergamous ideal that imbalances intergender dynamics, but that doesn’t mean men are powerless to effect their own interests and draw women into men’s Frame. The solution isn’t one of ‘taking all your toys and going home’ to wait for women to come around to appreciate men. It’s going to take a learned interaction.

The real pussy begging comes from demanding a woman to come over to your perspective unbidden and unmerited. Make your mission not your woman your imperative, but in that mission be the Man a woman will want to be associated with. I always stress the importance of Frame control – it’s the first Iron Rule of Tomassi – but this presupposes you have command of that frame to begin with. She enters your reality, you don’t enter hers, but you must have a reality a woman wants to enter into before you can maintain it.

Alpha Tells

Alpha Tells

For as long as I’ve been writing in the manosphere, the definition of “what is Alpha?” has been the number one point of contention I’ve had to state and restate the most often. I’m not going to rehash this now as I have several posts on the nature of Alpha already linked in the sidebar, so if you’re looking for my take on Alpha that’s where to find it.

However, to lead in to today’s post I need to address the basis of what I believe are the most common misunderstandings about the term Alpha.

Well before the inception of this blog, in the early beginnings of what would evolve into the manosphere there was a need of terminology to describe the more abstract concepts developing in the ‘community’. Some of these analogies and terms are still with the manosphere today, others have morphed into more useful abstractions; Alpha Widows, Hypergamy (in its true nature), the Feminine Imperative, even Red Pill awareness are all examples of established terms or analogies for understood abstractions. Among these are also the concepts of a man being Alpha and Beta.

From The Unbearable Triteness of Hating at CH:

5. Etymology Hate

Hater: Your definition of an alpha male is false. In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is leader of the pack, not a cad/badboy/jerk who pumps and dumps women.

Isn’t it just like a nerd to get hysterical over the appropriation of a narrow-sense scientific term to conveniently illustrate broader truths about men and women.

One of the most common disconnects men encounter with the Red Pill for the first time is equating the term Alpha with its usage in describing the mating habits of Lions, Wolves or Silver Back Gorillas. It’s easy to ridicule or simply dismiss a valid, but uncomfortable, Red Pill truth when you’re simplistically comfortable in defining ‘Alpha Male’  in literal etymological terms.

This is the first resistance blue pill men claim they have with the Red Pill. They have no problem understanding and using abstractions for blue pill concepts they themselves are ego-invested in, but challenge that belief-paradigm with uncomfortable red pill truths and their first resort is to obstinately define Alpha (as well as Hypergamy) in as narrow, binary and literal a sense as they can muster.

“Get in Touch with Your Feminine Beta Side”

The next most common misunderstanding comes from conflating the abstractions of Alpha and Beta with masculine and feminine traits. In this (often deliberate) misdirection, the concepts of being Alpha or Beta become synonymous with being masculine or feminine. This is the personal basis of Alpha and Beta many Purple Pill advocates (really blue pill apologists) comfortably redefine for themselves, to suit themselves.

This purple pill conflation is really just a comforting return the the curse of Jung – anima & animus – if the complete man is an even mix of Alpha and Beta, masculine and feminine, then all the worst aspects of his “betaness” can’t be all bad, and he reinterprets what really amounts to a complete androgyny as “being the best balance”.

Unfortunately, and as blue pill chumps will later attest, the feminine expects to find its paired balance in the masculine, not an equalist idealization of both in the same man. Thus women, on a limbic level, expect men to be Men.

This one of the missives of an equalitarian mindset; that an individualized, egalitarian balance of masculine and feminine aspects in two independent people should replace the natural complementary interdependence of masculine and feminine attributes in a paired balance that humans evolved into.

What purple pill temperance really equates to is a 21st century return to the 20th century feminized meme “men need to get in touch with their feminine sides”… or else risk feminine rejection. 60+ years of post sexual revolution social engineering has put the lie to what an abject failure this concept has been.

What they fail to grasp is that an Alpha mindset is not definitively associated with masculine attributes. There are plenty of high-functioning, masculine men we would characterize as Alpha based on our perception of them in many aspects of life, who nonetheless are abject supplicating Betas with regard to how they interact with, and defer to women.

Whether that disconnect is due to a learned, Beta deference to the feminine (White Knighting), some internalized fear of rejection, or just a natural predisposition to be so with women, isn’t the issue; what matters is that the abstraction of Alpha isn’t an absolute definitive association with the masculine.

Likewise, Beta attributes are neither inherently feminine. As has been discussed ad infinitum in the manosphere, 80%+ of modern men have been conditioned (or otherwise) to exemplify and promote a feminine-primary, supportive Beta role for themselves and as many other men they can convince to identify more with the feminine.

The Beta mindset isn’t so much one of adopting a feminine mindset as it is a deference to, and the support of, a feminine-primary worldview.

The reason purple pill (watered down red pill) ideology wants to make the association of Alpha = Masculine, Beta = Feminine is because the “get in touch with your feminine side” Beta attributes they possess in spades can be more easily characterized as “really” being Alpha if it helps make him the more androgynously acceptable male he mistakenly believes women are attracted to (if not directly aroused by).

Alpha Tells

From jf12:

The sexual alphaness of a male towards a female is exhibited by her wanting to please him, and the sexual betaness of a male is exhibited by him needing to please her. A man’s alphaness obviously and definitionally does not cause her to more require him to please her (i.e. alphaness does not rub off like that). And also, betaness is not transferrable, no matter how much we betas wish that our women-pleasing caused women to want to please us.

Moreover, the social dominance of a male in a male hierarchy is barely correlated with his sexual alphaness, and certainly not causal. There are far too many counterexamples, such as Bill Gates, Napoleon Bonaparte, Horatio Nelson, and the list is very very long.

However, and this is a key sociologically empirical point, the social dominance of a *female* human (the best kind!) in a *female* human hierarchy is extremely correlated, in this precise way: A woman to whom women cater to will 99.9% of the time demand to be catered to by her man. This is why women believe man-pleasing women (I admit there are some) are “lesser”. It is also why men (e.g. me) who have tended to be mated to females who are socially dominant in a female hierarchy are invariably betas. It’s simply false that female-dominant women tend to choose men who demand pleasing.

What critics of an Alpha/Beta dichotomy conveniently sweep under the conversational carpet is that the dichotomy they want to debate only exists in their convenient, personal interpretations of Alpha or Beta mean to them.

From a male perspective we can endlessly debate (from our own personal biases) what we believe constitutes an Alpha state (remember, an abstract term, stay with me here) and the expectations of which we think women should respond to according to those expectation. But it’s women’s instinctive behaviors around Alpha men (or men they contextually perceive so) that provide us with the tells as to how she perceives a man’s Alpha or Beta status.

For as much as we believe women should respond to our definition of Alpha – and despite how women will explain they agree with those self-prescribed definitions – as always, it is their behaviors when in the presence of, or in a relationship with men they perceive as being Alpha (or of higher sexual market value than themselves if you prefer) that they bely their true, instinctual recognitions of Alpha.

In a social environment where men are conditioned to believe that women are as equal, rational agents as men, the belief men put their faith into is that women will appreciate their intrinsic qualities and base their sexual selectivity upon a man’s virtue, bearing, intelligence, humor, and any number of attractive intrinsic qualities. However, the truth of what women base their sexual selectivity upon (arousal) is far more evident in their instinctual, unconditioned behavior when around Alpha men – as well as men’s instinctual sensitivity to that behavior.

There are many examples of this Alpha reactive behavior. I’ll make an attempt to illustrate a few of them here, but I expect there’ll be many more offered in the comment thread an I’ll encourage a discussion of the behaviors that serve as Alpha tells. Rossy/Heartiste has made a sport with his ongoing “spot the Alpha” series of posts in which he analyzes a picture or video of a woman’s reaction to a man who she is obviously has an Alpha interest in as her body language and subcommunications suggest. (h/t to CH for today’s image)

The common criticism of these images is that red pill men would read too much into these displays, but the underlying message in that criticism is rooted in understanding and willfully ignoring what our instinctual perceptions of them are. We know Alpha when we see it, but need an explanation to protect our own ego’s Alpha assessment of ourselves.

The Real Selection

For all the delighted ego ’empowerment’ of women boasting they are the sexual selectors in this life, there is still a nervous uncertainty about being found acceptable themselves to an Alpha lover of higher SMV status than they might otherwise merit. This is where the illusions of an assortive mating model break down for women. If feminine-primary sexual selection were the only element to mating there would be no need for the behaviors women are subject to in seeking the approval from men they perceive as Alpha.

There’s a look, an attitude and a presence women will give to Men for whom they have a natural deference to. I don’t just mean blatant sexual subcommunications like casually biting her lower lip, or the hair twirling that’s almost cliché now. It goes beyond the sexual into a kind of meta-attraction/arousal. While the sexual urgency for an Alpha is strong and manifests in a woman’s forwardness toward him, the meta-attraction is both of submission and a subconscious desire for his approval of her.

Men predisposed to a Beta mindset also display many of these same behavioral cues with the women they hope will appreciate them in the same fashion a woman does for a Man that her hindbrain instinctually knows is of a higher SMV. In Beta men we see these behaviors as evidence of “clinginess” or “neediness” and is an identifiable Beta tell; but in women this natural and unprovoked leaning in to a Man, this desire to submit for his approval, is a positive indicator of Alpha attraction.

This is why, as third party observers, we instinctually find such behavior in men distasteful; we subliminally sense a complementary imbalance between the man and woman.

When a woman makes an unforced effort to please a man with subtle words, unintentional wide-eyed contact, and body positioning / posture you’re dealing with a woman who is compelled to defer to you as Alpha.

That isn’t to say this can’t be faked. In fact strippers, good ones at least, are not just physically arousing, or more sexualized, but are in tune with the deficit most men feel when it comes to this Alpha deference. Beyond just the sexual aspect, one thing that makes strippers so enticing and seductive is that the majority of men are simply unused to the fawning affections and Alpha interest (albeit feigned) of any woman, much less an attractive one.

This is also one reason men become so prone to ONEitis both inside and outside this contrived, transactional, sort of attraction. Men are the True Romantics, they want to believe a woman’s sincerity in her Alpha deference to him.

Does the girl you’re interested in come to you, or do you go to her?

I’ve emphasized the importance of establishing and maintaining Frame for years now, but I sometimes wonder if the importance of holding Frame isn’t lost on most men.

To an equalist mindset this Frame establishment seems like I’m advocating men be domineers of their relationships and a man rely on some dark manipulative psychology to enforce his will in that relationship. That’s not what I’m suggesting for the simple reason that it’s too effort consuming, and genuine desire is unsustainable within that constant effort. Maintaining Frame demands a voluntary, uncoerced, desired compliance.

What I’m suggesting is that men simply not invest themselves in women whose Alpha interest in them is mitigated by doubt or an obvious SMV imbalance. This is difficult for most men as it conflicts with our want for an idealized romance with a woman – a want for a love that requires a mutual definition with a woman lacking the capacity to realize this with him. And it’s within that idealized desire men lose Frame and excuse the behaviors of Alpha deference.

The Medium IS the Message

As I’ve written in the past, the Medium IS the Message with women. On some level of consciousness men instinctually understand their relative status with a woman based on the behaviors she directs toward him.

Is she affectionate without being prompted or only when circumstance makes your comfort needed for her?

Is Amused Mastery an easy default for you, or does she resist even playful attempts at it?

Does she initiate sex with you, or is your provocation only ever the precursor to sex?

Is sex even a priority for her (with you)?

Does she make efforts to make things special for you (you both) or is your relationship one of her grading your efforts in qualifying for her Alpha approval of you?

What most guys think are ‘mixed messages’ or confusing behavior coming from a woman is simply due to their inability (for whatever reason) 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 interest level 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 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.

Are you making psychological concessions with a woman who’s never displayed an Alpha deference to you?

Last Minute Resistance

LMR

Many PUAs have at one point encountered and considered what’s commonly known as LMR, Last Minute Resistance after they’ve successfully moved through the various phases of seduction and had a girl reconsider fucking him and ultimately reject him at the zero hour before sex was in the offing.

LMR is the acronym PUAs gave to the tendency, but you don’t need to be a PUA to have had the experience of pleading your case for sex while spooning on the bed with a girl you’ve been trying to ‘make comfortable enough’ to want to fuck you using your best Beta Game for two months. I’d say blue pill men are much more familiar with LMR than most self-styled PUAs.

I’ll admit, I did this in my younger Beta days.

This was long before I realized that sex was about urgency, anxiety and tension, not comfort, familiarity or rapport, or proving how much better a boyfriend I’d make than the Jerks she’d enthusiastically spread her legs for because they naturally created that urgency.

It wasn’t until I’d hit my sexual stride in my semi-pro rock star 20s that I realized that striving to make a girl feel comfort and trust was anti-seductive.

Eventually I got to the point that I could get laid predictability enough with girls who were enthusiastically down to fuck, that I no longer felt the responsibility to endure the blue balls I had in trying to behave according to how girls ‘told’ me I should go about being intimate with other girls.

It was then I realized I had been attempting to Game girls according to the advice other girls had given me (or even some of the girls I wanted to get with themselves). I realized how adolescent this really was; these are games teenage girls played with guys who’s attentions they enjoyed, but couldn’t bear the thought of fucking someone they were so familiar with. I figured out that when a woman says, “I don’t think of you in that way. I think of you as a brother.”, what she’s really saying is “I’d consider sex with you to be incest”.

I didn’t know it then, but this was an important lesson in my red pill education.

I’ve never been an advocate for pushing past last minute resistance with a woman. From that point on in my life if there was any hesitancy on the part of a woman becoming sexual with me, and certainly once clothes were about to come off, I knew something else was affecting the needed sexual tension and urgency. Something else was mitigating genuine desire and I knew it wouldn’t be the kind of sex I wanted to have, or couldn’t already have had a better experience with another plate I was spinning at the time.

I get that for a lot of guys, “pushing” for sex – really trying to wait a girl out for sex – is the only Game they really have to speak of. However, I’d gotten to the point where I realized that any sex a woman makes a guy wait for is negotiated desire and mitigated sex, and the experience was never worth the wait.

I learned how to do very effective takeaways during this point in my life, but not because they were practiced to perfection from a want to bang a particular woman. Rather, and unintentionally, I had what PUAs termed a very good ‘push/pull’ technique due only to the fact that I knew if a new girl I was with was hesitant to get sexual I was wasting time I could’ve spent with another girl who was a proven commodity.

Women pick up on cues like this. Men are often oblivious to them, but there are subtle differences in our behaviors, indifferences to women’s expected behaviors from us, and subtle attitudes we sub-communicate which women are attuned to thanks to an evolved psychological understanding of when they have a sexual competitor for our attentions. Women who have a genuine interest in a guy, rarely confuse that guy with “mixed messages“.

I didn’t consciously process it then, but an overt attempt to overcome last minute resistance broadcasts a perception of ‘pussy begging’ in an obvious way. While I realize there’re sometimes situations that call for a need to be sexually assertive to promote a dominance women are testing for, if you’re in a position of what amounts to pleading or “c’mon baby” convincing a girl to fuck you, you’re negotiating (really compromising yourself) for her unenthusiastic desire.

When you overextend yourself in getting past LMR, you risk sending the message that “you just don’t get it” with regard to how women need to be seduced, and how the men they do want to fuck organically behave. By being too self-effacing in convincing a woman to fuck you, you present the perception of being optionless with other women, and thus a non-sexual Beta and she can deal with you, or not deal with you, accordingly.

It was really simple pragmatism for me to walk away from a sexual dead end girl – I had other options – but in doing so I’d unwittingly, but organically, passed a shit test. And more often than not I got laid a week or two after “bumping into” her again; after she’d had time to process it.

Game 101

Now, why am I going back to Game 101 here?

Likely this is something I should’ve included in the book, or come about to in the early posts of Rational Male (I have actually, but not in depth). Well, it’s because of a pathetically brief throwaway post from Lindy West praising the recent Yes Means Yes law on California campuses.

West usually wrote feminist agitprop before she was surreptitiously let go from Jezebel a few months ago, and rest assured this is the first and last time I’ll ever quote her on this blog, but in her giddy sputtering over the YMY law she did manage one coherent point:

“Why would you want to be tolerated when you could be desired?”

Following along in the wake of the Yes Means Yes social initiative, many a feminized blogger has gone through a good deal of mental contortions in order to rationalize why they support it. The problem they encounter is that in supporting YMY they have to explain away more than a few previously, and publicly, held stands they made in the past about gender relations to align with YMY.

One such inconsistency stems from women’s dubious want for comfort and rapport prior to sex that conflicts with what, essentially, amounts to negotiating for their genuine desire. Thus, I agree with Lindy, why would you want to be tolerated, when you could be desired?

What Lindy is oblivious to (no doubt from a lack of experiencing male attention) is that genuine desire cannot be negotiated for. Many a hapless Beta suffering in a ‘tolerance’ relationship is all too familiar with the lackluster experience of ‘duty sex’. Women will bemoan some fanciful epidemic of misogynists who think they’re entitled to, or owed sex, but the fact of the matter is the same women actively contribute to that belief by (legally now) requiring a checklist of terms necessary for men to have sex with them.

When I published Iron Rule of Tomassi #3 I received (and periodically still receive) a rash of criticism from the femosphere for insisting men excuse themselves from, and not wait for, compromised, mitigated and I daresay now, unenthusiastic sex.

Iron Rule of Tomassi #3

Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait.

When I wrote this it was an effort in illustrating a pragmatic approach to save men the time and resources of investing in a less than optimal sexual experience. In essence, it’s a rule to help men avoid negotiated, unenthusiastic sex with women who feel obligated to fuck him. Whether it’s ostensibly from pity or duty or some other pretense the outcome is still the same.

I also wrote a follow up to this rule in Three Strikes:

Risk & Reward

In Game, there is a subtle balance that needs to be recognized between risks of over-investing in a particular woman with regards to practicality and not throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water and losing on a potentially rewarding opportunity. Women, as is particular to their own Game, will naturally come down on the side of casting doubt on a man’s valid assessment of a woman’s potential value, both in long term perspectives and potential sexual satisfaction. This presumption of doubt is a built in failsafe social convention for women; if only you’d been more patient, if only you invested a little bit more, you’d be rewarded with a great mother for your children and the best pussy of your life – don’t blow it now!

The short version is that it’s not in women’s best sexual-strategy interests for a man to have sexual options. Women’s sexual strategy is very schizophrenic – ideally women want a Man that other women want to fuck, but in order to assess his sexual market value to other women he’s got to have exercisable options for her to compete against, or at least display indirect social proof to that effect. So, she needs to limit his options while simultaneously determining he has those options. Now add to this the hypergamous necessity of maintaining  a reasonable pool of suitors suspended in doubt of her own SMV in order to determine the best one among them for short term sexual provisioning and long term security provisioning.

As ever, the intent here is to determine the potential for genuine enthusiastic sex – if there’s no interest, or hesitant acceptance: NEXT.

At the time of my writing these posts I was castigated for exactly the same rationale that femosphere bloggers are now endorsing Yes Means Yes with today. The (now scrubbed from certain blogs) criticism then was one of how terrible it was for Men to punish women by not playing along with feminine-primary Game.

Only two years ago the criticism was, “What? You just want some whore who gives it up on the first night?”

However, under the Yes Means Yes initiative, this Three Strikes pragmatism is flipped and endorsed by the women who were previously outraged by it. YMY fosters a social environment which actively promotes Pump and Dump sexual encounters, since the furtherance of that sexual relationship into an LTR increases the risk and liabilities that are the result of the YMY threat point.

Commenter jf12 from last week’s thread:

YMY makes a good case for men abandoning what women consider to be their assortative equals, i.e. women who are older, crankier, and more likely to say no, for women who are younger, nicer, and more likely to say yes. YMY is a total green light for men to push for sex immediately if not sooner.

So the question becomes one of how men will most pragmatically develop contingencies for the YMY threat point in their own sexual strategy? In an age when Sheryl Sandberg is openly telling young women to fuck the Bad Boys, and settle down with the Nice Guy before her SMV decays into non-competitiveness, when open hypergamy is not only embraced, but proudly preached in the media, what logical choice do men have but to push for sex immediately and go their own way?

YMY combined with Open Hypergamy promote a sexual marketplace based on enthusiastic consent for Alpha Fucks, and mitigated, ambiguous consent for Beta Bucks. Now add to this environment the effects and behaviors inherent with women’s Ovulatory Shift on a monthly basis and we can begin to see the latent purpose behind Yes Means Yes – insurance against regrettable sexual behavior.

Purgatory

purgatoryheader1

I’m going to apologize in advance to commenter Softek (hopefully you’re cool with my posting this), but his comment from The Real Nice was exactly what I was digging into this morning:

I’ll tell you where the friendzone is: it’s in your head. You want to believe that something is going to happen with a girl and that you’ve got your foot in the door because you’ve always been there for her for so long, and you always have “so much fun” when you hang out, they like you, they tell you they enjoy spending time with you.

Yeah…no.

Rollo’s said if a woman’s interested in you, she won’t confuse you.

A girl that I was not interested in was interested in me. That girl let me know she was interested in me because while we were hanging out she initiated physical contact herself, I just went along with it, and next thing I know I’m on my back and she’s pulling my boxers down and sucking my dick.

After she swallowed I figured out, “Oh. She must be interested in me. Okay.” For real. That oblivious.

And that was the second day we were hanging out. I’d never met her or hung out with her before. We’re talking 0 to 60, although in her mind when we started hanging out I guess she was already going 60. She did not tell me she liked me or cared about me or wanted to be with me. What she “said” was ask if I wanted her to go down on me, and then she did.

Night and day. I’ve known other girls for years and years and spent so much time with them and never saw one iota of pussy, and only on a couple of occasions got a hug. Nothing was ever going to happen. And I was in the friendzone in my mind. I’d spend all my time there wishing and hoping and never realized how short I was selling myself and how by being the pursuer, I’d already lost.

If you’re waiting for something to develop, you’re already fucked. I learned that one after reflecting on that experience with that other girl. That was the first time in my life any girl showed sexual interest in me — and it was very, very clear. She was the one throwing herself at me. And when she did and I just soaked it all up she was very happy about that and it was just this torrential downpour of praise and compliments and how great I was and everything inbetween.

I haven’t had a lot of experience, but the little I have had has shown me the difference between pursuing a girl who may or may not be interested in you eventually, and one who absolutely, unequivocally is. It is night and day. There’s no mistaking it.

We’re not being nice to ourselves and loving ourselves when we willingly stay in the friendzone in our minds — wishing and hoping and fantasizing. A girl who’s interested will give you so much more, and she’ll give it at the drop of a hat.

I’ve done posts in the past about the utility LJBF rejections mean to women, men’s Beta Game tactics of Playing Friends in the hopes of qualifying for a woman’s intimacy at a later date, and how men and women differ in their approaches to friendship based on their same-sex friendships. In all of these I brush a bit into the concept of the “friend zone” and how it’s really men who put themselves (usually willingly) in this state:

Men get a LJBF rejection because of a process. These are the “friends first” mindset guys; the guys who put far too much emphasis on a solitary woman and wait her out until the perfect moment to attempt to escalate to intimacy, at which point her most comfortable rejection (Buffer) is to LJBF. This is made all the more easy for her because of the process the guy used to get to that point.

[…] Get it out of your head now that you’re even in a so called “friend zone” with any woman. There is no friend zone – there is only the limbo between you being fooled that a girl is actually a friend on an equitable level to your same sex friends, and you understanding that as soon as she becomes intimate with another guy your attentions will become a liability to any relationship she might want to have with the new sexual interest and she puts you off, or you do the same when you become so involved with another girl.

I probably could have mentioned this in The Real Nice post, but I’m noticing a social trend from overly ’empowered’ women in not simply rejecting the concept of the ‘friend zone’, but outright hostility towards the men who insist they’re forced into it. Women are angry about men complaining about the friend zone.

Neo-feminism HATES the idea of the friend zone for the same reasons it hates Faux-Nice Guys; there’s an implied state of exchange. They hate the reciprocal part of the Savior Schema because it’s considered one degree away from rape.

Nothing upsets the feminine-primary balance of sexual selectivity and betrays the secret mechanics of women’s need to optimize hypergamy than having a man overtly expose the transactional side of women’s sexual strategy. The side that puts him into a friend zone purgatory for being a ‘tryer’ when it comes to sex, but her need for his trying hasn’t reached a critical point.

This is what the friend zone does; it makes a man simultaneously responsible for, and accountable to, his want for sex by attempting to qualify for it with a woman. The friend zone is a Beta man’s punishment for expecting to be entitled to the rewards reserved for an Alpha. The Alpha doesn’t qualify himself for a woman’s intimacy, she qualifies for his sexual approval. And the longer you stay rapt by her in the friend zone the readier you’ll be when she needs your dutiful, sex-lured, providership.

If you want an example of the feminine imperative’s fluidly reinventing social conventions for itself look no further than how the concept of the ‘friend zone’ has evolved since the mid 90’s. In 1994 it was cute in an “Aww, hang in there fella, she’ll come around to loving you for who you are eventually (once she’s “grown” from the experiences of banging bad boys). In 2014 it’s  “Any guy who thinks he’s in the so called friend zone is just a potential rapist because he thinks he’s owed sex for his friendship.”

A Way Out of Hell

One of the most common questions you’ll read from desperate blue pill men, not just in the manosphere, but on damn near every dating forum, to Dear Abby, to AskMen is “How do I get out of the friendzone?” Type that question into a Google query and look at the number of returns you get. The question of course is usually followed by some plea for advice or a script to follow in order to finally get with the Girl of his Dreams®, and rationally and reasonably make her aware of how he measures up to everything on her ‘boyfriend list’.

If you want some actionable Game advice about the ‘friend zone’ here it is – leave it yourself!

Even if you think you have the best and noblest of intentions in your White Knight ‘friend zone’ status, the fact remains that women in general, and the woman you have set your noble intent upon, will consider your ‘friend zoning’ a prison of your own making – not theirs.

Even the most complicit or implicit woman in a guy’s ‘friend zoning’ will never accept the liability for placing him into that state, and even the most culpable woman in this will still resent him; not just for pointing out her own participation in it, but because it irrecoverably confirms him as being a Beta chump who would allow himself to participate in his own ‘friend zoning’.

If you believe you’re in some friend zone with a woman, never overtly admit to or complain about it with anyone, man or woman – you will only reaffirm your perception of being a necessitous Beta. Men will judge, women will talk, and your self-perception gets caught in a negative feedback loop.

Next, remember Iron Rule of Tomassi #7:

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.

Your “friend zoning” is a failed relationship. Approach new women, develop new prospects. A Woman doesn’t want the ‘liability’ of implied sexual exchange (actual or imagined) for your friendship? Don’t give it her.

 

Ultimatum

A comment on the Iron Rule of Tomassi #4

Rollo mentioned that once a woman gets into a cohabitating situation, that her sexual availability markedly decreases. It seems to me that so long as the man is able to give and act out the ultimatum that “either I get a sexually satisfying relationship or I’m out (or you’re out, if it’s my place)”, then there should be no problem.

Sure, there are financial and legal entanglements, but this would be akin to dead money on any investment – sure it hurts, but that’s the risk one takes. And in the case of a lease, the man could always take the attitude that he wants out, and is only living in the apartment because he is on the lease (he could always go back to his available bachelor days.)

Interesting you used the word “ultimatum” here. It’s important that you understand what an ultimatum implies. Whenever a person delivers an ultimatum, always understand that this is a declaration of powerlessness. In other words, “I am so out of control in this circumstance you must do this or I will remove either myself or you from the circumstance.”

First off, in this particular instance it’s far more likely that you’ll be the one leaving considering the preference modern legalities give women today with regard to evicting them from such a situation. Secondly, it only confirms for her what she wants to know, that she is your one and ONLY source of sexual intimacy and by you cohabiting with her, emotionally, financially and logistically it makes it almost impossible for you to really make good on your ultimatum. You only consolidate her sexual monopoly by living with her.

I’ve already gone into all the practical reasons as to why a guy should never move in with a woman in Iron Rule #4, but I think it may be better to ask yourself why you do want to move in with her. What are you benefitting from in this situation that you aren’t by remaining independent of each other? For most guys the fantasy is more accessible sex, but if you’re living as you suggest here already, how is living together any different? And even if this were the case, that you had more sex with her by living together, you are still assuming a greater degree of responsibility, accountability and liability in your relationship and in your day to day life in exchange for that sexual accessibility. How is that an advantage? How is that not like marriage anyway?

As I’ve stated in the prior posts, when you commit to ANYTHING – women, career, education, family, etc. – you necessarily lose options and your ability to maneuver in taking advantage of them.

Ultimatums

Ultimatums are declarations of powerlessness because you are resorting to a direct threat to get someone to do what you want them to, and in doing so you OVERTLY confess your weak position. If you were in a genuine position of control it wouldn’t be necessary to resort to an ultimatum; you’d simply use that control. There are many ways to effect a change in another person, but ultimatums will never prompt a genuine change. If they change behavior it’s prompted by the threat, not unprompted, organic desire.

One of the primary tenets of my Game philosophy is that true desire cannot be negotiated. A natural, unsolicited desire state, unmitigated by obligation or concerns for resources exchange, is the ideal basis for any intergender relationship. Any factors that introduce elements that hinder this genuine desire – exchange, negotiations, obligations, reciprocity, etc. – weaken this desire and weaken the relationship. Delivering an ultimatum is the most direct, overt way to introduce exactly these elements into a relationship.

Now you might say that an ultimatum is implied in how you stated this it to her, or the context it was in. If this was your intent, you are still in a position of powerlessness since you are still trying to get this person to do what you want. It’s not what you can do to her (i.e. withdrawing your attentions) that’s the power issue, but the actual desired result, getting her to genuinely have a desire to do what she has no desire to do.

I should also add that ultimatums are, ultimately, self-defeating. You can keep your dog from running off by chaining him in the yard, but that dog still wants to run off. You cannot effect a genuine change of desire with an ultimatum as your relationship will be founded on that threat. And this is the real power issue; that you’d want a person to conform to your desire so badly that you’d use a threat to effect it in spite of the foreknowledge that it can never be a genuine conformation because they didn’t orginate it and did so only under duress.

So from your standpoint, yes you do have the power to affect your own actions (like walking away), but you are powerless to force her to do what you want (prompt a genuine desire in her), thus you resort to an ultimatum and only illustrate this OVERTLY.

Boundaries

It’s very important to make the distinction between setting boundaries and delivering ultimatums. Men with a head for absolutisms seem to think that avoiding ultimatums is the same as spinelessly avoiding laying down the law and setting the frame for a relationship (or even a particular plate they’re spinning). Establishing boundaries and assuming frame requires exemplification and demonstration. As with the 9th Law of Power: Win Through Your Actions, Never through Argument – demonstrate, do not explicate. There is no more overt an explication than your delivering an ultimatum. Ultimatums only lead to behavioral shifts based on the fear of repercussions, never a genuine desire for that behavior.

However, a continuous demonstration of what you necessitate in a relationship is vital to its health and your continued primacy of frame. Telling a woman what’s what or else often smacks of insecurity and childishness, but a firm discussion-less enacting of what is important to you and necessary for any future relationship viscerally teaches her what is expected by experiencing the very repercussions you ultimatum would only advertise to her.